Scream All Day

This will totally shock all of you: The still-untitled FreeDarko Book 2 will at one point address some "could've been" players. I had called them "what if's," but not only does that encompass much more, it also overlaps with the Simmons tome—one of my great anxieties about the project. The last thing I want to do is look like I'm ripping off another colorful NBA history book that came out one year before ours.

Last night, as I inexplicably watched the World Series over Lakers/Hawks, I struggled to come up with the perfect characterization of that kind of player. Then it turned into a model, so I decided to scrap it and make it a blog post, not in the least because it could use some copious reader input. I think they call it open source, or cheating. First, though, some glimmers from the NBA I caught last night: I fear the Lakers will win it all with Bynum as rampaging dinosaur and Artest and Odom used as unimaginatively as possible. The Blazers really bum me out, especially Aldridge. Blatche is the original Anthony Randolph. Stop comparing Oscar Robertson to LeBron, Robertson was a better mid-period Kidd with scoring genes (that was all Ziller). Ozzie Guillen's pre-game commentary shows you why Kevin Garnett will never be part of a studio crew.

But back to the problem that really bugged me. We all know that there exist players we say "if only" about. For one, there's two kind: Those that drive us insane when they're around, and assume the glow of exceptionalism once they've retired. That's due in large part to the fact that 99.99999% of these players have problems with injuries, which we've learned to hate the victim for, or fuck up personally, which just gets really old really fast (at least if you're trying to argue for their hypothetical place among the game's elite). Beyond that, there's the more complicated matter of what kind of legacy we're going off of. What I haven't figure out yet is whether, in the end, we view all these types the same way—many paths to the same honorary status—or the kind of career a player manages to have in fact decides how real, extravagant, or wishful our projections for them end up being. I also really want someone to tell me if certain of these scenarios are more common to one sport, or position, than others.

After much handwringing and chatting, I arrived at the following four categories, which for now lack snappy names:

1. Guys who, when all is said and done, somehow convince us they'd had an actual career. This one is startlingly subjective: Sandy Koufax, Gale Sayers, and Bill Walton all belong here even though each had a very different arc as a player. Maybe "non-player" is more appropriate. This is kind who make the Hall of Fame without anyone making a fuss.

2. One step below that, we have players who strung together several seasons of stardom, but either not to a degree, or without enough distinction, to elevate them to the top category. Sometimes, it's just a matter of us being unable to get over how incomplete their place in history seems; they're a strange mix of conjecture and actuality that's its own kind of purgatory. I put Pete Reiser and Maurice Stokes here; Stokes is HOF but it's largely sentimental.

3. Total flashes-in-the-pan, one-year wonders who sustain nothing but suggest multitudes. Herb Score goes here, as does Mark Prior. These are the real darlings of the "could've been" fetishists, at least those with the most preposterously Romantic streaks; that because Category #2 is generally classified as "tragic."

4. Pure potential. Never really got a chance for those initial assessments to be proven wrong. Len Bias is the obvious, and most extreme, example here. Ernie Davis. Shaun Livingston probably fits, as well.

With that, I open up the floor for discussion. Add names, critique the framework, give a sport-specific analysis. It's like a Wiki with the head cut off. Or the tail, maybe.

Which Way to Christendom?

I can take no credit for the following idea: Skeets said it, left me to think about it for hours, and then said this morning that he'd barely considered it since opening the floodgates. And frankly, I think it deserved better. It may have come out of a discussion of a certain incident I'm sure we're all quite sick of, and not at all interested in hashing out any further. But it's just as applicable to yesterday's GW musings, and sets up a brand new line of inquiry concerning style and intention. Now, I want us all to come together and see it through.

Skeets asked, simply enough, why it is that only defensive plays (or players) are branded as "reckless" or "irresponsible," when certainly there are offensive plays that pose just as much of a destructive threat. This obviously breaks down two ways: Guys who put themselves at risk, and those who endanger the well-being of others. The latter category is easier to get a handle on, but it's generally incumbent upon the defender to get out of the way. The way basketball is constructed, defense reacts to offense. Sure, LeBron could run down the court and crash into someone, or leap right into them and break a nose. But the former is so "reckless" that it borders on incompetence, while in the case of the latter, we make it the duty of the defender to judge whether it's worth trying to draw a charge. If there weren't that agency involved, the charge wouldn't have once been a heroic act.

