Welcome to the seventh edition of THIS WEEK IN GIFs, in which we round up the very greatest sports GIF of the last seven days for your review, and you vote for your favorites. This week, as usual, we have an eight-GIF lineup. Voting will remain open until 11 p.m. Eastern Sunday night.
This Week In GIFs: Intrusive Bird-People And Embarrassed Fruit
A man cries. An apple hides. A bird calls. A pitcher just smacks a baseball against his cup over and over. It was a fine seven days in sports. Vote, and help us determine the greatest animated GIF of the week.
As always, these GIFs merit deconstruction. Here’s Matt Ufford, Dan Rubenstein and myself discussing our favorites. Sorry for the puns, everyone:
JUNGLE BIRD
Well, this is an interesting one. If you haven’t seen the video, this is a terrific GIF. If you have seen the video, you just wish you were watching the video instead of staring at this GIF.
That’s the lesson here: not every moment is a GIF moment.
JOEL PERALTA JUST STANDIN’ OVER THERE JUST BANGIN’ HIS JIMMIES
(via @The_Vole)
Here’s an incomplete list of perhaps-just-invented phrases I almost used in that headline instead of, “bangin’ his jimmies”:
- Thumpin' his dumplin's
- Knockin' his neddies
- Tappin' his timothies
- Pluralizin' his baseball
- Dong-gongin'
SHANE BATTIER’S VOLLEYBALL SHOT
(Via Mike Prada)
Lately, Shane Battier has been killing it from beyond the arc. He’s so hot, in fact, that he can play another sport out there and still almost make it. And yes, I know he didn’t have much choice but to shoot it this way since the shot clock was running out. Still funny.
And see, this is why you give a GIF an extra look or two: I just noticed LeBron James’ body language. He initiates the “What the Hell was that?” arms-outstretch for 0.2 seconds before, premably, realizing that being so openly critical of a teammate would paint a bad teammate coward fraudulent teamfraud choker clubhouse cancer clownthug crybaby jokemate bad sports town gas-guzzling environmentally harmful FDA-rejected IBM-incompatible insufficiently-postmarked fraudclown clown teamthug teammate.
SHANE BATTIER FLOPS OUT OF HIS OWN SCREEN
(Via Mike Prada)
It’s like Shane Battier and Russell Westbrook are at a youth summer camp and the counselor instructed them to do a “trust fall” and they just totally f***ed it up. Shane Battier is not GIF Hall of Fame-caliber yet, but he sure is building his resume.
CHRIS BOSH IS TERRIBLE AT HIGH-FIVING
Special thanks to The XFINITY Sports Guy, Austin Schindel (@XFINITYSports) for nominating this one.
Now HERE’s a GIF Hall of Famer. The bad news is that I’m about to drop some context on you. The good news is that said context is also in GIF form. For further viewing, please see:
- Chris Bosh missing another high-five
- Chris Bosh missing a low-five
- Chris Bosh finally executing a high-five properly, to everyone's bewilderment.
MARIO BALOTELLI IS RIDICULOUS
(via Ryan Rosenblatt)
That was a goal. Like, a ball that he was intentionally trying to kick in the net, and it actually went in the net. It was such a great goal that by the end of the GIF, his team is down by 90-15 instead of 90-0. I do not know how to read graphics on soccer broadcasts, so I don’t know what else those numbers could possibly signify. Maybe soccers.
SHEEPISH APPLE
(Via Jeff Sullivan)
The Mets’ Home Run Apple popped up despite the fact that the Mets weren’t even at bat, then had to make a slow and humiliated exit. G’AWWWW POOR LIL’ FELLA. And with that, I am feeling human sympathy for an inanimate object that is fashioned to look like a different inanimate object. Thanks a lot, Mets.
DESPAIRING GIORGOS KARAGOUNIS
(Via @cjzero)
This is like the GIF version of “Who Gon Stop Me” off Watch the Throne. It’s pretty great. You think it’s over, then the curtain pulls across the screen in the person of No. 10, and the despair is somehow ramped up by a factor of 10, going from “aaaagh soccer game” to “AAAAAAAAAGH FAMILY JUST DIED AND SOCCER GAAAAAAAAME.”
VOTE!
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