Question: Which of the above is an NBA prospect? TAKE YOUR TIME, DON’T RUSH INTO AN ANSWER.
With the 14th overall pick in the 2011 TrueHoop Network Mock Draft, the Houston Rockets select Jan Vesely, out of the Czech Republic. Allegedly. Sources close to us say he’s actually a Martian warrior sent to destroy Earth. You do realize the folly in thinking a Euro big could actually be this aggressive, right?
Vesely falling this far is a crime. It should be punishable by lashing. JIMMER FREAKING FREDETTE WENT BEFORE HIM. UNACCEPTABLE, NETWORK. Which of the following pertains to Vesely?
A. He played against the sterling competition at Brigham Young University where he ad license to jack up 40-foot threes, the first of which he launches in the NBA will result in his coach actually physically using a hook to drag him off court. And oh, yeah, he’s slow, compared to most prospects.
B. He’s got a buyout condition that’s going to keep him in Europe till 2012.
C. He hasn’t played competitively in nearly two years.
D. He isn’t allowed to ride Space Mountain yet and his name rhymes with “Shmemba.”
And yet, here he is, just sitting there. Daryl Morey actually hurdles two of his own men in making this pick. He and Kyle Lowry form a devastating combo on the break, and the universe is saved from disaster, except Morey still can’t trade for a legit superstar. And they all lived happily ever after. Except Morey. He was fired, eventually.
Oh, the stories to tell you, kids. The Finals are a dirty, greedy, messy affair that smells like overwrought calogne, stale champagne and motor oil. I have stories about mullets, pants, socks, sad desperation and incredible glee. But they’ll have to wait another day.
In the meantime, I want to implore you. Mr. Mahoney is a published author. Yes, from the plucked sad beaches of Upside and Motor on Blogspot to published author. Mr. Fancy Pants needs your hard-earned money. After so many hours you’ve devoted to this site reading his paragraphs and semicolons, not to mention those nifty videos, don’t you owe it to him?
Okay, maybe not, but it’s a neat book and worth your time. Buy it.
There’s plenty not to like about Kidd, much like pretty much, oh, every great player with a few notable exceptions (LIKE DROSE, BECAUSE HE IS PURE AS FALLEN SNOW, DID WE MENTION HE LOVES HIS MOTHER? HOW AWESOME IS THAT? NO ONE ELSE EVER LOVES THEIR MOTHER!). But hey, you gotta admit, A. he has kicked ass “like Jim Kelly” (see first video) B. he rapped. (Totally owned that album.)
There is a myriad of ways in which “Titanic” is considerably more awesome than you think it is. Watching “Titanic” is watching a colossal comedy of errors take place. My favorite moment of the entire film is after Jack gets done tapping Ms. Fancy Pants in the back of the car, they rush out and hear the crew talking to the captain and engineer going over where the ship has flooded. Leo pauses, in an all-too Keanu way, and says,
“This is bad.”
I crack up, every single time.
(“Haha, it’s funny because hundreds of people died long enough ago to where it’s not insensitive.” See, now I feel bad.)
What I’m getting at is that it’s a movie about folly. Jack and Rose thinking this is actually going to work out. The Captain thinking it’s totally fine to push ahead through iceberg-infested waters at full-speed. The promoter thinking that he can just jinx anything to that degree. The engineer thinking that his eminently obviously avoidable mistakes won’t come back to hurt him. The Bro thinking he can contain a woman who obviously doesn’t want to be with him. And the Los Angeles Lakers of the film, the Bourgeois wandering around a sinking hunk of steel dropping into icy, unsurvivable waters complaining about luggage, comfort, and a chill.
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The lame passengers are primarily scenery in the flick. Molly Brown stands out in contrast, and they’re used in relation to the plight of the poor (who of course we love much more because they drink and dance and party, even though that cargo hold most likely stank like a hobo’s bad place and those kids were probably getting bartered in dice games). They’re stuck-up, they’re self-entitled, and they’re completely oblivious to the idea of danger.
Yeah, that guy. When Bryant made the “trippin’” line, you knew they were screwed. You have to recognize trouble. Everyone’s so consumed with not panicking, they wind up ignoring danger. It’s disassociating yourself from the reality of the situation to focus on something external. In this case, it was the Lakers disassociating themselves from the reality that the Mavericks were kicking the hell out of them and they had no answers by focusing on the media “overreacting” to said struggles.
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You know who I hate in “Titanic?” The Goddamn quartet. You love them the first, oh, fifty times you see the flick. It’s such a nice, quiet moment when they decide to keep playing. But you know what? You’re not better than everyone else. When the boat rips in half and starts sinking into the ocean, those sons of bitches were beating people out of their way with bows. You think you’re helping with the music? THE GIANT STEEL BOAT IS SINKING INTO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. YOU ARE NOT HELPING. YOU’RE JUST PROVIDING A POIGNANT SOUNDTRACK TO A FULL SCALE RIOT.
