Searching for Slava

FREE FALLING

2013-04-14T01:10:00.001-05:00

My writer's path has been both logical and clear cut - from a blog named after an obscure Ukrainian to to Craig Sager fiction to Forum Blue and Gold links and finally, a novel about a kidnapped movie dog with diabetes. I have been rewarded with great riches for my efforts, having sold a grand total of ten eBooks to date. I am convinced now more than ever that I have found the true golden thread.

The history of electronic books goes way back to 1930 when Bob Brown predicted a machine that would evolve the art of reading, even considering a future in which the written word could be recorded 'directly upon the palpitating ether'. Various inventions ensued over the coming decades but the words didn't really hit the fan until the introduction of the Sony Reader in 2006 and the Amazon Kindle in 2007. Electronic devices are now the preferred mode of consumption - Amazon alone recorded over $61 billion for all media revenue in 2012. Is it so wrong to salivate over a slice of cyber-pie?

Friends have been mostly circumspect about my new venture, neither encouraging or discouraging. It's a wise move - the path of least resistance when somebody you know writes 300 pages about an advertising executive, three wannabe young white gangstas and a half-baked crime. I'm not complaining though. I'm meeting new friends who churn out boatloads of literary marvels about steely-eyed assassins and passionate widow women heading along the dusty trail to a life of loneliness way out west. I have been told the proper way to market one's work is by tweeting it every five minutes rather than every few days. I'm trying to imagine how that would fly alongside discussions of Kobe's pop heard 'round the world.

But where's the free stuff? For those unable to contain their want, look to the right hand margin. See the large Coma Dog widget that looks like a reader with a little blue arrow at the lower left corner? That's the mother lode. Don't be alarmed by the initial jumble of words on the title page – simply choose your font and line spacing and click “apply”. The typeset will crystallize and carry you away to 58 pages of unabashed joy.

I know that some may find the first chapters a bit slow. Not to worry, it's a thrill ride from page 60 on. Of course, that will cost you $2.99 which is two bucks more than when I first wrote this post. Bummer. If you're a clever person you can read it for free at Goodreads but I'm not telling you how. Regardless, don't you want to know if Peppy lives or dies? Don't you want to know whose blood pools on the dirty floor of the Fabulous Forum?

Harry Debec was a child of the sixties, born between two worlds. He came into advertising at a time when the old ways were still the stuff of legends, as technology was just beginning its virulent explosion. It was the corridor between martini lunches and coffee bars, a time when print advertising still meant something, when there were still three networks and then four and soon hundreds more. Computers and video changed everything, illustrators went out of business, keypads took over the earth, the internet devoured conscious hours like a flesh-eating disease, new media existed in ever shortening cycles, louder, faster and cheaper trumping almost every known aspect of marketing.

The stories about Lindsay Lohan and Michael Phelps never did lead to a job with Rolling Stone and ESPN has yet to offer their Page 2 slot. I may yet write novellas about nubile zombie girls and I may not. Words can be addictive though in all their many forms and fashion. Is Peppy the diabetic dog so far removed from the Jim Kjelgaard books I cherished as a kid? Then again, the Big Red stories didn't feature junkie directors or a Pilates babe. Conquering the literary world, ninety-nine cents at a time. All the vampires, are walkin' through the valley...

PROLOGUE

2013-04-09T13:29:00.002-05:00

I became enamored of the idea of writing a book some years back. Ultimately, does it matter why? One inconsequential problem, I had no story to tell. Fortunately, the hands of divine intervention appeared, sparing me the necessity of creative thinking. A buddy gave me a book for Christmas – a simple field guide to Birds of North America. I didn't have much interest in the subject but the dryly laid-out text began to interest me with its repetitive minutiae.

It wasn't enough but again, happenstance. I was in the Pasadena Library, standing in front of rows of musty books and closed my eyes, let my hands trail and randomly stopped on A Unit of Time, A Unit of Water: Joel White's Last Boat. It was a beautifully written accounting of the last days of a legendary boat builder, dying of cancer. It was not only about Joel's life and his boats, but his relationship with his father – none other than E.B. White, author of marvelous children's literature and scholarly essays and my favorite writer growing up. Now I was intrigued.

I needed more though and after a considerable struggle, came up the idea of writing about a guy who doesn't know what comes next. I had my book! I would write about Harold, a middle-aged advertising executive who sails his boat up along the Atlantic seaboard, following the migratory path of birds. I even came up with a brilliant title – Birds, Boats and Middle Age.

I wrote at a snails pace, day in, day out. Slowly amassed details, lots and lots of details. This was important stuff. The Birds of North American Guide was not enough – I purchased the definitive work on the subject – the Sibley Guide to Birds. There would be nothing left out. And books about boats. Lots of books about boats. About a year went by. I now had 300 pages with lots of marshes and birds and plant life and sailing and a guy named Harry who's kind of a dick.

The next logical step was to dump the manuscript off on a good friend who was also a very good writer. I needed affirmation. My friend found it to be boring and repetitive with an unlikable main character. He had enjoyed one random section however, in which Harry flies out to Hollywood to meet with studio types about running the ad campaign for a hopelessly snake-bitten sequel to a talking dog movie.

The scrapping of all but 40 pages didn't come easily. But it came, along with other characters and story devices and drafts that topped out at 450 pages and were again stripped down. And years of stops and starts and crashing computers and lost files and lost interest and eventually a found memory stick with an old draft and more revisions and at the end, an unstable mess as a result of different software systems and who knows what.

Perhaps the best thing about the process is just that – the process. The story about an ad exec and a dog with diabetes, a trio of entitled white wannabe gangstas and a Hungarian junkie director won't win any awards but it will exist in cyberspace as a drawn-out exercise that hopefully helped me become a better writer.

One final circle of hell presented itself – an abomination called e-formatting. I basically gave up on that battle – Coma Dog is on Smashwords, Nook and Kindle for 0.99 cents and there's free chapter samples available. The Smashwords reader is the larger widget to the right and there's about 58 free pages - click the arrow at the lower left corner, choose your fonts and spacing and you're all set.

BOOKMARK

2013-04-04T19:01:00.000-05:00

There are just seven games left in the Los Angeles Lakers' regular season. I am painfully aware that this blog has received little attention lately, especially from me. This has been my first entry this year. Many excuses, from work to other sites to real life – and all are only that, excuses. The Lakers have had a difficult and often perplexing year. In the past I would have chronicled the missteps with nearly as much enthusiasm as the victories – this team has been nothing if not story-worthy in many ways. Yet, I have procrastinated.

I'm surprised sometimes to see that traffic still filters through here. Lately, some of it has been not dissimilar to the tiny scrabbling feet you might hear between the walls late at night. It began with a few cleverly worded comments left on old posts, complimenting them and adding tidy little links. Soon the trickle became more than a trickle, I would log in an find a dozen or so comments. Fantastic post, I wonder why other experts in this sector don't notice this? Or, this recent gem, unquestionably consider that you stated your favorite reason seemed to be at the internet the easiest thing to have in mind to you. And always with ever-helpful links to sites at the end, from garden tools to kitchen appliances. I changed my security settings but the comments come in ever faster, now piling up in a spam folder. My assumption is that the various “Anonymous-es” don't actually bother checking to see if their comments appear.

What's next for Searching for Slava? I have no clue. I somehow doubt that a rash of inspiration will take hold as the Lakers begin a glorious resurgence, coming from eighth place in the west to resume their rightful place among the halls of great comeback stories. If they do somehow make a run at it though, I may memorialize it here. And if not, I'll certainly cover it during my twice-weekly reports for ForumBlue and Gold.

A few years back I spent too much time penning a manuscript for a full-length novel that never saw the light of day except for a brief excerpt I used as filler during the dog days of the NBA lockout. The laptop housing it crashed and I thought it was lost forever and didn't much care. I recently found a draft on an old memory stick and have been toying with edits. I may decide to release it into the cyberverse before I come to my senses. If nothing else, this particular bookmark will serve as an additional repository for rapt readers who like to leave comments about their own moneymaking schemes – those however will continue to be deleted.

A VERY SAGER CHRISTMAS

2012-12-23T19:41:00.002-06:00

Life had been good lately. Or, had at least been stable. As stable as a life spent largely on the road enduring universal disdain could ever be. If the sparkle had somehow left Sager's eyes, it was replaced by grim acceptance. And, there were the weekends at home in Scottsdale as well. If you were to happen by the floor-to-ceiling windows of a stucco McMansion off the 18^th green, you might observe domestic bliss. Or something.

The afternoon had been spent at Santa's Village. The penultimate Colorado Blue Spruce had been delivered by truck and wheeled into the living room. Craig was pleased. It was a living tree with its root ball encased in damp burlap and would be a proud addition to his back lawn after the holidays – he had just the spot picked out. Anne however was less than thrilled. She had been holding out for something made of metal, and was now swirling ice in a tumbler. Chipper meanwhile was plucking living needles and sticking them in his sister's angora sweater. Bunny Bear proceeded to wail and Craig exited to the patio and the comfort of his Adirondack, as the sun went resolutely down.

He thought about firing up the grill but a toothache was coming on. Inside, the sound of rending angora and a fresh anguished wail. Bunny Bear shared his reverence for natural fibers. An angry yell from Anne, the sound of Chipper's stomping feet as he headed upstairs to his wireless weather station kit. Craig found himself wondering how Betty the library assistant was. She didn't judge.

It was dark outside. A cold front was moving in. And still he sat. He imagined the smell of pine, a yellow moon and dream comfort memory. The familial pull wouldn't leave. And he knew it wasn't right, that toys by themselves weren't enough.

***

The early light revealed passing fields, now barren and cold. Faded barns and swayed ridge beams. He'd taken the old highways up through Utah and now into Wyoming. The RAV4 was doing yeoman's work. There was no shortage of food wrappers, seven hours out now and eyes burning. His cell had rung incessantly, until it hadn't. Anne would be making coffee, the children would be up soon. And questions and tears.

A long sweeping bend. A motorcycle by the side. An older gentleman with a leather bomber jacket. Sitting patiently by his backpack. Watching nothing in particular, facing away from the road. Sager pulled in and turned off the motor. The pings and ticking sounds. A warm engine and cold air. The man turned slowly, and also smiled slowly.

Big birds flying across the sky.

The man climbed in, slowly. The long pain that is simply accepted now. The backpack went into the back seat. Some strange stringed instrument stuck out through the top flap. It looked like a harpsichord. But it wasn't.

“Sager.” Just a statement. As if it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Phil. Problems with the Road King?”

Phil Jackson is a man who is careful with his answers. “Where are you headed my friend?”

“Saskatchewan. And you?”

Phil turned his attention to the passing barren fields. “I'm to host the kids at Deer Lodge for the holidays. Saskatchewan's nice this time of year though.”

Sager shrugged. He was already into Wyoming. He had not yet crossed across any borders.

Phil eyed the photos on the dashboard curiously. “Deer Lodge can wait.”

***

Night had turned to day and had turned to night once again. Craig Sager had tried to hide the smile but he felt like someone with a brother from another mother, you take it where you get it and sometimes you have to hide a grin. Like when you have a chance gelato spill and stop at a thrift store catering to the cabaret crowd. And then your whole life changes.

Walter and Doris stood blinking at the door, bathed in the ambient glow of a single strand of holiday lights, zig-zagging across the clapboards.

Walter squinted, and then his countenance lit up. “Well, Phil Jackson, how are you sir? Come on in out of that cold night air!”

Doris beamed happily as well. She and Walter didn't know Phil personally but they certainly watched television, and while their son's parade of pastels and plaids had long worn thin, there was something different about a brush with eleven rings.

Phil stepped aside and motioned for the son to enter first. He followed behind, as Walter and Doris murmured anxiously about “the peat moss.” A moment later Doris did an about face and led him back out to the dining table.

“You just sit a spell and let the boys do what they have to do. No reason to trouble yourself. Would you like a glass of sherry?”

Phil pondered the question and sat slowly. “Is there anything else?”

“We have limeade.”

“I guess I wouldn't mind a small glass of sherry.” And then watched a curious spectacle as America's sideline reporter and his father made a series of hallway trips, carrying large bags of garden fertilizer over their shoulders out into the cold night air. He looked to Doris and raised his eyebrows. She just smiled sweetly. In due time, the procession ended and there was the sound of extended vacuuming. Craig finally stepped into the living room with a red, sweaty face.

“You'll be bunking with me. I got twins. But I have to take a shower first.”

***

It was late now. The faint smell of an apple-scented candle wafted from down the hallway. Phil was sitting at the dining table with Walter and Doris, playing canasta. Craig watched from the recliner, scowling and checking his cell messages now and then. “We could listen to music in my room if you want.”

Phil waved off the suggestion. “It's your draw, Walter.”

The gray dawn arrived and Craig was awoken by the strange sound of oddly-chiming strings. It sounded like flowing high-mountain water to him. He wiped the sleepy-bugs from his eyes and sat up, wrapping his blanked around him. “Where did you learn to play like that?'

Phil was sitting cross-legged on his twin bed, cradling his zither and plucking the strings. “It's my version of 'Rolling in the Deep' by Adele."

Sager nodded. “Do you know any Leonard Cohen songs?”

Phil shook his head slowly as if bemused by the man-child's questions, then looked back levelly. “No. But I can play this.” And began a languid version of Soundgarden's 'Black Hole Sun', speaking the words as he plucked the zither's strings.

Sager watched and listened, wide-eyed.

***

Days came and days passed. Craig and Phil took to visiting Rosthern's Main Street. They browsed the racks at Pogo's Bargain Center, sat on the park bench. Some nights they would stop at Bumpy's Bar. If a game was on, Phil would share his wisdom with the regulars. Craig attempted to join the conversations but his old pals simply slapped him on the back as if they were in on some familiar joke. He finally stopped trying.

At home, Phil helped make salads and watch the local weather reports with Walter and Doris. Christmas was just days away. At night by the glow of the twinkling bulbs, songs would be sung – joyous renditions of Burl Ives and Frankie Lane classics. Doris would accompany on the piano and Phil would strum his zither. Craig sang along at first but didn't feel appreciated, and eventually went to his room and listened to his own music, trying to drown the grownups' revelry. It just didn't seem right. He yelled out in the general vicinity of the living room. “Mom! Do we have any more pudding cups?”

Phil's bemused voice drifted back. “Sorry sport. I had the last one.”

It was a cold, clear day. The sun was shining through the windows. Phil was sitting on the couch, lost in thought. Craig wasn't sure what was wrong. He only knew that the legendary coach has been on the phone earlier, having a “private conversation” with someone. And now he looked sad and lonely.

Craig spoke up. “D'you want to go for a walk in the woods? That's what I do if I'm feeling troubled about anything. I bring my cassette recorder with me and sit on my favorite rock.”

Phil thought about this and shrugged. “Okay”.

***

They sat there by the stream, Craig perched on one rock eating goldfish crackers from a baggie. Phil sat on an adjoining rock, looking toward the water. The beavers could be seen, poking their heads their heads up briefly now and then from their pile of sticks and logs in the water.

“Those are my friends, Chipper and Mrs. Sleek.” Craig held out the baggie of goldfish crackers. Phil accepted them companionably. Sager continued. “You seemed sad in there. Is it because of the Lakers?”

Phil shook his head and smiled. “No, my friend. If you love something you have to let it go. If it comes back to you it is yours forever, if it doesn't, then it was never meant to be.”

