The NBA’s 100 Greatest Plays

The NBA’s 100 Greatest Plays

Greatness.

In sports, it’s a term that, in one sense, can only be measured over time.

A player becomes a Hall of Famer, and a team becomes a dynasty, //only after years of performing at a high level.

But at any given moment in the NBA, //the mission of any given player is simpler.

Played out in the here and now, //put the ball in the basket, or turn that ball the other way.

Sometimes, it takes five men to get the job done. // (Look at that pass work! Beautiful! //That's pass work. That's teamwork.)

Sometimes, one man has to rise above on his own.

It can be a question of raw talent or of pure desire.

And it can happen in the seventh game of the NBA finals.

(And there they go. They've won it again.)

Or in the opening seconds of an early season game.

In this sense, greatness can present itself in an instant. //(It’s over! It’s all over.)

A single play can become a defining image of how high a player can reach.

And the greatest plays //can represent the inspiration for the next generation of NBA stars and fans.

The elements of greatness, like skill, timing, or the importance of situation, //work together in different ways to make every great moment unique.

Blocked shots, great hustle, teamwork, //and buzzer beaters all can take their place as historic plays // based on the different skills they require.

A hundred great plays could be complied a hundred ways.

One would be ten plays in 10 different categories.

And that is what follows.

POP MASTER_第一部分

POP MASTER

Japan's literati may sneer at Haruki Murakami , but his latest novel has sold 460,000 copies in two months—and he's revered overseas. 

War crimes, nationalism, teenagers, the World Cup, second-rate writers, third-rate politicians: no matter what he's discussing, Haruki Murakami appears strangely, almost disconcertingly placid. During nearly three hours of conversation, emotion flickers across the face of the most popular Japanese writer since Yukio Mishima precisely once. After a wry put-down of a rival novelist, his eyes sparkle with mischief and his lips curl into a smile. But Murakami's words—both written and spoken—are a different matter. Listen to them carefully and you soon realize he is brimming with passion. As American novelist Jay McInerney puts it, Murakami captures "the common ache of the contemporary head and heart."

In East Asia, his lyrical fictional style has spawned a legion of imitators dubbed "Murakami's children." In South Korea, where his books often hit best-seller lists, 50 volumes of his work have appeared in translation, including novels, short stories, travel pieces, essays and interviews. "Readers develop empathy for Japanese of their age through Murakami's books," writes Noriko Kayanuma, a professor of Japanese literature at Choong Euk university in South Korea. "They realize that Japanese young people have similar sentiments, worries and problems." In the West, too, admiration is growing. "Is he the voice of our age?" asks Jay Rubin, a professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University and author of a recent Murakami biography. "Who knows? But judging by the reactions of people from different cultures, you can say his work has that great amorphous thing that makes literature live."