It Rode Out in Denim

I never get the sense that anyone likes Antoine Walker. Somewhere around his thousandth three-point attempt in the NBA, perception appeared to have turned against him. After that, it never changed back. He was branded as a counterproductive chucker, someone not especially preoccupied with winning, and a lazy disappointment. Boston almost made the Finals once, and that helped him a little, but ultimately it didn't take. It might be the idea behind disappointment--seems like people expected more, didn't get it, and became eternally frustrated, if not angry. None of this is meant to sound derisive because I shared in the pain. We're not headed down a Rasheed path here; I've not come to rattle about with the notion of Antoine succeeding in his own way. Nor is this a post about his redemption. Toine usually left me upset, just as he might have left the rest of you.



This is a post about demise, actually. Antoine's recent arrest highlighted just how quietly he left us. Had you thought about him this summer? This year? His final seasons in the NBA were spent as some itinerant sideshow with an overeating disorder and historically comical shot selection. He was on teams like Minnesota and Memphis, Siberian outposts that matter on FD and few other places. (At least, given recent history. No offense, DLIC.) He sort of vanished, first exciting, then relevant, later curious, and ultimately just gone. That he bounced bad checks in casinos didn't even strike me as especially odd, as though there were a logical progression from what he had become on the court to what he is now off of it. Shoot some threes, work up a sweat walking across halfcourt, retire to the bench with those calf-highs the only things reminiscent of former pride, and then hit the Alaskan king crab buffet at Harrah's in between hands. For a few moments, I was puzzled by whether any team would care, and I was sad to realize that none would. The Walker arrest had the feeling of a Mickey Rourke movie, Wrestler or not.

Oddly, this particular melancholy resonated with me, almost literally. I felt it in my chest, through my body. Involuntarily, my shoulders went up, my brow wrinkled up, and my mouth turned down, the posture you adopt as you mull over something perplexingly sad, or nearly unspeakable because it's just that unpleasant. I don't know Antoine Walker, of course, and he always seemed decent but nothing more. His color, to the extent that he had any, was washed out and unremarkable. I think that's what makes me so uncomfortable.

Before Antoine, there were forwards who could pass, and forwards who could shoot. There were tall men who could drift outside. And since Toine, there have been men who do those things better than he ever did them. Standards have changed, though. Big men who played like Walker before there was Walker were not so common, and I don't only mean that the three-point line irrevocably altered basketball. I mean that James Worthy was swooping to the hoop if not occasionally popping out for a mid-range jumper, and that Karl Malone was throwing his elbows into you. (Or hooking with his off arm before spinning away from a defender and the ref.) I mean that every year, now, we look at drafts filled with tall guys who must improve their post games because so many have dedicate their respective youths to developing a guard's skill set. We celebrate Kevin Garnett and Dirk Nowitzki for being the standards of non-standard, and every team seeks to find some non-standard of its own. The perception of what forwards can do, and how they should play, has changed in many ways.



Walker may not have been a true originator, but for me, in the stream of my own basketball consciousness, he was emblematic of the evolving style that a forward could effect. Antoine was a symbol, no light distinction given the company among which he stands for a 27-year-old. He was a true hybrid--he had guard skills and guard range (plus that crazy-person shot selection), but he also was naturally gifted around the rim and a wonderful rebounder. Not a lanky giant and not a small man trying to play a big man's game, he had the true hybrid body, too: the ass of a guy who could post up, complete with a sturdy base (which those socks may have reinforced, ever so slightly), yet he was nimble enough to run a little (when he still ran), and his upper body was not muscle bound or an impediment to his shooting.

And, of course, he was propelled toward stardom by excelling in a college system that encouraged someone like him to bomb from three and press all game. His combination of varied skills, multipurpose body, and atypical doctrine was truly different, and it came at a time when a critical mass of forwards who play a different kind of way was only beginning to build. Now, we take for granted that there will be tall men who can play inside and out, but Walker was a key figure in helping the orthodoxy arrive at such an assumption. I do Toine a disservice when I write this, but there is no Skita-as-bust without Walker, because no one's looking for some soft-ass Euro named Nikoloz in the first place.



