The Wet Blanket on Kevin Durant's Olympics

The Wet Blanket on Kevin Durant's Olympics

If you read a bunch of my articles, you will notice that I criticize the NBA media over, and over and over. If we had the forethought to actually tag our articles, I’d throw some links up here. My basic thesis is that about 90% of the media coverage of the NBA is just worthless. That’s why I think our Annotated Bathroom Smartphone Reader feature is so importantâ€"there is so much garbage out there that it is important to separate out the wheat.


My criticism usually falls into two, interrelated, camps: the majority of content is either devoid of original and critical thought, or it exists solely to feed into the NBA echo chamber and hype machine. A perfect example of the former is just about every sideline interview ever conducted with a player or coach actively involved with the game. A typical sideline reporter will slide up to the coach of the losing team at the beginning of the third quarter and ask something bland like, “coach, what does your team have to change to win this game?” and the coach will respond with a non-answer that is obvious to any casual observer of the game, like, “we just need to play better defense and make our open shots.”
With that in mind, rewind to Sunday afternoon (in London). The United States Men’s Basketball Team has just won the gold medal in the Olympics, overcoming a feisty Spain. Kevin Durant has just played an amazing tournament, taking over the United States Olympic scoring record, and was perhaps the best player in London. Spain certainly thought so, as they tried a bit of defensive trickery (a box-and-one) to contain him. Not LeBron. Not Kobe. Kevin Durant.

Craig Sager, who decided his ticket to fame would present itself more easily by wearing garish suits than becoming a good reporter (seriously, since when do REPORTERS need to have a shtick?), interviews the aforementioned trio after the win. I’d embed the video in this post but NBC doesn’t allow it, so check it out here.  Sager starts out the interview by asking each of the three a fairly standard set of interview questions. He then asks LeBron:
“What an incredible few months. NBA championship. NBA MVP. Gold Medal. Can you put it into words for us?”
What. A. Dick. Kevin Durant, the man who lost to LeBron in the NBA Finals, the man who described to reporters a month ago how difficult it was for him to play with LeBron on the Olympic team after that Finals loss, was standing right there. You can see Durant become visibly upset with the question as he first looks up and then away, with an expression of I have to sit here and listen to this shit? on his face.

I have two big problems with his question. The first is that it isn’t, as Sean Connery once explained to us, a soup question. If purpose of a question is to obtain information that is important, this barely even counts as a question. The second is that there is a time and a place for everything, and after winning the Olympic Gold Medal is most definitely not the correct time to rehash painful memories. In fact, it’s one of the few times in which, if you view sports and media through an “Entertain me!” lens, a softball question is appropriate. After watching Team USA triumph, I’m sure there are a lot of people who would’ve appreciated an opportunity for LeBron to wax about his patriotism, how much playing for Team USA meant for him etc. I would’ve preferred something more interesting, but to each their own. We can certainly all agree that what Sager asked was inappropriate.
Sager followed up his doozy of a “question” with another. It began with him still talking to LeBron but trailing off, and directing the end of the "question" to Durant:
“You took away Kevin Durant’s chance for an NBA Championship, but you have been close friends here. How did the chemistry all come together for you guys?” 
Like LeBron, Durant deflected and handled the question well, but I really wish LeBron had interrupted:
Craig, it is difficult to excel in basketball. There are so many good, talented, hardworking players that all want to win as badly as you did. The basketball court is an anxiety-filled place. There are ten players, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, being watched by millions around the world. Unlike you, we don’t have the luxury of hiding our inadequacy behind polyester travesties of nature. Kevin here is hands down one of the basketball players in the world, and was our best player on this Olympic team. He has just achieved something amazingâ€"leading his team to Olympic Goldâ€"while being the focus of every opposing team’s defense. He also led his NBA team through the tough Western Conference to the NBA Finals. He has had an amazing year.
So why do you have to be such a dick? Why do you have to bring up irrelevant shit from the past with the sole purpose of riling somebody up? You’re not learning anything interesting from these question, you’re just making a man feel bad about his amazing accomplishments, which nobody is allowed to do, and especially not a talentless hack like yourself.
I understand that we are all so fortunate to be paid to play a game we love, and that there are a lot of responsibilities and duties, like talking to the media, that comes along with that. It is a trade that we are all happy to make because basketball means so much to us. But just because you have on a little badge that says “journalist” doesn’t give you a right to belittle a man and try to bring him down. C’mon, we’re out of here.
If only.
     

Millions of Average Joes.

Millions of Average Joes.

Editor's Note:  This is a guest post from Joe Bernardo, our resident Lakers fan.  Joe is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Washington and a Los Angeles native.


*****
When I was in elementary school, as part of the American regime to indoctrinate young citizens (and non-citizens) with patriotic nationalism, we started every morning reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, singing the National Anthem, and choosing another patriotic song to sing as a class.  To this day, I can still recite every word of the Pledge and sing every note of the "Star Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful", and my favorite (don't ask me why), "This Land is My Land".  I imagine every kid in the United States goes through a similar nationalistic ritutal to the one I experienced as a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but I came to realize that I was clearly mistaken.  Yes, students all over the country learn these expressions of loyalty, but in every school district outside of Southern California, they must also include some sort of daily recitation or musical composition dedicated to their hatred towards Los Angeles.


It's true! Or, at least, it seems true. As much as daily routines of nationalism make people love this country, the daily regiment of L.A.-bashing seems to have created millions and millions of L.A. haters among the populace.  I've lived nine years of my life outside of Southern California and in every conversation I happen to hear or engage in myself, people somehow include a diatribe about how much they hate L.A. and that the city is two steps removed from Hell.  Even upon an initial introduction to non-Angelenos, I consistently received some snide remark or condescending look of disgust when I told them where I was from.  (Note: I received the majority of these warm receptions during my time in San Francisco, where they consume more L.A. Haterade than anywhere else).

Of course, I knew where it stemmed from.  Usually it was an assumption that I embodied stereotypical L.A.  You know, the Hollywood-talking, Beverly Hills-shopping, beach-combing surfer bum who was image-conscious, plastic, and fake, all of which can be surmised in this hilarious SNL skit.  So, after a polite, "nice to meet you too," I tried to convince the person I was meeting that most of L.A. was just like anywhere else in America, populated with ordinary folks (mostly people of color) who never deal with Hollywood riff-raff and that most of the rich, fake cosmopolites were L.A. transplants anyway.  Unfortunately, my attempts at proving s/he otherwise always fell on deaf ears since they were already thoroughly convinced that I, along with the rest of the city, symbolized everything wrong with society.

But underneath the glitz and glamour of this town are millions of hard-working individuals who never had champagne wishes or caviar dreams, and who really make the city run.  These are the unsung heroes that work countless hours and fight hours of traffic just to eke out a living.  The janitors, the cooks, the nurses, the accountants, the construction workers...the put in their time, but receive none of the glory.  Just like in any other city.

One of these tireless workers is Mitch Kupchak.


Kupchak came to play with the Lakers before the 1982 season after five fairly productive years with the then-Washington Bullets.  However, 26 games into the season, he blew out his knee, and was out for two seasons.  Although he worked hard to rehabilitate his playing career, even playing a key role off the bench in the Lakers' 1985 championship run, he was never the same and eventually forced to retire unceremoniously.  But under the tutelage of then-Lakers GM Jerry West, Kupchak learned the ropes of front office management.  He worked hard behind the scenes, helping the Lakers build contending teams.  He even earned an M.B.A. from UCLA in 1987 in the process.  After years of apprenticeship under Jerry West, Kupchak fully took the reigns of the Lakers front office in 2000.

After receiving the best news of the summer, I subsequently received many texts and FB messages from my Laker-hating friends on how the evil empire struck again or how Jerry Buss is forcing his daughter Jeannie to sleep with the owner of the Orlando Magic or how I should "never, ever, EVER say the word 'conspiracy' again".  (By the way, I still can't fathom how "basketball reasons" is the explanation for the CP3 veto.  I just can't).  When Kupchak pulled the Dwight Howard trade, most of my friends didn't acknowledge the hard work he put into the deal and just assumed the Lakers used their Sith powers to get Dwight.

