TEAM DREAMS: The Clippers’ Blood Meridian
On how the boat-themed basketball team are their own gnarly Western, penned by hot-take guru Cormac McCarthy
Defined and doomed for decades by a sort of preternaturally self-destructive instinct, the Clippers’ grotesquely funny failures made them natural attractants for an author so taken with the concept of a disinterested natural order visiting horrific violence on the guilty and innocent alike, as Cormac McCarthy is.
The Clippers of today are different from the ones that destroyed themselves out of habit, but, ya know, once a fan, always a fan.
Take McCarthy’s masterpiece, Blood Meridian. Lots of people think it’s a meditation on man’s inherently violent nature, racism, the ancient and inescapable madness that shapes our modern world, and trees full of dead babies. Which…I guess it’s kind of about that stuff.
But it’s also basically a guidebook for surviving as a Clippers fan in these happier times.
Start with the title: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West.
Evening redness in the west? Come on, it’s right there. L.A.’s jerseys are red, they play on the west coast and, as such, their games are always broadcast late…in the evening!
And that’s just the start. There are obvious references—ones that apply particularly well to the upcoming 2016–17 Clippers season—in virtually every passage of that book. Some scholars argue that L.A.’s basketball stepchild is indeed the sole inspiration for this classic work of literature. With words like these, it is hard to disagree:
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”
OK, so right away we’ve got our reference to the Clippers’ revolving door at small forward. Itinerant carnival? Migratory tent show whose ultimate destination is calamitous beyond reckoning? If that’s not a direct shot at a positional lineage terminating catastrophically with Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Starting Small Forward, I don’t know what is.
For as long as the current Clippers core has been around, the 3 spot has been a temporary landing spot for misfits and variously imperfect fill-ins—a real trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue no precedent, if you will.
McCarthy’s right, you guys. The Clips need to swing a deal for a real small forward before Chris Paul hits free agency this summer and the team’s window of relevance slams shut.
“Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
A little on the nose, if you ask me. But there may not be a better encapsulation of head coach/team President Doc Rivers explaining to his son, Austin Rivers, why he’s now making $35 million over the next three seasons.
I mean, you could try to spin this by noting the Clippers’ cap situation precluded them from spending on outside help, and that the only way to secure a serviceable backup guard was to exceed the cap and retain in-house “talent.” But $35 million for Rivers, a gotta-get-mine chucker without a defensive instinct or pass-first thought in his head? On a team that needs someone reliable behind an aging CP3?
Fuck a mystery. This is nepotism, y’all.
Cormac knows what’s up.
“There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.”
This is clearly about Blake Griffin and how fun he used to be, back when he was all incomprehensible feats of aerialism, anticipatory gasps and potential. It may also be about Griffin punching team trainers outside of taverns.
Now, even though Griffin is perhaps a more effective and versatile player than he’s ever been, he’s just not the same. Some of it has to do with obviously declining athleticism; dude dunked almost exactly once per game last season. Five years ago, his dunk rate was more than triple that. But most of it is tied to the idea that Griffin isn’t an up-and-comer anymore. Instead of wondering what incredible feats he might be capable of, we know what he can do and, maybe more to the point, we know we won’t see the truly inspiring shit ever again.
Knee surgeries make gravity a bigger bitch than usual.
Griffin’s at the tavern, which is a good place to be. But it’s not the same as the road thereto.
“They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.”
Everyone fucking hates Chris Paul. He wears on teammates as much as opponents, but his overbearing demeanor comes connected with assured 50-win seasons. Barring disaster, his assholery will get the Clips another hefty win total and at least the fourth seed in the West.
But do the math on this core sticking together through this summer’s free agency, when Paul and Griffin can both go their own ways.
“If a man’s at odds to know his own mind it’s because he hasn’t got aught but his mind to know it with.”
Doc Rivers is mostly a bad personnel man (though he keeps finding decent veteran-minimum stopgaps like Raymond Felton, Marreese Speights and Brandon Bass this year), but it’s difficult for his coach self to figure out why.
Cormac nails it again.
“Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen the horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance.”
Is this McCarthy’s iconically depraved Judge…or is it Paul whispering encouragement in DeAndre Jordan’s ear between free throws? You can’t tell, can you?
“The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman’s making onto a foreign land. Ye’ll wake more than the dogs.”
This is McCarthy very clearly cautioning Paul Pierce and anyone else in the West recklessly stupid enough to throw shade at the superteam Warriors. Don’t wake the wrath of God (Stephen Curry treybombs). Don’t carry this war of a madman’s making onto a foreign land (Oracle arena). Just shut up, compete for a few solid regular season months and take your second-round out in May.
