The ‘Hold Me Back’ Economy
“The game was better in the 80s”
“Today’s players couldn’t handle my era”
“I would’ve sat him on his backside”
The primitive cries of the hard men of a bygone era that, with good reason, is nothing more than a relic of time, immortalised only in grainy tape footage and stained newspaper clippings.
With every Russell Westbrook fashion statement, Trae Young kick out and LeBron James sell, the chorus of forgotten role players starts up, more monotonous and humdrum than the previous iteration.
“I wouldn’t let him get away with that”
“You try that on my court and I’m letting you know I’m around”
And what’s the golden rule? Sequels suck.
Gone are the days of Rick Mahorn decking a wandering soul in the paint, welcome to the “Hold Me Back” economy.
As I’m sure you’ve seen by now, even if you don’t register anything more than the most passive passing recognition of the NBA, LeBron James hit Detroit Pistons center Isaiah Stewart with a closed fist to the eye region, and what ensued was, to put it mildly, absolute goddamn chaos.
The ‘Hold Me Back’ economy, as I’ve termed it, is basically building credit by being seen as the modern day ‘enforcer.’ Now, with the rules being the way they are compared to yesteryear, the chance to actually, you know, enforce, seldom comes along.
Very rarely nowadays is there a genuine occasion of a player needing to be held back.
In an era of chest beating, jersey grabbing and back row catcalling, what unfolded here was a jolting reality check.
Every NBA scuffle, skirmish and melee that occurs from now on, I challenge you to not see an opinion on the hypothetical bout.
“X would dust Y”
It’s about the analysis of the fight now, not the condemnation of the journey there.
I’m not interested in who would win in a hypothetical smackdown between LeBron and Stewart. LeBron can handle himself I’m sure, in a fight, being 6’8” and 250 pounds, while hardly having a cupcake upbringing in Akron, Ohio.
Stewart, meanwhile, was raised in Rochester, New York, the 50th most dangerous city in the United States, someone who wasn’t even allowed to hang out with friends after school unless they were from organised sport.
It’d be an interesting undercard, I’m sure, but it isn’t one I need, especially if it means we can stop with the fetishization of hard childhoods and the proverbial ‘hard road’.
So when someone catches wind of a fight only to discover it’s ‘handbags at ten paces’, what do you actually want to see? LeBron lying on the ground, Isaiah Stewart standing over him like an insurgent killing the president?
Or maybe you want to see a young kid embarrassed, taunted, tossed aside by one of the greatest athletes, not basketball players, but physical athletes, of all time?
This all comes barely two weeks after reigning MVP Nikola Jokic was equally retaliatory to a cheap foul from Miami Heat forward Markieff Morris.
Straight after the Jokic body check we were regaled with stories of flyover bombings in Jokic’s native Serbia, mere miles from the family home, while on the other side, Jimmy Butler’s supporters would tell anyone who listened about his incredibly tough upbringing battling youth homelessness in Tomball, Texas, a suburb of Houston.
In a way, there’s nothing more emblematic of current NBA ‘fight culture’ than the following image, taken after the Jokic-Morris scuffle.
Aaron Ontiveroz - Denver Post
Yes, that’s over 400kg of raw NBA athlete standing at the doorway in the form of Bam Adebayo, Dewayne Dedmon, Kyle Lowry and Jimmy Butler.
The immovable level of protection standing between them and Eastern European, Pepsi-fuelled fury?
Maybe two security guards clearly at the end of their rope, not an hour away from clocking off and going home, sick and tired of the fake tough guy hubris.
The modern NBA is about reputation and lip service as much as it is actual on court production and winning basketball games. Season on season, games are littered with players getting into disagreements, forcing a scrum, then getting lary once there’s a firm layer of buffer by way of referees, teammates and security personnel.
The Michael Ennis Effect, if you will allow an NRL crossover.
When someone breaks that line, like Isaiah Stewart, like Nikola Jokic, it sends a shock through the league. In a modern age of content sharing and lack of licensing barriers made possible by Adam Silver’s freedom of content policies, videos travel quick, and seemingly every basketball fan was all of a sudden tuned into a sleepy November contest between the 4-11 Pistons and 8-9 Lakers.
Remember the “Secret Tunnels” incident between Houston and the LA Clippers? Only Chris Paul knew about that unheralded passage, before it got plastered over the internet in minutes.
Are players being influenced by modern highlight culture and wanting to make a name? No I don’t think so.
Is the “Hold Me Back” economy a thing? Absolutely.
Isaiah Stewart has tangled with the NBA’s finest in his short career. Not only LeBron James, but throw Blake Griffin and Giannis Antetokounmpo on that list.
If nothing else, he has credit now around the league.
Whether that credit is worth anything is a different issue.
And one final note to those who want the 80s back. You want your star players, your marketable product, playing longer? Then don’t let them get beaten into a pulp by mindless goons.
The rules changed for a reason. You’re right in saying modern players wouldn’t last longer because they’d be nursing seventeen different ailments a season by the time Christmas hit.
The 80s sucked. Let’s leave it behind.
