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True story: I was visiting a state on the West Coast that I'd never been to. For privacy's sake, let's call it "Boregon." I was there on vacation with a friend who was also visiting this place for the first time. We had flown out together to meet her brother. In terms of entertainment, he was our only option. If he had not made plans to sport us around town that night, we would be scrambling to find a way to not spend a "relaxing" vacation night sitting in a motel room on the outskirts of fucking Niketown.

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If they catch you alone after dark, Nike's legally allowed to keep you as child labor, regardless of your actual age.

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As "luck" would have it, our visit coincided with the NBA playoffs, and our host was a Lakers fan. Like, too much of a Lakers fan. The kind of fan who could probably be persuaded to flip a car with eight of his newest friends following a championship win.

The Lakers were playing the Spurs that night, so our plans started with meeting in the hotel room to power drink on the cheap and watch basketball. Things got awful right away with the Lakers losing for most of the game, falling behind by 25 at one point. And that's when the worst possible thing happened. The Lakers almost came back.

If they'd just kept losing, we probably could have turned the game off early and gone to dinner. But with Super Fan possibly witnessing his team pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in playoff history, all plans were on hold. With each point the Lakers chipped away from the Spurs' lead, the atmosphere in the room became electric for our host and borderline hostage-like for everyone else. I'm not a Lakers fan, and it's my nature to make fun, but I'd have been as likely to make a Kobe rape joke in that room at that moment as I would be to make a Kobe rape joke at a women's shelter. So a strong maybe at best, which is nowhere near the level of confidence at which I normally operate.