A HUNDRED TACKS

How to Relax Your NBA Friends at Parties

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 17:50:00 +0000

People making jokes about LeBron's new mask seem to be missing out on the deepest well of potential material.

Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:10:00 +0000

Confidential to anyone calling the third presidential debate for Romney: You're arguing that someone should be president WHO DOESN'T KNOW THAT IRAN HAS A COASTLINE.

Set yourself on fire.

Why Don't You Listen?

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Contra seemingly everyone, I thought Martha Raddatz was mediocre, at best, last night. She framed every question from the point of view of Beltway conventional wisdom, which is is just a long way of saying that she got her facts wrong. The two most egregious:

In asking about unemployment, she cited an administration statement that, with the ARRA, the rate would fall below 6%. The administration, of course, made that statement before the scale of the recession was known--unemployment is after all, a trailing measure. Once the full impact of the recession was known, the administration revised the number. So, basically she misled everyone watching the debate, forced Biden to respond to something inaccurate, and framed an issue in a way favorable to Ryan.
She actually asked about SocialSecurityandMedicare. They're not the same thing, and their financial issues are completely different. As has been well documented basically everywhere, Social Security is funded for another 20 years and could be funded indefinitely with a minor increase in the tax that funds the program. Increasing the eligibility age, cutting benefits, etc. isn't necessary. It's just a way of punishing working people and denying them the benefits that they paid for. Equally well documented is that Medicare's problem is the increasing cost of medical care. That's all that needs to be fixed. Every proposed reform is also a means of punishing working people. And confidential to Marth: neither can go bankrupt; Social Security in particular can't because of the formula for calculating benefits.

And one more thing: why was the only question about abortion framed as an issue of what religions and men will permit? It's frankly dispiriting that even a female moderator can't make women the subject of a question about ESTABLISHED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS and the kind of autonomy over medical decisions that men take for granted.

Another great victory for the American press corps!

How the Dead Enjoy Irony

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:44:00 +0000

Was Sully so labile in the 90s? It's hard to believe that he ever possessed sufficient focus to play such a significant role in killing health care reform. I wonder if the the millions who've died since then because they couldn't get adequate access to care find it at all funny that a dude with the emotional stability and focus of a drunk kitten contributed to their untimely demises.

"Actually" Innocent

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 03:32:00 +0000

It's probably past time to acknowledge that, generally, Americans enjoy killing people.

Do Not Answer, Lest You Reveal Yourself

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:59:00 +0000

New ad from LeBron, Nike, and Wieden & Kennedy:

There are so many things to like about this ad. Obviously, it's slick, so props to all the folks who conceived, wrote, shot, edited, etc.

But it's also LeBron's attitude. It's defiant and introspective without being apologetic or self-pitying. (I don't know what the fuck Dwyer is talking about, as usual when he starts moralizing about players instead of describing games. At no point in that ad does LBJ try to make anyone feel sorry for him.) It's completely aware that the audience will offer up, at best, new versions of the same thing that everyone spent the summer saying; most of them will just say the exact same things again, as demonstrated in comments sections throughout the 'tubes.

Of course, there is no answer to a rhetorical question, just as there was no right thing to do or right way to announce The Decision. There is only what was done and the way it went down. LBJ is no more defined by a single act than any of us. This isn't about second acts or making amends or cleaning slates. If we're doing it right, we are each of us inventing ourselves in every moment. Reflecting upon the past isn't about fixing it; it's about creating new paths into the future. Depicting all of the things that might have been isn't about those things; it's about imagining all of the things that might be. It's not an ad about the what could have been; it's a conjuring of possibility and a contemplation of how those possibilities might unfold.

And so, to answer Shoals, I don't think that saying at the end, "Should I be what you want me to be," is removing LeBron from the equation or blaming the viewer. The viewer in this ad is almost irrelevant, because he's not really addressing the viewer. He's ultimately addressing himself in the form of a viewer and asking who he wants to be. Thus, the implication isn't that the viewer is to blame for what happened, because the ad doesn't concede that anything blameworthy occurred. The implication of the question is that, having reviewed the possibilities of the past, the interlocutor now has clearer vision of both himself and of the possibilities of the future. The question is a hook.

Two other things that I really like about the ad. First, it's the evolved version of The LeBrons. In those ads, LBJ displayed different facets of himself. That continues in the new ad, articulated through each of the "careers" displayed: actor, poet, cowboy villain, construction worker. I'm kind of fascinated by the continuing theme of LeBron as unfinished product still figuring out himself as he figures out the game.

