Tfeht dna Evol

I fell asleep and drooled on my keyboard and it made this. But for more serious writing, check out my latest FanHouse column on where the fuck these point guards came from.

Remember how Obama was elected President, and race no longer mattered in America? Here's some proof of that: West Virginia, coached by Bob Huggins, stocked with your usual Huggins players, is the latest underdog to inspire us all by taking the piss out of some uppity bunch of future lottery picks. Take that, John Wall. You were shut down, and while those lazy pros who would never heed a coach's scheme won't do it, West Virginia did. That's a mark of shame you'll bear forever. You couldn't take it to the limit, you are mortal, and your whole career will be a sham. DeMarcus Cousins, big dude, you can't handle the triple-team. But they won't throw that at you in the pros because they don't have the heart. Or too much ego. Those two are opposites.

Okay, let me stabilize myself, this boat is awfully rocky on the high seas of knowing what I need and want. West Virginia. What state says America more than that one? They've had the shit shot out of them for striking (I've seen Matewan for the acting!) and otherwise just die in the mines. But they keep on. Just like those Mountaineers. They refused to quit. You know why? Because they didn't need the NBA. They knew they might be playing the last game of their college careers. And since they were Huggins guys, they weren't getting a degree, either. Some might say "oh, they are just a bunch of wannabe NBA players, how can they be so noble?" The answer? They saw the light. They might as well be white people, the way they put Kentucky in their place. No way Ebanks declares this year, he's got unfinished business—and real men take care of business.

Coach Cal, shut the fuck up. Huggins made his team work, and drew up the X's and O's to make you sweat. Fucking Italian. Go back to Africa with your fucking team. I have to say, I never liked the Bearcats, or whatever the mascot of K-State is. But Huggin is the real deal. Appalachia is the heartland, just higher in the air. God's country. You lead a horse to water, but in the end, you need a real cowboy with his hands on the pump. Who was that black dude at the Tea Party rally? He was post-racial America. Go Mountaineers.

Stop, Listen, and Ears

Dan is joined by Ken, who was first on an old computer and then on an old phone. Ken says he used to have good equipment, but that his dog ate it.



Anyway, they still managed to get in a good discussion of the Bucks playing defense, Brandon Jennings playing point guard, the Thunder playing defense, the Knicks playing decently, Nate Robinson playing, John Wall playing incredibly, the poor play in the Kentucky-Louisville game, and Gilbert playing with guns.

No playing!

Songs from the episode:

"Brand New Day" - Dizzee Rascal
"Great Expectations" - The New Year
"Tron Man Speaks" - Antipop Consortium
"It Ain't Nuthin' (The Chapter Remix)" - MF Doom
"Freaks in Charge" - Superchunk

Hey! You! Subscribe via iTunes!

His Own Happy Abyss

You go away to celebrate the Lord's birth, the ringing in of 2010, and more wedding, and all sky busts open. That's pushing things too hard, maybe, but I've had a few topics festering in my brain over these last two weeks and now it's time for them to get out. Topics that deserve a friendly presentation around these parts. Also people have been nagging me over Twitter to have opinions and I like to respond to our readers. So here goes my four-act, back-logged holiday grievances, which may or may not work together as a dramatic construct, or web of intrigue, when taken as a whole.

John Wall just keeps on doing it, we watch, register amazement, and nod our heads like "I told you." John Wall: Where Amazing is one some level assumed with each passing second. There's little question that Wall represents the latest in the highly-selective lineage of CHANGE THE GAME prospects. This is not a follow-up to the "have we lived a lie?" post precipitated by Darko's retirement. That was the last, desicated days of 2009, when accounts are called in and bells rung with solemnity. Now we're wandering amidst the first triumphant peals of 2010, where for at least a little while longer we can step outside and surely announce that today's news will echo forever. What better time, then, to declare what's become something of a no-brainer: We're watching the kind of player who makes the "I am a Martian" trope intelligible; this is athletic performance we might very well be hallucinating, as well as the long-needed intersection of NBA scouting and taking lots of drugs.

