Fare Thee Well, Head Ball Coach

There is both too much and not a lot to say here.  As the capper to a weekend of college football that featured more insanity than just about any I can bring to mind, Steve Spurrier announced his intentions to resign, effective immediately, as South Carolina's head coach last night.  He then finalized that with a brief mic drop of a press conference yesterday morning, bringing to an end one of the most singular and remarkable careers in the history of college football.  Spencer Hall did all the heavy lifting on this already, and it was appropriate that a Florida alum would have the best last word on the Head Ball Coach. 

There's a whole mess of conflicting emotions here for me, and I'm going to try and unpack them. 

As a Georgia fan, there has been no single human who approaches Spurrier as an architect of my personal misery.  Lots of coaches have dashed the Dawgs' hopes like so much kindling over the years, but no one else did it so consistently and with such obvious glee.  The list of people and programs Spurrier has deeply enjoyed antagonizing is a long one, but you'd have to put Georgia pretty near the top if you were using him as the test case while creating some sort of "career opponent trolling percentage" metric. 

During his time at Florida, the humiliations and iniquities and just plain whuppins he doled out to Georgia were both plentiful and full of a bile that stemmed from his playing days with the Gators.  It wasn't just that he assassinated us year after year; it's that the losses were always, always accompanied by a snide remark or three in a characteristically brief and pithy post-game presser.  He felt it was his duty to twist the knife, and he did it with relish.  All coaches love winning, but where the Dawgs were concerned, Spurrier luxuriated in it, and the opportunity it afforded him to remind anyone within earshot who won, by how much, and what that implicitly said about the loser's sad and dilapidated former dignity.  And what, in turn, it implied about the winner too. 

God we were happy when he left Florida.  We thought the nightmare was over. 

After a brief and not-great NFL stint which I won't belabor here, he picked up right where he left off, performing the same messianic feats at South Carolina that he had in the Swamp and Duke before that.  Predictably, his time away from the SEC East had not lessened his Georgia-baiting proclivities, and we were back in that demoralizing grind again.  Just drubbing after drubbing and joke after joke at our expense.  And the games, always early in the schedule, torpedoing whatever preseason ranking or momentum the Dawgs might have had going in.  And it was almost always cumulative.  Georgia has a history of tailspins after bad losses, but dropping one to the Head Ball Coach virtually assured a season fraught with ineptitude and stupid losses to teams no one should lose to.  Just torture, man. 

So a part of me is, if not glad, at least relieved that I don't ever again have to endure the vicious beatings and ensuing snark Spurrier routinely gave the Dawgs for the better part of a quarter century.  (Though he was adamant about "resigning", not "retiring", so who knows.)  Even as the signs became more apparent that his fastball was gone or going fast, you never slept soundly the night before that South Carolina game.  There was always the threat that the man was going to take some seemingly rudderless Gamecocks team and work his voodoo and then you were going to be looking at a scoreboard where the other side had a bajillion points and yours had 10 or 7 or zilch and it shouldn't be happening but OH GOD THEY'RE TAKING THAT PUNT ALL THE WAY TO THE HOUSE WHY AM I EVEN WATCHING THIS JESUS SOMEONE FIND A SUNBELT CONFERENCE GAME WE CAN PUT ON I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.

But if you follow and love college football, didn't Spurrier make it more fun than pretty much anyone else?  He gave Georgia hell, sure, but that was due to a career spent in our division and a grudge that extended back to 1966.  Clearly, the man was an equal-opportunity hater, and watching him turn that ineffable snark ray wherever the wind was blowing on a given week was just delightful.  The gifts he gave were bountiful; every week, our cups did runneth over with the rare vintage of Spurrier.  There were finely blended notes of disdain, candor, humor, pride, humility, and vitriol, coming together in a finish accented by his own self-awareness that this was all both absurd and the perfect vehicle to exorcise every demon and slight he felt was owed payback.  He was giving us a show, but he also meant every word.  He was contemptuous and spiteful yet congenial as hell about it the whole time.  He was the finest example of lovable curmudgeon-ness that ever stepped onto a sideline.  

And he was great, just so very exceptional, at his job.  He took sad sack programs and turned them into juggernauts time and time again.  The records and winning percentages and titles piled up and then he would go somewhere else and recreate, reinvent, and tinker to his heart's delight.  And unlike the other preeminent coaches of his generation and the following one into which his career lasted, he never seemed to have any identity beyond mowing fools down with a grin.  He wasn't defined by any one system or ethos or coaching philosophy.  He revolutionized SEC football with the Fun'n'Gun, but that wasn't because he had a particularly evangelical attachment to it.  He just did whatever seemed most likely to succeed at a given moment on the field, and he was usually right.

