Fall Over Parade

I find it possibly amazing that Gerald Wallace is in the All-Star Game and Josh Smith should be. We did it. We made it. Our choices have been just. Note: I forgot Durant was a first-time All-Star yesterday because, in my mind, he's been on since Texas. Say that what you will about my love with this game.

Oh wait, Josh Smith didn't get in, it stings me right down to the bone, and you can read all about my feelings and history's folly (committed upon its own head, no less), in this precious column of mine.

I ended up cutting a paragraph that might have been all figurative economics too dry for those parts, so I lay it here. Or at least its essence. Think about this: It took time for hs-ers and Euros (in the wake of KG and Dirk) to become automatic presences in the high lottery. There was still a little bit of lingering skepticism, or at least hesitance. And these were the consensus best few teens the world had to offer. Thus, in theory, in the beginning there was a de facto cap placed on what hs/Euro picks made it in. It was only the cream of the crop, those generally agreed upon as the "next KG" or "next Dirk."

However, it didn't stop there. Once these players moved all the way to the top, the floodgates were opened for the "Maybe Next KG" and "Possibly Maybe Next Dirk." This is how you got Josh Howard and David West going at the end of the first round; high school/Euro picks weren't boom-or-bust by nature, they were made to look this way by a willingness to, in effect, scrape the barrel and push the very logic that had made teams pursue them in the first place. The best ones were gambles on great potential, which had built into it some sense of security. It was much more like the risk built into drafting a college player, just with a different form of assurance. The latter ones gambled without any safety net.

This description is remarkably inexact. But what would have happened if teams had never decided to cross that line and go from the relatively safe teens to those with less and less to recommend them as solid pros? When people talk about some sort of committee that would decide when a player could jump from high school, it seems like what they're really talking about is this alternate reality where all these other prospects never snuck in the cracked door on account of equivocation.

Got to Get Off This Never-Ending Combine

Merry Christmas to you, and to all a brave tale! On this day of expanded NBA programming, Rough Justice of the smart-n-snazzy blog There Are No Fours comes to you with a heaping philosophical question and fodder for your viewing guide. Be well!

" All languages offer the possibility of distinguishing between what is true and what we hold to be true. The supposition of a common objective world is built into the pragmatics of every single linguistic usage. And the dialogue roles of every speech situation enforce a symmetry in participant perspectives.
- Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking

Who is the most athletic player in the NBA? Picks would differ, but if you polled a group of people up on the league, you would get stars like LeBron, Dwight Howard and Dwayne Wade (Kobe probably also makes this list for a few years yet) but also players like Tyrus Thomas and Nate Robinson. The question that never seems to get asked subsequently, though, is what precisely constitutes "athletic" in this context. Literally, the term is pleasantly tautological, meaning simply pertaining to an athlete. For our purposes here, it seems reasonable to define it as "possessing physical characteristics beneficial in the game of basketball".

It's pretty easy to figure out the yardstick we're all mentally using to figure out the "athletic" list. Put together some combination of vertical leap, top speed and lateral quickness with bonus points for strength and height and you'll have a pretty good approximation of "athletic". But that's leaving out a lot of the physical tools that are beneficial to a basketball player. Take, instance, David Foster Wallace talking about the issue¹:

Successfully returning a hard-served tennis ball requires what's sometimes called "the kinesthetic sense," meaning the ability to control the body...through complex and very quick systems of tasks. English has a whole cloud of terms for various parts of this ability: feel, touch, form, proprioception, coordination, hand-eye coordination, kinesthesia, grace, control, reflexes, and so on.

Hand-eye coordination is certainly vital to basketball. Without it, you'll have terrible handle, and even if you're a big who doesn't really need to dribble, you have to be able to handle the pass into the post. Body control is vital to taking contact without losing control on a drive. Fast reflexes obviously matter. The list goes on. So why do we limit the discussion of athleticism to jumping and running? It's pretty simple: A) We focus on the obvious. B) We pay attention to the impressive.

