Too Good for Twitter

A lot of rad, fragmentary ABA footage, with Polish (I think) over it. This stuff never gets old, and I never feel silly for liking it so much.

NOTE: My brother in DoC Ken has pointed out that this is the doc Long Shots, which I've posted here (all four parts!) in the past. However, I like the Polish version better. Face it, old footage is better with no sound or music. The past is silent and scary.

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.

He Will Take You Away

If the following video doesn't hit you on a number of levels, be dead and be gone from my sight:



Meanwhile, keepin' up with the future:

-Language and coverage of Gil. You know you love it.

-Eric Freeman coins the term "reverse-tanking," which I predict gets big.

There are some guest posts in the works, but for now, reacquaint yourself with my new home. And watch that video over and over again.

Sprinkles

Three things of note:

-The above very interesting Dr. J. video. Get involved, get into it.

-I was a guest on The Dagger Report, where Mike Prada, Kyle from Truth About It, and myself let the Arenas anguish and confusion flow.

-Finally, I am happy to announce that tonight's meeting of the SSSBDA went fine, though I want to change it to SSSDBA, which stands for "Death by Arrival." Instead, I was convinced to change our name to "Basketball Death Association." However, I would also like to announce the official end of my fatwa against Stephen Curry. No, he's still no point guard, and the non-stop love for him must eventually expire. Tonight against the Cavs, though, he looked damn good: streaking to the basket with quickness and agility, beating defenders with the crossover, displaying real urgency when knocking down threes, and filling up the stat sheet. Curry can play on or off the ball, pile up points from all over, and move the ball around well enough, too. He's creative and exciting, and is at his best when his confidence guides him, but is also more than a little careless. In other words, he and Monta Ellis are turned out to be more like each other than we'd ever expected. Ty Keenan just called him "the white Monta."

Also worth noting: While Curry remains the darling of purists around the world, he's also an ideal Nellie guard (Ellis comes up short on that count). And only in that haywire system by the Bay could this golden boy actually thrive. That's a cruel irony, but one I can applaud all day, and maybe even makes me like the kid a little more. Not just grudgingly respect him.

Two Grabs at Once

Please, keep the excavation of athleticism blazing far into the holiday season, whenever that ends. But I beg thee, take heed of this old and crumpled PSA, from a time when hair was hair and socks were socks. Is that Auerbach with the official voice-over at the end? Kind of like West, but when it comes to official league approval of stuff.

Share your warmest wishes here!

(Speaking of that video, here's some Larry O'Brien real talk from my main man Tommy Craggs. I am fine with Stern-bashing as long as his essential mythic nature is not called into question. To me, the man rests beyond causality or the most granular forms of history. O'Brien is the opposite. Sleep well, little pumpkins.)

PSA in the USA

I know it's embarrassing that I was home watching SNL as it came on, but I'm old, get used to it. And, as much as I like to see a sketch go from the back of the show to the front, I still wonder if "What's Up With That?!" isn't at least a little bit racist. Or maybe it's just a critique of BET by writers who have no right to make it. EDIT: Or of other African-American media, by someone who knows them, with "BET" added for accessibility's sake. Whatever. I think it's hilarious, and for everyone who has ever made some touching, but ultimately dismissive, comment about "Shoals's brain," this week's WUWT came pretty close to capturing what it's like in there. Special guests Mike Tyson, tormented and then dancing, a mute Jack McBrayer, a fake John Stockton, the most pointless use of an African-American marching band (fake or otherwise) since Brewster McCloud, and of course, fake Lindsey Buckingham. Then afterward, the screen silently announced that Charles Barkley will host the first episode of 2010.

We can argue if you want, but please, shut up and watch it. It's really stupid. Might post further later if the book continues to piss me off so.

