NBA-themed musical starring Daryl Morey -- kind of

(Lock if already posted.)

The Lockout: A Musical, a new production opening in Chicago this Friday, is a story about the fictional Wichita Water, a hapless small-market team that dreams of contending against the Heat and Lakers and their big-market brethren.

Much of the show’s conflict lies in a Moneyball-esque split between a delusional owner, who thinks superstars will flock to Wichita, and his GM, a female Daryl Morey-type who has a much more realistic and stats-based approach to building their roster. The owner, as Gallagher explained to me, “tends to shout ‘Moneyball!’ a lot and has no idea what he’s talking about.” The production then expands into a Romeo and Juliet-esque story of the owner and his star player cast on opposite sides of a bitter lockout.

Other standouts {songs} include “Win in Wichita,” an advanced analytics manifesto complete with lyrics that seem straight from a GM’s email: “A player’s value is easy to find/ divide salary by wins generated/ stats times coefficients adjusted for minutes/ in proportion to the team wins created."

Lyrics from the musical's opening song:

"Five more seconds...
five more seconds...
...
Oh, he passed the ball to Sampson!
Oh, he's going for a three!
We will beat the Lakers tonight!
I will beat the Lakers tonight!
We will beat the Lakers tonight!"

linky