So when Jacob asks how the Lakers "get the best date at the dance", the answer is: hard work and dedication, sprinkled in with a little bit of luck.  Yes, the glitz and glamour of the Lakers can entice any NBA player to move to Los Angeles, but it's the front office's hard work and dedication that really makes the organization run.  And it also doesn't hurt  that the Lakers have been extremely lucky.


With the exception of Shaquille O'Neal, no other major championship piece in Laker history has come through free agency.  All of those pieces were acquired through trades.  And Jerry Buss is no Vito Corleone.  Nobody put a gun to the head of Milwaukee's GM to take Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or to New Orleans' GM to get rid of their 1979 #1 draft pick three years prior (who eventually turned into James Worthy Magic Johnson).  He didn't blackmail Charlotte to take Vlade Divac for a high school kid named Kobe Bryant, or kidnap Chris Wallace's kids to take Kwame Brown's expiring contract and picks for Pau Gasol.  The same thing goes for Lon Babby in Phoenix, to take picks for Steve Nash, and now Orlando, to take three other teams' mediocre draft picks and average players for Dwight.  They have used trades for their big pieces, and used free agency to pick up valuable role players.

And yes, Shaq was a free agent, but he would have never come to L.A. if the Lakers weren't a bona fide playoff team lead by Nick Van Exel (who was drafted 37th overall by the Lakers in 1993), Eddie Jones (the 10th pick in 1994) and Cedric Ceballos (acquired from Phoenix in exchange for draft picks).  Now would be a good time to remind you that Jerry West's only Executive of the Year award came in 1995 when he assembled this post-Showtime rag-tag group and turned them into a playoff squad.

Simply put, the Lakers have been smart.  They worked incessantly to build the best roster possible, with both an eye on the present as well as the future.  I don't know how GMs Bill Sharman (1976-1982), Jerry West (1982-2000) or Mitch Kupchak (2000-present) do it, but they are all excellent assessors of basketball talent.  They have never been caught or charged of any transgressions by the league.  Plus, they rarely let agents get the best of them (see: Ramon Sessions, Trevor Ariza, Shaquille O'Neal and Luke Walton...er, never mind, not Luke Walton).


Here's a clear example: after the ill-fated 2004 Lakers "Reloaded" squad, which featured the walking corpses of Gary Payton and Karl Malone, lost to the Pistons in the finals, the Lakers barely made it to the playoffs or were first-round fodder for the next few seasons.  In 2007 Kobe went on a media tirade and demanded a trade.  But Kupchak didn't budge (unlike 99% of the GMs in the league), knowing full well that Kobe was still valuable and in his prime.  He kept calm and slowly built the roster and trade pieces necessary to build a championship team around Kobe.  He made the controversial decision to trade Kobe's friend Caron Butler for Kwame Brown, drafted and developed an out-of-shape high school kid in Andrew Bynum, convinced Phil Jackson to come back and coach a mediocre team, and even resisted Kobe's (and fans') demands to trade Andrew Bynum for Jason Kidd   Then he pulled a rabbit out his ass and turned Kwame Brown's expiring contract, picks and then-unknown Marc Gasol into Pau Gasol.  Two championships later and Kobe hasn't said a word since.

And you can't say that the Lakers have simply bought their players a la the New York Yankees.  Jerry Buss is not George Steinbrenner.  In 2002, the Lakers won the championship with the ninth highest payroll in the league.  In 2006, the year after they missed the playoffs, they didn't put themselves in bad contract hell, and settled on having the 16th highest payroll.  In 2009, they had the sixth highest payroll, and won the whole 'Ship.  And yes, since 2010 they have carried the highest payroll in the league, but have converted fairly bad contracts and mediocre players into the team they have now.  The Lakers are also owned by a man whose wealth pales in comparison to 19 of the NBA's 30 owners, so his pockets aren't THAT deep.  He's not Mikhail Prokorhov, Mark Cuban, or Paul Allen, who can just blindly throw money at the team and hope for the best.  If other owners knew the difference between a good and bad contract, there wouldn't be as much disparity in the league.

Yes, the big market and geography gives LA an advantage, but it's not an astronomical advantage.  The Knicks, Nets, Sixers, Mavs, Warriors, Hawks, Wizards, Rockets and Clippers all play in large markets, but have just 10 championships between them.  Why is this?  And yes, the Lakers have brand-recognition.  But ask why it took Boston, Detroit, and Chicago forever to rebuild after their championship dynasties ended.  Simply put, it's the front office.  The Lakers' front office is the best poker player in the NBA.  They know when to hold and when to fold.  And they take advantage of the plethora of bad poker players around the table -- that is, incompetent NBA owners who give the keys to their more incompetent general managers.


The Lakers are continually successful because they have the best management in the business.  The glitz and glamour is there, but it wouldn't be there in the first place if they didn't work their assess off to put the best basketball product on the floor.  You can't deny that.  And just remember that if this team ultimately fails to bring another title in the next two years (which, as Jacob has argued, has some potential of occurring), they will start again with no bad contract to their names when the new luxury tax rate really kicks in.  With the exception of Steve Nash, no current Laker has a contract beyond 2014.  So you can't say that the Lakers new Time Warner Cable contract automatically guarantees they will continue to pay through the roof for star players.  Well played, Mr. Kupchak.


After twenty-something years since finishing elementary school, I now question the validity of American nationalism that was so ingrained in my head when I was a kid.  So I ask that you all question your L.A. haterism as well.  L.A. isn't all Hollywood, plastic bodies, and plastic people.  There are millions of average Joes (hey!) just like you and me who work hard and lead normal American lives.  There are many who also despise David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, and Snoop Liony Lion frontcourt at Staples Center raising ticket prices so that average fans like me can't afford to go to a game.  Yes, I get it.  The Lakers win all the time.  But at the end of the day, NOBODY and I mean NOBODY would say they don't want their team to be as successful as the Lakers.

Give credit where credit's due.  Mitch Kupchak puts in hours of work and asks little in return.  Hell, give credit to Jim Buss (Jerry's son, and current Lakers overseer) for sticking with Kupchak even when his dad is out of the picture.  These people make the Lakers run, just like we make the city run.

Of course, I can't convince all of you to respect my hometown.  That's okay.  You will despise L.A. like you have since birth.  So when you do see the Lakers compete year-in and year-out, and you find your blood pressure rising as a member of the Buss family raises yet another Larry O'Brien trophy, just make yourself feel better knowing that we have no football team to root for.

Diss Guys Miss Guys, Volume 5

Diss Guys Miss Guys, Volume 5

Diss Guy - Mitch 'Are you kidding me? Seriously? Mother Fuckin' Kupchak

I guess we can just go ahead and give him the Executive Of The Year Award now after he traded what amounted to be his dirty laundry (the whites, Dude) for the services of Dwight Howard. However, it wouldn't be fair to give Kupchak ALL the credit. A hearty slap in the face is most certainly owed to Magic GM Rob Hennigan for his outstanding role in this transaction. What a Dwightastrophe!

As sickened as I am by all this mess, I'm left at the end of the day shaking my head and fist and thinking aloud to myself....Mitch Kupchak, you one baaaaaad dude. What else can I do but tip my cap to the best GM in the league? As if using his voodoo powers to bring Pau to LA in 2008 wasn't enough, he managed to snipe Dwight away from Orlando by offering up a package WORSE than Brooklyn and H-Town. I'm highly considering writing in his name for Commander in Chief come November.


Miss Guy - Nic Batum

Nicolas Batum punched Juan Carlos Navarro in the balls. Let me clarify: Nicolas Batum punched Juan Carlos Navarro in the balls.


