Everything Paints

I'm Judging Me

With Odom continuing to play the best basketball of his career (42 and 43 in two days against the Warriors) now seems like as good a time as ever to revisit something Shoals mentioned a couple months ago: the dream of what Lamar Odom could be. Now I don't feel capable providing a fully satisfactory response that question at the moment, but I do hope to at least address why the question itself fascinates me as much as it does.

Few players in the NBA inspire pundits and scribes to search for excuses for his inadequacies quite like Lamar does. "He needs the ball in his hands to be effective"; "he's better as a third or fourth option"; "he just doesn't mesh well with Kobe"; "he's not a good fit for the triangle"; "he's more comfortable on the perimeter because of his frame"; "he needs to work in the post to be efficient"; and so it goes. The debate over whether or not he'd be more productive as a 3 or a 4 (designations which, as well as I can tell, don't actually exist in Phil's system) highlights why discussions revolving around him inevitably drift towards unimaginative terms like enigmatic and confounding.



This impulse to rationalize his disappointments and to create alternate universes for his potential to reside in fascinates me, both because it's a pretty absurd thing to do and because I often find myself submitting to it myself. The consensus seems to be that he is failing to live up to some considerable potential but also that his potential is not only indefinable, but very likely unattainable. Which creates an odd tension: the gap between potential and performance typically bears with it the assumption that it could eventually be crossed. With Lamar, I'm not sure even his most ardent supporters believe he could ever actually reach the idealized perception that some of us imagine he could reach if only given an ideal scenario that none of us can really describe.

When Lamar showed up to training camp with a star etched into his hair the explanation was that his barber believed this would be his breakout all-star season. Upon hearing that I thought both, 'OK, that makes sense, there's no reason he couldn't be in New Orleans in a league where Mehmet Okur can be an All Star,' and 'That's going to be embarrassing when February arrives and he's still wearing that ridiculous star.' Sure enough, when he returned from the break, he was back to his pristinely bald head. I imagine there was quite the awkward moment between him and his barber as they were forced to finally concede that this wasn't going to be the year he made the leap.



Over the summer I wrote a fairly-derided post aimed at tearing down Hollinger's numbers, in part because they failed to depict Lamar in a positive light. Looking back on that it strikes me that most people missed how self-consciously questionable my decision was to question the system rather than the player that struggled within it. It was and is much easier to critique an equation rather than accepting that Odom just isn't capable of being as productive as I want him to be. Having an incredibly rare combination of skills, immense physical gifts, and style to spare should be a recipe for success. That Odom's freakish ability to rebound the ball in traffic on one end, push it up the floor, and finish single-handedly at the other doesn't in itself translate to victories, independently of the maturation of Bynum or the acquisition of Pau, is frustrating. I don't want to admit that retrofitted cliches like "winner's mentality" actually hold water on some occasions. I don't want to see Odom retreat into a well-paid rebounding specialist who has occasional flourishes. Conceding that talent alone isn't enough to win basketball games opens the door to the necessity of the Bruce Bowens and Shane Battiers of the world.

Even more troublesome for me personally, sentences like the one above force me to confront the fact that I have the tendency to denigrate things like desire, hustle, cleverness, and work ethic; virtues I would typically applaud in non-basketball settings. Confronting that personal contradiction isn't something I'm exactly prepared to tackle just yet though; this is still ostensibly about Odom and my desire to believe he can be (is?) a star on this stage.

This latest spurt of awesomeness, while causing me to grin from ear to ear, also has me worrying a terrible thought: what if Lamar's much-celebrated versatility is somehow directly related to his much-lamented inconsistency? As though his ability to do various things in a way that few others are capable of actually makes him an impractical player in this league. While the eclecticism of a Marion or a Rasheed works in mysterious ways, the equally irregular puzzle piece that is Odom fails to fit in for equally inexplicable reasons. This is a depressing thought that I choose to reject on emotional grounds, even if my mind is gradually coming to accept that Odom will never be the transcendent star I feel he should be capable of becoming.

Word to Brandon Jennings

The playground moves, the handles, and the dimes were all impressive, but the biggest impact Jennings had on the McD's game was the highly unexpected return of the high top fade! Willie Warren's cut was on point, too.

SEE, BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ

Someone needs to speak to Tom about NBA Electability (scroll down to the table at column's end). Chris Paul's FBP quotient is through the roof.

A Watchful Part

Here's my TSN column for today, all about Iverson and his legacy. I really like it and hope you will to.

It was supposed to be more about Obama's speech than it ended up being, but then I realized that one could legitimately dislike Iverson's style of play without there being any racial overtones. Not to say that was always the case, but I myself had mixed feelings about his game while embracing his socio-cultural significance.

Here's a random, possibly offensive thought: We all know that Hoberman is bothered by the "athleticization" of the black mind, whereby writers and intellectuals liken themselves to sports figures. But isn't it possible that Obama—who is fit, relatively young, and talks a lot about basketball—is benefiting from this? Athletes are second only to war heroes when it comes to instant political mojo. If Obama can tap into some of that without mortgaging his real strengths, is that such a bad thing?

UPDATE: With much trepidation, I introduce you to Ziller's excellent piece on the NBA and Obama's speech.

