A Fair Share of Rudiment

Some very important corners of the web finally got around today to wondering about Jay-Z paying Dwyane Wade. The explanation has been laid out several places and now linked to where millions of eyes will catch the fever. So that's that. We all know what's up, drugs in the house and no tampering.

Howeeevs (long e), there have been radical developments since "NY State of Mind" stopped ringing in my ears. Namely, LeBron James switched his number from 23 to 6. So now, if Jeezy's paying LeBron prices, he's getting his for 6K a kilo. Not as good as Jay, but everyone knows that Hov is an old, washed-up liar, while Jeezy still occasionally shows up in court documents. Under his alias, Mr. Pickle and Fright, of course. But back to the matter at hand: So now, if the international cocaine market is, as I've always suspected, governed by NBA jersey numbers, then Jeezy is getting a really good deal himself.

That's only one layer of the mystery, as they say. Why would LeBron James go and do a favor for Jeezy, when Jay-Z has been been big brother since before Akron was more than a place from Greek mythology that someone got to visit? That's right, you guessed it: LeBron is going to the Hawks. I know that Jeezy isn't an owner yet, or officially, but how hard would it be for him to purchase a minority stake? Him going to the Hawks allows the coke price to drop for a part owner which means the financial picture for the franchise changes drastically in ways that means going way over the cap is no problem.

When it comes to the world of money and stuff, perception is stronger than reality. That's how a song, which is just a bunch of words, can actually have these real world implications. You know why? Because those lines are really memorable and "NYSOM" was a huge hit. So when deals get determined, it creeps in, insidiously. In the end, Jay's hit-making prowess may have destroyed the future of the Nets. I can't stand it anymore.

This may be tampering but it's also an NBA team funded by drug money. I don't even know where to start with that.

NOTE: THIS IS ALL FICTION.

NOTE: This is my really long and thoughtful piece about this year's tournament.

NOTE: This blog will be pumpin' out more when I'm done with book stuff, in like a week or so. Hopefully.

Bend String on Zither

It is with great weariness that I begin this post on Michael Beasley and his rehab situation. I feel like I already pushed forth the envelope of flippancy in my Baseline post on the matter (damn, that works well in a self-referential sense). Maybe too far if it turns out that Beasley gobbling down pills or fall-down drunk all the time.

But when we posted that tattoo twit on Friday, the bags didn't even cross our mind. Maybe we're content to call a bag a bag; maybe we just were't super-scanning the background for too-thrilling data on what a 20 year-old millionaire does in an empty hotel; maybe we know that Beasley probably smokes and plays video games in all his spare time, but just didn't care. Whatever our over-liberal reasoning, the next morning it turned out we'd missed out on a MONSTER SCOOP: Michael Beasley photographed himself with pot-a-phenalia. What a moron.

What became difficult to discern in the flurry of typing that followed was whether Beasley was 1) in the wrong for smoking 2) was dumb for getting caught 3) needed to avoid all perception of smoking, since he had in the past 4) needed to cover his ass better. I was briefly working on a column that tried to link Beasley to Bolt, explaining how skepticism and suspicion was ruining sports, or at least our consumption of it. Or at least making blogs into speculative, uninformed, worthless tabloids that did little more than all squint at the same blurry image, or process the same publicly available circumstance, before giving voice to the "fan in the streets" or "what the mainstream's afraid to say." An unfortunate blurring of function, if you ask me.



Back to the Beasley at hand. Before the window into his soul—I mean, the Twitter account—hit the deck, Beasley threw out a couple of twits that were equal parts morbid, goofy (if you're threatening to take your own life, please limit the number of exclamation points), off-hand, paranoid, impulsive, and, sorry, but culturally specific. Among the many great contributions Tupac made to the world was the trope of imminent doom, brought about by fame, fortune, public scrutiny, and doing shit to piss people off. I admit that Beasley's twits were erratic, but they also fit readily under this rubric. So there might a matter of cross-cultural mis-communication here.

