"ANYBODY CAN BE BEAT!" - Bart Scott

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

A Necessary Evil

We needed Darth Vader.

(Yes, another Star Wars reference. I swear I don't love the franchise this much, it just comes in handy for analogies. But I digress.)

We needed Darth Vader. We needed him to chop Luke's arm off. We needed him to crush the Rebel Alliance.

We needed the Evil Empire.

Just as the New York Post suggested, the ultimate triumph of good against evil would not have been possible without, well, evil. For the Jets to overcome, the Patriots had to exist as the personification of decadence and dominance. And they absolutely had to humiliate the Jets like they did in November.

So all Chicago Bulls fans still stinging after the loss to Miami, listen to me.

We need LeBron James.

Hurdles

A few minutes after the Bulls surrendered a 12-point fourth-quarter lead to Miami in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals, I fought the oncoming catatonic state that was taking over my body and made a pointed Facebook status.

It read:

"1988. 1989. 1990. We will return."

The generation of Bulls fans who remember the days prior to the Jordan Renaissance is growing more scant every day, but they're still out there. They remember when red, white and black wasn't the premier color scheme for any Nike shoe. They remember when Converse and Adidas reigned and there was no such thing as an Air Jordan. When Chicago Stadium was a drafty old barn that hadn't seen a championship since Bobby Hull.

The days when, as Sam Smith says in his book The Jordan Rules, the late Johnny "Red" Kerr would have to call the Chicago papers to spell players' names after games for the box score.

Save for a few close years in the mid-'70s, the Bulls were an afterthought before Jordan. And even after he did jump-start the Bulls, glory did not come easy.

Off the hardwood, sportswriters said a team with no star center or distributing point guard could ever win a championship. On the court, the Detroit Pistons were doing their best to prove the critics right.

Those three years mark the successive seasons in which the Pistons knocked the Bulls out of the playoffs. First in five games, then six, then a heartbreaking seven-game series at the turn of the decade. Detroit had Chicago's number, and they knew it.

This was the mental hurdle the Bulls—and Jordan—had to clear. He had famously broken the Cleveland Cavaliers with "The Shot" in 1989 (Smith writes in Rules that the Cavs would not beat the Bulls once until Jordan's first retirement), and the Celtics' dominance was at an end. The Pistons and their "Bad Boy" tactics stood in Jordan's way for three straight years.

Until the breakthrough.

One distinct play may have sealed it, but the Bulls finally defeated Detroit in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals. The rest is, of course, history.

New enemies

Twenty years later, the Bulls are once again trying to climb the mountain after 14 years of relative anonymity. Save for one year in the mid-2000s, Chicago had not made it to the second round of the playoffs since the last year of the Dynasty.

This would be the year the Bulls would finally revisit the mountaintop.

They had seemingly disheartened the faux-triumvirate in Miami after three nail-biting regular season victories. They had the top seed in the playoffs. They played hard-nosed defense at every position and they had the Most Valuable Player.

But the Heat would have the last laugh, and Chicago would be sent packing.

People forget that Jordan and the Bulls did have their moments of regular season triumph against Detroit, only to go down swinging come springtime. Same was true for the Cavs before the breakthrough in '89. Just as sportscasters say shooters need to see one go in before they can start hitting shots, the Bulls needed to see an enemy defeated before they could start running through the league with regularity.

These Miami Heat are not those Detroit Pistons. (A more fitting Miami team would be that of the late '90s: Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, P.J. Brown. Those guys could throw shots with the best of them.) But they are standing in the way of the Bulls, and if Miami wins the chip this year, they will be the team to beat for the coming future. The Bulls will have no choice but to gameplan for them every year.

(Ed. note: Interestingly enough, the roles have almost been completely reversed (from a Chicago fan's perspective) from that of the old Bulls-Pistons rivalry. The Bulls are now the hard-nosed defensive team led by their star point guard and other adept role players, while the Heat are the finesse guys with two top stars and an unsung shooter (who'd have thought Chris Bosh could ever be connected with John Paxson?) and a "doberman" defense anchored by Wade and James.)

The face of the franchise

As the Bulls' 15-point lead dwindled away in Game 5, it was LeBron James leading the charge, hitting shot after shot. Remember those faces Knicks fans always made when Jordan (and sometimes, Reggie Miller) made deficits disappear against New York in the '90s? Those were the faces we were all making at the end of that game.

All because of LeBron James.

