According to the mighty Grantland – no, not the iconic Golden Age of Sports-writer Rice but the Wise Guys Guide to Sports and Other Stuff We Watch on Flatscreens – we are 26 days from the opening of another NBA season. (Grantland.com started counting down over 100 days out for this NFL season, such is the pigskin sickness in the Excited States of America.™ 1 ) In recent days, the countdown has included the following essential bits of news. Chandler Parsons digs fashion and wears trendy glasses and fashionably nerdy
Chandler Parsons, fashion plate. (Can’t be in the weight room *all* the time.) Photo from Grantland.com.
hair. Kevin Durant is learning to be angry, while Pau Gasol is an unrepentant nice guy (actually, a surprisingly insightful short piece). The Philadelphia 76ers are the early favourites in the tanking derby to try to select Canada’s Andrew Wiggins in next June’s draft (he’s a Kansas freshman), something Grantland terms “Riggin’ for Wiggins”. Drake hearts the Raptors. The Blake-Griffin-as-Doctor-Dunkenstein days are over, according to Blake Griffin. In other news, JaVale McGee remains JaVale McGee. Some of these I actually read. Any port in a storm.
Mostly, though, I’m still looking backward to the 2013 Finals. I was pulling for the Spurs. I replay, as Tim Duncan will for the rest of his apparently fairly contented days, the easy putback he missed late in Game 7. I still can’t quite believe Ray Allen got both feet outside the three-point line for that game-tying miracle at the end of Game 6.