The no-look passes are things of beauty, the full-speed 3 pointers are deadly weapons, and the competitive edge is intense and furious, but to me Steve Nash's sense of humor and regular guy-ness are what truly sets him apart in terms of his standing on the continuum of my own NBA fandom. It's like if you squint hard enough you could almost see him hanging out, swinging by for a few games of pickup, and then going out for drinks and making jokes and then maybe after enjoying a few libations gettin' a little crazy on the dance floor:
Steve Nash = my favorite professional athlete. I can respect the Ego-Laden Warrior persona currently sported by Kobe and Lebron (perfected by Michael Jordan), but give me the Steve Nashes and Dwight Howards and Chad Ochocincos any day of the week. Sports should be fun; they may be war in proxy but they're games, and even when a game is turned into a grueling profession the kernel of kids on a blacktop (or empty field, or [insert playing area of choice] remains at the heart.
So, the LA Lakers get another title, Kobe gets another title, the Magic go home empty-handed, and Turkey Glue, D12, and the rest of the Magic get a summer to console themselves with the soothing purchasing of Lamborghinis and the launching of vanity rap careers and watching Transformers 2 and whatever else a millionaire NBA star does to console himself in an offseason not washed in the glow of a championship. I'm pretty sure they'll be just fine.
But from the sports narrative perspective, I'm disappointed that Kobe got another title, because of the way that it validates this whole athlete-as-steely-warrior meme that holds that to have a killer instinct a pro (or amateur) athlete has to be kind of a jerk. Or a lot of a jerk, depending. The goofballs (Dwight Howard), the dry wits (Steve Nash), the happy-go-lucky spotlight-eschewing beach-loving space cases (Lamar Odom) don't get much slack in the perceived mental toughness department, maybe because of the way that athletic competition serves as proxy war, and war tends to the serious. Although this breaks down as a straight 1:1 - what of the dark, cynical gallows humor? That takes place, if at all, definitively offscreen, away from the viewing audience. And, additionally, there is a viewing audience. It's entertainment, after all.
Nontheless, it's disappointing the way that the warrior/grinder is celebrated. Kobe is validated because winning is so important to him, when clearly what's most important to him is winning while being awesome, and as an occasional pickup basketball player (go-to move, the airball), there's no type of player I'd least rather play with.
Here's the subtitle for the article SI did on Dwight Howard toward the beginning of the playoffs:
"Great centers don't come any more easygoing than Orlando's Dwight Howard. But can he take the Magic to the Finals—and get one big, bad dude off his back—while keeping his smile intact?"
And the article proceeds to follow that, with the main thesis being that Dwight Howard, with his goofy nature, imitations of his coach, ADD photo shoot style, and all the rest, just isn't and serious and focused enough to win the NBA title. Which is infuriating. Because last I checked, basketball is a game. And sure, to make a living at it, and to play at the highest level, it's a lot of work, but it's still a game. There's still a lot of it based on fun, and on artistry, and on improvisation (within a defined context), so I don't get the binary that states that one must be a basketball Terminator in attitute to win it all. It's like the asinine dress code on ESPN, whereby grown men and women dress in power suits to talk about football. It would be a lot less disenguous, and a lot more reflective of the kernal of truth at the center of sports, if ESPN anchors would just sport sweatpants and the jersey of whoever their favorite player is. Because it comes off as dressing up something fundamentally non-serious as something important, when any spectator can see that despite the passions they inspire, sports have their foundation in play; ergo, playfulness should not be so shunned.
So, great, Kobe wins, the grinder wins, the warrior wins. Now can he please retire the bizarre underbite-as-intimidation facial expression. Because it makes me want to reach through the screen and tell the man to grow up, already.
I love college basketball, I love March Madness, and, even it seems like a sort of too-easy sporting event to love (since the team I am loyal to, the Tar Heels of North Carolina, are perennial Goliaths/contenders), nonetheless, I do love it even when there aren't really a great deal of opening round upsets to speak of. The reason being is that when upsets are expected, they're not really upsets at all. To know that the higher seeds are capable of steamrolling the entire tournament may make this year's (and last year's) tournament seem dull, but it lays the seeds for future tournaments, when we don't expect a George Mason or W. Kentucky to do anything but roll over and die an then lo! We are shocked again anew. I've heard a lot about how this might be a really boring tournament, but I don't find a lot boring about close games and desperation basketball, even if Goliath winds up eating David alive. And again, to reiterate, I'm biased, because UNC is one of the 800-pound gorillas here, and I would love to see them win every game by 20 and cruise to the title.
