USA - FreeDarko, a roundtable with the hardest working basketball blog in show business

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FreeDarko is a collective of friends who spend a good deal of their time writing about the world of professional basketball. Since they started their blog, nearly four years ago, they've been called everything from "fabulously eccentric" to "intentionally impenetrable." Bottom line is that there just aren't many out there who are writing about basketball (or sports in general) with this level of inventiveness and detail. Their new book The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, with a forward by Gilbert Arenas, hits shelves today (here's an excerpt). We caught up with Nathaniel Friedman (Bethlehem Shoals) and Adam Waytz (Dr. Lawyer Indian Chief) to talk basketball in the modern era.

MAG.COM: How did all you guys meet and when did Free Darko become a serious project?

FRIEDMAN: In college some friends of mine all sort of abruptly decided we liked sports again after not having paid any attention to them for a few years. College is, of course, when people don't usually care as much about sports, but, for reasons I still don't entirely understand, we just threw ourselves into the NBA. Most of us had actually been bigger baseball fans before, but suddenly we started watching as many games as possible and obsessively seeking out the most obscure corners of the league. We had a fantasy league and we had a message board on it and instead of saying things to each other like "I heard your dog can't digest a chicken bone," we started writing these really long essays. I still don't understand what exactly started it.

WAYTZ: I had worked for the Minnesota Timberwolves during their inception and then lost touch with basketball when I was in college. But, at a moment of sort of personal crisis, I rediscovered the NBA when I graduated. Nathaniel and I had known each other since I was in high school and we used to trade obscure rap tapes. I was going to high school in Minneapolis and Shoals was at Haverford College, this was about '97, and we would trade these extremely dorky rap tapes. He would write me these essay-like emails on these really obscure artists that nobody cared anything about.

FRIEDMAN: So we stayed in touch, mostly about music, but then our conversations sort of shifted from free jazz to hip hop to basketball. We actually talked about starting a free jazz magazine first, but we had no idea how much it cost to press a magazine and we greatly underestimated the lack of our friends' motivation to do things. At some point we looked at the slate of the stories we had and the stories were so all over the place that we realized that basically we would be putting something out that would only appeal to us. Which, is at times how my friends have sort of described Free Darko.

MAG.COM: In the forward of the Macro, Gilbert Arenas says that Penny Hardaway was the reason he really got into basketball, not just playing it, but when it really became his life. Was there a player that did that for you?

FRIEDMAN: One of the central tenants of my family, one of the stories that gets told to males on one side of my family as soon as they're born is that Hank Greenberg came to my family's Seders one year in Detroit. He was playing for the Tigers and though he presumably had his own family in Detroit, he came and hung out with my family for Passover. They think it has something to do with a cousin Harry who was like this smooth talking defense attorney or something. And my grandmother's brother, who I've been meaning to ask about this, apparently had gotten drunk that night with him at age seven on homemade elderberry wine. I've always really been into 30's baseball players, and collecting cards. I followed everything in a voracious, really dorky way. That fascination with sports eventually led to basketball. So in a way I guess you could say that Hank Greenberg is the player who really got me into basketball.

MAG.COM: It seems that the general sentiment among fans, coaches and the media these days is that there needs to be more teamwork and less selfishness in professional basketball, but the mission statement in Macro states a significantly more laissez-faire approach to the game ("We embrace the primacy of the individual" and "We discount mere wins and losses.").

FRIEDMAN: One of the things that we are constantly having to defend ourselves against is the claim that we want to bring the NBA back to 1997. We don't. What we're more talking about is that there is a way that players, by being recognized as individuals, can actually lead to a more sophisticated team concept. It's not about how much we love sneakers and egos and crossovers. The very notion of style that we're hung up on is not about saying, "Oh did you see that move, lets put that on a mix tape." We're saying that if you take a closer look at that Kobe Bryant move that got shown on SportsCenter 700 times, that every single split second of it made sense from a basketball perspective. They're doing it because it makes sense in the moment as a response to the surroundings and as a way to overcome the challenges in front of them.…The idea is that by understanding the individual player better you can start building teams that are more about just getting a center just because he's seven-foot and we need a guard just because he's fast. You have to look at their personal styles of play. In that way the '04-'05 Suns were kind of the genesis of the blog. When we talk about "the individual" it doesn't mean that we like one-on-one ball it means that we think that if you're actually trying to, in an intelligent way, think about, coach, organize, or analyze basketball, you have to start with the individual.

WAYTZ: I want to debunk another myth: that we hate defense. As a case study the '03-'04 Pistons are a good example of everything we like. The whole reason they won was that they defied the conventional wisdom that a center has to be seven-feet tall and has to be able to defend against Shaq. They had Ben Wallace, who Larry Brown finally appropriately utilized for his skill, and Elton Cambell and Corliss Williamson and Rasheed Wallace, who basically all just swarmed Shaq. They won that final because they knew how to use players to the best of their abilities. Rip Hamilton is undersized for a two guard. Chauncey Billups is a shoot-first point guard. Tayshaun Prince is too skinny to really mangle it up with the guys down low. Rasheed Wallace likes to step out and shoot the three even though he's a power forward. But with Larry Brown's personality and the recognition of those individual strengths he somehow transformed a more conventional, even puritanical, team ideal. And they were much more interesting to watch too.

MAG.COM: Do you have any particular plays in mind?

WAYTZ: Like Josh Smith jumping up and blocking a seven-footer. Or Tracy McGrady jumping over Sean Bradley. Or even Yao Ming dunking, essentially, from his tiptoes.

MAG.COM: So what has your reaction been from players? What kind of access do you guys have and have you actually been able to interact with players?

WAYTZ: Thurl Bailey emailed us to tell us to stop using his image on the site. That literally might be the most anyone has ever commented besides Gilbert.

