DAMIAN LILLARD wasn't picked for the NBA All-Star team. (For those of you who need an explanation of the NBA's All-Star team... no. No. I know that Pitchfork reviews are on a 10-point scale; I know that you're supposed to spell out the Doctor in Doctor Who; I can name multiple Junot Díaz works. So you can learn a little bit about basketball on your own. Quit being willfully ignorant: You make the world more boring on purpose.)

Our special guy has been left off the All-Star team—our show pony, our Maverick to LaMarcus Aldridge's Goose. It's hard to find anything lovely in Lillard's exclusion, other than the acrid high of indignation, but since that's all we have... I guess that's all we have. The remainder of this column will be a screed of shit-talking about some of the players who made it over Damian Lillard. It'll be a screed mostly divorced from logic, a fanatical catharsis that does not stand up to the scrutiny of advanced, or even basic, statistical proof.

FUCK YOU STEPH CURRY AND FUCK YOU KLAY THOMPSON. The nickname for the Golden State Warriors duo, the Splash Brothers, sounds like it's a member of the Brazzers site. Both of your fathers were NBA fixtures and your tradition of nepotism is emblematic of all the evil societal ghosts that took San Francisco from its position as one of America's great cities—full of diversity, weird-even-without-the-drug-addiction authors, and legitimate countercultural movements of disruption—and turned it into a polo shirt with a corporate monogram of a metropolis. I hate you.

FUCK YOU KOBE BRYANT. (Explanation withheld for litigation reasons.)

FUCK YOU CHRIS PAUL. Your on-court preening, flopping, and histrionics are reminiscent of Pagliacci, and I can only hope you're just as tragically depressed as that sad clown of lore.

FUCK YOU JAMES HARDEN. You refer to your team as the "Swag Champs." Swag Champs. The Swag Champs. You stand in a circle of millionaires and say, "Okay guys... 'Swag Champs' on three. One, two, three..." and then you get mad if they don't also cheer "Swag Champs." You can grow a beard, James Harden, but we all see the Hitler mustache it hides.

FUCK YOU DeMARCUS COUSINS. DeMarcus is a ridiculous name. You know what's a fine upstanding name? LaMarcus. D and E are the first two letters of detention, the disciplinary practice highlighted in The Breakfast Club. D and E are the first two letters of Delaware, America's Swag Champ. D and E are the first two letters of death, DeMarcus. Now take L and A: lackadaisical, labradoodle, labia... ALL THE BEST THINGS.

And more than anything, FUCK YOU KEVIN DURANT. Fuck you, dude. Fuck you. First, you're a living, breathing, wacky-limbed reminder of the failures of Greg "My Residual Bad Vibes Killed Brandon Roy" Oden. That's fine, that's not your fault, but your Anansi-the-Spider-in-human-form ass has missed almost half the season with various injuries befitting a fuckboi of your stature. If you were half the man Damian Lillard is, you would decline your All-Star invite and apologize for entertaining people who chose to live in Oklahoma.

RUSSELL WESTBROOK AND BLAKE GRIFFIN... you're cool.