Pulls me right back
Very little left in the tank after Kobe's sweeping orchestration of the strong and weak forces earlier today, but there's a diary entry that needs to get wrote up in here.
Someone really, really needs to call me on this one: multiple times, I've seen Arenas stumble out the gate, for an entire half even, and then rip the house apart for a crucial quarter or two. Granted, it's sometimes all in vain, as with game #1 of the Cavs series. But look back on what I said barely one hour ago: "I can't stand to see Arenas suffer."
Uh, isn't that part of his appeal? That he bounces back against impossible odds more often than not, and that even his blunders leave you wondering exactly what they meant? I guess I'm only showing here that I do have such a strong affinity for the perennially under-respected Arenas that I don't want to see him razed by Team LeBron. The point of Gilbert, though, is that he'll go down dying before he lets the inevitable happen. If LeBron is a walking foregone conclusion whose shown he can indeed falter, Arenas is, and always will be, the unlikeliest of all the elite, even over the course of a single game. Having something invested in him is an uneasy, hair-raising pact tinged with a certain anxiety; being Gilbert, though, is probably the complete and total opposite of this.
And that, my friends, is why I'm barely a real sports fan. Call me unseen caretaker, call me patron, but don't forget that I had to be convinced to come on board in the first place.
posted by Bethlehem Shoals @ 4/30/2006 10:07:00 PM
16 comments
16 Comments:
Is anyone else getting a sort of Dionysian v Jesus vibe out of this Gilly-Bron clash? (this is a pretentious Nietzche reference for anyone who doesn't happen to have required reading at the time).
I know that Shoals is now sitting eagerly in a Houston apartment, probably cursing the humidity just waiting for that Arenas bobblehead to appear in the mail. I'll try to package it up tomorrow.
Beth Sho,
the fact of the matter is, Team LeBron is an unstoppable force and predetermination is on its side. Only LeBron can fuck this up- nobody is permitted to take him down. The only thing that Arenas has on his side on this one is that Archie Manning is not LeBron's dad. BronBron's papi is, you guessed it, Zoroaster, totemic embodiment of the one-handed running J.
p.s. i think Beth Sho is a synagogue
Maybe these thing were already mentioned on the broadcast (Which I couldn't watch), but here are three things worth mentioning from the recap article:
1. "This is LeBron's show, you know. We're just all witnesses," Arenas said with a broad smile, mimicking a catch phrase used in James' shoe ads.
2. (In the locker room at halftime) the always-quirky Arenas changed his jersey, shorts, shoes and tights, saying what he was wearing had brought bad luck.
3. That's when Jordan ripped up his script, in part because former Wizards guard Larry Hughes was telling his Cleveland teammates what plays were on the way.
"Coach said, 'Throw away the plays,"' Arenas said. "'Throw away the plays?' All right. That's like playing outside."
Arenas endless parade to the free throw line is a shot in the face to the so-called superstar protection of this man's league.
The New NBA is almost anti-star, anti-individual. It's an NBA that favors raising it's stars up so that it can slap them in the face.
All in the name of "we must have 7 games in the first round".
There is not a single goddamn reason why Antonio Daniels running parrallel to a driving Lebron James should be able to draw an offensive foul, while on the other end, a simple flailing of the arms by Arenas is sufficient to draw the referee's ire.
Don't even get me started on calling a technical foul on Donyell Marshall.
Eddie Jordan complains about the NBA protecting Lebron James and not his player Arenas. A day later Lebron is inexplicably picking up offensive fouls everytime he even thinks to drive to the basket, and meanwhile Arenas and the Wizards are spending much of the game with the Cavs in the penalty.
That is how the game is really played.
A bunch of paranoid backroom image conscious, we must appease every satellite viewer ever, fuck a major market, degenerate lizard freaks.
Fuck it.
T-Mac and Yao will never get out of the first round. KG will never see the playoffs again. There's a conspiracy against the stars and the individual going on. Lebron and Kobe are really our only hope.
Kobe beating Nash and the Suns is something of the good fight.
Lebron alone against the Big 3 of Washington, is even more so.
something no one else is likely to mention:
JARED JEFFRIES IS BUILT FOR THIS SHIT!
remember this dude carried a mediocre indiana team to the ncaa championship. danny manning the remix!
bloomington stand up!
