Category Archives: Kobe Bryant

Dallas Mavericks, Dwight Howard, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA, NBA Free Agency

The Plight of Dwight


If there were a soundtrack to the life of Dwight Howard, these past two years would simply feature Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” being played on a continuous loop.
At least that’s the song I’d pick for him, because to watch Howard agonize over where he plays professional basketball, it requires a heavy dose of the reality elixir being administered in high dosage – to himself.
If we thought LeBron James was bad, if we despised the posturing, self-aggrandizing and egocentric ways of 2010’s “The Decision” – then what do we make of this, the Indecision?
You cannot even put a year stamp on it, because it’s spanned two years now – and who knows if it will truly end when Dwight picks a place to play.
Being disgusted by the nerve of professional athletes as they cleverly maneuver from Point A to Point B kind of comes with the territory. Every few years, with someone like James, or Alex Rodriguez, it reaches new heights among sports fandom. We gripe, complain, let out our angst, burn some jerseys and then move on.
But what happens when the athlete – in this case, Dwight Howard – really seems tormented by such decisions? It’s like Howard didn’t get the memo. He’s supposed to be running this joke of a process. Yet Howard seems to be earnestly unaware of how preposterous this charade has become.
Perhaps, as was pointed out the other day by another talking head on the radio, Howard truly doesn’t know what he wants because it changes constantly. And this could be due to not going to college, as was suggested. It could be that by never being in charge of his direction at the age of 18 and selecting where he wanted to go, he’s always had this lingering thought in the back of his mind that other people held the cards.
So you didn’t go to college, Dwight? Well, that too, was your decision. Blaming others is a weak façade, especially in the world of professional sports – no matter if it works or not.
But this is what Howard believes: that currently, this free agency period is his first chance to control what he wants to do.
Problem is, he doesn’t know what he wants. Putting deadlines of making a decision today won’t change that.
What’s weird is how Howard reacts and handles his business after a decision is made. It’s been revealed he still talks with Stan Van Gundy – even after that awkward moment when everyone knew Dwight had told Magic management to let SVG go. He wants to be legendary, to be remembered in the lineage of NBA bigs, but somehow doesn’t seem the connection with the Lakers and oh, Wilt, Kareem and Shaq. Instead, he’s leaning towards Houston, Golden State and Dallas.
Whatever.
There was a time this drama would captivate us, now it feels like updates on Howard are force fed, and they are wildly uncomfortable for everyone, from the people doing the reporting, to those analyzing on radio and TV, to basketball fans that must be in the know, even if they don’t really want to know.
Of all people, Kobe Bryant probably said it best. It’s been reported that during the Lakers pitch to Howard earlier this week, Bryant looked Dwight in the eyes and told him to “put some roots down.” In other words, just make up your mind, man. At this point, we’ve forgotten whether or not we care – just that we want some finality to it.
Maybe Brett Favre changed that for us. Or LeBron. Or the unending coverage. Or a combination of all the above, plus other events. Either way, we’ve become intolerant and resistant to the manufactured drama.
NBA free agency has always been this weird process that sits outside of what is normal in sports or the world. The circus comes to town, everyone loses their mind like they are drunk at a friend’s wedding, making promises they can’t keep about staying in touch.
There are recruiting calls from those loyal to a franchise, packaged presentations with videos, billboards, fake jerseys, Pat Riley tossing down a bag full of rings. Franchises in Texas and Florida always pull out the “no state income tax” card, because stuff like that matters to someone earning $16 million a year. Weather, wives, schools for their children, the possibility of a player becoming a “global brand.”
It’s nonsense. It works. It’s part of it, yet it’s also out of control.
Americans already live in a world of excess compared to the rest of the globe, a country obsessed with gadgets, gossip and material goods. Oh, and money. So it says quite a bit that we, as a collective whole, feel disgusted over a situation like Dwight Howard’s free agency. The disgusting have become the disgusted.
And for what, really? A relatively young center with lots of miles on the tires, with a bad back and a fragile ego who’s never won anything other than individual awards, considered the best at his position during a period of the game when that position happens to be at its weakest? If I were the Lakers, I would have rethought the billboards and banners based on how the season played out.
If this feels like an attack, well, it probably is. Mainly because Dwight Howard is the epitome of an ego run amuck. At least Allen Iverson kept his cornrows and never changed a bit. We knew what was going to happen. In fact, most players are who they are.
Howard, however, came into the league sporting his religious background and a massive smile. He spoke like a cross of the religious Baldwin brother and Champ Kind. He was all about having fun on the court. The east coast home of Mickey Mouse seemed a perfect and wholesome place for Howard.
Somewhere along the way, Howard looked around and thought he was just as good and marketable as all these other fools. He deserved rings and love. Neither came in Orlando. Not much in of either in L.A. My assumption is he won’t find much in the next city as well, until he can forget about what everyone thinks and just becomes happy with being Dwight Howard.
And working on his offensive game more than five feet from the basket, but I digress.
The underlying fear of all this is that even once Howard picks a place, puts down some roots, they will be soft roots. What happens when he gets injured? If the media turns on him a bit? If the team doesn’t perform up to expectations? Howard has spent so much time pointing fingers at everyone else the past few years, there’s no one left to point to.
Except maybe if he found a mirror.
Notice how little of this has to do with money? It’s always been about conduct unbecoming. We’ll forgive a lot and forget a lot as Americans, as sports fans. Just don’t whittle away our patience for your plight.
But Howard has reached that point, probably long ago. We don’t care, Dwight. And it seems the people who play with you and that are pursuing you are growing weary to this saga as well.
If any redemption can be found, this is the recommendation: decide. Stick and stay. Go away from our public stream of conscious. Let some other jerk take the spotlight. Let us look at a stat box next March and say, “D12 had 34 and 18 again last night? Dang.”
For now, just go sell your crazy somewhere else. We’re all stocked up here.
Standard
Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, Mike D'Antoni, NBA, Orlando Magic, Phil Jackson, Shaquille O'Neal, Stan Van Gundy

