Skills Competition

As a reminder, here are the teams:

Indiana Pacers: TJ McConnell, Chris Duarte, Bennedict Mathurin

Plumdog and his Millionaires: Mason Plumlee, Bol Bol, Jalen Duren

The Face, The Brains, and The Brawn: Ricky Rubio, Alex Caruso, Jonathon Kuminga

Here’s how it all breaks down:

Round 1 – Halfcourt Shot

-        Everyone will attempt a halfcourt shot until their team makes one. We will watch for as long as we have to

Round 2 – 4x4 Relay with Mystery Guest

-        Cone drill, pass through some rolling tires, pick up a Boston Dynamics robot full court, shoot the t-shirt cannon

Round 3 – Layup Line of Revenge

-        Exhausted, our heroes must now run a regular layup line. Except there are some guests waiting in the wings who get to seek revenge on them

If you win the round you get 3 points, come in second you get 2, last you get 1. Most points at the end of the night wins. You don’t want to know what the tiebreaker is.

Round 1 – The Halfcourt Shot

Everyone lines up at halfcourt and looks at each other as if this was the first time they’d been told about the true nature of this competition. Let’s not give them any time to reconsider: there goes the gun, time to start!

Bol Bol grabs a ball like it’s an orange and cashes his first shot, sealing three huge points for Plumdog and his Millionares before anyone else can take a shot. The remaining contestants are stunned into silence, standing as they are in the presence of this god among men.

The first person to shake off the religious awe is TJ McConnell, that bastard, and he heaves a pretty bad shot. He turns to Mathurin and Duarte and barks “Do your job!” then immediately starts playing defense against Ricky Rubio. Seemingly in lock step, Alex Caruso starts face-guarding Duarte. It’s up to Kum Buckets and Mathurin to hit an open shot, and they both hit the rim.

Despite winning and having nothing left to play for, Christ-incarnate Bol Bol swats Kuminga’s next shot into the third row. Plumlee and Duren grow tired of waiting and begin to take shots just for fun. Rubio and Duarte have fully given up. Kuminga’s next shot hits the rim, backboard, then rim again and falls just short, even as Mathurin’s falls right through. The Indiana Pacers take 2 points. We luckily don’t have to stand around awkwardly for much longer as Kuminga sinks his next shot.

Round 1 Wrap Up: Plumdog and his Millionaires – 3, Indiana Pacers – 2, FBB – 1

Round 2 – 4x4 Relay with Mystery Guests

For this round, each team must run a quick cone drill for foot speed, successfully pass a ball through all three rolling tires, stop a Boston Dynamics robot from scoring, and hit the target in the nosebleed section with the T-shirt cannon. One player per task. As the teams deliberate, it becomes obvious even to those of us who aren’t mathematically gifted that each team will require a mystery guest. After each team decides which players are performing which tasks, they will be assigned a mystery guest at random. This guest will reveal themselves when it is time for their task to be completed.

Up first, the team in first: Plumdog and his Millionaires. They have assigned Plumlee to the passing, Duren to defending the Boston Dynamics robot, and Bol with shooting the T-shirt cannon, in hopes that their mystery guest will be fleet of foot for the cone drill. The players stand at their stations and wait anxiously for their mystery guest to appear and start the show.

Smoke fills the tunnel.

The lights go out.

The Brooklyn Nets logo flashes on center court.

The lights come up, and out walks Cam Thomas! He saunters up to the cone drill looking pretty disappointed. We’re not sure if that’s just how he always looks or if he really wanted to shoot the cannon. Either way, the gun fires and he easily handles the drill, proving Plumdog’s gamble to be a good one.

Once he’s done, unpaid interns start rolling three tires across the court at varying distances from the baseline as Plumlee tries to bounce pass a ball through them. Precious seconds tick by as he switches his form and start passing left-handed! That tricky son of a bitch! The moment he fires the third pass through, the Boston Dynamics robot rises out of its crouch and menacingly begins dribbling down the court. Jalen Duren goes in for a confident steal, only for the robot to smoothly dribble behind his back and make him look foolish. The robot keeps Duren on his back as they cross halfcourt, shielding him with one long metallic arm. Duren fights around him and they square up 30 feet from the basket. The robot hesitates, looks at the basket, then drops his shoulder and flies by Duren, accelerating at a genuinely inhuman rate towards the hoop. Duren, not to be outdone, soars into the air and pins the layup off the backboard.

Three down, one to go. We now turn our attention to the wonderful sight of Bol Bol hoisting a T-shirt cannon to his shoulder. He peers past the bright lights of the court all the way into the upper deck where one lucky section unfurls a big cloth target. Bol hits a banner with his first shot, misses the upper deck entirely with his next two, but with the fourth shot hits the section. A buzzer sounds and their time is displayed – 1:44.

On to team two: the Indiana Pacers. They place Duarte in the speed drill, Mystery Guest on the passing, McConnell on the robot, and Mathurin on the cannon.

The gun fires. We begin.

