AI to Minnesota !!!

Dear all

There are very few things that can make me take off my lush beard and purportedly intellectual demeanor and jump up an down like a 10-year old. The most culturally sophisticated of these is the beautiful game of basketball. I will now acknowledge the stylistic influence of a woman whom I have grudgingly had to accept as being my superior in literary expression in the form of some italicized nostalgic meandering.

I have played basketball since I was 11, and have watched NBA games sporadically since I was 17. It would be easy for me to bring up myriad on-court memories - grade-school, high-school, college. But, I would rather choose to talk about a memory that I no longer remember for the event itself, but for the inner fountain of ecstasy that it unleashed on that memorable day.

Kings at Lakers, Western Conference Finals 2002.

The Lakers, like all Shaquille O'Neal led teams of the past decade, coasted through the regular season, and the Kings snapped up home-court advantage by winning the Pacific Division. Now, with the Lakers down 1-2 in the seven game series, losing this one at home would drop them into a 3-1 hole, with two visits to the notoriously partisan Arco Arena lined up.

In those days I used to be a great Shaq fan - there is something innately appealing in the idea of a dominant giant destroying all opposition, then going down fighting in a sea of flames that I instantly connect to. Shaq, of course, wimped out when it came to going down in flames, letting Dwyane Wade carry him to his fourth championship ring last season. However, back in 2002, he was still in his prime, an absolute monster. And his Lakers, supported by the league's officiating, were looking to win their third straight title.

So, my favorite basketball team is struggling, down by 15 to start the fourth quarter. Kobe has had an off game, and the Kings are doubling down on Shaq even off the ball. The only high point of the game, for a Lakers fan, is Samaki Walker's half court heave at the half-time buzzer.

So, I am sitting in bed and exhorting Kobe to get it going. And the Kings appear to be inexorably deep and well-coached. They have no weaknesses, and they are hanging tough with the Lakers. I can remember muttering, "Come on you b*****, give them some open looks". This, please remember, is when I was 18, and thought swearing was cool.

So, the Lakers start coming back. I don't remember how they did very well now, but I think they got a lot of help from the officials. Of course, nothing like the scam they pulled in this year's Finals, but, for those days, it set quite a precedent. What does a fan do when the refs are cheating in his favor? That has to be a tough one.

So, its the last two minutes of the game, and the Lakers are down by 4, and they get a questionable foul call or something, and they are within 2, and the Kings have possession. I am probably making this stuff up, to be honest, I am just building up to the big scene. The important thing to note is that I have steadily been muttering under my breath for half an hour, and the tension is building up.

The Kings run a bad play, go scoreless I think. That was their Achilles heel, those Kings. They were, by far, the better team. But they did not have a go-to superstar late in close games. Webber was an A grade choke artist, Peja struggled under pressure, and still does. Bibby had the gumption, but not the skills to make too much happen. The Lakers call time-out, they have about 10 seconds to get a basket to tie the game, and one of the game's best clutch performers in Kobe Bryant. This is looking special ...... in a humdrum kind of way.

Starting now, you may depend on a more accurate story - the events are seared into my memory. Kobe gets the ball off the inbounds pass from the near sideline. He has Christie on him, I think. He goes to work, ball fakes left, drives right. The limitations of my cheer-leading vocabulary become painfully obvious to me even as I am shouting awkward phrases like, "Yes! Do it, Kobe". What on earth is a man to say at times like these?

Kobe drives past, has an angle for a tricky layup, there are defenders waiting for him in the paint. He goes up, gets hacked on the arm, no foul called, layup clangs off the rim .... The breath is sucked out of me ..... 3 seconds left .....

SHAQ GETS THE REBOUND !!!!!! He has a simple putback from close range !!!! Shaquille O'Neal saves the DAYYYYY .........

He MISSES ........ I yell "WHAT", and the whole colony can probably hear me. There's a scrum for the loose ball, and Vlade Divac swats it away thinking time has run out ..... which it nearly has. By one chance in a million, it goes straight to the man they call Big Shot Rob, whose only basketball skill is his uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time on the biggest of stages.

I remember the words, as in a dream, "Horry ....... for the win", interspersed with the sound of the buzzer. I can't remember seeing the shot actually fall, because I had gone crazy just a fraction of a second before it did.

YES!!!

For the next 10 minutes, I relapse into a state that has only one description, 'primal'. I was shrieking inarticulately, I was jumping about, then rolling about, then jumping about again. I hurt my hand hacking at the ceiling fan, under normal circumstances, I can just about touch it, we have an 11-foot roof.

YES!!!

I have had happy experiences before, and since - several of them of far more moment than a basketball game that I was enjoying vicariously. But none have come anywhere close, in the sheer intensity of response and delirium, as Robert Horry's serendipitous three that pretty much won the Lakers their 3rd straight championship. It knocked the wind out of the Kings' sails, and the Nets from the East never could have offered too much resistance to Shaq-zilla anyway.

The second part of this post details why I chose to torture my readership with this juvenile memory in the first place. It was occasioned by the fact that I have an offer to go to Minnesota to do my PhD. There are three reasons that are threatening to draw me away from my idyllic sanctuary at Max Planck to the Twin Cities.

One of them is Kevin Garnett of the Minnesota Timberwolves, the greatest warrior in the NBA. He is stuck on a bad team, the GM, Kevin McHale, deserves to be roasted over a slow fire. KG leaves it all out on the floor every game, and the result is that the Wolves are never bad enough to get knocked into the lottery too far, and come out with a young superstar from the Draft. At the same time, they are not good enough to contend for a title, in any realistic sense.

Also, with so many young superstars coming into the league in the last few years, it is likely that the window of opportunity for the older stars to win and cement their legacies is over. So, everyone wants KG to ask for a trade, so that he can go to a better team and win a championship before he is too old to be relevant. And he steadfastly refuses, holding loyalty to the franchise above everything else.

I was thinking of going to Minnesota and sharing in KG's battle with the windmills. However, there is change afoot. Suddenly, since this Tuesday, KG has perked up and is relishing his time on the court. I was somewhat surprised at this, until it was announced Friday night that Allen Iverson, the Philadelphia 76ers superstar, had asked to be traded.

If there is a greater warrior in the NBA than Garnett, it has to be the unbelievable AI. Garnett is seven feet tall and has the physical implements to succeed in the NBA. AI is a mite under six feet tall, and yet, is very likely going to go down as one of the greatest players to have played the game. He plays through injuries, he challenges people twice his size every time he drives into the lane. He has fought against his vertical disadvantage every step of his illustrious 11-year career in the NBA. He served as a role model for me, once I realized that I was not likely to grow to 6'6" and be like Mike.

Now, although there is no official pronouncement yet, I find Garnett's cheerfulness really suggestive. Wolves owner Glen Taylor has commented that AI coming to Minnesota is impossible, but I suspect that might be a diversionary tactic to help with negotiations. I think AI wants to play with KG, the two most quixotic figures in the NBA in the last two decades, and win a championship together.

If this trade does happen, you can stick a MN code to any letters you wish to send me for the next 3-4 years.

Fingers crossed .......