Letter To A Friend

Dear Jordan,

How's it going, buddy?  I know we haven't talked in a while, but I wanted to check in and make sure you hadn't gone entirely catatonic after last night.  Ever since we met, we've been bound inextricably by two shared loves: music and basketball.  We've gone through things, you and I.  Members of three (four if you count senior recitals) bands together.  Geeking out over things like phase cancellation and built-from-scratch synth patches.   Having generally ridiculous nights.  We once crammed a four-piece band WITH GEAR into a single, regular-sized cab to make a radio appearance on time.  We've played the dingiest, crappiest dives imaginable and some pretty great venues as well.   We've sweated out half our body weight in that claustrophobic, non-air-conditioned practice space that smelt like a combination of day-old Subway, garbage, and PBR.  We've made wonderful records, even when we had to re-track most of one because the initial engineer was a complete moron.  And we've talked hoops.  A lot.  You are the only other obsessive basketball fan I know, which is why we spent so much time discussing, arguing, and joking about the NBA.  I mean, I'm a Hawks fan and you're a Cavs fan, so the alternative to all that constant discourse would probably have been to just break down in tears, right?   

Anyway, I saw your facebook status last night and the vitriol and sarcasm were practically seeping through the screen: "Hooray Lebron. You and your super team won, with the help of Stern and the refs. Just like you were supposed to."  I knew you were probably headed towards the darkness.  You know, like the night after your breakup when it was you, me, Hannah, and a super-sized bottle of Jack Daniels.  (To your credit, I've never seen anyone play bass that well after getting blackout trashed and falling down the stairs.)  So please don't be too mad when I say this: LeBron has a ring now, and he deserves it.  It was time, and there's a lot of silver lining here if you want to see it.       

Ever since the finals matchup was set, we knew someone was getting kicked in the teeth.  Either Cleveland or Seattle was going to wind up feeling collectively more embittered, depressed, and outraged than they already did, which seems quasi-impossible but is true nonetheless.   Unfortunately, Cleveland drew the short straw, for which you have my deepest sympathies.  But HOLY CRAP DID YOU WATCH THOSE GAMES?!?!?!  You realize what we're looking at, right?  We have seen the future, and if the gods are kind, it is going to be every bit as beautiful and intense as Celtics/Lakers in the '80s.  The Thunder and Heat are poised to dominate the NBA for the next decade, clashing time and time again for the championship and creating the sort of long-form narrative drama that makes basketball so damned fun.  Sure, our teams will probably be languishing in mediocrity while those guys hog all the glory, but I am always in favor of profoundly gorgeous basketball being played.  Always.  And we are about to watch boatloads of precisely that for a long time to come.

(Also, you have Kyrie Irving, so chin up, right?)

I know that you, like many Clevelanders, will always despise LeBron.  The Decision was an incorrigible and vomit-inducing bit of lunacy, and I completely understand that there's simply no room for forgiveness and atonement when you've been sucker-punched in the crassest manner imaginable on national television.  Not for a city whose sports history has been as nightmarish as Cleveland's.  LeBron left Ohio to fester as an unmitigated sports wasteland, to which Colt McCoy added the coup de grace of more-or-less sucking as an NFL QB while the Indians were and are themselves.  Again.   So LBJ has earned your everlasting scorn, the native son and last hope jilting you at the altar.  Fair enough.  But as a basketball fan, what are you gonna do in a situation like this?

LeBron played at a patently ridiculous level all playoffs.  He stomped on the gas midway through the Pacers series and never looked back, with game 6 in Boston and last night's virtuoso 26-11-13-1-steal-2-block masterpiece serving as indelible capstones to a breathtaking season.  It is your inalienable right (and maybe even your mandate) as a Cavs fan to hate him for eternity with the wrathful passion of a thousand firey suns, but you can't possibly belittle or demean the brilliance he has exhibited over the last two months.  And it wasn't just him.  The Heat, collectively, learned how to operate perfectly within their insular context, alloting LeBron the bulk of the heavy lifting while simultaneously asserting themselves at crucial junctures.

