sam cassell is an alien and i love him

If a common response to witnessing the unexpected/inexplicable is to try to explain it, then the spate of credit where credit’s due reactions to Brandon Jennings’s sudden ascendance has been, well, rather predictable. And perhaps that’s reasonable, considering the ridiculous number of obstacles (snubbed draft pick, rookie-hating coach, banishment to Milwaukee, to name a few) Jennings has deftly maneuvered along his path to early season dominance. But with each ensuing performance of fantasy stat wizardry, the level of nuance amidst the Jennings quandary becomes that much deeper, the questions being asked less easily answerable. So while the legions of few remaining nutjobs claiming to be Knicks and Wolves fans have become more and more insular in their own response, the rest of the NBA-loving universe is turning outwards for answers—to the relative unknown, the murky backwaters of roundball expanse, the wild and unregulated market of the NBA’s bizarre-o world. Here, of course, I’m speaking of Europe.

For much of the past two decades, European basketball’s relationship to the NBA has not always been so ambiguous. When the NBA eclipsed football and baseball in national popularity in the early-mid 90s, David Stern set his sights on another opponent. With an army of entertainment built on the strength of MJ, Nike, The Dream Team, and NBA Jam, the NBA viewed Europe as the main front in its war of commercial colonialism. The invasion was not a one-way exchange though, and the NBA graciously opened its arms to the refugees of Europe’s fledgling basketball empire. What’s remarkable about the function of the mid-90s Euroballer in the NBA is how, in the process of carving a legitimate niche for himself, he further cemented the viability of the NBA’s sportstainment rebranding. If the finesse, relative lack of athleticism, and excess of facial hair of players like Divac, Schrempf, and Kukoc carry any lasting significance, it’s in how smoothly those qualities were seamlessly incorporated into winning franchises and then ultimately subsumed as part of the NBA’s larger cultural ascendance, both here and abroad.

Over the past decade-plus, while the international playing field has leveled considerably and the NBA has sputtered in its incessant post-MJ identity crisis, the relationship between Eurobasket and the NBA has lost much of its original meaning. Lead by a small but vocal minority of American bball outcasts (refugees in their own right, really), the code for breaking David Stern’s monopolistic cultural authority is slowly being deciphered, one year-long Euroleague contract at a time. That European basketball has taken on any value compared to its American inceptor—let alone the current tangle of intrigue, symbolism, and rivalry—is both ironic and fitting; the NBA opened the floodgates of free-market international exchange much to its initial benefit, it should also have to withstand the now-legit competitor it inadvertently created, along with any crude Frankenstein allusions that go along with it.

So if the future of basketball lies somewhere between Italy, Spain, and Greece, where does this leave the NBA? Watching Jennings, his play taps into something innovative, ethereal, with a swagger and style that’s a bit more familiar, even nostalgic at times. There’s even something to say of the fact that the kid possesses a kind of deceptive physicality reminiscent of Stockton and the early 90s (minus the mini-dreds, of course), more so than the bulging finesse of muscular speed brimming out of the jerseys of your average member of the NBA elite. It’s not surprising that his progression has been attributed to some otherworldly effects that only this other-world of basketball holds: logic dictates there’s simply no way a player this talented and unique could’ve come through the regulated hype factory of the NCAA and slipped past a nation of basketball gawkers.

So what does Europe portend for your average NCAA pariah seeking transformation or even just affirmation denied him by the American basketball system? Well, if the experiences of Jennings and Jeremy Tyler tell us anything, the effects apparently amount to jackshit. Jennings’s now-fabled European staycation was marked by inactivity, brooding, and more bench time than a backup utility man—all the ingredients necessary to counteract any mercurial hype Jennings possessed prior to his cross-Atlantic venture. If we’re to believe the New York Times, this is an experience Jeremy Tyler, with the relative lack of contextual awareness you’d expect from a seventeen year old, is hellbent to repeat in Israel over the next year and a half.

Taking this notion one step further, the elephant in the room is that the European experience has taken on much of what the NCAA used to offer (“used to” in this case refers to the past five years). The age limit is best considered when taken in context of the dress code, as opposed to some ridiculous notion of economic benefit. In that sense, it’s clear that the NBA above all else is seeking a level of professionalism from its rank and file—a line that conveniently allows college ball to accept the money and fame on behalf of its student-players, while still claiming rights to the role of teacher/benefactor, parental guide, and moral compass. It’s no surprise guys like Jennings and Tyler are keen to spurn this system, since they’d be the ones most spurned by it. Yet in Europe, a similar pattern of rhetoric has emerged; the overarching themes remain: lessons in humility, accusations of laziness, antithesis to entitlement, and that persistent sense of white paternalism (“serves them right,” “they got what’s coming to them,” etc etc).

