Must’ve been a slow night, sports-wise, if I feel the need to talk about the New Jersey Devils. There has been no more scenery team, and dreary at that, than the Devils the past 10 years. You didn’t think about them until they came up on the schedule against your favorite team. And even when that happened, it wasn’t an occasion you can remember. I was a season ticket holder here in Chicago for 12 seasons, and I don’t remember a single visit by the Devils. I know they were there every year because they had to be, but other than that, couldn’t help you.

Turn on a Devils game on Center Ice and you’d see a half-empty building filled with wayward souls merely acting out of ritual and trying to not think too hard about what landed them in a chilled warehouse in Newark. I assume that’s what all of Newark is like, and I don’t plan to ever find out for sure, which is how most everyone feels about Newark. It’s a place you’ve heard of and would never find yourself there on purpose. [Editor’s note: Newark has the Ironbound Section around the Devils’ home ice, which is worth checking out.] Which is kind of how the Devils roster was constructed.

And yet…now…on a Tuesday night, there was “The Rock” full and lively. The faithful were only too happy to sing along to “Take On Me” or “My Own Worst Enemy” (becoming something of an NHL tradition, to be fair) long after the PA had cut out for the action on the ice. The place actively bounced after big hits and Devils goals and sounded in turmoil after the hosts had two goals ruled out by video reviews.

And on the ice, the Devils were fast. They were creative. They were… fun? Is that what this says? That can’t be, right?

The Devils won their eighth in a row, their second in a week over the Calgary Flames, 3-2. They came back from a goal down to take it, with Nico Hischier netting the winner with eight minutes left. It was one of the rare games this season when the Devils had to fight off an onslaught to hold their lead, but so they did. Only the Bruins have more points in the East.

Noise? Excitement? It used to be that the Devils craved not these things. After all, this is an organization still living off the reputation of a lack of action, of noise, of excitement. Success built on sucking out all of those things, with their trap and their goaltending and the idea that the best way to win hockey games was to make them the least amount of hockey possible and make oxygen hard to come by. That every inch of the rink had to be contested like it was holy land, and the puck was incidental. The Devils haven’t played like this in a long time, of course, but that’s still what most think of when they hear the name.

There probably isn’t a more opposed coach to that old Devils style than Lindy Ruff, who has gotten to let his team off the leash like he prefers finally. The offseason addition of John Marino on the blue line has given Ruff another option to take dungeon shifts and allowed Dougie Hamilton more freedom with his assignments to push the Devils all the way up the ice.

Hischier making the leap hasn’t hurt either, as he finally looks like the top-line center that a No. 1 overall pick should. Hischier has seen a huge jump in the shots, chances, and goals he and his line are producing, with Jesper Bratt on his wing as another weapon.

Which has meant that Jack Hughes has gotten to be a little sheltered on the second line. He’s at just about a point per game with the comfort.

There isn’t a dropoff anywhere on the roster, as anyone who has skated significant movements is carrying metrics that are way above water. Ruff in Dallas had a team that was run n’ gun as just about anyone we’ve seen in recent years, and it’s no different in New Jersey.

Sure, the goaltending isn’t good, but they could really be onto something if it improves with a return to health for MacKenzie Blackwood. Or maybe Vitek Vanecek just takes the job full-time in his absence, as his .915 save percentage suggests he probably should (though still below the line for expected goals saved).

But the vibes with the Devils are just so strong. This is a fanbase that has been waiting to not just have a winner but for a version of the Devils to shake off those shackles of the past. To re-identify the whole thing. It’s not quite showtime yet, and the idea of showtime in northern New Jersey is complete folly. But where there was once a void of intrigue or excitement, where the signs of life were the absence of color and vibrance, now there is juice and pops from the crowd. There is a din. There’s a feel, which portends to something even bigger and better.

The Devils are no longer an absence, a gap, ellipses. Nothing is permanent.

