SIDELINE CUT:Basketball formed a low-key but subtle backdrop to his historic presidential campaign and Obama's ease in sporting surroundings boosted his appeal
THE REALPOLITIK of the White House may have temporarily winded Barack Obama but when the Duke University basketball team came to Washington to play Georgetown, the US president did not miss the opportunity to remind everyone of the easy charisma with which he mesmerised hundreds of millions just over a year ago.
Obama has never made any secret of the fact he is a basketball fanatic. When he was a teenager growing up in Hawaii, it was a poster of Julius “The Doctor” Irving soaring through some half-lit gym with his distinctive Afro and bandaged knees that decorated his bedroom wall rather than Charlie’s Angels.
By the time he was 16 he was dunking the ball and the game had become his escape and, although basketball was never going to be the path through which he distinguished himself, the blurry video footage that surfaced on YouTube after his political ascension makes it clear he had talent. And it is said Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson, who was a Division One college player and now coaches Oregon State, used a pick-up game to assess the character of his sister’s suitor.
In fact, basketball formed a low-key but subtle backdrop to his historic presidential campaign. The stories of the pick-up games he played with aides and colleagues during the gruelling trail across the USA for the primaries have become celebrated, with Obama reputedly delivering speeches across Illinois with badly bruised ribs. Playing Obama at basketball became something of a cherished and achievable wish on several lists. Students at a high school in Indiana were rewarded with just that experience after persuading school friends to sign on and vote for him.
Famously, Obama picked up a basketball while on a visit to Kuwait to rally troops in a local basketball hall and, in front of a rampantly expectant audience had the chutzpah to knock down a three-point shot on his very first attempt. He once localised his fascination with basketball on a HBO interview as being the “improvisation within a discipline that I find very powerful,” a phrase that could well sum up his approach to gaining the Democratic nomination, when he thrilled half the world while working within the confines of the system.
And in one sequence of the riveting By The Peopledocumentary, Obama is filmed in a lift riffing about the significance of the Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry of the 1980s.
Before the Obamas would have had time to complete their first grocery shop as White House residents, the newspaper wires were brimming with stories that he was about to convert the bowling alley into a full-sized basketball court. The chances are his shot has gone into decline since he first walked into the Oval Office; between Afghanistan and a flagging economy, the peach basket game must have been pushed to the very back of his mind.
But he found time to make a courtside appearance at the Duke game, sitting alongside his personal aide Reggie Love, who won a national championship with Duke in 2001 under the legendary Blue Devils coach, Mike Krzyzewski. Love was appointed as Obama’s shadow man after applying for an internship to Capitol Hill three years ago and he was a key member of the pick-up games the candidate engaged in after what began as a whisper in Springfield.
Obama noticed a trend developing – they tended to win primaries where they had played basketball on polling day and lost where they remained inert. So playing hoop became a lucky charm; he even played a game on the day of the presidential election. Among the invitees to that historic game was ESPN analyst Andy Katz, who had interviewed Obama about Craig Robinson some months previously. Katz extracted a promise from the President-elect that he would come into studio and give his opinion for the brackets – his seedings – for the March Madness tournament that is the culmination of the college basketball season. (Obama has a record of communicating with the masses through sport. Alone among the presidential nominees, he not only replied to ESPN columnist Rick Reilly’s invitation to pick a fantasy football team ahead of the season, he had Reilly travel with him on the Democratic wagon and had his homework done when they joshed about prospects. Reilly wrote the column and there was Obama, talking to thousands of jocks).
In deference to Love, Obama gave Duke a ranking but did not tip them to win the championship, prompting the amused retort from Mike K: “Really, he should concentrate on running the economy.” As it happened, Obama’s judgment was on the money; as he predicted, they failed to win the national championship because they didn’t have a sufficiently strong inside game.
That very shortcoming was also exposed against Georgetown, who bossed the game last week in front of the president. American college sports – and particularly basketball and football – exist in a twilight zone between professionalism and absurdly gifted amateurism. A team like Duke are arguably better known than most NBA teams and playing in front of celebrities, even of the calibre of Barack Obama, won’t faze them. But when Obama accepted an invitation to do a few minutes at the television commentary table, his colleagues were a little inhibited.
It took Obama seconds to put them at ease; he told analyst Clark Kellogg he was the best “colour-guy” on television and when Kellogg, after hearing the president analyse a couple of plays, returned the compliment, Obama told him: “I’m coming after your job. I’m not sure if you have three or seven years but I’m coming for you.” And when commentator Verne Lindquist, alluding to the fact that Obama is a left-handed player, asked Obama if he had any difficulty going to his right, his guest wasted little time in quipping he wasn’t so bad; he had gone to the Republican convention just the week before.
In 2000, when the election of Obama would have seemed unimaginable, the Democratic party flirted with the idea of running a genuine basketball star in Senator Bill Bradley, the Rhodes scholar who won two NBA titles on a feted New York Knicks team in 1970 and 1973. (Bradley, incidentally, had committed to play college basketball for Duke but had a late change of heart and went to Princeton instead). Bradley had the vociferous support of two of the bluebloods of the basketball world, Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest player the game has seen, and Phil Jackson, the maverick coach with a Zen streak running through him. Their voices were not enough to help Bradley eclipse Al Gore.
Eight years later, as Obama negotiated his path to the top in such bewilderingly smooth and convincing fashion, Bradley remarked he was the kind of politician that “comes along once every three or four generations”.
A year into his presidency, the mass rallying cry of “Yes, We Can,” has become somewhat faint. Joking with college analysts will not help Obama in delivering the crucial domestic and international reforms that were the central tenets of his electoral message. But those few minutes did, once again, illuminate his effortlessly brilliant powers of communication.
So often, politicians stand out for all the wrong reasons at sports occasions. They either look too stiff and formal or fail to hide the fact they are just using the occasion to grab a little free exposure for themselves. Obama, though, looked right at home.
