Joe Johnson driving to the basketball is not exciting. It is borderline anti-exciting. He is slow, he probes, he weaves, sometimes I honestly think he wanders. The whole thing is a mixture of ball handling, body control, and boredom. You would almost think the defenders have been lulled to sleep. If you can stay in front of a guy, out jump him, laterally move quicker, and have help defense already in place because Joe has been driving the ball for going on three seconds, the job seems all but done.
But somehow, Joe almost always gets his shot off, and it almost always goes in. I would call it magic if I could. At the very least, it is some kind of sight gag. There are subtle movements, slight bumps, and quick flicks and all of a sudden Joe makes an easy act that was made difficult easy again.
And like any good card trick, you want to see it again. And you do. You see it over and over. From one game to the next. And you want to figure it out. Each time you see it, you want to figure it out more and more. Everything just does not add up. How do defenders stand in a position to either foul or block Joe and somehow do neither? The questions rage and the drives continue. And the more times you see it the more crazy it becomes. And they just keep coming, and all of a sudden before you even know it, you are on your feet screaming for the most boring drive to the basket in the NBA.