FD Guest Lecture: Where Magaling Happens

Paeng Bartolome (aka Rafe Bartholomew) blogs at Manila Vanilla and has written a book on Philippine basketball, to be published in June.

When I was growing up in early 1990s New York, I thought everyone played ball. Shammgod, Ron-Ron and Steph were still in high school, and back then all we could talk about was their handles, not—as they moved on to college and the pros—how coaches should handle them. Of course, hoops didn't actually hold the entire city in its grasp, but it felt that way. I wore Olaf's shorts under my jeans every day in ninth grade; everyone I knew played ball, and anyone who didn't play I had no reason to know.

Alas, I grew up. I had to go to college, get a job, widen my frame of reference to acronyms beyond the PSAL, NAIA, NCAA and NBA. The sport was no longer my life, just a part of it. That's pretty typical for most kids who possessed some talent but nothing special and had to figure out plan B. Still, I missed the feeling of being surrounded by the game, of living in a place where everyone seemed to have a connection to basketball. A year after I finished school, I was lucky enough to find that place again, but I had to travel 8,000 miles to get there—the Philippines.



I had an idea of what I might find there. A few scenes of Filipinos committing out-of-this world acts of hoops devotion in Alexander Wolff's Big Game, Small World tipped me off, but nothing could prepare me for the depth and richness of the Philippines' basketball culture. The first time I stepped off an airplane in Manila, I saw passengers boxing out for front-row spots around the baggage carousel. At first I dismissed it as a hopeful mirage whipped up by researcher bias, but then I saw one passenger attempt to backstroke the person in front of him out of the way. He slid his hand under the other guy's armpit and pretended to yawn while raising his arm and pushing the other traveler behind him. It almost worked, but the guy in front kept his outside foot in front of the stroker's and denied the ensuing attempt to step through. Their technique was too pure. It was undeniable—basketball had seeped into the most mundane acts of everyday Philippine life.

Let's compress the messy and not-particularly-pretty history of U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines, not because it's unimportant but because it's difficult to explain in a paragraph, and I'm trying to stay focused on basketball. The vital fact, as far as the sport is concerned, is that Americans brought basketball to the Philippines in 1911, just twenty years after Naismith hung a peach basket on a wall in Springfield. Filipinos were probably the first people after Americans to play the sport seriously, and by the 1930s college and commercial leagues had become first-rate entertainment in Manila, events where society types fanned themselves in courtside seats and everyday fans dangled their feet from the rafters.

The conventional wisdom regarding Philippine basketball is that it is just like the American game, only the players are six inches shorter at every position. Blame the long shadow of colonial history for this misconception. American influence has been overstated by foreign writers who stayed a week in Manila, noticed that Filipino guards had more shake than their counterparts elsewhere in Asia, and credited Uncle Sam. Filipino columnists have been equally guilty of spreading the lie, often as part of a rhetorical argument (that has little to do with reality on the court) against U.S. influence on Philippine national affairs. The truth is that basketball has been a marquee sport in the Philippines for the better part of a century, time enough for the game to develop on its own, spinning off new styles like successful mutations, and evolving into something uniquely Filipino.

That ought to be enough context. Now, with some help from YouTube, here are five terms to describe the basics of the Philippine game.

•Umupo sa ere – translation: To sit in the air. Most Filipino players lack the height to pull off SportsCenter-worthy dunks. They don't, however, lack hops. Slashers in the PBA, Manila's professional league (also the second-oldest in the world, after Boss Stern's Association), have substituted the circus layup for the dunk as the ultimate expression of basketball artistry. Shots that look like once-in-a-lifetime lucky chucks are actually taken by design. Well, not exactly design, because for players like Samboy “Skywalker” Lim, the subject of two lengthy tribute videos (first above), the plan is to get into the lane and into the air. After that, there is no plan, other than to “sit in the air,” spinning and twisting, pumping and clutching until a chance to shoot materializes. In the American game, mid-air improvisation more often seems like a last resort, a flash of brilliance made necessary by a challenge, like Vince Carter's last-second squirm to dunk over and around Anderson Varejao on Sunday; it's more of a strategy for Filipino scorers, who will look to break down their opponents in the air, rather than on the ground. Samboy may have the longest highlight reels with the most sublime musical accompaniments—Yanni and Kenny Loggins—but he is certainly not the only player to master these hoops flights of fancy; Vergel “The Aerial Voyager” Meneses and Bong “Mr. Excitement” Alvarez, helped Lim perfect the art in 1990s, and guards like Cyrus Baguio and Arwind Santos keep it alive today.



•Pektos – translation: spin. If you're going to jump before deciding how to finish the play, you better be able to score from all angles and from an array of release points. To that end, PBA scorers like Lim and his modern day forebears James Yap and Willie Miller, combine spin and touch with scoops and finger rolls to bank shots like they were born with a Spalding in one hand and a protractor in the other. They may have grown up speaking tongues like Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilonggo, but their use of shot-making English could leave H.L. Mencken at a loss for words. Spin is such a necessary part of the Philippine game that when large numbers of Filipino-Americans started coming back to play in the Nineties, guys from Cali received earnest instructions to imagine they were unscrewing a lightbulb while shooting layups.

The emphasis on pektos is due in part to the Philippine penchant for improvisation, but it also has to do with the lack of standardization in basketball courts and training techniques around the country. The Philippines is a poor nation, and although a startling amount of public money has been spent on constructing cement courts with roofs, overhead lights and fiberglass backboards, thousands more jerry-rigged hoops pepper the nation, built by people who decided to make do with a flat patch of earth and a rusted car hood lashed to a coconut tree. Countless Philippine pros learned the game in ad hoc style on homemade courts, mimicking their uncles' moves and trying out their own shots. These guys had little exposure to proper hardwood or knowledgeable coaching until high school or sometimes college. Of course, they eventually learned textbook basketball, but by then their self-taught skills couldn't be unlearned. Thus, almost every player possesses his own, abnormal genius—unteachable shots born of the extra-wide gaps between the two-by-fours that passed for a backyard backboard or a piece of rebar bent into a too-small rim.

•Gulang – translation: craftiness. This word is actually the root of the Tagalog term for parents, a neat double-entendre that emphasizes the built-in respect for experience in Philippine culture and, by extension, basketball. A player who has been around long enough to master the sport's dirty tricks has earned the right to take advantage of younger opponents. These dark arts include the holding and pushing that occurs on courts across the globe, but a special appreciation is reserved for sneakiness. You'll almost never see these acts caught on camera, but a few afternoons on Philippine playgrounds or a night of drinking with one of the PBA's retired defensive specialists will reveal a litany of basketball deceits. My favorite is hand- or finger-holding. Set a high screen in the Philippines, and chances are when you try to roll you won't be going very far. Ditto for when you get ready to jump for a rebound and find yourself tethered to the ground. What happened? Someone latched onto your index finger and tugged just enough to kill your momentum. You've been made a victim of gulang, which, in English, would be kind of like saying you got sonned.



•Ginebra – This isn't a term, it's a team, which is named after a brand of gin. It's also something of a movement, the runaway most popular team in the Philippines (although recent surveys suggest this title is not so clear-cut) that is synonymous with never-say-die basketball and its most famous practitioner, Robert Jaworski. This hoops Methuselah might have played to the death if being elected to the Senate in 1998 hadn't forced him to vacate his role as Ginebra's player/coach at the tender age of 52. When Jaworski was with Ginebra, the crowd was so notorious for showering the court with peso coins and AA batteries that opposing teams kept beach umbrellas under the bench and opened them up for protection from the inevitable fusillades. Nowadays, that frothy fandom is mostly channeled into chanting “Hee-neh-brah!” loud enough to shake the 15,000-seat Araneta Coliseum. That devotion also shows up in comically intense YouTube tributes like the “Princes of the Universe” video. If you can get over the words “I AM IMMORTAL” scrolling across the bottom of the screen when Jaworski appears, you'll see some splendid footage of one of the PBA's most exciting teams of the Nineties.

You may also notice Noli Locsin (6), the archetypical Philippine undersized power forward. That is, a 6-foot-3 bruiser who moves like Baryshnikov. Enough bulky fours – Nelson Asaytono, Alvin Patrimonio, Ali Peek—have combined agility and beefiness to make the miraculous blend seem fairly unremarkable, but none so dramatically as “The Tank” Locsin, who looked like he ate a kilo of rice at every meal and hung in the lane like he was riding Aladdin's carpet.



•Larong buko – translation: coconut game. The opening clip in this countdown is a reminder that the Philippine game embraces a healthy amount of silliness. These loose ball carnivals are common and popular enough to have earned the colloquialism larong buko, which suggests the players are handling the ball so poorly it might as well be a coconut. Aside from the surprising frequency of such moments at the professional level, it's worth noting that these are often the crowds' favorite parts of games. Fans will reward ten seconds of the ball squirting around like a greased pig and the players diving and sliding in pursuit with a few minutes of standing ovation. It goes back to the participatory nature of Philippine basketball—Filipino fans don't just admire the game, they play it, and nothing seems to please them more than the free-wheeling, frenetic, occasionally sloppy style of ball that they practice on their own neighborhood courts.



