new bskball column

["Josh Ozersky" <jozersky1@nyc.rr.com>]

This is my new column for bskball; assuming he runs it.  It's a kind
of field sermon, inspired by something I saw on TV the other night.

Josh

Giving Witness to the Celtics

Thanks largely to an unwholesome amount of time spent watching nba.com TV, I'm
thinking a lot these days about what basketball is all about; and in
particular our own seedy and cynical, but still sacred space. You get to see
Michael Jordan when he was just another scorer, and when he had turned himself
into a high-efficiency winning machine, sweating freely and denying himself
the full use of his powers. You get to see how much better for basketball as a
team game Magic Johnson was, and how different an assist can be (Magic's seem
to make their recipients teleport into place at that moment, and refreshing
team chemistry and confidence; Michael's are afterthoughts, triple-teamed
fail-safe ejections to a waiting functionary near the basket.) You get to see
what a great uptempo finesse team the hated Pistons were in their prime; and
the other night, I had the good fortune to see a discussion of the basketball
virtues from three of its most reverend preceptors.

Actually, it strikes me now that this wasn't on nba.com TV; it was on PBS.
Charlie Rose spent a half hour talking to John Wooden about life and
basketball, and then brought in Bill Russell and Bill Walton for the show's
second half. It would be hard to overestimate how inspiring this show was;
every NBA fan should see it. Some people find Charlie Rose, with his frequent
interruptions and longwinded style, annoying; it doesn't matter. The guy is
the best interviewer on television, with all due respect to Brian Lamb and Bob
Costas. He seemed to understand that for Wooden, basketball was an essentially
religious vocation; and that in talking to him about it, it wasn't necessary
to posture as some kind of seer, because "this is only a game, after all." To
Wooden, and to the high-minded race of coaches of whom he is the highest
living exemplar, basketball does matter. It doesn't build character; it is an
expression of character. Wooden -- 90 years old, with the pendulous earlobes
of a Buddha -- is particularly priestly this way. His "pyramid of success"
can't be dismissed merely as west-coast sloganeering. Wooden believes in it as
an expression of natural law, derived from the wisdom of his farmer father and
the self-evident truths of the earth. I'm serious. Hearing Wooden talk is like
hearing one of the Church fathers preach Christology. There's no dissonance at
all between hearing him talk about the role of time-outs, and reciting a
moving passage from Gray's "Elegy From a Country Churchyard," to illustrate
some sad, deep point about life.

And then it hit me.

Listening to Coach Wooden brought home to me why the Celtics matter so much.
The bipolarity of my experience these last few years has sometimes seemed to
have a power of its own over me; as if, after suffering so much, I dare not
dismount the Green Beast now. But Celtic Exceptionalism once taught us all
that we were not only better than other teams, but that our tradition and
solidarity made us different. That being a Celtic fan was an incredibly
rewarding statement of faith in something called Celtic Basketball. Something
that was no more abstract that a Cowens foul, a Bird assist, an M.L. Carr
wave, a DJ jumper, or a Danny Fortson rebound. (I still believe in Fortson as
a born Celtic; Xavier McDaniel too.)

When Wooden was joined by Russell and Walton, everything Wooden had said was
affirmed by these two Celtic greats out of their own experience. Walton was
Wooden's direct disciple, and always speaks passionately about basketball as
he was taught; and of course, Russell is the most intelligent, profound player
ever to come near the game. Russell was to team basketball what Michael Jordan
is to one-on-one basketball, and the real founder of the Celtic Mystique. To
hear all three men discussing life and basketball, and seeing such permanent
and crystalline truths in its nature and practice was inspiring.

I felt something then I hadn't felt in a long time, and ever said out loud:
that I would rather see Celtic basketball in a losing cause than generic
basketball in a winning one. The reason no one is venturing to predict success
for the Celtics next year is that the team's success seems built on weak
foundations: stellar one-on-one play, three-point shooting, frantic pressing
instead of physical defense, and so forth. The addition of three superb
offensive talents only makes sense if basketball is a sterile "fantasy" game,
where you just add up player stats. But we know, just as UCLA fans once did,
that there is more to basketball than that, and that talent only matters
insofar as it embraces certain moral orthodoxies, represented on the court by
men like Russell and Bird. My hopes rest on the team allowing Joe Johnson to
be a playmaker, rather than a spot-up shooter; and likewise for Joe Forte.
Watching our two best players isolate, run around double picks, dribble for
ten seconds at a time, or take thirty shots each is too depressing to
contemplate.

But if the Celtics can play with not just the skill, but the spirit, of old;
and if guys like Eric Williams, Vitaly Potapenko, and Walter McCarty will
truly embrace limited roles and limitless generosity; and if Paul and Antoine
realize that individual scoring, in and of itself, is meaningless out of a
team-first, inside-out context; then we can reconnect not just with our
happier pasts, but with the nourishing river of faith, that spring of spirit,
that was Celtic moral theology, in all its triumphant and orderly glory.

Bring on the season!