Obama Ensures JA Vote Forever

(Start at 1:30)

Obama already had pretty strong support among Japanese-Americans (he got 60% of the vote), but he might have locked it up for good by shouting out JA hoops legend Wat Misaka, who had a cup of green tea with the Knicks in the late '40s, at a press conference recognizing the contributions of Asian-Americans to this great land of ours.

And we're talking about the competitive spirit of athletes like Wat Misaka, who played for the New York Knicks back in 1947 -- the first non-white player in the NBA -- and who served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Mr. Misaka is here as well today and -- where's Mr. Misaka? There he is. Thank you so much.

This is another example of the Obama administration's undying belief in the unifying spirit of basketball, following the President name-dropping Mehmet Okur in front of the Turkish Parliament and Attorney General Eric Holder talking about Connie Hawkins during his Senate confirmation hearing. The first year hasn't gone quite as well as we expected, but moments like this give us reason to continue to hope.

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.

Obama to Turkish Parliament: Okur, Turkoglu Can Play

(starts at 6:00)

In what must have been the first reference to an NBA player by an American president speaking before a foreign parliament, Obama just wrapped up a speech to Turkey's assembly wherein he both denied that the U.S. is at war with Islam, and gave a shout out to Mehmet Okur and Hedo Turkoglu.

"As a basketball fan, I’ve even noticed that Hedo Turkoglu and Mehmet Okur have got some pretty good basketball games," he said to a rousing round of applause from the delegation.

Obama's stop in Turkey comes after visits to London, Strasburg and Baden Baden, during which he pointedly refrained from showing love to either Luol Deng, Boris Diaw or Dirk Nowitzki. Whether this reflects a stylistic preference on Obama's part, or rather the strategic importance of Turkey as one of the world's few Muslim democracies*, remains an open question.

Also, if you haven't already, be sure to check out this piece by John Hardwood in yesterday's New York Times, which quotes Obama likening Biden to an underappreciated teammate who “gets that extra rebound, takes the charge, makes that extra pass.” Hardwood goes on to suggest that the success of Obama's agenda depends on his political apositionality - a far more inspired application of the hoops metaphor than Al Hunt's suggestion in Bloomberg today that Obama, like LeBron, wants the ball in prime time.

*I originally said 'sole Muslim democracy', but Doug in the comments points to Indonesia, which is also Muslim and a democracy. I suppose Lebanon could be considered a contender as well.

(Shoals will be up with something more substantial later today. Until then, consider this an open thread).

Crazy Commerce, Commerce Crazed

(Actual post follows the store stuff)

With a lull in the season, what better to do than revamp the FreeDarko store, repress some in-demand tees, and roll out some new prints? Yes, starting last night, you can visit the brand new FD Imperial Marketplace, whose clean and articulate presentation alone should inspire you to cut into your tax payment. Highlights are open editions prints of some Style Guides, at a lower price than the artist's edition ones (see Lamar Odom, above), and re-ups of THE STEPHEN JACKSON TEE YOU EMAIL ME ABOUT EVERY OTHER DAY and the Classic 2.0.



Right now we're taking pre-orders on those, but they should be available in 2-3 weeks. And this is just the first wave: Get ready for some totally original new shirts and more portrait prints in time for the playoffs. The shit you've never seen before. Now, in other news. . .

-Me with a point about GM's

-I can't tell if this quote from Ray Allen regarding Bron Bron's future is inspiring or deeply suspicious, like he's trying to undermine the kid's career so the Celts have a clear path as they fade. From CBS News:

"Mike paved the way for all of us to open up the endorsement door," said Celtics star Ray Allen, another Jordan Brand athlete. "But the one thing that Mike never was is political. I think in today's era, the NBA player has an even greater podium if he chooses to use it. And with Barack Obama being the first black president, it's a great forum. I think that would separate him from anybody who's done this. ... It's great to be a basketball player, but to transcend sports is a big responsibility. If he were able to pull that off -- if he wants to pull that off -- I think that would set him apart."

