The Celtics, the Lakers, and Some Thoughts on the State of the NBA and its Narcissistic Stars

Tonight at 9:30pm, the Celtics and Lakers begin competition for the NBA championship. For those who don't know, this is a renaissance of basketball, one that hearkens back some two decades to the glory days of the NBA, when Larry Bird worked his Hoosier magic and Magic Johnson (an overrated player--but then again, I am from Maine, and thus a diehard Celtics fan) roamed the court.

(Side note: one of the funniest things about sports is the ridiculous concept of "history." History, for sports and the sports marketing machine, extends about fifty years back. That which is truly ancient, occurring in realms almost inconceivable to the modern mind, happened between 60-100 years ago. Much of what drives this truncated view of history is the fact that modern sports are closely linked with television. Television is notorious for developing an undernourished version of history--History Channel excluded, of course--in which events barely two decades old are seen as almost comically passe. History, friends, is the realm of things that stretch back centuries, millenia, not merely decades! But alas, I am a wannabe historian, and these things irk me.

Side note continued: If you think I'm on a jag here, just consider my words after you've watched the hundredth commercial or halftime spot recalling the "glory days" of twenty years past, replete with slow motion footage and mystical voiceover. This little side note won't change anything, of course. However, it may free one watcher, one lonely viewer, from the absolutely hilarious conception of history common to television, marketers, and those for the twain meets. Histrionics concluded.)

Okay, with all that said, if you're interested in the game, read this hilarious Bill Simmons column on it. Bill Simmons writes for ESPN, he's not a Christian to my knowledge, he can be irreverent, but he's quite insightful on the game and frequently witty in the extreme. If you're going to follow the series, he'll give you a good briefing on the match-up.

For my part, I am ready for the NBA finals. Really--I've been preparing. Meditation, balancing exercises, that sort of thing. Why? Because the NBA finals offer a level of over-heated, self-serving entertainment of the kind rarely glimpsed in the mortal realm. NBA athletes are far and away the best in the world. They possess a collection of skill, dexterity, strength, size, and grace that is unmatched by any other class of sportsmen. However, with this burden of talent comes a burden of ego. There is no one like the NBA superstar. The world exists to drool over him, throw money at him, applaud him til all palms are red, all while he preens and pouts and whines and machinates and ruminates before television commercials about his barely comprehensible greatness. There are a (very) few exceptions to this rule, but most of the NBA superstars and stars and even normal role players one watches are highly skilled not only in the art of basketball, but the discipline of relentless, unimpedable narcissistic self-obsession.

However, they are extremely fun to watch, if you can just ignore the histrionics, attention-grabbing disorders, and general interest in self-promotion.

When overseas recently, I watched some rugby, which was quite fun. Rugby players are talented athletes, and they play before thousands, and they have their own brand of machinations, but theirs come nowhere near those of NBA players. Rugby players work hard, work together, and when they succeed, they briefly celebrate with their teammates and then move on. As one who admittedly loves the grace and skill of the NBA, it was a pleasure to watch the character and team-oriented play of the rugby players. There was no Lebron James out there, no player who seemed to have become a demigod in his eyes and the eyes of those who follow him. The rugby game was sport as it should be: competitive, fun, skillful, and team-oriented, not individual-exalting.

With all of this bluster, I confess that I still love to watch the NBA. I can't help myself. At its best, played at its highest level by its best players, it is a forceful ballet, an athletic drama. Its top stars, most of them outfitted with extraordinary coordination, 36-inch verticals, and fine-tuned ability, lead their teams in coordinated attack and defense. The best teams exist together in a kind of physical harmony, the players sharing a common mind and will. For these reasons, I try hard to overlook the lack of character displayed by many players and to enjoy the gift of graceful competition. Reminds one that Christians really have an opportunity to shine in the realm of sports. When one plays hard but fairly, skillfully but not self-servingly, one can really stand out. We should not abandon sports, but should season them. That includes the NBA and other levels of basketball and even local gyms and rec leagues. The world is sin-infested, and we can't just turn our backs on it--we need to be salt in places that smell, leaven in realms of dullness and decay.

Of course, if the Celtics win this series, that would be just fine with this New Englander. If some team full of narcissistic athletes has to win, I'll take the New England team every time.

What It's Like to Play in the NBA D-League (or at Least the D-League Tryouts)

Just read a pretty funny article about one writer's bid to make the NBA's Developmental League. "Me Got Game", by Davy Rothbart, is a funny and revealing look about what it's actually like to try and make a high-level professional basketball team. You'll want to watch for bad language in the piece, but if you can get past it, you'll likely be entertained by Rothbart's experience.

