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megara-the-jedi · 4 years

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That Summer

A/N: Hi guys! I feel like this chapter is longer than the first, but I felt like I had to make up for the fact that this story is going to be forever long. I’m still trying to establish relationships with the characters, but I felt that I could really only do Pope this chapter. Also, my friend and I have decided that Carlie and JJ are gonna have a complicated relationship, and trust me, I've read enough fanfiction to feel like I got this down.

Disclaimer: I don’t own this show or its’ script. I am trying to keep to the original scenario without straying too far from the script (i.e. changing words and sentences.)

CH 2

Carlie spent the hours before Hurricane Agatha’s landfall trying to help her grandma, who she called Mimi, but all the locals knew her as Miss Ann. She had helped prepare the usual survival kit and made sure that Mimi had her phone plugged in and the weather channel playing in the background. Once Carlie thought everything was fine and was told that some people were going to help cover the windows, she hugged her grandma goodbye and ran off to surf the waves with John B and Pope.

As soon as Carlie got in the van, the group headed off to the beach.

“Hey, Smiles, is Miss Ann okay being alone?” Pope asked.

Carlie scooted up from the back and put her tanned legs in the space between the front seats. She quickly went to work her blonde shoulder-length hair into double braids. “Yeah, she should be good. She has a survival kit ready. Honestly, she claims that she’ll be fine and that she’s faced worst storms.”

John B laughed, “Miss Ann is one of the most stubborn people in The Cut.”

Carlie smiled, “That she is.” The rain from Hurricane Agatha was hitting the windshield harder now.

As soon as John B parked, the small group grabbed their boards and ran to the beach, where it was closed off.

As they came to a stop, Carlie wiped the rain out of her eyes as she felt it hit her body.

“It’s a double overhead out there, guys.” John B called out.

Pope questioned, “Double overhead?”

Carlie looked at the waves, “What the-“ The waves were huge. Bigger than she had ever seen them.

Thunder boomed across the beach. Carlie could feel it in her bones.

“Those waves aren’t surfable, dude.” Pope clarified.

John B laughed, “Wanna bet?” He took off running.

Pope and Carlie watched him for a moment before looking at each other.

“Do you want to go out there?” Pope nodded his head towards the waves.

Carlie laughed and shook her head. “Hell no. I’m not risking my neck.”

The two made their way to the sand and proceeded to sit on their boards. They had to wait for John B anyways due to that fact that walking in a hurricane was basically a death wish.

Carlie was glad that it was Pope that she was sitting on this beach with. She may have been best friends with JJ and John B and great friends with Kie, but Pope was the one she felt the closest to.

“So, Smiles, what’s going on in life?”

Carlie smiled at him, “Pope, you see me everyday, what could possibly be new?”

Pope looked towards the ocean, where John B was currently wiping out. “Hey, I don’t know what goes on at home exactly.”

“True, well, other than my parents announcing their usual return for Midsummer’s and Carson avoiding coming home because of them,” Carlie paused, looking at her pink bikini bottoms. They were a stark contrast to the darkening world around them. “Nothing has really been happening. What about you?”

Pope shrugged his shoulders, “Y’know preparing for the scholarship interview, but nothing really.”

A moment passed, the two of them watching John B wipe out again.

“How’s it going with JJ?” And there it was. Pope was the only one who knew about Carlie’s possible feelings for blond boy in the group.

Carlie shook her head. “As of this moment, never telling him.”

“Why not?”

“Well for one, JJ, John B, and you all happen to have feelings of some sort for Kie.”

“No, no,” Pope shook his head. “We don’t.”

“You don’t have to deny it. She is the better choice out of the both of us.” Carlie couldn’t help but compare Kie and her.

The two of them weren’t completely opposites, but they did have different personalities. The only thing Carlie had going for her was her bright personality that was brimming with positivity.

“I don’t think that is as big of problem as you think it is.” Pope said

“And reason number two would be that JJ would never get with me,” Carlie gave a small laugh. “I don’t think I’m his type and he’s known me since what feels like forever.”

Another moment passed before Carlie brought up the most important rule.

“Finally, there’s the whole ‘no pogue on pogue macking’ rule. I don’t wanna find out what happens if that rule is broken.”

“Okay, I gotta tell you something and I know I shouldn’t…” Pope smiled as he as paused for dramatic effect.

Carlie looked at him, “Well, you gotta tell me now, and I know that you can’t keep secrets from me.”

“Okay, okay. I think JJ likes you, but I’m about eighty-five percent sure.”

Carlie was shocked, but laughed anyway. “Only eighty-five? Dang.”

Pope looked at her seriously, “Carlie, JJ is always near you, wanting to hold your hand, touching you, hugging you when you’re sad.”

Carlie couldn’t help but laugh. There was no way in hell that JJ liked her like that. “He always does that! That’s how he shows me that he cares. Plus we’ve been friends forever..”

Pope tried to give her a look that said “c’mon,” but at that moment the rain become harsher and John B was coming in from the surf. They struggled to get to the van as the rain came down harder than before.

Getting into the van, Carlie shut the side door and settled in, waiting for John B to start driving. Carlie looked throughout her bag that she had brought and found a dark blue hoodie. She quickly put it on to get rid of the chill that took over her body. She then quickly put on the shorts that she had tossed aside when they had got to the beach.

As they got closer to Pope’s house, John B looked in rearview and made eye contact with Carlie.

“Am I taking you home?” He asked, quietly.

Carlie shook her head, “No, I told Mimi that I was staying at yours tonight just so that she knew I was staying in one place.”

Pope turned to face her from the front seat, “Did you even tell her about you going to the beach?”

“Do I look like I have death sentence?” Pope had to laugh at that. Your grandma was pretty fierce when she needed to be.

The small group got to the Heyward residence and sent Pope off went a “stay safe.” Carlie moved to the front seat. The movement of the van and the rain lulling her into a sleep-like trance the whole ride back to John B’s place.

“Smiles, wake up.” John B said as he pulled the van to a stop near the the chateau, meaning they would have to run to the door.

As they ran, Carlie could feel her bag and her hoodie being soaked by the downpour.

John B opened the door, Carlie soon following. Looking down at her clothes, she walked into the spare room, hoping that JJ would have a spare, and hopefully clean, shirt for her to borrow. Yeah, that’s how close they were to each other. If anything, she probably had a good chunk of his clothes at her house that were actually clean.

She heard the door open again as soon as she put on a shirt. Just in time, because JJ chose to open the door to the spare bedroom right then.

“Hey, sweet girl.” He said. JJ had already been in the process of tearing off his shirt for bed. Typical.

“Hey,” Carlie said as she threw her hoodie down. There was no way it was going to dry at this point and she didn’t want to start the dryer with the hurricane coming. “I’m borrowing a shirt. Just to let you know.”

JJ laughed at this and Carlie left the room, heading towards the pull-out bed in the living room. “Y’know one of these days, I’m going to get all of my shirts back.”

The wind started getting louder outside and Carlie couldn’t believe that she was about to sleep in the living room with the big windows.

“The thing is, JJ,” Carlie turned to look at him, knowing that he followed her. “Is that you have to come to my house to get them. There’s a good chunk of them in my drawers.”

Carlie found a blanket and crawled on the bed. She heard John B call out some sort of goodnight to her and JJ. JJ, following Carlie’s lead, fell onto the pull-out bed. JJ rolled over to face her.

Carlie looked right back at him for a few moments before asking, “Why are you staring?”

“You know you’re my favorite, right?” JJ asked, knowing that what was to follow. Carlie laughed, “I better be.”

This was their usual banter. Joking about how they are each other’s favorites.

JJ took some of the blanket Carlie had and covered himself, fully aware that he’ll probably wake up with none of it. Carlie would admit that she was a blanket stealer with no hesitation.

Another few moments pass before Carlie spoke again. “My parents are coming back.”

“And you’re not looking forward to it?” JJ, well, everyone in the group, knew that her parents were a touchy subject. In a way, her parents leaving her and her older brother, Carson, with their grandma, was basically a form of childhood abandonment, but one where she sees them every so often and only for a week or two at a time. The last time she recalls seeing them was around winter break for Christmas and New Year’s. Carlie didn’t see any of her friends that week because of them. William and Olivia Brooks weren’t controlling, but claimed that she saw her friends all the time. Who’s fault was it for not being around?

“They’re only coming for Midsummer’s and are staying for a week.” Carlie groaned.”It means that I’ll either not see you guys or barely see you.”

JJ grabbed her hand. Carlie looked down at it for a moment, considering Pope’s words from earlier. Then, stopped. This was JJ’s way of showing her that he was listening since it was just the two of them.

Carlie continued on, “And Carson’s only coming back for that weekend, trying to keep his visit short so that he only interacts with them little as possible.”

“Well, at least you’ll see Kie at the party. Her parents are making her go, too.”

The wind and rain from Hurricane Agatha was getting stronger. After living through a few other major storms and hurricanes, that honestly, if Carlie thought she was in any actual danger, she’d be staying in the spare room. “Yeah, you’re right.”

They continued to talk until Carlie fell asleep, as per usual. She was always the first one in the group to fall asleep, no matter the consequences.

TAG LIST: @fanofmany

#JJ Maybank #JJ #Pope #Pope Heyward #john b routledge #John B #kie carrera #Kie #OC: Carlie Brooks #jj x oc #Outer Banks #outer banks fanfiction

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chestnutpost · 5 years

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The 'Bone Collector' teaches NBA MVP new moves

Rafer Alston’s job is to watch basketball. In Houston, where he spent three-and-a-half seasons as a player, he scouts local games on behalf of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He pays special attention to point guards, some of whom are his old foes, now pacing the league in extraordinary ways. James Harden, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Chris Paul—the list goes on. For Alston, the current so-called golden age of point guard play is something of a callback. The moves of today have a familiarity to them.

There is the way Curry glides beyond the arc, slicing and dribbling at high speeds, pitter patter, until he springs himself open for a three. There’s the probing, fearless work of Kemba Walker, a New Yorker like Alston, who treats every trip down court with mano a mano desperation. On a recent night, Kyrie Irving confused the defense so deeply in transition that by the time his pass traveled through his own legs—backwards—and into the hands of his teammate, the guy was open by 20 feet. Have we covered Paul or Lillard yet? Or how about Ben Simmons, who at 6’10” casually dropped in a youthful, slightly haphazard behind-the-back one-hopper two weeks ago. And then there is Harden, who performed the most notorious move in recent memory last year when he crossed over Wes Johnson, poured him out onto the floor, took a long look at him and then popped a three. All that was missing, as far Alston might be concerned, was Harden bouncing the ball off of Johnson’s dome before shooting.

