- Jun 16, 2021

DEFEND YOUR MOVES OFF-SEASON 2021 #10!!!!!!!!!!

What’s up Special Ed?!?!?

We wanted our guy Kyrie to come by this week for an NBA Playoff update, but alas. He’s in bed right now vaping pain killers, keeping that foot elevated. Kinda sounds amazing to be honest, we’re jealous. Work's just killin us lately so we could really use a debilitating injury or somethin to get little break. We even went to the grocery store last night with no mask, walkin right up close to everybody. If we're lucky we might get that 14-day COVID staycation.

The Nets are toast*, and we’re pretty fuckin upset about it. But it’s summertime, the weather is warm, and pre-season is right around the corner so we’re trying to stay positive. Fortunately we still got our Other Favorite Team - The Phoenix Suns.

We’ve been ironically following the Suns since 2014-15, which was possibly the funniest NBA team ever assembled. That winter the wife was pregnant and had a lotta trouble sleeping, consequently we spent most nights on the couch watching late night Western Conference hoops. The 2013 Suns were a surprise upstart team, finishing 48-34 but missed the playoffs in a very tough Western Conference. So, even though the 2014-15 team was utterly ridiculous and only won 39 games, A LOT of those games were aired nationally on NBA TV or TNT.

Ostensibly the most ridiculous thing about the ‘14-15 Suns was that their three best players (Goran Dragic, Eric Bledsoe, and Isaiah Thomas) were all point guards. And on top of that, two of the three (Bledsoe and Thomas) were, in the fifth years of their careers, already well-known ball hogs AND famously thin-skinned and sensitive about playing time and usage. Those two did NOT get along AT ALL. To keep them in check, and stop the locker-room-cancer metastasis, they signed Goran and Markeiff's actual brothers and compiled the rest of the team with a who’s who of the decade’s most likable names:

Goran Dragic and Zoran Dragic
Markeiff Morris and Marcus Morris
Brandan Wright and Brandon Knight
PJ Tucker, TJ Warren, and AJ Price
One Plumlee (Miles)
One Curry (Seth)
Slam Dunk Champion Gerald Green
Gotham City Detective Reggie Bullock
Marcus “Lil’ Buckets” Thornton

Well folks, its 2021 now and The Suns are BACK!!! They easily dispatched the defending champion Lakers in the first round, and then finished off a SWEEP of The Nuggets.

This is huge for us, not just because we think it’s funny to cheer for The Suns, but also because in 2018 we wrote two non-consecutive paragraphs about DeAndre Ayton, making him the most talked-about college basketball player in DYM history.

Our guy just shut down Anthony Davis and the "2021 NBA MVP" for the last six straight games and put up 14 and 10 every night.

This is all coming together exactly as we predicted before the 2018 draft: Ayton is the talk of the town in The Association, and the breakout season is here just in time for sweaty-ass Sean Miller to get a new job!!

NEW UFO THEORY!!!!!!!!!!

We’re getting into this new app called Clubhouse. It’s a voice-chat social media site - so it’s got a bunch of “chat rooms” where people just talk about, like, whatever. So it's kinda like a bunch of podcasts that don’t get recorded, or like a college radio station with a mic in every dorm room. It’s kinda nuts, and there isn’t very much “good” content on there, but we did happen to stumble upon a fascinating theory on there the other day.

We popped into a room where a bunch of Ivy League physics and astronomy professors were dishing about all the new UFO “revelations” in the news these days. A lot of it was speculation about space travel - how long it would take to get from one galaxy to another and what kind of alien biology or communication mechanisms that would necessitate. But this one guy from Stanford kept reeling in the alien talk and reminding everybody that these are truly Unidentified Flying Objects - we don’t really know if there are aliens controlling these things. In fact we don’t know that they’re being controlled by anybody at all - human, alien, or otherwise.

This guy had the most hair-brained UFO theory we’ve heard yet:

The UFO’s might not be from another planet, but rather from THE FUTURE!! What if we create artificial intelligence that outlives us on this planet. Then either we create time-travel sometime before our species becomes extinct, or the AI creates it after we’re gone. Then the future AI sends drones back in time to, ya know like, keep tabs on us. That would explain why the UFOs have always seemed so interested in our nuclear sites, military installations, and supercomputer facilities - The future robots could be coming back here to interact with their ancestors, perhaps to ensure their safety, or to accelerate today’s AI development, or even to ensure the eventual demise of humanity. Basically the UFOs are like the Transformers, except Cybertron is actually Earth from the future.