So I'll miss having Steve Spurrier around.  College football will be less interesting and far less of a joy to follow without him.  Not the Dawgs having to play him once a year and that usually ending poorly for them, but I'll miss everything else.  May his tee shots be long and straight, may his putter be sure, and may there always be an Arbys within easy distance of the clubhouse.  Take 'er easy, Head Ball Coach.  We'll miss you, dang it. 

Georgia Can Still Do This: Weird Saturdays and Hope

It is an inevitability in college football that one or two Saturdays every season are going to produce a wave of results that tilt the sport completely on its ear.  You'll be watching the late games, innocently checking over the final scores from the day, and a whole bunch of them will just look plain wrong.  They'll make you talk like a little kid just learning to speak in complete  sentences, scrunching up your face because all those words put together that way taste funny.  (I'm honestly not sure "undefeated Iowa knocked off a ranked Wisconsin team in a rock fight" is grammatically correct English.  Seriously, can someone check the AP Style Guide and tell me if I'm even allowed to type that?)  But that happened.  So did a lot of other truly bizarre stuff.  Yesterday was weird.

It felt like it was going to be one of those days well before the noon games kicked off.  The rain that's been battering the eastern seaboard for the past week was going to play havoc with every game on or near the coast, and there was plenty of potential chaos lurking around the rest of the country. You could see it just waiting to burble up from the depths of bad bounces and listless play calling, flattening hapless teams without warning or provocation.  Even the survivors had to be shaking their heads yesterday, wondering what the actual fuck just happened.  Indiana and Purdue played #1 Ohio State and #2 Michigan State to within inches of their respective lives.  Clemson somehow avoided their essential Clemson-ness juuuuuust enough to beat Notre Dame in a hilarious display of soaking wet ineptitude by both teams.  Florida put an absolute whuppin' on what had heretofore looked like a pretty damn good Ole Miss team.  There was also the complete and abject disaster of Vols/Hogs, in which Arkansas technically won but everyone who had anything to do with that game in any capacity, particularly those whose job it was to tackle opposing players, lost.  Badly.  North Carolina beat Georgia Tech in something which was not a basketball game, and Duke squeaked out something which would presumably be classified as a "football-ish event" against BC.  FSU struggled with Wake Flippin' Forest.  And here I thought that UConn/Mizzou atrocity from two weeks ago was going to be the most ridiculous thing I watched all year.  Nope.  It was a strange, strange day yesterday.

And then (... sigh ...) there was what happened in Athens.

Here's the thing about Georgia football: when those Weird Saturdays of the season come calling, it is never, ever a good thing for the Dawgs.  Any UGA fan can tell you that in games where the capriciousness of fate is running rampant, it is inclined to blow up in Mark Richt's face.  And that was one howler of an example yesterday in Sanford Stadium.  Despite Nick Chubb continuing to be a ridiculous human being and putting up 146 yards and a touchdown on 'Bama's stellar front seven, cumulatively, Georgia simply couldn't do jack and/or squat on either side of the ball.  A (previously) very good defense proved utterly ineffectual against the Tide, and this is an Alabama team that still isn't sure who its best quarterback or wideout is.  Offensively, there just wasn't a solution to the fact that Greyson Lambert's gaudy numbers from the past few weeks couldn't be sustained against an actual team that can play actual defense.  Basically, we played like garbage.

I can tell you without bothering to verify it that the phone lines of every sports talk radio station in Georgia are being incinerated right now by people calling for Mark Richt's job.  I mean this in both the metaphorical and literal sense, as one in every three people who call radio stations re: beleaguered teams honestly believe that they themselves should be given the head coaching job in place of the actual head coach.  Ditto for AD Greg Mcgarity's inbox, which is undoubtedly being inundated with more of the same vitriol.  Personally, I think Richt has been a great head coach for this program, but the frustrations are understandable.  Another potential title contender of a team has been laid low because "dang it, Richt don't ever win the big games."

And yet.

If you squint very hard and tilt your head just so, it is possible to discern the faint shimmer of a silver lining buried behind yesterday's debacle. Setting aside the fatalism endemic to all Georgia fans (by which I mean both the university and the state's various professional and collegiate franchises in general), just indulge me in a hypothetical scenario for a moment ...

Let's say the Dawgs run the table for the rest of their schedule.  It looks reasonably doable, right?  A suddenly revitalized Florida team will very likely give us holy hell at the Cocktail Party, and I'm not ready to pencil in Mizzou and the Vols as obvious victories, because this is Georgia after all, but just pretend it happens.  They'd win the SEC East by virtue of that Florida game, and likely square off against 'Bama, LSU, or Ole Miss in the Georgia Dome for the SEC title.  Can they beat the Tide in a rematch in a meteorologically neutral environment?  Can they beat the Tigers or the Rebs?  Yes.  They can.  It's not necessarily likely, but you don't have to strain credulity all that much to envision it, either.  So: SEC Title, theoretically granted.

