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. 

To Pitch Or Not To Pitch?

Sometime in mid- or late September, the Washington Nationals are going to shut Stephen Strasburg down for the remainder of the season.  At that point, the team that currently holds baseball's best record will voluntarily shelve its best starting pitcher while standing on the brink of the playoffs (barring a 2011-Red-Sox-ian collapse, of course).  Since no team has ever done anything like this before in sports history, and since D.C. baseball fans have been among the most consistently abused people in sports history*, the question of whether the "right decision" is being made has become much more incendiary and vitriolic than a normal hot-button sports argument.  The Nats' fans (and some players) are furious, the Nats' brass are standing pat, and the rest of us are either vehemently arguing one side or the other or simply scratching our heads at the whole thing. 

It's been said that the line between genius and insanity is often gossamer thin.  There have certainly been notable past instances of courageous innovation and full-blown lunacy being two sides of a singular coin, as Picasso or Mozart would attest if they weren't, you know, centuries dead.  In fact, unorthodox thought is often perceived as madness until hindsight shows us otherwise.  So, what will history show us about Washington deactivating one of the game's elite pitchers on the doorstep of the city's first postseason appearance since 1933?

As Jayson Stark's cover-all-the-angles article noted last week, medically, we simply can't know.  There is no predicting the effects of a season-ending shutdown versus skipping a start here and there verses 15 or 30 days of rest now and reactivation when things get serious next month versus letting Strasburg continue to pitch as he has all year.  Each body reacts differently to Tommy John surgery and recovery therefrom, and past outcomes have been varied enough that a definitively correct medical course of action cannot be identified.  The Nats are apparently erring, in the most dramatic way possible, on the side of caution.  That a team would be so bold and far-sighted as to place the long-term health of a player above more pressing and immediate concerns, even in the face of so much averse reaction from fans, is its own form of courage.  And in a weird way, it is commendable.

This is no little thing the Nationals are doing, or at least have assured us that they will do.  It flies in the face of conventional wisdom, of putting your best possible team on the field, and some might even say the spirit of baseball or sports in general.  In the name of protecting the future, the team is voluntarily rendering itself less competitive, less likely to win in the present, in a season where they have a legitimate shot at a World Series title.  That's some Big Picture Thinking accompanied by a pair of Big Brass Ones.  It's certainly breaking new ground.

But here's the thing, and somebody probably ought to have told Mike Rizzo this at some point:

Winning a World Series is extraordinarily, phenomenally hard.

Ask any fan, sports journalist, broadcaster, player, or coach.  The sheer amount of factors that have to align for a specific team to plaster a locker room in champagne in October is staggering.  Team health, luck, fate, coaching decisions, umpiring calls, and usually at least one purely miraculous act have to not only be involved, but be involved in the correct sequence.  Trust a Braves fan here: my team had the best rotation in baseball for a solid decade and 14 straight division titles, and they captured exactly one World Series title.  They could have, and probably should have, had more.  But there are just too many things at play over 162 games and the playoffs.  Too much can go wrong; fate is too capricious. A Kent Hrbek/Ron Gant call here, a faulty Bobby Cox pitching change there, or a plain old "it just wasn't our year" moment, like running into that buzz saw of a Yankees team in '99.  There are literally infinite variables, some so minute that you only notice them in retrospect, that can derail a team's road to a championship.  In other words, people are asking the wrong question.

The question is not: is this a wise decision for the future of Stephen Strasburg's career, and by extension, the Nationals organization?  The question is: when staring at lightning in a bottle, when everything is clicking for your team, when you have momentum and chemistry and all those other intangibles on your side, and they are in evidence on a daily basis in the Win column, how can you resign yourself to anything less than a full-on assault at the trophy?  The Nats are in the middle of a charmed season, and they are prepared to throw it away because they believe there are many more in store.  [Ed. note: as a Braves fan, I am absolutely not complaining about this.]  Problem is, baseball almost never works like that. 