When Kevin Durant came out of halftime and buried that 26-foot bomb, it looked like we had the makings of a comeback for all of about 2 minutes before Miami slammed the door again with brutal finality.  Which is what they've been doing since April to anyone in their path.  It was so much more than D-Wade recalibrating his game to accomadate his injuries and LeBron's dominance, or Chris Bosh quietly dismantling Oklahoma City in the paint.  I mean, everyone expected Shane Battier to give the Thunder fits with his hyperintelligent brand of old-dude-gritty defense.  Randomly turning into Ray Allen from behind the arc?  Not so much.  (61% 3FG for the finals, Shane?  F**KIN' SERIOUSLY?!?!?!)  What about Mario Chalmers exploding for 25 in game 4?  Or Norris Cole demonstrating a phenomenal amount of poise for a rookie on the game's grandest stage?  And you know who really clinched the title for Miami last night?  Mike Freaking Miller.  The guy was literally hobbling around for the entirety of the playoffs, and his one useful NBA skill was nowhere in evidence.  Dude left the clip for his sniper rifle at home ... until last night when he went 7-8 from deep en route to 23 completely unexpected points.  Like the Mavs last year, like most NBA champions in fact, the Heat repeatedly got serious help when they needed it from the unlikeliest of quarters.   Also, Juwan Howard has a ring now, which kind of makes me happy.

And let's not forget that OKC beat themselves to a degree, too.  James Harden evaporated so badly my grandpa wouldn't have feared the beard in a game of one-on-one.  Russ Westbrook was exactly what we expected: a mercurial alchemy of unadulterated genius and head-scratching flaws.  Trouble was, the flaws were unfortunately on prominent display at too many of the wrong times.  Scott Brooks either didn't recognize that Nick Collison needed much more burn this series (and Kendrick Perkins needed much less) or he was simply too reluctant to tamper with the rotations that had gotten the Thunder this far.  And Kevin Durant, for all his offensive wizardry, is simply not physically strong enough, mentally eff-you enough, and defensively skilled enough to handle LeBron on both ends of the floor for extended stretches of time.  Not yet.  But he'll get there.  His ceiling is still miles away, and watching him reach it while going toe-to-toe with LeBron James for the next ten years is going to be a phenomenal experience.

I know you're hurt and angry and more than a little depressed that you had to watch the guy who sold out your city win a title, but try to look on the bright side.  We get to watch a league full of young, transcendent talent blossom for the foreseeable future, bookended by two incredibly entertaining teams who couldn't have set up a better collection of story arcs and interchangeable hero/villain personae (depending on where you stand.)  As basketball fans, what more can we really ask?

Take care, and I'll try to visit Boston sometime soon.

Your pal,
Trav.

Five Reasons To Root For A Thunder/Celtics NBA Finals

If your team is still alive in the NBA playoffs, then a) bully for you and b) you're exempted from figuring out precisely which potential Finals match-up is most aesthetically appealing to you.  You want whatever opponent will be most advantageous for your team to face, and while that choice may be debatable from a tactical standpoint, that sentiment governs your wishlist for the last series of the season.  For the rest of us, I suspect what pairing we desire depends on exactly what type of NBA fans we are.  (Note: I am not endorsing or deriding any one of the first three philosophical outlooks presented here.)  In no particular hierarchical order:

Thunder/Heat.  If you love star power and welcome the potential for explosive lunacy running rampant, this is your series.  This is also they way to go for those who hope to witness the young, humble, "built-the-right basketball way-through-the-draft-and-smart-trades" kids from OKC smoke those egomaniacs from South Beach.

Spurs/Heat.  If you enjoy LeBron and D-Wade (and maybe if he's healthy Chirs Bosh) doing their thing in transition, hucking oops and rocking rims, you want this to go down.  San Antonio is still a formidable defensive team, but they're not the lockdown kings of Spurs iterations past.  The Heat would put on a show in the open floor.  Conversely, if the Spurs could knock off Miami via Tony Parker righting his personal ship and by unleashing a deep bench (who really need to start playing better if they want to even make the Finals), there will be a deal of jubilation from those who can't wait to point of how a sound team concept and superior coaching can trump supernova-bright stardom.

Spurs/Celtics: For the nostalgia set.  Veteran squads, last hurrahs, and the two best coaches left in the playoffs.  This would be the ultimate slow-to-a-crawl, defense-first showdown.  And the NBA Marketing Team's worst nightmare incarnate.

Undoubtedly, any of those matchups would provide plenty of compelling basketball, and a few additional story lines to those mentioned above would emerge as they do over a finals series.  But the most compelling possibility by far, in my humble opinion, is Thunder/Celtics.

This would be my preference for a number of reasons which I will now enumerate in depth. 

