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.

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 has 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.

“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.

If my name were Sam, then Coach K would be my green eggs and ham, only the book wouldn’t rhyme, because what rhymes with Kryzyzewski? Seriously, the fact that Coach K is atop the NCAA record books, with a win over Michigan State, makes me need to sit down, watch The Sound of Music, and have Julie Andrews harmonize the evil out of the world. But, tonight, tonight feels different.

It takes a long time to win 903 games. This season marks Coach K’s thirty-second straight at Duke, following a five-year stint at Army, and in a nuclear winter where basketball courts have been boarded up and quarantined, that kind of longevity and dedication to a game is refreshing, even for a North Carolina fan like myself.

Coach K is not a hero of mine–and if there’s a negative joke out there about him, then I’ve probably already laughed at it–but I do respect what he’s been able to build over the course of a career, that a Duke team always plays tough defense from end to end, that his players graduate, and that scandal has not been his bedfellow. And, in accordance with how the post started, I hope that’s always the case, because the last few weeks have left me jaded to new revelations about legends, their legacies, and the games that empower them.

Congratulations, Coach K, may there be no new chapters in your tenure at Duke.

Now, I’m not sure exactly why, but this episode of Community, for me, tells the story of the NBA Lockout. Maybe it’s that David Stern and Billy Hunter remind me of demonic troll dolls, or maybe it’s that both the players and the owners, due to their egos, are not willing to concede an ounce of pride, so rather than walking out of the apartment, down the steps, and opening the front door, a dice is tossed in the air and the entire NBA universe becomes a party to chance, only in the NBA dice roll there aren’t six possible timelines coexisting–spiraling off to their own reck and ruin–but two: one with a season and one without a season.

And while the possibilities for this season seemingly consist of a coin flip between the seventy-two game proposal that players are currently weighing in on or no games at all, the focus of a fan’s blame is spiraling out of control. First, one could blame the owners; after all, they chose to expand their League’s number of teams, they chose to pay players outrageous amounts of money, they created a League where only a handful of teams can win a championship, and they locked out the players. Then, there is David Stern’s fear mongering, his Judge Danforth like press conferences where he might as well be saying, “you’re either with this court or against it [no pun intended].” Or, if you believe Stern’s words, then blame the “greedy” agents. Or, in the spirit of Stern’s fallacious arguments and hyperbolic language, one could also blame talking heads, such as HBO’s Bryant Gumbel, who claims that the owners are acting as if they were plantation owners punishing their slaves.

And it is the false analogy that Gumbel’s making about professional athletes as slaves that is the crux, no matter how long the Lockout lasts or the fact that the owners initiated it, as to why the players cannot win the public opinion battle over the long haul, and the reason is as simple and ugly as the emotions of jealousy and envy (as well as the fact that there other parts of American society that would more aptly identify with nineteenth century slaves than professional athletes do).

To many working class families, athletes are individuals blessed at birth with talents that make their road in life a much easier journey than the rest of us. At some point in their lives, most people come across someone with talent on a sports field that made them say, I can’t do that and never will, and at some point, coaches saw it too and they were cut. Those individuals who were cut, whether it was from a travel soccer team or a varsity basketball team, then entered the competitive fields of academics and the arts, but it’s much harder to get cut in those two fields–everything is seemingly more subjective and national policies like No Child Left Behind suggest that cuts in education are not possible, that everyone is good enough, but anyone with a rejection letter from a prestigious university knows that’s not true. And most people would be okay with that, except that there are individuals who, based on their innate abilities to run faster and jump higher, unlock doors to academic institutions, and the irony that someone can get into an academic institution by way of athletic accomplishment leaves much of society’s members unwilling to bestow the characteristics of hard work and sacrifice on athletes, especially when those abilities not only sustain athletes but bring them fame and fortune as well.

So instead, they are men blessed with the fountain of youth that escaped most of the population, for their work commute takes them back to the fields and the courts that everyone else last traversed as young boys and young girls. In our minds, they are forever toiling at play, getting paid to never grow old, and, therefore, we can never side with them in an argument that will still leave them with a “job” that will pay them millions of dollars. And because they have something that we can never have nor get back–a game that matters more than anything–we have a hard time feeling sorry for them when it comes to labor disputes.

