quite the little cast of talkings heads there: chuck d, samuel l. jackson, um bill cosby, senator barack obama, etc. but in general historical video on the trotters has been absurdly thin. i've searched many times over the years for footage of the fabulous magicians, but i remember watching more or less whole games on wide world of sports. trying to really just get good footage of the great dribblers, marques haynes, curly neal, boo johnson, etc. is absurdly difficult. anyone who's working for the globetrotters or whatever needs to get good historical vid of all the greats up in a good way. thank god some stuff finally came up after marques haynes's death: still it is insane not to have much more and much better for a great artist like that. (the comparison to improvisational jazz is extremely apt. haynes is fucking louis armstrong, but you cannot even find his songs.) or hello my former relative-by-marriage greg winik: put twenty interns on it with a good editor this summer, ok? that is your own history too.
haynes could do what he did in serious competition against nba (or nbl) players. now, louis played great, but not while large athletes were trying to grab his trumpet. it is true improvisation under pressure, even if it became a great act (imitated by many ever since, as well it should have been).
i played a lot of playground basketball against and with black guys, and understand that i was the scrawniest little white kid you ever saw. but the court was to some extent a shelter from the race war, even if it might have looked the opposite. and i will say almost always if you got out there on a new playground (i wasn't the only white kid trying to play, except for sometimes), you almost always had to take a hard foul first; they'd kind of level you just to test you. and one way to pass the test a bit was not to call it, but just pick yourself up and try to say something like 'call that a fucking foul?'
anyway, one reason it was good was precisely that race was explicit, but played many different ways. so it could be very intimidating: like boom! you're on your back, then it's 'go home to your skanky mama, fucking white boy.' it got so where 'honky' was my nickname. but that's the way they were talking to each other (different slurs, of course) too. so you'd keep trying and it'd be more like: you can't fucking drive on me, you fucking honky. i have to say they gave you a lot of credit for sticking but then if you did something ok, you might get 'dayum, look at white boy!' anyway, i say those experiences and how i learned to come back etc are still in my persona or even on the blog all the time. people are surprised when you whip that out at a philosophy conference.
i always wanted to play black, and some of my favorite players have been those players, like 'white chocolate' jason williams, or rex chapman, or pete maravich. anyway, i'm obviously particularly obsessed with the dribblers, and i am actually serious in comparing haynes to people like armstrong, though honestly i'd rather do without haynes than louis. but why do i have to? there has got to be a shitload of great video out there. people need to care enough to get it out there, edit it right, etc.
look that's fucking great: everything i always wanted to be. but how can there be so much and so much better footage out there of jason williams than marques haynes or whomever? will you people get it together?
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