(SJFIHIAQG, Get the Money, Dolla Dolla Bill, Y'all)

Intro:

Originally, when I conceived of this post to review the latest mixtape of Stephen Jackson (aka, Stak5) I was honestly kind of hoping for the worst: I was looking forward to finding that Stephen Jackson - who promotes his mixtape constantly on Twitter - had come up with an epic bomb, something so transparently ridiculous and self-unaware that only Jack's friends and family - along with the various hip-hop figures in Jack's contellation of contacts - would humor him to enjoy.

Not only would this premise allow me to make light ridicule of one of the best characters and most interesting individuals in the league, but I would also be allowed to go into a really fun writerly character: White Boy That Deliberately and Selectively Misunderstands Absurd Hip-Hop For Humorous Effect. Finally (I had it all planned out), I could lay out the conditions for the occasional absurdities of the genre I love: The beefs and swagger, the less-than-half-hearted political messages, the recycled beats, the soon-to-be-anachronistic pop culture references, and the constant name-dropping.

Unfortunately, "Trill Mixes" (free download here) is actually pretty decent, and what absurdity it has is mostly washed away in professional-quality production and a (:sigh:) legitimately humble sincerity that testifies to Jackson's life and career. So I am unfortunately obligated to make a positive, respectful, objective review. (I know, how fun is that, right?)

"Yes, Stephen, we'll all buy your album in nine years. Don't worry. Now get back into the huddle. It's the Finals."
(Photo by Jerry Lala)

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Ever heard of Simple Rating System (SRS)? It's a nifty little statistical system for making sense of the hundreds or thousands of games in a season of sports. Back in January, about 10 or 15 games into the season, I was a little bit obsessed with SRS. The math is a bit complex, but not all that hard for computers (some linear algebra if you're into that), but the idea is quite elegant. Let's go into it quickly.

See, when we talk about strength of schedule, usually we mean the average record of the teams played against. But consider a team in one of those tiny college conferences out west. If most of the team's games are in that conference, they're going to average about .500 in their SOS (Strength of Schedule) calculation over that conference (as for ACC teams). Even if our small-conference team plays a few decent teams out of conference and gets torched every time - they could stockpile wins in their weaker conference and end up with a great record and an excellent strength of schedule. We want a rating system that takes this into account. That rating system is SRS, and it's one very elegant solution.

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The Spurs walk into the playoffs with hope and foreboding. They've seen the promised land but they have also seen so many cool oases that turned out to be mirages. These Spurs have at various times washed in endless, beautiful seas and been tricked by the desert sun.

Memphis surprised us, but not all that much: Throughout the season, we'd seen teams with tremendous size (like the Lakers and Wolves and Grizz), and we'd had relatively little success (the W column belied that every time we'd had to claw back against the Wolves, and that the Lakers series had been a coin-flip or a box-out away). We looked upon the Spurs going into that series with cautious - extremely cautious - optimism. Put it this way: No one thought that series would be a sweep. We thought we would pull out the close games with execution and avoid the traps that a great defensive team would set. We almost did win. Still, almost doesn't count for anything. In another universe - perhaps one with slightly different playoff rules or seeding - that was the WCF, and the Spurs win in 6 or 7. Last year wasn't a mirage of a lake: The water was there, it was just a millimeter in the direction of that ungraspable fourth dimension. Man's reach exceeds his grasp, and we could - in that wonderful season - seem to touch the sea.

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"Gotta stand and face it
Life is so complicated."
-The Kinks, "Complicated Life"

I've been cooking a stew this morning. I love stew, because it's so simple in concept, execution, and taste: Oh, sure, some ingredients don't go well together, but usually - if you put enough heat and water to a lot of ingredients you like and act carefully and deliberately - you will get something pretty decent. You can't make anything out of anything, but you choose a base of liquids, herbs, broths, and oils, you put in meat and vegetables, and you add enough water so that it covers everything, and you have a good stew.

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[Editor's Note: This is the second installment of the serialized story The Device, by DewNo and myself. The first is here. -jrw]

Part 2: The Glyph and the Riddle

"Wake up, Tim!"

Tim Duncan sighed as RJ stood outside his hotel room's door, knocking and yelling. Richard Jefferson - or the more familiar "RJ," as he was known - relished the opportunity to be the more responsible one for a change. It was true that Tim the Attentive Franchise Player had overslept for once, after all. Tim let RJ have his fun.

"Wake up, Timmmmay!"

"Sheesh, RJ, just a minute! We can't all be perfect like you!", Tim deadpanned with inner glee.

