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Fear and Clothing in Atlanta
As America was put on Orange Alert last Friday, Atlanta appeared well-fortified against a terrorist attack, filled as it was with armored stretch Hummers and blocklong bulletproof Escalades. In the lobby of the Hyatt Regency, where NBA All-Stars stayed in advance of their game on Sunday, men sipped Hennessy from golden goblets, wore mink top hats and terry-cloth tracksuits -- in robin's-egg blue and traffic-cone orange -- and proved, among many other things, that discretion is not the better part of velour. Even Wolf Blitzer, an hour after announcing the terrorist alert on CNN, looked unruffled at the Ritz-Carlton, where he was lamenting, to a conference room full of athletes and executives, the 4 a.m. tipoff times for NBA games televised in Qatar. Which is to say that the only gravity on evidence in Atlanta was actual gravity. "Before I entered politics, I was 6'7"," said Bill Clinton, the 6'2" former president, in a private reception room at Philips Arena on Saturday night. "I had a chance to play pro ball." Then he was off to the National Basketball Players Association party, across the street, where it was said he'd be sitting in on saxophone with the Gap Band, whose biggest hit was -- unfortunate, given the timing -- You Dropped a Bomb on Me. Perhaps it's to the country's credit that while standing at the brink of war, we'll still party like it's 1999. Or, rather, 1969: With all the 5XL throwback baseball jerseys in Atlanta, it was difficult to tell if this was the 2003 NBA All-Star Game or the 1973 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Jermaine O'Neal of the Indiana Pacers wore braids and a blaze-orange '84 Denver Broncos shirt around town. With their plumage and primary-colored suits, players are increasingly indistinguishable from mascots. All they're missing is the furry tongue. Even those were easy to acquire in Atlanta, at parties like the Chris Webber-hosted Evening of Luxury, an invitation-only affair at which a 2003 SUV was to be given away to an already-rich reveler. Why not? Shaquille O'Neal on Friday wore a hooded sweatshirt whose leather sleeves could have been hewn from Louis Vuitton luggage. His knit watch cap bore the Yankees' NY logo done up in diamonds. Said Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times: "Why not go the final step and just start wearing a toga?" Is this opulent decadence, this decadent opulence, what the world envies, or disdains, about the U.S.? On Sunday, with the terror alert in the headlines, war was on many minds. Steve Nash wore a khaki T-shirt that read NO WAR: SHOOT FOR PEACE. "In the Constitution it states that war is to be used in the case of self-defense," said the Dallas Mavericks guard, a South African-born Canadian, "and I don't think that this" -- war with Iraq -- "is self-defense." Jermaine O'Neal, Tracy McGrady and Antoine Walker each hosted the family of a serviceman stationed overseas. And yet, televised talk of a "wartime economy" was rendered ridiculous by displays of conspicuous consumption so over-the-top that they'd have made Caligula do a spit-take: stretch Volkswagen Beetles, bowler hats made from Gucci handbags, men swaddled in so many chains that Atlanta looked like a city of Houdinis. Or Henry the VIIIs: Grown men really did carry, through the Hyatt lobby at 2 a.m., their own jewel-encrusted chalices. At the NBA's Jam Session fan festival, children could buy a miniature model of an Escalade. A collectibles booth sold, for $100 apiece, framed photographs of Al Pacino in Scarface and Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, each of which included two real bullets -- and a Cohiba cigar -- pressed under the glass. Meanwhile, Ian Naismith, grandson of the game's inventor, sat nearby in his own booth, dedicated to the history of basketball, and found himself largely bereft of visitors. "My grandfather would detest all the money grabbing in the game," Naismith said, as LeBron James was scoring 52 points on cable TV. "He never took a dime from the game he invented. I'm concerned now with all the negative role-modeling we see." Indeed, the rapper on everyone's sound system last week was 50 Cent, whose debut album is called Get Rich or Die Tryin'. On Sunday morning I ascended in an elevator with a young man wearing, on a chain around his neck, a three-dimensional diamond-and-platinum baseball player that looked as if it had just fallen off the world's most expensive Little League trophy. And it occurred to me, not for the first time, that I may merely be on the far side of a growing generational gulf. When 20-year-old Tyson Chandler of the Chicago Bulls said that he "grew up watching Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan," I nearly coughed out my dentures. In the wee hours of Sunday morning Atlanta looked like Atlantis, an ancient empire preserved in amber. At the players' union party Lennox Lewis entered behind a chevron of bodyguards that served as a human cowcatcher, cleaving the crowds in front of him. I expected an attendant to scatter rose petals before him. But none did, which was -- it must be said -- vaguely disappointing. "This party," said Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, on his way out, "is a lot tamer than last year's." So maybe we're belt-tightening after all. Issue date: February 17, 2003 Sports Illustrated senior writer Steve Rushin pens the weekly Air and Space column in the magazine. |
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My Two Cents
