This writing project is courtesy of everyone's good friend Angelo. I'll let him describe it:

A friend challenged me to a writing contest. The basic premise is that for two months, she will send me a writing prompt twice a week. 750 word response. I will do the same with her. The point is to get some experience/feedback writing a bunch of different, unusual things with odd prompts that you don't expect. Would you be interested in doing one a week for the rest of the offseason?

Fun times in Cleveland today. (Cleveland!) He's posting his on Goodspeed and Poe, everyone's favorite blog. I'm posting my contributions on Gothic Ginobili, everyone's favorite basketball. No, I didn't mean to type "basketball blog." Gothic Ginobili is not a blog. Gothic Ginobili is a basketball. If you disagree with this particular assessment, you just haven't experienced this place properly yet. Here are the previous prompts:

• WEEK #1: Dispatches from 3030 & Drive Thru Disaster
• WEEK #2: The Dangers of Thrift & Forever Inked
• WEEK #3: MackGuire vs Hogan & Mega Blogger Man
  
• WEEK #4: Moosepocalypse Now & Leave it to Beaver
• WEEK #5: Halloween Follies & The Boy Who Cried Apocalypse

Here's this week's prompt.

• • •

PROMPT #6: GTA: Grand Theft Aaron. As my life right now is primarily composed of Breaking Bad re-watches & playing GTA 5, the topic of crime is foremost in my mind. What would it take for you, Mr McGuire, to abandon your life of statistical analysis & turn to a life of crime? What would your crime of choice be? Would you go all Walter White and enter the drug trade? Take after Trevor Phillips and become a complete psychopath? Or perhaps would you use your statistical prowess in some sort of white collar endeavor?

To a certain extent, crime is often precluded by a sort of moral code. Dexter Morgan's code made sure that he only killed serial killers and his popular eponymous television show. Walter White constantly states that he's willing to give up everything to save his family -- whether or not you believe him is another matter, but there's a stated code to the way he acts. Avon Barksdale's code precludes him from ordering a hit on the Lord's day of rest. John Marston commits his crimes for his kidnapped family. Et cetera, et cetera. Criminals in popular fiction almost always have some sort of warped morality play in their wheelhouse. It serves two purposes -- it allows the criminals to justify their actions and allows the mass audience to find some tiny common ground with a criminal they'd normally detest. For the purposes of this question, though, I'm trying to get to the bottom of the first purpose. What crimes, exactly, could I justify to myself if I had to try?

Let's start high and descend slowly. First, we'll start with the highest crime of all: domestic terrorism. And the answer to that is an obvious "no." It breaks morality on several levels. It kills innocent people as well as any guilty people who happen to be in the vicinity, it causes massive property damage, and can serve as justification for misguided mass military action. That's decidedly beyond my ability to justify. There is no cause I can think of that would make domestic terrorism something I could live with. What about the individual pieces of domestic terrorism? Property damage seems like an easy "sure, I could do that!" crime until one really starts to ruminate on the consequences. Who pays for rebuilding property you destroyed? Depending on the property, it could be any number of people who aren't at all responsible for ill action towards anyone. And even if crooked insurance companies are paying out for your damage, the inconvenience to everyone caused by the damage can often be entirely too much. (Seriously, have you ever lived near a place that was recently vandalized and is undergoing massive repairs? It sucks!) And if you're destroying a little mom-and-pop store, your act of vandalism may very well be enough to put them out of business and on the street. Smooth move, Ferguson.

Then there's the obvious biggie -- murder. Could I actually kill someone? I'd never say never, but I'd deem it highly unlikely. Look: I still feel a twinge of guilt every time I recall making fun of a kid in elementary school. Even for the most grotesque of individuals, there are still a few people on Earth who care about them. Mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers. A murder you get away with is still a murder that leaves family and friends grasping for reasons why it happened. Could I live with that on my conscience? Not sure. And we're talking about a life of crime, here -- I'm just talking about a single murder. Perhaps I'd go Walter White on life and stop caring about murders after I commit my 5th. But I feel it's far more likely I'd make a mistake disposing evidence or turn myself in out of guilt. I can only imagine being okay with murder in cases of extreme self defense -- that is, a position where family or self is being mortally threatened and the only way out is to kill the threat who's looming. Or someone who threatens my livelihood in such a way that would destroy everything I've worked to achieve.

So, yes. Maybe I could murder under the proper circumstances. Still, that doesn't mean I'd be able to murder lightly. And there's still the matter of finding a criminal livelihood that would be even remotely possible under my personal moral mores. That leaves one criminal potentiality: white collar crime. There are a lot of ways to go about that. Fraud, money laundering, covert heists. But every action runs up against a serious problem, for me -- I have no desire whatsoever to harm those less fortunate than myself. If I feel the need to steal when I already have more than the people I'm stealing from, I'm putting them in a legitimately impossible situation. I'd feel guilty as hell. The unfettered avarice you need to feel to steal from the less fortunate disturbs me. Could I live with that? Probably not.

But then there's the other side of stealing -- skimming from the rich. But then you're faced with yet another moral quandary. Is it all THAT much better to steal from richer people, if you aren't keying in on those whose fortunes are largely illicit? There's a large chance I'm stealing away well-earned money that people worked extremely hard to cultivate. Is that really worth it? Professional money laundering is an easy white-collar crime tactic, but then you're simply enabling all the crimes listed above that I am morally uneasy on. At what point would I turn to a life of crime? I'd assume I'd need to have exhausted every possible means of legal living, and I'd need to have people who depend on me financially. That way, I could feel less conflicted about stealing from anyone. But then I'd be working with zero resources. How do you start a life of rewarding white collar crime with zero resources?

... okay, you know what? Angelo, I think all I've realized from this prompt is that I'm by far the worst criminal ever. But it's okay, I finally figured out my calling. When I was a kid, I kinda liked politics. Really wanted to be Sam Seaborn. Let's say THAT'S how I get into a life of crime -- I sign on as a starry-eyed speechwriter for an idealistic world-builder. I get elected to public office and gradually lose my principles a la Thomas Carcetti. I steal from the government by offering up terrible contracts for kickbacks and regulations that cause incredible cronyism. I retire and become a lobbyist trafficking in war machines. Beautiful, simple, completely believable. Classic story.

Thanks, Obama.

• • •

Just a programming note -- our normal basketball-heavy content will begin anew this October. Get excited!

Continue reading

This writing project is courtesy of everyone's good friend Angelo. I'll let him describe it:

A friend challenged me to a writing contest. The basic premise is that for two months, she will send me a writing prompt twice a week. 750 word response. I will do the same with her. The point is to get some experience/feedback writing a bunch of different, unusual things with odd prompts that you don't expect. Would you be interested in doing one a week for the rest of the offseason?

Fun times in Cleveland today. (Cleveland!) He's posting his on Goodspeed and Poe, everyone's favorite blog. I'm posting my contributions on Gothic Ginobili, everyone's favorite basketball. No, I didn't mean to type "basketball blog." Gothic Ginobili is not a blog. Gothic Ginobili is a basketball. If you disagree with this particular assessment, you just haven't experienced this place properly yet. Here are the previous prompts:

• WEEK #1: Dispatches from 3030 & Drive Thru Disaster
• WEEK #2: The Dangers of Thrift & Forever Inked
• WEEK #3: MackGuire vs Hogan & Mega Blogger Man
  
• WEEK #4: Moosepocalypse Now & Leave it to Beaver

Here's this week's prompt.

• • •

PROMPT #5: This is the time of year when I really start gearing up for Halloween. Despite what many adults would say, Halloween is easily the best holiday of the year. Shitty horror movies are on TV all the time, you can binge eat candy without any of your coworkers guilt tripping you and talking about the "paleo diet", and pumpkin flavored everything is everywhere. It's the greatest. That said, the best part of Halloween is easily the Halloween party and the corresponding costumes. And that brings us to your prompt, Aaron. Give us all a brief history of the Halloween costumes of Aaron McGuire. What are you most proud of? The most ashamed? Have you ever seen a costume that brought a tear to your eye? Any that made you shudder in fright?

A brief history of my Halloween costumes is just that: brief. For someone that's as huge of an unrepentant nerd as I am, I've never been one to really go all-out and create a super-intricate Halloween costume. I've been content to linger with the unwashed masses, reveling in our completely unremarkable costumes and leaving the truly impressive stuff for others. Most of my costumes were so unremarkable as to be totally forgettable, and I honestly can't say I remember what I went as for most of them.

The ones I remember include:

• Age 5: Waldo from Where's Waldo. (There are some really adorable pictures of this one.)
• Age 6: Steven Spielberg (Yes, I went as a famous Jewish filmmaker as a 6-year-old. Classic Aaron McGuire.)
• Age 9: Obi-Wan Kenobi (The cloak from this one formed the basis of every costume I wore for the next 5 years.)
• Age 17: Dr. McNinja (From the webcomic, unexpectedly titled The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.)
• Age 21: Scarecrow (From Wizard of Oz. Girlfriend went as Dorothy.)