But Wall, unlike LeBron, Durant, or going back, Garnett or Odom, isn't just a basketball quark waiting to be unleashed on the pros—and, for the time being, negotiating with ease the scraggly environs of the NCAA. Wall is the most preposterous kind of paradox: A player whose raw ability, and range of skills, give him the ability to shatter our very imagination, leave us transfixed and drooling at the exact point where all pedantry fails. And yet, after watching Wall seamlessly fit into a talent-packed UK team and acquire a jumper overnight, we've simultaneously seen him reveal himself as a building block that offers more than infinite possibility. Short of a seven-foot inside presence like Oden (the safe pick, the nice guy, etc.), a PG is the most straightforward investment you can make in your team's future plans. Especially in this rule-changed era, you might argue that it's an even more foundational pick than the dominant big man—besides the obvious Steve Nash/Aaron Brooks test, you also find the perimeter game increasingly transformed into the—ahem—center of the action. Inverted, upside-down ... now, the point guard is the ultimate functional component. Chris Paul, for all his all-time-y proficiency, is (like Duncan) still on some level a role player. In the same way that a Maybach gets you to and from work.



Wall, though, is both capable of almost anything and without doubt locked into a position, a role. Part of the frenzy surrounding LeBron and Durant had to do with the fact that, while they seemed capable of almost anything, we had no idea what they'd be tacked to do as pros. You could argue that Garnett's spent an entire career negotiating the less plush side of this dynamic. John Wall's potential is hydra-headed. He's the next great PG, leap-frogging Jennings, Evans, Rondo and Rose before he's even hit the league. On expectations alone, Wall already stares eye-to-eye with Chris Paul. Yet at the same time, Wall's feel for the game and innate ability allow him to do things that his position-mates just usually can't. In that, he has much in common with Rondo (not a new observation), or maybe rookie year Westbrook. Except Walls is at once a more immediately adept point guard than the scrappy Rondo or scattershot (then, at least) Westbrook, and is more of an athletic outliet than either. He has the ability to make plays that just shouldn't happen. The phrase "that's just plain wrong" is applied to bringing completely and totally raw dishonor, or defying the expectations we bring to the game as viewers. Wall actually insults our assumptions about what's supposed to happen next.

If this is odiously vague, well, it's because John Wall is balancing his point guard responsibilities with his ability to do pretty much anything he wants on the court. I got to know John Wall at Hoop Summit, where he ran wild in one of those games that reads like the greatest workout you ever saw. At UK, he's been the quintessential team player, adherent to the system, and so on. He's played the kind of basketball that every coach loves, albeit with occasional flashes of the great beyond. Yes, John Wall right now is amazing. But perhaps even more unfathomable is that tension that exists between a sense of predestination and the power he holds to write his own script. We've never seen anything like it, at least not in this era of uber-hyped kids coming out of HS. Dare I say that, because he'll hit the pros with both a first-rate sense of purpose and an untapped reservoir of basketball superpowers, his rookie season might be a voyage of discovery (for him and us) that rivals even Bron's first campaign.

Speaking of that great workout/great game dichotomoy, that actually sprung to mind yesterday at Seattle U./Harvard, which I attended with most members of the Super-Secret Seattle Basketball Dork Association. Normally I have huge problems leaving the house, but this offered the rare opportunity to see two potential first-rounders—Seattle's Charles Garcia and Harvard's Jeremy Lin—square off for the cost of a hot dog. Given that Lin is the greatest Asian-American basketball player since Wat Misaka, and has a shot at being the first since Misaka to make the NBA, and Garcia is ... some kind of Latino in a sport desperate for them ... I was secretly hoping for a race war. One quarter of the arena Harvard, one quarter SU, another random Asians, and the last, Latinos from around the area. And then one half of one row of draft geeks. But alas, that was not to happen, and I had to content myself with assessing Lin and an on-the-mend Garcia.

Sidebar 1: SU's return to D1, albeit without a conference, reminds me of post-colonial independence movements. They have spent years in the wilderness, off the radar, whatever, but now get to basically invent an identity and narrative for themselves as a legit program. At the same time, there's this mythical past they can always reference, with Elgin Baylor being the pre-colonial icon from which all else draws its strength.



Sidebar 2: Feel free to take whatever I say about Garcia worth a grain of salt. For reasons that will become apparent, I have no choice but to over-react. Everyone I was with concluded that they "needed more information," and Q McCall has been investigating Garcia for a minute now, so his dispatches are probably more reliable.

