FD Guest Lecture: Where Magaling Happens

Paeng Bartolome (aka Rafe Bartholomew) blogs at Manila Vanilla and has written a book on Philippine basketball, to be published in June.

When I was growing up in early 1990s New York, I thought everyone played ball. Shammgod, Ron-Ron and Steph were still in high school, and back then all we could talk about was their handles, not—as they moved on to college and the pros—how coaches should handle them. Of course, hoops didn't actually hold the entire city in its grasp, but it felt that way. I wore Olaf's shorts under my jeans every day in ninth grade; everyone I knew played ball, and anyone who didn't play I had no reason to know.

Alas, I grew up. I had to go to college, get a job, widen my frame of reference to acronyms beyond the PSAL, NAIA, NCAA and NBA. The sport was no longer my life, just a part of it. That's pretty typical for most kids who possessed some talent but nothing special and had to figure out plan B. Still, I missed the feeling of being surrounded by the game, of living in a place where everyone seemed to have a connection to basketball. A year after I finished school, I was lucky enough to find that place again, but I had to travel 8,000 miles to get there—the Philippines.



I had an idea of what I might find there. A few scenes of Filipinos committing out-of-this world acts of hoops devotion in Alexander Wolff's Big Game, Small World tipped me off, but nothing could prepare me for the depth and richness of the Philippines' basketball culture. The first time I stepped off an airplane in Manila, I saw passengers boxing out for front-row spots around the baggage carousel. At first I dismissed it as a hopeful mirage whipped up by researcher bias, but then I saw one passenger attempt to backstroke the person in front of him out of the way. He slid his hand under the other guy's armpit and pretended to yawn while raising his arm and pushing the other traveler behind him. It almost worked, but the guy in front kept his outside foot in front of the stroker's and denied the ensuing attempt to step through. Their technique was too pure. It was undeniable—basketball had seeped into the most mundane acts of everyday Philippine life.

Let's compress the messy and not-particularly-pretty history of U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines, not because it's unimportant but because it's difficult to explain in a paragraph, and I'm trying to stay focused on basketball. The vital fact, as far as the sport is concerned, is that Americans brought basketball to the Philippines in 1911, just twenty years after Naismith hung a peach basket on a wall in Springfield. Filipinos were probably the first people after Americans to play the sport seriously, and by the 1930s college and commercial leagues had become first-rate entertainment in Manila, events where society types fanned themselves in courtside seats and everyday fans dangled their feet from the rafters.

The conventional wisdom regarding Philippine basketball is that it is just like the American game, only the players are six inches shorter at every position. Blame the long shadow of colonial history for this misconception. American influence has been overstated by foreign writers who stayed a week in Manila, noticed that Filipino guards had more shake than their counterparts elsewhere in Asia, and credited Uncle Sam. Filipino columnists have been equally guilty of spreading the lie, often as part of a rhetorical argument (that has little to do with reality on the court) against U.S. influence on Philippine national affairs. The truth is that basketball has been a marquee sport in the Philippines for the better part of a century, time enough for the game to develop on its own, spinning off new styles like successful mutations, and evolving into something uniquely Filipino.

That ought to be enough context. Now, with some help from YouTube, here are five terms to describe the basics of the Philippine game.

•Umupo sa ere – translation: To sit in the air. Most Filipino players lack the height to pull off SportsCenter-worthy dunks. They don't, however, lack hops. Slashers in the PBA, Manila's professional league (also the second-oldest in the world, after Boss Stern's Association), have substituted the circus layup for the dunk as the ultimate expression of basketball artistry. Shots that look like once-in-a-lifetime lucky chucks are actually taken by design. Well, not exactly design, because for players like Samboy “Skywalker” Lim, the subject of two lengthy tribute videos (first above), the plan is to get into the lane and into the air. After that, there is no plan, other than to “sit in the air,” spinning and twisting, pumping and clutching until a chance to shoot materializes. In the American game, mid-air improvisation more often seems like a last resort, a flash of brilliance made necessary by a challenge, like Vince Carter's last-second squirm to dunk over and around Anderson Varejao on Sunday; it's more of a strategy for Filipino scorers, who will look to break down their opponents in the air, rather than on the ground. Samboy may have the longest highlight reels with the most sublime musical accompaniments—Yanni and Kenny Loggins—but he is certainly not the only player to master these hoops flights of fancy; Vergel “The Aerial Voyager” Meneses and Bong “Mr. Excitement” Alvarez, helped Lim perfect the art in 1990s, and guards like Cyrus Baguio and Arwind Santos keep it alive today.



•Pektos – translation: spin. If you're going to jump before deciding how to finish the play, you better be able to score from all angles and from an array of release points. To that end, PBA scorers like Lim and his modern day forebears James Yap and Willie Miller, combine spin and touch with scoops and finger rolls to bank shots like they were born with a Spalding in one hand and a protractor in the other. They may have grown up speaking tongues like Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilonggo, but their use of shot-making English could leave H.L. Mencken at a loss for words. Spin is such a necessary part of the Philippine game that when large numbers of Filipino-Americans started coming back to play in the Nineties, guys from Cali received earnest instructions to imagine they were unscrewing a lightbulb while shooting layups.

The emphasis on pektos is due in part to the Philippine penchant for improvisation, but it also has to do with the lack of standardization in basketball courts and training techniques around the country. The Philippines is a poor nation, and although a startling amount of public money has been spent on constructing cement courts with roofs, overhead lights and fiberglass backboards, thousands more jerry-rigged hoops pepper the nation, built by people who decided to make do with a flat patch of earth and a rusted car hood lashed to a coconut tree. Countless Philippine pros learned the game in ad hoc style on homemade courts, mimicking their uncles' moves and trying out their own shots. These guys had little exposure to proper hardwood or knowledgeable coaching until high school or sometimes college. Of course, they eventually learned textbook basketball, but by then their self-taught skills couldn't be unlearned. Thus, almost every player possesses his own, abnormal genius—unteachable shots born of the extra-wide gaps between the two-by-fours that passed for a backyard backboard or a piece of rebar bent into a too-small rim.

•Gulang – translation: craftiness. This word is actually the root of the Tagalog term for parents, a neat double-entendre that emphasizes the built-in respect for experience in Philippine culture and, by extension, basketball. A player who has been around long enough to master the sport's dirty tricks has earned the right to take advantage of younger opponents. These dark arts include the holding and pushing that occurs on courts across the globe, but a special appreciation is reserved for sneakiness. You'll almost never see these acts caught on camera, but a few afternoons on Philippine playgrounds or a night of drinking with one of the PBA's retired defensive specialists will reveal a litany of basketball deceits. My favorite is hand- or finger-holding. Set a high screen in the Philippines, and chances are when you try to roll you won't be going very far. Ditto for when you get ready to jump for a rebound and find yourself tethered to the ground. What happened? Someone latched onto your index finger and tugged just enough to kill your momentum. You've been made a victim of gulang, which, in English, would be kind of like saying you got sonned.



•Ginebra – This isn't a term, it's a team, which is named after a brand of gin. It's also something of a movement, the runaway most popular team in the Philippines (although recent surveys suggest this title is not so clear-cut) that is synonymous with never-say-die basketball and its most famous practitioner, Robert Jaworski. This hoops Methuselah might have played to the death if being elected to the Senate in 1998 hadn't forced him to vacate his role as Ginebra's player/coach at the tender age of 52. When Jaworski was with Ginebra, the crowd was so notorious for showering the court with peso coins and AA batteries that opposing teams kept beach umbrellas under the bench and opened them up for protection from the inevitable fusillades. Nowadays, that frothy fandom is mostly channeled into chanting “Hee-neh-brah!” loud enough to shake the 15,000-seat Araneta Coliseum. That devotion also shows up in comically intense YouTube tributes like the “Princes of the Universe” video. If you can get over the words “I AM IMMORTAL” scrolling across the bottom of the screen when Jaworski appears, you'll see some splendid footage of one of the PBA's most exciting teams of the Nineties.