“They got it from somewhere,” Alston says of these astonishing guards. “That’s the funny thing about basketball. They didn’t start doing some of the moves and passes that they do. CP, Steph, Lillard, they didn’t do it on their own. They got it from somewhere. You ask them, ‘Who’d you watch?’ It might have been a streetball guy.”

Two decades ago, Alston was the streetball guy. In 1998, he brought his audacious, borderline unsportsmanlike style of streetball to mainstream audiences as the dazzling Skip 2 My Lou on the inaugural AND1 Mixtape. He would pave the way for 10 such videos. The first three centered around individual streetball players such as Alston, Main Event, Hot Sauce, and AO. The final seven tapes tracked a team of AND1 streetball stars, such as The Professor and the late Escalade, as they traveled the nation, facing local competition in various cities. In many ways, Alston was a pioneer of the goosed-up highlight reel; the AND1 Mixtape arrived some six years before YouTube and a dozen years before Instagram. Today, the basketball world is oversaturated with such clips, but back then, there was only one set that mattered.

Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images

“We used to watch it all the time before we’d go play, as inspiration,” says Phoenix Suns veteran Jamal Crawford, now a sort of ball-handling sage at age 38. “We’d take the VHS everywhere with us.” When Crawford saw Alston on the tape as a teen, he was “mesmerized,” he says. “The way he passed the ball, the way he handled the ball, the way he just displayed that kid of flair.” Crawford was such an admirer of Alston that he initially enrolled at Fresno State to follow in his footsteps. “The creativity of it, the art of it, you didn’t see guys like that in the NBA,” Crawford adds. “It just brought a whole different layer and viewpoint of how you could play the game.”

All these years later, Alston’s approach—and that of his fellow AND1 streetball players—has permeated the NBA. “Every pass, every fancy play, the derivative is streetball,” says Larry Williams, better known as the Bone Collector, who joined the AND1 live tour (a follow-up to the mixtape tour) in 2011. Williams has worked on handles with a number of NBA players, including Harden. “Jamal Crawford, for instance, Lou Williams—look at their entire game,” Williams says “What kind of offensive structure do they have? Is that a [conventional] pro game? Crawford isn’t a point guard or a 2-guard, he’s everything. That’s why streetball is important for the NBA, and I’m happy James [Harden] and guys like that are bringing light to that.”

On any given night, you’re liable to catch some mixtape-worthy moments in the NBA. Even on the brightest stages—like, say, Game 7 of the NBA Finals—a quick crossover and a springy stepback might decide an entire season. That’s now light work for a player like Irving. “He’s really got it down pat,” says Irving’s teammate, Jayson Tatum, of such wicked moves. “For him to perfect it in the biggest moments—it’s special.”

Indeed, Irving, Harden, Curry and the rest have taken the snazzy elements of the mixtapes they grew up watching and elevated them, honored them, pulled them apart and reassembled them. For trailblazers like Alston, it wasn’t easy to prove that a guard could win and look so good doing it. Today, though, substance and style are a packaged deal in NBA backcourts, and the AND1 mixtapes are owed a debt of gratitude.

It just brought a whole different layer and viewpoint of how you could play the game—Jamal Crawford on the legacy of AND1.

“AND1 played a big part in handling the ball. Period. For everybody, no matter your size,” says Terry Rozier, the Celtics‘ backup to Irving and an electric player in his own right. Rozier followed the AND1 Mixtape Tour as a kid and often tried his luck with mixtape moves. “It had a big impact on the stuff we see in peoples’ games today—it’s more natural now,” he continues. “It’s not so much of guys being stiff when they’re playing [anymore]—everybody’s more loose. I wouldn’t say it’s mainly because of AND1, but I feel like that played a big part in it.”

To be sure, there are any number of reasons that the NBA game looks like it does today. Guys have been crossing up defenders and flipping the ball behind their back for decades—you can trace great ball-handling from Bob Cousy to Pete Maravich to Magic Johnson, with countless practitioners in between. Jason Williams, aka White Chocolate, recalls owning just one jersey as a kid: Jason Kidd’s Mavericks No. 5. During a broadcast last week on TNT, Isiah Thomas recalled that when he was a veteran, a young Tim Hardaway challenged him “and used my move [the crossover] on me! That’s when I knew it was time to hang it up.” Later, as Hardaway’s career faded in the late ’90s, Allen Iverson took the torch and sprinted ahead.

Other factors have influenced the way the game has evolved, too. In the early 2000s, the palming and hand-checking rules were shrugged off, opening up the court. Everybody learning to shoot threes only widened it further. “I think it all played a role,” says Aaron “AO” Owens, a former AND1 star. “It all meets in the middle and goes down the same lane.” But, says, Waliyy Dixon, aka Main Event: “Let’s be real. Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Thomas, James Harden, a lot of guys—they had to watch the tapes.”

True—it seems most everybody in the NBA did.

“I watched it, and there were times where I tried to do some of the moves, of course,” Walker says. He never thought of AND1’s style as one that would mesh or thrive in the NBA. And yet, he adds, “I’m a small guy, so I had to use some of those moves to get where I wanted to go or get the shots off that I wanted to get off.”

“I watched it, and there were times where I tried to do some of the moves, of course”—Kemba WalkerSteve Dykes/Associated Press

Will Barton, the Nuggets swingman, can pinpoint the gestures he borrowed from the AND1 players on the tapes. “A lot of crossovers I stole from them, a lot of moves I tried,” he says. “They definitely had a particular flair. Sometimes when I dribble, you’ll see me skip—I definitely got that from Skip 2 My Lou. Throwing passes while looking away, I definitely got that from him and Alimoe [the late Tyrone Evans]. Sick crossovers from Hot Sauce, definitely.”

