Editor's Note: This is the first of an epic of more-than-your-grandmother-can-count short columns by yours truly. Hopefully, they’ll add some grand levity to the grueling 67-game regular season and 15-game playoffs. Some of what you will read here will be true. Most of it will be false. And, of course, all of it will be basketball. Enjoy and peeeeaaaccce…
His fingers run over the ugly, homeless man’s scruff on his chin. These are the large, soft hands that led his team in scoring only a year ago. A team that didn’t make the playoffs.
A team that would actually pay him some dinero...
Under his breath, he mumbles to himself as he waits there on the trainer’s bench. It’s all a formality he knows. Hell, pretty much all of life is a frickin’ formality!
“Who really like’s Carlos Boozer?” the Alaskan says under his breath. “Honestly, even David Stern must hate me, and I don’t even know what I did to him.”
If there’s one soul in professional basketball that’s underappreciated, overhyped and unloved all at the same time, it’s Carlos Boozer. However, when it’s all said and done, everything Boozer gets is all justified…even if his name is currently omitted from the NBA.com players page. Even when he’s on the Internet, all Boozer sees is disrespect.
But he sits there, calmly, talking to himself like the silent boar that he is. Trainer scared come back to the 6-9 Duke grad. Looking at Boozer’s Eskimo-esque face, you never know if your head is going to be chopped up and barbequed for dinner or if he’s going to treat you to a fine
Yes, this is how Boozer gets what he wants. He sits, he talks to himself and he grows out the scruff until his wife withholds sex. Plain and simple, the man-beast will scare you into doing whatever he wants…even if he doesn’t know it.
On the dark, regale blue bench, with his trunks dangling in the air. Swooshes on his $68 million, moldy, stenched feet, Boozer continues to talk to himself: “LeBron…game…f*ck…f*ckin’…”
Yes, he could be homeless. Yes, he could be in your backyard or a stunt man for the Beast in that 1992 Disney movie (one of the best all-time, I might add). And yes, this is the frightening reason why he gets whatever he wants.
Finally, the trainer reaches down, realizes he’s got balls and inches over to tend to Boozer’s “tweaked” hamstring. Booz slowly looks up, eyes bloodshot and all:
“One week,” he says.
Yes
