Delonte West is Cinemax

ESPN featured Lebron talking to Tiger Woods at the Orlando Magic's house Monday. The ol' nba.com doesn't even show it. But the highlight du jour was Delonte blocking former St. Josephian Jameer Nelson — on a fast break that started because Delonte tried to find Big Z with a time warp pass attempt-gone-turnover. This was sometime around mid 3rd.

But there was even a show before that. Delonte spun out of everything around him, over and over, like you just kept hitting the spin-move button — each time you got the ball. And Delmonte, the Good Fruit, kept getting rebounds. He always seemed to get the rock out of a muddle in the paint. He was an illustration of energy at high control.

Accuracy at scatterbrained rates is what has always attracted me to sport. But what DGF did is not what ESPN shows us on its abasement parade of dunks and final shots that zoom in on the ball so no one sees what's actually going on in the place where the activity is happening. Sidenote: Instead, sports videographers have been taught the baffling technique of zooming in on the one inanimate object around which the game is played. They think this is brilliant but all it does is take us to the one dead zone in an orgy of live drama. What Delonte does, some may say, is only to be noticed by the sports pedant. I say he's doing something right there for everyone to see, pop culture just chooses to focus on shock and awe. That's not a condemnation, per se, I want to see dunks too. But, and this is why owning the LPass or having NBA TV is so crucial, Delmonte Fruit spinning back and forth and dribbling behind his back 90' from his own basket to start a fast break is fucking amazing.

And they'll never show it again.

This is why the sports argument wins over the counter argument raised by girlfriends that dedicating time to watching sports is the same as watching reality television. They replay that shit until the advertisers' palms are pruned. Sports happenings happen once. If notably iconic, clips of a few plays may live on from an entire year of playoffs. On the long timeline, only a few seconds of life carry the entire history of even the most noted sports and their so-claimed and sometimes deserved "defining moments." All the other bits of spectacular are only reviewed by austere historians. In essence, this is what makes ESPN Classic a good idea. Not that it's executed well.

So, from a forgettable Cavs loss, gone forever is the 'double L'Emmanuelle': a spin move so luxurious they only made it in Europe, but in the late 90s a template was stolen, only to be re- lost somewhere in urban East of America. We know who found that tape. And it ain't Walleye ScerBRICK.

Big 3s and dunks will always get the bands and waves, but the grand marshall always remembers the face of one small boy waving in the crowd, not the plaque. No one asks if you'll tell them about the plaque, they want to know what happened around it. They want to know who you had to fight dirty against, where the extra gas was hidden and why your gutter perspective is gleaming.

History doesn't record the perfect moments, it keeps its own files in terms of things like plaques and stats and highlights.