Smiles and Cries

Two years ago, during the lockout, I wrote a piece entitled "The Importance of Andre Drummond and Anthony Davis" for a now-defunct NBA website. The first paragraph concluded with "...together they could be saviors of the low post for both the college and pro game."

I say this not to toot my own horn, but because, on a day when Drummond recorded his best game as a pro to date and tragedy struck Davis in the form of a broken hand, it seems relevant.

To be perfectly honest, when I wrote it I'm not sure I truly believed it, but it seemed like a reasonable narrative. I went on to remark on the overwhelming percentage of highly drafted big men to flame out of the league in the past decade and a half and presented my reasons these two would be exceptions to that trend, namely unreal size and athleticism.

Neither has done much to prove me wrong. Good news first.

Sunday, Drummond recorded a stat line not seen since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1990, 31 points, 19 rebounds and six steals. Throw in a couple blocks for good measure, and some casual Sportscenter watchers will be taking notice of the Pistons big man tomorrow morning for more than his typical thunderous alley oops. Although, the performance wasn't lacking in those either.

Surely, First Take or some other joke of a sports media outlet will dwell on the facts that Drummond made just seven of 18 free-throw attempts and that those numbers actually bolstered the season percentage of one of the worst foul shooters in league history. He now sits at 32.1 percent.

As long as his woes from the charity stripe continue, he will be a late-game casualty and one of the more prominent members of the Dwight Howard Players Who Force an Opposing Coach to Make the Game Unwatchable by Repeatedly Fouling Because Even Though Everyone Hates It the Numbers are Undeniable club. I will not point out that he is on pace to join a very exclusive club of players who have attempted 50 or more free throws in a season and shot twice as high from the field than from the line. Instead, to counter those who will focus on the negative numbers, I must present the positive.

Through 17 games, Drummond is averaging 12 points and 11.8 rebounds, as well as 3.2 stocks (a Bill Simmons-coined combination of steals and blocks) per game on 65 percent from the field, tops in the league among qualifying players by a significant margin (LeBron is second. How insane is that?). At the moment, he's the perfect catcher of Brandon Jennings' lobs, but it's impossible not to see that with a little hard work on his most glaring weakness and some minor defensive tutelage, the guy will be posting even gaudier stat lines in the near future.

If Drummond could hit a couple more throws a game he would suddenly be approaching the numbers of the man the NBA world shed a tear for last night. Anthony Davis was one of the most pleasant surprises of this young season. After a very raw offensive and very overeager defensive rookie campaign, the 2012 No. 1 pick was on pace to be the first player since Shaq in 1999-2000 to average 19 points, nine boards and three blocks per.

Last week, a friend and fellow NBA nut posed the question "Is Davis the best big man in the league right now?" After a dismissive chuckle, the thought permeated my brain, and I found myself half-heartedly responding "Kevin Love...."

After a number of days to think on it, I will still contend that Love is a slightly better player (honorable mention: Boogie, I see you), but it is much easier to see Davis as the second-best player on a championship team sooner than Love or any other post player in the league, sans Roy Hibbert and Dwight Howard's narrow chances in their respective situations. Which made it all the more disheartening to hear of the fractured hand that will sideline The Brow indefinitely.

Davis and his incredible 28.4 PER were almost little secrets that us in the NBA Twitterverse and blogosphere (Twitogospherse?) were hiding down in Pierre's cage. Everyone knows the lanky arm of the law, but I bet even many of you reading this were unaware of just how impressive the numbers were that he was posting.

All things considered, the news is as encouraging as it could be. It's his non-shooting hand. It's a non-displaced fracture (meaning the bone didn't break all the way through). It's, obviously, completely unrelated to the MCL sprain that cost him 18 games last season. But we're a selfish bunch. We don't like losing one of our crown jewels for a day, a week or a month. And we really don't like seeing a potential Hall of Fame talent showing any signs of being injury prone at such an early stage of his career.

Two years ago, I took a wild guess that Andre Drummond and Anthony Davis would be the future of the NBA low-post game. I can't call that prediction safe yet, as both face very different forms of adversity, but the stats and, more importantly, the eyes of any League Pass subscriber can attest that they're on the right path.

SportVU is Here to Stay

There’s a stat for everything.

Want to know LeBron’s record on Tuesday nights at home in the second game of a doubleheader when he’s wearing black socks? You can probably find it. It’s probably very good. And it’s definitely meaningless. Maybe the last thing we need is more statistics for ESPN to throw at us on Numbers Never* Lie!

Well, here are the SportVU cameras, providing readily available quantitative analysis that you didn’t even know existed. Except, instead of being meaningless, these stats are amazing.