But funneled through this parallel is the reality that the Euroleagues have not asked for this role; they have no obligation to embrace such rhetoric or impart any life lessons. For managers and owners, their Eurobasket teams are the ends, not the means to another, supposedly more professional league halfway across the world. These teams are fighting their own battles against the bottom-line without the backing of endowments and lucrative cable TV and sneaker contracts. And as my friend living in Sweden reports, the battles for even regular TV exposure are extensive—the kind the NBA was fighting twenty-plus years ago when games could only be seen on tape delay late at night and on Sunday. Euro teams aren’t taking on these kids and their growing pains out of some sense of moral responsibility. So logically, the conviction behind the tough-love (if not fullblown lack of love) Jennings and Tyler endure in Europe seems that much more genuine—a point driven home by the fact that Jennings’s old team in Italy still thinks he amounts to shit.

It may be impossible to tell whether Jennings succeeded because or in spite of his Euro-tainted maturation. But the fact that Europe’s got a say in the matter has got to be making the whole American basketball system feeling a little less complacent these days.

While the rapidly escalating impact of social media may not have contributed to the single most significant moment of the NBA offseason, there’s no doubt that it has cast the largest shadow over the evolving cultural landscape of pro basketball. Seeing as the most pioneering efforts in social media have been widely publicized throughout the summer, it may be redundant to recap some of the larger headlines here (the firing of a head coach; speculative gang affiliations; even more speculative drug use and mental health issues).  But what that exercise in redundancy hopefully reveals is noteworthy: the plotlines borne out of the social media frenzy more often than not have little to do with the NBA or even basketball itself.

Of course, that realization is also a bit redundant; sports-as-entertainment is hardly a new or innovative concept. And as much as traditional media outlets may focus on sportsmanship, competitive balance, athleticism, and other inherently incidental aspects of the modern sportsworld, the fact remains that sports, like any sector of the American entertainment industry, operates on a level far removed from what most of us consider reality.  That’s probably how it should be: we watch sports to escape reality, to get caught up in the sheer physical feats of the world’s best athletes, to marvel at the mechanical resolve of Tim Duncan’s post-up game, to stew over ridiculous rivalries like the Washington Wizards vs. Lebron James.  But these problems aren’t real and to a certain degree, they have little to do with real-world problems issues like the wavering status of my gainful employment, or my mom’s birthday today. Which of course proves why I was so interested in Mike Miller’s faux pas of wearing a pair of Lebron Nike’s to Wizards training camp.  The separation between our reality and the reality of our heroes—sports stars and entertainers alike—is, to borrow a popular Minnesota Vikings phrase, a schism sportsfans remain endlessly captivated by.

So the underlying story here is one you have to dig a bit at, and one I’ve been digging at ever since reading this op-ed on Minnesota Public Radio’s website.  The NBA officially announced its policy towards social media last Wednesday, banning the use of during game time (including pre and post game pressers), thereby placing it under the same punitive category as the dress code.  In this sense, the NBA is hardly any different, and actually might be even more lenient, than other pro sports leagues. The NBA, like all of the pro sports, reserves the right to insure the integrity of its product, so professionalism gets the nod over culture.  That NBA players as a whole have been quick to embrace Twitter, Facebook and other social media also makes them no different than many pro athletes, or more generally, any person of notoriety.

Yet the Michael Beasley and J.R. Smith sagas—with their flurries of wild speculation, reactionary cultural alarmism, and public condemnation—illustrate quite vividly how different the guidelines are for this distinct and highly-visible sector of the entertainment industry when compared to other equally distinct and highly-visible entertainers. While the reaction on the part of sportsmedia to these social media-addled plotlines has thankfully invoked a larger dose of nuance than in the past (see: here and here), the larger and more candid public response has been predictably troubling. Which is exactly why Beasley was forced to spend the end of his summer receiving treatment for mental health in rehab. And no, that doesn’t make any sense, no matter how much of a necessity David Stern, Pat Riley, or John Lucas might have claimed it to be.

