graydongordian:

Take a look at my newest piece for TBJ, a reflection on the above photo, if you get a chance.

From the article.

Anyone who has ever played full court basketball even a handful of times has experienced this moment. Bringing the ball up the floor uncontested early in the shot clock is as unremarkable a moment as occurs in the game of basketball. That’s exactly what draws the observer so deeply into the shot.

Most sports photography imposes what David Foster Wallace, in his now canonical essay “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” called a moment of “reconciliation.” We are watching someone perform an act we are incapable of performing, and that forces us to reconcile ourselves with the fact of having a body and the physical limitations of that body. No such reconciliation is imposed here. Calmly bracing yourself as your opponent brings the ball up the floor is as ho-hum as it comes. But although one might expect an image of such a moment to seem boring, our personal knowledge of Rondo’s position, both spatially and mentally, fuels our imagination.

I love this.