You may also notice Noli Locsin (6), the archetypical Philippine undersized power forward. That is, a 6-foot-3 bruiser who moves like Baryshnikov. Enough bulky fours – Nelson Asaytono, Alvin Patrimonio, Ali Peek—have combined agility and beefiness to make the miraculous blend seem fairly unremarkable, but none so dramatically as “The Tank” Locsin, who looked like he ate a kilo of rice at every meal and hung in the lane like he was riding Aladdin's carpet.



•Larong buko – translation: coconut game. The opening clip in this countdown is a reminder that the Philippine game embraces a healthy amount of silliness. These loose ball carnivals are common and popular enough to have earned the colloquialism larong buko, which suggests the players are handling the ball so poorly it might as well be a coconut. Aside from the surprising frequency of such moments at the professional level, it's worth noting that these are often the crowds' favorite parts of games. Fans will reward ten seconds of the ball squirting around like a greased pig and the players diving and sliding in pursuit with a few minutes of standing ovation. It goes back to the participatory nature of Philippine basketball—Filipino fans don't just admire the game, they play it, and nothing seems to please them more than the free-wheeling, frenetic, occasionally sloppy style of ball that they practice on their own neighborhood courts.



Watching these videos, someone might conclude that Samboy's virtuoso finishes and Noli's round mound act are cute novelties, but that these players can only pull off their moves because there are no shot-blockers in the PBA. They're probably right—the PBA game is played, by and large, below the rim, and if you dropped Josh Smith into these games he'd gobble shots like Pacman. So what? A country's basketball style develops according to the physical constraints and cultural intangibles that—in criminally general terms—make Americans the cagiest ball-handlers and strongest finishers, Eastern Europeans the most accurate shooters, and Filipinos the finest layup artists. I don't care that the Timberwolves could beat Ginebra by fifty; I care that the Philippine Basketball Association showcases a gorgeous and joyous brand of hoops and makes its own kind of amazing happen.

Where Now, Endorser of Folly?

Hey all, neglect not my voluptuous team previews over at you-know-where.

All sort of crazy stuff coming down from the foggy hilltop lair of the Golden State Warriors. Down a bit in this Baseline post, you get Monta equivocating on just where he stands with the team, and whether or not he thinks Ellis/Curry could ever make that bank. Dude's got a point: Both are small, and while Ellis isn't say it, Curry's unproven, much less as a do-it-all weirdo that Nellie will demand if he's actually paying attention. For my three dolmas, I don't see why the team wouldn't go with Morrow, other than the fact that Curry's got just enough to keep everyone under his spell (or rather, to justify using him when his name is potentially big draw. At least NY felt that way.)

Morrow is a shooting machine, and while Ellis doesn't naturally play the 1, I fail to see exactly why the team wins by accommodating Curry, rather than trying to figure out how to best make the team work around Monta. Come on Nellie, you're letting down your foremost theoretial boosters! In fact, you could run out a line-up that's surprisingly conventional, albeit with a few wrinkles, and still learn a lot, teach others, and win some games. What's so bad about Ellis/Morrow/Jackson/Randolph/Biedrins, with Curry and Wright featured prominently off the bench?

But this ain't The Baseline, and you aren't here to watch me rattle off possible line-ups—however irrational, or ideologically-motivated, they might be. I come to speak to you of the current interactions of Jackson and Ellis with the press, respective. Jackson, in particularly, is somehow straddling the line between calm/cool and outlandish, saying, more or less, "I've seen everyone else go. The team I helped win is gone. The new formation is, if not looking for an identity, at least not that good yet. I proved myself with the Spurs, brought love to the Bay, and signed an offer I'd have been foolish to turn down here. Please trade me." Yes, there's a paradox there: WHY SIGN IF YOU WANTED TO LEAVE YOU SELFISH THUG FUCK!???!! But Nellie himself is talking a similarly rational game, along the lines of "we'll see what we can do, but it won't tear the team apart." In short, the two still seem to trust the other to exercise some form of reason—a funny sentence if ever there were one, but the way it is.



(By the way, I think most of my paraphrases are taken from this here San Francisco Chronicle story. For Monta, see Baseline link above.)

Ellis is a trickier proposition. He's being paid like the franchise, but is increasingly depicte as the odd man out. Why exactly has Ellis gone from one of the league's most coveted young players to disgruntled trade bait? Because he's not a true PG? Because his three-pointer has bad credit rating? This is a Don Nelson team we're talking about. For the same reason that we'd expect him to both respect Jackson's will to exit and forge ahead with him nonetheless, it's a total letdown that Ellis now poses such a quandry.Who exactly is Nelson waiting for when it comes to making this team fall into place? Is he suddenly appealing to the templates of convention? Yes, he loves Randolph. How are those two not a package deal? I guess there's some PR/business shit to sort out, but as for basketball, if ever there were a time for fearlessness on Nellie's part, today is that hour.

It's tempting to blame it all on Curry, and all that he stands for. But whatever, even his uneven skill set might end up best tucked away somewhere in a Ellis/Randolph superstructure. I don't get why, on the level of feelings and abstract coach-speak, Nelson seems so willing to break the mold as he plays reasonable with Jackson, but can't get a little restive or provocative when it comes to putting players on the floor.

Or perhaps the repartee with Jackson must be viewed alongside Nelson's threat to coach for free in 2011-12. The Positional Revolution has sapped him; now, he's smacking up and down the entire culture of labor and coach/team/player relations. That would be cool and all, but at this crucial time for the Dubs, when so much is possible and at the same time so much slipping away, now is the time for Nelson to get off his ass, slap some water on his face, and one more time ride into battle like the wind around him can drown out all but the sound of his own thoughts.

It's Judgment That Defeats Us

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Like virtually all of his ‘We Believe’ teammates before him, turns out that Captain Jack was never quite as happy with being an act in Donnie Nelson’s circus as we once presumed.

Bear in mind that this is a player-coach combo once thought to have built the best rapport in the league. When on Oakland’s local sports-talk radio they would regularly call in as anonymous listeners to pose goofy questions to each other. Nelson gave Jackson more minutes and more regular minutes than any other player on the squad, which is actually quite an accomplishment since Nelson benched players like Jamal Crawford, who should nicely compliment his system, and the Anthony Randolph, who should be a fucking thunder-lizard or something, for the bulk of the season. Point is it’s becoming rather obvious that Don Nelson is to the NBA as Colonel Kurtz is to Vietnam.

Nelson is a man tortured and ruined by the combination of his own genius and the impossibility of his circumstance. Donnie can turn some undrafted kid out of the Georgia Institute of Technology into an explosive scorer in his rookie season, but couldn’t have cultivated a healthy, professional relationship with Dikembe Mutumbo. And while this phenomenon might be endlessly interesting to a casual observer, it seems to be particularly frustrating to those living the dream.