See what I mean? He totally just punched Jaun Carlos Navarro in the balls. I'm not quite sure what else I can say. The GIF speaks for itself (and what a glorious GIF it is). Batum claims that the FIBA officials were not correctly calling the game due to the Spaniards incessant flopping. He decided it was time to take things into his own hands. So he took his hands, made a fist, and punched Juan Carlos Navarro in the balls. If that doesn't qualify you as a Miss Guy for the week I don't know what does, but at least it gives us a chance to remember some other great French moments in International play.

VIVE LA FRANCE! 

Millions of Average Joes.

Millions of Average Joes.

Editor's Note:  This is a guest post from Joe Bernardo, our resident Lakers fan.  Joe is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Washington and a Los Angeles native.


*****
When I was in elementary school, as part of the American regime to indoctrinate young citizens (and non-citizens) with patriotic nationalism, we started every morning reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, singing the National Anthem, and choosing another patriotic song to sing as a class.  To this day, I can still recite every word of the Pledge and sing every note of the "Star Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful", and my favorite (don't ask me why), "This Land is My Land".  I imagine every kid in the United States goes through a similar nationalistic ritutal to the one I experienced as a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but I came to realize that I was clearly mistaken.  Yes, students all over the country learn these expressions of loyalty, but in every school district outside of Southern California, they must also include some sort of daily recitation or musical composition dedicated to their hatred towards Los Angeles.


It's true! Or, at least, it seems true. As much as daily routines of nationalism make people love this country, the daily regiment of L.A.-bashing seems to have created millions and millions of L.A. haters among the populace.  I've lived nine years of my life outside of Southern California and in every conversation I happen to hear or engage in myself, people somehow include a diatribe about how much they hate L.A. and that the city is two steps removed from Hell.  Even upon an initial introduction to non-Angelenos, I consistently received some snide remark or condescending look of disgust when I told them where I was from.  (Note: I received the majority of these warm receptions during my time in San Francisco, where they consume more L.A. Haterade than anywhere else).

Of course, I knew where it stemmed from.  Usually it was an assumption that I embodied stereotypical L.A.  You know, the Hollywood-talking, Beverly Hills-shopping, beach-combing surfer bum who was image-conscious, plastic, and fake, all of which can be surmised in this hilarious SNL skit.  So, after a polite, "nice to meet you too," I tried to convince the person I was meeting that most of L.A. was just like anywhere else in America, populated with ordinary folks (mostly people of color) who never deal with Hollywood riff-raff and that most of the rich, fake cosmopolites were L.A. transplants anyway.  Unfortunately, my attempts at proving s/he otherwise always fell on deaf ears since they were already thoroughly convinced that I, along with the rest of the city, symbolized everything wrong with society.

But underneath the glitz and glamour of this town are millions of hard-working individuals who never had champagne wishes or caviar dreams, and who really make the city run.  These are the unsung heroes that work countless hours and fight hours of traffic just to eke out a living.  The janitors, the cooks, the nurses, the accountants, the construction workers...the put in their time, but receive none of the glory.  Just like in any other city.

One of these tireless workers is Mitch Kupchak.


Kupchak came to play with the Lakers before the 1982 season after five fairly productive years with the then-Washington Bullets.  However, 26 games into the season, he blew out his knee, and was out for two seasons.  Although he worked hard to rehabilitate his playing career, even playing a key role off the bench in the Lakers' 1985 championship run, he was never the same and eventually forced to retire unceremoniously.  But under the tutelage of then-Lakers GM Jerry West, Kupchak learned the ropes of front office management.  He worked hard behind the scenes, helping the Lakers build contending teams.  He even earned an M.B.A. from UCLA in 1987 in the process.  After years of apprenticeship under Jerry West, Kupchak fully took the reigns of the Lakers front office in 2000.

After receiving the best news of the summer, I subsequently received many texts and FB messages from my Laker-hating friends on how the evil empire struck again or how Jerry Buss is forcing his daughter Jeannie to sleep with the owner of the Orlando Magic or how I should "never, ever, EVER say the word 'conspiracy' again".  (By the way, I still can't fathom how "basketball reasons" is the explanation for the CP3 veto.  I just can't).  When Kupchak pulled the Dwight Howard trade, most of my friends didn't acknowledge the hard work he put into the deal and just assumed the Lakers used their Sith powers to get Dwight.

So when Jacob asks how the Lakers "get the best date at the dance", the answer is: hard work and dedication, sprinkled in with a little bit of luck.  Yes, the glitz and glamour of the Lakers can entice any NBA player to move to Los Angeles, but it's the front office's hard work and dedication that really makes the organization run.  And it also doesn't hurt  that the Lakers have been extremely lucky.


With the exception of Shaquille O'Neal, no other major championship piece in Laker history has come through free agency.  All of those pieces were acquired through trades.  And Jerry Buss is no Vito Corleone.  Nobody put a gun to the head of Milwaukee's GM to take Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or to New Orleans' GM to get rid of their 1979 #1 draft pick three years prior (who eventually turned into James Worthy Magic Johnson).  He didn't blackmail Charlotte to take Vlade Divac for a high school kid named Kobe Bryant, or kidnap Chris Wallace's kids to take Kwame Brown's expiring contract and picks for Pau Gasol.  The same thing goes for Lon Babby in Phoenix, to take picks for Steve Nash, and now Orlando, to take three other teams' mediocre draft picks and average players for Dwight.  They have used trades for their big pieces, and used free agency to pick up valuable role players.

And yes, Shaq was a free agent, but he would have never come to L.A. if the Lakers weren't a bona fide playoff team lead by Nick Van Exel (who was drafted 37th overall by the Lakers in 1993), Eddie Jones (the 10th pick in 1994) and Cedric Ceballos (acquired from Phoenix in exchange for draft picks).  Now would be a good time to remind you that Jerry West's only Executive of the Year award came in 1995 when he assembled this post-Showtime rag-tag group and turned them into a playoff squad.

Simply put, the Lakers have been smart.  They worked incessantly to build the best roster possible, with both an eye on the present as well as the future.  I don't know how GMs Bill Sharman (1976-1982), Jerry West (1982-2000) or Mitch Kupchak (2000-present) do it, but they are all excellent assessors of basketball talent.  They have never been caught or charged of any transgressions by the league.  Plus, they rarely let agents get the best of them (see: Ramon Sessions, Trevor Ariza, Shaquille O'Neal and Luke Walton...er, never mind, not Luke Walton).


Here's a clear example: after the ill-fated 2004 Lakers "Reloaded" squad, which featured the walking corpses of Gary Payton and Karl Malone, lost to the Pistons in the finals, the Lakers barely made it to the playoffs or were first-round fodder for the next few seasons.  In 2007 Kobe went on a media tirade and demanded a trade.  But Kupchak didn't budge (unlike 99% of the GMs in the league), knowing full well that Kobe was still valuable and in his prime.  He kept calm and slowly built the roster and trade pieces necessary to build a championship team around Kobe.  He made the controversial decision to trade Kobe's friend Caron Butler for Kwame Brown, drafted and developed an out-of-shape high school kid in Andrew Bynum, convinced Phil Jackson to come back and coach a mediocre team, and even resisted Kobe's (and fans') demands to trade Andrew Bynum for Jason Kidd   Then he pulled a rabbit out his ass and turned Kwame Brown's expiring contract, picks and then-unknown Marc Gasol into Pau Gasol.  Two championships later and Kobe hasn't said a word since.

And you can't say that the Lakers have simply bought their players a la the New York Yankees.  Jerry Buss is not George Steinbrenner.  In 2002, the Lakers won the championship with the ninth highest payroll in the league.  In 2006, the year after they missed the playoffs, they didn't put themselves in bad contract hell, and settled on having the 16th highest payroll.  In 2009, they had the sixth highest payroll, and won the whole 'Ship.  And yes, since 2010 they have carried the highest payroll in the league, but have converted fairly bad contracts and mediocre players into the team they have now.  The Lakers are also owned by a man whose wealth pales in comparison to 19 of the NBA's 30 owners, so his pockets aren't THAT deep.  He's not Mikhail Prokorhov, Mark Cuban, or Paul Allen, who can just blindly throw money at the team and hope for the best.  If other owners knew the difference between a good and bad contract, there wouldn't be as much disparity in the league.

