{"id":94453474,"date":"2023-01-04T13:30:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T13:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=94453474"},"modified":"2023-01-04T13:30:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T13:30:04","slug":"basketball-and-poetry-in-our-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=94453474","title":{"rendered":"Basketball and Poetry In Our Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Throughout history, I bet every old man probably said the same thing. Old men die, and the world keeps spinning.” – Marty Hart, ‘True Detective’<\/h2>

On Monday, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell scored 71 points and dished out 11 assists. Shaquille O\u2019Neal, 1\/4 of a quartet of grumpy old men who make millions complaining about the contemporary NBA on national television during NBA games, one time told Mitchell (outta nowhere, outta goddamn NOWHERE) that he didn\u2019t think Mitchell \u201chad what it takes.\u201d<\/a> Don\u2019t know if Shaq said anything about last night. Only David Thompson, Kobe Bryant, and Wilt Chamberlain have ever scored more in a NBA game. Only Devin Booker, David Robinson, and Elgin Baylor can also say they\u2019ve scored 70 points in an NBA game. Donovan Mitchell made real, actual history, and he did it this week<\/em>. <\/p>

Sometime last week (conventional time doesn\u2019t exist between Christmas and New Year\u2019s Day), the New York Times<\/em> published what conservative estimates are calling the 738,656th essay in human history declaring poetry to be dead. This opinion piece took things a step further, declaring 2022 the 100th anniversary of poetry\u2019s death. Apparently, that rotten old anti-Semite T.S. Eliot killed poetry with The Waste Land<\/em>. <\/p>

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It is the policy of this blog to only read New York Times<\/em> op-ed pieces via Twitter screenshots and discourse. It is also the policy of this blog to only watch Inside the NBA<\/em> if I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ll get distracted by like, cooking, and forget to switch the channel back in time for the 3rd quarter to start. Yet both pieces of media are constantly on my mind. <\/p>

Anytime I want, I can cue up YouTube and watch Bulls championship games tipoff-to-buzzer. I can go to my bookshelf and re-read The Great Gatsby<\/em> for fifth(?) time. What takes a little more work is seeking out new writers. What gets my blood pressure pumping a little more is watching a Bulls playoff game where I don\u2019t know the outcome. New things are scary, especially when they make us re-contextualize old things. <\/p>

I was in college before I read a living poet. Is there some mandate to approach the literature linearly in elementary through high school? My favorite high school English teacher* reads this blog, so let me be clear that I\u2019m not blaming teachers. Poetry after The Waste Land <\/em>does freak people out. \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t it rhyme\u201d \u201cwhat does it mean\u201d \u201cwhy am I reading this\u201d are all fair questions to newbie contemporary poetry readers, if we admit those are fair questions to ask of any piece of writing. To declare 100 years of some of the most exciting writing humankind has ever produced to be some sort of lesser-than zombie is inexcusable laziness. <\/p>

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The three-point line was introduced into the NBA in 1979-80, but people didn\u2019t figure out how to shoot them until like 2015. That\u2019s the year the Splash Brothers Warriors won their first championship, after the Beautiful Game Spurs<\/a> and the Pace-and-Space Heat<\/a> proved it was easier to get layups\/low post buckets when your roster is stacked with three-point shooters. <\/p>

Shaq and Charles Barkley, two low-post bangers if ever there were some, have relentlessly thrown cold water on the NBA\u2019s current product. They seem to not know that defending the low post is way easier to do now, making post-up play more difficult. They seem not to have considered that their own careers would have been better had they been surrounded by shooters or if they themselves could shoot threes (Barkley famously took a whole ton of threes and missed damn near every one<\/a>). The practical effect of this player\/pundit imbalance is whole halftime and postgame shows dedicated to denigrating the game you just watched, and trying to fit 2023 ball into a 1993-shaped box. I should be clear that no games were on TNT last night, and I don\u2019t know if Barkley or Shaq said anything about Mitchell\u2019s outburst. Their (and other retired players\u2019) propensity to poo-poo anything cool that happens in today\u2019s game is firmly interwoven into the experience of today\u2019s game, whether or not they\u2019re even on the call. <\/p>

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Donovan Mitchell\u2019s 71-point outburst (of which every point was necessary, that game went to overtime) overshadowed the following: 54 points from Klay Thompson in an overtime win. 39-12-8 from Luka. 43-11-6 from LeBron. 42-11-5 from Joel Embiid. 29-10-5 from Anthony Edwards. 28 points and 16 rebounds from Julius Randle. 31 points and 13 rebounds from Bam Adebayo. A 12\/17 vintage double-double from Mitchell\u2019s own teammate, Kevin Love. Then there\u2019s this: <\/p>

Ignore greatness in your own time at your peril. Jerry West couldn\u2019t dribble with his left hand<\/a>. T.S. Eliot never did a poetic biography of Leadbelly<\/a>. Horace Grant didn\u2019t have three-point range. Christopher Marlowe would\u2019ve melted into a puddle reading one verse of Gwendolyn Brooks. If you\u2019re that worried about something you love from the past disappearing, commit to telling stories. Who cares if LeBron or MJ is the GOAT if we\u2019re lucky enough to live through both their careers<\/em>? Who cares if poetry doesn\u2019t have the same cultural cache it used to if we\u2019re lucky enough to be alive at the same time as Eve L. Ewing<\/em>? Beware becoming a bitter old Scrooge, forever complaining about the good ol\u2019 days. <\/p>

Sorry you got an email, <\/p>

Chris<\/p>

Thank you for reading shipwrecked sailor. This post is public so feel free to share it.<\/p><\/div>

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* That\u2019s not an exaggeration or just me being nice. Shoutout to Mrs. S (name redacted because I don\u2019t know if she wants to be mentioned, though she\u2019s so cool I doubt she\u2019d care). She taught an up-and-down reading list (British lit before the 20th century) in a way that made you enthusiastic even about the shitty parts. She\u2019d offer silly extra credit assignments that Brendan and I seemed to be the only people to ever complete, one of which was an 11-minute video re-enactment of Paradise Lost<\/em> scored by a combination of The Chariot<\/a> and Between The Buried and Me<\/a>. She played keys in a local band that was friends with some bands our<\/em> band was friends with, and she rarely came in on Mondays. Mrs. S absolutely laps the field when it comes to cool high school English teachers. Senior year of high school was one of the most miserable years of my life, and Mrs. S was an much-needed bright spot. Shoutout to teachers.<\/p>

Thanks for reading shipwrecked sailor! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/p><\/div>

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