Sometimes You Eat the Bar, and Sometimes, well, He Eats You

Some time ago TZ appointed me to Associate Editor primarily with the intention of serving as the Sactown Royalty business class equivalent of the now retired Rob Iracane at Deadspin. A sort of commentary ombudsman. As with any good state worker upon receiving said promotion I promptly ceased productivity and have spent most of my time subsequently on this blog making boner and pension jokes. Now the need for an ombudsman on this page may seem slightly extravagant, and realistically had I pursued my duties more zealously most of my communication would have been in the form of personal e-mails between myself and Pookie, but the recent rash of high school suicide note quality troll posts has spurned me into action.

So here's question number one, at what point did it become culturally acceptable for fans of over achievingly average basketball teams to comport themselves with smug self-satisfaction? Why have Blazer and Warrior aficionados turned into the fandom equivalent of subprime borrowers (leveraging success against bad teams like Sacramento as some sort of proof of Western Conference contention)? And why have they, all too often, shown the same intellectual capacity of said subprime borrowers?

Now look I'm not going to sit here and say posts need to be intelligent or insightful. The bulk of my writing on this page as of late, as previously noted, involved erections, but there's a sizable difference between a post being unintelligent and unintelligible. If your writing sounds like the ramblings of a smoking Club Raven customer at 11:30 a.m. on a Wednesday and you live in Oregon but are a New England Patriots and Detroit Red Wings fan I am left to assume one of three things 1) You're 16 2) You work at a Foot Locker in suburban Medford or 3) You're 16 and work at a Foot Locker in suburban Medford. And that's not intended to cast aspersions on any Foot Locker employees but realistically to believe any alternative would shake my fundamental faith in the inherent intelligence of any individual.

Now the misguided gloating doesn't entirely shock me coming from Warrior fans. In college when I'd ask classmates where they were from in the Bay Area they'd generally respond "The City," interestingly their interpretation of San Francisco included not just the Mission, the Sunset and the inner Richmond, but Richmond, Hayward, Fairfield and Lafayette. Hell the majority didn't know what the inner Richmond was. But from the Portland fan base this does surprise me. I always liked Portland. I always liked the Trail Blazers, and realistically this page has done nothing if not show a healthy level of respect and even intimidation toward said team. And maybe that's been our mistake. Ever since our post-Bayless thread in June Sactown Royalty has allowed itself to play victim and unreasonably so. No one here questions the fact that Portland is a better team than Sacramento. Christ, you've been in the lottery for most of this decade you'd better have a better team than we do. You've had Top 10 picks in the 3 out of the last 4 years, including what most consider to be the League's next great center and you're claiming to be better than a roster that features Mikki Moore? J'accuse!

Several Blazer fans have had very kind, nurturing, clever, supportive things to say. And it is appreciated. And the truth is well intentioned animosity is always entertaining. Besides the Portland fan base has probably made the most substantive contribution to Sactown Royalty outside of Sacramento fans. So know my intention isn't to generalize, despite generalizing always being easier when criticizing. But I think we'd all be better off giving each other shit than humoring people who write like shit.