A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: When you're watching sports, say, for example, basketball, has an odd question ever crossed your mind, something like, I wonder how many times a player touches the ball during a game? Then you think, well, who would be counting that? Well, the NBA does. NBA teams do and count just about everything you see on the court. And nowadays, it's really easy to drown yourself in stats, but writer Shea Serrano instead wants you to stop counting basketball numbers and start getting in touch with how watching basketball makes you feel. It's part of what he writes about in his new book, "Expensive Basketball." So, Shea, when I was a boy, I was a stat geek. And then I became a teen, and again, I was a stat geek. And now, because of the internet, as a grown blank man, I'm even more of a stat geek. So what's wrong with loving stats the way I love stats?
SHEA SERRANO: There's nothing wrong with loving stats the way you love stats. I love stats as well. The book - let's clear that up immediately. The book is not a refutation of stats. There are plenty of stats in the book. All that the book is saying is that there's other parts of basketball, parts that can't be counted. That's those - the indescribable, the unquantifiable...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
SERRANO: ...The uncomputable stats.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. I'll admit, Shea, I mean, in sports, because of all the tools we have around us, we have become a little desensitized to, like, the feelings that sports used to bring us, right? We're just kind of computing and adding up and dividing and coming up with formulas and analytics and all kinds of things that sometimes I think it does take the soul out of the game.
SERRANO: Yeah, it can. It definitely can. And then every once in a while, a thing will happen. Look at Game 3 of the WNBA final. A'ja Wilson hits the game-winning shot.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #1: Gray gets it in. Wilson on the drive. The fade. You bet. You bet. A'ja Wilson with point one to go.
SERRANO: In that moment, you could have said every single stat you wanted to in the world. But all that mattered was that there was five seconds left in the game, and Becky Hammon, who coached the Aces, said, you know what? Let's just give the ball to our best player and let her go to work. Nobody in that moment, not one single person, thought about a number. You know what I mean? Nobody. They were just thinking, oh, my God, this feels either incredible or this feels devastating. And that's what I love about basketball right there, those moments where you just - everything goes away except for what you're feeling.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So explain what the title "Expensive Basketball" means.
SERRANO: OK. So expensive basketball. This is very likely a thing you've never thought about before, but a thing that you sort of understand intuitively. There's no numbers to back it up. There's - we don't need any stats. You just know in your chest. Every chapter is a different thing like that, that when you watch it, you feel something. Like Isaiah Thomas dribbling the basketball, Magic Johnson in the open court. Sue Bird, after hitting a big shot, backpedaling, back down to get on - like, these things that you feel, that's what expensive basketball is.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. OK, so you write about a lot of players in the book. But for me, since the sun rises and sets with Earvin "Magic" Johnson, tell us how he exemplifies what you mean by expensive basketball.
SERRANO: Oh, my God, Magic. OK, Magic is a perfect example. Right, as we're talking about him now, Magic Johnson plays basketball in such a way that it felt irresponsible for us to call him anything other than Magic Johnson. His name is not Magic, but that's all anybody knows about. His name is Earvin Johnson. He doesn't play basketball like an Earvin Johnson - he plays basketball like Magic.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #2: Five seconds to go. Magic with a hook shot scores with 2. And the Celtics trail by 1 with two seconds to go.
SERRANO: They literally had to - and they invented the triple-double trying to, like, capture everything he was doing on the court. But if we're talking about expensive basketball, stuff that just feels like, wow, this is incredible, the entirety, the totality of Magic Johnson's game is expensive basketball. Just - we're calling an adult man Magic Johnson. That's his name. That's what we - you know what I mean?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. No - yeah, and that's the thing 'cause, I - you know, I used to talk to a lot of his old teammates. I mean, one of my luckiest parts of my career is being able to talk to, like, Lakers, old Lakers like Michael Cooper and Byron Scott...
SERRANO: Oh, man.
MARTÍNEZ: ...Those who played with those '80s Showtime Lakers that were led by Magic Johnson. And you're right. I mean, they didn't know necessarily what the plan was. They just knew that they had to run and run fast, and that Magic Johnson would somehow them and give them the basketball at the perfect time for them to shoot. It was like this poetry or, like, this concert where someone's the conductor.
SERRANO: Yes, yes.
MARTÍNEZ: And, you know, he points to the cello section, and he points to the - you know, it's - that's what it was to watch Magic play a basketball game. Now, OK, the last chapter of the book is called "The Final 196 Seconds Of Kobe Bryant's Career." That was Staples Center back then. The Lakers - that's where they played in downtown Los Angeles against the Utah Jazz. That's where he scored 60 points - his final game as an NBA player.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #3: The Lakers down 1. Will Kobe give them one last gamer? Bryant on the move with the jumper. He does it (ph).
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #4: Oh, my.
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #3: Fifty-eight points.
SERRANO: That moment - that was - that's a perfect example. This is a player who - he ruined my basketball life so many years in a row. So many postseasons were destroyed by Kobe Bryant. And I'm watching this guy like I've loved him my entire life because of this thing he's putting inside my chest in this moment. How can I not write about that? How can I not end the book with that thing?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. When a book like yours comes out, you know, I tend to want to ask the author. Like, why did you feel that you needed to write a book like this? But I don't know, I think I might know - and I'm going to just run this by you and let me know if I'm close or not. Whatever game is your game, we've gotten a little detached from it because of this obsession with statistical analysis. And I love it, and I'll still do it. But you're right, a book like yours, I think, comes at a perfect time to kind of reconnect and kind of reattach to that feeling that when we were a little kid, we didn't know how to add batting averages and shooting percentages, we just loved what we saw, and it made us feel something. And I think that's what this book is doing.
SERRANO: That's exactly right, and that's exactly what I was hoping you would feel when you read it or when anybody who reads it - I just want them to go like, oh, I remember. I remember that. I felt something. I felt alive. I felt it - I felt like this is why I watch sports. Not because I want to see somebody score 100 points in a game, but because I want to know what it feels like when somebody scores 100 points or whatever. You know what I mean?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. That is Shea Serrano. His new book is titled "Expensive Basketball." Shea, thanks.
SERRANO: Thank you.
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