https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85wVC9j1k1Q

I can no longer speak about this team with any level of intelligence. That is both a combination of several factors. One is that I feel as though I’ve felt every emotion, and said everything that could be said from my perspective, as this team has fluctuated in between sloppy and inspiring play. There are only so many times that I can say that they are entertaining and dangerous, but have serious limitations as far as post season success goes. But the larger reason is that I have been set free, or possibly cast myself out of the wilderness and into the land of tranquility.

I have become domesticated. No longer is there some buzzing sense that I need to complete a project. I have no real social media to yell into. I don’t hear the noise that reminds me that I live in a city. Instead my daily life is defined by space. I’ll watch as many games as I can, though I admit that 10:30 pm start times aren’t ideal, but the call is not to soak up every emotion and violently regurgitate it back at you, the faceless reader. Now it’s about sweeping the endless floors, and filling the walls with art. The shortest distance from my bed to my daughters room, would be to walk out my window, and over to hers, about 15′ away. Instead I have to walk around this G-shaped layout, going 27 steps from my side of the bed to her door. As a result, I watch the Brooklyn Nets out of a sense of duty toward both this column, and as a personal obligation to see just how it ends.

This is a ridiculous amount of navel gazing that does not flatter the Nets or what they should represent. They played their west coast clones earlier last week. Having won their MLK Jr Day matchup in a resonating beatdown, they limped into Sac Town having lost their first three games of a brutal west coast swing, and spent a solid three quarters handicapping themselves, to the tune of a 25 point deficit going into the 4th quarter. Then they upped the record of teams that entered the 4th down 25, to 4-3,028. That’s a real statistic. I swear I’m not pulling that out of my ass. I’m pulling it off of several other blogs that claim that prior to Tuesday NBA teams were 3-3,028. Yeah, that’s right gang, I’m anonymously dropping stats I heard on the internet without real sources, under the “common knowledge” qualifier, bitches. Anyway, 25 points is a lot to erase in 12 minutes, and the Nets beat them in regulation on the road. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson did the deed, and while I’ve been critical of him in the past, I would like to acknowledge that I am a shitty fortune teller. Also D’Angelo Russell dropped 27 points in the 4th quarter, which seems relevant. I don’t know, sometimes I think that maybe the Lakers should have gotten more for him.

I don’t expect that anybody who reads this actually clicks on the videos that I have so helpfully embedded, but honestly, go to the 9:11 moment in that clip and watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXugmT1trwg

They took a trip down to LA- D’Angelo’s old town, for a late season affair with yet another team that they had beaten earlier this year, the Lakers. I can only image the cathartic pleasure D’Angelo took in their first win, when he’d helped bury the team that had cast him off with a late three. Once again D’Angelo was there as the Nets dealt Los Angeles the loss that officially eliminated them from postseason contention. In my heart, I still think the trade was acceptable to Los Angeles, as they never would have developed D’Angelo into this player anyway, and they were given the cap relief of not paying Timofey Mozgov, as well as receiving Brook Lopez and the draft pick that would become Kyle Kuzma. But while I might be able to rationalize that LA’s biggest mistake might be letting Brook Lopez getting away before the start of the season, the move is nothing but a clear victory for Brooklyn, who acquired what has been an essential piece for this turnaround season.

I wish that some of this was a revelation on my part. This is the bummer of the season. That I’m out of narratives to stretch out. It feels like something that I’m required to talk about, instead of a playful thread that I can tug against. I need for somebody to do something quietly destructive so that I can have my hot takes. I intimately understand the need that the New York media has for drama. Unfortunately there are not nuanced opinions that I can have here. The Nets have been better than expected. They play hard. They won the D’Angelo trade. Is it too much to ask for Joe Harris to go on a lengthy screed about Geopolitics so that I might have something different to think about? New York City is going to miss Odell Beckham Jr’s cocaine pizza parties now that they don’t have him to kick around.

Maybe the juice is coming back. It’s 2:54 in the morning on a Monday as I’m piecing together the final bits of this article. Why is it coming together right now, when I could have just as easily worked on this in the morning at the office? Because I’m awake, unable to get back to sleep as my daughter tries to rest her feet on my pillow. What’s keeping me up? Some general anxiety that I can’t explain. No real fear of some inevitable future like feeling as though I’m about to be fired or wondering where my rudderless life is headed, but that useful manna of feeling as though I’m not moving forward. Something that if it remains in the morning, might propel me to enact some moderate improvements. Of course it probably won’t. When I awake, I’ll have exchanged the self loathing for a neurotic frenzy as I try to rush my morning routine along after oversleeping. But as my eyelids begin to get heavy I comfort myself in the idea that I might be a little better tomorrow.

[After the fact note: It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. 2am terrors never manifest into anything once the sun comes up. In the end all I have is the exhaustion from a poor night’s sleep and found myself spacing out on the subway, contemplating just how much one woman’s nose looked like Joe Camel’s phallic schnoz. My brain had been reduced to pudding and the simple observation was the only thing that I could handle for approximately three stops on the R train. So the exercise in night ennui was less that helpful.]

None of this rant makes any goddamn sense, does it?

The Brooklyn Nets are 38-36 and in sole possession of 6th place in the Eastern Conference.