Sit and Think with a Drink about How We've Won

In no way does this make me exceptional, but I’ve reached a point in life during which I am consistently reminded about my age. (To be exceptional, I’d have to be able to fondly recall Adrian Dantley with Yasser Arafat while in an Upper West Side synagogue.)



I refer to childhood touchstones that elicit blank stares from my law-school classmates, among whom important things such as Voltron do not resonate. Playing sports for too long makes my right knee hurt. My favorite music was released about fifteen years ago, when I was in high school. Prospective employers ask me why I’ve already switched careers twice. (To become NBA commissioner. Duh.) Almost all of my long-time friends have recently gotten engaged, married, gay, or gay and married. I am 28 years old.

My early and mid twenties were spent obstinately trying to prevent this time from arriving. I would bristle if anyone referred to me as an adult and cite adolescent children as my emotional peers. A birthday was the most depressing moment of any year. All the while, I quietly conceded the inevitability of aging, and even regarded myself as magnanimous when I realized, early last fall, that upon leaving behind a developed adult life in New York for a second try at high school in Missouri, I was happy to be a grown-ass man. It was the sort of calm revelation that surprises before instantly settling as obvious. I parked a car which I leased in my own name, walked into an apartment fully decorated with furniture I assembled on my own, and willingly opened a book about contracts so that I might get ahead. Measured risk, self-sufficiency, responsible choices--I had arrived.

It’s not all cardigan sweaters, warm milk, and world weariness, of course. I exuberantly run around school in a unicorn shirt on days when my flag football team has a game. I like going to Olive Garden’s never-ending-pasta-bowl nights and telling dirty jokes with the waitresses. The flag of piracy still flies from my mast. And let’s be real: 28 isn’t 78; that’s a destination not even on the horizon.



Romanticizing youth and mourning age are equally easy. Appreciating an ongoing transformation is somewhat harder. That’s why I am taking this moment to welcome back our beloved Association with my enthusiasm, normally so loudly pronounced, somewhat muted by reflection.

The build up to this season has been a quiet time for me. Entrenched stars of the new establishment--LeBron, and Dwyane, and Chris, and Dwight--are thrilling. For a number of them, the questions focus on when they will cross the threshold of all-time greatness. The excitement they’ll offer is assured. Yet the ascendancy (if they even remain ascendant) of these post post-Jordan saviors necessarily implies that they have passed by their predecessors. Predecessors with whose legacy the public remains uneasy, and who will collectively be remembered by history for having carried the burden of redemption after Michael. With this class of tortured heroes in mind, opening night is shaping up to resemble a reunion down the line more than a first day of classes. A generation that defined not only the NBA’s post-Jordan growth but also my own personal transition is coming to its end. This year feels like a gathering valedictory.



There are the accomplished folks, those who adhered to their stated intentions and are celebrated for making it: Tim, now hobbling more noticeably but not quite ready to submit; Kevin, whose protestations to the contrary cannot fully mask the wear and tear; Kobe, with nothing left to prove; Jason, timeless in his own way. Perhaps Shaq (though as the years accumulate, he increasingly seems like his own era, in some ways, both for chronological and stylistic reasons). There are the fuck ups, too. The kids who squandered their potential or never really had any. Some of them won’t even show: Glenn, Keith, Tim, Ron, Steph.

And then there are so many others whose stories defy neat categorization and whose appearances at the function engender polite admiration but also unavoidable disappointment. Think of the ambivalence, the confusion, the mixtures of conditional praise we’ll conjure as we see Ray Ray, Tracy, and Paul again. Or Grant, Sheed, J.O., Vince, and Chauncey. Anyone know if Antoine and Stack are coming? And, of course, Allen. A.I. will be the dude who could show up in any condition, and it wouldn’t be surprising after all that’s been done, seen, and heard.

We are about to embark upon an era’s denouement. Preseason forecasts have made a similar declaration in recent years, but this season is different. To start, the 2009 playoffs were almost exclusively owned by the next generation. Even the old-NBA Celtics were dominated by their emerging point guard, he of this burgeoning oligarchy. Old-NBA Kobe Bryant won, but he played for history. What greater validation could there have been than the immediate, reflexive glances backwards? The Lakers’ title, won with Pau and Bynum, may have portended continued success, but more than anything, it was about Bryant’s legacy.

