A few weeks back DT and I had the pleasure of talking to John Salley, NBA Champion turned media assassin, at some length about his dietary habits and his love of The Bay (more on this in future posts). I’m happy to report that Salley is a good cat and one of the more interesting personalities that we’ve interviewed for FTB. The man can spin a decent yarn. I say this as a disclaimer of sorts for what you’re about to read because it does involve some PG-13 content. This is a story that I first read on Deadspin last week and that they excerpted from Salley’s podcast The Spider and The Henchman. So, it’s not breaking news like Turman’s Cougar story, but still a good read.
Before we jump to the story, I want to mention that I have a keen interest in the subject of quotidien life BC (Before Cell Phones) and BI (Before Internet). Even though I experienced a sliver of my adult life without these technologies, I can’t, as hard as I try, imagine how I got through a single day without either. I don’t know how I ever functioned. That’s one of the reasons I love this story. Because now I know what NBA players did in BC times (as opposed to now when these dudes are attached to their cell phones like it was an extra appendage). As an example, if you were wrongfully placed on injured reserve and your team is traveling without you, you might just cat the hell off for a weekend. Why not? Who’s gonna know? Ain’t nobody there to snap a picture of you coming out the club on their iPhone. So, without giving away the rest of the story, I’ll let Salley tell it like it was (Oh, and there’s a little insight here on just the kind of guy Isiah was and later turned out to be so publicly). Enjoy.
M. Meschery
It’s February 1989. I get injured, and then the Pistons trade Adrian Dantley for Mark Aguirre, and I’m pissed off. I’m really crying. A.D. was The Teacher. Not long after that, Chuck Daly puts me on injured reserve. So I’m out 15 games with a stress fracture that no one gave a fuck about until they brought Mark Aguirre in and needed to give him a lot of playing time. So they put Salley on injured reserve and say to Mark, You step in, learn the offense, get used to everything.
All right, cool.
After five days, I’m fine. The stress fracture has healed, and I’ve got new orthotics and everything. But I’ve got 10 days of not playing. Well, the team goes on a roadtrip, and I’m like, fuck it, I’m getting on a plane and going to Atlanta. I’m gonna hang out with Moms and get some food, yadda yadda yadda. [Ed. note: At this point in the story, Salley makes the kind of slapping sound that suggests he hung out with women in Atlanta who were not Moms.] I need to go down and relax. By the time they come back from the trip, I’ll be back for practice.
The team leaves for the airport. (An aside: Whenever we flew out, we’d always go to this place called the Landing Strip, which is a strip joint, obviously. We’d be there all afternoon until 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave, and then you’d see every car zipping into the airport, and Chuck would be like, “Ten minutes, and we would’ve left without you.”)
Anyway, the team leaves for the airport, and I go to rehab and tell the guy: “Yo, man, I’m not gonna be in. I’m healed. You know I’m healed. I’ll be back when the team is back.” I go the airport, and I get on my Delta flight, and I fly out.
Meanwhile, something happens to the team’s private jet. The flight’s canceled, and those guys have to fly commercial. Now, Detroit is the size of a postage stamp. As soon as I got on that plane, word got out that I was leaving town. So now my teammates know. But I ain’t got no cell; nobody’s calling me. I don’t know that they know.
So after the trip, I rejoin the team, and Isiah comes up to me.
“You see the game, Sal?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You guys put it down.”
“Sal, you watch the game?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know what y’all did.”
He goes, “Did you watch the game?”
Now, this is before DIRECTV, ladies and gentlemen. This is before Time Warner Cable. If you’re in Atlanta, you’re not watching the Pistons play Milwaukee.
I say, “Man, fuck, you know I don’t like watching the games.”
He goes, “Well, why didn’t you watch the game?”
“Why do I have to watch the game?” I say. Everyone’s giving me the stare. I’m thinking,These motherfuckers know.
Isiah says, “Sal, when we’re out there playing, you can’t —”
“Zeke,” I say, “you put me on injured reserve so Mark can get 25 minutes a game. What difference does it make if I watch you motherfuckers play Milwaukee, when all you really care about is Mark getting 25 minutes a game? I’m on injured reserve. I’m not even supposed to be on injured reserve.”