The Lakers’ constant insistence throughout the season that they were fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that they would turn it on? All quartet music. Keep it lively while we half-fill the boats. Keep relying on the fact you’ve done this twice before so naturally you’ll do it a third time without trying. And that’s really what they did. The May disaster was written in January and February. Three-game losing streaks, which shouldn’t be a big deal, but were because they hadn’t happened under Phil. The losing streaks in and of themselves weren’t a problem, the reaction to them was. “Oh, it’s no big deal.” You have to respond to those little embarrassments with vengeance and anger. Â You have to become livid at your malaise and react with outrage bordering on violence (as opposed to Game 4′s flagrant-fest, which was violence bordering on outrage). Instead, the Lakers sloughed it off. One member of the organization told me in February, “When you’re contending for a three-peat, and you’re just months removed from the intensity of a Game 7 against your franchise rival, getting yourself mentally “up” for a mid-season game against a small market, no-flash team is tough. They just don’t care enough about these games.”
The problem was that set a precedent. That was the engineer electing to halve the lifeboats. It was “EJ” electing to listen to the promoter and not respond with caution. It was Snooty McSnooterson saying outloud, on a ship he was on, “God himself could not sink this ship.” Had the attitude changed, maybe the Lakers would have gotten the top seed. Maybe they would have been better prepared for Game 1. Maybe they would have responded better in Game 2, or gotten themselves together in Game 3. But at the end of the day, you can only blame the people involved in “Titanic” so much. Because in reality, how were they really supposed to stop what happened. They just ran into a gigantic freaking iceberg.
The Dallas Mavericks.
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It may not have been as simple as “try harder.” There may not have been anything they could do. Sometimes, teams just shoot like that.
In March 2009, I was talking to Graydon Gordian about what if the NBA did have a one-and-done NCAA style tournament, who would win. And both of us said the same thing. “Orlando. Definitely Orlando.” Orlando had been outrageously hot from the perimeter that year. They simply worked so hard to create open 3-pointers, and had such a deep team of shooters, you couldn’t do much. Orlando got hot from the arc, and you could just pencil it in. Boston found the same thing. Yes, Kevin Garnett, blah, blah blah. My point is not that Garnett wouldn’t have been the difference in the series, he likely would have been. My point is that he really didn’t need to be. The Celtics could have beaten the Magic without Garnett, had Orlando not worked so hard to produce quality 3-pointers, and had the personnel to knock them down, and had that collective core been on fire, right up until June 1st.
(Ironically, this season was also what caused the downfall of the Magic. In 2010, they set a record for made three pointers, but only shot 37.5%. That’s 95th best in league history, which is still marginally impressive, but it also reflected a change from the 53rd ranked all-time 2009 team (who shot a whopping .6% better, but bear with me). The 2010 team made 24 more 3-pointers than the 2009 team, but attempted 94 more of them. The Magic stopped working for the best 3-pointer and started just shooting the available 3-pointer. In 2009, the team was made of the kings of the extra pass. In 2010 and 2011, the team resorted to just taking the first open 3 that came their way. The ball rotation wasn’t perfect. It was passable. The shots were makeable, but they weren’t wide freaking open. Personally, I blame Vince Carter, even though it is clearly not his fault.)
The Mavericks had that kind of mojo in the second round. Jason Terry’s barrage in Game 4 was just the icing on the cake. The Mavericks went out in Game 1 and shot the lights out. Then they decided if they had done it once, they could do it again. And again. And again. The Lakers didn’t react or adjust to this, because, let’s face it, Phil Jackson and the mighty Lakers would never deign to adjust to someone else’s gameplan. Lest you forget how Doc Rivers with a worse team than in 2010 completely worked over the Lakers in 2008 by making key adjustments. If the Lakers can’t out-muscle, out-tall, out-talent you, they have no second option. And they get frustrated and cranky, instead of focused and determined. They’re so worried about not panicking, they never respond to the aggression. In years past they had enough talent to overcome eventually. They were bigger, they were taller, they could tip shots in and rely on their talent being better. The Mavericks were talented enough, and meaner, and tougher, and not only wanted it more, but had something none of the other teams that came close to upsetting the Lakers in previous years (your Suns, Nuggets, Rockets, and Thunder): they had the experience to know how to take their foot, place it on the Lakers’ neck, and not squeeze, but stomp the hell out it until it was completely broken.
So in the end, while some Laker fans were pleading for the team to respond, sweating and wringing their hands, many fans, and the team itself, was too busy worrying about its luggage, or how cramped it would be, or if they would be serving tea on the deck. Sure, the Lakers saw the rats running. But they had  no idea what it meant.
photo by Santiago GarcÃa Pimentel on Flickr
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AFTERWORD: The 2010 Lakers were an unstoppable juggernaut, and I continue to believe that even if Kendrick Perkins had not injured his knee, the Lakers would have triumphed. The Celtics played above an already high ceiling that year, and the Lakers were much more in tune with their actual ability. Phil Jackson is the most successful head coach of all time, and walks away considered the greatest head coach of all time by people a lot smarter than I am. This Laker core is not a failure. It has two championships. So don’t consider this piece an indictment of this era (which may not be closed, though, Mike Brown, really?). It’s merely trying to put this particular team’s failures in perspective.