In the most FD of ways, Nelson’s dementia is clearly reflected by the style of his system, which makes his insanity almost a necessity. As I’ve written about in the past, teams that play asymmetrical basketball can be extremely effective, but are still extremely uncommon. This is because there are three enormous roadblocks that tend to prevent the more sane coaches in the association from being given a chance to prove their genius.



While Don Nelson has broken the mold by simply refusing to acknowledge the existence of any societal norm, most of us prefer not to have conversations with the demons inside our skulls, so front offices tend to get stuck on these worries:

Social: Lots of people pretend like peer-pressure isn’t real. Lots of social scientists know it’s an incredibly powerful force in decision making. Lots of professional sports teams have fans, which provide an enormous social pressure. NBA front offices trying to build unique squads have to make unique, sometimes questionable roster moves. Since lots of the fans aren’t members of the front office, it’s incredibly difficult for a franchise to teach them the rationale behind their action without alerting every other team in the league. And that kind of defeats the purpose of running a sneaky strategy the other teams aren’t built to counter.

Unless you’re Chris Wallace, chances are you don’t want to be perceived by your fans or the national media as like Chris Wallace—not to insinuate Chris Wallace is covertly building an asymmetrical team, just to insinuate most teams would probably rather hire Isiah Thomas as their new GM at this point. Some franchises manage to answer this convoluted equation, normally by branding their style so fans and media understand their personnel decisions. But most franchises find it much easier to just remove the whole unique squad part from the equation, then all you need to do to quell those incessantly riotous fans is trade for Shaq.

Cultural: This equation is much shorter. Coaches and GM’s aren’t always on the same page. Because of the ‘No Championships’ propaganda and the reason above, GM’s resist making particularly creative roster choices. Coaches need to win, or they get fired. So if the coach has a traditional lineup, there is too much pressure from the NBA’s win-or-burn coaching culture for that coach to tinker with the way the lineup is constructed and utilized. Who really wants to save a world that is destined to die?

As evidence I would like to submit that coaches using a unique system typically have nothing to lose because of their status (read: large and long contracts, or exceptionally short leash): D’Antoni, Nelson, Adelman, Karl are the legends; Stan Van Gundy and a bunch of interim coaches are the outcasts who need to show sparks of genius to have any hope of staying an NBA head coach.



Economic: Common sense would edict that a team using its personnel in unique ways to maximize their ability and minimize their flaws would get some serious discounts on players. In theory because they’re getting the maximum value out of each players skills, these teams could get by paying less for players who are seen as flawed in most systems. Sadly because of the branding issue even the most innovative team needs to have some semblance of consistency in player roles. The more unique your team becomes, the more unique skill-set necessary to make it work, thus the rarer the player that will plug into your asymmetrical system.

Since players and agents aren’t fucking morons, they know their team’s unique needs and use this as an advantage in their negotiations. How does a dude named Andrea makes $50 million over 5 years from a team bidding against itself, despite failing to contribute for a bad team over his entire career? He is seven-foot tall and can shoot on a team that’s trying to build the NBA’s closest approximation of Euro-ball. The Raptors have the opportunity to emerge as the strangest team in the NBA next season, but had to pony up serious cash to make it happen. I’m not exactly a trained economist, but common sense tells me that if supply equals one, it doesn’t take tons of demand for the price to rise.

Like most systems that persist over time, team development is well reinforced by structural forces that are perpetuated from Grand Minister Stern all the way down to the most ignorant of fans. There isn’t even an ounce of hope for Reformation at this point. Nelson is too egomaniacal to lead the revolution, the Magic are too repentant for their loss, and D’Antoni is too not in Chicago.

So where, precisely, are we, the fans who want nothing more than to just see something fucking new and different, to go from here? Well it looks like in the foreseeable future we’ll just have to keep on elevating our heartbeats over the positively titillating news that flawed dunk specialist Hakim Warrick will be joining the incredibly raw rookie Brandon Jennings, who might not even start over Luke Ridinour. And we will keep watching insufferably ugly, slow Bobcats games just to catch the token Gerald Wallace highlight. Or maybe we’ll track a Suns team that is a ghostly, back-from-Siberia version of its glory years. Crazy Donnie, you are a much stronger man than I.

Out of the Wormhole

Pause on BASKETBALL MAY OR MAY NOT BE JAZZ to talk crossovers.


This isn't a complete dissertation on the state of the crossover, obviously, but at least addresses key modalities. Straightforward: the x-axis asserts the function of the crossover while the y denotes perceived importance (substance vs. style). There's a third dimenson measuring quality of said crossover, but it's not visible from Earth, and you already know the answers anyway.

Still Waters Run Shallow

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Trevor hates sports more than, perhaps, anything else. In fact Trevor’s has irrational hate for everything that doesn’t pique his interest is the only thing that keeps me from definitively saying sports are the main target of his loathing. You see Trevor prefers to spend his days as an active citizen, devouring monographic texts on the complexities of nuclear deterrence theory. He fancies himself a thinker, an intellectual even, and resents that others are more interested in half-heartedly watching a second episode of Sportscenter instead of making sure to catch this week’s U.S.-Chinese Strategic Economic Dialogue on CSPAN.

So needless to say I was skeptical when Trevor sent me an article he described as “probably about basketball, you like that, don’t you?” I damn near closed the tab when I saw a goofy white dude with thick rimmed glasses and a weak ass ‘fro staring back at me, until I read the subtitle: “When underdogs break the rules.” Intriguing. Except horrible.

When I talked to Trevor later that day I told him how I thought the article was fucking stupid. I straight up murdered that shit. Guess what pal? No fourteen year old team is really all that talented, so it’s not like the metaphorical glass ceiling was too high for up and coming team to break shatter. Not to take anything away from the sport, but my high school’s girls team once scored under 20 points in a game—scratch that, a win.

Trevor, possessing a biting wit, responded, “Didn’t you just write like a page long feature about how bad-ass some team was cause they were so odd?” Oops, there goes gravity.



The team in question was the Golden State Warriors. And the short piece theorized that if we remember sports are ultimately an exchange of entertainment for pay, wherein wins and losses are just one function of entertainment, then the W’s are actually one of the most successful teams in the league. Their games are thrilling, they give 48 minutes of excitement, and the constant tension between Nellie and his riotous players fosters a compelling and dramatic narrative. While the team might not be win many games, both the Golden State Warriors and their fans are certainly winners.

But every time we boot up ESPN, watch Sir Charles rant on Inside the NBA, or listen to the B.S. Report we are reminded that championships and wins are the measure of the quality of sport. On top of that brainwashing we’re reminded that only certain types of teams win championships—teams that are about as unique as Simmons’ punch lines.

As a result of this propaganda most fans perceive unique teams like the Warriors as gadgets or tricksters, somehow perennially inferior to the real contenders. The Magic can’t win in a series—live by the three die by the three, bad luck will eventually hit. And my, oh my, look at that Rafer Alston’s street ball moves, aren’t they a neat distraction! The Nuggets don’t have any chance—up-tempo teams just don’t play enough defense to win big games. By the way, friends, please note that J.R. Smith has no basketball awareness. It must be because those tattoos cover his eyes too!



Of course in reality the curse of the three-pointer is a myth carried over from the NCAA’s one-and-done tournament format and streaky shooters. The Magic shot the three more consistently than any other team deep in the playoffs, which makes sense considering that the greater the sample the more likely you are to find the mean. As far as fast pace equaling a lack of defense, Denver was 6th in the league in defensive efficiency despite missing Kenyon Martin for much of the season, much better than even moribund grinders like the Spurs and Trailblazers. Anyone who watched the Denver’s playoff losses recognized they lost due to late game offensive blunders, not defense.

