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).

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.