Boy, the Kemba hate is strong. The guy has done nothing but work his ass off to be as good as he can be and has averaged 19/5/4 with slightly above average efficiency in his time here and people just want to buy him out/salary dump him/trade him for role players.
He is one of the most likeable athletes to come into Boston in years and everyone is dumping on him. I don't get it.
You want to package him and picks and youth for an upgrade, that I get. Just ditching him because....I don't know....he represents everything that went wrong this year in the minds of many, that I do not get.
The fanbase is entitled and toxic. From the "Average Al" talk to that plagued Horford, to folks admonishing Hayward and Kemba due to injuries, to fans ready to throw two good young All-Stars in Tatum & Brown under the bus. No one is worthy anymore. There has always been this undeserved narrative that top players don't want to play in Boston, that's going to eventually be true and it won't be because of the franchise itself.
Yeah, it's kinda interesting cuz we Celts fans have a rep around the league for this too.
We might've just had the worst year ever, injury-wise, for a starting 5. After being hailed as potential contenders. Yet all that gets thrown out the window because we flared out against possibly one of the best teams ever.
There's just no winning, regardless. We demand loyalty, but we treat our players worse than we'd treat dogs.
Part of it because
we're on the sidelines and it doesn't really matter what we say here. But also because we don't know half the stories that are going on behind the scenes, whilst pretending we do. Every shred of info gets blown out of proportions and taken as a sign of X or Y. And regardless which of the two happens (X or Y) you'll see someone saying "I told you so!!!" because the signs were there :]
I think partly, it's the
way we sometimes discuss stuff that bothers me. Very dismissive and presenting things as facts. Even when they're either hearsay, or hindsight and thus irrelevant to said previous discussions.
Then there's the
way we speak of them as resources and numbers, often ignoring the human aspect. Ignoring chemistry (and building it). Ignoring that if you trade [player x], that might upset the whole team.
Like that "rebuilding around Tatum" thread. I didn't read it, but if you fire everyone and keep Tatum ... imagine working somewhere for a while and the boss sacks everyone except you. I've quit jobs when only 1 or 2 friends were fired. If you'd do that to everyone, I'm GONE.
Anyway, not sure where I'm going with this post.
I guess, in short,
I wish we'd be a little more balanced and empathic occasionally.
Or don't, see if I care :') lol