Craig cocked his head, seemed about to say something, then closed his mouth and wrinkled his brow. He seemed to be working this out in his head.

Phil spoke again. “Well, it is about one Laker actually. Jeanie. That's who I was talking to on the phone earlier. She arrived in Deer Lodge. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. She and my kids are wanting to see me. And I want to see them. This has been a fine past few days though. And I thank you.”

Sager's shoulders slumped. “It seems like we didn't even hang out that much. You just wanted to play cards with my parents.”

Phil Jackson stroked his white beard. “Why are you here, Sager? You have your own kids, you have a wife. It's Christmas time for crying out loud. Your bedroom isn't all that cool. It kind of smells in there to be honest.”

Sager thought hard on this. “Lately, the black dog has been with me. I'm questioning everything. I have an annoying ringing in my ears that won't go away. I don't know why I keep coming back here. I don't even think Walter and Delores are my real parents. They just tolerate me. I'm supposed to be from Batavia, Illinois. That's what Anne keeps telling me. And I don't think she's my real wife. Which means Chipper and Bunny Bear wouldn't be my real kids. What am I supposed to do?”

Phil tossed a couple goldfish crackers to the beavers. “Of course you're from here, sport. Nobody pretends to be from Rosthern, Saskatchewan. All your changes were here. But it is Christmas. And those kids deserve to have their dad with them, black dog or not. You could get a Santa suit.”

Craig considered this. “Not just any Santa suit.”

***

Craig Bartholomew Sager arrived at his own front door sometime after dark on Christmas Eve. It had been a long, bone-weary drive. He'd dropped Phil Jackson off in Wyoming, and they had thanked each other for the company. Now he stood at the threshold, and rang the doorbell.

Anne opened the door and put her hands on her hips. “Santa. Nice of you to stop by.”

Craig was wearing a glorious red leisure suit trimmed with faux ermine around the cuffs and collar, and a red velvet pimp hat. And a giant black patent leather belt. And a fake beard. “Ho ho ho!”

The kids came running out and hurled themselves against his legs. Their daddy was home. Anne shook her head. “You'd might as well come in then.” And she turned and walked inside. Sager grinned.

***

Christmas day had been splendid. The children opened an obscene amount of presents by the glorious living Spruce, and a wonderful meal from Whole Foods was consumed. And candy and treats and snack trays galore. Anne had appreciated the David Yurman jewelry and had polished off a goodly amount of Veuve Clicquot. And now the sun was going down. Again.

Craig had retreated to the patio and was parked in his Adirondack. Shadows crept across the golf greens below until the darkness consumed him. Anne had thoughtfully plugged in a strip of Christmas lights that crept across the patio fence. The tiny twinkling bulbs tried burning their way through the thickening black syrup of night. His cell phone vibrated silently. He looked at it and then spoke cautiously. “Yes?”

The voice sounded far away. “Hi Craig. It's me, Betty. From the library.”

Craig answered. “Yes, I know.”

A long pause. “Are you with your wife and children?”

“Yes, I am.”

“That's nice. Everyone should be with family on Christmas. So, have you been thinking about me at all?”

“Well, yes. Sometimes.”

“I bought a new dress. It's blue with a snowflake pattern. I think you'd like it.”

Sager sighed heavily. The tinnitus in his ears began again. Inside, he could hear the sound of the children. They were beginning to quarrel and the sound mixed with the ringing in his ears. Anne's voice was raising in timber but he could not make out the words. The voices seemed to ebb and flow in some strange rhythm that he hadn't yet figured out.

“Craig? Are you still there?”

Sager clicked the phone off and reached into a paper bag that was by the side of his chair. Inside was the old cassette recorder, it had come back from Saskatchewan with him. He pulled a wrapped chocolate from his pocket and put it in his mouth. And pressed play. The comforting rasp of a singer from his past.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.

THE SHOTGUN SINGS THE SONG

2012-11-09T20:34:00.000-06:00

I felt resentful of Mike Brown from the beginning. It didn’t have that much to do with him really. It was more about the way the season had ended, the way the players had given up on Phil Jackson during his well-publicized last run. It had to do with the way management cleaned house and the way Brian Shaw was treated like a pariah. It felt toxic. And the new boss came along, smiling and affable and filled with reasonable plans. And the summer became a bitter lockout.

He had been to the finals, had been a coach of the year. He had dealt with an outsized ego in LeBron James. He preached defense. I for one, made fun - he wasn’t my choice. As if I had a right. And the lockout-shortened season began and he was thrown into it with a blockbuster trade that was vetoed and a jerry-rigged amalgamation of aging stars and average journeymen. The season didn’t go so well and we weren’t that surprised.

Coach Brown seemed like a nice guy. He had an easy laugh and a love of work. He held long practices and his players seemed to accept it because the intentions seemed good and sincere. And he seemed reasoned when he explained his cockeyed rotations and pedestrian offense. Because they were figuring this thing out, y’know? It took time. And the season ended with another second round exit and there was the usual talk about what he was and what he wasn’t and another summer rolled along and then the lid blew off in the form of Steve Nash & Dwight Howard. Rock Stars! Salvation! Bring on the rings, encrusted with jewels, for surely they are ours to lose.

There was a small matter - the team needed direction and a system. And low and behold the Princeton Offense was brought forth and this seemed good because there were familiar principles involved. It had a lofty name and it was about ball movement and off-ball movement and wasn’t it kind of like the triangle, kind of? And a new crop of assistant coaches were summoned and a smattering of new role players and the table was set. Signed, sealed, delivered.

There were a few minor wrinkles. Dwight Howard was coming off back surgery. The team was somewhat geriatric. This danged Princeton thing seemed awful tough to figure out. Kobe hurt his foot and Nash fractured a shin and Jordan Hill did the same thing to his back that Dwight Howard had done but that was okay because he’d just rest it a little and besides, Dwight himself was coming back after many months of inactivity. No worries.

It was easy to blame Mike Brown and yet it was also reasonable to blame injuries and unfamiliarity and a host of other events on the ground. And Mike still had his smile and his work ethic and his screwy rotations. The team lost three in a row to start the season and finally beat the lowly Detroit Pistons and with five minutes left in the game and a 25-point lead, Mike Brown stood on the sidelines with his hands on his hips, shouting out directions as Kobe and Dwight and Pau huffed and puffed down the floor.

And yes, there was something about this that didn’t quite seem right. Just like there was something lost in translation when Brown explained why he played Pau for such heavy minutes during the preseason. He said he knew Gasol had played a ton of ball during the course of the previous year so he would play him more now because it would be uncomfortable in the moment but wouldn’t seem uncomfortable later.

And then came the fateful fifth game of this almighty season and the Lakers were blown out in Utah. And the needle swiped across the vinyl with an ugly squawk and everything stopped. And Mike Brown talked his talk and the players said it would take some time and Jim Buss said he had every confidence in his guy. And pulled the trigger.

It was a surprise but it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Jim Buss is a numbers guy. He looks at percentages, at returns, at stats and data. And he has no aversion to dropping the hammer. He has been handed the keys to a kingdom that’s about winning, about major media market deals and signing superstars and great expectations. There's also talk that the grand patriarch himself wanted Brown gone. To be honest, it's remarkable that he lasted as long as he did.

Mitch Kupchak gave a presser and spoke thoughtfully and pragmatically. They’ll make some calls and sort through the candidates. They’ll probably talk to their superstar veterans about it, he said. Not for validation but just for information – who they know and that kind of thing. The team will take many things into careful consideration and won’t be rushed. I don’t buy it. I think Buss has been running the numbers for weeks. And the winner is.....

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

(*update: I wrote the above hours after Mike Brown was let go. I felt as so many did, that Phil Jackson would return for one more go-round. It was a wonderfully sweet and toxic 48hr ride until management took a sharp and sudden turn. Mike D'Antoni is nothing like the old boss but he should be just as entertaining.)

NOT FADE AWAY

2012-10-27T15:41:00.001-05:00

Searching for Slava isn’t consistent and it has no particular rhyme or reason. It will never be part of a network and it will never be invited to be part of a network. The top rated Slava post ever? Not Kobe, not Lamar, certainly not Craig Sager. As much as I like writing about woodland creatures and synthetic fibers, those posts are like the last kid who straggles across the finish line. Adam Morrison and a post called Shooting Star brought in the most traffic I’ve ever had, by far.

Ammo was waived by the Portland Trailblazers on Friday. He’d managed a training camp invite after lighting it up for the Clippers in summer league. He didn’t get the call from the Clippers. He played in Vegas after playing for the Brooklyn Nets in their summer league. That after playing for Besiktas in Turkey and KK Red Star Belgrade. Morrison was fired up in Serbia, he said he would have run through a wall the night of the viral ejection. He was fired up for the Clippers, averaging 20 ppg in six games. The Clippers should have signed him. He’s their kind of player. They didn't, but Portland gave him a shot.

Ammo’s not particularly consistent and he has no rhyme or reason except he loves the game. When he’s firing he’s amazing, transcendent. And when he’s not he’s like a stone-faced pedestrian. I have no illusions about why my hit counter's still running ten months later. I understand what 'Google images' means. I get that people click on a picture of a meteorite streaking across a nighttime sky. I also remember that when I first wrote it, the connection wasn’t about a photograph. Adam Morrison said he’d retire if Portland let him go. He’s got a couple young daughters in Seattle. Time doesn’t wait forever.

Was there ever a player who showed more emotion than Morrison with Gonzaga? Maybe. He has no more of a lock on passion than a million other ballers. Was there another player who shot himself up with insulin on the sideline? I have no idea. Was there another player who blew out his knee and failed to live up to lottery expectations? Sadly, too many. Morrison spoke to the geeky kids who lit joints on deserted playgrounds and let fly from obscure asphalt cracks that served as markers. And he never cared about that. He cared about the loss to UCLA in the sweet sixteen. If you didn’t see it you don’t know and it was only six years ago. It seems like a lifetime.

Ammo turned 28 this past summer. He will finish school at some point and he will live a life. And do something to earn a living because the expenses don’t stop. And at some point many years from now with his daughters grown and water under the bridge, he may track down old friends and look at photographs. You can blow off the sentiment in the moment but it will catch you in time. It always does. And you know that he was a shooting star. And the world will love you, just as long as you are a shooting star.

BLUE WINDOWS

2012-09-22T21:46:00.000-05:00

The schedule had long been set. He had been told to buy new clothes if he must, that it would be an important season. Ernie said he wanted no more shenanigans. It hadn’t stopped the sections in his life from colliding. He smiled when the network suits spoke to him, and felt like he was still falling to earth.

The Scottsdale patio was quiet. Dying embers in the grill. Voices and laughter drifted up from the greens below. A young couple had managed to sneak on after dark, counting fireflies. Craig sat in his Adirondack, feeling as if time had passed him by. Anne spoke from the shadows by the slider. She had been watching his silhouette.

“You’re leaving again, aren’t you?”

Sager didn’t answer. A glass came out of nowhere, splintered against the leg of the grill, a million tiny pieces flying.

“Fuck you, Craig!” She turned and went back inside. Sager smiled grimly. Beware the dancer.

***

Three days driving, crumbled farms and outlet malls. He’d taken the RAV4 out of mothballs, taped favorite photos and clippings to the dash. Sunflower seeds in the ashtray and songs inside his head. He crossed the border, Saskatchewan was calling.

Walter and Doris stood in the doorway, blinking. “You’re back.”

Sages pushed his way past, a duffel slung over his shoulder. He was damned tired and sweaty. “Yes, mother. Your powers of observation are undiminished.” The overpowering stench as he opened his door. “Dammit! What is always with the fucking peat moss!?”

Doris’s voice drifted and wavered. “We needed your room for the peat moss.”

Craig tossed his duffel into a free corner, turned and stalked back up the hallway with its warped wood paneling. And stared evenly at his father.

The father sighed and followed the son. And they each put 40lb bags on their shoulders and walked single file into the crisp night air and after they deposited each bag they turned and retraced a timeworn trail, and the ritual took place over and again and they said not a word. And after, Craig opened his windows and vacuumed the floor and borrowed candles from the mother, scented of apple. And took a shower and was clean again.

It was late. Sager was wearing sweats and eating crackers. He pulled sagging cardboard boxes from the closet and looked through them. He put the cassette of ‘Suzanne’ on the portable tape player. There was a wooden cigar box with cards and curios and he rocked from side to side with the music and called out now and then, “Mom! Is there any pudding?”

He revisited the old haunts but it felt like the last time he was here and he was conscious of the stares and whispers. He thought he remembered school and his parents and his friends and the way the fake fur felt on his skin when he was Willie the Wildcat. He followed an old girl friend to the park and watched as she pushed her son on the swing. And she turned and hissed at him, “I told you last time, I never really liked you. I’m married now!”

And he looked and asked her, “Was I ever really here before?”

And she took her son and hustled him away. She didn’t need this crap.

Craig sat at the dining room table with Walter and Doris. “This is good meatloaf, mom. You always made a good meatloaf.”

Walter viewed the world in terms of essential goods, needs and services. “Isn’t basketball season beginning soon?”

Sager nodded carefully as he chewed, wondered if there was desert, knew better than to ask.

Walter pondered. There was not enough room in the shed for the bags of peat moss. Some of them were sitting outside, in the damp night air. “Nobody ever gave me nothing, boy. Worked at the coat factory for long hours to put food on the table. The bits of fiber stick in your lungs and fester. They don’t tell you that when you start.”

Craig narrowed his eyes, swallowed the last bite. He would come back to the kitchen later for more to eat. After the parents were asleep. “Well, thank you for that. I need to go to my room and make some business calls now. The season will be starting soon, you know.” He pushed his bulk from the table and made his exit.

Doris patted her husband’s arm. “That went well, I think.”

Walter nodded. He hoped so. The boy had never been quite right. The music and clothes and questions about interpersonal relationships. The fact that he named his children after woodland creatures.

Inside his room, Craig rewound the cassette to his favorite spot. He opened the wooden box and arranged things inside it. All his memories were there.

***

Craig was sitting on his rock by the stream, filled with wonderment. Chipper or a beaver that certainly looked like Chipper, was carefully constructing a dam. Could it really be the same beloved animal from so many years ago? Could he return to a place in time?

“Hey Chip, hey buddy. Remember me?”

The beaver continued to work methodically, churning up mud with his front paws. Another beaver floated nearby, watching.

“Is that Mrs. Sleek? Oh my gosh. That is really something.”

“Why are you talking to those animals?”

Sager whipped his head around, instinctively put his hand over a baggie of graham crackers. They were his. A young boy was standing not far away, his head cocked to one side. Sager relaxed a little, smiled toothily.

“Hey sport. These are woodland friends of mine. We go back a long ways.”

“The kid’s eyes narrowed. “You’re Craig Sager.”

Sager smiled. “Yes, I am.”

“Why aren’t you stateside? The season’s starting soon.”

“I am finding solace from mother nature. Have you ever listened to Leonard Cohen?”

“No, I don’t know what that is. Are you any good with advanced metrics?”

Craig summoned his patience. Where had the simple beauty gone? “No. I don’t do that. I’m a sideline reporter. I communicate with people. That’s what I do.”

The kid was not impressed. “You wear ugly clothing, that’s what you do. So awkward. If I can’t see it in the stats I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

Sager frowned. “I don’t think I like your tone young man. What are you, ten?”

“Hey fuck you! Shots fired! You’re just a stupid old dinosaur. Fourteen or fight!”