Considering how few teams played with a style asymmetrical to league trends last season, I count 8 (Knicks, 76ers, Magic, Pacers, Rockets [without Yao], Nuggets, Warriors, Suns), isn’t it modestly impressive that half made the playoffs, none were embarrassed, and two made the Conference Finals? If you play the percentages, teams who employ unique strategies to maximize their advantages actually tend to be competitors more often. Now remember that the Suns would probably still be in the Conference Finals picture too if it weren’t for their owner’s shameful identity crisis.

Perhaps it was fate that the Suns would be betrayed by their owner, since the only thing that had ever kept them from winning multiple champions was catching a couple breaks. Or, rather, they caught too many breaks. Joe Johnson broke his face, Amar’e broke his knees, Amar’e and Diaw broke the rules, and Nash broke his nose. But Steve Nash standing back up, defiant with his face bloodied, will be my image of a winner’s spirit forever. The pained determination in his eyes was enough to make you wonder if he had asked God why he had forsaken him. And yet since we all should be preaching “defense wins championships” so kids will learn to be winners for life at elementary school basketball camps, the story books will remember Nash and the seven-seconds-till-death Suns as nothing but an entertaining sideshow to the Spurs dynasty.



Yes, the haters are right that none of these eight teams have won a championship lately, and they’re right that recently the ranks on Larry O’Brien’s trophy are devoid of a team with a unique, non-traditional style. But consider the three greatest dynasties in the NBA’s history: the Bill Russell Celtics, the Showtime Lakers, and the Jordan Bulls. Believe it or not, Russel’s Celtics thrived off fast-breaks at a time when clothes-lining a streaking wing was considered a defensive fundamental. The Showtime Lakers overcame having stars named Ferdinand and Earvin to become flashy to a fault at times, they admittedly made no effort on defense, and the guy named Earvin could and would play all five positions. Of the three only the Jordan Bulls even vaguely resembles what we now know as the prototypical blueprint for success, whatever the fuck that even means, and that’s likely only because Jordan’s dominance shaped the model in our collective minds.

A week or two ago I was chatting with Trevor and we stumbled into a breezy conversation about Third World development and dependency theory. To explain my point I dropped a little round ball reference: the Lakers want the Kings to try to build around Kevin Martin like he’s Kobe, because they know the Kings will never grow into contenders that way. They want the Grizzlies’ young core to fail because they can rape their greatest resources for a pittance in return. And the fans are strung along the whole way, struggling to subsist while waiting for that true shooting guard or seven foot shot-blocking center they just know is the final piece.

I was pretty proud of the metaphor, and thought I might have smartly, meaningfully bridged the gap between disciplines.

But Trevor just told me it was fucking stupid.

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.

Baked Alaska

I usually hate the sun, in fact, it places undue pressure on me to love life and makes me that much more determined to hide in the shadows. But fuck it, it's been gorgeous here for three days, there's only so much basketball on, and no one's checking their email. So I'm suddenly filled with spring fever—more like compulsion—and have to get to the water and get my tan on.

Before I run out the door, though, I did want to say a few things about last night's game. Sorry for the lack of frilly language, these are more notes that grew out of post-game conversation:

-I recognize that this Cavs loss somewhat mutes my latest spasms of LeBron-mania.

-That said, it is kind of sad to watch Bron go straight at Howard like the DPOY doesn't have shit on him. You wonder if an angrier Dwight might help here.

-At some point, I began to wonder if the Magic could only win, or at least impress me with a win, if they made a comeback that was . . . ummm, magical?

-Based on conversations with my friend Nate, Kevin Pelton, and my own two eyes, it's become obvious to me: Howard is a monster on offense provided he's in motion. Give him the damn ball, just make sure he's cutting, leaping, or in a position to make one step and then dunk. That's why, even though he could stand to diversity his offense, it is on SVG and other players to see this gives them a tremendous weapon right now. See also Game 1 of this series.

-Someone needs to tell Howard that him stationary in the post is a total dead-end. Unless he's got a total mismatch. When Amare was a raw killing machine in 2004-05, the trick to his success was that he avoided this situation like the plague. Now, Howard will never be able to expand his range, or ability to put the ball on the floor, like Stoudemire has done—the main way he's overcome the obvious limitation of not playing in the post. So who knows what the long-term prognosis for Howard is. But Amare was never as imposing as Howard. There's no reason he can't be used creatively so that, in short, the post is always the terms set by Howard's lateral or upward motion.

-Not surprisingly, Kevin just realized he'd said something like this several years ago:

For years now, Howard has drawn comparisons to Phoenix's Amaré Stoudemire because of how both players have a prodigious combination of size, strength, and athleticism. The comparisons break down at some point, because Howard is a far better rebounder and defender than Stoudemire, but the Magic clearly learned from how the Suns accelerated Stoudemire's development by pairing him with Steve Nash and surrounding him with double-team neutralizing outside shooters.

And also. . .

We're trained to recognize that those kind of outside shooters help beat double-teaming of a post player, a style so popular in the NBA in the 1990s that was perfected by the Houston Rockets around Hakeem Olajuwon. However, the Suns of recent vintage have demonstrated that deep threats can be just as valuable when it comes to running pick-and-rolls. Even though Magic point guards Carlos Arroyo and Jameer Nelson are not on Nash's level, the Orlando pick-and-roll is still difficult to defend because teams can't leave the outside shooters to provide help and because Howard is so good at going up and getting the ball on lobs to the rim.

-KP adds: "The point now is they realized this a long time ago, and then seemed to forget it in these playoffs, either because Nelson/sorta Turkoglu were hurt or because of ORTHODOXY."

-Tangentially related, Rafer Alston is so weird. He's at his best as a straightforward guard. Nothing outside-of-the-box or too improvisational.

-So yeah, despite Joey's earlier critique of Howard, the Magic could be making a lot more of the current situation. And maybe Dwight could stop making me feel so damn bad for him, as LeBron plays like him with perimeter skills.

-It's true, I wrote something claiming that a big game from J.R. was more important to the Nuggets than Billups stepping it up. That probably would've made more sense around these parts. But I would still like to forget it happened.

-GO WONDER PETS!!!!!!!

We Touch Your Ears (Podcast #55)

This was recorded Tuesday night, but its apocalyptic reachings are probably the sort of thing that benefit from being found in a clay pot several thousand years after the fact. Also, I've been a little busy with my new joint, The Baseline, which more than warrants your attention. At least this harried state of things prompted the following hilarious line from Dan: "'Blame it on the Baseline' sounds like an Eric B and Rakim record."

But now you have it before you, and it's a good one. We look for the future, ponder the interchangability of point guards and centers, say "ball-stopping" dozens of times without giggling, and discover the science of the Ewing Theory. We also manage to make the unflappable Tom Ziller misty by taking a trip deep into the collective Kings memory we all share.

THE PODCAST:



Playlist:

"Hanging By a Thread"- The Forty-Fives
"Drizzle" - Burd Early
"Ride Tonight" - Z-Ro
"Terminator X" - Public Enemy
"Down South Blues" - by Old Crow Medicine Show

For other means of obtaining this program, try iTunes and the XML feed.

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

The man who made a certain famous comment has returned to expand upon his initial germ of genius. Ladies and gentlemen, Damian Garde:

As far as NBA platitudes go, among the oldest and most yawn-inducing is the idea that players sacrifice everything for the team. Whether their bodies, their egos or their stats — we want our heroes to be selfless at some cost. But all that seems petty compared to the transformation of Rajon Rondo. Beyond making the extra pass, beyond diving for a loose ball, Rondo gave up his innocence for the Boston Celtics.

