In his own words
by Stop-n-Pop on Feb 19, 2009 4:46 PM CST
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With Mr. Born to be Hated/Dying to be Loved headed on out of town, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at www.rashadmccants1.com to see if the man himself could provide a few words of wisdom to help us deal with the situation that developed right before the trade deadline.
First up, the most recent site update:
02/06/2009 - 05:46
Back in the Saddle
by Joe LutherRashad returned Wednesday night for the first time in 12 games, and showed tremendous effort off the bench in the 94-86 loss to the Hawks.
"Rashad was a bright spot tonight and there weren't many,'' Coach Kevin McHale said.
In only 15 minutes of play Rashad knocked down 10 points including two big threes in the fourth quarter.
He was 4 for 7 from the field with 4 rebounds a steal and a block.
BACK FOR GOOD?
McHale had sat McCants for the last 12 games and it seemed like he would never give No. 1 another chance until last night.The team was playing poorly on both ends of the floor and needed a shot in the arm. Enter Rashad.
His performance last night in limited minutes shows what kind of presence the Wolves have been missing.
Back for good? For the answer to that question I'll refer you to the image at the top of this post.
Let's take a quick look at my favorite piece of Shaddy poetry, Hustle and Cream. I think it is especially pertinent considering today's events:
We Dead inside just a hollow shell, our hearts are so cold look at dave chapelle,
evil is people with greed that shit green. How is there loyalty when friends is switch teams
We trade stocks and shares but can't help my hood and the NBA cares over there.
Eve should have ate that pear then maybe life would be more fair.
Will Shaddy's departure kick off a run of poetry in the Wolves' locker room? It's impossible to say.
Here's another important passage that provides a window into Shaddy's tortured soul on this particular day:
Where do we start. At the top?
Whether it’s top or bottom, you build for the top only to fall to the bottom.
Everyone must fail to succeed. Everyone wants greed cause it feeds.
Everyone wants to achieve because they believe.
Hell if I fail,
I was born to prevail.
Born to raise hell.
With as much seriousness as I can possibly muster in the face of such awful art, I think Shaddy's poetry is fairly indicative of his problems on the court. He knows how the game is generally supposed to sound and feel, but he lacks the necessary ingredient--whether it is heartfelt for love or faked for gain--to bring it all on home. He's a poseur, a flirt, a fake, and whatever other name you can come up with for a guy who choses chews up life's scenery while the lead actors wait for him to get the hell of the stage.
Let's be clear: Shaddy is a lucky guy. Not many people make it to the NBA. However, instead of realizing that there is a fairly wide variety of lights in the basketball sky, Mr. McCants thinks that by simply being up amongst the stars, we earth-bound suckers are looking up to see him.
Hopefully, some day he will get it. He has all the talent in the world to be a fantastic 15-20 mpg guard off the bench for a competitive team. It's not exactly a living that people will write poetry about, but it is one that is worth looking up at every now and then.
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I just saw
that Mikki Moore was waived by Sacramento after getting traded by NJ. Seems like he had some good games against us. Wouldn’t he be worth picking up?
I think if there.....
….is to be any sort of complaint about this deal it is that they could have simply waived both players with buy outs and signed D-League replacements, or a guy that was let go like Moore. I guess Williams is a bit more of a known NBA commodity than someone like Pops and he allows Love to get back closer to the development track they had, but…well, that’s as big of a complaint as they could have had.
Also, if I remember correctly, he was signed with the Wolves for about a month and I think there were some bad feelings. But I could be completely wrong about that. I can’t find anything to back that up. I just remember hearing it at the time.
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mayn dis gon sound crazy
but i alreddy miss Shaddy! mayn i know we shudda traded him but im not sayin MAYN HOL UP in a good way bout it dass all. i hope shaddy puss it all togetha mayn
RASHAD MCCANTS RAPPING: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWNsvbVourc
MAYN HOL UP!
