10.02.2006

Inner child on my sleeve



Behold SBL's interview with T-Mac, to which myself, Henry Abbott and Skeets all contributed questions. Listen closely, and you'll hear Jamie look in the mirror and say "FreeDarko" three times while McGrady's listening to him.

Seriously, I got chills up and down my arms when I heard this; T-Mac might be the only player in the league who really, truly looms in my life as a mystical titan of sport. Hero, master performer, bottomless soul, and eternally unknowable, he somehow sums up an entire century of what it's meant to admire athletes. The term "FreeDarko" has now been in the presence of greatness, and I can't think of any other NBA'er who would've made me say this more. Iverson, Kobe, KG, Amare, Artest. . .all of FD's stormy touchstones intrigue us because of their imbalances and keening emphases. With T-Mac, though, all forms of worship converge smoothly at his feet.

And don't worry, the long posts will return soon enough.

9 Comments:

At 10/03/2006 4:15 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

until i had the privilage of watching tracy on an every game, every day basis, I had no idea of just how smooth and natural he is on the court. The man was created to play basketball. if he's healthy this year, I believe he'll rightfully reclaim his spot in the top 5 players in the game.

 
At 10/03/2006 3:57 PM, Blogger C-los said...

Yeah thats a big "IF"...I saw some special on how hard he trained last off-season but once you mess up your back you are never the same player...look at LJ...he used to have alot of bounce (those of us who remember the NBA Inside Stuff Dunk he had on the intro), then he messed up his back and he began shooting 3's...you're right though...no one is as graceful as Tmac...ive had many a discussion over the past 5-7 years about who is a better natural scorer, Tmac or KB8 and Tmac always got my vote...he makes scoring look so easy

 
At 10/03/2006 11:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was able to watch T-Mac before the Magic went south on him, much to my dismay. Ralph Wiley summed him up best: the Kwisatz Haderach.

Which poses the question: can being 'Dune' also mean being 'Free Darko'?

 
At 10/03/2006 11:19 PM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

have never been both more in awe of and annoyed with wiley than when that column hit.

 
At 10/04/2006 12:38 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Annoyance because of the out-of-left-field metaphor re: McGrady, or more generally with the column? Now I neeed to go re-read it myself.

 
At 10/04/2006 12:42 AM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

the whole column was about that metaphor. the real question is: annoyance over his writing about dune, or over his stretching a single, batty idea into 3,000 words.

he had another one that similarly boggled the mind. it was on wide receivers, wherein he called santana moss, deion branch, and everyone else like that DRAGGERZ and christened that coming nfl season RETURN OF THE DRAGGERZ. don't even tell me that was also a dune reference.

 
At 10/05/2006 1:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Must note that the same Hebrew root D-R-Kh (path) from whence Frank Herbert got Kwisatz Haderach (a corruption of the Hebrew "Shortening of the Path") produces the word Darko (his path).

What does this multilingual wordplay mean? Absolutely nothing.

 
At 10/05/2006 8:51 AM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

in the early days, a decent number of people used to find this site by googling "darko jewish" or "is darko jewish?" which struck me as weird, since i thought only i equated all of eastern europe with jewry.

wv: ynootb=radical, noisy underground version of youtube

 
At 10/05/2006 2:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

T-Mac might be the most heartbreaking player of his generation. Oozing easy capacity, he should have been in the utmost tier of NBA dominance. The Sleeper should have awoken. But it didn't. Can it still? Or was he one of the dead ends of Bene Gesserit breeding program, an almost-KH, to be overshadowed by the LBJ Imperium?

I'd just like one season with him and Yao in good health.

And just to put it out there: the All-Star games with him and AI starting the backcourt were among the highlights of those seasons for me. I attempted to make pacts with dark gods to get them on the same team, but apparently my offerings were insufficient.

 

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