Yesterday, the New York Times confirmed the long-circulating rumors that Jay-Z will be stepping down as CEO of Def Jam Records, a position he’s occupied for three years. Supposedly, Universal, Def Jam’s corporate owner, balked at Jay-Z’s salary demands. If one were to take his lyrics at face value — a dicey and unsporting proposition with any artist — Jay-Z’s high asking price should be no surprise. After all, this is the man who broke ground not only as the first rapper-turned-CEO of a company not of his own creation, but also as the first person to publicly brag about “raping” his company and then become its CEO (“I’m rapin’ Def Jam ‘til I’m the $100 million man”). He boasted that his avarice served to avenge the slights of his musical predecessors, who were never paid their due. (“I’m overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush.”) What all this amounted to, however, was a moderately successful three-year stint, some low-level layoffs, and a denied request for more money and its accompanying problems.

While the man who calls himself J-Hova has no shortage of wealth and enterprise upon which to fall back (among other things, he is owner of a clothing line and co-owner of the New Jersey Nets), his departure from Def Jam still rings a little disappointing. The thing is, more than most rappers, even, Jay-Z’s success is wrapped in, or wrapped around, legend and myth. Plenty of rappers have gone from rags to riches, but few have made their success seem so inevitable and versatile. 50 Cent ran a more than impressive street game (are there any similar journalistic accounts of Jay-Z’s skills as a hustler?), was pumped so full of lead he could’ve been a pencil, and then had the acumen to buy into Vitamin Water in ’04, ultimately cashing out to the tune of $400 million. And yet he doesn’t possess anywhere near the mythic stature of Jay-Z. Of course, a lot of that has to do with musical prowess, but more on that in a bit.

In moving from the hustle to the boardroom, from the eternal elephant of society’s living room to the very picture of establishment success, Jay-Z achieved the dream of celluloid gangsters as disparate as Oscar’s Snaps Provolone, Haymaker & Sally’s Lincoln Playa, and The Wire’s Stringer Bell. He’s gone “legit,” something he frequently celebrates in his lyrics. Now that he’s completed the full arc of the hustler-made-good, he’s above needing to prove himself in any realm (“I don’t want much, fuck, I drove every car / Some nice cooked food, some nice clean drawers.”). The problem is, making good is one thing, staying good another, and staying good in the public eye, in the mythopoetic, hardscrabble American Dream sense, yet one more. When a gangster gets taken out, it’s a blaze of glory, or at least an acceptable price for having lived the high life the hard, fast way. But nobody ponders Vito Corleone’s offers and turns them down, and it’s hard to imagine Horatio Alger’s protagonists watching their ass for a closing boardroom door.

Jay-Z likes to compare himself to Frank Sinatra, which is a little unfair to himself, as his own rise from nothing to real chairman of the board required more industry and acumen than did Sinatra’s Jersey-to-Vegas, chairman-in-nickname-only climb. Moreover, with his lyrics, Jay-Z penned his ascent, wrote his own legend. But strangely, unlike Sinatra and even purely fictional characters like Stringer Bell, whom Jay-Z perhaps most resembles, he sometimes seems ambivalent about moving on. Sinatra didn’t boast of his shadowy associations, and Bell–his desire to put a hit on Clay Davis notwithstanding–dealt with a tight spot by looking to Milton Friedman or Bill Gates. Jay-Z looks to Frank Lucas and his own memories of the street game. The hustle is what makes him tick and drives his best rhymes. Guilty pleasure or not, American Gangster, like Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint, is compelling stuff. (The ’70s-heavy production milieu of the more recent two doesn’t hurt, either.)

Yet given how self-glorifying the rhymes invariably are, and given their author’s remarkable dexterity and cleverness with the English tongue and his boasts of being able to conquer any endeavor, even his fans may sometimes lament that he hasn’t managed to bring the same intelligence and enthusiasm to other subject matters. Or perhaps that he hasn’t more fully explored the internal conflicts of the street game’s players and especially bystanders, however textured and attractive his current portrayals may be.

You could argue that hip-hop’s held to different critical standards than other genres, and not just on the subject of public morals. Martin Scorcese’s been telling the same ol’ gangster tales for decades, and we all still cheered The Departed. He attempted a number of departures, but then, many of them weren’t very good. And of course, he’s had an extra 30 years with which to experiment. Jay-Z’s only 38, so this should probably stop reading like an obituary; he still has plenty of time to experiment and he’s given us no reason to believe any claims of retirement. Will he move beyond the hustle? Maybe it’s that you can take the kid out of the street but not the street out of the kid. Maybe the market failed him and, like a good hustler, he tells us only what album sales say we want to hear. Or maybe, as Vladimir Nabokov once said, “derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only its own self to copy.”

