Ball Don't Lie: NBA True Horror Stories — 'Egg Crazy, or How The West Was Fun'
A dark answer, finally, to what has been going on in Oklahoma City.
It is not fair, or even really accurate, to say that I feel old thinking about the first time I read one of Katie’s Halloween Specials. I feel old all the time, for one thing, primarily because I am. But all the stuff I associate with feeling that way—feeling creaky and impatient and overdrawn on multiple accounts, faintly disgusted but mostly just tired—is the opposite of how I feel reading Katie’s stuff, and especially unlike how I feel reading her when she’s getting weird in seasonally appropriate ways. It has been a long time since I read the first post in the Ball Don’t Lie Anthology Of Terror, which she wrote for me at the now-defunct website The Classical; it was long enough ago that I’m sure some of the NBA personages floating through it by now qualify as faintly remembered guys. Maybe Kevin Martin turned into a werewolf? That sounds familiar, but it’s not important.
The important thing, with traditions, is that they keep being observed, and celebrated. Not all traditions deserve that honor, as it happens, but Katie’s seasonal turn towards plugging NBA players and teams into some exceptionally goofy and delightful Tales Of The Macabre is one that does. It is one thing to have an idea this silly and good even once; most people couldn’t. That she has carried this forward, this lightly and for this long, is…well, I want to say heroic, but then that sounds like too much, but then I think about how she might have turned Kevin Martin into a werewolf in one of these and realize that “heroic” is really the only word for it.
Katie is busy being one of the most distinctive writers working on basketball stuff, and as a fan of her writing I’m glad she’s as busy as she is. I’m sure that she could have spent time working on one of those stories instead of this one. But it is Halloween, and tradition is tradition, and so here we are, finally, with a NBA-related story that features multiple instances of the phrase “glistening eggs.” We are all, as you read this, perhaps just hours from Kyrie Irving demonstrating the absolute wrong way to talk about the role of supernatural reptile creatures in the NBA. Thankfully, Katie is around to show us how it should be done.
David Roth
October 2022
Josh Giddey knew a lizard when he saw one. Waggly narrowed eyes, darting tongue, pebbly skin a bit crackled that looks rough from far away but smooth to the touch. He wasn’t going to get close enough to this one to find out though, no way.
He’d been poking around the kitchen of the Thunder ION practice facility because Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had told him the chef had “thrown some more shrimp on the barbie”, but now Giddey saw there were no shrimp. There wasn’t even a barbie.
“He did it again!” Josh had groaned to himself.
It was walking, crestfallen, back to the locker room that Giddey heard the scuttling. That was another thing he knew about lizards, they scuttled. Going with a weird, chilly feeling that settled in his gut he’d had just enough time to duck into the gym and pull the door closed behind him before he saw, well, a lizard, but what in the bloomin’ hell type was it?
A long, pearlescent purple body didn’t so much slink as slip around the corner. The arms — crikey, those things were muscular — didn’t elbow out from the reptile’s sides like an everyday Komodo so much as spread out splayed, in a way that reminded Giddey of how the big shots in this league sat at their press conference podium tables. It must’ve been about 6-feet long, with a twitchy tail that added another two.
Trying to get a better look in the flickering light of the hallway — those spooky fluorescent lights were always shorting out — Giddey pressed his face closer to the skinny window of glass on the gym doors, accidentally fogging it with his breath. Instantly, the reptile whipped its head around, narrowing its eyes into vertical slits. Giddey pressed his body backward into the frame as hard as he could and gulped.
He counted to 20. He swore he could hear a ticking sound, like the impatient tapping of a foot, but knew reptiles, coldly calculating as they were, never grew impatient.
Slowly, Giddey peered back out of the glass and was relieved to find the now brightly lit hall empty. He blinked and let go of the breath he was holding, opened the door and stepped back out into the hallway.
He’d only taken two steps when he felt the lash of something as sharp and strong as a bullwhip across the back of his knees. He tumbled to the side and hit the tile floor hard. Heart racing, the smell of something vegetal and rank filled his nostrils and Giddey rolled to his side, meaning to scoot backwards and put some distance between him whatever it was coming up fast behind him. Spinning his body around on the floor Giddey was perplexed for a second when he didn’t see anything there but no, as his eyes travelled up he saw the reptile was still there, steps away, only it had stood up.
From this vantage point, looking up at the now bipedal lizard, he had to squint at its bright orange underbelly before landing on its face. There, perched down low on its snout — it couldn’t be — were glasses. Clear frame, circular glasses. The recognition hit him in his already roiling gut.
“Mate, it can’t be,” he mumbled, scrambling back with one hand and putting the other out in front of him to ward this thing off.