SportVU is a system of six cameras located in the catwalks of every NBA arena that track the motions of every player on the court at every second of every game. Before this season, only about half of the teams had them installed and the numbers weren’t ripe for the taking like they are now.

I’m sure I will be revisiting these statistics intermittently throughout the year (most likely every day), but here are a few interesting takeaways from the young season, because small sample sizes are the best.

• -          Goran Dragic is currently first in distance traveled per game (3.1 miles). Fast point guard, playing a lot of minutes, makes sense. But first place in distance traveled per 48 minutes is Gigi Datome, naturally. The Pistons forward only played about 20 seconds in the opening game but tallied an average speed of 5.7 miles per hour (also first) for a whopping 4.5 miles per 48. The curious thing is wondering exactly how that happened. Did they make a line change mid-fast break? Did he check in and begin sprinting around aimlessly in an effort to impress coaches? Was he simply making sure he high fived EVERYONE while the clock ticked out at the end of the game? I am not going to investigate the answer because it is undoubtedly better in my imagination.

• -          As you’d expect, individual time of possession is dominated by various point guards, but the highest non-point guard on the list? Well, LeBron obviously. But second highest? Oh…James Harden. This is boring. Let’s move on. WAIT!! Hawks rookie Dennis Schroder ranks 34^th on the list with 4.3 minutes of possession. Pretty mundane until you notice that he only played 18.6 minutes in his debut. Double his playing time to around starters’ minutes and he’d be at 8.6, 0.6 more than leader Damian Lillard.

• -          Dwight Howard had a HUGE first game as a Rocket right? He tallied 26 rebounds Wednesday night, but let’s take note that 21 of those boards were uncontested, leaving his contested rebound percentage at just 19.2 percent. Comparatively, Kevin Love wrangled in “just” 17 rebounds, but 47.1 percent were contested. Again, one game each, but this is one I feel could emerge into a long-term trend.

• -          Roy Hibbert has 12 blocks in his first two contests. No doubt, impressive, but more surprisingly impressive, Brook Lopez allowed the Cavs to convert just one of 11 shots that he contested at the rim. In contrast, Marcin Gortat was abused by the Pistons, as they finished every single attempt (eight) against him at the hoop.

• -         John Wall tallied four secondary assists (passes that led to an assist) in the Wizards opener. Among the players who had three such passes in their only game are Will Bynum, John Lucas III and Jon Leuer. So that’s weird. Those numbers may not seem all that high, but keep in mind that in 2010-11, Rajon Rondo averaged just 1.3 secondary assists in 32 SportVU-tracked games. He led the league with more than 12 assists per game that season.

I’ll stop here before I find myself all the way down the rabbit hole, but I’ll definitely be analyzing these things way more than I should for the next 81 games or so. So will Daryl Morey.

Prince George

It might be bad karma to kick the season off with a negative post, but with LeBron and the Heat coming off of two consecutive Finals victories and a nearly guaranteed third (and fourth, and fifth, and sixth) on the way, there’s just too much positivity going on in my basketball life. I need to get back to an even keel. The Extra Pass is back. And Paul George is overrated.

It’s a notion I find myself coming back to time and time again. Yes, Paul George performed admirably in the playoffs, holding his own in head-to-head matchups with the league’s leading scorer and the greatest player in the world in consecutive series. Yes, he is one of the more promising two-way wings the league has to offer. In fact, each time I watch him play I find myself enjoying his game more and more; a smooth, artistic freelancer on an otherwise offensively inelegant squad. But there is no legitimate rhyme or reason for the unabashed superstar status he has been so prematurely anointed with.

ESPN’s #NBArank, which is devised from an expert panel’s predictions for the upcoming season’s performance, recently placed George as the 13^th best player in the league, just ahead of Blake Griffin (14^th) and Carmelo Anthony (15^th) and 18 spots higher than Andre Iguodala, a player whose relevance to this debate will become evident shortly. This after a season in which the Pacers guard averaged 17.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and 4.1 assists on a shade below 42 percent shooting, for a PER of 16.84.

Let’s focus on the comparison with Anthony first, a player still very much in his prime, who averaged 28.7, 6.9 and 2.6 on nearly 45 percent shooting, with a 24.83 PER last season. The natural line of argument here is that while Anthony is by all accounts a minus defender, George is universally recognized as one of the top five defensive wings in the league, a distinction largely based on the eye test and dozens of advanced analytical measures that I could rattle off, but none of us would fully comprehend.

