Anything, anything was preferable to another quarter of James going full supernova and turning their home court into his personal highlight reel. They were at Defcon-Desperate levels, and triple-teaming James was apparently the nuclear option, the basketball equivalent of pushing the big red button beled "MAYHEM."

  “Salman, Nikhil,” Coach Rahman continues, pivoting to his remaining two soldiers, the designated ‘sacrifices’ in this tactical kamikaze mission. “You two, you become the… the ‘open man’ wranglers. Your job? Cover… everyone else.

  Yes, they will be open. So open they’ll be able to set up a full-blown picnic out there, complete with checkered bnkets and wicker baskets. Yes, they will get shots. Probably a whole lot of shots.

  But… we’re pcing a wager. A high-stakes, all-in, YOLO bet. We’re betting that without him running the show, they are… less lethal. Manageable-ish. We have to… cauterize the wound at the source. James is the source of the… uh… basketball-reted bleeding. Understood? We’re going full chaos theory here, people. Embrace the madness. Let's get weird.”

  He cps his hands together, WHAM! The sound ricochets through the locker room, sharp and decisive, like a judge’s gavel smming down on the official sentence: “Triple-Team. Sentence is life.”

  “Alright! Let’s… execute this… masterpiece of a pn! Let’s get out there and demonstrate to them the true, unadulterated, borderline-insane essence of Motijheel defense!” He tries to pump them up, inject some adrenaline, some tiny spark of “we can totally do this!” energy back into his visibly shell-shocked team.

  They looked like they’d just been told they had to wrestle a grizzly bear… wearing only socks, not py basketball. But even Coach, deep down in the deepest, most rational corner of his brain, probably knew this was a Hail Mary pass thrown from the parking lot, while blindfolded.

  A desperate, st-ditch gamble against something… well, something that felt less like a basketball pyer and more like a glitch in the matrix, a rogue program, something unprecedented, unnatural, and possibly powered by actual dark magic.

  The third quarter buzzer – or rather, banshee scream – erupts again, and BAM! Motijheel’s “Operation: Human Centipede on James” strategy becomes horrifyingly, immediately, and hiriously apparent. James, bless his unsuspecting, beautiful heart, barely crosses the half-court line, dribbling with his usual ugly style, effortless grace, and then… BAM! He’s engulfed.

  Swarmed. Attacked by a pack of ravenous, slightly panicked, defenders. Lut, Saim, and Anderson descend upon him like a swarm of particurly aggressive bees who just found out he stole their honey, their movements surprisingly coordinated for a st-minute, completely insane pn. Their focus? Laser-sharp. Their objective? Singur. James. Stop James. No, scratch that. Erase James from the very fabric of basketball reality. Make him un-exist.

  They're all over him, bumping him, jostling him, practically forming a human, slightly sweaty tripod around him. Arms are filing everywhere like those inftable tube men outside car dealerships in a hurricane, bodies pressed in so tight it looked like they were trying to physically merge into a single, three-headed defensive hydra, fueled by desperation and questionable coaching decisions.