When Stations Shift, You Find Your Own

Not that I think it's my God-given duty to size up the Finals and decide who's up, who's down, but you've got to admit that Lakers/Magic does present a certain number of curious proposition. For one, these two are neither mismatched nor equals. It's like they exist in parallel universes. The Lakers, as we all know, as flushed to the gills with ability, but only periodically harness it all. The Magic, well, we didn't realize it until recently, but so are they. And they bring it on the regular. Does that make Orlando overachievers, Los Angeles underachievers, and no one but the Cavs the underdogs? The Magic's has been a season of peaks and valleys, hitting their stride, then losing Nelson, then picking up steam again, then hitting a wall earlier in the playoffs when Howard's identity came into question and Turkoglu was hurt. And now, they're riding high, so high, again. The Lakers? Friday was the first time all playoffs they've looked like the Lakers we expected to see come and visiti pestilence upon the postseason. Now you tell me: Which is inconsistency, which on a voyage of self-discovery and perpetual adjustment?

What's more, while this series doesn't seem to have STAR BATTLE written all over it, it will certainly challenge the "nobody digs Goliath, ya dig?" axiom of the modern NBA. Because, simply put, Howard is love and lightness, Kobe the darkest side of Jordan, the least ecstatic aspects of his game, streamlined and boiled down to something potent, metallic, and kind of smelly. That's not to say that Kobe's still the man we love to hate, just that he'll never be easy to love—in much the same way that Chamberlain, and even Shaq, found themselves troubled by.

Here's some fragments from a piece I wrote this spring on Shaq for a certain well-known web magazine. This was from draft #3, and apparently wasn't snappy enoigh. So sorry, guys. In any case, I think it's pertinent here for describing just how far Howard is indeed with "the new Shaq," in terms of natural magnetism and ability to worm his way into our hearts without making us feel engorged or cloyed by absurdity:

O'Neal wouldn't be the first athlete always angling for the spotlight, or looking for ingenious forms of self-promotion. But compared to, say, the whip-smart expressiveness of Muhammad Ali in his prime, O'Neal is at once light-hearted and uncomfortably deliberate. He excels at spoken spectacle, assigning himself absurdist nicknames (my favorites: The Diesel, The Big Aristotle, and Shaqovic) and making off-color jokes about opponents, like his disparaging reference to rivals "the Sacramento Queens."

From the beginning Shaq saw himself as an entertainer, which explains 1993's platinum rap album Shaq Diesel and film roles ranging from the 1996's Kazaam, in which Shaq played a genie, to 1994's Blue Chips, an underrated look at corruption in college sports that starred Nick Nolte. The more he does, the more control he exerts over his image. And with good reason. In the fraternity of superlative NBA big men, O'Neal stands alone in his non-stop levity. Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Patrick Ewing, and peer Tim Duncan, to name a few, were pensive and aloof—and often criticized for it. O'Neal has seemingly spent his entire career trying to break the mold, replacing the towering, faceless Goliath with a hip-hop Paul Bunyan. Shaquille O'Neal may have been Joe Frazier or (young) George Foreman on the court, but preferred the garrulous, daft Ali role off of it.



However, this disconnect comes with a price. Shaq's behavior can get downright ugly when his ego, image, or brand are threatened, since this could send him plummeting into in the annals of large, bitter, awkward freaks. For evidence of this, look no further than the litany of "sidekick" guards who have proved essential to his success: Penny Hardaway in Orlando, Kobe in Los Angeles, and Dwyane Wade in Miami. In the post-Jordan NBA, smaller, more dynamic players are the unquestioned center of attention. Style-wise, they're the Ali's, with inventive games that suggest a richness of personality. Shaq, always the talker in these relationships, always casts himself as the alpha dog, a font of charisma whose dominant play was a matter of fact. At the same time, in each case the other guy was emerging as one of the most exciting, inventive players in the league, leading O'Neal to turn cold and toward them, and however incidentally, move on to another team. [I think you all know how Shaq fell over, and then turned on, Penny, Kobe, and Wade].