P.S. Relax, I am not going to see Avatar twice in three days just so I can get the 3D experience. I stand by Cinerama as the ultimate in hyper-real cinema. It just requires a little more imagination, and hits you more in the gut. Warning, drugs ahead: Call it the heavy opiate/psychedelic divide. That is my version of integrity when it comes to action movies with heavy-handed ecological messages and evil techno-industrial war monsters who any decent person would shoot through the face. Note: If the plants on Earth were transmitting data and contacting Jesus, they would be far bigger business than wood. And they would cleave the Right in two.

Obama Ensures JA Vote Forever

(Start at 1:30)

Obama already had pretty strong support among Japanese-Americans (he got 60% of the vote), but he might have locked it up for good by shouting out JA hoops legend Wat Misaka, who had a cup of green tea with the Knicks in the late '40s, at a press conference recognizing the contributions of Asian-Americans to this great land of ours.

And we're talking about the competitive spirit of athletes like Wat Misaka, who played for the New York Knicks back in 1947 -- the first non-white player in the NBA -- and who served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Mr. Misaka is here as well today and -- where's Mr. Misaka? There he is. Thank you so much.

This is another example of the Obama administration's undying belief in the unifying spirit of basketball, following the President name-dropping Mehmet Okur in front of the Turkish Parliament and Attorney General Eric Holder talking about Connie Hawkins during his Senate confirmation hearing. The first year hasn't gone quite as well as we expected, but moments like this give us reason to continue to hope.

In This Hour of Totality

Manny still lingers, John Wall's debut is vague, if crackling, until the final exclamation point, Jennings with a positively fearsome second half and OT in a loss to the Mavs. They threw everything at him, including the war with Beaubois that was like watching photon particles at play, and the plays still happened. And looming over, under, or behind it all, this Iverson news that raises more questions than it settles.

Here's my magnum opus on Allen Iverson, right and now and forever, at least until his career's a decade in the ground. It sounds like this:

Allen Iverson was, and still is, heaven or the great below. He shakes basketball to its very foundations or, according to some, is foolish enough to think he can. He changed the game, though not necessarily for the better. We have been forced to take him at face value, and in the process awaken all sorts of even more inspirational, or degrading, feelings about race, culture, and the structure of American society. "Ambivalence" doesn't even fit. That was Kobe; Iverson is a player who exists in two different worlds.

Now go read the rest, so you won't be sore if this Manny/Jennings post waits another day. Oh, and speaking of Manny. . .



That's the trailer for his new film, and I like to think the crab represents Floyd. Via Sporting Blog, via Last Angry Fan and Film Drunk.

Final announcement, until I try and post late in the day: I've thrown caution, and looks, to the wind and just started throwing up out-of-print NBA classics in the Amazon widget. Profit motive aside, you people really need to read all of these.

Cancel Everything

WTF
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I never understood all those metaphors about faces melting and brains collapsing until now.

Oh, and CHECK OUT THIS POST FROM EARLIER!

IT'S THE ANTHEM

Read Dr. LIC on myth across all sports. Check Joey lamenting his age. But if you really want to get ready for tomorrow, watch this music video from outsider dancehall seer—and gung ho NBA fan—SNIPA, and maybe even his statement to the media about track. Not since that "Ron Artest" joint has a song gotten me so amped for the season. Especially the underwater season.

Just Another Good Friend

How did I miss this? Late, and the emotion's receded, but Russell makes anything matter, and there are some good tid-bits in here.

Now, don't forget to read my latest on Oakland's finest.

Slipping at Slow Speeds

Nothing FD-worthy is happening, and I have a day gig, a book, and an impending wedding to worry about. So feast upon this clip of Kareem playing congos on one of my favorite modal beginner's standards, and try and decide what this means for BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ.

Speaking of which, earlier today Ziller and I got bored and tried to figure out which positions would correspond to which instrument if basketball WERE jazz. You'd think that soloing would equate roughly to scoring, because of style and voice and improvisation and all that. But we agreed that, in a conventional quintet, the piano comes closest to approximating the role of the point guard. Things got really screwed up when I suggested that scoring might actually equal drums, since both are alternately propulsive, matter-of-fact, jarring, and still. That would make the big men . . . the horn section?

So basketball still isn't jazz, but does offer a interesting inversion of the usual listening hierarchy, and maybe some compositional cues. Please tell me what you think, and damn, I wish I could get this video to play.

No Chase in Leaving

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

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



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



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

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

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

FURTHER LINKS:

-Can't miss cult classics for 2009-10

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

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

BwB 2.0 and Fresh Clothing!!!

Before the explanation, the announcement. Oh, and read my lame, contrived punchline-fest from yesterday. It gets no deeper.

So the line-up for Blogs with Balls 2.0 is pretty much in place, and the trumpet hath been sounded. It'll be a part of Blog World Expo in Vegas, which will allow me to bask in, or court, that vital (if imagined) crossover demographic. Jesus there are a lot of speakers at this thing. I'm on a panel about resolving differences between bloggers and traditional media, and suspect Amy K. Nelson and I are supposed to pick up where we left off at BwB. Yes, I am talking this up like a pro wrestling event.

The video: USA vs. Brazil at the 1987 Pan-American Games. Pre-doom Danny Manning, the amazing young Mr. Robinson. But most of all, holy fuck Brazil's uniforms are amazing. They are at once futuristic and Naismith-esque, while nearly going so far in both directions that these two opposites collide. Innovative uni design—I'm talking design, not just engineering—is an untapped field of exploration.

Have a nice weekend, friends.

One Good Thing Explains Another

For my money, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is the best rock movie ever. Maybe Cocksucker Blues burns it alive when it comes to just plain hangin' out, falling in love, and playing it cool (emphatically NSFW video). But nothing quite captures the crushing desperation, snarling idealism, and complex post-Situationist trappings of punk rock like Stains.

As a bonus, you get perhaps the most realistic depiction of the adolescent female experience this side of Thirteen. You also seen that Laura Dern was kind of hot before she grew up, and Diane Lane has pretty much been hot since the day she was born, which since both were probably underaged during the filming of this movie should make you feel really weird. Or remind you of a scene in Six Feet Under that would be hilarious if it plopped down in the middle of Entourage, where Nate's friend tells him that sometimes he looks at his daughter's friends and feels something he hasn't felt since he was a teen himself.

The really awesome part about this movie, which would be the defining film of the decade were it not for Superman III, is that it was produced by Lou Adler. You know the face, if not the name. He sits next to Jack! He's at every Lakers game! He is basketball incarnate! And thus, like the brilliant plot-fuck that would result if you put The Orphan's twist at the end of Know1ng, all is right and it's time to sum up the off-season with some of the most quotable moments from the early going of Stains. Not a wasted word in it—kind of the opposite of this summer.

You know, you think this town wouldn't die. That's how dumb you are. This town died years ago!

Is Steve Nash talking about himself or the Suns here? Or the Arizona housing market?

And she died of lung cancer?

That's what they call it.

What do you call it?

Breathing.

Yao and T-Mac were always playing on borrowed time. You could say that we should enjoy what they gave us, or get really angry at them, like me when I read about Bill Walton.

You father was never around?

Your father is dead. BEEP He was in the army BEEP Means you get more money BEEP Have a good day BEEP

Artest has reached that point where he can't shock or surprise himself or others. So everything's cool. Like Hawaii being build on a bunch of volcanoes.

What goals did your mother have in life?

I don't know, I wouldn't call her and ask.

This whole "Kevin Durant gaining on LeBron" thing is bad for everyone involved, including fans of both.

Here you are, just sitting around at home wasting time

I wouldn't call it wasting time



I hope GMs are showing off their cap space as a means to get female attention.

What about love?

I'm too far gone for love.

Whatever happened to Kirilenko?

So long as you're alive. .

