My Basketball Jones

It's well past midnight and I just finished doing the dishes after fixing dinner for two most charming ladies (my sister and The Sauron). I have every reason to be wiped and hit the deck. And if it weren't for the fact that, while doing the dishes, I listened to Hatebreed's 'Perseverance' album in its entirity, I probably would be in Dreamland by now.

But seeing as though that album gets your blood pumping faster than speed ever could, I'm still here, kickin' it on da blog.

This morning - before driving from Zwijndrecht to Zele, from Zele to Vilvoorde and from Vilvoorde back to Zwijndrecht - the picture which you see above this post caught my eye on nba.com (my 5th favourite website after Hotmail, this blog, Webstats for this blog and standaard.be).

Not only is it a magnificent shot of The Best Basketball Player This Side of Michael Jordan; it also represents my early love for basketball in general and the NBA in particular.

(Also, looking at the picture, it occurred to me that I have only referenced my Basketball Jones - that's how they call 'love for basketball' in the States - sideways on this blog, in the three weeks that I have been back in business. As this cannot be tolerated, I decided to dedicate today's post to my passion for the Beautiful Game of Basketball.)

My Basketball Jones showed up as early as my seventh year of life. I was in third grade of elementary school (OLVA Male, where u at??) and one of the many after-school activities was learning how to play basketball.

Though I wasn't very good at it, I soon started to wear Jordan apparel (even though I had never heard of this guy named Michael Jordan; when I first saw the name on the outfit, looking at the Jumpman logo, I thought he did ballet - that gives you an idea of how distant a notion the NBA was to me, growing up) and Nike sneakers.

(God dammit, if I think about the sneakers I wore back then, I would've copped a couple o' more larger sizes, so that I could still wear those fine, neon-colored butters today.)

We're talking 1990 here, around the time this Michael Jordan dude led his Chicago Bulls to a first of two three-peat World Titles in the NBA. Names were thrown around such as 'Johnson', 'Robinson', 'Jordan' - they all meant sh** to me as the National Basketball Association was about as underground in Belgium as the up-and-coming grunge movement.

(God dammit, if only I had known back then what I know now; I would've checked out Nirvana at Pukkelpop, I would've bought the first Tool LP's and gone to see them in obscure Belgian venues, I would've checked out the first RATM gigs on the European continent. There's so much that I've missed.)

From time to time, I would see highlights coming from the distant US. By 1992, the Dream Team came and took Europe by storm. 'Johnson', 'Robinson', 'Jordan' were no longer just names; I could now put faces on them. And highlights, lots of highlights.

The NBA soon became an obsession. I bought the XXL mags and the Upper Deck Cards, copped the gear and the sh**s, but it wasn't until 1998, when this scrawny, 18-year old kid named Kobe Bryant came along, that my NBA appetite was whetted forever.

This guy had it all: a cool team (the LA Lakers), a cool sneaker ad with a West-Coast trash metal soundtrack, and hops which hadn't been seen since MJ first showed up. This guy was the real deal.

All this time, I never played organized ball. Bruges had a pretty lively streetball scene back in those days, especially in the summertime, when guys like me only got to play when it got dark and the real ballers got tired. But I loved the game - and I still do.

In 1999, the New York Knicks advanced, as the second no. 8 seed ever, to the NBA Finals. That was one amazing run with some amazing players. Camby, Ewing, Sprewell, Childs, Ward - heck, even Dudley. A gritty team which never said die. I watched their run to eternal NBA glory night in, night out, on the Canal + pay channel. Got up in the middle of the night to see them play.

Canal + got too expensive the next few years, so my attention swung back to Formula One - though I never lost track of the world's greatest basketball league via nba.com.

Coming April, I plan to get a subscription to NBA League Pass, the online network which lets you enjoy every. Single. NBA ballgame. Live. (Non-basketball fans better stay away from this website then, as it'll be my primary point of focus.)

I could wax lyrically about Kobe Bryant and the NBA all I want, but maybe I should point out the reasons why I love this sport so much: it's fast, intense and very often the most exciting sport you'll ever see. It's not a discipline made up of a bunch of wankers (which you all too often see in football) kicking the sh** out of each other - no, this is a hard-punching man's game.

And I think the NBA is made up of amazing athletes with often electrifying personalities, writing basketball history through emotion-laden matchups.

So to me, 'Where Amazing Happens' is a pretty good tagline for this sport. Anything goes, anything can happen, but it's always the most talented and persevering (there we've got that Hatebreed album again) which take the prizes.

And if you could excuse me now, I'm off to bed. I've got a special treat planned for tomorrow, which my inner movie geek will certainly appreciate.