Stephen Strasburg may never miss another start for the rest of his career.  Fine, but what happens if Bryce Harper goes down with a broken tibia next July and the heart of your order can't get along against elite pitching without him?  Or if Gio Gonzalez never comes close to replicating his stellar 2012 season again.  Or if the bullpen falls apart?  If, if, if.  That two-letter word isn't worth much in Scrabble, but it's everything in baseball, and Washington is banking on several ifs, for years to come, coming out in their favor.

The odds of that happening are stacked heavily against them.  That's why you don't look gift horses in the mouth.  That's why you don't ignore lightning in a bottle.  That's why you let transcendent talent keep taking the mound.  You just never know. 

*It's true.  We think that, say, Sonics fans have it bad, but Washington has had its baseball team taken away TWICE.  The original Senators franchise had a proud history including Hall Of Famers like Walter Johnson and Goose Goslin, and were the 1924 World Series champs.  They mostly faired poorly in the '30s and '40s, but following the 1954 signing of Harmon Killebrew, their fortunes looked to be improving.  Killebrew led the league with 42 homers and made his first of 11 consecutive All-Star teams in 1959 ... and then the team was shipped to Minnesota to become the Twins in 1961.  The expansion/replacement "new" Senators were objectively terrible, averaging 90 losses a season from 1961 to 1971 ... and then they moved to Texas to become the Rangers.  Lacking a baseball team from 1971-2005, D.C. fans were forced by default to root for the Baltimore Orioles.  Aside from the '83 World Series and the privilege of watching Cal Ripken Jr.'s incredible career unfold, this was a pretty miserable proposition for most of those years.  And of course, when the city did get the Nats in '05, they were awful and have been right up until pretty much this year.  That's a lot of losing, both in the W/L column and in the ignominy of having your team taken away two times in a decade. 

Not Far Enough: College Playoffs Redux

So we finally got what we wanted.  We pissed and moaned, kicked and screamed, cried foul from the rooftops and raised hell from the grassroots up.  The BCS is dead; long live the ... oh, wait.  This ain't a eulogy.  This here is rapture.  College football (almost) has a playoff system.  Hallelujah!!!

And yet, the bastards still got it all wrong somehow.

Four teams.  Four lousy F&$% teams.  That's it?  That's the grand solution?  Four teams isn't a playoff system, it's a dysfunctional oligarchy that is only fractions better than the BCS itself.  Let's say for instance that next year Alabama, LSU, and USC are unequivocally the three top teams in some order.  (Likelihood: 87.3%)  Vying for the fourth spot, say we have undefeated conference champions Oklahoma State, Virginia Tech, and Boise State, a one-fluky-midseason-loss-but-Big-Ten-Champs Wisconsin, and a South Carolina team that steamrolled their schedule and whose only loss was in the SEC Championship game to 'Bama.  Some of those squads probably would not deserve to make it, based on whatever semi-legitimate criteria governed the decision.  Nonetheless, someone(s) with a just and righteous case for inclusion would likely get hosed in the above scenario.  And no, it won't be that crowded at the top most years.  That doesn't mean the "teams getting utterly screwed" angle won't be in play.  So why create a system in which the same old recriminations we've been bandying about for years would still be possible?  In many instances, the argument of the fifth team out will be no less valid simply because now four teams instead of two have the right to vie for the crystal football.  Having only four teams will almost certainly still exclude someone worthy of at least a chance at settling things on the field every year.  We couldn't do better than this while we were "fixing" the problem?

Oh, and we're going to have a committee that ranks and selects these four programs in a supposedly appropriate fashion, you say?  Exactly how will this paragon of objectivity be comprised?  Of people with a deep and intimate knowledge of college football, I'd hope.  But allow me a few suggestions:

1. Absolutely no former Division I coaches.  It seems like every year, there's at least one rumor that percolates about someone making a shady move with the Coaches Poll in order to help their own cause or slight a rival.  You think that loyalty and bad blood just evaporates when these guys retire?  Say they get Bobby Bowden to sit on this committee, for instance.  There is no way in hell that man is ever going to let Florida into a playoff if he can help it.  (Not that Florida is any real title threat for the foreseeable future, but you take my meaning.)  Or suppose Bob Stoops is retired in ten years and they ask him to serve a turn.  You're telling me he's not advocating for the Sooners and torpedoing the Longhorns and Cowboys every chance he gets?  Please.

