You can be mad in so many different ways in the sport of basketball. It’s a sport, and sports are very maddening basically all the time. Maybe your team wins the championship, and you go mad, but it’s a mad world, and this is my attempt to set the record number of times using the word “mad” in a single paragraph.
The 4 maddest people from the first NBA playoffs weekend, ranked
The NBA makes people mad! Here’s how mad they were.
Fans are mad all the time, but the real treat is when the players get mad. Sometimes, it leads to instant karmic amusement.
Sometimes, the players say they’re not mad, but they really are mad.
Many times, it’s Doc Rivers who is mad, and when he gets mad, you KNOW HE’S MAD BECAUSE HE WILL YELL AT YOU VERY LOUDLY.
The first weekend of the 2017 NBA postseason was no exception, and Doc Rivers’ blowup from earlier this season is a perfect metric by which to judge our participants’ level of mad. We even have a wonderful photo that goes with it.
Here are the most and least mad moments so far in these NBA playoffs.
DeMar DeRozan mad at Matthew Dellavedova’s screens
DeRozan is mad enough about the screens to imply they’re illegal, but not mad enough to actually say it. We’ll say this draws ... Two Screaming Doc Rivers on our Screaming Doc Rivers Mad Chart.
Draymond Green and the Blazers mad at each other about trash talk
Green actually missed a wide-open dunk, and C.J. McCollum responded with the hilarious, “You need to do more calf raises.” Anatomically correct burns always sting the hardest.
But Green won, so he wasn’t really that mad about it. And from the way McCollum responded, it didn’t sound like he was mad, either!
“He needs to do some calf raises so he can dunk,” McCollum said when asked about it. “But I’ve known Draymond Green since he was at Michigan State. He was a little chubbier at Michigan State. He’s done really well with himself. He’s worked hard. If I have something I want to say, I’m going to say it.”
It didn’t seem like anyone was that mad — so I was going to give this One Doc. But then I watched the video.
I don’t think McCollum or Damian Lillard even smiled there. “I don’t even talk trash,” said Lillard, before admitting Green made him so mad he totally talked some trash in Game 1.
They’re totally a little bit mad. They get three Screaming Doc Rivers for their anger.
Swearing Celtics kid mad at his own team
Aw, buddy, I’ve been there before. He’s not really mad, not yet, just sad that the No. 1-seeded Celtics are blowing a game to the terrible Chicago Bulls. We’re only going to give him one Screaming Doc Rivers for this showing.
Paul Millsap mad at the Wizards for playing another sport
Oh, Paul Millsap was mad on Sunday.
“The difference in the game was we were playing basketball and they were playing MMA,” Millsap told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They were physical. When the game is like that we have to match their physicality. But again, we’ve got to go get some moves and bring them back to the court.”
If they were playing another sport, Paul, you probably should have beat them! But seriously, a team being more physical than you isn’t something you can really complain about. Perhaps the Hawks can draw our attention to any cheap shots that weren’t seen, but it’s not like Washington’s aggressive defense went unnoticed — the Hawks shot 39 free throws while the Wizards only went to the line 17 times.
For this, Millsap earns himself Four Screaming Doc Rivers!
That’s it for this installment of How Mad Are They!? Remember: Getting mad isn’t a bad thing, and we’re all better off for it when it happens, as long as no one gets hurt.
