Pinata Tied and Golden

I wrote a thing for FanHouse this week about the very, very serious man Ron Artest has become. You should read out, but here's the gist: Ron Ron was once taken seriously in a bad way, then became a harmless joke, and now, through his advocacy of mental health issues, has once again turned his persona into something that matters. Reading yesterday's Marc Spears column on Gilbert Arenas, these days, I had a similar thought.

I've been understanding this season's Arenas as sad, sunken epilogue. The quotes he gives are, for someone who had so much invested in his days of might, heart-rending. Even his description of himself as "controlled chaos" from the beginning of last season -- which at the time, seemed forced and unhappy, and soon thereafter, the worst kind of irony -- now makes me smile. That's what Gil did at his peak: he made us smile. When he describes himself as an entertainer, it's not in performative, WWE-sort of way. Rather, he was a play who, through basketball, could remind us of that part of brains that's there to be tickled and confounded. "Enigmas" in sports are troubling if the game is an equation to be solved. We know it's much more than that, though, and so the 2002-2007 Arenas can never be erased.

Wipe that tear away. We had a while with him, and while it would have been great for Gil to keep it up forever, at least he gave us (and got) that five-year joy ride. The more I read of him these days, the less I think he needs our pity. Sympathy, maybe, but we should take note not only of the fact that he's changed, but that -- unlike in other comebacks -- he's fairly comfortable in what he's become. Maybe it's resignation, and yet there's no question that Arenas has assumed a new role in the grand scheme of the league. Not necessarily wise, or entirely disinterested, he has the perspective that comes only with losing it all and then piecing yourself back together again. No question, ruminative Gil is a function of circumstance. But there's something Sheed-like about statements like:

“When a young guy is coming in, the older guy never wants to move over,” Arenas said. “But I know my time here is over [as the face of the franchise]. I messed up my legacy here"

“It’s still basketball. The rules don’t change for the bench players. I learned a lot from the whole Iverson experience. Not get a job because I can’t adapt to my environment? I’m sure I can adapt to any environment.

“In this league there is no such thing as long-term anymore. Players are getting shipped out and shipped out. I’m looking at the Kings like, when I first came [into the league], none of those players were here. The Lakers team, the only person that was there was Kobe [Bryant], and Derek Fisher came back."

Arenas is resigned to what he's become. In that, though, there's also resolve -- resolve to not only make sense of his situation and find a realistic path forward. More importantly, these are hard truths about the league, ones we could stand to here. They're certainly useful to have out there in public, probably even for younger players to hear.

Sports radio loves to talk about players who "get it". In that universe, Arenas never did "get it". Now, he "gets it", except "it" isn't about killer instinct or locker room chemistry. He never really did play by those rules -- he was "an assassin" to the point of absurdity, and we all know what his idea of a lively locker room led to. That doesn't mean, though, that others can't learn from him, whether or not they brought a Desert Eagle to the Verizon Center. Gilbert Arenas says these things not because he could give a fuck less, or in hopes of making us all weepy on his behalf. He does it because he doesn't have any choice. He's always been incapable of self-censoring, and perhaps was a bit too honest at times. The difference is, these days there's real substance to what he's selling.

You're Promised the Honker

The following is not intended as a defense of Jay Caspian Kang's post on Kevin Garnett. Mr. Kang is a quite able-bodied young man and can speak for himself, in these parts or elsewhere if he should so choose, whenever he so pleases. Nor is it any sort of attack on the man they call Rough Justice, who has contributed to FD in the past and is, at There Are No Fours, a writer you should digest on a regular basis.

That said, I would like to take some of this quality 6AM airplane time to address RJ’s post from yesterday, where he lashed out at Jay’s Kevin Garnett post and raised some broader critiques of the FreeDarko way of life. Let it first be said that my feelings on Garnett-Villanueva are uncharacteristically murky. In a purely ethnographic manner, I dismissed CV’s tweet-borne outrage as “just not the way things are done.”

I wasn’t only the writer to say, in not so many words, “come on Charlie V., WE PLAYIN’ BASKETBALL!” Rather than take a moral position, I was content to relativize, or romanticize, or whatever, and say that sports are awesome and athletes, subject to more special rules than the rest of us, even when it comes to the expectation of half-decent conduct. I heard from readers who wondered why the near-rampant homophobia of sports wasn’t somehow entering this discussion; in talking with Jay, I started to think that here, Garnett was the exception that proved the rule.

There’s a lot that can be empirically, and affirmatively, chalked up to the culture of the sport. When is trangression transgressed? When, as in this case, the speech-act is both resoundingly dull and just plan mean (as in petty). The common currency, or rules of engagement, is all about drive, rancor and wit. Going too far and not going far enough are strangely intertwined.

As for Garnett himself, to call his intensity performative is by no means to discount it. If KG is one-hundred percent authentic – which, mind you, is different from sincere – out on the court, he would be almost alone in sports. Part of playing the game is playing the game, playing mind games, and any other such cliché you can call up to register the duality that is the competitive self. If you hate that sentence, just say “nature and nurture” three times fast. Garnett, like pretty much any other person looking to topple others in his field, is closed loop with no beginning or end. He wouldn’t be driven to so fastidiously project the character he does if he weren’t, on some level, really that hell-bent on succeeding. Yet as the Recluse suggests, KG’s allowing himself to be so swayed by lawless emotion is easily attribute to Jordan-era basketball socialization. From there, though, we’re right back at “but it takes the right kind to so totally embrace, and even further amplify, the lessons of MJ’s persona”.



I can quite artificially pick and choose what Garnett traits to admire, or at least enjoy -- cussing at no one in particular, banging his head on the padded goalpost, needlessly blocking shots after the whistle, barking like a dog, and slapping the floor on defense for no other reason than to fire himself up further. That John Thompson interview, the “loading up the clip” sound bite, and that dolorous adidas commercial with the stand-up comedy section, these are all pure gold to me. Yet that’s a false dichotomy. These are part and parcel with the bullying, dirty play, and complete and total loss of perspective while on the court that increasingly, have become the hallmark of Garnett’s on-court demeanor. Part of it is the move from Minny to Boston, which got Garnett out from under that all-consuming cloud of pathos and made him less eternally sympathetic and – since he was suddenly playing on a real team – eccentric. Going from feel-good super-team to brooding contenders further concretized Garnett. You just couldn’t look at him any more as a powerful, twisted curiosity. He was out on center stage, and then after 2008, a professional who didn’t care to leave room for our indulgences. Getting older didn’t help, either.

That’s to say, I neither quite agree with Jay, nor with the part of me that could once be brought to tears by a 2002 shot of Garnett guarding Webber. Before, Garnett was an extreme version of competition with no object. Once he got a taste of its applications – the only role that would ever make sense for him, long-term – he changed, but our perception changed, too. The KG of Minnesota was a parable, a folk hero, a creative act that drew in athlete and fan alike to create mythology. He was perfect for the purposes of this website, but I can’t pretend he wasn’t kind of a dick all along, or that the way he looks in this second act somehow stands apart from the earlier KG. What I’m learning now is that I’m stuck with both, and that they’re actually one and the same.