Watching these videos, someone might conclude that Samboy's virtuoso finishes and Noli's round mound act are cute novelties, but that these players can only pull off their moves because there are no shot-blockers in the PBA. They're probably right—the PBA game is played, by and large, below the rim, and if you dropped Josh Smith into these games he'd gobble shots like Pacman. So what? A country's basketball style develops according to the physical constraints and cultural intangibles that—in criminally general terms—make Americans the cagiest ball-handlers and strongest finishers, Eastern Europeans the most accurate shooters, and Filipinos the finest layup artists. I don't care that the Timberwolves could beat Ginebra by fifty; I care that the Philippine Basketball Association showcases a gorgeous and joyous brand of hoops and makes its own kind of amazing happen.

It's Judgment That Defeats Us

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Like virtually all of his ‘We Believe’ teammates before him, turns out that Captain Jack was never quite as happy with being an act in Donnie Nelson’s circus as we once presumed.

Bear in mind that this is a player-coach combo once thought to have built the best rapport in the league. When on Oakland’s local sports-talk radio they would regularly call in as anonymous listeners to pose goofy questions to each other. Nelson gave Jackson more minutes and more regular minutes than any other player on the squad, which is actually quite an accomplishment since Nelson benched players like Jamal Crawford, who should nicely compliment his system, and the Anthony Randolph, who should be a fucking thunder-lizard or something, for the bulk of the season. Point is it’s becoming rather obvious that Don Nelson is to the NBA as Colonel Kurtz is to Vietnam.

Nelson is a man tortured and ruined by the combination of his own genius and the impossibility of his circumstance. Donnie can turn some undrafted kid out of the Georgia Institute of Technology into an explosive scorer in his rookie season, but couldn’t have cultivated a healthy, professional relationship with Dikembe Mutumbo. And while this phenomenon might be endlessly interesting to a casual observer, it seems to be particularly frustrating to those living the dream.

In the most FD of ways, Nelson’s dementia is clearly reflected by the style of his system, which makes his insanity almost a necessity. As I’ve written about in the past, teams that play asymmetrical basketball can be extremely effective, but are still extremely uncommon. This is because there are three enormous roadblocks that tend to prevent the more sane coaches in the association from being given a chance to prove their genius.



While Don Nelson has broken the mold by simply refusing to acknowledge the existence of any societal norm, most of us prefer not to have conversations with the demons inside our skulls, so front offices tend to get stuck on these worries:

Social: Lots of people pretend like peer-pressure isn’t real. Lots of social scientists know it’s an incredibly powerful force in decision making. Lots of professional sports teams have fans, which provide an enormous social pressure. NBA front offices trying to build unique squads have to make unique, sometimes questionable roster moves. Since lots of the fans aren’t members of the front office, it’s incredibly difficult for a franchise to teach them the rationale behind their action without alerting every other team in the league. And that kind of defeats the purpose of running a sneaky strategy the other teams aren’t built to counter.

Unless you’re Chris Wallace, chances are you don’t want to be perceived by your fans or the national media as like Chris Wallace—not to insinuate Chris Wallace is covertly building an asymmetrical team, just to insinuate most teams would probably rather hire Isiah Thomas as their new GM at this point. Some franchises manage to answer this convoluted equation, normally by branding their style so fans and media understand their personnel decisions. But most franchises find it much easier to just remove the whole unique squad part from the equation, then all you need to do to quell those incessantly riotous fans is trade for Shaq.

Cultural: This equation is much shorter. Coaches and GM’s aren’t always on the same page. Because of the ‘No Championships’ propaganda and the reason above, GM’s resist making particularly creative roster choices. Coaches need to win, or they get fired. So if the coach has a traditional lineup, there is too much pressure from the NBA’s win-or-burn coaching culture for that coach to tinker with the way the lineup is constructed and utilized. Who really wants to save a world that is destined to die?

As evidence I would like to submit that coaches using a unique system typically have nothing to lose because of their status (read: large and long contracts, or exceptionally short leash): D’Antoni, Nelson, Adelman, Karl are the legends; Stan Van Gundy and a bunch of interim coaches are the outcasts who need to show sparks of genius to have any hope of staying an NBA head coach.



Economic: Common sense would edict that a team using its personnel in unique ways to maximize their ability and minimize their flaws would get some serious discounts on players. In theory because they’re getting the maximum value out of each players skills, these teams could get by paying less for players who are seen as flawed in most systems. Sadly because of the branding issue even the most innovative team needs to have some semblance of consistency in player roles. The more unique your team becomes, the more unique skill-set necessary to make it work, thus the rarer the player that will plug into your asymmetrical system.

Since players and agents aren’t fucking morons, they know their team’s unique needs and use this as an advantage in their negotiations. How does a dude named Andrea makes $50 million over 5 years from a team bidding against itself, despite failing to contribute for a bad team over his entire career? He is seven-foot tall and can shoot on a team that’s trying to build the NBA’s closest approximation of Euro-ball. The Raptors have the opportunity to emerge as the strangest team in the NBA next season, but had to pony up serious cash to make it happen. I’m not exactly a trained economist, but common sense tells me that if supply equals one, it doesn’t take tons of demand for the price to rise.

Like most systems that persist over time, team development is well reinforced by structural forces that are perpetuated from Grand Minister Stern all the way down to the most ignorant of fans. There isn’t even an ounce of hope for Reformation at this point. Nelson is too egomaniacal to lead the revolution, the Magic are too repentant for their loss, and D’Antoni is too not in Chicago.

So where, precisely, are we, the fans who want nothing more than to just see something fucking new and different, to go from here? Well it looks like in the foreseeable future we’ll just have to keep on elevating our heartbeats over the positively titillating news that flawed dunk specialist Hakim Warrick will be joining the incredibly raw rookie Brandon Jennings, who might not even start over Luke Ridinour. And we will keep watching insufferably ugly, slow Bobcats games just to catch the token Gerald Wallace highlight. Or maybe we’ll track a Suns team that is a ghostly, back-from-Siberia version of its glory years. Crazy Donnie, you are a much stronger man than I.

Still Waters Run Shallow

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Trevor hates sports more than, perhaps, anything else. In fact Trevor’s has irrational hate for everything that doesn’t pique his interest is the only thing that keeps me from definitively saying sports are the main target of his loathing. You see Trevor prefers to spend his days as an active citizen, devouring monographic texts on the complexities of nuclear deterrence theory. He fancies himself a thinker, an intellectual even, and resents that others are more interested in half-heartedly watching a second episode of Sportscenter instead of making sure to catch this week’s U.S.-Chinese Strategic Economic Dialogue on CSPAN.

So needless to say I was skeptical when Trevor sent me an article he described as “probably about basketball, you like that, don’t you?” I damn near closed the tab when I saw a goofy white dude with thick rimmed glasses and a weak ass ‘fro staring back at me, until I read the subtitle: “When underdogs break the rules.” Intriguing. Except horrible.

When I talked to Trevor later that day I told him how I thought the article was fucking stupid. I straight up murdered that shit. Guess what pal? No fourteen year old team is really all that talented, so it’s not like the metaphorical glass ceiling was too high for up and coming team to break shatter. Not to take anything away from the sport, but my high school’s girls team once scored under 20 points in a game—scratch that, a win.

Trevor, possessing a biting wit, responded, “Didn’t you just write like a page long feature about how bad-ass some team was cause they were so odd?” Oops, there goes gravity.



The team in question was the Golden State Warriors. And the short piece theorized that if we remember sports are ultimately an exchange of entertainment for pay, wherein wins and losses are just one function of entertainment, then the W’s are actually one of the most successful teams in the league. Their games are thrilling, they give 48 minutes of excitement, and the constant tension between Nellie and his riotous players fosters a compelling and dramatic narrative. While the team might not be win many games, both the Golden State Warriors and their fans are certainly winners.

But every time we boot up ESPN, watch Sir Charles rant on Inside the NBA, or listen to the B.S. Report we are reminded that championships and wins are the measure of the quality of sport. On top of that brainwashing we’re reminded that only certain types of teams win championships—teams that are about as unique as Simmons’ punch lines.

As a result of this propaganda most fans perceive unique teams like the Warriors as gadgets or tricksters, somehow perennially inferior to the real contenders. The Magic can’t win in a series—live by the three die by the three, bad luck will eventually hit. And my, oh my, look at that Rafer Alston’s street ball moves, aren’t they a neat distraction! The Nuggets don’t have any chance—up-tempo teams just don’t play enough defense to win big games. By the way, friends, please note that J.R. Smith has no basketball awareness. It must be because those tattoos cover his eyes too!



Of course in reality the curse of the three-pointer is a myth carried over from the NCAA’s one-and-done tournament format and streaky shooters. The Magic shot the three more consistently than any other team deep in the playoffs, which makes sense considering that the greater the sample the more likely you are to find the mean. As far as fast pace equaling a lack of defense, Denver was 6th in the league in defensive efficiency despite missing Kenyon Martin for much of the season, much better than even moribund grinders like the Spurs and Trailblazers. Anyone who watched the Denver’s playoff losses recognized they lost due to late game offensive blunders, not defense.

