BwB 2.0 and Fresh Clothing!!!

Before the explanation, the announcement. Oh, and read my lame, contrived punchline-fest from yesterday. It gets no deeper.

So the line-up for Blogs with Balls 2.0 is pretty much in place, and the trumpet hath been sounded. It'll be a part of Blog World Expo in Vegas, which will allow me to bask in, or court, that vital (if imagined) crossover demographic. Jesus there are a lot of speakers at this thing. I'm on a panel about resolving differences between bloggers and traditional media, and suspect Amy K. Nelson and I are supposed to pick up where we left off at BwB. Yes, I am talking this up like a pro wrestling event.

The video: USA vs. Brazil at the 1987 Pan-American Games. Pre-doom Danny Manning, the amazing young Mr. Robinson. But most of all, holy fuck Brazil's uniforms are amazing. They are at once futuristic and Naismith-esque, while nearly going so far in both directions that these two opposites collide. Innovative uni design—I'm talking design, not just engineering—is an untapped field of exploration.

Have a nice weekend, friends.

One Good Thing Explains Another

For my money, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is the best rock movie ever. Maybe Cocksucker Blues burns it alive when it comes to just plain hangin' out, falling in love, and playing it cool (emphatically NSFW video). But nothing quite captures the crushing desperation, snarling idealism, and complex post-Situationist trappings of punk rock like Stains.

As a bonus, you get perhaps the most realistic depiction of the adolescent female experience this side of Thirteen. You also seen that Laura Dern was kind of hot before she grew up, and Diane Lane has pretty much been hot since the day she was born, which since both were probably underaged during the filming of this movie should make you feel really weird. Or remind you of a scene in Six Feet Under that would be hilarious if it plopped down in the middle of Entourage, where Nate's friend tells him that sometimes he looks at his daughter's friends and feels something he hasn't felt since he was a teen himself.

The really awesome part about this movie, which would be the defining film of the decade were it not for Superman III, is that it was produced by Lou Adler. You know the face, if not the name. He sits next to Jack! He's at every Lakers game! He is basketball incarnate! And thus, like the brilliant plot-fuck that would result if you put The Orphan's twist at the end of Know1ng, all is right and it's time to sum up the off-season with some of the most quotable moments from the early going of Stains. Not a wasted word in it—kind of the opposite of this summer.

You know, you think this town wouldn't die. That's how dumb you are. This town died years ago!

Is Steve Nash talking about himself or the Suns here? Or the Arizona housing market?

And she died of lung cancer?

That's what they call it.

What do you call it?

Breathing.

Yao and T-Mac were always playing on borrowed time. You could say that we should enjoy what they gave us, or get really angry at them, like me when I read about Bill Walton.

You father was never around?

Your father is dead. BEEP He was in the army BEEP Means you get more money BEEP Have a good day BEEP

Artest has reached that point where he can't shock or surprise himself or others. So everything's cool. Like Hawaii being build on a bunch of volcanoes.

What goals did your mother have in life?

I don't know, I wouldn't call her and ask.

This whole "Kevin Durant gaining on LeBron" thing is bad for everyone involved, including fans of both.

Here you are, just sitting around at home wasting time

I wouldn't call it wasting time



I hope GMs are showing off their cap space as a means to get female attention.

What about love?

I'm too far gone for love.

Whatever happened to Kirilenko?

So long as you're alive. .

I mean, we can sit here and waste our precious time philosophizing about love, and make it sound terrific, but what it boils down to is that we're just a bunch of horny dogs.

And this is why Don Nelson will always have a job, even if he has to pay himself.

Do you think your views may change as you grow older?

Grow older?

Let's quit cautiously pealing away the onion's layers and admit that Iverson's bind is all about issues of African-American masculinity.

What happened to the furniture?

I sold it.

George Shinn should've thought of that before dealing everyone's BFF and NBA sex symbol Tyson Chandler.

I like you and your sister. I think you're all nice kids. But I say to myself. .

You'd better watch yourself, because if they catch you talking to yourself like that, they're going to fire you for sure.

Strangely meta-moment, seeing as the viewer is constantly asking him/herself "can I find a very young Diane Lane attractive, since she looks so much like later Diane Lane, and carries herself like an adult?" You people are sick! This line tells you that!

