Wednesday, May 6, 2015

David Lee: The Man Who Is Alive, But Not

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One humdrum November night in 2009, a much touted spindly limbed rookie guard found himself inserted in the closing seconds of a game with a foregone conclusion and promptly fouled David Lee (PF, New York Knicks, Old Money). Umbrage was taken, trash was talked. In a game bereft of drama or stakes, a benign altercation would have to suffice for a denouement. The Madison Square Garden camera crew fixed their sights on the comparatively hulking figure of Lee as he viciously admonished the slight guard who had the fucking chutzpah to garbage time foul him. The young guard for his part appeared unflappable, supremely unconcerned with the large white man talking shit. This was, as far as I can tell, the first time the world saw David Lee and Stephen Curry on an NBA court at the same time. They've been together nearly ever since. One dude became the most popular man-boy on the planet and the other guy is David Lee. David Lee, huh, what's that guy with the boring name's story? Well, David Lee is a seemingly pleasant enough rich guy rocketing towards an inevitable reckoning with the point of no return.


When he was just a smaller and younger version of himself, David Lee used to feed jaguars and lions with his grandfather. His grandfather was a fellow who had lots and lots of money, and feeding big cats is something rich grandfathers like to share with their heirs. It also seems like something Caligula would do with his grandson, but apparently this old dude was cool and not the least bit like Caligula. E. Desmond Lee had made his fortune manufacturing metal hangers and wire shelving. He also played a bit of basketball back in the day, loved his model trains, and was nuts about the symphony. The thing we know Grandpa Lee for best was philanthropy. Before he died he had given an atrociously vast amount of money ($70 million) away to various charities and causes, mostly to the good stuff, education and the arts. He lived long enough to see his former feed-the-lions buddy somehow become a professional basketball player, and even more somehow, perhaps owing to the well known generous and forgiving nature of New York Knicks fans, become a fan favorite. Doughy David Lee: a Hero for Our Times!


Since signing with the Warriors the national media has mostly been less eager to write puff pieces. A scrappy white man who can jump is a lot more inspiring for the kids back home than a guy pocketing a cool $80 million and not even being anything close to a messiah. Expectations were sidelined for hopes, because no one really expected that much. Every defensive breakdown was scrutinized, held up as proof that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks and also hey, this guy can’t hold his ground against the big front courts or chase the quick ones out to the three-point line. He’s battled being a punchline from the likes of Kirk Goldsberry, who referred to him disparagingly in a let's face it, way too highly publicized presentation at the Sloan Conference as the “Golden Gate". My counter-point? The Golden Gate Bridge is not terrible.

The best press David Lee seemed to get was a mumbly Shaquille O’Neal dubbing him the “White Chris Webber”, which is...a nice-ish thing to say? Lee never came close to getting the loudest applause at Oracle. No one will write a “Why We Watch” article about him for the Classical. My sense of it is that most Warriors fans at least sort of appreciated the little things he brought to the table, like his White House Press Secretary style sideline interviews and his willingness to get into scrums to back teammates. It's never been proven that Lee is a psychopath or a murderer, or that he enjoys Smash Mouth. And come on, dude almost lost his shooting arm courtesy of Wilson Chandler’s teeth. That probably endeared him to some folks who value Purple Hearts and stuff like that. 

Everyone has an opinion on David Lee, the missing piece that never much fit. Golden State of Mind comment sections, the dank alleyways of Twitter, your friends and neighbors.