Second, I think there's a sly implication of the notorious tweet, "Don't think for one min that I haven't been taking mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone!" There was a lot of speculation about what he meant. Apparently, at least one thing he meant was that he was going judo a lot of the comments in this ad. Plus, the dig at Barkley is classic.

"Muslim Garb"

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:15:00 +0000

What the fuck is that?

Juan Williams sure as fuck doesn't know. No one at Fox News does either.

If you're going to simultaneously claim that you're afraid of something, and that you're not a moron bigot, you have to at least be able to define the thing itself.

Can It All be So Simple?

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 06:02:00 +0000

New video of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" tablet.

Gruber already pointed out that it looks like it could be a decent product, and that it's an obvious imitation of the iPad. Those two points are probably related.

I've read a number of comments arguing that it's real competition for the iPad, an iPad-killer, going to cost Apple its dominant position in that segment of the market, just like Android phones have done with the iPhone, etc.

But I kind of think that Apple couldn't be more pleased to see this video herald the arrival of another decent tablet computer. I assume that Apple views the iPad as the future of personal computing. Additionally, as a general matter, I don't think that Apple cares about controlling all or even most of the markets that it enters; rather, it cares about making products that it believes in and selling them at a profit. As long as it can do both, I don't think the company cares overly about its market share, who else is selling products in the same segments, how those products compare to its own, or its customers' complaints about else its product should or shouldn't do.

So, assuming further that Apple is making a fairly significant wager that tablets represent a significant portion of how people will do their computing in the future, the best thing that could happen is for another company to release a competent product in the same segment. It validates the concept. It makes consumers believe that there's more to it than an Apple fetish for style. If the competent alternative largely apes the iPad, so much the better, because it simultaneously validates Apple's vision while providing a point of contrast for the specific ways that Apple thinks this product should work. Since I think it likely that Samsung simply won't get video chat to work seamlessly, it also provides Apple with an opportunity to turn the second generation iPad into an example of how to do some things right. I actually hope the Galaxy Tab is as good as it looks in that video.

Lie Down with Dogs

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 06:18:00 +0000

I am about to blaspheme: I don't like watching Kevin Durant play basketball.

Not because he isn't a great player. Because he obviously is. A fantastic one actually, playing on a team that under other circumstances I would be very excited about.

Not because he is on a day-to-day basis a bad person. Because what the hell do I know about that.

And not because everyone loves him right now, and I tend toward contrarianism. Because I'm at least that self-aware.

I bring this up at all only because of some recent traffic around the webs about KD. In the wake of The Decision, he's become the anti-LeBron: the unassuming, humble, no interests outside of basketball kind of player who's also awesome at his job and, therefore, embraceable by a public eager to prove what it assumes to be it's morality.

Shoals documented the most recent outburst over at The Works, wherein he describes an article by Tommy Craggs questioning the reliability of Durantula's public persona and Nate Jones's Twitter replies, reasonably suggesting to all that they keep a little perspective and neither make too much nor too little of KD at this point.

He then followed it up with a reminder that, whatever KD's off-the-court temperament and style, on the court, dude will fucking kill you. Softly but with fire.

All of which serves only to remind me how tormented I am about watching and enjoying Durant and the Thunder.

And it boils down to this: he plays for some of the men I find most despicable in professional sports. For those who prefer not to remember, Clay Bennett and his GWB-supporting partners behaved less than honorably in taking control of the Sonics and arranging events to allow them to relocate the franchise to Oklahoma City. And David Stern was an accessory. And they used as their grand excuse for their larceny that the people of Seattle wouldn't tax themselves to subsidize a for-profit private business. I think they're all scum.

Believe me I know that there are other scum owners in the NBA. I'll just write the words Donald Sterling and leave it at that.

I also know that the people of Oklahoma City see it all differently.

I further know that NBA players have to play where the draft tells them to play.

But players are autonomous moral actors. They make choices. They have soapboxes. They can and do speak, even if it results in fines. They have power and can use it to influence the actions of owners either to change or to send the players to other teams.

Durant has done none of those things, so far as I know. He has been silent.

Worse, this summer, when he (wittingly or not) transformed himself into the anti-LeBron, one of the actions that cemented that perception of him as person and player was quietly tweeting about this contract extension. Rather than take the opportunity provided by free agency to walk away from his villain employers, he committed himself contractually to giving them a significant portion of his prime playing years.