Which brings us to the next and most important question: would the Playoff Committee leave a one-loss Georgia team out of the postseason?  Maybe.  We could see an SEC-less playoff altogether, given the ouroboros the conference has become.  But if Georgia beats Florida, and you believe in the theory of transitive wins, then Georgia beat the team who beat Ole Miss, who beat Alabama, and here they are victorious despite what happened yesterday.  And if they can get into the four-team melee that determines the national champion, the Dawgs stand as good a chance as anyone of prevailing. 

All of this is, of course, extremely unlikely.  So many intricacies would have to shake out in precisely the right way and at the right time.  The teams who are currently at the apex of the sport would have to stumble, and Georgia would have to play spotless, sublime football for the remainder of the year to even have a chance.  But they could.  This could all still happen.  And in a year where the SEC is finally seeing its overall dominance approaching a shelf life, this may be the last, best, only shot for Georgia to poke its head above the fray and bring home the first national championship since before I was born.

And this is what we need for a start: we need another yesterday.  Not the outcome, but the circumstance.  We need the shakedown that topples monoliths and skews perceptions.  We need another Weird Saturday.  A day of chaos and stupid, stupid football that, just once, goes in Georgia's favor. 

"The Year", The Pittsburgh Pirates, And The Truth.

The phrase has passed the lips of every fan of every team of every sport at one point or another: "This could be the year."  It's more talisman than utterance, more affirmation than statement.  It's saying the magic words, an incantation to the team and invocation of the Gods.  It's not an every-season thing, obviously, because sometimes the writing is just plain on the wall, and your team is not coming within a stone's throw of success, even if they're using a catapult.  But sometimes, we say it and we mean it.  With enough luck, if most of the team stays mostly healthy, if things break right at the perfect time or at least avoid breaking poorly and the worst possible moment, it becomes a truth and a hope and a dream.  "This could be the year."

And as fans, the meaning of that phrase is a given.  No one has to ask what "The Year" is, because it's the same thing for everyone: a championship.  Champagne and jubilation and your team riding on parade floats down your city's main avenue.  That's what you envision when you invoke the magic words.  "The Year" is this rosy, diaphanous thing in the lexicon of every fanbase.  Every fanbase, that is, save one. 

If you happen to root for the Pittsburgh Pirates, "The Year" is almost assuredly not concerned with the World Series.  You've probably heard, but the Bucs have a sustained track record of ineptitude to rival that of any organization in sports.  (Yes, I am aware that the Charlotte Bobcats exist.)  To wit: The Pirates have finished with a sub-.500 record every season for two decades.  That a team could miss the playoffs for twenty straight years seems statistically improbable; that a team could fail to win even half their games for twenty consecutive seasons defies belief, yet that's exactly what the Pirates have done.  Last time the Bucs won more games than they lost in a year, the first President Bush was in the Oval Office, Boyz II Men's "End Of The Road" was #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, and the term "email" had yet to be coined.  I imagine that, if any Pirates fan has used the phrase "this could be the year" in the two abysmal decades since, they weren't thinking about October glory so much as just a nice, pleasant season in which the team managed to win more than 81 games. 

To that end, it appears that this may in fact be "The Year" for the Pirates.  Here is a thing which is true: Pittsburgh has the best record in baseball right now.  Not the NL Central, or even the NL, period.  In all of baseball.  Again: Pittsburgh.  Best.  Record.  In baseball.  This is not a typographical error. 

Despite such an encouraging start, there is, of course, plenty of fretting among the Bucs faithful.  Cautious optimism is the only kind that fanbase has known for a long time, and even a first half as auspicious as this year's is no guarantee of anything.  (See: 2012.)  There are real baseball concerns like whether or not the pitching staff can continue their superlative performance through the stretch drive.  There is also, because it's the Pirates we're talking about after all, irrational, fatalistic dread. It's the sort of apprehension that comes from having watched a team repeatedly, completely, utterly wilt after (if not long before) the All-Star break.  They're waiting for the other shoe (injury? surging Reds team?  Inexplicable decline?) to drop.  Twenty years of abject misery will to that to a body.  Twenty years and one of the slowest, most perfectly mustachioed baserunners in the history of the game. 

