The FIBA World Cup, A Sleeping Giant

The FIBA World Cup gets no respect.  No esteem. No love.  What is the history of this tournament?  What is its lasting legacy?  Does anyone in the United States really care about basketball's international stage? Well, after listening to the Ringer Basketball Podcast I'd have to say... uh, no not really. The latest pod from Justin Verrier and Dan Devine, both of whom I like very much, featured these assertions: “I don’t think I watched a single game from the 2014 Olympics.”  (The Olympics took place in 2012 and 2016, not 2014.) “The US didn’t Medal in the 2006 World Cup.” (They actually won Silver that year, they didn’t medal in the 2002 debacle.) It frustrates me that these inaccuracies are just acceptable, that no one seems to care about the details.  If a sports writer was off two years citing playoff results of any NBA season it would be sacrilege.  And yes, I love Bill Simmons and the Ringer. I am a huge fan, (although they do still inexplicably employ Chris Vernon, who once called John Paxson, John PaxTon, and Dirk Nowitski, Dirk NowiNksi, which may seem like minimal mistakes, but are both legitimately horrendous mistakes for anyone to make, who has paid attention to the NBA, ever.  And this guy is paid to pay attention. Please Bill Simmons, save the fantastic Kevin O’Connor from the Mismatch!). ANYWAY... sorry. I digress. First-World Problems.  

The reigning NBA MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo 

The FIBA World Cup gets no appreciation. No reverence. No regard.  Every four years, it has every single right to be at least as big, worldwide, as the NCAA Tournament is every single year in the United States.  It has everything. Huge stars, great teams, international intrigue, national pride, fast games, extraordinary backdrops and storylines, and the knockout rounds are mesmerizing.  People should fill out their brackets and try to win their office pools like they do for every March Madness. People should be captivated, watching with electrified intensity. The stakes are so high! People should be enjoying beautiful basketball in the September doldrums. But no one does, and honestly it seems like no one in the United States really even knows that it is even happening.  Every four years I’m absolutely befuddled that this tourney is so overlooked, in 2002 it was held in Indianapolis (a basketball mecca in the US) and basically no one came. I'm not sure why, but for some reason, US basketball fans don't seem to care about it. This event is a sleeping giant.  

The Aussie Boomers had their best showing yet in this World Cup

Between 1950 and 2010, the World Cup was known as the FIBA World Championship, before the powers that be very wisely re-branded to become the FIBA World Cup in 2014.  Then they moved the event to an odd year to avoid it being played in the same summer as the infinitely more popular FIFA World Cup. This may have seemed smart, but has been awful for USA Basketball.  Not many NBA stars wanted to participate this year, because most of them have their eyes on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and another grueling NBA season coming up this fall and next. A commitment to USA basketball this summer meant two years in a row of disrupted off-seasons, and that is a lot to ask of anyone. Regardless of the American hardships though, the table had been set for a world class tournament, and other nations around the world do care, at least more than we do.  Basketball is more popular than ever around the world; more popular than Cricket, Rugby, Hockey, Tennis, American and Aussie-Rules Football, and Baseball, and there are dozens of spectacular foreign born players wowing people stateside in the NBA every season. For most of those players the concept of representing their respective nations in the World Cup is wraught with extraordinary meaning.  Many of them love the camaraderie and the passion, and this platform is the perfect way to bring their artform to prominence. No other country can boast the basketball talent that the United States has, (most Americans will immediately mention the 20 or so NBA stars that declined to play on this year’s squad) but this year alone there were at least 10 teams that could beat the US head to head.  It is a new world indeed.      

The NBA Junkies saw the US vs Spain in August.

I did come to the 2019 FIBA World Cup with some reservations.  I’ve certainly enjoyed the event in years past, but it was usually the concept that I loved, while the actual practice might have been lacking.  The FIBA game is different from the NBA game, but in many ways that makes it more interesting. 10 minute quarters speed things along, and only 5 fouls are allowed before fouling out.  Any ball on the rim is live to be cleared off without being called for goal-tending, and backcourt violations are different while in-bounding.  These slight rule differences are certainly obstacles for American players but clearly the more difficult issue, as I mentioned, is convincing NBA players to give up valuable off-season time. The Olympics has historically been held in much higher regard for Americans than any other international competitions, so the World Cup has always been viewed as an afterthought. And no one is under any obligation to represent their country, obviously, so by comparison these must seem like the darkest of days.

Pop unveiled his "comfy coaching" style

All of the world’s nations have their issues, but the US certainly has just as many, if not more issues, than the worst of them.  Does it really mean anything to have those three letters on your jersey? Ideologically, it should but no one can force these things. Can you imagine if Marc Gasol or Matthew Delevadova felt about their nations’ government the way that some of these NBA stars probably feel about how their families have historically been treated in the United States?  I bet they wouldn’t be representing their country on an international stage. Just talk to Ennis Kantor about how the Turkish government has treated his family in retaliation for him speaking out against the current ruling party in Turkey. I guess the main point about sports is that it’s supposed to be separate from politics and devoid of the diplomatic drama. (The US skipping the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the Soviets skipping the Los Angeles games in 1984 didn’t do anything but hurt those athletes.)  Sometimes we have to suck it up and endure hardship for the greater good, and sports can be at the forefront of inspiring progressive change.  