I mean, we can sit here and waste our precious time philosophizing about love, and make it sound terrific, but what it boils down to is that we're just a bunch of horny dogs.

And this is why Don Nelson will always have a job, even if he has to pay himself.

Do you think your views may change as you grow older?

Grow older?

Let's quit cautiously pealing away the onion's layers and admit that Iverson's bind is all about issues of African-American masculinity.

What happened to the furniture?

I sold it.

George Shinn should've thought of that before dealing everyone's BFF and NBA sex symbol Tyson Chandler.

I like you and your sister. I think you're all nice kids. But I say to myself. .

You'd better watch yourself, because if they catch you talking to yourself like that, they're going to fire you for sure.

Strangely meta-moment, seeing as the viewer is constantly asking him/herself "can I find a very young Diane Lane attractive, since she looks so much like later Diane Lane, and carries herself like an adult?" You people are sick! This line tells you that!

Now Corrine Burns, what are you going to do?

My name isn't Corrine Burns. It's Third Degree Burns. I'm the lead singer and manager of the Stains.

There has to be some player I'm forgetting who is sitting around waiting for a huge deal to drop in his lap. The one holdover who doesn't get that things have changed. I mean shit, even Tim Thomas went quietly.

One time I heard Larry Hughes and Darius Miles talk for half an hour about how each of them was going to get their next big contract. This was two years ago.

In case you haven't heard, you're the laughingstock of this town.

Hey, did you hear the one about David Kahn?

Don't you have something to do? You know. Maybe your homework for once. Or you could take Jason for a walk, or how about cleaning your room. Huh? What do you think?

Nice multiple choice.

Kevin Pritchard and the Blazers may have had to settle for Andre Miller. Or they showed they have the strength and cunning to contain multitudes. This is a central debate among scholars of class and values.

I gave you your name.

That's why it's so lousy.

Actual exchange between Donald Sterling and Elgin Baylor.

We're the #1 rock 'n' roll group in the world and we're going to see that everything's going to be different. It's got to change. The first thing we're going to do, we're going to build a radio station tomorrow. And we're not going to play no commercials, or no news. Just rock 'n' roll and the truth. 1-2-3-4!!!!!!

You don't draft Brandon Jennings to come along slowly or get muzzled by Skiles. You grab a new era by the horns and hope you've got good insurance.

Now you're really going to have a freak.

Zach Randolph to Memphis only makes sense if that's where the Ghostbusters have built their new containment unit.

ELSEWHERE: On a more serious, less petty note, please read my column on the joys of restricted free agency.

The Tide Giveth and Taketh

Next week, I will return to FreeDarko, and hopefully The Baseline will load reliably. In the meantime, you should check out this 2003 Roger Beebe video, which I just saw at an INCITE! screening on the subject of sports and aesthetics.

Treading Lightly

Summer leagues can create optical illusions, cause alternate realities to spring up, or defame the entire good name of professional basketball with their outcomes. Qyntel Woods was always a monster in these. However, sometimes, you get a look at the early stages of something great, i.e. Anthony Randolph last summer, or Julian Wright in 2007 (I think). Yes, if Wright got consistent minutes, he'd be on everyone's radar.

I've had a rough last few days, so let's at least entertain the possibility that the above video is exactly that window into the future, not a house of cards with mirrors on them.

Listen to our free agency podcast and check The Baseline. I'll try and get things going again on here mid-week.

UPDATE: Shoals has a new post at the Baseline, wherein he ponders what AI signing with the Clippers might do to his iconic status. It's a good read.

Get a New Mazda

Belated Blogs with Balls thoughts in a second. But first:



This reminds of a Painted Area post that boldly and matter-of-factly declared Jennings the third-best prospect in the draft. This was based on actual observation, whereas everyone else was going on murky deductions about what Euro stats did or didn't mean, or a handful or anecdotal reports that trickled in from interested parties.