There comes a time in a man’s life when the old ways return. Preservation of the species is tantamount. Craig bent down and found a good-sized rock and whipped it at straight at the little ass-mouth. It bounced off the kid’s shin.

“Hey what the fuck, asshole!”

Craig picked up another rock and took careful aim. This time it hit the boy-creature right on his flawless young forehead. A bloody welt formed immediately and the boy began to cry, and ran away. “Go back to Batavia, creep!”

Craig threw another rock at the kid’s back, just to be sure. He took a deep cleansing breath and turned back to his animal friends, who had been watching curiously. Chip resumed his building efforts. The rain and strong currents would be coming soon. Craig sat back down and took a graham cracker out of the baggie. He had his primitive cassette recorder with him, and rocked back and forth with the music.

It was nighttime when Sager returned to his parents’ house. He could see flashing lights and stayed in the shadows. Two Royal Canadian Mounties were taking notes. Sager couldn’t tell if his parents were covering for him, or simply mystified by what they were hearing. The mounties finally nodded and left, after extracting personal pledges of responsibility.

Long after the mounties had left and the house had gone dark, Sager crept back in and assembled his clothing and a few personal belongings. He climbed into the RAV4 and drove away. Nighttime miles melted away, dark clouds drifting overhead. He practiced lines that he would use on the sidelines and listened to the iconic warbles of a countryman. “Blue, blue windows behind the stars, yellow moon on the rise.”

***

The elevator dinged softly. Sages got out, polished white loafers on the plush carpet. He walked confidently into Ernie Johnson’s office. Johnson looked up over his rimless glasses.

“I hear there was a spot of trouble in the old familial provinces?”

Sager shook his head, “Nope, no problems at all.”

“You didn’t give some kid six stitches in the head?”

“No my friend. Been working on my golf game in Scottsdale.”

Ernie stared owlishly. “And if I were to say that he’s one of our's?”

Craig’s mouth set. “Webworks sector? I would say my mail runs ten to one better than anyone else here and my contract’s coming up.”

Ernie Johnson sighed heavily. He never got the easy ones. “Okay then. Got your itinerary?”

Sager patted his pocket. “I always have my itinerary.”

The two men stared, twenty feet of carpet and countless years between them. They didn’t blink as a body fell past the window. Sages finally separated and turned toward the door.

Ernie called after him, a peace offering. “How’s Anne and the kids?”

Sager didn’t look back. “They’re super. Anne’s been working out like a maniac.”

Craig Bartholomew Sager walked on down the hall, shoulders straight and proud. The elevators waited, the quiet broken by the occasional soft chime. A figure stepped out from around a corner, watching. There was a bandage on the boy’s forehead and his eyes were clear and pale. His time would come. Sager entered an elevator, pressed the button. The doors closed silently.

Big birds flying across the sky. Throwing shadows on our eyes.

THE BROKE MONEY

2012-09-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

The further you go, the further the road stretches, playgrounds, youth leagues and endless summer camps. They were standouts in school, celebrated by peers and coaches, boosters and sycophants. Some went undrafted, some have been knocking around forever and some have had more than a taste of glory. Each summer they make their way back from all corners of the basketball globe like lemmings. They hang around gyms, minimize their injuries and fill dance cards set by agents. What binds them together is a love of the game and a snowball’s chance of sticking around once the regular season arrives. Altogether, NBA teams hand out around 100 of these tickets each fall and they’re not easy to come by.

Heading into training camp, the Lakers are carrying an 18-man roster, four of whom are non-guaranteed rookies. There may be more added between now and then. It's unlikely the team will carry a 15th contract into the regular season as they prefer to keep a spot open for flexibility. Nonetheless, the tryouts aren't vanity deals. The chosen few will be practice bodies, specialists, role players and hopefuls and when all is said and done, they'll become files for future reference. And every now and then, one becomes part of the lexicon for all the others.

On the night of June 28, 2012, the Lakers paid a cool half-million to Dallas for the 55^th overall pick. In doing so, they acquired Darius Earvin Johnson-Odom, the man with the awesome name. The 6-2 shooting guard out of Marquette blew away the combine this past spring with a 41.5” vertical leap. He's got a defensive mindset and a sweet lefty jumper. The obvious obstacle is being a small guard on a roster with seven other guards, two of whom are named Bryant and Nash. Regardless, it would not be unheard of for the Lakers to hold onto the kid as a future prospect, especially given the need for affordable pieces within the new collective bargaining agreement.

I wasn’t thrilled when the Lakers took Robert Sacre in the dead last slot, passing on point guard Scott Machado who was somehow still on the board. Machado has since signed a three-year deal with the Rockets. Nonetheless, Sacre, a seven-foot banger out of Gonzaga, was solid in Summer League play for the Lakers, leading the team in minutes and showing signs of relevancy. He was born in Louisiana and moved to Canada at age seven. He is beloved by former teammates and sports an ocean of ink, including two dogs, a lion, rapper DMX and one that simply reads, "water the bamboo." The Lakers don’t have a lot of front court size in reserve and Sacre has an insurance policy shot, especially if Dwight Howard’s back isn't ready.

Reeves Nelson is the prototypical cautionary tale, a former projected lottery pick who got kicked off the UCLA squad for disciplinary reasons in his sophomore year. An undersized center and power forward, nobody ever accused Nelson of not being willing to mix it up. There’s a difference however, between being willing to fight and willing to play when your team’s down. There’s plenty of conflicting stories, as well as a ten million dollar lawsuit against Sports Illustrated. The story took an unexpected turn when the Lakers invited Nelson to work out before the draft. They subsequently brought him to Vegas for Summer League and left him on the bench for the first two games to test his character. They liked what they saw both on and off the court and offered him a training camp contract. There is plenty of potential and always has been, just as there has been for countless other players who chase the dream.

Greg Somogyi was never a projected lottery pick or anywhere near it. At 7-3, his center of balance lies somewhere between a rickety stepladder and an origami figure in a stiff wind. A native of Hungary, Somogyi averaged 3.5 ppg during his four undistinguished years at UC Santa Barbara. He can’t shoot, can’t rebound, can block a little, and is otherwise fully able to stand under the basket and get dunked on. Somogyi is the least likely of these four to make the Lakers or any NBA team for that matter. Still, he is very, very tall. And, will likely find work if he wants it in Europe along with a whole lot of other really tall eastern bloc guys.

There’s stories on every team, from those just beginning their NBA quest and from those nearing the end. It’s the same for every sport and for dreams unrelated to sports. It’s the story of the holy grail and that which remains tantalizingly out of our grasp. Johnson-Odom, Sacre, Reeves and Somogyi all met in Las Vegas and probably got to know each other a little bit. At the Lakers’ El Segundo training facility, they will compete for one improbable chance.

There’s a term in Vegas for gamblers who lose everything – broke money is what’s given by casinos for a one-way ticket out of town and away from temptation. The itch never quits though. Training camps will begin and they will end and the hopefuls will drift away. They’ll have a bit more than broke money in their pockets and they’ll head back on their serpentine journeys, endless and elusive, with no direction home.

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

2012-09-09T21:12:00.002-05:00

I walked outside this morning to a cooling wind. Change comes slowly here in Austin but it comes. There will still be sweltering days as basketball rolls around but fewer and further between. This will be my third season logging entries into something more akin to a journal than NBA binary code. And I wondered why I felt this way and it was my inner clock telling me something - it has been a year since the last time I felt this way.

Otis is still of the world. I took him for his morning shuffle and was fiddling with my phone and looked and my heart jumped. The old dog was lying in the grass. Back when he spent so much time outdoors it wouldn’t have seemed unusual. But he hasn’t done it here, not on his walks. And I went over and was able to coax him up. He is unsteady on his back legs now and walks in sections. In Atwater Village in California when he was a young dog, he was a fearless hunter of skunks.

It was pitch black in the back yard. We had returned from a run in the neighborhood. Otis went scrambling after something and I thought it was a cat and I ran and bent down and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, just as the skunk sprayed. It was so close that it wasn’t even a smell but an overwhelming taste, as if a battery had exploded in my mouth. Otis was perfectly happy about the whole thing. It was the skunk’s last act on earth.

Did Thomas Wolfe essentially have it right? Can we not go home again? Can we return to a building or a place, but not a place in time? It is never quite as we remember and we ourselves are not the same. I am better at tracking old friends through the wonders of the digital age than I am at maintaining relationships in the moment. I have been going through boxes, photos and letters, remembering places and canyons and cars. I listened to an old song while I was typing.

Otis was fast asleep from tonight’s adventure, the nightly walk straight into the mosquitoes no-fly zone. Every evening I return with welting bites on the insides of my wrists and arms, and take Bendryl to relieve the maddening itch. I watched him while he was sleeping. I click links and scroll walls and look at the things from the box.

I’ve had recurring dreams, hanging out with my older brother in the present although he died long ago. Searching for someone or something from my past, visiting an apartment I once lived in. It’s mostly empty but I know it can’t be right, I feel that someone belongs here, that they will return soon. Down in the lobby are the old metal mail cubbies that took an entire wall. I still have a key and the box is overflowing but I know it is not the same, that I can’t return to this place in time. There was a tree outside the window, and traffic from Franklin Avenue.

I believe Thomas Wolfe and I don’t believe Thomas Wolfe. There are tiny cloud icons with lightning bolts on my cell screen, arriving later in the week. You can return to changing seasons of course, and all that comes with them. There is a sound that is missing outside and I realize the cicadas have left and gone away. I go upstairs, feeling my way through boxes in the dark. This is not just for you but it is for you. I looked at your picture while I was typing.

THE ART OF HATING KOBE

2012-08-15T22:17:00.000-05:00

Hate has been defined in Websters as “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.”

It’s a strong word, used easily and often - in childhood quarrels, between lovers, by parents, by friends. It can be used to demean and hurt, and simply in lighthearted jest. It is evidently, a wonderfully multi-purpose word. I’ve been watching the Kobe Richter-scale for the past week, a series of low grade seismic bumps but you get the feeling that it wouldn't take much to send the digital villagers scampering for their creosote and torches. Bryant’s the man they love to hate.

It was the first half of the quarter finals against Australia and Kobe went 0-3 with some decidedly ugly turnovers. The railbirds went swinging for the fences. He was over and done, a shell of his former self. He came out in the second half and buried six consecutive threes and the narrative skidded to a halt. The whiplash effect bothered absolutely nobody. A sampling of subsequent articles revealed that for Kobe, the Olympics had just begun. The casual epitaphs went into the day file, the Lakers plucked Dwight Howard out of self-immolation and USA won the gold. This confluence of off-setting information caused rampant overload and confusion which was only sated by Breaking Bad discussions.

When athletes, actors and rock stars are still young and vibrant, writers begin stocking provisions for the winter that will eventually come. And, it’s not only observers who feed the narrative, it’s the central figures themselves. The Who’s My Generation famously proclaimed, “Hope I die before I get old.” Mick Jagger once said, “I’d rather be dead than be singing Satisfaction when I’m 45." And Sir Paul McCartney asked, “Will you still need me, when I’m 64?” And there he was at the Olympics opening ceremony, warbling at age 70. The seeds are planted early, and they germinate nicely. Time the avenger waits and grows and feeds conversations.

We watch and read and express our opinions. We combine ideas and words and re-purpose them for the digital age. Webster defines meme as an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. Richard Dawkins coined the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, defining it as a unit of cultural transmission. George Orwell considered the re-purposing of words much earlier, in a 1946 essay entitled Politics and the English Language. And then came Newspeak, the art of making words convenient, and of lesser value.

I doubt that Kobe cares much about our memes or deep thoughts. And as years go by, he doesn’t jump as high, and the stretches between his moments of greatness become longer. This is something that he does know, and has acknowledged. The body is made of blood and bone and connective tissue after all. Whether he cares about words is another matter. The kid who used to ignore Phil Jackson’s summer reading list has more recently admitted to picking up a book or two. And while he doesn’t tweet himself, he certainly keeps track of trends and discussions. After the win against Australia, Kobe said that he simply found something to get mad at. Most of twitter-dom assumed he meant them.

There is of course, the possibility that y’all don’t really hate Kobe. That it’s just a funny haha, a joke, get it? Because words don’t have to be dissected. It doesn’t have to get this awkward. They’re just keystrokes is all. Little clicks and tiny buttons on our phones. All in the art of hating. A cultural transmission for our times, in 140 characters or less. And besides, that was last week.

The stories about his growing up have been told and told again. His father, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, took the family to Italy after his NBA days were done. They lived there for seven years and Kobe has said that he may too end his playing days in Europe. Joe himself played as recently as 2005, in the ABA. This year found him coaching in Bangkok. He has lived a basketball life. Like father, like son.

There are those whose hate seems real and legitimate. They will defend it, applying the same standards to team rivalries, or other hated sports figures. Or people. Or whatever. Fair enough. I hate spinach, and cleaning the litter box. And not having enough to pay the bills. Some will say that it’s not actually hate, it’s more of a dislike. A really intense dislike. Kobe Bryant bothers them, whether through his arrogance, or the unending tendency to take over games to the detriment of some greater good. Apart from winning, that is.

For those who don’t find this at all amusing, I’d ask with sincere curiosity. If you had the power, would you wish him away? Would you take away his childhood, the years in Italy, the unquenchable thirst to dominate? Would you vanish 16 seasons, 13 All-Star appearances, five NBA championships and his two gold medals? Would you take away the head fakes and jab steps, the art of drawing fouls and the withering stares? How about the Jordan tongue-wag, or the 81 points against the Raptors? Would you take away the feud with Shaq, or the the arguments with Phil Jackson?

In his book The Last Season, Jackson wrote of a conversation he had with general manager Mitch Kupchack, of his extreme frustration with Bryant. He said he wouldn’t come back to coach for another year if Kobe was still in the picture. We all know how that turned out. A season passed and a new one began, with a reunited coach and player. It seems almost funny now, that Kobe actually defends the triangle offense. Phil Jackson knows a little about hate himself. For all his rings, he was a pariah in the league.

Would you take it all away? Because it is all or nothing. Kobe may have mellowed to some degree, but he’s still an intensely polarizing figure. And you do not get to shape somebody or conform them through opinion or words. There is no mix and match. There is only who he is, or nothing at all. Do you change the game itself, and consider it as if he had never existed? He says that he is aware of the ticking clock, that the end of his NBA career is coming to a close. That will happen when it happens.

With both Howard and Nash on board, the Kobe hate becomes more of a conspiracy theory. It’s somehow all interconnected yet shifting and elusive. Burn them for they have traded successfully. And regardless, the Lakers won’t win anyway because Kobe will essentially sabotage their success on the alter of his fading greatness. Unless they actually do manage to buy themselves another ring and then it doesn’t matter, considering that the cards were already stacked.

The summer goes into its hibernation late this time, thanks to Olympic gold, thanks to free agency and trades that made some happy and some frown. And thanks to the fact that we’re not having to sweat late night pressers about basketball related income and the union wars. Fall will come soon enough and with it one more chapter of a generation of basketball that will be gone too soon. And if the loathing simply becomes too much to much to bear, remember that stirring, oft-quoted saying; “If you hate something, set it free; if it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was meant to be.”

THE RAYON THAT EXPLODED

2012-07-27T21:09:00.000-05:00

I have always been enthralled with words. Growing up in a small town, I would actually pull a wagon to the library, check out my allotment of books, and arrange them on my bed. When I was eight, I penned my own offering. It was a slim collection of stories and drawings, mostly poems about hamsters or how potatoes grow. There were a couple features as well though, like ‘Stubs Makes Halfback”. Even then, the brilliance abounded - witness a sampling:

At the table, he told his father and his mother of his good luck. His mother said “It’s good luck you haven’t got your arm broken or your teeth knocked out.”