Happy trails

DM

Ferrari's Weapon of Choice for the New F1 Season

(I was gonna write something about Margot's birthday bash of yesterday evening in Brussels, but seeing as though the birthday girl in question wasn't really in the party mood after the necessary celebrations of the night before, and I was a wee bit moody after an afternoon in which I needed all the focus I had - and from which many good things will come, as well as for me as for this blog; you just wait - the whole party idea didn't really pan out. So I just decided to write something about the new Ferrari, which was unveiled last Friday.)

So I guess it's just me and all three of you. (Hello Canada! US! Brazil, you too!) It's a beauty, innit - the F150, I mean?

But apparently, the car which will take the start at the Bahrain Grand Prix, come March 13th, will look completely different than the one you see here. (Welcome to modern F1, folks...) At least that's what Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali and chief designer Nicolas Tombazis told the BBC:

"The car you will see at the first race will be completely different from the car you will see in Valencia. (...) This car is just the first step; the entire body will be changed. We will have changes visually and also in performance for our first race."

According to the BBC, the name of the car is a reference to 'the 150th anniversary of the reunification of Italy'. Next week, on February 1st, the 1st test will take place in Valencia - a test where all F1 teams get the chance of running their new cars.

Ahhh, I can already smell the sweet scent of burning rubber and V8 exhaust fumes in the air - like spring, the new F1 season is upon us. Only 41 days left!

Your 2011 NBA All-Star Game Starters

In a little over three week’s time, in the penultimate weekend of February, the city of Los Angeles will once more be the focal point of the basketball world. Not because the Lakers have a big game that weekend, and don’t even get me started on the Clippers’ Blake Griffin.

It’s because that weekend, the NBA’s most popular players will take on each other in the annual All-Star Game.

These players get voted into the starting line-up or onto the bench of either the east-coast or the west-coast team, depending on where they play. (For example: a New York Knicks player will play for the East, while an LA Laker suits up for the West.)

Let’s see who gets the privilege of starting for the West in the most spectacular game this side of an NBA Finals Game Seven:

WEST

Center: Yao Ming (Rockets)
Power forward: Kevin Durant (Thunder)
Small forward: Carmelo Anthony (Nuggets)
Shooting guard: Kobe Bryant (Lakers)
Point guard: Chris Paul (Hornets)

Yao Ming?? Seriously?? This is what you get when you let the Chinese people vote – to them it doesn’t matter that Ming hardly played this season (hell, I don’t think the Rockets even need him anymore); they just want to see their man in the game.

I’d take Marcus Camby over the Giant Chinese Bean-Pole any day. Granted, Camby’s in the twilight of a career that wasn’t even that spectacular to begin with, but I still cherish the memories of him energizing the amazing ’99 Knicks during his injury- and foul-prone tenure at the City of Bright Lights’ basketball team. Camby put every ounce of his personality and flair into his often spectacular game back then. Consider me a fan for life.

You won’t hear me complaining about Durant, Anthony, Bryant (13th selection with 2.380.016 votes; Bryants the leading vote-getter) and Paul though: that’s a nasty-lookin’ team right there.

Let’s take a look at the Eastern high-flyers:

EAST

Center: Dwight Howard (Magic)
Power forward: Amar’e Stoudemire (Knicks)
Small forward: LeBron James (Heat)
Shooting guard: Dwyane Wade (Heat)
Point guard: Derrick Rose (Bulls)

As a Knicks guy, I’m proud to see Amar’e in the starting line-up. But even if I hadn’t been a New York fan, I’d still have appreciated his name on this list of elite players: Stoudemire’s rescuscitated a franchise that had been sleepwalking for the past decade. He's reinstalled some much-needed confidence in the NBA’s most valuable team. And I’m sure he’ll kill on the Staples Center court too, come February.

Don’t get me started on the Heat guys though – I respect their ability to put the ball in the hole, but there’s this nagging too-much, too-soon feeling that creeps up to me when I think about the hyped-to-a-crisp Miami team. I think the ‘Heatles’, plain and square, suck.

Don’t get me wrong: I think both James and Wade are great players; it’s just that I don’t like their jock-style swagger. I’d haven taken the rock-solid Paul Pierce over James and – of course – the Knicks’ point guard Raymond Felton over Wade.

It’s good to see Rose out there though, along with Howard.

In the end, it doesn’t matter one bit what anyone thinks about aforementioned ten players – what does count is the certainty that they’ll put up one hell of a show on February 20th.

