Advertisement
Commentary
Basketball is an escape — and an inspiration
There was one play in the second half of Game 2 of the NBA Finals Sunday night, when the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were running a two-man fast break against a lone defender. Tatum had an open lane to the basket but decided to dish it to Brown, who had an even more open lane and slammed it home. It was just such a nice moment to witness.
These days, I appreciate those moments more than ever. I don’t know about you, but the weight of the world feels especially heavy lately. Rooting as hard as I do for unusually tall men to put a ball through a hoop may seem like a strange coping mechanism, but I find I’m in good company.
When I’m not watching hoops, I’m playing as often as I can. It’s not as pretty, but I’m on the court three to four times a week at my local YMCA. There’s an unspoken rule in pickup ball that people don’t talk politics on the court. So, I don’t really know where most of the guys I play with stand on the issues — despite 10 years of weekly play together. That’s not generally how I move through the world. Activism is at the center of both my professional work and my volunteer work, so knowing people’s positions on moral issues is important to me.
But basketball provides a rare exception to that rule. When I put on my faded and disgustingly sweat-pitted shirts to head to the gym each week, I want — no, I need — to turn my mind off for a while. Playing and watching hoops are the times I can stop thinking about national elections, local politics, climate change, Gaza and all the other things that keep me up at night. For an hour or two, I focus on nothing more than the movement of a ball through space and the coordination of five humans within a 92-foot rectangle.
On the worst days, basketball is an escape. On the best ones, it’s an inspiration.
After years of falling just short of the NBA championship trophy — sometimes because egos have gotten in the way of team ball — the Celtics have lately achieved something close to basketball nirvana: an egoless approach, where each player makes the other player better. The 2007-2008 championship squad called this type of play “ubuntu,” a Zulu word meaning “I am because we are."
The 1964-1965 Celtics crew exemplified ubuntu. Bill Russell, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones, John Havlicek and Tommy Heinsohn played a style of balanced offense and lockdown defense, which remains unparalleled in the history of basketball. The mid-'80s franchises were more top heavy with Larry Bird the clear all-around leader, but he couldn’t have dominated the way he did without the hard-nosed work ethic of Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and the recently departed Bill Walton.
The recent incarnation of Celtics teams, with Tatum and Brown in the mix, have made it to the Eastern Conference Finals five of the last seven seasons, and twice to the NBA Finals. They’ve hardly been slouches. But, as the pressure mounted, it sometimes felt like we were slipping further away from a title.
The difference between this year’s team and last year’s clearly has a lot to do with the acquisition of Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis, two selfless former all-stars who slotted right in with the core of Tatum, Brown, Derrick White and Al Horford. But there’s been an important shift in the approach of Tatum and Brown this year as well.
Advertisement
Playing and watching hoops are the times I can stop thinking about national elections, local politics, climate change, Gaza and all the other things that keep me up at night.
Throughout their careers together, the media narrative has been that these two young stars are in competition with each other for the position of top dog. There were times in the past when that narrative rang a little too true. But whether the national media got the memo this year or not, it no longer is. Tatum’s unselfish pass at the rim in Game 2, like his assist-heavy play throughout the postseason, and Brown’s commitment on both ends of the floor, show just how much growing up these players have done.
Setting up plays for others, rebounding, hustling back on defense, blocking shots, forcing turnovers: These are all the little, unglamorous parts of the game it takes to win championships. This is what every player on this year’s team is now doing. It’s just so beautiful to watch.
The Celtics are two wins away from the Larry O’Brien trophy. I don’t expect the Dallas Mavericks to roll over at home; they’re a tough team with some future Hall of Fame players. But win or lose, the Celtics have given me and a lot of other Boston fans something to root for this year at a time when so many of us needed it.
Of course, none of this changes the state of the world. Our job as humans is to wake up every day and try to make things a little better, even against overwhelming odds — and that takes a lot more than just “getting along well” as a group.
But, for me, basketball provides a glimmer of hope for what the world can be at its best.