Howard’s Hotel California


Dwight Howard never wanted the Los Angeles Lakers. 
He knew he would never match up to the expectations, the history, the legacy. Yet true to his personality, Howard smiled on the outside in the preseason following his trade from the Orlando Magic to the Lakers. He said mostly all the right things, mostly because there’s no way he’d say the wrong things.
Howard told us he wanted to win a championship. As opposed to telling everyone he doesn’t? And that’s the thing with Howard: his actions have always spoken louder than words.
From arriving as such a fresh-faced teenager who spoke about his Christian faith and all that he hoped to accomplish until this moment, wearing the famed Lakers purple and gold nearly a decade later, Howard’s hopeful words have never changed.
He always says what you want to hear, you just can’t tell if he believes it or only says it because he longs to be liked.
Howard had it all in Orlando: a small-market team that embraced him as Shaq The Second, willing to let him run the roost and act like a kid, because, that’s what he was. 
The Magic had a coach in Stan Van Gundy who exhausted all options in making Dwight’s strengths obvious, while hiding his weaknesses. Van Gundy protected Howard, both on and off the court. He defended him in the media. He surrounded him with shooters.
In Orlando, it was all about Dwight – and mainly only the good parts. Taking cues from Disney World just down the street, it truly was Dwight’s Magic Kingdom.
Just four short seasons ago, it looked like it couldn’t get much better: there was Howard, strong, agile and dominant in his own way, the centerpiece of a team that reached the NBA Finals. 
In retrospect, Stan Van Gundy did more for Dwight Howard that even Dwight Howard. 
Van Gundy put Howard at the rim, drawing defenders and creating a defensive scramble that forced help and freed up shooters like J.J. Redick, Courtney Lee, Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis to fire away or attack the rim themselves. Throw in Jameer Nelson and Mickael Pietrus, the Magic had athleticism, shooters and tons of ball movement.
It was perfect for Howard, who was allowed to control his environment, in the middle of the paint, and took the spotlight off his offensive weaknesses, like creating his own shot, developing a mid-range jump shot or a series of post-moves.
But nothing lasts forever. And everything ends badly or it wouldn’t end. Yet it’s still perplexing why exactly Howard grew so sour on Orlando. Or on Stan van Gundy.
Howard got SVG canned and himself traded out of town. He was indeed the second coming of Shaq in that regard, but nothing like him on the court. Which is why following Shaq’s path to L.A. is a big problem.
The Lakers are the complete opposite of the Magic, and it shouldn’t take much knowledge of professional sports or the NBA to know that. The Lakers are the Yankees of pro basketball, and therefore, everything is magnified. Every comment, every missed free throw, every loss and win. Howard’s worn out on the drama already – and we’re barely 50 games into his stay in L.A.
This could be Heaven or this could be Hell for Howard. If he committed himself to the Lakers, it would end part of the merry-go-round and media circus. But he only perpetuates it with his non-committal attitude. He thinks he’s being coy; he’s just being annoying to Laker fans and the media.
Likewise, it could be heavenly if Howard would develop the parts of his game that were masked by the Magic and Van Gundy. But he hasn’t shown signs of improvement and remains very limited offensively. You still have to have Howard close to the rim to be effective. You can’t just toss him the ball in the post and let him go to work. He’s not Shaq. He’s not Ewing, Mourning or Olajuwon, gifted big men who could score in a variety of ways.
