The story goes that Jesse Lott made these figures while watching the 1986 NBA finals between the Houston Rockets and the Boston Celtics. Lott, himself a legendary basketball player in a local pickup league of artists, captures the frenetic action of the game, though this group resembles not so much basketball players as Jazzercise mimes or interpretive dancers. No matter. Their gnarled, gargoyle-like faces and wildly gesticulating poses add up to a sublimely chaotic whole. It looks a lot like how life sometimes feels. Lott’s splendid monument to the now-distant series (which the Rockets, ahem, lost) lives on, transcending it.

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