(Furthermore, in both cases, the defender will be on the ground, while the most serious concern is falls from up above.)

But what about players who play with a self-destructive streak? Or someone like Manu, often described as "out of control." Perhaps inspired by this excellent comment, I've begun thinking about the responsibility involved when a player takes flight. I'm not saying they should hold back and get all timorous, but that through experience guys who jump a lot gain a sense of how to go up in a way that, when they come down, will minimize their likelihood of dying. Or even just knowing how to break their fall when caught by surprise. Falling is, after all, an act of style, and can tell you a lot about a player. And in the sense that it's directly tied to their mortality, it may be one of the most revealing of all.

P.S. Because I am bored: Elevating the Game is like FD with history; When A Man Cries is my favorite soul comp ever; and The Furies is the perfect cowboy-noir movie. And Flower Traveling Band are playing a reunion at the Knitting Factory this weekend. THE WONDERS OF THE WIDGET ARE THERE FOR YOU TO PROBE!!!!!!

Clay Left Smoldering

New Shoals Unlimited on the linguistic lunacy that is the Most Improved Player award. Also, notice the new Amazon widget to the right: Same "you buy stuff by clicking through here, we benefit" idea, but new approach. We're going to be recommending books, music, movie, whatever we feel is worthy of FD's prized endorsement. If you click through there, feel free to buy whatever you want. But the point is to manipulate you.

Apologies if I've touched on this before, but when you have the same screamed phone conversation with multiple FreeDarko members, it warrants a post. It's agreed around headquarters that, simply put, Gerald Wallace is now scary. Not edgy, exhilarating, or overwhelmingly intense. When you watch him play now, fright nips at each and every fiber of your bones.

Part of it is his appearance. I will never cease to hammer home this "Gerald Wallace is the Predator" meme, because this is what a pop culture/sports analogy should be. Wallace is now a little older, thicker, and yet at the same time broken down and flecked with scars on his arms and shoulders. Gone is the sleek, statuesque specimen who was equally at home walking on air or slamming into the earth. Now, Gerald Wallace looks like the sum of all his heights and collisions—lofty, worn, tough, and always in a quiet frenzy. His dreads creep down the side of his head, where they occasionally come into contact with the plastic mouth guard that's always hanging out in the air.

This kind of adornment seems so out of character that we're taken aback by them. It's mysterious, like a vaguely sinister echo of his warped basketball philosophy and the moments that shaped it. We barely notice tattoos anymore—J.R. Smith and Larry Hughes are practically covered from waist to chin, but it's all in good fun. Wallace, though, exists at the intersection of style and grim reminders. Other useful pop culture references: Star Wars bounty hunters, those elegant tackle boxes with death sitting casually on their brains; every Vietnam movie where heroes get subsumed; eye-liner on radicals in the desert, and the chintzy portraits that follow directly from it.



No shock that this new vibe has manifested itself in—or stems directly from—Wallace's game these days. Gone are the eye-popping box scores of yore, the competition with Smith and Kirilenko to see who could most delight our mightily peripheral group of enthusiasts. Wallace scores less, attacks more sparingly, isn't as frequently streaking ahead on the break or leaping up for the put-back—even as he's continued to get more fluid and guard-like with each passing year. Part of this might be Larry Brown, which is fine, because it works. But it's most certainly not a reluctance to put himself or others at risk (though, it should be noted, usually only doing damage to his own person). Wallace is a lurching, semi-breathing basketball death wish.

Remember when Wade or Iverson embraced contact around to the basket to such an extent that it became an end in itself, and got kind of stupid? Wallace seems to have taken this same attitude toward open-ended, violent motion. And movement, if a difference exists there. He doesn't make plays as often, or sow the seeds of chaos (as said in our book.) Now, he's just kind of there to hit the floor like it was a dunk, go for blocks and steals like an agile wrecking ball, terrorize the court in a way that somehow evinces both more and less discipline. This isn't the hustle player reborn, but the blood and guts of what athleticism means at its best in the league. And it isn't necessarily pretty or inspiring, unless you think Icarus is really fucking cool coming and going.

