Bruce Springsteen albums these NBA players need to hear

With Bruce Springsteen’s latest record out now, what other records by The Boss should NBA stars be listening to?

Now that the offseason is upon us, NBA players have a ton of time to unwind after the longest, most uncertain campaign in league history. With all this spare time, I’m sure many players are exploring some new music, and perhaps revisiting old favorites as well. In light of the release of Bruce Springsteen’s latest record last week, I thought I’d recommend a few players some records by the iconic songwriter that may particularly resonate with them.

Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green: The Rising

The Rising was the first record Springsteen recorded with the full E-Street Band since Born in the USA, released eighteen years before. It was a return to form following a desultory 90’s that found him releasing three albums that practically no one would rank alongside the work that came before.

This season, the Warriors expect to be healthy, featuring the return of both Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry, who played a combined five games last year due to a torn ACL and a broken hand respectively. Due in large part to their absence, Golden State had the worst record in the league last season, going just 15-50. However, with Curry and Thompson both back in the line-up, alongside Draymond Green, a (potentially) rejuvenated Andrew Wiggins, and whoever they end up acquiring with (or in exchange for) the number two pick, the Warriors promise to be a Western Conference threat once again. Together, they can listen to the Rising, looking back on their “city of ruins” while inviting Bay Area fans to “come on up to the rising” as they hope to contend for a title once again.

Luka Doncic: The Wild, the Innocent, the E Street Shuffle

No record Springsteen ever made is as carefree as the Wild, the Innocent, the E Street Shuffle. Released two years before his breakout record, Born to Run, it captures him and his band feeling free to do whatever they want, not particularly worried about what anyone else may think. There are extended jams and the songs themselves are celebrations of youthful days on the New Jersey coast, filled with nostalgia and the joy of carefree days.

Luka Doncic was one of the biggest and most pleasant surprises in the NBA last year. After a very promising rookie season, he broke out in a major way in his sophomore campaign, being named to the All-NBA first team and often looking like the best player in a playoff series that also featured Kawhi Leonard. Yet while Doncic was able to do this free of expectations last season, there will soon be added pressure for him to not only meet, but exceed his level of play. Questions about his ability to win a title will not be far behind. Perhaps this record will help Luka to appreciate these days more, and in the future help him escape to a time when the burden of outside pressure did not weigh so heavily, those times when, as Bruce might put it, the aurora was lit behind him.

LeBron James: Letter to You

LeBron James’ legacy is practically set. He will retire and be remembered as, at worst, one of the five best players in NBA history. Though he looked frequently great throughout the playoffs, often like the best player in the world, no one could argue that this iteration of LeBron is as dominant as those who came before. It wouldn’t be quite accurate to call whatever comes next irrelevant, but it’s closer to that than potentially defining

That’s kind of where Bruce Springsteen is as well. His latest record, Letter to You, is a solid record. It’s not one of his best, but it’s a worthy addition to his body of work and at this point in one’s career, that’s all a fan should really hope for. I mean, he’s not going to top Darkness At the Edge of Town as a septuagenarian. The record finds him revisiting the past, recording songs he initially wrote in the 1970’s, and meditating on the passing of time. Unlike records by artists like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen that deal with similar themes, Letter to You is meditative without being maudlin, contemplative though not fatalistic

Perhaps if LeBron sat and listened to this record, he would see a bit of himself in it, drinking a glass of wine while thinking about past glories and the many roads he’s traveled the last 20 years. Of course, he’s probably too restless and busy getting ready for next season to do that.

Zion Williamson: Born to Run

Born to Run was Springsteen’s third record and it was a bit of a boom or bust proposition for him. His first two records had been well received by critics, but did not make much of an impact on the charts with neither album cracking the top 50 and none of their singles making the charts at all. He spent over a year working on the record and his painstaking perfectionism paid off. It became a massive critical and commercial success, peaking at number 3 while becoming one of the most acclaimed and beloved records of its era

Zion Williamson had a bit of a rocky rookie season. He only appeared in 24 games and was on a minutes restriction in many of those contests. However, he did look like a budding star, potentially dominant in those moments he did appear on the floor. Hopefully, next season he will be healthy and able to more fully actualize his outsized potential.

Williamson is not in quite the same situation Springsteen was at this point in his career. No one’s wondering if he’s a bust or anything like that, but nevertheless, he could really break out this year in a major way, showing that all the pre-draft hype was well-deserved, that he was indeed born to run. Or born to dominate opposing defenders in the paint at least.

Houston Rockets: the Ghost of Tom Joad

Tillman Fertitta may be the brokest billionaire alive right now. As the CEO of Landry’s, a restaurant company which owns and operates hundreds of establishments nationwide, his businesses have been hit very hard by the ongoing pandemic. But even before this, there were questions about whether or not he actually had the money to buy a team. After all, he did have to borrow 275 million from the team’s previous owner and take on 175 million dollars of debt to make the deal work, neither of which is really an auspicious sign of financial flexibility

All of this is to say that Fertitta is not really a man who is likely to spend the necessary money to keep retooling and improving this Rockets team, especially not with Daryl Morey in the front office continually pushing him to move his chips to the center of the table

The Ghost of Tom Joad is a stark album, both musically –Springsteen appears by himself on seven of the album’s twelve tracks — and topically. Several songs are narratives about characters caught in the trap of poverty, trying and failing to escape it. Fertitta is obviously not a poor man, but he does appear to lack the ability and willingness to be a good NBA owner, which means that James Harden and Russell Westbrook may be in for some rough years ahead. Listening to this album, perhaps they will be able to see themselves in the downtrodden figures Springsteen sings about here and capture some of the resilience they have for themselves while they struggle to find “a one-way ticket to the promised land.”