The Basketball Feelings Feeling of the Year (FOTY)
The 2nd annual year in review of plays, moments, or memories that stood out, by some of basketball's best.
Seth Rosenthal, Writer and Producer, Secret Base, SB Nation
Over here, 2022 was the year my wife got pregnant. I helped. It was, then, the year I tried to figure out a way to get my future child accustomed to my voice. If you remember Jennifer Garner’s delivery of “... hi baby,” in Juno, you’ve seen a perfect representation of how awkward one feels (and looks) speaking to an unborn fetus. What are you supposed to say? How do you release the natural apprehension and deliver your normal voice?
My advice is to talk about the most boring thing about which you are an expert, which for me is the Knicks. I have an alarming ability to rattle off 5 uninterrupted minutes of monologue about the latest comings and goings at Madison Square Garden. Once or twice a week, my developing child gets The Knicks Podcast With Precisely One Listener. While my wife scrolls on her phone, I tell her belly button how much I love Jalen Brunson, and how Julius Randle making snappy decisions completely changes the offense, if only he could do that consistently, and, yes, the defense has posted an impressive statistical week, but I worry like I always do about three-point regression against better or luckier opponents, and have you SEEN Quentin Grimes’s first step– oh no of course you haven’t, and I just keep prattling until I run out of breath. It feels good to have an audience, ya know?
And, well, yeah, that’s exactly what dad sounds like.
Ava Wallace, Writer, The Washington Post
Twenty-nine has felt like a weird age so far. I’m not grappling with the concept of aging or “growing up,” but there have been a few big changes and my life is different now; it's settling. That’s gratifying even though sometimes it makes me itchy.
I don’t think anything has made me feel as comforted about where I am than talking to John Wall. Please don’t take that the wrong way – Wall has been through unimaginable tumult in the past few years between losing his mother and grandmother and not being able to play basketball much because of either injuries or the Houston Rockets. He admitted this fall to having suicidal thoughts. I’m not comparing my own mundane maturing process to his experiences.
When he called me one Saturday night in early December, I was expecting a changed man. I wanted to interview him about the new role off the bench he’s embraced with the Los Angeles Clippers and this new phase of life he’s in as a family man, as a 30-something point guard trying to survive in the NBA rather than conquer it.
He was different from the 27-year-old I’d covered with the Wizards, for sure. He spoke to me about not liking his limited role on the Clippers but pushing down those feelings and accepting it. He told me about taking his kids to school and welcoming a stepdaughter into his life.
But the voice on the phone had Wall’s familiar North Carolina swing to it. He talked at the same supersonic pace and he bragged and greatly exaggerated moments from his basketball history. He cussed constantly and also he was eating during the entire interview. It was classic John shit. I loved it.
I was giddy after about an hour of chatting, both because Wall has always been a great interview and because I was – perhaps naively – surprised to learn the degree to which he hadn’t changed after all he’d been through. This was probably the wrong nugget to glom onto. But it struck me, and it made me happy for him. It was relieving to be reminded that just because Life Stuff changes us in some ways doesn’t mean we lose ourselves completely.
Caitlin Cooper, Writer, Indy Cornrows
It’s a question I grapple with often. Do I love basketball so therefore I write, or do I love writing and basketball is merely the subject with which I am most familiar? To be honest, I’m unsure of the answer. What I do know, however, is that there is a sense of security for me in leading with the machinations of basketball as opposed to being vulnerable with my writing, let alone my feelings. Just being asked to contribute to this post alongside many writers with whom I respect and admire is intimidating – and something I nearly turned down. In fact, I’m already picturing a scenario where, when devoid of micro-details and in-depth analysis, my submission ends up reading like the crude half of the “unfinished horse drawing” meme, standing out awkwardly from the other more thoughtful blurbs.
And yet, if I’m known for anything as a blogger, it’s likely for my play-recall and magnification of nuance. So, while I’m sitting here picking apart my every sentence and focusing on what could go wrong instead of what might go right, my mind wanders to Bennedict Mathurin, who drives to the hoop with such fury and conviction as to think the court is falling out beneath him, providing no choice but to move forward.
When he gathers the ball from outside the free throw line with four bodies standing in the paint, what looks like every reason to bail turns into a game of hop-scotch with cruel intentions, as he maneuvers through obstacles that ultimately become his path to finishing through contact.
