How dull it is to pause, to make
an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life!
Shawn Kemp has been around the NBA longer than most players,
but not even he had the pleasure of meeting Alfred, Lord
Tennyson. Yet when Tennyson penned "Ulysses" more than
150 years ago, he unwittingly provided the most insightful
commentary on recent events that have stirred the souls
of Blazer fans.
Explanations for what led to the three-team NBA deal
that brought Kemp to the Blazers and sent Brian Grant
to the Miami Heat have focused on financial necessity
(Grant wants too much money!) and job satisfaction (Grant
wants more playing time!).
Both analyses are wrong. Salary-cap nonsense aside, if
financial limitations forced the Blazers to let Grant
go, then under whose mattress did they suddenly find $70
million for Kemp? As for playing time, Grant, whose minutes
declined due to injuries last year, would have had plenty
this season in Portland.
It's fruitless to look to the sports pages for explanation,
because the real motive behind the Grant-Kemp deal is
far older than the NBA. In acquiring Kemp and, days later,
trading 21-year-old Jermaine O'Neal for 31-year-old Dale
Davis, the Blazers have defined in very clear terms the
strategy they intend to employ against the much-reviled
Los Angeles Lakers next season. The drama will be one
of classic generational conflict: young boys vs. old men.
And, taking their cue from Tennyson, the Blazers have
decided that they will play the old men.
Vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
Picture the stoic Kemp during the press conference at
which the ex-Sonic-turned-Cavalier was introduced as a
Blazer: Like Tennyson's Ulysses, he, too, stored and hoarded
himself for three "suns" in Cleveland, and like Ulysses'
trip, it was an ill-fated journey. And that "gray spirit
yearning in desire" stuff? It was the central theme of
Kemp's press conference. "My hunger has never left," Kemp
asserted. "Now I find myself at nighttime holding the
basketball, just thinking and visualizing the things that
are going to happen."
In Homer's version of the Ulysses myth--a little thing
called The Odyssey--the hero returns to find his
home overtaken by arrogant youngsters.
Kemp returns to the Pacific Northwest to find a similar
fate has befallen the Western Conference in the form of
the Los Angeles Lakers.
Kobe Bryant, one of the new breed of NBA wunderkinder
that arrive straight from high school, is far too young
to deserve his success: he hasn't paid any dues and doesn't
respect the years other players have spent working for
a title. The gargantuan Shaq, of course, continues to
cultivate and promote a peculiarly adolescent persona--a
man-child more committed to putting out rap albums and
Disney movies than to improving his free-throw percentage.
Lakers fans, similarly, are akin to the fickle teen-girl
fans of annoying boy bands. Quick to join the fan club
when the band is hot, they're even quicker to quit when
the band falters--at no point do they truly appreciate
good music. Los Angeles as a whole, of course, is dismissed
as a city obsessed with youth, where fading 50-year-old
starlets desperately buy the clothing and cleavage of
girls half their age.
The exchange of Kemp and Davis for Grant and O'Neal,
then, becomes obvious: the Blazers have positioned themselves
as the antidote to immaturity. There's Sabonis, the Lithuanian
workhorse with the knees of a 60-year-old; Steve Smith,
the sharpshooting guard entering his 10th season; Detlef
Schrempf, considering retirement; and their most-decorated
veteran, Scottie Pippen, six-ringed link to the reign
of Jordan.
Though many fans hope for a return of the young, muscular,
Seattle-era Kemp that appeared chiseled from granite,
it may turn out that the Cleveland Kemp--molded from Play-Doh--is
what they will get. If the Lakers are the arrogant upstarts
who show up at the neighborhood court, blaring rap from
their boombox, the Blazers are ready to be the older guys
already there, working the ball around, using all the
wily old moves (or at least their big middle-aged butts)
to achieve their goals.
Homer's Odyssey ends with the hero destroying
the arrogant youths in a bloody battle and reclaiming
his home and title--the same resolution team president
Bob Whitsitt wants for the Blazers.
The team's "Ulysses Strategy," however, is risky. As
any gym rat will tell you, more often than not, the teens
at the local court defeat the aging weekend warriors.
Youth shall be served, older generations must make way--any
number of aphorisms state the same. Even Tennyson sensed
danger, ending his poem with this speech from Ulysses
to his men:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
What's the problem with this pep talk? Well, according
to the ancient myth, Ulysses was the only one of his crew
to survive the journey home. So now that he's old, just
who the hell does Ulysses thinks he's talking to? It seems
possible that he's sadly deluded. His men are dead, his
days of glory gone, and this valiant speech is actually
an old man muttering to himself--the same thing many of
the Blazer players and fans found themselves doing after
last season's catastrophic collapse.
Do Kemp and the rest of the aging Blazer veterans retain
enough of the "strength which in old days moved earth
and heaven" to conquer the NBA's arrogant youth? That
depends on which Ulysses they turn out to be: the noble,
returning hero, or the lonely old man.
