Arrogance is not an admirable trait, but there are certain circumstances in which it is not only acceptable but welcome.
Correct! Exactly. The correct answer is: KG will make Brian Scalabrine more arrogant, and with an arrogant Scalabrine on the squad, other teams will cower and forfeit in terror.
If you’ve watched the Boston Celtics for the past 20 years, you know what I mean. Once they were the most arrogant of sports franchises — more than any of their counterparts in other leagues, including the New York Yankees — simply because Red Auerbach was the face of their organization. And there is nothing more arrogant than having Red puff a cloud of smoke in your face after he’s handed you a whipping.
What if Mark Cuban vomited in a Broadcast.com promotional frisbee, drove over to your house, and dumped the vomit into your mail slot? Would that be more arrogant? How about if Paul Allen financed a private spacecraft, piloted it to the nearest planet with sentient life, collected the waste material of said life, drove back to Earth, and poured the waste onto your plate of fries? Is that more arrogant? I'm sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, right. Aliens. I'm for them.
Alas, Red is gone. And his Celtics’ swagger had disappeared well before that.
Back to the matter at hand. The thing they always said about Kevin Garnett: he was born swaggering. He swaggered out of his mother's birth canal. He swaggers when he sleeps. His favorite preacher is Jimmy Swaggart. Sometimes, instead of going for a rebound, he'll wink at the crowd and swagger into the locker room and put on a cowboy hat and cowboy pants. Sometimes he plays basketball, but not often.
The Celtics were only obnoxious if you liked to bathe in nostalgia.
Metaphor not working for me. Anyone else?
But in one offseason, all that has changed. The Celtics have their cherished arrogance back. They’re hateable again.
Also, they're better. At sports. Better players, you know? Not that important, but still.
Ah, forget it. We know the truth: when the Celtics come visit your home team, Ray Allen is going to strut out onto the court in a leather unitard, stride into the crowd, and insult your wife's personal appearance. Because Ray Allen is an arrogant shithead and that's what makes the Celtics good.
And the Celtics basically got Garnett for a bag of peanuts and a can of cling peaches. The T-Wolves are taking Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Telfair and Theo Ratliff’s expiring contract. Jefferson and Green are nice players. Telfair is a waste of a good uniform.
This is wrong. Al Jefferson is neither peanut nor peach. Al Jefferson is a valuable commodity who averaged 19.8 PPG (on 55% shooting), 11.5 RPG, 1.7 BPG, and 1.1 SPG after the All-Star break. He was born the year Back to the Future came out.
In Ventre's defense, Jefferson could improve defensively and he's nowhere near the human mountain of arrogance Tim Duncan is.
Although Boston will still have the little matter of surrounding those three with enough talent and depth to keep the stars from wearing themselves out, the extended forecast in New England is sunny for the first time in years.
More than their actual win-loss record, however, is the attitude. Arrogance is back. If Red were alive, he’d be so happy he could smoke.
More what than their actual win-loss record, Michael? More what?
Here I will offer some suggestions:
more important
more consequential
more significant
more material
more meaningful
more influential
Or wait. I'll just rewrite the paragraph entirely.
More arrogant than their actual win-loss record, however, is their arrogance. Arrogance is king. If I had a racehorse or a fragrance, I would name it Arrogance.
And then, if I were you, Michael Ventre, I would conclude this article without mentioning basketball. Thank you for your time.
Labels: basketball, celtics, food metaphors, kevin garnett, michael ventre