Henry Chinaski is not Spider-Man

The NBA All-Star Weekend is, as much as anything else, a sort of Topsy-Turvy celebration, where traditional roles are set aside and the hierarchy of the league is put in reverse for one glorious weekend. In the three-point contest, specialists dominate MVPs in a supposedly objective contest. (I don't really acknowledge the presence of the other two All-Star Saturday events, but if you wanted to stick with the theory, the skills contest is a measure of the individual abilities of those whose best attribute is making their teammates better, and the Shooting Stars Competition is basketball as a boring and miserable exercise.) The dunk contest has come to celebrate something wholly different from what it claims to be, celebrating style and creativity rather than showcasing the pure awe that MJ, Dominique, and Vince were able to instill during their reigns over the contest. Consider the post-Carter dunk contest champions: Jason Richardson now leads the league in threes made. Fred Jones, Desmond Mason and Gerald Green are in various stages of irrelevance. 0% of Nate Robinson's shots in games are dunks. (I'll get to Josh Smith later.)

This year, of course, was the exception. Dwight Howard is the most functional dunker of my lifetime, and while I was 7 years old when proto-Shaq left the Magic, I can't really imagine making more impact by dunking the ball than Howard is now-he's a legitimate top-10 player in the league and a full third of his shots are dunks, and even when he doesn't dunk he changes the defense, as they must keep someone between him and the basket at all possible times in fear of the alley-oop. When he plays, the court pulsates with the power of dunk. And yet his dunk contest was marked by triumphs of style rather than substance, with his signature dunk being a show of smoke and mirrors while THE BIRTHDAY CAKE was, like Howard's tragically futile sticker dunk, a demonstration of substance-as-style, and the contest ended with Green doing a ridiculously difficult dunk that didn't photograph well (seriously, try jumping off a hardwood floor in socks), while Howard did a two-handed windmill using a toy hoop.

When a guy who just got waived rides for degree of difficulty while an MVP candidate goes for style points, it just tells you that All-Star weekend is a distorted time. (Disclaimer: In no way did that paragraph mean to deprecate Howard's deservingness, mainly due to the Inverted Windmill and the Ambitastic Tappy-Oop, it's just saying that Howard based his claim on style while Green dealt more in degree of difficulty, which is odd considering their relative ability.)

Of course, the game itself is the greatest example of All-Star Weekend's spirit of casting aside the shackles of team roles, as players, especially for the first three quarters, govern their games by what they feel they should be instead of what they are told to be. Watching the All-Star game often reminds me of the story in The Blind Side where Michael Oher, the 6-7, 280-pound future offensive tackle, showed up to play basketball for his tiny high school not with the game of a banger who lived in the paint, but as a shooting guard who preferred to gracefully handle the ball and rip threes off the dribble, because he'd learned the game by practicing alone on the street and had never even seen himself in the mirror.

In other words, he played like a guard because nobody had ever told him that he was a big man. This is reflected by The All-Star Game's freeing nature; we get to see Dwight Howard only taking dunks, Rasheed Wallace popping left-handed threes, Yao launching threes himself, Jason Kidd getting 10 assists but only shooting twice, AI dishing out 6 assists and only shooting 7 times, 'Melo shamelessly gunning, VC treating basketball as aesthetic exhibition as opposed to athletic competition, and the like.

But look at the MVP of the contest. He went for 27/8/9 on 12-22 from the floor and 2-7 from deep. His season averages are 31/8/7 on 22 shots and 5 threes. In other words, for LeBron, the All-Star Game, when players can do as they feel, was exactly like any other game. Even his signature play, the game-sealing dunk, was a slashing dunk through traffic instead of a VC/T-Mac show, the kind of highlight he generally provides within the context of a game.

It's not even that LeBron is the least inhibited superstar we've seen since, like, ever: it's that it makes sense. At the highest level of basketball LeBron played before the big show, he took the tip, brought the ball up, hit the boards, slung dimes, just generally did the whole thing up, and now he's more or less doing what he feels in the pros. Some will tell you that some Coach K in LeBron would have done him right; footwork down low, form in the mid-range game, etc. This is untrue. Sure, he might have some fundamentals, but would they have come at the cost of the freedom that makes him as he is? That's a rhetorical question.

Several folk have noted that the best players in the league are from the high school cloth; according to Race For the MVP, the best player in the L has been McGrady, Howard, LBJ, Kobe, or KG for all but one week, and Amare remains the unsung MVP candidate. What stands out about these players is not just how good they are but how unique they are, with the possible exception of Kobe, who didn't go to college but did intern at the Zen Academy.

LeBron is a dominant big man who plays de facto point guard on the perimeter. Howard eschews traditional big-man offense and instead just finds creative ways to use the power of dunk. KG has struck the elusive balance between "little-big" and "big-big" skills. Amare makes his office not on the blocks but by catching passes at he top of the circle and thundering downward. T-Mac works the point forward. (Even before the class of '95, the guys blazing the trails were from the closest thing to high school ball, the land of the small college, which gave us Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman in their unconventional glory.)