That's all I really can recall, which is both the sign of someone who really didn't put a wealth of effort into the craft and a sign of someone who didn't have particularly good ideas to begin with. At least I didn't ever go with any of the classics (Frankenstein's monster, zombies, warlocks) -- I would've probably made a mockery of them, and if you're gonna make a mockery of a costume you might as well keep it relatively off the beaten path. I added a photograph of my Dr. McNinja costume to the front of the post, as well as a photograph of my scarecrow costume to the bottom. As those are by far my two best ones, you can make your own silent judgments on the rest of them from there. In terms of pride and shame, I'm a bit proud of the Dr. McNinja costume simply because it was a cheap-yet-fun costume that I thought I executed reasonably well with scant little money to spend on it. Using my Obi-Wan Kenobi cloak for five years of costumes would be my biggest source of shame -- few things are more shameful than Halloween half-measures, and recycling a costume for that long is the king of all half-measures.

As for the costumes of others, that's another admittedly scant subject for me. When I was in college, I somehow managed to be working on Halloween night every single year. The night I was Dr. McNinja, I didn't even go out -- I stayed in and handed out candy while my parents had a relaxing night with the X-Files movie and my brother trick-or-treated with friends. There was only one particularly costume-filled Halloween night, and that was the time I went as Scarecrow, traveled back to Chapel Hill, went to one a Halloween party thrown by some of my UNC friends. If you aren't familiar, UNC's Franklin Street goes nuts on Halloween. They rope off several blocks and it becomes a gigantic outdoor party, one of drunk heckling and costume admiration all around. While I've only been there once, I have to admit, it was pretty fantastic. The creativity was incredible. Costumes I can remember off the top of my head include:

• A living set of Tetris pieces, occasionally being lifted up and placed atop each other.

• One man went as a giant (and semi-functional!!!) Connect Four board. Rajon Rondo would've freaked.

• Scrabble tiles. (Carved ones, too -- not just flimsy cardboard crap, they actually carved out life-size scrabble tiles.)

• Some frat boys went as a centaur. Wouldn't have been notable, except it looked exactly like the Alex Rodriguez centaur that everyone knows about. Which is, you know, completely 100% perfect.

• Seven people fully painted themselves the seven shades of a rainbow. Pedestrian, right? Wrong -- they moved in complete concert with each other, never breaking character as a living rainbow for over an hour.

What.

Look, Angelo. I'm not saying that you need to make a point to come to Chapel Hill just to see their Halloween celebrations. I'm just saying that exact thing I just said I wasn't saying, you know? I am not enticing you to come to Chapel Hill, except for the part where that is exactly what I'm doing. The decision is entirely up to you, although there is a clear delineation between right and wrong in this specific case. No judgment here, except the judgment I am making right at this very moment on you as a human being. Feel free to do whatever it is you want to do, as long as whatever you want to do intersects with exactly what I have outlined in this confusing paragraph.

... Happy Halloween!

Continue reading

This writing project is courtesy of everyone's good friend Angelo. I'll let him describe it:

A friend challenged me to a writing contest. The basic premise is that for two months, she will send me a writing prompt twice a week. 750 word response. I will do the same with her. The point is to get some experience/feedback writing a bunch of different, unusual things with odd prompts that you don't expect. Would you be interested in doing one a week for the rest of the offseason?

Fun times in Cleveland today. (Cleveland!) He's posting his on Goodspeed and Poe, everyone's favorite blog. I'm posting my contributions (apparently!) on Gothic Ginobili, everyone's favorite basketball. No, I didn't mean to type "basketball blog." Gothic Ginobili is not a blog. Gothic Ginobili is a basketball. If you disagree with this particular assessment, you just haven't experienced this place properly yet. Here are the previous prompts:

• WEEK #1: Dispatches from 3030 & Drive Thru Disaster
• WEEK #2: The Dangers of Thrift & Forever Inked
• WEEK #3: MackGuire vs Hogan & Mega Blogger Man
  

Here's last week's prompt. (We gave ourselves a week off due to labor day weekend getting up in our business.)

• • •

PROMPT #4: You are the head of programming at the Syfy channel. In recent years, the Syfy channel has discovered the formula for made-for-TV movie success; washed up stars from 90's television shows and ridiculous monsters. Unfortunately, after the successes of films like Sharktopus, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, Sharknado, Dinoshark, Spring Break Shark Attack, Sharks in Venice, and Ghost Shark, the public is beginning to sour on films involving the aquatic predators. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find the next big thing in Syfy entertainment. The one catch? The financiers have refused to fund another film involving sharks. Without sharks, what creature will the film revolve around? What will it be called? And finally, what washed up star will play the lead?

MEMO TO FINANCIERS

That's sharky? That's malarky. You speak, we hear. SyFy's new intellectual property is poised to blow any residual shark-tinged viewer fantasies out of the water, and begin a new age of made-for-TV faux-horror. We know you don't want sharks. We don't either. And though our viewers would disagree, they're just in denial. You know that, we know that, end of story. Sharks are old hat. Old, profitable, fearmongering, classic, and totally unremarkable hat. Those are the kinds of hat they are. Those are not hats I would like to wear, and I am incredibly fashionable. I bet they aren't the kinds of hats you want either. Instead of those outmoded tams, we put on some thinking caps. Really classy. And we racked our brains til' the ribs were jealous. And after all that, we came up with an idea that really pops. Absolutely guaranteed to open your hearts, minds, and -- most importantly -- wallets.

Prepare yourselves... for "Moosepocalypse Now."

As the maiden installment, Moosepocalypse Now represents the first salvo in what's sure to be SyFy's next big faux-franchise. The sea is dark and mysterious, with briny depths unknown and horrors unseen by man. But that reliable spookiness is exactly why our next property can't come from the sea -- it's too expected. Too vanilla. Too boring. Instead, we're taking our cue from the frigid hinterlands, and our animal from a too often slept-on time bomb. Have you ever thought about just how easily a moose could murder you, your wife, and your infant daughter? Have you ever considered the dire threat they could pose to humanity, if only they felt the need? I assume you have not. Please peruse this list of True Moose Facts, and try to keep your creeping terrors at bay.

• Bull moose antlers can span up to six feet wide. If sanded to jagged edges, that's a living chainsaw.

• A fully-grown moose can weigh up to 1500 pounds. That's not a typo. If two of them teamed up, they'd outweigh most sedans.

• At full stride, a moose can run 35 miles an hour. You can get speeding tickets at moose running speed.

• Moose can swim at 6 MPH. Think you can get away from a killer moose by jumping into the water? Think again, fatso! (Sorry. Your weight is a sore subject. I'll keep that to myself.)

• Despite their size, due to large hooves and deft feet, a moose can travel silently through snow, underbrush, and muskeg. Metal Gear Solid 5 -- Solid Moose Strikes Back.

And that all ignores the fact that the moose may be the strongest animal on the face of the earth -- their legs are only thin on appearance, their muscle mass is legendary. The moose race -- if they ever woke up -- represent a huge danger to society at large. And that's exactly what we plan to film. In Moosepocalypse Now, FBI agent Kelsey Fringmann (played by Anthony Michael Hall, known for his work in The Dead Zone, Edward Scissorhands, The Breakfast Club, and vanishing into the ether after The Dead Zone concluded) investigates a series of strange happenings in Maine. Gruesome bloody massacres, people with their heads crushed like soda cans, cars stomped and thrown into rivers, buildings trampled. Nobody knows what could possibly be causing it.

The first act covers both their investigation and a mirroring thread in Russia. The caretakers of Russia's moose conservatory (led by Yakov Dramadov, played by Anton Yelchin) have noticed a spate of odd behavior from their formerly docile moose population. They're getting hyped. In the movie's suspenseful middle-act, the moose revolt in Maine and Russia, leveling towns and producing large-scale destruction the likes of which no military unit has ever seen. It's revealed that Russian testing of a new chemical agent has mutated hundreds of Russian specimen into super-mutant moose warlords, 7000 pound behemoths that are virtually impervious to bullets and possess the speed and intelligence to outsmart and destroy tanks and helicopters. These super-moose agents have developed a telepathic link to the planet's moose population, inciting them to revolt and instigating a mass takeover of the northeastern United States, Canada, Russia, and Alaska.

In the movie's final act, the super-moose warlords -- now firmly in control of St. Petersburg and Moscow -- are inching closer to figuring out Russia's nuclear launch codes, with every intention of carpet-bombing the civilized world with nukes and leaving the noble moose as Earth's last remaining sentient species. It's up to Agent Fringmann and Dr. Dramadov to unite the gene sequences from two improbably similar USA/USSR testing sites to produce a moose-targeting biological weapon that will kill off the super-moose warlords and save humanity. Will they succeed? Will the moose reign be thwarted? We don't know, because we actually haven't written a script yet. What, you think we actually write the scripts for these things before we start production?

Shut UP, dude, that's ridiculous.

Coming this fall to a SyFy near you: MOOSEPOCALYPSE NOW. Don't miss it.

-- GERALDINE Q. MEGABUXX, SyFy Head of Programming

Continue reading

This writing project is courtesy of everyone's good friend Angelo. I'll let him describe it:

A friend challenged me to a writing contest. The basic premise is that for two months, she will send me a writing prompt twice a week. 750 word response. I will do the same with her. The point is to get some experience/feedback writing a bunch of different, unusual things with odd prompts that you don't expect. Would you be interested in doing one a week for the rest of the offseason?

