50 years from now, after the third game in the NBA's 55th annual Christmas Day triple-header, Commish is gonna sit down his grandkids and tell them a story.
"In the first game on the first day of the first-ever NBA survivor pool, I picked Russell Westbrook's team to win. He shot the basketball 44 times... 64 if you include free throws...
"And I lived to tell about it."
But really. Just like my first NFL survivor season gave me my most thrilling finish to date - one that'll likely never be topped no many how many seasons I play - my first NBA survivor season (more specficially, my first NBA survivor game) gave me one of the crazier roller coaster rides you could ever hope for.
Westbrook recorded the NBA's first 50-point triple-double since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it 41 years ago. He also nearly shot the Thunder out of the game, playing a strange breed of hoop somewhere on the outer, gladiator edges of "hero ball."
The Thunder beat the Suns in overtime, 113-110, because of... in spite of... lol just go with it Westbrook.
Blake Griffin said it best: "That's just his personality - just go and destroy."
NBA Survivor quick links:
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WEEK 1 RECAP: 90 PERCENT WIN RATE? NOT BAD!
Commish is learning about how NBA survivor flows in the same way you are. This is all new to me, like the first time I cracked open a BLL. I expected beer. I got Bud Light Lime. The world opened up in new and exciting ways.
- 1,816 of us made picks. I'm looking at you, pioneer. No matter what happens from here, you'll go down in history with the 1849 gold miners, the 1960s Loyola basketball teams, and that Dollar Shave Club dude as inimitable legend-forging pioneers.
- Since it's two picks per week, we made 3,632 picks. We won 3,291 of those picks - good for a 90.6% winning percentage.
- Commish has no baseline, so I can't say whether that's excellent, woeful, or somewhere in between. But something tells me that's pretty damn good.
- Our 341 incorrect picks translated into 339 people being knocked out. That means only two people got both picks wrong. If you think Commish is gonna call them out, you don't know me well enough and don't have a proper appreciation for history. They are DOUBLE PIONEERS. The only two people in world history to go 0-for-2 in the first-ever week of the first-ever SZN of NBA survivor.
- Our biggest loss was Indiana losing at Brooklyn, which knocked out 158 people - roughly half our losses. Commish can't blame us for feeling that the Nets going 0-82 was more likely than the Browns going 0-16.
- In that game, the Nets' Bojan Bogdanovic went 1-for-6 with one rebound, one block, and four fouls. Sean Kilpatrick logged a +25 in just 25 minutes of play.
- If the Nets benched Bojan and played Kilpatrick a full 48 minutes, they'd go 82-0, Prokhorov would be voted in to replace Putin, and Jay-Z would become President of the United States of America.
- I hope you enjoyed this Week 1 Recap With Commish.
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THIS PASS MIGHT BE IN LEBRON'S ALL-TIME "STUPIDLY HIGH BASKETBALL IQ" TOP 10
You hear people say it all the time, but that's because it's true: LeBron James simply sees a different basketball court than everyone else does.
Maybe it's because he knows he can do basketball things that almost no one else can do - and thus, form follows function - but it's hard to argue that dude is preternaturally skilled in both a physical and mental sense.
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THE GM WENT WESTBROOK ON THE NBA SURVIVOR COMPETITION PAGE
There are now dates next to all games on the picking page. Your pick confirmation now shows dates next to your teams, so you can remember which of their games you picked. The spreadsheet now also includes dates, and (deep breath), when picks are locked, you'll see both friends' picks and a game-by-game pick distribution. (NBA Survivor page here.)
The GM deserves something great... like a game of one-on-one with Westbrook.
Actually, on second thought... if Russell played one-on-one with, like, an eight year old, would he just absolutely destroy the kid? Probably, right? Maybe we need a new plan.
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HOUSEKEEPING: IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW IT WORKS, THIS IS HOW IT WORKS
You pick the winner of two games each week. A "week" is every game played from Friday through Monday.
If you win both, you survive. Can't pick the same team twice. Last person standing wins.
On every competition page, there's a blue box near the top. In that box there's a link to the full rules and prizes. You can always look there if you have any questions, and of course, you can always email us (yo@theszn.com is your best bet).
By the way, I should have asked earlier... does anyone know Russell?
...
GET HIM IN THE POOL!!!