5/20/5: Reggie, Into the Sunset

I'll admit it. I cried for Reggie tonight. That's the way I am. Not just one tear, either -- maybe 25 or 30. Let's call it 27. A huge emotional event in my own life and I am as stoic as an Easter Island statue. Then I release it all at some stupid moment like tonight that has nothing to do with me. In the next few days, lots of people are going to talk about Reggie and try to contextualize his career and figure out what he meant to the NBA and where he fits in among the all time greats blah blah blah. So instead of trying to analyze all that shit, I will just say a few words to Reggie, who has been an active supporter of verbungle.com since the early days.

Dear Reggie,

Sleep well knowing this: you were on tonight. 11-16 from the field, 27 points in a pressure-filled playoff game, just the way you always liked it. Not many players ever went out with a better night than that. Your old nemesis Mike? He had his legacy gift-wrapped with the cobra extension shot after the flagrant push-off against the Jazz, but then he went and messed it up with that ugly Washington comeback. His final game? 15, 4, and 4 in a meaningless regular season loss to the 76ers. But you had a clutch Reggie Miller night tonight, coming up a little bit short like you always did, but firing away with style and guts until the game finally proved unwinnable.

When you were born, your legs were so twisted and damaged that the doctors said you'd be lucky to ever walk normally, let alone play sports. And even when you said fuck that and became a college star, nobody ever thought you were rugged enough to last in the NBA. But you dragged that "Indiana Bones" physique through season after long season, always managing to stay away from serious injuries. Taking hits, selling fouls to the refs, playing what was at times a spectacular role but doing it with an underrated sense of the fundamentals of the sport. Simply: you knew when to shoot, and when not to. That alone separated you from many players more talented than you.

I'll remember you as one of the most dramatic athletes of my lifetime. The way fans watched Darryl Strawberry or Reggie Jackson bat, we watched you shoot. It was a weird-looking shot, with your hands criss-crossing on the follow through, but it was pure, and as we watched it ripple the net year after year, it actually started to look sorta cool. You knew where the cameras were, you knew how to play the villain, and I'll admit it: I hated you. For five or six solid years, I hated you. I can't even say I respected you. But from the smug look on your face when you were giving Spike the choke sign or the businesslike way you went up to the free throw line and made shot after automatic shot, it was clear you didn't want us to respect you. You wanted us to hate and fear you, and we did.

Maybe, as Beantown Bill Simmons insists, you weren't a "superstar" in every sense of the word. Your game wasn't the most well-rounded, you didn't fill up all the stat columns. But rather than debate what exactly it is that makes someone a "superstar," I will tell you that the last team that I cared about enough to make me lose sleep was the mid-90's Knicks, and your distinctive, never-aging mug was often at the center of those restless nights.  You were the dreaded enemy, just like Jordan. More than Pippen, more than Hardaway or Olajuwon or Duncan or any of the other players who snuffed out Knick seasons in the 90's. You were the guy who somehow ended up standing nearly unguarded at the 3-point line at the one moment in the game when we could afford to do anything but leave you unguarded at the 3-point line. That sight, you standing there with the ball, going up for the three -- it scared the living shit out of me and I suspect it always will.

But the same way we lose our own youth -- slowly, bit by bit -- the great teams of our lifetimes get old and eventually disintegrate. Like your Pacers, those Knicks teams never had enough to go all the way. And as my Knicks slipped into mediocrity and then even lower than that, my hatred for you turned into a sense of deep respect. You played through the Bird-Magic era, the Jordan era, the Olajuwon era, and finally the Shaq-Kobe-Iverson-Duncan era. Through it all, your game and your body held up.  You didn't change a thing.

And there you were tonight, drilling threes, scaring the shit out of another team and another city. Your team came up short again, but you didn't.

If you're not over the hill, shit, maybe I'm not either.

Thanks for the memories.

Your friend,

Hans Bungle

***

Thanks to "Squirrel" for the fine update on your progress.  My favorite line in the article is this:

He has studied their behavior ... and determined that the squirrels don't appear to treat each other differently because they are black or gray.

"They don't seem to care," he said.

We have a lot to learn from the squirrels. But we knew that already.

***

Thanks to Chris H. for this article about Stuytown, in case ya missed it. Kind of sad to learn about the racist history of the complex. And the writer is deluding himself if he thinks Stuytown is now a racially-mixed utopia. It's mostly honkies, no doubt. But I do agree that there is something really special about this place, something hard to define. I'm so happy I live here. Big Jimmy Lang was right about the book I'm reading, though. It sucks. But I'm still enjoying it for some reason.

***

Yesterday Dan K. cleaned up with 8 easy points for his gut-wrenching admission that he sported a rat-tail haircut back in '85. We had no other confessors, which is just as well, because nobody's really beating a rat-tail haircut, are they? No they are not.

And Brian C. is proving just plain scary with the Martika knowledge.

Today, for twelve points each, I ask you: whodey and wheredat? You may answer immediately.