When is a Three Point Shot a Declaration of Independence?

Only one game after controversially benching Kobe Bryant during a key fourth-quarter stretch, Lakers head coach Mike Brown felt forced to do something similar with All-Star center Andrew Bynum on Tuesday.  Bynum, a seven-footer who has taken eight three-pointers in his entire NBA career, took an ill-advised (and let’s be honest…all Bynum outside shots are ill-advised) three point shot during the Lakers 104-101 win over the Golden State Warriors.  It barely touched the rim, missing by a mile.  Incensed, Brown immediately called Bynum to the bench and put in a substitute.  Bynum did go back into the game after a stretch, but the benching was clearly punishment for a shot the sanity of which the play-by-play announcers questioned during its flight.  So far, this is uninteresting.  Anyone who’s ever played basketball has probably been pulled out of a game by a frustrated coach, and moreover, everyone who’s ever played basketball has probably, at one point or another, deserved it.  It’s what Bynum said to reporters after the game that has raised eyebrows.

“I don’t know what was bench-worthy about the shot, to be honest with you,” said the Lakers’ big man. ”I made one [Sunday], and I wanted to make another one. That’s it. I guess he took offense to it, so he put me on the bench.”

“I’m good,” Bynum said. ”I guess it’s ‘Don’t take threes’ is the message, but I’m going to take another one and I’m going to take some more, so I just hope it’s not the same result. Hopefully, I make it.”

So there you have it: message received, and message ignored.  People think that punishment will correct behavior.  Andrew Bynum’s postgame comments illustrate a competing (though more accurate) truth: punishment incites rebellion.  The law (e.g. don’t shoot three-pointers if you don’t have a reasonable expectation of making them) asks for a certain behavior.  Bynum got it right: Don’t take threes.  When it doesn’t get what it’s looking for, the law inflicts punishment, hoping that a program of reeducation will produce better results the next time.  Unfortunately, as Christian theologians have always noted, the law is much better at asking for a result than it is at achieving it.

Martin Luther likened the relationship of the law to results to a lion held down by steel bands.  The lion fights against the bands…and the tighter the bands become, the more viciously the lion fights.  We fear freeing the lion because of the ferocity with which it strains, forgetting that all the while the lion is fighting the bands, not us.  Released, the lion has nothing to struggle against, and will likely cease its struggling.

In the world of competitive basketball, of course, sitting a player on the bench for long enough may well break him of a bad habit.  But so far, it’s having the reverse effect.  Bynum is planning on launching more shots from long range, not fewer.  As our view lengthens, though, and our scope expands, we might well note that even if Bynum is eventually benched enough to force him to stop shooting threes, won’t he consider his coach a ruthless tyrant and undermine him in other ways?  Won’t he be much more likely to find another team in free agency (or at least threaten to do so unless Brown is fired)?  Is the tightening of the bands on Andrew Bynum (though it might work on the surface) worth the damage it will surely cause to his fragile (i.e human) psyche?  Aren’t we all happier free, and isn’t it true that grace (e.g. the freedom to shoot) can provide the space to realize what it is we’re really good at, and allow us to settle into the behavior, by choice, that the law was asking for in the first place?

Don't Poke the Bear: The Law of Chastising Boo-Birds

Monday night was "Chris Mullin Night" at the Golden State Warriors/Minnesota Timberwolves game. Mullin, the most popular Warrior ever, had his jersey retired before the game. These sorts of ceremonies are invariably feel-good affairs for fans, and it was going just as expected on Monday night. Then Warriors owner Joe Lacob took the mircophone and things got ugly.

Bill Simmons wrote a scathing article yesterday (3/21/11) on Grantland.com about the sixty ways that the Warriors franchise has antagonized its fans (through bad drafting, terrible trades, and horrific luck) since it last won a championship in 1975. Lacob, though (it should be noted in his defense), is a new owner and not responsible for the bulk of the Warriors woes. However, what he is responsible for is trading Ekpe Udoh and Monta Ellis to the Milwaukee Bucks for Andrew Bogut and (via a second trade with the San Antonio Spurs) Richard Jefferson. In short, after decades of losing, Lacob apparently gave up on this season by trading an up-and-coming talent (Udoh) and one of the most exciting scorers in the NBA (Ellis) for a currently injured-for-the-season big man (Bogut) and an uninspiring small forward with an albatross of a contract (Jefferson). So when Lacob took the mic, the fans let him have it.

Mullin gets cheered, as you can see, as he walks out. His cheers fade as he attempts to defend Lacob. As Mullin retreats, Hall-of-Famer and greatest-Warrior-ever Rick Barry grabs the microphone and tries a different tack. He doesn't defend Lacob, he chastises the fans. And that's when the interesting thing happens. The boos reach their zenith as Barry exhorts the fans to have some class.

