Will Leitch on this Illinois basketball team —

This weekend, we will find out how, exactly, we will talk about this team, a team that we have obsessed over all season, for the rest of our lives. This team has the talent to be a Flying Illini team, the sort that makes your kids slobber all over a 45-year-old Jake Davis when they run into him in 25 years. This team also has the inconsistency–and the occasional struggles with embracing prosperity and opportunity–to be one that breaks our hearts. I’m pretty sure that, at its best, this is the most truly talented Illini team since the Dee-Deron-Luther team. (It’s more talented, top-to-bottom, than the Ayo-Kofi team. I’m not sure it’s that close?) But that doesn’t mean we’ll forever talk about them that way.

They have three days, two games, to be legends here forever. It really is just about these three little days. By Sunday, we will know. And so will they.

This is it.

In three months, Keaton Wagler is going to be chosen in the NBA Draft, almost certainly among the top 10 picks. (I keep dreaming the Spurs get him and he gets to play a decade with Wemby.) He will have that “6-foot-6 guard from Illinois!” roared before his name for many, many years to come; Keaton Wagler will be representing the Illini when Brad Underwood is in his 70s, when Tommy DeVito turns 40, when the kindergarten children in your house leave and go off to college. His name is going to be in the rafters of the State Farm Center. We will talk of him for the rest of our lives.

So I would love it if, before he leaves, he sends us off with something truly glorious. It’s all setting up for him. The rest after the Big Ten Tournament seems to have invigorated him: The shoulder is healed, he’s making the right passes in space, he’s handling the physicality everyone’s throwing at him, that incredible, signature stepback 3-pointer has returned to its inherent perfection. I want him to have his Deron Williams moment, his Nick Anderson moment, heck, his Kemba Walker moment. He is a truly special player. All we can dream of is him giving us, before he goes, a truly special moment. So he will become a legend–the sort of legend that, years from now, makes us all want to faint.

I’m ready. Are you?

I’m not sure I can handle watching the game on Thursday… so… no.