What It Is (Day 12)

Yago Colas posts again about his Cultures of Basketball course, but also, what the ABA means to us today. Especially in the afterglow of All-Star Weekend. Here's Day 11, on kids and the seventies Knicks, if you missed it.

I didn’t plan it this way when I designed the syllabus, but it seems especially appropriate to be teaching, thinking, and writing about the old ABA during the media-amped spawn of pure skill and utter silliness that is NBA All-Star Weekend. We wrestled no bears, but it was as though the giddy 70s hallucination that the ABA can appear to have been infected my students (and me) so that we had a wacky day worthy of the most surreal of that defunct’s league’s half-time shows.

I undoubtedly set the tone for this, in part, by beginning class with my personal anecdote about watching the Michigan game the night before at Applebee’s next to a couple of puffy, red-faced, slick-haired vulgarians who were ragging endlessly on each and every one of the players that I have in class. I was surprised to find myself offended. The students (players more than anyone) insisted on hearing the criticisms in all their blockheaded, paunchy glory. And with that I seem to have informalized the classroom beyond the point of no return.

From there, after a brief and meaningless introduction, I rolled a 3-minute clip of Julius Erving tearing up the ABA. As Dr J exhibited his assortment of pull-up threes, twisting finger rolls, and, of course, elegant swooping slams to a funky instrumental backbeat, the students got rowdy and loud.

Beating on their little desks, they screamed for more clips: "Where’s the drifting-out-from-behind-the backboard scoop?!!" "That was the NBA," I tell them, oldly, "against the Lakers." “We wanna see that!” “Julius in the NBA!” Inside I’m resisting – this isn’t about Julius per se, but about the ABA – but I’m weak. I don’t want to lose them, I don’t want to police them, and most of all, as I’ve said before, I could watch these clips all day. I want to see the Doctor too. “You really wanna see that?” I ask, suggestively, blithely unaware of the doom about to descend. “Yayyyyyyy!!” they shouted, birthday hats akimbo, noisemakers blaring, faces smeared with cake. “Okay!” I say brightly.

With my computer’s desktop projected enormously on the screen in the front of the room, I quickly Google “Dr J in the NBA”, self-conscious about how slow I am in this medium compared to these kids who were all born and raised in the Matrix (even slower than usual since I can’t type normally because of the splint immobilizing my right hand). But I manage to get to a long list of video links. Now I can’t decide. We see one called “NBA Julius Erving Mix”, with a subtitle in Spanish: “dunk de Julius Erving.” That looks like fun. I click and then watch with horror as the first static image appears on my screen (and therefore, I know, 1 billion times larger on the screen over my left shoulder, and probably on a monitor in the Dean’s office): a woman wearing a cut off tank-top with the words “Got dick?” emblazoned across the front. Yeah. Of all the stupid things I’ve done, of all the humiliations I’ve suffered in the classroom since I taught my first class as a graduate student at Duke University in 1988, nothing like this has ever happened. Now we are indeed in a time machine hurtling toward the ABA.



The students are like teenagers – well, most of them are teenagers – at their first keg party. Howling, laughing, shouting clever comments to the person sitting two inches away from them, hysterical with embarrassment and excitement at having blasted through a taboo. Jumping over a car seems like nothing when you've just seen that in your college class. My crippled fingers stab at the keyboard trying to make it go away, my clumsiness magnified exponentially as I try to restore a semblance of calm to what has become a roomful of very large, coked-up 6th graders. I find a new clip and, as always, the graceful moving images of baller excellence gradually bring them back to their senses, or, at least, make them quiet down a bit. But, as the last image fades, along with the last bellowed note of Whitney’s “Greatest Love of All,” I sense the loopy energy bubble back up to a boil.

I try to channel it: “what do you see in the clips of Erving? “ Some of the answers: “grace, dunks, the range on his finger-roll, his athleticism.” Great, I tell them. And then I remind them that much of what we saw in the Dr J clips was occurring at the same time as what we had seen two days before in clips of the Knicks. But it looks like a different game, like a different era, like our era. And, in fact, it’s true, they see it too, today’s NBA game – driving athletic layups, rim rattling dunks, three-pointers – owes much more to Erving and the ABA than it does to Red Holzman and the Knicks. Unfortunately, scintillating and promising though that postulation may be, they’ve lost interest and begin to bombard me with irrelevant questions about Dr J’s career. That happens a lot: class disintegrating into a streetball version of Jeopardy.

I countered by putting a concrete focal object in front of them. "Take out your books," I droned, "and open to this picture, on p. 86." At least they are obedient, even if glumly so. We look at Jacob Weinstein’s trippy ABA artwork, a two-page visual explosion, in magenta, yellow, and the palest of pale blues, of elevating players, towering stylized afros, skyrocketing shapes and stripes, squiggles and loops, and bears and dancing girls. It’s really a brilliant piece of work, like mainlining Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls (the canonical documentary account of ABA zaniness). “Let’s look at this,” I say, “like a work of art, what jumps out at you?”

First answer: “the 70s.” I press for a little elaboration. They do pretty well, pointing to the color palette and the explosive lines and forms just barely ordered. They smartly contrast this with the art work we’ve already examined in the class: the neat lines and subdued colors of the Celtics trophy machine, the slightly more individualized and fantastic but still by no means chaotic image of the Knicks plying their trade against a skyline of newspaper headlines and box scores. What do the 70s mean to you? I ask.

One kid’s answer: “I don’t exist.” By which, it turns out, he meant neither to roll out a slip-n-slide of Cartesian doubt, nor to transport us into a paradoxical first-person consciousness prior to his conception, but rather just to state the obvious: it’s before his time and so doesn’t mean much. It’s the flipside of the Trivial Pursuit version of historical interest: none. I choke back the rising gorge of self-righteous indignation so as to glide past that worrisome – and all too common -- ignorance and lack of curiosity about any frame of reference outside the first person singular in the present tense. Fortunately, someone else says, “It’s the 70s, it just looks like, like, anything could happen. You tell me something crazy happened in the 70s and I’d believe it, because anything could happen in the 70s.” A couple of students echo that, as though the first one hadn’t even spoken, like academics in a committee meeting.

