An ode to the sports meme graphic
How 'bout them silly pictures
Hey. Been busy, but we move.
Draymond Green was suspended indefinitely on Wednesday after hitting Jusuf Nurkic with the Link up-special spin attack from Smash Bros.
The verdict from the office of NBA Executive Vice President Joe Dumars is the confluence of repeat offenses from the veteran Warriors forward, and “takes into account Green’s repeated history of unsportsmanlike conduct” — a reference to his pioneering of various MMA techniques on the hardwood.
In somber moments of national tragedy like this, the NBA re-establishes its bona fides as the funniest sports league, without rival. On cue, the NBA playhouse has taken the stage with their prepared statements for the trial/intervention/funeral/execution of Draymond Green.
“I hope [he] gets the help he needs,” offers Kevin Durant, Green’s former teammate and current teammate of Nurkic on the Suns. From Rudy Gobert, whose trachea Green used as a stress toy just a month ago: “You see somebody that’s not well inside and suffering.”
Steph Curry, a man single-handedly propping up the dying empire that is the Warriors dynasty like a 6’2” Atlas upholding the heavens, revealed that his conversation with Green post-punch involved him emphasizing Green’s need to get on a path “that allows him to be who he needs to be as a person, as a man, a husband and a basketball player in that order.”
None of these musings on Green, though, compare to the ESL masterclass of the victim. Jusuf Nurkic’s assessment was along the same lines, but more brief:
For as long as athletes have encountered prodding microphones in press conferences and locker rooms, their statements have been segregated from their larger contexts. Look no further than Muhammad Ali or Colin Kaepernick for cautionary tales of expounding on one’s beliefs, then losing material gains to a frothing mob who didn’t actually hear what was said, but rather what they wanted to hear.
The new age of sports media has only served to accelerate this. On platforms like Instagram or Facebook, aggregators and media accounts butter their bread by presenting select snippets of quotes in a text-based format, dually voided of the remaining quote and any vocal inflection or coaxing from reporters that come common with the domain. Even as social media users acknowledge this in the comments, their critiques only serve as further engagement on posts designed for that end. Was that the point all along of being inflammatory and misleading? Could be!
There is something to be mourned here. With no incentives in sight to produce them, well-reported stories and highly-produced video content can’t hold a candle to quick graphics rife with typos and TikTokers asking men on the street to name the top five all-time receiving leaders for the Jets.
All is not lost, though. The very same social media ecosystem that put the still-breathing golden age of sports journalism in its grave has given us a new golden age as a consolation prize:
The golden age of sports shitposting.
‘That brotha needs help’ is not amazing because of what Nurkic actually meant (though it is funny to hear people talk about Draymond’s corporal assaults like a terminal illness that eschews medical intervention). The quote is amazing because of the subsequent text graphic’s possibilities.
When I get invited to something, do I simply want to give the humdrum RSVP? Or can I bring a little spice into the conversation by hittin ‘em with the Mbappé?
Is Mac Jones merely letting my team down? Or should that brother be delivering my DoorDash??
I’ll stop here short of explaining memes to you like a late-night host would explain ‘gyatt’ to your mom in between Timothée Chalamet and Doug Emhoff guest spots. Just know that it doesn’t matter whether anyone actually said the bolded text in the lower third of an image with their face (the Charles Barkley one is fake), because Ballsack Sports could have made the picture on your phone just as easily as Bleacher Report.
What many may not like to admit is that the Ballsacks of the world learned it from the so-called real mavericks of sports reporting.
For shit’s sake, this is the league where the sport’s most infamous analyst can ‘report’ that Zion Williamson would ‘eat the table.’ Stephen A. Smith hasn’t suffered the most credulous viewership recently, with NBA players coming out here and there to call bullshit on the headlines he expertly manufactures, but is anyone going to ask which hating-ass chef he was “quoting” when he repeatedly claimed the Pelicans star is willing to go to Hanna-Barbera lengths when finishing a meal? Eat the fucking table???
For nearly a decade, misinformation has not just been in the public discourse — it is discourse, spawning entire culture wars around fake situations and satirical stunts. When the less digitally literate have their bubbles burst about children peeing in litter boxes at school or whatever the weekly outrage is, the truth doesn’t matter if they still believe that it could happen in a modern society that has passed them by. Their feelings were validated, and damn you if you implore them to ask for more out of the news they imbibe than that.
I’ve drifted from writing about politics in recent years. It's not because I don’t care, though I admittedly pay a bit less attention when my privileges allow. It's not because I’ve given up on people collectively, either; in fact, I feel more emboldened in the power of everyday working folks every time a business unionizes in this deeply anti-worker country, or when the youth makes clear their alignments with humanity and the environment over capital.
I stopped writing on politics because the minutiae just pisses me off too much. The minutiae in sports, meanwhile, is much more enjoyable. Dudes are screaming on my TV at 10 in the morning about a professional athlete courting the chefs of New Orleans like Helen of fucking Troy.
Politics and sports are both absurd, but the golden age of shitposting has made the absurdity of sports self-aware. Like the outrage bait about schools that make boomers spume, I do not care that Charles Barkley didn’t really call Klay Thompson a DoorDasher-in-training, so as long as it propels my need to shitpost through the end times. Every time something silly happens or a player gets a quote off, we have a new reaction image to burn out before the end of the week. Sign becomes signifier. It’s a nihilist’s wet dream. It is not sustainable.
Neither is the real world. But it doesn’t matter when I tune back in to that. It’s all reruns, and the teams I like never win.