There is a chance Michael Lee not a particularly observant spectator.
A mere four sentences in to his recap of the Wizards loss to the Timberwolves, he reports that "Coach Flip Saunders helplessly searched for a player who would at least show mock interest in competing". Garbage. And I will name names.
The list starts with Chris Singleton. Unmentioned in the article, Singleton, with the help of Rashard Lewis's absence, (Also unmentioned in the article. These were the two most remarkable things from the game.) started his first career NBA game after doing more than compete in each home game this season. He flusters a variety of opponents on the defensive end in the SF to G slots and passes the ball on offense.
The list does not include Andray Blatche, who, as best as I can tell, does not like playing basketball and isn't particularly good at anything other than being appropriately sized and wanting to score. Noncontextually, of course.
The list includes John Wall, whose one-man fastbreak layups are not only the best offensive option the Wizards possess, but they are his inexplicable otherworldy talent. This is what is worth watching about Wall. This is his gift. He will take the ball from below the defensive FT line, look upcourt, see 3-4 defenders and 1-2 teammates and proceed beat them all to the basket. John Wall + Water = Fast Break.
The list does not include Jordan Crawford. He's like a cross between Andray Blatche and Jamal Crawford. Except without Jamal's ability to get scorching hot or Blatche's ability to collect rebounds by default.
The list includes JaVale McGee. This guy is a true NBA center. He's, admittedly, still developing moves other than "Fake to the lane, pivot to the baseline and out-freak-athlete the defender toward the rim somehow", but he blocks shots, rebounds, runs the floor and finishes at the rim. Plus the announcer loves his name.
The list includes Nick Young. I know it looks like he isn't trying. And his chronic inability to pass to the wide-open player is spellbinding. The thing is, he simply doesn't do either of those things. He also doesn't play defense. He is, however, the most reliable isolation scoring option on the team. He can score buckets against NBA-level defenders. He cannot read a defense and make decisions. One-on-one, he's a tough cover. Oh, and he's constantly using his lack of obvious effort to trick you into a cheap turnover or two.
The list includes Booker, Seraphin, Mason and Mack. They're all good. None of them seem particularly great at anything. They don't stand out, but they can play. They don't know when it is their turn and when it is someone else's turn, but they're not black holes on offense, and they're not terrible at defense. They are system guys. They have to be taught the O and D and how to make decisions based on the system, rather than what they are individually thinking. Heck, McGee, Singleton and Wall are ALL system players in a half-court offense. They do each shine at other individual aspects of the game though.
The list does not include Flip Saunders. He has a young athletic team which thrives on being aggressive. To wit:
1. The 10 blocked shots by the Wizards against the Timberwolves.
2. The Wizards lead the league in blocked shots and average 3.25 more blocks than their opponents per game.
3. The Wizards are 8th in the league in total steals and outsteal their opponents by 2.38 per game, good for 4th best in the league.
I don't mean to suggest that the Wizards are particularly good at defense. That would be dumb: They are giving up the 4th most points per game in the league, and are being outrebounded by 8 per game, the worst in the league. Sure, this has to do with their lack of an actual PF who beats the piss out of his opponents down low to compliment McGee's athleticism, but it also has to do with a lack of belief. To commit yourself to rebounding is to commit yourself to punishment and redemption. You must believe that even though your idiot teammate can't shoot, that you'll give up your body and the team will do better with this extra possession. You must believe that even though your opponent got off a shot, they missed it and now you will give up your body so that the team will score on offense.
The Wizards, as a collective, totally lack this belief.Individually, players believe they can score. Systemically, they do not. They do not believe that they get easy buckets from their offense, because they don't. The ball stops at inappropriate times and continues at worse. The players run the plays, but they don't know what, exactly, is supposed to come out of them.
On the other hand, they go on runs. They get a generate a couple of steals/blocks back-to-back and Wall generates a couple of one-man fastbreaks. The pace of the game increases. The heartrate in the building and the opponents goes up. They show off how athletic they are by taking risks and covering for each other. Steals and blocks indicate activity and effort.
Then the Wizards lose hope. Blatche tries to ride someone else's fire. Crawford self-immolates. Someone other than Nick Young tries to create on offense. (I'm looking at YOU, Singleton and Wall.) JaVale doesn't jump for a board. They lose belief in their ability to compete.
This team needs to play faster. This team needs to press. This team needs to gamble. This team, the youngest team in the league, needs to run their opponents out of the gym. They need to run into their opponents on fastbreaks. They need to run right up their defender's chest on the break. They need to never be in a half-court offense. They need to learn the slow break to compliment the fast break. The best way to forget about failure is to move on to the next act as quickly as possible.
This team needs to know their roles. They do not. They are all alternately overreaching and under-efforting. Taking it easy during the parts of the game they need to work harder and putting too much on their own shoulders when they need to share the load. These are things a coach teaches them to do.