Moreover, the NBA players drafted in the mid and late nineties have themselves conceded that this will be the end. Roscoe went to Boston to mount a final championship push before KG’s knee fully gives out and injuries and age weather Ray and Paul Pierce to the point of dullness. The Spurs added Richard Jefferson because biding time and playing for the tomorrow of 2010 is apparently not a luxury which Tim Duncan can afford. Vince has embraced third-option status on a Magic team that is almost entirely powered by an engine of the new NBA. Allen Iverson has devolved into a Memphis sideshow attraction. Elsewhere, older stars of the soon bygone era are reliant upon their younger teammates: Chauncey needs Carmelo; Nash and Grant Hill need Amare; Jermaine needs Dwyane; Tracy needs to retire; Shawn Respert needs food. Even Shaq--Shaquille O’Neal!--needs no less than LeBron James.



So I have reached yet another reminder of my age. The suddenly old guard begins to fade along with my youth; the league evolves along with my fan perspective.

Kevin Garnett was drafted during the summer before I entered ninth grade. I was thirteen, and I vividly remember running to the telephone at summer camp to discuss the draft with my father. As any barely pubescent, aspiring NBA savant might have, I diligently regurgitated everything I’d read in the newspaper as though they were my own opinions. “Garnett’s supposed to be really good, and really versatile,” I said. “He’s straight from high school, too. That’s young!” I exclaimed, a full four years away from being draft eligible myself (you know, had I been a better player). I didn’t know it at the time, but Garnett’s arc as a player, like the larger narrative about his generation, would go on to mirror my fan identity.

Weaned on an Association dominated by Jordan and populated by the legendary bumper crop of hall-of-fame players who debuted in the middle and late 80s, as an adolescent I greeted the NBA with wonderment and an expectation of excellence. I assumed that the league’s trajectory would remain on the growth course it enjoyed as my fan consciousness emerged during my formative years.

Over time, my evergreen enthusiasm for the sport mixed with an understanding of the athletic, social, cultural, and market forces surrounding the league. It was natural; I grew up. I remained committed, but I steadily understood a much larger experience that accounted for everything else in the basketball realm. For instance, adoring the NBA was not universal, I learned. Plenty of fans were disenchanted, frustrated, indifferent. Likewise, my take on player transactions, the sport’s mechanics (don’t bring the ball down, big man!), and the business of basketball all grew deeper, adding layers sometimes in conflict.

The NBA is no less fun for me now. I continue to hoot and holler at my television, or evangelize on Twitter about the glory of Chris Douglas-Roberts. But I also see a broader image than the one to which I clung as a child. The officiating can be awful. The sneakers aren’t what they once were. The access to players is much better. And so forth. A panoramic approach affords the opportunity to dwell upon what’s passing while still being excited about what remains going forward.



It has been no different for the generation we will soon lose. Folks looked to Garnett and his peers to continue the work Michael et al. started, growing the sport’s popularity and elevating its execution. The “Next Jordan” basketball hype that seemed to swirl endlessly alongside the manic search for expanding revenue asked this new class of NBA players to meet an unrealistic standard. When stories about prep-to-pros players and increasing athleticism grew stale, when it became clear that Michael was an exception and not a new rule, the narrative twisted. Over time, it cast KG and those of his era as inadequate, no matter how intrinsically great the accomplishments.

Arguing about whether the characterization of inadequacy is just or not has grown tedious. Without judgment, we can likely all agree that the Kevins, the Tims, and also the Mercers, came to the NBA under the weight of great expectations, carved out an epoch with many more shades of gray than expected, and now begin their departure worn by highs and lows. As I said, this progression isn’t so different from that of the innocent fan whose appreciation and cynicism both grow over time, leaving him free to relish the good and understand the bad.

But, for being a vessel; for being a companion; for living our progress--for these things, this group of departing players deserves our attention. These players facilitated growth, served as reliable friends in a way, and were, in part, projections of fandom. They are less heroic but more human. Accordingly, those of my age group surely must take a moment as the NBA again approaches to consider fully what it means for the era of our definition to be winding down. The trumpets heralding a new regal class will still be echoing when we finish.

