Vision Circle

From the Pistons' standpoint, the refs took this game (and game #3) from them. Three or four offensive fouls called consecutively? Even the announcers were puzzled by it, noting that the refs' calls didn't seem to be consistent.

As someone watching from tv-land, while coding data (I told you I'm a supporter not a fan), it seemed as if most of the refs calls were legitimate calls...but that they were calls that would not normally be made during the course of an nba game. It's technically illegal to switch lanes while driving without signalling, but most police officers won't pull you over for doing it.

But here's the thing--during the course of the game you cannot do a damn thing about what the ref calls. All you can do is play your game. You want to mobilize against the refs? Cool. Do it after the game.
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I always thought that Rasheed got a bum rap. Coming from the Derrick Coleman school of power forwards (can handle, pass, shoot the rock from behind the arc, use power, and use finesse), Wallace has always had game. Always. I still marvel at the fact that the Washington Wizards (then Bullets) let Webber, Howard, and Rasheed get away. But Sheed's problems (which didn't appear until he was shipped to Portland) were threefold.

First, he was in the wrong market for his game. Someone like Wallace was much better suited to a Detroit, a DC, an Atlanta, than a city like Portland. He needed to be in a city where folks sported gold teeth and rims. A solid working class city with a lot of working class black people. The type of people who understood why someone like Rasheed wasn't friendly towards the media off the court, why he played with righteous anger on it.

When Dumars made the play for him, I knew Wallace had found a home. Even when Zeke came calling from NYC.

Second, Wallace was always more of a Pippen (sans the chump-like headaches)than a Jordan. That is, Wallace wasn't really cut to demand the ball. To be "the man." People always expected that of him, because of the skills he had...but that doesn't really fit his style. Rasheed is well aware that the game of basketball is just that, a game. One of the things that separated Bird, Magic, JOrdan, and Isiah, or someone like a Woods, is that they felt that everytime they competed, their lives were on the line. And everytime they lost, a little bit of them died inside.

Hell, I hate to lose. Hate it. But I'm not going to do the equivalent of slitting someone's throat to not lose. Someone like Isiah? In a minute.

Rasheed? Nope.

Third.

The referees. I think NBA refs have too much control over the game. I think they have no visible checks on their authority--not even a commentator can go too far in criticizing them. And it is clear that certain refs have much too thin a skin for their job, and that they go after players. Javits is particularly hard--I believe it was Javits that had to be separated from van exel at one point. And if Rasheed is anything besides a Tar Heel, he is skeptical and highly critical of authority. The way Rasheed feels about NBA refs is most likely similar to the way he--and most of us (by "us" I mean black men under 40) feel about police.

But in his case, he encounters them every day on the job...and they're watching over him like a hawk. Raise an eyebrow?

Smack.

No wonder Rasheed's led the league in technicals or been near the top. But going to Detroit, folks thought he turned the corner. And indeed he had.

But he turned the corner right back in the most important of times.
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My politics at the aggregate level is decidedly leftist with crusian nationalist overtones, and a boggsian belief in grassroots organized democracy.

My politics at the individual level? You've got to do the work. You've got to be responsible. An Ancient saying goes something like this: Strive for excellence in all you do, that no fault may be found in your character. Damn right we don't need to "act right" to get our rights guarenteed by the Constitution. But I'll be damned if you're going to be a decent organizer if you don't know a damn thing about showing up to work on time every day. If you don't know anything about the idea of seeing something through beginning to end whether you like it or not.

Here is where Rasheed's breakdown in game 5 was troubling to me. What he--and so many like him--have to somehow do is take the pinpricks and jabs of the moment, and somehow rise above them to deal with the pinpricks from a better place. There's nothing he can do about the refs during the course of the game. All he can do is play his game.

That lesson is probably the most radical--in that it is the most fundamental--to learn.

The Pistons have one, maybe two more games for Wallace to get it this season. But the joy and pain of organized sports is its never ending nature. He learns it now...only to emerge the next day to relearn it.

Posted by at June 3, 2005 11:37 AM | TrackBack