Image by Mike Langston

In light of the most recent Dwight Howard rumors, I thought it would be worth revisiting Steve Nash’s move to one of the NBA’s most historic franchises, the Los Angeles Lakers:

Steve Nash has always been an outsider. When most of the basketball world was introduced to him, it was March and Santa Clara was printed across his chest. His team was a fifteen seed and pulled off an upset against the number two seeded Arizona Wildcats. His team would return to the NCAA Tournament two other times, but was unable to ever make it past the second round. In many ways, Steve Nash’s college career was more than just a precursor or slight foreshadowing of his pro career — think specifically of how in both Dallas and Phoenix he was able to perfectly juxtapose brilliance and beauty with disappointment and failure, going places where it appeared he had no business going.

In fact, it would be easy to constitute his collegiate experience of achieving so much while winning so very little as a metaphor for his entire NBA existence. For one thing, Nash has consistently lived outside the margins of the basketball mainstream, as if he hitched his way from city to city by boxcar. Both his nationality, Canadian, and his race, white, mark him as a minority on the hardwood, as does his signature flopping wet mop of hair. And in terms of MVP winners, he is one of the few defensive liabilities to ever make the list; he is a point guard whose sole style of play is to weary the defense by scoring and creating easy buckets. By nomadically probing the paint, he has always managed to translate basketball courts into prairie and interstate and the fodder of free spirits.

Then there is the clarity of his politics. Steve Nash has somehow figured out how to always say the right thing morally without being the shy athlete stuffed full of cliches. In short, he is the NBA’s equivalent of a folk singing troubadour — Woody Guthrie with a crossover and a jump shot.

I have read two books this summer about migrant outsiders. One was Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, which was part of my school’s AP summer assignment for next year’s juniors. The other was Richard Ford’s latest novel Canada. The former deals with isolation as an independent choice and the latter deals with isolation as it is thrust upon the individual.The time in between reading the two books was marked by Steve Nash’s being traded from the Phoenix Suns to the Los Angeles Lakers; a move that took just about everyone by surprise, seeing as how most rumors had Nash headed to either Toronto or New York. Personally, I believe a move to the Toronto Raptors would have been the easiest to comprehend because it would have done nothing to change the archetype at the core of Nash’s basketball identity. A move to New York also would not have been as dramatic as the one that did happen; a move to New York would have simply brought Nash’s ballads and protest songs to Greenwich Village; and if offered a harmonica, he would have been transformed from Robert Zimmerman into Bob Dylan.

Before going any further, two things need to be said about Steve Nash as both a person and a basketball player so that these paragraphs do not melt into the false accusation that his donning of purple and gold makes him a sellout. First, Steve Nash’s going to LA has family at the center of it, or at least that is how it is being marketed, which makes his joining forces with Kobe Bryant feel much less contemptuous than most superstar mergers. Secondly, Nash does not need a NBA championship to secure his greatness; he is not LeBron James. Hailing from Canada and Santa Clara and the general unknown, rather than from prophecy, has granted Nash the peculiar gift of coming to the NBA as a blank sheet of expectations, meaning that whatever he achieved would, in actuality, be viewed as an achievement. His humble beginnings have made him appear as miraculous as something coming out of nothing, especially when one considers how he has ironically carried rogue franchises deep into the Playoffs on the one body part of his that was supposed to be his Achilles heel: his busted back.

To sleight Steve Nash for agreeing to play with Phoenix’s rivals, the Lakers, would be as petty and immature as booing Bob Dylan for plugging into an amp, but the motivation to do so does not appear to be entirely removed from Dylan’s decision to follow a trend and break down barriers all within the same action.

Image by Mike Langston

As to how Nash’s move to California is similar to Dylan’s going electric, when Dylan went electric, he brought something outside of the folk genre to the main stage of a folk festival, but he also put himself, whether knowingly or not, at the center of a sound that would buy him years more of relevance. Acoustic folk was a sound from a past decade, while sonic assaults were the sound of the future, and the same seems to be true of singular superstars in the NBA. No longer will they sit alone on stage with just a mic, a barstool, and a guitar.

The Los Angeles Lakers, even under Phil Jackson, have never really had a great point guard, maybe not even a good one (no offense to Derek Fisher) in the true sense of the role, and under Mike Brown the team’s offense, in one season, has come to rely mostly on isolation plays and methodical post-ups. What the Lakers are getting in Steve Nash then is Bob Dylan’s set from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, which means that while whatever basketball they produce on the court is sure to be memorable it could all end in boos just as easily as it could in cheers. And on a secondary note, Steve Nash is not allowed to disappear, to fade into irrelevancy, to have his artistry handcuffed by something as stubborn as loyalty.

Of course, this evolutionary migration does not come without its costs. Something is lost in Steve Nash’s move from the Arizona desert to the beaches of southern California. If he wins a championship in Los Angeles, he most likely gains status as an iconic basketball figure, but such gains will cost him his status as the basketball poster boy for romance and martyrdom, just as Dylan’s embrace of electricity contributed to his losing his status as a prophet and the voice of his generation, to in essence become just another rockstar.

But also worth considering is the fact that while winning a title in L.A. would boost Nash’s professional legacy, it may not translate into enhancing his career in terms of myth and folklore. The Lakers as a franchise are home to a bevy of superstars, and their rosters are a who’s who of legendary men. Even if Steve Nash were to help Kobe Bryant capture his sixth ring, he would still only be the third best Laker to ever man the point, falling behind the likes of Magic Johnson and Jerry West. He would also rank behind the likes of Wilt, Kareem, Kobe, Shaq, Elgin Baylor, and maybe even James Worthy. As much as their beaches and freeways, the Los Angeles Lakers are crowded with fast cars and rich names. Steve Nash may win the ring he so very much deserves in L.A., but it may not come with all the roughspun sentimentality that a ring in Phoenix would have, where a championship would have made him a Sun to eclipse all others.

