Where Has Amazing Gone...

The basketball itself has been fairly uninspired, and an overtime period on Sunday night could do little to cover up for three quarters of miserable play. The finals stand at two games to zero now, but does anyone think the Lakers are actually playing like champions?

After weeks of shooting the basketball like they had been possessed by supernatural spirits who had descended to Earth for the purpose of humbling the great Lebron James, the Magic guards now stink. They can't string together five minutes of quality offensive possessions, let alone a full quarter, and Dwight Howard for all his muscles and television commercials looks incapable of actually establishing position in the post.

And so we travel to Orlando tonight to see if someone, anyone, can play with the artistry or daring or toughness to justify the enthusiasm that NBA fans have felt for their league all season long.

And with such bland play characterizing the first two games, it becomes even more difficult to ignore the two truly colorless superstars now thrust upon us. To think that this series could have been about Chauncy and Lebron and Carmello and, yes, even Birdman.

Instead we have Howard, an astonishingly gifted center, who has all of Shaq's imposing physicality and none of his will to exercise it. He also has all of Shaq's childish goofiness, but none of the occasional edge that make interviews with the Big Aristotle so much fun for actual adult fans.

Howard has a thousand watt smile. He seems like a wonderful person and he is well known as a devout Christian. All is which is wonderful, but not particularly lively to watch. The history of the NBA is colored by big men who captured the imagination- the lordly dignity of Russell, the brashness of Wilt, the iconoclasm of Walton, even the improbable grace of Olajuwon. It is an exceedingly high bar, and it's unfair to ask Howard to be something he is not.

But its still true that he isn't cut from that heroic cloth.

Incredibly, though, Howard is probably the more compelling of the series's two superstars, for in this finals he stands opposite of Kobe Bryant. For an athlete who has been globally recognizable since his eighteenth birthday, is it anything short of bizarre how oblique Bryant's personality has remained?

There is the official narrative - he loves to win, he speaks Italian, he has a beautiful wife and charming two daughters - short, unremarkable, and so shallow that its bottom can be seen by anyone who still has eyes. And then there is the great, expunged event - a certain occurence in Colorado that has been written out of an amnesiac sports history like Garcia Marquez's incident at the Cienaga train station.

Of course there is a intriguing quicksand of curiosities all around the official story of Kobe Bryant. He grew up in foreign countries, learning the game without any kind of typical peer group. He went to high school in the affluent suburbs, then moved straight to Los Angeles at seventeen. He almost went to prison. His father was a famous NBA star, who is never - I mean never - shown or mentioned when Kobe makes appearances.

But you're not likely to get even the most hasty vantage on any of these stories. Even if the sports media was more interested in asking about any of it, Bryant wouldn't come close to allowing it. He is perhaps the most jealously guarded personality in sports, and that's how he'll remain, championship spotlight or not.

For my money, the most culturally compelling figure in the whole series is Hedo Turkoglu.

He was a streaky, minor contributor on the historically odd Sacramento Kings. Now he's the unorthodox go-to-guy on a contender. That's interesting. He's the greatest player ever from his home country, a nation with a surprising interest in basketball and a complicated relationship with the West. That's also interesting.

And with Ali, Abdul-Jabbar, and Olajuwon largely gone from the public eye, he is the most famous Muslim athlete in America.

That's really interesting.

Unfortunately, we're not likely to see much written about that either. Mainstream basketball journalism just isn't set up for that kind of thing. The best we can hope for is this article from the NY Times this morning, detailing how Hedo eats pizza before games and wears a silk bathrobe after them.

Actually, that sounds pretty damn interesting all things considered.

Now, if only the Turk could hit a few shots...