My literary tastes then, tended toward the Hardy Boys or Jim Kjelggard novels about Irish Setters and beaver dams. See how far I have come.

Global polymorphic giants hire the cyberverse and the criers cooked their bindles again for a couple cents a word. The technology and convenience that allows us to share, but the thin tubes were more constricted now. And the little birds would not open their mouths, to reach out in immediate and efficient ways so much. And the pasty tar dribbled out like they did last summer, requires that we accept less and less for our efforts, and no longer accepted the inserts, in 140 characters or less.

Craig Sager was sitting at the bar, staring down at the dregs of a Peach Bunny. He had tried several syrupy concoctions so far. His head was splitting. Insect guitar sounds leaked from somewhere around the edge.

“The word is more of a parasite than I ever thought it was. And I thought it was a parasite.” The voice seemed to come from inside some large can, deadpan and gravelly.

Sager turned slightly, peered at a black and white apparition of an old man in a baggy suit. His face was impossibly gaunt and sunken in on itself. The image flickered slightly, like bad reception.

William S. Burroughs continued morosely. “A thought is a seed planted under the skin. It will stay and fester there for years, its dark thread will travel like a virus.”

American’s sideline reporter was halfway bombed and didn’t give a shit about dark viral things. His whole fucking life was a dark viral thing. He missed his fictional parents in Saskatchewan. He looked blearily up toward a cute bartender in a crisp white shirt. “What kind of drinks use butterscotch schnapps?”

A hand spun him around on his bar stool, the old man was up in his face, smelling like tainted cheese. “Who are you?”

Sager wasn’t so bottomed out that he couldn’t appreciate a gag. “Just a man in a pink suit.”

William’s bony knuckles hooked into his abdomen, Sager crumpling in pain. He would have slid off his stool if the old man hadn’t held him up. The waitress watched, impassively. Sager sucked air, “why?” A soft binging sound came from his pocket. The black and white man disappeared. Sager pulled his electronic device out and stared at it. A soft monochromatic woman’s voice.

“Your word count is 673. Please deposit $13.46.”

Sager just stared. “I don’t.... what am I supposed to do?”

“Your word count is 688. Please deposit $13.76.”

Sager howled in anguish, “you’re my fucking phone for God’s sake!”

He fumbled for a credit card, wiped it helplessly across the phone in random, useless patterns. A set of bony knuckles crashed into the side of his head. A brief second of hot white static pixelated to black. The distant sound of keypad clackings, echoing and mixing with the incessant insect chorus, the cicadas were back.

***

A 1965 Ford Futura yawed back and forth across the undulating black tar highway. The man in the passenger seat had a death grip on the dashboard. The pain in his head was almost unbearable, tiny white sparks firing randomly in his field of vision and drifting outside. The scenery seemed to float past backwards. He looked slowly to his left. William was talking to himself, a monotone recitation. Sager looked down at the skin on his hand. It was shades of black and white, only his clothing was in color, the fuchsia rayon shirt in improbably saturated relief.

“Are we going back in time?” Sager’s voice seemed calm. It could get no worse than this.

“Only a few days.” That voice, as if the inflections were randomly generated and sorted.

“It seems so much more than that.”

“Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are things I wish I could forget.”

Sager shook his head, watched the outside go by. A boy was pulling a wagon, reading a book. He stopped, startled, eyes wide open as the Futura drifted past, wheels squealing rubber protest. The kid went back to his book.

Flag lay beside the pool. He opened great liquid eyes and turned them on the boy with a glazed look of wonder. Jody pressed the muzzle of the gun barrel at the back of the smooth neck and pulled the trigger. Flag quivered a moment and then lay still.

Jody threw the gun aside and dropped flat on his stomach. He retched and vomited and retched again. He clawed into the earth with his finger-nails. He beat it with his fists. The sink-hole rocked around him. A far roaring became a thin humming. He sank into blackness as into a dark pool.

* The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 1938

Burroughs limped along the sidewalk, it was scorching hot in the late afternoon. An old hooker held his arm at the elbow’s crook. Her makeup was thick and her hair was blond. In another life she had been a teacher. Sager walked behind them, almost an afterthought. His skin had returned to its normal, ruddy color.

A group of young men with blurred, ecstatic faces tumbled from the casino in an abstract wash of color. They were shouting and free, they had come for summer games and refused to leave. They looked at the strange trio and laughed and snickered and whispered among themselves. And brushed past on the sidewalk, jarring the old man’s shoulder.

One of them yelled in surprise. “What the fuck! He cut me!”

The others gathered around. “He didn’t cut you. That’s no cut, man, it’s barely bleeding. It looks like something got under your skin.”

William smiled, old teeth like dried corn kernels. And turned and limped away with his companion. Craig wasn’t told to follow and had fleeting thoughts of escape. He looked back and forth, a widening gulf between the two small groups. And hastened after William.

“Look, just make it stop for a little while. I’m down with Tawny Kitaen and Saskatchewan. I like retro textiles. I am interested in interpersonal relationships. The season’s months away, just put me on the shelf? Please?”

The old prostitute stood and listened. She turned empathetic eyes toward the old junkie, nodding her head. William pushed his fedora off his forehead and contemplated the plea.

“I will think about it.”

Craig nodded. “Good, that’s all I ask. Think about it.”

William made a fist with his old rheumatoid knuckles. Craig grimaced and closed his eyes, waiting for the pain. Nothing. Finally, he opened his eyes again. He was sitting on the patio in Scottsdale with Anne, evening floating up off the 14th green. Mixed grill meats were sizzling inside the Broil Master. He closed his eyes against the pain. Why wouldn’t it stop?

Anne swirled the ice cubes in her glass and smiled. “It’s not so bad, is it? The children have been caught up in the ungodly pageantry all evening. They'll be wanting to play.”

He could hear their voices from inside, mixed with sound of television. The noise of a crowd, and strains of music. Something far off stirred, he was conscious of the hairs on the back of his creased neck.

“Daddy, daddy, they’re marching now!”

He hoisted his rayon bulk out of the Adirondack chair, and made his way inside. The big screen television showed a serpentine parade, the athletes of many nations. The children stood, transfixed by something that was new to them but somehow ingrained. Chipper’s face was glowing as he watched. His sister turned from the television, young and hopeful. She looked at her father. “Do you think Grammy and Grampy are watching?”

A smile finally came over Craig’s face, warm, simple, and genuine. “I bet they are, Bunny Bear. I bet they are.” The music morphed as his people came into view, a wash of red jackets. He stood taller, and placed his hand over his heart. “O Canada!”

Anne had walked in from outside, her ex-dancer’s walk. “Batavia, Craig. You’re from Batavia, Illinois for God’s sake.”

He closed his eyes, and his mouth set once again, the crevices deepening.

***

The wagon bumped along, the first dandelions scratching up through buckled sidewalk. Salt air, cut green grass. The boy bent down and picked some of the bright yellow flowers. His mother would like them. Something stuck him and he instinctively put his hurt finger into his mouth. At home in the kitchen, he showed it to her. She was tall and willowy then, and clear of mind.

“It looks like something tiny under your skin. You must have pinched a nettle. I can get it out for you. It’ll only hurt for just a moment.”

He shook his head vigorously. His mother smiled at him.

“It’ll just have to fester and work its way out then. Unless it’s a seed and it grows into something big! Like a beanstalk!”

His eyes widened. His mother hugged him, to show that she was joking.

“I’m going to get started on dinner, Daddy will be home soon. Are you going to your room to read?”

The boy nodded, and turned, and walked toward the stairs.

BEND IT LIKE NASH

2012-07-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

The path began a gradual ascent, sloping canyon walls reflecting the late afternoon sun. A thousand dimpled footprints, hawks drifting on thermal banks. Steve Nash had done the radio shows, had said all the right things, had absorbed the moment. On some basic level, he needed to get clear. He paused and regarded his surroundings. His friends in Los Angeles wouldn’t shut up about the canyons. Magical places, they said. Places to heal. He saw discarded soda cans and water bottles, bleached from the sun. Dried dog feces and flies. He pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead, began his solitary journey again and was forced to stop short. Standing in his path were two men - a vaguely familiar tall white guy with rosy cheeks, and Craig Sager, resplendent in a lime polo shirt, white shorts and a tinfoil hat with horns.

Nash wasn’t sure where to begin. “What’s with the hat?”

Sager smiled tentatively. “It helps to block the frequencies. I’ve been getting a lot of headaches lately.”

Nash processed this, squinted up at the tall one. "Weren't you that Russian guy from the Lakers?”

Slava grimaced slightly. “Ukrainian.”

Nash nodded agreeably, checked his watch. “Well, this has been super, guys. I’ve got to keep moving. They say there’s a nice view of the smog bank on top.” He tried edging around them. Medvedenko shuffled sideways for the block. Nash sighed heavily.

***

There’s a place where truth meets fiction meets truth. Stephen John Nash was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. His father was a journeyman soccer player who hailed from England. His mother had played netball at the national level. The family moved to Canada when Steve was a toddler - Regina, Saskatchewan, to be accurate. That’s where his brother Martin was born. The family didn’t remain there long, moving to Vancouver, and then Victoria, British Columbia. Craig Sager’s own journey was deeply rooted in Saskatchewan, or so he was convinced. In truth, their paths were serpentine and elusive. Not so Medvedenko, his heart was always in the Ukraine. He stood on the path uncomfortably. He disliked the heat.

Basketball has not been kind to Steve Nash’s nose. In 2007, during a heated second round series between the Suns and the Spurs, Nash collided with Tony Parker and the blood took on an epic life of its own. The nose was a monstrosity, and the Spurs prevailed. In 2010, Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers head-butted Nash's nose, resulting in an on-court self adjustment. "You play against them so many times in the playoffs." He was talking about the Lakers of course, not simply the west. The most obvious way home meshes naturally with Canada, but that doesn’t really tell the story.

Steve Nash played sports endlessly as a kid; lacrosse, rugby, hockey and soccer. His brother Martin went on to a 15-year pro career with nine different soccer clubs. His travels made Steve’s look linear. Their younger sister Joann was a standout soccer player in college. The way home isn’t always about geography. Sometimes it’s about life and relationships and a place in time. And as you get older you have your own children and they begin their own journey, with their own familial roots.

Nash found basketball somewhere around the 8^th grade, and got real good, scary fast. He averaged, 21.3 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 11.2 assists in his senior year of high school. His coach sent letters by the dozen to major college programs, to no avail. The head coach from tiny Santa Clara College in California was impressed though, and visited the BC senior boys AAA championship. He called Nash the worst defender he’d ever seen and offered him a full ride scholarship. Four years at a school whose previous NBA success story was Kurt Rambis. The rest becomes a familiar fairytale story of Santa Clara’s improbable rise to contention in the NCAA tournaments.

***

It didn’t take much to get past Slava, just a half-ass spin move and Nash was scampering up the trail. The Ukrainian sighed heavily as he turned and began slowly trudging up, along with Sager, whose sandals skidded on every loose pebble.

Up ahead, standing by a cactus patch, was a tall blonde vision, back-lit by the sun and laughing. “Hair Canada, what took you so long?”

Nash grinned, “I got delayed by the welcome wagon.”

Nowitzki looked past his little buddy to the two men struggling up the trail. “Sager! Nice shirt! Slava?! Is that you? My god, man!”

Medvedenko finally allowed himself a smile. “Dirk”.

The God-creature’s laughter echoed off the canyon walls. “So we have a fantasy adventure today?”

Nash shrugged. “Whatever. They can tag along if they want.” He continued up the path and the others followed.

Steve Nash’s NBA career is well-documented - drafted at #15 by the Phoenix Suns and traded to Dallas a couple years later. He became friends with the kid from Germany, eventually returned to Phoenix when Mark Cuban wouldn’t match offers. All the years of playoff battles, reaching the Western Conference finals thrice. And the Suns’ long slide down as Coach D’Antoni left, and then Amare, Barbosa, and others. Nash remained loyal throughout, always returning, always trying. And marrying and fathering twin girls, and the birth of a son that coincided with the end of a marriage.

The trade to the Los Angeles Lakers took everybody by surprise for a myriad of reasons, not the least being a deal that was cobbled together from pieces of scrap. There were feelings of abandonment and anger. It would have been one thing to sign with the Raptors. That’s an understandable narrative, that’s going home. Even New York where he lived off season, all the way on the other side of the country. But Los Angeles was the unkindest cut of all. The years of not getting past them in the playoffs, the fights and hard feelings. Small market versus major market and the convenient belief that a Hollywood team simply buys their way to entitlement, year after year.

There are trajectories that lie outside the lines. Separated parenthood can be difficult to explain to those who haven’t lived it. Time moves faster with each advancing year. Feelings of loss can play into our decisions in deliberate and tangible ways, and in abstract, even ignored ways. In the end it was the simplest of decisions. Nash said that he wanted to be close to his children. That plus $27 million.

***

The four men had reached the top and were sitting on the edge of a ridge, overlooking the sprawling city below. Around them were sagebrush and golden yarrow, dusty fissures in the ground. The sun was starting to set, glinting off Sager’s tinfoil horns. He reached into the pockets of his shorts, pulled out a baggie of sunflower seeds and offered them around. There were no takers.

The newest Laker squinted toward America’s sideline reporter. “I know why I’m here. Why are you here?”

Craig wasn’t sure now, how to put it in words. “Los Angeles is a different place. We wanted to prepare you.”

Steve shrugged. “It’s not that different. I’ve spent the better part of twenty years in the west. And what’s all this business about Saskatchewan? You’re from Illinois.”

Sager chewed harder on his sunflower seeds. Nash wasn’t done. “And what about this Chipper and Bunny Bear nonsense. Those aren’t your kids.”

Craig’s frown lines grew ever deeper. He hadn’t left a perfectly workable scenario in Scottsdale just to have his storylines butchered. Dirk laughed, reached around and knocked the tinfoil hat off. A gust of wind took it spiraling away. Slava watched the proceedings implacably.

Sager hoisted himself up from his sitting position and stood, towering over Nash.

“I didn’t come here to be insulted.”

Dirk laughed, “Oh c’mon Sager, sit down. We’re just messing with you.”

Nash looked up and grinned. “Yeah, sit back down, gimme some of those sunflower seeds.”

Sager sat down warily, handed over the baggie.

Nash continued, “I know you’re a real dad. Chill.” He looked over toward the big Ukrainian. “How about you Slava, got any kids yet?”

Medvedenko frowned, “Yes, seven years old now.” His chin jutted out a little as he stared morosely off into the distance.

The others glanced at each other, shrugged, The moment passed as the sun dipped below the horizon. Steve Nash turned his attention back to the vista below, bands of burnt orange and purple, diffused by chemical particulate. You say you know but you don't know.

NBA DRAFT 2012: BEYOND THE PALE

2012-06-23T23:21:00.000-05:00

An annual rite of passage for over sixty years, the NBA draft takes place Thursday night. It has been much discussed and debated by those looking at the top of the hopes ladder, but also by teams whose only picks lie outside the box. Now that the Finals are over, the discussion will intensify. For the Los Angeles Lakers and those within their worldwide inner circle, the emphasis is on trading up into the first round. Without that, they're consigned to the 60th pick.

