So This Is The Definition of Greatness

Brandon Roy, Portland Trailblazers

Yes and you don’t even have to ask. I am taking FULL credit for Saturday’s transcendent resurrection of Brandon Roy and Sunday’s I-don’t-need-two-healthy-knees-to-be-the-best-player-on-the-floor-I’m-Chris-F*cking-Paul 27/13/15 evisceration of the defending champs.

Greatest. Reverse jinx. Ever.

I stand by every word I wrote – Chris Paul will never possess the pure talent he did as a 23-year-old. You can see it in the way he comes off of screens, like a Hall of Fame running back fresh off a torn ACL. He cuts gingerly – or, at least, more gingerly than before – never planting with the full force of either side. Even in Paul’s best moment Sunday, a gritty bumrush of the lane with 10 seconds left in a tie game, he could not shake a hobbled Kobe, instead hanging in the air the extra millisecond needed to find a cutting Jarret Jack for a shot clock-beating 10-foot fadeaway.

It should be clear to you as it’s clear to me New Orleans has no business tying this series. A cursory glance at their roster says as much – as much being, “this team, minus David West, should not have made the playoffs in the first place.” There is no amount of Carl Landry that can compete with half of Pau Gasol. There are not enough Js in Jarrett Jack to justify Jarrett Jack jacking Js.

And yet, there is Paul, making this lopsided-on-paper series into an Apocalypse Now-worthy ambush of the presumptive Western Conference champions. Somewhere, there’s a rolodex of cliches describing such phenomena: Paul “wanting it more”/Paul “getting by on guts”/ Paul as “the crafty veteran”/ Paul “willing his team to victory.”

I think all apply. I think these things define greatness. I think they are intangible, but they are real. I think Chris Paul does in fact want it more, just as Brandon Roy’s Willis-Reed-Ain’t-Got-Nothing-On-Me 8-of-10 shooting performance in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s shoulda-been blowout was the culmination of a host of conspiratorial emotional sequences preparing Roy for this singular moment of perfection.

As you long know by now, he scored 18 of 24 points in the final 12 minutes, igniting one of the greatest playoff comebacks of all-time and lighting Twitter afire in the process. This is significant because A) a performance of the sort could’ve presumably only been accomplished by the Brandon Roy of 13 months ago and B) Roy’s 8-minute botchjob (zeroes across the box score) less than a week ago nearly reduced him to tears.

You’ve seen Disney movies with fewer goosebumps moments. You’ve seen miracles that felt less like destiny. Roy, degenerative knee injury and all, took a season’s worth of swirling negativity, the barbs of an entire basketball-watching nation, and his own paper-thin psyche and funneled them into this:

“I am going to do something special tonight. No one – no one - will f*cking stop me.”

This heart of a champion thing? It’s real. And to deny it would be like denying the wind or the ozone layer or other things you can’t see but know for damn sure exist. No amount of fast-twitch muscle and hard work could’ve hatched game 4′s final dizzyingly electric 12 minutes.

Eight of 10 is not luck. It is pride.

So Brandon Roy, like Chris Paul, might still be good. He might not. But he will always, forever, be great. Greatness is being able to go above and beyond what the constraints of athletic prowess allow. Chris Paul is great. Tiger Woods is great. Kerri Strug is great. Brandon Roy is great.

After moving the Oregonian earth with jump shots, the Portland guard told reporters, “I’ve been in some pretty good zones before, but nothing like tonight.” Couldn’t have said it better, Mr. Roy. Nothing ever again like tonight.