US handled Spain that night, but Spain got the last word

All in all, what I saw of this years FIBA World Cup was fantastic.  Brazil, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Turkey, Poland, and Russia are very solid clubs and clearly on the up and up.  Czechia, Serbia, Australia, France, and Argentina were the class of the tournament, and of course Spain proved to be the best in the World.  The US team struggled to adapt to a bigger style game than is currently the predominant style in the NBA, had some injuries, and finished a disappointing, and worst ever, seventh place. Coach Popovich made no excuses though after the tournament, adding that other countries had stars missing from their respective teams as well. Most expect the US to send an extremely talented group to Tokyo in 2020 and reassert the US position as the world’s best, but at this tournament the playing field was as level as ever, and it was glorious.  The Spanish national team is now reigning supreme as the World Cup Gold Medalists, and most Americans that I know can’t believe it. Well, those that are even aware.    

New Celtic, Kemba Walker lead the US squad

I’ve heard a number of Americans in the past couple weeks say that maybe the FIBA World Cup should just end, that the Olympics should be the only international basketball tournament of record.  This idea seems completely ridiculous to me. With basketball continuing to grow to the point of obsession all over the world, how could only one championship every four years be sufficient? What should be discussed is any and every way possible to make this event a whole lot better.  The NBA has taken a major backseat to FIBA over the years, and why not? It’s not the NBA’s tournament, but their stars get invaluable exposure to thirsty markets all over the world. The NBA has benefited enormously from international tournaments since the Dream Team in 1992, and it’s time the League gave a little back.  With few exceptions, all of the best players in these tournaments are NBA players, so why isn’t The World Cup a joint venture between FIBA and the NBA? Step up Adam Silver and NBA Governors; build this tournament up to the level it should be. What could be better than a proper International tournament showing off the best of the world's greatest game? There's nothing else going on in August and September anyway! Maybe move it back to an even year and just schedule it to be a month or so after the FIFA World Cup. There are so many solutions possible and so much potential for this tournament to be incredible.  Ah yes... the FIBA World Cup gets no deference. No distinction. No fervor. But, I’m telling you, considering what it could be, this event is absolutely a sleeping giant.

Ricky Rubio, as MVP, intensified his International Basketball legacy.  Now he heads to Phoenix to start the NBA season, for the opposite type of basketball experience  

The Stoics...

In my regular life I’m kind of superstitious.  If I really want something to happen, and it is completely out of my control, or even if it is in my control, I won’t make the assertion out loud.  I’d never talk myself up on a court anymore (tennis or hoops) because in the back of my mind I know that the minute I do, my knee will give out.  Or even if it’s something I’m good at, I feel like there’s some mystery involved, and if I am too over-confident about the end product, I will crash and burn. 

Having your hopes and dreams left to chance and to the whims of an unrelenting universe, is par for the course for sports fans, but is it possible that it is for a coach as well?  Thus is the enigma of Erik Spoelstra.  The Miami Heat head coach is a tireless worker.  His attention to detail and devotion to dissecting videos of opposing teams was legendary far before he succeeded Pat Riley as head coach five years ago.  Four NBA Finals appearances and two championships later, it would seem that he and the Miami Heat would have this down to a science by now, but the truth is they don’t.  They’ve had some good luck on their side of course.   And although Miami has been very good the last three years in a watered-down-Eastern Conference, one wonders that if a butterfly had just flapped it’s wings in a different direction somewhere in the mountains outside of Beijing, that Miami would still be chasing that second title, and first since LeBron came to town.

The point isn’t that Miami is a bad basketball team, there are very good, and they deserve the glory for the championships that they’ve won the last two years (especially the first one against OKC.)  But most of their big wins, have that weird intangible quality about them; that they weren’t necessarily deliberate.  It always feels like a rather large percentage of the offensive game was left to chance; what we used to call amoeba offense in high school, albeit run by brilliant offensive basketball talents it is unmistakably good.  That’s good enough to win 7 nights out of 10 in the NBA, but any team that relies on this in the NBA Finals, well, they’re no match for the extremely well oiled machine that is the San Antonio Spurs. 

Obviously, we all know this now, but even two years ago the difference was more than obvious.  In the Spurs beautiful motion offense nothing happens by accident, they are the only team I’ve ever seen in the NBA that almost always gets a good shot.  Their discipline is incredible, regardless of whether it’s the starters, the second team or a mix of both.  And on defense, when they shut down the Eastern Conference champions (Miami) twice in a row on their home floor, there is no chance involved.  That butterfly in Beijing can flap all it wants.