I will not refute George’s defensive prowess by any means. His combination of length, speed and athleticism make him the rarest breed, capable of at least slowing down the Melos, LeBrons and Durants of the world. I will point out that he has the luxury of operating in an Indiana system where he is given the confidence and free reign to provide unwavering ball pressure, knowing that funneling his counterpart toward the rim and a roaming Roy Hibbert is by no means a bad option. But yes, he is one of the handful of best perimeter defenders around, and in a league where offense continues to be weighted disproportionately over defense, it’s refreshing to see a player get so much love for his work on the dirty end.

The question becomes, is that elite defense worth more than the 11 points and gaps in efficiency he gives up to Anthony on the offensive end? The answer is a pretty clear no.

In their six-game conference semifinals matchup last season, Melo scored more than 28 points per game on 43 percent shooting while being defended primarily by George, numbers nearly identical to his season averages, despite also facing that suffocating, pack-the-paint help provided by the rest of the Pacers. Small sample size notwithstanding, if George had held Anthony to 20 per on below 40 percent then this would be an argument.

As stated earlier, #NBArank is a predictive list, so the next rational argument would be that George is expected to make an offensive leap this season, narrowing the void between him and a player like Anthony. This argument would logically be based on the offensive “coming out party” we saw from George in last year’s playoffs, showing glimpses of a more refined scorer who shined in the biggest moments. Are we sure that happened?

George’s scoring average increased less than two points in the playoffs, to go along with a one assist per game jump and an identical effective field goal percentage. His PER actually dropped by two tenths due to a nearly four-minute increase in minutes per game. I won’t continue to rattle off numbers, but rest assured that if you compare his regular season and playoff statistics per 36 minutes there are no substantial differences.

But he’s a big-time player! He matched LeBron shot for shot, play for play! He played best when the lights were brightest! Did he?

He canned a ridiculous three to send Game 1 into overtime and followed it up with three cold-blooded free throws to take a one-point lead with two seconds left in the extra period. Of course, we all know what happened in those two seconds, but have we given George enough blame for that final defensive breakdown? He was attempting to stop the most unstoppable force in the league without his 7-foot rim protector in the game, but to concede an uncontested layup in that situation is inexcusable. George knew just as well as anyone that Frank Vogel had decided to leave Hibbert on the bench, likely because he didn’t expect any of his guards to get absolutely torched to the rim with just two seconds on the clock. Someone didn’t hold up his end of that bargain.

Even if we heap on the credit to George for keeping the Pacers in that contest, to claim that he stepped up to the moment throughout that series is to ignore the 3-10, 13 points, two rebounds and five turnovers he put up in a blowout loss in Game 3 (one of five games in that series in which he had five or more TOs), as well as a 2-9, seven-point performance he dropped while fouling out of Game 7.

One of my criteria for superstar status is scoring more than seven points when you have a chance to advance to the Finals. Call me old fashioned.

The issue at hand is that many see George as a unique entity. The league’s traditional defensive stoppers are guys like Tony Allen and Avery Bradley, hard-working but somewhat unassuming players who often struggle on the offensive end. In George we see elite athleticism, and there are times when he makes scoring look simple. Just not often enough.

The truth is that George isn’t unique. Unbelievably athletic wing stopper who’s something of a Swiss army knife on offense? Andre Iguodala would like to speak with you.

I’m not totally insane. I do not think that Iguodala will have a better season than George, but the distance between them is not that great, surely not the distance between the 13^th and 31^st best players in the league.

George’s raw offensive numbers were distinctly better than Iggy’s last season, but it should be noted that his PER was just a point higher despite a significantly higher usage rate (23.5 to 18.8), which will surely decrease with the return of Danny Granger to the Indy lineup. Additionally, you simply are not going to convince me that George is a better wing defender than the subject of this CBS article.

Iguodala will turn 30 in January. He is likely hitting the downslope of his career. But no one was clamoring to call him the next big thing six years ago when he was posting seasons inarguably better than George at just a year older than the Pacers guard is now. The guy didn’t even make an All-Star team until 2012.

George may very well end up having a better career than Iguodala. In fact, I hope he does. But the likelihood that he’ll be top five in 2016 doesn’t make him top 15 right now. The only thing such lofty expectations can lead to is disappointment. Hows about we let things play out a little.

We all see the potential. You’d have to be blind not to. But Paul George is not the 13^th-best player in the league. He is not better than Carmelo Anthony. He is not a superstar. Not yet.

The TV Takeover

ALERT!! The second half of this piece contains minor Breaking Bad spoilers.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the TV takeover is in full swing, and it might even be on its last legs.

Last week I posted a piece about the recent lack of cinematic masterpieces. But, while Sept. 21 could potentially mark the end of a nearly five-year drought of great films, the downtime has provided ample opportunity for television to establish itself as the most relevant medium.