Even the non-all star HS guys work in powerful and mysterious ways; Josh Smith might be one of the best defensive players in the league as a shot-blocking shooting guard. The Warriors, the league's most unconventionally fantastic team, employ only two rotation players who have ever set foot in college, and one of them is demi-god Baron Davis, who played to his own beat even at the Church of Wooden. (Unrelated note on the Warriors, prompted by the Mavericks losing Nowitzki and still yet to beat a winning team after their panic trade: not only are the Warriors capable of beating anyone, at any time, essentially based on the health of their spirit animals, they are perfectly capable of claiming a team's soul as part of the transaction.)

Last time I talked about college basketball, I advocated for the value of a good role player coming out of college, as many of the guys laden with "upside" and expectations end up falling short, while guys who know how to do their jobs are overlooked and cause chagrin among all when they continue to do their jobs well in the NBA. Upon further review, I've pretty much decided that college basketball's system of assigning roles is purely and simply evil no matter what. Players like J. Smith would be shackled to the confinements of being a traditional shooting guard, robbing us of his high-flying exploits at power forward. Monta Ellis would be told to run the point. Amare and Dwight would have been told to quit their flights of fancy and stick their butts on the blocks. THIS WAS DAVID LEE. Josh Smith is not effective despite his rawness: He is effective because he is allowed to be raw.

Even those given absolute freedom in college end up shackled by their role as savior: Instead of being allowed the key to unlocking his talents at his own place and find his game, Durant was thrown into the role of savior and is now being forced to suffer by a team whose only move to develop him in any sort of positive way was to trade for Donyell Marshall, who shall serve as a vivid and horrifying reminder to Durant of what he could someday become. Hell, look at AI; every time he's had talent around him, in the Olympics or the All-Star game, and to a lesser degree with Denver, he practically aches to show the world he is not a ball-hog at his core, but has been shoehorned into being one by the likes of Kevin Ollie. (If you want my take on B-Easy; I fear for him as well. A fast power forward who can take big guys off the dribble from the free throw line and become a bigger David West, a faster Carlos Boozer, or Super-Bonzi? Good Policy. A guy who's slow for an elite NBA perimeter player and favors fadeaways from 21 feet and turns the ball over twice as much as he gets assists given 20 shots a game and told to make it work? Bad Policy.)

For all the noise about HS guys being thrust into the limelight too quickly, coming into the NBA incomplete and mercurial will always be better than having to shoulder the burden of perceived completion; by being allowed to find the music of their own games, the HS guys eventually found an off-beat form of truth as yet unrivaled by any other category of player. Even LeBron, who came in wearing savior white, was allowed to find his way in Cleveland, who experimented with him at the point but eventually stuck him on the wing, took Ricky Davis and D-Miles out back and shot them, and allowed him to run things as he always had and shall continue to do.

The age limit is an affront to what makes basketball great; basketball-as-jazz is something we refer to as little as possible here, but the age limit puts Coltrane in a symphony. But it's not going away, and it might even get raised soon, so we should make the most of our chance to appreciate the rare and off-center diamond that is the High School player while we still can, who base their games on what they are rather than what they were told to be, and find greatness where they could not be shown to look. And if the age limit applied to sports bloggers, you'd be reading this in The Daily Trojan. The age limit sucks.

Mayo/Beasley IS HERE

First of all, SORRY DAVE BERRI. It's true, you recognized that scoring means something—even if you'd still prefer it be expunged from the earth. I was just perplexed by your insinuation that "these might have been valuable players" that went directly into "but they wanted to score, so we have to be offended by their lack of scoring opportunities." It seems to lend itself to a "they were the ones playing real basketball, even if they didn't know it" formulation. Even if Berri gets that the cultural valence of scoring was as important as win shares here.

Other Black Magic thoughts: Chris Paul's friendship with Clarence Gaines puts his FBP-ness, through the roof. If only he were a little taller. Also, having two Stovall Sisters songs on the soundtrack is a weird combination of esoteric and lazy. I hate that Steve Miller is the backing band on those.

My real big issue with the series is in fact that same old Nelson George versus John Hoberman conflict. George feels that style is a socio-cultural masterwork, one that grew out of black institutions, official and otherwise. Classic NYC street ball is kind of the dilluted, or subcultural, or vernacular, version of that. And when Jordan starts terrorizing the league, or the post-Jordan era happens, there are still some vaguely political, or at least principled, ideals present in the choice to play like that.



Hoberman, of course, thinks that it's anathema to read too much into mere athletic performance. However, I think he would look sympathetically on, say John McClendon, who built a network of acolytes playing his "shoot every eight seconds" style. It's not that the fast break itself meant something, but that it came out of a McClendon's institutionally-supported originality, which went on to create its own network. This was style as infrastructure. That it was incomprehensible to whites, and seemed to embody some vaguely evocative qualities of "black culture" is nice but not essential. And if it does turn essential, then the romanticization of style takes place.

Which is what made Black Magic so weird: It couldn't decide whether it was the story of these networks, or of individuals who passed through them. Or maybe the point was that every player who went through these programs was an agent of this legacy. Still, it's hard to square the "style as personal expression" logic with the "vessel of original institutional thinking" angle. Also, the star turn given to Pee Wee Kirkland really undermines the latter, especially seeing as the whole hidden history had an undercurrent of respectability and Dean Smith-like reach.

