Despite having just run an inbounds play for (gasp!) Bill Walker, who stepped on the baseline as he simultaneously tried to cut toward the rim and secure the pass, the Knicks were one stop away from a key win over the South Beach SuperFriends with 12 seconds remaining on the clock at FanUp Arena. Which, at least in the recent past, meant that the other team was about to add a clip their end-of-season highlight film by way of buzzer beater. Courtside fans likely readied their high-fiving hands as outlined in the most recent Fan Up Memorandum.
LeBron James, pounding the ball at the top of the key, surveyed the landscape and the closest roadblock. It was New Knickerbocker Carmelo Anthony, whose defending and perhaps lawn care abilities were recently belittled by a former coach in Denver. Flanking and backing up Anthony was 34-year-old Chauncey Billups, the aforementioned and nondescript Walker, long but light Shawne Williams and Amar'e Stoudemire. The only player on the floor for the Knicks that has ever been considered a plus defender was Billups, and he has been in the league since LBJ was in the sixth grade.
More or less the size of Willis Reed but possessing the speed and handle of much smaller, I could see why LeBron would've thought the path of least of resistance against this club was a straight line to the rim. And, to hear Amar'e Stoudemire tell it after the game, he could also see why James would've come down Main Street.
To his credit, Anthony managed to body the charging James off his beeline ever so slightly. James veered to his left so that he wasn't coming straight at the rim on his final approach. He was coming in from the left. And just as he got to the rack, loosing the ball from his grasp, Stoudemire came soaring in from the weak side to push the ball off course. Perhaps by Russelian design, the blocked shot dropped to Williams rather than landing in the fifth row. Fouls were committed and the Knicks iced the game from the line.
"I knew what he was going to do," Stoudemire said. "Even if he had gone up for a dunk I would have contested that shot. I have a few game-winning blocks in my career."
One game-saving blocked shot does not transmogrify these 'bockers into the Riley-era bruisers of my youth (and, neither do the uniforms), but this squad has shown itself capable of playing hard, energetic defense for stretches. After a poor first quarter when they surrendered 34 points, the Knicks held Miami to 17, 15 and 20 points, respectively, in the next three quarters. If you carry the one, that means that a team starring James, Dwyane Wade and #likeabosh scored just 35 points in the second half. Despite rumors to the contrary, this defense may be operational. It's a defense built on pridefulness (and Toney Douglas) rather than principles but it appears capable to work for spurts.
In many Indian religions, Samsara means the "flow of life," or the continuous cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. One's movement around this wheel depends on one's karma, or actions. Whether enforced by a deity or not, this belief system states that immoral actions will have negative consequences while positive behavior will be rewarded as one progresses through the many states of existence.
After the Cleveland Cavaliers' 57-112 loss to the Lakers on Jan. 11, LBJ tweeted:
"Crazy. Karma is a b----.. Gets you every time. Its not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!"
While theologians puzzled over the significance of his evocation of both the Judeo-Christian deity and the Eastern idea of karma, veteran followers of the NBA quickly surmised that James' barb had been intended for Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, who very publicly lambasted the King after he abdicated his Cleveland throne over the summer. By LeBron's logic (or belief?), the Cavaliers were rocked by a franchise record 52 points because of Gilbert's comic sans misdeeds.
The SuperFriends weren't playing that night, so it's possible that LBJ was watching the Cleveland game on television. Miami was coming off an overtime win at Portland and had won 21 of it's previous 22 games, including the thorough triumph over the Lakers on Christmas. Based on his espoused theory of karma, it would seem that James must have been pretty well behaved.
Given the instant karma that's been visited upon him in the week and half since, I'd imagine that either his self image or his belief in moral causation has been shaken. The night after James' tweet, the scorching Heat were dropped by the Clippers. LBJ sprained his ankle during the game and was forced to miss the next game in Denver. The Nuggets blew the doors off Miami in that contest. Up next? A visit to Chicago, where the Heat went down again. They hadn't lost three games in the previous eight weeks total, but they had dropped three on the bounce when they got their talents back to South Beach for Tuesday night's game against the Hawks. LBJ was back in action, yet the Heat dropped the tilt in overtime.
To sum up, that's four consecutive losses after the karma tweet after just a lone loss in 22 tries immediately before. How's that for some instant karma?
In December 1970, songwriter, guitarist, painter, author and aspirant fisherman John Lennon sat down with Rolling Stone mogul Jann Wenner for an interview. With the entire world listening during the past decade, he'd gone from writing about holding hands to screaming about kicking heroin. The Beatles had disbanded just better than a year earlier. Lennon was 30 years old. And Famous. Really, really damn famous. Bigger than Jesus, in fact.
In the aftermath of the Beatles break-up, each of the Fab Four was publicly coming to grips with their accomplishments and the damage that accompanied them. Ringo even put out a country record. Not coincidentally, Lennon released his solo debut, Plastic Ono Band, the same month as the sit-down with Wenner, agreeing to the interview in order to help promote the album. Then undergoing something called "primal scream" therapy, which had been helping him release pent up emotion and deal with the apparently overwhelming paranoia that had built as a result of the scrutiny he'd been under (as well as the copious drug use), Lennon was unflinchingly honest at this point in his life. Gone was the cheeky wordplay and the surrealistic imagery of his youth, replaced with unadorned, and sometimes downright nasty, truth on record and in person. The transcript of the interview was later published under the title Lennon Remembers.
