The 2015 B/R Player Hater Awards
Player hating is an ancient tradition.
Your father player-hated, as did his father before him. Brutus hated on Caesar, and Joan of Arc got roasted in the group chat for being a strong, independent woman.
As long as there have been players, there have been player haters, dating all the way back to Cain and Abel—a biblical beef over luxurious leather goods widely consider to be the first instance of man hating on his .
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Since this seminal event, player hating has snowballed into a worldwide institution, and it's natural that you may have some questions: "What is player hating?" "Am I a player hater?" "Can I be cured?" A detailed documentary on hating can be found here (probably ), but for the sake of brevity, I've outlined the answers in brief:
- Player hating is any act intended to suppress or discount someone else's success and/or shine. These acts include, but are not limited to: slander, libel, think pieces, , calling the police, , perpetrating, and most side shading.
- Yes.
- No. Not as long as there are people who drive Cruisers. Cruisers are trash and deserve your hatred.
Again, these are basic answers to complex questions, but dissecting isn't why we're here today. Today, we are gathered to recognize the many distinguished complainers, malcontents and washed individuals who have impressed their player hatred on the sporting world in 2015.
I'd like to welcome you to the first annual B/R Player Hater Awards.
Most Influential Hater: Byron Scott
Against all odds, Byron Scott is still on fire.
After a 2014-15 NBA season in which he dismissed the three-point shot as a method of scoring and openly questioned the street credibility of math, no one thought it would be possible for Scott to maintain his hating hot streak in 2015-16.
But at the ripe old age of 54, Scott and his personal brand of peach-basket are back and than ever.
The season is young yet, but the Los Angeles coach's pettiness is already making waves around the league. So far, his shading has inspired Emmanuel Mudiay—who is not on the Lakers—to become a better point guard. It's also landed Scott's most talented rookies on the bench—a move that prompted ripple-effect hating from a former (or some incredibly specific hacker).
These acts of perpetration, along with the assurance that more like them will soon follow, have earned Scott honors as the Most Influential Hater of 2015. He's the Malcolm of modern hating—because the greatest paradigm shift is telling people paradigm shifts aren't things.
' Superlative: "Most Likely to Go Through Your Medicine Cabinet"
Interspecies Hater of the Year: Horse Twitter
# exists.
It is a place where people go to share pictures of horses, sell horse-centric bangles and sometimes go completely ape-ass over horse-related heresy.
This last thing happened in December, when Sports Illustrated crowned Serena Williams its "Sportsperson of the Year" for 2015. This did not sit well with the horse men and women of America, who had expected the magazine to crown American Pharoah its of the Year for being the first horse to complete the Triple Crown in nearly four decades.
This did not come to pass, however, because American Pharoah—while a fantastic horse—is not people, and the SI snub led to a perfect storm of anti-Serena and anti-human hate on Horse Twitter:
That's solid sports hate, and it's made only more potent by its use in the defense of an athlete that doesn't know what sports are.
' Superlative: "Most Ridden"
The Marty Award for Innovation in Hating: Siri
Siri's roast of the Chicago Cubs is proof that robots capable of sensing hope and swiftly crushing it are the future of hating.
' Superlative: "Most Likely to List Your Mother on "
The Award: Angry Tennessee Titans Mom
"Siri has given up on the @Cubs pic.twitter.com/bh7ywK4UE8
— BarDown (@BarDown) October 21, 2015"
Most written is short because it happens on social media and you don't need a story arc and multiple rough drafts to tell an aspiring model her looks like an upended bread bowl.
And this is what makes the Angry Tennessee Titans Mom so rare. Unlike most haters, her inability to stomach the joy of others came with a plot line and characters—l hating.
For those unfamiliar with Angry Titans Mom, she's the Titans fan who sat down and wrote an open letter to Cam Newton in November after the Carolina Panthers quarterback corrupted her child with his "pelvic thrusts" and profane while defeating the Titans in Week 10.
Lauded by some as "the Grapes of Wrath of being mad that the other team scored," the letter is a compelling piece of centered on Angry Titans Mom's nine-year-old daughter, whose unusually keen sense of sports morality was quick to detect that Newton's dabbing celebration was wrong, and that he probably didn't have a family:
"My daughter sensed the change immediately—and started asking questions. Won't he get in trouble for doing that? Is he trying to make people mad? Do you think he knows he looks like a spoiled brat? ... "I guess he doesn't have kids or a Mom at home watching the game."