Considering how few teams played with a style asymmetrical to league trends last season, I count 8 (Knicks, 76ers, Magic, Pacers, Rockets [without Yao], Nuggets, Warriors, Suns), isn’t it modestly impressive that half made the playoffs, none were embarrassed, and two made the Conference Finals? If you play the percentages, teams who employ unique strategies to maximize their advantages actually tend to be competitors more often. Now remember that the Suns would probably still be in the Conference Finals picture too if it weren’t for their owner’s shameful identity crisis.

Perhaps it was fate that the Suns would be betrayed by their owner, since the only thing that had ever kept them from winning multiple champions was catching a couple breaks. Or, rather, they caught too many breaks. Joe Johnson broke his face, Amar’e broke his knees, Amar’e and Diaw broke the rules, and Nash broke his nose. But Steve Nash standing back up, defiant with his face bloodied, will be my image of a winner’s spirit forever. The pained determination in his eyes was enough to make you wonder if he had asked God why he had forsaken him. And yet since we all should be preaching “defense wins championships” so kids will learn to be winners for life at elementary school basketball camps, the story books will remember Nash and the seven-seconds-till-death Suns as nothing but an entertaining sideshow to the Spurs dynasty.



Yes, the haters are right that none of these eight teams have won a championship lately, and they’re right that recently the ranks on Larry O’Brien’s trophy are devoid of a team with a unique, non-traditional style. But consider the three greatest dynasties in the NBA’s history: the Bill Russell Celtics, the Showtime Lakers, and the Jordan Bulls. Believe it or not, Russel’s Celtics thrived off fast-breaks at a time when clothes-lining a streaking wing was considered a defensive fundamental. The Showtime Lakers overcame having stars named Ferdinand and Earvin to become flashy to a fault at times, they admittedly made no effort on defense, and the guy named Earvin could and would play all five positions. Of the three only the Jordan Bulls even vaguely resembles what we now know as the prototypical blueprint for success, whatever the fuck that even means, and that’s likely only because Jordan’s dominance shaped the model in our collective minds.

A week or two ago I was chatting with Trevor and we stumbled into a breezy conversation about Third World development and dependency theory. To explain my point I dropped a little round ball reference: the Lakers want the Kings to try to build around Kevin Martin like he’s Kobe, because they know the Kings will never grow into contenders that way. They want the Grizzlies’ young core to fail because they can rape their greatest resources for a pittance in return. And the fans are strung along the whole way, struggling to subsist while waiting for that true shooting guard or seven foot shot-blocking center they just know is the final piece.

I was pretty proud of the metaphor, and thought I might have smartly, meaningfully bridged the gap between disciplines.

But Trevor just told me it was fucking stupid.

Ferocity Touches a Vein

Today's guest lecture comes from Brian Lauvray, whom Chicagoans may know from his post at Gapers Block's Tailgate sports section...Brian brings to us a piece on one of our favorite subjects, Usain Bolt, who the Recluse nicely pitted against Amare and Michael Phelps in a piece from last summer. This summer, we join Bolt, and Lauvray (metaphysically), in Switzerland...



This week and across the pond in Europe the titanic freak-of-physics, Usain Bolt redefined swag and athleticism with one deft 19.53 200 m "jog." Seriously, forget "Impossible is Nothing," Bolt is going door-to-door asking for donations in difficulty. To wit, in Lausanne here's what went down: (note: vid is in Italian)




Fierce head wind, check; driving rain storm, check; pre-race: Bolt? Flipping his fingers like under-sized windshield wipers while flexin' and apin' for the umbrella-ed crowd; race: Bolt singularly putting the competition in a headlock and putting world-records and history --HIS world-records, mind you-- on notice, that he's coming. If LeBron, Kobe and on certain nights McGrady or pre-injury Gilbert redefine "virtuoso" and "appallingly efficient and single-handed dominance in a team realm," Bolt's performance at Lausanne emerges as a hyperbolic defying, amalgamate of Arenas' kooky candidness/antics and Kobe's iron-will to crush the spines of those who stand before him, all within a matter of minutes (pre-race/post-race: swag and show) and seconds (race: execution in the face of all-comers and Mother Nature's ornery mixtape of pelting rain and cursed wind).

Track and Field is a difficult comparison to our beloved Association --one is a battle of man vs man vs man vs man; and the other team vs team, only in the relays do you have "teams;" and even in the NBA where, on any given night, an individual can carry a team to victory: he still carried a TEAM. Track is strictly man vs man, as in the simplistic breakdown of boxing: "One man punches another man harder and more frequently," track is (again K.I.S.S.ing it here, folks): "I ran waaaaay faster than you." The actual competitions and nature of the distances --over 200 M pro racers are too close in skill for acts of brazen celebratory excess-- in T n F leave very little room for style or swag as opposed to the NBA where in-game style is self-evident. But stylistically what is galling about Bolt is that not only does he carry himself with unlimited confidence and showmanship pre and post-race, during the races he still carries that "swag" along with his invisible jetpack and the perfect form that allows his 6'5" frame to effortlessly eclipse others who should, by all previous track measures and conventions, be eclipsing HIM!

Watch the replay of the race closely and witness the utmost calm that his body maintains from start to finish; as other racers begin gnashing their teeth, tensing their bodies on each stride, and grimacing from the lactic acid coursing through their veins --no doubt begging for this very public humiliation to end; Bolt is beginning to grin, his countenance at the very worst pains of the sprint, slightly more expressive than "Uh-oh, did I remember to pay the cable bill this month?" and not near the Munch-eaen "Baby, Come Back! She didn't mean nothing!" expression of his "competitors." Where before in track the signposts of style and swagger were superficial commodities: Carl Lewis' black wraparound shades at the '84 Los Angeles games, Michael Johnson's gold Nike spikes in '96 Atlanta and '00 in Sydney; Bolt, has delivered with himself an article-free swag that is as much breezy, Jamaican, palm-lined, beach as it muscle-bound giraffe with the heart of a tiger that broke free from Dr. Moerau's island. In Beijing last summer with an untied shoe, dude, slowed in the final 35 meters of the 100 and still won gold. Again, people pre-Bolt did not win races by having untied shoelaces and definitely not by slowing down with a third of the race left to run...

I have a fair amount of intimacy in "the racing sports" (2000 US National Team Development Camp, Holler!) and an adage that a former mentor of mine once said rings hollow with Bolt. To paraphrase my old coach: "There comes a time in every race, where every single competitor has a neon-sign above their heads saying 'Kick my ass' and that's when you crush them." Yet, with Bolt, the neon-sign is swinging above the competition's collective heads before the race has even begun. The men lined up next to him are less his rivals and more dead men walking.

Exhuming Pizarro

Hello all, and welcome to another FD Guest Lecture. This one comes to you courtesy of Brendan K. O'Grady, author of 2nd Round Reach.

When you start to win as many championships as the Los Angeles Lakers have, it’s not good enough to just talk about how nice it is to win. So, starting sometime in May, the narrative of LA’s playoffs became an extreme program of self-reflective mythmaking in the name of one Kobe Bryant, administered to us for the better part of two months by Nike, Gatorade, and the World Wide Leader in Sports.

But now, weeks removed from the din of pomp and ceremony, let us take a moment to consider the championship as it presents an equally significant legacy statement for not merely one man, nor his teammates, nor even the storied franchise for whom they won it, but rather for an aggregation of oft-impugned ballers who have now been gifted with their ultimate rebuttal: The Euro.

For the better part of two decades, the term “Euro” immediately evoked something resembling one of two primary archetypes: Either men with floppy hair and too-slight builds for their height, or men with high-cheek beards and good passing skills from the post. The pioneering Euros- men like Sabonis, Petrovic, Divac, Smits, and Kukoc- had influential careers, in some cases earning the respect of league-wide accolades and even winning a little. But the modest successes they presented immediately lead to over-eagerness from NBA teams for still greater returns. These mysterious figures from distant lands represented possibilities unknown but unconstrained, a Myth Of The Next bonanza promising to make “once-in-a-generation” talents a “two-or-three-times-in-a-draft” reality.

When Pau Gasol entered the league in 2001, he was the perfect player at the perfect time to further feed the league’s enthusiasm for Euros. A super-skilled ROY in waiting, his intercontinental qualities were never as apparent as those seasons he spent at work on the blocks, maneuvering his still-skinny frame around defenses and stuffing stats across the box score. He was hailed as a cornerstone, savior of a team that could never attract talent that wasn’t shipped in from overseas and didn’t know any better that Memphis was among everybody’s least favorite cities on an NBA road trip. Before too long, Pau grew his beard and his grit, and soon he lead the lowly Grizzlies to their first playoffs, all the while colored with nouns like “finesse” and “gracefulness.”

But Gasol would prove to be more the exception than the rule. Sometime around the mid 2000s, after committing untold millions to prospects not long for NBA rosters, the word “Euro” started to become a stigma, synonymous with “longshot” when spoken of a teenagers born internationally, and a near-pejorative when describing domestic products who possess a solid stroke and no defensive ability.

By the mid-2000s, speculation on Euro futures had come to a head, but the continent had yielded fewer successes than the time, money and draft picks invested might have otherwise dictated. The reputation of the Euro as an under-performer might well have been cemented then, as the first Euro Decade had almost entirely proven itself a litany of outright failure.



The most obvious point of redress here is the obvious question of the Dynasty Spurs, from whom a vocal minority of NBA fans will claim as many as three era-defining Euros with as many championships between them. But a cursory glance reveals that the effect of their supposedly heightened Euro presence has been greatly exaggerated.

