Booby-Booby, Say It Ain't So...

Soupy Sales, Dead at 83.

Oh no. This was such a cool show.

See the LA Times obit..

Soupy Sales dies at 83; slapstick comic had hit TV show in 1960s

The comedian acquired a cult-like following among adults with a show ostensibly meant for children. His signature routine, which he elevated to an art form, was pie-throwing.

By Elaine Woo

October 23, 2009

Soupy Sales, a comic with a gift for slapstick who attained cult-like popularity in the 1960s with a pie-throwing routine that became his signature, has died. He was 83.

Sales had numerous ailments and died Thursday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, said Kathy O'Connell, a longtime friend.

As the star of "The Soupy Sales Show," he performed live on television for 13 years in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York before the program went into syndication in the United States and abroad.

Ostensibly for children, the show had broad appeal among adults who found Sales' puns, gags and pratfalls deliciously corny and camp. His cast consisted of goofy puppets with names like White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie, and a host of off-camera characters, including the infamous naked girl.

The high point of every show came when a sidekick launched a pie into Sales' face. Sales once estimated that he was hit by more than 25,000 pies in his lifetime.

The gag became more than hilarious; it evolved into a hip badge of honor. Frank Sinatra was first in a long line of celebrities who clamored for the privilege to be cream-faced, including Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin and Burt Lancaster.

"I've never done a pretentious show; it's always had a live feeling, the kind of thing that comes across when you don't know what's going to happen next," Sales told author Gary Grossman in the 1981 book "Saturday Morning TV." "I've never done anything simply because I thought I could get away with it. I've just wanted to do the funniest show."

The possibility of humor dogged Sales from the start. He was born Milton Supman on Jan. 28, 1926, in the North Carolina backwater of Franklinton. The Supmans were the only Jews in town. Sales' father ran a dry goods store that sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.

The family name was often mispronounced as "Soupman." To make matters worse, his parents, who had nicknamed his brothers "Hambone" and "Chickenbone," dubbed him "Soupbone." Eventually, Milton became just Soupy.

His father died when he was 5, prompting a move to Huntington, W.Va. Sales acted in school plays and in high school was voted most popular boy.

World War II did not dampen his showbiz ambitions. He fought in the Pacific theater in the Navy and participated in the invasion of Okinawa but managed to entertain crew mates with routines broadcast on the ship's PA system.

After his discharge, Sales returned to West Virginia and enrolled in Marshall College as a journalism major, earning a bachelor's degree in 1949. He went to work for a radio station in Huntington as a scriptwriter. At night he did stand-up in nightclubs. Soon he became a disc jockey.

In the early 1950s he moved to Ohio, where a Cleveland station manager gave him the professional name of Soupy Hines. That was nixed in Detroit, where his new station manager thought Hines would be confused with an advertiser, the Heinz soup line. Thus was Soupy Sales born.

In 1953, Sales launched a daily live children's show on Detroit's WXYZ-TV, called "Soupy Sales Comics." The show caught on, causing the station to give him a nighttime slot for "Soupy's On." Sales created characters such as Wyatt Burp, a belch-prone sheriff, and Calypso King Harry Bella, a crazy-eyed South American with a mop top.

In 1955, the show was picked up by ABC as a summer replacement for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and renamed "The Soupy Sales Show." Its star soon became Detroit's top-rated daytime television personality.

Sales was joined by White Fang, "the meanest dog in the United States," and Black Tooth, "the nicest dog in the United States," of whom all that viewers saw were giant paws. Other characters included his irrepressible girlfriend, Peaches, the vivacious Marilyn Monwolf, and a bloodthirsty neighbor, the Count, who touted an album titled "Love in Vein."

Every show featured a segment called Words of Wisdom, an opportunity to offer silly sayings such as "Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you."

The highlight of each show, of course, was the pie-throwing, which Sales elevated to an art.

Sales took his first pie in the face in 1950 when he played an Indian in a spoof of the James Stewart movie "Broken Arrow." That pie was real. Later, he would switch to shaving-cream pies. But he swore that the secret of a good pie was the crust: If it stuck to the face, it was, in Sales' opinion, no good.

"A pie has to hit you and explode into a thousand pieces," the expert explained, "so you see the person's face and see it take away his dignity."

By 1961, the face that launched several thousand pies in Detroit began to dominate local TV in Los Angeles. Critics were unkind, calling the show "a mishmash of mediocrity" that was meant for "kids with low IQs." But viewers lapped it up, making it the No. 1 local show by 1962. A survey at the time revealed that more than a third of Sales' fans consisted of adults. Some of them were hosting pie-lobbing parties in their basements.

