[June 6th marks the NBA’s 75th birthday, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of basketball figures and stories. Leading up to this crowd-sourced weekend post featuring bball contexts shared by fellow BasketballStudiers—add yours in comments or by email, please!]
First, a few of
my favorite SportsStudiers:
And Johanna Mellis
Responding to Wednesday’s
Magic Johnson post, Douglas Sackman
tweets,
“I remember where I was when I heard the news (in
Orange County during grad school). I appreciate your take on how Magic's
commercial enterprise and vision challenged ‘Fortress LA.’”
Douglas
also follows up Thursday’s
GOAT post, writing, “YES! Pretty much how I look at it. We
learned a lot about MJ from Last Dance
and his life context, and he is a compelling figure, as is his rise to
greatness. Still, I find much of the investment in him as GOAT over LeBron (or
Kareem!) ties into a toxic masculine model of greatness (which avers he made
his teammates better by refusing empathy and modeling indomitability), and they
romanticize hating the opponents and seeing the game as battle, while LeBron
affirms the humanity of his teammates, opponents, and fellow citizens.”
One
of my favorite FSU English Studies alums ever, and an up-and-coming
sportswriter in his own right, Kurtis
Kendall, argues, “Obviously you
were taking a different approach, but if we’re talking goat debate, it comes
down to your preference of playstyle between Jordan and LeBron (Kareem is
definitely 3rd all-time though). I put Jordan at #1 because I'd want the best
scorer all time first and foremost, among other reasons. Also, what people
forget is Jordan can do the 8 assists and 8 rebounds like LeBron as well (his
88-89 season), while scoring more and shooting more efficiently. He just
decided he was more effective scoring than passing, which, it's hard to argue
with the results.”
Both
Glenna Matthews
and my FSU colleague Ben
Lieberman agree with my choice of Kareem. And the
conversation continues at this
twitter thread.
Other
NBA & basketball thoughts:
Tim
McCaffrey writes “When I was a teenager,
every year the Lakers seemed to be playing the Celtics in the finals. People
used to say that the Celtics were a racist organization, and that the Lakers
weren’t (likely because of the race of their star players). I used to get so
mad.”
Derek Tang shares, “Grew up watching the Celtic-Showtime Lakers rivalry in full
swing, then The Bad Boys, then Jordan's prime. Drifted away from the sport in
the 2000s, and still don't follow it anywhere near as closely as I used to.
However, my 12-yo son is a huge Luka Doncic fan, and I cannot deny that he
makes following the Mavs a whole ton of fun...until they lose in the playoffs
and his lack of a strong supporting cast shines through.”
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Other bball
stories, histories, or contexts you’d share (in comments or by email)?
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