Hornets Hype

• ESPN’s Daily Dime – the usual. Except everyone seems to be mentioning that he smacked/kicked/whatever Al Harrington. Hello, that’s probably more a result of Harrington grabbing Chris around the leg than it is indicative of some deep, secret, frustrated desire to be out of New Orleans.
• At the Hive talks about Byron Scott’s lack of adjustments over the past two years and how this does not bode well for the future.
• Paul’s Frustration Grows, Even as he Hides It – Hornets are a mom and pop organization, Shinn is a liar for claiming credit for coming back after Katrina (we knew this), maybe Paul should start holding them to higher standards as a franchise player like Kobe and LeBron do.
• Dime: Chris Paul has lost his smile
• Frustration, losses mounting for Hornets’ Paul – Ken Berger has been a perennial Shit List resident in the past because of stupid factual errors, but I have to say I agree with him and his column is probably the best of the lot. No, not just ’cause he hit all  my major gripes and agreed with me. Well, maybe a little bit because of that…

“One of the best potential recipients of Paul’s assists, rookie Marcus Thornton, languishes on the bench because Byron Scott wants the team to defend first and score later. At this rate, though, there won’t be a later.

…On one hand, Paul says things will be fine — “It’s a long season,” he said — and in his next breath he laments that the Hornets are a team without a style. That’s code for “team with a stubborn coach.” Scott wants a rugged, defense-obsessed, insanely conditioned team. He wants this all the time, with no exceptions. But if a week goes by, and then a month, and it’s not working, he’ll have to try something else or he will lose the team”

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come back later and add some commentary, but for now I’m not going to. Peja was on from deep, West and Okafor had 21+ points apiece, and CP had 32. We lost last night because our interior defense and teamwork was horrendously, eye-searingly awful, not because “ha ha the Hornets suck, who’s gonna score for them?” like a lot of the mainstream sources seem to think. It was already bad enough that New Orleans does a poor job of defending the three, but it was infinitely more excusable than allowing junky teams to get layup after layup. 4o points in the 4th quarter to the Knicks? And this is not the Bobby Browns of the team. (Well, it’s that too.) It’s the starting lineup.

Chris Paul wasn’t exchanging words with Tom Thibodeau the other night because he was pissed at Rondo. He was probably trying to smuggle him on the freaking plane.

But it still looks like Rondo started it. And if Chris Paul tried to follow anyone into locker rooms and had to be prevented by security, it’s not on this video. (This is from the Celtics’ feed, by the way, since CST didn’t show the end-of-the-game scuffle.) It looks like CP and Paul Pierce were talking when Rondo butted in and got up in Chris’ face. CP immediately sticks his hands in the air and backs up, talking the whole time. Pierce steps between the two, and meanwhile Eddie House grabs Rondo and hauls him off. And then a couple of seconds later, Devin Brown comes and drags CP off in the other direction and that appears to be the end of it.

Yawn. And there we have the genesis of yet another exaggerated headline featuring Chris Paul.

There are few certainties in this ever-changing world. Luckily we have NBA media day, which is pleasantly and reassuringly similar every year. We know that Peja will be the darkest he’ll be all year, players will be forced to pose all sorts of ridiculous and slightly awkward ways with a basketball– often two– and we know that David West will, at some point, manage to look extremely skeptical in a photograph, despite there being nothing apparent to be skeptical about.

Below are some of the highlights from yesterday’s posing party:

"Oh, they don't make CP take goofy pictures. Cause he's The Franchise." .... Okaaaaay, maybe not.

We really need to track the statistics this year on whether Peja shoots better in his dark half of the season or his pasty half. That stat sounds right about up our alley.

DWest works out some. Just a little.

I really want to caption this picture, but I think deep down we all know it would just be a dirty joke. So instead I will let you imagine what I would have said. And you are probably right.

No one really knows what is going on here.

WTF. Who would do this to Mo Pete's picture???