Yes, the big market and geography gives LA an advantage, but it's not an astronomical advantage.  The Knicks, Nets, Sixers, Mavs, Warriors, Hawks, Wizards, Rockets and Clippers all play in large markets, but have just 10 championships between them.  Why is this?  And yes, the Lakers have brand-recognition.  But ask why it took Boston, Detroit, and Chicago forever to rebuild after their championship dynasties ended.  Simply put, it's the front office.  The Lakers' front office is the best poker player in the NBA.  They know when to hold and when to fold.  And they take advantage of the plethora of bad poker players around the table -- that is, incompetent NBA owners who give the keys to their more incompetent general managers.


The Lakers are continually successful because they have the best management in the business.  The glitz and glamour is there, but it wouldn't be there in the first place if they didn't work their assess off to put the best basketball product on the floor.  You can't deny that.  And just remember that if this team ultimately fails to bring another title in the next two years (which, as Jacob has argued, has some potential of occurring), they will start again with no bad contract to their names when the new luxury tax rate really kicks in.  With the exception of Steve Nash, no current Laker has a contract beyond 2014.  So you can't say that the Lakers new Time Warner Cable contract automatically guarantees they will continue to pay through the roof for star players.  Well played, Mr. Kupchak.


After twenty-something years since finishing elementary school, I now question the validity of American nationalism that was so ingrained in my head when I was a kid.  So I ask that you all question your L.A. haterism as well.  L.A. isn't all Hollywood, plastic bodies, and plastic people.  There are millions of average Joes (hey!) just like you and me who work hard and lead normal American lives.  There are many who also despise David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, and Snoop Liony Lion frontcourt at Staples Center raising ticket prices so that average fans like me can't afford to go to a game.  Yes, I get it.  The Lakers win all the time.  But at the end of the day, NOBODY and I mean NOBODY would say they don't want their team to be as successful as the Lakers.

Give credit where credit's due.  Mitch Kupchak puts in hours of work and asks little in return.  Hell, give credit to Jim Buss (Jerry's son, and current Lakers overseer) for sticking with Kupchak even when his dad is out of the picture.  These people make the Lakers run, just like we make the city run.

Of course, I can't convince all of you to respect my hometown.  That's okay.  You will despise L.A. like you have since birth.  So when you do see the Lakers compete year-in and year-out, and you find your blood pressure rising as a member of the Buss family raises yet another Larry O'Brien trophy, just make yourself feel better knowing that we have no football team to root for.

Millions of Average Joes.

Millions of Average Joes.

Editor's Note:  This is a guest post from Joe Bernardo, our resident Lakers fan.  Joe is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Washington and a Los Angeles native.


*****
When I was in elementary school, as part of the American regime to indoctrinate young citizens (and non-citizens) with patriotic nationalism, we started every morning reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, singing the National Anthem, and choosing another patriotic song to sing as a class.  To this day, I can still recite every word of the Pledge and sing every note of the "Star Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful", and my favorite (don't ask me why), "This Land is My Land".  I imagine every kid in the United States goes through a similar nationalistic ritutal to the one I experienced as a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but I came to realize that I was clearly mistaken.  Yes, students all over the country learn these expressions of loyalty, but in every school district outside of Southern California, they must also include some sort of daily recitation or musical composition dedicated to their hatred towards Los Angeles.


It's true! Or, at least, it seems true. As much as daily routines of nationalism make people love this country, the daily regiment of L.A.-bashing seems to have created millions and millions of L.A. haters among the populace.  I've lived nine years of my life outside of Southern California and in every conversation I happen to hear or engage in myself, people somehow include a diatribe about how much they hate L.A. and that the city is two steps removed from Hell.  Even upon an initial introduction to non-Angelenos, I consistently received some snide remark or condescending look of disgust when I told them where I was from.  (Note: I received the majority of these warm receptions during my time in San Francisco, where they consume more L.A. Haterade than anywhere else).

Of course, I knew where it stemmed from.  Usually it was an assumption that I embodied stereotypical L.A.  You know, the Hollywood-talking, Beverly Hills-shopping, beach-combing surfer bum who was image-conscious, plastic, and fake, all of which can be surmised in this hilarious SNL skit.  So, after a polite, "nice to meet you too," I tried to convince the person I was meeting that most of L.A. was just like anywhere else in America, populated with ordinary folks (mostly people of color) who never deal with Hollywood riff-raff and that most of the rich, fake cosmopolites were L.A. transplants anyway.  Unfortunately, my attempts at proving s/he otherwise always fell on deaf ears since they were already thoroughly convinced that I, along with the rest of the city, symbolized everything wrong with society.

But underneath the glitz and glamour of this town are millions of hard-working individuals who never had champagne wishes or caviar dreams, and who really make the city run.  These are the unsung heroes that work countless hours and fight hours of traffic just to eke out a living.  The janitors, the cooks, the nurses, the accountants, the construction workers...the put in their time, but receive none of the glory.  Just like in any other city.

One of these tireless workers is Mitch Kupchak.


Kupchak came to play with the Lakers before the 1982 season after five fairly productive years with the then-Washington Bullets.  However, 26 games into the season, he blew out his knee, and was out for two seasons.  Although he worked hard to rehabilitate his playing career, even playing a key role off the bench in the Lakers' 1985 championship run, he was never the same and eventually forced to retire unceremoniously.  But under the tutelage of then-Lakers GM Jerry West, Kupchak learned the ropes of front office management.  He worked hard behind the scenes, helping the Lakers build contending teams.  He even earned an M.B.A. from UCLA in 1987 in the process.  After years of apprenticeship under Jerry West, Kupchak fully took the reigns of the Lakers front office in 2000.

After receiving the best news of the summer, I subsequently received many texts and FB messages from my Laker-hating friends on how the evil empire struck again or how Jerry Buss is forcing his daughter Jeannie to sleep with the owner of the Orlando Magic or how I should "never, ever, EVER say the word 'conspiracy' again".  (By the way, I still can't fathom how "basketball reasons" is the explanation for the CP3 veto.  I just can't).  When Kupchak pulled the Dwight Howard trade, most of my friends didn't acknowledge the hard work he put into the deal and just assumed the Lakers used their Sith powers to get Dwight.

So when Jacob asks how the Lakers "get the best date at the dance", the answer is: hard work and dedication, sprinkled in with a little bit of luck.  Yes, the glitz and glamour of the Lakers can entice any NBA player to move to Los Angeles, but it's the front office's hard work and dedication that really makes the organization run.  And it also doesn't hurt  that the Lakers have been extremely lucky.


With the exception of Shaquille O'Neal, no other major championship piece in Laker history has come through free agency.  All of those pieces were acquired through trades.  And Jerry Buss is no Vito Corleone.  Nobody put a gun to the head of Milwaukee's GM to take Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or to New Orleans' GM to get rid of their 1979 #1 draft pick three years prior (who eventually turned into James Worthy Magic Johnson).  He didn't blackmail Charlotte to take Vlade Divac for a high school kid named Kobe Bryant, or kidnap Chris Wallace's kids to take Kwame Brown's expiring contract and picks for Pau Gasol.  The same thing goes for Lon Babby in Phoenix, to take picks for Steve Nash, and now Orlando, to take three other teams' mediocre draft picks and average players for Dwight.  They have used trades for their big pieces, and used free agency to pick up valuable role players.

