The NBA off season is not better than that. Sadly.

And now, the longer view of the Russell Westbrook – Chris Paul deal that you have not seen yet:

…

Ok, that was good. Now what do you have?

And no, Antoine Griezmann in Barcelona will not cut it.

Of course, you can analyze the winners and losers that everyone has, knowing that when this money is shoveled, everyone wins, just for the show.

But let's be honest here, Thursday night was the moment when the NBA free agency reached its peak. You'll never get as much high-level human entertainment moved in such a short space of time. No agreement is now unthinkable. The salary cap is in fragments. A championship parade is a sign for the sale. Injuries are now the management of the load. Total silence is the new pressure and secrets are now more fun than leaks. The sources are now liars who may be just voices in the head. A handshake is equivalent to a wave coming from a parking lot. A contract is only a suggestion. And the composition of the lineup is now essentially the Super Friends League, in which everyone ends up being as available as Aquaman. All these new truths were communicated to us / imposed during the four weeks following the end of the series, and stacked on top of each other, they constitute a historical moment in the North American sport.

One that does not repeat itself, not with this level of grandeur. There will be new attempts to recreate these days in future decisions, all more artificial than the others, and they will all fail horribly because artifices always fail. We will ask when the free agency is dead as entertainment, making a series of references to shark jumps as the answer comes back to us.

Westbrook for Paul and a series of draft picks for a team that already had several are the last moment of jaw relaxation in NBA history, because I already had the jaw to the height.

Here's what comes next instead:

• The owners will meet at a resort to discuss how to "take control of our game" and Adam Silver will begin to launch veiled threats on "the health of the game".
• Officers will attend these meetings and will request 20 additional chairs and 40 more sandwiches.
• The agents will win (because the owners have all the discipline of a preschool recess), then attack each other when they take all the jobs of general managers and then complain about the certainty of the costs. and the ingratitude of the players.
• Players will line up their contracts for maximum leverage, think they have invented something new and cool and will be greeted by "Yeah, Kawhi, 2019."
• Stephen Curry, the league's oldest player in the league as we speak, will politely answer a question about staying with a team all his career and will be damned as being a little adventurer and a volunteer.

Now, we could do a whole series of other not-so-far-fetched scenarios to solve this problem, but the truth is still true: it was the best choice. All that follows is imitative at best and insufficient at worst. Even some players who can not play for the first 25 percent of their new contracts are not dissuasive from massive new deals, and the only way to defeat them is that a team hires a deceased player several years later. earlier (James Dolan needs his beer). That was it, the kids – the post-season game Citizen Kane.

Let us leave you now with the vision of Adam Silver as Orson Welles as the closing act of the longest dead season of all time, the one that Don Nelson never tried to consider during his day the more aggressive in the Kush warehouse. And if you try to crush any of these images, rest assured knowing that it's about the basketball event horizon in all its splendor and splendor absurd.

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Ray Ratto Looking forward to the draft 2025 in which Sam Presti has all the choices.