But hey, today, Beasley's checked into rehab, John Lucas is running the show, and we'll see those "possible substance and psychological issues" scrubbed right out of him! Excuse me if I'm not inclined to take this 100% seriously, especially as Yahoo! also reports that it was Riley who made Beasley 'fess up to his involvement in Rookie Transition-gate well after the fact. Beasley is weird dude, one whose personality makes him a fascinating and frustrating public entity. I can only imagine how it is for a team that's invest millions in him. The same goes for this lingering weed association. Why not attach "troubled" to his name once and for all, throw into rehab, make a show of it, and trot him out for 2009-10 with a firm sense of how he's supposed to conduct himself as a pro?

Except that's not what rehab's about. And "troubled" shouldn't simply mean "wacky" or even "pot smokin'." This might be a stigma that haunts Beasley for life, all in the name of public presentation couched in the language of "possible substance and psychological issues." That's the matter-of-fact take on it. There's also the rather ghastly thought that Beasley's being poked and prodded in hopes of uncovering some explanation for his behavior, reprogramming him rather than looking to subject him to the ultimate disciplinary sham/PR cover-up. Michael Beasley is young and foolish, but there's no reason to presume he's got loose screws just because he's poorly-behaved and off-kilter. You can tack various degrees of sinister, or ruthlessly capitalistic, to that.



All this goes on the assumption that 1) Beasley is not indeed insane, since anyone who observed him in college can see he's toned himself down even under the greater stress posed by the pros 2) it's only pot, since a coked-out Beasley would be even more of a nightmare, and a Vin Baker-drunk Beasley would probably have gone to sleep in a giant ditch of his own digging by now (I mean that literally, not figuratively). If, however, this is intended to get Beasley help in earnest, the strategy seems awfully sloppy. Sorry, no pothead demands immediate detox. If the loopiness points to anything deeper, wouldn't it make more sense to first just have him talk to a doctor? Oh, I forgot: Whenever a famous person is unwell, or might be, your spirit them away to rehab so the world can't watch, and they can be spared the humiliation of being picked apart any further in public.

Unless I am totally wrong, and Beasley's been shooting speedballs before every game, this a ton of wasted resources, breath, and bed space for a kid whose long-term mental health—whatever its current state—would probably benefit from a vacation and some trips to a psychologist. But rehab sends a message to the world, and to Beasley. Like jail. Never mind that, if someone sick wants to get well, he needs to do so of his own accord. Threatening and intimidating Beasley onto the straight and narrow by making him hear about men who lose everything and spend their mornings looking a vein. . . it's an insult to Beasley, those addicts, and anyone who ends up working on his "case."

Normal people have to undergo some kind of in-house screening before entering a rehab facility. That Beasley got green-lighted immediately, when his situation would seem to demand at least some preliminary treatment before getting recommended for these places. Maybe I'm out of touch with the treatment of addiction, or the best way to deal with a recreational drug user whose behavioral issues only matter because he's a gigantic business asset. It's just hard for me to read this stuff and not laugh at the whole thing, while feeling a little bad for Beasley—who might have missed out on a chance for an appropriate, not nuclear-level, intervention.

Stop This Man

I said my basic peace on the Rashard Lewis suspension over at The Baseline. Read here for my (ahem) baseline analysis, plus the Manny coincidence. Excuse me if I'm not foaming and fuming about this one.

To get a little deeper, even if you want to suspect certain players of juicing—especially those guys who enjoy working out—you've got to look at these suspicions in context. Same goes for the Lewis thing. Baseball and football are knee-deep in PED problems, and obviously have a culture that promotes and enables them. Does anyone have any evidence that such a thing exists in basketball? A suspension like this is, to be sure, startling. But it's almost as if people assume that, if MLB and the NFL are dirty, then surely that same climate must be present in basketball.

I know there's no consensus on whether NBA players could benefit. Even if they could, I'd have to get some inkling that it wasn't just a few isolated cases. That's now how it works in those other sports, so why would it be like that here? And saying "it's in other sports" is, like I said, a total fucking fallacy. Show me the sea change in play, in stats, in injuries; the rumors that make it past the ESPN boards; more than one person ever suspended for a non-diet pill violation. As I've said many a time, that the league is all too willing to share information about PED suspensions, but stays mum on hard drugs, doesn't just imply they have nothing to hide—they want it out there just how unworried they are, how minor these trangressions are expected to be.

Now tell me, as much as baseball was in denial, would it ever had gone out of its way to craft a policy that was so casual and transparent about PEDs? Conversely, while I may not be the world's biggest insider, I think I'd at least have once heard—from people who know—that a player was suspected. Which wouldn't even in itself convince me, since it takes more than one person to change the course of PED history. Unless you believe Jose Canseco's "I am the Messian of steroids" crap.