Okay, a few other things. Did I mention that we're in the home stretch of the book, and that it will blow your mind, and that my hands have me this close to becoming the Gerald Wallace of amateur NBA writing?



Some outside links I find particularly useful. All written by us:

New Quotemonger
This TSB post I did about whether this season's lacking in charisma.
Dr. LIC Deadspin column is on the horizon.
DESHAWN STEVENSON APOCALYPSE

Because of Ashley: dlol@snaq

The fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance...
ErieVern: New Orleans was a disaster before Katrina. and it was the people. I never saw so many losers in my life.

Ultimately defeated, in one way or another.
Jordan45822: Does 22 in a row mean anything without a title? Nope. Unless they prove something in the playoffs and get the monkey off their back of not choking.

Commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations...
ReallyFamousGuy5: 2001 Super Bowl Champions. 2003 Super Bowl Champions. 2004 Super Bowl Champions. 2004 World Series Champions. 2007 World Series Champions. 2008 NBA Champions.

To simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
ReallyFamousGuy5: I was thinking Shaq, his diick must be at least 20 inches. But I also think Brian Scalabrine would be a beast!

I've gone to some of the best schools in America...
ekents_return: Trying to use the Coach K way and lean into the defender to try and force a foul

These kids can't learn.
sorabji_66: He's a clown with zero character. Watched him goof around in Toronto. Now we have Ford to play that role, for now... Come playoff time, these kind of guys disappear real fast.

Deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough...
Rockmonster12: I don't know but he eats the same thing that Ginobili does...wind can knock them both over.

Tackle race only as spectacle...
skufners friend: I cant wait to see him play in the NBA. Dude got the complete package. He can dominate down low, hit the jumper, make the right pass and play good D when he wants to. That dude is built like an ox, I would suck him off anytime he wanted me to.

Someone who doesn't look like you might take your job.
DLOLKOBE: Its not like he ever plays anyway, he could stay with is brother for the rest of the year and the Magic wouldnt even notice.

The promise of our ideals and the reality of their time...
Vinsane15Nets: AS0N KI

Corporate culture rife with inside dealing...
ekents_return: Thats not how we play in this country. Hard fouls are allowed, not cheap shots

The memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away.
xJokerz: Fluke.. and how do i know it was a fluke? bc he couldnt win 1 game in the finals. lmao

Opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game.
bostonchamps4life: WOULD A SHOOTING BE IMMINENT? I MEAN 2 FROM THE THUGGETS + ARTEST SHIIIIIIT SON

They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas...
Bush4everLOL: Which one is softer? Yao or a baby's bottom?

In no other country on Earth is my story even possible...
GMenSeamen: I'd say about 2 more years... Its going to be a travesty, enjoy hearing and reading english while you can!

Does not just exist in the minds of black people...
kcbaseball101: If that had been Ron Artest he would be getting a game or 2 suspension.

As if our society was static.
kobe3ringz: IN THE PRE GAME INTRO, THEYRE BLOWING THEIR TRUMPETS DANCING AROUND LIKE MONKEYS LMAO ;-D

State-Based Sneezers

I feel like I'm going to puke, and I'm really busy. This book is getting hectic, and I say that both for the sympathy vote (what vote?) and as a teaser.

About Suns/Warriors: Amare is still the best undersized center in the world. Against a team like Golden State, the Suns can go small, use Diaw where once Marion existed, and pray that defense gets lost in the shuffle. It just doesn't seem that Shaq gives them the best chance to win in that kind of situation. Against the Spurs, on the other hand, they go big from the outset.

I just wonder, though, if it can really be all that simple. If this team's going with the dual-consciousness approach—and after a game last night, it's hard to imagine them not doing this—then don't they have to establish some kind of hierarchy, or overlap, or intersection, of the two? Let's face it, while Shaq has been active, he still impedes Nash's natural flow. It becomes a paint-centric team, where the lane's a fort as opposed to a fly-over. With time, you have to assume that the two worlds will draw closer to each other, and yet "opposites attract" doesn't always make for harmony. I always thought that said Paula Abdul song was about rough sex and flying dishes.

I'm assuming Nash will ultimately adjust, and look right playing with either approach. But you have to wonder what's better: To make these two different "looks" separate but equal, or view Shaq as a weapon of necessity. Given how much of a role psychology already plays on that team—Diaw's inability to produce off the bench, for one—it seems like most obvious basketball solution might end up corroding this team from the inside out. Does Shaq really want to be seen as a guy who shows up only when the fun stops, the cops show up, and someone needs rescuing from the clink?

As I was saying about Houston this week, I think identity is very important to teams. In that case, it was how teams can rally around, or be subconsciously set into motion by, a very particular stylistic ideal. Here, we might see that working in the negative: How Phoenix defines itself could end up adversely affecting some player's brains. The human mind is the ultimate liability.

Leave Me Alone

Some external links of mine:

-More Quotemonger

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

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

Thank you.

Coarse Shine in Forests

I keep trying to form a cohesive thesis about the Rockets streak, one that won't give away how little I watched them pre-Yao injury, or bring out the disdain I once had for half that roster. What's really tugging at me is the correlation between a streak and self-definition. Or, more accurately, how a run can define a team but a streak usually involves getting caught up in the moment, deferring to circumstance, and feeling like you've been touched by something large and possibly sinister.

