Saturday Morning Cartoons: Rejoicing and Weeping (Peek)

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From Thunder Chick:

from Cray:

It's easy to rejoice with the bazillion Knicks fans as they slay Goliath. I was glued to Game 7, reacting with the same ridiculous expressions and postures as the Knicks Film School livecasters:

It's so easy to root for a team of destiny like New York. They're cool. Their fans are title-starved. They're racking up epic comebacks. Their diminutive leading scorer could have graduated from a school for ants, and their beloved Hollywood superfan is filming it all from the sidelines.

But most importantly: they're beating the San Antonio Spurs.

[Spurs fans] spent the evening watching Detective Benson, Taylor Swift and the Haim sisters dance on [our] grave... It really is such a surreal experience to be living through a horrific sports trauma and then the camera cuts to Adam Sandler in a giant hoodie clapping along to your demise. I’m trying to process my grief and David Zaslav is staring at me in a backwards hat. There’s not a playbook for things like that. We weren’t trained for this.
- Charlie Thaddeus, Pounding the Rock

It's all too easy for me to delight in the Spurs' downfall. A lifelong Popovich truther, it makes me giddy to point out the irony that two spectacular, legendary offensive boards have now buried San Antonio's Finals chances. Before it fed the hand of Ray Allen in 2013 and guided the hand of OG in 2026, the virtue of offensive rebounding was killed off by Greggthink in the 2000s. And Pop, the most infamous hater of the three-point shot, was likely watching from home and thinking the thoughts of Charlie Thaddeus at Pounding the Rock: "I’d be okay if we never shot another three the rest of the game.”

As a Shai fan who has endured incessant lowlight reels of fouls called and falls had throughout his legendary, clutch season, I was equally shameful in my race to compile Victor Wembanyama's putrid last two minutes of game tape from the Finals so far:

I won't weep with Wemby or anyone associated with the Spurs if and when their title run comes up short. But I hope to never be as bitter as Skip Bayless, who once criticized Popovich for being gracious in defeat.

Popovich was once gracious to Mike Brown, the man now coaching circles around Pop's protégé. As a Spurs assistant stuck between his duties as an employee and his duties as a father, Brown was on the receiving end of some more stubborn Popovich dogma: family first.

"I called Pop [and said,] 'I am going to be there, I am at the airport, my kids are having a tough time getting on the plane to go back. But just give me a few more minutes.' And he goes, 'Mikey, you should just stay here.' I said: 'No, no, no, Pop.' Because we were going to Chicago and it was my scout and I needed to go. [I told Pop,] 'The kids will be all right.'”
"He said, 'If you show up to this plane, you're fired.' I said, 'Pop, come on, man! Listen, I'm packed and ready. I'll be there in [a little bit].' He said, 'Remember, if I see you on this plane, you're fired.' Click. He hangs up on me. So I stayed back with the kids for an extra three days."
Stories You've Never Heard About Gregg Popovich, ESPN

Like most human beings, Pop had his passion taken from him before he was ready to let it go. As his health deteriorated, he went from leading the huddle to being led from his seat by the players he once coached. It saddens me that he's reduced to rallying the troops before their plane carries them to the next game without him. It's an injustice that Taylor Swift descended into Madison Square Garden to celebrate the greatest Knicks win ever, five days after Popovich took in a brutal Spurs loss next to a random Baldwin brother at the Frost Bank Center.

I can't bring myself to root against the Spurs series ending in San Antonio tonight. But if and when the broadcast pans to the coach I've loved to hate for decades? I might shed a tear.