1: Yes, obviously he was talking about tennis, and I've yet to see Roger Federer run the fast break. Everything he's saying, however, is directly transferable to basketball.

Sit anyone down and show him/her a few minutes of a game, and he/she'll be able to point out which players can really jump. The guy that dunked, the guy that blocked a shot. It's evident and impressive when someone makes a play up in the air. Similarly, we can all tell when someone turns on the jets to get ahead on the break for an easy basket. It's right there to see, it's effective, so it gets noticed. A lot of the elements of this physiological cloud are subtler. Who has the best body control in the NBA? Nobody knows. You can tell if someone is on one extreme or the other if you watch them a lot, but no one could begin to rank everyone in the league. Who has the best hand-eye coordination? These aren't the things that are or even necessarily could get tested at combines, but they are things that partially determine how effective someone is on the court. If an individual athlete's cocktail of traits is low in several, he probably is going to wash out to the D League or Europe pretty quickly no matter what kind of ups he has.



"Athletic", then, has more to do with explosive than athletic. No one is touting (for example) Steve Nash's athleticism; all the talk is of his court vision, shooting skill and general savvy. I'm not trying to downplay his basketball IQ or court vision², but watch this video and tell me he's not a physical specimen. The reason is narrative. We don't think of players as a spreadsheet of skills, we think of them as a story. Steve Nash is a creator who sees the court like no one else and capitalizes on that. His hand-eye coordination gets explained as passing and shooting ability. His speed and agility is part of how he reads defenses and goes where they can't stop him, and his body control isn't really part of the story, even though I suspect his stellar proprioception plays a surprisingly large role in his effectiveness.

All of the physical tools that make him great are subtle, so we don't think of him as a stellar athlete, even though he is. Similarly, I think a lot of what determines an undersized player's success, unless he chooses to specialize in outside shooting, is body control, coordination and touch. AI's dominance was predicated on his aggression, but a willingness to take it into the paint against men twice his size and explosive quickness are no guarantee of greatness. Yes, he was lightning fast, but he could also take and adjust to hard contact and still finish. The way he could absorb a blow and still get the ball in the hoop played into and reinforced the narrative of uncompromising dedication, but had as much to do with his inner ear and broader athleticism as it did his steely resolve.

2: Part of the trouble here, of course, is that the subtle skills bleed into the mental realm. How fast I can run has everything to do with the fast twitch muscles I have, but the ability to thread the needle with a pass depends on (optical) vision, hand-eye coordination, the inclination to try and past experience. There's no way to disentangle them and isolate the merely/solely physical.

Another funny bifurcation exists within the treatment of players who are on the far right of the bell curve of obvious physiological traits. When is the last time you heard LeBron or Dwight Howard referred to as "athletic"? It doesn't happen. When a player is jaw-droppingly gifted in the obvious ways and dominant on the court, he is termed a "freak". This may be because his non-evident physical gifts are commensurately ridiculous (Dwayne Wade, I suspect), because they're at least acceptable and his strength/size makes him unstoppable (young Shaq, Dwight Howard) or both (this, I think, is what is so unfair about LBJ's abilities); regardless, he gets otherized by this categorization.

It would be easy to dismiss this as hyperbole in the mode of current sports coverage, but there's more to it than that. It is partly a result of the mythologizing of greatness, that a player is so gifted he is more than human. You see it in Jordan as messianic figure and its aftershocks of James as the Chosen One, but it's more decentralized. Howard as Superman. Wade as Flash. Half Man/Half Amazing³, even. This otherization cuts deeper, however. They are freaks not merely because they are so obviously amazing, but because theirs is a problematic greatness. Labeling them as a freak moves them outside the discourse of normality and allows us to consider them uniquely and not reconcile them with any other player. They become an exception to the norms of physique, and so therefore not subject to them. They're certainly athletic, but they aren't "athletic" because the second we move them to "freak", considerations of athleticism that aren't about them don't include them. We shove them onto another plane rather than reconcile them to ours so that we don't have to account for them in our evaluations of everyone else.