Sid Bream's slide in 1992 effectively murdered baseball in Pittsburgh.  As a Braves fan, it was one of the great moments of my young sports-watching life, but I can see how, given everything that's happened to the Bucs since, that slide has come to embody the whole sorry mess of bad trades and worse luck and collapse after collapse after collapse.  (I was at Turner Field last year for the 20th Anniversary commemoration/bobblehead giveaway of the Sid Slid game, and there was a guy a few rows down from us wearing a Pirates cap and a homemade t-shirt that read: "Twenty years of lies.  Sid Bream was out.")  And I get it.  It's the same pathos that causes me to refer, to this day, to a long-retired Minnesota Twin as "Kent F****** Hrbek" or Red Sox fans to still call a 61-year-old man "Bucky F****** Dent" or Clevelanders to call pretty much everything "Awful, Demoralizing, Heartbreaking F****** Sports."  Some moments you just never let go of. 

Admittedly, I used to revel in the Pirates' failures.  They were the Braves' fiercest NL competition for two or three seasons, and a heated rivalry flared up during the incredible '91 and '92 NCLS.  Thing is, that rivalry was ultimately too short-lived, with too little history attached, to really hold water two decades removed from its inception.  I'll never stop hating, say, the Phillies, but I long ago discarded any real animosity for the Bucs.  Which brings me to a sentence and a sentiment that little-kid me who watched Sid Bream's slide could never have imagined writing.  I am rooting, actively and more than a little fervently, for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  And so should you, if you have a heart.  Root for them because not even Bills fans are this miserable and the Bucs faithful need something, anything, good to happen.  Root for them because it's a fun team miraculously playing over their heads and Clint Hurdle seems like a good guy.  Root for them because watching a team, finally, mercifully get off this kind of historical schneid is gratifying and even a little life-affirming.  Mostly, root for them because every fan should be able to say the magic words from time to time, with hope resting in the truth of possibility.  Root for them because, after all, this could be the year. 

A Brief Time Well Spent: Michael Turner And JoAnna James

A few days ago, the first reports surfaced on ESPN and other outlets that the Falcons were likely going to cut Michael Turner sometime this offseason.  A few brilliant playoff moments aside, our workhorse back has seen his production decline at a near-precipitous rate over the past few seasons.  You didn't even need to check the stats to recognize that The Burner was not really himself anymore.  He was right there on the TV screen, hitting the hole with zero force of impact, his legs no longer churning with the implacable force that once made him so difficult to bring down.  Of course, not all or even most of this is Turner's fault.  Former OC Mike Mularkey wore him out prematurely with a staggering amount of carries despite having the personnel to distribute the backfield workload far more equitably.  The loss of Ovie Mughelli, whose ability to clear a path for the ball carrier cannot be overstated, didn't help either.  It was inevitable, given the circumstances, that such a physical back would lose the explosiveness that made him special.  The overwhelming consensus seems to be that Turner's time in the ATL is at a close. 

There is a tendency among fans to slightly (or occasionally dramatically) overvalue our own.  Because we watch our teams with more frequency than any others, we see every contribution and every hustle play, regardless of whether or not they appear on a televised highlight reel.  During his peak, I thought Turner was criminally underrated by the national media, despite all evidence to the contrary, because I watched him absolutely pummel so many defenders every Sunday.  How could this man not be considered elite?  Aside from, you know, the fact that he wasn't actually one of the three or so best backs in the league.  We appreciate these players far more when they wear the home jersey than we ever would otherwise.  And so over the past few days, I've found myself grateful for Michael Turner's time here, and I've found myself thinking of a songwriter from Minnesota that, and pardon the indie-snob cliche here, you've probably never heard of. 


I probably would not have discovered JoAnna James had she not been a friend of a friend of a friend.  She wasn't exactly in my buddy Mike's musical wheelhouse, but he nonetheless threw on her second album, "Desire," in the car one sunny afternoon.  It's funny that I remember him being almost dismissive about it: "Hey, I saw this girl play the other night, you might enjoy her stuff."

I did.  What I heard glided effortlessly from ethereal pop to gritty twang to darkening soulfulness to some eerie, alchemical space off the map.  It wasn't perfect, mind you.  Some of the songs were overly direct and maybe even a little sophomoric, lyrically speaking.  But.  My God.  That voice.  Through a stereo, it was lovely and powerful and rich.  In person, it had roughly the same effect as that flash of light had on Saul on the road to Damascus. 

