mayce edward christopher webber III

this is going to be tough, not a single topic, perhaps with the exception of the Sun app server, has dominated my on-line communique, the way that my defense of Chris Webber has over the past 8 years...after making arguments in my inaugural on-line campaign with the Sacbee's Kings forum, and writing letters to the sports editors of the Tri-state region while he was in Philly, and then maintaining a semblance of rational thought on the mlive.com Pistons forum during his short run in DET, i honestly have somewhat lost track of the reason why...i mean, i pretty much gravitate toward athletes and even other so-called celebrities that tend to build their careers on their own terms, and not allow the massive, integrated system to define them for the public...

its why i have always and will always prefer Agassi to Sampras...or Nadal to Federer, for that matter...

it is why i will always subscribe to the notion that Bonds is telling the truth...

that Kweli is measurably superior than Jay-Z, Kanye, and all mainstream hip-hop...

that, essentially, those individuals that get most castigated by the MSM for making statements, making movies, making music, or playing sports in a manner that does not reflect the accepted way things have been done, and, god forbid, even try and help things evolve - - those are the men and women that i spend my money on, whether it is CDs, DVDs, posters, or tickets...it is the most American way to protest, and it is the reason why no matter how much conventional wisdom tells me that the people i like the most are the biggest failures or the most irrelevant, i know we are winning because the people i like are still around, and still affecting change beyond what any politician could ever dream of doing...

and then, there is Webber...

a couple of posts back i had a couple paragraph run in the middle of one of my diatribes on the corruption of the NBA, of basketball, and of sports, in general, where i was talking about my favorite sports moments, in my lifetime...some of you caught it, but of course, the 16-year-old high school hoopster who i was fortunate to see in GRR back 20 years ago was Chris Webber, somewhere in his sophomore year of Detroit Country Day, the year he would lead them to the 1st of 3 state titles...probably even more profound than watching him play was the days at UofM and early in his NBA career, before people expected basketball players to reflect on anything other than what the coach's take on the opponent's defense was, i remember my brother and i getting psyched just reading the quotes of Webber in the newspaper, and being like: 'no way, that pretty much sums up everything...'

i can't put my finger on it, but i will give a clue to the haters out there, whether they be non-athlete sports writers, whether they be ignorant fans, whether they be opponents who tried to suppress his influence, the only equation that i know to be true is that the harder the conventional wisdom was built to make me believe that Webber was a crook, a prima donna, a bad teammate, or even, somehow, an ineffective player, i only grew more intransigent about my opinions, and it has ultimately led to this post...basically, what i am saying is that it seems like for a long-time the system was built around the idea and ability of making people conform by hammering in to the masses the accepted logic of the day, and what i am saying is that those days are done, and you can no longer tell me, or that 13 year-old kid with a single-mom, trying to figure how to survive what to think...the Matrix has been imploded, you are either with me or you are against me...

the stats tell part of the story, but the other day, i was thinking about how irrelevant stats are in basketball...i honestly am moving in the direction of almost thinking about claiming that stats are inversely proportionate to the influence that a player had on the game...sure, it is tough to make that claim, especially when Webber put up pretty awesome numbers, night-in-night-out, as well as the fact that in order to win you need to score, and so Kobe's PPG average does say something about how the Lakers score, i guess...but, there is another side of the story, something that i have been taught by good coaches along the way, like some of the people at AQ's sports camps when i was a kid, or Scott Thompkins, or anyone else who does not say fundamentals trump ability, but that teamwork trumps individual effort every single day hoops is played...

it is not a coincidence that players at every level he was at from DCC to UM to the NBA were simply in their prime or developed under his guidance: those guards at DCC were solid, and thrived playing in his shadow, even as he tried as best as you could to be as precocious as he could and keep the team together under the intense nationwide media spotlight he engendered at 17-years-old; the Fab 5, need we say more...the Golden State team his rookie year, the Kings, and the Pistons: all were better off because of his innate sense that in order to achieve his own goals, he would have to make the people around him rise to levels they had not previously considered were possible: Bibby, Turkoglu, and G. Wallace being my most obvious examples of this logic...

the other issues surrounding his career: Ed Martin, Puerto Rico, Adelman, Iverson, the time-out, the knee injury, the contract: they are all side-shows in the effort to stigmatize his legacy, and no matter where i go, no matter what i do, i will never forgive the people making decisions at the University of Michigan for bowing to pressure to spite one of their alums...there will come a day, and it is going to take time, and ongoing and detailed dedication to overturning the accepted wisdom of the day, but there will come a day when people will say: 'maybe this whole charade of tearing human contributors down in order to keep things as comfortable as possible for those currently in charge has had its day; maybe, it is time to move forward, and talk about the community contributions, the smile, and the entertainment more than the fabricated lies...'

i said some good things about Dumars and, more recently, about Isiah...but, to me, the man who will go down as the single biggest contributor to athletics in Michigan history will be Chris Webber, all sports included...you cannot find a better representative of this state, anywhere, and like i have said about other matters and other opinions: when someone talks down about Webber, i automatically treat them as suspect, with respect to their knowledge about life...sure, i have friends who do not feel the same way i do, i try to understand, but you find me someone who has looked through the prism and seen Webber for what he really is, and is willing to say, that in the face of all conventional wisdom, that Chris is someone, as a human being, as much as a player, who they appreciate, well, that is the kind of litmus test that i enjoy, and i use to know which people on this planet, i will invest my energy and efforts in assisting with what they want to get done...

there are other so-called litmus tests that i use, sometimes just to entertain myself, but if you are a Webber fan, you are alright by me...