What Is the Point of Winning?

I will attempt to keep my personal history out of this as much as possible.  It's important, however, to note that I read and can therefore generally be thought to be influenced by the bigger voices in the professional basketball blogosphere.  It's also important to note that the way I've written about the NBA in the past has mostly been with an eye on how our place in time affects the things happening now.  In other words, I've tried to answer the question: How does what's happening in the NBA now reflect what has come before and how does it reflect the attitudes created by the contemporary world?  I guess that delves into the realm of "my personal history" pretty deeply.  Best to move on to the content.

Bill Simmons, aka "The Sports Guy," wrote before LeBron James' nationally televised "Decision" that James' decision to play for the Miami Heat next season amounts to a cry for help.  His previous ideas about LeBron's free agency destination indicated that Chicago would be a decision about winning, Cleveland would be about loyalty, and New York would be about immortality (i.e. fame).  He had not thought Miami was the viable option that it became.  LeBron announced his decision to sign with the Miami heat through an hour long show (it ended up being longer, in reality) dedicated to his choice.  This decision smacks of a cry for help because it means LeBron will be joining forces with two other athletes who are also deemed part of the NBA's elite.  It smacks of a cry for help because it seems like an admission that James is not able to win a championship as the sole elite player on a team.

There.  Now you're caught up on the impetus for this article.  I'm not going to quibble over the minutiae of this situation.  Who's the best player on Miami and which teams are now the strongest in the NBA?  No.  These kinds of questions are ones I care about, but that's not the point of this article.  My goal is to paint a picture that this issue can be fit into, one that it can be seen as part of.  The quibbling is going to go on for days.  It'll go on until all the relevant players are retired, and beyond that.  Because that's the nature of sports.  But I'd like to go beyond that and look at a few things that have transpired since the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA Championship in June up until this point.  Why is this span of time important?  Because the NBA Finals are the time when professional basketball in America is at its most visible.  Because the span of time following the Finals this year lived in the shadows of the casual fan.  With LeBron's decision of Thursday evening, the casual fan can go back to not caring about basketball for a few months, and perhaps nearly a year depending on the level of casualty.

The idea of casualty (so close to causality that it pains me) is an important one.  In a nutshell, casual means as if almost by accident.  LeBron James, Thursday, was courting the casual fan, the accidental fan.  LeBron has stated that he would like to become a "global icon," which means reaching deeply enough into the psyche of popular global culture to become a force inevitable, something people can not care for and yet remain consistently aware of.  LeBron wants to cross over from the realm of the attention grabbing and into the realm of the subliminal.  He wants to become legendary, a part of the pop culture tapestry, an immovable object that stirs the irresistible force of time and, in effect, becomes a similar force in and of itself.  When we speak of global iconography, we mean advertising.  And adverting works on a subliminal level.  Or, it's supposed to.  When you're at Sears shopping for a Christmas gift for a nephew, do you reach for the unknown label or the one highlighted by a Sean John or Michael Jordan symbol?  Chances are, you go for the one you know.  And that's the significance of being a "household name."

Look, the point of writing this is to ask, of myself and of any potential reader, what is the point of winning (in sports)?  Or, perhaps more accurately, what are we really winning?

Exhibit A: LeBron James.
Why does LeBron want to win?  The whole idea of leaving Cleveland was to make his chances at winning a title more likely.  Why is this more important that representing an area you grew up in and represented for seven years?  In any other profession, most people would laud a young man moving to a place of greater opportunity.  Some might say that's the American dream.  But LeBron is certainly not being looked at by Clevelanders as a native son making good and getting out.  He's compared to Benedict Arnold, and his jersey is burned.  In Cleveland, they burned LeBron James' name and he watched while being televised nationally, and we watched to see how he reacted.  I think he tried not to, which is perhaps admirable.

But, again, why does he want to win?  The answer is possibly two-fold.  He wants to win so he'll be remembered as a winner, a champion, and he wants to win in order to increase his global icon cachet.  Most people want to be remembered.  It is a fundamental aspect of the human condition.  How will I be remembered when I die?  As a person who spends much of his year in the public eye, LeBron cares about this perhaps more than most.  He needs to be a champion, because otherwise the memory of his pursuits and accomplishments won't be as insistent as other athletes or public figures.  This first aspect leads into the second.  In death, how you are remembered matters.  In life, how you live matters, the quality of your day-to-day activities, the ease or comfort with which you can do what you want to do.  Money plays a big part in this.  The more money you have, the higher your quality of life, generally.