Howard doesn’t need to shoot threes, even though he likes to joke about it. None of those guys did. But he’s got fewer offensive capabilities than Dikembe Mutombo. Howard’s also missing something else nearly all of the great and dominant centers have had: a mean streak. All of the best go into beast mode, where they physically take over games, snear and mean mug it down the floor, their presence known and felt. Howard just smiles, afraid that someone won’t like him.
So instead of being the awesome match everyone assumes it will be, it’s been Hell so far for the Lakers and for Howard. It’s exacerbating all of his flaws: his need to feel wanted and loved, his limited offensive ability, his cloak-and-dagger comments about the future.
Yet truthfully, the Lakers didn’t lose out on this trade, even if Howard doesn’t stay. The guy they traded, Andrew Bynum, has lost his knees and his mind (seriously, check out his hair). Bynum hasn’t played this season for the Philadelphia 76ers, and might not ever be what he once was – which was the No. 2 big man in the NBA.
And there’s the point: the Lakers needed to find someone to transition the face of the franchise to once Kobe Bryant retires. Howard could be that guy. And they didn’t really give up much to get him. If it doesn’t work out and he bolts town, then at the very least they have cap space to spend in 2014 on some other big name free agent.
Trust me, someone will want to play in L.A. and take over after Kobe is gone. The Lakers biggest mistake was in choosing Mike D’Antoni over Phil Jackson (which is still too weird to talk about). Jackson certainly would have made this work better and Howard would be more apt to stay. Then again, Jackson wouldn’t have stayed as long as Dwight, so you’d be right back here in a few years anyway.
Howard is an enigma, perhaps even to himself. He doesn’t know what he wants, and perhaps when he does, he’ll be too old to use it. He’s looking for what he already had and in the process of doing so, he’s created a beast, fed daily by the overactive L.A. media. But just like the Eagles sang, you just can’t kill the beast. This thing has spun out of control now.
Mitch Kupcheck says he’ll stand firm, that he won’t trade Howard today and that Howard will be another in a line of legendary Lakers.
At least someone believes that. At least someone wants that.
Problem is, it’s not the guy the Lakers need wanting and believing it.
Problem is, Howard can’t get out so easy now. There’s too much money on the table. Too much damage to Howard’s rep should he leave another team when times got tough. And that, for many reasons, matters to Howard. He may want things a certain way, but it goes hand in hand with being liked. You’re not well liked when you bail on the league’s marquee franchise, not when nearly everything for your future and the team’s is set on you. And he’ll have about $30 million extra reasons to make it work.
Howard just really hoped he would be able to recreate the magic he had with the Magic in some nondescript, less pressure-packed place like Dallas, Brooklyn or Atlanta, where he’d be revered as a much as he was for his first eight years in Orlando. But this is the Lakers. They focus on winning banners, not the happy pursuit of them.
In a way, he really did find the Hotel California.
Howard is caught looking for a passage back to the place he was before, and while he can check-out, he can’t really ever leave.
Standard
Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Mike D'Antoni, NBA, Pau Gasol, Phil Jackson

Showcase Showdown?


Now that football has entered hibernation period, and just before baseball begins its long warm-up to a long season, there is basketball of the college and professional variety to help us pass our weekend time.
And while the amateur ranks of college have produced a wildly entertaining and wholly unpredictable state of affairs, with the nation’s No. 1 ranked team losing each of the past five weeks, the NBA hums along toward its mid-way point with little surprise in its pecking order. As usual, you will find the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, and of course, traditional powers like the Los Angeles Clippers and Indiana Pacers.
Wait, what’s that you say? The Pacers and Clipper aren’t traditional powers? You wouldn’t know the Pacers had won 15 straight at home until Friday night’s loss to the plucky Toronto Raptors. Hell, you may not remember Canada still has a team. Or that the New York Knicks – yes, the Knicks – have the second best record in the Eastern Conference, or that the Chicago Bulls are hanging around and doing pretty good without former MVP Derrick Rose, still out because of his knee injury suffered last year.
You might not know the aging Spurs are 40-12, and have only lost two home games all year or that the Golden State Warriors are an emerging young team out West.
But as a casual fan coming out of a football coma wouldn’t know these things because no one is talking about them.
It’s all Los Angeles Lakers, all Dwight Howard, all Kobe Bryant and all the time.
The Lakers are a 24-28 team – good enough for 10th place in the Western Conference. They are old, injured and plagued by infighting. As I highlighted a few weeks ago, they aren’t really worth watching. Yet I couldn’t turn down the chance to watch at least a little of the ABC “Sunday Showcase” game featuring the Lakers at the Miami Heat.
For three-and-a-half quarters, the game was competitive and close. And then the Heat blew the Lakers doors off in the final six minutes before winning 107-97. Eric Spoelstra out-coached Mike D’Antoni, LeBron James continued to outplay everyone and Kobe Bryant tried to will his team back in the game, even as a five or six-point lead felt insurmountable.
You could glean several things by just watching the second half, where the Lakers couldn’t keep pace and allowed the Heat to score 29 in the final stanza. Even more telling – the Heat outscored L.A. 25-16 the final nine minutes.
First, LeBron James has no peers right now. It’s all come together and he’s at the peak of his prime. Google “LeBron James” and “shooting streak” and you’ll get a good idea of why. Efficient doesn’t even really begin to describe what James is doing, shooting 75 percent on his last 65 shots. He just broke the franchise record with five-straight 30-point games as well.
It’s a reminder of when Michael Jordan was in the midst of his reign of awesomeness: the only way James won’t win another MVP is if, much like Jordan, the voters get tired of it. No one else should win. He’s just that good.
The second thing you’d notice from yesterday’s game is just how dysfunctional the Lakers truly are. Steve Nash looks like a broken man who regrets agreeing to this trade. When they showed a close-up of his face, I pictured him with a thought bubble over his head: “I really think losing in Phoenix might be better than this.”
And for as great as Kobe is, as he himself has admitted recently, he is a difficult player to play with. He clogged up the offense good and gross down the stretch Sunday, using an array of back-to-the-basket moves, faders and leaners, appearing to me like a guy who’s legs were fading. This is understandable considering the Lakers were completing their long annual Grammy/Eastern road trip with the game in Miami.