Kobe Bryant’s play in 2009 was the best basketball I’ve ever seen him play. He was flawless. That he moved so far away from that in 2011 to me was an indication of what I’d heard from people in L.A. before the season started. One person close to the organization told me that the trainers had indicated to the coaching staff that Bryant would be unable to deliver his usual production, and that the coaching staff should likely talk to him to make sure he worked in the flow of the team. Bryant’s overall statistical production was far from deficient. But there were more times this season when fans were left flabbergasted at his inability to close a game, or create space, or hit the impossible shot, and some of the smarter fans were even more aghast when he seemingly deliberately responded to these struggles by electing for more difficult, worse shots. Bryant can get healthy and produce another MVP-level season. But the decline has begun, and if no one can stand up to him, his pride will not let him do anything but fail and then shoot for two hours in front of an awe-inspired media and then continue to shoot them out of games. Bryant’s unable to remember past mistakes. He’s too focused on killing whatever is next in his way.
The Lakers organization is clearly moving in different directions, branching away from Phil Jackson’s work within the team. And by “branching away” I mean “putting all the stuff he left into a trashcan and lighting it on fire while drinking scotch from the bottle and singing Semisonic.” Maybe this will work out. After all, it’s always worked out for them. Each time the team has hit a rough patch, it responds with an era of dominance based on its ability to bring in the best talent. Maybe that’s Dwight Howard. Maybe that’s Chris Paul. But this colossal and monumental failure of a Lakers team is only really notable because of the franchise’s historical and consistent superiority. They’ll be back. And maybe next time, they’ll learn the cost of hubris from the 2011 team.
The 2007 Mavericks were a great team. I’m not tossing that term out lightly. I’m not convinced to this day that the 2009 Los Angeles Lakers, who won the freaking title, were a great team. (The 2010 team was a great team, as was the 2011 team right up until about the time Chris Paul leaped up and stabbed them in the eye like Kratos.) But the 2007 Mavericks? That was a great team. Top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The only other team to be so was the San Antonio Spurs. The Mavs were second on offense, fifth on defense, the Spurs second on defense, fifth on offense. The Mavericks, believe it or not, were better than the 2006 team that went to the Finals the year prior. They were deep. They were smooth. They were, yes, well coached. They were also fun as hell to watch. To this day, this remains the most fun I’ve ever had watching a game. It was one of those nights, where yes, it’s the regular season, but by God, it felt like May. The two teams were so locked in to beating one another, they were killing themselves trying to win that game. After that double-overtime joy fest, it seemed absolutely certain the Suns and Mavs were going to meet for the Western Conference Championship and the right to thump whatever chump came out of the East (LeBron James, step on down!).
That team was when Jerry Stackhouse was still able to produce, and Josh Howard was still considered a top-flight small forward. Jason Terry was the kind of scorer you trembled in fear at. Devin Harris was the young kid along for the ride and showing now and then why he would be the point guard of the future for Dallas after they won the title. Erick Dampier was a load, and not nearly as slow, still able to take rebounds and give fouls. And Dirk?
Dirk was Dirk. Like he’s never been. 2006 was a superior season in terms of raw production. But that 2007 Dirk was something else. He was still so furious about the Finals loss, and you could see it. Everyone scoffed at his MVP trophy, wanting to give it to Bryant, but Nowtizki dropped a 27.6 PER with a 61% True Shooting Percentage on 28.9% usage while the Mavericks won 67 games. SIX-TY-SEV-EN.
It was a masterful season. They were the best team in the league. Their path was set. Topple the first round opponent, like you do, face either the Jazz (O-VER-RA-TED) or the Rockets in a quality six-game semis, then the big one. Whoever survived out of the San Antonio-Phoenix bloodsport would be so battered and bruised, facing Dallas would be like going into the thresher after a car wreck. Beat the crap out of whatever East team came out (hopefully Miami), and forget 2006 ever happened.
And then…
That Goddamn Warriors team.
Don’t be confused. I pulled for that Warriors team with every ounce in me. I wanted to see the upset, the underdog, the unbelievable moment where the worst playoff team in the West knocked down the Big Bad German. I wanted to see the scrappy underdog overcome all odds and show what “true heart means.” I “believed.”
That series was not only an abject freakazoid, lightning strike four-times in the same spot outlier of logic and production, it was the worst thing that could have happened for both franchises. The Warriors fans got their moment, that shining night where your team did the impossible. That also resulted in another three seasons of Don Nelson boozeballing the team into the ground requiring the sale of the team and a complete overhaul to get the team right, which they’re still working on. It led to the Stephen Jackson contract, Baron Davis thinking he was worth the money to hop on over to Clipperland, Monta, and the rest.