And yes, Shaq was a free agent, but he would have never come to L.A. if the Lakers weren't a bona fide playoff team lead by Nick Van Exel (who was drafted 37th overall by the Lakers in 1993), Eddie Jones (the 10th pick in 1994) and Cedric Ceballos (acquired from Phoenix in exchange for draft picks).  Now would be a good time to remind you that Jerry West's only Executive of the Year award came in 1995 when he assembled this post-Showtime rag-tag group and turned them into a playoff squad.

Simply put, the Lakers have been smart.  They worked incessantly to build the best roster possible, with both an eye on the present as well as the future.  I don't know how GMs Bill Sharman (1976-1982), Jerry West (1982-2000) or Mitch Kupchak (2000-present) do it, but they are all excellent assessors of basketball talent.  They have never been caught or charged of any transgressions by the league.  Plus, they rarely let agents get the best of them (see: Ramon Sessions, Trevor Ariza, Shaquille O'Neal and Luke Walton...er, never mind, not Luke Walton).


Here's a clear example: after the ill-fated 2004 Lakers "Reloaded" squad, which featured the walking corpses of Gary Payton and Karl Malone, lost to the Pistons in the finals, the Lakers barely made it to the playoffs or were first-round fodder for the next few seasons.  In 2007 Kobe went on a media tirade and demanded a trade.  But Kupchak didn't budge (unlike 99% of the GMs in the league), knowing full well that Kobe was still valuable and in his prime.  He kept calm and slowly built the roster and trade pieces necessary to build a championship team around Kobe.  He made the controversial decision to trade Kobe's friend Caron Butler for Kwame Brown, drafted and developed an out-of-shape high school kid in Andrew Bynum, convinced Phil Jackson to come back and coach a mediocre team, and even resisted Kobe's (and fans') demands to trade Andrew Bynum for Jason Kidd   Then he pulled a rabbit out his ass and turned Kwame Brown's expiring contract, picks and then-unknown Marc Gasol into Pau Gasol.  Two championships later and Kobe hasn't said a word since.

And you can't say that the Lakers have simply bought their players a la the New York Yankees.  Jerry Buss is not George Steinbrenner.  In 2002, the Lakers won the championship with the ninth highest payroll in the league.  In 2006, the year after they missed the playoffs, they didn't put themselves in bad contract hell, and settled on having the 16th highest payroll.  In 2009, they had the sixth highest payroll, and won the whole 'Ship.  And yes, since 2010 they have carried the highest payroll in the league, but have converted fairly bad contracts and mediocre players into the team they have now.  The Lakers are also owned by a man whose wealth pales in comparison to 19 of the NBA's 30 owners, so his pockets aren't THAT deep.  He's not Mikhail Prokorhov, Mark Cuban, or Paul Allen, who can just blindly throw money at the team and hope for the best.  If other owners knew the difference between a good and bad contract, there wouldn't be as much disparity in the league.

Yes, the big market and geography gives LA an advantage, but it's not an astronomical advantage.  The Knicks, Nets, Sixers, Mavs, Warriors, Hawks, Wizards, Rockets and Clippers all play in large markets, but have just 10 championships between them.  Why is this?  And yes, the Lakers have brand-recognition.  But ask why it took Boston, Detroit, and Chicago forever to rebuild after their championship dynasties ended.  Simply put, it's the front office.  The Lakers' front office is the best poker player in the NBA.  They know when to hold and when to fold.  And they take advantage of the plethora of bad poker players around the table -- that is, incompetent NBA owners who give the keys to their more incompetent general managers.


The Lakers are continually successful because they have the best management in the business.  The glitz and glamour is there, but it wouldn't be there in the first place if they didn't work their assess off to put the best basketball product on the floor.  You can't deny that.  And just remember that if this team ultimately fails to bring another title in the next two years (which, as Jacob has argued, has some potential of occurring), they will start again with no bad contract to their names when the new luxury tax rate really kicks in.  With the exception of Steve Nash, no current Laker has a contract beyond 2014.  So you can't say that the Lakers new Time Warner Cable contract automatically guarantees they will continue to pay through the roof for star players.  Well played, Mr. Kupchak.


After twenty-something years since finishing elementary school, I now question the validity of American nationalism that was so ingrained in my head when I was a kid.  So I ask that you all question your L.A. haterism as well.  L.A. isn't all Hollywood, plastic bodies, and plastic people.  There are millions of average Joes (hey!) just like you and me who work hard and lead normal American lives.  There are many who also despise David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, and Snoop Liony Lion frontcourt at Staples Center raising ticket prices so that average fans like me can't afford to go to a game.  Yes, I get it.  The Lakers win all the time.  But at the end of the day, NOBODY and I mean NOBODY would say they don't want their team to be as successful as the Lakers.

Give credit where credit's due.  Mitch Kupchak puts in hours of work and asks little in return.  Hell, give credit to Jim Buss (Jerry's son, and current Lakers overseer) for sticking with Kupchak even when his dad is out of the picture.  These people make the Lakers run, just like we make the city run.

Of course, I can't convince all of you to respect my hometown.  That's okay.  You will despise L.A. like you have since birth.  So when you do see the Lakers compete year-in and year-out, and you find your blood pressure rising as a member of the Buss family raises yet another Larry O'Brien trophy, just make yourself feel better knowing that we have no football team to root for.

We Can't All Be Supermen.

We Can't All Be Supermen.

"Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being.  A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength -- life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the most frequent results."- Friedrich Nietzche (c. 1886)
"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."
- Elbert Hubbard (c. 1900)
*****
So, I heard the news.  And I guess I need to say something about it.  But I don't really want to. There's so little I can do. For despite my best intentions, I am not Superman.

*****

On July 15th, after officially accepting a new job in California, and deciding once and for all that I was going to leave Seattle and move (back) to the North Bay where I was born and raised, I decided to take two weeks off from The Diss.  I had been going at a pretty good clip for awhile, and with NBA news seemingly slowing to a trickle, it seemed like a natural time to take a small break from the humble little blog and hit the road for a few weeks.

I had a pretty good "vacation" planned.  True, there wasn't going to be much relaxing involved, but I felt that I needed to get some space from both the Association and The Diss to really immerse myself in a variety of "heres and nows".  So that's what I did.  After banging out a quick Bathroom Reader two Mondays ago, I handed the keys off to the able hands of Frank "Kevin" Mieuli and Jordan Durlester and hit the road.  I went to former Diss interviewee Adam Smith's wedding in Minnesota (and got to see former Diss guest contributor Greg Perryman), where I hit the sauce and the dance floor hard.  On Sunday, I returned to Seattle, where I hurriedly packed up my apartment, said goodbye to scores of adoring fans, and visited the Moon Temple twice.  On Tuesday, I hopped into my tiny little Honda, played a few last games of NBA 2K9 with Diss interviewee Jason Angeles, and zoomed off to California to begin life anew.


But not quite.  On my way to Santa Rosa -- where I am currently writing this soon-to-be rant -- I stopped off in Willits, California, to do a two-day work retreat deep in the woods of Mendocino county.  What I assumed was going to be a few days of intense discussions about behavior support plans, antecedents and zero baselines turned out to be anything but.  Instead, two days of relaxing, napping, libation-ing, and reflection ensued.  I got the opportunity to meet my wonderful new colleagues, get to understand my new agency's culture, and most of all, just chill the fuck out for a few days.  For all of Wednesday, Thursday, and this first part of this morning, I took in the beauty of Northern California, while idyllic ponds and majestic redwoods reminding me why I came back home.  And throughout it all, my cell phone remained off, and my laptop never left its bag.  Indeed, being so far out in the woods, there was no chance I was going to get reception, and certainly no chance that I was going to be able to wirelessly connect to the internet.