Now Corrine Burns, what are you going to do?

My name isn't Corrine Burns. It's Third Degree Burns. I'm the lead singer and manager of the Stains.

There has to be some player I'm forgetting who is sitting around waiting for a huge deal to drop in his lap. The one holdover who doesn't get that things have changed. I mean shit, even Tim Thomas went quietly.

One time I heard Larry Hughes and Darius Miles talk for half an hour about how each of them was going to get their next big contract. This was two years ago.

In case you haven't heard, you're the laughingstock of this town.

Hey, did you hear the one about David Kahn?

Don't you have something to do? You know. Maybe your homework for once. Or you could take Jason for a walk, or how about cleaning your room. Huh? What do you think?

Nice multiple choice.

Kevin Pritchard and the Blazers may have had to settle for Andre Miller. Or they showed they have the strength and cunning to contain multitudes. This is a central debate among scholars of class and values.

I gave you your name.

That's why it's so lousy.

Actual exchange between Donald Sterling and Elgin Baylor.

We're the #1 rock 'n' roll group in the world and we're going to see that everything's going to be different. It's got to change. The first thing we're going to do, we're going to build a radio station tomorrow. And we're not going to play no commercials, or no news. Just rock 'n' roll and the truth. 1-2-3-4!!!!!!

You don't draft Brandon Jennings to come along slowly or get muzzled by Skiles. You grab a new era by the horns and hope you've got good insurance.

Now you're really going to have a freak.

Zach Randolph to Memphis only makes sense if that's where the Ghostbusters have built their new containment unit.

ELSEWHERE: On a more serious, less petty note, please read my column on the joys of restricted free agency.

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It Rode Out in Denim

I never get the sense that anyone likes Antoine Walker. Somewhere around his thousandth three-point attempt in the NBA, perception appeared to have turned against him. After that, it never changed back. He was branded as a counterproductive chucker, someone not especially preoccupied with winning, and a lazy disappointment. Boston almost made the Finals once, and that helped him a little, but ultimately it didn't take. It might be the idea behind disappointment--seems like people expected more, didn't get it, and became eternally frustrated, if not angry. None of this is meant to sound derisive because I shared in the pain. We're not headed down a Rasheed path here; I've not come to rattle about with the notion of Antoine succeeding in his own way. Nor is this a post about his redemption. Toine usually left me upset, just as he might have left the rest of you.



This is a post about demise, actually. Antoine's recent arrest highlighted just how quietly he left us. Had you thought about him this summer? This year? His final seasons in the NBA were spent as some itinerant sideshow with an overeating disorder and historically comical shot selection. He was on teams like Minnesota and Memphis, Siberian outposts that matter on FD and few other places. (At least, given recent history. No offense, DLIC.) He sort of vanished, first exciting, then relevant, later curious, and ultimately just gone. That he bounced bad checks in casinos didn't even strike me as especially odd, as though there were a logical progression from what he had become on the court to what he is now off of it. Shoot some threes, work up a sweat walking across halfcourt, retire to the bench with those calf-highs the only things reminiscent of former pride, and then hit the Alaskan king crab buffet at Harrah's in between hands. For a few moments, I was puzzled by whether any team would care, and I was sad to realize that none would. The Walker arrest had the feeling of a Mickey Rourke movie, Wrestler or not.

Oddly, this particular melancholy resonated with me, almost literally. I felt it in my chest, through my body. Involuntarily, my shoulders went up, my brow wrinkled up, and my mouth turned down, the posture you adopt as you mull over something perplexingly sad, or nearly unspeakable because it's just that unpleasant. I don't know Antoine Walker, of course, and he always seemed decent but nothing more. His color, to the extent that he had any, was washed out and unremarkable. I think that's what makes me so uncomfortable.