1. Perk.  When the C's traded Kendrick Perkins at the deadline two seasons ago, they could not possibly have foreseen Jeff Green's heart troubles or how badly they would miss his scowly interior presence, but suffice it to say the Thunder got the better of this trade by an Oklahoma farm-country mile.  The chance to go up against his old cronies, with the potential to wind up with more titles than at least three future Hall-of-Famers, might propel him to even more incredible heights than his 15-point, 9-rebound WCF Game 4.

2.  The Great PG Battle.  Rajon Rondo and Russell Westbrook are undeniably two of the best young point guards in the league, albeit in entirely different ways.  More than that, though, they are eerily reminiscent of one another in temperament.  In many respects, Westbrook is almost a reverberation of Rondo's past, an echo from four seasons ago being sonically re-imaged into the now, but slightly distorted from its original waveform.  Think about how we describe the Thunder's dynamo PG: Good kid, interesting skill set, but somewhat problematic.  Petulant, erratic, and unpredictable.  Inexplicably lapses into deep funks, but can also carry the team.  Not the best player on the floor, but the linchpin off of which everything else is keyed.  A study in contradictions, given to sullen fits and non-replicable displays of genius.  Isn't that essentially a carbon copy of our perceptions of Rondo a few years back?  This matchup would be utterly fascinating; watching Rondo stare down his own ghost would be a delight, and if that ghost can evolve along similar lines and up the ante, so much the better for the rest of us.  

3.  If the Thunder can advance past San Antonio, much will be made of the torch-passing, old-to-young theme.  If they can beat the Spurs and Celtics, they will have knocked off the winners of every Finals since 1998 save the '04 Pistons and '06 Heat ... in a single postseason run.  It's difficult to envision a more declarative way of announcing the league's New Undisputed Alpha Dogs.  They have to actually pull it off first, but still. 

4.  You want to watch Paul Pierce give Kevin Durant firsthand basketball lessons of slickest, super-craftiest variety, right?  Of course you do.  It'll be like Crash Davis and Nuke LaLoosh, only with the desire to hoist the Larry O'brien Trophy coming between them instead of a Poetry and English Composition professor.  "This is how you draw contact, Kevin.  Jot this down ..."

5.  The oldest franchise in the league against the youngest, and I don't mean the median age of their respective rosters.  I am literally talking about The Celtics, the winningest and most storied team in professional basketball history, playing opposite a team that essentially manifested overnight in a fly-over state because some wealthy people decided they didn't give a damn about the city of Seattle.  (You know, where Ray Allen used to play.)  Oklahoma City is still, collectively, a new-born, wide-eyed, punch-drunk basketball entity, from the ownership  to the players to Scott Brooks to the fans to the folks who work concessions at an arena the likes of which they probably never thought they'd see in their town.  Stepping into the NBA Finals for the first time against Boston, where they've bled hoops for generations compared to OKC's few seasons, will make for an interesting contrast. 

No matter what, we should soak up the basketball we have left before it goes away until November, but if the sports gods are feeling benevolent, I hope they grant this humble request: Thunder/Celtics Finals, seven games (pretty please), and all the drama and pyrotechnics we can stand.  It's not too much to ask, right?  Now, let us pray.

Why I Can't Root For The Thunder With A Clean Conscience Anymore.

There was a brief moment Saturday night, just as the halftime buzzer sounded, when the air went out of the room.  Russell Westbrook skidded along the Staples Center floor, legs in unnatural akimbo, and collapsed.  "If Russ is seriously injured," I thought, "the Thunder's title aspirations are shot."  This was a somewhat objective assessment of the situation.  Since the Hawks got bounced, I don't have a horse in this playoffs race anymore.

Except I kind of do.  My reaction to Westbrook lying on the court included no small amount of actual trepidation, because I really, really like the Thunder.

As fascinating as the other remaining teams' narratives are, I'm more or less done with everyone else from an attachment point of view.  The Lakers and Clippers are finished.  The Celtics and Spurs are playing phenomenal basketball, but they've already enjoyed considerable success with their respective nuclei.  I would certainly love to watch that combination in the finals, but I'm not sentimental enough to desperately long for one last hurrah from any of them.  The Pacers and Sixers are fascinating and enjoyable to watch, but they have time, assuming the prime assets of both squads elect to stay in the coming years, to develop and cohere before real expectations are thrust upon their shoulders.  Miami is a science experiment whose results will have interesting ramifications for how we view future teams and how front offices construct their rosters, but they're too far down the path of mechanical assemblage/dysfunction to engender any real affection.

