THE. FUCKING. O'BANNONS.
This is gonna come a day late like your side girl's period. And this will probably sound self-mythologizing like a million little pieces of bullshit. But relax and take notes (God rest, F. White).
For the sake of context and awakening your senses: I'm sitting at my office desk and I got allergies because it's the New York metropolis and the Spring brings apocalypse (your beef is mine, walk-on's). I'm wearing aviator sunglasses indoors , making me look like an asshole but obscuring the fact that my eyes look like they belong to Bob Huggins after a night "tutoring" the bartenders at the Kansas State graduate student lounge. It's damn near 60 degrees in this bitch and I'm a late-70's baby pumping Remy Martin's verse on the "Ante Up" remix (BITCH RUN THAT), everybody's verse on the "Made You Look" remix (MORE SHIT OUT ON THE STREETS THAN EVICTED TENNANTS) and the last verse on the last song of the first Archers of Loaf record (YOU BROKE IT, NOW FIX IT).
And you know what puts a motherfucker in this mood? You know what makes a motherfucker get out of bed, light up a Camel Light and light up the JUST BLAZE YOU A REBEL ON THIS BEAT playlist ("Safe 2 Say" into "Line 'Em Up" into "JUELZ SANTANA AIR FORCE 1'S ANTHEM OF THE SUN")?
Because it's March. And I believe in miracles.
But not the Digger Phelps kind. Shining moments aren't just for student athletes. Miss Thing, there is no guest list to this shit. GET FAMILIAR:
"THEY TRYING TO CUT THE LIGHTS OFF LIKE WE DON'T LIVE HERE"
I am in the strange position of growing up in Philly, going to school in Boston and putting down about seven years towards being able to call myself a New Yorker. So I'm about as fucked up over Northeast corridor fandom as a Philip Roth protagonist facing down his mother, his sister, his mistress and his doppleganger.
Steve didn't get to cut nets. Juan, Lonny, Blake and Wilcox got that done. And for the last few years he's been the ex-girl whenever a team decides to move on to the next girl (due in no small part to being a poppy seed stuck in his team's collective teeth. Boom. Imagery).
But what he did for me on Saturday was some kind of sports equivalent of working all day, coming home to your shitty apartment and all of a sudden having Diane Lane come out of the kitchen wearing a tattered sundress and a smile on her face, handing me a Miller High Life and lighting my cigarette for me. It put me under the motherfucking Tuscan sun.
There's a line from Glen Garry (I know, I know, get a new schtick, etc.) about great fucks...it's about the moments, the brief, fleeting feeling of actually being alive. I love the NCAA's. I put my hand to the tracks like Wesley Crusher in Stand By Me and I can feel something fucking transcendental coming from Durant, something we'll remember. But you know what? Somehow, for me, the Big Dance has started to look like a bunch of drunk office drones doing the electric slide at an after-work team-outting. It's fun, it's touching that it's happening. But it's choreographed. It's not surprising that it's surprising. And the reason I put those ghosts up at the top...Ed, Charles, Macon, God...is because the NCAA's have become a nostalgia trigger for me. Days of heaven that I'm not even sure happened the way I think they did.
Meanwhile in the present tense heads are missing something fucking awesome. On some other channel, while we're wearing our beer hats and clutching tear-stained bracket printouts, cheering for motherfucking Old Dominion or some shit, the members of the National Basketball Association will be getting into costume and performing some fucking drama worthy of Grey's Anatomy numbers.
"FIRST THING'S FIRST! WATCH WHAT YOU SAY OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!"
He's not really playing for anything but the right to rock Freeway's beard in the playoffs, right? But there he is with J-Rich and a bunch of kids out of a fucking Benetton ad. Read the recap of the Oakland Warriors' win over the Clips. Read the Real talk:
"They wanted it more than us..."
"We're close..."
"...finding ways to win games so we can get in these playoffs..."
Where they won't do shit. Of course. I ain't high. And, in theory, neither is Stephen Jackson. But you get to this point in the season, a place Tom Clancy might call STRIKING DISTANCE, and the tendinitis stops acting up; the annoying motherfucker in the locker next to you stops bothering you, teammates start resembling family, coaches start making sense; you start playing for the one thing worth more than contract incentives: pride.
That's why these kids...
