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.
William Strauss and Neil Howe divide Anglo-American history into saecula, or seasonal cycles of history. I will attempt to do the same for several epochs of NBA teleology.
I don't care how old we get, how far away we go, 80s night will always trump any other decade themed party. Hands down, kiddies. Why? Because the 80s is the right decade to celebrate. Look at what surrounds. 70s was hippies and drugs and vietnam, social awareness turned "serious," and rock bands making shit that actually mattered. 60s, as all decades do, opened the door to this with civil rights movements and the naivette of early flower power. The 60s was when we learned to celebrate even through the hard times. in the 70s our celebration of life became more (self-)important, but in the 80s we finally let loose. We were aware enough of social consequence that we could party unabashedly, knowing we knew what really mattered when the sun came up on our hang-overs. And then it did. Magic got HIV. Kurt Cobain hit, and big. And the socio-political heads of KRS-One, Grandmaster Flash, and the rest of the gang turned to the snarls of NWA and N.o.t.o.r.i.e.t.y. (Which is fine, by the way. I'd take 90s substance over 80s surface any day. But nights flavored with fruity drinks? That's another story. Give me 80s night even if I have to wake up to the 90s all over again in the morning. Just wake me with a goodly dose of Vicodin, please.) The 90s saw us turn inwards, critique ourselves in and of ourselves, rather than a war thousands of miles away. Of course, we had a war thousands of miles away then too, but it reflected more on us than on our elected admin. At least that's how we took it. Don't worry, I'm going to talk more sports than just the fleeting Magic reference. Let me just get to the 00s first.
If the 90s were Vicodin, the aughts are Ritalin. (The 70s are obviously LSD and pot. The 80s have to be cocaine and sex. Heroin probably goes 90s, and ecstasy is 00s, but this is all metaphorical, y'understand) We're the reality tv, blog generation, the one that makes you both the audience and the star. We're gen-Napster. What you see you like, and then you take it. But you don't necessarily tell anyone. You clean shit up and make it marektable. You take the identity politics of the 90s and you turn it into queer eye. You take the honest, earnest navel gazing and grunge and turn it into pop-punk, emo-ironicism. Fuck contact(s), now we wear Buddy Holly glasses for show and get a shot at love with a audition tape. The NBA perimeter becomes a zero-tolerance bad-touch zone and the Jordan era tongue-wagging becomes James era product.
Think about it. The three phases of basketball popularity I've lived through can be summed up by their J-surnamed iconic superstars. Johnson leads the phallically head-strong charge of the 80s. Jordan is the dogged, self-immolating epic hero with epitragic flaws of the 90s (it's also not unsymbolic that Jordan is an obviously Middle Eastern derived surname). James is the ultimate posterboy for the new generation, the change-is-come generation, the preening slickness of a 007 flick. Let's just hope this Daniel Craig paradigm is an harbinger for seismic activity to come.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for an NBA revival. The redemptive golden age we’ve summoned up from the broken systems of United States developmental ball and insidious, quietly humming systems overseas. I’m all for it. I’ll take in any day over the impoverished, hooverville post-Jordan “era” (but God help me, I enjoyed those days of true fans and lumbering, lovable, fallible big men who weren’t easily marketed). But what kind of golden age are we talking about here? In these times of economic hardship, I don’t need to remind you that yellow brick roads lead to translucent cities of green. Me? I’m not seeing it as a golden age in any terms but talent. There are still way too many questions left to be answered about this era. We still need to see what Stern pulls out from behind that curtain.
The first issue that needs rectification? Bad guys. Okay, this is sports we’re talking about. Guys who actually do detestable things (Michael Vick and Stephon Marbury come to mind) are not entertaining, they are the crusty underside we try to ignore. No, what I’m talking about is Hulk Hogan, Clubber Lang style bad guys. Larger than life “villains” who incite vitriol in the hearts of fans. This is what creates real rivalries, not these trumped up standings fights that see players patting each other’s tuckuses. See, bad guys have no shortage of their own following. That’s the whole point of a sports “bad guy.” To be polarizing. They’re not the face of evil. They’re just the face of that which you most strive to overcome. And it helps to see that they’re sometimes human. Ivan Drago goes down as one of the best sports movie villains (check that?) of all time because of one line. Drago says, “He is not human.” And in that moment, Drago reveals himself as human and allows the hero to transcend.
