Reel Talk: Corbin Smith's Review of Online Basketball Highlights Pertaining to Steph Curry
The NBA belongs to Stephen Curry at the moment, and rightfully so. But this does not mean we can't bellyache about it, and praise the divine Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
It's magnificent. Steph Curry, time ticking off the clock, dribbles the ball just barely into the front court and takes a shot from the only place someone wouldn't cover him: 35-ish feet. It goes in, of course. Warriors win, of course.There's only one problem with this highlight: it's stupid. It's dumb! Gaudy! Unrealistic! A sugar-addled child's absurd, imaginary idea of a great basketball play!
It was a dumb shot taken at the worst/best possible time that went in for no reason except the whims of luck and the fact that Curry has an unparalleled, unprecedented, honestly kind of unsettling ability to drill long shots. He even got a NBA record for it! It's great, I guess, if you like that sort of thing.
Just one victory after another, all in a little 15-second box. It has no relationship to anything we recognize as good storytelling. There is no narrative arc with struggles, human emotion, recognizable feeling, any of that good stuff. If it were a story, it would be a terrible story. It would be this:
THE GOOD PRINCE
Once upon a time, there was a great prince. He was beautiful and everyone loved him.
One day, a dragon attacked his kingdom. The prince killed it with his bare hands, choked him to death. The sound of was horrifying, the creature—a dumb creature, which attacked because it was all the creature knew—confronting death, watching it rush up and overtake it, as the prince mercilessly pressed on its throat.
When word got out about the prince's glorious victory, he was showered in praise. Soon, the whole world was bowing on one knee, begging for his leadership. The whole world DEMANDED he become their king.
But the prince was wise. "I will not allow the world to bend their knee to me. The future of governance is the absence of governance. Instead, the world will now manage itself through a series of semi-autonomous, interdependent, spiritually democratic communes." The good prince wrote a 200-page book titled
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The Future that laid it all out. It would be the only thing the prince ever publishes, but is widely regarded as history's finest written material, both aesthetically and philosophically, so there's no real need for a follow-up. Subjects are content to reread it.
The world takes the great prince's suggestion. Soon, Earth is a-whirl with productivity and peace, strong and beautiful, like the mighty lion.
The prince was so humble that he INSISTED that no statutes or icons be made of him in his lifetime. But one was built, in secrecy and devotion, cast in stone and gold, without his knowledge. It sits on a remote, obscure cliff in the Himalayas. Ten years after the prince passed away, it was discovered by the public and became the foundation for a worldwide religion that worshiped his life and his time. This religion was benevolent and all-accepting, and became the bedrock on which never-ending world peace and prosperity were built.The End.
Compelling and rich. Photo by Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports
See? What a fucking stupid story, enlivened only by the wonderful, incisive prose that is the envy of all other sportswriters. Otherwise, it stinks: a dynastic protagonist slays a fake threat and receives the admiration of literally everyone, which he uses to further his personal pursuit of a very shallow concept of world peace. He was rewarded for his revolutionary thinking by becoming an unproblematic God in death. No dynamics! No real conflict! Just improbable victory after improbable victory, over and over, until the whole world is in thrall to peace and justice, worshipping at the altar of Steph Curry. I'll stick to my false idols, thanks.