The owners, however, are another matter, not that we ever pity them either, but owners are richer versions of what all of us have already become: adults. They have jobs that look, sound, and feel like real jobs–make that boring jobs–having already made their money elsewhere, in anonymity, before deciding to spend it frivolously on free agents and arenas. In other words, they made their money working rather than playing, and owning an NBA team is a hobby for them, not to mention that video games and fantasy sports leagues so often put the fan not in the place of the athlete but in the place of the coach or owner. We are not jealous of owners; we can understand how they came to be, because, right or wrong, we believe they are self-made; but we are envious of the players because their roll of the dice is something foreign (or lost) to just about all of us.

Pay for play? Most of us can’t even fathom saying no to that, because when our parents told us we could have anything and everything–our genetics told us we couldn’t.

(DISCLAIMER: The child-adult analogy made in this article is not intended to insult NBA players and say that they are childish or immature, but rather I meant to imply that all of us who are no longer children would prefer to be so because we believe that such a miracle would deliver us from our adult responsibilities.)

The pie came at the end of the meal, as desserts typically do, but Billy Hunter wanted none of it. When the waitress placed a snow white plate in front of him, Billy nudged it toward the center of the table with the heel of his palm and looked out the window of the diner, disgusted.

Most of the protestors and picketers had dispersed after the Molotov Cocktail through the Mr. Stern’s Wall Street window disrupted negotiations by bursting whatever progress had been made into flames, and now the streets were lined with women in tight dresses and men in sports jackets trying to hail cabs to drunken destinations.

Billy looked at the pie in the center of the table, its crust brown and flaky, its blueberry core venting steam like a volcano underneath a national park. Perhaps, even if he didn’t want any for himself, he could take some of it home to his kids, maybe, after fifteen straight hours of stagnant negotiations, going home with a pie wrapped in tin foil might leave him feeling something other than tired and empty handed as walked through the front door, hung his keys on a metal hook, and slid into his Sunday morning slippers.

“Not gonna have any, Billy?” asked David Stern, stubble sprouting from his jawbone.

Billy looked at his adversary, whose sleeve was singed from the rage of a Molotov Cocktail. “No, David, you ordered it. If there’s some left maybe I’ll take it home–give it to the kids.”

David shrugged his shoulders, picked up a silver knife, and cut into the pie. Then he traded the knife for a fork like he was switching scalpels and carved a piece out for his mouth, and as he did so, the filling spilled out of the crust and covered the porcelain beach in a tide of navy blue oil. He lifted his fork to his mouth and took a bite. The warmth of the pie nearly burn his tongue, and while the blueberries overran his taste buds with the sweetness of a fading summer, he couldn’t help but detect a hint of smoke in the dryness of the crust–in fact, the whole late night dinner meeting he had tasted the smoke of their failed negotiations, in his tea, in his tuna melt, in his fries–even in the ketchup.

“Mmmhmmmmm, this is good pie, Billy,” he said, not looking at Billy, his mouth still full and oozing juice at the corners of his lips. He looked like a pie sucking Dracula, thought Billy. “Really good.”

David did not mention anything about the ashtray aftertaste.

The two men sat in silence, the only sounds coming from David’s mouth and the diner’s other patrons. Billy ordered a cup of coffee with a nod, desperate to stay awake, and was ready to ask for his share of the pie to be put in a box when David cut another piece and started eating it.

“Just delicious,” he said in between bites, and the hollowness of his grin as he said it made Billy wonder if Stern really liked the pie or if it was the fact that by eating it he could waste more of Billy’s time.

“I have to use the bathroom.” Billy excused himself form the table.

When he returned, David was on a different piece of pie, only now he was stabbing his fork into the uncut bulk of the entire pie, eating right off the serving dish, and Billy found himself full of anger, pressure building up inside him, for the first time in what had been a very long night, as David butchered the crust of the pie: cutting here, hacking there, flakes of crust falling to the table, and blueberry blood everywhere.

Billy looked for the waiter, raised his hand in despair like some geyser exploding into the sky, hoping somebody might come by the table and stop the heedless violence.

“Good pie,” said David. “Sure you don’t want some–”

He extended his fork to Billy, its prongs jutting through the dripping husk of a blueberry’s skin, and while eyeing the sagging bruise of a skull, something in Billy snapped; and he cried out like some fictional character, like Chinua Achebe’s Okonkwo, that yes! yes! he did want a piece of the pie! He grabbed the plate, still hot from the stove, and sprinted headlong for the door.

He spun around the waiter, sidestepped a drunk woman in a pink dress, but he could not dodge Derek Fisher as he scooted back his chair. And like all thermal activity that gets jettisoned into the air, Billy Hunter came splattering back down to Earth. There was the sound of breaking glass underneath his sternum, and he wondered if he had been stabbed as what felt like warm blood seeped through his shirt and onto his skin. When he rolled over, he couldn’t help but think how much the purple stains on his blue shirt gave off the impression that his heart had burst wide open.

Behind him, over the sounds of Derek Fisher apologizing, Billy Hunter could hear David Stern’s dry sense of humor: “Ma’am, we’re gonna need a box for that.”

Mr. Stern could hear the protestors outside yelling about percentages, banks, and tyranny, and the sun setting in his office window made him wonder out loud if this was the end of something: the day, his employment, his status, his wealth, peace and prosperity, maybe even the tenets of capitalism.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, just underneath his glasses, for relief.

“I don’t think this is going to blow over,” he said. “That kind of anger,” he gestured towards the window, “doesn’t just blow over. . . unless it blows over the way a wild fire blows over.”

“Look, Stern, baby, there’s gotta be some compromise,” spoke one of the protest leaders. Stern didn’t know his name; none of them had names. Maybe it was Billy or Bobby or Hunter. “We’ve been here before, and I know your number can be lowered.”

Stern had no clue what to call the man, even if they had been here before. He wasn’t a peer or a friend; he was a roadblock. Stern moved towards the window, the failing light turning the gray of his hair silver. He closed the curtain, turned his back on the protestors and their handmade signs, and leaned against the width of the window sill. “I would, but the shareholders won’t let me. They’ve got long term concerns, and they think what’s out there can’t be sustained.”

“And you believe ‘em?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think? My job is to make them happy.”

“Look, Stern,” the man’s hands were open and pleading now, his lifelines like deep, desperate canyons that made Stern lose respect for him. “How ’bout fifty-fifty. No body wants it, but it makes sense–they sweat, you pay, it all comes out even.”

“Fifty-fifty?” Stern wrote the number down on a legal pad. Fifty was a big number, one of those half full-half empty sort of numbers, in math they taught you to round up. Fifty percent rounded up.

“I know you’re thinkin’ about it,” said Billy? Bobby? Hunter?

The man with a question mark for a name walked to the window, peeked behind the curtain. “That out there, that’ll blow over. Shit, they can’t picket forever. Who can picket forever?”

Stern didn’t have an answer, didn’t want to have an answer. He stared at the two matching percentages on the paper. A five next to a zero, next to a five next to a zero. The two percentages were identical, but they felt like those mismatched faces of Greek theatre, one smiling, one frowning.

“Let me go get the boys. We can draw this up tonight. . . be back to work by morning. . . like nothin’ ever happened.” He walked to the door and called in a panel of broad-shouldered men–the working class–and Stern didn’t recognize a single one: These couldn’t be the hardliners he was negotiating against. These men were middle of the pack; they weren’t leaders; he would recognize a leader. “Boys, we’ve got the start of something.”

They all smiled, patted each other on the back. A pasty redhead reached out his right arm towards Stern when the sound of glass shattered behind them all. Men ducked, scampering behind office ferns and leather chairs like boys playing hide and go seek, but Stern didn’t duck or run: He stood there violent flames breathing heat on his forehead, causing his skin to dampen with sweat. He lifted one arm, noticed the sparks glowing from the threads of his gray suit, and blew on them one by one, causing them to flare up and fade away.

Outside, someone yelled, “Awwwww, shit, Wade! Nice throw! Motherfuckers gonna take us serious now!” And then the voice got lost in the flames.

But that’s what happens when men the size of mountains balance their girth on thimble-like feet–things break–while an individual, like myself, who is nothing but average in every sense of the word has only managed to break his expendable pinkie toe, having slammed in on a door jamb when doing baseball slides across a Pinesol-scented linoleum floor. Basketball is full of these oddities, especially when fans try to juxtapose their own lives against those of the famous, and not so famous, athletes that captivate their imaginations, trying to find some greater meaning in their heroes’ victories and defeats.

