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.

Can't Find No Comfort, Don't Need No Relief

Some great talk in the comments about the contrast between the steeped-in-history Celtics-Lakers (at least as the league's trying to construct it) and the looming LeBron-lead master plan from without (within? no idea.) I know, the history thing isn't working so well with this year's teams, and James himself isn't explicitly leading the charge. But it's hard not to notice: on the one hand, we have the past glomming onto the now in ways reactionary and haunting (role of the Simmons book?). And on the other, the future that, even if you're cool with it, still stands to put players on top and give them their choice of colors.

Is it too much to suggest that the NBA/ESPN/ABC are in fact trying to push back against whatever radicalism comes to pass this summer? They have spent so long trying to get out from under Jordan's shadow, and now a new crop of stars seemed poised to do so. Except then they went and decided to undermine the very notion of tradition-through-sublimation. It had been coming for some time, post-Jordan, and been the popular fear, post-Jordan. Here's the thing, though: Jordan didn't do it, and no one else before the Class of 2003-based crew had the relevance to make it happen. They seemed headed in the right direction, whatever that means, and now they've really gone and realized exactly what the league always feared Allen Iverson would spread. It's apt, if accidental, that we're being treated to LeBron James's all-out blitz during the Finals. These Finals, and that players, of all things.

Let's face it, James doesn't need history like Kobe Bryant does. Kobe sits with film, and has become—in his age and relative wholesomeness—a reliable lodestar for old-meets-new. I've joked that LeBron should hire Kobe for reasons of growth. The difference between them, though, continues to grow this summer. Bryant is not only visibly older, he's also more readily absorbed now into not the post-Jordan morass, but a broader picture of How They Played the Game. His Nike ad involves siphoning in images from the last twenty years, including past campaigns that weren't about him (in the sense that Kobe is a single historical fact), plus a collapsing of Andre 3000/The Beatles that suggests not just cross-generational dialogue, but the importance of rejecting that rift. James, thought, reveals in his Larry King interview that he's a Jordan guy, which makes no sense considering his body and skills. However, while others have sought to imitate MJ (including Young Kobe), James simply adopts him in spirit, as the world-shatterer he entered the league as. This is the end of history.

In 2008, Lakers-Celtics screamed "bring the past back", except there was one kink. Both of those squads had been assembled that season. The Celtics invented the template for mercenary action that will be referenced many times this summer; the Lakers saw Andrew Bynum come into his own, then falter, and then soared only because of Pau Gasol's arrival—still incomplete at the time of the Finals. Maybe these two fit the Lakers-Celtics stereotypes well, in some rudimentary sense. However, this wasn't embracing the possibility of history, of an unbroken link to the past. That was all equivocation. Really, 2008 set the stage for what's coming after the Finals wind down. The Celtics now much more resemble a classic, categorized unit of the Russell years, maybe Bird's time if you think Paul Pierce is that ace. Lakers flow and spire, even as Ron Artest remains so key to altering the complexion of all that happens on the court without even making a sound (I'll say it again: NEW BATTIER).



James is not as crass as, say, so-and-so jumping teams for cash in the nineties. There are sound business reasons to work the mini-max, the Super Summit, and the shadowy plan to customize his destination as much as makes sense. This isn't pure self-interest. While it affects a limited number of players, this is somewhat earth-shaking, changing the way that not only the team and individual sync up when it comes to loyalty and such, but also the very question of who owns who. Who is accountable. Earning the right to a star, as opposed to simply danging cash in front of his face and expecting him to jump, alone, on to the next one. But—and here's the problematic one—history in sports has always been the history of institutions, or at least individuals against the backdrop of institutions (i.e. franchises). After Jordan, we worried it might devolve into Mad Max. Instead, though, we've gotten something more rational and, if done with tact, hard to argue with. In James, we have a player who has positioned himself against all history.

That raises another odd detail of this series. As I highlighted in an earlier post, and was also raised in the comments, Rajon Rondo aggressively rejects the past. He claims to have sprung, fully-formed, from some combination of other sports and Rondo's natural aptitude. Hence, an idiosyncrasy wholly distinct from LeBron's all-consuming template. Except, oddly, he's the one on this throwback Celtics. Would have made more sense if he'd been dominant in 2008, as opposed to playing a role. The recurring theory is that he's Cousy reborn, but even Cousy was referencing other styles. Rondo might be lying through his teeth or at least bending those teeth a little. Though doesn't seem self-conscious like that. Regardless, look at his game ... does this strike you as a man useful to anyone's agenda?

It all comes down to intention, and who struck first. LeBron as jerk, I cannot abide. LeBron as smasher of worlds, I have to acknowledge. If the twain meet, I'm not so pompous as to deny #1 if #2 does end up shaping the future—with results, and regardless of whether or not the past is ignore and the present defiled. For now, the past is pushing back hard. Whether this is a deliberate strategy, or just dope scripting, I have no idea. I can say, though, that is makes the present wild, incoherent, fresh, stressful, and subject to hourly reports. And that's ignoring the fact that there's an actual NBA Finals going on.

Reading Is Elsewhere

You will like this post I did on LeBron, I promise. Even though it's not on this website.

Burn Away All But Yourself

While finishing up some stuff for the forthcoming blockbuster, FreeDarko Presents: The Incalculable Basketball Tale of Blue Wiggins and His Jittery Groves, I had a magical romance with the following sentence: "And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written". Say what? That's Exodus, if you couldn't tell, according to the mysterious ways of prose that govern the King James translation of the Bible.

I think I heard a "King James." Where's my puppets? Ha. Gotcha. We all know why LeBron has been stuck with the nickname "King James"—duh, it's his last name, and he's a king among men. Also, it's like "The Chosen One" (which somehow belongs to way too many lesser players, too), but isn't blasphemy or quite so arrogant. As in, it pertain to magical events in the time of the forefathers, and their forefathers' forefathers, and Jesus. Except King James isn't in the Bible, or of the Bible: He's dude who oversaw the translation so that it might be accessible to oh so many commoners. He didn't even do the actual work himself!

