Reel Talk: The Corbin Smith Review Of Basketball Highlights For The Week With Thanksgiving In It

Hello. Welcome to this week's Highlight Reviews. I know that the world is hard and cold in the winter, and I know the lonesome inner despair that comes on as the world turns dark. I wish I could come to your home and hug you with my two arms, give you some of my warmth for the long journey ahead, past Thanksgiving, past Christmas, past Valentine's Day, into the bitter dark.

Unfortunately, I cannot: I have my own struggles and demons, and I cannot simply stop attending to them. Also the logistics of traveling all those different places to hug everyone are pretty daunting; if you could come to me, I'd surely give you a hug, but I understand that's not easy, either. Instead, I offer you this humble column, which I hope can be your light for even a small sliver of a second.

NOZINGIS

Every morning I wake up to a BARRAGE of emails, tweets, letters, and monogrammed bricks of silver thrown through my window. Every one has the same message. "PORZINGIS!" "WE WANT PORZINGIS!" "CORBIN, MY FRIEND, WRITE ABOUT PORZINGIS! I CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH PORZINGIS! PORZINGIS CELEBRATIONS, PORZINGIS TAKES, PORZINGIS STATISTICS, TASTEFUL PORZINGIS DRAWINGS! WHAT SHOULD HIS NICKNAME BE? IS HE DATING ANYONE? WHAT SORT OF PROJECTABLE FANTASIES CAN WE PUT ON HIM?"

And on this day, I say, ENOUGH! I will no more feed the Porzingis maw, the Mawzingis, I will not be made the servant of this thirsting brood of sweaty animals in Knicks Jerseys, or of Young Lurch himself. I will review whatever highlights are IMPORTANT. The kind of thing you can't turn your eyes away from, good or bad! And guess what? What's important right now is ArchDukie Grayson Allen scoring 32 points! So wedge your stupid eyes open with little tiny sticks and FEAST ON THIS RIGHT HERE:

Ahahahaha! All that Porzingis pleasure melts off when exposed to the fiery and unforgiving sun of an undersized Duke guard succeeding on national television! LEARN the true dimension of sports suffering at 1:44, when Dick Vitale compares him favorably to JOHN HAVLICEK while the play by play man says "Oh yeah! Absolutely!" Quiver in terror and despair as Grayson's Ted Cruz-like visage RESPONSIBLY gets back on defense after a made three pointer! "He always seems to be playing at one hundred percent!" "Stars make big plays, and there's no doubt about it: He's A Star!"

Feel a chill seize your entire body as Georgetown's final game winning attempt hits front iron and Duke wins BEHIND Grayson's performance! Your Porzingis seems so very far away in this cold sun of Duke Beefmen pumping their fists in celebratory ecstasy on the bench. Your Porzingod is not with you, here.

Now you know true horror, and your perception of basketball can be rebuilt on the ruins of your mind.This is not merely a land of Porzingian delights: there are terrors out there, blights. Also, can you believe the NCAA lets this fly? Those motherfuckers LOVE money and also being unreasonable, you would think they have lawyers armed with shotguns just for storming into mixtapers' houses and confiscating their hard drives.

RATING: UPSETTING, BUT IMPORTANT. DO NOT SHOW TO CHILDREN

WIGGINS

You guys see this shit? Andrew put this dude on the WALL. TOOK A PICTURE OF him, took it TO A PROFESSIONAL PRESS, sent it TO MARKET, to be sold to hungry POSTER ENTHUSIASTIC CHILDREN.*

…or it ALMOST is. Your child will not feasibly put just this thing on their wall. You need to take this party to Photoshop and add some context. Fox example:

…something classy, sleek, a little forward looking, in the way Andrew Wiggins is. For a child who is into futurism—the sort of youngster intent on inserting his/her minds into computers and living forever, tracking their sleep with apps and shit, using Snapchat, bath salts, all the Post-Millennial shit that most modern kids are into—this is ideal.

But what if your kid is a little "rougher" around the edges?

Little graffiti work! Looks edgy, like a skateboard or a Basquiat!

Or they're really into the idea of cursive even though they haven't learned it and never will?

(The extra little spark on the tail end of Andrew's last name is meant to symbolize energy and activity, the sort of which Andrew used to dunk on Hassan Whiteside, like in this picture. It IS NOT a piece of string on a stick of dynamite waiting to explode. That would be unseemly content for a children's poster.)

Maybe your kid is fixating on nicknames?

Or they're absorbed by a series of imagined slights from Hassan Whiteside?

Perhaps they are stinking from the very real slight of Hassan Whiteside cutting their arm off in a machete fight, and they're seeking revenge?

Or they're actually more into cartoons and art and shit, but you want to sort of nudge them in a sports direction so that you will have something to talk about when they're an adult:

Or they love classical music:

(A symphony is a type of musical piece with several movements. Beethoven, pictured on the left, produced a Fifth Symphony of extraordinary power that is beloved all over the world. Your child, who so loves classical music, will relate to this, for certain.)