Here’s the clip of Chris Paul on Jimmy Fallon last night. Of course I stayed up for this, only to see Our Local Hero chat about his kids’ book for a couple of minutes and then play dodgeball in the NBC elevator bank. Yep, dodgeball. What’s funny (and yet sort of fittingly in character) is watch how CP gets the jump on his opponents at 00:31 by sneakily not going all the way back and touching the wall!

And in case you’re just hearing about it, here’s Chris’ book Long Shot: Never Too Small to Dream Big.

Well, that should get Google’s attention. Maybe even someone who follows basketball. Apparently, my breakdown of how Chris Paul’s numbers last season gave him one of the most historic point guard seasons ever, and which, incidentally, blew away Steve Nash’s two MVP seasons, is forgotten.  Some people, who don’t believe in small markets, are convinced the Hornets will finish no better than 7th this year, and that CP3 does not even get consideration, let alone a single vote, in the MVP category, though Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant do.  Crazy.  And people wonder why I disappear in the offseason.  People are so fucking ridiculous that they forget what the sport of basketball is and/or are so fucking bored that they just invent stories to keep themselves occupied.  Oooh… Stephon is insane, Rubio won’t come over, C.J. Watson only took a one year deal?!  Whatthefuckever.

Listen.  It’s not rocket science.  If you’ve ever watched basketball, it’s pretty fucking obvious that Chris Paul is a once-in-a-generation talent.  Quick, name the best players in the NBA.  If you didn’t say CP, Kobe, and one other person, then you’re a moron.  Yeah, yeah, freedom of choice, opinion, etc.  All that also includes the freedom to be wrong, to be a moron, and just plain ignorant.  Congratulations.  Sometimes I wish this country was a totalitarian state and they made everyone worship the players who had talent and heart (yeah, I’m talking to you Vince Carter), rather than just those that get the most attention.  At least it’d be a little more honest.

Sorry if I don’t drop to my knees and worship the capitalist propaganda that would make us believe the Knicks deserve a championship when they haven’t even put forth a team that resembles a professional unit since Allan Houston played for them and don’t bask in the glow of yet another Celtics-Lakers matchup when there are are 30 teams in the league with 30 equally laudable fanbases, or for that matter, drool at the mere mention of the “Chosen One”—a.k.a. the Nike whore or whoever makes the sponsors figure will make them the most money (um, Dwayne Wade?).  Call me an elitist, call me a purist, yeah, like those are bad things, but I appreciate the game of basketball.  I’ll follow the talent like Deep Throat said to follow the money.  And the media is complicit.  Already they’re putting it again as Kobe-LRJ for MVP and Celts-Lakeshow for the ring.  Fucking sad.  Unprecedented parity and they mouth the same shit?  Dimemag is one of the few that gets it.  They ask the hard questions.  Steve Nash (no offense, dude, I love your game), and Duncan (ditto) both have two MVPs, and Shaq one?  What the fuck?  Dime thought that weird.  Me too.  But I digress.  Dime also noticed that no one has truly appreciated  CP3’s greatness.  That the rest of the country isn’t onboard makes me want to drop a bunch of downers chased with beer like Hunter S. Thompson and go on a shooting spree.

But why cry over spilt media milk?  That’s just how it is today, money, money, money.  No one cares about the truth or the purity of existence that is exemplified by the beauty of physical perfection, which is exactly what excellence in sports is.  Forget that Chris does things that no one has, probably ever, other than Magic, Johnny Stock, and the Big O.  That’s okay.  People can forget.  And then the season will start.  And then you’ll all remember why they called him the Baby-Faced Assassin, the Grief Merchant, or the guy who could talk about Fight Club.  Call him what you will, or ignore him if you will; I’ll be watching, though, and I’ll call him what he is: a warrior, a winner, and the-real-MVP, and someday soon, an NBA Champion.

