I Challenge Sam Hinkie to a Game of One-on-One

You probably read my piece about the Nike Hoop Summit. It was measured, thoughtful and interesting. You were entertained, enterformed, and enterfascinated by my look into the lives of future NBA Superstars/my description of the climate-controlled gym in which they practiced. I won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

Not to sound like a starfucker—although I am, I am a man of pansexual desires and famous stars are in that pan, cooking alongside normal people and garlic—but I saw a lot of famous NBA GMs at that event. Mitch Kupchak was chewing on a toothpick and leaning over his phone. Masai Ujiri was talking to a reporter off the record, probably about movies. John Hollinger talked to Neil Olshey on the eve of the Blazers' and Grizzlies classic playoff matchup; it was a conversation boiling over with passive-aggressive body language. It was all extremely exciting, because NBA GMs are famous and powerful people who can get away with being mean to waiters at restaurants because their lives are very high pressure and they need everything to be just right.

I also saw Philadelphia 76ers GM Sam Hinkie. As a frequent contributor to this website and basketball-liking person, I boiled over with rage in my heart. The tales of the Hinkster's Maleficence are well known: going under the salary floor until the last second so he can avoid paying his players extra, lighting the team he works for on fire to stockpile picks, running a basketball team like it was a stock shorting operation, encouraging his players to attend TED-style seminars about how failure makes you better person, working for Mitt Romney.

I was in an environment with other professionals, so I didn't pull out my white glove and challenge Hinkie in that moment. But I took down a brief scouting report and I came to some startling conclusion: I could almost certainly beat Sam Hinkie at basketball if given the chance.

So, on behalf of VICE Sports, and of all humanity, I issue this, right now, an official challenge, TO SAM HINKIE: in two months time, I will play you in a one-on-one game of basketball. Your representatives in the Sixers front office will meet with my editors at VICE and decide on a set of rules to play by. IF I WIN, you have to SIGN ME TO A CONTRACT so I can write my book, "Grinding on the Bench: A Sportswriter's Very Erotic Year in the NBA." If YOU WIN, I will hand wash your car three (3) times and wax it once (1ce).

You might be saying, "Corbin, I'm a big fan of your work and online persona but this seems like a bad idea. Sam Hinkie is a BASKETBALL PROFESSIONAL, and so is probably better at basketball than nearly every other bean-counter in the world, whereas you are a freelance writer who occasionally shoots hoops at the gym." If I were in the room with you, I would have interrupted you halfway through that sentence and slapped the Giant Submarine Sandwich right out of your hand.

I will tell you, right now that I am CONFIDENT in my ability to beat Sam. I am a young person in the prime of my physical life. Sam on the other hand is an "older" person whose bones creak and break because the dread disease of middle-age devours all of the calcium in your body. He also probably works too much and is more scared of death and dying than I am, because I do not work that much and use the extra time to live life to the fullest.

ALSO, I have seen Hinkie in person. I stood three feet from him. And let me tell you this, right now: Sam is not very tall. I would say about 5'8" or so. I, on the other hand, am Six-Feet Two-Inches tall, which is basically the height of 6'3" NBA Player Russell Westbrook. Here is proof:

I can also palm a men's regulation basketball, like Allen Iverson and other famous NBA Superstars. I don't know if Hinkie can, but I seriously doubt it.

"But Corbin," you say, your clothes now covered in mayonnaise and sandwich meats, "Why are you giving him so much time to train!? He and his organization have access to many millions of dollars worth of modern workout facilities and coaches. They will spend two months unceasingly crafting their boss into the ultimate basketball monster, lab engineered to beat you in your one-on-one contest!"

But in this presumed deficit is my true advantage, for I can train in basketball's true home: nature. Here I am, dribbling in nature.

The dirt makes the surface uneven, necessary for mastering true improvisation. Here I am, passing back and forth with a mighty tree.

Unlike humans, who wither and die in true sunlight, trees take their power from the Earth and live for centuries, accumulating centuries of basketball knowledge. When you let them act as your partner in a passing drill, they pass that knowledge on to you. The closest ol' Hinkman is going to get to learning basketball from a plant is knocking over his office cactus with a stress-ball.

Shooting in the forest might not come with a fancy rebounding machine or hoops, but without those structures, the shooter is left to find hoops where one would not normally see them. One fosters TRUE Basketball creativity when man's structures of "basketball" are stripped away.

But to truly learn all that nature has to teach about basketball, you need to take extreme measures. Measures I have taken.

I enter into the woods, untouched by man. It might take a while to truly get away from civilization, into the true cathedrals of the Nature Gods. My rough measurement is "Would I feel comfortable masturbating here?" I did, so I knew I was deep enough.

I stuck a regulation basketball in the hole. Every true basketball is a seed with a spirit that can draw from nature. Now I cover the hole.

Then, I wait a month while the ball draws its power from the Earth. I read the collected works of Willa Cather, the Novelist Laureate of Nebraska, during this time. It doesn't have anything to do with basketball, she is just a tremendous writer and I don't spend enough time with her.

When I return to my basketball seed, the plant had grown.

This is the BasketBlant, Balliaceae Baskeanium. That purple flower contains the pure secrets of basketball, straight from nature's heart. I yank the plant out from the roots and eat the flower.

I give the plant several minutes to take effect. Then, as a flash of light, all of the secrets of basketball that nature has to teach me come flooding into my heart and mind. I dig up the basketball from which the BasketBlant sprang. I commune with it, feel all of it's angels, sense the new secrets I now possess, revel in the new knowledge and power I earned from my total communion with nature. A knowledge of the game that goes deeper than words or numbers, the spiritual truth of basketball buried deep in my heart.

If Hinkie thinks his fancy coaches and weight sets can get him in a better place, physically, spiritually, and sexually, than the one I inhabit after cultivating and consuming the BasketBlant, I invite him to do his worst.

But he will not accept my challenge. Hinkie is a coward, camped out behind his spreadsheets and fancy facilities while I went deep into the woods and became one with the spirit of nature itself, basketball's most sacred source of power. He is welcome to his strategies, but I trust in mine.