Aside from last year's Isaiah Thomas, how hard would it be to go back and research every final pick in NBA draft history? Nobody really cares, except those individuals themselves, and their families. To say they went off the map would be a understatement. Many were never on the map to begin with. As the number of teams ballooned, general managers began something of an inside joke for very late selections - picking overseas players with the most unpronounceable names imaginable, indulging their dreams for a few shining moments, and then tossing them back into the swirling chum.

What ever became of Cenk Akyol, Andreas Gyniadakis, Miolvan Rakovic, Damir Markota, Uros Slokar, Sergei Karaulova, Miladen Sekularac, Robertas Javokas, Igor Rakcevic, and so many others? They returned overseas after their questionable moments in the NBA sun. Most continued to play, earning a living, chasing the dream.

This year could be different, but it probably won’t. Still, there’s a dark horse candidate being whispered about, yet another obscure Euroleague player with a dream and a difficult past. Kiovanic Atomik was the product of a troubled relationship; a mother from Ingushetia, and a father from South Ossetia. His mom was an activist, his dad was a soldier. And each became caught up in longstanding regional conflicts that ultimately outweighed their love for each other, and tore their family apart.

Like many kids, Kiovanic’s escape has been sports. It’s not so easy in war torn countries to go to the gym, to be on a team, to travel freely. Raised primarily by relatives, he managed to navigate the shoals. Kiovanic had a brief introduction to the public during the civil war in Ingushetia, when his neighborhood was shelled by Russian forces. He began a conversation through twitter, which at the time was coming into its own as a social media platform. The descriptions of war in 160 characters or less found resonance until government forces prevailed. The account disappeared from public record, and Kiovanic himself escaped the country and went on to play basketball in the Adriatic league.

None of that matters to NBA decision makers, or at least, it may not matter this year. Atomik possesses specific basketball skills that could actually pay off. He’s a 6-9 point guard with raw athleticism and a singular feel for the amazing pass. He’s a streaky shooter, gambles too often on the defensive end, and is prone to turnovers. But those who have seen him play, talk about his uncanny ability to facilitate for others, and to read nearly impossible situations.

The Los Angeles Lakers are in dire need of backcourt help, and are severely constrained by the new CBA. If they can find their way into the first round, there are tangible solutions. If not, they’re left with the most meager of consolation prizes and cannot afford to toss even that aside. Last summer, Kiovanic Atomik, like many kids from other countries, managed to get a temporary work visa. He found employment at a Cumberland Farms convenience store in Harwich, Massachusetts, roomed with six other kids, and took part in a summer circuit basketball league where he demolished the competition. Atomik was invited to a basketball camp and astounded grizzled observers who thought they’d seen it all. He had to return to Europe the next day.

A year has passed. Kiovanic has continued to improve his fundamentals, playing for Montepaschi Siena, and DC Donbasket. This time, scouts have followed him more closely, especially Antonio Maceiras from the Los Angeles Lakers. Atomik returned to the U.S. and has taken part in a few of the draft combines. Like many other overseas prospects, he’s on the bubble and will probably never play in the NBA. Maceiras recently observed however, that Kio as his friends call him, is one of the most cerebral, intuitive players that he has ever watched.

A search for the holy grail can be many things to many people. To some it may not even qualify as such. To a parent it can be paying down a sequence of bills that looks like the hydra, to a student it can be a love affair. To a writer, it may be searching for a way home to an elusive concept that became forever buried under things discovered along the way. And for a basketball player who’s completely off the map, it can be the quest for something more, a ticket away from heartbreak, war, poverty, dysfunction, or cyclical bias. It’s the search for fame and fortune, and sometimes, freedom.

There is a place where fantasy ends and reality begins. On draft night, dozen of players that you actually know exist, who have not been invited to the ceremony, and who have received no promises, will sit in front of TV sets and watch and wait. Some will be with family and friends, and some will be alone. To the Kio Atomiks of the world, best wishes for success, wherever you may find it.

CHIPPER AND BUNNY BEAR

2012-06-20T23:12:00.002-05:00

Craig Sager felt out of sorts, the frequencies just weren’t the same lately. He was sitting at a small desk in a small studio apartment. He opened a drawer and organized a box of paperclips and a complimentary pad of Radisson Hotel notepaper, acquired during the western conference playoffs. That was when a player who shall remain nameless compared him to a popsicle with teeth. The player with the stupid plastic frames. No, the other player with the stupid plastic frames. No, the other one. Craig had died just a little bit more inside. He shut the drawer, stood and opened the blinds a crack with his index finger. It was raining outside. Wet streets, yellow swipes of light.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Only the sound of intermittent rain drops. It sounded as if they were landing inside somewhere but he couldn’t find them. He entered the kitchenette and took a half a ham and cheese on pumpernickel from the refrigerator. It was wrapped in a paper towel. He sat and picked at it. Tawny Kitaen was no longer in his life. Recently, somebody had questioned his status as a native of Rosthern, Saskatchewan. A woman had called, and claimed to be his wife. She said the children missed him, she asked where the love had gone.

Craig knew a few things. That he had rented this apartment recently. That there were no more games for him to report on this season. He walked over to his bed and laid on top of the covers. He pulled a blue velvet shrug from under the pillow, and placed it carefully under his head. He turned on the TV. The American Airlines Arena sounded like Dresden when the bombs were falling. The faces in the stands were twisted and yelling. Craig imagined himself standing on the sidelines, wearing a frozen grin. His head was pounding. He fell asleep.

“Knights in white satin, never reaching the end... “ The music burbled and the image rippled slightly around the edges. Like the peaceful babbling brook. The boy sat on a rock, watching patiently. He had a nice thick head of hair, and some books with him. And a canteen and a paper sack lunch. Chip the beaver was adding twigs to his creation, working carefully, yet quickly – the rain was coming. Mrs. Sleek watched him work. The kits swam nearby, gamboling in the stream. The boy whispered, “”Hey Chip! Hey, you’re doing a good job!” Chip kept working, The boy tried making a couple chirping noises. “Hey Mrs. Sleek! Chip is sure doing a good job!” Mrs. Sleek tilted her head and looked at him. The scene burned to white.

Sager had traveled to Austin, and was sitting outside a burrito place. The creator sat across from him. He was tall and thin and listened patiently. “You’re gonna be okay. Your wife’s name is... Anne. You have two children. It’s okay to visit them. No, Tawny doesn’t love you anymore. You have to get past that now. You have a good job. You love blended synthetics. You’re from Saskatchewan if I say you’re from Saskatchewan."

The flights were all jacked up. Overhead monitors scrolled and sputtered with symbols that made no sense. It smelled like every other shitty airport terminal he had ever been in. He stopped at a newspaper and t-shirt store. A song filtered through tinny overhead speakers. “Knights in White Satin...” He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to make the music stop. Why wouldn’t the music stop? The thin man had smiled patiently at his questions. “You have to trust me, Craig."

Craig was sitting at a table in a library. It was an old library, with high ceilings and many old books. The library was near the small apartment he had rented. He never went to libraries but had decided to come to this one. He sat at the table with his hands folded in front of him. A woman approached him and smiled pleasantly. She had a name badge that read: “Betty, library assistant”. Craig couldn’t really tell how old she was. She may have been 30, or she may have been 40. She wore glasses and had her hair in a loose bun.

“You’re not reading anything.” Her voice was soft and gentle.

Craig looked at the empty table in front of him. “No, I guess not.”

Betty thought for a moment. “Would you like to read something?”

Craig pondered. “Do you have any of the Big Red books? I used to like those.”

Betty pursed her lips for a moment as she thought. “Jim Kjelgaard? Boys and their dogs?”

Craig nodded. “Yes. Big Red was an Irish Setter. A really good one.”

Betty nodded as well. “Yes, those are very old books. We don't get a lot of requests for them anymore. Would you care to follow me?”

Craig got up from his chair. He followed and could not help but notice her hourglass figure, under a modest navy colored dress with an appealing floral pattern.

Craig picked out three books by Kjelgaard, each old and worn - Big Red, Son of Big Red, and Chip the Dam Builder. The latter had been a particular favorite of his. Betty led him back to a nice leather couch in the periodicals reading room. Craig sat and held his books in his lap. He was feeling a little bit sleepy.

“You can put your head here if you want.” Betty indicated her bosom area. Craig nestled against her and drifted off. An older gentleman looked up from his newspaper, and then went back to his article. Betty smiled sweetly at him.

He woke up, it was four in the morning, his head was pounding, he was not in his own bed. The woman from the library was facing away from him, sleeping. Light filtered through the blinds. He looked around the room. They had been at some out of the way dive bar. He was sure that he had talked a lot. His mouth tasted like metal. He didn’t want to be here.

Betty stirred, took hold of his hand and fell back asleep. Craig pulled his hand away, got out of bed quietly. He nearly blacked out from the rush of pain to his head. He walked quietly to the closet. His clothes were hanging neatly. He couldn’t help but notice a yellow cashmere sweater, just sitting there on a shelf. He touched it, so soft and so nice. He looked over at Betty, sleeping quietly.

***

Craig pulled into the driveway of an upscale stucco monstrosity in Scottsdale, Arizona, adjacent a golf course. Two blond-headed children came running and threw themselves against him, making children noises. Chipper asked if he’d brought back any autographed jerseys or game balls this time. Craig smiled, and said no.

Craig’s daughter spied the yellow cashmere sweater in a bag. “I want that.”

Craig considered the situation for a moment. “Yes, that’s for you, bunny bear.”

His daughter held it up in front of her. It looked like a sweater dress. Craig’s wife approached and appraised the scene. “I’ll take you to Dress Barn later.”

Bunny bear frowned. “I want this one.”

Sager’s wife shrugged and walked away. She had an ex-dancer’s walk.

The sun was starting to sink, casting golden fingers over the perfect golf greens. Craig and Anne were sitting on the patio at a wrought iron table. The Broil Master was nearby, a selection of mixed grill meats sizzling nicely. Craig looked out over the 14^th hole, golfers in brightly colored polos. The children were playing inside, their voices rising and falling in some cadence. It may have been the beginnings of a quarrel.

Anne sipped her iced tea and looked at him. “Kenny called earlier. They’re having a barbecue on Saturday.”

Craig nodded, his eyes still on the golfers.

“Kenny said to tell you, that if you wanted to talk about anything, it would be a good time.”

Craig nodded again. “I’ve been thinking about visiting Walter and Delores in Saskatchewan this summer.”

Annie’s mouth set. “Batavia. Illinois.”

Craig turned and looked at her. “Saskatchewan”.

Inside, the sudden rending of cashmere, and an anguished wail. “My sweater!”

Anne swirled her ice cubes and looked out over the perfect golf greens. Her garden of wildflowers was coming in nicely. “The children don’t do well when you’re away for such long periods.”

The small pieces of mixed grill were beginning to smoke. Craig closed his eyes. Let them burn.

Episode one Episode two Episode three Episode four

BIG HITS: HIGH TIDE AND GREEN GRASS

2012-06-18T11:06:00.000-05:00

masking tape, J.D. Hastings

If you’re looking for something new and shiny, sorry – this is just a recycled compilation. The first three tracks come from a new site, Digital Refrain. I keep feeding them analog and they don’t seem to mind. The second batch is from various basketball-driven forums I've written for this season, and the final three are archived from Searching for Slava itself.

One of the common threads in my writing is the idea of marrying elements from the past to the present. Orphans of the Storm imagined a consortium of present day cultural icons attempting to revitalize a film studio founded by icons from a century past.

Jim Jarmusch recently appeared on the Charlie Rose show, revealing that his lengthy absence from directing had much to do with an obsession with a never released United Artists film entitled Long John Cabin (1935). The isolationist drama starred Wallace Beery as an agoraphobic woodsman bedeviled by incontinence, and was helmed by writer Dalton Trumbo in his directorial debut. The last known copy of the film turned to dust in a lonely warehouse, some years back.

Butterflies are Free had its roots in a running online conversation I had about bog snorkeling a few years ago. I added Michael Phelps and a great marsh painting by my father.

Michael changed into dry clothes and we were fed a hearty muskrat stew prepared by his friend Elin, a singer with a local pub band. And afterward, we sat by the fire with a good dark ale and finally talked about motivation and purpose. “I swim” he said, “It’s what I do and what I have always done. Lately I’ve been bothered by chlorine. After all these years.” And he just shrugged, as if there were nothing else about it. And stared with a sense of melancholy into the fire. And Elin came and put a quiet hand on his shoulder, each of us alone with our thoughts.

I threw a a number of disparate references, past and present, at a framework of LiLo’s ongoing train wreck in The Horrible Flowers. I think it might have disturbed some people. That’s okay, I’m only happy when it rains.

I took this assignment with a heavy heart. This is not the stuff of resurgent film studios or peaty bogs. It’s the cautionary last chapter of a life gone sorrowfully wrong. I remember Lindsay as a grinning imp on the set of Parent Trap – all freckles and cat eyes and young hopes. It was only a convenient snapshot of course. She was pushed and pulled relentlessly by the impossible forces of unconscionable parents. She could have been anything.

I wrote something for Pounding the Rock to mark the occasion of the Lakers’ three-game series with the Spurs, late in the season.

Up to the Forum in Charlie Cole’s ancient Volvo station wagon during high school, and later, moving to L.A. and punk bands – you could be anybody and dig the Lakers. And adulthood and parenthood, left to right on the radio dial with Chick Hearn, driving home from work. The first Phil Jackson years in Los Angeles – incense pots and rings.

J.M. Poulard from Warrirors World reached out over the course of the season for a series of email conversations which is one of the easiest and funnest ways to write a post.

I’ve watched Kobe since he came into the league and it’s been such a pleasure. To me, he represents something that’s so special about sports, the ability to be transcendent, to do things so extraordinary that time seems to slow or even freeze in the moment. I’m very conscious about his age and mileage, and look at each season as a bit of a minor miracle. His greatness isn’t as consistent anymore but he’s like Ali, he’ll still come off the ropes with a blinding flurry.

The following is from a Forum Blue and Gold preview of sorts, for the Lakers Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs.

Where did it go wrong? Or, how did it go so wrong, so quickly? It seemed to happen over the course of a game - an extended, senseless slide, like a nightmare car accident or a real accident - the ones that seem to last an eternity. It wasn’t any one game, of course. They say that you can’t go home again. It has been interpreted in many ways, a space in time, a memory, or the idea that you cannot return home without being deemed a failure. The Lakers return home tonight for a Game 7 that never should have happened.

I’ve written four Craig Sager stories for this site, they seem to get a little stranger with each telling. If I do another, it will return to a more solitary, lonely feel. Like the man himself. This excerpt is from episode two.

Highway 11 headed south, only one lane in each direction at times, the occasional logging truck approaching and thundering past. Craig Bartholomew Sager found himself smiling. A distant siren mingled with the song coming through his dashboard. Warm light sifted through the windows, softer than satin. It was hard to keep his eyes open. Just a perfect day, problems all left alone.

Last summer’s lockout negotiations often went late into the night, followed by pronouncements of doom from each side. I’ve gotten a wealth of material from Mr. Stern and had no compunction whatsoever about likening media consumption to a junkie’s fix.

In the end it came down to yards, not inches, and the eldest of elders turned slightly away and rubbed at his chest and wore his smile and his skin turned gray as he spun avarice into pride. And the lights blazed on and the town criers sat at devices and fingers danced over keys marked ‘insert’ and ‘delete’ and they cooked their bindles grimly and inserted thin needles into delivery systems. And the trails turned to tar until the spaces had filled and villagers put away their torches and stroked long beards and headed for home.

