String Those Nerves Together Now

In olden days, I would have said "read what I wrote over there but this is the real", and then poured out my innards. But the problem with FanHouse is that they want me doing whatever. Have you read the previews Ziller and I did? I really couldn't make any less sense if I wanted to. So read them. Thus, as the playoff monster begins to stir, I find myself on my own doormat, faced with the possibility that what's on FD might be more straightforward than my "real" gig. Strange times we inhabit. However, I wanted to tend to these lands, dry and shriveled as they have become. So here's my very sober, useful rundown of Things That Persuade Me in This Postseason.

1. The Thunder--Really, can there be any doubt? Forget for a second that Durant is, if not LeBron's narrative, mystical equal, maybe even greater for not being equipped with a superpower's physique. He looks like I figure Young Ezekiel did, and also deserves some sort of otherworldly, possibly Martian, nickname. LeBron is, pardson the pun, all embronzed. Durant is exotic metals; there's a reason why, at one point, there was an Avatar comparison for him in a part of the new book. I think we finally decided it was at once too true and too silly to comprehend.

But the Thunder as a whole represent so much we've been in favor of while—and here's the kicker—without seeming like a leap of faith. Serge Ibaka is not a test. Russell Westbrook is not a test. The Hawks when they dared face Boston were exhilarating, but living on the edge can sometimes leave you feeling tawdry. No one thinks OKC beat LA, but good luck finding a single serious basketball fan who expects a sweep with zero intrigue.

2. Brandon Jennings--Tyreke Evans is a major stylist, and I still don't think people are letting that all-around game of his sink in. I've made my peace with Curry. But Jennings is the only one left standing, and while the Bucks are taking two games---no more, no less--tell me you aren't excited to see Jennings try his hand at the playoffs. No Bogut hurts the team's case, and Jennings' absolute value, and yet if the Bucks are going down anyway, why not do so with something resembling a Brandon Jennings showcase? I'm not talking about no 55; that's probably what led to his abrupt drop off the ROY map (and Curry's rise).

Let's just see Jennings carry himself like he belongs there, run his team, and demonstrate the game that makes him a clear-cut building block at the one. At the beginning of the season, the AI comparisons were pure bunk to me. I loved Jennings best when he slithered around the half-court looking to make a play. He can either jack up shots here in desperation or dig in and try to animate the bunch. One good thing about Skiles: He will be, umm, gently pushing for number two.

3. Dwyane Wade-- No one told me, I didn't notice, and frankly (stats aside), it didn't show all the time. But Wade was still pretty out-of-this-world in the 2009-10. Thus, I am looking forward for Wade to really blow it all out. That Round One is against Boston, the perfect team to fly headlong into and hope for collapse (or a revved-up guitar soundtrack) (is it so wrong that I once found a LeBron mix soundtracked with Iron Maiden?).

Despite what I've been writing at FanHouse, I don't quite get how players are thinking of these playoffs in terms of this summer. No one needs to be convinced that Wade can prevail, at least game-to-game. Still, 2010 is more than a rat race, it's a pecking order, with LeBron's 2010-ness having become some measure of his absolute power over the league. Not that Wade can nibble away at that, but riding high as the Free Agency babble begins is very much the new pecking order around the league. Like standings or balloting ever matter; there all we ever hear about is the winner. Not so with 2010. The whole world is watching and Wade is certainly looking to gain a little on LeBron. The question, though: What happens to this hierarchy once 2010 is over?



4. Bobcats WTF--I really, really need some help on this one. It's almost like when you go to a mental hospital in the fifties (okay, I'm imagining Shutter Island), and everyone's sweeping floors and playing Risk!, and then all of a sudden there's a disturbance and things really jump off. Is Larry Brown the warden? Wait, how is he not—I'm sorry to repeat myself so often on this count—the Bad News Bears coach? (Billy Bob version, motherfuckers . . . if I go down that path, I go down it all alone.)

Stephen Jackson, Gerald Wallace, Tyrus Thomas, Boris Diaw, Tyson Chandler, even Raymond Felton . . . it's like karmic revenge for the Believe! Warriors. If you let me coach this team I would discover Atlantis and burn down a subway. But no one's even suggesting that this team is scrappy, or violent, or even miscreants floating out on a boat somewhere (love that movie Strange Cargo!). For God's sake, didn't Stephen Jackson decree himself a pirate at some point?

5. Please let the Derrick Rose backlash begin now. Please bring back that psychedelic karaoke Luol Deng.

6. In the immortal words of J.E. Skeets, WHAT DO YOU THINK!??!!?!??!?

Invites for Frost

I don't like what I'm hearing. Not from LeBron, who has boldly asserted that he could win the scoring title every year, but from the rest of us. No, it's not the case that any other player could top LeBron if both gunned all-out, Gervin/Thompson-style, each day of the night. You know why? Because unlike Durant or Melo, James has way more at his disposal. He could work the post, or just run up the court and through all defenders on every possession. Yes, it was a matter-of-fact statement, calm and hardly with the lurch of a braggart. At the same time, LeBron is differentiating himself from his peers. Hey, everybody, he has untapped potential still. He knows it, and if he totally broke out of a team system to go for numbers—which, incidentally, he is less likely to do than anyone on this short-list—amazing thing would happen. We used to know it, and now he's slipping it in himself. Going after him for it seems a waste of time, but at the same time, there is something chilling about this off-hand press release. Forget at your own peril.