It's not so much the Heat the Bulls will have to defeat. Dwyane Wade is and will be a great player for his career and Chris Bosh will contribute under the radar. But it is James (who knocked the Bulls out last year with Cleveland with another cold-blooded performance) whom Chicago will have to eliminate in order to get ahead.

Luke needed Darth Vader in order to triumph. Our own young "skywalker" needs LeBron James.

See you in the cheap seats.

JS

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Shaw-Shaq Realization

(Ed. Note: As I've said before, I'm not the only guy sitting in the cheap seats. Brian "Styx" Spicklemire is not only a great composer (though he is from Indiana), he's also an avid sports fan and solid writer. Here's his take on the recent retirement of NBA great Shaquille O'Neal.)

Shaquille O'Neal officially retired from basketball Friday, ending an 19-year career that saw "The Big Diesel" accumulate four NBA championships between two teams, three finals MVPs, and 15 All-Star selections. He finishes his playing days fifth on the all-time scoring list, and along with Kareem,Wilt, and Russell, officially puts his face on Mount Rushmore (to steal an analogy used by just about everyone at ESPN since they stole it from Bill Simmons) as one of the greatest big-men of all time. He is perhaps the most physically dominant athlete I've ever seen play live, and is the only man on the planet that could make a seven-foot tall rapping genie seem plausible (if not enjoyable).

After making the announcement via social media, Shaq was interviewed on SportsCenter, and said that he was considering playing next season, saying:

"I really, really thought about coming back, but this Achilles (the injury that has plagued him all year,) is very damaged and if I had it done the recovery would be so long we'd have same outcome as this last year -- everyone sitting around and waiting for me.

I didn't want to let people down two years in a row. I didn't want to hold Boston hostage again."

It's difficult for athletes to walk away from a game they've played and loved their whole life. I'm sure "The Big Aristotle" believes in his heart of hearts that he could have played another season if it weren't for a bad ankle. It's hard for anyone to know when it's time to move on to the next stage in their life, be it a professional athlete or just a regular person. we get used to a comfortable routine, or a great feeling, or a lifestyle.

We get, as Red from The Shawshank Redemption would put it, institutionalized.

Life imitates art

There's an important scene in the movie where Brooks, an old inmate who's been in jail for decades, tries to kill fellow inmate and friend Heywood, so that they won't release him on parole and send him away from the prison. Morgan Freeman's soothing voice is able to stop him (and really, couldn't Morgan Freeman's mellow baritone convince anyone to do basically anything? I mean, besides bringing the FIFA World Cup to America and to take Evan Almighty seriously?) and later, the group of inmates recount the attack:

Andy: I just don't understand what happened in there.
Heywood: Old man's crazy as a rat in a tin shithouse, is what.
Red: Oh Heywood, that's enough out of you!
Ernie: I heard he had you shittin' in your pants!
Heywood: Fuck you!
Red: Would you knock it off? Brooks ain't no bug. He's just...just institutionalized.
Heywood: Institutionalized, my ass.
Red: The man's been in here fifty years, Heywood. Fifty years! This is all he knows. In here, he's an important man. He's an educated man. Outside, he's nothin'! Just a used-up con with arthritis in both hands.
Replace the words "fifty" with "twenty," "con" with "rapper/actor/reality TV star," and "arthritis in both hands" with "a body that gave up on him five years ago," and you've got O'Neal. An all-time great player who did everything short of advertising himself as "Shaqwater," playing mercenary for the Cavs and Celtics these last couple years trying to chase one more championship; trying to hold onto that feeling. But I think he knew he was done, if not last year after not being able to take Lebron to the NBA finals, then in 11 painful-to-watch playoff minutes against Lebron this year. That's when he knew.

That's when he had "the realization."

Twilight of their careers
There seems to be a string of major sports figures retiring recently. Phil Jackson finished an incredible career with 11 NBA titles and probably owns the title of greatest basketball coach of all time, (though I personally put Wooden ahead of him) said last year that he was thinking about retiring, but decided to come back for a chance at another three-peat. Did he hang on for one season too long? Maybe, maybe not, but the Lakers' outcome this season certainly didn't match up to what he must've hoping for.
Brett Favre is probably the best recent example of someone hanging on too long. Everybody gives Favre grief (and deservedly so) for holding the Packers and Vikings hostage while he was debating whether or not he was coming back for another season, though the media should get some credit/blame for turning that into a circus. (By the way, does Ed Werder know that he doesn't hafta go back and camp on on Favre's lawn this year? Does he just get all of July-August off now? What else does he have to do?)

