Lamar Blogom celebrates its first Thanksgiving with a feast fit for a king. The seazon has so far yielded bountiful treasures with the promise of many more to come. So, we list 24 things that we are thankful for:
Andrew Bynum becoming Big Pussy and flashing strands of future greatness.
ATLanta proving that you can win games with a roster of only people 6'7" or 6'8".
The Heat collapsing in on themselves like some kind of aging supernova.
Starbury's Starburies.
Nate Robinson swatting Yao Ming.
Yao Ming, best center in the league.
Kevin Garnett, tortured soul in search of absolution.
Amare's return.
Josh Smith.
Gerald Wallace.
Brendan Haywood's favorite movie is Coming to America.
CP3 and Weezy F. Baby bringing back the N.O.
Chris Bosh making game winning 3s.
Don Nelson taking over the Yay Area.
Monta Ellis.
Jerry Sloan fashioning a sleek new version of Old School.
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.
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.