One day, Sinatra called. "Hey, Soupy, it's Frank," he said. "I want to come on your show on one condition: I get hit with a pie." Sales was happy to fulfill the legendary crooner's wish.

The appearance by Sinatra stirred a stampede of stars hungry for the same humiliation. One night featured a triple-header: Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Trini Lopez were all pied together.

In his evening show, Sales also featured jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. The Ken Burns jazz documentary included a clip from Sales' show.

Once, the crew played a joke on him by posing a naked woman in a stage door. When Sales opened the door, he gasped and feared his career was over, but the scene was never telecast.

For notoriety, nothing beat the show that aired New Year's Day 1965, when Sales was producing the program in New York. Told he had a minute to fill, the comic told the children watching on WNEW-TV to find their parents' wallets and "get all the green pieces of paper with the pictures of guys in beards" and mail them to him. In return, he said, he would send them "a postcard from Puerto Rico."

Sales had used the same joke in Detroit and Los Angeles. But this time, the prank elicited some $80,000 "in Monopoly money," as well as a complaint from a viewer filed with the FCC. Sales' show was suspended, prompting fans to swamp the station's switchboard with protest calls, mostly from high school and college students who demanded that their favorite television fare resume. Within a week, it did.

On a website devoted to the Sales show, a fan recalled that the first program after the New Year's episode opened with stock footage of dancing girls kicking up their heels and crowds cheering; the musical accompaniment was "Happy Days Are Here Again." "It was obvious to all of us that our beloved Soupy was unrepentant," the fan wrote, "and we repressed youths were behind him. I must dispute the thesis . . . that Froggy from 'Andy's Gang' was the cause of '60s rebelliousness. It was Soupy who inspired my generation to anarchy."

Sales called the episode "the most brilliant minute of ad-lib in television history because it proved how powerful the medium is."

Later that year he invented a dance called "The Mouse," a loony version of the Twist in which Sales bared his upper teeth, raised his hands to his ears and wiggled his fingers while chewing in time to the music. He performed it several times on "The Ed Sullivan Show," where he met dancer Trudy Carson. They were married in 1980.

When animation took over children's programming in the 1960s, personalities such as Shari Lewis and Sales began to lose their appeal. In 1966 his show was not renewed in New York and went into syndication. A new version was produced and syndicated in 1978-79.

During the next few decades, Sales starred in a short-lived Broadway comedy and became a regular panelist on the long-running TV game show "What's My Line?" He also was a featured performer in the musical variety show "Sha Na Na" from 1978 to 1981.

In the mid-1980s, he emceed a radio show on WNBC in New York, sandwiched between Don Imus and Howard Stern. He acted in several movies, notably in the role of Moses in the 1993 cult comedy " . . . And God Spoke."

He once acknowledged that his trademark pie routine hurt his career: "Producers say, 'Hey, all he does is throw pies.' It kept me off a lot of shows."

His authority in pie-tossing even landed him in court -- as an expert witness. In 1974 he was called to testify in the court-martial of a sailor accused of pitching a pie into an officer's face. Noted defense attorney William Smith enlisted Sales to tell how, after launching more than 19,000 creamy missiles, he had never been prosecuted for assault with a pie. Pie-hurling, Sales told the court, was "a harmless joke" designed to "relieve tensions and frustrations." He offered to perform at the Port Hueneme naval base Christmas show if the charges were dropped but was turned down. The sailor was found guilty.

Sales kept up club appearances through the 1990s, performing before audiences of baby boomers.

"A lot of people grew up watching me," he told The Times several years ago. "I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right. That's fine and dandy. I'm flattered."

He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Trudy Carson Sales; sons Tony and Hunt from a previous marriage; a brother; and four grandchildren.

elaine.woo@latimes.com

Local, National, Global...

From yesterday's LA Times...


NBA reflects social changes
League features globalism in pure form, which helped form the foundation of Martin Luther King's philosophy.
By Kurt Streeter

January 21, 2009

On Martin Luther King Day, just before the Lakers-Cavaliers game, LeBron James stood in front of a swarm of reporters, his light banter turning serious when the subject turned to this week's historic inauguration, and to the wise preacher whose struggle made President Barack Obama a possibility.

"It's not even about playing basketball on this day," James said. King saw "change before change even happened . . . saw the future before the future happened. . . . You talk about leaders in the NBA, but no leader in the NBA or any sports compare to MLK, what he did for this world."

