Art by TonyTheTiger
On the day of the new NBA season I felt it necessary to pay respect to the most absurd and fascinating league in the world, with a preview that is equally absurd and hopefully at least somewhat interesting. We begin today with the Western Conference and conclude tomorrow with the East.
No faction of popular culture is as relatable as the personalities in the West. The best player in the West (and maybe the entire league) spent his championship honeymoon battling Twitter trolls and wondering if anyone liked him. Kevin Durant is the pizza-faced, insecure chubby high school freshman who spends too much of his time fantasizing about the hot senior (it’s Scarlett Johansson, apparently). Russell Westbrook is the quiet weirdo in your office who obliterates every productivity quota but just wants to dress like a hot-topic mannequin on the weekends. Chris Paul is the definitely not chill small town suburban cop who once busted you for smoking pot in the nearby nature preserve.
Everywhere you turn you will find a microcosm of your own life and that is just one of the reasons why I love the NBA. So without further ado, I present the Western Conference Preview. —Mike Dupar
Pacific (in order of ranking):
Golden State Warriors
Last off-season the Warriors’ signing of Kevin Durant gave NBA fans an existential stroke. Collectively we resigned ourselves to the futility of the season and just as expected, the Warriors thizzle-danced their way to a championship. Durant’s so-called ring chasing drew almost universal ire, but in my mind it hardly seemed fair to ridicule a man for leaving OKC for the NBA’s equivalent of peak Death Row. On the other hand, the franchise’s impending move to San Francisco is some abhorrent bullshit and the Warriors are flying way too close to the sun (how is E-40 seemingly okay with this fuckery?). Super-teams are the well-deserved product of player prosperity and career autonomy (both good things), but robbing Oakland of their cherished franchise and gifting it to Silicon fuck-boys? That will get you cursed real fast.
Prediction: The Warriors lose in 7 in the Finals as Nick Young hijacks a play designed for Durant, once again posing with his back to the basket as the shot rims out. Durant is prescribed Percocet for a social media induced anxiety disorder and retires to Nepal; Steph Curry finally realizes that communion hosts aren’t chips and accordingly renounces God and demands a trade to Memphis after David West shows him Mystic Stylez; Klay, unbothered, smokes dabs and continues to do shit like this; Draymond gets cast as Goose in a reboot of Top Gun and starts dating Mariah Carey.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 1,000,000/100- No explanation needed. Don’t fuck with Oakland.
Los Angeles Clippers
Chris Paul is a narc and a proven loser. No one has garnered as much praise as he has while accomplishing so little, which is why Paul is the ultimate addition by subtraction guy. With Paul gone, the hopes of one of the NBA’s saddest franchises turn to Blake Griffin, who, depending on who you ask, is either a chill bro or a psychotic, not so chill bro. Having done my doctorate dissertation on bros and their behavior in the wild, along with the fact that I’m a recovering bro myself, I can tell you that psychotic behavior and chilling are just two sides of the same bro coin. Unfortunately the Clippers’ affinity for underachieving and their ability to attract talent are both inextricably bound to the double-edged scapula of the shaky handed Doctor Nepotism. Like Paul, Doc Rivers is overrated, and until new President Jerry West grows tired of Doc’s whiny and antiquated bullshit, this team is forever destined to be bounced before the Conference Finals.
Prediction: Blake Griffin is an early front-runner for MVP and the Clippers start out hot before Griffin fractures his sphincter while playing charades alone in the locker-room shower, rendering himself out for the year. In an unrelated incident, Danilo Gallinari sprains his soul while washing his hair in the locker-room shower and is never seen again. The Clippers proceed to break the record for most consecutive losses before Pat Beverly, Louis Williams, Sam Dekker, and DeAndre Jordan decide to ceremonially sacrifice Austin Rivers in the team’s locker-room shower to appease the demon they believe to have cursed the team. Citing Doc’s inability to “control the locker-room” Jerry West fires him and brings back Vinny Del Negro, who coaches the team to yet another Conference Semi-Finals. They lose in beautifully tragic fashion, as always.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 0/100, The Clippers have been cursed since they moved to LA in 1984, which is 5 years before Lil’ B was born. Lil’ B knows this and is too smart to waste his cursing energy on a team that needs no help fucking things up.