I Believe in Windows

Miss me? If you want some Protestant assurance that I'm not abandoning the goal of endless written output, regard The Baseline, or spy on me in coffee shops as I draft chapters of the next book. So yes, the blog lies fallows, but it's not dead, and elsewhere I thrive.

But I did want to drop by my own ghastly quarters to reflect upon something David Falk. That sound a lot like Stalin's Writings: A Critical Perspective. Really though, there's at least one really telling passage in this Washington Times ode to a great man, one who might belong to a bygone era where superstars actually needed agents for all-hands-on-deck negotiating (these days, you can get by with a lawyer once the sneaker contract's set). Regardless, here's the quote that got me thinking:

"Michael Jordan is a very good player. Is he the first best player in basketball history? That's arguable," Boland says. "Is he the first best endorser in basketball history? That's not even a question."

Agents and marketers have copied what Falk refers to as the "Jordan blueprint" - a strategy Tiger Woods, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant have tried to replicate. For all that Falk did to launch Jordan's career off the court, the agent says, "Michael Jordan not only made my career, he made my life.

Kind of boring, I know. But consider this: FreeDarko has long trumpeted on-court action as a function of personality, a symbiotic bond, even. Why wouldn't marketing, or at least public persona, be similarly tied into who players are? Not saying there's a direct correlation, and this might be more about the "how" than the "what." Think about it, though: Maybe Jordan didn't just fit "the blueprint," he was able to inhabit it, because of who he is as a player and as a person. Private, kind of boring, single-minded on the court, a natural at keeping the ferocious murder-mask and Southern gentleman-ly countenance.



Falk made Jordan. Fine. It was a feat of tremendous vision. But, in the same way that Jordan's game allowed for a new dynamism of sneaker marketing, didn't the entire package of grown-up MJ make a particular marketing plan possible? Somehow, this template has been treated as if multiple athletes found it tried-and-true at the same time, despite their differences. When in fact, to imitate this plan with Jordan's (real) personality or (capacity for) persona is to put the cart before the horse.

It was never going to work with Kobe, for the simple fact that Bryant and Jordan could not be further apart as people. Beyond the "intensity on the basketball court" thing. Not coincidentally, I think that Kobe's mature game bears less and less resemblance to Jordan as he's given rein to be his own basketball-industrial complex. LeBron, too, will learn soon. He's funny, outgoing, and mystical in ways Jordan never was. You can't just transpose a strategy that presumes blandness, control, and compartmentalization and assume it makes sense with the player. Tiger, fine, maybe.

Some, most likely those out to murder Kobe Bryant in his sleep, will argue that the young Bryant tried to emulate MJ as a player, as a man, and in ways that went deep enough so as to sync him up with the Falk/Jordan plan. The lesson, though, comes in the fact that eventually it came crashing down, and there were cracks in the fissure well before the rape case.

Marketing is a form of style. Let's just admit that, no matter how corporations may see it, you ultimately can only get so far by expecting an individual to fit a strategic plan crafted in someone else's image. Thus, even on that plane in which the lie is common currency, athletes must be themselves in order to do so in a way that's, well, honest enough to stick.

Playing With House Pancakes

You want to know why I didn't flinch when Shaqobronix, or whatever it's called, came to pass? Why I was lukewarm on the Celtics, and to this day think my premonition was right? It's because this is what a real meeting of the minds should feel like.

Let's stop momentarily and honor Trevor Ariza, who will have a bright career elsewhere, starting with Houston, where he will either make okay to like Shane Battier, displace him the way we thought James White might do Bowen, or both. I know how important he was to that championship run. But that's in the past. They got the ring; these things are filled with singularities, contingencies, and rarely start-to-finish mandates. He was part of one crazy summer, and now instead, Ron Artest will be a Laker.

What makes Artest such a magical beast is that he's exactly the opposite of a championship. That place in history was a flux that ends in certainty. Artest is forever bold statements and stands, all adding up to bouquet of question marks. He can do nothing to surprise is, partly due to our numbness, but also because of how damn earnest he is about everything. It's a testament to Ron Ron that he can fall back on the force of his spoken and implicit convictions, no matter how ever-shifting and contradictory they may be. Artest will always have, for lack of a better word, his realness. Not his authenticity—he's not the only athlete from the projects who's seen shit—but the ability to make us watch not out of horror or honor, but from a place of love.