Certainly, were he alive and on hand at the buzzing, booming Staples Center on Monday night, King would have been greatly pleased to see the way African American athletes have been embraced.

In 1968, when his life was cut short, such acceptance was still far off. A professional basketball team starting five African Americans would nearly be national news. A black head coach leading a pro team such as the Cleveland Cavaliers' Mike Brown? When King was killed, only Boston Celtics great Bill Russell, named Boston's player-coach in 1967, had reached that level. In that era, the notion of a black star such as Russell being used, LeBron-like, as a pitchman in a glitzy, national advertising campaign would have been laughable.

Yes, King would have been well satisfied by the great progress of blacks in sport. But I'm guessing he would be just as pleased by the strong wave of globalism we're witnessing on our fields and courts -- among major sports in America, no more than in the NBA. I say this because globalism in pure form, the idea that everyone on the planet is part of one tribe, helped form the foundation of King's philosophy.

"We are challenged to develop a world perspective," King said in a sermon at Washington's National Cathedral only days before his death. "No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone. . . . We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."

Years before the Internet, King pounded at the point that as the world shrinks, we must pay stronger attention to how we treat our neighbors.

The sports world gives us that chance.

It's no secret, of course, that foreign players now have a big effect on the NBA, but sometimes we forget how profound that impact is. On Monday night, the Cavaliers' starting five included Serbia's Sasha Pavlovic and Brazil's Anderson Varejao. Usually it includes Zydrunas Ilgauskas, from Lithuania, held out by an injury.

The Lakers, meantime, started Serbian Vladimir Radmanovic and Spaniard Pau Gasol. That's 40% of the starters in the globally broadcast Lakers-Cavaliers game who were born and bred outside America, which is not all that uncommon these days in the NBA. Roughly 20% of the league's current players are foreign-born. Many more are on the way.

Much is made of basketball and the NBA being the near exclusive province of African Americans. Sadly, a guy like Canada's Steve Nash wins an MVP award, heads turn and some cry conspiracy. But the fact is, with each passing year, basketball becomes more a world game, its international players bigger and bigger stars. Wonderful. It may not be long before someone from Europe or South America or China is coaching an NBA team. It might not be long before a player with the brilliance of a LeBron cruises through his prime years in Paris or Istanbul or Shanghai.

And here we return to King's vision, because it should not be forgotten that while he focused his energies on the plight of African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s, he always thought in deeper, broader terms.

King studied Gandhi, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and many others from beyond our shores. While American culture tends toward the insular, he clung to the idea that there was an arc of justice that swept far beyond national borders (even out into the universe), and frequently reminded that all citizens of the world are connected in very real ways, which is partly why he opposed war in Vietnam.

When I asked the thoughtful Lakers center Gasol about King, he admirably focused on the progress made by American blacks since the civil-rights era. Ironically, it appeared that it was lost on one of our great global stars that King dreamed of days when the entire planet would begin coming together in new ways. A guy like Gasol -- born in Barcelona, seasoned as a player in Memphis (coincidentally, where King died), and blooming into a global star in the shadow of Hollywood -- is the very embodiment of this dream.

It's fine that Gasol didn't quite get what I was driving at, that what he focused on was the black experience. His being among us, the growing understanding we gain when borders are crossed for work or play or big-time sport, is enough.

During the game, I watched Sasha Vujacic, a son of Slovenia, have a layup swatted away by James, a descendant of African slaves who is now one of the most recognizable figures in the sporting world. Vujacic retrieved the ball, stepped back, and launched a three-point jump shot: Swish. The crowd rose as one, and let loose a thick current of cheers. I imagined Martin Luther King sitting next to me. I imagined a huge smile on his face.

***

I'll add an interesting comment from Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics:

"Basketball has grown to such a level, but never will it ever compare to the impact that our government has on the whole world, and our president," Allen said yesterday.

Ramble On ... Bill Dwyre on Sports in the Year 2008

Bill Dwyre, one of my all-time favorites, does it again. In fact, I don't think there has been a better sports column written this year. Read on:


What's lost in a post-Donaghy sports world

Sports officiating's biggest problem isn't the refs, or even Tim Donaghy. It's the world of instant expectations that has blown the call.
June 21, 2008

Here's a book title you won't be seeing soon: The Joy of Being a Referee.

These are not salad days for those who blow whistles, drop flags or wear chest protectors. Same for those policing other sports, even those sitting in tall chairs and getting suntans at tennis matches.

