Piece by: Brian Saal
This was supposed to be something else. Rendition 1.0 of this article will likely sit unfinished in my Google Drive forever, a relic of those halcyon days before the quarantine life drove me completely fucking nuts. I’ve started on three or four different articles since the beginning of May, and all of them crash-landed almost immediately. This was supposed to be Part 2 of “The Spencer Hawes Catastrophe.” My intent was to lead you all on a riveting journey through the hours that my eyes were captive to my least favorite player, dragging our titular villain through the mud all the way to the bank. There would have been stats, personal anecdotes, fun facts, speculation of what might have been. A scorn cocktail with a pinch of nostalgia. The final product will have all of those, and more. Someday soon, I will be able to write about Spencer Hawes and his ridiculous haircut and his sub-10 PER. Someday soon, I’ll tell you that story. Right now, it has to be this one.
World-shaking events have a way of crystallizing for us the exact moment we get the news. I was slouched against a countertop at the A4cade barcade in Cambridge, watching my friend play Guitar Hero, when I saw that the NBA had suspended their season indefinitely. History has a killer right hook. The COVID-19 coronavirus was going to pack a hell of a punch, well beyond that of the H1N1 swine flu, the only other major outbreak I’m old enough to remember.
As our train of horrors approaches a precarious summer, a devastating autumn further on the horizon, I can say with all honesty that if basketball returning meant a Knicks-Cavs 99-game series to decide the champ, I’d give rapturous attention to every minute. One never really realizes how much the sports world contributes to our collective feeling of normalcy until it’s ripped from our hands. Even during the greatest crises of the last few decades, at least there was usually a game on. The few games that reach our screens these days are spectral echoes of sporting events. Without spectators, baseball and soccer and (especially) pro wrestling take on a supremely uncanny air that makes it feel like we’re illicitly peeking in on broadcasts from an alternate universe where the only people allowed to attend sporting events are invisible mutes.
There has been chatter that the NBA will resume the season in some capacity, isolated from fans, in a secure location like Orlando or Las Vegas. If the Clippers or Lakers or Bucks win an NBA Title in front of nobody at Disney World, does it still matter? Of course it does. Contrary to what Major League Baseball’s commissioner might say, the World Series trophy is not just a “piece of metal.” The Mona Lisa is not “a painting of a lady”, The Godfather is not “a movie about mobsters”, New York is not “a place where a lot of people live.” Basketball is not “a game where you try to put a ball through the hoop more than the other guys.”
Basketball, and all sports, are grand narratives. Basketball is Lakers vs Celtics, Jordan vs LeBron, Spencer Hawes vs Making a Three Pointer. “Narrative” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in a pejorative sense, but without it, basketball, sports, life, all are just a series of sterile equations. Stories separate us from the animals, elevate us beyond simply optimized survival into a more beautiful state. On May 2nd, 2015, some guy tossed an orange ball into a hoop, even though another, taller guy was trying to stop him.
That doesn’t matter, because that’s not what actually happened. What really went down is that Chris Paul, point guard extraordinaire, playing through a serious hamstring injury, barely hit a layup to put the Los Angeles Clippers, perennial losers, ahead of the reigning champion San Antonio Spurs for good in the final seconds of Game 7 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals, briefly giving millions of people hope that this team, their team, could finally reach the top of the mountain. People don’t fall in love at 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E. People fall in love in the City of Lights.
We’re coming up on three months without the NBA, and I just miss it, man. It’s the big stuff, for sure. I want to see the Clippers play in the Conference Finals for the first time. Hell, I want to see them beat the Lakers in the Conference Finals, and if I’m allowed to be even more greedy, I want to see them win the whole damn thing. I miss the small stuff too. I miss trying to figure out whether Brian Sieman and Chauncey Billups are mere connoisseurs of banter or if they actually dislike each other. Speaking of Brian Sieman, I miss him bringing up weird stuff during a slow broadcast. Though I’ll never visit, my existence is made a bit richer by the knowledge of the Oklahoma City Basket Museum. I weirdly miss Chuck the Condor, and even his unsettling inflatable counterpart, “Chubby Chuck.” I’d accept basketball’s return in virtually any form at this point — I’m sure I’m not the only one who initially balked at the idea of crowdless games, only to find that just a few weeks without NBA competition would make me desperate for even that.
