The Most You Can Do Without Speaking

I need to stop and get it together. Yesterday is a truly big one for this establishment, especially when you consider that we didn't do anything. TrueHoop tells us that Dr. Santiago Colas (of Go Yago!) at Michigan is using The Undisputed Guide as a textbook; then, the Mavs video team gives what is undoubtedly a shout-out to one of our founding members (go 58 seconds in).

Also, last night I realized that there are no new buzz players this year. That's why I feel like I'm slacking. Actually, there's one, one big one -- Blake Griffin -- and physics-like, he has stolen everyone else's light and plunder, or made their stores look puny. He is the great uniter and great divider -- what us League Pass fiends have been waiting for, maybe even more than Durant ever was. At the same time, though, he makes a mockery of all the time we spent waiting on players far less fantastical to shake up our Tuesdays. AND OUR TUESDAYS ALONE! Anyway, I'm not complaining. Griffin has made life so much more simple. You watch the big game, or you watch the Clippers. Or maybe the Warriors, if BG ain't on.

Can someone tell me the difference between End of the Year posts and Thanksgiving ones? Really, I don't get it. Am I supposed to be preachy here? I feel a lot more reflective; in late Novemeber I was mostly just mad about travel and disappointed at what wasn't working out the way I wanted it to in the NBA.

Speaking of total surprises from space, I wake up today (way, way late) to news that the Timberwolves -- already FD favorites for their stewardship of Love and Beasley -- are eyeing O.J. Mayo, have a good shot at Ricky Rubio coming over (there is now promise there, really), and ... hold it ... trading for Anthony Randolph. I think I speak for everyone when I say that, if these things come to pass, this will be the most FreeDarko team ever assembled. I couldn't even dream up one more in line with my core principles. Will stop now before I puke out tears of excitement. It's funny, though, that David Kahn may actually be more a kindred spirit than we ever thought. Those folks calling him a fool? They probably get bored with this site, too. So there. Happy New Year, Kahn. Phase One was risky, even silly, but if this is what's next, it was all worth it. You saw what talent would flourish, and are now in a position to bring in more Beasleys. Just keep letting other teams think you're doing them a favor.

Now I have to wonder if this means all-out war between Ziller and myself. Although I suspect he would forgive all, and do penance, if that above-stated team came to pass. Rationality only holds until it is outsmarted. Kahn may do just that.

I am going skiing in a mountain cabin and may die. So here is the last Works of the year, with New Year's Resolutions for players, and Eric and me. Also, the long-promisd discussion of age in the NBA. Look for me on the Awl sometime Wednesday, too. Merry Christmas to all!

The Sky Was All Worth It

The latest Outside the NBA/FD joint venture. The punchline is that it takes forever before Marvin actually sings the hooks.

Also, I'm posting a link to this Jewish Exponent column by Andrew Sherman.. It beings "Cliff Lee is more than just the modern-day Sandy Koufax. At least to Philadelphia Jews, he is." You can read the rest and judge for yourself, but I feel like it belongs here.

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 Spaniard's Bar Mitzvah

Ethan Sherwood Strauss is writer and editor at Salon.com. He's been sitting on this for a year now.

This was written one year ago, immediately after I got home from the 2009 NBA Draft. The NBA had assigned me as evening escort to the No. 5 pick, a strictly non-sexual job despite its euphemistic ring. My duty was to whisk Ricky Rubio from the draft couch and through the media gauntlet. I began this task immediately after the Timberwolves selected Johnny Flynn.

A possibly shaken Rubio greets me.

“Hi, nice to eh, meet you.”

We both have weak handshakes. I instruct him to follow me past a horde of Madison Square Garden hooligans.

The MSG crowd is hooting, throwing drunken energy at the Spaniard. They appear threatening but the shouting is complimentary. I had attended Steve Nash’s charity soccer game the day before. A beaming Chris Bosh got draped in ceaseless “Play for the Knicks!” entreaties. The chants carried a streak of desperation steeped in a sense of entitlement. We need you and it must happen because we want it and because we’re us.

“We NEED you, Ricky! Please, come to New York! You HAVE to play for the Knicks!”

(This is the most important moment of his life? It looks like a fucking zombie movie.)

I lead Rubio through the theater lobby as the creepy adoration follows. Ricky has been drafted by a non-Knicks team—and he’s getting away. Fans grope and grab like horny, depraved barflies. Young girls scream in Rubio’s face. All I can see are arms and faces. All I can hear is animalistic bleating. It could be projection but Ricky looks frightened and young. I’ve read a lot about how an 18-year-old LeBron looked beyond his years. Rubio makes me feel old, and I’m 23.