Are ruining Larry Brown's chances at ruining a top 3 draft pick. And instead of acting like Hudson...
"THAT'S IT, MAN! GAME OVER! WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GONNA DO NOW!?"
We are acting like Hicks...
We are fucking chilling. Because we might have already found an Answer...
And even if we haven't...March winning streaks let us pretend. And it's almost the same thing
posted by Billups @ 3/12/2007 04:15:00 PM
40 comments
40 Comments:
Never open a story with the O'Bannon brothers when writing about the NBA. It's like starting a mystery novel with "it was a dark and stormy night".
Florida vs Georgetown in the NCAA Final. Then Jeff Green becomes the next Tim Thomas.
YES! This post maybe my suffering NYC Stagnant Air Alert self rejoice.
By the way, I have it on a seriously reliable source that Stephen Jackson dropped at least $500 a week on endo while in Naptown. That's bourghetto!
If I hadn't quit already, I'd leave this grad school library and smoke a Camel Light just to commemorate this fine Billups stamp on the interverse.
And see, I made it all day, maintaining a relative degree of calm (with the occasional bracket being like my methadone fix. It doesn't really do anything for me anymore, just keeps off the sickness...) and then Billups came, saw, and...
MARK MACON!!!
(Of course, Mark Macon brings to mind Billy King, who kinda ended him come tourney time...)
F*ck man, when Billups writes you can't even argue. This sh*t is getting ridiculous. Yo Bill - make it discussable next time. Stop dropping wisdom etched in stone tablets on us.
And stop quoting Mobb Deep. That's my ish. I took it when you vanished like Menudo....
Are there any black people involved in this site at all? It seems like there should be. Otherwise isn't it just the equivilent of weekend beatnicks and their mimeographed thoughts on bebop?
CW, and?
This particular line of attack on FD is growing tiresome.
I tell you the same thing I'd tell some blowhard from the FRC - If you don't like, changing the f'in channel.
"cherring for motherfucking Old Dominion..."
Damn straight. Virginia's for lovers, but trust there's hate here.
I mean, I'm all for some Baron Davis McDreamy drama, but watching Udonis drop a jumper with .3 has got nothing on a bunch of random dudes enjoying their 14:59 of fame.
Never understood why some folks on FD don't see the coveted style and substance in the collegiate ranks.
Perhaps it's that there's a requisite of simultaneous recognized and yet unfulfilled potential, a Free Darko trajectory difficult to ascertain when the sample size is restricted by the short high school/college gestation period.
I'll never get the 4 minutes I spent reading this piece of crap article.
So while there is no question that the posters of FD grew up listening to rap, do all of these commenters think that black people invented stream of consciousness?! Yeah, the new wizznutzz completely apes "Invisible Man" by black-guy Ralph Ellison, but Billups is just using a moderately disjointed style with a whole bunch of non-sequiturs (sp?) that may be entirely meaningless, but are inscrutable enough to let you twist them into whatever you feel like. Also, purposely misspelling and capitalizing things for no reason at all is a device that has been around a lot longer than rap.
Other than the lyrics, I really don't even see this as derivative of hip hop culture.
Sure you will, Ted: don't jerk off tonight. It's a sacrifice, sure, but that's life. Douche.
no doubt, FD is hella entertaining and incredibly clever, but the NCAAs are roughly 4,000,000,000 times more compelling than watching the Warriors and the Sixers churn out 48 minutes of blase nonchalance nonsense on any given Tuesday. No amount of intentional misspellings and highly advanced literary parlor tricks is going to change that. I'm also kind of surprised that FD isn't more up on the college game, because as MegaPickles noted it is the proprietor of a vast wealth of unrealized potential far beyond that in the lig. I guess it's because there's too much Substance and not enough Style [insert clever pop culture and/or mid 90s NYC hip-hop and/or moderately obscure early 90s NBA reference and/or whimsical, interminable non sequitur].
Everyone know that chauncey billups is black, right? just google him.
megapickles --
because "a bunch of random dudes enjoying their 14:59 of fame" = lord of the rings, while freedarko = harry potter. In other words, NCAA is about democracy, while FD is about celebrating the talented few. NCAA = Fanfare for the Common Man, FD = Wagner. You get the idea.