LeBron, in a glib attempt to make himself sound awesome while still mining some small strip of divinity, has ended up identifying with an administrator. To be fair, the original King James did do something; he may not have spearheaded the project of translation, but he helped dictated the guidelines that produced the definitive, and crappy-sounding, version we lived with for so many years. You can read about the fine details of it over at Wikipedia. What I learned: The Puritans had some problems with the Great Bible and Bishop's Bible, and James "gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy." Worse than a feckless administrator, or empty figurehead-ed name—King James was a bureaucrat!

Let me reiterate: I do not think for one second that LeBron or his handlers researched this nickname thoroughly. It's Biblical. It goes with James. Hell, yours truly employs it all the time. It just sounds good. Triumph of branding, Nike is evil . . . but more on that later. First, a few of King James's other accomplishments, as they may do a little to prop up—nay, even explain—a moniker that starts to squirm when strapped in the creepy dentist's chair that is Real History, by Real Concerned History Citizens, a white power hate band video show that airs on Animal Planet. Hosted by this guy:



(Fair enough if you say I now sound like Bill Simmon chewing poison beetles, flipping through basic cable, and going to the movies once a week. We all have to change, we all become our parents, we all thereby face our demons and move on to making other people's lives' miserable. While, hopefully, we are lighter and more prosperous for it.)

King James was, in a word, amazing, and not in the Drew Barrymore sense. He got the Bible out to the whole wide world. Yes, the translation bears his name, but there's a reason that's the one we know: Subsequently, it was disseminated like no version before or since. Also, the King James Version made some very good but also, at the moment, supremely over-priced funky gospel LPs in the seventies. But I revert. The real King James was King James I, which I always consider a plus. He didn't dress up with a super hero alias or nom de drag when he took office. Or wait, that's just Popes. Monarchs just have a limited amount of names to choose from to begin with. In any case, Wikipedia again:

"James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597), True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599). Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom", an epithet associated with his character ever since."

How awesome is that? This guy really made it happen. But where is the creative agency of his own, or the transformative, that James needs other James to have when we bother to investigate the past? He did bring about major shifts in the way the King and Parliament got along, get embroiled in the 30 Years War, and have troubles with "The Spanish Match" (not a hooker) and "The Gunpowder Plot" (not an attempt to kill him with hazardous snuff). I hereby resolve that all future LeBron James exploits be branded with moments from this great monarch's career. W+K, are you out there? There's more, but I have to get on with my day. Fun fact: The period of his reign is referred to as either the Mirandian or Jacobean Era. Do not confuse the latter with more sinister times. Do, however, learn that "Jacob" is Hebrew for "James," with means I have to change my middle name to restore my birthright.

Still, nothing that really clicks with the commonplace sense of King James. Unless you like KJ1's refusal to break with the notion of divine monarchy. That's kind of the worst case for LeBron, no, or at least a really ugly tautology. You can feel free to repeal this pargraph and get back to eating your breakfast, suckers.

Here's a thought: You know how I always say that LeBron put Cleveland on the map as if it were a real market? Well guess what: We still know nothing about Cleveland, other than that it's the home of LeBron. Watch out, great King James I of England, you too can be adopted thus. Your career matters little, just that you were a king connected to the Bible. LeBron's attempt to, if not erase your accomplishments, then at least reduce them to a few faint themes (well, one), isn't stupid, it's corporate plunder. King James is dead; long live King James. Meet the new King James, same as the old King James, except in the ways that they have nothing in common, but that doesn't matter because the old one has his name on the Bible.

And LeBron will one day deserve his name on the basketball Bible. This type of shit happens every day. Don't worry, though. As demanded by Eric Freeman, George Hill still needs to answer for his "Madness of King George" nickname.



(That photo scares me.)

SOME NOTABLE ADDITIONS: The first King James I took power early, but didn't actually get in charge for some time, which might mean something. Though it's not flattering. Also, a very important man tells me that certain undesirables and numerology "kooks" believe Shakespeare translated the King James Bible. But that still wouldn't make Shakespeare into King James.

Sing With The Pollen

This post follows directly from Dr. LIC's consideration of myth in the NBA, so read that first if you expect to be on my level. Other suggested reading: Pasha Malla on "Where Amazing Happens" during last year's playoffs.

A few weeks ago, I fired off an ill-advised email pitch to an editor, proposing a comparison of divinity in the NBA vs. other sports. The gist: In other leagues, God reveals himself in the form of miracles, an external agent that, no matter what the skill level of the players involved, must intervene in order for The Immaculate Reception, The Catch, The Motor City Miracle, The Shot Heard 'Round the World, or Bill Buckner's Folly, to occur. The NBA, on the other hand, attaches this hand of heaven to players. The Shot is amazing, but there's no question that Jordan and Jordan alone made it happen. That's why we fear him so. Similarly, nicknames like "Black Jesus," "The Chosen One," "Magic", "The Answer," and "The Dream" imply the otherworldly, if not the supernatural. They are the agents, they make "amazing" happen.

How to reconcile this, then, with the writings of Dr. LIC and Pasha? I agree that, as conventionally understood, myth just doesn't adhere to the NBA in the same way as it does football, baseball, or even college hoops, and that forcing that modality onto the Association just feels wrong. What we see, and how we remember it, is always dense, less distant, and despite the prevalence of the highlight, harder to boil down or distill. The highlight may be susceptible to this treatment, but it's worth noting that compared to still photography, the highlight is more clamorously here-and-now—the way, I think, NBA action and memory is best understood. It's not so much about marketing as it is the proper cognitive framework. In the same way that watching a game depends on uninterrupted attention, THE MOMENT can only be abstracted so much.

Unless, of course, we're talking about Jordan. MJ asked in one fairly recent ad if he wrecked the NBA. Certainly, in terms of introducing both myth and split-second history into the fan lexicon, he did. Never mind that Jordan's own myth falls apart if you whitewash his early years with Chicago—he was a menace, not just a young buck paying his dues—and disregard what was being said about Jordan by people who had seen him outside of Dean Smith's system. Or that, as Pasha points out, the highlights that define Jordan's career have been transformed through sheer force of marketing. The Jumpman, iconic as it is, doesn't really capture that dunk. It's just the most convenient way to communicate it as product. The same goes for Jordan-over-Ehlo, or Russell. Bird and Magic might have made the league palletable again, but they existed very much in basketball-time. It took Jordan to really put things over the top, due in large part to Nike's turning him into a myth, and walking bit of history, a la baseball or football.