Bingo. I can work with that. "The 70s," I say, "I’m hearing means possibility to you, an expanded field of possibilities." I hear a sound. Everybody laughs. I look confused. I hear the sound again. Not sure if it is a fart or a snore. Everyone laughs again. "Please," I think I begged, "can y’all stay with me here." A hand goes up: "Who is the guy holding the McDonald’s bag in the fur coat?" I look more closely at the illustration. I can’t remember and I’m so irritated by their unrepressed fascination with the marginal detail. Then I come up with it: Marvin Barnes. I tell them the story about Barnes refusing to board a St Louis bound plane in Louisville because it would arrive “before” it departed: “I’m not getting on no time machine,” said the player some felt could’ve been the greatest ever. No hand, but a voice calls out, "Who is the guy with the gun in the Condors uniform?" I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t fucking know. Their fucking attention spans are like the 2005-6 Phoenix offense: 7 seconds or less. I say none of this. Instead I laugh: "you can look it up if you want, y’all are so much faster on your devices than I am." (it was John Brisker, for the record).



I try again: "Possibility…" I say, richly trailing off, trying to make the word sound like an open door rather than a lead balloon. I really want to bring home the point that this marginalized insanity of the ABA, the league that apparently folded, had actually migrated into the NBA and taken over, viz. All-Star Weekend. But I also want them to get not only that historical point about the game, but to glimpse that there’s a way of thinking about possibility and growth, about marginality and centrality here. I fantasize about them going out in the world and scrambling social hierarchies because of Cultures of Basketball class.

"Wendell Berry," I tell them, "is an American poet and essayist, who is also a farmer in Kentucky." (Snickers). "He’s interested in questions of land use, farming, productivity, and ecology," I say. Back in the late 70s, just after the ABA folded, he took a trip to Peru to study the farming practices of Andean peasants there. I remember almost nothing of this essay except the following (which I may in fact be misremembering): Berry was struck by the fact that the Peruvian farmers would leave a wild margin all around their cultivated plots. Accustomed to the US practice of tilling and planting every possible square inch of arable land, Berry was puzzled. The farmers explained that the margin was sort of like a research laboratory. If some sort of pest, for example, destroyed their crop one year, they could look to the margins and see what had survived and in that way begin to develop hybrids that would resist that blight the next time.

Now it all started coming together for me. I began to see the students’ wildness today as an expression of, as a way of responding to, by reflecting, the wildness of the ABA. “What the hell was the ABA?” asks the subtitle of Bethlehem Shoals’s chapter (entitled Notes from the Underground) on the league in FreeDarko’s history of the pro game. Indeed, what the hell was that? The question we ask after something absurd occurs. Or, even more pertinently, after we come to our senses having participated in something absurd and inexplicable, or maybe even embarrassing. The question we ask having seen a UFO shoot across the evening sky, a quick trailing flash in our peripheral vision. It’s the question that might be asked of anything that grows in the unpoliced, uncultivated, untended margins of our attention. What the hell was that?

Indeed, that’s why I’ve allowed myself (why I always allow myself), against my judgment, to ramble about the seemingly unproductive, distracted and distracting occurrences and comments in class. The students seemed to me to be pestering for the identities of players on the margins of the picture, but they were really asking what the hell was that on the periphery of their egocentric, adolescent vision? What was that in a cowboy hat and six shooter? In a fur coat clutching a McDonald’s bag? Was Will Ferrell true? What was that world before I was born? (Indeed, the viral metaphor helps me understand how I kept getting carried away on the tide of their appetite for the decontextualized marginal detail; they were bitten by the ABA and I was bitten by them). What the hell was that?



And the answer, just like when someone hauls out the baby pictures (or better yet, the ultrasound images), is: it’s you, silly! Your game, your day and age. Saturday night Claire and I watched – riveted, bored, and embarrassed all at once -- a high-heeled, dolled up Heather Cox (I know its obvious, but really, why is a woman wearing heels to a basketball game?) escort Clippers guard Eric Gordon to a green screen, where he bashfully donned a Spartan helmet, grabbed a fake sword, and stood awkwardly before Jon Barry, ESPN commentator, who himself was also holding a sword and wearing a gladiator mask. They proceeded to mumble a few lines from the movie “Gladiator” and half-heartedly to knock their swords together like two embarrassed six year olds who are friends only because their parents are. “Thanks for the giggles, Eric” said Heather. He wandered off probably wondering “What the hell was that?” That was just before Justin Bieber nailed a three pointer in the celebrity game; which was just before he claimed his MVP trophy shouting props to “my boy Magic Johnson.” Did Justin Bieber really say “my boy Magic Johnson”? Did Magic really not only let him, but slap palms with him as he did? What the hell was that? The ABA –oops, the NBA – Its FANtastic! Have we really come so far from wrestling bears and playboy bunnies?

It’s true, the ABA may primarily be a mine of retro cache for a few urban hipsters, or a nostalgia trip for some middle-aged ballers like myself, but in some very real ways the ABA didn’t fold at all, it just implanted itself parasitically into the NBA and mutated (Shoals himself offers the viral metaphor in passing, and refers to the league as a “workshop or laboratory”). Add it’s not just the shamelessly, insatiable appetite for attention in the global media marketplace or the brazen techniques for securing it that the farmers of the NBA found and hybridized in the margins that were the ABA. It’s also, as I pointed out to the students, the game itself, the product on the floor.

If LeBron idolized Michael Jordan, well, it’s well-known that Michael idolized North Carolina State, then ABA, high-flyer David Thompson. Thompson may have burned out, but Dr. J didn’t, becoming instead a dominant gene in the host body of his new league. Where clips of the 70s Knicks offer an endless series of sober layups and mid-range jumpers (their regularity only emphasized by the oddity of an Earl Monroe scoop shot), the typical NBA game today presents itself as a series of 3 pointers, twisting layups in traffic, and mighty jams: in short, as a Dr J ABA highlight reel. And never is that more evident than during All-Star weekend, when the game turns itself inside out: parading as spectacular exhibition what in fact it is all the time.

There is a beautiful coda I would like to add, though it didn’t occur to me in class, lest I sound too disdainful. I’m only a little disdainful. After all, I’m of original ABA vintage and my authentic ABA game ball (autographed by the 1975 Spurs) sits proudly on our mantle. It’s in my DNA. But if I nonetheless seem less than caught up in the spectacle let me offer this by way of gratitude to the progenitors of Amazing.