Which leaves OKC and their infectiously loveable brand of hoops.  We've spent the past few years waiting for this team to blossom into the legitimate contenders they've now become.  We've watched them accumulate the necessary and appropriate players to fill the gaps around the heavy ammunition.  We've witnessed the Durant/Westbrook tandem, so widely rumored to be a divided and unworkable pairing, evolve into a thing of power, grace, and balance.  And of course, we have seen James Harden transmute himself into an unequivocal force of nature, accepting his "bench" role with not only a commitment to the team mentality, but an incomparable relish and flare.

This is an easy team to cheer for; an easy team to adore.  The have an identifiable group personality and an engagingly individualized cast of characters.  Outside of the Hawks, they are my favorite NBA team by a considerable margin.  But lately, I've been questioning that tertiary rooting interest.  A triptych of thoughtful and affecting articles has appeared online recently that have raised a fair amount of doubt in me as to the ethical "rightness" of rooting for OKC.  In chronological order:      

May 3: A heartbreaking, first-person account detailing the demise of professional basketball in Seattle appears on Deadspin.  Jeremy Repanich recounts the manner in which Clay Bennett hijacked the Sonics franchise and took them to OKC.  It's a narrative that will wrench your guts out if you allow it to do so, even as Repanich acknowledges that Bennett, despite his initially duplicitous sentiments, ultimately did a lot of good for the franchise.  

May 11: Brian Phillips posts a lovely open letter to Seattle on Grantland about the convoluted nature of being an Oklahoma City Thunder fan.  He acknowledges the guilt of enjoying a team that was wantonly pilfered from another city.  He also pens the case for his and every other Oklahoman's absolution under the fairly irrefutable "Holy crap our fly-over city has a real pro sports franchise and they're actually good!!!" defense.

May 12th: Beckley Mason responds to Phillips' post on Hoopspeak.  This is at once a still-raw, jangling nerve reflex to the sad events of the Soncis' departure and a flat rejection of Phillips' apologia.  Essentially: "I appreciate the sentiment, but eff you, Oklahoma.  When your team is snatched away for the greener pastures of a bigger market, you'll know how this feels, but don't presume to shower us with pointless, hollow empathy in the interim."

Bereavement, it seems, cannot be easily put aside. The question as NBA fans is what, if anything, we owe to the bereaved?

The Thunder have been the darlings of the NBA for quite some time now.  We love the team and how brilliantly Sam Presti has built them.  We've all just been waiting for their ascendancy, and that appears to have arrived.  As basketball fans, the whole narrative is so enticing, so filled with wonderful characters and sweeping pictures.  And it doesn't hurt that they play with fervor and dynamism and the exuberance of youth, either.  Problem is: we tend to forget that this storybook we're enjoying was printed on paper made from a rare and lovely tree with deep roots that was chainsawed down without a thought or care by one greedy-ass and duplicitous lumberjack.  

The tenets of "liberated fandom" not withstanding, enjoying the Thunder guilt-free seems at least a little shady.  (I should note that I am a fantastic hypocrite, since both the Braves and Hawks resided elsewhere before becoming Atlanta teams.  In my defense, this happened about 15 years before I was born, so I grew up with "my" teams without realizing until later that they hadn't always been there.)  Shouldn't we feel some remorse about this?  Shouldn't we abstain from buying in when the price was the destruction of the franchise that gave us The Glove and Shawn Kemp and The X-Man and some of the coolest jerseys ever?  There's a reason that Zombie Sonics picture at the top of this post exists, though it's unclear who's more walking dead, the new team or the city they abandoned. 

Those in Oklahoma should probably try not to be too smug about The Thunder if they're in the company of Seattle folks, but they can and should root for their team.  That's what fans do, after all.  As for me, I'm trying pretty hard to temper my enthusiasm for OKC.  I'll enjoy the aesthetics of their play on the court, but I'm striving to do so with an appropriately somber attitude.  The Soncis were from their mother's womb untimely ripped.  I'm not sure if it was Howard Shultz or Clay Bennet in the role of Lady Macbeth, but it seems safe to say neither of them ever felt guilty enough to wash their hands repeatedly while hysterically mumbling "out, out, damned spot."  Shame on them for that.  Either way, Seattle ended up as Banquo's ghost. From now on, whenever I watch the Thunder, I'll also hold a candlelight vigil for them.