It is 2005.  There is a bar on 6th Street in Minneapolis called Gluek's, and JoAnna James has a permanent residency slot there on Tuesday nights.  When you meet her, she is slender and slight; she cannot be taller than 5'4" or so.  The first thing you notice is that she has the bluest eyes you've ever seen.  When her smile lights them up, which it does frequently, they are electric.  The second thing is that JoAnna James the person is sweet and humble and wryly self-deprecating and has almost nothing in common with JoAnna James, Force Of Nature, who will be reappearing on stage as soon as this set break is over.  She stands there at the mic, brandishing that gorgeous Rickenbacker 330 as the band slinks and struts through the intro.  Then she opens her mouth and ... well, you'll describe this as soon as your breath and some portion of your mental faculties return.  You have just been aurally gobsmacked by JoAnna James' pipes.  There is no way someone that tiny should have that voice.  It's a hurricane wrapped in a thermonuclear detonation.  Her range is phenomenal, her control perfect.  The depth of her feeling is astounding.  Whether she's tenderly cooing "Lucky Strike" or bouncing the raw fury of "Molasses" off the back wall, that voice envelops your world.  JoAnna James contains multitudes. 

Back in the present, I think about the fact that for two years I was fortunate enough to see JoAnna James live probably twenty or thirty times.  Every time, without fail, that voice left me deleriously, joyfully shell-shocked.  Then it was time for her to move on.  JoAnna went out to L.A. to pursue her dreams.  Were those nights at Gluek's or The Fine Line or 7th Street Entry the same as, say, seeing Mahalia Jackson in her prime?  Probably not.  But in the moment, with the thunder of that voice rolling out over you and all creation, they were surely incredible. 

That was Joanna James.  And, from 2008 to 2010, and occasionally thereafter, that's what watching Michael Turner run the rock was like.  Thanks for everything.  Both of you.

Notes On A Half Decade Of Found Objects and Strange Treasure.

I didn't realize it until I got home late last night, but Hardwood Paroxysm turned 5 years old yesterday.  Basketball, and particularly its NBA iteration, produces the highest across-the-board quality writing of any sport (this is technically a subjective opinion but also true), and f I were to list all the excellent basketball blogs available for your perusal on the internet, we'd be here a very, very long time.  That said, if you asked just about any hoops head to make such a list, I'd bet you all the money Antoine Walker no longer has that HP would be among the first sites mentioned.  So why am I about to dedicate a large swath of celebratory text to this anniversary, you ask?  What exactly is Hardwood Paroxysm?

In a literal sense, it's a basketball blog that was created five years and a day ago by Matt Moore and which has been home to a large number of extremely talented writers over that period, but HP's ethos has never been overly concerned with "literal."  Here you find a rare and unique confluence of detailed analysis and abstract thought.  There is wry humor if you want it, and heavy questions about life, and poetry, and nonsensical yet utterly engaging ramblings.  Here, statistics can have a quiet drink with alchemy, and the conversation will inevitably find its way to reasons why Kyle Lowry is criminally underrated.  Constructs are erected and torn down.  These people are not afraid of oblique angles.  They embrace them, in fact. 

Basketball, of course, is the nominal reason HP exists, but that seems reductive.  In the artisan hands of the writers, this game that we love so dearly becomes a prism, a means of refracting and reflecting our world and ourselves in new and interesting ways.  When I click on my bookmark to get here, I get excited in a way that I really don't about any other space on the internet.  OK, whaddaya have for me today?  I might learn about which Grizzlies lineups grab the most and least defensive rebounds, or how an undrafted backup point guard had a killer game at Summer League.  I might read about how watching a team got someone through a tough breakup.  I might stumble onto a rumination on Jarrett Jack's Twitter attacks of Ray Allen and Dwight Howard and how they remind someone of Andy Warhol's early work.  (This post hasn't actually been written, but it probably could be, and that's the beauty of the whole thing.) 

HP works in part because the people involved are scientists in that they want to figure out how and why things in basketball and life function the way they do; there is a true spirit of inquiry.  But far more importantly, it works because they aren't just colleagues, they're friends, with each other and with us, after a fashion.  They teach us, everyday, more about hoops, but in intensely personal ways.  We trade quips and observations with them on Daily Dime Live.  We come to know them through their work because it's never just about the game.  It's about us, and them, and shared adventures.  It's about joy and love and how we communicate those things to each other. 

HP has been a perpetual source of wonder and happiness for me since its inception.  It has been a sanctuary and a beacon, and just downright ineffably special.  And so I want to thank Matt Moore for this creation he birthed and the inspiration and beauty it's given us.  I want to thank everyone who has written on the site for their wit, opinions, and heart.  And I want to wish Jared and Amin the best of luck in continuing the work.  (Spoiler alert: they're going to do a phenomenal job.) 

Happy 5th birthday, Hardwood Paroxysm.   Many happy returns. 

Taking My Mind Off Of Other Sports: Ten Teams To Enjoy This NBA Season.

