Vocals First, Drums Later

Here at FreeDarko, we're all about weird stuff no one knows or cares about, even though they should. That's why I want to talk about the latest Old Spice ad, featuring Ray Lewis. Actually, I don't want to talk about the campaign, or Lewis (although it's amazing he never won an MVP). I'm amazed at how much this resembles the best kind of work Wieden+Kennedy used to do for Nike. Then that stopped; players wanted to be taken seriously, Jordan cast a long shadow even in retirement, the NBA had an image problem, and there simply wasn't space for either fun or mischief. Even those Roswell Rayguns ads haven't aged so well. But here we have Ray Lewis, an older athlete who no one associates with playfulness, from a sport known as the No Fun League, in a truly bizarre spot that even makes a gratuitous, if compelling, one-line commentary on fantasy sports. The whole commercial becomes that for one second, in fact, and then it's back to the fun house.

Yes, I know that all this going against the grain might be exactly why this ad was possible, and part of why it works so well -- and would work in far clumsier hands. However, the irony is that, with Ray Lewis and football as premise, or the foundation, W+K are able to simply port in the kind of ad we once might have seen from Nike. Note: "The LeBrons" or the "Book of Dimes" are among the last spots in this tradition, before James's ads set out simply to prove that he wasn't a clown. We've been down this road a million times: Advertising with personality helps the NBA, whether or not the people in charge realize this. The Hyperize joint was an encouraging sign. Still, seeing an athlete used like this and have it be a football player -- much less advertise basketball products -- is a real bummer. It's the medical marijuana, or struck-down Prop 8, of a great advertising tradition.

Semi-related and probably deserving more space: There's a misconception floating around that FD likes underdogs. We don't. We like star players, weird players, and players who aren't afraid to be candid. We are also huge snobs who all cut our teeth in various realms of music snobbery. When players we jock, like Julian Wright, turn out to suck, it's an embarrassment. We're looking to catch the next big thing before you do, celebrate the unjustly ignored forces, or pick up on the glorious outliers who just might sneak in and transform the sport in small ways. We love potential. But potential, as it should be, is a burden -- for players in real life, and in terms of the way this blog views them. We don't root for lesser souls; we're all about those who deserve to be, or become, something rare and cunning. A screw-up or drop-out isn't FD, he's the antithesis of it. This isn't Slackerball, it's about making sure we're up on the best the league has to offer. J.R. Smith? He's not a patron saint, he's the prodigal son.

It's his Pasture

Okay, what's getting lost in this whole LeBron James/Russian tycoon/global tycoon synergy is WHERE THE FUCK JAY FITS IN. For pure spurts and puddles, read Woj's column on Mikhail Prokhorov, which will leave you thinking that Prokhorov is hard (of course), his money questionable (it's Russian), and his grand entrance into the lobby of a NYC hotel nothing short of a Jay-Z video.

Incidental, you say? Did Sean fail, since his token ownership stake failed to get the Nets relocated, or generate that much buzz? What about this: Even if the man mattered very little in this particular case, it's his influence that allows James and Prokhorov to make so much sense together. His presence in this deal may add some residual cred, and make it pop a little more, but it's more a lifetime achievement award. Remember, Jay was the first to take the hustle all the way into the boardroom, and make the boardroom respect it. Forget the kingpin fantasies that made our favorite music. That was the old totem; Jay saw a way to really leverage street smarts, and street branding, in a way that brought him real power.

Is he still the figurehead he once was? No matter what you think of the new joint, the answer is no. He's closer and closer to Russell Simmons everyday. That is, less and less involved in any real manipulation of what we might term "gangter capital." Gangsters by themselves are business rubes, at least once they try and enter the halls of legal money. Capital of all kinds is synonymous with selling out, exactly the reason why anyone trying to be the Next Jordan has to tread lightly: Jordan could get away with anything, and even he ended up a corporatized shell on the public stage.

I believe in the power of music. I believe that Jay-Z inspired a generation to believe that there was no shame in trying to clean up a little and invest back in ventures that didn't have to choose between profit and legitimacy. He made a seamless transition from fake drug kingpin (is mafia even lower than this?), to vague wealthy and influential baller with skeletons in the closet, to the nexus of the board room and the streets in a way that worked for everyone. LeBron wants to be like Jay, not Mike; this Russian fellow finds himself with instant credibility because of the pioneering work done by the man without a pen. When the photo opp happens, he needs to symbolically bless the handshake, because it might be his greatest legacy.

(You try and tell me how "My President is Black" fits in here.)

In other news, I am positively baffled by Flip's "Arenas will have the ball more than eighty percent of the time because we're scrapping Princeton". Isn't that an awful lot already? I know that Butler and the other guards did touch it sometimes, and that Arenas's quickness/quick release means he doesn't stand around so much. But I just don't see how this does anything to encourage a change in Gil's game, or the team's complexion. It's not like he was being denied his touches or discouraged from attacking before. This is what happens when Ziller or Kevin Pelton aren't online early.

Update: Maybe he meant "I want him to control the ball and run the offense, not just fire away or attack." But the comment was about % of the time Gil has the ball, not how patient he is.

Say What You Feel

Let that sink in, then go visit my in-depth musings on the topic over at The Baseline.

P.S. The word "musings" should be outlawed, I'm just in too much of a rush to do better right now.

P.P.S. Don't sleep on the newest FD presents DoC podcast. Here for you!

Bend String on Zither

It is with great weariness that I begin this post on Michael Beasley and his rehab situation. I feel like I already pushed forth the envelope of flippancy in my Baseline post on the matter (damn, that works well in a self-referential sense). Maybe too far if it turns out that Beasley gobbling down pills or fall-down drunk all the time.

But when we posted that tattoo twit on Friday, the bags didn't even cross our mind. Maybe we're content to call a bag a bag; maybe we just were't super-scanning the background for too-thrilling data on what a 20 year-old millionaire does in an empty hotel; maybe we know that Beasley probably smokes and plays video games in all his spare time, but just didn't care. Whatever our over-liberal reasoning, the next morning it turned out we'd missed out on a MONSTER SCOOP: Michael Beasley photographed himself with pot-a-phenalia. What a moron.

What became difficult to discern in the flurry of typing that followed was whether Beasley was 1) in the wrong for smoking 2) was dumb for getting caught 3) needed to avoid all perception of smoking, since he had in the past 4) needed to cover his ass better. I was briefly working on a column that tried to link Beasley to Bolt, explaining how skepticism and suspicion was ruining sports, or at least our consumption of it. Or at least making blogs into speculative, uninformed, worthless tabloids that did little more than all squint at the same blurry image, or process the same publicly available circumstance, before giving voice to the "fan in the streets" or "what the mainstream's afraid to say." An unfortunate blurring of function, if you ask me.



Back to the Beasley at hand. Before the window into his soul—I mean, the Twitter account—hit the deck, Beasley threw out a couple of twits that were equal parts morbid, goofy (if you're threatening to take your own life, please limit the number of exclamation points), off-hand, paranoid, impulsive, and, sorry, but culturally specific. Among the many great contributions Tupac made to the world was the trope of imminent doom, brought about by fame, fortune, public scrutiny, and doing shit to piss people off. I admit that Beasley's twits were erratic, but they also fit readily under this rubric. So there might a matter of cross-cultural mis-communication here.

But hey, today, Beasley's checked into rehab, John Lucas is running the show, and we'll see those "possible substance and psychological issues" scrubbed right out of him! Excuse me if I'm not inclined to take this 100% seriously, especially as Yahoo! also reports that it was Riley who made Beasley 'fess up to his involvement in Rookie Transition-gate well after the fact. Beasley is weird dude, one whose personality makes him a fascinating and frustrating public entity. I can only imagine how it is for a team that's invest millions in him. The same goes for this lingering weed association. Why not attach "troubled" to his name once and for all, throw into rehab, make a show of it, and trot him out for 2009-10 with a firm sense of how he's supposed to conduct himself as a pro?

Except that's not what rehab's about. And "troubled" shouldn't simply mean "wacky" or even "pot smokin'." This might be a stigma that haunts Beasley for life, all in the name of public presentation couched in the language of "possible substance and psychological issues." That's the matter-of-fact take on it. There's also the rather ghastly thought that Beasley's being poked and prodded in hopes of uncovering some explanation for his behavior, reprogramming him rather than looking to subject him to the ultimate disciplinary sham/PR cover-up. Michael Beasley is young and foolish, but there's no reason to presume he's got loose screws just because he's poorly-behaved and off-kilter. You can tack various degrees of sinister, or ruthlessly capitalistic, to that.



All this goes on the assumption that 1) Beasley is not indeed insane, since anyone who observed him in college can see he's toned himself down even under the greater stress posed by the pros 2) it's only pot, since a coked-out Beasley would be even more of a nightmare, and a Vin Baker-drunk Beasley would probably have gone to sleep in a giant ditch of his own digging by now (I mean that literally, not figuratively). If, however, this is intended to get Beasley help in earnest, the strategy seems awfully sloppy. Sorry, no pothead demands immediate detox. If the loopiness points to anything deeper, wouldn't it make more sense to first just have him talk to a doctor? Oh, I forgot: Whenever a famous person is unwell, or might be, your spirit them away to rehab so the world can't watch, and they can be spared the humiliation of being picked apart any further in public.

Unless I am totally wrong, and Beasley's been shooting speedballs before every game, this a ton of wasted resources, breath, and bed space for a kid whose long-term mental health—whatever its current state—would probably benefit from a vacation and some trips to a psychologist. But rehab sends a message to the world, and to Beasley. Like jail. Never mind that, if someone sick wants to get well, he needs to do so of his own accord. Threatening and intimidating Beasley onto the straight and narrow by making him hear about men who lose everything and spend their mornings looking a vein. . . it's an insult to Beasley, those addicts, and anyone who ends up working on his "case."

Normal people have to undergo some kind of in-house screening before entering a rehab facility. That Beasley got green-lighted immediately, when his situation would seem to demand at least some preliminary treatment before getting recommended for these places. Maybe I'm out of touch with the treatment of addiction, or the best way to deal with a recreational drug user whose behavioral issues only matter because he's a gigantic business asset. It's just hard for me to read this stuff and not laugh at the whole thing, while feeling a little bad for Beasley—who might have missed out on a chance for an appropriate, not nuclear-level, intervention.

I Believe in Windows

Miss me? If you want some Protestant assurance that I'm not abandoning the goal of endless written output, regard The Baseline, or spy on me in coffee shops as I draft chapters of the next book. So yes, the blog lies fallows, but it's not dead, and elsewhere I thrive.

But I did want to drop by my own ghastly quarters to reflect upon something David Falk. That sound a lot like Stalin's Writings: A Critical Perspective. Really though, there's at least one really telling passage in this Washington Times ode to a great man, one who might belong to a bygone era where superstars actually needed agents for all-hands-on-deck negotiating (these days, you can get by with a lawyer once the sneaker contract's set). Regardless, here's the quote that got me thinking:

"Michael Jordan is a very good player. Is he the first best player in basketball history? That's arguable," Boland says. "Is he the first best endorser in basketball history? That's not even a question."

Agents and marketers have copied what Falk refers to as the "Jordan blueprint" - a strategy Tiger Woods, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant have tried to replicate. For all that Falk did to launch Jordan's career off the court, the agent says, "Michael Jordan not only made my career, he made my life.

