Steph As Comedian

 

With Steph Curry sidelined due to a hamstring injury, the Golden State Warriors bombed out of the NBA playoffs the other day. Curry being 37 years old, his chances to grab another brass ring may have run out. Patrick Redford took this occasion to publish a lovely piece at Defector about Steph.

Redford points us to a highlight video of Steph dissecting the Houston Rockets in the Warriors’ first-round series. In his signature fashion, Curry mixes impossibly long 3-point jumpers with tantalizing floaters that are enabled by the threat of the long 3’s.

That is rude, ingenious, and above all funny. An important thing about Steph Curry: He is foremost a comedian. His possessions have the structure of a joke, with setups, misdirections, and punchlines. 

This is the beautiful observation I want to bookmark: Steph-as-comedian.

I can add, for anyone who needs reminding, that Steph entered the NBA from Davidson College. Come to think of it, Steph playing his college ball at Davidson is a comical twist in his story. Davidson was not his Plan A, to say the least. It was an absurd collective blunder by all the major college hoops powers to allow Steph to wind up in the Southern Conference hinterlands. Somehow Plan B worked.

It is difficult to describe how Davidson people feel at having Steph Curry come into our lives and being entitled to root for him. We never dreamed our school would produce a world-famous sports star. And then to have him be such a fine person and loyal advocate for the school—it’s too much. We love Steph, and, amazingly, he loves us back, for giving him a longshot chance. Davidson’s love for Steph has the quality of unbidden laughter, of being surprised by joy.

Redford goes on:

As he explained in Court of Gold, Netflix's Olympic basketball documentary, the sense of freedom [Curry] plays with is only possible because he's made his peace with losing. He seems like someone who loves winning more than he hates losing, the opposite of how Michael Jordan and his sour peers ordered things and probably different from how his eternal foil, LeBron James, relates to losing.

Last year I wrote about Jerry West that he was more characterized by the hatred of losing than the love of winning. His playing career resembled a grim crusade, piling wounds upon indignities in pursuit of validation. West finally earned that moment of glory and seeming redemption, but did it truly redeem all the sour years?

Steph is different. He’s been doubted so many times during his career as being too small, too injury-prone, not a true point guard, and more. People seem to have forgotten that he was The Underdog for so long, and the essence of being The Underdog is that the possibility if not likelihood of losing is ever-present. Steph Curry is sublimely conscious of the unlikeliness of his own story--even now, when so many others have forgotten it and treat the Warriors like a presumptive Finals contender. Unburdened by outside expectations (although they are there), Steph is free to accept joy when and where he finds it. It’s all gravy.

 Photo by Keith Allison via Flicker and Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA 4.0

Internet Rabbit Holes: Grudging Respect Edition

Chet Lemon died the other day; he was a very good major league outfielder during my youth and young adulthood, and was the center fielder on the 1984 world champion Detroit Tigers team. I re-read what Bill James said about Lemon in his New Historical Baseball Abstract: a player with some valuable qualities, notably defense and the ability to get on base, along with some flaws. Chet was good enough to hold down a starting job in the American League for 14+ years. This makes him the 48th best center fielder of all time in Bill James's book. 

An aside: A lot gets said and written about multi-championship sports dynasties, the Jordan-era Bulls or the Brady-era Patriots. Some of my favorite sports stories are of teams that hang around on the fringes of greatness for a number of years, and are only able to get it together for one season, break through and win a title. The '84 Tigers are a great example. They were a juggernaut for that one year; I think they started the season 35-5, and their winning the World Series became a default assumption which they made good on. That team had two (borderline) Hall of Fame players, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris. Around these two perennial stars were several other tenured members who were good but flawed: Lance Parrish, Willie Hernandez, Chet Lemon, Kirk Gibson. In 1984, everything went right; the strengths were accented, the flaws were obscured. The team cohered, everyone stayed healthy and sharp, and they steamrolled all comers. That is a more inspiring and relatable story than anything involving the Yankees. Here, incidentally, is a 1985 LA Times column about all the things that went wrong on the field for the Tigers that after-year. We learn that Chet Lemon inspired Lou Whitaker to join the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Anyway, the rabbit hole I followed started with the news about Chet Lemon, then my turning to Bill James to read about him. I then Googled "bill james new historical baseball abstract," I guess in hopes that the full text of it is available online. Answer: no, not for free. The links that popped up included some reviews of the Abstract, including one by Dan McLaughlin, aka The Baseball Crank, with whom I was vaguely familiar: he is a conservative pundit of the type I normally avoid. 

So I investigated Mr. Crank a bit. I was reminded that nerds-writing-about-baseball is a niche populated by quite a few conservative pundits: some decent writers like George Will, some hacks like Rich Lowry and Michael Brendan Dougherty. A vaguely disturbing realization for this nerd-writing-about-baseball. Yet Dan McLaughlin writes clearly and sensibly on aspects of baseball that are right up my alley. I feel I need to bookmark this piece about baseball's winningest pitchers, counting games won in the minor leagues and Negro leagues as well as the AL and NL. I also ran across McLaughlin's recent comment on the newly-elected Pope, an even-handed plea to conservatives, Catholic and otherwise, to give Leo XIV a chance.

Why the conservative-baseball axis? Off the top: Baseball history is steeped in traditionalism and nostalgia and American exceptionalism. It is also a protected space for talking about race. In my brief survey of his work I find McLaughlin making admiring references to Jackie Robinson and Moses Fleetwood Walker, Satchel Paige and Don Newcombe. To say these men were worthy players who faced injustice are broadly uncontroversial positions, yet they are an implied rebuke to the anti-woke philistinism of the Trumpers. Moreover, baseball seems to be an approved lighter-side to break up the relentless culture war fighting and ideological boundary-policing that right-wing punditry requires. If anyone ever needed an afternoon off in the bleachers, it's guys like NRO writers.