Kevin Love travelled over for Kyle Lowry’s block party, organised in Toronto in honour of Lowry, whose jersey the Raptors are about to retire. Lowry retired recently and is still waiting for the ceremony. Love took the microphone and said: “This is Kyle’s Day, but isn’t this LeBronto?” The nickname came from Toronto supporters themselves, after several playoff exits in a row against LeBron James. The crowd booed. Love answered: “I’m just kidding, I love you guys.”
On Sunday, after dinner, Darnell rang Indiana.
I told her the whole scene. A 2016 champion who turns up at a former opponent’s party, says one sentence, gets booed, and fixes it in ten seconds. In 2000, at my first club reception here, I’d prepared a sentence in French in the minibus. I said it. Nobody booed. Nobody understood either. Let me tell you: silence lasts longer.
His mother listened to the end, then asked who had come up with the word.
I said: the Toronto supporters, themselves, after the playoffs against LeBron. She laughed, and she said: so he just read out what they’d written. She said: see?
Then she asked what she always asks, which has nothing to do with microphones.
She asked whether, in all those playoff series, anybody had defended. I said I didn’t know, I was watching from Marcinelle at three in the morning, and the heating in that old hall with the badminton lines had its moods. She said the nickname would never have existed if someone had boxed out. The fundamentals, that’s that too. I told my under-tens on Sunday morning: a nickname is what people write when you let them.
Love is 38 and looking for a nineteenth NBA season. According to a report from NBA insider Jake Fischer, the Utah Jazz, where he played last season, have shown interest, but the player would rather join a title contender. In Utah he averaged 6.7 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.8 assists in 37 games. Five-time All-Star, NBA champion in 2016 with Cleveland.
Lowry is still waiting for his ceremony. Darnell is still waiting for someone in Indiana to ask about the score first.
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.
