We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.
"Because that will take all the fun out of it, silly billy gumdrops." - Blankman
The Superman moniker just never made sense for Dwight Howard. A singular talent deserves his own nickname, and the Big Nickname already went by Superman for a while. Plus, why compare the world's most shockingly spry big man (dude's missed dunks are thrilling) to the most boring superhero around?
Nope, for Dwight, Blankman is more apt. A naive young man who's blessed with congenital talents (for Blankman it's his odd brand of Goonies-esque inventing genius, for Dwight it's jumping), but is constantly maligned for not taking life seriously enough. Well, this is Dwight's shot to prove you can indeed save a city while having a laugh.
Look, talk of whether or not Dwight Howard is a real superstar—a top five guy in the league—is childish, but it's going to follow him until he wins a championship. He scores too little and smiles too much to be given the credit he deserves. He's getting hammered for not keeping blocks inbounds now? This needs to end and if he leads them to a championship, it will.
Remember: Darryl Walker doesn't become Blankman until he first tastes tragedy when his grandmother is murdered. Similarly, Dwight's superhero narrative starts now, in his first playoffs after reaching the finals and failing (it didn't start when he arbitrarily decided to don a cape and change what dunks look like).
The Magic and Dwight will be impressive in their first round dominance (as was Blankman in his early heroic act of delivering a baby in a stalled elevator). While Charlotte actually does have a bevy of tall men to foul Howard, they're a bit too old (Theo Ratliff, Nazr Mohammed) or unfocused (Tyrus Thomas, Tyson Chandler) to do much else. Mayor Stephen Jackson always gets up for the playoffs and might be able to win one game for Charlotte, but Matt Barnes is going to be able to get under his skin and do as much damage to his psyche as that orange dude in those foul Lamisil toe fungus commercials.
But we'll see if Dwight has really gone superhuman in their round two fight against the Hawks; in Blankman's first real challenge, he's unable to defuse a heap of explosives, leading to the death of the mayoral candidate that's tagged as the city's savior. So there's that. Then there's the movie's last shot: Blankman sprawled out across municipal steps, shaking in orgasm. Seriously, the movie ends with an inexplicable combination of Godfather: Part III homage and premature ejaculation. Prophetic?
Defining quote
"How can I be happy when there's so much work to be done?" - Blankman
Orlando in 5
No comments:
Post a Comment