The wide release of There Will Be Blood, considered by many, including myself, to be the last great film, took place on Jan. 25, 2008. Five days earlier, America was introduced to Walter White and his terminal lung cancer.

“I would like to think this was a matter of chance.”*

In the four and a half years since, The Wire has ended and a Harvard Law School class on The Wire began, Dick Whitman and the gang have received seven Emmys, Shane and Rick have dome-blasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 zombies and some midget has tricked every person in an entire kingdom (or something like that. I don’t watch that one.)

If we’re dead set on calling the 1950s and early-1960s the Golden Age of Television, then I must propose that we call this current phenomenon the Platinum Age of Television. Wikipedia describes the Golden Age as “…a time when many hour-long anthology drama series received critical acclaim.” Remove the word “anthology” and that’s the exact description of the current era, beginning when those ducks waddled into Tony Soprano’s yard.

In hindsight, the reasons for America’s gravitation away from film and towards television are clearer than a batch of Walt’s 99.1 percent pure brew. We have become a generation of multi-taskers, and, while smartphones have made all those tasks available no matter where we are, we have also become a generation reliant on our comfort zones.

It’s the same reason the Rays and Orioles can’t even come close to selling out their home games, despite being square in the middle of a divisional championship race. It’s easier, cheaper and more comfortable to stay home and watch from your couch. Your 60-inch HD TV displays just as good of a picture as 90 percent of the seats in the stadium. A hot dog in your living room doesn’t cost $5. The time you would spend sitting in your car waiting to exit the parking lot can better be spent watching one of 1,000 other games on one of your 10,000 other channels.

The same principle applies directly to television watchers, even more so when you consider the fact that cellphone use is frowned upon in movie theaters. On a Sunday night, would you rather spend $12 on a movie ticket, spend $10 more on popcorn and soda, listen to the idiotic laughs and gasps of 200 strangers and stare at a screen almost too large to comprehend showing another plotless sequel/remake or pop your own corn, nestle into the butt groove in your couch (infinitely more comfortable than a theater seat) and scan Twitter during commercial breaks of a superior program?

Ten years ago, you might still have answered with the former. But it just so happens that as technology was advancing to the point that your home experience is equal to or greater than a trip to the theater, a generation of unbelievable writers, cinematographers and showrunners were taking their talents to the small screen.

It’s not as if the film industry was Dan Marino and, following his retirement, we were talking ourselves into the potential of Jay Fiedler. No, we were replacing Brett Favre with Aaron Rodgers, and soon he was winning MVPs and we were realizing that the successor might be even better than the original.

Premium television now transcends the idea of procedurals. This season of Breaking Bad was the equivalent of a 362-minute film that I guarantee I could watch beginning to end without a hint of boredom, something I can rarely say about any newly released two-hour film.

But all of that could be changing.

When ASAC Schrader sat down to take a number two and finally realized the identity of public enemy number one, it wasn’t what many of us expected and it signifies a reality nearly as harrowing as the Godfather-esque 10-man murder montage. It truly is the beginning of the end of something that can non-hyperbolically be called the best piece of media of the past half-decade.

With a mere eight episodes remaining of the best show on television (Yes, I’m calling it that, and there’s nothing you can do about it) and potential big screen greatness on the horizon (The Master, Lincoln, Django Unchained), it’s tempting to think we may have come full circle.

I don’t buy it.

Breaking Bad is not an outlier. In fact, less than a year ago, it was pretty much a consensus that Mad Men was the superior AMC drama. From The Sopranos to Six Feet Under to The Wire to Dexter to Game of Thrones to Homeland, there has been a steady stream of amazing television shows pumping out of the ol’ boob tube for nearly 15 years.

Not to overuse Malcom Gladwell book titles, but Breaking Bad seems to be the tipping point; the show that has finally brought premium television fully into the mainstream. College kids are watching it. Twitter explodes during every episode. And it’s nearly impossible to navigate the internet the following Monday without stumbling over a recap. But the point is that it’s not alone. Its success may even inspire an exponential growth in shows of the same ilk.

So, while Walt, Dex and Don may be calling it quits sooner rather than later, I see no reason to believe they won’t be replaced by different but equally mesmerizing characters soon enough. And, even though this Oscar season looks to be a renaissance of original screenplays, it may be no more than a flash in the pan.

The Paul Thomas Andersons and Quentin Tarantinos and Coen Brothers of the world each make one movie every five years if we’re lucky. It just so happens that two of them, along with Steven Spielberg, are releasing films within four months of each other this fall.

I look forward to the upcoming peak, but I’m fully aware of the drop off on the other side and the bottomless gulch that lies beneath, lined with Hangover sequels and the remake of Point Break.

