The Grind: On the Twilight of NBA Careers

A friend of mine recently remarked that decimation doesn’t actually mean an all-out destruction. It actually means the reduction of an army by 10%, at least in the Roman sense. It was an elimination conducted by those in command and a punishment reserved for mutineers. “Decimation” in this sense is a much more accurate way to describe what we’re witnessing with Kobe Bryant, Steven Nash, and several other aging NBA stars like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and even Dwayne Wade.

Whatever you might say about either Mr. Bryant or Mr. Nash or any other old-man baller, they’ve paid their dues with their bodies. They’re old for basketball players. Bryan and Nash are, prior to the 2014-5 NBA season, 14^th and 43^rd respectively, in minutes played all-time. Bryan has played over 45,000 minutes. If you played one game a day, never taking a day off, that’s over two years of basketball, excluding the postseason. Over two years of basketball at the professional level. Nash sits at over 38,000 minutes. Other active old-man ballers, like Shawn Marion and Vince Carter, are on that list too. With 48,000 career minutes, Garnett is 6^th all-time, but his career isn’t so much in its twilight as it is in the dark. Nevertheless, there are numerous aging former-superstars. Their careers are winding down now. That’s actually the most accurate way to describe the end: their careers aren’t abruptly ending so much as they are fizzling. They’re fizzling under the NBA grind.

It’s a grind. Unlike in the NFL, careers in the NBA don’t abruptly end over night. For instance, did you know Darko Milicic technically had a 12-year career and averaged more than 18 minutes a game? In fact, your average NBA player is handsomely rewarded. But they all end, eventually. And like getting old, the end happens bit by bit. The end of an NBA career, any career really, is death stretched over an extended period of time. A character in Neil Gaiman’s epic story The Sandman actually described this kind of death eloquently:

“Death’s a funny thing. I used to think it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off. I don’t anymore. I think it’s a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay.”

The end in the NBA isn’t generally a shot to the knee, like it could be in the NFL. It’s a grind, a slow twist every time you land after a jump. That’s what we saw with Jordan and Bird. The knees ache, the rebounding gets grounded, the juke invariably slows. We saw Shaq turn into molasses to such an extent that we forget he used to do this in his college days. Others can see the grind too, hovering in the distance. LeBron and ‘Melo are wising up, losing weight, in preparation for the grind as it arrives with turning 30 as an NBA player. The weight, though, will only prolong the inevitable, the graying (or balding) of our heroes hair as Father Time touches LeBron and ‘Melo. Make no mistake, Father Time will touch them, as he will touch all of us, even if it’s bit-by-bit.

It’s the bit-by-bit that brings me to another topic: the ESPN harassment of Kobe Bryant. Even if Kobe is your enemy and an asshole, you have to respect the man.  Kobe isn’t a fractured ghost of his former self, at least not yet. He’s earned the right to keep playing and he certainly deserves the contract he was given, if only because the fans of the LA Lakers want to witness the final grind on a five-time champion.

In regards to players generally, I believe as long as they want to stay and an owner gives them a contract, NBA players have every right to play. In fact, that might actually be why the Lakers gave Kobe such a massive contract: people want to witness the end of something great and are willing to pay for that. We want to watch Kobe cling to the end because he still believes there’s something left. There is something for Kobe to still do.

What then is the larger lesson of the grind? I’m not sure.

But take a moment to watch this video. No, I mean it. Watch it. There is something here that transcends the grind and the individuals of basketball. The twilight of basketball careers always forces us to reflect on those who came before (before Kobe, there was Jordan, before Jordan, there was Bird and Magic, before Bird and Magic, there was Dr. J and Wilt, before…). The grind, outside of basketball, tells us that whatever we’re doing, as long as there is something still in our “house,” we should do it.

So let Kobe play and we can watch him doggedly push back against the grind. He is Sisyphus and the basketball is his rock. Watching him will remind us: as long as we find meaning in it, we should keep doing it. We should keep pushing back against that thief who will always successfully steal from us.

Keep pushing that rock, Kobe. Keep pushing that rock.