NBA Eve

On the eve of the NBA season, we witness the passing of a legend. As tragic as his demise is, I have no frame of reference other than that provided by the occasionally good Sports Guy.

The man's death is tragic; no-one has meant more (sports-related) to a city probably ever. The only one who comes close is Larry Bird. Notice how all of these are in Boston.

Is that because Boston is so depressing that only sports give it meaning?

Or is it that Bill Simmons is the only column I read that deals with this shit?

We report, you decide.

* * *

City-wide days of mourning aside, a truly joyous time is about to happen on earth. Kicking off in Miami and LA, the season starts with two tantalizing matchups. Both match Conference Finalists against their first round opponents and both involve seriously talented 2-guards.

That's where the similarities end. Miami should be (in Lamar's estimation) the most hated champion in recent memory, whereas Phoenix will be (hopefully) the most loved in the near future. The Lakers and Bulls are both former products of that 90s-Early 00s star-centric system that placed a premium on acquiring one or two players with limitless talent and surrounding them with semi-crappy but cheap players.

If anything, the Suns take the Jordan Mandate to an extreme unrelated to it and yet ultimately so. Their #1 superstar is a formerly floppy-haired Canuck obsessed with the possibility that he can be defined not by supernatural gifts of his own, but rather that he gathers his worth from making the mundane abilities of his teammates somehow transcendent of the basketball norm.

The Suns revolve around Nash, but at the same time control him. He is Frankenstein, he creates the monster, but ultimately the monster makes its master the slave.

Because the Suns revolve so much around a singular star, one might say that they fit the Jordan Mandate perfectly, but that ignores the essential reality of Sunsiness.

Sunsiness means that they are more than the sum of their parts. They assemble a whole that functions together as a whole, but to which one part is so integral that without it the entirety of the system would collapse.

Nash is not only the defining factor of the Suns factory, but he is also the one most victimized by its existence as a seamless entity. Nash is defined by the Suns system--run and shoot, shoot and run--and struggles not to overcome it. He is nothing more than a worker in the Suns farm, and yet he owns the farm himself.

Wave of Mutilation

Small Forwards are incapable of deciding a game of basketball. Since Larry Legend, none of the swingmen have done anything but flail helplessly at the monolith of guards and centers. While SFs are often praised for their versatility, that same versatility also condemns them to the life of an outsider--never intimately wrapped up in the outcome of the game. The ghetto of the swingman is one near impossible to break out of. If one does, one does it in style.

On to the next two of my Starting Five.

SF: Gerald Wallace

A ghetto superstar if there ever was one. G Walls was dumped unceremoniously on the Bobcats by the Sacto Kings after he failed to develop as they thought he might.

There, he blossomed into a dunking and occasionally shotblocking force at the SF spot, finally reaching a more perfect state in 2005-6 season. His offensive game has matured to the point of illness, his defensive game on its way.

His dunks have some of the power of Nique, along with some of his explosiveness to and from the ball. If he ever harnesses his physical power more than he has now, watch out.

PF: Josh Smith

He's techinically an SF, but then what the hell do positions mean anyways?

Smith is raw power embodied--his dunks are the most vicious since Shawn Kemp. He is still figuring out how to play the game though.

One night he might block five shots, dunk the ball six times, and make the opposing coach cry twice, but the next he could slip down into the oblivion that has occupied Small Forwarddom since Legend and Nique hung up their spikes.

He will fit into this squad's tempo perfectly, and give us another crazy person to hammer down dunks on unsuspecting opposition.