The other night, Barkley said thus: "Just like with the Blazers, when the Rockets stop hitting their jump shots, then they'll really have to learn who they are." To extrapolate, a monolithic streak can't furnish an identity, since there's too much luck, and fluke, and danger involved. What's more, while the streak is most certainly a statement of might, it's also wistful and already soaked in its own nostalgia.

That is, assuming Barkley is right. I happened to think his conclusions were so off, they rotted. We have no problem with saying that the Lakers' going on a tear indicates a realization of potential, a celebration of what that team should be. Everything falling into place and the team running wild with relief. I'd have to put the be-Yao-ed part of this streak in that category, since it showed that Yao/T-Mac could be rescued from their rut by the right coach. Adelman was brought on to make this nucleus less stagnant, to lift a curse than JVG's exile only partly symbolized.



But here's why I'm now kept up late at night thinking about the post-Yao phase: This team hit a major snag and kept going. Not through residual pixie dust, or the regenerative power of fumes. This is almost a second, separate streak, one that involves the level of self-discovery we associate with random teams (Warriors, anyone?) finding a groove and inflicting it upon others. Except in this case, the wins pile up in succession, in a way that should discount the very seriousness of what's at hand.

Who knows when this ends. I'd like to think tomorrow in Atlanta, but that's unlikely. Over the weekend in Los Angeles, probably, especially with Kobe-as-Grinch the role of a lifetime. But I don't think we'll ever be able to discount that, far from lacking in substance, this streak has contained two season-changing junctures that are usually at odds with the tawdriness of endless, endless victory. These are matters of identity, or learning who you are with the crucible blasting all around.

For a team to pull off two, possibly divergent, versions of this, to accept its destiny and then manufacture a new one on the fly without the ticks or pauses that should give it credibility . . . you'll excuse me if this strikes me as almost overpowering in its intensity. There's nothing trivial about this twice-over transformation, and yet the fairy tale forcefulness seems to demand some. Only time will tell, I guess, if this Rockets team is really that endlessly, disgustingly resilient and resourceful.

FD Guest Lecture: Poetic Primacy

We've long been fascinated by the poetry of Rashad McCants and have argued passionately in the comments about its literary merit. To strengthen our case, we brought in an actual academic for today's guest lecture. Below read the words of Chartin Muzzlewit, English PhD student and future big red tree, analyzing the McCants poem "Number 1."

At first glance, this poem indicates the speaker's investment in guidance by a spiritual power. And although power is initially accessible solely in a dream-world, it has troubling effects on the speaker's body ("I sense the veins in my body thicken"). The striations of muscles coming to life could indicate sheer physical strength, but this possibility is complicated by the later homoerotic intimacy between the spiritual presence ("him") and the speaker's body. For example, when the speaker imagines a spiritual consummation, the body seems both infinitely compartmentalized ("my eyelashes touch") and entirely reduced ("no thought or sound"). This combination of extreme particularity and obliteration imply that the spiritual encounter is, in fact, a self-shattering sexual encounter.

Throughout the poem, power links to sexuality in a dangerous way; access to the spiritual plane is possible, but the body challenges the spirit while it simultaneously acts as a route to spiritual life. Physical power bursts forth in the poem's opening line, only to be undercut by a progressive reduction in the body's ability to apprehend the world around it ("my eyes just blink. No thought or sound"). This is a speaker poised between a desire to enter a spiritual world that chips away at the physical body and a realization that true power can only be achieved through that body ("he knew that my life would demand some sin"). The spiritual power's foreknowledge of the body's "sin" indicates that the power dynamic (troubled by the image of the self's engorgement in the first two lines) remains in place – the spiritual power maintains its hierarchical relationship to the speaker's body.

The resolution of the poem links masochistic submission to the spiritual power ("with a command from him") with recognition of the speaker's chosenness ("I am here for a reason"). The poem closes with a momentary identification between the speaker and the spiritual power ("To be/#1"). But the question raised by this elision is, of course, how the speaker's willingness to submit to the spiritual other relates to the central tension in the poem – the sexualized connection between the spiritual and the body.

A Dense Branch Is Born

Still trying to pin down the Rockets' identity, when I probably should be working on columns. Terse McGrady meditations below. Add to that: Today I turned on the State of the Black Union today for one second, and heard someone say (roughly) that "optimism is fed to you, but hope comes from within."

When I said "workmanlike" what I really meant was "blue collar", which means "gritty without being a threat to society." The Warriors make hustle subversive, and their smart, easy baskets are all fireworks. The Rockets—aside from McGrady's genius, of course—have this weird high-low thing going. Structurally, they've got that Adelman elegance, but a lot of the moving parts still hail from the church of JVG. On defense, they've got a defense Jeff would be proud of energized and/or made haywire by the offensive changes. That seems like arriving at the Warriors conclusions through hard work and process, as opposed to rabid experimentation.