Nothing sums up this paradox more than the mural on the bus Shaq brought to an LSU game in 2007: some sort of gangster super-summit, where Shaq presides over Scarface, Tony Soprano, and Vito Corlene, among others. Hilarious, but also quite sinister. Not coincidentally, during his time with the Heat, Shaq was fond of an analogy that cast his Hardaway as Fredo, Kobe as Sonny, and Wade as Michael. Coppola's films and The Sopranos have been defanged by their absorption into pop culture. But watch those movies from start to finish, and you'll realize just how unsettling they really are.

Heavy, huh? Man, been waiting for a while to get that out. I have to say, though, that this series might explode this paradigm, and perhaps summarily frustrate Shaq's grand mission in life. Despite O'Neal's attempt to undermine Howard, or Howard's obvious inferiority as a pure center—perhaps one of the reasons this slippage is possible—Dwight, with his boyish good looks and effortless acrobatics, is that lovable big men Shaq never could be. Yes, we can debate for days when he is in fact a big man, or just a bigger Amare. But the Superman has stuck there without any sense that we're being forced into embracing his might (like how Superman really could have destroyed the world whenever he wanted). On the other hand, Kobe, while he remains the epitomal post-Jordan off-guard, we all know that this trappings of his game have become so methodical, his aura so admirably bleak, that it's transformed the dream-like "as an explosive shooting guard, I will get rings" of Jordan into a optimization of the position so that it embraces as much of the big man rigor as is possible. LeBron is unstoppable, quasi-religious. Kobe is so professional that he's always adjusting, a character who is about as Terminator-like as guards can possibly get. Like when they made the evil robot a hot lady for T3.

That's not to say that Kobe lacks charisma. He has kind of reached that rare, glare-laden apex where, no matter what his game has evolved into over the years, or what its finer points are, fans respond to him as a showman. You and I know, though, that the man is probably replacing his blood, or grafting metal onto his spine, in hopes of turning this positional role into something with the certainty, and even the purposeful vacancy, of the big man. Howrad is so young, it's hard to gauge where he's really headed. But for now, he's a hunk of muscle unstoppable down low who is also so easy to love. And it's Kobe whose human drives and expressions of self seem more of a technicality or, even to supporters like myself, an afterthought in his grand pursuit of basketball perfection. That's not to say he's totally inhuman, on or off the court, but the personality of his position (and by extension, the Good Kobe that has so many fans) is no longer a restriction on how he looks to put together grade-A efforts.



And to turn briefly to one more WTF about this series: Does this tell us shit about the future of the game? The Lakers are by no means a reasonable template for success. Top to bottom, that team is loaded. In ways new and old. What other team can boast one of the league's most promising pure centers, as well as its second-best Euro, and a post-Garnett weirdo—all who may or may not figure prominently into the game-plan on any given night? It's almost like a brief history of the last eight years of the NBA, all on one team. Except that participation by all is optional, or maybe selectively minimal. Put simply, other teams have no chance at copying this one, and that's without even getting into Kobe's embattled, but persistent, standing among the league's elite.

The Magic offer a far more interesting case. They have this big man who is both more and less than the past. There's a chance they stumbled into it, and that the tandem of Lewis and Turkoglu are both essential and came as a surprise. And when healthy, they have an All-Star point guard. This is old worship of height, plus the age of the point guard, plus a kind of post-Euro Sudoku puzzle that only master coach SVG could make sense of in such a non-obvious fashion (and, as Kevin Pelton has pointed out, this team would suck if deployed in obvious fashion). I also pick up a distinctly Pistons-meets-Suns vine int he way Lee, Pietrus, and even Reddick are used, though maybe now I'm just laying it on thick. In short, this team has everything but a Kobe or LeBron, which is a really fortuitous spot to be in. And chances are, any other squad with this roster would screw it up. So we might be looking at an utter singularity here that both bridges and invalidates the entire ferment of conventional basketball wisdom, past and present. In the end, it comes down to the twist you put on it. Traditions and trends, new and old, can tell you some basics, but past that, you're on your own. The question is, what does it take for a team like the Magic to be absorbed, as the Suns were? The Warriors certainly weren't . .

Orlando Magic, just keep being yourselves. History will sort out the rest. As will the results of this series, incidentally.

We Touch Your Ears (Podcast #55)

This was recorded Tuesday night, but its apocalyptic reachings are probably the sort of thing that benefit from being found in a clay pot several thousand years after the fact. Also, I've been a little busy with my new joint, The Baseline, which more than warrants your attention. At least this harried state of things prompted the following hilarious line from Dan: "'Blame it on the Baseline' sounds like an Eric B and Rakim record."