And for the Mavericks? A horrible matchup that they could not have avoided created a perfect storm of conditions. The right crowd, the right team, the right matchups, the right bounces, the right emotional response from Dallas and the right timing. It all came together, and the Mavericks lost. One of the truly great teams of the last ten years is now held in disdain as one of the biggest jokes in NBA history, the classic example of choking. They are the wretched and the years after only provided turmoil, failure, and a gradual decline. That’s how the story was going to end. Dirk goes down with an MVP, underrated by most, talked of in writer’s lunches and on podcasts, always anchored by the collapse in the 2006 Finals and the greatest season that ever ended in disaster.
Everyone acts like the last few years have seen such an upturn in great teams. But back up a second and consider what Nowitzki and the Mavericks have been fighting against during their ten year 50-win war. Shaq’s Lakers. Duncan’s Spurs. The Pau-trade-created monster team. The only window for the Mavericks? 2006 and 2007. When they lost in the Finals in one of the most contentiously officiated series ever, and in a maelstrom of bad luck. The Clippers win three more games and we’re not talking about this right now. That 2007 Spurs team? Good. Really good. But most Spurs fans will tell you it wouldn’t hold up to the other championship teams, and that’s the season immediately after Dirk beat the Spurs in San Antonio to advance. There were some incredible teams that Nowitzki had to fight tooth and nail with in his prime (I say as he just got through with his best TS% season ever, but we’ll get there).
But still, the teams have gotten better. This was the most loaded NBA season in history. But at the end, it was supposed to be the same story in the West. It was going to be the Lakers. We all knew it. We were positive. I had resigned myself to the inevitability of knowing who is going to celebrate in June before the season. All the rest was just filler. And if for some reason the Lakers didn’t win it, it was going to be the Spurs in the West. The top seed, with one of their best regular seasons ever, the unstoppable offense. And if not them, certainly the Thunder. They added Kendrick Perkins for crying out loud! (Don’t ask me when Kendrick Perkins became the greatest defensive player ever and the guy who makes an entirely inconsistent Thunder defense into an unstoppable juggernaut just by being  mean-looking. I’m still trying to figure it out.) Dallas had been there all season, flirting early with the top seed in the league, just hanging out. A few noticed. I wrote about them a few times, mentioned Nowitzki as an MVP candidate. They were playing exceptionally well. Carlisle, in particular, seemed to have figured out some things about this particular team we hadn’t seen before.
But in the end, they fell off enough that we forgot about them. Another good season, but really. Hornets, Nuggets, and Blazers fans were all begging to get the Mavericks, thinking they were ripe for an upset. Blazer fans really thought they were going to win that series. Instead, it was one Brandon Roy WTF game from being a sweep. And we started to see it. But certainly, no. The Lakers will do what they have always done. Dirk Nowitzki, with no rings, can’t beat Kobe Bryant, with five. Can’t happen.
Then the Mavericks shot the lights out. It was masterful. It could only have been done by Dallas, too. They were the one team with the veteran shooters, experience, skill, speed, and ability to take the approach of “Let’s bury ‘em. And then let’s kick the dirt over on top of  ’em.” They just kept shooting. Phil Jackson’s going to have peyote hallucinations about Peja and Terry dropping bombs for another five years. And before we could come to terms with what happened, down goes the Lakers. Dead. And you started to get the feeling.
It was supposed to be about Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson getting the three-peat to ride off into the sunset. It was supposed to be about L.A. cementing itself as the greatest again. If not, it was supposed to be about the old Spurs putting in one last ride (even if their defense was a weak-ass miniature pony running into fenceposts). If not, it was surely supposed to be about the Thunder, and the arrival of Kevin Durant with Russell Westbrook his Robin.
No.
Nope.
Nuh-uh.
Now?
Now It’s Nowitzki.
This is the shot. This is the one, with Dirk putting in one of the finest playoff performances we’ve ever seen, being absolutely unstoppable in the biggest moments. Nowitzki isn’t human right now in the fourth. There’s so much confidence it makes you ill. Nick Collison played some of the best defense you’re ever going to see on Dirk (and got away with the most fouls you’re ever going to see on Dirk; seriously, someone tell Nick you gotta buy a girl dinner first), and Nowitzki still took him to school, sat him down, quizzed him, graded him, then beat him up and took his lunch money after school. The stuff we love about sports? Nowitzki was all of it against the Thunder. Heroic, timely, passionate, exciting, aggressive, intelligent, efficient, ballsy, and a little bit nuts. This isn’t the tongue-spitting Dirk. This is the determined “That’s right, MFers, I’mma keep killing you till I can’t move” Dirk. There’s no joy in this, he’s too driven. After Game 5, he didn’t smile, didn’t seem relaxed. He was just irritated that he has to wait six days to start killing whoever else is in his way.
There will not be another chance for Nowitzki. Nash, his old partner, who formed one of the truly lovable teams of the decade with Dirk, probably won’t get a shot. But for Nowitkzi, there’s a chance at redemption. And no, it doesn’t look good. Miami is better, should they advance. Wade got to the line in 2006? James will get to the line in 2011, along with Wade, and Bosh. The Heat can defend where the Thunder could not, and as helter-skelter as the Heat offense can look at times, it’s a might bit better than the crap sandwich Scotty Brooks spooned out onto the floor in the clutch. The Heat have components to stop Dirk like they did in 2006 (Haslem), and weapons to gun with them. The odds are not good.