Or maybe the idea of a dog urinating on Luol Deng is so viscerally disagreeable (or tantalizing?) to them that they need to reaffirm (or be reminded?) their belief (Or discourage their desire?) that that specific event is, in fact, bad, every time they look at their wall?

Whatever the case is, there is a version of this poster out there for YOUR child. It's just that spectacular.

RATING: ANDREW+!

*CORRECTION: Some readers felt that the phrasing of this review implied that Mr. Wiggins finished his dunk over Mr. Whiteside. This was not, in fact, the case. He did not convert this dunk. This should not, in my mind, disqualify it from posterhood.

LAKESHOW

This week, Drew Garrison, a faithful and fair author over at Silver Screen and Roll, wrote a post about the Lakers' shitty three-point defense. I am not going to review that post, of course; my days as a literary critic are far behind me, a trail of fire and tears left in the wake of my monumental accomplishments. I, instead, want to address a video Drew put together to illustrate his points:

Over and over, the Lakers commit three dudes to covering a pick and roll in the lane, and over and over, the closest wing panics and runs to cover a shooter. They are burned in the exact same way, over and over. Every time a new play starts, the viewer feels like someone might break out of this holding pattern, but they never do. They always send three guys and always leave someone open. It's like they forget, every single trip down the floor, that the three-point line exists. You could feasibly watch this for hours, it is possibly the most hypnotic basketball video ever produced, a medium that includes spaced out classics like "Nik Stauskas Shooting 105 Three Pointers in the Rain" and "Sim Bhullar Scores 18 Points in a D-League Game."

Garrison does well by layering the clips over a modest, hip-hoppy beat. The repetition of the music really does an amazing job bringing out the repetition of the basketball mistakes. But, I might suggest that the choice only goes half way. If the viewer really wants to get to the core of the content here, they ought to try muting the soundtrack and playing Steve Reich's 1970 classic "Four Organs."

The jauntiness of the organs seem at first, comic. At first, you think, "Why are there so many gosh darn organs, playing with one little rattleshaker, and why is silly old Kobe Bryant out there ballwatching?" But soon, you are consumed by "Oh my god, these organs are beginning to sounds like deathdrones, and this Lakers season will never end, and they'll keep making the same mistakes forever, and maybe I'LL keep making the same mistakes forever, and maybe I can never fix them, and, and…" It might not seem like a good feeling, but Art isn't about good feelings: it's about great feelings.

RATING: SEVEN ORGANS (h/t @Ugarles)

WADE

Dwyane Wade just got a foul call by stopping and staring at the referee — Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey)November 24, 2015

Let's imagine you are watching a movie, set in modern times, about aliens or robots or magic or whatever. One of the bad magic people or animals is in a small town and they create some mischief, like stealing a candy bar because they don't have a concept of commerce. Then the sherrif comes by, and he's a big mean-looking old white guy, and he says "HEY! What are you doing, stealing that candy bar, you outsider!"

In this moment, you decide that this sheriff is straight trash. He probably abuses his power and drinks too much. So, you are OVERWHELMED with glee when the alien or magician or robot uses their special power to just absolutely fuck this guy up six ways til' Saturday, until he is straight heap'd. Soon, you will go back to rooting against this bad supernatural presence and rooting for the good supernatural presence, but for a moment, you are happy they blessed our world with one less pushy cop.

I invoke this common filmic trope to try and put what makes this little vine so gosh darn pleasurable. Truly, there is no more absurd authority figure than a referee. They are small men who make significantly less money than the people they are nominally in charge of, and are only famous if they are notably bad, bald, or old. To see Dwyane Wade, a supernatural presence on the basketball court if there ever was one, assert his natural dominance over this small time sheriff of the hardwood is to feel that sports have finally got it right. A revolutionary work.

RATING: 100, but in red and with three little lines underneath.

STEPH!

Last, and certainly least, is this mix of an 18-Point effort from Steph Curry against the Nuggets:

This many points is practically a rounding error for the NBA's finest offensive player, but it is a fascinating glimpse of what Steph Curry might be like if he were not consistently good. If you can just ignore the little box in the bottom right corner of the screen, you can, in your own head, turn Steph from a savant having an off-but-still-good night to a sixth-man scorer off the bench who is having a PARTICULARLY hot game, like basically the best game of his career. Look at the Nuggets Panic! They didn't see this coming! What do we do? Let's put Gallo on him! This WAS NOT in the scouting report!

I also think the Nuggets' white jerseys could be cool. If someone bled on them it would really pop. The sight of real blood is truly the last viscerally shocking experience in the mass media age.

RATING: C+

Thanks for reading! If you have a video you want me to review, get in touch! And until next time… KEEP HIGHLIGHTING!