I am about to say two things involving NBC's Pro Basketball Talk, both of which involve folks I consider e-pals. So no one think this is a mix-tape war. Kurt lead the "is this news?" charge on the LeBron front; to him, I say yes and no. In what order, I'm not sure. No, in that we should knew, but yes, in that he reminds us? Or yes, in that it he reminds us (and himself) what's still buried inside him, and no, after that it's a no-brainer. Let's move on. Krolik, whom some of you may remember from his contributions to this site, took poor Monta Ellis to task the same day for calling himself the third-best player in the league. First, I would like to thank John for bringing to my attention Rolling Stone's embrace of Durant. Of course, it all makes sense—KD, and the Thunder in general, are the most indie rock-friendly team in the league. They even took that from the Sonics' storied past. El ouch. As for the meat of the story, look, shouldn't Ellis be ignored even more forcefully than James? Let him have his fun. If you think he's the problem with the Warriors, you must have an undue amount of faith in the D-League.

Ellis isn't perfect, and his career is at loggerheads. But if an obviously talented, frustrated, and aimless still-young guard on a team built out of nonsense brags to a generally indifferent media, is he really going to war? Not to neglect my role as a member of the media, but come on, let's give Ellis a break. At least until we're all convinced that he's being given a chance to screw up convincingly. Neither his non "right way" play (either caps or quotations all the time, I thought), nor his inflated ego are tethered to reality. I don't know, maybe I'm underestimating all these call-ups. But this is a man floating through trauma. Do we really want to hold him accountable in the same way—even less so, maybe—than the game's best player? Ellis may deserve more grief than James, and is certainly empirically wrong in a slew of ways, but it's only LeBron James whose words have any meaning past the narrow context of "punk spews crap" headline.

Oh, and Amare hates T-Mac. Pass it on.

His Own Happy Abyss

You go away to celebrate the Lord's birth, the ringing in of 2010, and more wedding, and all sky busts open. That's pushing things too hard, maybe, but I've had a few topics festering in my brain over these last two weeks and now it's time for them to get out. Topics that deserve a friendly presentation around these parts. Also people have been nagging me over Twitter to have opinions and I like to respond to our readers. So here goes my four-act, back-logged holiday grievances, which may or may not work together as a dramatic construct, or web of intrigue, when taken as a whole.

John Wall just keeps on doing it, we watch, register amazement, and nod our heads like "I told you." John Wall: Where Amazing is one some level assumed with each passing second. There's little question that Wall represents the latest in the highly-selective lineage of CHANGE THE GAME prospects. This is not a follow-up to the "have we lived a lie?" post precipitated by Darko's retirement. That was the last, desicated days of 2009, when accounts are called in and bells rung with solemnity. Now we're wandering amidst the first triumphant peals of 2010, where for at least a little while longer we can step outside and surely announce that today's news will echo forever. What better time, then, to declare what's become something of a no-brainer: We're watching the kind of player who makes the "I am a Martian" trope intelligible; this is athletic performance we might very well be hallucinating, as well as the long-needed intersection of NBA scouting and taking lots of drugs.

But Wall, unlike LeBron, Durant, or going back, Garnett or Odom, isn't just a basketball quark waiting to be unleashed on the pros—and, for the time being, negotiating with ease the scraggly environs of the NCAA. Wall is the most preposterous kind of paradox: A player whose raw ability, and range of skills, give him the ability to shatter our very imagination, leave us transfixed and drooling at the exact point where all pedantry fails. And yet, after watching Wall seamlessly fit into a talent-packed UK team and acquire a jumper overnight, we've simultaneously seen him reveal himself as a building block that offers more than infinite possibility. Short of a seven-foot inside presence like Oden (the safe pick, the nice guy, etc.), a PG is the most straightforward investment you can make in your team's future plans. Especially in this rule-changed era, you might argue that it's an even more foundational pick than the dominant big man—besides the obvious Steve Nash/Aaron Brooks test, you also find the perimeter game increasingly transformed into the—ahem—center of the action. Inverted, upside-down ... now, the point guard is the ultimate functional component. Chris Paul, for all his all-time-y proficiency, is (like Duncan) still on some level a role player. In the same way that a Maybach gets you to and from work.



Wall, though, is both capable of almost anything and without doubt locked into a position, a role. Part of the frenzy surrounding LeBron and Durant had to do with the fact that, while they seemed capable of almost anything, we had no idea what they'd be tacked to do as pros. You could argue that Garnett's spent an entire career negotiating the less plush side of this dynamic. John Wall's potential is hydra-headed. He's the next great PG, leap-frogging Jennings, Evans, Rondo and Rose before he's even hit the league. On expectations alone, Wall already stares eye-to-eye with Chris Paul. Yet at the same time, Wall's feel for the game and innate ability allow him to do things that his position-mates just usually can't. In that, he has much in common with Rondo (not a new observation), or maybe rookie year Westbrook. Except Walls is at once a more immediately adept point guard than the scrappy Rondo or scattershot (then, at least) Westbrook, and is more of an athletic outliet than either. He has the ability to make plays that just shouldn't happen. The phrase "that's just plain wrong" is applied to bringing completely and totally raw dishonor, or defying the expectations we bring to the game as viewers. Wall actually insults our assumptions about what's supposed to happen next.