I'm kind of torn
on what to think about this stuff – on the one hand I agree, I’m not crazy about his poetry…on the other hand I think all poets are bad, sometimes really bad, before they get good. I’m not going to be buying any of his collections anytime soon…but I guess I applaud the guy for trying. I can see your point about the writing being related to the problems on the court…I guess I’m just not sure I agree…I don’t know what I’m trying to say exactly, I guess I just can’t fault the guy for trying. Who knows, maybe he’ll actually be a good writer down the road sometime.
To be fair...
…he is as good as Robert Bly. Maybe the U of M can spend a cool million on his notebooks.
As for poetry, check out Cesar Vallejo. For something more modern, try David Berman. He’s the lead singer of Silver Jews and he has a fantastic collection.
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i'll credit the bly comparison...
once shaddy has completed his own translation from the Norwegian of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. in fact, anyone interested in what is involved in the struggle to “achieve” or “prevail” in one’s calling, including shaddy, should read that book, if they haven’t already. robert bly got the message, at least.
in the meantime, allow me to overbearingly opine that it is indeed fair and even instructive to draw parallels between shaddy’s game and his poetry. in both cases, it is his apparent romantic faith in his own genius that prevents him from recognizing that real work and attention to the specific demands of the task is what distinguishes actual beauty from mere immature self-expression. writing bad rhymes without submission to the dictates of form is not poetry, it is just wankery. and merely chucking shots without regard for the broader logics of the game produces the same ugly result.
i join with everyone in wishing him more mature times ahead, but for now — glad he’s gone!
by secretarykissinger on Feb 20, 2009 12:05 AM CST up reply actions 1 recs
well said
BTW: speaking of Mr. Bly, here are two of my all-time favorite blog posts concerning the fine gent:
http://insomniareport.blogspot.com/2006/10/iron-john-and-ennui-cartel.html
http://insomniareport.blogspot.com/2006/10/insomnia-report-contest-find-fake.html
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those were sweet...
and yes, those excerpts totally nail your comparison. i was too kind to Iron John. when is the trading deadline on those archives the U acquired? maybe we could swap them for a toaster.
(that said, i have to confess that i dig it when the Wild Man is right there in the room while I make love!)
by secretarykissinger on Feb 20, 2009 2:24 AM CST up reply actions
but just to put things into perspective
the cost of permanently acquiring those Bly papers, whatever their literary-historical merit, is roughly the same as retaining Kevin Ollie’s services for an abbreviated season…hmmmm.
ps. thanks, Wyn, for the dope salary spreadsheets!
by secretarykissinger on Feb 20, 2009 2:33 AM CST up reply actions
guess I'll have to disagree
I think I see where you guys are coming from. Let me just say that I agree on certain points: I don’t think his poetry is very good, and I think there’s probably a link between the content of the poetry and his play on the court, as secretarykissinger states convincingly.
At the same time, the guy is a pro basketball player, and a decidedly amateur poet. His basketball skills place him in, oh I don’t know, the top 200 or 300 people in the world in terms of the ability to play the game. His poetry skills place him…well, substantially further down in the pecking order.
That is to say: I think criticizing his game is fair play. He’s an “expert” in this field, and because of his attitude or whatever, he’s seriously underachieving. He’s getting paid a ton of money to play and we should be free to debate the reasons for which he’s not earning his paycheque.
At the same time, I don’t really see why we need to have a go at his poetry. From the standpoint of poetry, he’s just some dude who’s putting his poetry on his website, just like many others do all the time. His poetry happens, I think, not to be of the highest quality. And yes, probably for some of the same reasons for which his playing isn’t of the highest quality. But so what? Like I tried to argue above, you have to be a bad poet before you can be a good poet. And this, I think, is where any consideration of his play on the court has to be differentiated from criticism of his poetry. In basketball, theoretically at least, he’s already been a bad basketball player (before becoming a good one) – only it should have been in the 5th grade or something. Now, since he’s among the very elite of his field – i.e., playing pro ball – we assume he’ll have a modicum of skill – e.g. that at the very least he’ll be able to play team ball, not turn the ball over with such frequency, take good shots, etc. In poetry? We shouldn’t assume anything of the sort. How many great poets in their early 20s do you know of? On the contrary, we should assume that he’ll be an awful poet at this stage…and that, hopefully, his efforts will lead him to be a good poet somewhere down the road.
