Episode 2
Open to a news broadcasting studio. A camera crew is set up facing a large desk with monitors behind it. The monitors are all showing the words SAVAGE NEWS in big blue block letters. At the studio desk, we see user benhoidal looking into a teleprompter. We hear a deep baritone voice off screen say, “THIS IS SAVAGE NEWS. BRINGING YOU THE MOST SAVAGE UPDATES FROM THE MOST SAVAGE LEAGUE IN ALL OF WIS.” The camera moves around until all we see is benhoidal and the monitor behind him.
“Hello! Welcome to the Savage News Channel! Our show today is brought to you by dB’s trick candles. Turn your **** sandwich into a motherf*cking birthday cake, today! I’m your host, benhoidal, and I will be here for all your Savage news all season long.”
A box appears over his right shoulder with a graphic showing cmcafeeky in a LeBron James jersey and wearing blackface.
“Our top story tonight, Savage IV is underway and the first round is complete. cmcafeeky started things off by drafting LeBron James. LeBron has been drafted first all three times he has been eligible and has led the users who drafted him to top eight finishes each time. This is good news for cmcafeeky whose average wins over two seasons is ranked twenty-third. Will the King help the Kentucky Kid reverse his fortunes?”
The image in the box is replaced by a list of the top ten selections.
1. cmcafeeky -
LeBron James
2. jhsukow -
Wilt Chamberlain
3. jkaye24 -
Steph Curry
4. tarheel1991 -
Shaquille O'Neal
5. robusk -
Dwight Howard
6. pexetera -
Michael Jordan
7. dBKC -
Giannis Antetokounmpo
8. albiband0 -
Chris Paul
9. gerryred -
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
10. jpevans31 -
David Robinson
“Pretty chalk for the top 10 with the possible exception of Kareem falling to the 9th pick. This continues a downward trend for the captain. After being the first ever player to be drafted in a Savage league in season 1, Roger Murdock fell to fourth the next season and then down to seventh for season 3. Will this trend see Big Lew drop out of the top 10 next season? Or can the Power Tower regain his old form and become a top five pick once more?”
The graphic is replaced by an image of King Kong fighting Godzilla, the duo towering over New York skyscrapers.
“The two most successful Savage governors over three seasons, dBKC and pexetera are drafting right next to each other. Michael Jordan and Giannis Antetokounmpo are great starts for both users, but I for one am looking forward to this duo stealing each other's picks throughout the draft.”
The image is replaced with the selections for the rest of the first round.
11. ysw128 -
Kevin Durant
12. beloud -
Karl Malone
13. 24kpyrite -
Charles Barkley
14. ashamael -
James Harden
15. 20ks -
Kevin Garnett
16. jcred5 -
Larry Bird
17. mikee1 -
Anthony Davis
18. notoriousj -
Artis Gilmore
19. bds9992 -
DeAndre Jordan
20. kinoa1 -
Tim Duncan
21. benhoidal -
John Stockton
22. amerk1180 -
Moses Malone
23. midge -
Magic Johnson
24. dh555 -
Hakeem Olajuwon
“I really hope the next few rounds give me something to talk about, because there’s not much news here. I mean the highest riser from an ADP position is Anthony Davis who rose 6 picks, but his teams have finished in the top 10 the last two seasons so you can hardly call this a shock. The biggest falls? Karl Malone and John Stockton fall four places each. Is this Utah Jazz slander?”
The box over benhoidal’s head disappears and he swivels in his chair to another camera.
“Overall, I’m really disappointed with the lack of drama in this draft. Where’s the Savagery that defined this league over the last three seasons? Where’s the name calling and heated debates? Where’s the…”
He turns his head slightly and puts a finger to his ear as if listening to something being said in his headset.
“Hold on. robusk called who a fascist? Big Lebowski? Who’s Peggy?”
benhoidal turns his head back to the camera and breaks out in a wide grin.