First, let's take Ray Ray at face value, since I like the world better that way. And I might be getting confused due to the ol' cut and paste, but—key to this point—LeBron isn't a Jordan Brand guy. He does have the leeway to push, even redefine with an athlete brand means if he feels like it. I think most of us would agree that politics is the easiest way to alienate a bunch of potential consumers. But, while I know Allen is focused on what Obama the FBP can do in office, let's not forget what a marketing sensation Barack was before the election, when through no fault of his own, he created the Nike of politics. Sure, the stances were at times vague, and style may mattered more (or been as much of a statement as) substance. Though there's no denying the fact that Obama awakened something citizen-like in people while offending or boring as few as possible in an election year. If LeBron were to at least give the appearance of political engagement, and of therefore having a constituency at his fingers, that would make him a leader. And then, "brand" hardly seems a sufficient description.

I'm not saying this would be an altogether cynical maneuver. Nor do I think James could realistically call out China at a press conference. But he's got the world's attention, and a team around him that could do some risk-management assessment on what issues he could and could not get near. Maybe this would just turn him into a world-class philathrophist. The Bill Gates of sports. On the other hand, now that (go ahead, bold and attack this statement) so many formerly "black" issues are now publicly acknowledged to be everyone's problems, it's possible to take a stand on public schools, health care, unemployment or housing issues without seeming like a dangerous radical. Sure, Hollywood talks all the time. And yet we've learned to tune them out, question what little authority they have, and wonder why they bother. LeBron James could leverage an entirely new kind of pop culture politics. It would be a risk, but, to follow Ray Allen's reasoning, it would be one hell of a way to get bigger than Jordan and carve out an unmistakable legacy.



All this assumes that LeBron gives a damn. Maybe all he needs is the right mentor to get in his ear. Or to find that one issue where he can afford to take corporate interests. Fuck a petition; could LeBron James have a trade policy, at least when it came to sneakers? Imagine if he got a Nike plant put in Akron. Or, going beyond the usual thirty-second spot, went before Congress and urged them to not leave behind international aid programs. It sounds ridiculous, but then again, so did the idea of everyone wearing Obama all-over print hoodies after Iowa. If Obama was the ultimate feat of politics crossing over into pop culture, why couldn't LeBron—who is a pop culture brand, not just a symbol of athletic excellence—try the inverse?

Of course, none of this happens if LBJ doesn't get invited to the White House a few times, minus a ton of publicity, and with appearance alone laying the gorundwork for both independence and continuity.

Senate Confirmation Basketball Semiotics, #456

I've got supremely mixed feelings about this whole "basketball is the new America" meme, and all the articles written on how everyone in Obama's cabinet played ball, wondering what kind of offense they'll run, and if the President will be more like Phil Jackson or Jason Kidd. Excepted from that, of course, is Alexander Wolff's definitive treatment of the subject, largely because it's more interested in the nuances of one man's relationship with the game than taking an Obama presidency as some monolithic endorsement of BASKETBALL.

In fact, some of could border on uncomfortable, if not a little racist. Like, why do Senators need to ask Eric Holder about whether he could beat Obama one-on-one? Even when black dudes reach the highest peaks of civil service, they still get asked about their game? That's kind of fucked up, you might think. . . if not for the fact that it's Herb Kohl asking, a guy who refuses to sell a team as everyone screams for him to, someone with a sincere love of the sport who is probably as excited as any African-American to see it in the public eye.

But what really makes this video special, and why it's the first time I've weighed in on Obama/hoops since the election (and since the appointees made it into a far less nebulous notion) is Holder's earnest as fuck invocation of The City, Connie Hawkins, Kareem, and Tiny Archibald, that near-sacred list that any real hoops fan is used to revering—but probably never expected he'd hear intoned, with no small measure of seriousness, in a Senate confirmation hearing. There's laughter right away, as there should be, but for that moment I felt for the first time like the sport was being legitimated, if not vindicated, in the public eye.

UPDATE: My once-and-for-all take on Kevin Pritchard.

Oceanic Christmas Lights

As the Bush era draws to a close, we have a chance to reexamine some of the filters through which we view sports (and everything else), and give some thought to how the framework we use to make sense of things could possibly be different going forward.