2. This committee needs fairly substantial, if not complete, rollover every few years.  Otherwise animosities, alliances, fractious arguments, choosing sides, and all the other crap that goes along with any organizing or governing body are going to emerge.  You let people sit in positions of power for too long, they will develop not only delusions of grandeur but biases detrimental to the fairness of the process.  I say two years, tops, for any sitting member.  After that, they must wait six years before sitting another term.

3.  The ranking/seeding/selection probably should not resemble the autocratic juggernaut that is David Stern's control of the NBA Draft Lottery. You are doing a new thing here, so do it correctly: televise the damned process, like they do on C-SPAN.  All the minutiae, the debates and arguments and especially the people making them, ought to be public domain.  Accountability and transparency are the only way to stop the cycle of suspicion and anger and calling bull$%^& that has plagued the sport since time immemorial.

Now, back to the four teams debacle.  Howsabout we make it eight, or better yet sixteen?  (Yes, I am aware that there is a provision in the current proposal that allows for revisiting expansion in a few years, but why wait?)  I wrote a post last year about college football playoffs that was, in retrospect, more than a little overambitious.  By which I mean it was a soapbox rant of impossible logistics and staggering proportions of delusion, for which I am now compelled to apologize.  But buried within the morass of madness are a few concepts that I feel still hold some water.  

Chief among these is the idea that we don't need to divorce ourselves from the bowls entirely, at least not those with the greatest traditional import.  Say we have 16 teams as chosen by the Starbucks Official  NCAA Football Playoff Selection Committee.  We auction off naming rights to the first round, so hypothetically the 1 and 16 seeds could meet in the TicketCity Bowl, 2 and 15 in the Champs Sports Bowl, etc.  For the Elite 8 round, the Outback, Gator, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls rotate between highest-seed ownership each year.  The Rose and Orange Bowls are the Final Four venues, and the Championship Game is the Championship Game.  That's going to keep Bowl sponsorship revenue coming in, and the bidding for naming rights should at least offset to a degree the "loss" of the other twenty-odd worthless, podunk bowls.  Also, we keep the neutral field intact.  Is there a realistic reason this can't work?  We're already deferring the implementation of this system for another few years, assuming it passes tomorrow.  We can't figure this out in two years' time?

Four teams is a nice start, but it's not a solution.  If we're going to have playoffs, let's make them sensible.  I know it sounds insane to ask sensibility of the NCAA, but this is, after all, the dawning of a new era.  Why not do something radical?   

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.

Chosen.

"So that's everything, huh?  No weapons, no friends, no hope.  Take all that away and what's left?"

"Me." 

-- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Becoming: Part 2."

One of the most appealing facets of basketball is its inherent lack of artifice.  Basketball is elemental; it's a primal thing.  Wood court.  Metal rims.  Glass backboards.  Twine nets.  Rubber ball.  Ten guys essentially wearing clothes that anyone might wear to the gym, albeit with matching colors and logos and higher thread counts.  There are no illusions and no concealment on a basketball court.  The game and its participants are laid bare. 

Perhaps no person on earth would be more qualified to give a symposium on that aspect of the game than LeBron James.  The cumulative effect of everything from his disappearing act in that last game in Cleveland to The Decision to The Laser Show Fog Machine Pep Rally Thingy to last year's NBA Finals to Haslem-Bouncepass-Gate has been an accrued level of pressure unlike anything we've seen an athlete experience before.  Every iota of his being gets dissected and analyzed and turned into a referendum on Global Iconography or What Greatness Means or whatever.  At this point, people would probably label his dental hygiene "unclutch" if he forgot to floss one morning.  The thing about pressure is, you put an element under enough of it for enough years and apply the requisite heat, and eventually you get a diamond.  Which, aside from its monetary value, is a beautiful, purified bit of rock hard enough to cut through damn near anything on earth.  Last night, LeBron James was the world's most expensive and spectacular engagement ring.

The situation was all too familiar.  An elimination game in the Boston Garden, high stakes, backs-against-wall, win or go home.  He's been there ... and failed.  He's been there ... and let Dwyane Wade carry the moment.  And now, he's been there and done that, submitting his latest superhuman (meta-human?  supra-human?) entry in a playoff resume that, despite lacking the all-important rings, is still resplendent with several nights of sheer brilliance.      

