Forty Dollars Short of Amazing

When Chris Paul was untraded back from the Lakers to the Hornets, the procession of horribles was so obvious that cataloging them was almost a delight. Los Angeles suffered a compromised foundation, the untraded Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom. Houston's careful planning was exposed and burned to the ground. Boston alienated its future by marginalizing Rajon Rondo and lost out on David West. New Orleans was left with a toxic asset and even less of the limited leverage it enjoyed at the outset. Further, the Hornets were not likely to receive more for Paul than Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, and Kevin Martin.

Ultimately the Hornets sent Paul to Lob City, where he is now mayor, and New Orleans received Eric Gordon, Al-Farouq Aminu, Chris Kaman, and a coveted draft pick in return. However ugly the Paul trade saga may have been, watching the NBA-sanctioned Hornets was worse.

Game time in Phoenix, and the U.S. Airways Center is 60% full. The Suns event staff ushers the crowd through the customary, empty pre-game ceremonies. The in-arena MC for the evening is Cedric Ceballos, and this invites conflicted thinking: is it horribly sad that Ceballos is left to fill this role, or should everyone feel optimistic that the NBA is an engine of job growth? Better that he has something to do, right? Really, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Over the course of the evening, the Suns will help America get back to work by trotting out not just Ceballos, but also Kayte Christensen, a "social sideline reporter," and no fewer than three different blonde women who preside over trivia games and giveaways. (Jokes aside, these are the faces of the lockout's true losers, and they were largely without representation during the NBA labor strife.)


Staying true to their community, the Suns' dance team features women named Sumer, Brittni, Geminise, and Jordan, among others. How terribly Phoenix. Betting against them having tattoos and fake hair would be like burning money. These girls enjoy center-court status as the Hornets and Suns are introduced. New Orleans trots out Eric Gordon and four of Chris Paul's Pips: Marco Belinelli, Emeka Okafor, Carl Landry, and Trevor Ariza. (Chris Kaman, earning $12.9m this year, does not start. Enjoy working at your job.) After dispensing with this formality, the lights go out, a jumbotron introduction video forged in the fires of excessive editing comes on, and the Suns are revealed. Emerging in pairs from assorted gates--look how much the players love the fans!--these desert conquerors descend onto the court for another exciting season of hoarding cap room for 2012. (Phoenix will have more than $29m to spend next off-season.) The smartest pairing is Josh Childress and Hakim Warrick. The crowd can only point, gawk, and make fun of their contracts once.


The first quarter is as ugly as one might expect when two ill-prepared teams of meager ability play for the first time. Grant Hill collapses in a heap on three different occasions, Carl Landry fires an air ball, Jared Dudley looks disoriented. The Hornets soon bring in Greivis Vasquez, a point guard who couldn't beat out Jeremy Pargo for minutes in Memphis, and literally everything he does is awkward. Everything. Errant and ill-advised passes. "Drives" to the basket that are labored exercises in grinding on another man. Hectic dribbling with no discernible purpose. Nothing, though, is a greater indictment of the New Orleans offense than the quarter coming to a close with Eric Gordon taking only two shots. He may be an efficient scorer, but on a team with such a stunted attack, Gordon should shoot often enough to embarrass John Salmons.

 
The game wore on this way. There was never a rhythm, nor any spells when cleaner play hinted that each team would eventually look professional. Instead, the Suns and Hornets animated the NBA's worst problems. In a league of stars, none were to be found. Gordon, despite his shooting touch, balance, and basketball aplomb, is the ultimate sidekick. He is not assertive, partially because he cannot be. Gordon does not drive to the basket reliably; he struggles to control the game when forced to dribble. A shaky handle leaves him as an excellent jump shooter. There is no shame in that fate, but neither is their glory. Steve Nash, meanwhile, plays as his worst self on this diminished Suns team, dribbling too often and recklessly racing toward vanishing real estate. Nash had twelve assists against New Orleans, but he never created a sense of control, and much of his production owed to his protracted periods with the basketball. Less maestro than ER doctor, Nash spent the game scurrying around to no end. Something less than the stuff of NBA mythology.


Not every team will have a transcendent star, of course, and the Hornets and Suns might be forgiven as teams in the midst of churn. Worse was the depressing nature of the entire affair. By the end of the first quarter, the arena was 90% full, a late-arriving crowd that surely needed just a few more minutes for those final fluorescent vodka shooters. (Phoenix!) The PA announcer worked hard to keep the audience engaged, leading cheers of "De-fense," kicking it over to Cedric, and supervising the endless barrage of gimmicks. Fire exploded out of the baskets, t-shirts whistled into the crowd, and those tasteful dancers gyrated with elegance. Yet all of these elements comprised an elaborate citadel built to guard a gaping void. On the court, Robin Lopez and Marcin Gortat mechanically finished at the rim while Trevor Ariza vacillated between encouraging veteran and disappointing never-was, but the season's first game condemned both teams before either had played its remaining sixty-five. No good will grow out of this garden.


Sad air suffocated the night. Al-Farouq Aminu was a whirling mess in eleven minutes, hardly playing on a team going nowhere after factoring prominently in the trade that ground the league to a halt. Chris Kaman was an infamous grotesque. Shannon Brown looked heavy yet adrift. Everywhere, NBA basketball was in its ugliest iteration, from incompetent isolations to woeful free-throw shooting and vacant defenses. The enduring image was a common, deflating one: Josh Childress missing an open corner three after 24 seconds of writhing in the name of nothing. It is a symbol of basketball at its worst, and it was the most fitting reminder of why it can sometimes be so difficult to love this game.