It should come as know surprise to me that, to most of the public, LBJ's prime time betrayal of Cleveland makes him a monster, but KD's commitment to work for monsters makes him a hero, but it does.

And because Durant has chosen a partnership with fiends, I find him tainted. I question whether he has any honor or, to be more charitable, what his conception of honor is. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know, that to me, he's LBJ, and LeBron is the anti-Durant.

I also know, that because KD plays ball so well, and his team is so interesting, that this season (and his career) will be a small torture for me, in which each Thunder game forces me to consider whether honor requires boycotting their games; whether there is such a thing as honor in sports, work, or life; and whether the aesthetics of the game are a sufficient ethical palliative to overcome the calumny of the Thunder's ownership.

Yelling at a Wall #9474905

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:26:00 +0000

This morning, listeners were subjected to another display of the ignorance of NPR's Planet Money team regarding all matters of economics, as well as their gutless inability to actually call someone out when they're being disingenuous.

In this case, the story was about a new report form Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago and Atif Mian of the University of California, Berkeley, in which they claim that the "Cash for Clunkers" had no net positive effect. And yet, in his interview, Mr. Sufi states:

"You could argue that if you're in the depths of a really bad recession, maybe shifting purchases of automobiles by even a couple months, maybe that's a useful thing to do."

Why yes, you could say that, since shifting demand forward in time to offset a decline in other sectors to maintain aggregate demand was one of the primary purposes of the program. I actually hope that Mr. Sufi is just pulling a Dubner & Levitt, trying to get himself some publicity by saying something that the press will pay attention to. Because the other options are that he's ignorant of the fundamentals of his own profession or just a political hack disguising his intentions in the apparent objectivity of his field.

Of course, the folks at Planet Money don't actually understand much economics, and when they do understand, they don't have the guts to call someone like Mr. Sufi out on his bullshit. Pathetic.

(And neither the story nor the study pay any attention to the significant net increase in the gas mileage of the cars that were purchased through the program. I mean, who cares about something like that?)

We'll Live on Love

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:31:00 +0000

Got this email today from "David Plouffe":

When I saw the actual Mr. Plouffe speak in June, he informed the assembled that additional fiscal and monetary stimulus wasn't necessary to get the economy moving again. He openly mocked Paul Krugman. He assured us that it was just a confidence issue, and soon as "the markets" were sure that the federal deficit was being addressed, everything would turn around.

When I get emails like this now, I think, "Well, David, no additional organizing is necessary. It's just a confidence issue. If you reassure your supporters by doing nothing, they'll just decide to show up in November and support Dems in the same numbers and with the same enthusiasm as in 2008."

Lessons I Learned from Al Giardello #947835

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:47:00 +0000

Recently at Coates's Corner, Mark Kleiman, subbing while TNC gets his Thoreau on, reposted an analysis by Lowry Heussler, of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, in which Heussler read's Sgt. James Crowley's own account of the arrest. Shockingly, the conclusion is that, realizing that he's committed a serious error, Crowley baits Gates in stepping out of the house, where a small crowd has gathered. Since Gates was still yelling at Crowley for the crime of breaking into his own house, under Massachusetts law, Crowley was then able arrest Gates for disorderly conduct.

The shorter summary: Crowley was embarrassed and decided to give Gates a humble.

Many will remember that Obama subsequently and correctly commented that Crowley had acted stupidly. Which in turn led to the uber-odd Beer Summit. One of the aspects of that strange media event that, I think, many perceived but couldn't articulate, was that Obama quietly converted what was supposed to be his required apology to the public for having the temerity to question local law enforcement into an opportunity to flip the script. To all appearances, Obama was concluding a teachable moment and attempting to heal the country's racial divide. But there sat Crowley with the black President of the United States, a black Harvard professor, and Joe Biden, who had accepted a position of support to the black president. As I saw it on TV, it didn't look like anything to me other than Obama giving Crowley a humble.

I've got a lot of bases on which to criticize Obama since he took office, but I'll always like him for that moment.

No Piece May Stand Alone

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:31:00 +0000

Let me get this out of the way immediately: Ross Douthat is a dipshit, and finding flaws in the garbage that The Times (amazingly) pays him to write is a pastime for simpletons. Moreover, I don't consider what I'm about to write to be novel in any way. But a blog is a place to vent about the absurdities of this world, so here goes.