The students, in responding to the artwork, mentioned the word “psychedelic.” In the feverish haze of my own ABA acid trip, I neglected to tell them that etymologically, “psychedelic” means “soul manifesting.” But it strikes me now that the phrase is a perfect response to the question: what the hell was the ABA? It was soul, manifesting. And while it may well have been an economically futile, exploitative, drug driven ride for a few martini-soaked businessmen, it also implanted some much needed soul (and style) into the genetic material of the mother ship that would first absorb and then be possessed by it.

What Hideous Curiosity

Over the years, FD has become associated with many things, some good, some bad. Among the leading positives is Big Baby Belafonte's dazzling artwork. Since the Style Guide was first released--ironically, you can't even see it anymore--Big Baby has popularized a distinctive, resonant way of looking at basketball. Literally. The Macrophenomenal Almanac and the Undisputed Guide expanded the audience for this exciting, perceptive, creative thinking, and Big Baby's work is as inextricably FD as anything else. We're all fortunate to say so. Those prints are something of a trademark. And a cash cow!

(Please note that I can write all of these nice things, however factual, because I've had absolutely nothing to do with the art. Like anyone else, I am a fan who looks on with amazement and appreciation.)

It's not just Big Baby, though. FD has been the launching point for a number of artistic explorations. Who could forget when Tom Ziller used his third-eye vision to teach that the day's mathematics was Z? Or more recently, when Hakeen was remembered amid the scribbles in your notepad that invented your life? FD has a proud artistic tradition.

Today may mark a departure from this distinguished history. Certainly, there is artwork that follows, and it very much endeavors to comment on this basketball which we hold dear. But that's the end of the similarity. Our latest episode offers decidedly less aesthetic appeal than that which is common among its predecessors. It might not even make any sense. The images that you're about to look upon are purposely lo-fi, functional in the service of expressing an idea, but not exactly ready to adorn the lavish halls of Slim Chin's manse.

These images grew out of a confused, meandering conversation that I had with Shoals one night last week as Derrick Rose played a sensational game that we hated. You may recall the capstone:



Less obvious while in plain sight, Derrick Rose took a customary straight path to the basket. He seems to always do that, eschewing soft angles and minute precision for hard darts and raging athleticism directed in a single vector. Rose can change directions, of course, but he explodes in a series of discrete movements, no matter how quickly he may change from one to another. His motion isn't united as a single brush stroke. It is a collection of lines, a pile of pickup sticks arrayed in new patterns but always limited by the component parts. Another image that immediately appeared in my mind was one of a locomotive laying down its own tracks as it rumbled along. Shoals was almost mad at Rose for this. We agreed that it was dissonant. For all of his obvious physical prowess, Rose has a limited game. Only, the limit is born of convenience. He isn't a wonderful shooter, his court vision is not an unmistakable strength, and he does not pose a threat from all over. Derrick Rose doesn't need that. Instead, he's something of a perfect scoring weapon, a man who invariably finds himself at the rim after picking a trail and racing forward along it. The shit works.

Brute strength and straight-line basketball are shrill traits for a point guard in this new era of the position's pitch-perfect primacy. While styles among the leading point guards vary, seemingly each one makes far more sense for its master than Rose's does for a player as physically competent. Shoals and I mulled this over for a while before intervening commitments left us at the point where artwork comes into the story. Lost in the morass we commonly create as our online ruminations crash into each other, we agreed that I would endeavor to create simple visuals that captured the overriding impressions respectively left by my favorite guards. This, we thought, might help us better articulate what Derrick Rose is, exactly. I am not sure that I succeeded, but maybe it will start a better conversation.

(Click to enlarge.)

Chris Paul, Angle Master




Derrick Rose, Raging Bull




Rajon Rondo, Cat on Ice Skates




Russell Westbrook, The Magic Carpet Ride

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.

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.

FD Guest Lecture: Where Magaling Happens

Paeng Bartolome (aka Rafe Bartholomew) blogs at Manila Vanilla and has written a book on Philippine basketball, to be published in June.

When I was growing up in early 1990s New York, I thought everyone played ball. Shammgod, Ron-Ron and Steph were still in high school, and back then all we could talk about was their handles, not—as they moved on to college and the pros—how coaches should handle them. Of course, hoops didn't actually hold the entire city in its grasp, but it felt that way. I wore Olaf's shorts under my jeans every day in ninth grade; everyone I knew played ball, and anyone who didn't play I had no reason to know.

Alas, I grew up. I had to go to college, get a job, widen my frame of reference to acronyms beyond the PSAL, NAIA, NCAA and NBA. The sport was no longer my life, just a part of it. That's pretty typical for most kids who possessed some talent but nothing special and had to figure out plan B. Still, I missed the feeling of being surrounded by the game, of living in a place where everyone seemed to have a connection to basketball. A year after I finished school, I was lucky enough to find that place again, but I had to travel 8,000 miles to get there—the Philippines.



I had an idea of what I might find there. A few scenes of Filipinos committing out-of-this world acts of hoops devotion in Alexander Wolff's Big Game, Small World tipped me off, but nothing could prepare me for the depth and richness of the Philippines' basketball culture. The first time I stepped off an airplane in Manila, I saw passengers boxing out for front-row spots around the baggage carousel. At first I dismissed it as a hopeful mirage whipped up by researcher bias, but then I saw one passenger attempt to backstroke the person in front of him out of the way. He slid his hand under the other guy's armpit and pretended to yawn while raising his arm and pushing the other traveler behind him. It almost worked, but the guy in front kept his outside foot in front of the stroker's and denied the ensuing attempt to step through. Their technique was too pure. It was undeniable—basketball had seeped into the most mundane acts of everyday Philippine life.

Let's compress the messy and not-particularly-pretty history of U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines, not because it's unimportant but because it's difficult to explain in a paragraph, and I'm trying to stay focused on basketball. The vital fact, as far as the sport is concerned, is that Americans brought basketball to the Philippines in 1911, just twenty years after Naismith hung a peach basket on a wall in Springfield. Filipinos were probably the first people after Americans to play the sport seriously, and by the 1930s college and commercial leagues had become first-rate entertainment in Manila, events where society types fanned themselves in courtside seats and everyday fans dangled their feet from the rafters.

