Why you should be rooting for the Lakers

In terms of everything right with sports, there's a pretty clear choice here.

The Lakers and Nuggets are now two games into their series and, as per usual, otherwise neutral fans have started to take sides. As you’d probably expect, given the amount of success the Lakers have enjoyed and number of childhoods they’ve ruined along the way, most are siding with the Denver Nuggets.

I’m here today to explain why that is the wrong decision, sports trauma and all.

At first glance, the Los Angeles Lakers would appear to be the beneficiary of basically every advantage you can think of over the Denver Nuggets. Sure, Los Angeles is a bigger market that attracts and keeps stars. Yeah, perhaps they have an organizational history of not only success on the court, but also helping their players parlay popularity to financial opportunities others may not necessarily enjoy. Perhaps occasionally the proximity to so many worldwide businesses in the greater Los Angeles area only furthers those advantages for players who are becoming increasingly focused on their post-playing careers.

But really, the Clippers have all those same advantages and they still suck, so how much can all that really matter?

The Lakers are just a small business trying to carve out their own little corner in a league dominated by insanely deep pockets. Jeanie Buss is worth a fraction of some of the owners she’s competing against. Compare her relatively humble net worth of an estimated $500 million to (owner of the Nuggets) Stan Kroenke’s almost $13 billion fortune and this is a real-life David vs. Goliath story playing out right in front of us.

Hell, the Lakers even gave back a PPP loan back in 2020 that they clearly needed, as eventually they had to watch fan favorite Alex Caruso walk to Chicago because they couldn’t afford him. He has since become an All-NBA caliber defender and, given the Lakers’ struggles against Jamal Murray, sure feels like he’d help.

Speaking of Buss and Kroenke, only one of those two owners have overseen a cable dispute that has led to their fans not being able to watch their team, and it isn’t the team with an exclusive channel. When Bruce Brown says no one is watching the Nuggets all year, he’s actually correct.

So ask yourself, do you really want to side with an owner already worth almost 26 times more than his direct competition in this series? On one hand you have an owner who helped put together a channel where Lakers fans can find all their content in one accessible platform. On the other, you have a man who doesn’t even stop at forcing his fans to illegally stream their team’s games.

Do you really want to publicly voice pleasure the kind of monster who would literally rip a team away from an entire city and forced fans to watch that team win a championship thousands of miles away from them? That’s who you want to support here?

This doesn’t even count that the Lakers have consistently paid luxury taxes to remain competitive even as Buss doesn’t flaunt the incredible wealth her competition does. Kroenke, on the other hand, finally paid luxury taxes this year for the first time ever as owner of the Nuggets. Yet another case of the world’s billionaires flaunting taxes as we peasants pay our dues.

While we’re on the subject of bullying, do you honestly want to root for a two-time MVP literally forcibly moving players with his immense size advantage? The Lakers’ best chance at defending him is a player who received a single Defensive Player of The Year Award vote (third place, by the way) and he is giving up 50 whole pounds in the matchup.

The Lakers aren’t just facing these bullies from Colorado, either. Their 38-year-old superstar is also staring down Father Time, too. Do you wake up sore in the morning and have no idea how? Do you yearn for those youthful years where it didn’t feel like merely existing wasn’t painful? Then your choice in this series should be even easier: It’s the old man trying to show all of us that we too can still get up and move.

So ask yourselves, sports fans everywhere, do you want to side with corporate greed? Do you want to cheer for the bullies of the world who trample anyone in their path and claim to not garner enough respect for their ability to do so? Hell, do you want to root for mortality, itself? I sure hope not. For the sake of all things good overcoming all things evil, you should support the real underdog, the Los Angeles Lakers.