The Brilliance of Chris Paul

I know Chris, I missed you too.

Three years ago I was best described as a casual basketball fan. Then I watched Chris Paul perform in the 2008 NBA playoffs, and I wasn’t a casual fan anymore.

Chris Paul’s run during that postseason made me want to be a basketball fan, much the same way that reading The Great Gatsby made me want to understand literature on a deeper level, or how seeing Die Hard for the first time increased my love of Christmas tenfold. The barrage of crossovers, floaters and bounce passes that Paul let loose in those playoffs left me in awe, and I wanted more.

And then, tragically, Chris Paul just sort of disappeared. After missing almost half of last season with a knee injury, he returned to the court this year as a deeply lessened version of himself. He still managed to put up decent stats and get his team into the playoffs, but the knee was clearly holding him back. Watching him this season was like watching Die Hard 2, still fun, but nowhere near as good as the original.

As a basketball fan, this circumstance made me very sad, because when Chris Paul is playing well he is more fun to watch than any other player in the league.

I say this because there is something incredibly unique about Paul’s greatness; in that it is not derived from pure athletic force, but rather from subtlety and craft. When you look at guys like Dwight Howard and LeBron James you immediately know why they are two of the best players of the league, and while watching them do their thing is no doubt impressive, there also isn’t really much to it. They are simply bigger, stronger and faster than everyone else in the league, and they know how to take full advantage of their physical gifts.

Paul is different, though. He doesn’t make other players look silly by jumping over them, he does it by unleashing an ever so slight flick of the wrist or bob of the head. His movements are so subtle that sometimes you can’t even see them until the play is shown again in slow motion.

Take the play at the 2:01 minute mark of this highlight reel for example. Watching the play at full speed, it’s not exactly clear what Paul does to make Jason Kidd temporarily lose control of his limbs. If you look carefully, you can see him do something with his right hand, but it’s just a brief flicker, there and gone before you make sense of what just happened. Paul’s like a magician performing a card trick. You know you saw him do something with that damn card, and yet it’s still nowhere to be found when he opens his hand.

It’s not until the play is slowed down that the genius of Paul’s subtlety becomes apparent. You see him feign a crossover to his left as he slides his right hand underneath the ball, leaving it spinning in place like a yo-yo. You see him calmly re-collect the ball with his right hand as he explodes past a bewildered Kidd. You see him finish with a spectacular pass that is completely mundane when compared to the magic trick that started the play.

You feel bad for Jason Kidd.

It is plays like this that made me fall in love with Chris Paul, and subsequently the game of basketball. This is why it was so sad to see him playing as a shell of his former self, to be forced to acknowledge the possibility that Paul’s best days were already behind him.

And then Sunday night’s game against the Lakers happened.

There was Chris Paul, mercilessly exerting his will onto the Lakers defense, utterly in control of every facet of the game and finishing with 27 points, 13 rebounds and 15 assists.

Paul played brilliantly the entire night, and yet as the game was winding down I found myself still waiting for that one magic trick of a play, the one play I’d need to see over and over again in order to fully understand what had happened (this ridiculous crossover move on Bynum came awfully close).

It was on the game’s pivotal possession, with the Hornets up three and fourteen seconds left on the clock, that I got my wish.

Paul isolated against Kobe Bryant at the top of the key, drove left, and then did this (fast forward to the 4:00 minute mark of the video).

When I saw the game live, I had no idea how Jarrett Jack had ended up with the ball just inside the free throw line. I saw Paul go careening down the left side of the lane where he was enveloped by the limbs of Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant, and then the ball just seemed to appear in Jack’s hands, who proceeded to knock down the game clinching jumper.

Stranded in mid-air with nowhere to go, facing what would have at best been a brick off of the back board and at worst a blocked shot, Paul somehow managed to see Jack cutting towards the lane out of the absolute furthest corner of his eye; and with one quick flick of the wrist, he’d pulled off another card trick.

And it felt good to be dazzled once again.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 dot gmail dot com.

U MAD, ADRIAN?

On Tuesday night a shorthanded New York Knicks team lost 96-93 to go down 0-2 in their first round playoff series against the Boston Celtics.  The Knicks had to play the entire game without Chauncey Billups and a majority of the game without Amar’e Stoudemire

If you were wondering how the Knicks were able to keep the game so close without the services of Billups and Stoudemire, look no further than Carmelo Anthony’s stat line: 42 points, 17 rebounds and 6 assists.

If you are a sane, rational person you will probably look at that stat line and say, “Wow, Carmelo really played great!  He sure did his best to help his team win!”