Sacramento Kings
Last year the Kings traded Boogie Cousins for the only player in the league who looks more like a beaver than Khris Middleton. I’m high on players who look like beavers, the reason being that in 5th grade some asshole kid said that I looked like a beaver; fearful of being made fun of further, I spent every day after school for the next two years in the gym to avoid that kid. I developed the wettest of jump shots and saved the years of lunch money to buy myself braces. The national media wrongly ignored the beaver narrative and while Vlade Divac may not understand how trade protections or the salary-cap works, he does know the true value of beavers. Early in his career, Vlade played for the Lakers alongside one of the greatest beavers to ever play basketball, A.C. Green. Green only looked like a beaver half the time but he is one of Oregon State University’s greatest basketball players ever and OSU’s mascot is, of course, a MOTHERFUCKING BEAVER!
Prediction: Truthfully I am irrationally high on basketball beavers, but I’m not an NBA executive (yet). Divac is under-qualified, and, like Doc Rivers, he will continue to stilt this team’s progress, especially if he continues to assess players based solely upon their physical likeness to beavers. But don’t sleep on the benefits that Zach Randolph’s Blunt Rolling 101 course will provide to the team’s chemistry and communication skills. Buddy Hield will shoot 50% from 3 and the Kings will be more competitive than most expect as De’Aaron Fox learns to run a filthy Pick n’ Roll with the best law firm named player in the league, Willy Cauley-Stein.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 10/100, Lil’ B will likely secretly wish that this team played in Oakland all year and at a press-conference on the first day of the NBA Finals he will curse Golden State and adopt the Kings as his new team. Bernie Sanders will be there.
Los Angeles Lakers
This team is weird. Lonzo Ball looks like the love child of Drake and Screech, and, like the latter, may just end up doing porn and wondering where it all went wrong. Ball has the weight of an over-zealous franchise on his back and an over-bearing father who has an unparalleled lust for attention. Ultimately, Michael Jackson flourished for many years despite his father (prior to bleaching his skin and running a pedophile carnival, of course) and Shawn Marion proved that one can have a long NBA career despite their jump shot looking like a T-Rex masturbating. I’d bet that Lonzo does as well, thanks to his passing and Luke Walton’s parenting skills surpassing those of Lavar. That said, anyone that thinks that this team will contend for the 8th seed in the West has swam one time too many in Bill Walton’s acid pool.
Prediction: This team will likely have one of the worst defenses in the league but don’t be surprised if Brook Lopez gets some All-Star buzz and helps this team stay competitive, especially if Luke finally drinks some of his dad’s pool water and reinvents the sport. LeBron is going to be a Laker next year so nothing matters and there is no God. Ultimately, this year is all about over-hyping Kyle Kuzma as the next Kobe and Lonzo as the next Magic Johnson, both of which make no sense. The Lakers will turn the biggest profit in franchise history and miss the playoffs by 20 wins. Lavar Ball will divorce his wife and also marry Mariah Carey.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 100,000/100, If I could bet everything I had on this I would. There is no fucking way that once Lavar finds out who the Based God is, that he doesn’t challenge him to a game of pick up and say some inflammatory shit about his music in the lead up. Lil’ B will literally break Lavar’s ankles on primetime television and proceed to do the cooking dance on him as he whimpers in pain.
Phoenix Suns
Devin Booker looks to potentially be half-beaver, which would account for his fantastic shooting. As most NBA fans will recall, last year he impressively dropped 70 points against the Celtics. But what many don’t recall is that he was a minus 6 while on the court in that game and the Suns lost. That’s fucked up. For perspective, in Kobe’s 81-point game against the Raptors in ’06, Bryant finished with a plus 25 and the Lakers won. Booker is a sieve on defense and if the Suns ever want to evolve he’s got to get better on that end. At the end of the day this team is going to be a lot of fun to watch and even more so if the logjam in the front court opens up with the inevitable trading of Tyson Chandler and Jared Dudley.