That being said, Steve Nash does not have the time left in his career to wait on the completion of yet another rebuilding project. To have perished in what was fast becoming a purple and orange wasteland would have made Steve Nash into the basketball equivalent of Into the Wild‘s Chris McCandless, who Krakauer strongly believes died in the wilderness wishing for a return to some sort of domesticated life. A prolonged existence with the franchise he has come to define would have starved Steve Nash into becoming some misbegotten philosophy; something that breaks but does not bend, a cult hero that defines the style of an era but does not pertain to the larger scope of historical record-keeping.

Consider Nash’s words to ESPN’s Marc Stein on the matter of not playing for Phoenix anymore or never winning a championship: “I feel fairly philosophical about it.”

Personally, I do not know what it means to feel “philosophical,” but the statement on its own makes Nash sound like a man who spends long nights journaling, trying to find himself, unabashedly gazing at his navel, wondering not what his place in the NBA is, but what exactly is the NBA as a place. And most likely, his answers would have been deeply personal and untranslatable to the general public; the confused dreams of a peyote inspired vision quest and nothing more.

People remember the tragedy of Chris McCandless because he perished alone in the woods and the circumstances move people in the possession of empathy to ask both how and why he died, for what purpose did he suffer, and Krakauer is quick to observe that if the young man had walked out of the Alaskan woods, then his story would have no audience — there is a market for death and failure out there in the world, and in the eye of the sports journalist, but not necessarily for the means of ordinary survival. So think of Steve Nash’s going to LA as his walking out of the Alaskan woods, unscathed, but keep in mind that what holds true in the real world does not always hold true in the NBA. He will not be forgotten for surviving to contend another day; in fact, he may be prolonging his judgement, at the keyboards of journalists everywhere, by opening up for further review what had become an open and shut case. In Phoenix, there was nothing new to write about the little Canadian point guard that could, but that may not necessarily be the case in L.A. The move, in many ways, makes him vulnerable to criticism that his tenure in Phoenix never could.

While staying in Phoenix would have preserved Steve Nash’s reputation as a basketball artist and philosopher rather than as a basketball player, his going to Toronto would have been a journey from a marginal residence to completely off the page. Granted the man would have been hailed by his home country as a hero and a patriot, but to what purpose? If his relationship with Phoenix was prompting existential questions on philosophy already, then his joining Toronto would have been entirely literary and therefore unsubstantiated; a life come full circle for the sake of narrative alone.

The central question of Richard Ford’s Canada appears to be what do individuals do when those people who are supposed to be a foundation come to victimize them through carelessness and desertion. What does a person such as Ford’s young protagonist Dell Parsons do when his parents rob a bank or when his protector murders two people? Or, what does Steve Nash do as ownership changes directions once again? Ford’s answer to this question — and Steve Nash’s as well, if he ever did truly consider Toronto as a destination, or even staying in Phoenix — appears to be go into hiding. But hiding is only a temporary solution to any problem: a person can always be found.

As a narrator, Dell Parsons speaks sparsely, as devoid of true personality as the town of Great Falls, Montana, which really isn’t his home but just another place he stayed on his way to somewhere else, and the same can be said of his time spent north of the American border. And in some ways, that makes Dell a lot like Steve Nash. Despite Nash’s having more personality than this fictional counterpoint, the fact that both men hail from nowhere makes somewhere feel like an accomplishment, whether it is in Montana, Saskatchewan, an Applebee’s, Santa Clara, Dallas, Phoenix, or even Los Angeles.

Richard Ford ends his book with the words “We try,” and I agree with that sentiment. Everyday all we do is try to maintain some consistency of living, but the results and destinations of our efforts do change us; and in Steve Nash’s efforts he has proven himself to be much less predictable than any archetype to which we might pin him. What that means, I’m not quite sure, but the answer is probably blowing in the wind, at least until he stabilizes himself with a championship or we, the basketball public, find some other way to decipher what it means to be a successful professional athlete.

This article originally appeared on Bryan Harvey’s blog The Lawn Chair Boys, on July 17th, 2012.

The post Out of the Wild: Steve Nash’s Exodus to Los Angeles appeared first on The Faster Times.

In the first camp, which up until LeBron’s defeat of the Oklahoma City Thunder had held the upper hand in the dispute over his goodness and right to live, are the Skip Baylesses of the world. They come with their garlic nicknames, crucifixes, and stakes, searching for where LeBron sleeps and what exactly it is that makes him tic, and they look and sound utterly ridiculous for two reasons. One, given LeBron’s age and talent, his winning a title was as much a matter of probability as a game of Russian Roulette–pull the trigger enough times and eventually the bullet will fire–and secondly, these critics of LeBron’s look ridiculous because LeBron James, while often immature and ignorantly naive, is indeed not a vampire.

