Breaking: FD Breaks News

DATELINE, me on the phone with Lou Williams — So last week, I'm interviewing Sixers guard Lou Williams for the revived Converse Yearbook. He's telling me that he didn't really feel like he could be an NBA player until he went to camp as a rookie and realized he could hang.

If you're like me, you have vivid memories of the 2005 draft, when Williams, Monta Ellis, and C.J. Miles all stayed in as undersized shooting guards. The thinking was, one of them would probably crack the first round (none did; did the glut hurt?), but three? It was like a game of chicken, one which, while it turned out okay for all of them, could have ruined their careers. If anything, I expected Williams to tell me he stayed in out of confidence, not something that was nearly the opposite.

Here's where we'll pick up the conversation:

Bethlehem Shoals: That’s interesting because you and a couple other young guys came out and everyone was confused why you did. And everyone assumed that you were super confident and could make it at the next level.

Lou Williams: Well, you know, just to have that opportunity and to even get mentioned and be able to go straight out of high school as a 6-1 point guard speaks volumes right there. I was like “okay, well if they think so, why wouldn’t I?” We had a meeting, like a big summit. We were all at USA Basketball. We all sat down, and I think Monta [Ellis] broke the ice and said “hey, I’m declaring, so we're all going." [laughs]

BS: Who was this?

LW: It was Monta Ellis, CJ Miles, Andrew Bynum, Gerald Green, and myself. We all sat in a room. Monta went first. It doesn't compare to LeBron and D-Wade and them all, but you know.

So there you have it. They all went pro not in spite of each other, but basically on a group dare. Solidarity when, quite obviously, they were each others' closest competition. I can't tell if this is really heartening or just absurd, but it's a pretty amazing bit of NBA draft arcana.

Two the Gull Way

Sometimes, you get an email so pure in its intentions, so rippling with information and connections, that you can basically steal it and make a post from it. So thank you, longtime reader Ian Ross, for bringing the following facts to my attention.

-Apologies if I'm late on this -- I kind of got sick of reading every single thing every single person in every single city touched wrote about LeBron -- but David Hyde column from the Sun-Sentinel, dated 7/11, has some real stunners in it. At least for someone who recently finished working on a book about NBA history. It's about not the evil players fooling the fire department, but Riley's persuasive powers. Central to all of this is his use of the Russell/Auerbach Celtics as a rhetorical device, even point of inspiration. The key passage:

"The Celtics won 11 titles in 13 years,'' he said. "That's the one dynasty."

Riley began throwing out names centering around Bill Russell on those Celtics teams like Bob Cousy and Jungle Jim Loscutoff. Sam Jones. K.C. Jones. Tom Heinsohn.

But the one name he left off, the one that began as coach and ended as team architect, is the one Riley's team and personal legacy chase now. So among the questions percolating around the Heat now, add this one: Will Riley go down as the Red Auerbach of the YouTube generation?

I left that last part on just because it sucks and isn't accurate, and shows how much this column buries its own quirky, if not brilliant, lede. Or, to be more exact, Riley's. I've written much about de-Jordan-ing Bron, which as Ian Thomsen has said, might be for the best for the league and its paradigm factory; many folks have pointed out that great teams all were deep as fuck. But no player has been as single-mindedly deconstructed in the name of winning as Russell, and no pox of talent more sublimated than the Celtics dynasty. Also, the Jungle Jim reference is so weird we should remember it forever. Paul Flannery told me this morning that his name -- just his name -- is retired, because someone more important (don't have time to cross-check, sorry) wore the same number.

No one's ever accused Bron of being a Kobe-like history buff, which is why it's so funny that Riley would mention Loscutoff, an enforcer who clearly didn't give up greener individual pastures by playing for team in Boston. But the genius of Auerbach's teams was that they were stacked to the point of congestion. And yet everyone put ego aside. It's the most extreme case of this ever, and from a bygone era. I want to know, though, why it would be totally invalid here -- and if we would mock James for wanting to be Russell to Wade's Sam Jones and Bosh's Heinsohn (that one needs work).