Kind of boring, I know. But consider this: FreeDarko has long trumpeted on-court action as a function of personality, a symbiotic bond, even. Why wouldn't marketing, or at least public persona, be similarly tied into who players are? Not saying there's a direct correlation, and this might be more about the "how" than the "what." Think about it, though: Maybe Jordan didn't just fit "the blueprint," he was able to inhabit it, because of who he is as a player and as a person. Private, kind of boring, single-minded on the court, a natural at keeping the ferocious murder-mask and Southern gentleman-ly countenance.



Falk made Jordan. Fine. It was a feat of tremendous vision. But, in the same way that Jordan's game allowed for a new dynamism of sneaker marketing, didn't the entire package of grown-up MJ make a particular marketing plan possible? Somehow, this template has been treated as if multiple athletes found it tried-and-true at the same time, despite their differences. When in fact, to imitate this plan with Jordan's (real) personality or (capacity for) persona is to put the cart before the horse.

It was never going to work with Kobe, for the simple fact that Bryant and Jordan could not be further apart as people. Beyond the "intensity on the basketball court" thing. Not coincidentally, I think that Kobe's mature game bears less and less resemblance to Jordan as he's given rein to be his own basketball-industrial complex. LeBron, too, will learn soon. He's funny, outgoing, and mystical in ways Jordan never was. You can't just transpose a strategy that presumes blandness, control, and compartmentalization and assume it makes sense with the player. Tiger, fine, maybe.

Some, most likely those out to murder Kobe Bryant in his sleep, will argue that the young Bryant tried to emulate MJ as a player, as a man, and in ways that went deep enough so as to sync him up with the Falk/Jordan plan. The lesson, though, comes in the fact that eventually it came crashing down, and there were cracks in the fissure well before the rape case.

Marketing is a form of style. Let's just admit that, no matter how corporations may see it, you ultimately can only get so far by expecting an individual to fit a strategic plan crafted in someone else's image. Thus, even on that plane in which the lie is common currency, athletes must be themselves in order to do so in a way that's, well, honest enough to stick.

Full Moon Drone

What a little honesty can do. Obama suggests that it might be stupid to arrest a cranky old public intellectual in his own home, and it overshadows the most important facing the (non-voting) American populace today. Stephen Marbury sustains 24 hours of online rant 'n' rave, and comes out on the other end provoking a range of emotions . . . if you consider disgust, annoyance, amusement, bemusement, and meta-voyeurism range. Here you go, your hybrid media event of the week, both sides manufactured, both ultimately very revealing.

To repeat something I said on Twitter: Marbury plays basketball for (roughly) the same city that Skip Gates was humiliated in. That's when you realize how, in their utter disparity, these two stories end up contradicting and reinforcing each other.

Dr. LIC called to my attention the following Stanley Fish passage, in today's NYT:

When an offer came from Harvard, there wasn’t much I could do. Gates accepted it, and when he left he was pursued by false reports about his tenure at what he had come to call “the plantation.” (I became aware of his feelings when he and I and his father watched the N.C.A.A. championship game between Duke and U.N.L.V. at my house; they were rooting for U.N.L.V.)

There was some internal debate over whether U.N.L.V was desirable because they represented the antithesis of Duke—including in all matters of style, culture, and race—or simply because they weren't Duke. Dr. LIC and I came to the consensus, though, that it didn't matter. The Times was never going to skew that radical, or near-essentialist. But I almost wish that Fish had, one way or the other, definitively let us know. Not because I think that important African-American figures owe us a daily update on their version of "Blackness," and relative relationship to the latest definitions of the terms.

No, I just think this kind of inkling would make the story more intelligible to members of the public who see Gates as having left himself behind and flipped out. Who don't see how the PBS figure connects to this outrage and belligerence. On the one hand, it's evidence of certain "tendencies" in Gates that could be used against him. But it also serves to undermine the myth of the good/bad Negro. Gates could be the paragon of respectability, and yet still have this sense of alienation simmering inside him—without it showing through except under the most exigent circumstances. That's proof that not he flipped out, but that anyone assuming that an angry Harvard professor is acting erratically just doesn't get it.



Back to saying all that you mean, and putting stock in the idea that the world need know that we exist on multiple levels, or registers. One can override most, and keep us secure. However, without those strains of dissent or self-contradicton, it becomes all the easier for a public figure to be portrayed as "lost" or "ruined" when he goes down that avenue. Show that they're connected, and people start to understand how these strains can co-exist. This, and not the politics of post-racial blandness, is Obama's most important political gimmick.

When I wrote that piece on Iverson and shifting definitions of authenticity, I spend way too much time explaining what I thought about AI. That really was neither here nor there. I also was wary of bringing hip-hop into the picture, because everyone knows I don't count there at all. But that's the analogy I was going for. Iverson was hip-hop to the core because, from a young age, he learned to make his public and professional face almost formally, or at least over-determinedly, fiery and uncompromising. Say what you will about his heart, or his production on the court, but as an athlete and public figure, Iverson never backed down, believed primarily in his own self-determination, and in that, met that era's fairly intentional, inorganic definition of "realness."

If that gets murky in basketball terms, just think about it vis a vis rap. One can be earnest, or know how he got to a point of playing a part, while still having to suppress contradictory strains of personality or behavior. Or creativity. Or style. So fine, argue about Iverson's career all you want. As an icon, he's associated with that strange space where fierce honesty can lead you down the path of self-limitation. Like Richard Nixon.

All of which brings us back to Marbury. In that Iverson ditty, I concluded that his stubbornness/integrity had given way to something more fluid, flexible and, if not complex, at least more stem cell-like among athlete images. Twitter brings us athletes watching their manners, sometimes, acting like themselves, mostly, and all in all, makes the Jordan/Iverson struggle seem like two prehistoric gods who battled to the death and left only pragmatism in their wake (note: any and all propositions that involve Obama and Twitter together are true.). The dark—for lack of a better word—side of this new access is UStream, which seems to attract only players who have the most to lose by having an unfiltered camera on them (or sprung on them) for hours on end.

