But Williams had stepped outside the arbitrarily defined borders of basketball form. This was an act of pure art, and not just because it was utterly and entirely superfluous. Any matter of standard sparkle could have gotten the ball into Lafrentz’s hands and past a frozen defender. Instead, Williams took the behind the back pass, firmly entrenched the NBA’s canon, and stylized it to the high heavens. Creativity for the sake of creativity, art at its most basic level.
From The Elbow: On Jason Williams’ Greatest Pass | The Classical
Enjoyable comparison between an imaginative basketball player and the arrival of modern art in the US. It’s a good example of a system (in this case a professional sport) being pushed out of a local optimum (a particular style of play).