Much of Rough Justice’s post was directed at Jay; I may have indirectly addressed them, but the point here isn’t to rush to the aid of the last thing published on this site. What really interests me is RJ’s assertion that liberated fandom and team faithfulness are not mutually exclusive. To this I say, duh. To be perfectly honest about it, the “manifesto” in our first book did the concept of liberated fandom a great disservice. I was only barely responsible for it; it was put together by forces beyond my control, and I was too busy to complain that it tacked way too extreme for my part. Plus, I heard it would help sell books.

On this blog, I have never suggested that liberated fandom meant players over teams, or that pure aesthetics are all that is to be gleaned from basketball. What excites me about basketball is that, at its best, a team is not only the sum of individuals – it has nearly the same amount of personality. Furthermore, winning is always a question of aesthetics, and aesthetics employed primarily in the service of winning. It’s the interplay between these two poles that, to me, exemplifies the NBA. And while I’ve always scoffed at being chained to a single team, especially when players shift around so much, I’ve always taken it as license to have a rooting interesting in a bunch, with one or two sometimes elevating themselves above all others. Granted, oftentimes my more casual interest in a team is a function of a player or two, but for what it’s worth, I’ve always been known to turn my back on individual players. In short, liberated fandom is more like free love than a weird fetish, or unlimited free porn downloads.



That’s all I have to say on the subject for now. There is precious little rock in my iTunes. I have some thoughts on legacy that I’ve been meaning to get up for a while now, so let’s so how bored I get on this next flight. The television isn’t working on here but I wasn’t expecting it in the first place.

THE PASSION OF KEVIN GARNETT

Jay Caspian Kang has a tumblr where he mostly posts videos of bad rap acts from the late nineties. Follow him on twitter at maxpower51.

Two nights ago, I walked around the Mission and watched as thousands of elated Giants fans flooded out of the bars and into the streets to celebrate. As I walked deeper down 24th Street towards the frontlines of gentrification, where handcrafted coffee houses with vaguely German names have staked out their own turf in the never-ending battle between the Nortenos and the Surenos, the scene didn’t change much. Everyone was elated, yelling. Even the nerdy brand of San Francisco hipster, the ones who can’t figure out how to dress interestingly, were out cheering on their stoops. The honking of horns, the unabashed revelry, the energy of the city was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. And although I have no allegiance to the Giants or even to the Bay Area, I found myself thinking of all the Roger Angell and Philip Roth quotes I had long since cast off as being sentimental, ridiculous. Baseball was stitching together a civic consciousness, a shared ecstasy. What that was worth was open for debate, but it certainly had an undeniable power to bring people together into something approximating a joyful moment.



A lifelong Red Sox fan, I watched Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS in a piano bar in midtown Manhattan. The bar itself had no mounted screens, but someone had wedged a small TV in one of the bar’s shelves. Me and the bartender were the only people who were watching. My new art school friends were watching the performance artist Soy Bomb sing the National Anthem of a fake country, in some language he had made up. When Johnny Damon’s grand slam cleared the short porch, I yelped, took out my phone and started furiously texting my friends back in Boston. My art school friends gave me a look usually reserved for cute Special Olympians and dogs who try to walk on their hind legs. I remember feeling a tingle at the back of my skull, a charge flood into my fingertips—the usual bodied indications that something was changing. Just three months prior, I had graduated from a college where the major social activity was crowding into the campus pub to watch the Red Sox. Now, I was sitting in a piano bar with friends-of-friends of a performance artist best known for jumping up on stage with Bob Dylan during some Grammy performance. I wondered how long it would be before I would stop seeking out the small TV in the corner of the bar. When would being friends-of-friends of Soy Bomb become my life? A year? Three months?

As it turned out, the tingly feeling was just the effects of the awful garlic-infused vodka I had been drinking. I kept watching sports, but as my priorities changed, I found myself caring less and less about whether or not my team won or lost.

By the time the Sox won again in 2007, I had started reading FreeDarko, which provided me with a name for my particular sports affliction. Liberated Fandom made sense, not only because my beloved childhood losers had been usurped by a bunch of rowdy Cowboy Up dickbags, but also because it allowed for a different engagement with sports, one that seemed to fit better with my particular circuitry. I’m sure that most of the people reading this are doing so because they, at some point, felt a similar detachment from caring whether a team won or lost, but could not quite pry themselves away from the intricacies, and, at times, the beauty of the spectacle on the court.



Within this aesthetic realm, where players exist as performers, who, while never completely excerpted from the calculus of winning and losing, share a relationship to the game similar to that of an opera diva and the libretto, the prima donnas are the Pedro Martinezes, the Allen Iversons, the Griffey Juniors. Those athletes, through their individual brilliance and magnetic personality, transcend the manufactured drama of millionaires pretending to collectively care about beating other millionaires in a fully corporatized game. The anti-heroes are always those millionaires who would have you believe that there is nothing more vital to humanity than whether or not they win or lose a playoff series.

Yes, as fans, we demand the players care about winning, losing and loyalty, but there also exists an unspoken line where the athlete should not cross. Namely, they should never, ever, never-ever-ever remind us that the scope of their lives is larger than our own. The history of fans violently turning against an athlete is just a list of athletes who felt entitled to publically disregard a communal rule. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire cheated and we got mad because most of us don’t (or can’t) cheat at our jobs. The answer to LeBron’s Nike question is this: we wanted you to swap employers with quiet dignity, because when we switch jobs, nobody really cares. And since we like to think of ourselves as people who work hard at our jobs, we also demand the athlete care, but when he steps off the field of play, we expect him to be the sort of guy, who, to quote some disastrous election logic from a few years back, we can have a beer with.



(go to 4:07)

In the dungeon of tunnel-visioned stars, only Barry Bonds has carried the excesses of caring-too-much as poorly and awkwardly as Kevin Garnett. Jordan was protected by doting reporters and the persistence and impenetrability of the mask he wore whenever he was in front of a camera. Kobe is saved by his visible intelligence, his occasional moments of thoughtfulness. Garnett has never possessed any of these graces, or, at the very least, the institutional guidance to occasionally edit out his excesses. What’s worse, there’s always been something a bit off about Garnett’s famed intensity—he doesn’t quite burn in the same way that Chris Paul burns, he doesn’t have Isaiah’s grim determination, he doesn’t have Rodman’s “fuck it, we’re winning” mentality.

With Garnett, there’s always a sense of insecure theater, of a man who hasn’t quite convinced himself of the virtues and authenticity of his passions. We all know people like this in our daily lives—the sneering indie snob, the violently overprotective mother, the religious blowhard. When Garnett started crying in front of John Thompson in that famed TNT interview, I remember feeling bad for him, not because he was sick of losing, but rather, because he, in true Jimmy Swaggart style, felt the need to imbue such wild theatrics into his caring. When he made the comment about going to war and bringing teks and grenades, I remember thinking, “He just doesn’t get it.” Nothing that’s happened in the interim, from the weirdness of his championship ranting to last night’s confrontation with Charlie Villanueva and today’s bizarre attempt at an explanation, has budged that perception.



