If you have Slack at work, you know that it’s designed to make remote office communication easier and more enjoyable. That’s all fine and good, as long as you don’t actually use Slack. Smart Slack users have the discipline to read rather than contribute, and understand that their contributions are optional at best, task-generating scams at worst, and the middle ground is mostly sighs and stares. The truth is that everything you say out there can, will, and should be used against you. Perhaps by someone with the authority to assign stories. Case in point: a recent conversation that got your traveling typist drinking James Harden’s J Harden label red wine, watching a terrible game featuring the J. Harden in question, and getting the NBA commissioner thinking about the first truly powerful action of the season. It was a promotional partnership for the Atlanta Hawks with a local strip club.
But let’s start from the beginning. In this case, last Wednesday. One of our numbers came across a promotional flyer image of James Harden holding an autograph session in suburban Cleveland (he’s now a Cavalier). That one rule is that you only sign for one bottle of wine. The reason this is important to our company’s news gathering process is a matter between those comrades and the God they believe in, so I won’t speculate. Since few people walk around with a bottle of wine (you can usually see him sitting in the park with a bottle in his bag), this was obviously done to get people to buy his stuff. Harden was introduced to wine a few years ago when a significant number of players were dabbling in oenology, almost certainly inspired by longtime San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich. He had a devout and refined love of grapes and always chose a wine at every dinner as long as it met three criteria: dedication to the craft, taste, and a cost per glass equivalent to the payment of a midsize car.
Harden joined an Australian company called J Shed and lent his name to three varietals – two red wines and, like most proseccos, a joke about putting bugs in the bottle. Your author knew a deeply devoted Harden’s apologist and decided to buy a bottle each to gift to said friend at an appropriate date in the future, but when that date arrived the friend declined because he was “celebrating” the sap, Dry January. We were stuck with three bottles that we couldn’t share, with no burning desire to open ourselves, and no motivation to find another Hardenophile to push the items.
So far you can see that what we have here is an anecdote with nothing interesting about it. But wait, it gets a lot more boring.
Three years after this botched purchase, a flyer for James Harden’s autograph show showed up on Slack and, like three idiots finding a leaky boat on a stormy day, we actually mentioned that we owned a bit of Harden, as a funny story. This quickly proved to be a mistake of unfathomable proportions, as one of our number (name withheld pending legal action) immediately blurted out, “We need to look into the site.” A consensus to this effect was immediately formed, as all other comrades were cruel, evil cursers who gorged on discomfort like normal people eat breath mints. That’s why we try to post just enough to not get fired.
The perfectly smooth rebuttal is, “Why would we do such a thing on this burning planet of impending doom?” Since such dismissal is the purpose of the editor, he was immediately dismissed. Suddenly a terrible mission was born. “Why” was never answered. Probably because there was no satisfactory answer. But we opposed another suggestion: “Evaluate other basketball wines.” sorry. Luguentz Dort 2022 Montepulciano Reserva could not be found. Wine Spectator There were few kind words to be said about Kelly Olynyk’s foray into the natural wine field. It has to be Harden.
Once it was decided that a hasty move to Malta was impractical, the next task was to find a suitable match. The menu had some interesting choices. One was the Cavaliers’ next game against Boston, which was a great opportunity with one caveat. The game was scheduled for Sunday at 10 a.m. PT. Even Popovich doesn’t drink that early. The sommelier also suggested a game against Philadelphia on Monday night, a game that would be much less exciting on the merits but would have the advantage of starting at 4pm (7pm ET), a more relaxed time when one could drink without shame. The game likely wasn’t good, but blurry vision might help.
To justify all this, or perhaps just to excuse it, your old-fashioned correspondents tried in vain to find a news hook. There’s more information on the site about the NBA’s belated decision to retroactively cancel the Atlanta Hawks’ Magic City promotion next Monday, but we’ve established Harden’s status as a strip club legend. He is often said to have spent up to $1 million at certain locations, and for many years had banners hung from the rafters of Houston clubs in his honor, with bottles opened at designated times.
The experience that followed wasn’t the cruel antics the slackmeisters had demanded, but at least it wasn’t the whimsical history of athletes dabbling in wine just as the market entered its current downturn. There was absolutely no reason to go back and forth between wine shops to see what Carmelo Anthony was doing with his Bordeaux varietals. Especially when you are armed with the suspicion that receipts from multiple liquor stores will not be accepted by the company. So we were stuck studying and drinking while putting on a deadly and boring floor show. That’s not much of an excuse, but it’ll have to do. It made for a terrible Sixers-Cavs game, to say the least. Harden led all scorers with 21 points in the 115-101 snoozer. The Sixers played the game without their four leading scorers. This was slightly less tolerable. But only slightly.
In conclusion, I would like to introduce the tasting notes.
color: It is an appropriate color to distinguish it from white, rosé, and Windex.
Drinkability: If that’s what you’re after, glass is perfect.
body: It is not very chewy and goes down the esophagus with minimal resistance.
evaluation: The wine cost $12. If you appreciate wine differently, good for you. It’s unbearable snot. Maybe Gregg Popovich can take you out for a burrito and Chateau Margaux. Here I will reserve the highest rating for the concept of “interoffice silence”.