It seemed sudden in the moment but natural in retrospect. The boyish, long-lashed work in progress who unabashedly discusses his love for roller-skating and keeps Chap Stick in his sock turned into a volatile rebounding machine who’d smack you in the face and throw your Kansas ass into a table on general principle. But it wasn’t a flash of deep-seeded rage or some misguided ploy for street cred or respect. In Game 5, Paul Pierce — who is perhaps a dramatist, a masochist, or both — was playing hurt; Ray Allen had uncharacteristically fouled out; and Kevin Garnett was caged in a suit on the sidelines. Rondo — like a young Dr. Doom, like the child soldier who kills because it’s the only alternative to dying — became evil solely as a survival mechanism.

But like any evolution, Rondo’s has not been without growing pains. In Game 5’s post-game news conference, when the foul on Brad Miller got brought up, Rondo sheepishly lowered his head and, oddly, let Kendrick Perkins defend him before mentioning that, yes, Miller is much bigger than him. This can’t be overlooked — the Celtics have gone out of their way to defend what he did, and when pressed, Rondo only points out the perceived injustice that, excuse the pun, forced his hand. Further straddling the line between a sudden, very adult fury and his boyish nature, Rondo left that conference to share a post-game dinner with the guy who played McLovin.



Following last year’s championship run, Rondo was a league rarity: a name player without a creation myth. Taken late in the first round, Rondo spent his rookie season battling with Sebastian Telfair and Delonte West (a triumvirate pregnant with meaning, if I’ve ever seen one) for minutes at the point. Despite proving himself as a serviceable PG, he was seen as a lanky uncertainty after Boston’s summertime transition into a juggernaut. Even this season was spent somewhat in the wilderness: There were flashes of brilliance, followed by no-shows. And that probably should have made his playoff christening all the more predictable — few furies match that of a man in search of his own legend. And isn’t it only natural that, raised by three of the best self-mythologizers in the game, Rondo would eventually come into his own? After all, Paul Pierce need only touch a wheelchair to pack the theater; KG screams at the God who scorned him after an easy rebound; and, well, Jesus Shuttlesworth is Jesus Shuttlesworth.

But while Rondo’s newfound identity is perhaps as theatrical as those of his wolf-parents, its rawness makes it unsettling. Garnett, as intense as any player since cocaine stood in for Gatorade, is controlled genocide and often rides murder to work. His demons, volatile as they may be, forever bow to him. Rondo, who provided the waifish, just-happy-to-be here levity last season, now has the soiled hands of an off-the-handle bruiser. But, in a sense, he has the worst of both worlds: His fury is shaky and noncommittal. In Game 6, it was tempting to see Rose’s block as the hero’s impossible feat to thwart the supervillain. But aside from his squabble with Hinrich, Rondo was somewhat less explosive in that game. However, that didn’t stop the dawn of the new narrative: Rose, the golden, acne ridden beacon of Stern’s master plan, versus Rondo, the shifty, Gollum-like trickster.

Doin' Dirt: A Visual Taxonomy



(Chart by Ziller)

Facts don’t matter in the face of such montage fodder, and, thus, the new reality. Even though Rondo has been emotionally (and statistically) calmer in this Orlando series, his wide-eyed exuberance is gone, replaced by a quiet menace lost on no one. Obviously, his whole career is ahead of him, and it’s impossible to say with authority whether this identity will stick or be just a hiccup on the way to becoming Chris Paul Lite (It’s worth noting, however, that he’s probably the only 23 year old I’ve heard described as “wily”). But even if he goes on to become Isiah, we can never get jaded to the myth of Rondo. We were there, and we saw the boy in him die.

They Will Take You There (Podcast!)

You asked for more Nuggets, and dang, are you gonna get it. This week's episode of FreeDarko Presents the Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast is devoted largely to a "why not us" take on Denver, as well as an examination of George Karl's hidden, at times self-defeating, genius. And a rare chance to hear the voice of one Brown Recluse, Esquire. I know, huh? Also, be sure you've read recent convert Joey's clear-eyed breakdown of their charms, and absorb the "live-blog" I did with Zac Crain for D Magazine. Yee-haw! Take that, Frank Deford!!!

The Podcast:



Song List:

"The Perfect Stranger" - Sneakers
"Insanity" - L Seven
"Irregular" - The Invisible
"Blackout" - Plagal Grind
"One Step Forward" - Max Romeo
"Strange Life" - Arabian Prince
"Dreams Never End" - New Order
"Keep The Dream Alive" - John Vanderslice

Remember, if you want to buy some of these, save our ship and go through Amazon. For other means of obtaining this program, try iTunes and the XML feed. Note: The XML feed won't be prepared until about 1EST, but I was too excited to hold back.

He Was Born in Hell

Everyone I talk to is worried about a anti-climactic contest tonight. Of course, after Thursday, Lazarus making hot chocolate at halftime would be an anti-climax. But even if all we get in a few hours is epilogue, and even if that epilogue is the (expected) Boston win, the convoluted history of this series tells tells us that there's no way it won't be eventful.

Before we all get completely consumed by pre-game hysteria, I wanted to briefly touch on the weird, weird Josh Smith scandal. Smith goes for the showtime dunk, on the break, during a blowout, and fails. He's lambasted for trying to show up or disrespect the Heat, personally apologizes to Coach Spoelstra (who publicly made many of these accusations) and explains that it was just to thank the fans. Confused? You also have Smith saying he'd do it again, and basically agreeing with Jalen Rose's analysis that the problem was the miss, not the attempt itself. Which is to say, he embarassed himself—had he made it, Smith would've had the whole world entranced. The Heat would've come off as petty whiners, or at very least, the dunk would've been so awesome as to insulate itself against criticism.

All this presumes that Smith needs to apologize for wanting to humilate the Heat, or that an insane dunk is purely self-indulgent. Last I checked, intimidation and making statements were really important in basketball, especially in the playoffs. Why, then, is Smith all of a sudden in "unsportsman-like" territory for trying to use a dunk to do just that? It was gratuitous when the Celtics ran up the score, and put on a show, to cap off last year's Finals victory, because in that case the series was over. But this one is still very much alive. Breakaway dunks can be momentum-changers in a game; why not think of this in the context of the series? While games have throat-slash moments, these events can pile up and carry over to the next one, too. The Heat had every right to take Smith's attempted dunk personally, and use it as motivation. That's because he was trying to punk them, put them in their place. That's about basketball, pride, and ego; there's absolutely no need for the finger-wagging and commenters dissecting the ethics of the situation.

It all comes back to this idea of there being "good" and "bad" forms of intimidation, or rather, "acceptable" and "tacky." Tough defense and physical play can throw off an opponent. As can talking. Or throwing down in traffic. Those are fair game in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs. But if Josh Smith goes for the showpiece dunk, it's him, not the Heat, who have some explaining to do? Isn't a long three in transition always outrageous and uncalled for? If I had a penny for every time someone old insisted that teams need to send a message with their defense, I'd be crushed to death. Why then, can't Josh Smith try and say to the Heat "fuck you, I can do whaetver I want against you." Isn't that his whole game? It's up to the other team to keep his one-man momentum bomb under wraps; as one of the studio guys observed in the pre-game last night, Miami immediately let Johnson get away with an uncontested dunk. Are there rules and regulations about when you're allowed to intimidate . . . or does that only apply to individual acts of offense? Because clearly, no one makes a fuss if a team lets up on defense once the outcome's decided. And running up the score can certainly be deployed selectively.