When the NBA does return, fully and completely, crowds and all, the first thing I’m going to do is hop on a plane to Los Angeles and catch a Clippers home game. Oddly enough, the first place I ever saw my team live was not at the Staples Center, or my hometown TD Garden, but the Smoothie King Center (if you think that’s a dumb name, you clearly haven’t heard of the “KFC Yum! Center” in Louisville) in New Orleans. January 30th, 2015. The Clippers lost to the Pelicans, who were playing without Anthony Davis. Spencer Hawes played 15 minutes and went 0-1. He managed to pick up 4 fouls. A few months later I got to see them whip the Celtics in Boston, with some help from Blake Griffin’s ridiculous 360 block, and JJ Redick’s lights out shooting, the latter of which was clearly getting to the fans sitting behind me (“fuckin JJ Redick man, he’s making everything”; I usually try not to indulge in schadenfreude but the tears of disappointed Celtics/Bruins fans are too delicious to resist). Spencer Hawes played 19 minutes this time. He still didn’t make a field goal, but managed to sink 3 free throws, matching his foul count. That contest remains the only Clipper win I’ve seen live. One of the best games I’ve ever seen period was this year’s double OT thriller in Boston, despite the fact that it was a game seemingly designed to make me personally angry: a big performance from Marcus Smart, who also made a bunch of clutch shots; Paul George got injured and didn’t play in the second half; Pat Beverley missed the game entirely; worst of all, it was one of those games where your team hangs around for a while, never quite breaking through, and eventually just runs out of gas, known in academic circles as “The Lob City Special.” Spencer Hawes did not play that night, having not stepped on an NBA floor in almost 3 years.
Even that couldn’t come close to the experience of Blake Griffin’s first game back in Los Angeles after the trade. I’d never been to LA, and after years of putting off the trip I finally was presented with an event that I simply could not miss. It would never happen again for the first time. The game itself was another Lob City Special, which wasn’t nearly as annoying as it had been in past years, since expectations for and the vibes around the magical 2018-19 team were so drastically different than they were in the previous era.
Getting to cheer with thousands of others as Sweet Lou Williams tied the game at 97 was a tremendous privilege even in defeat. Then there was Blake, who got two standing ovations and an outstanding video package. He seemed pretty apathetic towards the whole thing — after the game I’d find out that he had run away from Steve Ballmer’s pre-game handshake, and had even spurned the legendary Ralph Lawler’s attempts to say hello, which is pretty clearly listed as a cardinal sin in the Clipper Bible (Lawler 21:8 for the curious). He still gave us a wave, which was the only kindness he extended to the Clipper faithful that night, dropping an efficient 44 points in a brutal revenge game. I was robbed of the opportunity to see Boban Marjanović play, a letdown that I can only assume is somehow Spencer Hawes’s fault.
In time, a vaccine will be widely available, and the world will be back to business as usual. The rumors that this season will resume in July without fans continue to gain traction. For now, we’re homebound with our prayers for the future and memories of the past. This article isn’t tight, there are probably a bunch of run-on sentences and too many instances of the word “but”, but that’s just the times, you know? I know what you’re thinking, convenient excuse for Brian to avoid work and pump out something sloppy. I’ll be back to my usual format in short order, with some changeups and curveballs in the near future. This, though, I just had to get it out of my system. In these troubled times, there’s something bottled up inside all of us, and some form of release is necessary to maintain some semblance of sanity.
I know that you’re probably sick of hearing this right now, I know I sure am, but stay safe out there. Be mindful of the health of others, be mindful of your own health. Try your best to be patient, even though that definitely seems impossible a lot of the time. You’re stronger than you think, and better times are coming. Basketball is coming too. There may never again come a time when I can say this without a hint of irony, but I miss Spencer Hawes. If I could, I’d watch him galumph down the court, take a pump fake on an open 3 from the top of the key, and dribble forward into a contested long 2 for hours on end, if that’s what it took to get my fix of basketball.
All the hoops in my town are boarded up right now. There’s a hole in my heart, and the hearts of millions around the globe, with a 29.5 inch circumference and a 9.5 inch diameter. Indulge in your own basketball stories. Watch old games, old highlights. Reminisce. If it fills the void even a little bit, then it’s worth all the time in the world. And when the police tape comes down and the nets are rehung and I can go out and brick midrange jumpers in my Shai Gilgeous-Alexander jersey once more, the universe will be at peace. Good times always come back around.
This is beautifully written.