Still, it's easy to understand why the decision would be so tough for him to make. He was walking away from a game that meant everything to him. Wouldn't you need a clear-cut reason to walk away from something that had been your daily life for the last 20-plus years?

By the way, as I write that paragraph, every Colts fan, including myself is preparing for what I'm dubbing the "Peyton Manning Retirement Tour": the last three or four seasons after Manning's prime that he continues to come back play, regardless of whatever pundits think he should do. It'll probably be painful to watch, but if the Favre-Packers saga taught front offices everywhere something, it's that you've gotta let your franchise player go out on his own terms. When they mean as much to the team/city as Favre did/Peyton does, it's the right thing to do.

He knows he had skillz
See, it's easy to understand why Shaq would try to extend his career by playing seventh or eighth banana, albeit on a championship squad. Even with an athlete that has as promising a future career ahead of him, (somewhere between NBA analyst and TV star, and I'm thinking reality TV. You're telling me that if he, with his interest in law enforcement, decided to star in a new reality series with "Dog the Bounty Hunter", you wouldn't be glued to the TV. It would easily be better than "Franklin & Bash".)

And this isn't limited to athletes; it's hard for anyone to move on past a significant portion of their life, so we find ways to hold onto the parts that make us feel comfortable. We fall in love with a particular movie or song, not because it necessarily is any good, but because we identify it with a time we wish we could get back too. It reminds us of some time when everything seemed perfect. It's why every guy in his thirties I know still blasts Metallica, friends of mine will still defend the time they saw "Prince of Persia" to the death, and every time we hear Train's "Hey, Soul Sister," all we can think about is how great that one summer was (Sidenote: I'm convinced that playing off of these emotions is the only way Train has been able to sustain a music career).

It doesn't matter how it ended, or why, or when; we latch onto those things, these images and sounds that bring us back to visceral memories of a time where everything seemed to fit. Whatever "it" is for us, it's the closest we can get back to it. Eventually, something happens and we realize that it's nothing more than a memory, that we should've moved on already and we've missed our window for a timely exit.

That's the realization: that, painful as it may be to move away from something that means so much to us, we have to leave because whatever "it" is, it's just not there anymore.

I think Phil Jackson realized it after getting walloped in Game 3 against Dallas. For Favre, it was probably sometime between concussions while playing on fumes for a Vikings team that just couldn't reproduce the magic they had one season earlier. For Jorge Posada, it was probably the time he had to reflect and have the realization after getting dropped in the batting order last month and subsequently pulling himself from the next game. It took that event for him to figure out what everyone else already knew: that the familiar praise for the numbers he wasn't putting up anymore was over.

Derek Jeter is experiencing the same thing right now on his quest to perfectly re-enact the movie "Mr. 3000." Not being able to play the way you're used to, and having people remind you of how far you've fallen from your prime is tough. They've been institutionalized. For me, it's whenever I'm listening to the radio and I remember how ridiculous the line "(You're) So gangster/I'm so thug" is. It hits us square in the face (or in Favre's case, I suppose it's somewhere between the torso and back of the head) and we realize the moment has passed, and however hard we try, we can't go back to it.

Whatever we're trying to hold on to is gone.

It's especially hard for athletes, who have been conditioned to compete their whole lives, to accept this fact. Luckily, we mostly forgive them of their realization-failures. When Shaq's legacy is discussed years from now, we won't talk about his last two stops in Cleveland and Boston, just like how we remember Jordan's last moment as the jumper over Bryon Russell, and not the last 2 seasons he played with the Wizards. (I'll pause a second for Bulls fans everywhere to erase the Washington years in their heads again.)

Shaq vs...the future

Friday, as soon as O'Neal had made it official, there was already speculation as too how long it would be until the "Shaqtus" officially unretires. For what it's worth, I think he's done. He has plenty of opportunities ahead of him, and seems to be at peace with his decision.

Still, eight months from now, when that Achilles is healed, and some struggling team (hopefully not from Indiana) needs one more veteran big man on their roster, he's gonna get multiple calls. Will he take any of them into serious consideration?

Red probably said it best:

"These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized."

I can understand why Shaq would want to play one more season. Why he and so many other pro athletes get to the realization that it's time to move on a little while after everyone else has figured it out. They're still comfortable, they're institutionalized. And sometimes all you can think about is getting back inside those walls.

Brian Spicklemire is a composer, percussionist, part-time astronomer and Harrison Ford stunt double from Indianapolis, Indiana. You can hear his music on his website (www.brianspicklemire.com) and follow him on Twitter (BLAMOtis).