NBA23 Update

I intend to watch a lot more NBA this season, and there are two things I want to say about the league to get the 2022-23 ball rolling.

Number 1, the Washington Wizards have two players on their current roster with whom I share a birthday, and that's got to be a good sign. 

In 1995, I was living in Falls Church, Virginia, and around the time of Aug. 2 that year, someone attempted to break in to my apartment while we were all asleep upstairs. It was terrifying. Also at the time, my girlfriend and I were starting to split. And I had a pretty good little journaling discipline where I made myself write something I learned on that given day (in addition to listing everyone with whom I had an interaction, writing some memory and writing about where and how I would be spending that day if I could do so in however I wanted). Here's what I wrote for the "learned" prompt one of the days near Aug. 2:

continuing with page 701 of the dictionary in my cubicle:

•  eucharist - means communion.  it comes from a greek word meaning gratitude.

•  communion - an act of sharing of ideas, opinions or feelings; a religious fellowship; a group of christians with a common religious faith who observe the same rituals, a denomination; the christian sacrament in which consecrated bread and wine are partaken of in celebration of christ's last supper; the elements of the sacrament; the part of a mass or other religious ritual in which communion is received.

also, i learned - again, according to the pamphlet the u.s. government gave its soldiers - that in vietnam public displays of affection between men and women are widely frowned upon.  it is not uncommon, however, to see two male friends walking hand-in-hand.  also, indirect hinting is the best way to handle a request rather than being straightforward.  and, the common outstanding feature of vietnamese homes is an altar which holds a tablet bearing the names of all of that family's ancestors - at least as far back as the great-grandfather.  apparently, these altars can be as large as one-sixth of the floor space of an entire house.

Then here's what I journaled on my birthday in 1999:

A nice birthday. Spent it with my mom, my oldest brother, my sister-in-law, one of my nephews, one of my nieces. Broken-down car. No home. No girlfriend. Felt strange. Still focused on the haven'ts. My life is richer than for which I give it credit.

The car broke down somewhere in Tennessee or Alabama. I hustled and got myself a Greyhound seat that evening to Evansville and arrived in time for an impromptu birthday party with the fam. En route, the Greyhound made an extended stop on U.S. 41 on the north end of Madisonville for smokers on the bus to smoke in the parking lot of a hotel that no longer stands. It's a tenth of a mile from where my daughter is attending high school at this very moment. 

So, in summary, Number 1 that I want to say about NBA23 is, one just never knows. Season starts Oct. 18. Wizards tip next night, at Indiana.

Number 2, I really hope the Wizards sign DeMarcus Cousins.

I'm Reading a Book

It's When Cuba Conquered Kentucky by Marianne Walker.

Somewhere back in the comments archives of the HP--oh, how I wish those were still searchable on Google--I wrote about discovering this 1999 book while listening to the late, great Joe B & Denny Show. It was during a state basketball tournament, and they had on the author. Marianne Walker was a professor of English and philosophy at Henderson Community College, and I'm pretty certain this was her second book--after a book about the author of Gone With the Wind and Margaret Mitchell's husband. She had also written for The Courier-Journal's old Sunday magazine, but she was never a sports writer. I remember that she seemed a little uneasy about coming on the radio show with the coaches but then increasingly delighted as the program went on and it became clear that the hosts had absolutely devoured and loved the book, asking her detailed questions about deep-cut passages from it.

A friend got Marianne Walker interested in the story of Graves County's Cuba Cubs, the 1952 Kentucky boys' basketball champion, and it turned into a magazine story and then this book (and, since then, another book still, as well as one about Joe B). She's retired from teaching. Her husband is or was an attorney. My wife and I last night creepily looked up their house on Google Maps. It's a big place on the Ohio River in Henderson. It looks beautiful. I hope they are very happy, and I'll bet they are. She sounds like a happy person in her writing. It's hard for people to fake that when they're good writers.

Marianne Walker is a great writer.

