It's time to pull my head out my ass, and focus on my life again. It's time to extract myself, no matter how painful, from the bad episode of Friends that I let my life become over the past month. It's time to look ahead and stop constantly checking my rear view mirror. But most importantly, it's time to bring the pizzle back. It's time I deliver on the false promises of a pizzle resurrection made on March 29 . It's time...
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My boy Ram called me out in a comment on the last entry, and it's true, I have been putting off an Allen Iverson/praise of the beauty of basketball entry for a ridiculous amount of time. The truth is, I was never happy with it. It's been written and I've gone back to it a few times, but I can't get my words around exactly what I want to express. It seems incomplete and lacking in the exact evocation I was going for. So, rather than torture myself over it, I'm gonna throw it out there. Hell, if Chappelle can score ratings with skits that never made it to air the first time around, there's nothing keeping the pizzle from producing a Greatest Misses edition every now and then.
Here it is then, in all its sputtering glory--
"Cuz either you're slanging crack rock, or you got a wicked jump shot"
In just those few words, Biggie brings together the frustrations and dreams of those living in poverty. It is a mixed message, one of hopelessness and hope. You may not have all the opportunities you want, but you can make it out, and most importantly, affect the lives of others. This, along with the underlying hip-hop ethic of making it but never forgetting where you're from, has been embodied by Biggie, Tupac and Allen Iverson.
Basketball is pretty simple on the surface. Put the ball in the hoop. It's not always natural to think beyond that. Athletes play and fans (to different emotional degrees) support their favorite athletes and teams. But if you watch carefully, from a more detached perspecitve, you start seeing things differently. There's a point where it stops being about physicality or speed, and about personal expression. The fluidity of the game, The lyrical beauty and grace of the motion. Showing who you are, how you feel, by putting the ball in the hoop. Watching Iverson play is like transforming a sport into an art. Watching an artist in the process of discovering himself.
The tattoos and corn rows often lead many to dismiss Iverson as a "punk". Only the Strong Survive (see Spins, Flicks and Words section) serves mainly as a refutation of this unfair characterization. Iverson's life story itself is interesting and unique. It is a very American tale of a supremely gifted hero rising from impossible circumstances to not just succeed personally, but in the process change the way the game is percieved and marketed. It is the story of someone who became a singular symbol of the racial, generational and class divide in America. His attitude, image and insistence on loyalty to where he came from and who helped him get there threatened the white mainstream image of what successful athletes should be. He was not the first to bring the playground version of basketball into the NBA, but he was certainly the most visible. And now, that version is itself big business. Playground ball was ball as an extension of hip-hop culture. DJ's improvised their scratches, graffiti artists spontaneously decorated public spaces, rappers freestyled rhymes, b-boys freestyled on the dance floor, and on the court, playground players brought a balletic, high-flying aesthetic to the game. They made it into a forum for creative expression and, like jazz, like rap, one-on-one spontaneous competition.
The book works well in showing how long the NBA tried to suppress AI and his chosen form of expression. How the sports media continually misrepresented him as a spoiled star who lacked respect for the game. And how long both the media and the league remained blind to the fact that their definition of a star athlete was restrictive and carried with it ugly racial and class biases. In the end, all of this was overcome as the fans saw past the image that was forced on them, and recognized the sincere, genuine appeal of Iverson.
At times, however, Platt too often apologizes for and glosses over some of Iverson's flaws. He tries too hard to bring home his point which was made clear early in the book about how misunderstood Iverson was throughout his career. It's also a little dated since now Iverson's attitude and image have been accepted and even sold as the norm. He almost single handedly raised Reebok's stock price in the mid-90's and for years his jersey outsold all other active players. I also would have liked more in depth accounts of Iverson's playing days. Platt takes an amazing look at his early life, but rushes through his career. We need more stories like the one of Iverson during the 2001 playoffs, when knowing that showing blood would mean leaving the game, he swallowed the blood flowing from a cut lip for an entire quarter.
Iverson's success was achieved on his own terms and his story represents the acceptance of hip-hop as a part of American culture and no longer a threat to it.
But don't take it from me, Page 2 brings it home in a much more eloquent way:
Book Excerpt One - Tupac with a Jump Shot
Book Excerpt Two - Newport Bad News
More from Eric Neel:
"JKidd or AI?
This is a debate about the soul of the game. Is it in the egalitarian vision and democratic dishing of Jason or is it in AI's Secretariat-sized heart and fearless, give-up-the-body drives to the bucket?
I love Kidd. I love his think pass first, and then making passes only maybe one or two other guys in the history of the league could have thought of and pulled off. He flings passes and the game hovers between five guys like a collective vision, a shared feeling. The way the ball comes off his fingertips -- never lingering too long, never coming to rest -- it's the way Naismith imagined things, I think.
But for all that, if I have to choose just one, I'll take Iverson. What he does night in and night out, at the size, and from the angles, and with the snarl? Un-freakin-believable is what it is. Mi-freakin-raculous. I'm with Willie Nelson on this: My heroes have always been cowboys. "
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So that was it, please feel free to comment, edit, destroy all you want, its all yours pizzle denizens.
Some random things:
Newport News, VA, Iverson's hometown, is also where Michael Vick is from. Superhuman speed must be in the water.
My props to Russ were somewhat premature. He has since accepted another offer with Citigroup. I now have the best excuse in the world to go to NYC. HOLLA!
I've seen the Roots five times now in concert. When do I officially reach groupie status?
I hate the Lakers.
"put it Right Thurr like Chin-gay
your girl don't like me, how long has she been gay"
---another simple yet effective line from Kanye