But the Mavericks don’t care. This team isn’t playing with a “Hey, look where we got to?” flair, they’re not just happy to be here. This is a veteran team that believes that fate or talent or marketability or storyline be damned, this is their ring. It belongs to them. Nowitzki is the centerpiece of that. He will not be denied. He will not be deterred. And he will continue to rain down on you no matter how you guard him.
This season was supposed to be the final chapter of the Laker’s past. Or it was supposed to be about the Thunder’s future.
Yeah, I’ve got nothing else, and nothing else is necessary.
Oh, but I will note that Scotty Brooks just called and would like me to have a turn guarding Dirk. He figured since he whipped out Thabo Sefolosha and James Harden on Dirk at times last night, it couldn’t hurt. He asked for your number as well, I hope you don’t mind.
Of all the John Hughes films, Breakfast Club is the best. I don’t mean that in that it is the most critically acclaimed, nor the smartest, nor the funniest, nor even the most popular. It is simply that it manages to combine what makes the funniest movies funny (memorable lines and gags), with what makes the most iconic coming-of-age-movies iconic, relate-able feelings (“being a teenager suuuuuuu-uuuucks”), Â and the most difficult element to replicate, simply being cool. Christmas Vacation, Uncle Buck, or The Great Outdoors are funnier (sorry, Judd Nelson, but you can’t really compete with Chase, Candy, or Aykroyd), Pretty in Pink, Home Alone, and Sixteen Candles more iconic, and Ferris Bueler’s Day Off way, way cooler. But none combine those elements the way Breakfast Club does. Everyone has a favorite moment from that film, and everyone has a favorite character (though Molly Ringwald’s is never it).
When you watch that movie as a teenager, you inevitably find yourself saying “Yeah, man.” If you don’t, congratulations, you’re somehow even more cynical than the false cynicism of the average teenager. The movie captures too much of the experience, emboldens you too much with the idealistic concepts of staying authentic to what should matter, to getting beyond those stereotypes that seem to weigh you down so much, the ones you realize are utterly useless and outdated the minute your high school days end, just as you realize that your parents’ damage to you is only relative to the damage done to them, and that of the world on you. But in that moment, where you’re first experiencing it, you form a nostalgia for it that carries over. This is what a film about high school should be about.
And the Thunder against the Nuggets, that’s what basketball should be about.
They make mistakes, the ill-temperance of youth tainting what needs to be flawless execution, but the drama shines through. The Nuggets don’t make a fair Mr. Vernon. Which is why Rob will be along shortly to deal with their own version of dystopia. No, what the Thunder were really fighting against was the idea they needed detention. That young teams aren’t ready, that they don’t win. Vernon was tradition, experience, the cynical idea that a team like that simply can’t make it to the next step, that it needs detention.
Even the way the five are brought together is vaguely reminiscent of the Thunder. After all, Westbrook was the star at UCLA. He was the point guard for a UCLA team, never supposed to play second fiddle. Harden was the role player, never supposed to be drafted third, and was the underwhelming gunner prospect who wound up as a vital cog that seems at once worth the pick and not. Ibaka, we don’t know what he is. Thabo, the cast off, the list goes on and on and on. And everything, as we learned in this series, just as we learned when the romance failed between Estevez and Ringwald, leads back to Judd Nelson as the unconquerable Bender, and Kevin Durant as the unfathomable hero.
The translations aren’t pure, and that’s what makes the elements in play so much more fulfilling. Bender’s needling of Vernon to the point where he sucker punches him is Westbrook’s own intemperance. The infamous dance sequence screams loudly of the Game 2 romp, the Thunder’s first real routing of an inferior team in the playoffs, high on their own play. The growling monologue of Bender relating his own disturbing relationship with his father reminds us of Perkins, that he was cast aside by the franchise he loved, the brothers he’d played with, prayed with, because of money and a doubt of his knees. Ally Sheedy’s deceptively shallow Allison (the girl every guy who watches the film falls in love with while hoping Ringwald vanishes) reminds us of Harden. Quirky, confusing, and bizarrely wise. There’s Brooks, trying to keep everyone together as the mild-mannered Brian. Westbrook can’t decide if he’s Bender or Andrew, constantly slipping between both. Durant shares this role in him. Milk and cookies and marijuana and beer, but just on the floor. The two can never sort out who’s in the lead or should be.
The sneak down the hall to get the joint has to be the escape in Game 3, where by all rational sense the jig should have been up, but they narrowly escape thanks to the key contributions. And Westbrook’s gunning in Game 4, right or wrong, speaks of Perkins’ lack of patience.
