The Name Of The Father, And Of The Son

You must understand: He did this. It was for him.

When you see the try-hard attempts at nostalgia perhaps best manifested in the various versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles images and pixelated photos for the sake of the poor, beleaguered pixel, they are trying to get at this. This is a feeling from four years ago and seven years ago and fifteen years ago and longer ago, captured via various iterations of flip phones and hashtags that never made sense.

Joy and happiness are two different things. He knew that, but he probably knows it much better now. Joy is fleeting. Joy sparks; happiness, hopefully, ignites. This is a man who has been on fire like no other person in the history of the rock he walks, and he walks it next to us.

He flicks his wrist in such a way that fans have all but appropriated an adverb on his behalf. Effortless though it may look, he worked on that in a way neither you nor I ever bothered to do for pitching undergarments into the dryer.

Looking at him affords him margins of error he never needed, so long as you weren’t looking too closely at his ankles roughly a decade ago. If you were, you had doubts; if you weren’t, or didn’t care, you were Joe Lacob, and you’ve been handsomely and abundantly rewarded. Good thing you sold that part-ownership of the Celtics.

Lacob has his chariot awaiting him, and either way, it has nothing to do with this year’s NBA Finals MVP. The metaphor is not usually this simple, but in this case, the father really did walk so that the son(s) could run. This one, in particular, knew where to go. The light shines upon him; praise be.