If this is odiously vague, well, it's because John Wall is balancing his point guard responsibilities with his ability to do pretty much anything he wants on the court. I got to know John Wall at Hoop Summit, where he ran wild in one of those games that reads like the greatest workout you ever saw. At UK, he's been the quintessential team player, adherent to the system, and so on. He's played the kind of basketball that every coach loves, albeit with occasional flashes of the great beyond. Yes, John Wall right now is amazing. But perhaps even more unfathomable is that tension that exists between a sense of predestination and the power he holds to write his own script. We've never seen anything like it, at least not in this era of uber-hyped kids coming out of HS. Dare I say that, because he'll hit the pros with both a first-rate sense of purpose and an untapped reservoir of basketball superpowers, his rookie season might be a voyage of discovery (for him and us) that rivals even Bron's first campaign.

Speaking of that great workout/great game dichotomoy, that actually sprung to mind yesterday at Seattle U./Harvard, which I attended with most members of the Super-Secret Seattle Basketball Dork Association. Normally I have huge problems leaving the house, but this offered the rare opportunity to see two potential first-rounders—Seattle's Charles Garcia and Harvard's Jeremy Lin—square off for the cost of a hot dog. Given that Lin is the greatest Asian-American basketball player since Wat Misaka, and has a shot at being the first since Misaka to make the NBA, and Garcia is ... some kind of Latino in a sport desperate for them ... I was secretly hoping for a race war. One quarter of the arena Harvard, one quarter SU, another random Asians, and the last, Latinos from around the area. And then one half of one row of draft geeks. But alas, that was not to happen, and I had to content myself with assessing Lin and an on-the-mend Garcia.

Sidebar 1: SU's return to D1, albeit without a conference, reminds me of post-colonial independence movements. They have spent years in the wilderness, off the radar, whatever, but now get to basically invent an identity and narrative for themselves as a legit program. At the same time, there's this mythical past they can always reference, with Elgin Baylor being the pre-colonial icon from which all else draws its strength.



Sidebar 2: Feel free to take whatever I say about Garcia worth a grain of salt. For reasons that will become apparent, I have no choice but to over-react. Everyone I was with concluded that they "needed more information," and Q McCall has been investigating Garcia for a minute now, so his dispatches are probably more reliable.

I'm getting tired here, so the bare bones of what I saw: Lin played the better game, Garcia the better workout. Harvard blew out SU, Lin made play after play (often inconspiciously); Garcia seemed off, distracted, and unable to deal with decent opposing bigs. But at the end of the day, Lin—while bigger, stronger, and faster than I'd expected—is, in the words of Ty Keenan, "one of those unathletic guards who does everything relly well," while Garcia is like something I dreamt up while asleep at my desk. He's 6'10", 230, with massive biceps and length for days. While he bears a faint resemblance to a young Larry Johnson in the face, his game is tailor-made for FD. My cohorts are fond of comparing him to Tom Chambers for reasons I don't quite get, but I'd describe him as post-injury Amare, plus Odom's versatility, plus Rashard Lewis's range (and lack of strength inside). Garcia needs coaching and discipline, or at least a situation where he gives a fuck, but he's hardly Anthony Randolph raw. Don't count on him chewing up the paint and knocking over opposing PFs on defense, but as Haubs pointed out, Garcia he could be positively deadly as a 3/4 on a fluid, up-tempo team. Which, more and more, is the way of the Association. Or, more specifically,: If Kevin is right that last year's Orlando Magic was the ideal line-up for today's NBA, imagine a guy who could alternate between the Turkoglu and Lewis roles.

Odds and ends:

-Don't ask me about Arenas. Any reporting that takes Vecesey as its foundation is like building a house on top of raw sewage. Bullets Forever is going a great job of compiling the credible info coming out, and as of now, I still don't feel like I have a clear picture. Sorry for not being bloggy enough; I wrote some good stuff about Beasley, but regret how prematurely I jumped on that story.

-I know that the whole "if Jeezy's paying LeBron" line from "Empire State of Mind" was cleared up a long time ago. It's not tampering, it's about Jay's imaginary drug-dealing career. But you have to wonder, did this ever come to the Commissioner's office? And if so, did he get an explanation from a PR flak: "Don't worry, it's just a high-profile stake-holder in an NBA franchise pretending to be a drug trafficker." Either we've come a long way since the Thug Warz that surrounded AI's rap career, or Stern isn't as on top of things as we'd like to think. Maybe because these things just don't matter anymore.

The Meal of the Wicked

March 10, 1976: Colonel at Spurs, Gilmore and Gervin, through my brain right now.

