The Rondo injury, the knucklehead routines of Lebum and Wade, the Ray allen transfer really swayed me into hating the Cheat.
The Lakers, although, an archenemy has my respect during the Magic/Bird era. But this incarnation under Kobe is despised as well.
+1....I have hated the Fakers longer, but my hate for the cHeat is FAR more intense for all your reasons in paragraph #1 and add to that their disingenuous claim to have used the Cs Big Three concept in THE WAY they came together.
That's crap. Our Big 3 came together by us giving up assets.
The cHeat came together by collusion amongst the evil 3 and Riley, the puppetmaster. They gave up NO assets to get them.
The Fakers 2000's iteration, I agree is pretty loathsome, however, as much as Magic Johnson broke my heart with that baby-hook to clinch that Finals game not more than 200 feet from where I sat and on many other occasions, I still respected the guy, even though I rooted fiercely against him and the Spartans in the '79 NCAA championsip game against our boy and the Sycamores, and even more fiercely in the '80s in general.
To me, Magic, behind Russ was the best player ever, and so was pretty hard to hate. (Sorry, MJ, Lenny Bias would've made you a footnote.)
What Magic did as a rook in the sixth game of the NBA Finals series against the '6ers earned my respect for him forever. Because Jabbar was out, Magic
started at center and played forward and guard and scored 42, had 15 boards, 7 assists and was the only rookie at the time to have won the Finals MVP as a rookie.
Much respect for Magic, but I still hated Kareem, Scott, Rambis and company.