That's why the NBA wrestles with the problem of mythology—its greatest player ever distorted the sport's true meaning in a clever commercial ploy designed to compete with the NFL and MLB. Fans like myths. But they're not a natural fit for basketball. Jordan fooled us, and it's unfortunate that, to paraphrase Dr. LIC, Kobe and Bron have left to contend with his example. Chasing his example on the court is no problem—it's the distortion of everything else involved in stardom, wrought by Jordan that's left them flummoxed. And, I'd say, made the NBA seem so less impressive in his wake. It's because MJ changed the way we consumed the league, what we expected of subsequent players. Of course, we forgot that Jordan was a process, even his construction as a corporate entity. We were at once too smart and too stupid to appreciate the NBA on its own terms.

This season, I'm not feeling the same prophetic fury I usually do. Bron is Bron, higher than all; Durant will astound us; Kobe's intelligence and discipline can shatter you just to watch. Wade is spectacular, Chris Paul's a walking clinic where the sweets never stop flowing. But I'm not in full-on manifesto mode. I would ordinarily chalk that up to being overworked, or otherwise burdened. But instead, I've realized that I'm finally coming to see the NBA clearly.

And herein lies the answer to the riddle of divinity. What marks the earlier examples of NBA otherworldiness isn't immanence, but action. I'd go so far as to make that "acts." Players who earn these appelations don't rest on their laurels, they define themselves time and time again through simply unfathomable play. We don't watch superstars with eye toward the past or future, but to see them fully realize the present. Vince Carter's "Half-Man, Half-Amazing" gets at the root of it: These are mere mortals who defy these limitations on a regular basis. Not myths expected to fulfill expectations, or symbols lining up to enter history. The NBA is where, above all else, the experience of watching it unfold in real time, only to be eclipsed minutes later, is the essence of stardom. Casual, disposable, and yet utterly indelible.

We are all witnesses, but that doesn't mean we're not greedy for more.

East of Agitation?

Hit up another WNBA game last night. This time it was the Storm vs. the Sun, notably mostly for the presence of Lindsay Whalen. While I may have misspelled her name on Twitter (thanks to dude who corrected me immediately!), there was something to her game that seem fairly lacking in what I've seen of the WNBA: Meanness.

First, to step back from the flames of real provocation, a word or two on Whalen. I was serious when I twitted that she doesn't even need the ball to operate masterfully from the point. Depending on how you look at it, it's either quasi-mystical, or the kind of what people used to say about Deron Williams ("he gets hockey assists and stays within the system") before dude came to life, but true.

She gives it up almost as soon as she crossed half-court, or posts up at the top of the key, Cassell-style, but as a way of attracting attention and feeding someone else. And these aren't passes for assists; mostly, they set into motion a series of obvious events (two, three, four passes) that result in an open shot. Her teammates usually miss, and Whalen herself can hit the lane strong and sink jumpers at will, but whatever. She's bigger than that. Closest NBA comparison: Old Jason Kidd, if old Jason Kidd were young and could shoot.

(Speaking of which, last night I decided that comparing NBA to WNBA players is the logical next step of NBA esoterica. Like when Kevin told me "Darko was supposed to be what Lauren Jackson is." These days, everyone knows everything about every random player. If you value elitism and obscurity in your fandom—and buy my argument that the WNBA is a variation on the NBA, not an inferior product like college—then welcome to the new frontier.)



Most notably, though, Whalen is bad. She talks non-stop, plays the whole game with a scowl on her face, and stared down the ref at the half. I even think she a teammate might have been restraining her a little. This is just not the kind of stuff I've seen thus far from any other WNBA player, even someone like Cappy Pondexter or Tanisha Wright who have the kind of game that we'd legitimately expect some swagger from. Everything is very polite, matter-of-fact, and even good-natured—as it remains unquestionably competitive. During that first game, Taurasi pulled off an absolutely devastating block, and stood over her victim, yapping for a second. The whole thing was so foreign, she didn't even get a tech called.

The WNBA markets itself, and arguably, survives as, a positive, family-friendly experience. There are about a billion things about gender and sexuality and stuff that can be said here, but to cut to the chase, you have to wonder if attitude is somehow at odds with this program. I know it's shocking to hear a snarling, feisty white girl described as having "attitude"—and maybe there's a semantic difference between "attitude" and "an attitude"—but it just seems like there's very little edge to the players, in every conceivable place you could conceivably find it.

I come neither to condone or condemn this aspect of the WNBA, except that all this positivity is going to start grating on me at some point. Or at least feel forced. Flash to the league that everyone reading this site knows and loves. Without a doubt, NBA ball is at its best—from the standpoint of any kind of fan—when players get pissed, involved, intense, etc., provided this doesn't lead to them forcing shit. At the same time, I have no problem saying that my least favorite part of games is fan ugliness/attitude. I understand wanting your team to win and all that, but it doesn't excuse being an ignorant dick. I honestly believe that the Falling Down/Taxi Driver-like turn in spectator-hood is as much to blame for all the negativity surrounding the NBA as the seflish thug players are.



But enough about me and my ideal world. Why couldn't the WNBA encourage a crowd of sweetness and light while encouraging players to, I don't know, get a little more raw. I'm not saying they should argue every call, but that league needs more Whalen. By that same token, just because NBA players are talking trash and shoving each other, it doesn't mean the moron next to me has to act like he's watching Jesus get killed. Emotion can be personal without triggering some flight or flight shit. It's called being a grown-up.

That was really draining. I will leave you with a thought from Q. McCall, who has taken it upon himself to make me the world's most famous WNBA convert. To paraphrase, Sue Bird starts over Whalen on the U.S. National Team. Bird also has the image thing down pat. Whalen isn't seen as Bird's equal, even though from a basketball standpoint, she's in many ways better. You have to wonder how much that has to with her demeanor—do some regard it as unnecessary, or even a drawback to her game?

Someone who knows this shit better than me can tell me if Latasha Byears is relevant here.

(Can I curse when writing about the WNBA?)

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.

