With the 15th pick in the Basketball Feelings Feelings Draft, James Herbert selects... SURPRISE

James Herbert is a small engine. Of information, of empathy, of very very sneaky jokes that burst like a slow bloom, their memory bringing a jolt in the joy of recall. It was James who I texted from the closet-sized and ancient steel box of the Summer League elevator to ask, who is this older man with a giant binder and 5 huge golden rings strewn over his fingers (10x NBA Champion assistant coach and scout Bill Bertka) because James can tell you in a glance, even if he isn’t physically present, who all is in the room. It’s James who has some of the greatest stories about almost every player of the last ten years and who writes the same people closely and with care and then pans way out, catching every ripple writ large on the league. It’s James who I tend to check in with when something or someone happens in basketball to shift it on its orbital axis because he is an arbiter of in-depth, critical conversation and also a needed “What the?” — he is really good at making you feel not crazy. When I asked if there were any photos he wanted to include with his choice of Surprise, he sent the selections below in an uninterrupted stream via text, each one a happy jolt, surprise at surprise.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on a bench with my wife, Becca, eating a slice of the pizza we’d just picked up, when I heard someone call my name. It was the first time we’d dined anywhere other than our living room in months, and the first time we’d taken our masks off outside of our apartment. 

I looked up. Holy shit! It was a basketball writer! I hadn’t seen him in what felt like a million years but had listened to him on a podcast hours earlier. He was out for a walk with his wife and daughter, and I told him I’d almost forgotten it was possible to run into people. We talked for a few minutes, mostly about the NBA and its bubble plan — some players had finally expressed dissent, older coaches didn’t want to be singled out as “high-risk” — and they went on their way.

Wow, I thought, that was so nice! And … weirdly exhilarating? My life during the pandemic has been sickeningly easy compared to most people’s, but it has been mostly devoid of surprise. 

To be clear: It is an enormous privilege to be able to be as careful and homebound as we’ve been, reading horrifying articles about overburdened hospitals in walking distance from the safety of our Brooklyn apartment in March, shaking our heads at similar stories in other parts of the country now. We’ve been lucky enough to choose predictability.

But I’ve drafted surprise here, which is another way of saying I’ve drafted the feeling that shocks us out of our default mode, that jolts us to attention. Our brains are constantly categorizing and simplifying everything we encounter so that we can race through our lives more efficiently. Surprises are energizing because they make us stop all that, at least for a moment. We all need them. 

In a basketball context, no player in recent history personifies surprise better than Pascal Siakam. To quote the head honcho of this newsletter: “Watching him makes you feel like you need to rewrite the way your eyes send signals to your brain.” In that same story, Siakam’s brother says that even his family is surprised by his crazy trajectory. There is no precedent for a player developing quite the way he has.

Siakam is an outlier among outliers, but players and teams surprise us every season. Who knew Davis Bertans was going to turn into a 6-foot-10 Splash Brother? Even those of us who cared about Brandon Clarke winning Summer League MVP didn’t see this coming from the Grizzlies. We know so much about NBA basketball, and we have all sorts of sophisticated statistical models that predict what’s most likely to happen, but none of them can account for Brandon Ingram completely changing his form or Devonte’ Graham introducing himself to the world with a barrage of 30-footers. 

Last week I interviewed a high school coach about a player who has exceeded expectations at every level. He told me that writers always ask him if he’s surprised by the player’s success. His answer is always no. When asked about himself, Siakam’s answer is typically the same. In this context, surprise is as almost a pejorative term, implying that the player either didn’t have much potential or didn’t have the work ethic to achieve it. It lets the league off the hook for underestimating him. 

I can understand that. I can also understand how “surprise team” can be shorthand for a cute story, a non-contender that inspires more fawning praise in the media than it does fear in opponents. If we know that there will always be two or three teams and a dozen or so players who make experts look stupid every year, then this framing can feel monotonous and lazy, the exact opposite of surprise. 

On a fundamental level, though, aren’t surprises the whole point of sports? If you’re burnt out by recycled talking points and dumb debates, you still watch the games because you want to see something new. Each possession brings a possibility of an amazing highlight, and the best, most creative players all say they surprise themselves with the moves they make. Every time something spectacular happens on the court, and you’re screaming or jumping or laughing or all of the above, it is a reminder that you haven’t seen it all.