Devin Booker, the Suns’ combo-guard, felt more of a connection with the bravado, the posture of AND1—what it represented. “It was definitely a culture of basketball; a whole different swag was invented from that,” Booker says. “We’d watch the moves and then go in the backyard and practice them—get a 3x shirt, put it on, headbands, they did it all, man.”

Tatum has similar fond memories. “[It] was really big, as a kid on the playground,” he says. “I tried putting the ball in my shirt, throwing it around, throwing it off their head—I used to try all that stuff.”

That AND1 could affect multiple generations of current NBA players—Crawford is Generation X; Tatum, coincidentally, was born in 1998, the same year that the first AND1 Mixtape dropped—is testimony to its brilliance. And to its impeccable timing.

The NBA was entering a transitional period in the summer of 1998. Michael Jordan had three-peated for the second time, defeating the Utah Jazz, the epitome of controlled, no-frills basketball,again. John Stockton was a kind of anti-mixtape point guard. Meanwhile, Allen Iverson, then in his second year with the Sixers, was upending that stiffer tradition, performing what Thomas Beller of the New Yorker recently described as “the apotheosis of street ball’s swagger at the NBA level.”

That offseason was a wild one: In June, Vince Carter (No. 5 pick) and Williams (No. 7) were drafted in the first round. Alston was selected with the No. 39 pick. In August, the first AND1 Mixtape, starring Alston, dropped. In January 1999, Jordan retired. All the while, the league was on strike. There would be no NBA basketball until February 1999 (and no MJ until 2001). A window opened for AND1. “The timing was perfect,” Alston says.

And that wasn’t just true in a basketball sense. Something was bubbling in American TV culture, too. Reality TV was exploding—think The Real World, Survivor and American Idol. AND1, which had established its own authentic version of basketball, was, on some level, tailor-made for reality television. The AND1 tour picked up in 2001, and the next year, ESPN built a show around it called Street Ball. (EA Sports also released an unaffiliated video game called NBA Street in 2001.)

Cameras would follow the AND1 team from city to city to film not just how they played, but how they interacted off the court. “We’d do some whacked out stuff, some stuff that they probably had to edit out,” Alston says. “But at least it was organic—this is who we are. Then with basketball, you had kids, mothers, grandmothers so fascinated. Each player had something unique he could do with the basketball.” (In 2003, Dave Chappelle mocked—or maybe honored—the show in a hilarious sketch.)

Aaron “AO” Owens drives at an AND1 Mixtape Tour game in Los Angeles.Steve Grayson/Getty Images

AO recalls the AND1 tour stopping at Wake Forest, where college-aged Chris Paul came to watch them play. Big men like Ed Davis and guards like Shabazz Napier and Monte Morris caught the tour, too. Morris, who’s now among the NBA’s leaders in assist to turnover ratio, credits his hesi dribble to the AND1 players. At a Cavaliers game in the mid-2000s, Main Event recalls LeBron James finding him in the crowd to dap him up. “He didn’t know me from sitting in the stands; he had to from watching the mixtapes,” he says. In 2012, Grayson Boucher, aka The Professor, connected with Curry, who asked him for a photo. Not long ago, in a Las Vegas casino, Alston came across a fan in Lillard. “He was like, ‘Man, what’s up, OG Skip?’ I know he’s not calling me an OG because I averaged 20 points per game in the NBA, you know what I’m saying? He’s like, ‘This dude was a streetball dude, man—AND1 Mixtape!'”

As much as players respected the AND1 Mixtapes—from the personalities to the style of play—many coaches felt differently. “I came up when coaches wouldn’t allow it or they call it junk ball or they’re like, ‘Oh, that street stuff is no good,'” Alston says. “We grew up playing the game in the playgrounds and the gym, we come from playing the game with so much flair and passion for the game. I think the coaches had a hard time trying to blend the two, trying to incorporate the fundamentals and make sure these young men keep their God-given talents, some of the good things that they do.”

Alston’s first coach when he entered the league in ’98 was George Karl. “[Alston] had that game, he had that street game, or…” Karl says, before pausing for a beat. “He definitely had some shit, man. It was good.”

Still, most nights early in his career, Alston was stuck behind Sam Cassell, a more established, balanced point guard. Alston and Karl developed a “love-hate relationship,” in the coach’s words. Karl had just wrapped up a six-plus-year tenure in Seattle, where his SuperSonics had reached the Finals behind the all-around excellence of point guard Gary Payton. Alston wasn’t Payton in sensibility or style, despite both having been molded by the rigors of the playground. (Alston in Queens, New York; Payton in Oakland, California.)

“He played with the ball a lot,” Karl says. “We had a little problem there, but I think I realized Rafer was young, youthful, maybe too playground-ish. The game has maybe gone to the playground a little more than back then. There were more set plays then—the point guard was more to be a mental mind on the court for the coach rather than a talented player as today.”

AND1 played a big part in handling the ball. Period. For everybody. … It had a big impact on the stuff we see in peoples’ games today—Terry Rozier

In that version of the NBA, a number of AND1 players struggled to break through. “When I was coming up, it was so political—if you were a streetball player, you weren’t meant for the league,” says Boucher, who joined the AND1 tour in 2003. Boucher played a stint in the Continental Basketball Association—the unofficial predecessor to the G League—where, he recalls, “They’d say, ‘Well, he’s more of a novelty, he’s streetball.’”

