I Love This Game

I love basketball.

I love everything about the game. I love 5 men moving on a string. I love making the extra pass. I love alley oops. I love the trash talk.

I played hundreds of hours of pickup basketball in college. If I didn’t live in a city with seemingly no hoops, I would play more now as a 25 year old.

I fell in love with basketball when I was 8 and living in Knoxville, Tennessee. My dad bought my brother and I a hoop that we perched at the top of our driveway. During the spring and summer, we would sit outside for hours shooting hoops and listening to the same Jimmy Buffett album over and over and over.

Our driveway was on the top of a hill, so anytime the ball would kick right off the rim we would have to dash to try and cut it off before it went down in to the valley between our property and the neighbors’.

It was on this driveway that I learned a lot of the fundamentals of basketball. Aiming for the top corner of the box above the basket gave you the best shot at making it. Forget the swish…that was for showboats who had talent. For guys like me, it was bank shots and tear drops and layups and finding the open guy. It was defense. It was all of the little things that you have to do to make yourself useful as a marginally athletic white kid in the CBFO 8-10 year old league.

(It was also learning that you couldn’t block the old man’s scoop shot, and to foul him on the arm was not the solution.)

Because I loved basketball and I was 8 and I collected sports cards, I became mesmerized by the NBA.

The Charlotte Hornets were my team, and I had a poster of “The Sting” (Alonzo Mourning / Mugsy Bogues / Larry Johnson) on my door. I loved Kenny Gattison and Dell Curry and a washed up Robert Parrish. I had Hornets wallpaper.

When the team transitioned in to the Glen Rice Era, which begat the David Wesley / Bobby Phills Era, which begat the  Baron Davis / Jamaal Mashburn Era, I went for the ride. I was Teal and Purple through and through.

(I remember LOVING when we traded for Vlade Divac and all we had to give up was some high school kid named Kobe Bryant. Also, teal and purple?! Really?! You couldn’t have made the colors something cooler than teal and purple?)

Then the Hornets moved. I wasn’t shocked as much as I was depressed. I had no team. Suddenly I didn’t care as much about the league; once the ball started rolling on the team’s relocation, which we saw coming a couple of years out, I became desensitized.. It also didn’t help that the players were less likeable. Baron Davis isn’t exactly the easiest guy to root for.

My love for the game, however, never changed. I still loved shooting baskets on the driveway. I still loved aiming for the top corner of the box, even though we were living in Wisconsin instead of Tennessee and our driveway wasn’t as fun. I still loved that Jimmy Buffett album.

Then, along came LeBron. Sure, I had no team. But at least now I had a player that sucked me in.

James became my favorite player the moment he stepped in to the league. I had never been as in awe of someone’s physical ability, except for maybe Sean Taylor or Kayden Kross. It was like rediscovering something that I had forgotten about.

I couldn’t believe a man of his size could jump and run and PASS like that. It was absurd. It was like a real life Monstar. And even crazier, he was only a couple of years older than me.

And so, last night, for the first time in forever, I was actually invested in a team that won the NBA Championship.

I don’t know if I can truly be considered a Heat fan. I started writing for a Heat blog in 2009. They were mediocre. Very mediocre. Being a free agent fan at the time, they obviously became the team I cared the most about, but by no means did their day to day success impact my outside world as, say, the ‘Canes did.

That summer, the Heat signed James and Bosh. All of a sudden Miami was the axis upon which the basketball universe turned. The only team I really cared at all about had suddenly signed the player I cared the most about. I might not be dyed in the wool, but you bet your ass I was rooting on the Heat.

I had defended LeBron against his (at the time) small group of detractors for as long as I could remember. Here was a likable superstar who played like a combination of Magic and Russell and Jordan and was, by all accounts, a good guy. He was the kind of player that would define our generation as Jordan had defined the previous.

To dislike him seemed inane to any true lover of hoops.

And inevitably, the reason for the hatred was not about basketball.

The Decision and the parade were in poor taste and more to the point, stupid. But he was a 25 year old kid. I do and say dumb things pretty damned often. I apologize and everyone moves on. LeBron apologized, and NO ONE moved on.

LeBron deserved some criticism and to be held to a higher level. However, he did not deserve to be held up to Mount Olympus, or the Mount Olympus sized heap of vitriol he received every single day.

And so, today, as a LeBron defender and fan, I feel vindicated.

This is not an “I told you so”.

