I just want to talk.
Dear Lakers,
Fancy seeing you here. Like my entire life living with depression, just when I thought I had outrun you until you were no longer visible in my rearview mirror, it turns out you were hiding in my blind spot the whole time. Like a cockroach after a Nico Harrison and Miriam Adelson induced cold war that our society is on pace to face in the next four years, you’ve found a way to not only survive, but thrive.
We sure do go back, though.
You were there at the very beginnings of my round ball observation. Calendar year 2000. I was living in a quaint suburban town just outside Sacramento, California, wrapping up elementary school. I didn’t know much about basketball, but my late father would often flip on the tube to expose us to some good ol’ American culture.
The Portland Trail Blazers were on the edge of dispatching your dynasty that was just taking form in the Western Conference Finals. They fell short, but I thought maybe the Indiana Pacers had a chance in the next round with “that guy that shoots a bunch of threes.” They didn’t. But even as Indiana got thoroughly smushed, I remember thinking to myself:
“It’s not fair that the guy who’s bigger than everyone is just pushing them out of the way.”
JOHN G. MABANGLO/AFP via Getty Images
“Well, young Leo. Life’s not fair.”
That’s a line Shaquille O’Neal, one of the many Hall of Famers you’ve enshrined in bronze, has probably belligerently bellowed out on TNT more than once. Hell, I guess that’s better than the racist “jokes” he spouted towards Yao Ming just two years later. Jokes that were all too familiar to me as a young Asian American teenager growing up in a majority White town, if not worse.
Thanks for your pre-YouTuber apology, though, Shaq Fu (Emphasis on the F-U).
So, what? There’s a big, mean bully that exists in the sports sphere. He’s certainly not the first, and definitely not the last. Shaq is on the list (The same Shaq that was recently spotted hugging the current “president” at a UFC event). But as fate would have it, there was a budding rivalry between you and my local team, The Greatest Show on Court. Many sports fans like me often default to being a fan of the team closest to us in proximity.
The Sacramento Kings were that team.
I don’t need to get into a long diatribe about the travesty that unfolded due to the “special partnership” you had with Tim Donaghy. I still had to watch you beat “my team” in excruciating fashion for two straight seasons. The typical Lakers/Yankees/Cowboys fans at school all celebrated in our faces. We could do nothing but put on our “Kevin Hart you ain’t gon do shit” faces.
But I decided to do something.
I had been an admirer of the wild and tenacious Kevin Garnett. A dude that would eventually “do shit” to you in 2008. He was someone that I wish I could be, considering I was just a four-foot something, scrawny, shy, glasses-wearing boy at the time. I had followed the Minnesota Timberwolves a few years prior, but finally chose them as my hipster team to root for. I walked away from the team you tormented, Sacramento, who was given to me by geography, and loyally committed myself to a new team by choice.
Certainly, they could fare better against you than the Kings, right?
Photo by Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
I’ll never forget this moment during the 2003 NBA playoffs. Minnesota had taken an unexpected 2-1 series lead over you. I was in a Computer Technology course in high school. Sitting next to me was a tall, three-sport, jock. A fan of yours, of course. He would often see me use class time to peruse NBA.com box scores and video clips.
“You like the Timberwolves? They suck!”
I had tried to just wave him away and ignore taking the bait. Unfortunately, as your Luka Dončić once said, “Everyone acts tough when they’re up.” I tried to “scoreboard” him and retort that his three-time defending champs were about to lose to the plucky Timberwolves. I was steadfast in believing my then-favorite player, Troy “Laker Killer” Hudson, was about to finish the job.
Oh, 15-year-old Leo. Still so young and full of hope.
Of course, you would go on to win the ensuing three games. Not only did I have to hold those L’s and dust off my Kevin Hart face again, but I also had to receive a volley of race-infused obscenities and vulgarities from my classmate thanks to you. If I shared his words here, SB Nation would get completely demonetized.
A year later, we were one Sam Cassell dance away from exorcizing my demons and making it to our very first NBA Finals. Alas, we ended up as just another planet that the Hollywood Death Star blew up. Four straight years of “my teams” getting erased by you. Have you no shame? This just created another opportunity for the aforementioned jock to began cyber bullying me.
