Basketball (And Other Things) Read online

  2. NATHAN DIDN’T HAVE THE RIGHT DISPOSITION FOR STARDOM. I know this one might sound incorrect, what with him mostly being a selfishly successful person and also given that he was basically built up to be a basketball star by his father from birth, but I just don’t think he was nearly petty enough or vindictive enough. I mean, he pawed at the idea of it, like the way he prodded Lucas about being an unwanted, unnecessary human early in the series, or the way he shot that no-look free throw to win the game against Oak Lake and his then-nemesis Damien West. But that was all just surface stuff.

  He eventually came around to loving Lucas. And when he finally had a chance to be his absolute pettiest—in that father/son game, playing for a chance to beat his loathsome dad in front of everyone, which was his dad’s worst fear—he welched.

  The play: After having demolished the dads for almost the entire game, the scorekeeper announced he was going to make the ending more exciting by making it a Next Basket Wins thing, which, FYI, seems wildly unfair. But so the sons had possession and Nathan had the ball and drove in for the game-winning layup, only except instead of getting the layup he got clobbered by his dad, who put two forearms into Nathan’s chest, crashing him to the floor. “I couldn’t give you the winning bucket, Nathan,” he tells him. Nathan gets up, they reset the offense, then he turns the ball over on purpose. The dads come down and toss the ball to Nathan’s dad in the post. Nathan offers up a freebie layup, explaining, “You don’t deserve my best game, dad,” and then, “You know what? If you wanna win so bad, go ahead. I’ll give it to you.” Then he moves out of the way. His dad, a real winner, looks at him in disbelief, then scores the layup. The team of fathers wins. Afterward, Nathan tells him, “You didn’t beat me, dad. You never will.” And I guess that was supposed to be a more devastating, more righteous blow, but FUCK THAT SHIT.

  I don’t want righteousness. I don’t want dignity. The Second Place Hall of Fame is littered with virtuous people and their loser morals. Give me a murderer. Give me the trophy. Give me the guy who’s gonna make a bet to play one-on-one against a guy and the loser has to quit the basketball team, then he beats the guy, then he makes him stay on the team anyway out of spite, which is what Lucas did on the very first episode of season one. Give me Lucas Scott over Nathan.8

  1. Jimmy ends up hitting the game winner at the buzzer to win the state championship for his team. It’s based on a real thing that happened, only in the real-life version, the player was named Bobby Plump, a decidedly less cool name than Jimmy Chitwood. Also, Plump’s shot won his team the 1954 title. In the movie, Chitwood’s shot wins them the 1952 title.

  2. Draymond Green nearly won a title for the Golden State Warriors in 2016 by attacking wieners.

  3. To be clear, I’m talking about Netflix Daredevil, not Ben Affleck Daredevil.

  4. “Your white tee, well, to me, look like a nightgown / Make your mama proud, take that thing two sizes down / Then you’ll look like the man that you are, or what you could be.”

  5. The best kind of robot, if you ask me.

  6. Robots play basketball weird.

  7. He’d lost all but four of his players to injuries or fouls, and openly contemplated letting the team get disqualified rather than play Urkel. It was Eddie Winslow who convinced him to put Steve in.

  8. Also, Lucas is way hotter than Nathan. That’s important to me.

  WHAT’S THE ORDER OF THE FIRST ROUND OF THE FICTIONAL BASKETBALL PLAYER DRAFT?

  PART 3

  NO. 13 PICK: Kyle Lee Watson, Above the Rim

  HEIGHT: 5'10" WEIGHT: approximately 165 pounds POSITION: point guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Getting dismantled in a game of one-on-one against Thomas “Shep” Sheppard.

  (He’s tied with the no. 12 pick.)

  NO. 12 PICK: Scott Howard, Teen Wolf

  HEIGHT: 5'4" WEIGHT: approximately 122 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Making two free throws with no time left on the clock to lift his team, the Beavers, over their rivals, the Dragons.

  FYI: I don’t want the Teen Wolf version of Scott Howard. I want the human version of Scott Howard. Teen Wolf was certainly the more exhilarating player, what with his dunks and Harlem Globetrotter dribbling exhibitions, and also he was a fucking wolf playing basketball. But Human Scott was the superior player.

