Inside Man: Some Thoughts on Spike Lee's "He Got Game" (1998)

Considering that I am going to be teaching this stuff, it was about time that I finally filled the gap and saw Spike Lee’s 1998 “He Got Game.” While I was occasionally bored or disappointed, I did care enough to watch the whole thing through (not a given for me), and (after a helpful conversation with Claire) I ultimately felt like I expect I might have had I stumbled upon a Brecht play: good message if somewhat heavy handed, cleverly aware of its own medium, and certain moments of aesthetic genius.

If you're looking for ambiguity, this is not the film for you. "He Got Game" unambiguously states the case that in the ever-increasingly high stakes game of finding the second-coming of the transcendent superstar who will win games, fill seats, and sell shoes, the gifted urban adolescent athlete is pure of heart, clear of head and surrounded by scummy parasitic schemers and criminals offering cash, gifts, and women in exchange for a commitment that the young star, will turn pro or sign with their college program. In "He Got Game," Jesus Shuttlesworth, the nation's number one prospect (played pretty convincingly by a young Ray Allen) turns it all down, except for one bizarre lapse where he hooks-up with a couple of pretty gross white prostitutes procured for him by the staff at "Tech U."

I applaud Lee for painting the scene in this way. Though both the goodness of Jesus and the badness of the coaches, agents, and hangers-on feel exaggerated to the point of inexplicable implausibility, this is an appropriate corrective to the somehow still prevailing myth that the young (usually African-American) superstar athlete is morally confused at best (on account of a perilous upbringing) and the (usually white) fixers, scouts, middle-men, agents, and coaches who surround him -- apart from a few opportunistic bad apples -- are just trying "to do what's best for the kids and the game goshdarnit."

Lee reminds us -- and we seem to require it no matter how many books like George Dohrman's Play their Hearts Out or Darcy Frey's The Last Shot, or documentaries like "Hoop Dreams" (and Lee offers a nod to the latter, whose two stars Arthur Agee and William Gates make cameos in the opening credits), come out -- that if you love the game, and Spike definitely loves the game, these are some of the conditions of possibility for what you love. It goes with the territory. Sort of the way that Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me" reminded me of what goes into my Big Mac. If I have to choose my basketball propaganda film: I'll take this vision over "Hoosiers"'s nostalgic fantasy of the time we scrappy little white folks pulled it together and through effort and the superior evolutionary leap called teamwork beat that team of frighteningly athletic but hopelessly individualistic Blacks.

Anyway, propaganda aside, "Super Size Me" made me hungry for McDonald's. And He Got Game made me hungry for more game, especially Ray Allen's work-of-art jump shot. But I think for subtly different reasons that have to do with what makes Spike Lee more than a superb (and much needed) propagandist. Super Size me didn't make me want McDonald's because it's images of the food were enticing, or because Spurlock told a narrative that I could relate to. I think it made me want the food because the food is made to be addictive and so almost any mention of it reminds my body that I want it. He Got Game made me want more basketball because when Lee wasn't talking with his voice, but just with his eyes and camera he created tableaus and fragments of narrative into which I could project myself.

So this is genius:



Aaron Copland's score connotes nothing more than the innocent expansive landscape of rural America where individuals with pluck and determination carve each their own modest path and the sum of all those modest paths, the sum of those small triumphs is the greatness of the country as a whole, registered in the crescendos. Lee gives us what the music leads us to expect -- the farm boy playing ball in the dirt driveway a stone's throw from golden fields -- but then gives us more to boot: the middle-aged black men shooting and hanging around an urban playground, two girls executing a perfect give-and-go, a young African-American boy working on his cross in an abandoned lot. All of it tied together with the fabric of Copland's score: do you get the picture yet? he's painting you a portrait of America.

Lee also gets the beauty of the ball in motion, say, on its arc toward the basket: he understands and communicates with his camera far better than I ever could in words the possibility, perfection, and power in that path. He gets and transmits effectively the combination of grace, beauty and force in the basketball player in improvisational motion.

When he shows me, in the clip above, or in the opening credits, just a fragment of a shot in the air, or the beginnings of a move toward the hoop, I can fill in the rest with the memories and fantasies of my own lifetime.

