Basketball « Black Marks on Wood Pulp / by Corey Vilhauer

Category: Basketball

Goodbye, Perk

February 25th, 2011

See, you can’t truly love a team until you’ve suffered with it. The 2008 title team always felt like a fantasy team that had been thrown together in some sort of euphoric basketball dream that wasn’t quite real. Losing Garnett in 2009 (and eventually, the Orlando series) definitely hurt; blowing the 2010 title was 100 times worse. The agony of those last two games pushed our relationship with the team to an entirely different level. I still remember seeing Perkins rolling around in pain during Game 6 — it happened about 20 feet away from me — then the veterans watching him get helped off, his right leg dangling in the air, the life sinking from their bodies like Apollo watching Rocky wave him back to the corner. With a healthy 2011 Garnett in that Game 7, maybe we could have survived. Banged-up 2010 Garnett couldn’t get it done. The trophy was sitting there, and we couldn’t take it. A crestfallen Perkins spent the summer blaming himself, busted his butt to come back … and the Celtics dumped him a month after he returned. Claiming they couldn’t afford him only made it worse: The kid signed a discount extension four years ago and outperformed it. They owed him.

Bill Simmons can be an annoying homer sometimes, but that’s exactly what makes things like this – his rundown of emotions regarding seeing a favorite player traded away – so damned good.

I feel exactly the same way. Kendrick Perkins was never the best player on the Celtics. He wasn’t even one of the five best, at times. But he was easily one of the most important in terms of attitude, ability and specialty. He was one of my favorite players on the team, and I looked forward to the years when, after Garnett and Allen and Pierce walk away, Rondo and Perkins took the team as their own and continued playing genuine Celtics-style basketball.

Now, he’s gone. And, like Simmons says, I’ll eventually talk my way into this new era. Doesn’t make it any easier, though.

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Issues Considered: Basketball, Boston Celtics

Thoughts on “Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks”

December 20th, 2010

We want it all. We want the championship. We want the corner office. We want Best In Show.

We want success. We want top billing. Too often, we overlook the honor in lesser milestones.

Reggie Miller never won a championship. Patrick Ewing never won a championship. To take it a step further, their franchises – the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks – are championship-less since 1973. For all intents and purposes, every season since 1973 has been a failure.

Ask Reggie Miller, though, and you’ll find the opposite.

For Reggie, there were two goals each year: to win the championship, and to beat the Knicks. He never reached the first goal, but for one year, during the 1995 playoffs, he accomplished the second, beating the Knicks on the back of one of the game’s greatest performances.

He didn’t win the big one, but the drive to beat his rival was so great that it counted as success. It gave him peace.

In the end, history will play off the Pacers/Knicks rivalry as a third-tier story. It occurred during the Houston Rockets’ repeat championships, during both Michael Jordan eras, and – even later – parallel to the rebirth of the Los Angeles Lakers. It’s a footnote.

Still, there are few chances to see how a team finds ambition and pride in smaller goals. Each game was a challenge, each series a sort of miniature championship.
They fought not just to win the war, but to win each battle therein.

How often does this happen to us? How often do we feel disappointed when we win regionally, yet fail to find success nationally? How often do we look at a promotion as a step toward the top, not as something to be equally proud of? How often do we treat each project as a massive undertaking, instead of taking pride in each detail?

I’ve never written a best seller. I never became a nationally known copywriter. I have yet to headline A List Apart. But, more than anything, I’m learning that this doesn’t mean I’ve failed.

There are differing degrees of success, and we have to take them one at a time.

Reggie never won a championship. But he’s a few years away from becoming a Hall of Famer. He’s a relatively successful broadcaster. And, no matter what, he’s always got that 1995 series against the Knicks, where, for a few days, he felt like a champion.

Who’s to say he never succeeded? Come to think of it, who’s to say we haven’t, either?

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Issues Considered: Basketball, Career, Indiana Pacers

46 lines, 13 rules

December 10th, 2010

46 lines.

13 rules.

Two words. “Basket Ball.”

