At No Regard, we love basketball. We love the spectacle and strategy of the game, but sometimes the league's lack of imagination confounds and disappoints us. Call us optimists, visionaries, or kids who watched too much Space Jam, but we have ideas. Damn are we gonna share 'em.
The Thunder found near-immediate success settling into Oklahoma City; that which can't be credited directly to Kevin Durant's instant superstardom certainly goes to a young bench teeming with raw talent.
Watching a Thunder game this season guarantees three things:
1) KD and Russell Westbrook continuing to blossom before your eyes.
2) A host of rising stars jockeying to position themselves around Kid Delish and Jet Zero.
3) A gargantuan and vacuous black hole at the 5-spot, a position the front office seems intent to never actually fill.
The Thunder need more guards like Peyton Manning needs another endorsement deal. Ignoring the need for big men troubled them all season. Surrendering the paint buried them in the playoffs. Do we have ideas for them? Of course we do.
Consider the above photo. Pick out who is the most bored and who is the craftiest guy there. Easy, right? Bored goes to Nick Collison (Lower Left, Napping). Craftiest goes to James Harden (Top Back Right, Suit).
James, Nick, can you guys come over here for a second? Hey fellas, have you ever seen Freak the Mighty?
Perfect. Here’s what we’re gonna do…
Folks, I’d like to introduce you to Hard Collision, the Thunder’s new hope in the low-post. What? Of course they drafted him. Hard Collision, look him up.
Okay, we know this looks weird.* It’s James Harden sitting on top of Nick Collison’s shoulders wearing a custom parachute jersey for God’s sake. No matter how crazy it seems, it sure beats the hell out of the current Just-Put-Krstic-In strategy. Have you ever rooted for a team that tries to start Nenad Krstic at center? We have. It’s horrible.
Look Nenad, we hear you. Sit down. You’re not a center. No, you’re not. You’re a power forward. No, you haven’t played center all your career, you’ve filled in for teams without a center, there’s a difference. Let me ask you something Nenad, how was your last playoff series? Yes, the one where you were supposed to guard Pau Gasol. What’s that? Not well? Right. Pau is also a power forward, by the way.
Enough of that. What will people say? Will anyone actually buy this crazy plan? Of course they will. If Harden shaved his beard, nobody would recognize him. Fake some off-court legal trouble for the real Harden and suspend him for the season. Say Collison went off to do some soul-searching. Then get Hard Collision a birth certificate from the Dominican Republic. That works in baseball all the time. Questions about his height? Suspicions about his midriff? Hey guys, our little monster at least looks more human than Glen Davis. With a bit of preseason practice, Hard Collision is in business for opening day and OKC is on its way to a new era of dominance. Watch your back Bynum.
*The two-tone skin is going to be a problem. Collison will need some make-up and perhaps a minor surgery.
Nick Collison has never been happier. Shit, who am I kidding, we'd all let Harden sit on our face.
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