“Breaking News! Things are finally getting interesting. robusk called cmcafeeky a fascist, which is hardly surprising, but apparently it was just a part of a Big Lebowski conversation. The real story which is still developing is in regards to everyone’s favorite exiled former sportscaster.”
A box pops up behind him and we get a mugshot of amerk1180.
“Two seasons ago, amerk1180 went on a now infamous 8 page rant about pick times, and holding up the draft, specifically in regards to albiband0 who was picking from Italy. Let’s roll the tape.”
A recording starts to play and we hear amerk1180’s voice: “Sheesh this is BRUTAL! 3-4 picks....three hour wait....2-3 picks.....four hour wait.....1 pick....two hour wait.....5 picks in an hour....four hour wait....and so on. When can we get on a clock???”
benhoidal: “In a lovely twist of irony, amerk’s pick times from that draft and the next one end up worse than albiband’s. Now fast forward to Wednesday morning. It’s been twelve hours since the last pick and users are patiently waiting for amerk to make his selection. Finally we have a little drama as a few governors start to point out the hypocrisy. Even dBKC. Yes dBKC, the unanimous pick for nicest guy on the site. When dB gets in on the pot stirring, you know things are spicy.”
The graphic is replaced by an image of a long wooden peg.
“Here’s where the story really heats up. Amerk logs on after over 16 hours of inactivity and claims the reason for his absence was he was up all night with a girl named Peggy. This is met with a fair amount of skepticism in the forum. I have some okay jokes about this, but nothing that matches the following user comments.”
The screen is taken over by the image of few forum posts:
tarheel1991:
I bet I know why they call her Peggy ;)
robusk:
Unfortunately I was unable to fall back asleep after this nightmare of a post.
cmcafeeky:
PEGGY?.... I just checked the last census... hasnt been anyone named 'PEGGY' born since 1949....
The images disappear and we see benhoidal shaking his head and chuckling.
“So what’s the truth here? Was amerk up all night with a beautiful woman? Was it an old cougar with a broken hip? Or was the story made up? I for one, completely believe him. I just hope he got his money’s worth.”
The image of the Savage logo appears in the box over his head and he swivels in his chair to face a second camera.
“In a league full of the most Savage users in the history of WIS, one man stands alone as the most Savage. How did dh555 come up with the most Savage league in all of WIS? This reporter was able to secure an exclusive interview with “The Commish.” But first, a quick word from our sponsor!”
The studio disappears and our screen turns black and white. The image of an oven opening up from the inside greets our eyes and two oven mitts are thrust into it. The camera focuses on the dish that was inside as it is brought out and placed between two slices of bread upon a plate. It is a massive pile of manure. The oven mitts are taken off, and two hands smush the bread slices down. Manure seeps out from the edges of the sandwich and onto the plate. We can visibly see the stink coming off the sandwich and into the air. Flies circle over the plate and omit a low buzzing sound.
The plate with the sandwich on it is slowly brought over to a compact table sitting in a corner of a dim room where a lone boy sits. His head is hanging dejectedly and as he looks up and sees the food being brought over to him, a look of revulsion crosses his face. The sandwich is placed in front of him and his nose crinkles. He reaches with both hands and grabs the bread and brings it tediously towards his face. His eyes close and the boy visibly gags as the sandwich inches closer, closer, closer.
Behind the boy, a door creaks open slowly. A man enters the room, but this man is not in black and white like the rest of our scene, but instead is in full color. He is wearing a flamboyant outfit and an oversized party hat which shields his eyes from the camera. He has both hands in his pockets. He looks over at the boy about to eat the **** sandwich and quickly takes his hands out of his pockets. In one hand we see a noisemaker and in the other we see five candles, which are somehow already lit despite just emerging from his pocket. The man flicks his wrist and all five candles zoom over to the **** sandwich and somehow stick perfectly into the top slice of bread. As this is happening, he raises the noisemaker in his other hand to his lips. He purses his lips together and blows.