That's because, while Wallace is by no means a dirty or petty player, the toll he's exacted upon himself is, for a basketball player, almost unprecedented. Four concussions to date, and an insistence on rushing back from a collapsed lung. The lung's actually become a running joke; most guys allude to their limitations with "I felt that in my leg," but for Wallace, the game catches up with him in his ribs and breathing apparatus. Forget the high-flown accounts of potential lost and imagined; in his combination of blazing ability, blatant disregard for his body, refusal to change one bit, and downright earnestness about the whole thing, Wallace is the second coming of Pistol Pete Reiser. As Big Baby Belafonte says, you can't watch him without worrying he's going to collapse or implode at any moment, even as he exudes strength.



I wish I could say that in Wallace, we see a simultaneous acknowledgment of mortality and embracing of life. Instead, he just makes my skin crawl.

Bony Tenders

Nothing much of note, just thought I'd check in.

I now write with the disclaimer that I may no longer know what the f I'm talking about. I've been in a post-Al Jefferson knee injury daze for the past few weeks, and then with the news that Amare is out for the postseason, I almost just gave up. Instead, I've been watching all of the games without the sound on, and I actually cannot understand what is going on. As soon as I started watching the games on mute, LeBron seemed like way more of the MVP than Kobe, the Spurs look outstanding, and I am now on the verge of liking Dwyane Wade,

Now Imagine my confusion when I was watching the Wolves game and they flashed the faces, four in a row, of Antawn Jamison, OJ Mayo, David Lee, and Emeka Okafor. What could those four possibly have in common? Turns out it was one of those promos for fans to buy tickets for the upcoming next four games at home: Washington, Memphis, New York, and Charlotte. Depressing for sure.




















Yes, enough has been made of the fact that Bynum's out, KG and a ton of Celtics are out, Al Jeff's out, Amare's out, Gilbert is still out, Iverson is teetering, T-Mac is out, most of the Bucks are out, Oden is out, and now Rudy Fernandez but let me make more out of it. We are entering into a swaggerless vortex that might extend into the postseason. Already, I don't want to see the Suns win it simply because it won't "count." Same goes for Rockets if T-Mac isn't there (yes, I know), and that goes double for Portland if Oden and/or Rudy aren't in the mix.

And if KG isn't at full speed, would a Cavaliers or Magic title count? And if the Spurs beat the Suns again, it certainly wouldn't have the same significance as it would if Amare was on the court. Remember those jokes about how the Rockets' mid-90s titles didn't count because Jordan "loaned" them the trophy? I'm starting to get that itchy feeling again.

Right now, the only teams I can fully get behind winning the whole thing is the Denver Nuggets and the NO Hornets (and on a good day, the Jazz). The Nuggets and Hornets aren't expected to beat anyone in the playoffs even an Amare-less Suns. They both have guys in Melo and CP3 who are more deserving of titles than anyone I can think of. Their teams are in tact. Their coaches' futures depend on their success this season. And they dunk a lot.

With a month left in the regular season, I thought I'd have more than that to cheer about. Please give me some other good news, if anyone cares to.

FD Guest Lecture: Something About Robots

Ziller weighs on yet another urgent current event. But don't sleep on the Recluse's take on the Josh Howard situation. Really, don't. Or the ongoing, unspeakably awesome, Presidental 21 Tournament.

Gelf published a keen, damning piece on faux media-driven controversy in the ever-tiring baseball stats-vs-scouts war. ("Ever-tiring" because anyone who knows anything in that sport saw the light years ago. Those withholding belief have become a farce and their denials self-parody. Sort-of like everything about a particular presidential campaign.) In the Gelf post, Jake Rake notes the baseball war has basically moved to a cold phase, with mutual understanding overriding deep hatred despite the lasting media narrative. (I mean, damn, FJM's been dormant almost all fall.) That isn't the case in the NBA, of course, and it never will be. TIMELY NEWS HOOK: Gil.