The only good thing about having a fever for days is that after a point, you stop being exhausted and end up floating and all creative-like. I have so many things to add to the book today, and also wrote a 1200 word opus on why, indeed, small forwards matter for The Baseline. It could've easily appeared here, but it happened there. Check it out.

Also, don't forget to check out the last days of the Bill Simmons Book Club. The heat hath really been brought in the second round, and I kind of wish we could drop Simmons and just form a basketball-and-culture blog with this roster of writers. I know, keep dreaming.

Celebrate the New Dark Age

The New York Times recently ran an interesting article checking in on Jeremy Tyler, the 6-11 eighteen year old who one upped Brandon Jennings by not only bypassing college, but also his senior year of high school, to play professionally overseas. Tyler landed in Israel, where his experience has made Jennings's time in Italy look like a vacation by comparison. Indeed, the most striking thing about the article is how Jennings, now five games into his NBA career, is already perceived as a success story. Much was made last year about Jennings struggling with the transition and playing sparingly for Lottomatica Roma, but everything’s changed now that he's locked down the starting point guard job for the Bucks, while averaging 18.4 ppg, 4.4 apg, and 4.4 rpg and looking like the early favorite for Rookie of the Year.

The moral of the story seems to be that, if you're willing to suck it up and adhere to European basketball's bizarre notions of team play for a year (or in Tyler's case, two years), then NBA stardom awaits. Sonny Vaccaro, the evil genius behind both players' decisions, stated the matter more bluntly by praising Jennings's willingness to "shut up and learn." Tyler, by contrast, has reportedly demonstrated the kind of immaturity and whiny entitlement that most people seem to expect from today's teenager. If Tyler fails, it may jeopardize Vaccaro's plans and those of his partner in crime Jeffrey H. Rosen. Rosen has great plans for turning his Israeli pro team Maccabi Haifa into "the preferred destination for American prodigies who want to skip college" and ultimately "a global media presence." Shades of Saperstein.



Last week, Latavious Williams added a new wrinkle to the discussion by becoming the first high schooler to be drafted by the NBDL. Williams had already done several other things you do when you're a high school basketball star with bad grades and low test scores: go to prep school for a year, commit to Memphis, and explore the option of playing overseas. It turns out no foreign team was interested in the raw combo forward whom Scout.com rated the 52nd best player in the class of 2008, so the DL and its $19,000/year contract was the only option left. Since it's unlikely Williams will ever play in the NBA, he is more of a sad anomaly than a legit test case.

Current college freshmen John Wall and Renardo Sidney are better examples, since both have the skill, size, and athleticism that the NBA actually wants. Wall was rumored to be exploring the option of going overseas, but ultimately decided to play for Kentucky, which under Calipari is kind of like playing professionally while getting to stay in the country. (Lexington is also the likely destination of Michael Gilchrist, currently a high school junior and widely considered to be the best player in the nation. Oh, and he happens to be a close family friend of Worldwide Wes.) Sidney also selected an SEC school, Mississippi State, after most every other school backed away, out of concern about Sidney's amateur status possibly being compromised. Unsurprisingly, Sidney has still not been cleared to play this season by the NCAA, and Wall's status is similarly muddy.



Wall and Sidney's situation is a reminder that Jennings was also scheduled to play collegiately (at Arizona) before the NCAA flagged his test scores, thus setting into motion Vaccaro’s machinations. It’s worth mentioning here that KG was also planning to attend college (at Michigan or maybe UNC, depending on whom you talk to) before test scores derailed his plans and made him the next gen Moses (Malone), leading a generation of high schoolers into the promised land. Remember, also, that according to the NCAA record books, Derrick Rose never played in the national championship game, because someone else took his SATs for him. To a man, these players were willing (and even wanted) to go to college, but were prevented from doing so by either low test scores or, in the case of Wall and Sidney, unsavory associations. If Garnett or Jennings had been allowed to go to college, it’s not difficult to imagine them extolling the experience and continuing to take classes the way Durant and Oden have. So, when we talk about these issues, we need to reconsider whether players are going overseas to chase the money or because the NCAA forced them out. The answer, in most cases, is probably both.

So whither Wall and Sidney? If they are ultimately cleared by the NCAA, they play a year of college basketball, increase their brand awareness, and enter next year’s NBA Draft as known commodities. But, if they aren’t, then what? Since I assume they’ve been accepted as students by their universities, they could continue to take classes and work out individually, but that seems unlikely. A last minute pro contract overseas, a stint in the NBDL buoyed by sneaker money, or maybe an agent-sponsored residency at somewhere like the IMG Academy is more like it. Maybe the humiliation of being effectively kicked out of school would give them the motivation to succeed where Tyler has thus far failed. And if it works out for them, who could blame the next hoops prodigy for wanting to follow in their footsteps and stay clear of all the NCAA drama?

Go Go Commerce!

