The Diss.

LeBron James, in the abstract, and from a distance, can be rationalized and understood. At the most basic level, he exists as the active representative of an oft-discussed lineage, a time-honored tradition most fans of sport have been exposed to since they became aware of the institution itself. He is one of the great ones; one of the truly original talents of the game. The ability to name his most relevant modern predecessors — Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, Magic, Bird - has become one of the most basic tests for casual fandom in the 21st century, and in time, LeBron’s name will easily sit beside them. Even from afar, and without direct experience, the platitudes don’t lose any luster; don’t dim in the slightest. Observers can offer hyperbolic takes in flat, tired voices; resignation and reverence braided together in a bizarre knot. “He’s the greatest player of his generation,” is joined seamlessly by “the closest thing to Michael Jordan”, and very few (outside of a frayed Laker nation-state) could argue otherwise. LeBron is accepted as fact; fiat draped wholly in legitimacy. Recent history has mandated that the championship goes through him, and all interested parties — players, teams, polities and fanbases — have fallen in line. Some are able to counter him. Others are not. As a writer of the NBA, it’s a simple enough process to recite by memory. And before this year, it was just as nice to sit, watch, and appreciate.

But LeBron up close — deep in your psyche, dictating your emotions — is a different matter altogether. For LeBron isn’t just battling the opposition on the court, a group of men equal in physical stature, but far inferior in terms of collective gravitas. LeBron is also in your living room, crashing through the coffee table, trampling all over your furniture. He is in your face; his eyes wide, his nostrils flared, a wet mouthpiece barely perceptible over brilliant white teeth. As LeBron backs down a defender, easily clearing space, and in the process, creating endless options within that newly occupied space to complete his task, you, too, are uprooted; you, too, are displaced. When he shifts inevitably into kill mode — his body contorting and buckling, storming through the ramparts and taking the contact, or stopping without warning, and raising up far above the reaches of your outstretched arm, your fingers splayed — you are left with little choice but to absorb the contact and see whether your best effort from the living room was enough to stop him. Typically, neither your effort, nor the effort of the player(s) attempting to stop him were enough. All too often, the ball goes in. He lives. You die.

Certainly: it has been incredible to watch the Golden State Warriors compete in a series that I always thought would elude them. It has produced highs that have superseded We Believe many times over, established an emotional connection with a professional sports team that I never conceived could be possible. But at the same time, it has been equal parts terrifying to bear witness to a version of LeBron that, as Tom Haberstroh writes, is “unfathomable” , a horrible, beautiful amalgamation of the greatest players ever to compete in the NBA. LeBron over the last five games has been the secret weapon developed through years of bloody conflict in FreeDarko’s positional revolution; an undefinable maelstrom that has been engineered to individually defeat every player that attempts to stop him, regardless of their size, shape or conviction. The Finals, being watched by record numbers of people with each passing game, has been fully dictated by LeBron, even if the Warriors are up a single game in the series. It has been a performance that has impacted casual fans in distant markets, and terrified the denizens here in the epicenter. His onslaught captured me as a victim; once in the safety of my home, and last Sunday at Game 2. By 9 pm — a bucket list day complete, overtime and everything — I stood dumbfounded at Oracle, tucked far away in the people’s seats, uncomfortably packed with 20,000 other stunned faces sweating in cheap (but sacred) yellow shirts. I felt that LeBron had defeated me, had somehow made my own emotional defeat part of his legacy. More than a week later, the feeling that it is not the Cavaliers that must be defeated, but LeBron, himself, has not waned in the slightest.

The final is never supposed to be fun. This is a concept that carries weight in both learning and leisure; appears to be applicable in countless contexts. The final examination of a class is a stressful, dehumanizing affair; all-nighters before, furious scribbling and muttered fuck‘s during, and a sense of relieved exhaustion after. The final boss of a video game is never as fun as the game itself; random button-mashing, countless deaths, and several rage-quits when it just isn’t enjoyable anymore. At this point, I cannot say that taking the LeBron final — or, rather, watching my preferred team take the test — is a pursuit of happiness. The gnawing anxiety of the unknown, the awesome power of the inexplicable; this is the LeBron that Warriors fans have come to know intimately over the past few weeks. Perhaps more intensely and aggressively than ever, LeBron has insisted to be noticed; demanded to be respected. Fan allegiance aside, we have witnessed firsthand the incredible skillset of LeBron James; on the television, in the Arena, on shoe shelves and coming to a theater near you. It is not fun to deal with LeBron, whose arsenal is deeper than we could have ever suspected, more developed than our intelligence had let on. There is even — deep down, in a place I visited with Warriors teams in the past — a feeling of just wanting it to be over, so I can get on with life, and stop screaming at the television. It’s summer, after all; this is very late in the year to be caring so deeply about basketball.