Fun times in Cleveland today. (Cleveland!) Now, that said, we started this exercise a month ago and only recently finished our first contributions. He's posting his on Goodspeed and Poe, everyone's favorite blog. I'm posting my contributions (apparently!) on Gothic Ginobili, everyone's favorite basketball. No, I didn't mean to type "basketball blog." Gothic Ginobili is not a blog. Gothic Ginobili is a basketball. If you disagree with this particular assessment, you just haven't experienced this place properly yet. Here are the previous prompts:

• WEEK #1: Dispatches from 3030 & Drive Thru Disaster
• WEEK #2: The Dangers of Thrift & Forever Inked

Here's this week's prompt. Angelo was really mean to me this week.

• • •

PROMPT #3: The year is 1988. It's the evening before the World Wrestling Federation's flagship event, Wrestlemania and you, Aaron McGuire, have a shot at the WWF Championship. Your opponent is none other than the legendary Hulk Hogan. You find yourself in front of a green screen with a camera pointed on you. It's time to film your pre-match promo in which you get to address your opponent one last time before you two face off in the squared circle.

What do you say?

You have the creative freedom to create your character as you see fit but with one limitation. As it is 1988, you are the product of the '80's pro wrestling circuit. As such, assume your brain is under the influence of the same amount of steroids, cocaine and concussions as all pro wrestlers of the era. Think like a wrestler, McGuire.

[The camera turns on. MCGUIRE stares into it blankly for what seems like an hour. He speaks.]

MCGUIRE: I brought a dictionary, Hulk Hogan.

[He reaches down and picks up a dictionary off the ground. He flips through it, seemingly completely unaware of the large bookmark roughly two thirds of the way through the tome. After some mindless flipping, he realizes the bookmark exists and turns to it, tossing the bookmark aside.]

MCGUIRE: I'm not big... on words. I'm big on results. I'm big on being big. I'm big on the Mack. I am "Mack Hammer" MackGuire, the greatest to ever flex. You? You're Hulk Hogan. And when I think of Hulk Hogan, I think of this thing.

[MCGUIRE MACKGUIRE waves the dictionary.]

MACKGUIRE: I think of WORDS, Hulk Hogan. Words I don't like. Words I hate. And one word for sure. It is the word called... traitor. It says here, in the Yoxford Real American Dictionary, that you only need two words to define a true traitor to his people. Do you know what those words are, Hulk Hogan?

[He begins to tear pages out of the dictionary indiscriminately. He takes special care to rip out the page that contains the word "traitor", shoving it into his mouth like a raspberry danish gone wrong. He flexes, chews, and yells.]

MACKGUIRE: THOSE WORDS ARE HULK HOGAN.

[He swallows.]

MACKGUIRE: Dictionaries are for nerds and televisions and heads. You don't have any of those, so you probably never knew you were in the dictionary. But that's OK, Hulk Hogan. Because you won't ever have the chance to. I just wanted you to know before Wrestlemania ends you. Because it will, Hulk Hogan. You don't understand these demons. You don't get it.

[He goes silent. The camera zooms in on his eyes. This zoom takes roughly 20 seconds of dead air.]

MACKGUIRE: I am the swamp giant, Hulk Hogan.

[The camera shakes, as if to emulate an earthquake. It instead emulates your father's Christmas home movies.]

MACKGUIRE: Long ago I rose from the swamp at the bottom of the ocean, hungry for sharks and blood. But I'm all out of sharks and blood only makes sense when it's from a traitor, because that's the rules of blood. Rules that people know. Except for traitors, because they don't GET to know that. They don't GET to understand. And you, Hulk Hogan, you're the biggest traitor of them all. You gave up Wrestlemania. You gave up your friends and family. All for what? All for WHAT, HOGAN?

[He stops. He might have lost track of what he was saying, much like everyone watching.]

MACKGUIRE: Hooooooooo... gaaaaaan...

[Oh, nevermind, he's back on track, guess he just wanted to be dramatic.]

MACKGUIRE: Traitors never prosper, except when they're Eggs Benedict. He prospered back when Lincoln was president and the world was different. But you, Hulk Hogan, you're no Eggs Benedict. You're not even the Pope. You're Hulk Hogan, which is a noun, which is a dictionary for traitor. The swamp giant was made to eat traitors for breakfast. And the Mack Hammer never surrenders. Not like you. You always surrender. I know you, even if you think I don't. So step up to that ring, Hulk Hogan, and fight me like a man. And I will destroy you, just like the traitor you are. Just like the traitor you knew you'd be. Kiss your world goodbye, Hulk Hogan. Because it's about to be over. Traitor.

[He mean-mugs the camera, flexing incoherently. Camera fades to black.]

Continue reading

This writing project is courtesy of everyone's good friend Angelo. I'll let him describe it:

A friend challenged me to a writing contest. The basic premise is that for two months, she will send me a writing prompt twice a week. 750 word response. I will do the same with her. The point is to get some experience/feedback writing a bunch of different, unusual things with odd prompts that you don't expect. Would you be interested in doing one a week for the rest of the offseason?

Fun times in Cleveland today. (Cleveland!) Now, that said, we started this exercise a month ago and only recently finished our first contributions. He's posting his on Goodspeed and Poe, everyone's favorite blog. I'm posting my contributions (apparently!) on Gothic Ginobili, everyone's favorite basketball. No, I didn't mean to type "basketball blog." Gothic Ginobili is not a blog. Gothic Ginobili is a basketball. If you disagree with this particular assessment, you just haven't experienced this place properly yet. Here are the previous prompts:

• WEEK #1: Dispatches from 3030 & Drive Thru Disaster

Here's this week's prompt, alongside my confessional.

• • •

PROMPT #2: Your next prompt, if you choose to accept it, is to write about the stupidest thing you ever purchased. Why did you buy it? How has it affected your life? How would your life be different if you had that money back and could choose to invest it more wisely?

A little bit of background on me: I'm thrifty. Full-blown penny-pincher. Cheap, on any given Monday. I value my money and it values me. (It does not value me. Money is not a person. That sentence was untrue.) For me, retail therapy involves going to Costco and finding a great deal on snacks I'd buy anyway. Clipping a coupon and applying it at the exact perfect moment. Example: I cook a LOT of soup. Every few weeks, I make a ton of soup and I jar it into Ball jars and I eat the soup as a side for the next few weeks. It's neat. Thing is: I only got a ladle two weeks ago. That's right -- for two years of my life I made soup every 10-15 days, but I never thought to get a ladle to serve it. I'd just tip the pot and use measuring cups for soup disbursement. Seriously. My friends made fun of me for it, but I'm not in the business of changing my life just to accommodate the naysayers and people named Gerald. Gerald can find his own way.

I'm thrifty and generally prone to making best with quite little. And for this very reason, I had trouble thinking of any particular purchase that was too large and too stupid. This is hardly just me, of course -- most people remember their purchasing successes long before they recall their purchasing failures. Hindsight is usually 20/20 for your triumphs and cloudy for your failures. It's the way of things. I had to think back hard to remember the poor investments I'd made in my life. My college education was a bit of a poor investment -- I could've gone to a state school on a full ride, but I chose to go out of state for slight added benefit. My first (and current) car -- a used 2009 Toyota Camry -- is serviceable. But at the price I paid for it, I should've just bit the bullet and gotten a new car. Used cars lose most of their value the second you take them off the lot, despite the fact that you still have 6-7 years of paying for it. Come on, Aaron. Get it together. I could also talk about my enormous book collection, one of the few things I collect. Dropped many ducats on the craft, for sure. Do I need it? Perhaps not. Perhaps so. I do not know.

None of those things are the stupidest purchase I've ever made. The stupidest purchase I ever made defines me. It's a scarlet letter. It's a flashing neon symbol of cheapness and thrift-over-blood that I should've figured out from the start. I have been trapped in this hell for years, my friends -- I must confess and seek absolution for this sin. It's one thing to buy multi-use kitchen tools so that everything stays in your cooking rotation. It's one thing to buy bulk items from Costco and freeze extra things in the freezer to keep them longer. It's one thing to eat slightly-maybe-a-few-days-expired food as long as it doesn't look or smell disgusting. It's one thing to take your garbage to the dump by hand because you haven't gotten the motivation to purchase garbage service for your home yet.

It's quite another to ever buy the cheapest toilet paper. At Costco.

I don't want to give you the gory details. Nobody wants to hear that. Ever. What happens in the bathroom is humanity's grandest secret. There is nothing to be said, no words to be shared. I stare silently at you, you stare silently at me. You turn up your nose. I shake my head and stare at my feet, ashamed. This is the way of things, and this is how it must be. But you know exactly what I mean when I say that this -- this -- was the stupidest purchase I ever made.

Look, Costco sells things in grotesque bulk. You know this. In a moment of weakness, two years prior, I chose to go with the cheapest of all possible toilet papers. I am not a wastrel. If I waste a single pea on a plate of prepared food, I feel bad. So I knew going in that I was going to have to use all the damn paper if I intended to ever move up in the world. But what the doomed never realizes is just how long that take__s. I also did not realize that the questionable luxury of good toilet paper is only truly possible to understand when you experience its absence for several years of your life. I also did not fully comprehend my impending shame. Imagine: friends come over. They need a restroom. You watch helplessly as your friends and family enter the valley of the shadow of death. You cringe. You shiver. You know the truth.

