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.
So, a plug; here we are deep in football season, with the Fall Classic about to kick off, and the NBA season approaches with great stealth. I'm not sure when exactly NBA basketball became such a niche sport, more on par with the NHL than the NFL, but my purely anecdotal experience suggests that NBA fandom is narrow. The diehards are just as enthusiastic as those found for any other sport, but the vast casual middle seems much smaller.
Take another look, I urge you. Why? Two lines of argument - athletic/aesthetic and metatextual.
1. Athletic/aesthetic - Basketball played at its highest level is most often compared to jazz, and though the cliche is hackneyed (I don't really like jazz personally), there is an element of truth to it; namely, collaborative improvisation holds sway in basketball like in none of the other major U.S. sports. Football, which I do love watching, is military and industrialized - success is so often dependent on the industrial virtues of parts working together in harmony; pistons cranking to turn out a chassis, etc. There are great improvisational moments in football, for sure - the acrobatic TD catches, the scrambles away from pressure, the cutback runs, but a great deal of football plays consist of many discrete parts operating in harmonic concert. Baseball is almost anti-collaborative; a series of discrete 1-on-1 battles (interesting that basketball is accused often of being just that, when no hitter in trouble can ever pass to the corner for an open three, or whatever the equivalent would be). Baseball is a game played in many individual steps, with many pauses, and units of the game measured to within an inch of its life - strikes become outs become innings.
Basketball is fluid, closer to soccer, another game that has caught on as something to play but not watch in the U.S. in large part. Plays are called, plans are laid, to be sure, but there is an element of improvisatory danger in every possession, for every team. Zach Randolph airballing a three pointer for the Knicks last year is so batshit insane that it could a) only have happened on the Isiah Thomas Knicks and b) in a game of basketball. It would be like the Raiders attempting a FG but instead of kicking it Janikowski decides "screw this, I'm throwing a long bomb to my long snapper". Crazy on a basketball court, but it ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Absolutely inconceivable to even consider the equivalent in other sports.
The game is beautiful, athletic, and compelling. A common complaint holds that you only need to watch the last 2 minutes, that the rest is irrelevant, but any watcher of basketball knows how much the preceding minutes inform those final 2. Often everything that happens toward the endgame is foreshadowed and hinted at during the beginning and middle. The All-Star game, sure, only the end matters, but contrast that with the steady viselike effect of the ticking clock from the first minute of any regular season or (especially) playoff game - the game builds to those final 2 minutes. Sure, you could just watch the climax of an action movie, but you are missing the texture that gives that climax such force and power.
2. Metatextual. More than any other sport, NBA basketball has prompted the absolute best sports writing in the form of blogging of any major sport, no holds barred. The work of the cream of the crop of the NBA bloggers is so well-written and well-researched that the games themselves are elevated. Seek out the following and be awed.
www.basketbawful.com - the worst of pro ball. Vicious, endearing comedy. www.freedarko.com - get your Ph.D in NBA studies here. This year they didn't preview NBA teams, they previewed EVERY SINGLE GAME OF THE SEASON, in pithy, haiku-like snippets of glory. http://hardwoodparoxysm.blogspot.com/ - Just solid analysis, in-depth and smart. www.thebasketballjones.net - a daily podcast on the NBA during the season. Don't miss it. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie - Edited by the incomparable J.E. Skeets, of the Basketball Jones. Unique in the blogosphere, Skeets is hilarious AND inclusive.
Start there, but it's merely the tip of the iceberg. Enjoy the series, enjoy fall football, but if you love sports try re-introducing yourself to the NBA.
I kind of love the Olympics, although I don't find myself particularly compelled to watch much of them, because the truth is that the televised summer Olympics are for the most part boring as sport. As spectacle, they're almost unbeatable, but I like spectacle with sports when the sports themselves are highly telegenic. And gymnastics is pretty telegenic, but it's also a solo act committed by small girls who I want set free from the tiny prisons of their bodies/training regimens.
But so much of the Olympics, as sport and a series of images removed from context, are fantastically boring. I'm as caught up in Phelpshype as anyone, but I have to convince my brain that it's exciting to watch eight guys swim really fast in a straight line. There was a window of time when the only 2 Olympic sports on were softball and beach volleyball, and I found myself channel-surfing to the food network, where a New York chef was making lame lion jokes in the middle of South Africa. My significant other claimed that the only Summer Olympic sports are track, swimming, and gymnastics, and was absolutely incredulous that beach volleyball was a sport. After watching a point or two of the match, I was inclined to agree except for the fact that I found the swimming to be just as yawn-inducing. Women's softball? I find an MLB no-hitter to be boring enough.