Okay, from same dude:

In the More Than a Game documentary, exactly 18 minutes in, Sian Cotton is talking about the decision to go to St Vincent's over Buchtel, and goes, "The African-American community had wanted us to bring our talents to Buchtel, and felt like we were traitors."

Also unnoticed (as far as I've seen) is the fact that the chapter in Shooting Stars where he and his friends decided to go to St. Vincent's is called "The Decision."

This really leaves you puzzled, doesn't it? The much-maligned "take my talents to" could be either a local, or hyper-local, or among-friends, idiom ... yet it's been picked apart like a political speech (whether or not LeBron should have been more careful, anticipating that reception, is another question). At the same time, that move and the title of the chapter suggest that hey, James has done this before. What was it about then? Camaraderie? Opportunism? I don't know. I'll go with "some of each", and make it the subtitle to my forthcoming LeBron James stop-time claymation epic.

We All Mourn in the Right Way

Bethlehem Shoals: The dreads are gone. But does the spirit live on?

Eric Freeman: I was under the impression that it was a Samson-type deal, in that they serve as his armor from the divine.

BS: I know Luke Ridnour needs the Armor of God to take the court. But is training the Nuggets really that much of a risk to his person? Does JR Smith throw weights around for fun?

EF: I would not be surprised. It's a team of thugs!

Tom Ziller: I think he cut them because he had trouble fitting them in his tanning bed. Or that his tanning bed was cooking them too much. Burning hair smells terrible

EF: Is there not a hole on top for long hair? Tanning bed engineers need to think about their product a little more.

TZ: There is something about the Nuggets that makes cutting off long/longish hair cool. Or Maybe this is a commentary on the death of the Nuggets as stylish. Birdman jumped the style shark, Melo went mainstream ...

EF: Has Billups ever had hair? I don't think he even did in college.

BS: He was born bald. He has eyebrows, though.

TZ: I've never seen Billups with hair

EF: He did! Maybe people made fun of his squiggle and he stopped.



TZ: He looks like Penny when he has hair.

BS: Do you think he had to get them as part of being the Nuggets trainer? Like reverse dress code?

TZ: That'd be great. But what does Al Harrington have to do? Billups can get away with the baldness due to respect and prestige.

BS: I never liked the nickname "Baby Al". He always looked 58 to me.

EF: He kinda looks like what I wanted to see at the end of Benjamin Button: a giant baby.

BS: A world-weary baby? I think that's what I mean?

EF: I would expect a giant baby to be world-weary.

BS: Not if it were brand new.

TZ: Yao weighed like 13 pounds at birth. That's almost a bag of cat litter. Wait, maybe Hess is trying to catch on with the Heat.

EF: Isn't that team basically going to strength-coach itself? Or is the strength coach only going to work with Dexter Pittman?

TZ: That's why he wants a job there. He can relax

BS: That's all it takes to audition for Miami? A tan and sensible hair?

TZ: Shavlik Randolph got a contract, didn't he? He has the most backwards name in the NBA.

EF: I think he took his mother's maiden name as his first name.

TZ: From Hess' official bio: "Hess lives to obtain peak performance in his own life." Maybe he bought a convertible and the dreads were creating too much drag.

BS: They are pretty inefficient in general, from a performance standpoint. But not from a maintenance one.

EF: That's why David Lee doesn't have them.

BS: We should make a program where you can give any NBA player a Hess makeover. Like Steph Curry.

TZ: Who needs it most?

BS: Do they get the supernatural powers? Wait. What if all the hair experiments on the Nuggets were part of Hess's "peak performance" regimen? Not any form of cultural expresison.

TZ: Good call. That would explain the abnormally high hair turnover.

BS: It's like that Pistons guy and his water molecules. Follicles and molecules almost rhyme.

FIN

Toad Enclosed

Here are two things written elsewhere, by me, that I firmly believe you will like:

For the Awl, the new Knicks and why they will matter.

At FanHouse, Chris Paul's demand and, as they say, "who's the man"?