Fun fact about the Denver Nuggets: They might have more trendy NBA Twitter fans than actual hometown supporters. While the hipster hoops head’s response to “You know who I low-key really love to watch?” is always Nikola Jokić’s squad, they’re behind the Broncos, Avalanche, and the Rockies when it comes to the prototypical Colorado sports fan.

That could be due to the fact that the Avs and Nuggets are entering their fourth season having their games blacked out on the primary cable carrier in the state because Stan Kroenke is a cross between Snidely Whiplash and a urinal cake, but I digress.

After starting the season 2-2 with a couple of lopsided losses to the Jazz and Trail Blazers, Denver has won five of six, including a little payback against Utah. Their 7-3 record after 10 games is good for a three-way tie for second in the West. The immaculate starting five has a plus-minus of 17, and even though the defense could be a little better, this looks like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster that NBA top-knots pined for.

Nikola Jokić is .7 assists shy from averaging 20-10-10

If Russell Westbrook hadn’t sullied the pristine reputation of triple-doubles, Jokić winning another MVP might not be a borderline impossibility. However, I think he’d prefer to be flanked by Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. over Will Barton and Monte Morris than another trophy that’s not the Larry O’Brien.

His scoring average has dipped (27 to 21) almost as much as his shot attempts (18 to 13) despite the Serbian shooting better than 61 percent from the field. The crazy thing is his 61-23-87 shooting splits could still go higher. Jokić is 10 points below his career mark from 3 on two attempts per game, and those looks have either been open or wide the fuck open, according to NBA.com.

Obviously, the return of the team’s perimeter threats accounts for the shots he’s given up, but that just means a boon for his assist numbers. At 9.3 dimes per contest, he’s fifth in the league.

I could get swept up in the Joker’s stat lines all day — and I’m not even an analytics stan whose eyes roll back in their head when a guy’s PER surpasses 30. Take it easy, Kevin, it’s just basketball. Stop moaning like you’re being overwhelmed with foie gras and foreplay.

See? I got sidetracked while getting sidetracked talking about Jokić’s stats. Back to the Nuggets, specifically MPJ and Murray.

Jamal Murray didn’t lose burst, but is still finding touch and confidence

The team’s de facto No. 2 that last time we saw Denver’s best three on the floor together was Murray. He’s playing that way, leading all Nuggets in field goal attempts even though he’s playing the least of any starter. You’d like to see more than 15 points per game from 14 shots. On his highest outputs of the season — 21-, 24-, and 19-point nights in three of the past four games — he’s needed 21, 19, and 17 shots to get there, respectively.

That said, the seventh-year guard is still ramping up in his return from a torn ACL and has shown flashes of his previous form that lead you to believe those legs still have rocket boosters in them.

You can tell Murray has a little ways to go before his fearlessness fully returns, and with that, his trips to the stripe. He was getting to the line three times per outing before the injury, but is barely earning two freebies per night. (The free throw percentage oddly is way down, hovering around 60 percent, so I imagine that’ll correct itself, too.)

Being 25 years old, in a pressure-less situation, and having shown signs of the guy capable of dropping 50 in a playoff game, I think he’ll be fine by January.

Half of Michael Porter Jr.’s shots are 3s — and he’s hitting half of them

The X-factor of what Denver could be though revolves around Porter. The most games he’s appeared in during his four-plus years in the NBA is 61, and he has one year with zero and another — last season — with nine.

The 6-foot-10 swingman has already played in as many contests this year as 2021-22, and is actually outscoring Murray by three points per outing while shooting a shot less than him. The key is Porter’s attempts from deep. Once unheard of and now increasingly common, seven of his 13 launches per night come from behind the arc.

You could argue that MPJ’s current 49 percent from deep isn’t sustainable, and you’d be partially correct. The guy shot 42 and 44 percent in his only true seasons of work, so when it falls, it probably won’t be by that much.

Who the hell knows about his health three, or four months from now. Yet it is encouraging that Porter is right back into starters’ minutes while looking like the stupid luxury wing option Nuggets’ fans hope he can be.

