Before the British Expeditionary Force fought its initial battle in World War One at Mons, Belgium, the soldiers thought they’d be home within a matter of months. Half a year, at most. Instead, those few who survived the initial contact at Mons ended up living, on and off, for the next four years in almost total isolation from the rest of the world.
On a small scale, that’s sort of what this NBA season was like.
The NBA season began an eternity ago, as the Toronto Raptors beat the New Orleans Pelicans in overtime after receiving their championship rings in a long, heartfelt ceremony. Now, 352 days later, perhaps 100 days longer than initially expected, the NBA season continues in an overtime period of its own. The season limps forward, still, dragging itself to the finish line like a proud, ancient heavyweight battling long after the final bell was supposed to toll.
In a normal time, NBA basketball is supposed to start again within the next week or two. That’s not happening.
This will be the last Minute Basketball before the end of the endless 2019-20 NBA season. This may not be the ending we envisioned: Jimmy Butler and LeBron James trading body blows in a dystopian compound, unaffected by a global plague that has claimed over a million lives, telling us to vote in between possessions of basketball played in an empty and deafening arena. But it’s the ending we’re getting.
The NBA season isn’t the only thing that’s ending. This week in Minute Basketball, we’re diving into conclusions. How they all blend together in a whir, and how we got here in the first place.
Zatzman
Interconnectedness
All things end. It’s a law, perhaps the law when you zoom out. We’re in the middle of several endings right now. Not just basketball. The summer is ending -- fall never really happened, it seems, at least not in Toronto. The cold is starting to eat under the skin, burrow and nestle in you the same as you do inside of blankets. If it’s not winter yet, I can see it fogging up the mirror and hear it creaking in the floorboards.
It’s possible that four years of uncut, malicious chaos could be ending in the United States. Then again, it could just be beginning.
Plenty in the NBA has changed, too. Vince Carter, now mostly groundbound, retired after a record 22 seasons played. He’s been a fixture in the league for almost my entire life, and it will be strange to watch basketball without him next season. The Milwaukee Bucks may have missed their best chance at a championship, swallowed by the weirdness of the bubble. Kobe Bryant, David Stern, John Thompson: the year 2020 has been cruel to the ranks of basketball legends. Beyond the pandemic, the basketball world is very different now than it was a year ago.
The world is very different now. That’s maybe why these things can’t be separated. It was the NBA that first triggered pandemic panic, at least in North America. The virus didn’t seem real until Rudy Gobert was diagnosed with Coronavirus, and the game between the Thunder and the Jazz was canceled, then the NBA season suspended. It happened quickly. The Jazz had hosted the Toronto Raptors a few nights before. I reached out to friends who had traveled to Utah to cover the game, made sure they were okay.
That’s why basketball can’t be separated from the world. Why else would they be playing in an arena in front of a hundred celebrities watching the game through their computers, beamed into the stadium like a socially distanced Star Trek? The NBA has truly become the panopticon, a hive of one-way observation, all safe and snug and protected from the virus for our viewing pleasure.
And the train, leaking and rattling and chugging down the line, is about to hit the last stop. The NBA bubble is coming to an end.
I think about these things, the weather and the virus and the American election, all linked together, as I watch Black Mirror Basketball every other night on television. Sometimes it feels like the world is ending. And then LeBron James drives to the rim, overpowers his opponents, and jumps higher than time while laying in the ball. He’s probably about to win his fourth championship and, less certainly, his fourth Finals MVP. James is endless, his dominance a barometer or hallucination of normality, depending on the night. These players have been locked away in sterile comfort for over three months. Their hotels have emptied around them as fallen foes have left, grateful, for home and family. The Disney Resort is barren now, yawning towards its own end.
What a long, strange trip it’s been. It’s time to let NBA basketball, or whatever this has become, sleep.
Folk
Predetermined or Earned?
There are very few living things outside of humans (that we know of) that actively trade the present for the future. The idea is that the work you put in today will manifest in reward down the road. Initially that was food, shelter etc. for humans, and now we’ve created an extremely abstract - often at the expense of a large subset of the population - system that incorporates money, the 40-hour work week that now creeps towards 50 or 60 for many, and increasingly specialized job markets. Regardless, the work is put in by many. Be it the 9-5 job, the offseason for NBA players, or a free newsletter by Louis Zatzman and Samson Folk - they’re all, hopefully, precursors to more success.
We’re wired to chase success that permeates beyond the present. A type that assures us a comfortable walk to the finish line at the end of all things. And that really is it - as humans we are cursed with the knowledge that all things end. Death anxiety puts the onus on us to produce, create, and dominate the many aspects of our life before it’s all over, and knowing that these things end makes everything matter that much more. It’s romantic in a sense. However (comma) before the finish line, it’s fair to question how many people are running the 100m dash from the starting blocks, and how many are starting with only 10m to go. How much of our destiny is predetermined and how much is earned? Generational wealth, race, nepotism, and the genepool are all ever present in our lives as both mitigating and aggravating factors.
The 5th seed (Heat) vs. the 1 seed (Lakers). Jimmy Butler (pick 30) and Bam Adebayo (pick 14) vs. LeBron James (pick 1) and Anthony Davis (pick 1). Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who had been an afterthought in L.A. before reclaiming his career with vigor - even he was drafted higher at 8th than any single player on the Heat.
This isn’t to say the Lakers didn’t earn their way to the Finals and won’t earn the chip, provided they get it. Only that most NBA viewers weren’t expecting the Heat to be here, and if you had given every player on the Heat truth serum, they might not have foreseen this either. Within the framework of the NBA and what we’re accustomed to seeing, the Heat have achieved something very unique.
The talent gap in this series - and talent is the predetermined part of it - is staggering. And yet, the Heat continue to hang around because of all the different machinations they utilize to try and leap the gap. A furious and fast-moving offense that creates advantages by making the other team account for 3 simultaneous actions, wherein one breakdown leads to a bucket. If they deny the action, there’s a counter designed to take advantage of how they denied the play. The Lakers have far less going on, but James and Davis are walking advantages. Everything they do makes defenses uncomfortable, as they stretch the floor vertically and horizontally, and punch through gaps with force. It requires more from them and less from the team, and that’s the benefit of talent.
On the defensive end, Davis, James, and Dwight Howard (all #1 picks) make incredible reads that are backed up by world-ending athleticism, and they form the most potent level of the Lakers defense. The Heat are a symbiotic 5-man unit that can transition in and out of zone on a single possession, and are all seemingly calculating the spaces on the floor and the players they’re guarding. On one end, Davis and James make show stopping singular defensive plays where they envelop the offensive player. On the other, 3 Heat players converge on James in the paint while the other 2 carefully measure the passing angles that are left to him. The mad scramble the Heat perform to front and deny something as simple as a Davis post-up (and caused a lot of turnovers in game 4) is well-rehearsed choreography.
The Heat have this incredible story, and it probably won’t be enough against these Lakers who have played a few different styles in these playoffs and succeeded at all of them. A LeBron-led team that was underrated by a lot of people (myself included), and has taken care of business in the bubble.
All this to say: the ending you want isn’t always assured, no matter what you put into it. But, maybe for you in your life, or mine, or the Heat - the work that has been put in is a precursor to something more, it’s just not here yet. For now, it looks like the Lakers are getting the ending they were chasing.
Thanks for reading Minute Basketball this season. I’ve really enjoyed all the different themes I’ve been able to touch on, and partnering with Louis has not only made me a better writer, but party to genius ideas every week.
Minute Basketball: Endings