Marcus Smart has left the Lakers for Houston. I read it on BasketNews and heard Jovan Buha’s sentence as a script for the mic: “He decided he wasn’t gonna stay, and they went in a different direction.” A different direction. Nobody made the announcement. So I’m making it.
Dark. Well, half dark, the caretaker keeps his neon lights on. The two school fête spotlights. “Mesdames et messieurs, dames en heren. After one season, sixty-two games, one point four steals a night…” Two-second blank. “Marcuuus… Smart!” [jingle]. He crosses the floor. Towards the exit.
And that’s where I get stuck. Because next I have to announce the other side, the Lakers. “Make some noise for… a different direction.” The sound system has an opinion: it can’t find a jingle for a direction. I’m still looking. A direction is an arrow, not a first name.
Buha also says the Lakers were much better at both ends with him on the floor early in the season. That’s a moment. He found the Los Angeles offer disrespectful. That’s a moment too. The biggest league in the world has all that and leaves it in a journalist’s sentence.
At our place, I do a departure on the mic at half-time, with the president’s nephew in the dinosaur suit shaking hands. Even if nobody knows where he’s going.
Houston gets the entrance. Los Angeles gets a direction. Just saying.
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.