Last year, no shortage of "scout" types basted Arenas because the Wizards had the audacity to play well without him. It's the fucking Ewing Theory gone mad: if a team is X units of good when player A is healthy, and X, X-1 or X+1 units of good when A is injured, A must be useless, overrated, not worth the currency he graces. Basketball, the most interdependent game in the whole universe ... and we'll leave out players B through E. NEVER MIND that one of the cornerstone pleas of the anti-stat basketball crowd is the nonlinearity and INTERDEPENDENCE of basketball. They argue that you can't measure a player's worth because there are too many variables. But when a player beloved by science doesn't get enough W's, it's all on that player's talent/production/performance. It's a completely two-faced argument.



Is it a secret that the formulas generally adore Gil? Dean Oliver rates Arenas highly. Same for Hollinger and the adjusted plus-minus set. (Berri hates scoring and thus is recused from the matter.) Almost all basketball seamheads consider Arenas an elite efficient scoring genius. So the opposing view from much of the anti-stats crowd -- elucidated so plainly in David Friedman's senseless assault on Gil last year -- is that all those points come at a cost to the team, as if Arenas scoring 30 a night on solid shooting dismisses the grit and effort and team play Washington trots out there when dude's off playing grab-ass with Beau Biden.

The argument aganst Gil from "basketball purists" (that term's loaded like a Kennedy) is that Gil gets his, but does not contribute to the team in any meaningful way. PROOF: the Wizards did well without him. The argument by the maths: Gil gets his, which helps the team. PROOF: the Wizards got good when Arenas came 'round, and basic arithmetic indicates Gil does many important basketball tasks (score, pass, draw fouls, shoot) extraordinarily well, which helps the team. There's no way to prove who's right, insomuch as there's no way to make irrational, anti-reality folk concede to fact when their heart's fixed on a narrative that feels good.

If someone isn't willing to believe Arenas is an amazing talent based on the proof which exists, you'll never change their mind. So really, the best this season of Gil could have provided to we of the pasty numberkind who have is an appendix of truth, a fuck-you synopsis of mathematical philosophy. All we lost was the chance to point at the scoreboard during a game without a mercy rule. So Gil's valiant ascent with Caron and 'Tawn to maybe first-round home-court has been dashed, and the thieved opportunity for a minor victory stings. But the war rages on. IN DIOGU WE TRUST.

Coffee Punch To Kasparov

Before the intelligent commentary begins, I'd like to start this morning just by vomiting.

First let me point out Randy Kim's excellent summary of my thoughts and disbelief toward Stuart Scott ACTUALLY asking Wilbon about the Willis Reed comparison.

Then let me be a little non-modest in pointing you to my outcry of two years ago:

"And last series, BOTH Raja Bell and Josh Howard were called "Willis Reed" for coming back and playing with injuries. The NBA is but a mere middle school theater production, in which Emeka Okafor and Eddy Curry are given non-speaking roles as foliage and the part of Willis Reed is chosen before the beginning of every season (next year, I believe the role will be played by Mehmet Okur)."

Then let me be even MORE not modest and point you to the third principle of the new injury rules, which I spoke about last week:

3. If the "injured" player is playing, then he is not "injured" and should be treated the same as any other player, not as Willis Reed.

Finally, the ridiculousness continues with further explanation of Doc's mysterious "South African:

That's when Rivers gathered the Celtics in a huddle during a timeout and reminded them of Nelson Mandela and South African struggles with apartheid, something the team has studied to inspire and motivate during this season.

"I reminded them of 'Cheetah', the guy from South Africa who told us there will be adversity and you have got to overcome it," Rivers said. "I was really proud of our team. We could have easily felt sorry for ourselves."

AAAAAAAAAAAH. The NBA is out of control. Comparing basketball adversity to Apartheid!!!! Doc Rivers is totally Smith College with that bullsht.

I CAN'T GO TO SLEEP.

Information Dump

--Can you people honestly say that you are pulling for Antonio McDyess, Kevin Garnett, PJ Brown, or Damon Stoudemire to get a ring over LAMAR ODOM? Wouldn't that be the circle of life in its completion?

--The muxtape competition hit a snag as muxtape exploded the day after we advertised the contest and lots of people lost their songs, but we'll see what we can do.

