The Glare Up There

It was deemed “Goggle-gate” by boyish Miami Heat coach Eric Spoelstra, and rightly so. There were goggles involved, and there was definitely a ’gate aspect to the kerfluffle that Dwyane Wade’s choice of doctor-prescribed eyewear had raised. Designed to alleviate his migraine symptoms, they were darkened to the point that he looked like a player in one of those halftime charity games where nobody scores and yet everybody cheers; or a character in a 1970s Disney movie about a blind point guard who singlehandedly wins the state championship and gets the scorchingly hot, sighted girl.

So the Heat sent some lackey (no offense, sir or madam) to the league offices and the commissioner said, “No haps, D-Wade.” The league’s reasoning was that opponents wouldn’t be able to see Wade’s eyes and therefore, presumably he wouldn’t be able to… do that winking thing? Or the eyeball crossover that has really spread like wildfire in Turkey. I’m not quite sure. Poker players are allowed to wear Darth Vader helmets and LaDanian Tomlinson looks like he has a plastic niqab under his helmet.

But it’s okay: Wade managed to locate a pair of shades that were more Bono and less Ray Charles. Unfortunately, they were also more Dolph Lundgren and less Bono, and he wore them for a few days, actually played well, then got mercilessly mocked by his teammates, and decided to forgo humiliation to play in pain, something the man knows about first-hand.

Upon hearing the news, I had two immediate thoughts: One, as a chronic migraine sufferer I have difficulty sitting up and tying my shoes when afflicted, so the thought of running around in a janky NBA uniform is a no-go, fancy goggles or no fancy goggles. The man is clearly brave and the least mockable player on the All-American Rejects…I mean, the Heatles. And two, dark sunglasses seems like a natural progression for a league filled with players far more obsessed with style than fundamentals.

To their coaches’ credit, the Heat players know all about fundamentals. They run the offense and even the scrubby players (basically, numbers 5–12) have been able to hold it down, while the hospital gurneys are wheeled to and from the court. Also positive: the LeBron-as-post-up force seems to be progressing and now that Chris Bosh has returned to the lineup everything has gotten back to normal-ish.

Still there are speed bumps, like when the team’s players endured a double public beatdown, one from the TNT crew of bandwagon-riding gasbags and the other from a far less expected source: Kevin Durant. And let me tell you: if a nice guy like Kevin Durant deems you pussy-like, that has got to sting. The man is so much the NBA’s wet dream, I’d be shocked if at some point over the next few years, league officials don’t fold his team, the Oklahoma Town Hillbillies, in order to get him to a media capital like New York (pant, pant) or Los Angeles (pffft.)

But all Durant’s shocking words did, really, was confirm a long-held view of Bosh as being soft. I’ve alluded to it in this space (if you consider me repeatedly calling him ‘soft’ an allusion). And everyone from his former boss Bryan Colangelo to the lunatics who made this video have piled on. Let us not forget, league oracle Shaquille O’Neal’s nickname for the man I affectionately refer to as “the third guy”: RuPaul. Ouch.

That hurts Bosh, but also the whole team. Charles Barkley’s earlier assessment of the team as soft is not the reputation you want heading into the playoffs, when referees are more apt to let the players perform the Bruce Bowen karate chop each other. Still, it’s February, and the fact that the finish line is inching closer must be alleviating some of pain.

There are two months, give or take, left in the regular season. The Heat has proven to be a great team when healthy, an average team when injured and a crappy team when… never. The state of their union is strong. And come playoff time, they will be in the thick of fight for the right to face the now-cuddly one, Kobe Bryant, and his team of occasionally sleepwalking sidekicks.

Even a blind person can see that.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Chamber of Fear, from Flickr.