The conventional wisdom regarding Philippine basketball is that it is just like the American game, only the players are six inches shorter at every position. Blame the long shadow of colonial history for this misconception. American influence has been overstated by foreign writers who stayed a week in Manila, noticed that Filipino guards had more shake than their counterparts elsewhere in Asia, and credited Uncle Sam. Filipino columnists have been equally guilty of spreading the lie, often as part of a rhetorical argument (that has little to do with reality on the court) against U.S. influence on Philippine national affairs. The truth is that basketball has been a marquee sport in the Philippines for the better part of a century, time enough for the game to develop on its own, spinning off new styles like successful mutations, and evolving into something uniquely Filipino.

That ought to be enough context. Now, with some help from YouTube, here are five terms to describe the basics of the Philippine game.

•Umupo sa ere – translation: To sit in the air. Most Filipino players lack the height to pull off SportsCenter-worthy dunks. They don't, however, lack hops. Slashers in the PBA, Manila's professional league (also the second-oldest in the world, after Boss Stern's Association), have substituted the circus layup for the dunk as the ultimate expression of basketball artistry. Shots that look like once-in-a-lifetime lucky chucks are actually taken by design. Well, not exactly design, because for players like Samboy “Skywalker” Lim, the subject of two lengthy tribute videos (first above), the plan is to get into the lane and into the air. After that, there is no plan, other than to “sit in the air,” spinning and twisting, pumping and clutching until a chance to shoot materializes. In the American game, mid-air improvisation more often seems like a last resort, a flash of brilliance made necessary by a challenge, like Vince Carter's last-second squirm to dunk over and around Anderson Varejao on Sunday; it's more of a strategy for Filipino scorers, who will look to break down their opponents in the air, rather than on the ground. Samboy may have the longest highlight reels with the most sublime musical accompaniments—Yanni and Kenny Loggins—but he is certainly not the only player to master these hoops flights of fancy; Vergel “The Aerial Voyager” Meneses and Bong “Mr. Excitement” Alvarez, helped Lim perfect the art in 1990s, and guards like Cyrus Baguio and Arwind Santos keep it alive today.



•Pektos – translation: spin. If you're going to jump before deciding how to finish the play, you better be able to score from all angles and from an array of release points. To that end, PBA scorers like Lim and his modern day forebears James Yap and Willie Miller, combine spin and touch with scoops and finger rolls to bank shots like they were born with a Spalding in one hand and a protractor in the other. They may have grown up speaking tongues like Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilonggo, but their use of shot-making English could leave H.L. Mencken at a loss for words. Spin is such a necessary part of the Philippine game that when large numbers of Filipino-Americans started coming back to play in the Nineties, guys from Cali received earnest instructions to imagine they were unscrewing a lightbulb while shooting layups.

The emphasis on pektos is due in part to the Philippine penchant for improvisation, but it also has to do with the lack of standardization in basketball courts and training techniques around the country. The Philippines is a poor nation, and although a startling amount of public money has been spent on constructing cement courts with roofs, overhead lights and fiberglass backboards, thousands more jerry-rigged hoops pepper the nation, built by people who decided to make do with a flat patch of earth and a rusted car hood lashed to a coconut tree. Countless Philippine pros learned the game in ad hoc style on homemade courts, mimicking their uncles' moves and trying out their own shots. These guys had little exposure to proper hardwood or knowledgeable coaching until high school or sometimes college. Of course, they eventually learned textbook basketball, but by then their self-taught skills couldn't be unlearned. Thus, almost every player possesses his own, abnormal genius—unteachable shots born of the extra-wide gaps between the two-by-fours that passed for a backyard backboard or a piece of rebar bent into a too-small rim.

•Gulang – translation: craftiness. This word is actually the root of the Tagalog term for parents, a neat double-entendre that emphasizes the built-in respect for experience in Philippine culture and, by extension, basketball. A player who has been around long enough to master the sport's dirty tricks has earned the right to take advantage of younger opponents. These dark arts include the holding and pushing that occurs on courts across the globe, but a special appreciation is reserved for sneakiness. You'll almost never see these acts caught on camera, but a few afternoons on Philippine playgrounds or a night of drinking with one of the PBA's retired defensive specialists will reveal a litany of basketball deceits. My favorite is hand- or finger-holding. Set a high screen in the Philippines, and chances are when you try to roll you won't be going very far. Ditto for when you get ready to jump for a rebound and find yourself tethered to the ground. What happened? Someone latched onto your index finger and tugged just enough to kill your momentum. You've been made a victim of gulang, which, in English, would be kind of like saying you got sonned.



•Ginebra – This isn't a term, it's a team, which is named after a brand of gin. It's also something of a movement, the runaway most popular team in the Philippines (although recent surveys suggest this title is not so clear-cut) that is synonymous with never-say-die basketball and its most famous practitioner, Robert Jaworski. This hoops Methuselah might have played to the death if being elected to the Senate in 1998 hadn't forced him to vacate his role as Ginebra's player/coach at the tender age of 52. When Jaworski was with Ginebra, the crowd was so notorious for showering the court with peso coins and AA batteries that opposing teams kept beach umbrellas under the bench and opened them up for protection from the inevitable fusillades. Nowadays, that frothy fandom is mostly channeled into chanting “Hee-neh-brah!” loud enough to shake the 15,000-seat Araneta Coliseum. That devotion also shows up in comically intense YouTube tributes like the “Princes of the Universe” video. If you can get over the words “I AM IMMORTAL” scrolling across the bottom of the screen when Jaworski appears, you'll see some splendid footage of one of the PBA's most exciting teams of the Nineties.

You may also notice Noli Locsin (6), the archetypical Philippine undersized power forward. That is, a 6-foot-3 bruiser who moves like Baryshnikov. Enough bulky fours – Nelson Asaytono, Alvin Patrimonio, Ali Peek—have combined agility and beefiness to make the miraculous blend seem fairly unremarkable, but none so dramatically as “The Tank” Locsin, who looked like he ate a kilo of rice at every meal and hung in the lane like he was riding Aladdin's carpet.



•Larong buko – translation: coconut game. The opening clip in this countdown is a reminder that the Philippine game embraces a healthy amount of silliness. These loose ball carnivals are common and popular enough to have earned the colloquialism larong buko, which suggests the players are handling the ball so poorly it might as well be a coconut. Aside from the surprising frequency of such moments at the professional level, it's worth noting that these are often the crowds' favorite parts of games. Fans will reward ten seconds of the ball squirting around like a greased pig and the players diving and sliding in pursuit with a few minutes of standing ovation. It goes back to the participatory nature of Philippine basketball—Filipino fans don't just admire the game, they play it, and nothing seems to please them more than the free-wheeling, frenetic, occasionally sloppy style of ball that they practice on their own neighborhood courts.



