The guy on the left, in the black hat; the one who looks like he just stepped out of a Coen Brothers movie. He was on the floor during every game of the NBA Finals. Who the heck is he? Anyway, you gotta give him credit for breaking the mold with regard to Finals attire: The braided-leather-cowboy-hat-and-bandanna-around-the-neck combo was unexpectedly effective at getting him noticed, by everyone in my living room at least. (I hope all you stars in your brand-new Lakers hats were taking notes.)
18 Jun 08 · filed under: basketball · 
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I’ve got the killer app for the NBA television-viewing experience, something that will melt faces around the world and provide the league with yet another license to print money. (Props to Justin and Zidane who sparked this idea last night as we watched Game 3.)
You could call it: NBA 360, or the Courtside Package, or the Real NBA Courtside 360 Package or whatever, but the concept is simple … Arrange some microphones around/above the court, and create a pay TV service that allows fans to hear the trash talk that accompanies every game. Even better: You could eliminate the announcers, and go au naturel: Game trash talk soundtrack, nothing more.
“I feel so misunderstood, KG. Sometimes I just wish the fans could know the real Kobe.” [Photo: Stephen Dunn]David Stern will never go for it, you say? You may be right — today — but Stern is a product manager at heart. His recent crackdowns may seem moral in nature, but they’re really efforts to maintain the integrity of the current NBA brand. Of course, certain brands continually change, and some brands are forced to change. (General Motors can’t continue to be known primarily the makers of Suburbans and Hummers forever, for instance). Sometime soon, I expect that Stern will do what all good PMs do: Evolve his product and brand to respond to the market.
Why a trash-talk channel, then?
Well, my guess is that people harbor fewer and fewer illusions about what’s happening on the court. It obviously ain’t Sunday School, as much as the NBA wants you to believe it is. Also, even the slightest peek at the trash talk is fascinating. The one and only time I sat close to courtside — in Toronto, 2003, end of the season, against the Hornets — I heard Baron Davis and Rafer Alston go at it for a few seconds near the sideline and I was stunned: It was deeply personal, and profoundly entertaining. (It’s also unrepeatable on a family-oriented blog like this).
Curt Schilling sat courtside during Game 2 of the Finals, and he also was strangely compelled by the trash talk:
… About 43 times last night I heard things being said that would have made me swing at someone. These guys talk MAJOR trash on the floor, and the great part is that most of the times I’ve seen it the guy on the receiving end usually doesn’t respond much, if at all, and just plays the game, schooling the guy who feels like he needs to talk to make his game better.
For example:
Last night KG goes to the line, Lamar Odom (who I became a fan of last night) is saying “Hey KG why don’t you help on the ball down here?” Pointing to the paint, and I am guessing he’s referencing the fact that KG wasn’t down in the paint mixing it up. He says it again, loudly, KG doesn’t even acknowledge him, and sinks both. Impressive, total focus.
For the record, I was asking KG the same question from the privacy of my living room.
Anyway, on a philosophical note
For the last 10 or so years, the NBA has been in a sort of conflicted adolescence. Stern makes extreme efforts to manage an outward appearance of normality, but this barely masks the turbulence beneath the surface. He created a dress code, and he enforces strict policies on communication with the media. Meanwhile, everyone associated with the league — fans, players, coaches, etc — knows that this is all window-dressing, and dated window-dressing at that. There is a deeply compelling game within a game going on; why not productize it? There are personalities, feuds, villains, heroes, and so on — why not bring them out, and create a service that people will pay for in the process?
11 Jun 08 · filed under: basketball, ideas · (2) ·
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The New York Times recently ran some photos that were taken from the train carrying Bobby Kennedy’s body between Washington to New York. The photos themselves are amazing documents of a nation in mourning, people from all walks of life lining the tracks, holding signs, saluting or just watching, but they’re also beautiful — saturated and blurred, creating the sensation that things are moving too fast, that something is irresistibly barreling on.
The photographer, Paul Fusco, narrates a slideshow on the New York Times site, and it’s well worth a viewing. He’s nicely describes the experience around the photos, and provides some insight into the mechanics (Kodachrome film, of course). He also mentions that he hadn’t planned on taking pictures while on the train; he was simply traveling along with the coffin to take photos at the funeral.
The first thing I saw were hundreds of people on the platform … Fortunately, I just reacted. My instinct was: There’s something going on, photograph it … [The train] was a moving platform. I couldn’t change my view. I couldn’t change my perspective. I had to just … grab it, when I could.
“Everyone was there. America came out to mourn.” Photos: Paul Fusco/Magnum PhotosFusco has a show that’s currently at Danziger Project in New York, and a book coming out in the fall, too. Looks nice.
10 Jun 08 · filed under: inside art, photo, visual · (2) ·
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Chicago. A man is about to get on a routine flight. Suddenly he pauses and decides to walk away. He doesn’t know why. An hour later the plane goes down in flames. It’s dismissed as chance … Britain. A woman has an image of a black mountain that’s moving, with children underneath it. Two hours later, a Welsh schoolhouse is buried in an avalanche of coal slag. It’s dismissed as coincidence.1
New York. A book designer named Chip Kidd begins to read his New York Times. On the cover is a photo of new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a suspected puppet of former president Vladimir Putin. The photo has been torn across Medvedev’s midsection to reveal a word: Trickery. It’s dismissed as something that could only happen to a famous book designer who has been known to use this sort of graphic element.
But really, was it all in his mind, or was it much more than that? You decide.
1 If you were a TV-watcher in the 80’s, you probably saw a commercial for the Time-Life books commercial for a series called Mysteries of the Unknown. This was my favorite: “The Midwest. A mother feels a sharp pain in her right hand. Far away at that exact same moment, her daughter screams as she touches a hot pan. Just chance?” Check it out, for old times sake [YouTube].
09 May 08 · filed under: photo, visual · (0) ·
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Muxtape has blown up — just a matter of time, I guess — but I hope this doesn’t mean that they’ll add a bunch of “features” to it. It’s basically two things — the homepage where you pick a mix, and the player where you listen — and it doesn’t need much more. Really! Please!
Part one of two: The home page. It’s where the “navigation” is. There’s no keyword search, no “categories.” Just you, the name of each mix like a sticker on a cassette tape, and the sense of rooting around in a cryptic virtual shoebox, popping a mix in, listening for a little while, striking gold, or not, and moving on. It’s a really lovely and evocative of the simpler, more mysterious times.
Part two of two: The “player.” It’s genius. No “friends” or “people who are also listening to this” or “messaging” or “you may also like.” Just the songs, links to buy them, and an indication of which track is playing.
For the record, I don’t think it needs much else. Whatever happens, I really hope this stuff is NOT added:
- Search. Please, no search. Of course search would make it easier to find mixes that “match” your keywords, but who wants that? Well, I did, at first, but after I poked around I realized that I was having way more fun exploring, letting go of the way that I normally explore. We need more non-keyword-oriented ways of exploring! Seriously! It’s way more fun to roll the dice than to look for what you think that you want, and it’s somehow more appropriate to music
- Any kind of “profile-generating.” The madness must be stopped somewhere, sometime. A way to connect with mix-makers would be nice, but no names, birthdays, pictures, blogs, or any of that.
- Any kind of more “predictable” homepage. Please. Just show the random stuff. Let people start here. It’s scary and frustrating and annoying at first, but it becomes fun, magical. Perfect! Done!
08 May 08 · filed under: ixd, music, web · (1) ·
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