The DeAndr-ankings

There might be a tie-in for basketball somewhere in here, but I can't promise anything. My grandma, my dad's mom, died Tuesday. She was 93 + 4 months. Why is it that we only care about the partial years at the beginning and the end? The days in the middle count just as much, don't they? Arguably more, I'd say. I get it for babies - the difference between "I'm 2" and "I'm 2 and a half" is adding 25% more to your life. That's a big thing. But for old people - and 93 is pretty damn old - it's more of an accomplishment thing. No matter what, if I'd said she was 93, you'd think "that's old." But she didn't make it to 93.5, so I didn't want to say 93.5, as that's a milestone that she fell just short of. What I'm getting at is that this doesn't matter. We (my brothers and my parents) were never as close with my dad's parents as we were with my mom's. My mom's mom is still alive - she...

Since this is ostensibly a basketball blog, I should mention that I watched a few minutes of the H-O-R-S-E tournament the first night it was on after seeing 80,000,000 people bash it on Twitter. It was fine. Trae Young was clearly hanging out at his parents' house or something, because a McMansion in Oklahoma with a bent-rim and a non-fully-paved basketball playing area? That was weird. And if there were any chance that this tournament was somehow related to actual on-court basketball skills, Mike Conley probably would not have won. Dude was shooting 40% this season. But quarantine is about more than just finding ways to survive the basketball emptiness. It's about finding ways to survive the everything emptiness, and finally confirming that time spent on social media is the absolute worst time in the world. So what has been going on in my house? Sure, I've been playing some NBA2K (the original, with Allen Iverson on the cover and with Steve Francis being a goddamn supe...

Look, I know this title is an occasionally overused joke line, but let's get real. Nobody knows what day it is anymore. You wake up, you stay inside, you do whatever you were going to do - maybe including leaving the house for a walk, but maybe not - and then you go to sleep. It's exhausting in a way that is extremely not exhausting. I thought we had a mild enough winter that I was going to get through the cold months without gaining 5-10 pounds, and I did...until the weather started to warm up and everyone was forced to stay inside. But here we are now. My dog refuses to walk, my wife's birthday meant lots of cake and sweets on a 4-day weekend, and there's no end of quarantine in sight. So let's talk about basketball. It's crazy to think about how various trades have had long-lasting effects on various franchises. One trade leads to another trade, which leads to a draft pick, which leads to a great season or a terrible bust. It happens all the time. But h...