LeBron’s worst crimes are employing his friends as media consultants as if he were the star of HBO’s Entourage, hiring other people to cut his steak and even his spaghetti, getting dunked on by a high schooler and afterwards confiscating the video evidence, and having a mother who may or may not be out of control. Oh, yes, and not having a constant father figure, paternal or embodied by a college coach. And with each revelation of LeBron’s Transylvanian background his critics have pieced together a logical case for why his greatness is as unnatural and oxymoronic as the dead living, as if all other NBA champions were somehow more human and therefore more wholesome, and in a world of Penn State coverups, LeBron James’ lack of a post game was treated as the most fraudulent of behaviors. ESPN’s SportCenter even went so far as to run a Finals promotion that featured Rick Reilly belting out some pretentious spoken word piece where he compared LeBron James’ crimes against Cleveland with the crimes Tiger Woods committed against his wife, children, and the sanctity of marriage, because anyone who has ever held a job swore to never leave it for another destination before man and God. LeBron may be vain–and even a poor tipper when it comes to thanking the waiters who cut his meat–but to hunt after him every weekday morning on talk radio and First Take is the equivalent of finding Dracula’s coffin, opening it up, finding a soft, white bunny, and driving a stake through said bunny’s heart. LeBron may have been an impostor of sorts, but he only faked being an actual villain, rather than a child prodigy whose unholy claim to eternal life was never growing up on time.

The hate for LeBron James has always existed in a hyperbolic chamber. (Yes, that sentence is intended to read hyperbolic, not hypberbaric, which would seemingly only feed the LeBron as Dracula narrative.) The constant screaming that he lacks a “clutch gene” stems from two Playoff series: the 2011 Finals against the Dallas Mavericks and the 2010 Playoff meeting between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics. But such claims ignore LeBron’s entire body of work: his Houdini-like miracles against the Pistons, his John Henry efforts against the Celtics, and his role as Galactus against a black and silver Fantastic Four in the 2007 NBA Finals. All of those things happened–you can find them underneath the desert sands of YouTube! if you look hard enough. The fact that LeBron James forced Cleveland to tear down a skyscraper-sized banner of himself, burn his jerseys, and denounce his name only makes those past efforts more legendary and more ethereal. Viewed through the eyes of his harshest critics, LeBron James begins to embody every fictional hero and villain who, despite his or her might, is ultimately defeated, and in Cleveland, LeBron James was ultimately defeated, by better teams and by his twenty-first century sense of loyalty and escapism.

But, by making his defeats into anecdotes denoting survival of the fittest and good’s ultimate triumph over evil, LeBron’s critics only succeeded in making his fans romanticize him more than he deserves at the midway point of his career.

In the second camp of vampire relations are those who pull back their bed sheets, bare their porcelain necks to the night air, and allow Dracula to feast on their virginity. When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in the nineteenth century, he never meant for British school marms and housewives to idolize his mysterious Transylvanian predator, but they did. Rather than heed Stoker’s implicit warnings about keeping their Anglican bloodlines pure, women fantasized about the raw passion and forbidden temptations that a pale man in a black cape could embody. If you are a young basketball fan, then a prodigious talent from Akron, Ohio possibly came to embody that same subversiveness for much of the last decade.

First, take into account LeBron’s high school career. He did not need college. ESPN began televising his prep school games without the context of March Madness, historic conferences, and traditional rivalries. LeBron James was not born of a legendary fieldhouse or coach. He was not begotten. He pro-created as if he were James Fuckin’ Gatsby. Michael Jordan had North Carolina, Dean Smith, and a beloved father. Kobe Bryant was washed ashore by a father’s NBA career and was nurtured by Jerry West. LeBron James had a mother of ill repute, some high school buddies, and himself, and much of the story was known by the time he made it to the NBA, unfolding in real time, unpolished and unrehearsed, which is why when LeBron does come off as rehearsed it feels so unnatural and uncomfortable, because such behavior does not gel with the times in which we live. In a twenty-first century of broken marriages and teenage Twitter feeds, is it any wonder that the boy basketball prodigy was taken as a King by a generation that was raised by parents who treat Tupac and Biggie’s discologies as lullabies and Mother Goose rhymes; looks to Drake, Kanye, and Lil’ Wayne for motivation; and has embraced Facebook as part of the universe since late elementary school?

For young fans, the criticism LeBron James underwent, and still undergoes, for having not defeated the elderly Boston Celtics on his own must feel awfully personal for an age group that has seemingly failed to solve Global Warming or world hunger by way of a science fair project. In the lusting over LeBron James his fans have found the perfect projection for their self-idolization of youth and beauty; a teenage coping mechanism that screams the present matters as much as the past and that the opinions of teenagers matter more than those of their parents’.

Of course, not all of LeBron’s horde is young. Chris Broussard and Stephen A. Smith are believers too, and countless blog articles have been written in his defense. John Hollinger has argued stat after stat that the Chosen One is indeed clutch. And in all those arguments, too, is the mature adult’s wraith-like battle against the rising sun. The combination of LeBron James’ physical build and his talent made it easy to predict his greatness, but when he did fail, or was slow to succeed, not only was his greatness called into question but the expertise of those who predicted such greatness; and in their defense of LeBron James’ undying potential, they were also defending their own abilities to testify on who either is or is not a great basketball player. The problem with defending LeBron James against all his faults (and not all who defended him are guilty of this), however, is that often such defenses deny his defeats entirely, just as those who attack him consistently deny his victories. Those who sing LeBron’s praises should heed the same warning as his critics: the man is not Dracula, so shut your bedroom window–he’s not coming in.

What’s at stake (sorry for that one) in the debate over LeBron James is where he ranks among the all-time greats. With three MVPs and a ring now, the discussion has inevitably begun, but with his promotion, it would seem that other players must be demoted, which is why the elder fans of the game feel as though they must treat a specimen such as LeBron with an eye so speculative that it will most always, in the eyes of his followers, come off as unjustly overbearing. Still, just as LeBron’s past actions matter in explaining who he is as a player, the past actions of the NBA matter in compiling all of these historic scrolls and stone tablets that turn every single one of us into a keeper of the faith. He may have a ring now, but he is still 1-2 in Finals appearances. Michael Jordan and Tim Duncan are both undefeated. Magic Johnson has five rings. Larry Bird may still be the best small forward of all-time. Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double for a year. Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem, Bill Walton, Moses Malone, Hakeem, and Shaq were all bigger and mightier. And Kobe Bryant, well, Kobe Bryant has a 5-2 record in the Finals and may actually be a vampire. LeBron is now undeniably an integral part of the NBA’s championship tapestry, but his depiction of himself as a vampire is inaccurate–too much of his career is still unwritten–and shows that even he cannot free himself from the extremes that define him.

