This Radio is On Fire

To start this episode, Ken and Dan provide some suggestions on how NBA fans can pass the month of March, and talk about Michael Jordan buying the Bobcats.

They are then joined by the new lead blogger at Yahoo!'s Ball Don't Lie, Trey Kerby. They talk a bit about his new job, and how he plans to keep the awesomeness rolling there at BDL.

They also talk about the Bulls, the greatness of Michael Jordan as a player, and come up with a new movie idea starring some unexpected NBA stars. In the process, they come up with a new phrase that they hope you'll all use from now on.

Really, it's your perfect post-trade-deadline, pre-playoffs, 20-games-left-in-the-season, early March NBA podcast. You can't not go wrong!

Be careful, it's hot:

Songs from the episode:

"I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody Got A Thing" - Funkadelic
"The New" - J Dilla
"I'm New Here" - Gil-Scott Heron
"Greatest Man Alive (Man's Game Mix)" -Steinski
"One Two" - Cool Kids
"New Frontier" - Antipop Consortium
"Take A Rest" - Gang Starr

My Best Worst Friend

Had some kind of inexact deja vu as I read this story yesterday (emphasis added):

While Jordan declined to speak to reporters, he did plenty of talking on the court.

Needling Henderson relentlessly for being from Duke, the North Carolina product kept clanging jumpers off the rim as Henderson quickly won the first shooting game.

But then Jordan, wearing jeans and sneakers, started getting hot. He hit a free throw with his eyes closed to take the lead in the second game.

"What do you think, I just dunked my whole career?" Jordan asked Henderson after making a 3.

Henderson remained stone-faced when Jordan hit another outside jumper.

"You've got to miss eventually," Henderson told him.

"That's what Cleveland said," replied Jordan, referring to his last-second shot for Chicago in 1989 to win a playoff series over the Cavaliers.

I once played HORSE with Michael Jordan. It was in the summer of 2008. My time in New York was winding down, and I could easily take an extra hour or two for lunch as necessary. You don't forget the details of playing basketball with the man who's done it better than anyone else, and I can recall vividly that fateful Wednesday in June

The day started like any other. I got up, got dressed, rode the subway, and went to work. I peeled off my sports coat as the office air conditioning replaced the uncomfortable humidity of a sweltering trip to midtown. My desk was overflowing with papers from various assignments I was in the midst of closing out. I sat down at my desk, leaned back in my chair, sighed a few times as I considered what I wanted to accomplish that day, and then undertook the arduous task of checking my email. Back then, I was still responsible for supervising some time-sensitive reports that had to go out early, and that meant a glut of email greeted me every morning, seven days a week.

I got through my email, I got some paperwork in order, I moved on to other administrivia, and suddenly it was 11:15. I got up for a cup of water and some small talk with a few office friends. As we were chatting, my right pant pocket started vibrating, so I reached in, pulled out my phone, and hit the talk button without really considering the caller ID.



"Is this that flaming f***ot Joey?" a baritone grumbled through the phone. "You there, you punk bitch?" I don't like the f-word, and I don't like being called a "punk bitch," but I couldn't stifle my smile because nothing had changed: Michael was on the phone. I excused myself from the conversation with my colleagues, and I ducked into a vacant conference room.

During the bright days of June, I like to work with the lights off because the sunlight is adequate and rooms stay cooler when light bulbs aren't burning. So I staggered into the relative dark of a conference room and sat down as though I didn't want anyone to know I was in there. Only after I'd taken a seat did I realize how off-balance--literally and figuratively--I was feeling. I didn't hear from Michael all that often because I didn't (and still don't) have the bankroll for Vegas, strip clubs get old quickly, my golf game needs work, and I have never really gotten along so well with Charles Oakley. I loved him as a player, but his Captain Surly routine and Mean Girls-like focus on being the gatekeeper of MJ's inner circle make him less than affable. I have ceded that territory to Oak, though it means I don't talk to MJ much.

I hadn't really said anything since answering the phone because Michael just kept going. "That's right, motherfucker, I'm in town, I'm heading to the gym later, and I'm looking to whoop someone's ass. You know you owe me one. You know it, bitch. So get your shit, leave that cute little job of yours for a few hours, and come meet me at the gym."



