The New Jersey Nets were downright humiliated in their home opener last night, a 106-70 curb stomping at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks. But despite the loss and coach Avery Johnson and star Deron Williams playing the “We’re better than this” routine, we learned two things:
1) Nets fans are willing to piss all over their team until they get Dwight Howard, because f*ck those other guys around Williams.
B) Kris Humphries found the one arena that he won’t be booed in this season, and that makes people mad.
That first point is moot for now since the Nets have nothing of value to trade for Howard anymore, so we’ll focus on that second point for now. As my good buddy and Nets beat writer Andy Vasquez Tweeted, Humphries was booed mercilessly in the Nets preseason game against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden and again in the season opener at the Washington Wizards.
And now people are asking the question: Why all the hate for Humphries? It starts with Johnson after the team’s victory against the Wizards, when Humphries contributed a surprising and inspired 21 points and 16 rebounds.
“I don’t know why. I’m trying to figure out, what did he do?” Johnson said. “I’m serious. Maybe because I don’t follow reality TV, I don’t know all the ins and outs of it but it’s pretty hilarious to me. I don’t know if they even know why they’re booing him.”
(Via the NY Daily News)
Robert Littal at Black Sports Online, one of my favorite blogs out there, is also crying foul at this sudden hate for a guy nobody had ever really heard of until last June.
People who don’t really know anything about basketball but act like they do, just assumed Kris Humphries was a scrub because they never heard of him before he started to Keep up with the Kardashians.
Because of the power of the Kardashians is so strong they have people across the country hating Humphries and I am not exactly sure why, but to Humphries credit he is embracing that and using it as motivation on the court.
Here’s the thing: the people who watch “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and “Kourtney and Kim Take New York” and “Khloe and Lamar” and “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami” and “Khloe Takes a Dairy Queen” and “Kris Jenner Presents Not Without Whoring My Teenage Daughters” and “Kim Takes it on Camera” aren’t the kind of people who are shelling out cash to attend NBA games. If I had to make a pie chart, I would say that fans of those shows make up 2% of the people booing Humphries at a game. And I did make a pie chart, but Khloe ate it. :(
But I think the rest of it is much more simple. On Thursday night, I get to heckle and boo Humphries when the Nets come to Orlando to play the Magic, not because he broke poor Kim’s heart, but because he enabled that family of fame whores by teaming up with them and allowing them to allegedly make $18 million off the wedding and, even worse, trade all of the wedding presents in for Rolexes. Whether he thought he was actually going to spend the rest of his life with the woman who let Brandy’s brother mount her like a Shetland pony on camera or not, Humphries contributed to this empire of shameless greed.
If that is the reason that my fellow average NBA fans are booing Humphries, then I encourage it. After all, he wants to be LeBron James now and claim that the boos are making him embrace his inner villain.
“To me, it’s motivation. People are yelling at you—you’ve got to perform, you’ve got to play hard. They might want to have a reason to say something. You want to try and give them that reason,” Humphries said. “For me, it’s just makes it a little hostile environment—and it’s kind of fun to play in that environment.”
The quiet, humble Minnesota family man has decided that he wants to be the villain now and welcomes opposing fans booing him. Maybe we’re just booing him because he makes incredibly bad decisions.
