Juwan a Blog? #4: The Classical
For several years, the recently retired FreeDarko blog took a groundbreaking and individualistic perspective towards the NBA as a whole -- a perspective rooted as much in critical theory as in hip-hop. FreeDarko's main strength was that it collected some of the best minds in basketball out there - both readers and writers - into a single, content-rich site. Its main weakness was that it sometimes felt like the New York Times covering hip-hop: alright, we get it, you think this player is good at basketball and fun to watch...you don't have to abuse the word "profound", if you dig me. But on the whole? The collective added a lot to the community in so many ways, obvious and subtle. The most tangible contributions were the group's two books, the first decent but uneven, the second a classic of sportswriting. On the blog, the underratedly apt commenters and authors frequently expressed (or tried valiantly and interestingly to express) their best interpretations of what was going on in the Association and the new lenses they were bringing to bear on it. In the final tally, FreeDarko brought us some of the great sports conversations of the last decade in basketball, and the collective has a lot of credibility.
Since the blog's retirement, many of FD's authors have stayed in touch and teamed up for spot projects after the main blog started to wane. Their first really substantial project - called The Classical - is the first true sequel, though. The closest analogue (though it pains me to make the comparison) is Grantland - in terms of their longform, firsthand, unorthodox takes on the great stories mainstream and forgotten. The talent pool is quite different and the differences in content will become quite clear a couple of months from now, but for now, the comparison fits. Also, Bill Simmons doesn't write for The Classical, generally a positive thing. I digress. Right now, The Classical is in preview mode. If the content is representative (and it appears to be), then we have fodder for our fourth installment of "Juwan A Blog?". In general, for this feature we'd like to use blogs that are well-established, but the FD group has enough credibility with the community that we're going to allow it. And they even got quite a few new established authors that we can dig into immediately. So, let's.
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There are only 23 posts on the site at the moment (and that's including the post explaining that it's a preview). I felt the size itself, along with the generally individualistic author-centric design of the site, led itself well to a simple "let's read their posts and see how they stand" kind of analysis. To that end, I'm going to go through a large proportion of what they've produced so far and offer 8 separate spot reviews of the most recent pieces. But first, a few paragraphs of general impressions:
First, it's worth noting that they went all out with the authors. Just like with Grantland, this is one thing The Classical really did well: They found people who could write, and had interesting particular angles. I don't know if this is just great emergent social networking or great top-down management by FD and their "handlers," but they found their favorite writers and they brought them into the fold. You have to respect that, given the wide range of backgrounds and sources these writers came from.
Second, almost all the pieces were good to great. Besides the unfortunate Tebow piece (you can read my problems with it in 2. below), I enjoyed every single piece that I reviewed. As a writer I don't consider myself to be on their level of excellence, but I'm very well read and I know good work when I see it: this is damn good sportswriting. You've got innovative prose, new forms of presentation, and systemically solid subject matter. All the good things that make sportswriting good. And while I apologize for making this paragraph somewhat fawning, repetitive, and trivial, I can't really help it. I'm always looking for people that can make our corner of reality a little bit bigger and have it blend into the whole of human experience a little more fluidly.
The Classical - at least in its limited preview - has done so. It stands poised to achieve greatness.
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