The news came as an utter shock to me today. Ralph Wiley, columnist, author, sports analyst, passed away this morning. I didn't know him, and he had no idea that I existed, but I felt this one. I was shocked and sad, for me, for sports fans, for the world. I was so affected that it surprised me all over again. But it's true, I feel a real and tangible loss.
I've raved often about Page 2 and it's singular focus on extending sports reporting and sports commentary to all things social, political, artisitic and even spiritual. Ralph Wiley was, for me at least, the vanguard of this movement. He was the Yoda of the Jedi writers who seamlessly melded athletics with poetry, music, film, society and culture. I religiously read his columns for more than two years, because something in him spoke to me. His writing had an undeniable rhythm and style, just like the jazz musicians he was always so eloquently comparing athletes to. I have feebly attempted to copy that use of cadence, that ability to tie a piece together with such lyrical ease, and I straight jacked his use of those asteriks to separate different passages of thought and especially his use of a ghetto alter ego to have imaginary conversations with.
I felt close to him because he always spoke for and to those whose perspectives were either misrepresented or disregarded by the mainstream. Even when I disagreed, his thought process matched mine. Most importantly, he opened my eyes to what sports and the world could be like if you had the courage to look at it from a different perspective. Sports and music, sports and film, sports and race, even sports and religion, nothing was beyond Wiley's scope. He brought out the humanity in the games we love, showed how sports can be personal extensions of our thoughts and desires, and collective expressions of our hopes and fears.
He was everything everyone said he was, but more than that his work showed me that a writer, any artist really, must take his work seriously. Your work can and will have an impact and that is a responsibility not to be taken lightly. I liked that he was so self-reflective at times. He knew the power of the pen, and he was confident in his ability to wield it. At the same time, he was unafraid to reveal himself and let the reader in on the possibilities and the limits of his words. Ray Ratto hit it on the nose when he said that Wiley, "didn't write or speak from his gut as much as he wrote and spoke for yours". Wiley was never afraid to speak up, his credo for the columnist was to put your opinion up front, don't leave the reader guessing. He was also never one to dumb anything down. He respected the intelligence of his readers and he challenged them with his thoughts.
I admired and respected his career. He wrote two books with Spike Lee (SPIKE LEE!!) one about basketball and the Knicks and the other about the making of Malcolm X. At the time of his death he was working with Lee on a follow-up to the basketball movie He Got Game. I had a hard time finding his books in regular bookstores ( I once saw a lone copy of Why Black People Tend to Shout at Barnes and Noble), but my first task now will be to go out and get my hands on as many as possible. I had barely scratched the surface of what Wiley had to offer, but just from his Page 2 work, I know I am lucky to have had the opportunity.
I would like to go through his archives and pay better tribute to him by sharing some of his best passages, but that will take more time than my heavy eyelids will allow right now. Upon first seeing the news report a couple of things sprang immediately to mind though. The first was just a parenthetical phrase he used in a column about the shooting death of a Baylor basketball player. In describing the victim's girlfriend he called her beautiful "(because being smart always makes the pretty ones beautiful)". The second was a column he wrote on Toni Smith , the Division II women's basketball player who in a quiet form of protest against the then impending war in Iraq, turned her back to the flag during the national anthem. And lastly, especially since re-reading it in writing the Iverson piece, the Urban Legend column linked to in the last entry. It contains some vintage Wiley:
"A barely six-foot guy? Becoming Herculean in the NBA? Is that possible?
It isn't. It's impossible. It's legend. Urban legend. The Kid came from nothing, with nothing. His mama Ann begged John Thompson: "Please. Save him. Save my son's life...
Can't tell you how many players with ability don't make much of anything out of themselves, who come from out of tough or harsh circumstances, places where life is cheap, staging areas of Hell, barrels of human crabs pulling you down while saying, "Me! Me! No Me!" Allen Iverson's will alone is very heroic. You can say it isn't, that he isn't anything but trouble, you can O'Reilly him, shout him down, try to kill him off by saying, in a fair and balanced way, that he is undeserving, and not the Answer, but the troubadours, barbers, kids and I will laugh at you if you do....
Please. Allen is "Rocky" for the people "Rocky" forgot.
For those in Philly, beyond Philly, stuck in staging areas of Hell, stunted by Section 8 housing, with time as their only luxury, time and imagination and endless blacktop ... even from so much nothing like this, something wonderful was made. The troubadours, barbers, poets, artists and children, they know. Ask your kid. Ask Bruce Hornsby. Ask Woody Allen. They know this genius when they feel it and sense it."
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...
*****
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. "
****
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