Acrylic Basketball Backboards

Dear Shaq,

We’ve had a long history together. For years, you made it your mission to terrorize me and my relatives. You were pretty rough on us. Remember that one backboard you shattered at the draft combine? Yeah, that WAS pretty awesome, huh? No. That was my cousin, Darryl. So, to me…not awesome.

But at some point, things started to change. First, you stopped visiting as much. Someone told me you were losing a step, and it was getting hard for you to make the trip up the court to see me. Then, I heard you were doing commercials for the Icy Hot Patch for aching joints. So it seems the rumors were true. You’re just not the threat to my kind that you used to be, I guess. Where has the time gone?

Well, I’m getting off track. I didn’t write to bag on you. The reason I’m writing is to tell you to keep your head up. A lot of folks are going to want to take you down a peg now that you’re not quite the terror that you used to be out on the court. Don’t let them. If you need some support, I got your back. Because the truth is, these new kids don’t have anything on you.

Dwight Howard, Blake Griffin, Greg Oden; we never tremble when we see them headed down the court the way we did when you were in your prime. When you took that dish from the point, that Spalding basketball in your hand might as well have had a fuse sprouting from the top with the word TNT written on the side. This one backboard named Larry (he was a good friend, my best man at my wedding), you pulled him all the way to the ground in one piece, shot clock and all. I’d like to see Dwight Howard do that.

The point is: you’ve done a lot. I’m not telling you to rest on your accomplishments, just that you can let them speak for you when you have to. If someone questions your dominance, just pull up the videos of your savage rim-ravaging dunks, and us backboards will be forced to testify in your defense. So, the only time you should ever hang your head is when there is backboard glass raining down around it.

Sincerely,

Acrylic Basketball Backboards