Of course, without straying too far into the details of basketball (note to self: that isn’t what this is about, remember?), he can also be predetermined in his determination, so intent on arriving at his destination that, to his detriment, he misses seeing the sights along the way.
Still, that confidence to bet on himself, risking and learning from the oops instead of pondering the what-if, is my 2022 Basketball Feeling of the Year – a necessary reminder amid my tendency to doubt whether I’m good enough at writing to be a writer or know enough about basketball to work in basketball, that imperfect action, as the cliché goes, can perhaps be preferable to perfect inaction.
Metaphorically, a friend of mine recently went full-on Bennedict Mathurin, chasing the life they’ve always wanted like mad without looking back. My current circumstances have not allowed me to take a similar leap of faith, but I’ve enjoyed revelling in their success, while also challenging myself to build my own confidence by doing little things that take me out of my comfort zone.
You can judge whether this is my version of Mathurin against Miami, scoring at the rim while staying in complete control, or Mathurin versus Portland, hitting nothing but glass while maybe losing track of the plot. Either way, I wrote about basketball without really writing about basketball and the fact that the words are here, in print, rather than hiding in a saved file somewhere, is arguably the most Mathurin thing of all.
Willam Lou, Writer and Host, The Raptors Show
My assignment on Media Day was to record a check in with Khem Birch, a little-known and lesser-used centre who was entering his third year with the Raptors. With all due respect, there was no interest in hearing the standard "adding 15 pounds" talk from Khem, who was coming off knee surgery and expected to ride the pine until his contract ran out. There was little curiosity nor optimism in his story, and so my goal was just to fill our time with anything I could. That's why I opened our chat by wishing him a happy 30th birthday.
"Why did you have to remind me," Khem responded. "I feel older by the hour."
It wasn't exactly the easy icebreaker that I intended, but his grumpiness did resonate. My twenties were also set to expire. I reflexively offered a sheepish response that it was a blessing, but I understood why he dreaded it. There was a formality about this next birthday, like the departure time on a flight, and I was constantly checking my watch to measure my progress. I obsessed over it, taking stock of everything in my life while planning ahead with a calculated efficiency on what I wanted to pack with me for my next trip in life.
After our interview, I thought of what Khem was going through. He wasn’t just turning 30, he was facing mortality as an athlete. He explained that he was still recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery, and lamented that he wouldn’t ever return to 100 percent. Meanwhile, his replacement was already arranged, with a bouncy 22-year-old rookie set to claim what little remained of Khem’s minutes.
When you’re young in the game, everything is exciting with the bright lights, the big crowds and the bigger paycheques, and the feeling is a tug-of-war between overwhelming optimism and anxiety. When you’re at this point in Khem’s career, it is just about salvaging what you have left so you can last another year.
The milestone also came for me eventually. Like Khem, I was also reeling from the effects of a procedure, recovering from a tooth extraction woozy off Tylenol-3’s as the clock struck midnight. And in the evening of my birthday, I covered the Raptors beating the Cavaliers, where I caught a glimpse of him. It struck me that 30 arrived and that nothing had changed. Khem was still on the bench, I was still trying to get my shit in order, and that it was literally just another day.
Claire de Lune, Writer (The Guardian) and Musician (Tiny Deaths)
I can’t really pinpoint the moment I fell in love with the NBA, I don’t have one game or one dunk I can point to as some of my esteemed colleagues in the media space are able. But I think the player who made me love the sport the way I do, whose own love for the game of basketball meets or maybe even surpasses his own excellence at the game, is LeBron James.
It’s kind of impossible to watch LeBron play, in this, his 20th season, without hearing a commentator’s refrain about how impossible it feels that he should still be at this level. It’s gotten grating, even, in its repetitiveness. But it’s also true, and I’ve found the experience of watching him has shifted for me over time, and especially this year. There’s something about watching the grays multiply in his beard, the injuries begin to catch up with what once felt like a truly impenetrable athlete, the (maybe too early) propaganda for the imminent draft campaign of his son, Bronny, who looks like a whole-ass adult, that drives the point home. LeBron’s days in the NBA, which once upon a time felt infinite, are numbered.
