Sometimes I wish we were a role player
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.