{"id":750,"date":"2005-12-07T20:53:55","date_gmt":"2005-12-08T01:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hoopage\/"},"modified":"2005-12-07T20:53:55","modified_gmt":"2005-12-08T01:53:55","slug":"hoopage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hoopage","title":{"rendered":"Hoopage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two neat basketball stories today. First, Chuck Klosterman wrote a neat piece<\/a> on ESPN’s Page2 about how Phil Jackson will become a much better story once he’s gone through the abject failure of coaching the Lakers this year.<\/p>\n

Americans don’t read very much, mostly because they don’t have to. But we still live in a staunchly literary world. We understand almost everything (and everyone) within the context of a narrative that’s written by circumstance and reality; each person’s history is a little story where they are the main character. As such, historical figures are remembered for the things they accomplish and the victories they win — if life were a movie, the collection of those achievements would comprise the plot. But people are always defined by their greatest failure. You learn very little about a man’s character from his success; truth exists only within adversity. And adversity is what Jackson needs to define himself as A Great Man; without it, he’s just a tall dude from Williston High School who won a lot of games with a lot of talent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The other neat story? Why, it’s that Seattle Sonics center Reggie Evans missed a piece of the 3rd quarter<\/a> of last night’s game against the Knicks because he was taking his drug test at halftime. <\/p>\n

“I’ve been clean since I’ve been in the league, I’ve been clean since I’ve been in college, I’ve been clean since I’ve been in high school, middle school, elementary school,” Evans said. “I’m just cleaner than clean. I’m cleaner than Pine-Sol.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two neat basketball stories today. First, Chuck Klosterman wrote a neat piece on ESPN’s Page2 about how Phil Jackson will become a much better story once he’s gone through the abject failure of coaching the Lakers this year. Americans don’t read very much, mostly because they don’t have to. But we still live in a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Hoopage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4C7K-hoopage","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1014,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-uses-of-failure","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":0},"title":"The Uses of Failure","author":"Gil","date":"July 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"One of my favorite posts ever is actually a From the Editor column from my magazine about my enjoyment of failure. This week, BW has a neat article called How Failure Breeds Success, on how corporations can learn from their mistakes, particularly with product launches gone awry. Intuit Inc. [.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/diversify-toleration","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":1},"title":"Diversify toleration!","author":"Gil","date":"February 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Neat editorial by Chris Broussard at ESPN, regarding gay players in the NBA. He believes the league is \"ready\" for them, while also contending that homoesexuality's a sin. I'm a born-again, Bible-believing Christian (no, I'm not a member of the Religious Right). And I'm against homosexuality (I believe it's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1367,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/making-music","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":2},"title":"Making Music","author":"Gil","date":"March 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Bierut at DesignObserver feels that Dreamgirls misses the soul of the music that it's trying to capture, and he has some neat remarks about the \"production line\" of Holland, Dozier and Holland at Motown records. It puts me in mind of Jack Kirby's most prolific and productive era, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2053,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/friendship-character-rebounding","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":3},"title":"Friendship, character . . . rebounding","author":"Gil","date":"May 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Separated at birth: Charles Barkley from tonight's TNT NBA playoff pregame show, and Jon Polito (as Johnny Caspar in Miller's Crossing). \"I'm a sporting man. I like to lay the occasional bet.\"","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/polbark.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1376,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/when-bad-metrics-happen-to-bad-gms","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":4},"title":"When bad metrics happen to bad GMs","author":"Gil","date":"March 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Anyone who's read our VM basketball previews in the last few years knows that the Timberwolves are in terrible shape, and it's due to the incompetent dealings of its general manager, Kevin McHale, who can also be faulted for being part of the Joe Smith debacle that ruined Kevin Garnett's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":627,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cuban-sanction","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":5},"title":"Cuban Sanction","author":"Gil","date":"August 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Tom Spurgeon and I will post another NBA Preview this October, but the league has been going through upheval thanks to a weird, one-time clause in the new collective bargaining agreement, allowing teams to cut one player (they still have to pay him) to remove his salary from their luxury\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}