Of course, money can be said to be the ultimate determiner of winning.  But if money, and the comforts it affords, simply signify winning, what then is the point of money?  I'm not economist, but don't millions of dollars, when they reach past the first two or three or AT LEAST two or three dozen, don't they become a bit superfluous?  Once you've bought yourself and your family the houses, cars, food, and entertainment, once you've satisfied your and your people's desires, what then is left?  A desire for more.  Okay, okay.  I'm getting a little preachy here.  But realistically, LeBron has stated that he wants to be a billionaire, so the question is: Why?  What would that allow him to do?  The first thought is that he could own his own NBA team.  The second thought is he could buy or begin other kinds of ventures.  Clothing lines.  Textiles.  The American economy has always fought over textiles, and it remains the case today.  Anyway.  This would mean he could make more money.  What is the goal of an NBA owner, for that matter?  Make more money?  But it becomes a bit repetitive, right?  Why make more money?  Why own a franchise, a company, a set of companies?  Because it allows you to make more money.  Or, if you're getting tired of using money as our symbol for winning, because it allows you to have more control over your life.

We live in a capitalist society.  We affect those that interact with us in a myriad of ways.  In a business hierarchy, if you more generally someone's boss than you are someone's employee or subordinate, then you are more in control of your own life.  The richest man in the world, hypothetically, doesn't have to worry about people telling him what to do.  Okay, okay, okay.  I dipped into the hypothetical.  But we've taken a glimpse at the reasons a basketball player, an athlete could want to "win," whatever we as people internet-ly interacting think winning means.

Let's take a look at Exhibits B and C together.  Exhibit B is Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  Exhibit C is basketball fans.  Dan Gilbert wrote an incensed, rather irrationally toned letter to the fans of the Cavaliers that seems more like an attack on LeBron than anything else.  You can read it here.  The Cavaliers fans, as mentioned earlier, burned a jersey representing their feelings of betrayal.  They lost tonight, obviously.  But what did they lose?  The fans lost the opportunity to take part in the good memories and feelings of pride that LeBron could have created had he stayed in Cleveland.  But they also lose the right to be loyal to the Cavs.  Okay, they can remain loyal to a losing cause (which is assuming the Cavs become a "losing" organization), but I was being a bit sardonic.  The idea of being a fan is that you get to cheer on superhuman feats performed in the name of winning.  That's the essential idea.  But a team exists on the loyalty fans show in purchasing tickets, jerseys, or other merchandise.  It's a capitalist system, make no mistake.  A team exists on the tv ratings it gets, which are fueled/paid for by advertising.  Money.  A professional team cannot exist without money.

Pause a second.  A professional team cannot exist without money.  Obviously, the paid aspect is what makes it a professional team, but it's not what makes it a team.  To make a professional team function, you need players who are paid to play.  In other words, they need to not need to worry about making money in other ways, though they might want to.  If they needed to make money in other ways, it would be considered an amateur team.  What else is reasonably needed for a professional team?  They need an arena, which needs to be maintained.  If it's a national team, they need money for transportation.  Transportation is hard to get around, even if thousands of jet planes flying around our planet's atmosphere sucks for environment.  Arenas, however, are often subsidized by a city's government.  Obviously, the structure needs to be approved by a city because it causes all kinds of traffic issues, both cars (also sucky for the environment) and people.  An arena makes lots of noise, so you can't just plop it down anywhere.  But when a team gets an arena approved by a host city, often the host city provides money to help them build it.  Okay, I haven't done my research on this, but I remember it being mentioned whenever a team threatens to leave a city.  Here's a site that has done research, though it may be a bit biased.