The point is that Gregg Popovich and RC Buford have created a haven in San Antonio that has no rival in modern sports history.       

The Thing About Ball, and Marty McFly's San Antonio Spurs...

The thing about ball is that it always comes back around.  The San Antonio Spurs almost made history last year, coming seconds away from winning a fifth championship over a span of 14 years with the same coach and star player.  But despite last season's crushing defeat at the hands of Miami, the Spurs defied the odds (for what seems like the millionth time,) and made it all the way back to the NBA Finals this year.  And so as fate would have it, here they are again, representing the stellar Western conference against the East's Miami Heat. 

The Spurs always appear to be the better team.  Perfect movement on offense, great team defense, brilliant coaching, and heady play.  They’ve been, over the last fifteen years, the closest thing the NBA has had to the Celtics of the 50’s and 60’s who won 11 championships in 13 years.  The Spurs have been right in the mix every year and although they’ve only actually won four championships (I say only as if most franchises wouldn’t kill for such hardware) they could have won many more.  A bounce here, an injury there, a missed shot here, a heartbreaking-miracle-shot-from-the-other-team there.  San Antonio has been a basketball Utopia for the past 15 years, and contrary to popular opinion, it has been anything but boring.

But the other thing about ball is that there can only be one winner.  It seems so obvious of course, but the way people talk these days, it’s seems that for NBA teams it’s either “championship” or “completely failed season.”  I thought that if the Oklahoma City Thunder hadn’t caught fire on offense in an unprecedented and never-duplicated manner in 2012, the Spurs would have advanced to meet the Heat that year in the Finals, and I think that they would have won that series because the Heat were still searching for their identity.  And we all know how close the Spurs came to winning the Chip last year, thanks to Ray Allen’s contribution which was, very possibly, the greatest shot in NBA history.  So by all accounts, incredibly, instead of Miami gunning for a three-peat this season as is the current reality, it very easily could have been the Spurs in the exact same position.  In the alternate space-time-continuum reality, when Marty wasn’t able to stop Biff, the Spurs very well could be working on championship number seven!  They would have been the Evil Empire, but instead they are the lovable Underdog.  Because that’s yet another thing about ball; everything matters. 

I’m never one to talk about championship-or-nothing as it regards to NBA teams.  I’ve seen far too many extraordinary things happen that so effortlessly seem to nudge history in one direction or another.  The Blazers, Kings, and Suns specifically, could have very easily been champions over the past 15 years, and the Spurs and Celtics could have added Chips to their trophy cases too.  But history remembers the teams who are up when the final horn blows, and Miami has been that team for the last three years.   

So as I find myself at a bar in LA, with equal fans Miami and San Antonio, it’s a perfect time to think legacy.  As far as these poor Laker fans go, and I say poor in the least sympathetic way possible, since they’ve had the greatest success of any NBA team in history, it’s actually kind of an interesting situation at present.  Laker fans want to root against LeBron of course, because he is the obvious heir-apparent to Kobe and is well on his way to usurping the Lakers’ favorite son’s greatness in NBA circles.  But they also, should want to root against Tim Duncan, who has long been a Laker enemy, and who would be a serious threat to Kobe’s “player of the era title,” if he indeed gets a fifth championship.  

So it seems to be kind of a lose-lose for Laker fans, but don’t worry, they’re taking it fine.  Most of them seem to be pulling for San Antonio, because they are the better pure team, and maybe because they feel bad about the Fisher shot (which facilitated a Rule change!) as well as other Shaquille O'Neal related beat-downs, when “Champions” from the East were easy-Pickens.  Those Lakers stomped at least three possible Spurs championships, which would have actually added to San Antonio’s “Marty McFly seven” we talked about earlier!!  Can you imagine?  Russell’s Celtics don’t seem so far off now do they?

Regardless, it seems that current-reality Laker fans are forgiving their past hatreds and actually pulling for the men in silver and black!  I suppose it's because anything would be better than ex-Pat Riley getting yet another Chip in Miami-maroon, and rightfully so.  Things should definitely come back around at some point.  It's the thing about ball.          

So here we are.  Game over.  The Spurs pretty much dominated game three.  They are the best team in basketball, and have been for a few years.  But as Miami has proven, sometimes the better players can skew that, and given enough times through the space-time-continuum, they can alter history. 

Right now though in the NBA, for one reason or another (or more specifically, because of LeBron James,) it’s still Miami’s world.  But the Spurs don't need a hover-board or a flux-capaciter to alter the space-time-continuum.  They just need to stay the course and play the games.
Hill-Valley will never be the same.
Thanks for reading,
Underdogs out!                        

MLK 2014...

