Dear Mr. Morey,
My plan was to watch last night’s two huge, meaningless, self-congratulatory spectacles, and then write you a letter about which NBA All-Stars and Oscar nominees I believe to be overvalued, since I know from reading your Twitter messages that you’re a movie fan and since assessing value is one of your specialties. After all, you're the NBA’s version of Billy Beane (by reputation, at least). I planned to devote space to discussing Aaron Sorkin in particular. In 2011 you wrote about Moneyball for Grantland—though you hadn't yet seen the movie, an unfortunate approach—and the year before, on Twitter, you weighed in on The Social Network, praising Rooney Mara and Andrew Garfield, but disliking the movie overall: "1D characters & should celebrate hard work & smart execution more." (No other GM in NBA history has ever used a phrase like “1D characters.” Another reason I’m glad you run my favorite team.) I was going to say that Sorkin’s work is extremely overvalued, that he makes good drama at the expense of reality, which is questionable since he writes about real people. From there I'd talk about the other Best Picture nominees I believed to be overvalued, even ones that I enjoyed. But first I wanted to see how the night actually unfolded. And now that both the game and the awards are over, with nothing very interesting occurring during the game and two movies I haven’t seen winning most of the awards (The Artist and Hugo), I realize I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up. I'd promise myself that I won’t watch either event next year, except I always do that, and anyway, the All-Star Game’s in Houston next year. Still, after spending way too much time thinking about which movies didn’t deserve any accolades, I’m reminded of something the great Houstonian Donald Barthelme writes at the end of his story "The Party": "Is it really important to know that this movie is fine, and that one terrible, and to talk intelligently about the difference? Wonderful elegance! No good at all!"
Showing posts with label Astral Weeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Astral Weeks. Show all posts
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Jeremy Lin Experience
Dear Coach D'Antoni,
Let's take a trip in the mental time machine to Friday, February 3rd, 2012. By the end of the night, your Knicks had suffered their 11th loss in the last 13 games. The NYC tabloids were saying you could be fired by the end of the weekend. Your team had absolutely zero chemistry. You had no competent point guard. Allow me to quote an article written around this time by New York magazine's excellent Will Leitch: "The Knicks are unquestionably a disaster right now...There is a short window for D'Antoni to survive, riding mostly on 33-year-old Baron Davis returning from his injuries to play the point the way a D'Antoni team requires...But considering the truncated season and the lack of practice time available, that seems highly unlikely. Whether it comes after this season or as early as this week, the end for D'Antoni appears nigh." Nobody disagreed with this assessment.
Remember that February 3rd, Mike? Recall, too, the Jeremy Lin of that night, who scored two points for you in six minutes of PT, and whose contract wouldn't be guaranteed if the Knicks cut him within a week, a distinct possibility. What if someone would've told you then, after that loss, that the very next night Jeremy Lin would score 25 and add 7 assists in a win over the Nets? What if someone told your February 3rd self that you'd soon be inserting Lin into the starting lineup, and that in his first three starts he'd score more points than any player since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976, and that you'd win each of these games? And what if on February 3rd this person told you that on the following Friday your Knicks would beat the Lakers for the first time in five seasons, without Carmelo or Amar'e, and that in the victory Jeremy Lin would score 38, the most points against L.A. in the Garden by any Knick in the last 25 years? What if somebody told you on that awful February 3rd that in a week's time you'd be referring to your team's chemistry semi-sincerely as a "love fest," and that with Lin in the lineup, your other guys--Chandler, Jeffries, Novak, Shumpert, Fields--would start playing much better, too? And what if this clairvoyant also told you that 24 hours after the L.A. game, coming off the exhilaration and exhaustion of his performance against the Lakers, Jeremy Lin would put up 20/8/6 against the T-Wolves while having an off night and that he'd make the go-ahead free throw at the end, sealing your sixth straight victory and concluding the most unlikely week of basketball for any player in NBA history? Seriously, Mike. What would you say? What the heck would you think? And if you knew for an absolute fact that all this would truly come to pass, how delighted would you be?
Let's take a trip in the mental time machine to Friday, February 3rd, 2012. By the end of the night, your Knicks had suffered their 11th loss in the last 13 games. The NYC tabloids were saying you could be fired by the end of the weekend. Your team had absolutely zero chemistry. You had no competent point guard. Allow me to quote an article written around this time by New York magazine's excellent Will Leitch: "The Knicks are unquestionably a disaster right now...There is a short window for D'Antoni to survive, riding mostly on 33-year-old Baron Davis returning from his injuries to play the point the way a D'Antoni team requires...But considering the truncated season and the lack of practice time available, that seems highly unlikely. Whether it comes after this season or as early as this week, the end for D'Antoni appears nigh." Nobody disagreed with this assessment.
Remember that February 3rd, Mike? Recall, too, the Jeremy Lin of that night, who scored two points for you in six minutes of PT, and whose contract wouldn't be guaranteed if the Knicks cut him within a week, a distinct possibility. What if someone would've told you then, after that loss, that the very next night Jeremy Lin would score 25 and add 7 assists in a win over the Nets? What if someone told your February 3rd self that you'd soon be inserting Lin into the starting lineup, and that in his first three starts he'd score more points than any player since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976, and that you'd win each of these games? And what if on February 3rd this person told you that on the following Friday your Knicks would beat the Lakers for the first time in five seasons, without Carmelo or Amar'e, and that in the victory Jeremy Lin would score 38, the most points against L.A. in the Garden by any Knick in the last 25 years? What if somebody told you on that awful February 3rd that in a week's time you'd be referring to your team's chemistry semi-sincerely as a "love fest," and that with Lin in the lineup, your other guys--Chandler, Jeffries, Novak, Shumpert, Fields--would start playing much better, too? And what if this clairvoyant also told you that 24 hours after the L.A. game, coming off the exhilaration and exhaustion of his performance against the Lakers, Jeremy Lin would put up 20/8/6 against the T-Wolves while having an off night and that he'd make the go-ahead free throw at the end, sealing your sixth straight victory and concluding the most unlikely week of basketball for any player in NBA history? Seriously, Mike. What would you say? What the heck would you think? And if you knew for an absolute fact that all this would truly come to pass, how delighted would you be?
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