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Sunday, June 8, 2025

Basketball - What's in Our Wunderkammern?

"If you happened to be wealthy and educated and alive in 16th- and 17th-century Europe, it was fashionable to have a Wunderkammern, a “wonder chamber,” or a “cabinet of curiosities” in your house—a room filled with rare and remarkable objects that served as a kind of external display of your thirst for knowledge of the world." - from Austin Kleon in Show Your Work

Once we called these "prized possessions" collected over a lifetime. Basketball fuels our memory machines, the sum of our experiences. No two are alike. 

This is not Jason Selk's "highlight reel" in 10 Minute Toughness. What artifacts might we unearth along our wunderkammern memory lane? 

  • Scrapbooks
  • Books
  • Trophies
  • Videos and CDs
  • Photographs 
  • Cards and letters
  • Awards and honors 
The contents hold unique value to us. Imagine having your picture on an SI cover...like Butch Lee. 


I speculate that Brett Vroman has a net 'clipping' from the 1975 National Championship at UCLA and a plaque commemorating being a Parade All-American. 


Treasures like those make our collections seem small.
 





                              Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli
 
Our craft never springs full grown like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Our work emerges after painstaking practice and preparation over a lifetime. My first exposure to art history was Fine Arts 13 at Harvard. Learning about the craft of masters matters as much as hearing Newton's Laws. 

Our next basketball memory might spring from hearing Mike Breen's "Bang" or seeing a wondrous drive from SGA. Or watching Drew Hanlen or Chris Brickley train stars and wannabes. 

The blog originates in books read, videos, sports, and interviews watched, and the shots taken against the wooden backboard nailed to a tree, with eight year-old me imagining that I was Sam Jones off the glass. 

"Show your work." Build connections with others. 

Lagniappe. "There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an “ecology of talent." - from Austin Kleon, "Show Your Work"

Lagniappe 2. Flip the switch. 
Lagniappe 3. What defines your experience? 









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