#nbadventcalendar

[2girls1ball]

#10: RIP Jeremy Lin, Cult Figure (02.06.12 - 03.24.12)

#NBAdvent Calendar. Ad-vent: the coming, or arrival, especially of something extremely important. The NBA season is almost upon us, and we don’t know about you, but we’re hopelessly consumed by meaningless pre-season matchups (down to compulsively refreshing our browsers to see who won that thrilling OT game).  It is in that spirit that we’ve decided to unleash that pent up anticipation and count down the last two weeks before the 2012-2013 season tips off by highlighting some of the things that we’re oh so giddy to see.

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Posted by Ali Mao

If you've been reading this blog, you know my affinity for Jeremy Lin and the distress I felt when the Knicks let him walk. How could they let the most popular player and corpse reviver of last season leave? Oh right, Dolan owns that ship and Carmelo is the captain. That's right, you in Melo's house baby!

The Knicks have always been on of those teams that clamored for star power more than a players who fit the team. Jeremy changed that with his special kind of alchemy, albeit with an ephemerality of a shooting star. Don't misunderstand, Lin's ascendancy was not a fluke; I believe Lin will have a lasting NBA career once his production volatility curve (and the media's hysteria) flattens out somewhere in the middle between his paradisaical highs and disgraceful lows.  I just don't believe he can maintain that cult level of production/excitement/theatrics. Especially this year, and ESPECIALLY in Houston.

I don't want to be one of the New Yorkers (I can officially call myself one!) who always claims New York to be the best city in the world, but this city is amazing and the fans are diehards through every terrible thing - owners, coaches, players, owners, etc. Consider Wait Til Next Year co-author, William Goldman who professed his undying loyalty to Knicks through the Hubie Brown regime (which preceded the suicidal Pitino days):

Because Hubie had turned the Garden into a bomb shelter. He had made us cowards, expecting to be beaten. We sat until the carnage was complete. We had, at the end, no hope. Our job was to suffer. I guess I go because I've been. And saw such wonders. 

Among those wonders, Goldman lists: Bradley, DeBusschere, Reed, Frazier, Pearl ... That's what you have to contend with when you don a Knicks jersey. Fans remember, and loudly. So when something unexpected and great comes along, like Jeremy Lin, we feast on it like a pack of famine-stricken wolves. We get so involved in all of it that the energy the city produces feeds everything about the player. Jeremy Lin was great for the Knicks, but New York was even greater for Jeremy Lin.

His emergence and his stardom could not have happened in any other city. It took a special kind of confluence of bizarre events that involved underachieving star players, injuries galore, restless fans...The team was finally winning and in grand fashion. The Garden looked and sounded like it did in its heyday. To be a part of that kind of history? Jeremy Lin said it himself:

You can't ask for a city or a fan base to embrace somebody more than they embraced me. I know it's kind of silly to talk about it with only two years under my belt in the league, but going in before free agency, I was like, 'I want to play in front of these fans for the rest of my career.' I really did. I really wanted to play in front of the Madison Square Garden fans for the rest of my career, because they're just unbelievable. (GQ November 2012)

In Houston there is no drama, no alpha dog like Carmelo. Lin is coming in as the de facto star and as a such, he will be scrutinized endlessly.  What's sad is that in a sense, he is doomed to the middling class of NBA players, but with the burning microscopic gaze usually reserved for star players. Concerns are already arising because of his terrible preseason numbers (averaging 5.3 points and 4.7 assists a game while shooting 21.1% from the field), with no regard for his mending knee, the defensive side of the ball and general preseason fluctuation. 

Lin's career trajectory and expectations have already been tempered accordingly for the Houston market (after all, the Rockets ranked 22nd in the league in attendance last year); He'll be loved in Houston, but not as hard -- for better or worse -- as he was loved in New York. 

[2girls1ball]

#11: Why there Has to be Bad Blood in the NBA

#NBAdventCalendar. Ad-vent: the coming, or arrival, especially of something extremely important. The NBA season is almost upon us, and we don’t know about you, but we’re hopelessly consumed by meaningless pre-season matchups (down to compulsively refreshing our browsers to see who won that thrilling OT game).  It is in that spirit that we’ve decided to unleash that pent up anticipation and count down the last two weeks before the 2012-2013 season tips off by highlighting some of the things that we’re oh so giddy to see.

======================================================

The FreeDarko Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac manifesto boldly states the following:

In an age less advanced, man's allegiance was determined by proximity alone. Tribalism and peer pressure conspired to make the fan see only "us" and "them," no matter what genius wore the color of the enemy. We believe that these are the ways of provincials and fascists, and in this brave century man must stand on his own and open his fandom to new possibilities.

This is what the intellectual backlash to the mainstream sports establishment looks like; it proposes we loosen the grip of the Old Boys' Network monopoly and its Jackie Christie tyranny on the way we experience sports --through the narrow and suffocating prism of wins and losses and all the mindless barking that accompanies it.

Honestly, I don't fully buy or endorse the liberated fan doctrine.  

