An old friend called me the other day, someone I’ve known for more than thirteen years, and during the course of our conversation, he brought up a girl I used to date. I should stress here that this wasn’t a casual, three month girlfriend; I was with her for eight of the thirteen years he and I have known each other. But when he brought her up, for a moment, he couldn’t remember her name.
At the time, he suggested that he’d been very forgetful lately and claimed that this must be the cause of his clumsy recall, an excuse that seems unlikely as he’s barely 31 and has rarely, as long as I’ve known him, participated in any sort of activity (alcohol or otherwise) that is often blamed for such memory lapses. It seems to me that the reason for his forgetfulness in this particular instance was a much more understandable one: he hasn’t seen or spoken to her in almost four years and so is just simply, naturally forgetting.
I bring this up not to blather on about my personal life but to make a broader point about memory. Last week I was sick with the flu and, thus, had a lot of time on my hands to troll around the internet and, in the process, inevitably ended up watching a bunch of old highlight clips.
This one, in particular, stuck out to me because even though I was watching basketball when most of these highlights were current and remember the lean 76er’s short-shorts Barkley and the more savvy I’m not a role model Phoenix Round Mound, I had nearly forgotten the ferociousness with which he played the game, the freight train drives to the basket that saw him swing from the rim to keep himself from flying into the second row and the length and power that allowed a 6’6” forward to lead the league in rebounding in the ‘86/’87 season.
What had replaced these memories were more recent images of Chuck quipping with D. Wade in cell phone commercials, lazily smirking at Kenny and Ernie on TNT, and being too winded to talk after a foot race with a 67 year old referee.
We can’t help but interpret the past through the distorted convex lens of the present. The recent history of what things have become inevitably informs our concepts of what they were, and also what we expect them to be. It’s not that I don’t know Sir Charles is a former MVP, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and an Olympic gold medalist. It’s just that more recent memories are more accessible, and therefore are more apt to shape what comes to mind when I hear the syllables Charles and Barkley.
So what happens to our perception of the NBA after the lockout ends? How many fans will be so frustrated with the players or the owners or both that they just never come back? And how does the league itself function after this much vitriol has been so publicly aired? Assuming the sides agree on a deal tomorrow, how much damage has already been done? Even discounting the alienation of fans, how can these two sides go back to working with each other? How good can players feel about again working for their respective owners? How much trust has already been eroded?
I’m not sure there is an answer to all this, but what’s clear is that no one’s memory will be erased anytime soon and that the identity of the league as we know it will most certainly be changed. It already is.
