With the 19th pick in the Basketball Feelings Feelings Draft, Dan Devine selects... JOY

Dan Devine has been covering the NBA for over a decade now and has managed to retain the ability to watch it through eyes that bulge wide open. It’s one of the reasons I wanted him to be a part of this draft for this newsletter which is, if nothing else, earnest to its own occasional detriment. Dan also has a habit of publicly lauding Kyle Lowry and the Toronto Raptors, so there is a small bit of bias there. In his writing, he is a heart guy. He knows the numbers but he’s leading with how much a player or a team is ratcheting up his pulse. Even when he’s critical, he prefaces judgement with phrases like “this feels awfully harsh” and “it feels nuts to”. To him, basketball is the sum of all it’s straining, misfiring, maybe-just-a-bad-day parts as much as it is about proficiency and triumph, which is why it felt almost diabolical to me when he picked Joy, in this moment, and gave it the treatment that he did. Like I’d willed it. But really he did.

It was just after New Year's, 2015, and I really, really didn't want to go back to work.

I'd just spent the whole month of December on family leave taking care of my daughter, a four-month-old galaxy who arrived with a terrifying bang, and who has continued to make beautiful and bracing noise of one tone or another ever since. Some parts of that month, I recall with a grimace. As I write this, I'm looking at the couch where I fed her mid-morning bottles, which is where she one day blew out a diaper so violently that it required I change not only her outfit, but also my own; this marked the first time in my life that someone else had shit my pants, and, hopefully, the last.

Broadly, though, it was cool as hell to get to learn about my baby—how to get her to eat, how to get her to sleep, what made her laugh, what songs calmed her down. But when the holidays were over, so was my leave, which meant it was time for her to start day care, and time for me to start writing about the NBA again. I'm very aware that that isn't "work" at all, really, in the grand scheme, but I still felt pretty bummed out about it; I was having a hard time rediscovering my enthusiasm for watching into the wee hours and writing about what I saw.

And then, on my first night back, there was Stephen Curry.

I just sat there, watching him dribble around the Thunder like they were static obstacles in the Skills Challenge, intermittently and involuntarily muttering stuff like "This fuckin' guy" and "Jeeeeesus, dude," trying to do it as quietly as I could manage, to avoid waking anyone up.

It seemed like every possession presented a brand new canvas for his fluid, vibrant, unrestrained, and bombastic self-expression. Feints and pivots and reversals of field; dribbles through his legs, through Adams's legs, and around his back; releases under Roberson's arm, over Ibaka's head, splitting through doubles before the walls could close in—body and ball moving seemingly everywhere at once, baffling excellent defenders into parting like the Red Sea, his pulse barely seeming to quicken as the roar at Oracle steadily rose. (Man, that sound. I miss hearing that sound pump through the TV.)

I just sat there and waited for something special to happen, and it did, over and over again. Before too long, I was like, "Oh, right. That's why I stay up late all the time. That's why this job fucking rules."

Here's what I love most about that memory: While that night sticks out for me because of the circumstances of my life, it wasn't really a particularly noteworthy game. Steph finished with 19 points, nine rebounds, six assists, and four steals in 31 minutes—decidedly not the stuff of his legend. (He only made one goddamn 3, for chrissakes.) The Warriors blew Oklahoma City's doors off, sure, but who cares? It was a friggin' Monday night in January—just one of 82 for all parties involved, nothing to fawn or obsess over.

Except that... y'know... it's totally something worth fawning and obsessing over! What Steph was doing was cool as hell! Sure, those shoulder fakes, in-and-out dribbles, up-and-under layups, and seeing-eye passes don't matter all that much in the big picture of an NBA season. In the moment, though? They can be a flotation device, a lifeline to something lighter and brighter than what came before, a smile where one didn't previously exist—pure magic. In the moment, man? That shit's everything,

Here is a sad truth: Watching game after game, night after night, month after month, year after year, it can be easy for me to get sidetracked by the churn, and to start missing the forest for the trees. Every so often, though, if I'm lucky, I'll catch something in some random game as I'm flipping around—some "oh, shit" moment like Steph going Globetrotters on a playoff team—and it'll redirect my eye, and remind me of why I'm doing what I'm doing.

It might be Steph's liquid handle and parabolic underhand scoops, or the way Russ slices through the lane for a one-handed atomic-bomb tomahawk before sneering through your soul, or the sheer imperiousness of Ben Simmons's whole vibe as he plays exactly the way he wants, without any consideration of how anyone else seems to think he should. (Every time I look at him, I think about Namor, but maybe that's just my particular damage.)

Or it might be KD and LeBron turning a regular season game into the Rucker, or Marcus Smart checking 7-footers and stonewalling them. Or Kawhi, OG Anunoby, Jrue Holiday, and Jonathan Isaac just straight up ripping the ball out of dribblers' hands. The Cavs playing Tristan Thompson, Kevin Love, and Larry Nance Jr. at the same time, because fuck it, and it somehow working. Dame Time, and Devonte' Graham out of nowhere, and Corey Brewer scoring 50, and Trevor Booker volleyball-setting in a buzzer-beater, and, and, and, and... At the risk of veering toward breathless "THIS LEAGUE!!!!" territory, just about every night, there's usually something in the NBA that makes me a little bit happier than I was before I saw it.

"A little bit happier," as you know, is in awfully short supply right now. Between a broader world haunted by plague, political brutality, racism, and rapaciousness, and the smaller-scale stresses of raising two children under 6 without school, day care, or extended family support, and the way that living and working amid the social media shit show amplifies my ambient anxiety, and the facts of daily life in an industry that's been having a violent perpetual seizure for seemingly the entire time I've been in it, I don't really know how to feel good, most days. It's hard to find silver linings, causes for optimism, reasons to get excited about what's coming next.

I talk about this with my wife a lot, because I don't know what to do about it. She doesn't know, either, because nobody does, but the other night she said that we have to figure out ways to find and seize joy wherever it might be, however fleeting. The girls need it. We can't expect them to do it for us; we have to do it for them. It's part of the deal, you know?

A couple of years ago, after the Warriors swept the Cavs in the 2018 Finals, I got to ask Steph what "playing with joy"—a concept that cropped up a lot as Golden State became the league's premier juggernaut after Steve Kerr's arrival—meant to him.

"I've always had that disposition—to smile and laugh and joke and be free out there," he said. "I think that's contagious [...] I think, for me, just in general, it's an appreciation of everybody that you get to play with out on the floor, and what they all mean, and the value they bring to winning a championship. I don't think any of us take ourselves too seriously, and we just appreciate what we get to do for a living."

It feels nearly impossible to do that right now, and given the state of things in the U.S. in general and in Florida in particular, it feels really, really hard to envision the return of the NBA providing that sort of exhale and elation for me. Maybe it won't; maybe something else will. I just know that I have to keep looking for it. The people in my life need me to find that spark, and the people in yours do, too. The moment is a mystery, and we've all been conscripted into a search party. It's time to go back to work, whether we want to or not.