Orlando Magic Preview: AKIRA

Evan Fournier was hunched over a Lord of the Rings themed pinball machine in his favorite bar, when the door burst open. Lord of the Rings was his favorite movie, and the pinball machine did Peter Jackson's Middle Earth justice. When he was lonely he would sometimes imagine himself as a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. The only member of the Fellowship of the Ring he did not like was Gimli. In France no one cared for Gimli. But anyway, the door had burst open.

A gust of cold swept the room momentarily, and Evan Fournier adjusted his scarf tighter, all the while pounding away at the two buttons on the pinball machine. God, Pinball was awesome. In fact, it was so engrossing he barely noticed the figure who had entered the bar quietly approach him then lean on the pinball machine and fix him with a hard cool stare.

It was his teammate Victor Oladipo. Victor was an interesting fellow. He was a young guy but had that self assured poise of a man who knew he would be a future star. Once, in his cups, Victor Oladipo had confessed that someday he would be as good a basketball player as Monta Ellis. That would make his father proud he said. Evan Fournier had at that point taken the flagon of wine from Victor Oladipo, but confided that he understood the urge to impress a father. His own father had been a judo champion. Victor Oladipo had smiled and confided that his father had wanted to send him to China to learn "karate", that he had not approved of the basket ball. He thought wistfully of his shot chart.

He then broke into song, a deep resonant wail. Victor Oladipo was a great singer. But now, in the present, at the bar, he wasn't singing. He bent close and spoke in a barely audible whisper.

"We've got the Clowns cornered at the expressway," Victor Oladipo said softly, and almost in retaliation Evan Fournier pounded the pinball machine even harder. It was a fools errand though, as he pounded without any apparent strategy, and the balls fell beyond his reach. He was out of quarters. Wasn't that always the way it went. He then imagined his girlfriend and the way she would make him his favorite dish, Thieboudinenne, a mix of fish and rice! His girlfriend was always making him eat that stuff. "Here, eat this dish, it is a mix of fish and rice!" and Evan Fournier would say, "Call me 'More Champagne', it is my nom de guerre, but okay, this fish and rice is excellent!"

  

But in the present and far from those fish and rice reveries, Evan Fournier thought about Victor Oladipo words. "Lets go," Evan Fournier said, tightening his scarf once again and casually strolling out of the bar, as if he was never a little boy who had dreamed of being a paleontologist. Their coach (who sometimes was a bartender), an imposing looking fellow who went by the name of Jacque Vaughn, was glaring at them as they left.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer, pops," Victor Oladipo said caustically, as they sauntered out of the bar like they owned the whole world.

"Get out of here, you punks! I don't need your business! And don't call me pops, I'm not that much older than you!"

Evan Fournier and Victor Oladipo laughed as they slammed the door behind them. Jacque Vaughn was left thinking about how much older this job had made him, running a bar in Neo-Orlando, after the apocalypse. Things had been different since the bomb. Life wasn't guaranteed anymore. It was a touch and go existence, man. And in this world only the strong survived, or the very well endowed.

One of the patrons suddenly spoke up, decrying the song playing on the jukebox.

"What is this shit?" He shouted in a high pitched whine, more suited to a British TV comedy than post apocalyptic Orlando, which this was. His name was Marv Albert, and he was wearing an eye patch.

"Oh, this is Mumford and Sons," Jacque Vaughn explained, "They were a band before...before the you know what."

"They suck," Marv Albert said in a sexy growl.

"You don't know what your talking about," a tall woman named Doris Burke said earnestly. "Mumford and Sons is the best band ever to come out of the old days. Listen. They sound like a choir of strange of angels."

"Will you marry me?" Marv Albert asked, earnestly.

Doris Burke nodded, then said "Yes," superfluously.

Jacque Vaughn smiled.

Anyway. Back to the matter at hand, Evan Fournier and Victor Oladipo walked toward the parking lot. It was a foggy night and about to get foggier. They didn't speak to one another, there was no time, there was walking to do!