Framed in that context, the MPR op-ed becomes a study in privilege.  The list of societal ills so extensively catalogued in Mark Andrejevic’s op-ed—the discrepancy between vote totals for American Idol and the presidential election; politicians’ embrace of Twitter over the headier and more scripted press release; the “rehabilitation” of faded celebrities through reality TV—starts to read like a blog entry on Stuff White People Like. In spite of, say, Shaq’s reality TV show or the existence of video games like NBA Street, the commodifiable “tinge of nostalgia” that paves the way for Tom DeLay’s “Dancing With the Stars” absolution is a fate that will remain elusive for Michael Beasley or J.R. Smith.  And thus the dichotomy that politicians crave social media while the NBA is fearful of it could not be a stronger reminder of exactly how Americans view race (or at the very least, young, rich, black basketball players) when they seek to be entertained.

And that’s how a simple perusal of MPR’s op-ed page can become a reminder of the NBA’s golden rule in the Post-MJ Era: the NBA wants to keep it real, but only up until the point that you can handle it.

Looking back on this NBA offseason, which was simultaneously less and more predictable than one might’ve imagined the Official Offseason of the Recession to be, the most significant moment of the entire summer can be found at 5:13 into Terrence Williams’s flipcam faux-documentary from the NBA Draft.  In the video, Ricky Rubio is hollered at by a group of guys who he shares little in common with except skillz on the basketball court (certainly not race, nationality, language, even age), and responds predictably enough– with a feeble flash of the peace sign.  The awkward white guy is a role I know all too well, so I can’t say I blame Rubio for his lame attempt at ingratiation.  But it’s perhaps fitting that Terrence Williams then inadvertently turns on the social commentary right quick:  “You’re the only person that can say, I’m not going to places.” Blink quick and you might miss it, the whole moment takes just eight seconds.  Sure, all the guys on the bus laugh and Rubio smiles in response to what was surely meant as a relatively benign remark (the comment is, after all, only given eight seconds of attention).  But there are differences of experience and background that allowed Rubio, though of no design of his own, to be in a different position of privilege than all the other guys in the green room on draft night.  In that one moment and with that one admission, Terrence Williams not only calls attention to everything that sets Rubio apart, but he also effectively physicalizes and puts real people and faces behind the racial disparities that have been borne out of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, most notably the age limit.

The fact of the matter is, the age limit does have some undeniably sticky social and racial consequences.  That Rubio had the opportunity to enter the NBA as an 18 year old whereas everyone else on the bus to Madison Square Garden had to donate their time as high profile athlete-interns for their respective colleges (and the shoe companies that sponsor their colleges), the NCAA and CBS for a year or two, that’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when every high schooler-turned-pro except Robert Swift is black.  However, Rubio’s privilege to enter the NBA as an 18 year old exists not out of some insidious Birthers-hatched plan to make the NBA the next frontier on their social agenda, but because the CBA and its age limit possess some glaring loopholes.  David Stern has maintained that the age limit was strictly a business decision, meaning if there’s potential profit-to-be-had, the CBA will find a way to allow for it– a fact which becomes especially convenient for white, international ballers who weren’t likely to lend their services to the NCAA for a year or two anyway.  But five years after the rule was passed and with the international market for young American ballers becoming all the more unaccommodating amidst a global recession, the loopholes in the age limit remain largely untested.  What I then find particularly ironic in the case of Ricky Rubio is that by working completely within the maddeningly inconsistent framework of the CBA, Rubio has proven himself to be, even explicitly stated that he’s no more emotionally or psychologically ready to enter the uncompromising hype factory of the American pro sportsworld than the homegrown crop of players who have known nothing but hype since they were first able to show off their abilities on the court.

From the moment the Wolves drafted Rubio with the #5 pick on June 25th up until Rubio’s announcement leaked on Monday night, I have maintained that Rubio would don a Wolves jersey before the season started– an assumption I based largely on what I deemed to be sound common sense.  The bottom line, I figured, is that if David Kahn and the Wolves brass could jimmy together an ad hoc buyout package that largely compensated for Rubio’s ridiculous Euro-buyout, he’d jump at the opportunity to join the NBA ranks and be that much closer to his second, more lucrative, non-rookie scale contract.  But while I may feel some misinformed bond with Rubio over his hesitantly flashed peace signs and social awkwardness, the bottom line is that he’s an 18 year old kid who (like most 18 year old kids) has never lived away from his parents, calls himself shy, and dude can’t even speak English all that well.  It’d be an understatement to say Rubio doesn’t (and shouldn’t) see things the way I do.

