Hello. Respect to all of the veterans out there. Let’s basketball.
WELCOME BACK, COLLEGE BALL: The college basketball season begins in earnest on Friday. Just in time, too. We have SB Nation’s College Basketball Preview! Loads of great insight in the season to come. NBA fans might be most interested in these two pieces: Mike Rutherford’s top 100 players in the country and J.Z. Mazlish on the bumper crop of dope freshmen (many of whom will be entering the draft in six months).
WINE AND GOLD HOUSE: The Cavaliers visited the White House. Richard Jefferson posits that they might be the last NBA champion to do so for a while. While there, they teamed up with Michelle Obama for the piece de resistance of the Mannequin Challenge.
REVENGE: The Bulls edged the Heat in Dwyane Wade’s return to Miami. Jesus Gomez laid out the timeline of how it all went sideways for Wade and the Heat, and I wrote about Pat Riley’s habit of alienating superstars. Wade did get a warm reception from the Miami crowd, as expected.
SCORES GALORE ...
Pelicans 112, Bucks 106
Bulls 98, Heat 95
Warriors 125, Nuggets 101
Lakers 101, Kings 91
KAREEM, ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLACK IN A TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.
THE RIVALRY IS BACK! The Lakers came back from 19 down to beat the Kings in Sacramento’s only TNT game of the season. Afterward, DeMarcus Cousins tried to punk Julius Randle. Randle did not stand down. (via reddit.)
GOOD KNICKS: The Knicks gave a very good service dog to an Army veteran.
HYPE KILLER: Old buddy Jonathan Tjarks on Indiana’s OG Anunoby, the next Kawhi Leonard.
REASONS WHY THE CELTICS ARE DISAPPOINTING.
AHEM: Ernie Johnson received a lot of immediate kudos for announcing on Inside the NBA that he decided he could not vote for Hillary Clinton ("trust issues") and Donald Trump ("incomprehensible and indefensible") for president, so he wrote in John Kasich. This felt like a confessional, and I bet many of Ernie’s fans (including the players who visit the set) are going to see it as such: as an admission of sin. Because enough people who considered Trump unfit for the presidency stayed home or got cute with their ballot to let President Trump happen. We won’t forget that. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
ON THAT NOTE: Dave Lozo has a piece on the futility of being a sportswriter in these times, and how hard it is to muster enthusiasm for the inconsequential when something so consequential has happened. I feel this deeply. I also feel that our human emotions cannot run hot all day, every day. We need to cool the engine, so to speak. For some, meditation will work. Or making art. Building Lego models with their kids. Reading escapist fiction. For me, it’s watching and thinking about and writing about basketball. Hopefully some of y’all still need that basketball fix, too. But I understand if you don’t. We all cope how we can. And after we recharge our spirits, we fight again.
NEXT UP ...
Friday: NBA TV has Clippers-Thunder at 8 p.m. ET. Best League Pass options are Raptors-Hornets at 7 p.m. and Pistons-Spurs at 8:30.
Saturday: NBA TV has Pistons-Nuggets at 9 p.m. ET. League Pass has Celtics-Pacers at 7 and a big Spurs-Rockets rematch at 8.
Sunday: Nothing on national TV but you’ll want to check out Hornets-Cavaliers on League Pass at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Be excellent to each other.