In all honesty, I’d rather not think about those things until I find out what exactly Walt’s going to do with that gun.

*One more thing. Then I have to go. First person to name the reference from the fourth paragraph wins a prize.

The Truth Smarts

“I’m single. Not really single, just alone.” –Louis C.K.

Truer words have never been spoken. That shouldn’t be surprising. Since 2010, over the course of 2.5 seasons, Louis C.K. has molded the most honest thing on television. In a medium filled with laugh tracks and Jim Parsons’ Emmys, Louis C.K. truly is alone.

If you don’t know “The Louie Deal” by now, I’ll boil it down for you. FX gives Louis C.K. a bunch of money. He writes, casts, shoots, stars in, directs and edits 13 30-minute episodes of Louie and gives them back to the network. They are then aired weekly each summer. Until this year, nearly all of the work was done by the star himself…on a MacBook.

It’s the most unique deal in television (maybe in history) and results in a show that is almost entirely one man’s vision. More so than Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad. More so than Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men. More so than Tyler Perry’s Stuff That Black People Laugh At (that’s a show right?). So it’s a good thing that man is a bona fide comedic genius.

For more than two decades Louis has traveled the country performing a brand of comedy that can only be described as “his own.” He may have the most aptly named HBO specials in history because his act is equal parts Shameless and Hilarious, even though he would despise me using the latter word.

His television deal alone is enough to make him a comedy icon and legend for years to come, but instead of stopping there, he went ahead and made a choice that is literally revolutionizing the stand-up industry. Last December, Louis released his fourth full-length special, Live at the Beacon Theater, and made it available exclusively on his website.

Consumers willing to make a $5 digital payment directly to Louis himself were able to download the special straight to their computers, no middle men involved. He politely asked his fans not to download the special illegally. When all was said and done, he had made over $1.1 million, more than quadrupling production costs, and more than 220,000 people had received the special for an extremely low price. Since then, Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari have released specials the same way, with great success.

“’I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. And even the inside of your own mind is endless. It goes on forever inwardly. Do you understand? Being the fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to be bored.”

That quote comes from a scene in Season 2 where Louie and his two daughters are taking a car ride to see Louie’s great aunt. It’s one of many times over the past three years that have made me wonder if Louis simply records every interaction he has with his real daughters and re-shoots the interesting ones word-for-word with the two brilliant actresses Hadley Delany and Ursula Parker.

These moments make it seem as if you’re watching a sweeter yet strangely more twisted version of Big Brother. There are too many of them to list, and I don’t know how true to reality any of them actually are, but the fact that Louis is able to make them feel so genuine is a testament to his directing skills.

One of these instances will always stick out in my mind. In the Season 2 episode “Oh Louie/Tickets,” Louie is forced into asking mega-comedian Dane Cook to cop him some Lady Gaga tickets for his oldest daughter. For years there has been a real-life tension, perpetuated more by fans than by the comedians themselves, that Cook stole parts of Louis’ act. The episode’s candid interaction between the two is so mesmerizing, so real, and yet nothing is resolved. Each funnyman says his piece, Cook agrees to get the tickets and they move on.

The scene is so convincing that even after scouring the internet I still have no definitive idea of what parts were real and what lines were simply amazing writing.

“It doesn’t have any effect on your life. Why the fuck do you care? People try to talk about it like it’s a social issue. ‘How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?’ I don’t know. It’s your shitty kid. You fuckin’ tell em. Why is that anyone else’s problem? Two guys are in love but they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for fuckin’ five minutes?”

Maybe you believe in gay marriage, maybe you don’t. Regardless, you have to admit that no matter how simplistic and profanity-laced that statement is, there’s a valid point in there.

That’s the beauty of Louis' greatest jokes. They really aren’t even jokes. He simplifies some of the most controversial topics that exist today and forces the audience to inspect themselves in regard to those issues. The divine humor lies in the fact that these issues, which thousands of people spend thousands of hours lobbying for or against, can be summed up so damn easily. In the above joke, he expresses practically all that needs to be expressed by the pro-gay marriage camp in less than 90 words.

Analyze those nine sentences. There is no set-up, no punchline, yet I’m sure it incites a roar of laughter every time he tells it.

There are different methods of attack any comedian can use to make his audience laugh. Along with the more traditional humor, Louis is a master at using uneasiness, guilt and embarrassment with ourselves as a society. I’m sure a majority of his audience members let those feelings leave their brain as fast as they arrived and continue on with their lives, but when I hear Louis tell jokes they resonate for days (and hopefully influence my entire life). I don’t think I’m the only one.

