ME: “So, do you think Yao Ming will ever play again?”

HIM: “On the record? Yeah, absolutely. Off the record … ”

All records aside, we have our answer. Just 30 minutes later, Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Yao Ming, who hasn’t played a full season since his sophomore season, is officially retiring. And, as always, Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie sums it up the most elegantly.

From his post:

A 77-game run in 2008-09 led to broken hearts amongst every basketball fan, as they watched him pull up lame on basic cable television on a Friday night, working as best he could to defeat the Lakers in the second round of the playoffs. This is a game that was created for winter, to distract young men from cabin fever, and Yao’s run was as cold and cruel as those dreary New England months around the turn of the last century that created what we, in the heat of July of 2011, obsess over. Fairness had no say in the deal.

I hated how he’d be voted in as an All-Star starter every year on the strength of millions of Chinese votes, but I always respected his game.

(Key note: NATURAL. This wasn’t Kurt Rambis freaking out over his glowing basketball. This was a real picture – a photo opportunity, sure, but a real picture of a real player playing a real sport for a real team.)

If you were a basketball fan, you wanted this card. It was the only way to get a Michael Jordan card that year. If you were a baseball fan, you wanted this card, much as you’d have wanted Eddie Gaedel’s card: as an oddity, a rare blip on the trading card landscape, a mashup before mashups were even a thing.

It was valuable. It was rare.

Twenty years later, we can see it for what it really was: arrogant.

Because, with the benefit of hindsight, this card freezes a privileged superstar at the peak of his ability, unable to understand failure, confident that he can do anything better than anyone, and completely willing to be paraded around as a novelty for the chance to prove everyone wrong.

Michael Jordan played baseball for a year. He was given a minor league spot by Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of both the White Sox and the Bulls. He was paid by the Chicago Bulls the entire time.

He batted .202 for the Birmingham Barons. He hit three home runs and drove in 51 runs.

He wasn’t perfect. And this card proves it, much to his chagrin.

The accepted story is that Jordan did this for his father. It was all done out of tragedy of his dad’s murder. He retired and went into baseball because his father’s dream was for Jordan to be a MLB star.

Maybe. But he also did it because that’s who he always was: unable to admit that he had flaws. The arrogance in that smirk, the ease with which he wandered onto the baseball field, the knowledge that he hadn’t worked a day to earn his spot on the team, and that, once he felt the heat from his critics, he was able to waltz back onto the Bulls with a simple phrase.

“I’m back.”

And we all embraced him. We had missed him on the floor. So we patted him on the head and let the experiment slide.

The card’s worth about five bucks, now. Funny what hindsight does.

“Parity and improved competition are also at the heart of the league’s desire for change. Superstars such as LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony controlled the 2010-11 fates of their former clubs, dictating where they wanted to play – Miami, New York – and damaging the futures of franchises in Cleveland and Denver. In addition, most small-market teams lack a realistic chance to win the NBA championship before the season even starts, while several clubs have either been sold or put on the market during the past year.”

There’s a lot wrong with that paragraph. But let’s look at two reasons.

Reason One: If small markets are hurt by their team, they sure aren’t showing it.

I don’t have any sympathy for small market teams, especially not in a league where profit-sharing allows small market teams to ride piggyback on merchandise sales of its larger market brethren, and ESPECIALLY not in a league where a salary cap dictates how much you can spend on your team.

To say most small-market teams lack a realistic chance to win the NBA championship – and to assume that large markets are given some kind of free “get to the second round for free” pass – is pretty short-sighted.

Just a reminder: the smallest markets in basketball last year were:
1. Memphis – Bad for some years, fantastic last year, filled with young talent and ready to make a leap.
2. New Orleans – Injury riddled and still reeling from some hurricane.
3. San Antonio – Four championships in the past twenty years.
4. Salt Lake City – A power through the 90s, a upper-tier team until recently
5. Milwaukee – Pretty awful.

And the five biggest non-NBA markets:
1. Tampa/St. Petersburg
2. St. Louis
3. Pittsburgh
4. San Diego
5. Hartford

So, the “small market” argument says that, if the five smallest markets were replaced by the five biggest non-markets, those teams would suddenly gain some kind of advantage? Would the San Diego Spurs or St. Louis Bucks suddenly be better?

While we’re at it, let’s look at the five biggest market teams:
1. New York – One playoff team in the past decade
2. Los Angeles – One team with tons of titles: the other with tons of lawsuits
3. Chicago – The best team in the world in the 90s, woefully underperforming through the 00s and until recently.
4. Washington – Snicker.
5. Boston – They’re good now. But remember the Antoine Walker years?

Reason Two: The league didn’t force someone like Dan Gilbert to purchase or create a basketball team in a place like Cleveland.

Last I checked, there was no dictate that allowed the NBA to force an owner to buy a team in a small market for more than it is worth. On the contrary – owning a basketball gives some people SUCH a hard-on that they’re willing to overspend.

If I buy a Mini Cooper, and I live in the mountains, I don’t have the right to complain about how my small engine makes it too difficult to travel over a mountain pass. And I certainly don’t have the right to expect the state to tear down the mountain to make a more level road.

You can’t blame your 400 million dollar purchase of a sports team – and the subsequent inability to sell said 400 million dollar sports team – on the players.

One More Thing

LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony controlled the 2010-2011 fates of their former clubs by dictating where they wanted to play, eh?

Well. Kind of.

Carmelo Anthony improved the future of the Nuggets. By requesting a trade, Carmelo guaranteed that the Nuggets would receive SOMETHING for their superstar, as we now see he had no desire to stick around in Denver. And LeBron, sure. He’s a dick. That’s easy. But he also worked the free agent market the way he could. The way any of us are allowed to when we want a new job.