Before Antoine, there were forwards who could pass, and forwards who could shoot. There were tall men who could drift outside. And since Toine, there have been men who do those things better than he ever did them. Standards have changed, though. Big men who played like Walker before there was Walker were not so common, and I don't only mean that the three-point line irrevocably altered basketball. I mean that James Worthy was swooping to the hoop if not occasionally popping out for a mid-range jumper, and that Karl Malone was throwing his elbows into you. (Or hooking with his off arm before spinning away from a defender and the ref.) I mean that every year, now, we look at drafts filled with tall guys who must improve their post games because so many have dedicate their respective youths to developing a guard's skill set. We celebrate Kevin Garnett and Dirk Nowitzki for being the standards of non-standard, and every team seeks to find some non-standard of its own. The perception of what forwards can do, and how they should play, has changed in many ways.



Walker may not have been a true originator, but for me, in the stream of my own basketball consciousness, he was emblematic of the evolving style that a forward could effect. Antoine was a symbol, no light distinction given the company among which he stands for a 27-year-old. He was a true hybrid--he had guard skills and guard range (plus that crazy-person shot selection), but he also was naturally gifted around the rim and a wonderful rebounder. Not a lanky giant and not a small man trying to play a big man's game, he had the true hybrid body, too: the ass of a guy who could post up, complete with a sturdy base (which those socks may have reinforced, ever so slightly), yet he was nimble enough to run a little (when he still ran), and his upper body was not muscle bound or an impediment to his shooting.

And, of course, he was propelled toward stardom by excelling in a college system that encouraged someone like him to bomb from three and press all game. His combination of varied skills, multipurpose body, and atypical doctrine was truly different, and it came at a time when a critical mass of forwards who play a different kind of way was only beginning to build. Now, we take for granted that there will be tall men who can play inside and out, but Walker was a key figure in helping the orthodoxy arrive at such an assumption. I do Toine a disservice when I write this, but there is no Skita-as-bust without Walker, because no one's looking for some soft-ass Euro named Nikoloz in the first place.



Certain players serve as cultural touchstones, and Antoine was one of them, both good and bad. He embodied an archetype of innovation that enjoyed out-sized notoriety because of its intrinsic qualities and extrinsic influences. The intrinsic has been touched upon--Walker was among a new class of forwards who were neither "The Next" anything nor wholly divorced from the past. Toine and his set were, and are, an amalgamation of parts meant to conjure progress. The extrinsic was a function of time: Antoine et al. arrived (as in, emerged, not just "were drafted") as the first players charged with governing the NBA after Michael Jordan. Almost too perfectly, he debuted as Allen and Kobe reached these altered shores. Toine's game was laid as part of the foundation for this new era.

So, consider all of that. Really take some time to appreciate who Antoine Walker was. First, the star pupil of a masterful coach, and not just a mere beneficiary of Rick Pitino radicalism. Rather, Walker enabled it. He was a paradigm, and no small reason why 1996 Kentucky stands as one of college basketball's most talented and all-time greatest. Next, a member of a new oligarchy which came to the NBA with a mandate for change. He appeared with a game that expanded the boundaries of our thinking, and a body perfectly tailored for the way he was supposed to move.

Antoine Walker was a revolutionary figure, and that was lost along the way.



Also: Recent events compel me to make mention of a few other things:

First, I find the NFL's treatment of Michael Vick odious and racist. You can read about it here. The post quasi involves eschatology, if that's any incentive. That said, as Shoals has pointed out, there is irony in the fact that despite everything, Vick is more likely to find employment than Allen Iverson.

Second, when it was reported that Iverson might be signed by the Clippers in a desperate attempt to sell tickets, my heart sank. Not because I am such a huge fan of AI's game, but because I do tremendously value AI's meaning in the sociocultural continuum. Reducing Allen to the NBA equivalent of a carnival attraction immediately summoned sad notions of minstrel things. For several years, now, I have been unable to stop thinking about Iverson and his unforgivable blackness, to borrow the the Jack Johnson term. Whatever else he was or is, and however sincere it might have been, Iverson's identity has always counted his blackness as a primary component. Seeing a symbol of the black experience he has been held out to represent reduced to a sorry gimmick would feel horribly gross. Though maybe Allen crossing that threshold would necessarily entail leaving behind whatever we claim he represents and emerging as just the latest broken-down mercenary.

