A LEAGUE IN LOCKOUT [SWAMPSTORYZ 6]

[SWAMP STEVEN]

With labor relations at an all time low and SLN games being postponed, we survey the league and take temperatures across franchises. So spread those butts, because it’s a butt thermometer.

By Steven “Mr. Money Bags? Please, Mr. Money Bags is my father, call me Steven” Steven

“What do we think, boys? Another shared plate of the garlic honey shrimp?”

If you grew up in White Hall, Alabama, the question answers itself. A small town still deeply haunted and impoverished by the legacy of Jim Crow segregation, White Hall’s median household income is under $19,000 per the 2000 census. If you’re Ben Wallace, who in middle school was forced to take classes like “Old Testament and Sexuality” and subsisted on 2-for-1 critter crunchers at Skynyrd Lynyrd’s (a local eatery so poor it couldn’t afford to buy a vowel), well, a luxury like garlic honey shrimp was never in your wildest dreams. More appetizers is damn near compulsory now.

Inside the steely gray edifice on Dearborn and Ontario, the 31 year old is universes away from his humble beginnings. Here, he’s not “Bama Big Booty Blocc Boy Benny”or “the super tall kid who rode to school on two certified pre-owned Razr scooters, one on each foot like he’s water skiing.” He’s Ben fuckin’ Wallace, star of the SLN’s Chicago Bulls and recipient of a mega-contract that pays him a guaranteed 22 million nurse’s salaries over the next two years. He’s won the Defensive Player of the Year Award twice and is compensated accordingly. Here at Tao in Chicago’s affluent River North neighborhood, Wallace is amid the psychological two-step that straddles pride and humility, material conquest and metaphysical loneliness, the stuff Chicago’s Kanye West raps about in this year’s “Addiction” or what Bubba Sparxxx touches on in his latest single “Ms. New Booty.”

The Bulls are not a particularly winning bunch, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the plates of Wallace and a select group of his teammates. To his left sits Rasheed Wallace (editor’s note: no relation, well wait, we all come from God so yes relation ), fashioning a tuna tartar sandwich by smashing two orders together. The Wallaces are making a combined $41.5 million this season, and they are the captains of an internal club called “Appy Roots,” a nod to both the “Awnaw” song they love and the aggressive amounts of appetizers they order at every meal. Tonight at Tao, while Rasheed and Ben are making it rain sashimi on unsuspecting female patrons, Bulls point guard Tony Parker is negotiating with the waiter. “I’m happy, I’ve been here for an hour, I don’t understand how that doesn’t qualify me for cheaper pricing. This is literally why Bastille Day happened.” Parker is in the first-year of an extended contract that will pay him about $8.8 million annually. It’s certainly not money to scoff at, but such disparate compensation rates have led to bubbling tensions in the locker room, mostly because the app guys keep over-ordering and then wrecking the bathroom. Parker and Corey Maggette, who is making under $6 million for 2005-06, combine to significantly outscore the Wallaces, yet their added salaries don’t come close to matching one of theirs. Later that night, the team will head separate ways. The Wallaces are eager to burn cash, quite literally, because Sheed swears that 50s smell different and burn with this bluish flame (editor’s note: they kinda do!!). Parker and Maggette are heading to Boobz Lounge East, a strip club that’s part of the teammates’ subscription service for discounted nightlife tickets.

The next morning, each would wonder in solitude if they were ever going to see their teammates again. That was actually because Sheed rubbed spicy yellowtail in everyone’s face, and the Bulls lost their vision for, like, a not chill amount of time. A few days later, however, the SLN would be locked out.

“‘Revolutions are the locomotives of history’ - Frederick Engels, 1850,” - Richard Jefferson

“‘Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write checks’ - Diddy, 2001,” - Damon Stoudemire

The SLN lockout is but a few hours young, and Richard Jefferson’s Wells Fargo Student and Teen Banking card has already been declined. Him and his girlfriends - Shameka, Keisha, Tara, Shawna, Sabrina, Crystal, Daronda, Lisa, Felicia, Tenisha, Sharon, Monica, Monique, Christina, Yolanda - are dining at Magic Johnson’s, a cafe owned by Los Angeles Dodgers legend Lou Johnson that features magician performances and interactive special effects. “Is my card not working a part of the magic thing?” Jefferson asked the concierge, who is a rabbit in a tophat. Jefferson is one of a handful of SLN players, along with Parker and the Nets’ Mehmet Okur, who were forced into team-friendly long-term deals this offseason. It has RJ thinking, not just about the inequities that plague the league’s landscape but the broader socioeconomic forces at play.

“We were at this house party in Brentwood, right?,” he explains (editor’s note: don’t talk like this. Are you asking me a question? If so, how the fuck would I know? Were you at this house party in Brentwood? I’ll tell you where I was, AT THE PIGEON RACETRACK AGAIN, YUP, BETTIN’ ON THE BIRDIES). “Salim Stoudemire changed the music and put on the Franz Ferdinand song from Madden, like just that one song on loop bro. Then he starts telling me how he made my college sweetheart Becky Thompson look like a Jackson Pollock last summer, like you made her look like a DUDE? And not a handsome dude from movies or whatever, a dude who paints. Then he started hogging all the nitrate poppers and making increasingly elaborate jokes on where he would display my college ex. Like, you’re going to hang a woman in The Whitney? What is this, the Manhattan Witch Trials of 1999? Oh, you’re going to sell Becky to Hauser & Wirth? The joke is on you because I don’t know who they are. More dudes though, kinda sus! God, I’m so sick of hanging with the broke players. Elton Brand hooked up with the alien pharaoh dancer from the California Love video on a bed made of cashier’s checks, he told me all about it.”