It isn't just the Tim Donaghy saga.

Yes, he poisoned the pool and got us all thinking about the fragile line we walk by trusting the people in charge of our games. And yes, what he did, and his subsequent finger-pointing at others in the NBA, has punctured the core of officiating, no matter the sport.

Donaghy's legacy includes new shorthand for officiating malfeasance. We hear "Game 6, Lakers-Kings," and we know the subject. We don't even know if it is true, or Donaghy's wimpy attempt to look better in the face of his own sins by sniveling about how he wasn't the only one.

The problem is, we don't seem to be willing to wait for proof of guilt or innocence these days. Our world moves too fast. We hear it, text-message our assumptions and move quickly to the next arena of instant gratification.

Which may be more the problem, or reason for the current low-status of officiating, than even the despicable Donaghy.

We want it quick and clear. Decisive and over. Something doesn't look right? No matter. We have cameras, computers. Take a look. Get it right. Move along.

It is no longer of interest for us to watch John McEnroe approach the chair umpire after a questionable tennis line call and label the poor guy "The pits of the Earth." That was entertainment. It wasn't nice, it wasn't great sportsmanship, but it sure was McEnroe. And when it was over, the official always won.

Today, nobody argues with anybody in tennis. A camera with nice graphics shows us exactly where the ball bounced, we nod and the game goes on. Even the player who just lost match point accepts it as gospel. Interestingly, if you watch closely and talk to officials on the lines, you will conclude that even the almighty Hawk-Eye is wrong once in awhile.

We care only that it is neat and clean and fits perfectly into our current video game mind-set. Quick, visual and over.

The retaining of the "human element" in sports officiating has long ago lost its appeal. The games, especially on the pro level, aren't so much fun anymore as they are life and death.

If you watched the recent Lakers-Celtics series -- there are rumors that seven people in Greenland were the only ones who didn't -- then you saw the nightly ecstasy of creating agony for the referees. Sure, they are now all blood brothers of Donaghy, whether they like it or not, but never have so few taken so much abuse from so many. At last count, by gauging their reaction and that of the fans, no player from either team committed a foul. Ever. Not once.

The truth be known, the men who had the most to gain or lose, coaches Phil Jackson and Doc Rivers, kept their poise better than anybody else in the buildings. The players? Never have so many suffered so much injustice at the hands of so few. At one point, there was genuine concern that Sasha Vujacic might blow his hair net.

Interestingly, one of the mandates in the NBA the last few years, to the point where referees were calling trigger-quick technicals in exhibition games, was for players and coaches to stop showing up the officials after calls. No throwing up hands in anguish, no yelling at them, getting in their face, stomping off in disgust.

That disappeared in the playoffs, where every foul call triggered Hamlet. If players could play as well as they can act, the basketball would be unbelievable. If the NBA is looking for a new slogan for next season, how about this: Shut Up and Play.

Still, don't expect the NBA to go to much instant replay other than what it has now for shots at the buzzer, etc., because, if every foul were scrutinized, each game would last 20 hours.

But baseball, where some of the games seem to last that long, is apparently leaning toward more Kodak moments, starting Aug. 1. It would be limited at first to checking on home runs -- fair or foul, etc. But once you sign onto a computer, it never quite lets you sign off. Coming soon: John Hirschbeck with a BlackBerry under his chest protector.

Commissioner Bud Selig, from the pre-iPod generation, loved the human element of umpiring, but he'll be toast now if he stays that course.

For a while, life will go on in the usual ways. Olympic boxing judges will cheat. Figure skating judges will be homers. Hockey linesmen will train for their real job by working off-season as bar bouncers. And our image of NFL officials will be of men with heads under camera hoods.

There is, of course, golf, where players call violations on themselves, but even that is less redeeming than it once was, because cameras are everywhere, making sure.

Eventually, it will come to this.

A father will take a cellphone picture of his Little League son or daughter, being called out at home plate on a close call. He will sue, using his picture as evidence, win $2 million because of pain and suffering and get the 16-year-old umpire fired. His picture will, indeed, show that his child was safe at home.

We will read the story and ponder the phrase "careful what we wish for."

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com.


***

Rudy, Rudy...

The Trail Blazers will be pretty tough with Rudy Fernandez and 2009 Rookie of the year-to-be Greg Oden joining a lineup of budding stars. In case you didn't see the AP report last weekend:

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Guard Rudy Fernandez said that he plans to leave his Spanish ACB League team to join the Portland Trail Blazers.