It is important I say that, because pretty much all you will be reading today is people saying they were right.

I am here to tell you the exact opposite, in fact: we were all WRONG.

The Heatles won their first title last night. I expect many more, but even if they never come last night was a defining moment not just for the principals involved but for basketball as a whole.

The game has changed, and yet it has also remained the same.

When I say everyone was wrong, I mean that no one was right.

When The Decision happened, the nation was split evenly in to two camps. One side said the Heat would never win because they were too top heavy. The other side said it didn’t matter, give me three superstars (or two superstars and one mere All  Star) and figure the rest out later.

The former was always a ridiculous argument. Look at the history of the NBA. Before the reserve clause came down, you had stacked teams like Russell’s Celtics and West’s Lakers and Wilt’s 76ers.

Then free agency started and parity began to take hold, but the fact remained that the few dominant teams featured multiple superstars.

Magic had Kareem and Worthy.

Dr. J had Moses Malone and Mo Cheeks and the very underrated Andrew Toney.

Bird had McHale and  Parrish and DJ.

Isaiah had Dumars and the Bad Boys.

Jordan had Pippen and Grant / Rodman.

Duncan had Robinson, and later Ginobli and Parker.

Shaq had Kobe.

Kobe had Shaq and then Gasol.

Every definitive superstar relied on someone else to do a LOT of heavy lifting.

 Jordan’s dominance in the playoffs lead to a narrative that the best player won. That was often true, but he didn’t do it alone. No great player is an island. To say that LeBron teaming with Wade and Bosh was any different that Jordan teaming with Pippen and Rodman was just as ridiculous then as it is now. The only difference was the manner in which it was done. And that is a function of the times and our expectations, not the reality of winning basketball games.

The latter argument, that supporting cast doesn’t matter, was just as absurd. It is impossible to name a champion that didn’t have a shining moment from a reserve or role player. This year’s Finals was no different.  Take out the contributions of Shane Battier, Mario Chalmers, Mike Miller and Norris Cole and the Thunder are NBA Champions. That’s just the way it is.

The bottom line is that basketball is at its core the same game that we have always loved. Its strategies change. The physicality and speed change. The rules change slightly. But “The Secret”, as Bill Simmons wrote effusively about in his Book of Basketball, is still the same. First, you have to have talent that sets you apart. Second, the guys that have that talent have to be willing to sacrifice individual accomplishments for team accomplishments. Third, you have to get a little lucky.

Everything that was talked about for the past two years was just chin music compared to this inevitable truth: the Heat were really fucking good, and as soon as they found their lane they would be unstoppable.

And so this championship was about The Secret. Like it always is. Basketball purists can smile today knowing that to be true.

However, there is no denying that it is also about LeBron.

LeBron is a player that truly embraced The Secret. In years past he would have been celebrated. Not for the way he switched teams, or the way he faded in the Finals last year, but for his overall body of work.

The problem with the Information Age is that everyone gets a take and there is no filter. I mean, you are reading this on a blog that was free for me to set up and is free to publish. I do not have an editor. There are thousands of people like me, and everyone wants to be unique. These “unique” takes pile up, and they can become crushing. It is easy to lose sight of the forest through the trees, and that sucks.

Last night, LeBron shut everybody up, finally. His team won, and they won because he saved his best for last. It was about basketball last night, and hopefully that will be the new narrative.

LeBron facilitated a true team effort.

He scored when needed, but also created scoring opportunities for his teammates, like Mike Miller’s corpse.

He rebounded.

He was the centerpiece of the best team defensive effort seen in years, the ultimate queen on the chess board, the guy who was able to defend five positions.

He stayed calm and made sure his teammates did too.

He was vindicated, far more so than any of his fans. And that is saying something, as I literally cannot stop smiling as I write this.

LeBron showed us that we all should maybe shut up and let things play out every now and then. Maybe it is important to stop looking for an angle and just watch the game sometimes.

He made me feel as happy as I did on that driveway in Knoxville, because it looked like that was exactly what he was doing. Playing basketball the way it is supposed to be played, in its purest form. He took The Secret, embraced it, and then made it in to a true art form.

He picked his team up and carried them to a title, not by taking every shot, but by playing the game the way it oughta be played.

Basketball is a beautiful sport, perhaps the finest team sport. And LeBron is the best at playing it.

(Okay, maybe this was a little bit of an “I Told You So”.)