Congratulations on your national championship, University of Kentucky. This picture made me think of you.
Definition of VACATE
I had a nice little time yesterday afternoon. It was a beautiful spring day and the city basketball courts were full. I played a couple of games.
At one point I brought the ball up court, and someone who wasn’t my man picked me up, bumping me the whole way down. I dribbled with some power to make him commit, then pulled up five feet outside the three-point line while he kept going. Nothing but chain.
Hadn’t done that in a long time. I even said “get off me!” and tried to look him in the eyes, which I’m a little embarrassed about.
Played well the rest of the time. Hit a couple of threes. Had some nice passes. The nice thing about being me is that when a 300-pound man beats his guy by dribbling behind his back, everyone on the sidelines does that whole “Oh! Dang!” thing. What can I say? *humblebrag* It’s what I do.
After one of the games, while the next team was picking a side, one of the guys, who looked like he might still be in high school, asked if I’d dunk the ball. Just to show him. When guys asked me that ten (+) years ago, I’d throw it off the backboard, or tomahawk it. This time I had to tell the guy I might not be able to (the neighbor kid had asked me the day before and I hadn’t quite managed it), but since my legs were warm from playing I did a straight one-handed dunk pretty easily.
Then this kid wanted to throw me an alley-oop. Which he did. I missed, but was thankful that I threw it off the back of the rim instead of the front.
On the last play of one game I pump faked, which was credible because for the first time in a long time I was hitting from outside, drove baseline, and dunked with the left. The dunk was strong, because I’m huge, and it was on a double rim with chain nets. The sideline erupted in jeers and yelled advice about stopping me. Like in the old days.
The truth is, I barely got up high enough. And I had a running start.
I had taken my seven-year-old boy along to watch. I believe he was the reason I was so focused; I wanted to impress this little boy. I couldn’t wait to see if he’d bring it up when we left, I had to ask him right away: “Did you see your old man dunk?”
I said “old man” because I wanted to sound casual. I didn’t want to sound desperate. But I realized as I said it that I really am his old man. And I was desperate that he be impressed.
He was. More by the three-pointers than the dunk, but I didn’t care. I was happy. And I realized as we walked home that this might be the last time he sees me dunk a basketball.
I suppose it’s a little late for me to be realizing this, but I guess I’m passing the torch, whether I like it or not. I still play organized sports, and the younger kids are as impressed by me in my St. Andrew’s rugby kit as they are by professional athletes. But it’s time.
I’m not the basketball player anymore. They are. Little Joffre has a spin move, and I’m working on his crossover. I’m sure it’ll feel like no time at all when we’re in the driveway and he dunks on me. I’ll be very proud. I hope I’ll be ready.
The next generation.
Yes, I waited until the day after UNC exacted regular-season revenge on the Duke Blue Devils at Duke’s home arena before writing this. But it seemed petty to write it after Duke beat UNC at the Dean Smith Center on Austin Rivers’ last-second shot. And I didn’t think about Duke all in between the two games. I’m not an ACC guy. So I’m writing this now, while Duke’s on the mind.
I just don’t like Duke.
I don’t have the unreasonable but very rational hatred of Duke that a UNC or even an NC State fan has. Again, I’m not an ACC fan.
In some ways Duke is like the N.Y. Yankees of college basketball, in that they have a clean-cut image and get whatever they want. And oh, yeah, they win all the time. They’re easy to hate because of that. But that’s not why I don’t like them.
You might think that I pull against them because of their mascot, the Blue Devils. And you’d be right to think that’s an issue with me. But I have a limited amount of vituperation in my heart, so I reserve all the “demonic mascot” hate I have for another ACC team, which thankfully has been doing terribly the past few years: those wicked Demon Deacons of Wake Forest. (Seriously? A Deacon wasn’t scary enough for you? Have you ever met a Baptist deacon?) So that’s not the reason.
They annoy me because they’re so white.
And listen, I’ll pull for a white dude because he’s white. This is another topic I’ve been meaning to write on, so I won’t say a lot about it here. Suffice for now to say that I hate it when comfortable white suburbanites think they’re not as good as other athletes because they’re white, when the truth is that it’s because they’re suburbanites. I’ve got a lot to say on the topic, but I’ll save it for another.
When NCAA Tournament rolls around, I’ll pull for some little college from Podunk, Indiana or Nowheresville, Kentucky. And to a great degree I’ll pull for them because most of their players are white. Love to see the white boys do well. I’ve been the only white guy on the floor often enough. But again, the race thing here is not about pulling for the underdog; white dudes aren’t underdogs in sport.
Which brings us back to Duke. Not only are they white, they’re prep school white. Like that private high school in town that has the best of all the equipment, has the best coaches, has great recruiting. All the things that annoy people about Duke get to me too, not in se, but because they do it while being so white. And yes, I know who Austin Rivers’ dad is. And yes, I know lots of black players have played and do play for Duke.