First of all, quick guards might be the most borderline of all Euro postionalities- a higher-percentage version of the American “combo guard” counterparts. Scorer/distributors of this mold are rarely tagged as “soft”, even if they come with funny accents. But much more importantly, neither Parker nor Ginobili were ever anything less than wholly sublimated to the collective cause of winning in a system driven by the supreme force of the Popavich/Duncan spirit tandem. And while Timmy was neither born nor raised a continental, by now he’s surely been recognized as definitively less an “international” player than, say, a Kobe Bryant (or hell, even a Carlos Boozer.) Oh, and Ime Udoka is from Oregon. Seriously. Look that shit up.

With so many mitigators at play, San Antonio remains, at best, a heavily-qualified case for the Euro’s redemption.

Then there were those magical Suns teams of recent memory, which flirted revolution on many fronts, most of which were imported from other countries. Mike D’Antoni was a star as a player in Italy, and critics initially dismissed the run n’ gun offense as a charming curio, carried over from less competitive leagues across the pond. The Steve Nash/Leandro Barbosa tandem possessed such seemingly preternatural packages of ability, vision, speediness and control that a logical path of least resistance immediately (and stupidly) attributed them to exotic heritage, and the therefore-inescapable influence of soccer on their play. And then there was the positional enigma-cum-puzzle-box that is Boris Diaw. At their philosophical foundations, those teams were as radically “European” a phenomenon as anything since the Frankfurt School.

But the fact of all the “7 seconds or less” rhapsodizing now really just betrays that smug condescension toward those squads that we knew was always there. The mainstream of basketball tradition can afford look back fondly on memories of the entertaining desert upstarts because, well, conventional wisdom was right all along, wasn’t it?

“That stuff may be fun, but it doesn’t win championships.”

Inevitably, expectations lowered. Franchises would still scout Europe, but rarely for anything more than a quality rotation player. And just when it started to look like the Euro would never cast off the stereotypes thrust upon them by years of ridicule and flopping, what might have been the penultimate blow to their collective reputation was dealt...

As the best player of the 2006-2007 season, Dirk Nowitzki was poised to become the greatest Euro in history. His Mavericks were a confluence of players with complementary and very American styles (as presented by Stackhouse, Jason Terry, and especially Josh Howard) yet all were molded around Dirk’s singular, distinctly foreign presence. He brought an alien skill set, and altered the course of the NBA’s season with the effect that only a 7-foot white shooting guard masquerading as a power forward could have on the game.

Their collapse against Miami the previous year was brutal, to be sure, but the edges were softened a bit by the world’s realization of Wade’s ascendance and the knowledge that they would endure and come back nothing but hungrier. The loss may well have fueled Dallas as they navigated an absurdly competitive field to achieve a league-best regular season campaign, and the catalyst for a return trip to the Finals (stop me if this sounds familiar.)

And for prolonged stretches in that year, Dirk’s Euroness was synonymous with the strength of granite mountains, and no longer spoken of with the superficial novelty that once would have come in the same breath as the words “Nikoloz Tskitishvili.” After the first such sustained period of brilliance from the caste’s greatest hero, no more demoralizing a moment could have existed for the Euro than when a shattered Dirk, all sunken-eyes and vacant smile, shook hands and posed with Stern as he accepted his MVP trophy, just a week after being eliminated from contention during the anarchic Warriors’ impossible paroxysm against reality.



By the start of the next season, Pau Gasol had repeatedly vocalized his annoyance with a franchise that refused to grow with him into an entity worthy of much more than a first round bounce come the postseason. When Chris Wallace caved and sent Pau to the coast, an already better-than-expected Lakers team started looking scary good. And the praise for Pau’s play lasted all the way until the Finals, when he ran smack up against a green wall of shouting, grunting, pushing, elbowing ferocity that quickly put him on his heels.

After being decimated by Boston, Gasol was among the readiest scapegoats on the roster (along with fellow Euros Ronny Turiaf and Sasha Vujacic) and it immediately became common knowledge that the 7 foot Spaniard’s “softness” is what made him anathema to proper, homegrown big men. Even as the Lakers rolled through the west this season, it felt at times that praise for Gasol, while consistent, was somewhat muted as if nobody wanted to be the first to declare Pau a legitimate stud playing for what many portended the soon-to-be champion Lakers.

Then, as the playoffs unfolded, the moral of Dirk’s story was periodically invoked to invalidate Gasol’s role with the eventual champs. Failing to stand up to the interior toughness of Houston/Denver/Orlando (just as his was supposedly the failing versus the Celtics), Pau would have earned a place right beside Dirk in the lamentable lineage of the Euro. And even in winning, his role beside an All-Universe shooting guard who already had three rings of his own would prove their collective curse. Just as Dirk collapsed under the weight of the expectations placed upon him, Gasol would serve as further proof that a Euro could never lead a team to victory himself.

But really, there’s no shame in being the unquestioned second best player on your team when playing beside one of only a handful of men with legitimate claim to the GOAT. And winning a title as a minor role player is something wholly different than what Gasol accomplished going toe-to-toe with Howard. Pau made good on the nearly-abandoned concept of the Euro as an inside presence par excellence, a true Power Forward tested in battle against a DPOY man-child/beast.

Even if Dwight’s nature as a big is of an indeterminate nature in the greater FD ethos, there’s no denying that he’s cast of the immense physicality dreamed of by GMs in a traditionally (read: American) dominant big, nor is there that Pau roundly outplayed him in 5 games. Much more than a learned forward with a fluid game and soft touch, Gasol was reborn in the Finals as a bona-fide force. He out-banged everybody for just about any rebound that mattered, carried LA through long stretches of the games that were close enough to contest, and ran up the score to ensure that the others weren’t.



Still, now and forever, some will say Dirk’s failure should invalidate Gasol’s success and his redemption of the Euro’s name. And the fact is, no- he didn’t do it as the #1 guy. But the naysayers are on the wrong side of a canonical divide. A Finals legacy is benevolence unknown to all but the select few who achieve what Gasol did and Dirk didn’t. History really is written by the victors, and winning softens even the harshest criticism with the patina of time.

The Lore of championships elevated a career second banana to a place in the 50 Greatest list’s golden glow, and begat the yang-adage of popular wisdom that, no, Michael never won without Scottie either. Pau’s playoffs will stand in a similar light, enduring the trials of retrospect, pride in the knowing that although he might never have been first on his team, his was the first Euro title.

Taking One For the Team: On Converting Your S.O. Into A Sports Fan

With the draft dead and summer league weeks away, it's time to ponder other matter. Hence, we turn to Jim Ruland for some sports/relationship advice. Jim is the author of Big Lonesome, a collection of short stories, none of which are about Chris Kaman.

Now you’ve done it. You’ve gone against your best instincts and worst intentions. You’ve risked ridicule from your friends and put your free time (to say nothing of your finances) in serious jeopardy. You have fallen irrefutably, irredeemably in love.

They said be careful. They said look before you leap. But did you listen? No. You threw caution to the wind and pitched yourself over the cliff. You’re like someone with an incurable disease: there’s no hope for you.

Now you find yourself at the crossroads, ready to take the next step and reveal yourself for what you truly are.

A fan.

(You probably thought I was going to say “alternative lifestyle enthusiast” didn’t you? If you did, that means you’re probably a Dallas Cowboys fan, which is more or less the same thing.)

This is a serious dilemma. Potential mates will look past a lot of flaws if the positives outweigh the negatives--lack of education, staggering credit card debt, your asshole friends--but once you’re outed as a sports junkie, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes obvious that you are the asshole friend.

You know those relationship red flags they’re always talking about in a certain type of magazine that usually has Oprah on the cover? It’s not a metaphor. The red flag is your team colors. But there’s no need to surrender. You can win your squeeze over by following these simple steps:

INTRODUCING YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER TO YOUR TEAM

The logical first step is to bring your S.O. to a game, right?

Wrong. First of all, most professional games are long, dull and boring. Being a fan, you do not comprehend this. “Boring? There’s nothing boring about the Lakers/Colts/Red Sox!” To demonstrate how wrong you are, read this review of a performance of “The Nutcracker” by the City Ballet of San Diego. Couldn’t hack it, could you? Now try to imagine being there. For most non-hoops/football/baseball fans, attending a sporting event is like this. Times twenty.

The key to a successful first step in sports fandom immersion is controlling the environment. I don’t recommend watching the game at home for a number of reasons: 1) Old habits die hard. If the game’s tied going into the fourth quarter are you going to remember that she’s even there? 2) You have to clean and/or your parents will embarrass you. 3) You don’t want her to see your LeBron James puppet theater.



But where do you take her? A lot depends on the sport. Here’s a short list ranked from the easiest to most difficult on the conversion scale:

1. Hockey: Really. Everyone loves violence. Most people won’t admit it, but it’s true. Plus, if you’re a hockey fan, chances are you live in a shithole and she’s as starved for quality entertainment as you are. If you’re a transplanted NHL fan, all bets are off. I have a friend in San Diego who is a hardcore hockey nut and on most weekend nights he can be found trolling the Gaslamp Quarter for vacationing Canadians. Sad, very sad.