***

This past summer, we saw the following happen in sequential order with very little time separating all three events: LeBron James vanquishes the loud cannon of dissenting voices to clinch his first championship at the expense of Kevin Durant's Thunder.  Unfortunately for Durant, he then has to cozy up to James during the Olympics team training.  Voicing his mild discomfort with the idea that he would be getting in bed with the enemy, Durant says:

He's my teammate now. I'm a team player. I can't let that affect this. This is bigger than that. It's tough to lose in the Finals and play with the guy you've been going up against for five games who beat you. 

We all felt for Durant -- who would be able to tolerate such a thing? As the Olympics grew nearer, however, the team understandably got closer. And then Team USA took care of business and won gold, the penultimate team bonding experience. Some of us assumed that what happened in London would stay in London; surely that victory hadn't softened Duran't heart or washed away memories of the devastating Finals series. Or had it? No sooner than the team was back on American soil, we were made privy to Durant and James teaming up to get ready for the upcoming season (which, in the players' defense, was the second year of their grueling pre-season regimen and not something that sprang out of their brief stint as Olympics teammates). Some fans (among which the populist pitchfork holders) were dismayed, and others were predictably annoyed that anyone should care about on-court rivals compartmentalizing their basketball feuds. 

In the excellent piece, "Will There Be Blood", Steve McPherson argues that despite Magic and Bird's storied rivalry, the two grew to be very close. Surely that didn't affect Magic vengefully supplanting the Celtics in the 1987 Finals, Steve pointed out as a corroborating fact to the theory that on and off court friendships need not be coupled. 

This bit of narrative embellishment serves his argument well, but here's where the characterization of cherished rivalries loses its footing; While Larry Bird and Magic did in fact share something special during the 1986 Converse shoot, which was held at the request of Bird in his hometown of French Lick, Indiana, that kinship did not spill over into the season. In Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals, Magic mentions inviting Bird out to dinner while he was in town to play the Celtics. Bird, to his astonishment, refused. He had drawn the line; It didn't matter what kind of experience the two had shared in French Lick that summer, there was to be no in-season socializing. (Jackie MacMullan has often made the comparison between Rondo and Bird's sour personalities to defend Rondo from claims that he's a toxic influence on the team. I mention this in case you are tempted to extrapolate Magic-Bird to Durant-James, two entirely different personalities that are closer to Magic in temperament.) 

*** 

The broadcast and digital revolution that has made it possible to watch, learn more about and scrutinize any and all players and teams, has spawned a more educated, hence enlightened evolutionary fan. Is this new model for fandom akin to a monk's detachment from the material world, a rebuke against the Angry Fan that's blind to anything that hasn't been passed down to him through the pull of geography and family? Given the pitiful and polarizing state of sports discourse, I understand the motivation, but I neither agree with it nor do I think that rivalries in any way reduce our appreciation of the aesthetics of the game.

There are many dimensions to consider in the debate about the latest generation of NBA rivalries and whether the dynamic between foes has changed in any substantive way that goes beyond the tweets, the nefarious AAU format and the fraternal spirit among the newer generation of players. 

But where is JVG's Rough-and-Tumble NBA (the one he gripes about so fondly on the air)? Does it still exist?

With James and Durant, we had the best player in the world and the best scorer in the world going toe-to-toe positionally for five hard-fought games that would crown either Durant or James NBA Champion. This is by definition a zero-sum game which naturally lends itself to forging the rivalries some of us still long for in our sports viewing experience.  It's most likely that the 2012 NBA Finals was just a teaser reel of a matchup that will with each subsequent meeting, create new story lines, new frictions as well as exacerbate old ones. Despite the relatively short series, think back to Game 2 of the Finals where James got away with engaging Durant in a square dance on a drive that could have tied the game and given the Thunder a decisive 2-0 lead (you will recall that onlythree teams in NBA history have ever come back from a 2-0 deficit in the Finals to win it all). Should Durant fall to James again, would he react the same way he did this past summer? Part of me thinks that Durant went into those workouts with James, confident in the Thunder's ability to overcome the Heat in their next go-around. An added defeat could change the complexion of this baby, burgeoning rivalry and how each player chooses to approach it (independently of how the league manufactures a parallel narrative of rivalry that we are sometimes guilty of conflating with the real thing). 

Ferdinand De Saussure teaches us that "the binary opposition is the means by which language has value or meaning; each language unit is defined in reciprocal determination with another term, as in binary code".  The example that is often given to explain this notion of duality is good and evil. How do we define a concept if we do not understand its semantic polar opposite?  

In other words, what does "winning" represent in the absence of "losing"? What is "black" without "white", or "James" without "Durant"? We haven't yet reached that point, but as someone who enjoys every facet of the game and none more than the ones charged with binary tension, I certainly hope we do. 

[2girls1ball]

#12: The Royce White's Bedazzled Bus Tour

#NBAdventCalendar. Ad-vent: the coming, or arrival, especially of something extremely important. The NBA season is almost upon us, and we don’t know about you, but we’re hopelessly consumed by meaningless pre-season matchups (down to compulsively refreshing our browsers to see who won that thrilling OT game).  It is in that spirit that we’ve decided to unleash that pent up anticipation and count down the last two weeks before the 2012-2013 season tips off by highlighting some of the things that we’re oh so giddy to see.