This one was just a drift of thoughts, and included one of many misadventures from my youth.

When I was in high school, my buddy Waldo and I got drunk and ran out of ice so we walked down to the Travel Lodge ice machine but the night manager chased us away so we drank some more and went back and pissed in the machine and left. The next day, we went down to the beach to bake. Our friends were drinking margaritas and we asked, “where’d you get the ice?” They answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Travel Lodge.” Waldo and I snickered and sparked a joint.

A recent SfS change involved ditching the old black template with white font. I had mixed feelings, the color scheme allowed images to to pop out in a nice way. On the other hand, I just got tired of the reverse negative look. Searching for images often represents the final step of completion for a post but for this offering, I already knew what I wanted. J.D. Hastings is a San Francisco Bay artist who put together a series of collages from previously used masking tape. They fascinate me, not only for what they represent as works unto themselves, but in a sense of wanting to trace their roots backward, to their original usage.

Things that cycle - tides, trends, and generations. We're in the middle of a particularly good NBA Finals, and soon, the draft, free agency and the summer of guessing games. I heard from Kristi Fratello recently, daughter of the Czar. Slava's apparently doing well, working with the Ukrainian youth league. Nice update but it doesn't really satisfy my holy grail. I choose to believe that he's still nowhere to be found - a literary mystery. The search continues.

MY CYBER DINNER WITH EMILE

2012-06-07T16:00:00.002-05:00

I find myself increasingly spending time communicating with people I’ll probably never see face to face. It’s this ongoing amalgamation of writing online articles, sometimes collaborating, often seeking approval in some fashion, and usually tweeting about it and many random things with no beginning and no end. I can’t sit down to dinner with online friends. Actually I can sit down to dinner with online friends, with more than a nod to Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn.

My first sit down was with Emile Avanessian, a New York City resident, one man band for Hardwood Hype, and fellow contributor for Forum Blue and Gold. And a friend, regardless of location. We each had food and various electronic devices and watched Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the San Antonio Spurs – it was an epic game, and a fitting framework for dinner conversation.

Dave – What do you have on your plate, Emile?

Emile – Roasted chicken breast with goat cheese, olives and cherry tomatoes, with roasted potatoes on the side. And what are you having this fine evening?

Dave – Thank you for asking, I’m having small pieces of marinated chicken with mushrooms, red bell pepper, onion and angel hair pasta. I prepared it in a small skillet which is perched on the corner of my desk. And Pepsi. I was going to have wine. But I’m not.

Emile – So whaddya think about tonight’s game?

Dave – I think the Spurs have a legitimate shot. I think they’re due. But OKC has that thing that’s like instant healing. They can come back so fast it’s scary. The Spurs kind of have to stop and catch their breath.

Emile – Yeah, youth and spring are deadly. I am 55-45 thinking OKC closes it out. That said, I’m irrationally excited to watch the Spurs have to play a game for their season. They are so great normally, how about these stakes?

Dave – It’s the issue of generational change around the league. It seems as if there’s always newer, younger, more athletic teams coming up through the ranks and influencing the direction of the game itself. Yet, as we get into the late stages of the playoffs, there is an almost an inevitable shift back to the veteran teams. OKC is the exception this year – the one “young” team out there. By the way, did you ever stop to think that David Stern’s league model may very well be a self-perpetuating unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian form of government based on money? Haha, I’m paraphrasing My Dinner With Andre.

Emile – Haha, interesting thought on Stern & Co. I think this goes back to a conversation we had a few months back. The comparison was the NBA as a corrupt (but not too corrupt to deal with) oligarchy. Ironically, the new ownership groups entering the NBA (Wall Street/PE types) will run the show until NBA franchises are no longer considered a quality investment.

Dave - Another thing is the draft. Lakers have the 60th pick. I think Jimbo’s going to go hard after something better. It’s one of the real problems we face, dealing away picks and this is what we’re left with. Plus, Jim and Chaz and the younger brother scouts are so convinced that the draft is the way to go and that they have some form of expertise about such matters now. So what are they going to do? Just sit back and watch everybody else party? I don’t think so. Doesn’t mean they’ll get a good pick but I think they’ll try.

Emile - After all these years of “win now” mode, drafting away first rounders (admittedly low-to-mid first rounders, but first rounders nonetheless) in attempt after attempt to address specific shortcomings with turnkey solutions, it’s time to settle up. On the bright side we have two titles and three conference titles to show for the past five years, but we’re left with a roster that is aging, overpaid and inflexible, cap/trade-wise. Thus, I am all for making a bold move in the interest of beginning to lay a foundation for tomorrow.

No sure if we’ve ever discussed this but I am decidedly pro-trading Bynum, though I’d not do it for a draft pick. For ‘Drew, I want front line talent. Pau on the other hand, we can talk. Like I said in the 3-on-3 we did for FBG last week, I love the guy and would rather not trade him, but given the lack of options, I think he could be flipped for a top-10 pick and cheaper (but still overpaid) NBAer. As for Jimmy & Friends running a draft vital to the franchise’s future. I am unsure what to think. I’ve not been terribly kind to Short Buss since he took over, but he is in fact responsible for drafting Bynum and has not really had any other high picks with which to work. At the end of the day, I’m in favor of a full-scale blow up, in which the Lakers trade the two bigs for a combo of existing talent and a high pick, moving forward with that and plus Kobe’s final seasons, as the foundation.

Where do you stand on this? Are you in the Bynum-as-future camp, or do you see him as a valuable asset to be monetized? And Buss? Do you more trust him to run a draft, or to assess, value and acquire talent from around the league?

Dave – I agree about Pau, I think he's gone. And Andrew, for an elite talent? Sure. As for Buss, I probably trust him more with the draft than other basketball decisions.. I don’t put quite as much stock in his championing of Bynum because I think Ronnie Lester did the really heavy lifting there and Jim jumped on for the ride, and eventually showed Ronnie the door. I do however, think he’s spent a lot of time doing his homework and seems to like talking about it. Plus, he’s shown himself to be a cost-cutter in some obvious ways and I think that dovetails with a draft philosophy. His dad is the guy who had a keen eye for existing talent around the league. And Mitch of course.

As we were having this conversation, the Spurs had jumped out to a huge first quarter lead, extending it in the beginning of the second quarter before the Thunder began getting traction. The Spurs still went into the half, up by 15.

Dave – I went into my cupboard at halftime and realized I forgot to have the artisan filone asiago cheese bread that I purchased at my local Randall’s flagship market earlier today. And I really like having bread with my chicken and pasta. I’m a little annoyed but I’ll solider on. David Stern’s obviously a lighting rod for criticism and I’ve been on him plenty, all throughout the lockout, through various fictional tales, and then for obvious reasons after the botched CP3 affair. What’s your honest opinion on Stern’s stewardship of the league in general, a big picture view of what he’s done in the past, and where he is now?

Emile - Stern? Yeesh. Where to go with that? I don’t think there is any doubt that his leadership has been a net positive. He benefited from great timing, but he’s globalized the league, TV revenues are massive, the players are even better compensated, they’ve embraced digital/social media better than any league. That said, I think Stern is past his prime and drunk with power. It’s understandable when you think about it – he knows he’s nearing the end of the road and wants to assert his dominance until that day comes. Also, the world in which he now works is drastically different from the one in which he got his start. Players are fabulously wealthy and demanding a greater say in the way the league conducts its business. He’s become preoccupied with constantly reminding the world “who’s boss” and has begun inserting himself rather sloppily, into matters in which he probably has no place.

Dave – Tell me a little about the new ownership groups. Your comment from earlier about “running the show until NBA franchises are no longer considered a quality investment” is interesting. How far off do you think that is? Do you think there’s ever a chance of antitrust concepts being loosened in the NBA, much like they have in other business sectors? And has the New Orleans league-controlled ownership aspect already breached the antitrust concept?

Emile – I am not well versed in the legal aspects of sports ownership, but I’m talking about the guys who made megabucks from hedge funds/private equity/etc., and are now paying $300 - $400M+ for franchises. These guys are rarely the pillars of the community that bought teams back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, for $10 - $20 million. They are buying because NBA teams have historically been inefficient businesses, and by stepping in, totally revamping the infrastructure (much tighter payroll constraints, fewer jobs for former players; reworking arena leases) and improving cash flows. It is not bad per se, because these guys mostly recognize that in a suboptimal market, winning sells and all else withers. But they will run these teams as businesses more than as civic institutions.

With the exception of the CP3 debacle, I didn’t have a huge problem with the league’s ownership of the Hornets, as Shinn was a fucking disaster. And yes, it took a while to sell the team, but in the interest of keeping the team in NOLA (the stated goal) they waited and somehow got a top-dollar bid from Tom Benson.

Dave – I mostly agree about Stern. He did enormous good for the sport, and yes, the world is changing. But I keep thinking back to the lockout, and how that was handled. It was a labor negotiation, as elemental as it gets in many ways. We got so close to a lost season, and so much money was lost in ancillary ways. I could never quite understand why Stern seemed to shift away from his closest allies, the major market players. But ultimately, it really does go to your point – the new ownership groups, the cost-cutters. It’s the same mindset that has taken over so many business sectors. Cut costs, cut benefits, instill fear and make the other side cave. Except the players were finally pushed too far, and filed in federal court. And the cost-cutters had to take another look at it.

And then there’s the case of DerekFisher, still president of the players union, still in the game, still making a difference. And, with a fairly good chance to get his sixth ring. It’ll be a huge part of the narrative and for good reason. I’ve never quite gotten past the manner in which he was kicked to the curb. And here he is, still standing while the Lakers are trying to figure out how to get past getting bounced in the second round, two years running. It’s more than a little ironic that Fish is headed to the Finals and we’re talking about trade possibilities for Andrew and Pau.

By evening’s end, the Spurs had lost a heart breaker. The Thunder roared through the third quarter and were down by a single point going into the final frame. They succeeded in the end, paving the way for a trip to the Finals and possibly, a new dynasty.

Dave – I was sad to see the Spurs go down but at least they went down fighting. There’s that saying that youth won’t be denied – we’ll get to find out for sure in the Finals. I’m trying to wrap my head around who’s more competitive coming out of the east. A meeting between OKC and Miami has been a fairly popular assumption for a while. Not so much the case now, with the Heat facing elimination at TD Garden – that’s a tough place for an away team to win. And what kind of conversation would that engender this summer? The Celtics don’t have to sweat it, they’re not on the wrong end of the expectations game. I wouldn’t at all mind seeing Boston and Oklahoma – that’s as classic a case of generations colliding as you’ll get.

Emile - For reasons I can’t explain, I am finding OKC’s presence in the Finals a bit weird. Maybe it’s the jerseys and the logo and the name no one grew up with. Maybe it’s Derek Fisher’s presence. Maybe it’s just the stark reality of the balance of power shifting out West, and how suddenly that shift occurred. Maybe I’m just bummed that my full scale man crush on Gregg Popovich has screeched to a premature halt.

Because in terms of talent and continuity, OKC doesn’t lack for a whole lot. In fact, not only are these guys supremely gifted and immensely likable, they are punctual as well. This is when the Finals expected them. They’ve grown up, matured and learned to navigate the postseason together, made progress each year. Tough postseason losses, but not a single disappointing howler. It’s been textbook.

The Thunder are by no means perfect, but their strengths are just so pronounced and their stars so uniquely skilled that it’s inconceivable that any defense – even one as stingy as Boston’s – would be able to consistently shut them down for extended stretches. We’re going to watch the final two eastern conference teams duke it out for the privilege of joining KD, Russ and friends. If the Celtics are able to beat the Heat, we’ll be in it for the generational collision you alluded to. If Miami can pull out a pair against the C’s, the internet may well collapse under the weight of narratives of its own creation. Either way, regardless of the outcome of the Finals, I hope the simple “young greatness realized” storyline – one of this season’s coolest – gets the play it deserves.

Again, thanks a lot for putting this together. I had an absolute blast just sitting around Bsing about ball. Any time you want to do it again.

Dave – Thanks Emile, I wonder what Louis Malle would have made of the new digital age? Ultimately, this didn’t so much come down to the interactive possibilities of electronics, but simple, extended conversation. Over dinner, albeit it Austin to New York City. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Until next time.

THE CENTURY SHIFT

2012-06-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

It’s been a couple weeks since the Lakers’ hopes went whistling down a dark one-way alley. I’ve had a difficult time writing about it here, perhaps because it means moving past my own barrier. This marks Slava’s one hundredth episode, and I’ve have a fondness for the number nine all my life. It seems a silly thing to write about, but maybe not, considering the increased presence of metrics in today’s basketball observations. For me, number nine was simply lucky as a kid, and then I started liking threes and their multiples. As for this journal, I could either call it a day or push toward another one hundred, a completely unanticipated event when I first began this thing.

It had no planning and no direction home. It was simply a lark. The title was the only thing of significance to me and yet the seedling took root. Lately I’ve been wandering in other gardens and the earth here has become fissured and possessed of red fire ants and nettles, but life is mostly circular until it’s gone. Things that I may have written about came and went, time is the avenger in so many ways. Somewhere in a room in an office building with many other rooms, two men sat at a table with an oblong Lucite object in front of them, with trap doors and hopes. They may not have anticipated the virus of opinions that would spread like a seismic spiderweb. It’s doubtful that they cared.

David used an X-Acto knife to slice carefully into a ping pong ball. A tube of Daisy BB’s sat next to him. “This should weight it properly so as to propel our lucky number right down the chute. Damn it!” He winced and stuck the wounded digit in his mouth. Adam stood behind him, and without thinking, licked his own lips.

“Do we have band-aids somewhere?” I’m getting blood on the fucking balls.”

The man who would be boss trotted off dutifully, and returned with a medicine kit that was secured inside a knitted cozy. He opened it helpfully, and placed it on the table.

David waved him off. “Stop trying to mother hen me, Adam. I hate it when you do that.”

Adam stepped back, hurt. He clasped his hands together and pursed his lips.

David bandaged his finger and returned to his task. “Now where’s that hot glue gun?” Silver smiled just slightly, as the light glinted off his spectacles.

A recent article that I liked spoke of the appearance of impropriety, and how it takes on a life of its own. Which is true enough, but it never seems to actually sink in with certain people in positions of power. They may pay it lip service, but continue their single-minded journeys until they’re out of a job and have landed with a golden parachute and employ underpaid scribes to write false puff pieces with proper search term density that will filter upward, displacing truths that drift to the bottom of the ocean floor, there to be gnawed on by viperfish and grenadiers. And the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Two weeks ago, before Game 4 of the second round, I began to write this post with the following: “I love the Lakers with the intimacy that any sports fan feels for their team, regardless of other opinion. But, they have been like the proverbial aging fighter, clawing through rounds on old legs, while their younger opponents have the ability to come back with blinding flurries. Yet, here we are. Handed a lifeline, and hope.” It didn’t happen of course, the end evetually came as it usually does, with a whimper, not a bang.

Where does it go from here? For the Lakers, I no longer hold the hopes of meshing three central cogs, the idea that Kobe, Pau and Andrew will function as one. That just seems like what’s left over when there’s no more bullets in the chamber. Not that it hasn't worked in the past, but the simple observation that sweeping changes were made last season, which would have been even more sweeping if David Stern hadn’t brushed the pieces from the table with one impetuous motion. Jim Buss’s background is horse racing and entitlement. And he’s a draft junkie. The most obvious opening gambit is to try and trade for one of the landed ping pong balls. He won’t get the one with the blood on it, and he may not get one at all. But he’ll try.

