It started opening night, when Gordon Hayward went down with a truly gruesome injury 5 minutes into what looked like a very promising Celtics season. To be fair, the Celtics have been incredible anyway. Kyrie Irving has been out of his damn mind, my beloved Alfred Joel Horford has brought his usual understated brilliance, and Boston has mostly shredded their competition. Still, it felt cruel to witness the full-power C's for such a short blip of time.
Then there's the mess in Philly with Markelle Fultz. Trusting The Process has given basketball fans the unmitigated glee of Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid working their magic ... but. It's one thing for a #1 overall draft pick do be a bust; highly-touted players falling short of expectations is something we've seen plenty of times. This is different. Fultz, apparently, cannot shoot a basketball. He has a mysterious injury that has received conflicting diagnoses from multiple sources, and right now no one seems to know if he'll ever play even a minute in the NBA. It is an exceedingly strange development that has disappeared into a season where "strange" has become the new status quo.
Speaking of bizarre injuries, what the actual hell is going on with Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs? The franchise that has arguably been the model for excellence, consistency, and adaptability in all of professional sports for the past 15 years has an actual problem on its hands. When will Kawhi see the floor again? Unclear. Is he, or someone in his camp, disgruntled with how San Antonio is managing the situation or vice versa? Unclear. Is there a rift between the organization and its anointed franchise player despite said organization absolutely never having rifts of any kind? Also, still, unclear. The Spurs still boast a 35-21 record, right on pace for a home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, but things in San Antonio seem, for once, disjointed. When the cohesion of this team looks to be slipping, even if only in outward appearance, you know you're through the NBA looking glass.
We have to talk about the injuries, too. Boogie Cousins was finally on his way. After taking a metric ton of critical shit (some deserved, most not) for never reaching the playoffs despite being one of the league's elite talents, his Pelicans squad were looking like they might not just make the postseason, but give any potential opponents real fits. Boogie, the Brow, and Jrue Holiday (whose game I have always adored, sometimes irrationally) were a triumvirate that ran somewhat counter to the NBA's current ethos. They were stretching and spacing but also bludgeoning and hammering. The perfect miasma of a good-to-great combo guard and two bigs who played stretch-4 and -5 while retaining enough old-school Twin Towers elements to flummox any defense. Now Cousins is out for the year and change with an injury that has a history of limiting and/or destroying careers, specifically those of NBA big men.
Then there's Kristaps Porzingis, who came down on The Greek Freak's foot and will not be returning to the court any time soon. No fan base, especially one as ride-or-die as New York's, should have to go through what Knicks fans have suffered in the Dolan era. Decades of incompetence punctuated by the myriad "almosts" of the Ewing era; Stat punching the fire extinguisher; Phil Jackson's calamitous return. It's been an abject disaster for a long, long time in NYC. And they finally had a glimmer of hope in a transcendent young talent. And that hope was decimated in the space of a few seconds and one fluke play.
It's so fucking cruel and so fucking horrible. For the Knicks and the Pelicans and every basketball fan on earth. Fucking cruel and fucking horrible. All of it.
And then the trade deadline happened.
January-February Cavs panic has been a tradition ever since LeBron came back to Cleveland. It's just a thing we do and then laugh at ourselves later when 'Bron drags another squad back to the Finals. Every year, James and his running mates slog through a malaise and then turn on the jets and decimate everything in their path. This year was the craziest tightrope they've ever walked, and I'm not sure they found their balance again this time. The avalanche of moves Cleveland made did help. It made the team younger and better, and they kept the Brooklyn pick. But damn, it feels like King James might have finally met a situation he can't overcome with his unique and incredible brilliance.
Hanging over all of this is the disappointment Adam Silver has been this season. Silver was hailed as a visionary almost from jump when he took over from David Stern; a man who understood basketball's place in both American and global culture. He was going to shepherd the NBA into the new reality of streaming rights, accessibility, and social activism. He seemed to be analogous to the current Pope Francis in a way, open to dialogue and intent on growing the game while respecting and nurturing the needs and aims of the men who play it. And yet, in a league that has been both historically and recently progressive in its public-facing values, Silver has pulled in the reins at some truly odd inflection points. He issued a statement against kneeling for the National Anthem, despite knowing full well why it was being done in the NFL and also that his league's players and fans would likely have supported what that kneeling represents. On a far, far more trivial note, he also failed to comprehend that the maximum delight fans could mine from the school-yard pick 'em format of this year's All Star Game could only be delivered by a live, televised broadcast of the team selections. The legalized gambling initiative is nice and all, but Silver has still floundered at some key spots.
I have faith that both Silver and the league will get there. I truly do. And this season has not been wholly devoid of things to love and revere and adore and have a good laugh over. Sure, the Warriors still look like an indestructible juggernaut, but Good Gawd: Portland and Denver and Minnesota and Miami and Detroit (especially post-Griffin-trade) and Washington (post-John-Wall-yet-another-cruel-injury-but-they're-fun-anyway) and new-look-Big-3 OKC the Oladipo-powered Pacers and in particular Houston have all been incredibly fun to watch this year. I am delighted to have been wrong about how CP3's game would integrate into the Rockets' offense. Watching that team is pure joy.
This world is so fucked up right now. This country, especially. And the game I hold dearest, even with some of its most prominent voices addressing that fucked-up-ness and advocating for change, still seems to be mirroring both the country and the larger world in which it is played.
It is still, it is always, NBA basketball, and there is not a sports thing on this earth that makes me happier. But it's been a janky, confusing, and somewhat depressing season, and even with the joy and the highlights and everything else to love about this game, it's been strange and disquieting this year. And I can't help but hope. I hope things will be less cruel, less disjointed, less strange in the future. I hope things will maybe get a little better for everyone.
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