Anyway.  Fans pay for stadiums.  If not through tax dollars, than certainly through ticket and merchandise sales, or by watching sports and buying the products thereby advertised.  Fans also pay for players.  Those millions of dollars LeBron and similar players are making?  Those are salaries driven by the market.  If people wouldn't pay for tickets that would support those kinds of salaries, or if people weren't swayed by sports driven advertisements to buy products, those salaries could not be that high.  What am I getting at?  I'm trying to answer what fans are winning by having a winning sports team in their city.  They are winning the right to pay for those teams, those players.  What are owners winning?  They are winning the right to take what profit they can from teams they manage or pay to have others manage.  Some owners do not make a profit.  I understand that.  But the idea of owning a sports franchise is to make money on it.

So let's look at this year's NBA fans who won the most, the Los Angeles Lakers' fans.  What did they get out of winning besides getting to pay for the right to go to more games?  They won the right, apparently, to riot.  I won't even honor such acts with a link.  You can google it yourself, if you didn't hear.  One incident that sticks out is a car being flipped simply for the fans' furor over victory.  So what did they win?  Shouldn't "winning" contribute to the ease or comfort of one's life?  Perhaps causing destruction like some (obviously not all, but the outliers deserve to be talked about since they seemingly got the most of winning) makes for a good story to tell friends and family the day afterward.  But really?  Doesn't that seem to be more what you would expect from a losing set of fans?

I wrote on facebook, as LeBron's Decision program on ESPN unfolded, how quiet it seemed.  The people in the background of his interview with Jim Gray, who I can only assume were "fans," did not cheer at all.  They looked solemnly on.  Perhaps it was an intended effect, or poor planning.  But I noted how quiet it was because I wondered why this wasn't being cast as a jubilant situation.  The sportscasters seemed a bit giddy.  Jim Gray had a big grin on his face at the end of the interview.  There was a moment of celebration shown out of Miami.  Beyond that?  Not much.  ESPN just moved on, and perhaps they should be lauded for that.  On ESPN, the station that was held hostage by James' camp, James' decision was not a moment for fanfare.  Instead, it was a moment for increased discussion of the NBA.  Discussion, I like.  And yet, I am a fan.  I want to feel vicarious elation.  I want to scream and shout over the superhuman.  Perhaps James' performance as a stoic distributor of information was superhuman.  But it wasn't the kind I was expecting. Here I dip into that which I hoped not to, my personal history.

I've always been a bit perturbed by LeBron the businessman seeming to oftentimes take precedence over LeBron the athlete.  There are numerous stories about LeBron being an off-the-wall humorist behind the scenes.  We were afforded a glimpse with his pregame antics with his teammates this past season, which rubbed some players (namely, Joachim Noah) the wrong way, especially when they bled into his in-game behaviors.  LeBron has been called The King, but he's barely ever seen to act like a king.  He doesn't do whatever he wants, when he wants.  That distinction would go more to someone like Ron Artest.  LeBron acts, except for certain instances of displayed humor, like someone who's considering every movement, every implication, someone who's angling for global icon status.  In that, he's less like a king and more like a chief adviser, a person who wants to and generally does wield all the legitimate power.  In holding himself thus, LeBron perhaps too blatantly reminds us that the players do not generally hold the power, the owners do.

So, I've now gone over 2,500 words, and I'm not sure I've quite achieved a unified message.  I think that's fitting, though.  I don't have a lot of answers on this, just a lot of questions.  Do we, as fans, think the way the system works is right?  If we don't, do we have a responsibility to do something about it?  And what is that something we might do?  I think the first step is to know these kinds of things and talk about them, write about them.  For what purposes do our favorite athletes and the owners of our favorite teams act?  Don't just talk about the sports implications, talk about the real life implications.  Don't just buy a ticket or a jersey you can afford, ask yourself if that's the right mentality.  Just because you can buy something you want doesn't mean you should.  And then, what do our watching habits really mean?  Teams are partially funded by the money given for TV ratings.  When you watch TV, companies can tell which channels you're watching when, and consequently know what shows are most important for advertisers to target.  When you click to a website, you are giving it traffic, which allows its sponsors to provide more funding.  All these things matter.  The smallest click of a finger, when multiplied a million times, can move millions of dollars.

