Suckers Get Put to Rest

It's been almost a week since the trade deadline, and we're still trying to figure it all out. Joey has thought A LOT about how this all affects the Knicks, so definitely give his analysis a read. Dan and Ken are also Knicks fans, so of course they talk about it, too, along with the Bulls, the Bobcats, the Kings, the Rockets, and all of the various moves. They claim that their opinions are even more valuable than an expiring contract, and who am I to argue??

In all seriousness, this episode contains the most Ken and Dan seriousness in weeks, if not ever. Serious basketball talk. Because this is beginning a serious part of the season.

Put this in your ear:

Songs from the episode:

"Money Motivated Movements" - Guilty Simpson
"Busload of Faith" - Lou Reed
"From One Primadonna to Another" - 90 Day Men
"Won't Trade" - Q-Tip

Clay Left Smoldering

New Shoals Unlimited on the linguistic lunacy that is the Most Improved Player award. Also, notice the new Amazon widget to the right: Same "you buy stuff by clicking through here, we benefit" idea, but new approach. We're going to be recommending books, music, movie, whatever we feel is worthy of FD's prized endorsement. If you click through there, feel free to buy whatever you want. But the point is to manipulate you.

Apologies if I've touched on this before, but when you have the same screamed phone conversation with multiple FreeDarko members, it warrants a post. It's agreed around headquarters that, simply put, Gerald Wallace is now scary. Not edgy, exhilarating, or overwhelmingly intense. When you watch him play now, fright nips at each and every fiber of your bones.

Part of it is his appearance. I will never cease to hammer home this "Gerald Wallace is the Predator" meme, because this is what a pop culture/sports analogy should be. Wallace is now a little older, thicker, and yet at the same time broken down and flecked with scars on his arms and shoulders. Gone is the sleek, statuesque specimen who was equally at home walking on air or slamming into the earth. Now, Gerald Wallace looks like the sum of all his heights and collisions—lofty, worn, tough, and always in a quiet frenzy. His dreads creep down the side of his head, where they occasionally come into contact with the plastic mouth guard that's always hanging out in the air.

This kind of adornment seems so out of character that we're taken aback by them. It's mysterious, like a vaguely sinister echo of his warped basketball philosophy and the moments that shaped it. We barely notice tattoos anymore—J.R. Smith and Larry Hughes are practically covered from waist to chin, but it's all in good fun. Wallace, though, exists at the intersection of style and grim reminders. Other useful pop culture references: Star Wars bounty hunters, those elegant tackle boxes with death sitting casually on their brains; every Vietnam movie where heroes get subsumed; eye-liner on radicals in the desert, and the chintzy portraits that follow directly from it.



No shock that this new vibe has manifested itself in—or stems directly from—Wallace's game these days. Gone are the eye-popping box scores of yore, the competition with Smith and Kirilenko to see who could most delight our mightily peripheral group of enthusiasts. Wallace scores less, attacks more sparingly, isn't as frequently streaking ahead on the break or leaping up for the put-back—even as he's continued to get more fluid and guard-like with each passing year. Part of this might be Larry Brown, which is fine, because it works. But it's most certainly not a reluctance to put himself or others at risk (though, it should be noted, usually only doing damage to his own person). Wallace is a lurching, semi-breathing basketball death wish.

Remember when Wade or Iverson embraced contact around to the basket to such an extent that it became an end in itself, and got kind of stupid? Wallace seems to have taken this same attitude toward open-ended, violent motion. And movement, if a difference exists there. He doesn't make plays as often, or sow the seeds of chaos (as said in our book.) Now, he's just kind of there to hit the floor like it was a dunk, go for blocks and steals like an agile wrecking ball, terrorize the court in a way that somehow evinces both more and less discipline. This isn't the hustle player reborn, but the blood and guts of what athleticism means at its best in the league. And it isn't necessarily pretty or inspiring, unless you think Icarus is really fucking cool coming and going.

That's because, while Wallace is by no means a dirty or petty player, the toll he's exacted upon himself is, for a basketball player, almost unprecedented. Four concussions to date, and an insistence on rushing back from a collapsed lung. The lung's actually become a running joke; most guys allude to their limitations with "I felt that in my leg," but for Wallace, the game catches up with him in his ribs and breathing apparatus. Forget the high-flown accounts of potential lost and imagined; in his combination of blazing ability, blatant disregard for his body, refusal to change one bit, and downright earnestness about the whole thing, Wallace is the second coming of Pistol Pete Reiser. As Big Baby Belafonte says, you can't watch him without worrying he's going to collapse or implode at any moment, even as he exudes strength.



I wish I could say that in Wallace, we see a simultaneous acknowledgment of mortality and embracing of life. Instead, he just makes my skin crawl.

FD Guest Lecture: Very Cross-Eyed But Extremely Solid

A report from Bobcats camp, by Avery Lemacorn. He's previously posted here about the Hornets and NOLA's revival.



There's the dad with the swishy athletic pants. We were just making fun of kids for wearing it, then we step behind a gray-haired man, corralling his kids into the 5,000 person stadium at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Maybe the words "training camp" inspired some type of slovenliness in the dad, making him reconsider his clothing options. Should I dress respectably or should I bring my tear-offs? Tear-offs it is, because they might ask me to run into the game.

And after the drills start for the Charlotte Bobcats at their scrimmage game, I can catch a glimpse of how that mentality might enter the average fan's subconscious. The masses don't know these players. No one shouts hysterically when 10 young millionaires and 5 six-figure men stroll into the smallest gym they have seen since middle school. The only other cheers come on a couple of windmill dunks made by any player, not Wallace or Richardson or Okafor. So the everyman asks, "Who do I cheer for, who do I follow?" It might as well be anyone.



