“Alright, Alright, Alright” - really is my favorite line in all of American movie history. Thank you — Matthew McConaughey, for saying it, and giving me a way to express myself. The NBA Finals are still going, and I have nothing to say about them other than, “Alright, Alright, Alright.”
Twitter blew up this week after Austin Reaves was supposedly spotted at a bar in Oklahoma with Taylor Swift. I guess she had broken up with someone else and was feeling some rebound vibes, so she went and found herself a basketball player who is a pretty darn good rebounder. The Austin Reaves story is still kind of a miracle. We’re taking about an UNDRAFTED player in the mix for what is going to be a bidding war for his basketball services. We’re talking about an UNDRAFTED player who was the 3rd best player on the Lakers this year, in the Conference Finals. We’re talking about a basketball player who Taylor Swift might write a lullaby about?
Here’s a few of the undrafted players playing right now in the NBA Finals: Max Strus, Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent, Duncan Robinson, & Haywood Highsmith.
I’m not saying undrafted players are better than Ja Morant and Zion Williamson, but I do think it’s notable that all of the names in bold 👆🏻 are playing in the Finals right now, and Zion Williamson is blowing up on twitter for cheating on his baby mama, and Ja Morant is about to be suspended for 5 MILLION games for flashing-guns-for-funsies, in IG videos.
Players like Austin Reaves aren’t put on the cover of magazines before they get to the NBA like Zion, nor are they given enormous shoe deals, or NBA contracts, or any benefit of the doubt re: guns and porn stars when they sign their first NBA contracts. They’re expected to prove their value before they get paid. That’s a crazy idea if you ask me, but if you pull my fingers, or my ear like my dad used to do, I guess I would tell you it’s logical…
Once, a very famous actor told me at Sundance about how the only movie roles he would take are the ones with a certain producer attached to them because everything else is a waste of his time. When I inquired as to why he would think that way, assuming naively that he might be “in it for the right reasons,” he stared at me for a very long time, and since I had seen that gaze on the screen, I nodded back to him like an agreeable puppy before he turned me into a quarter and threw me down a well.
Guess I’m just saying, it probably makes sense to get some evidence of buy-in from your basketball players before you start to throw them huge amounts of money, and make all kinds of exceptions for them regarding M & M’s in their lockers before games?
Many NBA stars deserve special treatment of course. We have Star Players all over the NBA who treat the game with the respect it deserves, and because of that reap the benefits of huge contracts, and a little bit of special treatment. I’m all for that. I’m all for the best being rewarded and given what they deserve for making a huge impact on winning, but what the Austin Reaves story shows is that players who come from nowhere have a special ability to make it on the highest level precisely because they’re not given the same $, at first, as the players who everybody expects to be amazing.
Austin Reaves’s tenacity and desire to get to the top of the mountain is pure in a way that those who have always known they were going to get there simply can’t touch. In some ways, having great talent, and the huge expectations that comes with it, creates:
A) The burden of having to fulfill that talent
B) Resistance to working hard.
It’s what makes someone like Kobe so special. Mamba Mentality, hunny. When you’re given a gift, working at that gift with the Mamba Mentality is ten times harder than doing it when you’re just Austin Reaves. But even if you don’t have the ridiculous god given talent of a Kobe, as long as you have some, you can get there if you really want…
Austin Reaves plays basketball the right way, and does the things that non-star-players have to do to make a place for themselves in the NBA.
Clearly, Taylor Swift likes that too.
P.S. — The Taylor Swift story may not even be true. It might just be a joke, a Twitter prank or something, who knows. But it doesn’t change any of what I just wrote. In fact, Taylor Swift, if you’re reading this, you should go on a date with Austin Reaves.
Bye bye