We talk about athletes going into "video game mode" whenever they appear particularly unstoppable during a given game.  While he certainly played as such, LeBron also turned that concept on its head, appearing literally as if he were controlling his body from some distant remove, munching chips on a couch as he guided a catatonia-eyed avatar through an impossibly flawless game.      

It wasn't just the numbers either, though certainly they alone are enough to dizzy the mind: 45-15-5.  That's Wilt territory, if you're scoring at home.  Much has been made of the efficiency with which he scored those points, but LeBron had an economy of being last night that I don't believe we have ever witnessed before.  Jordan played with a contained fury and a calculated destructiveness.  Kobe has his trademark bulldog-lipped menace and god help anyone, even his own teammates, in his way.  This was an entirely different thing.  To all appearances, LeBron didn't have any teammates last night.  There were also no opposing players, refs, coaches, crowd, TV cameras, or even a building.  Heck, there might not have been a court.  He was alone without being lonesome, separate without seeing there was anything to be separated from.  LeBron's world last night had borders so tightly-defined that they ended where his fingertips touched the ball.  For all the acknowledgement he gave anything else, his feet may as well have been traversing negative space in a howling void.

LeBron wasn't a blank slate; then we would at least have been looking at the slate with the knowledge that something might be drawn on it at some point.  He didn't have a thousand yard stare, because that would imply that he was in a state where distances have meaning and can be measured.  It wasn't a zen calm, and he wasn't dialed in.  If anything, he was tuned as out as possible.  Forget radio silence, he was simply gone.

We can't know for certain, obviously, but if I could hazard a guess, I'd say that LBJ, out of sheer desperation and need, discovered within himself a completely new way to play basketball.  Faced with the possibility of once again crumbling in the same arena where so many of his past catastrophes have played out, and the full, brutal knowledge of what the fallout from such an occurrence would be like, LeBron James elected to shut down.  He retreated from the weight of the moment by becoming weightless, sliding down an infinite spiral further and further into himself until he struck the middle of emotional and cognitive nowhere, which was his essence as a basketball player.  Away from the glare and clangor of being Chosen, detached from even the most rudimentary of interactions, he was precisely and only himself in all his myriad gifts and instincts, devoid of any context save that which he allowed.  Which was not this game, but The Game of Basketball, actual and pure.  It's been said and written innumerable times that LeBron can sometimes seem as if he's playing a different game than everyone else.  Last night was the first time he transcended "seeming" into the realm of truth.

The question of LeBron replicating such a performance is easily answerable.  Yes, he'll have more games like this one in his career.  No, Game 7 on Saturday night probably won't be one of them.  But if LeBron has figured out some sort of meditation/alchemy/transubstantiation mental trigger by which he becomes a 100% hoops-by-volume distillation of basketball, if he can duplicate that Nowhere Man dream state with even semi-reasonable frequency ... watch out.  LeBron James is the best basketball player in the world, but last night he became something more, different, and rare.  When you strip away everything else and you're left with only him, that's when you see greatness.  After the hammering and thrashing he's received in the court of public opinion, last night LeBron proved that we are all still, and always, witnesses.   

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.

An Utterly Random NBA Playoffs Top 10 List

I don't know about you, but I feel like the 2012 NBA Playoffs are lacking more than a little elan.  At first I thought I was just acting spoiled, a petulance stemming from the embarrassment of riches lavished upon us by last year's heady Round 1.  Nope.  On reflection it turns out that, Grizzlies/Clippers aside, this year's opening series have been woefully devoid of intrigue or fun or even any particularly good basketball.  The overall malaise that has accompanied this past week has put me in mind of nothing quite so much as physics.

This is not to address the parabolic trajectory described by Ray Allen's jumper or to mean that the playoffs feel cold, clinical, and scientific this year.  (Though both could be discussed, I suppose.)  What I'm talking about is the thing every kid learns in middle school science class, usually illustrated by holding a tennis ball on top of a desk and then dropping it: the difference between potential and kinetic energy.