She starts When Cuba Conquered Kentucky (brilliantly) at the Phoenix Hotel in Lexington after the Cubs had lost the 1951 state final to Clark County. The boys are back up in their rooms on the sixth floor:

Raymon, who had been brooding, stopped eating the peanuts he had been snacking on, brushed the crumbs off his shirt, and reared back in his tilted chair with his thick legs spread apart. With arms folded across his chest, he looked up and made rude comment about Joe Buddy's "forgetfulness." The two of them began swapping some rank insults until Doodle, stretched out on his back in his underwear, with one arm lying over his eyes, shouted, "Shut up! Damnit, y'all sound like a couple of plucked hens." He rolled over in the bed, swung his long hairy legs over the side, sat up, and yawned.

Then, leaning forward, he rummaged in the back pocket of his trousers that were lying across the chair and drew out a slender book of matches, a cloth pouch of Bull Durham, and a small packet of thin white paper. Carefully, he tore off a sheet, laid it in the palm of one hand, and gently tapped out a neat little row of tobacco. Doodle was an expert at rolling cigarettes, able to fix them so that they looked like store-bought ones. As the others were waiting for Doodle to say something else, he neatly rolled the paper around the tobacco, moistened the edge of the paper with his tongue, and with a flourish, struck a match on the underside of the end table. Inhaling deeply as if he was partaking of something divine, he blew out a cloud of smoke and said "Whew, that's good tobacco!" Then he looked around at each of them and dropped his voice to a whisper, saying, "I think we oughta quit crying about this year and figure on coming back next year and win the danged thing."

Chapter 2 is about the drive back to Graves County--a lunch stop at Horse Cave, the crowd meeting them at the Eggner's Ferry Bridge in Aurora, a transfer to Cadillac convertibles for the last stretch to the courthouse square in Mayfield:

A little west of Horse Cave, at Bowling Green, the motorcade got on Kentucky 80, which led them into Mayfield. As they traveled through each town--Bowling Green, Rockfield, Auburn, Russellville, Elkton, Hopkinsville, Cadiz, Canton, Golden Pond, and Aurora--they were met by another sheriff or constable who would then lead them through the town. Onlookers parked in cars on either side of the narrow main streets started blowing their horns once they spotted the sheriff or the constable leading the green Kaiser. To them, Cuba represented the dreams of all tiny communities across the great state of Kentucky--the Cubs' success was theirs, too. Stretched across plain wooden storefronts were wide paper banners proclaiming, "Welcome, Cuba Cubs!" Adults and children stood on the sidewalks, alongside the roads, or in front of houses, law offices, hardware stores, and other businesses, waving pennants and flags and yelling, "Yea! Cuba!" Dogs ran barking alongside the Kaiser as the Cubs' long, outstretched arms waved from the car windows. In some town squares, little high school bands played "Sweet Georgia Brown," the Cubs' theme song.

Then, in Chapter 3, Marianne Walker takes us even further back. She opens a telling of Jackson Purchase history, 1818-1951, with a quote from Plutarch: "Men's customs differ; different people honor different practices; but all honor the maintenance of their own peculiar ways." And then she offers a lengthy, concrete discussion of the voting patterns and geographic characteristics that conspired to make the 1950-51 and '51-52 Cuba Cubs an embodiment of the curious relationship of their region to the rest of the state:

Surrounded by rivers on three sides, the Purchase was born in 1818, when Kentucky was already twenty-five years old. For a hundred years the state went on about its business as if the new section had not even been added to it. Until the late 1930s the political powers in Frankfort largely ignored the region because finding anything other than a registered Democrat in the Purchase was like finding hair on a frog's head. ... 

Until the late 1930s and early 1940s, the state politicians, for the most part, directed no funds toward building roads, schools, bridges, or state office buildings in the Purchase, nor did they set up the multitude of semi local agencies that are part of a state government. For example, Graves County in the late 1940s was given an agricultural extension agency but no laboratories or facilities. However, the agency in nearby Hopkins County, which is in western Kentucky but not in the Purchase, had a first-class operation. Just as it is today, politicians preferred spending state and federal money in those counties having balanced party systems. Politically speaking, you can say that the Purchase disadvantaged itself by adhering so strictly to its Democratic stand.

