In bi-weekly installments, OtB brings you a long-form joint re: NBA and its ontological extension unto all of sport. Epochrypha: writings or statements of questionable authorship or authenticity, but always impassioned and always with an eye on the times we're spectating in. Enjoy.
Watching Steve Nash repeatedly drive into the paint and then look for the shooters (or the bomb standing right there that is Shaq), I was struck by a feeling of redemption. Like any other sports fan in the last week, I’ve been aware of the 140 pointers Phoenix has been throwing up and the “ultimate barometer” of such a streak going against the “vaunted” Celtics’ teeth. But honestly? I don’t care. What is a heat check? A heaved, unadvised three with 12 on the 24. That’s like a show down with Dirty Harry at high noon, my friends, and let me whisper what you should already know. You don’t win those gun fights unless the sun and the wind and the dust are just right. The other thing you should know, though? It doesn’t matter if you win. It’s just having the cajones to be there, to draw your pistol, to be a man about it.
The Suns are like the embodiment of that high noon heat check. I don’t care if they lose, not if they’re playing the way my aesthetic sensibilities tell me they should play. And sports fans? Under Gentry, they’re back to those who-cares-about-winning ways. Don’t get it twisted. Of course they want to win. Of course that’s what a professional athletic organization should be about. Except they also need to be about putting butts in the seat. Entertainment value. Fuck that. Entertainment value is something you talk about on some corporate talk show bull shit in the shadow of Jordan’s third retirement when all you could smell was the quiet dusk of Tim Duncan bank shots and Kobe wasting away in 40 point futility. Fast forward to last season. The Celtics are suddenly unstoppable. The Lakers get Pau. The Suns try to revivify SSOL with a shot of the Diesel. And we saw the dawn of the Lebron-Chris Paul-Dwight Howard age. It’s a time of unbridled excitement that we could not envision coming down from. And it’s sacrilege to talk about this regeneration of the league in terms of “entertainment value”. Fuck that. What we’re talking about is sheer joy on the hardwood. It’s something we’d maybe glimpsed during the Lakers’ three-peat, but really until last year we hadn’t thought it could be recaptured in such wondrously uproarious fashion.
This season has proved quite a let down. Maybe the Mayans were right about 2012, but I can’t see beyond 2010. There’s been all the corner cutting cap watching, some of it under the guise of 2010 prep. There’s been the rash of injuries to important players. And then there’s been the total dismemberment of SSOL basketball. This season has been dotted with hints that this is indeed the waning hours of the (basketball) world. How, after such a hopeful 07-08 season, did this happen? But just look at the rhetoric being thrown out. The .800 teams have been deemed “juggernauts,” consuming all in their path. The big match-ups have been referred to as “Armageddon.” If Lebron is the chosen one and we are all witnesses, doesn’t that mean the judgment is coming? I don’t know, and I’m sorry for spitting a hundred words about the pain that has been the first half of this season. But here’s what I see this Sunday afternoon. Redemption.
Forget the Olympics. Forget Garnett’s hallowed re-jubilation at immersion in a winning franchise. This Phoenix team under Gentry is the real redeem team. Look, last season the Celtics looked like poster boys for second chances, but did Garnett, Pierce, and Shuttlesworth really need a chance at redemption. Sure, they saved themselves from being this generation’s Barkley or Malone, but being that kind of iconic no-ring thing was no crime. Increasingly this year, the Celtics have looked like tired heroes who continue to hew on because they know nothing else but dogged determinism. I don’t want to sound like a tired lit-head, but you can’t mistake the images that do battle today behind the eyes of a Suns-Celts match-up. The Celts are Ozymandiac. They stand for old blood, dark and mysterious powers that be, Stonehenge (sorry, but it works). Then look at the Suns. From the wreckage of this season, they have risen. What name could be more totemic than the Phoenix Suns? Of course Sun worship is much older than any cloistered, druidic practice, but it’s also much newer, much more alive. Okay, enough symbolism.
Just look at the pieces that make up this team. They truly beg for a second chance. Let’s start with Gentry. This is his third head coaching gig. He may still hold the title of “interim” for this season, but really I think that’s worth ignoring. He interim’d once before in Miami and had (near) three year stints with both Detroit and the Clips. It should be noted that Gentry was the coach of that Pistons team that featured Grant Hill and Stackhouse that peaked with a first-round defeat but seemed so much more significant. It’s been six years since Gentry’s given head coaching a try. It seems like it’s been due. How many head coaches go back to being assistants? Porter being named over him after D’Antoni’s departure was a travesty.
Speaking of Hill, he’s the poster boy of the wonders this Phoenix staff has been able to pull off. Hill was heir apparent for awhile, but then the unfortunate Orlando turn. Seeing his wife sing at the all-star game, I don’t think there’s any fan who wouldn’t want Grant Hill to have more than a marginally successful last stop on his resume. This was a guy who seriously could have been the greatest ever if he had been in different situations. Or, at least he could’ve been the greatest second fiddle ever, surpassing Pippen. Look at his first couple years of stats. The guy did 20, 10, and 7 his second year. Think about that. That’s a few more made shots by Alan Houston away from the trio of stats everyone’s lauding Lebron for even approaching.
The list of players rejuvenated by this Phoenix system goes on. Amar’e Stoudemire comes back from microfracture. Shaq comes back from lethargy and “Kobe, tell me how my ass taste” (the thought that he would get on stage and do that still gets me rolling in the aisles). He also needs this because he doesn’t want to bookend his career with disappointing showings. What other superstar of his magnitude has his record for disappointing potential? Matt Barnes goes from fading act on the Warriors to legit contributor. Steve Nash looked like he was never going to be recognized as the innovator he became until the Phoenix trainers taught him how to take care of his back. With the trade of Boris Diaw and Raja Bell, we saw the shipping out of two underwhelming presences for Jason Richardson who, at first glance, doesn’t seem like he’s a case necessitating redemption. But look at his career path. He and Hibachi both had vertical trajectories in terms of being looked at as elite scorers in the league. Then he was the chosen cog lifted from that breathless we-believe Warriors team. Despite the 23 ppg the season before, they felt he was expendable. In Charlotte, he did anything but blossom, overshadowed by the presences of Gerald Wallace, Emeka Okafor, and the Mustache. Banner list of guys to be behind in terms of name recognition. Or, did you remember J-Rich is a two time slam dunk champ (though that means less now that Krypto-Nate has arrived)? He’s another case of systematic disappearing act hopefully remedied by this Suns turn around.
What about Leandro Barbosa? Surely he’s not in need of redemption. Wrong. He’s in dire need of a second chance too. He averaged 18 ppg in 06-07 and was named sixth man of the year. At that point, he was projected to have the kind of significance Manu has for the Spurs. Perennially in the race for that reward again. But his scoring has dipped by almost five points in the last season and a half. Another vanishing act. In the past four games, however, he’s been averaging 24, hitting for 41 against OKC. That’s what you want to see. Barbosa is indeed the spirit animal of this team (cf. Macrophenomenal Almanac), meaning he’s in need of redemption just as much as any of his teammates. Just having to ask about him should tip you to this fact.
Again, I don’t think this team needs to win to make their collective second chances legitimate. They don’t even need to make noise in the playoffs, and with Amar’e out there’s a good chance they won’t. All they need to do is keep playing like this. Beautiful, moving basketball. Because if you can be beautiful and moving, you should be. Realizing this makes a second chance worth having.
Epochrypha: Under a Redemptive Sun