J.R. Smith, we got you. Brandon Jennings may have been blindsided, but it's not accident he was mixed up in that world of new media marketing. And now Marbury's marathon spazz-session which, at its best, hammered home for me Dr. LIC's comparision of Steph to Tracy Jordan/Morgan, and how our inability to tell the difference between the two Tracys was something far more sad than just "dude playing himself." The tragedy of Iverson is that, while he spent so much time doing what he thought steeled him best against adversaries, and gave him the greatest, can't-trust-no-one chance for survival, he's also funny, charismatic in the grand warm sense of yore, and known for taking his art seriously, and game as art.



Who could forget this wild and woolly TrueHoop post, and a passage that should ring in our memories forever:

"Allen took psychocybernetics to a new level," [high school athletic director] Kozlowski recalls. Today, Iverson doesn't like to talk about how he does what he does on the basketball court. "I just do it," he says. Partially, like any artist, he is wary of overanalyzing his gift. But it could also be that he's known since high school that the real explanation defies easy answers, that the answer is, at heart, both beneath and above the level of language, and connected, on some level, to his psyche.

Cybernetics has to do with learning to understand a higher dimension after you break your nose, or something, and really, this plus the "unplugged" Iverson is one of the great lost opportunities of the modern marketing age. Did he jump or was he pushed? Remember those adidas bloopers that got yanked from YouTube once they blew up? Adidas eventually put some factory-sanctioned ones up for T-Mac, but Iverson's never returned.

Then, there's Stephon Marbury, whose last 24-hours speak for itself. Like it or not, that's Marbury. Try and position his performance in opposition to his career, or write it off as a stunt. But the very conception of it is totally weird. The mainstream media pushes binaries, or at least set models, and we buy into them. Marbury may have all along had the warning signs of a grade-A weirdo, but we were too busy trying to decide if players were Iverson or Jordan to connect the dots. The behavior with the Knicks certainly helped things, and yet that was taken as "acting out" in the same way that ultimately, Gilbert Arenas's persona served to make him seem more sane than the initial anecdotes that came out.

Staring into the abyss, sailing into the heart of darkness without you calling me racist. That's the shock, and retroactive head-slap, that this Marbury thing brought for me. Where have all the truly odd people gone in sports? We squelched them out as much as the corporations did. For better or worse, now there's nowhere for any of us to hide.

If people like Skip Gates were not only allowed, but expected, to have layers to them, the range of their personality would be harder to dismiss or reduce to an unflattering photo. If sports culture more often took into account that jocks are a sample of the population at large (some gay, some depressed, some indecisive) then this Marbury thing would've been a close-up on a landscape we'd known had been there all along. And instead of our judgments being cynical, we would know that the cynicism rested purely within our own hearts.

You've Got The Look!

I always thought these things came out after the draft, but here these are. Okay, so maybe they always come out beforehand; perhaps I didn't notice until this year because so much is unsettled, so many players looking to define themselves amidst the din, that such images matter more than usual. Anyway, here's my cursory do/don't take on these, with apologies to Billups:



For someone so gangly on the court, Thabeet, unlike most seven-footers, sure knows how to look natural in the suit. He also has a face that looks like it could be put on a normal-sized person, a big plus when it comes to centers seeming human. The guy even shrugs and grins naturally, effortlessly, in a way that puts you at ease. This is wholesome point guard territory, not the usual awkward weirdo introvert.Counterbalance all that on-court scouting, now no one will whisper when he goes top three. For hell's sake, what other big man can drape a sweater over his shoulders without looking like a demonic scarecrow?



Everyone else is trying to tell us who they are, or really are, or want us to think they really are, with these shots. Ricky Ricky could give a fuck less about that. This is all about "how will I like in a fashion shoot" or "am I paparazzi worthy," maybe even "imagine this billboard over Times Square." Because see, Rubio isn't a person, he's an icon, a cute little sensation waiting to, however briefly, make an NBA city feel like it's the center of the basketball world. If that ugly-ass dude who is always on the Clippers could bag a model, imagine what kind of arm-candy this guy will come up with? You other kids get sneaker contracts; he's busy moving Armani.



Life is all about stark contrasts. Here's Rubio's arch-rival, humorless, smile-less, and without frivolity, dressed up just enough to show you he knows he, dressed down to show you he will roll up those sleeves and get to work. That expression says STRICTLY BUSINESS, and he's even hiding the ball in a non-flamboyant way. "My name is Brandon, and I control the rock." This shot also makes you believe he's just a weird-looking dude, not a teen still growing into his face. It's all gaze, no market, just the portrait of a player who wants respect. Which is overdoing it, of course, since this shit about him falling to #20 is just a Masonic conspiracy.



They say Jrue Holiday isn't ready. They say he only looks good on paper. The answer? Make him look a very sensitive golem emerging from a long lunch break in the void of un-being. I hope that's a satisfactory explanation.



Jordan Hill is just trying to figure it all out.



You know the ultimate mark of either a very young athlete or a total mama's boy? When they can't rock an outfit without looking like someone else picked it out for them. It also doesn't help that DeRozan, who is going to get drafted based on athleticism, looks like he's running for student body president of Dead Person University. No color? No expression but that wan grin? I don't even believe this guy can move. Or maybe I'm reading it all wrong, and that's the point: Seriousness and composure, to preempt all the "jump out the gym" talk. Even something resembling a wrap-around pass. Hidden secrets. Unknown pleasures. Whatever the last Joy Division album is called.



First of all, I own that same outfit. But not the socks. I like the socks, and think that's the next frontier of NBA fashion. That said, Curry looks perfectly comfortable and convincing until you get to the point of contact between his hand and the ball. NOT A GOOD SIGN. If he's going to be anything more than a friendly catch-and-shoot fella, he could at least look like he sometimes takes the ball out at night and does tricks in front of the mirror. . . in that outfit. That's what the people want.



