<\/p>\n
If the Lakers decide they want to save money by not bringing Phil Jackson back, the LA-area sports media needs to pass the hat to try and keep him, because there is nobody better at giving quotes. <\/span>The most recent example was his Zen-ness\u2019s observation that the Clippers\u2019 weren\u2019t cursed, they just had bad karma. <\/span>Lord Zenenstein is absolutely right\u2014there are three kinds of losing franchises: <\/span>the losers<\/strong> (think: the Arizona Cardinals, the Bengals) basically teams that are just not very good for no reason other than that they suck; then there are the <\/span>karmically-challenged<\/strong> (the Clippers, the LA Kings–anyone that watched the 30 for 30 on Gretzky knows that the Kings aren\u2019t cursed by that trade but it certainly wasn\u2019t good karma to screw the entire country of Canada); and lastly there are teams that are <\/span>cursed<\/strong>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The last one is by far the smallest; they just don\u2019t make good curses anymore. <\/span>Sports used to do it right. <\/span>You shaft a guy, he spits twice and spins in a circle, and suddenly your team can\u2019t win a Championship; if you trade Ruth, your archrival gets to bitchslap you for nearly ninety years. <\/span>Like the mob breaking your legs, it\u2019s dirty but fair. <\/span>But now that the Red Sox have won theirs, there\u2019s one fewer curse in the world. <\/span> To be cursed your fans need to be miserable, they need to feel dread every time the big game approaches, they need to know (just know!<\/em>) that the team is going to hurt them and they\u2019re going to do it because there are mystical forces colluding against them. Furthermore there needs to be one event that follows a long run of success, and immediately after that the success leaves\u2026never to return again. <\/span>You\u2019ll hear plenty of teams claim they are in this elite group- the \u201cVikings curse\u201d, the \u201cBrowns curse\u201d, etc.–but while it certainly must suck to cheer for those teams, surprisingly, the most cursed team in the NFL is the Chargers. <\/span> Maybe it was the AFL\/NFL merger in 1970 (only 12 Super Bowls have been won by former AFL teams.) <\/span>Maybe it was Conrad Hilton selling the team in \u201866 (the new owners Eugene Klein and Sam Schulman seemed like pretty decent guys but maybe they ran over a witch or slept with a gypsy\u2019s daughter or something to bring this about. <\/span>Klein, a long-time democrat, did publically support Nixon in \u201972 but that wouldn\u2019t lead to being cursed\u2026um\u2026right?) <\/span>Maybe their Stadium, built in \u201967, was designed by a guy that went to King Tut\u2019s tomb or was a 27-year-old Rock Star or was elected President in a year that ends in zero. <\/span>Or more likely, it was changing their uniforms from the Powder Blue–surely the Forces That Be are totally rocking the light blue Alworth jersey like Snoop in the \u201cBeautiful\u201d video, and clearly switching to the dark blue in \u201974 pissed them off. <\/span> Before the 2009 season (when the AFL 50th<\/sup> anniversary meant they wore the light blues often) the Chargers had 11 wins in their last 11 games while wearing the powder blues–including the fluky win over the Colts in the \u201908 postseason. <\/span>Obviously no curse known to man or beast can override the power of a truly sweet uniform. <\/span>But whatever caused the curse, the success the Chargers had in the first half of the 60s (winning the AFC West 5 of the first 6 years and won the AFL Championship in \u201963) immediately disappeared in the 2nd<\/sup> half of the decade. But again simply losing isn\u2019t the same as being cursed. <\/span>The Chargers being the most dominant team of the early 60s followed by forty years without a Championship is heartbreaking but not paranoid-schizophrenia inducing. <\/span>Instead, like Bucky F\u2019n Dent and Aaron F\u2019n Boone proved to Red Sox fans, Chargers fans know what cursed losing looks like. <\/span>It\u2019s losing to your archrivals in ways that defy human explanation. <\/span> It\u2019s 1978. <\/span>The Raiders QB–down by 6–fumbled the ball on the 12, and then kicked it forward, only to have the running back also knock it forward, only to have the tight end also