Anyone who has played pickup basketball has come across the guy who compulsively and needlessly bullies other players. These guys always force you into that ugly headspace, wherein you must calculate what is more debasing: to endure their abuse or to fight back. On Tuesday night, Charlie Villaneuva made a bad compromise by tattling via twitter, when the more appropriate response might have been to punch Garnett in the mouth and let the public decide whether or not it was justified. Strangely, it was Villanueva’s twitter activity, and not Garnett’s trash-talking, that violated an unspoken code: the one that dictates athletes take care of their own business without turning to the public opinion. And while I’m not so naïve as to say that Garnett’s comments marked some unbreached depth of trash-talking, I don’t find it instructive or even interesting, really, to argue whether or not this is in or out of character for him, specifically, or for NBA players, at large.

I’m certain there are tons of assholes who say asshole-ish things on the court. But a history of boorish behavior shouldn’t excuse what Garnett said and it certainly should not change the prevailing opinion on the sort of guy he has become. We all know he is the irrational, manic bully on the court, the one who you just wish would get a girlfriend or find a job he enjoys, the same guy who ruins it for everyone else. And we know that sometimes the bully’s intensity, even if its fraudulent at its core, can rub off on his teammates. What sometimes results is five guys who cry at every foul call, who puff out their chests and talk shit, who throw elbows and who say things that turn an otherwise friendly, enjoyable game into a slap-battle of dicks. There is no question that Garnett’s “edge” has helped the Celtics win games, but it’s also created a litany of ugly moments in which Garnett physically attacks and threatens much smaller men. Any rational fan, really, anyone who doesn’t salivate at the thought of jumping strangers, should feel their stomach turn whenever they watch one of these encounters. And, I’d argue, if what Charlie Villanueva said is true, and there’s no reason to doubt his word, especially when compared to Garnett’s preposterous explanation, anyone with any decency or compassion should cringe when they hear about a grown man evoking the words “cancer patient” while ridiculing another grown man about a rare genetic condition that causes him to have no body hair.

Let’s remember: the bully ruins every pick-up game. The moment Garnett was traded to the Celtics, he ruined yet another one of my childhood teams. I haven’t rooted for the Celtics since and I’ve enjoyed the NBA more.



It was a strange swing—from witnessing the elation of a city over the Giants to the ugly reminder that there is a way to care too much about sports and championships. Garnett has always been my benchmark for twisted intensity, for what happens when an athlete takes the dogma of winning-at-all-costs and turns it into something ugly and indefensible. Sports, after all, are not war, and although we burden the stage with military props and metaphors, I don’t think the model we envision for our athletes is wrong. The best should play with passionate intensity, but there is a sportsmanlike way to perform any task, especially one as fundamentally meaningless as trying to put a ball through a hoop more times than your opponent. Yes, Garnett has done this before and he will do it again and the next Garnett will do the same, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue to confuse cruelty with competitiveness and a genuinely pathetic lack of perspective with intensity. Why can’t we just call an asshole an asshole every time he acts like an asshole? What the fuck do we owe Kevin Garnett?

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

Zac Crain is a senior editor at D Magazine and author of the Dimebag Darrell bio, Black Tooth Grin. Follow him at @zaccrain.

Josh Howard didn’t stop being a Dallas Maverick because he loves weed or hates the national anthem. That was cover fire. Josh Howard stopped being a Dallas Maverick because he became conventional.

When he entered the league as part of (but not really) the fabled draft class of 2003, he was wholly unpredictable, something the Dallas Mavericks lacked at the time. Don Nelson gave that squad the illusion of unpredictability, but that team (and pretty much all others Nellie has coached) was incredibly predictable within his framework. He’s like Wes Anderson or any other director that has been called quirky, or similar. If you walk in halfway through one of their films, it might seem so, but not if you have seen all of them from the beginning. Then the quirks are rote and easy to anticipate. Nellie has been Nellie for long enough that every ace up his sleeve is, by now, a two of clubs.

But Howard was genuinely wild, in his way. He was part of the team but apart from it at the same time. That isn’t to say he broke plays, or was a problem in any way. He had a game that seemed concocted on the fly. It was all impulse. He, more than any Mav at that time, could leave the crowd gasping. Dirk Nowitzki was the inevitable. Josh was the possible.

And then he turned into Michael Finley. Worse, he turned into late-career Michael Finley.

When it comes to Howard, I’ve always thought of Michael Finley as secondhand smoke. He is a power plant behind the back fence. He is a microwave tower hovering over a quiet neighborhood. I could (probably) make a scientific case that Finley gave Howard’s career cancer. But more than that, I simply believe it’s true, maybe because I want to and maybe because I can’t explain it otherwise. I don’t want to blame chance. It has to be the fault of someone or something.



So I always think of Mike Finley.

Specifically, I think of the Finley that I grew to despise during the last few years of his time in Dallas, which coincided with Howard’s first few seasons in the league. Even more specifically, I think of one play. It’s not a single moment, exactly. It’s a sequence that seemed to happen every game.

It is the end of a quarter, or a half, or a game. The shot clock is off but there is plenty of time left on the clock. Let’s say 17 seconds. Finley gets the ball near the three-point line on one side or the other. And then he turns into a bad Michael Jordan impersonator. Let’s say Harold Miner. He palms the ball, arm extended, holding it away from his defender. You’ve seen this. Yes. Finley keeps holding it, and holding it. You reach, I teach, and, man, fuck Jordan, too. He made this happen.

Ten seconds. Jab step. Jab step. Five seconds. Finley takes a dribble than in no way could be considered as progress toward the basket. Two seconds. And here we are again: a heavily contested, step-back, fall-away jumper that only succeeds in drawing a groan from the crowd and maybe a bit of rim. It is a single shot, but it means everything. This is the signature move of someone who has put pride above all else. It was Finley’s move, and it became Howard’s.

Howard is sort of the son and grandson of this—affected by Jordan through Finley, and affected by Jordan directly. (That they were both handpicked by Jordan to be part of his Jumpman 23 roster and therefore under his wing is, I guess, my smoking gun.) A good enough player can handle it. For a time, Finley was good enough. With tons of qualifiers, yes—The Man, but on a terrible team, etc. But still: good enough. Howard never was. He was close. But he didn’t have the right make-up or the right situation.

The off-court PR problems? Those were maybe symptoms of his newfound pride. But I don’t believe that. Those made him more of a real person. He said the shit he wasn’t supposed to say but wasn’t alone in thinking or doing. He was maybe wrong in his choice of venue for one of those statements, but that didn’t make him wrong, or at least not wrong to speak his mind.

Be he was wrong on the court. That was more unforgivable. He fell in love with a jumper that, at best, wanted to be friends, maybe make out a little every once in awhile if they both had too much to drink. He decided he was 1B to Dirk Nowitzki’s 1A based on an injury-replacement All-Star selection and little else. He made superstar mistakes (picking up bad T’s at worse times) without superstar production.

