Between the end of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Saturday night and the start of tonight’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals, sports writers are going bonkers trying to establish the best storylines that they can hammer into the ground over the next one or two weeks (hopefully two). The easiest storyline, of course, is “You’re not allowed to like this team because ______” and depending on the writer, the reason is either “LeBron’s Decision” or “Clay Bennett’s theft”.

That’s the common denominator narrative for the 2012 NBA Finals – you’re either pulling for the villains in Miami, or you’re pulling for the villain in Oklahoma City. After all, there’s nothing worse than a guy who hosted his own 1-hour special to tell his hometown that he was leaving than a guy who purchased a team and moved it to another city, or vice versa. Whichever person you choose to cheer for makes you wrong, according to some sports writer.

And that’s obviously not fair. As sports fans, we should be able to cheer for whomever we want, without having to explain ourselves. But if these media bullies are causing you to second-guess your bandwagon loyalty for the NBA championship series, then I’ve created a handy flowchart to help you decide which team you’re actually allowed to cheer for.

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The controversy: rapper/actor-producer/avant-garde comedian (?) Lil’ Wayne was denied access to Thursday’s Game 3 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs. Like anybody with a bone to pick and a night in Oklahoma City with nothing better to do, Weezy took to Twitter to voice his displeasure and derisively S his H for seven million people.

How could this happen? Wayne’s followers have their theories:

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Are you an international With Leather reader looking to learn a little English so you can have colloquial conversations with the locals about basketball? If so, would you feel more comfortable learning it from a cute Taiwanese lady and a Who Framed Roger Rabbit?-style living cartoon of badly-animated Taiwanese Jeremy Lin? If you answered yes to either of these questions, who the f**k are you and how do you exist?

Anyway, Taiwan’s Next Media Animation project Learn English conversation with Carol! is my new favorite web series. I enjoy the premise (especially if it ends with LeBron James lowering animated Lin into a vat of The Dip) and I like knowing there’s still a place in the world where people think Jeremy Lin is inspiring and great at basketball.

For your viewing pleasure, I present episodes one and two. In episode three, Carol issues Order 66 and the sh*t goes down.

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With the success of the first installment of the With Leather Awesome Celebrity Baseball Fan Tracker last week, I decided that we had to explore the darker side of famous fans. And hoo boy, are there some seriously embarrassing celebrity fans out there. But in fairness to the good fans out there, a lot of them – motions upward with eyes – are just fake fans, using our beloved national pastime as a chance to extend their 15 minutes a few more seconds.

As mentioned in the previous post – updated maps forthcoming – I don’t want the burden of being the ultimate deciding factor in putting together this thorough directory of which famous d-bags and dolts love which baseball teams. So I want you to make your recommendations in the comments for celebrities that I’ve missed, and I know that there are plenty.

But I also urge you to speak out in defense of any actor, musician, politician or generally famous person who I may have slighted by labeling an embarrassing fan. With the NBA and NHL playoffs ending in a few weeks – and they’re both already over for me – we’re in for a long summer. Let’s spend it creating productive dialog, shall we?

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For those keeping track at home, this truck has:

New York Yankees logos
Los Angeles Lakers logos
Miami Heat logos
Chicago Bulls logos
Nike logos

And there are more. I’m guessing Alabama, Duke, LSU, Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants logos are also on there somewhere. But before we go passing judgment, I caught up to this guy to get his reason for having all of these different teams represented on his truck:

“It’s totally cool, bro. I was born in New York, my girlfriend is from Miami, I had a 12-hour layover once in Chicago and I can almost spell Los Angeles. So I’m allowed to be fans of all these teams. But seriously, f*ck Boston.”

(Reddit via Sharapova’s Thigh.)

On Saturday, L.A. Times columnist and Around the Horn regular Bill Plaschke asked NBA fans, “How dare you? How dare you hate the Miami Heat?” The guy who regularly makes Woody Paige look intelligent shook his ham fist at the heavens and pondered for 1,000 words why sports fans could hate the Heat, and what LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh have done to deserve the scorn and ire of the majority of fans not living in Miami (or pretending they live there, for that matter). And even though Plaschke’s argument makes very little sense, uses poor franchise comparisons and contradicts itself, I thought the idea of this “hate” issue should finally be addressed.

Since “The Decision” aired on ESPN and from the day that James, Wade and Bosh were introduced in some sort of nightclub/man orgy celebration in Miami, it’s been a case of us and them. Us – the anti-Miami, the fans of so-called fairness, balance and order, those of us who despised the grandstanding and boasting before the season even began – against the idea that two superstars and Bosh could do something unprecedented to establish a dynasty and people should just be expected to love the Heat for that. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

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