Shaun Livingston Is Finally Where He Belongs

Don't watch it. Do not click on this link, because it will take you to a YouTube video that you do not want to watch. The setting is the first quarter of a deeply average mid-aughts NBA game between the then-okay Los Angeles Clippers and the obnoxiously orange and perennially doomed Charlotte Bobcats. For the first twenty seconds or so everything is so normal it would put you to sleep. A deflection turns a slow Bobcats halfcourt possession into a Clippers fastbreak. This is when you must look away, if you have for some reason clicked that link, which you should not.

After missing a contested layup in transition, Shaun Livingston—Clippers starting guard, 21 years old, lottery pick, 6'7" with a ceiling so high up you could hardly see it—lands, without being touched, worse than anybody, ever, has landed. His left knee corkscrews around, suddenly putty; various ligaments shred and displace at once, the most unconscious of basketball maneuvers inexplicably transformed into a gruesome proof of Murphy's Law. His kneecap, unanchored and adrift, winds up someplace horrible. I have seen this footage a handful of times since it happened, and I can't watch it without covering my eyes with my hands, or shutting down the tab before gravity brings Livingston back to the hardwood. Livingston has said he's never seen it, not once. I can't imagine why he ever should. He's busy, after all, playing the best basketball of his life for the presumptive NBA champs.

In the immediate aftermath of that injury, there was question of whether or not Livingston's lower leg would have to be amputated; a main artery was damaged to the point that his leg could develop gangrene. Once this indisputably career-killing threat passed, Livingston faced a year-plus of solitary rehab, his basketball future still an unanswerable question. That process transformed Livingston from a young man into an old soul, a rare and truly admirable person who stared life's deepest unfairnesses dead in the eye and did not flinch.

The injury took place in February of 2007. When Livingston stepped back into a real-live NBA regular season game in October of 2008—now in a Miami Heat uniform—it was already the accomplishment of accomplishments, a crowning and deeply meaningful achievement beyond any reasonable expectation.

The difference was that, now, instead of sitting at the center of his team's future plans, Livingston was a deep bench player who could be quickly and inexpensively moved. As much as I'm sure Livingston would prefer to be remembered for something, anything other than an unforeseeable injury, the injury defined his career in that it transformed him from long-term cornerstone to journeyman. This has been Livingston's eleventh year in the NBA; if the injury had not happened, the Clippers would have proactively extended him for four or five years beyond his rookie deal, and right now Livingston would be two or three years into the first contract he signed as a free agent.

Instead: after appearing in just four games in four months for the Heat, Livingston was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies. The Grizzlies immediately cut him. Two months later, he joined the Tulsa 66ers of the D-League for 11 games. In the closing weeks of the regular season, the Oklahoma City Thunder promoted Livingston to the NBA. The next fall with the Thunder, Livingston spent nearly a month on the injured list before being waived three days before Christmas. Two months later, the Washington Wizards signed Livingston to a 10-day contract, then another 10-day contract, then finally for the remainder of the season. That summer, as a free agent, the Bobcats signed Livingston to a two-year deal.

In 2010-11, he played 73 games for the team, a rotation player for the first time since before the injury. Then, in the summer, he was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks, playing the 2011-12 season with the team and even making his way into the starting lineup. The next summer he was traded to the Houston Rockets, who kept him for four months, including training camp and the preseason, before waiving him on the eve of the season. A few weeks later, Livingston signed back with the Wizards, who waived him a month later. Within the week Livingston was claimed off waivers by the Cleveland Cavaliers. At the end of that season, Livingston was a free agent and signed a one-year minimum deal with the Brooklyn Nets, where he was suddenly, finally an every-game starter for a team that made it to the second round of the playoffs.

Which brings us to last summer, when Livingston was still just 28 years old and his future, still, a blank sheet. He was signed by the Golden State Warriors for three years and $16M. It was the very first time that he would out-earn his rookie deal with the Clippers from eons ago.

While Livingston would probably appreciate playing for the league's worst team for that much money and security, what has been so joyful this season is that Livingston was signed by the league's very best team. The Warriors play faster, score more often, defend better, and smile more—and win more—than any other team. Livingston has been installed as the backup to MVP Stephen Curry since the start of the season, which is all the more interesting because, unlike the sunny Splash Brothers (and also unlike virtually every other guard in the NBA), Livingston has never had a 3-point shot in his arsenal. Not that adding a 3-point shot ever hurt anybody, but Livingston more than gets by with his significant intelligence and guile, which finds him cutting open underneath the basket at least once a game.

It's important to remember that Livingston's inclusion on the Golden State roster isn't an act of sympathy or charity for his past trials. This team has committed nearly $90M to next year's roster because they want very badly to win big. One reason they are winning big is they saw the true and rare value of Livingston's ability to run, in the most hands-off way possible, a fluid, egalitarian offense. Never was that more evident than in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, a Warriors victory wherein Livingston scored 18 points simply, it seemed, by being in precise tune with the rhythm of the game:

Livingston is unique as a player because—between his injury and his Zen response to it—he is without enemies either within the league or in the stands. Even when he smacked Dirk Nowitzki in the dong last month, the future Hall of Famer immediately started cracking jokes about it. The Warriors are the favorites to win this year's championship, and on the off-chance you don't enjoy the rest of Golden State's roster—perpetually perched on the edge of a party, and also and always weirdly pissed-off about it—there are few players in the whole league easier to cheer for than Livingston. He has finally finished his comeback, nearly a decade later. After all those years of being finished, he's just now getting started.