They kept it close for a while. Led by Delonte West, who seemed pretty motivated to stick it to his old team, the Sonics auditioned for the giant-slayer role, only to fall to the Celtics, 104-96.

For once, the Key was full and the crowd raucous. Even the non-basketball entertainment turned it up a notch, with leather-jacket-clad mascot Squatch riding out on a Harley and leaping through a ring of fire to dunk the ball, and the Red Panda woman performing her laws-of-physics-defying, bowl balancing/unicycling act.

Forgive me for writing more so far about the atmosphere than the action, but if you’ve been to many Sonics games this year, you know how moribund the Key can be. In the first quarter of one game, Damien Wilkins crashed into the courtside seats trying to save a loose ball and knocked the over the whole connected row, which was being held down by exactly zero spectators.  So it was damn fun to feel that kind of energy in the building.

And despite my frustrations at his one-handedness and his inability to run a halfcourt offense, tonight I loved Delonte West. Before the Season began, I hoped for a run n’ gun team with a chip on its shoulder–basically, the NBA version of the Lorenzo Romar Husky teams of a few years ago. But although they’ve often played hard, that chip that makes an underdog irresistible has been missing. There are hints of it from Jeff Green, but he’s so stoic it’s hard to notice. Same for Earl Watson and Kurt Thomas, who bring the intensity but seem old and, more importantly, businesslike. And Despite the team’s humble record, when Kevin Durant goes on his streaks, it’s more Drago than Rocky.

But when Delonte West sprinted down the court to swat away a Kevin Garnett dunk attempt, getting a forearm full of cranium in the process, I got a little fired up. There was a dude who simply was not going to let the dunk happen, despite the fact that he was giving up 8 inches, 50 pounds, and a 15 foot head start. He followed this up just before halftime with a no-look dish to Durant for a fast-break flush, setting the crowd in a frenzy. It doesn’t change the fact that he can’t run a half-court offense, but at least it got people out of their seats. For one of the all-too-few, all-too-short stretches this year, it was exhilarating to be a Sonics fan.

Of course, it didn’t last. Paul Pierce went on a scoring binge, Szczerbiak started taking bad shots, West repeatedly left Eddie House open, Kurt Thomas fouled out after a heroic evening against Garnett in the post, and the Supes were once more a day late and a dollar short. Still, it was fun to get a little glimpse of the eye of the tiger.

PS–Ray Allen was a total non-factor.

Greetings, Readers–the few I have left after my recent shift to a basketball-heavy format. As many of you know, the reason I write about the Sonics so much is that I cover them for the Seattle Weekly, where I am also trying to score a fellowship. But a couple pieces of good news:

1) Good news for me–I got an article published there (the first that wasn’t just a converted blog post). It’s on the hard-hitting news subject of scalpers at Sonics games and probably won’t win me a Pulitzer, but it was fun to write and hey, it’s a start:

Welcome to the Hard-Knock Life of a Sonics Ticket Scalper

Feel free to read it, re-read it, comment on it, use the “e-mail article” feature, etc., so the kind folks at the Village Voice media realize what a talented and popular scribe I am.

2) Good news for you and me–I can now post in the Weekly’s other blogs (and maybe could have all along, something I didn’t realize), meaning the writing I do over there (and thus the writing that appears here) will cover a greater variety of subject matter. This, I hope, will make things a little easier on those of you who aren’t so into the basketball posts.

Christmas dinner prevented me from watching last night’s Sonics-Blazers game in its entirety (Blazers won 89-79), but here are a few notes from what I did see:

-Even though he had an awful night shooting the ball, it was still a great pleasure to watch Brandon Roy. His handle is flawless and he changes speeds and directions with ridiculous ease for a man his size. He’s like a bigger, slower, more ambidextrous version of Manu Ginobili: both can always find their way into the paint, no matter what the defense does.

-In other not-really-news, Damien Wilkins provided minutes and not much else, Jeff Green didn’t play enough, Wally Szczerbiak scored, and Earl Watson was the team’s best point guard.

-Who would have thought that, at this point in the year, Kevin Durant would be playing the two spot and his most consistently effective weapon would be his crossover? Maybe I just didn’t watch enough of him in college, but I wasn’t expecting a 6′10″ Jamal Crawford.