Planning something big here soon, as well as some guest stuff. Stay furtive!

There Is No Scrap Impartial

Don't miss the Morning News roundtable on sports and writing, with Pasha Malla, Will Leitch, Katie Baker, Chad Harbach, Nic Brown, and me.

I think we finally have our Psychological Man. His name, much to my utter surprise and possible chagrin, is DeMarcus Cousins.

As long as this site's been live, we've harped on player psychology. Not "what is a point guard thinking in the clutch", but as best we can, tried to determine what makes these dudes tick. Especially when, as it so very not the case in other sports, uniform execution simply won't do, and the decisions players make—their respective styles, if you will—can't help but reveal something about them as people. It may be only a thin breach here and there, through which little light is admitted, or gaping blast of individuality, but either way there's humanity in them there ball players.

Somewhere out there, a unified theory of FreeDarko presents itself in the heavens. For now, I'd go so far as to say that style and personality are the strong and weak force of our NBA cosmology, which is why no amount of boring-ass critiques will make me lose interest in Kobe Bryant. It's also why Gilbert Arenas was for so very long our patron saint. His entire public existence depended on either riding or struggling against that interpretive undercurrent "quirk". With the locker room incident and FINGER GUNZ, it went so far as to suggest that, in fact, he had been (figuratively, duh) swept out to sea. At some point, the joke ceases to be on the rest of the world, and out-there behavior becomes either sad or self-destructive.

That's also what happened with Michael Beasley, whatever happened with Beasley. He entered the draft speaking with uncommon candor—which in retrospect, turned out to be a "don't let me do this" cry for someone to keep him in school. At the time, though, it really seemed as if teams were being forced to confront the possibility that players could be weird, and yet still thrive. Arenas was a high-wire act, someone who played up his shtick for commercial gains and then found himself seemingly fall victim to his own act. Beasley entered the league not playing pranks and committing absurd gestures, but simply refusing to make sense. Again, at the moment it's hard to say he was taking a stand for anything but his own immaturity. And I mean that in the most light, sympathetic way possible.

All of which brings us to DeMarcus Cousins. You all know the story by now. Cousins was, all the way back to his high school days, branded "a problem". He didn't have Arenas's charm or Beasley's enigmatic qualities. DeMarcus Cousins had, as they say, an attitude. He was not a high-character guy. Supposedly, he fought with coaches, loafed, and wouldn't stay in shape. Whatever had happened at Kentucky, where he proved so dominant that John Wall was often relegated to a supporting role, was fool's gold compared to the monster he would become as a pro. It didn't help that, in many ways, the most apt comparisons the pros offered were Zach Randolph, Eddy Curry, and reaching back a ways, Derrick Coleman (that one more than ever after Vegas, but I'm getting ahead here).

I was staunchly anti-Cousins, though mostly owing to the fact that I thought his college career was a mirage and his height not what it turned out to be. When the whole thing got all weird and paternalistic, I realized which side justice smiled upon. Cousins was trapped in a strange rhetorical bind best described as "worst available". He was the bad seed of the draft, the high-risk, high-reward guy who got all the ink, and of course. Not every draft class is so lucky as to have one. But once anyone can be stuck in the "bad kid" or "problem" category, they will catch hell up until they prove otherwise.



Beasley, incidentally, saw his stock of evil rise (fall?) as the draft approach. Draw your own cause and effect conclusions here, but Cousins loomed larger and larger as a talent and became more and more of a potential thug creature. Don't blame FreeDarko; we dispatched Joey Litman to meet Cousins and observe him acting like the kid he was. Beasley had said "I'm a kid", but for him that opened the door out onto all sorts of weirdness. Cousins really just came off as sweet, likable, and hardly the kind of ass who would warrant such premature nay-saying.