2. Basketball: It’s fast, it flows, it’s graceful, and it’s acrobatic. It’s also screamingly obvious. Either the ball goes in the bucket or it doesn’t. It’s also exceptionally difficult. We all know people who are convinced they could play pro ball if only their knee hadn’t blown out. Not so with basketball. (Are you 6’9”? Do you have freakishly large hands? Do you have the legs of a gazelle and the heart of an assassin? Then STFU.) The athletes do things on the court that we can only dream about and they do it on the regular and, perhaps most importantly, we can see their facial expressions while they do it. I’m going to suggest it’s poetry in motion or anything like that, but it’s at least the equivalent of a muscular species of doggerel.

3. Football: Let me say this once and get it out the way: football is the most complex game in the history of mankind. What else requires a 53-man roster, a dozen coaches, a few dozen assistants and a small army of equipment people to make the enterprise possible? (Warfare, maybe.) And football is burdened with more Byzantine rules than any one person can be expected to absorb in a single afternoon season. But when an offense or defense executes its game plan it’s astonishing to watch. And if it’s done when the clock is ticking down and everything is on the line, there are few things more dramatic than a come-from-behind victory. Also the fact that the games occur just once a week also works in your favor. It’s a tough sell, but it’s helped along by all the food and fanfare that is considered part of the pageantry.

4. Horse Racing: Don’t believe me? Have you ever seen an actual horse? I’m kind of sort of kidding here but the point that needs to be made is that just about anything is more enjoyable than televised baseball and I say this as a baseball fan. An afternoon spent watching a game of baseball at home is a form of early-onset oldness. You know what goes well with televised baseball? Newspapers and naps. Next thing you know you’ll be drinking prune juice and watching Matlock.

5. Baseball: But only if you’ve had your hip replaced.

THE FIRST SPORTS DATE

I recommend an upscale sports bar. The key is to make it as normal a date as possible with sports as an added bonus. A place that is an official team bar is good because it proves that your preoccupation is shared by others.

A word to the wise: make sure it’s not the place where you normally watch the game as Murphy’s Law dictates that the rival sports fan you almost got into it with or drunken cougar you nearly took home three seasons ago will resurface and put your plans in peril. If you’ve been bounced from all the local watering holes, plan a picnic and listen to the game on the radio. Remember, it’s not like going to the movies where you put all interaction on hold. At the sports bar you have to talk and stuff.

It goes without saying that you will be recording the game and watching it later with the phone turned off and all of your rituals in effect (i.e. burning sage, donning unis, heating up the nacho cheese).

INTRODUCING YOUR S.O. TO YOUR “FRIENDS”

Breaking in a new lover is like breaking in a baseball glove: you have to be rough. You’ve followed my advice and taken the first step and been generous (but not too generous) with the lubricating oil, now it’s time to stick a ball in your lover’s mouth and stuff him or her under the mattress—too far, maybe? The point is you’re going to have to expose your new fling/life partner/mail-order sex slave to a little harsh treatment so when things really get serious they’re battle-tested and ready. I’m talking about introducing them to your friends. Three words: proceed with caution.



There are two kinds of friends: the people we like and the people with whom we watch sports. The two aren’t synonymous. I’m not going to spend the day on a boat fishing with some asshole I can’t stand, but I’ll spend an equivalent amount of time watching the game with him, regardless of how many warrants, divorces and/or DUIs the guy has. Friends come and go but a fan is a fan.

The best scenario for introducing your S.O. to your friends is at a game-watching party held at someone’s house who is extremely successful. This sends the message that successful people are Philadelphia Eagles fans, too. (Just kidding. There’s no such thing as a successful Philadelphia Eagles fan..) There should be a mix of people, male and female, married and single, just like a beer commercial. This may take some effort, some careful planning, possibly even the hiring of actors and bribing of affluent acquaintances. And it must be done in such a way that your S.O. feels like they’re in a beer commercial without actually being aware of it.

TAKING YOUR S.O. TO THE BIG GAME

You’ve taken in some games together, got the “friends” introduction out of the way—now it’s time for the next step: going to a game. Some tips:

1. Don’t cheap out. Get good seats. A fan might be happy to be in the same city as their favorite sports team, but a casual, semi-interested observer needs to be able to actually see the game in order to experience it. Go figure.

2. Be prepared but don’t over-prepare. Going to a game is a colossal pain in the ass. Fans frequently overlook this. Remember the ballet example. Would you tailgate to a ballet? Sit in the parking lot for an hour afterwards because the traffic is grid-locked? Risk being groped in long bathroom lines filled with drunks? (Don’t answer that.) There’s nothing you can do about these things but a little preparation goes a long way. Some things you should never be without during a first date to a game: sunscreen, aspirin, blanket, handy wipes, first aid kit, snacks, full tank of gas, and a shitload of cash.

3. No face paint. For reals. And for god’s sake, don’t forget your medication.

MISCELLANEOUS TIPS FOR SEALING THE DEAL

BE A FRONTRUNNER: Everyone loves a winner. What better way to demonstrate your dominance over the rest of the species than by aligning yourself with newly anointed champions? So go right ahead and dress up in matching Lakers gear. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t.

BAIT & SWITCH: If you know you can’t control yourself during the NBA playoffs, feign interest in another sport that you don’t really care about as a way to get your S.O. used to the idea that you’re a sports fan, while still providing the attention and consideration that will prove impossible during the Western Conference Finals . This doesn’t make it easier, but it shortens the learning curve.



BE CASUAL: I was at a hardcore New York sports fan’s house the other day and his collection of jerseys, bats, balls, and other memorabilia was the most impressive I’ve ever seen. What made it so cool is that he had the stuff lying around. You could get close to it, pick it up, get intimate with history. He’s clearly obsessed, but because he wasn’t super intense about his stuff he came off like a normal person. It’s like he was saying, This is a big deal to me, but I don’t expect you to feel the same. Don’t try this at home if you have pets. You’re going to look pretty silly with your arm up your dog’s ass after Fido scarfs down that Ricky Henderson batting glove.

THE ULTIMATE, FAIL-SAFE WAY TO CONVERT YOUR S.O. INTO A SPORTS FAN: If none of the steps above work, do what I did: marry someone who went to high school with a player on your favorite sports team

Crossing the Rubiocon

Jelani the Elder is a young man living and writing in NYC. When he’s not writing, he’s busy plugging Epilogue Magazine. He's hoping FD will have him back soon, as he's already started on his magnum opus, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Clippers: The Blake Griffin story."

In the notebooks of scouts abroad and at home, Ricky Rubio has been, all at once, the future and a throwback. He’s been Drazen Petrovic, Pete Maravich, Magic Johnson, and Steve Nash. But, as aesthetically pleasant as all these player comps might be, the National Basketball Association is a business; if the league’s sole purpose was to promote civic pride and goodwill, they probably wouldn’t have sales reps calling you every day for the last two months trying to get you courtside for a team built around Nate Robinson. Ricky’s venerable mound of hype surely commands hundreds of minds devising how to best monetize it. Such is capitalism.

Ricky represents the dream for those in the merchandise business who stand to make a tidy killing off of the Legend of Ricky. He’s played high-level competition in Europe since his early teens, hundreds upon hundreds of games a year, so either he’s A) totally bereft of personality due to the lack of a normal or stable adolescence developing amongst his peers or B) one of the weirdest, most eccentric dudes to lace ‘em up in a long time. If it’s A, that’s terrific, blank slate, the creation of an image from day one without any real transgressions. If it’s B) hell, maybe even better. But let’s say it’s A. Let’s run through the Rubio-branding options.

The Foreigner:The most obvious direction. He’d join Rudy Fernandez, Jose Calderon, and the Gasol brothers as the league’s resident Spaniards, which is just lovely because they’ll all could potentially play for different teams, where any head-to-head matchup would generate at least mild buzz, or, at the very least, an all-the-tapas-you-can-eat watch party. Ricky even stands to surpass them all (my guess is all five will make an All-Star team at some point) as he strides toward defensive competency. But I’d like to think Nike—it’ll be Nike—plays this up. Rubio’s EuroLeague career and its application to the NBA is still swathed in mystery, and certainly a quality that the brightest merchandising minds can utilize and build around.



New York Rubio: Some of the buzz lately suggests that Rubio-to-NYC is something that just has to happen. The Knicks don’t have a true point guard, they play D’Antoni run and gun and Rubio is the neo-Nash, not to mention that the league could easily stand to gain from putting a future star (product placement) in the Big Apple. In a city with legions of fans to seduce, relocated persons such as yours truly who have never had an NBA team to call their own, and NYC just happens the world’s finest hype auger. Also, the city’s fashion arm would certainly slide Ricky into $15,000 suits, paste him on SoHo billboards with his eyes obscured by Wayfarers, and stock an initial run of 50,000 Rubio Knicks jerseys at Midtown’s NBA Store. Oh, and a prediction—if the Knicks got Rubio, they would immediately introduce a new “alternative” jersey (Black? Green? Spanish flag color scheme? It doesn’t matter) just so they could make even more money. You know they would.

