The Cavalier

(Pre-note: this post was written before the previous one, but we want this one on top for now.)

Sorry to keep you waiting.

Everyone knows what he did.

Hell, even he knows — perhaps dropping the phrase “Orange Roundie” right in the middle of it was his way of admitting it without admitting it. Who knows what goes on in the mind of someone like Scoop.

Frankly, if he’d left it out, nobody could really say anything — certainly two people on Earth could come up with the idea of the ball being sentient. By vaguely nodding to the source, he points out the whole deal, though.

He stole. He stole a concept, a schtick, a character.

He took it and presented it as his own.

It’s wrong, and people with integrity don’t do it. In any creative industry, it’s like the RULE. It’s the one thing you DON’T DO. He knows it, we know it, everyone else knows it.

(Side note here. We’ve never been huge fans of Scoop the writer — he knows his hoop, but his stuff is a little over-stylized and wordy for us, mainly due to our short attention span. Never did we think he was a bad guy, though. Never did we think he was a hack of this fashion.)

The worst part about this is that no matter how it shakes out, we end up looking bad. Just to be clear, we don’t want apologies, and we certainly don’t care about links or credit from ESPN.

What we want is a time machine, so that we can put the Roundie back in his box until it’s his time to come out. You’ll note the videos stopped — there’s a reason for that. We had a plan, and that plan is now compromised, lest the uninitiated think we draw our ideas from Scoop Jackson. All because he couldn’t come up with his own idea for a column.

Oh, and just to be clear with what this really is all about: we own the copyright on the name and character “Orange Roundie”. (We have no claim on the ball pattern, which is why we have our own being done.)

Do you hear and understand that, ESPN?

NOTE: Another point that’s really clawing at us is that Scoop completely misunderstood and bastardized the humor in “Orange Roundie” and the personality of same. You don’t throw that phrase out there without going back to the source and seeing it in context.

And you certainly don’t try to do a lame imitation of someone else’s character. This is like if someone wrote their own Spider-Man comic and gave him bird powers.

Since we’ve got stealing on the mind, allow us to steal from Seinfeld — this portion of the problem doesn’t offend us as the owner of “Orange Roundie”, it offends us as a comedy writer.

NOTE 2: It’s entirely possible Scoop innocently thought he was throwing the “cute lil’ blog person” a bone by doing this — he could pat us on the head like a small child, all like, “Here’s some candy! Do you like candy?” And we’d be all like, “Wow! Scoop Jackson reads the website! Ooooh!”

Hey Scoop — we’re a professional screenwriter, buddy. We get paid to write, too. You assume too much, especially if you think we’re “wowed” by celebrity of any kind.

NOTE 3: We welcome others to chime in as they please. Send us your links — we’re collecting them. Were not going to war with ESPN…yet. That said, we’ve had it with them — you like our style and material so much (and clearly you do), pay us to do it for you.

(For the newly arriving, click on that Orange Roundie category link up there to see the real history of the actual Orange Roundie.)

UPDATE: Scoop has responded via Deadspin:

“I actually thought I was giving them some love, even though ESPN edited out the part about them being the ball’s favorite site. Just trying to have some fun. Hope you enjoyed the piece; tell YAY I thought their overall ball coverage was brilliant. The ball, on the other hand, had a few issues.”

We appreciate the compliment, Scoop, and that’s exactly what we figured you’d say. “Aww, thanks lil’ blog guy. I’m gonna take your idea and run with it on my own in bog boy land.”

Look, we have the copyright on the “Orange Roundie”. This isn’t about “respect for blogs” or “wahh wahh recognize us”, it’s about a character that we own and commercial plans for, which you have taken and used without permission.

Again, you have every right to have the NBA ball speak in the first person (as questionable as that is to do), but you cannot call it the “Orange Roundie”.

We’re going to hold to our current opinion that this was done out of ignorance and not because you’re a bad person. We imagine we’d get along quite well with you, actually.

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