  This is Teen Wolf’s stat line from that first game he played in (which was the only game we got to see him play for more than a little bit): 8/8 on shot attempts, one rebound, two blocks,1 one steal, and one assist. This is Human Scott’s stat line from the last game he played in: 5/6 on shot attempts, 4/4 on free throws (including the two that won the game that he shot alone because he was fouled at the buzzer), six assists, and two steals. I’d probably seen Teen Wolf a good 15, 20 times and hadn’t realized Human Scott was better until I sat down and watched it specifically to write this blurb because that’s when I wrote the stats down. Stats are dope. Stats defeated a werewolf.

  (All that said, I am absolutely okay with the Teen Wolf version of Scott Howard showing up to the draft.)

  NO. 11 PICK: Will Smith, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

  HEIGHT: 6'2" WEIGHT: approximately 180 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Demolishing Isiah Thomas in a game of one-on-one.2

  Smith, who averaged 61.5 points per game over the two games he’s shown playing during his high school basketball career, was an overwhelming offensive presence on the court.3 Here is literally the first thing he did in his first game: He was set up to do the beginning-of-the-game jump ball, the ref threw the ball up, then Will jumped, then rather than tap it to one of his useless teammates he simply grabbed the ball out of the air,4 then shot it WHILE HE WAS STILL IN THE AIR. What’s more: HE DID THAT SHIT FROM HALF COURT. It’s one of the four or five most impressive basketball shots in the fictional basketball universe.5 He had a massive ego and an affinity for kissing cheerleaders during games, but the potential for having that sort of firepower on your team makes him worth the risk.6

  NO. 10 PICK: Jesus Shuttlesworth, He Got Game

  HEIGHT: 6'5" WEIGHT: approximately 205 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Snatching the alpha-dominance from his dad during a game of one-on-one.

  In March of 2015, I wrote a thing about fictional basketball players with Jason Concepcion for Grantland. In the article, Jason made an incredibly salient point about Jesus Shuttlesworth that has remained with me to this day. He said, “How good is Jesus Shuttlesworth? So good that the GOVERNOR of NEW YORK STATE has Jesus’s father sprung from Attica, WHERE HE IS SERVING TIME FOR KILLING JESUS’S MOTHER, in the hope that he can convince Jesus to attend Big State University, the governor’s alma mater.” If you’re so brilliant a player that government officials are releasing convicted murderers as a response to your basketball existence, you’re sliding into the top ten every single time.

  NO. 9 PICK: Moses Guthrie, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

  HEIGHT: 6'7" WEIGHT: approximately 209 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Any time he did anything on the court because Dr. J is walking poetry.

  My favorite thing about this movie is that there’s a part where a woman is crying and expressing concern about a person and Moses Guthrie, star player of the Pittsburgh Pisces7 (played by Dr. J), responds to the situation by saying, “Come with me,” and then he takes her to a basketball court and makes her watch him play basketball in street clothes by himself for three minutes.8 Moses is not that great of a therapist, I don’t think.

  NO. 8 PICK: Lola Bunny, Space Jam

  HEIGHT: 3'2" WEIGHT: approximately 35 pounds POSITION: guard9

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Running up a defender’s face, jumping off it, then dunking.

  Two things here:

  1. Lola mostly just gets mushed into the Sex Icon role in Space Jam, which is weird because it’s a movie for children,10 but she’s a phenomenal basketba
ll player. She’s fast, she’s aggressive, she has unquestionable dribbling skills and an overwhelming vertical (during a one-on-one match against Bugs Bunny she dunks it easily, despite barely being 3 feet tall). Best case scenario she ends up being a championship-caliber point guard; worst case scenario she ends up being the new Reggie Jackson. If this draft weren’t so guard heavy, she’d be closer to the third or fourth spot.

  2. Lola Bunny is the first non-human I was ever attracted to. Others on that list: Blue, the main raptor from Jurassic World; Neytiri from Avatar; Roxanne from A Goofy Movie; and the cartoon fox version of Robin Hood.

  NO. 7 PICK: Snake Plissken, Escape from L.A.

