Lakers (Fans) Suck!

Seriously...I'm not one to take the word "stupid" lightly. I don't throw it around because it's too easy to take that shortcut, rather than taking the time to understand someone. I've seen too many ignorant people call an intelligent person stupid just because the ignorant one missed the point of whatever the intelligent one said. Believe me -- I've been called stupid a lot.

So I don't fly off the handle when someone says something that I think is incredibly misguided or uninformed. I do a lot of work behind the scenes to find out whether or not what they say has merit, that I have just been given a new perspective that never dawned on me, or whether that person just doesn't know. Whatever the case, I let that person know exactly what I think in no uncertain terms. And "stupid" is usually the last word I use.

In walk Lakers fans.

Kobe, Odom, and the rest of the team can beat the Phoenix Suns. The Suns are really not a good ball club. They just happen to have guys like Steve Nash, Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire. - Rey Gamboa

You cannot blame Kobe. The man wants to win. At least the Lakers show that they can play with the Suns in this series. - Rodeo

The Suns will never win anything of consequence with this style of basketball. Under no circumstances should a 61 win team have any trouble with a team that only won 4 of its last 12, and is still trying to work players back in from injuries. - Anonymous

I can see why one would want to remain anonymous. I consider myself fairly representative of Suns fans everywhere, so I feel comfortable saying that the Suns had no trouble at all. No one was worried, least of all me because we've seen the story before. The Suns come out unfocused, Kobe scores a ton, Kobe gets tired, the Suns lay the hammer down. It's a pretty simple formula, and it's the reason Phil Jackson's team went up 3-1 on the Suns last year -- Kobe didn't dominate the ball.

But those quotes are just a sampling of the myriad idiotic comments I see posted on the web regarding the Lakers' chances in this series. Laker fans are so enamoured with the scoring champion that they are completely blinded to the fact that their team simply sucks. They actually believe that the Lakers posed a problem for the Suns in game one, and they have somehow convinced themselves that weaknesses were exposed.

Fact - the Suns missed a ton of open looks during the entire game, especially in the first half.

Fact - Kobe made some phenomenal shots that would make even Gilbert Arenas cringe.

Fact - Phil Jackson has won only one playoff series when he had only one star player (Chicago swept Cleveland in 1994, when first round series were 5 games).

Fact - Kwame Brown is the worst finisher in all of basketball, and he cannot guard Amare Stoudemire. (OK...the first part is opinion, but I dare anyone to challenge it.)

Fact - The Suns played only half a game at full bore, and still won.

Fact - Los Angeles does not have a way to defend Leandro Barbosa.

Still, Laker fans don't care. For reasons beyond my understanding, they think that there is a lot of good to take from their team's game one loss at the hands of the Suns. Apparently, they are devout followers of the Church of Latter Day Lakers, believing in the Gospel as preached by the Pope and his emissaries. Like an apostle in the Dark Ages, they shun the empirical evidence that the sciences apply in favor of faith and hope that their purple and gold-donned savior will expunge the demons of the valley to the east from the playoff world.

Or maybe they are all just plain stupid. Maybe they really think that facts mean nothing because their team's history is blanketed in banners and studded with jewels. It maybe hot today, but that doesn't mean it won't be cold tomorrow because we are only 10,000 years removed from an ice age. It must be just around the corner. Forget the fact that everything in this whole universe is based on cyclical patterns, that it takes time before past events repeat themselves. Forget that the Lakers are just not a good team this season, and probably won't be for several more, because it's easier to be stupid than it is to accept that the needle is going to sting.

Laker fans have a twisted habit of removing themselves from reality and going to a happy place, as if they are a collection of sexually abused children who believe that daddy really does love them. Is it sick? Not really, because we are talking about a basketball team. Is it stupid? Of course it is. Why? Same reason -- we are talking about a damn basketball team.

To put so much of their egos' stock in something so trivial can't speak well to intellectual advancement. It makes no sense to me that someone can say that they have a better team, one that will win this series, because "how many championships has PHOENIX won? That's right -- NONE!"

Seriously -- how stupid is that?