After watching this Rome-only Jennings mix, I see why he came to this conclusion. So maybe his stats had holes; aren't they supposed to? And I know the whole growth narrative matters, but it's too hazy to hang a multi-million dollar investment on. These clips make it pretty darn clear that Jennings wasn't stumbling through a foreign system. He's making plays here that evince exactly the same flamboyant, near-absurd, virtuosity—that I'm convinced is totally self-aware—but not in any way wrecking the integrity of his role. This is what Jennings more than Young Marbury 2. He's both more and less that cosmic force, Iverson's Zoroasterian battle within reconciled as a multi-national.

And about BwB . . . I can't really add much to the zillion recaps that have already been written. It was great to meet a bunch of people I've emailed with, and—gasp—in some cases, make the acquaintance of some folks with whom I'd had zero blog interaction. The HHR crew deserve oodles of credit to pulling together and pulling off an event that kept changing and evolving. GQ's party was fun, and I hate parties. I'm not even mad at y'all for spreading petty rumors about my love for Ricky Rubio!



I know my panel was crazy and all, and did produce this lasting tribute to how loathsome and noisy I am, but I think one key thing got lost in there, and in the conference as a whole. Yes, in part I wanted to question the whole blog/MSM blood-feud, and wonder why exactly newspaper men and bloggers had convinced themselves it was 1917 Russia all over again. Bloggers are not inherently noble, or part of some movement that will carry us all to heaven; established writers should not think the sky is falling, or that all's relative and everyone has voice, because people just aren't that stupid; the Ibanez saga says to me that treading lightly when it comes to steroids is impossible, so if you want to be taken seriously and not just be seen as a cranky fan, you should be ready to dig in your heels and pound the pavement!!! And yes, I probably cursed out all bloggers and journalists who can't write well, or report well when they have to. Merit is not dead, it just got less exclusive.

But what I really want to get out there was how little print media other than newspapers were discussed. Newspapers are in trouble, and have been for some time, which kind of makes them an easy target, like the steroids of media upheaval. However, yours truly has always been most interested in magazines and books. Jeff Pearlman at one point said that books were now his medium of choice. Other than that, nothing. I know that all publishing is a mess right now, but I felt a little out of place when the main issues were 1) learning how to ball out like Jason McIntyre 2) getting hired to kill off beat writers.

I don't see why at least magazines can't figure prominently into this discussion. After all, if you want to make a living writing, they're still a decent source of (intermittent, supplementary) income. And it's kind of insulting to bloggers to assume that, while they can move in on one quadrant of print media, they're somehow barred from making the same kind of transition that so many "real journalistz" have made. That's the blog ghetto all over again.

And anyone who doesn't think it should be a global priority for Spencer Hall to get a book out there soon is not a part of the same "movement" as me.

Boomshakalaka

That's Chiranjeevi, the most famous Tollywood actor of all-time, schooling some creeps on the hardwood in the greatest finish to a basketball game film patrons have ever seen. The people who wrote that scene had clearly only experienced the sport in NBA Jam, so they treat us to unreal handles, glowing balls, and fluctuations in the space-time continuum. Except this is way better than the game, because Acclaim never let you play a bonus sequence where you try to outrun a train.

Please note that Chiranjeevi, on the strength of such feelgood hits as Hitler (in which the protagonist's sister marries her own rapist to the delight of all) and Stalin (which has the same general premise as Pay It Forward), recently founded the Praja Rajyam political party in Andhra Pradesh. Eat your heart out, Schwarzenegger.

Also, if you didn't see it on the Twitter already: Shoals and Billups will be at Littlefield in Brooklyn starting at 5pm for music and fun. Consider it the Game 5 warmup.

MONDAY AM BONUS: Our old friends Mark Pike has put together an "Amazing" version of this clip that, for once, warrants this description:

Some of Where We've Been

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





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

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

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

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

Don't hide from your parents!

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