This is a headgum podcast.

Welcome to Buckets.

It's that time of year again, cold and flu season.

Unlike the NBA regular season,

this one isn't suffering from a crippling ratings hit.

If you're not currently sick, odds are you were at one point in the last few months,

or will be soon enough.

Worry not, even professional basketballers are not immune.

Like a kindergarten class filled with seven footers, diseases spread like wildfire

amongst teams that share locker rooms, airplanes, and physical therapists. Littered throughout

the landscape of winter box scores is the same note, DMP illness, and I don't blame

them. When I'm sick I don't even have the strength to watch basketball, let alone play.

But when it comes to cold and flu season, these NBA players rarely get the former and often get the latter.

Flues! What's the difference between a cold and a

flu? Is it as simple as the flu has a fever? According to a Google search I just

did, yes. Both suck but one just sounds a lot worse. Nobody wants to admit they missed a game because of a cold. That sounds mild. Flues can kill people. Colds are just, you know, the sniffles. Some people hide behind the three-word semantic gymnastic flu-like symptoms,

which I think is just a cold.

Runny nose, sore throat, headache,

those are indeed the flu-like symptoms of a cold. I bring this up because recently,

LeBron missed a game due to a cold, officially too. He didn't say he had the flu. He didn't even

say he had flu-like symptoms. He said,

point blank, I have a cold. And then he watched the entire game from the bench.

...