Like Nike needs my help in promoting this ad. But this is so classic, I have to post it. This is that strain of Nike ad-making that fueled the business up until recently, and helped create players as much as they helped create it. "The LeBrons" picked it up briefly, but this confirms what I'd been hearing: That these companies know the demand is there, and have been trying to get back to this. I definitely attribute this to Twitter, though not Obama; not sure how my theory about those two phenomena works when you introduce a third element. Regardless, this is the shit, even if it's somewhat redolent of past Undrcrwn efforts.

Stray thoughts:

-The mystery of Shard continues. I only found out recently that, rather than speaking in an affect-less whisper, dude has a thick Houston accent. How I didn't know this until recently is anyone's guess. But now he goes and raps in a way that in no way indicates his regional roots. This isn't a referendum on his skill as a rapper, though I guess bad rappers sound more generic. Just surprised me, in the same way that Delonte's bland freestyle voice did. Iverson should've set the precedent on this one!

-Where's the part, mentioned on Mo Williams's Twitter, where Iguodala saves AutoTune from stagnation? Now he doesn't even get a verse?

-Lewis looks most costumed. Williams, like that's what he wears around the house. Durant makes me think about what this ad means to people who aren't old enough to get all the references (includng him).

-Spent last night in the ID looking at Japanese teen fashion magazine. That's kind of the vibe I get from this.

-Never have I felt less like the ad world needed me. And I think that's a good thing.

-Is there going to be a backlash that demands more differentiation between West/East, or Afrocentric/gangster? It is all kind of lumped together. That's what makes the ad so great to me, but to the purist, it could be dangerous.

-Is this archaeology, a la the Jordan 9th game vid, or self-aware nostalgia?

-Mainstream-ing after the fact? Not that this stuff was so inaccessible, but rap's definitely bigger now than then.

-Back to the previous question: Exoticism, roots, or both?

-Finally: Missed opportunity that Ice Cube and Kobe appears in a Nike SB ad but failed to address the 3x2, to my mind the defining ball moment of West Coast hip-hop?

Can He Get a Witness?

Right before the regular season ends, FreeDarko pays cloth-y tribute to Kevin Durant's mammoth sophomore campaign . . . and the relative obscurity he's toiled in. Maybe if we move enough of these, he'll get on national television for 2009-10.

Some other store news: Based on popular demand, we've done up limited prints of a few more portraits from the book: Kevin Garnett, Lamar Odom, Ron Artest, and Joe Johnson. We're offering two special deals with these: if you buy two, you get a third free. Or, for those with an excess of wall space or love for the NBA, there's the option of all nine portrait prints for $250.

Be sure to weigh in on the latest version of the Z-graph, and tune in Thursday for another episode of our brand news joint venture podcast. I feel like a fucking octopus right about now.

Big Bucks on Astral Plane

At this point, we should probably just ignore Wade, Bron, and Bosh when they're asked about the future. James just messes with reporters, Wade's the good soldier, and Bosh is too polite to regularly let it smolder like he wants. For the record, on intuition and common sense alone, I figure James stays, Wade too but only after JO's replaced with quality, and Bosh might even be traded to Cleveland by next spring.

That said, I was struck by this Marc Spears Durant piece, which includes the following quotes:

"But after coming here and seeing the city, I love Oklahoma. The fans have been with me every night. What more can you ask for?"

"I like the nucleus that we have," he said. "I'm excited. I want to be here as long as possible. It's like family. I love being here. We're going to get better. We can get better.

"Hopefully, we will make the playoffs next season. That's what we're fighting for. We'll have a good chance."

Fine, maybe your standard clap-trap from a young, upbeat athlete not looking to make waves. But unless I'm just really stupid, Durant and Uncle Jeff will be looking for extensions next summer. So it's not like he's talking to thin air here. More importantly, though, is the emphasis on 1) OKC being a viable home for Durant's prime and 2) how impressed he is with the team around him.

The first point relates to both LeBron's supposed predicament, and possibly, the economy. I've written previously that James doesn't need New York or Miami except as lifestyle accessories; and hell, he can Gulfstream it out there whenever he feels like it, or buy a mansion for weekends. The Knicks, even the city itself in these troubled times, need brand LeBron, not vice-versa. And at the same time, he's elevating Cleveland, turning it from the butt of jokes and flaming rivers into the home of King James. Durant has more of an uphill battle in this respect, since despite his college hype he's been all but invisible this season. Still, this can't last much longer, and if next season the recognition comes, and the fans flock, by 2010 OKC might not be a joke any longer.

But more importantly is Durant's conviction, even good-natured shock, and just how brilliantly-engineered this team's future is. Sam Presti is smart. Sure, being surrounded by bikinis and beaches is nice, as would time spent in a national spotlight you don't have to earn. And yet we've seen that the Knicks can tumble into oblivion, even before the economy collapsed. Presti will not mess up when it comes to developing this team and its players. You could say similar things about Pritchard. If team markets are becoming more and more negligible, and the perilous state of all things financial makes the astute GM more precious than ever, how far are we from Presti being what keeps Durant in OKC?



P.S.: Because I am serious about those Amazon recommendations, the current ones: Eros Plus Massacre is the book on Japanese New Wave and such; The Street of Crocodiles an obvious influence on FreeDarko's prose style and worldview; On the Rainbow Road, the cheap way to some essential Southern soul; Sherman's March is my favorite documentary ever, except for maybe his Bright Leaves; The Wizard of Odds is FD itself; All Things Must Fight to Live will change your life.