I could do a little bit about how good Denver’s best three bench scorers have been, or the offensive arsenal Jokić developed as a one-man show that hasn’t had to use yet, but I’ve already aroused these thick frames enough. You need to be doused with some cold water, like the Nuggets’ middle-of-the-pack, 110-points-allowed defense.

As if Brett Favre’s blunders in (allegedly) diverting $5 million of Mississippi’s federal welfare money to build a new volleyball facility at Southern Miss wasn’t crazy enough, two concussion drug companies he backed that are also entangled in the scandal overstated the known effectiveness of their drugs to raise money, according to an ESPN report.

Court filings showed the two companies founded by Jake VanLandingham, Prevacus, and PresolMD, allegedly received more than $2.1 million in Mississippi’s funds earmarked for welfare families, the report states, all while facing financial troubles. During that time, VanLandingham pressed his investors, including Favre, for more funds. Favre, shockingly, declined to comment to ESPN for the story. VanLandingham, however, did. “I had no idea this was welfare money, and I’ve always been an upstanding person when it comes to research,” he said.

According to the lawsuit, Favre is the top outside investor in Prevacus, having allegedly put $1 million into the two companies. PresolMD and Prevacus are developing a nasal spray to treat concussions, as well as a cream to prevent or limit their effects. Favre and VanLandingham weren’t among the six people arrested and charged in 2020 as part of the alleged embezzlement. The former Mississippi welfare director has since entered a guilty plea. Farve and VanLandingham are listed among the 38 individuals and companies in a civil suit, which seeks the return of more than $20 million designated for families in need, per the report. Favre has previously denied knowing any funding was diverted welfare money.

As part of VanLandingham and Favre’s efforts to gain money for the companies, they listed Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, and Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for health & safety innovation, as “other contacts” on a list of “Key Advisory Members and Associates” to Prevacus. An NFL spokesperson said the league was contacted by the organization but never provided funding or supported its efforts. The spokesperson also stated neither Miller nor Sills have ever been involved in the company. Dr. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, was also among “other contacts.” An NCAA spokesperson stated in the report that neither Hainline nor the NCAA has any connections with Prevacus or VanLandingham.

VanLandingham said Favre connected him with Sills and Miller and stated the company marketing document was intended to show there was contact between Prevacus and PresolMD with the NFL and NCAA, not that the companies were officially working with them. That’s slimy and confusing. It would come off as an endorsement to most, not knowing it was unrequited. That’s a trend in the court filings obtained by ESPN.

PresolMD and Prevacus aren’t FDA-approved, but the company’s marketing document stated that they allegedly had relationships with six NFL teams. No proof as to their identities. The document also reportedly stated the companies were working on a “partnership with NFL Affiliate Groups.” Yet when asked by ESPN what that meant, VanLandingham couldn’t remember what it was referring to. It also listed 15 sports figures as key advisors, including ESPN NFL reporter Ed Werder. It was conveniently pointed out in the report Werder wasn’t employed by the network when the document was released. ESPN reported that the document also included falsehoods about how many retired NFL players were affiliated with the product, if any, and claimed to have the support of the NFL Players Association during clinical trials, which the NFLPA wholeheartedly denied. An NFLPA spokesperson told ESPN: “There is no affiliation with that company or person” and also said, “If this person is representing that they have our support, that’s false.”

The NFL is still in the middle of the most intense scrutiny of its concussion protocol system since its inception in 2011. Even though Tua Tagovailoa and Nyheim Hines, the most high-profile players to be recently concussed, have returned to the field after nasty tackles that led to obvious concussion signs, the protocols’ current ability to keep NFL players safe is very much still up for debate. Yet, I’m glad they weren’t crazy enough to buy into VanLandingham and Favre’s company, given its alleged exaggerations. Do you know how messed up you must be to make the NFL look like a beacon of intelligence these days? How Favre and VanLandingham are not facing more severe consequences for their actions is beyond comprehension. 