And it will happen in New Orleans.  And people will wonder why they don’t know more about him.  They’ll wonder what inane thing they were doing when Chris Paul did ______ because their TV station didn’t carry that game.  You really want to know what “amazing” is?  Just watch CP do his thing.

Until then, pretend that someone else deserves the headlines.  Pretend that some other player should be the league’s MVP.  When the truth is he can do things that no one else can, is a leader like few others, and who will continue to smash records on his way to greatness.  I know where I’ll be when it happens.  Do you?

Now, I know this is the internet, where douchebags have free reign to be douchebags in anonymity, without repercussions. I know most comment threads are usually full of ignorance that’s not worth reading. But (this is the point where you should stop reading if strong language offends you) the shit I have seen today is far beyond the limits of acceptable behavior. I am compelled to say something about it.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, in the past few weeks Stephon Marbury has gotten up to a neverending series of interesting– and sometimes disturbing– antics in his forays into livestreaming his life on the internet. I am probably guilty of watching far too much of them than is healthy to watch. Wizards center Brendan Haywood, when asked about Marbury by Hardcore Sports Radio, had the following to say:

“At first it was cool, but after a while it just became disturbing. He’s on YouTube crying with no shirt on for no reason, sweating while his boy’s rubbing his shoulders. What’s that about? That’s like gay porn. I don’t understand it. He’s dancing to a song called ‘Barbie Doll’, doing like stripper moves. I have no idea what’s going on with the guy, it’s almost like he’s trying to end his own career. There’s not a GM out there that would touch Marbury right now.

Have you seen the ‘Barbie Doll’ clip? Click on YouTube and go to Barbie Doll. There’s no way any other professional athletes would wanna get dressed around this guy, because you gotta think something is a little, he’s swinging from both sides of the fence.”

OMG they could be in your locker room, looking at your DICK!!

I was kind of taken aback by this when I read it, since, as mentioned, I watched quite a bit of the Marbury stuff this summer and “gay” was a word that pretty much never occurred to me. Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie provided an excellently written and fairly condemning post on Haywood’s foolish comments, and Kevin Arnovitz at True Hoop (who actually is one of the  “out” journalists referred to in the aforementioned post) followed it up with this piece. I read both and immediately thought, “Wow. Those were awesome pieces.” I said so at once. In fact, I’m the first comment on the BDL piece. What I liked particularly about it was that it used language that made the subject accessible to the average fan who might not be used to reading or writing about equality topics, and it used humor. It didn’t leap in and get political, or throw around a bunch of terminology that an NBA fan wouldn’t know. As you will soon find out, I am not going to do that in this post. I am going to use terminology. But I am going to– I promise– try to explain it, and also why the comments I read today from NBA fans are disheartening and seriously not OK, and the inherent connections homophobia has to issues which directly affect me.

Usually when I rant about topics like this, the group toward whom I direct my ire and fruitless pleas for enlightment is heterosexual white men. This is the default demographic in America. What do I mean by “default”? I mean that they are the group that’s marketed to. I mean that they are the group we see presented to us as characters on our televisions in Hollywood-produced entertainment, in ratios that are disproportionate to real life. It means if you are not a part of this group, you are “other” in some way. You have had some sort of “-ism” directed at you in your life, whether it be racism, sexism, whatever. For the purposes of today’s rant, however, I want to make it clear that men of color are totally not being given a pass. We are talking about HETEROSEXUAL. MEN. WHO. LIKE. SPORTS. Got it?

So now we’re going to talk a little about privilege. I’m going to roll with this definition, because I really like it:

Privilege Is: About how society accommodates you. It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal. It’s about fate dealing from the bottom of the deck on your behalf. (Source.)

It is now Question Time.

Q: But Ticktock6, I called Kelly Dwyer gay because if someone cares about an NBA player being afraid of gay people, he must also by default be gay!