Fernandez made the announcement at a news conference in Spain. The Trail Blazers can not comment, because of league rules, until he signs with the team on July 1.

"It has not been easy for me to take this decision, but it is the moment to face new challenges," Fernandez said. "Now, I have the chance to fulfill a dream and become part of the NBA."

The 6-foot-6 shooting guard averaged 21.2 points, 4.1 assists and 3.1 rebounds for DKV Joventut Badalona this past season.

The 24th overall pick in the 2007 NBA draft by the Phoenix Suns, he was acquired by Portland for cash considerations.

***

This item ran in Marc Spears' Boston Globe notes along with NBA Finals coverage on Friday:

A Maine attraction?

The NBA Development League recently announced the Celtics will keep the Utah Flash as their affiliate next season. Boston, however, has been interested in getting a much closer affiliate, perhaps in Portland, Maine.

Portland is hoping to field an NBDL expansion team by the 2009-10 season. Ex-Celtics assistant coach Jon Jennings, who would be a co-owner in Portland, is hoping to hear good news soon. Helping Portland's cause is the fact the franchise's lead investor is Bill Ryan, chairman of TD Banknorth Garden, and ex-Celtics coach and star K.C. Jones is a consultant.

"We're still negotiating with the NBA," Jennings said. "Things look very good purchasing the team, but it's still not a done deal. We've gone pretty far in satisfying everything the NBA requires. Hopefully, in the near future, we'll get some good news from the NBA.

"They are really impressed with Portland and we have a great ownership group and the arena and so forth.

"We'll see what happens with Portland," Ainge said. "We're jumping the gun. We'll see how it goes."

Said Jennings, "We feel it's the perfect scenario . . . It would help the Celtics grow their brand in Northern New England."

In the meantime, Ainge expressed satisfaction with being affiliated with the Flash. "We'll go back to Utah [for 2008-09]," he said. "We like our relationship."

"It's an honor to be associated with a team playing in the NBA Finals," said Flash GM David Fredman. "The fact that they sent two players to develop, I thought the relationship went well and both sides were happy. It makes sense that they want something geographically closer. I understand that."

Celtics rookie Gabe Pruitt and rookie forward Brandon Wallace, who was cut Dec. 13, played for the Flash this season. "You don't know how much you helped a player like that until later on," Fredman said. "But I still think Gabe has a chance to be a good NBA player."

***

I've written it before and I will write it again.

See this quote from a 2007 ESPN.com story on the NBA and TV:

"The Internet changed everything in the mid-1990s," says the NBA's Lyons. "Fans that weren't able to watch full games could enjoy up-to-the-second reporting, click on box scores instantly and download highlights on NBA.com. That's certainly helped fans follow the game.

"No matter what time you start a game, you're always going to inconvenience someone, somewhere. But the issue is, with TiVo and digital recording, how can fans get the best access to games? You look at almost every step of technology along the way -- whether it was flying tapes across the ocean to Italy in the 80s to satellite delivery and digital technology today -- the NBA has been at the forefront."

And, See this from the Boston Globe earlier this week about the NBA start times:


After NBA highs, a.m. lows
Late-night Celtics games rob devotees of sleep

By Christopher Baxter and Maddie Hanna, Globe Correspondents

Game after game, Celtics fans across Boston face the same, painful decision: basketball or bedtime?

Waiting in line for coveted tickets yesterday morning, George Hutt fondly recalled lazy weekend afternoons at his parents' home in Hingham, watching Celtics playoff games while the sun still glowed through the windows. But games this series have all started well after dusk, and the longtime fan has surrendered to heavy eyelids and the allure of digital recording.

"I hate it," said Hutt, 42, who lives near TD Banknorth Garden. "The only game I watched in its entirety was [Sunday] night, because I thought it was going to be the championship."

Tense midnight moments have quickly turned into sleepy mornings in boardrooms and classrooms across the region, and have left parents, youngsters, and radio talk show callers asking the same simple question: Why? Why do the games have to start at 9 p.m. and end so late, even on Sundays?

The answer, according to the National Basketball Association, is that the late start time allows the most people across the country to watch the games and appears not to deter even those who complain.

"It may be counterintuitive and against conventional wisdom, but there is no indication that the younger audience is impacted by later start times," said NBA spokesman Michael Bass. "And the reality is, if it's past their bedtime, in this day and age, kids in particular are extra tech-savvy and are finding ways to consume the game online through nba.com or YouTube."