  HEIGHT: 5'11" WEIGHT: approximately 175 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Making a full court shot under threat of death for a miss.

  A very short summary of Escape from L.A.: Snake Plissken, a rugged and handsome and amoral but moral man, gets sent into an apocalyptic future version of L.A. by the government to retrieve an important thing from a bad person. There you go. That’s the movie.

  The basketball part: The bad person, a Peruvian terrorist named Cuervo, captures Snake. And so since he has Snake, he decides to kill him, but because Cuervo has flair and charisma, he decides to do so in an aggressively charming way.

  He has Snake stand at the center of a regulation-size basketball court. The court is fenced in and the fence is surrounded by 20 or so people with guns. Cuervo tells Snake he has to complete a basketball challenge. Cuervo says he’s going to turn on a 10-second shot clock. Snake has to take the ball and make a shot at the goal on the far right. If he makes it, the clock will reset, and he will have 10 more seconds to make another basket in the goal on the opposite end of the court. And he has to do it over and over and over again, alternating goals each time, the shot clock being reset each time. If he can score 10 points under these rules, he gets to live and he gets to leave.11 If he misses a shot, though, he’ll be shot. If the shot clock goes before he gets a shot up, he’ll be shot. And so there you go. Those are the stakes.

  Cuervo turns the shot clock on and Snake takes off toward the goal on the right side of the court. He gets there in time for a layup before the buzzer sounds. (Two points.) As the ball falls through the hoop, though, he bobbles it. The misplay eats up two seconds on the new shot clock. He doesn’t have enough time to make it all the way to the other goal for a layup so he settles for a 15-footer. He makes it. (Four points.) He grabs the ball and starts running back toward the other goal, this time only making it to the three-point line. He throws up a three as the buzzer sounds. It’s good. (Six points.) By the time he retrieves the ball, he’s down to five or so seconds, so he has to heave up a shot from half court at the other goal. Improbably, it rattles in. (Eight points.) He fetches the ball for his last shot, but there are only two seconds left once he’s chased it down. He looks at the clock. He looks at the goal. He looks at Cuervo. He looks at death. He’s approximately 90 feet from the hoop he has to shoot it in. So, with literally his life at stake, he chucks up a baseball pass toward the basket. Everything is quiet. Time stops moving forward. The world stops spinning so as to not disrupt the path of the ball. It’s flying, it’s flying, it’s flying. And then, miraculously, it’s in. Plissken doesn’t even celebrate.

  Under the greatest pressure and in the most impossible basketball spot of everyone else on this list, Snake Plissken was unfazed. He shot 100 percent from the field and did that shit in a leather onesie. Nobody’s ever been as clutch.

  NO. 6 PICK: Sidney Deane, White Men Can’t Jump

  HEIGHT: 5'9" WEIGHT: approximately 180 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Getting hustled by Billy Hoyle out of $62 in a shooting contest.

  (He’s tied with the no. 5 pick.)

  NO. 5 PICK: Billy Hoyle, White Men Can’t Jump

  HEIGHT: 5'9" WEIGHT: approximately 170 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Hustling Sidney Deane out of $62 in a shooting contest.

  These guys are the second best fictional basketball playing duo if you’re only counting basketball skill (and the first best duo if you’re including things outside of basketball skill, like performances in the movie and how interesting or not interesting their existences are).

  The only way Billy sneaks ahead of him here in the draft is because his only real weakness was that he would get ultra offended any time anyone made fun of him for not being able to dunk, and that was a very real weakness because it flustered him entirely. By the end of the movie, though, he was able to dunk, so there you go.

  NO. 4 PICK: Shep, Above the Rim

  HEIGHT: 6'3" WEIGHT: approximately 185 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Scoring 34 points in less than three minutes while wearing corduroy pants.

  Championship game.

  Against his murderous, murdering brother’s murder team of murderers.

  Where no foul is hard enough to get ejected.

  Playing in corduroy pants and a long sleeve shirt.

  14/14 from the field.

  10/10 on threes.

  Team down one with nine seconds left.

  Steals the ball.

  Throws an alley-oop from behind the three-point line for the game-winning dunk.

  All over a 2:34 stretch.

  Beautiful.

