League Pass All Stars

I love NBA League Pass.  In the hierarchy of things in my life I love it goes: sunny days, League Pass, booze, women.  Over at IGoHardNow.com I've started up a 32-man 'League Pass All Stars' tournament.  The best non-All Star players on small/mid market teams.  Check out The Sweet 16.

Does Steve Nash Deserve His Freedom?

I've joined the team over at IGoHardNow.com and this is my first piece for that site.  You can read it here. I'll be contributing to them in the future, but will be sure to update on here as well. 

“Only free men can negotiate.  Prisoners cannot enter into contracts”  - Nelson Mandela

Steve Nash is a prisoner.  A unique one held captive seemingly on his own accord; the keys to release are in his possession, but his freedom comes with stipulations.  In February 1985, Nelson Mandela had been a political prisoner for thirteen years.  South African President P.W. Botha offered him freedom contingent on disarming his anti-Apartheid sect the African National Congress (ANC).  This was not the first such offer of release for Mandela, and not the first he would reject.

Fans want to see Steve Nash freed from Phoenix, and all he seemingly needs to do is ask to be traded, but Nash rejects this notion.  If he is to leave Phoenix, it will be on his terms, without any concessions.  He has waited patiently as the Phoenix Suns have rotated through general managers, growing hopeful each time that change is imminent, only to be disappointed and left with a depleted roster.  Now seems to be the time for our Canadian hero to change his approach.

When the leader of the Apartheid Party, Daniel Malan, was in power the Mandela-led ANC attempted to set up a round table discussion, but were soundly ignored; when Prime Minister Strijdom was in power the ANC tried again, but continued to be ignored; and when Prime Minister Verwoerd took office, the ANC requested a national convention, but still no notice was taken.  After years of thwarted peaceful negotiations, the ANC resorted to violence.

Steve Nash’s requests to upgrade the roster have gone unheeded by his last three leaders: Jerry Colangelo, Steve Kerr, and current oppressor Lance Blanks.    Perhaps, our Canadian compatriot holds out hope that change, not just in leadership, but a shift in culture for Phoenix Suns management.  Unfortunately that has not happened, and good faith negotiations have been ignored, now is a time for action.

Five years after daughter, Zindzi, delivered his speech rejecting the conditional offer of freedom, Mandela was finally released by F.W. de Clerk, without conditions that would compromise his beliefs, and the decades long ban on the ANC was lifted.  Later, Mandela and de Clerk would go on to win a Nobel Peace Prize together for their efforts to end apartheid.

A resounding change of fate does not seem imminent for Nash and the Suns.  He does not deserve to toil away on a lottery-bound team in the twilight of his career.  Time is running out on his championship aspirations.  The time for a diplomatic approach is over and he needs to take matters into his own hands.  The time has come to rise up, as we all must push, to ‘Free Steve Nash’!

Excuse the glib and porous analogy.  The point is not to marginalize Mandela and all those who suffered through Apartheid (Lord knows I could not begin to fathom their struggles, then and now), but to compare the ‘Free Steve Nash’ movement as bordering on asinine.  We all want to see Nash doing his whirling-dervish point guard thing on a team that ‘matters’, but to imply that he is suffering some type of hardship, or injustice, is absurd.   Robert Sarver is not an evil man oppressing Nash by keeping him from what he trulydeserves, a shot at another title run.

The general census: Steve Nash must be freed from the shackles of the Phoenix Suns because if any veteran player deserves a championship, or at least a legitimate shot at one, it’s him.  Take a moment to think about that, has Nash not been given all the accolades he deserves?  He and Jason Kidd are the two best point guards of this generation.  Last year Kidd collected his chip, along with an intimidatingly large ring, so that leaves little Stevie Nash out in the cold right?

Nash might not have a championship, or even a Finals appearance on his resume, but his back-to-back MVP seasons in ’05-‘06 leave him in truly elite company: Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar, Moses, Bird, Johnson, Jordan, and LeBron.  Reread that list, if you listen closely you can hear the ‘One of these things is not like the other…’song playing.   Perhaps the reason Steve hasn’t demanded a trade either directly with management, or through the media, is because he realizes he has already received more than hedeserves.

Now, let’s not devolve into the ‘Kobe was robbed in 2006’ discussion, which has already been discussed ad nauseum.  Nash has won two MVPs, with the ’06 win being one of the most hotly contested of all time.  He does not look at himself in the mirror and ask “what did I ever do to deserve this, how did I get so unfortunate?”  He’s a back-to-back MVP and that means first ballot Hall of Famer, so what if he doesn’t eventually raise a banner.  If you think Nash deserves another shot at a championship, do you also think Kobe deserves a retroactive vote on the ’06 MVP?  Kobe has his rings, Nash has his MVPs – both have been awarded for stellar careers.  In a perfect world Nash has a championship, and Bryant has two MVPs.  We do not live in perfect world.

There’s no point in seeing the Suns guard moved if he can’t continue to be the Steve Nash we have all grown to love.  It would be disheartening to see him moved to a contender like The Heat, and watch his dazzling abilities neutered by greatly deferring.   The sexy pick is for Nash to be reunited with D’Antoni and Stoudemire in New York.  Plus, apparently Nash loves New York [note: so does everyone].   That Knicks squad, with Nash helming the point, could still not overthrow Miami, or even Chicago in the East.