But marketing specialists warn that the broadcast strategy may backfire, as children struggle to stay awake until the final buzzer.

"From an advertising perspective, from a common sense perspective, what the NBA is doing is clearly excluding a whole generation from being able to watch their games," said Christopher Cakebread, advertising professor at Boston University.

In 1986, the last time the Celtics made the finals, three games, including two on Sundays, were broadcast earlier in the evening, Bass said. There were also two earlier broadcasts during the 1987 championship series, he said, but since then the NBA has been starting games at 9 p.m.

The league is not alone. The NCAA men's basketball tournament and the World Series both start in prime-time spots. Sports are no different from popular television shows, trying to maximize their audience and advertising rates by starting at 8 p.m. or later, Bass said.

Viewership of the finals has varied game to game. Game 5 was watched by more than a million people in the region, according to NielsenTV tracking data.

But Joseph Johnson wasn't one of them. The 11-year-old Celtics fan, in town from Chicago visiting family, said that even the raucous championship atmosphere could not keep him awake.

"I fell asleep in the fourth quarter," he said, as he waited in line at the Garden for Game 6 tickets.

The question remains whether the NBA's plan will engage children who have not yet been captured by the sport, said Cakebread.

"Marketers aren't known for thinking long term," he said. "They're thinking, 'How much interest can I attract to the brand at this moment? We'll worry about 2012 or 2015 later.' "

But with the Celtics on the verge of their first championship in two decades, any disengagement was hard to detect yesterday at the Holland Community Center in Dorchester. Eric Brito, 10, said he watched all of Sunday's game, but felt it in the morning.

"I couldn't wake up, and then I fell off the bed," he said.

Giovany Perez, 8, said his mother made him go to bed Sunday evening, but he sneaked back to watch the game on television with his sister and brother later that night.

Even some parents who have held a hard line throughout the playoffs are begrudgingly making late-hour exceptions for the finals.

"I got little kids, you know, and they want to watch the game," said Doug Coughlin, 40, of Revere, who was wearing Celtics gear in the ticket line yesterday at the Garden.

Even Hutt, nostalgic for a time when sleep and slam dunks didn't conflict, plans to give up a few more hours of shut-eye to see the Celtics play tonight.

And he will actually be in the Garden if it comes to a Game 7. But, he said, "we're rooting for no Game 7."

Christopher Baxter can be reached at cbaxter@globe.com. Maddie Hanna can be reached at mhanna@globe.com.

-30-

If the LA Times Says So ...

Check this out:


The NBA is the USA
Every game is a bit of modern America, pitting individual desires against the needs of the community.
By Neal Gabler
April 27, 2008

The NBA playoffs, which began last Sunday, remind us of the suspense, the aesthetic beauty, the emotional identification, the intensity and the transcendence that sports provide for their fans. But within the play on the court there is something else, something that, whether we are fully conscious of it or not, resonates at a much deeper level than the rooting interest or the entertainment value, and that gives the playoffs significant cultural heft.

As high-blown as it may sound, the truth is that every NBA game is an object lesson in one of the great ontological dilemmas of human existence -- the delicate balance between individual and community, the tension between one's desire for acknowledgment and the urge to be part of something larger than oneself. And to the extent that this theme reverberates through modern America, where celebrity has become the gold standard of life and a sense of community has steadily diminished, this makes professional basketball a source of American drama and an explicator of an American crisis.

All sports incorporate themes, and all sports come with a distinctive ethos. Baseball, with its leisurely rhythms and its open spaces, has been called our pastoral sport, hearkening back to the days when it was played on pastures. Football, with its sense of regimentation, its specified duties and its obedience to the clock, has been called our industrial sport, recalling the old steel mills of the East and Midwest where workers, also enslaved to the time clock, performed essentially in formations along the assembly line. And basketball, with its improvisatory flow, its blacktop courts and its up-and-down speed, has been called our urban sport, Hoosiers notwithstanding, pointing to the explosive energy of the cities and to the abandon of the ghettos where it has thrived.

In expressing its origins, each sport also addresses some aspect of the human condition. Baseball, with its roots in the early 19th century, still speaks to the fears of disorder in a modernizing society. As students of the game have noted, what happens in baseball is that peace is continually disrupted by the batted ball, which triggers a kind of chaos.It is left to the defense to restore order. Football, with its roots in the industrialization of the late 19th century, speaks to the power of the mechanical in the Machine Age. What football does -- just look at its formations -- is forge a purring machine out of its human parts.

