The Beginning of the End

Before I start this article, I would just like to thank the Godfather and Chad Ford for their mock draft today on espn.com. (Blog Note: Bill Simmons will henceforth be referred to as the Godfather in all articles a la Vince Vaughn/Luke Wilson in Old School.) My buddy described that running article as Christmas in late June and that wasn’t an exagerration. But now onto our own thoughts on the 2007 NBA Draft…

Tonight will be a night to remember for those gifted players that will hear their name called during the 2007 NBA Draft. They will get the chance to shake NBA Commissioner David Stern’s hand and put on their new team’s hat as they relish their first moments as a professional basketball player. For most of these players, getting drafted will be the culmination of a lifetime of dreams and jump shots.

However, as significant as the draft is for each individual player, it is tenfold more crucial for each individual team. The NBA Draft can make or break a NBA franchise for decades if they do not choose wisely. My hometown team, the Boston Celtics, have been unfortunate with their draft selections for my entire lifetime. (I wish I was kidding but I was born just a few months after the Len Bias tragedy and the Celtics have not won a Championship since.)

I hoped that 2007 would be the year to break this trend with the Greg Oden/Kevin Durant sweepstakes but the lottery system left Celtics fans and David Stern asking themselves “What did I do to deserve this?” (Unfortunately, I could also answer that rhetorical question with one word … tanking). As the Godfather repeatedly references, Celtics fans everywhere are now left with a constant feeling of nausea leading up to Draft Day as our comically incompetent Director of Basketball Operations, Danny Ainge, has to make yet another decision that has the potential to make or break our beloved franchise. Right now, I’m waiting for him to take another undersized player with little offensive ability with the #5 pick, just to see if he can actually outdo his other inexplicably bad front office moves.

In all honesty though, I just take it for what it is at this point … high comedy. By now, Ainge’s uselessness is only rivaled by one other major sports front office official … Matt Millen. If we could only put these two in a room, we’d have a brain trust of impenetrable strategic brilliance (Insert sarcasm thick enough to cut with a knife here.). Ultimately, if we’re going to make sure that Celtics fans everywhere stay off suicide watch, I’m led to believe that there is only one possible solution for the long-term safety of the Boston Celtics fans…

FIRE AINGE!

I know he won a bunch of championships with the C’s and is a favorite son from back in his playing days, but he has GOT to go. For that matter, hire anyone to replace. I’m not even kidding. Hire a chimp that can pull name’s from a hat. He would have a better chance of making the right pick for the Celtics at #5 with that method, plus he’d be infinitely more entertaining doing backflips when the Celts played well and throwing his [ahem!] at any of the players who slacked off.

But as bad as it is to be a Celtics fan amidst such unbelievable incompetence, I actually would venture to say that it must be worse to be David Stern. Coming off the lowest rated NBA Finals in recent memory, the lack of competitive games between the two conferences as a result of the gross disparity in talent is becoming alarming. We can credit Stern with developing such ideas as the surprisingly successful developmental league which has put teams in major markets like New York, Miami, and Chicago. Wait, sorry, I just remembered that this league is the Eastern Conference and not the NBDL, so I retract any and all previously granted praise for Stern.

Now to make matters worse, salt is just being rubbed in Stern’s metaphorica wound as not one but two arguably franchise-making future stars in Greg Oden and Kevin Durant are headed to the already stacked Western Conference (and not even to a major market to boot). For everything that he’s had to deal with as a result of the inequality between the conferences, the draft lottery must have been like taking a couple Ali haymakers right to the chin for Stern.

Never has there been a time that the Eastern Conference could have used a jolt of star power like an Oden or Durant more than right now, and with the Hawks sitting at #3 and the Celtics at #5, we missed it by that much. Just think about it, the two new stars of the NBA will be playing in the Pacific Northwest? Not only are Portland and Seattle not exactly major marketing cities, but by the time their home games are played, most of the East Coast is asleep. To make matters worse for Stern, a growing percentage of “fans” don’t even watch games till February and even then they only watch the fourth quarter when the game matters. So now, our poor David has the two most hyped players since King James playing in more-or-less obscure places where the vast majority of basketball fans will rarely get to see them play.

