My beloved Clippers

I always loved the Clippers.

I am a die hard Sixers fan, but I like the Clippers too. One could say: “Dude, it’s your problem…”. Well, probably it is.

So the question could be: how can a Sixers fan in Italy love the freaking Clippers? (I’ll skip the “How come a guy in Italy be a Sixers fan?” question, anyway if you are interested, here you find the reason)

Answers, in no particular order:

1) I always root for the underdog

2) I hate the Lakers 

3) I am a soccer fan

You don’t see the link between 2) and 3) , right?

What guys in the US probably don’t know, is that being a soccer fan of a team here in Europe means HATING a lot of other teams. Forget your idea of “rivalry”. You take the most heated rivalry in the NBA (Lakers/Boston? Sixers/Celtics? NY/LA? Chicago/Detroit? Sacto/LA?) compare it to what happens in Europe for soccer and you might get 1/100 of the reality: Celtics/Lakers fans would seem old buddies here…

Unfortunately I transferred these evil feelings to my passion for basketball.

In Italy if you root for team A and team B is your arch-rival, if B loses to C in a big game you usually PARTY like your team won. It’s not that you are just happy, we simply take it to another level… I don’t know how to explain it, anyway you got the point.

The whole process then is: I always hated the Lakers, so —> being a soccer fan —> I started liking the Clippers more and more (LOL).

Probably Clippers fans don’t care as much about Lakers as I do.

But there are more reasons to love the Clippers:

4) wild, crazy, funny fans

5) cool uniforms & logo

I am a uniforms/logos freak and I always liked Clippers’ colours and jerseys. Simple, “clean”. Clippers never changed their uniforms and kept their style through the years, not following stupid trends (*** cough *** unlike Sixers, who idiotically created black uniforms, that have NOTHING to do with the history of the franchise *** cough ***).

6) amazing, cult players.

How about Eric Piatkowski, “the polish rifle” ?? Lamond Murray ?? Benoit Benjamin ?? Charles Smith ?? Dear old Stanley Roberts ??? Or Wang Zhizhi, their (chinese) version of Manute Bol ?? An immobile 7’1 lefthanded center that loved to shoot threes, gotta love him… Or The Sportshernia favorite, Chris Kaman ??

These are some of the reasons why everytime Clippers and Sixers meet, I am happy. I know that I’ll come out with a W anyway.

Speaking of the Clippers, before tonight’s game I asked Steve from Clips Nation to break down Al Thornton’s season for us.

Many Sixers fan were thinking about picking Thornton (in the picture, during yesterday’s night win over Toronto) with #12 in the 2007 draft (remember ??) so I thought having a Clippers fan’s perspective on the guy could have been interesting, even if we are all happy with Thaddeus Young now. Here is Steve’s point of view on Thornton.

Go Sixers, go Clippers !!!