But no sport seems to capture our current preoccupations with self and society the way professional basketball -- a 20th century sport -- does. Some observers have analogized the sport to jazz. It has the same looseness as jazz, the same sinuousness, the same spontaneity. NBA players run, cut and intersect, ever riffing, and one usually emerges the way a soloist emerges in a jazz composition, only to return to the ensemble after making his basket and thus highlighting his skill.

This is one of the thrills of the NBA, but it also has been a source of criticism of the league -- too many soloists, too much egotism. There is even a designed play -- the clear-out and one-on-one -- that institutionalizes the soloist. Detractors complain that the breast-thumping after a basket, the jersey-popping, the grimacing, the preening, even the tattoos all contribute to putting the spotlight on the individual at the expense of the team. They prefer the more sedate college game with its seeming discipline and decorum.

What this view misses, however, is the real drama of professional basketball and the way it reflects modern America. NBA players, like other professional athletes today, grow up in a nimbus of adulation. Most are identified as potential stars from the time they are in middle school, and they go through high school and at least one year of college (if international players, no college) as celebrities. They are accustomed to being coddled and ogled and worshiped. By the time they arrive in the NBA, after what amounts to a fearsome vetting process, they are regarded by fans as gods, which, not incidentally, is the state to which many Americans aspire.

All this encourages players to assert themselves, and it is part of the genius of the game that it provides temptations to do so. In professional basketball, offense is the fun part, and players talk about how much they love to score. This meshes with the culture. ESPN features the slam dunks and great feats of scoring. It seldom shows a shot block or a steal. Fans know who racks up the points. Fewer know who is grabbing the rebounds, and stellar defensive players, such as Bruce Bowen or Shane Battier, receive a millionth of the attention accorded leading scorers such as Kobe Bryant and Allan Iverson. The lure, then, is to do whatever it takes to be noticed.

But there's a hitch. Despite the truism that offense begins with defense, basketball is the only game in which defense often comes at the expense of offense and vice versa. Every other sport separates offense from defense either by assigning different individuals to perform each task or by dividing the game into offensive and defensive segments. In basketball, offense and defense follow one another in rapidity, and the team that plays great defense typically has to sacrifice its offense (to wit, the San Antonio Spurs), while teams that play great offense typically sacrifice defense (to wit, the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors and Denver Nuggets). Most teams can do one or the other, not both, and because it is more likely to be acknowledged and rewarded, offense is more personally satisfying.

What this means is that basketball is, once again, of a piece with the rest of American life, where the showiest get the biggest accolades and where celebrity goes to those who command it -- which is to say that self-celebration is the American way, not only the NBA way.

But the NBA throws us another curve that underscores the shortcomings of egotism: You cannot win championships -- which is, after all, the goal -- without playing as a team. Even the most skillful players will not hoist the trophy unless they know how to read the game and understand when to assert themselves and when to subordinate themselves. Basketball is just too fluid and complex for any one player to control a game. It takes a village.

Yes, this is a sport cliche we've all heard ad nauseam, but in no other sport is the cliche put to as constant a test as in professional basketball, and in no other sport is it the centerpiece of the game. Alex Rodriguez doesn't have to subordinate his hitting skills to the success of his team. Nor does quarterback Tom Brady. Their personal success is the team's success. This is not true for LeBron James or Iverson or especially, as we have seen in recent years, Bryant. In the NBA, an individual can do exceedingly well for himself -- and wind up costing his team dearly. In basketball, you must cooperate or lose.

And so professional basketball is ultimately a continuing exercise in calling forth selflessness in an environment and in a culture that does everything to discourage selflessness. That is why every NBA game is a battle not only between teams but between each individual player's inherent desire to be the primum mobile and the demands of the team not to be one. Because it isn't in one's nature to want to sacrifice one's own glory, and because the objective is to win, every NBA game hums with a kind of personal agony.

This may have been what Woody Allen, a New York Knicks fan when the Knicks weren't a laughingstock, meant when he once said that the best drama in America is at Madison Square Garden. Thanks to the NBA, the next two months of playoff action will give us yet another demonstration of that drama: the timeless struggle within the human soul. May the best team win.

Neal Gabler is the author of many books, including "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" and "Life: the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality."

Bill Dwyre is right on the mark ...

You want to read the best blog entry by any blogger in the Year 2008? Here it is, and, oh yeah, it's a cut and paste job - with all credit to its author, the one and only Bill Dwyre of the LA Times, one of the greatest reporters, editors and journalism professionals to ever live:

Media are off their game

By BILL DWYRE
Los Angeles Times

Story posted on Jan. 24, 2008

Friday was a strange day in Palm Desert.

