Paul Giamatti Will Save the Clippers
How 'The Holdovers' can be a blueprint for LA's James Harden experiment
Last week, I bopped down to my local movie theater, bought a Pure Leaf Tea and a box of Reese's Pieces (top-tier cinema snack), and watched The Holdovers. I loved it. Each character is written with a unique depth that makes their interactions feel wholly genuine. The soundtrack is beautifully curated. The scenery is wondrous. The colors and camerawork made me feel an ambient sense of calm. This is My Kind of Movie.
Note: You should really see The Holdovers and while you’re at it, watch Sideways— the first project from Giamatti and director Alexander Payne— too. It’s one of the best movies of the 2000s. Earl Sweatshirt referenced it in a song once. Earl knows movies. I digress.
The Holdovers centers three individuals who are forced to spend their winter break at Barton Boarding School where two of them work– one as a teacher, the other as a cook– and the third attends as a student.
The teacher, Paul Hunham, is played sublimely by Paul Giamatti, an actor who has truly mastered the role of the odd, spiteful man. (And why stray from what you’re best at? When you find a niche, you run with it. Giamatti’s niche is playing a Weird Guy.) Mary Lamb, the cafeteria worker, and Angus Tully, the student, are played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa, respectively, who are both absolute forces too, apparently.
Note x2: Paul Giamatti is, like, the best actor; I don’t want to undersell that point or box him in as just a Weird Guy. He’s incredible. I digress, for real.
Our charming(?) protagonists are wholly disparate, sometimes desperate, human beings who all, eventually, come to understand that learning how to coexist is their best course of action because, well, they’re stuck together for Christmas, so they might as fuckin’ well.
Hunham is miserable and lonely, leading his life in a manner reductive to everyone around him, a lifestyle that clearly depresses even himself– alas, he doesn’t know quite how to be anything except the raging asshole he is at the movie’s onset.
Angus is on his last chance; military school awaits if he screws up at Barton, and an Ivy League school likely awaits if he doesn’t. Mary is searching for comfort and support after experiencing a devastating personal tragedy.
Cold and standoffish at first, the trio’s relationship evolves into something genuinely touching by the time New Year’s Eve rolls around. And in the end, (Spoiler alert) Lamb isn’t swallowed by grief; she finds solace in the people around her, namely her pregnant sister with whom she reunites in Boston.
Angus, meanwhile, is allowed to continue studying at Barton after he breaks a rule that his mom and her partner (not a guy I’d drink a beer with) believe warrants his withdrawal from Barton. But Tully is saved by Hunham, who shoulders the blame for his student’s (heartbreaking) action.
Giamatti’s character sacrifices his job—which didn’t necessarily bring him any joy, but at least provided him a sense of security that he is clearly petrified to exist without— for the benefit of his new friend Angus.
Hunham’s firing, in turn, allows him the opportunity to leave the Barton campus— the place which he has spent most of his life— and travel, write the book that he alludes to early on, settle down with a friendly woman, whatever. The possibilities are endless for him now, blah blah you know the story.
In the end, Hunham forgoes individual comforts for the good of someone else, and that surprising bit of altruism directly leads to a happy ending for himself, too.
James Harden and the Los Angeles Clippers need to watch this movie. Their hopes of an NBA title might hinge on whether they can transfer the lessons that Paul Giamatti unintentionally teaches in The Holdovers onto a basketball court.
The Clippers– or maybe just James Harden specifically– must learn how to mold into the shape of a collective whole, because, like Angus, Mary and Paul, what other choice do they have at this point?
They must learn how to relate to the people around them, who–even if they don’t always appear to– strive for the same end result. They must decimate the toxic, self-interested wants inside of them and replace those desires with aspirations of communal well-being. Alter their immediate connotation of the word “success” from a vision of them, solo, on top of a podium, to them, standing atop a podium alongside the other individuals who accomplished the goal with them.
Clippers James Harden needs be like Paul Hunham and, colloquially, take one for the team so the team can thrive.
I’m not particularly hopeful.
