The Slice: ‘Basketball fan’ can’t avoid the headlines

Has anyone been keeping tabs on our old pal “basketball fan”?

Sure, this newspaper has. And a quick scan through the S-R’s digital archives reveals just how “basketball fan” has been making news.

Let’s review.

Do you remember the time he invited President Obama to “play him one-on-one”?

Perhaps not. But it does make you wonder. Would the Secret Service be in charge of calling fouls?

“Down on the ground, Basketball Fan. Gotcha on the arm.”

S-R readers also learned that “basketball fan” is, at least in the opinion of one writer, “organized and analytical enough to manage a large organization.”

So much for sports fanatics not having game when it comes to brain-power.

Of course, it hasn’t all been upbeat news for “basketball fan.” Far from it.

In addition to learning that he had “grown up in Vero Beach, Florida,” we were horrified to read that he “killed 16 people and himself in a suicide bombing attack.”

Yikes. That must have been some time after the S-R ran a story noting that he was playing some pretty good golf and “had two third-place finishes and has made $1.3 million this season.”

With that sort of money, you could probably afford courtside seats.

The truth is, “basketball fan” has been all over the map.

Take, for instance, the time he told Dennis Rodman a couple of years ago that he hoped the former NBA player’s visit would “break the ice between the United States and North Korea.”

Perhaps he had come down with a raging case of March Madness. There is no vaccine, after all. Not yet.

But “basketball fan” is not a totally bad guy. Remember the time he got elected governor and then “repeated his vow to return to Hoopfest this summer and professed his love of Gonzaga basketball”?

Or what about when he introduced an initiative to change Washington’s state song to the Sonics era “Not in Our House” by Sir Mix-A-Lot?

But “basketball fan” is not the only one to get fired up about roundball at this time of year.

Consider his friend and confidant, “hoops fan.”

A peek into the newspaper’s electronic archives shows that he had been known to “delay mowing the backyard to spend a glorious spring afternoon glued to the TV.”

Hey, somebody get “hoops fan” a cold one.

And it probably goes without saying what “Zags fan” has been doing.

S-R readers learned that he “was on hand for Gonzaga’s win.”

Of course. Where else would he be?