I guess I just don’t see what criticizing McCants’s poetry can really achieve. I mean, in a way, he’s damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t – we always criticize athletes for having no intellectual life, being the ultimate “jocks”…and then laugh at them when they try to express themselves. I just don’t want to sound like that Blazers dude who was in here the other night, insisting that they were booing Miles not because he cost them money but because when he was in Portland he was a jerk off the court, smoked weed, etc. To me, criticizing these guys’ game is fair play…the other stuff, I think we need to approach more cautiously.
by plinytheelder on Feb 20, 2009 9:26 AM CST up reply actions
Shaddy seems like a cool guy
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him doing anything wrong off the court (could be forgetting something?) and he’s clearly got some balls to put his amateur poetry up for all his fans (or critics, as the case may be) to see. It’s fun to try to tie in a player’s on-court behavior and tendencies to the rest of their life, but it usually doesn’t work. Many, if not a majority of, athletes are completely different people when they’re competing. Just because Shad can’t seem to figure out how to move the ball properly in a half-court set doesn’t mean anything besides just that.
I hope he ends up playing for a good coach. Gerald Green looked pretty decent under Rick Carlisle, when Howard was hurt—if GG can look like a player, I’m damn-sure that Shaddy can. I don’t expect it to happen in SacTown, though—my guess is he’ll jack away whenever he gets on the court.
well said...
…I guess my response is that I think his approach to things appears to be across the board with the interests that we fans know about enough to comment on. I suppose it does venture into the realm of off-court issues but he puts it on his public website and encourages people to go there. I would never have approached the poetry if it weren’t self-promoted by the guy himself.
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Right on.
It does take some courage to put poetry out there and every good poet must have some stuff in the archive out there that their embarassed about because it is just plain bad poetry.
Shaddy’s poetry is not that good and if he wants to be a good poet he is going to have to listen to some constructive criticism, but most of the stuff you hear on blogs and KFAN criticizing Shaddy is just plain vindictive and I have to agree with Andy G that Shaddy seems like a cool guy. I don’t even believe that he was a cancer in the lockerroom. I think he was an odd, but decent teammate.
And, what’s with all this Bly stuff. Yes, he wrote Iron John which is ripe for controversy, but he writes damn good poetry. wrote some bad ones too. Thats what happens when you keep everything and sell an entire archive. He’s a well-known, critically acclaimed, Minnesotan poet. Why wouldn’t the UofM honor him by purchasing his archive. He’s a Minnesotan Ican, regardless of what you think of his poetry. Hes a cool guy too. I once spotted him and his wife in a st. Paul bar in the 1990s listening and dancing to an Irish band. When I introduced myself to him, he could not have been more gracious and engaged me in a long conversation on music, writing and politics. Unfortuanately, bball did not come up in the conversation, but I’m sure he would have made an outstanding power forward in his hs days.
point taken, you capture an interesting dilemma in that last paragraph
at the same time though, what we respond to so negatively in the “poetry” is really one component of this larger malign personality, which always seems to be focused on something other than his game — whether it’s running with celebrities, musing over being in the entertainment biz, writing poems, or, especially, admiring his own reflection in the mirror. you always got the sense that shaddy was probably less interested in stroking his shots than he was in making sure that it resulted in a media-ready photograph of him scowling in defiant celebration at stroking his shots. i think a lot of us are feeling the impulse to attack the writing because it stands to symbolize these other defects — and maybe the fact that in many cases we can’t quite put our finger on what it was that drove us so crazy about him makes the poetry an easier target. that the poetry not only is undisciplined (like his game) but also is largely about himself tends to make the critique more personal.
that said, however…
he may be a young poet, but a first rule of juvenile works is that they should be kept from the public eye until the poet is ready to have them ruthlessly criticized or at least properly contextualized. it would be a different thing if shaddy, after becoming a respected man of letters, bashfully revealed these works to show where he had come from. instead he thinks he has already come from there and arrived at his destination. so in short i insist not only that this poetry sucks but also that it deserves whatever ruthless criticism anyone cares to throw at it.
by secretarykissinger on Feb 20, 2009 2:42 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
check out Raymond Carver's poetry...
