I guess I have to cop to being an "Authentic" fan of the Golden State Warriors basketball team. I have been watching Warriors' basketball games, now, since 2015, and if the Warriors aren't playing, I am not particularly interested. Last year, for instance, I pretty much stopped paying any attention to basketball right after the Golden State Warriors were eliminated from the 2024 playoffs by way of their loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. The Warriors were eliminated from the playoffs this year, too, in the middle of May. I had the same reaction. I'll tune back in when the next season starts!
At any rate, it was way back when, way more than a year ago, now, that I noticed a news story in the San Jose Mercury, which was published on Sunday, April 28, 2024, and on which I am finally commenting. That 2024 news story included some speculation on what the Warriors' team would probably look like during the next season, the 2025 season. That was then an "upcoming" season, and that 2025 season has now turned into another season both past and gone. The most recent "next season" is soon to begin. What most impressed me in the story in the Mercury, from April 2024, was a little snippet about D'Angelo Russell, who was then playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, and who was then generally considered one of their best.
The photo at the top of this blog posting illuminates the story. As noted by reporter Danny Emerman of the Mercury News, the camera has "caught D’Angelo Russell sitting alone on the Lakers’ bench, apparently scrolling on his cell phone as his teammates huddled during Game 3 of their series against Denver." Having made this observation, the reporter then provides this rather snide comment: "The scene said everything you need to know about Russell."
I am not someone who either knew then, or who now knows anything about Russell, or about how Russell behaved himself as a teammate, or whether or not his apparent disregard of the huddle in question, which came at a critical point in the Lakers' playoff game against the Denver Nuggets, was as full of import as the news story seemed to indicate. The fact that Russell no longer plays for the Lakers, however, having been traded, could definitely be a "tell."
Whatever Russell's immersion in his phone may otherwise say about him, I do know that his behavior, right in the middle of a playoff game, at a crucial time in the game, reinforces what I used to tell students in the Legal Studies Capstone Course I taught at UCSC. The course was titled, "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom," and the course focused on how emerging technologies pose an existential challenge to our humanity, and to our ability to maintain and advance "self-government" in the United States.
Here is what I told those students: When we are looking into a screen, with the screens of our cellphones being the most ubiquitous examples of the phenomenon, we are not, actually, inhabiting the physical, common world in which others are living (presuming that the others are not on their own cellphones or other devices).
The 2024 NBA championship was at issue when the above photo was taken. The Denver Nuggets were leading the Western Conference, and the game with the Nuggets was critical for the Los Angeles Lakers.
And what about D'Angelo Russell? Arguably one of the Lakers' best players, Russell was somewhere else.
This little news squib - even though much delayed - can be a lesson and a blessing to us all. If we want to navigate the world, and prosper (if we want even to survive), and especially if we want to "run the place," as I have suggested we should be trying to do, then we have got to be "here," not somewhere else, in cyberspace.
When I think about that picture, from the 2024 season, featured at the top, here's what I am thinking: D'Angelo, D'Angelo, where are you? Where were you then? Where are you now?
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