It might be the ways in which James’ journey in the league almost mirrors my own aging, and by proxy, mortality, that makes me so emotional about it. But it’s also prompted me to do a lot of introspection about how difficult it is to appreciate things while they’re happening, versus after they’re over and we’re feeling the chasm they leave behind. There was one moment in particular this year, when I was at Staples Center (yes, it’s crypto . com arena now, no, I will not be calling it that) for the instant-classic that was Lakers vs Celtics, that will stay with me. The Lakers had gotten off to a pretty pitiful start, and ended up staging an incredible (though ultimately fruitless) comeback to send the game to overtime. One wily Lakers steal resulted in a LeBron dunk on a fast break, as the entire arena was lit ablaze.
There was a shift in me in that moment that made me able to appreciate it in a way that felt different, watching the whole arena hold their collective breath, LeBron sailing through the air for the dunk almost in slow motion. Something in me understood almost overwhelmingly, “this will be gone soon.” And I was able to let it soak in. Someday new NBA superstars will take over his throne, and I’ll be telling my kids I watched LeBron James live and in person. Until then, I’m doing everything I can to savor it.
Colin McGowan, Writer, Real GM
I am describing her family's dysfunction. I'm really getting to the bottom of it, working my way from her father's blithe cruelty and mother's directionlessness through the broader Problem With Families: histories disinfected by sentimentality, the psychic cost of feigning affection. "It's like an ever-present anvil on your chest, being somebody else's son or daughter, in your fucking thirties." I am fuming at the very existence of Indiana. I am pointing at dumb houses. I am killing time, releasing energy, annoying M. as we crawl under a steel wool sky through a development where half the lots are dug out basements for identical ranches not yet built, to the strip mall with a liquor store in it, where we examine every item in the beer aisle twice in hopes that we will somehow return to her parents' house with the business of the evening having been settled, everyone in a state post-meal repose, dad dozing off in front of the live-action Grinch. At checkout, the clock behind the register reads: 2:38 p.m.
M. and I cannot depend on one another, when we are with her folks on Christmas Eve. She turns into a chipper Republican daughter I don't recognize, and I retreat into misery and torpor. We are terrible, tetchy people for a while. Only our self-awareness keeps the relationship intact. We have done this enough times to know that we will thaw out on the drive home, love once again animating us as the Chicago skyline rises from the dismal plain. We will return the rental car, and embrace.
We survive small talk, dinner, and the exchange of presents. An assortment of crap: candy-colored plastic kitchen implements, fleece blankets and novelty socks, drug store chocolates, bunny-print pajamas that make you wonder if anyone has ever wanted anyone else here, if this development is a sexless state. M. is drunk and beaming falsely. I am trying to be better about drinking my way through these events. I am catastrophically stoned.
Later, holed up in the guest room, the thaw begins ahead of schedule. I have a tablet on my gut, watching a replay of a Cavs game from yesterday, and M. is tracing shapes on the back of my neck while she reads a New Yorker. The bed has a divot in it that filters us toward each other.
"This was a bad one," she says.
"Worse than usual."
She watches a few possessions silently, perhaps recalling something her father said, that's going to ruin her week.
"Are the Cavs good this year?"
"Yeah. I really like watching them."
"That's good for you."
She's asleep soon after. I watch the second half in the dark with her nose pressed against my shoulder. I play with her hair. I think about the drive home. The Cavs lose, but it's alright. We'll be alright. We have things in our lives that give us comfort.
Sometimes I get confused. Whether a friend was discussing ball way beyond my knowledge or Jimmy Butler showing up to media day with long dreadlocks, there certainly were times in 2022 when I didn't know what was going on. The key for me is figuring out when clarification will be beneficial and when to embrace the confusion. I often just want to further my understanding of the game and sometimes a quick Google search is all it takes to put my mind at ease. Other times, I just accept that I’ll never truly know why things happen and people do what they do. Caleb Martin is just going to attack a rookie now and then. It is what it is.
