Ask the Dust

One thing I’d like to add to yesterday’s thoughts: part of what the McCants story appealing is the character of its redemption. No story is more satisfying than the troubled, talented man who makes good, at least for a little while. Sure, the league is stocked with those sorts of stories—Kobe, in some ways, is an example—but for the balance to continue between the Howards and the Captain Jacks, there needs to be some cast-aways to redeem. My concern is that there simply aren’t any around anymore—that they have been erased from the league, replaced by a mostly anonymous army of D-Leaguers, cast-aways and mid-major stars. Yes, these men have their own Kurt Warner-themed redemption story, but what we applaud in them is simply the triumph of good, hard work. Their score is translated out into dollar signs, scoring averages. And, at some level, while we might tell our children about those redeemers, their stories are mostly interchangeable, inert.

Although I admit my Carolina fandom might be intruding, I simply cannot find a better story for redemption--emotive and basketball--than Rashad McCants, a bright, extremely talented dude who is clearly battling with some self-destructive impulses. We can rarely turn ourselves away from the wreckage of such young men, especially those who only live to deny the evidence. McCants is brash, arrogant, petulant, and, without any doubt, a horrible person to work with. He is like every writer I’ve ever met. And while I certainly don’t mean to promote writers-as-humans, (God help me, if I did) there is part of McCants’ story—he is a self-proclaimed poet—that reminds me, too much, of those haunted, hell-bent men who narrate all my favorite novels. He is going nowhere fast. He is successful with women. He alternates between hostility and overflowing generosity. We know his end is coming and that it probably won't be pretty.

He is the young narrator in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, the NBA’s version of John Fante’s Arturo Bandini. These conflicted, wildly charismatic and destructive men all find, in some way, their redemption, and we read books because we are helpless against our sympathies. The NBA is not so much a sport as it is a clash of outsized and comical narratives. On that stage, where jocks rule the day, how can you not root for Bandini?