Like it or not, there is something admirable about Artest. Otherwise, he'd be a garden-variety sociopath. He's no longer a symbol of instability or risk, but of the enduring quality that could redeem such a blood-blender of a career: the fact that, at the time, he sure did mean it.



You might also say he's the opposite of Kobe Bryant, who by the least charitable reading, is the form of conviction without any of its substance. That would of course be totally wrong and unfair (though I expect to hear it echoed in the comments section), and yet it gets at something of Kobe's, well, dullness. Artest is complicated in the literal sense, of things fucking each other up and getting in each other's way. Kobe's complicated like a watch or schematic, and it's only us on the outside who don't see the internal logic. Ron Artest is inconvenienced by logic, Kobe redeemed by it. That's partly why you never hear "why doesn't Ron Artest win a championship?" It just doesn't seem right to bring him into the world of criteria. He has one of those careers that, when it's over, we'll all know whether it left a mark or not.

That's why it's so perfectly glib, and hilarious, that he's being attached to a team looking for a second championship. I caught some criticism for suggesting that, even if the Shaq-jection was successful, LeBron would only have one ring. I know that city and franchise can't like that, and noted as much, but James needs to be thinking dynasty. It's in his nature, the scope of what he does in the sport. Kobe, on the other hand, needed that single Shaq-less ring. Right, there's the three-peat, and the dynasty he got to help author. This last one, though, was all about the technicality. Ironic as all get-out, then, that this kind of thinking barely enters Artest's mind, or those who would judge him. Sometimes you wonder if he even thinks in terms of seasons, or even final scores. Each nanosecond is a war.

Ron Artest doesn't need a ring. Kobe doesn't anymore, either. There's zero pathos or desperation to this, not even with Lamar Odom presumably back on board (more on that in a second). I'm not saying the Lakers won't have desire, just that there won't be pressure beyond the pressure to play basketball. LA is great at disappearing; I think that having no weight on their shoulders will make for less, not more, of that. Artest, paradoxical as this may sound, will also only heighten this new outlook.

To close out this journey to the heavens and back again, the reason I am bouncing off the walls tonight is because of the Artest/Odom reunion. I know people have a problem with Knicks exceptionalism, and maybe even New York exceptionalism. But fuck it: I am sick of Mark Jackson having a monopoly on the New York Basketball brand. How long has it been since we heard any other announcer describe a player as NY, except in passing? Do not so quickly forget what our Attorney General said at his Senate confirmation hearings! Not bullshit street ball, these two; they're the stuff lore is made of. Artest is all grit and aggression, Odom beauty and otherworldliness. Sometimes I don't know who between them has more anguish in their game; they probably share a sack. However, as much as it will sicken some to hear this, seeing the two of them on one team is, in a sense, a triumph for whatever it is that city means to the sport.

It may be Los Angeles hanging a banner in a year, but if you want to talk style and stories, you couldn't make a team more New York if you wanted to. Just from these two.

The 5000-Year Picnic

You people are so thick sometimes. Anyone with two blind eyes could tell that this foray into Simmons-friendly Tollywood was, in fact, a premature tribute to those winnin' Lakers, and longtime FD fave Kobe Bryant. Congrats, weird guy!

For those of you wanting a less heavy-handed way to talk about THE TITLE (and yes, it is that), please read my Baseline column on the matter. No joke, this was about to be posted on FD when it seemed like there might be technical difficulties on SN.com's end. It's that heady and weird. So approach without reservations. Other than that, feel free to share your favorite Kobe moments in the comments, and hug one another because finally we can fucking stop talking about this.

BWB was quite an experience. Hopefully I can post some video of my panel, where I decided to get mad because Steinberg was mad and ended up cursing out the audience in an advanced state of dehydration. Sugar Hill, baby.

When Stations Shift, You Find Your Own

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

Some of Where We've Been

By now, you might have already seen the fruits of FD's collaboration with adidas. If not, behold:





I also want to direct your attention to a couple TOTALLY FD columns I wrote yesterday for The Baseline:

-This Gund/Gray/Bron incident was so shriekingly literary, I nearly considered pitching it like I was a real writer.

