Make a wish, Nick Young’s a falling star

Congratulations Swaggy P, you played yourself.

The karmic retribution you so obviously deserved for giving yourself your own nickname finally stung you. Turns out blabbing about cheating on your celebrity girlfriend isn’t a smart move, particularly when every sports reporter in town stuck covering your miserable Lakers squad desperately clings to any kind of break from the long, miserable slog toward the end of Kobe’s lackluster farewell season.

And boy, did you deliver a gem of a story. During the week leading up to Major League Baseball’s opening day, Final Four weekend and Wrestlemania, the tale of your foolish infidelity still managed to grab headlines — granted, that’s due in part because us journalists rarely get a chance to use two equally ridiculous names in the same sentence. The ill-fated adventures of Iggy Azalea & Swaggy P sounds like a nonsensical children’s book.

Now, there’s been an abundance of undeserved hate sent D’Angelo Russell’s way from active and former players alike alleging he broke some sort of bogus unwritten rule that says a locker room is a safe, happy place to talk about what a scumbag you’ve been. But, these players are forgetting a few critical points which render that particular sentiment totally invalid.

First, I wish I could personally drag every so-called unwritten rule or “code” in professional sports out onto Aggie Blvd and beat it with Jose Bautista’s still-twirling baseball bat until it’s nothing more than a mass of bloody rags. There is no rule preventing a guy from bunting away a pitcher’s no-hitter, from running up the score or from going full Richard Sherman after a big game. The NFL does have an excessive celebration penalty, but that one’s actually written down and basically everyone agrees it’s the worst rule of all time.

Second, you have to actually be a decent player for this mythical celebrity code of discretion to apply, which you’re not.

You’re Nick Young, a middling nobody averaging a little over seven points per game on a Laker team that won’t even touch 20 wins this season. Your contribution to the game of basketball begins and ends with a pretty hilarious premature celebration of a missed 3-pointer. Literally the highest compliment anyone can pay LA this year is that the Lakers sucks slightly less than the Philadelphia 76ers, making you the 8th-best player on the 2nd-worst team in the NBA. If you played for the Milwaukee Bucks, this story wouldn’t have even made it onto SportsNation, and that show lives for garbage peripheral stories like this one.

You’ve somehow managed to play the victim of a mess that’s entirely your fault, successfully shedding any blame or shadow of wrongdoing onto your own teammate. The only one out there with the proper reaction to this whole drama was Michelle freaking Beadle, which is how you know something in the world of sports is a complete disaster.

You’re a victim of nothing. All the former athletes griping about their precious code can shove it. Unless your name is A-rod, cheating and expecting to get away with it is going to end badly for you every time.

— Logan Jones is a junior majoring in journalism. Contact him with feedback at logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj.