I’ve woken up under the weather.
My mouth is dry. I’m either hot or cold, I can’t decide. I desperately want to distract myself from whatever it is I’m feeling right now, but I know, deep in my bones, that nothing good is going to come from looking at my phone. I need a coffee. Or a water. Maybe just a hug. I don’t know, anything to take the edge off.
Now is probably as good a time as any to talk about how grueling the playoffs are. All the usual caveats aside, that this doesn’t really matter and that the world
is a nightmare full of actual problems, I feel like I’m losing my grip on reality. People weren’t meant to do this. To live and die every other night for two straight months? Like, come on. I have to go to work today. Once the games start you just enter into this weird emotional rollercoaster that is alternately giving you the thrill of a lifetime and spinning you through curves sharp enough to make you meet your ancestors. The highs are so very high and the lows are so very, very low.
At least, they are if you’re doing it right.
So yeah, last night was a low. I think we can all agree on that. I don’t want to dwell on it or anything, but, hey, I didn’t want to be in the low in the first place, so I think maybe a bit of dwelling is simply on the menu for us at the moment.
What I’m not going to do is look up any numbers for you because my masochism only goes so far, but suffice to say they were bad. Kind of across the board. Wemby got a weird triple double. Everyone else got…I don’t know. They got some, but they didn’t get enough. Which is how we find ourselves here, staring at the ceiling, not entirely sure what to do with ourselves.
We don’t need to rehash the specifics. We all watched it and, frankly, it’s not our job to sift through the wreckage looking for answers. Nobody is paying us to sit in a dark room, grind tape, and figure out how to scheme even more open looks for our guys to clang off the rim. That’s not on us.
No, what we’re here to do is dwell. To sit with this inelegant ball of emotions on our chest and try to fight out from under it with enough time left to psyche ourselves up before tipoff tomorrow night.
As I lie here, battered and bruised, distracted and listless, I find myself trudging down the well-worn path of big unanswerable questions. You know, time. Space. Causality. What are we doing here? Why are we doing it? Was Anthony Edwards designed in a lab to specifically ruin my day, or is anyone else getting hit?
This is not deep stuff. It’s not even particularly original. But when something knocks the wind out of you the way Game 1 did, the easiest corner of the brain to retreat to is the metaphysical one. It’s how we make sure we’re still here. That we’re still alive.
I’m not old, but I’m also not young. I remember what these playoff runs felt like in high school, and it was a lot like how everything else felt in high school. Intense. My memories of watching those games in a room packed with friends, hanging on every shot, erupting at the good and dying at the bad, are imprinted on my brain. I can touch them. Smell them. Hear them. It’s as if they’re happening right now, right in front of my face.
I don’t know if I cared about basketball more back then, so much as I cared about everything more back then. I spend a lot of time wondering if that’s just how life goes. It burns hottest and brightest when you’re new to the world and slowly, continuously dims as we make our way through it.
Last night, I watched this game by myself after the kids had gone to sleep. I sat with my dogs and I nervously fretted over a bunch of twenty year olds trying to hit jump shots. It felt less like a party, and more like a workout. I paced and I pumped my fist and I shook my head and then, when it was over, I turned the TV off and went upstairs to bed. I have work today, remember?
For a variety of reasons, I can’t watch these games the same way I did as a teenager. I can’t actually spend my morning hungover, emotionally or otherwise. I desperately want to spend a few hours complaining about the refs or missed free throws or Julius Randle but, you know, The kids have to get to school. The laundry has to get done. The shareholders need unstructured data turned into actionable insights. I want to. Boy, do I want to. But I can’t.
Here’s the thing though. I am still mad. I’m going through my day, grinding on spreadsheets, and I am still thinking about Anthony freakin’ Edwards and that Cheshire cat grin plastered on his face all night. I know for a fact that someday when I’m old and decrepit, sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch, I’m going to randomly recall him draining a three over Wemby’s outstretched hand and feel the kind of burning hate in my belly that doctors say you should have checked out. It will haunt me for the rest of my days.
I hate how this feels.
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
Takeaways
- When our opponents get nervous going to the rack because of a tall French dude? Hell yeah! Yes!!!
- When our players get nervous going to the rack because of a tall French dude? Well this sucks. What the hell?
- I made a promise earlier not to look up any numbers from this game, and I am nothing if not a man of my word. The shooting was bad though. Anecdotally? Emotionally? Bad. Nothing was going in all night. Not a single shot. I know what you’re thinking: “they scored 102 points, surely some of the shots must have gone in.” And yeah, I can see why you’d think that. You’d be wrong. Don’t make me tap the sign about not looking up numbers.
- There seems to be this cute thing the Spurs do against the Timberwolves where they take the entire fourth quarter off. Very chic. Very European. Don’t get me wrong, I love the commitment to the bit. Committing to bits is something I hold very near and dear to my heart. I just think that at some point, maybe, they might want to try closing one of these out instead. Just a thought. Just putting it out there.
- One of the underrated pleasures of a new playoff series is the fresh set of villains to invest in. Edwards is obviously our big bad, but I’m excited to explore new flavors. Jaden McDaniels. Naz Reid. Terrence Shannon Jr. Julius Randle? Don’t mind if I sprinkle a little hate your way. Rudy Gobert? I appreciate the mentorship and the kind words about Wembanyama, truly, but the very tall voodoo doll I ordered should be arriving any minute now, so I wouldn’t expect to have much fun in Game 2. Mike Conley? You’re cool.
WWL Post Game Press Conference
Is it difficult to get saddled with the writing assignment for losses?
I mean, there’s really only two options at the end of the day, so it’s not like it’s an eventuality I haven’t prepared for.
Sure, but is it the harder of the two?
It’s…yes. If only because usually after a loss the thing I want to do the most is look away and pretend it didn’t happen. Like, I lived it once last night, I don’t really want to log in this morning and live it again. I think in the long run it’s probably healthier for me though.
Healthier to deal with your emotions instead of pretending they didn’t happen?
Healthier to dig deep. To try and wrestle some meaning out of this pain. Maybe find a way to learn something about myself, about the world, about life, you know? Really get in there and try to heal!
So, you’re saying it’s healthier to deal with your emotions instead of pretending they didn’t happen?
I mean, yeah.