Prediction: Marquese Chriss will deliver multiple dunks in which his flaccid dick wipes across the face of befuddled opponents and breaks Twitter. Eric Bledsoe will continue to be underrated and somehow untraded by the deadline. Chandler and Dudley will remain untraded as well, but will conspire together and successfully overthrow Suns management and coach Watson. Post mutiny, the Suns will go undefeated for the remaining three weeks of the season and become must-see TV.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 20/100, Lil’ B likely won’t concern himself with the Suns as they’ll mostly be on TV when the Warriors, Lakers, Kings, and Clippers are. That said, there is a small chance that Tyson Chandler, like Lavar Ball, discovers the Based God’s music and says something damning on Twitter. Here Lil’ B claps back online and curses Chandler individually, thus rendering Chandler’s knees non-functional and his career over.
Southwest:
San Antonio Spurs
Never discount the Spurs. Who the fuck do you think started all this gangster shit? Gregg Popovich, America’s grumpy and politically relevant grandpa, that’s who. Until the writing of this article I had no idea that Pop spelled his first name with two G’s, TWO Fucking G’s! Poppy Two G’s has only missed the playoffs and finished with a winning percentage below 60% once in 21 seasons as the Spurs head coach, and that was his rookie-coaching season. Poppy Two G’s doesn’t lose in the regular season and even last year, up until Kawhi’s injury, had the Warriors looking shook. The Spurs could field 5 paraplegic sloths and still make the playoffs. Tony Parker’s injury entering the season is a plus in my opinion, as it will allow the Spurs to run up and down a bit more with Murray and Mills. All summer the Spurs were shopping LaMarcus Aldridge but never heard an offer they liked. This year Poppy Two G’s is going to torture Aldridge every chance he gets—I’m talking more suicides than Jonestown and psychological warfare the likes of which the NBA has never seen. Aldridge has two choices, either he gets on board and sweats his big ass off or Pop literally throws him under the team bus on a snowy night in Minneapolis.
Prediction: When Rudy Gay and Tony Parker come back from their injuries they’ll fuse with Ginobili to form the ultimate old man YMCA pick-up game Hydra. Together the three will have all the requisite tendons to once again excel in the league, and together, their powers will multiply and effectively allow the Spurs to play 7 players at once, as league rules state that Hydras only account for one roster spot (Poppy Two G’s has long known of this little rule book caveat). Alongside chicken-lord Pau Gasol (the guy just looks like a giant drunk chicken at this point), skinny LaMarcus, and ’17-’18 regular season MVP Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs return to the finals and sodomize LeBron one last time.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 0/100, If Poppy Two G’s rides off into the sunset in time for the 2020 primaries, as I expect him to do, Lil’ B is a shoe-in for a cabinet position. Under President Poppy Two G’s the Based God will serve as Secretary of State and bring his populist message of love and acceptance to the entire world.
Houston Rockets
Remember when I said that no player had garnered so much acclaim while accomplishing as little as Chris Paul? Well, that remains true, but in a not so distant second sits James Harden. If you thought the Rockets’ 2015-’16 iteration featuring Dwight Howard and Harden was a disgruntled and success-inept bunch, just wait until you see this year’s team. Mike D’Antoni is a proven loser as well, and last year the Rockets ended up right where they belong, with Poppy Two G’s pantsing D’Antoni on national TV and Harden playing like he boofed ruflin just before tip-off. Anyone that says clichéd bullshit like “there is only one ball” or questions how two great regular season players like Harden and Paul will coalesce in the regular season is stupid. The Rockets will win 50 plus games once again and everything will seem honky-dory, but the funny thing about NBA basketball is that there is this thing called the post-season and never in the history of basketball has a team assembled a coach and two superstars as over-hyped as the Rockets have this year.