I'm getting tired here, so the bare bones of what I saw: Lin played the better game, Garcia the better workout. Harvard blew out SU, Lin made play after play (often inconspiciously); Garcia seemed off, distracted, and unable to deal with decent opposing bigs. But at the end of the day, Lin—while bigger, stronger, and faster than I'd expected—is, in the words of Ty Keenan, "one of those unathletic guards who does everything relly well," while Garcia is like something I dreamt up while asleep at my desk. He's 6'10", 230, with massive biceps and length for days. While he bears a faint resemblance to a young Larry Johnson in the face, his game is tailor-made for FD. My cohorts are fond of comparing him to Tom Chambers for reasons I don't quite get, but I'd describe him as post-injury Amare, plus Odom's versatility, plus Rashard Lewis's range (and lack of strength inside). Garcia needs coaching and discipline, or at least a situation where he gives a fuck, but he's hardly Anthony Randolph raw. Don't count on him chewing up the paint and knocking over opposing PFs on defense, but as Haubs pointed out, Garcia he could be positively deadly as a 3/4 on a fluid, up-tempo team. Which, more and more, is the way of the Association. Or, more specifically,: If Kevin is right that last year's Orlando Magic was the ideal line-up for today's NBA, imagine a guy who could alternate between the Turkoglu and Lewis roles.

Odds and ends:

-Don't ask me about Arenas. Any reporting that takes Vecesey as its foundation is like building a house on top of raw sewage. Bullets Forever is going a great job of compiling the credible info coming out, and as of now, I still don't feel like I have a clear picture. Sorry for not being bloggy enough; I wrote some good stuff about Beasley, but regret how prematurely I jumped on that story.

-I know that the whole "if Jeezy's paying LeBron" line from "Empire State of Mind" was cleared up a long time ago. It's not tampering, it's about Jay's imaginary drug-dealing career. But you have to wonder, did this ever come to the Commissioner's office? And if so, did he get an explanation from a PR flak: "Don't worry, it's just a high-profile stake-holder in an NBA franchise pretending to be a drug trafficker." Either we've come a long way since the Thug Warz that surrounded AI's rap career, or Stern isn't as on top of things as we'd like to think. Maybe because these things just don't matter anymore.

That Old Weird Horizon

Before I get serious, take a look at this list of records I'm too lazy to put on eBay just yet. And listen to the newest Disciples of Clyde-cast, featuring Kelly Dwyer. Will be posted here later in the week, but it's there for you, now. Thanks!

I have never felt a post as profoundly as the one I've labored over since Monday night. Various abortive attempts have included "I want to be free. The more we know, the more we want to tear it all down"; a discussion of whether the relationship between knowledge and ardor in sports was like or unlike that in sports; digging around for a Heidegger quote that worked out of context; a tangent on Cotto where I wrote just like Shoefly; and the question of elitism in non-snobby watching, i.e. "I get this shit so much better than everyone else around me."

But what I really should've done is listen to my heart, to pay attention to the largely sports-driven moods that have so thoroughly burnt, cleansed, and smushed me since Saturday. The long and short of it is this: I watch sports like an expert, even if I don't know what I'm talking about. I feel, but I also look for details and seek out analytic angles. We are all guilty (if that's the word) of this to some degree; no one is born into sports. Even those who don't know much are still, as highly-evolved cognitive beings observing an activity bound by rules and order, looking to make sense of it all. Greatness is always contextual, and if pushed to its logical extreme, at the distant horizon of Dr. Jack Ramsey we find either the grandest palaces of Jordan and Pippen, or the strike-team ambushes that strike heads from off of idols' shoulders.

Originally, I thought I'd come out of Manny/Jennings/John Wall/remembering Iverson blitz having hit on a new kind of fan experience. Call it innocence, call is blissful ignorance, throw out your favorite lines about the eyes of children or being on acid. As I watched Pacquiao/Cotto surrounded by a large extended family whose knowledge of boxing ranged from encyclopedic to nil, all of whom responded to Manny's space-and-time defying combos with the same oohs and aaahs (admittedly, unorthodox technique and cultural affinity played some role here), it dawned on me: There exists a type of athlete so crackling, inventive, and forceful, and elemental, that they become the great equalizer. It doesn't matter how intently you've followed their career, or a sport. When Pacquiao goes on the attack, Jennings launches into one of those trances where swagger, will, and basketball IQ find themselves in perfect harmony, John Wall hits a game-winner as if to say "enough, it's time to start this season", or Iverson's latest ugh-fest sends us all scurrying back to video of the young AI (funny how different those initials sound now as a nickname, almost like Roman numerals) . . . we find ourselves in a state of wonder that strips away all of our hours and hours of learning.



That was the thesis. These players are ultra-accessible because they tap into a different part of our psyche, infectious and impossibly popular because of the wonderment they inspire. And for those of us who have seen it (and them) all before, each time it happens, it's like we're seeing it for the first time, like we may never even have seen the sport before. I don't want to reduce it to pure aesthetics, or the quote I read somewhere (anyone?) about basketball appealing most to casual fans because of the highlights and sheer poetry of movement. I still maintain that the narrative of a football game is easier to follow, but whatever. I think that one of the reasons it feels natural to include a boxer in here is that, if on some level basketball attracts us with its spectacle of dashing, cutting, and leaping, then boxing is a fist-fight—pretty basic human experience—potentially raised to the level of magic and mystery.