On a macro level, it's the perfect descriptor of every series besides the aforementioned Clips/Griz matchup.  All that beautiful potential that, for various and sundry reasons, has failed to be converted into anything compelling and dynamic.  The tennis ball is stuck, frustratingly, maddeningly stuck, on top of the desk.

On a micro level, the potential/kinetic energy difference applies to any number of critical story arcs and players.  To belabor the analogy for just a bit longer, take Derrick Rose.  Eight days ago, he was NBA's foremost personification of kinetic energy.  Now, one detonated ACL later, he's unable to harness any of that energy.  He's neutralized, stranded in a potential state.  Now apply that to the litany of other injuries we've seen so far.  You see where I'm going with this, right?  I don't want to have to exhume the dead horse to beat it again.  Point is: The playoffs have mostly been godawful dull so far, so I've taken solace by immersing myself in the little things that make basketball fun to watch even when the games are terribly inconsequential or just plain terrible.  Here, to help me (and you) with the Bland Playoff Blues is a no-particular-order-and-definitely-extemporaneous Top 10 list of brightly flashing instants, minor personages, and other arcana that have made round one marginally more bearable.

1. Jrue Holiday's smile.   I don't know if you've noticed, but whenever anything good happens for Philly or he does something cool, Jrue's grill goes incandescent.  At 21, he's an NBA young'un anyway, but when he lights up with that huge, gleeful grin, he looks about twelve.  Or like a twelve-year-old looks when he gets a new bike for Christmas or possibly a pony, anyway.  When he drained his second trey in a minute during the 4th quarter today, he turned an unleashed that Cheshire-Cat goodness on Elton Brand, and it was the most sincerely happy thing I've maybe ever seen.  Jrue Holiday is awesome.

2. J.R. Smith's "this is how you punk your opponent's entire front line with a monster jam" clinic.  All due respect to Blake Griffin, but this was the dunk of the year.  Posterizing dudes is cool an whatnot, but when there's no one there to actually posterize because you just blew by two defenders and faked a third out of his kicks with the most insane double-clutch ever, that is artistry, my friends.

3. Paul Pierce's insane night/Tebowing at midcourt.  He did this to my beloved Hawks, which sucked, but I can't even be all that mad at The Truth.  This was one of those games where the phrase "you can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him" doesn't even apply because ... well, because the Hawks hadn't a prayer of containing Pierce.  He was categorically uncontainable, which is probably why he felt saucy enough to emphasize that point with a good, old-fashioned Tebowing.  Annoying, sure, but when you toss up a 36-14-4 on a night your team absolutely needs you to bring that kind of production in order to win, you may invoke, utilize, and/or revive any dopey meme you wish.  Well played, Paul Pierce.  Well played.

4. The genius on the Indiana Pacers' training staff who decided to affix a "please do not hit" warning label to the fire extinguisher in the hallway leading to their locker room.  That was some absolutely inspired comedy, right there.  What did you learn, Amar'e? 

5. I've been watching Knicks/Heat as I'm typing this.  'Melo just dropped 41 points, 6 boards, 4 dimes, and a steal on Miami to force a game five.  It was magnificent.

6.  Zach Harper.  You're scratching your head right now trying to figure out if he's some obscure Nugget's bench player or Jazz assistant coach, aren't you?  Well: Zach is a tremendous basketball blogger and, more importantly for the purposes of this entry, he also runs the Daily Dime Live chats for ESPN.   DDL is, for lack of a better word, a sort of extended family.  For those of us with a marrow-deep affinity for NBA basketball, it's a virtually-based communion.  It's hoops nerds generally having a wonderful time watching games, cracking jokes, and sharing the sort of memes that only come to exist when a bunch of enthusiastic loonies get together in the name of fun and snark.  Zach is the grand poobah, moderator, setter of humorous emotional tenor, gently scolding parent, and general facilitator of this awesomeness.  Holla at me DDL, I'll be there later.  Doing laps, of course.  KLOE!!!