Prediction: D’Antoni is 8-24 against Poppy Two G’s in the playoffs and that trend continues as the Spurs sweep Houston in the first round in 3 games. The 4th game of the series is forfeited after Chris Paul chokes every one of his teammates and the entire staff of the Rockets to death at center court following the Game 3 thrashing. Paul evades authorities as the murders are blamed on Cliff Paul, Chris’ brother and fellow State Farm endorsee. Chris, having unknowingly discovered a free-agency loophole in the league rules, joins the Spurs for the remainder of the playoffs while the authorities search for Cliff. Chris wins his first ring and Cliff is found in a trailer park in Utah shortly thereafter. Cliff is tried and hanged for the Rockets murders, but after Cliff’s execution, a note is found amongst his belonging that proves that he was really just Chris Paul wearing the mustache of the dead D’Antoni. 10 years later DNA testing conducted by a 60 Minutes special report proves that Paul was in fact the Zodiac killer.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 1,000,000/100, Harden has trifled with Lil’ B before and discovered the dire consequences. Chris Paul on the other hand, strikes me as a man that would dismiss the protests of Harden and besmirch the Based One in a fiery press conference. Lil’ B responds by cursing Paul with his most powerful hex yet, driving Paul mad and leading to his eventual murderous meltdown in the playoffs.
Memphis Grizzlies
The Grizzlies are going to be slightly above average and fun to watch as long as they have Mike Conely and Marc Gasol. Unfortunately, Chandler Parsons has become so irrelevant that it isn’t even worth my time to address the unparalleled levels of douche-baggery coursing through his body for all of time. Parsons has the biggest sham of a contract that professional sports has ever seen, and despite being seemingly healthy for the first time ever, his career will finally end this year after he breaks both of his legs while pretending to hump the back of coach Fizdale’s head during a team meeting. The loss of Randolph and Tony Allen will be lamented endlessly and ultimately the Griz don’t have enough talent to seriously compete in the stacked Western Conference. Conely is a candidate to be traded if shit gets really bad, which it very well may when the team realizes they have to choose between starting Tyreke Evans or Parsons.
Prediction: Mario Chalmers and Mike Conely attempt to prank Parsons by putting a wig on a wood-chipper and leaving it at Parsons locker with a note reading “You Would.” Having mistaken the wood-chipper for a “hot babe” Parsons inserts his member into the machine, which Gasol had mistakenly left on after using it to slice deli meat, and the rest is history. Fizdale gives an 8-hour press conference defending the wood-chipper and its grittiness. A week later Conely is traded straight up to Milwaukee for Matthew Dellavedova as a means to reinstate the team’s gritty identity. Marc Gasol grows older and grayer and becomes a sort of sage that all future centers must pilgrimage to as a means of developing a 3-point shot.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 10/100, Once again the Grizzlies need no help in the curse department, but months after the wood-chipper incident, Lil’ B leaks the video and is suspended from Facebook for a week.
Dallas Mavericks
If they are smart they’ll tank and let Dennis Smith Jr. chuck 25 shots a game. Unfortunately, the Mavs can’t help themselves and will likely win a lot more than they should. Rick Carlisle is a great coach and as such can only handle so much losing. Smith and Noel will be bastards in the Pick N Roll and Seth Curry will get some Most Improved Player buzz. Late in games Carlisle will draw up elaborate plays that consistently find Dirk with wide open looks 10 feet behind the 3-point arc and Dirk being Dirk, will shoot 100% in late game situations and propel the Mavs to just one game shy of the 8th seed going into the final game of the season.
Prediction: With the season on the line, Harrison Barnes will steal the inbounds pass intended for Dirk and drive to the hoop in a blaze of glory and dunk the ever-loving shit out of it. The buzzer will sound and Barnes will realize that the team needed a 3 to tie. Mark Cuban will mistakenly invest in an ISIS-operated ponzi scheme on the season finale of Shark Tank and be labeled an enemy of the state. Dennis Smith Jr., thanks to his league-leading 50 Twitter-Shattering moments and the will of Carlisle, wins Rookie of the Year. In his speech he only thanks J Cole.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 50/100, When Mark Cuban refuses to invest in Lil’ B’s start up Wonton Restaurant chain, Lil’ B swears to curse Cuban. Prior to any public knowledge of any curse being cast, Cuban is swept up in FBI investigation. For decades, rap and astrological scholars alike debate whether Lil’ B played a role.