But now you have it before you, and it's a good one. We look for the future, ponder the interchangability of point guards and centers, say "ball-stopping" dozens of times without giggling, and discover the science of the Ewing Theory. We also manage to make the unflappable Tom Ziller misty by taking a trip deep into the collective Kings memory we all share.

THE PODCAST:



Playlist:

"Hanging By a Thread"- The Forty-Fives
"Drizzle" - Burd Early
"Ride Tonight" - Z-Ro
"Terminator X" - Public Enemy
"Down South Blues" - by Old Crow Medicine Show

For other means of obtaining this program, try iTunes and the XML feed.

Concept Car : Galapagos

GALapagos project by Igor Yastrebov shows the evolution of Vehicle for the future. It can be adopted to any road situation, that can happens in the MEGALOPOLES with transformable wheel base. GALapagos can be Motor bike with narrow weel base or can be a real comfortable car for two passengers.

Concept Car : Futuristic - BRB Evolution

There are plenty of eco-friendly cars that are around in the market today giving everyone a wide range of options to choose from when they wish to go green. There are also many concept cars that are around which will hopefully one day hit the road as they seem to be a wonderful alternate to the available models filled with green features and loaded with design improvements that really are of great use in everyday life.



The BRB Evolution is a very interesting concept apart from the name itself which is pretty nice if you ask me. The BRB is a car designed to free you up from parking hassles and it is designed to reduce the energy consumed by all those parking lots by reducing the parking space. The concept is so simple and yet so fundamentally sound that it holds your attention and you really have very little to be skeptical about. If you reduce the space of parking for each car, the parking lot accommodates more number of them leading to the requirement of less number of parking lots!

This car concept is called BRB Evolution, because it has the ability of this car to fold up to 50% of its original size. Daniel Bailey, the designer, figured the two of the main problems of the future in big cities would be the pollution and over population, he wanted to design a car which powered by electricity and a hydrogen fuel cell to deal with the pollution issue, while the fold-able concept is to help with the limited available parking space. Nice to see that modern designers are more and more often coming up with designs that address specific problems which in this case happen to be pollution and lack of space.

Post MUST Be Called "The No More Drama Club"

Major TSB grind today, includng an entertaining interview with Clyde Drexler and some Rookie/Sophomore thoughts. Stay tuned to there.

One of the reasons I hate our book now is that, as I've said several times already, it seems like this season has brought about a subtle-yet-dramatic shift in the NBA. Kobe suddenly became an elder statesman instead of a lightning rod; the 21st century draft classes now rule the roost; a number of younger players have taken their ever-improving games into the All-Star waiting area; and, as one commenter put it, "a generation of good-not-great players" has slipped into irrelevance, gracefully receded, or seen their stories wrapped up with little room for protest. I'm working on a revised table of contents for a (purely hypothetical) 2009-10 Almanac, and it pretty much involves a complete and total overhaul.

But underneath all this is another trend, one that while possibly accidental is certainly worth noting. When pressed to break up recent NBA history into epochs, I'd go with the 1980's/early 1990's Golden Age, then the post-Jordan era, which overlaps the beginning of the Iverson era and then lingers on through it like a ghost with tenure. I'd thought that the period FD has existed through was somehow post-Iverson, where style and identity co-existed with empirical results and make others feel safe. Like the equilibrium the dress code has settled into. In fact, that's the dualism that drives most of the book's profiles, the tension between swaggering inviduality and the need to fit into a viable, and marketable, version of basketball.

This season, it seems like we're entering a new era, one where the sky is patroled by utter professionals with a strong aversion to inner turmoil. We're not just seeing players with simple narratives take over; a lot of them seem way lacking in any kind of narrative, or personality-driven dynamism. In the book, Dr. LIC took Duncan's non-ness as the ultimate enigma; the Recluse found Joe Johnson compelling because he yielded so little that was distinct apart from his game, if even that. Compared to Johnson, Duncan—boring, mordant, mysterious, vacuous—might as well be Kobe Bryant. The new NBA is at peace, resolved, and if not muted, then certainly a place where the rhythms of craft tamp down man and his problems, instead of the latter animating the former. The game is becoming a Platonic ideal (you know I meant it if I make a fucking Plato reference), not a violent three-headed dialectic of self, world, and pastime.