One last sobering revelation that came to light during this time period.  I submit to you Exhibit D: Ray Williams.  The story of Ray Williams remains a bit incomplete.  To put it simply, this former NBA player is homeless.  It was a story published in the Boston Globe and received by me through Ball Don't Lie and Yahoo Sports.  The story seems unclear as to how Williams lost everything.  This is not to say that this is a common affair among NBA alumni.  However, it does beg the question, what is really going on in the NBA?  What does it really promote in its players?  As fans, these things reflect on us.  If not for the NBA, who knows what Ray Williams life would be like.  It could be better, it could be worse.  Still, it's difficult not to wonder if the system is broken, if money needs to flow like it does through professional sports.  The question leaves me feeling empty inside.  I will continue to question and probe for answers.  I hope you will too.

Posted in response to a blog post about racism in Hawai'i...I just thought some of these ideas are important for me to think about and mull over, enough so that I might want to post them here:

Hi Nora,

Perusing your blog after having come across it on Matador.  I respect and laud your ability to maintain an open mind and make your actions thoughtful ones.  I enjoy traveling myself and think it's an advantageous way of experiencing the world and life; however, I do think it necessarily allows for less thorough understanding of places and perspectives.  That said, and being from Hawai'i (O'ahu, actually), I can't help leaving behind a few points on racism in Hawai'i.

First of all, the incredibly negative translations of "haole" that you received are rather hotly contested in the 'Olelo Hawai'i speaking community.  The story actually stems from early experiences with western communities.  Hawaiians used to greet each other by touching foreheads and breathing in as one, thus sharing the air, sharing the world.  The idea of "haole" meaning "without breath" comes from the fact that the practice of shaking hands was so dissimilar to the traditional manner of greeting.  I would argue that, if there is any creedence to this translation, it is more close to meaning "does not share breath."  Furthermore, the idea is supposedly supported by "ha" meaning breath and "ole" meaning "without" or "zero," but these words are actually spelled differently in "haole" from the way they are spelled individually in 'Olelo Hawai'i.  There is a glottal stop before "ole" if it means "without."  "Ole," as it is in "haole" means "eyetooth" or else "squirm." There is no individual word "ha" without the elongated "a" that is present in the word for "breath."  All evidence points to "haole" being a word not comprised of separately meaningful parts.  The strict translation is "foreign," and what little literature can be found from pre-missionary language shows that the word was used to speak of anything coming from foreign shores, including domesticated animals and other Polynesians, possibly with a translation nearing "strange" or "different."  Nothing quite so vile as "soulless one."

As to acceptance by modern day locals, it certainly is different depending on which community you are in.  It is also all about how one presents oneself.  There are protocols it takes a lifetime to learn, especially because many of them are not communicated verbally.  I personally do not surf because I did not grow up learning the protocols.  It is a dangerous sport, and a novice in the wrong place can severely injure themselves or others.  Thus, the man who gave you a lift may have experienced problems if he simply went out and tried to learn on his own or with someone who may also not have known the protocols.  I have a friend who grew up on the mainland and lived in an area even more rural than Puna for several years.  He is an avid surfer and, because he's come to the sport willing to learn the right way, hasn't experienced such problems.

I teach in an area similar to Puna, and racism does indeed run pretty deeply.  Many locals/Natives, myself included, find it difficult to speak of our history with outsiders, as we feel it is a struggle we are still caught up in.  It's not that we don't want to share or even not that we don't want help; it's just that we're still so wounded that we find it difficult to talk about.  I am part Native Hawaiian and part Asian, and I can attest that the monotone taciturnity that you experienced is something many locals exhibit as a defense mechanism.  There has been so much to contend with in becoming the kind of community, still greatly in transition, that we are today.  I can't say I excuse it, but I certainly understand why locals can sometimes tend towards being laconic around outsiders.  Obviously, we can be incredibly garrulous as well, but when it comes to the serious stuff...well, I can't say I've never become tight-lipped about it myself.

I'm taking little steps, like posting comments on a blog, trying to shed a little more light on touchy subjects for me.  I hope I didn't sound too defensive at any point.  I just wanted to provide a little more info!  Thanks for writing.  I believe wholeheartedly in the transformative power of the written word!