-I still agree with this assessment of what Kobe/Melo means, even if last night's game hardly followed the script. That was the most graceful, morally permissible, battle of the titans you could get in the NBA. Also, that game struck me as part-NCAA, part-pros. Don't ask me where that intuition comes from.

-Also, don't neglect last night's dream-like lottery live-blog.

Don't hide from your parents!

Oh, and also: IF YOU LIKE THE ART IN THESE ADS, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER VISITING OUR STORE:

If You Don't Look Good, I Don't Look Good

This morning, my distinguished colleague twitted the following about everyone's favorite char-broiled NBA lightning rod, and sub-rosa racial interloper:

lingering thought-did kobe really say "i'm an 80s baby" when asked about the artest foul? what type of bs cred is he trying to buy? (and, my standard qualification: i still LOVE kobe...it's just...what a nerd)

Now, without taking anything away from Dr. LIC's intuition—yes, this sounded contrived, and almost made you think that Kobe had planned out a semi-youthful, semi-traditionalist way of framing the situation in advance. But whatever persistent reason you may have settled on for mocking Bryant (his fake-ness, his cultural uncomfortable-ness, his personality, his self-consciousness), we're all assuming that Kobe doesn't understand where Jay-Z stands these days. It's entirely conceivable that Bryant knows that, these days, Jay is pop culture detritus, not the lingua franca of street cred. The remark was fun, flippant, and knowing, an admittedly nerdy way of evoking Jay-Z as both foundational and cliched. Being goofy with hip-hop is dangerous territory, especially for Bryant, but does the alternative—that he cluelessly tried to channel the streetz and fell flat—is to give the guy way too little credit. The only thing worse than caricaturing players is caricaturing ourselves as fans.

This feeds into what might be the most compelling mano y mano rivalry of the playoffs. No, it's not Kobe/Bron; that 1 point/minute average for James has him in a stratosphere all his own for now, especially given how easy it's looked for him. It's this Kobe/Ron Ron binary that's emerged not so much on the court (all elbows aside), but in the imagination of the public. If Bryant's slammed for tip-toeing around hip-hop, Artest is lionized as a man who walks with a cloud of Mobb Deep samples over his head whether or not he ever explicitly makes the connection. If he did an entire post-game interview with Kool G Rap quotes, bloggers would faint from glee. Never mind for a second that if you want to get aesthetic about it, Artest's hip-hop analogue is M.O.P., while Kobe can tap into a far more substantial lineage of self-serious, style-laden masters. Or that Artest is going out of his way to repaint himself as a tough player, not a hood one, going so far as to suggest that there's no essential connection between the two.

And then you have Artest faintly conspired against by the league, and Kobe riding a wave of whispers about a rigged Lakers/Cavs Finals. Not to say this has turned into a study in racial or cultural contrasts—or that it should be either—but once again, Kobe's being cast in, pardon my pun, a black/white situation. Maybe Kobe isn't as "real" as Artest, but is Artest a player driven solely by what he learned from Kool G Rap fantasies? Isn't Artest way more Bad Boys than Kobe? If all this boils down to is "Artest saw friends die on the basketball court and Kobe grew up rich," then we might as well ignore everything they've accomplished, and asserted, as professional athletes—and admittedly convoluted adults.

Do that, then you can start arguing about who belongs to hip-hop, or who hip-hop belongs to, in the NBA.

You're Podcastcic!

You can't handle it. New episode of "FreeDarko Presents the Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast" that feature appearances by myself, Dr. LIC, and our good friend Joey, who hid from his heritage by refusing to reveal his last name. Topics covered include the good and bad of the Bron/Wade/Kobe triumverate, other examples of the Beijing Effect, how pleasant it is that no one's tanking, and LeBron's disco essence.



As a public service, here's a playlist of the music used in the show:

"Everything's Ruined" - Faith No More
"I Really Love You" - The Ambassadors
"Assassins" - Geto Boys
"Dr. Handy's Dandy Candy" - Jim Ford"
"Nothing Comes to a Sleeper (But a Dream)" - Sam Dees
"Duel" - Madlib
"If You're Ready (Come Go With Me) - Staple Singers

Oh, and them DoC boys can write a little, too. Check out this extensive post on a playoff scenario that now won't happen, which caught my eye immediately with its 1980's DC reference in the title. Also, if you're in Chicago, go see Dan's play.