It could have been different. He could have actually earned that 1B status. He could have been—and generally was, early on—a great defender, but he stopped trying on that end around 2005. Somehow, he was a much better defender under Don Nelson.

(Aside: You could sort of see where this was headed during the 2004 Rookie Challenge. That he was there was victory enough, given his draft position and everything else. He was a footnote to an afterthought, in a game dominated (on court) by Amar’e Stoudamire and (media-wise) by LeBron and Melo. Nelson told him to just do what he’d been doing to earn rotation minutes: rebound and play defense. Instead, and I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I feel as though he went something like 0-12 from three-point range in about eight minutes of playing time. I know, I know—wrong to judge ANYTHING in a glorified pickup game. But still. Omens are omens.)

He should have flourished playing with Jason Kidd, but the opposite happened. The Josh Howard that would have flourished in that situation—the one who always seemed to appear out of nowhere somewhere around the rim and, less relevant, regularly shut down clubs with Marquis Daniels—was long gone. He didn’t need (or want) a point guard, or anyone else, really. He had a fat man’s game: nothing but jogging and fadeaways.



In a way, Howard was still unpredictable, because I never expected that.

And so he is in Washington now, trying to come back from a knee injury and various other psychic damage from the six-month period where his status was fired on from pretty much every angle. This could come full circle. He is, more or less, forgotten now. It’s the perfect time for him to fly in from out of nowhere again.

FREE RASHAD

Jay Caspian Kang believes it must be done. Rashad must be free. Join the FREERASHAD movement over at his new blog at freerashad.blogspot.com and follow Jay on twitter

"Is it because my car is nice, clothes are nice, because I listen to Jay-Z, cuz I'm kinda cute? Or is it just "jealousy"? This has got to be the weakest emotion that anyone can have. To be jealous that I have what you don't have. But what I don't understand is why hate on just me? Then I thought, ain't no one fresher than me, no one flier than me, no one realer than me. So I am the reason people hate, prime reason you should hate anyone like me. I think it's cuz I was "BORN 2 BE HATED." - from the diary of Rashad McCants

ON FEBRUARY 10 2004, UNC sophomore Rashad McCants entered the second half of a game against Georgia Tech having only scored three points. The Heels, struggling along with a 4-6 conference record in Roy Williams’ first year as coach, trailed by five. The half started with a quick Georgia Tech run that expanded the lead to ten.

Over the next sixteen minutes of game time, McCants put on one of the most dazzling one-man shows in Tar Heel history, scoring twenty-eight points, draining three after circus three. Unfortunately for the Heels, McCants’ performance on that night was matched by Tech’s BJ Elder, who scored twenty-four in the half, and Carolina ultimately lost the game 88-77, a star was born in Chapel Hill. But here, finally, was the remedy to the Joe Forte blues—the explosive scorer and charismatic dynamo who could lead Ol’ Roy’s Heels back to the Final Four.

Back then, when a defense of Matt Doherty was enough to start a fight at Spanky’s or Woody’s or He’s Not Here, we were desperate. Perhaps we overlooked some early warning signs with McCants. There was never any official reason behind the Doherty firing; the accepted story in Chapel Hill was that Felton, May and McCants, offended by Doherty’s suggestion that they might need a psychiatrist, incited a mutiny that cleared the way for the Roy Williams era. In retrospect, the sports psychiatrist story only seems relevant in the context of McCants.

McCants, perhaps in a first-ever in the history of lazy sportswriters using the word mercurial, actually kind of was, well, mercurial. His antics on the court were always strangely anti-Carolina. Instead of taking on any leadership responsibilities, McCants seemed to orbit around the team’s gravitational center of May, Felton and Jawad Williams—never quite engaging, but always nearby, always doing his own thing. McCants flashed the Roc-A-Fella Domination sign after dunks, he saluted the cameras, he popped his jersey and preened for the crowd. To his credit, his theatrics were acts of exultation—unlike other “emotional” players, Rashad never argued with refs, he didn’t bicker with teammates during time-outs or on the court, he was never cheap or violent. Those of us fans who count Rasheed Wallace among our all-time-favorite Heels were happy to see that Ol’ Roy hadn’t brought the stuffier parts of Ol’ Carolina Way with him to Chapel Hill.

Yet he also played with a detached, but fully-formed intensity somewhere outside the usual jocularity, sportsmanship and precision one usually associates with Tar Heel Basketball. Watching him play was sometimes like watching Mike Tyson tell a joke—you love the man, the commitment, but you sometimes wonder what the fuck might be going through his head, and if what you are witnessing is the charming mechanics of a serial masochist.

Nothing that has happened to McCants over the past few years comes as any surprise to those of us who watched his career at Carolina. College, especially college in Chapel Hill, is a cocoon. Once Rashad was fed to the wolves and every quirk, every mysterious story was exposed for what it was, once he quit being Rashad McCants: eccentric and lovable dynamo for our Tar Heels, and, instead, became Rashad McCants: public property, what would happen to him? He once equated playing at Carolina to being in jail and longed for his “freedom.” What would that freedom entail? Although nobody really talked about it, Carolina fans had already seen what was odd with Rashad.

It certainly seems telling that the last image of McCants as a Tar Heel comes right after the final buzzer sounds in the 2005 National Championship. Felton, May, Marvin and Jawad mob one another under the basket. McCants is nowhere to be found. The camera finally finds him standing alone at mid-court. He has taken off his Carolina jersey and, with a smirk, presents it to the television audience.



SOCIETY-IN-THERAPY rarely extends its graces to the professional athlete. Ricky Williams is equated to Benedict Arnold; when Milton Bradley took some time off this spring to tend to some very obvious emotional issues, sportswriters piled on the usual absurd, man-in-a-foxhole metaphors. No matter how much Zack Greinke achieves on the mound, he will always be defined by the depression that caused him, God forbid, to question if he really wanted to pursue a life as a professional baseball player.

Although our post-racial language will not allow such an easy categorization, there exists a perception of a “Black depression,” that differs from its counterpart, “White depression.” Each iteration carries its own bag of causalities and images—White depression elicits bathtubs filled with blood, minivans, Mary Kay, Sylvia Plath, Edward Scissorhands, whereas the prevailing vision of Black depression is laid out along the narratives of economic hardship, limited opportunity and the ghetto operatics that much of America uses to define the totality of the African-American experience. In neater terms: White depression is The Virgin Suicides, Black depression is the fourth season of The Wire.

It certainly doesn’t need to be said that all these differentiations are myths, and dangerous ones at that, but the way they are processed seems paradoxical to certain core American values of responsibility. Why are we quicker to forgive White athletes for lapses in mental health? Why do we turn a blind eye to Josh Hamilton’s relapse, but pile on Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry? Why are there glowing Sports Illustrated cover stories about the miracle of Zack Greinke’s recovery from anxiety and depression, but none about Michael Beasley? In the most essentialist vision possible, which also happens to be the touchstone for almost all discussion of sports in America, shouldn’t America (titanic) be more willing to forgive the kid with the tough ghetto childhood than the kid who gets bored with his privileged, suburban life? Why did society-in-therapy, so eager to embrace everyone that it produced a show about a mob boss and his psychiatrist, create a state of exception for the Black athlete?