One of the most important lessons I was ever taught by my parents was this sentence that I heard over and over again as a small child: “The world doesn’t revolve around you Stephen.”

The time that I most vividly remember being reminded of that was one day, as a child, going to the elementary school to find out who my teacher would be for the year. I saw the door, I ran to it and right before I could fling it open my mom stopped me. She told me that I had cut off a woman in front of us and made me open the door for her. While extremely young, that moment was a low feeling. I felt bad because, even though I couldn’t articulate it at the time, I had completely disregarded another human being, and acted like I wasn’t sharing this planet with her.

It’s the lesson that helped me not linger in my hotep phase of 2009-10. I turned down that dark road when those YouTube videos came out that supposedly proved that Beyoncé, Rihanna, and all other pop stars were in the Illuminati. I thought about that time in my life when an old video was tweeted out by Awful Announcing’s Ben Koo, originally sent out by Jordan Heck of The Sporting News.

It was a clip from a 2018 episode of Pardon The Interruption. Stephen Curry had gone on a podcast and said that he wasn’t entirely sure that people had ever landed on the moon around the same time that Kyrie Irving’s brain first started to break when he said that the earth was flat. ESPN’s Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser scolded the two for holding such ridiculous beliefs. They discussed how that kind of thinking can lead to Holocaust and slavery denial. While it’s a slippery slope argument, a person with those viewpoints doesn’t have to slide too far down to fall into a dangerous place.

The video struck me because during those 2009-10 years I also questioned the moon landing. I was starting to question the world around me and started looking for alternative places to get “real” news. My mind was in that place because of some YouTube videos I watched by night while, by day, finishing up courses to receive a broadcast journalism degree. My mind got out of that place because, for one I started hanging around journalists and watching fewer conspiracy videos, and also, I realized that I didn’t possess any knowledge about secret societies and had no evidence the seminal moments in world history did not occur. History is real and the evils of the music industry are because of the greedy and power-hungry people who run it. No special devil-worshiping cult is necessary for people to only care about power and profit, and to be certain that the world revolves around themselves.

Why Wilbon and Kornheiser were so correct to jump on Irving and Curry — who both went on to say that they made those comments in jest — is that type of open denial of history and science is dangerous. Once people believe that they have acquired some type of knowledge that elevates them to a reality of their own creation, credibility to them becomes whatever information satiates their ego.

It’s how a viable coalition of people can upend democracy in this country by refusing to believe in the validity of an election because their candidate lost. As well as a home invader breaking into the residence of the Speaker of the House and causing head trauma to her husband with a hammer. The assailant did it because, allegedly, he wanted to tie Nancy Pelosi, who was not in the home at the time, and demand that she tell the truth. What truth? Whatever truth this man believed which, judging from his social media posts, would be Q-Anon and other far-right wing conspiracy that have no factual basis.

But according to some right-wing politicians, and the current owner of Twitter, the words from David DePape’s own mouth and social media accounts don’t matter. A person becoming dangerous after mainlining dangerous rhetoric can’t be true because it goes against the beliefs of people who are certain that they are the arbiters of truth. So out comes a new conspiracy theory, that it was a scorned gay lover who went after Paul Pelosi. The conspiracy theorists have gone this far, why not add some homophobia to the mix?

On election day, Nov. 8, 2022, there are people running for office who amplify this type of deranged thinking, and are fighting to make sure that those voices are the only ones who get to decide who runs this country.

Four years after Wilbon and Kornheiser called for basic human humility in respecting the events of the past, the effort to make reality murky grows more and more fierce. Mostly, because a powerful minority of people refuse to believe that the sun does not rise and set on them. None of us own this planet. Many of us currently alive saw a new millennium, but there is no way we will live long enough to see the next one. No person can make it to 1,000 years, and one millennium is a mere blip of time when compared to how long earth has existed.

This world does not revolve around us or our intellect. If more people don’t learn that childhood lesson, there won’t be a world worth living in for much longer.