Recession Rubio: If the emptiness of Nike’s NYC retail outlets are any indicator of corporate prosperity, then maybe Nike ain’t doin’ so hot. Why spend the cash on an unproven Rubio when all it will take is a couple tweaks to the Rafael Nadal brand image? Rafa has a lot of desirable characteristics as a pitchman—he’s young, he’s good, he’s strikingly polite, and he’s European (Spanish…same as Rubio! Oh my!). Plus, Nadal’s possibly out for Wimbledon and the rest of the summer, so they could easily utilize his temporarily dormant campaign for the media swirl around July’s NBA draft. And if we’re running with the idea that Ricky Rey (patent pending) has no personality, you could do a lot worse than being sold as basketball’s Nadal. I don’t think that lugging your uncle around as coach would fly in the League, but I guess that just depends on how much money you’re generating.

Rascal Rubio:Bad boy angle. Gotta have it: The trickster, the devil—it’s timeless. Why mess with archetype? After last summer’s incredibly offensive Spanish Olympic Team picture mocked the host nation in a not-so-subtle way, this idea has wheels. Pair Ricky with Andrew Dice Clay, his Mars Blackmon, and you’re set for a divisive yet highly publicized career. Also, Rubio hails from the Catalan region of Spain, and making loads of deliberate anti-Basque statements in post-game press conferences could create tension internationally. It’s offensive and galvanic in dozens of time zones and languages, something that you can’t quite capture with your average Charles Barkley rant.



Relocation Rubio: If Ricky Rey ends up in Memphis or Sacramento, two embattled teams perpetually pondering relocation options, brand imagining would transcend Rubio and maybe create a market. For those mathematically inclined in the audience, surely “present value” calculation of future Ricky Rubio-related profit has to be a pretty substantial figure, a number that would surely affect a franchise’s current valuation. Kansas City, amongst others, could swipe a team due to its tenantless but new Sprint Center, and the return of the Kansas City Kings would certainly gel with my “Ricky Rey” campaign, “Rey” of course being the Spanish translation for “king.” Surely you see what I’m on to here. This is selfish for many reasons, but you know, you gotta look out for #1.

And if it’s option B, B again representing a maladjusted eccentric that has no feel for the American press or the subtleties of a new language, just let the product sell itself, Mr. Knight.

Guest Lecture: All This (Rocket) Science I Don't Understand

Today’s FD guest lecturer is Chi Tung, a man who may or may not refer to himself as the Chinese Stallion (after all, it is what his name means). When he’s not wearing lensless glasses for a tech show on state-run Chinese television, he moonlights as a writer, for publications ranging from the Huffpo to Asia Pacific Arts.

Now that the 2009 Houston Rockets have bowed out for good (bless their scrappy hearts), it’s as good a time as any to turn down all that red glare, and understand what actually matters. There will be talk of caging and uncaging the pitbull that is Ron-ron, whether the collective talents of Lowry/Brooks are lesser or greater than the parts of their sum, and of course, T-mac’s further descent into the abyss. But all that pales in comparison to the made-for-Beyond-the-Glory (as directed by Werner Herzog) trajectory of one Yao Ming, and his newfound FD-ness.

Prior to these playoffs, Yao had yet to have a truly defining NBA moment—at least, not one that didn’t end in head-shaking ignominy (see: Robinson, Nate). Redemption, then, has been thrice as nice to him in ’09—the flawless shooting exhibition he put on in a game-one dismantling of the Blazers that caused them to rejigger their entire defensive gameplan; the gutsy fourth-quarter points he notched against the Lakers in Game One after a near-catastrophic collision with Kobe; and the outright refusal to leave Game Three when he was noticeably limping and would later be diagnosed with a broken foot. Again.



On paper, these images lack the naked transcendence of a Lebron buzzer beater, or the basketball-is-hip-hop undressing of Tyronn Lue in the wake of an AI crossover. But they’re important nonetheless—because mythmaking relies as much on the power of perception as it does shock-and-awe. Pundits and bloggers alike tend to talk about Yao’s accomplishments like they’re being asked to pen a hagiography—as if being compelled to assume the role of China’s sacrificial lamb-cum-cash-cow has earned him a lifetime of faint, backhanded praise. Under their breath, though, there’s more than a whiff of denigration: what kind of dominant big man doesn’t dunk the ball with malice, they ask? Or put his imprint on games by demanding the ball more often? Or, in so many words, tell the Chinese government to step the eff off so his achy-breaky feet can heal properly?

In isolation, these mutterings sound like provocations made by Right Way absolutists. But the things you hear in China are equally problematic, albeit for entirely different reasons. The other day, I offhandedly remarked to one of my Chinese colleagues that though it’s a damn shame about Yao’s latest injury, it’s some consolation to see him getting recognition from the MSM as a tough, resilient sonofabitch. His response? That in many ways, Yao has always been the quintessential Chinese male—he has big, brass balls, but doesn’t feel the need to tell you about them, a la Sam Cassell. It’s just one of many instances where Yao-as-cultural-trope trumps Yao-as-basketball-player. And one of many instances where Americans and Chinese alike fail to appreciate the true essence of Yao.



Liberated fandom allows us to root for who we want, in the ways that we want, largely because of our desire to claim ownership over a certain value or aesthetic. But in China, the who and the how take a backseat to the just-is. One could argue that Chinese fandom is inherently liberated in ways that Chinese politics—and American fandom—are not. Without the self-reflexiveness that comes part and parcel with Americanness, Kobe just is someone who makes the game look absurdly easy and fun, not a lightning rod for varying definitions of greatness. NBA player jerseys are worn unironically and with little regard for street cred—hence, the inexplicable popularity of Shane Battier. Even Chinese fandom, as it relates to domestic pro clubs, seems curiously anachronistic—rather than drawing upon clearly defined geographical lines, it functions more like club soccer on a smaller scale. Mercenaries carry little stigma because so little is at stake—replace the name Cristiano Ronaldo with Bonzi Wells, and you’ll understand why.

And yet, through all of it, Yao remains—he has all the responsibilities of a national monolith, but none of its perks. In other words, Chinese people may look to him for inspiration, but rarely can they articulate what they intend to do about it. Part of that is due to the building-castles-in-the-sand nature of globalization. In basketball parlance, it’s like seeing the torch-passing from Yao to Yi as a sweeping, old-school-to-new-school progression, and swearing it’s only a matter of time before China’s own version of Ricky Rubio is releasing mixtapes during the offseason.

I’ve beaten this drum before on my Huffpo beat, but it bears repeating—China is a country containing multitudes within multitudes. Those multitudes ebb and flow in zigzag fashion, but that hasn’t stopped the Western hemisphere from hurtling toward linear categorizations and literal-mindedness. We see Yao pushing his body to limits for a cause that seems far flung from everyfan realities. (Zig) But at varying points throughout his career, we’ve also seen him be silly, wise, cocky, fatalistic, self-aware, angry, unflappable, rattled-to-the-core. (Zag) If Kobe is the man of a million Machiavellian faces to his detractors, then Yao is the fragmented, pixilated visage of a billion reluctant fans and their foibles, few of whom are willing or able to defend him as being unassailably great.



So does that make Yao a blank canvas that leaves the etching of destiny to others? If you think that, then I have an autographed poster of Antoine Walker I’d like to sell you. When Yao first came into the league, he was eminently quotable, but in a way that seemed tailormade for caricatures stemming from Asian Mystique. He would alternate between zany philosophical musings and carefully constructed nationalist mantras. After the Beijing Olympics ended, he even went so far as to say his “life was over.” Not so the Yao of today. Though he remains quip-y (his crack about America’s National Anthem being his favorite song because he hears it 365 days a year seems a pretty cleverly disguised rebuke of compulsory patriotism), Yao no longer speaks like Yoda-meets-Sun-Tzu, and refers instead to personal triumphs and priorities with something resembling ebullience.

While chronic injuries have robbed T-mac of his once-irrepressible vitality, they seem to have reinvigorated Yao, who now plays, acts, and talks like someone who can’t be bothered with the weight of tradition or the double-edged sword of transparency, whereas both remain major hang-ups for China. Perhaps he’s finally realizing that, unlike the Lebrons and Kobes of the world, nothing is preordained, and that he can rewrite the script as many times as he sees fit. In a way, the mundane inevitability of Yao’s injuries have helped put his mortality into clearer focus—it helps liberate him from our static, decontextualized ideas of spectatorship, not to mention the stale notion that his multi-facetedness is somehow artificially conceived.

That same paradigm exists with China—the more we treat its symbols as fuzzy math, the more easily flummoxed we become. As liberated fans, we should know better. After all, we can take a Right Way canard like “let the game come to him” and turn it into a triumph of individual style. In Yao’s case, though, letting the game come to him is about letting everything else go. Only then does he know what’s still worth holding on to.

FD Guest Lecture: Thank For the Memories

Today's very special Guest Lecture comes to us from Pasha Malla, author of The Withdrawal Method, All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts, and a scouting report on Teen Wolf done for our mutual pals at McSweeney's.

Michael Jordan never kicked Craig Ehlo in the head. For years I was sure he did: Cleveland, first round of the 1989 Playoffs, Jordan hits The Shot and hysterical with joy cuts Craig Ehlo down with an accidental boot salute; Ehlo drops like a drop-kicked sack of bricks and the assault is largely ignored—in the making of history, after all, the vanquished are irrelevant. Cue the Legacy. Awesome.