Smith's right—the problem is that he missed. That turned it into something frivolous, a sideshow subject to all sorts of bullshit moral high ground-grabbing. Smith is clueless, spoiled, disorganized, a disgrace to the game because he resorted to absurdity. Why was it absurd and excessive? It failed. If he'd pulled it off, it would be the Heat who would be feeling shame, no matter what the media decided to say about it.

If anyone wants to give him hell, they just focus on what a half-assed effort that was.The angle of approach was all wrong and Smith barely got off the ground. What a dick.

I'm from Barcelona

And now, a look overseas, courtesy of Bricko. For some NBA, try my post on the Bulls and Celtics finding themselves.

There's a band composed of 29 musicians whose lead singer looks like a young Kurt Rambis minus the googles. They're « I'm from Barcelona » though they're actually from a small town in Sweden. Joan Mirò was from Barcelona, Scarlett Johansson kissed Penelope Cruz in Barcelona. Even Ricky Rubio is from Barcelona. His hometown stands 10 miles away from Plaça de Catalunya. By the time you read this, maybe more people will claim they're from Barcelona as the city continues to be synonymous with excellence. “I’m from Barcelona” as a post-modern “Ich bin ein Berliner” for sports. Today Barcelona's main artists do not paint cubic faces or melted watches, they play on a football pitch or a basketball court. For the first time in European sports history, one team could get a European crown in both football and basketball over the same season. Tomorrow night the football section will host Chelsea FC in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League semi finals. The basketball section? They will head to Berlin to play CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague Final Four on Friday.

We may have the same old VHS starring Marv Albert and Frank Layden. I remember them joking about how the Dream Teamers enjoyed the local specialities during the 1992 Olympics while showing footage of players entering a McDonald’s restaurant. Well maybe that’s the thing: Larry Bird peeing his large Sprite at the local McDo’s thus fertilizing the soil of Barcelona. Being responsible for an array of talent in the area 17 years later. But that of course would be an offense to people who know history and would come up with names like Johan Cruyff, Juan Antonio San Epifanio and Diego Maradona. Barcelona’s basketball team is no Dream Team. It took them all 5 games to overcome Spanish rivals Tau Vitoria in the Quarter Finals. They do not have this sense of perfection the football section has. Twice these last few weeks – Leo Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta put on a show in the UEFA Champions League – claiming 5-1 and 5-2 wins against Bayern Munich and Olympique Lyonnais. Those 2 nights, this team played close to perfection. It was like listening to Catalonia’s Isaac Albeniz.



For most experts FC Barcelona however plays the best basketball in Europe today. Like their pals from the football pitch, they emphasise ball movement and knocks down their outside shots. At 38%, Barça ranks third in Europe this season in 3 point percentage. With Italian sharpshooter Gianluca Basile netting over 50% of his long-range bombs. I remember running an interview with Basile back in the days and blaming my cell phone for bad connection. It took me 10 long minutes to understand he was a stammerer. And I found it so antinomic for a guy who can arm so quickly to face shot clock violation whenever he answers a question. While Basile is solid, Barcelona’s main asset is to be found on the other wing with Juan Carlos Navarro being back in business after an ambivalent year in Memphis (11 ppg though). “La Bomba” is arguably the most talented player heading to this Final Four with a skillset made of long with little rotation three points shots and floaters that he trademarked long before the TP9s and the CP3s. But Barcelona’s biggest strength might as well be its depth, especially down the lane. With 4 big men being starting 5 - worthy for any contender. All 4 were drafted. NBA geeks may be familiar with names like Fran Vasquez, Daniel Santiago, Ersan Ilyasova and David Andersen. The first two provide an intimidating force in the paint while the other two bring a deadly outside touch. A very deep team I said – strangely enough without any American contributor.

First hurdle on the road to the Euroleague title, a certain Ettore Messina. Who’s been heralded as the future first European head coach in the NBA forever. He did win the European trophy twice in 3 years with CSKA Moscow and forged a reputation as one of the biggest brains in the business. He did lose a couple of bets with his summer signings but can still rely on his vets including 2008 Euroleague MVP Ramunas Šiškauskas, who’s the closest thing to Brandon Roy this side of the ocean. Second hurdle will be the result of a Greek tragedy. Bitter enemies Panathinaikos and Olympiacos meet one more time and for once in a long long time, the latter have a shot at getting away with the win. Hence they even broke the record for the best winning percentage in the Greek League history (they only lost one game all season). Josh Childress’ fro might draw the attention though his… 9 ppg have been anything but spectacular – in the eye of the beholder (ask the defender on the poster).



FC Barcelona’s quest for a triumph in European sports starts tomorrow before 90,000 something Blaugrana fans against Chelsea FC, the 2008 UEFA Champions League runners up. The proud metropolis - home of close to 5,000,000 sports fans - is not even the capital of its own country yet it has a chance to become the center of Europe - at least on the sports map. And many could soon climb on the Barcelona bandwagon as the team looks like the last defense against British imperialism in European football and the Orthodox dominance in European basketball. With Leo Messi and Juan Carlos Navarro as the best ambassadors of a game where creativity wins games. So who's from Barcelona?

I Am Somebody

You cannot stop me, I am still excited to see Deron Williams in the playoffs—at least when it heads back to SLC. I now fully accept Iguodala after his game-winner, which at the same time, I do not hesitate to chalk up to circumstance. A rookie playing his best game of the season in his first playoff appearance? That's not improbable, it's attributable to a kind of logic we have boldly ignored up until this point. Proof of Kobe's greatness? Just say "Kobe" and "playoffs" in the same sentence and try not to get chills (even if you have to scoff at last year's Finals). And damn, the thought of what Kevin Durant would do in the playoffs is flat-out scary.

There have long been concerns that FreeDarko is somehow not suited for the playoffs. Either because it marks the elimination of cult players and sideshows (it doesn't) or, more darkly, because there's no way to ignore the fact of winning and losing (we don't want to do that). I suspect, though, that there's some intuitive truth to the thought that the individual is sublimated more than ever in a certain, largely mythological, form of playoff ball. That the playoffs and style are mortals enemies who, while they may be reconciled, always rest uneasily at opposite poles. Of course, this depends on defining style as separate from function, and presuming that the playoff mindset is not only generic, but bound to affect some sort of uniformity in those who submit to its sway. Which frankly, is an insult nor only to what "FD" has come to mean, but also to the players themselves—as if the competitive spirit were somehow not an individual question.



The postseason inspires players. It's understandable, and in no way reflects on their attitude toward the regular season. But the stakes are higher, they dig down deeper, and in some cases, you find them more fully-realized, ferocious, and expressive than ever. I point to Williams, for the zillionth time, and submit that Jazz/Lakers will be enjoyable simply because I get to watch this heightened and enhanced version of an elite PG. This is, simply put, playoff style, and it's the intersection of FD's more esoteric concerns and our more hum-drum interest in who goes all the way. That's why a series can be interesting even if the outcome's a no-brainer, and why the drama inherent in any postseason context is ramped up by the NBA's capacity for the individual to contribute to this ambience on a micro-level.

