blogsketball

You could say that in a lot of ways, I’m indebted to Lang Whitaker. Although I’ve been an avid SLAM reader from Day One, I never really took to a writer at the magazine until Lang came along a few years back. I mean, Scoop Jackson had his influence on me, but I always got the feeling that if we ever met, he’d scrunch his face up at me, scoff and wave me off, like Kobe does to a ref at the 33 second mark of this video.

But Lang has always been cool.

When he started writing The Links back in 2001, he encouraged dialogue with the readers of the site through emailing him. Whenever I’d write him something, he’d get back to me, whether it was something detailed or just a quick one-liner. Which was cool, because it was something he didn’t have to do at all. Eventually, he started running some of my emails on The Links. “If Lang Whitaker thinks my words and ideas are good enough for SLAM readers,” I thought to myself, “maybe I should pursue this thing a little further.”

So I did, and here I am today, the raging freelance success machine known the world-over as CO. Or something like that.

The reason for this post, though, isn’t to gush over Lang on a public forum. It’s to apologize to him.

In traveling his own path to success, Lang inadvertently became my mentor. And if kung fu movies have taught us anything, it’s that when someone is your mentor, it’s your obligation to respect them:

Lang is a long-standing fan of the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks, of course, are about to go to game 7 tomorrow afternoon/morning with the winningest team in the NBA this year, the Boston Celtics.

I’m a Raptors fan at heart, but you know how that turned out this year. And while the Raps might be my favorite team, you can’t help but follow the different personalities of the NBA and root for them as they chase their championship dreams. No one in the NBA wants to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy more than Kevin Garnett.

I felt KG’s pain every year that he couldn’t get his team out of the first round when he was a T-Wolf. When he finally did it, he won the MVP award and took his team to the Western finals in the process. Then things fell apart and Minnesota re-familiarized themselves with mediocrity. Finally, KG went to Boston last summer and he and Ray Allen and Paul Pierce led the C’s to a 66-win campaign. “Surely,” the sane-thinking world said to itself, “Kevin Garnett will at least get to the NBA Finals this year.”

Well, Lang’s Hawks have put that in jeopardy. They’ve won three of the series’ last four games and an Atlanta win tomorrow would extend the Hawks’ season, and surely (but not really, I don’t think) put KG on suicide watch. You can see my conflict here. I’ll be watching tomorrow and as the Celtics beat the snot out of the Hawks for bringing things to this point (I hope), I’ll think of Lang. Being a Hawks fan is probably a lot like being an Oilers fan: you start out happy enough to see your team in the playoffs (when they manage to squeak in), but with a chance to move forward in front of them, you believe that they can do the impossible.

So Lang, I’m sorry. If they were playing anyone else, I’d be rooting for your Hawks. Hopefully I don’t earn myself a karmic ass-kicking from you and Scoop, who would probably be ready to roll on it if you said the word.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow.