What’s up Special Ed?
NBA Off-Season is the best. Most years, the rumors around the draft, free agency, and trades are more entertaining than some regular season games. Then, when they raised the salary cap three years ago shit got real real crazy. Now adays the first week of free agency has clearly overtaken All-Star Weekend as the most fun time of the basketball year. This is when The Association’s brightest stars come out to shine.
This summer was already shaping up to be a total blockbuster, and we are absolutely locked in. So much so that it’s really putting a damper on the quality of our mock drafts. This could be a big opportunity coming up for you guys.
The last couple years in The Association have been a little uneasy with some teams going on multi-year tanking missions for Zion while also navigating the newly inflated salary cap. Now, most of the guys who got those extra saucy contracts in 2016 are free agents again this year. That means a lot of teams have a lot of extra money to spend, and one of those just happens to be the team that actually did draft Zion (just sayin).
All this is just in time for the long-awaited fall of the Warriors dynasty and Lebron’s decline and indefinite departure from the Eastern Conference. A lot of things are going to change in the next week or two, but the window is WIDE OPEN. This off-season it looks like about half the league is in “win-now” mode. Depending how things shake out there could be a dozen legitimate title contenders in the Association for the next couple years. Everything will depend on the signings and trades that are about to go down next week: 11 of last year’s 27 All-Stars are free agents, one of them has been traded so far. There very well could be more star-laden trades to come, that in addition to the free agent wrangling, could send over half of last years all-stars to new teams in 2019. Heady times indeed.
THE MOST PIVOTAL MOMENT IN RESPEC YO RUSSELLS HISTORY
No matter what happens, this summer will always be remembered as The Reckoning of D’Angelo Russell. The talk around town is the Nets are front-runners to sign well-known-psychopath Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant’s right leg to max contracts, which would necessitate renouncing the extremely on-brand D’Angelo Russell. D'Angelo Russell was our favorite player ever for just a moment but now it seems he's already gone (sad music highlights coming soon). Most people say it’s a pretty easy choice on paper, and this should be an exciting time for a Nets fan, but honestly...
We know KD and Kyrie are good. Obviously the 2018 versions of either of those two were better than anybody on the 2018 Nets. The problem is that they’re NUTS. Both of em. Total fucking screwballs.
Let’s start with KD -
Of course we all remember his fake twitter accounts (possible red flag but who are we to judge).
A little more troubling was when he went off in interviews last summer talking about how “the media” hates him and they’re always trying to make him look bad. Sound familiar? I mean come on, in 2018 you gotta realize who you sound like when you say that kinda shit.
But the number one reason Kevin Durant will be a liability to his next team is HE DOESN’T TIE HIS SHOES!!!
Last year FiveThirtyEight’s Chris Herring wrote a hard-hitting expose on “Why Kevin Durant’s Shoes Keep Falling Off.” Apparently it happens all the fucking time.
He goes in deep and investigates every possible angle:
Which Nike KD version falls off the most? (the 9)
How broken-in should the shoe should be? (not very)
Does KD have abnormally thin and slippery feet? (yes)
He eventually manages to track down KD and asks the man himself why the fuck his shoes keep falling off. Surprisingly, he gets a real answer:
“Anything too tight on my body as I play, I feel like it restricts me a little bit. I don’t wear the arm sleeves, the undershirts, the finger tape, the wristbands, or none of that stuff,” he said. “I’m already skinny as it is, and I don’t need anything else weighing me down. I want to be aerodynamic out there, and I guess that’s how I think of my shoes as well.”
And so to achieve that featherweight feeling, Durant wears a size-18 while on the court — one full size bigger than what he wears when in casual settings.
“These are like slippers, man, and I just try to be as efficient as I can when I create what I want out there. I don’t want something that’s too bulky. So, sometimes they may come off, but the good thing is, I can slip them back on and keep playing.”
Holy. Shit.
13 months ago FiveThirtyEight's Chris Herring was awoken in the middle of a terrible dream. He can't remember the dream, only the feelings: Fear, terror, pain. His face and chest are wet with a cold sweat. He sits up and opens his laptop, the soft glow of the sreen melts away the feelings. He opens a new Word document and writes in it one but sentence:
“Indeed, if one could identify an Achilles’ heel in Durant’s game, it might be the feckless nature of the shoes that swaddle his Achilles’ heel.”
A lot has been made the last couple weeks about KD feeling “betrayed” by the Warriors medical staff. He was still hurt coming into game 5 when they supposedly told him he could play without risking any further injury. That turned out to not be true, but there’s a couple things we need to consider before we go around blaming the guys that renew Klay Thompson’s medical marijuana card:
First of all there’s no such thing as playing “without risk of further injury.” There’s always a risk of injury, that’s just life, ya know.
But also, if they did tell him that, there was probably an assumption on their part that KD would WEAR THE RIGHT FUCKING SHOE SIZE. Seems possible that mighta been a factor.
Of course, KD’s running mate in this cursed campaign is none other than Uncle Drew, the world’s most famous flat-earther.
smgdh.
It’s a fucking match made in heaven, right? What could possibly go wrong?
The one rumor that’s even more soul crushing for us real 2018 Nets fans is the one that says if KD doesn’t want to sign with Brooklyn they’ll look to sign Kyrie and Jimmy Butler instead. Now, that sounds like a fun locker room doesn’t it? Yeeesh. Man, they might fuckin kill each other. Jarrett Allen’s gonna be scarred for life.
We say keep the guy with the long hair and the full sleeve Bob Marley tattoos.
He’s the stable one.
HAVE A GREAT SUMMER EVERYBODY!!!!!