Which is possibly the reason Larry Brown took this job. While last year was more Planters than pleasure, this year seems to have a relaxed professionalism, not the steady worry from Sam Vincent about how a real head coach was supposed to act in front of Michael Jordan. This is Larry Brown's team. Short and gray, the players look down at him, not away ignoring his edicts. They respect him. And this Charlotte Bobcats could be his Pistons from earlier this decade, when no one believed a team based on defense with no discernible stars could win. There are no immediate egos on the Bobcats, no petulant Stephon Marburys, or shaken Eddy Curry's. No unsteady Luol Deng's or legacy-stricken Dirk Nowitzki's to confuse matters. Instead it's a team of players willing to follow a coach that has won on every level, malleable to his stringent desires. This is Larry Brown's team.

During drill weaves, there is nothing to notice really, except for Adam Morrison. He's back, from an ACL injury. I point him out to my wife. She remembers him from the Gonzaga days on television, with the close-ups of his sketchy moustache. "That's him really?," she asks. "He looks hurt." Indeed he does. He barely stretches with the rest. He limps downcourt unsteadily with a half-jog. It was noted in the local paper earlier that Morrison has rounded out his mustache to a full goatee, and grown his hair out halfway down his back. It's tied up in a ponytail. With seemingly more in common with your car mechanic than anyone on this team, I'm pretty sure Morrison has assumed the style mantle of Scott Pollard. Except Pollard is/was a cult hero, not a top three pick as another questionable choice by MJ.



Speaking of, he is nowhere to be found. Technically, he is a local boy, having gone to Laney High School, the scene of the crime, the place where "Michael Jordan got cut." There are no streets named after him, no bridges, not even a Boys and Girls Club with his moniker. The only monument I've ever found is inside the local city museum, with his kindergarten graduation certificate, and a pay stub from his days as a busboy at a local diner. Perhaps he's wanted those things back and never knew where to look.

During the scrimmage (Felton with the starters, D.J. Augustin with the back-ups), the Pistons model is even more evident. Sean May is looking svelte, and as more than one seasoned Carolina observer notes, this is the best they have ever seen him. May is actually slim, and now in his fourth season, hopefully he can play a full year. The Brown system calls for a Rasheed figure, and May takes and hits shots from around the free throw line. Only once or twice do the blocks come into play, and only after rebounds. Brown was looking for a guy to extend his reach, and May at least seems willing to try.

On the other end, another unlikely figure for this role emerges: Alexis "Sticks" Ajinca. Though his legs look like rebar, he almost takes May shot for shot, both ending up in double figures, with several makes from around the three point line. And it's clear him and Augustin have done more than just toting around stupid luggage. They run picks off one another, and Augustin favors Ajinca over most of his other scrub teammates. It will not surprise me when phrases like "sleeper pick" and "underrated" are bantered around by the pundits for Ajinca.

Wallace, tonguing a bright orange mouthguard like a chew toy ("Is that thing really hanging out of his mouth?" asks my wife) soon grows bored covering Morrison, and starts to float. Brown, apparently emphasizing "team" defense, brings Wallace up for half-court traps, which still doesn't prevent Wallace from flying in for a rebound or a loose ball floating towards the dance team. As the Dog Whisperer likes to say, Wallace needs exercise, discipline, and a job, so Brown has him on the hunt, and pretty much free to roam where he wants to go (or maybe Adam Morrison can't shoot and can't defend). He even brings the ball up a few times, now totally free from his concussion inducing power forward excursions.

All the while, it's clear Felton is passing early and taking supreme care of the ball just not to lose the starter's role. His first dump is always to J-Rich, who then decides what to do. In a few fast breaks, he throws alley oops. Augustin, perhaps not surprising, seems exactly like he did last year at Texas--a complete dictator or perhaps a dutiful floor general, depending on your outlook. He drives deep, getting tangled with May and Mohammed. He throws last ditch passes out of bounds. He never looked frustrated, just a bit out of sorts with what to do with the likes of Morrison, who couldn't make a shot. Towards the end, he instead preferred Shannon Brown and Jared Dudley, who almost rallied the second teamers back to victory along with Ajinca.



My mind begins to wander. I do want to see Augustin, but I'd prefer a lineup of Wallace and Richardson as guards, Ajinca as the out of place 7 footer, and May and presumably Okafor on the blocks. And in a classic Chad Ford overindulgence, for some reason I do believe Wallace and Ajinca could be the mentally stable but physically disruptive manifestation of Howard-Nowitzki. At least it's there in my mind, for a few seconds.

Surprisingly, the Gerald Wallace of the second team is fellow Bama alum Jermareo Davidson. He even has slight dreadlocks like Wallace now. Though making only a fraction of what Morrison does, he has significantly more impact. He is the man for the second team flying through for the putback. He is the guy Brown calls up for the trap. He is the wild and goofy one, joking around and looking slightly physically discombobulated.

J-Rich fits the Rip mode. Augustin/Felton perhaps excel beyond Billups and whatever backup they've had. Wallace has the Prince defense, plus the lackadaisacalness that makes him more fun to watch. Nazr has the Nazr role, which should have been a backup role all along, so hopefully Okafor will be an upgrade. And May will function in the practical Rasheed role (for now), while Wallace takes over the jawing and athleticism. Fill that in with a decent bench of Dudley, Matt Carroll, probably Ajinca, and hopefully Davidson, along with wherever Augustin and Nazr fit in.

Morrison will, Lord willingly, be traded for a halfway decent center and then left to deal with his inner demons of the "way things should've been" and his complex, but more-friendlier-than-ever-imagined relationship with JJ Redick. Also, he will find his own unique kinship with those that wear athletic synthetic tear-offs to sporting events, yet remain firmly on the bench.