Magic Johnson in the 1987 finals
Sports Saturday
I’m a Steve Nash fan and was hoping that, by being teamed up this year with Kobe and Dwight Howard on the Los Angeles Lakers, he’d be in the hunt for his first championship this year. But the Lakers have proved to be the NBA’s biggest disappointment. They would be out of the playoffs altogether if the playoffs began today, and even if they squeak in, I can’t see them getting out of the first round against the San Antonio Spurs or the Oklahoma Thunder.
One can’t feel too sorry for the team, however, as they have won more than their share of championships. To blunt the pain that Laker fans are experiencing, here’s a poem that takes us back to the glory teams of the 1980’s. That’s when Los Angeles, led by Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Kareem, played as beautiful a style of basketball as the game has ever seen. I think the small forward mentioned in the following Garrett Hongo poem is Worthy. Gorgias, by the way, was a Greek rhetorician skilled in the art of persuasive speaking.
Enjoy the memories.
The Cadence of Silk
Garrett Hongo
When I lived in Seattle, I loved watching
the Sonics play basketball; something
about that array of trained and energetic
bodies set in motion to attack a more
sluggish, less physically intelligent opponent
appealed to me, taught me about cadence
and play, the offguard breaking free
before the rebound, “releasing,” as is said
in the parlance of the game, getting to
the center’s downcourt pass and streaking
to the basket for a scoopshot layup
off the glass, all in rhythm, all in
perfect declensions of action, smooth
and strenuous as Gorgiasian rhetoric.
I was hooked on the undulant ballet
of the pattern offense, on the set play
back-door under the basket, and, at times,
even on the auctioneer’s pace and elocution
of play-by-play man. Now I watch
the Lakers, having returned to Los Angeles
some years ago, love them even more than
the Seattle team, long since broken up and aging.
The Lakers are incomparable, numerous
options for any situation, their players
the league’s quickest, most intelligent,
and, it is my opinion, frankly, the most cool.
Few bruisers, they are sleek as arctic seals,
especially the small forward
as he dodges through the key, away from
the ball, rubbing off his man on the screen,
setting for his shot. Then, slick as spit,
comes the ball from the point guard,
and my man goes up, cradling the ball
in his right hand like a waiter balancing
a tray piled with champagne in stemmed glasses,
cocking his arm and bringing the ball
back behind his ear, pumping, letting fly then
as he jumps, popcorn-like, in the corner,
while the ball, launched, slung dexterously
with a slight backspin, slashes through
the basket’s silk net with a small,
sonorous splash of completion.