If you are somewhat insane and brutally illogical, however, you probably have a lot in common with Yahoo Sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski.

 "Where's my oat meal! I've got a column
to write!"

Following Tuesday night’s game, Wojnarowski penned this column, which I like to imagine was written on a roll of toilet paper in between bare-handed bites of cold oat meal and shouting matches with disembodied voices.

In his column Wojnarowski argues that ‘Melo in fact failed his team on Tuesday night, first by making wrong decisions on the court, and second by offending some kind of imaginary honor code during his post game press conference.

Wojnarowski begins by taking aim at ‘Melo’s apparently bankrupt soul:

“Once again, he still doesn’t understand that a superstar’s code calls for different disposition when a losing playoff night is over. Whatever he’s done, it isn’t enough. Let everyone else praise you, but the superstar doesn’t take bows when his team is down 2-0 in a series where he ended one game missing 10 of 11 shots.”

It’s hard to imagine a more quintessential example of sports writing hackery than the invocation of the “superstar’s code,” which Wojnarowski claims that ‘Melo violated by not brow-beating himself during his postgame press conference.

Wojnarowski wanted ‘Melo to act a certain way during his press conference, and the fact that he didn’t does not make him a bad person, it just gives Wojnarowski a reason to be a nattering twit.

In Wojnarowski’s world, ‘Melo’s comments were proof that he does not grasp the “superstar’s code,” which is itself a meaningless, abstract ideal that is the construction of curmudgeonly sports writers who want desperately for the games they write about to mean whatever the hell it is they want them to mean.

There is no such thing as the “superstar’s code.”  There is no governing law of basketball that demands that players of a certain skill level conduct themselves in a way that sports writers deem acceptable. 

I’d wager that if you asked Wojnarowski what the “superstar’s code” was he’d just babble something similar to, “GURGLE…Larry Bird...GURGLE, GURGLE…Michael Jordan!  Team Play…GURGLE…ULTIMATE SACRIFICE!”

It’s not real; it’s a fucking figment of the collective imagination of a bunch of self-righteous dudes with lap tops.

So to sum up, Wojnarowsk is mad at Carmelo Anthony for making an imagined slight against an imagined code of conduct.  Seems reasonable.

Once he’s done gnashing his teeth over ‘Melo’s post game comments, Wojnarowski goes on to have a hissy fit over ‘Melo’s decision to pass the ball to a wide open teammate in the final moments of the game.

Down 94-93 on his team’s final possession, ‘Melo received the inbounds pass near the elbow and was quickly double teamed by the Celtics.  ‘Melo quickly passed the ball to Jared Jeffries, who was wide open under the basket, who then decided to try and pass the ball to a cutting Bill Walker rather than taking a shot.  Jeffries pass was intercepted by a rotating Kevin Garnett, and the game was essentially over.

Wojnarowski thinks that this sequence is evidence that ‘Melo is a coward and a big fat dummy.  Of course he does:

"...he made the safest possible play to ultimately deflect criticism, the one that deep down he knew would free him of blame when it predictably crumbled."

I can barely even stand to address this statement, wherein Wojnarowski is essentially claiming that ‘Melo's decision to pass the ball to a WIDE OPEN teammate in the waning seconds of a close game was not a basketball decision, but rather a PR decision.  I think the intense idiocy in such an assumption is pretty self-evident and does not really need to be parsed out, but yeah, it’s really stupid to say something like that.

Which brings us to Part II of Stupidest Thing Written in this Batshit Column, in which Wojnarowski claims that Jeffries failure to lay the ball up or make a clean pass to Bill Walker is somehow ‘Melo’s fault.

“When the ball leaves your hands for Jeffries, what he does with it is your responsibility. That’s how it works…Melo needed to let everyone else celebrate this magnificent performance and hold himself to a higher standard, a superstar’s standard. And that isn’t going, ‘Hey, I gave the ball to a lousy player, who made a lousy decision so how’s that on me?’”

Look!  It's Jared Jeffries!

Oh, ok.  So instead of defending his decision to pass the ball during his press conference, ‘Melo should have said something like, “Yeah, it’s totally my fault that Jeffries didn’t lay that ball in.  I should have known better than to pass it to a worthless piece of shit like that.  In fact, I’m surprised the mongoloid didn’t just drop to the floor and start dry humping the basketball right there!  Next time I’ll be sure to shoot over the double team.”

I wonder which clause of the “superstar’s code” that would fall under?

