After his first five seasons in the NBA, Delonte West was the kind of player who basketball obsessives knew and loved, a fan favorite who hadn’t drawn much mainstream attention. That changed on Sept. 17, 2009. Around 10 p.m., not far from his home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, he was pulled over on his three-wheeled Can-Am Spyder motorcycle for making an unsafe lane change. West explained to the officer that he was carrying weapons: a 9 mm Beretta, a Ruger .357 magnum, a Remington 870 shotgun, shotgun shells, and a bowie knife. The police later reported that the shotgun was in a guitar case.
But the major reason, I suspect, is because we're all going to someday die.
The present is never enough, because the present always vanishes. This obsession with legacies is because we all know that eventually this series is going to end, and everyone's going to retire, and everyone's going to die, and all of this ultimately means nothing. Which means we must make it mean more.
We keep the stakes high for these matchups by insisting that it's not just one series on the line, not seven games to decide an individual season's champion: It's in fact the future. One year, one championship, can't possibly be enough: Every game is for eternity. The stakes for LeBron and Duncan aren't victory or defeat: It's immortality or death. This has to mean something. It has to mean more.
No comments:
Post a Comment