Daredevil Like Kenivel

Full disclosure: I'm a Lakers fan. I have been and will be and if that's not appealing to you...well, that actually must be appealing. My team: galvanizing, entertaining, Showtime - much like Britney Spears at a date auction, you can't help but watch.

I have a lot of Lakers memories, but my favorite came in the summer of '00. It's the end of my freshman year of college. I'm out in time for the completion of the playoffs. I'm in LA. The Lakers, well, they're coming together: Phil's working his magic; Kobe and Shaq are gelling; we've beaten the Kings, the Suns, and have only to get past the Blazers to reach the NBA finals.

But the Blazers, they don't go gently - after winning games five and six of the WCF they're suddenly up big going into the fourth quarter of game seven. Scottie's pounding his chest. Rasheed's bouncing around. Paul Allen's watching anime. And then this happens:



Brian Shaw hits a three. Kobe throws a lob to Shaq. The Lakers win the series, go on to win the championship - the first of three - and the Blazers settle for another half-century of mediocrity.

I remember watching this game with (what I thought was) a good friend from high school. That friend, as revealed via a bit of online snooping, was recently married (that's distinctly not him above). I did not receive a wedding invitation. Nor, I'll add, did my co-author here at MRYBA, also an old friend of the character in question. Several less colorful characters from those days were invited.

How do I feel about this obvious oversight? I'm bitter. I hope the bridegroom runs into Ron Artest's great dane with a bag of cheeseburgers in his hand, has his car and extensive blue film collection "borrowed" by Eddie Griffin, and mentions that he was moved by Brokeback Mountain in front of that loser Tim Hardaway. Karmic bungee-jumping, that.