After tonight’s loss to the Denver Nuggets in the NBA’s Western Conference finals, the LA Lakers and Nuggets are now tied 1-1 in their best-of-7 series.  As you may or may not know, sometime in the middle of last season, yours truly, a NY transplant now living in LA coming up on 5 years now, jumped on the Lakers bandwagon.  As a long suffering Jets/Mets fan mostly, this was my chance to root for a team that had much more of a winning tradition.

Anyway, on an episode of Seinfeld, I believe I can recall George Costanza once ranting (paraphrasing), “I’m surprised with all the plane travel professional sports teams do, that one team just hasn’t crashed and gotten wiped out entirely…”  I guess Costanza’s notion wouldn’t have had the same humorous effect had he acknowledged the 1970 Marshall University football team that was involved in a crash and 37 members of the team were killed.  Sigh.

So despite the Nuggets having former Syracuse (my alma mater) basketball star Carmelo Anthony on their team, I’m still rooting for the Lakers.  Honestly, I’m not a huge “Melo” fan, and am somewhat turned off by his thuggish history, and refusal to autograph my bar receipt during an incident back in 2003.

In fact, with Carmelo, Kenyon Martin, and Chris “Birdman” Andersen on their team, I’m shocked that the entire team hasn’t been arrested.  I mean, none of them are murderers, but Andersen has served a suspension for drug use.  He looks like the kinda guy who makes me think it was for Meth.

Meanwhile Mr. Anthony once appeared in a video that threatens violence against people willing to help the police in Baltimore.  Wikipedia doesn’t list any major infractions against Martin, and I know not to judge a book by it’s cover, but I don’t trust anybody who’s 6-foot-9 and covered in tattoos, and who has an affinity for racking up technical fouls and ejections.

I’m impressed by the Nuggets team play on the court, and think it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they can work together as a team off the court, and get arrested in unity.

Maybe someday an entire team could get arrested, and have to forfeit a game(s).  I don’t want an entire team to gang-rape anybody, so a simple bar fight could do the trick.  I suppose there’s many other ways a team could commit a “team crime.”  Hmmmmm.

Go Lakers.