Six NBA things we hope happen

Basketball writers talking about the basketball season during the part of the offseason between offseason roundups and regular season previews is kinda like baseball radio announcers who chime in on the inning they're supposed to take off.

Nobody really needs these additions, but why not?

BEN SIMMONS WORKS IN SACRAMENTO

It won't work, Sacramento is where players go to play exactly the same way they played at their last job. The Kings didn't mellow Russell Westbrook, didn't perk Zach LaVine's efficiency or interest in defense and the Kings certainly couldn't lift Markelle Fultz or Devin Carter out of the dregs.

But with Ben Simmons? No, it won't work. But maybe he'll get another pro job next season (at age 31) which does click.

Is Ben a bit of a– yes, he is, but so am I and you're rooting for me, too.

If he proves he can do exactly the same, it should lead to a 2027-28 gig from a team which expects more from Ben Simmons, even after his decade of intractable ball. He doesn't need to shoot 35 percent on threes to turn in another few years of capable rotation production, helping good teams turn great. He just needs to shoot!

TYRESE RETURNS AS IF NOTHING HAPPENED

It won't be a quiet return, in spite of the NBA plotting the first spike of Haliburton's comeback attempt in New Orleans on opening night, not Indianapolis. It won't be a silent comeback and Haliburton deserves those features, those camera crews, those first-person accounts and social media gear-ups.

Nobody's ever done that, the MVP of the postseason suffering an unrecoverable setback in a Game 7, all eyes on him as his leg fails, half of us looking away the moment we were able to read Haliburton's face on the replay.

That's up-all-night pain, replaced with up-all-day agony, shingles.

So, yeah, give the man all of October, he's earned it. Then, approximate statistics, normal Pacer placement in the standings, and those 17 months are a footnote we recognize occasionally, with a "wow."

As we do with Paul George. We should "wow" Paul George more often. That play was twelve years ago.

NEW YORK LOSES GRACIOUSLY

If they must lose, please, no jinx. No owner embarrassment, no celebrity overreach and, sure, no basketball injury.

Depending on your view of the East, the collection may not have added any championship contenders for 2026-27: Miami, Indiana and Boston have some explaining to do for those moves, Detroit and Cleveland and Orlando need to show some form of mettle, Toronto and Philly need to prove they can make it to the finish line. Atlanta who.

So few of them strike fear in San Antonio and Oklahoma City, so what? They figure they can wrangle those horses at the stream, what matters is toppling New, York, City.

Working 200 games at top title form is no treat, but the Knicks own enough depth and certainly the inspiration needed to count in on breaking the NBA's recent ban on back-to-back champs. If the Knicks settle for something less than a title, can we at least keep the good vibrations? If New York wins back-to-back, I'll even use the word "vibes." They'll have earned it.

BAM AND GIANNIS HAVE FUN

The more fun Adebayo and Antetokounmpo have, the more confidence percolates. The more confidence, the fewer insecure statements to press and on social media.

This is not a comment on the Tyler Herro punch. Tyler deserved that shit. And, yes, confidence can percolate. It has to, I didn't want to write "exudes."

PORTLAND'S POINT GUARD EXPERIMENT

Chances Ja Morant said something objectionable to Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard and Scoot Henderson in three separate on-court instances? Nearing one hundred percent.

Probably won't matter, players recognize a problem when they see one and want to help and we should too, because we don't see any other NBA players tripping the live social media like Ja.

He's one of one. Scoot might feel some affront by the acquisition, but Holiday and Lillard understand they're not good for 40 minutes a night anymore. Possibly combined. Dame and Jrue need new deals with new teams nearing the 2030s, good teams, and they're not going to get there adding to Ja Morant's list of ongoing woes.

NEW ORLEANS SPARKS

Infuriatingly inert during the offseason, we can't keep piling on this franchise. New Orleans owns the NBA's eighth-largest payroll, the Bensons owe over $212 million to this mess, the least we can get is a good time out of it.

We need one of the good years from Jordan Poole. Jeremiah Fears must click and Saddiq Bey's gotta be himself, don't change a lick (but turn up the volume). There is no reason Dejounte Murray and Derik Queen's savvy, multi-generational two-man game cannot become a thing.

We'll be watching anyway – Joel Meyers and Antonio Daniels – but we'd like to view Bennedict Mathurin shooting his tenth free throw of the game by the two-minute mark of the third, Herb Jones and Trey Murphy chatting at the line as to how they'll hound the in-bounding attempt as Jamahl Mosley barks out what are probably instructions to the contrary.

I root for Mosley the same reason I root for Mike Gansey, I encourage continued NBA employment for anyone who was probably wearing really, really really long basketball shorts this time 25 years ago.