Earlier that season, I had scraped together just enough money to make the first big purchase of my life. An authentic white Latrell Sprewell jersey. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. But after you beat us in the 2004 Western Conference Finals, I was terrified of wearing that jersey to school because I thought that kid was going to beat me up.
Even when the Kings and Timberwolves descended into the abyss for decades, I had to watch one of your top 15 players, Kobe Bryant, defeat my hero, Kevin Garnett, in 2010.
Even when you descended into that very same abyss, I had to witness Mr. Bryant defeat my new hero, Ricky Rubio by way of knee injury in 2012.
Hating you is as much of a part of my DNA as being a Timberwolves fan is, if not more.
In a cruel twist of fate, you’d always find a way to be tethered to my life. My high school best friend had an AOL screenname of KobeClone88. My wife, whom I love dearly, made the bad decision to be a “casual” fan of yours (I know). Even my adulthood would place me squarely in Southern California. In your home. Among your cryptocurrency-funded headquarters. Suddenly, I was surrounded by coworkers and social groups that were the most casual of casual sports fans.
Photo by Noel Vasquez/GC Images
“I love my Lakers! Kobe was just a better version of Michael Jordan.”
“I’m a real fan. My favorite unknown player is Pau Gasol. What team is he on nowadays?”
“The Lakers deserve to be in the playoffs every year.”
“I don’t follow the Lakers as closely now because LeBron’s there and he sucks.”
These are all sentences I have literally heard with my two ears. Sure, not every single follower of yours is as disgraceful as this, but you know the truth. At first, I may come off as bitter. A sore loser. A basketball gatekeeper. None of those are particularly inaccurate. But I can speak from a place of truth from my lived experiences.
I’ve lived an entire life under your detestable reign. You are quite literally the one percent of the NBA. You get everything you want, but don’t deserve even a quarter of it (Five championships belong to Minneapolis, after all). You’re an elitist giving off main character energy. You move like a Hollywood exec and predator, treating all other franchises as a farm team for you to groom, eventually taking advantage of their young talent.
“You want success and the bright lights? Then come in my trailer and play with the Lakers.”
My best friend, who writes and podcasts for The Kings Herald, has continued to provide me with a beat on my old favorite team. He is easily a much better writer than me (he has a damn master’s degree in English), but summed you up in a way that I’m not quite able to.
The Lakers are everything that’s bad about this world – nepotism, cronyism, D’Angelo Russell. They’re a franchise populated by fail-sons and fail-daughters, by people who can’t tell the difference between a back clap and a back stab and are so used to doing both, they just stopped caring which was supposed to happen where, and to who. Where a father, rich in talent and success, can get so cocky in assuming his children will be the same, and so powerful that no one can stop them from placing them within the team body and then later, to have a TV show that foreshadows their exact plan to do so. At least Jerry Buss got an HBO prestige drama… all LeBron got was a Netflix original.
— Will Griffith, The Kings Herald
This beautifully penned piece belongs in the damn Louvre.
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
So every time something fortunate happens to you, painful memories flash in my mind: My late father. Getting teased about my ethnicity. Physical bullying threats I faced as a teenager. My personal heroes suffering in agony. The inequalities that exist in this world.
That’s why I was terrified of seeing you again this postseason. The high-risk, high-opportunity cost that comes with this brings me a level of anxiety that you and your fans can never fathom. When one of your disciples tells me they’re worried about losing to Minnesota, all I see is TikTok influencer Charli D’Amelio cosplaying as a Walmart employee with a big smile on their face.
You know nothing of my suffering.
My childhood trauma, the evil in the world, insufferable stan accounts on social media — It all comes down to this. We may not have Luke (not Ridnour), but we have a Skywalker that is destined to eviscerate you. Even when that happens, whether it’s this season or 20 years from now, I know you’re still going to be right there. Always in my blind spot.
But this time, for all that’s right in the world, you have to lose.
With hatred,
Leo Sun