The simple truth is that ‘Melo made a routine basketball decision.  He was double teamed, and his teammate was wide open under the basket, thus giving him what appeared a better chance at scoring than ‘Melo had.  There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘Melo’s split-second decision to pass the ball, things just didn’t work out the way he had hoped they would.  Sometimes in life and in sports things just don’t work out, and we don’t always have to go searching for some greater meaning in these moments.

Which is really what’s so aggravating about Wojnarowski’s column.  He can’t just let the game be, he has to go digging within its crevices in search of some sort of revelation with which he can construct a narrative about ‘Melo’s shortcomings as a person and as a basketball player; and when there was no meaning or revelation to be found, he made one up.

Maybe, just maybe, there really isn’t anything to be said about this particular game other than a very good basketball player played very well in a very exciting basketball game that his team ultimately lost.

That's a column I would like to read.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com

The Deafening Silence of the Gay Athlete

A few months ago I listened to this podcast that was hosted by Bill Simmons on ESPN.com. Simmons’ guest that day was LZ Granderson, a very talented sportswriter who also happens to be a gay man.

The podcast was very informative and I recommend that everyone take the time to listen to it. The part that I was most intrigued by was Granderson’s revelation that he is aware of a number of professional athletes who are currently playing in major sports leagues as closeted homosexuals.

After listening to the podcast I remember simply thinking, “Wow, that is really interesting! I wonder who those gay guys are!” And then I went back to doing something really important like playing video games or picking at my dead toe nail.

Recently though I’ve been thinking a lot about these anonymous gay athletes, and I’ve come to realize how absolutely insane it is that they are in a position where they feel it necessary to conceal their sexuality for fear of the scorn and ridicule that their homosexuality would bring them.

Imagine for a minute that we lived in a world where African Americans did not feel welcome in professional sports. Now imagine that there was some kind of easy, painless medical procedure that could temporarily turn a black person’s skin white. Now imagine that there was a large number of African American athletes who had undergone this procedure as children and were currently playing professional sports while appearing to be Caucasian. Finally, imagine that this massive, persistent denial of identity was common knowledge, and yet the leaders of the major sports leagues were doing nothing to remedy the situation.

Sounds ridiculous, right? I’m sure that a nice, reasonable person like yourself would refuse to tolerate such an egregious breach of justice and lack of action on the part of Bud Selig, David Stern, Roger Goodell and whoever the hell the commissioner of the NHL is.

In short, this kind of bullshit wouldn’t be tolerated; except that this kind of bullshit is tolerated every day by fans, media members and athletes when it becomes homosexuals who are forced into living a double life.

Worse still is the fact that all of the major sports leagues have been unabashedly aggressive in their attempts to attract a more diverse demographic of both fans and players while completely ignoring the homosexual community.

The NBA has made great strides during the Stern era in its attempts to create a more global game. There are more foreign born players in the league than ever before, and the league has begun marketing itself heavily to the Hispanic community with the launch of its “Noche Latina” program.

Major League Baseball has fully embraced the influx of Latin born players into the league and continues to try and increase the number of African American professional baseball players by funding various outreach programs in inner cities which are meant to attract young, black athletes to the game.

The NFL has its own marketing campaign that is geared towards attracting more Hispanic fans and players, and has also attempted to globalize by holding regular season games in Europe.

All of these things have been done in the name of creating a more diverse and inclusive league, which should be applauded. Yet it is unfathomable to me that Stern, Goodell and Selig can claim to be committed to achieving this goal while there are DUDES CURRENTLY PLAYING IN THEIR LEAGUES WHO FEEL IT NECESSARY TO HIDE THEIR OWN HOMOSEXUALITY FOR FEAR OF BEING DENIGRATED BASED ON THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATION.

I believe that is the responsibility of every sports league to make it abundantly clear that homosexual athletes will not only be tolerated but embraced.

I say this because this isn’t a situation in which one gay athlete is going to come out and drag the sports world kicking and screaming into a realm of tolerance a la Jackie Robinson, who fortunately for us didn’t have the option of concealing his race. After all, what would be the incentive for a gay athlete to come out now? They certainly aren’t going to be inspired by the blatant homophobia that continues to characterize professional sports.

During his conversation with Simmons, Granderson mentions John Ameachi, a former NBA player who revealed himself to be gay years after retiring. Granderson claims that Ameachi is one of the most knowledgeable, well spoken and engaging former NBA players that he has ever met, and points out that he would make a fantastic broadcaster or analyst.

And yet, where is John Ameachi now? Despite his knowledge and eloquence, he hasn’t been heard from at all since coming out, and this doesn't appear likely to change any time soon.

A gay athlete who looks at Ameachi's example will most likely see two possible consequences of coming out. At best, he will be relegated to obscurity like Ameachi. At worst, he will find himself suffocating underneath a mountain of intolerance. More likely, he will experience both. I imagine that it feels much safer to continue living a double life, however heartbreaking and maddening that may be, than it is to stick ones neck out in such a way.

Perhaps if these leagues attempted to make the same kind of inroads into the gay community that they have into the black, Hispanic and international community, some of these closeted players would be more willing to embrace their homosexuality rather than hide it.

Perhaps if the NBA reached out to John Ameachi and used him as an ambassador to the gay community, young gay athletes would finally have a role model to look up to and be inspired to live their lives openly.

Perhaps if league offices did more to educate players about the harm that homophobia can cause, gay players would begin to see the world of professional sports as one in which they can exist safely.

And don't try to tell me that eliminating homophobia in sports is something that league commissioners don't have the power to achieve. If Stern can attempt to eliminate his league's "thug" image by instituting a dress code and ramping up the NBA Cares program, and if Goodell can attempt to eliminate his league's dog murdering and strip club shooting problem through the institution of a draconian personal conduct policy, something can be done about homophobia.

The road to acceptance in the sporting world for homosexuals isn’t going to be an easy one, but it’s one that we need to start walking right now.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.

Kobe Bryant, Hardest Working Man in Show Business

After playing somewhat poorly in a tough loss against the Miami Heat last Friday, Lakers guard Kobe Bryant did something that was as predictable as it was constructed.

He remained at American Airlines arena long after the game had ended, shooting jumpers for several hours with only a couple of ball boys, a few reporters, and a conveniently rolling camera to keep him company.

A lot of people will see Bryant’s extracurricular shooting session as yet another piece of evidence in support of the idea that Bryant cares more about winning, works harder and leads by example better than anyone else in the league. Just look at Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, who was gracious enough to live tweet Bryant’s shooting session.

Ugh. You can almost hear him humming the Rocky theme as he typed those out.

It’s not fair to single out Wojnarowski by the way. You can find many other examples of sports writers waistbanding their boners long enough to type out slack-jawed odes to Kobe’s work ethic here and here,

These people were fooled by Kobe Bryant, because I don’t think he shot basketballs into the wee hours of the night because he is some kind of basketball Mandala artist. I believe he staged his late night shoot around because he wants people to think that’s what he is.

Let’s look back at Bryant’s failures in the closing minutes of Friday’s game. After nailing a 28 ft. 3-pointer to tie the game at 88 and doing his underbite face thing, Kobe gets stripped by Dwyane Wade on the next possession, which leads to a fast break dunk for LeBron James.

On the next possession Kobe catches the inbounds pass, and with 24 seconds left on the shot clock he decides to chuck a 3-pointer. Airball.

On the following Heat possession Kobe plays some truly awful pick and roll defense as Wade explodes by him for an easy layup.

The next time Kobe touches the ball he fumbles it out of bounds for a Lakers turnover.

The game ends with Kobe clanging a 30 ft. 3-pointer attempt off of the front of the rim.

Looking back at those last few minutes of the game, it’s pretty clear that Kobe’s failures were derived from poor shot selection, (even the 28 footer that went in can be described as ill-advised) bad defensive awareness and a lack of ball security.

So how exactly is shooting jumpers for two hours after the game supposed to help remedy these issues?

It isn’t.

It’s only meant to keep Kobe’s carefully constructed image intact, so that even in defeat we can still find an excuse to praise him for wanting it more than anyone else. So it’s not surprising when Heat beat writer Ira Winderman tweeted that Kobe did have access to a private practice facility after the game, but instead chose to work out in the empty arena.

I’m willing to bet that there weren’t any cameras in the practice facility.

It’s not like this is the first time we’ve seen this kind of behavior from Kobe, either. Remember the filmic hand job that was Spike Lee’s Kobe Doin’ Work? The movie was billed as a documentary, but Kobe came off like an actor rather than a subject.

The guy who constantly bitches at referees, sneers disapprovingly at his teammates and sits in silence on the bench had suddenly vanished. Instead what we saw on the screen was a calm, jovial guy who goes out of his way to encourage his teammates and chit chat with Sasha Vujacic. (Easily the most ridiculous part of the movie)

"Does this make me look intense? God I hope
this makes me look intense."

Anyone who has watched Kobe Bryant play more than 2 times will understand which one of these personas is real, and which one is not.