I'll write the Chipper piece later.  Let me get some distance, chronological, emotional and otherwise, from Friday night's sad and ugly final punctuation mark on his career.  I'm depressed about the loss, pissed about that infield fly call, and embarrassed as hell by the fans.  Or rather, the portion of the fans who briefly lost their collective minds at Turner Field and started behaving like a bunch of depraved assholes.  We take a lot of guff, Atlanta fans do, for supposedly not being as passionate about our teams as other cities.  If that was a display of "passion", well f*** it, then.  I'd rather deal with a lifetime of insults from the neanderthals in Philly, New York, and Boston than be associated with the kind of hive-mind psychosis that leads to throwing batteries at players or games being literally called on account of riot.  (Cleveland Indians, 1974.  Look it up.)  I spent the entirety of that 20-minute bottle-chucking lapse of sanity standing in the stadium concourse with my best friend; both of us Atlanta sports diehards since birth.  In between long stretches of appalled silence, the one thing we kept repeating by way of conversation was some variant of: "I can't effing believe this is happening.  Atlanta fans never do this kind of stuff.  What the holy hell is going on?"  We were as outraged by that (egregious, awful, horrible) travesty of a call as anybody, but sweet jeebus, people, there is a line between normal anger and outright stupidity, and a chunk of the crowd crossed over the damn thing like it didn't exist or they didn't care or both.  Southern hospitality, my ass.

Sadly, that was only the start of of one long, slumping weekend for Georgia sports teams.  The Yellow Jackets put up a fight but were ultimately outplayed in all phases by a feisty Clemson squad in a loss that cost Tech's D-Coordinator Al Groh his job.  The Dawgs ... I don't want to talk about what happened in Columbia.  That wasn't a football game, it was a slow parade of visceral humiliation.  Or, to put it less poetically and far more accurately: Carolina kicked Georgia's asses up and down the field for four quarters.  End of story.

Two things salvaged the weekend: A phenomenal show by Grace Potter at The Tabernacle Saturday night (seriously, go see her live if you get a chance!!!), and the Falcons playing a sloppy first three quarters but ultimately pulling it together for a win over Washington to remain undefeated. 

Oh, and one other thing.  That bright burst of light flashing across the sky like a beacon of hope or the Bat Signal or some other damned explosion of heart and grace and purpose.  That's right, folks: Basketball!!!  Preseason is underway, and things tip off in earnest the day before Halloween.  For an outstanding season preview from the reigning HEAVY-WEIGHT CHAMMPPPEEEN OF THE WOOOOOOOORLLDDDDDD!!!! of basketball writers, skip on over to Grantland and soak up Zach Lowe's breakdown of all 30 teams.  I was contemplating a full-on NBA 2012-2013 preview, but frankly, Lowe dropped the mic and walked off stage with that piece (as if we expected anything less) and there's just no need for an inferior reproduction from me.  Instead, here's a list (in no particualr order) of the 10 teams I'm most excited about watching this year:

1. Miami.  For reasons that should be obvious.  A. Watching LeBron is always worthwhile.  B.  Will Wade stay on the court this season, or is his career going to be truncated by injuries?  C.  How will they function now that they've scaled Championship Mountain?  Can they maintain the drive towards sustained excellence of MJ's Bulls and Kobe's Lakers, or will the satisfaction of what they've achieved dull the gut-check propulsion necessary to repeat not one, not two, not three, not four...?
We'll see.

2.  OKC.  Did you spend a decent portion of the off-season wondering how the NBA Finals would have turned out if Eric Maynor had been healthy?   Me too.  Are you intrigued to see what kind of impact new draftee Percy Jones III has on an already exciting team?  Me too.  Are you ready to watch Russ to explosive, enigmatic Russ things?  To see if the Durantula continues to develop his game while assaulting another scoring title?  Me too!!!  Do you wonder if The Beard might, maybe, be less than the awesome force we all think he is?  Me too.  Gosh, we have a lot in common. 

3.  The Lakers.  Yeah, yeah, I hate them, you hate them, we all hate them.  And yes, I wrote a whole piece about how their acquisition of Dwight Howard made me much, much less inclined to watch them.  You know what?  Screw it.  They're running out four future Hall of Famers, including arguably the most devastating offensive backcourt of the past 15 years.  There frontcourt is downright terrifying.  Not even Mike Brown can screw this up.  As long as Father Time doesn't wrap his icy fingers around Nash's back or Kobe's knees, their floor is an almost certain trip the Western Conference Finals, with a ceiling that extends all the way to hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy.   

4.  Indiana.  The Pacers put the fear of God into Miami in last year's playoffs before LeBron went into full transcendental virtuoso mode, and they smartly retained the core responsible for that.  There's just something charming about this Indy squad.  They're a fun group of guys with complimentary styles of play and, when the key cogs are all in high gear simultaneously, capable of giving any team in the league a good battle. 