Fast forward to the Vegas league, where Cousins's debut was awaited almost as eagerly as Wall's. When he proved even more of a force (granted, Wall had very little to prove), and flashed skills and awareness that had once been mere fluff in the mouths of his biggest supporters, Cousins instantly became the second-biggest star among the rookies. That attitude we heard so much about? Damn right it's there. But it's fire, intensity, and the desire to flat-out destroy his opponent, especially other big men. It's exactly what so many other bigs are lacking, and why they end up a very different kind of bust. Cousins rages because he cares. It's that simple. To say that his personality can be rough or stubborn at times is to say that he's a gamer. Attitude on the court, if it's this kind of edge and determination, is the exact opposite of what off-court attitude will sow.

And it's not like Cousins is lacking in self-awareness, something we can debate all day about Arenas or Beasley. The Timberwolves, of course, tried to throw him off by antagonizing and harassing him, expecting him to crack and show the lunatic no one wanted to draft (including them). Except as soon as Cousins caught on, he disengaged himself and opened scoffed at the tactic. Does this sound like a wayward brat to you?

All of which brings us back to psychology. Cousins did, indeed, possess many of qualities NBA scouts feared in him. Except he possessed them in a way that manifested itself primarily on the court, where they were a decidedly good thing. Differentiating between on and off-court personality, as well as mapping out their intersection, has never been more important than now. What's more, the "good kid"/"problem" binary has revealed itself to be, if not a farce, at least utterly simplistic, the kind of clap-trap that no journalist—much less a scout—should bother to hang his hat on.

Cousins might seem to call into question whatever it is that Arenas and Beasley represented. On the contrary, in his contradictions, he make more urgent than ever the need to develop a more psychologically sophisticated approach to assessing prospects. Arenas asserted the right to be kooky, unpredictable, and obsessive; Beasley, incoherent, compelling and loud. That was a fair description of each at their best, and if their stories ended today, each would serve as a cautionary tale against this kind of player. Cousins, though, makes the case for the development of something new, something that might actually better equip a team for an Arenas or Beasley—that is, anyone other than an outright bust.

Earlier today, Ziller wrote about Rashad McCants. McCants, it seems, was Cousins before Cousins, and had the bad luck to not be born very tall. No one has yet been able to tell me exactly what it is that makes McCants so horrible and unemployable. Maybe he's not the best defender, and there have been some confounding incidents with scheduling and contracts (like TZ's post today). But McCants himself believes he had been blacklisted, and I'm inclined to believe he's not far off. McCants deserves a chance to succeed based on his abilities, not some shit-poor conception of what makes for good and bad soldiers in a mechanized world that never really existed in the first place.

A Grade-School Terror

This was only a matter of time: the Game has already committed to wax what is likely the first of many forthcoming Miami Heat references. There could not have been a more perfect musical lab rat. This was obvious, really.

Game's fondness for the NBA knows no limits. (Listen to these, too. At your own peril.) Neither do his self-consciousness, nor his looming presence as an inexplicable outsider. There is something strange about a guy on a major label whose career was anointed by a trinity of rap folks who couldn't get more mainstream--Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent--constantly moping around on the periphery as though he were left behind. (Left behind! Holy trinity! FD is evangelical!) He loves being a victim--of circumstance, of politics, of street life. Yet, he also loves being so brash and boastful that the sad-sack routine clashes with the lyrical bravado. Game is the ultimate establishment villain in that regard. Given the opprobrium that has poured forth for LeBron since he left Cleveland, there is a fitting, albeit temporary, alliance to be found among these two.

In a more general sense, Game's latest is also an appropriate theme song for a team that now will be the most hated in Cleveland, New York, Chicago, and many other places. Miami, suddenly entrenched as the NBA's signature glamor team, also has become a public enemy. Looking past the potential for beautiful basketball that could literally transform the sport, many fans will lash out at the conquering monolith with fear and envy. The Heat will take on the role of outsiders, then, raiding and pillaging rather than merely ruling. And that, we can only imagine, will inspire many more Game verses. Or maybe a face tattoo. Or something.



"I keep three heats on me
45, Glock, and the gage
LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and D Wade
Any n***a try to stunt, get sprayed
What happened to the body?
N***a M.I.A."

