Fuck Brooklyn

Blah blah blah Donald Sterling racist blah blah blah lawsuit blah blah Adam Silver even more powerful than his master before him blah blah leading group to purchase the Clippers if they became available would include Oprah as a significant investor blah, whatever, let’s talk some basketball, amid what is perhaps the most interesting first round of the playoffs the league has ever seen.

– Poor Paul George. Despite putting up a crazy stat line of 22.6 points per game on 47% shooting (including over 50% from three!), 11 boards, 5 assists, 3 steals, and a block per game he still finds himself and the rest of his imploding Indiana Pacers team only one loss away from being eliminated by the 8th seed Atlanta Hawks which would only be the second time in history that’s ever happened in a seven game series (and the Hawks will no doubt get an extra boost tonight from the return of their awesome Pac-Man logo). And on top of that he’s being heckled by his own fans at home and his house has been burglarized. Check out the items they stole…

Among the missing items: a 2014 Paul George NBA platinum All Star ring with diamonds, a watch and a pair of Air Jordan 4 “Toro” shoes. A $20 bill was also taken from the home.

It is an unfortunate story, but the inclusion of the $20 bill to the list of missing items is just bizarre. I don’t have $15,000 worth of items in my house for a burglar to steal, but even if I had a $20 bill lying around somewhere that was missing I’m not sure I would have noticed. What is the significance of this bill!?! Anyways, sucks for Paul George. Gotta feel bad for the guy…or as bad as you could possibly feel for a super famous 6’9″ athletic 24 year-old who will make $15.8 million next year playing a game he loves for seven months a year.

– But the weirdest storyline of the NBA playoffs so far is how a lint roller became a symbol for the Toronto Raptors after cameras caught Drake trying to keep his pants fresh while sitting courtside in Game 2 between the Raptors and the Nets. And because we live in such an odd internet age that obsesses over strange minutiae like this, word has gotten around. First, a visionary Raptors fan on the road in Brooklyn championed the idea and kicked off all this weirdness. Afterall, it only takes one follower to create a leader. Then this stupid idea of Raptors and lint rollers just took off across social media, which ultimately seemed to culminate with official Raptors brand lint rollers being passed out at yesterday’s Game 5 in Toronto (I refuse to spend even one word discussing the actual game). And apparently IKEA was also giving out free lint rollers in support of the Raptors!

(And let me just say real quick, those are two great PR teams that seem to be impressively “with it” – versus say, the Nets, who bizarrely called out their own home crowd and also instructed their fans to…”set their DVD?” I’m not entirely sure what the specific criteria is for being “with it” but I would wager a guess that a statement like that wouldn’t satisfy it.)

And who knows where it will go from here. So it’s officially a thing now. The Toronto Raptors and lint rollers are tied together forever, and the better this particular team does and the further they can extend their time in the consciousness of popular culture…the stronger that bond gets. Welcome to the absolutely stupid and irrelevant but yet still amazingly awesome internet age we live in.

– His coach threw him under the bus after the last game, but Jeremy Lin is still good, don’t worry.

The NBA has fined Toronto Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri $25,000 for using profanity in a public place.