Drew and I agreed before Memorial Day weekend that it was time for a Just The Two Of Us episode of The Distraction, but it wasn't until much closer to recording it that we decided what kind of episode that would be. There is more than one kind of those, and while we were probably due for one of the loopy, pre-vacation, Oops! All Digressions episodes, there is a whole long summer ahead of us to fill with those, and still some really good playoff basketball happening. Between the fact of that dwindling season and Drew's latter-day return to NBA fandom, the decision was decently easy. It's a just-us episode, but this one is also About Sports.
Eventually. The usual goofball overture—the revelation of our top-secret "we're back" soundboard, the potency of College Maladies, the future of how to behave when you're sick—went on long enough that it would have been easy to assume this was the other kind of just-us episode. But we hit the pivot, appropriately right after a pair of weakish Mike Breen imitations, and stuck with the NBA for the better part of an hour.
Or, anyway, we talked about the NBA for that period of time. The result is an episode that moves in the kind of free-associative way that our no-guest episodes do, while mostly staying on topic. We talked about the visceral thrill of watching classics like Game 4 of the Western Conference final, and how much of that thrill lies in everyone involved executing at the highest possible level while physically being at the very edge of collapse, and then we talked about how dispiriting and dull it is to see basketball like that regarded by ESPN through the Who's Now lens. Drew reveled in the physicality of the playoffs and talked about how he made his peace with the three-point revolution. That is all basketball stuff. But we also talked about forgotten galoot Brad Lohaus in a way that ended with me apologizing to him for being rude to him when I was in ninth grade, and I made a half-earnest case for Al Horford as the NBA's answer to Bartolo Colon. That is "we do not have a guest to act normal in front of" stuff.
After the break, we parsed the Knicks as a unique aesthetic experience and a historical concept, remembered bad free throw shooters we have known and loved, arrived at a grudging consensus on seeing John Mellencamp's scowling presence at Pacers games, and aired our grievances with the concept of the three-person broadcasting booth. But there was some more decently granular basketball talk in there, too, most of it focused on an appreciation of the totally terrifying Oklahoma City Thunder and the manic, relentless Indiana Pacers. We looked ahead to the tantalizing possibilities of that matchup, at least for people who enjoy watching basketball more than they do the Who's Now/TV ratings aspect of NBA fandom, and celebrated sports as the last bastion of watching competence in action. Sadly, ESPN's green n' eager analyst Richard Jefferson was not included in that last assessment.
And then, past the one-hour mark, we turned at last to the Funbag. There we found a question about a fancy Maryland private school whose logo has a gazebo on it, and whose mascot is The Obezag, which led to a consideration of gazebos in Hallmark movies, and sports, and the broader culture, and the limits of non-boring mascot names. That this bit ended with Drew fulminating gently about Jordon Hudson's uncanny vibes is appropriate, I guess. This was pretty focused and sportsy for a Just The Two Of Us episode, yes, but there's no way to keep that sort of silly stuff out of that kind of episode entirely.
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