The original idea was to label the above photo, in all its black and white macabre glory as the grave marker for the last decade of NBA basketball. I even had two extended metaphors I planned on using. The first one, since I found the above picture to resemble a tombstone, compared the NBA to the wild west, with Tim Duncan as the straight-shooting Wyatt Earp andShaquille O'Neal as the always witty and physically ailing Doc Holiday. Instead of painting the two big men as rivals, I wanted to paint them as fighting the good fight, together, against theClanton's and McLaury's. In other words, I wanted to paint the last decade as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with these two making the last stand for the traditional center everywhere, before rail roads, fences, and the automobile ate up so much land that the court became too small for these Ice Aged mammals and fell into the hands of guards and wingmen that like small rodents are more flash than substance. I wanted to show that Duncan and Shaq needed one another, even if, like Earp and Holiday, they were on opposite sides of the law.
But I threw out that idea when I started watching The History Channel in heavy doses. Shaqand Duncan are not Earp and Holiday. They are bitter rivals, forced to battle with one another because of their proximity on the League's timeline. They are a woolly mammoth and a saber tooth tiger.
In the last decade, interest in the NBA froze, as seen by the frosty TV ratings of the NBA Finals. While Shaq roamed the Arctic tundra with Duncan clawing at his flesh, casual sports fans, like elementary schoolers visiting the Smithsonian just wanted to see the dinosaur exhibits. The casual fan couldn't get over the idea that Jordan as T-Rex would dominate a woolly mammoth and a saber tooth tiger, not thinking about the fact that a T-Rex would never survive in sub-freezing temperatures. I thought this metaphor of the last decade as a slow-moving glacier carving out the League's future was as good as fossilized and then a few things happened:
namely the economy, volcanic eruptions, and a sputtering of ideas....
This past season trade rumors flew, but nothing happened other than the Detroit-Denver trade that sent AI to Detroit and Billups to Denver. It was like a poker game where no one ups the ante. It would not have been surprising to hear that NBA owners were hiding cash under their mattresses and in lunch pales, buried in the backyard, afraid to take financial risks because of a bear market economy.
This willingness for so many teams to stand pat made it seem like the League was going to just wait for the Ice Age to thaw, especially when Cleveland decided not to trade for Shaq and San Antonio chose not to acquire Richard Jefferson or Vince Carter. The lack of action at the trade deadline made it appear that our two 7-foot cowboys were riding off into the sunset, but, as they rode out, someone yelled, "rape!" or "help! we're being robbed!" or "draw," followed by the sound of a pistol being cocked; and, at that moment, RC Buford decided that Tim Duncan needed another deputy to watch his back and traded two old horses and a mule for Richard Jefferson, who wins the award for always seeming younger than he really is. He's like the Cougar of the NBA; he looks 20, but he's pushing 30. He's also the Spurs hired gun.
Unfortunately, for Spurs fan, this gunfight appears to be outside the realm of Hollywood script writing. Buford was not the only one who heard time's pistol being cocked behind him. Steve Kerr also heard it, leading to Shaq the Woolly Mammoth's migration to Cleveland, which prompted the Magic to trade for Vince Carter, sending Hedo Turkoglu and Marcin Gortat back out into the wild. Then, the Detroit Pistons received verbal commitments from Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, while their own Ice Age relic, Rasheed Wallace, desperately went in search of a way to keep his place in the NBA food chain as a relevant player on a championshipteam, and his search could land him anywhere from Boston to Cleveland to San Antonio. Zack Randolph was sent to the Grizzlies for Quentin Richardson, and, lastly, the Lakers appear to have struck a deal with Ron Artest, causing the Rockets to court Trevor Ariza. Too much is at work right now for this fight to boil down into one man versus another, in the middle of the street; there are too many pieces involved for it to be as simple as High Noon.
This offseason started off like a scene from the Old West but became a show and tell of how the world works like a card game, meaning that one card in a deck of 52 can dictate the destinies of several franchises all at once. The Spurs pushed their chips to the middle, like they were moving land masses, and traded all their front court depth for the chance to win one last hand. Then, one team after another called their bluff by pushing their chips into the middle as well. A gun fight tends to have only two sides to it. One man challenges another by saying, "draw." A gunfight comes down to two men, timing, and guts. Sometimes, before the gunfight, there is the preface of the poker game, which comes down to luck and a reading of temperaments.
This offseason is the last big hand of this poker game. The last two hands saw LA, San Antonio, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Orlando, Phoenix, and Houston sit around the poker table staring blankly at one another for well into the night. They're the usual players at the saloon's big money table, getting together like this every decade or so.
