I’ve been meaning for a while to discuss the deep connections between art and basketball (sports in general, if you will). Till I better organize my thoughts, I’ll leave you with this Werner Herzog quote I came across on FreeDarko:
La Soufrière is a good example of one of your many films where athleticism, or at least enduring very harsh and inhospitable conditions, was essential to the making of it. Are you worried about aging to the point where taking these types of risks and putting your body through these intense experiences are no longer possible? No, I don’t really care about that. The connection between athleticism and cinema is in part, of course, metaphoric. It’s about the understanding of movement in space. That’s why I admire NBA players so much—how they move and how they understand space is just phenomenal. Besides, it is a statistical fact that a good amount of filmmakers have been quite athletic people. You don’t see that among painters or among musicians. I have never met a composer who was an athlete.
As I discuss topics related to bygone days, one of the things I’m trying to avoid is lamenting on how much better everything used to be. Nothing causes a conversation to devolve into utter lack of substantiality, and me to cringe, much as a statement like, “Oh, X used to be so much better back in the day, now it just sucks” (insert variable for X: post play, guard play, physicality, NBA on NBC intros, ad infinitum). True or not, you miss out on the subtle nuances by making such categorical assertions (for example: big men are more versatile than they’re ever been, the guard play right now is criminally exciting, NBA on TNT is some of the most entertaining content on television now, etc.).
That said, I came across this video of a classic duel between MJ and Glen Rice in 1997. Rice, fresh off the All-Star Game MVP (which he won on the strength of an All-Star record 22 point third quarter, beating out MJ, who had the first triple-double in ASG history [yes, that’s a 21-part video of the 1997 ASG- sorry for ruining your planned afternoon of productivity]) hit some clutch shots en route to a 32 point night, but Jordan was Jordan, hitting the game winner and dropping 43.
First, quick thoughts from the video:
I forgot how much I loved the 90’s Hornets- Muggsy, Dell, Grandmama, Vlade.. the list goes on. They deserve another post.
The 10 seconds starting at 0:44 are Exhibit A to be filed under “Why I Love Dennis Rodman”
You knew that shot was going in.
Anyways, the topic of discourse that the Rice-Jordan duel inspired: player rivalries nowadays. Kobe-Lebron media hype aside, when’s the last time two players have sincerely risen to the top of their games when challenged by each other? The most recent one I can think of was Lebron-Pierce in Game 7 of last year’s Conference Semifinals, but the self-references to Dominique-Bird (combined with the Celtics’ posse cut) kind of killed that one for me.
The other one that stands out off the top of my head is Iverson v. Carter in the 2001 Eastern Conference Semifinals, replete with following statlines:
Gm 1: Iverson scores 36, Carter hits game winner. Raptors W
Gm 2: Iverson scores 19 straight Sixers points at 1 point and 54 overall. Sixers W
Gm 3: Carter hits 8 straight 3 pointers, 50 overall. Raptors W
Gm 4: Iverson scores 30 and game winning 3. Sixers W
Gm 5: Iverson drops 52. Sixers W
Gm 6: Carter hits 39. Raptors W
Gm 7: Iverson hands out 16 assists, Carter misses that fateful game winner. Sixers W
(click through at the end for part 2)
I recognize that the above is by no means an exhaustive list. But compared to the liberal doses of goodness we had in the 90s (Miller-Jordan. Shaq-Hakeem*. DRob-Hakeem*.), examples I can think of nowadays are sparse**. Is it me or do head-to-head matchups these days fail to deliver on their promised hype? Is this because of:
some weird positional asymmetry established in the NBA, where my power forward shoots 3s and yours has a back-to-the-basket game? Perhaps this versatility of player roles precludes any significant one-on-one matchups.
a lack of continuity precipitated by ceaseless and sporadic player movement? (How can a rivalry evolve if you’re just as likely to play on my team next year as challenge me for the title— or in Kobe and Artest’s strange case this year, both?***)
Or is this merely a case of nostalgia, where I’m missing epic duels happening right before my eyes? Lots of questions; looking for answers.
* Not quite a rivalry so much as Hakeem imposing singlehanded destruction on his challenger.
** Rose-Rondo looks promising, especially after Round 1 last year. I find the Williams-Paul “rivalry” laughable; while Williams destroys Paul head-to-head by virtue of his size and strength, Paul is simply in another league.
Forgive the long block quotes (and the foray into recent news), but I found this great page from David Foster Wallace’s collection of essays and arguments, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”. This excerpt is from the essay entitled, “tennis player Michael Joyce’s professional artistry as a paradigm of certain stuff about choice, freedom, limitation, joy, grotesquerie, and human completeness”, and applies to post-millennial basketball as much as the 1990’s tennis it originally analyzed. Consider this next time you recoil in horror at the simplistic musings by athletes you are undoubtedly deluged with all day on sites like Twitter and Facebook. It was easier to ignore this when the line between athletes and celebrities was so much clearer, and I’m not sure greater insight into their lives enhances our appreciation of the game any.
It’s not just the athletic artistry that compels interest in tennis at the professional level. It’s also what this level requires — what it’s taken for the 100th-ranked player in the world to get there, what it takes to stay, what it would take to rise even higher against other men who’ve paid the same price he’s paid. Bismarck’s epigram about diplomacy and sausage applies also to the way we Americans seem to feel about professional athletes. We revere athletic excellence, competitive success. And it’s more than attention we pay; we pay; we vote with our wallets. We’ll spend large sums to watch a truly great athelete; we’ll reward him with celebrity and adulation and will even go so far as to buy products and services he endorses. But we prefer not to countenance the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so good at one particular thing. Oh, we’ll pay lip service to these sacrifices — we’ll invoke lush cliches about the lonely heroism of Olympic athletes, the pain and analgesia of football, the early rising and hours of practice and restricted diets, the privations, the prefight celibacy, etc. But the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up bovine hormones until the collapse of explode. We prefer not to consider the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in postcontest interviews, or to imagine what impoverishments in one’s mental life would allow people actually to think in the simplistic way great athletes seem to think. Note the way “up-close and personal profiles” of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of a rounded human life— outside interests and activities, charities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what’s obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It’s farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one pursuit. An almost ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to their one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to live in a world that, like a child’s world, is very serious and very small.
