Not to be a killjoy, but the upcoming two years filled with Kevin Durant to D.C. fodder is going to be really fucking miserable.
And here I am contributing to it. Clearly.
There is a saving grace, however. The Wizards are expected to be a damn nice team next season. Might even compete for the Eastern Conference Finals (or NBA Finals … hell), provided health. #Pray4Nene, as always, but let’s remember: there is good basketball now showing right here in the District.
Otherwise, the Durant stuff. I get it. It’d be nice for him to come “home.” He’s really fucking good. Like really.
Click-baiting headlines certainly (and thusly) will tickle the undercarriage of those thirsty for ‘news’ about nothing regarding one of the entire world’s top two players.
Plus, as SB Nation’s Mike Prada puts it via Twitter, “I know we’re all burned out from the long season + offseason, but if NBA teams are thinking about KD’s free agency in ’16, so can we.”
But NBA teams, like most business, sometimes try to plan for the future. Sometimes. And the Wizards are … trying. Trying to maintain flexibility for the summer of 2016, at least, when so-and-so will be a free agent. But they didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning—even before pixels.
Also: NBA teams are not necessarily in the business of skull-fucking pixels to death to the point where Kevin Durant’s mom is being followed to the grocery story**, inducing a series of hand-signals from one observer to an array of well-placed Morse Code operatives via spotlights whose job it is to translate what type of bowel movement Durant will have the next time he visits mom, predicated on what she buys at the Shopper’s Food Warehouse (or rather, Whole Foods), and what it all means to the deep down feeling in Durant’s gut about playing pro basketball as a career choice near Seat Pleasant, MD, his hometown.
(**Um, no, this didn’t happen. But you were wondering for a second, weren’t you? More likely: some scrawny-looking kid wearing a white t-shirt with ‘We miss you before we ever had you’ on the front and ‘KD2DC 2016′ on the back crudely written in Sharpie will wander onto the court when Durant plays at the Verizon Center next season.)
But, alas, some people’s business is to skull-fuck the pixels. The recycling that’s currently polluting the sports internet (and ‘the’ Google) is also the Web’s currency. And thus, Prada kindly apologizes for the future skull-fuckery, via Twitter: “I’m sorry in advance for all the obnoxious KD to DC stuff we’ll surely be doing on @BulletsForever for the next 23 months.”
It is what it is, according to Mike Miller-dearest once upon a lifetime. If you aren’t skull-fucking then someone else is skull-fucking. And if they do it first and you don’t do it, then you will look bad—fucking some dehydrated, recycled-material science lab skull instead of a real one. And then the SEO will not be optimized.
At this point it must be relayed:
Sorry for the vulgar language.
Sorry for the presumed bitterness.
Sorry that I don’t even know what this is about.
I bet Kevin Durant thinks this song is about him.
Maybe it’s just one guy’s way of coping with the heartburn. Certainly many of the skull-fuckers are also thinking such. Well, I get to write it. Plus, it’s certainly understood that we are at peak time of Kevin Durant speculation. Barely anything is going on in the sports world and Durant just happens to be training for Team USA with John Wall and Bradley Beal in Las Vegas. Synergy!
Maybe this whole charade only bubbles up just once more before the regular season (doubtful!) … and of course twice during the regular season when the Wizards and Thunder face each other … and of course when Mama Durant, the Real MVP, goes to the grocery store … and of course when the Wizards hire Durant’s high school math teacher to be their head of analytics … and of course when—well, you get the idea.
Mr. Prada, for consistency’s sake, has even pixelized his apology for the Durant coverage with Durant coverage in the form of an apology. Prada makes many valid points about relevancy in a ‘Welp, if there isn’t anything else to do, watching the grass grow greener is a comfortable default’ type of way. Part of his argument: “Hope sustains fandom.”
The story is about the story. A fan reads the story about the story about the fans making it a story and it is more a story than it was ten seconds ago. The world spins, sure, but the timeline branches. The branch will not break. Even an Oklahoma Thunder City blogger admits the relevancy … while prognosticating that Durant doesn’t need to win a championship to keep him in OKC. Maybe not winning a ring in the next two seasons will increase the chance that he stays put, the blogger counters.
Hope is just lining up to be hopeful, which is why hopelessness has led to a dearth of D.C. Wizards fans in recent history, leading to the team actually losing money during its first playoff appearance in six seasons. Hope, huh? More like: Bandwagoning sustains individualistic idolatry. But hey, so is life.
Why am I here again? Maybe its to cash in on the Durant hysteria (hint: this blogging game ain’t really making nobody no cash—read more here, young blogger). Maybe it’s to cope. Maybe it’s to wonder. Maybe it’s a vain attempt to get those damn Durant kids to get off my lawn.
Maybe it’s… DAMMIT!? You guys already made Durant delete his Twitter app from his phone?
“iPhone go silent, like I ain’t need the stress,” Durant recently tweeted from his @KDtrey5 account.
May the basketball gods have mercy on your hopeless, hapless, and #SoWizards souls. (Guess there’s always Instagram, kids.)
Otherwise, I’m totally on board with the #KD2DC movement. How can we make this happen for really real?