I "owed" him one only because to beat Michael at anything is to forever arouse his anger. You saw his Hall of Fame induction, right? My transgression, my horrible offense at Michael's expense, dated back to when we first met, in the Detroit airport during the summer of 2002. I was flying out to Colorado and MJ was going to Los Angeles. He'd been in Detroit for some kind of charity golf event at Oakland Hills Country Club. I was there because I was still a student at the University of Michigan and had to attend a wedding right before classes resumed. We were both flying Northwest and a patch of that violent, unpredictable summertime Midwest weather rolled through, grounding everyone for a few hours. I had accumulated enough frequent flyer miles to travel in style for a change, and I hit the rich-person concierge area to wait out the storm. I walked in and saw Michael sitting on a couch with one hand on a cigar, the one bearing his wedding ring on some woman's thigh, and his eyes burning a hole through the television.

I always knew that Michael had a gambling problem, but I didn't understand its full dimension until I sat down across from him and got roped into his lunacy as he indulged his famously competitive zeal. The sky doesn't usually turn from blue and sunny to black and foreboding over the course of three minutes, but that's what had happened on this day, and the television was tuned to the Weather Channel so that travelers could follow the storm and adjust their plans. I guess that Michael had told the woman he was clutching that he could predict the weather--as though Michael Jordan needs pickup schtick--and fixing to mount the illusion of scarcity, she bet him a drink and phone number that she could beat him at it. Obviously, that got Michael going, in pretty much every sense of that well-worn expression. As I plopped down on the leather couch, he and the woman had just begun, and they both seemed eager to share their game with a stranger who could admire it and maybe cough up some cash.

"Excuse me--would you like to play a game with myself and my friend here?" Michael asked me.

"I'm sorry? A game? What's the game?" I could barely get out my response as my mouth tightened up into a grin that obviated any need for the usual aren't-you-such-and-such-celebrity routine. Michael could tell instantly that I was intrigued, that I was in awe, and that I was in.



He told me that I could buy into the game for whatever cash I had in my pocket--turned out to be $127. Small stakes for MJ, but nothing kills time like gambling, and Michael is an addict. No stakes are too small. In return for my cash collateral, I'd have a chance to win twice what I'd put up, and to exchange phone numbers with Michael and his lady friend. All I had to do was beat Michael and the woman at a series of prop bets that ranged all over, from how fast the storm was moving, to how cold it would be in Fort Lauderdale that night, to how much rain would fall in Ohio.

Over the next three hours, Michael, the woman, and I went back and forth, talking shit, getting drunk, and making outrageous bets about the most mundane and innocuous meteorology. When the clouds finally parted and planes began taking off again, I'd won 28 bets, I'd earned $254, I'd stored some random woman's number in my phone, and I'd become friends with Michael Jordan. Of course, he also stopped talking to me for 45 minutes after I properly predicted that the heat index in Mesa, AZ would hit 114 that Friday. He had said 113, and I was closest without going over (116 was the answer).

When I eventually landed in Colorado that night, I texted Michael that I'd enjoyed meeting him, and that he wouldn't believe the weather in Denver. He wrote back, "Eat a dick, motherfucker. I'll call you when I am next in town. I'm collecting my $254. GTG. Just left mile-high club." I assumed he was messing around, and that our paths would never cross again. He's Michael Jordan, and I'm me. But sure enough, about a year later, Michael got up with me in New York. He even cajoled me into buying him dinner just to stick it to me and because he could. From then on, we were friends.



I've never been forgiven for having had the temerity to win our bet in DTW, though, and when MJ called me to play ball that day a few years ago, I knew what was in store. The phone call alone was more than enough proof. What 45-year-old man unleashes a torrent of profanity and ignorance to entice his friends into playing basketball with him? This afternoon gym session with Michael was going to be the usual--he'd make shots, he'd make money, he'd make fun of everyone until he sensed he'd all but broken your spirit to live. Then he'd tell you to stop "being a bitch," and he'd suggest smoking cigars and meeting women. By 2008, Michael was divorced, so it wasn't as uncomfortable for me when we'd have a guys night. Tiger and Charles and Charles never seemed to care, and if they did, none of them ever said anything to Michael. Certainly not Tiger. Neither did I, but despite the way we met and everything I'd long assumed about him, I could never get past the cheating. By the time Michael and I played HORSE that June Wednesday, my guilt-by-association had gone away, and that made things easier.