To make matters even worse, these are not two of the most stable franchises in the league. The Portland JailBlazers have seen their players incarcerated almost as much as the Cincinnati Bengals. Just a theory of mine, but this may be due to the fact that Portland has more microbreweries per square mile than anywhere else in the U.S. Now this club will be acquiring an underage player in Oden who has repeatedly said that he loved college, an institution founded around the bedrocks of kegstands, beer pong, and chugging contests. Consequently, I just don’t see a multitude of microbreweries and an underage Oden combining to create a trouble-free marriage of player and city.

In fact, I can just see it now. After the Blazers fail to trade resident problem child Zach Randolph, he and Oden are going to go out on the town “to welcome big Greg to Portland.” Randolph will buy Oden some drinks (translation: Oden will be alternating shots of Patron, bottles of Cristal, and beer bongs of PBR), and ultimately both will get arrested for supplying to a minor (in Randolph’s case) and underage consumption and public drunkenness for one of the stars upon which the league’s future is mortgaged. What's more, I can also imagine Stern crying himself to sleep on his little twin size bed (he’s just a little guy after all) while he figures out how to get more goofy, “white bread” kind of guys like Mark Madsen in the league.

Then there is the Seattle Supersonics landing Durant. This is just a disaster waiting to happen. Seattle will most likely be on the move, because of the lack of funding for a new stadium. Stern is pushing for a franchise to move to Oklahoma City, which means the Sonics could become the OK City Sonics. However, in my humble opinion, Vegas is the answer not Oklahoma City. Although OKC has already proven that it can support an NBA franchise, Vegas just offers so much more in the way of marketing and publicty (Please note that I’m completely ignoring the fact that at least ¾ of the Las Vegas Sonics’ lineup would be arrested within the first 2 months.) Nevertheless, just look at this…

OK City, OK

Vegas Baby Vegas

Which sounds more exciting to you? OK City is exactly what it says, okay, but Vegas has it all. After the NBA All-Star weekend though, a few provisions would have to be put into place prior to the move becoming final. First off, Pacman Jones and his entourage would not be allowed inside city limits at all (for obvious reasons), and John Daly, Michael Jordan, and Janet Gretzky probably shouldn’t be allowed in either just because they would have Durant point-shaving in no time. In fact, I actually take that back. If Oden is going to be chugging down gallons worth of Dead Guy Ale, Durant may as well be every bookie in America’s best friend merely for the sake of symmetry.

So there you have it. Oden and Durant going to the Pacific Northwest will be an absolute disaster for the NBA (maybe even worse than Ainge staying in the Celtics’ front office and trading Al Jefferson and the #5 pick to Atlanta in order to move up #3 and guarantee that they get their man Yi. Don’t think this couldn’t happen with Ainge and Doc Rivers at the helm.). As for the 2 “can’t miss” rookies, I see Oden pulling a Frank the Tank and running through downtown Portland in his best Naked-Bill Russell costume while Durant ultimately gets the Pete Rose treatment after a couple years of throwing games in Vegas and the two “future” NBA stars will be out of the league after 3 years. Maybe Stern doesn’t deserve such bad luck, but it’s his own fault that he didn’t rig this year’s lottery for the Celtics like he did for the Knicks in the infamous Ewing Draft. So, in the end…

FIRE STERN TOO!

Or at least get him a really stiff drink. It’s bad enough that he has to deal with all of this AND he’s going to look like a midget on national television as he shakes hands with the vertically gifted future NBA stars. Hey, maybe Big O can mix him up something nice.

Get Ready For 132!

Summer is officially here, and for the next 3 months baseball will be every sports fan’s obsession as we grind through the dog days of summer. The great thing about baseball, and what makes it America’s Pastime (the NFL may be more popular but you can’t tell me that anything in football comes close to having the historical and cultural significance of a Sox/Yanks series), is that it brings together people of all different walks of life. If you put a preteen from Cleveland, an Anheuser Busch executive from St. Louis, and 70-year old Dominican all in a room together, they may not have a lot in common but what they will have is baseball.