On Sunday, Douthat shot off an op-ed regarding the Cordoba House Islamic Community Center proposed to be located a couple of blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center. In it, he insists that, before Muslim-Americans can be taken seriously, or fully integrated into the American mainstream, they have to give up ideas like the possibility that American actions abroad might have played some role in the motivations of those who committed the misfortunes of September 11, or that directly answering questions about whether Hamas is a terrorist organization is a fool's game because they're usually founded on disputable premises. Never mind that plenty of American-Americans share those ideas.

No, Muslim-Americans must stop having such thoughts because, to be full members of society, they must appease a group of other Americans "that understands itself as a distinctive culture ... speaks English ... looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus ... and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly." To that group of Americans, disobedient Muslims and their proposed cultural center are "an affront to the memory of 9/11, and a sign of disrespect for the values of a country."

What I find particularly interesting about this made-up controversy, and Douthat's column perpetuates this idea unquestioningly, is that that group of Americans has laid claim to a few blocks of lower Manhattan, and yet those very same people regularly assert that the rest of NYC isn't "Real America"™, "my America"™, or a part of any other America that they invent when they find it convenient to create division when none exists.

As far as I'm concerned, they don't get to claim the WTC site unless they're willing to claim the rest of Manhattan as part of "their America." Or LA. Or the Bay Area. Or Seattle. Or Portland. Or Chicago. If they want to claim any part of America, then they have to take all of America and everyone who's already living there, too. Until they're willing to do that--until they're willing to take all of America as the "Real America"--then they have no legitimate claim to any other part of it. And they have no leg to stand on to declare the terms under which other groups get to join our society.

Paper Longer Than Pippen's Arms, but Not Long Enough to Box with God

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:11:00 +0000

I've been surprised by how much I've been thinking about LeBron's Decision, but perhaps I shouldn't be, since in the wake of one of the boldest and most landscape-shifting moves in the history of professional sports, there's a lot to think about. Besides just the basketball itself, which I'll have a few things to say about at the end, LBJ's move has drawn the kinds of robust howls from the corners of conventionality that often get me thinking about the ways in which others see the world.

Many of things that I think about The Decision, I already wrote as a couple of comments over at Joey's place. Unfortunately, with the update at Straight Bangin', they seem to have been ethered.

Some recent quotations have, however, given me some impetus to re-articulate my views in slightly different ways.

In a July 17 article in the Arizona Republic, we learn that "NBA legends are rolling their eyes at LeBron." In the article we're given this discussion between Jordan and Barkley:

"Charles, what would you have done if Pip (Scottie Pippen) and I called you up and asked you to come join us in Chicago?" Jordan asked.

A look of disgust flashed on Barkley's face. Not in a million years, he scoffed, and his colorful language made Jordan smile with pleasure.

It was nothing more than a humorous exchange between close friends on the driving range of the American Century Championship. Yet it spoke volumes of how the NBA's old guard views LeBron James and his ignoble departure to Miami.

"Let me just tell you this," Barkley said. "Mike and I are in 100 percent agreement on this. If you're the two-time defending NBA MVP, you don't leave anywhere. They come to you. That's ridiculous.

"I like LeBron. He's a great player. But I don't think in the history of sports you can find a two-time defending MVP leaving to go play with other people."

…

To former NBA legends, the move has diminished James' profile. It's how the self-appointed "Chosen 1" has taken the easy way out, leaving his home to join another established star instead of leading a supporting cast up the mountain. In the process, he's breaking the protocol set by most great players.

"It's disappointing from a competition standpoint," Barkley said. "You want to beat these guys. Sports are all about competition, and you want to beat the best. You want to beat Kobe (Bryant). You want to beat Dwyane Wade. You want to beat the Celtics, who beat you last year. That's what competition is about."

Shortly after that, MJ himself decided to weigh in on the topic:

"There's no way, with hindsight, I would've ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, 'Hey, look, let's get together and play on one team,'" Jordan said after finishing tied for 22nd in the American Century Championship golf tournament in Stateline, Nev. "But that's ... things are different. I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys."

Magic soon followed with similar thoughts:

"We didn't think about it 'cause that's not what we were about," Johnson said at Baruch College in New York, according to Bloomberg News. "From college, I was trying to figure out how to beat Larry Bird."

…

Johnson added on Tuesday: "It was never a question in our mind because nobody has ever done that."*

In just those few quoted remarks, I think those legends reveal more about their own limitations than they provide insight into or meaningful contrast with LeBron's actions. Indeed, they tell us a lot about what's wrong generally with the way The Decision is being characterized, particularly by an older generation of NBA players who come off looking worse for their efforts.

