Not only has there been an overabundance of Lakers fans posting, but their comments about the Spurs and San Antonio have been especially harsh. After winning the first two games in LA, they seemed to get even more vicious - not at all like a confident group of fans. Maybe they all remember that two seasons ago, the Lakers were up 3-1 in their first round series against the Suns, before getting spanked 3 games in a row. (BTW - Phil Jackson was 44-0 as a coach when leading a series before the Lakers blew that one.) And their worst nightmare is for this series to get to 2-2, with the Spurs having momentum. Being embarassed and worried can make some people act like assholes. I thought that might be the answer.
But they are also talking so much city smack - not at all like a confident group of LA residents. Surely people wouldn't say such terrible things about another city and its citizens over a basketball rivalry? So what else could it be? Maybe it's the headlines that California home repossessions are up 327% over last year. Maybe it's just the sheer embarassment that a Congresswoman from California just had her own house repossessed. Or maybe it's the worry that her house was sold for $200K less than she paid for it in 2007, and she left the lender holding the bag. If it happens to a member of Congress, a lot of "regular" people must be upside-down too. So OK... embarassed and worried. Makes them behave like assholes. Got it.
I could almost make myself feel sorry for them. But then there are all those nasty comments about the Spurs and their fans making excuses. That's a little hard to accept from people who blame their over-extended credit on the people who loaned them the money! And the comments about the Riverwalk being dirty? I don't think so... not from residents of the most polluted city in the country, within the most polluted state. And how about the comments about Texans being stupid? Kinda harsh when fewer than 70% of California ninth-graders will graduate high school. (They have 150,000 dropouts per year, but their state laws allow high school students to work 48 hours per week. Brilliant.) There's an old saying about people who live in glass houses.
Nope... after careful consideration, there can only be one reason why there are so many asshole Lakers fans here:
They're assholes, there's a lot of them, and this is better than any other place they are allowed to post.
Spurs fans don't need any excuses, because this series is a long-assed way from over. This LA roster isn't that much different from the one that got blown out by Phoenix last year. (Gasol wasn't there, but they had a healthy Andrew Bynum. I'd be more worried if they had Shaq, even at his age.) And we don't need city smack from any city that is half a billion dollars in debt, and cutting school funding so that it will have enough cash on hand to pay its bills. Winning an NBA Championship might provide LA residents with a ray of sunshine in an otherwise crappy existence. But they shouldn't invest in any T-shirts just yet.