Across the state, the Warriors are ratcheting down tensions between John Salmons ($2.6 million salary, 15.6 points per game on 49.8 percent shooting) and Damon Stoudamire ($19.8 million salary, 17.7 PPG on 43.3 shooting). The two got into a verbal altercation at team facilities, with Stoudemire repeatedly offering to “buy” Salmon’s last name. “Rich people eat fish, you wouldn’t get it,” the veteran point guard told the ascending wing. “I have Edmundo Champagne on the phone right now, he’s ready to do this thing. I’m still waiting on Robbie Dollars Sr.’s estate to get back to me. Do you think it’s easy finding people with these surnames, bro?” On the other end of the country, the New York Knicks are diffusing conflict between the Haves (Jason Kidd, Antwan Jamison, Diamond “Dimitris Diamantidis” Titties) and the Have Nots (rookie-scale stars Chris Bosh, Deron Williams, Luol Deng). The “having / not having” in this situation is a 32-foot jet-propulsion motorcycle limousine, and the conflict is basically just the rich dudes swooping in on the rookies’ dates and taking them to Mars 2112. “Our locker room is falling apart,” a source says through gritted teeth, because the way to get the source on record was giving him (or her ((or it!))) a few lines of ketamine. Down South, the San Antonio Spurs are dealing with a youth movement radicalized in real time, knowing they will not get their bags: quite literally, team flights limit luggage and carry-ons for “broke boys.”

“‘I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.’ - Eugene V. Debs, 1918” - Tyrone Nesby

“‘First claaaaaasssssss up in the sky, ohhhh the flossy flosssssaaaaaaay’ - Fergie, 2006” - Robert Horry

Tony Scrony, general manager of the Atlanta Hawks, is wearing a shirt that says “FBI - FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR'' and sipping straight vermouth from a diamond-encrusted chalice. He’s ambling through Magic City, one of the most infamous and popular strip clubs in America, flanked by three men collectively making the GDP of Belarus (est. $60 million) this season. Grant Hill is telling dancers to “kiss the ring” while extending his fingers to reveal a half-dozen whittled-down Ring Pops. Robert Traylor has a VIP table reserved for his iguana, which he named “Luxxxury,” and is struggling to fashion a small drinking vessel for the lizard. Eddie Jones, a career Hawk who holds just about every all-time franchise record, is talking up patrons and offering them generational wealth through equity in something called “Expensive LLC.” Tony Scrony seems unconcerned with the fact that half of his roster lives below The Poverty Line, an extension of the Atlanta MARTA system reserved exclusively for public school district employees. “If you come to the ATL on this LLE, you will eat Tractormade Beef for life,” he beams, referring to Traylor’s iguana’s USDA-uncertified food truck.

In Portland, management is far less enthused. “These guys have already been on strike from winning for two years,” a source complains. In perhaps the most awkward locker room arrangement in the league right now, the Blazers are loaded with big expiring contracts and have a total of under $7 million on the books for next season. Rookie Lou Williams says he’s surviving off lemon rinds and pepper grains. Meanwhile, $18 million man Robert Horry took his family on vacation to see the original courts and fields from the Air Bud franchise. And in Utah, young players have complained to grundlemanagement about struggling to make ends meet while the team employs Petey Pablo to record a local remix of “Raise Up” minus the shirt off like a helicopter thing. A shirtless helicopter is particularly foreboding and cursed iconography in the Church of the Ladder Day Saints. Yes, times are tough, they’re using a ladder to keep that whole thing going. What rhymes with Ogden, Peter?

A few weeks into the lockout and the direction of the SLN remains deeply uncertain, mostly because they don’t teach cardinal directions in schools anymore due to budget cuts. Tyrone Nesby, the pride of “Little Egypt” in Cairo, Illinois, doesn’t mind shopping on a budget if his teammates can get on the same page and show solidarity against management. “I’ve gotten full refunds at this Good Will before for saying the stuff I bought was gay haunted. Oooh, this table is gay haunted, this jacket is gay haunted, you simply must take it back,” he explains. “My near-sighted agent actually just forgot a zero on my contract, it’s kinda funny if you think about it.” Fellow Celtic and temporary Temptations understudy Michael Ruffin was in no laughing mood when tracked down at the Dorchester Dollar Tree. “I’m disgusted by these greedy bitches,” he muttered while contorting himself into his 1897 Toyota Camry. He then shows a Blackberry private message from newly-traded Boston superstar Kobe Bryant, desperately trying to offload his 81-foot yacht, The Rack Mamba, which employs large-breasted women in residence and has a Cristal fountain on the boat’s rudder.

We don’t know what’s next for the league, but a few certainties abound. Mehmet Okur will still be paying for parking by the hour, that’s a nonstarter. Ashes will continue to reign with supreme omnipotence and also kick the computer’s ass in Bejeweled. And in America (editor’s note: does Canada do macroeconomics???), the rich and the poor will forever be at odds. While the fans wait for SLN action and the rest of the machine is ground to a halt…go ahead and holler at my editor for the name of that subscription discount strip club thing.