The NBA enters the Tournament Stage

So, I was going to write a bit about improving the NBA’s midseason tournament, the one with the courts, but I’ve happened upon something far more important to discuss immediately.

One of the jokes in the piece had the NBA winners — each player and coach on the team, all up and down the bench — receiving an oversized, Ed McMahon-styled check from the NBA, because 40-different giant checks for the first and second-place teams will look rather silly on television.

You know what else is silly? The fact I thought Ed McMahon handed out giant checks.

He didn’t, it’s a Mandela Effect, Ed McMahon worked for American Family Publishers and it was Publishers Clearing House which doled out the massive, doorstep, checks. Publishers Clearing House remains, to date, unaffiliated with television’s Ed McMahon.

I know right. I think this was the first time I’ve been a victim of the Mandela Effect and can we PLEASE come up with a more respectful namesake for this phenomenon. It feels inappropriate associating paramnesic recollections of Nelson Mandela’s life following political imprisonment with movies we think Richard Grieco made.