Martin Luther King Day, 2014.  We are here today, in a place of unparalleled, yet obviously still incomplete, racial harmony in our country.  But as crazy as it sounds, much of the credit for the progress that has been made, has to go to the game of basketball.  For years the NBA has made the most of this special holiday and with good reason.  Throughout history, basketball has been a huge proponent of highlighting the long process of positive integration among different races in our country, and the future hope to break down barriers among racial stereotypes.  It's a crazy world for sure, but all we can do is our best to make sure that it's as controlled as we can make it.  And sports once again, gives us a platform to do that.  Regardless of upbringing or nationality the best will out.  We learn this over and over.  

Therefore one of the most obvious proponents of racial equality comes with the presentation of NBA basketball.  The game provides for many, on television and otherwise, and all of them deserve it.  At some point they've earned their place amongst the world's greatest game.

The Eastern Conference Non-Achievement Awards...

“It’s been 14 years of silence.  It’s been 14 years of pain.  It’s been 14 years that are gone forever and I’ll never have again.”

                                                                        Guns ‘n Roses - Use Your Illusion II

This long-forgotten song just popped into my head this week, while looking at the Eastern Conference standings in the NBA, which is an absolutely unbelievable sight.  The Lakers, who are the thirteenth team in the West, would be a half-game back of Atlanta for the third spot in the East.  Now that is amazing!
Just look at this.  

I’ve been following this league for much longer than 14 years and even I’ve never seen it this historically bad in the East.  Sure it’s still pretty early in the season so a lot of this ineptitude will even out (because after all, someone has to win these games,) but it’s really just more of the same trend we’ve seen year after year in the Leastern Conference.  Well, for the last 14 that is.

I’ve written many times on this blog before about how incredible it has been that the Eastern Conference has consistently been about half as good as the Western Conference for all of recent memory.  The playoffs for all of the last decade were never really fair, because usually about eight of the best ten teams in the league were in the West.  Every year multiple winning-teams would be left out of the playoffs in the west, while many times, multiple teams with losing records would qualify in the East.  So far this year the West is dominating in inter-conference play with an aggregate record of 67-31, which is a winning percentage of about 67%.  But over the course of the last decade the split has been 59% to 41%. That’s crazy!  And really regardless of the numbers, the eye test has left absolutely no doubt.   So in a professional league of equal footing amongst teams, how is this possible?  When I think about it, it all traces back to one event, 14 seasons ago.    

The Guy who owns the Bobcats

Coming out of the lock-out of 1998-99, the NBA looked very different from what it had looked like previously.  Of course the accelerated 50 game season that followed was the most (or least) entertaining aspect of the situation, later inspiring Phil Jackson to say that the San Antonio Spurs 1999 championship should have an asterisk next to it.  And of course the marketing of the league had to shift dramatically with the second retirement of Michael Jordan, and the end of the Chicago Bulls dynasty, but the true lasting affect of that lockout settlement was the massive changes made to the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players and owners. 

The Exception-al Larry Bird 

The NBA has had a salary cap since the 1983-84 season, but until ‘99 it was a soft cap that allowed teams to exceed the cap up to any amount they wanted when re-signing their own players (via the “Larry Bird exception,”) so in many situations there wasn’t really a cap at all.  But in ‘99 the league capped the amount that could be offered by percentages each year (including the Bird exception,) and for the first time in any American Sports league history, the NBA actually capped the amount an individual player could make, period (based on how long each player had been in the league.)  In addition, the rookie salary scale system was created which even further reduced player salaries, and truly was an ingenious coup for the owners.  It’s not like any current player was going to vote against it, and all of the players it would eventually affect weren’t even in the league yet! (If I recall correctly the only player who voted against it was Kobe.  I love that.)  But regardless, the agreement went through, and the new rules for building teams were extensive and suddenly quite a bit more complicated.      

So what does all this mean?  It means that teams needed to get smarter; they couldn’t rely just on basketball intuition anymore, they needed number crunchers, and salary-cap experts.  They needed to be responsible in their spending.  They had to make smart decisions.  But since that day in ’99 the East has time and time again been the vastly inferior conference.  So can it be that for 14 years, the Eastern Conference teams’ management has just been considerably dumber?  The answer is a resounding yes.   

When teams are bad consistently, it really just means that team management and coaching staffs have been bad consistently, so it’s time to celebrate the east; the NBA’s dumbest conference.  It’s time for the 14-year Eastern Conference Non-Achievement Awards.  Lets happily rank the ineptitude, shall we?

For the sake of these awards we are going to exempt the five Eastern conference teams that have been decent or better over the last 14 years, Miami, Indiana, Detroit, Boston, and Chicago.  And really even the later two teams on this list were both historically awful for the first seven seasons after the lockout.  But this is the deal.  Here are your top ten Eastern Conference Ineptness Champions, and their respective 14-year win-loss totals.

10. Orlando Magic – 622-582 - Even despite the Grant Hill/Tracy McGrady debacle and the Dwightmare (and of course Shaq skipping town in 1996) the Magic have kept their head above water by making decent personnel decisions.  Even though the ridiculous contracts they inexplicably gave out to Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu alone, should have gotten General Manager Otis Smith fired five years before he was finally shown the door, on the whole the team has been a decent Eastern team. 