To me, every NCAA tournament is only capable of telling one out of a few very generic stories: e.g., "small-town nobodies upset the big-time bullies," "troubled coach finds redemption," etc etc. Whereas at its best, the NBA creates its own narrative. It's not that college ball is intrinsically incapable of this, but various factors make it unlikely -- especially the fact that style in the NCAA almost always comes from the system rather than player.
I'm not attacking. I'm questioning. This whole website is about black people. This statement has been made several times in various ways. It's about style and the style most seem to prefer is the "black" style. Shoals hates dwade, loves kobe (although I don't really see Kobe as having a "black" style, so maybe that messes my whole point up), I think this has something to do with "black" style. Same with the rant against Skiles.
Anyway, if this site is supposed to be about race and the NBA, then should't we be examining the realtionship between the author's race and thier chosen subject?
And wouldn't it be informative to get some actual black people to post and say what they think. I mean, I would really welcome that. There's lots of black bball writers ont he internets, invite them in. Get some kind of real conversation going.
Odd... commentators criticize FreeDarko for being white, one post after criticizing a black man (D-Wil) for writing what alot of black men were thinking. I'm getting all types of cognitive dissonance.
Well, f*ck all of ya. I'm Hispanic. I'm brown enough to vouch for FreeDarko's style. And, though he's only contributed once, I believe The Assimulated Negro is, in fact, a negro.
How about actually discussing the stuff in the post, like college basketball versus pro basketball....
JR, twist my verbs like a Rider.
Too be clearer, the substance ain't there yet at the college level NOR is the style. "At the white boy club, hanging out at the bar. They like, hey now, you're an all-star." You must know style to bestow style.
The vacuum creates the drama. I love it, but it's not FD. You can enjoy both. Have fun.
cw - it's about the words on the page, manny man. they are a being unto themselves, and they do what they do. nothing else is necessary.
"it's about the words on the page, manny man. they are a being unto themselves, and they do what they do. nothing else is necessary."
Nah. Words don't write themselves.
And again, I'm not criticizing. I'm asking. Isn't it kind of weird cultural twist that there's this whole enterprise devoted to the examination of race through the lense of the NBA and there's no black people involved? Isn't that small weirdness part of the discussion of race and the NBA? And wouldn't a good thing be better if there was some input from black basketball fans?
I mean, it's not the end of the world.... Just one question among many.
What's with all the black/white bullshit? Writers write. If you're Balboa-level inarticulate, don't submit. Don't hate on me 'cause I can use all 26 but you can't fucking spell QWERTY. Re: style (NBA) vs. substance (NCAA), some people just prefer substance, not the gold-plated turd that is the NBA. You can dress it how you want, but it still smells the same. THIS IS THIS.
CW: Alright, if its just questioning, and not criticism... okay. It's just the timing of that comment, on the heels of the last post and the comments over there....
Actually, I always thought that at least someone in FreeDarko must be black. No one is? Not Billups? How do we know?
Given that I don't know, I just let the words say everything. Maybe if I knew these cats in real life, if actually sat down and had a drink with them, I might not respect the website as much as I do? Or maybe I would respect it even more?
Doesn't matter right now, though. The words are suffice for me. Because often there is a truth in these words, a truth that speaks to me despite my different background (urban Hispanic) from the writers (suburban overeducated white guys, apparently) or their "intended" style (African-American, but not necessarily urban, apparently). The truths that we find in these posts, in these words, are all that matter....
truth? ain't here for that, only for the poetry. why the fuck would you look for the truth from a bunch of "overeducated suburban white guys" who (apparently?) want to be/sound black? don't really care what color Billups is, he's an entertaining writer. FD's not about truth, it's the pure joy of writing. now is the time on FD when we dance!
cw, i don't think "this whole site is about black people." if you read it regularly, it seems pretty clear that the posts are just as much about the NBA (the players, their style, their race), as it is about the authors themselves and everything they bring to the table - at least part of that is their ethnicity or "whiteness," whether it be real or percieved.
if anything, this site is painfully self-aware. i certainly don't want to project intent upon the authors, but to a small degree this site has always read to me like (mostly) non-black guys trying to reconcile their love, or fandom, for something utterly foreign to them. they're not trying to reconcile it because it's a bad thing but simply because it is what it is. the "marvel" expressed by so many writers here kind of aknowledges the fact that the writers are "other" from that which they write about, doesn't it?
in any case, i enjoy this site, at least partly because it's not written from a "black" perspective (and i happen to be black). there's all sorts of web sites where you can get all sorts of things. there is certainly no shortage of places one can go to get black writers talking about the NBA....
anyway. big ups to freedarko. pls. do revisit the topic of Lebron!
