There are like 20 good teams now

The NBA is awfully fun in autumn

Now that the leftovers settled, let me rank my favorite Thanksgiving dishes:

1. A snug baseball mitt, oiled and stiffened over winter, ready for spring.
2. Celsius, Peach Vibe
3. Diet Coke
4. Mashed potatoes BUT ZERO garlic My people did not starve through famine so you could put garlic powder in my mashed potatoes. I didn’t peel two bags of potatoes to have the whole thing ruined by two teaspoons of garlic powder.
5. Whatever seltzer they have except lime, no lime.
6. Diet Coke, again, to stash.
7. Whatever drugs there are. Probably should have put this first.
8. Are there any potatoes left.
9. The Sonny Boy Williamson Spits Into a Can-scene from ‘The Last Waltz’ but you are eight years old and it is awfully upsetting.
10. I found mom and dad’s leftover Halloween candy.

I hope your holiday was mellow, and your cats didn’t mind someone else feeding them, I hope those Nate Bargatze sketches on SNL were nice and comforting for the whole family, he’s very funny.

I dig the NBA at the moment, the talent is spread and the squished lottery odds worked, teams now treat the No. 8 pick in the draft like the No. 16 picks they once tanked to avoid. The Play-In Tournament probably doesn’t help the parity as much as currently credited, but it certainly makes the below-to-above average a bit more fun.

Teams can’t take a season off, and won’t, not with 38 wins potentially leading to the revenue from few home playoff games. An expiring cache of aging superstars meshes nicely night after night with those who aren’t nearly there yet (Anthony Edwards now, sure, but Anthony Edwards in 2026?). Twenty teams are good plus there are also the Nets and Raptors.

The Bulls and Grizzlies want to win but don’t, and six teams are bad. That’s the whole NBA. So the scores teeter and tower, I ain’t worried, I had NBA League Pass in 2000-01, I had to sit through …