“remind you // those who wear the crown must wear it / as a crown / it cannot be worn as a hat” – Adrian Sobol, “gradation of american hunger”
Programming note: there will be a Friday Links on Friday, but there will be no column next Wednesday. I am taking the time off to finally migrate this thing off of the Nazi-loving, Useful Idiot-fomenting company that is Substack. Here’s a piece I wrote about this desire a long time ago. I regret that it has taken so long. Brendan and I are trying to make the Lazy & Entitled website a home for all of our music, VINE and future novell(a)s, the podcast, and yes, this blog. Unfortunately, we both work day jobs, and in my case, care for a child. So things take a long time. Remember those two albums we recorded last year? Yeah, don’t forget about those. Also, don’t feel the need to re-subscribe or anything—you, the reader, should just keep getting emails from me. Aren’t you excited about emails?
Y’all been watching the playoffs? It’s been a good first round. I love the first round, even if I think both it and the second round would be a lot more fun if they were best of five. Clippers-Nuggets has been especially good.
It’s been a weird NBA season for me. I’ve watched less basketball and listened to fewer podcasts/read fewer articles than I have since the 2006-07 season, which was my first season back into the game after some yearslong burnout following the end of my AAU playing days.
(my AAU playing days are not the subject of this blog)
I want to try to figure out what’s pushed me away from watching sports as much, as well as interrogate what I like about sports so much in the first place.
The practical specifics of why I’m watching less—my six-year-old’s bedtime is in the middle of the east coast games, I like hanging out with Mal after the kid goes to bed, much more of my daytime is focused on writing than it used to be—matter a little less than this nagging feeling that something’s changed. Is this an internal or external change? Feels like a little of both.
The people involved with the NBA seem to like actual basketball less and less. Not exactly the players, although my “old man yells at cloud” stance is that I wish active players would stop starting podcasts and thinking of themselves as “brands.” It’s more like pundits and former players have soured on basketball, which fuels fans into this insufferable old school/new school false dichotomy. Concern trolls talk about ratings as if the league would *poof* disappear, every single team in every city gone in a flash, if an NBA game in February draws fewer Nielsen households than the Food Network. Kofie knows what I’m talking about.
All of that spills over into announcers, in-game, talking about the 1990s every 15 seconds. If I were a kid watching basketball right now, I would hate nothing more than 1980s and 1990s basketball. If I were a 13-year-old, I’d be cheering against the return of the Seattle Sonics outta pure spite. I’d be calling Shaq overrated trash,1 I’d be saying Barkley couldn’t hang with Ben Simmons, I’d be saying the Toronto Raptors right now would run roughshod over the 96 Bulls.
Not to quote Rian goddamn Johnson on main, but let the past die, fellow old dudes.
Then there’s the gambling shit. Adam Silver writing that goddamn op-ed in 2014 isn’t as bad as Obama refusing to close the prison at Guantanamo and that leading to Trump shipping U.S. citizens to El Salvador without trial, but it’s the first metaphor that came to mind. If my kid ever decides to watch ball with me (we watched Game 1 of Clippers/Nuggets together), I gotta give “Say No To Drugs” talks every ad break.
If it sounds like I’m whining, I’m far from the only person who’s irritated. Kofie’s a sharp dude, and I’ve been into Joon Lee’s new YouTube channel. A man who used to be on Around The Horn is starting a YouTube channel for the usual layoff reasons, but his first video lays out similar grievances re: sports media broken.
Let’s get back to my attempts to share my love of sports with my six-year-old. He loves going to games. When we did our first family foray to the United Center this winter, he kept asking why I didn’t play for the Bulls. Now, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man standing five foot nine and in possession of a two-inch vertical leap must be in want of a starting small forward spot on an NBA team. We know this. For some reason, though, it was hard to explain how much the hoopers we were going to see were (almost) all well over six feet tall and impossibly strong, graceful, coordinated, and quick-thinking. The casualness with which they do things that are literally impossible to you and me is part of the appeal.
Hey look, Joon’s got a video about trying to hit off an MLB pitcher. Joon played baseball for longer than I played basketball, and has about as much chance against Adam Ottovino as I do facing John Lucas III with one leg in a cast.
Joon—a former ESPN talking head—says the experience changed the way he watched sports. Isn’t that interesting.
Eventually, I got to thinking—as I often am—about Allen Iverson and Manu Ginobili. Those two are my archetypes for cool and creative, respectively. AI’s crossover was legendary, it was a worthy signature move, but it was also a relatively standard crossover. Ginobili’s erratic nature and soccer-like approach to hunting for angles and doing trick passes could sometimes be enough of a detriment that he spent his career coming off the bench. Neither of these guys “could be the best player on a championship team,” neither of these guys would be very fun to bet on, and yet both represent something I wish we celebrated more in sports.
Athletes live on a spectrum between their individual quirks and thousands of hours of honing various techniques the way soldiers learn to stand at attention or whatever. Does you elbow stick out slightly when you rise up to take a jumper? We’re gonna spend the entire summer taking 10000 shots a day and ironing your arm straight. Learning to slide your feet on defense and backpedal down the court after an offensive possession are hard-coded into your legs. What’s cool about Manu was how creative he was within the Spurs’ controlled offense. What’s cool about AI is how he seemed silkier and smoother than everyone else. Every time those two stepped on the court, I felt like I was going to see something I’d never seen before. I imagine this is how the older generation felt watching Dr. J or Ice Gervin.
It’s how I feel watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, and Nikola Jokic today. Shai not only seems like karma giving us the career Penny Hardaway should’ve had, he seems like he’s playing the game like Neo seeing through the matrix. Not as in “he’s jumping into people” but more like “everything’s moving in slow motion to him, he’s in complete, calm control of his body, and he just does everything better than everybody else.” Ant has every bit of AI’s cool, combined with a very cool Michael-Jordan-in-1990 playing style (except Ant can shoot stepback threes). Jokic, of course, is easily the most creative passer we’ve had since—C-Webb and White Chocolate Williams? Magic and Bird? Pistol Pete? Speaking of Jokic, let’s watch a Thinking Basketball (talk about a guy who appreciates the game) video about one of the best playoff games we’ve had in a while.
I want to celebrate the game for all impossible and cool stuff that happens on the court. Call me a bitter Bulls fan who has only had real stakes in the playoffs twice since 1998. But I’m done with the bullshit in sports fandom. Betting, pundits and fans playing fantasy GM, cross-era comparisons, rumor mills—I’m sick of it. I’m so much more interested in whether or not a team is playing the beautiful game, if a player is doing something we’ve never seen before, or if a matchup between two teams or two players is an interesting clash of styles. I’m not worried about whether a team shoots too many threes or too many midrangers, I’m worried do they look cool. I’m so much more interested in the things that make basketball cool and fun. Are the players fully embracing their gifts, are the coaches letting the players fully express themselves?
Is everyone having fun out there?
Are both teams playing hard, my man?
Ok you made it this far here’s a kid at the game.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
in fairness, I do this as a 37-year-old