Slam Dunk! Rowan Ricardo Phillips at Paris Review

Paris Review published an excellent morsel of reportage this weekend: poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips on feeling good (thank good-ness) and the Golden State Warriors. Start your morning off right!

When Nina Simone first sings the title of “Feeling Good,” her voice has been alone for thirty-nine seconds. The solitary singer: there’s always something fiat lux about it. Resolute, the individual moves through the void. You know the accompaniment is coming, but the voice, all by itself, makes you care about it: form turns into feeling. This is how the artist passes on her exuberance. You’re affected by her immediate present, implicated in her future, and interested in her past. This is how the strut between you two starts: “and I’m feeling good.”

The instruments come to life right after Simone sings those words, as though her voice has just confirmed that the coast is clear—a new dawn, a new day, a new life—the brass begins with those gravel-and-booze notes down low, the piano like morning birdsong, light and constant, up top. The world is being made, and you feel good enough to sing as if you yourself were making it. And maybe you are: the experience heats up, the experience becomes porous, and you don’t know anymore where you end and it begins. Is she feeling good? Am I feeling good? Am I being told to feel good? We’re feeling good.

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And this is where we are with the Golden State Warriors—feeling good. They’re 23–0, the best start to a season in NBA history; they’re seven wins away from the longest streak the league has ever seen; they’re the reigning champions. We’ve seen phenomena like this before—the 1969–1970 Knicks, the 1971–1972 Lakers, the 1995–1996 Bulls, the 2012–2013 Miami Heat—but these were teams that engaged in different ways, using templates that were widely understood to bring success: a stifling defense, a dominant big man, a stockpiling of superstar players. Those Bulls and Heat, in particular, were when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-crushes-your-soul teams. The Bulls were an aging, bitter collection of legends who cut through the league like Sherman cut through the South; the Heat of a few years ago wasted their time trying to figure out if they wanted to be the heroes or the villains of the league.

Continue at Paris Review.