i wish i was a little bit taller

Greece is a place where the unpredictable becomes the norm. Where a economic bailout is never just an economic bailout and a game is never just a game. 

We had one game left in the season last year, the most tumultuous of all seasons. Twice during the year we changed home courts due to unpaid bills, over 20 players came and went. Even during my short stay I wore 4 different jerseys numbers with my last name awkwardly superglued over Paplougu whose name was superglued over Haynes. We were moved halfway through the year from our beach front palace apartments to a roach infested hotel amongst the anonymous urban sprawl that is Athens over an hour away from our home court. 

AEK, one of the most famous and most popular clubs in Greece, if not all of Europe was on the verge of being relegated to the second division for the first time in their illustrious 90 year history. The ultimate humiliation. Yet despite it all and the ever increasing $2 million debt the fans continued to come in droves alternatively cheering then spitting on us up until the very last 10 minutes of the season.

We needed to beat cross-town rivals Panionios at home and hope that the northern Athens team Illysiakos lost on the road to not only remain in the top league but also rescue our respect.

Our fans packed in the gym hours before the last game, disobeying every fire safety code ever written. Their large, booming drums erupted through the small gym, banners hung proudly everywhere. The collective chanting of the fans was one decibel level away from deafness and the energy inside put any Duke-North Carolina, Real-Barca game to shame. The walls of the tiny rundown gym echoed the hopes and insecurities of everyone inside. This wasn’t just a game for the fans or even for us for that matter. It was more, it was a referendum on who we are, on our identities. A referendum on the team we’d chosen to play for and the team they’d chosen to support. Sport, after all, is like a razor-blade cutting through our ambitious childish dreams of what we could have been and the reality of who we’ve become. In many ways our team defines us.

2 minutes to play and we took the lead. The clock ticked down, each possession that much more important.

Everyone was on the edge of their seats.

Finally, an impossible three-pointer with the shot-clock running down from our best-shooter put the game in our hands. A late turnover by Panionios and a wave a relief ran through us. 1 minutes to play, 30 seconds. I put my hands up at half-court. We’d done it, avoided the ultimate humiliation.

Or had we?

Word began to spread through the gym that Illysiakos had won on the road on a last second shot. We ran the score up in our game, eventually winning by 10, but it didn’t matter. We were relegated. The first time in 90 years.

We walked slowly to our locker room in shame, then the fun started. Our fans turned against us, despite winning we had ultimately betrayed their loyalty. Molotov cocktails were lobbed towards the locker room window, exploding against the side of the building. Rocks and coins crashed against the walls. The police force arrived in full riot gear and soon an all out melee broke out between our fans and the national guard. We watched it all from the tiny rectangular window in our locker room.

3 hours later the police escorted us toward our team bus to take us back to our hotel. The terrain around usthat guy! second from right! mirrored Beirut in the 80’s, anger splashed across the concrete. Ambulances driving away, and pieces of rubble everywhere.

As I walked by a row of cops and turned to thank them for helping us get out of the locker room alive, a tall cop with an AEK sticker placed on the side of his riot helmet looked straight into my eyes and forcefully called my name. Then in one swift motion tilted his head back and spat on my shoes in disgust.

I look down, then around me in confusion. Finally looking back at our Greek power forward Theo for direction. He turned towards me and merely shrugged his shoulders then flipped his palms upright as if to say, ‘what did you expect? You’re in Greece.’

Currently the world seems to be split into two sides. Team Lebron, and Team Hater. Without commiting a crime, Lebron James has become a hugely polarizing figure of late. If basketball is an art form (which it is) then he'd be Vincent Van Gogh, the slightly misunderstood genius, who will one day be looked at with eyes of praise. However, currently he is being vilified and mocked. The disapproval towards Lebron by most has turned venomous, crescendoing at the Finals. Fans, didn't so much celebrate Dallas' victory they exulted in Lebron's failure. There are well over 100 facebook groups titled 'I Hate Lebron,' there are websites dedicated to loathe him, some sports writers make a living off of feeding the hate. We could all say that's part of sport, but is it?

After the last Finals game he was asked what its like to have so many millions of people rejoicing in your downfall. He said: "all the people that was rooting on me to fail … at the end of the day, tomorrow they have to wake up and have the same life that [they had] before they woke up today. They got the same personal problems they had today.” 

Eloquence might not be his forté, but he is absolutely right. Us, as fans, have gone past the point of merely criticizing his game, we've begun to hope for his personal failure to feel better about ourselves. As a professional player I've seen fans overstep the brittle, imaginary boundary of fandom, often putting too much stake into the success of their favorite team. When things don't work out they can sometimes make it personal and forget that athletes can't always play the way they'd like. It's fair to cheer and boo and pick sides and dissect every detail of the game but we've slowly turned Lebron into what we've wished for, a failure. That's sad, because only so often in our lives do we see talent as great as this, yet we're in danger of tearing the Starry Night right off the walls of the Museum of Modern Art. .