"
In this passage, Angry Titans Mom uses her family's struggle against touchdown celebrations to tell the story of every family's struggle against touchdown celebrations—a small vignette expanding to explain the harsh realities faced by the American nuclear family at large.
And it's this nuance that earns Angry Titans Mom top honors in her field and the 2015 Award for literary excellence in hating.
' Superlative: "Most Likely to Have Car Decals Illustrating the Members of Her Family"
Hater: MAC referee who stopped a game to the crowd
As the old adage goes: "It takes a village to raise a child, but only one Mid-American Conference referee to remind everyone it's a school night and to keep it down up there."
' Superlative: "Most Likely to Live Among Turtles"
Most Petty: Milwaukee Bucks fans wearing 24-1 shirts
The most satisfying part about being a workaday, blue-collar hater is punching your timecard every morning and going to work celebrating the small stumbles of great people.
It's not about creating your own shine, but dumping as much as possible on those currently shining. And in this regard, fans of the sub-.500 Milwaukee Bucks beat the rest of the haters to the punch this year.
Their team been six games south of an even record, but that didn't stop them from hitting up for the ultra cotton tees and reveling in the Golden State Warriors' first loss of the season.
Because, as the Bodega Boys would say, facts don't matter. Schadenfreude does.
' Superlative: "Most Likely to Have an Egg Avatar and Two Mortgages."
Most Diabolical: Chip Kelly
Diabolical hating is what happens when narcissism, personal hangups and plausible deniability combine forces to undermine a player's shine.
No one pulls off this tricky bit of alchemy quite like Eagles coach Chip Kelly, who probably isn't racist but definitely isn't above trading away his best players and the league's most sought-after free agent for reasons that remain entirely his own.
' Superlative: "Kid Who Stole Cash from Your Wallet in Eighth Grade but You Couldn't Prove It and Now You Think About Him Every Day"
Celebrity Hater: Donald Trump
Much like the celebrity shooter in beer pong, a celebrity hater is a person who comes into someone else's game and chucks up wild shots with no regard for the consequences.
This is the quickest way to explain Donald Trump's campaign strategy.
Over the course of the last year, the would-be GOP presidential candidate has parachuted into industry after industry to drop uninformed but highly effective disses on all parties involved. Sports was no exception.
In 2015, sports fans were privy to some of Trump's most choice , including his questioning of whether Muslim athletes exist and his writing of a letter to the telling the organization to host its golf tournament elsewhere if it doesn't agree with his opinion that Mexican immigrants are dangerous and subversive to the American social fabric.
And for this steadfast dedication to barging in heedlessly and firing from the hip, Donald Trump is your Celebrity Hater of the Year. He's playing with house money in someone else's game, and he is a model to young everywhere.
' Superlative: "Most Likely to Get Jumped in the Parking Lot After We're Done Here"
Player Hater of the Year: Roger Goodell
Could it be anyone else?
Year after year, the NFL commissioner continues to outdo himself from atop his perch as hater in chief of the most paranoid and jealous institution in sports.
Like Byron Scott, most members of the doubted whether Goodell could build on his 2014 season. He was coming off the massive botching of Ray Rice's domestic-abuse punishment, and all signs pointed toward a 2015 season of "humility and learning" in the league.
Nope. Not even a little bit in the beginning.
Instead of stepping back for a sobering appraisal of the league's priorities, doubled down, expanding his cast net of to pursuing deflated footballs in court and fining players for honoring family members who succumbed to cancer on their eye black.
It takes a special commitment—an inner strength of pettiness—to continue hating in times of crisis, and Goodell's ability to maintain world-class levels of sodium in the face of personal strife is a testament to his drive and singular ability to put small things above all else.
Goodell is the ideal ideal-cut hater—an unwieldy chunk of waxy cubic zirconia in a sea of , and a pillar of the sporting industry's player-hating community.
Congratulations, commissioner. You are 2015's Player Hater of the Year.
' Superlative: "Most Likely to Book Out of Spite"
And this concludes our first annual B/R Player Hater Awards.
I hope you learned a few things about the power of pettiness and its ability to change the world as we know it. Furthermore, I hope you have a terrible 2016 and drop your phone in the toilet while watching a bad Vine.
Happy holidays!
Dan is on Twitter, the Player Hater's Ball that never ends.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