-Now that Mo Sene is in the D-League, will Mickael Gelabale be following? He had the league’s highest shooting percentage in the immediate basket area last year, but he still looks lost and tentative. I’ll go out on a limb and venture that he’s thinking too much. He seems concerned about his handle, but on a fast break last night, he quickly wrapped a dribble around his back while moving at a decent clip to avoid a defender who suddenly appeared–an instinct play that showed some dexterity with the leather. Yet just seconds later, after he crossed halfcourt, he looked indecisive and sloppy when facing down the waiting-in-defense Jarrett Jack (who unwisely fouled him). If you’re reading this, Mik, know that the time has come to uncage the ballyhooed Franco baller with in. Go get ‘em, tigre!

-Finally, who in Seattle isn’t jealous of Portland for the Trailblazers? Their coach is Mr. Sonic; their star the best Husky ever (sorry, Detlef); their owner a rich dude with Seattle roots who isn’t likely to sell the team to guys who look like this:

And they don’t draft seven-footers unless those seven-footers are good.

Maybe we can engineer a trade–say the Sonics, the S.L.U.T., and Chris Gregoire’s expiring contract for the Blazers? Hell, we’ll even throw in one of our American Apparels. You guys like those, right?

(This one appeared in the Weekly’s Buzzer Beater a few days ago but, in the midst of the holiday festivities, I forgot to post it here.)

You can slap a baroquely patterned, festive holiday tie on him, but the tiger that is P.J. Carlesimo ain’t changin’ his stripes. He chews more ear than Mike Tyson. Similarly, you can call him a veteran leader, but like a soused fraternity pledge with a fake i.d. drinking bottom-shelf liquor at Dante’s on a Friday night, Wally Szczerbiak has never met a shot he didn’t like. Herein lies the conflict, which, despite Wally’s prolific 23-points-in-26-minutes performance, was laid bare last night.

Thanks to the alert and skilled video capturing of Jason “Reidster” Reid, you can enjoy the following:

With the Supes up 5, 12 seconds on the shot clock, and 1:05 on game clock, Szczerbiak takes (steals?) a pass that may have been intended for Jeff Green and decides to jack up a three, which he misses. (8 years later and he still thinks he’s at Miami, OH.) This infuriates Carlesimo, who chews out Wally in the huddle, providing a chuckle to Luke Ridnour and a full-on belly laugh to Chris Wilcox. (15 years later and he still thinks he’s at Seton Hall.) Wally then performs some rather comical help-side defense, but is bailed out when Carlos Delfino’s three-pointer is scratched because his foot was on the sideline.

As Mike Seely pointed out earlier today, the New Orleans Hornets are struggling to get fans in their arena despite having a winning record (not to mention the the best point guard in basketball–more on that in a minute), thus eliciting whispers of a potential relocation to Oklahoma City. And as John Hollinger points out (though it requires an ESPN Insider password, unfortunately), Chris Paul is having one of the best seasons ever by a player under 6′3″. Yet, even for their road game (the Hornets beat the Sonics 107-93), attendance was spotty, though the fans who showed up certainly were vocal.

Of course, the empty seats might have something to do with the home team’s winning percentage, which is barely in respectable batting average range. It also might have something to do with the coach’s rotation. Carlesimo claims to experiment and to go with what’s working, but a lot of it just doesn’t make any sense. Consider the following:

-Jeff Green and Kevin Durant, the pillars of the franchise, played a total of 10:08 together. Is it really that important to have the veteran leadership (i.e. ballhogging) of Wilkins or Szczerbiak on the floor with the rooks? Can’t Durant and Green be trusted on together? Is there a better defensive combo than those two? Wouldn’t it make sense to allow them to develop some chemistry?

-After Durant began to heat up in the third quarter (10 points in 9 minutes), PJ sat him for the next 9:13. Because it was really important to get Damien Wilkins some more time on the floor, so he could shoot 4-15. We were also treated, in this time, to Wally Szczerbiak chewing up about 7 seconds of shot clock jab stepping out of a triple threat as though he were Kobe Bryant. News flash, Wally: The only way your name and “Iso” should appear in the same sentence is if you’re getting a Christmas gift from Dan Marino.

There were a few positives for the Sonics: Durant added four rebounds, five assists, and zero turnovers to his 18 points, and also used his left hand nicely throughout the game; Jeff Green indulged in some un-Jeff-Green showtime when he pulled off a fast break, behind-the-back dribble and no-look pass to an open Ridnour, who knocked down a three; Nick Collison had a solid game working the boards and scoring inside; and Szczerbiak, who takes a lot of shots in these pages, must be given credit for a decent shooting night and an uncharacteristic six rebounds in 26 minutes.