But no one steps up for me. They’re all taking Isiah’s side. Even Dennis Rodman didn’t tell me what the deal was. This was when I really started falling out with this motherfucker. I’m like, “How do you not give me the heads-up?” He says, “Man, Sal, you’re supposed to be a teammate.”
Fine. OK, I went to Atlanta. Fuck y’all, I didn’t watch the game. There’s nothing they can do about it.
Flash to my last year with the Pistons. Isiah gets hit in the eye by Karl Malone, and he’s bleeding. Isiah goes to the motherfucking Bahamas for a week and sits in the sun. When he gets back, I go up to him.
“Hey, motherfucker, did you watch the game?”
He says: “Nah, Sal. I had my shades on, man. Plus, you know I had to take care of [Ed. note: There's a mildly suspicious edit in the podcast here.]”
So I get bitched at for going to Atlanta and getting some pussy. He goes to the Bahamas with his wife to get some color. Ain’t that some bullshit?
The Baron Davis All-Star Kickball Game is a wrap. And right now James Harden’s t-shirt is asking the question that all of us are thinking. And his bearditude is also duly noted. It goes without saying that FTB will probably follow his exploits more closely this season.
The game itself provided ample excitement, a surprising amount of which was provided by an epic superfan known simply as Clipper Darryl. It also raised more than $118,000 for Baron’s charity, as Clipper Darryl reminded us all after each of his wild miscues in the field. “This is for the kids, man! This is for the kids!”
More on all of it soon, but first to find out the answer to a certain rhetorical question.
Doin’ it for the kids,
Turman (DNP, Coaches Decision) and Meschery (DNP, Injured Reserve)
That’s right. Meschery and I. Headed to LA. To see this logo. Which I kind of like for some reason. On a shoe. And on a giant truck. And playing kickball. While covering all of this as members of the media. Right. I know. That made no sense. Let me try again.
So, more precisely, the kick of choice for Boom Dizzle, the Boom Doom, is launching this week in the US. Promoting this via several Li Ning-related events in LA, Baron is also hosting an all-star/celebrity kickball game to benefit his charity, Rising Stars of America. So, Fear the Beard is hitting the road. Reports on said activity and the launch of a new podcast to follow.
For now though check out the promotional video of BD’s sixth trip to China.
Business took me down to the “City of Angles” this weekend; UFC 104, to be precise. And, while the House of Staples played host to the big match between Lyoto “The Dragon” Machita and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua on Saturday night, the event there on Friday evening was noteworthy as well.
Shortly after arriving on Friday afternoon I was summoned to the Staples to see the Clippers in their final preseason match against the CP-less Hornets. Preseason and not exactly a matchup of much consequence, but still, I was excited. Not only to see The Beard in person (I’d heard Baron’s man moss was reaching epic proportions), but also to take see the young Mr. Griffin close up and get a sense of the team dynamic.
About the first, I have to say Baron’s beard was ferocious. Totally savage. It’s long past those voluptuous Teddy Pentagrass proportions. It’s freakin’ angry and wild. Like Joaquin Phoenix angry and wild. On the freeway to Kimboville. And so was his presence on the court. Passion and competitiveness flowing from every pore. Some Warrior fans may have caught a glimpse of this when he put Mr. Randolph on his backside earlier in the preseason, thus removing him from the opening-night starting lineup. Suffice to say, for the 22 minutes Boom was on the floor, you’d never have guessed it was a meaningless preseason game.
Regarding my thoughts on Blake Griffin? Well, even with the limited minutes he was on the floor on Friday, I can tell he’s going to be a factor. Hype, or no hype. Take a look at this highlight.
In the end, I liked what I saw (I managed to avoid looking directly at Cryptkeeper Dunleavy and one Ricky Davis). But Thornton and DeAndre looked great. Rasual Butler, yes. It should be interesting to see how The Beard’s emotional leadership and this young squad fare over the long regular season.
