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Neat Article
>
> Mars points
> NBA to next
> Milky Way
> JULY 15, 1997
>
> Dave Kindred
>
>
> When we first met Mars Blackmon, the
> Brooklyn bicycle messenger had invested in a
> pair of original Air Jordans, red and black with
> fat shoelaces. This despite his love for the
> Knicks. This despite his belief that Knicks star
> Bernard King was the best scorer ever to come
> out of Brooklyn.
>
> Mars bought the Air Jordans because he was a
> purist who honored The Game, and he knew
> Michael Jordan was The Man.
>
> We met Mars at the movies in 1986. In "She's
> Gotta Have It," the little guy always wears his
> Air Jordans, even to bed when entwined with
> darling Nora Darling. The shoes are a signal of
> his devotion to hoops. He can go on about
> Bernard lighting up the Celtics. Or how Larry
> Bird is one thing above all, and that thing is not
> the NBA's best player but its ugliest!
>
> That brings us to a Kindred theory: Mars
> Blackmon saved the NBA from extinction. His
> rescue of a drug-infested, money-poor,
> moribund league is a story so obvious it has
> been missed by analysts who credit Jordan
> Himself.
>
> Filmmaker and actor Spike Lee, working as
> Mars Blackmon and directing seven Nike
> commercials featuring Jordan, gave the NBA an
> identity at once positive, playful and powerful.
> Certainly, Lee profited by working with the
> greatest player ever, but many a "greatest" has
> come along without achieving a Jordanian
> impact.
>
> Thanks in large part to those images and
> Jordan's supranatural ability that made those
> images all but reality, the league prospered
> beyond imagination.
>
> Now we know how Lee and Jordan came to be
> connected. To quote Lee: "Jim Riswold and Bill
> Davenport, at Weiden & Kennedy, an
> advertising agency in Portland, Ore., that had
> the Nike account, would later see 'She's Gotta
> Have It' (and) get the extraordinarily bright idea
> of pairing Mars Blackmon with Michael Jordan.
> . . ."
>
> Soon enough, we saw Michael dunk over
> hapless Mars, who hangs on the rim and moans,
> "Money, Money, you just going to leave me
> hanging?"
>
> We heard Mars ask if it's the baggy shorts or
> the socks or the shoes. We entered Michael
> Jordan Flight School in which eager scholars
> learned to stick their tongues out just so.
>
> I loved Mars, the little brother in all us guys. So
> it was nice to run into him again in Lee's new
> book, "Best Seat in the House," an account of
> his life as a Knicks fanatic, the title suggested by
> his progress from the Brooklyn child's nosebleed
> seats to the celebrity's $1,000 front-row seat
> within earshot of Reggie Miller.
>
> Happily, Lee's book does the NBA yet another
> good deed. He complains passionately and
> purposefully about a culture of egotism that has
> eroded The Game's beauty. He also insists the
> selfishness apparent in pro sports is a selfishness
> created and condoned by society.
>
> As a means of contrast, Lee recalls Marquette
> star Dean Meminger's acceptance of a
> secondary role with the Knicks in 1971: "If he
> were playing today, imagine the ego Dean
> Meminger could display compared to some of
> these young boys who come into the league now
> thinking they're supposed to get shoes named
> after them and TV commercials and movies
> because they got their game off on other
> teenagers. . . .
>
> "They have no idea, some of them. Rare is the
> talent of a Ken Griffey Jr. in baseball or a Tiger
> Woods in golf, a Jordan in basketball. They
> come along once or twice in a life span. But
> now, every year during the NBA draft, you've
> got 28 guys sitting behind a curtain, insulted if
> they get drafted too low. They have no concept
> of humility, of sublimating their game to the
> needs of the team.
>
> "Players back then (the NBA, early 1970s)
> were much less selfish than the guys now
> because now there's so much more money to be
> made; the more points you score, the bigger the
> endorsements, the bigger the shoe deal, the
> bigger the playing contract. . . .
>
> "So I feel people really wanted to win more
> back then than they do now, and that's a
> by-product not just of the basketball players
> today but of society as well. It's just more about
> 'me' and 'getting paid' nowadays. Whatever its
> merits might be, that philosophy doesn't make
> for winning basketball."
>
> Understand. Spike Lee is now. He's 40, born
> the year the Dodgers left Brooklyn. No senior
> citizen wishing things could be the way they used
> to be, Lee is a thinker at the top of his game
> who sees trouble in The Game he loves.
>
> He calls Dennis Rodman a lunatic. He says
> there's no explanation beyond misplaced
> priorities why Shaquille O'Neal should shoot 50
> percent on free throws: "When a professional
> athlete neglects his craft in order to take
> advantage of broader horizons, that's
> self-defeating."
>
> Even Jordan's famous agent, David Falk, comes
> into the line of Lee's fire for selling his clients'
> personalities and their entertainment value:
> "Now, if your agent is telling you that, then what
> is a rookie to think? 'I have to be a fantastic
> performer.' An individualist, whose goal is
> antithetical to the kind of team play that is
> essential to winning -- and watchable --
> basketball."
>
> As for the guilty parties, Lee begins a paragraph
> with "OK, stealing money," and he says: "Shawn
> Bradley, $5.13 million -- stealing money. I guess
> being 7-6 and white pays a dividend, but he's
> still a stiff and he's stealing money. David Falk
> worked them over really good on that one.
> Dennis Scott, $3.5 million -- stealing money. He
> needed Shaq a lot more than Shaq needed him.
> One dimensional, but he was Shaq's boy. Danny
> Ferry, $4.6 million -- stealing mo' money. . . .
> Derrick Coleman at $6.7 million -- grand theft."
>
> So many good things here that I can forgive
> Spike Lee one lapse in judgment. He hated the
> ABA's red, white and blue basketball. Calls it
> hideous. This from a man who became famous
> wearing red and black sneakers in bed.