True thespianism lives — in NBA players, my son

The NBA is the league of many faces.


Not unlike my Toddler Son (TS), who makes up for lack of discernible words with his demonstrative demeanor, professional basketball players are becoming more and more concerned with their reactions than actually playing the freaking game. 


Turn on an NBA Finals game this week to see what I mean. Kevin Garnett snarling like a rottweiler whose tail has been stomped on. Kobe Bryant doing that pained look that he must practice in the mirror for hours. For a guy with absolutely no personality to feign true emotion like that is true thespianism. I guess there's a reason he plays in L.A.


Still, TS can rival these guys' expressiveness any day of the week. His patented "double hammer" move is the envy professional wrestlers everywhere. It's a simple move at its core: 
1) Get good and ticked off.
2) Arch lower back while extending both fists above cranium.
3) Approach soft inanimate object, such as couch or ottoman.
4) Lambast aforementioned object with downward blows.
5) Amid ruckus, commence guttural screaming.
6) Repeat as needed.


My son is good, but Rasheed Wallace might just be better. He routinely employs the "This foul being called is worse than my mother being killed in a car accident" tactic  — a move once popular in Romanian gymnastics. If he could learn to squirt out some actual tears on command, he could easily land a role in the hit cable TV series "The Closer."


Still, the king of the ridiculous reaction is Derek Fisher. It's not even a contest. If you asked Fisher, I think he'd tell you he's never committed a foul in his life. He knows it's untrue, but he'd still say it.


Fisher's act is more nuanced than most, though. He has perfected the "light as a feather, stiff as a board" maneuver, in which he's called for a blatant foul, then he simply stands still — ball on his hip — for what feels like 10 minutes while he stares off into nothingness. It's brilliant, as well as the most annoying thing the hard-core sports fan's eye has ever beheld.


My son is not yet 2 years old. What is Fisher's excuse?