This will be a visual post in the form of a storyboard narrative (video and photo):
It’s easy to forget how many good (but not great) swingmen were in the league in the mid-to-late 90’s. This man was a beast in his own right, getting a handful of honors,
while putting up some really impressive numbers for a few seasons:
Of course, the only numbers anyone remembers him for now are these:
Because I like the tagline, I’m going to use this series to explore the coming-out parties of players or teams, early explosive efforts of young individuals that just had you convinced you were seeing The Next Big Thing.
I’ll start out with this gem I came across on FreeDarko:
This grainy footage of his ninth game, the first time he really exploded as a pro, is quite possibly the most raw example of Michael Jordan, threat to the known universe.
I especially love the elation of the announcers towards the end of the clip in a Boobie Miles-esque avuncular, “He’s a guard, he’s a forward, he blocks shots. He does it all!”. Feel Chicago Stadium going nuts, knowing this was just the beginning.
The Dichotomy of Jason Williams or, How We Choose to Live
Recent rumors of a possible Jason Williams comeback to the D’Antoni-led Knicks have made me reminisce about the career he had, or rather, could have had.
It’s hard to forget how he burst onto the scene in 1998 with the Sacramento Kings, as the 7th pick in the draft after getting kicked out of the University of Florida for repeated drug use. His was a brash, unadulterated style of play that helped revitalize the Kings and, with a cast of Chris Webber, Vlade Divac, and Peja Stojakovic, turned them into instant playoff contenders. As a rookie, his jersey was among the top 5 sellers in the league.
If I could choose to have anyone in the league’s highlight reel, it might be Jason Williams’. Seriously; watch the video! He didn’t just make flashy passes once in a while; his penchant for out-of-the-ordinary moves affected his whole outlook of the game and created angles that just didn’t exist for other players. On the strength of a few playoff appearances, including an almost-passing-of-the-torch 2-3 loss to the Jazz in the 1999 Playoffs, I figured that we were blessed with the gift of the next Maravich for years to come (Williams to Webber: the new age Stockton to Malone!).
Of course, J-Will’s strength, his court vision and passing ability, were also the source of his biggest weakness, risk-taking. Which gets me to the heart of this post— compromise. After an erratic 2001 playoff performance with the Kings, J-Will was traded to the Grizzlies, and then the Heat in 2005, where under the tutelage of Hubie Brown and Pat Riley he successively (and successfully) toned down his style of play to the point where he was a league leader in assist-to-turnover ratio (he never averaged more than 1.89 turnovers per game in his last 3 seasons). This second video, of his Miami playing days, is just depressing, a 5 minute primer on bounce passes and mid-range jump shots.
Does Williams represent the compromise so many of us are forced to make with our lives… choosing the prosaic, the mundane, that god-awful term “ordinary”, for the promise of security and comfort over the opportunity to be brilliant and flame out early? Do too many shun the burden of potential, creative and otherwise, that lies within each of us?
Considering this question makes me realize how pointless or non-existent that very dilemma is; that it’s not so much what you choose, it’s why you make that choice. Everything can have meaning (or, equivalently, nothing has inherent meaning); even routine and normalcy, pursued deeply enough, can have enlightening value.
At the end of the day, J-Will made the transformation necessary to be effective and helped his teammates win a ring; I’m sure he sleeps well at night. Still, he’ll always remain an archetype of flashy point guard creativity. While we wonder if that star could’ve shone brighter, the ultimate question, still lingering, is whether brightness even matters.
Alright, I figured I’ve let this languish for as long as necessary; it’s time to get down to The Meat of Things. I love basketball; I love writing; seems like this is the appropriate venue to wax poetic about both. Rereading my earlier introduction piece, I can’t help but change gears as to what I’m going to write about. I’m going to step away from solely analyzing the premise of team-as-a-concept, and more broadly examine the big picture of NBA evolution. If Buddhism has taught me anything, it’s that overemphasis on words and symbols does nothing but direct you away from the “suchness” of reality and truth (see also- Don’t Overcontemplate, Appreciate); as a result, I’m going to focus my writing on being as deceptively descriptive as possible. I don’t purport (or plan) to provide sophisticated statistical breakdowns, or in-depth analysis, I merely want to help bring about as many of those “Aha!” moments that you get when you remember something that you truly cherish being a Witness of (and not in a manufactured Lebron way, I’m talking about witnessing 51 point duels between young Kobe and Jamison, seeing KJ throw down on someone he had no business going up on, that-shit-is-REAL-jump-out-of-your-seat visceral experiences…).
I’ll throw in some period music (whatever that means, in this case it’s mid-90s rap, that halcyon age…) to boot. I hope you enjoy reading about and watching videos of the good ol’ days while listening to some great music on the Streampad down below. And that’s really the key word to all of this (this meaning everything)… enjoy.
Revisiting some of the NBA's most memorable teams, players, and personalities through the years. If you're into either of the two dudes below (nothing serious; a passing interest will suffice), you will be entertained. Unless you're one of the guys who got here by Googling Manute Bol hockey; if so, move along, there's nothing to see here.
