Dan Savage has left me with many messages that will be forever emblazoned somewhere in my mind, most unrepeatable on a family blog like the one you’re reading, but if there were ever one that seemed more important than others, that most important tidbit would be that once can only truly know what one loves or even likes after one’s tried a lot of different kinds. All true adherents to the game have had those spells, those months or even years where a sabbatical seemed necessary to any semblance of a normal life. Whether deviating because of college, girls, jobs, an actual life— whatever the reason, we’ve all had to stop watching the game with same fervor as we once did, if only to see what it’d be like. For me, college represented a (quite literal) chance to shed my walls of unopened Star Wars figures, elementary school honor roll certificates and, yes, SLAM UP Kobe Bryant posters; I couldn’t properly lose myself in it if I were to live the way I did as a pudgy tween, meaning a clean, bloodless severance from basketball. For a while, I held out, getting my sports fix from leaving on Astros games as I finished homework and gobbled down endless thin crust Domino’s Pizza slices, eventually caving to watch a little ball while still keeping at a Kevin-Durant-arm’s-length. Then it happened: that moment in basketball when things that didn’t quite seem impossible occurred; no, something I had never even thought of happened. But it was just a block.
Just a simple block, in a way I hadn’t ever seen one, in a game I hadn’t expected one, by a player that I didn’t know could do such a thing. Tim Duncan, the game’s best player, a man who made sure that his domination was so mundane as to be irreversible, had another of his imminent game-enders, a flush from just a few feet away, sent back by this impetuous kid with nonsensical tattoos. Ginobili comes off of the handoff brilliantly, going right as he’s not supposed to be able to, making the excitable Amar’e Stoudemire follow the Argentian and lose sight of a man he never should have; Manu makes the perfect shovel pass and as Duncan prepares to snuff out this Suns team’s season, Stoudemire does what he should be able to and makes the play. The ball, flying downward; the Suns lead, this close to evaporated; the hand of Amar’e, bounding upward to get under the dunk attempt in a way I had never seen before, the closest I have ever seen to a human erasing another man’s actions like some poorly thought out scrawling on a notepad. Like that, Amar’e Stoudemire reminded me what this game could do, what he could do, what it all meant. And like that, it looks like he’s done.
2012 has been less than kind to Amar’e, once such an undiluted beacon of pure light in this sport that seems endlessly stocked with flash, a flaming blue star hanging in the middle of the Vegas strip. Reminding everyone exactly how human every one of these “freaks”, these “beasts” are, Stoudemire lost his brother in a car accident earlier this year. Nothing can compare to tragedy of this sort, of course; still, the rest of the year has treated the former Suns stalwart less than genially. When Jeremy Lin began his brilliant stretch of play, Stoudemire was away from the team, grieving his loss; when he returned, he found himself an uncomfortable, if accepting, secondary option to a guy working on a 10-day-contract what seems like moments ago. Prior to and after Lin’s going supernova on the world at large, STAT had looked sluggish and frustrated playing in an offense in which he was not a primary option, while continuing his general ineptitude on the defensive end; many theorized that he had to be injured, and why wouldn’t they, if they had seen what we all had in Phoenix?
As many great writers of this sport have discussed, the beauty of basketball can be seen in the narrative of the possession, of which hundreds make up a game which make up a season, a 24-second period that can at once be a microcosm of a greater storyline and its own fantastic, miserable, tragic, captivating, heroic moment; in most half-court possessions, some version of the pick-and-roll is employed, furthering this idea that every basketball possession is like the last and also completely different. the middle pick-and-roll that Stoudemire ran, most often in his career with Steve Nash but also for a while with Raymond Felton, represented all that seemed possible within such simplicity. After setting the screen and turning the corner, all hell had been unleashed on defenders of the play; Stoudemire’s stunning blend of controlled grace and awesome power mostly left those attempting to keep him from the rim with the unfortunate choice of trying to cheat off of the ball-handler to deny him the ball, leaving one of the greatest shooters ever in Nash with space in the paint, having a help defender from the perimeter double in the paint, opening an array of looks for the Suns’ shooters, or, gulp, try to stop Stoudemire one-on-one slashing toward the basket with zeal. I say that he mostly gave this choice because many times, there was no choice, simply an end point.