When I first started watching the Wizards this season, Flip Saunders looked like he was in his first season. I was shocked to learn that he's been here for years. Then, I read Mike Wise's piece on the Wizards being "dismal by design" which inexplicably exonerates Saunders from any wrong-doing. While the piece does succinctly recap what, exactly, led to this team being 0-8 over the years, it paints a picture of Flip painfully sitting on the sideline while Blatche says crazy shit, JaVale says ignorant shit and players-only meetings are the end of the world. Well, Blatche is lost on this team, JaVale is trying to be friendly while playing rather well, and player-only meetings are just meetings.
Then Mr. Wise plays a quick round of the Blame Game, as if something like an 0-8 start can be directed at an individual. The problem is systemic. The players do not believe in their system, Flip is powerless in Leonsis&Grunfeld's system, Leonsis&Grunfeld system is built within the league system which works over years rather than games.
Flip is therefore one who must change his system. He has already lost the ability to make these players believe that they can compete. As he was quoted in Mr. Lee's article, "You can't give 82 Knute Rockne speeches every night." Yes, I agree. The issue is that speeches, while they can pull deeply-felt truths to the surface, cannot create belief. In competition, success creates belief. With the Wizards, Mr. Saunders has not created success. No, 49-123 is not all his fault, as Mr. Wise adeptly explains on his behalf. It is, however, the record the Wizards see when they look at their coach as well as the record they feel in the ruts of the offensive and defensive strategies they implement.
The Wizards do not have hope, redemption, faith, belief or science to cling to. They simply need change. They need something exciting. They need new traditions. Dig out that old full and 3/4 court press. Opponents are scoring just fine, maybe they'll be caught off-guard. Drop into some trap-zone and trap-man looks in the half court. Losses don't come by much more than 13 pts per night, which leads the league. Convince your opponents to sign the turnover compact and plot a more variable course for the evening. Bring out an irrational box-and-one or a goofy 2-2-1. Increase the total number of possessions in the game for both teams by encouraging quicker shots on both ends with defensive gambles matched with a constant dead sprint on offense. More possessions equals more steals and more blocks. More abrupt changes from half-court defense to full-court offense. More running, more gunning. There is literally nowhere to go but up.
This is the turnaround moment in the movie. The moment when the old ball coach tries something new, or the moment when the old ball coach is fired for a new experimental ball coach. This is when we receive grainy footage transmitted by slightly arcane technology of something fresh, yet totally ancient. An inspiration for a group of rebels, waging an uneven war. Mobilizing the youth to believe in an iconic, photogenic leader. Decked out in an interpretation of the colors of his home nation's flag: Red, white and blue.
No, not President Obama in 2008 as HOPE for the legions who had not felt their vote mattered before him. A reference far more lasting:
"Help me Obi-[J]an, you're my only hope."
20120102
Wizards: 0111012
20110610
So, what does he mean?
When he types
Our editorial staff wrote a lot for the editorial staff. Instead of writing a daily newspaper, they were writing a magazine that was impressing other writers. We were a second, maybe a third read. The guy going to Wall Street was reading the Journal, the Times, and then us. The guy I would love to have reached was Joe Six-pack, and Joe Six-pack didn't need to read how the GM of the Mets reminded the writer of the Phoenicians. My immediate reaction was the guy reading this paper thinks the Phoenicians play in Phoenix.?
Well, first, he immediately confuses people with himself. That is, if the editorial staff is writing for the editorial staff, then they don't acknowledge that they are different from their audience? Or is it that the author confuses the action with the reason? Is it that he can't understand the perspective of someone who always wanted to write for an audience like themselves with what he believe the goals (business plan?) of the publication should be? Many people write what they write because they got into writing because of reading. That is, if you're not writing pieces like pieces that you like read, why are you writing, exactly?
The way you write depends on the way you read depends on the way you write depends on the way you write the way you read the way you read what you write the way you write what you read into what you write when you write what you read. Or whatever. The point is, the two are inseparable. I know they have separate words, but unlike, say "cake" and "thought", they are not at all connected only by the way that the seconds can contain the first. They are connected by dependence. There is no A w/o B and there is no B w/o A. They are, in the strictest sense, inextricable.
The man speaking is the CFO. The group he is describing is "the editorial staff". Well, it is the CFO's main goal deals with financials. Financial risks, rewards, realities, bottomlinities and the like. The editorial staff is to control the content of the publication. To make the thing that they are writing (as a group) something. What that something is, is (to mess with Clinton) depends on the meaning of what the word is is. The Editorial Staff of a paper is culled from writers. But how? With what purpose?
Well, that depends on the publication. That depends on the whims of the CEO and CFO and the like. If you choose an Editorial Staff (with[out] an E-I-Chief) you will determine what the publication will be. Not that you can always understand what that means, but that you can reasonably anticipate that smart people want to write for smart people. They want to read things written for smart people. Or, even, for people who are smart at what they do. Which is different. However slightly.
The thing about writing, is that it answers the questions which reading answers.
Switch 'reading' and 'writing' and it is just as true.
This is inextricability.
