NBA Dunk of the Week: Nenê Transcends Divinity

Nenê—one name only, please, the man is a Brazilian athlete and deserves our respect—has become a notable old player. The first contract he signed this summer was voided because he was too old to sign it. Last year, he started flashing some extremely tasteful grey hairs in the roots of his trademark dreadlocks. He’s slower, he doesn’t leap or run like he used to, his yoked-as-fuck upper body now seems especially bulky next to the lithe Karl-Anthony Townses and Kristaps Porzingi of the world.

In watching him, no matter how effective he is or isn’t, we are watching a perennially valuable and efficient big man seeing the end of his time on a basketball court, and in life, ultimately.

But here’s the thing about watching Nenê sporting an occasional grey and grinding out there as a backup center for the Rockets: that shit is mad inspiring. He seems to almost completely not give a shit that he is an aging, greying center who is relying on weird ass cap manipulation-type contracts to get paid. This is a dude who has, quite literally, stared death in the face, the kind of shit that probably makes you forget about the end of one’s athletic life.

And so, while we still can, we celebrate Nenê, taking a pass off the pick-and-roll from Chris Paul, lifting, nearly heaving, his body in the air, taking contact from the eternally nut-kicked Mason Plumlee, seeming to, for a brief moment, shift the air around his body to give himself an angle, and throwing down on the Plumlord as Mason futilely swipes somewhere in the air.

How often do we get to watch a 35-year-old man, who has been on and off the knee-operating table, heave himself in the air and bang on a guy eight years his junior? A man launching a loogie right in time’s eye, denying death itself to stick a guy on a poster, then jogging back on D while the arena lights catch the subtle strands of grey creeping forth from his temple?

After making the briefest, subtlest of stank faces, Nenê glances at his hand. He sees in it the power of his spirit, the mojo that has driven him all the way, to point after point, contract after contract, team after team, playoff berth after playoff berth.

The gesture of looking at your hands after an amazing shot, a glorious accomplishment, is a beautiful one, a brief recognition that you’ve been given gifts beyond your understanding, a gift from God that you have sharpened, something truly amazing, a touch from a divinity.

But here, Nenê flips this convention on its head. Old Man Nenê, in searching for some surprise in that hand, in that dunk, in his life, his career, finds none. He is too aged, too wise, too experienced, too SEASONED to think about this moment as a gift from God. He is beyond the divine.

There is no God left in that body, in that mind.

There is only Nenê, which, he whispers to himself in his mind, is certainly enough to bang on one more young, overrated bighead on his way out.

And then, to top it off, He looks into the camera, making a connection with anyone who is watching, speaking to the world with one steely look: You think I can’t do it to you? I see you, mocking me for being old, observing my demise. But just know: I just slapped one down on this goon, and if you come at me anytime in the next 20 years, I’ll get you too, you son of a bitch. I might not be in the NBA soon, but it won’t matter. Between these lines, you couch rat, I have everything I need to crush you. Tremble in fear, cower, bow in the presence of a living God, fear me, I will dunk on you if given half a chance, grey hairs be damned.

Brings a tear to one’s eye.

Oh, I almost forgot: this was the second time banged on Plumlee that night:

No Gods. No Masters. Only Nenê.