As the Lakers attempted a second half comeback against the Blazers last night, things got chippy, to say the least, resulting in Gerald Wallace having multiple stare downs with multiple Lakers, but none of these was as earth moving as when he and Ron Artest locked orbs and the Portland crowd chanted, "GER-ALD-WALL-ACE."
It was like watching two clumsy monsters battling over grainy shades of gray. Both men, who by their very natures can't help but reduce the rules and laws and structure of society to bread crumbs of rubble, appeared, in that moment, to renounce whatever qualities make us human. It was pure savagery, the chants of the crowd rising like tribal drums and pow wow smoke. In other words, it was so early America:
Two men whose very presence on the court, at the same time, promised to spark a fire that burned so stupidly in our collective consciousness that all traces of their basketball brilliance would fall to ashes: These men appeared ready to duel, to the death, over nothing.
A violence so silly it's perplexing, especially considering that it rendered two well-rounded statistical performances into something less substantial than melted butter: After all, Gerald Wallace put up 19 points, 13 rebounds, and 7 assists, while Ron Artest posted 14 points, that included a couple of big threes, and 8 rebounds that seemed to go missing in all of the game's macho posturing.
A first round matchup between the Lakers and Blazers would be music to my ears, like hearing torpedoes hit their mark, from inside a submarine.
It was like watching two clumsy monsters battling over grainy shades of gray. Both men, who by their very natures can't help but reduce the rules and laws and structure of society to bread crumbs of rubble, appeared, in that moment, to renounce whatever qualities make us human. It was pure savagery, the chants of the crowd rising like tribal drums and pow wow smoke. In other words, it was so early America:
Two men whose very presence on the court, at the same time, promised to spark a fire that burned so stupidly in our collective consciousness that all traces of their basketball brilliance would fall to ashes: These men appeared ready to duel, to the death, over nothing.
A violence so silly it's perplexing, especially considering that it rendered two well-rounded statistical performances into something less substantial than melted butter: After all, Gerald Wallace put up 19 points, 13 rebounds, and 7 assists, while Ron Artest posted 14 points, that included a couple of big threes, and 8 rebounds that seemed to go missing in all of the game's macho posturing.
A first round matchup between the Lakers and Blazers would be music to my ears, like hearing torpedoes hit their mark, from inside a submarine.
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