This Week In Balls: Deep Inside The Strange Basketball Philosophy Of Free Darko
FreeDarko is a blog that regularly runs essays on basketball and culture. Its ethos? The all-powerful mandate of style, psychology, liberated fandom, and unfulfilled potential in the NBA. Plus a little bit of zoology, Islamic extremism, and pop music.
After the jump, Michael Fichman puts on his pipe and slippers with Bethlehem Shoals, Philly expat and the man behind the meta-hoops blog Free Darko
This Week In Balls: The Bethlehem Shoals Interview
A few years ago, I got near simultaneous emails from my father and Skinny Friedman. They said that a certain friend of ours was writing a blog about basketball that was equal parts inspired and impenetrable. The blog, FreeDarko, is essentially a team-written column of long-form essays. The pieces are peppered with obscure references to graduate level philosophical theory and inside baseball music and cultural landmarks. The prose is narrated by google-image-search portraits of obscure cultural totems and random internet bric-a-brac. Understand it or not, FreeDarko has become a sports nerd internet phenomenon and the fancy of all post-graduate jock-sniffing journalists on the internet.
This “certain friend of ours” goes by the name Bethlehem Shoals. He is also the main man at AOL Fanhouse’s NBA department. FreeDarko has also expanded to the realms of Slate and McSweeney’s. A few days ago, he and I were chatting about the prospects for the 2007-08 Sixers, and we agreed that we were profoundly uninspired. In lieu of voicing our collective discontent, I asked the bol Shoals if he’d care to reflect a bit on the time he spent living in Philly as it relates to the charicatured and heavily cultivated ethos of FreeDarko.
I should also mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that Philebrity Editor Joey Sweeney may or may not have lived on Shoals’ couch for a time, depending on who you ask.
This Week In Balls: For the uninitiated, describe for us “FreeDarko” the site and “FreeDarko” the ethos and how the whole thing got started.
Bethlehem Shoals: FreeDarko is a blog that regularly runs essays on basketball and culture. Its ethos? The all-powerful mandate of style, psychology, liberated fandom, and unfulfilled potential in the NBA. Plus a little bit of zoology, Islamic extremism, and pop music. It began as a message board that got so involved, we figured others might as well read it. So it’s not as forced or pretentious as I just made it sound.
TWIB: A number of FD fam do/did live in Philly (Emynd for one). What kind of influence did Philly have on the FD perspective or approach to understanding basketball and, you know, life?
BS: For better or worse, I think living in Philly gave me a lot of insight into the average sports fan. Those fans are over-the-top, unashamed, and almost inescapable — oh, and completely biased, near-sighted, and ignorant. That’s the extreme version of every homer in every city, and I don’t think we would’ve developed our own kind of appreciation if we didn’t have something to react against. That and this town’s race issues — especially as they creeped into the love/hate relationship with Iverson and McNabb–were pretty cutting studies in sports-as-society.
TWIB: Yeah, Philly is so highly segregated and economically stratafied. It’s racially racially polarized on a multitude of issues. Much of FreeDarko’s existence is owed (in my opinion) to its willingless to honestly address issues of race. What does the FreeDarko ethos have to say about Philly the city?
BS: What can you say? Philly is a fucked-up place, and anyone invested in issues of race or class should be disturbed by it. I’d say it’s almost in the same boat as the post-Wire Baltimore–a regionalism in part defined by awful, bleak shit.
TWIB: The biggest basketball story here since the 2001 Finals is the trade that sent AI to Denver. You were all over this story at AOL Fanhouse as it went down. Any reflections on it now?
BS: I’ve always had mixed feelings about Iverson. I get the swoons like anyone else when he takes over a game, but AI’s also the league’s best when it comes to stagnating offense. Maybe I’ve just got too many negative associations with hours of Iverson clanking jumpers and ignoring open teammates. I still think that that Denver team could be something amazing, if not productive; a starting five of Iverson, Melo, Marcus Camby, a regenerated Kenyon Martin, and a reborn J.R. Smith would set off some terror alerts. But we’ll never get to see that realized unless Iverson stops dominating the ball when he’s off, or not completely on. And that’s just not his game.
TWIB: So with AI gone, what are your thoughts on the new look Sixers?
BS: Aren’t you only interviewing me because neither you nor I had any? [Ed: It was worth a second shot.] Link to Billups’s Deadspin essay on Iguodala. He should be worth watching. Thaddeus Young’s game will mess with your head, the way being hungry makes you hallucinate.
TWIB: Andre Iguodala is, in my opinion, the most captivating thing about the Sixers now. Maybe the only captivating thing. Your colleague Billups’s basically he said that Dre is a poor man’s superstar and then he said a bunch of other impenatrably dense things that may have been profound but may also have been post-structuralist red herring babble. Your thoughts on our hero?
BS: Iguodala is never going to be a completely traditional swingman, nor should you want him to be. I like that he can play the point. I like that he’s not wholly in love with his jumper. So while I agree with Billups that Iguodala is sick, mesmerizing, etc., for me a lot of it is that he’s slightly off. He’s never going to be a full-fledged superstar because his game is Heisenberg-esque — it’s always going to be a little hard to pin down or pigeonhole.
TWIB: I know there’s a Free Darko book in the works right now, tell me about that.
BS: Yeah, after about two years of kicking around the idea, we found an agent through a friend, put together a proposal, and hit the market. We got close a couple of times, but it always came down to someone at the company saying “I have no idea what’s going on here or how to work with it.” Then, out of nowhere, Bloomsbury swooped down, said they loved it and us, and made us a very good offer. It’ll hit right before the 2008-09 season, and is nothing like the site. There are lots of illustrations, weird stats, and other shit that we’d never do without the time/money afforded by a book deal.
TWIB: Any parting words?
BS: I hope no one remembers me there.
Michael Fichman is a writer and DJ living in Philadelphia. He also blogs at Just Sayin’ and Pour The Science. Read more editions of This Week In Balls here.
