Shut up, basketblogger.

The superstar narrative is a powerful one. We like singular heroes facing insurmountable tasks so much that almost all human storytelling is built around it. Hercules, Oedypus and Achilles have evolved into Superman, Batman and the Brooklyn Knight, but we are no different than our earliest predecessors – we want to…

I can’t tell you how to fall in love, but I’ve always agreed with Mr. Darcy’s explanation of it from Pride and Prejudice: “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” I’m not here to argue with…

The Armory Show was a portal through space and time, crossing oceans and giving American artists and the American public a glimpse of the future. But describing this moment as a quivering fork in the road for both art and culture is too stark a binary. It was more like the introduction of a virus. Modernism began to…

Shut up, basketblogger.

ICYMI, I wrote about Dwight Howard's obsession w/David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest here: http://t.co/USxZM45kCU

To do so, we’re going to look to the East, and I don’t mean the Eastern Conference. We’re going to shift the paradigm and look at tanking through the prism of Buddhism and its views on suffering, impermanence and attachment.

To be honest, one thing I've thought a lot today, in addition to "Man, that Finals was great," is "I did it." Odd feeling of accomplishment.

Trying to pull a good, overlooked angle out of the playoffs is a lot like being a good rebounder who’s 5’10” in a pickup game when a bunch of 6’4” guys show up to play. I know this because that’s exactly the guy I am. Rebounding goes from a matter of effort and determination to simply being physically impossible. As…

Shut up, basketblogger.

Given his unique skill set, it's a bit surprising that Curry isn't already more popular outside the Bay Area, for it's hard to imagine a more relatable, familiar player. He is relatively small and can't jump all that high, just like most of us who aren't in the NBA.

Ian: You’re starting a book club and the first selection is the classic Phillip K. Dick novel, ‘A Scanner Darkly.’ Which four NBA players do you invite to join?

Right, this too. Steve Novak is white. He’s so pale (How pale is he?) that he appears almost translucent. More than that: he mostly lacks professional-grade muscle tone and never quite breaks into a full sprint on the court. Rather, he ambles goofily, with his sloping, shoulders dangling idly, as if they knew the…

To know someone is usually to empathize with them. They cease to be a skin-wrapped tumbleweed, and morph into something beyond flesh and movement — a man with tendencies and tribulations that you can recognize in yourself. The more you learn of the human, the more human he becomes. I feel a connection to Michael…

In both music and sports, we mark boundaries. We draw staves on paper, divide them into measures, press record and stop, pick an opening track and a closer. We put lines on the ground, draw circles and half-circles, plant hoops and measure them at 10 feet. And within these spaces, like pillow forts or dioramas, we…

Lillard is Barry Sanders on morphine; before handing the ball to the referee after scoring a touchdown, he gets down into a yoga position and then paints an empty lake. Untouched bodies of water come to mind because he is simply placid, so serene after defeating the Lakers that he made you hope that when the cameras…