Thumper

Dear Tom Scocca

Since reading your article On Smarm, I’ve been honing my smarm radar as it continues to hide behind high minded ideals and political correctness. It has been a pretty smarmy year already, and my top smarm honors go to the commentary surrounding Donald Sterling’s and his racist comments.

The Smarm parade came down hard on Mark Cuban when he aired his opinion about the NBA’s knee-jerk reaction to Sterling’s comments. He was not condoning the comments, only making a valid observation about the steep precedent the NBA set on personal opinions and ownership rights. But because he said he would of gone against the other owners if it came to came to a vote, he was soundly berated and indirectly accused of racism himself.  He strayed from the herd when so many owners took the “thumper” approach.

In my personal quest to write a letter a day, I’ve tried to be conscious of my smarm and snark levels. I consider myself a straight shooter, someone who calls it how I see it for better or worse. So far, most of my letters have been positive because I would rather write about something I enjoy andI like to give credit where credit is due.

Is that lazy of me?

When everyone with a Twitter has an opinion (except maybe @NormalTweetGuy) and a means of projecting it, who’s opinion actually matters? The critically acclaimed author, the celebrity, or just the person with the most followers (Justin Bieber)? Are they all equal?

While it may not be our duty to call a spade a spade, it’s at least our right. Smarmers be damned.

Cubes

Dear Mark Cuban,

To preface:

I’m a certified, card carrying MFFL. Thank you for the only sports championship I can remember or have ever really cared about. I have a short story to recount with you.

I was in 7th grade at Lakehill Prep in east Dallas. As they do every year, the folks from UNICEF came to our school to discuss the impact of our donations. This many cents buys vitamins for a week, that many dollars feeds a person for a month, and so on. But this year was different. Aside from the altruistic benefits of giving, there was a prize for the school who raised the most money: THE Dallas Mavericks will come to your school!

Well that certainly got my attention. We fund raised and scrapped and begged for weeks. Then one day we had an assembly and some news camera showed up. The rumors started flying. Is this it?! How many Mavericks are here?! All of them? IS DIRK HERE?!!!?

We were informed we had indeed raised the most money in our division and GUESS WHAT KIDS! Coach Donnie Nelson Jr. and Willie Hernandez from the wheel chair Mavericks are here!

..womp..

Donnie Nelson proceed to give this weird speech about defending against terrorism (this was shortly after Sept. 11). Then Willie, who we (I’m not so proud to admit) started calling “Wheelie”,  told us about his rise to the highest levels of wheel chair basketball. And that was it. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I would have been satisfied with one Maverick, even if it was just Tariq Abdul Wahad.  I couldn’t stay too mad at the Mavs so UNICEF took the brunt of the blame. I swore to never give another cent to UNICEF and wrote you an email about it.

Cool story huh?

Well GO MAVS, I’ll catch you at the game tomorrow.

Sincerely, Hayden

PS: Have any plans to get fined by the new NBA Commissioner yet?