It’s a little maddening how there is always an element of shock in an ending. The most expected conclusion can still be met with an, “I can’t believe it’s really over.” Declines nurture a sense of inevitability which logically point to a close. We brace ourselves, knowing full well what is soon to come. But endings happen in an instant; nowhere near the amount of time necessary to grasp the conceptual change between here and gone. We set up cushions that inevitably won’t do what they’re supposed to.

Yao Ming announced his retirement in a press conference in Shanghai today. Receiving this confirmation is sad, but it’s something we’ve had to get used to. As incredible as the 2010-11 season was, a lot of iconic figures have moved on. And they’ve been monumental losses — losses that push the league towards a sea-change, if the 2011 playoffs hadn’t already transitioned us into a ‘new era’. Today we lost Yao. More than a month ago, a pixelated Shaq told us in less than eight seconds that the end had come (although a new beginning wasn’t too far behind). And a week before the playoffs, the seminal NBA blog, FreeDarko, closed up shop after more than six brilliant and confusing years.

Of course, we’re also on the verge of losing an entire season, but I have neither the knowledge nor the desire to discuss much of that. The lockout has left much of the NBA blogosphere in a malaise. But in these trudging moments of doubt, stillness, and uncertainty, we’re allotted the time it takes to truly reflect on these entities — these titans that have threatened to and succeeded in shattering our understanding of basketball.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5jMOK87N7A]

No player exemplified  shattering quite like Shaq. The court is treated as sanctuary, and we’ve never seen a player so violently/willfully/beautifully defile it. And thanks to him, we never will. Unlike most players who reach their physical peak years into being in the NBA, Shaq’s peaked in his rookie season (or earlier in his LSU days). He was noticeably leaner then, and capable of ungodly displays of athleticism and coordination. Shaq was remarkably quick down on the block, and was relentless in his pump fakes. A catch within 15 feet spelled doom for opponents, as his turn-around hook shots/jumpers (!) were already well tuned by then. Again, he was in prime physical form by age 22.

Stranger still, Shaq is one of the rare (if not the only) cases in which a player was better when he wasn’t at peak fitness. His legendary 1999-00 season was what I consider the midway point in his career between svelte Shaq and shack Shaq. Clearly putting on around 40 pounds since his rookie season, he didn’t quite resemble the toned specimen of his youth, but he was every bit the physical beast, and then some.

I remember watching the 99-00 season as a kid with so much frustration. I hated Shaq. I hated him because there was absolutely no way to stop him down in the low post. If he missed his first hook, he’d just bully his way in for an offensive rebound and at that point, he was directly in front of the rim. Defenses would recognize the fatalism in any action other than leaving him the hell alone, and that was that. It was that simple, that inevitable, and I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t something that I could one day hope to replicate. It was a just a freak bully having his way with the entire league.

Now in retrospect, its impossible not to respect the kind of year Shaq had in 2000. At the age of 27 and at the beginning of his “prime” (if it’s correct to call it that), the extra weight was probably some combination of a lack of discipline and circumstantial metabolism issues. Whatever the case, it was the year Shaq maximized his gift of enormity. Slightly slower than he was in the past (though not by much), his added girth forced him to consolidate his skills for the sake of efficiency, and boy did it work.

More than a decade later, it’s easy to say Shaq didn’t live up to the promise of his talents. Had he remained diligent in his conditioning, maybe his decline wouldn’t have been so steep. His retirement press conference was full of jokes, but it had just a touch of bittersweet acknowledgement for a career that could’ve been. Extraneous ambition and other sidesteps kept us from a more actualized Shaq. For someone as dominant as Shaq has been for the first half of his career, that’s hard to imagine. And maybe that’s what we’re left with in Shaq’s parting. He was an anomaly whose abilities shouldn’t have been possible in the first place. But they happened. He happened. We were lucky enough to witness every act of the performance. And it was a hell of a show.

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I’m of the opinion that basketball is the drug that feeds our neuroses. The back corner of the mind is an open workshop of ideas and observations spliced together to satisfy creative urges. For example, in high school, I always felt uncomfortable watching Rajon Rondo and Kevin Garnett on the court together. To me, their physical resemblance was too eerie. Rondo’s long arms and extremely broad shoulders made it seem as though he was just a shrunken version of Garnett. I was convinced Rondo was the manifestation of KG’s pure evil. Whereas Garnett wore his emotions on his sleeve, Rondo was cold and detached. It was like I was watching a sociopathic midget twin.

Now, of course, that isn’t something I could share openly with my friends. So these types of thoughts lingered and and matured over time. Then, by fate, seemingly, I discovered in 2009 Free Darko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, goofing off in my graphic design class. From there, entranced, I stumbled upon the FreeDarko blog.

And to better explain the exact moment I discovered the blog: It was like a hand reached out from the screen and cracked my skull in two, reaching in and detaching my brain from the rest of me. Then it took my brain, flipping it over so that the back corner workshop was exposed, and slammed it down onto my desk.