So while the playoffs never make me avidly dislike a player, they can certainly open my eyes to what they're all about, or make me their biggest fan all over again. Playoff style proves, like Iguodala did today, that it's when players push themselves to the limits that they expand and discover just how resourceful, and awe-inspiring, they can be on the court. Today was the best I've seen Josh Smith play all season, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. We talked earlier today about Ariza's coming-out party; J.R. Smith and Beasley didn't do so badly, either. This is when basketball matters most, and consequently, when players put the most of themselves out there. And in the end, there's no way that happens in a manner devoid of, or hostile toward, style.



FreeDarko Recommends Updates: Mike James Kirkland's Hang on in There is so good, I just defied my own personal record spending freeze to finally bid on a copy; I keep staying up way too late reading The Buried Book, even it's about Gilgamesh and British archaeologists; Speaking of indispensable basketball books, Robert Peterson's Cages to Jumpshots, which tells of the NBA's pre-history (I can't muster a Gilgamesh analogy right now), is out of print; this Les Rallizes Denudes live album is enduring proof to me that noise has heart, even soul; Barry Hannah's High Lonesome falls under the category of "stuff that's really influenced my writing that I can still stand to read"; I think pot is absolutely hilarious, and Laurie Colwin's The Lone Pilgrim contains the single funniest short story about pot ever written.

(Clarification: We get paid even if you buy something else, as long as you go in through these links/the widget/the FD book links.)

Which Way to Christendom?

I can take no credit for the following idea: Skeets said it, left me to think about it for hours, and then said this morning that he'd barely considered it since opening the floodgates. And frankly, I think it deserved better. It may have come out of a discussion of a certain incident I'm sure we're all quite sick of, and not at all interested in hashing out any further. But it's just as applicable to yesterday's GW musings, and sets up a brand new line of inquiry concerning style and intention. Now, I want us all to come together and see it through.

Skeets asked, simply enough, why it is that only defensive plays (or players) are branded as "reckless" or "irresponsible," when certainly there are offensive plays that pose just as much of a destructive threat. This obviously breaks down two ways: Guys who put themselves at risk, and those who endanger the well-being of others. The latter category is easier to get a handle on, but it's generally incumbent upon the defender to get out of the way. The way basketball is constructed, defense reacts to offense. Sure, LeBron could run down the court and crash into someone, or leap right into them and break a nose. But the former is so "reckless" that it borders on incompetence, while in the case of the latter, we make it the duty of the defender to judge whether it's worth trying to draw a charge. If there weren't that agency involved, the charge wouldn't have once been a heroic act.

(Furthermore, in both cases, the defender will be on the ground, while the most serious concern is falls from up above.)

But what about players who play with a self-destructive streak? Or someone like Manu, often described as "out of control." Perhaps inspired by this excellent comment, I've begun thinking about the responsibility involved when a player takes flight. I'm not saying they should hold back and get all timorous, but that through experience guys who jump a lot gain a sense of how to go up in a way that, when they come down, will minimize their likelihood of dying. Or even just knowing how to break their fall when caught by surprise. Falling is, after all, an act of style, and can tell you a lot about a player. And in the sense that it's directly tied to their mortality, it may be one of the most revealing of all.

P.S. Because I am bored: Elevating the Game is like FD with history; When A Man Cries is my favorite soul comp ever; and The Furies is the perfect cowboy-noir movie. And Flower Traveling Band are playing a reunion at the Knitting Factory this weekend. THE WONDERS OF THE WIDGET ARE THERE FOR YOU TO PROBE!!!!!!

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

Samson Is My Leader (RAZED)

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

Check Into Tomorrow

For serious, I swore I was going to take it easy over All-Star Weekend. Instead, some links:

-Joey and I frantically work through the implications of a shorn AI.
-Ty and Carter pay snide attention to the non-dunk parts of All-Star Saturday.
-Over at TSB, my Then and Now column overviews the weekend. No, "overview" is not a verb, except for here. Read and comment on this one so it stays alive.

Oh, and after much deliberation, we've decided to gently call out TNT for their Sunday intro. No, not because of its forgettably racist overtones, but because it's invocation of "spirit animals" and "style" was just a little too close to home. Probably not as glaring as the the ESPN mag deal, but still, we're left feeling something between flattered and slighted. Plus, they really should've dug a little deeper into the desert ecosystem.

Now, onto brighter places, or at least those that thrive and scamper in the fields of discourse, not envy. Michael Lewis's Battier/NBA Moneyball/how Morey works piece has seriously shaken up the basketball world. At least the kind that reads the Times. Some have been blindsided (ha!) by this sudden and gaping window into Morey's methods. But what's really made an impact is the fact that Battier, formerly thought of as that annoying Duke whose fantasy numbers means you have to draft him, but will automatically forfeit your team's claim to likeability, is portrayed here as a truly advanced stylist and a compelling figure. It was, in many ways, an FD-ization of Battier, albeit as a means toward an end.

Central to this version of Battier is the idea that he's not simply a scrappy guy who likes to defend and do "the little things," a hungry opportunist who imposes himself on the game by taking over the real estate no one else wants. Instead, Battier remains constant as "a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths." What's more, compared to the hustle guy who hits the floor on every play, Battier pursues a far less brute version of the glue guy—who even in Morey's parlance, can be seen as seeking some form of attention as an assertion of style. It's not just that his contributions only really come through in advanced stats; compared to Battier, a lot of other intangibles experts come across as single-minded and, in their lack of ego, almost showy. Battier is on another level, versatile and evasive. He's nothing less than the Right Way version of apositional icons like Lamar Odom and Shawn Marion—a player who, while dependent on context (whether instantaneous or long-term, as in a system) for direction, is valuable precisely because of his ectoplasmic net effect. And in Battier's case, this requires more flexible math than the box score offers, as if Shane himself provided the impetus for a change.



It's no accident that Lewis sees fit to include a healthy dose of Battier's biography, devoted in large part to his identity in the game as a mixed-race youth. Presumably without irony, Lewis explains that Battier followed the ultra-black Chris Webber at Detroit Country Day, but realized he could never be that player. Of course, Webber himself had plenty of identity issues, but on the court, there was no question he was a super-charged, highly-skilled power forward who had "superstar" scrawled all over his corpus. Anyway, the Life of Battier:

And yet here he was shuttling between a black world that treated him as white and a white world that treated him as black. ''Everything I've done since then is because of what I went through with this," he said. "What I did is alienate myself from everybody. I'd eat lunch by myself. I'd study by myself. And I sort of lost myself in the game."Losing himself in the game meant fitting into the game, and fitting into the game meant meshing so well that he became hard to see. In high school he was almost always the best player on the court, but even then he didn't embrace the starring role.

To me, this perfectly sums up why Battier is both so frustratingly hard to pin down, and in some ways, so fittingly the role player of the future. The pure specialist is as much of a dinosaur as the 20ppg scorer who offers little else. Not to conflate race and style too much, but think about Battier: Sure, he appeals to conservative fans and lacks swagger, but he's also long, versatile, and has been known to make pinpoint, aggressive plays. You follow from there. "Meshing so well that he became hard to see" is a statement about style, but it's also a reflection on identity. Battier's neither a black guy playing white, or someone whose white game is arrived at through means often associated with a certain stran of black player (the difference between Battier and Outlaw is. . . ). Granted, most of this is pat, but if Battier is next level when it comes to this "flow of the game" stuff, it might not be by coincidence that he also confounds easy race-based stereotypes on the court. He doesn't transcend oppositions; instead, he hangs out in everyone's margins, impossible to explain and thus posing a riddle to both sides. That shared terrain, that intersection of margins, is vast and unexplored, and it's only natural it would give rise to new kinds of players and a new way of seeing the game.