As suddenly as he'd gotten on the call, he got off it. "Alright. 1:30 at the usual spot. Come ready, Joey. I'm gonna make it rain on your ass like you were Eric Smith." I hung up and walked out of the conference room. My friends had dispersed, so I returned to my desk without having to say anything. Though I've never lied about my friendship with Michael, I've also never been quick to bring it up. How can I possible explain to people that I am friends with one of the ten most famous people on the planet? With Michael Jordan?! Who would believe that? It sounds crazy, and it is. I am writing about it today only because this Gerald Henderson news has been making the rounds, and it's so funny that Michael just always does Michael.

Back at my desk, I quietly finished out some short-term assignments and emailed my boss that I had to run some errands and would be gone for a few hours. Around 12:30, I neatly stacked all of the outstanding paper still littering my workspace and headed out the door. As usual, the humidity outside was heavy, and it felt as though the air were filled with some viscous liquid that was inescapable. The subway only made it worse, and I was panting when I walked into my apartment. I quickly threw on my basketball gear and went back out. That day, I was going to play in my white-and-French-blue Jordan XIIs because they matched my blue Knicks shorts. Michael likes it when I show up in Knicks gear because it reminds him "of a career spent tea bagging Patrick." Who am I to deny Michael Jordan a basketball indulgence?



Another subway ride left me at the gym. Michael Jordan can't play at local parks or public centers, of course, so we always go to a private facility. I'd mention where, but Michael still hits this place on a regular basis, and I already have blown up his spot enough in this post.

I walked into the gym, and it was eerily quiet. The room was still and dry, permeated by a plastic smell given off by some new padding along the walls. Michael was lying on the floor stretching, and I didn't see anyone else around. He told me that Oak was on the way, and that a bunch of other guys were going to be joining up later. In the interim, though, he wanted to get warmed up. In classic Michael fashion, he cast himself as the magnanimous fellow making a generous gesture. "I'll tell you what--we'll play HORSE. That way you won't wanna go home crying too quickly. I know you can't dunk, but I've seen that scrawny ass of yours hit some shots." To be friends with Michael is to forever indulge his vanity and his inward focus, but his biting sense of humor and willingness to abandon judgment once you've earned his trust make him seductive all the same. He's the sort of person whom you can't quit very easily. The fleeting moments of fun always pull you back before his pettiness creates too large a void.

Hoping above all else to not pull something, I stretched a little as Michael and I revved up the playfully adversarial banter. I can't talk shit about my basketball game to him for obvious reasons, so I always have to go elsewhere. I was gonna be on my knees; he was gonna be in a paternity suit. I had ruined my chance with some woman; he had ruined the Central Florida athletic department. I picked the wrong day to mess with him; he picked Kwame Brown. I couldn't get one letter off of him; he had letters S, T, and D to spare. Finally I was warmed up and ready to go.

The game started simply at the free-throw line. I got to shoot first, and I chose a spot from which I was confident. Establishing a rhythm, however it happens, is crucial when playing against Michael. Be it HORSE or a real game, you have to see yourself making a few shots if you're going to stay on the court. He answered, and he did it with his eyes closed. "That's some Mutombo shit right there, Joey!" Yes, we all remember.

Next, I walked over to the baseline and put down a 16 footer. Michael matched that, too. If it seems like I was choosing basic shots...it's because I was. As much fun as it would be to beat Michael Jordan at HORSE with an array of specialty shots and high-difficulty conversions, that's not really within the realm of possibility for a mediocre player who has spent most of his life doing things other than playing basketball. It's especially hard when playing against the greatest player of all time.



My game came unraveled after I missed my next shot, a three from the extended elbow on which I called bank. The ball did bank, only it caromed so hard off the backboard that it missed the rim and wound up back at half court on the other side of the floor. "Damn, Joey. That was uglier than my divorce settlement!" I told you that Michael can be fun. "Now we're gonna separate the men from the bitch-ass motherfuckers."

