Comedy central.

Normally, I don’t pay attention to commenters on websites; By rule, any post online with more than 20 comments to it has usually been overrun by ignorance, idiocy and vapid morons. This is especially true with AOL. But the comments for this post at the NBA Fanhouse are so inane that they fail to be offensive and are instead unbelievably hilarious.

The post in question by Marcel Mutoni: “Kwame Brown: Cake Thrower?”

Following their tough 3-point win over the Orlando Magic last Friday, several Lakers headed to an LA bar to unwind. Nearby, Alexander Martinez was celebrating his 30th birthday at the Shore Restaurant. Just before 2 A.M., Kwame ran into the Martinez (cake in tow) on the street and allegedly grabbed the cake from his hands and threw it him.

Now the comments. There’s sixteen right now, and there will probably be more by the next time I check.

“Oh and don’t forget you’re still a BUM,Mr. Brown.”

“What is this crap about the city attorney “won’t prosecute”..Why is it up to him. Arrest, indict, and try the bum, just like a “commoner”. These jiveass athletes get away with far too much in our society…”

“A bum is always a bum.He was a bum here in Washington,D.C. A bum with excuses.My husband and I would go to the Wizards games and he was a bum with excuses.I believe he threw cake at someone and then ran away.A bum move for a bum player.Grow up and man – up little boy.”

“Lots of ghetto left in that looser. Overpaid thugs need lots of lessons on being human. NBA is full of such debris. Horrible role models. LaCrosse, baby!”

“Now we know what “NBA” stands for…”Not Been Arrested”, (yet)”

“Kwame, you nasty dingleberry, why don’t you do the world a collective favor and die???”

“It looks like the NI… was just acting like a NI….to me..Prosecute the a—hole..”

“This is another example of the way the NBA has turned into a bunch of thugs and another reason why I dont ever watch the NBA anymore. I would much rather watch college B-Ball any day.
When I flip channels at home, if I come across an NBA game I switch the channel as fast as I can.
NBA sucks and do so do all the thugs in it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Uncivilized.”

This is why I don’t get offended. This is why I don’t try to defend the NBA to people like these. To quote Richard Roeper (commenting on YouTube comments of the MSNBC anchor who choked on live television):

Imagine the smallness and the sadness of the life of the person who typed that last remark. Whether it’s a college kid making a lame stab at irreverent humor, a 42-year-old malcontent living in mom’s basement or the guy sitting next to you on the train on the way to work, how pathetic must his life be that he’d feel compelled to add that “thought” to the discussion?

At that point, the thread has nothing to do with J.J. Ramberg or Saddam Hussein or MSNBC or politics. It’s a mirror held up to itself, giving us an instant snapshot of a certain percentage of the world’s population: the people who spend an inordinate amount of time in various chat rooms and on message boards, spewing and venting and rambling without ever signing their names or identifying themselves.

It’s too easy to dismiss the legions of anonymous posters as crackpots, cowards and losers. There are tens of millions of people who do this on a regular basis, on one discussion site after another. Some of them have to be relatively normal, mainstream society success stories who for some reason turn into nasty little jerks when they put on the Harry Potter invisible cloak and start typing away.

The anonymity is liberating. It gives them the freedom to lower themselves.

He’s completely correct. These are the people on AOL. And the NBA need not worry about them. The league is all the better if someone who can call a man a nigger for throwing a cake and yet somehow doesn’t even have the balls to use the word uncensored doesn’t watch the games. The sad thing is that these are the people David Stern is trying to appease. These are the people who David Stern wants watching the games. Appeasing the irrational can only result in failure. But that’s another article for another day. In the meantime, inspiring words to go out on:

“Mr. Big-shot B-Ball player dont wanta pull that crap in my hood. He’d be carrying his ass home in a bag. Run away in a limo….Bet my wife could whip him.”

God bless America.

King David speaks.

Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.