And yeah, there is an Obama reference earlier on in the story.

Clutter About Light

BREAKING: First huge trade. I like to think this means Miami gets a center, straightens out their frontcourt for Beasley's sake—though Ziller points out that Brad Miller could've done the same thing for cheaper—and the Raptors now get their run on. It also depends on how much you believe Marion and JO are "done" or, for the purposes of this site, irrelevent. It would be funny if this lead to the real creation of "Suns North", with Marion once again the lynchpin of it all. Would say more, but I'm off to see Joan Rivers.

I have a celebrity birthday to tend to this weekend, on top of Valentine's Day, so I'll be low-key until my Sunday TSB column sums it all up. There might be a live-blog but at some point, but for all intents and purposes you can consider this an All-Star Weekend open thread.

To get you in the mood:

-Read me at The Sporting Blog, where I've been writing a decent amount about this weekend.

-Those zany Jupiters now have their own site, and a 2009 version of their annual All-Star role call.

-Me, among much bigger names, on a virtual ESPN mag panel on the Dunk Contest. My answers were edited, and this was all before J.R. Smith was in, but it's nice to see my name up in lights like that.

Unrelated:

I spent the first part of the week in Portland, including a Powell's experience was overwhelming in every way imaginable. Also, big ups to the Comcast post-game television show. I read this novel once in college about a Nazi doctor who fucked with people's vocal chords to the point where their ability to speak (and thus think and exist) was reduced to something primordial, and with it, he felt like he was getting at human nature itself. That's what "Talkin' Ball" is like when the comedian is on.

The game I took in on Wednesday, which I wrote up here, really illustrated something myself and Ziller have been talking about. Greg Oden had 10 rebounds, almost all of them memorable. Jared Bayless chipped in a career-high 8 assists, and I only recall one or two of them. This brought me back to a conversation Tom and I had, where I pointed out how easily, maybe even unimpressively, LeBron had racked up his assists in his MSG showcase (like that it's not even a Knicks game?). His contention was that very few assists stick with you; I took it further, and now firmly believe that consistent production in either assists or rebounds is almost always ambient in nature, occurring seamlessly within the flow of the game. These plays only stand out if they are either flawed, or risky and thus imperfect in the formal sense, or dramatic, which usually comes with one or both of these other two characteristics.

When Oden's active, his springiness and size are truly awe-inspiring, but they're made all the more evident by how often he bobbles a rebound, or has to go up twice to reel it in. On the other hand, Russell Westbrook—who takes my "blocks like he's dunking" axiom and applies it to rebounding—was a monster on the glass, but almost always lept in out of nowhere, or over multiple Blazers. Obviously this "noteworthiness" is better than the other not only because it works, but because it's intentional, rather than accidental. In Bayless, you have assists showing up in the most "ambient" way possible. Tom pointed out that Chris Paul has plenty of these, two, and that his highlights often result from exploiting opportunities others can't see. This is familiar FD territory, I know, so I'll shut up after this: Contrast that with Nash, whose pre-Shaq assists always stick with you. That's because almost all of them are risks, based on assertiveness rather than patience, and often take unfamiliar paths.

Anyway, happy weekend, and keep us in your thoughts!

SELF IS THE NEW STATS

Tune in elsewhere for Dr. LIC's Black/Jew essay and a truly epic Shoals Unlimited (BOTH UP NOW!).

I really don't like to go back and do an entire post on something from another post that I failed to clearly explain the first time around. It smacks of self-obsessed perfectionism, which is to say, it can obscure whether or not the material really matters that much. But like most of you, I am mortal, impatient, and occasionally busy, which means that my favorite part of yesterday's post got condensed—maybe compressed—into this impenetrable passage:

The challenge, then is to somehow quantify stupidity on both side. Wide-open lay-ups, drives into four defenders, cherry picks, full-court drives, gambling for the steal on every play. . . these are the markers of deviance, and big surprise, the ball I love. Remove them, and pace could truly be universalized. I wonder, though if there's not a slippery slope, or two of them, on either side of an equilibrium forever in question. Where you set it, what represents the mean, is strictly a matter of preference.

To review, the purpose of yesterday's post was to address "D'Antoni inflation," and determine if such a thing were truly statistically possible. Such an investigation would help us all better understand just how to view Kobe's 61-point game; like, if the numbers were completely inflated, then how much of a statement game could it have been? Ziller proved that adjusting for pace alone yielded no conclusive difference, so we delved into the possibility of a qualitative difference. The anecdotal evidence for this is rich, if a little perverse: Namely, players suck after leaving D'Antoni. This feeds into Simmons's claim that D'Antoni screws with the game's collective brain, the LSD of its sporting era, and some never quite recover. To actually "deflate" stats requires some standard by which we filter out "good" plays from "crazy" ones. Simmons suggests no such things, but unlike home runs in baseball, here we are talking about a difference in style—something that clearly manifests itself on the basketball court. One could conceivably draw distinctions, as opposed to estimating, via advance trigonometry, which balls wouldn't have gone the distance if struck by a non-roided up batter.

I was not, however, endorsing this sorting of play-by-play data, because applying the kind of criteria Simmons hints at is both totalitarian and self-defeating. For one, as you can guess, the line between stupid and inspired is preciously thin in the NBA, or at least the NBA as I prefer it to be. When you start to judge plays based on how rational they are, or whether they represent the most efficient form of execution, then you end up fast in Dave Berri territory. That's not to say that D'Antoni teams, or Nelson's Warriors, aren't at the far end of that spectrum. A normative basketball, though, would force you to pass judgemnent on individual basketball acts, regardless of context, overall flow of the game, or symbolic pay-off. Not exactly friendly soil for revelation or transcendence. This also raises the question of whether all basketball contains such imperfections, and thus the goal would be to adjust teams for their relative "stupidity", or punitively hold them all to a single standard.



The latter seems downright evil. You could end up with very, very strong teams punished for not being sufficiently perfect, or not pursuing a single-minded approach to the game. In an even yuckier version of things, the standard is not any particular team that season, but a nameless, faceless archetype, such that the players and teams that have come to define "smart" ball would still have to measure up to an ideal. It goes without saying that truth lies in creation-through-example, not a coach's imagination. The former brings up the question of where exactly you put that mean. Would it be based strictly on that year's numbers? Or is it inserted arbitrarily, a reflection of one's own stylistic preference? In both cases, deflation becomes an essentially political act.

To bring it back to reality, we are on some level talking about the primacy of identity-through-style. Is the game not defined by particular players and teams, the limits of the reasonable charted anew each night? If a man finds himself through "foolishness," well the, who plays the fool? There is only a "wrong way" or "bad plays" if they result from clear misapplication and lead to indisputable wreckage. So what if the Suns screw with people's heads, or there are clear-cut "D'Antoni players?" It's like acid casualties from the sixties. Are we really suggesting that era should've stayed clean, so it would be easier to compare with those that preceded it?

Oh, and only because it can never be said enough: The Suns didn't win any titles, but they have changed the definition of "stupid." Point guards now matter more than centers. Every team plays some small ball now, no one milks the clock. Phoenix itself ran away from the very low rumble of change that they set into motion. Perhaps the right thinking here is that D'Antoni's stats are ahead of their time, and those who emerge from his teams suffering from a permanent time-travel hangover. I've had those, and they suck. Maybe we should be looking at inflating former Suns' numbers so they accomodate a greater amount of "stupidity."

Note: Al Harrington is the Rosetta Stone of this shit.