In all, I left feeling a bit frustrated. No disrespect to my magnanimous hosts, but seeing the Clippers look like a team with an emerging identity opened up my old wounds. I couldn’t help dwelling on the “what if the Warriors hadn’t?” scenarios all over again. Ugh.
So, all I can say is this. Good peoples of LA, get behind your “second team” and Beard Up for the Clippers. It’s the Wild West, and you never know where this might go.
Ronny Turiaf, unimpressed by my FTB shirt, covers up his beard.
For the most part, the city of Portland is divided into orderly quadrants. In the northwestern one, there is a section of town called Nob Hill. Named in homage to the neighborhood of the same name in San Francisco, this neighborhood is a clean, quiet place of old Victorian mansions and boutique shops. Somewhat disconcertingly though, several of the streets share their names with characters from The Simpsons. Apparently, Matt Groening grew up in Portland. Go figure. But with streets named after both Ned Flanders and Reverend Lovejoy, an outsider is struck by a strange sense of order, imposed only by the psychological effect of churchgoing cartoon characters seemingly having streets named after them.
To a degree this is the net effect of attending a game at the Rose Garden as well. Bay Area fans will not hear the jeers that one hears at the Oracle. And I’m not talking about the ones directed at opposing players, I’m talking about the guy in section 203 yelling obscenities at Stack Jack every time he misses a three. And forget about any comparisons with Raiders fans. There’s no “Black Hole” here. I’m not saying that everyone in the arena is a Flanders or a Lovejoy, but there is a profound difference in the culture of hoopfandom here: people come to the game to cheer for a win.
Interestingly enough, they weren’t that interested in the 6’4” guy in the “believe yellow” Fear the Beard shirt in the seventh row either. I was afforded such largesse by virtue of a Stub Hub-savvy Dubfan of a girlfriend and ticket prices that are nearly half of what would pay for a similar seat at the Oracle. It was like a visiting a really polite foreign country like Denmark. Except one where your currency went further, like Mexico. Sure, it was a little homogeneous for my taste, but damn if it wasn’t hard to like what they’re cooking.
When the Warriors opened up a little bit of a first-half lead behind the spicy moves and sharpshooting of Jamal Crawford, I couldn’t restrain myself. I stood and clapped after a particularly tasty shake followed by a crisp jumper. “Blake can’t stay with you,” I yelled. Read More »
Brandon Roy ices the victory against Golden State, January 10, 2009.
The Portland Trail Blazers are the only show in this town. As a result, they occupy a large space in its collective psyche. And now, after several thoughtful years devoted to rebuilding, the team and the city are finally ready for the great repositioning. On the not so broad shoulders of Brandon Roy—son of the Pacific Northwest—will the fortunes of this generation of Rip City’s heroes rise or fall. But that is the beauty of renewal. Portland still has all of this action ahead of them. The team’s new mantra? “Rise With Us.”
It is a slogan that accompanies the team wherever it goes in these parts, and it fits. The giant billboard across the street from the Rose Garden itself places the action in perspective before you enter the arena. And the promise of the slogan is only half of the arrangement. This is a team that is also asking something specific of its fans. Implied in the three words is something that should sound familiar to Warriors fans: belief. Rise With Us. You do your part and we’ll try to do ours.
But this is a metropolis that seems to have a particular sense of civic duty. Slogans follow you around this town, like the strange, four-top, always-on water fountains that seem to be everywhere downtown. Plastered on city vehicles is another one: “The City That Works.” Portlanders want each other to feel like they are in this thing together. It would seem that this is a sentiment that they also—in this epoch at least—want to also apply to their professional basketball. This is done without irony or conceit. And it makes sense.