A: I was called gay at least three times today in comment threads about the Brendan Haywood thing, and I found it both laughable and infuriating, because it is so symptomatic of the exact attitude the posts were talking about. It was part of what prompted me to write this post, and part of the privilege thing I was talking about before. It is self-centered and arrogant in the utmost extreme to assume that everyone in a comment thread must automatically feel a certain way because you do. Also, I frankly am so horrified that people apparently exist who have no ability to put themselves in the shoes of another human being, I really don’t know how strongly I can express this horror without spazzing incoherently on the keyboard of my MacBook. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? You read that post, and the first thought that jumped to your mind was, “Haha! Kelly Dwyer’s gay!” … Wow. You are a sad individual. You are awarded no points, you fail at life, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Q: Surely, Ticktock6, you would be afraid to change in a whole room of lesbians, because they might spontaneously assault you and try to convert you! Oh wait, I just remembered lesbians are hot. Whereas gays are not cool. Never mind.

A: There is a lot of privilege to unpack here but I will make a valiant attempt. Let us start with the fact that men are privileged not to have been bombarded by sexualized and contorted imagery of their bodies on a daily basis for their entire lives. As a woman, damn, all we see is other women’s bodies. They’re everywhere. They’re in our magazines. They’re on the TV. They’re out on the street, because it’s acceptable and encouraged for women to wear less clothing than men. They’re on freakin billboards. If we hadn’t achieved a level of comfort with them being out there, we wouldn’t be able to open our eyes in America. Our sexuality doesn’t even really belong to us, on a certain level. It belongs to… everyone! It’s… out there! It’s public. We have been removed from having a say in certain aspects of it, and while this is not right, it does make us very used to female bodies. Sorry if I can’t summon any sympathy for your terror that someone gay might be looking at your body. As a heterosexual male, you are privileged in not having to deal with this in your life. I don’t know, is it this privilege that makes men freak out about other men’s bodies? You tell me. But then, you guys are in locker rooms. You guys pee next to each other with parts of your anatomy out. Where does this intense fear of other men’s sexuality come from? Seriously, don’t you think gay people have much better things to do than try to convert you? Again, your ability to be so self-centered is directly rooted in your privilege.

Q: So you are saying that Stephon Marbury might have danced around on Justin.tv to a teenybopper song with no shirt on for a reason other than because he’s gay? But how can this be? I was watching! The fact that he was there! Doing that! While I was watching! And I’m a heterosexual male! He has to be gay!

A: This is the assumption that pissed me off. If you can get this, and only this, you may leave this blog and I will feel like I achieved my purpose. Repeat after me. It is not always about you. Maybe it’s possible that someone can do something weird or slightly “off” and it’s not about their sexuality. Hell, maybe it is about their sexuality, and it’s still not about you. Maybe it’s possible that people exist– bear with me please– who are basketball fans, for whom a video of Marbury dancing is not “gay” at all. I watched a bunch of the Marbury stuff. I was like, “Damn, don’t put the shirt back on!” Was that gay of me to say that? Of course not. I’m a heterosexual female. (Never mind that gay people are just like heterosexual people, and they behave in a variety of different ways because they are a whole spectrum of people and do not necessarily define their entire lives by the fact that they are gay. They may be doctors. They may be writers. They may be basketball players. The point is there is no such thing as “THIS IS THE WAY ALL GAY PEOPLE ACT”.) By pre-supposing that someone’s behavior is gay or offensive solely because you are uncomfortable with it or confused by it, you are making it all about you. Society is set up to accommodate you more than any other demographic group, and you are demanding that we do it some more because you are insecure. You completely dismissed out of hand the idea that Marbury might be dancing for anyone– me, his friends, himself– other than you, because of course you are his only possible audience. And as a nice little side note, you are telling me I can’t possibly exist. I do not take kindly to this. Hence, the post.

Q: I don’t get it. How is that telling you you don’t exist? That’s not what I said at all. You’re not even gay.