Watching these videos, someone might conclude that Samboy's virtuoso finishes and Noli's round mound act are cute novelties, but that these players can only pull off their moves because there are no shot-blockers in the PBA. They're probably right—the PBA game is played, by and large, below the rim, and if you dropped Josh Smith into these games he'd gobble shots like Pacman. So what? A country's basketball style develops according to the physical constraints and cultural intangibles that—in criminally general terms—make Americans the cagiest ball-handlers and strongest finishers, Eastern Europeans the most accurate shooters, and Filipinos the finest layup artists. I don't care that the Timberwolves could beat Ginebra by fifty; I care that the Philippine Basketball Association showcases a gorgeous and joyous brand of hoops and makes its own kind of amazing happen.

Where Now, Endorser of Folly?

Hey all, neglect not my voluptuous team previews over at you-know-where.

All sort of crazy stuff coming down from the foggy hilltop lair of the Golden State Warriors. Down a bit in this Baseline post, you get Monta equivocating on just where he stands with the team, and whether or not he thinks Ellis/Curry could ever make that bank. Dude's got a point: Both are small, and while Ellis isn't say it, Curry's unproven, much less as a do-it-all weirdo that Nellie will demand if he's actually paying attention. For my three dolmas, I don't see why the team wouldn't go with Morrow, other than the fact that Curry's got just enough to keep everyone under his spell (or rather, to justify using him when his name is potentially big draw. At least NY felt that way.)

Morrow is a shooting machine, and while Ellis doesn't naturally play the 1, I fail to see exactly why the team wins by accommodating Curry, rather than trying to figure out how to best make the team work around Monta. Come on Nellie, you're letting down your foremost theoretial boosters! In fact, you could run out a line-up that's surprisingly conventional, albeit with a few wrinkles, and still learn a lot, teach others, and win some games. What's so bad about Ellis/Morrow/Jackson/Randolph/Biedrins, with Curry and Wright featured prominently off the bench?

But this ain't The Baseline, and you aren't here to watch me rattle off possible line-ups—however irrational, or ideologically-motivated, they might be. I come to speak to you of the current interactions of Jackson and Ellis with the press, respective. Jackson, in particularly, is somehow straddling the line between calm/cool and outlandish, saying, more or less, "I've seen everyone else go. The team I helped win is gone. The new formation is, if not looking for an identity, at least not that good yet. I proved myself with the Spurs, brought love to the Bay, and signed an offer I'd have been foolish to turn down here. Please trade me." Yes, there's a paradox there: WHY SIGN IF YOU WANTED TO LEAVE YOU SELFISH THUG FUCK!???!! But Nellie himself is talking a similarly rational game, along the lines of "we'll see what we can do, but it won't tear the team apart." In short, the two still seem to trust the other to exercise some form of reason—a funny sentence if ever there were one, but the way it is.



(By the way, I think most of my paraphrases are taken from this here San Francisco Chronicle story. For Monta, see Baseline link above.)

Ellis is a trickier proposition. He's being paid like the franchise, but is increasingly depicte as the odd man out. Why exactly has Ellis gone from one of the league's most coveted young players to disgruntled trade bait? Because he's not a true PG? Because his three-pointer has bad credit rating? This is a Don Nelson team we're talking about. For the same reason that we'd expect him to both respect Jackson's will to exit and forge ahead with him nonetheless, it's a total letdown that Ellis now poses such a quandry.Who exactly is Nelson waiting for when it comes to making this team fall into place? Is he suddenly appealing to the templates of convention? Yes, he loves Randolph. How are those two not a package deal? I guess there's some PR/business shit to sort out, but as for basketball, if ever there were a time for fearlessness on Nellie's part, today is that hour.

It's tempting to blame it all on Curry, and all that he stands for. But whatever, even his uneven skill set might end up best tucked away somewhere in a Ellis/Randolph superstructure. I don't get why, on the level of feelings and abstract coach-speak, Nelson seems so willing to break the mold as he plays reasonable with Jackson, but can't get a little restive or provocative when it comes to putting players on the floor.

Or perhaps the repartee with Jackson must be viewed alongside Nelson's threat to coach for free in 2011-12. The Positional Revolution has sapped him; now, he's smacking up and down the entire culture of labor and coach/team/player relations. That would be cool and all, but at this crucial time for the Dubs, when so much is possible and at the same time so much slipping away, now is the time for Nelson to get off his ass, slap some water on his face, and one more time ride into battle like the wind around him can drown out all but the sound of his own thoughts.

It's Judgment That Defeats Us

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Like virtually all of his ‘We Believe’ teammates before him, turns out that Captain Jack was never quite as happy with being an act in Donnie Nelson’s circus as we once presumed.

Bear in mind that this is a player-coach combo once thought to have built the best rapport in the league. When on Oakland’s local sports-talk radio they would regularly call in as anonymous listeners to pose goofy questions to each other. Nelson gave Jackson more minutes and more regular minutes than any other player on the squad, which is actually quite an accomplishment since Nelson benched players like Jamal Crawford, who should nicely compliment his system, and the Anthony Randolph, who should be a fucking thunder-lizard or something, for the bulk of the season. Point is it’s becoming rather obvious that Don Nelson is to the NBA as Colonel Kurtz is to Vietnam.

Nelson is a man tortured and ruined by the combination of his own genius and the impossibility of his circumstance. Donnie can turn some undrafted kid out of the Georgia Institute of Technology into an explosive scorer in his rookie season, but couldn’t have cultivated a healthy, professional relationship with Dikembe Mutumbo. And while this phenomenon might be endlessly interesting to a casual observer, it seems to be particularly frustrating to those living the dream.

In the most FD of ways, Nelson’s dementia is clearly reflected by the style of his system, which makes his insanity almost a necessity. As I’ve written about in the past, teams that play asymmetrical basketball can be extremely effective, but are still extremely uncommon. This is because there are three enormous roadblocks that tend to prevent the more sane coaches in the association from being given a chance to prove their genius.



