ONCE IN A LIFETIME

A lot can happen in a week’s time. Last Sunday, Dwayne Wade broke Kobe Bryant’s nose in the All-Star game. In the three games since, Kobe scored 102 points. He also led his team to convincing wins in all three games, including a victory against Wade’s Miami Heat.

Second impact syndrome is the terminology for what can happen when an athlete receives a second concussion before fully recovering from an initial, even minor concussion. I won’t go into the details but it involves swelling of the brain and unrelieved pressure – not pleasant stuff. Kobe was diagnosed with a concussion on a Tuesday, as well as soft tissue damage in his neck to go along with his broken nose. He was allowed into action the following day. 

Kobe’s game against the Timberwolves was stunningly successful, a masked bandit pouring in 31 efficient points in 33 minutes. Why 33 minutes? Because the Laker lead dipped to a mere 19, late in the 4th quarter. Coach Brown in his infinite wisdom sent Kobe back out to protect this tenuous situation. Not to worry about the broken nose, the concussion and the damage to his neck.

Two nights later, the Lakers are up by 10 with only seconds left against he Sacramento Kings. Keith Smart sees a teaching opportunity and calls a time out. A natural segue for Kobe to take his place on the bench considering the considerable time he’s been logging this season, not to mention that whole concussion/neck injury thing. Nope, Brown sends him back – the Kings foul Kobe hard and he heads back to the line.

Sunday – the Miami Heat come to town, a major storyline considering that it was Wade who did the bloody deed a week earlier. The Heat are widely considered the favorites to take it all this year. The Lakers picked them apart – perhaps their most convincing win this season. Kobe was an assassin and the rest of the team stepped up as well. Andrew dominated inside and Metta World Peace was as dialed in as I’ve seen him in a long time. Pau played well, Steve Blake played well, they all played well - crisply, cohesively, with meaning.

And you may ask yourself, well, how did we get here?

The Lakers ended last season by cleaning house and hiring Mike Brown. An excerpt from a May 27, post entitled This Is Not My Beautiful House:

There are contingency plans of course, in the event that cooler heads prevail and a season is somehow salvaged. For the Lakers, this entailed finding a coach who could follow Phil Jackson, a coach who would bring a fractured team back together and lead them to the promised land. After careful consideration, they hired Mike Brown. Pause for the sound of a gigantic shoe dropping with a loud, dull thud. Yes, that guy from the Cavs, the one last seen with LeBron’s tire tracks across his back. He was on ESPN the other night, grinning huge at the prospect of working with Kobe. I’m sure Kobe’s excited to be working with Brown as well, henceforth to be known as the big bulls-eye.

What was Jim Buss thinking? You probably don’t want to know, I suspect his mind is a soggy and dangerous place. He often talks of learning at the hand of Mitch Kupchak but it’s a crock – the only guy who sat at the right hand of Kupchak was Ronnie Lester, 25 years with the Lakers and the one really responsible for scouting and championing Andrew Bynum. Lester is now joining the exiting conga-line of coaches, scouts, trainers and video staff, courtesy of Jimmy’s sloppily wielded truncheon.

Cooler heads did not prevail – the league would soon shut out its players, resulting in a protracted lockout in which a cabal of owners attempted to shut things down for a season and break the players’ union, it was a time of strangeness and abstractions. That a season was rescued at all was due to lawsuits from the players – a ludicrous checkerboard schedule followed, along with predictable injuries and spotty up-and-down play.

The Lakers’ abbreviated preseason brought them a blockbuster trade that was summarily scuttled by David Stern, the trade of Lamar Odom for financial reasons, and the rupture of some key ligaments in Kobe Bryant’s shooting wrist. And so their season began, with three games in three days - Kobe played with the torn-up wrist, naturally.

The team itself went through a series of lineup experiments as the season progressed, a dizzying array of rotations that baffled most observers, along with the players themselves. The musical chairs lasted until this past week when Brown declared himself settled (notwithstanding the fact that Pau Gasol remains on the block).

You may ask yourself, how do I work this?

A couple weeks ago, Kobe Bryant spoke up for beleaguered teammate Pau Gasol, blasting the front office for keeping the guy dangling. It’s not a good way for management to promote team unity and success. Kobe’s statement however, was a good way to promote team unity and success. Ken Berger was one of many to write about the team’s deteriorating front office.

The Lakers’ front office is an uncommunicative, rudderless fiasco, and the unrest and paranoia that have been festering for years threaten to derail the team’s plans to ride Bryant to his sixth NBA title while they still can. And much of it can be traced to the growing influence of executive vice president Jim Buss, the owner’s bon vivant son, who has helped transform a great franchise into a steaming pool of nepotism and nincompoops.

General manager Mitch Kupchak responded to Kobe’s statement in the only way he really could, preserving the right to make personnel changes when needed. Lakers icon Magic Johnson put himself into the mix via a conference call with reporters, stating that Jim Buss is the one running the show, not Mitch Kupchak. Magic elaborated on television, “I’ve been with the Laker organization for almost 35 years, and this is really the saddest, the most disappointed that I’ve been.”

Roland Lazenby, author of numerous sports biographies, columns and other good writings, unleashes some wonderful threads on his twitter account. During the height of the Buss/Magic/Kobe tempest, he opined acerbically on the subject of the Lakers blowing out the minutes of their most valuable asset:

A season like this could burn Kobe’s candle out quickly. It’s a big price paid for a new CBA. Kobe won’t decide to retire. His knees will make that decision for him. He’s long known that. A basketball player’s knees are like a rock musician’s ears. They wear our and leave you crippled or deaf. That’s the real price of it all.

Race horses are surprisingly delicate creatures. They’re bred for blinding speed, and support themselves on incredibly spindly legs. As they run, their hooves hit the ground independently, 2,000 pounds of crashing weight. Each year about 800 die in the United States as a result of on-track injuries. Somebody could ask Jim Buss about this – the guy running the front office into the ground used to train his dad’s racehorses.

The racehorse analogy’s a tough one for me. I actually love going to the track, or at least I love the memory of it. I bought a fake ID when I was 13 and would go to the Del Mar summer meets until my meager savings were exhausted. It’s a brutal sport though. Ever see a horse break down in the home stretch? They struggle to cross the finish line, ankles sometimes flopping - whether it’s the instinctual drive to win or simply a sad attempt to outrun the pain, who knows. They can’t speak.

Like most of the teams in the NBA, the Lakers have had a jagged up and down season. The common wisdom is that they don’t have the talent to go all the way – hence the nonstop trade rumors. There can be no doubt that the team has been playing better since Kobe spoke out in support of Gasol. A couple days later, after a win against Portland, the team held a brief players only meeting, and further circled the wagons.

A litany of injuries over 16 seasons, from shoulder to knees to ankles, gnarled fingers that no longer grip the ball as strongly, the torn-up wrist that somehow self-healed and now pushing through a head injury that didn’t seem to faze him a bit. Somehow he perseveres. His ability to will mind over matter his astounding – he terms it “adjusting”. Terminator-esque, shedding parts along the way. Muhammad Ali used to will his mind over body, laying on the ropes and inviting punishment, waiting for his moment to counter with dazzling flashes that became fewer and more far between as age and punishment took its toll. As we all know now, he paid a heavy price for the blows to his head.

Throw a dart at the season’s schedule, ask at any random juncture where the Lakers should be. Take fans’ temperatures regarding trades, ask those who ponder such things if Brown was the right choice, if gutting an organization is clear-headed thinking, if Lamar’s trade exception should remain unspent, if anybody thought the team would be in fourth place in the west right now and climbing.

The game against Miami looked different, just as the past few games have looked different – the white light that leaks from the edges, the blurring of age and injury-defying moves, time standing still once more as it always seems to in this game when brilliance unfolds.

The future doesn’t always play out as predicted – LeBron’s Heat lost to the Lakers this afternoon and afterward, he came over and gave Brown a cordial hug. Wade just stared with a towel over his head. As for Kobe, he was giving an on-court interview at the time, relaying how it feels to play with a plastic mask covering his face – this in the wake of three games in which he averaged 36 minutes and 34 points. And I can make no real sense of it except to take it as it comes. Once in a lifetime.

DOES JIM BUSS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

Lying in waiting, locusts and epic mountain tales, slow-motion highway drifts. The season had threatened to derail yet somehow, events kept sinking back into the primordial stew. Magic Johnson called out Jim Buss but a week later, questions and articles were erased, as if in a cyberpunk novella.

