So Paul Pierce tweeted about "taking his talents to South Beach"… a funny little dig that some reporters had to immediately rush to the Miami locker room for a reaction.
Then Udonis Haslem took the bait and called Pierce a studio gangster.
So of course, someone had to go running back to Paul Pierce and get HIS reaction. Thankfully, Pierce didn't bite:
"[the tweet is] self explanatory," he said. "There's nothing else to talk about. What y'all want to talk about? I don't need to add to it. What are y'all talking about? Y'all making it seem like I am trying to…
"Don't get caught up in all this media hype. What's wrong with y'all? You need to stop watching SportsCenter, ESPN. Don't get caught up in all that. C'mon, we're better than that. Don't get caught up in all that. It's all smoke and it started a fire."
This is where it gets a little tough.
Reporters have a job to do. They've got to tell a story and tell us what happened today. But they need to be interesting too. And let's face it… "studio gangster" is interesting. Hell, we put it out there too.
BUT… this childish name-calling that's been going on the NBA lately is getting nauseatingly absurd. I know it's a long season, but there HAS to be something more interesting than baiting players into grade-school name calling.
To me, the baiting is easy.
reporter: "Hey, did you hear what this guy said about you?"
player: "He said what now? Well he's a…."
reporter: [scribbling in notepad] "….. oh this is gold!"
So now you've got the journalistic equivalent of a car wreck. Yes, there's a lot of rubber-necking… but really what everyone is looking at is a big ugly mess that almost makes you feel sorry for paying attention.
And I know some of these journalists are looking at me and thinking I'm an asshole hypocrite because I'm one of the people that pushes out links to that crap. Yeah… I'm guilty as charged. But I'm not a journalist. I'm a blogger. I get to do things you don't. Part of my gig is to do what a blog was always meant to do: be a web log of a certain topic. I pass it all along to the reader. And I get to talk about silly crap like name-calling because it feeds into the opinions that I'm allowed to give but you're not.
Let me be clear about something: I've met a lot of these Celtics reporters and I haven't met one yet that I don't think is great. I've got a ton of respect for their work and this isn't a slam on anything other than this one question that was asked. I'm just bringing to light the fact that we're barely a month into the season and we've already gotten "cancer patient," "ugly," and "studio gangster" thrown at us. I think the whole thing is a little silly and it should probably no longer be perpetuated.
I'd just like to see more focus on ball. What's happening on the court. There's got to be something more interesting than "studio gangster" going on on the court. I hope Paul's answer today ends this stuff.
Just one man's opinion.
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