I don't want to say they transform the mundane, because that completely undermines the competitive and technical aspects. However, these athletes affect hit us right in the reptile brain, and send us reeling from there. I don't really think this describes the typical viewing experience of the fan who knows not to ask. My sense is that, for the most part, sports become easier to invest one's self in the more you know about them, and vice-versa. The trick is that this class of athlete short-circuits this relationship. They don't transcend the burden of understanding, they tear down the very parameters by which understanding is so strictly tied into spectatorship. Call it ecstatic viewing, performance without description, or the belief that some moments in sports can cause sports to fall away and just sit there in front of you, beaming, as if their power were inherent, their expressiveness final, and their ends, inevitable, if not irrelevant.

This isn't Kobe ruthlessly working his way through the end of a game, but a wisp of a 20 year-old doing it all in one fluid motion, as if to come up for air would be to let in a host of distractions and contradictions for which neither he—nor we—need confront. Not during this window into a kind of sport beyond sport that never risks cheapening itself or its devotees. One that can't last forever and yet this past week, seems to have.

In This Hour of Totality

Manny still lingers, John Wall's debut is vague, if crackling, until the final exclamation point, Jennings with a positively fearsome second half and OT in a loss to the Mavs. They threw everything at him, including the war with Beaubois that was like watching photon particles at play, and the plays still happened. And looming over, under, or behind it all, this Iverson news that raises more questions than it settles.

Here's my magnum opus on Allen Iverson, right and now and forever, at least until his career's a decade in the ground. It sounds like this:

Allen Iverson was, and still is, heaven or the great below. He shakes basketball to its very foundations or, according to some, is foolish enough to think he can. He changed the game, though not necessarily for the better. We have been forced to take him at face value, and in the process awaken all sorts of even more inspirational, or degrading, feelings about race, culture, and the structure of American society. "Ambivalence" doesn't even fit. That was Kobe; Iverson is a player who exists in two different worlds.

Now go read the rest, so you won't be sore if this Manny/Jennings post waits another day. Oh, and speaking of Manny. . .



That's the trailer for his new film, and I like to think the crab represents Floyd. Via Sporting Blog, via Last Angry Fan and Film Drunk.

Final announcement, until I try and post late in the day: I've thrown caution, and looks, to the wind and just started throwing up out-of-print NBA classics in the Amazon widget. Profit motive aside, you people really need to read all of these.

Death to America

I attended the Hoop Summit earlier today. These pictures, and the short captions I have managed to muster, should be of interest to readers here.



It is almost impossible to explain how awesome John Wall is. He's like a more athletic, less selfish, Derrick Rose. Like LeBron if he hadn't been made in space and was crossed with Chris Paul. Like that column someone wrote during Wade's championship about how no one saw Jordan coming, either, and the Messiah is supposed to be unexpected and organic. I have absolutely no idea how someone can be both so freakishly dominant and yet so comfortable staying within an offense. Did I mention he has at least five "extra gears," like a series of increasingly explosive first steps that happen within mere feet of each other? When asked about a fall he took that would've made Wade or Gerald Wallace proud, insisted it had to be that way because "you never know which game might be your last." He also has the uncanny ability to cock his entire body in mid-air for a block, only to abruptly staunch all his momentum and float back down to earth if the angle's not there. I have never been more impressed by a high school player. I very nearly blurted out "just stop fucking around and go to UNC" while he was taking questions about his ongoing college search.



But it was the international team that won, for the first time in eleven years. Here's where it got decided, as Milan Macvan celebrates a long three and possibly several other things that might shock and surprise you.

Photos by Alex McDougall, for Blazer's Edge.

SUPER UPDATE: If FreeDarko is your favorite blog, well, bump it down to number two. This masterpiece of high-concept psychedelic caveman prayer turned up while I was looking for John Wall ish. Ty Keenan thinks it's a dispatch from another planet, several decades down the road. I like to believe it's Calipari himself, releasing an excess of basketball thought and emotion in a manner that just might keep him from 1) getting noticed 2) violating anything more than usual. So he runs it through Babelfish and back. There's also the possibility that it's an ESL scout/agent who refuses to acknowledge his limitations, or a member of some dude's entourage hoping to come out of this spring with a creative writing scholarship.