The parable of Westbrook and Harden

When Patrick Beverly of the Houston Rockets body checked his head coach Mike D’Antoni after a win in Oklahoma City, the scene, while celebratory, was also reminiscent of the time NBA immortality slipped through the coach’s fingertips like a snow globe in the hands of a decrepit Orson Welles.

After all, once upon a time, D’Antoni had coached in Phoenix, where he and his team were often held captive before the sultan powers of San Antonio and Los Angeles. And, in such a way, the weight of carrying their story rendered them as vulnerable as Scheherazade sitting for 1,001 straight nights with her life on the line. But when Robert Horry of the San Antonio Spurs sent league MVP Steve Nash flying into a scorer’s table during the 2007 Western Conference semifinals the crisis, knowingly or not, had been reached, and there was no turning back. The “stately pleasure dome” D’Antoni had built in seven seconds or less cracked wide open, exposing the coach and his point guard to the desert’s unrelenting heat.

Still, D’Antoni did not give up. He migrated to Los Angeles and New York. He sought other muses for his system than Nash, but these were haunted ventures and nothing ever panned out. He ended up in Houston with James Harden, who, like Nash before him, is an offensive savant sporting a signature hairstyle. And, like Nash who prior to Phoenix called Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Finley teammates, Harden’s own career path is a tale of what worlds could not hold.

When Houston travels to Oklahoma City or vice versa, the gravity of the matchup is what will transpire between James Harden and Russell Westbrook. The former is currently averaging 28.2 points per game, 11.4 assists, and 7.6 rebounds. The latter is averaging 30.9 points per game, 11.3 assists, and 10.8 rebounds. While these numbers do demand further dissection, they are, to say the least, astounding. And, given the statistical present and narrative past of the two players, it is really no wonder at all that Patrick Beverly impersonated a tectonic plate at game’s end and roughed up his coach with enthusiasm. What happened on December 9 was less like basketball and more like the history of the universe as told by Neil Degrasse Tyson.

The old parable is something about the wind challenging the sun. A man walks by in a coat, and the wind says to the center of the solar system, “I bet I can have him remove his coat before you can.”

This fable is the duel in which Westbrook and Harden engaged. They traded drives, they passed beautifully, they lost control, they forced the action, they played organically, they rebounded, Westbrook stiff armed a camera, Harden flailed, they each struggled with personal vendettas, and I have no idea who was the wind and who was the sun. I’m not sure it even matters. The final score was Houston 102 and Oklahoma City 99, and that, too, doesn’t seem to matter all that much.

Of course, both players would tell us otherwise. They are, after all, competitors. They would talk about building clichés, about steps in the right direction for the franchises they represent. But, for all those words, these two go about their business with a methodology that cares little for the markets of traditional success.

They bubble in the mercury without counting degrees. They sift through the shards and grains of a shattered hourglass. Maybe they are given to stuffing the stat sheet, to chasing numbers and God knows what else. So what? How else, seeing as how their teams are what they are, would you have them play?

Divorced from Kevin Durant, each in his own way, hero ball now is the only way through the muck and the mire, and I’m not even sure that’s the correct label for the current conviction of these two relentless anchorites.

Yes, Steven Adams is available for 24 points and 10 rebounds on any given night, rising above the fray like some barbarian not named Conan. And yes, Patrick Beverly does look weary as an unnamed traveler of Fury Road. And yes, Enes Kanter lies dead under the assault of a blind Sam Dekker. There are plenty of witnesses to this reckless journey down a barbed tight wire, but you wouldn’t trust any of these other players at the wheel.

You wouldn’t trust anyone other than Russell Westbrook or James Harden to burn down their cities, the league, the record books, even the world. I mean, for the love of the game, how else would you have them play out the centuries in A.D. (After Durant)?

The dream of the young Thunder, like the dream of D’Antoni’s Suns before it, is dead, and this is something beyond Ecclesiastic despair and renewal. This is Job screaming eff you to the sky and deciding to go his own way.

In an age of so-called super teams and data that explains the data, this is a return to some pagan way of deciding the tribe’s fate, and yet it matters not one bit. The Clevelands, the Golden States, maybe even the walls of Popovich, will deny these two the garden’s sanctum come the spring. But so what! It matters not one bit. This seething anger is why TNT and ESPN and satellites exist. The destruction in this story is but a constant assault belching its way to the surface. At times, living in Pompeii is preferable to comprehending its faulty foundations.

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