The League that Michael Jordan Made

Since Michael Jordan retired, his successor has been prayed for and prophesized.  Kobe Bryant? Close, but no.  Allen Iverson? Scoring, but no winning.  Finally, in 2005 Nike introduced the “Witness” campaign for Lebron James (who wears Jordan‘s #23), which I always interpreted to mean “Witness the second coming of Michael Jordan.”

As Lebron James announced his signing with the Miami Heat, where he will join Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Hall of Fame manager Pat Riley, he also unofficially conceded defeat in his heretical quest to become the greatest.  His new strategy is being on the best team in NBA history.

There are a few noteworthy aspects to this development.  Pat Riley, who has already coached some of the greatest players of all time (Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Wade), has proven to be a master strategist, a tycoon of professional basketball.

Wade, Bosh, and James have also shown a remarkable amount of cooperation, including a willingness to take pay-cuts (apparently Florida’s generous tax policies will mitigate most of the losses in salary).  This deal was seemingly constructed as much by them as by anyone else, and surely half a dozen teams tried to lure each of them elsewhere, particularly the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls.

But at the end of the day, I think this deal marks these athletes as cowards and hurts the game of basketball.

When Chris Bosh signed with the Heat several days ago, I assumed James would go to the Chicago Bulls.  That would put each of the league’s major stars on a team that could conceivably make a championship run, perhaps with James in the best shape of all.  I would have expected the next several years to be an annual competition between the Lakers, Bulls, and Heat, perhaps like the reliable Celtics-Lakers rivalries of past decades.  There would be occasional Cinderella teams to spice things up.  Perhaps Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder or Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic would have squeezed in some championship appearances.

Instead they have executed something like the 2008 Celtics, when Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce joined forces.  That union had more charm.  Each of those players was winding down his career, and none of them had won a championship on his own.  This was teamwork, by which three very good players could take down the best player (Kobe Bryant), which they did.

But Lebron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade are not in immediate danger of retiring empty-handed.  They’re in their primes, and each can win a championship without the other--Wade already has, in Jordan-esque fashion no less.

This team may win every title for the next two presidential terms, but now they’ll never touch Jordan.  Jordan isn’t the greatest because he won six titles.  Hell, nine players have more titles than he does, including Robert Horry of all people.  Jordan is the greatest because he played in Utah with the flu, scoring 38 points (15 in the 4th quarter) until he collapsed into his teammates’ arms with seconds remaining.  Jordan is the greatest because every person and every child knew the Bulls would pull ahead in the clutch, by Jordan’s sheer will if necessary.

And James, Wade, and Bosh also won’t capture the excitement of classic rivalries, as they could have.  If Magic and Larry Bird had played on the same team maybe they could have won ten titles.  But each title they won against each other meant more because everyone knew they had to beat the other best player in the world to earn it.  With these three on the same team every victory will be worth less and every defeat will taste worse.  Winning a championship will be a fulfillment of expectations, while losing will always be a story of David defeating Goliath.

On the face of it, it seems hard to predict anyone could beat these three exceptional athletes.  Perhaps some alliance between Dwight Howard and either Kevin Durant or Chris Paul could do the trick.

On the other hand, however, sports karma doesn’t always favor the big money and big names.  Consider the New York Yankees losing the World Series to the much poorer Florida Marlins and Arizona Diamondbacks.  In the 2004 NBA Finals, four Hall of Famers of the Los Angeles Lakers were thumped in the “five game sweep” by a Detroit Pistons team without a single player that averaged twenty points.  In fact, Lebron James and Dwyane Wade have previously played together for the U.S. Redeem Team, which (before it won the 2008 Gold Medal) lost in the 2006 World Championship Semi-finals to Greece.

Looking at the Heat’s roster specifically, there is reason to question their championship potential.  At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a facilitator to dish out assists to the superstars.   Rafer Alston and Mario Chalmers presumably aren’t the answer.  I also can’t think of any championship team that has had two all-stars play such similar positions as Lebron James and Dwyane Wade.  Perhaps James will become more of a forward, low-post kind of player, but if not it will be interesting to see how these two divide labor.  The team also has several holes.  They lack a deadly perimeter shooter, and Chris Bosh doesn’t have the advantage matching up against Dwight Howard in Orlando.  Unless Riley makes some more moves--which he’s very good at historically--this team will show whether an overkill of talent at key positions is enough to overcome deficiency in the team as a whole.

Regardless of how this affects the reputations and legacies of the players involved, I believe it’s bad for sports and bad for basketball.  By my--perhaps naïve--definition, sports is about getting the best players and the best teams and setting them against each other to determine who is athletically, mentally, and strategically supreme.  These players, particularly James, seem so afraid that they might retire without a title that they’ll forgo the pride of leading a team to victory with their own blood, sweat, and leadership.

I, for one, will root against them in every game.  