For the past 8 years it's felt like anytime you had a disagreement with someone, it was probably safe to assume that your opponent was morally bankrupt. There was so much built up political bitterness that the invective spilled over into almost every other aspect of our lives. Any tension or conflict unwittingly gained ideological connotations: a superhero movie couldn't help but become an allegory about US foreign policy; political subtext cropped up in otherwise innocuous love songs; and a wide range of television shows were convincingly read as referendums on our current administration's incompetence. Sports may not have been quite the breeding ground for political parable that books and movies were, but how we thought about and talked about power and conflict in athletics was necessarily clouded by how we dealt with those concepts during Bush's presidency.



The high-water mark of this tendency in basketball may have been last year's Lakers-Celtics Finals. Even though the series didn't lend itself to any obvious Red State/Blue State mapping, the tone with which allegiances were declared was as indicative of the political climate we've been living in as anything that happened between Bird and Magic two decades ago. You had to have an opinion and it damn well better not have been the wrong one. Granted, sports have always lent themselves to political undertones and to enthusiastically taking sides, but I'd still like to credit Bush for inspiring a particular flavor of venom that spilled over to how we discussed everything from Iraq to All Star selections. In other words, the fact that the Kobe-era of headline dominance coincided almost perfectly with Bush's two terms might not have been purely coincidental. That Obama's favorability ratings hover above 70% and no one views LeBron as a yes or no question is hopefully a sign of things to come.



While I don't think the League itself will actually be discernibly different when we wake up on January 21st, I'm hopeful that the way we perceive the game might already have begun to shift subtly. I'm not sure I envision exactly how this less-polarized, post-Bush era of basketball will look, but for some reason I picture Danny Granger playing a central role in decoding the new landscape. The world is ready for a more nuanced view of the game, one where Cleveland's ascendance doesn't take anything away from what Boston and LA have going on, where the Hawks can be both up-and-coming and taken seriously at the same time, and where Devin Harris doesn't need a counterpoint in Paul, Williams, or anyone else to be understood and appreciated. While columnists were forced to reluctantly shelve the LeBron v. Melo stories long ago, Wade's resurgence thankfully hasn't seemed to force too many battle lines to be drawn. Even with Oden finally on the floor, the fact that he went one slot ahead of Durant is little more than a footnote at this point. Kevin Love's irrelevance probably killed any potential for an ongoing Mayo-Love plotline, but even the contrast that would seem like it should have legs (the UCLA guard on close-by team who will play an equally essential role in overturning his team's current crappiness) isn't really cropping up yet. This isn't to say that rivalries will be (or should be) non-existent, but maybe we're reaching a point where we can stop viewing them as either/or propositions, where one player's dominance doesn't necessarily pose a threat to our appreciation of another's. Even if the sport is ultimately defined by wins and losses, we don't need to view every aspect of it as a zero-sum game.



While I'm probably overestimating both the transformative nature of Obama and the transformable nature of sports fans, I'm nevertheless optimistic that we can at least step away from some of the more forced indignation and oversimplified dichotomies that have dominated our conversations about sports recently. If this post-partisan (sorry) approach sounds an awful lot like the liberated fandom this site has espoused for so long, it's probably because it should. As we adjust to life without Bush-tinted glasses, it will hopefully get easier to eschew some of the knee-jerk thumbs up/thumbs down reactions and to move towards embracing the contradictions before us. Put another way, learning to root for a Larry Brown team might be good practice for accepting a ceremony prominently featuring Rick Warren.

Then, This Morning

Still kind of at a loss for words. The "our team won!" youth riot on Capitol Hill was a little weird, but on the whole, I think the man himself best expressed what this country was feeling last night, way back in 2004:

"America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November . . . and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come."

I've got a TSB column up now on how this trade affects Iverson's cultural meaning. I wrote it somewhat with Obama in mind—while our next President is extremely difficult to break down according to categories of race, ethnicity, and even immigration, I do believe that the FBP is, well, blacker than he lets on. Not that Obama's not also in many ways a son of the American heartland, but that's one aspect of the multi-faceted life experience that's made him who he is. He's the son of an African, but also someone who identifies as African-American and has spent time in those spaces. So whenever I hear a pundit comment on Obama being stiff, or not natural enough, I wonder if they see how, when he does loosen up, he does read as much "blacker." In other words, and this is where the Iverson to Detroit comparison comes in, does this nation realize it's elected a black president, or just think Obama is an exceptional man who happens to be black?