BE SURE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THIS

SLAM writer Tzvi Twersky lived the dream yesterday, having been invited by Jordan Brand to try out their brand-new Jordan 2011 sneaker. On the Madison Square Garden hardwood. As LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the rest of the Miami Heat sat courtside. (Now that’s what I call 'pressure'! 'Pressure'!)

The Day The Earth Stood Still

There are those moments that'll stay with you forever. Of all the seconds that came before that instant when you heard the news or experienced something, and all of the seconds that came after it, you'll remember that one, single split-second when the earth stood still, as if it had just happened - what the weather was like, who was there with you and what you were doing.

Nothing would ever be the same again. There's the time before what had happened, and the time afterwards. Pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Pre-birth of my sister and post-birth of my sister. That kind of thing. Pre-formation of the Belgian gov - eeeeer, no.

All of this to say: everybody's got those moments, and they're different to each one of us. I'm sure most of you don't remember where you were or what you were doing when you heard that the legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna had gone.

I remember it like it was yesterday: on May 1st, 1994, on a beautiful spring afternoon, eleven days before my 11th birthday, I was standing on the bridge over the pond in the garden of my parent's house when my dad came out and told me the news.

We had been watching a couple of hours earlier when Senna, leading the pack in the seventh lap of the Italian Grand Prix, shunted straight into the wall at the Tamburello corner - that same infamous corner where the likes of Nelson Piquet and Gerhard Berger had crashed and walked away.

It was immediately clear that something had gone wrong. There was no fire, the monocoque of Senna's Williams seemed intact and no other cars were involved... it was just that the man with the yellow helmet didn't move.

Back in those days, with helmets not being resistant to 800°C heat and with cars not being quite as strong as the carbon-fibre fortresses they are now, drivers not moving after a heavy impact was an ominous sign. My dad, who was (and still is) a diehard Senna devotee, now says he immediately knew that things would never be the same again. His passion for F1, which had started some twenty-odd years earlier, died that very instant.

My passion for Formula One was only burgeoning, though I felt tears well up when I realised Senna was gone as I had grown fond of him the couple of years that came before - especially as I watch my father jump for joy each time the Brazilian took home his McLaren in first position.

(I still, to this day, envy Dad as he had been able to obtain a paddock pass back in 1990 for the Belgian Grand Prix. He pretended to be a camera man, carrying with him  the Sony HI8 he normally used to make family clips - which was enough for the FIA officials to let him wander around in the Francorchamps pit straight from garage to garage, even talking to Jean Alesi and Thierry Boutsen. (Again: things were different in F1 back then.) He can still recall the moment when he was on the inside of the La Source hairpin when Senna came thundering down the main straight. Dad says he stared straight into the Brazilian's eyes when he slowed down and curled around La Source. Damn.)

So anyway, the reason I felt like digging all of this up is because of a beautiful article I read today in F1 Racing (the world's second best magazine next to SLAM). It's written by Matt James and it tells the story of how erstwhile Williams team manager Ian Harrison experienced the 1994 season, including that fatal 1st of May when one of the most charismatic sports icons ever passed away.

It's a special story because never before has the modal F1 fan gotten such a close insight into the day that changed his favorite sport forever. Numerous documentaries have been made, countless words have been written and too many people have vented their take on things - but up till now (at least until this much-anticipated documentary sees the light of day), no-one has taken me this close to that first day of May '94 as Ian Harrison did.

An excerpt from this journalistic masterpiece reads as follows: "I remember looking at it (Senna's crash; DM) and after probably about ten seconds I just started saying: 'Move, move.' We'd seen Ayrton twitch inside the car and that represented movement. So there was hope. Initially. (...) Then there was nothing. It just stopped. It became obvious that there was a bit of an issue but nobody knew how serious it was."

Not only do you get a testament of the aftermath of the crash unfolding through the eyes of a Williams insider by reading this story; it also tells you how much Formula One has developed since then. In 1994, pitstops were just being re-introduced, as was the use of the Safety Car. Pre-race meetings were a lot more simple than they are today and strategy was much more of a Fingerspitzengefühl affair than it is today.

In the end, Harrison is adamant: "It happened because it was one of the first times a Safety Car was used; the tyre pressures were low, the car was running low anyway and it was full of fuel. If you looked at the in-car footage from Schumacher's Benetton you could see the car was bottoming out really bad from the restart. It was probably a combination of all those things that caused the shunt. I'm not an engineer but I think the thing bottomed out and Ayrton lost the front end."

He goes on to proclaim that Senna probably would've won the 1994 World Championship. Sadly, we'll never know. And I'm pretty sure that aye lot of F1 fans don't know who was World Champion that year, having stopped entirely watching Formula One post-Senna's death...