5.  My very own Atlanta Hawks.  If you think that's a shameless homer pick, hang on a second.  I'll put Horford and Smoove up against any starting frontcourt in the land, Devin Harris may be the best backup PG in the NBA (which is always a nice luxury) and, alternately, pairing him (at the two) with Jeff Teague will play havoc on opposing defenses.  We have a truckload of perimeter snipers (I see you, Lou Williams and Kyle Korver), Zaza, Anthony Tolliver (great acquisition), and everybody's favorite bench big Ivan Johnson should be sound rotation contributers.  Oh, and we're going to use this small, speedy assortment of cats to run like hell.  We're Nuggets East at this point.  Title contenders?  Not a chance, but I'm calling this team early (continuing the Denver analogy) for League Pass Darlings of the season.

6.  The Clippers.  Blake Griffin has moved from Must Watch Highlight-Making Slamma Jamma to OK, what else ya got? in near record time.  He can catch oops all day, but his shooting stroke and defense need serious refinement, and it's unclear whether he's willing to put the work in to become a more complete player.  (And he's on the short list for guys whose wallets get dinged the hardest by the NBA's new flopping policy.)  Which direction he chooses will have an immeasurable impact on L.A. not just because he's the ostensible franchise cornerstone, but because it will have a direct effect on how compelled CP3 might feel to stick around.  Also: Grant Hill!  I like Grant Hill. 

7.  The (hang on, I still have to get used to typing this ...) Brooklyn Nets.  The new Jay-Z designed uniforms, the dawning of an era, the potential clash of the Russian mob with the long-established Italian and Irish crime syndicates in New York ... uh ... Brook Lopez, I guess?  OK, there's not a lot of tangible reasons to watch this team, but it's a new team, the first professional sports franchise in Brooklyn since forever, and they have the potential, depending on how the Knicks' season unfolds, to usurp a decent enough portion of the Madison Square Garden crowd's affections to start a legitimate rivalry.  Let's all enjoy the ride. 

8.  Denver.  Even though I hope the Hawks usurp their League Pass Must-Watch crown, how can you not love this team?  Manimal and JaVale fo'eva!!!  'Nuff said.

9.  The Timberwolves.  Obviously, this mostly applies once Rubio returns, but there are a bevy of fine reasons why you should be tuning in from jump.  Kevin Love being Kevin Love.  AK-47 and Derrick Williams.  Free from the Darko Curse!!!  (Oh, Boston, I'm so sorry.)  And the biggest and best incentive of all: the potential redemption of Brandon Roy.  We all remember Roy going off in epic fashion against Dallas in the playoffs two seasons ago, and how we were so glad he could muster one more stellar effort before staggering of into the sunset on his ravaged knees.  If he can mount any sort of comeback, and especially if Rubio can come back at something close to 100% by February, this becomes the most lovable team in basketball.  Here's hoping that happens.

10.  New Orleans.  Fear the brow.  Fear The Brow.  FEAR THE BROW!!!!!!  Ahem, sorry.  But, you know, fear the brow. 

Night In A Car Alone: A Brief Rumination On Irrational Fandom.

Being fans is a fascinatingly irrational part of our daily lives.  Whether it's a psychopathic overreaction to Kristen Stewart cheating on Robert Pattinson (and seriously, have we come to this, people?) or going near-catatonic over a humiliating playoff loss (like I did after the Falcons' atrocious showing against the Giants last year), the idea that we would emotionally invest in people and their exploits with virtually zero reciprocity is counterintuitive to the point of foolishness.  We cede certain territories of our souls to the objects of our fandom, and ask that they keep those fiefdoms in good repair.  Sometimes they're kind enough to oblige.  More often, those little geographical soul-areas are left with the weeds choking out all other flora and covering over the dilapidated buildings.  And yet, we keep going back to the well. 

We do this because, especially in this age of internet unilateral consciousness cum digitized isolation, we badly need real-world affirmation.  The nod to the person on the street wearing the same ball cap we're wearing.  The high fives with the random people in the stadium or the sports bar after a big play.  Fandom, even the long-suffering variety, is a balm for the countless bruises we sustain on our hearts and minds because we can share it.  Perhaps especially when it's also the cause of said bruises.  This paragraph is overwrought and a dead-horse-beaten reprisal of a thousand just like it, but it's that way because it is rooted in truth.  Fandom matters because it imparts a fundamental sense of belonging to the fan.    

