If a homey's still moving, he's holding it down

Alright, I admit that the title of this post is quoting Lil' Wayne's fiery track "Georgia Bush". I also admit that "homey" was a completely different word in the track, a word that shouldn't be tossed around by whitey.

The subject of this post isn't the revitalization of N.O., nor is it something about the durrrty in general. No, Lamar throws his gaze to Phila, where AI is currently keeping it real as shit. A teenage was shot because he refused to give up his Answer jersey to a group of ruffians, and now Answer is paying for his funeral. Among all the things A.I. has done in his career, this is without a doubt the most noble and selfless. Well, duh.

We've talked about Iverson before, but in the context of Team USA and their doctrine of dominance. Now, his relationship to the Lig at large is examined.

I've never enjoyed watching Allen Iverson. Perhaps it's the Finals appearance against my beloved Lakers in 2001, or maybe I harbor some latent feelings of supressed racism, but his game is generally without aesthetic merits as far as I'm concerned.

That does not mean that he is without import to the Lig. Entirely the opposite--because he makes whitey so uncomfortable by fearlessly repping his thug/gangsta image, he is demonized in whatever he does. The conventional wisdom is that he doesn't share the ball enough because he's too "street," or that he hot-dogs too much for his own damn good.
One of those criticisms is perhaps true: for all his merits, Iverson didn't tend to share the ball around a whole lot until two years ago. But both deny the man's insane toughness and win-at-all-costs sensibility. Iverson should, by all rights, be revered by the Right Way NBA for his bulldog mentality. Dude tosses his 6'0"-and-skinny frame into the fires of war each and every time he rides onto the hardwood, but cannot shake the demonic marker that has been so cruelly placed upon his slender shoulders. No matter how hard he attacks the bucket, he will forever be regarded as a ballhog showoff who just happens to have played for some damn good basketball teams.

When Larry Brown, that paragon of righteous basketball, helmed the 76ers, Iverson was faced with a constant battle. Although Brown clearly acknowledged that Iverson could and should be the only scoring option on the team, there were mighty battles waged in the press between the two. Iverson's famous practice speach is just one small example of their ongoing struggle.

What cannot be ignored about their pairing is that it worked. Kinda. They made the damn Finals in 2001 with nothing beyond Iverson, Aaron McKie, and Dikembe Mutombo on either end of the floor. Iverson did nothing less than single-handedly win every game for the 76ers, dragging them by their struggling hair into some version of the promised land.

They fell short, and Larry was greeting with resounding praise for his fabulous job wringing success from what should have been a fruitless measure. The praise fell upon the wrong head. For all of his flaws, and they are many and multifarious, Iverson holds shit down on the offensive end. Sacrificing your body 82 games (and more) at a time is a measure that should not, by rights, be undertaken by an individual that could be described as shrimpy.

However, because of Answer's heart, lungs, and brains, he does that shit daily, with little help from any of his compatriots.

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.

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.

I Never Though You'd Be A Junkie Because Heroin is so Passe

Since blaming Isiah Thomas for Knickerbocker woes has gone the way of bellbottoms, Starbury shoulders most of the abuse.

In the words of Tony Wilson: "You're just fucking wrong."

To put it bluntly, Starbury is perceived as a cancer; a shoot-first point guard in a world where that role is regulated to the trash heap designated for other Next Jordan candidates. That Starbs occupies the same space as Franchise is an experiment that is every bit as valid as the PHX.

The experiment was doomed to failure from its inception with the hiring of LB to coach the Knicks; as soon as Franchise was traded, Starbury correctly assessed that they needed to play one style only--run and gun.

His statement is a testament to an intelligence rarely attributed to ballers, especially those from the streets.

Zeke should not attempt to control this monster, as LB did, but rather let it run its course. Put five guards on the floor, don't be constricted by the social norms that dictate the way that basketball should be played.

It worked at Villanova, and we know the normal stuff sure as hell didn't work last year, so why not allow Starbury to control his own fate? Steph is not the one to blame for the NYK debacle, nor is Zeke.

Isiah has built a team designed to destroy, but to destroy in a very specific way. LB did not unlock the secret. Maybe Zeke can, but I have a feeling that the keyholder might be suiting up in #3 for them next Fall.

In Which the Quandary of Darko is Discussed

Darko is perhaps one of the biggest quandaries of the 2003, or any draft. See my post yesterday for why he didn't fit in with the Pistons, but it's debatable whether or not any of the players drafted before or after him would've added a damn thing to that mix.

The Pistons' starting 5 was and is a mortal lock every single year. It is very probable that had anyone--aside from LBJ--been drafted to that team, they would have spent the majority of two years languishing on the bench. 'Melo, Dwyane, and Bosh are all very good players, players that would start for any team in the league... Now.

Had the Piston's picked any of them, we would still be reading stories about how they're flourishing in practice, or waiting for their chance to shine.

By drafting Darko, Joe Dumars sealed his fate as a disappointment for the Pistons. With a coach that hates rookies and foreigners, it is highly retarded to pick someone in the draft who is both. It's avoidable to pick rookies in the draft: Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were both veterans of sorts.

However, someone as raw as Darko was doomed to languish, forever lost, on the Piston's bench simply because Larry Brown rocks it like the Know-Nothing Party. Now that Darko has found his place on the Magic, he has a chance to establish himself as another premier player emerging from that draft of yore.

If Darko does pull the sword from the stone and takes his place at the Round Table of King James, the Magic will wield a frontcourt the likes of which the world has never seen. Dwight Howard is still immature, and look what he does on the daily.

If the Magic get their hands on Rudy Gay, watch the fuck out.