Lee also taps into a particular narrative that, while obviously not strictly speaking universal, certainly works for me: the story of the love and hatred, the collaboration and rivalry that is the relationship between father and son. My dad never pushed me the way that Jake pushes young Jesus in the film's flashbacks, relentlessly baiting him with trash-talk, swatting his every shot attempt, and even knocking him to the ground. But I still felt pushed to tears and desperate rage and moments of excellence by something that I attributed to my father. And so also the fantasy of Jesus, now grown, dominating his father and turning the physical and psychological tables in a final game of one on one, appeals in equal measure.

My own relationship with my dad has certainly evolved over the decades. I now deeply appreciate what he has taught me. I love what he is that I am, for better and for worse, and what he is that, for better and for worse, I will never be. But whatever is unresolved in my relationship to my dad, I am certain, would be resolved once and for all if we could play one game of one on one, under the floodlights. But it would have to have these three elements: 1) me swatting his shot and saying "get that shit outta here" 2) me saying "What you want? Jump shot, dunk?" and, most of all, 3) him relentlessly talking trash -- "I think I'l go around again", "I'm teaching, like I always been teaching" -- even in the face of the overwhelmingly obvious reality that I'm now the better player.

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HoosiersNation?

Why are we -- I mean the sports media in this country -- so head over heels in love with the American basketball team that just won the FIBA World Basketball Championships last week?  I probably should have been doing my day job, preparing for my first class on Tuesday morning. But, as I sipped my automatic machine made latte on the 2nd floor balcony of the Red Roof Inn, the four story tower of the Hampton Inn looming across the parking lot, I felt the irresistible lure of setting down some thoughts on this infatuation. I'm not thinking of the action on the court itself so much as the storyline -- the myth -- that has been repeated ad nauseum in the American media.  I encountered one of the many instances of this while reading Mike Lopresti's recent column in USA Today over my complimentary Hot Breakfast at the Big Boy adjacent to my digs at the Red Roof.    It's a beautiful life.

Here, for those who didn't follow the tournament, are the facts:  the US won this year's FIBA World Championships and I'm glad.   None of the players that took the gold medal in Beijing in 2008 agreed to play for Team USA in the World Championships, with the result that Jerry Colangelo, who runs the USA Basketball program and Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski, assembled their roster in the two months prior to the tournament from a different, less acclaimed pool of NBA players.  The team played tough defense and ran the ball well and Kevin Durant had a terrific tournament.   I feel glad for Durant because he seems like a good guy and a good ball player; I feel glad that the team won, played well and avoided any kind of "Ugly American" incident on the court or off.  And that's about the extent of my feeling about what actually happened.  But, as I said, this is not so much a story about what actually happened or about my feelings about what happened, so much as a story about the story that has been circulating about what happened and my feelings about that.

That story inevitably begins with a backstory.  It may take different, sometimes very compressed forms for different writers, but in its main lines it goes something like this (which I'm blocking off as though it were a direct quotation to indicate that I'm paraphrasing):

Once upon a time, the US dominated international play fielding teams of the best college players and then, when the rules changes, with a series of Dream Teams of the very best American NBA players.  But there was a snake in the garden.  To begin with, the NBA's own aggressive globalization efforts began to pay off in the form of vastly improved play from international players in a number of foreign countries: Spain, Argentina, the Balkans, and France.   Then, at the same time, selfish and immature US superstars stopped considering it a priority to represent their country in international competition.  Finally, even those players that did agree to play for Team USA were at a disadvantage because 1) they weren't used to playing with another (unlike other national teams whose players had, in some cases, been playing with one another since their teen years); 2) they were selected for individual greatness and not in terms of the quality of the overall team they would combine to form; 3) they weren't coached with an eye toward the style and unique rules of international competition.  The result:  a dark period of USA Basketball:  a third place finish in the 1998 and 2006 FIBA Worlds,  a sixth place finish in the 2002 FIBA Worlds (held in Indianapolis no less), a third place finish in the 2004 Athens Olympics.  Even a gold medal in the 2000 Olympics was judged a sign of demise since several games were won by margins too narrow for comfort.   Finally, the sun begins to shine through these dissipating clouds when USA basketball got its act together, hiring Colangelo and Krzyzewski and requiring a three year commitment to training and competition from its NBA player pool.   This yielded a gold medal finish in 2008 in Beijing and all was right in our basketball cosmos.

