Jon Bois is great, he's an inspiration for me
this may be the best part outside of the LeBron shade
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By the end of the season, Ramon Sessions is 36. The free-agent market is beyond rich with talent; there are countless flawless point guards who were discarded only because they were 25 years old and not 23. Their motive for acquiring Ramon Session, even for one minute of basketball, remains entirely a mystery. I don't even want to imagine what he did with that minute.
You may notice that Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook -- arguably the two most electric, exciting players of the NBA we know and love -- are gone. The game does not announce their retirement, and they are not inducted to the Hall of Fame. They suffer the most ignoble exit of all: they surface only as a name on the free-agent list. No one picks them up, and just as LeBron did, they leave without saying goodbye.
I would imagine you have, or had, a friend you have never seen in years, and don't expect ever to see again. The two of you built sand castles, or tried to build a skateboard ramp, or drank Beam out of a bottle in a glossy yellow-bricked dorm room. For one reason or another, you no longer do those things, or any things, together, and the reasons behind that are none of my business. Neither is this, but I've already barged in: the last time the two of you met, or spoke, you suspected it would be the very last time.
To openly treat it as such -- the last meeting of two people across all eternity -- is a sort of a fraction of a death, and is too heavy for the moment: something that heavy would bust the framework, you would call from Dallas, and there wouldn't be a last time. This is the quiet knowledge that it's over, and the tense words that replace the processing of that knowledge.
Kyrie Irving is that friend, and this is that time. He's 30, and with the Pistons now. In a team otherwise entirely filled with Immortals, Kyrie starts at point, leading his team in assists and ranking second in scoring. He's a foot shorter and five years older than everyone. He does not give a damn.
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He -- the mortal -- has led Detroit to the NBA Finals. On behalf of all of us, who dribble off our feet and neglect our marriages and cut ourselves shaving, Kyrie Irving presents one last goodbye to the Immortals.
The Pistons win in seven games. Kyrie Irving leads with 30 points in Game 7.
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