It's the weekend; lightness is in order. Here's a spectacular lede to what is essentially a review of a book published by a website, the brainy and pretentious Free Darko.
Frankly, the review is better than the product. A lot better. Happens sometimes, especially on the web. Here's Sam Anderson, for New York magazine.
I believe, fervently, fundamentally, irrationally—like a big-tent
revivalist speaking in tongues—in the deep spirituality of basketball.
The game belongs in the same experiential category as space
exploration, planting gardens, raising children, watching sunrises from
12,000-foot peaks, solving impossible math problems, and making
emotional connections with lost animals. It is the ancient primal
language in which the universe speaks human truth most plainly. My
first sustained exposure to basketball was literally religious. As an
adolescent I would skip church services along with the pastor’s son,
sneak off to a nearby Sunday-school room, fire up the big TV on its
rolling metal cart, and (primed by NBC’s theme music, the now-legendary
John Tesh hymn “Roundball Rock”) sit down to earnestly study the
feverish catechism of the early-nineties NBA—the heroism, villainy,
violence, sacrifice, treachery, faith, and wisdom of Barkley, Stockton,
Wilkins, Jordan, Pippen, Ewing, Rodman, Moncrief. After several pious
months, this secret worship led to a spiritual transfer in which
basketball supplanted Lutheranism as the official mythology of my
youth. It succored me in times of hardship. When I got bullied in high
school, I shot hundreds of free throws like someone reciting rosaries.
I came to believe that the health of your jumper’s arc, the purity of
your ball rotation, was a precise measure of your spiritual worth. When
I tried out for my high-school team, it seemed that so much was at
stake about my soul and its place in the universe that, before we’d
even had a chance to run the first drill, I projectile-vomited all over
the gym floor. (I didn’t make the team.)
After that, who cares what the anonobloggers for this site think about Scott Brooks? (Among other even more trivial topics.) I mean, really.
