A Dinner of Onions

You may also know me as Eric Freeman. Check out more of my writing at The Baseline.

Shoals has a new column on the psychology behind the LeBron/Kobe debate. And make sure to check out the latest podcast.

One of Phil Jackson's most notable tactics as Zen Master is his yearly tradition of selecting books for each of his players to read. He considers the player's personality and needs, and makes a decision based on all available factors. It's one of the clearest reminders that he's a coach who respects and values his players as people, not just basketball players.

Most years, we hear a few of the selections through the grapevine. But last night, Phil's girlfriend and Lakers Executive VP of Business Operations Jeanie Buss put all of this year's picks on Twitter. Let us analyze some of the most notable choices and figure out what Phil sees in his team.

Player: Kobe Bryant
Book: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
Synopsis: A small-town sheriff finds out that his brother has raped and murdered numerous Native-American women. He finds himself torn between his dual loyalties to family and the law.
Meaning: Wow, Phil doesn't screw around, eh? Forget for a minute the connections to Kobe's legal troubles and consider that the reader is meant to identify with the sheriff. The common perception of Kobe is that he's torn between his need to score and his desire to win as part of the larger team. Often, he appears to toggle between each pole, unable to find a happy medium. What Montana 1948 teaches us is that no matter which option you choose, you must live with the consequences and emotions of forgoing the other choice. It's about living in the gray area, something Kobe must embrace to realize his full potential as a teammate and star.



Player: Pau Gasol
Book: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Synopsis: A five-part, nearly 900-page novel following a disparate group of characters, with many plot threads, including serial murders and the possible end of the world, connected only by the most tenuous of threads.
Meaning: This choice is more about what it represents than the actual content of the novel. 2666 is notoriously difficult, a full-on experience that rewards patience, creative interpretation, and the reader putting as much as he can into reading. In short, Phil wants Pau to push himself, to put forth so much effort that he'll push his critical abilities to new heights. Just like on the court, he needs to stop being content and get the most out of his considerable natural talent.

Player: Ron Artest
Book: Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson
Synopsis: A coaching legend details his philosophy of basketball as the ultimate in spiritual communication among teammates.
Meaning: This is one of the few choices Buss explained: apparently Phil likes to give new players an introduction to his approach to basketball. Sorry, but I don't buy it. The more likely explanation is that Phil knows Artest is borderline insane, tried to think of a suitable book, couldn't come up with anything, and just picked up one of the copies of Sacred Hoops he had around the house. The good news is that Ron-Ron is so sincere that he'll undoubtedly take every message in the book to heart. It's just unclear what it'll all mean to him.



Player: Shannon Brown
Book: Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Synopsis: Our president reflects on growing up as a mixed-race child in America.
Meaning: Yeah, Brown is light-skinned, but this isn't about race. Brown was an athletic dynamo of a star at Michigan State, was drafted by Cleveland in the hope that he could be a sidekick for LeBron, and seemed like a bust before he made it to LA. In other words, he grew up with one identity, found that it didn't entirely suit him, and now must adjust to a new life as a role player. Dreams from My Father can help him realize that his past identity doesn't need to be cast away, that it can constitute his adult self just as much as the new role he must take on.

Player: Luke Walton
Book: The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Synopsis: Four ecologically-conscious misfits rage against the machinery of pollution.
Meaning: As the son of Bill, Luke probably likes to get high in nature. But that's a passive activity, and sometimes complacent appreciation isn't enough. You must rise up and take what's needed for Mother Earth. (Note: Phil gave this book to Luc Longley during the Bulls years, with disastrous results.)



Player: Lamar Odom
Book: The Right Mistake by Walter Mosley
Synopsis: An ex-con gets out of prison after 27 years and becomes a fount of wisdom. He shares his story and advises others.
Meaning: The most inspired choice of all. Lamar has been through a lot in his life, and he's come out on the other side better for it. Phil knows this, and wants him to become an agent of change. Lamar has the power -- it's up to him to make the next step and reach out to others.

Player: Derek Fisher
Book: Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Synopsis: A collection of political essays by a then-incarcerated leader of the Black Panther Party.
Meaning: Fisher is basically the definition of a veteran, a dependable, serious soul on which the rest of the team can rely. But he's also safe, so maybe it's time to inject a little fire into his system.

Player: Adam Morrison
Book: Che: A Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
Synopsis: The life of the revolutionary Che Guevara in comic book form.
Meaning: Look, Phil, we all know AmMo has no future with the Lakers, but that doesn't mean you have to slap him in the face. Morrison is a noted fan of Guevara, so it's clear his coach put little thought into this choice. And if you're going with a Che-related work, why not pick something with a little more heft, like the 800-page Jon Lee Anderson bio, or even the Criterion Collection version of Soderbergh's four-hour biopic? You might as well have given him Con Air for its heartfelt portrayal of a man struggling with diabetes.

Ring Out Loud

Ken and Dan check with each other, and with the league as it is at this particular and exact time.



In summary: the Lakers and Celtics are good. The Timberwolves aren't. We're not sure who the second-best team in the West is. Everyone should probably make a trade, especially with Golden State.

Along the way we contemplate time and object permanence. Plus, Ken makes a special announcement.

It's as FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast as FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast gets. Dig it.

Songs from the episode:

"It's So Obvious" - Wire
"Things I Did When I Was Dead" - No Age
"Love Will Tear Us Apart (Live)" - Joy Division
"Boys, You Won't" - The Wrens
"20 Minutes/40 Years" - Isis

Exhuming Pizarro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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.

Write with Your Feelings

Below is an exercise in conjecture about Andrew Bynum. As you consider it, please also remember to check out The Baseline, where Shoals has been going in all day, every day. Today should be especially good, as Mr. Bethlehem uses his commodious TSN space to write two columns.

Most likely, few people anticipated that the Game would emerge as such a committed NBA observer when he dedicated his career to the lowest-common-denominator rap in which 50 Cent traffics. And yet, it's undeniable. There are so many examples. A few years ago, on "Beautiful Life," Mr. Taylor spit, "Fo'-dot-six Range/Ben Gordon dip game/That's bullshit/I never been to a Knicks game/Or sat inside of Ms. Chang's/But I watched Tim Duncan in the Olympics go for 45 against Spain." Last year, on "Red Magic," it was: "I'm in L.A. Gasol-in'/But when I'm in New Orleans/You can call it Chris Paul-in'." On "My Life" with Lil' Wayne: "Got a Chris Paul mind state/So I'm never outta bounds." And later, on "Baggage Claim," he again name checked Chris Paul (he is always rapping about CP3) before looking to both the past and future in prophetically asking, "What up, Bynum/How's that playoff knee?/Next timeout/Tell Kobe run the play off me."

So, indeed, Bynum, what up with that playoff knee? Well, so far the results have been mixed. But if Sunday was a game about Andrew performing as he can, and as he has when not impeded by those precarious appendages of his, tonight is perhaps a game about whether or not it's even a relevant inquiry. Tonight we find out not if Bynum matters, but if he knows that he is supposed to matter.



The Game (the rapper, not the sports competition) may not be an NBA thought leader. In fact, it's good that he isn't--in some ways, he is a perfect barometer for what matters to the everyday fan. You usually don't get rapped about if you're a nobody. Nobodies especially don't get rapped about by the Game, an MC so hypersensitive about how he is perceived and so self-conscious about his references that you sometimes pity his therapist while also assuming that you and he would find ample common ground. That he would include a reference to a player who has accomplished little and is best known for summoning Kobe's parking-lot ire stands as testament to just how much is expected of Andrew Bynum. Andrew is supposed to matter.

The trope permeating media since Sunday has been that Andrew Bynum is a key to the Lakers' championship run. If he plays like he did in Game Seven against the Rockets... is the condition upon which the NBA appears to now hinge. It's reasoning with roots in Denver's impressive playoff performance, Denver's imposing front line, and the memory of L.A.'s feeble stand against the Celtics in the 2008 Finals. Similarly, Bynum-as-dispositive-element is presented in the framework of which things must occur to allow for the Lakers' success as a team. Lost amidst these analyses, though, is what the Denver series means for Andrew Bynum, not what Andrew Bynum means for the Lakers. If J.J. Abrams were to direct Andrew Bynum's life, tonight would likely be some kind of wormhole in the space-time continuum through which the future could be seen and at which Andrew's present self and future self would converge to determine who would be the real Bynum.