Instead of undermining the simplicity of our categorization and forcing us to account for why explosiveness translates into effectiveness for some but not others, they reinforce our categories by not having to fit inside them.

3: I would love to see someone give this nickname the exegesis it deserves. Given the trajectory and conventional packaging of Carter's career, its ironic accuracy is stunning.

So players, or at least players after their first year or two, tend to get labeled as "athletic" only if they're disappointing. The Tyrus Thomases ⁴ of the world tantalize you when they leap out of the building to block a shot or thunderously dunk, but they can't seem to put it together. The question hanging around such a player's neck is, if he can make that play, if he can make everyone else on the court look like they're standing still, why can't he dominate? Why can't he consistently take over a game? He stays "athletic" because we can't fit him into another narrative slot.⁵ He's not successful enough as a role player to be cast as a rebounder or a scoring swingman or even a lockdown defender. If a player succeeds in one of those roles, his athleticism becomes a trait, not a defining characteristic.

Ironically, it's often the lack of the subtler forms of athleticism that hampers this growth and stalls a career at "athletic". If he doesn't have the subtler skills to round out his game and instead is a leaper who makes one amazing play per game but can't consistently produce. The clumsy moments when a play doesn't come together for him aren't an abberation, a lapse of unharnessed motion, but rather as telling of the borders of his kinesthetic ability as the dunk. Because of the transcendent moments he'll stick around for a while, but because he doesn't have similarly high-level subtle athleticism, he is merely "athletic". The label, despite its surface connotations, is more indicative of a negative absence than a positive presence.

4: I realize Thomas is young and may yet live up to his promise. He is at least partially here a stand-in here for the type.

5: This is why you won't see Josh Smith or Gerald Wallace essentialized as "athletic" anymore. Josh Smith has settled down and now is a dangerous wing scorer, while Wallace's rebounding explosion has moved him into "freak" territory. Their gifts haven't changed, but because they're more effective this season our profiling of them shifts.

We do ourselves a disservice when we fall into the trap of the obvious. Conventional wisdom is dangerous not just when it's wrong, but also (and more often) when it's incomplete. An unnecessarily narrow understanding of athleticism informs a wan view of the NBA as a whole. If we focus only on explosions, we undervalue the rest of the spectrum of ability. Quiet excellence is every bit as interesting and important as loud excellence, it just doesn't give itself up as quickly. A debate like "most athletic player" has as its core an assumption that athleticism is both quantifiable and linear; neither is remotely true. A fractured view of athleticism that acknowledges the impossibility of full knowledge may at first blush seen irritating or gnostic, but is in fact the only responsible approach.

News to Me

Am I the only person on the planet who didn't know that Paulette Reaves is the mother of Josh Smith? Her current site has some candids of her with Amare, Nash, and others.

Like you need FD to tell you that LeBron is almighty. Read The Baseline tomorrow for my thoughts on the game. Some other random shit will probably show up here around the same time.

UPDATE: Excuse whatever chippiness follows, because my internet connection is once again totally unreliable and it makes my increasingly professional life a total mess. Fuck writing serious emails on a phone. Anyway, I know I've been scarce around these parts. It's got a lot to do with the new gig; I'm trying to both 1) figure out the hang of it 2) divert traffic from here to there (sorry if that's a huge sinister surprise). So if anyone has advice or feedback on either of these counts, let me know. I can pretty much write whatever I want, and it's really only the recaps/previews I've gotten bogged down with, but every writer is these days (power of repetition = power + repetition. Which means no need for "experts" after a point.)