  NO. 3 PICK: Butch McRae, Blue Chips

  HEIGHT: 6'7" WEIGHT: approximately 197 pounds POSITION: guard

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Throwing the pass that led to Neon Boudeaux getting a game-winning dunk to help his college team beat Indiana, then the number-one-ranked team in the country.

  (He’s tied with the no. 2 pick.)

  NO. 2 PICK: Neon Boudeaux, Blue Chips

  HEIGHT: 7'1" WEIGHT: approximately 325 pounds POSITION: center

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Getting a game-winning dunk to help his college team beat Indiana, then the number-one-ranked team in the country.

  These guys are the first best fictional basketball playing duo if you’re only counting basketball skill (and the least best duo if you’re including things outside of basketball skill, like performances in the movie and how interesting or not interesting their existences are).

  Neon edges out Butch, an all-world guard, on account of how few big guys there are in this draft. They really are at a premium. If you’ve got the second pick, it has to be Neon. And if you’ve got the first pick, it has to be . . .

  NO. 1 PICK: Elliot Richards, Bedazzled

  HEIGHT: 7'6" WEIGHT: approximately 290 pounds POSITION: center

  MOST MEMORABLE ON-COURT MOMENT: Dunking it from well beyond the three-point line.

  The undeniable, impossible-to-pass-up, absolutely-has-to-get-chosen, guaranteed-Hall-of-Famer-and-potentially-greatest-of-all-time first pick. His stat line from the game they show him playing in in Bedazzled is so absurd that it feels like too much even for a fake player: 104 points, 45 rebounds, 32 assists, 37 steals, and 28 blocks. He dunked it from the three-point line. He shot 40-footers like they were 5-footers and he shot 30-footers without even looking at the rim. He sweat a lot, and he was exceptionally dumb, and he had a teeny tiny penis,12 but no matter. Championships abound.

  1. It’s very likely that he only had one block, as it appears they use the same clip of him blocking someone in the game montage twice.

  2. In a dream sequence, BTW.

  3. Really, the only person who ever stopped him from scoring was Carlton, and the only reason he was able to do so was that Will never expected him to try because they were on the same team.

  4. Absolutely illegal.

  5. It goes: 1. Snake Plissken’s full-court buzzer beater to save his life in Escape from L.A.; 2. John Tucker’s flip dunk; 3. Hancock shooting it on an outside goal from several hundred feet away; 4. Will Smith’s jump ball jumper; 5. Jordan’s stretch dunk; 6. Billy Hoyle’s hook shot from half court to get Gloria on Jeopardy!; 7. David 8’s hook shot
three while riding a bicycle; 8. Hoops McCann shooting that thing through the little metal hoop on top of the thing on the boat at the end of One Crazy Summer.

  6. Kobe Bryant was drafted 13th and also went straight from high school to the pros. I’m figuring (hoping) Will’s pro career is going to look a lot like Kobe’s.

  7. The premise of The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh is the team decides to put together a group of players who are all Pisces.

  8. My second favorite thing is in the trailer where the narrator says, “Take an Indian, a preacher, a midget, a magician, a hip deejay, an Arab, an astrologer, and a great big kid and what have you got? It’s fish fever.”

  9. During the player introductions of the game, she’s introduced as a small forward, but there’s no way I’m putting anyone who’s only 3'2" in that position.

  10. There’s a part where she talks to Bugs Bunny and then his whole body turns rigid. I think that’s secretly supposed to signify an erection. Bugs Bunny is more sexually aggressive than I’d realized as a child.

  11. Each basket will be worth two points, regardless of the distance Snake shoots it from. Cuervo is decidedly anti-three-pointers, which is maybe the most surprising part of the future.

  12. The plot of Bedazzled is a guy makes a deal with the devil (played by Elizabeth Hurley) where he trades his soul for seven wishes, one of which he uses to become an NBA megastar version of himself. Every wish she grants him ends up having some terrible thing attached to it, though, and so when she turned him into an NBA All-Star, she also gave him a super small penis. He immediately traded away his stardom and fortune to get back into his normal body and his normal penis. Men are dumb.

  WHICH NBA PLAYERS GET REMEMBERED FOR THE WRONG REASONS?