Four games in, and I’m crazed as a shithouse rat. 

I’m back home, in the chaos and anxiety of the metro area, where everything makes so much more sense. I’ve had four days to think about the team since their loss in Indiana. For whatever reason, I am comfortable with the idea of covering the squad over the course of a full 82 game season. Of course, by this point in the novel, I was fine with reading Infinite Jest as the true sadism of David Foster Wallace’s insufferable prose hadn’t yet fully blossomed. I have to keep that shitty book in mind. The season is hardly an infant after three games. There is so much room for pain and suffering ahead.

But that’s no way to live. Instead I extol the virtues of this 1-2 team. I look forward to Nets games, and even want to talk about them with my basketball mad coworkers, who can barely contain their contempt over my new habit. I’ll hear it soon enough. “Man, the Nets are trash.” Then they’ll go back to mooning over the fever dream of Kristaps Prozingis not only staying healthy but acting like a true superstar, while in the real world their coach David Fizdale continues to make “Who farted?” until the end of time. My dad won’t hear of any good news out of Brooklyn. My brother insists that I’ve become a super fan, but really, he’s just bitter that he didn’t think to blog about a new team. The temptation is to quickly defend this group as underrated until I wildly overstate their potential. “You know Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Shabazz Napier haven’t even played yet.” Maybe the most dangerous thing is in deeming something to be better than expected, because you never really know if you’re seeing something that’s real or if you’re just overreacting to basic competency. Much of that game against Indiana was entertaining. And yet, the Nets still managed to get stomped into the bowels of hell. There is no chance in hell that Brooklyn will win the NBA Championship, or appear in the Finals, or sniff the Eastern Conference Finals, or make it to the second round. Their absolute ceiling is making the playoffs and maybe taking a game from a clearly superior team going through the motions. But damn near every team in the league has no chance of winning the Finals. Golden State will loom large enough to blot out the sun, and short of a plane crash over the Rocky Mountains, they’re probably in line to pick up their 4th title in 5 years. Everybody else is just playing for more esoteric reasons. The love of the game and that crap.

Of course expectations need to be kept in check whenever you’re playing the 4x Eastern Conference champions. People will talk about Boston and Philly and Toronto all year, and sure Indiana and Milwaukee could be dangerous for completely different reasons. But did any of those squads win the 2016 NBA Championship? I didn’t think so. And the team is mostly the same. All that really happened was they lost LeBron James to free agency. But they still have NBA champion coach Tyronn Lue, and NBA champion veterans Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson and JR Smith.

So I didn’t really know what to expect when the 1-2 Nets visited 0-3 Cleveland. And for the first half I began to think to myself that I’ve made a huge mistake. Brick after brick. Uninspired three point attempts combined with a distinct lack of offensive rebounding. I began to contemplate the prospect of another 79 games of watching them play not only bad basketball, but boring basketball. YMCA basketball. Of course I also noticed that the Cleveland Cavaliers, four time conference champions that they may be, are not good. In any way. The team that was supposedly “built” around Kevin Love somehow forgot to get the ball in his hands for almost the entire second half. And the Nets woke up. D’Angelo Russell had a strong outing, Joe Harris and Jarred Dudley combined to go 8-10 from three for the game. Nobody scored 20 points, but six players scored at least 10. You…you’re not paying attention anymore are you? I’m rambling about a blowout Nets basketball game and acting as if it signifies something greater.

Okay, fine, but I would like to talk about Richard Jefferson. He debuted as a TV analyst, which sounds like the absolute perfect thing to do if you were trying to drive away your few remaining fans. Though he hovers near the top of most Nets franchise leader boards, Richard Jefferson has always been a tremendously boring player. That shouldn’t be fair. He was talented as all hell. Could do a little bit of everything on the court. But…there was just something about him. Some sleep inducing quality. Maybe it was that he was a discount All-Star. For whatever reason he was good but boring. It appears that Richard Jefferson the TV analyst is bad but interesting. At one point he talks about how he and Ian Eagle were stopped by security on a train, both mention that it was a good story, but can’t go into it. Fine, whatever. But then Ian Eagle mentions that it should be told on YES after dark, and now I can’t get the image of Richard Jefferson and Ian Eagle forming an Eiffel Tower on some woman in between stations. Had they just told the story, I’m 98% sure it would have involved a lost ID lanyard, but with no further details and that ‘after dark’ detail, I am forced to imagine that Ian Eagle fucks.

Later as the Nets nursed a massive 3rd quarter lead, Richard Jefferson started talking about how the coach should tell the players that they only have a few minutes of actual work left and that the Cavs would probably just run out the clock. But the starters were already on the bench, and the role players aren’t going to dog it. They’re trying to get out of garbage time duty. And then he starts going on about how they’re at the ‘second baby’ part of the game. When Ian “The Sexual Tyrannosaur” Eagle presses him on that, Richard explains that a woman’s second pregnancy is always easier than the first and it just takes a few pushes to get through it. And sure, I’ve heard mothers say that, and I don’t think it’s offensive, because who’s even watching this blowout Nets game to begin with? But it’s fucking weird, right? That’s just an odd thing to say in your first day on the job. “I love it when the producer is in my ear piece saying ‘uh oh’.” Yeah, I’m sure you do love that, because in spite of your boring on the court play, apparently, you are a fucking maniac, Richard. Look, it’s one game, but I will be monitoring him as the season progresses.

I of course will want to talk about it. But again, because these are the Nets nobody in my home or work life will feel much like engaging. It’s going to be a while until anybody cares, but I’ll be keeping score.

The Brooklyn Nets are now 2-2 and currently locked in a five way tie for fifth place in the Eastern Conference.