These NBA Teams Are on the Road to Nowhere

Wrote about the Magic, Pistons, and Hornets. An excerpt:

Across the final two episodes of Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin’s 1998 TV drama about the backstage goings-on of a sports news program of the same name, Felicity Huffman’s Dana Whitaker, who executive produces the show, has a series of encounters with a mysterious man (played by Clark Gregg). This stranger is, well, strange, and not just because he seems to have a lot of information about Dana, about Sports Night, and about Continental Corp., which is the parent company of the channel that airs Sports Night, and which is currently for sale.

Over the course of several days, Gregg’s character correctly predicts seemingly unpredictable twists and turns in Continental Corp.’s sale. When they run into each other for the third night in a row, they have an exchange about Sports Night’s supposed failure, which ends with the mysterious man giving Dana a piece of supposedly helpful advice. “I’m what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man, and I’ve failed much more than I’ve succeeded,” he says. “And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, ‘Where are we going?’ And it starts to get better.”

Later, after learning that a mysterious company called Quo Vadimus has indeed bought Continental Corp., Dana asks what Quo Vadimus means. Turns out it’s Latin for “Where are we going?” And then the light goes on in her head. Clark Gregg owns Quo Vadimus. Sports Night is safe after all. Everything did get better.

All of this is to say that, toward the end of every off-season, I like to sit down with a list of all 30 NBA teams for a little thought exercise: I put myself in the shoes of each team’s lead decision-makers and ask, “Where are we going?”

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