Please, Writers–More Complex Narratives

Lebron James

Sports Saturday

More than one reporter—in fact, many reporters—admitted that, in the sixth game of the NBA finals, with 28 seconds left, San Antonio shooting foul shots, and the Miami Heat down by 4, their stories were already written in their heads. Lebron James was a choker, his legacy was deeply tarnished, the Big 3 era in Miami was a bust.

Then the reporters had to rewrite their anticipated endings as Miami miraculously got a turnover, two critical rebounds, and two three-point shots—including one that will be talked about for years—to tie the game. They won in overtime and then took game 7.

I write a lot in this blog about how we use narrative to negotiate what we see in the world. The narrative that people were opting for in this case, however, was pretty simplistic. It was one that insists that only a happy ending is acceptable and that, furthermore, the ending colors everything that has come before. A win wipes away all the bad in the story, a loss wipes away all the good.

And not only with regard to James. If just one of the two rebounds has caromed off the rim slightly differently, Greg Popovitch would have been a genius. Because both ended up in the hands of a Heat player, he made the mistake of his career (so some asserted) by not leaving Tim Duncan on the floor.

As Philip Niles, my old ancient history professor at Carleton College, used to say, we’re guilty of “Whig history” when we read everything that came before through what ends up happening. (I’m currently at my Carleton reunion, which is why I’m thinking of Niles.) Or as Winston Churchill once supposedly said, “History is written by the victors.” What gets lost is the extent to which sheer chance works its way into sports. We see the inevitability of fate at work after the game is over, never acknowledging that we would have claimed to see an inevitable fate at work if one small change of circumstance had resulted in the opposite ending.

There’s a 20th century English short story that impressed me when I was a high school student–I don’t recall the author or the title—that has two different endings. As I remember it, a young man is riding his bicycle down a hill on his way to rejoin his mother after a long absence when a chicken runs out into the road. The family is poor—the mother is single and the boy her only hope—and we are given two different conclusions. In one, the boy swerves to miss the bird, crashes his bike, and is killed. Everyone wishes he had acted otherwise. After all, it was only a chicken.

In the second version, he runs over the chicken. His mother is furious, angry words are said that cannot be unsaid, and the boy leaves home never to return. People wonder why he didn’t swerve. After all, how could that have been worse?

The analogy isn’t exact because there are two unhappy endings but you get the point. I sometimes wish that sports writers would use the same intelligence on their stories. If Lebron’s legacy is greater because of one missed Spur free throw or one unexpected carom, then our summations aren’t worth much. Or to put it another way, we are essentially saying that legacy is in the hands of higher forces, not in the hands of the players.

So what should we really conclude from the conclusion of game 6? Simply this: Lebron James and Tim Duncan are two of the greatest players ever to play the game. Duncan missed a shot he often makes and Lebron got a second chance at a three. The story could easily have been reversed. Sport writing needs to acknowledge this.

 

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