So, I let go.  And dare I say: basketball did not cross my mind.  Not really even once.  Sure, in quiet moments with a beer, I might have thought briefly about The Diss, and what I was going to talk about in the coming week.  But for the most part, my mind was focused not on what I had preoccupied myself with for the previous nine months -- namely, the NBA, my case aide jobs in Seattle, making rent, finding drow, procreation without procreating and a middling little basketball blog -- but rather what was about to come, and the sheer ridiculousness of the moment I found myself in.  A month ago, I was convinced my life was going to be spent in Seattle, my community-building project still incomplete.  Now, I was in southern Mendocino county, on the wildest work retreat of my life, taking in the beautiful California sun and marveling at the sight of a perfect blue sky.  The places life takes us are amazing, and there are moments that require us to stop and just take a deep breath.  Those deep breaths are so important, as we continually confront the things that try us and test our often delicate first-world compositions.

I dreaded the inevitablility of reality.  I always do.

*****
Friday came.  There was nothing I could do to stop it.

As I drove out of the woods, made a sharp right onto Highway 101, and headed due South for Santa Rosa, I plugged my phone into my car charger, and waited for the small Apple icon to appear.  While the phone slowly worked its way up to 5% strength, I felt a strange sense of foreboding and anxiety building in my stomach.  We've all had that feeling with our phones, especially when they've been off for awhile.  In an age when an unanswered text produces legitimate panic and mania within our friends and loved ones, who no longer accept radio silence as a normal part of communication, I am always nervous to re-engage with the grid, and face the issues that seemingly require immediate resolution.  When the phone is off, or dead, or lost, there's nothing I can do about that.  Nothing.  People have to deal, and I am (at least in my mind) let off the hook in terms of maintaining nearly-constant lines of communication, and overseeing a vast social network.  When the phone comes back on, so too do the problems of the working life, as well as the not-always-leisurely life.  Commitments are renewed, and projects are resumed, whether we like it or not.  Time keeps on marching along, even as you plead for it to slow down.

When I heard the phone click on, and a series of chimes erupted from the damned machine that seemed to say Where the fuck have you been?! People have been trying to get ahold of you, you asshole!, I knew my vacation was nearing an end.  Eventually I'd have to check the phone.  Eventually I'd have to take a deep breath, face the real world, and end my vacation.  Respite is a fleeting pleasure.  Reality is a daily burden.

So I checked the texts.  I was relieved to see no panicked texts from old clients, wondering why I didn't come into work (sorry folks, I moved).  There were also no texts from my father or mother, wondering if I had flown off a cliff and was now sitting at the bottom of the Pacific (not this time, thank God).  So far so good.  Maybe this would be an easy transition back into the real world.

Not to be.  Not a chance.  I became nervous when I checked my texts and I saw a single text from my friend and The Diss' resident Lakers fan Joe Bernardo.  Within the body of that text was the symbol no one ever wants to see from a Lakers fan: a smiley emoticon.  A sinister ":)", it's innocent eyes and shit-eating grin looking up at me as I barrelled down 101.  Fuck.  I didn't even need to read the other texts from Jason, Franklin, or Symbol.  I knew what had happened.  I knew that while I was in the woods, the Dwightmare had resolved itself in the worst possible way.

Vacation over.  Back to this shitty reality.

*****

Going out into the woods, leaving the grid, then coming back to find that Dwight Howard was a Laker was the basketball blogger's equivalent of going on vacation, coming back to your office, and finding that someone had taken a big, fat, steamy dump on your desk while you were gone.

For all of Friday after I got home, I grumped around.  Homecoming ruined, at least blog-wise.

I tried to think of legitimate basketball questions to ask about arguably the biggest blockbuster of all time (certainly the biggest since the wholly forgettable Melodrama of 2010-11), but for most of the day I was too disenchanted and disgusted to pose or ponder them properly.  The questions always seemed to pander to the obvious, or border on the ridiculous.  Will Dwight, Kobe, Pau and Nash be able to share the ball?  Who the fuck cares?  Will Steve Nash be anything more than a glorified Steve Blake, serving primarily as a limited ball distributor and spot-up shooter?  Again, who the fuck cares?  If he was worried about it, he shouldn't have requested a trade to the damn Lakers.  And the coaching questions.  Will Mike Brown win these guys respect?  I don't know.  Ask Stan Van Gundy.  And my new favorite.  Are the Lakers better than the Thunder or the Heat? Great question; let me get out my crystal ball so I can tell you that I DON'T HAVE A CRYSTAL BALL, AND I DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER THAN YOU.  SO STOP.  ASKING.  DUMB.  QUESTIONS. 

So I wasn't feeling too objective.  And I wasn't feeling too happy.


Instead, for once, I want to ask the questions.  Not good questions.  No, I wanted to ask the questions that were rooted purely in emotion rather than analysis.  Questions like: how do the Lakers get the best date at the dance time, and time, and time, and time, and time, and time again?  That's a question that I think is worth answering.  That's a question I'm really quite curious about.  Or, alternatively, how about a question that Lakers fans love to ask when things aren't going so hot for them for them: what's David Stern got against us? Is there some sort of conspiracy that keeps this team contending when they don't seem to have the pieces to really make it work?  Or how about this one: why do the Lakers never, ever have to rebuild their team like the other teams have to, and instead get to acquire top-shelf All-Stars for pennies on the dollar?  I wonder even about some of the bigger questions.  If star players can continue to determine their career paths with impunity, why did we have a lockout in the first place?  Or maybe even this no-brainer: will Lakers fans ever experience a hard day in their lives?  Ever?  Ever??

So I sat around in my childhood home, and stewed, and avoided ESPN all day.  I had already called Symbol earlier in the day, and shouted over and over again "this isn't fair.  This isn't fair."  To her credit, she agreed, despite the fact that she got a franchise center in the deal, while at the same time, saying goodbye to a versatile, loyal forward.  As the day went on, I birthed and aborted numerous Dwightmare rants, each one more vitriolic than the last.  None of them were decent.  All of them were hateful and crude, purely emotional.  And more frustratingly: all of them were bad.  The two weeks off had dulled my chops, and had made me cynical to the process of (at least striving for) objective analysis.  I was pissed.  Writing wasn't fun.

And you know what?  That's a shame.  That's a tragedy.  That's not how blockbuster trades should be received and discussed.  That's not how The Diss is supposed to be.  And that's not how I should feel about The Diss, and the NBA in general.

So, I went to bed.  There was nothing left to do.

*****

When I awoke on Saturday -- today, that is -- Dwight Howard was still a Laker, and I was still in California.  But I was much more calm.  Maybe even a bit more objective.  And perhaps more ready to accept the things that I could not change.
No, the NBA isn't always fair.  It's not always worth repeating, but it is sometimes worth the reminder.  Since the NBA-ABA merger, seven franchises have won over 85% of the championships.  The team with the highest percentage of regular season and playoff wins, of course, is the Lakers, who for years have prioritized splashy trades and dominant pivot play as a way to maintain a stranglehold over the Western conference.  The times that the Lakers have been a middling team have come when they did not have a dominant center (or at the very least, a competent tandem of big men that could effectively switch between the 4 and the 5) to anchor their offense and defense.  So the fact that they worked tirelessly to acquire an All Star center that could do that shouldn't come as a big surprise.

Furthermore, we must remember that the only reason that Dwight Howard is on the Lakers because of poor player and franchise management on the part of the Magic.  Though every sign pointed to Howard leaving as a free agent this summer, he inexplicably exercised the final year of his contract with the Magic, which barred him from leaving Orlando on his own volition.  Meanwhile, the Magic sat on their hands, and kept Howard, incompetent former GM Otis Smith and disgruntled former coach Stan Van Gundy around the organization far too long to make a few changes, and magically convince Howard to resign.  By the time the finals were over, and the Magic still hadn't hired a new GM or coach, it was clear that the franchise was going to be cleaning house, and needed the time and space to do the terrible deed properly.  The Magic's mistakes provided new opportunities for the other 29 teams, and Mitch Kupchak, one of the finest GMs in the league, worked tirelessly to take advantage of the transgressions of the DeVos family and Magic CEO Alex Martins.  The Lakers are not to blame for poor management in Orlando.  That was the case in 1996, and it remains the case today.