Rothbart recounts his initial moments as a D-League would-be.

"When we get to the arena, we run our pregame warm-up. I feel good, and every shot I fling up is going down. Marcus whistles. “Dang,” he says. “If I get the rebound down low, look for me to kick it out to you. I want to rack up some assists.”

Once the game starts, its pace is relentless, a nonstop sprint. When I sub in, I’m matched against a six-foot-two guard who played at Southern Oregon. I decide to drape myself on him on the perimeter so he can’t get off a shot, even if it means surrendering the drive. My lungs are on fire; my vision feels fogged. Then the ball rotates to me on -offense, and I let loose a long-range jumper, six feet behind the three-point line. Swish!"

Rothbart has a good first game, but things go downhill from there. As he writes, one gets a sense of the speed and force of professional basketball. Here's a snapshot from his next game.

"Right out of the gate, I know I’m in trouble. Yesterday’s games have sapped me of my juice, and the guy I’m D’ing up scores twice in a row. At the other end, I throw up an off-balance shot that barely glances the front rim. Coach Walsh yanks me. “Don’t force it, Davy,” he shouts. “Find your rhythm.” I nod, but when I sub back in, I can’t find it. Walsh pulls me out again, and I take a seat at the end of the bench, sucking breaths, close to tears."

After several games, the tryout for the D-League is over, and Rothbart reflects on his effort.

"Yeah, I found out the hard way—I couldn’t hang. I was good enough only to keep from embarrassing myself. (I’d totaled fourteen points and fifteen assists.) Anthony, who scored three points in our final game, also came up short. But that’s kind of all right. There’s something about laying it all on the line that feels gutsy and noble."

I enjoyed the writing, though it's not particularly noteworthy. What did stand out to me from the piece was the level of difficulty that former athletes often face in walking away from their sport. Some can hang up their shoes without much sadness, but others continue to chase a dream that retreats with each year that passes, like a shadow from a descending sun. It seems to me a difficult thing to be a marquee athlete. One day, you're playing on ESPN and in front of 20,000 screaming fans. The next, you're in a gym in the middle of nowhere, desperate to keep your dreams alive, unaware that they may well have already passed you by.

There's something about sports that makes it hard to keep in balance--perhaps the rush of testerone that becomes a regular part of life for athletes. When you're used to a cycle of highs and lows, you struggle, perhaps, to keep your life in balance, to adjust to the normal rhythms of life. This is especially true when you've been told at summer camps and motivational meetings that you can be anything you want to be. Sometimes, despite what the speaker may say, you can't. Most of us will be forced at numerous points in our lives to stop, drop what we're doing, and evaluate our lives. Is our current pursuit in the stream of God's blessing? Are we hacking away at dreams and hopes that should have died long ago? Are we, like Jonah, fighting God's will, no matter how much sea water and disappointment we swallow?

There is great humility in admitting one's limitations and in accepting the inevitable. This is no easy thing to do, but in doing so, we exhibit commendable self-awareness and realism. We also acknowledge that despite what our mind or heart may tell us, reality tells us to give up, to redirect ourselves, to lay down even the most cultivated of passions. For some of us, that's a sport; for others, it's a person we've long pursued; for others, it's a vocational dream. No matter what it may be, whether the D-League or a doctorate or even marriage, it's a fundamentally humble and healthy thing to stop fighting the circumstances around us--and the God who, we regularly discover, is behind them.

Wimps, Goofballs, and Thugs: Deconstructing Contemporary Masculine Stereotypes with Salvo Magazine

Note: this piece is cross-posted today at CBMW's GenderBlog.

A recent Salvo Magazine piece by S. T. Karnick, "Girly Men: The Media's Attack on Masculinity", lays out three stereotypical masculine images found in contemporary culture. Here's Karnick's distillation of the roles currently available to men in American society:

"(T)he war against boys seems to have created three main character patterns for the adult male of our time: sensitive guys who want to please women; weenies and dorks who want only to be left alone to drink beer and play video games with their dork buddies; and thugs who, in rebellion against their unnatural education, are perpetually concerned with proving their toughness through increasingly loutish behavior. There are, of course, examples of decent, positively masculine males in the culture, but they are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the products of educational and cultural feminization."