Third, the Stephon Marbury saga. This is not a desperate athlete's contrivance meant to court attention in the wake of an unwelcomed retirement. (At least, no solely, or even mostly.) This is, rather, a legitimately deranged person who has always used basketball to forge an identity. Bereft of basketball, and no longer pigeonholed into the rote selfish-malcontent narrative that may have obscured his eccentricity, Steph is being Steph. Really, the only thing that has changed is that he now has much more free time and much less sense of purpose. I've always maintained that there might be something Mike Tyson-ish about him. I hope not.

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Full Moon Drone

What a little honesty can do. Obama suggests that it might be stupid to arrest a cranky old public intellectual in his own home, and it overshadows the most important facing the (non-voting) American populace today. Stephen Marbury sustains 24 hours of online rant 'n' rave, and comes out on the other end provoking a range of emotions . . . if you consider disgust, annoyance, amusement, bemusement, and meta-voyeurism range. Here you go, your hybrid media event of the week, both sides manufactured, both ultimately very revealing.

To repeat something I said on Twitter: Marbury plays basketball for (roughly) the same city that Skip Gates was humiliated in. That's when you realize how, in their utter disparity, these two stories end up contradicting and reinforcing each other.

Dr. LIC called to my attention the following Stanley Fish passage, in today's NYT:

When an offer came from Harvard, there wasn’t much I could do. Gates accepted it, and when he left he was pursued by false reports about his tenure at what he had come to call “the plantation.” (I became aware of his feelings when he and I and his father watched the N.C.A.A. championship game between Duke and U.N.L.V. at my house; they were rooting for U.N.L.V.)

There was some internal debate over whether U.N.L.V was desirable because they represented the antithesis of Duke—including in all matters of style, culture, and race—or simply because they weren't Duke. Dr. LIC and I came to the consensus, though, that it didn't matter. The Times was never going to skew that radical, or near-essentialist. But I almost wish that Fish had, one way or the other, definitively let us know. Not because I think that important African-American figures owe us a daily update on their version of "Blackness," and relative relationship to the latest definitions of the terms.

No, I just think this kind of inkling would make the story more intelligible to members of the public who see Gates as having left himself behind and flipped out. Who don't see how the PBS figure connects to this outrage and belligerence. On the one hand, it's evidence of certain "tendencies" in Gates that could be used against him. But it also serves to undermine the myth of the good/bad Negro. Gates could be the paragon of respectability, and yet still have this sense of alienation simmering inside him—without it showing through except under the most exigent circumstances. That's proof that not he flipped out, but that anyone assuming that an angry Harvard professor is acting erratically just doesn't get it.



Back to saying all that you mean, and putting stock in the idea that the world need know that we exist on multiple levels, or registers. One can override most, and keep us secure. However, without those strains of dissent or self-contradicton, it becomes all the easier for a public figure to be portrayed as "lost" or "ruined" when he goes down that avenue. Show that they're connected, and people start to understand how these strains can co-exist. This, and not the politics of post-racial blandness, is Obama's most important political gimmick.

When I wrote that piece on Iverson and shifting definitions of authenticity, I spend way too much time explaining what I thought about AI. That really was neither here nor there. I also was wary of bringing hip-hop into the picture, because everyone knows I don't count there at all. But that's the analogy I was going for. Iverson was hip-hop to the core because, from a young age, he learned to make his public and professional face almost formally, or at least over-determinedly, fiery and uncompromising. Say what you will about his heart, or his production on the court, but as an athlete and public figure, Iverson never backed down, believed primarily in his own self-determination, and in that, met that era's fairly intentional, inorganic definition of "realness."

If that gets murky in basketball terms, just think about it vis a vis rap. One can be earnest, or know how he got to a point of playing a part, while still having to suppress contradictory strains of personality or behavior. Or creativity. Or style. So fine, argue about Iverson's career all you want. As an icon, he's associated with that strange space where fierce honesty can lead you down the path of self-limitation. Like Richard Nixon.

All of which brings us back to Marbury. In that Iverson ditty, I concluded that his stubbornness/integrity had given way to something more fluid, flexible and, if not complex, at least more stem cell-like among athlete images. Twitter brings us athletes watching their manners, sometimes, acting like themselves, mostly, and all in all, makes the Jordan/Iverson struggle seem like two prehistoric gods who battled to the death and left only pragmatism in their wake (note: any and all propositions that involve Obama and Twitter together are true.). The dark—for lack of a better word—side of this new access is UStream, which seems to attract only players who have the most to lose by having an unfiltered camera on them (or sprung on them) for hours on end.

