#10: tall millionaires

They say that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I can tell you from experience that this is true.

Unfortunately, what they failed to mention is that when you make biggies fall by wrapping their legs up and falling under them, they may very well fall on top of you.

I remember one tough game - which is a blessing, considering what happened - in which I hit my brain box against somebody’s child so hard that a golf-ball-sized protrusion poked its way furiously out of my forehead. I was on my narwhal mode.

I started to lift weights around that age, which did help me keep up, but bulgy muscles quickly became their own pursuit. At uni, I would take up powerlifting, and got fairly good at it - at the expense of any semblance of mental health.

I was 16 years-old, and just about sick of getting trampled and crushed. At the time I felt like rugby had sized me up and out, but none of that would have mattered if I still felt like rugby was an authentic part of my identity, and it just didn’t.

I still had far too much energy to stop moving or slow down even a little bit, so I needed to find something which more appropriate for someone of my slight stature.

I’m 5’7”, and my body has sometimes been known to disappear - like a sheet of paper - when observed from a perpendicular angle. The right answer was clear, I should be a jockey.

But I don’t live by right answers. Instead, I concluded… basketball. You know the one with the famously high up hoops, big jumps and impossibly long people running around in a dither.

Are you beginning to understand why I have doubts about my brain? Now I don’t necessarily blame injuries like the golf-ball bruise for my now permanent state.

For whatever reason, I just like things being difficult.

They say that adversity drives growth. It is entirely possible that my deep seated desire to become a 6’6” Adonis has compelled me to interpret that message literally. If I keep on grinding, that growth spurt is bound to kick-in, right?

When I turned to basketball I didn’t approach it the same way I had rugby. I didn’t join a team, I just started to fill every free hour, and many of the not-free hours, with time spent on basketball courts, or watching games. It didn’t matter if I was by myself or with others, so long as I was getting shots up.

On April 13th 2016, I stayed up late to catch an illegally streamed National Basketball Association fixture. This was a regular season game, and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers had no chance at making the playoffs. This game was only important because it would be Kobe’s last before retirement.

I liked him a lot. I found his work ethic inspirational, and his almost psychotically single-minded approach to perfecting his craft is something I am still seeking to emulate in my own pursuits.

Now, more than 8 years later, Kobe’s memory also serves as a tragic reminder that helicopters are not to be trusted.

In movies, in my estimation, roughly 50% of helicopters are blasted out of the sky for some reason or another. On the 26th of January 2020, Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others aboard were killed in a helicopter crash.

That may not have been the worst thing to happen in 2020 - except, of course, for those nine people - but it was exactly the sort of strange, surreal news which could have indicated just how weird that year was about to become.

Back in 2016, I watched as a 37-year-old Kobe dropped 60 points, including a kind-of game winner, against the Utah Jazz. His performance punctuated a storied career with a bang, and I cried tears of joy for my hero.

I really thought that following Kobe’s retirement, I would continue to play basketball, to love the sport, but I wouldn’t be invested in the NBA anymore.

That sentiment was echoed, interestingly enough, by Hollywood icon and apparently unhinged individual, Jack Nicholson, who was in attendance at Kobe’s farewell game.

Nicholson had been a mainstay of Los Angelese Lakers court-side seated celebrity attendees for years. When he was briefly (and strangely) chosen for an interview briefly during Kobe’s last game, he said that as Kobe was about to hang up his jersey and step away from the game, maybe he would do the same.

Just like me (the parallels are endless), Nicholson has recently returned to the NBA. He was welcomed back to his court-side seat with a video tribute and raucous applause. My return to the game has been comparatively unheralded, but that’s honestly okay. (No honestly, I’m fine, stop asking.)

This year, as the weather has started to improve, I’ve been taking advantage of Vienna’s numerous, beautiful, publicly available basketball courts, and the culture of pick-up ball that has developed as a result.

I’m finding that participating in the great bucket chase alongside other people who love the sport but don’t feel they have enough time, energy, or skill to play in an organised league, suits me very well.

I play with people who are competitive, and want to win, but are also generally not so driven by that urge as to expose the ugliest side of unfriendly competition.

There have been exceptions. I’ve seen a couple fights break out, and a few people definitely talk more trash than they ought to, considering we’re all playing for jokes anyway, but that stuff is a fairly limited irritant.

I’m a vibes-first individual, and unfortunately, often a negative-vibes-first person at that. I struggle to be in large groups of people because my instinctive, anxious response to other people is to seek out the darkest, angriest or most hostile energy around, and hyper-fixate on it.

This was true at home, when I felt the need to tiptoe around hostility suspended in the atmosphere so as not to set anything off. It was true on a rugby pitch when I felt myself being lured into the darkness of the nastiest kid (who was probably going through a lot too, in retrospect) on the pitch. It has been, and continues to be true in workplaces, in my social life, and still, on a basketball court.