To begin, Barkley's statements reveal one of the many of the reasons that, in the end, he's a Hall of Fame loser. According to him, during his time as a player, a middle-school-gym-coach sense of pride was more important to him than clear thinking about what was necessary to win. Rather than survey the league, analyze what would be necessary to defeat the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, or Bulls, and put himself into a position not only to compete with MJ, but to actually defeat him, Barkley chose to sit on his hands and let team management try to build around him, trade him away, and then try to build around him again. Such passivity is a sure sign of loserdom and the utter absence of imagination. In another article, Sir Charles said that it's fine to chase rings later in one's career, which to me, only makes him look like more a fool in light of his passivity during his prime.

Thus, both Barkley and the author of the first article imply that LeBron will never achieve true greatness; LBJ has revealed himself to be too weak to be the GOAT. As the author puts it, in a now over-used pun, LBJ will never be a true king. The nature of a great king, however, is not to battle interminably against all opponents without ever considering one's own capacities or those of one's opponents. In a justly ridiculed statement, Donald Rumsfeld once (wrongly) told the nation that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you choose. Strategists have told us for millennia that, to the contrary, that when preparing for battle, one should assess the capacities of one's own army and improve them in light of your opponents'; scout and choose the terrain of battle if you can; learn your opponents' strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies; and strike appropriate alliances. Looking at the Cavs as constituted and as the team might realistically have been reconstituted in James's prime, he might well have concluded that it would be impossible, no matter how well he played, to defeat the Magic, Celtics, Lakers, Mavs, and other teams with multiple all-star caliber players. He might further have concluded that joining with Wade and Bosh was the path that would maximize his chances of a championship. Judged in that light, LBJ's decision to go to Miami could more readily be described as the result of a clear-eyed assessment of the best teams in the league and necessities of defeating them. In other words, it looks like the action of a man who, in other circumstances, would be respected for making smart choices and taking control of his own destiny.

Which brings is to the issue of courage and cowardice implied in all of those three legends' comments and nearly every media critique. To them, it was the coward's way out to team up with Wade and Bosh. I think exactly the opposite is true. James risked nothing by staying in Cleveland. He could have been this generation's KG, futilely battling for a decade and winning nothing; if he'd done that, the same three legends and all of the media critics would have used his loyalty to excuse the failure. He could have left to team management the decisions about whom he would play with or where he would play. But he didn't. He made his own choices, right or wrong. In doing so, LeBron risked everything--the love of his home state, his public profile, his legacy--to embark on a completely uncharted path in the NBA and perhaps in all of professional sports. There's no existing narrative to explain this move. There's no model to follow. There's no cover to hide beneath. This is something entirely new. A new story. A new power dynamic. A new model. Creating/doing something new is one of humanity's bravest acts. It's fraught with the potential for failure and ridicule. It has historically turned potential heros into nobodies. But it's also how we advance, how we progress. And LeBron was the only one with the guts to chart this course.

Whereas Barkley, in his comments reveals himself to be a coward and inadvertently explains why he's a loser, MJ and Magic (and Barkley too, to a lesser degree) demonstrate an alarming lack of awareness about their own legacies. Each's comments suggest that they never played with anyone of the quality of Wade and Bosh, which is simply preposterous. TrueHoop has a good post about the quality of players on Magic's teams, compared to LBJ's. Basketball-Reference has explained how good MJ's team was without him in 1994, and he had an equally good group in 1995-98. Do I really need to mention how many great players Bill Russell ran with?

So, it's simply not the case that MJ and Magic were playing with five guys from the Y. They arrived on teams with good players, and good players were brought to them. Any complaints about The Decision based on playing with potential competitors sounds merely like a gripe about process and not a legitimate objection to result.

If James playing with Wade and Bosh is the same result as MJ with Pippen and Rodman, does The Decision really imperil LeBron's legacy in the way that Barkley et al. imply? First, let's consider that the Triptych may win nothing, but that it might also win five champships (to make up a number). Many have posited that Wade will be the leader of this team and thus the one to receive the credit for those Larry O'Briens. Perhaps those people missed LBJ being the best player in the L for the last 2-3 years. If they didn't, do they actually expect that to change with the scenery? Wade might have some glorious moments in those future Heat runs, but LeBron will always be the best player on the court and the one driving those teams. So if those hypothetical championships include a couple more regular season MVPs for James and several finals MVPs, how can he not be in contention for GOAT status? Someone still has to explain convincingly how it is that LBJ becomes Pippen in this situation. LeBron might not be MJ, but neither is he Pip; he's something entirely new, so applying the Bulls narrative to the Heat is simply inapt,absent more compelling proof.

