Mannequin Love

The Saints cast off the pall hanging over the great city today, helping (hopefully) to finally revitalize an urban area long overdue for a change in the dialogue surrounding it.

Of course, this gives Lamar the perfect time and opportunity to discuss what's been kicking around in his brain since Randy Moss and T.O. started raising hell in the NFL.

The point is this: football players are entirely products of the system in which they play. So much so that it is impossible to divest any specific player from the team he is currently playing for, or to imagine his fit in any other system. The loss of individual identity is partially due to the lack of trades in, but that lack of trades is due more to the dehumanizing aspects of the most violent sport.

If basketball is a uniquely postmodernist game, football is a modernist product of the Industrial Revolution.

Basketball contents itself with finding the partial and half-truths that dominate the court every time 10 men set their soles on it. The ins and outs of the season lend themselves to experimentation in a quest for ultimate knowledge that forever remains just beyond our grasp.



The Right-Wayers would have you believe that there is a single truth to the way the game should be played, but their ideals have been exposed as unstable as any Fundamentalist sects'. More than anything else, the "point" of every NBA season remains the same: there are interesting and unique ways to win games. Whether or not those methods translate to championships is still under debate--the Mavericks' radical collapse in the NBA Finals struck a blow to those ready to declare a New World Order.

However, football is still dominated by the conglomeration of talents to a degree disgusting to all but Larry Brown and a select cadre of 300-pound Goliaths intent on sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

The helmets play a small role in increasing this anonymity, but what makes football such a coach's medium is the sheer number and mass of those involved. The NBA lends itself more to balletic compositions simultaneously reminiscent of the hood and opera house, while the NFL replicates the singular grind of major corporate life.



It is perhaps ironic that America would choose to so embrace a sport that celebrates the goalessness of Middle Management in perpetuity, but also perfectly sensible when one considers the glorification of those same employees by the League.

Also important is the fear of progress that football espouses on a weekly basis. The individual is ignored, or perhaps demonized in the quest for an 11-players-working-as-one ideal achievable only in that sport. The Young, Black, and Fabulous mentality that so permeates the NBA is almost completely absent from the football universe save two shining stars: Randal Moss and Terrell Owens. It is no coincidence that those two see their names most often associated with “headcase,” just as Donovan McNabb was considered slightly undesirable until he toned down his free-flowing creativity in the backfield.

Those two are concerned with only one thing: imposing their stamp on whatever game they play by dominating the field in all aspects. I don’t mean dominating in the sense of big-ass-running-back-working-the-clock, but rather dominating in that ethereal sense of the word; affecting all proceedings while having a hand in none.



Neither one touches the ball on every single play they are on the field, but both strike fear into the opposing team because of their ability to rubber-stamp the game as theirs from the moment they lay hands on the pigskin to the moment they flip it to the referee, and perhaps even a little after, depending on how loquacious they find themselves on a given afternoon.

By inspiring this fear, they transcend the sport itself and begin to occupy a higher plane not dissimilar to that of MJ, Dr. J, or Kobe Bean. That higher plane is exactly what football strives to denigrate with each passing snap, beating their will into the turf as behemoths collide.

Football analysts often marvel at the supreme athleticism possessed by these two shining stars, but bemoan their woeful honesty and expression. What these talking heads fail to recognize is that the very honesty that they pour scorn on with their outmoded ideals is a uniquely American ideal: that one man may rise above the rest based on talent alone. Not pedigree, nor politeness, but sheer artistic strength and force of will may triumph over outmoded systems designed to create and maintain a rigid caste system.



If football is a feudal society, Moss and Owens have managed to separate themselves from the commoners. They’ve broken their chains, but none join them in their revolution.

Tru Warier

Before you read, peep the 2010 predictions popping over at the Worldwide Leader. I'm not saying that shit is accurate, or even that most of those involved are experts, but it does reflect a change in the fundamental way that basketball is perceived. At least for the dude that picked the Hawks.
The quandary of one Ronald Artest. On talent and competitive drive alone, he is easily a top 10 player in the NBA. His competitive drive, however, is subverts itself on an almost daily basis. Observe an incident while he was with the Chicago Bulls: while trailing at half-time, Ronald threw rocket chest passes at the wall just above his teammates' heads, all the time remaining mute.

Besides the obvious implications for "team chemistry," his actions in that one incident reflect only one thing: a burning desire. This desire has nothing to do with winning. Rather, Ronald simply seeks always to distance himself from embarrassment and humiliation.