"Aw, dag-nabit," RJ answered, with the sadness audible in his voice, even through the door, making it clear he'd caught the irony in Tim's statement.

"Whoops," Tim thought. "That blow to his self-confidence could take weeks to undo. Unless..." Sighing again, Tim challenged RJ to a corner-three-shooting contest at "high noon". That was a competition Richard would win every time, or at least Tim hoped. Making such an offer was not out-of-character for Tim, but since he wanted to obscure the blatant purpose of the contest as a boost to Richard's self-esteem, he added some fake machismo. "Heh," Tim quietly half-chuckled with pity, all of it inaudible to Richard. Tim had actually created hundreds of these put-on competitions (all of them at "high noon") over the years, all as instinctive (and usually unnecessary) attempts to include and bolster his teammates. Only in these moments would Tim wear sunglasses, to conceal his lying eyes.

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[Editor's Note: This is the beginning of a new fictitious series by DewNo. If you're not sure where it's going, stay tuned for future installments. If you don't know who DewNo is, then you missed his excellent two-parter on Manu and Borges: The Infinite Chase. You can find it here and here. The recap of last night's non-game against the Portland Trailblazers will be posted around noon central time. - jrw]

"How strange it is to be anything at all"
--Neutral Milk Hotel

Tim dribble-drobbled the ball into nowhere. Another turnover. Another missed opportunity.

"What a shame," Tim thought, "but history tells us that the lateral dribble-drobble is the first thing to go for big men."

Even for a smart player like Tim Duncan, age took its toll quickly on the body. But he did somewhat well, all considering, he supposed. "Heh," Tim laughed, not amused about the turnover, but amused at himself for making such a simple mistake. Tim resolved to himself not to make the same mistake again, to trust his more well-dribbled teammates next time. As he was deciding all of this, he heard a little bird from the sidelines.

"Tim, you've got to do better next time, or we'll trade you for Methuselah and cash considerations! We need some younger legs. Heh heh ha!" Sean Elliott - whose career had been ended swiftly by injuries and health concerns, took a detached amusement to the problem of age.

"What team does he play for?" Tim deadpanned, and Sean was caught off guard before meeting Tim's smile. But the moment passed, and Tim - flanked by his less famous teammate Manu Ginobili - watched an opponent dribble-drobble towards him. With expertise and careful judgment, Tim put his hand towards his opponent as a cursory (though psychologically precise) test of the opponent's reaction time. Unfortunately, as he did so, so did Manu, and Tim felt something crack in his teammate's hand.

"Whoops," Tim said, as he got the trainers over to his anguished friend Manu.

A tornado of light began. Something smashed into Tim Duncan, knocking him out. When he awoke the arena was indoors. He took no note of it.

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Editor's Note: Yesterday, we posted the PtR debut of DewNO, Part 1 of Manu and Borges: The Infinite Chase. If you haven't already checked it out, please do so in order to fully enjoy Part 2 below. I can't tell you how excited I am about DewNO's writing for our fair blog for what I hope will be a long time. If, like me, you just can't get enough of his writing, you can see more of his work at GothicGinobili.com and read anything by Alex. - JRW

The San Antonio Spurs' Manu Ginobili is a statistical freak: he has no imbalance whatsoever in his game - there is no one way to play him that is better than another. He is equally efficient both off the dribble and off the pass, going left and right and from any spot on the floor.

Shane Battier in "The No-Stats All-Star" - New York Times, 2009

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via upload.wikimedia.org

"The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books." -Borges

Jorge Luis Borges never wrote a novel. Sure, he read a lot: Borges read libraries' worth and had a love of knowledge of every sort, from epics and religious texts to philosophy and films. And yet, for all the dense, obscure - above all long and many - things he'd read, Borges loved nothing more than a tiny, unnoticed detail: a clever interpretation of something, a strange fable buried on page 78, a paradoxical trait of character in a line that was probably left accidentally by an unwitting author. A smile that shouldn't be there. I'd say most of us as fans notice and love these little occasional details about the Spurs that flesh out their culture, their opponents, their personalities, and their games. The lineups that exist to troll the defensive-minded fan, the offensive rebounding machines that can't hit a shot in ten tries, the inexplicable passivity of Richard Jefferson in passing up his favorite shot with miles of open space. Okay, it's not all love, but you get what I'm saying here, right? The details matter, and the details are fun and give what we're watching on the screen a third dimension (the fourth dimension is PtR and the shared experience of being a fan, right? Heh.)

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