It go Haliburton... or hallelujah

fraternizing with the enemy through the Eastern Conference Finals

awe

Last Wednesday night, I wheeled my ergonomic computer chair out of the office and into the living room. The wheels caught on the rug and my dragging polka dot pajama pants and I fell into the coffee table and wondered if I wasn’t better off suffering on our once-white DTC bullshit couch. I laughed at myself. Laughing at yourself is key. I laugh at myself enough that I’ll probably live forever. My social compass points me toward those who do the same.

I was locking in for an important night of basketball: the New York Knicks’ first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years (hence the optimized seating). My husband even made me a Vietnamese avocado smoothie for the occasion. Fats power the brain, you know? I’m still a student of the game. Still learning the historical touchstones and all that so bear with me awhile.

It’s always a pleasure to pregame with “the fellas,” as we call them in our house: Inside the NBA hosts Shaq, Ernie, Kenny, and Chuck. My parasocial relationship with Charles Barkley exceeds that of any other celebrity. Thick as thieves, the two of us. AIN’T THAT RIGHT, CHUCKGPT?!?! I’m soooo so sorry.

The fellas bring an infectious lightness to basketball. Sometimes their opinions are sus and Chuck mispronounces everyone’s name but it’s all comedy. So I was disappointed when they presented the LEAGUE MVP AWARD to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who, even in this emotional moment, surrounded by his goofy teammates all wearing t-shirts emblazoned with his face, talking to the funniest crew on TV, maintained his media robot grindset stoicism. “God, he’s BORINGGGG,” I groaned with more Gs than I care to type.

It felt blasphemous slandering the auracle aka Himothée Chalamet aka Him Duncan aka Mr. Put It On because all things considered, SGA is that guy. I loved seeing him win MVP by a landslide, Balenciaga Boi that he is. His midrange dominance is a palate cleanser in the three-point era. And of course, we love a Wife Guy around here. But whenever his voice meets a mic, so comically deep it sounds fake, so Canadian in a way I can’t explain because I’ve never actually been to Canada, I wait for a personality to appear. No dice.

Here are three hard (for me)-to-swallow facts about athletes and the media:

1. To expect authenticity from gazillionaires with full teams behind their public image is a fool’s errand.

2. They do not owe us an all-access pass to their personhood. 

3. If everyone was the people’s princess, then no one would be.

So I accept that Shai is too cool. His team, too safe. But because I am in the business of emotionality, of scouring the world for tenderness with the cosmic idealism of every woman born June 21-July 22, I am inclined to believe the league needs warmth. Sincerity. A big, Oshkosh, Wisconsin smile, gleaming with punchability, always on the precipice of laughing at themselves, which, might I remind you, is key.

I know just the guy.

It’s the end of game one of the Pacers-Knicks series. Tyrese Haliburton puts up a very Tyrese Haliburton shot: a frantic “three” that bounces off the rim, into the stratosphere, and falls in at the buzzer. Everything he does looks like an accident. The Pacers storm the court, and Haliburton invokes Reggie Miller’s infamous choke celebration a little too soon; the shot ends up a two-pointer to tie the game and force overtime. Pacers win. History is made.

They—and by “they” I mean Etsy stores that sell mugs for midwestern boomers (perhaps Pacers fans!) to gift their admin assistants—say life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. When TNT’s Allie LaForce interviewed Haliburton after the game, his whole demeanor around the premature celebration was just… charming. Dopey and Bashful from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in a trench coat. He blames his teammates for convincing him to “hit the celly” like a kid who lost a dare, who gets in trouble at school for wearing that I ❤️ SLUTS t-shirt he copped on the Atlantic City boardwalk. See for yourself. 

My husband wasn’t so charitable: “Tyrese Haliburton was definitely one of those kids who wore two polos at the same time with the collars popped.”

It was at that moment I realized the extent to which this guy had grown on me—that I’d been keeping a mental record of his blunders, his detractors. All the ways the universe conspires to embarrass Tyrese Haliburton (signs from God, as I once wrote), only to be met with that fucking grin and several ugly, game-winning shots.

If you watch basketball at all, you know about The Poll. I mean, I’d personally be ok never hearing about this shit again but I’d be remiss not to mention it, so read the next sentence in begrudging monotone: In an anonymous NBA player poll conducted by The Athletic, Haliburton was voted most overrated player in the league. This came out around the time his dad got in Giannis Antetokounmpo's face and was temporarily banned from Pacers games. Haliburton had to relive these moments in every post-game, in the face of every nasally journalist fiending for an angle. Poor guy could not catch a break.

Those are just the headlines, though. Haliburton has long been the butt of the joke, and I grew smug in my opinion that he was, indeed, an overrated dork of a “star.” Like in the Olympic docuseries Court of Gold when Anthony Edwards mocks his soft voice. Or when Jalen Brunson makes fun of his TYRESE 3:17 t-shirt from their WWE appearance. These are small jabs that wouldn’t rattle most self-assured adults, much less a professional athlete with the world at their fingertips. Yet the more I clocked it, the more I felt like an overprotective big sister. The more I wanted to step in and say, “hey, only *I* get to make fun of him!!!” Such is my own pathology, but if you’ll allow me to invoke my woman card…

How many “no makeup makeup” tutorials can I watch against my will before, by algorithmic powers, it becomes my will? And the staged candids! Still a dominant force in the elaborate ruse of looking effortless. I’m exhausted by this idea that it’s lame to be caught trying. We see Tyrese Haliburton try hard and often. In his GQ Sports “10 Essentials” video, he openly says, more than once, that he likes to be different. He even says it about his beloved DOC MARTENS and like, how adorable. Wanting to stand out from your peers is a most human desire, but you’re not supposed to admit it. And there he is, admitting it over the same shoe rocked by every barista at a Turnstile show. It’s magical. I hated it before but now I find it magical.

Sometimes I think my husband is in cahoots with Shaq. He’ll make a remark just seconds before Shaq says the exact same thing. Before game two, it was Haliburton’s playful disposition that irked them. “I don’t like all that giggling,” they grumbled, “you don’t act like that after one win.” Thus, what it comes down to, I’d argue—what makes him easy to rag on, what makes him a good sport albeit swagless— is that Tyrese Haliburton is conspicuously joyful.

And so I ask… fellas, is it gay to be happy?

(Clyde Frazier, bi erasure, who cares. Knicks in seven.)