J.R. Smith, we got you. Brandon Jennings may have been blindsided, but it's not accident he was mixed up in that world of new media marketing. And now Marbury's marathon spazz-session which, at its best, hammered home for me Dr. LIC's comparision of Steph to Tracy Jordan/Morgan, and how our inability to tell the difference between the two Tracys was something far more sad than just "dude playing himself." The tragedy of Iverson is that, while he spent so much time doing what he thought steeled him best against adversaries, and gave him the greatest, can't-trust-no-one chance for survival, he's also funny, charismatic in the grand warm sense of yore, and known for taking his art seriously, and game as art.



Who could forget this wild and woolly TrueHoop post, and a passage that should ring in our memories forever:

"Allen took psychocybernetics to a new level," [high school athletic director] Kozlowski recalls. Today, Iverson doesn't like to talk about how he does what he does on the basketball court. "I just do it," he says. Partially, like any artist, he is wary of overanalyzing his gift. But it could also be that he's known since high school that the real explanation defies easy answers, that the answer is, at heart, both beneath and above the level of language, and connected, on some level, to his psyche.

Cybernetics has to do with learning to understand a higher dimension after you break your nose, or something, and really, this plus the "unplugged" Iverson is one of the great lost opportunities of the modern marketing age. Did he jump or was he pushed? Remember those adidas bloopers that got yanked from YouTube once they blew up? Adidas eventually put some factory-sanctioned ones up for T-Mac, but Iverson's never returned.

Then, there's Stephon Marbury, whose last 24-hours speak for itself. Like it or not, that's Marbury. Try and position his performance in opposition to his career, or write it off as a stunt. But the very conception of it is totally weird. The mainstream media pushes binaries, or at least set models, and we buy into them. Marbury may have all along had the warning signs of a grade-A weirdo, but we were too busy trying to decide if players were Iverson or Jordan to connect the dots. The behavior with the Knicks certainly helped things, and yet that was taken as "acting out" in the same way that ultimately, Gilbert Arenas's persona served to make him seem more sane than the initial anecdotes that came out.

Staring into the abyss, sailing into the heart of darkness without you calling me racist. That's the shock, and retroactive head-slap, that this Marbury thing brought for me. Where have all the truly odd people gone in sports? We squelched them out as much as the corporations did. For better or worse, now there's nowhere for any of us to hide.

If people like Skip Gates were not only allowed, but expected, to have layers to them, the range of their personality would be harder to dismiss or reduce to an unflattering photo. If sports culture more often took into account that jocks are a sample of the population at large (some gay, some depressed, some indecisive) then this Marbury thing would've been a close-up on a landscape we'd known had been there all along. And instead of our judgments being cynical, we would know that the cynicism rested purely within our own hearts.

The Sound of Music

This week's FDPTDOCNBAPC (the podcast) features no me, but instead, a special all-Knicks segment with the eminent Seth Rosenthal of Posting and Toasting. True story: I was once standing next to Seth with a "Bethlehem Shoals" name-tag on, and he was asked, in all seriousness, if "Seth Rosenthal" was his wacky blog alias.

I will defer to Dan and Ken themselves when it comes to further explaining the episode. Also, you know they write stuff over there sometimes, don't you?

THE GUTS:



Songs:

"Mellow Yellow"-Donovan
"He Got Game"-Public Enemy
"DangerDoom"-Danger Mouse
"Viva Las Vegas" by The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash

If you want to settle down and make a serious commitment, try iTunes and the XML feed.

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Bucking Mines

Timely as ever, I'd like to weigh in on the Steve Nash contract extension, which is now centuries old news in internet time...

There are many theories on what exactly "ruined" the Suns that have so defined this millenium of pro basketball. I choose to blame D'Antoni's (fixable) failure to get tough on the team's rebounding woes, bad luck with the timing of Amare's injuries, the firing of D'Antoni, the replacement of D'Antoni with Terry Porter, the ill-timed acquisition of Shaquille O'Neal, and in general, Steve Kerr. I don't really buy into theories about Sarver's cheapness, trading all those draft picks, or not holding on to Joe Johnson/Q-Rich/Marcus Banks...etc.



