In the end, it wasn’t just one insurmountable hindrance but a confluence of factors (an unfairly inflated buyout; the financial limitations placed on the fifth pick slot by the CBA; the ego hit of slipping to the fifth pick; the influence of family; youth/imaturity) that prevented the formulation of common sense facing Ricky Rubio from falling in step with mine.  Yes, Ricky Rubio did say he’d play in the NBA for free, along with a bunch of other misleading bullshit that has further disparaged my long-battered Twolves pride. But the story here is not that Rubio’s immaturity and petulant and conceited attitude has prevented him from seamlessly integrating into the NBA– but that Rubio’s  immaturity, youth, and capriciousness should be forgiven, not blamed, in his reasoning for favoring the “less complicated” and “less risky” move of staying home over testing the uncharted loopholes of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Of course, the same can be said for Derrick Rose concerning his academic scandal at U-Memphis, or Lebron James accepting some retro jerseys for free as a high schooler in Akron.  The loophole that Rubio faced may have been officially ratified by a group of rich pro sports team owners and the NBA Player’s Association, but it’s no different than the relatively subjective set of limitations facing any young kid who slips up while navigating the pressures of fame, impending wealth, and intense media scrutiny that come along with life in the NBA.  In the end, maybe there wasn’t that much separating Rubio from the rest of his 2009 NBA Draft-mates after all.

Welcome to the new and improved Sam Cassell is an Alien and I Love Him!  Two months after having bought the domain for this lil’ bugger, I’m finally feeling comfortable enough with the layout to make this shit official.  But aside from the new layout, new banner image (I designed it myself!), and somewhat new web address, I’ll still be offering the same overly verbose and sporadically updated observations on the NBA, and all that good stuff.  So yay for new digs. (And yes, those are the new and totally wtf Sub Pop inspired Nikes, and no, I am not wearing them. Make a Warp Records pair of kicks, Nike, and then we’ll talk.)

Best play of a this-is-everything-the-Finals-should-be Finals game: with 2:30 left and the Magic down 3, D12 sets a high pick for Hedo, who then rolls right taking two defenders with him. Hedo passes to a relatively open Rashard at the top of the key, who then in turn rifles a pass to the ridiculously fucking open JJ Reddick, allowing Mike Breen to gleefully announce to a viewing audience of thousands: “JJ Reddick ties the game with a 3 with 2:19 remaining, his first field goal of the night”– words I never imagined in my wildest dreams I’d hear in the context of a 4th quarter NBA Finals game. How Phil Jackson doesn’t respond by immediately subbing in Adam Morrison is beyond comprehension. You cannot gameplan for that.

Unbelievably, this moment was almost eclipsed when, not a minute and a half later, Breen managed to utter Hedo Turkoglu’s last name SIX TIMES in ten seconds.

All together now: Where Amaz…

There’s a behemoth in the room that I’ve avoided addressing, namely because it’s old hat by now. From the quiet pre-season grumblings of concerned observers to the Bill Simmons All-Star Game NBApocalypse article, the state of the economy has loomed as large a discussion topic in NBA circles this season as any. So a lot of print has already been devoted to the topic. Also, it’s depressing. Pet dog-inspired elegies aside, that Sports Guy article was the first time Bill Simmons made me cry. And that shit’s just uncalled for. Look, is the financial viability of the NBA something to be concerned about? Sure it is, inasmuch as FSN’s penny pinching means my flatscreen is a flat waste for over half the local T’Wolves broadcasts.

For two months, I’ve been ruminating over this random-ass post on BoingBoing. Take a second and familiarize yourself, namely with the author’s notion that the Web is a self-serving exercise in mental masturbations (not to mention actual masturbation). If you get bored reading the article, try playing a word game: replace every mention of media or Web with NBA. What this little trick will hopefully reveal, and what the author and vaunted media/communications analyst most likely didn’t mean at all, is this: the NBA is in danger of becoming totally devoid of serendipity.

Now before you get yourself all in a tizzy, let me be clear—I don’t exactly mean the NBA is descending into a quagmire of boredom and irrelevance not seen since the Nets-Spurs Finals. That’s a difficult thought to entertain at this juncture in time/space, considering the multitude of buzzer beaters, emergence of new or forgotten players (Aaron Brooks, Michael Pietrus, Nuggets frontline), the fall and rise (and fall again) of Stan Van Gundy, and surprising overall level of competitiveness in these playoffs. And it’s not like NBA, where dynasties are established with alarming regularity and competitive edges seem to ebb and flow perennially with all the power of a cess-less cesspool, has ever really been the preeminent source of serendipity in the modern pro sports landscape. Both MLB and NFL provide greater randomness and variance of outcomes on a year-to-year basis (Michael Vick just said he’s taking a break from football but the Falcons are NFC contenders? The most FD-team in baseball won the AL last year? Exactly). But if we’re to follow Dan Gillmor’s definition of serendipity (“a topic you didn’t know you cared about until you saw it”), then there is no doubt in my mind that the NBA is tenuously perched on top of a slope more steep and slippery than Adam Silver’s forehead (or nose, take your pick).

