An addendum to Ryan's post dated May 26, 2005 regarding not liking LA sports teams and LA sportscasters. He talked about baseball. And now I will proceed with basketball.

My three points of grievance:
1) Laker sportscasters. At the beginning of the year, there was all this talk about the Kobe Bryant/Shaq split and guessing as to whether the Lakers would be able to go far in the playoffs without Shaq. How far will they go in the playoffs? Will they be able to win a championship? Blah blah blah. Another case of sportscasters not knowing what they're talking about.

2) Laker fans. Or rather, as they now like to called, Shaq fans. Apparently, all those Laker fans from years previous were never really Laker fans at all. If you ask most former Laker fans how they feel about the Lakers they'll just say something along the lines of "Well, I'm really a Shaq fan. I never really liked Kobe. And well, you know with everything that happened with Kobe..." Blah blah blah. Just a few years prior when the Lakers won the whole thing, the Laker fans were extolling the wonderful virtues of Kobe's game and how much potential he has to become the next coming of Michael Jordan. And of course it's purely coincidental that the Heat, Shaq's new employer is in the conference championship. And what are the Shaq fans doing? Well, cheering the Heat on of course.

3) The Laker flags. During the years of glory, there were these stupid little car flags that would clip onto a car window. These things were everywhere. Flapping here and there. Creating possible blind spots. And just flat out annoying to this Warrior fan who hasn't seeing anything resembling "glory years" since the Run TMC years. And even then, they didn't make it deep into the playoffs. Lack of defense probably had something to do with it. Now? I don't think I've seen a single flag flying in my entire time here in LA. The bandwagon is looking mighty lonely right now.