James, Wade, and Bosh Land in Miami

The biggest disappointment for me is that it’s Miami. If you believe in fairness in these things, that city just doesn’t deserve it. Miami’s a notoriously bad sports town. Even when the Marlins were winning World Series, they could hardly sell out. When the University of Miami’s football team or the Miami Dolphins drop in the win column, so does the interest of their fans.

It’s a city that, for better or worse, will ignore you unless you win big. And, if you win big, they ignore you anyway.

The enthusiasm of Cleveland fans has been disproportionate to the success of its franchises. Their title hopes in the 1990s were squashed by Michael Jordan’s Bulls teams. The Cleveland Indians held the MLB sellout record, at 455 games, between 2001, the end of the streak, and 2008, when Boston surpassed them. The Indians have three AL Penants, since winning their last World Series in 1948. When the Cavaliers won the lottery seven years ago, and the Akron-based “chosen one” was available, divine providence seemed to have rewarded their enduring faith.

Unfortunately, fairness has nothing to do with it. Miami freed up the cap space, and Dwayne Wade went out and convinced his Olympic teammates to join him in South Beach. What might define Wade’s career is his willingness to “kiss the ring” of the ringless king. James made a spectacle of his decision, making his decision to abandon Cleveland all the more embarrassing and emphatic. Clearly, James’s ego far outweighs his production to this point, and the chemistry in Miami will depend on whether Bosh and Wade, and the entire Heats organization, are able to placate him.

The Suns Make Disciplined and Elegant Protest

On Wednesday night, the Suns choose to don the "Los Suns" jersey, as a sign of protest to Arizona's new law.

The Suns are owned by Robert Sarver, whose family built a hoteling empire in Tucson. Sarver himself made a fortune in banking. Though the owner has gotten flack for frugality, Sarver made a classy and brilliant move here, by introducing these jerseys during a playoff game.

Arizona was also subject to another protest in 1991. The NFL moved Super Bowl XXVII to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena as a reaction against the state's decision to reject recognition of Martin Luther King Day.

Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain

I wanted to note that these "sports debates" columns concern only debates that are "two-pronged" or binary. That is to say, I won't have a "Best Second Baseman Ever" entry. Rather, I'll be posting entries that break down into either / or categories, such as...

Better Player: Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain

This debate transcends an interest in basketball, because (a.) Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships in thirteen years, and (b.) Chamberlain was a dominant scorer, with the only 100-point game ever. As time goes by, both of these achievements stand as almost untouchable, but not entirely unbelievable, given a few factors. During Russell's era, there were almost a third of the teams in the NBA today, and getting to a finals (and winning a championship) were much easier than in the current long plow. In terms of Chamberlain's accomplishment, though he didn't have the benefit of a three-point opportunity, he also had a coach and a team that deferred to him, to a fault.

Basically, the debate comes down to a number of biases that typically have little to do with Russell or Chamberlain. There's the defense vs. offense bias. The Lakers or Celtics bias. The sullen superstar (Russell) or the gregarious trash-talker (Chamberlain). Which makes the discussion all the more compelling, of course. (For the record, I have always leaned toward Russell for those reasons, and more.)

Few fans actually remember Russell, and, when he does poke his head out, he makes inexplicable public speeches, such as "Keven Garnett more than my own son!" or the like. When LeBron James recently decided to change numbers, he chose the 6 jersey, to honor Michael Jordan (and his 23). James and others didn't seem to mind that Russell was being slighted for Jordan. Chamberlain, on the other hand, has always been on the edge of the public's consciousness.

First Entry: The Great Sports Debates

I was reading an archived Slate.com review of Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August. I haven’t actually gotten to Bissinger’s book, an account of a three-game series between the Cardinals and the Cubs from the eyes of manager Tony LaRussa, but the review fascinated me. The article, whose author skewered Joe Girardi, was brimming with contempt for Kissinger’s anti-Moneyball, old-school ranting. This got me thinking about some of the great ongoing sports debates. (It also doesn’t hurt that I’m still working on Bill Simmons’s tome, The Book of Basketball, which seems to have a list for every miniscule interest: Top Ten Freeloading Point Guards, Top Fifty Centers From Southern Idaho, etc. I mean that as a deep compliment, by the way.) I think I’m going to put together a list, with one entry per day of the ten greatest sports debates, and then rank them at the end. So here’s the first entry:

The Moneyball Crew vs. Traditionalists

Since Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game in 2003, a theoretical divide has cut through most baseball fans. There’s the school of thought (that Lewis, in fact, shortchanged) that managers have a larger role in producing a winner than a general manager and that RBI, steals, and batting average are high-value stats. Lewis, and Oakland general manager Billy Beane, went on to criticize these “traditionalists” by foregrounding their subjective biases, prizing on-base percentage, and seem to minimize the importance of in-game player management. Frankly, I admire Lewis’s book, but its influence on me has less to do with my thinking on baseball and more to do with my thinking on “group think” and player evaluation. In the intervening conversations between the sides, traditionalists have pointed out Beane’s shortcomings in wins and losses, while the Moneyball crew have pointed out the success of his proteges (including Epstein of the Red Sox).

In Which I Examine My Reticence to Embrace the Olympics

Of all sporting events, it’s the Olympics that always disappoint me. The disappointment is always preceded by an earnest attempt at trying it “one more time:” you have to concede that the shortcoming was your own.

But the disappointment is the same. As it is with health-care debate, Chinese food, and the television show 24.

Perhaps, I’ve wondered, it’s the strange choices that broadcasters make. This year, NBC delayed airing events and then puzzled everyone by capping the event with none other than. . . the season premiere of The Marriage Ref. (Re: television show plugs. What is a product plug, if I actually bash the product? A blug?)

On the other hand, there was that 1,400-year dry spell of corporate endorsements and effusive celebratory speeches and ESPN highlights. Now, there’s an Olympics--winter, summer, gay, special, metaphorical--every six or seven weeks.

Maybe, it has to do with the athletes. Unlike basketball prodigies and other sports figures, Olympic athletes toil in seeming futility for a dozen years, until the breathing beast of 24-7 news coverage turns its attention to them. Lindsey Vonn, the chosen starlet of the 2010 Winter Games, is remarkable for how perfectly average she is. I felt the same way about Michael Phelps: could this incredible talent and enormous stage have happened to someone else?

The way Olympic athletes take the biggest stage of their lives just doesn’t fit our moment any more. For a while, Vonn, Phelps, and, in another sport, Kobe Bryant have tried to milk the international sports star image / multimillion-dollar product spokesman mold that Michael Jordan established two decades ago. Restrained, ordinary, bland.

It could be said that Vonn and Phelps have a different set of pressures in individual sports (and under-appreciated sports, at that). Neither of them has to inspire trust in teammates or incorporate themselves in larger team dynamics. Charisma is not something that Vonn has to cultivate, or at least not in the same way that a Drew Brees or Brett Favre do.

Then you have LeBron James’s winking post-modernism. Here’s an athlete who will experiment with his image in Nike commercials and parody the media pose in his pre-game rituals. That’s an athlete that will connect to an audience that has tired of the rote habits of Jordan’s crass, measured image. That’s a 21st century athlete.

Records, Records, Records

Records have a rare currency in the sports world. The mystique of the unprecedented, the “unbroken record,” surrounds any and all athletic competition. Seemingly, these records offer us a quantifiable method to weigh achievement and frame moments in an historical sequence. But then the records themselves gain a foggy mystery and an academic remoteness. The mystique of vibrant sports figures begin to dim, beside the solemnly collected and assiduously studied data. Records themselves become the Rosetta Stone for understanding the language of sports.

In terms of the mystique of records, the last three years have been a revelatory period in speed sailing. In October of 2008, a French kitesurfer, Sebastien Cattelan, cracked an unprecedented 50 knots at the Lüderitz Speed Challenge. Within a month, the 50-knot threshold became the equivalent of a four-minute mile. At once undreamt-of, now suddenly very attainable. More fascinating than the record itself is another Frenchman, Alain Thébault, a defiant, self-proclaimed “Icarus of the sea,” who has pushed the record to 51.4 knots, as of September 2009. When our historical consciousness fades temporarily, the mystique of our “Icarus” grows.



By this summer, the NBA might see a very different barometer of “unprecedence” forged. Last summer, Boston Celtics power forward Rasheed Wallace was brought in to compliment the defensive prowess of the team. Celtics fans also hoped his diminished playing time would keep his intensity high but his ejections and technical fouls low. Throughout his fifteen years in the league, Wallace has most resembled Thor, the mythological, thunder-clapping, and bearded Anglo-Saxon.