Does Hansbrough mean to be wearing exactly what Adam Morrison rocked in 2006?

Is the War Over Now?

As Ziller explains, first the news came over email. As Tom succinctly put it, "no haircut could ever be more meaningful. In all of America." If I believed in titles that made sense, I'd go with "The Chop Heard 'Round the World." Nate Jones later posted photographic evidence, seen above. But before we knew exactly what was up, in those first few breathless moments of comprehension, Joey Litman and I tried to make sense of it all.

Bethlehem Shoals: Inside report: AI HAS CUT OFF HIS BRAIDS
Joey Litman: I hope he goes back to the mini-fro he had at Georgetown. There was something youthfully innocent about it, and I think it engendered optimism in me. I am also a nostalgist, though.
BS: I like that angle. Like before him being him was a burden.
JL: Exactly. Back when he was free to just play. To just be. To be a kid. His public persona, for better or worse, is kind of like a prison.
BS: There was always something defensive about the braids. Like "yeah, this is me where I feel safest. Now step the fuck back."

JL: Completely agree. And they may have allowed him to feel like he owned the way he was being portrayed. Even if it wasn't his choice, even if he didn't fully control it, choosing braids gave him at least the illusion of self-determination.
BS: Or more cynically, was like "if you're really going to fear me anyway, I'm going to drop all pretense of playing that game." Which sort of implies that Iverson was once ready to deal.
JL: I don't disagree with that, but I sometimes wonder about whether he was, or if that was just something we assumed as a result of the redemption narrative: out of jail, prodigious talent, father-figure coach who would help him see that potential and walk the righteous path. That imports a sense that he was ready, or willing, but maybe it was just easy to go along with things without any real certainty.
BS: Or, let's put it like this: He was at least somewhat humble, and realized it was a new venue, when he first hit the league. Not redemption per se, but pragmatic. Then when the backlash came, he retreated into an especially dark (yes, keep the pun) and reactionary form of Romanticism.
JL: Kind of like he threw up his hands and said "I tried to play by the rules, I tried to be nice, but fuck it. You don't seem to care, or get it, so i am just gonna do me." And oddly, doing him, rocking the braids, only reinforced what people were saying. It's like a weird Stockholm Syndrome in some way.



BS: But what about now, when everyone's saying he might fetch nothing on the open market, and has clearly receded into history as the league's major influence? Now it's just marketing, right? Was it just marketing for Melo, too?
JL: As you know (i think you know), I think Carmelo is like Common and like A-Rod--Carmelo seems like he's searching for something. I think that his period at Syracuse, when he was the man, and his talent allowed him to rule the game, was illusory. And I think his PR missteps as a pro, and the stigma that he can't win a playoff series, and the fact that his charm and thoughtfulness are often buried underneath the stereotypical trappings of someone in his position--to me, it all points to this directionless-ness. The braids were perhaps a part of cleaving to an archetypal identity that may or may not really be him, but gave him direction.

JL: Oddly, I think he's maybe coming out of it. This season feels different. I think winning at the Olympics helped him. I think doing more than only scoring has helped. He plays and comports himself with more self-possession this year.
BS: It's weird, people say he took a step back from other international competition, when he dominated. But yeah, his more focused, mature season is probably the result of the Olympics, too.
JL: That's kind of my read on it. and "mature" is a good word. I think he has grown up in some ways. Not to say a grown man, or a self-possessed man, can't have braids. But if the braids are part of a uniform, in effect, and not just a personal preference, they can mean something else. And in the league, thanks to AI, in particular, they can connote some lingering "otherness."
BS: Well, I've always thought of Melo as trying to mediate between being the NCAA champ "good son" or alt-Bron "new jack", and the really real heir to Iverson's street cred, since that's what differentiated him from Bron. Now he's proven he's still got street in him. But on some level, as a businessman—the post-Jay hustler archetype that's replaced the Scarface thing as the model of success—he's got to move on and market himself.

BS: In Iverson's case, he kind of preceded all that. For Iverson to, for lack of a better word, assimilate, doesn't have as clear a narrative to it. How does he justify dropping the ultimate symbol of his personal integrity? It really is all about not necessarily changing his image, but becoming less conspicuous. Is that a return to the beginning? Like "just let me play my game, and then sign me based on that."
JL: Like hitting the reset button. It's funny that it's so hard for him to do that. other players--players who weren't as singular, and as culturally significant--have been able to do that. But with Allen, it's like people don't even want him to.
BS: Well, Melo didn't hit reset per se. He moved on. And that's really the bottom line. At this point, can we even imagine what it means for Iverson to evolve, in terms of game, image, or meaning? Or is he at once an important piece of history and such, doomed in the present.

Our Kind of Scraping

Were this a real blog, Josh Howard's drag-racing arrest would've hit this page immediately; we would've coined some half-hearted jokes about driving cars fast while blazed, which hopefully would've been recognized their own irony. And kaloo fucking kalay, another athlete fuck-up to generate page views for us.

We're not a real blog, and in fact, we're the sort of blog put in a decidedly awkward position by Howard's latest shenanigans. Nothing but positivity here, endless attempts to sculpt and reconstruct players' personas so they can resist being needlessly dragged through the mud.

We presume there to be some degree of complexity in every human being, and—not withstanding the fundamental unknowability of our subjects—professional athletes are no less contradictory than the rest of us. Otherwise, they would be supremely one-dimensional and boring, which is probably where my expectations (and preferences) differ from most other watchers of sports. It's like this Olympic thing: Sure, the All-Stars look sparkling together, but so Hollywood sex scenes. What does man learn of himself when everything falls effortlessly into place, smooth, gliding, and unblemished?