--I feel like I'm slipping into Simmons/observational comic mode here, but let me ask two questions about TNT broadcasts: (1) Does anyone else experience the "Charmed phenomenon," in which you wake up in the morning, turn on the TV to see Charmed, rendering you speechless and without explanation until you realize you went to sleep just after turning off TNT? (2) Isn't it weird, to the point of being emotionally uncomfortable, to see all these T-Mobile commercials with Dwyane Wade in them during the playoffs, when the guy hasn't been the least bit relevant for the past two years? There's some bad juju surrounding these spots that I just can't shake.

New rules for playoff injuries (I'm talking to you, Manu & Chauncey):

1. Once an injury is brought into the public conversation, it can no longer be used as an excuse, nor can it be used to deem somoene "heroic."

2. "Refusing to use an injury as an excuse" [see Exhibit B] is in its very nature using the injury as an excuse by calling it to people's attention.

3. If the "injured" player is playing, then he is not "injured" and should be treated the same as any other player, not as Willis Reed.





Bethlehem Shoals is sick, and I'm busy, but feel free to discuss the D-Fisher/Brent Barry conundrum below.

Leave Me Alone

Some external links of mine:

-More Quotemonger

-A short but crucial Sporting Blog post, wherein I finally figure out the Rockets. If they're animated not specifically by athleticism, or insanity, or skill, could their identity come down to Morey's statistical background?

-Welcome back, Gerald. He should be retiring but instead he comes back sooner than expected. I have a question for all of you: I know that this latest concussion came by getting thwacked with a big man's elbow. But haven't at least two of the other ones just involved him falling out of the sky? Why don't other contact-happy high-flyers have such bad luck landing? Have Wade or Iverosn ever sustained concussions?

Thank you.

The Darning Stick

Well, I guess you can't quite ever have perfection, can you. The NBA season was on the brink of becoming the wildest in history, with the league suddenly transformed into the NCAA football system. Every single Western Conference game mattered and every game that the Pistons and Celtics played seemed of grand import for determining who would garner that 1-seed in the East and not have to face LeBron in the playoffs. The race out West has been so tight that post-Pau Gasol, teams have been involved in a chess match on the largest scale, flipping and trading pieces left and right to stay afloat. Firegeorgekarl.com sprang up gloriously from the earth's core, which proves just how competitive things have gotten. Denver fans had realized that the current climate out West had given their team as it is currently operating a surprisingly bleak chance for the playoffs.



But when the news of Yao's injury hit yesterday, amidst the ridiculousness of Ric Bucher and the Rockets GM being legitimately asked if this was somehow a ploy to ready Yao for the Beijing Olympics, I couldn't help but feel that this season no longer counts. Ever since the Rockets got McGrady, they have been my pre-season pick to come out of the West, and this year, with Adelman finally equipped with a team that could play defense, Houston actually proving that they could win withOUT T-Mac scoring 30 a night, the recent 12(13)-game winning streak, and most importantly Yao's newfound swag, I thought it could finally happen.

There are seasons in the NBA when a championship means a lot, and seasons when it means relatively less. Larry Brown's Pistons beating the Lakers in 2004 was the greatest upset in sports over the past five years, better than George Mason, Eli Manning, or Warriors vs Mavs. THAT was a championship. There are other seasons, however, where the glory has been diminished by mitigating factors. Sometimes one conference is so strong that all the scrapping their finals representative did to get to reach the championship round has exhausted them. Other times, key players are absent from the entire scene. Charles Barkley jokingly talks about how Michael Jordan "loaned" Olajuwon and the Rockets their two titles during the mid-90s when Jordan opted to try baseball for a couple years. Wade's abdominal injury a couple years back, Shaq's toe and Kobe's knee back in 2003, even these things matter.


And now it is Yao whose absence shakes skyscrapers. Jason Kidd, the 2008-Shaquille O'Neal, Pau Gasol, sure these are nice pieces for a playoff run. But I wanted to see if we have really entred the age of post-Center supremacy. I wanted to see if the Suns, Lakers, Mavs, or Spurs could really defeat Yao--in his prime--in a seven game series. The whole situation just leaves me feeling a bit hollow.

...In other news, this new Nike Kobe campaign, which can be seen here, gives us endless joy. This commercial is like the anti-KG-Adidas-joint. This commercial is totally They Might Be Giants.