While we debate King James as ubermensch, don't forget that we have a true test of the Nietzschean Will to Power in the Staples Series as Kobe & the Lakers take on the notorious adherents of the slave morality, the LA Clippers.
Also, Gilbert Arenas to Cleveland, re: being a Witness: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? . . . Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?"
I'm really enjoying the narrative of this series. As good as Bron has been, after every progressive step, there's a half-step of regression. The truth of the "We're all witnesses" campaign isn't that we're watching preordained greatness perform perfectly on all occasions, it's that we have an opportunity to watch a guy who we already know could be the GOAT figure out himself and the game, which means watching him both misstep and recover, or not. It's fascinating enough on its own, but it also makes him and Gilly fantastic foils.
But please, someone with better X and O knowledge than I, help me out: Is it just me or is Mike Brown inadequate to this task? I can't tell whether he's made a single adjustment in this series. Am I wrong? It seems like the Cavs are only in it because Bron is putting the team and the coach on his back. Which is what he's supposed to do. But still ...
Oh, and that LBJ pass under Jamison's arm in game 3? My mind is still blown.
1. "This is LeBron's show, you know. We're just all witnesses," Arenas said with a broad smile, mimicking a catch phrase used in James' shoe ads.
AP says "broad," but the Post tells it like it is:
"This is LeBron's show, you know," Arenas said through a babykins smile. "We're all just -- we're just all witnesses.
that pass went right past haywood's arm, not jamison's.
i just have to say that if lebron broke a record previously held by kelly tripuka, it's probably not really that impressive of a record.
Are you serious Futuristxen? Lebron has traveled so much during this series and no one even calls it. The Wiz finally get a couple of calls and all hell breaks loose. To be serious, the NBA officiating is the worst of any major sport. Dick Bavetta and Joey Crawford almost make the game unbearable to watch. No consistency at all in any of these series.
Kobe's negation is still HIS negation. The Lakers are still HIS doing. Of course this is why Lebron vs. The Wizards(it's not Lebron vs. Arenas to most watchers of the assocation, it's Lebron vs. the Wizards) is even more the individual vs. the collective.
Gilbert isn't good enough to be considered the most individual player in the league. He'll never be an Iverson. Never be a Kobe. His excellence is something that is indulged in the name of political correctness, but deep down, everyone knows he's not Lebron, not Kobe, not Wade, not the AI of old. Of course this political correctness can earn you an MVP (see Nash) but true fans know who the true MVP is not.
I mean, Arenas only barely made the all-star team this year. Even his peers don't truly put him in the elite caste.
Glorifying Arenas is something akin to glorifying Michael Redd.
As far as Lebron's traveling, you can't call what you can't see.
It's like if the Flash gave Superman the finger, would anyone really know if it wasn't in the frame that was drawn?
Is a travel in instant replay the same as a travel in actual time? I would say not. The reality that exists in the instant replay does not exist in the reality of actual time. In actual time Lebron did not travel. In slowed down instant replay, he definitely walked. But the speed with which he moves to make such things uncallable to the naked eye has to be acknowledged as part of the move. Of course this is the reason Arenas got a ton of calls as well. He was too fast to actually see get fouled--the refs implied it. I'd rather the refs officiate on what they see rather than what they don't--but hey, whatever.
Fun analogy with Flash giving Superman the finger, but if you didn't get suspicious about LeBron's game-winner before you saw the replay than you weren't watching the game.
If you did get suspicious about Lebron's game winner, you were watching the game on TV and probably slightly paranoid to begin with.
I sometimes wonder if the voyeuristic element of watching games on TV leads to more paranoia with regards to officials. I think most fans actually at a game, without the aid of the jumbotron, couldn't make half of the calls that the refs do.
i'm fairly certain that what you're saying now was the point of departure for what i wrote yesterday afternoon.
WV: CIPZY!!!!!!
Futuristxen,
Any real hoops fan can make the calls that the nba refs make sans the 3 seconds and other bullshyt like that. If you don't think you can then you need to switch you hobbies from bball to fencing or some other obscure sport. A travel is a travel. In real time, in slow motion, freez frame, whatever.
Post a Comment
<< Home