Jeb Bladine: A good time for the occasional sports column
This is a sports column.
I’m a long-time basketball fan. My earliest years of home TV coincided with Boston Celtic NBA championships in 1957-59-60-61-62-63. Celtic star Bob Cousy inspired those of us who played the game with passion despite minor challenges of being short, slow and with limited jump-reach.
I’ve gone to countless basketball games of McMinnville High, Linfield and the University of Oregon, Portland Trail Blazers in season-ticket years, and child-grandchild games ever since.
So, it was an easy choice to record then watch the past week of NBA Finals between underdog New York Knicks and the 68 percent favorite San Antonio Spurs. The compelling sports story questioned how the Knicks could win being built around a small point guard — 6’1” Jalen Brunson — and how San Antonio could lose behind the staggering skills of a dominant center — 7’4” Victor Wembanyama from France.
Did I mention that Bob Cousy was 6’1”?
That sports story took a turn when, for only the third time in NBA Finals history, the visiting team (Knicks) won the first two games. But the Spurs won Game 3 in Madison Square Garden and, on Wednesday, took a 29-point first half lead in Game 4 en route to an expected 2-2 series tie.
Someone forgot to convince Brunson of that. He engineered the largest single-game comeback in NBA Finals history, capped off by the spectacular play of Ogugua Anunoby Jr. Spike Lee, Taylor Swift and a host of celebrities celebrating into the night with all of New York City, and the Knicks head to Austin for Game 5.
Meanwhile, for now, forget about those NBA Finals. America’s new sport of history has to be mixed martial arts (MMA), promoted by Ultimate Fighting Championship. Its marque event, “UFC Freedom 250,” happens this Sunday on the White House South Lawn. This after President Donald Trump built “The Claw,” a huge steel canopy over and around the UFC octagon cage where fighter compete.
MMA has been described as “organized, regulated hand-to-hand combat in which athletes punch, kick, knee, elbow, throw, pin, choke and joint-lock one another until time expires, a judge decides, someone submits, or someone is knocked out or unable to continue.”
UFC Freedom 250 transcends sports. June 14 is Flag Day, Trump’s 80th birthday, and the opening spectacular of America’s 250th birthday celebration.
I couldn’t find how much the Trump business organization will earn from licensing his image for private Trump/UFC collectible medallions — being sold in silver and gold versions ranging from $250 to $12,000.
It’s more than a sport: It’s politics as entertainment; it’s combat as presidential identity; it’s masculinity politics seeking the votes of young alienated men; it’s about grifting America for another vote, another buck.
Our national semiquincentennial is being usurped with cultural vandalism turning fringe entertainment into Trump-era politics of spectacle. I don’t think I’ll watch, but instead stay tuned to Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama to the end of the Finals.
Thank you for reading … this has been a sports column.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
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