Part of the problem was a misunderstanding about what AND1 players really could do and what they were already doing. “People would say it’s some Globetrotter shit, but it wasn’t,” says Owens. “In a 40-minute AND1 game, you might only see five minutes of shit (on the mixtape) because of TV, cutting and clipping.” Most of the game, Owens says, was something more similar to NBA ball.

Owens was a DII All-American at Henderson State and would later play in the then-D-League, where he won a championship. At times, he felt as though he were being judged for his streetball background. At one NBA tryout, he recalls the team’s coach said, “What’s a streetball player doing here?” But for Owens, the transition from the street game to the pro game was simple.

“There wasn’t the balance for me—if I was playing in an AND1 game, it’s one thing; a D-League game is real basketball. But if I get an outlet and my instinct is to throw it through his legs, I’m gonna fuckin’ do it. The only way to get past him without a turnover might be through his legs,” he says. “I didn’t have to calm myself down like, Don’t do no dumb shit like throw it off the side of the backboard. It was basketball.”

That’s how Jason Williams looked at it, too. Williams, who arrived to the NBA as a highly touted point guard prospect, felt comfortable leaning on some flashy street elements. He didn’t view his style of play as a novelty—not even his signature behind-the-back elbow pass. “Sometimes throwing it behind my back was easier than a regular chest pass,” he says. “I didn’t look at it at a street level; it was basketball to me. I watched [the AND1 mixtapes] growing up and loved it, but I didn’t pattern my game after any of that. I was just doing my own thing.”

“Sometimes throwing it behind my back was easier than a regular chest pass. … I didn’t look at it at a street level; it was basketball to me.”—Jason Williams aka White ChocolateRocky Widner/Getty Images

Now eight years retired, Williams is amazed by how much the league has changed. “When I was playing, guys were still throwing the ball into the post and trying to get double-teams that way,” he says. “Now that’s out the window.” He prioritized feeding the big stars around him: Chris Webber and Vlade Divac, then Pau Gasol, then Dwight Howard. And Shaquille O’Neal, too. “If Shaq don’t get the ball two or three times downcourt, he looks at you and says, ‘I need the ball,'” Williams says. “It’s just different. My job was to get scorers the ball. Now their job is to score and get guys involved.”

Sunday will mark 20 years since Alston debuted in the NBA. The league—perhaps especially at point guard—has changed tremendously since then, while the star power of certain streetballers has faded even in Alston’s own home. Alston’s son, a 10-year-old guard who will undoubtedly arrive in your Instagram feed before long, “doesn’t realize how good his dad is,” Alston says. “To him, I’m just dad. I’m not Skip 2 My Lou, the streetball legend, the guy who played 11 years in the NBA. Other kids gotta tell my son, ‘You know how good your dad was?'”

Owens never made an NBA roster and now coaches high school basketball in Philadelphia. His ninth and 10th grade players, much like Alston’s son, don’t fawn over his streetball fame like a young Jamal Crawford or Terry Rozier once did. “They’re like, ‘I seen you on YouTube,” Owens says, flatly, “but not necessarily like, ‘Yo, that’s AO!”

Vince Carter, who is as much a mentor to young players as he is a rotation player in Atlanta, has sensed a change in the way young players relate to the tapes. “I think most younger people today just watch YouTube or watch highlights on social media just because of the convenience and access,” Carter says. “And while they’ve heard of AND1, I don’t know that it has the same impact.”

Take Booker, for instance. The 22-year-old Suns guard was born only two years before the first mixtape dropped. He may have tried out the moves he saw, but his connection with the AND1 tour only runs so deep. When asked about his favorite mixtape ballers, Booker says, “I know Hot Sauce put the ball in the shirt, and who was the white guy with the handles?”

Alston and Carter together in Toronto.Ron Turenne/Getty Images

Booker can’t quite come up with the name of The Professor, the type of player who meant so much to his older teammate, Crawford, back in the day. One reason, Crawford suggests, is that mixtape culture today is so omnipresent. “There’s so much now to digest on Instagram,” he says. “It wasn’t like that before.”

The mixtape has become something new, and in a way, it is stronger than ever. “Now a kid can get a scholarship off a Ball Is Life mixtape,” The Professor says. Or even climb up NBA draft boards. Zion Williamson, for instance, became famous long before he arrived at Duke—before his games aired nationally—and he’s likely to go No. 1 in this year’s draft. “Now the influencer hooper is the new streetballer,” The Professor says.

But the old streetballers aren’t going anywhere. The Professor runs his own YouTube channel—Professor Live—where he airs his familiar skillset to nearly 3.5 million followers. The Bone Collector has nearly 1 million followers on Instagram, where he posts photos with Harden and tapes of poor kids falling all over themselves while defending him. Hot Sauce made waves last year for doing the same in Atlanta as a Hawks halftime performer. And Alston is still as connected as can be to the game.

Plus, as he points out, those original tapes are never far away.

“The footage is still around,” he says. “It might be some grainy footage—you gotta convert the VHS to DVD, then convert it on the computer. But the footage is still around.”