Sonically, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is at turns spare and rootsy. There are blues, folk and rock sounds. Lyrically there is anger and vulnerability, introspection and aggression. In "God," Lennon tears down civic and religious idols from Jesus to JFK. To the chagrin of twenty-something acolytes, he declares, "I don't believe in Beatles." In the early-Dylanesque "Working Class Hero", he refers to his middle class listeners as "fucking peasants," a turn of phrase that had the album's second single banned in various locales.
"Look at Me" features John singing accompanied by his picking at an acoustic guitar while the lyrics detail his complex relationship with his audience, whom he addresses as "my love." Lennon dutifully admits that he feels compelled to comply with the world's demands on him and his art, even asking his listener/lover, "What am I supposed to do?" Rather than lash out (as he does several times in Lennon Remembers and on the record), here Lennon concedes the symbiosis between the famous and the fan. He admits that part of him hopes to please them. That he loves them and needs them.
Upon its release, the record was a critical success and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 22 on its Top 500 Albums of All Time in 2003. Last Sunday morning, I was alone in the car listening to the record for the first time in a few years, and "Look at Me" reminded me of another commercial meditation on fame that I saw for the first time just a few weeks ago.
LeBron James' "Rise" spot for Nike was created by Wieden & Kennedy of Portland. Directed by Stacy Wall, the spot tackles head-on the fallout of James' decision to take his talents to South Beach. The director was previously behind the NBA puppet commercials as well as several other notable spots. Just as LeBron repeatedly asks "What should I do?" in that recent advertorial, Lennon alternately asks "Who am I supposed to be?" and "What am I supposed to do?" in "Look at Me."
By asking such questions, both men are admitting that the opinion of those strangers matters, regardless of how much it may rankle them. The only thing outstripping the creeping disdain for the audience is the continued need for the attention and the platform. Their nearly unprecedented worldwide fame* is both addictive and alienating.
In answering Wenner's first question of the aforementioned interview - "Would you take it all back?" - Lennon says:
And these fucking bastards there just sucking us to death, that's about all we can do, is do it like circus animals. I resent being an artist, in that respect, I resent performing for fucking idiots who don't know anything. They can't feel; I'm the one that's feeling, because I'm the one expressing. They live vicariously through me and other artists, and we are the ones ... even with the boxers, when Oscar [Bonneventura] comes in the ring, they're booing the shit out of him. He only hit Clay once and they're all cheering him. That's what I resent, you know. I'd sooner be in the audience, really, but I'm not capable of of it."
After watching James's most recent commercial and noting his increasingly defensive and combative statements since signing with the Miami Heat over the summer, I can't help but think that he'd have a knowing nod for Lennon's feelings about fame and the fickle nature of the crowd.
Like Lennon after the break-up of the Beatles, LeBron is now attempting to get out in front of the stories being told about him. He's trying to write his own narrative rather than let jersey burnings commence in Cleveland unabated. LeBron's defiant shots at his critics, such as Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan, echo Lennon's own verbal barbs for former bandmate Paul McCartney and even his younger self. In each case, the anger and resentment comes off as petty. But both Lennon and LeBron are humanized by their melancholy and their pathos. Both Lennon, directly through his lyrics, and LeBron, at the behest of ad mavens and marketing wizards, admitted that they need us not only to look at them, but to support them. And perhaps even guide them. In both cases, fans have mixed reactions to seeing the flaws of their heroes.
I can't help but wonder if Wall and the fine folks at W&K created this commercial with "Look at Me" in mind, or if there are just so few ways to described the rarefied place that LBJ and Lennon have held in popular culture that they pair of searching creations just seem intrinsically linked.
"Look at Me," by John Lennon OK? (yes sir) Look at me, Who am I supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be? Look at me, What am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be? Look at me, Oh my love, oh my love. Here I am, What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Here I am, What can I do for you? What can I do for you? Here I am, Oh my love, oh my love. Look at me, oh please look at me, my love, Here I am - Oh my love. Who am I? Nobody knows but me, Nobody knows but me, Who am I? Nobody else can see, Just you and me, Who are we? Oh my love, oh my love. Oh my love...
*Random Music Footnote (at the end of a random music post on a sports blog): John Lennon received a song-writing credit on David Bowie's "Fame" after singing the word FAME over the Carlos Alomar's guitar riff during a one-day studio session in New York with Bowie in 1975. Bowie was inspired by the theme and the chords and dashed off the rest of the lyrics. On the finished single, Lennon contributes backing vocals.
Despite having just run an inbounds play for (gasp!) Bill Walker, who stepped on the baseline as he simultaneously tried to cut toward the rim and secure the pass, the Knicks were one stop away from a key win over the South Beach SuperFriends with 12 seconds remaining on the clock at FanUp Arena. Which, at least in the recent past, meant that the other team was about to add a clip their end-of-season highlight film by way of buzzer beater. Courtside fans likely readied their high-fiving hands as outlined in the most recent Fan Up Memorandum.
To his credit, Anthony managed to body the charging James off his beeline ever so slightly. James veered to his left so that he wasn't coming straight at the rim on his final approach. He was coming in from the left. And just as he got to the rack, loosing the ball from his grasp, Stoudemire came soaring in from the weak side to push the ball off course. Perhaps by Russelian design, the blocked shot dropped to Williams rather than landing in the fifth row. Fouls were committed and the Knicks iced the game from the line. 