7.  Ivan Johnson.  I don't think I should have to explain that.

8.  Clippers/Grizzlies: Game One.  The most overtly ridiculous rally in playoff history involved Reggie Evans briefly morphing into Scottie Pippen, Nick Young plumbing the utmost depths of his Swaggy P-ness, and Chris Paul being the most perfectly amplified version of himself.  That fourth quarter was twelve minutes of undiluted, unrelenting glory (unless you're a Griz fan).  Just a gem of a game.  Thanks for that one, playoffs.

9.  JaVale McGee!!!  Sure, he spent a hefty portion of the season as the NBA's unofficial poster boy for ineptitude, but he's playing remarkably effective and coherent basketball in Denver.  Love it when the endearingly vexing quirky kids make good.

10.  I saw someone wearing one of these the other day.  However you feel about the Thunder, (and I love watching them play hoops.  Fear the beard!) you have to admit this thing is awesome.  I want one.

Happy playoffs.  Here's to a better Round 2.

NBA Poetry Corner.

I have to be honest, I was expecting at least a modicum of normalcy to show up this weekend.  I assumed that the old axiom about everything slowing down in the playoffs would apply in a compound fashion this year, because the games would actually be scheduled at a reasonable, measured pace.  You know, as opposed to that space-time-continuum-mangling we just endured; 66 games where 50 should have been played.  The NBA and those who follow it were going to recalibrate to a tempo where we could absorb everything without getting whiplash.  Or so I thought.

Turns out the reverberations of the manically compressed 2011-2012 regular season are still clanking and jangling around the league, echoing in shudder-y and unpredictable ways off of the postseason's actions and characters.  Sticking with that conceit, I thought I'd take a swing at categorizing the salient points of the playoffs' opening weekend using an organizing principle of the four stanzas in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells."  (Seriously, just bear with me, this will make sense in a moment.)

I

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.  

The Magic going "Ewing Theory" all over Indy.  Jameer and J-Rich had 17 apiece, Big Baby kicked in 16 (seriously?!?!  Glen Davis?!?!!?) and Orlando staved off a deeper and more talented Pacers squad.  This was a statement game.  The statement was probably "it will take slightly longer than you thought to eliminate us without Dwight", but still.  You can't count on Indy failing to get buckets in the final four minutes of every game, but the Magic served notice that they're not going gentle into that good night.  Bonus points : Chris Duhon's Travellin' Call Shuffle Dance, which might be the most inspired bit of NBA choreography since John Wall's "Dougie" intro.    

Andrew Bynum's insane 10-point, 13-board, 10-FREAKING-BLOCK Trip-Dub.  Setting his irritating petulance (and my general hatred of the Lakers) aside for a moment, it was gratifying as a basketball fan to finally see him healthy and playing up to his potential in a big moment.  Lakers fans must have been ecstatic watching a team that looked lost and discombobulated for much of the season play with such cohesion and verve.  All five starters for L.A. scored in double figures, and despite heroic efforts from Galo, The Manimal, and a feisty Nuggets bench, The Lake Show appear completely in command and primed for a deep playoff run.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! -
From the molten - golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! - how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! 
 
Oh good gravy, we got two absolute barn-burning gems out of our late games this weekend!  I mean, where do you even start?  (OK, chronologically sounds good.)  Mavs-Thunder was as taut and intense a fireworks display as we could have hoped and then some.  For OKC, Durant and Ibaka combined for 47 points and 9 monstrous blocks, Russ stuffed the stat sheet with 28, 4 boards, 5 dimes, and 3 steals, and The Beard showed no lingering affects from his unpleasant run-in with Metta World Peace's elbow by tossing up a similarly awesome 19, 6, 3, 1.  Dallas' players were no less ridiculous in there performances.  Dirk's 25 was pretty much expected, but The Matrix chipped in 17 and 8 boards, J-Kidd had a great 8-6-5 and absolutely pilfered the Thunder to the tune of 7 steals.  JET Terry shot a patently absurd 80% and hit 4 of 5 treys en route to 20 points, and even Vince Carter's ancient bones were good for a 13-7.  And it goes without saying that KD's absurd game-winner with 1.5 on the clock made this an instant classic.  This series is going to be phenomenal.