Indeed, it seems as if the Basketball Apocalypse is upon us.  But it's not the first time.  And it's not going to be the last.  When the Lakers trot out a lineup that features Dwight and Stevie Nash, and still takes advantage of the services of Pau and Kobe, the going will be tough.  But a number of truths about the game still remain.  The Lakers bench is still pathetically weak, and will again rely on the efforts of declining bottom-shelf vets like Matt Barnes and Steve Blake to carry the load.  There are a number of different egos and agendas on this team -- based on the silliness of Dwight's introductory news conference, one wonders how serious he is about winning a championship at this critical stage of his career --  and Mike Brown sometimes shown that personality management isn't his strong suit.  
And, most importantly, remember this: this type of stuff rarely works out, at least in the first year.  Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler/Scottie Pippen and Charles Barkley learned this while playing for the Rockets in 1999.  Karl Malone and Gary Payton couldn't rely on the Lakers to deliver rings in 2004.  The Celtics' Big 3 of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett got theirs in 2008, but have gone fishin' every season since then.  And it took the Heat a season to put it all together, and even this year's run was never guaranteed.  The modern NBA is an imperfect science, not a scripted sitcom, despite transactions (like this one) that seem to imply otherwise.  You have to play the games to know what's going to happen.
The hardest part, of course, is not knowing what's going to happen.
*****
At the end of the first Superman movie, our beloved blue-tressed hero flies really fast around the Earth, and goes back in time to save Lois Lane.  Of course, he defeats the properties of science, as well as Lex Luthor, and saves both the girl and the day.
If I were Superman, and I could do the exact same thing, I'd be the worst superhero ever.  I'd just fly around the Earth and go back to a time when I didn't have to worry about new jobs, new homes, new friends, and new Superteams.  My focus would be purely on myself, and rectifying the ways the world has wronged me.
Perhaps it's a good thing that I can't do this.  Disappointments -- especially the relative ones -- help me appreciate the moments of reverie and respite, where the world stops, and the things you don't want to happen simply don't happen.  It's those moments that refresh, renew and recharge, and allow me to face new challenges head on, with a full head of steam, and if nothing else, a vision of what I want to occur.  It also allows me to deal with the things I can't change, and must simply wait to see if they will work out.
This has to be the way we all live.  And for NBA fans, this has to be the way we view the "end" of the Dwightmare.  There's nothing we can do to change what the NBA has become.  All we can do is continue to hope that the variables that have confounded "best laid plans" since time immemorial -- that is, the inescapable effectiveness of Murphy's Law -- confound these ones as well.

Because, in the end, we can't all be Supermen.

We Can't All Be Supermen.

We Can't All Be Supermen.

"Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being.  A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength -- life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the most frequent results."- Friedrich Nietzche (c. 1886)
"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."
- Elbert Hubbard (c. 1900)
*****
So, I heard the news.  And I guess I need to say something about it.  But I don't really want to. There's so little I can do. For despite my best intentions, I am not Superman.

*****

On July 15th, after officially accepting a new job in California, and deciding once and for all that I was going to leave Seattle and move (back) to the North Bay where I was born and raised, I decided to take two weeks off from The Diss.  I had been going at a pretty good clip for awhile, and with NBA news seemingly slowing to a trickle, it seemed like a natural time to take a small break from the humble little blog and hit the road for a few weeks.

I had a pretty good "vacation" planned.  True, there wasn't going to be much relaxing involved, but I felt that I needed to get some space from both the Association and The Diss to really immerse myself in a variety of "heres and nows".  So that's what I did.  After banging out a quick Bathroom Reader two Mondays ago, I handed the keys off to the able hands of Frank "Kevin" Mieuli and Jordan Durlester and hit the road.  I went to former Diss interviewee Adam Smith's wedding in Minnesota (and got to see former Diss guest contributor Greg Perryman), where I hit the sauce and the dance floor hard.  On Sunday, I returned to Seattle, where I hurriedly packed up my apartment, said goodbye to scores of adoring fans, and visited the Moon Temple twice.  On Tuesday, I hopped into my tiny little Honda, played a few last games of NBA 2K9 with Diss interviewee Jason Angeles, and zoomed off to California to begin life anew.


But not quite.  On my way to Santa Rosa -- where I am currently writing this soon-to-be rant -- I stopped off in Willits, California, to do a two-day work retreat deep in the woods of Mendocino county.  What I assumed was going to be a few days of intense discussions about behavior support plans, antecedents and zero baselines turned out to be anything but.  Instead, two days of relaxing, napping, libation-ing, and reflection ensued.  I got the opportunity to meet my wonderful new colleagues, get to understand my new agency's culture, and most of all, just chill the fuck out for a few days.  For all of Wednesday, Thursday, and this first part of this morning, I took in the beauty of Northern California, while idyllic ponds and majestic redwoods reminding me why I came back home.  And throughout it all, my cell phone remained off, and my laptop never left its bag.  Indeed, being so far out in the woods, there was no chance I was going to get reception, and certainly no chance that I was going to be able to wirelessly connect to the internet.

So, I let go.  And dare I say: basketball did not cross my mind.  Not really even once.  Sure, in quiet moments with a beer, I might have thought briefly about The Diss, and what I was going to talk about in the coming week.  But for the most part, my mind was focused not on what I had preoccupied myself with for the previous nine months -- namely, the NBA, my case aide jobs in Seattle, making rent, finding drow, procreation without procreating and a middling little basketball blog -- but rather what was about to come, and the sheer ridiculousness of the moment I found myself in.  A month ago, I was convinced my life was going to be spent in Seattle, my community-building project still incomplete.  Now, I was in southern Mendocino county, on the wildest work retreat of my life, taking in the beautiful California sun and marveling at the sight of a perfect blue sky.  The places life takes us are amazing, and there are moments that require us to stop and just take a deep breath.  Those deep breaths are so important, as we continually confront the things that try us and test our often delicate first-world compositions.

I dreaded the inevitablility of reality.  I always do.

*****
Friday came.  There was nothing I could do to stop it.

As I drove out of the woods, made a sharp right onto Highway 101, and headed due South for Santa Rosa, I plugged my phone into my car charger, and waited for the small Apple icon to appear.  While the phone slowly worked its way up to 5% strength, I felt a strange sense of foreboding and anxiety building in my stomach.  We've all had that feeling with our phones, especially when they've been off for awhile.  In an age when an unanswered text produces legitimate panic and mania within our friends and loved ones, who no longer accept radio silence as a normal part of communication, I am always nervous to re-engage with the grid, and face the issues that seemingly require immediate resolution.  When the phone is off, or dead, or lost, there's nothing I can do about that.  Nothing.  People have to deal, and I am (at least in my mind) let off the hook in terms of maintaining nearly-constant lines of communication, and overseeing a vast social network.  When the phone comes back on, so too do the problems of the working life, as well as the not-always-leisurely life.  Commitments are renewed, and projects are resumed, whether we like it or not.  Time keeps on marching along, even as you plead for it to slow down.

When I heard the phone click on, and a series of chimes erupted from the damned machine that seemed to say Where the fuck have you been?! People have been trying to get ahold of you, you asshole!, I knew my vacation was nearing an end.  Eventually I'd have to check the phone.  Eventually I'd have to take a deep breath, face the real world, and end my vacation.  Respite is a fleeting pleasure.  Reality is a daily burden.

So I checked the texts.  I was relieved to see no panicked texts from old clients, wondering why I didn't come into work (sorry folks, I moved).  There were also no texts from my father or mother, wondering if I had flown off a cliff and was now sitting at the bottom of the Pacific (not this time, thank God).  So far so good.  Maybe this would be an easy transition back into the real world.

Not to be.  Not a chance.  I became nervous when I checked my texts and I saw a single text from my friend and The Diss' resident Lakers fan Joe Bernardo.  Within the body of that text was the symbol no one ever wants to see from a Lakers fan: a smiley emoticon.  A sinister ":)", it's innocent eyes and shit-eating grin looking up at me as I barrelled down 101.  Fuck.  I didn't even need to read the other texts from Jason, Franklin, or Symbol.  I knew what had happened.  I knew that while I was in the woods, the Dwightmare had resolved itself in the worst possible way.

