Wednesday night the San Antonio Spurs were shellacked to an extent that bypasses humiliation. It was the sort of defeat that you can sense coming early but can’t be completely certain of, so you invariably begin to sort through topics to zone out to, in the event that the game gets ugly.
When I was younger, I would play out favorable trade scenarios in my head; the kind that would have shifted the balance of the league in favor of my team for the next decade or so. These were the sorts of daydreams that precluded the modern era of the Superteam, when ring-hunting superstars banded together once or twice a decade or so, rather than every two to three years.