Big Girthy and The Butt Lasagna: Thank You, Jersey [SWAMPS4]

[SWAMP STEVEN]

We began our SLN careers here. We started our families and moved our side families here. We practiced hard as we could every single day here, and DeSagana practiced law here as part of the ill-fated Basketball Court adjunct program at Rutgers. Now, we’re facing off in round two of the playoffs. Though we’ll have other SLN cities across the chest, we’ll both always have Jersey in our heart…because of the ‘02 Camden Clam Bake. Damn, is this kinda the precursor to The Players Tribune, and will there be unintended consequences across the future publishing landscape? Full piece after the jump!

By Michael Dunkin Penberthy and DeSagana Diop

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It’s hard for us to say this…also because of the 2002 Camden Clam Bake. Diop’s tongue is still super fucked up. Our union rep is soooo pissed. Who the fuck thought that would be a fun team-building activity? When the event looked like a dud, Matt Barnes said his agent knew Naughty By Nature’s manager or something so he got Treach’s number and called him on speaker in front of the whole team, asking if he wanted to kick it with some ballers at the Camden Clam Bake. Treach straight-up laughed and said “that sounds like fun…NOT!” and the rest of the team just had to stand there while Matt’s face completely dropped. Pale as a fucking ghost. What a bummer that whole day was. But we do love New Jersey. The Swamp opened us with outstretched arms. We cut our teeth here, word to Stinky Christopher and his homemade boardwalk taffy. We grew as men here, word to Matush and those magic beans.

Neither of us knew much about what SLN life entailed. Mikey was toiling away in the NDL while DeSagana moved to America from Senegal at the age of 15. Coming to the Nets, neither of us had any sort of real money until right then. A lot of cities would take advantage of our naivete, but not a lot of cities are New Jersey. Yup, read that again because WE MEAN IT. Tony “Raw Dawg” Volpacchio procured us “Jersey style” shrimp scampi, which of course substitutes yellow Gatorade for white wine sauce and doesn’t have any actual shrimp but still costs the same amount as the other seafood dishes because you’re paying for the experience. We bought a home that got repoed during one of the Gambino Family RICO sweeps. Mikey is imploring us to tell the whole truth and elaborate that the house was foreclosed on and the family unknowingly worked Gambino events as contract party planners, yup, it was a boutique party planner husband-wife and for what it’s worth, they’re tacky as SHIT. Together, we gave back to the community that embraced us by turning the property into North Jersey Food Pantry, a gentlewoman’s club that recently earned four stripper poles in Boobs Magazine.

When we took the Indiana Pacers to six games in last year’s playoffs, we thought it was the beginning of something special. We felt that we were showing promise and gelling together as a group. In the offseason, our team committed to spending more time with each other. We saw Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat, and bonded despite Steve Logan intermittently screaming “DO FAT BASTARD!” the whole movie. We did camp together, not the one like Rocky Horror Picture and not the one with tents and color wars and shit, but the one where you get +8 handles and let the trainer watch you shower to unlock your full potential. Whatever we did, it didn’t matter much: almost midway through the season and approaching the SLN trade deadline, we found ourselves 11 games under. 500. Then we got the fax…on REAL paper, despite what that bitch-ass sales rep at Staples repeatedly taunted us with…and it said SELL. At first, the team thought this was in relation to our 92.3 KROQ “Klaus Fest” ticket package, which was fine because DeSaggy had already seen Hoobastank on their earlier tour and got what he needed out of a full setlist. Then the trades came.

D to Seattle was tough to swallow, so ignore that gagging sound and keep reading. For a while, it looked like he and Mehmet Okur were tied together as franchise cornerstones, both selected in the 2001 SLN Draft and both total Charlottes in the WHICH SEX AND THE CITY CHARACTER ARE YOU quiz mandated by management. But the locker room understood the decision. Local businesses flew their business flags at half-mast. Eateries offered incredible discounts on wholesale trays of “butt lasagna,” such good deals that it was almost suspicious. Like, what’s in this butt lasagna? Was this stuff implicated in some sort of crime scene? There’s no way it can be this cheap. They’re GIVING it away, chanting “lasagna rain, lasagna rain!” NOOOOOO! Anyway, we know that real Nets fans are reluctantly joyous for DeSagana, who is a natural fit alongside SLN record scorer Dirk Nowitzki and will grow tremendously as an electric clarinetist at SubPop.

But Jersey Berthy, Mr. Girthy herself, in another SLN uniform? We know it was hard to imagine, mostly because a little-known austerity measure in the New Jersey state constitution made it illegal to use your imagination or consider hypotheticals until its 1992 repeal. Now, you can see it with your own friggin’ balls of eye. He’s a Timberwolf (Timberwolv? Timberwolx, actually). From NDL prospect to scoring a franchise-best 57 points. From tattooing two separate lyrics from Smashmouth’s “All-Star” to the SLN All-Star Game. From a scheduled line read for Zach Braff’s forthcoming Garden State to…well, obviously not doing that, if you’re Big Mike’s agent reading this please advise and also look into how he can get onto the Diop Gangsta Grillz mixtape because the suits at SubPop don’t support his artistic vision.

Now, we’re playing each other in the playoffs. Like we used to during the first unit scrimmages, minus the row of Sicilian gamblers angrily gesticulating at us. We’ll still do our “Jersey style” sleepovers, home and home. And we may represent other teams as basketball players, but legally speaking, we still represent Hoboken Hank’s Custom Shirts & Printing until the big fundraiser thermometer reaches the top. So you can visit us there, at Hoboken Hank’s Custom Shirts & Printing, because quite frankly it’s not particularly close to the top and we are desperately trying to get out of this.

Go Sonics, Go Wolves, Go US, and most of all, go Jersey!