But it brings me to one of my favorite subjects, which is the bad rap that the NBA suffers in comparison to the college game. Having come to the NBA late, and not having a team to swear blind loyalty to gives me a little bit of the freedom to freelance, fandom wise, and I once again find myself following the plight of that NBA Sisyphus of franchises, the Phoenix Suns. They played the Jazz last week to fight for the right to enter the playoffs, and the atmosphere of the game was absolutely electric - far more so than any of the opening round games of the NCAAs. I don't know where the idea comes from that pro athletes don't care, or don't try, but it seems particular to the NBA. Nobody ascribes sloth and non-motivation to the NFL as a league, so why the NBA? Especially since the Suns-Jazz game I saw featured neck and neck lead changes, dives for loose balls, and all players going all-out 110 percent while playing some of the best basketball in the world. I love the NCAA tournament, but if basketball gives you pleasure it's sheer madness to write off the entire NBA just because of received wisdom that the games don't matter and the players don't care. When a 35 year old point guard is sacrificing his body by stepping in front of Carlos Boozer on the way to the rim, hitting the deck to ensure postseason games, well; the dichomoty falls apart.
Best of luck to the Suns in their quest, even if it looks like post-Sacramento all hopes are dead in the water until next year.
Ah, the glorious freedom from the shackles of the bandwagon fan! For these entire NBA playoffs I have been cheering the downfall of Boston, mighty mighty Boston. But now that they are playing the Lakers...
Well, it may be overly traditionalist of me, but I can't stand Kobe Bryant. The other day I read that if he had gone to college, it would definitely have been Duke. That fact surprises me exactly zero percent. In fact, there is a large part of me that heaves a huge sigh of relief that I was spared the sight of Bryant and Coach K hoisting NCAA trophy together and embracing. Because, as has been observed ad nauseum, Kobe Bryant is just that good. The man really is a transcendent basketball player. And, as Kelly Dwyer has argued on the Ball Don't Lie blog over at Yahoo, one thing that should be respected about Kobe is that he has a great deal of respect for his own basketball gifts. He works at his game. He adds shots, spins, additional footwork, additional weapons to the arsenal the longer he plays. This is commendable. In some ways, there's nothing more frustrating than the person that refuses to take advantage of their own prodigious gifts. Kobe's got the gifts, and he has taken full advantage. By all accounts, he is one of the hardest workers in the NBA.
He is also, by my estimation, a pretty crappy human being. For a great courtside account of Kobe's courtside demeanor in Boston during Game 3, when things weren't going his way, the noted authority Curt Schilling's got the definitive word:
"Kobe. This one stunned me a little bit. Who doesn’t know Kobe Bryant right? I only know what I have heard, starting awhile back with the entire Shaq debacle. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other on or about him other than to know that people feel he might be one of the 4-5 greatest players to ever lace it up. What I do know is what I got to see up close and hear, was unexpected. From the first tip until about 4 minutes left in the game I saw and heard this guy bitch at his teammates. Every TO he came to the bench pissed, and a few of them he went to other guys and yelled about something they weren’t doing, or something they did wrong. No dialog about “hey let’s go, let’s get after it” or whatever. He spent the better part of 3.5 quarters pissed off and ranting at the non-execution or lack of, of his team. Then when they made what almost was a historic run in the 4th, during a TO, he got down on the floor and basically said ‘Let’s f’ing go, right now, right here” or something to that affect. I am not making this observation in a good or bad way, I have no idea how the guys in the NBA play or do things like this, but I thought it was a fascinating bit of insight for me to watch someone in another sport who is in the position of a team leader and how he interacted with his team and teammates. Watching the other 11 guys, every time out it was high fives and “Hey nice work, let’s get after it” or something to that affect. He walked off the floor, obligatory skin contact on the high five, and sat on the bench stone faced or pissed off, the whole game. Just weird to see another sport and how it all works. I would assume that’s his style and how he plays and what works for him because when I saw the leader board for scoring in the post season his name sat up top at 31+ a game, can’t argue with that. But as a fan I was watching the whole thing, Kobe, his teammates and then the after effects of conversations. He’d yell at someone, make a point, or send a message, turn and walk away, and more than once the person on the other end would roll eyes or give a ‘whatever dude’ look."
So, even within the borders of the basketball court, he's the kind of guy that's just absolutely miserable to play with. Speaking as someone with minimal talent but a great deal of love for basketball, there is nothing worse than playing with someone with immense talent consumed by rage and/or selfishness. Sports are metaphor, sure, but they're also games, played at base, for fun. Nothing sucks the fun out like a tyrannical Kobe Bryant-type. It's more complicated when you're talking about getting paid to play ball, and organized team sport vs. pickup, but there's a kernel of fun there that, from a fan perspective, is not an insignificant part of it. It is what connects my experience clanking 15-footers at the local park with NBA players' slamming home tomahawks on breakaways.
