A long time ago, in a conference out west….

Star Wars on a basketball site? “How are these two even related?” you might ask. Well reader, they aren’t really (minus a few odd things here and there.) However, we here at Beale Street Bears were able to draw some parallels between Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and the upcoming NBA season (particularly, the Memphis Grizzlies). Besides, it’s October and who doesn’t love to see some ridiculous Halloween-esque photoshop!?

For those of you who have lived under a rock since 1977, I’ll briefly go over the basic plot of A New Hope, which at the time of it’s release, was simply titled ‘Star Wars’.

Spoiler alert, I guess?

A while back, in a distant galaxy, an empire controls everything. A band of rag tag rebels have joined together to battle The Empire. The Empire has a new shiny toy, the Death Star, which the Rebels have stolen the plans to. Some stuff goes down and a young farm boy, Luke Skywalker, is thrust into the role of a hero and must rescue Princess Leia and deliver the plans for the Death Star to the Rebellion. Along the way, he meets new friends: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo and Chewbacca. The four of them, along with C-3PO and R2-D2 manage to save the princess, escape the Death Star (minus Obi-Wan) and meet up with the Rebels. Luke then pilots an X-Wing and destroys the Death Star. The galaxy is safe and there’s even a medal ceremony.

So, now that we’ve covered that, I’ll tell you just how the 2016 Memphis Grizzlies can be like the group of Rebels.