Mirjam Swanson, Writer, OC Register
As a kid, I stole a small carton of chocolate milk once from the grocery store. Wanted to see if I could. I mean, I knew I could. But I wanted to see if I could bear to do it. I could not. The stress of it, the wrongness, it soured my tummy on the whole endeavor. And that was OK with everyone. Including my slick, sticky-fingered best friend whose influence I’d been under. I used to go shopping with her and when we’d leave, she’d have stuff up her sleeves I didn’t even remember seeing on the shelves. And if I hadn’t noticed, walking beside her, and I knew what she did, how would anyone else? It was like magic.
First job outta college, I always raised my hand to cover the Hoover High boys’ basketball team here in Glendale, Calif. Those Hoover Tornadoes, they were fun. Always punched above their weight, and they were slick too. They had this play. In my mind, it’s called “Run Chris with Ara.”
Chris was the point guard protagonist, the player getting the heaviest usage, dictating all the action. And so, late in games, when Coach Kohlmeier would call out, “Run Chris with Ara!,” Ara would dribble the ball up for a moment as Chris drifted toward the sideline so Kohlmeier could make like he was giving him some quick instruction before they got into the next play.
But then Chris would get right back on defense. Because the play was over. Over before the other team realized it began. Everyone’s gaze trained on Chris, Ara would zip a pass to the big kid below the rim for two easy points, his distracted defender having relaxed for a second. Sleight of hand with a Spalding.
In 2022, I’ll survey the spread of games on NBA League Pass and, if the Clippers and Lakers aren’t on, go directly for the Pelicans. Doesn’t matter who else is playing. If there’s a chance Jose Alvarado is sneaking up on somebody, I’ll pass on Luka, Jokic, Steph, SGA, Isaiah Hartenstein.
I’m a sucker for a good underdog story, sure. Love me a showman. Wholly appreciate the hustle, the heart. I’d love watching dude ball out minus his magic trick – which apparently, Jose’s said, was a no-no-no-no-YES! proposition with AAU coaches who didn’t get it.
That Jose stayed at it anyway? That he’s kept foolin’ ’em now, hiding in corners, blending in even better with all the bodies encircling NBA action, able to take advantage of teams’ desire to score outweighing warnings in the scouting report? That he’s launched so many successful sneak attacks?! On Alex Caruso, Tyrese Maxey, Kevin Huerter, Grant Williams, Lou Williams, just about everyone on the Portland Trail Blazers and, yep, in a big moment in the playoffs, on the Suns point guard who shan't be named here?
It’s gusty. It’s brilliant. It’s inspiring, you feel me? It is magic.
Steve Jones Jr., Host of The Dunker Spot, Former Assistant with the Nets and Grizzlies
My basketball moment is a mash up. I've always been grounded by the fact that we get one life to live, we get one journey to embrace and that comes with a whole lot of highs and lows. Sports and basketball can bring a connection point. Narratives and stories can bring us closer to those we admire. The truth is the story book endings that we all chase at some point come in all shapes and sizes but rarely do they come as expected.
Sue Bird has been one of my idols for as long as you can remember. Her resume goes unmatched and her story goes far beyond what I could type.
To complete the assignment, there is no basketball player that has given me the feels like Sue Bird. There is no player that can get me to go to YouTube and find happy or sad tears like Sue Bird.
There's a twisted irony that one of our GOATs lost her first game in Seattle, lost the game in Seattle that prompted the "one more year chants", lost her last regular season home game in Seattle and then lost her final game in Seattle.
Then you realize — that's how life works. There's no guarantees, there's no control, perception doesn't guarantee success and it's just not going to be linear.
But there is no better feeling than hope and belief.
And the funny thing is that in my life, no matter what, one of the things I've always believed in and counted on is Sue Bird finding a way. To explain the 2022 feels I go back to 2021. The Storm down by 3 vs. the Mercury with 1:06 left in an elimination game. A simple action has Sue hit Jewell Loyd, pop back and hit a 3 to tie the game. I knew it was coming, I just didn't know how. And then it happened and you're thinking you know the ending. The Storm ended up losing in overtime. It felt like the end. But hey one more year, etc.
Sue came back for one more year. There may have been more questions, defenses may have changed how they covered her, but she kept making plays. As the year went I could hear the sounds of "hey Sue should shoot more" and in the back of mind I said "hey Sue is playing rope a dope, just you wait, she's going to let if fly".
