Sunday, January 5, 2014

Obama's Jump Shot for the Ages

Now we know why Barack Obama spent so much time in the gym those last days in Chicago before taking off for Afghanistan. He was practicing jump shots, preparing for the sensational 25 footer he sank in the Kabul gym in front of cheering US troops.
All practitioners prepare. Professionals are defined as much by preparation as practice. Great professionals practice as Obama does, their focus on key moments, striking, often unexpected occasions and opportunities. ("Photo ops" is the vulgar phrase.)The great practitioner takes a longer view than the people around him. The fine, diligent New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza about Obama making his slow, challenged way to political office in and through Chicago shows him learning the ropes and continually abandoning them for other ropes, other learning, other modes of advancement. The same goes for his negotiating with University of Chicago law deans and professors who wanted to recruit this brilliant, attentive young man,one going so far as to tell him after a political defeat that he had no future in politics but might well have a great career in the academy and then perhaps as a public intellectual, a la Judge Richard Posner. Obama accepted an office, a stipend, and some lecturing on constitutional law, but nurtured his political career, his long view, as he wanted.
Because of the recent Wimbledon tournament, I think of Richard Williams, seeing the money and glory earned by women tennis players, buying a book on the sport in order to learn it and then working thousands of hours with two of his daughters to make them international champions.
These are great triumphs of practice and professionalism. The knowledge of oneself, the people around, contemporary conditions, and future possibilities is so great for both these
men--one is tempted to use the word genius for them. The basketball shot that Obama made in that gym was photographed and sent around the world. I expect that it will become what is too frequently called "iconic," and will be found in history books or their digital equivalents for a long time...
TNR July 2008

13 comments:

bagoh20 said...

So that's 2 buckets out of 24 attempts that I've seen. His cracker-based upbringing sucked the mojo right out of him.

Chip Ahoy said...

One is not tempted to use the word genius for practicing basketball shot instead of focusing on key landmark namesake legislation, showing no interest in that beyond campaigning for its passage amounting to demonizing marginalizing ridiculing opposition, you know, making friends, and any one who is tempted to use 'genius' for that and not 'shiftless,' 'cynical,' 'lazy,' is too stupid to listen to.

This reminded me of something I'm tempted to post about. The contrast between what I recall and what appears to be factual about Dushore.

I have a map in my mind. I know what our house and immediate environs looks like and I carry those images with me. It involves two girlfriends that lived across the street. A street nearly too dangerous for me to cross. I lacked all judgement regarding automobiles/distance/speed/my ability to cross in time, so if I saw a car in the distance I couldn't cross. Until I learned how to judge better. Then a whole world opened up.

Immediately there is a garage with a basketball hoop so high up so distant and the ball so heavy the very idea of making it through the hoop is a remote impossibility. We did spend time there trying and I cannot throw the ball a fraction of the way required far less aim it well enough to actually make it through the hoop. But the outstanding thing is, the net is complete. The garage is on a hill, it extends farther than needed and becomes a barn that houses a horse and the girl's pony.

Her family house next to that. And next to that a dairy. Her father owns the dairy.

The other girl, Judy is more interesting, her family more eccentric. Their house more exotic with adornments and extra balconies all over. One of her aunts lived with them. I saw her ironing. A parrot on her shoulder. That talks! Later, the lady walked out onto her own bedroom balcony absentminded as to the parrot that took off. And that was the end of the parrot.

Turns out, from internet searching and google earth, I see that dairy was rather important and served the whole area. Barry and I build a tree house on the far side of her pasture, the girls' family's pasture. Next to a creek. The creek leading to a pond. And all that IS visible on google earth. But nothing else matches what I recall. The houses did look like that, somewhat unique it turns out, crunched together like that in a little town, but all the small things I recall I cannot find; mortuary family, cool play things there too, I played in the caskets with their daughter, the school I went to, the library I recall, the houses on hills with lots of steps.

Imagine the crap I'd have got up to had we stayed there and I grew up there. Girls all over the place just itching to do stuff.

Judy, the parrot lady girl, went to school with me, she was second grade I was first. She yelled at Barry and me, "You boys better stop doing that. That's BAD for your BACK!"

Barry was piggybacking me, and it was fun, and we both stopped and thought, "What a nosy little bitch." She carefully explained piggybacking is bad. Then we started dating. Barry wasn't interested in her. Too young.

JAL said...

I can't decide if I am nauseous from the upper respiratory virus which is trying to lay me low, or from the ongoing revelations of the idolatry of the Obamites.

Which daily becomes even more offensive.

Iconic is not a word I can associate with this person.

Unless it is the iconic idolatry of a large number of American voters.

deborah said...

Now, Bags, don't go all racialist on me :)

Chip, I've spent a ton of time looking at google earth. My dad was stationed at El Toro for a while, and I can still recognize some features, though a lot of the base housing has been torn down. If you look closely, you can see a large circle that was a sidewalk. I used to get off the bus and walk to the babysitter's on that circle.

I can see a lot more in Oceanside. All houses are still standing, and only one school has been torn down. I have a very good spatial memory of the routes I walked to schools and babysitters, places we played, etc. It's amazing.

deborah said...

JAL, if it makes a difference, that was from 2008.

deborah said...

Chip, also, one babysitter got very upset that I was doing sommersaults, or some such. She took me aside and said that might mess with my baby making later on.

edutcher said...

What bag said.

The fact he didn't want to repeat the humiliation of the last go shows all the constant criticism has made him aware of his faults and spurred a willingness to improve.

Which may or may not be good news.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Chip -they loved their basketball out in western PA. Pistol Pete Maravich grew up in the Altoona area I think.

I'm Full of Soup said...

And Deb -I don't get the idea of running this 2008 tory about Obama in Afghanistan?

JAL said...

@ deb --

I realize it was from 2008. That's what I mean -- the minions were all gaga back then like this man never had bowel movements or something. Everything he did was aawwwweeesssommmmeeee.

No wait. A basketball shot he wasted hours working on to impress guys most of whom could outshoot him with their eyes closed ...? It would be remembered for the ages as "iconic."

Just like the Affordable Care Act.

These people have had chemical lobotomies, or something.

bagoh20 said...

AJ,

Ahh, Altoona, PA one of the arch rivals of my high school: the awesome Butler High Golden Tornados! Altoona was a mostly black school and we were mostly white, yet we had few problems with all that, none that I can remember, because it was just skin color, which somehow mattered less in the 70's. What went wrong?



deborah said...

JAL, okay, I see.

AJ, I ran it because of the title, the adoration, and I always thought the comparison to the Williams sisters was interesting. The piece always stuck with me.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Bago - we only used fists and tire irons back then and there there was the occasional knifing. Now, they use guns.

Heh- I guess we are just nostalgic for fistfights, rumbles and the random knife attack.