Side Note

We’re having a lot of fun with this photo of John Wall

Possibly you, a reader of The Outline, are not familiar with the inner-team workings of the Washington Wizards, a professional basketball team that’s hovered between “maybe sort of good” and “total frauds” for the last few years. Last season was closer to the latter for the Wizards, as their record dropped, their players openly sniped at each other, and they failed to make any dent in the playoffs. How have they solved that chemistry issue? This offseason, they’ve added human child Dwight Howard to the roster, whose corny, canned quotes already have their coach looking like he wants to die. (Key phrases for people who don’t care whatsoever about sports, even with the explainer: team bad, players mad.)

Things are not all rosy in Wizards World. Perhaps that’s why their social media manager was comfortable posting this photo of John Wall, their best player, to the team’s Twitter feed. What’s the first thing you think of, when you look at Wall’s glazed expression?

Uh huh. Twitter was so quick with the jokes that after a little while, the Wizards deleted the photo altogether.

You can get more of that here. It’s a lot of fun. The Wizards’ most recent tweet is a video of Wall draining jumpers, captioned: “John Wall getting loose.” Yeah, no shit.