P.S. While you're over there, check out today's column on fan psychology and 2010.

Secrets Revealed

Everyone wants to know what drug—"drugs", as that interview lady may have let slip tonight—Chris Andersen was into. All of them would be funny, for different reasons. However, I think this weird T3 graphic inserted into the halftime show might actually hold the answers. If you didn't know, it's a biometric scan. And I'm guessing ESPN didn't realize that, if you perform the calculations already underway above, the truth emerges. They narrowed it down to three in the script, too, but don't be fooled: Experts knows that many, many more substances, and sub-substances, are contained in the little lines and symbols.

More important: My J.R. manifesto for tonight over at The Baseline. Let's see how that audience deals with my religious leanings.

White Worm, White Whale, White Elephants

Over the past week, there was some non-link-worthy speculation as the presence of PEDs in the NBA. The logic: Players got bigger and faster in baseball and football, and look what was just beneath the surface . . . so why not us? To their credit, the authors aren't pointing fingers—nor do they have the slightest bit of credible evidence to back it up—but believe that, as an analogy, the similarities are simply too juicy to ignore.

These arguments have already been refuted using the most obvious ammo. The league tests like crazy for them, reporting any semblance of a positive result with glee, since all are diet pill-related; unlike baseball or football, there hasn't been a wholesale shift in the numbers or physique of the league as a whole. Is it really plausible that only Dwight Howard and LeBron James have discovered HGH, and the rest of the NBA is in the dark? Plus, while stronger and faster is of immediate benefit in baseball and football, in basketball, skill is at more of a premium. There's a reason why terms like "skills" and "game" are so important to fans and players alike, and while the NBA combine is at best misleading, at worst, a version of that year's scouting drunk and tied to a burning sailboat.

But for yours truly, what makes these insinuations so absurd is the very nature of the pro baller. Not to get all quasi-essentialist on you, but what propels most players to to the top is some version of indvidiual arrogance or confidence, stemming from the fact that when they take the court, no one can fuck with them. From that age where everything becomes to jump off for them, who they are—a seamless combination of mind, body, learned tricks, and attitude—allows them to absolutely steamroll everyone they come into contact with. Except for sometimes in AAU, or if they play at Oak Hill, or are fortunate enough to train with Tim Grover. Compare that with football, where most players are trained as good soldiers meant to excel at a particular task, to fit into a role, or baseball, in which skills are so atomized as to become impersonal. Of course those two sports would welcome a third-party that could up the numbers, heighten the measurements, bring one closer to the unspoken—yet certainly formal—ideal that informs their training. These players are learning function, and to that end, to dispense with some of themselves. That's a lethal combination just begging for a chemical substance to play a key consulting role.



Now consider basketball and the ego. Admittedly, if one were to construct the perfect player in a vat, in the most mechanistic way possible, there might be a way to bio-chemically optimize the process. I guess that would make sense psychologically, if not technologically—as of yet, no one's suggested that PEDs improve court vision or shooting form. In this country, though, that's not how players are made. They start to play, they are, and they pick up stuff along the way (or not). In short, if there's a way forward, it's clearly defined by both their strengths and limitations. Otherwise, why wouldn't everyone take drugs to turn into Durant or LeBron?

LeBron is one of names most frequently whispered. At which point, really, would PEDs have intervented in LeBron's development? When he was 16? When, as a rookie, he was merely one of the best players in the league? Forget the whole "they want to be fast" line of argument—why exactly would a player as at home on the court, as joyous in his identity as an athlete, suddenly decide he needed to conform to a non-existent standard? Who the fuck thinks "I'm the most unholy combination of speed and size the league has ever seen, but everyone knows I could be a little more that?" Becoming LeBron James is a tremendous accomplishment; deciding to become more LeBron would run counter to the entire project of perfecting self and style.

Addendum: Point raised in the comments section that stuff like HGH aids in recovery, and has nothing to do with what I've outlined above. Given how long it takes guys to come back from ankle and muscle and side problems, how back spasms have ruined careers, and that guys only ever rush back from wrist and finger problems (that's the scene of the crime?), I find this highly unlikely.