Now that the NBA has given all of the remaining playoff teams a well-deserved night off, instead of, you know, scheduling the games accordingly so that fans could watch their favorite stars play every night, we get to sit back and enjoy some games tonight. And since the Miami Heat play, we’ll hopefully get some more Chris Andersen antics for Shaquille O’Neal to talk about on TNT tomorrow night since he apparently loves talking about the Birdman.

That Shaq, such the comic genius. I, for one, can’t wait to see him return to the big screen in Grown Ups 2. In fact, if TNT could show that Grown Ups 2 playoffs ad more than it already does, I’d be so incredibly happy. It’s great to see Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade and Kevin James openly acknowledging how they play the same character in everything they’ve ever done. That’s true comedy.

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By the time 2013 wraps up and is in the books , the award for Biggest Villain will probably be locked up by one of three people – Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump or whoever created the Harlem Shake fad. I don’t mean the song, mind you. I mean this recent meme of people dancing like A-holes to the song “Harlem Shake”, as it has been quite the decisive topic among people with too much time on their hands.

Some people, including approximately 80% of my idiot Facebook friends, think these Harlem Shake videos are hilarious. Others treat them like utter blasphemy, based on the fact that the people in the videos aren’t actually performing the Harlem Shake. But then there’s a third party, including indifferent people like me, who don’t really give a crap, and would prefer to watch goats scream during the choruses of popular songs above all else.

Yet here we are, discussing this Miami Heat Harlem Shake video that started popping up on the webs and bloggy blogs last night. And I’m not bringing it up, because I hate it or love it. I have a completely different reason for bringing this up.

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The sports world is abuzz with the news that a Magic-Johnson fronted group broke the dang old bank in order to purchase the Dodgers for over $2 billion, which is a figure so absurd that it may as well be written like a comic strip character says cuss words.

“Yes  Mr. McCourt, and our counter-offer is #!%*& dollars.”

Anyway, it’s no secret by now that Magic Johnson, while not a billionaire himself, is a mega-entrepreneur and philanthropist. Already in 2012, he’s bought a baseball team and announced he’s launching a television network. What’s next, a chain of restaurants that are like Applebee’s, but with edible food? A series of Wal*Mart-style superstores? It’s almost like he’s some kind of business wizard. Almost like he’s … gathering spectacular assets.

Wait a minute. Wizard … gathering … Magic … I think we may be on to something here, ladies and gentlemen. In the spirit of Magic Johnson’s spectacular purchase, I am pleased to present the nerdiest sequence of jokes to ever appear on With Leather. It is my pleasure to present to you a very special type of card game: a collectible one.

Faithful readers, I proudly present Magic Johnson: The Gathering.
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I hate the term “posterized”. Like “awesome” for good things and “ginger” for anyone with red hair, it’s become an easy catch-all term to describe every single dunk that happens. So Bismack Biyombo dunked. So what? Dude’s like 6-9, I don’t think the Costacos Brothers are rushing to put dress him like the German Kriegsmarine for a SINKING OF THE BISMACK poster. If the NBA printed a poster for every posterization we’d be living in the world of the Lorax.

What I’m getting at is that Tim Duncan didn’t “posterize” the Birdman during Sunday’s Nuggets/Spurs game … he novelized him. It starts with exposition (“this is a basketball game, Chris Andersen is trying to play defense on contextual grandpa Tim Duncan), continues on through to the rising action (“Tim Duncan hits Birdman in the face with a basketball”) toward a logical climax (“lol, he just got hit in the face with a ball AND dunked on”). The falling action could literally be Duncan coming down after the dunk, and the resolution is that the entire Internet can laugh about how pathetic he made a guy look.

The moment has been captured in glorious animated gif form below, courtesy of SBN by way of CJZero.com.

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EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW AND READ THIS EXCHANGE FROM A SLAM MAGAZINE INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS “BIRDMAN” ANDERSEN:

SLAM: A lot of NBA guys have been playing in streetball games this summer. Not you. Why? What have you been up to instead?

CHRIS ANDERSEN: I’m actually from the woods down in Texas. I’ve been training and whatnot about basketball, but also I’m trying to start a hunting show right now. So I’m out in the woods with Converse.

SLAM: A hunting show?

CHRIS ANDERSEN: It’s gonna be called “Willie B and the Good Ole Boys.” Basically with all my friends I grew up with down in Texas, and it’s going to be celebrity rednecks that do crazy, dumb stuff…hopefully I get sponsored by Converse.

I can’t even BEGIN to explain to you how much I want to watch this show. I don’t know if the people at Converse are big With Leather readers, but on the off chance they are, allow me to make this plea: You do this, Converse. You do this NOW. You greenlight five seasons, at minimum. We have the opportunity to see a 7-foot-tall professional basketball player slash crazy person — who once missed like a dozen consecutive dunks at the Slam Dunk Contest — hunting in the woods with (and I quote) “celebrity rednecks.” Do you know what my favorite part of that last sentence is? EVERY SINGLE WORD IN IT. The only way it could have been improved is if I had somehow been able to work in the phrase “with his sidekick Rafer Alston.” Yes, you make this show immediately and you ship screeners directly to me via first class mail.

After the jump, a three-minute highlight video of Birdman blocking shots set to “Butterfly” by Crazytown, which is the perfect accompaniment in its own little terrible way.

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