'Fortnite' and tattoos make me feel impossibly old

Kids these days, am I right?

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Can I be real with you for a minute? I’m rapidly approaching full-blown middle age, and I’m feeling every bit of it this morning. I can remember a time, not even too long ago, when I figured I’d at least be able to understand the appeal of all the latest trends, forever, and stay up on new music and formulate sharp-eyed opinions on all the newest cultural phenomena. Then it all got away from me.

I’ve never played Fortnite, a video game apparently so addictive that the 2018 Phillies couldn’t stop playing it until Carlos Santana took a bat to a clubhouse TV in the midst of a late-season losing streak. Baseball players love Fortnite. It seems like the game’s moment has passed now, but for a minute, it appeared that basically every single person under 30 was focused only on Fortnite.

There is some guy named Ninja who made millions of dollars streaming himself playing so other people can watch. I watch plenty of dumb stuff myself so I know I am in no position to judge, but man, I just don’t get it. And the part of me that was once eager to understand such trends now, with increasing frequency, thinks, “meh, I’ll catch the next one.” Honestly, if I wanted to watch Ninja play Fortnite, I wouldn’t even know where to go. That’s how I know I’m old.

J.R. Smith (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Also: I fully support the use of cargo shorts and flip-flops. I have precisely zero tattoos, and I cannot even begin to comprehend how eager today’s young people seem to permanently adorn their bodies with, like, gorillas and such.

It’s not that I think it’s indecent or immoral or anything of the sort. It’s your body and you can decorate it however the heck you please. There’s undoubtedly artistry and beauty and skill to the ink, and I 100% understand defying your father by getting a tattoo if your father happens to be LaVar Ball.

It’s commitment that I don’t get. I remember wanting a tattoo when I was in college because practically no one at my school had tattoos and I thought it’d be a way to reveal myself as different and artsy and cool. But I could never come up with anything I knew I would want to rep for the rest of my life. And now, when I think back on the type of thing I considered getting inked on me forever, I’m so, so, so glad I never went through with, say, putting a bar code on the nape of my neck.

Odell Beckham Jr. has an extremely realistic portrait of Michael Jackson on his leg. J.R. Smith has a brand’s logo tattooed on his body forever, and while I can recognize that J.R. Smith is undoubtedly cooler than me, I can also write with some confidence that a tattoo of a brand logo is the basically lamest thing I’ve ever heard of.

I hate nothing more than chalking up trends to generational differences, as if billions of people all operate in lockstep because they’ve been labeled “Millennials” or whatever.

But I do suspect that my inability to comprehend the whole contemporary tattoo thing stems from coming of age in an early- and mid-1990s culture steeped in layers upon layers of irony. The earnestness required to put any one image or phrase on my body forever simply escapes me. And I wonder — especially when I watch NCAA basketball games and see 18-year-olds covered in ink they’ll likely never remove — if I’ve been more apt to keep an open mind to new ideas across my life for not having any ideas permanently dyed into my skin in a way that would force me to dig in behind them.

That’s probably because I’m old. And don’t even get me started on trap music.

Monday’s big winner: Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

The Celtics paid tribute to their former guard before his first game back in Boston as a member of the Denver Nuggets. Thomas got emotional during the video montage, and fans gave him a standing ovation. Every time I hear there’s going to be a video tribute to a player, I think it seems contrived, but then every time I actually see the video tribute, I think it’s cool. And it feels good to give fans an opportunity to cheer for an old hero before he’s actually playing in the game against their favorite team.

Quick hits: Steph bomb, Dickie V, Netflix

– In the Warriors loss to the Spurs, Steph Curry drilled a shot from behind the arc — the other arc. The uber-long range jumper, and the nonchalant way Curry drained it, got me thinking: Are the best outside shooters in the NBA also the best on absurdly long shots from the other half? It feels like there’s so much luck involved in long heaves, but this particular shot made me consider that maybe Curry is just a better shooter than anyone from practically any spot on the floor.

Dick Vitale (Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports)

– Dick Vitale told our Charles Curtis that college athletes should be allowed to hire agents and take endorsement deals. I suspect the problem with the former would be that just about any agent worth his salt, upon signing a top-flight NBA prospect, would immediately tell him to stop playing for free.

– We’ve got a Netflix bracket going and some of my favorite shows drew tough first-round matchups. I loved American Vandal, but I think Bojack Horseman is the best comedy right now. I wanted to quibble with the seeding, but outside of one major upset in the works, it looks like the favorites are going to all advance.

This day in dumb sports

Phil Jackson (Adam Hunger/USA TODAY Sports)

Journey with me, friends, back to March 19 of 2014. The Knicks had just hired legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson as their new president of basketball operations, and sad, sad Knicks fans actually thought it was going to work out. Jackson made his first appearance at Madison Square Garden as a Knicks executive on this day five years ago and received a rousing ovation from a fanbase starved for hope. Like basically everyone who has worked for the Knicks in any capacity in the last two decades, he would leave in ignominy a few years later.