And yet.
Divorcing the events from the context of what they mean is a deliberate missing of the point, like eating fried chicken without the skin. The delights of the Olympics are all in the way that untelevised, un-telegenic sports like synchronized diving and table tennis and all the rest of the bizarre galaxy is infused through context with a grand master narrative. It's almost beside the point what the events are - as long as it rolls around every 4 years, and involves country vs. country action, there is enough large-scale narrative momentum to sustain the most mundane and/or bizarre of competitive "events".
So swimming is boring to watch, yes. But somehow everyone who had watched the astonishing Lezak rally couldn't stop raving about it; plugged into the communal Olympic spirit that charged an admittedly nigh-superhuman feat with the thrills that Lezak was doing if for 'Merica, dammit. We may not be able to invade the right country, and the French may have been right about the way, but they won't be able to...outSWIM us! I was not immune - I watched the whole thing replayed and got goosebumps all over my arms when Lezak touched the wall and the rest of the Americans screamed.
I would not have been so excited if not for the grand narrative trappings, the gloriously overstuffed opening ceremonies, the drama about China's cloudy skies and human rights record, the knowledge that just these minutes, these seconds are all the only windows that these athletes have to be venerated like the secular gods of the NBA, NFL, NCAA, etc. LeBron can have a bad night in at the Palace, but he'll be back next Thursday astride TNT like a colossus. Alicia Sacramone has these...minutes...and, not the steady uptick and downturn of a public athletic life, but a legacy that rests on the head of a pin. Context is all, as it is in most things, and to conclude: USA. #1.
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.
Ugh, I say, when greeted with the unholy visage of the NBA's final four teams left standing, especially the two odious titans left in the Western Conference. Here, then, is the downside of the glorious unpredictability of sports - sometimes, one is left with Goliath victorious, with David left in a crumpled heap, sling clutched in bloody hand. Surely it makes some future eventuality all the sweeter, knowing that this can be the result, but that doesn't make this any easier to stomach in the here and now.
To wit: the Spurs. Perennial playoff vanquishers of Nash and the Suns, who have, in fact, committed the death blow to the D'Antoni and his free-form offense and ensured that bland assertions of defense-wins-championships continues. Sure, they seem like "good guys" in the classic sense, Duncan=unselfishness and all that, but to have the tantalizing potential of the now-departed running Suns gradually sapped by such methodical efficiency is a multiyear tragedy. D'Antoni's warmth and self-deprecation makes the (great) Popovich seem bland, wan, and jerktastic by comparison. Bowen's voluminous fouls/elbows/dark magic foiling the offensive grace of Steve Nash is an affront to the aesthetic flow of the most telegenic basketball. Execution: the Spurs embody both meanings of that dread word. Add the evisceration of the Suns (and I do mean evisceration - they now have Shaq, don't run, and are about to bring in some defense-first knucklehead to follow D'Antoni's insanity) to the ouster at their hands of the marvel of the marvel that is Chris Paul and his young Hornets team (exciting to watch, and also endearingly young - witness Tyson Chandler's hilarious "I Wanted My Buddy But I Got Chucky" comparison) is enough to make one throw allegiance to...
The Lakers? Kobe Bryant? Not likely. Bryant hits all the signifiers of great basketball/terrible person while standing as the avatar of all that is shallow and petty about LA. Whining about a trade at the beginning of the season, playing like the worst ballhog pickup player when things aren't going his way, attempting some sort of bogus authenticity with his tattoos and bling when the guy is a cosmopolitan Italian-American - the smugness and self-regard are as wearing to me as a viewer as his trancendent abilities must be to a playoff opponent. And Vujacic? The machine? His hair net is even more egregiously annoying than the one sported by Oberto of...
The Spurs. Methodical. Slowdown. Duncan's self-abnegating brilliance. Execution, execution, execution, with the fun sucked out except by Parker's mad drives. And he raps in French! And is married to Eva Longoria? This is who I'm supposed to cheer for? Give me Lamar Odom's drives instead, any day of the week, except that leaves me with...
