FD Guest Lecture: Better Basketball = Extra Schmedium Shorts
Today I would like to present to you the next installment in our FREEDARKO Guest Lecturers series. Today's tome comes from Dr. William Sunday, whose true identity can be speculated upon in the comments section. [Note: This essay comes with a disclaimer that "Dr. William Sunday is not an accredited physician in the United States, or any other country for that matter."]
FreeDarko Nation! What it do party people? Right now I feel like KanYe West after he won all those Emmys. I can’t believe I’m talking to the F.D. famlay. I was a little shook at first to come in over here because y’all cats are mad polysyllabic with your shit, but your boy said that I should just get in where I fit in. Hopefully there’s someone on this side to translate retahd-speak.
The 2007-2008 campaign for the Association is well underway and just like we all imagined they’d be, Boston is a beast. LeBron and the Cavletics might be able to served up some comp if that dude Jesus Shuttlesworth can keep choking with under a minute left to play. The West is still the best. I was quietly hoping that Houston would step up something serious so that maybe we could have a repeat of one of the classic Finals’ matchups.
The Rockets and the Celtics butted heads[ll] twice for ‘Chips and both times Boston prevailed on the back of Larry Bird. The Celtics superstar forward for this tilt would be the wunderkind Kevin Garnett, while the Rockets foreign exchange center is from Africa by way of China, Ming Yao. The marketing is already in place so it makes the regular season kind of a waste of time. Sort of like the first forty-six minutes of most b-ball games.
The league can work all of its magic to engineer this matchup, but the one element that would have made this series an instant classic has been stashed away in the NBA’s closet of shame. Cocaine, you said? No, but you were close. Tightpants would be the correct answer. In the last twenty plus years since the decline of tightpants the Association itself has been foundering. The beauty of the game is now interminably lost as the players run up and down the court in Capri shorts, or are they coolots. Assists on an overall basis have been declining steadily as well as field goal percentages. Three point field goals made are up from the 1980’s numbers, but how hard is it to shoot a three pointer wearing board shorts?
Show me a professional sport, that is enjoyable, where the entire uniform can be worn as street clothing? I rue the day that Michael Jordan came into the league and altered the minimum length of the player’s shorts. This was the death knell for great basketball play. Baggy pants ruin everything they touch. Zoot suits turned gangsters into comedians. M.C. Hammer ruined rap music. Capri pants killed the NBA. Do you think Elgin Baylor would have been the Rookie of the Year if he didn’t wear tightpants? How the hell do you think Magic Johnson got his nickname? Pause[ll] to that last sentence.
Tightpants are what made an average player like Dennis Rodman into a Hall of Fame caliber player. To bad for Dennis that he was fucking crazy. Don’t blame the tightpants though. John Stockton, arguably the greatest point guard of all time wore tightpants well into the new millennium and for no other reason were the Utah Jazz still a competitive force. Let’s face it party people… Cocaine and tightpants made the Association what it is today. Provided that you don’t overdose on the former, and you don’t elongate the latter you might still have the greatest show in town. Word to Oscar Robertson.
posted by Dr. Lawyer IndianChief @ 11/29/2007 01:12:00 PM
26 comments
26 Comments:
Nice drop Dallas.
This actually kind of sucked.
It wasn't the different tone, but the lack of any actual content. Did Sunday establish himself as someone worth listening to? The ESPN intro (after the "I don't fit in here" part) says no.
"..but the lack of actual content."
Jesus dude, what do you think is, distance learning from La Sorbonne?
I wish I could write something half as funny as "zoot suits turned gangsters into comedians."
Speaking of me, new longform up about Gil's injury.
MC Hammer did not ruining rap. No one took him serious, on any level. Rap had a few good years after Hammer.
No, twas the Wu-Tang Clan that ruined rap (and it should be noted that no one here is a bigger fan, for longer, than I... I brought the demo tape back in 91 from a bootlegger. I have "Ooh, We Love You Rakeem" on tape). But that's a story for another time....
BTW, I appreciate all the Guest Lectures, and like that Free Darko is adding this to the mix. New blood! But, sadly, I, too think this lacked content. Someone famous and unnamed needs to do a better job of channeling their inner Free Darko. Maybe we can give the good Doc Any Given Sunday a mulligan on this one, and let him write another post?
I'd like to hear the story about how Wu-Tang ruined rap. Not being a dick, I'm just curious.
A longer, more nuanced look at how the cocaine era (80s) gave way to the weed era (now) might be in order. And how the drug affects short size, etc. etc. My namesake, as all the old farts out there might recall, was definitely a weed guy in a coke league, a man out of time.
having no content is totally free darko.
i laughed at the pause [''] and the word to oscar robertson.
maybe it was gus johnson?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pxN1zkQgKKA
gus at 24 seconds is absolutely hilarious.
The pause rocked me.
I was searching for a bit more here though. Was it about how tightpants emphasized the movement of the players in that era, leading to a stronger aesthetics experience? Was it a parody of the right-way authors who highlight other arbitrary differences between this league and leagues of season's past? Was it about seeing Stockton's cock through his shorts?
I'm not sure.