But then,  the story arc dips into another trough of difficulty.

None of those players -- not Lebron James, not Dwyane Wade, not Dwight Howard, not Kobe Bryant -- wanted to play in this year's FIBA tournament.  The players that were selected were dubbed "The B-Team".  We couldn't expect much of this team because, for the rest of the world, the FIBA World Championship is more important than the Olympics.  

To intensify our investment in the drama, the typical storyteller injected some additional stakes

Not only the FIBA gold medal, but our spot in the 2012 Olympics in London was a stake because if the US didn't win the FIBA Worlds and its accompanying automatic qualifying bid in the next Olympic competition they would have to qualify for the Olympics through a round of inter-American competition and this would be more difficult than usual given an imminent NBA labor negotiation and the strong possibility that players who might be on strike at the time of the inter-American competition would be ineligible, leaving the US to face stiffened competition with nothing more than their best amateurs.

Now that the tournament has been played out and disaster averted, journalists and bloggers are falling over themselves to herald the over-achievement of "The B-Team," their moral stock rising, seemingly, on the tide of the "Redeem Team" players refusal to join the competition.  Here's how, again in summary, the story reaches its satisfying resolution.

Kevin Durant, humble and likeable, emerged from the shadows of the Redeem Team superstars James, Bryant, and Wade by putting on a tremendous display of scoring prowess.  While Kobe spent his summer lolling in the reverie of his recent NBA championship, and James and Wade spent theirs conspiring to join forces on the Miami Heat and greedily thrusting themselves into the media spotlight, Durant worked hard to get ready to represent his country in international competition and then, when the tournament began, put the team -- at least on offense -- on his shoulders and carried them to victory.  As for the rest of the players, undersized, not all that good, and unaccustomed to playing together, they pulled together under the wise tutelage of Coach K, played gritty old fashioned defense and then celebrated their surprising victory with the innocence and charm of the (all white) Hickory High Huskers knocking off the big, bad, black team from the big city in the 1989 film Hoosiers.  And it's a darn shame that the selfish superstars like James, Bryant, and Wade will probably displace this likeable bunch of underdogs on the team that represents the US at the 2012 Olympics in London.

So that's the story, the myth, that's being created and circulated and relished in the media here. It's a great, rousing story.  The only problem is that it rests on what might generously be called some exaggerations of actual facts, and some omissions of others.  Let me correct these first.

Kevin Durant was already, before the tournament, recognized as one of the top players in the NBA.  Durant was named College Player of the Year for his efforts as a freshman at the University of Texas (the only year of college ball he played).  In fact, he was heralded as the only freshman ever to win the award.  Then he was the second selection in the NBA draft.  In his first season, he averaged twenty points a game and was named rookie of the year.  In his second season, he averaged twenty-five a game.

Yeah, never heard of him

And this past season, his third in the NBA, he became the youngest player ever to lead the league in scoring, averaging 30 points a game, finished second in MVP voting (behind James and ahead of Bryant, Wade, and Hoard), was selected to the Western Conference all-star team, and was chosen as one of the five players (along with Bryant, Wade, James, and Howard) to the All-Pro team. He also helped his team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, to reach the playoffs, where the young, eighth seeded team pushed the top seeded, and eventual champion, Lakers to six games in their first round best of seven series.  Oh yeah, and when he came out of college to join the NBA, he signed a $60 million endorsement deal with Nike.

Certainly, the rest of Team USA's roster, top to bottom, lacked both the record of individual and team success and the star power of the 2008 Beijing Olympic team.  But it's quite a stretch to characterize them as "B Team" players.  Chauncey Billups was the third overall pick in the 1997 draft, the 2004 NBA Finals MVP, and has been an All-Star each of the past five seasons.  Lamar Odom was the fourth overall pick in the 1999 draft and, though his career has been checkered for personal reasons, was instrumental in the Lakers repeat title run this year as the first player off the bench. Derrick Rose was the first player picked in the 2008 draft, the 2009 Rookie of the Year, and an All-Star in the same year.  Among the other players, several were chosen in the top ten in their NBA draft cohort, and some had been first team All-Americans in college.