At a historic golf tournament named in honor of one of the funniest men to ever live, the undercurrent of the day was anything but a laughing matter.

Sure, bogeys and birdies were chatted up during the third round of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, as they always are. But the bigger buzz, sadly, was racism and misguided media.

The first part of the story has been out there for about two weeks. Kelly Tilghman, Golf Channel anchor, made an inadvertent comment during some broadcast chatter on Jan. 4 that the only way to stop Tiger Woods was to "lynch him in a back alley."

It was a throwaway line, a joke, a stupidly miscalculated foot in her mouth.

Most people cut her some slack. She is well-liked among pro golfers and they, for the most part, said her two-week suspension was justified, and severe enough.

Mark O'Meara said Friday, "All the players are on the side of Kelly, because they know her and know she is a nice person."

Fred Couples said, "She's talking for four hours. You kind of understand."

Woods, who would stand to be among those most offended by any statement about "lynching," accepted her apology immediately.

But others, including civil rights activist Al Sharpton, felt a need to do more than merely shrug, say oops, and give her a pass because she is nice and popular.

So the controversy snowballed. Some segments of the media saw it for what it was and handled it evenly. Others, not being able to distinguish noise from substance, turned up the volume full bore.

Then it got worse.

A magazine apparently seen by hundreds, Golfweek, decided that it would report on the controversy by putting a picture of a hanging noose on its cover. Up went the volume again.

On Friday, the editor of the magazine was fired and the publisher and new editor spent much of the day saying they were sorry and admitting what a horrendous breach of judgment it had been.

"The guy [editor] had all week to sit around and think about this," Couples said. "He must be an idiot."

Nope. Probably not.

More likely, he is the product of the current age and rage of media, as well as society in general.

We blog before we report, when it should be the other way around.

We write more about ourselves than we do about our subjects. We have Facebook and YouTube, and we see the world as being all about us, on all topics, every day. News isn't news unless we agree with it.

We are afraid of quiet. Our children don't see the world around them in our minivans. They watch TV.

The editor of Golfweek who put the noose on the cover probably went home that night, thinking he had done what his bosses and the world around him kept telling him – to think outside the box, be creative, groundbreaking, innovative.

There is a fine line between those things and stupidity, of course.

Our society has a massive appetite for drama, and little for reality. We read about Britney Spears when we need to read about Afghanistan. And the media, which has the mandate – and the constitutional right – to lead us from this abyss, are all too often not doing so. Media, which once led public opinion, now all too often follow it.

We aren't just talking celebrity scandal sheets, weekly shoppers and sports-talk radio.

Last week, a Los Angeles bureau executive of the Associated Press, no less, put out a memo to staff that said they were to pay more attention to developments about Britney Spears. The message was: She is news.

No she isn't. She is titillation. She is a troubled young woman whom we cover with delight, rather than empathy. She is web hits, the current fool's gold of the newspaper industry.

Out of this toxic atmosphere comes the current chapter of the Kelly Tilghman story. Racism is ugly, even the inadvertent kind. Perpetuation of racism under the guise of journalistic creativity is worse.

The consumer, especially the more thoughtful type, is both aware and confused.

Seth and Kaye Ward of Fort Collins, Colo., are in Palm Desert to watch the tournament and "thaw out." They had heard about the Tilghman controversy, said they were dismayed by the magazine cover and mostly wondered why everybody can't lighten up a little, turn the volume down.

Seth Ward told about a dinner they attended in Colorado on Wednesday night, a dinner to honor Hank Brown, University of Colorado president.

One of the speakers "made a political joke," he said. "He said that, if Barack Obama won the election, we would no longer be able to call it the White House."

Ward said it was stupid, everybody knew it was stupid, and the guy who said it felt awful afterward. "The next day, that was the story," Ward said. "Not the guy who was being honored."

Racism needs to be reported. Blatant, inadvertent, miscalculated, all kinds. What doesn't need to happen is for it to become a forum for noise, web hits, marketing and lost perspective.

Tilghman will be back to work next week at the Buick Invitational at La Jolla. Tiger will play there. Both will be asked about this, as they need to be. In person. Having had time to digest all of this and think through a proper response.

Then it can end. Until the next issue, the next drama, the next chance for media to go overboard and, instead of leading the public, as is its sacred trust, continue to pander to it.

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com.

To read previous columns, go to www.latimes.com/dwyre