Certain players serve as cultural touchstones, and Antoine was one of them, both good and bad. He embodied an archetype of innovation that enjoyed out-sized notoriety because of its intrinsic qualities and extrinsic influences. The intrinsic has been touched upon--Walker was among a new class of forwards who were neither "The Next" anything nor wholly divorced from the past. Toine and his set were, and are, an amalgamation of parts meant to conjure progress. The extrinsic was a function of time: Antoine et al. arrived (as in, emerged, not just "were drafted") as the first players charged with governing the NBA after Michael Jordan. Almost too perfectly, he debuted as Allen and Kobe reached these altered shores. Toine's game was laid as part of the foundation for this new era.

So, consider all of that. Really take some time to appreciate who Antoine Walker was. First, the star pupil of a masterful coach, and not just a mere beneficiary of Rick Pitino radicalism. Rather, Walker enabled it. He was a paradigm, and no small reason why 1996 Kentucky stands as one of college basketball's most talented and all-time greatest. Next, a member of a new oligarchy which came to the NBA with a mandate for change. He appeared with a game that expanded the boundaries of our thinking, and a body perfectly tailored for the way he was supposed to move.

Antoine Walker was a revolutionary figure, and that was lost along the way.



Also: Recent events compel me to make mention of a few other things:

First, I find the NFL's treatment of Michael Vick odious and racist. You can read about it here. The post quasi involves eschatology, if that's any incentive. That said, as Shoals has pointed out, there is irony in the fact that despite everything, Vick is more likely to find employment than Allen Iverson.

Second, when it was reported that Iverson might be signed by the Clippers in a desperate attempt to sell tickets, my heart sank. Not because I am such a huge fan of AI's game, but because I do tremendously value AI's meaning in the sociocultural continuum. Reducing Allen to the NBA equivalent of a carnival attraction immediately summoned sad notions of minstrel things. For several years, now, I have been unable to stop thinking about Iverson and his unforgivable blackness, to borrow the the Jack Johnson term. Whatever else he was or is, and however sincere it might have been, Iverson's identity has always counted his blackness as a primary component. Seeing a symbol of the black experience he has been held out to represent reduced to a sorry gimmick would feel horribly gross. Though maybe Allen crossing that threshold would necessarily entail leaving behind whatever we claim he represents and emerging as just the latest broken-down mercenary.

Third, the Stephon Marbury saga. This is not a desperate athlete's contrivance meant to court attention in the wake of an unwelcomed retirement. (At least, no solely, or even mostly.) This is, rather, a legitimately deranged person who has always used basketball to forge an identity. Bereft of basketball, and no longer pigeonholed into the rote selfish-malcontent narrative that may have obscured his eccentricity, Steph is being Steph. Really, the only thing that has changed is that he now has much more free time and much less sense of purpose. I've always maintained that there might be something Mike Tyson-ish about him. I hope not.

Full Moon Drone

What a little honesty can do. Obama suggests that it might be stupid to arrest a cranky old public intellectual in his own home, and it overshadows the most important facing the (non-voting) American populace today. Stephen Marbury sustains 24 hours of online rant 'n' rave, and comes out on the other end provoking a range of emotions . . . if you consider disgust, annoyance, amusement, bemusement, and meta-voyeurism range. Here you go, your hybrid media event of the week, both sides manufactured, both ultimately very revealing.

To repeat something I said on Twitter: Marbury plays basketball for (roughly) the same city that Skip Gates was humiliated in. That's when you realize how, in their utter disparity, these two stories end up contradicting and reinforcing each other.

Dr. LIC called to my attention the following Stanley Fish passage, in today's NYT:

When an offer came from Harvard, there wasn’t much I could do. Gates accepted it, and when he left he was pursued by false reports about his tenure at what he had come to call “the plantation.” (I became aware of his feelings when he and I and his father watched the N.C.A.A. championship game between Duke and U.N.L.V. at my house; they were rooting for U.N.L.V.)

There was some internal debate over whether U.N.L.V was desirable because they represented the antithesis of Duke—including in all matters of style, culture, and race—or simply because they weren't Duke. Dr. LIC and I came to the consensus, though, that it didn't matter. The Times was never going to skew that radical, or near-essentialist. But I almost wish that Fish had, one way or the other, definitively let us know. Not because I think that important African-American figures owe us a daily update on their version of "Blackness," and relative relationship to the latest definitions of the terms.