The FIBA World Championships may just as important to the players in other countries as the Olympics, maybe even more important for some of them.  But if such a generalization may be in some sense true, it doesn't account for the fact that some of the best and best-known international players in the NBA, the very players whose talent and visibility are held up as evidence that the rest of the world has caught up to the US in basketball  -- Manu Ginobili (Argentina) Nene Hilario (Brazil), Pau Gasol (Spain), Tony Parker and Joakim Noah (France)  Dirk Nowitzki (Germany), and Mehmet Okur (host Turkey) -- chose not to participate in the tournament.   One observer close to a several European players claims that the Olympics are, in fact, their top priority (after the NBA).

Finally, this is subjective (who is to say what is the requisite level of innocence and enthuiasm with which to celebrate an international championship?), but having watched most of the games in the 2008 Olympics, I'd feel hard-pressed to say that the superstars of the Redeem Team weren't excited to be there, and, even more, every bit as jubilant upon finally capturing the Gold with their finals victory over Spain.

Yeah, they don't care.

 Those players -- Kobe and others -- were also running around the court after their victory, slapping the hands of American fans in the stands and, in general, celebrating with the innocence and unbridled exuberance of a group of high schoolers winning their first state championship.

So if Kevin Durant didn't come out of nowhere and was already considered one of the best players in the world, why do we keep acting as if he did and wasn't?  If the rest of the US team didn't consist of a bunch of midget also-rans but rather were almost without exception successful and recognized as such, why did we act like it did and they weren't?  And if the rest of the world didn't bring its best players, why do keep insisting that they did?  And if the Redeem Team was excited to win too, why is it so important to say imagine that they weren't?  Why are the same media experts that participated in the circulation of all the facts that I described above now forgetting them?  What purpose is served by this?

I will be blunt, at the risk of over-simplifying.  I think what is served by this particular story, and this sort of storytelling in particular, is a particular national self-image, often not so subtly racialized if not racist, that we expect our athletes, especially our national athletes, to support.  It's that image that I sum up with the title of this post:  HoosiersNation.

Our National Team?

 That film fabricated the story of an invented small, rural Indiana high school team (the Hickory Huskers)  winning the Indiana state championship against a much more athletically gifted, all black team (with all black coaches and rowdy all black fans) from  South Bend Central.  In the process, players, fans, and coaches alike overcome obstacles, learn life lessons, and redeem their pasts.    Nevermind that the actual Indiana team (Milan) upon which the movie was based beat -- as Oscar Robertson, among others, has pointed out in his autobiography The Big O -- a Muncie Central team coached by a white man, supported by mostly white fans, and whose entire roster included only three black players.

But such realities don't need to get in the way -- any more than the facts I listed above -- of our seemingly endless need to see ourselves as a scrappy group of unheralded white guys rising, through hard work and the subordination of individual ego,  to successfully, joyfully, but humbly, meet the challenge of defeating a talented Other whose abilities and superior resources ultimately, cannot make up for their lack of heart and unselfishness.

How perfect that this year's quarterfinal game was played against the Russian team on the 38th anniversary of the 1972 Olympic Finals in which the (scrappy) US team (of all amateurs) lost to the Russian team on a last second basket, after the referees unfairly awarded the Russian team three different opportunities to replay the final seconds.  Though the players didn't make much of the anniversary, the press certainly did.  Nevermind that the 2010 Russian team (unlike the 1972 Soviet team) had done little in international competition.  Like Rocky facing the machine like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, our boys were playing out of desire and with heart, and, in the moral universe of our national fantasies, that always wills out over talent, technology, and heartless efficiency.  Finally, as if the brew weren't rich enough, this year's semi-final was played on the 9th anniversary of September 11th, 2001, helping to reinforce our collective desire to see ourselves as innocent victims and underdogs and to stoke our collective desire to assert the superiority of our self-assigned national values against overwhelming odds.

I like this year's US team.  I really do.  And I appreciate and respect what they achieved.  But I'm annoyed by the way in which the media has turned their story into a myth that permits us, as individuals and as a nation, on the court and off, to evade so many realities about ourselves (some good, some not so good) and, like an oversized infant blithely lumbering through a Lilliputian world, to cause so much suffering.  I don't want to identify with that team, that game, or that country.

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