-Some other odds and ends: Not much to say about Garnett. I don't want to say he's dead to me, but I've got zero emotion invested in him or his career at this point. And I like the idea of the Celtics falling out of the picture early, not out of bitterness, but because I don't want to have to hear about them. That said, this makes Round One into THE RONDO/ROSE SHOWDOWN TO END ALL AGES AND FOREVER, which oddly has me stoked about a Boston playoff series.

-I only found out today that the playoffs actually start Saturday, not Sunday. As I mentioned, I'm co-giving this paper at EMP on Saturday (panel is "Disembodiment," where Dave Grubbs will upstage the fuck out of me, I'm sure). However, on Saturday there's the aforementioned Chicago/Boston intrigue; our chance to see just how hard Bron brings it from the first possession, against the Pistons, no less; Dallas/San Antonio I'm find with missing, but I have all sorts of obligations to pay attention to Portland/Houston, where there's oh so much at stake. While I just happened to cop a DVR this week, I'm still a little overwhelmed. Help me deal!

-And yeah, the store is on fire, sales abound, and our hella fresh Kevin Durant tee should be flying on a flagpole somewhere. Play us a visit, you won't be sorry.

The Great Debaters

It's the showdown for NBA supremacy that's been brewing all season. Obama's weighed in; our two most involved posts of the season have been about the relationship between the two and how they fit into the same universe, respectively. And now, it's your turn to make your voices heard—first with your wallet, then on your chests, until such day as the thread of these garments unravel. Cop the Bron tee (just narrowly in time for D. Boon's birthday), or the Kobe in support of both his game and his unending attempts to claim Philly.

We're taking pre-orders now, but order promptly and you'll still have your shirt by the start of round one, if not sooner. Hopefully, you'll see someone on the street wearing the other one, and you can either kiss them like Judas or beat them to a fucking pulp. Either way, the conversation continues. God bless America.

Get ready to absorb another brand new shirt in about a week, as well as some portrait prints from the book we've had requests for.

Our Guardian Angel

Special field report on another big time in big shoulder city, by the indomitable Brian Lauvray.

Late last week the opportunity arose for me to actually get to, you know, ask Kobe F*cking Bryant a few questions and for the rest of my life tell people that, "Yes, in fact, I have been face-to-face with a NBA legend in his prime." Naturally I jumped on the chance and today found myself driving a borrowed, early 1990s Pontiac through the blighted neighborhoods of Chicago's Westside on my way to the jointly (Nike/Foot Locker) owned House of Hoops where Monsieur Bryant was going to make a special guest appearance to premier his hottttttt new shoes named after his Philly high school. So let's cut to the chase:

Inside the mall/outside the House of Hoops: Hysteric throngs of teenagers (God! I hate teenagers), shoe heads, NBA junkies and confused parents/legal guardians all crowded around at what first seems to be an invisible force field but in reality, and on a closer inspection, is revealed to be a velvet rope. "Crap!" thinks my brain, "I'm 15 fucking minutes early and I'm already too late. 'Au contraire, feeble brain;' you know someone on the inside. Eureka." My Nike contact is informed by security of my arrival and Blam-O, Kobe is mere feet from my sweaty palms.

The Q 'n A: Kobe and some Chicago-area comedian, it's not Bernie Mac --this I know; are bouncing ideas and questions off one another. Topics include: his new shoes, "Why low top instead of high top?; the competitiveness of Kobe's daughters; Does he have anyone who he steps up his game to play against*; Who he likes to talk trash to? Manu. Shocker!

One Question Interview: After the question and answer session and the five lucky/depraved fans who have been waiting in line since Friday for the new Zooms and the chance to see Mamba get their hotttt new shoes signed by #24, I'm informed by my Nike rep that now is the time for me to go and talk to Kobe. His prickly handler explains that I have one question w Kobe. "Alright."