The Lakers. Phil Jackson and his billion titles. The crush of the celebrity crowd. Luke Walton's uncanny resemblance to every slightly-too-aggro drunk guy at every party I've ever been too. Pau Gasol's calculated scruff. But most of all Bryant, Bryant, Bryant - drinking in the MVP and the spotlight like that guy at the party that Luke Walton looks like.
So, what? The Celtics? The Pistons? Yawn and double-yawn? Stacked vs. been-there, done-that. I guess I'm for Rasheed Wallace, who I once saw throw down a stanchion rattling dunk at the Dean Dome when he played for UNC, and who seems to be the only member of any team left that embodies the slightly unhinged nature of basketball at its best, with so much of that aura departed with AI, Nash, Paul, and Deron Williams.
The standard disclaimer - I am a complete bandwagon NBA fan. The Charlotte Hornets were relocated, and I have not yet warmed to the Bobcats nor do I have any childhood connection to them, so for now I cast about at will, compelled by the stories that swirl around various teams/styles. So any passion that I have for the Phoenix Suns comes from their well-documented revolution and in my admiration of Nash, not from the blood-deep bonds that other sports fandom promotes.
That being said, it's ridiculous to me the amount of groundswell behind firing coach Mike D'Antoni. Sure, it was obvious that he got outcoached by Popovich in that series, but join the club. Popovich has coached his way to 4 titles in the last decade. D'Antoni's not the only one to have his neck get in the way of that particular axe.
But what about longevity, and building a program, and all of that? Every endeavor has ebbs and flows, and as the ads are so fond of telling us, "There Can Only Be One". Which means that there are going to be teams, good teams, sometimes even great teams, that don't win it all. It's the beauty and curse of sports. No one in their right mind would argue that the '07-'08 Patriots weren't a great team, even though they didn't win it all. And, sure, the temperature might be hotter on Belichick if he didn't already sleep on a pile of Super Bowl rings, but the thing is that sports are unpredictable. By nature and by glorious design.
So it can become difficult to sift out teams that were derailed by unpredictability from those that are simply incapable of winning it all. But past accomplishments should count for something, I think, especially at the coaching level. Sometimes, what seems like a long-term team-altering decision gain (like canning a coach) provides just a short term burst of false hope. And sometimes it halts the rhythm and momentum of building a program and a culture.
So, sure, you can argue that the D'Antoni culture in Phoenix is that of "almost", but if the Suns braintrust doesn't have a good idea of what they want and who they want that is NOT D'Antoni (and who fits their players, who for the most part are locked in), then they should calm the hell down and realize that Popovich outcoaches everybody, and that D'Antoni has had teams that brought the firepower to at least go up against San Antonio with a fighting chance.
Popovich & Duncan are as linked as D'Antoni and Nash, and the culture that he has been able to build in San Antonio is a key part of their accomplishments. Jackson and Jordan and the Bulls in the '90s; similar "program development". Even when the Lakers were terrible and getting bounced in the first round by the same Suns that now look so lost, no one was calling for Phil Jackson's ouster. Sure, he's got the credibility of a championship, but unless you're bringing Jackson or Popovich to Phoenix than you're taking a step down from Mike D.
The thing about the Suns is that with D'Antoni at the helm they will be good, and they could be great, and they may even win a championship one day. But give the man credit, give him stability, and let this year stand as a disappointment, sure, but let the man get back to the drawing board. You'll be getting offensive fireworks and defensive idiocy, but that's as good a weapon to train on the behemoth Spurs as anyone has figured out how to muster. The wrong thing to do is to force Mike D. out or to force him to alter who he is as a coach. The short term philosophy demands an ouster, or to turn the Suns into more of a playoff built, low-post team. That's what Kerr will want, it will probably happen.
But I wish they would take the long view. I want Kerr to say screw it, Mike, Amare Stoudemire is never going to play defense, so let's crank the O up to 130 point per game. Bring in 3 point shooters, leapers, alley-oop finishers, surround Nash with as much offensive ridiculousness money (and trade flexibility) can buy, and let the two men that brought such high style to the desert go out shooting the guns they know how to fire. Execution/lack of defense/lack of health, whatever - ignore the demands of a championship-hungry fanbase and run the hell out of every 10 second possession. It hasn't won a championship yet, but it will one day, and I know D'Antoni believes that. Let him try, or let him go.
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.
