Writer, humorist, rap critic, and awestruck Spurs fan Shea Serrano knows an NBA moment when he sees it, even if he can't describe it. Even if it's impossible to describe.
In an effort to blend narrative context with the highlights that will shoot a viewer's jaw down through the hardwood, Serrano recently released Expensive Basketball, his latest book and the next step on his quest to define the game's unquantifiable eccentricities.
What is "Expensive Basketball"? You know it when you see it. What it's definitively not is a refutation of stats or an attempt to extricate the nerds, weirdos, and nerd-os from the game. Statistics have their place - and that place, in Serrano's view, is to help contextualize a building narrative and make each incredible highlight that much more important.
"The only reason a highlight is exceptional is because of the history involved in it," Serrano told FanSided, in response to Adam Silver's assertion that the NBA might just be, at its core, a "highlight league".
"I could show you a clip of a basketball player you've never heard of, some kid over in France doing something incredible," he continued. "You would look at it and go, 'That's pretty cool', but it wouldn't grab a hold of you the way it does if I show you a clip of The Joker doing something because we have these years spent with him watching him battle in the playoffs, watching him do all this incredible stuff. You have to build that up."
The NBA, more so than any other league, is about the narrative climb. It's about great clashes you can say you saw building from the beginning. It's not about rivals splitting the pie evenly, 50-50. Often, it's someone getting the better of a fellow superstar 94% of the time, until one day the resistance rises up and checks a legacy-defining box with the help of a few upright bounces and an unexpected teammate catching fire.
Shea Serrano's "Expensive Basketball" helps define the greatness of unquantifiable NBA moments
As a Spurs fan, Serrano has seen his fair share of playoff risers. He's also seen plenty of annual villains trudging home disappointed, bested by his beasts. But one thing he hasn't really seen is 81 games of an athlete breaking the fundamental mold and leaping off the page. His Spurs typically win the right way; as a child, Reggie Miller trash-talking opened his eyes during a nationally televised game to the idea that it was possible to win boisterously.
Now, San Antonio has an archetype-breaker all its own in Victor Wembanyama. Serrano hesitated to place him among the most talented athletes in league history just yet, but the fact that the conversation was necessitated in Year 3 said enough, creating enough hope that 2025-26 could be his ahead-of-schedule 2007 LeBron season.
"When you're talking about Wemby with a basketball person, you end up defaulting to these amalgams," Serrano explained. "Like when LeBron showed up, everyone was like, 'Oh, that's Jordan. He's like a bigger Jordan. That's what he is.' There's no one player we can go back to with Wemby. He's like if you mushed Tracy McGrady and Hakeem Olajuwon. You've got to do stuff like that. He's like Kevin Durant and Ralph Sampson."
"If you talk with someone who doesn't have that frame of reference, like when I talk with my wife Laramie, I'm like, 'Man, we have this new kid. He's kind of like if you mixed a fighter jet with a panther.'"
That's Expensive Basketball. You know it when you see it. And, whether Wembanyama is in Year 3 of a five-year title plan or carving out a more powerful path that even the most optimistic assessors couldn't envision for him, it's clear the Spurs have an un-stealable crown jewel for the long haul.
This is the reason we watch. Because, someday, we might all get to view our own one-of-one with a price tag we both cannot afford and happily pay every day.