What Happened Between The Snapchats? The Story Of Team USA’s Last Weekend In America

This is a work of complete fiction involving this year’s USA Basketball team. – Ed

Team USA’s weekend began ordinarily enough. After thrashing the Venezuela national team, 80-45, in Chicago, despite immense hangovers after the squad played Truth or Dare in front of Jimmy Butler’s local giant boombox aquarium — a bout that featured Kyle Lowry breaking down sobbing while talking about the one who got away, Gertrude Gertruderson from kindergarten — the team took off for Houston the next day. That’s when DeMar DeRozan sent out this Vanessa Carlton singalong from the plane that is of course already canon:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIfcB_MhAaM/

Shortly after the song ended, though, Kevin Durant grabbed hold of the aux cord and took his teammates to a dark place. Still shrouded in the big white blanket he adorably sports in the video, Durant confessed to the tune of Japanese metal band Boris’ “Farewell” that the ominous piece of fabric was in fact responsible for his survival. Peering out the window at the charter’s jet engines, Durant revealed he is “always cold.”

He continued: “Nothing warms me except for this blanket, which a dude in Switzerland made for me. He said he wouldn’t tell me what’s in it, because if he did I wouldn’t want to use it. He also gave me a bunch of little vials with a special liquid, which he also wouldn’t tell me about, that keeps me warm just long enough for the games. Otherwise, I am always shivering and picturing death.”

Disturbed and frightened by the story, Draymond Green escaped to the plane’s bathroom to photograph the part of his body that most reminds him of his mortality: his (outie) belly button. His finger hovered over the send button on his phone before he decided not to forward the image — for now — to the only person who’d ever truly loved him.

Sunday morning, however, staring into the unfeeling abyss of industrial oil complexes and space stations visible from his penthouse hotel room, Green asked a nearby Klay Thompson whether sending the photo was the right idea. Thompson, half-awake, mumbled “do it up, man.” This all went down mere hours after Butler and DeMarcus Cousins went on a country music-fueled twilight ride:

.@JimmyButler might be that one friend you dont want to give the aux (NSFW) (via @boogiecousins)https://t.co/Rg6aLoJTNN

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 30, 2016

While Brad Paisley blared, Butler instructed Boogie to drive past a park he spent a lot of time at as a Texas teenager. “This,” Butler said, “is where bumpkin rhythm and blues first struck my soul. This is where I learned what lies at the heart of striving America, and how to harness it toward the bildungsroman dream!”

Utterly inspired by the story — and, suddenly, by country music too — Cousins pulled over so the two could take off their shirts and twirl them over their heads, roadside, beneath the moon. He carried that feeling of forever to his Polo Ralph Lauren shoot:

It is here that Carmelo Anthony, still upset about having to listen to “A Thousand Miles,” grumpily accuses both Boogie and Durant (who is using more of his serum than usual on this tour) of “not being true banana-boat boys.” Joshingly, they nudge Anthony for the rest of the session, and the three engage in Zoolander poses before agreeing they should all “really get wet” later that night.

Meanwhile, Green has become a social media pariah yet again after accidentally launching the picture of his erect stomach hole to the whole internet — instead of to Gertrude Gertruderson, who Green did not know was also Lowry’s great white whale, because he was in the bathroom sending out snapchats of himself doing various dance moves during Truth or Dare at Butler’s apartment. You see, Dray finds confessionals to be “mad boring.”

While later taking interviews in a state of heartbreak and existential crunch, while courtside during practice, Green catches Cousins mocking him like this:

Green does not forget, and holds an unusually silent rage in him for the rest of the day, which, in retrospect, was one long slow burn toward madness in a hot tub. When the whole team gets into the water, Durant’s energy starts taking strange turns, since he has consumed five times the prescribed amount of special liquid that day. He looks to Green and says this:

Durant proceeds to repeatedly shout that he is “so warm on his insides,” until Green catches Cousins mocking him in that same pose again, and tackles him from behind.

“This is for Gertrude Gertruderson,” he screams, prompting Lowry, who feels he is being mocked, to dive after Green and punch his kidneys many times. Durant cackles madly while Anthony looks bored; Butler lassoes DeAndre Jordan; Thompson wears headphones and stares deep into his DM’s; Paul George splashes the hot water everywhere; DeRozan consoles a weeping Harrison Barnes; Kyrie Irving does the Nae Nae at hyper speed; and all of these actions hold until coach Mike Krzyzewski appears, sensing innately that absurdity is afoot, and ruining the whole spectacle immediately with his horrible face, which all of the players fear.

Fin.