Zydrunas Ilagauskas has earned millions more dollars than I will ever come close to sniffing. I could look at his average averages (13 ppg and 7 rpg), lack of postseason success, and two All-Star appearances (achieved mostly by default) and say that the man was overpaid, or I could think that some price must be paid to a 7’3″ man weighing well over two hundred pounds for literally running the bones of his foot into chalk dust. That has to be worth something, right? How much would you take for your right foot? I’m not sure what I would answer, but I do know that someday (sooner than he might like to think) Ilgauskas is going to move like a cripple, and that before the time feels just, his body will age rapidly. I know that I would have to go back to some college intramural game to discover a time when I was still willing to make physical sacrifices. And that feels like forever ago.

Zydrunas Ilgauskas lost three crucial seasons in his development to foot surgeries, becoming a twenty-seven-year-old version of a forty-year-old Arvydis Sabonis. While he is certainly less sweaty and not as good, Ilgauskas is still endowed with all the magical what ifs, and I find it strangely coincidental that a center who was kind of a star, but not really, chose to walk away from the game the weekend before Tuesday’s crucial NBA labor negotiations–a work stoppage that has resulted from the owners’ beliefs that the middle tier of players, which players like Big Z were a part of, has been vastly overpaid for over the last decade.

In a summer that saw Shaquille O’Neal and Yao Ming both retire, it’s a career like Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ that looms largest over the league. Guys like Shaq and Yao will always get paid: top talent, top production, top stars never have to fret. But guys like Big Z? Well, they may never get paid the same again. Yet, when contemplating a possible pay cut for players such as Ilgauskas, I find myself filled with a lot less sympathy than when I ponder his five-foot surgeries. Why? Because I would break my pinkie toe all over again if whatever the new deal is – a hard cap, a semi-hard cap, or new changes to the old Larry Bird rights — rendered someone like me who, when compared with my peers is pretty much average or maybe just slightly above, amazing.

And so, after a summer that saw LeBron continue to become even more of a hot button issue, saw Kevin Durant pass his game around like a mix tape, and has ended with Kobe contemplating Italy, it’s men like the seemingly ordinary Zydrunas Ilgauskas, with his hit man face and osteoporosis feet, that are the topic of debate. And in fact, owners, player reps, and even agents are debating the state of the NBA’s middle class much more effectively than the GOP or even Democrats could ever dream of doing, because while the NBA may not pay them as much as it once did, at least it mentions them from time to time.

And, with the Pac-12′s denial of acceptance to Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., and Texas Tech, it’s not necessarily hyperbole to state that the ACC might have jumped the gun in snatching Syracuse and Pitt out of the Big East, making itself look like the crazed neighbor that dug a backyard bunker and is now homeschooling its children, using soup labels as textbooks, in preparation of the end. No, that wouldn’t be hyperbole at all–it would be true. And it’s that issue of truth, as greedy as the ACC might appear, that separates them, along with the SEC from all of these other conferences and schools–we know their intentions.

Big East fans may not like to hear it, and Big 12 fans certainly don’t won’t to admit it; but the ACC and SEC have acted with a fair amount of transparency, unlike the roguish Texas Longhorns, whose real intentions are as clear as any Congressman’s. The ACC’s 2004 and 2005 additions of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College spoke volumes then, and now, about the ACC’s long term objectives. While the move from nine teams to twelve was done to strengthen the conference’s football standings and to add a championship game, the moves were also an attack on one of the ACC’s biggest rivals, and the acquisition of Boston College, specifically, positioned the conference to be at geographic odds with the Big East for years to come. The conference saw the writing on the wall, and it acted then as it did now, for the survival of its athletic traditions.

And, while the ACC’s dealings may smell of cigar smoke and sound full of backroom whisperings, think about the two teams the ACC just acquired, and the admission of both the conference’s strengths and weaknesses are both present and entertwined: the ACC basically told the rest of the country that they know they’re good at basketball, mediocre at football, and maybe, just maybe, that they’re okay with that.

No, the ACC knows that it didn’t add two powerhouse football programs, and that it will most likely still feel like the prissy half sibling of the SEC, on the gridiron, but it did deliver a devastating uppercut to its major competition on the hardwood: the Big East being the only conference to pull in more revenue for Men’s Basketball than the ACC. And while what a conference makes in basketball revenue is obviously chump change when compared to football, the most profitable athletic program in the ACC is Wake Forest, who took a loss in terms of football revenue, which, as the Clippers do for the NBA, speaks to the fact that there’s more than one way to run a successful athletic program in college sports.

