Basketball is little short of sacred in Kentucky and as a result demands much newsprint. The Sports Sections of newspapers are therefore required to have basketball stories everyday – even in football season – and thus pay appropriate homage to what certainly would have been one of the peaks on Mount Olympus if in operation during the times of the gods and goddesses. Oops! Maybe goddess is not a good word anymore, Olympus notwithstanding, since it smacks of gender discrimination. Let’s just say, “god-persons” and be done with it.
It might have just been a slow news day (even for basketball) the other day when a large section of the sports pages of the Lexington Herald-Leader was devoted to what might be called the “mother of all sports-soaps.” It involved the relationship of Coach Calipari with his star player (so designated by the coach) John Wall, identified by all the sports networks as the high-school super-god when he arrived for his freshman year at the University of Kentucky.
Make no mistake! Wall IS good, although he, just as do all freshman gods, has found out that playing in the Southeastern Conference means playing against other high-school gods who are just as good as he is, if not a bit better. Apparently, according to the paper, Wall got his feelings hurt because the coach said out loud in public that he (Wall) had played poorly at South Carolina. This would have been no big deal, except that freshman basketball-gods never play poorly. Maybe they can have an “off-night,” but poorly – absolutely never!
So...what could a star god – er, guard – do but have a little talk with Calipari about that arrow slung right through the non-god-fearing press? Actually, Calipari had also said about that South Carolina game that, “John Wall really hurt us.” He said it – right out there in public, with all those sportswriter geeks in attendance, whereupon Wall remarked later – also in public – that “I didn’t think I played that bad,” another way of saying that Calipari is not up to snuff on his judgment of freshman gods – er, guards, that is. Translated: Calipari is just a plain old flesh-and-bones mortal – completely out of his league on basketball Olympus.
Something had to be done, naturally, so Wall went to see the coach. Hurt feelings can be serious, maybe not as bad as a sprained ankle, but a sprained ego can cut right to the quick. Wall said right there in public before the sportswriters, “Me and Cal talked.” It seems that Wall said he also hadn’t been having fun while playing, and any student of the god-persons knows that those entities enjoyed perpetual orgies, ecstasies beyond comprehension. Not to have fun, especially for a star god – er, guard – is simply unacceptable. Wall said, “I ain’t had a dunk in I don’t know how long,” and any fan or player knows that reaching/jumping up and dropping the ball in the basket (dunk, for the nerds) is a thrill experienced only by the best...and it’s the most fun, almost as good as an orgy, not to mention a three-pointer!
During that little tete-a-tete, according to the paper, Calipari told Wall it was OK to play bad [sic] and even named a couple of other star-gods he had coached who had also had bad games, but that Wall should go out there and have fun. Wall wasn’t too satisfied with that, especially since he had come to UK so that Calipari would make him ready for the National Basketball Association in one year, there to join Lebron James and other basketball professional basketball god-persons.
Of course, Calipari has already said out loud in public places that Wall will be at UK for only one year, moving right along then to the NBA, there to make his millions. Problem: Despite his obvious superior talent, Wall has a bad habit of losing the ball to the opposition and is often totally out of control, spending a large part of the game on his derriere. So...his scoring and high number of assists is sort of offset by his proclivity for turnovers, a no-no among coaches, notwithstanding a player’s status as a basketball god-person.
So...listen in for any new developments in this soap, which perhaps could be called General Arena, (get it...like ABC’s General Hospital) and feature spellbinding afternoon entertainment exploring whether or not one player’s coach can deal with the everyday problems of Unrealized Olympian expectations. Egad!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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