As sound erupts from the noisemaker, color floods the screen and our image is no longer in black and white.
The boy startles and opens his eyes, a look of shock replacing the one of revulsion that was there just a moment before. In front of him, instead of the **** sandwich he was about to eat, sits a glorious birthday cake. He looks up and around, but no one is there. He looks back at the cake in front of him and grabs a fork. A look of pure delight stretches across his face.
Our camera moves away from the boy and to the door that the man had emerged from. The door is open just a crack and our camera moves through it. On the other side we see the man who was just in the room. His party hat has shifted and no longer covers his eyes. We see that it is dBKC. He catches the camera on him and winks. His other hand takes a lit candle out of his pocket and raises it to his lips. As he blows out the candle, our screen goes dark.
Colorful italic words appear and a loud, excited voice over reads them:
dB’s Trick Candles! Turn your **** sandwich into a motherf*cking birthday cake, today! On Sale Now in all five worlds!
Beneath those words, smaller words written in black momentarily flash across the screen:
Terms and conditions apply. dB’s trick candles cannot turn a ****** governor into a good one.
The image fades away and the studio reappears. benhoidal is still sitting behind the desk, but joining him is dh555 who is wearing a Joel Embiid 76’ers swingman jersey. On top of the desk we see a motherf*cking birthday cake with a number of lit candles. benhoidal stoops down to blow out the candles, but they flicker back to life. His eyes catch the camera and he winks.
benhoidal: “Welcome back! With me today is none other than your very own Savage commissioner, dh555. dh, how are you doing today?”
dh555: “Hi ben, thanks for having me on.”
benhoidal: “dh, you have been credited with single handedly saving WIS basketball and injecting new life into this starved community. How did you come up with this brilliantly Savage idea?
dh555: “Well Savage came from the ashes of the failed OCP league I ran. It was a five season league, just not all at once. Unfortunately it only lasted one season. For any of you old heads out there, there’s some pretty classic scud material in the forums.”
A flashing link appears on the bottom ticker:
https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=477054&threadID=10460041#l_10460041
benhoidal: “I miss scud. Last time I talked to him, he traded me Larry Bird for a bucket of bolts and a second round pick. Tell me, what are the toughest challenges you face while running Savage?”
dh555: “That’s an easy one. Checking all of the rosters for sure.”
benhoidal: “How do you stay free of all the drama?”
dh555: “I dunno...just try to move past it and appreciate that there are actually other weirdos out there that enjoy this strange hobby.”
benhoidal: “You are the third winningest user in Savage history. What do you attribute to your success?”
dh555: “I probably don't always have the strongest drafts, but I feel like I do a job of putting the puzzle together afterwards. My favorite part of Savage is that one night with some good drink/smoke/music when I get lost for a few hours in a haze of advanced stats.”
benhoidal: “What is your confidence level this season?”
dh555: “I'm at a 9 right now. Can't do 10 without a top 9 pick, but I usually do pretty well building these ugly DWade teams and I love my 3rd round options.”
benhoidal: “Which players were you hoping to draft this time around?”
dh555: “I really wanted to get Magic or Stockton at 24. Or maybe even both? That would have been fun.”
benhoidal: “Well sorry for stealing Stockton from you!”
dh555: “That’s alright, I…”
benhoidal swivels in his chair to face the camera and it zooms in on his face.
benhoidal: “Now over to ashamael for our Daily Top 10!”
We switch cameras over to another part of the studio where ashamael is standing in front of a large screen with the SAVAGE logo written in dark red across a white background.
ashamael: “Thank you ben. For today’s top 10 I will be talking about a topic I am intimately familiar with. The NBA has a long history of feuds between players. From Larry Bird and Dr. J, to Shaq and Kobe, to Charles Barkley and a salad, disputes are common. But what about feuds in our NBA SIM community? Here are the top 10!”