We need not shed tears for David Lee. Shedding literal tears for that guy would be a weird waste of tears. He was born rich and he will likely die rich. He partied with Snookie. He's tall and not uncomely as they say. It’s not about that of course. When he is gone and mostly forgotten the Warriors will keep on moving, one way or another. This sports thing is all about cycles, and only the smartest and luckiest franchises get to be contenders ad infinitum. It may be that we’ll be back where we started soon enough. But to cherish what we have, where we are, as close to the crown as we’ve been since the goddamn 70s, it feels wrong to not give David Lee some small amount of regard. The world won’t stop for David Lee, or any of us. All that we can hope for is to be remembered somewhat fondly, for being attached in some small way to a part of this living thing that was precious to someone for some amount of time, and for not being involved in betrayal or neglect or destruction or abuse or failed power-plays. David Lee never rocked our sinking boat or tried to single-handedly navigate it past treacherous shoals. He just did what he did. A pick-and-roll savant, great hands, superior finisher around at the rim, some slick midrange jumpers for awhile there...It wasn’t nearly enough to match his pay stubs, but he went about it without throwing a single sulk, even now that’s he’s the new (old) Kent Bazemore. So now I will raise a glass of affordable but not shitty whiskey and make a toast: Here’s to David Lee, who played hard in ofttimes shitty circumstances, a man signed to my favorite team who made them better than they were. I feel mostly no regrets.


Imagine David Lee spending the day with his grandson at the zoo in St. Louis. He’s arranged it so that they will feed jaguars and lions together. The concrete beneath their feet burns. His hair has receded, what little left is white as bone. His body has gone to fat a little, the hint of a heavy middle no longer a hint at all. But he can still keep up with an energetic eight year old. The boy fixes him with an inquisitive look as they watch a sleeping zebra.


“Grandpa,” the young boy says, “Did you fight in the war?”


David Lee’s takes a kerchief out of his fanny-pack and wipes his brow. He sweats a lot now. His thoughts are mostly half remembered shadows, but some things never go: high-fives and thunderous applause and then heckling and the screech of sneakers pivoting on hardwood. And then there was that time he had 37 points and 21 rebounds...


David Lee shakes his head at his eager grandson, “No...but I was a Golden State Warrior for a few years. And you know what? Never mind what haters say, ignore them ‘til they fade away, amazing they ungrateful after all the game I gave away. Safe to say I paved the way, for you cats to get paid today.”

True, true.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Be Like Brandon, not Mike






So, a few weeks ago we all heard the shitty news that Brandon Jennings will miss the rest of the season after suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon during a perfectly random middle of the season who gives a shit Detroit loss to Milwaukee. It was a personal tragedy for Brandon and his family, a possibly pivotal setback for the Pistons who were in the midst of mounting a supremely rare redemption story, and a sucker punch to the gut for anyone who puts stock in the unrepentant and wild 80s LA hardcore punk ethos of the playground baller amidst the staid machine that is the National Basketball Association.

There are much better talents and way better players than Jennings, but the 25-year-old point guard was always unmistakably himself, and he didn't market his brand for Republicans who also bought sneakers. His journey from basically a cast-off to a sorta leading man wasn't quite the stuff of legend, but it would do. It was the crossroads where pathos skull-fucked bathos and made a human seem like a person.

Brandon Jennings spent the first four years of his NBA career in Milwaukee, before being traded to the Detroit Pistons in the summer of 2013. At the time, Detroit had lost its way in spectacular, almost super-human fashion. They were routinely clobbered in almost every manner you can be clobbered, accumulating a straight-up cornucopia of painful losses. Teams win and then they lose. No recent team has done the latter more strangely and suddenly than the Detroit Pistons.

The Pistons have tried a lot of different things to improve their talent level since ceding the mantle as the Eastern’s elite team to the Big 3 Celtics back in 2008. [The gory details include: Michael Curry’s plodding big-ego compromised version of small-ball, Lawrence Frank’s ghostliness, the mutiny against John Kuester, the helplessness of Mo Cheeks, the gamble on Allen Iverson, the false prophet of Rodney Stuckey, the contracts of Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, the broken down TRACY MCGRADY playing point guard, the return of Old Ben Wallace, the continued prominence before a merciful exile of Tayshaun Prince, the rookie promise of Jonas Jerebko, the hair of Kyle Singler, and finally, acquiring Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings for the Great Ball Hog Renaissance. ]

Detroit lost and lost and lost some more. To forestall more losing, their new owner reached out to Stan Van Gundy and made Van Gundy a veritable Grand Vizier of Basketball Operations, putting the entire campaign in his hands. And then they kept losing, starting this season with a dismal 5–23 record. Another lost year, it seemed.