So there it was. I asked what I thought was an informed and decent question and brought the FD book to show off and proffer to Kobe. Of course, the prickly handler in his haste to usher me away and disassemble and pack up Kobe, demanded, "Are you giving it [the book] to us or what?" Anyway, Kobe is much nicer in person and definitely does seem to take himself so seriously when he's not on the court or in the scrutinizing lights of a sound studio with a Stu Scott on his jock. He's definitely very manicured in his demeanor, habits and way he handles himself.**

*Kobe claims no one, he just approaches every game/player the same way. The "Artest Game" in Houston at the start of March begs to differ.

**His handler took the book for him even as I was offering it to Kobe and Kobe's hand was outstretched...

"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.

STATS ARE THE NEW SOCIAL NETWORK

Behold, the new Black/Jew dialogue starts today at We Are Respectable Negroes. Look for myself and Dr. LIC later in the week.

I don't know if the intertwub'ns (catch the slang!) is supposed to make me feel perpetually included, or forever alone. Certainly, blogger and Twitter can go either way, mostly depending on my mood. How you make a straight social network anti-social—not in the "Joey never goes out anymore," but actually encouraging narcissism and absence of any form of interaction—is beyond me. I feel the same way about sports sometimes. So Kobe goes for 61 while I'm busy taking notes on the Blazers. I've watched the highlights. I knew it was happening. I'm writing about it. And yet this morning, I can't help but feel like I'm out in the desert with all the wrong memories. You'd think that the power of modern communication and computing could provide a reasonable facsimilie of first-hand experience. Instead, all of this build-up seem like that much more mockery. I missed it. All the catch up, prying, or immersion in the world can't get me any closer to that basic, visceral event, which provides the spark for all the web-borne reinforcement going on this morning.

But fuck it, dude score 61, it was a modern miracle, and I have something to say about that bare fact. For firsts, I know this will repercuss back onto the way this Bynum-less team is perceived. I trust a lot of these reactions will be stupid, so please refrain from airing them out here. I swear to Hoth, I will delete them. This has also allowed me to deconstruct the myth of the Garden, to which I welcome angry, or empirically sound, objections. Yes, I do equivocate the visitor's record with the all-purpose record, with the latter raising all sorts of questions about how the Knicks feel about the Garden, or maybe real evidence of a franchise style that abides throughout the ages (oft-referenced, rarely proven, truism). Or maybe I just don't understand how uncommon 50-point games are.

In Kobe's case, though, even as it was happening you heard mutterings about D'Antoni inflation. This theory holds that playing for or against Mike D'Antoni leads to a stat explosion. Therefore, any and all numbers achieved in that context deserve disdainful raised eyebrow. It's also been brought up in reference to David Lee's numbers, which because they're distorted cannot gain him entry into the All-Star Game. I'm by no means well-versed in the advanced statistical community, but it seems like we could adjust these numbers to determine just how many "real" points Kobe scored, or how many double-doubles Lee would have elsewhere.



ENTER TOM ZILLER

The so-called Mike D'Antoni Inflation Effect is wildly overstated. I can't really delve into the philosophical question of whether the mere existence of D'Antoni magically makes every player's heart swell to the point of scoring explosion (read on for Shoals' opinion), but I can strip pace from the equation, something a hundred amateur statisticians have done since the birth of SSOL.

D'Antoni's Knicks play at an above average pace, giving the players more opportunities to score and rebound and so on. The Knicks average 97 possessions/game, league average is less than 93. So adjust David Lee's 16/12 down 6% to account for the extra team possessions, and he's really a 15/11 guy. Quel horreur. (This is a quick and dirty [emphasis on the dirty] calculation; this assumes no other affects on Lee or the team if the team were to be forced into league average pace suddenly. That assumption at a team/player level makes me anxious, but so does Francisco Garcia. But you don't see me discounting Francisco Garcia's existence.)

As this chart -- the Knicks' per-game scoring figures at real pace and league-average pace -- shows, the Mike D'Antoni Inflation Effect as it pertains specifically to pace is wildly exaggerated.



In a equipace world, Brandon Roy would be the league's #7 scorer instead of his current #11. LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gay, David West and Rodney Stuckey also get love in a land without D'Antonis and Nellies.

ZILLER LEAVES

This assumes, though, that the difference is a purely quantitative one. Bill Simmons's asterisk argument, I take it, is that there's also a qualitative shift, a suspension of all common sense that gives way to numbers that are not merely inflated, but also empty. I wonder, then, if there's some way not just to fix numbers according to pace (or paceless-ness), but to also quantify the amount of irrationality or impetuousness that a team like the Knicks or Warriors brings to the game. It's possible to play fast and smart.