That being said, with just one championship in hand, a picture of himself as el chupacabra would appear to have been the more appropriate championship attire, considering the fact that depending on whom you ask he can be described as anything from a rabid bat to a degenerate coyote, or even a wild bear, wandering from town to town, both hungry and afraid, desperate to survive, sucking the blood out of all the country’s G.O.A.T.’s. Hell, you may even find him floating in a pool as the neighbor’s dog in a Workaholics episode.

To see him as anything else is, well, ludicrous, unless it appears on tumblr or instagram.

The post El Chupacabra: Reflecting on LeBron James as a Vampire appeared first on The Faster Times.

When he turned the television on, he was greeted by the sight of Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade exchanging harsh words with his coach Eric Spolestra as the Indiana Pacers took a two games to one lead over his League’s current flagship. As Stern watched the pundits and talking heads fret over the health of Wade, the absence of Bosh, and the unpredicability of LeBron’s narrative, he wondered aloud who the Pacers most recognizable player might be and arrived at Tyler Hansbrough, the epitome of physical hustle and college ball. Then Stern went back into the kitchen, poured out his glass of milk, and reached for the stronger stuff, pouring out a shot in the name of Roy Hibbert and every other Pacer the public wouldn’t recognize.

Then, taking the bottle with him, the man went back to the couch where he bore witness to highlights that weren’t highlights at all. The ancient Tim Duncan, barely even sweating, was schooling a naive Blake Griffin. Needless to say, Stern poured himself another shot. Hadn’t these San Antonio Spurs reached their expiration date? Weren’t the days of them sneaking deep into the Playoffs like an army of ants done with? Hadn’t they been exterminated? By the time he was done with black and silver questions, Stern was drunk, having taken a shot for every lowly rated Finals appearance that miserable team from the Alamo had handed him and his League. Oh, the horror! The horror! Damn that Gregg Popovich!

As the night rolled on, a heavy black tide of guilt shrouded David Stern and his thoughts. He had locked the players out, bargained with them, maybe even broken them, and this is how the basketball gods repaid him–this is what the new CBA hath wrought: a shortened season and a possible final four of the San Antonio Spurs, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Indiana Pacers, and the Philadelphia 76ers. Horrible, he thought, and two of them from the ABA. Oh, the agony!

He took another shot, and tried to fall back asleep thinking warmly of Oklahoma City’s youthful exuberance, wondering if its 21st century quickness might somehow outrun its #44 ranked TV market. He whispered something about Seattle and closed his eyes.

The post David Stern’s Nightmare: What’s Happened to the NBA Playoffs? appeared first on The Faster Times.

“. . . it was unfortunate that James had to get hit with an unintentional elbow.”

–Ron Artest

First, what Metta World Peace did to James Harden in today’s Thunder-Lakers game is wrong.

He had just made an emphatic dunk, with two electric blue jerseys draped all over him. Then he unleashed his emotions, pounding his chest, yelling, screaming, throwing elbows, and in the blink of an eye James Harden fell to the floor in a slow, clumsy spin, World Peace continuing to carouse down the basketball court. In real time, it looked like an accident, as if the gods were mocking Metta World Peace and everything about him–flesh, blood, and synapse–could be boiled down into a moment of cosmic irony. However, slow motion told a different story.

In slow motion, Metta World Peace became Ron Artest. Banner turned Hulk green, and Dr. Jekyll gave way to Mr. Hyde. In a split second, number fifteen went from smiling to grimacing, from pounding his own chest to cocking an elbow and dropping it like a hammer into the back of James Harden’s skull, and as ABC replayed the violent blow again and again, questions flew on Twitter like sparks from an anvil:

Did he mean to do it? Was it an accident? If he meant to do it, did he mean to hit Harden in the head? If it was intentional, was it also criminal? Is he crazy? What would his shrink say? What happened to all of his efforts to rehabilitate himself?

And that last question, along with Harden’s health, is what matters most here. Ron Artest can change his name to Metta World Peace, go years without committing a violent act, become the poster boy of redemption, but he can never be cured of himself or his reputation; and while the situation may not be entirely fair, it is painfully true. While addictions and behavioral disorders require bold acts of forgiveness, they make forgetfulness futile for both the victim and the perpetrator, which in the case of Metta World Peace has almost always been one and the same.

No one can answer why Metta World Peace cold-cocked James Harden, whether it was a get-off me blow or a blow delivered to hurt and maim, just as no one can answer why an alcoholic insists on having one more sip, one more drink, one more night out doing the very things that are detrimental to an individual’s livelihood. All any of us know is that fighting depression is always battling the darkness, that an alcoholic is always confronting their thirst, and that an athlete known for irrational, and often times violent, behavior is always one physical play away from regression.