The security guards disintegrate upon our arrival in the media area. Rubio and I file into the secure bowels of the Garden, accompanied by his translator.There are cameras flashing and the space-to-person ratio is miniscule. There are no drunken shouters, but the effect is just as disorienting. It’s a bit like someone set up a strobe light in a cramped subway station. I shuttle el Rubio and el translator from media box to media box, leading to the “Live Shot area” clusterfuck. CBS, ABC, and NBC are the can’t-miss booths, but all are sort of mandatory. In between, anemic media entities try to beg their way into boothless peasant interviews. It’s a good day for human dignity

“They drafted ANOTHER point guard!” Rubio exclaims in disbelief. He speaks little English and rarely talks, even to his translator. But I hear this refrain throughout the night.

“They drafted ANOTHER point guard? Why?” Rubio’s grappling with where his life is heading as mics are shoved against his jaw. As I push Rubio through the Live Shot Area, his dissatisfaction becomes obvious. He looks tired, gaunt. Especially when you contrast his mood with that of Hasheem Thabeet, who bounds across the room and gives me a hug. Everyone’s getting a piece of Thabeet, even the nervous kid with the sweaty suit. I try to cheer Rubio up.

“I hear people in the Midwest are very nice!”

Another NBA worker chimes in.

“I’m from the Midwest…I’m nice!”

Rubio smiles shyly, but doesn’t seem convinced. His rebuttal trumps all.

“I hear eets, eh, very cold.”

Athletes by reputation, are not interesting people.There are obvious attributions for the blandness.Yes, they are hoisted on a conveyer belt during their formative years.Yes, they are taught sports in place of books. But interactions with the press condition athletes to be lame.The same fucking questions.The same fucking answers.What could be more numbing to the personality than engaging in thousands of ersatz conversations? It would be better if the athletes were supposed to volley questions, but we’ll never know.

And it's one thing to understand that a press junket process is repetitive, but it’s another to participate. My participation is peripheral, thank God. We’re at interview six and Rubio is wilting. He keeps prodding his translator to ask when the session will end. I keep apologetically forcing Ricky Rubio through more bullshit.

“Just a few more…just a few more, please.”

We slog forward, walking into a hallway. Johnny Flynn is seated, crying into his cell phone.

"We did it! We...did it!"

Flynn has reached an elated state that I can only dream of, or drug-induce. A dyspeptic Rubio walks right past his new teammate.



New Knick pick Jordan Hill arrives. Hill is alone for the moment, holding a Knicks jersey that’s been dragging along the floor all evening. Since I’m wearing a headset, and therefore must have psychic powers, Hill inquires about whom the Phoenix Suns drafted.

“Um, well, I don’t know.”

(Dude, you’re holding a Blackberry.)

I stare at his feet, and dumbly compliment Jordan’s fancy gator shoes.

“Those are…um, awesome shoes…man.”

My voice trembles and I forget to add “No homo,” as required for proper NYC colloquial complimentary parlance. Hill nervously smiles and laughs.

We trudge down to the “phone room.” This is not a booth, but an isolated, actual room, replete with catered food. There are a few tables with land line phones. Lottery picks are merrily calling their new teams. Griffin, Thabeet, Harden, every high pick is there to use Auerbach-era technology. The only other people in the spot are the exhausted looking escorts and some scattered NBA workers. And Rubio’s translator is there. And he’s getting royally pissed off.

I hadn’t properly explained the phone room’s purpose, perhaps because it made so little sense to me. Why is it perfunctory for players to call their teams on landlines in a controlled setting? I knew players use the room to call teams, but why is it mandatory? And why is Blake Griffin shaking everyone’s hand like he’s the union rep? These questions exist.

When the agitated translator announces that Ricky has to leave, I nervously bounce the idea off the czars of the room. They won’t have it.Translator fails to see why the poor kid can’t just exit and see his family. There’s cursing, threatening, pleading, demanding, and Ricky sits off in the corner, staring glumly. As I helplessly observe the crisis, a fellow escort swoops in. She’s pretty, self-assured, and, most importantly, she speaks soothing, flawless Spanish—and she knows the translator. This woman cuts the right wire on the ticking bomb, as I cover my face. Translator agrees to the phone call, the arbitrary goal will be reached.

Ricky picks a chocolate chip cookie off the catering table. He nibbles at it, and laughs when I notice. He offers me one, but I decline. There’s more waiting, as Ricky watches a TV screen tuned to the draft. Rubio jumps up as though startled.

“Omri!!”