We gotta admit it sounds nuts, but it’s still MORE LIKELY THAN ALIENS!!!!!

FANTASY TAROT CARD UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!

Julio Jones got traded to the Titans and we have updated our rankings accordingly (Derrick Henry still 1.01). Some have said the Falcons got a bad deal. There were rumors that an unnamed team had offered a first round pick, but then the Falcons took the Titans 2nd rounder instead. That report seems pretty dubious to us, and is more likely the kind of (mis)information that Julio’s agent or the Falcons themselves would be a lot more motivated to leak (or fabricate) than any more reliable source.

Here are the terms of the last three super-star WR trades:

Hopkins (age 28) - 2nd rd pick, swap 4th rd picks, & David Johnson
Diggs (age 26) - 1st rd pick, 4th rd pick, 5th rd pick, & swap Bills 6th for Vikings 7th
Julio (age 32) - 2nd rd pick, & 4th rd pick

The fact is Julio is 32 and everybody knew that Atlanta needed to get rid of him to get under the cap. There’s just no way they were gonna get anything close to what the Viking got for Diggs. They coulda gotten a first rounder for Julio like three years ago, maybe, if he wasn’t getting foot surgeries every year. Given that Mike Davis is just as good as David Johnson now, The Falcons got pretty much the same return on Julio that Houston got for DeAndre Hopkins, and Hopkins is four years younger than Julio. Sure, the Falcons are gonna suck for a couple years, but Julio wasn’t gonna change that anyway. It’s rebuild time.

Of course DYM dot com had it’s own re-build to do: Our 2021 Fantasy Football Tarot Card Deck is nearly complete.

We have all 78 cards assigned to players now - including our NEW Julio card and a few that still might need some graphic updates before the season starts.

We updated the Julio card with his excellent new jersey number and hair style. Literally no one looks good in that Titans aquamarine but Julio’s making the most of the situation with his new single digit jersey and up-and-coming dreadlocks.

But regardless of what team he plays for Julio was always gonna be THE HERMIT card in our deck. The Hermit is #9 on the 21-step mythopoeic journey of Tarot. The Hermit is the archetypal mentor or sage. He is an old and experienced individual who helps show the hero the correct path for the rest of his journey.

Much like Old Ben Kenobi and Yoda helped Luke contact the force, they do not remain with him throughout his journey, The Hermit must be surpassed and outlived by his student - if the student is to truly become a hero. If Julio had remained with the Falcons he would have continued in the Hermit role for Calvin Ridley. But Ridley may have already surpassed Julio last year, so to complete Ridley’s training, he had to leave him behind. Ridley now ascends to become the KING OF CUPS, and Julio will now adopt a new scion - AJ Brown, the KNIGHT OF CUPS.

Along with Julio, there are a few other high-profile players in our deck that seem likely to change NFL teams this off-season:

Aaron Rodgers says he’s NOT playing for the Packers, no matter what.

The Packers say they’re not gonna trade him, no matter what. So....

As far as we’re concerned he’s just the host of Jeopardy! now. We just know one of you idiots is still gonna draft him tho, so he’s gotta stay in the deck. He’ll be our KING of SWORDS, no matter what.

Desean Watson is VERY unlikely to play for the Texans again and, like Rodgers, there’s also an off chance he doesn’t play in the NFL at all this year.

The EIGHT of SWORDS is a very bad luck card. It’s about being held against one’s will. The figure is isolated in solitary confinement, and also bound and blinded - meaning they even can’t see what or who has imprisoned them, and they have no recourse.

We’re thinking if Watson gets cut and nobody picks him up (like if he goes on the Commissioner Exempt list) we’ll still keep this card as is since it’s such a great metaphor for the entire Houston Texans. They’re waaay more fucked than The Falcons.

If he goes to the Dolphins we might still keep Watson on on the EIGHT OF SWORDS and change the logo on the mountain to Miami. The Dolphins can’t not suck, doesn’t matter who the QB is, they’re just compelled to fail.

If Watson goes to the Broncos or some other not-bad team then we’ll have to re-arrange some things. A fresh start for Watson would make him THE SUN for this year, which is currently Miles Sandes. Sanders could be better suited as the JUSTICE card, and then we’d make Josh Jacobs the FOUR of PENTACLES and bump De’Andre Swift out of the deck. The more we think about it we don't have a lotta faith in the Raiders or Lions offenses and we're probably gonna avoid ‘em in general in fantasy this year.

Zach Ertz trade rumors are ramping up for the third consecutive year. We still want him to end up on The Bills, obviously.