9.  Atlanta Hawks – 525-679 - The ultimate .500 team for the second half of this 14-year span, the first seven years were so bad that their over-all record is abysmal.  After making multiple disastrous mistakes in the draft, they’ve constantly put themselves behind the 8-ball.  Marvin Williams over Chris Paul and Deron Williams, when they needed a point guard, was the most egregious.  Sheldon Williams over Brandon Roy, Rudy Gay, and Rajon Rondo was bad too.  And top picks DeMarr Johnson and Acie Law were both mega-busts.  They have done almost nothing in the playoffs in the past five years despite having somewhat decent regular season records, because they’ve just never seemed to have any kind of identity.  The Hawk’s future actually looks bright at the moment, but then again, we’ve said that before. 

8.  Cleveland Cavaliers – 551-652 - The only reason they are this high on the list is because of LeBron James, and because he willed them to far more victories than they deserved over a five-year span ending in 2010.  A perfect example of front-office ineptness, GM Danny Ferry never decided on a strategy to surround James with any complimenting talent, and ended up panicking himself into absurd Hail-Mary attempts to appease the King, bringing in over-priced former all-stars that didn’t fit at all.  But most shamefully, Ferry let defensive minded (and offensively-allergic) coach Mike Brown stay around five years too long, squandering any chance of success.  Brown was just as much of an adversary to LeBron’s game as the Celtics and Lakers were.  It's no wonder LBJ left town that fateful summer, to go to competent organization.          

7.  Brooklyn Nets – 550-668 - This seems too high for the former Jersey Boys, who have been synonymous with horrible basketball for most of their history, but a couple of Finals appearances in ‘02 and ’03 help their case.  On the flip side, they were blown out in both of those Finals matchups, by vastly superior Lakers and Spurs teams, and since then have been completely pathetic.  The fact that they are this high on the list, proves that the east is an absolute cluster.   

6.  Milwaukee Bucks – 559-645 - Another decent regular season team, often derailed by injuries, but consistently lose in the first round of the playoffs.  They have also made numerous questionable decisions when acquiring players.  In recent years they’ve traded or signed multiple score-first point guards or under-sized shooting guards who all need the ball in their hands to be effective, which is a very questionable strategy.  They are thus the current owners of the worst record in the league at 5-17.  Don't worry about "fearing the deer."    

5.  Philadelphia 76ers – 598-607 - They went to the Finals in 2001, and have done nothing in the playoffs since.  Like, really, pretty much nothing.  A great city like Philadelphia deserves better.  There’s been some bad luck; Elton Brand and Andrew Bynum both basically stole millions from the team, but mostly it’s just been the familiar Eastern conference story, horrible management.  And of course, no accountability.  It took Billy King five or six years to get fired when it seemed like he was actively trying to make it happen, with his horrible decisions.  (And of course now he runs the Nets.  Why?  I don't know.  My guess is that it's because some NBA owners are morons.)           

4.  Washington Wizards – 472-740 - Same thing here.  Horrible management.  GM Ernie Grunfeld has made every possible mistake possible during his run in the nation’s capital.  Mis-managing the cap, signing over-priced vets, trading “bad contract” for “worse-contract.”  And he’s kept his job for 10 years.  Unbelievable.  Only in the East, folks.   

3.  Toronto Raptors – 521-679 – Of course Canada’s only team has disadvantages in luring free-agents and keeping valuable assets, so a lot of this losing can be understood.  But the Raptors have just been pretty awful since they’ve come into the league.  Nothing has worked. 

2.  Charlotte Bobcats – 260-484 – The only team that hasn’t been around for all of the 14 years, only ten of them, but they’ve done enough losing for 20 years worth.  Many head-scratching trade decisions, and horrible draft selections have placed the Jordan-Errs consistently at the bottom.    

New York's Un-Big-Three

1.  New York Knicks – 539-661 – And here’s the ultimate poster-child for the ineptitude of the NBA’s Eastern conference.  The Coup de grace of a basketball soul-crusher.  What on earth is to be said about the New York Knicks?  They should be a juggernaut.  With all the advantages of the New York area, the supposed great basketball history in the city, and unlimited financial resources of their owner, they should be the smartest organization and the most talented team in the entire league.  They should constantly contend for championships.  But they never do.  Why?  Because for the past 14 years the franchise has been suffering under the delusion that they cannot “rebuild.”  “New York won’t stand for it,” we heard, but then that means contrarily, that New York will stand for their team being the biggest organizational laughing-stock in the NBA?  Don’t rebuild, just repeatedly put out a horrible team of mismatched veterans, with no discernable system or hope to win.  Over the last 14 years the Knicks have been managed by idiots, coached by idiots, owned by idiot, and watched by idiots, (I know because I was one of those idiots,) and there’s really no other way to put it.  We could go into all of the atrocious mistakes made by the infamous Isiah Thomas regime, and the ones made before and after, but it’s really not necessary.  No other team even comes close to the abomination that is the Knicks, they've just been consistently terrible at basketball.  They are the anti-Spurs; the precise paint-by-numbers example of what not to do.  And it’s shown on the court.

