sam cassell is an alien and i love him

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.