Michael walked underneath the basket, leaped out toward the back wall, spun in the air, and easily put the ball in the hoop after floating it over the backboard. Before I even tried, Michael was hooting at me, "Can't spell Hoey without an H." He was right, both grammatically and in a basketball sense. I got an H and fell on top of myself in the process. As I was getting up, Michael was strolling back toward midcourt, and he stopped one step from the line. Without turning back toward the basket on which we were shooting, he lofted the ball over his head with one hand, and it fell through the basket without hitting the rim. Then Michael shrugged at me and said, "That's what Portland saw when they didn't respect my J. I bet you didn't think I could do that." Really, this is what we're talking about?

I was quickly a HO. R and S came on the next two exchanges when I failed to make a three from my knees, and then when I saw the ball lip out after Michael insisted that I mimic his famous layup against the Lakers. If you're keeping track, I made my first two shots, missed my third, picked up four letters on the next four shots, and endured references to faded glory from 1991 and 1992, a full 17 and 16 years earlier. The sad thing is that Michael almost always talks about or somehow invokes these moments. Reading what he said to Gerald Henderson the other day compelled me to share this story because while Michael's post-career descent into a certain lowlife hedonism is well known, his enduring competitiveness and depressing inability to let go remain beyond tangible comprehension for most people. This is a man who wouldn't allow me to have water on the day of my Gerald Henderson experience until I was at HORSE. He explained, "Craig Hodges used to want water breaks, and look what happened to him."

Luckily for me, I am not too proud to cast my lot with someone like Craig--whom MJ and I once ran into on the street in Chicago; it was really awkward--and the sweet rapture came soon after I was at HORS. (Or, as Michael said, "Get that Pietrus-ass French 'HORS' shit out of here." A reference to an active player was actually encouraging, so I didn't even mind that it was an insult, and that as far as insults go, it was about as weak as anything Michael has ever summoned.) Michael's next shot was a straight ahead three, something I could convert. The charity was limited, though, because after I matched him, he returned to the spot from which I had missed a bank three and effortless executed a spinning fadeaway off the board. Game over. HORSE for me.

"That's the shot I hit to beat James Worthy after my first practice at UNC," Michael said. "I challenged him to a game of one-on-one, and I nailed that shot just to show him that I could. He said 'No way you hit this' as it was in the air. And after I put it down, I told him 'That's what Leroy Smith said to me.'"

As you can see, some things about Michael have never changed, and apparently, they never will.



(As you might not be able to see, this post is a work of fiction. But what does it say about Michael that it seems so believable? -- Ed.)

How Dew U Wan Tit?

Seriously, fuck Lost. Go to the doctor. Read my ultimate Gil outpouring.

Sing With The Pollen

This post follows directly from Dr. LIC's consideration of myth in the NBA, so read that first if you expect to be on my level. Other suggested reading: Pasha Malla on "Where Amazing Happens" during last year's playoffs.

A few weeks ago, I fired off an ill-advised email pitch to an editor, proposing a comparison of divinity in the NBA vs. other sports. The gist: In other leagues, God reveals himself in the form of miracles, an external agent that, no matter what the skill level of the players involved, must intervene in order for The Immaculate Reception, The Catch, The Motor City Miracle, The Shot Heard 'Round the World, or Bill Buckner's Folly, to occur. The NBA, on the other hand, attaches this hand of heaven to players. The Shot is amazing, but there's no question that Jordan and Jordan alone made it happen. That's why we fear him so. Similarly, nicknames like "Black Jesus," "The Chosen One," "Magic", "The Answer," and "The Dream" imply the otherworldly, if not the supernatural. They are the agents, they make "amazing" happen.

How to reconcile this, then, with the writings of Dr. LIC and Pasha? I agree that, as conventionally understood, myth just doesn't adhere to the NBA in the same way as it does football, baseball, or even college hoops, and that forcing that modality onto the Association just feels wrong. What we see, and how we remember it, is always dense, less distant, and despite the prevalence of the highlight, harder to boil down or distill. The highlight may be susceptible to this treatment, but it's worth noting that compared to still photography, the highlight is more clamorously here-and-now—the way, I think, NBA action and memory is best understood. It's not so much about marketing as it is the proper cognitive framework. In the same way that watching a game depends on uninterrupted attention, THE MOMENT can only be abstracted so much.