All-Star weekend had come and gone. Craig Sager was in his hotel room, picking the best parts out of a complimentary fruitcake. His rack of network-approved synthetic blends stood there silently. America’s sideline reporter peered at his cell. There were no text messages, no emails. There was a line of ants approaching the fruitcake from the left flank of the bed. There comes a tipping point in one’s life. Sager called the airline and changed his reservation.

An endless patchwork of ugly earth tones and smog unfurled as the 747 banked down. Sager looked out the window dispassionately. He had his headphones on. ‘Cause she knows that, it’d be tragic... if those evil robots win. Forty minutes later he successfully negotiated rental terms and marched through rippling heat waves toward a blue Chevrolet Aveo.

Nobody at the team’s headquarters in El Segundo had any idea where Jim Buss might be. It was true that he had an office here at the Toyota Center, supposedly. There didn’t seem to be a lot of people working today. Craig Sager sat in a waiting lounge and checked his messages. He was supposed to be in Atlanta. The girl’s voice sounded harried. He purchased a soda from the vending machine and carefully unfolded a piece of paper towel. The fruit cake was still pretty good. He had all the time in the world.

Hours passed. Sager wandered around the hallways. A couple young office workers hurried past, carrying cardboard file boxes stuffed with papers. Inside a copy room, a paper shredder had jammed. A security guard approached, put a gentle hand on Craig’s shoulder. “You really shouldn’t be here, Mr. Sager.” The man looked around carefully, then slipped a small piece of paper into Sager’s hands. “We never met.”

Sager cranked up the AC and began backing out. He noticed an older gentleman exiting a Mercedes S-Class, painfully. The man began walking, if you could call it that - his torso seemed to be advancing a foot or two in front of his legs. A blonde woman was accompanying him, along with a figure in a white robe, swinging an incense pot and looking skyward now and then. Craig shrugged off an uneasy feeling and drove away.

The strip club sported a facade with neon palm trees, currently experiencing electrical problems. Craig’s eyes adjusted to the gloom inside, the place smelled of stale smoke and room deodorizer. A girl squirmed halfheartedly on a small stage ringed by low chrome bars. A guy in familiar baseball cap was resting his head on his forearms at a table. Sager approached. “Is your name Jim?”

The head twisted up at him and the tiniest, most imperceptible spark might have winked from the corner of a bloodshot eye. He rolled his forehead back and mumbled into the table. “All I ever wanted was to please my father. We should party.” Sager shook his head slowly, something didn’t feel right. “No, we should get out of here.”

Jim said he wanted to go hiking. Craig just nodded as he piloted the Aveo through traffic. Any connection with reality had been left in Saskatchewan, a long time ago. He pulled into a 7-11 and purchased some terriyaki jerky and a slushy. Jim got a Mountain Dew Big Gulp, without ice.

The path began a gradual ascent, sloping canyon walls on either side. Loose pebbles and the dimples of a thousand footprints, plastic water bottles and soda cans, dented and bleached in the sun. Craig’s white leather loafers slipped and skidded and everywhere there seemed to be golden weed and sagebrush, low-lying clumps of prickly pear cactus. A red-tailed hawk circled high overhead, drifting in the late afternoon haze.

They had reached the top and were sitting. The city of angels stretched out forever below them, or until it disappeared into the smog. The sun was going down. Sager took a bite of his jerky. “You’re not really him, are you?”  Jim shrugged, “who are we really?”  He pulled out a wrinkled SAG card. “I never really worked a lot. Casting directors said I looked too much like Clint Howard. They gave me season tickets and then they said I couldn’t come around anymore. I don’t know what happened to the real Jim.”

Sager handed the card back. “You haven’t touched your Mountain Dew.” The actor looked sideways at him and smiled. Then turned his attention back to the smog belt. Layers of red and purple.

***

Ernie Johnson looked up from his notes and frowned. “What is it this time, Craig?” Sager smiled toothily, savoring the moment. “Okay, so the whole damned thing with Kobe and Jim Buss, right?  Have I got a story.”  Ernie stared. The tiniest spark might have flickered across his eyeball, behind the bifocals. Craig took an uncertain step backward, reached into his pocket for his android. His stubby fingers danced across the touch screen, pages scrolled. Jim Buss had never existed. Only broken noses and trade rumors.

A girl entered the room. "They’ve been waiting for you down in wardrobe, Mr. Sager. There’s a new chiffon sports jacket they’d like you to try.”

