“THAT AIN’T NO RIVALRY”

Sir Charles Barkley once said that a rivalry is when you win some of the games and they win some of the games. On one occasion, discussing the Sacramento Kings vs. Los Angeles Lakers playoff battles of the early 2000s, he simply said, “That ain’t no rivalry. The Kings just got their (butts) kicked.” True.

When you’re Kobe Bryant, the key to a third straight championship is befriending the arch rival. Ron Artest, Matt Barnes and Steve Blake are proof and you can click their hyperlinked names to find out what their statistics have been against the purple and gold in recent years. Done clickin’? See, these dudes were real buttocks ailments until they joined the Lakers’ ranks. And here we are freshly across the threshold of a new NBA season with the usual suspects in action making enough money in two pay periods to equal a worker bee’s lifetime of earnings.

Players move in the NBA all of the time as they do in other sports. This is why Brett Favre waits until all of the hard preseason workouts are over before reporting to Viking camp which just happens to be the nemesis of his first NFL team the Green Bay Packers. A rivalry is a rivalry in professional sports until your rival writes you a big fat check. Loyalty has not a different face but rather the familiar one of conditionality. You ever check the salaries of the jocks we worship? Kobe will make $24,806,250 this year and that number is likely a significant factor in his vestment with the Lakers I fell in love with in 1980. But I don’t want the smooth taste to fool you in this post. I’m not especially interested in exorbitant salaries and circumstantial allegiance.

A real rival can never be satiated, appeased or reconciled. He is an enemy through and through and you hate the breath he exhales. His thoughts toward you practically reek of malice at best and produce predatory intent at worst. A true enemy will never be your comrade in arms because truth be told, you are the reason for his arms. The point is that there is an evil that causes our petty grievances to pale. Like the receding waters before a Tsunami wave, is the delusion that for one second the destructive and avaricious system of our world wants what’s best for you. This is what we call an intentional false analogy – that is, comparing Shaq signing with the Boston Celtics after being loved in Los Angeles for seven years with evil that is personified in biblical literature. Shaq is foul for wearing that green but at least I understand. It’s basketball, he’s in a fraternity of men who understand the business they help perpetuate. But life? This is different. In my “land,” there’s this real rival, an insidious Satan which literally means adversary in Hebrew. He bears nothing in common with you for if he did, perhaps you could appeal to such commonality and form an axis of evil. The problem is, he neither needs nor wants your help. You can’t pretend to share his objective for you are his objective. He is singular and unwaveringly intent on compromising you simply because of the genesis from which you sprang. Heavy stuff. I just thought it’d be cool to rant about what an enemy really looks like so we put this Lebron James/South Beach thing in perspective. Fight the right fights when you walk out of that door today.