Vacation over.  Back to this shitty reality.

*****

Going out into the woods, leaving the grid, then coming back to find that Dwight Howard was a Laker was the basketball blogger's equivalent of going on vacation, coming back to your office, and finding that someone had taken a big, fat, steamy dump on your desk while you were gone.

For all of Friday after I got home, I grumped around.  Homecoming ruined, at least blog-wise.

I tried to think of legitimate basketball questions to ask about arguably the biggest blockbuster of all time (certainly the biggest since the wholly forgettable Melodrama of 2010-11), but for most of the day I was too disenchanted and disgusted to pose or ponder them properly.  The questions always seemed to pander to the obvious, or border on the ridiculous.  Will Dwight, Kobe, Pau and Nash be able to share the ball?  Who the fuck cares?  Will Steve Nash be anything more than a glorified Steve Blake, serving primarily as a limited ball distributor and spot-up shooter?  Again, who the fuck cares?  If he was worried about it, he shouldn't have requested a trade to the damn Lakers.  And the coaching questions.  Will Mike Brown win these guys respect?  I don't know.  Ask Stan Van Gundy.  And my new favorite.  Are the Lakers better than the Thunder or the Heat? Great question; let me get out my crystal ball so I can tell you that I DON'T HAVE A CRYSTAL BALL, AND I DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER THAN YOU.  SO STOP.  ASKING.  DUMB.  QUESTIONS. 

So I wasn't feeling too objective.  And I wasn't feeling too happy.


Instead, for once, I want to ask the questions.  Not good questions.  No, I wanted to ask the questions that were rooted purely in emotion rather than analysis.  Questions like: how do the Lakers get the best date at the dance time, and time, and time, and time, and time, and time again?  That's a question that I think is worth answering.  That's a question I'm really quite curious about.  Or, alternatively, how about a question that Lakers fans love to ask when things aren't going so hot for them for them: what's David Stern got against us? Is there some sort of conspiracy that keeps this team contending when they don't seem to have the pieces to really make it work?  Or how about this one: why do the Lakers never, ever have to rebuild their team like the other teams have to, and instead get to acquire top-shelf All-Stars for pennies on the dollar?  I wonder even about some of the bigger questions.  If star players can continue to determine their career paths with impunity, why did we have a lockout in the first place?  Or maybe even this no-brainer: will Lakers fans ever experience a hard day in their lives?  Ever?  Ever??

So I sat around in my childhood home, and stewed, and avoided ESPN all day.  I had already called Symbol earlier in the day, and shouted over and over again "this isn't fair.  This isn't fair."  To her credit, she agreed, despite the fact that she got a franchise center in the deal, while at the same time, saying goodbye to a versatile, loyal forward.  As the day went on, I birthed and aborted numerous Dwightmare rants, each one more vitriolic than the last.  None of them were decent.  All of them were hateful and crude, purely emotional.  And more frustratingly: all of them were bad.  The two weeks off had dulled my chops, and had made me cynical to the process of (at least striving for) objective analysis.  I was pissed.  Writing wasn't fun.

And you know what?  That's a shame.  That's a tragedy.  That's not how blockbuster trades should be received and discussed.  That's not how The Diss is supposed to be.  And that's not how I should feel about The Diss, and the NBA in general.

So, I went to bed.  There was nothing left to do.

*****

When I awoke on Saturday -- today, that is -- Dwight Howard was still a Laker, and I was still in California.  But I was much more calm.  Maybe even a bit more objective.  And perhaps more ready to accept the things that I could not change.
No, the NBA isn't always fair.  It's not always worth repeating, but it is sometimes worth the reminder.  Since the NBA-ABA merger, seven franchises have won over 85% of the championships.  The team with the highest percentage of regular season and playoff wins, of course, is the Lakers, who for years have prioritized splashy trades and dominant pivot play as a way to maintain a stranglehold over the Western conference.  The times that the Lakers have been a middling team have come when they did not have a dominant center (or at the very least, a competent tandem of big men that could effectively switch between the 4 and the 5) to anchor their offense and defense.  So the fact that they worked tirelessly to acquire an All Star center that could do that shouldn't come as a big surprise.

Furthermore, we must remember that the only reason that Dwight Howard is on the Lakers because of poor player and franchise management on the part of the Magic.  Though every sign pointed to Howard leaving as a free agent this summer, he inexplicably exercised the final year of his contract with the Magic, which barred him from leaving Orlando on his own volition.  Meanwhile, the Magic sat on their hands, and kept Howard, incompetent former GM Otis Smith and disgruntled former coach Stan Van Gundy around the organization far too long to make a few changes, and magically convince Howard to resign.  By the time the finals were over, and the Magic still hadn't hired a new GM or coach, it was clear that the franchise was going to be cleaning house, and needed the time and space to do the terrible deed properly.  The Magic's mistakes provided new opportunities for the other 29 teams, and Mitch Kupchak, one of the finest GMs in the league, worked tirelessly to take advantage of the transgressions of the DeVos family and Magic CEO Alex Martins.  The Lakers are not to blame for poor management in Orlando.  That was the case in 1996, and it remains the case today.

Indeed, it seems as if the Basketball Apocalypse is upon us.  But it's not the first time.  And it's not going to be the last.  When the Lakers trot out a lineup that features Dwight and Stevie Nash, and still takes advantage of the services of Pau and Kobe, the going will be tough.  But a number of truths about the game still remain.  The Lakers bench is still pathetically weak, and will again rely on the efforts of declining bottom-shelf vets like Matt Barnes and Steve Blake to carry the load.  There are a number of different egos and agendas on this team -- based on the silliness of Dwight's introductory news conference, one wonders how serious he is about winning a championship at this critical stage of his career --  and Mike Brown sometimes shown that personality management isn't his strong suit.  
And, most importantly, remember this: this type of stuff rarely works out, at least in the first year.  Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler/Scottie Pippen and Charles Barkley learned this while playing for the Rockets in 1999.  Karl Malone and Gary Payton couldn't rely on the Lakers to deliver rings in 2004.  The Celtics' Big 3 of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett got theirs in 2008, but have gone fishin' every season since then.  And it took the Heat a season to put it all together, and even this year's run was never guaranteed.  The modern NBA is an imperfect science, not a scripted sitcom, despite transactions (like this one) that seem to imply otherwise.  You have to play the games to know what's going to happen.
The hardest part, of course, is not knowing what's going to happen.
*****
At the end of the first Superman movie, our beloved blue-tressed hero flies really fast around the Earth, and goes back in time to save Lois Lane.  Of course, he defeats the properties of science, as well as Lex Luthor, and saves both the girl and the day.
If I were Superman, and I could do the exact same thing, I'd be the worst superhero ever.  I'd just fly around the Earth and go back to a time when I didn't have to worry about new jobs, new homes, new friends, and new Superteams.  My focus would be purely on myself, and rectifying the ways the world has wronged me.
Perhaps it's a good thing that I can't do this.  Disappointments -- especially the relative ones -- help me appreciate the moments of reverie and respite, where the world stops, and the things you don't want to happen simply don't happen.  It's those moments that refresh, renew and recharge, and allow me to face new challenges head on, with a full head of steam, and if nothing else, a vision of what I want to occur.  It also allows me to deal with the things I can't change, and must simply wait to see if they will work out.
This has to be the way we all live.  And for NBA fans, this has to be the way we view the "end" of the Dwightmare.  There's nothing we can do to change what the NBA has become.  All we can do is continue to hope that the variables that have confounded "best laid plans" since time immemorial -- that is, the inescapable effectiveness of Murphy's Law -- confound these ones as well.

Because, in the end, we can't all be Supermen.