This is victory music. Coming at the end of the fourth quarter to an arena near you!

Things Go Nowhere

I finally say something about LeBron&Gilbert&Rhoden&Jesse&you. Or the Heat as uprising and upheaval, louder than I had before. Wasn't writing because others had already nailed it, but there were so many people out there missing the point, I figured the reinforcements couldn't hurt.

IT'S NOT ABOUT A SALARY

Favorite reactions so far: @bmicheal recommending Marxist Kojeve (whom I don't know)as a better point of reference than Hegel himself. And a FanHouse commenter asking, simply "what the hell are you talking about?"

Oh, and very trivial, but if this Boston thing is going to happen it will probably be the last week in the month. I have no idea how to successfully organize something like this.

Dr LIC's Krazy SyEnce Korner Again

More NUMBERS for all y'all. This time courtesy of the brightest minds at Northwestern's Kellogg Business School (some of these guys are friends of mine, which I should both admit and apologize to them for potentially butchering my interpretation of their results below...anyway, on with it!)

In a paper currently under review titled, "Meritocracy, Cooperation, and Performance," Adam Galinsky and colleagues analyze the performance of a sampling of 282 professional NBA teams from 1997 to 2008 and demonstrate a simple formula:

meritocracy leads to cooperation, which in turn improves performance.

What is particularly interesting, however, is how meritocracy is measured, which is by two variables: pay dispersion, starting dispersion, and participation differentiation. Pay dispersion is the extent to which there exists a range of salaries on a given team such that some players are very highly paid and some are very minimally paid (pay dispersion would be low on a team with relatively "flat" salaries--where everyone is pretty much being paid the same). The authors measure this using the standard deviation of player salaries on each team. Starting dispersion, which really constituted a measure of how much status was dispersed across players, was measured by standard deviation of starting positions for each team during a given season. Participation differentiation was measured by the standard deviation of playing time for each team during a given season. High levels of pay dispersion, starting dispersion, and participation differentiation meant that teams were operating more in terms of a meritocracy than in some sort of pseudo-socialist all-for-one system.























Cooperation--intragroup cooperation--was measured (and feel free to debate this in the comments) using a combined measure of assists, defensive rebounds, and field goal percentage. And performance was simply measured as winning percentage.

The takeaway is that using some seriously gritty statistical modeling, the data supported their assumption. Teams that are more meritocratic--those that have greater disparities between stars and nonstars--show more cooperation, and in turn win more. Pay dispersion was the variable that overarchingly accounted for this effect.

What is impressive about these studies is that they use field data to corroborate previous experimental and cross-sectional work in the social sciences showing the benefits of hierarchy on cooperation (i.e. "know your role" is a good strategy for promoting teamwork). What's more, I think these data say something counterintuitive about NBA conventional wisdom, which is that having max salaries on the tab can be a good thing if it establishes a clear pecking order...and the very teams that show the most cooperation don't do so because they are all equal serfs, but because there is deference to the gawd at the top of the roster.

Commenters, what say you?

I Can't Share Ranks

I've been around the world. I did some writing on soccer and America. You would do better to read this Sport is a TV Show post, or Brian's dissection of Spain's aesthetics. As far as LeBron is concerned, today I offered up a plea for sanity based on The LeBrons, Friday I predicted the toast of doom at Melo's wedding.

There are, however, some decidedly FD matters to tend to. First, off of Brian's "Ballet of Frost" post linked above: I very much enjoyed watching Spain throughout the World Cup. As I told Eric several times, they made me feel like I actually understood something about soccer. Many people compared the midfielders, especially Xavi, to Nash. And it's true—we've often discussed on here the ways in which Nash creates new passing lanes. To me, that's what the endless movement of Spain looked like: Manipulating position until an unfamiliar path to the goal revealed itself. I don't care if it's wrong, it's how I saw it. What got to me, though, was how little playfulness there seemed to be in what was, in its most basic and post-structural sense, play. I tweeted that it was the most earnest trickery I'd ever seen. Today, chatting with Trey, I called it Nash with no sense of fun; he came back with "Chris Paul if he weren't a dick".