Maybe Kobe was just tired. But he looked like a guy who was old, the one who’s shots at the end of the open gym are bouncing around the rim four or five times and falling out. And with each passing possession, his teammates are less and less interested in watching the same show. Keep in mind, Kobe’s heroics were half the reason the Lakers were even in the game midway through the fourth quarter, but the outcome was all too familiar: another loss.
We haven’t even touched on Dwight Howard (frankly because everyone else spends too much time on him). But Howard’s either not right physically, disengaged with all the drama mentally or most likely, a little bit of both. This week alone featured another round of media clips of Kobe calling out Dwight, Dwight responding and even Dwight’s dad getting involved to take a shot at Mike D’Antoni for not stopping it all.
But forgetting all that drama, the Lakers lack scorers, speed and aggression. They have no bench. There’s relatively little that’s likable about this team on our off the floor.
The Heat play, as do many of the aforementioned teams, with a sense of aggression and attitude. The Lakers have only Bryant with that mindset. Pau Gasol, currently out 6-8 weeks with a foot injury, attacks once every three weeks. Dwight Howard shows more aggression in trying to make his teammates laugh than he does on the court. Howard has one of the most forgettable 15-point, 9-rebound games I can remember. Howard ought to be getting 20 and 10, every night.
The Heat have let our out their inner beasts, the Lakers their inner child.
It’s clear the Lakers made a mistake in not bringing back Phil Jackson, who’s perhaps the best there ever was in the professional ranks at bringing massive egos like Howard and Bryant together under a common goal, while nurturing bruised ego’s like Pau Gasol’s and crazy-in-the-head egos like Metta World Peace/Ron Artest.
What does it say about Mike D’Antoni that the Knicks were a mess during his time in New York, yet a year later, they have the second best record in the Eastern Conference and seem to be playing quite well together? All you need to know about D’Antoni is what he said following the game yesterday: “We’re making strides. We can still do this. [Miami] set the bar and this is where we got to get to.”
I suppose I don’t know what I expect D’Antoni to say. I really don’t expect that truth, which would be: “We’re horrible and we really aren’t getting better. We should be left alone to become an afterthought on what has been a compelling and entertaining NBA season.”
He can’t and won’t say that, I know. But it’s outlandish to think the Lakers are making strides. Or that they are close. Not only can this team not win a championship, it shouldn’t out of sheer principle.
But sadly, this won’t go away. They are the Lakers. It’s 2013. The media cannot not hammer this story, this team, even though there is more going on in the NBA than this mess. So I beg of you, turn on NBA TV, check out some other games this week and then All-Star Weekend. You’ll find so much more going on in the NBA than what you might have seen Sunday from the team in purple and gold.
Otherwise, March Madness won’t just be reserved for the college ranks, as I’m not sure how much more of this ongoing soap opera in L.A. we can take.
It certainly was a Showcase Sunday for both James and the Heat and Kobe and the Lakers.
Yet only LeBron and Miami can feel good about what’s on display.
Standard
Derek Jeter, Drew Storen, Ed Reed, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, MLB, NBA, NFL, Peyton Manning, Ray Lewis, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Tom Brady