To Hold On Tight We Must Let Go

The days are not good for Allen Iverson. The one-time beacon of personal integrity, triumphal dysfunction, and "fuck the world" stylistic rights currently sits out in the cold. He's hoping some team will look past his recent disappointments, figure several accelerated half-lives have made his legacy less radioactive, and give him a chance to make a roster like a blaxploitation Kevin Costner character. So perhaps now is not the time to launch an entirely new critique of AI.

However, the rise of Twitter has me rethinking that foundation of Iverson's NBA being: his authenticity. Allen Iverson, above all else, was his own man, did what he wanted, and forced the world to accept him on this own terms. This was where he picked up momentum as a hip-hop icon, which is to say, while others screamed "thug", he simply brushed them off as ignorant or sheltered. There's a tendency, even a need, to separate AI the world-historical figure from AI the athletic performer. In both cases, however, Iverson exemplified "realness"—perhaps to a pathological degree, but nonetheless in a way that informed the direction of the league and the players who came up idolizing him as much as Jordan.

Hence, as much as we speak of the post-Jordan days, I myself had become accustomed to the "post-Iverson" age. In this (gulp) dialectic, there seemed to always be a hard edge, or uncompromising bluntness, to be reckoned with. There was Jordan's universal appeal, met head-on by Iverson's populist bluster. The players spat out of this maelstrom were some combination of the two; Allen Iverson came to symbolize a mish-mash of unapologetic ghetto roots, "wrong way" ball, not taking shit from no one, and a wary intelligence that could often be its own worst enemy. Carmelo Anthony, post-Iverson because he was hood plus Magic Johnson's effervescent charm; Gilbert Arenas, idiosyncratic and disruptive as a player and person, but writing his own script with all the whimsy of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Jordan was a sales pitch, Iverson a doctrine. Except that, at the risk of offending a bunch of people, Iverson's persona was itself a posture. This may sound pedestrian, or simplistic, but at what point did we decide that Iverson (or Tupac) wasn't, to some degree, faking it, putting it on, selling us a bill of goods based around a very deliberate refusal to play by the rules? AI was certainly faced with difficult circumstances, and had to make tough decisions about what path to follow. And yet over the long haul, it became as opaque a guise as Jordan's Sphinx-like mask. They may have been polar opposites, but their inflexibility and predictability ultimately made them two sides of the same coin.

Should we bemoan the fact that, in the age of Twitter, authenticity is no longer about any iteration of “the struggle,” or truce between the two sides, but the possibility that individual athletes be both accessible and undeniably themselves? The stakes may have been lowered, and yet better a feed like Rudy Gay’s inform our sense of athlete “realness” than AI’s on-message scowl. Relaxation on its own is empty, taking a stand indefinitely is its own kind of blandness.

Incidentally, anyone who’s seen Iverson in the locker room, or otherwise with his guard down, knows that dude would be a monster on Twitter.

Someone's Favorite

In a perfect world, all of you would read The Baseline all day long. But I recognize there are differences. So how about taking a look at the following FD-friendly posts:

-Sleep-deprived column on how messy complex salaries have gotten and what it means for fans.

-Death of the mini-max dream.

-Is it time to redefine tampering?

-Why Nike should want the public to know that LeBron got dunked on.

Crossing the Rubiocon

Jelani the Elder is a young man living and writing in NYC. When he’s not writing, he’s busy plugging Epilogue Magazine. He's hoping FD will have him back soon, as he's already started on his magnum opus, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Clippers: The Blake Griffin story."

In the notebooks of scouts abroad and at home, Ricky Rubio has been, all at once, the future and a throwback. He’s been Drazen Petrovic, Pete Maravich, Magic Johnson, and Steve Nash. But, as aesthetically pleasant as all these player comps might be, the National Basketball Association is a business; if the league’s sole purpose was to promote civic pride and goodwill, they probably wouldn’t have sales reps calling you every day for the last two months trying to get you courtside for a team built around Nate Robinson. Ricky’s venerable mound of hype surely commands hundreds of minds devising how to best monetize it. Such is capitalism.

Ricky represents the dream for those in the merchandise business who stand to make a tidy killing off of the Legend of Ricky. He’s played high-level competition in Europe since his early teens, hundreds upon hundreds of games a year, so either he’s A) totally bereft of personality due to the lack of a normal or stable adolescence developing amongst his peers or B) one of the weirdest, most eccentric dudes to lace ‘em up in a long time. If it’s A, that’s terrific, blank slate, the creation of an image from day one without any real transgressions. If it’s B) hell, maybe even better. But let’s say it’s A. Let’s run through the Rubio-branding options.

The Foreigner:The most obvious direction. He’d join Rudy Fernandez, Jose Calderon, and the Gasol brothers as the league’s resident Spaniards, which is just lovely because they’ll all could potentially play for different teams, where any head-to-head matchup would generate at least mild buzz, or, at the very least, an all-the-tapas-you-can-eat watch party. Ricky even stands to surpass them all (my guess is all five will make an All-Star team at some point) as he strides toward defensive competency. But I’d like to think Nike—it’ll be Nike—plays this up. Rubio’s EuroLeague career and its application to the NBA is still swathed in mystery, and certainly a quality that the brightest merchandising minds can utilize and build around.



New York Rubio: Some of the buzz lately suggests that Rubio-to-NYC is something that just has to happen. The Knicks don’t have a true point guard, they play D’Antoni run and gun and Rubio is the neo-Nash, not to mention that the league could easily stand to gain from putting a future star (product placement) in the Big Apple. In a city with legions of fans to seduce, relocated persons such as yours truly who have never had an NBA team to call their own, and NYC just happens the world’s finest hype auger. Also, the city’s fashion arm would certainly slide Ricky into $15,000 suits, paste him on SoHo billboards with his eyes obscured by Wayfarers, and stock an initial run of 50,000 Rubio Knicks jerseys at Midtown’s NBA Store. Oh, and a prediction—if the Knicks got Rubio, they would immediately introduce a new “alternative” jersey (Black? Green? Spanish flag color scheme? It doesn’t matter) just so they could make even more money. You know they would.

Recession Rubio: If the emptiness of Nike’s NYC retail outlets are any indicator of corporate prosperity, then maybe Nike ain’t doin’ so hot. Why spend the cash on an unproven Rubio when all it will take is a couple tweaks to the Rafael Nadal brand image? Rafa has a lot of desirable characteristics as a pitchman—he’s young, he’s good, he’s strikingly polite, and he’s European (Spanish…same as Rubio! Oh my!). Plus, Nadal’s possibly out for Wimbledon and the rest of the summer, so they could easily utilize his temporarily dormant campaign for the media swirl around July’s NBA draft. And if we’re running with the idea that Ricky Rey (patent pending) has no personality, you could do a lot worse than being sold as basketball’s Nadal. I don’t think that lugging your uncle around as coach would fly in the League, but I guess that just depends on how much money you’re generating.

Rascal Rubio:Bad boy angle. Gotta have it: The trickster, the devil—it’s timeless. Why mess with archetype? After last summer’s incredibly offensive Spanish Olympic Team picture mocked the host nation in a not-so-subtle way, this idea has wheels. Pair Ricky with Andrew Dice Clay, his Mars Blackmon, and you’re set for a divisive yet highly publicized career. Also, Rubio hails from the Catalan region of Spain, and making loads of deliberate anti-Basque statements in post-game press conferences could create tension internationally. It’s offensive and galvanic in dozens of time zones and languages, something that you can’t quite capture with your average Charles Barkley rant.



Relocation Rubio: If Ricky Rey ends up in Memphis or Sacramento, two embattled teams perpetually pondering relocation options, brand imagining would transcend Rubio and maybe create a market. For those mathematically inclined in the audience, surely “present value” calculation of future Ricky Rubio-related profit has to be a pretty substantial figure, a number that would surely affect a franchise’s current valuation. Kansas City, amongst others, could swipe a team due to its tenantless but new Sprint Center, and the return of the Kansas City Kings would certainly gel with my “Ricky Rey” campaign, “Rey” of course being the Spanish translation for “king.” Surely you see what I’m on to here. This is selfish for many reasons, but you know, you gotta look out for #1.

And if it’s option B, B again representing a maladjusted eccentric that has no feel for the American press or the subtleties of a new language, just let the product sell itself, Mr. Knight.

FD Guest Lecture: Thank For the Memories

Today's very special Guest Lecture comes to us from Pasha Malla, author of The Withdrawal Method, All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts, and a scouting report on Teen Wolf done for our mutual pals at McSweeney's.

Michael Jordan never kicked Craig Ehlo in the head. For years I was sure he did: Cleveland, first round of the 1989 Playoffs, Jordan hits The Shot and hysterical with joy cuts Craig Ehlo down with an accidental boot salute; Ehlo drops like a drop-kicked sack of bricks and the assault is largely ignored—in the making of history, after all, the vanquished are irrelevant. Cue the Legacy. Awesome.

During this year’s Playoffs, The Shot has resurfaced in heavy commercial-break rotation, and each time it plays I’m thrown into painful paroxysms of embarrassment at drunken arguments I’ve had with strangers—“He kicks him, man, I’m telling you. Just watch for it.” But, fuck: Jordan’s Nikes are clearly nowhere near anyone, Ehlo’s collapse is only out of grief and shame, and it turns out I’ve deluded myself for two decades. I don’t feel so bad, though: sure, my Shot-and-Kick was a fabrication, but so is the actual footage.

While nba.com claims, “As the ball nestled through the net, Jordan pumped his fists in jubilation, completing a video highlight for the ages,” this is a moment that has only ever existed in replay. Those watching the game on TV didn’t see Jordan’s celebratory histrionics; the original CBS telecast cut immediately (and bafflingly, in retrospect) to the reaction of then-Bulls coach Doug Collins. If the NBA is to be believed, the popularized version of The Shot ranks with the moon landing and JFK assassination among the great, suspect, live experiences in American television history—regardless that the spread-eagle jump and fist-pumps only surfaced later. But we need a moment to commemorate the birth of a legend, and so the redux has been fed to us and has become, now, how we remember something most of us never saw.



The “Where will amazing happen this year?” ad campaign is weird for a lot of reasons. First, “where” seems an odd choice of interrogatives. The host city or corporate-sponsored stadium hardly seems significant—rather than the victories of teams, to me “amazing” connotes sublime moments of individual athleticism, like The Shot, that linger in our collective memory. (E.g. I have no idea how deep that Bulls team went in the ’89 Playoffs, but I do know, and can explicitly picture, how Jordan hangs in the air, waits for Craig Ehlo to land, and then bangs that jumper.)

“Where” is especially lame when you consider the alternatives: “Who will [make] amazing happen” acknowledges both the simmering potential of superstars and the possibility for unlikely heroes, “when” insinuates suspense-laden expectation, “how” a reverence for physical theatrics, “what” = mystery, and “Why will amazing happen (and why will it matter)?” could even be (existentially, abstractly, and especially if voiced by Werner Herzog) kind of funny. But we get “where”—right.

Anyway, aside from the fact that it’s a clunky non sequitor of a motto, the corresponding commercials make me uncomfortable on a more personal level. I’m of an age, demographic and cultural moment that filters my enjoyment of the NBA, like most things, through a scrim of nostalgia. As a result, I’m routinely compelled from the present to a poignant anchor in the past: the slight shudder of melancholy, for example, I suffer when a former star I grew up loving (Sam Cassell, say) checks in for garbage time at the end of a blow-out. And I like my version of the past just fine. I don’t want it co-opted and fed back to me as advertisements.

Mainly what gets me about WWAHTY? is its perversion of nostalgia. The highlights—shown without context, slowed down, flipped to black and white (= The Past), soundtracked to the sad parts of the score from Amelie—self-consciously create wistfulness they may not warrant. The suggestion that each of these plays is “amazing” relies on us remembering each of them and what, in their respective games, each one meant—whether, for example, that alley-oop to Andrei Kirilenko came late in the fourth quarter with the scored tied or early in the half with Utah up by 20. I’m not a Jazz fan—does such a thing even exist?—so I have no idea.