The post The 'Bone Collector' teaches NBA MVP new moves appeared first on The Chestnut Post.

from The Chestnut Post https://www.thechestnutpost.com/news/the-039bone-collector039-teaches-nba-mvp-new-moves/

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petrichorate · 6 years

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No One Belongs Here More Than You: Thoughts

No One Belongs Here More Than You (Miranda July)

Reading No One Belongs Here More Than You was really the first time I experienced Miranda July’s work (besides watching some short videos by July over the years). It was stunning—her style of writing reminded me a bit of George Saunders’ writing (really pointed observations of characters in often weird scenarios, tied together with a kind of tragic, sarcastic irony), but with a distinct... peculiarity? A kookiness coming from July’s particular voice? Anyway, there’s a bizarre charm running throughout all the stories, which I would describe as sort of sad but in a really calming/resigned/insightful way, all at the same time.

By the way, check out the book’s website. It is amazing.

Here are some bits I bookmarked. I won’t preface the quotes with what they’re about, since I think that would take away from the way July conveys her thoughts:

“Vincent has a wife named Helena. She is Greek with blond hair. It’s dyed. I was going to be polite and not mention that it was dyed, but I really don’t think she cares if anyone knows. In fact, I think she is going for the dyed look, with the roots showing. What if she and I were close friends. What if I borrowed her clothes and she said, That looks better on you, you should keep it. What if she called me in tears, and I had to come over and soothe her in the kitchen, and Vincent tried to come into the kitchen and we said, Stay out, there is girl talk! I saw something like that happen on TV; these two women were talking about some stolen underwear and a man came in and they said, Stay out, this is girl talk! One reason Helena and I would never be close friends is that I am about half as tall as she. People tend to stick to their own size group because it’s easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am wiling to go the distance for you.”

“Vincent was on the shared patio. I’ll tell you about this patio. It is shared. If you look at it, you will think it is only Helena and Vincent’s patio, because their back door opens on to it. But when I moved in, the landlord said that it was the patio for both the upstairs and the downstairs units. I’m upstairs. He said, Don’t be shy about using it, because you pay just as much rent as they do. What I don’t know for sure is if he told Vincent and Helena that it is a shared patio. I have tried to demonstrate ownership by occasionally leaving something down there, like my shoes, or one time I left an Easter flag. I also try to spend exactly the same amount of time on the patio as they do. That way I know we are each getting our value. Every time I see them out there, I put a little mark on my calendar. The next time the patio is empty, I go sit on it. Then I cross off the mark. Sometimes I lag behind and have to sit out there a lot toward the end of the month to catch up.”

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”

“I taught them all the strokes I knew. The butterfly was just incredible, like nothing you’ve ever seen. I thought the kitchen floor would give in and turn liquid and away they would go, with Jack Jack in the lead. He was precocious, to say the least. He actually moved across the floor, bowl of salt water and all. He’d come pounding back into the kitchen from a bedroom lap, covered with sweat and dust, and Kelda would look up at him, holding her book in both hands, and just beam. Swim to me, he’d say, but she was too scared, and it actually takes a huge amount of upper-body strength to swim on land.”

“I am not the kind of person who is interested in Britain’s royal family. I’ve visited computer chat rooms full of this type of person, and they are people with small worlds, they don’t consider the long term, they aren’t concerned about the home front; they are too busy thinking about the royal family of another country. The royal clothes, the royal gossip, the royal sad times, especially the sad times, of this one family.”

“As I recovered from the demonstration, he put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a leaf that was almost in the shape of a shark. He said it was the best one; he showed me other ones he had collected, all of them more leaf than shark. Mine was the sharkiest. I carried it home in my purse; I put it on the kitchen table; I looked at it before I went to bed. And then in the middle of the night, I got up and pushed it down the garbage disposal. I just don’t have room in my life for such a thing. One question is: do they even have earthquakes in England? If they don’t, this is the wrong approach. But if they don’t, I have one more reason to want to live in the palace with him [Prince William] rather than convincing him to move into my apartment.”

“Would he empathize with us? Does he know what it’s like? Most people do. You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it’s not true. Generally, people don’t like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too. Sometimes I lie in bed trying to decide which of my friends I truly care about, and I always come to the same conclusion: none of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no. These are my real friends.”

“Always running and always wanting to go back but always being farther and farther away until, finally, it was just a scene in a movie where a girl says hello into the cauldron of the world and you are just a woman watching the movie with her husband on the couch and his legs are across your lap and you have to go to the bathroom. There were things of this general scale to cry about.”

“We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired—as furniture sanders—we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone’s job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.”

“With one foot in the bath, I stood waiting for her to return. I waited an unreasonably long time, long enough to realize that she wouldn’t be back tonight. But what if I waited it out, what if I stood here naked until she returned? And then, just as she walked into the front door, I could finish the gesture, squatting in the then-cold water. I had done strange things like this before. I had hidden under cars for hours, waiting to be found; I had written the same word seven thousand times attempting to alchemize time. I studied my position in the bathtub. The foot in the water was already wrinkly. How would I feel when night fell? And when she came home, how long would it take her to look in the bathroom? Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone? And even if she did realize that I had done this impossible feat for her, what then? She was never thankful or sympathetic. I washed quickly, with exaggerated motions that warded off paralysis.”

“But as I had feared, I was mute. I stood paralyzed, as if on a rock over a cold lake. I was never good at jumping in, letting go of one element and embracing another. I could stand there all day, letting the other kids go in front of me forever.”

“Finally, the man upstairs coughed, which set off a wave of kinetic energy. Pip adjusted her shoulders so that the outermost edge of her T-shirt grazed my arm; I recrossed my legs, carelessly letting my ankle fall against her shin. Five more seconds passed, like heavy bass-drums beats, the three of us were motionless.”