Slightly related: I've long been tracking Obama's near-uses of the phrase "a change is gonna come" in speeches. He's come close several times, but it was only last night that he finally delivered it in full. In the triumphant past tense:

"It'a been a long time coming, but tonight, beacuse of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America."

Not trying to advance a "secretly black" meme, or prove how down I am because I've heard Sam Cooke. But this is part of what makes him such an amazing speaker, and candidates: Obama's all things to all people, hits all sorts of notes and connects with everyone. And it's all real.

-I'm feeling this video Chris Bosh made for FanHouse of his immediate reaction. Between him and Jermaine O'Neal, the Raptors might have the most socially conscious frontcourt in the league. Too bad they're in Canada.

-Driving home last night around 1AM PST, some BBC program or other was on. They read a text message from a guy in Kabul expressing, yes, hope and joy over Obama's election. That really set the mind reeling.

It's Over

Bearings on my T-Shirt

This wasn't going to be a DEATH OF THE BIG MAN post, but screw it. Welcome to the DEATH OF THE BIG MAN era. The AI-for-Billups trade seals the deal. What a fantastic occurrence. This deal is good for both sides, except Denver has way more to lose. All I hear on the message boards is how, yay, Carmelo finally "has a legit point guard" (taken from ESPN's featured comment), but I'm not sure Billups was ever a true (read: pass-first) point guard. He's had some good assists averages with the Pistons over the years, but ironically I think where he'll help most is giving the Nugs a legit outside shooting threat. Wait a second. Is Billups just a more battle-tested clutcher version of Andre Miller?

Who cares. The focus of everything is back on 'Melo, and I am looking forward to 'Melo leading the league in PPG. Plus, Billups' experience cannot be overrated here. He is the type of dude to get the Nuggets past the first round.

[Also, it's officially appropriate to use the nickname MCNUGGET again!!!! This trade is AWESOME.]

Of course the more significant aesthetic component of the trade is Iverson in Detroit, which is immediately giving me flashbacks to the first 15 seconds of this:



Iverson belongs in Detroit like Nick Saban belongs in Alabama. I think this is going to reignite Sheed and Rip's hunger, and have the exact same effect on the team as when Rasheed joined in the 03-04 season. Also, I love how implicitly the entire league seems to want to make AI happy. Give him C-Webb, trade him to a contender (Denver), ok, trade him to a REAL contender. If KG gets a ring, it's just dead wrong if AI doesn't get his.

And so it is, little guys rule the earth. The fall of Oden opening was no coincidence. It was a signifier...

I'm hopped up on some ill green tea right now so I'm having a hard time gathering my thoughts, but let me keep it on the topic of guard dominance would like to point everybody's attention to Russell Westbrook, who I had the pleasure of watching last night. If Westbrook isn't starting over Earl Watson by December, I'm putting a bounty out on PJ Carlessimo who has been killing this team with his starting lineups since last year (PUT KD AT PF, and make Jeff Green sixth man!!!). I'm not sure I'm sold on Westbrook being as good as Derrick Rose, and it's too early to put him on that CP3/Deron Williams level, but the kid is just sick at getting to the rim...

















...and it appears "ability to get to the rim" is the new zeitgeist, replacing "ability to play with his back to the basket" as the new championship requirement. I heard some Paxson quote where he was talking about Beasley versus Rose and how in the end it wasn't even close because you "NEED" a guy who can penetrate and get to the cup. Obviously this is nothing new. The Spurs and Lakers champ teams of the early 21st century mastered the inside-outside game with Kobe/Manu/TonyParker/etc breaking down an entire team's defense with penetration, and Rajon Rondo played a critical role for the Celts last year simply in his ability to get in the paint. But of course a central component of the inside-outside game is INSIDE component--the Shaq or Tim Duncan who makes people pay down low. Might we be entering a new age of total little man domination?

