The monetary and the military
They get together
Whenever it’s necessary
They’re making the planet into a cemetery.
—Gil Scott-Heron
Christmas Day, and did I need a gift! Feeling—ever since Elektion Day as if I am living somewhere between under a dark cloud and in a ratcheting-up concentration camp, I thought maybe I could still derive some pleasure—if not solace—from the long-anticipated NBA Finals “re-match” between Cleveland and Golden State.
A great game! Played at playoff levels of intensity. Cleveland once again stormed back (this time from an 94-80 deficit with 9:35 remaining, whereas in last season’s Finals the deficit was three games to one) to spoil the Warriors’ victory party, if not dash their hopes of revenge and dreams of world domination. These dreams are quite real to fans out here; their heroes hover on the border of being mythical figures, yet are fully human and also strangely precious to them. Triumphalism Light, one might say.
Ironically, even with the personnel shake-up represented by Golden State’s off-season acquisition of Kevin Durant, there were several constants, repeated themes from last year’s incredible denouement in both the Western Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, each of which saw comebacks from 3-1 deficits, both traceable to egregious individual meltdowns on the part of star players: Kevin Durant and Draymond Green.
It was Green’s foolish lashing out at Lebron James’ groin at the end of Game Four of the 2016 Finals that opened the door for a Cleveland comeback that otherwise would have never happened. The Warriors had just completed sweeping Games Three and Four in Cleveland, sending the defending champions and winners of a NBA-record 73 regular season wins back home for what figured to be a certain clincher; they had been invincible at home all season, but when Green senselessly got himself suspended for Game Five, he gave Cleveland enough life for James to resuscitate his then-faltering team.
Up until that moment, Draymond had masterfully straddled the line between the outrageous and the self-destructive, but never crossed it. He seemed the savviest player, maybe even the smartest, since Oscar, Magic, and Larry. (Forgive me, Lebron.) Since then, though, as was evident in his storming around after a technical so much that he had to be restrained in order to avoid a second one, Green has become increasingly erratic: haunted by various incidents that would unsettle a lesser player, but are becoming just expectable signposts of his notoriety. Are you sure Public Enemy went through this phase?
With Draymond out for Game Five last spring, momentum suddenly shifted. Kyrie Irving joined James in brilliance, leading the Cavaliers to three straight wins that tarnished the Warriors’ image, and led to the controversial acquisition of Durant (see Overkill, June, 2016 in Firstofthemonth), bolstering what was already a trio of near or arguable superstars, all homegrown in the hothouse of recent NBA Drafts: Green, Steph Curry, and Klay Thompson.
What is less remembered is that in the Western Conference Finals, the Warriors had trailed 3-1 to Durant’s (and Russell Westbrook’s) Oklahoma City Thunder. Game Five at Golden State was an expectable loss for the Thunder (no service break involved), but then Durant personally threw away Game Six—he one must-win game left at home. He hoisted up nineteen (!) first half shots, completely disrupting his team’s chemistry and flow—hard-won qualities that had been achieved by harnessing Westbrook’s natural take-over instincts and submerging them into team play.
Durant’s inexplicable regression to the Thunder’s earlier-season hero ball antics was one key to their surrendering a 3-1 lead. Though, even after Durant’s opening the door in Game Six, it took Klay Thompson’s record-setting eleven three pointers to stave off a 4-2 defeat. In California-Think, they were already prefigured as team-mates. It was meant to be!
Alike both in their greatness and in having acted as saboteurs (I’ll resist further elaborating the facile comparison to James Comey and Vladimir Putin) in last season’s playoffs, perhaps the joining of Durant with Green represents more than a pooling of their talents. It may also amount to a merger of their collective bad karmas.
Is this why the Warriors lost on Christmas? Preposterous, of course, but that question keep hanging around my mind as I think through that amazing fourth quarter: Durant’s outsize talents were evident everywhere. His seemingly effortless flow and superior skill level were there to awe throughout. Though he recorded only three assists, his deft touch as passer (especially that one-hand bounce pass he throws like he’s flicking a paddle tennis racquet) becomes more apparent every time I see him: a special skill that a smaller market could readily conceal.
Yet he replicated last year’s critical Game Six in the way he played the last quarter. When his five straight points (scored with authority and fully displaying his remarkable combination of length, skill, and scarily sudden quickness) extended the Warrior lead to 94-80 (doubling their seven point lead after three quarters), he was 11-18 from the floor, had 33 points, and was on his way to 15 rebounds! He appeared, like a giant bird, to have completely taken over the game.
Right then, though, the aging Richard Jefferson began Cleveland’s comeback with a hard lefty dunk on Durant, getting Jefferson an unwarranted technical foul, which Durant then converted, the last points he would score the rest of the way, save for two free throws.
Though he made two more of those wonderful signature slip passes to cutters, Durant missed his remaining five shots. The last two he took (one a 27 footer early in the shot clock) were remarkably reminiscent of those hero shots of Game Six. Never mind that, yes, he might make them; early in the shot clock, they are still bad shots. (My tape review also showed him to have fumbled two passes in the last minute, one that should have resulted in an easy lay-up that would have put the game out of reach at 110-105).
