Among the more contrarian aspects of my sports fandom is an aversion to hyperbole in general, and Big Events in particular as a means of describing and defining the games I witness. It’s probably a snobbish impulse, because Business 101 tells us that supersizing anything is the way to bring in the casual consumer, and I fancy my approach to watching sports as anything but casual. Nevertheless, superstars boost ratings, and every sport secretly hopes that their league will be blessed with the next Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, etc. (This is not limited to sports: Longtime music fans have lost count of the number of people anointed the “next Dylan” or the “new Bob Marley.”)
I say this, of course, in the wake of all the hoopla piled on top of LeBron James’s legitimately spectacular and unarguably memorable performance in Game Five of the Cavs-Pistons series. I’ve read at least three or four accounts that refer to the performance as the real crowning of King James, as the moment LeBron went from everyday superstar to the status of icon or myth or legend–what we used to call a “superstar” before the language was cheapened.
When confronted with this stuff, a little war goes on in my brain. First, I guess I’m envious that I can’t just submit to the frenzy of the moment, devoid of all context, and swim in the melodramatic agony and ecstasy of it all. But the more rational, analytical side is saying to the television (or computer or newspaper), “get a grip.”
Here’s why: A year ago at this time, everyone was raving about how Dirk Nowitzki had taken that next step, had emerged from pure scorer up to inspiring team leader. The hype and hubbub over Dirk’s playoff performance last season (until the last four games against Miami, when everyone then immediately went crazy for Dwyane Wade) is how and why Notwitzki was awarded the MVP this year; which, if anyone watched both Nowitzki and Steve Nash this season, was a travesty even before Nowitzki was exposed against Golden State.
Now, LeBron has always had way more raw talent and potential than Nowitzki, and, in my opinion, has been a better player the past two seasons *even before his world-shaking Game Five.* (Readers with good memories might recall that I picked LeBron as the NBA MVP in 2005-06.) So, obviously, the point here is not to rip or otherwise belittle LeBron, but to chafe at the black-and-white, all or nothing way the major-media machinery operates when covering sports. I practically threw a shoe through my television set listening to Magic and Barkley and the rest criticizing LeBron for passing off to Donyell Marshall for the trey attempt that was a make-or-break bucket in Game One. Who doesn’t think that if Marshall hits that shot the same blowhards aren’t gushing about how the superstar “made something happen” by drawing the defense and shrewdly compelling the win with his pass, perhaps even pointing out how it is an example of LeBron wanting to be more Magic than Michael in the way he involves his teammates on the court? The bullshit came full circle when LeBron eschewed all passes and took it hard to the hole in Game Two, only to get hacked by Rip Hamilton and thus missing the basket for another last-possession loss. Magic and Barkley both put on their bobbleheads and agreed that “you can’t expect to get that call on the road.” Hey, maybe that could have been a reason to dish it to Marshall in Game One.
So now LeBron scores 29 of his team’s final 30 points and those who subscribe to the philosophy that your superstar has to be selfish and win games by himself are vindicated. Yup, it’s nice and neat that way. It’s just that a part of me wants to point out–as the wonderful trio of Marv Albert, Doug Collins and Steve Kerr did during the contest–that if Eric Snow isn’t in the game to strip the ball from Pistons players without fouling down the stretch, LeBron never gets the chance to be a superhero. Putting Snow in for defensive purposes was just one of the many smart moves Cavs coach Mike Brown has made in this series–another was giving LeBron a 3 and a half minute rest to start to the 4th quarter–but Magic and others such as The Sports Guy Bill Simmons had been ripping and second-guessing Brown before then. (Now, of course, it is Flip Saunders being ripped and second-guessed for not guarding LeBron more diligently. Perhaps Saunders was set up by the ball movement LeBron had fostered in the previous games; you know, the thing Barkley and Magic ripped on.) For that matter, if LeBron had missed only two instead of three crunchtime free throws, the game never would have gone into a second overtime.
