Roundball Rack: Tuesday Open Thread

Let’s start with a bit of a departure from my normal practice of ignoring Lesser Sports (other than baseball) in this column unless something Stripper Monkey Bites Kid level occurs.

Congratulations to Tyrese Halliburton’s right Achilles’ tendon on defeating the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Championship. Truly, the human body is a wonder of compromises and repurposing from when we moved to standing upright and  that would make the engineers of Mir proud. And, like Mir, when it fails it can be spectacular.

Seriously though: I didn’t know who to hate in this series. Yes, Oklahoma City has a stolen team, but the people they stole it from were mostly Seahawks fans- barely a crime. Yes, the Pacers will always be Reggie Miller’s team, but Reggie Miller is way less annoying than he used to be.

I tried to go with my usual tie-breaker: team name. But that doesn’t help.

“Thunder” is stupid. “Lightning” will kill a motherfucker, or send him back to 1955 or whatever. Hardcore. “Thunder” doesn’t do shit except frighten dogs and children- dick moves.

“Pacers” is at least as stupid. The name comes from the pace car in the Indy 500 and the weird-ass gait horses in harness racing use. The pace car exists solely to restrain better cars from going as fast as they can. For God’s sake, this piece of shit was a pace car:

Gaze upon God’s Foulest Mistake

Then I got distracted diving into the terrible name history of the NBA (including the pre-merger ABA) and goddamn. The worst offenders:

New Jersey Americans (Brooklyn Nets): Dumbfuck obvious name. Houston Texans-ass name. Have some pride, for God’s sake.

Chicago Packers (Washington Wizards): Wizards isn’t a great name either, and Packers isn’t a truly terrible name if you were founded with financial support from a meat packing company and your players all just got home from giving The Kaiser a bit of the old what-for. But the Chicago Packers were founded in 1961. Kennedy’s America, Yuri Gagarin in orbit, the invention of the Slip ‘n Slide. Chicago fans hated it specifically because the Bears and the Packers had been rivals for 40 goddamned years by that point.

Minnesota Pipers/Pittsburgh Pipers (defunct): We ‘ave a piper doon

Memphis Pros/Memphis Tams (defunct): They were named “Pros” so that their existing uniforms could be reused without much alteration. They were renamed the Tams (Tennessee-Arkansas-Mississippi) after that name somehow won a fan contest. Presumably the original winner (Cousin-Fuckers) was disallowed by the league.

Minnesota Muskies/Miami Floridians (defunct): Just…wow. Bad, and then Worse Than New Jersey Americans Bad. Bravo.

Anyway, the Pacers have that crappy yellow color scheme, so congratulations to Oklahoma City.

NFL NEWS:

Running out of ways to say “none”.

Aaron Rodgers hinting at retirement after this season isn’t news, he’s just starting the narrative a little early this year.

RANDOM RANKINGS: STAR WARS MOVIES (live action theatrical release only)

1. Return of the Jedi (original Ewok Dance Party/Old Anakin ending)
2. Star Wars
3. Empire Strikes Back
4. Rogue One
5. Solo
6. Revenge of the Sith
7. Force Awakens
8. Phantom Menace
9. Attack of the Stupid Name
10. The One Where JJ Abrams Frantically Tried to Fix Rian Johnson’s Fuckups
11. Rian Johnson’s Fuckups.