The movie isn’t really about triumph, you realize that as you get older, it’s about those brief moments in life where you feel like you’ve learned something. It doesn’t matter if you really have. It doesn’t matter that you likely face a superior Spurs team in the second round or barring that, a much superior Lakers team. Nor does it matter that all you’ve really done is win a first-round playoff seed as a favorite seed, which so many forgotten teams have done before. It’s big in your life, at that moment, and that’s what matters, that’s what you hold onto. There’s all the time in the world for you to come to grips with the fact that in many ways, high school is about those simplistic terms, those cliched definitions, because you’re not a real person yet. For the time, you can thrive in that knowledge that you’re different, and that the experiences you have matter. You can hold that defiant fist high as a great song plays to end the flick, and think of the letter.
Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain…
…and an athlete…
…and a basket case…
…a princess…
…and a criminal…
Does that answer your question?… Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.
Do you realize that during a five-minute sequence to really kick off the action in this film that there’s a solid minute-long sequence where the entire thing is nothing but two neon-colored sports cars racing in blurs? And it’s not facetious in the slightest? This actually happens, along with this quote, after Paul Walker’s character says “Dude, I almost had you.”
“Ask any racer, any real racer. It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile; winning’s winning.”
Now, this is a bad film. That line above should be proof enough. That line is the same kind of overly simplistic crap you’re going to find on shows where people yell each other or any halftime show not on TNT. It ignores context, relevant elements, and any sort of analysis beyond the results speaking for themselves. It’s also pretty true. Which is why it’s the story of Heat-Sixers. And why The Fast and the Furious (as opposed to 2 Fast, 2 Furious, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, or Fast Five) fits so nicely with the series.
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In this, the most amazing of first rounds, there are going to be bad series. Every single one of them can’t be amazing. God knows the disaster that was Celtics-Knicks wasn’t. But Heat-Sixers was worst of them all. It was so very much the empty action film. Nothing but gunplay, high-speed chases, explosions, women wearing slutty clothes, and behaving sluttily (but some of them are tough so it’s not misogynistic, we promise!), and incredibly fast vehicles. You’re not walking out of this flick thinking about it, you’re not even really going to enjoy it on further watching. It’s just eye candy. It’s like cartoons for adults. Which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing.
When I saw this flick in 2001, it was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I was home at my folks. My friends and I saw the movie, walked out, and without saying anything, drove out to an abandoned strip of road in the backwoods of Arkansas and raced our crappy sedans and beat-up used pickups. That’s what The Fast and the Furious did to you. It made you want to do ridiculously unnecessary things that borderlined on dangerous and flirted with reckless in your own life. The Heat? That’s the ultimate sin they commit. They make you want to watch, by flirting with something that somehow goes beyond Showtime. Don’t get confused. They’re not. Showtime was function through form. The Heat are form trying to be function. And most of the time it makes you shake your head and wonder, “How in God did someone greenlight this?” But there are those moments, like the Race Wars scene in the desert, or when Wade literally just throws the ball as high as he can and James just goes up and gets it, that you want to do that, you want to see that, you want to be a part of it. It’s just f*cking cool.
It dials into some sort of primal, Neanderthal-based instinct to simply exert as much testosterone as possible. That may be the biggest difference. If the Celtics are strength through fury, and Showtimes was art through balance, then the Heat are simply basketball testosterone. It’s indulgence at the highest level. Anyone who’s studied will tell you that real strength is discipline. What the Heat express is not that. It’s just speed, and style, taken to its most ridiculous form. It’s like a Bruckenheimer flick if you took out all the creative energy and just poured in visceral physics.
The Sixers are Paul Walker here, clearly. The cop trying to be the hood, the traditional borderline playoff team trying to be the point-forward driven stretch of positional revolution. The incomplete team trying to be the athletic powerhouse, and finding themselves more and more drawn to playing the Heat’s game. In Game 5, the Sixers actually spent much of the first quarter winning, and then, for reasons unknown, tried to be the Heat. Behind the back passes, alley-oops, the works. They could have simply played their game and maybe it would have worked, maybe it wouldn’t have. But there they were, racing their sedans on a deserted Arkansas backroad, and surprised when the real machine flies by them on the highway.
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The sad reality is that the Heat are just like Vin Diesel. Unable to see what, in any situation that isn’t a testosterone-fueled fantasy, they’ll wind up in jail. My father always said, “You can outrun a cop. You can’t outrun the radio.” The Celtics, naturally, are the radio, in this position. In the second round, the Heat have to somehow prove that blurring lights, car chases, and gunplay can constitute something real, can actually show some sort of insight.
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Do you realize how many shoves are in this flick? Rewatching it, I was just sort of stunned. The level of violence in a movie about dreamboats racing cars is stunning. It’s unnecessary and has no real point to it. It’s just shoving. And the racing? In reality the racing’s just a, pardon this, vehicle. When you look at it, the Asian mob, the heist, the cops, the double-cross, that’s all the real plot. The cars are really just dressing. And in Heat-Sixers, the highlights were really just dressing. The entire thing was about defense. Meeks holding Wade down for two games before Wade adjusted and overcame because, well, he’s Dwyane Wade. The Heat cutting off driving lanes, forcing the jumpers, running off threes, clamping down on positions. That’s the only saving grace of the Heat, that they recognize that it’s defense that can separate them. They’re at their best unleashed, washing over the barriers of the defense in an athletic tidal wave collapsing down on the huts that line the beaches. But what drives them is the ability to garrison the walls, to hold the line and to force teams into strangling themselves. They’ve learned from the Celtics, even if they can’t imitate them.