And on the subject of Van Gundy: He might have surpassed Hubie as my favorite color guy. I'll never forget when, a few months ago, he said that Rajon Rondo needed to learn that, as a point guard, he couldn't go for the rebound every time. Made perfect sense, but what a random observation. Anyway, they were talking about the Rockets earlier today, and it's always impressed me how he talks knowledgablely, extensively, and enthusiastically about that team like nothing ever happened. It's so totally class. Mark Jackson said something about "Jeff Van Gundy laid the foundation" for the streak's defensive intensity, and JVG played it off while continuing to break the defense—that he had, of course, laid the foundation for.

Even worse than Shaq not working in Phoenix: Old Shaq coming to define the Suns.

Scale Matters

I still have no fucking clue what half of this Ralph Wiley column means, but with the T-Mac renaissance on, I find myself returning to it anyway.

I've said plenty before that no one's failures drain me quite like McGrady's. The flipside of that, which I never thought we'd see again, is that his highs can make your whole gut heave with joy. It's like that ecstatic quality the 2004-05 Suns had, or the Warriors during last year's run, made personal instead of ideological. It's not just thrilling and expansive, it's also hopeful.

I guess that's sentimental, or shows the softer side of sports, but emoting isn't supposed to have victims. Oh also, T-Mac playing like this is must-watch for me the way those Suns or Warriors are.

And no, hope isn't an ideology, it's a bottomless appeal. That's why Obama works so well.

FD Guest Lecture: Side of Palmist Building

Today's guest lecture comes from Mark Pike, a frequent commenter here most memorably recognized in these parts for compiling a statistical analysis of Nike's Air Force 25 commercial or hiking Masada in a FD t-shirt.

Free Darko rarely exhibits interest in the realm of the Collegiate, but the background narratives of League professionals and their previous university settings can help illuminate the style + substance axiom.

And, even though Liberated Fandom pays little attention to the merits of geographical proximity, this guest author and several of the FD regulars have had stints on Tobacco Road, thus serving as an impetus for a quick exploration of the intersections of Duke University, viral media, avant garde film, and Michael Dunleavy, Jr.



During his time at Duke, Dunleavy was the protagonist in a short-film made by the charitable comedy group Duke University Improv, or DUI for short (avoid the obvious JJ Redick quips. These funnymen do good work. "Humor fighting tumors."). The film was directed by lit it boy, Dana Vachon (hit up Amazon), and heavily references Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal", with Dunleavy playing Stratego against Death.

Though I know I am merely teasing you with these tales without providing ample footage, in the nascent era of viral video the film remains locked up in the prison of Facebook's privacy settings. Feel free to visit DUI and ask them to (ironically?) Free Dunleavy.

*Cue the Proclaimer's "This Is the Story". Loop the opening chords.*



It begins with Dunleavy seated on a bench in the scenic Sarah P. Duke gardens, foot-tapping and staring off into the distance. His posture projects loneliness, but his demeanor quickly changes when a man in a bumble bee costume and a chicken mascot materialize next to him. They all hug enthusiastically, multiple times, and then dosey-do in the distance. Logically, lollipops are the only thing that can keep up the pace of the perfect day. Dunleavy is happy. What next? Too close for lollipops, switching to ice cream cones. Clearly, Dunleavy is not lactose intolerant as he smushes the soft serve into his face.



Finished with the snacks, Dunleavy discovers fire in the form of bottle rockets. The chicken and the bee rejoice. But, just as the joy from food is an ephemeral pleasure, fireworks soon fade. Sport emerges. Wiffle ball bat swings and a homerun for Dunleavy. Having mastered the game, the chicken suggests kickball. Dunleavy kicks a chunky ball off into the distance, floating into the air...



*Cue the lyrics to the Proclaimers song. "It's Over and Done With...."*

Death catches the ball. Dunleavy becomes self-aware, or perhaps cognizant of his own mortality, or maybe just sad that the perfect day has changed. Death challenges Dunleavy to Stratego. They play. Dunleavy wins a piece. The bee cries. The chicken sobs, or laughs--it's unclear. They all dance, hand in hand.



FIN

Powder Blue Isotope

I can't believe how blind I was. To whomever said that the Nuggets are the new Warriors, you're wrong, but onto something. I watched them last night, and still stand by my complaint that this team should have way more edge than it does. And really, wasn't it edge/attitude/intangibles/serrated testicles that allowed the Dubs to push through Dallas like they did?

However, there is a light, and it's one whose familiar glow has at times threatened to burn down my life, or presented itself as that last flicker before the human race goes dark forever. That, my friends, is J.R. Smith. He may never grow up into a solid starter, but in the wake of Stephen Jackson's revenge, I see a new niche for J.R.: Catalytic wild card. Smith has been on a tear lately, which for him means backing up swag with outrageous playmaking, which in turn feeds the swaggering beast. George Karl may deserve to be fired, but at very least be should be commended for letting this petri monster bubble a bit.

So I'd say, why not take off the leash? Make Smith's antics a permanent feature of this team's night-in, night-out identity. Iverson and Melo are perfectly responsible adults now; Martin and Camby, beyond reproach. There's no risk of their backsliding, so why not at least give them a little souvenir of the vitality that goes with irresponsibility? It's the role of a lifetime for the mercurial Smith, and might give the Nuggets the spark they need to, well, stop looking so rote in their scoring explosions.



