He Who Would Be King Now Is

As I write this, Lebron James and the Miami Heat have already tipped off Game 4 of the NBA Finals versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, a series they lead two games to one entering tonight’s contest. I don’t need to check the score now, or even after it goes final, to know the outcome of the series. The Miami Heat will triumph and Lebron James will be named series MVP as he collects the first set of championship hardware of his already storied career. I know this not because the NBA is fixed, because it isn’t, and not because Kevin Durant and the Thunder are incapable of coming back from a 2-1 series deficit. About two weeks ago the Thunder were down in a deeper hole, 2-0 to the four-time NBA champion Spurs, who at the time were riding a twenty game win streak and for whom the reputed basketball experts (see one Bill Simmons) were already measuring ring sizes for the one for the thumb. The Thunder won four straight, demonstrating the ability to take a punch from a team with a “Big 3” every bit as accomplished as Miami’s, and here we are. I know this (this being the Heat’s eventual triumph) because it is preordained, which is not the same thing as fixed, or at least fixed by a human being.

Watching Lebron James throughout the 2012 playoffs, or rather listening to his games on the radio or listening to people who have watched the games talk about them on the radio (which is how you experience the games if you are blind, or, like me, not allowed to have a TV in your house because you frighten the children when you yell at it during ball games), one gets the clear impression that one is witnessing someone who has paid his debt to society, and is once again a free man. That debt has nothing to do with the fact of his departure from Cleveland, an inevitability, nor the fashion in which he did so via “The Decision,” i.e. tacky and not classy. This hurt James’ popularity, or Q Rating, but wasn’t what landed him in the symbolic pokey. What got James in trouble was his premature, self-styled coronation, when he landed in Miami for the celebration of his arrival and freshly minted partnership with Dwayne Wade and, to a lesser extent, Chris Bosh. At the celebration, James announced that the Heat would win “not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven,” NBA championships. Eight championships is a bit over the top, but the collection of talent on the Heat is capable of winning three, four, or even five rings. So, if we excuse James’ understandable excitement in the moment and allow him a reasonable margin of error of three or four championships, nothing James said was demonstrably unreasonable. James’ mistake, his crime, if you will, wasn’t, then, how many chickens he counted before they hatched, but the simple act of counting any eggs whatsoever before they hatched. What James, who has always gone by the nickname King James, failed to realize is that for every king, there must be a kingmaker. To wear the crown, kings must go through the checkout counter staffed by a cashier, who acts as kingmaker. In ringing up his championships that heady first day in Miami in the self checkout lane, James undid the process of coronation, which has always consisted of athlete winning championship, and public crowning him king. Lebron reversed both elements, crowning himself king before “not one” championship had been secured. James’ sin, for which he would be punished in the 2011 NBA Finals, was not that he would be king, it was always clear that he was destined for that, but that he would be both king and kingmaker.



James’ punishment in the 2011 NBA Finals was as preordained as the outcome of these 2012 Finals. The first piece of evidence comes in the form of a tattoo on the person of Dallas Mavericks shooting guard Jason Terry. Prior to the 2010-11 NBA season, Terry, a good but not great basketball player on an at best very good but never great basketball team, had the Larry O’Brien Trophy ( awarded annually to the NBA champions) tattooed on his right biceps. Given both Terry’s and the Mavericks’ modest resumes (Terry’s previous greatest previous accomplishment was being named the NBA’s 2009 Sixth Man of the Year, which is like being named world’s best sous chef, and in their one previous NBA Finals appearance in 2006 the Mavs had choked up a 2-0 series lead to the pre-Lebron Heat) this was akin to fellow Texan Ron Paul having a tattoo of the Seal of the President of the United States tattooed on his right biceps just before the Iowa caucus. The second piece of evidence from the 2011 NBA Finals came in the form of James’ bizarre disappearing act in the decisive fourth quarter throughout the six game series. James, one of the most dominant and assertive players in basketball history, inexplicably watched listlessly from behind the 3-point arc as the rest of his team wilted in each of the last four games of the series. To this day, commentators and James alike are unable to account for what occurred. It was as if an outside force had taken over James’ body. It had (it being the symbolic order that had been violated the moment Lebron publicly counted to seven).