What’s more, baseball also combines an overpowering physical component that can be seen in moments such as Junior’s mammoth second home run yesterday in his homecoming to Seattle with an innate mental aspect like knowing when to put on the hit-and-run or bringing in a left-handed reliever to face lefty swinging monsters like Barry Bonds and David Ortiz. For me, this combination of the physical and the mental make baseball a truly beautiful game. It’s the perfect blend to pique my intense competitiveness while also playing right into my ultra-geek side as well.

My inner geek (I use inner here because I like to live with the illusion that I’m not actually the huge nerd that I really am) is completely infatuated with baseball as a game of numbers. When I open a newspaper from April to September the first thing I look at is the Major League Baseball’s standings. I look for Boston and then see W-L, GB, Last 10. I see the Yankees’ same stats and hope that the Red Sox have a dash under their GB while the Yankees have a number, preferably very large. After the standings, I make my way through the previous nights box scores keeping track of who’s hot and who’s not. My obsession with tracking all these statistics may seem inane and a waste of time to most, but there’s a reason why I’m annually dominant in my fantasy baseball leagues. My mother would be so proud. Poring over common stats like HR, RBI, AVG., and ERA as well as Moneyball-era sabermetric stats such as WHIP and OPS, I update my vast baseball data banks daily over a cup of coffee and toast.

As much as the daily stats thrill me though, it’s the historical significance of some otherwise unimportant numbers that completely sets baseball apart from any other sport. .406 … 56 … 2,632 … 61 … 5,714 … 755 … 131, these are numbers that transcend the game and permeate into national history and popular culture. .406 for Teddy Ballgame in 1941. Probably the last guy that will ever hit over .400 for an entire season. 56-game hit streak for Joltin’ Joe Dimaggio. To put that in perspective, you would have thought Jimmy Rollins was a game or two from breaking that record the way the media was covering him last year … and he still had almost 20 games to go! The numbers keep on coming too. 2,632 consecutive games for Cal Ripken, Jr., baseballs true Ironman. 61 home runs for Roger Maris in 1961, arguably one of the most famous baseball records to be broken in recent history (although with the steroid era in full swing, I’m among the many who still consider that the single season record). 5,714 strikeouts for the immortal Nolan Ryan, a record that stands to last quite sometime considering the next closest active pitcher is soon-to-be 45-year old Roger Clemens who sits more than 1,000 K’s behind Ryan. 755 home runs, Hank Aaron’s recently imperiled career HR mark that’s under siege by the juiced-to-the-gills Barry Bonds (Wait, who said that? Of course Bonds doesn’t use any performance enhancing drugs knowingly and he’s never been caught for it so that must be true. A head bigger than a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float isn’t at all suspitious.).

As Bonds’ assault on this most hallowed of baseball records continues with its requisite asterisk, true baseball fans will be getting treated to another record breaking performance in the near future as Bobby Cox makes what has now become his patented trot out from the Atlanta Braves’ dugout. No steroids necessary, Cox is just one game ejection away from breaking John McGraw’s all-time record for game ejections at 131. Cox, not necessarily the showman that some other managers such as Lou Piniella or Bobby Valentine are, has quietly assaulted umpires with accusations of incompetence and insinuations of foul play (pun very much intended) for nearly three decades. And even though he may lack a bit of flair in getting the thumb 131 times, he still has the uncanny ability to bring out the best in his organization. Just look at minor league affiliate the Mississippi Braves’ manager Phillip Wellman who put on one of the greatest tirades in baseball history including throwing the rosin bag like a grenade at the umpiring crew a la Sly Stallone in Rambo. With such great respect for the Braves’ managerial tradition, Wellman is just one more Cox disciple.

So, for the time being, let’s forget about Bonds’ juiced up chase. Let’s all just cross our fingers and hope that Major League Baseball puts some incompetent umpiring crew at Turner Field this week, so we can see Bobby Cox take over this record in style. As countless suckers float along in McCovey Cove anxiously awaiting catching an asterisked home run ball, I’ll be sitting in front of my TV catching every second of every Braves game. Fans in Atlanta will be on the edge of their seats as Cox gets ready to top the record. Who knows, maybe the normally understated manager will decide to enter the record books in style and throw a fit for the ages. Then some lucky fan can auction the displaced 3rd base bag that Cox unexpectedly launched into the stands on eBay. I know I’d pay more for that than Bonds’ 756th home run ball.