Who are the names we recite this season? LeBron James, otherworldly but impenetrable; Dwyane Wade, a game possessed but a man forever at ease; Chris Paul, a nice guy with a mean streak in competition; Dwight Howard, the goofy big man whose excessive popularity has everything to do with him being one of the league's few fonts of personality, or personality/professionalism tension. Dirk and Chauncey, older dudes who have always been at odds with the NBA's culture of dissonance. Duncan, who in this context comes off as imperfect, and thus enthrailling, pre-history. The aforementioned Joe Johnson, the standard-beared for a new group that includes Brandon Roy, Danny Granger, Al Jefferson, Devin Harris, Jameer Nelson, and David Lee. Even the top rookies, Derrick Rose and O.J. Mayo, are in part being praised for their maturity and level-headedness. Professionalism may not have sublimated swagger, but it's certainly well on its way to sublimating it at the expense of—or perhaps in place of—the trials of the self.

There is perhaps no greater evidence of this unexpected shift than the rise of Kevin Durant. Durant's mild-mannered off the court, but on it has a phantasmic bloodlust that's equal parts sneaky, vicious, and just plain mysterious. He's also the best small forward the West and yes, I agree with Simmons that he's the league's most underrated player. Watch him over a couple days. Not only does he look every bit the force he was at UT; gone are those quarters of nebulousness or frustrated jump-shooting. Durant goes to the rim stronger, faster and more insistent than we'd thought possible, while retaining all the sleek, slippery qualities that define his movements on the court. He rebounds, sometimes with a force bordering on outrage, and sets up teammates with tough passes. And on defense, there's determination if not always results, and feats that use his length to its fullest. What's more, Durant's gaining power (figurative, dudes, so maybe it should be "powers") every day, such that the improvement over a couple weeks is noticeable.

He's also now better than Carmelo Anthony, who while he may be the most complete offensive player in the game, and a far more committed rebounder and defender this season, is always subject to his passions. What's more, our perception of Melo, and his life in public, are always a function of the complexities surrounding his person, or persona. Melo is the epitome of post-Iverson, a player undeniably hood but trying to synthesize that with good basketball. However, there's no separation there, much less sports overtaking the rest of the world. And while I hate to say it, Durant's partly a better player because he's less distracted, his development less loaded, and his style full of details that warrant purely aesthetic (or technical) critique, rather than the kind of all-encompassing blather this site specializes in.

I fully acknowledge that Durant has not turned out to be a force for utter change. But perhaps even the meta-discourse of revolution and renewal is moot, at least for a while. This is an age of reconciliation for the NBA, with itself and its audience. Now is not the time to thrust forth radicals or make us deal with the madness of others, but the period when we take stock of what came before, consolidate and digest it, and as I said the first time I got all worked up about this subject, appreciate it.

Muse and Mechanics

Skeets and myself are both very busy men with a constant need to consume virgin blood and walk on ice. But when we aren't so busy, or need to take time out from said business to determine the future of basketball, the topic often turns to the alley-oop. It's often decried as the ultimate in showy, bombastic play—and not surprisingly, has been a hallmark of all the most FD teams ever. However, it's also money when executed by a pinpoint guard and masterful leaper. In fact, it can be so hard to stop, such an easy way to get points, that it sometimes feels like the new low post. That's one of those moments where I really understand why Hubie Brown constantly observes that the game is now above the rim, has an added dimension, and all that. Certainly, the likes of Paul and Chandler view it as a set play. And I can get bored by players who can only get points off of alley-oops, which certainly strengthens their case as something worthwhile.

If you accept the alley-oop as more like the pick-and-roll than the windmill, all sorts of perceptual doors begin to loosen. Remember McGrady's off-the-backboard self-oop? Why not use the backboard as a second floor, thus adding another (fourth?) dimension to the game. It sounds fancy and frivolous, but again, we're talking set plays, or at least shit that's been worked on in practice. Take a look at this Hedo/Howard connect, about 1:48 in.



Now, this might have been a botched shot. But the timing is so perfect, and the point of impact so high, it's hard to not see a glint of intentionality in there. And it was out of a timeout. If you buy that, then follow, and tell me it's not every bit as smart as a bounce pass into the lane. Plus, this is Hedo Freakin' Turkgolu, a player known to style a little, but hardly a hot dogger. Despite the sheer kookiness of the play, on the whole it feels a lot less trangressive than pretty much every possession of the 2006-07 Warriors.

