Last Call: Read This
Carnegie, Marc
LAST CALL by Marc Carnegie Read This N APOLEON SAID THAT IT WAS JUST a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but I don't remember him letting on what comes after that. What could the...
...Snapped Chicago's Ron Harper: "I hope he can predict where he's spending summer vacation...
...Goddamn," the kid thought, "he ain't gonna shoot the next one...
...The basketball playoffs (sadly over by the time you read this) consume my attention in late spring, and it is a small miracle that the July issue of TAS ever gets finished...
...ANYWAY MAYBE NOW SOMEONE WILL talk trash to Juwan Howard about his preposterous television commercial while lighting him up for thirty points...
...THE TRASH TALK IN THIS YEAR'S PLAYOFFS was especially delicious...
...04 86 July r 9 9 7 • The American Spectator...
...My favorite features Juwan Howard going about his daily routine—sit-ups, dribbling, shooting—without ever looking up from an apparently fascinating tome...
...But the piece de resistance came in Game i of the Finals, held on a Sunday, when Karl ("The Mailman") Malone was at the free-throw line with the score tied and just nine seconds left in the game...
...One possibility is the "Reading Is Fundamental" series of television commercials, in which various pseudo-literate basketball players impress upon us (in barely unbroken English) the importance of reading...
...either, which is one reason why I've seen Juwan's ridiculous commercial several-dozen times...
...IN THE JUNE ISSUE OF GENTLEMEN'S QUARTERLY, Jayson Williams recalls a game in his first year in the pros when he tried to defend against Bird, who immediately got the ball, uttered a hearty "Hey, rookie"—and then sank a three-point basket in his face...
...Malone—who had waited twelve years to get to this championship series—missed both shots...
...Stepping into the locker room before a three-point shooting contest against his fellow All-Stars, Bird cackled, "Which one of you ass----- is gonna come in second...
...Swish...
...In the 1992 Olympics, before the Angolan national team was to take on the USA's Dream Team, a reporter asked Charles Barkley what he knew about the tiny African republic...
...Asked about the off-season training regimen of fellow Celtic Kevin McHale—a jaunty 6' ro-player who hated lifting weights—Bird replied, 'Well, he switches from Miller to Miller Lite...
...Urn, that's the blank part, Juwan...
...The Americans won 116-48...
...OF COURSE I HAVEN'T BEEN SPENDING my leisure hours reading An Analysis etc...
...Bird, Williams says, "[messed] up my mind so much, I didn't want to play basketball anymore...
...Nor was he averse to chiding his teammates...
...Michael Jordan is alleged to be one of the finest yappers on the court today...
...Then he hoists a four-inch thick reference book with a knowing glance and nods, "I better get started...
...Surely he is the only editor in the country who knows off the top of his head where Jack Sikma played college ball...
...At the end of this little propaganda film he is seated next to an imposing stack of musty volumes...
...Yo, Juwan, your defense is like the first page of your book...
...But while Wlady is a fussy aesthete about the game, I love basketball for the incessant bragging and badgering and trash-talking...
...The next time Bird did it again, and then again, eventually torching the rookie for fourteen points in six minutes...
...Unless you've sat courtside yourself, and slogged through the innumerable bad books about the sport, you can't imagine the range of taunting—from playful to vicious—that takes place both on and off the court...
...The Bulls won the game...
...The Bulls' Scottie Pippen strolled casually over to Malone and whispered, "The mailman doesn't deliver on Sunday...
...Once I start a good book," he grins, "I just can't put it down...
...Alonzo Mourning, the much-overrated $1o5 million man for the Miami Heat, boldly predicted his team would beat the defending-champion Chicago Bulls in the fourth game of their best-of-seven series...
...Totally blank...
...BARKLEY-WHOSE TWO NIGHTLY PIZZAS in college earned him the nickname "The Round Mound of Rebound"—is an outspoken fellow and a fine player (and even a Republican), but he's not even near the top of the list for trash talkers...
...Bird probably would have told him: what mind...
...When I finish one, I can't wait to start the next one...
...What could the next step be to the post-ridiculous...
...The next time Bird got the ball, he faked Williams into jumping up in the air and went around him for another basket...
...Or, in cruder form, it could be just: "Read this...
...The Heat won (barely), but then were eliminated by the Bulls in the very next game...
...But Larry Bird ("The Hick from French Lick") may have been the greatest mouth ever...
...and just because the players don't sit around reading Wilde doesn't mean they don't have a gift for the truly inspired bon mot...
...It's not only that I don't believe he's spending his leisure hours perusingAn Analysis ofthe Common Dihedral Properties of the Oxygen Molecule...
...The only thing I know about Angola," Barkley replied, "is Angola's in trouble...
...The one-upmanship never ceases to amaze...
...It's that, when he scrutinizes the book, he's looking at the inside front cover...
...Wlady is also a hoops aficionado, and one of the best aspects of my job here has been listening to WP dissect the previous night's game while drawing upon his prodigious mastery of the game's arcana...
Vol. 30 • July 1997 • No. 7