The image on the screen behind him is replaced by a graphic of a number 10.
ashamael: “Coming in at number 10, tanguma v. the entire ODL. There used to be a rule in the ODL: You could not start a player you didn’t draft. Tanguma ignored this rule. Repeatedly. When told to stop, he kept doing it and ******* at everyone in a foreign language. When threatened with admin intervention, he persisted. Eventually, admin removed him from the league, and he is the only known player to ever be blacklisted from the longest running draft league in the sim.”
A number 9 spins onto the screen behind him.
ashamael: “At number 9, we have the first of two Savage feuds. It’s amerk1180 v. albiband0. Okay, actually the feud was between amerk and myself, as albi is the nicest dude ever, but I’m on here a bunch so whatever. Anyways you guys know the story. albiband0 lives in Italy and takes a little long on a pick due to time zones. Amerk flips out as he often does, and long story short, ends up taking even more time on his picks and blames it on getting pegged by a prostitute.”
The number 9 is replaced by an 8.
ashamael: “At number 8, a feud I only know about anecdotally. It’s robusk v. cjok1051. This was over in ben’s ATBA and me and ben weren’t really getting along at this point in time (Don’t worry, we’ll get there). Apparently, CJ creates this alias named Fred and starts trading Magic Johnson, and Kevin McHale over to his other team which already has Karl Malone and John Stockton. There was no proof until admin finally stepped up 10 seasons too late and CJ was allowed to keep playing. Him and robusk had some epic finals matches, but the real drama happened off camera. In an unconfirmed rumor, robusk made CJ cry and CJ offered to tank a finals matchup if robusk would stop calling him a cheater. robusk ended up leaving the league before the evidence finally came out. CJ is now selling used cars in Oklahoma.”
The number 7 flashes on the big screen.
ashamael: “Number 7 is a personal favorite of mine. We have pennsylvania and smokey57 v. common sense. Honestly, I don’t know which one was sillier. On one hand you have pennsylvania storming the capital and claiming the Dunning Kruger effect every chance he gets despite proving his idiocy time after time. Then again, you also have smokey who would claim things as gospel that were clearly untrue such as dreb% not contributing to defensive rebounding or that the more free throws you drafted, the more likely you would be to foul the other team. Not making this stuff up.”
The number 6 shines brightly on the television.
ashamael: “Coming in at number 6, jpevans31 v. a good trade offer. Have you seen this guy’s posts in progressives? ‘
In win-now mode, looking to get a really good player. Can trade one of D'Angelo Russell, Norm Nixon, Glen Rice or Raja Bell.’ Maybe I’m being too hard on him, since he isn’t the only one, but I just see things like this in every single one of his posts.”
The number 5 spins into view.
ashamael: “Alright, now we get to some real feuds. The real nasty ones that define this top 10. Coming in at number 5, we have the most Savage of feuds, bds9992 v. ashamael and robusk. I have been told specifically by my producer that in the name of diplomacy I have to read this script he wrote word for word, so here goes. ‘Ahem. bds9992, robusk, and ashamael all said some words. Some of those words were correct, some of them were not. Names were called, pistols were drawn, and many brain cells were lost by all who read their posts’… hmm, not exactly how I remember it. As I recall, bds started this whole thing by his ridiculous claim that…”
The broadcast goes static for a couple of seconds before coming back on. We see an image of a number 4 take over our screen before we zoom out and we see it the number is on the jumbo screen behind ashamael.
ashamael: “Okay, okay I’ll move on. Let’s get to number 4! It’s monkee v. seble! The king of aliases vs the king of ghosting. Monkee aka emonk aka monyet aka chester_o aka felonius aka copernicus aka who the **** else could he be just never knew when to stop. He teased. He cussed. He constantly tore into site administration, aka seble. Seble flat ignored WIS NBA most of the time, with the few exceptions of coming by, banning monkee from the forums, and then continuing to ignore the entire sim for about a decade before leaving the site to a new sim god. My favorite monkee story was when he wrote a big guide on how to win at the sim. It was complete garbage & misdirection, obvious tongue in cheek. Seble took it personally, banned monk, and made the big announcement that the user known as monkee / emonk / monyet / chester_O had been banned from the forums. It was revelatory as nobody knew about him being chester, and monkee often played with chester & one of the other aliases in most themes. I don't remember if he did anything hokey or not... but it was funny that I liked monkee but hated chester... and they were the same dude.”