Ricky looks forlorn. Is he depressed to see a fellow international headed to what was supposed to be his team? Is it envy? Or is Rubio wondering what his career in Sacramento would have been like with Casspi, another kid from across the Atlantic, there with him to restore the team to decency?

It’s time for Ricky to make the phone call. We all hunch over at the table as he dials. The timid kid looks in my general direction as the conversation unfolds. Rubio damns with feint praise.

“I hear Al Jay-fer-sohn es um…guuudeee…”

There are long pauses.

“My buyout? I don’t know…eet eez very compleecated.”

For the sake of propriety, Rubio is trying. His cadence betrays any attempt. He’s not a bullshit artist; he’s a teen unhappily coping with fate-altering forces. The kid can’t fake enthusiasm for the process any more than I could happily sell cars.The Wolves are likely using him as a trade chip, but I’m sure the other end of the phone call is shouted faux enthusiasm for the great mutual future on the horizon. American basketball executives can BS better than scared 18-year-old Spanish kids.

It’s human, which is jarring. I’m used to reading rumors about these kinds of conversations, often described as a series of “talks,” (As in “talks went badly”). I’m not used to an insulted kid politely asserting leverage. I’m not used to seeing NBA politics, practiced on the fly. Rubio’s incensed translator keeps repeating, “Why can’t his agent talk to the team?”

(Good question)

My adrenaline is wearing off. I lead him back to the draft stage for photo ops, where Rubio’s family swarms him. Given nothing to do, I make awkward small talk with Toronto’s newly minted swingman, DeMar DeRozan. DeMar wants to know about the Suns. I plead ignorance again.

“Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of it… it’s hard to understand anything.”

DeMar smiles at my profundity attempt.

"Yeah..."

I say my goodbyes to Ricky’s people and sneak off for phone room snacks. Other exhausted youngish NBA workers are in there munching away on stale deli food. The one incongruity is the presence of an amped-up Terrence Williams, the new Nets wing. Terrance has already built up a rep for weird. ESPN’s draft expert Chad Ford once wrote that, “Talking to Terrence Williams was like talking to a 12 year old.”

Through my headset, I hear Terrence had been AWOL much of the evening. Williams sets eyes on a TV replaying his selection. He suddenly dances around the room, eventually bouncing towards the table where I sit.

“Hi, I’m Terrence, what’s your name? Do you live in New York? Well I play for the NEW JERSEY NETS!”

He points to his Nets hat, and hops high in the air. Williams leaps away as though jumping is his primary mode of conveyance.

Ring Out Loud

Ken and Dan check with each other, and with the league as it is at this particular and exact time.



In summary: the Lakers and Celtics are good. The Timberwolves aren't. We're not sure who the second-best team in the West is. Everyone should probably make a trade, especially with Golden State.

Along the way we contemplate time and object permanence. Plus, Ken makes a special announcement.

It's as FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast as FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast gets. Dig it.

Songs from the episode:

"It's So Obvious" - Wire
"Things I Did When I Was Dead" - No Age
"Love Will Tear Us Apart (Live)" - Joy Division
"Boys, You Won't" - The Wrens
"20 Minutes/40 Years" - Isis

Jesus Christ

More coming soon...

UPDATE: Shoals weighs in immediately.

Career Suicide: The Dead Sea Scrolls

For the record, after Shoals took my post down last night, we had quite the screaming match on the phone. I said some things I probably shouldn't have as did he, and we both seemed to be attempting to revoke each others' FD membership. He didn't want me to put this out there, but at point he threatened to leave FD altogether and start his own blog. Obviously knowing that Free Darko would fold in his absence, I had to bribe him back into the fold by promising I would pay for his League Pass subscription next year. He thought that was ludicrous and declined, but I guilted him into at least letting me purchase him this Brother Ah record on eBay. The whole thing upset me so much though I couldn't sleep last night, so I put up my post again at 430 in the morning. When I woke up it was gone again and I knew that Shoals had again put the clamps on me. At this point I wrote a really incendiary and personal email to him. He sent it to the other members of the Free Darko high council and this morning it's been a real shitfest hashing things out. I guess the compromise is to release this version of the chat, below...

Also, for the record, I agree with Caleb Tyler Adam that it is selfish if I deny in any way the greatness of KG winning his championship. I am being completely selfish here, both in my KG bitterness and my angst over Boston, yet I am extremely about happy about KG winning his championship. And at the same time it doesn't mean I have some other thoughts about what KG has become as an individual (not just this year, but over the past three and a half years...). Upon re-watching the Tafoya Interview on Odenized this morning maybe my stance on contrivedness has softened, or maybe that interview is more just a poor piece of evidence to support the broader point of players playing into their narratives/caricatures.