No, I just think this kind of inkling would make the story more intelligible to members of the public who see Gates as having left himself behind and flipped out. Who don't see how the PBS figure connects to this outrage and belligerence. On the one hand, it's evidence of certain "tendencies" in Gates that could be used against him. But it also serves to undermine the myth of the good/bad Negro. Gates could be the paragon of respectability, and yet still have this sense of alienation simmering inside him—without it showing through except under the most exigent circumstances. That's proof that not he flipped out, but that anyone assuming that an angry Harvard professor is acting erratically just doesn't get it.



Back to saying all that you mean, and putting stock in the idea that the world need know that we exist on multiple levels, or registers. One can override most, and keep us secure. However, without those strains of dissent or self-contradicton, it becomes all the easier for a public figure to be portrayed as "lost" or "ruined" when he goes down that avenue. Show that they're connected, and people start to understand how these strains can co-exist. This, and not the politics of post-racial blandness, is Obama's most important political gimmick.

When I wrote that piece on Iverson and shifting definitions of authenticity, I spend way too much time explaining what I thought about AI. That really was neither here nor there. I also was wary of bringing hip-hop into the picture, because everyone knows I don't count there at all. But that's the analogy I was going for. Iverson was hip-hop to the core because, from a young age, he learned to make his public and professional face almost formally, or at least over-determinedly, fiery and uncompromising. Say what you will about his heart, or his production on the court, but as an athlete and public figure, Iverson never backed down, believed primarily in his own self-determination, and in that, met that era's fairly intentional, inorganic definition of "realness."

If that gets murky in basketball terms, just think about it vis a vis rap. One can be earnest, or know how he got to a point of playing a part, while still having to suppress contradictory strains of personality or behavior. Or creativity. Or style. So fine, argue about Iverson's career all you want. As an icon, he's associated with that strange space where fierce honesty can lead you down the path of self-limitation. Like Richard Nixon.

All of which brings us back to Marbury. In that Iverson ditty, I concluded that his stubbornness/integrity had given way to something more fluid, flexible and, if not complex, at least more stem cell-like among athlete images. Twitter brings us athletes watching their manners, sometimes, acting like themselves, mostly, and all in all, makes the Jordan/Iverson struggle seem like two prehistoric gods who battled to the death and left only pragmatism in their wake (note: any and all propositions that involve Obama and Twitter together are true.). The dark—for lack of a better word—side of this new access is UStream, which seems to attract only players who have the most to lose by having an unfiltered camera on them (or sprung on them) for hours on end.

J.R. Smith, we got you. Brandon Jennings may have been blindsided, but it's not accident he was mixed up in that world of new media marketing. And now Marbury's marathon spazz-session which, at its best, hammered home for me Dr. LIC's comparision of Steph to Tracy Jordan/Morgan, and how our inability to tell the difference between the two Tracys was something far more sad than just "dude playing himself." The tragedy of Iverson is that, while he spent so much time doing what he thought steeled him best against adversaries, and gave him the greatest, can't-trust-no-one chance for survival, he's also funny, charismatic in the grand warm sense of yore, and known for taking his art seriously, and game as art.



Who could forget this wild and woolly TrueHoop post, and a passage that should ring in our memories forever:

"Allen took psychocybernetics to a new level," [high school athletic director] Kozlowski recalls. Today, Iverson doesn't like to talk about how he does what he does on the basketball court. "I just do it," he says. Partially, like any artist, he is wary of overanalyzing his gift. But it could also be that he's known since high school that the real explanation defies easy answers, that the answer is, at heart, both beneath and above the level of language, and connected, on some level, to his psyche.

Cybernetics has to do with learning to understand a higher dimension after you break your nose, or something, and really, this plus the "unplugged" Iverson is one of the great lost opportunities of the modern marketing age. Did he jump or was he pushed? Remember those adidas bloopers that got yanked from YouTube once they blew up? Adidas eventually put some factory-sanctioned ones up for T-Mac, but Iverson's never returned.

Then, there's Stephon Marbury, whose last 24-hours speak for itself. Like it or not, that's Marbury. Try and position his performance in opposition to his career, or write it off as a stunt. But the very conception of it is totally weird. The mainstream media pushes binaries, or at least set models, and we buy into them. Marbury may have all along had the warning signs of a grade-A weirdo, but we were too busy trying to decide if players were Iverson or Jordan to connect the dots. The behavior with the Knicks certainly helped things, and yet that was taken as "acting out" in the same way that ultimately, Gilbert Arenas's persona served to make him seem more sane than the initial anecdotes that came out.

