Jeff Foster: A Night to Remember

i did not make this title up. [ASIDE: i stole it. from Quinn Buckner, i think. or perhaps Al Albert.] i did, however, watch the Sonics get "Fosterized" (not my words) by the Pacers. i laughed, i cried, i fell back in love with local color commentary.

no one is really sure how it happened. explanations have been attempted. the Sonics are too small to adequately guard Foster? FALSE: no one is too small to adequately guard Foster. and i can say with some authority here that nothing will explain how Jeff Foster, the inveterate bench warmer and Johnny-come-lately to the starting lineup, racked up 19 points 12 rebounds 3 assists and 2 steals in 25 minutes. hustle, size, barometric pressure, pronounced Adams' apples, and pure sticktoitiveness were all undoubtedly factors.

[ILLUSTRATIVE COMPARISON: Foster's game is sort of like World War One in that way. sure, people were predicting it to happen. but people were also predicting lots of other things that never happened. and we all know that someone shot the Archduke. but why did they shoot him? and what bizarre set of circumstances made that small event the trigger for an enormous catastrophe? and, frankly even the assassination looks something like an accident in hindsight (the potential assassin got bored looking for the Archduke and went to get a beer. when he came out an hour or so later, BOOM! there was the Archduke in a car right in front of him). in this way, Foster's game and WW1 are unmistakeably similar: there will always be both too many and too few facts available to explain them.]

i am certainly at a loss. so was Foster when interviewed after the game. the commentators were too busy looking for paper towels to clean up their urine-soaked pants to do much but cheer. the Jeff Foster bandwagon has officially begun rolling, and i for one plan on riding it as far as it will take me. predictions on how far this will be vary from the conservative "to the toilet and back, if you're lucky" to the impossibly distant "downstairs, outside and across the street".

[EXPLANATORY DIGRESSION: for those of you who don't live in Indiana or follow basketball closely, i should explain. Jeff Foster is not what in the traditional understanding would be called a "good" basketball player. if forced to describe him, i would say that he is a less-tall, more-insane, less-talented, more-ugly, significantly-less-Dutch Rik Smits. then again, for those of you who don't know basketball, describing one relatively unknown basketball player by comparison to another (somewhat) more well-known one is probably a waste of time. but who am i kidding? it's not like i've got anything better to do.]

i learned tonight that "Baby Al [Harrington] is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Pacers" and that "you gotta be ready when the three-ball comes your way... because it is such a manly shot." anyone who can explain to me what either of those two things means has my undying respect.

[CLARIFICATION: this is not exactly the kind of respect you get for being knowledgeable. this is the kind of respect you might get from you fellow travelers on public transportation if you were twitching and muttering to yourself and drinking whiskey & bananas out of a large paper cup. what i mean to say is, it's the kind of respect commonly given to those who are suspected of being at least a little bit insane.]

Also: i have at several points in the past expressed my contempt for Bill Walton. in light of recent events, however, i have had something of a conversion. i have in the past said things like "Bill Walton is a moron", "Bill Walton is only 1.5 rungs up the evolutionary ladder from a possum", and "Bill Walton is a complete waste of space". i have not changed my mind about these things. however, the scales have fallen from my eyes, so that i may now appreciate Bill Walton's commentary in all of its (gloriously?) rambling nonsensical incoherence. once upon a time if i heard someone say that Raef LaFrentz made "slashing forays to the hoop with all the toughness of a SpiderMan" i would have rolled my eyes in disgust. now i can laugh. i think this makes me a better person. better than you, anyway.