“That’s what optimistic means, you know? It means stupid. An optimist is somebody who goes, ‘Hey, maybe something nice will happen.’ Why the fuck would anything nice ever happen?”

On its surface, Louie is defeatist. Louie continually reaffirms his stance that nothing good is ever going to happen to him or anyone else. Anything beautiful that does happen (the subway platform violinist from Season 2, Parker Posey’s rooftop speech from the most recent episode, etc.) quickly dissipates when the world rears its ugly head.

But doesn’t that make the show all the more optimistic? Louie doing his absolute damnedest to raise two young girls the right way no matter how shitty the world is around them? Maybe there’s a better word for that than optimistic, but that’s what it seems like to me. No matter what he claims, there’s always that glimmer of hope that he’s doing one thing correctly.

And ultimately I think Louis C.K. is optimistic. What else could possibly cause a man to trust his fans enough to pour a quarter of a million dollars into a project that could have been widely pirated and resulted in epic failure? What could convince a man to tolerate failure of the worst kind on his first television show (HBO’s Lucky Louie) and encourage him to plod on until he earned himself the right to make something he truly believes in?

“I have a lot of beliefs…and I live by none of them. That’s just the way I am. They’re just my beliefs. I just like BELIEVING them. I like that part.”

Louis would be the first one to tell you that he doesn’t actually do anything. He writes dirty jokes and gets paid obscene amounts of money to read them. But that’s not true is it? I’m not sure if it’s modesty or just a specific lack of awareness, but claiming that his work is unimportant is the one dishonest thing I’ve ever seen him do.

All comedians do a great service just by making people laugh. Louis goes a step further, also making his audience think critically about the world around them. But there is a very fine line between being observational and being preachy. Even the greats, such as George Carlin, had moments when their politics overpowered their act.

It never goes that far with Louis C.K, because above all things he knows not to take himself too seriously, something that very few of us ever learn.

“You don’t have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to.”

The Baddest Show on TV

I have never seen Avatar. I consider myself a movie buff regarding the time period from at least the mid-1950’s until now, and I have never seen Avatar. Or Alien. Or the two Matrix sequels. Or a single Lord of the Rings or Star Wars film. It isn’t that I in any way doubt the quality or entertainment value of any of those movies, and it’s not that I simply hate science fiction. It’s just that when it comes to movies and television I enjoy watching realistic people (usually men to be honest) making real decisions in a world largely based in reality. Call it personal preference. It’s mentally stimulating for me to put myself in a character’s position, having to make the same decision he has to make and imaging how I would handle it.

Which is why, to me, Breaking Bad is the absolute best show on TV, and it’s hard to put into words how excited I am for the Season 5 Premiere on Sunday. Let me try.

I realize my definition of the word “real” may be a touch different than Webster’s. It’s unlikely that a genius-chemist-turned-high-school-teacher has ever been confronted with the decisions that Walter White handles on a weekly basis, much less converted himself into a methamphetamine manufacturer in the first place.

But that’s the beauty of Breaking Bad. As Grantland’s Andy Greenwald so perfectly put it, the show “at times seems less like a TV drama and more like a terrifying chain reaction.” It started with a situation that thousands upon thousands of people have dealt with and, according to the statistics, one out of every four of us will encounter in some form; staring cancer in the face and wondering how your family will survive without you. Who will provide for them? What can I do now that will help them when I’m gone?

The decision Walt makes leads to dozens upon dozens of new decisions that are progressively less likely for any one of us to ever be confronted with, but, as they say, “shit flows downhill.” The consequences of his actions become more dramatic, more grisly and exponentially more shocking. It’s a reminder that you can make one decision, no matter how good your intentions, and before you know it you’re dumping poison into a Mexican drug lord’s burrito while his mute, wheelchair-relegated uncle warns him by incessantly ringing his communication bell. We’ve all been there.

The narrative of the show turned a very normal man’s life into a shocking but not unbelievable series of twists and turns.

Over its first four seasons, Breaking Bad has earned a handful (plus a finger) of legitimate “Holy Shit!”s from me. Mind you, this is coming from someone who didn’t flinch when we found out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, didn’t bat an eyelash when we discovered there was a Brian Moser and cried with joy when it was finally revealed that “I am Tyler Durden.” (If I spoiled anything for you just now you might want to check out the weather outside of that cave you’ve been living in.)

Scenes from six separate episodes, “…And the Bag’s in the River” (Season 1, Episode 3), “Crazy Handful of Nothin” (S1E6), “Phoenix” (S2E12), “Half Measures” (S3E12), “Box Cutter” (S4E1) and “Face Off” (S4E13), had me picking my jaw off the floor. No other show has ever done that.

