For the record
February 18, 2008
This is the finest mix of strength, athleticism, creativity, entertainment, charisma and gimmickry I have seen.
Update: Ok, the entire unvarnished episode is here including the missed dunks. It is worth going through the whole Superman sequence again right from the time he reveals the costume (2:50). The commentators were virtually orgasming and the moaning (how else to put it) only got more acute with every replay. Oh and the dunk itself was a splendid example of lessening the margin of error: it is downright impossible to throw the ball, from the distance he did, down into the net with that kind of force. And these two lines were unmanufactured and memorable: “He’s a video game! He’s not a real person!” and as a riff on the ‘thinking’ and ‘creativity’, “Well if you jump that damn high you’ve got plenty of time to think.”
February 18, 2008 at 3:57 am
It was spectacular even to someone as uninitiated as I. Was it just for pure showmanship?
By the way, the NBA runs its own broadband channel? The ICC should learn. Quickly.
February 19, 2008 at 12:10 am
This was one of those transcendent moments when casual and serious fans alike would have been one in wonderment. The backstory makes this memorable enough but for me this was all about setting expectations. Once he put on the Superman dress, if he so much as fell a hair short of flying, he would be laughed at as a tall clown in a costume. But God knows Dwight can fly.
February 19, 2008 at 12:13 am
Channeling Harsha Bhogle, if the ICC is like an old Ambassador car in the pre-liberalization regime, the NBA is the new economy Nano. Or something like that.
February 20, 2008 at 4:51 am
Ok, I think that I derived a different sense for CLR James’ phrase “lessening the margins of error”. I thought that it meant inventing new technique/response to a sporting situation that would have a lower percentage of failure than the best response derived from the previously known set of techniques (as a skilled unromantic sportsman would).
I think that you are using it in the sense of attempting something very difficult (that the unromantic would not contemplate attempting) and still pulling it off successfully despite the high percentage of failure.
Perhaps your interpretation is right.