Each of these characters depresses us, even as we realize that they are not fully imperfect. The sensitive man, after all, is something of a reaction to the cold, emotionless "Lone Ranger" type of man popularized by actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The sensitive man represents a cultural attempt, then, to correct John Wayne masculinity. Where his father or grandfather never wept, never talked much, never said "I love you", the sensitive male weeps readily, chatters away, and reassures anyone within earshot of his love. In seeking an emotionally alive masculinity the sensitive man seems to have sped past "properly balanced emotional life" and landed in the once-foreign land of "traditionally feminine ways of speaking and feeling". The Christian man stands ready to lend him his roadmap.

However off-base this quest may be, at least the sensitive man seeks to go somewhere. The same can not be said for our goofball. Like other useful items strewn around his room in his parent's home, he could not find a sense of self-control, of shame, if offered a cash reward for it. Where men used to define themselves by taking responsibility, by making money, seeking a wife, fathering children, and so on, various factors changed all this. The rise of collegiate culture unimpeded by institutional Christianity, the booming of anonymous cities that allowed for familial escape, and the rise of the playboy bachelor in the post-World War Two era mixed with the rebellious 1960s to explode responsible masculinity. With that, the man-child was born, and so too a major missiological challenge.

The third group--the thugs--represents a reaction against each of these stereotypes. More accurately, perhaps, this third group is a subgroup of the first. This type of man prizes action, not talk, unlike both the sensitive man and the goofball. This is the kind of man who exalts deeds, not words, who would rather talk with his fists than his mouth. Though all three of these perversions of true manhood have existed throughout human history, this type has caused the most damage, at least physically. Your conquerors, your tyrants, your bullies from high school? They fit here. Driven by pride, motivated by glory and the opinions of others, this group, when unrestrained, possesses the power to cause great harm to others.

If many contemporary men fall into these three rather frightening categories, how are local churches to respond? First, by affirming the element of goodness found in each type. Men of the Bible are by no means silent or unemotional. The father of the prodigal son, for example, weeps openly and deservedly when his son returns home (see Luke 15:11-32). Christ Himself wept when He heard of Lazarus's death (John 11:35). Christ was compassionate, tender, gentle, and merciful throughout the course of His ministry. So we ought to be a balance of strength and gentleness, not either/or. On the other hand, it's a bit difficult to find the goodness in the goofball, frankly. With that said, we can appreciate the way in which this type lives honestly and often happily, enjoying the arts, sports, music, and more. Perhaps this cultural pattern of manhood shows us that men do not need to be grim and dour to be truly masculine. As with sensitivity, we need to work hard to strike a balance here, but we can surely recognize that the Bible affirms a balanced, happy life--see Ecclesiastes for more on that. The Christian man ought to be responsible, but he ought also to be happy.

The thug, for his part, shows us that men were not meant to be wimps. We were meant to be strong, to the best of our capability, and to use that strength for the betterment of others. The patriarchs worked the land, and they worked it hard, in order to provide for their families. Death was a constant threat--to worship in Israel in many ages was to worship with a sword on the belt. Christ Himself stormed through the temple, turning over tables, scourging the wicked. In His second coming, He will arrive as the Warrior-King. Therefore, as men, we should realize that to be a man is to harness one's natural strength, energy, and agency for the betterment of others, namely, one's family, church, and brothers and sisters.

We see, then, that there is a fourth model: the redeemed leader, whose type we derive from the Bible. In a sense, this fourth model is a composite of the earlier three types--or rather, the three types are all realized in Christ, the God-man, whose model is elaborated in the Bible. We must not let our children learn what it is to be a man--or a woman, of course!--from MTV, or Hollywood, or the NBA. No, we must embody robust, godly masculinity in our churches. This starts with a pastor who embodies biblical manhood and who then teaches men to do the same. A full commitment must be made to teaching men the rudiments of biblical masculinity--Proverbs, the Gospels, 2 Timothy come to mind here.

Churches must thus teach men not to be feminine in matters of communication and emotion, not to shirk responsibility and maturity, not to mistreat and abuse others, but to emulate the Savior. When churches train men in this way, fathers will trains their sons, leading to sea changes in Christian culture. The pastor is important, but he trains only one family directly. Every Christian church, however, has many fathers, and it is up to them in an earthly sense to determine whether they will raise men of Christ or men of culture. It is not too much to say that all of the above, all of the preceding discussion, rises or falls with the simple matter of what a father teaches his family, what models he holds up before them, and how he lives out that teaching.

Will our boys be wimps, goofballs, thugs--or will they be a fourth type: Christian leaders according to the dictates of Scripture? The answer depends not on what the culture says, not on what it parades before us on television, but on the conception of man that we teach, that we exalt, and that we embody before the eyes that are always watching, the hearts that are always taking shape and form.

taking shape and form.