While Don Nelson has broken the mold by simply refusing to acknowledge the existence of any societal norm, most of us prefer not to have conversations with the demons inside our skulls, so front offices tend to get stuck on these worries:

Social: Lots of people pretend like peer-pressure isn’t real. Lots of social scientists know it’s an incredibly powerful force in decision making. Lots of professional sports teams have fans, which provide an enormous social pressure. NBA front offices trying to build unique squads have to make unique, sometimes questionable roster moves. Since lots of the fans aren’t members of the front office, it’s incredibly difficult for a franchise to teach them the rationale behind their action without alerting every other team in the league. And that kind of defeats the purpose of running a sneaky strategy the other teams aren’t built to counter.

Unless you’re Chris Wallace, chances are you don’t want to be perceived by your fans or the national media as like Chris Wallace—not to insinuate Chris Wallace is covertly building an asymmetrical team, just to insinuate most teams would probably rather hire Isiah Thomas as their new GM at this point. Some franchises manage to answer this convoluted equation, normally by branding their style so fans and media understand their personnel decisions. But most franchises find it much easier to just remove the whole unique squad part from the equation, then all you need to do to quell those incessantly riotous fans is trade for Shaq.

Cultural: This equation is much shorter. Coaches and GM’s aren’t always on the same page. Because of the ‘No Championships’ propaganda and the reason above, GM’s resist making particularly creative roster choices. Coaches need to win, or they get fired. So if the coach has a traditional lineup, there is too much pressure from the NBA’s win-or-burn coaching culture for that coach to tinker with the way the lineup is constructed and utilized. Who really wants to save a world that is destined to die?

As evidence I would like to submit that coaches using a unique system typically have nothing to lose because of their status (read: large and long contracts, or exceptionally short leash): D’Antoni, Nelson, Adelman, Karl are the legends; Stan Van Gundy and a bunch of interim coaches are the outcasts who need to show sparks of genius to have any hope of staying an NBA head coach.



Economic: Common sense would edict that a team using its personnel in unique ways to maximize their ability and minimize their flaws would get some serious discounts on players. In theory because they’re getting the maximum value out of each players skills, these teams could get by paying less for players who are seen as flawed in most systems. Sadly because of the branding issue even the most innovative team needs to have some semblance of consistency in player roles. The more unique your team becomes, the more unique skill-set necessary to make it work, thus the rarer the player that will plug into your asymmetrical system.

Since players and agents aren’t fucking morons, they know their team’s unique needs and use this as an advantage in their negotiations. How does a dude named Andrea makes $50 million over 5 years from a team bidding against itself, despite failing to contribute for a bad team over his entire career? He is seven-foot tall and can shoot on a team that’s trying to build the NBA’s closest approximation of Euro-ball. The Raptors have the opportunity to emerge as the strangest team in the NBA next season, but had to pony up serious cash to make it happen. I’m not exactly a trained economist, but common sense tells me that if supply equals one, it doesn’t take tons of demand for the price to rise.

Like most systems that persist over time, team development is well reinforced by structural forces that are perpetuated from Grand Minister Stern all the way down to the most ignorant of fans. There isn’t even an ounce of hope for Reformation at this point. Nelson is too egomaniacal to lead the revolution, the Magic are too repentant for their loss, and D’Antoni is too not in Chicago.

So where, precisely, are we, the fans who want nothing more than to just see something fucking new and different, to go from here? Well it looks like in the foreseeable future we’ll just have to keep on elevating our heartbeats over the positively titillating news that flawed dunk specialist Hakim Warrick will be joining the incredibly raw rookie Brandon Jennings, who might not even start over Luke Ridinour. And we will keep watching insufferably ugly, slow Bobcats games just to catch the token Gerald Wallace highlight. Or maybe we’ll track a Suns team that is a ghostly, back-from-Siberia version of its glory years. Crazy Donnie, you are a much stronger man than I.

Out of the Wormhole

Pause on BASKETBALL MAY OR MAY NOT BE JAZZ to talk crossovers.


This isn't a complete dissertation on the state of the crossover, obviously, but at least addresses key modalities. Straightforward: the x-axis asserts the function of the crossover while the y denotes perceived importance (substance vs. style). There's a third dimenson measuring quality of said crossover, but it's not visible from Earth, and you already know the answers anyway.

Still Waters Run Shallow

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Trevor hates sports more than, perhaps, anything else. In fact Trevor’s has irrational hate for everything that doesn’t pique his interest is the only thing that keeps me from definitively saying sports are the main target of his loathing. You see Trevor prefers to spend his days as an active citizen, devouring monographic texts on the complexities of nuclear deterrence theory. He fancies himself a thinker, an intellectual even, and resents that others are more interested in half-heartedly watching a second episode of Sportscenter instead of making sure to catch this week’s U.S.-Chinese Strategic Economic Dialogue on CSPAN.

So needless to say I was skeptical when Trevor sent me an article he described as “probably about basketball, you like that, don’t you?” I damn near closed the tab when I saw a goofy white dude with thick rimmed glasses and a weak ass ‘fro staring back at me, until I read the subtitle: “When underdogs break the rules.” Intriguing. Except horrible.

When I talked to Trevor later that day I told him how I thought the article was fucking stupid. I straight up murdered that shit. Guess what pal? No fourteen year old team is really all that talented, so it’s not like the metaphorical glass ceiling was too high for up and coming team to break shatter. Not to take anything away from the sport, but my high school’s girls team once scored under 20 points in a game—scratch that, a win.

Trevor, possessing a biting wit, responded, “Didn’t you just write like a page long feature about how bad-ass some team was cause they were so odd?” Oops, there goes gravity.



The team in question was the Golden State Warriors. And the short piece theorized that if we remember sports are ultimately an exchange of entertainment for pay, wherein wins and losses are just one function of entertainment, then the W’s are actually one of the most successful teams in the league. Their games are thrilling, they give 48 minutes of excitement, and the constant tension between Nellie and his riotous players fosters a compelling and dramatic narrative. While the team might not be win many games, both the Golden State Warriors and their fans are certainly winners.

But every time we boot up ESPN, watch Sir Charles rant on Inside the NBA, or listen to the B.S. Report we are reminded that championships and wins are the measure of the quality of sport. On top of that brainwashing we’re reminded that only certain types of teams win championships—teams that are about as unique as Simmons’ punch lines.