Of course, there are also the contradictory tendencies that come with devotion.  Most common and identifiable is the "player you hate now but would adore if they were traded to your team."  (Copyright: Bill Simmons.)  I mean, I'm fairly certain Cole Hamels is an irredeemable d-bag, but if I woke up tomorrow and he was miraculously on the Braves' playoff roster, I would go buy his jersey immediately.  (Obviously, there are exceptions for people like John Rocker.)  It really is incredible how the name on the front of the uniform can eradicate any negatives associated with the name on the back.

But this kind of thing is mostly harmless, and also falls into the shared experience category.  It's when you isolate us, when the act of rooting becomes a solitary thing, that the emotions that find release and reflection among our fellow fans turn inwards and can lead to the more illogical extremes of rooting.  When you can't vent with or express you opinions to other people about what's going on in the game, things can take a bizarre turn.  

Last night, I had possibly the most viscerally irrational moment of my sports fan life, and that, folks, is saying something.  

Here I was, alone, in a dark car at night.  After a ten-hour work day, all I wanted was to get home, crack a beer, catch the end of the Braves game, watch the second half of Bears/Cowboys, and go to bed.  Unfortunately, I was stuck in a torrential downpour of the sort that grinds traffic to a crawl because no one can see out of their windshield for the rain, creeping down 400 South at eight miles an hour.  So I was already tense and cranky.  On the radio, Don Sutton and Jim Powell were narrating as the Braves struggled to stage a late-inning rally on the Pirates.  Since the Nationals were losing to Philly, we still had a shot at the division.  We win out, they lose out, presto: NL East title. 

Now, here's where things got strange in my interior fan dialogue.  (Or, you know, sad.)  Instead of getting upset at our anemic bats for failing to get anyone across the plate, I became absolutely furious at the Pirates.  Their season, after all, is over.  These last few games are a formality as they stagger to another sub-.500 finish, when even a month ago their playoff hopes were so vividly alive.  They don't have any dignity to play for.  Sid Bream took it with him when he left the visitors' clubhouse in Three Rivers Stadium in '92, and it hasn't been back since.  There was nothing in this game for Pittsburgh ... so why didn't the bastards have the decency to roll over and lose?  Why did they insist on fucking up our season?  Why?!?!?!  I started muttering snide and petulant asides every time a Pirates batter stepped into the box.  "I bet your OPS is terrible, Josh Harrison.  I've never even heard of you.  And you're probably lousy at Scrabble, too."  I was trying to be funny for the audience in my empty passenger seat, but I swear to Craig Kimbrel, there was real vitriol behind every thought and word.  For whatever reason, I simply could not fathom why the Bucs wouldn't lay down and die, and it incensed me with rage.

Two things about this: First, it is likely better for the Braves that we lost last night.  We can rest Chipper, Mac, Prado, and anyone else who needs a breather.  We can set the postseason rotation.  We can focus on scouting the Cardinals as fully as possible.  We can take a beat, let the kids on the bench get some time without it being critical, and see where they're at.  Tactically, this is a superior position to mad-sprinting and nail-biting our way towards an almost certainly unattainable division title.  And I knew that last night.  I knew losing that game would probably be better for the Braves in terms of the postseason, yet I still desperately wanted us to win that game.     

And second, why on earth should I want or expect the Pirates to just give up?  Truthfully, I'm afflicted by far more saccharine sentimentality than a proper 21st-Century sports writer ought to have.  I confess that to a great extent, I love all the "spirit of competition" and "majesty of sport" and "triumph of human will" jazz that gets spouted in the form of tacky aphorisms by certain ESPN personalities or in the pages of SI.  The thought of striving in the face of long odds or playing out the string for the love of the game fills me with warm fuzzies.  (Yes, I am a sap.)  In any other circumstance, I'm sure I would have thought the Pirates quite noble for playing hard even in the ashes and wreckage of another lousy September, made all the worse because things looked so promising for so long this year.  

But I didn't.  I was just pissed that these clowns were actually trying.  Again: I ascribed zero blame to the Braves' hitters who kept leaving runners stranded on base; it was all on the opposition for actually, well, opposing us.  And it occurred to me that I would never have felt this way if we were playing, say, the Brewers.  Because Milwaukee has been a pretty good ball club these past few seasons.  It was the notion of a lesser team, a weaker team, having the gall to step into our path.  In a brief moment of utter madness, I had become a bourgeois fan.  I felt entitled to my team stomping all over someone else purely because they were supposed to.  God help me, I'd turned into a Yankees fan.

I have no idea what possessed me.  Normally, I'm passionate but not irrational in my fandom, and not prone to these sorts of bile-fueled funks.  For whatever reason, last night set me off.  My neural pathways were shorted out, and temporarily replaced with idiocy.  Being a fan is strange that way, sometimes.