JEFF PEARLMAN

JEFF PEARLMAN

The snot snorter … and Isiah Thomas

snot

I’m sitting here in the Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans, killing a few hours before my flight.

There was one seat available here in the little coffee shop by Concourse D. I took it. Now, I need to leave.

The man sitting next to me, roughly 35 in age, with a black cap and jeans, keeps snorting. Snorting snot.

He’ll be typing … typing … typing …

SNNNNOOOORRRRRT!!!!!

Typing … typing … typing …

SNNNNNOOOOOORRRTTTT!!!!

There are sounds I very much enjoy. Birds chirping. Waves crashing. A James Ingram solo. The echo of this man’s mucus residue, resonating through his throat, doubtlessly projecting small, microscopic snot particles my way?

Not so much.

•

On another note, Isiah Thomas is hurt. Magic Johnson says in a new book that he helped keep Thomas off the ’92 Dream Team; that nobody wanted him and the league hated him and, more or less, he was a twerp. “I wish he would have called me,” Thomas said. “I always believed that our friendship was good and close enough that we wouldn’t have to talk about this stuff in such a public venue.”

As a human being, I despise Zeke, the man who killed the CBA, killed the Pacers, killed the Knicks, clashed with the media, etc. He is, by all accounts, a pretty bad guy; one I have little interest in. But, as a writer, I’m fascinated. Generally, the jerko**s of sports tend to hide their jerko**itude by signing a few autographs; smiling for the camera; shaking hands and kissing babies. Thomas actually did all of those things, and he’s still loathed.

That, my friends, takes talent.