I watch a lot of basketball and I have to confess that I don’t remember most of the plays in these commercials. Collectively, they feel a bit like a compilation of money shots to the porn enthusiast: glorious moments, for sure, but what about the build-up, where the real drama happens? And even as pure highlights, few strike me as particularly amazing. I see Lebron dunk and Dwayne break ankles and Manu bank lay-ups all the time; without the context to inform these plays, I’m a little lost—blame my ignorance, maybe, or failing mental capacity, but that the NBA is relying on us to imbue these moments with meaning feels not only ostentatious, but counter-intuitive to what really makes playoff basketball so exciting. In the regular season, highlights are fine; but after the 82 are up, it’s all about when the big shots happen—and for that, context is absolutely necessary.

“Remember this?” the WWAHTY? ads seem to demand. “It was important. Remember this.” The whole business smacks of contrivance, but it’s not disingenuous. In fact, nothing could be more revealing and apt than what is articulated through the whole campaign: all of us—the NBA front office and players and coaches and owners and media and fans—want to believe that, with each round of the Playoffs, we are experiencing history.



If we are to believe the marketing campaign that has loomed over and punctuated the past few weeks, we are already living the past: the highlights of the night, the days of our lives, the memories of our future. The NBA isn’t rhetorically asking where amazing will happen; it’s more an open call to players to create moments to be relived, later, in endless replay, and for fans to be ready to acknowledge them. The effect is sort of a living archive, which, at least for me, has been causing some problems, because it’s impossible to figure out what’s genuine.

There was an interesting conversation on this site last year in the wake of the Celtics’ Championship win—and, more so, Kevin Garnett’s. Was his lycanthropic howling— “Anything’s possible!” “I’m certified!” &c.—premeditated, contrived and fake, or was it an authentic expression of emotion? There were arguments; things got heated. Assessing other people’s motivations is always futile, but Garnett was a special case: here was a guy who we’d always believed, whose sincerity was unquestionable, who came correct with the straight real and wept in John Thompson’s lap like a failed son. But, then the made-for-TV moment—and even worse, it felt made-for-replay.

Everything seems to go back to that old Michael Jordan bucket-and-swag—which, keep in mind, but for one savvy cameraman we might have never seen happen. Michael Jordan is history, but also Michael Jordan Is History: his great airy legacy looms over the league and everyone in it. Comparable Greats—Pele, Gretzky—are certainly paragons of individual achievement, yet their shadows don’t loom quite as vastly over soccer and hockey as Mike’s does over the basketball. Maybe it’s because neither has an eponymous “highlight for the ages” that not only defines their careers, but the modern era in their respective sport.

Michael Jordan provides pro ballers more than the archetype for all achievement; he’s created a model for the very idea of legacy—not only in how dominantly you play the game, but how you’re remembered. And having a metonymic, iconic image is imperative to that. So it feels, at least to me, that today’s NBA has created a culture in which players, if they want to be ranked alongside Jordan, or at least recalled in the same breath, need a watershed moment, and they need that moment recorded, and they need that moment replayed—so it’d better be good, and it’d better be theatrical.

It’s the way that this need for performativity manifests in the flow of games that troubles me the most. I shudder at the contrivance of, say, an and-one Lebron James shoulder-shimmy, which seems so concertedly not just mugging for the cameras and fans, but mugging for posterity. And, perhaps most amazingly, that sort of affectedness seems to be trickling down from the league’s top tier to its lesser lights. Even way back in the first round, the unbridled exuberance of a relative nobody like Joakim Noah felt exuberantly put-on. The league needs the wild-looking, sorta foreign youngster with a limited skill-set to have the heart of a hyperactive lion who roars and roars. And Noah—much as I grew to like the guy—seems to recognize that. Good thing we’ve got it on tape!

This sort of cynicism sucks, because I love the Playoffs. I want to believe what I’m seeing is real. But what I don’t want is to have the best moments fed back to me in slo-mo black and white by the league’s marketing department. WWAHTY? replaces the agency of subjective memory with the stagnant banality of fact; it repackages joy as commodity. If they ever were, each of the athletes in those spots is no longer doing anything amazing; they are merely figures in advertisements, reduced to hapless shills. The suggestion seems to be that players who aren’t performing something easily quantifiable as “amazing” will not find their way into a TV spot and, accordingly, will never remembered by anyone.



I think I allowed myself to believe that Michael Jordan kicked Craig Ehlo in the head because back then that sort of bizarre accident actually felt possible—let’s keep things moving and blame pre-adolescent innocence rather than retrospective idealism. But my corrupted memory also makes me think about how excited I’ve gotten when this year’s playoff action has spilled into the unpredictable—Rafer Alston smacking Eddie House on the head, Derek Fisher’s cross-check of Luis Scola—and I feel even sadder. Are eruptions of violence the only time when I let myself feel that I’m not watching programmed automatons, but actual human beings?

Maybe it’s more that I know these are scenes the NBA can’t co-opt, blemishes that the league is in a constant battle to buff and polish out of its pristine product—see the resultant suspensions and ejections. And, when it comes to basketball, I don’t crave or fetishize violence; Vernon Maxwell punching a fan in the face is pretty amazing, in its way, but it’s certainly not a moment in league history that I particularly cherish. No, I just want my memories for myself. And what I don’t want, ever, is to think the stuff I’m playing out in my head (like John Starks’s career-defining dunk on Horace Grant—and MJ, bitch!) is just another commercial.

There’s a weird tension between the celebration I associate with The Shot, which feels absolutely genuine, and the knowledge that I might have never known it happened. In retrospect, it’s more than Michael Jordan’s metamorphosis from showman to winner, but also from man to brand. And while lamenting the commodification of Jordan is a bit like standing in the Ganges and whining that you can’t drink the water, there is still a precious purity to my fantasy about that fabricated replay—after all, Craig Ehlo taking a roundhouse to the temple isn’t the version that’s being played ad infinitum, as a promo for the league.

FD Exclusive: Wade Endorses Obama

The not so well-kept secret of the Obama campaign? That if you stop by your local headquarters, there's a good chance you'll run into an NBA player. They've appeared at voter registration drives, and turned out for fundraisers en masse. But with the exception of Baron Davis and Greg Oden (and Josh Howard, sort of), there haven't been any outright endorsements. And yes, it's because they're being told not to, sometimes even by their handlers on-site.

