James Harden, Madame Web, And Not Realizing When The Milk's Gone Bad

Have you ever reached in the fridge for milk only to open it up and realize it’s gone bad? That smell of dead bodies reminding you it’s time to go grocery shopping again. Some people refuse to acknowledge their milk’s gone bad and they pour that curlded nightmare into their cereal anyway.

Like the Los Angeles Clippers trading Marcus Morris, Robert Covington, Nic Batum, KJ Martin, a 2028 unprotected first-round pick, two second-round picks, a 2029 pick swap and an additional first-round pick from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Philadelphia 76ers for the shell of James Harden.

James Harden is 34 years old. He’s on a 1-year deal and will be a free agent when the season ends. This is his most important season since 2012 when the Houston Rockets traded for him.

His reputation as a quitter and a loser is the only thing holding him back from one last BAG. In 2021, James Harden suffered a brutal hamstring injury and he hasn’t been the same since. All of his shooting percentages have dropped every year following the injury.

He used to be quick enough to beat anyone off the dribble and strong enough to finish at the rim but he looks nowhere near as athletic or physically dominant as he used to be. He can’t get past anyone anymore. He looks like he’s playing in wet Doc Martens.

James Harden needs to be a key part of a deep Clippers playoff run if he wants another real contract because last time we saw him in the playoffs, he scored 9 points in a Game 7.

9 fucking points.

If I was an NBA GM, I wouldn’t sign him for anything more than the veteran’s minimum. Physically, he’s no longer an All-NBA caliber player. The Clippers are putting all of their eggs into a basket full of holes and Ciroc.

LeBron James has tricked a lot of people into believing all great players are capable of maintaining their All-Star level play as they age but Harden is NOT LeBron.

Harden has finished in the Top 3 for minutes played 5 times in his career. Plus all of his playoff minutes. He also spends every night drunk at the club and I imagine he’s not stopping by real quick and going to bed by 10pm.

So after years of playing the most minutes, getting the most bottle girls through college and missing all offseason workouts with the Sixers, the Clippers expected him to show up in his 15th NBA season as this big difference maker. They lost 6 straight games when he arrived¹.

The James Harden milk has gone bad.

This week, Sony Pictures released the first trailer for their Madame Webb movie starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney and Tahar Rahim.

I grew up reading comic books and I barely know who Madame Web is.

From my understanding, she’s a paralyzed, blind, old lady with psychic powers who occasionally helps Spider-Man. Those of us who watched the 90’s Spider-Man animated series remember Madame Web popping up to guide Peter Parker through the multiverse storyline that ended with the reveal of Mary Jane Watson being a clone made of water. Heartbreaking at the time. Stupid in hindsight but that’s a conversation for another day.

When the MCU was blowing up, like around 2012 ²when The Avengers came out, Sony Pictures had the rights to Spider-Man and wanted to make their own Spider-Verse movies about his villains.

We’ve gotten 2 Venom movies and a Morbus movie that was so terrible that it was trending for weeks as a punchline. But Sony didn’t understand they were trending ironically and re-released the movie in theatres under the impression it was back by popular demand. It made $300K on the re-release. It probably cost more to advertise the re-release than it actually made back in the box office.

It’s 2023 and the comic book movie bubble has been obliterated.

No one is rushing to go see The Marvels yet Sony is still attempting to feed us their Spider-Man-verse movies. Sony is like the guy you went to high school with who’s still posting anti-vax, Dr. Fauci liar memes despite no one giving a shit about vaccines anymore. Sony is still trying to make Dogecoin happen long after we learned crypto is bullshit. “To the moon” or whatever the crypto dorks say.

There are no more interesting stories left to tell. It doesn’t matter how much Sydney Sweeney you stuff into it, you cannot make me care about the Madame fucking Web movie. These tertiary Spider-Man characters do not need their own full-length feature films and they absolutely don’t need to keep making comic book movies anymore.

The superhero genre’s milk has gone bad.

Cannot wait to see James Harden score 5 points in a playoff game and I cannot wait to hear Dakota Johnson try her hardest to be a leading actress in a movie about a woman who gets magic spider powers with her girlfriends who also get magic spider powers because they cannot stop making movies about people getting magic spider powers.

Buy new milk.