JuJu Watkins hit me with this pretty little crossover of an analogy a couple of months ago and I still haven’t recovered: “I try to be an artist, I try to be,” USC’s breakout star said. “Because I honestly think basketball’s a form of art.”
I’ve been looking at basketball differently since, enjoying my own private trip through the world’s b-ball museum – which is not to say I wasn’t admiring players’ on-court artistry before. Paul George’s liquid fluidity and Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Greek godlike strength. Steph Curry’s pregame circus shooting routines and the sequels upon sequels of LeBron James’ scary movie chase-downs, horrifying to somebody each time – cinema!
Nikola Jokic’s prescient genius: The basketball savant here to haunt the New Orleans Pelicans / Passing it over his head, rocking the defenders to bed / Just a dream of a dime, settin’ up A-aron, who’s too strong.
Those aren’t lyrics to a song, not lines of a poem. Not technically, at least. Though, to me, they are part of an ever-evolving exhibition reflecting how the artistry of basketball inspires the artistry of basketball.
Beau Estes
“NBA’s Top 10 Plays Of The Night,” Jan. 12, 2024
Freestyle verse (NBA.com)
That dreamy Jokic call of Estes’ accompanied the chart-topping play on a Friday edition of the NBA’s highlight countdown, a segment he calls a “big scoop of basketball ice cream at the end of the night.” You can find the veteran sports broadcaster – nicknamed the “Goatmentator” by his fans – and his popular NBA.com segment online or during in-game breaks the next day on NBA League Pass.
Personally, I could listen to Estes’ free verse – “at 6, Jalen (Williams) settin’ sailin’, and straight impalin’ the Denver Nuggets” – all day. And we’ll come back to a performance of his soon, I promise, but I also have to show you this other exhibit I love.
Dave Severns
Photography (Twitter … or X or whatever)
Every morning for the past seven years, Severns has added another installment, another photo of a basketball hoop captured in the wild. Daily posts – his “one contribution to social media,” he says – are the product of 40-plus years involved in the game, as a player, coach, scout, bona fide (lower-case) globetrotter. Many of these snapshots of these cylinders are his, but some are contributions from family, friends or followers, and they’re all perfect.
It seems to me that no matter where in the world you plant a basketball hoop, it’s at home. It fits. It’s an invitation. For one, for all. Sure, soccer has the rights to “the beautiful game,” but scroll through Severns’ posts and tell me Mother Nature wasn’t inspired when she gave us the basketball hoop – as right at a park in Severns’ hometown in Dos Palos in Central California, as it is in Nepal, as it is in a cave in China, as it is in an airport in Indianapolis, where they’re welcoming fans ahead of this week’s NBA All-Star festivities…
“They’re everywhere,” Severns said recently. “Because, other than soccer, basketball is the one sport that all kids everywhere can play.”
Hoop of the Day…… Dos Palos, CA. pic.twitter.com/NlDlMFeHbi
— Dave Severns (@dave_severns) May 28, 2017
Hoop of the Day…… Dhampush, Nepal. pic.twitter.com/HiOuULVTsJ
— Dave Severns (@dave_severns) May 12, 2020
Hoop of the Day…Xichun, Guizhou, China. #hoopoftheday pic.twitter.com/eqVvZLGrq1
— Dave Severns (@dave_severns) August 28, 2023
Eric Bui
Digital doodles (Instagram)
“Sports fandom is so toxic, the discourse on Twitter is so horrible, I wanted to offer something where it doesn’t need to be that way … I was like, ‘How do I stay positive?’ ‘How do I let sports affect me less?’ A lot of people let sports dictate their mood and personality, and when I was younger, I definitely did. So this is a way to combat that and to channel my creativity. With basketball, I get a daily prompt, and it’s like, how do I make something funny and relevant? How do I put my stamp on it?”
I showed Bui’s illustrations to a couple of little kids who don’t even know ball and they didn’t want to give me back my phone, his images are that fun. And if you watched the game and you’re in on the joke? These uplifting, usually adorable, meme-like contributions to the conversation are like candy. Between Estes’ late-night NBA sundaes and Bui’s drawings, hoop heads could get cavities.
Bui – who went to Alhambra High and Pasadena City College and now works in tech in San Jose – is one of a growing number of artists gaining acclaim for their basketball-inspired work. A few others you’ll find in this wing of my museum include a favorite of Bui’s – nbapaints – as well as Kevin Gold (aka _ohnoes); Jack Perkins (purehoop); Jason Scribner (paintonwood); walkertkl … it keeps going. It’s a really long wing.
But do you see? The sidewalk outside of Crytpo.com Arena is a veritable garden of statues. L.A. is awash in Kobe murals. Basketball style has been pervasive since before I was in middle school – when boys were shaving their heads to be like Mike – and continues with every striking pose by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Russell Westbrook at a Met Gala. Oh, and how sneakers have influenced culture – let me count the colorways!
And because I’m a word nerd, I especially love the language of it all. That someone at the top of their field is still “the Michael Jordan of” said field. That we have Marcus Thompson II, who writes bars about Bay-area basketball, and Katie Heindl, who chronicles her basketball feelings in Toronto.
And wordsmiths who improvise as impressively as the players on the floor.
Want to get Clippers fans all on the same page? Ask them about their play-by-play announcer Brian Sieman. Hot damn, that guy’s brilliant.
He once described guard Reggie Jackson as having “the guts of a daylight burglar!” for a daring dunk over the 6-foot-11 Jokic. And Sieman’s Amir Coffey-coffee puns are legendary. They’re bold, they’re smooth and, because he somehow continually squeezes another drop out of the idea, they come with unlimited refills – and please believe, they’re all much better than that.
And then there’s Estes, who grew up rooting for the Lakers in Mission Viejo but lived for many years in Atlanta, and who insists there’s nothing really to see there, where after watching hoops, he sets up in a room in his condo in Burbank and waits for colleagues to email over a shot sheet with the NBA’s top plays on any given night.
I’d say I had too much fun with this column about basketball art — but then I think about what the poet @NBABeau does and I don’t think that’s possible.
Behind the scenes of an “NBA Top (Five) Plays of the Night.” ???????????? pic.twitter.com/ZxEfNuWra7
— Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) February 17, 2024
It’s just a desk and a chair, a laptop, a microphone, and a day’s worth of inspiration – a Jack Johnson song he heard, say.
Estes will watch the footage through once and start to come up with some loose ideas while he does.
“It’s all just rough in my mind,” he explained the other night after I’d invited myself over to see his one take to believe it. “So now I’ve got to make something happen with all this, right? So let’s see …”
He pushes record and … “we’re startin’ with ‘the Finnisher,’ Lauri Markkanen, a defense diminisher! …” Estes says in his unmistakably bombastic and enthusiastic delivery. “Movin’ along to No. 4, where we always get up off the floor and we give props to Kristaps, so Kristaps hooray, Porzingis can bring this! …
“At No. 1, GG Jackson, goin’ up for the stuff, but the kid didn’t have enough! Look who’s doin’ shot detonations in the constellations – that’s Jarrett, who’s able to ensnare it. Nothin’ but pumpkin for Jarrett Allen, as he lands, at No. 1, on the NBA-dot-commmm topfive!”
Even in that 93-second top five – Feb. 1 featured a light, four-game schedule – there were so many references, so many twists to unpack. Nicknames and song lyrics and vivid imagery, ahoy. “I think it means my brain works weird,” Estes said.
I say it means he’s an artist.