Qualifier on DEATH OF THE BIG MAN: Shaq and Duncan and Yao and Amare will continue to tip scales. But I am finally willing to admit that the big man haslost primary relevance. Whereas the last five years set up an environment where guys like Jerome James and Loren Woods could make zillions just because they were seven feet tall, we are approaching an age where Anthony Carter and Jamaal Tinsley might soon be making those millions instead.

















Last thing, I would like to remind all of you to VOTE.

This is another thought for another day, but I've spent many a long night wondering whether an Obama presidency would be good or bad for professional basketball. Sure, it would make those NBA Champions visits to the White House less awkward and the sport itself may gain a little more public exposure in the form of errant paparazzi snaps of the president shooting hoops instead of riding on a segway. Maybe it will revive the Michael Jordan analogy. But maybe this Obama as end-of-racism utopia that morons like Dinesh D'Souza, bright guys like Paul Krugman and many others have pushed could adversely affect The Association, to the extent that the NBA is a racialized sphere (which let's face it, it is...). In this reconfiguration of things, Obama stands as some sort of odd contrast to the NBA, not to mention that I think his campaign has expended a lot of white people's "racial" energy. Anyway, I should probably continue this when I've settled down and am not free associating. Perhaps tomorrow. I can't wait for this election to be over.

oh, and on a concluding Note: Click here if you want to see THE RETURN OF STYLE.

FD Exclusive: Wade Endorses Obama

The not so well-kept secret of the Obama campaign? That if you stop by your local headquarters, there's a good chance you'll run into an NBA player. They've appeared at voter registration drives, and turned out for fundraisers en masse. But with the exception of Baron Davis and Greg Oden (and Josh Howard, sort of), there haven't been any outright endorsements. And yes, it's because they're being told not to, sometimes even by their handlers on-site.

That's why I was impressed to find out (WORLD EXCLUSIVE) that tomorrow, Dwyane Wade's going to register to vote for the first time and then register others—presumably to vote for the Heat guard's fellow Chicagoan. Not to take anything away from Baron and Oden, but they don't live in the mother of all swing states, nor are they among the Association's five biggest names. You can laugh at the registering himself part, but I think it sends the right message: It doesn't matter if you've never been involved, either because you've been told not to, or just haven't cared to. This is that time to change all that.

So hats off to the guy for being one of the few to take that critical last step. I said at one point that, given how "black" basketball reads, Obama's close identification with the sport could be a negative; according to that logic, having athletes out in the open could be a liability. But obviously the campaign wants them around and really, how depressing is it to suggest that, for political reasons, ordinarily apolitical figures shouldn't get involved?

And Dr. LIC, I'm finally with you on that contempt for Melo.

BONUS: Me and Ziller team up for a Gelf piece on stats, scouting and common sense.

Basketball is the New Snobbery

Let's talk about sports in politics. Not athletes endorsing candidates, or the need to cast candidates in athletic terms. No, this is the apocalyptic extension of the "he is like me" issue that Dr. LIC treated a few weeks ago. Now, with Palin, we're down to "he is me."

So instead of just peppeting stump speeches with sports metaphors, or, as Obama does, allude to the Packers' loss when in Wisconsin and mention his own Bears misery, these candidates need to throw out the playbook and just talk about sports. Constantly and endlessly. Think about it: First, this election was about gas and corn syrup. Now it's shifted to the apoplectic market which, sorry, is way too abstract and removed from most people's lives. What's the perfect antidote? The National Football League, natch. I swear, if Barack just got up there—during the debate, even—and rattled off ten minutes of non-descript "who's hot, who's not" talk about this year's topsy-turvy beginning, he'd walk away the clear-cut winner. Not just "he watches football, like me," but "his brain is similarly consumed by it."