When introduced to those fans, Wallace said that he would accept happily any role that coach Doc Rivers would assign him, as long as it led to victories. Mostly, that’s exactly what he’s done for the aging Eastern Conference contender. This NBA season, Wallace has averaged almost 24 minutes, but with an astonishing fourteen technical fouls. For every five quarters he spends on the court, Wallace gets a technical foul. Likely, he will fall short of his own regular-season record of 41 technicals in a season. But, if he remains on pace (and on the floor), Wall will set a new record for most technical-fouls-per-minutes-on-the-floor. A dubious record, indeed.

A dubious new standard in the world of college recruiting has been estabished, as well. In the first week of February, the University of Florida set a precedent for monopolizing ESPNU 150 recruits: he brought in 15 of them, including four in the top ten. Aside from the usual moral qualms I have about the insulated and upside-down world of college recruiting, I consider the mania around National Signing Day especially misplaced. In fact, Meyer’s recruiting achievement illustrates all the sticky problems with record-breaking.

First, collecting talent does not ordain winning seasons or grabbing championships. Since Pete Carroll’s arrival, the USC program has dominated recruiting, but has never matched the success of 2005, which is almost a half-decade ago. The real significance of accumulating stud high school players or home runs or speed sailing records might pale beside the furor that the topic initially raises.


Secondly, and more importantly, you have to consider the “Michael E. Mann Factor.” In 2001, Mann, a celebrated climatologist and professor at Penn State University, crafted a graph (known as “the hockey stick graph”) that gave a powerfully visual weight to the polemical environmentalist’s position of global warming. It would feature prominently in Al Gore’s book and movie An Inconvenient Truth. Last year, though, private emails sent by Mann and circulated on the web seemed to give credence to the fact that he (and perhaps other climatologists) had distorted evidence to verify the existence of climate change and alarm the public. Now, this discovery does not shake the scientific foundation for climate change research, but it does illustrate how even someone professionally invested in objectivity can be willing to distort evidence to fit a preconceived notion or even a widely-held professional consensus.

Let me explain how the Michael E. Mann Factor weighs in college recruiting. A consensus is established around a program or a coach, simply as a talent evaluator or as talent developer. Since the evidence on a recruit’s ability is weak, recruits rise and fall depending on how their stock is graded by those very coaches and programs. As at a roulette table, three-star athletes are transformed into five-star guys, and five-star players slip into mediocrity.

Again, a consensus is formed around a recruit and even a region (Florida is talent-rich, Connecticut is not). Since Florida coach Urban Meyer is a great recruiter, the ESPNU and Rivals.com recruitniks will always rate his classes highly. Even though their previous estimations had those same athletes rated low. (As long as he happens to win championships, too.) And, since the recruitniks will always rate him highly, the legend of coach Urban Meyer as a great recruiter grows. (It also helps that he lauds his recruits, like a gushing mother hen. Meyer has suggested this 2010 crop is, to a person, the finest individuals, the brightest academic stars, and the best football players available, before they ever play a meaningful down or attend a college class. Remember, too, that the last time he brought in classes this talented, 2006 and 2007, those athletes accumulated a collective rap sheet of about twenty arrests.)

Ironically, this is how great programs are brought low: hubris. Just ask Bobby Bowden.

Arenas and Dangerous: A Review of A Public Response

Gilbert Arenas has had a quick fall from grace among the national media. Three years ago, he rose to prominence as a quirky star, in the mold of Pete Maravich, and grabbed a $111 million dollar contract. He spent two years battling injuries, and last month it was discovered that he brought multiple guns into his Washington Wizards' locker room.

As the story has been told, Arenas grew up in an unstructured home, after his mother abandoned him in a crack house. He played under Lute Olsen at Arizona, and then broke into the NBA. During the Wizards' deep run in the 2006-2007, he was a clutch performer that stole victories with last-minute shots.

His rise and fall have inspired a number of great columns. Unfortunately, a 2006 column written by Fred Barnes is called "The Assassin." It typifies the "Pete Maravich angle."

The reaction against Arenas is founded on the genuine stupidity and criminal stupidity of Arenas. But, typical of knee jerk reactions, there's something dishonest about some of the responses. The smartest and most humane criticism I've read is by Mike Wise, at the Washington Post. In his column, he examines how Arenas got to his current situation. Wise has also added a discussion of the fallout.