But there are many NBA stars that might not be all that fun to play with. The razor edge of competitiveness is pretty crucial for success in that crucible, so some bark and bite is to be expected. Choirboy Chris Paul, one of my absolute favorites, famously punched Julius Hodge right in the balls because Hodge had apparently squeezed Paul's injured hand on an inbounds play outside of the view of the officials.
Kobe, though, seems like a jerk on the court who carries that over into the rest of his life. Dude was making his teammates cry back in high school for letting him down. And oh, yeah, the rape allegation. The charge was dropped, so I suppose I can't hold that against him 100%, but he then followed it up with a huge settlement, a press conference announcing he had cheated on his wife, and the gift of what looked like the hope diamond to his wife. Ugh. These are the kind of people whose success I expend no energy to with for, to put it lightly.
The man's a millionaire many times over. He's a champion. His teammates wear his signature shoes. He's beloved LA-wide. Success is in the books. So I don't think it's so bad of me to with for abject failure for Kobe Bean Bryant on the NBA Finals stage.
Especially in contrast to these Celtics. Halfheartedly rooting for the upsets, and then casting my lot for Rasheed necessitated looking past a lot of tragic narratives. Garnett, Allen, and Pierce are all various forms of long-suffering, and don't give off that smarmy sociopath vibe that Bryant does. They have endured loss (all 3). Garnett is criticized for his lack of clutchness. Allen is operating on prayers for ankles. Pierce has stuck with Boston through thick and thin, and been stabbed in a nightclub to boot. They may have the best record in the NBA, but a victory for Boston's 3 (and everyone else) would be a true triumph over adversity narrative. Kobe winning his Shaq-less title is just another validation for the Greatest Player Currently Playing to sink further into his own narcissism.
I was the shortest kid in the class for a long, long time - probably until midway through high school, and remain undersized. I also love playing basketball. These two things are, sadly, not the best fit. They would fine if I were quick (I am slow) or had a really solid outside shot (which I do not), but the fact remains that without that nigh-essential basketball skill, height, my abilities are always going to be on the bottom end of the average pickup league.
For that reason, I am consistently enthralled the the players that are able to dominate while being short. While I can barely conceive of what it must be like to tower over the paint, throwing down vicious dunks and sending impertinent perimeter penetrators' shot attempts into the 5th row, I can at least at the outer edges of my fantasies imagine myself weaving into the land of the giants, deftly passing or scoring. This never happens, but it is at least less ludicrous to imagine myself playing that role.
It is that reason (if not that reason along) that my coming back around to the NBA had a lot to do with Steven Nash and the Suns. Telegenic, media-hyped, surely, but I've never had NBA allegience (perhaps I was lined up with the Hornets, but I never liked the NBA growing up and then they left Charlotte and the Bobcats just don't feel like mine) so I flit about from style to style, player to player, narrative to narrative. In terms of allegiance, I am the definition of the casual, bandwagon fan, but the more I follow the league the more my fandom of the game of professional basketball itself deepens. It is the polar opposite of my NCAA fandom, in which I live and die by one team and one conference and could really care less about the rest of the CBB universe until March rolls around.
So, a short, white point guard, playing the position the way that in my wildest dreams I could very faintly imagine - this has the resonance that makes a person sit up and pay attention. I could never legitimately say that I'm a Suns fan, but a Steve Nash fan, absolutely. I could rehash all of the reasons that he's such a compelling player to watch, but that is all covered better elsewhere. And, with the the Shaq trade trimming back the Suns' wings a bit, Nash has played off the ball more this season, which from a strategy perspective is better but from a selfish perspective (mine) means there are less opportunities for him to work his particular alchemy.
And then, staying up late, watching game 1 of NO-Dallas, the Chris Paul tsunami. Now, this is a man who I should have seen play- after all, he was the PG for Wake Forest for 2 years, and is born and bred North Carolina. But these two years were among my years in the sports wilderness, so to my shame I hadn't yet seen the MVP candidate play all year. Well, except for in the All-Star game, in which his talent shone bright enough for me to declare that he was fantastic. Which he was.
But good Lord. The All-Star game is a basketball themed party. The playoff are basketball through and through. I tuned in shortly before halftime to watch Kidd (who I find repulsive more for his off-the-court domestic abuse issues than with any flaws in his game, but, like I said, when it comes to the NBA I'm a cherry picking fan) help push the Mavericks to a dozen point lead, and saw Paul not do much special.
2nd half. Paul WENT OFF. It actually felt like watching an explosion, or a series of them, like the climax of a bombastic 80s action movie. Paul with a step-back, good. Paul with a hesitation teardrop floater, good. Paul to Chandler, alley-oop. Paul with a flurry of 15 foot jump shots. Paul stealing the inbounds from what looked like Croatia. And on and on and on and on. At a certain point, I thought Kidd might actually cry. It was the sight of the future machine-gunning the past down with with extreme prejudice.
