Here are the NBA Fights We Desperately Want to See

It’s fight week in the NBA! Whether it was Michael Carter-Williams and Jason Smith falling over each other, Arron Afflalo trying in vain to decapitate Nemanja Bjelic, or Chris Paul leading a furtive strike against his former team's locker room, things are getting, as they say, chippy. Who knows the reason why, maybe it's the cold weather locking down most of the hemisphere, or maybe LeBron James has secretly been working behind the scenes to orchestrate a distraction big enough to get us to overlook his own personal struggles as the Cavaliers sink in the East. Who knows?!

What we do know is, we want more. We want all the bloodshed. Here are the fights we want to see in no particular order/proximity to reality.

The Plumlee Pummel

Much like the Highlander, there can only be one. More than that, this fight will serve to end the confusion once and for all. Mason? Marshall? Miles? Some other one we haven’t met yet? It doesn’t matter, after this battle royale style scrap only one Plumlee will be left alive and the survivor’s contract will go to the Nets for all time.

There Can Only Be Thon

This is one of the more existential feuds planned for NBA Fight Week. Given his wingspan, Thon quite often accidentally shoves himself from behind. No stranger to being an instigator and generally evil, Jason Kidd will wrongly inform Maker that he has been shoved by an opposing player. As the slaps and jabs continue, Thon will be forced to confront the truth that we are all our own worst instigators in this greatest melee called life.

Tunnel Tumult

Given the detractive success of Chris Paul’s raid on the Clippers locker room earlier this week, let's elevate the formula. This fight will feature the entire roster of the Denver Nuggets, dressed in old-timey miners gear circa the gold rush era. Instead of rushing into tunnels, they will be struggling to escape them. A veiled critique of the collapse of the American coal mining industry, this fight proves to have a moral purpose, plus Mason Plumlee—should he survive the Pummel—loses a tooth testing the rocks a stagehand gave him from the parking lot to pan as if they were real gold.

Coaches Corner

Given the eagerness Mike D’Antoni showed in wanting to punch Blake Griffin (we’ve all been there), this fight will take place in a ring shaped like a hexagon to represent each division in the league. Using the model of All-Star voting, a coach from one team within that division will be chosen and given a tool that best represents the historic nature of their geographical background. For example, the Atlantic division coach will be given a fishing net, the Southwest coach a lariat, and so on. They will be set loose in the Pentagram where the only escape is to execute their own plays.

Courtside Chair Challenge

Taking one of the most iconic—not to mention wasteful of a perfectly good chair—pro-wrestling prop set-ups, one lucky fan will be upgraded to courtside but then forced to smash every single chair within the inner and outer row upon the back of their favorite player. It shows the fans that sometimes, however well-intentioned, heckling can hurt.

Bigs and Littles

A battle of the bigs is something every basketball fan is familiar with, and rather than riff on this term in a totally literal way, we're taking it a step further. By pairing each big with a “little” we've got a more inclusive, tag-team event. In an unexpected twist, CP3 will lose his big, Nenê, in an early round and be forced to strike a deal with his ex-teammate, Blake Griffin, if he hopes to stand a chance. As huge fans of the book and television show, Big Little Lies, we originally wanted to name this match “Big Little Guys,” but HBO was quick with the cease and desist letter.

Afflalo Me To The Gates Of Hell

OK, these are getting dramatic. Anyway as far as I can tell from the playbook, this fight will be the entirety of Dante’s Inferno acted out by a beleaguered Arron Afflalo. LeBron James will narrate as Virgil, but radio in from another location with a vocoder so he’s unrecognizable. Not all of the nine circles have been cast yet, but I can tell you that Dwight Howard will play Gluttony in a nod to his candy addiction, Durant will play Treachery, and Tony Parker is apparently Limbo, but only because we've heard he's done it at a wedding and it's apparently incredible. This one is 72 hours long.

Tower of Power

Basically a chicken fight out of water, this event is a guy stacked on another’s shoulders but because each combatant’s combined height is over twelve feet it makes for a very long and awkward duel, because nobody can stay balanced. Kyrie uses it as proof gravity is a social construct.

The Stone Buddha Beatdown

Tim Duncan will come out of retirement for this, striding onto the court in his oversized silks, floating and luminous. He thought it was going to be a kickboxing demonstration, you see, and now realizes that someone tried to trick him into a fight. It is not noble. It is beneath him. He floats off the court, impervious.

Growing Pangs of New York

The Knicks and the Nets face off in a West Side Story style fight, led on one side by Nik Stauskas and the other by Enes Kanter. Porzingis has a piece of rebar strapped to his forehead and Allen Crabbe wields a tiny little crab fork that glints wildly in the oil drum fires scattered around the court. When it turns out nobody on either team knows how to snap OR whistle the whole thing sort of peters out.

Battle of Los Angeles: On Ice

This fight is primarily concerned with the Clippers battling the Lakers for rights to their bigger locker room, but to signal that they neither yield nor care to enter the fray the Kings have declared their neutrality by demanding the battle take place on ice. It’s only fair. However, some AV tech fears that they have bungled the Staples Center schedule and that it really is the night for Disney On Ice, so the entire fight is scored by some of Tim Rice’s most well-loved hits.

Rasheed William Wallace

Meant to be a historically accurate reenactment of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, this version goes awry when Rasheed decides to add a battlecry of his own devising, a rousing call-and-return of “BALL DON’T”, “LIE”. All the players in attendance, regardless of being cast as Scottish or British, get so fired up that they turn on the refs. Somebody finds an old trebuchet kicking around but Wallace stops everyone before they get out of hand with a speech in which he growls that in his day, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t just go launching officials from trebuchets, you had to confront your problems on the court.

Tormentor in the Smoothie King Center

Much like the Malice at the Palace, this one is a slow burn that sees tensions palpably rising throughout the game. However, that’s because known throat-pouched demon, Pierre the Pelican, has been turning up the heat as the quarters go on. It is a giveaway gone awry because cold smoothies were supposed to parachute from the rafters down to the sweating crowd and players, but everything launches at once and the entire arena is drenched in Açaí Adventure ®. Do you know what it feels like to have brain freeze while simultaneously sweating profusely? Awful. Boogie cries!

Mascot Mayhem

What everyone expects to be the lighthearted interlude of NBA Fight Week turns out to be the biggest bloodbath yet. Chuck the Condor, a flippant millennial unaccustomed to the ways of war, is the first to fall. Shortly after this, Slamson the Lion is skinned by Stuff the Magic Dragon, who is already wearing the bloodied pelt of Clutch the Bear. The G-Man makes a surprise appearance and is immediately stuffed into a t-shirt cannon and shot at Boomer, Jazz Bear, and Jack Nicholson. Champ's and Hooper's herd instincts kick in and they both make a run for it, but Moon Dog ends up harnessing them to a chariot with spikes on its wheels and having a Gladiator moment with Grizz, Pierre the Pelican, Rumble the Bison and the Coyote. Bango skewers Burnie on its horns and Rocky the Mountain Lion eats Moon Dog. Hugo the Hornet and Harry the Hawk are disemboweled by the Raptor while Go the Gorilla’s jumping-through-a-flaming-hoop trick backfires and it becomes a walking inferno with Franklin and Blaze the Trail Cat later huddling over the smoldering corpse for warmth. Tapping into the hunting techniques of it’s ancestors, Crunch the Wolf forces Benny the Bull off a cliff (the rafters) and Lucky the Leprechaun does a jig in the carnage.