A: You implied it. And this is really the crux of the whole thing. When you make harmful and ignorant comments about an NBA co-worker/peer in a supposedly joking way, or think every space in the sports blogosphere is a safe space for you to spew ignorant hate as a commenter and not be called on it– after all, everyone there is the same as you! … What you are really saying is that people who aren’t like you  A) aren’t a part of the audience for sports, and B) aren’t welcome in sports.

As a wrap-up note, don’t tell me I’m being too sensitive and need to grow a thicker skin or whatever garbage you want to say. You. Have. No. Idea. What it is like being me, out here in the blogosphere. You think if I didn’t have a thick skin, I would be still be writing an NBA blog? This is going to be my third season, and let me tell you, if I was not already able to shrug off the disgusting jokes, and ignorant statements, and people talking like I’m not there, and sheer hatred of women I read on a daily basis– yes, I said daily and yes, I said hatred because, as far as I am concerned, a denial of a person’s basic humanity counts as hatred–  I would have quit after a month. And that’s just what I read on the internet. In the spaces I regularly inhabit as a fan of the NBA. I can’t even imagine what it is like being a female reporter in a locker room. Or a gay reporter in a locker room. Also, it goes without saying that anyone who accuses others of being “too sensitive” or “acting out” is operating with a big whopping dose of— let’s all guess the word– privilege. If you’re a blogger, never having to skim past eighteen disgusting comments about a group of people that includes you is the biggest privilege of all. And you probably don’t even notice.

What follows is a Heterosexual Privilege checklist. The time I have personally taken to read checklists like these has been highly eye-opening and sobering to me. I suggest you read it alone, drop the tired “no homo/pause” facade, and try to imagine what it is like to be someone else for the five to ten minutes it takes you to finish reading. (For more reading on privilege, go here. And White Privilege Checklist, and my personal favorite friend the Male Privilege Checklist.)

Daily Effects of Straight Privilege ( Source.)

On a daily basis as a straight person…

• I can be pretty sure that my roommate, hallmates and classmates will be comfortable with my sexual orientation.
• If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented.
• When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others.
• I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences.
• I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer).
• I am not accused of being abused, warped or psychologically confused because of my sexual orientation.
• I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation.
• I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual.
• I can be sure that my classes will require curricular materials that testify to the existence of people with my sexual orientation.
• People don’t ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation.
• People don’t ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation.
• I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It’s assumed.
• My sexual orientation was never associated with a closet.
• People of my gender do not try to convince me to change my sexual orientation.
• I don’t have to defend my heterosexuality.
• I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual.
• I can count on finding a therapist or doctor willing and able to talk about my sexuality.
• I am guaranteed to find sex education literature for couples with my sexual orientation.
• Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass me.
• I have no need to qualify my straight identity.
• My masculinity/femininity is not challenged because of my sexual orientation.
• I am not identified by my sexual orientation.
• I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my sexual orientation will not work against me.
• If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has sexual orientation overtones.
• Whether I rent or I go to a theater or Blockbuster, I can be sure I will not have trouble finding my sexual orientation represented.
• I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare.
• I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation.
• I do not have to worry about telling my roommate about my sexuality. It is assumed I am a heterosexual.
• I can remain oblivious of the language and culture of LGBTQ folk without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
• I can go for months without being called straight.
• I’m not grouped because of my sexual orientation.
• My individual behavior does not reflect on people who identity as heterosexual.
• In everyday conversation, the language my friends and I use generally assumes my sexual orientation. For example, sex inappropriately referring to only heterosexual sex or family meaning heterosexual relationships with kids.
• People do not assume I am experienced in sex (or that I even have it!) merely because of my sexual orientation.
• I can kiss a person of the opposite gender in the cafeteria without being watched and stared at.
• Nobody calls me straight with maliciousness.
• People can use terms that describe my sexual orientation and mean positive things (IE “straight as an arrow”, “standing up straight” or “straightened out” ) instead of demeaning terms (IE “ewww, that’s gay” or being “queer” ) .
• I am not asked to think about why I am straight.
• I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job.

