To understand the NBA in 2017, you must first understand PBS Kids programming. In particular, you must understand the charming yellow aardvark named Arthur.
On Thursday, the Houston Rockets trolled LeBron James with an Instagram video featuring the meme of Arthur’s clenched fist and other clips of the PBS character.
In case you do not carefully follow the NBA’s unending social media wars, allow us to catch you up. On Monday, Kyrie Irving scored 35 points to lead the Celtics to their ninth consecutive win. The Boston victory came a day after Irving’s former team, the Cavaliers, had fallen to 4-6 with a loss to the Hawks, despite 26 points and 13 assists from LeBron.
Amid all this, LeBron tweeted out the popular Arthur clenched-fist meme, with the caption “Mood…”
Though it was pretty clear LeBron was expressing frustration about Cleveland’s struggles and his rival’s success, the King said the next day that he had posted the image because, simply, “I like Arthur.”
The Rockets, clearly not quite buying that explanation, shared their Arthur-centric promo video which, we should mention, was laudatory of LeBron.
When Marc Brown created Arthur back in the ’90s, did he anticipate that a random frame from the show would wind up as a tool for NBA players and teams to mess with each other? Seems safe to assume he did not. And yet, here we are.
As always, long live the NBA.
[ESPN]