What if Nash moved to cross-coastal big market powerhouse The Lakers?  Watching him setup Pau and Bynum seems nice on paper, but Nash loves the ball in his hands, almost as much as Kobe Bryant does.   Plus, replacing Derek Fisher with another old point guard is not the answer.  Pairing Nash with Dwight Howard in Orlando could be interesting, and that’s only if, and we’re talking a Howard-size if, Dwight decides to stay.  Even then, I can’t picture them beating Heat/Bulls in a seven game series.  Nash rejoining Dirk in Dallas, has a nice cyclical career-arc  feel, but that’s supposing the Mavs whiff on acquiring Deron Williams this summer.  It seems the only way Nash is moving to a contender is if it takes a significantly reduced role.

Our world is not perfect.  If it were, Steve Nash would have an NBA title.  However, moving to a contender where he is relegated to the bench, just for a chance at a ring is not the answer to ‘Free Steve Nash’.  As Nelson Mandela’s has taught us, if you cannot be yourself then you are not truly free.

Kobe Bryant in 'Silence of the Fans'

Uniformly accepted around the NBA is the idea that Kobe Bryant is a ‘killer’, but what type of killer is he?

During the climax of All Star Weekend, a competitive and highlight stuffed All Star Game, Kobe Bryant had a clear path under the basket, but Dwyane Wade employed an unprecedented (for an All Star Game) “Jordan Rules’” type foul which resulted in light concussion along with a nasal fracture for the fourteen-time All Star.  When news hit the internet that Bryant had a broken nose, Twitter was abuzz with Rip Hamilton-esque mask suggestions.  One thread beckoned Kobe to sport a Black Mamba inspired mask which, tying in with the snake theme, led to campaigning for a Cobra Commander mask.

Suggestions continued until they reached ‘Kobe should wear a Hannibal Lectar mask’ because as we all know Black Mamba is a killer, and what greater homage to being a killer than to one of cinema’s most famous.  At this point I had to chime in that if Kobe’s going to be labeled a killer from Silence of the Lambs then he’s more fit to be Buffalo Bill than the fearsome Dr. Lectar.

If we’re playing the ‘NBA player / fictional serial killer’ association game then Michael Jordan is Hannibal Lectar and Kobe is akin to Jame ‘Buffalo Bill’ Gumb – a man who has become a killer to compensate for his social awkwardness.

In Silence of the Lambs Dr. Hannibal Lectar’s brilliance borders on savant, as does his madness, which is so chilling because of the cold and calculated way he kills and literally consumes a victim. You get the sense that Lectar was spawn straight from the pits of hell as some sort of unstoppable killing machine seemingly ‘programmed’ from birth to mercilessly slaughter whomever he sees fit.  Whatever is the driving force behind his actions is inherit.

Buffalo Bill, on the other hand, was not born but became a murderer over time.  The killing is a result of his upbringing, and mental torment. Lectar describes him as: “Billy was not born a criminal but made one by years of systematic abuse.”  Jame Gumb was not born as Buffalo Bill (the name given to him by the media) but he created the personae to try to distance his psyche from himself. Director Jonathon Demme describes the character as “a person who hated himself so much that he just wanted to make himself as far away from what he was, as he possibly could.”

When Gumb truly snapped he began murdering women, but that was not his end goal.  For Buffalo Bill his victims became trophies, murdering these women to cultivate a deranged ‘woman suit’ from pieces of each victim’s skin.  With each partition of skin garnered he felt he was moving further away from himself.  This is where the comparison to Kobe is made: the need to amass trophies, or in Kobe’s case, scoring records, as if once owning them all he can finally be satisfied with who he is.

Now, I’m not insinuating that Kobe is a lunatic who stares into the mirror with smeared makeup on his face while performing a ‘tuck back’.  But if we are going to compare killers in Silence of the Lambs to NBA players then Michael Jordan is Dr. Hannibal Lectar; a truly unstoppable force who was compelled to destroy others; and Kobe Bryant is a dangerous killer, but one not driven by the sheer act rather the achievement of accumulation.  Bryant, it seems, has foregone team chemistry this year with an eye solely on collecting personal records, as if only once he’s amassed enough can he like what he sees in the mirror.

Similar to Gumb, Kobe is creating a ‘piece of work’ and will not stop until its completion.  Becoming the Lakers’ all-time scoring leader felt good, but was not enough.  Passing Jordan on the all-time All Star Game gave him little pleasure but was a fine addition to his work.  Look at Kobe this past Sunday, this was not an exhibition game for him.

Long gone is the jubilant Kobe Bryant who awed NBA fans in his first All Star appearance back in 1998.  We are left with a man more obsessed with getting the scoring record, by any mundane way necessary, than with entertaining us.  All of these records are only pieces to his suit which can only reach completion once he passes Kareem on the all time scoring list.

Just as Jame Gumb gave way to Buffalo Bill, Kobe Bryant has become The Black Mamba – a killer consumed with owning records so he can be viewed as someone else.