Meanwhile, Green kept the Warrior offense going, but not quite like Kyrie Irving stoked Cleveland’s. Irving’s last eight minutes were a dazzling display of varied gifts: dramatic threes, great drives, passes, a lefty hook that he somehow floated over an extended Durant arm; then his superb last shot—a fading, spinning turnaround jumper that barely eluded Thompson’s equally stunning defensive effort. Just one play earlier, Thompson had made a sensational block of his layup in between the last two shots Irving hit.
Despite the loss, the four Warrior stars are blending just fine, all having their moments. Thompson, who had 60 points in 29 minutes earlier this season, remains an untarnished delight to watch, while Curry has his MVP trophies the last two years, but now appears more and more to be a faux superstar; at best a brief one: Steve Nash’s twin. Only slightly diminished from last season, he is clearly no longer his team’s best player. Among point guards, the more athletic Irving and Westbrook have clearly surpassed him; perhaps James Harden and Damian Lillard as well.
Then there were the referees: failing to give James a technical for hanging on the rim longer than the announcers had ever seen, they also permitted the Cavs to set up their offense by a needless review and, finally, on the game’s last possession, failed to call Jefferson for his mild but critical push on Durant. But come on, now: if they couldn’t discipline James for using the rim as his jungle gym, how could they have let Durant shoot two free throws at such a time in Cleveland?
II
I am not a fan of ESPN2’s Stephen A. Smith, but he is right in saying that Durant’s move to Golden State flat out ruined the regular season. He made it like what Charles Barkley called it as a player: the preseason.
But this Christmas game wasn’t like the regular season. I had my gift.
Still: so what? What does basketball count for now, as a new era of authoritarian neo-fascist ugliness dawns upon Amerika. Remember that spelling, folks?
Seeing two superb films—Moonlight and Fences—in the past two weeks, I noticed myself feeling transported into a space in which I suddenly realize where I have been mentally as a background since THE ELEKTION, in the aftermath of the tragic and disastrous ascension to power of the dangerous, ignorant, and determined demagogue who will control both houses of congress and get to pack the Supreme Court.
Is there solace in art? In any kind of culture? Returning from that enchanted space to which I managed to escape during those films, pretty soon, it all again seemed so trivial and frivolous.
I do not want to become depressed, but how can I keep this petty tyrant from defining my discourse? He is in my head every day now. Each morning’s newspaper brings new trauma, more alarming news. I cannot ignore him, cannot—like Hamlet—go abroad, or, like MacDuff, join a force that will march under camouflage and throw him out of his gilded castle. I still hope to dip my toes again in activism and resistance, but I feel too old to be on the front lines.
Growing up, and thereafter, basketball was both my most passionate interest and my initial template for understanding the world; sometimes metaphorically, but often I found that nothing was quite as literal as my metaphors. In the archaic language of my increasingly archaic profession, the game was hyper-cathected for me.
I do not want to abandon my love of basketball, which no longer feels passionate, but I hope will continue to provide me with a storehouse of metaphors. I still cherish the chance to say things that will move readers to identify with the goodness and humanism that underlies sport at its best, and basketball, with its acute kinship to jazz and ballet, in particular.
Anyway, what else is good about America anymore? Politics has been reduced to blood-sport and carnival, with culture perhaps next on the block. Perhaps my stories can be like notes in a bottle washed up on shores unknown, as the planet self-distorts through brutal neglect and plunder of its resources. Not likely, but, after November’s trauma that people rightly compare to 9/11 and JFK’s assassination, I need to search for some meaning, some coherence, some reason to hope that my unborn grandchildren will have something of mine to cherish as they stride a planet that may no longer be habitable..
So I will continue to look for other gifts, other story lines, not in the NBA’s regular season, but perhaps once again in the many sub-plots inexorably generated in the lengthy playoff dramas beginning in late April.
Green and Durant will by then have become familiar team-mates, and their own personal dramas—and karmas—will have been blended by Coach Steve Kerr. Or will they? Durant’s job may be easy by then. He may no longer feel any need to take over, may by then feel fully melded with his team-mates. He seems at ease already, the great majority of the time. He has few personal demons. His very defection to Golden State showed that he values a strong team more than he is driven to prove himself The Best. Or will Westbrook haunt him as his Nemesis, whose brilliance forces Durant to try to outshine him?
For Green, it may be more complicated. Newly arrived at the superstar level, from having been an unheralded second round draft pick, his team is now so good that he may yearn to provide excitement. Or will he leave that task to the new administration? I wish I had answers for myself, if not for him.
Coda: After their loss to Cleveland, the Warriors stormed through their next four games, and led Memphis by 24 going into the final quarter of their fifth, when they suddenly collapsed, losing 128-119 in overtime. In the fourth quarter, still up by two with 20 seconds left, Durant took another of those ill-advised long shots too early in the possession, and Green exploded, visibly berating him. Durant appeared to listen patiently, seeming to know that to do otherwise would pose a risk to what his former OKC team-mate Stephen Adams called (after Green lashed out during last year’s playoffs at Adams’ private parts) “my best friends; Batman and Robin.”