Bottom Time Puns

The Kings selected Marvin Bagley with the 2nd pick in 2018 and DeAaron Fox with the 5th in 2017, but it can be easy to forget that in both instances, the Kings got lucky and moved up in the draft. Since the 2011-12 season, we have actually never bottomed out to 26th place or below in the league standings. I believe the franchise has tried to have its cake and eat it too, by trying to avoid a full tanking season and in some cases just flat out overachieving.

The last time we finished with a bottom-3 record, we ended up selecting DeMarcus Cousins, who, despite all his issues, was probably our most talented player since the conference finals runs. Of course this is not to say that moving up in the draft or picking where expected should have any different results, but a concerted-effort tank is often effective, and it's interesting that we have never entered that territory.

Here are some franchises that have finished in the bottom-3 since 2010 (* denotes last year's draft):

• Bucks
• Cavs
• Grizzlies
• Knicks
• Lakers
• Magic
• Mavericks
• Nets
• Pelicans
• Pistons*
• Raptors
• Rockets*
• Sixers
• Suns
• Timberwolves
• Warriors
• Wizards

Expand to bottom-5 finishes after 2012 and you add the Bulls, Celtics, Hawks, Jazz, and Thunder*. That's more than 70% of the league that has been worse at some point in the last decade than the Kings.

Most of these teams have made the playoffs since, and almost all of them are in better shape as a franchise than the Kings. It's staggering to think of how shamefully our franchise is viewed despite avoiding a true tank. Some of the listed teams even needed several consecutive years of tanking to improve their team. The draft is one of the tried and true ways to improve a small-market team, and our modest success over the last decade has ensured that we never made full use of it.

Hurts in those 2 games: 36/49 for 367 passing yards, 133 rushing yards, 3 passing TDs and no turnovers. It’s nearly impossible to not love Minshew, and I’m stoked to have him on our team. He played great yesterday, and there’s a case to be made he’s the best backup QB in the league. For anyone comparing their passing ability / presence in the pocket / progressions, surely realize it’s a lot easier to look good at those traits when playing a bottom feeder of a defense. Go birds, fuck the cowboys and root for whoever suits up every week or don’t root for the team at all.

EDIT: 76-12

This is a weird example but in the dungeons and dragons acting challenge of season 3 I would have put Maxi Glamour in the top. They didn’t seem to like her that much in it but I thought her acting was hysterical with the voice and the mask having no emotion was kind of a funny character choice to me.

Tell me the first example that comes to your mind.

So, I came across this recent post on the main r/zelda subreddit, asking people to explain why the shark is there, but to give "wrong answers only." I decided to come up with my own head-canon version of why it's down there, and I wanted to share it here.

So first, that creature is actually known as a Gyorg, the Zelda universe's equivalent to a shark (the Majora's Mask creature of the same name is a monstrous variant corrupted with dark magic by Majora). The Lake Scientist ordered a specimen from a foreign land for research and experimentation. Most of his tests ended in abject failure, save for one: when he infused a regular Silver Scale with Gyorg blood, the result was an even more powerful scale that allows the holder to dive deeper than they ever could before. He named it the Golden Scale, and it was one of his proudest creations.

Unfortunately, Gyorgs are difficult to capture and transport, not to mention incredibly expensive (in the ballpark of >20,000 Rupees), and creating the Golden Scale consumed most of the specimen's blood. This made his discovery rather limited in its utility. With no further use for the scale, the Lake Scientist gave it to his former lab assistant and foremost benefactor outside of the Hyrulean Royal Family: the owner of the nearby Fishing Pond. Only one Golden Scale is known to exist in the world.

Having been drained of its blood, the Lake Scientist had to find some other way to make use of the oversized creature in his lab. The skin of a Gyorg proved worthless in every experiment performed, and was too thick to be edible. None of its organs lent themselves to any potions or medicines, and spoiled far too quickly regardless. Left with nothing but a dead, unusable sea creature, he decided to have it taxidermied using skin shed by Lord Jabu-Jabu (i.e. waterproof, unlike cotton or linen). He keeps the specimen behind a metal grate at the bottom of his diving pool for decoration.