To Be (A Sport)... Or Not to Be

DOM PORTWOOD: Hi, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.
PETER GIBBONS: Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.
DP: Yeah. Did you get that memo?
PG: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even really a problem anymore.
DP: Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!
Seriously, I actually just had this conversation. Well not this EXACT conversation, but as I sit here in my cubicle receiving inane memos, filling out useless “TPS reports,” and getting lectured by my innumerable bosses about god knows what, I have come to the realization that I AM Peter Gibbons. I am a living example of the cinematic caricature of how corporate America has devolved. As a summer intern for what we’ll call Initech for the sake on anonymity – as ridiculous as this job is, I do like the paycheck that accompanies it and I would prefer to keep those coming – I’ve realized that in all seriousness I do absolutely nothing of any importance. Basically, I file some papers, work on busy work projects for my bosses, and get into discussions with co-workers that drag out the lunch hour for as long as possible.

Over one such long, drawn out lunch hour, six of my co-workers and I were talking about what our weekend plans were for the much-needed respite from our real life Initech surroundings. At one point in the conversation, a colleague of mine, Employee #070543 who we’ll call Steve – I’m pretty sure he values his paycheck too so we’ll keep him out of it – told us all about his “huge bocce ball event” (I kid you not, these were his words). Now after the immediate outburst of laughter from the rest of us sitting at the table, we all tried to reason with Steve that while his enthusiasm for bocce was admirable, it was a completely misguided intensity because bocce ball wasn’t actually a sport. After minutes of vehemently opposing us, we just decided to let Steve live a lie in his own little fantasy world while we started debating what actually constitutes a sport.

Our discussion continued for what could have been hours (it’s not like anybody would’ve missed us at work) as we started defining the parameters that we deemed necessary for a competition to have in order to qualify it as a sport. In an age where ESPN – which, if you didn’t know, stands for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network – broadcasts more and more events such as the World Series of Poker and the Script’s National Spelling Bee that lean far away from the “sports” side of the spectrum, where do we turn to define what actually IS a sport?

Initially, we were thinking there ought to be a professional league towards which young athletes could aspire in order for an event to officially be considered a sport. However, many Olympic events such as wrestling, swimming, and many others have no such league so that argument was quickly thrown out (Writer’s Note: Although we all agreed that these events disqualified this argument, we also agreed that Olympic sports like equestrian and curling should not only be banned from the Olympics on account of the fact that they aren’t actually sports but should also be accompanied with some sort of corporal punishment for any participants. I’m a personal fan of flogging but that’s just me.).

So what next? Ultimately we decided that in order to be considered a sport, an activity must pass our 4-point test. Call it the Qualification For Sports Created By Guys Who Are Too Fat, Lazy, or Uncoordinated To Actually Compete In Said Sports or QFSCBGWATFLUTACISS for short. The four criteria are as follows:

1.There needs to be a higher level toward which one can strive to play such as a professional league or the Olympics (Yea, I guess you count bowling).
2.There needs to be some physical component to it (Ahem, uh NASCAR?).
3.There must be the ability for fierce competition or rivalry (I’ve never heard of a rabid curling rivalry).
4.There needs to be a fan base (Hockey is teetering dangerously close to oblivion. The only thing saving it at this point are those crazy Canadians, eh?)

While this still leaves a few organizational cracks – cheerleading actually qualifies as a sport under these guidelines, just watch Bring It On if you don’t believe me – we finally decided that this was the most all-encompassing qualifying criteria to define what is and is not a sport. So as you and your colleagues sit around arguing over the same topic, feel free to refer back to the QFSCBGWATFLUTACISS. It’ll serve you well.

For now, I have to go console Steve after we shattered his dreams at a future in bocce ball (we did a Google search and sadly there is no professional bocce league … idea?). If you need me, I’ll be doing my TPS reports. Peter Gibbons would be proud.

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