Perhaps, ironically, it is exactly the self-evidence, and, in some ways, the simplicity of the causality of Black depression that creates the very narrative used to dismiss it. Because Black depression, again speaking in as essentialist terms as possible, is perceived as being the result of economically depressed living conditions, whereas White depression is written off as chemical imbalances, treatable by any number of medications, when a Black male becomes a visibly wealthy member of society, he is subjected to this catastrophic logic: Because he is rich now, the reasons for the Black athlete's depression are now gone. Therefore, he should no long show any symptoms of any mental health problems. If he does, he is simply not appreciating what he has been given.

In his pre-draft interview with the Miami Dolphins, Dez Bryant was asked if his mother was a prostitute and if she “still did drugs.” When brought in for a workout with the 49ers, Matthew Stafford was asked to discuss his feelings about his parents’ divorce. When he said he wasn’t going to talk about it, the 49ers brass downgraded him on their chart.

What is the expected answer? What could Matthew Stafford have said to convince Mike Singletary that he was mentally healthy? How was Dez Bryant supposed to react to a stranger asking him if his mother was a drug addict/prostitute? It is impossible to believe that anyone, much less a front-office employee of a professional sports franchise, could make a determination of psychological health based on these sorts of scattershot, shock-jock questions. So why ask them? What Superman is being constructed? And what, for fuck’s sake, do we expect Superman to say?

Even if we do not know, exactly, who Superman is, we know who he is not, and he is not Rashad McCants, or any of his looks of exasperation, disinterest or anger. He is not the tattoos he sports on each arm: “Born to be Hated,” and, “Dying to be Loved.” He is not the poetry McCants has written or the mostly unexplained hiatus he took from that 2005 championship team. He is not his moodiness or his outbursts. In fact, the only NBA-ish thing Rashad McCants has done in the five years that have passed since he left Carolina, was briefly date a Kardashian.



IT IS NO SECRET THAT THE NBA has lost its personality. In this post-Gil-era, the mold of NBA superstar is more blank, unobtrusive and corporate-friendly than it’s ever been. Kids no longer run up and down the court with a specific player’s demeanor in mind, but rather, professional basketball has become a TV show in which every character aspires to be the bland, beautiful straight man. Of the top ten players in the league, only Kobe has a distinct personality, a set of easily codified traits that define who he is. What, really, do we know about Dwight Howard? When he came into the league, he was a shy, Christian kid who was so naïve that he once said that there should be a crucifix on the NBA logo. Now, he is Dwight Howard, smiling, corporate superman, stripped, with Mao’s efficiency, of any religious ornamentation. Howard’s quirks are so calculated, predictable, that he comes across as a gigantic Katy Perry. Kevin Durant is celebrated for his candor, but only in contrast with the clamminess or meanness of his fellow players Dwyane Wade is not much more than a collection of commercials, post-hipster glasses and velveteen suits. As for the league’s self-appointed King, part of the shock and rage over Lebron’s Decision Summer came from the fact that we are simply not used to such disturbances of our expected boredoms, especially from a guy who has Jordan-monotoned the cameras since his freshman year in high school. Even his recent twitter vendetta seems staged—the virtual flailings of a desperate, and, ultimately, blank man.

While it’s undeniable that a culture of sameness has arrived, one has to wonder if this is a product of the league’s relentless push into international markets (strip the game of the “Americanness” that might offend people in Europe and Asia, and watch it grow!), or if it is truly a reflection of something much more ominous: a society that has built up an industry of mental health to tamp everyone down into a docile vessel. Is there so much difference between McCants and Charles Oakley? Is he more polarizing than Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf? The NBA once was a place where volatile personalities were used as weaponry—players like Lambeer, Oakley, Mahorn, Andrew Toney and Mourning played not so much as individuals on the court, but as embodiments of their unchained egos.

What I am trying to ask is this: are we really still willing to accept eccentricity?



FREE RASHAD is for all of us head-cases, the misunderstood. It is for all of us who wanted to walk the earth with Ricky Williams, for those of us who listen to Mike Tyson and see a vision what we might be like if we had lived through a similar chaos. It is for those of us who, like Rashad, have never quite been able to bridge the gap between our conception of self—no matter how catastrophic it may be—and the functioning world. It is not as much a movement to get Rashad McCants back in the NBA, as it is a lament for the league we have lost. We accept, as Rashad has, his shortcomings as a teammate, as a basketball player. We are not even saying that if we were the GM of a team, we would offer our hero a spot on the roster. Rather, we ask for the league to FREE RASHAD in the hopes that it will restore a coliseum of volatility, a celebration of the eccentric, and, perhaps, in turn, delay the ever-expanding norm of the corporate, World-Wide National Basketball Association.

FREE RASHAD! FREE RASHAD! FREE RASHAD!

Leave Me at the Bank

My eyebrows are in one time zone, my legs are in the last one, and my torso shut off. I also don't think I got much sleep. So apologies if I don't give these bullets points the lengthy treatment they deserve.

-Amar'e, Amar'e, and more Amar'e. At the Awl, I turn the looking glass back on myself. I somehow neglected to mention the issue of conversion, something Eric Freeman and my brother have raised previously. They point to the convert's over-enthusiasm for ritual and all else that belongs in Judaism for Dummies, much like what we see with Stoudemire (albeit less cryptically). As well they should; it's their job. Here's the thing: conversion is a process, a course by which one arrives at the right to call himself a Jew. Amar'e ignored that part—the whole humility, learning and growing part—and has gone right off the deep end. So no, not the same thing.

-Yesterday, Henry brought up his year abroad in Tibet, and suggested we view Amar'e's summer fun in the same developmental light. Since, after all, Amar'e never went to college and had a chance to grow. Now, I don't see any one-and-dones taking a semester abroad, or necessarily getting all they can from the college experience. But certainly, some guys—Kevin Durant, for instance—have shown enthusiasm for their courses, mixing with students, and just generally getting something out of a year on campus. Jay Caspian Kang would like to nominate John Henson for this honor.

-Speaking of Jay, rumor has it he will be in attendance at Rafe Bartholomew's reading in the Bay tonight:

Pacific Rims reading and book signing
Tuesday, August 3, 6:30 pm
Eastwind Books of Berkeley
2066 University Avenue, Berkeley, Calif.

Don't forget, Pacific Rims is the basketball book of the year, and Rafe seems like quite a hoot in his videos. I can also attest to his skills as an email correspondent. Show up or regret it forever!

There Is No Scrap Impartial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

I Am An Eagle

Ron: First I wanna thank everyone in my hood, all my warriors, [inaudible]. My wife kisha, my family, my kids, everybody. I definitely want to thank my doctor, Dr. [name]. My psychiatrist. She really helped me relax a lot. Thank you so much. It's so difficult to play with so much emotion on the line in the playoffs. She helped me relax. Thank you so much. I knocked down that 3, just like you told me.