Staring into the abyss, sailing into the heart of darkness without you calling me racist. That's the shock, and retroactive head-slap, that this Marbury thing brought for me. Where have all the truly odd people gone in sports? We squelched them out as much as the corporations did. For better or worse, now there's nowhere for any of us to hide.

If people like Skip Gates were not only allowed, but expected, to have layers to them, the range of their personality would be harder to dismiss or reduce to an unflattering photo. If sports culture more often took into account that jocks are a sample of the population at large (some gay, some depressed, some indecisive) then this Marbury thing would've been a close-up on a landscape we'd known had been there all along. And instead of our judgments being cynical, we would know that the cynicism rested purely within our own hearts.

The Audacity of Pride

I'm reporting from space while Big Baby, Silverbird, and Shoals are on the front lines. Make sure to check them out on the FD East Coast tour. Oh also, I should mention, you can buy the Macrophenomenal Almanac for 40% off on Amazon ALL DECEMBER LONG.

Lots to catch up on. In the sporting world, there is currently a war on pride. Whether it's Sean Avery, Plaxico Burress, or Stephon Marbury, the standards athletes are being held to is that of a superhuman, which--pay close attention--doesn't get to feel the things that humans feel. Humans get to boast about their sexual conquests (within reason), protect themselves without relying on 350-pound bodyguards, and voice concern when they feel they have been betrayed.

To focus on our bread and butter, I am going to have to once again stand up for Stephon Marbury and talk about how ridiculous the vilification of him is. I never like a player disrespecting a coach, and therefore, I can't back him for dissing D'Antoni in saying...

"Mike had no intentions of me playing basketball here," Marbury said. "He gave me straight disrespect. It was beyond disrespect. He put in (Danilo) Gallinari, whose back is messed up and (who) didn't participate at all in training camp ahead of me (in the season opener). ... That's saying, `I'm letting you have it right now.' He was sticking it to me."

...I do, however, empathize with his feelings of being disrespected. And for Q-Rich to say that he "left his teammates out to dry" is just hypocritical. This is where I back Steph in his comments that

"I didn't hear one of my teammates say, `Why isn't Stephon Marbury playing? This is a good system for him, even to play with the second unit and bring more firepower.'

Not one guy stood up for him? I mean, you don't expect them to complain to Mike D, but you do expect them to communicate with Steph directly on some "that's f'd up, man." For nobody to have it in them to even approach Steph about his situation is about as arrogant as whatever Starbury has done to this point. And what exactly has Steph done. I always come back to this old saw. He never broke the law, he never fixed a game, he never coasted through a series. His crime, being a ballhog and not living up to a monstrous contract a la Raef LaFrentz or anybody else.

The fact that there aren't immediate takers for Steph speaks to the absolute ridiculousness of sports in the 21st century. CP3, D-Will, Mo Williams, and now more than anybody Chauncey Billups are proving that this is a PG-dominated league, and Steph would instantly transform a lot of PG-less teams into at very least playoff teams (WIZARDS I SEE YOU). Pro athletes should be superhumanized for their brawn, and accepted as human for their personalities. If Michael Vick has to play in the CFL out of jail, I'm going to gag.
























While on the subject of pride, I have to pour out a cup of something foamy for Sam Mitchell, last of the true nutsacks in the NBA. Carlesimo, Eddie Jordan, and now Sam Mitchell. Where have all the grown-ass men gone? The only silver lining for me (sorry Skeets) is that it makes Mitchell a more likely candidate for the Minnesota position, which should go vacant....any day now. I love Mitch's style, but I realize that guys like him, and Skiles, and Eric Musselman are really an entirely new brand of coach. The stop-gap hard-ass. They are the guys that are going to come into a rag-tag situation, scream on everybody, rally up the troops and bring them back to respectability...until the players start tuning them out. Much as I hate to say it, I think Colangelo made the right move...again.
























A few more notes. Shoals demands that I point out Rajon Rondo's line last night (even though I hate Rondo):

pos		min	fgm-a	3pm-a	ftm-a	+/-	off	def	tot	ast	pf	st	to	bs	ba	pts

R.Rondo

G

40:39

5-10

0-1

6-7

+30

2

11

13

17

4

3

4

0

0

16

Shoals has deemed Rondo, "the Garnett of point guards," which reminds me, this song is really good: Willie the Kid and La the Darkman -- The Rap Kevin Garnett.