New Orleans Pelicans
The Pelicans are fucked. Despite having one of the 10 best players in the league, they have repeatedly failed to ascend to elite status in the Western Conference. Anthony Davis will hit free agency in 2020 and every time the Pelicans front office goes out and does something dumb like sign Rajon Rondo, he just adds it to his notebook of things the team has done to deter him from re-signing. The Pelicans took a huge risk last year by dealing away the only basketball beaver on their roster. Now, the Pels find themselves in what would be a tricky situation for any team, let alone a wayward franchise that thought this was a good idea. The Pels have to find a way to build a team around Davis that can contend now and the only way to do so is to trade Boogie for an incredible package of complete players. That ain’t happening, thus the Pelicans are fucked. If they trade Boogie for draft picks or players still developing, Davis walks. If the Pels keep Boogie, the Pels will lose a lot and Davis will walk. Really, the best-case scenario for the Pels is for Davis to have a season ending injury that the greatest minds in sports science say he will recover from and then to sign him to a long-term deal and pray that he defies medical logic. While Davis recovers, the Pels play Boogie 40-minutes a game and he lights the league on fire by averaging a quadruple-double. The Pels then sell-high on Boogie and somehow get Khris Middleton and Buddy Hield in a blockbuster basketball beaver trade.
Prediction: Pretty sure Boogie and Rondo hated each other in Sacramento, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that that hasn’t changed. After coming back from injury, Rondo is concerned that Boogie is stealing too many of his rebounds and decides to pay off the King Cake Baby to do his bidding. During halftime of an otherwise forgettable game between the Pels and Suns, the King Cake Baby stabs Boogie eight times in the stomach with a prison shiv. Boogie goes on the IR and King Cake Baby is executed during Mardi Gras. Rondo goes on to lead the league in rebounds and the Pelicans offer him a 5-year max contract, which he declines, citing his belief in “testing the market.” Davis sprains each of toes 3 times over the course of the season and plays only five games. Alvin Gentry drinks cyanide on the team bench during the team’s last home game and no one notices until next October.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 20/100, I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that Lil’ B’s curse magic doesn’t work on individuals with intentional unibrows. Davis is already sort of cursed by the injury bug and yet again, we have another shining example of a franchise that doesn’t come close enough to competitiveness to warrant a curse.
Northwest:
Oklahoma City Thunder
Last year Russell Westbrook personified the Will to Power on the basketball court, dunking the dick off the ball countless times, draining ill-advised game-winning pull-up jumpers with baffling regularity, pulling off the Shammgod in game and knocking the Nuggets out of the playoffs like this. Westbrook’s performance last season was pure absurdity, like Natural Born Killers distilled into a season long ballet of violent, vulgar and all-consuming basketball. This off-season the Thunder plastered together a chimera of iso-assassins in hopes of retaining their relevance for years to come. Whether or not Paul George or Carmelo Anthony choose to stay in OKC beyond this year is irrelevant, as Sam Presti’s maneuverings were enough to convince Russ to ink a huge extension (on Kevin Durant’s birthday of all days) and that is all that matters for a team in a market like OKC.
But lucky for us we get to now watch the exchange of micro-expressions between three of the most polarizing players in the league. Hoodie Melo is already a deity of sorts but just wait until he’s smoking cigarettes on the sideline and casually scoring 30 points a game on 15 shots. Melo is going to flourish as the third banana and earn himself some crazy coin in the process. This is a contract year if Melo so chooses, and if he acquits himself nicely next to two other superstars, someone will throw dumb money at him next off-season and not even team-continuity or the chance to win a championship can deter Melo from chasing the money. Like Melo, George probably already has a foot out of the door, but unlike the Hoodie Gawd, George isn’t as easily forgiven for his disgruntled looks and passive-aggressive commentary. Ultimately, his demeanor doesn’t matter as he’s incredibly talented and plays the most coveted position in the game. He’ll get paid either way, but it’ll be amazing to see how he responds when Russ and Melo chuck 25 shots each in a blowout loss.