Give it away. If I may offer one piece of advice to LeBron James -- who in the span of 24 hours last week sold his soles to Nike for $90 million, had $1 million pressed into his palm by Upper Deck and watched, on prime-time television, as the Cleveland Cavaliers wept with gratitude for winning the privilege of enriching him further -- it's this: Give your money away. In less than a week, LeBron, you will graduate from high school with an eight-figure income and a two-figure life span. That life, almost certainly, will be one swift blur -- of Swiss banks and Tyra Banks, walk-in humidors and lobster thermidors, English valets and Alpine chalets. Make no mistake, however. You could live the same life on one-tenth of your income and still ensure that your unborn offspring are never bereft of the Bentleys that are their birthright. How much money can one man spend? Wine-and-gold is the Cavaliers' new color scheme. It should not describe, on a typical night, the entire contents of your mouth. Which is why I suggest you begin giving it away now. May I remind you, King James, what the King James version of the Bible says? "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." And so the choice is yours. You may live by the principles of faith, hope and charity, or stuff singles in the G-strings of Faith, Hope and Charity. Which will it be? Excuse this unsolicited advice. But who would know better what's right for you, an 18-year-old African-American with his own shoe, than me, a 36-year-old white sportswriter with a horseshoe (as my hairstyle is sometimes called), O Chosen One? Settle, incidentally, on one nickname. Are you deity or royalty, the Chosen One or King James? We will pay you homage or pay you taxes, but asking for both is a bit ... over the top. So decide: Is that Nike headband, now sutured to your noggin, a terry-cloth halo or a terry-cloth crown? Of course, the world will worship you as a benevolent god should you become a kind of roundball Robin Hood, robbing corporate America of easy endorsement dollars and giving your take to the less fortunate. (Which is everybody.) So cease putting your nickname on your mouthguard, which could be better festooned with lucrative logos. Why not market Whoppers on your choppers? Sell cheese when you say cheese. Never let a smile be your umbrella when a smile can move umbrellas. (We'll talk to the Totes people, then take their check to a soup kitchen. Or Hell's Kitchen. Or the Kitchener, Ont., public library.) Mother Teresa With Mad Hops. That's what people will call you, Bron Bron. Everyone, I realize, is now giving you advice. My advice: Ignore them. Your true friends will love you whether you have $9 million or $90 million, rock Reeboks or rock Nikes, roll a Mercedes or roll a Maserati. They will call you whenever you need a sympathetic ear, for as long as you shall leave them tickets. Indeed, that's why it's called Will Call. Mercifully, you will never go hungry, even if you should squander $90 million. For you also get, on top of your NBA salary, $150 in cash, every day, for the duration of each road trip, more than enough for a room-service Reuben at the Four Seasons. It's called "walking-around money," and may I suggest you walk around with it: Stuff the bills into a confetti cannon and belch them onto city streets. Festively fling -- from a shopping bag -- $100 bills wherever crowds gather, as if you're the unholy offspring of Rockefeller (a fellow Clevelander) and Rip Taylor. On Draft Day, June 26, wear a five-button suit made of paper money. Let technicians from the TNT crew peel 50s from your pants as you pass on your way to the podium. The King James Bible says it's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to gate-crash heaven. So start molting money today. Wilt Chamberlain was the Big Dipper. You should go down as the Big Tipper. God and agents get 10%, but give a good waitress 20. You can't take it with you, no matter the size of your Hummer. Never decline a charitable request. Nonprofits need your money, sure. But so do the nonsheltered (those panhandling outside Gund Arena) or the nonemployed (those seeking a position as your personal chef's personal assistant). Life's too short -- and your bank statement too long -- to question the motives of everyone who begs you for a Benjamin. You say money doesn't grow on trees? Au contraire, mon frère. Money's made of paper. Paper grows on trees. Easy for me to say, I know. But I sincerely believe you'll be well-served by this advice. Spurs center David Robinson is beloved for giving $9 million to build a school in San Antonio. Nine million dollars, Bron Bron, is just part of one year's ancillary income. You can do so much more. You can, above all, trust people. I am here to help you. I have no hidden agenda. I ask only this: That you circle the first letter of every paragraph in this column, see what those letters spell, then reciprocate my kindness in whatever way you see fit. Issue date: June 2, 2003 Sports Illustrated senior writer Steve Rushin pens the weekly Air and Space column in the magazine. |
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Take A Whiff
This column stinks. It's a scratch-and-sniff catalog of every smell in sports. A fresh can of tennis balls, for instance, opens with the same vacuum-packed whoosh as a coffee can but is -- on first whiff -- even more pleasantly potent. Secure a brand-new sneaker over your nose and mouth, in the manner of an airplane oxygen mask: Is there, anywhere on Earth, a more powerful intoxicant? (Snort Keds, not coke.)
