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Robert Christgau and Danyel Smith

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from: Robert Christgau

Hoop Reveries

Posted Wednesday, June 23, 1999, at 11:15 AM ET

Dear Tired,

Correction, correction, correction. I got Kurt Thomas' line all wrong yesterday. It wasn't 31 minutes, 16 rebounds, 13 points; it was 17 minutes, 10 rebounds (an even spiffier ratio, by the way), 2 points. Excuse: There was no box score in the Times, so I was recalling what I'd seen on AOL's NBA scoreboard the night before, when I had to restrain myself from waking up my wife with this tidbit. Lesson: it's easy (which isn't to say excusable) to make factual errors when you're playing write-and-shoot like we are. All respect to our brethren and sistren on the dailies.

Well, maybe. Harvey Araton's column in the Times today addresses the Sprewell-Houston matter in so many words: "Are you down with Spree? If not, you must be old, white, conservative, or worse." (Nervously double-checking this quote, I note the serial comma, which I thought the Times didn't use; indeed, in Mike Wise's column inside, it's "Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell and Larry Johnson," no comma after Sprewell. Maybe they have a different rule for four-item series. The Times has different rules for everything.) Give the man credit for venting his anxiety out loud. But to me, the aesthetic politics here split right down the middle. I like both Houston and Sprewell, as players and figures--and members of my hometown team, natch. I relate emotionally to both Sprewell's street intelligence (what is his family background, anyway? It's escaped my notice.) and Houston's son-of-a-coach rectitude (middle-class black people pack lots more metaphorical resonance than they get credit for). But I love neither the way I loved John Starks and Charles Oakley, whose intensity knew some limits and whose work ethic had no assimilationist conformism about it (and who wouldn't have brought the Knicks to the finals, which in sports is what it's about). My favorite Knick by far this year has been Larry Johnson, whom Araton snipes at for calling the Knicks "rebellious slaves." Johnson played in serious pain, changed his body and his style for the team, and was instrumental in turning Sprewell and Camby into Knicks. There is always a bullshit factor when millionaires compare themselves to slaves. But when the millionaire is black, there's always a truth factor, too. And there is always an enormous bullshit factor when white pundits pretend America has put slavery behind it.

In other news: Joseph Berger with a rather icky and condescending adoption column (adoption is not an act of charity). And on the first page of business, a hustler from Greenwich, Conn., who seems to have stolen at least $334 million. Can "Harper's Index" tell us what the total cash value of all armed robberies in the U.S. last year might have been? This pundit wants to know.

Opinionatedly,
Bob

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415
from: Robert Christgau

Hoop Reveries

Posted Wednesday, June 23, 1999, at 11:15 AM ET
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Robert Christgau is a senior editor and chief music critic of the Village Voice. His essay collection, Grown Up All Wrong (click here to buy the book), was published in 1998. Danyel Smith is the editor in chief of Vibe.
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