The lizard drew its lips back, revealing a row of long, glistening teeth that parted, an ink black tongue poking out as it began to speak.
“Oh, Josssssssssh, but ith issssssss,” it hissed.
Giddey screamed.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had noticed Giddy acting weird for a few weeks now. He’d been quiet and withdrawn in the locker room, out of step and tired on court, and worst of all, stopped falling for any of SGA’s pranks, which were only him telling Giddey there were shrimp on the barbie somewhere.
“His eyes used to light up,” SGA murmurs to himself in his car on the way to Paycom Center, “now they’re just bloodshot and sleepy.”
When the Thunder play a shaky game and lose to the Rockets later that night, with Giddey rooted in the corner for most of the game looking vacant, hands noticeably shaking, SGA makes up his mind to confront him. Thinking it best to wait by his car, SGA is shocked to see it covered in a thick layer of dust, tires flat, like it hasn’t left the parking garage for months. He’s considering writing WASH ME in the grime when he hears rushed footfalls behind him. SGA turns to find a haggard Giddey, his usually voluminous hair lank and flat, his arms full of… shedded up warmup gear?
“S-s-shai,” Giddey stops and stutters, “what are you doing here?”
SGA takes a step toward his teammate and Giddey recoils, flinching, dropping pieces of a sweat-wicking long-sleeve that look familiar.
“Is that mine? I wondered where that went.” SGA says, taking another step forward.
Giddey scrambles to sweep up the scraps of fabric and bunch them back in his arms with the rest. “It’s best if you get going, Shai,” he mumbles, “you don’t want him to catch you hanging around.”
Like he’s said something he shouldn’t, Giddey instantly pales and reflexively lifts a trembling hand to cover his mouth.
SGA takes another step forward, more tentative this time. He’s never seen Giddey this jumpy, not even when when he tries to catch passes from Chet Holmgren.
“Wait a second, Josh, I need to talk to you. You haven’t been acting like yourself. You’re tired and cranky all the time, you blew up at Lu for moving your Vegemite, you’re out to lunch on the floor. Your car looks like it hasn’t been driven in months,” SGA motions over his shoulder, “and now I find you skulking around in the parking garage late at night carrying all our sweaty workout clothes, looking freaked out, talking about you don’t want someone to catch me? Who, Josh? What’s going on?”
Moved by his teammates’ concern, Giddey relaxes. His shoulders slump. Maybe I can trust him, he thinks, before a voice hisses in his head, HE SSSSSSSET YOU UP, REMEMBER? Instantly he tenses, shoulders up around his ears.
SGA looks frustrated. “That’s what I’m talking about! That’s how you’re taking your free throws!” He mimics Giddey, bunching his shoulders up as high as he can, “Walking around like a damn Frankenstein.”
“What do you care!” Giddey sneers, his raised voice echoing around the tunnels, surprising them both. “You set me up! You said there were shrimp! You knew he’d be there waiting! And now, now look at me, I can’t sleep, can’t play, can’t do anything but what he wants, which is to tear this team apart!” Giddey wails.
Very confused, but shocked by Giddey’s outburst into action, SGA closes the distance between them and slaps all the dirty clothes out of Giddey’s arms.
“What are you talking about!” He exclaims, throwing his arms up in the air. “I just think it’s funny to tell you there are shrimp on the barbie somewhere because you always believe me!”
“Y-you didn’t know? Seriously?” Giddey asks in disbelief, his eyes coming up from the ground to meet SGA’s.
“Know what?” SGA softens, resting a steadying hand on Giddey’s shoulder.
Giddey takes a deep breath. It’s been months of living in fear and going against his own impulses, scuttling around like a, like a, well he knows exactly like what. He’s still not sure if he can trust SGA but he wants to, and it suddenly makes sense, why SGA once told him there were shrimp being grilled on the team bus, or in the visitor’s locker room. There never were but SGA always laughed when he went looking, laughed but more importantly, apologized for pulling Giddey’s leg, again. He has no idea how to end the horror he’s been living in, but he knows if he has any hope of escaping it that he needs help. He nods.
“I’m going to have to show you. You have to see for yourself.” Giddey turns and starts walking back toward the arena’s entrance, “Follow me.” He calls over his shoulder.
“Are those eggs?” SGA whispers.
In front of him, impossibly, is what looks like a giant nest full of glistening eggs. Slowly, and with a lot of stopping to peer around corners of arena tunnels and up stairwells, Giddey led SGA up into the rafters of Paycom. They’d crept along the catwalk, SGA careful not to look down and only ahead at his teammate, who seems so comfortable up here, like he did it every day. Once SGA saw the nest, lined with old warmup jerseys, torn up scorer’s sheets and giant tufts of Rumble the Bison’s hair, he realized that Giddey was up here every day, putting all that junk in the nest.
“Man, what is this?” SGA whispers, more urgently.
“They’re picks,” Giddey says softly, “all the picks the Thunder have or have ever had.”
“What do you mean,” SGA trails off, eyes suddenly widening, “Draft picks?”
Giddey nods. Carefully, he reaches into the nest and picks up one of the eggs. As he brings it closer to SGA, it seems to glow. He rotates it to show SGA something crudely scratched in the shell. His name.
“It’s, me?” SGA gasps.
“Haven’t you ever wondered why every year, since James Harden, Serge Ibaka and then Kevin Durant left, and the soft tank started, why this team starts hot only to lose in the first round, or, since we got here,” Giddey jabs SGA in the chest, “to not get there at all?”
Forgetting about the egg with his name on it, SGA was shocked to hear Giddey use the T-word. They never said that.
“I got there once,” SGA says quietly.
“Too right mate,” Giddey nods, “but didn’t you notice the next season, it was like all your skills, they’d been recalibrated? Like you couldn’t get exactly back to how good you were the season before?”
SGA’s egg pulses softly, sadly.
“What about Russ?” SGA asks.
“Russ,” Giddey frowns, “H-he had the job I have now. To make the team unstable. In some ways, even after he left, well… some people can’t separate life from work.”
They both nod.
“But the eggs, why?” SGA furrows his brow.
“He has some, some kind of ability, or the eggs do, but all our skills are in them. When we get too hot, or the team holds too much promise, the skills, our potential, all get sucked back into them,” Giddey explains.
“What about those other ones,” SGA points to smaller, blank eggs tucked in the centre of the nest. None of them glowed or pulsed.
“Those are future picks. They start to grow and get bright when they get named, see, look at Holmgren’s,” Giddey points to an oblong egg, “it grew like crazy all summer then stopped and got wonky when he got hurt.”
“Like it got squeezed?” SGA asks, eyeing the weird egg.
Giddey shrugs, “Maybe, I mean, I’ve seem him up here, holding them, it’s possible that he,” Giddey stops abruptly, shuddering at the thought.
“Who?” SGA presses.
Far off somewhere in the arena, there’s a deep, guttural growl. Giddey freezes, his eyes going wide.
“It’s Presti!” Giddey gulps, “He said years ago, the last year the team was in Seattle, he begged a warlock to give him the kind of power that would get him rings. We have to get out of here.” He takes SGA’s egg and moves to put it back in the nest.
“Uh-uh, no way.” SGA quickly reaches over and snatches the egg out of Giddey’s hand.
The growling grows louder, prowling closer.
Giddey turns and begins to move back down the catwalk before SGA grabs him by the shoulder and spins him around.
“Josh, listen to me, when you got here you were a cocky guy with big hair who didn’t shrink for anybody. The other night I watched you hand the ball to Luke Kennard. Just hand it to him.”
He remembers. Kennard had fixed him with those kind eyes and Giddey felt himself succumb to what felt like the first human connection he’d had in months.
SGA points to the nest, Giddey’s eyes follow. “Now, I need you to reach into that nest, get your egg, and those eggs too,” SGA points at a couple other eggs with names scratched in them, “and then follow me. I’ve got a plan.”
SGA called Lu Dort and Chet Holmgren in the car and told them to meet him at the ION practice facility the next morning, early. He also called the team’s chef and said a few of the guys were going to be working out and could he be there to help make a recovery breakfast? It was too risky to bring Giddey, so he told him what he wanted to do and made Giddey promise to do the same.
It made sense, the more he thought about it. First, the team moving from a cool, wet climate, to somewhere with a lot more rocks to bake on in those hot, dry summers? Then, all the seasons of almost, where it felt like the future, and all those picks, were more important than the present. What didn’t make sense was the motive, but that would have to wait.
The next morning, after a round of giant omelettes the chef kept asking SGA where he got the eggs from — Were they local? Did he know what kind of fowl they came from? — the three felt better than they had in months, years for SGA and Dort. Alternating between cold and hot tubs, SGA asked them to listen to a story he knew was going to sound crazy, but as he swiped through photos on his phone to show them a giant nest filled with glowing eggs and all their workout clothes that had gone missing, the two agreed to do whatever they could to help.
It was later, driving Holmgren to a Spirit Halloween store so he could fulfill the league’s unspoken mandate of a player on each team going as the Joker every year, that the last puzzle piece clicked into place. Holmgren was in the back scrolling through TikTok on his phone, chuckling and repeating things occasionally, with Dort beside him because the front seat had a giant garbage bag of ping pong balls on it. Dort’s arms were crossed as he gazed out the window, tuning the rookie out until something he kept repeating nagged at him.
“What did you just say?”
Holmgren, startled, turned to him in confusion, “Bones… are their money?”
“Shai!” Dort called, signalling for Shai to stop, “What did Josh tell you about those weird eggs?”
SGA, exiting the I-40 onto Oklahoma City Boulevard, said, “That they hold our power, our skills. That’s why when we ate them, we felt so good. I explained that.” He pulled the car to a stop in front of Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar And Grill. In the backseat, Holmgren’s hand was already moving to open the door handle.
Dort leaned over and smacked his hand away, “Repeat what you just said.”
“The bones are their money,” he said quietly.
“Louder!”
“THE BONES ARE THEIR MONEY!”
SGA looked confused. Dort waved his hand, “Not that, not that, but like that. Presti, the lizard, whatever, must get his strength from the eggs. It was never about what the picks would amount to,” he pats Holmgren reassuringly on the leg, “just that they kept coming. Everyone knows when you make a deal with a warlock there’s a catch.”
SGA nods, “He’s gone egg crazy.”
“Exactly,” Dort nods, “and so long as he’s around this team is never going to be more than a way to get more of them.”
The car is silent for a few minutes. SGA and Dort thinking about what to do next, Holmgren thinking about the Tumbleweed Onions appetizer and Cowboy Beans side on the menu at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar And Grill.
“Lu, you still have those friends at the zoo?” SGA asks in the rearview.
"Of course,” Dort says, meeting his eyes, “you know I value conservation.”
SGA called Giddey and told him they were on the way with the payload, and to be ready to execute ATO Get Crackin’. They’d meet him in the garage later that night but first, had to make one more stop.
Up in the rafters, sweating from all the overhead lights trained on the nest, Giddey had just replaced the last of the eggs with ping pong balls SGA, Dort and Holmgren brought him when he heard what sounded like if a motorcycle could be disappointed in you. It was a deep, revving grumble, but a little bit condescending. He turned to see Presti, leaning on the railing of the catwalk and shaking his big, reptilian head.
“Oh Jossssssh, Jossssssh,” he tried to tsk but it came out as a hiss, “didn’t you think I would ssssssssensssse you and SSSGA, sssssneaking around up here? Meddling with our future?”
Giddey stood up and carefully slung the big, mesh sack usually for basketballs, now filled with eggs, over his shoulder.
“Careful with that,” Presti stood up straighter and pointed a claw, tongue flitting out, “very precioussss cargo, a lot of potential.” He pushed his glasses up his snout and revealed his teeth in a grin, beginning to chortle, “Bessssssidessss, you’re forgetting one?”
Giddey felt his stomach drop to his knees when he saw, between two of Presti’s claws, his own egg.
“You didn’t think I would fill you in on everything, yearsssss of careful work, without a little insssssurance, did you?” Presti took another scuttling step forward, tssssking, “Now, Jossssssh, hand me that sack.”
Giddey steadied himself. It didn’t matter what happened to him, he didn’t want the same thing to happen to his teammates.
“I’m done being afraid, mate. You want these eggs? You’ll have to catch me.”
Giddey dipped and faked once, twice, Presti snarling as he whizzed by him, spinning off the tail he lashed out in frustration. He didn’t have his skills! It didn’t make sense how he could be this quick! Presti looked down at the egg in his clutches and yowled as it seemed to glow appreciatively.
Stopping up the walkway to smile back at Presti like he’d read his mind, Giddey gently waved the bag in front of him like a pendulum. Presti’s eyes followed hungrily, and he took off chasing him.
Down in the underground parking, Chet Holmgren was getting bored.
“SGA said he’s one of those lizard people?” He yawned.
Dort rolled his eyes, there were enough idiotic conspiracies going around the league at the moment for him to hear another one, “No, dude, he’s a straight up lizard. Now quit moving around and hold your side straight.”
The two were positioned on either side of a giant wooden crate, with camouflage netting draped over the top of the box and down over both of them. They each held a length of rope they had to drop the second they got Presti in the crate.
After telling the zoo someone on the team wanted to anonymously surrender one of their exotic pets, and that it would make a worthwhile addition to the reptile enclosure, the Oklahoma City Zoo had readily given them a travel crate and got busy preparing for the newest arrival.
A ferocious, rumbling growl sounded from the big loading bay gates where the team busses rolled in. The same gates SGA had opened and told Giddey to hustle through. From his position behind Giddey’s dusty car, SGA waited. He was no lizard, but he could be just as patient.