In some regards, the writing has been on the wall; so a brief word on context. Despite the penchant for unqualified superlatives and clichés exhibited so shamelessly (although maybe that’s the point?) by the NBA’s hallmark Where Amazing Happens campaign, the unbound athleticism and personality so blatantly on display on pro basketball courts allows the NBA a certain credence in making such statements. It is the reason we watch, after all. But with the danger that Amazing becomes too socially blinding (Wade’s band aids, KG’s Uzis), too racially intimidating (Artest, Sprewell, early 90’s Barkley), or just too damn young and rich (you really need examples here?), regulation—apparently—becomes an issue.

Four years removed from the shakeup of ‘05, with institutionalization of dress code and age limit complete, and hand checking rules in place to still allow the stars to shine when and where it matters most, the road to individual success in the NBA has been paved and cemented. The NBA has always been a star’s league, so while I hate the underlying motives, creating a degree of uniformity for the expectations of the Kobe Bryant’s, Trevor Ariza’s, and *snicker* Adam Morrison’s alike isn’t a terrible thing. But until this season, the burden of those expectations has been carried only by the individual, the player, the person. The dress code and age limit created a nice little cushion of comfort for NBA owners and investors; no need to worry too much about our product, or come down too harshly on young buggers ourselves, Papa Stern will take care of it.

Reenter behemoth: Now, with the effects of a recession manifesting themselves in the empty seats from Phoenix to New Orleans, shit has blown up, but in a way that’s so predictable, routine, and unvarying that it betrays the basic properties inherent to shit when blown up. The NBA has always counted on star power first and foremost, even over general competitiveness, as its primary revenue stream. So as far as the League is concerned, 2010 can’t come fast enough. NBA teams without a charismatic, seat-stuffing superstar are so fucked right now that their owners would call the Mayans crazy, not because of their prediction that the world will end in 2012, but because the prediction might come two years too late.

The extent to which owners, GMs, and coaches have forced their star players into alpha dog role, no matter how ill-fitting the nature of said player to fulfill alpha-branded expectations or how many subordinates are sacrificed in the process, is reaching a maddening point. This is even disregarding, momentarily, the hype that surrounded the MVP race and the utter dominance of the Lebron/Kobe/Wade triumvirate for the second half of the NBA season. No team exemplifies this sadistic trend more clearly than the Portland Trailblazers. Teeming with that rarified assemblage of young, early draft picks deftly and patiently maintained on a single roster (socialist promise on the cusp of fulfillment), the Blazers’ postseason berth seemed utterly serendipitous: no other team possessed the ability to launch the careers of so many individuals at one time, even with the impending ascendance of their own cool-veined MJ-doppelganger. Travis Outlaw flying on the break and throwing down a dunk with all the ferocity we expect from a prep-to-pro baller, LaMarcus Aldridge hitting the 15-footer with a silkiness uncommon to men his height, Nicholas Batum’s Frenchness, Greg Oden’s mere existence—all sacrificed for iso after iso of Brandon Roy. It was a sad thing to watch; the diversity of a mostly young, well-balanced roster surrendered for the chance of raising the profile of The One …or the one player most capable of fitting such a profile.

Trouble has turned up with other developments as well. The inevitability of moneyball reaching the front offices of NBA organizations was just that, an inevitability. But there’s a reason why the effects and application of advanced statistics in basketball remains such an unknown quantity, or why Darryl Morey conjures images of Dick Cheney more than any other GM. It doesn’t take any sort of advanced metric to quantify the physical and commercial impact of a Lebron, Kobe, or even Dwight Howard …but finding value in Shane Battier’s headwrinkles, or Trevor Ariza’s uncanny ability to pick off inbounds passes, that’s something that only the sagely mystics of moneyball can augur. Moneyball in and of itself isn’t evil, but at the risk of sounding like Joe Morgan or even that asstwat Buzz Bissinger, the timing is concerning. The next round of CBA bargaining in a couple years will see the elimination of the MLE and a raise in Max contracts, and with that, the separation between star and role player becomes that much more distinct— a distinction made all the more complete when moneyball seems to only confirm what we already know to be true: that Mike James’s sans-Bosh Toronto-era stats do not justify a four-year, MLE-level contract; that Mike Miller’s best asset is the size of his expiring contract; or that Elton Brand is terribly miscast on the 76ers roster, let alone on the team’s cap space.