Personally, the meshing of parts continues, from the Ukrainian holy grail to other far off places. At some point, choices will have to be made, it’s simply not feasible to keep hoeing, row after dusty row. Sometimes our resources are finite. For now however, I reload the chamber and spin again. Readers beware.

LIBERATED FANDOM

2012-05-15T12:49:00.001-05:00

The gutty Denver Nuggets took the Lakers to seven games, and a team finally showed up to play, thanks in no small part to the return of Metta World Peace. Two days later, the Lakers rolled into Chesapeake Energy Arena and were resolutely flattened. Was it a surprise? It shouldn’t have been. OKC was coming off a lengthy rest, they were playing at home, and had a bitter taste in their mouths from their last meeting – the Peace/Harden affair.

And so, one of the hottest teams in the NBA all season long, blitzed one that has been maddeningly inconsistent. Shocking. I was casually reading the epitaphs on twitter after the game. It began with fans’ own disappointment and after many had stumbled away, was taken up by other observers of the game - the sheer unfettered delight that begins at a trickle and soon flows unabated. Have you ever seen ‘The Shining’, the elevator doors and the blood?

A festival of court jesters and fire jugglers, bombastic royalty and simpering advisers, a crowd drunken on mead and mutton, intoxicated by the prospect of drawing and quartering a team after a blowout loss in enemy territory. Would the same wanton glee exist if the tables had turned? Would there be the same level of evisceration? You have already answered that.

Apart from last year’s decision-fueled Heat, there is rarely a team that draws more righteous scorn than the Lakers – sports’ version of the Star Chamber. Not so much from the ordinary fan, but those who write and comment and tweet and dissect the game, those who view fandom as pure and best reserved for minor market teams whose Horatio Alger dreams are inevitably dashed by contemptible spoilers who buy their way to glory, snatching crumbs from the mouths of hungry children.

The loathing has to exist. Society needs its villains, all the better if they represent a shady pedestal to topple, better yet if you can spend millions to make a starlet clean up body parts in a morgue. Debate becomes amorphous, like trying to pick up a tiny ball of mercury in a paper cup. It’s the eternal case of “well we don’t mean you – we like you because you’re not like them.” Bullshit, I am them.

What if they’re right? There is truth to all things and it may just be that a subjective view from one fan can’t compete against the damning chorus line. The epic arm wrassle will ultimately break your will or your arm. And so, y’all win - we are who you say we are. As fans, as observers, as writers, as an organization. As players and as a city, and as those who don’t live anywhere near the city but are guilty by association.

We are entitled, we are spoiled and we have cards up every sleeve. We are better than you and we will ruin your dreams. It has nothing to do with numbers, nothing to do with effort, it has nothing to do with the heart of a champion. It is preordained and purchased with filthy lucre. The handle of my axe is made of gold I say, party me to your sister. We will filch from your mothers’ purses. We know dark magic. We laugh at you behind your backs and if we don’t win this time, we will again – many times over.

Tomorrow night there will be another game in Oklahoma City. Ten young men in polyester uniforms will step out onto a hardwood floor under banks of blinding white light. They will advance from one end of the floor to the other. Some will be playing with injuries, some will become injured as you watch. Each side will attempt to put a large ball into an impossibly small basket, more times than the other side, and there will be sections of seconds and minutes in which nothing else matters. And at the end of the game, one team will have won.

In the days before internet I would walk to the Stella Maris playground down the street. And I would find patched asphalt ribbons to launch unlikely shots from, for no other reason than their existence as markers. They still exist, in the time of the game itself – eternal, and apart from judgment.

SEGUE DENVER

2012-04-28T14:03:00.002-05:00

Sixty-six games sandwiched into a short window and done. It’s easy to say the season was strange, uneven, that it seemed to play out overnight. It’s only a snippet born of easy comparison. There’s nothing short about sixty-six games, especially for the teams who bottomed out quickly and had to continue playing.

The conversation about tanking went completely viral and you have to wonder how that felt to players who strap on ice packs, limp onto buses, eat on the fly, and get ready to do it again the next night. You have to wonder what it feels like to blow out a knee or jam a finger into something that will never look the same again, to schedule an emergency trip to a dentist in strange city and check into your room and turn on the TV to discover that your team didn’t come to play last night – you thought you came to play and you vaguely remember having a halfway decent game before you fouled out and walked off, as fans with twisted faces screamed obscenities and hawked loogies while security guards stared toward the floor. Or was that the night before, or the one before that.

Basketball happens in a moment, rising up as an elbow’s coming down.

“They opened my whole head, pulled my face out and fixed it. Obviously there were a lot of loose pieces they had to put back together like a puzzle, but they did an amazing job." Eduardo Najera, Charlotte Bobcats

I doubt Najera ever tanked a game in his life, Does that mean the all-consuming conversation has no merit? Of course not. There’s players who care in a losing season and those that don’t. There were owners who wanted to toss the entire schedule before it began, and there’s the ones who would rather lose during the games they never wanted in the first place. And there’s coaches who balance phone calls they wish they hadn’t taken, against the reality that they probably won’t have a job next year anyway.

Sixteen teams managed to get into sixteen slots, jockeying for position, some brave enough to cut to the inside rail. Congratulations. You bought yourself at least four more games. And you’ve been analyzed and ranked and rationalized and you’ve had numbers and letters and equations assigned to you, and you have a chance or you don’t have a fucking chance and you’re cool, you say you don’t listen anyway, it’s a game, it’s a business, it’s a dream, it’s a failure, it’s a championship, it’s a trip back to the D-league, it’s wondering if your contract will get picked up, it’s talking to your kids on the phone, it’s your coaches screaming in your ear, it’s a hard drive to a basket that grows higher every year and finishing at the rim and getting hammered to the floor and a trip to the stripe to make it three and put your team ahead with one second left on the clock.

Congratulations, you’re in the playoffs.

I don’t know these Denver Nuggets very well, they’re mostly young and fast, and they have the future ahead of them. A sea of ink seemed to disappear overnight. It didn’t really, but it seemed that way. Just like the season seemed short. Chris Andersen has enough ink left for any three players but he doesn’t seem to count anymore, he’s only a reminder of a different era.

George Karl is from a different era as well. He knows about ice packs and bus rides, the days before the 24 hour news cycle. His headlong plunges earned him the nickname ‘the Kamikaze Kid’ at North Carolina. He’s played and coached in the ABA, CBA, NBA and Spain. He drove from one city to the next in a Ford van. He once coached Seattle in the ‘96 finals and lost to Phil Jackson’s Bulls. He didn’t know if he’d live to see another season, more than once. And he’s got his kids playing fast and loose and might just decide to empty his clip in this round. I wouldn’t count his team out.

Kobe Bryant put aside the scoring title on the last night of the regular season in order to rest for this series. His 58 games didn’t feel short - torn wrist ligaments, a broken nose, a concussion, soft tissue damage to the neck and a tendon shaft inside his shin that became inflamed. Ramon Sessions arrived for the end of the season. Andrew Bynum grabbed 30 rebounds one night and two rebounds a few nights later. Pau Gasol was relieved to learn that he’d still be a Laker and Metta World Peace will be spending the first round on his smart phone, typing not so smart things. And if you want a snapshot analysis of the team’s chances, look again at the fourth quarter and two overtime periods against OKC, when they came from eighteen back with a lineup that featured Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Jordan Hill, Devin Ebanks, and Steve Blake. And simply shut them down.

It’s hot and humid and the wind is blowing. I take the dog outside, a few lone cicadas have begun their incessant electrical buzz again. Segue Denver.

ASK THE DUST

2012-04-25T02:11:00.001-05:00

The elbow heard around the world has been endlessly discussed and written about, and some of the writing has been good and reasoned. I don’t know that I’m the one to interpret a half-second in the heat of battle, but the league has levied a punishment that will last for seven games and punishment and perception are in the eyes of the beholder.

When I was growing up, there was a ten year-old kid who lived across the street in a perfect New England house. Richie Littlehale was my older brother’s buddy, and regarded as one of the coolest smart asses around. He’d sneak cigarettes and lecture on the evils of vegetables. Richie came over for dinner one night and whipped a magnifying glass out of his back pocket, zeroing in on the spaghetti sauce. My mom asked what he was doing. “Looking for trick food” was the reply. This created a lasting impression on all of us, and made future nutritional efforts even thornier.

The seven day suspension is the league equivalent of trick food. It’s supposed to be for the good of the game I guess, but it’s filled with suspicious little bits and pieces that considered on their own, taste like crap. I eventually came to enjoy mushrooms and bell pepper. I’m not expecting to embrace Metta’s absence.

Boiled down to its essence, the most common narrative is an all too familiar speech, “I know you didn’t mean to do it, but it was still wrong.” You probably heard this as a kid from your parents and if you’re a parent, you’ve probably said it to your own kid. It’s used in school, work, sports, relationships. It’s a foundational argument from the most minor slight to courtroom trials. Whether or not there was intent, there was action and it deserves punishment. Because that’s how it works. It’s the quickest, simplest means to an end - corrective measures are necessary.

Throw his ass in jail. Take away the job, the scholarship, the car and sports. Take away dinner and the sleepover and the precious stuffed animal that listens soundlessly to a child’s sobs. Take away the love.

At this point, the howls of protest boil over, That shit has nothing to do with it! We can’t have lawlessness taking over our fine sport - imagine the consequences if the league handed down a lighter sentence. Everybody would try and get away with it. Oh... like after Kevin Love stepped on Luis Scola’s face and got a two game suspension, right?

Well actually no, the face stomping epidemic never happened - because it was Love, not Peace. Chris Mannix takes a swing at the precedent issue, that there is a history and history has to be taken into account. He tosses Metta a charitable bone – all the work and efforts to reform his flawed character have to count for something so he wouldn’t actually ban him for life, just for the entire playoffs. That way, nobody else will go around throwing elbows. Somewhere, Mutombo is laughing.

Where do I actually stand on the issue? I’m not huge on excessive punishment and to be honest, mixed signals are a way of life in this league. Still, I believe in the spirit of compromise. No other thrown elbow has ever resulted in more than a two game suspension, and it’s hard to see malice in the brief moment it took Harden to get up in Peace’s back. Still, give him the max punishment in terms of precedent and double it for good measure – four games.

The Lakers head up to Sacramento for the end of the line. They’ll be playing without Peace obviously, and will also be without the services of Matt Barnes who has a small ligament tear in his right ankle. The team’s third place seed in the west is secure with the Clippers losing to Atlanta, so the game is moot – it would be nice to see Brown rest his starters, although not likely.

The real repercussions take place in the playoffs. The Lakers will face either Denver or Dallas in the first round. They’re both tough matches and the loss of MWP will be real, and it will matter. The discussion isn’t apt to go away any time soon – it’s simply too juicy to ignore, The magnifying glasses are out, and aren’t going back in anybody's pockets, anytime soon.

SECTIONS

2012-04-22T13:14:00.007-05:00

The regular season is nearly done, two more stops until the end of the line. The Lakers face the Oklahoma City Thunder, having lost in their two previous match-ups. Today will be one of those early Sunday games which isn’t always optimal. The Lakers prefer waking when the sun is warm in the sky, a nice brunch, maybe poached eggs with artichoke bottoms and brioche.

There’s not much use dwelling on Friday’s game - Andrew Bynum got two rebounds after collecting 30 in his previous visit to AT&T territory. The Spurs spaced the floor and hit lots of open jumpers. The key to the game was that telescoping fireball that Manu hurled through the chute to Matt Bonner. The Lakers just kind of wandered around after that, talking at the floor.

Derek Fisher pays another visit to Staples in a Thunder uniform. He’s had a hell of a year. He helped save the Buss’s family fortune and they dumped his measly contract for Jordan Hill’s measly contract. This supposedly had something to do with saving money which I haven’t quite yet figured out, plus the idea that he might have had a problem with Ramon Sessions coming in.

This last theory is actually semi-understandable because we all remember how Fish threw fits when Tye Lue, Derek Harper, Ron Harper, Brian Shaw, Mike Penberthy, Lindsey Hunter, Mitch Richmond, J.R. Rider, Gary Payton, Shammond Williams, Janero Pargo, Tierre Brown, Jordan Farmer, Sasha Vujacic, Coby Karl and Steve Blake arrived. I’m probably forgetting some guys.

And then there’s the matter of Billy Hunter and his favorite pigeon Mo Evans trying to fit Fisher for a cement cornerstone. That’s just union business though. My favorite part was Evans giving a lengthy interview about wanting to keep things internal, and getting back to basketball.

Friday night was also the return of Kobe. He didn’t play into the hero narrative, preferring to let the team concept roll. Kind of like how it rolled when he was sitting in a suit. And later, he calmly explained that adjustments would be made. That’s code for “I’m gonna torch Harden’s nasty beard on Sunday.”

The carousel clicks, doorway by doorway. The trick is just to win more than you’re losing. That’s all. You just need to win a game. This team’s been markedly better lately but they still have inexplicable lapses. Like a guy who can get 30 rebounds and then get two against the same team. Like a gun that misfires sometimes. Bryant still leads the league in scoring at 27.89 ppg. Kevin Durant is just a fraction behind, at 27.79 ppg. Kobe said yesterday, “I’m not really tripping about it.”

***

Post double-overtime win update: For anything bad I've ever said about the Jordan Hill trade, forgive me for I have sinned. This post should be buried some dark night, where no one will find it.

BEWARE OF MAMBA

2012-04-20T00:42:00.015-05:00

He has been sitting on his throne, watching and resting. He smiles sometimes, but not his eyes. He has taken notes and measurements. Kobe Bryant is the closest thing the league has to a cold-blooded, reptilian assassin.

There are different narratives for different teams and fans, and for observers of the game who watch it incessantly - issuing opinions and pronouncements. Increasingly, there is the matter of numbers, charts, statistical truths. Because numbers don’t lie, they do not have that capability. There is a purity to them. As there is a purity to the clinically organized killer.

Tinker, tailor, solider, spy. Some love the journeymen, others are longshot players who'll bet their pockets on the outside rainbow, and some love the power game. And then there’s those who like to infiltrate, to cast doubt, to argue the very validity of specialness or magic in your team, or your fandom.

These last are the darkest seeds. They long to be placed under your skin, to grow long tendrils. They want your arguments.

The anti-Lakers, anti-Kobe narrative is one of the league’s most consistently fascinating ones. You may argue this of course, because arguing is the endless tape loop of commentary. Why on earth didn’t they catch the killer? Because the movie would have been over in the first reel, dummy. And swaths of purple and gold in every arena.

From J.R. Wilco at Pounding the Rock, in an ongoing series conversation with C.A. Clark at Silver Screen and Roll:

I hate being in the middle of a tense moment in the film and having the thought that the character who’s in trouble will certainly make it out of the situation, because he hasn’t yet said that line from the trailer that I liked so much.

Bryant has been sitting for the past seven games. During which, the Lakers have won five, lost two. By definition, this means that guys have stepped up. Two of the last seven games have been against the Spurs - the Lakers demolished them at the AT&T Center and the Spurs returned the favor at Staples. Game three of the series is at hand, back in San Antonio, and naturally, the script calls for the return of Kobe.