Doris: That was a huge shot, your late 3, yes no question. Ron again—

Ron: And my single's coming out! No talking to me (jokingly; Doris laughs). I got a single called Champion. I got a song called Champion! I recorded it...last..June!!!!

(thanks to the Litman clan for the transcription!)

Plus, the no less colossal NBA-TV interview:



And of course:

Ask Me About the Baptist

It's come to this. Yes, it's come to this. I suppose there are many courageous thoughts to have about last night's Celtics win, like how much they deserve to win it all if that keeps up. I wake up dreaming of titles and go to sleep crying about them. I live like a champion. But while I've gotten in a few sidelong remarks about Rondo's progress, and how a player who has always fascinated me has really taken it to the streets . . . now, it is the time of reckoning. The dams of restraint, and fatigue, have burst, and I can do nothing today but wonder: how and why does such an athlete exist?

Philosophically speaking, Rajon Rondo is my ideal basketball player. I say this when, in about thirty seconds, I'll be asked to explain my feelings for John Wall on pre-taped radio. Don't get me wrong, I still believe in Wall and his ability to throw basketball into a tizzy. Rondo, though, takes not such a direct route to dominance. I have perhaps been too caught up in his autodidact's legend; it dovetails a little too well with both my love of Other-ly foreign players, as well as rumbling, unfettered creativity that in LeBron James, we trace back to joy, not method. His mode of presentation, though, is as much Garnett as is his freakish build and skill-set. KG is at once out of control and totally within himself, exploiting the world's perception of the mask he can't help. I don't feel bad saying that Rondo comes across as otherworldly and borderline autistic; Doc Rivers swears the man loves to communicate, but is hard to get to. For opponents, that veneer of weird, tinged with hostility and detachment, is damn hard to read. Thus, for Rondo, personality becomes a weapon.

If I'm stumbling, or raving, here, pardon. This has been building for a while and at some point, it couldn't grovel to responsibility all that much longer. At last night's SSSBDA meeting, I had a major breakthrough: Physically, Rondo isn't an alien, or a dinosaur. He's an alien-dinosaur. Or, as Kevin corrected, a dinosaur-alien. Alien-dinosaur would just be a space lizard; dinosaur-alien is creature from other realms overlaid with the qualities of a raptor. This is the first of several times I will repeat this statement: This is no physical being like Rondo. Yes, his arms are long, his speed beyond speech. But there's also his wiry strength, his internal gyroscope (at its best when spooling along with a bit of wobble), those impossibly broad shoulders, calculating gaze, and a face too smooth and empty for this town.



We are nearly arrived at the point of actual basketball. There's a pause here, a beat, and then no turning back. Here's what astounds me most about Rajon Rondo: He is pure style, with an almost nasty disregard for formalism. How often does Rondo make the same move twice? When he succeeds, does he attempt to repeat himself? And, more to the point, does anything in his game suggests he learned the canon, or anything resembling fundamentals? That's not to suggest that RR is a sloppy, or showy player. Nope, on top of all that, he makes the most gnarled, baroque maneuver turn into a given. There's nothing self-consciously fancy or stylized about him. Rondo simply creates, going on what works, and refusing to acknowledge boundaries of good taste or the existence of time-honored solutions. He acknowledges only the situation at hand, the players on the floor, and the forces he feels working against his mechanical will.

Rondo has no sweet spot, no geometry. Even the multi-valent Kobe Bryant tends toward certain areas. Rondo, he could be anywhere, and everywhere at once, toss up the shot or pass it off at any time. At all times, he knows exactly where he stands in relation to the basket and his fellow man. Most astounding of all is how, with Rondo, the most haphazard, loose, or wild moves will resolve into something utterly precise: a wild lay-up that bounces off the glass just so, a shovel pass swung from up high that hits the waiting man, an over-assertive dribble, nearly wild, that sheds all defenders and leaves him out in space alone. Most players get anxious or excited in that situation. Rondo carries himself like he's been there all along, like it's our fault we can't always see this. I believe somewhere in the archives, there's a piece about string theory and many dimensions and worlds unseen. That seems applicable here, as do out-of-phase sound and The Ghost Whisperer.

I suppose the lack of a jumper should bother me. Looking at the way he negotiates space, though, it's hard to fault Rondo for something as trivial as range. He can rearrange defenders like garden furniture, set them scattering with a flash of arms and legs that (yes, I'm resorting to musical analogies) is like the second line version of Ornette's early Prime Time. When we talk about LeBron James expanding basketball's parameters, Kobe Bryant seeing things others can't, or the presumed Frankenstein PG game of John Wall, we deal with—cue the Rumsfeld—the known busting apart at the seams. Yup, unknown knowns, where nevertheless we have the known as a foundation.

Rondo doesn't just work with a different foundation; he's anti-foundational, even. For himself, for the sport, even for the personae we try and latch onto as fans. He isn't progress, or variation, or even an eccentric. Rondo is the strangest player I have ever had the privilege of watching. To locate him in the game's unconscious is the safer, easier explanation. Rajon Rondo is an outsider—or an original who burrows that word back to its own lost beginnings. I have no idea if this kind of athlete happens more often than I think, but for now, I like to think I'm watching a true basketball alien.

Reading Is Elsewhere

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

There's a Dark Hand Over My Heart

I am really not going to look back over everything I've written this past week and apologize, or tweak, according to the latest revelations. Head to TMZ if you really want to feel like the sky is falling. It pains the fuck out of me to acknowledge that, somehow, Vecsey did sort of have the story all along, perhaps the only real reporting of his career. How he got it pre-Gil/Critt cover-up will hopefully come to light soon, and I'm sure will make this ten times craziers. BECAUSE PETER VECSEY DOES NOT GET STORIES THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY. He doesn't know how to.

It's "Armageddnon Week" on the History Channel, and my listening for the day has moved onto this:



But this is really still about Gil. I said on Dan Levy's podcast last night that this was Gil at his most Gil ever. One friend said he's never been more proud of, or at least fascinated, by Arenas. However, Lang's got the most sobering angle on it: Arenas just doesn't seem to recognize that sometimes you can't plow through the world on sheer whim alone. You have to do shit you don't want to, follow orders, and go by the logic of something other than your own bonkers mental activity. Why would Gil have ever learned that lesson? He's a self-made superstar, defying the ban on combo guards, the expectations that he'd fail as a pro, and the post-Jordan belief that personality doesn't sell anymore. He wouldn't sit down and shut up, or play by the rules, not because he's a rebel, but because he's just completely out-there and independent.