Until 1905, there were no bridges built over any of the three rivers that hem in the Purchase--the Ohio River on the north, the Mississippi River on the west and the Tennessee River on the east--and ferries were too inconvenient or expensive for most of the people in the region to use, Marianne Walker writes. The Purchase was cut off from the rest of Kentucky and any other land (except Tennessee to its south) until a locomotive bridge over the Tennessee River at Gilbertsville came along in 1905. The first bridge for automobile travel over any of the three rivers came in 1929, when the Irvin S. Cobb bridge was completed, linking Paducah with Brookport, Illinois.

For the most part, the Purchase people had no real interest in crossing those rivers. Having been ignored for so long by the state's political powers, they felt no real attachment to Kentucky, even after the state began to show them some attention. Their kinship was with Tennessee. Even after the Eggner's Ferry Bridge across the Tennessee River at Aurora was completed in 1933, finally linking the Purchase to the rest of Kentucky, few took advantage of it.

Marianne Walker writes that Coach Jack Story often told stories about Andrew Jackson of Tennessee to teach his young Cubs about toughness. Then there's a bunch of stuff about the Civil War, TVA, Thomas Scopes, Alben Barkley and the tug of industrial jobs in Michigan. I don't know enough about history to know whether Marianne Walker is right, but she certainly convinced me. Feels right. I read almost every word of this chapter twice through aloud last night to my wife. We loved it!

I'm just getting started with Chapter 4, and Marianne Walker is going through what each player and student manager's family did for a living and how they ended up at Cuba. Some of the other chapters are titled "On the Importance of Acting Right," "The Harlem Globetrotters in Cuba" and "A Pilgrimage." I can hardly wait.

Eight teams left

Quick question:  When was the last time the First Region won at least one game in the State Tournament for three years in a row?

Answer:   1951-53.  Cuba reached the final in 1951 and 1952, and then Tilghman reached the final in 1953.  But last night, Calloway County upset Knott Co. Central, meaning that we have a Jackson Purchase team in the quarter-finals for the third year in a row.


Quick question:  When was the last time that Regions 1, 2, 3, and 4 -- the four westernmost regions -- all advanced to the quarterfinals of the State Tournament?

Answer: 1960.  To give you a sense of how long ago that was, check out these scores:

Symsonia 69, Meade Memorial 60
Hopkinsville Crispus Attucks 64. Clinton Co. 62
Owensboro 77, Lincoln Institute 75
Beaver Dam 61, LaRue Co. 56

That's right:  three of the four Western Kentucky schools that went to the quarter-finals in 1960 no longer exist.

So live it up, Western Kentucky!  We don't get too many chances like this one.  Plus, the four Western Kentucky teams will be playing each other, so our end of the Commonwealth will have two teams in the semi-finals.  That hasn't happened since Tilghman and Henderson County reached the semi-finals in 1999.

Our gain is Appalachia's pain.  The 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th regions have all been eliminated prior to the quarter-finals.  This is the first time that's happened since 1989.

OK, here are the scores from yesterday:

(1) Lou. Ballard 83, Johnson Cent. 69
Boyle Co. 60, Lex. Catholic 59
Bowling Green 86, Elliott Co. 44
Calloway Co. 73, (4) Knott Co. Cent. 68 (2 OT)

And that sets up the following quarter-finals today (all times Central):

11 A.M:  (7) Owensboro (28-4) v. (8) Hopkinsville (27-5)
12:30 P.M:  (9) Cov. Catholic (30-5) v. Lou. Doss (27-6)
5:30 P.M.:  (1) Lou. Ballard (32-2) v. Boyle Co. (27-6)
7 P.M.:  Bowling Green (29-5) v. Calloway Co. (30-3)

