Dear National Basketball Association,

Thank you for coming back—you always do—even in 2011, when the lockout kept you away from all of us until Christmas and threatened to cancel the season altogether. It’s been such a long, grueling four months without you.

Last time we saw you, you were crowning Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors as champions for the second year in a row. Oh, so much has changed in those four months since, but at the same time, it feels like not much has changed at all.

Those blasted Warriors still look like the best team in the league, especially after they decided that having a dynasty, two of the three best players in the world, and four All Stars altogether wasn’t enough, so they went out and got DeMarcus Cousins, quite possibly the best center in the world. Even though he’s currently injured, and nobody really knows how good he’ll be upon his return, he’s going to be playing for Golden State, which probably (definitely) means he’ll come back and never miss a shot and the Warriors will never lose a game and everybody will find a lot of ways to complain about it in June.

One cool thing about dynasties, though, is that those teams become the ultimate villains—it’s kind of like David and Goliath, except the entire league is David, and the Warriors are Goliath, but they’re actually like five Goliaths—one for every All Star on the team.

When those villains finally fall, the entire league celebrates (except for the fans of that team, obviously), and those moments are easily some of the coolest, most special moments that we as fans can experience (unless, again, it’s our team losing).

Thank you, NBA, for giving us supervillains.

My dearest NBA, many fans have developed an exceptionally sour outlook on you because of those Warriors, but this season, I can’t wait for you to remind them of how much you have to offer outside of the insanely scary supervillains.

You still have LeBron James, who is amazingly still the best player in the world, and even more amazingly still getting better, even though he’s been in the league since 2003, the same year 50 Cent released his first album and two years before the iPod Nano was a thing.

You also have Russell Westbrook and James Harden, the former teammates who decided it would be fun to try to score more points, grab more rebounds and dish out more assists (and commit more turnovers) than any man had ever even thought to be possible.

You have Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose name I just had to Google to make sure I spelled it right, and who also might be the most unhuman physical specimen to ever play basketball. You have Jimmy Butler and his team that he probably (definitely) hates. You have Kawhi Leonard and his laugh.

You have so much. We love you. Welcome back.

Jackson Bayer is a senior English and creative writing  major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at

jcbayer@eiu.edu.