Know Thy Mirrors

New Shoals Unlimited, on the subject of the NBA Financial Apocalypse in its form most pure. Oh, and as I try to figure out this new revenue streams thing, I may go a little heavy-handed at times. Like reminding you that it's decidedly un-weird to own the FreeDarko tote bag, or linking to commercial pages from out of posts. . . remember, I want to admit all this up-front so we trust each other.

In the latest ESPN mag, Bill Simmons eats breakfast with Baron Davis and tries to get to the heart of what's eating the former pride of the Warriors. For one, it's Simmons giving a fuck, which is to say, reminding us why he's so beloved and feared as a basketball writer [insert Freudian father figure, anxiety of influence tangent here]. But there's one truly unprecedented moment where, to paraphrase, Bill and Baron discuss Davis's lack of vitality on the court, conclude that it has to do with a lack of inspiration, and decide he needs to channel the "Boom-Dizzle" demi-god that rose out of the 2006-07 Warriors campaign.

Let's rewind that one, in case you missed how many fourth walls got violated therein: Davis opens up to a member of the media as if Simmons were there to help, a valued consultant instead of a thorn in his side. Then, he welcomes advice about his attitude on the court, even though the Sports Guy is not one of those wise ex-jocks who occasionally—and with great public fanfare—send messages to current players. To top it all off, or come full-circle, Simmons drifts over to the realm of fandom, drawing on his non-expert expertise to offer up a solution. Journalist and athlete meet in the middle, only to retreat to their respective sides of a gulf exactly because it's the source of the power, the mystique, that allowed Davis to thrive in the Bay. In short, it's Davis admitting that some of his swagger comes from a larger-than-life self that's both reinforced and reinvented by adoring fans. You can also imagine a more cynical version that involves sneaker companies and marketing entities.

In a way, this makes me understand why some people think Simmons is the only person alive who could realistically write another Breaks of the Game, likely the finest basketball book ever written. But this being a very different era, this new Breaks wouldn't just be expert reportage with an ear for the novelistic. Instead, it would go deep into one of Halberstam's recurring themes: what players mean to fans, or cities as a whole, and what impact this has on the actual person inside the jersey. Except, in a turn so benignly postmodern that I am contractually bound to type "postmodern," Simmons's authority comes from his willingness to intelligently embrace this fan-tastic aspect of the athlete. That, above all else, is how he's influenced FD.



However, instead of the players in Breaks of the Game, who come off as either staunch professionals troubled by this unpredictable realm of meaning, or egomaniacs who refuse to acknowledge what really fuels their stardom, you get today's NBA players. Davis may be exceptionally self-aware, but it's worth noting that popular players drowning in love feel it, feed off of it, and reflect it in their play. The concern isn't over why the public can't see them for who they are—either they could care less about everyone seeing "the real me", or such a thing no longer exists—it's about getting back to that place where they felt best and played like it. That's got everything to do with a version of themselves that has everything to do with perception, or consulting an expert on attitudes in the stands. Simmons remains the foremost chronicler of these voices, and if you want to understand why blogs matter, it's because—no matter how crappy they're treated by the league—fans matter like never before.

What If Dazzler Had Become the Herald of Galactus?

The Warriors are dead as we knew them. Baron is gone to LA to play godfather to Jessica Alba’s offspring. Gilbert Arenas, whose pairing with Don Nelson would have set the comments ablaze with new algorithms to calculate FD quotients, looks like he’s going to re-up with the Wizards. Yet, for a few glorious hours this morning, we had to entertain the possibility. Moments of this magnitude cannot be cast aside as soon as they become impossibilities. We must imagine what might have been.

For all his bravado, Baron is, in simple terms, one of the most complete point guards in the game, the kind of guy who finishes with a near-triple-double on an off-night. Guys like that are obviously rare, but they still conform to accepted notions of what constitutes a franchise cornerstone. On the other hand, building a team around dual 6’3’’ combo guards is basically unheard of, the sort of mad scientist decision that we associate with a team that relies on transition threes and refusing to guard at least one player on the floor at all times.

Then again, from a standard basketball view, this would have been Mullin’s worst move since he decided to pay a bunch of role players like they were lynchpins. There were certainly some stupidity afoot in the decision to lowball Baron; after all, Gilbert always said he was probably going to return to DC if Grunfeld brought back Jamison. Even if Arenas had surprised everyone and moved, regular basketball analysis would paint this move as a major miscalculation: Arenas is being paid max money after two major knee injuries, Arenas and Monta are both scoring guards without top-shelf PG skills, and this deal would tie up the organization’s finances in the long term without doing anything to shore up the team’s massive rebounding problems or compensate for the loss of Baron.



But the Warriors of these last few years have never been the kind of team to pay much attention to conventional wisdom. If Mullin had pulled this off, he would have succeeded in marrying the front office’s philosophy to that of the team on the court, even if he’d have done so without intention. Arenas would replace Baron quite cleanly in a philosophical sense, but not in terms of on-court abilities, bringing a change in the specifics of Nellieball while not denying its fundamental principles. Mullin would therefore bring about an entirely new method replacing players within a system: one that conceives of on-court changes as secondary to philosophical continuity.

Organizational unity can mirror what we want to see in the on-court product. Philosophical through-lines do not have to lead to orthodoxy, just as a team’s system doesn’t have to keep each athlete from playing a constrained role without room for individuality. The franchise’s worldview must still be interesting on its own and allow for a certain degree of personal freedom -- the Spurs come closest to this unity in the current NBA, and that doesn’t automatically make them electric eels -- but, with the Arenas offer, the Warriors were on their way to becoming a team that demands something without precedent at every level of the organization.



Unfortunately, this antiestablishment philosophy does not easily translate to the suits. For one thing, NBA salary negotiations exist in a near-utopia in which employers compensate their workers with some attention to the revenue that they produce. When everyday people complain about a lack of respect at work, they’re talking about the difference between comfortable living and getting by; when basketball players complain about the same thing, it actually is about the lack of respect relative to the marketplace, because there’s no necessary reason to complain about a difference of a few million dollars when it’s just a small fraction of the total contract. When a general manager offends his franchise player with a low offer, he changes the conversation between management and player from one of respect and shared involvement to a salary cap issue. Basketball becomes a business.

An MBA doesn’t need to be a prerequisite for enjoying basketball, but what if ideology defined the business end of things, too. Our dearly departed Suns could have used some daring in their recent financial dealings. To take another view of it, does anyone think that the Blazers would be as promising as they appear if Paul Allen didn’t give Kevin Pritchard license to deal second round picks just for the hell of it?

But possibility can’t sustain itself without a basis for hope. Arenas would have replaced Baron as the Warriors’ building block, allowing fans to look to the future while not fretting too much over the lost past. Looking at the current roster and cap situation, I defy anyone to predict what this team will look like next year. Will they just be a more frenetic, less effective version of the present-day Kings? Can Monta Ellis really carry a team at 23? Can Stephen Jackson possibly play the same way without Baron by his side? Will CJ Watson get legitimate minutes at the point? Is Mullin secretly a liberated fan who wants to put Monta and J-Smoove on the same team? Will they score more than ten baskets in the halfcourt offense per game? Am I going to have to shave my beard?