So what’s my point? That team sports are just that; a team game, full of all sorts of wonderful subtleties and wrinkles that ultimately mean as much or more than the jaw-dropping performances by the superstars. That the glory of LeBron had emerged before his Game Five explosion, when he combined with Hughes and Pavlovic to create the most suffocating perimeter defense in the Eastern Conference; and when his constant encouragement of rookie guard Daniel Gibson gave Gibson the confidence to come in and attempt, let alone make, a series of tough shots that totally swung the momentum of this series over the Cleveland. (Ask Fred Hoiberg why he was more valuable with the Wolves than anywhere else and he’ll tell you it was the confidence invested in him by KG.)
The all-or-nothing crew is now going with the meme that LeBron single-handedly beat the Pistons. And sure, if all you do is read the box score and focus on the superstar, you see that 29 of his team’s last 30 is pretty damned single-handed. But how has the previously unflappable Chauncey Billups gotten so flustered in this series? Why has a seasoned squad of Pistons who nearly all the “experts” claimed was the undisputed class of the East and would wipe out the Cavs in this round, has instead gotten just two nail-biting home wins (that could have easily gone the other way) in the first five games? The fact is that those who called for an easy Detroit series underestimated LeBron’s supporting cast (team defense is so boring and easy to ignore, doncha know). Now that the Cavs are on the verge of upsetting their conventional wisdom, these same “experts” continue to disregard Brown’s coaching savvy and the Cavs’ synergy, and instead proclaim King James–it’s so much easier, and cleaner, without the messy details.
The reason I love LeBron James is because through it all, and against an industrial-strength myth-making machinery that could inflate even the soundest of egos, he understands the context of what is happening here. No one disputes that without LeBron the Pistons win this in 4 or 5. But it isn’t all spectacular talent and a knack for coming up big either. Substitute Kobe for LeBron and the Pistons win this in 4 or 5 too. (Imagine how Kobe would have made Z and Varajo and Pavlovic feel during the season and the post-season; or how he would have reacted to Gibson taking over once in awhile.)
And yes, LeBron *has* matured and taken it to another level in this series, and, just maybe, we’ll look back someday and consider this the great harbinger of the second coming of Jordan. But, eh, maybe not. And that’s my problem with The Sports Guy lately. I single him out, Bill Simmons, because he’s my favorite sportswriter (has been ever since Bob Ryan went simultaneously senile and Neanderthal a few years back and then Ralph Wiley died), and has proven on many occasions that he knows the beautiful intricacies of the game, beyond the hype. But in the past six months or so, Simmons has stooped to conquer. Humor will always be his saving grace–he makes me laugh out loud nearly every column–but he’s increasingly decided to shelve nuance and play into the lumpen “regular shmoe” stereotype. And that means hype. So it’s not enough that LeBron, in Simmons’ words, “made LeLeap” in Game Five; it has to mean that the Cavs “are gonna own the East for the next 10-12 years.”
This is consistent with Simmons proclaiming the team that acquired Allen Iverson to be a world-beater, and that AI would practically destroy every opponent in his path once freed from Philly. The reality, of course, was that he was paired with the wrong fellow-star (Melo) and the wrong coach (George Karl) and faded away this season, even as Iguodala was emerging as his star-replacement for the Sixers. Ditto Simmons’s obsessive fixation on his beloved Celtics getting Greg Durant in the lottery. It wasn’t enough that this was, perhaps, a one-in-five chance: Every team had to be evaluated on whether they were or were not tanking, and what that meant; lottery histories had to be analyzed; college basketball had to be trumpeted while the NBA was besmirched. And for what? So a bunch of ping-pong balls could blow the whole fucking thing out of the water and expose the fixation to be much (much much much) ado about nothing? So, now that his Celts don’t have Durant and LeBron goes off for 48 and puts the Cavs on the brink of the first trip to the Finals, Boston is toast through 2017? Here’s hoping the Sports Guy stops looking for the, ah, Big Picture, and contents himself with the games, one game at a time. Because the beautiful thing about sports is that nothing ever stays the same, or very predictible for very long.