Look at the kid. Learn and listen. He idolizes you, and probably owes what's left of his NBA career to you. Now, it's his turn to give back, and maybe help himself even more in the process. J.R. Smith is getting free. Let him now lead his Nuggets to a higher plane of unpredictability. The Warriors parallel isn't perfect: Baron is a real point guard, Nellie has a vision, and so on and so forth. All the more reason to think in rareified terms. Nothing changes on the floor, except for the timbre of their output.

There is fun, and there is danger, inside J.R. Smith. When he harnesses these two, he's not a nuisance—he's a self-help guru for a team in need of a jolt. Here's hoping they don't let knowledge get in the way of knowing.

ALERT: I said earlier this season that Al Thornton would be mentioned on here more than any other rookie. Well, I fibbed. I haven't watched the Clippers once, though I see that dude has suddenly started to ignite what's left of the season. So someone, clue me in on Thornton at this level. Is he worth making a priority of? Does he belong in my Five?

Still not sure how I feel about Landry. The Rockets may be the most workmanlike running team ever, even if this might be the most I've enjoyed watching McGrady since 2002-03.



UPDATE: I have a new, highly entertaining column at SLAM.

Light the Boots and Files

Stop the madness, please! At least now I've realized that I only liked calling Kobe "the best" as an honorific, not an empirical distinction. Stop comparing people. Compare teams, and players like Chris Paul who are extensions of their teams (and vice-versa).

Let's revert to important matters, like Chris Andersen's return to the league. How long ago it seems that the Hornets were poised to move forward. . . with Chris Paul, J.R. Smith, and Chris Andersen. That makes even me nervous.

Anyway, welcome back, Birdman. You did drugs, I could care less, you're a funny player. What continues to fascinate me about Andersen's odyssey is the mystery nature of the substance involved. I told Billups earlier that Andersen + any drug makes a worthy punchline. But here, allow me to harken back to a post I wrote ages ago for FanHouse. The gist: As part of the CBA, the NBA goes out of its way to identify the substance involved when a player fails a PED test. I can't remember exactly how pot works, but I think that the punishment makes it pretty obvious what the offense is. Then there's that other class of drugs, of which Andersen is guilty of abusing.

So the NBA sincerely feels it has nothing to hear or hide from PEDs, so much so that it wants the particular chemical names out there. Perhaps it's because, as in the Lindsey Hunter instance above, some lend themselves (or are the result of) perfectly regular excuses. Pot is pot: Stuck in the league, tricky to crack down on, and only so offensive to so many people—and among those who would be pissed, a given even if no one's coming up dirty for it.

It's the other shit that the league's anxious about, exactly because they don't want imaginations whirring. Chris Andersen and his multi-cultural house of mirrors is a special case, but while pot's a mundane fact of all walks of American life, the last thing the NBA needs is drug exoticism on its hands. Stern does not want eyes wide at the thought of rivers of blow, pills in the pocket, or anything else that could add a whole new wrinkle to the league's image problems. And as much as I hate pot, it's the one truly universal drug. It's very nearly its own demographic, the way drinking is.

More me (everything's late this week because my hands broke):

TSN treatise on the forms of rebuilding
Snappy Deadspin column

The Clarity in the Cataracts

This really is a new and exciting time to be arguing about the game's best player. Ever since Jordan retired, MVPs have come and gone, but in the back of everybody's mind, there was never really a debate over who the game's best player was-Iversons and Nowitzkis and KGs and Nashes have streaked through the basketball world and claimed their moments in the sun, but in the back of the mind the league had returned to being in the shadow of giants-Shaq laid in the back of everybody's mind as the true best player in the league, and when he passed over the hill, it was Duncan. It's no coincidence that every finals since Jordan retired has featured either Shaq or Duncan, and they captured the title all but one time in the last nine years.



























But now, with the Suns setting around Shaq and Duncan finally aging and falling below 20 points per game, and Dwight Howard not yet able to claim the throne of The Dominant Big, the NBA's brightest stars are also deserving of the distinction as the league's true best player. Currently, the man occupying that throne is Kobe Bryant, the current gold standard of true and lasting NBA greatness.

Deserving or no, Kobe is a unique heir to the throne-while previous standard-holders made their claim based on games and achievements impervious to doubt or question, Kobe's greatness is shrouded in mystery; his closest historical comparison would be pre-championship Chamberlain or Jordan, who consensus dictated were inferior to Russell and Bird/Magic before they won their rings, but Kobe is different even from them. He has the necessary rings to make his claim, but won them as his team's second-best player, and is probably even better as an individual player now than he was when he achieved his rings. There is precedent for great players winning championships after their individual primes, but almost none who achieved their individual primes after their championship years.













I was talking to my boss, who runs the LA Times' Laker Blog and watches Kobe as much as any human being on the planet, and he simply said, "If you watch Kobe Bryant every day, there is no way you don't think he's the best player in this league." It's easy to see what he means-Kobe is at the same time the league's most well rounded player and the one most capable of singular domination. He can shoot beautifully, he can explode to the hole and put jaws on the carpet, he combines power with grace, he's a great passer with surpassing court vision, he plays defense, and he has a dizzying array of moves to compliment and harness his skills.