Party Like It Was 1999

Here are the songs on a mix tape that I made in September 1999:

-- "I'm Hurting Inside," Marcia Griffiths
-- "Skintight," The Donnas
-- "I'm Sorry Now," Jude
-- "Where Will I Be," Emmylou Harris
-- "You Gotta Be," Des'ree
-- "I Need Love," Sam Phillips
-- "As Cool As I Am," Dar Williams
-- "Where Do I Begin." Chemical Brothers
-- "Supernova," Liz Phair
-- "Be My Angel," Mazzy Star
-- "Taste of Blood," Mazzy Star
-- "In a Daydream," Freddy Jones Band
-- "Rocket Boy," Liz Phair
-- "Tony," Patty Griffin
-- "Goodbye," Patty Griffin
-- "Blue Sky," Patty Griffin
-- "Rebirth of Slick," Digable Planets
-- "Let's Make a Deal," Dangerman
-- "Good Friend," Dangerman
-- "Remember," Dangerman
-- "Brimful of Asha," Cornershop 
-- "Geek," Bettie Serveert
-- "Up All Night," Kelly Willis

Warning Explicit Content

James Gandolfini, 1961-2013

On January 10, 1999, the Minnesota Vikings beat the Arizona Cardinals 41-21 behind another strong performance to Randall Cunningham to roar into the NFC Title game, which they would host the next week.  Given that their opponent was to be the usually-hapless Atlanta Falcons, I was pretty certain Minnesota was going to the Super Bowl.  And that's about all I can remember from that day.  I didn't subscribe to HBO back then, so I know I didn't watch the first episode of The Sopranos, which aired that night.

But that would change.  Within just a few years, I wouldn't think of missing the first episode of a season involving The Sopranos.  Months before each season began, speculation would start in magazines and message boards.  And by the time the familiar theme music started to play, anticipation among Sopranos fans reached a fever pitch.

Of course, we were never all that numerous.  At the height of its fame, in late 2002, The Sopranos averaged about 11 million viewers per episode.  To put that in perspective, NCIS came on the air in 2003, and its lowest-rated season averaged 11.84 million viewers per episode.  (Last year, NCIS was the number-one show on television, with over 21 million viewers per episode.)

These numbers are important, I think, when we realize what The Sopranos did to the world of television.  For years, we've all been told the story of how The Sopranos ended up on HBO because all of the networks turned it down.  But the network executives were not necessarily wrong.  The networks are designed to appeal to a broad audience -- in that sense, they are literally broadcasters.  The Sopranos, with its artsy experimentation, its extraordinary levels of violence, and its moral ambiguity, probably never could have been sufficiently popular to air on network television.

Instead, The Sopranos represented the dawn of an era in which television would follow the rest of American culture, in which the divisions among Americans become more obvious with every decade.  When I was a kid, the United States was dominated by a broad middle class that shopped at Sears and Penney's, and got its entertainment from the major networks.  Over time, that class has shrunk, and we Americans have divided ourselves in different ways.  We have niche magazines, niche restaurants, niche books, and niche shopping.

Television came relatively late to this party.  By the late 1990's, it was obvious that the booming stock market and the growing effects of globalization were creating a new "overclass" that had less and less in common with its neighbors.  But when The Sopranos came on the air, TV was still dominated by the old networks.  In 1998, the nominees for the Emmy Award for Best Drama included two shows from ABC (The Practice and NYPD Blue), two shows form NBC (ER and Law & Order), and one show from FOX (The X-Files).

Even after The Sopranos burst on the scene, and was regularly being lauded by critics as the best show on TV, the Establishment was slow to recognize what had happened.  The Sopranos was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Drama in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003 -- but it lost every time.  Not until 2004 did it finally win.