… it’s excellent. Almost as good as his short stories.
I agree with the assessment...
…that he could be a vaulable sixth man for somebody, where his scoring and 3pt shooting could be useful for the right team. Kind of a Voshon Lenard-type player, which was I thought of him when he was drafted. In fact, their per 36 min numbers are quite similar, with the only real difference being Shaddy’s much higher TO rate. However, I don’t think the Kings are the type of team he’s likely to flourish on.
Maybe McCants should read some Milton. The experience might be good for him.
by oblivionspocket on Feb 20, 2009 12:21 AM CST reply actions
I was thinking he should start with..
….Dr. Seuss. His poetry should first master simple meters and precise message conveyance…much like his game should first master defense, rebounding, and getting to the line before he fashions himself as a 1-on-1 master.
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and what short but tough guards should McCants observe?
I guess the futility of the McCants situation is that despite his self obsession, he lacks insightful self awareness.
He can’t ever play like Joe Dumars or Dennis Johnson. He’ll never been as good as them, but he might think of himself as better than them. He could sort of model himself after Charlie Ward or Eric Snow, but it’s not happening. How can a person make any progress when they think they’re already an all star type player?
I guess I’m not really adding a new idea into the mix, but as people have pointed out the mental side is equally or more important than the physical side. In fact, the distinction between mental and physical is dubious. Superior athletes consist of a unified biological entity and if any part of that entity is lacking enough, they can no longer be superior athletes.
by oblivionspocket on Feb 20, 2009 3:56 PM CST up reply actions
Wolves took a bit of a risk drafting him and well, sometimes it pans out sometimes it doesn’t. Glad the “Deathmatch” is now “officially” over and we can move ahead. No hard feelings though :).
Beater of the early Thabeet drum
yeah, I still think drafting him at 14 wasn’t a huge reach. Sure, there were a number of players picked after him that have turned out splendidly, but I refuse to inflate my ego with hindsight bias.
by oblivionspocket on Feb 20, 2009 4:56 AM CST up reply actions
I agree...
….he was a fantastic college player and, for once, they picked a guy who could be considered a value at the position where they drafted him. The problem was that a) they didn’t interview his coach to find out how nutty he was and b) there were other players with (slightly) greater value. Granter looks better with 20/20 hindsight, but he wasn’t that much better at the time. Was Granger the right pick? Yes, but it’s not as stark of a choice then as it looks like now.
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Shaddy's not right in the head
I gotta theory. Okay, maybe its way off, but here it is:
Shaddy is not right in the head to be a a successful pro athlete, I mean. He’s got the physical gifts, but his mental makeup isn’t there. I think his poetry, as bad as it is, is indicative of this. What I mean is that athletes, professional ones at least, are not prone to introspection. That’s my theory. I am not implying that they are not intelligent, far from it. The necessary mental framework for a pro athlete is simple and efficient as in “have ball, see basket, put ball in basket,” or something along those lines. In many ways, the mental gifts of athletes are much more impressive than their physical gifts.
