Frank Lloyd Wright Doin' Work

Dear Kobe,

One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite books—This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff—is this: “All my life I have recognized almost at a glance those who were meant to be my friends, and they have recognized me.” I love this, the idea that friendship is a destiny that you’re aware of right away with some people, and that you can choose to accept or reject it, like Flannery O’Connor’s idea of grace. And the line can also be related to sports fandom. Maybe you don't know this, Kobe, but all our lives as fans, we recognize almost at a glance which athletes we believe we could be friends with, given the right circumstances. This recognition often informs our cheering, in fact. Like with the last Rockets team to make the playoffs, I could’ve seen myself being friends with Yao for sure, plus Scola and Battier and even their teammate and now yours, the humanitarian formerly known as Ron Artest. (One of my buddies and his wife ran into Scola and Battier at karaoke one night in Houston; they took a picture with Scola, who was wearing a giant t-shirt with Kurt Cobain’s face on it, which proves my point.) And in the current NBA, there are all sorts of dudes I believe I could be friends with: Durant (both of us nerdy UT alums), Roy Hibbert (both of us Parks and Recreation fans), Blake Griffin (I enjoy those commercials), and your teammate Luke Walton (Grateful Dead), just to name a few. And here's the thing, Kobe: though you are an interesting and super-intelligent guy, I have never once thought I could be friends with you, under any circumstances. Yes, you made that great reference to Black Swan (a movie I still haven’t seen) last season while talking about Pau. Yes, I’m impressed with your ability to give interviews in multiple languages. Yes, your turnaround fadeaways are truly a work of art. Yes, you’re one of the greatest players of all-time (and we all secretly want to believe we can relate to greatness). But you’re also kind of an asshole, Kobe. I’m not going to cite all the reasons I think you’re an asshole, except to say that it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the rape trial (for which you were acquitted, after all) or the prima donna stuff I read in The Last Season. No, it has much more to do with the way, earlier in your career, whenever you got knocked down on a foul, you would sit up and cross your arms while making the most arrogant face possible, and then keep this pose even as your teammates held their hands out to pick you up. That's what I mean by asshole, Kobe. And besides your beautiful fadeaways, this is the image that I believed defined you as a basketball player.

Yao We Can Believe In

Dear Yao,

First of all, Happy Chinese New Year. I hope the Year of the Dragon is truly a great one for you. And with that in mind, let me speak to you about less happy subjects. The day after I heard the news about your old teammate Mutombo and his alleged involvement in a Congolese gold-smuggling scandal, I read this AP headline: "Yao Ming goes into politics in China." I'm not gonna lie to you, Yao: this troubled me, especially coming on the heels of the Mutombo story. But I looked into the details, and it wasn't like you were pulling a Prokhorov; you were just joining a committee that makes recommendations to the government but has no actual political power. Yes, this committee has a scary Orwellian name--Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Shanghai Committee--but your spokesperson noted that "Yao wants to use his influence to do good deeds for society, but not to seek a political position." If there's anyone the public can't trust, it's a spokesperson, but still: this made me feel better. Even more comforting, NBC's Behind the Wall website ran a picture of you attending your first meeting, doggedly paying attention in a turtleneck, while the other committee members in the audience around you, all of them elderly, slept. Two old men in your row appeared to be resting their heads against each other as pillows. Nothing sinister here. But it's still politics, Yao. And you're young; you won't be content making recommendations among sleeping geriatrics forever, will you? And does one even choose to "go into politics" in China, or is one chosen? (I do know people can go into jail for speaking frankly about politics there. I've heard of Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei, at least enough to find them quickly on Wikipedia.) These questions worry me, Yao. So while I'm not in full panic mode about this recent news, I fear it could still mean an eventual change in the Yao Ming we all love and admire.

Special Emergency Letter: Conflict Gold

Dear Mutombo,

I never thought I'd be writing you again so soon. I don't know what to say. Four tons of Congolese gold? Militias? Corporate jets? Money-laundering? Two bags containing 6.6 million dollars in cash? Local generals? PowerPoint presentations? Purported customs facilities? Confidentiality? Highest discretion? Armed soldiers? Warlords? Did you, Mutombo, really set up a deal to sell a thousand pounds of conflict minerals within a few weeks of meeting with the State Department to bring more attention to how the illicit sale of conflict minerals has ravaged your homeland? Do you really want to add your name to the ever-growing list of Public Figures Who Secretly Do the Very Thing They Speak Out Against? Is the Mutombo family that hard up for money? Were you going to use the money to build another Congolese hospital? Would that make it okay, or at least a little okay? Do we all have as many sides to our personalities as you do, Mutombo (i.e. the gold-smuggling side, the Gold-Club-prostitution-trial side, the help-reduce-polio-and-build-hospitals humanitarian side, the finger-wagging-trash-talker side, the teach-Yao-Ming-about-fine-wine side, the exasperated-at-the-DMV side)? Are you greedy? Are you a money-hungry humanitarian or a money-hungry man posing as a humanitarian, or neither? Say it ain't so, Deke. Say it ain't so! We're not surprised at all anymore when athletes get accused of illegal activities--I mean, ESPN runs a crime ticker at the bottom of the screen during all programming--but damn, Dikembe. This is surprising. This is crazy and awful. This is some Blood Diamond shit. Please tell us you have a decent explanation. Or barring that, that you made a mistake, as people do, but that this isn't indicative of your character as a whole. Please tell us that the exasperated sitcom father I've been imagining you to be is the real Mutombo, and not this international smuggler of conflict gold. Exonerate yourself, Deke. Instead of being another reminder that there'll always be public figures who do exactly what they decry, please be a reminder that people do, occasionally, get falsely accused. 

Sincerely,

Burke 

P.S. I'm sure you already read it, but just so you know, all the words and phrases near the beginning of this letter come from the Houston Chronicle article breaking the news of your involvement in the scandal. When the reporters reached reached you in Atlanta for comment, you said, "I have nothing to say." No, Deke!  Exonerate yourself! 

P.P.S. What am I supposed to do about my bobble-finger doll if you don't ever refute the allegations? Bobble-finger dolls are not supposed to make us have complicated feelings about human nature.