Unless, of course, we're talking about Jordan. MJ asked in one fairly recent ad if he wrecked the NBA. Certainly, in terms of introducing both myth and split-second history into the fan lexicon, he did. Never mind that Jordan's own myth falls apart if you whitewash his early years with Chicago—he was a menace, not just a young buck paying his dues—and disregard what was being said about Jordan by people who had seen him outside of Dean Smith's system. Or that, as Pasha points out, the highlights that define Jordan's career have been transformed through sheer force of marketing. The Jumpman, iconic as it is, doesn't really capture that dunk. It's just the most convenient way to communicate it as product. The same goes for Jordan-over-Ehlo, or Russell. Bird and Magic might have made the league palletable again, but they existed very much in basketball-time. It took Jordan to really put things over the top, due in large part to Nike's turning him into a myth, and walking bit of history, a la baseball or football.



That's why the NBA wrestles with the problem of mythology—its greatest player ever distorted the sport's true meaning in a clever commercial ploy designed to compete with the NFL and MLB. Fans like myths. But they're not a natural fit for basketball. Jordan fooled us, and it's unfortunate that, to paraphrase Dr. LIC, Kobe and Bron have left to contend with his example. Chasing his example on the court is no problem—it's the distortion of everything else involved in stardom, wrought by Jordan that's left them flummoxed. And, I'd say, made the NBA seem so less impressive in his wake. It's because MJ changed the way we consumed the league, what we expected of subsequent players. Of course, we forgot that Jordan was a process, even his construction as a corporate entity. We were at once too smart and too stupid to appreciate the NBA on its own terms.

This season, I'm not feeling the same prophetic fury I usually do. Bron is Bron, higher than all; Durant will astound us; Kobe's intelligence and discipline can shatter you just to watch. Wade is spectacular, Chris Paul's a walking clinic where the sweets never stop flowing. But I'm not in full-on manifesto mode. I would ordinarily chalk that up to being overworked, or otherwise burdened. But instead, I've realized that I'm finally coming to see the NBA clearly.

And herein lies the answer to the riddle of divinity. What marks the earlier examples of NBA otherworldiness isn't immanence, but action. I'd go so far as to make that "acts." Players who earn these appelations don't rest on their laurels, they define themselves time and time again through simply unfathomable play. We don't watch superstars with eye toward the past or future, but to see them fully realize the present. Vince Carter's "Half-Man, Half-Amazing" gets at the root of it: These are mere mortals who defy these limitations on a regular basis. Not myths expected to fulfill expectations, or symbols lining up to enter history. The NBA is where, above all else, the experience of watching it unfold in real time, only to be eclipsed minutes later, is the essence of stardom. Casual, disposable, and yet utterly indelible.

We are all witnesses, but that doesn't mean we're not greedy for more.

Unknown Unknowns

I don't know exactly how noz, proprietor of the world's famous Cocaine Blunts, came to tell me he had this record. It was definitely off-hand, like "if I can find it and you're interested, I'll send you a rip." My hand went numb with anticipation, but even that was only a taste of how awesome this is. Well, more how awesome it is that it exists. Happy Hall of Fame, MJ!!!!!!!



MOST PEOPLE PANIC FOR A WAY OUT. BUT MYSELF, I IMAGINE A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS TO GET MYSELF OUT.

Put this right up on the playlist alongside the Ultramag All-Stars intro and Taborn's Manute Bol ode "Block the Ball", another gift from noz.

For reasons I don't get, the DivShare player sometimes turns up blank unless you go to the actual post URL (as opposed to plain old FD.com). Here's a link. Sorry, and someone explain.

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.

No Chase in Leaving

Every once in a while, my world stops turning here, but continues elsewhere, meaning that I have one foot in motion and the other at rest. That may make some of you angry, and it's a little awkward for me, but I think it warrants a post in case you don't just love FD for the template.

The big Gatorade gundown: Simple, hella corporate, and yet awakening the competitive spirit I didn't think I had in me. Click on that link and vote for my favorite Jordan moment of all time, so it can end up on a bottle across the nation. For space reasons, they had to cut the part where I suggest MJ finished in this manner to send a message to Bias, who had just had his potential game-winner blocked by Sam Perkins. Not quite the 1992 "eff Drexler" half that Skeet selected, but in the same vein. In case you've never seen it:



At one point, I was thinking of using this web classic:



I've posted it on here multiple times, but what fascinates me is that YouTube has allowed for a rediscovery of early Jordan. This grainy footage of his ninth game, the first time he really exploded as a pro, is quite possibly the most raw example of Michael Jordan, threat to the known universe. And relatively speaking, it might as well have never existed before this video was posted, except as a box score. Certainly, it's only recently that we've been able to drill it into our own heads, to memorize each move and, for me, reassert a past that's quite special in its own right. It's allowed us all to experience a relatively obscure moment as real, even consider it for the canon.

