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#1
As I walked into the grocery store today, I overheard this scrawny, little white guy telling the butcher what a wuss LBJ was, for not only crying/grimacing/making a big deal of his little cramps, but also not being able to overcome them. This quotidian, everyday conversation (between two men, on the topic of how men should act and respond to physical pain/adversity) actually has huge implications for game 2 of the finals. This is partly a subset of the national embarrassment angle (wonderfully developed by Scal) and partly an angle of its own. What the embarrassment taps into and exploits is a certain notion of masculinity and manhood that is ingrained in most men from childhood: be strong, don't show weakness, fight through pain, etc, etc, Hence, LBJ's body betraying him (on national tv) and his distraught reaction to that physical failure, was a gross departure from every masculine ideal that this nation (despite Dr. Phil) upholds as a type of norm. In essence, then, LBJ (and the Heat with him, since LBJ is "the man" on that team) went flaccid/limp at the most inopportune time. They wilted and/or got soft, in the heat, under pressure, and in the process became the butt of every man's (and woman's) joke. This is the kind of embarrassment that plays on man's psyche to the point of making him homicidal. This is the kind of embarrassment that a man (if he is indeed a "man")must respond to and/or answer in unequivocal terms. In other words, in terms that another man can understand: in terms that negate the feminization that brought on the embarrassment. And the only way the Heat can do this (and this embarrassment affects the entire team, since, in losing LBJ, the other players could not man up and win the game without their man!), is by winning game 2 in unequivocal terms. Anything short of that, and the Heat run the risk of having to hear about how they lost the championship on a night when they, along with their fearless leader, shriveled under the heat.
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