        

And there you have it.  The real reason why the East is bad, once again.  Just like it's been for the last 14 years, the teams in the West are just smarter.  Much smarter.

So hopefully teams in the East have been taking notes, because there’s never been an opportunity like this, to snatch the third seed behind Indiana and Miami.  Somebody has to win some games, so c'mon random Eastern Conference team x, that could be you!

And while the Pacers and Heat will rest their starters for the home stretch of the season and coast to easy victories in the playoffs, the teams out West will slug it out like they always do.  Imagine if the league abolished the conferences and just seeded the playoffs 1-16.  It would be a whole other ballgame right?  How many teams would get in from the East?  Three?  Four?    

Because that’s the way things are in the NBA, and have been for the last 14 years.  

The Western Conference and the Leastern.       

   
Thanks for reading,
Underdogs Out!

 

       

The World Cup Quandary...

It hurts me to write this.  It feels wrong.  I don’t consider myself to be that typical annoying American sports fan.  I do try to be as open as I can to watching the other popular sports around the world, but with international TV for the past nine months I’ve definitely had to adjust a little bit.  And by a little, I mean a lot!  Wow.  Cricket has to be the most boring game I’ve ever watched in my life, and I know that people say the same thing about baseball, but c’mon!  Even if I concede the point to some of my friends who claim that it is an amazing and interesting game, I find it to be one of the most unwatchable sports I’ve ever encountered.  Rugby seems like it would be incredibly fun to watch, and is, but it’s rarely broadcast even in international waters, and Curling and Netball are complete mysteries.  But of course dominating my European and Caribbean ESPN channels this year, has been the world’s most popular game, football. 

I’ve known this sport my entire life, as almost everyone on earth has.  Its rules are simple, pure, and maddeningly so at times because at the pro level, so often the score ends up to be much ado about nothing.  I can appreciate a good match, as I’ve written before, even in a nil-nil draw.  I can appreciate the incredible skill of these players, the offensive and defensive battle, and good spacing and great passing, but after nine months of having this stuff jammed down my throat, I have a few opinions. Believe me, I hate to write this, but there are a few fatal flaws here.  I’m going to combine all of the leagues that I’ve been watching this year; Premiership, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Eredivisi, UEFA Europa (and even ulp, the MLS) but I want to focus for a minute on the World Cup qualifiers, because they are happening right now and are ultimately by far, the matches of most consequence. 

The World Cup is the greatest of all the sports tournaments, with the hopes and wills of entire nations seemingly dwindling on a scale.  Up and down, up and down they go, and even to an absurd level, as was so horrendously and recklessly reported last month, regarding Mexico’s qualifying matchup, so do whole economies; One billion dollars apparently riding on one game?  (Well technically two games, with the aggregate goal totals being the deciding factor.  So basically, two 90 minute halves.)  Maybe in some configurations of economic calculations, those numbers might be close to accurate, but still, what an absurd and reckless thing to report on ESPN!  It’s not as if corruption is unheard of in sports, and I can only imagine what’s possible with a billion dollars on the line.  And those in control of the match have absolute control.  And this coming summer in the great country of Brazil we are once again, going to see if it works out for the best, or for the worst.               

Which brings me to my point.  As much as we are supposed to love and celebrate these World Cup qualifiers, there are some real problems from a broadcasting perspective. 

1.) The pitch is so big that we are always stuck with the extreme wide shot in live time, only getting close up looks after near misses and flops.  My kingdom for these guys to follow the NFL’s lead and put some cameras on wires to give us a new perspective.  That would be amazing wouldn’t it?  It has to be somewhere in that massive budget! 

2.) The poor announcers feel like they have to hype up the commentary as if the whole world is going to explode, when a goal is even only somewhat close to being scored.  But then of course it almost always isn’t.  And then…

3.  After said goal isn’t scored, we immediately get the close up of the player looking frustrated, embarrassed, often times like a bad actor, they give the George Costanza “who farted” face.  But the worst part is... 

4. The majority of close-ups that we do get are of the players when they try to sell a penalty call to the referee, by flailing dramatically, or going down to the pitch like they’ve been shot after being grazed incidentally.  Hands covering face, writhing on the ground waiting for the yellow or red card to come out.  This is done shamelessly on countless occasions, because it works.  Referees are tricked all the time, it reminds me of cheesy professional wrestling!  Now I know that this is a rough game and that there is real contact out there (we all remember the pain of shin on shin crime,) but the cameras don’t lie, and over and over again we are forced to witness the obvious pretenders.  While the referees play the dopes.    

