Hey, how is everyone feeling about this NBA season? Good? Are your dreams coming true? Are you being surprised by good things and having other good things you believed confirmed? I certainly hope so, I hope all of those dreams are coming true for you. I hope your pleasures and complete and expanding. Unless you root for the Lakers, in which case I hope you suffer to the ends of the Earth to pay for years of excess. Winning is sinful, repent repent repent.
MONDAY, UTAH AT INDIANA, 7PM EAST, 4PM WEST, BANKERS LIFE FIELDHOUSE
Man, three bucks! Out here in Portland metro we’re spending 25 goddamn dollars for a live basketball experience! I say you hop on a train, or a motorcycle, get on ol’ StubHub, and see what happens at this game between two weird lotteryish teams! Maybe no one on Utah can guard Hibbert and a 110-108 fire breaks out! Maybe this is “The Dante Exum Game!” Or, if you get REALLY lucky, you will be present at the game where Gordon Hayward’s tears heal a blind child! Anything can happen and you can be there for ONLY THREE DOLLARS!
TUESDAY: SACRAMENTO AT DALLAS 8:30 EAST, 5:30 WEST
Look, the Kings lost to the busted-ass incarnation of the Thunder tonight, so who really knows. But god help us they might be the future and I’m not going to sit here on this website and tell you to turn your head away from the future! The Kings could lose EVERY game over the next two weeks and become deeply non-recommendable! At this moment in time, this precious moment, the Kings are hot and winning and you need to hang onto them until the moment they’re not, God forbid!
WEDNESDAY: INDIANA AT MIAMI, 7:30 EAST, 4:30 WEST, ESPN
If you watch this game hard enough, you can actually see Lebron and Paul George’s ghosts going one on one. Can you see it? Is it in your grasp? A past that might have been the future?
THURSDAY: SACRAMENTO AT MEMPHIS: 8 PM EAST, 5 PM WEST, LEAGUE PASS
I don’t even have a joke, honestly. You should watch this game, because these teams are wildly entertaining and overflowing with personality. There are no jokes to be made about ZBo tossing up a hook over Reggie Evans. It’s the most serious thing in the world and also the most serious. It is the “Three Colors: Blue” of basketball plays. Deeply serious, and also very moving.
FRIDAY: MILWAUKEE AT ORLANDO, 7PM EAST, 4PM WEST, LEAGUE PASS
How deep if your thirst for knowledge? What would you do to find out the truth? A searcher’s question follows. The Milwaukee Bucks: are they bad, or average? Only one game contain the answer you seek: if they lose to the Magic on the road, they are almost certainly a bad team. BUT, if they VANQUISH Orlando’s finest sons, they are a step close to being regarded as “Pretty okay, maybe not a bad team. OJ is looking pretty good this year!” SEEK TRUTHS IN DARK CORNERS, AND YOU WILL FIND THE ENLIGHTENMENT YOU CRAVE.
SATURDAY: PHOENIX AT LA CLIPPERS, 7:30 WEST, 10:30
If the Clippers are the Grateful Dead, and they are, because everyone is the Grateful Dead on some level, Chris is Jerry and Blake is Bob Weir. Chris is a noodly genius who does better solos and does the stuff that the true heads revere. But Blake is more “Real world” charismatic, the kind of person who appeals to actual human beings and not just burned out basketheads. The Suns are probably more Allman Brothers-y, but I honestly couldn’t tell you who Duane is. I am not a music equivalence scientist, I had no desire to take the math to make it happen.
SUNDAY: DENVER AT KNICKS, 1 PM EAST, 10 PM WEST
I love early Sunday Knicks games. I remember once I watched half a Knicks/Sixers game in the train station in Olympia and I saw John Mcenroe sitting with his daughter and wearing gold chain and a shirt with three buttons undone. It was some peak-ass dad majesty, lemme tell you about it.
John McEnroe with one of the all time great embarrassing dad outfits. pic.twitter.com/uX03p74H
— Corbina Smith (@corbinasmith) November 4, 2012
Okay, it was two buttons. But spiritually, it was three.
My favorite thing about NBA crowds is that, for the most part, they don’t act like maniacs. The Sunday morning Knicks crowd lives this harder than any other crowd. “We’re just here to see a basketball game. We like basketball, no big deal. We’ll clap if something cool happens, WE GUESS.” I would watch ANY team play the Knicks on Sunday morning. The only thing that would make these things better is if they just gave everyone in the building pancakes to eat. You could probably get half the building sleeping in there, maximum relaximum.