One sign of a great show is when you’re re-watching seasons with someone who has never seen them before and you get excited to see their reaction to what’s coming up. I was giddy like a schoolgirl watching Seasons 1 and 2 over with my roommate; in part to see those amazing moments for a second time, but mostly because one more person in the world was about to become infatuated with the show just as much as I was, largely due to those shock-and-awe moments.

On top of the style and shock, Breaking Bad is the only show on TV that can rival Mad Men’s cast of characters. Every member of the show is a deplorable human being in one way or another. Jesse Pinkman is an on-and-off meth dealer. Saul Goodman is so crooked he makes Maurice Levy look like Clarence Darrow. Gus Fringe is the epitome of evil. Skyler White is….well she’s just a bitch. But somehow they’re all likeable in some way that makes you root for them at times. The most unlikeable characters on the show are the mostly innocent and essentially good Hank and Marie Schrader. It’s a conundrum that can easily make you question your own set of morals.

Do I side with the guy whose intentions were initially good but is now a psychologically conniving monster? If not, then who do I root for? How do I feel about this? When a television show causes you to pose such questions to yourself, it’s doing something right.

All this being said, do NOT watch Sunday’s premiere unless you have seen every one of the first 46 episodes. Instead, find a way to see each season, in order, quickly. I have the first three on DVD if you want to borrow them.

Breaking Bad is unique in the realm of premium television shows in that it follows one, mostly linear path through its entire existence. If it were a plant it would be a species of ivy. Storylines branch off in slightly different directions but always end up winding back around each other in a tightly clumped knot.

I have no idea what showrunner Vince Gilligan had in mind when the show kicked off in 2008, but when you revisit the first two seasons there seems to have been a very distinct plan in place from the beginning. The development is slow in many places. Knowing what we know now makes it seem all the more genius. Some shows, like Sports Night, Arrested Development or Freaks and Geeks, were cancelled early but are still considered great just from the body of work they were able to produce. If Breaking Bad had been cancelled at any point along the way it would have been forgotten for all time; an incomplete story.

Thank God it didn’t come to that. Instead we have two more eight-episode seasons to complete the darkest part of Walt’s life and see how many more people will die in what started as a “No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal.”

Mad Men may have four straight Emmys and Roger Sterling-esque money shots from every television critic in existence all over its box sets, but it also may have reached the point of being too beautiful. It’s disgustingly romantic, dripping in symbolism and utterly fantastic. But we mustn’t forget the root goal of television; to entertain. Nothing against Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce Holloway, but sometimes the dream sequences, whiskey-soaked diatribes and metaphor-laden partners’ meetings need to give way to some good old fashioned heroine overdoses and face explosions.

One more thing, then I gotta go get ready for this premiere. If you follow this blog you’ve surely noticed that I’m borderline obsessed with the work they do over at Grantland.com. One year and three days ago Chuck Klosterman (who is a much better writer than I) published a piece over there ostensibly arguing the same thing I just did (in a much better fashion). I highly recommend reading it.

Choosing Greatness

There are two different ways to make any decision in life; with your heart or with your head. Some people think rationally about every choice they make, weighing the pros and cons before going forward with anything they do. Others act purely according to what their heart tells them. I’ve always prided myself on finding a balance between the two in all parts of my life, including sports. This is why LeBron James and the Miami Heat winning the NBA Championship made me happy to no end but also felt very different than when the Packers won the Super Bowl a year and a half ago.

Not to brag, but I have a pretty impressive track record predicting the eventual greatness of young athletes. Among the players I’ve chosen as “my guys” early in their careers are Cristiano Ronaldo, Adrian Peterson, Rafael Nadal, Phil Ivey (not an athlete, still counts) and Rickie Weeks (shut up, he was an all-star last year). The only example I can think of who hasn’t completely panned out yet is Sergio Garcia. I made these decisions with my head, noticing unrealized potential that eventually surfaced in those individuals. While LeBron was, by far, the easiest to see that potential in, the decade-long journey as a lover of all things King James was anything but easy. But, it was worth the wait.

It was a strange feeling. Even though I’ve become extremely emotionally invested in LeBron, Thursday wasn’t heartwarming. A feeling of euphoria didn’t overwhelm me like it did when Ben Roethlisberger threw that final fourth-down incompletion. It was more a sense of relief. I’m sure that had a lot to do with the specific instance of LeBron. He finally realized the destiny that was inevitable but at the same time seemed like it would never come. He’s one of the most unique cases in history.

