The beauty parlor’s filled with sailors
The circus is in town.
-Bob Dylan.
The NBA’s current explosion of stunning three point shooting marksmanship and strikingly elevated team and individual scoring totals, along with what seems (can you data analytics guys help us here?) like quantum leaps in athletic ability [1], tends to obscure the reality that the NBA, indeed the sport of basketball itself, has always had a transgressive edge to its otherwise smooth round surface.
But 178-164? Those were the numbers just posted in the 2019 All-Star game, not very different from those of the previous year, when, somehow — perhaps because the East and West divisions were scrambled, the players began taking the game a bit more seriously, as if inspired by the playground style choose-up that now determines the teams.
Starting with Dr. Naismith’s impetus (New England winters) for its conception, the sport of basketball was, from its inception, an attempt to strike back at nature’s annual assault — winter — on the ideology that was known as “muscular Christianity.” The other-worldly quality of the game’s current iteration to those who knew it in its original form has passed through several phases: to assert that the game has changed radically is now plainly old hat.
So what could be more in keeping than The Rising Stars event that kicks off the massive three day party which All-Star Weekend has become? Hosted at last by Charlotte — two years after originally so scheduled, so the host city could clean up its transgressive gender bathroom laws — this new (only in its second year) format that pits the league’s foreign born first and second year players against its native-born ones was a stroke of subtle feel-good genius. The kind of innovation that the league needed after David Stern’s stepping down as Commissioner, and that Adam Silver, Stern’s successor, and more of a people person, has strived to provide.
However much “Basketball: A Love Story,” ESPN’s magnificent 20 hour paean to the game demonstrated Stern’s brilliance as a visionary expansionist Gospel-spreader, not just an expert marketer (and, on occasion, authoritarian clown), Silver’s influence has been palpable and welcome. His addition of 40 year old Dirk Nowitzki and 37 year old Dwyane Wade (both twelve time All-Stars) to the respective team rosters was but one example of Silver’s soft touch and humanizing effect on the league’s image.
Among the scintillating group of young stars, what greater transgressor of boundaries than the nearly unspellable and completely unstoppable Giannis Antetokounmpo, who still plays the game with the kind child-like enthusiasm shared by the legion of lovers of the game who never dream of getting near the NBA?
Until he was a late teen, Giannis didn’t either: discovered as a raw unknown in a secondary league in Greece, he had flown so far under the radar that he initially refused to leave for America without his family. Not even for the NBA! Not until his agent, convinced that this was not just a marginal pro prospect, glimpsed what Giannis might become and nixed the idea of his staying home. Early in the game, his wondrous dunk of the hardest bounce pass ever (a high riser thrown down by Steph Curry) showed why it would’ve been unthinkable for him to have done otherwise.
As the rising new face of the now thoroughly international NBA, Antetokomnpo is a ridiculously spectacular raw athletic talent. And, though utterly unique, he is not alone. Along with Giannis, Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Ben Simmons, and Denver’s mildly out of place Nikola Jokic form a cadre of young players who sport athletic talents that are expanding the game’s scope and attracting new fans; even as fans of the traditional game scorn the nearly exclusive emphasis on three-pointers and the spectacular dunk, pining for the more physical play that many decried as mayhem in its own heyday.
This cohort of young stars (include Kristaps Porzingis when he returns from injury) appears poised to take over and become the face of the league, if only Warrior stars Curry and Kevin Durant would agree to move over. This was what the weekend’s events seemed to augur, watching the rookies cavort Friday night, followed by new Dunkathon champ Hamidou Diallo. He made himself into an instant brand by jumping over Shaquille O’Neal and hanging from his elbow on the rim, with his goofy but knowing Lefrak City smile, as if to jeer his town’s rejection of Amazon. Talk about transgression!
Had it become their league now, waiting to be complemented by Zion Williamson, the only player ever deemed potentially comparable to Lebron James? This was the burning question for basketball historians who view the weekend’s events as a chance to take stock, not just a raucous full-time party.
It certainly appeared that way in the 95-82 first half in which Antetokoumnpo dunked and cavorted his way to clear front-runner position for the MVP award, but the mere presence of Lebron James on the opposing squad was reason enough for the outcome to remain in doubt.
With the new format dictated by the two captains (the leading vote-getters) choosing up teams from the players voted in by the usual process, last year’s All-Star Game felt different from previous iterations. Even with just token defense, the new format seemed to kindle a competitive mind-set and excitement that was lacking for several decades, with the notable exception of 1992, when Magic Johnson turned his special cameo role into a transcendently sentimental un-retirement party. It may also have helped that the game was played considerably later in the season — well into its second half — and after the trading deadline had passed.
In the second half, James, quiet and reserved during the first stanza — as if taking a back seat while playing himself back into game shape following his serious groin injury — showed how quickly and dramatically he still can change a game. He ignited a tremendous flurry of three point shooting that propelled “Team Lebron” to a 50 point third quarter and 132-131 lead. This hot streak continued in the fourth, and deprived Antetokoumnpo of his anticipated MVP award.
Where the opposition’s spirit was broken was on James’s consecutive threes (the first of 2 over Embiid) for a 166-58 lead, followed with an emphatic dunk. That’s all he had to do. Game over.
Enter Kevin Durant to pick at the spoils. MVP? Durant? Where did he come from? He was simply The King’s main tool, among many, as James opened the box that was his team and let all bombs fly, with old Warrior foes Durant and Klay Thompson the most joyous recipients. James stepped back and watched it all come together, what he had orchestrated and ignited. I would have let him take off with the MVP trophy, as if he had done what Magic did in 1992, making his comeback when he’d never really left.
MVP Durant was really Lebron’s creation. Like Voltaire said, if God did not exist, man would have invented him. Or was that mot about James Worthy and Magic Johnson? The proper reading of that third quarter surge was that it’s still James’s league. May he acquire the help he needs soon enough to eat ripe fruit. Anthony, Kawhi, come West, to Team Lebron in Los Angeles. Playing with James makes everyone better, just as the game he plays both extends its boundaries and confirms its basic essence. Free agent to be, y’all come play with The King.
The pro game has been made more competitive, thanks to the rules changes that have combined with what seems like a developmental spurt in athleticism. But there is a nostalgia I feel for the days when the league was still struggling to make it and become legitimate. What feeds that nostalgia is a sense that the three point shot, along with rules restricting hand-checking, have hamstrung the defense needed to keep competitive tension throughout the game.
It’s as if all-star style is becoming the template for how the now and future game will be played. The half-time show featuring rapper J Cole went on interminably, as if to confirm and underline just how far my demographic has been thrown under the bus [2]. It’s as if they’ve built a wall none of us can vault. Perhaps that’s the only way to stop some of these new guys. Transgression is a young man’s game. Even without walls, some lines cannot so easily be crossed
Notes
1 As if a spate of Wilt Chamberlain’s undisclosed progeny had suddenly surfaced.
2 For the fifth straight year, my son, now 31 and a Bleacher Report executive, spent the Weekend cavorting around all the parties and ceremonies, while I stayed home with memories of where I came in: Game Number Four I 1954 in Madison Square Garden, the game that involved a recount (the 1954 version of instant replay) of MVP votes after Bob Cousy had sparked a flurry that sent a seemingly lost game into an overtime, enabling his East team eventually to prevail. Nostalgia, too, crosses boundaries, and, like Antetokoumnpo, steps lightly, but leaves a big footprint.