Sager’s eyes rolled wildly between Ernie Johnson and the girl. He tried screwing his courage to the sticking place. “Right. I just have to use the restroom first. Diet soda.” He shrugged, helplessly. Ernie frowned. “What were you saying before?”

Craig Bartholomew Sager shook his head. “Ah, haha. Nothing Ernie. Excited to try the jacket.”

The girl looked toward Ernie who nodded. She headed out the door. “We’ll be down in wardrobe, Mr. Sager.” She wagged a finger and attempted a playful tone. “Don’t you keep us waiting this time.”

Sager turned on the faucet, splashed his face. He straightened up, pulled a paper towel from the dispenser, folded it neatly and blotted his face. He considered saving the towel but it was starting to come apart at the folds. He examined his reflection from several different angles. He tried smiling at himself but only his mouth moved.

High tracking shot of a RAV4, heading north past the Canadian border. Intercut the slip of paper, now folded into a tiny Origami unicorn, perched by the washroom sink. Inside the car, Craig Sager had his eyes on the the road ahead. Jim was looking out the window at scenery floating by.

Sager’s V.O. “The security guard said the first Jim was special, no termination date. I didn’t know how long we’d have. No one does.”

And when it gets dark, we go home. 


Part 1
Part 2
Spinoff

JIM BUSS EATS YOUR BABIES

The cicadas drone in staggered waves, the heat brings headaches - suggestions for pickle juice and Himalayan salt remedies. There’s not much going on with the CBA, the latest revelation was the release of BRI figures which only show that profits increased coming out of a recession while player salaries were  actually reduced. The sides proceed apace on parallel tracks, carved like trolley ruts in cement.  I’m reminded of our other national dilemma - the debt ceiling talks. The difference is any sense of urgency - the nation faces default while the league’s battles are a matter of choice, greed and good old-fashioned union busting.

And so our summer goes, players’ profiles are wiped from the league’s website, a few teams play musical chairs with coaches. Nellie is rumored for the T-Wolves slot and it ushers in a quick wave of hilarity before Rick Adelman’s name surfaces. Reality check. Plus, Lawrence Frank got another job, coaching the Pistons. The Lakers of course, hired the Piston’s last head coach - one John Kuester, now back with Mike Brown.  John’s tenure with the Pistons’ players didn’t go so well and I’ll leave it at that.

The commissioner’s foot soldiers march implacably forward, their briefcases swinging like incense pots. There’s no real leverage except that which comes when savings run low and unity begins to crumble. The fans have power but they won’t use it.  La la la la, we’re not listening!   Ever wonder about the sales figures for NBA licensed merchandise and apparel?  Keep wondering, that info's not released.  It’s the mother lode. Fans could decide not to buy it.  Nah, it’s crazy talk.

The stories and comments about Lakers layoffs and discarded loyalties have pretty much run their course but it’s at least worth listening to a Brian Shaw podcast interview from a week or so ago. It was done by the Kamenetzky brothers and covered not only issues of coaching and staff changes but also an arms-length distance extended by the league towards those that served so successfully under Phil Jackson.  It’s fascinating stuff.

One might expect Jim Buss to roam the Toyota training center like MacArthur at Normandy but in truth, he’s rarely ever seen.  Phil Jackson said he never once spoke to him last season.  Brian Shaw was somewhat at a loss, he’d see the guy at games with his dad but that’s about it. Buss doesn’t even keep an office at the facility.  He blew through June like locusts through a field though - careers were left on the floor like husks.

At the beginning of our millennium, Slava Medvedenko was piling up stats for BC Kyiv, scouted by Ronnie Lester.  He couldn’t seem to speak the language but he found a home. He confounded Phil Jackson and wouldn’t hesitate to chuck up a shot as the fifth option on the floor.  He’d usually sink it and get yanked back to the bench, cheeks aflame.  Kobe Bryant threatened to opt out of his contract and take Slava with him. Chick Hearn could never pronounce his name. These were the salad days and the championships came fast and furious.  I named my basketball journal after him and now we’re stuck in a fucking ditch called the lockout so excuse me if I get a little hostile and question the wisdom of a guy who put his bartender on the company tab.

Day turns to night. I noodle around with a post and get snagged on mundane matters like searching for an image.  The dog’s been looking patiently at me for an hour. The temperature has dropped by about two degrees. We go outside.  The cicadas have not ceased since this morning.  My sink is filled with dishes.