NBA Season Preview 2017-18: One reason every team will crash and burn

The thing about the NBA is that every game involves a loss. But can every game involve a loss for every team? Yes, actually. Here’s how.

There’s an episode of House MD that has stuck in my nightmares for a long time. It was the second part of the season four finale named “Wilson’s Heart.” In it, the hallucination of Amber Volakis says to House “everybody dies.” It was meant to echo House’s “everybody lies” mantra and to take the thought as far as any thought can go. Truth will out. Death is the ultimate truth. Everybody dies. Hooray!

She says it so matter of factly, and it’s later juxtaposed with her own terrified reaction when the non-hallucination version of herself is told the truth. It was haunting. I’ve decided to show these moments in a short clip, but attach funny music to it to allow the experience a slightly more tolerable level of anguish.

It still hurts, but at least the pain has some confusion mixed in, and that can be helpful unless it isn’t.

Anyways, everybody dies. I always used to take that with an implied “eventually” in front. Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. However, I started thinking about the 2017-18 NBA season and Hugh Laurie, and I realized that it was actually a prediction like most things are if you try hard enough.

On May 19, 2008 in the recesses of House’s mind, Amber predicted what would happen to all NBA teams this year. Each and every squad will splinter, and crumble, and fall. The team that wins the Finals will be the one that can pull five intact jerseys from the pile of ash and find at least as many souls willing to cram their carrion into them.

Maybe that sounds like an irresponsible assumption, but that’s only because you don’t see what I see. I will explain. Here is how each of the NBA’s teams will crash and burn this season.