Might as well just dab it with cyanide and get it over with, huh? Death by toilet paper only seems impossible until you buy the worst toilet paper. Then you know. Then you are made aware of the possibilities. It is horrible, to buy the worst toilet paper. It is unnecessary. Why did you do it, Aaron? "Oh, I saved a quarter." Stop. Cease. You mortgaged years of your life away. You became the evil you sought to conquer. You sold out for twenty-five cents. Even Judas Iscarot got thirty. You are a fool, McGuire, consumed by thrift and reduced to dust. "You are a toilet seat that smokes a cigar."

... Now, uh, that said, I don't really know what I'd do with that money if I hadn't bought them. I mean, Christ, guys. It's like two dollars. I'm going to assume I would have put it towards toilet paper that didn't make me want to skydive without a parachute. My life would be improved, and I would be twenty-five cents poorer. I would be infinitely wiser, although without this prolonged suffering, I may never have properly learned this lesson. Perhaps it's all for the best.

(No. No it is not. Never do this.)

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Hey, all. Having a good summer? Yep. Me too. I've been enjoying my time away from basketball, truth be told. You have to realize this -- no matter how much a person enjoys writing about hoops, a 370,000 series crammed into one month combined with 3-4 posts a week for the preceding and following 7 months is completely exhausting. I've been taking the time to get into video games I never played (currently slogging through Mass Effect, just finished Half-Life 2, et cetera), sleep more than I'm used to, and affect mischief around the town. Fun times forever. That said, I love writing. No matter how slowly I'm getting back into the swing of my basketball writing, I'm still doing a few tertiary writing projects. On Twitter's recommendation, I decided to bring one of my projects to Gothic Ginobili. This one is courtesy of everyone's good friend Angelo, and I'll let him describe it:

A friend challenged me to a writing contest. The basic premise is that for two months, she will send me a writing prompt twice a week. 750 word response. I will do the same with her. The point is to get some experience/feedback writing a bunch of different, unusual things with odd prompts that you don't expect. Would you be interested in doing one a week for the rest of the offseason?

Fun times in Cleveland today. (Cleveland!) Now, that said, we started this exercise a month ago and only recently finished our first contributions. He's posting his on Goodspeed and Poe, everyone's favorite blog. I'm posting my contributions (apparently!) on Gothic Ginobili, everyone's favorite basketball. No, I didn't mean to type "basketball blog." Gothic Ginobili is not a blog. Gothic Ginobili is a basketball. If you disagree with this particular assessment, you just haven't experienced this place properly yet.

Here's this week's prompt, alongside my diary-style response.

• • •

PROMPT #1: You've somehow found yourself somehow transplanted to the year 3030. Aaron McGuire (circa 2013) is trapped in the world of 3030. What do you see? Try to describe it in terms that would make sense to someone of the year 2013. What frightens you the most? What makes you the most hopeful?

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE 3030 -- AARON MCGUIRE, c. 2013

In the year 1030, Olaf II of Norway was slaughtered on the field of battle. (Gross.) Henry I revolted against his father, King Robert, and Romanus III invaded Syria to a crushing defeat at the Battle of Azaz. To my knowledge, these are the three most impactful things that occurred in the year 1030. Which makes it sort of strange that none of these three things had any traceable impact on our modern, 2013-style world. The most immediately evident is Olaf's fate, as he was canonized to become the patron saint of Norway. "Rex perpetuum Norvegiae" -- 'the eternal king of Norway', if you aren't one of those crazy people who speak Latin. The second most immediately evident is Azaz Ansari, who got his name fr--... wait, no, he's Aziz. Wow. This is tough.

Anyways. Point is: in 2013, we didn't know JACK about what happened a thousand years prior. I don't know anything about how King Olaf lived. I don't understand why Romanus III invaded Syria. I don't know why Henry I revolted. We had historical record, and we had scores of brilliant historians who put their life and soul into sifting through the past and pre-digesting historical truths like a beneficent mother bird. As I come to build a comfort level in the year 3030, I realize slowly that our inability to relate to or understand the bygone times isn't some struggle of information flow. Our lack of understanding around the figures who came before us is a persistent bug in the system. It's not an idiosyncrasy of data quality, in short -- it's a fundamental problem with time and the human condition.

The world's different, but the people aren't. We have some absolutely incredible technology here in 3030. World hunger has been eradicated -- humans are fed through these giant floating sky-barns. They're these giant floating globules over every city. They're weird. Every day, rockets with seeds in them get shot into their cores. The seeds disperse, creating a dandelion of genetically perfected vegetables and fruits. They have all of our daily values covered. They rain down from the heavens -- perfectly ripened -- at a specified time each day, and everyone wanders outside to catch them. Overpopulation was solved in a way that terrifies me, a bit -- the human race holds steady at roughly 125% the population of 2013, sterilizing children at random to ensure the population stays in a specified range. Random children! "It's fair if everyone has the same shot, right?" The nuclear family is gone, a bygone product of a lost age. You have a partner, and you have a neighborhood. These are your family. Your children are not yours -- they belong to the world at large, to be redistributed to a community that's lacking. Wealth and monetary achievement are still differential across states and nations, but the fortunes of the world's citizens are more dispersed among individual neighborhoods than the individual actors. People are a bit shorter than in our time, due to stricter height requirements on buildings. At 6'4", I'm something of a monster to my fellow man.

That's the world, though. That's not the people. I started that paragraph with the idea that people "aren't very different." And although I just listed a score of differences and dispersions from our 2013 norm, I stand by that -- society has changed, and the context in which we live is different. But what of people? Citizens of the world? The human soul? We're about the same, believe it or not. We still love and lose and live and lie. We cry and beam, we strive and die. Even in a world where food and survival is no longer a primary concern, we drop bombs over territorial disputes and the most wealthy nations of the world still go crazy to flex our national powers. Even for nothing. World War I started when a Bosnian national assassinated the wrong rich heir. The Great War of 3025 started when a Eurasian spy was shot in an American supermart -- a completely unrelated stickup, with no global consequences anticipated. If I'd been there when it started, I'd have yelled and pounded my fists and tried to make people realize the sad truth: it had happened before! World War I was the same exact thing! Same reasons, same illogic. But the alliances and treaties forced the world into an all-out war. Kids aren't getting sterilized as much, these days -- the population is STILL recovering.

I would've yelled. I would've pointed at the past and pleaded with the powers that be. "Listen to me! It's happened before!" The more I consider it, though, the less faith I have that it would've done anything at all. You know, some historians -- a few fringe 1900s scholars -- yelled their freaking heads off. It never did anything. Nothing whatsoever. That's what's so incredibly frightening about this world of the future. Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but as time goes by, the mistakes are forgotten and the triumphs idealized. World War I's lesson is lost, as generations melt into generations and the future has fewer and fewer direct connections. And then nations allied once more, and the droning march of history trudges onwards into a self-repeating abyss. What use is life, if the hard-fought lessons of your generation have no bearing on anything other than the immediate future? What's the real footprint of a humanity that goes in circles?

But then, hey. Step back a bit. Why worry yourself with the machinations of history when you have the machinations of those around you to distract? Look at yourself in the mirror, Aaron. There's this cute girl. Adrienne. We smile when we pass each other. She slipped me her number the other day. Real hush-hush, you know? We're meeting up for coffee on Thursday. And there's this bubbly anticipation for nothing but the potential of an unknown love. And when you stop rehashing the existential longing of a society that never learns? The concerns seem to fade away. I have her number. She's cute. She seems to like me. What's the distraction, anyway? Is it the fun personal meandering, or the concerns of humanity as a whole? Maybe the meandering is why we're here in the first place. Maybe the broader world is the distraction.

I'll ask her on Thursday. Maybe she'll know.

• • •

If you want to fill out the prompt with your take, the comments are open. I'll be sure to leave my thoughts on any attempts.

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Hey, everyone! We've been taking a bit of a break for the start of summer, but we're back. Our three main writers -- Aaron McGuire, Alex Dewey, and Alex Arnon -- are all slumming it in Vegas to cover the haps and antics of this year's Las Vegas Summer League action. Arnon and McGuire have been in town all weekend, putting together a cornucopia of miniature stories and notes for later digestion. This post represents a throughout-the-day effort by Aaron McGuire to de-mystify the strange and unreasonable tournament structure that the powers that be imposed on the Summer Day's concluding proceedings.

• • •

BRACKETOLOGY, SUMMER LEAGUE EDITION

After years of inconsequential Summer Leagues, the NBA has decided it's time to stop messing around. It's time to get serious, folks. This year, they're attempting to institute an NCAA-style tournament for Summer League competition, leading to an actual Las Vegas Summer League "champeen" (as our lame-duck commissioner might well intone). In it, Summer League's 22 teams will face off for the most illustrious of basketball honors. Summer League Champion. Which team has the heart of a champion, dear readers? Which of these world-beaters will be named the greatest of all the death machines? Who, at the end of the day, will be able to count their rings?!?

... alright, I'll stop. I tried. I'm a statistician, not a hype-man.

Barring some end-state where the summer league tournament is a practice run for a future implementation of the Sports Guy's "entertaining as hell" tournament, just about everyone collected was mystified upon hearing of the hastily-constructed tournament restructuring. This widespread mystification became all the more apparent when the media and fans congregated at Summer League, sat themselves down, and started to look at the schedule to plan out their week's coverage.

"Wait, what?"

Cue widespread confusion. "Who's going to be playing on Wednesday?" ... "When do our beat writers need to go home, exactly?" ... "How bad do you need to be to become the #22 seed at the NBA's Summer League?" Lots of questions, few answers. But have no fear, my friends and neighbors -- we've got you covered. As Tuesday's game action rolls forward, Gothic Ginobili will be solving the NBA's seeding crisis and giving you the juicy details on who's playing who. By the time the day's over, we'll know exactly who is seeded where and the final schedule for Wednesday and Thursday's action.

And we'll look good doing it, too.

• WHAT'S THE BRACKET? •

The bracket can be found here. For your sake, here's a repost of the bracket image.

• HOW'S THE BRACKET SEEDED? •

The seeding system -- while rather annoying to calculate -- is reasonably easy to explain.

• The__ first criteria__ teams are seeded on is overall win-loss record.

  • Given that each team will have 3 games, it's quite likely there are ties in overall record.

• Assuming a tie in overall record, the second tiebreaker is a point system related to the number of quarters that individual team has won. The system gives teams one point for a quarter they won, half a point for a quarter they tied, and zero points for a quarter they lost.

• If there is a tie between both overall W/L record and their "quarter points", the third tiebreaker is the team's head-to-head record -- if the tied teams had previously played each other in summer league, the winner of that game gets the higher seed.
• The fourth tiebreaker is point differential.
• And the final tiebreaker, in the unlikely event that EVERY SINGLE ONE of these criteria is tied, is a coin -- seeding would be determined by coin flip.

Piece of cake, right? (Jokes aside, it's a reasonably well designed system given the constraints. Good job, NBA.)

• WHAT DO THE STANDINGS LOOK LIKE? •

Here's the most relevant part of this post for those still reading. What do the standings look like? Who's going to be playing who?

What do these standings tell us? A few things. On Wednesday, seeds 12 through 22 will see action -- that means none of the top 11 teams will be playing Wednesday. (Related: Wednesday may end up being the worst day of basketball in the history of the human race.) Due to that, any team that's locked into the bottom 12 will be playing on Wednesday no matter what. There are a few teams that are locked-in to be playing on Wednesday. They are:

• MIA, LAC, NYK, ATL. Even if every team below these four teams loses, they don't have enough quarter points to win a tiebreaker with any of the other teams that have clinched 1-2. Since 10 teams have already registered two wins, only one spot in the top 11 is available for a possible 1-2 team to snag it. Minnesota, Toronto, Dallas, or Sacramento would be the team to grab it -- not any of these four. The WAS/MEM/POR/DEN quartet is also in the mix for that spot, but they'd need to dominate their games today, which looks unlikely for Memphis (Phoenix is fielding a good summer league squad) and unlikely for Portland (as Chicago currently rates out as one of the "elite" summer league teams, insofar as a summer league team can be categorized as such.)

Conversely, there are a handful of teams that have clinched a bye on Wednesday. These are teams that you definitely won't be able to see on Wednesday. These teams are:

• CHA, CLE, LAL. The Spurs and are also unlikely to be playing on Wednesday, but there's a fringe possibility they slide into the #11 seed if Toronto and Dallas both win their games today (and win 3 or more quarters) and the D-League manages to win at least two quarters in today's matchup. This is also contingent on Phoenix and Golden State both winning a quarter in their games.

Seeding-wise, things will clear up significantly as the day goes on. Obviously. To that end, I'll be updating these standings to reflect new data. Don't worry, guys. We've got this. We're going to know the schedule before anyone else does. It's going to be a secret between you and I, dear reader. You and I.

UPDATE: Well, I've been updating my lucky Twitter followers of all this thick and juicy breaking news all day. Make sure to follow me on Twitter, as I am clearly the only journalist courageous enough to tackle the real tough questions on Las Vegas Summer League Tournament Seeding. Here's the scoop with three of today's games in the book:

• The Warriors have clinched a seed of three or better.

• The following teams will be guaranteed to be playing on Wednesday: MIN, ATL, NYK, LAC, MIA, SAC, WAS, MEM, POR, DEN.

• The following teams are guaranteed a bye day and will not be playing on Wednesday: GSW, CHI, CHA, TOR, CLE, LAL, MIL.

• The following teams are still up in the air: PHX, D-League, NOP, SAS, DAL.

LIFE IS SO CRAZY.

Here are the updated standings as of the end of Q1 of MEM/PHO and CHI/POR.

-- Aaron McGuire

• • •

FINDING AUTHENTICITY IN THE MOJAVE WASTELAND

There's a sort of paradox that lies at the root of all team sports. Consider the underlying juxtaposition: the dynamism and entertainment of team sports alongside the dismal grind of the athlete's preparation. "He's an exciting, dynamic player" must be said, regurgitated, challenged, and deconstructed at its core before a team decides to take a chance on the player through waivers or trade or draft. The player's excitement and dynamism only emerged because of an enormous sacrifice of hours a day in training. Relentless decades in the video room, relentless self-analysis, relentless self-betterment.

I look at my endless, sprawling drafts and songs and -- alas! -- drawings. They're scattered. Various hard drives, scratch paper distracted from original function, Christmas albums published and unpublished, blogs with two entries that I really got enthused about and forgot the next morning, and all the sordid rest. And there are still days I wake up and can't seem to compose a sentence that anyone else on Earth can understand, at least to the extent that I want them to. It's dispiriting. And there are days I wake up and all the experiences, even those I'd previously classified as useless, are consummated together within my soul. And my prose flows freely. Comprehensible, understandable, stark. And most days are in the middle. If I'd worked at it less, I'd have more days like the former; if I'd more, I'd have more days like the latter. That's what I tell myself. And at the core of competition with the self, that's what we all have to tell ourselves. It's a conversation with ourselves that can be fraught with delusion, but it's a conversation about substance, and there's some sort of empirical measure to answer for.

"This isn't brilliant, but it's publishable."

"This isn't publishable, but it's fluent."

"This isn't fluent, but I kept the rhythm and the intonation. I can feel proud of this, given...".

Some of these players get paid millions of dollars to play a game, and in our culture we tend to get all righteous about this when teachers and firefighters and so on do so much more for our society and all that. With good reason. And then the counter: should we REALLY be determining what people can earn based on what others can't? Is there not room in a perfect society for a million-dollar athlete and a properly-valued million-dollar teacher? And the elephant in the room, the baseline here, might be that we tend to see sports as fun, above all else. But it's also a sort of strange evidence one can put forth of our incompleteness as a society, an unaccountable waste of time and resources, or at the very least a tasty side dish to the main course of life.

Sort of like... Las Vegas.

See what I did there? Confession: being in Vegas makes me feel authentic by juxtaposition. I can resist the casinos with placid frugality. I can resist the nostalgia of the nebulously blended together "Fifteen to Thirty-Five Years Ago aka When Those Of You That Can Run a Tab Were Young" with naught but vigorous activity. I can resist the desire to make myself worse, to forget, to spend, to be false. I can resist. I can resist. I can resist. I can feel superior and get drunk on my own apparent superiority and it's actually cheaper than literally getting drunk. But I know it's a lie and I know it's a fictional narrative designed to increase perception of my own value and character. I didn't become a better person because I surrounded myself with more vice. What's more, I know dismissing it all as vice is its own form of inauthentic rabble.

It's a way for me to have a confident, judgmental stride that I haven't deserved, an easy conversational shorthand to find common ground with fellow travelers. It's awful. Sometimes I think we watch sports in its spectacle to get to this form of paradoxical blend of miring ourselves in the drama and the simultaneous feeling ourselves above the drama. Rooting interests keep us grounded, aesthetics, sportsmanship, but sometimes I just want something interesting to happen. And, put it this way: My moral sense isn't always the first one to respond to an interesting happening.

Summer League is pretty neat because there is no such pretense of anything else. The league is too meaningless to be a determining factor in anyone's career, it's a Bayesian flyswatter of slight probabilistic meaning. And the competitiveness of the product on the court is nil and arbitrary. Lance Thomas isn't exactly competing with Deshaun Thomas, even if they may both be going for the board. Sure, it would be nice for each player to snag it. It'd be worse if they don't. But they're mostly competing against their team's established rosters, which has so little to do with the direct, symmetric competition before us that they might as well just repeat the tautological mantra: "do more, do better." And thus there's a strange blend of incentives. It's an overdose of a 35-year-old-on-a-28-win-in-a-contract-year team vigor. And that blend of incentives writ large determines the game. The fans know it, the writers know it, the front office people, the coaches, the players know it.

For all the occasional on-court absurdity, it's not wearing any alibis: In the end, Summer League is exhibition, it's learning, it's competition against the self that reigns here, for every single participant. Even for the fans, who are mostly in it for a good time and maybe some free T-shirts, there's not necessarily any sort of rooting interest so much as pursuit of entertainment. They have to find out what to watch for and enjoy it. It's authentic, even when the back-and-forth sequences of turnovers can make you grimace. Summer League is a nice bridge between the dismal "how athletes are made" (which takes decades) and the fascinating "what athletes can do" (which may take a tenth of a second). It helps us understand what must go on first, and gives us a taste of what symphonies this overture of decades is building to. And best of all, it doesn't pretend to be anything different.

Except for this tournament thing. What's up with that?

-- Alex Dewey

Continue reading

Hey, everyone! We've been taking a bit of a break for the start of summer, but we're back. Our three main writers -- Aaron McGuire, Alex Dewey, and Alex Arnon -- are all slumming it in Vegas to cover the haps and antics of this year's Las Vegas Summer League action. Arnon and McGuire have been in town all weekend, putting together a cornucopia of miniature stories and notes for later digestion. This post represents our Monday thoughts... including a short piece on one of the more notable pieces of Summer League news in Ron Artest's return to the boroughs.

• • •

WHAT'S SO FUNNY 'BOUT M-W-PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING?

Very few notable roster moves happen during the Las Vegas Summer League. If you're lucky, you'll see a few players get signed. You know the type. Your Will Bynums, your Luke Waltons, your Elton Brands. A handful of players, but few serious value adds. And fewer still happen to sign with legitimate contending teams. And given this context, imagine the shock and awe at the announcement of this morning's big-time breaking news: Metta World Peace, the recently amnestied, has signed with the Knicks! Listen to those fans, readers!

"Metta World Peace!"

"MEATY WHIRLED PEAS!"

"MELTING WARBLED CHEESE!"

Suffice to say, it was a fun moment. Especially when the collected Twitterati discovered that World Peace had made his way to Vegas. Seconds after the start of the day's first game -- an incomprehensibly fast paced matchup between the Charlotte Champcats and the Toure "Cash in a Hurry" Murry Knicks -- Metta World Peace made his way out of the tunnel to jam with Clyde Frazier and give a wave and a nod to his adoring fans.

I suppose it shouldn't be much of a surprise that World Peace made his way to Vegas -- if I was an NBA player as keen to the rhythms of the ridiculous as Artest, I'd be sure to make my way to an event like Summer League too. I mean, look at it this way: in Summer League, Toure Murry is a star. MarQuez Haynes is our player of the moment. Cory Joseph is legitimately too good. It's crazy-go-Wheaties stuff, and that's the exact place that a man like Metta World Peace thrives. I mean, Christ. He changed his name to Metta World Peace. He was made for this Knicks team.

Honestly, I haven't written much lately, and because of that I've neglected to share my thoughts on this year's souped up new Knicks roster. That's a mistake. I'm really looking forward to this Knicks team, and in an effort to help guide Knicks fans off the ledge, I'll use the Peace signing as a chance to share my grandest hopes for this year's New York Knicks squad.

SIGNING ANDREA BARGNANI

Okay, look. I don't love this trade from a future perspective for the same reason I don't love Brooklyn's trade for KG and Pierce. Given New York's general age, it's hard to imagine them suddenly getting all that much better in future seasons. Those draft picks may end up being actual assets someday. And Bargnani was an amnesty candidate with shockingly low trade value. I sincerely doubt the Knicks needed to give up that much value to get Bargnani. It wasn't a great trade, and all the Twitter hemming and hawing over the wealth of assets Toronto snagged was deserved.

All that said? I feel like this makes New York a bit better next season. Bargnani isn't nearly the long range shooter his reputation suggests, and his effort last season was abjectly awful. If he puts up that same brand of disinterested fluff-ball, the Knicks are in some trouble. But I have a feeling that's not going to happen. Bargnani may not be healthy the entire season, and he's likely to be the same sort of defensive turnstile he's been his entire career on help defense. But Bargnani has always been a semi-effective isolation defender when he's locked in, and Tyson Chandler will represent the first chance Bargnani's career to play big minutes alongside one of the NBA's top helpers. Bargnani may not fit particularly well next to Carmelo, but I can't help but think he'll play decent ball alongside Chandler and prove a useful 20-25 minute a night tool.

In the short term, the Knicks gave away Steve Novak (a lesser Matt Bonner), the dessicated corpse of Marcus Camby, and a player they signed in April of last season. In return, the Knicks receive a flawed but potentially useful piece. Bargnani -- shockingly -- makes the Knicks younger and gives them a semi-coherent big man rotation. The future is the future. In the now, the Knicks have a bit more upside and a bit more clarity. Not a bad thing, no matter how much we like to make fun of the Pastalord.

BRINGING BACK J.R. SMITH & PABLO PRIGIONI

Look. I get all the mockery. We aren't talking about skinny jeans, here -- I get it. "HAHA, WOW, J.R. IS TERRIBLE." He's not great. I'm on record as not being much of a fan, especially when he has those 3 or 4 plays a game where it becomes exceedingly obvious the kind of talent he's leaving on the table. That said... what the hell choice did they have? People act as though the Knicks passed up a ton of fantastic free agency options. Hardly. The only way the Knicks were adding players to a roster as deathly capped out as they are was resigning their own guys. Smith qualifies for that.

Beyond J.R. Smith, the Knicks had about $3 million dollars to spend. Three. To put that in context, Monta Ellis is making $10 million a year. Al Jefferson is making $14 million. Even Danny Green -- widely considered a complete steal and an incredibly cheap player -- makes $4 million a year. Long story short? The Knicks couldn't afford anything. By keeping Smith, the Knicks gave themselves the opportunity to spend their $3 million pittance on a few minor roleplayers while keeping themselves from having gaping holes in their backup guard spots. I don't love either Prigs or Smith -- I think Prigs is barely an NBA caliber player and I think Smith is one of the biggest disappointments still playing -- but for the price the Knicks got, they honestly couldn't have done better.

SIGNING METTA WORLD PEACE

And finally, we have today's signing -- "MARBLED WELDED CLEESE!" ... (I'll stop with the horrible MWP jokes, someday.) Given the amount of cash the Knicks had left after signing their guys, I must unveil a terrible secret. I don't hate this signing either. As bad as Artest looked in the playoffs last season, he spent large portions of last season playing legitimate second banana to Kobe Bryant for a 45 win Lakers squad. His defense has fallen off a cliff, but he still has a handle on that fundamental aggression that made him such a brutalizing force in his prime. He can share that, I think, with New York's younger, better defenders. (Shumpert, specifically.)

I don't think World Peace has a ton left in the tank, but I don't think he's chopped liver either. He'll give them 10-15 minutes a game of semi-coherent defense and he'll drain a few shots a night. He'll work in the weight room with Shumpert and help his defensive development stumble forward. He'll be an entertaining postgame presence. He'll get to be the first Queensbridge player to retire in Madison Square Garden. Could the Knicks have gotten any better asset with $1.5 million dollars to spend? I have my doubts. Decent signing for a team with virtually no flexibility.

Thus, my final verdict -- the Knicks really didn't do that poorly this summer. Sure, they made a poor forward-looking trade that may come back to bite them. Sure, their moves are only positive in the sense that they were completely cap strapped and utterly devoid of better options. That said? In a world with no real choices, the Knicks managed to marginally improve their team and keep their hopes alive. Didn't exactly ace the Kobayashi Maru, but at least they'll go out fighting. They have a decent shot at holding the Atlantic division and they should field a competitive team. They won't win a title, but barring decimation-through-injury, they aren't going to be much worse than they were last year (if at all).

At the end of the day, they've built a hard-fought collection of the NBA's most beloved headcases that should challenge for 45-50 wins in a pastry-soft East. Sports is what you make of it. For a besieged big market franchise with few present options, the New York front office somehow managed to mold their team into a marginally more ridiculous unit. Good for the fans. Good for the franchise. Good for the writers. God bless the New York Knicks, every one.

... "METTA! WORLD! PEACE!"

-- Aaron McGuire

• • •

GOTHIC GINOBILI DOES FASHION

In this positively glamorous new feature, Gothic Ginobili editor Aaron McGuire is going to try and comment on the NBA's jersey fashions in the 2013 NBA Summer League. Let's get it, fashionistas!

~ SUMMER LEAGUE UNIFORM GLAM RANKINGS ~

1. New Orleans Pelicans.

2 through 22. Every single other team attending.

23 through 30. Every single other team not attending.

NOTE: I will also accept any ranking system that flips 23 through 30 with 2 through 22.

At this point, Dewey and Arnon dragged Aaron away from his computer and forced him to stop writing about fashion. This concludes GOTHIC GINOBILI DOES FASHION, Volume 1.

Continue reading

Hey, everyone! We've been taking a bit of a break for the start of summer, but we're back. Our three main writers -- Aaron McGuire, Alex Dewey, and Alex Arnon -- are all slumming it in Vegas to cover the haps and antics of this year's Las Vegas Summer League action. Arnon and McGuire have been in town all weekend, putting together a cornucopia of miniature stories and notes for later digestion. This post represents our weekend reflections, to be updated throughout the weekend's action.

• • •

REFLECTION #1: OUR PLAYER OF THE MOMENT, MarQuez Haynes

Alright, alright. You may wonder why this isn't CJ McCollum. Or any of the myriad other players who played more minutes, produced more baskets, or just have names you recognize. You know what? Names you recognize aren't what Summer League is about. Summer League is about the journeymen who look stunningly good for a short stretch and captivate your imagination. MarQuez Haynes is one such player, at least for me. Haynes is a journeyman with a remarkably well designed website. He attended Boston College and UT Arlington, and has spent the last three years overseas with Gran Canaria and Elan Chalon. He wanted to be an astronaut growing up and considers Floyd Mayweather his favorite athlete. (On a totally unrelated aside, Floyd Mayweather stepped on Alex Arnon's feet yesterday while randomly traipsing through press row. If MarQuez wants to meet his favorite athlete, he should obviously become a Gothic Ginobili writer.)