But of course, it has to be convincing, authentic. And therein lies the hitch. Notice, I'm only talking about the NFL—neither Obama nor McCain can claim a college team of note, unless you count Cindy's Trojans (a net minus?). Plus, as partisan as NFL fans are, they've got nothing on the provinicial trappings of college sports. So good look mentioning any other college team at Ole Miss. . . or finding any other sport that's really real before that audience. That's where the Obama campaign has the edge: Its multi-tiered, situational approach to just about everything could gauge where and when to use this tactic, as well as how much to mention his Bears versus the home team, and what exactly the audience would buy. Contrast that with McCain, whose best gimmick seems to be inserting city-specific Hall of Famers into his P.O.W. tales.



And then there's that tricky issue of race. Look, I know why Obama played up the basketball thing. It earned him cred in the black community, and made him seem young and hip. But even if the sport's no longer highly toxic on the identity politics front, it's still seen as a black game—unless you're laundered by a Big 10 program, or grew up playing in a lunch box. This News One piece by Drew Ricketts is a little strident for me, but it has a Dwyane Wade quote that, while it thrills me, is exactly why Big O's basketball identification could subtlely drag him down:

Wade: Wooooowww.... One thing about Obama is that he has his own style... and that's what we love. He's not the typical presidential candidate. Anyone else who's been in office before him knows that. He's not afraid to showcase his style. He loves to play basketball. He hoops and that's how he stays in shape. He doesn't run on a treadmill. You can go on and on about the arguments of policy and experience, but at the end of the day, hopefully he becomes our president. We'll all be better for it.

All I'm saying is, that's not going to hit voters the same way "that call sucked" is. It might even come across as alien or alienating. So while sports could win this election for someone, in Obama's case, it's going to involve some back-pedalling on his First Baller image. Or least an attempt to reach across the aisle and show that this kind of relationship with sports dones't mean he's shut out of discussing just what's going on with Favre on the Jets. Also, never mention the Chargers. Yeah, on second though, Big 10 alum seems almost as important as religious background when picking national candidates. Because that's what the people are buying: Not an echo of themselves, or someone who feels their pain, but someone who isn't about to feel joy or pain over that high-falutin' stuff outside their purview.

I could see Obama comparing the Bears QB situation to Bush's advisors, or McCain conflating Michael Vick and Jason Campbell. The smart move, though, is to leave all politics and policy behind. Just turn this into a contest to see who can talk sports better. Not more knowledgeably, or passionately, but just who can prove how much football they're really made of.



Also, fuck this.

EDIAL, 9.22.08

The tourney ends, and thus, we remember another tradition.

-Ready for Obama Jewish Semiotics #44757345? Turns out Michelle has a rabbi in the family, a cousin who trained in a sect, but was then vetted and accepted by the white Jew establishment. Here's the full story about RABBI CAPERS C. FUNNYE, JR. I'd been preparing a taxonomy of Black Jews, including some sort of authenticity index, but didn't feel like getting in a fight over the Lemba. So suffice it to say that, even if the Ethiopia thing is not quite literal, this guy's not hanging in Times Square or part of a certain hilarious Miami cult.



-More Barry: In a Times piece on Obama, the teacher, the following passage explains, well, everything about everyone:

Obama’s rootedness in the real world shaped every aspect of his teaching. He laced his lectures with basketball analogies. When a student observed the death of Jam Master Jay of the hip-hop group Run-DMC by wearing the group’s trademark tracksuit to the racism seminar, Obama acknowledged the gesture with a nod and a smile. (“I can assure you, that would not have been a common response among the faculty at the University of Chicago,” Joshua Pemstein told me.

-Ladies and gentlemen, Joshua Pemstein today

-Although the first sentence of this New York Times article about football players wearing wristbands around their biceps actually mentions basketball, the author fails to mention the man who most likely started this trend--NBA strongman Ben Wallace. Ironically, Stern cited the NFL as a model when he outlawed wearing wristbands on the biceps a couple years ago.



Possibly the first footage of Dr. J as a pro (at all?), from one of those fabled NBA/ABA exhibitions, no less. Erving enters off the bench and while he's not exactly dominant, there's that sense that he—and a lot of the ABA players, in fact—have seen things that the likes of Oscar and Wilt just haven't. Not saying they're better, even though they go on a run in this clip. But this isn't sloppy street vs. button-down expertise, it's the great unknown pushing up on the powers that be.