As a result of this propaganda most fans perceive unique teams like the Warriors as gadgets or tricksters, somehow perennially inferior to the real contenders. The Magic can’t win in a series—live by the three die by the three, bad luck will eventually hit. And my, oh my, look at that Rafer Alston’s street ball moves, aren’t they a neat distraction! The Nuggets don’t have any chance—up-tempo teams just don’t play enough defense to win big games. By the way, friends, please note that J.R. Smith has no basketball awareness. It must be because those tattoos cover his eyes too!



Of course in reality the curse of the three-pointer is a myth carried over from the NCAA’s one-and-done tournament format and streaky shooters. The Magic shot the three more consistently than any other team deep in the playoffs, which makes sense considering that the greater the sample the more likely you are to find the mean. As far as fast pace equaling a lack of defense, Denver was 6th in the league in defensive efficiency despite missing Kenyon Martin for much of the season, much better than even moribund grinders like the Spurs and Trailblazers. Anyone who watched the Denver’s playoff losses recognized they lost due to late game offensive blunders, not defense.

Considering how few teams played with a style asymmetrical to league trends last season, I count 8 (Knicks, 76ers, Magic, Pacers, Rockets [without Yao], Nuggets, Warriors, Suns), isn’t it modestly impressive that half made the playoffs, none were embarrassed, and two made the Conference Finals? If you play the percentages, teams who employ unique strategies to maximize their advantages actually tend to be competitors more often. Now remember that the Suns would probably still be in the Conference Finals picture too if it weren’t for their owner’s shameful identity crisis.

Perhaps it was fate that the Suns would be betrayed by their owner, since the only thing that had ever kept them from winning multiple champions was catching a couple breaks. Or, rather, they caught too many breaks. Joe Johnson broke his face, Amar’e broke his knees, Amar’e and Diaw broke the rules, and Nash broke his nose. But Steve Nash standing back up, defiant with his face bloodied, will be my image of a winner’s spirit forever. The pained determination in his eyes was enough to make you wonder if he had asked God why he had forsaken him. And yet since we all should be preaching “defense wins championships” so kids will learn to be winners for life at elementary school basketball camps, the story books will remember Nash and the seven-seconds-till-death Suns as nothing but an entertaining sideshow to the Spurs dynasty.



Yes, the haters are right that none of these eight teams have won a championship lately, and they’re right that recently the ranks on Larry O’Brien’s trophy are devoid of a team with a unique, non-traditional style. But consider the three greatest dynasties in the NBA’s history: the Bill Russell Celtics, the Showtime Lakers, and the Jordan Bulls. Believe it or not, Russel’s Celtics thrived off fast-breaks at a time when clothes-lining a streaking wing was considered a defensive fundamental. The Showtime Lakers overcame having stars named Ferdinand and Earvin to become flashy to a fault at times, they admittedly made no effort on defense, and the guy named Earvin could and would play all five positions. Of the three only the Jordan Bulls even vaguely resembles what we now know as the prototypical blueprint for success, whatever the fuck that even means, and that’s likely only because Jordan’s dominance shaped the model in our collective minds.

A week or two ago I was chatting with Trevor and we stumbled into a breezy conversation about Third World development and dependency theory. To explain my point I dropped a little round ball reference: the Lakers want the Kings to try to build around Kevin Martin like he’s Kobe, because they know the Kings will never grow into contenders that way. They want the Grizzlies’ young core to fail because they can rape their greatest resources for a pittance in return. And the fans are strung along the whole way, struggling to subsist while waiting for that true shooting guard or seven foot shot-blocking center they just know is the final piece.

I was pretty proud of the metaphor, and thought I might have smartly, meaningfully bridged the gap between disciplines.

But Trevor just told me it was fucking stupid.

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.

Baked Alaska

I usually hate the sun, in fact, it places undue pressure on me to love life and makes me that much more determined to hide in the shadows. But fuck it, it's been gorgeous here for three days, there's only so much basketball on, and no one's checking their email. So I'm suddenly filled with spring fever—more like compulsion—and have to get to the water and get my tan on.

Before I run out the door, though, I did want to say a few things about last night's game. Sorry for the lack of frilly language, these are more notes that grew out of post-game conversation:

-I recognize that this Cavs loss somewhat mutes my latest spasms of LeBron-mania.

-That said, it is kind of sad to watch Bron go straight at Howard like the DPOY doesn't have shit on him. You wonder if an angrier Dwight might help here.

-At some point, I began to wonder if the Magic could only win, or at least impress me with a win, if they made a comeback that was . . . ummm, magical?

-Based on conversations with my friend Nate, Kevin Pelton, and my own two eyes, it's become obvious to me: Howard is a monster on offense provided he's in motion. Give him the damn ball, just make sure he's cutting, leaping, or in a position to make one step and then dunk. That's why, even though he could stand to diversity his offense, it is on SVG and other players to see this gives them a tremendous weapon right now. See also Game 1 of this series.

-Someone needs to tell Howard that him stationary in the post is a total dead-end. Unless he's got a total mismatch. When Amare was a raw killing machine in 2004-05, the trick to his success was that he avoided this situation like the plague. Now, Howard will never be able to expand his range, or ability to put the ball on the floor, like Stoudemire has done—the main way he's overcome the obvious limitation of not playing in the post. So who knows what the long-term prognosis for Howard is. But Amare was never as imposing as Howard. There's no reason he can't be used creatively so that, in short, the post is always the terms set by Howard's lateral or upward motion.

-Not surprisingly, Kevin just realized he'd said something like this several years ago:

For years now, Howard has drawn comparisons to Phoenix's Amaré Stoudemire because of how both players have a prodigious combination of size, strength, and athleticism. The comparisons break down at some point, because Howard is a far better rebounder and defender than Stoudemire, but the Magic clearly learned from how the Suns accelerated Stoudemire's development by pairing him with Steve Nash and surrounding him with double-team neutralizing outside shooters.

And also. . .

We're trained to recognize that those kind of outside shooters help beat double-teaming of a post player, a style so popular in the NBA in the 1990s that was perfected by the Houston Rockets around Hakeem Olajuwon. However, the Suns of recent vintage have demonstrated that deep threats can be just as valuable when it comes to running pick-and-rolls. Even though Magic point guards Carlos Arroyo and Jameer Nelson are not on Nash's level, the Orlando pick-and-roll is still difficult to defend because teams can't leave the outside shooters to provide help and because Howard is so good at going up and getting the ball on lobs to the rim.