Stop Being The System
James Harden seemingly believes that every coach, teammate, and general manager he’s ever played with/for was out to get him; that they were all standing in his path of success, blocking his ability to thrive, inexplicably praying on his downfall. Much like pre-winter break Hunham, Harden believes that a positive outcome for himself must come at the expense of those around him, when in reality, the only way he’ll find success in 2023 (and beyond, but especially on this year’s Clippers team) is with those around him.
By the end of The Holdovers, Hunham sheds his misanthropic attitude just enough to do something selfless. He—at least briefly— releases himself from the notion that he is in opposition to his students and coworkers. James Harden, finally, has to do the same thing.
He couldn’t do it in Houston, Brooklyn or Philadelphia, all cities with much higher arson rates in their post-Harden days thanks to all the bridges he burned on the way out. Los Angeles might be his last chance to do it, but it also might be his best chance to do it. He’s playing with Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, for Christ’s sake.
If he can relinquish his self-centered (and now dated) idea of success in LA, and buy into the idea that his, Leonard’s, George’s, Russell Westbrook’s and Tyron Lue’s successes are all intertwined rather than insular… then maybe, maybe, fucking maybe this can work.
An introductory press conference in which Harden claimed that he “is the system” wherever he plays, immediately followed by five straight losses, shows me pretty convincingly that no revelations have taken place.
The Clips have lost to Brooklyn, New York, Memphis, Dallas and Denver since adding James Harden. The Strictly Hooper lineups aren’t working. The ball is getting stuck on offense and few Clippers — least of all Harden— can be bothered to call out of defensive assignment, much less dive for a loose ball or give an extra effort. James Harden is wiping his shoes like the antagonist in a high school drama movie, airballing threes, then getting shots deleted by Bismack Biyombo. That’s not a hypothetical, either. It actually happened.
Harden is holding onto an idea. He believes his success begets team success, and the only way to achieve anything as a team is through him. For about the past decade, that notion hasn’t been erroneously far-fetched. He was, once, a generationally effective offensive hub. He averaged more points per game in 2018-19 than Steph Curry or LeBron James ever have in a season. There was a time where his success did dictate his team’s ceiling. That time has passed. Does he know that?
Ang-Russ Tully. Angus Tull-sbrook. Close Enough.
Russell Westbrook was the system, too. For a long time.
I don’t know how kind history will be to Russ—he played an oft-reckless, oft-inefficient brand of basketball that Stat Boys will tell you did not “equate to winning.” Maybe they’re right, I don’t know. I failed at least half of my high school math classes.
Russ also single-handedly caused NBA fans to start thinking triple-doubles are less impressive because he, personally, recorded too many of them.
Note: The triple-double discourse that occurred when Russ was recording one essentially every night was so funny. Any other player getting one triple-double was cause for celebration, but Russ stacking them up somehow made each one of his less impressive?
His stint with the Lakers looked like the tail-end of his career. And then it wasn’t. Russ has been revitalized since putting on the other LA jersey.
Because, like Angus Tully, he kind of had nowhere else to go. Military school, in this instance, is… retirement? The Chinese Basketball Association?
Also like Angus Tully, I’m still scared that Russ is a bit of a loose cannon, capable of making their situations crumble in an instant. But for the time being, he seems to have found his place within a team system. Russ, on the surface at least, appears to understand that in 2023, the Russell Westbrook System is not winning an NBA title. (Even though it was pretty goddamn fun.)
Ok, And Then What?
The last four years of Clippers basketball have been predicated solely on “if’s.” And if you think that adding James Harden into the mix will result in forest fire instead of fireworks, well, I can’t blame you.
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But if Harden can find his place within a team with goals that isn’t just going to sit around and tickle each other because of how happy they are to have James Harden on the roster, then yes, I do think, foolishly, the Clippers can still, in the face of six straight losses, be a force in the West. If. If. If.
Paul Giamatti’s character in The Holdovers sacrificed something of his own in order to help someone, and it ended up freeing him, too. The new-look Los Angeles Clippers need James Harden to sacrifice a few things— perhaps most importantly, the faulty idea that in 2023, he is still “The System” instead of simply a very good NBA player— and maybe they can have a Fireworks In The Kitchen moment this season. Or something. Just watch the movie.
PS: If you have no idea what’s going on here… it’s this!