Toy Story 3 Reflection

Perhaps a week ago I was on facebook when I found a photo of my nephew, Liam, playing with Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story franchise.

I remembered myself fifteen years ago, when the first Toy Story was released.  I was also five, playing with my collection of Toy Story characters to make dozens of sequels.  That photo combined with a predictable level of homesickness while I’m abroad made me resolve to do two things as soon as possible: visit my nephews and see Toy Story 3.  The first must wait at least until we’re in the same country, but the latter I have just accomplished.

In a timeline just a few years off from my own, Toy Story 3 begins with Andy going to college.  He’s long outgrown his toys, which are either going into storage in the attic or being donated.  By accident they end up at Sunnyside Day Care Center, where a tyrannical bear imprisons them.  Even if they escape, they have to find Andy, and who’s to say he still wants them?

Toy Story’s production studio, PIXAR, is undoubtedly the most successful and reliable production company of the last fifteen years.  They’ve never made a bad or unsuccessful movie, and their competitors in computer-animated children’s entertainment have always been too desperate for laughs and entirely incapable of PIXAR’s tenderness.

Even so, PIXAR’s sure-handed quality control process includes a reliance on several clichés.  The protagonists are trapped and need to escape.  A mentor character turns out to be evil because he was betrayed earlier in life.  Toy Story 3 falls into both of these, and the first two-thirds of the film suffer as a result.  One can feel the writers--and audience members over seven--checking off boxes and filling in the spaces as the toys plan their escape from Sunnyside and its evil teddy tyrant.  There’s also a diversion with Barbie and Ken that feels forced and annoying (Who would have imagined Michael Keaton would produce a bland voice performance?)

But PIXAR’s advantage has always been individual scenes of complex emotion and sublime humanity.  Buzz Lightyear discovering he can’t fly.  Sully saying goodbye to Boo.  Dory begging Marlin not to leave.  The montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together.   These moments of movie magic are embedded in otherwise satisfactory narratives, but they alone are worth the price of admission time spent downloading.

Toy Story 3 saves these moments for the third act, and then delivers beautifully.  In a moment of surprising maturity and intensity, the toys brace for and accept certain death.  In another, Woody’s friendship with Buzz is paralleled with Andy’s mother saying goodbye to her son.  Andy finally leaving his toys is a cathartic metaphor for anyone who is separated from someone they loved or grew up with.

What’s interesting about family films is their focus on our less outward, but deeper emotions about best friends, siblings, parents, and children.  A children’s film turns out to be a perfect medium for introducing ideas about growing up, one‘s purpose in life, the death of loved ones, and even the death of one’s self.  Consider the significance of Bambi and Dumbo in many children‘s development, the latter having maintained its popularity despite poor storytelling and anachronistic social values.  It probably won’t be as iconic in history, but upon my first viewing I think Toy Story 3’s final act may deserve a place somewhere close to the first half of The Lion King in terms of rousing complex emotions in a way children can appreciate.

In the concluding scenes I thought of my own family and my own life.  Whenever my mind gets autobiographical and reflective during a film, I accept that the filmmakers have defeated my coldness and my skepticism (Cinema Paradiso and Au Hasard Balthasar might be the best examples).  It doesn’t mean the film as a whole is masterful, but it’s an example of why people have always used and enjoyed art.

When Andy gives his toys to a new little girl, and I think of my nephew playing the same way I did fifteen years ago, as Jake LaMotta says in Raging Bull, "That's entertainment."

McChrystal's Exit Strategy

I know very little about military matters.  In my short history of paying attention to politics in a country fighting two wars, I haven’t shown any gift for analyzing war strategy.  When I was 14, I supported the Iraq War.  A few years later I opposed the surge.  Last fall I supported Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan.  Conventional wisdom of today might say I’ve been wrong on all three of these, the largest military decisions of the last ten years.

But I’ve taken a great interest in General McChrystal’s comments and subsequent resignation, which has elicited diverse responses from different thinkers.  Tom Ricks, who wrote the fantastic account of the early Iraq War, Fiasco, wrote that McChrystal had simply been out in the field too long.  An article in the New York Review of Books suggested that McChrystal’s comments reflect the frustration of a general facing an impossible mission and an unwinnable war.  Another writer suggested that one should view McChrystal and his aides as a group of soldiers on shore-leave unwisely letting off some steam.  Fareed Zakaria characterized McChrystal as a great warrior and a charismatic leader, but a poor statesmen with little appreciation for the civilian side of the COIN strategy.  I’m skeptical of Zakaria’s portrayal since McChrystal helped design this strategy, and I don’t recall anyone questioning his suitability for its particular demands last fall.

My initial thought was how could any general make a mistake this big?  You don’t criticize your boss or your colleagues in public.  McChrystal--and any military officer--surely knows this better than anyone.  Plus this Michael Hastings, the writer of the expose, is from Rolling Stone Magazine, which has for fifty years divulged the private lives of rock stars and celebrities to its subscribers.  