-KP adds: "The point now is they realized this a long time ago, and then seemed to forget it in these playoffs, either because Nelson/sorta Turkoglu were hurt or because of ORTHODOXY."

-Tangentially related, Rafer Alston is so weird. He's at his best as a straightforward guard. Nothing outside-of-the-box or too improvisational.

-So yeah, despite Joey's earlier critique of Howard, the Magic could be making a lot more of the current situation. And maybe Dwight could stop making me feel so damn bad for him, as LeBron plays like him with perimeter skills.

-It's true, I wrote something claiming that a big game from J.R. was more important to the Nuggets than Billups stepping it up. That probably would've made more sense around these parts. But I would still like to forget it happened.

-GO WONDER PETS!!!!!!!

We Touch Your Ears (Podcast #55)

This was recorded Tuesday night, but its apocalyptic reachings are probably the sort of thing that benefit from being found in a clay pot several thousand years after the fact. Also, I've been a little busy with my new joint, The Baseline, which more than warrants your attention. At least this harried state of things prompted the following hilarious line from Dan: "'Blame it on the Baseline' sounds like an Eric B and Rakim record."

But now you have it before you, and it's a good one. We look for the future, ponder the interchangability of point guards and centers, say "ball-stopping" dozens of times without giggling, and discover the science of the Ewing Theory. We also manage to make the unflappable Tom Ziller misty by taking a trip deep into the collective Kings memory we all share.

THE PODCAST:



Playlist:

"Hanging By a Thread"- The Forty-Fives
"Drizzle" - Burd Early
"Ride Tonight" - Z-Ro
"Terminator X" - Public Enemy
"Down South Blues" - by Old Crow Medicine Show

For other means of obtaining this program, try iTunes and the XML feed.

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.

They Will Take You There (Podcast!)

You asked for more Nuggets, and dang, are you gonna get it. This week's episode of FreeDarko Presents the Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast is devoted largely to a "why not us" take on Denver, as well as an examination of George Karl's hidden, at times self-defeating, genius. And a rare chance to hear the voice of one Brown Recluse, Esquire. I know, huh? Also, be sure you've read recent convert Joey's clear-eyed breakdown of their charms, and absorb the "live-blog" I did with Zac Crain for D Magazine. Yee-haw! Take that, Frank Deford!!!

The Podcast:



Song List:

"The Perfect Stranger" - Sneakers
"Insanity" - L Seven
"Irregular" - The Invisible
"Blackout" - Plagal Grind
"One Step Forward" - Max Romeo
"Strange Life" - Arabian Prince
"Dreams Never End" - New Order
"Keep The Dream Alive" - John Vanderslice

Remember, if you want to buy some of these, save our ship and go through Amazon. For other means of obtaining this program, try iTunes and the XML feed. Note: The XML feed won't be prepared until about 1EST, but I was too excited to hold back.

He Was Born in Hell

Everyone I talk to is worried about a anti-climactic contest tonight. Of course, after Thursday, Lazarus making hot chocolate at halftime would be an anti-climax. But even if all we get in a few hours is epilogue, and even if that epilogue is the (expected) Boston win, the convoluted history of this series tells tells us that there's no way it won't be eventful.

Before we all get completely consumed by pre-game hysteria, I wanted to briefly touch on the weird, weird Josh Smith scandal. Smith goes for the showtime dunk, on the break, during a blowout, and fails. He's lambasted for trying to show up or disrespect the Heat, personally apologizes to Coach Spoelstra (who publicly made many of these accusations) and explains that it was just to thank the fans. Confused? You also have Smith saying he'd do it again, and basically agreeing with Jalen Rose's analysis that the problem was the miss, not the attempt itself. Which is to say, he embarassed himself—had he made it, Smith would've had the whole world entranced. The Heat would've come off as petty whiners, or at very least, the dunk would've been so awesome as to insulate itself against criticism.

All this presumes that Smith needs to apologize for wanting to humilate the Heat, or that an insane dunk is purely self-indulgent. Last I checked, intimidation and making statements were really important in basketball, especially in the playoffs. Why, then, is Smith all of a sudden in "unsportsman-like" territory for trying to use a dunk to do just that? It was gratuitous when the Celtics ran up the score, and put on a show, to cap off last year's Finals victory, because in that case the series was over. But this one is still very much alive. Breakaway dunks can be momentum-changers in a game; why not think of this in the context of the series? While games have throat-slash moments, these events can pile up and carry over to the next one, too. The Heat had every right to take Smith's attempted dunk personally, and use it as motivation. That's because he was trying to punk them, put them in their place. That's about basketball, pride, and ego; there's absolutely no need for the finger-wagging and commenters dissecting the ethics of the situation.

It all comes back to this idea of there being "good" and "bad" forms of intimidation, or rather, "acceptable" and "tacky." Tough defense and physical play can throw off an opponent. As can talking. Or throwing down in traffic. Those are fair game in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs. But if Josh Smith goes for the showpiece dunk, it's him, not the Heat, who have some explaining to do? Isn't a long three in transition always outrageous and uncalled for? If I had a penny for every time someone old insisted that teams need to send a message with their defense, I'd be crushed to death. Why then, can't Josh Smith try and say to the Heat "fuck you, I can do whaetver I want against you." Isn't that his whole game? It's up to the other team to keep his one-man momentum bomb under wraps; as one of the studio guys observed in the pre-game last night, Miami immediately let Johnson get away with an uncontested dunk. Are there rules and regulations about when you're allowed to intimidate . . . or does that only apply to individual acts of offense? Because clearly, no one makes a fuss if a team lets up on defense once the outcome's decided. And running up the score can certainly be deployed selectively.

Smith's right—the problem is that he missed. That turned it into something frivolous, a sideshow subject to all sorts of bullshit moral high ground-grabbing. Smith is clueless, spoiled, disorganized, a disgrace to the game because he resorted to absurdity. Why was it absurd and excessive? It failed. If he'd pulled it off, it would be the Heat who would be feeling shame, no matter what the media decided to say about it.

If anyone wants to give him hell, they just focus on what a half-assed effort that was.The angle of approach was all wrong and Smith barely got off the ground. What a dick.