Also, everyone please read THIS bit on KG before proceeding. And...Onward...

Bethlehem Shoals: First off, I think you're in crisis. That was like catharsis for the whole year of bullshit Garnett.
Dr. LIC: Yeah, you're probably right. But let me make my point again: KG is playing into the caricature that the media has created for him: "KG IS SO EMOTIONAL/INTENSE." Just like the whole "Duncan is boring" thing or "Bellichik is enigmatic" meme.
Brown Recluse, Esq.: I think I'm in the middle between Dr. LIC and Shoals on the KG "speech." Leaning more toward Dr. LIC.
Dr. LIC: The interesting thing about the KG speech is that there were parts of it that were real, but the parts that were fake are what everyone will eat up.
BS: The crying seemed real/scream was actually kind of dumb.
Dr. LIC: Yes! Exactly. We needed more crying.
BS: The Malik Sealy shoutout=real
Dr. LIC: Props to Tafoya=fake
Dr. LIC: And seriously, the fact that he didn't burst into tears way earlier in the night was indicative of his whole role in this series.
BS: Whatever, I think someone sticking a mic in your face in iconic fashion is what makes it real.
Dr. LIC: This may be egocentric, but I'm wondering if this championship was actually more about South Carolina/Chicago/Sealy/Minnesota than it was anything having to do with Boston. This is redemption for things in the past. That is real.
BS: Well, that's why I'm moved. Why else would he dwell on his old team?

BR: Maybe this part shouldn't go into the chat, but I think part of why I've tired of KG's shit is that makes him look kind of stupid. Like so reflective, he's unreflective.
BS: How is screaming reflective?
Dr. LIC: That's not the reflective part.
BS: You mean on the interviews?
BR: During the season, he'd just become that first John Thompson interview all the time. That interview was awesome, but seeing it over and over again, it doesn't feel as real

[The Recluse clarifies: "my take is that the KG/John Thompson was one of the greatest things ever, so great in fact that even KG himself allowed it to define who he was from then on. It's like when famous people talk about themselves in the third person in a legitimate way.]

Dr. LIC: I just got a text message: "time to put a straitjacket on kg"
BS: Are you going to deny a man his pain? Or do we really not care about KG?
Dr. LIC: What is KG's pain?
BS: LOSING
Dr. LIC: Malik Sealy, Stephon Marbury. That's his pain. Losing isn't his pain, that's his own fault. And Flip's.
BR: Losing is not pain. If that's his pain, it's shallow as fuck.
BS: So you're saying KG should know better. DLIC, I think you have a reservoir of feeling for KG few can understand. For you, the years of the max contract choker KG were salad days.


Dr. LIC: He lost so much because he scared the shit out of minnesota and never quite committed 100% to staying there forever. for all that "I'm 'Sota" talk, he was trying to be GM behind the scenes all the time...get Joe Smith signed, sign Troy Hudson, re-up Sam/Spree's contract (plus the max contract thing). And ultimately, they had to do what KG wanted.

All along he gave the air of "i'm just doing the best i can do....i love MN" but there was a lot of other shit going on.

BR: i still blame all of this on jordan. He fucked everything up for everyone.
Dr. LIC: Everything is fucked. I mean, we're at the point where Stu Scott is ELICITING the memory of Doc's dead father before Doc can even spontaneously give a dedication to him.
BR: Jordan again!
Dr. LIC: To me, KG's scream was so far from primal. It was literally like an Oscar speech. You keep it on hand just in case you win. But then the real KG crept out.
BR: I agree with that. The stuff after the scream and the shoutouts. The rest was raw emotion. The Bill Russell conversation was the best part.
BS: Weeping and saying "I'm certified" is really the opposite of screaming.
Dr. LIC: Look, my bottom line: the KG speech was part contrived/part real. He couldn't make a decision between the stuff he had "pseudo-memorized" to say and the spontaneity of the moment. We did see more spontaneity from him then we've gotten all year.
: but it's like, all of my minnesota friends have been cheering for the celtics. i guess that's liberated fandom at it's finest, but really? when you look at what kg did the last couple years he was in minnesota....i just feel like if it takes paul pierce AND ray allen AND kg AND the perfect aging stragglers who will flock to whichever team has the best chance for a ring...then that championship trophy is way less special then, um, say lebron winning a trophy with cleveland

AND LEBRON HASNT EVEN SUFFERED

yet


Dr. LIC: also, it's funny how NON-representative i am of minnesota fans right now. people in mn are loving this.

BS: I'll edit this tactfully.
Dr. LIC: I'll expect to wake up to a bloodbath.

Everything Paints