"Safe to Say, This is What Saturday's Should've Been"-TK

Let no one ever tell you I don't take this shit serious, or write just to hear the sound of my own sweet, sweet voice. The whole dust-up last spring over whether the Lakers were FD or not, that was just frustrating. The debate over what the championship Celtics gave up to win, well, I think their play early this season showed we could all be made happy. But the LeBron debacle this weekend just plain embarrassing. It was sloppy, clueless, and obscured what I actually want to say about a new duality worth watching, one that could be even more central to the league's future than Kobe/Bron. And so, with a hearty shout-out to my new friends at the Real Cavs Fans board, here's a second take that will, when necessary, acknowledge the wreck that preceded it.

Why did I fuck this one up so badly? Because those LeBron threes were, clearly, definitively, LeBron James threes. All the power, fury, excess, and iron-clad assurance that defines James everywhere else on the court, they finally came out in his long range shot. Remember, I played a large part in a book that sought to understand basketball acts in terms of a "Periodic Table of Style," asserting a direct correlation because effectiveness, comfort level, and individuality. I know that James has hit three-pointers in the past, some at key moments. I've also been mightily impressed by the progress his stroke has made this season. But the reason for all the ninth-grade existentialism was that, for the greatest players, there's an idea, or a feeling, that pervades their every act. We call this "style," and it's the symbiotic relationship between how one approaches the game and how one carries out a generic act like "go left." I think superstars can go through several incarnations—most obviously, the various Jordans, but more recently Kobe through the years, or Wade then and now. What makes James both awe-inspiring and at times frustrating is that he seemingly has the ability not to spontaneously expand his capabilities, but pull off shit as if he weren't present in it.

Yes, I will single out his three-point shooting prior to Friday. When James takes two dribbles and then staidly fires away from the top of the key, that's almost a distraction from an epic work in progress. What makes James James? His uncanny combination of size and speed, which has gotten even more inexorable in the open court, off the dribble, or anywhere around the paint; the emergent defense nightmare he's become; his court vision, which insistently delivers the ball to whichever Cav happens to be closest to the basket; a nose for rebounds that comes with just understanding the action better than anyone else. All some combination of peak basketball IQ and/or outlandish physical gifts, traits he's applied more seamlessly, and synthesized with greater ease, as he's matured. This is the education of LeBron, and what I talk about when I imagine the "authentic" James. It's also, to be sure, a process, but one quite different from those that—ahem—mere mortals face. As we quoted in the book, Kobe consider himself to be "chasing perfection," aspiring to an absolute. James isn't so much trying to make perfection his own (he does have a few flaws) as he is transcending it, putting together a game that replaces a (false?) idol with his own frightening visage.



What I saw as "video game" LeBron was his knack for knocking down threes with no personal, stylistic context; why this troubles me is that it's at once in some ways unreal, or glib, and thus—at least according to the way I view the game—proof that he hasn't fully made the shot his own. For most players, we'd say "hasn't assigned a style guide icon to it;" for James, I think we expect nothing less than the invention of a new icon. Friday, he accomplished this. Those were shots that get labeled "video game" because they're impossible, but to me, "video game" signifies impersonal and facile. It refers not to the act, but the tone of it. And, in typical LeBron-ian fashion, what should've been a fundamentally unreal and unlikely way of doing things ends up seeming more fitting than "the real way" of doing things. That's why James is something other than mortal—not because he's already perfect, but because he exists beyond perfection. He's almost its mirror image, functioning always just on the other side of impossible. Does that make him less human than Kobe? No, but it certainly makes Kobe's journey something mere mortals can relate to, a parable of ambition, toil, and vanity that at least vaguely applies to other people.

Without getting all the implied religious analogies even more tangled, Jordan is obviously the idol of today's NBA. In the past, we've discussed Kobe as Jordan-centric classicist, Bron as defining a new paradigm for the future. What if we introduce Durant as the third element, the Air Apparent not in game per se, but in, well, Jordan-ness? Here's the crucial distinction, which might well blow up in my face: Kobe may be mortal, but there's something inhuman about single-minded pursuit of an ideal. It's clinical and, while subject to fits of passion, ultimately rational. There's a tacit assumption that with enough work, he'll match MJ's greatness. The problem is, Jordan's career isn't a template, it's a narrative, a series of organic occurrences that gave rise to the illusion of perfection. Perfection is the limit of what's possible; James inverts this structure, Kobe looks only at the finished product. Duran both steps out of MJ's shadow as a player and, with a honorable nod to Allen Iverson, has more of a flare for drama, more of a sense that his greatness grows out of the moment and is then added to the prototype, than anyone since Jordan. There, I said it.