What's the next step? Maybe this clip—granted, from high school, but introducing a totally volleyball element to the mix that echoes Wilt's never-ending devotion to that second sport.



When floating bodies become a passing surface, then all of a sudden I get dizzy and you're in the realm of basketball gadget plays. Exceptions, not a considerable planar extension of time and space. Still, this could work, people, and the more the NBA begins to see the 'oop as foundational, the more possible this kind of thing becomes. In effect, it becomes the new alley-oops.

Maybe we're putting the heads ahead of the other heads. But remember, the dunk itself was once thought of as useless tomfoolery. Now, most people would agree that relatively sane dunking is the easiest way to ensure the ball goes through the hoop. The paradox of progress is that imagination is always linked to style, and yet it also provides the seed for innovation that changes the face of function. Think about the way the Suns or Warriors use to alter the dimensions of the court (scrapped book idea: using advanced physics to prove this), all through a mode of play dripping with style. Is a team like the Magic or Hornets this close to another great, sustained breakthrough?

(Further, unrelated reading: Shoals Unlimited on losers and All-Star selection. Also, note all the questions posed herein. In one of the older chats I looked at to craft this post, Skeets and I decide that asking questions is the key to audience participation. What do you think?)

Rocket Takes a Bounce

So I've figured out why my writing over here has slowed to a trickle. It isn't that, after five years, the well's run dry, or the league has passed us by. It's that what keeps me writing on a daily basis, and what has "FD-ness" constantly subject to re-examination and its own wicked permeability, is the shock of the new. The sense that, in no particular order, there are new faces cropping up in the league, bringing with them new ideas about how to play the game, no matter how micro they may be. This season, however, such jagged wonder is in short supply. LeBron's Cavs, and the unleashed James and Wade, are ironically among the few things that consistently grab and shake me like they demanded my attention. We can argue about exactly what NEW means, but I know it when I see it.

Everything else, I term "appreciation." That's not to say that Granger or Harris or boring or uninspired. Just that they don't call me to action in the same way. They're unique, but not original to the point of shifting those around them. They break with the Right Way mold, but don't revolutionize all by themselves. And perhaps most importantly, while better than we'd anticipated, they aren't surprises. These two, along with Durant, Roy, Jefferson and Rondo, are somewhere between NEW and old guard. They're the guard changing, in such a way that if we had to redo the book right now, I feel like only LeBron, Paul, Kobe, and maybe Amare (down year) would be in a revised edition. The next generation is settling in, hierarchies becoming clear, and while the league feels different than it did in 2007-08, a shift is not the same as blaring change.



I don't believe this is just fatigue on my part. I think Mayo has come the closest, even if his game isn't particularly radical. With all the hype surrounding PGs, Rose was supposed to be this good. Actually, I did feel something watching Webber on Inside the NBA on Monday. With all due respect to Barkley, fuck Barkley. Webber says shit like "prominence doesn't equal significance," engages Kenny is a discussion of personality vs. character, and seems like he's going to burst if he can't get some of this shit off of his chest. That personality/character distinction might be exactly the snare I've been hitting. Webber was claiming that no matter what LeBron's outward personality was, you could see his dead-serious character in his eyes on the court. Kenny wondered if the lack of a cutthroat manner was still a problem. Or something like that; I wish that clip would appear.

What I'm still not sure of is whether this season is rich with personality but low on character, character-rife but lacking personality, or proving that, at least for me, the two are inseparable. EDIT: To me, the question was whether one trumped the other, and whether one, the other, or both were absolute. I think that's applicable to my take on this season.

More importantly: If you want to own a piece of history, and live in the Pacific Northwest, hit me up and I'll tell you what store currently has Detlef Schrempf's record collection in its possesion. The collection is equal parts 1983-1987 R&B like Shalamar and Ray Parker, Jr., European pressings of Dylan and Neil Young, and some stuff that's literally, drably, Kraut rock, as in, campy rock by self-satirizing Germans. If Germans are in fact capable of such a thing intentionally. All the black stuff is still in the shrink. I will be charging a small finder's fee for each tip.