And now, one price: 4.3 Million Dollars.

Dr. James Naismith’s original rules of basketball. Two pieces of paper that any basketball fan would love to see. Two pieces of paper that, to quote the illustrious Indiana Jones, SHOULD BE IN A MUSEUM. Or, at the least, featured in the abomination that most call the Basketball Hall of Fame.

$4.3 Million.

To think, this aged typewritten document, pinned to the wall of a YMCA 119 years ago, scribbled on by Dr. Naismith himself and left unframed for its entire existence – unframed and equally unprotected! – gave birth to the game I love. A billion dollar industry. A sport played worldwide. A defining point in modern American culture.

$4.3 Million.

What a number.

And get this: it was purchased by a couple of U of K donors. Not by a former or current professional basketball player or coach – people who owe their entire fortunes to those two sheets of paper.

You can’t tell me someone like Michael Jordan or Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t interested. Because I know one thing. If I was a billionaire, I’d be right there. I’d have paid $4.3 Million.

For 46 lines? 13 rules? For the seed that created my favorite distraction?

Hell. I’d have paid a lot more.

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Issues Considered: Basketball, Sports

There is no greater sports star than the sports star I become … in my head.

August 11th, 2010

There is no greater sports star than the sports star I become in my head.

In a vacuum, with no one forcing me to adjust for defense or change my direction, I am a scrappy hitter. I am a freaky consistent jump shooter. I am a Gold Glove defender.

I am Ichiro Suzuki. I am Oscar Robertson. I am Ozzie Smith.

My swing is true. I don’t hit home runs, but I do the little things that win games, despite the fact that I’m not actually playing games, relying only on a glorified batting practice to show off my amazingly consistent wares. My flow is sweet, my follow-through fluid, my confidence at its high; every shot snaps the bottom of the net, every juke and every fake – each one as fake as its name – unstoppable, every twist and turn like a gibbon effortlessly climbing a zoo cage.

Of course, I know the truth. I know what happened the last time I played one-on-one, the “one” itself betraying the number of points I was able to score in two combined games. I know what happened the first three times I saw a slow pitch softball this summer, how the breeze off my bat kept the outfielders cool, how even the mosquitoes kept away from me lest I miss the ball and knock them into the back fence.

It’s such childish bull, really. We’re supposed to grow out of it, right? We’re supposed to understand our place and buck up and admit that we’re not made for sports and that we’d do a lot better if we just stopped playing and started worrying about Brett Favre or some other tabloid sports crap.

That’s not how it is, though. Not for me. Not for any sports fan, regardless of talent.

We all want to imagine that we’re the best. Even if we know, without a doubt, that we have no chance in making it that far.

I don’t play sports to win. I play them to dream. To have fun. To taunt my friends. To imagine that I’m actually on a real field. That I’m actually a real athlete.

Because, on my own, with all of the quirks that come with a home court, or with the guiding hand of a friendly pitcher, I can pretend that the talent is real.

Without defense, I am All World. There is no greater player. No one can match the effort and skill and talent of the sports star I become. In my mind.

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Issues Considered: Baseball, Basketball, Sports

Go ahead – kick us while we’re down

July 12th, 2010

The NBA Game Time Courside app looks fantastic. I’m already excited for the season to begin, and I’d be lying if I said part of it wasn’t because I want to see this app in action.

But, you guys, come on. Can’t we throw an off-season placeholder up there until the season begins?

Do we have to be reminded of this game?

That’s cold, man.

You’ve got to change it. Celtics Nation implores you.

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Issues Considered: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Sports, Technology

Why I Watch

June 17th, 2010

It was Game Five of the NBA Finals. The series was tied at two games a piece, and the Lakers were making a run. Then, this play.

It was the single greatest play I’ve seen during these playoffs, and I was convinced that, with momentum, the Celtics had just cinched up a championship.

Two days later, it all came crashing down.