The case of Josh Howard, though, could very well underline the hypocrisy, or at least the fragility, of this site's conception. Some might say it's Kobe did us in. After all, I've tirelessly defended him against all attacks. On the other hand, I've always maintained that Bryant is flawed beyond belief—just that flaws are not the same as automatica damnation in all matters. Howard, though, seemed until last spring like an unassailable good dude. Devotion to family, to school, to surrogate, to the spirit of the game, to team, and cherished by his franchise. Then things started to unravel. After a torrential start, where people like me got caught up and called for him to supplant Dirk, Howard slumped. There were back problems, which may or may not have triggered the whole thing, and the death of the great-grandmother who had raised him.



We all know the rest real well. He smokes, everyone smokes, Josh Howard upstages the playoffs with infamy while he performs poorly. Handing out birthday party invites in the locker room before a critical contest. Suddenly, he becomes dispensable; I still don't know if he played into Avery's firing, or whether a new coach makes Howard more or less safe after a few months of non-stop shopping. Now, over a FanHouse, Matt captures to paradox that Howard has become: Doing wonderful things for his Winston-Salem community through basketball, then arrested that same night for drag-racing. To paraphrase Matt, it's a shame that Howard managed to rehab his image a little, only to immediately tear it down again.

I'm not here to excuse Howard's traffic violations, or his previous ratting out of the entire league. Nor are they even similar: One is youthful recklessness, the other out-of-control honesty. But what they do have in common is that, if you take the events of 7/30 as a whole, and looks at the entire pot explosion (not just the dagger), they show how hard it is to paint Howard as a good guy or a bad guy. And—what do you know—it's almost like he's thwacked harder, maybe gleefully, by the media for his having again ravaged his own credibility. Through no fault of his own, he's set a high bar for his behavior, since, you know, there's no way anyone could have traces of both angel and asshole within him. Certainly, the juxtaposition Matt cites is a better story than some random NBA player of questionable (or unknown morals) driving too fast.

So maybe I'm supposed to come on here today and be like, "oh, I'm so stupid for supporting Howard, he does bad things and deserves to be mocked. He has failed us." I guess. But really, I'm more concerned with us figuring out how to reconcile these two sides of Howard, something he'll have to do himself going forward.



You could argue that Melo's had to do something similar, without nearly the "good guy" rep to burden him. All Anthony had to do was prove that he wasn't as rough as Iverson. Howard, it's like if David Robinson woke up and found J.R. Rider living inside of him. That's a challenge for him, but also for all of us who like to think that there are values inherent in being a fan. If we owe athletes anything, we at least owe them the capacity to contain contradictions. Something that's a pretty basic right, and point of pride, for everyone from Christian fundamentalists to non-retarded socialists. Hell, it's this, and not his mealy-mouthed record, that's made Bill Clinton an icon.

Or, if you want, I can get some commenters riled up by bringing in Obama's "abandonment" of the netroots. . .

How Many Angles in a Vortex?

Note: I've got a new Sporting News column on the draft and gender, or something. This is longer.

When we were batting around draft ideas, Ty Keenan suggested that Mayo (and to some degree, Walker) were in the unique position of having their value peak, crash, and then rise up from the ashes in redemption—all before the draft prognostication even really got under way. We all decided that this was a function of undue hype, a circumstantial shutdown of the wild and woolly HS days. They had to come crashing down before, in this new climate, either could be viewed fairly. And then, the positives stood out again, the very ones that had set them on a pedestal in the first place. This is rational, folks, if a little awkward.

But the Michael Beasley's ride through the pre-draft rapids has been a lot less transparent. Even heading into the NCAAs, most people had Beasley penciled in at number one. Sure, there was the shady recruiting stuff, that WaPo piece, and rumors of a bad attitude and poor work ethic. Yet his one-and-done campaign had been such a freight-train of talent, his game so insistent, and so much of the negativity quelled by his on-court progress and words from the behind the scenes, that Beasleys PR problems seemed a thing of the past.

THEN: Rose's tournament ascendency, the "character issues" revisited as the draft became more real, and the lukewarmness of Paxson and Riley. Suddenly, Beasley was again a bad seed, this draft's problem child, Derrick Coleman redux just waiting to happen.



Or was he? In a blink, Beasley made his now-famous "I'm just a kid" comments. Was he dead serious all the time? No, but he'd probably grow out of that, and anyway, wasn't it his right to have a personality? This site and others rushed to brand him the new Gilbert Arenas. A vote for Beasley was a vote against staid hypocrisy, against buttondown orthodoxy in the way the NBA treats and represents its players. He became a martyr, fighting valiantly—if somewhat obliviously—to let players be themselves, to allow them to grow up in public instead of damaging them by expecting too much, too soon. Where Kwame Brown lay in a lifeless heap, Beasley planted a tree and saw it flower.

Stay with me here: The backlash was that, fine, Beasley's a kid, and a light-hearted one at that. And yet the truly elite teens—like, for instance, his best friend Kevin Durant—have that inner fire evident from the get-go. There are growing pains, even moments of weakness when the weight of expectations causes buckle. However, this line of work means working past these episodes, not glorifying them. Riley's disdain for Beasley's goofiness may have been an overreaction, and perhaps too moralistic. However, Riles does know basketball, and whether or not Bealey was defiling the game, it's safe to say that a failure to keep a straight face in the workout told us something about Beasley's disposition. Not a bad guy, but a space cadet, which sometimes seems like a liability in, say, Arenas.

At this point, there was talk of Beasley dropping to #3, or at least being dismissively traded by Miami (way to keep that chip shiny!). And thus, another trope of Arenas reared its head: The feisty underdog. Damn it, Michael Beasley would prove the likes of Riley wrong. He would tear up the league, and show the establishment how wrong it had been to ever doubt him. That's why you have ESPN picking him to blog his pre-draft experience, as well as make short videos brimming with both vitality and slightly unsettling unpredictability. The cult of Beasley was in full swing, and somehow, was as much about sympathy, a feeling for the warm and fuzzy victim who just wanted to have fun, as the bad-ass he portrayed on the court.