Q: But isn’t this supposed to be about basketball?

A: It is about basketball. And if you really, truly, loved the game, you would do everything you could to make sure that other people who aren’t exactly like you can be part of it too. I really encourage people to think seriously about whether you are being selfish in spaces you share with other NBA fans. Think about whether what you say may interfere with someone else’s ability to post about or talk about their love of the game.

Now, I hope we are clear about how arrogant and ignorant it is to assume that no one who’s anything other than the demographic you belong to is in your space as a sports fan or participant. I hope we are also clear that… this blog? This is my space. And if the “big” media isn’t going to delete hateful and disgusting commentary, you can be 100% assured that I will.

The only correct and acceptable answer here is, “Yes, Ticktock6, we are clear. Crystal.”

Logical argument is apparently a lost art in today’s culture.  Chris Paul, in Vegas to watch the Hornets’ Summer League team, was asked about Tyson Chandler, and how that trade might indicate that even someone like him could be traded.  His response: “In this league, anything can happen,” Paul told Pro Basketball News. “I can be dealt. It’s possible. It’s possible.”  Courtesy of the Times Picayune.  Notice the gap in the quote?  Who knows what was said in there.  Nonetheless, the resulting headlines in the national media were:

1. Paul says trade ‘possible.’  - Pro Basketball News
2. TRADES: CP3 thinks he could be traded.  - ESPN Insider
3. Chris Paul thinks he could be traded.  – Dimemag.com

Some headlines might be better, if one scours the net?  Right?  Okay.  Let’s take a look around.  The Times Picayune read: “New Orleans Hornets president Hugh Weber says there’s no way Chris Paul will be traded.”  Of course that headline was belied by the additional inclusion of: “the [Hornets] are desperate to dump salaries to avoid having to pay the tax penalty next summer. Due to its financial limitations, New Orleans is the only team in the Southwest Division that has yet to acquire a player through free agency or by a trade to improve its roster this offseason,” and then included the above CP quote, attributing it to Pro Basketball News.  This was followed by the quotes from the Hornets organization that led to its headline, and then absolutely no comment on either.  Way to analyze all the facts before you.

Sports Illustrated got close too.  Their headline?  “Hornets Will Not Trade Chris Paul.”  Good right?  Well, not if immediately followed by this: “Chris Paul told a reporter there’s chance he soon could be traded,” the article then quotes the purported financial/trade situation of the team from the TP (see the above), and then simply added that the Hornets say they won’t trade him, without bothering to include the quotes from any of the Hornets people.  And again, no analysis of the information.

Chris Paul, himself, nauseated by the explosion of articles about his “imminent trade,” used Twitter to tell the world: “Jus for the record too…I’M NOT GOIN ANYWHERE!!! No clue what Chris Thomasson was talkin about, but I didn’t say any of what he was sayin.“  So there it is, the truth.  No matter what was said in a hypothet, this was and is the truth.  CP knows it.  The Hornets basketball organization knows it.  And any serious basketball fan or  journalists, should damn well know it.  Why would the Hornets trade CP?  He’s a once in a generation talent.

Instead of letting it go at that, Pro Basketball News decided to follow up with “Paul Feeling the Pressure.”  Where, Thomasson argued the whole conversation was taped, and that this was what Paul really said.  Allegedly his editors listened to the tape and backed him up.  Okay, but what was the context?  What were the words before, after, and in between?  The reason Paul doesn’t remember it, in my opinion, is because he was talking in general, how the NBA is, how no one’s safe (remember to even qualify for a no-trade clause,  the player must have at least eight years of service time and four with the same team, and must then bargain for one in their contract; to my  knowledge, only Kobe has one).  As Hornets team President, Hugh Weber, said: “I think [Chris] was talking about the nature of the business and the fact that the question was asked the way it was.”  Funny how Thomasson didn’t address that point.  Just become some crafty reporter backs a star player into an awkward answer doesn’t mean his integrity is in place.  To the contrary, manipulating an honest person into giving a random quote that you intend on using as an inflammatory headline proves just the opposite.

