Lebron James has signed a 4 year $154 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers.
The NBA is currently in the era of the ‘Superteam’, where superstars band together on the notion that they will have enough firepower to win a championship. The Lakers and Celtics were Superteams from the 60s to the 80s, then again in the 2000s. Lebron formed one with the Miami Heat in 2010 and that Lasted 4 years, and the Warriors became one at the beginning of the 2017 season when they signed Kevin Durant, arguably the second-best player in the league behind Lebron, coming off a 73 win season.
And now we’re about to see the same thing happen with fanbases. Two really annoying sets of fans are going to band together to show the world just how annoying a fanbase can be. Lebron’s signing means we’ll see the world’s first Super Annoying Fanbase. Let’s look at who we’re working with here:
Lebron Fans
It’s really hard not to be a fan of the guy. He’s the greatest player that probably ever lived, his shoes are flames, he’s given endless amounts of his time and money to underserved communities, he is outspoken on social issues where most players would clam up out of fear of losing endorsement money and he’s never been involved in a scandal on or off the court (and don’t try to bring up ‘The Decision’, leaving the team that drafted you in free agency is not a scandal, even if you do it during a TV special). Lebron fans are a special variety of man-worshippers. This group will drop a team on a dime and root for another team within a matter of seconds. We saw it happen in 2010 when Lebron went to Miami, in 2014 when he went back to Cleveland and we’re seeing it now.
This type of hero-worship is why Trump is president, because anyone who worships their idol so blindly that they wouldn’t even be at least put-off by these kinds of moves can’t see the forest for the trees.
These people don’t deserve nice things.
Lakers Fans
Not sure where to even begin with this bunch. These are the most entitled, fairweather group of people you will ever meet in sports. They think that anyone who becomes a free agent wants to will ultimately sign with their team. They had Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabaar, Shaquile O’Neal, Pau Gasol and they won championships and gloated. Boy did they gloat so hard.
Then The Lakers started sucking and we laughed at this delusional bunch. It was so satisfying over the past 8 years seeing them convince themselves that their team was on the rise with a continuous string of shitass teams that included luminaries like Larry Nance Jr, Wesley, Darius Johnson–Odom, Lonzo Ball, and the immortal Ryan Kelly.
For years they proclaimed out loud that this year would be the year that they would land a whale in free agency, that this would be the year that they would return to the Shaq and Kobe era, that Showtime would be back in Staples Center. Every year they were wrong, and we laughed at how wrong they were and how crappy their team was. And we said they’ll never get to root for a great team again because they’re annoying, illogical assholes and they don’t deserve a great team. They deserve lottery picks, they deserve Lavar Ball, the archetype annoying, underachieving, gloating asshole.
But now these annoying assholes are right, they signed the whale in free agency. They’re going to be great again. Showtime is returning to the Staples Center.
It should be pointed out that these two sets of annoying assholes both hate what the other side stands for. Lakers fans hate Lebron because every time he has a triple-double, or scores 50 in a playoff game or wins another championship, he chips away at the facade of the perpetually overrated Kobe Bryant’s immortality. Lebron fans hate Lakers fans because… well, they’re really annoying.
So here we have it, two annoying fanbases whose interests have suddenly converged, about to form one big annoying fanbase, a ‘Super Annoying Fanbase’ and I am okay with all of this.
This team still isn’t good enough to beat The Warriors.