Indeed, when my friend, Erin, and I first read the article here in Moldova, she immediately posed the question of what McChrystal could have been hoping to achieve in the article.  Thus arose the possibility that this was perhaps intentional, a way for McChrystal to signal something to the White House.  Few seem to have taken this line, except Rolling Stone Magazine itself.  The executive editor of the magazine said these weren’t “off-the-cuff remarks” and that the general and his aides “knew what they were doing.”  Likewise, in an interview with CNN Hastings says that McChrystal is a “risk-taker” who, he suggested, may have been “pushing an agenda” and simply “pushed the envelope too far.”  Hastings also said that he didn’t exactly have to dig for this information.  He landed on the ground, and the comments started flying.  I have to think that McChrystal at least partially knew what he was doing.  He may have miscalculated, but he could not possibly have said these things in front of a reporter without the expectation that they would eventually reach the American public and the president.  

So what was his calculation?  Based on his documented contempt for Special Envoy Holbrooke and Ambassador Eikenberry, and the documented pressure from soldiers to have freer rules of engagement, I think McChrystal may have been signaling to President Obama that he should either rein in the civilians or fire the general because the current balance of power was unsuitable.  If this was his intention he seems to have executed it poorly.  Even so I find this more plausible than the general and his aides accidentally confiding in a magazine known for reporting what happens behind closed doors and backstage.

This left President Obama in a difficult long-term political situation.  It capped a few weeks of negative reports about the Afghanistan War, and certainly provides ammunition against him for the next election.  

But Obam’s solution for the short-term seemed fairly clear to me.  Not firing McChrystal could have been justified, especially if McChrystal is as popular with the troops as reports say.  But Obama still would have appeared weak, and given that the media’s quickest analogy was President Truman and General MacArthur, keeping McChrystal would have gone against historical precedent as well.  

But he could have his cake and eat it too by firing McChrystal and replacing him with Gen. Petraeus.  Petraeus would meet approval from the troops, the Republican Party, the media, and the public.  Today Sen. Graham said that if Petraeus can’t lead the United States to victory in Afghanistan, “no one can.” And that’s exactly what Obama needed.  It won’t save his skin if the war ends in defeat of US interests, but he may be spared the sharpest criticism if the consensus is that the task he inherited was simply impossible.  

It remains to be seen what this episode has sown for the future.  President Obama was lucky to have a convenient exit strategy for this one.  That’s more than I can say for the United States military in Afghanistan.

Traveling Thoughts

Some observations while circumnavigating:

Overheard conversation in China:
Chinese girl: chinesechinesechinese--Obama--chinesechinesechinese?
American girl: chinesechinesechinesechinese--uhh, white guilt--chinesechinese.

I may have promised someone I'd help them emigrate to the United States for their travel help.

I'm no expert on women's fashion in the world, but Russian fashion has to be the worst.  It's routinely some combination of high-heel shoes entirely impractical for Eastern Europe's cobblestone streets, striking but off-putting colors like puke green, purses of black shiny leather, black tights, and a blouse or dress with leopard print.  It feels less like the modern world has been unleashed upon Eastern European women and more like Eastern European women have been unleashed on the modern world.

As for men's fashion, I'll just say that a wife-beater, track shorts, and flip-flops is not appropriate dress attire for public.

In any European airport, I inevitably see one or two people who look so obviously French they shouldn’t  need a passport.  Olive skin, a pursed mouth for making those narrow sounds, and a general air of condescension, all stylishly performed.  The moment of recognition in which I find one of these people is the highlight of any layover.  I never confirm my suspicions.  Their Frenchness is self-evident, and further investigation could reveal a kind of racial/ethnic/cultural profiling that is socially unacceptable.

Overheard on the plane:
Man: “I’m headed to California for a half-marathon actually”
Woman: “Wow, do you usually run marathons?”
Man: “Not usually, but this is for charity”
Woman: “What charity?”
Man: “Ummm . . . Leukemia, or something like that”
Woman: “Wowww”

From Phoenix to Chicago there was a crying baby sitting behind me.  The mother could only calm the child down by singing “Old McDonald Had a Farm” over and over again.  As they say, out of the frying pan and into . . .

From Chicago to Brussels there was also a child crying, except this was like a 6-year old French boy. He won't be dispelling the stereotypes any time soon I suppose.

Flying from Tripoli to Bangui, Central African Republic, I of course couldn't understand the pilot's announcements in Arabic.  But I could understand "Inshallah" several times.  From the person responsible for my 700mph, 7-mile-high journey, more than one "God willing" becomes disconcerting.

In the last two weeks I have watched the World Cup commentated in four different languages, none of them English.

To be continued . . .