Jonathan Simmons Sends Meyers Leonard Shuffling off This Mortal Coil

Honor. It is so hard to come by in this life, and it can be torn from your hands at any second.

Meyers Leonard, the once and future long term solution at center for the Portland Trail Blazers, has had a fairly ignoble career with the squad.

He starts out a young, lengthy faun-boy, stumbling around the court without a clue as to what he was doing or even cursory control of his legs. He then languishes on the bench in the Aldridge years, sitting behind Robin Lopez and whatever meaty backup guy was posting up in town at the time. In time, he discovers a slow, looping trebuchet of a three-point shot and becomes a weirdo small sample size efficiency hero. Everyone leaves and Leonard is given the chance to prove himself. He does not, instead continuing to play filler minutes behind Mason Plumlee.

With the arrival of Jusuf Nurkic, the ultimate indignity comes to our hero's door. Nurk is powerful, terrifying, skilled. He becomes a hero overnight. On the pedestal the public had reserved for Leonard, the white center of fantasy and dreamed-of heir to Walton and Sabas, Portland tears his name from the foundation and spray paints NURK over the pedestal.

When Jusuf stress fractures his fibula near the end of the season and Meyers is reappropriated into his role, the world is angry, confused, upset. As Meyers skates around the court in his familiar manner, flailing and failing to match the steezy, beefy production of the city's new hero during the middle of a high stakes playoff push, the crowd turns surly and angry.

And then, on the last day of his season, it comes crashing down, all those years of malfeasance and disappointment bottled up into one clutch play. San Antonio's Jonathan Simmons driving down the lane, Leonard klutizily shifting into a late rotation, Simmons rising up and raining down a big ol' beefy slammer on his poor spirit, hooking onto Leonard's arm and spinning his entire body a rude one hundred and eighty degrees.

Leonard, knowing that something very embarrassing has happened to him in public, does not, as the stipulations of honor dictate, immediately slice his own belly open, spill his guts on the sacred court, letting the Gods observe his sacrifice as a means to pay for his own dishonor. Instead, he weakly claps. "Aww shucks."

Kawahi Leonard, driven by matters of honor, can't believe what he is seeing:

Meyers wasn't done. He sought redemption from that most dishonorable of actions, in the last refuge of every disgusting, pimply p'takh living today, the terrible sin: Posting Online.

Dear @SportsCenter , Jonathon Simmons deserves to be #2 on Top Ten for his dunk.. But @NoahVonleh should be #1 for his game winning layup
— Meyers Leonard (@MeyersLeonard11) April 11, 2017

Sir, I implore you, please, do not shame yourself further by indulging in that most vile of deflections, the "Hey but we won" fallacy. If you do not have the decency to regain true honor in the eyes of the judgemental Gods, at least honor your poor family by showing proper deference to the shame laid upon you by the vengeful arm of Jonathan Simmons. Do not mix that shame with a perfectly wonderful game-winner by using it it to prop up your tattered and ruined visage in this manner.

Instead, retreat to the woods. Speak only to lost hikers, giving them directions and a cup of nourishing soup. Glower over a campfire at night, the flicking light reflecting off your face as you contemplate the night when your honor was taken from you forever.