During this year’s Playoffs, The Shot has resurfaced in heavy commercial-break rotation, and each time it plays I’m thrown into painful paroxysms of embarrassment at drunken arguments I’ve had with strangers—“He kicks him, man, I’m telling you. Just watch for it.” But, fuck: Jordan’s Nikes are clearly nowhere near anyone, Ehlo’s collapse is only out of grief and shame, and it turns out I’ve deluded myself for two decades. I don’t feel so bad, though: sure, my Shot-and-Kick was a fabrication, but so is the actual footage.

While nba.com claims, “As the ball nestled through the net, Jordan pumped his fists in jubilation, completing a video highlight for the ages,” this is a moment that has only ever existed in replay. Those watching the game on TV didn’t see Jordan’s celebratory histrionics; the original CBS telecast cut immediately (and bafflingly, in retrospect) to the reaction of then-Bulls coach Doug Collins. If the NBA is to be believed, the popularized version of The Shot ranks with the moon landing and JFK assassination among the great, suspect, live experiences in American television history—regardless that the spread-eagle jump and fist-pumps only surfaced later. But we need a moment to commemorate the birth of a legend, and so the redux has been fed to us and has become, now, how we remember something most of us never saw.



The “Where will amazing happen this year?” ad campaign is weird for a lot of reasons. First, “where” seems an odd choice of interrogatives. The host city or corporate-sponsored stadium hardly seems significant—rather than the victories of teams, to me “amazing” connotes sublime moments of individual athleticism, like The Shot, that linger in our collective memory. (E.g. I have no idea how deep that Bulls team went in the ’89 Playoffs, but I do know, and can explicitly picture, how Jordan hangs in the air, waits for Craig Ehlo to land, and then bangs that jumper.)

“Where” is especially lame when you consider the alternatives: “Who will [make] amazing happen” acknowledges both the simmering potential of superstars and the possibility for unlikely heroes, “when” insinuates suspense-laden expectation, “how” a reverence for physical theatrics, “what” = mystery, and “Why will amazing happen (and why will it matter)?” could even be (existentially, abstractly, and especially if voiced by Werner Herzog) kind of funny. But we get “where”—right.

Anyway, aside from the fact that it’s a clunky non sequitor of a motto, the corresponding commercials make me uncomfortable on a more personal level. I’m of an age, demographic and cultural moment that filters my enjoyment of the NBA, like most things, through a scrim of nostalgia. As a result, I’m routinely compelled from the present to a poignant anchor in the past: the slight shudder of melancholy, for example, I suffer when a former star I grew up loving (Sam Cassell, say) checks in for garbage time at the end of a blow-out. And I like my version of the past just fine. I don’t want it co-opted and fed back to me as advertisements.

Mainly what gets me about WWAHTY? is its perversion of nostalgia. The highlights—shown without context, slowed down, flipped to black and white (= The Past), soundtracked to the sad parts of the score from Amelie—self-consciously create wistfulness they may not warrant. The suggestion that each of these plays is “amazing” relies on us remembering each of them and what, in their respective games, each one meant—whether, for example, that alley-oop to Andrei Kirilenko came late in the fourth quarter with the scored tied or early in the half with Utah up by 20. I’m not a Jazz fan—does such a thing even exist?—so I have no idea.

I watch a lot of basketball and I have to confess that I don’t remember most of the plays in these commercials. Collectively, they feel a bit like a compilation of money shots to the porn enthusiast: glorious moments, for sure, but what about the build-up, where the real drama happens? And even as pure highlights, few strike me as particularly amazing. I see Lebron dunk and Dwayne break ankles and Manu bank lay-ups all the time; without the context to inform these plays, I’m a little lost—blame my ignorance, maybe, or failing mental capacity, but that the NBA is relying on us to imbue these moments with meaning feels not only ostentatious, but counter-intuitive to what really makes playoff basketball so exciting. In the regular season, highlights are fine; but after the 82 are up, it’s all about when the big shots happen—and for that, context is absolutely necessary.

“Remember this?” the WWAHTY? ads seem to demand. “It was important. Remember this.” The whole business smacks of contrivance, but it’s not disingenuous. In fact, nothing could be more revealing and apt than what is articulated through the whole campaign: all of us—the NBA front office and players and coaches and owners and media and fans—want to believe that, with each round of the Playoffs, we are experiencing history.



If we are to believe the marketing campaign that has loomed over and punctuated the past few weeks, we are already living the past: the highlights of the night, the days of our lives, the memories of our future. The NBA isn’t rhetorically asking where amazing will happen; it’s more an open call to players to create moments to be relived, later, in endless replay, and for fans to be ready to acknowledge them. The effect is sort of a living archive, which, at least for me, has been causing some problems, because it’s impossible to figure out what’s genuine.

There was an interesting conversation on this site last year in the wake of the Celtics’ Championship win—and, more so, Kevin Garnett’s. Was his lycanthropic howling— “Anything’s possible!” “I’m certified!” &c.—premeditated, contrived and fake, or was it an authentic expression of emotion? There were arguments; things got heated. Assessing other people’s motivations is always futile, but Garnett was a special case: here was a guy who we’d always believed, whose sincerity was unquestionable, who came correct with the straight real and wept in John Thompson’s lap like a failed son. But, then the made-for-TV moment—and even worse, it felt made-for-replay.

Everything seems to go back to that old Michael Jordan bucket-and-swag—which, keep in mind, but for one savvy cameraman we might have never seen happen. Michael Jordan is history, but also Michael Jordan Is History: his great airy legacy looms over the league and everyone in it. Comparable Greats—Pele, Gretzky—are certainly paragons of individual achievement, yet their shadows don’t loom quite as vastly over soccer and hockey as Mike’s does over the basketball. Maybe it’s because neither has an eponymous “highlight for the ages” that not only defines their careers, but the modern era in their respective sport.

Michael Jordan provides pro ballers more than the archetype for all achievement; he’s created a model for the very idea of legacy—not only in how dominantly you play the game, but how you’re remembered. And having a metonymic, iconic image is imperative to that. So it feels, at least to me, that today’s NBA has created a culture in which players, if they want to be ranked alongside Jordan, or at least recalled in the same breath, need a watershed moment, and they need that moment recorded, and they need that moment replayed—so it’d better be good, and it’d better be theatrical.

It’s the way that this need for performativity manifests in the flow of games that troubles me the most. I shudder at the contrivance of, say, an and-one Lebron James shoulder-shimmy, which seems so concertedly not just mugging for the cameras and fans, but mugging for posterity. And, perhaps most amazingly, that sort of affectedness seems to be trickling down from the league’s top tier to its lesser lights. Even way back in the first round, the unbridled exuberance of a relative nobody like Joakim Noah felt exuberantly put-on. The league needs the wild-looking, sorta foreign youngster with a limited skill-set to have the heart of a hyperactive lion who roars and roars. And Noah—much as I grew to like the guy—seems to recognize that. Good thing we’ve got it on tape!

This sort of cynicism sucks, because I love the Playoffs. I want to believe what I’m seeing is real. But what I don’t want is to have the best moments fed back to me in slo-mo black and white by the league’s marketing department. WWAHTY? replaces the agency of subjective memory with the stagnant banality of fact; it repackages joy as commodity. If they ever were, each of the athletes in those spots is no longer doing anything amazing; they are merely figures in advertisements, reduced to hapless shills. The suggestion seems to be that players who aren’t performing something easily quantifiable as “amazing” will not find their way into a TV spot and, accordingly, will never remembered by anyone.



I think I allowed myself to believe that Michael Jordan kicked Craig Ehlo in the head because back then that sort of bizarre accident actually felt possible—let’s keep things moving and blame pre-adolescent innocence rather than retrospective idealism. But my corrupted memory also makes me think about how excited I’ve gotten when this year’s playoff action has spilled into the unpredictable—Rafer Alston smacking Eddie House on the head, Derek Fisher’s cross-check of Luis Scola—and I feel even sadder. Are eruptions of violence the only time when I let myself feel that I’m not watching programmed automatons, but actual human beings?

Maybe it’s more that I know these are scenes the NBA can’t co-opt, blemishes that the league is in a constant battle to buff and polish out of its pristine product—see the resultant suspensions and ejections. And, when it comes to basketball, I don’t crave or fetishize violence; Vernon Maxwell punching a fan in the face is pretty amazing, in its way, but it’s certainly not a moment in league history that I particularly cherish. No, I just want my memories for myself. And what I don’t want, ever, is to think the stuff I’m playing out in my head (like John Starks’s career-defining dunk on Horace Grant—and MJ, bitch!) is just another commercial.

There’s a weird tension between the celebration I associate with The Shot, which feels absolutely genuine, and the knowledge that I might have never known it happened. In retrospect, it’s more than Michael Jordan’s metamorphosis from showman to winner, but also from man to brand. And while lamenting the commodification of Jordan is a bit like standing in the Ganges and whining that you can’t drink the water, there is still a precious purity to my fantasy about that fabricated replay—after all, Craig Ehlo taking a roundhouse to the temple isn’t the version that’s being played ad infinitum, as a promo for the league.

