The Mercy Rule - Contemporary Magic

The most important thing to know about former Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy—more than his more-remarked-upon-than-actual, but also kind-of-actual resemblance to bepenised yam/veteran porn personage Ron Jeremy, more than his (generally quite successful) record as an NBA coach—is that he’s unbalanced. Not chemically, but with his time. This is a man who quite possibly does not know the identity of the current President of the United States and doesn’t feel badly about it, who hasn’t seen a movie in a theater since Regarding Henry, and who almost certainly slips up on a regular basis and says things like, “transition defense, you guys!” to his wife during sex. In other words, Stan Van Gundy is a fairly prototypical NBA coach, which means that the most important thing to know about labeling him “unbalanced” is that it’s a compliment, given his profession.

There was a time when NBA coaches were a more diverse group than the present fraternity. Don Nelson, who, over several decades, made a bunch of teams much more fun and somewhat more likely to win games, was basically @DadBoner—at least insofar as he did a lot of media interviews while drinking Bud tallboys and wearing Big Johnson t-shirts—but actually funny. Lenny Wilkens and Chuck Daly won a ton of games and projected some faintly American Dream vibes, in that both were blue-collar dudes who became really good at a difficult job, and were therefore able to both recognize and afford really sharp suits.

“Artest’s powerful and perverse anti-appeal for judge-y right wing types is obvious, at least insofar as he is a large, unbalanced, famous black guy who chased rich, heckling white fans around with the obvious intent to smash. The Fox Nation story on Artest’s elbow has the comments section you’d expect—people grumping that they only watch NASCAR in their home, Paultards Paultarding, anonymous racist cheesedick office drones scratching a noxious itch by writing things like “NBA and NFL are chock full of useless filth” and “Always the same. You can take the ‘homeboy’ outta ‘da ‘hood,’ but you can’t take ‘da ‘hood’ outa the ‘homeboy.’” That the story was covered at all on the right wing’s ulcerous answer to Buzzfeed—”Fox Nation Thinks This Post Is OBNOXIOUS”—is telling.”

—Ron Artest/Metta World Peace is the NBA player that the Fox Nation loves to hate.

Sex, one of the world’s dumber sayings goes, is like pizza, in that it’s great when it’s great and still good when it’s bad. There are adults who say this—right now, a ponytailed manager at a GameStop is saying it to his young employees in hopes of convincing them that he has experience in both; Dr. Drew, who is technically an adult-appearing marzipan-skinned insincerity droid, wrote said words in Oprah’s magazine; there are thousands of people in a Facebook group celebrating the expression.

For people who exist on a diet comprised exclusively of bad sex and bad pizza—Adam Carolla, Jay Mariotti, reality-show contestants on VH1—this may seem witty or true. But it’s not true: bad sex is sort of terrible, and bad pizza is incalculably worse, especially those slices with ziti on them. Sex is not like pizza in the way pizza is supposed to be like sex. The week before the NCAA Tournament, however, is like pizza in the way pizza is supposed to be like sex. That is, it’s sometimes—even often—sort of terrible, but it is also and always enjoyable, and sometimes great. There is also a disconcerting association to be made here with regard to Papa John’s, whose founder often shows up during college basketball commercial breaks, testifying to the camera how much fresh peppers and “real meats” mean to him personally, in an earnest tone most people reserve for proposals of marriage. But back to our metaphor.

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My NBA Hipsterism Problem, And Ours

In terms of how it gets used—which is often and poorly and carelessly enough to have legally assaulted “meaning”—the word hipster currently means something like “youngish city-dwelling white person with interests.” Though again, “meaning” is not quite the right word here. Hipster as it’s used refers to a specific type of person that likes a specific type of thing, and because Our Dumbest whites can’t stop giggle-shrieking the word long enough to figure out the type of person or thing in question, what we’re talking about is more less a word than mere sound. And anyway, once a term has become a laugh track cue on a B-grade sitcom—where it is used to rip on people who wear knit caps at seasonally inappropriate times (Kid Rock) and listen to Coldplay (your aunt)—it’s best to take it to the vet, say one last goodbye to the hobbling and slobbery old guy, and put it to sleep. All of which is to say that there is something faintly ridiculous about the idea that the NBA has a hipster issue.