I may still be a soccer beginner, but style is universal, because it is a product, and mirror for, the human spirit. I think what made Brian's piece resonate with me was that, while I don't find Spain at all boring, there is something inhuman about them that's always on the wrong side of human. They aren't steely or clinical; it's a game that wants badly to express itself, to be art not math, and yet it's fundamentally either too fulsome or too cautious to take that plunge.

Back to reality: I watched John Wall's debut, eagerly, and was perfectly satisfied with what I saw. Yes, there were a few really bad turnovers (what happened to the handle?), and no, the jumper hasn't emerged overnight. But mostly, this looked like Wall, at some vague semblance of the next level. He got his teammates involved, and pretty quickly established that he and JaVale McGee could become Paul-Chandler Redux. Throw Blatche in there and I have no idea how you express it as a word-equation. Blah blah blah not so much quicker than everyone else wide-open game agrees with him gets to the line college obviously stifled him. The real key, though, is that Wall didn't need to make a statement. No one doubts him. And as a pure point, you've got to figure that he was more interested in making others look good—especially when they need it so much more than he does.



The lottery picks who make headlines in summer leagues are usually those with something to prove. I'm thinking specifically of Tyreke Evans, when no one understood what position he played, or why he mattered more than Rubio. Anthony Rudolph had 40 when his legend started to build. Of course, there's also Julian Wright or Qyntel Woods going off, but turning in the other direction, does anyone think for a second that LeBron James couldn't have dominated summer league if he wanted to? Some rookies can afford to take slow, get a feel for this sort-of-pro context as a warm-up for the NBA, and, as Wall did, realize it means more to the second-rounders and free agents than to them. The big men who get 647573 fouls? It's them getting their bearings. All lottery picks should be able to use the summer league like this. But alas, sometimes they end up in the same boat as D-League-bound aspirants.

POSITIONAL REVOLUTION: I forgot who on ESPN kept saying "great players figure out how to play together". I think it was Tim Legler, who also said (I think) that Wade and James had the same kind of game. But, at the risk of embracing pure emptiness, this Miami Heat is super-major with regard to one of this site's core tenets. Actually, fuck it, these three DO know how to play together, like they did in the Olympics when they conquered the known universe. And that was with Kobe Bryant in tow, who—with all due respect to the God—makes this line-up more difficult to pull-off, since he's less versatile than James or Wade.

I have lately become enamored of the idea that James is a reluctant mega-scorer. Not a bitch who doesn't live for late game situations, or whatever the latest attack meme is, but a multi-dimensional beast who can do so much more with the floor than simply barrel inside or hoist jumpers. Given how much success he has with those two tools, the possibilities are mind-blowing. Once upon a time, James was likened to Magic Johnson. Put LBJ at point forward, truly playing on or off the ball, at either end of the pick and roll. There's no reason he can be the most ferocious inside-outside/outside-inside threat the league has ever seen. A quitter because he's with two other All-Stars? Fine, whatever. I'll take James unleashed as superstructure, with Wade alternating between the two guard slots, and Bosh taking advantage of his ranginess as a big man (the Gasol comparison). I know I said that this team was the anti-Thunder, but if they go this direction, they'll be light years ahead of Durant and company.

I refuse to comment on the new Raptors or Suns any further until there's a good chart for me to consult.

Constitute a Plane

Good things and bad things both happen in three. So do deaths, and celebrity deaths, which may or may not be transferable categories. There is no question that three is a magical number, one that has echoed throughout human history and systems of belief as both structurally perfect and aesthetically glorious. It makes you wonder why, at various junctures in the NBA’s lifespan, the media has settled for the half-assed “Big Three.” If it comes to pass, the Tree People Cartel of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh in Miami needs a bigger, better name that expressed exactly what forces are unlocked when three join forces. The running favorite thus far seems to be “The Triumvirate”. We have chosen to examine this option, and several others, to see if the pieces fit.