I was a 95% free throw shooter at anytime in highschool, except during games. I could shoot all day and make 95, but put me on the line with a full gymnasium and suddenly my thought process was not “have ball, see basket, put ball in basket,” it was more like “have ball, see basket, see crowd, my parents are watching me, my frineds are watching me, I have the ball and I’m standing here with all these people watching me, My teammates really want me to make these two free throws, why does the ball feel so clumsy in my hands and my hands are sweating, I can’t get a good grip on the ball and all these people know that I’m sweating and can see the little nervous twitches on my face…” well, in games I shot a little bit over 50 at the line. Now, my theory is that most people are prone to some level of introspection, they cannot shut off the dialogue that goes on in their minds. but, Professional athletes are different, they can shut off the dialogue. That’s why interviews with athletes after games are sometimes so infuriating. Q: “Big Al, 35 points tonight, what was going on out there and what was going through your head when you made that spin move late in 4th qtr to put Utah away?” A:“Well, I was hot and I gotta thank my teammates for recognizing the matchup and getting me the ball.” Q:“What were you thinking, though when you left your man standing there bewildered as you faked and then spun for the basket?” A: “Oh, well you know man, just playing ball.”
What was going on in Al’s mind. Nothing. He was just playing and reacting. His mind as much as his body is a well oiled machine. Shaddy’s, not so much. Shaddy is thinking out there too much. He can shut it off at times, but sooner or later hes going to start thinking about it and thats why he was never much of a 4th qtr clutch guy and his best playing was always at times when the game was either decided one way or another or it was early enough in the game that the outcome was still far enough away that he didn’t have to think about whether his play was going to help decide the final outcome.
And Shaddy’s poetry, or his attempt at poetry, demonstrates an opposite mindset to the professional athlete, because, of course, a poet never shuts off the dialogue in his or her head. It just keeps going on. Just the fact that Shaddy wants to write poetry, signals to me that he is working on craft that is in direct opposition to the craft he is being paid for. Shaddy is preparing for being out of the NBA. Yes, hes a fool, because he doesn’t realize how much he has and how much many of us would give for his physical tools. But, I say, most of us wouldn’t know what to do with his physical tools either. There are a lot of people with the physical gifts, but having the mental to go with the physical, that’s what makes the gifted professional athlete.
interesting comment
Al McGuire once said (I’m paraphrasing) that when the game’s on the line, he doesn’t want his A student on the line, he wants his C+ student there…because the worst thing to do in that situation is to think. (Then again I don’t know what Marquette’s graduation rates were during his tenure ;)
by plinytheelder on Feb 20, 2009 8:55 AM CST up reply actions
Makes sense
I know I can’t bowl for crap unless I’m bombed out of my skull. Thinking and sports don’t usually go together well — just look at Randy Foye’s face whenever he takes the point. Guards who can analyze the court while dribbling and passing are as rare as . . . as 2 guards who can write decent poetry.
Btw
as probably the only Canis Hoopus reader to have ever been in the Iowa Writers Workshop (undergrad “D” league), yes, Shaddy’s poetry sucks in that very special way that only bad poetry can.
I attended a summer course in Iowa City..
…does that count?
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creative writing...
…my great uncle is a big basketball booster down there and I went to a basketball camp followed by a creative writing course over a summer back in 91. the fam has had Hawkeye season tickets since before Lute.
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I gotta another theory
‘bout whether or not you learn more about writing poetry from a writer’s workshop or from sitting alone in a room and writing poetry, but there’s probably not any need to go into that.
But I will say, that noone needed to go to Iowa’s writers workshop to know that McCant’s poetry is not that good, just as no one needs to have played high school, college or proball to know that he wasn’t exactly lighting it up on the court this year.
Foye, to my mind,
is the king of overthinking. Who knows why – maybe he’s a really smart kid who can’t shut his brain off. And it’s true, it’s when he’s at the point that this is most visible. Paradoxically, it’s when teams don’t give him time to think that he plays best, whether at the 2 or the 1 – the first game against Miami, for example, he had almost 20 min. at the point if I remember right, and was fantastic precisely because Miami was pressuring the ball – i.e., he had no time to think, just went around whoever was guarding him and either scored in the lane or made excellent drive-and-dish passes; he also found time to score a bunch of points at the 2. It’s when teams lay off him, give him plenty of time to think about what he’s going to do, that he’s in trouble.
by plinytheelder on Feb 20, 2009 1:22 PM CST up reply actions
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