There was an imbalance there, and it's being corrected now. As of today, Michael Beasley isn't the king of the freaks any more, he's a misunderstood People's Champ who, when you get down to it, is all about wreaking havoc on the court. All the silly stuff, that's a most elevated version of swagger, pitched so high and relentless that resolves into a reckless calm. He's Amare, and maybe even The Wire's Snoop. Beasley will be on a vendatta from the second he hits the court, one without any of the eccentricity or elegance of Gil's. There will be dunks, and blocks, and threes over unsuspecting PFs. In terms of demonstrativeness, Garnett had better watch his back. He'll be a sneaker magnet, in part because he's a laugh riot (PREDICTION: If he went Nike, the ying/yang ads with him and Durant would be instant classics), but also because of the dynamism of his game.

Here's where we hit the inevitable question: Who is the real Michael Beasley? Of course I don't really know, and with someone who hasn't even hit the league yet, there's that much less to go on. But I suspect he's a combination of all these things, a series of contradictions—some imposed upon him, some stubborn and internal. It's a testament to his charisma, or maybe just the laziness of a media that has covered him like a political candidate, that he's been subject to this parade of monolithic characterizations. He's an icon waiting to happen, but paradoxically, we might have to settle for one with murky edges. In the two months since the lottery, Beasley's already gone through a Bowie-like parade of makeovers. That has to be reason to stop and reasses our mode of judgment.

What's more, there obviously a connection between these conflicting perception of him and his game. No one's labeling him a tweener, but Beasley's hardly getting the kind of "change the game" love that fell Durant's way. And yet, is he any less confounding, or versatile, a player? Sure, he can't play guard, but he's already more physical than KD will ever be. I don't want to say that the uncertainty his style causes has created a persona in flux, but it's pretty safe to say that the inverse is true. And that, if there is some chicken/egg at play here, it might be a long time before these questions get settled.

No One's Pistols

All sort of amazing possibilities about to come true. Shortly, Deadspin will post my Finals preview, which barely mentions Kobe but will probably still infuriate someone on that count. On Wednesday, when we should be flipping out over this season's climax, FreeDarko will drop a screwy, shambolic draft preview that, so far, I'm quite pleased with.

But before any of that happens, I wanted to raise one Kobe point that's sure to set off 100+ comments. Today on Morning Edition, they had the "Finals for non-sports fans" preview. It was okay, I guess, and yet was mostly notable for the window it gave me into the minds of people who have little or nothing invested in the Kobe wars. Basically, dude was running through the key players and match-ups, and ultimately decided that the Lakers have the edge because Bryant can take over a game like no one on earth. That's what makes him impossible to prepare for, such a god among men, etc. At least when you're trying to sell him to people who probably don't care.

Let's forget, for a second, the fact that super heroism is one of sport's great pleasures, and the one reliably shiver-inducing feature of the NBA. I have no idea how people can resist its allure, which has a lot to do with my disdain of unequivocal anti-Kobe rage. It's like, haven't you even been hiking, or watched a documentary on conversion and zealotry?

I'm mostly amazed at how what was once Kobe's main weakness, as a player and a brand (persisting far longer in the latter), has now been laundered. In its most simple formulation, it's what makes him undeniably great. That stands for the layperson, but I think it's getting harder and harder to deny—or resist—among those in the know, no matter what side of the fence they take.

Granted, Kobe's changed, so his one-man assaults no longer have the same nasty, anti-social connotation. Still, the change in public perception, and desire to stress this part of his game, is telling. There's a wave in town, and it's hard to resist.

Also, R.I.P. Walt Dickerson and Bo Diddley.

UPDATE: Deadspin preview up, light on you-know-who.

The Orderly Exchange of Grip-Taped Hatchets

I'm taking a wild guess that this Josh Howard non-event is a defining moment for the FD community. Namely, there's really no need for me to come on here and grandstand about how uninteresting weed is, how in Howard's case it plays neither to a racist image or questions about his attitude. Or how, as most of us know, Howard's second-half slump is a function of back problems and multiple deaths around him that he's decided to play through—both of which, from what I hear, are good therapeutic uses for pot if he were to smoke during the season.

The outrage most of us feel at the bristling know-nots is encapsulated perfectly by Henry's post, which mentions a certain Deadspin piece of mine. The whole controversy almost feels like a manufactured campaign trail issue, what with the push it's getting on local news channels. I also find it odd that, in football, it's now become common practice to admit to past weed use before the draft, to get all the skeletons out there. This isn't quite the same, since Howard stressed continued (if declined) use, and implicated others. But, as Devin Harris said on the sidelines, this is just Howard speaking his mind; he just does not give a fuck about bullshit delicacies and inference because he "knows they're not true.". Like Henry said, it's only a shock if we pretend we didn't know, and reward those who play along on what should be a relatively minor issue. Grow the fuck up, AmeriKKKa!!!!!!!



Where is Bill Walton in all this? Why did Howard have to go on the show of an avowed high-steppin' 12-stepper, whose tone and languge were straight out of smug intervention 101? It's a credit to Howard that, while Irvin was insisting that pot would break J-Ho's heart, he didn't once say "fall back, Old Crack, I've got this." He didn't come off so well, but partly because his disdain for the whole dog and pony show was evident. Drinking is rampant in the league, and that for sure fucks up your play worse the next day. It was telling to see the ESPN studio crew weigh in. Jalen giggling, more or less saying "young buck, just keep that among us," but clearly kind of enjoying the whole confrontation. SAS seeing it as a PR blunder that showed poor judgment on Howard's part bringing it out now.

