1. Confusion
Just back to the Bay Area from three weeks in New York. So, wouldn’t you know it: I got race on my mind. I can usually count on the early season NBA games to calm me down around now, but what is all this crazy shit?
Stuff is all upside down: the once-dynastic Warriors were struggling un-mightily, after losing all but Draymond Green (who himself missed five games) of their five all-stars to injuries (Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, and DeMarcus Cousins) and defections (the side-lined Kevin Durant), and now sport the league’s worst record (including the Knicks, [1])! They are depending on a couple of young Villanova big men to bring them a modicum of hope, if not respectability, in what you might call their “gap year.”
One, Eric Paschall (“The Lamb” to those who can’t wait for the playoffs, because they bring Passover) was often their leading scorer, whereas the other, Omari Spellman (“The Cardinal,” to old New Yorkers) was reported to have shed 60 of the 315 pounds he carried with him into the July Las Vegas summer league, when he first learned that the Warriors acquired him from the Atlanta Hawks. Omari had seemed not to thrive, away from Coach Jay Wright’s nurturing, which is of a quality few collegians receive, but after all, miracles are miracles.
But that wasn’t all that had me perplexed and confused: a twenty year old European player is showing a level of dominance never achieved by a player that young [2]. Dallas’s 6’7” point guard Luka Doncic is averaging very close to a triple double, while maintaining nearly a thirty point scoring average. He is dominating in a similar way to James Harden, Houston’s incandescent if problematic scoring machine. With the return of Doncic’s new team-mate Kristaps Porzingis (the 7’3” unicorn who was injured over a full year), and Denver’s Nicola Jokic’s continued all-star level of play, no wonder race was on my mind: perhaps the new style of play–its emphasis on player movement, long-range shot making, clever passing, and spreading the floor by stationing several shooters beyond the three-point arc–has begun to level the racial playing field.
Just as astonishingly, Atlanta’s Trae Young (also just twenty years old), diminutive and slender like Damian Lillard and the Steph Curry who won MVP’s before bulking up to respectable strength, has also hit the 30-10-10 mark, and is no less advanced at twenty than either of his older archetype models.
There’s something happening here, Mr. Jones. What are we watching when we tune in to the NBA today?
It seems like I no longer understand or recognize today’s game, despite its predictability: in what we might call “the post-modern game” (because of the proliferation of uniquely great players who could arguably contest Lebron James for the designation of “King”), guys curl off picks hard at 23 feet, ready to explode into the air, not a thought on their minds to distract them. They work very hard to get off precise set-play shots of a nature that used to get to guys a quick seat on the bench from which to digest their coach’s tongue lashing.
It seems as if explosive force has replaced passion. That and the game’s often boring predictability seem to incline me more toward watching highlights.
In this milieu, which has recently spawned such astonishing unicorns as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, and–may he return fully and thrive with Luka–Porzingis, luminescent uniquely talented players appear with ever increasing frequency, as if the evolution of human DNA expressed in this seemingly higher form of beings has alarmingly accelerated. Is this a form of species change?
Technology partners with the NBA to abet this trend, and Big Data gets a seat at the same banquet table. Ever-increasing incidences of severe injuries accompany the game’s evolution. We are on hold as far as seeing how the injured rookie Zion Williamson fits in here, as his heralded debut will have been delayed almost two months. In his absence, the spectacularly athletic Ja Morant has become front-runner for Rookie of the Year, but he too has recently been sidelined, perhaps lengthily, by severe hamstring strains. Who says you need to be a veteran to get hurt?
2. Enter Carmelo Anthony
Just as I was lamenting no longer understanding the game, the Portland Trail Blazers signed Carmelo Anthony, after his full year’s absence from the league. This latter-day Anthony has too many pundits and fans ready to bury him, and too few to praise him, but he’s a thoughtful and superbly talented man not ready, at thirty-five, to pack it in and wait five years to become a first ballot Hall of Famer.
Carmelo is the long-time recipient of a host of negative projections, but there is no need to treat him like Pete Rose or Barry Bonds, in limbo for unpressed charges of being a “ball stopper.” A latter day Adrian Dantley, no less!
It took Carmelo just a single game to opine that the league had changed in his brief amount of time away. The game had become more physical, he stated simply. Can we really improve upon that; or just continue to explore its implications?
These include the coining of the phrase “load management” to accompany the clichéd trope of “taking plays off.” Contrast Carmelo’s thoughtfulness with today’s players’ imitations (even “ebonics-ization”) of Coach-Speak, as they dutifully mouth management’s clichés.
Carmelo’s return adds a note of stability and continuity to that supplied by the return of The King, Lebron James. James seems as invulnerable as ever, though we now know he’s really not, and is for the first time in many years no longer hands down the league’s best player [3]. His new team-mate Anthony Davis belongs in that conversation, along with Kawhi Leonard, Embiid, Harden, Antetokounmpo, and perhaps now even Doncic.
It remains to be seen who remains standing after the long grind ends in June.
Notes
This piece’s title refers to the greeting uttered (“Whassup, Knight?”) by an Indiana student to which Bobby Knight reacted violently, precipitating his being fired as Indiana’s Head Coach.
1 About fifteen years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by former Knick star Willie Naulls, who had become a preacher and educator. “Willie, I have to introduce myself to you. I spent my adolescence watching you from the mezzanine in the old Garden.”
“Remember those doubleheaders?” Naulls shot back, evoking memories of the days of an eight team NBA, when the Garden regularly offered doubleheaders featuring match-ups that ranged from Boston-Philly (Russell-Wilt) on down, and implicitly acknowledging that in those pre Frazier-Reed days, the Knicks were also-rans at best, and fans of the hapless Knicks often stayed for only the first half of the vastly inferior second game.
2 Wilt would be an exception, but he wasn’t allowed in the league under the rules of his time, which held that a player who entered college could not be drafted until his entering class graduated; want to make a similar case for Oscar and Elgin? You have my blessings. May they always be recognizable by just their first names.
3 Today is Oscar Robertson’s eighty first birthday. Oscar remains the standard by which one measures great players, unicorns and Wilt Chamberlain possibly to the side. Carmelo, who exerts force, plays bully ball with small forwards in the post, eerily reminiscent of The Big O, but from the forward position.