Triumvirate: This is the default name, so it falls upon us to point out the unfortunate fact that the first triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Marcus Crassus was a secret political pact between the three bigwigs for much of its seven-year life. It was also an uneasy alliance with perpetual in-fighting, which became clear in 53 BC when Crassus died and Pompey and Caesar almost immediately started fighting for total control of the budding empire. This is the analogy for people who think the three stars’ egos would almost immediately doom what looks amazing on paper. Still, some of the correspondences work. LeBron is obviously Caesar, a man of overpowering ambition who wants to remake the world in his image as others (Alexander the Great, Michael Jordan) have done before. That makes Wade Pompey, a superstar in his own right who would be forced to play second fiddle because of circumstances, not a lack of talent. If there were to be a big blow-up in Miami, it’d be between these two. That leaves Bosh to function as Crassus, an important figure who is nonetheless likely to fall into the margins of history as the other two stars garner most of the attention. Let’s revisit this one if the trio fails miserably. It is currently too negative to describe a scenario with such amazing potential. (Eric Freeman)



The Holy Trinity: Before anyone freaks out and burns my head on a popsicle stick, remember, this whole summer has a messianic tinge to it, and LeBron’s been as embodying various modes of divinity since he was 16. This is the most famous three-part entity ever, too, which should make it an obvious choice. Except upon further inspection, it doesn’t really work. LeBron has to be the Son, since that’s buried somewhere deep inside his brand DNA. The Holy Ghost, which is of course not a ghost but a mystical presence, is generally represented in all post-Renaissance art as a glowing dove. That seems to go with Chris Bosh, who is both one of those players who fills in gaps (when in the presence of other stars) and isn’t possessed of the most aggro personality. But he still plays in the paint, or near it, which conflicts with everything we know about birds, as animals and as metaphors for people. What really drags this one down, though, is Dwyane Wade as The Father. His authority is earned and re-earned with each staggering move, not projected as a matter of fact -- that’s more something a big man, or less unpredictable guard, would do. Plus, even if you understand the Trinity as devoid of hierarchy, there’s still an implied “Jesus happened later,” and that’s at odds with the modern notions of progress we apply to sports. To us, LeBron is progress over all else. To God, it was progress to become mortal and get murdered. Good thing that bird was hanging around to light the way. (Bethlehem Shoals)



The Summit at Yalta: It’s got “Summit” in the title, which is cool, since other than “Triumvirate” no fancy-sounding word has been thrown around more in reference to this off-season. Also, if anyone cares, Eric and I both made this joke independent of each other, a testament to the depth of our friendship (or the limits of our wit, or the formulaic nature of all things FD). Maybe not so catchy, though, in name alone. “Yalta” would suffice, I suppose. As for the principals? The fact that one All-Star will be stuck playing the role of a demented genocidal maniac makes this a hard sell. Plus, there’s that innate human attraction to hierarchy. Sorry, other countries, but at this point in time the USA had taken its rightful place atop the heap of nations. That would automatically make LeBron into FDR, even though a bold, benevolent cripple doesn’t really reflect the man or his game. Maybe James is Stalin, if nothing else for the damage he can so readily inflict upon everyone else on the floor. Wade, with his backlog of injuries and fashion sense that at least references the world of blue bloods that FDR sprang from, works well as Roosevelt. His style, which prizes grand gestures over meting out elastic punishment, seems more in keeping with the President’s leadership style (and more convincingly puts Bron in his place as Stalin). Bosh may not be the master orator, humorist, or generally outsize human being that Churchill was. But like Britain, he’s the odd man out here, the one who has has beaten down and nearly defeated and needs more than anyone for this pact to restore his dignity. The slow break-up with the international-minded Raptors = Britain’s empire once and for all dwindling away. (BS)