If Kobe really wanted it more than anyone else, he could have found a much better use of his time following Friday’s game. He could have studied game film to figure out how to improve his pick and roll defense with Pau Gasol, or he could have done some dribbling drills to make sure that he doesn’t get his pocket picked again in the final minutes of a close game.

Personally, I think he would have been best served drafting up a Craigslist ad that would read something like, “NBA player seeks personal assistant to stand behind the bench and scream ‘Hey fuckhead, don’t forget to pass the ball!’ at me during the last four minutes of every game. If interested send references and resume to Bmamba69@gmail.com.”

Then again, none of those things are going to look very good on camera.

Goodbye, 'Melo Brick Road

Before we begin, can I just say that I really hope that this headline wins the award for “Most Retarded Carmelo Anthony Trade Saga Headline?”

Finally, Carmelo Anthony has been traded to the New York Knicks, and thank fucking Christ that this whole mess is finally over with. I had just about reached my limit for wild speculation and interviews given with sunglasses on.

According to the Denver Post, the Nuggets have received Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Ray Felton, Timofey Mozgov, the Knicks 2014 first round pick, and two second round picks from the Warriors.

The Knicks will receive Carmelo, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Renaldo Balkman, and Anthony Carter.

In other words, the Knicks just shit all over the bed.

I don’t say this because the trade is a lopsided one, but because the Knicks should have been able to steal Carmelo from the Nuggets for next to nothing. Instead, they had to give away 3/5 of their starting rotation and a Russian guy who’s face has been smashed into Blake Griffin’s testicles, which is actually a good thing as far as I’m concerned, because…I mean…those are Blake Griffin's nuts.

Anyone who isn’t half of a derp has known for months that Carmelo only ever wanted to play for the Knicks. He didn’t want to play with the Nuggets, he didn’t want to end up on the Lakers, and he sure as shit didn’t want to agree to a trade to the Nets. Honestly, why would Carmelo agree to play in New Jersey with Brook Lopez and a bunch of D-Leaguers? Unless of course he was really interested in having Lopez teach him all about Anime and how to awkwardly talk to girls. (I enjoy conceptualizing Brook Lopez as a gigantic child, kind of like Tom Hanks from Big)

All the Knicks had to do was wait the Nuggets out. They should have stood strong, and told the Nuggets that if they weren’t willing to trade them Carmelo now, they could just wait until the off season and sign Carmelo without losing anything. Yes, I am aware that Carmelo stood to lose a lot of money if he signed as a free agent under the soon to be renegotiated collective bargaining agreement, and that he could only keep his max contract by getting the Nuggets to agree to a trade. Still, this does not mean that the Nuggets had any kind of leverage over the Knicks.

“If you don’t give us what we want for Carmelo, we will just let him join your team as a free agent next summer, but we will totally dick him out of 15 million dollars first, BITCHES!” is not an effective bargaining strategy.

Unless of course you are bargaining with the Knicks, who apparently believed that the Nuggets were willing to lose Carmelo without getting jack squat in return out of sheer spite.

If the Knicks had just been patient, the Nuggets would have traded Carmelo for whatever they could get, because getting something is a hell of a lot better than getting nothing at all and whatever righteous satisfaction may have come from fucking with Carmelo’s money.

The Nuggets handled this whole situation rather brilliantly as they were A) Able to convince the Knicks that there were other possible trade destinations for Carmelo, and B) Able to convince Carmelo that they were willing to not trade him at all, taking him and the rest of the franchise down in a fiery crash.

In the end Carmelo seemed to panic just as badly as the Knicks did. Why else would he agree to meet with Nets ownership this past weekend, or make statements about “being screwed” if he didn’t get his extension. If he had just stayed calm, and made it very clear that he would only play for the Knicks, he’d be playing with much better teammates right now.

Now, I’m not saying that this was a “bad” trade for the Knicks. It’s never a bad thing to have two superstars on your team, and they are now set up pretty nicely to make a run at Chris Paul or Deron Willias in 2012. I’m just saying that it could have been a much better trade if the Knicks, and Carmelo, had just had enough balls to call the Nuggets’ bluff.

Instead, the Nuggets turned what should have been Wilson Chandler, Eddy Curry, and some draft picks into a pretty solid cache of assets--assets that could still belong to the Knicks right now.

There really isn’t anything that the Nuggets should have done differently. Well, there is one thing. They should have benched Carmelo at the start of the season, played him 3 minutes a game, and hired Joaquin Phoenix to do this right in his face every time he sat down on the bench. That would have been pretty cool.