Since the terrible day at the Palace that transformed Ron Artest from a second tier basketball star into a household villain in the vein of a masked freak who pumps toxins into his bloodstream, almost every basketball fan with a Twitter account has delivered some rendering of the line don’t mess with Artest–he’s crazy. No one should be shocked today that a man with a tendency towards losing his temper on the court, neglecting his dogs, and a long history of abusive relationships (where he has once again played both the victim and the perpetrator) finally lost his temper once more on the basketball court. In truth, what’s most surprising is that since completing the anger management steps that followed his defining moment Metta World Peace has played in roughly 580 basketball games without anything other than a few harmless exchanges of jawing back and forth or chesting up to other players. This stretch of five and a half seasons with no on the court violence does not necessarily make today’s incident easier to cope with, but it does help to prove that Metta World Peace isn’t quite the unhinged criminal some would make him out to be; and that prior to today positive steps in his life were taken.

I am not terribly outraged, upset, or appalled at Metta World Peace’s elbowing of James Harden, at least I can say that I am no more angry with him than with, say, Kevin Love for stepping on Luis Scola’s face or Ndamukong Suh for his Thanksgiving Day stomping of Evan Dietrich-Smith. These men all play physical games–and two of them are renowned for their physical play–so it is not surprising to see their emotions boil over. I am disappointed in their actions, but not inflamed. I do, however, find their responses to such acts unsettling. Love sprinted down the court as if it was natural to have Scola’s cheekbone between his shoe and the floor. And after the Lions Thanksgiving Day game against the Packers, Suh denied that he even stomped Dietrich-Smith despite video evidence to the contrary, and in the moments following his elbow to Harden, World Peace acted out a similar form of denial. All three failed, when everyone was watching, to demonstrate a raw form of responsibility that was both instinctive and uncoached.

The shame of responsibility as seen in Big Fish

When a friend or a loved one is attempting to make a difficult change in their life, remorse is often a catalyst; however, in the case of many professional athletes the guilt-laden apology often comes ripe with insincerity. Metta World Peace offered up an ill-worded apology after the game, in which he apologized in a manner that implicated Harden’s head just as much as his own elbow, and I find this more perplexing than if he hadn’t said anything at all. It seems to me that in apologizing for the unfortunate sequence of events that put James Harden in the path of his elbow Metta World Peace unraveled his own story and possibly his own abilities to truly deal with his anger. In all of his development and efforts to grow, Metta World Peace’s response to feeling his elbow plow through another human being’s skull, intentional or not, was to keep running down the court, fists pumping, lungs screaming, unable to think outside of the moment, unable to stop and see what his own recklessness had wrought, unable to apologize, which if the elbow had been unintentional would have been the easiest thing to do. Instead, he acted out the part of a comic book fiend on a rampage.

And when the cameras caught Ron Artest explaining himself to the refs, he mimed a timid Tarzan–there was no wildly swung elbow in his explanation of why Harden lay face down on the ground–and whether by omission or delusion, it was clear that Metta World Peace is a man unable to handle the sad truth that, in his life, the shadow of violence is never too far removed from the light of the present.

The post An Elbow’s Intent: Metta World Peace, Apologies, and the Truth appeared first on The Faster Times.

All of sports, not just basketball, likes to put things in dire terms of good versus evil. It’s not true, but it makes things more entertaining, more heated, more dynamic.

One reason I believe the Jeremy Lin story is so captivating is because it finally gives basketball major market hero for the first time in a very long time. LeBron went from Cleveland to Miami, but the the move mangled him. Kobe Bryant has always been scarred by perception. And Derrick Rose is at least slightly stained by the residue of Calipari’s hair tonic. But Jeremy Lin is pure.

We’ve been told that. We’ve heard it. We’re still processing it. We want to believe it.

Sometimes the basketball universe crams itself into tight spaces, behaving like some sort of a contortionist in love with a filing cabinet. It’s cruel. It’s calculated. It’s a murder scene.

The major city skylines are much too bright–they eclipse the night sky. Sometimes stars need to be viewed in prairies and cornfields–in places like Oklahoma City.

The debate over whether Carmelo Anthony can bend his iron will to Jeremy Lin’s wizardry will rage on. Who will change whom? Who will better whom? Whose epic journey are we watching? These are all worthy questions, but we’ve asked them before.

Last year, 2011 NBA Playoffs, we watched Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook outshoot each other, not pass to each other, not defer to each other, squabble even with one another. Two emcees. One microphone. It was against Lauryn Hill’s laws of physics.

We often root for such things.

Good versus evil is entertaining, but a team with two moral compasses pushing a team asunder–that’s like way better. That’s like Kobe versus Shaq. That’s like Stephon and KG. That’s like three J’s in Dallas. And Wilt pleasing everyone and somehow still winding up the bully. Until Lin came along, civil wars had to be fought for national press to make time for basketball.

But what about the feuds that skip all the blood and go straight to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural? Or are Durant and Westbrook still battling? Are they offering forgiveness or are they waging war on each other: You bring your 51 caliber rifle and I’ll bring my 40? Sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether these two young stars are dueling each other or the other team, but regardless of the motivating factors the results are becoming undeniable.

On a night like they had against the Nuggets, with Serge Ibaka chipping in a triple double, the Thunder looked and acted the part that everyone has drawn up for them: they were the noble dream, like some lost Steinbeck novel about basketball-playing brothers, and it was beautiful to watch, nylon splash after nylon splash.

This post originally appeared over at The Lawn Chair Boys on February 20, 2012.

The post Kevin Durant & Russell Westbrook Are Pretty Good appeared first on The Faster Times.

Down the road, people may not even remember a time when Kobe Bryant was clearly the first mate on Shaq’s merchant ship, and down the road, fair or not, Shaq might end up being merely a footnote in Kobe’s career, rather than the vengeful sea captain he sailed under; but only a short-sighted Celtic fan is going to place Pierce on par with Bird, Russell, Cousy, or Auerbach. And that act is probably simultaneously a little bit fair and a little bit unfair as well.

