Never Mind the NBA is Perfect
We'll talk about improvements later. Today is a celebration.
On Wednesday night around 8:00 PM PST I was putting final edits on a piece about how the NBA can improve its product. I wrote about lame foul calls and rumor culture and the dangers of organizational impatience and how weirdly evil-spirited narratives drag the game to a place it shouldn’t go and other shit like that.
But three games have been played since then and they were all so engrossing so thrilling so captivating that I’m completely scrapping that piece for now. Instead I’m gonna write about those games and explain how each of them captured something I wholly love about basketball. I think Adam Silver did a psy-op on me and it worked.
The games:
Sacramento 138, Orlando 135 (2OT)
Milwaukee 125, San Antonio 121
Denver 130, Golden State 127
The lessons
Magic vs. Kings: Basketball is Still Mostly About Hanging Out
Basketball will forever be the preeminent “hanging out” sport. Just the sentence “let’s shoot some hoops” is frankly one of the most intimate things a human can say to another human.
Magic vs. Kings was the final game on Wednesday’s NBA agenda and when you’re awake watching a midweek late-tip non-national TV game you feel camaraderie with everyone else watching whether you can see them or not. It’s just comforting to know they’re out there. And when the game goes to double OT (this one did) you feel an extra camaraderie because you know the audience has dwindled still and only the real sickos are left. While turning a game off after regulation is blasphemy to the aforementioned sickos (present company included) it’s a fully forgivable act for people who have “jobs” or “children” or whatever. Yeah whatever am I right?
The game itself was pretty much hanging out too. Specifically the hang when you’re with a close friend (Paolo Banchero) and they say “hey my other friends are gonna come hang too” and you’re very skeptical at first but then their other friends who you’ve met like one time (Trevelin Queen and Chuma Okeke and Caleb Houstan) turn out to be extremely thoughtful and kind-hearted men who you’d gladly shoot hoops with. No this has never happened to me why do you ask.
Franz Wagner and Gary Harris got hurt early on for Orlando which led to Queen playing 38 minutes after playing a total of 1 minute and 15 seconds in his previous 59 games combined. He was sensational (5 pts/6a/2 stl/1 blk) and so were Okeke (11 pts / 7r / 3a/ 1blk) and Houstan (15 pts / 4stl/ 4 threes). The power of friendship literally almost won this game for Orlando.
Well friendship and 43 points from Paolo Banchero anyway.
Orlando didn’t even win this game by the way. Sacramento held on because TBP GUY MALIK MONK scored 37 points and hit seven threes and he’s just cool as hell:
Ok last thing because I’ve already gone way too long about an early January Magic/Kings game: this game reaffirmed my belief (not that I needed it) that Paolo is going to be a top [INSERT NUMBER] player in the NBA by 2027. Put any number there. I think when players are good immediately we tend to get a little crazy about what a reasonable timeline is for them to achieve high-level success and start thinking they’ve hit a ceiling way way way earlier than they actually do. Paolo Banchero is averaging 22/7/5 on 38% from deep on a potential playoff team in his second season. I know his rim finishing numbers are bad! I don’t care! You cannot dissuade me from believing he will become an All-NBA player.
Anyway this was a 10/10 “hanging out” game.
Spurs vs. Bucks: Being Really Goddamn Tall Will Always Be the Best Skill
I love when the most basic and obvious explanation of something explains the thing better than anything else can. Occam’s cat in a box or whatever it’s called. In basketball (a game where you have to go up in order to succeed) I like that no matter how many evolutions the sport has undergone since it was first played1 sometimes success is as simple as be taller than everyone else.
Giannis Antetokounmpo and Victor Wembanyama played each other for the first time tonight. If that sentence means nothing to you just conjure in your brain an image of two guys with the longest arms you can possibly fathom and they’re playing basketball against each other and it’s just endless limbs getting all tangled up and balls being dunked and occasionally a behind-the-back fastbreak.
This whole game was incredible. I can’t recall many games in my lifetime that had such a sense of “Just let the big guys do whatever” like this one did. Giannis and Wemby just kept growing taller and taller and by the end of the game they were simply dropping the basketball into the hoop from above. At least that’s what it felt like.
Giannis ultimately triumphed as his 44 points and 14 rebounds and two late three-pointers helped Milwaukee beat San Antonio 125-121. I’m not 100% sure what the Bucks are capable of and I have a weird feeling in my gut that things might unravel but just like any feeling inside I’m gonna shove it down there and neglect it until it becomes a cyst or something.
There were so so many “I am tall so I will now score / stop you from scoring” moments in this game I could barely keep up but this might have been the best. ARMS:
RIP Dr. James Naismith if you were alive you’d probably be shocked that people this tall can exist on Earth much less play the sport you invented.
Warriors vs. Nuggets: Watching Something End That We Became So Used to Existing is Weird
I barely remember NBA basketball that doesn’t include the Golden State Warriors being annoyingly good (2014-2016) then less annoyingly good when we all kind of just went “ok fine they’re so good we can’t even be mad” (2017-2019) then back to annoyingly good (2021-2023) so it feels surreal watching this dynasty come to an end especially because it’s happened in such a disjointed and weird manner spread out over the season and not all at once. All dynasties have to eventually though just look at the Roman Empire or Jersey Shore.
I don’t think Nikola Jokic’s 39-foot buzzer beater killed Golden State because I think the Warriors have been a corpse with sunglasses on this whole season. But I do think his shot bumped the sunglasses off the Warriors’ face and now everyone’s looking around going “oh shit are they dead for real?”
Yeah I think they might be. Maybe I’ll write a eulogy for them later on. Acclimating to a post-Warriors NBA is going to be pretty strange but probably pretty freeing too. For the past decade they’ve just… always been there. Their success felt imminent and they just sort of hung over the league like a weird Silicon Valley Grim Reaper who doesn’t want poor people to live in his neighborhood. And now they’re just beatable.
Nuggets might not be beatable though. OKC Minnesota Boston Philly get ready because knocking these guys off will be a real bitch.
One time I was at a Blazers game and a guy shot a halfcourt shot to win a Toyota pickup truck. He heaved the ball sideways over his head without ever looking at the hoop and fucking drained it. That’s the only precedent I can think of for Jokic’s game-winning shot. I hope that guy is doing well. He ruled. The NBA has ruled for the past few days too.
“If either side makes three consecutive fouls it shall count a goal for opponents” was one of the original rules of basketball. There was also no dribbling. I’m not opposed to bringing that one back to be honest.
Giannis was like a banshee hellbent on taking revenge on a basketball hoop
I’m the sweetest bitch you’ll ever meet