We've Arrived At The "Nitpicking The Officiating" Portion Of The Finals

If I want to say something straightforwardly true about the officiating, like, "Referees are still sorting out how to protect Victor Wembanyama from a kind of mauling that only he faces," unless I surround the statement in 1,000 caveats so that the eventual sum of what I have said is, "Victor Wembanyama should be strapped to the electric chair," my observation is guaranteed to zoom right past the part of the brain of a Knicks fan that assesses the truth value of language. And that Knicks fan is likely to respond with something like, "Ey, you wanna talk about protection, dis freakin Victor Wembanyama got away with assassinatin our guy Jalen Brunson, ey, fugget about it." Which, hyperbole aside, is both true and irritatingly orthogonal to my own observation, and tempts us into a tangle of conflicting grievances. Just last night our own Giri Nathan shouted those very words, and then stormed off in a huff, slapping the hood of a taxi and exchanging angry exclamations and rude gestures with the driver. He s out there now, no doubt ranting at strangers on the subway.