Now, about last night: "Don't call it a comeback!" ... no, wait ... yeah.  Yeah, call it a comeback.  WTF, people?  W.  T.  F.?  erasing a 24-point deficit in the fourth quarter on the road?!?!  With a team that young and inexperienced?  It would take a miracle.  Like having Chris Paul on your team, and having him furiously explain to Vinny Del Negro that this one wasn't over, then deliver by dropping 7 dimes in the 4th Q and orchestrating one of the greatest comebacks we've ever seen.  Nick Young went incandescent and drained three 3s in about a minute of clock.  Veteran Reggie Evans was a tenacious firebrand with 7 points and 13 boards, , earning CP3's "game ball."  Memphis checked out in the second half, but still, this was a thoroughly insane effort by a Clippers team that had every reason to be distraught over an awful game (up until that 4th quarter) and Caron Butler's broken hand.  Notable for the Griz: Marc Gasol is a high-post artist.  Scoring, passing, whatever, dude is a straight baller.  Z-Bo is not the force of nature he was last year, but with Conley, Gay, and Mayo playing out of their collective skulls, Memphis is plenty formidable.  

III

Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now - now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale - faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells! 

Allow me to summarize the collective thoughts of Knicks and Bulls fans: F&#$^!!!!!!!!!!

D-Rose is gone.  For, like, the foreseeable future.  ACL bad.  You could feel it even before he hit the ground.  He's always been the most skilled mid-air contortionist in the league, but there was something eerie and unnatural about the way he planted on what turned out to be his final play of the season.  Given their exemplary sans-Rose performance this season, the Bulls probably can still get by Philly, but the road to facing the Heat in the ECF now appears much more treacherous for Chicago.  (And, I might add, wide open for the rest of the conference.)  It's a shame that this had to happen, especially with so much promising hoops obliterated in an instant.  That said, Rose has been injury-plagued all year, and this was the fault of 66 devilishly compressed games, not Coach Thibs.  

The poor Knicks.  They've dealt with so many identity crises and transitions this year, and they finally looked like they could come into the playoffs with a little swagger behind them.  Instead, they lost emerging defensive stalwart Iman Shumpert (ACL bad, again) and got absolutely crushed by the Heat.  LeBron.  Effing.  James.  That was a majestic performance (that he disgraced with two utterly reprehensible flops.  Sorry, those were just awful).  It also meant nothing.  He turned in several similarly jaw-dropping efforts last year before ghosting in the finals.  We'll wait and see if he can sustain this level of play. 

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people - ah, the people -
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human -
They are Ghouls: -
And their king it is who tolls: -
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells: -
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells: -
To the sobbing of the bells: -
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells, -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

What can you say about Spurs-Jazz?  That was a thoroughly unsurprising result, San Antonio's well-rested veterans took apart the Jazz behind yet another killer Tony Parker night (28-8-4) and Timmy D's semi-vintage 17, 11 boards, 5 dimes, and 2 steals.  It really was a ponderous affair, the outcome was never really in doubt, and, well, we're pretty much done here.  Now on to an equally uncompelling (yet infinitely more significant) game ...

Hawks.  Celtics.  No Ray Allen + Rondo's ejection + average night from The Truth = easy victory for Atlanta, especially with Jeff Teague playing well and J-Smoove going off for a monstrous 22-18 and eviscerating the C's interior defenders.  This was an ugly, low-scoring dirge in a series that no one particularly wanted to watch, but the Hawks dropped the hammer on an unsuspecting Celtics team, and Rondo's probable game 2 suspension for chest-bumping a ref could have the Hawks up 2-0 by the time the series gets to Boston.  Atlanta is the most maddeningly inconsistent team in the NBA, but they proved last night they can hold a lead against a good team, and their defiance all season in the wake of losing all of their interior depth was on full display.  We're being set up for either a resurgent Boston masterpiece or an unexpectedly dominant Atlanta run to the Eastern Conference Finals.  Too bad we'll likely have to endure a few more games like this one first.

Thus concludes the first (and possibly last) Arena Apothecary NBA Playoffs Poetry Recap.  In closing, a haiku:

Many games to come
Ball don't lie and in the end
Someone's gettin' Ringzzz.

Thank you.