Game 2, Rib-Shots, and Incessant Nattering

During the fourth quarter of last night's game, Tony Parker caught an elbow from Mario Chalmers, who wasn't being malicious so much as characteristically overzealous. In the thrall of peak Riosity, Chalmers came up with the most immediate and violent solution to the problem of not wanting Parker to be near him anymore. The Spurs guard curled up beneath the hoop while replays showed Chalmers putting considerable gusto into his cheap shot. As this was happening, some joyless so-and-so got an idea the way a dog gets an idea to eat its own shit. Someone crafted a meme, dubbed it #Parkering, and now it's part of the discourse. It is a BENGHAZI acrostic in "deal with it" shades. Forget it Jake, it's Internet-town, etc.

If one of the reasons we enjoy sports is they allow us to experience vicarious moments of transcendence—we imagine the sensation of diving through the lane like Monta Ellis—then it makes sense that injuries cause us to shudder. An arena tends to produce a hushed oooh when the jumbotron shows a knee flexing the wrong way in slow-motion because arenas are filled with people who have bodies and know or can imagine what it feels like to have one's body twist or bruise or snap. It's dickish and inhumane to watch someone get hurt and to mock them for making a face or striking a pose that indicates as much. But people do it. People also comment on porn videos, wear novelty t-shirts, and buy Mitch Albom books. This is all asinine enough, but you've been out in the world, haven't you? It's harrowing.

So why then, must #Parkering matter to anyone besides the imaginationless dweebs who find it funny? Because there will neverbeenoughdumbthings to sate the egos of smartish sportswriters, who have a Gervaisian impulse to comment on dumb things with maximum smarm in order to make themselves seem enlightened. They act out one of those self-satisfied Jon Stewart Eviscerates Rush Limbaugh-type bits, except the jokes aren't nearly as crisp. "The food sucks here," they mumble to their friends as they settle into a booth at the IHOP for the 213th consecutive morning. Like it's the IHOP's fault.

Will Leitch wrote a couple years ago that no one who is bright enough to see Skip Bayless as the shameless pedant he is should pay attention to him. I don't completely agree with that, because I think it's worthwhile for someone to write the occasional hatchet job that shames the biggest sports network in the country for employing a loud, leatherette dolt, but Leitch's principles are sound enough. If someone is being transparently idiotic—especially if they're just some prat with an Instagram account—you should probably let them be.

Now, about that game. It was handsome in a lot of different ways. The second quarter was all doomed, frenetic tryhardery, and the third settled into a dream-like back-and-forth: the Spurs whizzing the ball about in search of space and the Heat running at shooters like shadows in shifting light. Down the stretch, the Spurs' offense stagnated, LeBron remained brilliant, and that more or less decided the contest. We're well on our way to a long series, and basketball aesthetes should be elated about that. There is something to the style of each team that coaxes out the other's beauty, and in stretches, their games inspire a pleasurable but not altogether pleasant anxiety. It's a disconcertingly pure high.

Or perhaps not. For the pungent taint of humanity, this series is like any other in that it's fodder for puerile humor about LeBron being a pussy and that Frenchman being a pussy and how everyone who doesn't like your favorite team is butthurt and gay. You will find this sort of base discussion about anything zeitgeisty, if you seek it out. But we are not naive; we have been out in the world. It is harrowing and depressive and only intermittently any fun. We know enough to cherish sublimity when it comes along. Damn anyone who pauses to troll-scold while these two teams are making like a nuclear reactor of joy. Capitalism is crumbling and the air is slowly turning to poison, but hush for a minute: the sun is shining.