Ah yes, back when America was teh awesome.
I don't think it's much of a stretch for anyone, regardless of partisanship, to see that the United States' place in the world has significantly declined recently.
This country is uncomfortably embroiled in the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq, a process that has followed an invasion that was unwarranted and based upon either lies (what I'd consider to be the truth) or, more generously, horrible misinformation and grave miscalculation. As a result, the U.S. now has fewer allies; a military stretched beyond its ability to successfully manage its engagements; and a horrible deficit that comes along with the damning opportunity costs of neglected schools, crumbling infrastructure, and a byzantine health care system that is increasingly unsustainable. Al-Qaeda may have been diminished, but terrorist plots and radical Islam remain looming threats only exacerbated by the United States' discredited reputation and suddenly limited means.
"Unsustainable" is how an objective observer might also describe America's energy program--which largely consists of burning oil and hoping that private industry will bail us out--and its environmental practices, which have contributed to soaring carbon emissions and a scientific consensus that the planet is under a nearly cataclysmic assault.
The American financial system has also faltered. An economy driven by state-sanctioned home ownership and the myth that all real estate forever gains value has imploded as risky mortgages, junk securities, faulty regulation, globalization pressure and insufficient capital have coalesced into a recession that's brought with it rising unemployment, falling equity, and shaken market confidence. The U.S. is now losing jobs month by month, and people are left with less money to pay for ever more expensive things. And that synopsis of course neglects problems like critical institutions defaulting as investors realize that these organizations don't have the capital necessary to support debt obligations that are suddenly far more serious than anyone thought possible; problems like owning trillions of dollars in debt, backing it with just $81 billion, and arriving at the glass case only to find it already long broken.
This is an odd way to frame a basketball discussion, but Josh Childress's decision to decamp to Greece struck me as more of the same in its own way, another part of a recurring narrative that's never been far from most of my recent conversations: America is over.
That's not a new conceit; surely, it's been written before, either explicitly or in many other ways. Anyone who reads the news should be able to see it. The time following the fall of the U.S.S.R. when America was "the lone superpower" that filled a leadership void and gave shape to so many affairs is coming to an end. This is now a world in which resource-rich developing nations have taken on new prestige, China will emerge as the world's key economy, and states like India and Brazil will deserve treatment heretofore reserved for countries that led the way out of World War II. But all of this neglects a crucial dimension of the American story, because unlike Great Britain, the United States was not an empire marked solely by wealth or boundaries easily traced on a map. Beyond resources and population growth, aside from America's diminished sphere of influence and dire economic circumstance, the real sign that the United States' time has past may be that American cultural hegemony--aided by the rapid growth of mass, global communication--is failing. Basketball, long a citadel of American preeminence, may have sustained irreparable structural damage. That is what the Childress saga has most vividly suggested to me.
So far, much discussion has rightly focused on how Childress will impact the mechanics of organizing basketball competition. I don't think the conjecture is misguided, but it's certainly just that. No one knows what this means--or, really, if it means. We have to wait and see. Childress could be the first of many, or he could be a well-compensated, less-crazy Lloyd Daniels. Taken in tandem with Brandon Jennings eschewing college basketball for a one-year stint in the pergutorio of the Italian lig, Josh's European daliance could augur for a new basketball era in which the means of productions (the players) seamlessly travel across borders, democratizing competition. Those inclined to build this case--that the leveling process has accellerated--using Childress's departure as a proof point also could surely lean on the United States' shameful performances in the past two international basketball competitions. In sum, it all might argue that the vision of global basketball is rapidly reaching fruition, that "world champions" is a designation that may soon lose the presumptuous air Americans have created around it.
To a jingoistic sports narcissist like me, one whose primary instinct is to dismiss such a notion, that's a nearly unfathomable scenario. Sure, futbol is better elsewhere. And yes, there are great sprinters and hockey players and gymmnasts and all manner of athlete around the globe. But basketball? That's an American game regularly elevated on these shores. Further, I see Argentinian gold medals and I reflexively dwell on America's correctable basketball frailties (shoot better). I observe losses in the international arena and I find shelter underneath irregularities like trapezoidal lanes, junk defenses, officials that hate Tim Duncan, and the malaise with which U.S. players approach non-NBA competition. I read about the international invasion but I quickly remember that Yao Ming can't move or stay healthy, Dirk is a pussy, and the Euro-loving Lakers couldn't defend or play as tough as Yankees like the Celtics. Steve Nash is a novelty player, Biedrins is overpaid, and so forth.
American players, collectively, remain superior to their international counterparts. Similarly, NBA competition is superior to that in other leagues. More importantly, in a larger sense, the culture of basketball--everything from the on-court style, to the technique, to the fashion, to the confluence with music, to the language of the sport--is distinctly American. If you'll recall the brilliant essay about sports and international systems that Matt Yglesias contributed to FD some time ago, basketball was cited as quintessentially American, truly our greatest sport, because its spread and practice embody our values. Basketball, Yglesias argued, is America, in essence.
And that's why Josh Childress may be another ominous sign of impending doom for the U.S. Never before has an able-bodied contributor opted to leave America in order to play basketball. No one has spurned the Lig like that; to do so, to turn one's back on the highest form of an American original, is tantamount to cultural treason. The NBA is a destination, not an option. Coca-Cola, Disney, Michael Jackson, action movies, the NBA, and all of that. That's how it has been, and I always assumed that's how it would remain. At least, until it simply wasn't. I just never thought that time would come so soon. But it may have.
Childress is going to take home more money in Europe than he may have earned in the U.S. However, he would have been paid in America. Moreover, this is a cultured, smart guy, the sort of player of whom we might assume that the lure of the greatest competition would more than compensate for some relatively small difference in salary. Yet he's absconded, turning his back on what is still considered to be the finest venue in which an American cultural tradition is preserved and augmented. Playing in the the NBA, in America, just wasn't enough of a draw. What does that say about the United States?
The story of international basketball has always been that the NBA leads the game forward, evangelizing those whom it encounters yet never relinquishing control. Childress's departure challenges what we've known because it suggests that Americans are no longer arbiters of the sport; that a defining cultural export can now be produced elsewhere. And should a new order indeed be emerging in its nascent stages, America's basketball preeminence may no longer be assumed. That, like the economy, may be one more sign that our society is now sliding down the wrong side of the bell curve that maps a nation's success.
Labels: Andris Biedrins, Boston Celtics, Brandon Jennings, Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Childress, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA, Politics, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Yao Ming