Prediction: Like Russ last year, this team will be one of the more entertaining teams in the regular season, but ultimately they don’t have the depth or a coach that can break through the egos to produce the type of team basketball needed to go deep into the Western Conference playoffs. George, Melo, and Russ all take turns coaching the team over the course of the season after publicly firing Billy Donovan during a post-game press conference. Donovan tries to point out that they can’t fire him but as the team coalesces around their new three-pronged player-coach. Donovan eventually recedes to the owner’s box in hopes of riding it out, but gains 120 LBS and is hired by Florida to coach their football program. At one point, the trio help the Thunder rattle off 15 wins in a row, during which they coordinate their outfits and give birth to a new trend in the fashion world known as Thrashion, which relies heavily on moldy banana peels and fishnets. Together Russ, Melo, and George coach and play their way into a 50 win season but get bounced by the Warriors in the Western Semis, blowing a 3-1 lead.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 20/100, Ultimately any team with Melo can sabotage things on their own just fine, but if Lala for some reason ends up rebounding with Lil’ B, we could be in for the surprise curse of the year!
Utah Jazz
The Jazz lost Gordon Hayward and Dante Exum is out for another year after getting beat-up by a Kangaroo for the third consecutive year. Such is life when your franchise inhabits Salt Lake City. No player looked quite so Mormon without actually being Mormon like Gordon Hayward did and it’s hard to imagine the state of Utah ever truly recovering from what he did to them. That said, I think the Jazz are the second best team in the division when it’s all said and done. Rickey Rubio will excel at a higher-altitude, exactly why I’m not sure, but if I want to be taken seriously as a sports journalist I had to find a way to work in an altitude reference. Rudy Gobert is low-key a Twitter all-star and it’ll be exciting to see his shit-talking grow in step with his offensive game. Utah is probably the ultimate grandpa team, in that your grandpa is going to be “really proud” of how these “young men” play ball. They’ll do it the “right way,” whatever that means, and win close to 50 games in the most methodical and boring way possible.
Prediction: Utah gets swept in the first round and the Tabernacle Choir riots in downtown Salt Lake City. The National Guard is called in but is disarmed by the choir’s angelic voices. The Choir gains political power by way of a coup and as the national media ignores what is happening in SLC, the Choir establishes SLC as a sovereign nation and elects Mitt Romney as their leader. Romney provides universal healthcare to all SLC residents and I move my ass there real fast and pray to Joseph Smith that they don’t read this.
Lil’ Hex Meter: 100/100, Midway through the season Gobert Tweets “MC Solaar is REAL hip-hop, Lil’ B is trash.” Lil’ B reluctantly curses Gobert and the Jazz for the remainder of the season. Ultimately Lil’ B lifts the curse after enlisting the Tabernacle Choir to produce his forthcoming mixtape; MC Solaar guest features on 25 of the 59 songs.
Denver Nuggets
The Nugs have one of the wackiest rosters in the league, and as a result, are going to be one of the most entertaining teams in 2017. Nikola Jokic, if you haven’t heard, is the Nugs’ best point guard, is 6 foot 10, and maybe the most defensively challenged starting center in the league. The guy is a total contradiction and despite his inadequacies, maybe the most interesting player entering the season. Alongside Jokic, the Nugs now have Millsap, a lunch pale star that will bring some much needed defensive acumen. The rest of the Nugs’ roster is littered with players that would likely be underutilized on other teams, but in Denver, have found interesting roles to grow into. Jamal Murray is a run and gun phenom in the making, Will Barton is a favorite of mine for 6th man of the year, and Gary Harris is sneaky good. The Nugs may struggle to find a dependable primary scoring option night to night, but what they lack in star-power and defensive strength they more than make up for with their flashes of stream-of-conscious genius.
Prediction: The Nugs snag the 8th seed and get throttled by the Warriors in the first round, but Jokic stunts like crazy and performs an alley-oop to himself off of Draymond Green’s forehead. Jamal has a 70 point game of his own this year, but like Devin Booker, is a minus 10 and the Nugs lose. Paul Millsap’s talents continue to go virtually unrewarded on the basketball court, but he develops a cult following in the Denver hydroponics community when he successfully grows marijuana that is flavored like REI smells.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 10/100, While I can’t be certain, I have a feeling that Jokic fucks with Black Ken real heavy.