Summer smells like the rubber of a diving mask, which smells like the rubber of a beach ball, pressed against your nose as you inhale deeply while attempting to inflate it. Swimming smells like chlorine and damp nylon, whether at the Olympics or under the Holidome of the Holiday Inn in Stevens Point, Wis. Sports are an olfactory factory. I am, at this very moment, taking a long nasal draw off a baseball mitt, which is held over my face like Hannibal Lecter's muzzle. My reaction, spoken in an extended exhalation: God, I love the smell of Rawlings in the morning. Sports fans and sportswriters are often called jock sniffers. But we don't, for my money, sniff enough of our environment. Sometimes this is a good thing. Ten years after his last World Series appearance, I can still recall the postgame pong of Lenny Dykstra's locker -- B.O. and BenGay, Red Man and Dubble Bubble -- as if it were singeing my nose hairs for the first time. Still, for all our hours spent watching and listening to sports, we should occasionally stop to smell the Rose Bowl. College football is redolent of dry leaves and fresh-mown grass, flannel blankets and foam helmet padding. It smells like SoCo-and-Coke in a three-years-out-of-date souvenir cup with the team schedule washed off and its own subsidiary scents of plastic and dishwasher detergent. It's the beer-funk-on-shoe-sole smell of a concrete concourse, the Raid-and-urinal-cake aroma of halftime. High school football is the haylike whiff of year-old grass plucked from cleats gone unused since last season. Pro football is beer-marinated bratwurst hissing on a charcoal grill and the faint aroma of aluminum in a foam-rubber can cozy. All football smells like a weight room, which in turn smells like cold steel on calluses, with a twist of rubber floor mat. If Michael Jordan wanted Michael Jordan cologne to evoke basketball, he should have mixed new-sneaker smell with pebble-grain leather and the acrid, adhesive scent of athletic tape. He should have wiped his sneaker soles with his hands for traction, then bottled that scent of burned rubber, flesh and floor varnish. To judge by the product, come to think of it, that's exactly what he did do. When I was growing up, my big brother Tom found a way to weaponize a Nerf basketball, by farting on it and then clapping it over my face from behind, like a movie villain with a chloroformed handkerchief. But the worst smell in all of sport is concentrated, game-used hockey equipment. I once took a wrong turn into the Pittsburgh Penguins equipment room an hour after a game, and the unholy stink -- like God's un-Odor-Eatered running shoes -- nearly knocked me to my knees. Civilized man isn't governed by scent as, say, a schnauzer is. Or so says science. But that is, to cite just one smell that can hijack our senses, b.s. A great many aromas -- movie-theater popcorn, carnival cotton candy, doctor's office disinfectant -- have a Pavlovian hold on our memory banks. One whiff of a long-forgotten pastry set Proust off on a three-volume remembrance of things past. For me, insect repellent is Little League baseball, just as sledding is instantly evoked by a speedball of Swiss Miss and Vicks VapoRub. I don't smoke, except when on fire. But on the golf course the aroma of cured tobacco can be captivating, particularly in crisp autumn air, and I have to physically restrain myself from bumming a butt off a chain-smoking playing partner. The British Open smells of damp dog. But golf, to me, is the pine-tree forests in which I frequently find myself, to the point that I cannot even smell Pine-Sol, or the pine-tree air freshener in a New York City taxicab, without cursing my banana slice. Bananas themselves can trigger such an outburst. Baseball, of course, is an AromaRama. One scarcely knows where to begin. With the cocoa-buttered Coppertone scent of spring training? Or the smell of sausage puckering on a Lysoled roller grill, the first olfactory greeting in most ballparks? Or shall we go back, back, way back to the baseball-card bubble-gum bouquet that was, in fifth grade, almost unendurably inebriating? Baseball smells like cold beer in a paper cup coated in wax -- the same wax, I have long suspected, that coats baseball-card wrappers and the gum itself. It's pine tar, peanut shells, Sno-Cone syrup, sunflower seeds, the scent of approaching rain, Cracker Jack, cowhide and the kaleidoscopic condiment bar: yellow mustard, diced onion, pickle relish, sauerkraut and ketchup. It's a press box fragrant with deadline dread and dandruff shampoo. It smells, in short, like heaven. And if Chanel should ever bottle it all, I will buy it by the gallon. Issue date: July 7, 2003 Sports Illustrated senior writer Steve Rushin pens the weekly Air and Space column in the magazine. |