In the 1992 NBA Finals playoffs , in the first game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Chicago Bulls, just before the middle of the game, Michael Jordan scored his sixth triple for the Bulls, to which he had added other incredible baskets. . On his return to the defense field, Jordan looked at the commentary table and made a smug gesture with his palms open and shrugging that stuck in the image of television viewers and basketball fans around the world. He was the chosen one, the best player in history. The rest of us mortals could do nothing but admire him and he looked at the camera to corroborate what we all thought. Jordan won those 1992 finals and five more (1991, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1998), making himself the most valuable player in all of them.
That gesture is one of the great moments of the NBA, which the American journalist and writer of Mexican origin, Shea Serrano, together with the illustrator Arturo Torres, narrates in his hilarious book Basketball (and other herbs). Everything you always wanted to know (or not) about the NBA and never dared to ask (Contraediciones), a bestseller in the United States who also appeared in the list of book recommendations of former President Barack Obama of that same year in his account of Facebook. The addicts to the NBA, the most important league and the one that generates the most economic assets in the world, are, during this quarantine, in an unusual situation. The author himself recommends the formula that he himself used to prepare the book. “I have spent all my time watching the highlights of basketball on YouTube. I would recommend that. It is the best thing to do in a couple of months, ”he says by email. It is not a bad diagnosis for those who have impossible baskets overalls , stratospheric assists and other sports virtuosities. The book can be, in this sense, a useful guide to search for stock images.
The particularity of Serrano's work, within sports literature, is the humor of each of the pages and chapters in which his book is organized. Also the stories and footers that the author aspires to relate, in a narration accompanied by data and statistics of all kinds. In the chapter What group of NBA players would you join if today were ' The night of the beasts ', Serrano remembers the story of Matt Barnes, a conflicting player who went through teams like Los Angeles Clippers, Sacramento Kings, Philadelphia 76ers or Golden State Warriors. "The most delusional story about Matt Barnes is when he drove 150 kilometers with the intention of breaking the face of Derek Fisher, his former partner (and then coach of the Knicks), because he maintained a relationship with Barnes' wife, although they were separated. Back at kilometer twenty, a normal person would have started to calm down. Barnes no ”. As the author recalls, his fights even feature a tribute video on YouTube.
Shea Serrano's book and Arturo Torres's illustrations are a tribute to a good part of NBA history, especially from the eighties, when the commissioner David Stern decided to change the course of a competition until then frowned upon. due to suspicions of excessive drug use in the previous decade (it was pointed out that 75% of players used cocaine frequently). And in this temporal logic, there is an indisputable hero, the best player in history for the author and for most fans: Michael Jordan, who debuted in competition in 1984 for, after a few years of living with the two great revolutionaries of the time - Magic Johnson and Larry Bird - literally reaching the skies in individual and collective records with their Chicago Bulls.
The book works as a reminder of great moments, from that magical decade of the eighties until today. From those Johnson, Bird and later Jordan, to the current LeBron James and Stephen Curry, passing by players like Pat Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, David Robinson, Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Vince Carter, James Hardem, Dirk Nowitzki ... With repeated references to his admired Tim Duncan, an elegant player like few others, from his native San Antonio, or with taunts towards Kobe Bryant, who died after the publication of the book in the United States, which he describes as “A cocoon”, although he also recognizes his sporting merits and leaves open, with humor, the interpretation of his successes. Few great figures are left out of a story without hair on the tongue and with a hilarious point of acidity, which reflects a long series of unique moments from the NBA, such as the impressive stopper of LeBron James to Andre Iguodala in the 2016 finals that they won Cleveland Cavaliers to Golden State Warrios: "LeBron James, who had been sprinting from the neighboring town, said" Not today. " He jumped, calculated the angles, the rotation of the Earth, the exact age of the Solar System and immediately intercepted the ball against the board.
Torres, a regular collaborator and friend of Serrano's illustrations, alternate different influences –from western to superhero comics– in drawings with a style that rides between the action vignette and references to hip hop culture, in which Serrano, who has written a lot about rap, seems to feel very comfortable. For the author, the NBA and rap "came to prime time more or less at the same time, and also both are very cool . That is my way of feeling it. ” Asked who would choose his team for a game on neighborhood courts if Marc or Pau, Serrano chooses the youngest of the Gasol brothers. "I'm going with Marc, especially because it seems that he would do better in a fist fight, which is how a good percentage of basketball pachangas end," concludes the author of a book that can help cope with the absence of basketball during this eternal quarantine.