So did Kobe Bryant, back in 2006. Remember that? When he flirted with signing with the Clippers until Lakers management traded Shaquille O’Neal for next to nothing and – coincidentally – signed with the Lakers the next day? Now THAT was a jerk move. But, that being said, the question is still worth asking: why are we blaming players for the desire to switch jobs?

Parity is a fallacy. Parity is designed to allow bad general managers the chance to make bigger mistakes with smaller consequences. Parity hurts America, and it promotes communism and clubs seals and forces babies to become prostitutes. It gives Clippers fans hope that, despite a history of horribly managed basketball decisions (very very LARGE MARKET decisions, by the way) that they have a chance.

Argue about player salaries and cash and lockouts all you want. Just don’t position things like the players have some kind of upper hand. It takes two people to sign a contract, after all.

For background, I present Mike Greenberg, co-host of Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio.

Greenberg, who tends to take offense at everything, wondered aloud why, after Green Bay’s Super Bowl win, Brett Favre hadn’t bothered to call and offer congratulations, specifically to Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

To which I wonder aloud, “Why should he?”

Why does a player need to call his former team to offer congratulations? He had nothing to do with this current incarnation. He has no connection other than a playing history. With that argument in mind, why didn’t Ron Jaworski call Aaron Rodgers? Or Mark Chmura? Sterling Sharpe?

When you win the Super Bowl, or the World Series, or the NBA Finals, or any individual sporting event, there are certain expectations when it comes to congratulations. You get a call from dignitaries, and from the commissioner, and from friends you haven’t talked to in years and will never talk to again.

The problem: when it becomes expected, it no longer means anything.

If I suddenly turn around and win the French Open, I expect a call from the President. If I don’t get it, I’ll be disappointed.

“Why didn’t he call me?”

Because he didn’t HAVE to. Support and joy don’t need to be VOICED to be TRUE. And relationships don’t need to be conjured in the name of success.

Brett Favre didn’t say “congrats” because he didn’t want to. He doesn’t have a relationship with Aaron Rodgers. He played for a division rival last season. He feels wronged. He is his own person. It doesn’t matter why.

Let’s stop pretending like adoration is a commodity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“There are many beautiful things about being an American fan of World Cup soccer—foremost among them is ignorance. The community in which you were raised did not gather around the television set every four years for a solid, breathless month. The U.S. has never won. You have not been indoctrinated into unwanted yet inescapable tribal allegiances by your soccer-crazed countrymen. You are an amateur, in the purest sense of the word. So when the World Cup comes around, you can pick whatever team you like best and root for them without shame or fear or reprisal—you can spend the month in paradise.”
-Sean Wilsey, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup

This year, I feel like a traitor.

Four years ago, I didn’t. Because no one cared about soccer. No one cared about the world’s biggest game, so I could watch England stumble through the tournament like a toddler in new shoes in the relative comfort of my own home and know that I wasn’t performing some great act of terrorism, the black and white screen of our portable television reflecting a team allegiance, not a nation’s allegiance.

This year, though, it’s different.

This year, ESPN’s pushing World Cup ratings. Which means creating conflict. Which means overhyping matches that should be one-sided blow-outs in the name of promoting a rivalry that, really, for the most part, ended two centuries ago when the United States grew some balls and won a few wars.

Ask anyone. They think USA vs. England is a real match. They think the people who put USA’s odds of winning at 17% are just haters. HAY-TAHS, even.

They think this because the sports media is fighting hard to make World Cup soccer relevant. They’re duped by two examples of not-so-recent United States Brand™ upsets: the 1950 World Cup win over England and the 1980 Olympic hockey win over USSR. Two random occurrences, happening thirty years apart, and OH WOW, hey, this match is 30 years later too so there’s totally a correlation.

YOU GUYS. ONE OF THOSE ISN’T EVEN SOCCER.

So I know I’ll be rooting for England in silence. Not because I hate my country. Not because I hope the United States loses. Not because I am a bitter self-hating American that wants to champion contrarian irony.

No. It’s because I’ve followed England’s national team ever since a 2000 trip to England, because soccer is England’s sport, because I don’t believe in being tied to location when it comes to supporting sports teams, and because, really, there’s nothing forcing me NOT to support “the enemy.”

So I’m reminded of that quote above, from Sean Wilsey in the foreword of his wonderful collection, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup. A quote I quoted and stuck to four years ago – one I used to justify my position, though, really, my position doesn’t deserve to be justified at all.

Go England. And Go United States.

But not until this match is over.

The fact is, Celtics fans haven’t had a lot to be happy about this season. Doc Rivers continues to undercoach, Rasheed Wallace decided to only play half of the season, and our three Hall of Fame locks are beginning to look old. I mean really old. Keeper of the Crypt old.

So I continue to hold my breath. I don’t want to jinx this, you guys, and I truly believe that, if I say something with any kind of braggadocio, I’m going to screw things up; that LeBron will make a point to score 50 a game and, after dunking over the head of Kendrick Perkins, point to the camera and say “YOU THINK YOUR CELTICS ARE SOMETHING SPECIAL, COREY VILHAUER IN SIOUX FALLS SOUTH DAKOTA?”

“DO YOU?”

I do. But I won’t say it too loud. Except to remind everyone that, when ‘Sheed’s put out to pasture, when the “Big Three” are sizing their bronze plaques, when Doc Rivers is announcing games on TNT and we’re all left wondering where our championship aspirations drifted off to, we’ll still have Rajon Rondo.

I can’t stop watching it. Over. And over. And over again.

My hero.