“I get no respect.”
– Rodney Dangerfield
So, what’s wrong with shooting the messenger? Picture a king in Greece, long
ago. He is having a nice day. Sun’s out, he’s catching rays on his hill, eating
grapes, quaffing wine – a benevolent despot at rest. All’s well and tranquil.
Suddenly, amid vulgar clamor, appears a sweating, panting, filthy pile of
dreck. He’s not even a constituent, for Christ’s sake! Furthermore, he arrives,
as he puts it, “bearing bad tidings.” The uninvited courier spills his guts,
with totally unsolicited news of a costly grape strike down on the coast. Shoot
the messenger with dispatch.
It’s unfortunate in these politically correct times, this decisiveness – the
king, after all, did something – goes unappreciated. A modern,
relatively harmless equivalent of messenger-shooting is abusing electronic
messengers.
It’s not unusual to find me inches from the television set, howling at the
indifferent black square as my team is screwed, again, by malicious referees.
By the end of a tense, emotional contest, the area around the TV might be
littered with sneakers, Doritos, paper cups, and magazines, all tossed at the
electronic herald. (My father once really killed the bastard, sending a shoe
through the center of the offending picture tube, but that’s another tale.)
This unsightly spectacle always takes place in the darkness of my home…
until yesterday. My day, like the king’s, was going grandly. The weather was
unusually pleasant. My 11-year-old’s three-game soccer tournament was going
well. We’d won two games. I’d rushed home from the Circle C soccer fields,
between games two and three, under the ruse of retrieving “forgotten” snacks.
‘Twas a lame ruse to be sure. A few wizened fathers raised skeptical eyebrows.
The team manager/mom, however, bought it hook, line, and sinker, impressed that
I’d go all the way home for our hot and thirsty girls. “Ah,” I said shyly. “The
girls deserve more than water.” That the Suns and Rockets were just beginning
the second half of the seventh game of an amazing and contentious Western
Conference semi-final series was pure, wondrous coincidence.
It would have been poor form not to make it back to the soccer fields with
refreshments by halftime; thus, I’m stuck, at the 3:42 mark of the fourth
quarter, in an endless traffic jam at the Tinker-Toy intersection of 290 and
Loop 1. My top is down, the AM radio crackling loudly over the roar of idling
diesels and super-cab pickups surrounding me. Hakeem Olajuwon has just been
whistled, for the second fucking time, for something called “blocking,”
an obscure basketball violation called, perhaps, once a decade.
Someone‘s pounding on my new dashboard. A crazy scumbag has spilled
half a Coke on my leather seat. Someone‘s screaming in my vehicle.
Someone’s trying to kill my radio! Other motorists, mired in the late
afternoon traffic, look down upon my open green vehicle with wary concern: The
maniac could, probably does, have a loaded weapon. The deranged driver is, of
course, me. I’m trying to kill an innocent radio as it broadcasts to the world
the rape and pillage, by the Eastern news media and the corrupt referees, of
the Houston Rockets, a team to which, two weeks ago, I was in large measure
indiffferent.
Of course, I picked Houston to get killed by Utah. What sane person didn’t? I
began to wonder, when they somehow won, but they had no chance against the
mighty Suns, and they didn’t. Still, they won. Anyone who follows this space
knows the powers I attribute to the cosmos – luck, mojo, karma, whatever you
want to call it. I picked the Spurs, holders of the best record in the NBA, to
go all the way because everything seemed to be right. Luckmojokarma: It was all
in S.A.
And then along came Jones… Chuckie, that is, and the rest of the proud,
battered-but-still-standing World Champs… all six of ’em, plus three CBA
pickups. The regular season, it’s been amply chronicled, was a disaster for the
Rockets. Injuries, dissension… in short, no luckmojokarma. If this wasn’t
enough, just before the playoffs, Vernon (Mad Max) Maxwell, an important piece
of the Houston chemistry, basically quit the team. This was the coupe de
grace. The Rockets were dead as a bloated mackerel. Except they’re not. You
tell me how this can be. I don’t know.
Just don’t use the word “respect.” No one, except the New York Knicks or the
Boston Celtics, gets respect. If the Knicks played in Utah, or even Chicago,
they’d be portrayed as the ugly, old stubborn group of bullies which, in fact,
they are. Instead, they’re the heroic underachievers, the American dream. I’m
pleased, to say the least, they lost. The Chicago Bulls, until they won their
third world championship (even then there were whispers) got no respect. Before
they won #1, Jordan was an egotistic loser. Then, it was “Who couldn’t win
without Jordan?” If you live west of the Tri-Borough Bridge, the Eastern press,
which is to say the national media, gives no respect.
They have none, zero, zip chance against San Antonio. You can bet
they’ll be down 0-2 by Wednesday. Would I bet a dime against them? No way in
hell. n
This article appears in May 26 • 1995 and May 26 • 1995 (Cover).