The thing to do is to just show you what we encountered, trusting that you will understand how we got from there to here. Several Defector staffers were engaged harmlessly in a discussion about Stephen Curry's shooting form when we were suddenly made aware of a strange sentence written by Alex Schiffer of The Athletic, in a blog about the 76ers' interest in trading for James Harden of the Nets. Here is that sentence:
It's not clear, in that screenshot, what Schiffer is going for. The simplest explanation, given the information presented, is also the most troubling: Can he mean that the Brooklyn Nets have literally composed a team-specific version of Billy Joel's unbearable 1989 hit? Reading it in the context of the whole article is not at all clarifying. Clicking the hyperlink takes you to a Jan. 17 article "looking back at 10 important Nets moments" in the time since the James Harden trade, which opens the possibility that Schiffer thinks the Nets are the only team for whom 10 ... things have happened since January 2021. Is that what he means? That you could write a whole dense brain-shredding pop single out of the, ahh, "10 important Nets moments" of the last year?
I suppose that was the angle we were pursuing, more or less, when we began proposing Nets-themed lines to "We Didn't Start the Fire" in our basketball Slack channel. I don't know if this is what Schiffer had in mind, but you can't deny it's catchy.
Steve Nash, Patty Mills, shopping Ivermectin pills
Sean Marks, Ben Simmons, Landry Shamet to the Suns
Kevin Durant’s fucked-up knees, monoclonal antibodies
Dunks and threes, tons of fun, Harden hands out honey buns
Joe Harris: foot is crab, Kessler Edwards might be fab
Vanterpool’s cheatin’ ways, LaMarcus Aldridge fallaways
Barclays is Durant’s place, until the vaccine’s plant-based
Metaverse replays, I sure do hope Harden stays!
We didn’t start the fire!
With your help we can make this a whole chart-topping single. Do your worst.