knock it forward, into the end zone, before he fell on it with no time left (the rule change that an offensive player can\u2019t advance a fumble was created that offseason.) <\/span> It\u2019s the \u201981 playoffs in which they had to beat the Dolphins in 85 degree heat only to play the Bengals the next week in a wind-chilled minus 59 degrees. <\/span>Only voodoo can explain having back-to-back playoff games 144 degrees different. <\/span>Cursed losing is seeing your former players leave to the rival Niners so that they can win a Championship. <\/span>Cursed losing is decades of crappy teams. <\/span>Cursed losing is finally getting it together in \u201994, making it all the way to the Super Bowl, only to see that same Niners team–the one that your players go to when they want to finally win one–and have that team absolutely demolish you. <\/span>There is little agony that can compare to choke jobs on the biggest stage. <\/span>There is little that can compare to your hopes and dreams going unused, like a dictionary in the Jersey Shore. <\/span>There is little to explain Ryan Leaf other than the work of very powerful forces that were very angry at San Diego. The new millennium was not enough to change the story. <\/span>Our ex-players still broke up with us in order to go find what they were looking for somewhere else, this time in New England. <\/span>Our owner still supported Republicans with eavesdropping issues. <\/span>Our front office still fought with our coaches so that we couldn\u2019t keep both. <\/span>The only thing different about the new incarnations of the curse was that like Samuel L. Jackson movies they seemed to be coming out constantly and all of them found new ways to suck. <\/span> There was the 2004 postseason loss to the Jets. <\/span>It was the kind of loss that only cursed people know. <\/span>The come-from-behind, only to blow the lead, only to get a chance to comeback (and raise everyone\u2019s hopes), only to miss a field goal with the game on the line. <\/span>At the time we thought our success made Eli (and puppetmaster Archie) Manning look stupid. <\/span>\u201cIf you think we can\u2019t win, well shove these 12 wins up your\u2026\u201d but little did we know that Archie, like crucifixes and garlic, was just trying to stave off what was affecting the Chargers. Then there was the 2006 postseason loss to the Patriots. <\/span>14 wins, LT looking like a God, Rivers looking like he figured It<\/em> out.<\/span> <\/span><\/em>But the fumbles, and mistakes, and the missed FGs, and the whatever-it-was-that-was-preventing-us-from-winning that day. <\/span>At the time we thought it was Marty Schottenheimer. <\/span>We thought the 14-2 followed by a first-game exit was his fault. <\/span>\u201cIf you can\u2019t win in the playoffs, we don\u2019t want you\u2026\u201d but little did we know that Marty might be an effect more than a cause. <\/span> Then there was this past weekend. <\/span>The story is still fresh enough: Rivers collapsing, Kaeding–the most accurate kicker in NFL history–missing 3 FGs when just one would have sent it to OT, Revis\u2019 interception–the one that bounced off VJ twice before falling into Revis\u2019 hands–all of them are the kinds of things that happens when you\u2019re cursed. <\/span> <\/span> But this time we can\u2019t blame anyone corporeal. <\/span>We can\u2019t blame bad luck, we can\u2019t blame bad coaching, we can\u2019t blame ourselves. <\/span>We simply need to understand that we are trifling with forces that we don\u2019t understand. <\/span>We are cursed. <\/span> So just how did the Red Sox beat Ruth\u2019s curse? <\/span>Curt Schilling performed a heroic act (the bloody sock game) while invoking the only guy tougher than the Bambino, Lou Gerhig (with Schilling\u2019s \u201cK-ALS\u201d note on his shoe.) <\/span>We\u2019ll have to put our heads together and figure out what the equivalent of that would be in the NFL; or maybe we can invoke the Hilton legacy by bringing Paris to a game, or maybe we can just move stadiums, or maybe, just maybe, we should just get Phil Jackson to coach the team. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s no coincidence the Chargers were once again the surprise early exit of the postseason–Leaky Pipes has the evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}