The above video cites a poll of 190 NBA players asked which other player they would least like to have as a team-mate. In my mind, that's a bit of cherry-picking, but what's done (justifiable causality or not) is done. The reason the poll is mentioned is its relevance for Starbury, who topped the list by receiving 22 percent of the vote. Ron Artest finished second with 9 percent of the vote. The video is part 2 of a rather level-headed interview with Stephon. You gotta admire an athlete who can come right out and say dreaded words like, "sexual harassment case" and "going to the psychiatrist." We saw Artest have a few pretty successful (if consistently confounding) days with the press as Houston beat the Portland Trailblazers. Today, Stephon was a key contributor - contributor, not star mind you - in the Celtics' defeat of the Chicago Bulls. Throughout the epic seven game series, Marbury was a non-story. Less important than the various, trifling ailments that couldn't seem to keep Rondo down but kept cropping up. Anyway, being a non-story is a positive for Marbury's career resuscitation, and I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate the first round windfall seen in the fates of a few misfits who seemed poised to go down for infamy not play in the annals of NBA history.
And play, if anyone doubts it, is what this is all about. It's what holds together a smile in the face of so many dour, post-modern re-cognizances, posting-up one's contemporary beneath the (broken?) glass of tomorrow. Play is important, and personality is the key that turns the monolithic, mono-mythic lock of the clean cut, the pre-packaged, the regrettably preened upon and postured post-Jordan presences. And yes, this is all just some convoluted way to nod pre-conceived notions on, giving them their re: cognizant due. Id est. Yes, Jordan is the last great modern and Finnegan's Wake clearly presaged the D.C. come back. And yes, it's all fractured and hard to grasp and cascading light through everything. But yes, the misfit represents the necessary stance against consuming kitsch. And yes, the misfit ranges the boundaries and breaks down the ribbed gates either with mirth or with malice. And yes, these outskirts are in turn bound on one side by the meteoric rise and on the other by the precipitous plummet.
A Presence Re-Written
