Arcade Fire Stole Some Guy’s Basketball

by Ben Collins

(The following is a 74-page document addressed to David Stern. Due to space limitations, we have included only the last page.)

…The band Arcade Fire should have nothing to do with basketball. Hell, indie rock music as a whole should have nothing to do with basketball whatsoever, other than give Scot Pollard more horrible ideas to disgrace his head. If they end up in the same sentence it should be because Player X likes Band Y. That’s OK, I suppose.

But, over the weekend, Band Y stole Player X’s basketball and now indie rock basketball players are all thieves. Someone check Paul Shirley’s receipt.

Win Butler (which reads like a grammatically incorrect sign at the Sweet 16) from the much-heralded indie rock band Arcade Fire — a group that is chronically overrated, and has really only produced one cool thing for all the attention they get — decided to play some pickup hoop at Cal Berkeley over the weekend. He tried to reserve a half of the court for, I’m sure, a group of equally semi-talented musicians who suck at basketball.
There was a group on the other end of the court ready to start a run. You know how this goes — they asked him if he wanted to play, he said he was holding down that end of the court and, when they started to run over him, he went all emo on everyone.

“I’m standing on a stage of fear and self-doubt,” he screamed at the other people. Then he grabbed some guy named Chris’ basketball, yelled at some staff and went home with it.

OK, so I made up that “standing on a stage of fear and self-doubt” part, but he did snag that dude’s basketball. Allegedly.

So Chris decided to make a blog out of it: arcadefirestolemybasketball.blogspot.com. Creative.

Someone claiming to be Win Butler’s brother, Will, retorted the next day: arcadefiredidntstealdudesbasketball.blogspot.com.

“So, in response to his accusations, I, Will Butler, have decided to start an all out Internet libel war,” he said. He then accused him of vandalism, fraudulent Winter Olympic fundraising ploys, and dropkicking babies in public. I couldn’t make this up.

Since the beginning of this mess, two others have appeared: arcadefiremighthavestolenguysbasketball.blogspot.com, which is just a photoshop festival, and arcadefirestolemybasketballplayer.blogspot.com, which pleads for the safe return of Los Angeles Clippers’ center Paul Davis.

In conclusion, this is why the NBA Finals should have started five days ago.