The last time I was up at my parents’ house, I was rummaging through some old personal effects, and came across an old binder of basketball cards.
It’s funny to admit this nowadays given the fact that they royally suck, and have been more or less the laughing stock of the NBA over the last decade or so, but back in the 90s, I was a huge New York Knicks fan. John Starks, Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Derek Harper, and of course, the franchise himself, Patrick Ewing. Loved them all. Rooted for the Knicks against everyone, including Michael Jordan and the Bulls. I felt sports-heartbreak in 1994, when the Knicks came so close, and lost to Hakeem Olajuwon’s Rockets in the Finals. Was even too young to understand the magnitude of the OJ Simpson police chase, and was more irked that a championship game was being preempted.
The point is, I had a ton of Knicks basketball cards in this binder. Primarily Patrick Ewing, because he was clearly the primary star of the team. And while flipping through the sheets and sheets of Ewing cards, I came across this particular Ewing card from a ’95-96 Fleer set.
And then I snickered, because in today’s snarky trendy vernacular, the letter D is simply not what it used to be.
Obviously, in a sports conversation, the letter D has always been synonymous with Defense, and in relation to this particular card, Ewing demonstrates his propensity for defense, in grabbing a rebound, a particular skill that he was among the league’s best at, given the fact that he was 7 feet tall.
But instead, I see a card now that says “TOTAL D PATRICK EWING,” and I can’t help but chuckle, because I’m 14 years old, and it’s funnier to think that Fleer would put out a collectible card that did nothing but say that Patrick Ewing is a total D.
Oh, how the changing of times can sometimes make some collateral victims of relics from the past.
