Drake Is the NBA Finals’ True Villain

It is the only thing we could all agree upon: Drake should cool it when sitting courtside at basketball matches For reasons no one needs to understand – seriously, don’t worry about it- I saw that the fourth quarter of Game 6 of those 2019 Eastern Conference finals at the Cheers bar in Boston.

It is the only thing we could all agree upon: Drake should cool it when sitting courtside at basketball matches For reasons no one needs to understand – seriously, don’t worry about it- I saw that the fourth quarter of Game 6 of those 2019 Eastern Conference finals at the Cheers bar in Boston. My friends and I had been rooting for the Bucks, mostly because I cannot physically break until internationally and extravagant vengeance rains upon every enemy of the Philadelphia 76ers. (I was, nevertheless, rooting for Marc Gasol to have a good game, because he comforted our huge man in his time of sorrow and that I will remember and honor this meticulous act of human kindness before the day that I die.)  It’s customary to speak to the person sitting in the Cheers pub, if only to understand they also are spending a Saturday night watching a basketball game at a tourist-trap pub based on a syndicated television series. Our neighbor was a former Marine from South Carolina who had been rooting for the Raptors, mostly because he’d been following Kawhi Leonard since seeing him perform years back at a San Diego State match and he had every reason to believe that this was eventually Leonard’s superstar-making postseason run. Fair enough. And this stranger and so we spent another half hour cheering at times, yes, and also our moods were upon leaving the bar rather different, but in this polarized situation we were able to find some common ground. “Can you at least believe that Drake should chill?” I asked this guy. Oh , he also said, without doubt. Absolutely.

It’s perhaps the only thing that we could all agree upon as a nation, if not an whole species within an interconnected biosphere: Drake needs to cool it if sitting courtside.

Before the evening of May 21, 2019, no shoulder massage in history had created more tension on earth than it alleviated. And after that, with eight and a half an hour to go in the fourth quarter of Game 4, popular musician and nonathlete Aubrey”Drake” Graham snuck up behind Raptors head coach Nick Nurse such as a qualified little Reiki elf, gave 2 rebounds to his deltoids, and then- before Nurse’s face had a opportunity to register any awareness that this happened- exited framework to cause god-knows-what type of untelevised mischief.

The Massage has already been memed into oblivion, and I’ve observed a looped video of it approximately 1.7 million times, and yet my blood pressure still rises every time I see Drake bust into the shot like a handsy Kool-Aid Man. My dude … please be seated.

Let us leave aside for the moment, the question of physical contact that is unwarranted. What disturbs me is that the feeling of consent with which Drake walks together with the half-conscious air of a guy popping into his kitchen to create a midnight sandwich, around Scotiabank Arena’s sidelines. He at home on the court that I’m sometimes surprised to see he is even wearing shoes. The Rub wasn’t an isolated episode, of course: Drake has spent the entire 2019 playoffs springing to his feet randomly like an inexplicably emotive jack-in-the-box, and he has also reveled loudly in the misfortune of competitions like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid, two men that, unlike Drake- and I cannot stress this enough- are professional athletes who play in the National Basketball Association. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for celebrities like Jack Nicholson, Ansel Elgort, and Jack Nicholsonson (what Jack Nicholson’s close buddies call Jack Nicholson’s son) having fun at baseball games. But what Drake has been doing this season feels different, more tumultuous, more Concerning Him. It’s the atmosphere of a person who has been at Marquee when it’s shut down, who just named an extremely large private jet , and who thinks he could easily get any last thing that he desires, even when a certain cosmetics mogul might beg to differ.

“There’s absolutely no place for fans and, you know, whatever exactly Drake is for your Toronto Raptors,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer stated following the match. “There is boundaries and lines for a reason, and like I mentioned, the league is generally fairly good at being at the top of things like that.” “Whatever exactly Drake would be to get the Raptors” would have been a decent burn had the Bucks won the sequence. But Toronto’s smiling celebrity bodywork specialist triumphed, and will live to gloat courtside another day. We have to come to terms with it, although It’s a loss for us all as a people : Drake and his antics are going to go to the NBA Finals.

Even Kevin Durant to the five games of the playoff series, the Warriors’ appearance in this season’s Finals looks like an anticlimax. For still another season, the Dubs are so dominant that their greatness is sort of boring. I can hardly imagine a casual observer finding it interesting to root for a group that’s creating its fifth appearance in the championship series when they’re playing with a team creating its NBA Finals debut. But again, because you might have heard, Drake did this.  Has Drake made it fun to root for the Warriors? It’s complicated, and since fun is generally straightforward, I’m going to go ahead and say”no.” Sorry. He’s going to be happy no matter who 29, because possibly the most annoying thing about Drake’s function as NBA Finals Villain is that in some sense. The Raptors are Drake’s hometown team, it is true, but he made his teammates fandom known on the increasingly aesthetically suspicious canvas which is his body and in his lyrics. If the Warriors have still another championship to observe in the coming weeks, it’s not hard to envision Drake for some staged laughing at In-N-Out. “Golden State running practice at my house,” Drake boasted on his single”Summer ” (Though Curry later clarified that the event this lineup was based off was like”Steph Curry and his brother-in-law playing at my home while my buddies and I watch in the stands” Poetic license, fine) In addition, he name-dropped Durant on 2016’s”Weston Road Flows” (“shout-out to KD, we relate, we receive the same attention”). At that time, Drake has yet to mention the Raptors’ dinosaur mascot by title.

One silver lining of the struggle is that you can make some money off Drake behaviour. The gaming site SportBetTime.com is allowing users to take part in several of prop bets such as”Will NBA Warn or Ban Drake for Antics?” (+750),”Will Drake Respond to Smash Mouth on Twitter Before the End of NBA Finals?” (+200), and”Will Drake Have an On-Court Physical Altercation using a Warriors Player?” (+2500). The line on that one looks somewhat low but, as always when risking large quantities of money, follow your own gut.

The reason Drake’s courtside theatrics are loosely irksome is that it’s a manifestation of a dynamic in pop culture’s past half-decade Drake simply cannot lose. He is omnipresent, he is foolproof, he is too big to fail. He’s the home team and the away team, the alpha and the omega; he is the golden boy pumping his fist. However, you understand a few things that Drake is not? A professional basketball player, a part of an NBA coaching staff, or perhaps (at least to my knowledge) a licensed massage therapist. So, by all means, have as much fun as an absurdly rich superfan possibly can. But when game time comes, might I give up the guidance of one of the beloved sons of California: Sit down. Be humble.