Bryan Fuller / MGoBlog
Tropes about white basketball players – specifically smaller white players – are an inextricable part of basketball discourse, particularly at the college level. Take Aaron Craft, a very good (but inherently limited) player in his own right, who was incessantly inflated by platitudes about toughness, grittiness, the will to win, and all of those tired concepts that fail to explain the eminently explainable.* There’s something about that tiny white guy with immaculate hair, one who was the hometown hero of Everytown U.S.A., the Prom King of Everytown High, that kid who you look at and feel compelled to suggest a better hobby – chess maybe? – but that kid can ball, he really can, even though you know there’s no way in hell he’s going to make it to the NBA because look at him.
*For example, Aaron Craft was a great defender because of his amazing technique and lateral quickness. He was a very good player because of that tenacious defense. He wasn’t capable of somehow lugging the Ohio State offense to solid efficiency mark as a senior because of his leadership abilities once he was thrust into a feature role with players who weren’t as good as the ones he’d played with before. In the end, Craft’s offensive skill-set was lacking and no amount of “intangibles” would fix that.
Spike Albrecht fits that trope so well. His story is well-chronicled: he went to prep school in hopes of netting an elusive D-I scholarship offer, eventually managed to find one because of an amazing confluence of opportunity and luck, and played well on the big stage. He’s little – particularly relative to other basketball players – plays point guard, and if you’d like to play the “white basketball” word association game, you’ll find plenty of appropriate adjectives: scrappy (sure), heady (fine), feisty (yeah), dependable (why not). Spike Albrecht is just a blue-collar guy who heads to the court 9-to-5 every week, Monday-through-Friday, hard hat on his head and lunchpail in hand because he’s a company man and no sir, he doesn’t need the double overtime, he’s just here for the love of the game. He’s even from Indiana, if you want to throw Hoosiers in there, go right ahead. His given name – Michael – wasn’t enough, he’s “Spike” because, evidently, he wouldn’t ever take off his baseball spikes as a kid.
You have to talk about that magical first half in Atlanta when you talk about Spike. He assured that, with every time he appeared in a game, for the rest of his life, someone would mention the one half he lived a basketball fever dream and became somewhat of a legend. It’s almost comical. Trey Burke, the consensus National Player of the Year, has to exit the game with early foul trouble and his backup – the guy that the announcers barely research for their pregame notes – checks in, just to hold steady and “Oh God, just please keep the game close until Trey gets back, Spike, please.” Louisville runs a vicious trapping press defense and Michigan’s backup point guard is a true freshman that looks like he was plucked right out of the makeshift student section behind the Michigan basket.
That’s it right there. That’s every suburban kid in every flyover state who rubs his hands together to keep them warm, who navigates the patches of ice in the driveway, who dribbles that ball outside, by himself, as he counts 5, 4, 3, 2… and throws the ball at the hoop as he yells 1. Spike was the unheralded recruit who managed to find his way to a major program, managed to find his way onto the floor at the freakin’ Georgia Dome, and just decided to go for it* instead of simply “managing” the game.
*The behind-the-back pull-up three in Russ Smith’s face (Russ Smith was probably the best defender in college hoops that year) was Spike’s ultimate I’m-playing-out-of-my-mind-let’s-test-if-this-is-a-dream-lol-yep-it-is moment in that entire sequence.
The story ended and the plucky underdog who came out of nowhere to play the game of his life eventually lost the Big Game. He didn’t even get the girl afterwards either (she’s dating another athlete now).
* * *
If that was Act One of Spike Albrecht’s career, it was a hell of an Act One. It probably won’t ever be beaten, because how can it? Still, Spike left that game with three years of eligibility and, to little surprise, has cemented himself as a valuable cog in Michigan’s thrilling (and more importantly, successful) basketball machine. Trey Burke, like many of today’s college basketball heroes, scurried to the NBA at the first good opportunity – and rightfully so, at that – and in stepped highly-touted freshman Derrick Walton to fill the vacancy on the depth chart at PG #1.
It’s easy – and hell, perhaps it’s appropriate – for us to shoehorn Spike into the “backup point guard” role. Michigan can experiment with two-PG lineups (though watch out for the lack of size on defense!); the Wolverines can rely on him to ably step in to stop the bleeding if Derrick Walton is struggling, in foul trouble, or limited by injury; there will be in-game situations tailor-made for Spike and Spike alone; he can run the offense, pass the ball, avoid turnovers, and hit open jumpers. That’s fine.
