MONDAY: PELICANS AT MEMPHIS, 8 PM EAST, 5PM WEST, LEAGUE PASS
After a week, the NBA is worried about you. You smell like garbage, you’ve sworn off feeling human relationships, you’re starting to think about voiding all responsibilities and voyaging from arena to arena, in a sick neo-religious ritual. They think you need a night off. So they programmed this slate:
But you’ll show them! New Orleans at Memphis! Anthony Davis and Zach Randolph, answering the question “Just how different can two players be?” Jrue Holiday vs. Mike Conley: the fated battle of the West’s two great very-solid-but-juuuuuust-under-an-all-star point guards! Marc Gasol! Omer Asik! They’re both from Europe! You can do this! Show the NBA that NO SCHEDULE can stop you from zoning out in front of the tube and taking what is your, basketball stimulation!
TUESDAY: CLEVELAND CAVALIERS AT TRAIL BLAZERS, 7 PM WEST, 10 PM EAST, ESPN
AN EXCERPT FROM MY MEMOIR, “A LIFE DOMINATED BY VICTORY”
“I was so grateful that someone out there loved my writing for thediss.com SO MUCH that they just GAVE me a ticket for this game! I will be that person’s friends forever. I will even marry their sister, and be a better than average in-law, if they want that. And, hey, if they’re all ‘Hands off my sister’ I will think there is a weird kind of patriarchy-protection thing going on there, but I can respect that. Anyway, thank you for giving me a ticket to that game. I had a good time watching everyone play basketball.”
WEDNESDAY: SPIN THE DIAL!
There’s 12 games on! 24 teams, IN ACTION! And I say: WATCH EM’ ALL! Start off with Miami at Charlotte (PLAYOFF REMATCH!) and whenever it goes to a commercial, SPIN THE DIAL! Pull up a Random Number Generator, pick a number between one and fourteen, and go WHERE THE WHIMS OF FATE WILL TAKE YOU! Commerical? SPIN THE DIAL! Get bored? SPIN THE DIAL! If you’re PARTICULARLY adventurous, you might SPIN THE DIAL! every time a whistle gets blown! Why should you have to put up with stoppages in play!? Soccer ain’t got no stoppages in play! Pretend the shards are all one seven hour game, then piece it together in your dreams!
THURSDAY: SPURS AT ROCKETS, 8 PM EAST, 5 PM WEST, TNT
This battle between Southwest Division Powers is your mind being played out in front of you on a television screen. On one side: the Houston Rockets containing all of your neurosis and neediness, angling for free agents and better friends, making unfunny jokes to try and fit in at parties, incessantly promoting yourself so you will be famous and loved. On the other side, the San Antonio Spurs, obsessed with work, keeping a low profile so everyone will leave you alone, a productive member of society, but cold. WHO WILL WIN: THE FIRES OF NEUROTIC FRUSTRATION OR THE ICES OF PRODUCTIVITY!?
FRIDAY: WASHINGTON AT TORONTO 7 PM EAST, 4 PM WEST, LEAGUE PASS
SATURDAY: GOLDEN STATE AT HOUSTON 8PM EAST, 5PM WEST
Klay Thompson has begun this season on a upward trajectory. Will it continue in this matchup against James Harden and the Rockets? Or will he have already left the NBA to peruse space travel and lunar domination? Where will it end? Can Klay Thompson harness the power of the vibrating strings that make up particles at the lowest level of existence? Or will he regress and have basically have the same season he did last year?
SUNDAY: CHARLOTTE AT LAKERS 6:30 WEST, 9:30 EAST, LEAGUE PASS
Is watching a team just to see them get embarrassingly beat, over and over, in poor taste? Apparently I either don’t think so or don’t care, because I just recommended this game!