Almost every incident of Ron's career has been a direct or indirect result of not wanting to seem like a bitch when dudes step at him. The brawl in Detroit was and is a perfect example of that. A hard foul sets off a shoving match between Ron Ron and Ben Wallace. Gets broke up, but Artest mosies over to the scorers table and lies down--making like it ain't no thang. Of all the cocky things he could have done, that could be described as the most inflammatory.

He stood up (or lied down) and told the Palace crowd that he was literally unconcerned about the entire incident. All of this was done in a weird way to save face. A lot of NBA players would have sat back down on the bench, or continued the yelling and pushing match happening at midcourt. But Artest chose to make his nonchalance public and brutally honest. He was not to be cowed or made the fool of--if anything, he made Wallace look like the one who lost his cool; the petulant child shoving at the patient dad.

Then, shit got real as fuck. Someone lobbed a bottle at Artest. How else is he going to react? He is the most "Keeping it Real" obsessed dude in the NBA. Even Iverson doesn't do like Ron, because Iverson is secure in his own public image.

Ron has always been, and will always be, obsessed with how he is perceived. It is essential to him that he be thought of first and foremost as a representer: never, never back down. That desire to keep it real usually manifests itself as a strong, almost pathological desire to win. Losing is simply not an option for Ron, the public denial of his worth is too great.

The effects of his realness are also readily apparent in his game: he is a lockdown defender, a great way to avoid humiliation on the playgrounds of NYC. Some dude thinks he's all that, and tries to break Ron off, Ron reacts by making it so the dude simply cannot break him off. His offensive game isn't flashy--he doesn't want to risk a fancy move failing him, or excessive attention being brought to something as transient as offense.

He knows how easily those same offense-first players looked like bitches on the other end of the court. He knows how to keep it real.

Trinity of Dino Thugz

Fallow no longer

It is time to break Lamar's silence. In part caused by the general uninterestingness of the Lig this summer (is Bonzi Wells dead?) and in part due to increased workload now that school has rolled around, Lamar has been relatively reticent of late.

No longer.

Consider this the first post of a new era.
AI's denial by USA basketball has to rank either as the number one or two disaster of the summer. Agent Zero's injury/cut/subsequent explosion was bad, but not of the magnitude of the Answer being denied.

Dude busted his ass for Team USA in Athens and is repayed with a curt "Fuck you" when he asked, nay, begged, to be included in Colangelo's grand experiment on the international stage.
The Answer's snub reveals all that we should have seen coming. AI is the quintessence of Young, Black, and Fabulous. Even as he begins to decay, his conrows still hold the threat of unmitigated thuggery in its most primitive form. In short, he is still the most BAMF in the Association, perhaps more than dear Ronald because of his lack of explosion.

Latent energy is more potent than that exposed; his lack of explosion (save the "practice" speech) has dumbfounded a ruling class incapable of viewing Street as anything more than dealing crack and robbing old ladies.
Colangelo's Doctrine of Dominance runs counter to everything AI represents. He is not concerned with dominating the game with shock and awe--big dunks and the like. Rather, he is content to operate outside the normal boundaries of the law. Answer ignores the niche to which he should be regulated, drawing a healthy dose of hate from the right way contingent in process.
His transcendent ignorance is exactly what Team USA needed. It was filled by an essentially Right Way cast of characters--heady folk not as concerned with their stats as the functioning of the team as a whole. Their failure on a world stage is as much of an indictment of the Right Way as Athens was.

That's right, Athens.

Olympics 2004 proved what everyone should have already known. It proved that prejudice against prototypical Young Black Males is the most misguided sentiment of all time; Melo and Lebron barely tasted the floor, while Larry was content to watch his team struggle to adapt to the Right Way that he so cherished.

His inflexibility told us volumes about him and predicted his subsequent failure with the New York Knicks with stunning accuracy.
For all of importance on the world stage, Iverson also tells us about ourselves. He shows us the true nature of the underdog, the one we should all rally behind like so many moths to a flame. He shows us that no matter how big the heart, how big the fight in the dog, there will always be someone around to tell us to hate that dog because it makes them feel insecure in their White Anglo-Saxon Protestant manhood.

Iverson is everything that the Right Way folks tell us should be, but with a casing so repellent to their blinkered gaze as to make them blind to his glory.

Decay

That's what happened to USA Basketball. I didn't see it coming. Chris Sheridan saw it coming. Whatever.

The reasons for their demise are unclear, maybe it's shooting, maybe it's size inside, maybe it's the philosophy of the coaching staff, but some shit needs to get solved before Athens repeats itself. Hopefully Kobe and Chauncey and Amare can solve these issues.