So what happens next?  The announcers spend the next few minutes talking about how the call was wrong, and how the team got robbed by said call, but nothing is ever done to fix the wrong.  This is a big problem, because it happens over and over again.  And yes, there are missed calls in other sports too, but rarely in a sport where 1-0 is an extremely realistic outcome.  A call or non-call in the penalty box is very often the difference in the game!  90 minutes reduced to a one second penalty shot, which nearly always results in a goal.  And that brings us to our one major problem with this World Cup thing…

5.  One referee is God.  That’s it, that’s the problem.  There is one man on the field who decides every crucial aspect of the match with impunity, and it just makes no sense these days.  There could so easily be a few eyes in the sky that could overturn calls in obvious cases, and no one would be less served by it.  And it wouldn’t have to slow things down either.  It would enhance the product actually, so why hasn’t it been done?  If we wanted to watch one guy decide on his own, who wins or loses a championship game, why don’t we just watch him play a video game against himself, or role a dice.  It’s absurd.  Diego Maradona won the 1986 World Cup for Argentina by using his arm instead of his head on a header goal, and that is a lasting image for all time.  But Argentina is still the 1986 World Cup Champion.  Not addressing the egregious bad/non-calls is a disservice to the game.  It doesn’t preserve anything, in fact it actually exposes the games major weakness.  Why?  Why not make a change?

With whole countries riding on these results, we can't have frivolous, subjective calls dictating history.  Of course it is a near-impossible job to referee a match well, and these guys are extremely talented, but there has to be safe-guards.  Why aren't they in place for the world's most important sports tournament?  The table is now set for the summer in Brazil.  There's still time to get this right. 

C'mon powers that be!  The World Deserves it.

Just my two Euro,
Thanks for reading,
Underdogs Out!  

JFK... 50 Years Later...

I’m shocked.  Extremely so.  I have a great deal of respect for Bill Simmons and his wonderful ability to frame sports in the context of culture though his writing gifts, but I honestly could not believe what I heard this past week on his podcast, the BS Report.  It was a two-part series, where Simmons tackled the JFK assassination and it’s 50^th anniversary, and it was a real shame.  Of course I think Bill Simmons is a brilliant person and he naturally brought in bright people to talk turkey, Chris Connelly, Bill James, and Chuck Klosterman, but their ridiculous interview turned out to be anything but.  What a waste.  Of course the Underdogs weighed in on things-Dallas a few times, Here and... here.  There are so many interesting and bizarre elements to this case, that I'm sure I have become overly sensitive or easily offended when people casually dismiss or leave out specific details, but even from my flawed viewpoint, these guys totally missed the mark.         

I understand that these guys are writers, and therefore are very creative and artistically influenced, so they will inherently resist the mundane or the “widespread thought theories” at least philosophically, but I was still shocked at the lack of real substance in any of Simmons’ guest’s editorial opinions.  It felt like a group of giddy fraternity brothers talking.  After two hours, the general take-away from this debacle of a double-podcast was the following: that Oswald had acted alone, and JFK was shot from the front “accidentally by a secret-service agent.” 

You have got to be kidding me.  Even excluding political and economic concerns, this is a hugely absurd possibility.  Fractionally improbable, percentage-wise, at best, and even if all parties involved (in this broadcast) may now work directly, or indirectly for a major corporation, there is a responsibility or a collective opinion to come to.  But what we end up with here in Simmons’ podcast is a group of 40-somethings “of means,” simply wasting all of our time.  That's the best they could do?  No real opinion is challenged, and no discussion is terribly realistic at all unless they are simply intentionally trying to be counterintuitive. 

At one point, Klosterman, ridiculously so, explained it like this, “at 21, I was convinced of a CIA centered conspiracy, at 31 I didn’t know, and today, (hopefully, at 41 for these literary punks) I think Oswald acted alone,” is proof positive.  People give in to comforts.  Nothing has changed fact-wise, it’s just a matter of waxing-poetic.  As cliché as it is to talk about human nature and finding comfort in conspiracy theories, it’s so much more damning for these spineless writers, who are risking nothing, to swing the complete other direction, in spite of real evidence and to completely ignore its significance. They become bored so they find a new angle.   

Or maybe we should just presume ignorance, because in the face of perhaps the most important of possible truths we could learn is that there were real business consequences at stake.  And these reporters should have known the difference.  At the time, there was a tremendous amount of money on the line, nationally and internationally, and it would prove an absolutely pivotal time in the market-capitalistic-opportunistic-war-friendly-American possibility. All of the arguments made by Klosterman were so fanciful that it renders the whole conversation laughable.  It would never be so simple that then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, would actually be a conspirator to a horrendous killing, but that doesn’t mean that certain select people within the American power structure didn’t know that his political policies would much better represent their personal business interests, in the place of a specifically removed President.  And of course, that doesn’t mean any thought to that effect can actually be proven, but it also doesn’t mean that we have to bend over backwards to force a bunch of random puzzle pieces to fit together in order to convict a convenient killer either.  But it seems like that’s exactly what the Warren Commission did in the following year. Maybe they were trying to calm an uncertain nation or clean things up neatly, but one thing is certain; they weren’t trying to actually solve the mystery.  And what’s more realistic anyway?  Extremely effective, ruthless businessmen acting in defense of their multi-billion dollar international business interests, that would prove to shape the whole world for generations to come, got something done with extreme precision, or that one guy performed a scientifically impossible one-man-hit job because he was upset about national policy and wanted the brief attention he would get by sacrificing himself?  What makes more sense?              

