SONS OF DOCTORS

On Saturday the Trail Blazers will play a basketball game in Los Angeles beneath a large mural depicting Matt Barnes which covers up some of the 16 championship banners belonging to the Clippers’ Staples Center cotenants. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin and Jamal Crawford also have their own, larger banners, but who cares about those guys Matt Barnes is the Clippers’ lone superstar and the face of the franchise and the dynamic stallion who will lead them to postseason glory and truth. Jared Dudley used to have a banner, too.

The Clippers are coming off one of the weirdest, saddest off-seasons that any professional sports team has ever had to go through, but they’ve emerged on the other side with a new owner. Whereas Donald Sterling denied minorities housing and heckled his own players, Steve Ballmer drinks 37 Red Bulls a day and high fives people really hard and isn’t, you know, the worst person involved in professional basketball in any capacity. Pretty much anybody would’ve been an improvement from Sterling, but Ballmer seems like a genuinely cool, engaged dude, so the Clippers must be all kinds of relieved that he’s at the helm now. Plus, if any manifestation of the Doc Rivers-CP3-Blake Griffin Clippers ever wins a championship, they’re pretty much guaranteed a 30 for 30.

The Clippers are led by Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, but everybody already knows about those guys. CP3 is the best point guard in the league and Blake Griffin can jump really high. Let’s talk about the other guys.

Deandre Jordan can also jump really high, and he’s regarded as the Clippers’ third banana. He averaged 7 and 6 in his one season at Texas A&M, and then got picked 35th overall in the 2008 Draft, which is pretty remarkable considering that he averaged 7 and 6 in his one season at Texas A&M. He’s since developed into one of the better centers in the league. He’s a borderline elite rim protector, he doesn’t need plays called for him, and he carries Brandon Knight’s soul around in a locket around his neck. He led the league in rebounding and field goal percentage last year, but nobody really cared.

JJ Redick went to Duke for four years and is very good at shooting 3-pointers. People really, really hated him while he was in college, but now he’s kind of just one of those guys who plays for the Clippers that nobody anywhere cares too much about. He’s pretty good at free throws, too.

Matt Barnes was the number one overall pick in every draft from 1998-2002. In his first season in the league, he won Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Most Valuable Player, and the Joe Dumars NBA Sportsmanship Award. His game is said to reflect a combination of Julius Erving, Michael Jordan, George Gervin, and “Pistol” Pete Maravich. He is an 8 time Most Valuable Player and 6 time scoring champion, and he shattered the record for 3-point field goals made with 26 in a February 14th, 2007 contest against the Utah Jazz, after which members of the notoriously hostile Utah crowd serenaded him with chants of “MVP.” He also has lots of tattoos.

Jamal Crawford is the NBA’s reigning Sixth Man of the Year, and he has the most 4-point plays in NBA history, by like a lot. The second and third players on the list combined still have seven fewer 4-point plays than him. That’s a lot of 4-point plays. He was a Blazer one time, but let’s not talk about that season because that season just made everybody sad and got Nate fired. Jamal likes to occasionally torture us by saying things on Twitter about how his good friend Brandon Roy can still ball the fuck out in moderation.

Spencer Hawes was the Blazers’ primary target in free agency, but he decided to sign with the Clippers instead. I was at a Kings-Sixers game in Sacramento one time right before the Sixers decided to be actively terrible at basketball, and Spencer Hawes got booed by the crowd every time he touched the ball. For context, he had played for the Kings earlier in his career and had recently made comments supporting the franchise’s proposed move to his hometown of Seattle. Regardless, it was pretty awesome. A lot of people hate Spencer Hawes, including most Blazers fans, who didn’t seem remotely bothered by being spurned by him over the summer.

Glen “Big Baby” Davis is one of the Clippers’ backup forwards. His nickname is Big Baby. That’s really all you need to know.

Chris Douglas-Roberts has recovered impressively from missing several critical free throws coming down the stretch of the 2008 National Championship game / having the shot mechanics of a 6 year old. After leaving Memphis, in the span of five years he played for three NBA teams, one team in Italy, and got sent down to the D-League twice. Then, last season he randomly popped up in Charlotte where he enjoyed a relatively productive season playing for the artists formerly known as the Bobcats. He reinvented himself as a useful 3-and-D rotation player, and then parlayed that into a contract with the Clippers.

Austin Rivers was rated as the number one recruit in the country by Rivals during his senior season of high school. He went to Duke for one season, where he was mostly underwhelming, and then declared for the draft, where he was selected 10th overall. He has career averages of 7 points and 2 assists. Austin Rivers isn’t actually on the Clippers yet, but let’s be real. It’s only a matter of time. His dad is the coach, and Los Angeles seems like as good of a place as anywhere for a guy named Austin, other than Austin, Texas, which to my knowledge doesn’t have an NBA franchise.

Both teams come in with 3-2 records, so, according to my diligent calculations, the winner will leave with a 4-2 record and some much needed funky early-season mojo. Matt Barnes will look to have a statement game, as these are the kinds of games that Matt Barnes loves. With many pundits questioning whether or not he still has enough left in the tank at age 34 to capture an unprecedented 9^th MVP award, we know the truth. We know the kind of champion that Matt Barnes is. Matt Barnes knows the kind of champion that Matt Barnes is. Matt Barnes winning his 9^th seems inevitable, and we should all just feel blessed to witness a player as transcendent as Matt Barnes chase history and basketball immortality.