Which brings me to my main point: serendipity in today’s NBA is becoming more and more synonymous with cruelty or misfortune. Consider some of the weirdest recent plotlines, the topics you didn’t know you cared about until you saw it. Brian Scalabrine and JJ Reddick starting in the playoffs?! Oh right, KG and Courtney Lee are injured. The Timberwolves hired some dude who hasn’t been in the NBA in five years as their newest GM?! Oh right, Glen Taylor is a clueless owner snubbed by three other candidates before settling on Kahn. Even the totally unanticipated rise of the Nuggets can be traced to the fact that Joe Dumars valued Allen Iverson’s expiring contract and potential (and fully realized!) corrosiveness as more valuable than Chauncey Billups’s undeniable clutchness.

To me, this tension is what best frames the Lakers-Magic Finals. More than Kobe vs. Howard, Phil vs. Stan, or any of the typical plotlines, the subtext to this championship series is a showdown of new team construct vs. old. The Lakers, on the one hand, represent the adherence to starpower (Kobe), an impossibly well-constructed and talented roster of mega-role players (Pau, Odom, Ariza), many of whom were acquired by preying off the financial limitations of other teams. The Lakers stand for all that is to be gained from moneyball, from a rebargained CBA, from everything the NBA is hurtling towards. It’s not that the Lakers are evil, more so just complicit to an evil system where they happily exploit the fears of others.

The assemblage of players, talents, personalities, and contracts that comprise the Eastern Conference Champs, on the other, are perhaps the last vestige of serendipity as a positive factor in pro basketball. Their superstar is so much a victim of his own charming boyishness, raw physicality and freakish athleticism that he’s expected to perform acts clearly outside his skillset. Their best ballhandler in the clutch is their starting 6’10” small forward. Rashard Lewis is perhaps the preeminent example of an undeserving max contract recipient, yet he is as much to credit for their Finals appearance as anyone on the roster. The Magic are a throwback to the soon-to-be long-lost-and-forgotten years of the early Aught’s when the MLE and max salaries were thrown around casually, and rosters are assembled with regard for talent instead of financial or physical order and fit-ness. The Magic are the paramount example mismatched parts, cacophonous beauty, incongruent attractiveness—everything we didn’t know we cared about until it fell in our laps.

I hope the rest of the NBA is watching.

Of all the archetypes that enter into the oh-so-narrow scope of sports narratives, redemption is possibly the most recycled, overused, and misused. The recycling and overuse are easy enough to explain: redemption is just one stop in the Monomyth cycle, the hero’s journey. And what has the bland and unimaginative regurgitation machine that is the mainstream sportsmedia taught us if not that any and every athlete worth his/her salt can be forced, no matter how ill-suited, into the narrative of the hero’s quest.

Now the tricky part: misuse. The problem harkens back to the ill-suited nature of most athletes to don their best Siddhartha or Odysseus impressions, much to the disappointment of many a ninth-grader. What I mean is this: for our ill-fitted (not necessarily ill-fated) sports heroes to fully embrace the act of redemption, there must be a misdeed, a mistake, or some otherwise unspecified nadir to overcome, to be redeemed from.

Of course for this author, there is no NBA player more prone to be (mis)cast into the role of hero than Sam Cassell. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that I eulogized the death of Cassell as player/athlete by way of a particularly inglorious early retirement, lionizing Cassell’s legacy as an anti-hero in the context of the new, ultra-professional, post-dress code (it’s a bit too much to call it ‘post-autonomy’ but it sure does feel right) NBA. So considering all the fodder I’ve built up around the myth and lore of my favorite basketball player, why is it so hard to nail down exactly what’s going on in this latest turn in the Cassell Saga?

There is undoubtedly a redemptive quality to Cassell’s hiring as assistant coach to the newly Saunders-helmed Wizards; in fact, there are many. First and foremost, Cassell is saved from irrelevance: dude’s not out of work, and more importantly he’s not out of NBA work, which means professional basketball still has yet to extricate itself from the Blow of Information that continuously lingers over any area occupied by Sam Cassell’s very presence. Case in point: while the precise nature of the assistance Cassell will provide to Saunders’s coaching staff is yet to be determined, Cassell has already revealed—by way of a typically garrulous and extemporaneous interview—that he sees his new team as most in need of a litany of intangibles (general leadership, wily craftiness) and nearly devoid of a need for managing.