The Suns were always a team poised to win RIGHT NOW. There was no use for building toward the future with late first round picks. They never had a distinctly "old" team until the Hill/Nash/Shaq triumverate, and with Nash and Amare alone, they ALWAYS have a fighting chance.

And now they still do.

Despite Kerr's idiocy, Amare and Nash (miraculously) are still there. Nash might be on steroids for all I know (BLOGGER ALERT), but he isn't going to be demonstrably worse this year. And Amare might be better (?). May I present to you the possibility that this Nash extension gives the Suns one last glimmer of hope?

--Nash signing an extension says one of two things: (1) I believe I can win a championship with this franchise, or (2) This franchise gave me a new life and two MVP trophies. I owe it to them to re-sign, and PS, I'm satisfied. Either way, a happy Nash is good for at least 15 and 8.

--A summer and a half worth of ridiculous trade rumors may in fact inspire Amare Stoudemire to play tougher than he already does? I don't know. This might be a reach.

--A strong supporting cast of IF guys. IF J-Rich can knock down the open jumpers, IF Robin Lopez proves to be a serviceable back-up, IF Leandro Barbosa can regain form....the Suns have depth

--A host of players that can potentially solve the rebounding quandary (again, IF Robin Lopez is worth a damn...)

--Teams will no longer GET UP to play them. The Suns no longer boast that fear-inducing NBA championship squad on paper that causes TNT/ESPN/ABC to over-book them and teams to treat matches with them like Gladitorial arena battles. The Suns, for the first time in the Nash era, may actually be able to sneak up on teams...

Am I blindly grasping to hold on to an era that no longer exists? Potentially. But I am soberly not ready to admit that the Suns are over, merely because of what the Shaq trade appeared to signal (rebuilding). Nash's re-signing initially gave me feelings of emptiness, the thoughts of him and Amare roaming around in blank space, carrying the guilt of two 19th century Russian lit protagonist partners in crime. But then I reoriented: It signaled a last gasp of hope.

I am curious to see what the Suns do with desperation, which could be the last motivational tool they have.
























ADDENDUM:

The original version of this post (embarrassingly) included references to both Matt Barnes (the news of whose signing I totally missed) and Ben Wallace (inexcusable for falling off my radar). All I can say is that my NBA game has not been air tight this summer, and I'm getting back on track.

Also, I suppose I *should* reference the only things the Suns have actively done this season besides signing Nash: Grant Hill, Channing Frye, and Earl Clark. Truth is, these guys don't add much, except for providing even more of a blank canvas for Nash and Amare to operate on. Grant Hill keeps shit stable in the locker room. Channing Frye's young-journeyman tag should provide him with some inspiration to get back to rookie year form and to improve on his rebounding, and Earl Clark does absolutely nothing for me (I actually think getting a PG who could spell Nash (Jrue, Ty Lawson) would have been a better pick here).

The important thing is that, for the first time in a while, Phoenix is keeping shit simple. Contrast this with 2009 playoff alums Dallas, Utah, or even, say, Portland, who at this point have generated too high of expectations and are spinning squads of 'too many people who need to be kept happy.' Steve and the Suns made a mutual gesture of good faith, and this bump of positivity coupled with a sense of "nothing to lose" gives them some optimism for 09-10.

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To Hold On Tight We Must Let Go

The days are not good for Allen Iverson. The one-time beacon of personal integrity, triumphal dysfunction, and "fuck the world" stylistic rights currently sits out in the cold. He's hoping some team will look past his recent disappointments, figure several accelerated half-lives have made his legacy less radioactive, and give him a chance to make a roster like a blaxploitation Kevin Costner character. So perhaps now is not the time to launch an entirely new critique of AI.

However, the rise of Twitter has me rethinking that foundation of Iverson's NBA being: his authenticity. Allen Iverson, above all else, was his own man, did what he wanted, and forced the world to accept him on this own terms. This was where he picked up momentum as a hip-hop icon, which is to say, while others screamed "thug", he simply brushed them off as ignorant or sheltered. There's a tendency, even a need, to separate AI the world-historical figure from AI the athletic performer. In both cases, however, Iverson exemplified "realness"—perhaps to a pathological degree, but nonetheless in a way that informed the direction of the league and the players who came up idolizing him as much as Jordan.

