If it seem like I only recommended weird games, it’s because there were not any normal games on this week.
MONDAY: WASHINGTON AT NEW ORLEANS 8PM EAST, 5PM WEST
Has anyone floated the idea that the East is secretly more functional than the West? Teams with young stars shouldn’t have to face a gauntlet of trails that threaten to tear their testicles off year after year. Your team should be allowed to fail a little, the you get competent, then you get good, then you get better than good! Unfortunate, competition and weather have gathered in the west and build a spiked marble wall that a team must climb. Why is the East dysfunctional? The Bucks SHOULD be able to compete! They have good young players! The West and its inequitable world where the rich get richer and the poor suck lemons is the immoral one!
TUESDAY: PHOENIX AT MILWAUKEE 8PM EAST, 5PM WEST
There are only two games on Tuesday’s slate. This is the better of those two games. I am kind of into it, because I am down with the deer, but if you’re not, this is an excellent night to do something else. May I recommend a movie? I watched Cries and Whispers the other night, and it was a devious construction and an emotionally wrenching affair all in one. Bergman also does fascinating things with camera movements and close ups. The movement, the co-dependency, the emotional horror and the European-ness make it a very Spurs-y movie. You like pop culture equivalencies, right? It’s good sportswriting, right?
WEDNESDAY: MEMPHIS AT ATLANTA 7:30 EAST 4:30 WEST
Atlanta has won a lot of game against Western competition lately. Maybe they are very good. Maybe the West is overrated. Maybe everything living in a fixed position in our minds is more unknowable than we know, and we should embrace that uncertainty and let it take us to new and exciting places.
THURSDAY: MIAMI AT PORTLAND 7PM WEST 10PM EAST
If you come over to my house IN Vancouver, Washington, while this game is on, I will probably be watching it. I will let you into the house. “Do you want anything to eat, while we watch this game, the one on television?” No thank you, Corbin. “Oh. Do you want some special blanket, or sleeping bag, or pillow, to make yourself more comfortable while watching this game?” I am fine, thank you. “Drugs? I have some drugs, different kinds of drugs, you can take them and it might make the game better? Uppers? Downers? Pot? Holla-genics?” Uhh, not now. Maybe if the game isn’t very good, I will take drugs but I think I will just watch for now.
FRIDAY: CLEVELAND AT GOLDEN SLUMBERS 7:30 WEST 10:30 EAST
Halfway through this game, Kevin Love, who was NEARLY traded to Golden State, will have been thoroughly beaten and bruised by the team who spurned him. His teammates have abandoned him, subcumbed to injury, disease, and death (A Cav will die this week, yes.). Dion is floating around, clapping and doing things. He will stand at center court. The cheers will surround him. He will close his eyes and realize that the cheers aren’t really an upper, a pump that runs adrenaline into his blood and makes him run up and down and compete. The are a blanket, a gentle wave made from warm liquid cotton. He will lie down in the middle of the arena and sleep. He will sleep until the final buzzer sounds. When he wakes, the judgmental eyes of the words affixed to himself, the only self that ever gave him and peace, he will weep, for he now knows that happiness and comfort can never for him, that he can only chase and fail forever and ever.
SATURDAY: DALLAS AT CLIPPERS 12:30 WEST 3:30 EAST
FUN NAIL ART PROJECTS FOR THIS GAME:
ONE: Paint both teams’ starting fives on your fingers. Chris Paul and Chandler parsons are the thumbs.
TWO: Oceans on one hand, for Clippers, and Horses for the other, because the Mavericks are spiritually attached to horses.
THREE: R-A-J-O-N R-O-N-D-O
FOUR: A tiny little ten-panel comic about Donald Sterling.
FIVE: Matted red and blue, paint it with house paint instead of traditional shiny polish.
SIX: Dump both of your hands into giant buckets of hot wax, then hold it to your face until it sticks.At the end of the game, scrape the wax from your face and hands. Make it into a candle. Mail the candle to the winning team as tribute. Paint your nails purple.
SUNDAY: CLEVELAND AT SACRAMENTO 6PM WEST 9PM EAST
Cleveland put a perfect team together and it has congealed into a pile of lumpy cream. Sacramento has been a pile of worse cream that was starting to become cheese, but the guy who ran the dairy-arium decided this cheese was not to his liking so he filled it with arsenic and told the world it was the future of dairy. These teams deserve each other they and they deserve to savage each other like the sisters in Cries and Whispers.