Ahem. Back to the actual basketball. Haynes is here for the same reason most players are -- he wants a shot at playing in the big leagues. I don't really know if his performance this weekend is going to get him that, but I found it impressive as a statistical curiosity. On Saturday, he was the Washington backup for Sundiata Gaines. He registered 6 assists in 20 minutes of play, along with two made shots. Now, he missed five shots, so that's not the most impressive thing in the world, but take a step back for a moment. The Wizards made 19 baskets in yesterday's game. Haynes either assisted or scored on eight of those nineteen. That's hilarious. He also blocked the first shot that was taken after he came into the game. For the sake of my curisoity, I decided to calculate Haynes' exact assist percentage in that dreary Wizards game. In order to do this, I had to figure out every single shot his teammates took with Haynes on the court. The results?

• Otto Porter jumper
• Otto Porter jumper (miss)
• Glen Rice 3PT jumper, assisted by Haynes
• Frank Hassell three (miss)
• Jan Vesely dunk, assisted by Haynes
• Chris Singleton jumper, assisted by Haynes
• Glen Rice jumper (miss)
• Andrew Lawrence 3PT jumper, assisted by Haynes
• Glen Rice jumper, assisted by Haynes
• Andrew Lawrence layup (miss)
• Andrew Horner layup (miss)
• Glen Rice jumper (miss)
• Frank Hassell layup (miss)
• Ryan Thompson jump shot, assisted by Glen Rice
• Glen Rice dunk
• Otto Porter layup, assisted by Haynes
• Otto Porter layup (miss)
• Otto Porter floater (miss)
• Chris Singleton fadeaway jump shot (miss)
• Otto Porter jumper (miss)
• Chris Singleton jump shot (miss)
• Glen Rice jumper (miss)

So, when Haynes was on the floor, his teammates made nine shots. (His teammates missed 14, and he missed 5 as well, but shush.) He assisted on six of those, for an assist percentage of 66%. You hear me, NBA? Marquez Haynes assisted on 66% of his team's shots in an NBA summer league game. Perfect backup guard, right? ... of course, he followed up the 66% assist percentage game with a game of one assist, but Haynes made 4 of his 6 shots, which means he managed to shoot 66% from the floor in the game. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Immediately after I wrote this -- with 50.8 seconds remaining in the game -- Haynes made a three pointer. So, I suppose he actually shot 5 of 7. Let's pretend that last shot never happened.)

It stands to reason that MarQuez Haynes has a spiritual connection with the number 66. He may assist on 66% of the shots his teammates make. He may shoot 66%. He may snag 66 rebounds. He may play 66 seconds. He may drive to the game on Route 66. Who knows? All that's clear is that Haynes will always -- ALWAYS -- be repping his 66 roots in the box score.

Godspeed, MarQuez Haynes. May the NBA accept your 66 revolution with strong hearts and open minds.

-- Aaron McGuire

• • •

STORY IN A TWEET #1: AMARE'S MORTAL ENEMY, REVISITED

• • •

DEWEY'S CORNER: Gal Mekel Overdrive

Trying to assess the leap from basketball's lower leagues (your NCAA, your Euroleagues, your CBAs) to the NBA presents quite the challenge for the objective analyst. How do you even project that? Summer League, even more than these lower echelon semi-pro leagues, presents different incentives that really tend to warp the frame of any analysis th -- ... Okay, let me cut this line of thought short: Gal Mekel is the next Bill Russell. Okay, hold that thought, it's really not as absurd is it may seem. After all, both of them were born on Planet Earth and have some connection to the city of Dallas. This puts Russell and Mekel in rare company; they are the exact same player, but the other is the next of the one. [Editor's Note: Dewey, where are you going with this?!?]

Holding that thought a bit more, would Bill Russell honestly dominate the Summer League of his time? Yeah, yeah, I know, "of course he would, he was a college star. All he'd done up to that point is win." But didn't we also say that about Adam Morrison? I don't know. Yes? I was really young then. But what if Bill Russell wasn't dominant in a proto-Summer League precisely because of the things that made him great today? Would Russell -- disdainful of individual glory -- have had overawing statistics that would send us into flurries of pre-pre-season hype in 1955? Would Russell's reportedly photographic recall of every play in his career be expressed in 25 minutes of four games against gunners hoping to stand out with their jump shot and bigs trying to show off a prokaryotic back-to-the-basket game? Would Russell's mastery of the transition game and outlet passes -- a mastery that helped propel his teams to greater heights than had ever been achieved before or since -- show up in a mix-tape set to, uh... "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" by the Platters? Was that popular in the 50s? [Editor's Note: Yes, it was. 1958, to be exact. Good work.]

All of this to say nothing of the leadership abilities, rendered useless or meaningless or "a nice intangible". Sure, I'm not saying he'd fail Summer League. He's Bill Russell. The winner to end all winners. The original Trill Barton. But what if, my friends? What if the special form of incentives in Summer League didn't project Russell out as more than an average starter? Maybe his athleticism is the dominant theme. Limited offensive game, some individual talent on defense, lengthy, good timing, good feel for the game... Possibly the best player in the draft...

And yeah, that's where the comparisons with Gal Mekel begin to break down somewhat. Just a little bit. Very few people outset call Gal Mekel the best player available. [Editor's Note: Nobody has ever called him this, Alex.] It's an irrational Summer League fascination to pass the time. But maybe the next-level skills that actually translate to the NBA, the skills that transcend the limiting factors of an offense, the skills that increase in value with the skills of one's teammates, the skills that increase with time spent in the league? The skills for which teams end up paying a couple million a year extra, anyway? Maybe those skills are impossible to simulate. And maybe that's Gal Mekel's future.

Either way, Mekel was fun to watch in summer league. Great command of the floor. Good ball control, excellent floater, some very nice passes. He looks like he has a future. And yeah, maybe he's not the next Bill Russell. [Editor's Note: He isn't.] Maybe he's not the best player in his draft. [Editor's Note: He isn't.] But he's fun, he's got talent, and he's a passable backup point guard. [Editor's Note: He is.]_ _Perhaps that's enough, readers. Not the hero summer league deserves, but the hero it needs right now.

Gal Mekel for president, 2013!

-- Alex Dewey

• • •

FINISHING UP WITH THE BROTHERS JOSEPH

Going into the day-concluding matchup between the Toronto Raptors and the Summer Spurs, there was a single subplot I was excited for. The Spurs were starting Cory Joseph, a rotation guard during the regular season and one of Tim Varner's very favorite Spurs players. I'd gotten wind of a rumor before the game that the Raptors were going to be starting Devoe Joseph, Cory Joseph's journeyman older brother. The Elder Joe played one season with the Minnesota Wolverines and one season with the Oregon Ducks before falling out of the draft and ending up in Ukraine at BC Khimik. Both are point guards. Both are good. And both, according to someone I talked to, would be starting for their respective squads on Sunday night.

The brother-versus-brother matchup is one of my favorites in all of sports, no matter the level of competition. Neither my brother or I played much in the way of organized sports when we were young, but there was always a certain meta-game present in any sort of competition where we'd face off. Playing H.O.R.S.E., squaring off at Scrabble, exploding each other repeatedly in Team Fortress 2. Always a sort of latent energy you don't always get in a casual game. The younger brother is always hungry, trying to one-up the one who came before. Prove their place and show that they're as good as their elder.

On the other hand, there's this sort of desperate energy from the older soul. It's motivated by a lot of things -- the rigid application of familial narratives chief among them. Above all, though? It's a valiant effort to evade a brutal embarrassment. "Dude, your little brother beat you. Duuude." No older brother wants to deal with decades of reminders about that one time their little brother schooled them. Nobody's ever up for that. As a proud older brother, believe me -- every single one of us wants to avoid this.

Unfortunately for my narrative thirst, the rumor turned out to be bunk. Joseph's elder brother certainly didn't start, and in fact, he didn't even get into the game until the second quarter. He played about four minutes of first half action before subbing out, which was hardly enough time to get full coverage of the family feud. Alas.

All that noted, it was a fun few minutes. There wasn't any of my hopeful drama-laden faceoff, but there was one notable possession where Devoe and Cory matched up directly onto the other. I was close enough to the court to hear trash talk (a fun experience, but that's a story for another day), but neither of them mussed the other to any large degree. No big trash talking, just stony faces. Both of them seemed to be trying to treat the other as they would any other opponent. Let the game do the talking, game recognize game, all that fun stuff. This one possession, though -- Joseph missed a jumper and got the ball back with Devoe matched on him. Devoe challenged him, and Joseph ended up dribbling out of the shot and passing the ball inside. Missed shot by Baynes. The elder flashed a fleeting smile before he took the ball up the court, and Cory tried not to look at him. Not exactly "one shining moment", but a fun distraction in a marginally interesting day-ender.