That said, from last night's Bron/Magic post, here's the FD money shot that would've fit very nicely into this site's special place:

The Magic have been better in this series than they've been at any time during the season (or playoffs, of course). That Turkoglu shot, a mirror image of Lewis's heroics from Game 1, looked like it had capped off, or kicked off, a new glory era for the Magic. No matter how unlikely it all seemed, it would be damn hard to argue with after this. I know that athletes can taste victory, but for once, I understood why that language exists.

But the Magic don't have LeBron James. And while we know stars can lose, upsets can happen, and our preconceptions can be wrong, James is the ultimate superstar. In that, he's both breathtaking and boring. We're watching a career unfold that's already HOF-bound, maybe even the best ever, and yet it all feels so inevitable. And so it was with that shot. Of course James would make it and put everything in its right place. The second -- and yeah, it was literally a second -- the ball went his way, you thought "this is how it's supposed to happen, isn't it?" You realize that "scripted" and "storybook" differ only in connotation.

It had to happen, and as shocking as it was, you could only be so surprised. But isn't that what makes LeBron so ridiculous? He's conditioned us to not only expect the impossible, but take it for granted.

See, it lives! And yes, I took out two really weird sentences that are what happens when I write too late, under some deadline of some sort. Those always make me anxious, as opposed to the sense of urgency, or competitiveness, that used to spur me on when it was totally self-imposed. Welcome to America, I guess.

-While we're on the subject of me saying shit that could potentially hurt my future interest, I find it weird that in that fat dude swimming adidas ad, KG is cast as both less (cardboard shoes) and more (world champs!) fortunate in the grand socio-economic scheme of things than Jim, or whatever his name is. It's like NBA players' former poverty has been mythologized, turned into a necessary part of how high they'll one day rise. It's teleology, and Horatio Alger, and frankly kind of gross. At best, there's a disconnect between "kid plays on dirt and goes on to dominate American sports" and "ordinary schmo loses job during recession." The former is both fantastic and in our society, totally familiar; the latter is cast as the salt-of-the-earth feat of bravery. We're all ordinary people, unless we're too poor, then we might as well be rich because we'll end up cagers or rappers.

Fuck a photo, I have to go watch a movie about Chechnya. Will be live tonight.

He Was Born in Hell

Everyone I talk to is worried about a anti-climactic contest tonight. Of course, after Thursday, Lazarus making hot chocolate at halftime would be an anti-climax. But even if all we get in a few hours is epilogue, and even if that epilogue is the (expected) Boston win, the convoluted history of this series tells tells us that there's no way it won't be eventful.

Before we all get completely consumed by pre-game hysteria, I wanted to briefly touch on the weird, weird Josh Smith scandal. Smith goes for the showtime dunk, on the break, during a blowout, and fails. He's lambasted for trying to show up or disrespect the Heat, personally apologizes to Coach Spoelstra (who publicly made many of these accusations) and explains that it was just to thank the fans. Confused? You also have Smith saying he'd do it again, and basically agreeing with Jalen Rose's analysis that the problem was the miss, not the attempt itself. Which is to say, he embarassed himself—had he made it, Smith would've had the whole world entranced. The Heat would've come off as petty whiners, or at very least, the dunk would've been so awesome as to insulate itself against criticism.

All this presumes that Smith needs to apologize for wanting to humilate the Heat, or that an insane dunk is purely self-indulgent. Last I checked, intimidation and making statements were really important in basketball, especially in the playoffs. Why, then, is Smith all of a sudden in "unsportsman-like" territory for trying to use a dunk to do just that? It was gratuitous when the Celtics ran up the score, and put on a show, to cap off last year's Finals victory, because in that case the series was over. But this one is still very much alive. Breakaway dunks can be momentum-changers in a game; why not think of this in the context of the series? While games have throat-slash moments, these events can pile up and carry over to the next one, too. The Heat had every right to take Smith's attempted dunk personally, and use it as motivation. That's because he was trying to punk them, put them in their place. That's about basketball, pride, and ego; there's absolutely no need for the finger-wagging and commenters dissecting the ethics of the situation.