A few feet away, in the big but unimpressive parking lot, Mo Harkless was admiring Evan Fournier's unicycle. "Wow, that's an awesome looking unicycle. Way better than mine." Tentatively he climbed atop it, admiring the firm cushion that presently enveloped his posterior. He felt like a king. He had just read some analysis that had soured him on this mortal coil. He tried to forget it.

What is there to say about Maurice Harkless? He matters. A lot of guys on this team don’t fucking matter. Luke Ridnour doesn’t matter. Willie Green doesn’t matter even more than Luke Ridnour doesn’t matter! But Mo? Mo matters. And yet, he bores me. It bores me to think about Mo Harkless. His numbers suffered slightly from his rookie year, but his defense improved. He works hard, but he’s not a focal point in this bizarre storm, so he’ll likely continue to take a backseat to Oladipo and Gordon and Harris and Vucevic.  He’s a building block. Mostly. He’s a future starter. Probably. I mean, he started roughly half the games last year, came off the bench the other half. Did this confuse him? Send him mixed signals? I don’t know, probably. Can he continue to improve his three-point shot or was last season a cruel outlier?  He’s so young, and yet, the young should be angry and possessed by the fierce urgency of now! That’s why long stretches of invisibility on offense are so disconcerting, though this of course is not entirely his fault. It would be nice for the offense to run some plays designed to get Mo some easy baskets, something to tap into the malevolent scaled beast within. My advice for Mo Harkless, a man that made more money last year than I will in probably a hundred years is this: read the complete works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and practice dribbling.

Woof! Who would write such words! And then he saw the shadows approaching him. His heart dropped. 

"Is that you again, Mo Harkless?" Evan Fournier shouted, disdainfully.

"That pea-brain?" Victor Oladipo asked condescendingly.

"Get off my unicycle," Evan Fournier said, "It's too much for a kid like you."

Mo Harkless climbed down, his pride battered and bruised and shot up and immolated. "I could ride it."

"That unicylce would chew you up and spit out the seeds sport," Victor Oladipo told him with a kind of gentle but sinister smile.

"Which expressway are the clowns cornered?" Evan Fournier asked Victor Oladipo.

"Clown Expressway."

"Merde, it's gonna take all night to get there!"

A lot of frantic pedaling later, they finally came upon their prey. The clowns. A bunch of guys who wore clown outfits. But these were mournful clowns. As the unicycle gang approached, they sensed something was not quite right.

The lead clown was an imposing looking figure, who was wearing a shirt that simply said "Unity" on it. He waved to the unicycle gang as the surrounded the clown procession, crowbars ready to do some serious clown damage.

"What is this all about?" Evan Fournier demanded.

"Clown funeral," the lead clown, Joey Crawford intoned respectfully. "Our dear friend FORMER REFEREE.HTML was smote down in the prime of his life by his own hubris. Truly, we must stop this war. His wife, a true bombshell by any estimation, simply drove him mad. I got this crowd together to help bury him, but its not a crowd that we need I guess. We need a gathering instead. Whatever though, this whole Neo-Orlando thing is certainly making me jaded these days. My assets have had a veritable freeze up on them and my brother moved back to Hoboken, New Jersey and it's been months since I've slept long, or slept well. But enough about me, will you help bear our brother to his final resting place."

Evan Fournier, Victor Oladipo, and Mo Harkless were moved to tears by the tale.

Evan Fournier held out his hand, and Joey Crawford took it and shook vigorously, perhaps too vigorously, but perhaps not. It was a new beginning.

Many years later, Victor Oladipo wrote in his journal, setting ink and quill to the faded yellow pages. It was the best of times. The last summer we were all together. Joey Crawford owns a general store now. And Evan Fournier's just two towns down now, working at Urban Outfitters. As for Mo Harkless, he got drafted to go to Vietnam and we never heard from him again. But I still remember that day. The day we became infinite.

Far away, in an alternate universe, Peter Graves was just finishing a televised biography about my (@thomasawful) life. "And that was the worst Fan Fiction he ever wrote. Goodnight everyone, I'm Peter Graves, and you're watching Biography."