The Side Part: Show Me Don’t Tweet Me

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There’s this girl I went to middle school with. She was super small and loud and really liked sour straws. Once, at a school dance in the old gym, we paired up and danced to a slow song. K-Ci & JoJo’s “Crazy”, maybe. The twirling disco ball hanging from the rim above the desk of the DJ, our Pre-Algebra teacher, flinging shiny dots all over the Abercrombie spattered dance floor.

I was much taller than her so I danced on my knees. We thought we were really funny. The floor wasn’t wood. It was that rubbery type of surface that’s easy on elbows that a lot of P.E. rooms have. Someone took a picture of the two of us. I think it was in the yearbook.

She talked a lot. The type to always ask you to pick a number, please. She really liked Eminem. Knew all the words to “Stan”. She always wore hoodies that would swallow her. In my sixth grade yearbook she wrote “Thank you for letting me sign your crack” along the inner spine of the book. She wrote “Lol” right after that. She was really nice. Her name was Abby.

Dwyane Wade has the same handwriting as Abby.

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This is not new news to you because if you’re reading this then you read Royce, but for the sake of being thorough I’ll tell you that Kevin Durant was told Sports Illustrated’s list of the Top 10 players in the NBA and he didn’t agree with it.  James Harden wasn’t on it. Durant felt like he should have been. Thing is, you can’t have eleven people in a Top 10 list. So, the interviewer asked whose place Harden would take. Durant answered, without a whole lot of hesitation, “Dwyane Wade”.

CineSports releases the interview and Wade channels his inner Trinidad James and tweets this. Durant, taking sub-tweeting to Goliath levels, responds with this. Then the internet blows up and bits of the basketball blogosphere’s brains are hanging like coconuts from sun soaked South Beach palms, casting shadows on Scott Disick’s face as he tries to stop his significant other from taking Miami. If Tree & Leaf doesn’t have “Show Me Don’t Tweet Me” shirts in production yet then I don’t know that I believe in anything anymore.

It should be said: This is great. I love it. Anytime elite players on elite teams hate each other it is nothing but good times for the fans. Those games will double in anticipation and enjoyment and if we get to hear Durant tell Wade a few more times that he’s “too small” after hitting a jumper over him then I think that’s the best.

Too often the there’s a political correctness players speak with because of the AAU-ification of the league. Everybody knew each other coming up. Went to camps together. They run in the same circles so it’s always daps and love and let’s hit up Clermont Lounge. They’re nice to one another.

Now seems like as good a time as any to remind everyone: Kevin Durant is not nice. And that’s great.