Those who know me closest know I’d never predict what will occur tonight. No way. I am far too superstitious, and LeBron is that superstition embodied; an omen of ill portent. I am buoyed by a faith in the Warriors; in their systems, their players, their staff. I am energized by the abilities of our most valuable players — Curry and Iguodala, the native son and the prized free agent — and hoping that the lessons learned from previous series will come together when it truly matters the most. But I refuse to take my eyes off of LeBron, a talent so total, so awesome, so absolute, so complete; who continues to create new ways to make the faithful suffer, who continues to guard the gate until he is relieved from duty.

Stan Greenberg, loyal biological father of the last 29-and-a-half-years, came over to my shit-box apartment tonight to watch the game, and per his custom, he missed the opening tip, and the entirety of the first quarter. It wasn’t a big deal, since it never really is, for either of us. It’s a shrugging, insignificant sort of tardiness; one that has been informed by a lifetime of showing up to 9:00 morning meetings at 9:06, or picking up kids from school a cool 35-to-45 minutes after the final bell rang. I think I’d get grumpy about having to wait, and he was always apologetic, and that was it. No big deal, really. And no big deal, as far as watching basketball was concerned. Though my father and I have watched NBA ball on several occasions, I cannot recall a time he watched the tip of the game with me, even if we were in the same domicile, perhaps even the same room. Quietly, my father has perfected the art sauntering into the game just after the first conclusion of the first quarter; with the action fully afoot, boasting a plot growing deeper in developments, with an audience waiting to see what exactly will transpire. Even in this game — totally unlike any other game in either of our Warriors-focused lifetimes — my father could not make tip. True to form, he came in with about 10 minutes to play in the second quarter, with the Warriors struggling to get their offense going, and his son standing alone in his living room, holding 2013 Warriors playoff towel, wearing a Steph Curry jersey that has absorbed too many chip crumbs and beer driblets over the course of its life. “It’s not going well,” I said ruefully, not really offering a greeting. “I know,” he answered, not returning a greeting that never arrived, “I was listening on the radio.”

Watching basketball was never really a past time; not like the other pre-packaged American tales of father-son bonding that involve sports. Neither my father nor I were athletes, and neither of us played organized basketball — organized anything, really — for a school team. My dad was a star debater. I, myself, was a decathlete; an academic decathlete. If my father had athletic feats he wanted to relive vicariously through me, he never let me know; just as well, considering that I was anything but an athlete, and until my teenage years, a fan of televised sports. I, a raw, bespectacled mini afro-puffed blob of preteen angst, had no motivation to seek out sports on the television. My parents — bespectacled themselves, though that’s beside the point — somewhat set the tone. The one exception seemed to be the Warriors, which as far as I could tell, were the only sports team that got consistent airplay in my house after Michael Jordan retired from my mother’s once-beloved Chicago Bulls. During the late nineties and early aughts, from late fall until early spring, Bob Fitzgerald and Jim Barnett provided rollicking commentary for a high-octane team of perennial fuck-ups. The Warriors would play on the kitchen television while we ate dinner, and when my father and I were in the same room after the meal, we would crowd around the small screen, shake our heads, and laugh. Occasionally there’d be discussion; an attempt at critical analysis that often concluded with a head-shake, and a “my god, the fucking Warriors.” At that point, we’d both wander away from the game, and without warning, the Warriors would be getting blown out to an empty room, the cheap kitchen television croaking out an aria of irrelevance while the Greenberg family busied themselves in other rooms.

