sam cassell is an alien and i love him

Two. years.

Damn.

Let’s not speak of it again.

Anyway, what compels me to write is not the vacillations of NBA cultural mores over the duration of my, um, sabbatical. Those have been covered extensively, shrewdly, and encyclopedically elsewhere.

Yet the NBA’s cultural economy, much like its financial economy (or any economy, for that matter), if not a zero-sum game, yields winners and losers. And for all of its New Worldly professional sheen, efficiency (more on that next time) and equilibrium—all post-Madoff superlatives deserving of intellectual/rhetorical acknowledgment, appreciation, or at the very least introspection—the losers are as deserving of at least a few words.

In particular, I speak of one such man: the namesake of this blog; he is Sam Cassell, and, redundancy aside, I love him.

Foremost, Sam Cassell stands as a statue of sanctity to the old form of NBA craft, ruling from the midrange. In the post-millennial NBA, the midrange has veered closer and closer to a no man’s land—a mysterious stretch of space which rewards neither the brute athleticism of those plays existing above the rim, nor an extra point for its relative distance. Naturally, this misunderstood and neglected strip of land is the space in which Cassell thrives; Cassel’s ability to bury midrange Js with stunning consistency has been viewed by league observers alternately as both a wonder and witchcraft.

Cassell’s narrative has frequently paralleled the tired brains-over-brawn cliché, a story which inevitably ends when age denigrates the point to which savvy and smarts are able to compensate for the meager physical contributions said player brings to the court. But to lay blame for the demise of Sam Cassell solely on the staid outcome of an age old truism sells Cassell’s legacy short… despite his contributions from the midrange, in the clutch, and relating to the excess of the size of his testicles.

So how can a player of Cassell’s pedigree be so easily dealt, shelved, and forgotten—traded last week for not even another player but an empty roster spot?

Simply put, the currency that Cassell possesses has been invalidated by the equilibrium of the NBA in ’09.

Consider some of Cassell’s (to refer to them politely) intangibles. Cassell’s veteran savvy has already been mentioned here, but it’s not just that Sam relishes the role of teacher so much, it’s how he applies that relish. As you might expect, these identities all fall under the Blow of Information realm, as former teammate and current ogre Chris Kaman called it:

• Sam directs his team as a preacher guides his flock; he is the fiery pulpit preacher, the entirety of the court is his soapbox.
• Sam soothsays his opponents and the refs (is there a difference?); he is the loquacious gossip and the court is his barbershop.
• Sam speaks clearly yet forcefully to the new (and pathetic) school of shockjock assclown journalist; he is the consummate diplomat

It’s abundantly clear, on this celebrated 10th-Day-After-President’s-Day Day, that Sam Cassell is more like Abraham Lincoln than any other man to have ever played in the NBA.  The propensity for garrulousness; the urge to talk, to express; the need to find motivation and inspiration through the process of conferring, articulating–these Lincolnian values have been reproduced in no basketball player more faithfully than Sam Cassell.  [O]nce he began speaking, got a smile on his face and told stories, this whole vitality came to his face. You forgot he wasn’t so good looking. I mean, what other NBA player could this Doris Kearns Goodwin quote possibly be applied to?  For what other athlete, past or present, could the description “sexy-ugly” be more apt (especially considering Kearns Goodwin’s scholarly definition)?

Yet if the NBA of today is increasingly becoming a place where the brightest stars are characterized by “a strong aversion to inner turmoil,” a place where “the rhythms of craft tamp down man and his problems, instead of the latter animating the former,” (see: here) then this is a business in which Sam Cassell—savvy veteran, Lincoln scholar, fiery preacher, barbershop gossip—can no longer ply his trade. Despite an insatiable competitiveness and significant personal turmoil, there is nothing “inner” about Sam Cassell or his game. And in the process of constantly exposing himself on the court as exactly the type of person he is in real life, Sam Cassell has also exposed his most significant vulnerabilities in the fast changing economy of the NBA. Despite Cassell’s best efforts to diversify his investments (here I’m speaking of Cassell’s continued lobbying to venture to the sidelines, a campaign which began five years ago after his first full season in Minnesota and has continued at every one of his teams since), Cassell’s personal/professional identity has come off as too personal, too dated, too Sam I Am.

For all of the fully appreciable aspects of the New NBA which are proving the strength and appeal of this new culture on a nightly basis, it makes total sense that the inverse equally strengthens the existence of the equilibrium-writ-large. But couldn’t David Stern have sacrificed Marbury instead?