Other than the Lakers, no other franchise has so many quantifiable names. Red Auerbach lit cigars the way God did stars back in his heyday. Bill Russell is eleven rings to Wilt Chamberlain’s one. Bob Cousy is the point guard who orchestrated countless Hall of Fame Careers. And Larry Bird is 21,791 points, three championships, and 5,695 assists. These numbers spin webs, bars, graphs, and lists that measure the importance of each Celtic. But, despite his scaling of these green and white frosted peaks, what Paul Pierce means to the Celtics is difficult to measure.

The question of whether Paul Pierce was even the best player, or leader, on the 2008 Celtics team is highly debatable. What’s not up for argument is that he was the most dramatic, with his clutch shooting and wheelchair stage props, and that he was in Boston first. He was there before Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett. He survived the various appetites of Antoine Walker, lived through Rick Pitino, and bore witness to Ricky Davis’ inscrutable greatness.

Russell, Cousy, Cowens, and Bird never had to live in Paul Pierce’s post-apocalyptic Boston. For them, the Garden was Mark Twain’s Hannibal: all endless summers, pirates, and treasure hunts. Paul Pierce had to deal with something else entirely: a raft ride of violence and neglect through all depths of the competitive spirit. Paul Pierce’s journey through Boston’s green rivers occurred as Jim would have told it–desperate, determined, and painfully lonely. This is not to say that Paul Pierce’s struggle was greater than any of these other players–Russell and others faced incredible battles against racism and prejudice–but in terms of being a basketball player Paul Pierce was alone on Jackson’s Island, between the departure of Antoine Walker and the arrival of Kevin Garnett, starving off of strawberries.

And that’s what makes the Paul Pierce story resonate in a way that is both alarming and endearing. His story is one about the heights of companionship and loyalty as well as the depths of their absence. Alone the Paul Pierce as a great basketball player story arc withers and dies, which in some ways makes him appear weaker than it rightfully should, but with a band of robbers and scoundrels to call his own, 21,860 points amount to something that can be woven into the fabric of how Hannibal isn’t a town chained to the past but is an ever changing idea of what a team and a franchise can be. All those other Hall of Famers in green and white can be romanticized and fawned over–praised for their cleverness and their adventures–but don’t forget how Paul Pierce forced Boston to live in the present, both in pain and in triumph.

The post The Huh of Paul Pierce: His Passing of Larry Bird appeared first on The Faster Times.

Scientists supposedly find new species of life in the rainforest all the time. Most of us are not excited by this fact. Tree frogs, giant spiders, and fruit bats make most people, who are no longer in elementary school, yawn. However, Jeremy Lin is the exception. When we journey down on the Amazon with our petrie dishes, beakers, and test tubes, we explode out of our seats at the sight of him coming off a screen and roll, spinning in every direction, and making an acrobatic layup. A new species of flying squirrel does not give birth to such emotion, but Jeremy Lin makes us anxious in anticipation every time he touches the ball.

Ever since Mike D’Antoni became head coach of the Knicks in 2008, people have speculated about when he would acquire a point guard to run his offense and when said point guard would arrive. In the meantime, Chris Duhon, Raymond Felton, Chauncey Billups, and a host of others auditioned for the role, but in the back of everyone’s minds was the idea that the coach who once fought a guerilla style war against the Spurs and the Lakers would reunite with his fiery field general, Steve Nash.

The reunion was the dream, the hope, the fated path to glory, especially as every other point guard proved incapable of either running D’Antoni’s team the way he wanted, was viewed as expendable, or had trouble jiving with Amar’e and Melo, but if Lin continues on his present course, then all of those issues should become moot, because if Lin’s week in the sun has taught us anything, it’s that he not only makes his teammates better but, with every smiling fist pump, makes them enjoy playing basketball more than they did without him. In other words, D’Antonio can quit pouring out his heart in letters to his former point guard because he has found Nash’s spirit lurking at the end of his bench, already wearing a number seventeen Knicks jersey.

The Jeremy Lin phenomenon has been blowing towards our television and computer screens for a week now. Raps about him have appeared on YouTube!, he’s a trending topic almost nightly on Twitter, and who knows how many t-shirts bearing puns of his name have been printed and sold on street corners, but until tonight, when he went toe to toe with Kobe Bryant, answering the Hall of Famer with daggers and venom that proved to be just as deadly as the Black Mamba’s, many people, outside of New York’s fanbase, viewed Lin with the skepticism of a meteorologist monitoring Gulf streams in late summer, questioning whether a Tropical Storm had the staying power to become a hurricane. Irene may have underwhelmed the City, but it appears that Hurricane Jeremy is going to be much more than anyone bargained for, and in a day when technology and specialization have rendered almost every piece of mystery into a prescription drug, a percentage in a poll, or a multiple choice question that quality is quite unique indeed.

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The perception we fans have of players is constantly evolving, sometimes at glacial speeds and other times in the blink of a hurricane, and often times, the moments that redefine one player’s legacy ripple through the legacies of other players as well. According to its most popular tellings, last year’s Finals can either be viewed as LeBron James’ tragic Waterloo or as Dirk Nowitzki’s brave halting of a tyrant, and those Finals confirmed for many of us our worst suspicions about LeBron’s inability to win that first began to manifest themselves in 2010 against the Boston Celtics and snowballed as he made The Decision. After those first seeds of doubt were planted about his greatness, many of us openly rooted for him to be both shamed and humbled, and when that moment came, it also revealed the dual nature of every moment in sports by redeeming Dirk Nowitzki’s worthiness and exorcising him of all his own demons.