Ignoring its implications for the greater Los Angeles team, Denver is a unique challenge for Bynum because the Nuggets' front court is a litmus test for NBA significance. To this point, Andrew's knee has mattered to the Game because that knee is considered to be the reason why an NBA star has not yet been born in full. Weighed down by the yoke of his much-touted potential, Bynum has titillated his audience with improvement and flashes of dominance when not injured. One could maybe argue that Andrew, in some ways, is perhaps a better version of Dwight Howard, as the former has obvious room to grow and already possesses a broader range of skills. And yet, because of the injuries, and because he has been learning the NBA, Bynum as we know him is not the Bynum for which we hope. In that respect, we'd like him to be more like Dwight, whom we've already seen flourish (albeit with some obvious cause for concern). Now, finally, we get to find out if that injury, that playoff knee, was worth wasting bars about.



Most young players, with few but awesome exceptions, need three or four years to understand the NBA. They need to explore their abilities in the new landscape, they need to identify who they will be, they need to get used to running into the Charles Oakleys and Tractor Traylors of the world (just ask Danny G). To be blunt, they need to learn how to play against grown-ass men. Andrew Bynum needs to figure out if he can play with grown-ass men on a regular basis, and Denver has them. Luis Scola is a solid NBA player, but when you're being called "That Louis Guy" on PTI, you probably have not yet arrived. And in a post-Yao world where Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry are the Tiny Town Twin Towers, you haven't necessarily been prepared for up to seven games with Nene, Kenyon Martin, and Chris Andersen. More importantly, you haven't yet been tested in a fashion that directly imperils or validates your destiny. (That's a real J.J. Abrams sentence, isn't it? How can destiny be changed? If it could, would it really be destiny? This is where the LOST logo would flash across the screen.)

Andrew Bynum will help us understand tonight if that playoff knee matters, and if he's going to realize the meaningfulness which has been taken as an article of faith, as something to which he is entitled. Nene's girth and persistence will challenge him. Martin's nimbleness and ferocity will challenge him. Andersen's hops and energy will challenge him. Andrew will not be able to escape any of it. A hallmark of this Denver team, particularly in the playoffs, has been the gathering intensity that seems to hang over the court each time the Nuggets walk onto it, this building, palpable tension which ultimately is unleashed in almost feral fashion, with a Denver opponent overwhelmed by the onslaught. Bynum will have to find a way to sustain his energy and his focus as this comes bearing down. Failing that, he will have to decide if he both understands and is willing to undertake that which is required to consistently perform at the heightened level of execution demanded by the playoffs and the attendant greatness which they extract. Win or lose the series, will Bynum emerge chastened and diminished or challenged and hungry? Will he understand why it needs to be the latter? Among the hardest transitions required by the NBA is that from player who can contribute to player who regularly does. It's a process which cannot be accomplished in one evening, but tonight will offer a glimpse into how Andrew will navigate this specific sort of turmoil.



In The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne lamented that having ventured out into Gotham's festering crime, he returned keenly aware of what he would have to do, and become, to properly fulfill his destiny as the city's savior. Only, he wasn't sure if he was willing or able to undertake that process of growth. Tonight, Andrew Bynum will wander out into a darkened Gotham. It remains to be seen if he'll come back ready to take on all that's required for success, and if he'll know that he's supposed to. If he does, then we can expect more Game verses about him in the future. If not, should he ultimately just be some balky knees and frustrated shakes of the head, Game will have to find someone else to rap about.

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.

Blanketstein

Off the road, finally. Still not home yet, but I got to sit down this morning and think no Macrophenomenal thoughts. By the way, for all of you lamenting my long absence: You could try checking out the Sporting Blog. Not quite the same absurdist overtones, but I get my licks in, and I have been constantly churning out material there throughout this long, fun ordeal. Like today, you can find my reaction to that joint-popping Suns/Cats trade.

