Basketball Reasons

Dear Steve Kerr,

Now that the conference finals are over and you and the rest of the TNT guys are done until next season, I think it’s only right to pause for a second and to remember the last couple of weeks. Ever notice that as soon as a team is eliminated, it’s like they cease to exist until the season’s over? Usually I like that—it’s nice not to hear about the Lakers or remember how consistently mediocre the Rockets are—but man, I hate to see these Spurs and Celtics exit the stage. I really do. I also hate to see you TNT guys exit the stage. Everybody knows the Inside the NBA crew is great (besides Shaq, who’s terrible except for a few moments of unconscious greatness, but who I’d sort of miss if he left), but people don’t talk enough about what a great commentator you are—really intelligent, funny, and most of all, genuinely enthusiastic about the game. It's heartening to see a guy who still loves basketball as much as you do. You’ve retained your awe, which I really respect. You're one of those great enthusiasts who makes everybody else enjoy themselves even more through your enthusiasm.

During the last Thunder/Spurs game, there was a stretch of incredible back-and-forth basketball and I remember at one point, you said, “This is just brilliant stuff.” I really liked that, and it was totally true. And not just for that stretch: over the last couple of weeks, there's been brilliant stuff happening every single night. I can’t remember a pair of conference finals this good since the days when you were teammates with MJ. Actually, maybe even before that. There’ve been some incredible conference finals over the years—the Bulls team you played on vs. your partner Reggie’s Pacers, for one—but for a year when the Western and Eastern finals were both as good as these? In my opinion, we’d have to go back to 1993, right when I was really getting into basketball as a teenager. That was Suns vs. Sonics in the West and Bulls vs. Knicks in the East. Recall: Suns in 7, Bulls in 6, but Knicks went up 2-0. In the first game of that Bulls/Knicks series, Starks had the memorable left-handed baseline jam on Horace Grant and MJ, a play that I’d bet still quietly occupies space in millions of brains. Then MJ had 54 in Game 4, most of them in Starks’s face, and averaged 32/6/7 for the series. In Game 7 of the other series, with a trip to the Finals on the line, Barkley had 44 points and 24 boards. Man, that was a pair of great conference finals. And I think this year’s two series were along those lines. In fact, I can’t remember ever enjoying two different playoff series at the same time as much as I enjoyed these, 1993 included. I know we'll remember these series, most likely, as the moments when LeBron and Durant both reached new levels, Durant in that 18 point fourth quarter in Game 4, LeBron (obviously) in his 45-points-in-45-minutes-in-an-elimination-game performance in Game 6. But let’s not just forget the other incredible performances by guys on the losing teams, the ones by Parker (Game 2) and Ginobili (5) and Stephen Jackson (6) and in the other series by Garnett (5) and Pierce (the final-minute three in Bron’s face in Game 5) and most of all, the entire series of performances by Rondo.

I'm Learning, Man. That's My Horse Tutor.

Dear Shaq,

When I first heard you'd signed with TNT, I was happy for you, happy you wouldn't end up in the purgatory that is ESPN's NBA coverage, and excited for the basketball-and-humor-loving public that you'd be joining the already glorious Inside the NBA crew. Then, over the holidays at my folks' house, my brother and I watched a few episodes of a show on NBA TV called Open Court, where a bunch of TNT-affiliated former NBA guys--you, Chuck, Kenny, Reggie, Kerr, Steve Smith, C-Webb—just sit in a room and tell stories. The show was great, but you were by far the least entertaining person in the room. Even though Reggie Miller was at one time my favorite non-Houston basketball player, I only find Reggie-the-analyst entertaining when he's announcing a game and uses the term "a long deuce." But even he was more interesting than you. Suddenly I worried that you might ruin Inside the NBA. Then the season started: I caught a few minutes here and there of you at halftime, and what I saw was pretty bad, Shaq. Your voice was often so low as to be nearly inaudible, you made too many sound effects, laughed at your own jokes without making your co-hosts laugh, and when called upon to talk about the games, you seemed stuck in athlete-trying-not-to-say-anything-interesting mode. Admittedly, I only had a small sample size of your performances, but people were hammering you on Twitter, too: Shaq is boring! Shaq makes Kevin McHale seem entertaining! Shaq just said Rudy Gay could be as good as Lebron and Wade! Shaq just called Ricky Rubio the Italian Pete Maravich! Suddenly I couldn't remember: Were you ever that interesting? Or was the pressure making you uninteresting? I hoped it was the latter. It was like someone had brought you to a great party and said, "Hey, everybody, listen up. This is my friend Shaq. He's really hilarious," and because of this introduction you froze up and every prosaic thing you said disappointed the attendees and the vibe of the party was ruined.

Being someone who has frozen under pressure in many different pursuits, I felt like I could explain the problem: You hadn't found your freedom. I don't know if you ever listen to NPR, Shaq, but here's Philip Roth from an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air a few years back, talking about his novel The Human Stain and its narrator: