LeBron James is Real and He's Alive
On taking a seven-year-old back out in the world and why Oregon should cover in Salt Lake on Saturday
I’ve got plans to take my seven-year-old little boy down to LA and Palm Springs for a long weekend in mid-December.
It's kind of a pre-holiday getaway and also one of the first times he’s been outside county lines (or even the three-block radius between home, school, and the little bayside open preserve) in, I dunno, how long’s it been? Almost two years? A decade? Three eternities in the seventh circle of hell?
It’s tough to keep track.
Mostly we’ll probably stay around the hotel, let him eat sugar cereal, hang out by the pool in sweatshirts, and drive around Silver Lake looking at hipster family holiday light displays hung up on palm trees—big that Corona ad vibes. But I’m also checking into Griffith Observatory, the tar pits, and a Laker game.
I hinted that we might go see basketball, live and he asked if it would be OK by then (he’s scheduled for his second dose of the vaccine in two weeks.) I said yes, and they'll be checking his card at the door, and he smiled, and said, “What—are we going to see LeBron James?”
And I looked at him for a second, not knowing that he knew who LBJ was, and nodded. “Actually, yes.”
He was dumbfounded. He shook his head side to side in exaggerated shock and bugged out his eyes.
And then he said, calmly, “Wait, LeBron James is still alive?”
I figured out right away that invoking the name LeBron James was for him the same thing as me, saying something like, “Who does he think he is, Babe Ruth?” Or “Look at old Gretzky over here shooting his shot.”
In other words, LeBron James is THE legendary athlete of his time, the unapproachable, the not-real, the absolute unicorn. He’s the guy in Space Jam, doing things that transcendent athletes do—being someone who’s not from this planet at all. Relatable, yet elusive enough to hold major intrigue. Not a basketball player, not even a real man.
The last thing the little guy expected to be doing in real life—especially after all this time in relative isolation—would be to SEE, in person, LeBron in very human form playing a very human game.
Then I realized, it goes a step further: We live in such a bizarre world—where everyone is 100% Not OK—that these little things that we maybe used to take for granted, or just took comfort in knowing they were there, are practically out of sight, out of reach forever.
It’s not just that he doesn’t know that LeBron James is nothing more than actual man who’s doing actual things with his actual sport (still)—there’s another layer to it entirely. He doesn’t really believe that we can still access something, something a little magical, a little better, a little—perhaps—something we’re not worthy of.
It all seems illusory to him.
I don’t want to project too much my own lessons, discomfort, or misgivings on him—mostly to the extent that I spent a good year and change, especially during the dark days of first grade via Zoom, doing that very thing.
But I am starting to see how truly different he views the bigger world as it approaches. It’s not as a cynic like me, but it’s also not something to fully throw your arms around.
The experiences he’ll have will be taken on with caution, and concern, and skepticism foremost. It will be through the filter of who is healthy, who follows society’s rules, and who can muster the courage to speak out against bad-faith and the constant effort of charlatans to mislead mankind—pinning him into ever-darker corners in exchange for hate-fueled profits.
Fortunately, he’s got the bedrock of a community who (for the most part) believe in healthy children, in vaccines and masks, and following the rules not just for the benefit of the individual but for the greater good.
For now, he lives in a democracy and is one of the luckiest people on Earth to have access to medicine, and three (plus) meals a day, and a green space, and municipal tennis courts, and a library, and an ocean nearby.
The planet is sick, and we’re running toward the fire—and he’s well aware of this. He keeps track of animal species on the verge of extinction, and he doesn’t understand cars (and now I don’t understand cars!), and he loves all plants and animals. He talks to them and wishes them well on his way. Nothing right now exists in the context of service to his needs.
Of course, this will all change. Fundamentally we get worse, not better, mainly because the forces of evil are everywhere around us and inch us toward the bad place to survive.
And make no mistake, the bad people, the grifters, the white supremacist Christian fascists, the heretics right now are manifest—and they're on the winning side. That’s what happens when you gut the poor and middle class beyond recognition, and hyper-end-times capitalism takes over.
People turn to religion, and pyramid schemes, and online rumors, and smoke and mirrors—and well, you know the rest, you live it too. It’s easier to lie and obfuscate and shortcut your way to the desired outcome for you than to do the right thing and build it from the ground up and blah blah blah. Showing concern isn’t built-in or taught to all of us, though, and for now, the little guy has healthy doses of both.
He’s also got real, actual, living LeBron James, who can even still play basketball in front of a crowd.
And isn’t that something?
Oregon vs. Utah
For Oregon to have a clear shot at the college football playoff, they have to contain Utah twice over the next three weeks, once on Saturday and the second time on Friday, Dec. 3, in the Pac-12 championship game in Vegas.
And really, why would they want to do that?
Oregon can drop one to the Utes (this weekend) and still come out as the conference of champions’... champion and go on to play Ohio State or Michigan State or Michigan in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day as god (or LeBron James) himself intended.
Or they can win out and have to schlep to Texas and then to Florida to get chewed up in the frothy maw of Big-Time-College-Football pundits and fans for the chance at hoisting a giant vagina trophy while having their trademarked style of fast-break football be interrupted every 80 seconds by Dr. Pepper and Liberty Mutual. No thanks.
Perhaps Vegas oddsmakers know something about that motivation-wise for the Ducks as the no. 3 team in the land opened as three-point underdogs vs. the no. 24 Utes in Salt Lake on Monday.
(BTW, as a former resident of northern Utah, I recommend pregaming with a slice The Pie Pizzeria on campus—the dingy brick-lined basement with musty leather seats and arcade games goes perfectly with the college-grease layer on the slice; a burger and a shake at B&D, and a sloshy game of pool with a downbeat jack Mormon at Ex-Wifes Place while pounding a couple of mugs of their dirty-tap 3/2 swill before you head up to the stadium.)
Oregon has seemingly battled through early-season injuries and inconsistent, especially in the always slow-starting first halves, to stitch together a string of conference wins since a very silly clock-management and home-team-friendly Pac-12 officiating crew at Stanford stole one in mid-September.
The Utes, a hair bigger on defense and a step faster on offense than the Ducks, are the most formidable foe in the conference—and maybe of this entire season. As ever, I’m not fully convinced the Big 10 is all it’s cracked up to be. The Ducks controlled the line of scrimmage and the tempo bell to bell vs. Ohio State. I’ve seen flashes in Oregon State, UCLA, and even Cal and Washington to suggest that—once more—the Pac 12 isn’t bad, they’re just drawn that way by the major networks who don’t have the time, timing, or—more accurately—the desire to send the right equipment to showcase the most inconvenient of all the Power 5 conferences.
While Utes coach Kyle Whittingham remains predictably cagey about player availability before kickoff, it appears Utah will have a pair of starting o-lineman out. And the Ducks’ front five on defense is arguably the best (certainly the fastest and most physical) in the sport right now, especially at the ends. Rice-Eccles is a tough place to go grab a late-season win, and Utah—the Pac-12 North's chippiest program—will be up for it.
This season Utah is 8-2 when betting the over so take that for starters. I think the Ducks prevail just because they only seem to manufacture big wins when they're predicted to fall.
Take Oregon +3 and the over Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20 on ABC
Ducks can beat anyone but Stanford.