Dig a bit deeper and other slightly archaic but nonetheless significant and blatantly redemptive plotlines arise. Sam Cassell’s supposed squabbling, contract demands, reckless abandon for leadership and on-court freelancing provided ample scapegoating fodder for the epic failure that was the ’04-’05 MN Timberwolves—a season which saw the end to Saunders’s ten-year coaching reign, and precipitated the eventual (inevitable?) trade of the greatest franchise player in team history. That Cassell’s hiring was performed now by a man who he once purportedly helped fire is a significant fact, and one that should not be underestimated. Also, in the same announcement of Cassell’s hiring as assistant coach, we learned that Randy Whitman will be joining the Wizards staff in the same capacity. And while the move probably speaks more to Whitman’s complete lack of competence, we’ll say it means even more, both in an ironic and qualitative sense, that Cassell is now on the same career rung as a man who seven months ago coached Brian Cardinal, Kevin Ollie, and Mark Madsen. That’s moving on up.

But true redemption of the literary kind, of the variety that Odysseus travels to the underworld for, or Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez stops taking steroids for—that act speaks to a kind of deeper transformation. It isn’t exactly atonement, but it isn’t far removed from that. And that’s the problem with Cassell’s move from active to passive NBA participant: if early indications prove true, this next step in Cassell’s NBA career will lack any real transformative property. Despite the various and varied transgressions that Cassell’s detractors have (unfairly) accused him of over the years, Cassell himself remains unfazed, unconvinced or even unaware that his Blow of Information, his means of navigating the planes of sports lore is in need of a transformative tune-up of any variety, redemptive or otherwise.

And thus begins again an increasingly problematic cycle for Sam Cassell so long as he continues to assert his craft in NBA realms: Cassell’s assets are a devalued currency in the post-dress code, post-recession NBA economy. Consider the sagely advice Sam delivered to his future team by way of John Thompson in his first post-hire interview: The Wiz are a strong, veteran-guided team and not in need of persistent managing, yet Cassell will impart upon Gilbert Arenas how to be a leader; Cassell will teach the players how to overcome individual limitations and “get it done,” but “doing things out of character” is why the Wiz lost last year. While truth lies at the bottom of many of Cassell’s assertions when considered individually, navigating the full meaning of these false dichotomies elicits at best a degree of philosophical inefficiency and at worst anachronistic dilemmas that today’s NBA doesn’t afford its players or coaches.

Sure, that Arenas, Butler, Nick Young or anyone on the Wizards breaks out the Big Balls dance after a buzzer beater next season is inevitable. But there’s a reason the move to the bench has been kind to the likes of Aaron McKie, Brian Shaw, Scott Brooks, Vinny del Negro, and other bit-players turned coach. These blue collar laborers, who asked for and were asked of little during their time on the court, they suit the media-addled redemption narrative in a way that still fits the needs of the NBA’s personality police, by furthering the dutiful professionalism demanded of today’s pro basketball player. These are the men who can be said to have embarked upon a journey from modest, unassuming role player to head honcho (transformation with all the force of an anvil made of feathers), where they will of course preach the same rule of order, role, and function that they unquestioningly embraced on the rare instances that the ball was in their hand.

Not surprisingly, Sam Cassell’s got a different kind of redemption in mind. May the first Big Balls dance in the DC area be his.

Arenas On NCAA Players: ‘I Don’t Pay Attention To JV’

My man.

I received only two invites to compete in NCAA bracket pools this year, down from the half-dozen or so last year. Word’s getting out. It’s not that I hate college basketball; it’s fine. But every year the calls about the farce of competition (not exploitation) that is college basketball get louder and louder, and I for one hope to do my part to turn the volume up.

Obviously not surprising, though, that those mad money cats who benefit from the NCAA’s big lights moments are doing their part to shout back. The image hounds at adidas, a year after three adidas-sponsored teams appeared in the Final Four, have come up with the ingenious idea of getting adidas-sponsored NBA stars to hawk adidas-sponsored NCAA fables. What’s even more remarkable about the March is a Brotherhood campaign is the fact that the pros getting paid for these spots, are—irony of all ironies—the same all-stars who saw no point in going college in the first place. [KG enters stage right]:

KG March is a Brotherhood

The irony here has little to do with the specific schools being hawked in these spots. (The level of unintended comedy is off the charts when it comes to TMac’s Pitino pandering as justification for his choice of Louisville. There was a period, fueled mainly by my intense hatred of anything Brad Miller-related, when I refused to pity Rick Adelman and his charmin-esque coaching techniques. TMac has made it clear even those with no backbone deserve a break.) However, what’s so incredibly mystifying about this ad campaign is that it exists at all, that some ad exec thought this kind of wacknutt revisionist spin can fly in modern sports-entertainment capitalist machines when it’s proven so disastrous in so many other facets of American culture (wait, that actually makes perfect sense).

