One of my favourite basketball clichés is that 'basketball is jazz'. It's an especially apt one for middle-aged sportswriters to make since both seem to involve improvisation on top of a structured bottom; what good would Kind of Blue have been if Miles Davis hadn't just come off the more structured Porgy and Bess?
Like all clichés, there is a kernel of truth. So let's take that cliché and bust it out to the breaking point by determining which albums correspond to the major players in the 2010 NBA Finals?
Ron Artest: Miles Davis - On the Corner
Poorly received when first released, On the Corner is probably the most confusing of all of Davis' albums - no easy feat! It's a collection of strange rhythms, of beats and samples and repetition and, like Artest, it's maddening at times. Why is there a sitar? What does that blast of noise at the start of Black Satin mean? And why does Miles play so little on one of his own albums?
But give it a few listens and it grows on you. Its heavy, beat-first sound anticipated the direction music would go in the next decade. Between the odd shifts and beats were snippets of something great, something awesome; Wayne Shorter's sax, John McLaughlin's guitar. This album is best experienced when it sneaks up on you - it surprises you with something unexpected and, frankly, really good.
Sounds a little like Ron, doesn't it?
He's frustrating and hard to anticipate. He makes strange, inexplicable decisions - like jacking up a three with almost the whole shot clock left near the end of Game 5 of the Western Finals. But then he does something out of the blue, like bursting up from the ether under the basket and hitting a game-winning layup as the clock expires.
Kevin Garnett: Miles Davis - Live-Evil
Unstoppable and ominous, Live-Evil is a real beast. Spilt nearly in half between freewheeling live recordings and studio cuts, it's one of Davis' most compelling albums, but quite confusing as well.
It's almost like a puzzle with too many pieces - it starts mid-swing with the band in full flight, then jump-cuts to an electric piano/guitar jam, which is a radical change in pace. There's a moody, spooky-sounding cut with whistling that sounds like something off of a western. At first listen, you have almost no idea where it's headed at any moment. It's almost schizophrenic.
That's what KG has been like during these 2010 playoffs.
At time, he's shown flashes of brilliance, but has vanished in other games. In the second round alone, he posted three double-doubles; in the rest of the playoffs, he's had just two. He's almost like two players - one who (as Bill Simmons usually says) still has some gas in the tank, and one who is at the end of his career. He's limping, having coming off knee trouble.
Yet I almost feel it's that flaw that makes him all the more compelling. For years, KG toiled away in relative obscurity; for years, Davis was playing his stuff mostly for one kind of audience. But by the late 60s, venues like the Fillmore or Family Dog started booking Davis. He wasn't just playing to a whiter audience, he had all kinds of new sounds and tools in his disposal; but his definitive album, Kind of Blue, was long behind him.
It's kind of the same with KG. His best years are long since past, but he's never had a team quite as good as these Celtics have been. He can't simply dominate like he used to, but he's got experience on his side. Like what Davis did when he went electric, I'm curious to see where he will go from here.
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