The Price Of Flight Is Weight And Size

I'm writing up a post about the Suns' and the Nuggets' defensive psychoses, but it won't be here until tomorrow. In the meantime, check out something I wrote in jubilation last year after the Warriors whupped up on the Mavericks. For old time's sake. (I'm crying inside.) This is barely readable, incidentally.

I took a class on the history of music in the 20th century last summer. It was taught by the smartest man I've ever met, and was the best class I've ever taken. Most of the classes in the program are full of in-jokes and bonding, memories and irreplicable moments - not this class. We never talked to each other. We were too fascinated by what we were learning to manufacture in-jokes and make deep, lasting friendships. In that, our class was unique among all the classes there. And what we learned was unique. We didn't learn about the evolution of rock and roll through blues and R&B. We learned about the evolution of Expressionism through reaction to Impressionism. We learned about the influence of Wagner on Slayer and of Edgard Varése on Frank Zappa. Louis Armstrong? No. Herbie Hancock. Not Elvis - bebop. Dada and musique concréte. Mainstream, classic? No. Reactionary and revolutionary. Everything in art is in reaction to something else, and art is what you make it. Art is expression - Der Bleu Reiter. Art is blank - Fountain. Art is what you say it is. What's important is what's different, audacious, what wants to change for the sake of change, for the sake of art itself.

Anyone can follow rules and make beautiful things. Anyone can lay their emotions along set patterns, their talents inside set paths. Those outside the lines, those who follow their own way - they are the only ones worth learning about, the only art that matters. Why play piano with your fingers when you can slam the keys with your fists, your forearms, your head, just to hear what it sounds like? Why play one song at a time when you can play four? Why play an instrument the way it's always been done, when you can use it in completely new and different ways? Why accept the limitations of modern technology recording when you can create it anew? That's truly the heart of it - there's no reason to accept limitations when you can create new ways. There's no reason to do something the way it's always been done, just because it's the way it's always been done. Play the piano's strings like it's a huge, horizontal harp. Play multiple tape loops at once, taking advantage of tape's mechanical flaws to create new music altogether. Play artillery as percussion. Play anything, any way - just play. React, or create something entirely new. That's what we learned.

Thus, the Golden State Warriors. Lost in the excitement of their upset of the greatest team in the NBA, masked by the fact that so few people in the wider basketball community have seen them play, is how completely unique they, as a team, are. Basketball players, when they're young, are taught how to play. Don't shoot over a taller defender. That's dumb. Don't shoot if there's nobody there for a rebound. That's dumb. Set plays, run your offense the way you've been taught. There are specific rules, specific roles, and that's the way the game is played. And yet, and yet. Golden State refuses to play that game.

They're all in the same height range, roughly, midsized, plus a skinny seven-foot Latvian kid. Rules and roles don't matter They shoot, shoot, shoot, run, run, run, and damn the consequences. They are helter-skelter beauty in basketball form. You can shoot seven-for-seven from three, or sixteen-for-thirty-five. GSW knows what will get you more points, even if other teams refuse to take that many chances. No one else would pull up on a fast break and shoot the three, with no one under the basket to catch the rebound. No one else would get the ball on a second pass of a possesion, with no play set, and run into four confused defenders for a spectacular dunk. This is revolution. Why wait until you're open to shoot when you're taller than your defender? Why fear taller defenders when you're faster than them? There's a way to play, but there's more than one way to win. You win on your superstars, or you win on the brilliance of your coaching, one of the two. No. You win on stifling defense, on clock management, on perfectly set and executed plays. No, fuck that. Fuck skill and coaching. Win on exuberance, and speed, and talent, and shooting, shooting, shooting.

The difference between Golden State and the Dallas Mavericks, between them and every team in the league, is that they just don't care. They don't care about who they're playing, where they're playing, or how they're supposed to play. They are Dada, without the self-conscious individualism. They are a teenaged Frank Zappa, listening to Ionisation over and over, not understanding why his friends don't understand or care. They are Patti Smith or the Stooges, and Dallas is Deep Purple. They are bebop jazz and the basketball establishment is Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree. Golden State knows the price of flight, and it's weight and size. The revolution begins now.

Against the Dying of the Light

Devin Harris is now allowed to become a man.

I was not a fan of this trade, on Dallas' part. I just didn't think two years of Jason Kidd was worth ten years of Devin Harris. Now, I'm not that good at analyzing basketball - I leave that to those that actually know what they're talking about - but I was pretty sure about this one.

Nothing wrong with Jason Kidd. He is, as has been proven year in and year out for more than fifteen years, composed purely of amazing. But Devin Harris is, in his own quiet way, pretty damned good - and ten years younger. All this has been gone over. You know this already. But why, I wonder, did nobody ever talk about Devin Harris? Or the Nets, for that matter?

I don't pretend to be unbiased, or objective. Therefore I will not pretend that I watched much of the Nets, lately. They sucked; they were ugly; Jason Kidd and Vince and RJ were allegedly good, but ultimately weren't really; that's all I needed to know. But now I think I'm going to have to, because a free Devin Harris is one I want to see. Avery Johnson is slightly fascistic, as far as I can tell, but Devin Harris always showed flashes - of brilliance, of potential, whatever - that were squashed a bit by Avery's Napoleon complex. That is, of course, blatant unfounded conjecture. Just because he's short and squeaky doesn't mean he's Napoleonic. He may just be a cartoon character. But I digress.

The one constant in the trades this year was that those going West were old and proven, and those sent back East in their place were young and full of potential. It seems the trend now is to mortgage a team's future for the sake of the present - I suppose because it's much easier than actually building a good team. All it's doing, though, is making the West super-competitive now, while making the East young, sucky, and secretly exciting. The exceptions are the Lakers, who manage to be both young/exciting and competitive, and the Celtics.

But in five years, who will be good? Think of how much of the old guard will be gone. The Suns of 2013 will be the Heat of 2007. The Spurs will be in the regenerative phase of the championship machine. Melo may be smiling a little less. Yao will look like Shaq does now, unless he goes the Mutombo route. Dirk will be half-heartedly chucking it from outside...oh, wait. But the other teams, the young and sucky ones? The East, in other words? Think about it.

The Atlanta Hawks have Acie Law IV and Al Horford. They have Josh Smith and Other Josh and Marvin; they have Joe Johnson. Could they draft another guard? Could they ever get a decent coach? Would they get to be great? If they did, would anyone care?

The Chicago Bulls have the Big Three of the future in Noah, Thomas, and Sefolosha - assuming one doesn't get traded, which is probable. In the "Crappy lately, but still somewhat good" column they have Luol Deeeeeeng, Ben Gordon, and Kirk Heinrich, not to mention Nocioni. Noche does something I used to see Taurean do - "Aren't you guys going to play? Fuck it, do I have to win this game all by myself?" Scrappy, is the word, for the lot of them. We'll have to see if scrappy=good.

The Heat can not keep going in the way that they're going. Not that they must not, or they should not - it is, I'm fairly sure, impossible for a team this talented to suck this badly for very much longer. They're not young. But give them a few years of lottery picks, and they will be. And any team with D-Wade and Shawn Marion on it is okay with me.

And the Nets. The Nets have Devin Harris. Maybe RJ and Vince could get their acts together. Who knows what'll happen after that? They'll go to Brooklyn, maybe get LeBron. It's impossible to tell. But I know I'll actually be watching them play, this time around.

It's a cycle, I suppose - this shift in power, the old and the new, the wise trades and the bad ones. The young eventually outstrip the old, and every generation is better (maybe). But, eh. It's impossible to tell - all one can do is pray.