The Grind


Here’s to The Grind.
Or more importantly, here’s to the ones who went through it and excelled in it.
Because you can survive The Grind, but it changes you forever. If you don’t know what The Grind is, quite simply, it’s the torturous side of sports. The pain, the hurt, the injuries, the travel, the hard work, the rehab.

It’s the nights in an empty gym while your friends go out on dates. It’s the sunny afternoons of summer spent in batting cages, on dirt fields under a blazing sun, while others soak their feet in a pool. It’s the mildly grotesque smell of a weight room, which you strangely learn to embrace. The Grind is the scars, the rock hard calluses on your feet and toes, the lack of hair on your knees from floor burns.

And there’s a secret to it, that only the best of the best learn, which is simply that The Grind cannot be beaten, it’s barely survived and at your best, you simply manage and muddle your way through it.
The Grind is the journey, and it’s rarely understood by those who merely watch.
We are about to embark on a period over the next few years where some of the best in their profession – of all time – will step away from The Grind and reach The End. They survive it, embrace it and succeed in it.
The first comes Sunday, as Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis will retire – win or lose – following the Super Bowl. Whatever you think of Lewis as a person, or how the media lovefest has gone a little overboard the past month, considering, you know, this, it doesn’t change the fact that Lewis is indeed a warrior and a throwback NFL player along the lines of a Butkus or a Singletary. Ultimate competitor, passionate, and perhaps most of all, maximum effort at all times.
And he lasted 17 seasons in the NFL, a place where brain damage and physical disability are rampant after retirement. In 2011, a study found that the average NFL career was 6.86 seasons, a major league baseball player, 5.6 years, and in the NBA, ballers can expect to last on average 4.8 years.
That’s not very long. And that’s because of The Grind.
As spectators and as fans, we see the glitz, the glamour, the fame and the money of professional sports. And never mistake that they are well-paid. But few, very few, make it to The End. The Grind often ends it for you.
It becomes less and less about the money, but more and more about the legacy and about a unique competitive drive few can understand.
Within the next few years, many other outstanding, Hall of Fame caliber NFL stars could be joining Lewis: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Randy Moss (again), Tony Gonzalez and Ed Reed. Each of these players changed the game, impacted it in some significant way and broke records. Each will be a Hall of Fame player. Heck, maybe Brett Favre will finally hang ‘em up, too.
In baseball, guys like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, Ichiro Suzuki (basically, the New York Yankees roster) and David Ortiz will call it quits. And in the NBA, there’s this list: Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, and Steve Nash. All are winding down MVP-heavy, record breaking, Hall of Fame careers.
We’ve watched, we’ve enjoyed or hated them as members of rival teams, but we don’t know a thing about them, really. And we don’t know about The Grind.
Some of these athletes have been playing professional sports that span over three presidents – the second term of Bill Clinton, all of George W. Bush’s years in the White House and now, with Barack Obama beginning his second term as commander-in-chief. Cell phones weren’t heavily used, Justin Timberlake was in a boy band and we still feared the Y2K bug.
Just think, where were you in 1996, when Ray Lewis and Kobe Bryant started their NFL and NBA careers, respectively?
Simply put, the world has changed, but many of these guys haven’t. Think of what they’ve endured? To start, I think of how my story is 1/100th of theirs.
I am a has-been, former high school hoopster, and tried to play college ball at the D-III level. In my early 20s, I played pick-up ball a couple nights a week for a few years, didn’t do anything for a few in the middle and then played Y-League ball on Sundays for eight weeks, once or twice a year, for three years. Didn’t play again for awhile and now, over the past four months (in much better shape finally), I’m playing once a week again.
Keep in mind that fact – that I’m 33, haven’t spent the last 15 years in a 6-to-8 month season, traveling, maintaining, playing two games in three nights, back-to-backs or doing a West Coast road trip.
But I played. I’ve had my version of The Grind.
Frankly, I hurt more than I’d ever admit verbally, mostly in the mornings. And that’s mainly because I don’t want to be a whiner, a complainer and partly because those around me can’t understand.
In the winter, due to way too many ankle sprains, my feet just plain ache. They pop and crack constantly. They’re typically always cold, unless the calendar is between May and August, due to poor blood flow and bad tendons and ligaments. My wife shudders when my feet brush her leg and says they feel like ice cubes.
My back hurts, my left shoulder slips out of socket occasionally if moved the wrong way, or slept on for too long, from three separations. After diving for a loose ball once and landing on my elbow, I basically split my elbow cap into four or five pieces of bone. I’ve played with what amounts to a black and blue golfball on the side of my foot – several times and on each ankle. I’ve played in an Aircast, a shoulder harness (that I wouldn’t wear except for one practice), and routinely stuck my legs from the calf down into 5-gallon buckets of ice water.

Twenty minutes in, 20 minutes out. After pulling them out, with my feet still a blue-ish purple color, I’d do ABCs with my feet, then, plunge them back in for another 20 minutes of torturous cold that cannot be described, only experienced.