This is a good thing if you’re the only show in town. And it is a decidedly different vibe than the one that defined the last good Blazers teams. The twilight of Scottie Pippen was ultimately a lonely quest to emerge from behind a massive shadow. Young, impetuous ‘Sheed and all the technical fouls was also personal thing. Isaiah Rider smoking weed from a Coke-can bong was a more brazen type of indifference. And Damon Stoudamire’s slow, largely forgiven, fall from his hometown’s good graces may have been the final straw in the team’s protracted descent into selfishness. Make no mistake though. This town loved those teams. They just got tired of being hurt by them. Other parts of the country probably imagine it as a bad breakup. Here, one doesn’t get that sense. It was a marriage doomed to eventual divorce, but one where many of the memories are still good. Read More »
I miss Matt Barnes. And as a matter of fact his fiancee just gave birth to twins right here in the Bay Area. Crazier still, FTB reader “GSW Girl” had a sister giving birth down the hall. But with all of those good vibes gone come game time, apparently the “red mist” descended for Barnes in the Phoenix/Houston game earlier tonight. While I was indulging my newly registered NBA League Pass on the Clips/Kings matchup, Barnes decided to take some of the skip out of Rafer. This ignited some fireworks that even Nasty Nash put his crooked nose into the middle of. Not surprisingly, a couple of rather hefty shoves from Sheriff Shaqtus and some quick moves from the coaching staffs of both teams kept things from escalating further.
In either of the two games that I’ve watched recently, I’d bet that either the Dubs or Clips would have liked one of Barnes’ elbows to find its match with Mikki Moore’s annoying mug. At least the Dubs prevailed. In the case of the Clips, they faded down the stretch after riding their three (!) Davises to considerable comeback effect. While FTB ponders an epic road trip for a Saturday matinee between sub-500 teams that we have a divided interest in, let’s raise a late-night glass to a departed Warrior, one who certainly hasn’t lost his Warrior spirit: Matt Barnes we salute thee. Maybe it was a cheap shot, sure. But if I wasn’t watching the right game tonight, at least I can assume that Skip was inappropriate first, right? Sure.
Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton, Senator Barack Obama
Filed from: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii
Today, there is a strong possibility that America will elect its first person of color and first African-American to the highest office in the land, that of President of the United States. It is quite likely in many respects that the speed and effectiveness—to date—of Barack Obama’s ascendancy, has been bolstered to degrees incalculable by the utterly complete, yet haughtily delivered failures of the administration of George W. Bush. This conclusion is unavoidable, and overflows with the potential for Chris Rock-ish observation. Translated, it is something like this. Basically, it took the perfect damn storm. The most impossibly perfect damn storm. To make middle America ready to take a serious look at electing Barack Obama took some circumstances. First, it took middle America eight years of living under the reign of the worst president in United States history. Then the common folk had to damn near lose everything, while he presided over the biggest market crash in 60 years. And perhaps most critically, he also went ahead and cooked the books to get us into the most criminally mismanaged armed conflict in memory. To my mind at least, the mere fact that Barack Obama can be standing on the brink of the presidency is perhaps the only positive to have come from those eight years. The staggering blend of hubris and incompetence that have defined our recent history may have been precisely the slap in the face that America needed to wake up from its easy-credit and blind-nationalism fueled intellectual torpor.
Despite his considerable efforts to the contrary, Obama’s republican opponent, John McCain, has run a campaign that has been largely unable to shake the impression of similitude (McBush, as it were, to the leftist wonks). It must be assumed that he just, on some level, doesn’t really want to do anything very differently. Because at its core, the McCain campaign displays the same profound tone deafness to the basic needs of the everyday citizen. Oh, it’s artfully packaged, and more than a few will surely fall for the pretty colored wrapping paper, but his is a soulless campaign that, effectively breaks promises as quickly as it makes them. And this would-be emperor’s clothes are already coming off. The everyday Americans that have been the Republican stronghold since the Reagan Revolution are finally seeing the disingenuousness that girds the fallacy of “trickle-down” economics. And even though well armed with a phalanx of hockey moms and plumbers, he has callously assumed that this hokum will somehow play yet again. One has to hope that after eight years of blue-blood Skull and Bones quasi-cowboy, pseudo-populist bullshit, even the most die-hard social and fiscal conservatives have to have at least a shadow of a doubt now. Their banks are being socialized at great cost to taxpayers. They are losing their jobs. And whether they even realize it or not, they have been systematically cut out of the tax-relief shell game. Those “stimulus checks” didn’t do shit when it came time to save the house from foreclosure.
