Reel Talk: The Second Corbin Smith Review Of Online Basketball Highlights

To Kevin McHale: the world bids you a hearty "Adieu." I like it when a coach gets fired, for two reasons. First, I appreciate that, for a brief and fleeting moment, these stressed-out older men are given the opportunity to take personal inventory, leave their absurd jobs behind, and go live in the purity of nature somewhere, smoking rich-guy weed and looking into the deepest parts of their own souls. They never do, of course—these sad men always find themselves fixing for the next grind. But for a moment, you can dream that they will free themselves from the stockade of their own ambition.

Second, it reminds us all that the structures of authority, in sport as everywhere, are inherently false, and tearing down that scaffolding and replacing it with another ranting sad-sack in a suit or a sweater or, god forbid, a baseball uniform, changes VERY little in the grand scheme of the universe. That's a nice thing to know.

When, sooner or later, the next person (it's George Karl) gets fired, just remember: there will be another person after him, trying his hardest to move heaven and Earth with his only his hoarse human voice, and that person will also fail, sooner or later. And so the endless march of stressed-out men will continue apace, until society finally becomes truly enlightened and begins regarding sport as a meaningless trifle, a proxy for the violent conflicts we have long since abandoned in our new utopian society, which is built on cold fusion and advanced opioids.

Anyway: TO HIGHLIGHTS!

Chris Paul was injured last week—he is still injured, I guess, but, you know, play it by ear—which was sad, because watching the Lil' Commandant swing his ass around and chew people out is a lot of fun.

But you know what else is a DIFFERENT KIND of fun? Orgies.

But you know what else is a DIFFERENT KIND of fun than that? When Jamal Crawford, The Last Gunfighter in the West, has to step up and replace Chris Paul. You see, the Clippers have extraordinarily poor playmaking guard depth: JJ Redick don't dribble so great, Lance Stephenson has absolutely no fixed qualities whatsoever, Pablo Prigioni is a bad shooter who MIGHT be a particularly robust 50-Year-Old aquacize instructor, and Austin Rivers is a waterfall of nightmares that haunts America like the Zodiac Killer.

This leaves Jamal, whose handle is genuinely a work of glorious art that brings me halfway to tears every time I see it in person, as the only player on the roster who stands a chance of coming close to replicating the great man's production. Can he do it all the time? No. He was the Trail Blazers' starting Point Guard during a severe, season-long Raymond Felton collapse, and it was ugly and bad. Jamal Crawford is fantastic and a blessing to everyone who enjoys basketball—if there's any justice, he'll be the mayor of Seattle from the moment he retires until he dies—but he is just not the kind of dude who grinds the corn meal the same way every night. Half the time he gives you a fine polenta, the other half he gives you a small handful of inedibly sharp corn chunks. That's the fun of it, when it's fun.

But when it works, hatchi matchi, that's a dish you'd have to be an isolation-vegan not to enjoy it. During that nightmare Blazer swoon, I was present for one of the nights when Crawford got it going, and it turned me into a forever believer. There are gunners in the NBA, but there is no one in the world who has put that level of devotion and craft into gunning. The ball in Jamal Crawford's hands becomes one with a body, as vital as a hand or a vein.

Look at this chart:

You see that unwavering PER over nearly a decade and a half of NBA service? That is the mark of a fella who has never relied on his athleticism for a second. That's all idiosyncratic skill and conditioning, honed over a lifetime of meditating on the gunning arts. Someday, as is the case with us all, Crawford will need to leave the NBA when his body crumbles, but if a wizard could bless his body with a self-replacing healing majick, he could drift from team to team and maintain a 14-18 PER until the bottom fell out the NBA altogether, or the sun went out.

Anyway, terrific mix. It begins with Jamal reading a bump for GD's from his kitchen table. That is the kind of move only a POWERFUL highlight mixer can flaunt. Jamal blocks a halfcourt shot at about :40, the most unnecessary defensive play in human history. He runs a whole shit ton of pick and rolls, polishing them off with his signature squish-the-knees midrange jump shot. The announcers compliment Austin Rivers at about two minutes in: I encourage you skip that portion or mute your computer to avoid it. There's a special joy in watching Crawford beat Steve Blake off the dribble and then scoop a shot over Aron Baynes' meaty arm-wave.

As far as I am concerned, there are only two problems with this mix: no sack-dropping crossovers, and the last four points he scores are all from the free throw line during garbage time. False advertising, GD's. 37 points is EXTRAORDINARY, 34 is "Eh, pretty good." You have to notate that in the title, ethically.

RATING: 33 PTS, 6 AST.