Once, I got 12 stitches in my calf after diving for a ball and landing on the jagged metal edge of a bleacher – but I didn’t notice my sock was covered in blood for nearly two minutes. And I didn’t notice that muscle and fat from my calf were slightly exposed from the gash.
But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
The Grind can give you an adrenaline high, a natural charge from competition that you can’t really replace, a euphoria that you’ll spend trying to replicate. The Grind can hurt. I’ve got friends with knees that have been repaired or scoped three, four, five times. Herniated and or bulging discs in their back. Some have addiction to pain killers, to alcohol, to Tylenol, Advil or nicotine.
I’ve done it, too. They are simply numbing agents to offset The Grind and its effects.
And our stories – especially my stories – are literally nothing but a drop in the bucket of those mentioned above. Think of the amount of needles endured just to play. Lewis is coming back from a torn tendon in his arm that he suffered in October. Imagine that rehab. Surgeries and pins placed into bones. Kobe flew to Germany to have a controversial surgery on his knee, where they put new blood platelets in, because The Grind had made his bones, well, grind.
And that’s just before they are done.
At some point, though, it ends. And that’s when the mental aspect, not just the physical, begins. An identity crisis, or sorts. Who are you without (insert sport name here)? Some, like me, only did it for 12-15 years. I thought I had a hard time. Guys like Kobe, Duncan, Jeter, it will have been for 25 or 30 or more. You don’t remember a time when it didn’t revolve around the game. Your life is defined by it, you are who you are because of it.
The younger you are, the less painful the transition I imagine. Those who get it and did it, no matter what the level, have their demons related to giving it up or losing it. And it’s harder to understand for those around them. The competitiveness is wired into you, somehow, perhaps before birth or at a young age and you can’t turn off will and desire.
It cannot be replaced. The beast cannot be fed with desk jobs or investments, or even announcing and analyzing games on TV. Some do well with post-sports life, like Larry Bird, others, like Michael Jordan, not so much.
Some don’t want The Grind, which is when they get The Filter. That’s why they quit their high school teams, to go out and do their thing. They date. They party. They grow their hair out and spend their summers in flip flops, going to concerts and pool parties. There are more who wave it off after they get to college. Not worth it, too much. Or they don’t play as hard. They quit diving for loose balls or line drives in the gap, quit chasing down receivers 15 yards downfield. The funnel gets tighter the higher you go in the sporting ranks.
Until we are left with the few you can survive all The Grind has to offer. Twenty or more years, from childhood on, of aches, pains, missed dates, failed relationships, lost friendships over wins and losses, the travel, sleeping in chairs, living in training rooms with ice wrapped around every limb, doctors, surgeries, and rehab.
The Legends, they’ve been hurt, too, far worse and for far longer than many of us can even comprehend. Broken feet, torn ACLs. Dislocated this, that and parts in between. Peyton’s neck, Brady’s knee, Kobe’s knee, Jeter’s ankle. Paul Pierce was nearly stabbed to death. These are just the big ones, the ones that we know about. We don’t know anything of all the nicks, bumps, scraps, twists and turns. Banging into bodies, diving on the ground, on the floor. Flying from city to city, sleeping in cycles of naps on planes and buses.
At The End, if you’re lucky, you got a few rings to show for it.
This weekend, I heard rising star and young Washington Nationals pitcher Drew Storen speak. He was encouraging many in the audience, who were young baseball players, to focus each and every day on getting better at one little thing, and how, over time, it adds up to make a big difference.
But he also spoke of The Grind. What he does never changes. There’s just more of it. The same way he played the game at 11, 15,  or 17 is the same way he plays today. He gets just as excited – still gets that rush – to strike someone out, to make them look foolish, like he did his neighborhood friends as a little kid.
“Just more people watch now,” Storen joked.
They watch, but they can’t know. It’s a lonely place, The Grind. Going through it, only few understand. And the further your go with it, the fewer people that know what it feels like. That’s probably why it’s so hard to let it go.
Lately, I have been writing pieces about the moral side of sports, of society and how we view these events, and what’s right and wrong. But you think of it from this lens, of these outstanding few, of The Grind, and you think how many shades of gray enter into someone’s logic and rationale.
I may not agree with the PEDs, with the personal life or off court issues, but I can see why they are there. Why taking something to give you an edge is a tempting devil on your shoulder.
There are not many left after a dozen, 15 or 17 years. So very few can survive that long. That’s what makes these guys special in a sporting sense. We rarely get them, and when we do, they often have baggage near The End. Scars unseen they hide from the world, because frankly, the world can’t understand. It’s too cut and dry by that point for them.
Other times, it’s simply a numbing agent, a way to survive, to press on. Many started out, like Storen, chasing it. And as life often does, so many are filtered out over time. These guys aren’t like us, which is why I’ll tip my hat to them all, no matter who they are, simply because The Grinders reached The End.
And I hope and pray for the beginning of the rest of their life. 
Standard
Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, Mike D'Antoni, NBA, Pau Gasol, Rasheed Wallace, Steve Nash