It all comes back to this idea of there being "good" and "bad" forms of intimidation, or rather, "acceptable" and "tacky." Tough defense and physical play can throw off an opponent. As can talking. Or throwing down in traffic. Those are fair game in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs. But if Josh Smith goes for the showpiece dunk, it's him, not the Heat, who have some explaining to do? Isn't a long three in transition always outrageous and uncalled for? If I had a penny for every time someone old insisted that teams need to send a message with their defense, I'd be crushed to death. Why then, can't Josh Smith try and say to the Heat "fuck you, I can do whaetver I want against you." Isn't that his whole game? It's up to the other team to keep his one-man momentum bomb under wraps; as one of the studio guys observed in the pre-game last night, Miami immediately let Johnson get away with an uncontested dunk. Are there rules and regulations about when you're allowed to intimidate . . . or does that only apply to individual acts of offense? Because clearly, no one makes a fuss if a team lets up on defense once the outcome's decided. And running up the score can certainly be deployed selectively.

Smith's right—the problem is that he missed. That turned it into something frivolous, a sideshow subject to all sorts of bullshit moral high ground-grabbing. Smith is clueless, spoiled, disorganized, a disgrace to the game because he resorted to absurdity. Why was it absurd and excessive? It failed. If he'd pulled it off, it would be the Heat who would be feeling shame, no matter what the media decided to say about it.

If anyone wants to give him hell, they just focus on what a half-assed effort that was.The angle of approach was all wrong and Smith barely got off the ground. What a dick.

Take Your Sunday

Now I am really fucking snowed in, and Lady Shoals has gone mute from illness. So here are some notes/thoughts of a basketball nature that came to me this morning. Consider them the survivalist version of yesterday's post.

-Have I ever said, somewhere, that the Suns did win in the end, at least in spirit? Every team in the world plays small and fast sometimes now. Does that mean that, had the 2004-05 team remained intact, they would've gotten a title, or were they the extremists who sparked mainstream change? Logic says no. Besides, the 2006-07 team was more moderate, better on paper, and could easily have ended up in the Finals had it not been for some serious bullshit. Yet for some reason, I feel like it's the 2004-05 squad that would've been the most dangerous in the climate they've now brought about.

-I'm really taking seriously the possibility that LeBron does sign this summer. Cavs look great, Williams and West are low-key Positional Revolution, a poor man's Arenas/Hughes (oh, the irony), and with Wally and Wallace expiriing, the team will have cap space to sign Bosh or Amare, both of whom will be looking to change teams for sure in 2010. Doesn't that spell multiple rings to you? Where exactly would Bron have a better shot at championships?

-Haven't quite figured this one out yet, but Josh Smith needs to stay in motion constantly. Which is sort of the same thing as saying he needs to just study Amare's game intensely. He's not a PF, can't post up conventionally, and especially with Horford so important, is just getting in the way/wasting his talents when he meanders around the paint trying to get position. Smith needs to always be on his way toward the hoop to be effective. That can involve taking a few dribbles himself, or being hit with a less-than-perfect pass. But what doesn't work is his starting from a stand-still up top or trying to get his bearings down low, with the ball.

-For better or worse, he's not the new Sheed.



-Still thinking about the scoring leaders. I guess I'm just surprised to see Harris, Granger, and Roy near the top, because I never considered them dominant scorers. Don't Paul or Howard seem a tier higher than them? I mean based on presence alone. It's not only a change, it's one we didn't see coming, and I think that FD favors prophecies that come true, not change trumping the narrative.

-Though maybe I need to look further down, spot Ben Gordon on there, and once and for all view this list worth a grain of salt.

-I can't decide if this Pistons thing—combined with the end in Denver—is badly fucking with Iverson's legacy, or has just made him irrelevant. And then, the walking dead or an OG everyone opens the door for? Yes, I'm writing this as they cut to him on the bench in the fourth.