On Traveling, You Must Be Tripping: Luka Dončić, Joel Embiid, and the Mysteries of Basketball

Act One

Between Christmas and New Year’s, Luka Dončić posted a historic triple double. You have probably watched it. If not, you read about it in the group chat or were bombarded with highlights in your social media feeds. Maybe you rejoiced. Maybe you were left hysterical and wallowing in the video breakdowns of Knickerbocker errors and botched rotations and boxouts that allowed this to happen. If none of the above apply, maybe you’re just not into basketball and landed on this article by mistake.

I didn’t see the first half of the game in real time. We were watching Glass Onion, and in the middle of this whodunnit, we pressed pause right after Janelle Monáe’s character was shot and well before the hot sauce revelation. At that juncture, Mrs. Harvey departed the room as she often does for a night’s worth of recommended sleep and I went in search of a murder mystery substitute.

And I found one taking place in Dallas. When I entered the scene, I really thought the Dallas Mavericks were going to drop a home game against the New York Knicks. Dallas had trailed at the half, and they were down even more in the third. And the fourth didn’t look all that different. I thought about a good night’s sleep too. The game looked like a game I had…