Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Fight With Cudgels; Francisco Goya; 1820-3

Here’s something awesome: Secret Base, a storytelling and experimental video arm that includes several of my old SB Nation pals, has a three-part longform video on the Shaq and Kobe feud work beef called How to Make a Basket: Shaq vs. Kobe. Secret Base has given your friendly neighborhood NBA newsletter an ~exclusive~ trailer, knowing that this stuff is catnip for GMIB readers.

I’ve seen all of Part 1 of the 80-minute story, and it’s excellent (as is always the case with Secret Base work). Part 1 drops on Tuesday, October 23. Parts 2 and 3 come on the following two Tuesdays. You’ll want to make sure to watch those in between early season NBA games. We’ll include them in GMIB of course, but you can also subscribe to Secret Base on YouTube. (Big thanks to Seth Rosenthal, the voice you hear in the story and one of the impresarios at Secret Base, for bringing this to GMIB.)

Watching the first part and reflecting on how I experienced the genesis of Shaq vs. Kobe — as a college-age Kings fan that was fairly basketball obsessive — made me realize that the Lakers’ dynasty and dissolution was one of the last pure pre-internet NBA crossover moments.

Now, of course, Shaq vs. Kobe was not pre-internet. I think I was still on AOL during the first flare-up, but I’m sure a friend had DSL and so I accessed the early version of ESPN.com via Netscape Navigator. But this wasn’t the main way I received NBA-related information. That came from two places: SportsCenter and work.

SportsCenter was the center of the sports universe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Whatever you think Twitter had been for breaking sports news, highlights, lowlights and “the discourse” in the 2010s … SportsCenter was all of that in the ‘90s and early 2000s. If you were a sports fan, you fell asleep to SportsCenter and you woke up to SportsCenter. (Unless it was Friday morning, in which case you woke up to whatever was on TNT in the pre-Charmed era.)

This colored every sports debate that crossed into the public consciousness. The take economy was weak. Honestly, before Pardon the Interruption in 2001, the only place to really get pure, unfiltered takes on ESPN was The Sports Reporters, which aired Sunday mornings. (It was my favorite thing on television, and led to me being a journalist major. I’ll never forgive you, Dick Schaap. [May you rest in peace.]) Fox Sports Net launched The Best Damn Sports Show Period in 2001; this was actually the true warning shot of what was to come, featuring some of the dumbest sports takes imaginable. (I loved it and watched pretty religiously during a gap year I took between community college and university.) Cold Pizza, the actual precursor to First Take, didn’t start up until 2003. ESPN.com had Page 2 and its wild mix columnists, few of whom were pure take artists. (Even Bill Simmons wrote so long as to camouflage his takes in a way not as possible in his podcast era.) The purest expression of modern sports debate culture was probably found on sports talk radio. Mike and the Mad Dog for New Yorkers. Gary Radnich in the Bay. Jim Rome everywhere. Insert your local gravel-throated angerpot here. (Hi, Grant Napear.)

This is all to say that sports takes and specifically opinions about high-awareness sports stories and debates were not in surplus in 1998, in 2000, in 2003, unless you were a delivery driver consuming AM radio all day. The sports internet was a baby, and sports TV was still focused more on sports than competitive arguing. So to really get your fill of sports talk you need to … talk sports with people. Humans, in the flesh.

For me, this came at work.

I worked a few restaurant and similar jobs in the Sacramento region while getting through college. Despite this being in Sacramento, and this being the golden era of Sacramento Kings basketball, and this being the peak of the Kings vs. Lakers rivalry: I was surrounded by Lakers fans. Fellow 20-somethings whose parents were Magic Johnson fans. Teenage hypebeasts who adored Kobe. (Kobe always had fanatics.) Older Lakers heads who insisted the Kings’ style of play could never win a championship (even as they came within a few blows of the whistle of winning a championship).

The debates got progressively worse for me and my fellow Kings (or gods forbid, Warriors) fans as the Lakers won the first championship, then the second, then the third. (There was one Celtics fan, too. In those salad days, there was always one Celtics fan. You could be at a bar on Jupiter’s third moon and there’d be one Celtics fan.) The only saving grace that we non-Lakers fans had was it became increasingly obvious — even absent a 24/7 sports take cycle we have today — that Shaq and Kobe hated each other.

The championships could make those Lakers fans at work smile and gloat. You know how to erase that energy? Tell them the Lakers should trade Kobe before Shaq demands a trade. Or tell them Shaq is washed up and Kobe’s going to get sick of it. Just dig in and show them the impermanence of their joy, evident in every dramatized SportsCenter segment about the latest passive-aggressive quote from Shaq, Kobe or Phil Jackson.