Look at the Jordan era. There were so many “bad guys.” I mean, if you were an objective fan, you’d be hard pressed to pick out a “good” guy to root for. But that’s the point. There’s no such thing (or, there should be no such thing) as an objective fan. You want sports to stir you up. And it’s much easier to pick out something to root against than it is to pick something to fight for.
I think it was healthy for the NBA too. Players couldn’t move around so much, because the fan bases were too rabid. Man, in those days, dudes were going to war. Jordan was of course the ultimate, dictatorian bad guy (Only after the fact do you realize glory despite its painful ramifications for your home team). Look at the following list of players and answer this question: you want any of them coming over for a nice dinner with the fam? Unless they play for your home team, I’m guessing the answer is “no.” Shawn Kemp (and Gary Payton, to a lesser extent. All these Ahabs have a Ishmael to their credit), Patrick Ewing/Charles Oakley/John Starks, Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone. I mean, these guys were out there, tearing dudes’ heads off. They were vicious! Who we got leading the league now? Dwight Howard. Dwayne Wade. Chris Bosh. James ‘Bron. The new and improved Mamba. (a Tarantino appropriated nick name? c’mon! Guys is straight suburbs in the aughts.)
Y’know what, this whole fucking media culture is so diluting. Shit like the jabbawockeez is such played out, fluffed up “street slang” posited to move products. Larry Johnson ain’t changing to move products. NBA players used to be heady, street critics. At least that’s what I used to believe. Maybe Iverson was the last scion. Lebron would’ve been a terror if he’d come into the league with Jordan era “sensibilities.” Michael Jordan created a brand that was highly marketable. But he did it without losing his viciousness. Is it any wonder Lebron has problems moving units? Sure his jersey sells. But nobody buys his shit because street kids ain’t wanna be Posh ‘Bron. They don’t want to be any of those Lebrons on the commercial. All they want is to be that wicked, my face is more unbreakable than the pyramids and I’m bringing hell fire on your rim ‘Bron. I want to see that guy marketed. I need to see that guy marketed.
Stats say the league is more popular than it ever has been. Okay, some stats. But I bring them up so I can refute them. They’re obviously trumped up by new means of deriving such numbers. Fuck that. People were glued in the 90s. People were glued in the 80s too. You think you wanted to bring McHale or Laimbeer home with you? Not based on their court demeanor, my friends.
There’s a glimmer of hope. I think we’re lost for this season. But I want to see something happen. I want to see a change. Forget getting all roots revival on this, I want to amp up the geekiness of NBA players. If we’re not going to see a rebirth of the NBA villain, let’s see the opposite. Guys that are so squeaky clean that they actually become the antithesis of “cool” and make heretofore aspects of NBA characters the new marketable. Homoeroticism is always good (see: Dwight Howard & the recent dunk contest lollapaloozas), but it’s never going to be enough. Here are my torch bearers. I want Kevin Durant on a different team. Does his rookie contract end in 2010? He should go to the Knicks. I don’t care. He needs to be killing teams. He needs to go off for 50 like every single night. And he needs to be the Duncan ineffable but slightly less affable so that we can really start to hate him. I don’t know. He’s the old fashioned hope. The new hope is that we get the uberdorks out. Let’s play up Krypto-Nate’s halo obsession. And bring out Andrew Bynum’s. Brook Lopez at comics conventions. These are guys who can and will pwn you, so let ‘em. Please. Don’t talk to me about Bosh as hyper-techno-savvy unless he’s going uber, supernova savvy complete with Slate rss feed and WoW avatar.
To beat a dead horse: Agent Zero was really the savior savant. He put athlete blogging on the map. Okay, I don’t need to recant the caricature that became his personality. Or was it a personality that became a caricature? But look at it this way. If we’re waiting to see what marketing guru Stern pulls out from behind that curtain, we’ve already lost the war. Because what does it mean? It means that Tin ‘Bron, Straw Dwayne, and the “lions” Dwight and Chris don’t get a heart, a head, courage. No. They’re just what they seem to be. Prima donnas who are afraid to be the bad guy the NBA so desperately needs. And the man at the end of the yellow brick road? Well, if it’s Stern, then that means there is no Wizard to solve all our problems, to drop a 61 point house on our workaday witches. No, just a smaller than average man pulling all the strings.
Here’s hoping for next season. I hear Hibachi’s on the mend.
Epochrypha: What Big Teeth You Have