The Three Special Triangles: Basketball is a sport with geometry built into its foundations, even if we don’t always acknowledge it. And while it may seem difficult to compare basketball players to shapes, several correspondences fit quite well. LeBron is obviously the equilateral triangle, a shape without flaw that embodies perfection we have come to assume only exists in the divine. Wade is the isosceles, a near-perfect shape with only minor faults (the unequal side, Dwyane’s penchant for getting injured) in its attempt for equalaterality. Sadly, Bosh cannot be the right triangle. His well-rounded game cannot be seen in a shape with such a sharp angle; it’s for a role player, not a lanky star. Trying to put him in a role that doesn’t suit him would simply be obtuse. (EF)



Chimera: The chimera wasn’t actually three things (nor was the Trinity, exactly, but that’s a finer point). However, on a perfect basketball team, players achieve the synergy of oneness, a unity of performance that elides anything like ego or selfish demands. Thus, behold, a monster of myth and legend that combined that best—and some might say, the worst—qualities of a lion, snake, and goat. LeBron is the lion. He likes lions, and his name begins with an “L”. Plus, the lion has a head and body on there, indicative of the many ways James can contribute to the team. In strict, formal terms, no player has ever been more torso-like than LeBron, as he literally fills out the tasks a basketball team must execute like few players in the game’s history. Wade is the serpent, a deadly weapon coiled to strike, quick and decisive but not exactly the hub of activity. Also, the snake is a phallic symbol, and everyone knows D-Wade gets around. Bosh is the goat; people seem to dislike him, which means if this goes sour, it will be his fault for lacking toughness (no one understands it in the goat, either!). Also, the goat improbably juts out of the lion’s body, much in the same way that Bosh’s low post game will serve as an appendage of whatever James decides to do with the paint at any given moment. The perfect big man for LeBron is a skilled one capable of matching his skill level and physical ability, but sublimating his need to be anything more than a fantastic appendage. No, that’s not another dick joke. Think Nash and Amar’e, if Nash were more generally commanding and Amar’e more understated and steady. If only there were some wings on this thing. (BS)



Charmed: The strength of the sister witches was based on “The Power of Three,” and since teams are like families, this is a natural comparison. Upon closer inspection, though, it doesn’t hold . At first glance, LeBron would seem to be Shannen Doherty, the dependable, talented leader of the group. But Miami will likely remain Wade’s team, so perhaps he should be Doherty. But where does that put LeBron? He is certainly not Holly Marie Combs, who never stood out in any season and only registered as the one who would nag her husband for wearing white robes with the other White Lighters. And what of Alyssa Milano, who lacked discipline and needed to learn the value of responsibility? Surely none of these established stars could be spoken of in such a way, and Rudy Gay was never going to be in this group. Plus, Bosh looks more like one of the demons that the sisters vanquished with poorly rendered CGI. There are no easy comparisons here, just as there is no way to easily deal with the fact that Milano turned into a mermaid and wants to live in the sea. (Note: If you are a fan of post-Doherty seasons, substitute Milano for Doherty and Rose McGowan for Milano.) (EF)



John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Albert Ayler: In 1967, not long after Coltrane’s death, Marxist free jazz critic Franz Kofsky quoted Ayler as calling Coltrane “the father,” Trane’s sidekick Sanders “the son,” and himself “the Holy Ghost.” This one is in serious trouble from the beginning, since it’s essentially a metaphor built on the back of another. Let’s not even bother with discerning whether this works against the original, religious formation. Not because we couldn’t, or didn’t already type it up before deleting it, but because if that’s the basis for inclusion, this one might be a loser right off the jump. Instead, let’s just compare musicians the ballers. LeBron and Coltrane are a good fit, as both combine the magisterial with the truly expressive. Wade as Sanders, the hell-raising wingman, is great, and for all we know Wade could end up with Eryakh Badu, wear a knit arm sleeve, and start celebrating Blackness after every dunk. Bosh as Ayler? That’s all wrong. If Sanders pushed Coltrane while living under his roof, Ayler—like the actual Holy Ghost—was floating in the air as both insinuation and untapped energy. He was possibility, freedom, and maybe even impossible to pin down. That’s Anthony Randolph, and unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see James, Wade, and Randolph coming out of this summer as anyone’s Team of Titans. (BS)