LA and Boston are the old money; they've been around forever, and their spots at the table are reserved until the day they die. San Antonio's been on a hot streak of late, winning enough of the old money that he has to be kept at the table to give the aristocrats a chance at winning it all back. Detroit's always been a steady player, never takes too much of a risk; when he stays in the game, one knows he's got a good hand--he never bluffs. Houston's the same way. Every time he stays, it's a calculated risk that anyone in their right mind would have taken. Orlando and Cleveland are new money. Everyone's watching them closely, just to see how they handle the pressures of finally getting seats at the big table, wondering if they're the new San Antonio or just another Sacramento. Lastly, there's Phoenix, and Phoenix is here because somebody always has to go out first; and Phoenix fills this role. Phoenix talks and drinks too much. Phoenix takes every raising of the stakes personally. Phoenix bets when he should fold and folds when he should bet.
All San Antonio's chips are on the table, but they are not the only ones playing this hand as if they were starving. Early in tonight's game, Phoenix put too much stock in a decent hand and lost almost everything. Now, in an effort to just hang around, Phoenix unbuckles his great grandfather's pocket watch and slides it across the table, his fingers tremble as they leave the gold watch next to Cleveland, and Cleveland responds by flicking a couple of chips Phoenix's way. The rest of the table eyes the transaction critically. First of all, they're all thinking Phoenix gave up the watch all too cheaply, and second of all, no one should be kept at the table who doesn't belong there; leave drunkards to the bottle and cattle rustlers to the gallows. Cleveland's given Phoenix false hope. Phoenix only has a pair of Aces, a club and a spade.
Detroit and Houston fold; all they have is the pair available off the flop. Boston's been here before; he matches San Antonio. He's got a flush. LA has a full house; he matches San Antonio. Orlando hesitates, but he then matches the other three; he's only got two pair. Cleveland matches; he's holding a three of a kind. All have a hand that justifies their confidence; but how many men at one table can lady luck kiss?
San Antonio, the dealer, burns one card, and then places his hand on the deck. The four community cards are a 10 of diamonds, a 10 of clubs, a Queen of diamonds, and a King of diamonds. San Antonio eyes the other players at the table and then looks at the two cards in his left hand, a Jack of diamonds and a four of clubs. San Antonio begins to lift the corner of the river, knowing that once turned it will either bring disastrous rapids or the ocean.
San Antonio feels the table shaking and looks down at the floor. The whole room is shaking from wall to wall. Lamps flicker and glass clinks together like rain drops on a tin roof. Outside, a man yells, "stampede!" not draw. A dust cloud consumes the view outside of the swinging saloon doors, and from the yellow storm comes the sound of growling and a loud pitched elephant's wail. A trunk flails about in the wind; it's woolly and covered with claw marks. Snow piles up at the door so high that the doors stop swinging. San Antonio realizes that it was never a dust cloud outside but a blizzard mixing snow with dirt. The card waits to be turned.
San Antonio begins to lift it from the deck when the back wall of the saloon melts into lava. Sparks fly, and a river of red and orange flows into the snow bank, melting it. Here in the saloon water meets fire, and the floor splits in two.
San Antonio, LA, Boston, Cleveland, and Orlando are on one side, and the NBA's 25 other teams reside on the other--the have's and the have not's. The have's use the poker table as a raft while the have not's melt like wax in the fire.
The world does this ever so often, breaking itself apart to make something new. Super-continents like Rodinia and Pangaea come together and then get ripped apart. Mountains fall into oceans and oceans pull back like bed sheets. Shaq moves west, then east, then west, and then east again, scarring North America with his feet like glaciers digging lakes. Tim Duncan's fate as the league's polar ice cap rests in the fate of a river card. Time's gun is cocked, and now it comes down to waiting for a kiss.
San Antonio needs the Ace of Diamonds. They have Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Richard Jefferson, but they still need the fifth piece for their starting line up, whether it's Rasheed Wallace or Marcin Gortat. Otherwise, they will melt from the heat created by the preponderance of volcanic eruptions that hurtled five teams toward one another like tectonic plates and sunk the rest of the league into a sea of mediocrity.
The stillness at the trade deadline, during the season, was just the calm before the storm, and now the government, the banks, the investors, and those families that saved wisely are buying up assets. San Antonio fans, if this bold offseason doesn't buy back the family farm, then we're no better off than the Joad family, and we may share the same fate as those 25 other teams for a long time to come. We're no longer a player next offseason because of our financial obligations to Jefferson, and this offseason may just be a tremor compared with what's to come in the summer of 2010.
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