Which market are you trying to pursue? Well, this determines which Editors you should hire. They will determine which writers to hire. The Editors are the audience of the writers. Yes, writers is in lower-case.
Choosing of the Editors is up to... Well who started The National anyway?
Who started this blog?
We didn't start the fire.
We just watched the motherfucker burn.
We Didn't Start the Fire
by Billy Joel
might be every song ever written.
And I can't stop watching it.
I mean: I can, but I really like it.
It is everything. It covers everything. Either immediately or by ap(prox[y])imation. Challenges. Overcoming of challenges. Hubris. Consumerism. Government. Brutality. Death. War.
Passingthebuck.
Then again, what is "the fire"? It seems to have always been here. Is it a desire for something? Is it a reach whose grasp it constantly exceeds? Is it... humanity?
No, Billy joel is not the messiah.
No, the video is not a revelation.
That doesn't mean = irrelevance.
The thing is that it calls into question all other songs, even all other thoughts. how is something you think or feel not an echo of what came previously? A larger circle in the ever-expanding ripple of human cause-n-effect. What of the Schoperhauerian idea* that we are all just echoes of humans who came before? Or was it Borges echoing Herr Schopenhauer?
---
*- However much the plays and the masks on the world's stage may change it is always the same actors who appear. We sit together and walk and grow excited, and out eyes glitter and out voices grow shriller: just so that others sit around and talk a thousand years ago: it was the same thing, and it was the same people: and it will be just so a thousand years hence. The contrivance which prevents us from perceiving this is time.
20110523
So then,
let us think of life
as a process of understanding.
As I know more now than I did then,
I know more later than I do now.
Or, if that is false,
I know different things now than I did then.
Let us then assume an impeccable memory.
Or an infallible diary.
Some method of combining everything you've known.
Some medium in which everything is remembered.
Let us assume that this impressionable thing exists forever.
Let us assume that this memory is comprehensible to the future.
What then would you know in total?
What then would be recalled at the end?
What then, if we extend the end?
If we stretch life to 100, 200, 1000, 2000 years or more?
If we at 30 don't understand as fully the world as do those who are 50...
If we at 50 don't understand as fully the world as do those who are 83.3333...
Well then, do we bound the understanding of the world by the extension of life?
Well then, do we bound the extension of life by the understanding of the world?
Which is the figure,
Where is the ground?
How high can I fly
Before I mimic Icarus?
Before some idea burns my brain out.
Before some identity melts my self to paranoia?
Should we look to those long-lived institutions?
Should we look to those long-lived works of art?
Where in these breaths do I live?
Where in these breaths do I die?
Which is me?
Which is an echo of all who/that came before?
Can an echo be less than all that previously existed?
Can an echo imply anything other than time?
If I die before I wake,
I pray the lord my unoriginality to fake.
Or am I tilting at windmills,
Borrowing from the past?
To say unoriginality exists
Is to say originality exists.
If there is one author
One mind, one story...
Then...
What/who/how/where/why?
20110502
Avail Thyself to Interpretation
There is a point in each book
(Shirley: There usually exists more than one point in a book.)
at which the book opens itself.
The pages read carry enough weight to hold the place of the reader.
The pages to be read still hold enough weight to refrain from rushing the reader.
How like a plateau con una magnífica vista?
Struggle to enter, feel each moment equal, rush to return to the lowlands.
How like The American Dream?
Establish an idea, experience the genius, rush to return to base.
Buy the ticket, take the ride,
motherfucker.
How opposite The American Dream?
Climb up Appalachia, sully thyself in the great valley, fall from the Rocky Mountain High.
California tumbles into the sea.
Blame the San Andreas Fault, naturally.
20110426
In Re The Only One I Read On-Time
It is like I'm making him die.
Right there, on the page, as I read.
A photograph of some soul.
Seeping out, tint by tint.
Unwittingly he'd laid himself bare,
insecurities, inimitable wit and all.
His heart.
His mind.
Here.
"I'm in here."
Willingly taking on the hardest task:
To make me emote in w/r/t The Service.
The knowing unkowingness of it all.
The conniving innocence.
The incongruity.
The clarity.
I turn the page,
and the end draws near.
No more ghost words,
no more recursive characters.
No more implied infinities,
no more painful jest.
With each page turned,
the present becomes the past.
Each page turned,
the end becomes the beginning.
If no one else will write it,
perhaps I will?
If I well-regard the reading,
then I should do the writing
instead of (mak/lett)ing dfw intricately beautifully
painfully mumble muddle w nder through it for me.
20101201
What
Does it mean
that "drunk"may be
one of the few conditions under which adults can discuss their feelings?
That "stoned"may be one of the few conditions under which adults feel the height that is their existence?
What may this h(e/a)ll be?
This "dark twisted fantasy" o(f/r) reality
Why is "altered" the way it makes sense to more than none?
Wtf is wiki(pedia/leaks)
and why am I afraid to link to them directly?
Should I cancel "my google"?
Am I just paranoid for a breath or two?