======================================================

Posted by Ali Mao

It's common knowledge that Royce White has a debilitating fear of flying. Kudos to White for being completely honest with his employer, and even bigger kudos to Houston for being so accommodating to a promising young player who has yet to prove himself in the league. 

But outside of generating a ton of awareness about mental health issues, has anyone thought of it as a boon rather than a setback?

Think about it. You have a team of rookies and second year players (not to mention the ultimate scrub bonding agent) that McHale will try to fashion into a "team". The on court chemistry is easier to work towards -- You practice, practice, and when you're done practicing, you practice some more. The off-court chemistry is more of a crapshoot, but that's where team traveling days can come into play (unless two of your stars come to blows because of card game gone wrong). Think of the Celtics' trip to Rome prior to 2008 and its supposed role in fostering team chemistry.  Flying is obviously faster and more convenient, but there's something kind of grounding (pun intended) about being "on the road".

Think back to some of your favorite sports films, do you remember any team bonding scenes that happened on a plane? Now, think about the ones that happened on a bus. More come to mind right? There's a natural sense of camaraderie that flows during road trips that is not as easily accommodated in an airplane ride; Road trips are a consummate part of growing up -- they hearken back to our middle school days when teenybopper crushes and trail mix occupied most our mind-space.

Grueling schedule aside, let's say the team chooses to occasionally travel with Royce as a sign of solidarity and support. Can you imagine what it could do in terms of accelerating and strengthening those sometimes tenuous team bonds that aren't always visible to the naked eye but always lurk beaneath the surface of all dysfunctional teams? I'm not saying it would make them a top 10 team, but I do think that it could help them become one of those teams that wins games because they trust each other enough to make the extra pass, or to not foul unnecessarily because they know a teammate has their back. And with a year under their belt, I think they could potentially make the playoffs as an 8th seed.  

All I can say is this: I hope we get a "Pitch Perfect" spontaneous combustion of song from the Rockets, with Kevin Martin in the "I'm so alternative and angsty (but I love me some pop)" role.

[2girls1ball]

#13: Bow Down to the Unibrow

Ad-vent: the coming, or arrival, especially of something extremely important. The NBA season is almost upon us, and we don’t know about you, but we’re hopelessly consumed by meaningless pre-season matchups (down to compulsively refreshing our browsers to see who won that thrilling OT game).  It is in that spirit that we’ve decided to unleash that pent up anticipation and count down the last two weeks before the 2012-2013 season tips off by highlighting some of the things that we’re oh so giddy to see.

======================================================

Posted by Ali Mao

Allen Iverson had the cornrows. 

James Harden has the beard. 

And Anthony Davis now has the "Unibrow". 

What kind of hubris must Davis possessed by to trademark his "look" BEFORE he's even played an NBA game (although clearly incited by his agent)? I mean, I watched him a few of times in his freshman year at Kentucky and wasn't quite sure what all the fuss was about. All sportswriters and scouts could talk about was how this kid began his career as a guard and then shot up 8 inches in two years to become the most dominant freshman in college basketball. All I saw was a tall lanky kid with just adequate ball-handling skills, and most notably: the most ridiculous unibrow.

Was I missing something? Did the unibrow give Davis some sort of special power that I had not witnessed yet? Guys can get away with ANYTHING. As long as Davis had some sort of intangible talent, people would forgive any sort of...appearance gaffe. Can you imagine if Diana Taurasi sported a unibrow? Or worse yet, a mustache? (It wasn't that long ago that the Reddit community pulled their collective ignorance together to shame a Sikh woman.) No one would ever talk about how great of player she is because they'd all be discussing the 'brow!

The second thing that came to mind was how ballsy Davis was to rock what is culturally considered, "not sexy". It says something about him that he did not conform to social norms when it came to his appearance and instead embraced what made him different. I think in some sense, it fueled the way he played. Beckley Mason made an interesting remark about James Harden's beard and how it may affect fans' expectations of him as an NBA player: 

But whether it’s his beard that seems — perhaps unconsciously — to tell fans “I enjoy being a third option” or the fact that he was brought along a little more slowly and continues to come off the bench despite being a top three player at his position, there’s something subverting perceptions of his apparent greatness.

In just six months, Davis won a NCAA Championship with the Wildcats, became the top pick of the 2012 NBA Draft and garnered a coveted spot on USA Basketball's Olympic Team (and won gold, snap!). Could there have been a better six months and pre-NBA education for Anthony Davis, and his unibrow?!

So as the 2012 season starts, there are high expectations for Davis to bring the Hornets back to relevance after last year's Chris Paul Trade. Will he thrive at the 4 where Monty Williams plans on playing him most of the time? Can he handle the pressure of a young team relying on him night in and night out? Will the ridiculously colorful Mardi Gras Uniform clash with his unibrow? And the biggest question on everyone's mind? How long before the rest of the team sports the Unibrow? 

The NBA might not have a response to baseball's Mullet Night, but now they have a weapon of their own.