So there must not have been much for my father to say as he saw me standing in my apartment, pacing about an unkempt, ubiquitously ripe living room (something has gone dreadfully awry in my fridge), shouting at the top of my lungs whenever the Warriors made a basket. There probably wasn’t much to say at all. What do you say to a first-world flack fully unhinged; a barely functioning adult tightly wrapped in the proceedings of handsomely-paid millionaires, planning all aspects of his non-professional life around the nightly games of an annual postseason tournament? What exactly do you say to a fellow who has decided to place every pressing matter on hold while his favorite basketball team steadily works through the process of winning 16 games. What is there to talk about with a person who has committed to going to the NBA Finals at any cost, given that Finals trips happen about as often as Halley’s comet?  That is a person who no longer is behaving rationally; who has become too wrapped up in a drama that doesn’t really involve them, if it really can be called a drama at all.

While the Warriors conquered the Western Conference, basketball came up surprisingly little. It’s always been easy to watch the Warriors with Stan. My father and I chatted about his parents — both dead; neither would’ve cared the Warriors beat the Rockets — and whether the Baby Boomers would last as long as the Greatest Generation (dad thinks the Boomers will be felled early by bad diets). We discussed when we were going to go camping this summer, and whether we’d have time between my dad’s busy work schedule, and my busy NBA Finals schedule. When Klay Thompson committed his fifth foul, and Andre Iguodala missed four free throws in the final three minutes, he watched me pace back and forth, mutter-cussing to no one but myself. With each perceived injustice from the referees, he tolerated my epithets; my crude assessments of their character and acumen. He grumbled loudly when I forgot to hit “mute” on the remote control (“I have issues with background noise,” he kvetched, “oy, commercials.”). And when the excitement prompted a - gasp! - high-five from typically-stoic Stan, he marveled that you could connect on every contrived hand-slap if you just stare at the other person’s elbow. It was an excellent night of sport-watching with my father; a past-time that I didn’t even realize that we had.

Stan Greenberg, loyal biological father of 29-and-a-half-years, stayed until the end of the game, and not much beyond that. The Warriors won; their 79th of the season. We both watched as gilded confetti drifted lazily down from the concrete bulwarks of Oracle Arena; as a roaring, yellow crowd rolled and pitched like a massive frigate in a storm. My phone started buzzing with notifications and texts; with people excited, congratulating, marveling over what had just occurred. He offered me a hug, and I returned it; that stilted hug that adult fathers and sons share and perfect over time; short, meaningful, probably a bit heavy on back-patting. “Come watch a game over at the house,” he suggested, to which I offered a guttural non-reply. Even though my parents live less than ten minutes away, the distance feels much greater, the older I get; the more wrapped up I get in other people’s affairs. There is something inviting about watching at least one Finals game on the television in a kitchen. I say that I’ll think about it. But before he goes, a final request:

“Hey dad,” I said, my hips already gyrating, my arms already starting to move, a shit-eating grin on my face, “get a picture of me celebrating.”

Over the last few weeks, this picture, and others like it, have become strangely unnerving. Perhaps I’m the only one who feels it, but it’s there, tugging on my pants, whining like a hungry puppy. One doesn’t really need a caption to explain the image, and certainly any Warriors fan over the age of 16 should be able to immediately contextualize what they’re seeing: Baron Davis, the conquering hero of the 2006-07 Golden State Warriors; a 42-40 squad that managed to unseat the mighty Dallas Mavericks, who themselves had finished 67-15 that year, based mostly on the efforts of then-MVP Dirk Nowitzki. Until recently, this picture — and other pictures from that emotionally intense playoff run — were instant endorphin-rushes; a surefire smile on an otherwise gloomy day. But now, to current fans of the Golden State Warriors, this picture, and really, any mention of that team — perhaps the only .500 squad to be awarded a nickname, We Believe, that has endured for years past its projected shelf-life for relevance — elicits pointed stares, pursed lips, and self-conscious throat-clearing. During the closing seconds of what was the team’s 65th win, color commentator Jim Barnett commented that he was trying not to become anxious that this team could potentially finish with the same record as that ill-fated Mavericks team. “I’m trying to let it go,” he said with nervous laughter on his lips, but darker thoughts on his mind. And after his team secured their 67th win — and, thus, matching that potentially inauspicious record — head coach Steve Kerr pointedly extinguished a question wondering if he talked much about the We Believe team with his current group, and whether that history had any affect on the team. “No,” Kerr said firmly, “[that team] has nothing to do with anything.”