“Now that I know, it seems so obvious. Suddenly, there is nothing I remember that doesn’t contain a clue.”

“Do you have any pets? he asked. No. Not even a cat? No. Why not? I’m not sure I could care for a pet. I travel a lot. But you could get a very little pet that wasn’t very hungry. I knew all about those things that weren’t very hungry; my life was full of them. I didn’t want any more weaklings who were activated by water and heat but had no waste and were so small that when they died, I buried them only with forgetfulness. If I was going to bury something new into my home, it would be a big starving thing.”

“My disposition was that of all the girls who dated boys from other high schools. We were barely there. Our feelings could not be hurt because they lay elsewhere, off-campus, aurora borealis.”

“For the first six months I just walked around in a constant state of amazement. I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren’t even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I’ve always had—oh, but look! What is it holding? It’s holding Steve’s hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before.”

“Loving is all in the blood anyway. He called the feeling between us ‘weird,’ and I had nothing to add. I kissed the backs of his legs and they sang. He reached around and pulled me down onto his back and I lay there, like on the warm sand of a beach. Just that. That is all there is. That is the whole point of everything.”

“I brushed my new short hair with the same long strokes I had used for my old hair, accidentally hitting the brush against my shoulders. It was a delicate, new strangeness, and I held on to it like a candle, hoping it would lead me to an even newer, stranger strangeness. Or perhaps I could accumulate many small new ways and pile them up to form one large new way.”

“Over time she knew more and more people who had never seen her with the birthmark. These people didn’t feel any haunting absence, why should they? Her husband was one of these people. You could tell by looking at him. Not that he wouldn’t have married a woman with a port-wine stain. But he probably wouldn’t have. Most people don’t and are none the worse for it. Of course, sometimes it would happen that she would see a couple and one of them would have a port-wine stain and the other would clearly be in love with this stained person and she would hate her husband a little.”

“It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying. Years went by. This thing grew, like a child, microscopically, every day. And since they were a team, and all teams want to win, they continuously adjusted their vision to keep its growth invisible. They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture.”

“Tom began screaming, and I wondered if the baby’s soft brain was, in this moment, changing shape in response to the violent stimuli. I tried to intellectualize the noise to protect the baby’s psyche. I whispered: Isn’t that interesting to hear a man scream? Doesn’t that challenge our stereotypes of what men can do? And then I tried, Shhhhhhhhh.”

#reading list #books #miranda july #no one belongs here more than you

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My big fashion moment: 'I wore jogging bottoms on my first date' | Fashion

What I wore when… I went on my first date

Pearl Mackie, 30, plays Bill Potts, companion to the 12th Doctor in BBC1’s Doctor Who. She is wearing white Adidas jogging bottoms, a white vest top and white shell-top Adidas trainers.

I used to wear jogging bottoms a lot when I was teenager. I wore them on my first date, when I was 15. He became my first boyfriend. We went to the McDonald’s at the end of my road and I got a strawberry milkshake and he ordered a banana one, and I was like, “Mate, why you getting banana?” We went for a walk, then sat in the park, and it was really sweet.

The high street is full of all this stuff again now, but I can’t imagine wearing jogging bottoms on a date.I’ve got about 25 pairs of trainers under my bed. I wore a pair of yellow trainers to my Doctor Who audition. I felt Bill would wear something bright.

There are things in her wardrobe I wish I could take, like her red Urban Outfitters jumper or her jeans (I’m quite curvy and they were taken in to fit, so they’re better than any other jeans ever). But they save everything to exhibit at the Doctor Who Experience.

I don’t take clothes too seriously. My wardrobe is a collection of mostly insane items. My idea of a classic white shirt is my grandad’s old white shirt from the 1940s that does up with cufflinks. I like vintage a lot. I bought an amazing Moschino jacket on the Depop app. It’s really bright and fun, and covered in Las Vegas-style pinballs and cars. I went through a phase of buying leather jackets, which sounds expensive, but most of them were about 30 quid. I’m a hoarder and often feel like I need to have a big clear-out. My friends and I often do clothes swaps. The trouble is, I come away with even more stuff.

What I wore when… I became a full-time artist

Tali Lennox: ‘I’m obsessed with nostalgia.’ Photograph: Amanda Hakan for the Guardian

Model Tali Lennox, 24, showed her first solo exhibition, Ashes And Confetti, at New York’s Chelsea hotel in December 2016.

I found this kimono at Chelsea Flea Market in New York. It’s a really junky, filthy, old-school market. The clothes are pretty scuzzy – old, beaten-up jackets you wouldn’t really want to touch – but last year I found this silk robe and I’ve been wearing it ever since. I used to paint in a T-shirt and stained tracksuit bottoms, and wouldn’t change for about three days, which I found quite liberating after doing a lot of modelling. Then I thought, if I’m going to be a reclusive artist, I’d rather wear something that feels more elegant.

I have a super-colourful wardrobe. Guy friends of mine will get lost in there and come out wearing a little sequined crop top. I love dressing up friends in my clothes and I have a little set-up in my apartment where I photograph them.

I’m obsessed with nostalgia and buy only vintage clothes. I don’t enjoy spending a lot of money on fashion, when you can find a whole outfit for less than £50. I don’t often wear high heels, but I have this great pair of rhinestone-studded platform shoes that my mum [singer Annie Lennox] gave me. I also have some of her vintage jackets and I’m a big fan of costume jewellery, which she has a lot of. She loves giving me stuff, so it’s a win-win situation.