But the real story was Chris Paul, who, like Dwight Howard a couple weeks ago, dominated the Sonics in cartoonish fashion. He got wherever he wanted off the dribble, making Watson (once a feared defender) and Ridnour (never a feared defender) look like a JV scout team. Globetrotters vs. Generals came to mind. No one could stay in front of him. It was as though he was looking for new, fun ways to create shots for himself and others. My favorite was when he’d jitterbug into the “painted area” (I love how announcers are calling it that now, the old term, “the paint,” being insufficiently descriptive), draw three Sonics, and lob a pass to Tyson Chandler who’d finish with the big dunk.

You Hornets fans are lucky. You should go to your games and save your team from rumors of relocation.

You know what? Scratch that. George Shinn’s an asshole. Don’t support him. Stay at home. Or go out on the town. New Orleans is a fun town. At least it was. I bet there’s still some excitement to be found. Just stay away from the arena.

(Just thought I’d follow the rule that sports headlines must contain a bad pun.)

So it looks like the Mariners are going to remain in panic mode and sign Carlos Silva to a 4 year, $44 million contract. Silva and Jarrod Washburn will form a $20 million, two-headed monster in the middle of the rotation that really should be in the back of the rotation. If both are healthy and pitch full years, the Mariners will be paying roughly $100,000 for every strikeout they throw. Meanwhile, the Indians will be paying about $9 million for the full year services of C.C. Sabathia and roughly $300,000 for Fausto Carmona, and the Tigers $1 million for Justin Verlander and $4.5 million for Jeremy Bonderman. All of them are better than Washburn and Silva.

The point I’m getting at (in however a roundabout fashion) is that free agent pitching is generally overpriced and developing pitching from your own farm system (or someone else’s) is a much better bang for your buck. (Of course, if you have tons of money–which the Mariners do not–sometimes it pays to play the market, as was the case for Boston this year.) Billy Beane, the crown prince of squeezing the most out of a payroll, has recognized that for years in Oakland, and that’s why he didn’t re-sign players like Hudson, Mulder, and Zito. Only Hudson has come close to living up to his subsequent free agent contract.

The Mariners have the 7th highest payroll in baseball, but the team gets a relatively free pass from its fans for its inability to turn the money into anything approaching a contending team. It fails to develop its young talent because of a fetish for experience and “proven veterans” (proven to do what?): Keep in mind that batting practice pitcher Horacio Ramirez was acquired at the cost of young talent Rafael Soriano, who had a superb year as a reliever in Atlanta, with a WHIP of .86.

If the Mariners don’t want to chance it with Cha Seung Baek, Brandon Morrow, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Ryan Feirebrand, et. al. (I’m guessing at least one or two would turn out to be serviceable starters), then perhaps they should sign some pitchers to 1-year, stopgap contracts and continue to develop their young talent. This way, in a year, when Felix Hernandez is even better, Adam Jones is seasoned, Brandon Morrow has a third pitch, Jeff Clement is ready to come up, and Adrian Beltre and Ichiro Suzuki are still in their relative primes, the team will have some money to fill in the gaps and have a true shot at a World Series. (Dave Cameron at USS Mariner designs such a scenario in this post.) In the meantime, they’ll be no worse off than if they signed Silva.

The end of the year is the time for top ten lists. However, 2007 was not kind to Seattle sports fans, so we decided to make it a bottom ten instead:

10. May 24th - The Mariners lose to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 13-12. Third base coach Carlos Garcia gets two runners thrown out at home. Explaining his decision to send not-so-fleety Jose Lopez home against the near legendary arm of Delmon Young, Garcia says, “It was the first time we played them. I didn’t know he had such a good arm. But now I know.” The club defends Garcia against fans who point out that the strength of Young’s arm is widely recognized and could have been gleaned by reading a scouting report, or merely conducting a google search. “The fans who are expressing their discontent are displaying an unsettling level of cultural insensitivity,” declares Howard Lincoln. When asked to identify the culture to which the fans were being insensitive, Lincoln replies simply, “losing.”

9. Date unknown - Wally Szczerbiak takes rookie teammate Kevin Durant under his wing, explaining to the young star that he can boost his scoring average by largely ignoring those pesky things called teammates. “Unless, they’re setting a pick for you, they’re not there,” he says. (This may not have happened yet, but it’s a scary thought, no?)