Random thought when reading this: are the people who say the first 46 minutes of a game don't matter and those who say the regular season doesn't matter the same people?
Speaking of Better Basketball, if I have to watch that BetterB informercial on NBA TV one more time I might throw the remote through the screen. Could they please up the production value just a tad?
On point, though: Isn't it inevitable that a star player will revert to the short shorts soon? Aren't we about ready to go full circle? I mean, it's not like the young kids are averse to the tight pants thing, for crying out loud. The local mall is full of fats kids in skinny jeans hanging out at Hot Topic.
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And not to go all Paul Lukas here, and my apologies for the ADHD, but aren't we halfway to the short shorts era 2.0 with the advent of the crazy Nike uniforms that the Ohio States and North Carolinas of the world are wearing this season?
The shirt is skin tight and the shorts are billowing bombachas that would make any gaucho proud.
"...and the shorts are billowing bombachas that would make any gaucho proud."
Bonghits to you sir! The long-pants era is dead! Viva weeded out hotpants!
That was weak.You almost salvaged the post by attempting to lower expectations at the begining. Almost salvaged it...
Darkofan:
The baggy, long shorts are thought to add to the illusion created by modern dribbling technique, wherby the ball constantly floats in and out of view as players go behind the back, bteween the legs, multiple times, and very rapidly , often low to the floor, on even routine plays.
They are also thought to add ot the deceptionof a studder step.
(Boxers that use some derivative of the "Ali shuffle" favor loog baggy shorts for analogous reasons.
Thus, they are hereto stay because they are believed by many to have function, as well as form and fashion.
Maybe at some point the Commissioner enforces the uniform rules to limit some of th emore outlandish 'shorts'.
The long shorts may start with the Fab 5, but they were surpassed by Walt 'the Wizard' Williams. Between his shorts and long socks, he was practically wearing a burka.
I almost never watch women's basketball, did the long shorts revolution catch on there too? God, I hope not.
If I were in the league, I'd have to think about Umbro-length shorts- once I saw a picture of me in cargo shorts and it made me think I looked like my record collection skewed more toward Korn and Limp Bizkit instead of Ricardo Villalobos and Cowboy Junkies.
Carter and I have talked about doing an extremely long breakdown of the Better Basketball ads since around June. The only problem is that we can't find the video anywhere, and our points are specific enough that no one would know what we were talking about. Does anyone know if it exists anywhere in the tubes?
The weirdest thing about the tight Nike uniforms is that they made the shorts even baggier than usual. It looks like every player picked up the wrong shorts by accident.
having read this blog since it's inception, I feel obliged to point something out to those commenting. Declaring something within a post "so FD" is COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS. Of course it's FD, that's the name of the site for gods sake! I understand that labelling a player FD or not based on whether they meet the fanboy criteria is valid, but saying something along the lines of "no content/that sentence etc is so FD" is maddening.
As a contradictory side, it seems to me that the players that seem to be constantly labelled FD are the ones that are great in videogames but never quite so good in real life (JR, G Wallace etc)
anyway, I will now retreat into silence, feel free to abuse me as you please.
Atlanta, Georgia is not Free Darko.
Tbilisi, Georgi is Free Darko.
Once, in high school, I didn't have my shorts for gym class. So I borrowed from my Trinidian friend whom I shared a locker with. His shorts were very West Indian... shorts down to the calves, mesh on the side, matching top with mesh slot. I looked like a West Indian postal worker.
They were highly entertaining ("shoot the three, bumberclot!"), but not very functional. You don't see cats wearing capris on the playground, and you will not see that in the NBA.
Putting TVs on Ducatis is FD. Brick City when we smack cops back is FD.
Once, in high school, I didn't have my shorts for gym class. So I borrowed from my friend whom I shared a locker with.
I'll take To Be Blunt for $500, Alex.
"What is psychoanalysis?"
Then getting to the speculating over identity...
"Baggy pants ruin everything they touch."
"I rue the day that Michael Jordan came into the league and altered the minimum length of the player’s shorts."
"Coolots."
Tim Gunn?
-------------
wv: tonln- a Steelers coach who's all about the team
My apologies to the FD regulars for the brevity sans complexity of this drop. I should have known better than to approach entitled commenters with weaksauce.
Especially since I didn't fully explain exactly why tightpants provide for better basketball.
It is the nutular, or as some say sachian compression that gives tightpants wearers the advantage in team sports. By eeping one's "boys" closer together tightpants inherently fosters teamwork and camraderie.
Tightpants reinforce team play and closeness on the court and inside of your shorts.
Just look at the overall assists totals and field goal percentages within the Association from 1996 up to the present.
To this day Bill Russell still wears a thong underneath his slacks.
This is so very obviously Adande. Right?
Belatedly, let me note that I enjoyed this post and found its sauce non-weak.
DR L Indianchief -- you wearing some of those tight - short shorts? =)
I dug the article, short and tight, kinda like the pants. It reminded me of what a crime it was to kick birdman outta the nba for recreational drug use. Society is way too uptight about that shit.
There we go, William. That goes a long way towards redemption right there. Gives a jumpoff point and brings the funny.
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