He did his whole career his way. And he carried that over into a crisis that could very well end it. The Twitter, the FINGER GUNZ, they flew in the face of everything he was supposed to do—that Stern wanted him to do for the good of the league—to such an extent that it's hard to see this as, in the most grave way possible, Gil being Gil. To the bitter fucking end, I guess. Plus, that he is the lovable goofball works against him. At least a hardened thug-like dude has it expected of him, and is easy damage control for the league to run. In a way, Artest's history of violence allows him to get away with darn near anything now, even if he's at bottom just as fundamentally weird as Gil. Arenas, though, doesn't have that buffer. Nor does he have Delonte West's diagnosis. Gilbert Arenas is what he is, always has been, and he insists on being accepted for that. That's stubborn, arrogant, and misguided, but just as often refreshing, charming, and exhilarating. But here, Arenas knew the truth all along, and Stern's likely known for a minute. That Gil couldn't for once take a break from fighting for acceptance, or noticed that to survive you sometimes have to roll over and play possum, is everyone's loss.

Leo Durocher Sent Me

All I've ever really wanted to say all along about Gil, in column form: sports aren't morality. If you look to them for that, you're shallow and confused.

Now, go listen to the podcast.

Learning to Speak

We're back with a nice long show to take you through the weekend.



First, Dan and Bethlehem Shoals get together to try to talk like sports talk radio people. They intermittently succeed.

As usual, the topics vary. The Grizzlies and Kings - better than we thought? Point guards and confidence. Lineups with two or more small guards. The mystery of Ramon Sessions. Trying not to talk about Tim Donaghy, but doing so anyway.

At the end, Ken shows up so we can check in with the Knicks. Also, would Cleveland consider a trade with a team that might be a destination for LeBron next year? We talk as long as the baby allows.

Thanks for listening, no matter how long you've been doing so (or how long the show is.)

Songs from the episode:

"Baby We'll Be Fine" - The National
"Pigs in Zen" - Jane's Addiction
"A Horse Called Golgotha" - Baroness
"Never Gonna Kill Myself Again" - Rocket From The Tombs
"Before You Accuse Me" - Bo Diddley
"There Is No End" - Abyssinians
"Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" - Do Make Say Think
"Speakers Push The Air" - Pretty Girls Make Graves

It'll Find You

I've been trying to figure out why it is that I've got zero to say about Delonte West. Maybe it's because I'm fairly confident that he'll lawyer up hard and be ready for the start of the season. Or because the Michael Beasley saga, in all its opacity and yanking around after answers, ended up covering so much broad "mental illness in sports" territory.

Then I realized: It's because I'm neither amused, shocked, nor saddened by it. West is bipolar; so am I. That doesn't make me unsympathetic to his situation—on the contrary, to me it's almost mundane, the kind of thing you wake up from and shake your head at. Not that I've ever ended up strapped to the teeth on a mini-bike, re-enacting a scene from a shitty movie. But since no one got hurt, and the explanation is obvious, the specifics are neither here nor there. This is what happens when you go off your meds. The legal system knows this, and presumably, Delonte is a little closer to figuring it out.

So if I'm failing to come up with anything penetrating, or start any meaningful discussion, it's because this is so close to home, it's a non-entity. I don't even feel like having a conversation about living with said disorder, because that's not even interesting to me. It's the hand some are dealt. It probably explains why West is such a tremendous personality, and also reduces this incident to a feature-less bump in the road.

Update: Baseline column on West/coverage of Beasley.

Say What You Feel

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

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

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

Bend String on Zither

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

You've Got The Look!

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



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



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



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



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



Jordan Hill is just trying to figure it all out.



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



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



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

Guest Lecture: All This (Rocket) Science I Don't Understand

Today’s FD guest lecturer is Chi Tung, a man who may or may not refer to himself as the Chinese Stallion (after all, it is what his name means). When he’s not wearing lensless glasses for a tech show on state-run Chinese television, he moonlights as a writer, for publications ranging from the Huffpo to Asia Pacific Arts.

Now that the 2009 Houston Rockets have bowed out for good (bless their scrappy hearts), it’s as good a time as any to turn down all that red glare, and understand what actually matters. There will be talk of caging and uncaging the pitbull that is Ron-ron, whether the collective talents of Lowry/Brooks are lesser or greater than the parts of their sum, and of course, T-mac’s further descent into the abyss. But all that pales in comparison to the made-for-Beyond-the-Glory (as directed by Werner Herzog) trajectory of one Yao Ming, and his newfound FD-ness.

Prior to these playoffs, Yao had yet to have a truly defining NBA moment—at least, not one that didn’t end in head-shaking ignominy (see: Robinson, Nate). Redemption, then, has been thrice as nice to him in ’09—the flawless shooting exhibition he put on in a game-one dismantling of the Blazers that caused them to rejigger their entire defensive gameplan; the gutsy fourth-quarter points he notched against the Lakers in Game One after a near-catastrophic collision with Kobe; and the outright refusal to leave Game Three when he was noticeably limping and would later be diagnosed with a broken foot. Again.



On paper, these images lack the naked transcendence of a Lebron buzzer beater, or the basketball-is-hip-hop undressing of Tyronn Lue in the wake of an AI crossover. But they’re important nonetheless—because mythmaking relies as much on the power of perception as it does shock-and-awe. Pundits and bloggers alike tend to talk about Yao’s accomplishments like they’re being asked to pen a hagiography—as if being compelled to assume the role of China’s sacrificial lamb-cum-cash-cow has earned him a lifetime of faint, backhanded praise. Under their breath, though, there’s more than a whiff of denigration: what kind of dominant big man doesn’t dunk the ball with malice, they ask? Or put his imprint on games by demanding the ball more often? Or, in so many words, tell the Chinese government to step the eff off so his achy-breaky feet can heal properly?

In isolation, these mutterings sound like provocations made by Right Way absolutists. But the things you hear in China are equally problematic, albeit for entirely different reasons. The other day, I offhandedly remarked to one of my Chinese colleagues that though it’s a damn shame about Yao’s latest injury, it’s some consolation to see him getting recognition from the MSM as a tough, resilient sonofabitch. His response? That in many ways, Yao has always been the quintessential Chinese male—he has big, brass balls, but doesn’t feel the need to tell you about them, a la Sam Cassell. It’s just one of many instances where Yao-as-cultural-trope trumps Yao-as-basketball-player. And one of many instances where Americans and Chinese alike fail to appreciate the true essence of Yao.



Liberated fandom allows us to root for who we want, in the ways that we want, largely because of our desire to claim ownership over a certain value or aesthetic. But in China, the who and the how take a backseat to the just-is. One could argue that Chinese fandom is inherently liberated in ways that Chinese politics—and American fandom—are not. Without the self-reflexiveness that comes part and parcel with Americanness, Kobe just is someone who makes the game look absurdly easy and fun, not a lightning rod for varying definitions of greatness. NBA player jerseys are worn unironically and with little regard for street cred—hence, the inexplicable popularity of Shane Battier. Even Chinese fandom, as it relates to domestic pro clubs, seems curiously anachronistic—rather than drawing upon clearly defined geographical lines, it functions more like club soccer on a smaller scale. Mercenaries carry little stigma because so little is at stake—replace the name Cristiano Ronaldo with Bonzi Wells, and you’ll understand why.

