Vince Staples: “I’ve Hated The Clippers My Entire Life”
“And I’ve loved them so much.”
A few days ago, Vince Staples came by the offices at The FADER. Reasonably enough, this being NBA Finals season, we made him sit down with us to talk hoops. It was, as could be expected from the witty young man, a highly entertaining twenty minutes. Check out an excerpt below, and listen to the whole thing on the FADEAWAY podcast right over here.
You're a Clippers fan. Kind of like a self-loathing Clippers fan, is that fair to say?
I've hated the Clippers my entire life, and I've loved them so much. I love the Clippers so much because when we were younger, we didn't have much money. They extended their hands to people like, Oh, we know we're not that good, we're not going to charge you shit-load of money. Come get a floor seat for $15 bucks. They used to give away a lot of free tickets, suites and things like that to certain companies. My mom worked for Toyota at the time, and they used to get suites, and my aunt worked for Lexus, they used to get suites too, so we would be at all the Clippers games for free.
That's crazy. That's the Donald Sterling-era Clippers, too!
I don't even know how I feel about that. I don't even necessarily know what it is. Cause you know, what eightysomething year old white man isn't slightly racist? You know what I mean? You're not gonna find many ... I don't know what they expected him to be like. He has girlfriend that's like fifty or sixty years younger than him, and he has a lot of money, and he's eighty years old, and he owns real estate. Who do you think he's going to be?
You happy for Shaun Livingston, now all the way back from his infamous injury?
Yeah, I cried. I cried. I was a little kid of course, but I really cried.
You saw it at the time.
I heard it. That shit scared me. Like, I heard his leg snap ... 'cause you, my moms had good seats ...
You were there!?
Yeah. It was like crik-crack. It was nasty, bro. Nasty. And he was on the ground for like thirty-forty minutes. He was like, aaaaahhh! It was some of the saddest shit I ever seen in my life. He was really good, and we were on the playoff run, we were doing really well; that was a good season. People like to say the Clippers have been shit forever and that's not true. As if Baron Davis didn't make it to the playoffs. Lamar Odom had certain problems he was going through. Elton Brand had certain problems; just local stupid shit that happens in LA. We just had a bad ... short end of the stick.
I'm very happy for Shaun Livingston. I was happy for Lamar Odom on the Clippers. I'm happy Elton Brand just stopped playing basketball.
You wanna shout out some of your favorite Clippers growing up? Eric Piatkowski?
No.
Pooh Richardson?
Yeah! I fuckin' love Pooh Richardson. A Clipper dunked from the free throw line in the warmups ...
Brent Barry.
That's all I'm saying. Shoutout Cuttino Mobley, too. I have a Brent Barry Clippers jersey, stitched, that I'm trying to get signed, so if he hears this ...