The stability of the ACC, compared to the Big East, due to its logical geographic ties, allowed it to add two more teams, and even though the move was most likely inspired by the fear that the football-oriented SEC or Big 10 might come a calling, it was a move that, no matter how you analyzed it, resulted in a stronger basketball league, something that could be heard in the enthusiasm with which Coach K and Roy Williams each greeted the acquisitions, and it’s the strength the conference holds in that sport that is its only hope of holding onto its more lucrative football properties as well.

Accept what you are and play to your strengths; it’s one of the tested truths of any competition, at least until the world ends.

The train hissed and lurched and popped its way into a motionless state, steam exhaling out its mouth, blending with a wooly sky. No snow was on the ground yet, but the lack of color in the grass was already begging for winter. Minnesota was not hte place that Dr. Adelman, rainmaker, entrepreneuer, tinkerer, barber, dentist, magician, insurance agent for Chinese giants, and mustache aficianado, believed he would come to for his last dance of summer. Afterall, Minnesota was a barren wasteland, made interesting only by the rain-soaked ponds that riddled its flat terrain like bullet holes–the land itself was clearly wounded–but it was where his roguish hobo instinct and compass rose had led him, in the hopes of one last pay day.

Dr. Adelman tipped the pullman porter for bringing him his bags, both made of leather, one a suitcase and the other a medical handbag that slouched in on its contents. He checked his pocketwatch, took in the ticking mechanism that announced the small avalanche of the future falling into the present and walked down the gangplank, the crowds undaunted, a train whistling in the distance.

He walked by storefronts filled with music boxes and satin dresses. He hopped over puddles, petted a slovenly mutt of a sled dog, curtsied to a woman in a pink dress and found his way through the swinging doors of a saloon marked with big, blocked letters Kahn’s Golden Nugget.

Inside, he went straight to the piano, pulled a silver dollar out of the musician’s ear, flicked it in the air, caught it on his pearly knuckles, and rolled it down the sleeve of his sports coat, to his pinstriped elbow, before flicking it back to the piano player, who went to catch it with both hands, in midair, halting the Mississippi rag, that had finally made its way to the Great White North, and made the bar feel more crowded than it really was.

Dr. Adelman looked around, there were four men in the room, all the worse for wear; a bartender with a chinsrap of beard hair; and a timberwolf asleep and drooling in the corner, its teeth as weak as the spit running out its mouth.

“Ladies and gentlemen [there were no ladies present and very few gentlemen], I am Dr. Ricardo Adelman, and as of today, I will be performing outside in the Court Square everynight, at eight precisely, some of your favorite scenes from the great Bard himself–Julius Caesar, King Lear, and, of course, Romeo and Juliet. Where fore art thou? Hope to see you there.” He then pulled a scroll from his sleeve and unfurled it, the crisp parchment shimmering like a sword free from its scabbard, with the very words that the doctor had just spoken like drops of black blood, and said, “I bid you adieu.”

Meanwhile , the bartender spat into a spitoon while polishing a beer glass with a rag for a towel. “Whaddya make of that?” asked the man with a barrel of a chest. He got no answer; he was speaking to a man asleep at the bar. There was a light tapping of bone on wood, and the bartender looked down the great oak surface, finding Rick Adelman, the thespian, in need of a drink. “What’ll it be, sir?”

“Warm mineral water, please, the voice has to perform,” said the out of towner, fiddling with his mustache.

“Not sure we have that,” said the bartender, smiling.

“Well, then, a sarsaparilla.”

The bartender filled up a glass, and the patron who had been dormant raised his head from off the sweaty bar’s surface. “The Beas says tarred and feathered,” his eyes still shut with alcohol.

Then, the bartender, Kevin Love, looked on as the thespian addressed the hibernating bear. “Sir, you would make a lovely Othello–passionate, frustrated, strong, and jealous.”

The Beas looked Love in the eye again and repeated himself, “Tarred and feathered!”

“I beg your pardon,” said the man.

“He means to say that Mark Twain’s dead, sir, one hundred percent dead. It’s all about vampires and zombies now. Vampires and zombies.” He spat in the spittoon again, the sound of saliva against the metal like a dying fly.

“Vampires and zombies?”

The Beas nodded, “Yep, on account of this here apocalypse we got goin’ on.”

When Love noticed the doors to the saloon were still swinging on their hinges, he wasn’t sure if it was from the would be performer’s coming or leaving, just that nothing had changed, and that nothing ever did change, at the throat of the big river.