8. The Weekend of November 10th to 11th - Let’s start on Sunday: Moving like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle minus the Teenage Mutant Ninja part, Robert Swift has zero points, two rebounds, and two fouls in 12 minutes of play. As he struggles to lug his freshly tatted 280 lbs up and down the Key Arena floor, some fans wonder whether, knee injury or not, the new bulk will ruin the agility that was his previous strong suit. One night earlier, the player the Sonics should have drafted in 2004, Al Jefferson, scores 17 points and grabs 12 rebounds for the Minnesota Timberwolves.

7. January 1st - Ty Willingham’s Huskies look totally unprepared for their bowl game matchup with…oh, wait, nevermind.

6. December 12th - Unable to resist his stunning array of “out” pitches (as in “quickly headed ‘out’ of the park”), the Seattle Mariners tender Horacio Ramirez, the man who accrued more walks than strikeouts and hits than innings in 2007. “It was a difficult decision,” explains Bill Bavasi. “Had he been signed by a division rival, we might have been able to keep Richie Sexson’s batting average over .220 for the season.”

5. November 15th - Howard Schultz signs up to sponsor a youth basketball team.

4. August 28th - With the Mariners needing a win against the 1st place Angels to stay in the pennant race; with the bases loaded, the team down one run in the 8th inning, and Vladimir Guerrero due up, John McLaren digs deep into the throat of bullpen suckage to pull out Rick White. The barrel-stomached veteran, a piece of waiver wire flotsam that somehow landed in the Safeco bullpen (care to explain, Bill?), takes the mound and promptly makes a mound of his own. Two batters later, the bases — and Rick’s bowels — have been emptied, and the game is all but over.

3. Sundays, generally - Shaun Alexander sees tacklers, falls down.

2. December 3rd — Citing his dissatisfaction with the community center facilities, Schultz transfers sponsorship duties to an Oklahoma City car dealership, but asks if he can still attend the year-end pizza party.

1. November 1st — Sonics owner Clayton Bennett celebrates the newly begun Kevin Durant era by filing with the NBA for relocation of the team. Here’s to you, Mr. Bennett. May all your years be as bad as our 2007.

Who says torture can’t be funny?

Monday, December 10th
-The Justice Department defends its failure to investigate the allegations of a former Halliburton/KRB employee that she was gang-raped, blackmailed, and imprisoned by her co-workers. Says a Justice Department Spokesperson: “Halliburton told us it was just exploratory drilling.”
-In what may have been an underhanded attempt to dissuade voters from supporting government-sponsored health insurance, two nurses unions publish an ad stating that, without his government-sponsored health insurance, Dick Cheney would likely be dead of heart troubles by now.
-Cheney responds with his own ad against logging restrictions, water shortages, without which “I’d subject every one of those bitches to the non-torturous sensation of drowning.”

Tuesday, December 11th
-A special investigation reveals that Harry Reid’s “boxing” history consisted of a three-month stint as a stock boy at UPS.

Wednesday, December 12th
-Dick Cheney’s sex life heats up with another Bush veto of a children’s health insurance bill. “It’s like Valentine’s Day in December,” quips a flushed Lynne.

Thursday, December 13th
-Dick Cheney visits Harry Reid on the Senate floor to deliver him a copy of the FISA bill the administration would like him to push. Reid solemnly receives the manila envelope. “Thank you, sir,” he says.
“Is that all?” Asks an incredulous Cheney.
Harry Reid looks around the floor, noting that many of his colleagues are in earshot. “Oh, come on.”
Cheney continues to stare at him and snarl.
“Okay, fine,” says Reid. “May I have another?”

Friday, December 14th
Attorney General Michael Mukasey refuses to turn over information on the Justice Department’s alleged investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes. “I am independent,” he asserts, echoing the talking points the Bush Administration provided media outlets during his confirmation process. “I have the balls to stand up to anyone. I myself would stand up and show them to you, but I—rather, they, are occupied in the mouths of Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein.” For the first time in his public career, Schumer is rendered speechless, emitting only a muffled, talcum-y hum.
-GOP Senators block a House bill (known as “Geneva 2″) banning uses of torture in CIA interrogations. A staff member for Lindsey Graham explains that “Cheney sent out a new memo specifically prohibiting cockblocking,” which would be among this ban’s unintended effects. “When the waterboards dry up, so does Lynn,” wrote Cheney.

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