Summertime...And the Blogging is Easy

These are a group of seemingly unrelated but totally related notes I've compiled over the summer. Like in a beginning fiction class, the intertextuality of the piece is practically impossible to spot. Still, the author will get irate and defensive if you question it, and will probably say something passive-aggressive about your piece when the class critiques your writing.

i. Watching Summer League Play Reminds me of Grad School Applications. And this may be the process by which all helplessly unathletic fans get their rocks off, i.e. comparing the fantasmatic experience of the professional athlete to whatever memory you can use as some form of interpellation.  But seriously, I can’t tell you how many times I imagined my competing applicants and wished we could settle it in a more concrete way. Like, say, for instance, a game of pickup basketball. The joke is on me, though, because there is no concrete determinant used to decide who gets a job out of summer league and who doesn’t. You could lead an undefeated summer league team in assists and still find yourself gunning for the D-league all star game next year. It is precisely this indeterminacy that reminds me of the college application process. Everyone on the court is playing so frantically, so eager to do the one thing that will set them apart even though no one can tell them what that one thing will be. The GRE? Your GPA? Your PER? Your AWP? No one will tell you what any of them mean in a pragmatic sense, and for that reason you flail around the court bouncing the ball nervously off your knee in desperate attempts to stand out from the dozens of people around you—who, in all likelihood, are every bit as talented and desperate as you are.

ii. Jerryd Bayless Makes me Excessively Nervous. I’ve publicly admitted on this site numerous times that my tendency as a fan is to doubt before I believe. I should make it clear before I go on that I think it would be impossible to come away unimpressed with Bayless after watching him play these last few summer league games; his ability to penetrate and make things happen is on par with second year players like Thaddeus Young and Al Thornton who have proven to be effective at the next level. He gets to the line and makes his free throws, and even with a fairly lousy shooting percentage the number of shots he needs to get his points is encouraging. But that shaky J makes me think it will take a lot of work to get him to the point where he could actually play in the same backcourt with Roy. The problem as I see it is he does a lot of the same things Roy does. He forgoes the outside look in lieu of driving the lane. He looks for teammates out of the pick and roll. He takes contact in the paint and gets his shot off. This is all great and encouraging but he does these things at a significantly lower level than Roy (obviously) and I’m not sure you can play two of these kinds of players at the same time. You wouldn’t want Roy to sit around the perimeter, waiting for a catch and shoot opportunity; that would take away the true brilliance of his game. At the same time, I don’t want Bayless catching and shooting either because his J looks like mine: weak. Playing Bayless on the second unit in the short term will make our team a lot better—the guy will make exciting things happen for them when he gets his NBA legs. When his rookie contract is up, though, I don’t know whether there will be a position for him in the starting 5: the Jerryd Bayless Experience might be a short ride, but still well worth the price of admission

iii. This is my Last Summer in Portland and I’ve Found Just as Much to Love as There is to Hate. I love this city’s downtown; aesthetically its one of the best I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere to get a beer and a decent meal anywhere near downtown. Speaking of city planning, the public transit system is criminally flawed. Thanks to forward thinking the likes of which brought us the streetcar (which runs on Portland’s busiest streets and actually congests downtown) and the aerial tram (I can’t succinctly sum that project up without the use of foul language) we have one of the most ridiculous transit systems in the world. A million ways to go nowhere but no way to go where you actually want to go (but the bus). Going from North to South on the East side frequently requires bus transfers downtown (?). Plus, as an added bonus (and as my friend always like to point out) if you put a piece of tracing paper over a transit map of Portland and trace the streetcar and MAX routes you end up with a swastika. Thanks, Trimet, for making it subliminal.

Still, it’s been hard to say goodbye to the city I grew up in. Right now I’m frustrated but for sure in a month or two I’ll miss you like crazy. Even the ridiculous parts. Like the Michael Graves building, the Portlandia statue, the Amphibious tours through the sewage-laden Willamette, the burgeoning homeless problem, the slow and painful death of NW 23rd, the gentrification of Old Town, the hyperbole over the bike/automobile fracas, the decrepit arts buildings on the Portland State campus, the Lloyd Center, the superfluity of prostitutes on 82nd, the daily stream of beamer and lex driving businessmen parking around the Fantasy on Sandy at around 5:30 in the morning, the intolerable smugness of SE, the shiver that runs through my veins when people say “nopo,” the aimless bands of frail and tortured boys brooding over their hollow cheeks and mixed drinks in bars all up and down Belmont who are waiting for someone to ask them what they think about Dumas…

I love this city.