FreeDarko crept in and infiltrated my most guarded basketball hallucinations and put them in words. It was as violating as it was thrilling and euphoric. FD helped me embrace what I originally considered weird and irrelevant. But with enough conviction, anything weird, irrelevant, or otherwise can be absorbed, accepted and applauded.

But FD did more than just bait the weirdos. It championed untold stories; stories that were not only worthy of our time, but essential to our understanding of this game. Since obtaining a copy of Free Darko Presents: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, I’ve read each chapter at least five times, and I’m still nowhere near taking it all in. The blog will forever be FreeDarko’s cornerstone, but the books capture the high concepts and ideals in crystalline form: refined enough to take it larger doses, but still provocative enough to ensure a stimulating educational experience.

And I suppose FreeDarko’s endeavor was always an educational one. We followed their journey as they tried to examine the consequence of style, the limits to fandom, and how much of basketball had everything to do with anything but basketball. Perhaps longtime FreeDarkonian Eric Freeman/Ty Keenan said it best:

At its best, FD explained why we care in a way that we weren’t totally sure how to express previously. Now we know how to say it.

via  The Day Never Ended | FreeDarko

FreeDarko changed the way we think. It changed the way we write. It gave us a new way appreciate basketball. The outstanding cast of writers spent the last six years crafting absurdly smart theories and doctrines. And we’re all a lot smarter (and weirder) because of it.

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Sometime last week, we learned that Yao was retiring. For some reason, my immediate thought was to tell my dad. For some reason, I didn’t. My dad isn’t a basketball fan, though he’s raised two fanatics. He disliked Yao, or so I’ve spent the last nine years believing. He would frequently argue that Yao was too slow to make anything of himself as an NBA player. He’d scoff at maneuvers executed at half-speed. My brother and I, of course, were ardent fans since the beginning, but my dad never let up. At times, it seemed as though he was a harsher critic of Yao than he ever was of me or my brother.

I began to wonder if I had romanticized the notion of Yao as cultural savior and the pride of Asian-America. But I didn’t. That became clear not too long after he was drafted. In middle school, any (relatively) tall Asian who was reasonably competent as basketball was slapped with the nickname, ‘Yao’. It was trivial, and an immature stereotype, but Yao — both the figure and the basketball player — had entered the lexicon of younger generations as something of a cultural signifier.

My dad seemed to distance himself from engaging in that sort of glorification. I guess my he understood something I didn’t at the time. This whole “making it in America” thing? It’s hard. It’s really hard. At least my father was able to toil in relative obscurity, muttering a few ‘Yes, I can do it’s along the way. It took my dad 15 years to rise into a leadership position and develop enough confidence in his English to make it happen. Yao had to do it in three without a veil of anonymity and with the pressure of two worlds converging at once. It took someone special to go through this massive undertaking. I believe my dad recognized this. But a degree of tough love was in order. Because you don’t succeed in America as a foreigner — a 7’6″ foreigner at that — without some thick skin. I just wish my father had softened his stance once Yao proved himself to be far more than just a global marketing pawn.

Without asterisks, Yao was the last great offensive center the league has seen. And with the league-wide trend moving towards defensive specialists at the 5, he may be the last one for a while. I’ve appreciated Yao’s craft since his arrival, but I don’t have a library of basketball knowledge to fully elaborate on what Yao possessed and accomplished on a technical level. For that, I turn to Kelly Dwyer:

What he did to the rest of us was wish we had three chances to see him a night. Low-post play — due to generational shifts, rule changes and the vicissitudes of who gets born where and with what sort of heft in their lower end — is a lost art. There are precious few 7-footers that can turn into a jump hook while chewing gum at the same time, much less make a living out of it on the pro level. Yet, there Yao was.

via Yao Ming is retiring | Yahoo! Sports’ Ball Don’t Lie

A look at Yao’s face is a look at an unlikely hero. It’s blank and unassuming. It’s the face of an everyman who by fate was caught in a whirl of extraordinary circumstances. Yao was a phenomenal player. But if that was the extent of his impact on the league, this process would be far more heartbreaking. We’d be resigned to the what-if game, and for a man of so much talent, that would be a pitfall too deep to escape. He exists as a symbol not as concealment for a grand career cut short.  He exists as a symbol because the life that he was born into could only be lived by a man of his stature, his steadiness, and his devotion.

He inspired a nation of billions to embrace a new love. He instilled a sense of awe every time he stepped onto the court. And he showed us how quickly a man could be beloved by two nations that have precious little in common. Yao is the bridge. He is the totem. Individually, there were many accolades that he wasn’t able to reach. But for his country and for basketball, he did everything he possibly could.

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David Stern said during the broadcast of Yao’s retirement press conference that “it’s not a complete goodbye.”

It’s not.

Our farewells are formalities. The stories, lessons, and experiences we’ve gathered over time don’t have expiration dates. More likely than not, that feeling of shock will arise whenever the new season starts. It’ll be odd seeing Shaq in the Atlanta studios, seeing the same months-old farewell post atop FreeDarko’s front page, and seeing the Rockets bench without Yao Ming. But our shock will eventually subside. What we’ve gained from following in the trails of these giants won’t.