Deep down I think he went to Miami to satiate our comparisons of him to Jordan. He felt he had to win multiple championships to be considered an all-time great and the Heat gave him a chance to do that. Then, he probably also felt that by donating millions to the Boys and Girls club and taking less money to go to Miami he'd be looked at favorably. He's not the kind of person who basks in being hated by the majority of your countrymen, none of us are, not even Jordan. 

He's not been conventional in his decisions, but they're his decisions. Yet somehow we've taken offense and personalized our disproval. He's become 'arrogant,' or 'selfish,' or 'not self-aware,' or any other adjective that have blurred the lines between art and artist. 

It's unfortunate because he can't win. He's not Jordan and never will be, but instead of appreciating their differences, we hate him because of it. 

This isn't to say that Lebron isn't without fault. His game could use some serious tweaking, maybe his mental toughness isn't what it should be, maybe he defers too much late in the game. And that's fine for all of us to debate, but as fans we'd do well to take a step back and appreciate his game for what it is.

One day Lebron will reach his full potential and achieve something great. But it won't be for us the fan, and it won't be for his so-called 'legacy,'. Let's just hope when he finally does win a championship he doesn't have to cut off an ear to do it.  

from Flinder Boyd <lildozen@gmail.com>

to info@pneudart.com

from Judy Lunt <judy@pneudart.com> to     Flinder Boyd <lildozen@gmail.com> cc Blair Soars <bsoars@pneudart.com> date Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 9:01 PM subject RE: Question

Charles and I played together in Santiago de Compostela in 2007/2008. He is now in the 4th year of a successful overseas career. Currently with Avila in the Spanish LEB league. Since I'm lazy and don't update my blog as much as I should I asked him to write something for my blog about our year together. Instead he made me sound much more interesting than I am, so he's clearly a great writer! He also has his own blog, which is interesting and insightful- http://www.notjustabasketballplayer.com/

By Charles Ramsdell

I once saw this man ask a couple girls, while standing directly in front of Santiago de Compostela’s famous Cathedral, where the Cathedral was. They looked at him as if he was hobbling around with both legs in one pant leg and pointed just over Flinder’s shoulder at the huge facade of the Cathedral. He was joking of course, he just wanted a reason to talk to the girls. He then took it a step further and asked if it was true that there was a restaurant inside the Church. I think they got nervous at that point but Flinder turned on the charm and invited them to a party we were having that weekend. They showed up. That is what we were doing that day. That was Flinder, he had no fear or sense of embarrassment to go up and talk to anyone about anything. Literally anything.

Flinder, being the international man that he is, had learned about eighty-five percent of the Spanish language about a month into his first year in Spain, the year before I arrived, and was designated as the team’s translator. Flinder had a strange way of translating the coaches instructions. It wasn’t like he would tell you something differently than what the coach had said. He would just say it more colorfully and with a better vocabulary. The opposing team’s point guard wasn’t ‘fast’, he could ‘run like a bedazzled gazelle’. Their center wasn’t able to score from the post ‘in many different ways’, he was a player with a ‘plethora of intriguing moves at his disposal’. He also enjoyed giving little nicknames to whomever was the subject of the translations. If you were able to keep a straight face in the locker room or out on the court during the translations then they went off without a hitch. Sometimes it was difficult. As you know, since you’re a reader of his blog, Flinder is a very funny guy and snickers would break out from time to time from the English speaking section of the locker room.

 Flinder is a great basketball player. He has had a long career and has many seasons left in his knees. He’s won championships, big games, and represented his country on the international stage. All of these accomplishments pale in comparison to his greatest gift to the game of basketball: the Mustache Game.

Flinder convinced our team to grow out our beards for a couple weeks and then the morning of a home game The mustache by which all other mustaches' are judgedlate in the season to shave them down to mustaches. We showed up to shoot-around and video that day with a range of different types of colorful mustaches. We sat down to watch some scouting report video and the coach just stared at us for a few minutes trying to figure out what was different. I’m not sure if he was upset or amused. Our coach at the time was one of the most socially awkward people born. The mustache game was a success, even though we lost the actual game. We were successful however in getting several of the other team’s players to ask if we all indeed were sporting mustaches.

 I look forward to the day when we both get on a team together again. If that doesn’t happen, then maybe in our forties when we are back in the States we will wreck a YMCA league together.