What I'm really driving at, though, is that this flare-up feels like it's going on in a different dimension. I like sports, but I've also been around drugs a lot. I haven't smoked pot in over a decade, but that doesn't mean I have any strong feeling on it one way or the other. It's like, people thinking rationally can see the difference between fun intoxication and life-encroaching, job-wrecking problem. For Irvin to sit there and judge Howard like the latter's in the same boat as him—at best, it's solicitous, at worst, fear-mongering. Alcohol is the real scourge unto our nation, and it's a 24-hour source of pride. If Howard is going to have the decent to talk straight and off-the-cuff, at least have the decent to meet him head-on.



More playoffs fun: Some of you already think I've fallen the fuck off, and hopefully, once the book drops I'll be branded a sell-out. But when that happens, I invite you to go back and listen to this interview I did with 1420 ESPN Radio in Hawaii, where I proposed NBA Shit-Talking Semiotics to differentiate between Stevenson's war on Bron and J.R. popping off at Kobe down the stretch. The reasoning: Stevenson can't stop James. His one good offensive game was nice for his ego, but his bragging was based on their match-up. Smith, on the other hand, was guarding Kobe when Bryant already had established his unbreakable stranglehold on the game that night. No way J.R., who while much-improved on defense is hardly associated with that role, was claiming he could shut down Bean Thousand. So the flap most like becomes an abstract back-and-forth about general court prowess, and fuck it, when J.R. gets going he CAN score like Kobe. Thus, I deem the latter altogether more acceptable.

I have no mortal explanation for what's going on in Philly/Detroit. The Sixers still looked ragged and choppy last night, but unlike the past two contests, I had a real sense that it was working, leading somewhere, part of the plan all along. They're not the fluid team they were in the regular season, the one us dreamers had hoped to see make noise in the post-season, but this weird combination of athleticism, guts, and demolition derby might yet turn out to be an interesting contribution to the canon. Also, it's become abundantly clear—Matt Watson even agrees with me—that Amir Johnson has become the key to this series. Everything that's "wrong" with him is what Philly is using to shunt the Pistons. Sort of how J.R. Smith has become absolutely key to any Nuggets hopes. E.G. I control the universe, if you didn't know.



I've been getting a little annoyed at my fatalism throughout this first round "Jazz will take it, easy"; "Philly's done"; "Phoenix has looked too dominated". But I don't think it's too strong to state that we should go-ahead and start packing away our Suns keepsakes, our Barbosa autographed lapels and Nash surf goggles. Amare has risen above it all, and despite last night's ugh, should be able to dominate on his own for years to come. As a unit, a family we've come to love, that's all meandering out the door. Get stricken.

Foot on the Lever

Excuse the rant-y quality of what follows, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Avery Lemacorn already gave us some comprehensive analysis of the Hornets/NOLA dynamic. But with All-Star Weekend here at last, I feel moved to weigh in with some words about the locale. It's no secret that Katrina was a racialized tragedy, and the NBA—the league most often tarred with negative racial associations—threw its weight behind the rebuilding effort like no other major sport. Certainly, a lot of the weekend's festivities will nod toward the disaster, with players going out of their way to fit some goodwill appearances into their schedules.

I wonder, though, if the weekend writ large will feel any different. Wilbon famously referred to ASW as "the Black Thanksgiving," which if nothing else invests it with some kind of socio-cultural weight. Now, in New Orleans, you've got athletes who jumped at the chance to donate their time and money two years ago, including plenty who participated in Kenny Smith's ad hoc charity game in Houston (the Black All-Star Game?). What's perplexing me is that this just doesn't feel like a moment. Why isn't it all coming together in some sort of powerful statement about the power of sport, the degree to which the NBA reads black, and the cultural significance of its best-known figures?

Maybe it's just too late. At a time when the league might very well move a team to Oklahoma City, maybe having All-Star Weekend in NOLA isn't such a big deal. The downtown is largely intact or, on the surface, redone. The surrounding areas of total devastation are pretty well-hidden, and are looking more and more like permanent features of the city's landscape. There's enough of an infrastructure to keep things under control—hell, there's probably still Blackwater creeping around in the alleys for when shit gets really ugly.



It's a nice gesture that the game's there, albeit possibly condescending to the city and to whatever the NBA could mean. And let's not forget that, in the wake of Katrina, the city's demographic slant just ain't what it used to be. It's always decent to honor the ghosts of the dead, but those of the evicted and displaced? With a corporate salute? Again, that just doesn't add up to me.

And that's just it. This isn't an aggressive gesture on the part of the players, or the league, to take the side or show unwavering support for the city's victims. It's the blackest sport there is, brought into a city that's knee-deep in whitewash and dreams of gentrification. Had the All-Star Game come there sooner, it could've been a beacon of hope. Had it been seen as intervening to call folks home, to say that "this is our city," then I'd see some political relevance in it. Instead, it almost feels like a smokescreen.

While the charity that immediately followed Katrina felt like a movement, whatever players do now—and I'm not trying to downplay their sincerity, I'm just saying—is decidedly lacking in that tremulous overtone. If anything, it kind of makes it seem like settling is the best they can hope for. Bring in the All-Star Game, get some help for some families who made their way back. That means New Orleans is still black, right?



Addendum: You've probably all read ESPN's multi-articled treatment of the NBA's image problem by now. I personally don't see anything wrong with my claiming that the league can mean something to African-Americans, including disenfranchised ones, while agreeing with the mag that the Association isn't comprised only of ghetto success stories. Obviously there are distinctions of region and class within any ethnic group; it's the responsibility of those outside of it to acknowledge these, and not think with too broad a brush. However, that doesn't preclude the NBA and its players being a positive force for African-Americans writ large. In fact, it's when stereotypes break down that a group can have some sort of solidarity that doesn't run the risk of hurting it.