And Kerr is correct: a Warriors team from 2007 doesn’t have much to say to a Warriors team from 2015. Eight years is an eternity in the NBA; the only individuals who stay connected to a team more than eight years typically are the fans themselves. But Kerr’s terseness speaks to another point: perhaps more so than any other “new money” team in recent memory, the Warriors have a history that is marked by a serious dearth of regal memories to draw from, or relevant experiences to lean on. The teams that are now brushed-off as “the old Warriors” were, until quite recently, just the Warriors. Stephen Curry, not only the most valued player on the team, but likely the most valued player in the entire league, is also the only current member of the Warriors to have ever been draped in the colors and garments of a regime that had neither the skill nor the luck of the current administration. In many ways, he is the only meaningful relic from that torturous era of Warriors history, an era that saw only five winning teams over 21 seasons of play, a period that could only boast four all-star selections, three all-NBA selections, three postseason berths, and, until this season, a single division championship. Indeed, when looking at a professional history that is equal parts bleak and barren, that 2007 team appears as a faded jewel on a tarnished crown, perched firmly upon the head of an uneasy king.

Kerr is correct. Each moment stands unique in time; connected to events in the past, and pivotal for events to occur in the future. But the moment that Kerr and his team are living in — 67-15, the top seed in the tournament, and facing the New Orleans Pelicans Saturday afternoon — is a unique one, previously unknown to the franchise, and all the individuals connected to it. This season has been an exercise in identity-building; on constructing a history that has never existed. There has been heavy focus on the 1975 championship team, the only title-winning team since the Warriors moved to the Bay Area in the mid-60′s. And though there is healthy respect for that team, they are not a known commodity among Warriors fans, at least those under the age of 50. Certainly Al Attles is highly regarded, at least among those who have been schooled in his importance to the game. But Rick Barry, that team’s greatest player, is a reviled figure among younger fans, a cocky, racist relic from a clunky past. Names like Clifford Ray, Jeff Mullins, Jamaal Wilkes and Butch Beard do not have the brand recognition of later Warriors like Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway, Latrell Sprewell and Baron Davis, players who never won championships, and made their NBA finals appearances with different teams. No, Warriors fans today, light on experience with meaningful basketball, had their teeth cut on the Run-TMC, We Believe, and until this year, the Mark Jackson-led squads of 2013 and 2014: exciting, competitive outfits that, even though they found themselves lucky on occasion, were never meant to win anything, and for the most part, never ever did. Those were the teams that became canonized among the countless other seasons of forgettable basketball; 48 minutes of hell, in a much different context. But now, on the eve of what most say has become a championship-or-bust season, those teams have fallen back, ready to be forgotten.

From every arena, and nearly every analyst, there has been an intense focus on the newness of this team, a team that seems to represent modernism in professional basketball. The Warriors themselves play a game fortified by the armor of modern analytics, with a group of players and coaches perfectly built to implement a radically new system. Within the fan base — and, like any fan base suddenly bestowed with relevance — there is a quasi-fascist movement to weed out those who are labeled as “bandwagoners”, more discerning consumers who only recently started spending money on the team, and expose them as Johnny-come-lately’s to the cause (as if choosing not to support a vastly inferior product is an act deserving of shame). All of it speaks to the moment the team, and those connected to it, finds itself in. There has not been a time when the Warriors were favored to win a single series, let alone four consecutive series. There has not been a time when match-ups in the second and third rounds mattered, simply because the Warriors were not expected to be participating in those rounds. There has not been a point in getting excited for a player on the team, because that player certainly was going to get injured, or get traded to a new team, where he would start to perform on a larger stage. Every inclination is to find something knowable, understandable, and predictable. But the lexicon doesn’t have a term for how the Warriors -and by extension, their fans — are feeling; an emotion that can appear as anxiety, smugness, insufferability, doubt, and, most often, happiness; pure unbridled happiness that what is happening is happening while we’re watching; while we’re present and engaged.