Ball Don’t Lie


Ready for an understatement?
This isn’t Showtime. And this isn’t fun.
This isn’t even the 2007-10 Los Angeles Lakers that made three straight trips to the finals and captured two NBA titles.
It’s a Hodge-podge group of veterans, past primes and no names. The Lakers have an egocentric star, and his name is not Kobe Bryant. Another player’s psyche is highly susceptible to breakdowns. Their coach has a warped sense of reality and apparently doesn’t see the roster like the rest of us does.
If this weren’t the Lakers, we’d ignore them, tell them to blow it up and check back in a year or two to see if they’ve made any progress.
But this is Los Angeles and these are the Lakers. The Yankees of the NBA. And drama and theater go hand-in-hand with the purple and gold.
The media will keep talking about them, but even Jack Nicholson’s waved the white flag.
The Los Angeles Lakers are a 16-21 team.
Can we stop talking about them now? If not, just let me know when, because it’s at that moment I’d love to talk about the NBA with you.
The most interesting, dynamic and contending team in Los Angeles is the Clippers. There’s a better story in terms of collapse in Boston with the Celtics. New York finally has a decent Knicks team. The Thunder are rolling in Oklahoma City, the Pacers have saved their season in Indiana, the Heat are bored in Miami and the Spurs keep fighting off father time in San Antonio.
But everywhere you turn it’s the Lakers, who frankly, just don’t matter. Lack of depth on the bench, old age on the court, chaos in the front office. Jim Buss is calling the shots, more and more frequently, if that tells you anything.
You already knew most of this. It’s nothing new. But for some odd reason, they won’t go away.
The players keep talking. Everyone involved is trying to stay relevant and pretend the Lakers matter right now. But it’s just an act.
Maybe it’s their coach, Mike D’Antoni, who continues to say outlandish things on a nearly daily basis. The man touted the return of Showtime when he took the job in November, promised things would get better when Steve Nash returned and just yesterday said the Lakers season was just starting.
D’Antoni has turned into a walking, mustachioed cliché. One game at a time? Season just starting? You’re 16-22! There’s just 45 games left in the season and it’s reasonable to suspect that in a difficult Western Conference, the Lakers need to go around 30-15 the rest of the way to make the playoffs.
Can this team win 30 of it’s remaining 45 games?
It can. But it won’t.
Which means all of this is just a sideshow. It’s window dressing on an embarrassing season. To preach to the masses to not give up hope is an affront to the masses. We all might not have made it to the NBA, but we can tell when we see a train wreck on the court and in the locker room.
We were asked to give it time, to exercise patience while this group figured it out. Many pointed to the way the Miami Heat started two years ago with Chris Bosh and LeBron James. By this point in the 2010-11 season, the Heat were winning games, not losing six straight. The Heat struggled with things like who’ll take the last shot. The Lakers struggle to get their shot at the end of games.
This isn’t a team that’s close, on the cusp and showing potential signs of greatness.
It’s a mediocre team. Kobe Bryant wants it, Dwight Howard just wants his. Steve Nash wants it, but can’t use it the way he used to. And Pau Gasol just wants to be wanted. There’s too much noise in Lakerland.  
Now, for all the poking and prodding on D’Antoni, what is it that I expect him to do? Hold pressers with a drink in his hand and say things like the uncle in Home Alone: “Horrible, just horrible.”
No, Mike D is doing just what anyone would, trying to paint a face of hope and optimism on a dire situation. And Kobe can tweet staged photos that make light of reports he and Dwight are sparring behind the scenes. And the Lakers can claim a 10-point home win over a 9-29 Cavs team is righting the ship.
They can do all those things. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. But it doesn’t mean we have to watch.
What do we typically do when we see a proverbial sports train wreck? We watch until it’s over. Well, this is over. We pay attention to things only as long as they are interesting. Most people pay attention to politics the six weeks to two months before an election. Within days of the election being over, we’re not watching Hardball, Morning Joe or CNN as much.
We needed to see how this would play out: Kobe, Nash and Howard on the same team. How it would go, what egos would get in the way, how they would run D’Antoni’s offense, if they complemented one another (both with their play and their words in the media).
We wanted to see if this was as fun as everyone said it would be (like on the NBA preview issue of SI, above).
It’s not.
And that’s the thing with sports, you watch until you’re spinning your wheels and wasting your time. We know what’s going to happen from here on out. Is success possible? Well, as Mike D and many of the Lakers players will try and tell you, anything’s possible.
Our eyes see a different story. And it’s just not one worth paying attention to. Let’s just close the curtain on this season and focus on other things, other storylines and teams that are worth our time.
Remember Rasheed Wallace’s famous line about how the “ball don’t lie”? Meaning, if you’re given the ball and you shouldn’t have been, the story will be told with the next shot. If it doesn’t go in, the ball told the truth. 
The ball isn’t lying on the Lakers season. Whether it’s turned over, bouncing off the rim and careening into the stands from a bad pass, the ball don’t lie.
And there’s no talking around that.
Standard