But at the same point, it’s about the cars. I mean, it’s a movie about car racing. Â In the ridiculous monologue Diesel gives Walker when he shows him the Dodge Charger, he says “For those 10 seconds, I feel free.” Â That’s the exact same way the Heat are on the break, in those ridiculous highlights. When they get to preen for the crowd after a ridiculous play, they’re doing what they came together to do. The function doesn’t matter, the defense doesn’t matter, the criticism, any of it. They’re alive, and that’s all that matters.
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Walker eventually succumbs to the temptation and becomes just like them, just like the Sixers succumbed and gave into the series. Collins has so much to be proud of for what they’ve accomplished, but the result is that there’s not much to learn from this series. You walk out the same way, with nothing learned nothing experienced. You just want to go race your car into the night.
I always thought the “hope survives” theme in both Deep Impact (and its more successful brother Armageddon) was a bunch of crap. Do you realize how many people die in those flicks? As George Carlin once said regarding the leading cause of death throughout the history of the universe: “MILLIONS OF DEAD MOTHER!@%$ERS!” More people die in the last hour minutes of “Deep Impact” than any movie not based on outright apocalypse. Only zombie flicks kill more human beings. Â ”Hope survives.” Get out of here with that. Just because Frodo winds up with the girl looking down on what is not a peaceful sea of tranquility residing over the Appalachians but is in fact a gigantic cesspool of dead humans, debris, wildlife, and industrial waste, does not mean that “hope survives.” In reality, the odds of continued human existence in the wake of the impact are pretty low.
So while the popular narrative will be that the Pacers somehow proved something, showed that they’re on the right track and that there’s this continual move towards relevance, in actuality, that’s not how this works in most cases. The Hawks showed they had some life versus the Celtics two years ago, and despite being a perennial playoff team, they are looked at with more disgust than most bottom feeders. There’s a special level of dismissive contempt held for the playoff fringe dwellers. Sure, the Bulls pushed the Celtics two years ago, but there could not be more difference between the two. For starters, the Bulls pushed the Celtics to seven games (without Kevin Garnett, yes, we’re all aware, Celtics fans. Your caveat is duly noted.). Â And the Bulls used that series as momentum two years later to revamp their team with free agency, which Indiana will not be able to do, due to the market realities of the NBA. Â There is no Carlos-Boozer-Kyle-Korver-Ronnie-Brewer-Kurt-Thomas-Tom-Thibodeau revolution coming for the Pacers. This it. They have to hope for a miracle, that Hibbert develops into an All-Star caliber center, Collison hits the next level, and Granger even becomes more than what he is, a passable combo forward with inconsistently great scoring ability.
Which is pretty much the same as hoping a group of astronauts can deposit a nuclear weapon inside an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth. It’s also equal to what their chances were at beating the Chicago Bulls in a seven-game series.
Deep Impact‘s real themes are about death. It’s got very little to do with survival or hope. The impact is just a big, catastrophic event that is unstoppable and beyond real understanding (If you’re big on literal comparisons, that would be the young Bulls point guard, hallowed be thy name). The real conflict in Deep Impact is between two different lines of approach to death. There’s the frantic scramble for survival embodied by the Biedermans and Leelee Sobieski’s family, and then there’s the calm, collected resignation of Tea Leoni and her father, which, despite it being your usual unnecessary human interest drama set in the literal backdrop of  a 500-foot high tidal wave, actually does ring through with some sincerity. There’s a contrast best represented  by Leoni’s decision to push the mother and her child onto the helicopter despite winning the straw draw (a scene in which, when she grabs the little girl and heads for the roof, I was afraid she had stolen the kid and left the mother to drown, which would have been compelling, but also a really crappy thing to do). It’s a pretty rare thing when a film actually shows an acceptance of death, but it’s cross-lit by the heroism of saving innocent people.
The Pacers knew they were dead. There’s just no way of getting around it. There’s “We did everything right and we almost won that game!” and then there’s “We did everything right and Derrick Rose still landed and wiped out half of our population.” You almost have to think that freed them, though. The Pacers collapsed down the stretch, but it never felt like a choke job except for the near-collapse of Game 4, the only game they actually won. Instead, it felt like the Pacers played well, the Bulls played badly for most of the game, then the Bulls just played better to close. Even in defeat there was something proud about the Pacers, and instead of dismissing them, most in the media, blogs, and fans chose to give the Pacers credit. They were, after all, the 8th seed, supposed to be annihilated by the awesome force of the Bulls. Instead they fought through, likely knowing they were not going to survive.
It’s actually a lot like what the Bhagavad Gita talks about.
The bodily experience has no affect on the eternal soul thus it is spoken of as it is not born nor does it die.