On the other hand, when a D'Antoni or Nelson team is intent on sowing the seeds of mayhem and disrupting all basketball order, the opposing team is either tricked or forced into following suite. They are the proverbial serpent 'round the hoop, and dude, we kind of needed to listen to the serpent to so we could one day build our own zoos. I don't believe that there's no such thing as a bad shot or poor decision against these teams, just that you can get away with things—maybe even have to get into them—if you can't outright shut down these offenses. The challenge, then is to somehow quantify stupidity on both side. Wide-open lay-ups, drives into four defenders, cherry picks, full-court drives, gambling for the steal on every play. . . these are the markers of deviance, and big surprise, the ball I love. Remove them, and pace could truly be universalized. I wonder, though if there's not a slippery slope, or two of them, on either side of an equilibrium forever in question. Where you set it, what represents the mean, is strictly a matter of preference.

ZILLER RETURNS

(We considered also adjusting for the team's own defense, with the idea that D'Antoni teams don't care about defense and can thus reserve all energy for offense, thus inflating their production -- as in, on any other team, the players would produce less because they'd get tired on defense. But this is stupid and a few steps too far. Your top scorers list would just be Celtics and LeBron. BOO.)

ZILLER LEAVES; SHOALS CHOOSES IMAGE

Bites Eat Everything

The more I watch LeBron this season, the more perplexed I am by Kobe Bryant. Last month, I said that LeBron + Kobe = MJ, which of course assumes that Jordan is monolithic, or that the various phases of his career (worth talking about) don't in some ways embody opposites, or at least contradictions, when placed side-by-side. In February, one of the great forgotten FD diagram orgies posited Bron and Bryant as opposites themselves, though complementary in the NBA universe. Now, as LeBron's dominance becomes at once more fluid and rational, I keep thinking of the autism scale, a metaphor that inevitably posits Tim Duncan. A performance like LeBron's thrashing of the Celtics last night was, at both ends of the floor, consummate. You couldn't hope for a better synthesis of form and function, style and substance, physical gifts and basketball acumen. It's that stretching of possibility we've always marvelled at in LeBron, except this year, this night, he not only reached those limits—he kept on extending them.



Diagram by Tom Ziller, 2009

Incidentally, Kobe himself happened to be putting up similar numbers against the unknown Pacers, except with a higher assists total. But as LeBron consolidates two worlds, Kobe seems, almost by contrast, cleaved in two. No doubt he's still the more fiery player, almost to a fault. And at the same time, his game has also grown more and more cooly technical, through hours of study, gym work, and a strangely competitive approach to the concept of the encyclopedic knowledge. He's one of those particles, nameless so as to avoid unnecessary pretension, who now stands on either side of James. Still not sure if he's growing apart from himself, James is cleaving him in two, or, building on the MVP and further toning down his play, Kobe himself is moving toward the same center as LeBron. One thing's for certain: As of right now, LeBron's play casts Kobe in an entirely new light. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Kobe is mortal. He pushes himself, not the laws of what's possible. His vocabulary is all that basketball has to offer, not the possibility of total transcendence and reinvention of those parameters. Don't get me wrong, the Lakers' finest remains larger-than-life, but it's not the same as LeBron's ability to make us rethink what might happen on the court.

And here's where we return to Jordan. Was he mortal? If you look at his career arc, it seems to be that of a man who got more mortal as he matured into a champion. There's a possibly depressing parable for you, and one that bodes well for Kobe's continued relevence. However, I also wonder if James's genius might be that he's managed to buck that narrative. His ascent will require no such humility, or reining in of his messianic instinct (see also Dr. J, Black Jesus, for other examples of the usual trajectory). If anything, for LeBron James actualization only engenders more potential. At this point, as each game unfolds, they occur simultaneously. That's truly frightening, but it's also a message of hope. If just this once, a player can make changing the game and winning it absolutely inseparable pursuits. From a strategic standpoint, it's all too brilliant, and so seamless you might not even notice what a radical notion it is.



(Obvious, I know, but I'm willing to stake that cred on this occasion.)

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)