But every year they roll out what looks like a collection of the very best basketball players white America had to offer. And that’s what bothers me. I love to see some white dude slam a rebound back in over some guy’s head. I just don’t feel good about it when it’s a white all-star team. The UNC rivalry shows this off to good effect, because UNC is as “classy” a program as Duke is. Both are clean programs with long histories of winning. Their campuses are forty-five minutes apart. So why is it that every year UNC rolls out four or five black players against Duke’s four or five white players?
I know there have umpteen times seventeen posts about sports recently. The phase will pass, I am sure. Anyway, this is more of a fashion thing than a sports thing.
I just want to express my admiration for Rudy Gay and the Memphis Grizzlies for busting out the old school Memphis Tams uniforms. Marc Gasol always looks like he couldn’t jump off the ground if you put a Kareem-skyhook-powerup-mushroom on the rim. But when Rudy Gay starts looking like he has no hops, that’s when you know you’re rolling truly old school.
Gay has admitted to being the one who chose these jerseys, and apparently he’s gotten some flack for it. They do look a little goofy. But mostly they look strong and pure. Or like a women’s netball team.
Jeremy Lin has burst on the scene, the first American man of Chinese/Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA. He’s Harvard-educated, is well-spoken, has been fearless on the court so far, and has a pure game. After watching him play the Wolves and Lakers this weekend, I had to go back and YouTube the highlights for his previous four (I think it was four) games. They were an absolute blast to watch.
The man only has four or five starts under his belt, but wow, have they been sexy.
He’s been cut by a couple of NBA teams. He was undrafted out of college. He wasn’t offered any scholarships when he came out of high school (Standford boosters have been mad about that for years).
I admit that I find it quite a novelty to see an Asian man playing guard. I mean, his first step is so good. He takes hits in the air and still makes buckets. His layups over helping big men are downright acrobatic. And all of that seems incongruous to me, because Lin is Asian.
I think that’s making people pull for him.
Lin has been dealing with racial and racist stuff for a long time. He’s playing a sport he shouldn’t be playing. Everything from being called “chink” to having a kindly arena attendant inform him when he was in college that there was no volleyball that day, only basketball.
But none of that’s surprising. And honestly, it’s kind of fun to watch him put a lot of stereotypes to bed. There is, however, besides the Asian racism, a tangential racist element to this whole Lin thing.
It starts with the Lin-Tebow comparisons. Lin is blowing up, and he’s being compared to Tim Tebow. Unexpected success, focus on teammates, electrifyingly unusual play (less unusual in Lin’s case, but not orthodox), the wait for the magic to run out. And oh yeah, the God thing.
The New York Knicks sensational Asian-American point guard is exciting fans everywhere with his play and endearing himself into the hearts of many who otherwise wouldn’t watch a quarter of NBA basketball, all while giving thanks to God at every opportunity. (Yahoo Sports)
I’ve read or heard comments from several sources on his propensity for thanking God, although he’s much less over the top than Tebow. There’s a little eyebrow raise, a little snicker or knowing smile from the TV personality, and they move on to talking about his game.
"Jesus!"
Lin grew up as a Christian. He says he’d like to be a pastor. People are talking about it.
If I were a black man, I’d be angry. You can’t count the number of black professional athletes who grew up as Christians, would like to be pastors, and thank God or Jesus every time they’re interviewed.
Nobody talks about them because the cultural intelligentsia and the bourgeois-buy-ins have decided that Christianity is part of the black cultural handicap. We expect blacks to be Christians because they’re poor and less well-educated. Or at least their grandmas were.
It’s just amazing when a nice clean-cut white boy from north Florida displays the same tendencies. But I guess we can understand it. I mean, north Florida is practically the Bible belt, and his parents were crazy missionaries. Fine. But wait. You’re telling me this Chinese kid from Palo Alto, who could’ve gone to any school he wanted to and settled on Harvard, is a vocal Christian as well? No way…he’s probably good at math and everything. Even more amazing than Tebow, frankly.
Tebow was far from the first person to open his post-game interviews with “first of all, I’d just like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”. To a large degree, people are reacting to his and Lin’s Christianity because they’re not ignorant black folks. The truth is, all the college-educated white people are ashamed of their Christian heritage, just as their parents are. They think that sounding educated and smart means not being a Christian, or keeping one’s Christianity safely out of sight. They don’t know what to do with men like Tebow and Lin, who don’t buy into that lie; they don’t know what to do because Tebow and Lin are smart and educated like them.
If I were a black man I’d be insulted by this reaction. It doesn’t matter how smart I am or how well-educated I am, it’s expected that I’m too dumb to escape the lies of my upbringing; I definitely wasn’t smart enough to decide on my own that I want to be a Christian and follow Jesus.
Just give up, black man I could have been. Just accept it. You’re scary on the football field, or when you go out for a drink, but you’re nothing but cute when you open your mouth and try to talk. Such a well-spoken young man, that’s what you are.