But then something happened. Highly-paid chucker Josh Smith was waived, and almost instantly the Pistons started winning games. In a row. Call it addition by subtraction, call it an exorcism, that’s how history will no doubt see those few magical weeks when the script was flipped, burned, torn apart and re-written from a tragedy to a triumphant underdog story. There was suddenly hope in a town that had subsisted on crumbs since 2008.

On paper, resurrections look inspiring but largely shapeless. But in reality they tend have faces, and the two guys that the pundits were eager to bestow the credit to for the remarkable turn-around were Van Gundy and his spindly starting point-guard, Brandon Jennings. The team put together 12 wins in a 15-game stretch, beating the league’s lowlifes and giants alike. Brandon was winning again, averaging 20 points and seven assists per game. He was making a last stand against being typecast as an inefficient and perpetual loser, the type of guy that seems always on the verge of becoming a journeyman, even though he hasn’t done much NBA-journeying.



The nice little run the Pistons made after jettisoning Josh Smith, a run very much led by Brandon Jennings, was supposed to be the first step in reversing our perspective on the Pistons. Teams that far in the hole don’t come back with a vengeance. They just accept their fate, wait for the lottery, and give it the old college try next year. For whatever silly reason, these Pistons thought they could be the exception to the rule, and sneak into the playoffs and possibly even make some noise once they got there. For a while that seemed probable, and — given the torpidity of Brooklyn and the myriad of setbacks in Miami — perhaps even likely. One torn Achilles tendon later, and all that hope in Detroit was cruelly extinguished.


And that’s a fucking shame. Because there aren’t too many Brandon Jennings’ in this league. Guys with the sense of humor of a doomed poet carved into them. Complex guys who exist in mirth and in darkness at once. Watch his scenes in Adam Yauch’s “Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot” and tell me Brandon doesn’t have a certain gloom to him, even in his ebullient moments, that feels rare in his particular cohort. The way the camera lingers on him during a quiet moment, the stenography of his silence. This is a young man whose father committed suicide. A person written off by so many people it must seem almost blasé. This is a guy who had decided at a very young age to give David Stern’s cynical paean to the sanctity of college hoops a middle finger, and go overseas to play in Italy, thereby denying himself of a mandatory year of being enrolled at a university before declaring for the draft.



Brandon’s stunt at the 2009 draft is the stuff of legend. Hearing rumors of his draft stock plummeting, Jennings took the novel approach of not even being in the building instead of risking embarrassment in the Green Room. When the Bucks drafted him at No. 10, David Stern was forced to keep the show moving before Jennings eventually arrived on the scene. He took the stage with an excess of bitter swagger, waved to the crowd, and only then offered the Commissioner a perfunctory handshake. It’s brilliant, nearly art.

And then the 55-point explosion. In just his seventh career game, Jennings went absolutely bonkers, but in the most beautiful and dangerous way. It was a fantastic display of moxie and desperation and spoke to his irritability vis-à-vis losing. It was those playground handles, relentless drives, crafty moves under the basket, daring tip-ins amongst the trees, and one trebuchet-looking three-point attempt after another. He looked immortal, like a goddamn superstar.



However, as is the case with early critical acclaim, outliving his great moment took a toll on him. Never again would he even sniff 50 points. The Bucks made the playoffs in his rookie season and lost in the first round. Turns out he wasn’t a superstar, and the Milwaukee fanbase slowly turned on him. His tenure with the Bucks was more underwhelming than terrible. His shooting percentages were never great, his individual impact on the game was often in doubt. He was the leader, but not a leader. He was a serious person, but played like a joker. Brandon’s trajectory did not seem to be a happy one.

After the Bucks sent him to Detroit there seemed at least the possibility that things might turn around, but the Brandon Jennings/Josh Smith Pistons were a complete disaster from the get-go. The guy who had dared to not even show up to the NBA Draft was now going through the motions. Then suddenly the team’s fortunes reversed, capped off by a blistering stretch that confounded supporters and detractors alike. The Pistons as a whole looked strangely great. They played like a team, as if they knew each other's names and favorite spots, played as if they've even shared non-silent meals with one another from time to time. And no one on that Hoosiers meets the Bad News Bears squad played better than Jennings, the scrawny kid who certainly gave a damn, but perhaps not a fuck.