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MAHMOUD
Stephlam, Stephisim, Stephentology, Ra-Steph-Arianisim*. Whatever you call it, it's the world's leading basketball religion, collecting followers by the boatload as the once and former savior breaks down into human-smelling goo. The Church lost their FUCKING MINDS this week when a pair of old people made some public comments about Jesus Stephchrist that SHOCKED the world to their core.First, Oscar Robinson, appearing with noted luminaries of sport and language Michel and Michael, said, "If I've got a guy who's great shooting the ball outside, don't you want to extend your defense out a little bit? I just don't think coaches today in basketball understand the game of basketball. They don't know anything about defenses. They don't know what people are doing on the court. They talk about analytical basketball and stuff like that."I will concede that this position is less, uh, reasonable. Defenses definitely are trying to contain Curry. I've seen it, personally. It is hard, especially without hand-checking or whatever. Defenders are not shouting, "That is a low-percentage field-goal attempt that we will happily allow you take" at Steph as he ices a three-pointer from the middle third of the half-court logo.But you know what? Oscar Robinson has lived through several lifetimes' worth of bullshit and waves of uncut 1950s-ass racism and fought for free agency from the feudal buttheads of the early NBA, and dude doesn't need your grief on the internet, with your glazed donut ass face. You know what the Big O needs? Some peace and quiet. So I will afford him that, for now. (Or at least until someone gets some more clips out there. Basketball history is giant mound of unseeable fertile soil.)
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Phil Jackson, on the other hand, is pure boomer trash, and making fun of him is delightful to the point of it being sexually arousing. But this tossed off thing? It's fine:
Never seen anything like SCurry? Remind you of Chris Jackson/ Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who had a short but brilliant run in NBA?
The Big Lead: "Abdul-Rauf was an excellent shooter. However, he never shot .400 from three-point range." B/R's write-up devolves into Steph Stats Pornography. The Daily Newscompared Phil to Kanye West for a triple-decker SEO Bomb. Look at that, right in the headline: "PHIL JACKSON….. STEPHEN CURRY …… KANYE WEST." That's three hot topics, right in the headline. You gotta admire that level of devotion to the craft, even if the craft is "poopsmithing."The Sporting News went nearly out of its way to throw dirt on M.A.R.'s grave: "Abdul-Rauf was a fine NBA player. But he was not Steph Curry. He played in the playoffs just twice, never made an All-Star team. " In other words, "HE WASN'T AN IMPORTANT WINNER, AND THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO ARBITRATE HERE. THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF SPORTSWRITING."You would have thought that Phil dumped Steph in a giant tub of his own urine and took a picture of it, the way people reacted. Phil is, as mentioned earlier, a Yuppie Buddhist of the lowest form, but he was just trying to give some dap to Mahmoud.
How could you do a respectable person like that? A dude who had the otherworldly drive and confidence to BE IN THE NBA at a time when his skillset wasn't utilized properly, the way it would be now? Phil Jackson, bless his heart, thought the idea that Steph was COMPLETELY UNPRECEDENTED wasn't 100 percent true, and he always liked M.A.R., and he's probably half-drunk and packin' a bowl of unbelievable rich-dude weed that he ground with uncut diamonds. Then, stupidly, he sneaks a look at Twitter and thinks, "Hey, I should throw some good vibes that dude's way. Innovator in the field. Not enough people saw him or think about him."
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The whole goddamn world takes a simple compliment for an opportunity to act like Phil is a stupid dinosaur who DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE DIVINITY or THE STATISTICAL SUPERIORITY instead of taking a hot second to separate yourself from the crowd throwing up hosannas in the washed light of Steph's divinity and, I don't know, maybe think, for a second, about Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a basketball player who was cool as hell?