We see a large number 3 take up the screen behind him.
ashamael: “Okay, we teased this one earlier, but it’s by far the biggest WIS NBA feud that doesn’t involve death threats. It’s the clash of the motherf*cking titans! It’s benhoidal v. ashamael! Now, I’m sure ben has a different version, but here’s mine. I was the king of WIS at the time and I was watching this new kid on the block fly up the standings. That was okay. Mostly. Then the allegations from our number 1 feud that we will get to in a few moments came out and I thought ben was cheating and making all sorts of aliases to trade himself the best players. While these allegations have mostly proved untrue, I also thought ben was taking advantage of lesser experienced or less talented governors. This was unequivocally true. It resulted in me being extremely ugly towards ben and ******* on his advertisements for leagues, trying to steer people away from being the next victims of Prog-lord Ben. Eventually, we came to an understanding and somehow, even became friends.”
ashamael takes a moment to compose himself. Then he looks right at the camera with a serious expression and takes two steps forward. He grabs the camera and puts his face directly in front of it. “I actually have a public service announcement. Don’t trade with ben. Just don’t do it. He always wins the trade. Seriously, don’t do it. This isn’t part of the feud, it’s just reality. Don’t trade with ben.”
He takes a step back from the camera and regains his composure. “If you thought that feud was going to be our only one with a happy ending… You’d be right! We’ve reached the Death Threat Tier!!!”
Ominous music starts to play and the number 2 flies onto the screen, but this one is covered in blood dripping down from it.
ashamael: “Coming in at number 2, ashamael v. 98average. Before I was Lord of the Rings (to be passed by like a car doing 50 on the interstate), 98average was the site ring king. I won 9 of my first 10 leagues, including my first ever ODL and 98average didn’t take it too well. He took an immediate disliking to me and constantly berated me in every league we were in together about one thing or another. He then took to naming teams after me, calling me Ashley, his daughter, and even stooped so low as to begin copying my winning teams in a desperate effort to hold me off from surpassing him in the Ring’s race (despite me playing in dramatically fewer leagues). As the gap closed, 98 sent me a sitemail issuing a death threat, saying that he’d take care of me personally where he couldn’t ever pass anyone on the rings’ list. I left the theme circuit after that and went anonymous for a long time. 98 disappeared.”
A number 1 with blood dripping down from it replaces the number 2.
ashamael: “Alright, here it is. The moment you’ve been waiting for. The biggest feud in SIM NBA history. benhoidal v. slashtc. Never before has a feud been so public, so raw. Long story short, ben tanked a game he shouldn’t have, and slash ended up threatening his wife on Facebook. There’s a whole lot else including multiple public threats against ben in other forums and leagues they were in as well as slash claiming that ben had aliases in the form of every single other governor in the league they shared including fellow savages, NotoriousJ, and jkaye24.”
ashamael turns to face another camera. “That’s all for our Daily Top 10. The biggest feuds in SIM basketball history. Back to you ben.”
We switch back to the main studio where benhoidal is staring into the teleprompter.
“Thank you ash. Honestly I’m surprised you weren’t in more of those feuds. Well, that will do it for this edition of Savage News on the Savage News Channel. We will be back next time with a mid-draft review. As always, have a SAVAGE day.”
The camera starts to slowly zoom out and take in the whole studio as a pleasant melody of notes starts playing in the background. The image is replaced by a white screen with dark red letters spelling out the word SAVAGE. The letters seem to be dripping down as though written in blood.