If everything goes right, by the end of June, the We Believe team will no longer have relevance. Their accomplishment will be rendered minor, nearly meaningless. The names from that team — Baron, Captain Jack, J-Rich, Al and Nellie — will inspire small smiles, and nothing more. If those names are still meaningful come the end of the playoffs, something went wrong; the team that all assume are best positioned to win the entire thing failed to do so. Whether that will happen or not really can’t be ascertained yet. But simply looking at Baron, waving his hands as a crowd that didn’t know they had it in them rages mightily in the background, is enough to make me feel as nervous as I do excited for whatever might come tomorrow.

When I was entering the 9^th grade the school district I attended shifted the boundaries of which school students would attend. I lived right on the boundary of both, so I had a choice (sort of): go to the new school on the bus, or stay at the school I attended the last two years and find my own way there. Bad as it was being in junior high, this was a doomsday scenario. The new school was different; it was more… rural. I found that out the first day as a group of the largest 9^th graders I had ever scene, clad in wranglers and cowboy boots, locked arms and yelled “STAMPEDE!,” before they began barreling down the hall,  trampling anything in their path. I survived by barely slinking into the alcove of a classroom doorway.

A little young, and very underdeveloped for my grade, I had always had to survive on the outskirts of junior high school. When I moved to the new school, I couldn’t do that. I was one of the new kids that had invaded their school, and I suffered through half a year of humiliation at the hands of bullies in my choir class (taking that class was my first mistake). Every time the teacher turned her back, they would start in. Punching me in the face just hard enough to make my head ring, but not enough to cause an outburst; just overt enough so that everyone above me (I sat in the front row, by assignment) could see it. I took the half-year break to get out of the class, and was able to avoid those kids for the rest of the year, but the damage was done.

To this day, bullying makes my blood boil. So, it was when I woke up to see what Blake Griffin had done to a member of his training staff. The Vine has made its rounds. The staffer dutifully attends to the giant athlete, kneeling in front of him on the Clippers bench to wrap his war-torn leg. Then the hulking Griffin takes the opportunity to exploit the precarious position of the therapist by palming the back of his head, like a basketball, and forcefully guide it toward his crotch, as if to guide the physio to fellate the star athlete.  As the physio pulls away Griffin turns and laughs jovially, then points to another player and says “Did you see that?” The most lenient description would call it bullying, at its worst, sexual harassment.

The reaction on Twitter was what you would expect; a mix of horror and the minimizing crowd of “oh, it was just a joke.” I expect that one could only take the latter view if one had never experienced that kind of “joking” before. I understood it completely. The domineering Griffin humiliated the physio ON NATIONAL TELEVISION, and it’s nothing new for him. There’s a reason he is such a polarizing figure in the NBA. Loved for his soaring exhibitions of athleticism, but reviled for his petulant attitude and constant bullying. Whether it’s in his nature or if he’s a product of the constant headlines of yet another player “destroyed,” “killed,” or “posterized,” by one of his thunderous dunks, it has become a part of his public persona.

I doubt anyone reading this knows what type of relationship Griffin has with the member of his team’s training staff. I would hope it is a very good one, for Griffin’s sake. If it’s a bond of friendship then Griffin should be ashamed of himself, and go out of his way to make amends publicly and privately. If it’s more of a professional one, than he needs to make the same amends and re-evaluate his interactions with other human beings.  In the age of Vine, Twitter, Instagram, and every other method of recording video we all have to be a little warier of what we do in the public arena. Especially if said public arena is an NBA arena filled with 40,000 people, and many hundreds of thousands more watching on television. There is simply no excuse for this behavior.

For those of us who have dealt with these types of situations, seeing something like this over and over induces cringes, and feelings of sympathy. Perhaps it was as innocent as some claim it to be, but the fact of the matter is that a man in a position of power took advantage of a man performing a job that already appears submissive, and that is an extreme breach of trust. Hopefully Griffin does the truly manly thing and apologizes for his conduct, and learns a lesson for the future.

Editor’s Note: Dustin LaMarr’s work appears at SLC Dunk. This is his first contribution to The Diss.