Phish Wrote A Song About Memphis Guard Darius Washington, Jr. Missing Two Huge Free Throws In The ’05 C-USA Tourney Final, Because… It’s Phish

Rob Fox10 years ago

Phish has never been a band to write what one could call normal–or, most times, even coherent–songs. After all, one of the band’s most famous creations is Gamehenge, an acid trip of a senior project (originally titled The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday) written by lead singer, guitarist, and crunchy ginger Trey Anastasio. It involves a lizard king with a very plain name, a executioner named AC/DC Bag, a famous mockingbird, and an old colonel climbing a mountain or something. I love Phish, and even I don’t really know what the hell is going on most of the time.

That the band chose to write about former Memphis guard Darius Washington, Jr.’s missed free throws with no time left in the championship game of the 2005 Conference USA Tournament, thus costing the John Calipari-coached Tigers a berth in the NCAA Tournament, shouldn’t really be any more surprising than a song about an ugly, knife-wielding, dancing pig or the brother of a wolfman, but it somehow is. At least with a song about running like an antelope, you can pretty safely assume the lyrics were the amalgamation of whatever ideas they sucked out of a bong chamber and happened to stick to the wall they threw said shit against. Darius Washington, Jr. though? This is what happens when you get high and fall down the YouTube rabbit hole after searching “sports sad,” I guess.

I liked the song, titled “The Line.” It’s on Phish’s upcoming album “Fuego.” Take a listen. It’s pretty casually brutal right away, with the line “A hero’s what I’m not.”

And here, in case you don’t remember it–because unless you went to Louisville or Memphis, you probably don’t–is Darius Washington, Jr.’s choke job.

Washington, Jr. plays basketball in Turkey for the club Olin Edirne these days. If I was a basketball player, I’d probably rather have Kanye West rap about me being a badass, but then again, what kind of asshole complains about having a song written in his honor?

[via Rolling Stone]