This is a complicated topic that to the naked eye makes no sense in terms of the connection of all 3, but we’ll get to that eventually. First, I’d like to state how important my baby niece is to me. She is the most perfect earthly angel, and gives my family and I eternal and constant joy by just existing and goo goo and gaw’ing with perfect baby pitch and cuteness.
If she wasn’t the cutest baby of all-time, I would still love her the same, but thankfully we don’t have to worry about that notion, because she is in fact the cutest baby ever. Seriously, I’m not biased she is that cute. And if the internet wasn’t such a weird and complicated place, I would post a picture of her to prove it.
She has undeniably helped my mental state and wanting to live, which hasn’t always been the case. I am a complicated guy myself. I know that and my family knows that and its nothing new. And that is how Adam Silver is involved in helping save my life.
You see my entire life, my only true goal was to play in the NBA. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Shaq, Magic Johnson, Dr. J, Vince Carter, and many more NBA elite warped my brain from a young age on what I wanted in life. Only to be 5’8″ and the best attempt at a professional career was playing JUCO ball at 29. I’m 31 right now, and I still want to make a push to continue my basketball career (more on that in a different post). Nonetheless being white and 5’8″ has made my dream feel so futile that suicide felt like a simple answer to my shattered dreams. If I killed myself then I could potentially comeback as someone who I actually want to be, an NBA Superstar!
It seems crazy, I know, and it is crazy, but you cannot take away passion from someone. You cannot dim a fire that has been lit since I was a baby. One of my first memories was watching the 2001 Lakers vs. Sixers NBA Finals on my little sister’s Disney Princess TV. My love for both teams battled intensely, it was the greatest show I had ever and will ever see in my entire life. Kobe and Shaq battling the sole giant that is Ai.
So to come up short on my dreams felt like a death sentence of mediocrity I didn’t feel like dealing with and an open ended suicide felt more justified. That was until the modern day NBA saved my life. You see I have to “blame” or really “thank” Adam Silver because he is the only scapegoat I can blame for the current state of the NBA. I can’t blame him solely, I know he is just the figure head of special interests within the league, but he is the only person I can really say, “Yea, he definitely had at least some part in this destruction of my favorite thing in the world.” The NBA was once the gold standard of entertainment and sport, shaped by classic players and rough and tumble defense. Now? A mockery of the game of basketball. Softer than baby shit, SGA or Randall Boggs as I call him, the villain from Monsters INC. because he looks like him (sorry I don’t like making fun of people but I cannot stand this man in any facet) and because he is the soft, fragile villain of the NBA.
He wasn’t the first to make the game fragile, LeBron didn’t help being 6’9″ yet the biggest flopper in the world. That definitely didn’t help, but that only pissed me off because LeBron is a unit who doesn’t need to do that type of bullshit. SGA probably doesn’t either, but the way he foul baits and flails around like a fish seems like he needs to do such a thing in order to succeed at his highest potential. Ain’t no way he wins an MVP last year and possibly this year if he wasn’t such a coward and baited fouls.
What am I getting at? The fact the NBA is so bad, and so unwatchable and such a shell of its former self has given me new life in this world. I can’t even watch an NBA game now without turning it off withing 10 seconds for off-ball, non-contact fouls, flopping, foul-baiting, and dear God don’t get me started on the gather step. Fuck you Grayson Allen with that bullshit step back to step through nonsense. Oh yea fuck @isoscoring and especially Milton Chavis. You charlatan basketball frauds deserve zero success in any facet of basketball, but I digress.
Now to say the NBA doesn’t have fantastic players, athletes and skill guys is a lie but their efforts are being diminished by the whistle and the lack of physical play. Why would I kill myself in jest of such a joke of a company. I can’t, it would make no sense.
Obviously, I would love to still play in the NBA, I’m not a liar, but I genuinely don’t care anymore because its that whack and soft. I’d rather play overseas potentially or I’d rather play in the NFL or MLB because those leagues still have honor. Sure the NFL is softer than it was, but its still barbaric at heart. They had to stop guys from taking each other’s heads off, the NBA didn’t have to wipe away every ounce of physicality it once balanced perfectly, but it undeniably did.
Maybe I can add David Stern into my thanks for a new life. He inspired Adam Silver and he started to lessen physicality. It was slight back then, barely noticeable, but it has led to zero sense of physicality now. And Adam Silver even admitted directly to KG in an interview that he softened the game for guys like Steph Curry, which makes zero sense because Steph is so talented and stronger than he looks. Plus, Steph hasn’t benefitted from this softening, if anything he is one of the only players that see physicality through off-ball screens.
All I want is some roughness back, bring back hand checking, fuck the superstars, fuck these guys like SGA, who are bitch-made for no reason. These guys are replaceable, rough the game up and see who survives, see who earns their contracts. See who really wants it. If you play any sport on this earth and you don’t have the attitude that you are willing to die on that court or field, get the fuck out of my face. I played rugby that way, I still play basketball and baseball that way, and if I engaged in any sport in any level of league, rec to semi-pro to pro, I’m willing to die out there.
If we bring back physicality and bring back the real NBA, then Owners can then stop caring about who the fuck makes them money via traveling violations and seemingly “pretty and skilled” basketball. They can give the money to the guys willing to dive on the floor, to take an elbow to the face and not care. Until we start paying those guys the max deals instead of dudes willing to compromise the integrity of the game, the ratings will continue to fall and the only people watching will be TikTok teens who LooksMax and have no integrity in their discourse of what is cool or not. They have no taste and know nothing of culture, why are we catering to these dorks? WE SHOULD NEVER CATER TO SOFT DORKS WITH NO CULTURE OR RESPECT FOR THEIR ELDERS! NEVER!
And that is exactly where we are, the NBA is tanking literally and figuratively, Bam Adebayo scored 83 points on 43 free throw attempts and I’m supposed to be impressed. I was at the 31 in the first quarter, but the resulting second half was the deepest mockery of the game I love. The grossest display of greed and dishonesty of play. Fouling the other team to get extra possessions and throwing the ball off the front rim on a free throw attempt, those players should be ashamed of themselves and if you don’t feel that way, you are a shrill person with no integrity.
But…Thankfully this all happened because now I have new life. Adam Silver and the hidden agenda of the soft NBA saved my life so at least they did one thing of positivity. That and my newfound determination of God in my life through the acts of my Dad and the idea of self-realization and trusting something beyond me to guide me to salvation of life and death. The compounding affect of my beautiful niece gracing my hands and eyes the pure joy of her presence and radiation of love every time I hold her and think of her so dearly are going to keep me going until my time runs up.
Casually Enlightened 
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