At some point during the Celtics’ demoralizing Game Six defeat this past Tuesday – around the time I had stopped watching in order to wash the dishes, run to the store for a frozen pizza, and drink a beer in smoldering frustration, my confidence crashing and doubt setting in after only two quarters of play – Kerrie asked me a simple question.

“Why do you watch sports?”

My answer: “I don’t know.”

The real answer, of course, is that we’re entertained by sports. We watch people do things we’re not able to do, performing on the highest level possible. And if we subscribe to the notion of home-town success, we probably claim allegiance to certain sports teams by proximity alone; when they win, the city wins.

The draw, though, becomes more than just entertainment – especially when you develop a fanatical connection to a team. I say “fanatical” because that’s what being a fan means. I say “fantatical” also, not because it’s negative, but because it’s totally enveloping – it turns the process of watching sports into a process of being part of the team.

Sports fans are no different than those who refuse to miss a favorite television show, who buy an author’s books the second they come out, or who spend over $50 on a concert ticket. They find solace in someone else’s success, and take personally their failures.

We root because we care. We care because we’re human.

This time around, it’s different for me. The Celtics are playing on borrowed time. They weren’t supposed to make it past the Cavaliers. Or the Magic. And they certainly weren’t supposed to be a game away from winning it all. They were left for dead, too old to compete, too banged up to make a splash, a shadow of their 2008 season.

But they did it. They beat the Cavs in six. They beat the Magic in six. And now, despite a monster setback in Tuesday’s game, they still sit just one game away from being champions.

For those of us who followed them from the beginning of the playoffs, each round has been an improbable lesson in faith and hard work, and though we all know that this last round is as improbable as any, we’ll still feel the sting if the C’s go down.

No matter what, tonight is the last day of the NBA season. No matter what, one team is going to walk out of the Staples Center a champion.

No matter what, this is it. Game Seven, NBA Finals, featuring the two biggest franchises – and the biggest rivalry – in the history of the league.

And, no matter what, I’ll be filled with emotion: the exact emotion, though, may not be understood until after the game is finished, be it frustration and disbelief or joy and pride.

I can’t help it. It’s why I watch sports.

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Issues Considered: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Sports, Television

Killing hyperbole: or, a lesson learned from the “Lebacle” overreaction

May 12th, 2010

Last night, Lebron James had a bad game.

One bad game. Against a very good team. In a pressure-filled playoff atmosphere.

And, from the sound of it, the world is coming to an end.

Henry Abbott expertly covers the “sky is falling” aspect of this one bad game in a recent post on his blog, TrueHoop:

The “LeBacle” may soon prove to have been one of the darkest moments in Cleveland’s miserable sports history.

But please, spare us the assertion that after one bad night we know James has always had a permanent flaw. It’s just absurd, and amazingly some of it’s coming from the faithful in Cleveland. Twitter, Internet comments, my e-mail inbox, Facebook, all are loaded to the gills with talk that he’s doomed to mediocrity, psychologically deficient or was intentionally tanking.

As if those 69 playoff contests and 548 regular-season games were the aberration, and this one horrible night was the truth. As if the guy who scored 25 straight against the Pistons in a similar situation needs a lecture, from Twitter, on embracing the challenge.

Somebody should make a big list of all those people who think they now know James is a doomed player, and we’ll revisit in a decade.

He’s talking about basketball writers. But there’s a tone to this that reaches across all subjects, one that draws a sharp line showing the difference between writing WITH passion and writing FROM passion.

The first is all about embracing what you do and attacking it with gusto: cherishing each word, taking your shoes off and splashing around in the subject matter, laughing and waving your arms, delirious with happiness because – damn it – you love this.

The second is allowing the moment to cloud your judgment, letting hyperbole set in, overreacting and ACTING THE FOOL, as the more street-worthy performers might say.

The first leads to emotional prose. The second leads to 24-hour news channel hype.

We’re all guilty of the second.

Admitting we’re guilty helps us focus on the first, by identifying our own overreaction and acting accordingly. With grace. With all sides measured. Without filtering common sense in search of a sensational stance.

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Issues Considered: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Soccer, Words, Writing