Are you gonna write about it?

YEAH, I'M GONNA WRITE ABOUT IT

The two largest stories of 2001 were on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11, about a dozen hours apart. Nothing in the previous nine months – not Condit nor China controversy nor sharks nor the new president's inauguration – was in larger print than Michael Jordan's NBA comeback commitment on Sept. 10. Jordan confirmin' in the gloamin' outside Hoops the Gym in Chicago, followed by the thing I'm writing about, the next day in New York.

Jordan didn't directly answer reporters' questions about his basketball comeback, pitched after another weekday workout. Only smiling in agreement that the return was set for next week, saying something about "the love of the game," cologne ad copy.

Three reporters were there to hear this, but because it was 2001 the Associated Press' Jim Litke published well before any of three potential websites (CNNSI's Marty Burns, Chicago Sun-Times' Jay Mariotti) involved. Per the posting vicissitudes of the day (he adds, charitably), DA's take on ESPN was even up before CNNSI and the Sun-Times' story.

Around the same time Ed McCaffrey broke his leg (news alerted to me via message board thread), Litke hopped onto AOL, and a buzzed KDonhoops immediately congratulated him on his scoop via IM. Apparently I was the only one bugging him because it turned into a lengthy chat, we'd only talked a few times before but he was gracious and unhurried while detailing the scene, and Jordan's certain intentions.

Litke was sure to dominate cable airwaves the next day, but for the other story. I didn't write for a website that September, not since Sportstalk's services (and my stipends) fell to server dues the previous April. Summer of 2001 was spent running a pizza place in North Carolina that was a front for not-pizza, the less said about it the more interesting. I returned home to Chicago in late July to work a proto-Lollapalooza, then watched my basement apartment flood the next morning.

A few weeks later my (current) wife married her (to this point only) ex-husband. I handled this vodkadly. Swell pal that I am, I left Chicago to graciously attend her Indiana wedding, returned to Roscoe Village and a re-flooded apartment.

By the time I was chattin' with Litke, I'd moved my desktop computer and boombox and easy chair and makeshift bed next to the stove in the kitchen, the only place in the one-bedroom basement apartment unaffected by the curling wood beneath the stinking, couldn't clean it enough, carpet. Landlord? Hard to track down!

September 10 was a respite, my NBA FOMO mitigated by typing with Good Guy Litke. Jordan with the Wizards was whatever, we had all summer to talk ourselves into the inevitability. Cheered with the comfort, I tossed a few more grapefruit/vodkas on my fire, planning to sleep until the next afternoon on Tuesday. I succeeded.

Had to be at work on Sept. 11 at 5:30 PM Chicago-time, maybe 40 minutes of transit, running the cash register at the server station during a Laurie Anderson show. Do not know what time I awoke, by then very used to sleeping through landline calls, wouldn't own a cellphone for six years. What I had were three comfy couch cushions on a kitchen floor and a strong buzz and no reason to be up for any of Tuesday morning.

It was AOL that told me, around maybe two in the afternoon and only after whirring up the desktop and engaging the modem, about our 'AMERICA UNDER ATTACK.' My brain countered the information with the same enabling options others probably overcame if they'd been up early enough in the morning to observe reaction to the initial plane hitting WTC. Several minutes to consider why an innocent view would deviate so severely into an obvious obstruction.

Spotting two landmarks swarmed in smoke, my head immediately split-seconded the image as some form of movie promotion. This lasted briefly, before even the lingering well-brand vodka got out of the way long enough to let Brain know there will be some catching up to do on the news before grabbing the bus to work.

Work, no way I work, right? Called up Charley, the boss at work, who confirmed, work. Laurie Anderson's show would go on, the first news of the day met with relief, I needed the 50 bucks (before tax, plus shift drink).

Phoned the parents, dad and I briefed each other on kinda remembering anti-aircraft operations launched at the Buddhas of Bamiyan, mother and I assuring each other that the area nearing the Lincoln Park Zoo was in no danger of recurring Al-Qaeda strikes some eight hours after the initial events. Found my headphones and I found my bus and we found that Laurie Anderson fans were keen to spend an evening with Laurie Anderson to spite any outside interference. It was a nice day, after all.

It was a nice, sweaty, summer, several of its evenings spent in the basement apartment eating $1.99 stuffed crabs from Jewel/Osco. NBA TV the only channel available on my dish, New York City on the tube:

When did we realize everything changed? That America's summer turned to autumn?