I might have mentioned this here before, but flipping around Japanese cable, seeing Ed O'Bannon playing for the Toyota team in the Japanese Super League was a bit of a jolt. Kind of like finding out the lead singer of a popular band from when you were in college is working at 7-11.
If you get a chance, check out the BJ league (the official name of the Basketball Japan league). There are something like three or four foreign players a team who play most of the minutes, rack up godly stats, with the rest of the roster filled with Japanese players that make Yuta Tabuse look like Tony Parker. The disparity is like watching NBA players take on JV teams.
The Assimilated Negro is indeed an Assimilated Black Person. He is a regular on Gawker.com, I believe on Thursdays.
someone call nakamura! race happening on the internet about race happening on the internet. you little cybertypers, you.
good god... the o'bannons...
what was that really... they are the violent femmes...
they are ally Mcbeal...
but the lakers were the young and the restless... and now they are...
Mad Max?. ...
Just because of the way it looks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBgnozXMTYI
The O'Bannon Bros. won me 300 BUCKS when I was 15... a lotta money back then. Hell, a lot of money now.
I don't follow college sports and I filled out my dad's office pool and picked UCLA to win it all cause one of their main guys wore #31 (I did watch Sportscenter after all). I cleaned up and looked like a genius!
I bet heavily on #31 in Vegas years later and won $1400 smackers. It's a chosen number.
Reggie Miller did well with it, but not many others that I can recall... Foyle, Ricky Davis, Telfair (though I believe he'll stick and do good within the next few years).
I know this has nuthin to do with nuthin but I got it off my chest now.
Mortimer
T. found God! I've been searching the internets for a week now trying to find an update on Shammgod, and out of the blue T. drops word that he's balling in China. THIS IS WHY FREEDARKO IS THE GREATEST.
"Billups is just using a moderately disjointed style with a whole bunch of non-sequiturs (sp?) that may be entirely meaningless, but are inscrutable enough to let you twist them into whatever you feel like." (spanish bombs, above)
if one were to replace "Billups" with "Pavement"...I think I have read this entire paragraph in a wowee zowee review.
and...to add to the earlier discussion...I don't watch college basketball because it sucks. (except for kevin durant) my not watching college basketball doesnt have anything to do with a truncated "potential arc" or whatever, its just that the big ten is like watching old people eat.
stopmike, slam had a profile of shammgod in china a couple months ago. here
Anything written about basketball that references Under the Tuscan Sun and gives me the image of Diane Lane handing me a Miller High Life is A-OK in my book. Fuck questions of race and style vs substance. The answer is always Diane Lane.
T. About 7 years ago, when I was living in China, a couple of the tallest people I'd ever seen in my life came in to the one bar in the city foreigners could dance in. They were hitting on a friend of mine, and offered us tickets to see them play for the Wuhan (the city I was in) team. They couldn't even tell me the name of the team, but they had all kinds of stories to tell, about how they'd play ball in China for a couple months, then South America, or the Middle East for another chunk of the year.
Lousy ball players though. They talked all night about how good they were (obvious, they were better than me, but how good can you be playing for the worst team in the Chinese league?) then got their asses handed to them the next night by the Beijing Ducks, featuring Mengk Bateer, I think. The old man sitting next to me screaming obscenities in Chinese was the best part of the evening.
Also, I project that Reyshawn Terry's professional career will mirror that of Ben Folds. They conveniently went to the same high school.
Knowing is half the battle.
I don't know that this is intended to respond to any one person or post in particular, so please don't take this as such:
There is nothing wrong with addressing race. Frankly, people should be more honest about it. For instance, I know a lot of white people who whisper things like "more black men go to jail than white men" because they think acknowledging a race-driven cleavage is racist. That's how fucked up people are, and how scared they are of saying something "that they shouldn't." Similarly, I work with people who, as a matter of fact, say things like "Allen Iverson is a thug who only got pardoned because the governor of Virginia was black." I don't know if that's fair or true (though I doubt it on both counts). They also say things like "But he's white, so of course he has some money." It's obvious when hearing these things that there isn't a lot of thought, just faith, behind what people say.