But to call him a jack-of-all trades is to discount his ability to focus all his energies and envelop a team in a flurry of baskets; although he no longer holds the league's scoring title, he is still the one most capable of an outburst of scoring that can cripple a team all by itself-witness 81, or the 30 points he scored after the third quarter had ended against the Mavericks on Sunday. He plays every game with legendary resolve and competitiveness. (My favorite documented video evidence of this-the 1997 dunk contest. (Music NSFW.) First of all, Bob Sura was in the dunk contest. Second, look right after Michael Finley misses the two-ball dunk with Kobe sitting on a 49-He fist-pumps. A 19-year old kid rooting for a fellow dunker to fail. Cold-Blooded.) Quite simply, he is a humanly perfect basketball player, which, when coupled with the championships on his resume, makes him a logical choice as the game's true great, and allows us to forgive him the trespasses of failing to win a playoff series in the absence of Shaq.














The thing about Kobe being the league's best player because of his perfection is the exception, rather than the norm, to the league's greatest players. The league's greatest players have always been Gods, capable of impacting the game through their sheer force of being rather than their individual ability-Wilt impacted games without needing to do the impossible because of his crushing impact on the boards, on defense, and the way he changed everything on offense before he even shot the ball-likewise with Russell, Shaq, Walton, Moses, and Kareem. Likewise, Bird, Magic, Robertson, and now Nash change the game through their ability to change the game through their passing and divine sense of the game.

God does not need to be perfect in our eyes because we acknowledge that we are unable to understand his ways. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, than he must have known Satan would rebel, and that his rebellion would lead to the fall of Man from Paradise, and would have no need to create an heir if he is indeed immortal, but we concede what would be human flaws because we understand that God is beyond human notions of flaws or mistakes, and trust that he knows what we cannot understand. Likewise, we do not question Shaq, Duncan, or Wilt's footwork and free throw touch, Russell, Moses, and Kareem's ability to shoot from outside or operate outside the free-throw line, Magic's jump shot, or Bird's lack of athletic ability-they are beyond normal faults because the divine force of their games makes any questioning of their human shortcomings mere insolence and narrow-mindedness on our parts.















If great point guards and centers are the Gods of the game, than great perimeter players are the humans—capable of great things, able to change the world, but limited by their relative lack of power to the Gods to change at their will, and not able to have their flaws forgiven. Pistol Pete was created to be the perfect basketball player, and was as quick and as fluid a ball-handler and shooter as ever played the game, but lacked the blessing of the gods, and, like Cesar or Alexander, fell humbled without achieving the holy grail or even an MVP award. Then the Messiah came.

Like Jesus, Jordan was all the more powerful because he contained the force of the divine wrapped in the trappings of humanity. Jordan was not gifted with Wilt or Shaq's dominating physical force, or Magic and Larry's ability to affect what was happening on the entire court when they had the ball in their hands; he needed to be humanly perfect to be great, and like Jesus, he was humanly flawless-the quickness, the leaping ability, the coordination, the ball-handling, the mid-range shot, the defense, the relentless determination, everything. He even lives in parables; of being cut from his high school team, of perfecting his defense and his jump shot, of playing through the flu, of treating every scrimmage like a game 7. But as with Jesus, Michael only appeared to be mortal-he held inside his human trapping the ability of the divine, the ability to produce miracles when needed, to walk across water and over Craig Ehlo and Byron Russell and come out with six championships.
















(Quick aside: LeBron is something new and scary and different altogether, the power of a dominant big with the vision of a dominant point who plays on the perimeter. Look at his game-winning layup in game 5 up against Jordan's "final shot." Jordan is played more or less straight up, while all 5 Pistons were watching LeBron-Jordan's shot was the pinnacle of human basketball skill, while LeBron was something altogether different. Look at LeBron's game today: down the stretch, he tilted the entire floor left, then went right for the slam. On his next possession, he went to the one-on-one step-back jumper. Next time down, he drew the defense and hit a wide-open Wally Sczerbiak for the dagger. Not to pull out superlatives, but that's legendary big power, legendary point game-changing, and a human feat of skill, all in one stretch. This is a special, special player, as his Shoals' boy Chris Paul, combining divine court vision with a new-era type of speed and athleticism. But this is Kobe's show.)















In the meantime, Kobe dominated the Mavericks down the stretch with a flurry of jumpers and drives for contact, burying them with 22 fourth-quarter points and 8 more in overtime. We know Kobe is human basketball perfection. Now, armed with the weapons necessary to obtain a ring to call his own, we may get an answer to the question we've been asking ever since Shaq left Kobe in purgatory; is Kobe blessed with divine providence, or is he simply a mortal king? Is he Napoleon, or is he the Second Coming? Kobe is the best mortal basketball player on the planet, probably the best since Jordan. It is because he is human that he is yet to make it back to the finals, but it is because he is perfect that he retains a tenuous grasp on the coveted title of the game's best.

With Duncan finally sliding away from the picture, Kobe's playoff run in the loaded West will be a test of the power of human perfection against all those who dare oppose it. In the playoffs, he will either become a deus ex machina and bury all that dare challenge him with a series of timely jumpers and left-handed floaters or reveal himself as only mortal and watch as his jumpers fall short of Nirvana. What I'm trying to say here is that I am really fucking stoked for this year's playoffs.