Jet Ski Basketball will pave the way to our new world

I’ll apologize now for taking the incredibly gauche step of putting my own tweet in this post:

The fact is, Jet Ski Basketball is simply too important for me to worry about Internet Manners — because it points to a promising new future that’s been hiding under our relentlessly beachgoing noses this whole time.

Consider the relaunches of the WNBA and NBA, where most of the focus has been on the leagues’ extracurricular lifestyle challenges. How will the bubble be maintained? What is media access going to look like? Can professional athletes live on airplane food for weeks? The actual basketball retains its two most worrisome features, epidemiologically: The games are all indoors, and the players have to be in close proximity to one another the entire time.

Neither are true of Jet Ski Basketball. Ten jet skis in a pool at the same time is too chaotic to work, so we’ll have to play outdoors in the ocean or a large lake. (We may have to get the Restless Dads we previously quarantined there to make some room, but that shouldn’t be a big problem.) As far as distancing goes, have you ever sat on a jet ski and tried to high five someone on another jet ski? You either miss badly or at least one person ends up in the water.

“It’s really hard to play basketball on a jet ski.” Listen, hater, these are elite athletes. They’ll figure it out.

“You can’t play defense on a jet ski.” Uh, it’s called spraying your opponent in the face with a well-timed powerslide.

“This title won’t be legitimate if it’s won on jet skis.” Like we’re not going to put an asterisk on the NBA Finals at a Work Conference already.

Jet Ski Basketball’s going to look very different, but this is a sport that’s always thrived on change. The original version didn’t have a shot clock, the three point line, or dribbling. You would hate watching Basketball 1.0 today, and rightly so. The sport needed to develop. Now, we must let evolution happen where it’s thrived for thousands of years: in the ocean.

I can’t take sole credit for this idea, as it’s partially inspired by the young men and women of America’s greatest scientific stronghold, Key West, home of the Jet Ski Graduation Ceremony. (My only supplementary recommendation: Give the principal a t-shirt cannon instead of a grabber. Adds an element of competition to the thing.)

And once we have Jet Ski Basketball and Jet Ski Graduation Ceremonies, why stop there? The Jet Ski Oscars are just a fancier version of graduation. Jet Ski Wedding’s a no brainer. Jet Ski Funeral will feel a little weird at first, but we’ll get used to it. Jet Ski Rock Concert should exist already. Jet Ski Passport Renewal Office makes the waiting positively pleasant. Jet Ski Homecoming Parade. Jet Ski Comic Con. Jet Ski Small Claims Court. (Jet Ski Bris is still under development; we are confident a safe solution will be found.)

Our ancestors would have found cross country travel by plane or car to be a marvel. To us, it’s just some shit we have to do to make our family happy at Thanksgiving. In the same way, the Jet Ski lifestyle, which may seem strange or foolish to you today, will one day become entirely commonplace. We’ll wonder how people even got anything done in a time when Jet Skis were just for recreation.

That glorious future will all be thanks to Florida teens, pro basketball, and America’s finest waterfront community: Kansas City.