Duarte takes the cone drill a little too lightly, and while trying to still look calm and cool he tacks on a couple precious seconds. The moment he finishes the clock stops.

The lights go out.

Somewhere, a bell tolls.

The Milwaukee Bucks logo flashes at halfcourt.

The lights come up, and Jevon Carter trots out. He assesses the situation, takes up his place at the passing drill, and the clock resumes. With the tenacity which he attacks everything, he fires off chest passes at these tires like someone just told him he couldn’t. Faster even than Plumlee, Carter gives the Pacers the lead going into the third step.

The robot brushes him aside and hits the court at a dead sprint. McConnell, caught off guard, stands flat-footed as the robot flies right by him. But wait! McConnell reaches around it and pops the ball loose! The ball rolls towards the sidelines and people leap out of the seats as McConnell and a Boston Dynamics robot dive on the floor after it. They reach the ball at the same time and crash into the folding chairs. A referee we forgot we’d hired stands over the wreckage, clears some chairs and bags of popcorn out of the way, and declares a jump ball.  After much debate and plenty of exasperated looks from McConnell, it’s determined that by the letter of the law he did in fact stop the robot from scoring. A quick review takes seven seconds off the clock, and we’re on to the cannon.

Mathurin holds the cannon at full stretch and misses his first shot by all of about 30 yards. Checking the clock and hearing the screams of McConnell, he straightens up, hoists it to his shoulder, and hits the target. Time – 1:35.

Third team time – FBB take the floor. They place Kuminga on the speed drill, Rubio on the passing, Mystery Guest on defending the robot, and Caruso on the cannon. A murmur of confusion ripples over the crowd as they see one of the more well-known defenders in the league on the cannon, but Ricky Rubio hushes them by pointing to his temple and reminding everyone that he’s the brains of the operation. He must know something we don’t.

The gun.

Kuminga handles the cone drill a little quicker than Duarte did. Rubio hits all three tires with his first three tries; it’s incredible.

The clock stops.

The lights go out.

A spotlight points out a man playing the trumpet.

The New Orleans Pelicans logo lights up.

The jumbotron plays a Cameo of Mike Breen saying, “Bah Gawd, that’s Jose Alvarado’s music!”

The lights come on, and Grand Theft Alvarado is already on the court, sprinting at the robot. Alvarado slaps the floor and tells him to bring it. The robot rises, and calmly begins dribbling. Alvarado gets low, the robot pounds a few machine gun dribbles through its legs. The robot goes left, Alvarado’s right there with him. The robot crosses over and goes right, Alvarado’s with him stride for stride. A spin sees Alvarado catch a mean metal elbow to the jaw, but he doesn’t give an inch. Once more the robot tries to spin but Alvarado sticks with him. The robot stands up to its full height, then sits dejectedly, the ball bouncing away. The crowd cheers. The referee blows his whistle. Alvarado’s held him to an 8-second violation. Truly in character.

Now all that’s left is for Bald Jesus to hit the target, which he does with shocking ease on the first try. He offers no explanation for this and plays it off like it’s just good luck. Time – 1:19

The score, after two rounds: Plumdog – 4, Pacers – 4, FBB - 4

Round 3 – Revenge

This round is simple enough. Each team will run a layup line for one minute. Whichever team scores the most points wins. The twist: all three teams will go simultaneously.

The teams line up outside of the three-point line next to their rolling baskets of balls.

The gun.

Plumdog defies all logic and gets to the rim first, only to be domed by a football. His shot obviously goes wide, and he spins around with a quasi-concussed look of confusion. McConnell gets there next and his shot gets taken out of the air by another football. At this point the cameras have located where the footballs are coming from, and I’ll be damned, Jalen Hurts is standing in the Revenge Box with a cart of balls. Rubio, keeping one eye on Hurts, slowly approaches the rim. Even as Hurts rears back to spitefully try to stop anyone from winning anything, Rubio is table-topped by James Harden!

Rubio crashes to the floor as Harden rips off his shirt to reveal a “2023 All-Star Snub” custom-made underneath. Kuminga tries to reason with Harden, but Harden can’t be stopped. He draws a knife and begins popping all the basketballs in sight. Mathurin nearly gets to him, but Hurts keeps him at bay with a barrage of Philly curses, and also footballs.

Interns, unpaid and otherwise, rush the floor as commentators attempt to convince our viewers that this was all according to plan, but right before our eyes interns and participants alike start dropping to their knees in pain. The camera pans to LaMelo Ball and Trae Young sitting in the Revenge Box as well, shooting cardboard hornets with rubber bands.

Carnage seems sure to win the day, but the sound of the buzzer triggers a Pavlovian pause in the action by all. Everyone, without meaning to, stops fighting and looks at the scoreboard. It reads that somehow, some way, even in the midst of this chaos, Ricky Rubio managed to slither through the crowd and score a single layup. The only point scored in this round. Confetti rains down, All I Do Is Win starts playing, and team The Face, The Brains, and The Brawn are quickly escorted into the safety of the locker room as the strange, misguided, revenge fest continues in their wake.