I understand that talents/personalities like KG, Josh Smith, Dwight Howard et al are marketable commodities; I mean, unlike their matriculating brotherhood, they actually get paid for wearing adidas sneaks. But the appeal of those players (KG in particular as the modern forefather of the phenomenon) is that they co-opted cultural norms/conventions because they knew they were talented enough to legitimately do so. Some have (probably mistakenly) called that “street cred” or some other such cliché– and apparently now enough history has passed that the connection between the “cred” and the cause of it has been forgotten and/or blurred.

It’s not surprising that Brandon Jennings means nothing now because a move halfway across the world and an global economic disaster has made his trend setting utterly distant and inapplicable to the American basketball culture. So in those blurred lines, adidas by way of amateur-cum-pro baller has cleverly found the space to re-cop and recoup the imagined and constructed cred by hyping the what was once shunned. It’s almost that much worse that the choice of schools is seemingly random (minus the adidas sponsorship, of course), because then it’s that much more obvious they’re just pimping out hype for the NCAA.

This is straight up current-day Paul McCartney esque bullshit. It’s like if Roman Polanski were to return to the U.S., go to jail, and THEN film a movie about firefighters on 9/11. Or something.

Pressed by the unspoken, unquestioned and now furtively veteran status of the dress code, along with one of the best rookie classes in recent history, uniformity of purpose has become the new style of pro basketball. It’s not that personal identity no longer exists. It’s just that the punishment for a DUI now amounts to irrelevance instead of incarceration (Barkley), and the worth of a player is predicated more upon serendipitous and arbitrary financial implications than sophisticated analytical metrics like, say, winning (Iverson, Marion, Sczcerbiak, LaFrentz, Gooden, Collins, any worthless vet making more than $5mil in the last year of their contract).

This is also what makes Rip Hamilton all the more of a pioneer. It’s of course ironic that the sum-larger-than-parts Pistons championship assemblage of which Rip was such an integral, um, part, were initially regarded as revolutionary vanguards of the same quiet, dutiful dedication and athletically-honed professional (or professionally honed athleticism, your choice) now institutionalized across the whole league.

Rip’s lasting legacy, however, is found in his ability to harness individuality from necessity/technicality, e.g. the facemask. The narratives that underlie Rip’s perpetually be-facemasked face are of course wholly positive: Pygmalion/She’s All That transformation from dorky to chic (or at the very least dorky-chic); finding excitement out of the mundane / life gives you lemonade bs; finding strength out of vulnerability. In the process, Rip’s facemask has transformed his liabilities into assets: lack of size is now excess of speed, swiftness; inadequate playmaking ability become dervish off-the-ball movement; mercurial-like bad attitude becomes mercurial-like good attitude. So the Bruce Waynification (Chris Nolan version, obvs) of the facemask-adorned Rip Hamilton belies not only the subtle and delicate nature in which individuality is formed, honed, and refined, but also the fringes of league culture in which it exists.

(Side note: watched the Cavs-Hawks game on Sunday and saw a facemasked Wally Sczcerbiak for the first time, which even deepened my awe of the facemask’s uncanny transformative properties. Just as the facemask turns Rip’s weaknesses into strengths, it turns Wally’s vanilla existence into ultra-vanilla. His assets (soft shooting touch; boyish enthusiasm often expressed in the form of excessive butt slapping; gel-hardened, movement-resistant haircut) have never seemed more benign and frivolously beneficial. Wally Sczcerbiak, more than ever, is the sprinkles on the cupcake that is the Cleveland Cavs.)

The fringes, of course, are an area of league culture for which Dwayne Wade has no concern. Which is why it’s both odd that Wade borrowed a page out of the Rip Hamilton book on self-promotion, and also predictable that the Wade band-aids saga has ended the way it has. The parallels between Wade’s bandages and Rip’s facemask are notable: injury-related necessity as inspiration/excuse for self-embellishment; transformative on-court redemption (Wade’s averages over the last 5 games: 37.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals, 1.8 blocks, 54.8 FG%, 1.6 3ptss, 91.5 FT%, SICK). Yet the sleight of hand that Wade clearly doesn’t see is how, in the process of naming and literally branding his weakness, Wade has confused process and execution, subject and object. What started as a curious exercise in symbolism (American flag band-aid, Flash band-aid) became a crude hack of self-aggrandizement. Rip’s facemask has power in that its meanings can alternate between both the obvious and the unstated. Subtlety is not one of Stern’s strong suits.