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 »
Breakout. Emerge. Expand. Reveal. Grow. Play bigger and play better.
To clarify. We are not renouncing our status as Dubfans. To the contrary, we are and will remain avid supporters of the Bay Area’s signature professional basketball franchise. Hell, I’d buy the team in an East 14th-minute if I had the bread and Cohan was selling. But what we have had to come to grips with over the course of these past few months is that the NBA is bigger than one team. And to be a fan of basketball played at the highest level is—to some extent—to divorce oneself from the exclusive fortunes of a single franchise.
Another source of inspiration: Meschery the elder. Tom Meschery grew up in the Bay Area, went to college locally and played for the Dubs for the better part of a decade. And then he was traded to Seattle. He also coached in the ABA and CBA. Watching him now, a basketball elder in repose, something interesting becomes clear. And at least to me, it appears to be a peaceful truth. He is still rooting for the team that he played so physically for, for so long, yes. But if you ask him who his favorite players are, he says “Allen Iverson.” “Rasheed Wallace.” First and foremost, he is a fan, a student and a teacher of the game. Of basketball. Of the Warriors and their laundry too. But mostly of basketball.
And if it so happens that the guys wearing your colors are doing the things that you like to see—on the court, as well as off of it as citizens of humanity—then you can root with unbridled abandon. When those factors collide with less regularity or on a shallower plane, then sometimes one has to break out a bit and begin looking for those things from a broader group of sources.
To wit, our namesake beard still plays his home games in California. A fantastically intriguing team is taking shape to the north in Portland. The Lakers have signed The Monkey King. Nasty Nash still has the keys to the gym in Phoenix in his pocket. And even the Sacramento Kings have myriad storylines that bear watching. All of this will now come into play. But this is only part of the equation. Read More »
According to he who roams the sidelines and the blogosphere covering the Golden State Warriors—Matt Steinmetz—Fear the Beard is the third best blog covering the team. Perhaps even more shocking, he said that we would have been his number one pick had it not been for our tendency to be, well, all over the map with our coverage. Nonetheless, he went on to say that we were like a player that’s all upside, one that’s poised for a breakout season.
Rodney Stuckey of the Pistons was the player he compared us to. Not a bad comparo. And while I too am recovering from a hand injury that’s impacting my (blogging) career, the comparison got me to thinking. Thinking about where FTB is headed, how this relates to the Warriors and what it means vis-à-vis our choice of avatar and his departure.
When I was writing this, the airplane in which I was traveling was smashing across Nebraska at 500 miles an hour. The world is shrinking. And technology is closing the distance faster than wings and kerosene. That a roving sideline reporter and I can now be engaged in a swift and orderly online festivus of mutual admiration is exhibit “A.”
Exhibit “B” is perhaps best set up by paraphrasing an old bit from a long-ago episode of Seinfeld. There is a simple and cruel truth about professional athletics. One that is magnified by a factor of 10 for underfunded franchises with a history of losing. And it has to do with parity. And it has to do with television. And it has to do with free agency. And it has to do with—as Seinfeld famously noted—laundry.
See, the simple truth is that it gets hard to see your favorite players routinely leave as free agents. Where pre-free-agency pros—however compromised by servitude to a franchise they may have been—were agents of the public trust, now players are agents of themselves first and then of the league. So it is that now, after some considerable investment of time and energy, am I supposed to blindly root for whoever the next Warrior is with a beard or the jersey number 5? I am not this simple. Thankfully, neither is the game we love.
Not an hour from some of California’s greatest natural beauty is a city of notable despair. “The Biggest Little City in the World”, also known as Reno, Nevada. According to Wikipedia, Reno is the county seat of Washoe County. Incidentally, this is also the county, according to the a key campaign organizer for Obama, that will decide if Nevada votes red or blue.
As I understand it, there’s Clark County (the greater Las Vegas area), which votes democratic. Washoe County, that could go either way. And then, the rest of Nevada, gun toting and screaming red. In fact, it should be noted that Bill “Bubba” Clinton is the only dem to win the state in 40 freakin’ years.
Reno is basically a casino town. The birthplace of the gaming giant, Harrah’s Entertainment. Which was my hospitality this weekend and resting place for more 80+ year old smokers then I’ve ever seen (oxygen tanks and all). But the gaming scene is really just for the tourist. The voter action is in the hoods.
That’s where I spent the weekend knocking on doors for Obama (you should consider it too). From the single family homes in Kings Row, to the undeniably marginal Reno Vista apartments. I met and spoke to a lot of people from all walks of life. And, I have to say, I’m feeling pretty bullish on Washoe. I conversed with dozens of enthusiastic supporters, including three registered Republicans pledging support for Obama and two convicted felons that said IF they could, they’d vote for Barack.
So, while the city signage above clearly indicates the restriction of bringing wild Muskox to your next corporate retreat, I’d still pencil Nevada in for change.
You never know who you’re going to run into at the airport. I’m at JFK now and the dude in front of me in line turned out to be Seton Hall’s newest transfer and 2007 top-35 prep recruit, Herb Pope. After dumping 20 on Nevada in the WAC title game while playing for New Mexico, his stock soared high enough that he considered entering the draft. But after deciding against it, his coach (onetime commentator and player, Reggie Theus) bolted for another gig. So, Pope transferred to Seton Hall and may play this year depending on how the NCAA receives his hardship case.
His is a fascinating story of survival and perserverance. Get caught up for yourself here. He also blogs and posts pictures once in a while over at Street Ball Dot Com. Hopefully, he’ll hit us up with some comments from the other coast every so often and/or share a pic or two when somebody gets smashed on (see above).
Since I got a plane to catch, I’m gonna cut this short. Good luck Herb, this year and beyond. The pleasure was mine.
