Ben Gibbard nearly killed me. It was five years ago, but I remember it vividly. Gas was only two-bucks-and-change a gallon and I was still driving to work.
Death Cab’s ‘Transatlanticism,’ swelled in my truck cab with such deep sorrow that I found myself overwhelmed. After one particularly morose evening commute, I desperately sought out some lighter fare upon hitting the couch with a rubbery carne asada burrito.
That’s when I found it.
2003 also marked the arrival of One Tree Hill.
It is singularly the best television show ever…
…on the WB (now the CW) to meld basketball and music within the framework of hour-long teen drama.
In the tradition of the ‘Trekie,’ I’ll admit to a being a ‘One Tree Hillbilly.’
One Tree Hill is the ninth track of U2’s ‘Joshua Tree’ and the physical address of the high school in the fictitious town of Tree Hill, N.C. where the story begins.
Creator Mark Schwahn is something of a genius, especially regarding advertiser sponsored plot elements and how the show has been re-crafted for an Internet audience.
But there are two major problems with One Tree Hill that must finally be addressed.
One, character Marvin “Mouth” McFadden (played by Lee Norris) works at one of the most asinine TV stations in the country. It’s amazing how a television show could be so off base about how an actual TV station operates.
The other maddening (and less inside baseball) plotline is the derailed pro basketball career of James Lafferty’s character Nathan Scott.
Actor Lafferty grew up in Hemet (30 miles southeast of Riverside) and was a MVP of the Hemet High Bulldogs basketball team. He played Steve Alford in the ESPN movie ‘A Season on the Brink’ and is frequently involved in celebrity games, like the one at the most recent NBA All-Star Weekend in New Orleans.
I interviewed Lafferty once at a Phoenix Suns charity event and watched him play. While at 6-foot-2, he towers over most other entertainers, it is abundantly clear in person and on the TV show that his size and skill set doesn’t translate to even a fictional NBA career without a few tweaks.
Mark Schwahn has him playing way out of position.
There’s some back-story here. Lafferty’s character Nathan Scott was slated by many draft experts to be picked 10th overall in the 2006 NBA Draft. The Seattle Sonics instead selected a 6-11 center from Senegal, Mouhamed Saer Sene, in real life and on the show.
Scott had been thrown through a plate glass window just before the draft and became partially paralyzed, so then-Sonics GM Rick Sund pulled the trigger on Sene, who has toiled primarily with the NBDL’s Idaho Stampede while battling injuries of his own.
On the comeback trail, Scott is more concerned with bogus conditioning drills and dunking over a truculent high schooler (with no legitimate understanding of defense) named ‘Q.’
Schwahn’s insistence on Scott having any type of inside game is absurd, but there is a very reasonable solution here.
Frame his comeback as that of a sharpshooter. This should have been done from the start, even back when he was setting the all-time scoring record for the Tree Hill Ravens.
Scott played his way into a scholarship at Duke, so think more along the lines of fellow 6-2 former Blue Devil J.J. Reddick… not Josh McRoberts.
The names will start to flow… Steve Kerr, Jeff Hornacek, Billy Hoyle… you get the idea.
If Schwahn could just think a little more like Coach K, or at least Brian Dennehy… I’m convinced the overall quality of the show would increase threefold.
As for the elephant in the room… don’t judge me for falling into One Tree Hill’s snare. I’ve tried to blame it on Ben Gibbard, but actually, it probably has more to do with the Gilmore Girls.
During Oakland A’s homestands, pitcher Huston Street prefers taking BART to work instead of driving to the Coliseum. It’s something former A’s pitcher, the late Joe Kennedy urged him to try back in the later part of the 2006 season.
Apparently, the nic