Case in point: in supporing Thomasson, notorious Chris Paul-hater, Brett Pollakoff, posted the following article on NBA Fanhouse: “Chris Paul Caught Lying on Twitter?”, in which beyond supporting his fellow “journalist,” Pollakoff called CP a jerk for pretending not to have said what he said, and naive for not understanding the media business.  Right.  Why would Chris think that his opinion on a throwaway hypothet would be a headline?  How naive.  Or maybe it’s indicative of a larger problem; funny how the media always paints it as a player being too foolish to keep his mouth shut rather than the artificial frame of discouse constructed by a willing media agent who cares more about his name in the byline and his next paycheck than even the smallest smigden of self-respect, or dare I say it, the Truth.

So how did we go from having a completely hypothetical, sure, anyone can be traded, argument to “he soon could be traded”?  Simple.  The almighty dollar.  Today’s it’s all about the scoop.  First in time, first in line.  To get paid, that is.  Alternatively, create a crazy enough headline and just maybe enough people will jump to your site to bump your ad revenue.  What, CP is getting traded (to who)?  What, CP is a jerk (what he’d do)?  Either way, it’s about money.  Should Freedom of the Press even apply to these people?

There was a time when “journalists” researched their sources.  They got corroboration.  Apparently, today, it doesn’t matter.  So they have a tape and tore the quote out of context, guess that makes it okay.  Besides, no one trusts the internet anyway.  So what’s one more stretched truth?  Moreover, who really wants truth in an age when bickering people thrown into awkward situations with suggested responses is “entertainment?”  Reality television is the new gladiatorial games, and like then, the masses now eat it up.  It had occurred to me that sports was the purest form of entertainment left, an honorable exercise where persons are forced to play by the same set of rules and compete, their individual and/or aggregate excellence determining the winner totally removed from any political, personal, religious, or other frame of bias.  Only the media keeps ruining it.

The Truth Is Out There.  Only no one’s looking for it.  Although, apparently, no one misses it.  Maybe we should all be to blame.  We all bury our heads in the sand and accept headlines as truth when all they are is a collection of words carefully crafted by someone with an agenda.  As for me?  I’ll keep thinking for myself.  Chris Paul is going nowhere.  He’s our savior; not just for the Hornets, but for all of New Orleans.  His importance is uncomparable to any other in sports right now.  As we’ve said here over and over, his performance on the floor isn’t just MVP like, it’s historic.  As ticktock6 shared with you all, we just went to the Basketball Hall of Fame.  No Chris Paul there yet.  But someday he will be.  And while I hope it’s in a Hornets jersey, I can’t say that for sure.  Anything’s possible.

So maybe tomorrow’s blogosphere will have headlines of “Even Hornets’ bloggers unsure Chris Paul to remain in New Orleans.”  But as for me, I believe he’ll be here for a long time .  It’s what Chris said, it’s what the GM said, it’s what the team president said.  And it’s what I say.  Make up your own mind.

Addendum 07/20/09 by Ticktock6:

It took me forever to locate this post, which I remember reading back in June, because I originally thought a Celtics blog had done it. Turns out it was a Mavs blog, but it’s a fantastic account and critique of how one basketball “news” outlet put out a Rajon Rondo trade story, lifting out-of-context quotes made in 2007 out of an article and implying that they were recent. The story was then picked up by SI, ESPN, and other major news outlets and reported as fact. This was done without double checking the first story or attempting to put context to the original quotes which they then passed on to the public. And so a whole story about how all the Celtics hate Rondo was manufactured out of nothing and perpetuated all over the internet. Rondo’s agent was pissed, and rightly so. I wanted to post this link as another example of what we’re talking about and to emphasize that we’re not against this because it’s Chris Paul– we’re against bullshit like this in general.