Hence, as much as we speak of the post-Jordan days, I myself had become accustomed to the "post-Iverson" age. In this (gulp) dialectic, there seemed to always be a hard edge, or uncompromising bluntness, to be reckoned with. There was Jordan's universal appeal, met head-on by Iverson's populist bluster. The players spat out of this maelstrom were some combination of the two; Allen Iverson came to symbolize a mish-mash of unapologetic ghetto roots, "wrong way" ball, not taking shit from no one, and a wary intelligence that could often be its own worst enemy. Carmelo Anthony, post-Iverson because he was hood plus Magic Johnson's effervescent charm; Gilbert Arenas, idiosyncratic and disruptive as a player and person, but writing his own script with all the whimsy of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Jordan was a sales pitch, Iverson a doctrine. Except that, at the risk of offending a bunch of people, Iverson's persona was itself a posture. This may sound pedestrian, or simplistic, but at what point did we decide that Iverson (or Tupac) wasn't, to some degree, faking it, putting it on, selling us a bill of goods based around a very deliberate refusal to play by the rules? AI was certainly faced with difficult circumstances, and had to make tough decisions about what path to follow. And yet over the long haul, it became as opaque a guise as Jordan's Sphinx-like mask. They may have been polar opposites, but their inflexibility and predictability ultimately made them two sides of the same coin.

Should we bemoan the fact that, in the age of Twitter, authenticity is no longer about any iteration of “the struggle,” or truce between the two sides, but the possibility that individual athletes be both accessible and undeniably themselves? The stakes may have been lowered, and yet better a feed like Rudy Gay’s inform our sense of athlete “realness” than AI’s on-message scowl. Relaxation on its own is empty, taking a stand indefinitely is its own kind of blandness.

Incidentally, anyone who’s seen Iverson in the locker room, or otherwise with his guard down, knows that dude would be a monster on Twitter.

The Tide Giveth and Taketh

Next week, I will return to FreeDarko, and hopefully The Baseline will load reliably. In the meantime, you should check out this 2003 Roger Beebe video, which I just saw at an INCITE! screening on the subject of sports and aesthetics.

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Treading Lightly

Summer leagues can create optical illusions, cause alternate realities to spring up, or defame the entire good name of professional basketball with their outcomes. Qyntel Woods was always a monster in these. However, sometimes, you get a look at the early stages of something great, i.e. Anthony Randolph last summer, or Julian Wright in 2007 (I think). Yes, if Wright got consistent minutes, he'd be on everyone's radar.

I've had a rough last few days, so let's at least entertain the possibility that the above video is exactly that window into the future, not a house of cards with mirrors on them.

Listen to our free agency podcast and check The Baseline. I'll try and get things going again on here mid-week.

UPDATE: Shoals has a new post at the Baseline, wherein he ponders what AI signing with the Clippers might do to his iconic status. It's a good read.

2010 Ford Escape Wallpaper

2010 Ford Escape Front View

2010 Ford Escape Interior

2010 Ford Escape Wallpaper

Know the Unknown

New episode of "FreeDarko Presents the Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast." The Original Two plus Shoals this time around. Having not listened to it yet, I cannot tell you what they talk about. Surprise yourself!

UPDATE: Dan says that this is what they talk about:

Shoals dropped by, of course, to give us his unique point of view on the recent free agent and trading activity.

Left to their own devices, Ken and Dan discuss their blackmail plan for Lebron, the “2010″ plan for most teams, and then figure out what basketball writers would be good GMs.

Tuneage:

“Ragged Wood” by Fleet Foxes
“SugarFoot” by Black Joe Lewis
“Coming Home” by Maxine Nightengale
“And So It Goes” by Nick Lowe
“Stormy Sky” by The Kinks

UPDATE: Fixed the file in the player. Thanks for your patience and piety.

2010 Chevrolet Camaro Picture

2010 Chevrolet Camaro Yellow

2010 Chevrolet Camaro Red

2010 Chevrolet Camaro White