And Chris Paul is legitimately six feet tall. And a hardcore bowler. And I caught his appearence on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" and damned if the guy isn't effortlessly charming, as well. Unlike the dry reticence tinged with humor of Nash's public demeanor (when asked who he supported in the Democratic primary, he remarked that it was no secret that he was a "liberal young gentleman"), Paul is open, engaging, and seemingly regular.
And, like Nash was before Shaq arrived, Paul is 80% of the Hornets offense. Not to take anything away from Amare Stoudemire, David West, et. al, but Paul dominates the NO team the way that Nash did in his two breakout seasons, and it's just so damn rare to see that kind of dominance from the shortest player on the court (Iverson is the only example that leaps immediately to mind, although from what I've read it seems that Isiah was similarly dominant - I just didn't watch the NBA when he was playing). Watching it is watching David and Goliath, over and over, competing in a state of aethletic grace for 45 game-minutes.
As a Tar Heel born and bred (if not educated), it was quite painful to me to watch the boys in blue lay a giant stinkbomb in the first half against KU, especially after looking so dominant for the rest of the tournament. Hansbrough was hitting face-up 20 footers against Louisville, for God's sake. Then they, what? Forget they're one game away from the final? Watching Kansas come out and shove a live grenade down Carolina's throat to the tune of a 40-12 lead in the first half was literally the sight of a dream season ending. Unbeaten on the road? Oh, how about another easy layup following an uncontested interior pass? They couldn't have played worse at a worse time if their life depended on it.
I rationalize and say that, with the way Memphis played in a magnificent title game 2 days later, there would have been no way the Heels could have beaten them. Carolina couldn't stop Sherrod Collins from getting into the lane, Derrick Rose would have blown their minds. And so I say I'm happy for KU to put on the crown following that incredible Chalmers 3, but the truth is that every second of watching the game was haunted by the ghostly question of "how would Carolina be playing right now?" And, as with the Georgetown debacle last year, the what-if question will hang over me for a while as basketball season fades.
Still and all, it is these failures that make sports so compelling, the ways that real life, in the form of televised childhood games played by athletically freakish millionaires, sometimes lines up with the stories we tell and sometimes does not. In watching a movie, or a TV show, or reading a book, the audience member is entering a narrative compact that is rarely broken: things will end appropriately, is the promise of the writer. Not necessarily well, or happily, but in a way that satisfies the narrative drive. One of the pleasures of fictional narratives lies in seeing how the various strands that are laid out reach a satisfying conclusion. Genre often helps - for the comedy we implicity understand that things will end happily; the pleasures lie in the twists and turns along the way. In tragedy, or suspense, the Aristotelian catharsis is the implied payoff for the weight of awful events/threats/mishaps that form the narrative.
When a work of fiction does not resolve to the root chord, the audience often feels cheated, and the work itself can feel cheapened. Witness the great outcry over the Sopranos finale. Fade to black, no resolution, life goes on (depending on your preferred conspiracy theory). The series ends without resolving on anything; it is an ending in the literal sense - it ceases to be, and the narrative strands are left dangling. The question remains; does this make the vast rich middle any less compelling? A subjective answer, I'd argue - for myself I'd say yes and no.
The glory of sports is that they contain resolution every single time out on the micro level (someone always wins, someone always loses), but they do not always provide narrative resolution. The Cinderella team in the NCAA tournament does not always win. Davidson does not always hit the last second three against Kansas. Sometimes a team led by a devil incarnate (cough Christian Laettner cough) wins a championship. There's no guarantee that real life will follow any narrative drive. And when it doesn't, it feels unsatisfying, but not in the same way that it feels unsatisfying when a movie/tv show/book doesn't achieve resolution. In those cases, the lack of resolution is a deliberate choice from the part of the author, thus feeling like entitlement withdrawn. In real life, it feels true. It resonates with the thousand petty disappointments that all of us feel over the course of a lifetime.
So, when it does happen...when Davidson beats Georgtown, when Roy Williams wins the Big One (and then Kansas wins the Big One after vanquishing Roy Williams), when Memphis is tragically, Shakespearian-ly done in by missed free throws after Calipari's blithe assertion that they'll make 'em when they count, when, unbelievably, the smarmy Belichick and his Death Star Patriots fall just short of the ultimate prize (with their matinee idol QB spending a good portion of the game on his back in the grass), the pleasure is doubled, trebled, even exponentially increased because there really is no guarantee. If a satisfying ending is exquisite pleasure in the realm of fictional narrative, it is on another level when comes from real life, which so often gives no quarter and unspools with such little rhyme or reason.