The NINE of WANDS is a pensive card, we chose it for Zach assuming he stays with the Eagles and is jealously guarding his role on the team (and his status in the league) against Dallas Goeddert.

If Ertz goes to Buffalo he could become the TWO or the THREE of WANDS, which are currently the Ravens and Rams Defenses. Then we could make Melvin Gordon the NINE of WANDS. Gordon was originally the SEVEN of PENTACLES until the Broncos drafted another RB and put him on the hot seat. We prefer World Champion Leonard Fournette as the proud, accomplished SEVEN of PENTACLES anyway.

STAR WARS BULLSHIT

There’s been some funny business in the Star Wars lately, the nerds are up in arms as always, but we’re tryina ride this one out cause it could play into our Bad Batch theory from last month.

The bullshit is how they’re still trying to ret-con Snoke’s origin story after JJ Abrams made him a clone for some reason. Episode IX posited that Snoke was an artificial being created by The Emperor, but made no effort to explain any of the how/why/when, and didn’t even leave us any tangible clues.

Well, over the last year it’s become clear that the SW brain trust never really had a clue as to how, why, when, or where Snoke was created, and they still don’t, but that is not gonna stop them from throwing a lotta shit at the wall.

In Episode 12 of The Mandalorian the crew stumbles upon Moff Gideon’s clone laboratory. Therein they find some bodies floating in jars that look just like the extra Snoke clones that The Emperor had in his lair on Exogol. And just to make the point explicit, they even used a sample of Snoke’s theme in the score for this episode.

We caught it, but we were like “whatever” at the time, cause it seemed kinda perfunctory. Clone or not, we know from the Kylo Ren comics that Snoke was active sometime around the Mando era (about 10 years after Return of the Jedi). In this episode, Mando and the crew find out that Gideon tried (and failed) to infuse the Snokes with Grogu’s blood.

OK. Fine. Whatever.

But then last month in the Darth Vader comics they threw another, much weirder, twist in the Snoke story. Darth Vader #11 finds Vader touring The Emperor’s new base on Exogol. And since nobody asked for it, they thought it’d be cool to just have Luke’s hand right there next to the Snoke jars.

We guess the implication here is that the original Snoke got his midichlorians from Luke, but they ran out of blood just like with Grogu, so they could only make the one fully functioning Snoke.

OK. We guess.

Meanwhile, The Bad Batch is still trudging along. We’re up to episode 7 (of 16) and pretty much nothing has happened yet. We got a couple fun throwbacks to the old Clone Wars, and a foreshadowing of Ahsoka, but Omeega still hasn’t done anything noteworthy.

We liked the episode 2 check-in with the clone that banged a Twi'lek way back in season one. They settled down and had a couple half-clone kids, which was cute.

We’ve always been unabashed fans of these domestic scenes in Star Wars, but we were disappointed that Omeega’s interactions with the family only proved her to actually be far less capable and street-wise than even the average child. The entire season so far has just been Omeega doing dumb kid shit, and the otherwise focused and stoic clones struggling to develop a little empathy and patience. They’re just a buncha fish out of water - a wacky family just trying to make their way in a galaxy turned upside down.

So look, we get it, we’re just kinda bored.

We don’t wanna kill Bad Batch for being heartfelt, but we got our fill of the parental growth journey in season one of Mandalorian. We were ready for Bad Batch to really bring the Star Wars heat, but we’re not feelin it yet.

Episode 6 was actually somewhat interesting and potentially moved the plot forward. They happened to run into those chicks with the cool haircuts that were friends with Ahsoka in season 7. At the end they tip off Ahsoka to the location of the “rogue clones”, so our girl is pretty much guaranteed to show up in episode 8.

We want to see Omeega meet Ahsoka in episode 8, since that would be the mid-way point of the series and would therefore place Ahsoka in the proverbial “father” role for the Hero to atone with in the 9th step of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Hopefully they’ll let Ahsoka give Omeega a little once-over and confirm her force-sensitivity, like she did with Baby Yoda - that could be our only chance of confirming our original prediction for this series.

We’re gonna need Ahsoka to tell the BB crew that Omeega is very force-y but she can’t feel it cause she’s never been trained. At that point it’s hard to imagine the young Ahsoka rejecting Omeega the way she did Grogu. Instead, we think she’s gonna take Omeega under her wing, but something will go wrong and Omeega will get captured or killed by Tarkin (or possibly Vader), cause he's trying to harvest her midichlorians for a Snoke jar. That experience will scar Ahsoka to the point where she never wants to take responsibility for another padawan, prefacing her stand-offish appearances in Rebels and Mandalorian.