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

The man who made a certain famous comment has returned to expand upon his initial germ of genius. Ladies and gentlemen, Damian Garde:

As far as NBA platitudes go, among the oldest and most yawn-inducing is the idea that players sacrifice everything for the team. Whether their bodies, their egos or their stats — we want our heroes to be selfless at some cost. But all that seems petty compared to the transformation of Rajon Rondo. Beyond making the extra pass, beyond diving for a loose ball, Rondo gave up his innocence for the Boston Celtics.

It seemed sudden in the moment but natural in retrospect. The boyish, long-lashed work in progress who unabashedly discusses his love for roller-skating and keeps Chap Stick in his sock turned into a volatile rebounding machine who’d smack you in the face and throw your Kansas ass into a table on general principle. But it wasn’t a flash of deep-seeded rage or some misguided ploy for street cred or respect. In Game 5, Paul Pierce — who is perhaps a dramatist, a masochist, or both — was playing hurt; Ray Allen had uncharacteristically fouled out; and Kevin Garnett was caged in a suit on the sidelines. Rondo — like a young Dr. Doom, like the child soldier who kills because it’s the only alternative to dying — became evil solely as a survival mechanism.

But like any evolution, Rondo’s has not been without growing pains. In Game 5’s post-game news conference, when the foul on Brad Miller got brought up, Rondo sheepishly lowered his head and, oddly, let Kendrick Perkins defend him before mentioning that, yes, Miller is much bigger than him. This can’t be overlooked — the Celtics have gone out of their way to defend what he did, and when pressed, Rondo only points out the perceived injustice that, excuse the pun, forced his hand. Further straddling the line between a sudden, very adult fury and his boyish nature, Rondo left that conference to share a post-game dinner with the guy who played McLovin.



Following last year’s championship run, Rondo was a league rarity: a name player without a creation myth. Taken late in the first round, Rondo spent his rookie season battling with Sebastian Telfair and Delonte West (a triumvirate pregnant with meaning, if I’ve ever seen one) for minutes at the point. Despite proving himself as a serviceable PG, he was seen as a lanky uncertainty after Boston’s summertime transition into a juggernaut. Even this season was spent somewhat in the wilderness: There were flashes of brilliance, followed by no-shows. And that probably should have made his playoff christening all the more predictable — few furies match that of a man in search of his own legend. And isn’t it only natural that, raised by three of the best self-mythologizers in the game, Rondo would eventually come into his own? After all, Paul Pierce need only touch a wheelchair to pack the theater; KG screams at the God who scorned him after an easy rebound; and, well, Jesus Shuttlesworth is Jesus Shuttlesworth.

But while Rondo’s newfound identity is perhaps as theatrical as those of his wolf-parents, its rawness makes it unsettling. Garnett, as intense as any player since cocaine stood in for Gatorade, is controlled genocide and often rides murder to work. His demons, volatile as they may be, forever bow to him. Rondo, who provided the waifish, just-happy-to-be here levity last season, now has the soiled hands of an off-the-handle bruiser. But, in a sense, he has the worst of both worlds: His fury is shaky and noncommittal. In Game 6, it was tempting to see Rose’s block as the hero’s impossible feat to thwart the supervillain. But aside from his squabble with Hinrich, Rondo was somewhat less explosive in that game. However, that didn’t stop the dawn of the new narrative: Rose, the golden, acne ridden beacon of Stern’s master plan, versus Rondo, the shifty, Gollum-like trickster.

Doin' Dirt: A Visual Taxonomy



(Chart by Ziller)

Facts don’t matter in the face of such montage fodder, and, thus, the new reality. Even though Rondo has been emotionally (and statistically) calmer in this Orlando series, his wide-eyed exuberance is gone, replaced by a quiet menace lost on no one. Obviously, his whole career is ahead of him, and it’s impossible to say with authority whether this identity will stick or be just a hiccup on the way to becoming Chris Paul Lite (It’s worth noting, however, that he’s probably the only 23 year old I’ve heard described as “wily”). But even if he goes on to become Isiah, we can never get jaded to the myth of Rondo. We were there, and we saw the boy in him die.

Like a Pancake That Lands on the Ceiling

With some words on the Hawks, their city, and their parallel progress, here's Avery Lemacorn. He's been here before, and also writes the music and lit blog DeckFight.

“The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar”—Freud

Uncanny yes that the Hawks were facing another Game 7 for the second year in a row in the first round of the playoffs. Uncanny yes that they had never won a game seven and that a group of pretty much the same players were in the same predicament. Uncanny yes that Atlanta’s game 7 blunders have haunted them.

For these Hawks, this was a long road back, but one done with quiet fortitude with little fanfare from the masses or the mass media. This is a team dizzied by its own potential, a team that says Joe Johnson should be in the conversation about the top of the league, a team that says Josh Smith should not be so mercurial, a team that says Al Horford is too small to be a starting center. A team doubted because of its conference, a team overshadowed by another Atlantan in another city, even.

The fact is that Atlanta is a haunted city. Not by ghosts, not by voodoo, not by old gangsters, founding fathers, or star-struck starlets. It is haunted by the dismantling of its own success. Sherman burned Atlanta down as a symbol against the excesses of Southern pride. The former penal colony turned Confederate powerhouse turned powder. And approximately 100 years later when the city thought they had all this figured out, that they and the world had an uneasy comfort with “their” view on things, a man with famous initials moved to town to launch a national movement bringing unrecognized sins to light. Struck down again.

Not to say that those changes in the city were not for the better, but granted, there were wounded egos. Hence, the flight out. Yes, that pale-colored flight.

In a way that no court could ever order, Atlanta began to change. In 1965, the Falcons came. In 1966, the Braves moved to Atlanta. Then the Hawks. In '73, the first black mayor of the city was elected then Hank Aaron had his historic run. But not many were there to see the Hawks get ever so close. Slowly, sports began to make the majority comfortable in the skin of the city again. The Braves won first in 1991, then big in 1995 drawing those on the outside back into the city core. The Falcons made their own run with the Dirty Bird to the Super Bowl in 1998. Atlanta elected its first African-American female mayor in 2001, the same year that the great uniter for the most beloved sport in all of Georgia would come: Michael Vick. Vick would electrify crowds of any color, of any persuasion. Staid ol’ UGA never played ball this way, not since Herschel, the Walker on air. But now this was happening in Atlanta, the ATL, to all and for all.



But Vick only brought them so far before his own uncanny downfall. Now it's time for the Hawks. City streets and landscapes are changing. New downtown condos, new “refabbed” neighborhoods are guaranteed to make white people comfortable. Here comes IKEA. From 2007-2008, for the first time in forty years the city proper took in more residents than it lost. No matter what happened to Vick, the momentum has swung. The city has changed.

Atlanta was ready for this, ready to win a Game 7. Ready to show how everything has changed. With their past, Atlanta was simultaneously ahead and behind the nation in racial politics. The success of the Hawks is directly related to this moment in time, a Southern city being comfortable on a large scale with its president of color, its own nuances of color, its music, its game. A place where the Cartoon Network and crunk can reside side by side.

Think all of this is too much? The players don’t think so.
From Mark Bradley at the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

“It feels good,” said Josh Smith, the Atlantan who scored 21 points and took nine rebounds in Game 7. “It feels like the monkey’s off Atlanta’s back, not just this team’s.”
Said Al Horford, who worked 32 1/2 minutes on a sprained right ankle: “It’s big. People are really starting to look at Atlanta and consider us a basketball city.

Despite all of the missteps in years past by the Hawks' management, Joe Johnson and the Hawks are still playing while the Suns, the Jazz, the Hornets and the Blazers are at home.. Their moment is easily calculable--going past this point will be truly unexpected. They made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro only to discover that Mt. Everest exists. But no one expects them to climb Everest, only to show that they can climb at all.

But there can be dreams of what may have been. Maybe it's the constant "lack" of the point guard that has plagued this team. Pete Maravich and Dominique then Steve Smith and Jason Terry and Joe Johnson—all more reliable wing scorers than anything else. Though I appreciate the Hornets, I firmly believe that Chris Paul was supposed to be in Atlanta, with Josh Smith the perfect receiver for anything and everything Chris Paul could launch. Instead, everything we are seeing is something played out in an alternate universe, and the rest of us are the Oceanic 6 trying to figure out just how this time travel thing works to somehow correct it. And as New Orleans threatens to dismantle, isn’t there a way to spin the wheel in the proper direction to make these annoying flashes of frustration stop?

Mike Bibby and David West are the same. Both are serviceable like Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate": not what you would openly wish for, but exactly what you need. But who are we kidding? Paul "needs" a Josh Smith, like the Hawks "need" a Chris Paul for fulfillment. Though both are satisfied, neither are exactly ecstatic. This will always be the Achilles Heel for both.



In a lot of ways, the Hawks are a parody and lesser version of the Cavs. The point guards complete, but there is still an over-reliance on the wings for stability. LeBron by himself is essentially the ultimate culmination of Josh Smith/Joe Johnson. Cunning with his ballhandling and creative with his shot, LeBron is Joe Johnson while also being explosive, dynamic, competitive, expressive in style and action like Josh Smith. This series then is the battle of the two-headed monster of the Hawks against the monstrous leviathan of the Cavs with Bibby and Mo feeding and reeling the beasts.

Is the transformation of the city of Atlanta or the Hawks to champions fully complete? No, not yet. Not by any means. But maybe they have escaped that which has always been old and long familiar.