His career a sped-up flipbook with frustratingly constant plot twists, Stoudemire has went through so many different eras to his short career that one forgets exactly who he was coming into this league, a preps-to-pro project pick that looked like Shawn Kemp without any of the polish; of course, he similarly ate through the league in his initial campaign, looking none of his 19 or 20 years, or maybe looking all of them as he bounded around joyfully and waited for the next opportunity at which he could swallow the ball, hoop and league whole. When Nash came to replace the malcontented basketball prodigy Stephon Marbury, Stoudemire quickly transitioned from a dizzying frenzy of energy galloping around into Nash’s Mjolnir, the hammer of God that he could throw down whenever necessary to remind opponents exactly what they had to fear. And then the knee-surgery. And the failed comeback, the deep playoff run with Diaw, the reemergence as no longer a weapon of Nash’s but a separate and equally horrifying controller of space, a man who had found the exact limits of his seemingly limitless potential and the sheer genius involved in maximizing it. Phoenix became basketball paradise, where writers of all stripes— uselessly nostalgic, wide-eyed and effusive, seemingly racist— could create their own versions of what this offensive oasis truly meant on its own and to the greater NBA universe.
In the end, I hope that this endures at the image of Amar’e, a wunderkind that honestly developed himself into a mastermind, even if he and his best chance at what we retroactively deem greatness never quite attained what we thought that they could, whether it was due to a detached retina, a violent hip-check that made two men very reasonably get up off of a bench to protect their teammate, the subsequent suspension that seemed to gift-wrap a title for the already formidable 2007 Spurs, or a decimated line-up that just couldn’t outplay the Lakers with its feeble options outside of STAT and Nash. At his best, he could make such nonsense seem so possible without even touching the ball, his presence that imposing and awing. That is what I hope, but I know better.
I know that it’s New York and that that half-season of pure, giddy fun will be roundly dismissed when people stare at that millstone of a contract, given in that offseason when everyone wanted their very own LeBron consolation prize and $100 million maybe didn’t seem like the absurdly large sum that it is. I know that that city’s media has little sympathy for bulging discs or dead brothers or poor team chemistry when thinking about why the Knicks can’t just sign Chris Paul or Dwight Howard and make all of this stuff, this salary cap numbers game, go away. I know that Robert Sarver probably thinks that he’s validated in his pennywise ways when he looks at STAT’s newest health concerns. I know that he will be lumped in with Carmelo Anthony if this stretch of Knicks basketball doesn’t go the way New Yorkers want, need, it to go: somewhere, anywhere, near a Larry O’Brien trophy. I know, I know: fair or not, Stoudemire’s legacy among those nameless dunderheads who seem to scribe this sport’s unwritten history will be that of another New York savior-turned-pariah, not the paragon of unforeseen possibility that breathless viewers knew such a short time ago.
This might not be the end for Stoudemire, as his career will almost certainly drag on for a big longer; hell, in this league, with the gifts he had, another ten years seems completely realistic, if not inevitable. He could bring that once-gorgeous jumper basically anywhere if he shores up his defensive liabilities to some (or any) extent and be a helpful member of an NBA team for a very long time. But that genius, that spark that lit up in him, his point guard and every watchful eye that knew when he got space, something beyond magic, something impossible, might happen— that’s almost certainly not going to return with him when Stoudemire himself comes back from this back injury because we haven’t seen it once this year.
Knowing what we know this year makes that moment last season when STAT acknowledged Blake Griffin, an unmistakable nod of approval and gesture of mutual understanding between superhumans, that much more painful, as if Amar’e knew his own moment going nova was coming to its end, soon to be dwarfed into a career of pick-and-pops and shaky takes toward the basket. I can’t imagine what it might be to lose that or any of what he’s lost this year, but I can remember what he had and what he could do: remind people exactly what it is that they love about this truly gratifying game.