Americans are conflicted about race and always have been. I don't think we can ever get better about this stuff unless we talk about it openly, understand that there will be some ignorance aired, and try to foster opportunities for people to work and live and learn together. We are tasked with the onus of overcoming entrenched racism. The first part of that is the discussion--racial problems can't be fixed until they're fully acknowledged and considered. And the biggest racial problem in this country is the way that black people are treated. Frankly, I find it amazing that more people aren't fascinated by racial issues, because they are omnipresent and inexplicable. (Unless, of course, you have been socialized to not think so.)
My sense is that FD shares this interest in a racial dialogue and, given the enormity of the topic, has chosen an entry point that appeals to the collective passions of the authors. It may ultimately be about race, but it's also largely about basketball (not just as a conduit for race but for the game's inherent appeal) and a host of other interests that many like-minded people share. That these topics are all colored by race speaks to the inescapable nature of this social problem we've all created and the appeal of addressing this persistent American Dilemma.
That whites want to talk about cultural contributions of blacks is not wrong in and of itself. Confining all black culture to narrow fields (like if one were to say that black people were only contributing to rap and basketball), or insinuating that black people can only contribute in certain ways (that black culture is only rap and basketball), or wrongly festishizing stereotypes as gospel is where many white people seem to run afoul. (What, by the way, is white culture?) But the flip side is that stereotypes are stereotypes because there are often so many individual instances that reinforce generalizations. Neutrality is a narrow path that, quite honestly, can be tedious to tread as a writer if you must fill your prose with an endless array of qualifiers. Sometimes, you have to leave it to an audience to read with some perspective and understand that there may be things unsaid.
I think my ultimate point about FD is that while criticism may be valid when wondering whether this site's racial emphasis would benefit from a greater diversity of voices, and while there is nothing wrong with probing the nature of this ongoing racial discourse, it's wrong to suggest that the ideas here aren't valid because of what they lack. No person will be all things to all people, and we are all limited to authority over only our own experiences. Appreciate those original voices and challenge ideas. But let's not assume that the only way to credibly think about race is to do so by convening the largest tent imaginable.
I don't know. I mean, I'm a white historian who specializes in 17th and 18th Century Slavery. Am I not a legit historian because I'm not black? Can I not understand and write about that struggle?
I think that there is a degree of understanding by "white grad school" types that they won't be able to fully understand what it means to be black in America, and because of that, can't fully understand basketball/hip hop culture. I would posit that being white/black/wealthy/poor/educated/non-educated, etc. should not be a badge of honor where fandom and understanding of the game is concerned. The boys at FD write well about the game, and make no hesitation in defining their aesthetic and objectives, which is fine by me.
As for our boy Billups, he writes accurate, amusing posts. I don't care if he's a fucking martian, I just want more.
I don't know. I mean, I'm a white historian who specializes in 17th and 18th Century Slavery. Am I not a legit historian because I'm not black? Can I not understand and write about that struggle?
I think that there is a degree of understanding by "white grad school" types that they won't be able to fully understand what it means to be black in America, and because of that, can't fully understand basketball/hip hop culture. I would posit that being white/black/wealthy/poor/educated/non-educated, etc. should not be a badge of honor where fandom and understanding of the game is concerned. The boys at FD write well about the game, and make no hesitation in defining their aesthetic and objectives, which is fine by me.
As for our boy Billups, he writes accurate, amusing posts. I don't care if he's a fucking martian, I just want more.
-Rob
My man Joey from NYC breaking it down as always. I couldn't agree more with every word you just wrote.
By the way, Ed Obannon was tagging along with the Bruins last year on their March to the Final Four. I saw him at the Regional Final in Oakland. He was celebrating hard core after UCLA came back and beat Gonzaga. That guy was like a God to me growing up in L.A. I think he was the main reason I went to UCLA camp in 95.
I feel you on the nostalgia tip. The O'Bannon's were nice, but Toby Bailey was that DUDE!!!! This is the best time of the year with out question. Bryce Drew Stand Up!!!
First Diane Lane, then Hicks n' Hudson...
shit. one of the greatest FD posts ever.
Muthah fuckin Steve Francis.
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