And when it does, when genuine team greatness occurs, the casual fans frown and turn off their sets. That seems to be the case with the San Antonio Spurs, who have won so often that they have lost their cache, or become like rooting for the Yankees or something. Except that’s bullshit. First of all, the Spurs are not your classic “overdog.” Yeah, they totally lucked out winning Tim Duncan in the lottery, but since then have built their team by being ahead of the curve by scouting international talent, which is how they landed Tony Parker (France) and Manu Ginobili (Argentina) with very late draft picks, making a trio with Duncan that, along with demanding coach Gregg Popovich, comprise the heart and soul of the Spurs. And few teams in any sport have produced so much heart and soul over a 5-10 year period.
Second, in almost direct opposition to their second and third championship teams earlier this decade, the Spurs have become a hell of a lot of fun to watch. In this year’s playoffs, only Golden State provided more sheer basketball excitement, and unlike the Warriors, the Spurs weren’t going to keep pulling the trigger on a game of Russian roulette until things ended predictably badly. San Antonio isn’t about lightning in a bottle: Their fireworks are gorgeous precisely because they’re as voluminous and well-choreographed as the skies over the Hudson on the 4th of July. Just because everyone on the team–from Duncan down to 12th man Benny Udrih–has a pretty well-defined role doesn’t mean it isn’t exciting or downright glorious to watch. No NBA has a pair of penetrators as adept as Parker and Ginobili. Few if any teams have a half-dozen players who are legitimate threats to hit the three-pointer. With Ginobili’s former Argentian national team collegue Oberto emerging at age 32 beside Duncan, no team has a more intelligent pair of low-post players. Oh, and I know this is boring and “hard to watch,” but *no* team in basketball plays defense as diligently and seamlessly and selflessly as the Spurs.
But the Spurs are also a flavor that the public thinks it has already tasted, and so they get ignored, even by the commentators. In Game Four of the Jazz-Spurs series, if one had only been listening to the idiotic spew of Mark Jackson and (to a lesser extent) his cohorts Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen, one would have thought that Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer were laying waste to San Antonio: In fact, despite all the gushing Jackson was making about the Jazz’s top two players, Utah never led after the midpoint of the first quarter and was beaten at home by a dozen.
To their credit, Sports Illustrated and Simmons have both correctly noted that after more than a decade in the league and with three rings already in his safe deposit box, Tim Duncan is playing the best basketball of his life. But Duncan has to share MVP honors with Ginobili for the Suns series (the true NBA Finals this year) and with Parker for the Jazz series. And Duncan probably doesn’t get those “better than ever” headlines without Oberto making opponents pay dearly for all the low-post double-teams on TD, especially the numerous times he’s cut along the weakside baseline and Duncan has found him for an easy layup.
For all the times Parker and Ginobili have flown through the air, that Duncan has dipsy-doodled a turnaround hook for a banker on the right low block, the Ginobili has drawn the charge or pulled up for a trey or he or Parker have drawn the D and then dished to vets like Barry and Finley and Horry for treys–well, it is just beautiful, beautiful basketball that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the classic Celtic teams from the 60s as well as the 80s (and I saw them all). Simmons is wrong: This hasn’t been a terrible year for the NBA. Not with the Spurs refusing to give an inch to all comers (and the AI-Melo Nugs, Nash-Amare Suns and DWill-Boozer Jazz are a pretty good test). Not with LeBron and the Cavs’ defense quickening. Not with an eight seed toppling a 67-win team in a manner that indicated it wasn’t a fluke. On the brink of the NBA Finals–which the marketers are probably already concocting to be a Godhead versus Dynasty matchup–the game has produced a bounty of marvels. And just between you and me, they’re especially satisfying when put into their proper context, with the subtle, team aspects allowed their place.