Moving on, the ol' day gig has produced some possible posts of note. I was in a bad mood when I read Dave Berri's "underpaid/overpaid" post, and ended up writing a column about it. Slight slip in terminology notiwthstanding, I think it's a point that had to be made, even if Ziller really hit hardest. I also found out that Berri himself does't think so highly of me, though I suspect he only reads my stuff about him, and might think that everything on FD is by me. Regardless, this blurb is a keeper: "As always happens when I read Bethlehem Shoals, I am left wanting the last few moments of my life back. He generally offers a few personal attacks and then reveals he didn’t quite read what was written."

A commenter suggested that, to paraphrase, I should be sympathetic to Berri because we both look at basketball in an unorthodox way. What do you think?

FURTHER LINKS:

-Can't miss cult classics for 2009-10

-I am confused about J.R. Smith's gang leanings

-Over at Rethinking Basketball, Q. McCall recaps every single conversation we had at the Storm/Mercury game, most of which involved comparing the men's and women's pro games (as style, and product, etc.)

To Hold On Tight We Must Let Go

The days are not good for Allen Iverson. The one-time beacon of personal integrity, triumphal dysfunction, and "fuck the world" stylistic rights currently sits out in the cold. He's hoping some team will look past his recent disappointments, figure several accelerated half-lives have made his legacy less radioactive, and give him a chance to make a roster like a blaxploitation Kevin Costner character. So perhaps now is not the time to launch an entirely new critique of AI.

However, the rise of Twitter has me rethinking that foundation of Iverson's NBA being: his authenticity. Allen Iverson, above all else, was his own man, did what he wanted, and forced the world to accept him on this own terms. This was where he picked up momentum as a hip-hop icon, which is to say, while others screamed "thug", he simply brushed them off as ignorant or sheltered. There's a tendency, even a need, to separate AI the world-historical figure from AI the athletic performer. In both cases, however, Iverson exemplified "realness"—perhaps to a pathological degree, but nonetheless in a way that informed the direction of the league and the players who came up idolizing him as much as Jordan.

Hence, as much as we speak of the post-Jordan days, I myself had become accustomed to the "post-Iverson" age. In this (gulp) dialectic, there seemed to always be a hard edge, or uncompromising bluntness, to be reckoned with. There was Jordan's universal appeal, met head-on by Iverson's populist bluster. The players spat out of this maelstrom were some combination of the two; Allen Iverson came to symbolize a mish-mash of unapologetic ghetto roots, "wrong way" ball, not taking shit from no one, and a wary intelligence that could often be its own worst enemy. Carmelo Anthony, post-Iverson because he was hood plus Magic Johnson's effervescent charm; Gilbert Arenas, idiosyncratic and disruptive as a player and person, but writing his own script with all the whimsy of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Jordan was a sales pitch, Iverson a doctrine. Except that, at the risk of offending a bunch of people, Iverson's persona was itself a posture. This may sound pedestrian, or simplistic, but at what point did we decide that Iverson (or Tupac) wasn't, to some degree, faking it, putting it on, selling us a bill of goods based around a very deliberate refusal to play by the rules? AI was certainly faced with difficult circumstances, and had to make tough decisions about what path to follow. And yet over the long haul, it became as opaque a guise as Jordan's Sphinx-like mask. They may have been polar opposites, but their inflexibility and predictability ultimately made them two sides of the same coin.

Should we bemoan the fact that, in the age of Twitter, authenticity is no longer about any iteration of “the struggle,” or truce between the two sides, but the possibility that individual athletes be both accessible and undeniably themselves? The stakes may have been lowered, and yet better a feed like Rudy Gay’s inform our sense of athlete “realness” than AI’s on-message scowl. Relaxation on its own is empty, taking a stand indefinitely is its own kind of blandness.

Incidentally, anyone who’s seen Iverson in the locker room, or otherwise with his guard down, knows that dude would be a monster on Twitter.

FD Guest Lecture: Thank For the Memories

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

"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.