Players who don’t have rings often downplay the necessity of gold bands, diamond studs, and unimpeded celebrations. Players who don’t have rings really can’t be trusted to tell the truth about themselves, what championships mean, how championships are won, or how legacies are exaggerated and broken. Great players that have yet to win a ring insist they are still great; while the critics of the game insist they are not, that their greatness is somehow fraudulent; a chicken masquerading as a peacock. And for the longest time, these views are what I projected onto Dirk Nowitzki. To me, his fadeaway always fluttered like confetti on someone else’s parade, and his demeanor at post game press conferences felt like forced testimony in front of a skeptical jury. I believed that writers like myself could see through his lies and knew he wasn’t really great. Then he won a championship, and the brooding frustration became confidence, the awkward pauses became patient wisdom, and the questioning self doubt became competitive drive. The mannerisms changed only slightly, but the difference in how I perceived them was incalculable; and I was no longer debating what kind of a bird was Dirk Nowitzki, but what came first the chicken or the ring.

This past Wednesday the Dallas Mavericks were tied with the Boston Celtics. Paul Pierce had just landed a game-tying three, and the Mavs were down to their last possession. Kevin Garnett bodied up to Dirk on the perimeter, his chest against Nowitzki’s ribcage. Dirk stepped into Garnett, swung his elbow high and wide towards Garnett’s temple and drove so slowly and methodically to the basket that his grimace cut across my television screen like a crack through a thick layer of ice. When he got to within two feet of the rim, he wrestled the ball up in arthritic maneuver, was fouled by Brandon Bass coming over on a late rotation, and the ball fell through without so much as grazing the net–submitting to gravity is always easier than resisting it–and while the game winning shot looked like something from a middle aged Church League, Dirk’s ring made it into a stunning example of what it means to be a champion.

Dirk Nowitzki’s teammates pulled him off the floor; an act that last year would have made him look like a failed and wounded warrior in need of a crutch rather than a conquering king in need of anointing. They pounded his chest, exchanged war cries, and stared at each other with the utmost certainty. They believed in themselves because of Dirk Nowitzki and Dirk Nowitzki wins games, always, when in the past, prior to him having a ring, an outside observer might be prone to wonder whether Nowitzki needed more from his teammates than they did from him, that perhaps he sought mercy from defeat’s glare by counting himself among them, that he wasn’t ready to be what they needed, that his seven foot frame was hyperbolic of what the man truly was deep inside his heart.

People don’t ask those questions anymore.

The last player who came to Dirk Nowitzki after he outmuscled Kevin Garnett was the prodigal Delonte West. Dirk put an arm around his new teammate’s head, tilted it toward his lips, and yelled something tribal to a player best known for his struggles with mental illness, illegal gun possession, and the crude rumors of having slept with a much more talented teammate’s mother. But, with Dirk yelling in his ear, all that seemed to disappear, because when Dirk speaks on redemption and triumph and journeys out of the abyss now, well, now he’s a credible source and men of all walks and angles listen to a man like that. And the symmetry of the circumstances is enough to make one wonder, too, what LeBron James could one day be.

The post Looking for the Dirk in LeBron James appeared first on The Faster Times.

Atlantic Division

The Boston Celtics will edge out the New York Knicks to win the division, benefitted in a short season by their familiarity with one another. Still, winning the division doesn’t guarantee anything in the postseason, and the Celtics will see the last campaign of their Big Three (Four) come to an end in the first or second round. The Knicks, too, will be out by the time the Eastern Conference Finals roll around, having been undone by a shaky backcourt and the fact that Tyson Chandler, while good, isn’t really a kingmaker.

Southeast Division

Is there even a choice other than the Miami Heat? If Dwight Howard doesn’t finish the season with the Orlando Magic, then this is without question the worst division in basketball.

Central Division

The Chicago Bulls have both the talent and continuity of last year’s Playoff run to guarantee themselves of winning the division handedly. Their closest competition, the Indiana Pacers, may be a budding rival but they’ve still got too many new pieces to make a real challenge in a shortened season. The Milwaukee Bucks stand the chance of making it a three-team race, if Andrew Bogut returns to form.

Southwest Division

This stands to be the best division race in the League, with three teams capable of winning it: the San Antonio Spurs, the Dallas Mavericks, and the Memphis Grizzlies. Personally, I like the Mavs to take it, although the acquisition of Lamar Odom in no way equals what they lost in Tyson Chandler. I doubt the Spurs can stay healthy after a season’s worth of good fortune last year, and the Grizz may be ripe for a setback now that everyone has expectations for them to build on last season’s Playoff run.

Northwest Division

Everyone’s picking the Oklahoma City Thunder, and it’s the right choice; but the Band of Brothers that are the Denver Nuggets could make it interesting, which would be a good story considering that Nene chose the city after it had to deal with ‘Melo’s rejection all last season.

Pacific Division

Anyone who’s not picking the L.A. Clippers must be doing so under the assumption that Dwight Howard will be in purple and gold before the season ends. Of all the superstar merges over the last couple of off seasons, the marriage of Chris Paul’s point guard skills to the post game of Blake Griffin makes the most basketball sense, and threatens to make all the praise for what the Thunder were building the last couple of years seem foolish and premature, if not this year, then sometime in the near future.

Eastern Conference

The Chicago Bulls will meet the Miami Heat in the Conference Finals, but even with the addition of Rip Hamilton, there still won’t be enough help for Derrick Rose, especially considering that in crunch time the Heat will feature a perimeter defense of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Shane Battier. How does anyone score on them at the end of games? People can talk all they want about the Heat’s alpha issues on offense etc, but it’s the ability of their stars to defend that should propel them back into the Finals.