Maybe “relief” isn’t the correct word. It was just as much a feeling of accomplishment, granted I didn’t accomplish jack shit. It was what I imagine a proud parent feels when their child is named valedictorian or earns an athletic scholarship or gets married. No matter how many poor decisions took place along the way, and I’ll be the first to admit there were a few, someone I truly believed in achieved greatness.

I’ve always understood both the pro- and anti- LeBron camps, because, like I said, I understand the balance between heart and head. LeBron had every right to leave Cleveland. I’ve stood by that since the beginning, but we can all agree that “The Decision” wasn’t the best way to go about it. It just so happens that I’m part of maybe the only other fanbase who has experienced a more distasteful parting of ways with its once savior. Yes, technically it was the Packers’ “decision” to trade Brett Favre, but don’t act for one second like he didn’t push himself out of Green Bay with every intent to return to the division one year later and seek retribution.

This isn’t the time or place to get into how I feel about Favre (oh by the way he sent pictures of his wang to a smoking hot Jets employee while his wife was suffering from breast cancer; 1 million times worse than anything LeBron James has ever done). Luckily, we had a future MVP to replace the dolt, but it still hurt, and, as you can tell, I never forgave the traitor. So I can empathize with Cleveland fans.

But, like I said, LeBron had the right to leave, just like any athlete in the modern free agency era. Minus one big “Decision,” he has carried himself unbelievably well while facing more pressure than any athlete in history. With the exponential growth of social media and multi-platform sports coverage, even overwhelmingly liked athletes such as Derrick Rose and Tom Brady face more scrutiny than they would have in any other generation, and LeBron is analyzed 100 times more than either of them.

Every game, every quarter, every shot LeBron takes is picked apart by the hashtaggers and internet heroes. The pressure may have affected his play at times (vs. the Celtics in 2010, vs. the Mavs in 2011), but it never affected his composure off the court. Think about it. LeBron has never been in trouble with the law. By all accounts he is a loving fiancé and father. Practically every teammate he has ever had says only good things about the man. Yet he was broken down and dissected more than all the Pacmans, Mike Tysons and T.O.s combined. It’s because everyone saw his greatness, and deep down everyone wanted him to succeed because we all wanted to witness it.

Let’s also remember the greatness who embraced LeBron moments after the buzzer sounded at the end of Game 5, head shrouded by a Gatorade towel.

No matter how well I think LeBron has handled himself, while being the most scrutinized athlete of all time, it pales in comparison to the class and maturity Kevin Durant continues to display every day of his life. With all the chatter about how LeBron finally lived up to his name, I don’t think enough has been said about the way a 23-year-old handled losing and has handled everything throughout his career. I repeat; this dude is 23 YEARS OLD! He scored more than 30 points per game over the course of his first NBA Finals on 55 percent shooting, and when his team didn’t give him enough help to take down the Heat all he could do was hug his parents, fight off the tears and go to the podium to tell everyone how hard he would work to get better.

What were you doing at 23? I was still in college, sleeping all day and drinking all night. Durant has three NBA scoring titles and unanimous claim to being the second best basketball player in the world, and he’s just going to get better. Simply put, he was placed on this earth to score buckets in basketball games. He cares about his family, his fans and getting better at basketball. That’s it.

Three days after losing the NBA Finals, Durant tweeted:

Went and watched some basketball at Barry farms and@RiseAboveAll3 displayed the best pump fake I've ever seen, need to steal it!

He was watching a Euroleaguer and former Central Florida player hoop and thinking of how to add a move to his repertoire THREE DAYS AFTER LOSING THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP!!! LeBron is my favorite athlete in the world, but this kid is making it damn hard.

The difference between the two is that Durant has always chosen greatness. He really isn’t close to the all-around talent that LeBron is, but every day of his life he wakes up and chooses to be the best player and the best person that he has the ability to be. It’s unbelievable character for someone his age.

No matter how much room Durant still has to grow, LeBron’s ceiling is significantly higher. He possesses arguably the most raw talent of any NBA player (or athlete in general) ever. The only thing that made it close was their mindsets.

LeBron always used (and overused) his head. Durant has almost exclusively followed his heart. LeBron made passes to wide open but less talented players at the end of games. You couldn't pry the ball out of Durant's hand with the game on the line. LeBron decided to team up with Dwyane Wade in South Beach. Durant signed a ridiculously long contract extension with OKC the first chance he got. LeBron tried so damn hard to please everyone. Durant was so damn affable that pleasing everyone came easy.

On the podium, LeBron admitted that he spent his first season in Miami thinking about the people who doubted him and playing with too much hate. But at one point over the last month, some might say it was down 2-1 to the Pacers, I would argue it wasn’t until Game 6 against the Celtics, a neat thing happened.

Finally, LeBron chose greatness.