That's why I was impressed to find out (WORLD EXCLUSIVE) that tomorrow, Dwyane Wade's going to register to vote for the first time and then register others—presumably to vote for the Heat guard's fellow Chicagoan. Not to take anything away from Baron and Oden, but they don't live in the mother of all swing states, nor are they among the Association's five biggest names. You can laugh at the registering himself part, but I think it sends the right message: It doesn't matter if you've never been involved, either because you've been told not to, or just haven't cared to. This is that time to change all that.

So hats off to the guy for being one of the few to take that critical last step. I said at one point that, given how "black" basketball reads, Obama's close identification with the sport could be a negative; according to that logic, having athletes out in the open could be a liability. But obviously the campaign wants them around and really, how depressing is it to suggest that, for political reasons, ordinarily apolitical figures shouldn't get involved?

And Dr. LIC, I'm finally with you on that contempt for Melo.

BONUS: Me and Ziller team up for a Gelf piece on stats, scouting and common sense.

The Beasley Postulate, Extended

I was so serious when I said it: This is now a politics blog. Why else would we have covered a veep acceptance speech? Therefore, it with great importance that I command you to watch this video Chris Bosh made for FanHouse, of him and the gang eating fast food:



A few weeks back, I posted some image-defying, at-home footage of porn stars, and wondered what such a thing might do for NBA players, and if it ran too counter to the interests of branding and such. Well, here it is. First of all, this is stunningly mundane. And yet, you're still struck by the sheer presence of the scene—LeBron James, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, and Deron Williams, sitting at one table like it's nothing, millions of dollars and thousands of win-shares kicking it in front of, as Bosh note brilliantly, a wall of Penzoil. They come off not only as less serious and polished than we're used to seeing them—why wouldn't they, since this is their world, not the media's—but they also come off well. This is the most loose and amusing we've ever seen LeBron; weirdly, it was the acting of the "The LeBrons" that had previously seemed like the most authentic Bron we'd seen. I guess the common thread is humor and goofiness, which are largely absent from the King James we're sold.

But I'll be darned if this doesn't make me like James a lot more, and realize that underneath all the stone-faced professionalism, this is an outgoing young man having the time of his life. We can pretend that sports are war, or the measure of a man, or something whose true significance fans, and not players, are responsible for generating. However, who exactly relies on this construction for their interest? Does the demographic whose name is synonymous with the mention of "demographic" in sports want a stiff upper lip, as opposed to this window out onto levity and entertainment? I guess that (as it would be for the Nautica Thorn example) it's a slippery slope into all the old stereotypes of the modern athlete, and an evocation of Johnny Unitas's flat-top and the brow of Dave Cowens. I keep wondering, though, if 25-34 year-old males don't at some point catch up to the athletes of this era, or maybe even find themselves relating to exactly this capacity for frivolity.



Of course, this stuff lives on the internet for now, when we actually do get to see it. And I don't mean on-set bloopers, unless it's that batch of Iverson that got pulled off of YouTube after a few days of existence and never returned. Still, this shit is real, and people respond to it. It may muddy, or make slightly more complex, our picture of an athlete—or a candidate. But in the end, having us feel there's a real person underneath the professional feats, one that informs and infuses them with our common humanity, is worth the sacrifice. Instead of trivializing our fandom—or political allegiance—it engages us, turns us into more than circuits responding to cues and unrewarding, rote narratives. If we don't expect it, and the powers that be don't think we want it, the cycle can be broken and life will be more interesting for all of us. Unless I'm grossly wrong and a lot of people do need their athletes, politicans, and porn stars to be a series of accomplishments surrounded by formulae or talking points, nothing more and nothing less.

But seeing as this tincture of personality is what makes for Obama's appeal, and it's what made McCain's name in 2000, you'd think this charisma would have some recognizable value. It's only a matter of time before sneaker companies realize this, and hopefully, this election will hammer home that point even further.

P.S. Tum Tum=official Redeem Team soundtrack

Links=Freedom

A couple of quick thoughts before my mother hits town:

-Not sure if you've been following this, but apparently my half-assed joke about C.J. Miles's mic prowess alienating Larry Miller was taken WAY too seriously in Utah. Oddly, they made no reference to my concerns about the other C.J. Miles. After two days of trying to explain sarcasm from scratch, I'm now hit with an odd confluence of snark and reality: C.J.'s signed an offer sheet with OKC, despite having skipped the RMR and done little to boost his stock with Utah or others.

All of which raises the question: For all of my bald-faced assaults on Oklahoma City, there could be a regional appeal for certain players. Not that OKC is Dallas, TX, but it's closer to Dallas than any other city in the league. And really not that far from Houston. This may not be a draw for tons of free agents; however, in the case of Miles—a preps-to-pros guy three years removed from Skyline—this nowhere is certainly preferable to the nowhere of Utah. Especially if he'll get more minutes in the Dust Bowl.

The big irony here: My "joke" was that Miles sounded a lot more exotic and regional on the track than Dee Brown, who if memory serves was awfully peppy and accessible. So if the location of the [OKC team] makes it attractive to Miles, then, wow, my silliness inadvertantly might have made a point.

-Sneaker wars, stuff I barely follow: Darren Rovell says that Jennings is a hotter property than Rose or Beasley. Rose is the kind of player who needs to display some genuine excellence before the tone they'll probably take makse sense. Beasley presents all kinds of challenges, though, I don't see why Barkley (not Arenas, he's not that dorky) isn't the prototype here. Jennings, on the other hand, has unmistakable flair to his game, already has the image thing down pat, and now has this socio-political crusader thing going. You have to wonder how much they'd ever explicitly reference the Italy thing in a commercial. But certainly, it gives him a kind of cachet, and worldliness, and other NBA rooks—if we even want to call Jennings that—can't match.

Internal Test Case

As I continue my Obama-like slide toward the center, and wonder if I don't like the rhetoric of revolution but rather prefer the functionality of, well, skewed functionality (because otherwise it's hopeless romanticism), I also appear to have lost my YouTube ears. No one I've shown this to thinks it's funny. So in defiance of them, and last-ditch affirmation of self, I'm posting it here for you all to decide. Especially since no one's found those requested clips for me to watch yet.

Expect a unified theory of Anthony Randolph in the next few days, which will try and make sense of my recent introspection.