And you fast forward to the 2022 WNBA Semifinals, the Storm tied 1-1 in the series. With 2.7 on the clock, down 1 to the Aces. A simple stagger-to-flare action sprung Sue to the corner for 3. She left it fly over a contest and cashed it because of course she did. OF COURSE SHE DID. It looked like the story would progress towards the fairy tale ending but... the Aces matched it almost immediately and won in overtime. And then Chelsea Gray would not stop doing things and the Storm lost in 4 games.
And in the feels, what we got from our legend after all of that was "I hope I made everyone in here proud". In that moment that’s what she expressed.
I contrast that with Klay Thompson, who has given us moment after moment over his illustrious career. One of those moments was heading right back to the FT line after tearing his ACL in the Finals. He then tore his Achilles forcing him to miss another season. In his return almost two years later he started with a dunk vs. Cleveland and ended by helping lead the Warriors to another championship.
And my favorite part, past the storybook ending, past the mission being completed, past the journey that can't be understood, past the hero's tale, past the countless moments of hard work, rehab and reflection that led him to that moment.
It's that after expressing gratitude and praising his entire team for 50+ seconds he expressed that "Strength in Numbers was alive and well" which reminded him of a tweet that Jaren Jackson Jr sent on March 28th when the Grizzlies defeated the Warriors.
He let him know he was a freakin’ bum.
Do you know how mad you have to make someone for them to go through all of that in life, overcome, triumph and STILL call you a freakin’ bum? KLAY DIDN'T EVEN PLAY IN THE GAME THAT WAS TWEETED ABOUT.
I find myself at the end of 2022 struck by those moments. Struck by a belief that outweighs doubt, struck by realizing the realities that ultimately come with the journey, struck by the humanity that continues to unfurl as that journey gets taken, struck by understanding that you can overcome adversity and still find time to throw someone over the top rope. There are no guarantees but there is plenty of time left for us to enjoy each other and the journey.
Kelly Dwyer, Writer, The Second Arrangement
We moved from a suburb of Chicago to a suburb of Cincinnati in the early 90s, there was a Patrick’s Bar & Grille down the street from our house. It made sense for dad to re-arrange their menu, help get the staff in order, he is a chef and since the relocation he didn’t have his Blue Point Chowder House on Wells to run.
Soon after, a guy named “Patrick” actually bought Patrick’s Bar & Grille. Through Patrick’s (pick one) pipeline, I got a (super-illegal) job washing dishes for cash on Friday and Saturday nights, $4.50 an hour from 1992 (I was 12) through 1995. Through the same pipeline, my father had first crack at bar merch.
Each bit offended him, and certainly my mother’s, sensibilities. Eventually one charmed us, a Heineken lamp, with a little flag announcing the 19th hole. The flag is the only thing little about it.
Dad drank a fair portion of Heineken as it stood, and yanked the lamp in time for the 1992 NBA playoffs. My parents’ bedroom was the family’s de facto den, the space with the largest TV and several windows, one of which faced the street. This is the spot where my dad proudly put his sign, heartily aware of the joke from Christmas Story.
The yard below the room was made of baby trees, the whole street could see the sign glowing and mom hated it, but the games only lasted a few hours.
The Bulls won the championship, the sign went in a closet. But a few months later the Bears started up. And Notre Dame. Bulls game on Christmas, playoffs to follow. The sign had to go up, the sign had to go on. When we moved to Indiana we lit the sign atop the piano nobody played in the basement with the big screen where we watched every, single, sport. The sign’s rays may have been the reason the black keys broke off, but the Bulls won another three championships.
My parents haven’t watched sports in that basement since Jordan retired, since I left the house, since televisions got good. Dad rescued the light for the bedroom window sometime later, I don’t know how it made it into the dining room by the time I came over to watch the playoffs last spring. I bet it was a joke, I bet mom laughed.
The dining room faces the street, it’s a big window, a fancy street, everyone can see it. My parents both saw that Office episode, we get it, the light stays on.
It was on for Game 1 against Milwaukee, when the Bulls competed. It was on for Game 2, when the Bulls won. My dad traded a yuppie’s bottled beer for swankier spirits long ago, nobody here drinks Heineken, the Bulls lost to Milwaukee in five, we don’t care, game on, pull the cord, turn on the light.