FRIEDMAN: Oh … and Elton Brand, he knows who we are. A mutual acquaintance was talking to Elton and brought us up and I guess Elton laughed heartily. I have no idea what that means, but we figured that at least it registered with him.

WAYTZ: The first time we met Gilbert Arenas, Brown Recluse and I had gone to a Bulls/Wizards game with press credentials and we met Gilbert and gave him this t-shirt we made with his chest tattoo on it. And he was familiar with the blog. We gave him the shirt and he said, "FreeDarko…they still got that blog?" So he was at least aware of us.

MAG.COM: Do you think the level of basketball dialogue is better on the net than in print?

WAYTZ: First of all, I just want to say that the person who is the best, best, best basketball writer right now is Britt Robson. This guy is doing like 2,000 word tomes on every single Timberwolves game. And I'm biased because I'm a Minnesota fan, but I think the online v. print media dichotomy is indefinable at this point because I read all the print papers online anyway, so I can't even distinguish between the two.

MAG.COM: Off the top of your head, give me the five most evil forces that currently exist in the NBA, and rank them.

FRIEDMAN: I think James Posey is evil. I can't really explain why. I know he wins championships and he selflessly leaves teams that might win championships for other teams. Maybe it's that weird picture of him standing over that girl puking in the toilet wearing a dress shirt and no underwear. To me that's the most creepy way that you can appear clothed. He just has this gross temperament.

WAYTZ: Bill Walker. I really don't like this over-confidence that I've seen from Walker in the early stages. Usually that's something we like but the association with the Celtics is problematic for me. Also, I hate Shaq right now. It's a big cliché, but it's true. I wrote this thing a couple of years ago about how Shaq could have been the next Charles Barkley in terms of improving the league's sense of humor. In addition to leaving a trail of dust wherever he goes, I think he represents everything I hate about pro sports. He plays until he reaches a level of satisfaction and once that level is achieved then he allows himself to slump back out of shape. You can see it in the evolution of his rap albums, he went from Fu-Schnickens to Master P.

FRIEDMAN: There's a reason he won regular season MVP once and Finals MVP three times. He was never quite following through on being the player he could be. I find a lot of his cheap shots with Kobe over the years frustrating. Say what you will about Kobe Bryant but you would be hard pressed to find a player in the history of the NBA who has worked harder to become the best basketball player they can be.

MAG.COM: That segues into the next question, would you put Kobe in the top three forces of goodness, and who else would be on that list?

WAYTZ: Put it in these terms: If you have to spend a hundred dollars on watching an NBA game and you have to pick one team you want to see, it's gotta be Kobe's team. He suffers from this self-perpetuating cycle where all the crap he's taken has made him into an even lamer, more fake person, because everything he's doing is so contrived, but game-wise he's a total force of good.

FRIEDMAN: I think Kobe's totally changed over the last couple of years because he's realized that he can't make everyone happy. All he can do is go out there and be the best player in the league. That's why he doesn't try and act hard any more. His best friend on the Lakers is Sasha Vujacic, how "hard" is that? A few years ago when Kobe was on that tear against the Suns Dan Patrick said, "Look, if you aren't enjoying watching Kobe right now you're just punishing yourself." If you like the idea of a human being using everything they can possibly use at their disposal to be good at basketball you really have no business not enjoying Kobe. I'd have to add Amare Stoudemire. There is really no one else in the league that you can watch who puts a smile on your face like Amare. He's just always doing something that's amazingly dynamic or amazingly funny on the court. LeBron sort of has that, but you only get glimpses of it every ten minutes or so, where that's all Amare really has.

WAYTZ: I'm going to put two more on there: Chris Paul and Steve Nash. One thing that I will agree about with the old school diehards is that players don't pass like they used to. It's not that players are selfish, but literally their passing skills have gotten worse. You cannot say that about Chris Paul and Steve Nash.

FRIEDMAN: I would definitely agree with Chris Paul because he's one of those players who you can't take your eyes off the screen when he's playing. He's a spectacle. He does a million things besides just trying to put the ball through the hoop. The way he moves people around the floor, it's so complex. There's so much to digest and there's just such a joy to the way he plays. Point guard has sort of become this position that's supposed to be selfless and help anyone else, but in Chris Paul makes giving the ball up to someone else as badass and exciting as if he scored himself.

MAG.COM: If Charles Barkley runs for governor of Alabama in 2014, like he's announced, will FreeDarko endorse and/or campaign for him?

FRIEDMAN: When is 2014? That seems so far off that I can't really fathom it. There's two things here. First, that 2014 seems like a number from a science fiction movie. Second, that's six years away. That's a presidential term plus a congressional term away. It's obvious he's not thinking about that decision in any sort of political terms, he just picked a time he thinks he'd like to be governor.

MAG.COM: So, your devotion to the church of Charles is not eternal?

FRIEDMAN: I think Barkley can be insightful and provocative in a lot of ways and he's sort of assumed a role from the generation of more serious issues-driven players of the '80s, but in a lot of ways he's kind of a buffoon. The only athletes that run for president are sort of really boring ones. It would be cool if Barkley ran because he's not afraid to put his foot in his mouth, but at the same time I don't think he's particularly well-informed. There are all these athletes out there who actually do—despite some of them actually having never gone to college—care passionately about social issues and are trying to do something about it. There was that thing in the Toronto paper just this week about how Jermaine O'Neal is such an insatiable reader. But Barkley is pretty much just a talking head. It's not like he was ever head of the players union or anything. It's not like he's Mutombo building hospitals in Africa. He's just a guy who's on TV who spouts off about politics. In this political season everybody is doing that. I don't think of him as a serious person at his core. Phew, I had no idea I felt so strongly about this.