But belief is a strong and intoxicating tonic. And the belief extends deeper, to the specter of an us-versus-them xenophobia lurking just below the references to “normal Americans.” This is nothing more than a carefully wordsmithed attempt to get just enough disenfranchised working-class white folks to vote against their own self interest just one last time. Because the writing is on the wall. America is changing. And if not tomorrow, then it at least seems relatively certain that there won’t be another hundred years of handcrafting unnecessary wars and writing refund checks to the top one percent of wage earners before the hard truths emerge about where we find ourselves—collectively, and with our fates now truly intertwined—as a nation. We will either make the change, or the change will make us. The former is certainly the option that I hope we choose today.
What does this have to do with world driving champion Lewis Hamilton? Read More »
“…I threw the ball with two hands at first, then developed an awkward jump shot, a crossover dribble, absorbed in the same solitary moves hour after hour. By the time I reached high school, I was playing on Punahou’s teams, and could take my game to the university courts, where a handful of black men, mostly gym rats and has-beens, would teach me an attitude that didn’t just have to do with the sport. That respect came from what you did and not who your daddy was. That you could talk stuff to rattle an opponent, but that you should shut the hell up if you couldn’t back it up. That you didn’t let anyone sneak up behind you to see emotions—like hurt or fear—that you didn’t want them to see.”
-Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father
I’m staying in a lodging facility that places peace and quiet above all else. Thus, there is only one television here. After sneaking out for a couple of hours—to a nearby sports bar—to watch the Warriors/Hornets and Clippers/Lakers games, I returned just as the Barack Obama television event was reaching its conclusion on the community TV. He had just sounded the rallying cry of his campaign’s final week: “We must choose our better history.” And after the perfunctory God Bless America, the room had gone quiet. Until one woman in attendance uttered the phrase, “I hope he’s the real deal.”
This made me think about basketball. It made me think about the games I had just watched. But more specifically, it made me think about the psychology of the game and how this particular sport, more than just about any, cultivates an absolute desire to be the man. Basketball makes you want to be the guy who gets the ball in the last two minutes. The guy who even the most talented teammates defer to. The guy who gets announced last, when the scoreboard is flashing highlights and the game announcer summonses his best ring-announcer hyperbole.
That guy. Basketball makes us want to be him. Like no other sport I’ve ever played.
And yesterday I watched two games simultaneously, my head ping-ponging back and forth between flat screens watching four players vie for recognition as the man. On screen one, we had Stephen Jackson and Chris Paul. Screen two, Baron Davis and Kobe Bryant. Each screen, a showcase of contrasting styles in the man-ness. Each screen a collision of different measures of hubris and frailty. The absolutely critical swagger of self-assurance counterbalanced by the even more absolute weight of the odds against. Which, in the case of these four black men took me back to my beach reading from earlier in the day, to a particular observation made by Barack Obama.
“At least on the basketball court I could find a community of sorts, with an inner life all its own. It was there that I would make my closest white friends, on turf where blackness couldn’t be a disadvantage.”
Reading this quote and the one cited earlier a little differently—considering the “post-racial” Obama politic through the lens of basketball—I was struck by what it infers about the possibility of an Obama presidency. Read More »
Relaxing used to be easier. That’s how it seems at least. Barack Obama is leading the polls by many a measure right now, but there is also a countercurrent that seems to be palpable. The question: is the lead real? The answer: yes and no.
First, a picture. Here it is. From the Honolulu Advertiser (above). This is Barack taking a much-needed “me-time” walk after talking to his grandmother. And possibly saying goodbye to her. Friday. The woman who (largely) raised him. For what might be the last time. The apartment they shared. The block he grew up on. Father: deceased. Mother: deceased.
And this is no small moment in his own damn life. This is Barack Obama one week and change before he will either be elected or defeated in his bid to become President of the United States. And this is him. In flip-flops. And not the political ones. In some “sleepahs,” as they are known here. Plastic sandals. Walking around the fucking block.
Thinking.
So real, it makes the term “real” sound fake.
Personally, I want a president who knows when it’s time to put on some flip-flops and take a walk around the block to think for a minute. You? Need some scenarios? Read More »
