You hear that? That faint noise, crest over the evening sky? That’s the sound of NBA arenas in Canada because they aren’t letting anyone near Toronto due to COVID and the only living thing they are letting into Canada right now is beavers. It’s also a little past the halfway point of the NBA season, the All-Star game is this weekend, and we STILL don’t know what to make of the Lakers. I take that back, we know. It’s just not good.

By the time you read this, it will probably be just slightly passed the first week of the 2021 NBA season, and what better way to prep us for all the uncertainty of a barely functioning-COVID existence to take a nonsensical look at some alternate universes and scenarios for basketball as we know. Allow me to be your guide though these vast new realities that I just made up. Follow me and dare to face the unknown. All while pondering the question: What If….?

As I learned how to dribble the ball and ran drills, I quickly picked up the nick-name “sugar foot” from coach Dan, when it became obvious in shooting drills that, no matter how much force I intended to put behind the kick, the ball would barely roll into the goal—if it did at all. These drills were without a goalie.