Why the 2010 World Champion Lakers Should Be Stripped of Their Title
OK, first things first. I’ll get this out of the way.
I despise the Los Angeles Lakers.
It’s really only Kobe Bryant that I detest, but by association, his teammates suffer incidental ricochet from my misdirected rounds of Kobe-hating ammunition.
In saying that, my passionate hatred of Bryant has nothing to do with why the Lakers aren’t fit to be called the 2010 World Champions. Nor am I disputing the fact that the Lakers beat the Celtics fair and square.
The reason the Lakers should be stripped of their title as 2010 World Champions is because they haven’t earned it.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy to crown them the 2010 NBA Champions. I’ll even let them be labelled the 2010 North-American Champions, as it can’t be refuted that they beat the Toronto Raptors (the best Canadian team) on their way to the NBA title.
However…
Until they beat every other team on the planet Earth, the Lakers can not be called World Champions.
I’ll concede that the Lakers would probably be victorious if a world club championship were held this year. I imagine they would beat all the best club teams in the world and would, in fact, become legitimate World Champions. If they were to win however, they would have to beat teams like Regal FC Barcelona, Olympiacos, CSKA Moscow, Efes Pilsen, the Guangdong Southern Tigers, and the Perth Wildcats along the way.
As one of the billions of international fans of the NBA, I am bewildered at the brashness of teams labelling themselves "World Champions" after winning a national competition. The title "World Champions" suggests a long, drawn-out battle for world-wide supremacy, with every nation jetting its hopeful team from one country to the next in a bid for unsurpassed glory.
No Sir, the Lakers are not the current World Champions.
That claim to fame goes to Spain.
They won the most recent Basketball World Championship, which was held in Japan in 2006 and is sanctioned by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). The next World Championship is being held this year in Turkey, but the Los Angeles Lakers have not been invited due to their unfavourable current status as a recognized Country.
In its defence (or defense depending on where you are from), the NBA isn’t the only American competition with a history of this kind of ostentation.
Calling a national baseball competition "The World Series" is absolutely bizarre to most people that live outside the United States.
This type of grandiose attribution isn’t limited to American sports either.
The Miss Universe competition began in 1952 in California, and since its inception the annual winner has been from Earth every single time without exception.
I’m a little outraged that women from other planets aren’t even invited to compete.
Perhaps Donald Trump doesn’t want them to be embarrassed if they have trouble fitting their hideous, tentacled, alien forms into our Earth-Human shaped swimsuits?
The competition thus far has been completely fixed. There has been no need to resort to NBA-esque frozen envelopes, with a stacked panel of judges comprised entirely of Human-Earthlings for the past 58 years.
It seems extremely unfair to competitors from other planets.
It all reeks of a horrible kind of Holier-than-thou arrogance.
Now someone get me a high-powered telescope.
I’m going to find some sexy Jupiter girls to enter this damn pageant.
