2025 Charlotte Hornets SL
079 · 2025-07-25 · medium
Does Summer League exist in its praises? It's over now for another year, that singular NBA event that most resembles the glue that holds post-postmodern American basketball together – the AAU weekender. The NBA Summer League is an opportunity to check out the kind of generic templates Nike is cooking up in advance of the college season, to see how small they're going to make the team names. (Not the subject of today's puzzle, but I'm obviously talking about the Toronto Raptors.) It's a time to think about this now-decadenal trend of male ancestor worship, the Jr or II or III or IV appended to the NOB surname. It's not the playoffs anymore, there's absolutely nothing on the line, and you can take the time to think about it. Then you catch yourself in mid-thought, you remember that this has become a specifically Black-coded practice. It's absolutely not your place to make any kind of comment, no matter who's in charge of the country right now. You despise your own dad anyway, what did he ever do for you? So you say things like "Smith the third" on the live broadcast, even though that particular example would seem to indicate that a.) any and all of his siblings, regardless of given Christian name, have full license to refer to themselves in the exact same way; and b.) this man's grandfather was conceived immaculately. Because this is the NBA Summer League, Smith III is aiming for a spot on the third string, and c.) he's not even going to be invited to camp. If you are on the broadcast, you can skip calling as many plays as you want. You can compare notes instead about Las Vegas casinos and restaurants with your broadcasting partner, or Isiah Thomas, maybe even both. Don't worry! It won't be the kind of demotable offense that Doris Burke committed, apparently. If you're not on the broadcast, if it's late at night and you're in a foreign country watching a pirated NBATV feed, the NBA Summer League lets you check up on the products and services that are currently being targeted to American white males between the ages of 35 and 49. Home contractor referral websites? Yes. Price comparison websites for used cars? Absolutely. Penis-hardening pills in chewable form? Many. With the NBA Summer League, you can watch players like Kon Kneuppel. He was selection number four in the 2025 NBA Draft. If you'd like, you may ask the universe if he's in the NBA only because all those grocery baggers were displaced from the labor pool by self-checkout kiosks. You may say to yourself, this is not the future of hoops. Summer League's killing us, it's just sing, sing, sing all day. But then the epiphany hits, you finally realize what it all means. Of course this is the kind of tournament a team like Charlotte Hornets II wins. Of course there's a championship t-shirt available on Fanatics for fifty dollars, and of course the AI-generated ones on Etsy and eBay are better. Hooray? The champions?