Since Smith was cut loose and before suffering his season-ending injury, Jennings had posted the seventh-best PER in the league — his name alongside Harden, Curry, Klay Thompson, Durant, LeBron, and Anthony Davis. Although by itself such a small sample size proves nothing, to people who have been watching him all along it reinforced what we already knew. He belongs. He’s not those guys, not a transcendent talent, but he damn-well belongs. I don't know how to feel about Michael Jordan, other than I don't want to be like him. Brandon's more accessible and sympathetic to norms like me. There’s something to be said for a mid-tier terror, a menace that lurks and waits. Brandon has that 55-point masterpiece inside him always, timing its escape.


The Pistons may very well make the playoffs without him. They may not. It’s the luck of the draw and fortune’s shitty caprice that dragged him down this season, of all seasons. But the unlikely and all too short Phoenix (the bird!) like rise of the Detroit Pistons is the latest example of a life’s worth of mounting evidence that every now and then we get the chance to see the mathematics of certainty fucked with. Sometimes it's beautiful when that happens.

A now deleted tweet by Jennings read, "Not being able to play basketball is the worst thing."

Depressing. But just like Detroit, Brandon Jennings will rise again. Then he can have his revenge and eat it too.

Friday, January 9, 2015

On Being Removed from the Situation


Many of us, particularly those of us stateside, forget why basketball blogging and twitter are important. You of the more convenient time zones ask simply, “Why not just watch the games?” For those of you with cheap Bucks or Kings tickets available in particular, it’s hard to convey the position we on the other end of the world have. We get things through you second hand. We wake up in the morning and check fantasy scores and scroll through reposted dunk Vines. Try as we might, having a job or school means watching the vast majority of games, even for a favorite team, isn’t feasible. 

So I’ve lost my right to blog about basketball. I’m not longer engaged in the primary source, the text of the sport, and am instead resigned to taking your word for it. A handful of podcasts, a box score or two, this is how we keep in touch. 

Am I seeing the same NBA as you? I am not. Can I be as objective about it as you, or bring forth original insights? I cannot. Perhaps, in my position, I am only qualified to tell you what it’s like from “over there,” and how we might spread our dear league to the world. 

The sport itself, as you probably know well, is portable. Buy a ball and it’s easy enough to put up hoops, to find three other people. And foreigners do play. Foreigners even call “Kobe” at appropriate times. It does not need explaining that anyone, anywhere “can.” 

Deficiencies abound. We probably don’t know what happened in that game last night. We might, if you’re very lucky, know that the Wizards are doing well, or that Tom Thibodeau is a good defensive coach. Here in Israel, nearly everyone knows more or less what David Blatt is up to, understandably, but that’s the most detailed knowledge you’ll find. 

Yet many understand the basics of basketball. A random weeknight walk past the park, you’ll find Orthodox Jewish men and boys in black suits backing each other down in the post. The Maccabi Tel Aviv win dominated the papers for three solid days afterward, and this was during the tumult leading up to Operation Defensive Edge. Clearly, sports and basketball in particular matter.

But somewhere between shores the game becomes estranged from itself. Here they know names of greats, and some mythological qualities they possess: LeBron can drive like a train, Rondo has a quality no-look assist. They know very few concrete facts, and this somehow adds to the beauty. Performances pass into legend with no one checking the facts. You, basketball blogger, create this reality for them. 

In the same way a young man from Tel Aviv reads stories about D.C. and Bad Brains, and places himself there and fabricates his reality of the way things must have been, in some ways better, in some ways worse, so we wreathe basketball in our own particular fictions, here. For all we know, John Wall never hit a three point shot in his whole career. We exaggerate, we simplify, and we build it all from you. 


So consider us, when you don’t know what you’re writing, or why you’re doing it, or if it’s worth it. We here, of the less fortunate time zones, need you. You feed our myths. You bring us the basketball from the sacred lands, incalculably better than our own, though we couldn’t exactly explain why.