No Time for Good, Evil in Detroit

This is only a game.

At least, in the sense that anything with the population of Youngstown, Ohio sitting courtside can be just a game. In the sense that something with a television deal that could bail out the auto industry, the banks and the WNBA in one fell swoop can be just a game.

It's no great moral play in three acts with hugs at the end. North Carolina won't hit the warmup lines in capes and monocle, laugh maniacally and lash poor Lupe Izzo to a railroad track. And that block S in Michigan State's logo stands for nothing more than State, not Supermen.

No matter who wins Monday night, GM will still have as much red strewn across its balance sheet as Ford Field had green it its stands. There is no hardwood superhero on the way.

Superheros are for screenplays. Basketball games have players.

This isn't a battle of good and evil, it's a battle of great meets great.

It's the grab-you-by-the-shirt-collar toughness of Michigan State and the dish-and-dash ballet of a North Carolina team that's marched through the NCAA tournament like Napolean through a Risk game. It's two squads built from the ground up with players that stuck around for a few years instead of treating the college game like a side of broccoli forced on them on the way to dessert. In an era of one-and-dones, these folks might as well be playing shuffleboard during timeouts.

It's basketball in the many ways Dr. Naismith would've wanted it played.

It's a great game. Even without the plucky hero dressing.

No matter how many times you click your specially designed Final Four Jordans together and hope it to be true, it won't save Detroit.

The city's problems are nothing new or nothing that one night will solve. Long tenured Heel Tyler Hansbrough seemingly played AAU ball with Henry Ford, and even he'd have trouble remembering where it all started to turn. But here's a hint, when the city's population began to dwindle, the Lions were still NFL champions.

Michigan State will not help sell cars or stride heroically after lost 401ks. Heck, the biggest contribution to the economy may be the money Ty Lawson drops at the craps table.

And if sports is the answer, why haven't the Pistons or the Red Wings, teams based in Detroit, convinced people to buy Hummers by the six pack? The Red Wings won hockey's top trinket last year and are the best team in the puck-loving world yet again. The Tigers were in the World Series three years ago, and Michigan football ... well, there is at least one valid reason to want to run head first into the Joe Louis fist sculpture.

But for all the problems Detroit has, finding a sports team to cheer for isn't one of them.

Considering tickets for Final Four start at the cost of a monthly car payment and come with bincoculars and a Sherpa at that price, it's hard to imagine too many of those who could afford their way into Ford Field are feeling all that much of a pinch.

But if sports is the answer forget the bailout bill and force LeBron to sign here. Problem solved.

So let's leave the truth, justice and defender of the Chevrolet way somewhere in the fiction section.


These Spartans aren't some George Mason Cinderella whose whole playbook is pluck. They're good. They're four-star players with a five-star attitude who rebound like you personally insulted each of their mothers when the ball went up. They're not Stephen Curry cuddly. They're every bit the Goliath North Carolina is without the marketing budget.

And forget the economics because you need storylines. There are heroes and good guys and folks you'd want to buy a beer taking the court in green and blue. They won't solve the economic crisis, or save a city built around a struggling industry, but that might remind you that it's not just silver screen characters that can do special things.

And it'll remind you that there are good guys everywhere, even if they don't wear your teams colors.

So instead of a storyline borrowed from a Disney writer's MacBook, talk about Goran Suton, the Bosnian born center who lived in fear of missing shots on the basketball court when he grew up. Not because he had a domineering father, but because there were landmines. In his backyard. Three of them live.

Or Idong Ibok, who is a student athlete in every sense of both words, who studied so hard in his native Nigeria that when he arrived in the United States in 2003, he thought American schools were just too darn easy.

Try Durrell Summers, raised by a single mother who still works overnight shifts at the post office and passes up sleep to see her baby play in the Final Four.

Talk about North Carolina's Hansbrough, who's just one card away from laying down a royal flush on his collegiate career. He's won every trophy handed out this side of the Vibe Awards and has a chance to join the inner-most level of legacy at one of college basketball's most storied programs.

And if not him, then teammate Danny Green, whose mother walked out on his family, leaving he and his father to raise his two younger brothers. Green made it all the way to the basketball promised land of North Carolina, but his father couldn't follow. Danny Sr. spent the better part of two years behind bars fighting a drug charge. He missed the Final Four last year, but after a plea agreement, is in Detroit.

Or Ty Lawson, whose slick moves make you think he's wearing ice skates underneath his sneakers, but who nearly left North Carolina in relative obscurity last year, a loser in the Final Four and a likely late first-round draft selection. His farewell to Franklin Street was almost an embarrassing underage drinking and driving ticket.

There are stories in each, real ones that can actually have a happy ending, not just a happy moment until we move on to something else.

No matter who wins Monday night, Tuesday morning will still be tough for Detroit, for Michigan, and for the nation. Monday's winner won't take the city's soul, it'll just get a championship. Don't buy good and evil.

Because no matter who cuts down the nets, be it Michigan State or North Carolina, the good guys will have won.

Make that, the great guys.