#364

Had a lot more thoughts about basketball and strategy overall. Forgot 'em all, but you might gettem anyway as it would appear that the desire to write more about sport and the sporters who sportem has resulted in the firm acceptance of

factually sportsmsanlike 2024

and they might flow back to me, depending. All of this is in the hands of God.

Damn. Welcome. Wow. Man, my mind is blown! Never in all this typing did I dream the blog would do this. I would have laughed at you had you suggested it, dear reader! Man, we gotta both strap in today.

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When Muhammad Ali passed from this earthly plane, I bought a few of the magazines that I thought seemed irrestitible in the size of the moment. The LIFE magazine or however it would be appropriate to write that out was by far the best of my three selections in the checkout line at the Walgreen's next to the Autozone I was working at back then, more like a little book than a magazine. 

The best photograph among an impressive amount of great photographs as I remember it was of Ali in full profile at the bottom of a swimming pool, one foot far back behind the other, knucks up. The almost unbelievable beauty of Muhammad Ali is, I think, nowhere in greater evidence than this photograph. 

Wish I could say who took it, make proper citations, but I lost the magazine in one of the near-constant moves of my twenties. Sad loss. 

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My wrestling coach, who coached me in both middle and high school and also happens to be the local sherriff, showed us a tape of the Rumble in the Jungle. At a wrestling camp I attended run by Steve Fraser--where I earned a t-shirt for completing the Grind, meaning I wrestled full-out, pausing only to switch opponents, for two hours solid, which I admit is one of my proudest lifetime accomplishments--I was shown it again. The analysis provided by both these coaches changed my life, and made Muhammad Ali an immortal in my eyes.

Not just the power. Not just the technique. The strats. The fucking strategies, baby. The bright shining line from before the thing even gets going to the win. When you have it all worked out and you know it can work. You see the shot clear and complete.

Seeing someone pull that shit off is one of the most satisfying spectacles in life. That art of war shit. One little pop, one little surpise to throw the opponent off balance. You anticipate where they go to regain their balance and if you're right, if you gauged your opponent accurately, you have them from there because the rhythm and the pace belong to you and they'll go where you take them.

You write a poem that dances in the air. Your feet trace an invisible mandala. You follow the bright shining line.

I would be remiss not to mention that the man lived an incredible, outstanding life in many other ways. I would argue that he is a touchstone in American history. 

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Winning is cool. Let's face it. Winning can feel pretty good, and fulcrum of that is that it proves something, however ephemeral. It says something true about that moment.

Victory isn't something I really prize, though, because that moment is gone in a flash and I care as much or more about process than outcome. 

Now, they say that winning isn't everything, and that is actually bullshit. It is everything. We don't get into competition to fucking lose on purpose unless we're fucking with someone as a way to win on different level. There's nothing wrong with losing, because someone has to and everyone will. You might put up an undefeated professional record or whatnot, but at some point in your life you lost, and you learned from that loss; if nothing else, that the feeling of loss is unbearable in the extreme and that you must build your life on winning. Being as I personally identify very strongly with the Brilliant Loser competitive type, this is not the lesson I take from loss, but we are all different and it takes all kinds to make a worthy contest. 

And at some point, we like to see the proof of ourselves in the outcome. Just once at least. Even if you never taste it, though, that doesn't mean going for it was a waste of time or wasn't worth it.

They also say that it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. This is technically true but it is used incorrectly as another way to say that it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, because what is actually important is the process of building character, of winning and losing gracefully. What is factual is that how you play the game indelibly affects how you win or lose, and that it is how you win or lose that you played the game. There is no actual durable distinction. Broken down further into the root truths: grace is indeed required, not only in victory and loss but in process. The tally of victories and losses is nothing more than a byproduct of a process whose aim is not to demarcate winners and losers but to engage human beings in a process of aspirational dynamism. Of growth, adaptation, creativity. Perhaps what they say is functional, but to me the fine points of the breakdown are essential.

It is not dominance that ought properly drive us in contest, or the fear of loss, but advancement, improvement, building bonds, inspiring ourselves and others to greater heights in all aspects of our lives. It is the example that we show by how we strive that is essential, not whether we win. Because victory could never satisfy us, and loss could never deter us. What we seek is transcendental.

We stay in the process. That process is both spiritual, laden with immanence, and grounded in our bodies, our brains and muscles and guts and bones. The point is that you put it all in the line.

The bright, clear, shining line.

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More tomorrow! Man, I got plenty. This is crazy. For now though, the winds blow towards other waters.

--JL