Can We Do It With the Lights On?
Arkansas Razorbacks' Zvonimir Ivišić is heating up with back-to-back twenty-point games. Can he catch fire and make it three straight?
It’s been a busy past week. We watched a blowout Super Bowl, witnessed our Google maps update to reflect a name change to the Gulf of America, survived Valentine’s Day, got two wins for the Diamond Hogs (the baseball team, not to be confused with the new Razorback Foundation donor level) as college baseball season officially began, failed to finish eating our sandwich but fought hard against #2 Alabama, and kicked off an exciting weekend with both the NBA All-Star festivities and the 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live.
But we also witnessed a real-life lightbulb moment. This phrase is rooted in the connection between the Germanic words light and enlighten, which meant to inspire or dawn on. The first direct connection between having an enlightening idea and the lightbulb came in 1935 in a Betty Boop cartoon in which her grandpa, Grampy, was drawn wearing a hat with a lightbulb on top. Every time he had a good idea the light would come on.
But it wasn’t until 1974, that someone actually described this phenomenon as a lightbulb moment. That’s when comedian and tv personality Dick Cavett described getting an idea: “It did strike me one day, like the light-bulb moment in a comic strip.”
What we saw this week was the lightbulb lighting up on top of Zvonimir Ivišić’s head. He seemed to finally realize that no one can guard him, and if he wants, he can take over a game.
Big Z was averaging 7.8 points per game going into the week. He then dropped 25 against Alabama and 27 against LSU. He also added 10 rebounds, 4 steals, and 7 blocks in that two-game stretch. And he shot 57% from downtown, making 8 three-pointers.
Maybe, just maybe, Max was right about this kid. The 7’2” Croatian sensation only recently turned 21. I think he has a very bright future ahead of him. I’ll stick with my theme and give you two more lightbulb metaphors.
Coach Cal could be the next Thomas Edison
Despite popular misconception, Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb, he just improved it and commercialized it. Filament lighting had already been patented by Sir Humphry Davy and Joseph Swan, but Edison was able to make a more practical incandescent light bulb by using a carbon filament that lasted longer. He then doubled down by investing in electrical generation and distribution (can’t sell lightbulbs if homes don’t have electricity) and creating Edison Electric Light Company to mass produce and market his “invention”.
Coach Cal is far from the first basketball coach to realize that European basketball players can be very disruptive, especially the centers that play like guards. The NBA has been exploiting this for decades (Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Luka Dončić to name a few). But Cal is one of the first to bring these players to college basketball instead of straight to the NBA.
It’s common in Europe for these guys to start playing pro basketball at age 14 (like Big Z did). These guys could make a few million dollars before ever being able to go to the NBA, and it was lucrative for the European teams to invest in these players early because their contracts would have buy-out clauses that meant NBA teams had to pay them to have the right to draft them (for example the Mavericks had to pay Real Madrid $2mm to draft Luka).
But now the landscape is different. NIL money at top college basketball programs is more than what these kids make playing professionally in Europe, which makes college basketball attractive to them. And further, going to college doesn’t trigger the buyout clause in their European contracts.
Coach Cal is already the biggest commercialized brand in college basketball. If he’s able to springboard Big Z into an NBA Draft pick, this may pave the road for even more European talent to flow through the Ozarks enroute to the NBA.
Big Z needs to prove he’s more like the Centennial Light than a flash in the pan
I hate changing lightbulbs. It feels like I never have the right one on hand that I need and when I get to Home Depot I can’t remember if our other lights are warm glow or warm white or how to convert watts to lumens. I’ll haul out the latter and get the bulb changed and then it seems like not a month goes by and it (or one like it) will burn out and I’ll have to start the whole process over again.
Early forms of man-made lighting all burned hot and fast. They produced a lot of light and then burned out. They were flash-in-the-pan sources of light. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, there is a lightbulb in a Livermore, California fire station that has been shining bright since it was plugged in in 1901. Yes, that’s 124 years without ever having to endure the pain of changing a lightbulb. It’s known as the Centennial Light.
Scientists believe the key to its success is both the craftsmanship of being built well and its consistency. It’s never turned off or on. It just burns constant. It turns out the extra energy it takes to start and stop is what burns most bulbs out prematurely.
So what does Big Z need to do to keep this scoring streak alive? For him too, the key will be consistency. If you look at the game splits this season, his key appears to be making it into the starting lineup. He more than doubles his output in the 10 games he has started this year (including the past 4 in which the Hogs are 3-1).
Now we get to see if the lightbulb above Big Z’s head remains burning bright as the Arkansas Razorbacks take on the #8 Texas A&M Aggies. While it doesn’t cover the same topic, I simply couldn’t get this 2005 Benjy Davis Project song out of my head this week as I wondered if we can “Do It With the Lights On”?
Can we do it with the lights on
Oh, we do it so good
Oh, when we do it with the lights on
Oh, we do it so good
'Cause seeing is believing and I'm leaving if you don't think we should
-WPS