There wasn't a huge one-on-one matchup, and I suppose that wasn't a fair expectation. But they both had good games, in the end -- Cory had a 16-6-6 line on 13 shots, and Devoe had 7 points on 5 shots. Cory won the matchup (insofar as it existed at all), and Devoe's team won the night. The younger brother, fresh off spot minutes in the NBA Finals, played a markedly better game and looked the part of a Summer League Superstar. And the elder brother, fresh off a season in Ukraine, had himself a nice little game as a roleplaying second guard. The Raptors allowed Devoe to stay in the game for most of the 4th quarter after a 4 minute first half. Perhaps they'll show some faith in him and throw him a bone on the roster. And for one night, Devoe's team got the all-important W against his little brother's NBA finalists. Both winners, both losers.

(Just like writers who make their bread watching these ridiculous games, oddly enough!)

-- Aaron McGuire

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That's Free Agency for you. I wrote a short piece this past weekend for a 48 Minutes of Hell offseason compilation on the various options open to the Spurs. Unfortunately, in the process of finishing the compilation of the feature, Tiago Splitter was resigned and the whole thing became little more than an academic exercise. The main point of the piece was to examine the various options available to the Spurs in this offseason -- how some of the big targets would fit with the team, how the team could sign them, and the implications for future seasons. My assignment was to examine a curiosity of mine: Andre Iguodala as a Spur. The following is my Iguodala portion of this weekend's efforts, stored here for your enjoyment and for readers to laugh uproariously at me for thinking this had any chance of happening. (To be fair, I didn't think it was likely. It was just an exercise in spitballing options. Still, though. It's on me, to be a G.)

• • •

What should the Spurs do with Manu Ginobili? ... While I'm as big a Manu fan as anyone (see: the capsules!), there comes a time when every sporting legend fades to black. That time is now, for Manu. That said, I'm still a proponent of bringing Manu back if he'd accept a much smaller deal. He can still have occasional flings with dominance, but only on short minutes with a score of backup options. If Manu would accept $3 million a year I'd be happy to see him back. Any more and life begins to get messy, although I could be sold on anything up to $5 million without too much hand-wringing. [Ed. Note: I'm still on board with the $3-5 million mark. Hoping that he'll take the low end to allow the Spurs the room to go after one of the high-tier agents like AK47, but if the Spurs decide to resign Manu and Neal and use their full MLE, I'm also OK with Manu getting a one-year highly inflated salary to repay him for all the seasons of salary sacrifice to help San Antonio contend.]

What should the Spurs do with Tiago Splitter? ... I don't think the Finals necessarily mean the Spurs need to dump Splitter to the curb. After all, this is the man who roundly destroyed the world in San Antonio's lopsided romp through the Western Conference, despite the mid-playoff injury. Does he work against Miami? Perhaps not, but if he's effective against every other team in the league, he's still a worthy player. That all said, I do think the Spurs are going to be inevitably priced out of the Splitter chase. If Splitter could go for $8 million or less, I'd be happy with the Spurs resigning him. Anything more than $8 million, I'm wary. Anything more than $10 million, I'm adamantly opposed. [Ed. Note: Yes, I know. He got $9 million -- less than my "adamant opposition" point but more than my "happy with it" point. As such, I'm not too happy about it. That said, given the normal contracts that get handed out to above-average two-way bigs? I'm fine with it and accept it. Keep in mind, this is a league where Marcin Gortat got $7 million a year after less than a season's worth of 12 MPG play.]

The Spurs should target... Andre Iguodala. In Iguodala, the Spurs would be playing into the way Pop likes to play. Both Iguodala and Kawhi Leonard can act as excellent small-ball fours with their rebounding and defensive acumen, and Iguodala's passing could fill the post-Manu role of Parker's secondary creator nicely. While Iguodala's three point shot has been on-and-off his entire career, I have a sneaking suspicion that Chip Engelland's tutelage could rehabilitate it nicely. And for all his faults as a singular star, Iguodala would represent the best perimeter defender to suit up in a Spurs jersey since Bowen. He's a constant defensive player of the year candidate for a reason. Few defensive trios in the league are as fearsome as a theoretical Duncan/Kawhi/Iggy. Iguodala represents a nice bridge to the immediate Parker-led future, and a guaranteed trio of talent in the immediate post-Duncan years.

How does it work? ... I don't believe Andre Iguodala will attract a max contract this summer, but I imagine he'll come relatively close. As Iguodala made $15 million last season, a max deal for Iguodala will run a team $16.4 million per year. I suspect Iguodala's final deal will end up around $14 million per year, with some unlikely incentives to push up his possible numbers. Assuming the Spurs can quickly convince Manu to return at $3 million per year and allow Splitter to leave for fiscally greener pastures, they would have just $12.7 million dollars in available cap room. The Spurs could chip away at that number by renouncing Gary Neal's $1.1 million cap hold or pulling off a sign-and-trade for conditional second round draft picks to send him to an over-cap contender that needs him. (Indiana, perhaps?) They could look into possible trades for Matt Bonner, as well -- if nothing else, they could certainly amnesty him. Assuming a Bonner amnesty and Neal's departure, the Spurs would have $17.7 million dollars of cap room available to sign Iguodala. [Ed. Note: Hey, at least I was right about the $14 million, right?]

What are the immediate after-effects of an Iguodala acquisition? ... If Iguodala were to agree to a $14 million dollar starting salary, Iguodala's final deal would likely be a 4-year $60 million dollar deal. [Ed. Note: I forgot. Defenders rarely get paid.] The Spurs would end the previously proposed wheeling and dealing with $3.7 million dollars of cap room, perhaps allowing them to register a semi-competitive offer for Gerald Henderson, Chris Copeland, or Matt Barnes. Or any of the other small-tier free agents -- those are my three favorites, but I trust the Spurs front office more than I trust myself there. If the Spurs chose to use that cap room, they'd have only the "Room" Mid-Level exception available for further roster building, a two-year $2.6 million exception allotted to teams who have used cap room to sign players during their offseason. My best guess is that the Spurs would look into a few different options for the cap room and the exceptions, in the end settling with one reasonably young big or wing on a $3.7 million dollar contract and an unused MLE, counting on D-League call-ups to fill out the remaining three roster spots. Overall, the Spurs should end the spending spree nominally under the cap, in reasonably good shape to keep their books clean going forward.

How would this impact San Antonio's future cap situation? ... I said their books would be clean. I didn't say they'd be flexible. While it looks unlikely the Spurs are going to dip into the luxury tax any time soon no matter what San Antonio does this summer, it's rather unlikely the Spurs are going to have significant roster flexibility in the next 3-4 years. Whether the Spurs resign Tiago and Manu or sign a top-tier free agent, any contract they sign is likely to be a long-term deal. They won't have significant cap space in 2014 unless they sign this summer's haul to one-year deals -- the Cuban gambit. In 2015, the Spurs are nominally flush with room. In practice, though? They'll have expensive contract extensions to bring Parker, Leonard, and Green back into the fold. That keeps flexibility low. All told, those three are likely to demand something in the neighborhood of a combined $35 million dollars. Whether you sign Tiago, Manu, and a Redick-type shooter for $17 million or Iguodala and Manu for $17 million, any of this summer's signings will already put the Spurs in spitting distance of $50 million in 2015 salary commitments if you assume that they intend to bring Leonard/Green/Parker back at that juncture. And that's just a handful of players! The Spurs won't have significant cap room in 2015 unless they choose to blow up their core, and they'll be hamstrung for a few years after that -- this year's potential room represents San Antonio's best chance at a marquee free agent in the next half decade. They've handled their roster expertly, and this is their big chance to fill in a piece that will keep the Spurs humming in the post-Duncan era. I'm of the view that Iguodala is the best option of all the players out there. Does he want to be a Spur? Does the front office see things the same way? We'll see.

... And thus we saw. The Spurs did NOT see things the same way, and Iguodala isn't even getting quite as much as I thought he would. C'est la vie. I still think it'd be fun to see a Duncan/Kawhi/Iguodala/Green/Parker lineup -- defensively, that just seems amazing to me. And the smallball offensive opportunities are fun to envision. But there's value in retaining corporate knowledge if you're the Spurs. And there's value in Splitter's ability to help Duncan rest. And all this said? If they amnesty Bonner and get Manu to agree to a $3 million dollar contract, they can still have up to $8 million in cap room to pursue someone like Andrei Kirilenko or Gerald Henderson. The Spurs could still, in theory, add a major piece to the team that made the finals last year.

The eternal death-defying pretzel cart of the San Antonio Spurs hobbles onwards.

• • •

One final note -- you may have noticed a dearth of posts by me in the aftermath of the finals. This is on purpose. I'm taking a several week sabbatical to recover from an emotionally exhausting Finals gamut and -- quite frankly -- working far too hard on my hobby. I'll be back in a little over a week with some Summer League coverage, and I'll be starting a new capsule-related series later this summer. No, I'm not doing rewrites of last year's 370 capsules, but I'm doing some work on a 45-or-so part series that's almost as useful! Fun times for everyone. Until then, though, I'm going to take some time off and play Fallout 3 as Pau Gasol. No, really. I'm playing Fallout 3 as Pau Gasol. (In a related story, Fallout: Phil Vegas will return sometime next season. We have features galore, guys! FEATURES GALORE!)

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