I Am Herman Melville

I am Herman Melville.  Subject, object, and verb.  I and I, if you follow me.  Like a pied piper, all you readers reading.  I'm like the pied piper, and you all are my rats.  No offense.  What do you think makes my play all the more sudden?  I, too, am a rat.  The biggest rat of them all.

Perhaps that's not the same as being Herman Melville.  Can I say I am all things this early in the game?  Yes, it is a game, and it is a play, it is all things young and quiet with laughter, all things in blossom and all things deadly.  I am the tiger, and I am burning bright.  If there was no fire, I would have no stripe.

NYC - 6 Pearl Street: Herman Melville birthplace
Originally uploaded by wallyg

I am also Henry David Thoreau.  I think I am Ralph Waldo Emerson too, but I'm not sure.  Which one stayed in jail just to prove a point?  Hippy, that.  I'm Hank Thoreau because I refuse to refrain like a song, dipping and dipping again into a pool of the same lackluster insanity.  No, I will be Thoreau, and I will return to my followers and my shadows and my ruins, and I will rebuild them in gold and artifact and tier.  I will create of dust water, and the cities will sing.  I will edit and tweak, and I will stay up all night for the virgin of a comma.  Dust my pillows with pixie dust, will you?  I will want to dream when finally I get there.

Mostly, however, I am Herman Melville.  I often get mistaken as Samoan.  I know a lot of Samoans with the name Herman.  It's fitting that I should be Herman Melville.  As I take to the sky again, I see that as I once took the playground of the Pacific from the Polynesians, whose white whales were only stars and whose dreams did not whip roaringly the ocean into a frenzy of life and conflict and pursuit, as once I did that, now in the skin of some pacified islander, I will take to the sky, a different kind of ship and one that was not mastered here, but one that is put most to use in coming here, the most isolated island chain in the world, paradise.

I and other artists have previous painted islands as they dip and bob about the various oceans of this holo-globe.

As I fly, I imagine there is nothing beneath me but light.  All reflections have a source, and yet I believe even the sun is subject to other, more eternal flames, even the sun is merely a reflection.  As we may not hear or see God in all his majesty, so too may we not see the source of all light.  A sleeping passenger once told me this source of light, the distance of which from here cannot be measured in light years, the sheer lunacy of such a premise!  He told me that it does not actually appear to burn.  Rather, it is devoid of color, and it flutters gently as if by some cosmic breeze that is in itself only a reflection of the breeze measured within the source of all light.)

But never have we patterned our dreams off the lush and verdant fronds of islands such as these.  Rather, we choose deserted islands upon which our pirated, tyranicaly imaginations might run wild.  An island alive is too hard.  How can my dreams be reflected off the dipping and bobbing of so many other different dreams?  Better, then, to use the Galapagos.  Better, then, to use the Encantadas.  Don't ask, don't tell.

Sleep beckons.  Tomorrow, the first of many flights upon which I will compose my masterpiece.  For now, dreams.

---

I am at home in the sky because here are all the perfect storms.  It is always dark outside my plane.  Perfect story telling storms.

D-3: 304
Originally uploaded by hilobayislandcreations

And he said, What about this?  Melville was this, and he was here, and he was ours.  I said, That's quite right.  But he was also this, this, and this.  He was none of those things.  Melville had a point, he said.  He was crafting within the realm of allegory.  You are, I'm sorry to say, off your rocker.  Outer space is your home, he said.  You have no point, you're just a big extension upon a big extension resulting from one horrible accident.  What do you have to reach for if your borders are limitless and yet, somehow, still expanding?  Now you're talking, I said.  What is your goal, he went right on.  Are you like that guy George Clooney plays who's trying to get 10 million miles, because he ends up sad and all that snow falling is like stars you know.  And then I said, But don't you see?  If you are the stars, and I am the stars, and we are all the same, which is still, I mean, everything.  If we are all that, aren't we reaching for each other, and for ourselves, and for everything all at once?  Good, now that we got that out of the way, let's get to some real storytelling.  Okay, he said.  I'm writing a musical about Magellan.

I laughed him off the plane.  I'm listening to Biggie's Ready to Die, and we're taking off.  The pretty waitress is leaning over me, trying to say something.  I can't read lips, but I wish I could.