No Regard Mixtape: Jeremy Lin

On February whatever, against the Nets, Jeremy Lin took the red pill and escaped from the 2010 Summer League YouTube highlight reel that had imprisoned him for the past 18 months. In his first two weeks of running the Knicks squad, he played event basketball. He birthed cults, slayed dragons, sold organic radishes at farmer’s markets, won a bunch of games… and became a bit of a crush around the No Regard water-cooler.

We've had our eye on him for a minute now, but like you, we didn’t really know. We didn’t know that he had enough granite and grace in him to twerk his way to the hoop, almost at will, and take or avoid contact as he sees fit. We didn’t know that he could unpack defensive schemes and pry open passing lanes like a literature grad student dismantling Toni Morrison novels. We didn’t know he had a jump shot sturdy enough to keep defenses honest, preventing him from developing the type of agoraphobia that plagues Rondo. We didn’t know he had the bravado of Sam Cassell, tempered by a humble devotion to Christianity and D’Antoni’s system (RIP). Simply put, we’ve learned a lot about the guy.

And we keep learning. With D'Antoni's departure, Melo's return to whatever angry fans were clamoring him to return to, and gravity's insistence, Lin fell back down to walk among the other peasant point guards of the league. It's crystal clear that he was dropped into the perfect confluence of events and that this ready-to-cook goulash—Amar'e and Melo's absence, a string of easy opponents, D'Antoni's point guard-serenading system—was more responsible for his initial success than many are willing to admit. But hasn’t fate been dictating love for years? Haven’t the cosmos controlled how ardor manifests since day one?

Lin may be done for the season, but we’re far from losing our interest. Attraction is fueled in part by mystery, and there are still myriad unanswered questions about Lin. Primarily: Now that the original wave of hype and hashtags has crested, what kind of player is going to wash up on the beach? Who is Jeremy Lin? Is he Flip Murray? Is he Steve Nash? Is he Ramon Sessions? Is he Mitch Richmond? Is he Jimmy Ray?

At this moment, we have no idea. And that's why we're so enamored. And that's why we made this mixtape for the guy. We just want to get to know him better.

No Regard Mixtape: Shaquille O'Neal

TNT has made it official: Shaq will be joining Ernie, Chuck and Kenny on the stalwart program that is "Inside the NBA." Which is a relief to us since we thought Shaq was as dead as Laura Palmer. (We're still not really sure where most NBA players go when they retire, so we just assume they're in a morgue somewhere.)

But still, we're all pretty sad about his retirement. Not so much because he's been a contributing member to an NBA team any time recently, but more because watching a childhood behemoth age, crumble, then disappear is a stiff drink of mortality. Thus, we've turned to some of our favorite musicians as a coping mechanism.

The songs are also here to help us parse our own feeling about the Diesel, because he was a much more complicated dude than he let on. The gregarious giant crashed into the NBA like a diabolical hurricane on laughing gas, then was easily the best and most entertaining player in the league for about seven years in the middle of his career.

But around the time his brief tenure with Phoenix ended, it started to bubble up that the spat with Kobe (that broke up what could have been a six-year championship run) was more likely the doing of O'Neal, not Bryant. When coupled with the fact that he was about to leave yet another team on not-great terms, and the fairly nasty rumor that he stole Steve Nash's idea for a television show and turned it into "Shaq Vs.", the Big Nickname's reputation as all around fun dude began to rust a bit. Even during the epoch when he ruled the league, he was criticized for lazing through the regular season and never working hard enough to improve his free throw shooting (the one dim bulb in his trillion-watt repertoire).

But we're pretty sure all the cheer and mayhem he unloaded during his Hall of Fame career outweigh these unfortunate character tics. He won three Finals MVP awards and was named to 15 All Star teams! He starred in two really silly movies! He was a pretty good rapper! He had no regard for backboards! He's one of the few players easily identifiable only from a silhouette! He was incredibly generous with his time and money! He turned the grumpy Celtics from curmudgeons to clowns! He danced with LeBron! He said so many funny things and gave himself so many funny nicknames!

Clearly it's been a road trip filled with both fun and folly. As O'Neal ends his playing career, we wonder which Shaq was the real one, and which one he'll be remembered as. Oddly, his performance on TNT will play a very large role in pinpointing his character and cementing his legacy. Hopefully he'll bump this mixtape in whatever over-sized car he's riding these days and reflect a little bit on himself before he embarks on phase two of his time in the public eye, because we're still rooting for him.

Tracklist after the jump.

Mixtape for Deron

Nets fans are riddled with psychological complexes; that'll happen when you're constantly trying to convince people you exist. So when NJ shocked the world by trading for the superstar they craved in Deron Williams back in February, we didn't need the media's brash reporting to kickstart our anxiety. Once we heard the term "player option," our collective paranoia and inferiority leaped out of bed and bound down the stairs to fight for a seat at the breakfast table. I've since been able to push down the fear of losing Williams to free agency and the resulting Brooklyn oblivion. I'm trying on a brand new outfit for a Nets fan: Confidence.

A lot of Nets supporters seem to have done the same; I guess that's the reach of a great point guard. As Nets fans, we're suddenly optimistic about Williams' future with the team, and all it took was a five-game winning streak, 14 rebounds a game by Mr. Kardashian, and Brook Lopez playing like every day is Free Comic Book Day.

But, as we're told by everyone with a voice and a Nets press pass, the length of Deron's tenure with this squad hinges on the plan laid out by Billy King and Avery Johnson and endorsed by Prokhorov. Williams' Facebook page says he's thrilled about the glimpes of future that King has dropped into Williams' brain, but who knows what's real life anymore.

But you know what? We don't care. We're in love. We've fallen harder for this point guard savior than we did the last. The result is this mixtape, which is as much about Deron Williams as it is about Nets fandom and all its uncertainties. Is it filled with our begging him to stay? Yeah... it is. But it's also about what one man can do for a community; about what one man can do to the wounded hearts of so many faithful. Are we nervous about the future? You bet. But at least now we have a partner to share the anxiety with. Will he leave us? Maybe. But we dealt with heartbreak before, and it's taught us an important lesson: Love what you've got while you've got it.

Now for the tracklist...

Mixtape for LeBron

Our relationship with LeBron is reaching Inception-sized levels of confusion. He was so good and kind to us for so long; he made us happy. But this summer we realized he was more Zooey Deschanel than Meg Ryan, more manic pixie dream girl than stable and perfect object of affection. Or maybe he's most like Sarah Marshall.

See? He's got us all mixed up. Regardless, during "The Decision" and its aftermath, we finally realized we were in a destructive relationship. All the things he did that made us happy? He did them for himself, not us. We should have figured this all out long ago, but any time the thought trickled in, he swooned us with another new handshake or giggle-inducing look-away pass. "See?! He's a great teammate! He cares!" We know he's bad for us, but we just can't shake him. Reminders of the good times are everywhere... Jesus, we named our site after one of his grandest highlights.

So, as any heartbroken young adult is taught to do by John Cusack, we've made a mixtape for you, LeBron. Listen to the entire thing. Some is vicious, we admit; we want you to know you hurt us. But pay attention, because we have room for forgiveness and we want some form of success for you. We're compassionate. But we'll never go steady again.