This week, The Guinness Book of World Records had a world record day, where a bunch of people and bulldogs cross a bunch of arbitrarily constructed record lines so they could get in the book—presumably there is still a book?—or something. I don't think it was always this way, and it disappoints me that the august and widely revered World Record book has had to stoop to lame PR stunts.

I am NOT, on the other hand, disappointed in the Globetrotters, who set seven of these fake records, be because without lame PR Stunts, they almost certainly would not exist. Here is "Zeus McKlurkin" setting the World record for most dunks in a minute.

What THE FUCK are they doing!? Why does Zeke need to dribble through the lane!? Why is Guinness operating under this bizarre idea that it's only a slam dunk if you charge the lane!? Were all those things Shaq did out of post-ups just "Nuclear Layups!?"

To prove my point, I went to my gym—Lake Shore Athletic Club, in the Felida section of Unincorporated Clark County—set up under the 8 Foot Rim, and saw how many times I could dunk in a minute while employing a SOMEWHAT reasonable strategy for actually maximizing the number of dunks someone could get off:

31. 31! With a few PRETTY powerful layups mixed in there! I would have gotten more if I hadn't fucked up my hands from doing too many dunks:

Let's imagine, to use the most extreme possible example, that Rudy Gobert, who has a foot in height on me, a foot and a half in arm length, several magnitudes of athleticism, vastly superior dunking form and enough friends to efficiently feed basketballs to him from the baseline, made even a marginal effort at breaking this record. He would. He would blow it out. He could get 50. Too bad for this bizarre and unfounded "Driving the lane is NECESSARY" concept out of the Guinness office.

RATING: ONE ENGINEERING NIGHTMARE

…and now, to luxuriate in Jamal Crawford's polar opposite! Draymond "The Menace" Green is RIDING THE WAVE of his new contract onto a rip-roaring season with the Golden State Warriors. Normally, the primary aesthetic joys of Draymond involve his suffocating, borderline embarrassing defense—watch him play against Rudy Gay sometime, you can see blood coming out of Rude Dude's nose, his brain gets so hurt—and do not include the start points and endpoints for a mixtape.

But in this game, a weird slapfest with the very sad Brooklyn Nets that the Warriors nearly lost, Green managed a stately triple double. I hate to disparage the author, but the best moments of this video all involve Draymond passing to Steph Curry. Steph had an off night: only 5-of-16 from three, with Draymond assisting on four of those. The play at about 1:45 is particularly funky: Draymond in transition puts an eye on Curry, who runs around a screen and bounces away from Jarrett Jack to make space. It's a perfect play that doesn't feel improvisational, but which effectively mimics improvisation.

Draymond also hits a high-glass bank shot at about 2:00, that doesn't pass the standards of sunset-style beauty, but which the viewer comes to admire. On offense, Draymond just isn't the sort of player who routinely makes electricity shoot through your body. His three-point shots and finishes at the rim all feel makeshift, crafted out of spare parts to succeed juuuuust enough. But the passes, and his chemistry with Curry, make it well worth a watch.

RATING: "All happy families are alike; each" out of "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

"Go Pro Video of Donkey Basketball" SOUNDS like it could be fun. It is not.

It is confusing and noisy and there are people everywhere and it is scary. Somehow, in making a video from the literal perspective of a human being, we become disassociated from the "true" narrator—the woman who has the camera on her head, and who at one point says "Please don't hate me" to her assigned donkey. We are instead transported into the world of these poor donkeys, who just want to chill in a warm barn and eat hay but have instead been forced into a fluorescent gym and expected to perform a task they can't remotely comprehend. It is, in its way, a masterpiece. In the same way that Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom is a masterpiece.

RATING: ONE LEBRON JAMES OUT OF FIVE JOSH SMITHS

Stepan scores from center ice — Stephanie (@myregularface)November 16, 2015

If you're not familiar with hockey, It's like basketball, but played on ice and not subject to the orderly whims of the universe. In this highlight, a man whose name is Stepan—European, I think—takes a shot from "Half-Ice," which is what they call halfcourt in Hockey. The puck bounces past the defenders and into the lap-zone of the goalie, who seems like he had it for a second, but then it sloooooowly dribbles out behind him, like his leg taking an embarrassing little poo, and then slowly slides just baaaaaarely into the net.

There is, truly, no failure more resonant than 90 Percent Success In An Either/Or Endeavor.

RATING: BWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH (That's the annoying goal horn they use.)

RATING: Eight billion out of Eight Billion. There is no number scale on which this highlight can receive an imperfect score.

UNTIL NEXT TIME… KEEP HIGHLIGHTING!