Here is M.A.R. putting a hurt on Jason Kidd and Scott Brooks in 1995. Even if a comparison to Steph was something of an exaggeration—and any comparison to Steph circa now is going to be—Abdul-Rauf's of play seems oddly prescient and maybe even unsuited to his time. He creates some lovely assists: pinpoint work on the fast break at about 2:45 and a two-hander to a cutter at 3:28 are of particular note. This lovely piece feels almost like the future reaching its hand into the past and forcing one of its most notable plays into the mix:
Really is too bad he wasn't shooting from three, which would have made it perfect.Just as often in this highlight you see a guy who had a prescient mindset who is cramped and cooked by the weirdo ethics of the period. A pick-and-roll leads to a goofy, running down the lane hook shot from Mutombo. Antonio McDyess takes two dribbles and heaves a midrange jumper. MAR shuttles the ball to Bryant F. Stith on the block. A guy who can do shit like this…
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…or, more practically, this:
…is dumping the ball off and winds up relegated to set-up duty in his own mix.I myself agree with the idea that the new offense is suppressing some beloved aesthetic elements of basketball—post games, non-screen-and-roll offenses, mid-range jumpers, things like that. But it doesn't take much looking to see that it has also freed another type of player whose skills and mentality were too open for their era. Pro basketball just hasn't held the two ideas in its mind at the same time before.Think about it like this: M.A.R. hit eight three-pointers in this contest, and his team needed them all—Denver won 112-109. He probably would have hit even more—he shot eleven threes, a wild bacchanalia at the time—if he took a second to be totally aware of where his feet were and moved his multiple on-the-liners back a step. I'll bet his coach didn't even care. "It's just a point, NBD." Simpler times. Kind of worse, but also shaggier and maybe sort of better for that.A PAIR OF UNRELATED OBSERVATIONS: The crowd noise in this mix could just as easily be called silence. No one knows what to do. Nowadays, you would REASONABLY pipe in some crowd noise to spice the whole arena up, but this was a time when a GameOps was considered a higher calling, a class of people defined only by their undying desire to present the product as it really was. It was a craft, subtle, like calligraphy. Every shitty regular-season game was a mandala of its own.
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Of course, that world is gone now. Ever since Mark Cuban's three rooms full of giant fucking computers started pumping wall-to-wall noise and lights into the arena, a new standard was set. All of the old craftsmen were tossed off the ship, left to drown in the tide of perpetual blathering nonsense they fought so valiantly against.One last thing on this highlight: fading out after every basket isn't exactly a move out of the Thelma Schoonmaker Book of Best Editing Practices, but it does infuse the proceedings with a kind of importance, a feeling that every one of these plays is so remarkable that the only way you can cool down is by sitting in contemplative darkness for a second. This is wrong, but it's a choice, and I respect it.
This is, clearly, a very embarrassing Vine. Carmelo fails to dunk from a standstill. He looks old. It's sad.But I encourage you to really appreciate how HARD Melo tried to dunk, there. Even if he didn't make it, we should all aspire to go that hard at the rack, on the court and in our lives, even if we fail or something inside us isn't working the way it once did. Even if Melo got extremely embarrassed by a round, inanimate object, that doesn't mean his heart wasn't in the proper place.May all of our failures leave us splayed out on the ground, trying to save face while everyone chuckles."HOPPY" HIGHLIGHTING, REEL TALK RABBIT NATION!*Sean Highkin wrote this joke on my prompting. He asked for an "executive producer credit," so please assign that to him as you continue to read this piece, which is now over.
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Once upon a time, there was a great prince. He was beautiful and everyone loved him.
One day, a dragon attacked his kingdom. The prince killed it with his bare hands, choked him to death. The sound of was horrifying, the creature—a dumb creature, which attacked because it was all the creature knew—confronting death, watching it rush up and overtake it, as the prince mercilessly pressed on its throat.
When word got out about the prince's glorious victory, he was showered in praise. Soon, the whole world was bowing on one knee, begging for his leadership. The whole world DEMANDED he become their king.
But the prince was wise. "I will not allow the world to bend their knee to me. The future of governance is the absence of governance. Instead, the world will now manage itself through a series of semi-autonomous, interdependent, spiritually democratic communes." The good prince wrote a 200-page book titledThe Future that laid it all out. It would be the only thing the prince ever publishes, but is widely regarded as history's finest written material, both aesthetically and philosophically, so there's no real need for a follow-up. Subjects are content to reread it.
The world takes the great prince's suggestion. Soon, Earth is a-whirl with productivity and peace, strong and beautiful, like the mighty lion.
The prince was so humble that he INSISTED that no statutes or icons be made of him in his lifetime. But one was built, in secrecy and devotion, cast in stone and gold, without his knowledge. It sits on a remote, obscure cliff in the Himalayas. Ten years after the prince passed away, it was discovered by the public and became the foundation for a worldwide religion that worshiped his life and his time. This religion was benevolent and all-accepting, and became the bedrock on which never-ending world peace and prosperity were built.The End.