Well, for most of us it was the first time we saw a 'Glitter' poster. I spotted mine on the rush hour bus ride to work the Laurie Anderson show. Clark and Broadway and Diversey, I saw Mariah and I immediately felt bad for millionaire songstress Mariah Carey, her production ruined because how could anyone put on any sort of production at a time like this?

By the time I stepped off the bus and into work, 3:30ish Pacific, the entertainment industry had planned, like, a million productions. Admittedly, we were all lookin' for freedom.

Bereft of Laurie Anderson catalogue knowledge then and now, nothing in the (assuredly compelling) show stood out. Few attendees drank, which I can't completely blame on the terrorists. Anderson's teetotaling followers encouraged a row of inactive and annoyed servers staring straight ahead while standing in a small space, working on 9-11, sorta remembering all these Laurie Anderson songs that I didn't recognize because I was born in 1980. The last bit is included because my older co-workers brought this personal trivia up, constantly.

There wasn't a single cable television package available among this bartending and barbacking and waitstaff, not a lot of "web surfers," or "dot commers." We had to tell one of them, J.P., about what happened in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania when he showed up for his shift, his lighter shaking its way toward his dangling, indoor, cigarette. J.P. clocking into work without knowledge mid-evening made sense, we weren't talking about it on my buses, either.

J.P. was discharged from the Navy earlier that year, an experience he didn't enjoy yet found preferable to being closeted in a tiny town in Waythehellupthere, Michigan. His immediate reaction to learning that this day had a name was a sly and sad deduction that he'd be back on his ship soon enough. All of us on staff let out a collective s-word, for the first time other worlds beyond our own began ringing bells. J.P. was wrong, and happily ended up where he told us he planned to spend his life after he concluded his nights waiting tables at Laurie Anderson shows – working as flight attendant for a major domestic airline.

As cashier, I had no section rounds to fake-fill or tables to clear, no glasses to clean, zero liquor to label for inventory, no beer to stock. Still, I worked two jobs on 9-11: Laurie Anderson's show, ringing up those irregular Diet Cokes, and battering away at a freelance "scouting" gig, writing fantasy basketball player previews for a wire service (they eventually even showed up on Yahoo, all 348 players) during downtime. Some of my 9-11 was spent at a Laurie Anderson show inking longhand hot takes from memory into a spiral notebook, blurbing about Mark Blount and Milt Palacio.

After Ms. Anderson's show and Mr. Dwyer's shift drink concluded, I found another Clark bus and was fine, Max Roach and Clifford Brown cassette copy screaming in my headphones, halfway home. Then I found the Belmont bus for the final stretch, the buzz wore off, and I started to get angry at the idea of living through 'Pearl Harbor' the movie and Pearl Harbor the act of war in the same summer. Exited the bus at Leavitt and Belmont and made my 21-year old way to Miska's liquor store.

This, right here, is the difference between millennials and whatever I am.

Millennials owned zero autonomy at the time, whereas I could vote (if I wanted to), order the ultimately unfulfilling American Pie sequel on Pay-Per View (because I wanted to). I could buy a large bottle of cheap vodka, slurp a small sip on the way to my own apartment, alter my state only eight hours after waking up mid-afternoon.

Millennials, to hear social media tell it, had to go home early from school and watch 'Air Bud' on VHS after all the cartoon channels solemnly switched off regular programming.

There was no immediate release for these youngsters, and that's why many of them went on to grow beards.

My bloodstream was plenty hirsute hours before 9-12. I settled into my kitchen conference area and pulled up a million browsers – not tabs, browsers – filled with free internet columns. No newspapers needed a password, each were navigable with a 28.8k connection. With all of us at war, suddenly Matt Drudge's links and my cursor were on the same side.

Hijackings were something from the 1980s, something I'd heard about later but wasn't around to see on that evening's broadcast news. TWA Flight 847 was 16 years prior, Lockerbie 13 years before, they felt like three decades ago because they were.

It wasn't the dark ages, flailing in search of an errant tale to pin this on, nobody mentioned Saddam Hussein until our government did. The previous week's impromptu waitstaff meeting was spent with a conversation which heard everyone individually confirming Palestine's right to be Palestine, consensus achieved while bored because patrons weren't slamming drinks. The following months were more about diligence than vigilance because, seriously, what was I going to do about a guy in a cave in Afghanistan? Better to spot unattended backpacks on the Belmont bus.

AOL IM was used to get in touch with anyone from New York that night. Dave D'Alessandro and I used our conversation to womp all over Ari Fleischer in the waning minutes of Tuesday evening. George W. Bush was the guy who stole an election and put the arsenic back in our water, we were only ready to follow him to those caves, we were bloodthirsty but for Osama alone.