Western Conference

I’m envisioning a Clippers-Thunder Finals, which would look something akin to the playground tour Kevin Durant went on this summer, and would have to be viewed as a coin flip. While the Thunder made a run last year, it’s not like they have a ton more Playoff experience than the Clippers, outside of Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan who have none. Also, as the ’99 Knicks proved, in a shortened season continuity matters more in the regular season than it does in the Playoffs. I’ll go ahead and say the Thunder take the series, but mostly because Blake Griffin’s game hasn’t finished evolving.

Finals

The Heat beat out the Thunder as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook go through the same sort of growing pains that doomed the Heat last season. Plus, Chris Bosh proves to be better than the Thunder’s next best player.

Rookie of the Year

I’m hoping the award goes to either Ricky Rubio or Kyrie Irving because I can’t think of two fanbases more deserving of some positive energy than Minnesota or Cleveland.

Coach of the Year

I want to say Gregg Popovich because he should have more of these than he does, but to do so, the Spurs would have to win their division and that’s not happening. In that case, Frank Vogel of the Pacers is my dark horse, and either Scott Brooks or Eric Spoelstra have to be the frontrunners, with the real question being how many games would the Heat have to win for people to actually vote Spoelstra. Scott Brooks it is.

Defensive Player of the Year

An angry Dwight Howard.

6th Man of the Year

The more successful the Thunder are the better James Harden’s are for bring home some hardware. My sentimental pick, however, is Tyler Hansbrough.

Most Improved

How does one even go about predicting this? It’s supposed to be a surprise, right? Part of me wants to say Blake Griffin, simply because playing with Chris Paul is going to change him, and us.

MVP

A ton of players will deserve consideration for MVP, but Dirk Nowitzki will be the only one aside from Derrick Rose not paired with another candidate who steals votes from him. The award will also serve as an over the top apology for the fact that Dirk still doesn’t get enough respect year round.

The post The NBA Season Is Upon US: Thoughts and Predictions appeared first on The Faster Times.

“Someone here to see you, Mr. Jordan,” said the pink blushing security guard with a bit more fear and respect than he should have.

Mr. Jordan bit down on the end of his cigar, bits of brown leaf and spit slipping out his teeth and onto his lips, before fluttering to the floor. “When I’m done here.” He then peeked at his cards and raised the bet.

“Yes, sir. . .” the guard trembled, the rush of blood invading all the white that was left in his face. “. . . but this man is awfully anxious to see you.”

“Then he can wait ‘til I finish this hand.” “Yes, sir.” The guard scurried out of the doorway like a mouse from a broom handle. “Dumb cracker,” hissed Jordan through his cigar, causing the tip to glow orange.

The gruff looking man, in need of a haircut, beside Jordan just laughed; an empty, fake sort of laugh that would make one wonder whether the man even knew what funny was. “Yeah, boss.”

“Awww, shit,” said Jordan standing up from the table, “I ain’t got shit anyway. Oak, pay me out this hand, and if you take extra, I’ll cut even you.”

The man in need of a haircut nodded and then turned to the other two men at the table, one with a long Roman nose and the other one bald, “You heard that, Ronnie and Scott, Mr. Jordan’s out,” which they knew meant that they were supposed to lose on purpose to Mr. Oakley, who would later split his earning with Mr. Jordan.

Jordan tossed the still lit butt of his cigar into a waste basket, causing a flame to smolder in the paper remnants before going as still as it was before. Mr. Jordan had always lived this way, giving fire where there was none and leaving what had been nothing with nothing once again. It was his way of doing business; his way of existing; his way of living; his way of reckoning that he was better than all these cons, inside of a prison, reminiscing about how things used to be.

On the way down the hall to the visiting room, Mr. Jordan stopped and checked in his reflection in the metal of a water fountain. He rubbed his head, shaven that morning, and pulled on his nose. Then he bent down for a drink, baptizing his own reflection in the cool water, as he lapped it with his long, pink tongue. Then he prowled down the rest of the hallway. This was his domain; his savannah.

When he came to the visiting room, it was empty. A gray counter split the room, and the counter was split by a pane of plexiglass that ran the length of the room. The counter was then divided up by three pieces of plexiglass that cut across the width of the counter, making four places for prisoners to meet their loved ones. Each spot had a stool and a phone receiver on each side. Mr. Jordan took at seat at one of the middle stools and waited. He could see the glint of his earring in the plexiglass like some star that refused to die.

A green light went on by the door, and as it opened, a buzzer sounded. In walked a slim looking fellow whose gait reminded Jordan of his younger self. The younger man’s hairline set back on his forehead like it was receding, but it wasn’t; and his lips stuck out like he was pouting over the hand history had dealt him, like he was upset that he would never receive credit for being the first man to ever live, despite the fact that billions came before him and billions would come after him. The younger man sat down at the table and took in the moment, staring at the man he’d been studying from a far his whole life–now just a few feet away. If not for the plexiglass, he could reach out and touch the man.

Mr. Jordan looked impatient; he had known this visit would come; and he already wanted it over and done with; and he grimaced like a man eating leftovers that don’t taste good.

The two men reached for the telephone receivers simultaneously, in a manner that made it impossible to tell which was the shadow and which was the body.

“I can’t believe I’m here. . . . I’ve got so much to ask you. . . so much to say,” started Kobe.

Mr. Jordan just stared through the glass, his dark eyes still and frozen–he was a viper on display at the zoo–and he spoke in a fanged whisper.

“Kobe,” he waited for the younger version of himself to look him in the eye, “you know I’m not your father.”

Kobe let a out a hollow yeah and dropped the receiver.

This post originally appeared at The Lawn Chair Boys on November 29, 2011.

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