Faking through February
It is bogus inspiration to take cues from internet angst, but it's all anyone can do in February, it is gross outside and the pro basketball is trash. Due, almost entirely (can't blame it for snow), to February's trade deadline.
Dog days drag their part, the aforementioned "gross" chills its stupid, slushy role overs these traveling performers. So does the recognition, the snarling stench of acceptance, assuring competitors that they are weeks past the season's halfway point, and that the rest of this run will more or less look like it does today. Flare those February nostrils, there's nothing anyone can do.
If you're a Piston, sweet. A Buck, not so much. The Wizards and Nets and Bulls and Clippers recently heard all about the marvelous ways their employers set themselves up for any season but the 2025-26 campaign, and most assuredly without the services of half the humans currently working on the roster. Why this affects shooting form is up for the boffins to decide, I can't play doctor while I'm busy trying to work this armchair.
But, like, the trade deadline is over. Performances coalesce, if not improve, after the Super Bowl and good – we've got two months of this left. Tanks and two-way contracts for one-third the clubs, bloomin' basketball and sweet-smellin' lilies for the rest.
Tanking is noticed more in the 2010s and 2020s because its execution is extreme, abrupt, as if streamlined by computer design. Bottles of water are harder to open now, and NBA teams are far less liberal with the occasional game they suit the superstar. This wearies the fan, the viewing experience turns hostile toward the team typically rooted for. It is no fun watching a favorite team without being sure if you want them to win or lose for the entirety of the ballgame. An interior argument which never ends.
It is no fun watching tankgames with takechatter on either side, voices in each ear, Sam Hinkie on one shoulder and Stephen A. Smith on the other and both of them somehow correct, the team you've backed your entire life blowing another fourth quarter lead and that's ... good? You want them to, right? Better lottery odds.
Then again, what if your GM stinks and we don't trust him with the loot? Chicago, when will this end?
The disappointment, anger, and even happiness encouraged by last week's trade deadline needn't take away from what has been in place since Rocktober. Two-thirds the league tries to win every night, parity cooled the insistence on maxed-out All-Star triptychs, while ten teams tank for what is touted as the strongest NBA draft class since Todd Fuller and Stephon Marbury and ...
OK, this is probably a bad way to break up a column but recently I read a blurb about Cooper Flagg discussing 1996 NBA draft trivia, I immediately shushed my wife out of the room and started naming all the first-rounders from the 1996 NBA draft I could without looking. Haven't heard back from my better half and she's not answering her phone, but I encourage anyone here to give it a chance, just name 1996 NBA draftees until you can't.
Think about it, and in the meantime we'll give non-subscribers a chance to hop on, and we'll talk after this throwback image:
