Distraction’s clarity

SB Nation’s Associate Director of Pro Basketball on the oasis NBA basketball offers, even if that’s Jaylen Brown in a lab coat on Media Day.

NBA Media Day is one of the most beautiful, hopeful and funniest days of the year. Everyone is undefeated, in the best shape of their life, and Spencer Dinwiddie wants to make sure you know the Hornets are at least the 19th or 20th best team in the Eastern Conference (this is how dozens if not hundreds or thousands of people learned that yes, Spencer Dinwiddie is on the Hornets).

Members of the media sometimes bemoan the cavalcade of cliches each team’s traditional opening to training camp brings, but it’s easy to appreciate if you embrace the little absurdities on a day heavily featuring men in full basketball uniforms who have no intention of playing in a basketball game or working out. Beyond that, the silliness is a little different with every team. At some point either before or after posing for tea party photos in the Lakers weight room with his oldest son and teammate, Bronny James, there was LeBron saying that no, he won’t be determining how long his career goes based on when he’d have the opportunity to play with his younger son, Bryce.

Dialing in for a video call from Greece — and taking us all back in time to the NBA’s COVID media restrictions — a sick Giannis Antetokounmpo told reporters that he could not recall a meeting he had earlier this summer with Bucks owner Wes Edens about his future. People forget meetings all the time, but making this omission of memory a bit more notable is that Edens had, just moments earlier, told reporters that Giannis “made it clear that he is committed to Milwaukee and he likes having his family here.” So much for quieting the wave of keyboards perpetually clacking around the world to write blogs about possible trade destinations that maybe, this time for real, Giannis will actually demand a trade to after seemingly a decade of relocation speculation.

As Katie was in between posting sun-kissed Instagram stories from her latest overseas sojourn, Jaylen Brown brought his friend Bill Nye the Science Guy to Celtics media day as his guest. The two did a science experiment with Derrick White, wearing lab coats and safety goggles over their team uniforms, with White and Brown getting down into a stance to cheer a balloon shrinking into a bottle as if it was Neemias Queta coming in to give the team some unexpectedly good minutes off the bench. In lieu of Nye figuring out some science to repair the Celtics’ array of walking wounded, this will likely be the most notable fire caught by the team this year.

In Cleveland, Lonzo Ball also told assembled media that he had made a discovery: Cleveland has water. Like Christopher Columbus “discovering” land that had been inhabited for hundreds of years, this was seemingly only a discovery for Ball himself. Nonetheless, if his findings make their way to other NBA players and allow Cleveland to counteract the city’s Joakim Noah-tinged reputation as a boring town of nothing but factories, he may also get an eponymous holiday giving everyone in the surrounding area the day off.

Beyond the drama, silly photo sets and amusing quotes, the most fulfilling part of media day is the hope it brings. For some teams, it’s hope that this could be the year. For others, it’s that maybe this group could be better than expected, or that this is the year our young guys prove they’re worth building around. Or if you’re Spencer Dinwiddie, defiance against the haters, and optimism that if everything goes right, you might not be one of the ten worst teams in the league. This is more of a 12th-worst-in-the-league level of talent in Charlotte. Take that, pundits.

For fans, though, or at least this fan, that optimism takes a different form: It’s a reminder that our weird, thoughtful, empathetic, angry, sarcastic and beautiful community is back. That in a world that subjects us to a conveyor belt of constant ugliness beamed directly into our brains at all hours through our phone screens, we are at least about to get to see our friends online; to laugh, argue, tweet and skeet our way through another NBA season together.

Is that even a good thing? It’s something I grappled with while writing this post for a normally serious and thoughtful publication like this one that I’m still not entirely convinced Katie didn’t just accidentally give me the keys to. Ultimately, I still settled on yes. To be sure, we shouldn’t let the return of our favorite sports teams fully remove us from a moment in history where helping those around us and abroad who need it is more important than ever, but without this sport and connection, so many of my most treasured, hopeful moments wouldn’t exist. No matter how difficult times are, we as human beings need an oasis, a source of positivity to keep going. None of us can be negative all the time. Trust me, my brain has tried. And even if we could, it wouldn’t help anyone.

It’s in that vein that I think back to the moments of light in what has overall been a dark year, and how none of them would have happened without basketball, even if they were away from the court. I celebrated five years being married to my wife, who I never would have met if I didn’t choose to go to the same college as Marc Stein, assuming they churned out NBA journalists (they don’t, but it worked out anyway). I wouldn’t have gone to my first Las Vegas Summer League since the pandemic, conquering my fears of germs and gatherings by going to one of the weirdest and germiest places possible for some exposure therapy dinners with some of my closest internet friends, all while gaining my own 10 pounds of, well, let’s call it muscle.

Even smaller moments, like Katie, Mia and I getting drenched in hot desert rain walking from a Tiki Bar to get tacos, or listening to their synced-up giggles of joy at The Sphere changing from Backstreet Boys to giant basketball as we drove past, as if putting on a high-wattage show at the mere sense of our presence. More than anything, the promise of more moments like that is why media day, and the impending return of the NBA it heralds, is exciting. It’s why, while I don’t know if the Hornets will actually be able to almost, just maybe, challenge for a play-in berth in the East, I’m happy they’re back to try.