I'm running out of superlatives for Durant, and I don't want FD to turn into am unreflective parody of itself. But I find it critical that, for a player whose on-court demeanor is unflappable calm masking a yes, MJ-esque need to win, the element of drama is absolutely key. So far, every major event in his career has been a surprise, a shock, a sudden leap: the explosion at UT, sudden maturation late last season, All-Star numbers in run-up to the snub, absolute rule over the Rookie/Challenge game, comeback in HORSE (not important in itself, but helped make ASW his, itself a truly amazing narrative development), and now the freakish production since the break. You could blandly cast this as "Durant keeps getting better," but the reason I dare invoke MJ is that for KD, he's got that emergency gear that kicks in whenever failure or rejection starts to peak out from behind the corners. It's not anathema to him, or a strange unknown creature; it's a demon that haunts him and co-mingles with any ego he builds up from one game to the next. If his demeanor is one of unknowability and ghostliness, the game that pours forth from him is unmistakably human in its emotional thrust. This isn't about proving shit, or scouting out some other plan of existence. It's about a player who has a hair-trigger when it comes to pushing himself, and for whom "pushing yourself" involves lots of pushing and lots of self.

Samson Is My Leader (RAZED)

Forget it. The post is gone, because I can't stomach the sight of it. Your excellent comments, many of which made the Bron/Durant contrast far better than I did (I was a little distracted), remain. Let them be as a monument to ideas, this hole in the ground, a testament to my folly. At least I now have an account at a Cavs message board.

Vain Gray Ovens

Real quick, and maybe better designed for the Twitter: When they first announced HORSE, I was deathly afraid this was going to turn into some racial bullshit. I mean, what gave that away harder than the "no dunks" rule, buried deep in the press release? The reason I objected to everyone's jittery Kevin Love nomination is that, like it or not, trick shots are the result of practice. That's (EDIT:) self-fulfilling gym rat shit, and it's almost unreasonable to expect anyone else in the field to pull off your ace in the hole.

Now, to draw an analogy I absolutely hate myself for, it's classical music from a score. Putting Durant, Mayo and Johnson in there, is—arghhh—improvisational. Instead of all aspiring to a set-piece one dude knows like his own hand, you'll have weird combinations of elements emerging on the spot. Okay, so maybe these three will do some preparation, but not like how the Other Horse would go down, or how they would do for the Dunk Contest (P.S. the "white" HORSE with, say, Love, Miller and Dunleavy would be the white Dunk Contest). Am I falling victim to stereotypes here myself? Maybe. Durant could very well decide he has to win this one. But given the kind of players, and personalities, these three are, you know they're not going to come with anything corny, or a shot that it's clear they've spent their whole life working on. I'm thinking lots of high-bounced, backboard use, and range. Like the Dunk Contest of consummate scorers. Now that's got a solid ring to it.

Keep those contest entries coming!

Sorry for the sloppiness in the beginning that makes it sound like I don't believe in African-American gym rats. I hope you all got my drift.

Post MUST Be Called "The No More Drama Club"

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Lost Wonder

As usual, Ziller beat me to it, in officially blogging a sigh of relief that Kevin Durant has been moved to Small Forward. Gee, ya think? This was something I pined for back in the beginning of the season and something you would think wouldn't take this long to figure out. Gee, PJ, do you think one of the best freshman forwards in college history should be forced to play two-guard? Hell no.

The bottom line is that the Thunder already look and feel better under Scotty Brooks, who I must namedrop, as one of the few NBA guys I actually made friends with during my few years working for the Timberwolves. When I was 11 years old and working my first game, Brooks hit me with a $20 bill and actually chatted with me -- I felt a connection with him ever since that point. He was one of the true nice guys in the league, and also was a tough little bastard -- someone that Barkley would go to war for in their Sixers days and someone who played some key stretches during the Rockets' mid-90s title runs. Brooks has been city-hopping for a while, and may in fact be the next great coach. He provides the toughness of Scott Skiles, but also knows when to loosen his grip. Quoth Durant (again via Ziller):

"Not taking anything away from P.J., he wanted the best out of us," said Durant. "But Scott did a great job of giving us a little bit of room for error. Once we messed up he just told us what we needed to do better and told us that play was over. I think that kind of made us feel a little better. We just got to continue to build on it."



I can't think of a better situation for Brooks as a first-time coach, and for these Thunder players. Plus, when Brooks took over, they actually played like they were going to win a game, and because I fell asleep for the last two minutes of the Thunder/Suns game last night, I'm going to pretend they did. I could see an extreme sense of levity and comfort amongst these guys. And at very least I have seen in Westbrook and Durant, a potential small-big power-duo that by midseason will be competitive with D-Williams/Boozer, Nash/Amare, and Chris Paul/David West as far as these duos go. Not to mention next year, when Westbrook establishes himself as the official Deron Williams to Derrick Rose's CP3. Westbrook just has insane Dwyane-Wade-like upside and is fast becoming my favorite player in the league.

Now if the Thunder could only dump their supporting cast for better three-point shooters, we would have a serious team on our hands. Westbrook can get in the lane with the best of them, and Durant is JUST STARTING HIS CAREER NOW. In an email to Shoals and the Recluse last night, I officially proclaimed him "freed." Screw Glenn Robinson and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. This is the bizarro-KG-Dirk-assassin that we all were watching at Texas. It will take a year still for that player to emerge, but I could finally see the remnants last night, beginning to be reassembled.

