After observing the final Illini game of the season — if you like to play along with the fallacy that the B1G Tournament is not part of the season — Smile Politely editor Robert Hirschfeld and writers Matt Campbell and Rob McColley held a round-table discussion, hoping to find The Root of It.
ROBERT:
It was a foregone conclusion. There was no energy in the building, even from Wisconsin fans, apart from a heartfelt moment for Jordan Taylor. The game itself was over in the first five minutes.
I think everyone was watching to see a car crash unfold, rather than basketball. How bad will the crash be? Will it end in twisted, flaming wreckage?
When Bruce Weber said it’s been “a tough stetch in their lives …”
ROB:
You wonder “why do it?” Is that what you mean?
ROBERT:
The foregone conclusion meaning both Weber’s tenure at Illinois as well as the outcome of this game. You could just see it from the players. The whole team was broken beyond repair.
From the tip, and I mean AT THE TIP, it seemed like Meyers Leonard just wasn’t around. Lackadaisical.
MATT (TO ROB):
You disagree with that, don’t you? You’ve been challenging anyone who believes that.
ROB:
Yes. But I don’t disagree with his perception, or perhaps I mean to say “his perspective.” A lot of people say similar things. I guess that’s what it looks like on teevee, maybe even from the middle of A-section.
Meyers does a lot of little, weird things that I guess you can’t see unless you’re right there where you can hear what he says, and see what his eyes are doing.
MATT:
You mean like telling other guys where to cut and screen?
ROB:
That. But also he just emotes a lot, all the time. He’s enjoying the moment, the irony, the struggle and definitely the absurdity of it all. It’s like he’s watching child’s play from the outside perspective of a slightly older, more self-aware child. But it’s intellectual, and analytical.
He also works his ass off.
But it’s the emotive part. It’s the opposite of lackadaisical. Sure, that’s no good for a guy like Bruce Weber who demands that his players be Black & White automatons — which is ironic because Weber himself is so weirdly emotive.
.jpg)
ROBERT:
I’m still trying to figure out whether The Meyers Leonard Problem is him disappearing, or teammates not delivering the ball to him. It seems clear that the de facto first look is not toward the basket, either to drive or pass, but more horizontal. To throw it around the horn. This is a horizontal offense.
And what happened to DJ Richardson this year?
MATT:
He’s become a catch-and-shoot guy who doesn’t shoot as well as he used to.
ROB:
He did have a good drive to the hole today.
ROBERT:
It’s hard not to chalk it up to the system. Bo Ryan said, basically, if the students aren’t learning, the teacher isn’t teaching.
MATT:
He said that today? In the presser?
ROBERT:
Yeah.
MATT:
That’s pretty damning.
ROBERT:
It wasn’t a slam on Bruce Weber. He was discussing his own players.
MATT:
But generally, it’s a pretty damning statement. About coaching.
An indeterminate amount of time passes . . .
ROBERT:
The Maniscalco thing seems like it was a bad idea.
MATT:
Thankfully, though, Abrams doesn’t seem to have been stunted by it. All that time on the bench, while Sam was playing, it didn’t hurt him.
ROBERT:
You don’t know that, though. You don’t know what level of development he’d have attained if he’d got more minutes, earlier.
The round-table takes a break, to listen in on the Indiana-Purdue game, before quickly switching to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory. (The “table” itself is a fiction. It’s a mini-van full of drums and guitar equipment.) By the end of Oh! You Pretty Things, conversation returns, focusing on the crowd at Kohl Center. What was it like for them?
ROBERT:
For one watching strictly for the purposes of Schadenfreude, how exciting a trainwreck was this?
MATT:
From the Illini perspective, the train left the rails some time ago. It’s now a matter of survivors climbing from the wreckage.
There are people whose entire lives are wrapped up in Illini basketball. You might feel for them, because it really is a tragedy from their perspective.
ALL THREE:
(various remarks about callers to local radio shows)
MATT:
But it doesn’t matter if a majority of sports fans are awful. There are enough who think for themselves, and they deserve a thoughtful conversation.
ROB:
You mean “why can’t we have good teams simply because it’s profitable? And provides good light entertainment?”
MATT:
Sure.
My wife knows nothing about basketball, and the other day, sitting at the Michigan game, she turned to me and said “why, when the Illini players get a rebound and start running the other way, do they always then stop and turn, and throw that ball back to somebody?