Oh boy, the Lakers fans hated that. “It’s overblown.” “It’s just media bulls—t.” “The Zen Master knows exactly what he’s doing.” “Can’t beat us on the court so you have to try to break us up.” “[random assortment of curse words and slurs].” “Scoreboard.” “[more slurs].” And so the Lakers’ work beef became our work beef. The Lakers fans usually just had to cite, well, the scoreboard. Even when they lost a bunch games, it was always after a championship.

We had to work harder. We had to get the latest drama from SportsCenter, or from the InsideHoops.com rumors page, or from message boards, or from literal word-of-mouth gossip. “So-and-so went to the Lakers’ game in Oakland last week and Kobe and Shaq didn’t talk to each other once.” “I read that Shaq blamed Kobe for the team’s slow start.” “Shaq’s out again, he’s washed.” “Keon Clark changes everything.” (Note: Keon Clark did not change everything.)

By the time Shaq vs. Kobe actually turned into a full-blown conflagration, I was working the restaurant job less often as I finished up college and took on more pre-professional positions and got ready to get married. The day of the Shaq trade was joyous — that was our championship parade — but of course the Kings were sliding down the hill even faster than the Lakers. The only thing we could all agree on in the aftermath: unfairly criticizing Smush Parker.

From there, the internet took center stage for future NBA dramas, and the take economy got way overheated. You now had access to something like 12 hours of sports debate television on just the ESPN family of channels, plus ~blogs~ which meant ~comment sections~ which meant ~posters~ which … oh gods. Then Twitter became the place to instantly share your every sports take with a global community of people who would invariably disagree with you. Sports Twitter turned everyone into a poster. More slurs. Faster transmission of gossip.

Shaq vs. Kobe wasn’t the last NBA mainstream crossover story of a pre-internet discourse world, one where real-life argument was universally more plentiful. Malice at the Palace probably takes that award. But it remains remarkable to me, after watching the first part of How to Make a Basket: Shaq vs. Kobe, how two millionaires’ public work beef became the real-life work beef of so many of us. It’s an echo from a long-lost world. I wouldn’t say I miss it. But I’m glad it happened.

And as someone who at the time was grasping for any sign of weakness from a franchise that tortured my favorite team and I, I’m especially glad the Shaq-Kobe work beef happened.

What Happened

The Las Vegas Aces won their second consecutive championship.

A’ja Wilson with 24-16 in the clincher, totally overwhelming Breanna Stewart (who won MVP for the second time this season) and Jonquel Jones (who has an MVP as well). And she did without Candace Parker (out since early July) and without Chelsea Gray (injured in Game 3). Wilson is on the path toward potentially becoming the Greatest Ever.

What a tough blow for the Liberty. You’re probably not catching the Aces this weak again, barring really bad injury luck. And they took it 3-1. A great season, still, given where New York has been in recent years. But after that offseason haul, to fall short when the chief rival is down two stars … brutal.

On the NBA side, just one season into Kings vs. Warriors actually mattering, and still in the throes of the preseason, I am sick of watching Stephen Curry ruin my nights.

He’s so freaking good.

You want to know why I know I’m going to love the Jordan Poole era in D.C.? Because this dude took a 27-footer with 19 on the shot clock 90 seconds into a preseason game at Madison Square Garden … and got progressively more wild from there. 41 points on 10/19 shooting in 27 minutes. Best Wizard since MJ?

Deni Avdija is already have a great time as a witness to the Poole Party era.

A relatively quiet night for Victor Wembanyama and he still has some double-take plays.

One highlight that didn’t make that reel: Wemby casually nutmegging Reggie Bullock in the open floor. Like, this is really casual. He doesn’t have to rush to catch up to the next dribble or anything.

Links

James Harden no-called, no-showed Sixers practice on Wednesday. Can’t wait for the next James Harden Interlude on The Lowe Post. Sam Amick of The Athletic reports that the Clippers are still refusing to include Terance Mann in a deal for Harden after the most recent talks between the teams stalled on Monday. Harden hasn’t been with the team since Sunday. Hmm.

Zach Lowe’s top 10 League Pass Rankings teams.

Adam Silver says he’s considering going back to East vs. West in the All-Star Game. Disgusting!

Tom Haberstroh hacks the NBA over/under market.

Dan Devine on what makes the Sixers interesting.

Baxter Holmes and Tim MacMahon with a deep dive on how Ja Morant went from universally loved to suspended for 25 games. There’s a good bit of blame assigned to Morant’s father in there, which is familiar to anyone who listens to MacMahon talk about the Morants on ESPN’s various podcasts. Multiple Grizzlies have been public in their criticism of the story and support for Morant, as you’d expect.

And finally: Mike Breen with a “BANG!” on Kyle Kuzma.

Back on Friday. Be excellent to each other.