And yet, through all of it, Yao remains—he has all the responsibilities of a national monolith, but none of its perks. In other words, Chinese people may look to him for inspiration, but rarely can they articulate what they intend to do about it. Part of that is due to the building-castles-in-the-sand nature of globalization. In basketball parlance, it’s like seeing the torch-passing from Yao to Yi as a sweeping, old-school-to-new-school progression, and swearing it’s only a matter of time before China’s own version of Ricky Rubio is releasing mixtapes during the offseason.

I’ve beaten this drum before on my Huffpo beat, but it bears repeating—China is a country containing multitudes within multitudes. Those multitudes ebb and flow in zigzag fashion, but that hasn’t stopped the Western hemisphere from hurtling toward linear categorizations and literal-mindedness. We see Yao pushing his body to limits for a cause that seems far flung from everyfan realities. (Zig) But at varying points throughout his career, we’ve also seen him be silly, wise, cocky, fatalistic, self-aware, angry, unflappable, rattled-to-the-core. (Zag) If Kobe is the man of a million Machiavellian faces to his detractors, then Yao is the fragmented, pixilated visage of a billion reluctant fans and their foibles, few of whom are willing or able to defend him as being unassailably great.



So does that make Yao a blank canvas that leaves the etching of destiny to others? If you think that, then I have an autographed poster of Antoine Walker I’d like to sell you. When Yao first came into the league, he was eminently quotable, but in a way that seemed tailormade for caricatures stemming from Asian Mystique. He would alternate between zany philosophical musings and carefully constructed nationalist mantras. After the Beijing Olympics ended, he even went so far as to say his “life was over.” Not so the Yao of today. Though he remains quip-y (his crack about America’s National Anthem being his favorite song because he hears it 365 days a year seems a pretty cleverly disguised rebuke of compulsory patriotism), Yao no longer speaks like Yoda-meets-Sun-Tzu, and refers instead to personal triumphs and priorities with something resembling ebullience.

While chronic injuries have robbed T-mac of his once-irrepressible vitality, they seem to have reinvigorated Yao, who now plays, acts, and talks like someone who can’t be bothered with the weight of tradition or the double-edged sword of transparency, whereas both remain major hang-ups for China. Perhaps he’s finally realizing that, unlike the Lebrons and Kobes of the world, nothing is preordained, and that he can rewrite the script as many times as he sees fit. In a way, the mundane inevitability of Yao’s injuries have helped put his mortality into clearer focus—it helps liberate him from our static, decontextualized ideas of spectatorship, not to mention the stale notion that his multi-facetedness is somehow artificially conceived.

That same paradigm exists with China—the more we treat its symbols as fuzzy math, the more easily flummoxed we become. As liberated fans, we should know better. After all, we can take a Right Way canard like “let the game come to him” and turn it into a triumph of individual style. In Yao’s case, though, letting the game come to him is about letting everything else go. Only then does he know what’s still worth holding on to.

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

The man who made a certain famous comment has returned to expand upon his initial germ of genius. Ladies and gentlemen, Damian Garde:

As far as NBA platitudes go, among the oldest and most yawn-inducing is the idea that players sacrifice everything for the team. Whether their bodies, their egos or their stats — we want our heroes to be selfless at some cost. But all that seems petty compared to the transformation of Rajon Rondo. Beyond making the extra pass, beyond diving for a loose ball, Rondo gave up his innocence for the Boston Celtics.

It seemed sudden in the moment but natural in retrospect. The boyish, long-lashed work in progress who unabashedly discusses his love for roller-skating and keeps Chap Stick in his sock turned into a volatile rebounding machine who’d smack you in the face and throw your Kansas ass into a table on general principle. But it wasn’t a flash of deep-seeded rage or some misguided ploy for street cred or respect. In Game 5, Paul Pierce — who is perhaps a dramatist, a masochist, or both — was playing hurt; Ray Allen had uncharacteristically fouled out; and Kevin Garnett was caged in a suit on the sidelines. Rondo — like a young Dr. Doom, like the child soldier who kills because it’s the only alternative to dying — became evil solely as a survival mechanism.

But like any evolution, Rondo’s has not been without growing pains. In Game 5’s post-game news conference, when the foul on Brad Miller got brought up, Rondo sheepishly lowered his head and, oddly, let Kendrick Perkins defend him before mentioning that, yes, Miller is much bigger than him. This can’t be overlooked — the Celtics have gone out of their way to defend what he did, and when pressed, Rondo only points out the perceived injustice that, excuse the pun, forced his hand. Further straddling the line between a sudden, very adult fury and his boyish nature, Rondo left that conference to share a post-game dinner with the guy who played McLovin.



Following last year’s championship run, Rondo was a league rarity: a name player without a creation myth. Taken late in the first round, Rondo spent his rookie season battling with Sebastian Telfair and Delonte West (a triumvirate pregnant with meaning, if I’ve ever seen one) for minutes at the point. Despite proving himself as a serviceable PG, he was seen as a lanky uncertainty after Boston’s summertime transition into a juggernaut. Even this season was spent somewhat in the wilderness: There were flashes of brilliance, followed by no-shows. And that probably should have made his playoff christening all the more predictable — few furies match that of a man in search of his own legend. And isn’t it only natural that, raised by three of the best self-mythologizers in the game, Rondo would eventually come into his own? After all, Paul Pierce need only touch a wheelchair to pack the theater; KG screams at the God who scorned him after an easy rebound; and, well, Jesus Shuttlesworth is Jesus Shuttlesworth.

But while Rondo’s newfound identity is perhaps as theatrical as those of his wolf-parents, its rawness makes it unsettling. Garnett, as intense as any player since cocaine stood in for Gatorade, is controlled genocide and often rides murder to work. His demons, volatile as they may be, forever bow to him. Rondo, who provided the waifish, just-happy-to-be here levity last season, now has the soiled hands of an off-the-handle bruiser. But, in a sense, he has the worst of both worlds: His fury is shaky and noncommittal. In Game 6, it was tempting to see Rose’s block as the hero’s impossible feat to thwart the supervillain. But aside from his squabble with Hinrich, Rondo was somewhat less explosive in that game. However, that didn’t stop the dawn of the new narrative: Rose, the golden, acne ridden beacon of Stern’s master plan, versus Rondo, the shifty, Gollum-like trickster.

Doin' Dirt: A Visual Taxonomy



(Chart by Ziller)

Facts don’t matter in the face of such montage fodder, and, thus, the new reality. Even though Rondo has been emotionally (and statistically) calmer in this Orlando series, his wide-eyed exuberance is gone, replaced by a quiet menace lost on no one. Obviously, his whole career is ahead of him, and it’s impossible to say with authority whether this identity will stick or be just a hiccup on the way to becoming Chris Paul Lite (It’s worth noting, however, that he’s probably the only 23 year old I’ve heard described as “wily”). But even if he goes on to become Isiah, we can never get jaded to the myth of Rondo. We were there, and we saw the boy in him die.