NBA Offseason Memes

By Charlie Scaturro

Seeing as we’ve reached the dog days of summer where real NFL football is still about 2 months away, the NBA and college basketball won’t be back until late October/early November, and baseball is the only sport on TV, the flow of content here at SIIJ has slowed. It’s not that I don’t have plenty of ideas floating around in my brain, but when you combine the slow sports season with an extremely busy work schedule, there’s just not enough time in the day to churn out articles.

However, I’ve recently discovered an easy-enough way to generate memes, and although I’d much rather be crafting a 3,000 word article on the Brooklyn Nets from the perspective of a native Brooklynite, the memes will have to do for now. Here’s a couple I’ve crafted in the last few days that pertain to the increasingly comical and always entertaining NBA offseason.

After the Nets signed Gerald Wallace, Joe Johnson, and Deron Williams, there’s been some squawking about who the best team in New York is, well here’s the final word in that pissing contest for New York’s heart:

The 4-year, $60 Million max contract that the Nets shelled out to keep Brook Lopez in Brooklyn raised a few eyebrows, and perhaps rightfully so.  There's no doubt that Lopez can score, but his average rebounding and defense combined with the fact that he's a 7-footer coming off a rather serious foot injury doesn't exactly scream 'max contract', but the Nets did what they had to do to keep the biggest piece in their potential Dwight Howard trade around (assuming he's not shipped to Houston or LA, isn't it going to be fun when those trade rumors start popping up again in January?).  Sure, $60 Million is a lot for Brook Lopez, but when you think about it this way, it doesn't seem so bad:  

Although, considering the fact that the Suns have taken to YouTube with a horribly awkward video to try to convince Robin Lopez to stay in Phoenix that is akin to writing a heinously embarrassing love letter in high school to some girl you liked, maybe Robin won't need so much support after all.


Living in New York, it never ceases to amaze me how disappointing the Knicks have been on draft night for seemingly the last decade (save for a few exceptions).  Because the front office has shown little interest in actually keeping the team's picks, the Knicks haven't had too many chances to truly disappoint their fans in recent years.  Even so, my favorite moment of the 2012 NBA Draft was the Knicks fans reaction when the team announced it had selected Kostas Papanikolaou from Greece with the 48th overall pick.  The cameras panned through the crowd of unhappy Knicks fans, and eventually settled on a kid who couldn't have been older than 8 or 9, decked out in Knicks gear, whose only response to the pick was to wave his finger in the air to show his dissatisfaction:
























Granted, we're talking about the late second round here so it's not as if the Knicks blew another lottery pick (and maybe Papanikolaou actually ends up coming over to the states and can help the Knicks), but New York passed on Darius Johnson-Odom, Kyle O'Quinn, and Marcus Denmon at 48. 


Despite the fact that Dwight Howard has explicitly stated that the only franchise he will sign a long term contract with is the Brookly Nets, this critical piece of information hasn't stopped the Houston Rockets from doing everything in their power to acquire the superstar center.  Houston even went so far as to amnesty Luis Scola, who averaged 15.5 and 6.5 last season, so they could clear up the necessary cap room to take on undesirable contracts from the Magic:

The constant flow of incessant white noise about where Dwight Howard might be traded has really started to wear on most basketball fans, and the fact that Houston doesn't seem willing to take the hint that D12 isn't interested prompted me to pitch this new summer blockbuster:

Who wouldn't want to watch Dwight Howard and Daryl Morey star alongside Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Bradley Cooper, Drew Barrymore, and Jennifer Aniston in this sequel?

Finally, the Nets introduced Joe Johnson and Deron Williams on the Borough Hall steps in Brooklyn yesterday in a "hey, look, we're paying these guys a combined $190 Million over the next 5 years, we're relevant!!!" presser.  Although it was much less of a spectacle than when the Heat introduced LeBron, Bosh, and Wade to their fans a few summers ago, the Nets introduction featured a similar guarantee from their newest stars:

Are the Nets a lot better than they were last season?  Absolutely.  Are they anywhere near challenging for a title as they are currently constructed?  I guess it's possible, but more realistically, we're talking about a team that will make the playoffs for the next 4 or 5 years and have little else to show for all of the money they've dished out.