That’s in part what makes Deep Impact so surprising. It is, in a lot of ways, a spiritual movie without any overbearing Western philosophical overtones. In much the same way, outside of overdrawn fascination with making even Derrick Rose’s bad games into divinity, the series wasn’t written out as “plucky team can’t win because they suck.” Had the Bulls held the lead for the majority of the series, it would have been written that way, but because the Pacers held leads and then relinquished them — not to a series of terrible decisions but because the Bulls defense is a torture chamber when activated and Rose is the rare accurate analogy of “Hell on Wheels,” — everyone wins. In Deep Impact, the asteroid/meteor actually obliterates a large part of the world (once again, terrible things happen to Africa, BUT AT LEAST THE WAL-MART IN JOPLIN IS OKAY!), but everyone rebuilds, the hero and the girl survive, thanks to a heroic sacrifice by Robert Duvall, the national security advisor from the later seasons of West Wing and a blinded guy from E.R. That will be the feeling in Indiana, where it’ll seem like this team is just a few pieces away from really going somewhere. But guess what?
In Deep Impact, lots and lots of people still died in a global catastrophe, and the Pacers are still without a legitimate star. It’s fun to watch, but there’s not a real lesson to the tale.
Film Don’t Lie looks at the playoff series in retrospect and a movie. The movies are often bad, but they really only serve as an expository device. Plus, you’re reading a basketball blog. Come on. Â -Ed.
See, because Boston-New York was a horror film, get it?
“AND THE BARTENDER SAID WHY THE LONG FACE, AND IT WAS A HORSE!”
Anyway, Cube‘s actually about how humans will inevitably fail themselves. Even if they are able to outwit their own devices, they’ll fall victim to their own neurotic impulses. You can get out of the physical boundaries we build for ourselves, but you can’t get out of the spiritual, mental, and emotional traps we’ve designed to destroy ourselves.
The Cube, obviously, is the Celtics. The Knicks, obviously, are the poor dead bastards trying to get through the maze.
So much of the film is spent trying to decipher what the Cube is, where it came from, why the victims are within it, how it works, how you do prime factorization on the spot when you’re worried gigantic laser spikes are going to pierce you in the face. That’s pretty much what the Knicks spent this series trying to do. Trying to understand who the Celtics were, how you beat them. The Celtics, even after all this time, are unpredictable. They have guidelines, principles, kinks in the chains, but you have to spend so much time figuring them out that by the time you’ve discovered the secret, your time is up and you’re dead.
Rondo’s return to World Destroyer mode is the closest thing we’ve got to the overall aesthetic design of the Cube. Look at it. It’s smooth, detailed, sharp, clean, and solely focused. It also doesn’t react. It’s not affected by your frustration or successes, your victories or failures. It just rotates and executes. And that weird ball-fake non-whip pass he’s got going on? Well, the excessive violence in Cube can border on the irrational. You’re waiting for spikes with lazer tips that actually transmit poison. It’s completely over the top, which reveals the biggest secret about this movie.
It’s bad. It’s really pretty bad. The characters are caricatures but not in any sort of revealing or funny way, there’s no overt symbolism or subtle comparisons for sociological discussion, it’s just a bunch of dead over-exaggerations of traditional archetypes right on down to the mentally challenged wunderkind (who becomes more or less interesting if you watch Cube 2: Hypercube and Cube: Zero like I have, depending on how drunk you are when you watch them). And this series? There was a lot to consider, a lot to think was going on, but in reality, it was just a team without depth facing a robotic construct that didn’t happen to press the right rooms in the first two games, still took its fatalities, then cleaned up when the game really got going.
But if you want what’s interesting about the whole thing? The way the characters fail themselves. Not just Quentin’s psychopathic paranoia, but the lack of trust in one another. Which is frustrating until you understand, of course they weren’t going to survive. They couldn’t trust one another. They didn’t even know one another. It was entirely possible one of them was a spy. It was possible one was going to slow them up. After Game 2, Melo talked about how he made the right play, and he expected Jared Jeffries to make the layup. That’s removing yourself from the responsibility model. It’s the same as not making a decision in the Cube because you don’t want to be wrong. But Toney Douglas was like the opening victim. Far too impulsive, far too reckless with his decisions, and yet timid and meek at the worst times, too. The decisions have to be clear if you want to survive. The Knicks as a group are doomed by the same thing that doomed the poor folks in the Cube. Someone else pulled the strings and stuck them in the box together. Dolan’s incessant meddling with the negotiations process was only going to have one result from the beginning: the team surrendering too much for a player at a position which is in no way vital to D’Antoni’s system. The Depth afforded them by the other players, and more importantly, the versatility, was considerably more important. But hey, whatever, let’s get put in a box and try to fight our way out of it.
You can believe that Kazan is able to escape the Cube at the end, but that’s unlikely. It’s a government operated facility (we find out later) and there will be people waiting. But getting beyond the select group of participants the film focuses on, there’s really no escape. The Cube has the advantage in the percentages, and keeps on rotating.
All that’s left is to see if people can change, and if they’re smart enough to realize they have to.