Still, Spike Albrecht won the game on Tuesday night. He won it with 11 points, 9 rebounds, 3 steals, no turnovers; he won it with this shot (via UMHoops) Syracuse isn’t the type of team that role players tend to feast against: they turn the half-court into a quagmire, force opponents into futile and tentative pass and shot fakes around the perimeter, and generally smother most foes into submission. This Syracuse team isn’t as fearsome as past iterations, but they’re pretty good and they’re probably good enough to avoid having some inconsequential role player beat them. That’s not unfortunate for Michigan: Spike proved that he’s definitively good.
Spike made Crisler roar on Tuesday night. He was deft and incisive, piercing through the zone with relative ease and making the right decisions once he was surrounded by lanky wings, bulldog guards, and a huge rim protector. To distort the zone is to beat it, and Spike’s ability to manipulate the positioning of Syracuse’s defense is the primary reason why Michigan saw an offensive improvement in the second half. He also made three shots from outside the arc – including the game-winner.
More than winning the game, more than hitting that big shot, more than being maybe the best player on the floor that night against a college basketball blue-blood, this made me jump up and down in my seat, made me yell and clap:
Ricky Doyle deserves a ton of credit for a) finishing the opportunity set up by a truly gorgeous pass, b) managing to posterize Rakeem Christmas in the process, and c) make the free throw to complete the and-one. Well Done.
That’s some Steve Nash shit.
Spike attempted a behind-the-head pass (which, if memory serves, resulted in a flubbed Mark Donnal layup) and literally dribbled around the paint a few times in another game so far this season, but this play – a seemingly effortless play that was both audacious and completely necessary – in context, was something else. Firstly, Spike Albrecht is not, nor will he ever be, Steve Nash, a surefire Hall of Famer and one of the more exciting players ever to play the game. Still, there’s been a decidedly Nash-esque quality to Spike’s game this season, even if it’s a $29.99 photo print of an original masterpiece. It’s not hard to envision Spike Albrecht watching hours of Nash highlights on Youtube as a middle-school kid and trying out that nonsense at practice or on the driveway.
People love to compare white athletes to other white athletes (Wes Welker! David Eckstein!) and those comparisons often feel forced, trite, and lazy. I know, I just compared Spike to a white player. And Spike fits the stereotype of the undersized and overachieving white guard, that guy who always hits the big shot and has no prayer of making it to the league and dammit why won’t you graduate already, aren’t you like 26?(7) Zack Novak and Stu Douglass were that guy; John Beilein led a small company of that guy to the Elite Eight while at West Virginia; Bo Ryan has built an evil machine deep in the bowels of the Kohl Center that pops out one or two of that guy every November.
*That guy isn’t necessarily undersized, overachieving, white, or a guard, but all of those qualities certainly helps one make a case for being that guy. Everybody has one in mind.
Spike’s going to be that guy eventually. He’s currently the elder statesman on the team, but he has almost two entire years of eligibility left in a Michigan uniform. He still has plenty of basketball to give – unlike several players capable of singular brilliance (the Nik Stauskases and Trey Burkes), he won’t be a fleeting season’s worth of memories. I suspect that we’ll have another two years of Spike attempting insane passes that look almost indifferent and while his moments of genius will be much fewer and further in between than those from the stars of the college basketball world, it will be incredibly fun to wait and watch what Spike will do next. At the very least, he’ll probably hit about 40% of his threes, he’ll probably post a gaudy assist-to-turnover ratio, and he’ll probably be a solid player at worst, on the whole.
At the end of his career, that magical night in Atlanta will be remembered most by everyone and the narrative of the little, under-recruited benchwarming freshman and his perfectly-timed microwave scoring will be his legacy. Despite the overall success Michigan has had recently, there haven’t been many players who make dazzling passes like Spike did on Tuesday night. Darius Morris did (and as an ardent D-Mo homer, I remember those plays vividly), though his felt almost arrogant, and, as a result, slightly different than Spike’s. I can’t wait to see how our diminutive, floppy-haired backup point guard will try to channel the spirit of Steve Nash.