Judgement Night

Philosophically, I cannot imagine a match-up more pregnant with possibility than that of Carmello Anthony against Kobe Bean Bryant. While Bron V. Kobe has captured the public imagination and fueled both marketing campaigns and speculation about a possibly predetermined NBA finals, there is little about Lebron or Kobe that suggests drama, at least to me.

Lebron is pure weaponry, who gleefully exploits weaknesses, crushes hope and inflicts pain upon those while simultaneously summoning them the brink of joy. His game is naturalistic and artfully vulgar, almost pornographic - but in a way strikes fear in the heart of those who would be so bold as to question the value of such a thing.

Kobe, meanwhile, is a manipulator. A man who causes unease not for what could do to you physically, but for what might become of your mind if you were to happen upon the equations that drive him. He is an embellisher supreme. While Lebron destroys walls as a matter of course, Kobe scales them in a way that makes makes physicality seem merely a secondary concern.

But, again, this is not about them. And, it's even less about Bron = Brolic, Elite - Kobe = Calculating, Cold. This is more about Carmello Anthony staring into the river and seeing a vision of what he might become while Kobe looks back and laments what he never was.

Charles Barkley, for all his manifest failings as basketball man, brought a necessary conversation to light when he dubbed 'Melo the league's finest scorer. Basketball is not baseball, so it still warrants sober and non-condescending discussion when somebody who led the league in neither scoring or shooting percentage is deemed the best at putting the ball through the basket. It's how Carmello scores, decisively despite his limitations, that makes it feasible to assert that he might be the very best at what he does.



I defended the failure of the Iverson experiment in Denver as being a consequence of AI having to share the floor with a man who was essentially a taller version of himself. I like to imagine 'Melo as a hybrid of Pierce/Iverson, a man fully aware of his own capabilities and the weaknesses of his opponent and capable of instantly decoding the latter to serve the former. And, more plainly, he's a dude who gets buckets simply by rolling out of bed in the morning.

So, what does that have to do with Kobe? behind the facile categorizations of a bloodless perfectionist who sold his soul for a spot among the pantheon, there's an incredible sadness. Proof that to truly become what one most desires, there must be sacrifice. And not just in terms of hours spent in gym or a weight room. There is a requisite abandonment of the self for mortals like Kobe to become a deity. Perhaps, Kobe seems to fabricated because he is a man attempting to regain what he regretfully gave away as a younger man. Perhaps he has forgotten what makes a man real, and must now present a failing pantomime simply to coexist with those he shares a locker room with. Lebron, having been hatched in heaven and sent to earth fully formed, has never had to make such a sacrifice, and thus runs at a cross current with Kobe.

Melo, though, is painfully human. Tonight, for the first time, he may find himself standing at a terrible crossroad. One that asks him to shed his humanity in pursuit of something that will ultimately change the way those who have so fortified him through his salad days perceive him, or simply allows him to continue joyfully patrolling a superficially verdant plateau just south of infinity.