Of course this has all been said before, and maybe that’s why at this point in time, it just seems to be so ridiculously overlooked, by such cavalier journalists.  Of course it’s not ground-breaking information.  But maybe, because these opinions don’t really “belong” to our specific generation anymore, real evidence is being casually tossed to the side, despite its reputable contradiction to the official myths.  I can’t believe that people who are reported as intellectuals such as this group would waste their time talking about theories on emotionally based arguments, like they would a “Mafia based motive” or an action by a “communist sympathizer.”  These are overly simple and improbable explanations, and there is no evidence to support any of them.   

But that’s all Bill Simmons and his friends talked about.  What a waste.  There was very little talk about the Dallas Police or the CIA’s ineptitude to complete even the most basic of investigations.  That they um, gee… forgot to make any record of Oswald’s 12 HOUR incarceration after his arrest, or the curious realization that they could have possibly pinned the murder of a policemen, Officer Tippet, on him as well, that according to testimony, Oswald could never have been close to.  Or that all of the controlling interests in war-time-anti-Kennedy-interests that seemed to be represented there in Dallas too, always seem to get an unexplained pass.  Oh, and by the way, Oswald was murdered in a police-department basement as well.  Jack Ruby just happened to get in there with a loaded pistol, and shot him on National Television.  Yet it passed like just another blip on the radar as far as national relevance is concerned.  No real outrage here.  Oswald was never convicted, but everyone still labels him as a killer of a President.  Incredibly, Simmons and his friends, in their joyful banter, didn’t really mention this either.      

So what’s the other explanation?  If you want any real explanation from all of this new film evidence most recently making its way to light, instead of wasting your time with all of the conjecture of which random bullet did what, or how many seconds passed, while a certain head was at a certain angle, just stop and take a minute to look at all of the wide open windows left completely unchecked directly above the President’s parade route.  A route that was admittedly changed at the last minute; for a President’s motorcade.  An absurdly illegal route as well in this way.  Think about that.  Who ran Dallas at the time?  And why did the Federal secret service, for some reason, somehow accidentally forget to protect their client that day, when they’ve never been nearly so incompetent before or after so?  Complicit through intentional incompetence perhaps?    

It just couldn’t have been so random.  There was no mystery.  The Secret Service could have very easily checked out and secured the route days ahead of time, much less hours or minutes like they had done in the past, but for reasons never explained, they chose not to.  This lack of protection in such an environment, had never happened before or since for any American President, so why was it ignored on this day?  And why most importantly, why was it so underreported after the fact?  And why has it never been explained?  Simmons and his guests laughed it off as a Secret Service tradition in Dallas, that they were all out late the night, out on the town, and that their hung-over morning accounted for the troubles that day.  I hope that this can only be accepted by 50 years of desensitization, because it is just horrible.         

Has there ever been any real culpability taken, ever, by any government service, other than that of ignorance or incompetence?   Not that I know of.  It was at the very least an unforgivable dereliction of duty, but it was much more likely something more sinister.  Not by the men in the field, but as usual, by the ones pulling the strings, who have no face.  The ones who could manipulate a very large certain situation and then in one way or another also dictate the next forty years of American international policy.  They also made hundreds of billions of dollars too, through (many-times shady) American business interests all over the world.  It doesn’t take a conspiracy.  But like-minded people.  And no one is to blame.  It’s just business.    

I just don’t think anyone should forget this.  Even as academic as it can get when we talk about the 50 year anniversary of JKF’s assassination, at least this possibility still has to be in play.  The assassination has become a footnote in history, as easily dismissed as a stock-market crash or a war-peace-treaty, and maybe if you remove emotional attachment, it was just as important for certain businessmen, in the shaping of modern American Corporate global dominion.

 

And in a lot of ways that may be true, and maybe in some twisted way it was for the best economically.  But that’s why we depend on people like Chuck Klosterman, and Bill James, and Chris Connelly, and Bill Simmons to remind us that the bottom-line isn’t the only thing that’s important.  But this week they sold us out.  They are far too complacent; far too comfortable to make a realistic argument without laughing or trying a clever quip.  And if we do that, or agree with it, just because it’s easy, then we all fail.

But as far as trying to solve the crime, I feel like it has to be time to accept that we will never really know what happened that day.  So I guess I need to accept Klosterman's and Simmons' opinions.  

After 50 years of conjecture it's time to move on. 

Okay, Im done.   

  

Thanks for Reading,

Underdogs OUT!