At work, two days later, the kid working the box office gave me a small American flag decal, which I affixed to my refrigerator, a major decision as the fridge was awfully prominent at the time among my apartment's decor. The box office girl was a local high schooler – one of those sensitive millennials – born in Chicago, mother born in Liverpool, grandmother born in Jamaica.

And America changed, forever. I, wish.

Change woulda been great. A look at our history and what created our mess woulda been appropriate. We didn't let up, four different presidents sweeping the Middle East's infield with missiles and sprinkling its outfield with bombs, forever concluding that the next explosion will be the one to change hearts, minds, harps and moats.

We knew 25 years ago that we overthrew their governments in, like, the fifties. Or we gave another country bombs to bomb them with. Or whatever we did during the Gulf War, or some simple reason beyond nebulous claims of faraway humans hating the ways average Americans live. Nobody I knew bought that in 2001, or today, yet we still roll the same way. America did not change forever, on 9-11, but we did stiffen up the brand rather nicely.

Plane hijackings felt like a throwback, but I didn't feel especially invulnerable in the years leading toward that Tuesday. I had to dive under desks in nuclear fallout exercises. Huddled and cupped and held breath ahead of digging out to settle in to read about the way another country bombed our Navy in Hawaii, or burned Washington D.C. to damp charcoal while the Prez wuz away. The World Trade Center bombing felt as recent as Michael Jordan's first retirement, the USS Cole bombing sadly provided cable TV news (however nascent) fodder for months at a time, as did the previous president's attempt at offing Osama. The best hit song from the year before was called "Bombs Over Baghdad."

That's an idiot 21-year old, grown into a basic-ass 46-year old. Gen X and all the previous generations were, presumably, more properly packed with attention to more historical details by that Tuesday. Many of them spent the next quarter-century going out of their way to forget what they learned at those desks, forearms and pencils and paper atop the same Formica we all squeaked under while saving ourselves from certain annihilation.

We forget that America is younger and cooler than all the other countries and young and cool things make major mistakes, all the time, thinking they know better, acting like nobody's thought of THIS before. We are the hippest but also the least-liked and most-socked patron at the pub, even if we were the first to hear about all the bands spinning in the jukebox. Every nation-state on this globe is owed a meteor up its ass, America is the youngest and by far the most precious and how dare you, Spacerock? We got enough gold already.

What happened 25-years ago should have permeated any bubble. Instead, we coped. Those that celebrated what happened in Dallas this week spent the last 25 years thwapping contrarian darts at inarguable historical conclusions, blowing hard until enough people believe the entire purpose of a 20th Century was to invent the internet, blessing us with nothing left to learn. To hear out vice president speak of his "entire life" as epoch, acting like 42 years is some form of settled touchstone. In any era, let alone one spent half-online.

Half-online, unless we count those hours when we sleep, phone and/or television streaming something in the background to snooze to. Plus the smartwatch, monitoring our pulse. Fully online.

In trauma, all ages of us retreated to our browsers, our TV screens, and that's fine. And now what?

Keep clicking. At some point, you'll find out that this earth used to be 90 percent made of lystrosaurus, which humbles you enough to care about basketball again, write another bit about Ben Simmons.

So we fucked up the first 25 years. Historians aren't allowed to count anything as history until 50 years after it happens. In 2026? They can't judge shit! We still have another 25 years to get this right.

We didn't have to get it right for the first half of that half-century, but now we're forced to. The GOP summarized its last century-plus of hysterical flatulence in the form of a single three and possibly four-time candidate, and all our 21st century inaction turned clear at the cash register.

When we're at the cash register store, buying a cash register, and cash registers cost way more than they did a decade before. Because politics.

What happened 25 years ago, clearly, did not encourage me to follow ins and outs of our country's Capital Beltway. It pushed me to finish those 2001-02 fantasy league scouting reports, the payment check for which I cashed the morning of the Segway's debut in Dec. 2001, watching Good Morning America on stolen cable, a stray co-axial spotted when the new carpets were installed. Treated myself to a Croissan'wich, Burger King hadn't begun to turn.

What happened 25 years ago didn't turn me off cable news, that would be the 2000 Election. The reaction didn't turn me off our enfeebled opposition Democrats, the Clintons did that. It didn't clarify my view of the Middle East, which was already gray, and it didn't move me to wear clothing with American flags on them, because that's illegal! I was dumb then and a whole lot balder now, but when I'm deader than I am now don't let them paint pictures of us all outside the TRL studios, waving up at Mariah when it happens.

Some of us were sleeping, and then we had to work. That morning, and for most of the next 25 years.

LOVE LAND