Murky Invasion

The Official FreeDarko Mock lurches toward completion. ETA of this afternoon, maybe willing? In the meantime:

-In case you're still seething over us and the Celtics. . . lap up this latest Quotemonger. There are Green Guys in it, but I think I'm pretty fair and friendly.

-Getting an email from Keith Olbermann was really rad, even if it forced me to admit I'm full of shit.

-Yesterday, I took a look at a certain plaintive Garnett commercial and found myself affected as ever. Dr. LIC claims that this, more than anything else, makes him feel happy KG got the ring. I can't decide if the sadness it visits upon me is about Garnett's lasting pathos, or missing that pathos, which would be a little weird and mean.

Then, I started digging up some of the classic Adidas ads from around that period. Shit was really weird, and pretty visionary. The T-Mac/Clipse joint? McGrady with wings and flame? The Infinity Gauntlet-like one with Duncan, McGrady, and Garnett being built in an ethereal workshop? And then, it turns to the Basketball Brotherhood, which is about as down-to-earth and de-fantasicized as these things get. I'd call that the 2007-08 Celtics of brand strategy.

Nate Jones and I were talking about the sneaker game yesterday, and he suggested that Adidas decided to brand itself and go from there, instead of developing their unique players as brands. The former makes sense with Duncan and Billups, but Garnett and T-Mac certainly lend themselves to the latter—what Nike's done with Melo some (B.More), and, remember, what made Jordan such a revolution in the first place. Nate submitted Arenas as a step in the right direction, but I think that went too far. Those shorts were more likely to make you eat your shoes and set money on fire.



Randomly, this is where Beasley comes up. He's going to be a star, and has absolutely indomitable personality. I can't imagine anyone keeping a straight face as he gets squeezed into the template of Brand Jordan drama and honor, or Adidas's sentimental grind. Seems inevitable that a brand would have to break tone with him.

Oh, and more Beasley: This him to the Sonics possibility has to count for something. If any team is in a position to get the real story on him, it's Seattle. Plus, if you figure Durant's going to resent ownership at some point soon, and will likely leave when he can. . . all that changes if they bring his best friend on to form a ridiculously awesome tandem of contrasts and versatility. Despite my hatred of Clay Bennett, I would buy some season tickets if that came to pass.

A Grim Welcome

This day is way too much like the big French dinner I had last night. Both have left me stupefied, and capable only really of reflecting on my own mortality—or, as it were, the mortality of my ability to process basketball in a meaningful way. I've taken down that other post, since it confused me.

Did want to mention this, though:

"You can say I destroyed the game, but maybe you need to stop making excuses."

I don't think any kid says "Jordan made such a mess of this sport that I don't need a jumper." It would make more sense if MJ were addressing a roomful of old white men, trying to convince them that really, they do like the NBA. They just don't know it yet, or won't admit it.

Hey, here's our Deadspin preview of Nuggets/Lakers.

Green's Next Dunk: Falling Spikes

My 10 Bold Predictions column is up on TSN. The Cavs are officially my blind spot.

Apologies in advance for writing about the meaning of samples. I left grad school for a reason, and it wasn't to do the same shit around people who didn't find it novel.

Regardless, like all of you commenting down below, I kept getting stung by the Wade/ATCQ/Lou Reed collison. It was almost as jarring to me as when, in 2004, the intro to "Heroin" was used to sell a 4WD vehicle that helped you rock-climb better. That case was simply stupid, and within a few days the commercial had replaced the (wordless, but iconic as anything) guitar figure with some fifth-rate Yo La Tengo biting. Which might have very well been Yo La Tengo themselves.

Obviously, that case is different. That was an excerpt, and one that augured the entire song that followed. Here, there's a plausible excuse: "That isn't 'Walk On the Wild Side', it's the "Can I Kick It?". And as someone whose allegiances are seriously split, I'd say that, as soon as the vocals come in, I go with the latter. These days, we'd call it lazy, or a statement, to sample such a well-known song so literally. But that's how things worked then, and there's a grandfather clause at work that keeps it safe to this day.

However, that's all me. Bethlehem Shoals has been massively affected by both Tribe and Lou Reed. I've also spent way too long parsing the concept of sampling, or at least gauging my own aesthetic reactions to it. What struck me--and many of you, I'm sure--about that Wade spot was that it felt like a major fuck-up. For anyone who didn't know "Can I Kick It", or have a strong history with the song, it was Wade wandering dusky streets with "Walk on the Wild Side"'s loping gothic behind him. The "Heroin" commercial was, strictly speaking, more of a fuck-up. But at least there was this dissonance there. Here, the visual enhanced the ambiguity.

I have to think that—unless the ad agency is just fucking stupid—this ad just isn't for Boomer or Lou Reed fans. They're the only ones who will giggle at it, but they'll be drowned out by those who either don't know either song, and thus place primacy on the Tribe joint, or those who think of "Wild Side" as a decontextualized sample (I think it's hard to claim that it's playing off of the original song's meaning). But demographically speaking, they're just irrelevant. This isn't using the song "Heroin" in an ad for fitness, it's using a famous rap song, with its own set of connotations, that happens to draw on a sleaze-rock classic. There's an inside joke in there, but it's not a liability.



Anyway, the point of all that was to get to Dwight Howard. Billups texted me right after that dunk, saying (loose quote here) "everyone in that arena was thinking Soulja Boy, right?" I'd been thinking Shaq 2, but then Howard went out of his way to hammer it home: "It's my favorite song." And, if the white people didn't get it the first time, "it's like the song." Here's what's weird to me: Howard is one of the league's most wholesome rising stars. Why would he tempt fate by pushing unsuspecting fans that much closer to Urbandictionary.com?

Unless Dwight's smart about this, and knows that, when it comes to Soulja Boy, we really are living in two Americas. For some, the dance is about flying like a superhero, and that's consistent with the nice big dude Howard needs to sell. On the other hand, for plenty of people that reference is decidedly filthy, even if repetition has kind of reduced its edge to mush?

Of course, I've got to assume that Howard wants it both ways. That he wants that superhuman quality with an ear to the streets—without having the latter detected by anyone who might balk. And here, it's unequivocal: He wants it to mean two things, and it's both. It's a bolder move than Wade's commercial, which was only ever going to trip itself up with double meanings. Good thing it had insurance. Howard, he's out there without a safety net.