So many memories, so many faces, so many photos and media that we may or may not post up here in the future. Yes, KGB Radio night, I'm talking primarily about you. I've also watched hardly a game these last few weeks, so bear with me as I try and muster up a post to prove that yes, I still belong to you, you belong to me, and in heaven no one will tear us apart.

Of all the conversations I had multiple times on the road, none was more poignant, or tricky for me, than the Jordan Farmar one. Apparently, a lot of loyal FD readers, and semi-interested Jews, didn't realize Farmar was of the faith, or the people, or whatever the least PC nomenclature imaginable is these days. Now mark my words, I know the way things work, and have no interest in denying Farmar his full spectrum of cultural heritage. But—and this is more about our society than my own feelings—I don't think Farmar reads as Jewish, on at least two levels. For one, there's the Obama principle. Our real life FBP also happens to be half Heartland, and yet that other half is what defines him. Perhaps because of the context, Farmar is more likely to be recognized as "mixed" (which, of course, still ends up being primarily about black blood), but his Judaism is a technicality, or at least not readily apparent, even if he claims it quite regularly.



And that brings me to the second, really tacky, element of this analysis: Race and style. Once upon a time, the likes of Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax has to prove that Jews could outman (quite literally) their gentile brethren. Around the same time, in New York a generation of Chosen Kids were defining basketball as a sneaky, shifty urban game that played into all sorts of stereotypes. Sound familar? Farmar's game is squarely in that first category. He has ups, maneuvers with ease, and conveys a certain sense of equilibrium. Personally, I no longer feel the need to prove that Jews can be mighty and proficient in traditional ways. Perhaps it's the ghost of cultural stuidies, or the influence of Woody Allen on the paths of comets, but—and in some ways, this relates to what Kevin Pelton told me about the WNBA—I would want to see a player who played, well, Jew-y. In the same way that certain players are perceived as having a "blacker" style than others.

What would that game be? I'm not quite sure. I could trot out some stereotypes, but that wouldn't actually get to the heart of what I think is a very real discussion to be had. I've long been obsessed with other countries producing new strains of style; Spaniards like Rudy Fernandez, and established guys like Barbosa and Manu, are the proof of this. Has our own country become more fractured by identity politics than it has united by mass consumer culture?



This is where I would insert the video of the time several early FD operatives played a full-court game against a van full of Hasids in Maine. They thought I was a showboat, which apparently there's a word for in Yiddish. It's been lost forever, though, so instead I will open the floor, and ask if anyone knows whether Doug Moe is Jewish.

BONUS: Gordon Gartrelle with a close reading of the Vince/Obama tee.

Brain Battles on Slip-Top

I know we've lost all patience for Phil Jackson's hands-off brilliance, or the tease of Lamar Odom becoming the next Scottie or Magic in this offense. But hark, today Ronald Lazenby drops some science that I find it impossible to resist:

These mind games come in such variety that many times the people around Jackson proceed through the game without even being aware that they are participating, that he has engaged them in it and manipulated them. (He is magnificent at manipulating the media; reporters often seem least aware of his skill, perhaps because they're easy suckers for the ego candy he feeds them).

His players are usually a bit smarter than reporters, so they have at least a dim awareness.

There's about 10,000 more uses of the word "deep" in the paragraphs before and after, but this is pretty dope. Because we always assume that we're on the outside looking in, watching these feeble-minded—if not exactly unprepared—Lakers pushed and pulled by the master. What if, though, Lazenby (who knows himself more Lakers than most of us put together) is right, and the players are often co-conspirators, or props, in Phil's attempts not to motivate individual players, but to manipulate coverage of his team? This would make a mockery of camp; the point becomes not getting the team together, but getting certain memes out there in the press. Giving the impression that the team is or isn't working, that Odom is both the future and incompetent . . . really, do you think he's not saying something else behind closed doors?

In other words, in this all, the journalist is object, not subject. Phil is the master. And it's up to the players to sort out just how much they belong to either side.

BONUS: TSB post on MAVERICK fatigue and that Dallas team with the same name.