Lately, I’ve been drawn to sparkly colours and pink. I wear a lot of Eric Schlösberg, a New York designer, who is kitsch, weird and unafraid of colour. Maybe it’s to do with the loneliness that comes with painting, but it makes me a happier person. If I’m in a bad mood, I wear pink. It makes you feel better.

What I wore when… I started working at Radio 1

Clara Amfo: ‘I wanted to wear something that would make me feel good.’ Photograph: William Selden for the Guardian

DJ Clara Amfo, 33, presents Radio 1’s weekday mid-morning slot.

I love a tour tee. I collect vintage ones: Prince, Tina Turner, Whitney. You need to have bought it from the gig, or at least be a massive fan. My pet hate is when people wear band T-shirts but have no concept of the music. I’m really particular; I will research tour dates and cross reference them with what I see on eBay, because people often sell fake ones.

I bought this OutKast T-shirt when they played Wireless in 2014. When I started my weekday BBC Radio 1 show in May 2015, I was really nervous, so I chose jeans, trainers and this T-shirt, out of comfort. I wanted to wear something that would make me feel good. Even though I’d been at Radio 1Xtra for two years, I didn’t really know what to expect in the way of attention. I thought, let me wear something that feels like me, just in case there is a snapper outside the building.

Part of the appeal of working in radio is that you can roll into work looking like crap. Other days are full hair and makeup situations. When I interviewed Jay-Z for Radio 1’s Live Lounge Month, I wasn’t going to put on a ballgown for him; but Beyoncé is Beyoncé, and I just thought, there’s a chance she might see this on iPlayer.

The night before, my friend Shirley Amartey, who is a stylist, lent me a load of clothes. Her catchphrase is: “For God’s sake, try it on!” I opted for a Weekday bomber jacket, high-waisted jeans from Asos, trainers and a plain white T-shirt. I would never in a million years wear a Beyoncé T-shirt if I was going to meet her. Can you imagine?

What I wore when… I got my dream job

Isamaya Ffrench: ‘This belt signifies something powerful.’ Photograph: William Selden for the Guardian

Makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench, 27, began her career face-painting at children’s parties and is now creative artist consultant for Tom Ford Beauty.

This belt is so not me, but preparing to meet Tom Ford, I just thought: “Cinch that waist!” I found it at an Alexander McQueen sample sale where I go every year to find nice, smart stuff; the rest of the time, I’m in sportswear. This belt signifies something quite powerful, because it’s not a belt that holds up trousers, it’s a belt that accentuates your feminine qualities.

I was surprised to be considered for this job, given my background is quite wacky. But once we started talking about our personal tastes, there was a lot of crossover. Our sense of humour is the same. At one point, I was showing Tom my work on my phone and he took it off me and I said: “Wait! Don’t scroll left, there are nudes!” I like to think that’s what got me the job.

I really admire women who dress up. I think about buying those clothes, but would never wear them. I’m drawn to functional pieces such as La Sportiva and Undercover, anything a bit hard – you can’t wear Gucci loafers when you’re dragging three makeup kits between New York and London. I go out of my way to buy things that aren’t designer. I’ve not seen anyone else wearing Adidas goalie trousers or Salomon trekking trainers.

My first big red carpet event was the British Fashion Awards last year. I borrowed vintage Fiorucci trousers with high-waisted chaps, and they gave me the worst camel toe. I was also wearing the Vivienne Westwood platforms that Naomi Campbell wore when she fell over on the catwalk in 1993. And I fell over. I thought, things can’t get any worse. It’s only up from here.

What I wore when… I reopened the Whitechapel Gallery

Iwona Blazwick: ‘This was the most exciting moment in my career, so I had to be comfortable.’ Photograph: William Selden for the Guardian

Iwona Blazwick OBE, 61, has been director of the Whitechapel Gallery (which launched the careers of David Hockney and Gilbert & George) since 2001, overseeing its expansion in 2009.

I bought this black MaxMara number for the reopening. It was the result of eight years’ work, and £13.5m in fundraising. The thrill of the evening was bringing three generations of artists together, from Bridget Riley to Paul Noble to Goshka Macuga, against the backdrop of a tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, arguably the greatest history painting of the 20th century.

This was possibly the most exciting moment in my career, so I had to be comfortable. When you’re head of an organisation, you can’t run around looking sweaty, you’ve got to look cool, which is a challenge. I have at least 10 black dresses. It’s a bit like having a school uniform; however much I try to change, I always buy the same thing. A typical day might start with a studio visit in Hackney (they’re full of paint, so you have to watch where you sit), followed by a meeting with the Arts Council, then I might have to speak at a dinner. I’ll add something sparkly – Swarovski rings come to my rescue.

If I had the budget, I would love to wear Céline. When I was a baby curator in the late 80s, I wore horrendous giant shoulder pads, like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was a master-of-the-universe moment for women wanting to assert themselves, but it didn’t look very good in retrospect. I still treasure stuff I bought in the 70s from the Biba store in west London. It had the rudest, most over-privileged shop assistants in the world, but it was achingly cool.

Thomas Ruff: Photographs 1979-2017 is on show at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 21 January 2018.

Makeup for Clara, Pearl and Isamaya: Bobana Parojcic. Hair for Clara: Virginie P Morera. Hair for Pearl and Isamaya: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management. Hair and makeup for Iwona Blazwick: Sam Cooper at Carol Hayes Management

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