The Ziller Sessions: Edition 8

Firstly, please, look below for details on our Chicago and Seattle launch events.

I spend a lot of the day chatting with Tom Ziller about basketball. Sometimes, once of our conversations is so eventful, I decide to take it's basic structure, write a bunch of big words around it, and pretend I thought of the whole thing. This is one such post. Hence the title, and the occasional quotes from TZ.

Last night, when I decided to stop watching Facts of Life and go to bed, my thoughts immediately turned to yesterday's description of O.J. Mayo. I stand by the Joe Johnson comparison, but looking back at it, there's something a little too generic, or porous to what I wrote. It could describe anyone who "plays within the flow of the game but will step up." That could, to some degree, describe not only Mayo and Johnson, but also Kobe, Durant, and LeBron James. It's especially the addition of Bron to this list that rubs me the wrong way; the first four make it imprecise, he makes the characterization empty.

Searching for hope and direction, I was saved when my girl handed me last week's New Yorker, which had a long article on psychopaths/sociopaths (apparently one is either the PC term, or the one that makes the most clinical sense). It was then that, in reference to the above question of on-court assertiveness, I started kicking around that old cliche "killer instinct." This is, of course, a good thing. Unless you're reading an article about sociopaths, and then, the relationship between a man and his killer instinct starts to take on a more ambivalent connotation—especially if you think of "the flow of the game" and "team" as some version of polite society, and see Kobe as 1) epitome of killer instinct; 2) someone for whom it's not always a positive on the court; and 3) a person once suspected of being a low-grade sociopath.



I think the best description for what I see some of in Mayo, and defines Joe Johnson, is an especially powerful strain of cool. That takes it a step beyond "respecting the flow of the game," since there isn't that tension between their killer instinct and the flow of the game. Their insides are, for lack of a better word, flow, which is why there's no a clear disturbance when they assert themselves. Johnson doesn't struggle against circumstance, look to dominate, or even—to throw another cliche out there—"wait for the game to come to him." He's not envisioning opportunity in advance, or laying back one step, all predatory and reactive; he's right there with it, seeming just to know. There's a confidence to him, but you'd hesitate to even call it "steady." And when Johnson explodes for 20 in a quarter, it's about as naturalistic as these things get. Mayo's not quite there yet, but as Ty Keenan put it, "even when he seems to be forcing it he acts like he's supposed to."

Durant, possess no such mystical qualities. Barkley, I think, compared KD to Gervin, in terms of piling up points without anyone noticing. And it's true: Unless Durant hits five threes in a row and follows it with an especially acrobatic drive (which, with his length, he rarely resorts to), his style is impressionistic. Not understated—a 6'9" jumble of arms and legs that rises up for threes like he's floating is still an extraordinary sight. But between the lack of emphasis in his game, his build, and those limbs just seem to trail off into the rafters on every play, Durant can get pretty ethereal at times.

You can tell he's embraced this, perhaps because it suits his outward mildness, maybe since he knows he's not an intimidator. But we've all seen glimmers of unspeakable intensity from Durant, and some of his epic scoring bursts shatter all this, mistaken by some as complacency. Ziller: "Durant's eyes are always kind of frantic, like he wants to scream but bottles it up." There's a killer instinct there for sure, perhaps—remember the Jordan comparisons—one that borders on unnerving. That he gets the best of both worlds, instead of being torn about by the tension or overcome by his passion, is one of the greatest signs of his maturity. That doesn't mean, though, that he's always easy to watch, or ever feels entirely stable. More Ziller: "He makes the league uncomfortable."



In a way, Durant's closer to Kobe than he is Joe Johnson. It's not really worth going over Bryant's struggles with ego, and the ways in which his various instincts have been both incredibly productive and seriously destructive. When we talk about the mature Bryant, it's of a player who keeps himself under wraps until called upon. Certainly, he's internalized this good behavior, and Kobe does have the pure ability to play well with others without completely reforming. But that Kobe is always there, just beneath the surface, by design. Durant's at his best amidst the interplay of extremes. Kobe's an either/or headcase just waiting to steal the keys.

The missing element in all this is LeBron. This exchange says it all:

TZ: LeBron doesn't actually care. Like there isn't tension. Because he doesn't care if he's 2-for-14 or if he's scoring 55. Not that he's detached, but, well, he sort of is.
BS: I also don't think LeBron feels disappointment. He's above it all.
TZ: Exactly
BS: TRANSCENDENCE.
TZ: That's because he can never let his team down.
BS: You mean, no matter what he does, he can't let them down?
TZ: He could have his worst night ever and his team is better off in the immediate with him on the court. His worst is better than any teammate's best. That's not quantitatively correct. But spiritually, that's the case I think
BS: I think it's true. Like, when does LeBron actually hurt that team?
TZ: Never! Even Team USA, in 2004 and 2006. I don't remember him hurting the team ever.

Let me ask again: Who among us is really human? And when exactly did we decide that mattered so?



(diagram by Ziller)