To understand the gravity of James’ crime, two examples of biblical king making will suffice. The first example comes from the biblical king par excellence, King David. What is most important about King David for our purposes is the fact that he was not yet king when he slayed Goliath. It was only by slaying Goliath that David put himself in a position to eventually be crowned King of Israel. As the story goes, David placed all of his faith in God, and on the battle field against Goliath it would not be going too far to say that he became God’s chosen, later becoming king of God’s chosen people. There is a king, in the person of David, but there is also a kingmaker, in this case God Himself. The second example comes from Christianity, which as a religion only begins to make sense when the rule of king and kingmaker is applied. Against an interpretation of Christianity in which Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God prior to his birth from Mary, the rule of king and kingmaker, a rule that binds God as surely as the laws of physics (apologies to the believers in a supernatural God, but He just doesn’t hold water) endorses an understanding of God’s adoption of Jesus as his son as Jesus hung on the cross. By this reading of Christianity, Jesus’ three year ministry qualified him as Son of God/Messiah/King, with the coronation occurring on Mount Calvary. The rule of king (Jesus) and kingmaker (God) had once more been obeyed. All things considered, Lebron James is getting off rather lightly for the hubris of playing the role of king and kingmaker. His coronation was postponed, not cancelled. It is being aired live on national television on not one, not two, not three, not four, but at least five and possibly seven nights. And perhaps it was better this way for Lebron. Just as there must be a king and a kingmaker, there can be only one king. In 2011, James wanted to be co-king with Dwayne Wade. Imagine Michael Jordan trying to share the throne with Scottie Pippen. It’s like imagining a squared circle. Recall the most recent king, Kobe Bryant, kicking Shaquille O’Neal out of his kingdom. Perhaps James’ punishment was for this offense as much as it was for playing king and kingmaker. But that James is gone, replaced by a 2012 version who is now a real life king to match his nickname. The coronation , the real one where you, me, and Bill Simmons get to play kingmaker, is taking place now.

And while I was typing, the Heat won Game 4. Let me be the first to say it: Long live the king!

What Could Be Sweeter than the Love of a Grandmother?

A recent print ad for McDonald’s sweet tea reads “Just like grandma wishes she made.” At first glance, the ad is simply a clever play on the familiar saying “Just like grandma used to make.” But a more considered reading of the ad reveals the formula by which McDonald’s, and others of its ilk, are reshaping the landscape of desire.

Until very recently, the ad could have successfully relied upon the original familiar saying, “Just like grandma used to make.” The stirring of warm feelings towards grandma mixed with memories of her kitchen, once linked to the sweet tea, would have been sufficient to attract the prospective sweet tea consumer. Grandma was the source of a loving nurturance that runs deep, fulfilling a primordial need and at the same time establishing a desire to have those very needs continually met in an equally satisfying fashion. This potent combination of need, satisfaction, and desire secured a loyalty to grandma that a McDonald’s could only dream of from its consumers, even as it traded on that loyalty with advertising come-ons such as “Just like grandma used to make.





McDonald’s couldn’t have run the ad “Just like grandma wishes she made” perhaps just fifteen years ago. Even that recently the idea that a fast food chain could outdo grandma’s home cooking would have been seen as both preposterous and at least mildly offensive to grandmothers and grandchildren everywhere. Major corporations that are tone deaf to mainstream sensibilities do not remain major corporations for long. That the ad has run now, and that no one seems to have noticed it (I googled it, and found one lone mention on what appeared to be a stream of consciousness tweet), indicates that McDonald’s knew it could safely run the ad. McDonald’s understands quite well that something has changed, and what has changed is where our desires and, by extension, our loyalties rest. McDonald’s no longer needs to play off of our loyalty to grandma, but can instead flout our loyalty to McDonald’s. And we are loyal to McDonald’s because the golden arches can meet our needs and desires more readily than anyone or anything else, including grandma. Presenting the 99 cent sweet tea. By pricing its sweet tea and other items within reach of even the beggar on the corner, McDonald’s has refashioned itself as the local soup kitchen, opening its embrace to all when the threat of becoming that beggar on the corner continually expands its reach. If home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, that place is now McDonald’s. And if home is where the heart is, the respective questions of why grandma wishes she made it just like McDonald’s and how we could possibly take her wish for granted, have both been answered.