But even then, the greatness of James Gandolfini was recognized.  He won the Emmy Award for Best Actor in Dramatic Series in 2000, 2001, and 2003.  And he deserved them, because he was magnificent.  David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, had enormous ambitions for his show.  He wanted the viewer to be drawn into the story of Tony Soprano, a New Jersey mobster with a troubled family life.  But he never wanted Tony to be a good guy, or even a sympathetic guy.  Time and time again, the audience would start rooting for Tony -- only to watch him commit a particularly brutal murder, or mistreat his wife in a particularly cruel way.  It was a very difficult balancing act to pull off, and the writing -- while outstanding -- was only half the solution.  For the show to work at all, the actor playing Tony had to be able to both charm and horrify the audience.  We had to be repelled by his behavior, or the show would lose its moral force.  But we also had to remain interested, or the show would grow stale.

James Gandolfini accomplished the almost impossible tasks associated with his role.  In any episode, he could be funny, poignant, and murderous -- all with total credibility, and all within a few minutes of each other.  And he did it year after year, from the very first episode to the last.  You never felt that he was just mailing it in, or that he had lost interest in the role.  For its viewers, The Sopranos became the gold standard of television, and James Gandolfini deserves much of the credit.  His performance as Tony Soprano is, for me, perhaps the greatest acting accomplishment in television history.

These days, of course, the revolution started by The Sopranos is complete.  Last year's nominees for the Emmy Award for Best Drama included two shows from HBO (Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones), two from AMC (Breaking Bad and Mad Men), one from PBS (Downton Abbey), and one from Showtime (Homeland).  No show on the broadcast networks has won the Award since 2006, when 24 did so.  High-end television is now dominated by shows that, in one way or another, seek to emulate The Sopranos.

 We can talk about whether this has all been good for culture, just as we can talk about what the decline of department stores says about our country.  But I am certain that under the new regime, a lot of great and entertaining television has been made that never would have been seen in the old days.  And this would not have happened -- or wouldn't have happened so quickly -- without the brilliance of James Gandolfini's performance.  I am very, very sorry he has died, but his work will live for years to come.  Very few people can say as much.

Snow in Saint Philip, Ind., on Christmas eve 1999

That baseball field, by the way, is the one they use at the beginning of A League of Their Own (5 stars, highly recommended).

Tubby and Izzo: A Tale of Two Coaches

Thoughts on Minnesota's 61-66 loss at home to Michigan State last night, from someone who has spent a great deal of time thinking about Tubby Smith.

I turned this game off tonight while Minnesota was still in the lead, because I've sat through enough Tubby/Izzo match-ups to know what was coming.

I'm not sure that any coach has ever done more to damage the reputation of another coach than Izzo has done to Tubby. On March 21, 1999, Tubby Smith was a genius who had won the national championship in his rookie season at Kentucky and who was on the verge of taking his Cats to yet another final four. In the Elite Eight against Michigan State, Tubby's Wildcats were leading the Number-2 Spartans 36-35 at the half. But in the second half, Michigan State got hot from the outside and beat Kentucky 73-65.

Six years later, On March 27, 2005, Tubby was trying desperately to get back to the Final Four for the first time since 1998, and thereby restore his reputation as a big-time winner. His Wildcats, ranked number 7 in the country, needed only to beat number 15 Michigan State in the Elite Eight to set up a glamorous Final Four match-up with UNC. At the half, the Wildcats led 37-33. But they blew that lead, and needed a miracle shot from Patrick Sparks to get into overtime. At the end of overtime, the game was tied and UK had the ball -- but they couldn't get off a shot. In double overtime, the Spartans pulled away for a 94-88 victory. Two years later, Tubby's career in Lexington was over.

Tubby went to Minnesota, seeking to rebuild his reputation and prove that the UK fans who doubted him were wrong. But in his first four seasons there, he only made two trips to the NCAA's, and was never seeded higher than 10th. This year, his team was on the bubble, but tonight's loss probably knocked them off of it. A big part of his trouble is that he cannot beat Michigan State -- the Gophers are 1-11 against Izzo's men since Tubby arrived. Seven of those losses -- including the one tonight -- were by less than 10 points.