The biblical explanation of this phenomenon comes from St. Paul, who says both that when he didn't know what coveting was, the law of "thou shalt not covet" came in and awoke in him "all sorts of covetousness" (Rom 7:7-8) and that the law was brought in so that the trespass might increase (Rom 5:20). It is fashionable to think that if you can open someone's eyes (educate them) to their "sin" (or, for instance, their classlessness) they'll realize that they should stop. The Golden State fans illustrate, as Paul supposed, that, in fact, the opposite is often true: chastisement increases sin!

The old sayings stick around because they're true: There's no quicker way to get a kid to stick their hand in the cookie jar than to forbid them, and, apparently, there's no easier way to get a booing crowd to boo harder than to call them out on their classlessness and demand that they stop. 

Hit 'Em For Money, Hurt 'Em For A Little More

The recent revelations about the New Orleans Saints' "bounty" program have rocked the talking-head world at ESPN. The Saints, apparently,  had a program, administered by defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (who ran similar programs at previous teams), wherein players received cash bonuses for inflicting injuries on opposing players. For instance, knocking a quarterback out of the game might get you $10,000, and getting him carted off on a stretcher might earn you $20,000. No one seems to be particularly surprised that this kind of thing was going on; many have suggested that this occurs on every team, and that the Saints mistake was writing it all down and keeping track.

I don't want to get into the morality of paying players to intentionally injure other players, although I will say that it seems an awful lot like criminal activity (aggravated assault) to me. When Tonya Harding paid her boyfriend to take out Nancy Kerrigan, people went to prison. It has been notoriously difficult to prove "intent" on the athletic field, but with documented records of who got what for hurting whom, intent seems a bit easier to prove. Alternatively, I want to use these revelations (and especially the response of several former players) as an opportunity to talk about a theological idea: casuistry.

Over the last couple of days, I've heard both Mike Golic and Marcellus Wiley (former players) say that everyone is overreacting to this story. They say that they "went after the quarterback" as hard as they could on every play, and couldn't have done more if they'd been paid to. Their argument was, in effect, that the devastation of a hit would be the same, whatever the motivation of the player delivering it. Put another way, they said something like: "Football is a violent game, and people are going to get hurt playing it. We all know that going in. Paying people a little extra to put a little extra on some hits isn't going to change anything."

Casuistry might well be defined as "an attempt, via nit-picking, to appear to obey a rule whilst breaking it." It seems that it would be clear to the most uneducated observer that while a player might not be able to hit a quarterback harder  to earn their little bonus, they might well be able to hit them in the knee or in the head. And since when is "I play a game that is inherently violent" an acceptable excuse for attempting to injure another person? The best example of casuistry of all time is this 2005 story in The Telegraph, the first line of which is, "Machines will perform euthanasia on terminally ill patients in Israel under legislation devised not to offend Jewish law, which forbids people taking human life." Yowza.

As humans, we answer "thou shalt not kill" with "I'm not killing. This machine that I invented, put in place, and turned on is!" Apparently, as football players, we turn "don't intentionally injure another person" into "don't intentionally injure another person unless they signed up to play a game in which they might get injured anyway." Casuistry is the human occupation. It's what we must do when faced with a rule that we cannot follow. We mold the rule to fit our behavior, because we find that we cannot improve our behavior to match the requirement of the rule. When Jesus gives us the ultimate rule, that to be in a relationship with God, we must be as perfect as He is (Matthew 5:48), we turn to casuistry for an escape hatch. Usually, though, we're caught out, and look, like these former NFLers, pretty ridiculous.

The NeverEnding Story of Being Human

There is a great crossroads in life, a place described by two verses from the Bible.  The first comes from Jesus during his Sermon on the Mount, where he describes what righteousness looks like:  "Therefore you must be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).  Crossing this road is another thoroughfare, this one described by St. Paul:  "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10).  We all find ourselves at this crossroads, desiring to be righteous but prevented by our humanity from getting there.  Consider this clip from the 1984 classic The NeverEnding Story:

Though the scientist phrases it differently ("aware of your own worth"), clearly it is righteousness that will allow a person to pass through the sphinx gate.  There's even a little shot at the "white-washed tombs" of pharisaism (Matthew 23:27) when the "fancy" looking knight gets his.

It is a staple of fantasy books and movies for there to be a "chosen one," who is pure, even though those around him don't know it.  Arthur is able to pull Excalibur out of the stone, Aladdin is a "diamond in the rough," and so on.  Atreyu, at first, seems to follow that mold...but then the Sphinx's eyes start to open!  Even Atreyu is revealed to be impure, and it's only his cat-like reflexes (and some pretty severe limitations on the eye-shooting abilities of the sphinxes) that allow him to escape with his life.

For the sphinxes, nothing less than perfection will do.  This is true of God.  The sphinxes can see right through a shiny (righteous-looking) exterior and see into your heart.  This is true of God.  No one is worthy, not one.  Not even Atreyu.  This is true of all of us.  Finding ourselves at this crossroads, where requirement meets ability, and lacking the quickness of Atreyu, we must rely on a savior from outside ourselves who, as St. Paul says, "at just the right time, while we were still powerless, died for the ungodly."