In a flurry of guttural growls and otherworldly snarls, Giddey and Presti burst down the slanting lane of the parking garage tunnel toward the shipping crate. Closing in on the crate, with just six feet to go, Presti lashed out with his tail again and coiled it around one of Giddey’s ankles, yanking backward and bringing him down to the concrete.
“Ankle breaker,” Holmgren gasped.
Letting go of the bag to break his fall, the glistening eggs spilled out and began tumbling down the incline, toward the hidden mouth of the crate. A few of the smaller eggs, the future picks, cracked and broke. Incensed, Presti forgot about his quarry and went scrambling after them. From his place on the cold ground, Giddy lifted his head and grinned. SGA had popped his head up over the top of the dusty with the commotion and Giddey caught his eye to wink: the signal.
But instead of leaping vertically and silently up to the top of the crate to secure it, SGA ran toward Presti, now almost inside the crate.
“No!” Giddey couldn’t help but shout.
Distracted, Presti spun on him. His cold eyes narrowing.
“Give me Josh’s egg!” SGA demanded.
“You know what issss going to be your downfall? You, Giddey, Holmgren, all of you?” Presti snarled, “More than the skillsss I’m holding, cultivating for you, more than the way I’ve carefully sssshaped and cared for this team, is your inssssisssstence on chemisssstry, camaraderie,” Presti’s lip curled, “on being a team.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” SGA scoffs.
“It isssss! It’s why I had to recruit him,” Presti sharply points a claw at Giddey dusting himself off from the fall, “to ssssstart disrupting thingsss, after Russsss left and CP3 wouldn’t play ball. It was harder than I thought at firssst, but not so hard when it became clear all your teasssssing laid the perfect trap. Why you, with all your sssshrimp-baiting, led him right to me at ION that day.”
Giddey starts toward them with a new resolve. He knew, deep down, it was a set-up.
“And it would’ve worked, we would’ve gained and retained pick after pick, seassssson over ssssseason, if the new media,” Presti sneers, “didn’t inssssissst on writing sssstory after story, recording pod after pod, on what an exciting, fun, team we could be.”
“That’s really all it is for you, isn’t it? The picks?” SGA asks in disbelief.
“What elssse isss there?” Presti scowls, pulling out Giddey’s egg and swallowing it whole.
Giddey gasps, falling to the ground again. This time in pain.
“No way,” a muffled reply comes from under the camouflage mesh, before Dort darts out and gets behind Presti, locking his arms around him and executing a perfect abdominal thrust.
As the egg comes up out of Presti’s mouth he manages to sputter, “So undervalued, defenssssively.”
Leaping to intercept the egg midair, SGA lobs it to Giddey, who catches it in both hands. From behind the crate’s door, slamming down into place, Presti quietly hisses, “Tremendoussss collaboration. 2nd youngessst team in the NBA. 15 ssseasonsss in Oklahoma and 10 appearancesss in the possstsseassson. A work in progressssss. Alwayssss in progresssss.”
Josh Giddey knew a lizard when he saw one, and looking at this one now, safe and secure in its new enclosure at the Oklahoma City Zoo, made him let out a huge sigh of relief. The Thunder were third in the Western Conference standings, with a clinched playoff berth, and the way the team was performing — to its full potential, finally — made getting out of the first round finally feel like possibility within reach.
Better than all that, the team was happy. They were having fun.
Giddey leaned down on the railing and felt the relative warmth of the Oklahoma sun in mid-March, magnified through thick, greenhouse glass, wash over his shoulders. He felt, like he always did, the heft and warmth of his egg resting against his chest in the special pouch he had made for it. Only SGA knew he hadn’t cracked it and consumed it.
It didn’t matter.
He was playing with a focus that had shifted to his teammates, and the egg served as a reminder of the time he let someone else, a giant humanoid lizard in this case, get the best of him. From outside, he heard his teammates call for him. A few of them, the ones who knew, had made a routine of going to the zoo to read off their improving by the week averages to the big lizard down in the enclosure. Giddey was always the one who lingered longest.
Down in the steaming tropical vegetation, the giant purple lizard appeared to doze. As soon as Giddey turned and started back toward his teammates, it lifted its head and narrowed its eyes, testing the air with its tongue. Yes, there, a tinge of the egg there, of a pick. It could taste it. From underneath its belly, a deft, clawed hand pulled a pair of scratched and busted clear frame glasses and set them deftly on its nose.
I'm obviously way late to this, but this is effing brilliant.
Also, not sure I'll ever recover from "'you know I value conservation.'”