Portland Trail Blazers
The Blazers are essentially living in an NBA Groundhog Day. It feels like every year they barely make the playoffs only to get their asses smacked by the Warriors. This year should be no different, as the team is largely unchanged and will once again be hamstrung by their own stupidity. Jusuf Nurkic was a revelation late in the season last year but he has a penchant for shooting-up cheeseburgers, and even in a contract year, at some point he’ll become disinterested and go back to playing like he has mono. Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum are one of the top three offensive backcourts in the league but defensively they look like well-greased turnstiles. The best move the Blazers can make is to trade McCollum for Zach Randolph and to allow the Jail Blazers team to reunite and take the league by storm. If you can’t beat ‘em, beat the shit out of them.
Prediction: Lillard retires early to further pursue his career as a rapper and marries Mariah Carey, thus rendering his career over. Lillard comes out of retirement and joins his hometown Warriors, who no longer play in his hometown. Zach Randolph is traded to the Blazers for Terry Stotts and CJ McCollum. Randolph teaches the young Blazers about the franchise’s rich history and inspires the team to a 7th seed. The Blazers gets their asses handed to them, but this time by the Spurs. Portland celebrates.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 80/100, The cross-section of rap and basketball on this team, thanks to Lillard, is far too strong for something curse related not to happen. At some point Lillard’s music gets out sold/streamed by Lil’ B and then the gloves are off. Lillard says something inflammatory and Lil’ B curses him for neglecting to realize that he is the Patron Saint of Oakland. Lil’ B and the ghost of Mac Dre team up and release a diss track that breaks all streaming records from now until the end of time. When civilization is destroyed and humanity is driven from the face of the earth, an alien life form crash lands to find a neon green IPod Nano with only said diss track on it. The alien, inspired, asexually reproduces and repopulates earth. In this new world Lil’ B is thought to be the equivalent of God and Mac Dre the Holy Spirit, but of course this new world is completely unfamiliar and devoid of any Christian tenants.
Minnesota Timberwolves
The Wolves are going to be mediocre. Fuck all the hype; this team is going to miss the playoffs. Jimmy Butler is good but I don’t think this team can survive night to night in the west. Last year, the Wolves’ biggest struggle was defense, and despite all the slob on Thibodeau’s nob, I don’t think players like playing for him. Thibs is a narc and he yells too much. Seriously, watch a Wolves broadcast and the whole fucking time you can hear Thibs’ raspy ass voice bleeding through your TV. I know Thibs helped Butler become what he is today but good things don’t last for a reason in basketball. Imagine waking up everyday and knowing that once you went to work you were just going to be screamed at all day. Fuck that. Thibs is the anti-Poppy Two G’s and that’s all one needs to know. Towns is an incredible talent, whose game is diverse and unlike any other in the league. The guy needs an empty canvass and a coach that encourages spontaneity and progressive play, not some buzz-kill narc that looks and sounds like he’s self-flagellated himself for something as small as burning a frozen pizza. Teague is washed and Wiggins probably dreams of killing Thibs. Truthfully I don’t really hate Thibs; I just hate looking at him. He looks like Danny DeVito’s Penguin and I think he’s a bummer.
Prediction: Milwaukee great, Latrell Sprewell, chokes Thibs on a cold night in Wisconsin. Thibs is found in an alley behind Jo-Cats bar in a coma. After months, Thibs awakes to doctors informing him that the stick has finally been removed from his ass. His personality improves and he returns to coach the Wolves to their first NBA Finals in 2019. Thibs wins a Noble Peace Prize and retires to run an Animal Sanctuary in the vast wilderness that is Southy.
Lil’ B Hex Meter: 50/100, Lil’ B probably doesn’t like Thibs either but that doesn’t warrant a curse. Lil’ B is not one to curse rashly and Lil’ B is clairvoyant, which means that he knows that Thibs suffers from a severe case of stick-in-ass disease and that it is not his fault.