Also, I was completely prepared to hate this, but it turns out to be the most compelling thing I have seen in some time. I can't turn away.

I Can't Bake Fealty

Hats off to Fat Contradiction. Despite showing up only about twice a year, and usually to hurt my feelings in the process, he's earned a spot in the Commentors Hall of Fame. So when he takes me (us) to task for taking bland, conventional views on Stephon Marbury, and in some sense betraying this site's radical principles, I cry, bristle, and then start typing.

It's true, FreeDarko is preoccupied with the ways in which off-court manner and behavior bleed into our perception of an athlete's on-court identity, and vice-versa. The sneaker thing, though doomed and not particularly original, was a shock to the basketball system. His willingness to let his guard down with the media, be in that of a man released or an utter loon, could've rocketed Marbury past old teammate Garnett on the too effin' real scale. The Tracy Morgan/Jordan moments of 2007 were either a man losing it or maybe, like some of Josh Howard's less couth episodes, what everyone's already thinking anyway. My all-time fave has to be the "Money makes a man do crazy things," delivered in the midst of courthouse pandemonium, with a smile, and with full knowledge that his skeezy testimony had just pushed him into the Page Six gulag.

I don't remember exactly when The Recluse said this, but I still believe: "I predict Marbury in ten years to be some sort of deranged community activist, like a cross between Jim Brown and Mike Tyson."

All of which is fine and good. But let's not forget, as a player Steph is an absolute stinker. Fine, he's flashy, in that great line of PG's who wow in the city and disappoint as pros, is the very definition of clubhouse wrecker, fosters zero chemistry, and is street as hell without it amounting to much of anything. I've railed against early Iverson as FD taken too far; Marbury is certain strains of our philosophy turned back against us.



His game could not be more depressing. At his best, he could dish like crazy, use strength, elusiveness, and start-stops to find his way to the basket, and take over games to the surprise of no one. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no logical way for him to synch this up with other players. I've always believed that Iverson's main problem was not having players around him who understood—or could make good on—exactly how you work on offense with a ball-hogging, clock-eating, tunnel-visioned shop-wrecker who could split defenses and emerge as an impromptu playmaker more than you thought. Marbury was a far more traditional point guard, just a palsied version of one. Sadly, there's no external solution for the Marbury problem, no acceptable complement.

So he's a waste. The same brain that makes him a perennnial sideshow in street clothes also destroys any hope of his being a real "revolutionary figure." He's a corrupt city pol who just so happens to march in the streets or project a flamboyant image. Marbury is a parody on the court, which makes it hard to feel any real enthusiasm for or confidence in his public persona—unless we're just all about marveling at the outspoken idiot. That's why, for all our commitment to the big picture, you can't escape the man and his game. Marbury's game is just stupid, and at best, that serves as a counter-weight to whatever he's other become. At worst, it taints the whole thing with what you could only describe as mundane lunacy, outrageousness in the service of drab.

Was Marbury was better person when he was with Garnett? Would you really call the last two years a "personal breakthrough?" He was certainly less rigid in Minnesota. In Phoenix, though, when he actually experienced some success, you saw it more clear than ever: He'd become a drag, predictable, counter to the whole spirit of energized, creative basketball that supposedly flowed from the semi-disciplined urban mileau he came to embody. But as his game became less and less truly energetic and alive, what you were left with was empty swagger, skill you had to grudgingly admit (never admire), and someone whose claim to fame lay increasingly in his biography and symbolism. If that's totally severed from a man's performance, or ends up carrying all the weight, then that's when I turn my back. If nothing else, to protect the doctrine.

I wonder if it works the other way, though. Probably not. If you grew Anthony Randolph in a test tube in Iowa and had him shilling for Activia, I'd still ride.

No Limit Too Long

-If you have a story about how loud My Bloody Valentine is live, leave it in the comments section. Those are the only conversations I seem to be having these days. Based on hours of YouTube research, I've decided none of you would've lasted five seconds in 1991 (see above). Also, All Things Considered, I'm calling you out: Your Will Hermes feature on ATP was obviously using the studio version of Loveless material. We live in a nation of cowards.

-If you want to hear about basketball, go read my latest TSB column, on the subject of Marbury and Europe.

-This blog is hereby suspended until everyone buys the book, and those who have pay my student loan. Only the one.