I’m more aware of it now than I’ve ever been, so I can try to distance myself from that negativity, but the pull is strong and it really throws me off. When a teammate has that energy, when they get visibly and audibly irritated at another player’s miss, that’s going to do nothing but make me want to make the next shot less, purely out of nervous spite.

I need you to tell me what I’m sure as shit going to tell you.

Keep shootin’.

My return to basketball has invigorated me. I can feel myself getting better, fitter, stronger, more energetic, and more enthusiastic. All of that pours out and over into the rest of my life.

I’m waking up every morning to the excitement of watching game-recaps from the ongoing NBA Playoffs, and when my old-ass can bear the notion of staying up past midnight, I’m catching games live.

I’m the sort of person who has looked down on others for their en-masse, herd-like behaviour in obsessing over sports teams and games, getting deeply invested in the lives and work of ridiculously overpaid athletes who can often - win or lose - laugh it off all the way to the bank.

And yet here I am, invested as ever in the trials, tribulations and triumphs of tall millionaires playing a children’s game.

But I’m about done judging myself and my interests, futile as they may well be. I discourage myself from even trying when I tell myself that what I do won’t matter and that it won’t be good enough anyway. All I need is patience, and kindness, to find my space and hone my pace.

If any of this is pointless, it all is. So when I feel that something means something to me, that’s already more than enough.

Who gives a fuck?

I do :)

Without any (or very much) further ado, here’s a quick rundown of the narratives spun around tall millionaires and their careers, which has been rattling around the ol’ slightly damaged skull-meat over the past few months. And to top that off, I’ve put together a bracket illustrating my predictions for which players and teams are going to keep winning, and battle their way towards the 2024 NBA Championship.

If none of this has yet enticed you, consider this: every NBA Player on a winning Championship roster gets a very shiny, very ornate, and very expensive ring to show off, for the rest of their life.

Or, as depicted by former NBA player Kevin Garnett who starred in the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems alongside Adam Sandler, they get to show off that ring until they’re tempted by a different shiny object, for which they can make a temporary trade using their NBA winnings as collateral.

Good film. Go watch it if you need a hit of anxiety, if you haven’t recently thought ‘rich people are weird’, or if you’d like to see Adam Sandler in an actually good movie.

(I’ve heard that he’s good in Hustle, another basketball movie, too, but I haven’t seen it yet. He hoops in both of the Grown Ups movies too. Hmm. Adam Sandler basketball movie marathon, anyone? Yes please. Okay, end of self-talk section)

Tall millionaire narratives:

• Anthony Edwards is out there playing like Michael Jordan, like Kobe Bryant, with the confidence, charisma, and an ability to jump up and out of the gym before coming back down to earth with a slam bound to destroy any who dare to stand in his way. He’ll be voted league MVP within two seasons.
• Russell Westbrook. Nothing in particular about him, he’s just my all time favourite NBA player. I don’t care if you think he’s unreliable, or not a great shooter, or overly-emotional because he seems like a great human being and he will absolutely put you on a poster so get all the way off my back. Also, watch this video and dare to tell me you don’t like him.

• LeBron James is about to be 40-years-old, and he’s still one of the best players in the league. Time is catching up with him, but he’s still ahead, and still incredible. We’re blessed to have him, and I’m excited to see him play alongside his son Bronny - maybe as early as next year. Lebron may be gettin’ up there in age, but he can still throw a tantrum as well as anybody. I respect that more than anything.
• Despite LeBron James’ continuing brilliance, the ol’ heads are undoubtedly being pushed off the stage. Steph Curry isn’t in the playoffs. Kevin Durant just got swept by Anthony Edwards’ Timberwolves. LeBron James was pushed out of the playoffs by the Nuggets and league MVP Nikola Jokic, and the Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the youngest teams ever, are looking to make a deep run into these playoffs. I think they’ll make the finals.
• Over the next month, I believe that the tall millionaires playing for the New York Knicks are going to shock the tall millionaires playing for the Indiana Pacers, then Boston Celtics, before rocking the rest of the (short and poverty-ridden) world, by pushing through to a Finals victory and bringing a chip back to Madison Square Garden.

If you’ve gotten this far, take a look at my bracket and tell me how right you think I am. Alternatively, if you’re reading this in the future (ya creep), and I was (somehow) wrong… well you can go ahead and keep that to yourself.

p.s. do I still have vivid dreams of myself dunking a basketball on a regulation 10 foot rim? uhhh, yaaaaa, of course I do.

My yearbook quote was this:

“don’t waste time on a wish, strive instead for a swish. ball is life.”

I stand by it.

blog the tenth signing off