Here is where the torches burn brightest, where the cyber village becomes the most querulous and agitated. Is he going to try and take over? Will the team turn into wicker men, offered on the alter of his greatness? Whatever happens, Kobe can’t possibly be clutch because this has been proven to be statistically incorrect.

Of course, there could be the storyline that plays out best within a team's own fan base, the one that doesn't easily go viral. That a team continues to find its way, that a superstar in his 16th season returns after a much needed rest. That he faces a team he has faced so many times before. And that Bynum and Gasol continue their front court dominance, MWP hits his outside shots, and new arrival Ramon Sessions continues to find the seams. And that Kobe will process and adjust, and do the most damage when it’s most needed. Because assassins don’t always kill in the first reel.

Watch out now, take care, beware, of soft shoe shufflers. Dancing down the sidewalks. As each unconscious sufferer, wanders aimlessly. Beware of Mamba.

In a wholly unrelated note, has anybody seen the Dark Shadows trailer? I don’t know, it’s a matter of remakes and cover songs – sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

THE SEERSUCKER SEASON

2012-04-17T00:36:00.011-05:00

The up and down season had coalesced in a dizzying drift of final games without the Lakers' superstar. A convincing win against the San Antonio Spurs, deep in enemy territory, followed by an equally satisfying home stand against the Dallas Mavericks – a regular season sweep against the world champions that didn’t nearly erase the stink of the previous year’s playoff ruination.

“Yada, yada, yada. What a wad of drek.” America's sideline reporter slammed his laptop shut.

A man sitting across the aisle peered owlishly. “I hope we can trust you without a chaperone on this trip, Craig. No more androids or electric sheep?”

Sager looked sideways and grinned. “It’ll be fine, Ernie. We’ve gone too far for shenanigans. It’s home stretch time.” He called up the aisle. “Can I get some more peanuts back here?” A red-haired attendant with an hourglass figure sighed and looked in her cart. Craig closed his eyes and sat back. The lines in his chin seemed etched ever deeper these days. The 747 banked down over endless squares of earth tones and stucco.

The hospitality suite at Staples Center boasted a buffet table laden with shrimp, roast beef and cute little cups filled with gourmet candy. Craig was in heaven. Resplendent in seersucker, he alternately feasted and wrapped parcels of food in napkins, and stashed them for later.

“Your pockets are invitations for serpents and reprimand.” The speaker had white hair and used a cane.

“Gah!” Craig jumped back a foot. “Oh, hey there Phil... Mr. Jackson. You scared me. What are you doing here? And where’s that guy with the robe and funny incense pots from the last post?"

“Oh, you mean Zorad? He’s around somewhere.” Phil smiled disarmingly. “Right there behind you.”

Craig’s head swiveled. “Gah!!” He jumped back in a wholly different direction. The man in the white robe had milky eyes and held up his hand in some serene devil manner. Sager screwed his own eyes shut. When he opened them, everything had become normal-like again.

Zorad smiled pleasantly. He had a kind face and was wearing an organic cotton shirt with a Nehru collar. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you. That’s an interesting suit you’re wearing. In Hindustani we call it ‘shir o shekar’, meaning milk and sugar.”

Craig smiled tightly. “That’s fine.” He grabbed a handful of butter mints and shoved them in his pocket before edging away. He was about to leave when he noticed a thin black wire with a tiny bulb shape at the end, hidden beneath a platter of salmon.

“That’s a computer jack, Craig. We provide them as a courtesy for our friends in the media.” Jeanie Buss smiled sweetly, moving over to Phil and Zorad.

Craig put the wire back where he found it. “That doesn’t look like any computer jack I’ve ever seen. I wear mics, I know about this stuff.”

“Of course you do, Craig. Are you still with TNT?” Jeanie nestled hear head against Phil’s chest. Sager scowled and left the room.

The sideline seersucker found his way down to courtside. Kobe Bryant was sitting completely alone on the bench, wearing a nice Italian suit, watching a couple players in warmups, tossing up baskets.

“Hey Kobester, mind if I sit a spell?”

Kobe shrugged, gestured benignly. Sager settled in. Kobe was at least a head higher than him. “Is that Phil’s old throne you’re on?”

“Nope.”

“Heh. It makes you look like you’re taller than the coaches.”

“I am taller than the coaches.”

“Oh. I’m pretty tall.”

“You’re not that tall.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while. “So, big game. You’re not playing tonight?”

Kobe shrugged. “They're figuring it out upstairs. I don't think so.”

Sager reached into his pocket and pulled out a napkin-wrapped parcel. He opened it up and held it toward Bryant. “Want some?”

Kobe peered over. “What is that thing? Part of a cheeseburger?”

“Yup, it’s from the hospitality suite.”

“I might have just a little piece.” Kobe tore off a chunk and chewed. “It’s pretty nasty.”

A very tall player in a Spurs uniform came of the tunnel and looked around. He approached the seated men. “You’re not really sitting out again, are you Bryant? Seriously?”

Kobe laughed shortly. “Like you don’t take nights off, Tim. Don't worry about it.”

Duncan continued to stare. “There’s no need to get huffy. We’re just having a conversation.”

Kobe waved him off. “How are those supermarket commercials working out for you?’

Tim Duncan turned is attention to Craig’s suit for a long moment, then stalked away. Sager looked over at Bryant. “Wow. That was kind of awkward.”

Kobe shrugged. “Not for me it wasn’t.”

The control room was filled with screens, computers, dials. Two technicians in white shirts choreographed the scene. One was middle-aged, sardonic with a receding hairline. The other was a bit older, glasses, craggy face. Graphics scrolled down one screen, test patterns on another. A camera zoomed in on Sager and Kobe. The younger technician frowned. “He’s supposed to play. It’s in the script.”

The older tech spun a dial. “Oh, he’ll play. Cue the testosterone.” A slight mist appeared under Kobe’s chair.

The blogger entered and cleared his throat. “Excuse me. This is still my basketball confessional. Thanks.” He walked over to a screen and twisted a large, retro-looking dial. A new image flickered to life – an old dog with thick black fur hobbling though a field, sniffing the ground and stopping to squat awkwardly.

The younger tech looked at his partner and grimaced. “Oh geez, are you kidding me?”

Pixilate to black.

From a season that might have been lost, to uncertain first steps and new faces, this didn’t look to be a championship team. Many doubted it would be a good team. Looking around, it’s hard to see a prohibitive favorite. Miami and Chicago have each had missteps – strong but not unbeatable. The champion Mavericks have had their tribulations. OKC just got stomped by the surging Clippers and then there's the Spurs, riding a streak of nine and two.

And so they meet for the second of three games, all within an extraordinarily compressed period. The Lakers weren’t expected to win in San Antonio without Kobe but, they did – Andrew Bynum’s 30 rebound night was undeniably memorable. A team found itself and came together, and its superstar is enjoying a much needed respite. And even without him, we’re propelling through transcendent stretches once again, the celebration of basketball and visceral joy.

The page lurched and froze, and burned to white. The glare of the screen began to fill with saturated color - lush green fields undulated, and creatures of every kind jumped through painted portals. Pinwheels and beautiful cloud formations, a thousand guitars echoing in unison, as finger cymbals chimed. The soundtrack flanged like a jet engine, and flocks of shorebirds flew northward in a giant crescent shape, across the rainbow sky. And Sager, resplendent in top hat, tails and cane, went dancing down the sideboard. Kobe stood and watched, and clapped, filled with a child’s wonder that had so long eluded him.

The scene ended with a loud ugly scratch, the sound of a needle scratching across vinyl.

CUT TO control room. The older technician smiled smugly and keyed his mic, speaking in a mellifluous voice. “Mr. Bryant, it’s time to come back now. We’re clearing you to play.”

A lovely girl in a lab coat and clipboard, frowned. “Dave’s not going to like this.”

The younger tech leaned back in his swivel chair, locking his hands behind his head. “Dave goes along with whatever brings the traffic.”

The older tech nodded sagely. And the girl looked as if she was about to cry. “That’s soooo sad, I love his writing.”

The psychedelic sounds bled through the speakers and a voice drew their attention to the screen, Craig Sager was grinning his biggest toothy grin, and soft shoe shuffling for all he was worth. “I’m ready for my closeup now!”

The red phone on the wall rang. The techs turned and stared. “Oh, shit.” The younger one trudged over and picked up the line. And listened. And the girl in the lab coat smiled and watched, as the tall basketball player stepped back through the portal, and joined the man in the top hat and tails.

You're 2000 light years from home.

THEY PLAY AFTER DARK

2012-04-11T00:40:00.007-05:00

During the lockout I wrote black and white journal entries and vowed to find a new narrative if the season ever came to be. It’s come and nearly slipped away and I never did find a theme. There are only eight games left, beginning with a trip to San Antonio – the league’s schedule makers in their infinite wisdom, shoved all three meetings between the Lakers and Spurs, into the tail end of the season.

My dad would stand in front of an abstract painting and explain to me, about looking from one corner to the next in a clockwise motion, and ending in the middle. He described small square portals as doors through which the viewer can enter the work. He still paints in series, finding change in a common subject.

With the freedom of distortion, I use elements of the visual world not only as an appreciation of that world, but also as vehicles to express inner feelings that are emotional, psychological and abstract.

I forced my fingers to type, and worked until it was finished, the night before Easter. And as traffic arrived, I deleted the post. Something about the brightly colored marshmallow peeps against a black background bothered me. Plus lazy wiki references, and too easy endings. I saved the scraps for leftovers.

I’m never going to be immersed in new metrics, or an online matrix with clusters and rooms and tens of thousands spontaneously spinning something that accelerates faster beyond me. It is not my world and shouldn’t be, stubborn though I am. I stare at the screen, and backspace.

The comptroller pursed his lips and zippered his case. He wouldn’t be asking me to join his pony riders. And they filled their bags with words and wheeled away laughing, fixing up the dawn.

The game against the Spurs looms closer. I decide to give myself a quick deadline, and send 750 words to a friend at Pounding the Rock. Sometimes you just need to take a little trip.

Up to the Forum in Charlie Cole’s ancient Volvo station wagon during high school, and later, moving to L.A., and punk bands and you could be anybody and dig the Lakers. And adulthood and parenthood - left to right on the radio dial with Chick Hearn , driving home from work. The first Phil Jackson years in Los Angeles – incense pots and rings.

The Lakers come to town having won one in a row. The Spurs had won 11 before Monday’s night game in Utah. Coach Pop declined to send his big three, explaining, “it’s a no-brainer.” Popvich has always reminded me of a badass Bill Murray.

I once had the opportunity to see Abel Gance’s restored silent classic, Napoleon, filmed in triptych, and shown at the Shrine with Carmine Coppola conducting. It was a monumental achievement and had a profound effect on me. They put cameras on wires and sent them across a canyon, in 1927! If I could ever figure out how to blog in triptych I’d be on it like white on rice.

I began this confessional with a title homage to an obscure biscuit chucker from the Ukraine. At least then, there were gossamer thin connections – now all that’s left is Kobe. The latest reports are that he won’t play in San Antonio, missing his third game in a row due to a inflamed tendon in his left shin. Will Popovich sit his starters again, in front of a home town crowd?

Nobody knows how far this team can go in the playoffs. You may think the answer is on your map, but it is not on your map. Or your pie charts. The Lakers don’t have the discipline of the Spurs, or the Thunder’s overall brilliance. They exist somewhere in the gaps with the playoffs looming. They’re strong though, they’ve developed a nasty streak. Their switch is on but it’s not always connected.

The season was too compressed, drifting ever faster across lanes of converging traffic. I'm not even sure how we got here. Can writing a blog ever feel like going to lunch with an old girlfriend?

"So, what have you been up to?"

"Not much. Work blows."

The waiter comes and we stare at our menus - up and down ballgames, management rants, new faces. Am I still searching for Slava? Roadrunner once, roadrunner twice...

THE OLD GUARD

2012-03-16T00:05:00.004-05:00

Searching for Slava’s debut post was titled ‘The Intangibles Exposed’. I tried making the point that Derek Fisher wasn’t all that enigmatic, but more of a meat and potatoes guard who wasn’t afraid to do the dirty work. The writing wouldn’t have won any awards but for some reason, it was my top traffic post for several months. You hope to build readership along the way and the Fisher post eventually began to drop. It took about a year to fall out of the top ten, or more accurately, for other pieces to rise past it.

I’m glad I got to watch his career. I remember his rookie year, remember how he began picking up minutes when Phil Jackson arrived (the first time). He rotated in and out with guys who are no longer in the league. More recently, his declining skills were much discussed but people forget that he was always streaky – I recall some abysmal stretches in the early years. Still, he always felt he could shoot his way out and made some choice buzzer-beaters along the way. You can get a championship ring by sitting on the bench. You can luck into a couple of them though contractual quirks. You don’t get five unless you have just cause to get five.

Derek Fisher left after the ‘04 Finals - the year of the Big Exodus. He went to Golden State and then to Utah. After the 2007 playoffs Fisher asked out of his contract and returned to Los Angeles where he felt his daughter’s retinoblastoma recovery would best be served. He left $20 million on the table. He rejoined a team in turmoil - Kobe Bryant had recently asked for a trade. Derek became a co-captain and starting point guard once again (aka life after Smush). He was seen as a calming influence on Bryant. Pau Gasol arrived halfway through the season, and that of course was the real turning point in the team’ fortunes.

Derek Fisher never missed a game after returning to the Lakers. He suited up 447 times including the playoffs, and he started 447 times. Would it have been hard to come off the bench to relieve Ramon Sessions? No doubt. Is it hard to give up hundreds of millions of dollars in a new CBA in order to preserve the game? I would think so. Fisher understands compromise and sacrifice.

Phil Jackson set the table for his last stand and the team let him down – their collapse against Dallas was as ugly as it gets. Jackson left as he said he would and it was abundantly clear that the team needed new leadership and new pieces. What followed has been one of the lesser chapters in a storied Lakers history. Heir apparent Brian Shaw was given a courtesy interview and hung out to dry as management brought in new candidates. Mike Brown was hired. Most of the remaining staff was fired and the bloodletting coincided with the start of the NBA lockout, a seamless transition during a seamy time.

As president of the players association, Derek Fisher found himself negotiating with what we called hardliners, characters who stalled and snickered and folded their arms. And workers lost their jobs and players went overseas and if you don’t think the season came close to being lost, you weren’t paying attention. The Buss family stood to lose more than most. Three months later they decided to save what they would have had to pay Derek next season - $3.4 million. Then again, Jordan Hill makes $2.86 million so I guess the savings are actually more like $540 thousand? This apparently, is what’s being called 'basketball reasons' these days. Thank you for your service.

Mitch Kupchak held a presser, explained that he hasn’t actually spoken to Derek but he will. At some point. He said it’s hard, but you have to separate the emotion in order to keep moving forward. I’m a bit unclear about this forward motion stuff. Anybody remember Magic Johnson calling Jim Buss out on TV a couple weeks ago? He said it was the most disappointed he's been in the organization in 35 years. Fish was the guy who called the players meeting, said they all had to come together. And they did.

Derek Fisher has the highest three-point field goal percentage in NBA Finals history. He ranks second in Finals three-pointers made and he’s played in 209 playoff games - fourth highest in NBA history. I don’t know if they keep records for taking charges but I always enjoyed seeing him on the floor with that stunned expression – who me? I won’t get to see him lay Luis Scola out again, unless I’m a fly on the wall at Rockets practice. That’s assuming they don’t just buy him out. With that massive salary of his and all. So long Fish – one of my favorites. Always.