How could you do a respectable person like that? A dude who had the otherworldly drive and confidence to BE IN THE NBA at a time when his skillset wasn't utilized properly, the way it would be now? Phil Jackson, bless his heart, thought the idea that Steph was COMPLETELY UNPRECEDENTED wasn't 100 percent true, and he always liked M.A.R., and he's probably half-drunk and packin' a bowl of unbelievable rich-dude weed that he ground with uncut diamonds. Then, stupidly, he sneaks a look at Twitter and thinks, "Hey, I should throw some good vibes that dude's way. Innovator in the field. Not enough people saw him or think about him."The whole goddamn world takes a simple compliment for an opportunity to act like Phil is a stupid dinosaur who DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE DIVINITY or THE STATISTICAL SUPERIORITY instead of taking a hot second to separate yourself from the crowd throwing up hosannas in the washed light of Steph's divinity and, I don't know, maybe think, for a second, about Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a basketball player who was cool as hell?Here is M.A.R. putting a hurt on Jason Kidd and Scott Brooks in 1995. Even if a comparison to Steph was something of an exaggeration—and any comparison to Steph circa now is going to be—Abdul-Rauf's of play seems oddly prescient and maybe even unsuited to his time. He creates some lovely assists: pinpoint work on the fast break at about 2:45 and a two-hander to a cutter at 3:28 are of particular note. This lovely piece feels almost like the future reaching its hand into the past and forcing one of its most notable plays into the mix:
Really is too bad he wasn't shooting from three, which would have made it perfect.Just as often in this highlight you see a guy who had a prescient mindset who is cramped and cooked by the weirdo ethics of the period. A pick-and-roll leads to a goofy, running down the lane hook shot from Mutombo. Antonio McDyess takes two dribbles and heaves a midrange jumper. MAR shuttles the ball to Bryant F. Stith on the block. A guy who can do shit like this…
…or, more practically, this:
…is dumping the ball off and winds up relegated to set-up duty in his own mix.I myself agree with the idea that the new offense is suppressing some beloved aesthetic elements of basketball—post games, non-screen-and-roll offenses, mid-range jumpers, things like that. But it doesn't take much looking to see that it has also freed another type of player whose skills and mentality were too open for their era. Pro basketball just hasn't held the two ideas in its mind at the same time before.Think about it like this: M.A.R. hit eight three-pointers in this contest, and his team needed them all—Denver won 112-109. He probably would have hit even more—he shot eleven threes, a wild bacchanalia at the time—if he took a second to be totally aware of where his feet were and moved his multiple on-the-liners back a step. I'll bet his coach didn't even care. "It's just a point, NBD." Simpler times. Kind of worse, but also shaggier and maybe sort of better for that.A PAIR OF UNRELATED OBSERVATIONS: The crowd noise in this mix could just as easily be called silence. No one knows what to do. Nowadays, you would REASONABLY pipe in some crowd noise to spice the whole arena up, but this was a time when a GameOps was considered a higher calling, a class of people defined only by their undying desire to present the product as it really was. It was a craft, subtle, like calligraphy. Every shitty regular-season game was a mandala of its own.Of course, that world is gone now. Ever since Mark Cuban's three rooms full of giant fucking computers started pumping wall-to-wall noise and lights into the arena, a new standard was set. All of the old craftsmen were tossed off the ship, left to drown in the tide of perpetual blathering nonsense they fought so valiantly against.One last thing on this highlight: fading out after every basket isn't exactly a move out of the Thelma Schoonmaker Book of Best Editing Practices, but it does infuse the proceedings with a kind of importance, a feeling that every one of these plays is so remarkable that the only way you can cool down is by sitting in contemplative darkness for a second. This is wrong, but it's a choice, and I respect it.