Oh, I forgot, it's because LeBron gave up alpha status when he went to someone else's team. It's quite bizarre to me that no one wants to consider the more reasonable conclusion that Wade gave up his team when he begged James to come to Miami. That he ceded his leadership role when he acknowledged that he needed someone better than himself to put the Heat back on the championship path. Or that the three will, as part of this new model, craft a heretofore unimagined example of athletic leadership that will not automatically preclude James from achieving GOAT status. Again, the criticisms are trapped in old narratives that The Decision simply destroyed.

And it's the destruction of old models that brings into relief one of the aspects of this that few want to discuss: power. LeBron has it, and it seems that the bulk of the sports commentariat is repulsed by the idea that he actually used it. If you listen to the comments from Oscar Robertson and Clyde Frazier about The Decision--two guys who fought for free agency and knows what it mean--you'll hear about now-repudiated ideas of competitiveness, but you'll also hear recognition that James understands what they accomplished. MJ and Magic used free agency to push the envelope of compensation and to make demands behind the scenes. But neither of them could imagine using its power to completely reshape the landscape of a team--and perhaps even the league--around themselves. Which is unfortunate, because they should recognize that LBJ is actually paying them the deepest kind of respect by advancing the power of players. You could talk about this in terms of labor-management power balance, or the ways in which the raw exercise of power by corporate executives both repulses and attracts Americans, but you can't deny that James orchestrated over several years a situation in which he maximized the power of his own free agency, and that he then exercised that power in a way that, in other contexts, might be perceived as crude, but that would be respected. I suggest that readers consider what it means that they have a problem with the accumulation and exercise of power by a young, wealth, black man.

LeBron's exercise of power can be seen in another way, as well: as I write this, news is breaking that Chris Paul wants out of New Orleans because he wants to follow LeBron's example and play with another superstar. LBJ shifted the landscape this summer and made other player see new possibilities. Some may reject those possibilities but others will embrace it. Opening up new options for others similarly situated is power.

I don't want to end without writing a few words about the spectacle of The Decision. Even those who have made some of my same points nevertheless seem to think it a prerequisite that they say that the ESPN spectacle was simply gross. I think that's a cop out. All marketing is gross. But again, James did something new. His people negotiated a deal with ESPN to turn the announcement into a money-making opportunity. In other words, LBJ took care of his people. He also began a partnership with ESPN, which may pay dividends in the future, but also probably helped blunt some of the criticism that might otherwise have flowed from the network. And similar to free agency, LeBron advanced what those before him had started. Even if the special itself wasn't the most compelling program in history, it ensured that LeBron would be one of the most discussed issues of the summer. Kevin Durant may be satisfied with a simple tweet that he extended his contract, but he obviously doesn't have larger ambitions than basketball. LeBron does. Using the media to further them doesn't make him any different from any other corporate executive. Which certainly doesn't make him the person that many would like him to be, but does bear out what LeBron has always said about himself and his desires.

And so finally let's talk about basketball. I became a fan of the game watching MJ's Bulls. I hadn't been a fan of any professional sport for probably 10 years before that. In 1991, I really saw what they were doing, and it was beautiful. Since 1998, I don't know that I've seen the game played so gorgeously at both ends. The 1995 Suns were amazing, the We Believe Warriors were spectacular. But the Bulls were simply beautiful. The possibility of what LBJ, Wade, and Bosh can do on the court has me as excited as I've been about the game in nearly 20 years. The possibility of the quality of the basketball gets mentioned in other analyses, but it doesn't get the attention it's due. In the end, it's the only thing that matters.

* I give Magic some credit for at least acknowledging that what LBJ pulled off was something entirely new. Something that he, Barkley, and MJ simply didn't … couldn't … imagine--not something that they considered and rejected. Depending on how you look at it, that's recognition either of the limitations of their imaginations or of the limits of their power. Of course, they expanded the power of NBA free agents, and in light of that, they should, like Oscar Robinson and Clyde Frazier, be celebrating.

[insert stick figure with shovel]

noreply@blogger.com (eperone) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:48:00 +0000

This place is a bit of a mess at the moment. I'm not sure that this Blogger template is going to work out, but I've got a post that I want to put up, so I'm going with it for now. But in case anyone cares, this place may get a different look in the near future.