Last Saturday, Russ, his brother, a co-worker of mine, and myself went to see the Clippers battle the Wizards at the Phone Booth in DC. It was fun. Blake Griffin put up 26 in the first half and then rested on his laurels as his team looked drastically better than the Wizards. John Wall was fast. He got to the hoop often and quickly, but most of my attention was focused on how a promotional video of Wizards players singing The Supremes' "Baby Love" epitomized the state of their woeful franchise--they didn't know the words or the artist.
I wrote about it over at The Faster Times, but I felt that article left something out and it's the real difference between the likes of JaVale McGee/Andray Blatche and their young counterparts on the Clippers, Blake Griffin/Deandre Jordan. McGee and Blatch are tanks run amuck. They disregard history and tradition at all costs. Hell, McGee would rather play with multiple balls and multiple baskets. But the Clippers big men, as strange as it seems, are more reigned in than the Wizards big men. Think of them as mighty stallions harnessed to a stagecoach, which gives them their purpose. Think of McGee and Blatche as Neanderthals: They are dead ends with no higher calling. And the missing link is a man many of us have forgotten about this season, but a fossil of him was discovered Saturday night, in DC:
At first it was difficult to discern if the creature was indeed homo sapien kaman erectus, but a study of previous sightings confirmed that the confusion was merely him shedding his winter coat:
