There's something amazing about the way that the world responds to soccer. Almost everyone has a story about a personal visit or friend's visit to Europe or South America during a major soccer event, and the way in which the streets were empty, bars were packed, and people were all-consumed by the experience. As much as Americans love our Super Bowl - and as much as we claim that it's a truly global event - we simply cannot approach the level of intensity and pride that so many nations have for international soccer.
Why can't Americans feel the same way? I'm sure there are a number of reasons, one of the most important being that we tend to like the sports in which we excel, and we simply don't compete with the rest of the world on the same level. Watching the Euro 08 Final today, however, I have another theory - maybe the sports we enjoy so much say something larger about our culture.
Watching this game - Spain leads Germany 1-0 at the half, having narrowly missed on two scoring opportunities, but having converted on a race to the ball to flip in a quick goal that may well be the difference - I can't help but think that it speaks so well to the German style of precision and intense attention to detail. The game is technically fought in the midfield, with defensive breakdowns carrying the potential for catastrophe, and offensive brilliance neutralized in large part by defensive organization. Or, more simply put, in a low-scoring affair, one ill-timed defensive mistake could be the entire game.
Contrast that with baseball, basketball or football, in which Americans thrive on the comeback - the two-minute drill, the buzzer beater, the 9th inning rally. Could it be that Americans thrive on the ability for the underdog to strike it lucky, and the opportunity for redemption? We're a nation of second chances - most of our ancestors arrived here for that very reason - and one that has succeeded based on individual ingenuity and innovation more so than collective efficiency and sacrifice.
Soccer seems innately European - more socialist and collective - while American sports seem to fit the culture by being more individualistic and based on opportunity. I remember reading as a child a novel in which baseball is used as an analogy for American ideology - "the game isn't over until the last man has had his opportunity in the 9th inning" - and that struck me as I watched this soccer championship. Americans love offense, scoring, and a dramatic, Hollywood ending where the tides can turn on a dime. Soccer doesn't seem to offer those opportunities as readily as our other favorites.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The crazy state of the NBA
I've mentioned before that I'm a Detroit Pistons fan, and so during tonight's draft, I was thrilled to see Joe Dumars once again make the smart, business-minded move: faced with the opportunity to trade down from the 29th pick and secure the 32nd instead, Dumars the GM did what Dumars the SG would have done - made the smart, efficient, less-than-flashy move, and I consider it a win. What he also did was create a nice microcosm of the NBA these days, which is something that troubles me.
Why was Dumars' move so intelligent? The 29th pick comes along with it a guaranteed 3-year contract based on the collective bargaining agreement. Just three picks later, the 32nd offers an incredibly similar player in terms of talent level, but with no strings attached - that player doesn't count at all against the salary cap. Dumars also picked up a pick in the low 40s when he made the trade with Seattle, adding it to the 59th pick he already had, providing the Pistons with three wild-card opportunities to develop talent in the D-league at no salary cap cost to the team. When you're hoping to continue to compete for championships, and can use that cap space for more immediate help, every bit of space helps.
As proud as I am for Dumars, this fact that this kind of thinking is necessary is slightly embarrassing for the league, I feel. The more egregious examples this week have been the Jermaine O'Neal and Richard Jefferson trades - teams like Indiana and New Jersey deciding that the greatest assets it can have aren't multitalented all-star players, but rather the absence of those players and their corresponding contracts. I've been disturbed by the fact that NBA teams have an incredible incentive to unload contracts, with the idea that having the least commitment possible to players is the best way to compete.
More conspicuous is the fact that these teams often work so hard to free up cap space, then immediately waste it with inane contracts - much like the housing bubble, the desperation with which cap-free teams attack the free agency market only overvalues the available prospects and creates a larger problem for many teams down the road. Again, Dumars is a prime example of playing this situation correctly - in numerous instances, such as with Ben Wallace recently, he has stuck to his guns on where he values a player and let him walk when the market price rose too high. Similarly, he was smart enough to trade Jerry Stackhouse for a similar scorer - but younger and 'less overvalued' - in Richard Hamilton before Stackhouse's contract came up for renewal.
Is there a better way? Salary caps are tricky; the NFL's may be even more cruel, with unguaranteed contracts leaving for immediate cuts and even more player turnover. But it strikes me as odd that a league that needs to market the magnificent athleticism of its players allows them to almost always be viewed by fans and media as liabilities rather than assets. Since the rules don't appear apt to change any time soon, maybe more fans can appreciate the mastery with which shrewd businessmen like Joe Dumars navigate the NBA labor market to stay competitive year after year; art imitates life, and in the NBA, league success closely parallels the savvy that creates business success.
Why was Dumars' move so intelligent? The 29th pick comes along with it a guaranteed 3-year contract based on the collective bargaining agreement. Just three picks later, the 32nd offers an incredibly similar player in terms of talent level, but with no strings attached - that player doesn't count at all against the salary cap. Dumars also picked up a pick in the low 40s when he made the trade with Seattle, adding it to the 59th pick he already had, providing the Pistons with three wild-card opportunities to develop talent in the D-league at no salary cap cost to the team. When you're hoping to continue to compete for championships, and can use that cap space for more immediate help, every bit of space helps.
As proud as I am for Dumars, this fact that this kind of thinking is necessary is slightly embarrassing for the league, I feel. The more egregious examples this week have been the Jermaine O'Neal and Richard Jefferson trades - teams like Indiana and New Jersey deciding that the greatest assets it can have aren't multitalented all-star players, but rather the absence of those players and their corresponding contracts. I've been disturbed by the fact that NBA teams have an incredible incentive to unload contracts, with the idea that having the least commitment possible to players is the best way to compete.
More conspicuous is the fact that these teams often work so hard to free up cap space, then immediately waste it with inane contracts - much like the housing bubble, the desperation with which cap-free teams attack the free agency market only overvalues the available prospects and creates a larger problem for many teams down the road. Again, Dumars is a prime example of playing this situation correctly - in numerous instances, such as with Ben Wallace recently, he has stuck to his guns on where he values a player and let him walk when the market price rose too high. Similarly, he was smart enough to trade Jerry Stackhouse for a similar scorer - but younger and 'less overvalued' - in Richard Hamilton before Stackhouse's contract came up for renewal.
Is there a better way? Salary caps are tricky; the NFL's may be even more cruel, with unguaranteed contracts leaving for immediate cuts and even more player turnover. But it strikes me as odd that a league that needs to market the magnificent athleticism of its players allows them to almost always be viewed by fans and media as liabilities rather than assets. Since the rules don't appear apt to change any time soon, maybe more fans can appreciate the mastery with which shrewd businessmen like Joe Dumars navigate the NBA labor market to stay competitive year after year; art imitates life, and in the NBA, league success closely parallels the savvy that creates business success.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Postmodern Marvel That Is Sports
So Kevin Garnett finally earns his well-deserved ring, following in the footsteps of his mentor Bill Russell to lead the Celtics to banner 17. And Tiger Woods survives near amputation to win the US Open. You couldn't write better scripts, could you?
Not if you're ESPN or other media outlets, because predicting the news is hard work.
This postmodern world in which we live doesn't seem to live up to the hype, and sports are a fantastic microcosm. It's fascinating, honestly, the way we live our lives nowadays, constantly watching ourselves through a makeshift television every step of the way. Tell me, when was the last time you imagined a play-by-play announcer describing your actions? More recently than you'd care to admit, I'd think (mine was this evening, as my mind's broadcaster narrated my 4-mile jog; the Vin Scully of my skull has also commented recently on my toothbrushing technique - "that's why America loves his smile!" - relationships - "he's the kind of guy you'd love to bring home to the folks" - and job performance - "he just seems to be lackadaisical recently").
Our generation is likely the first to grow up watching more sports than we played, at least for certain stretches, and we're the one most likely to broadcast our own "3....2....1....aaaaahhhhhh" buzzer-beaters, "and he gets his own rebound" and "he was FOULED" mulligans, and other "it's a Cinderella story" fantasies throughout our lives. More awkwardly, we're also the prisoners of the hype that seems to plague sports all too often these days - each event of our lives needs to live up to our preconceived ideas, based in large part on our perception of how we should fit in to the scripts we've come to envision. We want to be star quarterbacks, homecoming kings, dashing leading men, quick-thinking executives... Our lives are designed to follow those of our heroes and role models - straight from high school to the pros, vice president by 40, Bending It Like Beckham and Dating Damsels like Derek. All too often, though, we're disappointed - who can live up to the hype that surrounds us?
Which brings me to the frustrating culprit - sports are a microcosm of that notion, and maybe even a major cause. As we've moved from afternoon games, twinight doubleheaders, bubblegum cards and tape-delayed broadcasts to luxury boxes, primetime-only playoffs, and SportsCenter, the all-encompassing reach of sports media has taken much of the charm out of sports and replaced it with the hallmarks of entertainment marketing. Namely, the hype dictates the story, as the games are a product to be sold, rather than a pastime to be experienced.
Think about this week's top events: The NBA Finals were billed as a classic Lakers-vs.-Celtics matchup, in which Kobe Bryant could elevate himself to Jordanesque status by eschewing the partial shadow of Shaq, or Kevin Garnett could win his long-awaited first title. Accordingly at the end of tonight's game, Michelle Tafoya stood witness to an awkward-would-be-kind display of emotion by Garnett, all the while missing what I'd consider to be the best story of the series - Inglewood native Paul Pierce outplaying the star of his boyhood team - Kobe Bryant - to deliver a title to the team that drafted him. The easy call for MVP, Pierce was not only the series' best player by a longshot, but he did so in compelling fashion, both outscoring and overwhelmingly defending Bryant and doing so for much of the series in Pierce's hometown. Similarly impressive, Rajon Rondo - considered to be a liability for the star-studded Celts all season - played admirably well and earned his share of the championship, while Garnett seemed - for a superstar, at least - to struggle despite how well his team performed. So why the attention on Garnett - by all accounts a great guy and model competitor, to be certain - when the deserved attention ought to belong more to his teammates? ABC/ESPN needed to fulfill its scripts - when you hype a few angles, one needs to pan out.
Similarly, this weekend's US Open reminded us that, just like superhero movies, TV shows made in to films, and Jackie Chan & Chris Tucker vehicles, traditional storylines are safe moneymakers whenever possible. So when Tiger Woods winced in pain during his Saturday comeback, announcers were only too pleased to overwhelmingly make the Willis Reed, Michael-Jordan-flu-game comparisons yet again (which was a story short-lived for Pierce last week, and comes up almost any time a player plays with "flu-like-symptoms" or retreats to the bench only to return minutes later). By the next day, the "is he the greatest of all time" storyline was in full force - overlooking what may have been one of the more compelling stories of the year in golf (which I don't follow religiously, so bear with me). Although Tiger-vs.-Phil never materialized, and networks decided to go with Tiger-vs.-history instead, Tiger-vs.-Rocco was an amazing story - how does a no-name, middle-aged tour player match the greatest-of-all-time shot for shot all day Sunday, all day Monday, and in to a sudden death playoff? Shouldn't Tiger be expected to perform under pressure - after all, his life has been lived under a microscope - while Rocco, a guy much more like us, should fold? The headlines all said "Tiger solidifies reputation as legend", but should have included that Rocco performed like few others ever could in that situation.
My point? Our postmodern sports world has taken a good deal of joy from the events themselves - we're sold a script and then told how the events compare, rather than allowing the action to dictate the story. In this case, how hard is it to believe the Donaghy allegations of fixes in the NBA? The league has a product to sell and billions of dollars at stake;is a phantom foul on Mike Bibby too great an undertaking to ensure that the league's investments produce returns?
Another point on the NBA and its hype machine - it's time we forgot about the Jordan comparisons for Kobe...or LeBron...or anyone else. There will never be another Jordan, or Bill Russell, or Larry Bird, largely because each candidate to replace those legends will be held to a level of scrutiny impossible to live up to. Jordan was able to grow in to his own from within the shadow of Bird, Magic, Isiah, and Dr. J. By the time he took that torch, he had earned it, whereas the newer generation has it thrust upon them first. In Kobe's case, Jordan was always an unfair and unfit comparison - Kobe came too soon after Jordan, and too young at the time, to make the comparison fair, and was put in a situation much, much more analogous to that of Magic Johnson than to that of Jordan. Jordan was the centerpiece of a rebuilding franchise that made its sole purpose to build draft picks to surround MJ with young talent; Kobe came in an 18-year old rookie on an ascending Laker team headlined by Shaquille O'Neal (much like Magic came in as a young understudy to Kareem), and should have been allowed to rise to superstar level gradually. Instead, the expectations grew, the egos grew bigger, and Kobe has been, as my friend Adam from Section F Sports likes to say, a contrived superstar (I'll argue that it's not as much fault of his own - the world expected Jordan and Kobe was young, talented, and competitive enough to want to comply...then he faced backlash...then the Colorado incident happened...then he was blamed for the team's breakup).
Alas, in real life, the story should be developed by the characters, and not the reporters. While a "Jordan for the next generation" or "Willis Reed 2K8" story might sell at the box office, the compelling nature of sports is that it is unscripted, and that 'on any given Sunday', anything can happen. I'll likely never quote Natasha Bedingfield in this space again, but we should embrace sports, and life, because "the rest is still unwritten". Somebody tell that to the producers at ABC/ESPN (and the color commentator inside my head).
Not if you're ESPN or other media outlets, because predicting the news is hard work.
This postmodern world in which we live doesn't seem to live up to the hype, and sports are a fantastic microcosm. It's fascinating, honestly, the way we live our lives nowadays, constantly watching ourselves through a makeshift television every step of the way. Tell me, when was the last time you imagined a play-by-play announcer describing your actions? More recently than you'd care to admit, I'd think (mine was this evening, as my mind's broadcaster narrated my 4-mile jog; the Vin Scully of my skull has also commented recently on my toothbrushing technique - "that's why America loves his smile!" - relationships - "he's the kind of guy you'd love to bring home to the folks" - and job performance - "he just seems to be lackadaisical recently").
Our generation is likely the first to grow up watching more sports than we played, at least for certain stretches, and we're the one most likely to broadcast our own "3....2....1....aaaaahhhhhh" buzzer-beaters, "and he gets his own rebound" and "he was FOULED" mulligans, and other "it's a Cinderella story" fantasies throughout our lives. More awkwardly, we're also the prisoners of the hype that seems to plague sports all too often these days - each event of our lives needs to live up to our preconceived ideas, based in large part on our perception of how we should fit in to the scripts we've come to envision. We want to be star quarterbacks, homecoming kings, dashing leading men, quick-thinking executives... Our lives are designed to follow those of our heroes and role models - straight from high school to the pros, vice president by 40, Bending It Like Beckham and Dating Damsels like Derek. All too often, though, we're disappointed - who can live up to the hype that surrounds us?
Which brings me to the frustrating culprit - sports are a microcosm of that notion, and maybe even a major cause. As we've moved from afternoon games, twinight doubleheaders, bubblegum cards and tape-delayed broadcasts to luxury boxes, primetime-only playoffs, and SportsCenter, the all-encompassing reach of sports media has taken much of the charm out of sports and replaced it with the hallmarks of entertainment marketing. Namely, the hype dictates the story, as the games are a product to be sold, rather than a pastime to be experienced.
Think about this week's top events: The NBA Finals were billed as a classic Lakers-vs.-Celtics matchup, in which Kobe Bryant could elevate himself to Jordanesque status by eschewing the partial shadow of Shaq, or Kevin Garnett could win his long-awaited first title. Accordingly at the end of tonight's game, Michelle Tafoya stood witness to an awkward-would-be-kind display of emotion by Garnett, all the while missing what I'd consider to be the best story of the series - Inglewood native Paul Pierce outplaying the star of his boyhood team - Kobe Bryant - to deliver a title to the team that drafted him. The easy call for MVP, Pierce was not only the series' best player by a longshot, but he did so in compelling fashion, both outscoring and overwhelmingly defending Bryant and doing so for much of the series in Pierce's hometown. Similarly impressive, Rajon Rondo - considered to be a liability for the star-studded Celts all season - played admirably well and earned his share of the championship, while Garnett seemed - for a superstar, at least - to struggle despite how well his team performed. So why the attention on Garnett - by all accounts a great guy and model competitor, to be certain - when the deserved attention ought to belong more to his teammates? ABC/ESPN needed to fulfill its scripts - when you hype a few angles, one needs to pan out.
Similarly, this weekend's US Open reminded us that, just like superhero movies, TV shows made in to films, and Jackie Chan & Chris Tucker vehicles, traditional storylines are safe moneymakers whenever possible. So when Tiger Woods winced in pain during his Saturday comeback, announcers were only too pleased to overwhelmingly make the Willis Reed, Michael-Jordan-flu-game comparisons yet again (which was a story short-lived for Pierce last week, and comes up almost any time a player plays with "flu-like-symptoms" or retreats to the bench only to return minutes later). By the next day, the "is he the greatest of all time" storyline was in full force - overlooking what may have been one of the more compelling stories of the year in golf (which I don't follow religiously, so bear with me). Although Tiger-vs.-Phil never materialized, and networks decided to go with Tiger-vs.-history instead, Tiger-vs.-Rocco was an amazing story - how does a no-name, middle-aged tour player match the greatest-of-all-time shot for shot all day Sunday, all day Monday, and in to a sudden death playoff? Shouldn't Tiger be expected to perform under pressure - after all, his life has been lived under a microscope - while Rocco, a guy much more like us, should fold? The headlines all said "Tiger solidifies reputation as legend", but should have included that Rocco performed like few others ever could in that situation.
My point? Our postmodern sports world has taken a good deal of joy from the events themselves - we're sold a script and then told how the events compare, rather than allowing the action to dictate the story. In this case, how hard is it to believe the Donaghy allegations of fixes in the NBA? The league has a product to sell and billions of dollars at stake;is a phantom foul on Mike Bibby too great an undertaking to ensure that the league's investments produce returns?
Another point on the NBA and its hype machine - it's time we forgot about the Jordan comparisons for Kobe...or LeBron...or anyone else. There will never be another Jordan, or Bill Russell, or Larry Bird, largely because each candidate to replace those legends will be held to a level of scrutiny impossible to live up to. Jordan was able to grow in to his own from within the shadow of Bird, Magic, Isiah, and Dr. J. By the time he took that torch, he had earned it, whereas the newer generation has it thrust upon them first. In Kobe's case, Jordan was always an unfair and unfit comparison - Kobe came too soon after Jordan, and too young at the time, to make the comparison fair, and was put in a situation much, much more analogous to that of Magic Johnson than to that of Jordan. Jordan was the centerpiece of a rebuilding franchise that made its sole purpose to build draft picks to surround MJ with young talent; Kobe came in an 18-year old rookie on an ascending Laker team headlined by Shaquille O'Neal (much like Magic came in as a young understudy to Kareem), and should have been allowed to rise to superstar level gradually. Instead, the expectations grew, the egos grew bigger, and Kobe has been, as my friend Adam from Section F Sports likes to say, a contrived superstar (I'll argue that it's not as much fault of his own - the world expected Jordan and Kobe was young, talented, and competitive enough to want to comply...then he faced backlash...then the Colorado incident happened...then he was blamed for the team's breakup).
Alas, in real life, the story should be developed by the characters, and not the reporters. While a "Jordan for the next generation" or "Willis Reed 2K8" story might sell at the box office, the compelling nature of sports is that it is unscripted, and that 'on any given Sunday', anything can happen. I'll likely never quote Natasha Bedingfield in this space again, but we should embrace sports, and life, because "the rest is still unwritten". Somebody tell that to the producers at ABC/ESPN (and the color commentator inside my head).
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Stanley Cup Thoughts
I won't claim to be a big hockey fan, despite hailing from the self-proclaimed Hockeytown, Detroit. But once every few springs - those that the Red Wings venture deep in to the Stanley Cup playoffs - I make it a point to watch a few games and root on the home team. Honestly, I'm rarely disappointed. This year's playoffs may have been the most exciting yet (I use 'playoffs' loosely, having only watched the finals), with the final two games featuring the highest levels of last-second drama.
Every time I watch playoff hockey, I wonder why I don't do it more often. There is a true feeling of intensity virtually every second of each game, and the selflessness and effort of the players are truly remarkable. Bodies hitting the ice to block shots, passes after passes to maintain possession and set up scoring opportunities, true teamwork to ensure defensive structure even in the most offensive of situations, and a sense of urgency on each play because one mistake can mean a goal, and one goal can be the difference in the series - what's not to love?
Why, then, is it so difficult for hockey to catch on? Why would ESPN have to jettison the sport in favor of...poker? One major reason has to be the business climate that, in a lot of respects, has created major deterioration in sports (and society). In the 90s, with basketball peaking and hockey beginning to show similar levels of star power and excitement (Gretzky and Lemieux playing at a high level, great teams in major markets like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Detroit), league executives (highlighted by NBA-ex Gary Bettman) made a push to expand the league unnaturally, moving from its Canadian roots to the Sun Belt, and pushing for TV coverage (with gimmicks like the glow puck).
It's a rhetorical question, as we know that the almighty dollar speaks volumes, but why can't sports just be sports? In simpler days, sports were an enjoyable diversion from the monotonous and ugly in life - finance and business on the monotonous end, and crime and scandal on the ugly side. Now, as the worlds of sports and business have merged, the games themselves have taken a backseat to the newsworthy drama - steroids, crime, backroom dealings, sponsorships. Which is what made watching hockey last week such a fun treat - a casual Red Wings fan, I only knew a handful of names on the roster, and the national media didn't give the series much due at all. But the players played hard, the drama spoke for itself, and for a change the action was the top story. The minimalist nature of hockey - forced by its business failures - actually made it more fun to watch, and wishful thinking has me hoping the same can happen in other sports. Maybe it's time we all turned off ESPN for a few weeks, with its off-the-field stories and hype-and-highlight packages turning sports in to a business for the worse.
Every time I watch playoff hockey, I wonder why I don't do it more often. There is a true feeling of intensity virtually every second of each game, and the selflessness and effort of the players are truly remarkable. Bodies hitting the ice to block shots, passes after passes to maintain possession and set up scoring opportunities, true teamwork to ensure defensive structure even in the most offensive of situations, and a sense of urgency on each play because one mistake can mean a goal, and one goal can be the difference in the series - what's not to love?
Why, then, is it so difficult for hockey to catch on? Why would ESPN have to jettison the sport in favor of...poker? One major reason has to be the business climate that, in a lot of respects, has created major deterioration in sports (and society). In the 90s, with basketball peaking and hockey beginning to show similar levels of star power and excitement (Gretzky and Lemieux playing at a high level, great teams in major markets like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Detroit), league executives (highlighted by NBA-ex Gary Bettman) made a push to expand the league unnaturally, moving from its Canadian roots to the Sun Belt, and pushing for TV coverage (with gimmicks like the glow puck).
It's a rhetorical question, as we know that the almighty dollar speaks volumes, but why can't sports just be sports? In simpler days, sports were an enjoyable diversion from the monotonous and ugly in life - finance and business on the monotonous end, and crime and scandal on the ugly side. Now, as the worlds of sports and business have merged, the games themselves have taken a backseat to the newsworthy drama - steroids, crime, backroom dealings, sponsorships. Which is what made watching hockey last week such a fun treat - a casual Red Wings fan, I only knew a handful of names on the roster, and the national media didn't give the series much due at all. But the players played hard, the drama spoke for itself, and for a change the action was the top story. The minimalist nature of hockey - forced by its business failures - actually made it more fun to watch, and wishful thinking has me hoping the same can happen in other sports. Maybe it's time we all turned off ESPN for a few weeks, with its off-the-field stories and hype-and-highlight packages turning sports in to a business for the worse.
NBA Finals Nostalgia - The Most Important Day of My Life?
Watching Game 1 of the Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals the other night, the historical perspective placed on the game forced me to think back to another Game 1, 20 years prior. That game had a lot of Lakers-Celtics flair to it, as well, although it was the Pistons this time taking on the purple-and-gold on the familiar Forum floor, having recently vanquished the leprechauns from Boston in a series that sapped all of the energy this then-9-year-old had.
Can sports ever loom as large as they did when we were kids? The hype behind this 2008 Finals demonstrates that perhaps the greatest feature of professional sports is its longevity and continuity - we care today in large part because of how much we cared yesterday, and how much our parents and grandparents before us had invested in these same franchises and games. For me, sports was the window through which I was exposed to the larger world - though I had never been to Boston or Los Angeles, I knew them by the faces of their teams and fans. And as I readied myself for Game 1 of the 1988 NBA Finals, I was unnerved by this first ever foray in to the Wild Wild West for me.
As I've written before, the 1980s NBA was, in itself, a journey - to become champion, it seemed, you must first ascend step-by-step through the playoff rounds through past champions, proving yourself worthy of, well, facing Worthy and his Lakers. The 1988 Finals felt like graduation from the confines of the East for me and my beloved Detroit Pistons, having the previous year passed the second round only to fall to Boston in a grueling, seven-game Eastern Conference Finals. It only seemed logical that, this year, we would take that next step to the Finals, but upon getting there it just felt like unchartered territory. The Boston Garden parquet, still intimidating, felt more comfortable now, having watched my team play there so often in the previous two years. The Forum, with its darkened floor, star-studded crowd, and the famous yellow jerseys? This was like leaving the friendly confines of Kansas for the magical-yet-foreign world of Oz.
Can we ever replicate the types 0f world-broadening experiences we lived through at that age? Like hopping rock-to-rock across a brook, this nine-year-old and his young team steadied themselves play-by-play, beginning unsure and off-balance and growing to feel stable and confident. Few times in my life have I been as nervous as I was that night, entering the unknown, knowing that it was what I had dreamed of but fearing that it might be over my head. Like so many things in those years - riding a bicycle, learning multiplication, jumping off the diving board - the insurmountable and frightening quickly became triumphant, then comfortable. When Isiah Thomas buried a three, stole the inbounds pass, and hit another to turn a one-point lead to a seven-point gap just before halftime, I felt the exact same way that I had when my father's hand left my bike seat on my first ride without training wheels - free, exuberant, grown-up.
We won that game, and I rested comfortably and happily that night, having vicariously increased my sense of belonging in the world through those upstart young Pistons. The series took a number of twists and turns en route to a devastating seven-game finish (although I still believe that the no-call on the last play of Game 7 was a travesty, and that if Isiah doesn't turn his ankle we win that championship and the next two), but by then I was mature enough to enjoy the series, rather than fear it. Over the course of that series, I finished fourth grade, passed my fractions and long-division tests, ran well in the Father's Day mile run downtown, won some Field Day ribbons, and grew in to a stronger, more confident boy. By the next summer and the 1989 Finals, I was an old pro, (more) calmly taking the games in stride, enjoying the drama of sports, and anxiously awaiting my opportunity to take down the bully that had beaten us in seven games the previous year.
When I reflect on the NBA Playoffs past, I see a microcosm of growing up, and appreciate the role that sports played in my maturation as a human being. We should all be so lucky to fondly remember the lessons that our favorite teams and players taught us growing up, and I think that so much of sports is made meaningful by that continuity that it adds to our lives year-by-year. The NBA Finals have a special place in my heart, as they represented spring, the conquest of new challenges, and the expanding of my world each year. That Game 1 in 1988, though it took place 2,000 miles away and was contested by complete strangers, was one of the more important events in my young life at the time, if only for what it represented. That's the power of sports, and the reason that I hope young people are enjoying the history that flanks this year's NBA Finals.
Can sports ever loom as large as they did when we were kids? The hype behind this 2008 Finals demonstrates that perhaps the greatest feature of professional sports is its longevity and continuity - we care today in large part because of how much we cared yesterday, and how much our parents and grandparents before us had invested in these same franchises and games. For me, sports was the window through which I was exposed to the larger world - though I had never been to Boston or Los Angeles, I knew them by the faces of their teams and fans. And as I readied myself for Game 1 of the 1988 NBA Finals, I was unnerved by this first ever foray in to the Wild Wild West for me.
As I've written before, the 1980s NBA was, in itself, a journey - to become champion, it seemed, you must first ascend step-by-step through the playoff rounds through past champions, proving yourself worthy of, well, facing Worthy and his Lakers. The 1988 Finals felt like graduation from the confines of the East for me and my beloved Detroit Pistons, having the previous year passed the second round only to fall to Boston in a grueling, seven-game Eastern Conference Finals. It only seemed logical that, this year, we would take that next step to the Finals, but upon getting there it just felt like unchartered territory. The Boston Garden parquet, still intimidating, felt more comfortable now, having watched my team play there so often in the previous two years. The Forum, with its darkened floor, star-studded crowd, and the famous yellow jerseys? This was like leaving the friendly confines of Kansas for the magical-yet-foreign world of Oz.
Can we ever replicate the types 0f world-broadening experiences we lived through at that age? Like hopping rock-to-rock across a brook, this nine-year-old and his young team steadied themselves play-by-play, beginning unsure and off-balance and growing to feel stable and confident. Few times in my life have I been as nervous as I was that night, entering the unknown, knowing that it was what I had dreamed of but fearing that it might be over my head. Like so many things in those years - riding a bicycle, learning multiplication, jumping off the diving board - the insurmountable and frightening quickly became triumphant, then comfortable. When Isiah Thomas buried a three, stole the inbounds pass, and hit another to turn a one-point lead to a seven-point gap just before halftime, I felt the exact same way that I had when my father's hand left my bike seat on my first ride without training wheels - free, exuberant, grown-up.
We won that game, and I rested comfortably and happily that night, having vicariously increased my sense of belonging in the world through those upstart young Pistons. The series took a number of twists and turns en route to a devastating seven-game finish (although I still believe that the no-call on the last play of Game 7 was a travesty, and that if Isiah doesn't turn his ankle we win that championship and the next two), but by then I was mature enough to enjoy the series, rather than fear it. Over the course of that series, I finished fourth grade, passed my fractions and long-division tests, ran well in the Father's Day mile run downtown, won some Field Day ribbons, and grew in to a stronger, more confident boy. By the next summer and the 1989 Finals, I was an old pro, (more) calmly taking the games in stride, enjoying the drama of sports, and anxiously awaiting my opportunity to take down the bully that had beaten us in seven games the previous year.
When I reflect on the NBA Playoffs past, I see a microcosm of growing up, and appreciate the role that sports played in my maturation as a human being. We should all be so lucky to fondly remember the lessons that our favorite teams and players taught us growing up, and I think that so much of sports is made meaningful by that continuity that it adds to our lives year-by-year. The NBA Finals have a special place in my heart, as they represented spring, the conquest of new challenges, and the expanding of my world each year. That Game 1 in 1988, though it took place 2,000 miles away and was contested by complete strangers, was one of the more important events in my young life at the time, if only for what it represented. That's the power of sports, and the reason that I hope young people are enjoying the history that flanks this year's NBA Finals.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Lakers-Celtics Nostalgia? Not quite...
Despite my lifelong allegiance to the Pistons and deserved respect for the Spurs, I have to admit that the NBA has found itself with a dream marketing matchup in the Finals with the Lakers and Celtics. But don't be mistaken - this historically-relevant matchup doesn't meant that we're completely harkening back to the glory days of Magic, Bird, Isiah, and Jordan. In fact, the way that this Finals developed is almost entirely counter to what made the Eighties in the NBA so great.
Rewind 11 months - the Spurs had just beaten the upstart Cavaliers and superstar LeBron James in the '07 Finals, and the league was hailing the San Antonio dynasty, awaiting the resurgence of the run-and-gun Suns for another playoff run, biding its time until the Cavs added a supporting cast for James, and knowing that the road to the Finals would have to also pass through Detroit (a conference finalist since '03), Dallas (a finalist the previous year), and perhaps even Denver or Houston. Meanwhile, Chris Paul was reflecting on a breakout sophomore campaign and preparing for an even better third year.
Notice that I didn't mention Los Angeles or Boston - Boston had just lost its ever-important draft lottery, squandering a host of ping-pong balls that it had earned for a woefully poor season, and the Lakers were headed for a summer of discontent, with Kobe Bryant publicly asking to be traded and GM Mitch Kupchak hamstrung by contracts and untradeable assets. A Lakers-Celtics final seemed among the least probable sporting events of '08.
Rewind 20 years: The 80s were great because of this - in June of 1988, the Lakers had just capped a first-in-decades repeat championship in seven games over the upstart Detroit Pistons (helped immensely by Isiah Thomas' ankle injury in his ever-heroic Game Six, but I digress...). To get there, the Pistons had to vanquish the Eastern Conference's perennial champion Celtics - in six hard-fought games, including Detroit's first-ever playoff win in the Boston Garden - to whom they had lost the previous two years. And before even getting there, the Pistons needed to outpace Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls, in a series that would mark the emergence of Jordan's playoff prowess.
The next year? The Pistons disposed of Boston in the first round, aided by nagging injuries to Larry Bird, and passed through the Knicks on a collision course with Jordan's Bulls in the conference finals. Jordan had hit his famed last-second jumper over Craig Ehlo to upset the Cavaliers, and fought admirably for six games before succumbing to the Pistons, who would unseat the defending champion Lakers in the Finals. The Lakers, to get there, passed through the up-and-coming Trailblazers, who would finally jump that hurdle the following year, as almost would Jordan's Bulls, this time lasting seven games before losing to the eventual champion Pistons.
Over the next few years, the Bulls, Pistons, Blazers, and Lakers would trade blows, with the Bulls besting the Western powers once each in the Finals. What does all this mean?
The 'good old days' featured young teams earning their ways to the top, needing to learn from losses to the incumbents in order to regroup and overcome those barriers the next year. Consider:
1982-87 - Lakers and Celtics alternate championships, with Houston and Philadelphia each getting a shot at opposing one of the two.
1987 Eastern Conference Finals: Celtics defeat Pistons in 7 games
1988 Eastern Conference Finals: Pistons avenge that loss and beat Celtics
1988 NBA Finals: Lakers beat Pistons in 7 games
1989 NBA Finals: Pistons avenge that loss and beat Lakers
1989-90 Eastern Conference Finals: Pistons beat Bulls in 6 and 7 games
1991 Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls avenge that loss and sweep Pistons
1989-90-91-92 Western Conference: Lakers and Blazers alternate trips to the Finals
1991 NBA Finals: Bulls defeat Lakers, beginning dynasty
That's basketball meritocracy - each team earned its way to the top, and each fanbase could feel the evolution of its team, as well as the sense of urgency when it neared the top as the newest upstart was always on the rise. Consider, also, the stars of these teams:
Lakers: Magic Johnson (original draft pick), James Worthy (original draft pick), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (acquired in 1970s)
Celtics: Larry Bird (original draft pick), Kevin McHale (original draft pick), Robert Parish (acquired in trade of #1 pick down to #3, pick used to select McHale)
Pistons: Isiah Thomas (original draft pick), Joe Dumars (original draft pick)
Bulls: Michael Jordan (original draft pick), Scottie Pippen (original draft pick/draft-day acquisition)
Blazers: Clyde Drexler (original draft pick), Jerome Kersey (original draft pick), Buck Williams (traded for Sam Bowie)
For the most part, these teams were homegrown, and grew in to their roles as champions. Contrast that with this year's finalists, who as of a year ago were nowhere near the top, and each had blockbuster trades drop in to their lap:
Boston acquired Kevin Garnett, whose salary was holding Minnesota back, and Ray Allen, whom Seattle was willing to drop quickly as part of a rebuilding plan and salary dump.
LA acquired Pau Gasol as a desperation salary dump.
Regardless of whether you believe any conspiracy thoughts regarding the fact that former Celtic Kevin McHale traded Garnett to Boston and that former Laker Jerry West oversaw the Memphis team that traded Gasol to LA, these trades were entirely improbable, and the major reasons that these teams find themselves in the Finals.
Will this series be enjoyable? Hopefully. Will the history bring back feelings of yesteryear? Of course. But this series materialized out of nowhere, and doesn't begin to compare with the Epic Eighties and all of the drama that unfolded as teams scrapped to the top then. It's historically relevant, but far from history repeating itself, unfortunately.
Rewind 11 months - the Spurs had just beaten the upstart Cavaliers and superstar LeBron James in the '07 Finals, and the league was hailing the San Antonio dynasty, awaiting the resurgence of the run-and-gun Suns for another playoff run, biding its time until the Cavs added a supporting cast for James, and knowing that the road to the Finals would have to also pass through Detroit (a conference finalist since '03), Dallas (a finalist the previous year), and perhaps even Denver or Houston. Meanwhile, Chris Paul was reflecting on a breakout sophomore campaign and preparing for an even better third year.
Notice that I didn't mention Los Angeles or Boston - Boston had just lost its ever-important draft lottery, squandering a host of ping-pong balls that it had earned for a woefully poor season, and the Lakers were headed for a summer of discontent, with Kobe Bryant publicly asking to be traded and GM Mitch Kupchak hamstrung by contracts and untradeable assets. A Lakers-Celtics final seemed among the least probable sporting events of '08.
Rewind 20 years: The 80s were great because of this - in June of 1988, the Lakers had just capped a first-in-decades repeat championship in seven games over the upstart Detroit Pistons (helped immensely by Isiah Thomas' ankle injury in his ever-heroic Game Six, but I digress...). To get there, the Pistons had to vanquish the Eastern Conference's perennial champion Celtics - in six hard-fought games, including Detroit's first-ever playoff win in the Boston Garden - to whom they had lost the previous two years. And before even getting there, the Pistons needed to outpace Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls, in a series that would mark the emergence of Jordan's playoff prowess.
The next year? The Pistons disposed of Boston in the first round, aided by nagging injuries to Larry Bird, and passed through the Knicks on a collision course with Jordan's Bulls in the conference finals. Jordan had hit his famed last-second jumper over Craig Ehlo to upset the Cavaliers, and fought admirably for six games before succumbing to the Pistons, who would unseat the defending champion Lakers in the Finals. The Lakers, to get there, passed through the up-and-coming Trailblazers, who would finally jump that hurdle the following year, as almost would Jordan's Bulls, this time lasting seven games before losing to the eventual champion Pistons.
Over the next few years, the Bulls, Pistons, Blazers, and Lakers would trade blows, with the Bulls besting the Western powers once each in the Finals. What does all this mean?
The 'good old days' featured young teams earning their ways to the top, needing to learn from losses to the incumbents in order to regroup and overcome those barriers the next year. Consider:
1982-87 - Lakers and Celtics alternate championships, with Houston and Philadelphia each getting a shot at opposing one of the two.
1987 Eastern Conference Finals: Celtics defeat Pistons in 7 games
1988 Eastern Conference Finals: Pistons avenge that loss and beat Celtics
1988 NBA Finals: Lakers beat Pistons in 7 games
1989 NBA Finals: Pistons avenge that loss and beat Lakers
1989-90 Eastern Conference Finals: Pistons beat Bulls in 6 and 7 games
1991 Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls avenge that loss and sweep Pistons
1989-90-91-92 Western Conference: Lakers and Blazers alternate trips to the Finals
1991 NBA Finals: Bulls defeat Lakers, beginning dynasty
That's basketball meritocracy - each team earned its way to the top, and each fanbase could feel the evolution of its team, as well as the sense of urgency when it neared the top as the newest upstart was always on the rise. Consider, also, the stars of these teams:
Lakers: Magic Johnson (original draft pick), James Worthy (original draft pick), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (acquired in 1970s)
Celtics: Larry Bird (original draft pick), Kevin McHale (original draft pick), Robert Parish (acquired in trade of #1 pick down to #3, pick used to select McHale)
Pistons: Isiah Thomas (original draft pick), Joe Dumars (original draft pick)
Bulls: Michael Jordan (original draft pick), Scottie Pippen (original draft pick/draft-day acquisition)
Blazers: Clyde Drexler (original draft pick), Jerome Kersey (original draft pick), Buck Williams (traded for Sam Bowie)
For the most part, these teams were homegrown, and grew in to their roles as champions. Contrast that with this year's finalists, who as of a year ago were nowhere near the top, and each had blockbuster trades drop in to their lap:
Boston acquired Kevin Garnett, whose salary was holding Minnesota back, and Ray Allen, whom Seattle was willing to drop quickly as part of a rebuilding plan and salary dump.
LA acquired Pau Gasol as a desperation salary dump.
Regardless of whether you believe any conspiracy thoughts regarding the fact that former Celtic Kevin McHale traded Garnett to Boston and that former Laker Jerry West oversaw the Memphis team that traded Gasol to LA, these trades were entirely improbable, and the major reasons that these teams find themselves in the Finals.
Will this series be enjoyable? Hopefully. Will the history bring back feelings of yesteryear? Of course. But this series materialized out of nowhere, and doesn't begin to compare with the Epic Eighties and all of the drama that unfolded as teams scrapped to the top then. It's historically relevant, but far from history repeating itself, unfortunately.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Supreme Court to hear "Major League Baseball v. Fantasy Owners, Fans, and Common Sense'
The Los Angeles Times reported today that one of the cases on the docket for this Supreme Court session involves a lawsuit filed by Major League Baseball, which wants to restrict the use of team and player names for fantasy baseball use to those who pay for the rights to them. (This on the heels of an AP story citing Commissioner Bud Selig's ruling that Little League teams can only have rights to MLB team names if purchasing their uniforms from the MLB's authorized supplier)
The licensing of names is a legitimate concern for many - I shouldn't be able to open a Michael Jordan's restaurant, nor should I be able to launch my own line of Air Jordan sneakers - but to me these steps by Major League Baseball send a terrible message to the fans, even if, legally, they are just.
My solution? Let Major League Baseball license its team names to the highest bidders, and let Little Leaguers and rotisserie fans suffer. Sure, without creating a next generation of fans by allowing them to fantasize about being Red Sox, Yankees, and Devil Rays (or is it just Rays?), and without providing adults with a compelling interest in its 162 games each year, the sport would suffer a fate similar to the NHL (or itself in the mid-nineties), relegated to Channel 325 on most cable dials. But fans will be fans, and if the product on the field - sunny Sundays, the smell of hot dogs and sound of bat cracking ball, and countless other pieces of American nostalgia - remains what it is, the MLB should be able to pass its costs on through middlemen (Majestic Athletic, its 'official supplier of Little League uniforms, and ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS Sportsline for fantasy baseball) to the fans, gouging us once more like an $8 beer, $15 parking voucher, or advertising-generated 1 a.m. World Series finish. In the end, the fans will pay, somewhat unknowingly, and the league can continue to overspend in the free agent market.
Where is the solution? It's all about name licensing - and here is where the fans (should) have the upper hand. In my mind, the single-greatest marketing achievement of professional sports is the fact that each team is aligned with a city, creating a sense of allegiance for even casual fans to one particular team. Growing up in Michigan, I identified with the Detroit Tigers, Pistons, and Lions before I was old enough to know the rules of each game, and have stayed with that loyalty ever since. The same is true across the country - fans identify with their teams if only due to the marketing that assigns a logo and team of representatives to that city. Cleveland Browns fans are a terrific example - that team in brown and orange isn't at all the team that they rooted for in the 80s, which is now the pride-and-joy of Baltimore. But this new, expansion variety bears the Cleveland branding, and the fans revel in the ability to wear the jerseys, chant the slogans, and buy the merchandise. It's no coincidence that the MLB's Angels have shifted geographic brands in search of the right quantity of loyalty - California was too big, Anaheim was too small, and the Goldilocked front office decided that Los Angeles was just right, even if it had its own team and resided 20+ miles (and several hours' worth of traffic) north.
Which all leads me to the solution - if sports teams want to license their names to squeeze every penny out of them, fans should have the right to expect the same protection. The "Los Angeles" in Los Angeles Dodgers is infinitely more important than "Dodgers" - few in Southern California care that anything east of the Mojave exists at all, so virtually no non-Brooklyintes would care about a team from Western Long Island if it weren't branded as LA's native team. So why shouldn't we Angelenos have licensing rights to the name of the city in which we live? The most important brands that sports franchises possess belong to the communities in which they reside - and the same communities that they seek to exploit with tactics such as this Supreme Court case. If the suit holds, precedent should be used to ensure that the cities that host teams are fairly compensated for the use of their names - and the teams, by my calculations, would have a hefty price to pay.
Naturally, the idea is a pipe dream - geographic names are exempt from licensing rights, to the dismay of oft-branded parties like the City of Hollywood, State of California, and Amerigo Vespucci (who, if alive, would have one heck of a lawsuit on his hands for all that the Western Hemisphere uses his name). Still, the point remains that professional teams should realize that their considerable revenue comes from the naming rights of their cities that they are permitted to use. Part of that should come with responsibility back to those communities, in the form of enabling kids to use the animal (and laundry) names that follow, and anyone to use the public-record statistics for amusement. For too long, fans have had to sit silent while ticket prices, team values, and player salaries have risen exponentially; they should at least be able to do so while knowing that the leagues will continue to let them enjoy the sports that they have come to identify with.
The licensing of names is a legitimate concern for many - I shouldn't be able to open a Michael Jordan's restaurant, nor should I be able to launch my own line of Air Jordan sneakers - but to me these steps by Major League Baseball send a terrible message to the fans, even if, legally, they are just.
My solution? Let Major League Baseball license its team names to the highest bidders, and let Little Leaguers and rotisserie fans suffer. Sure, without creating a next generation of fans by allowing them to fantasize about being Red Sox, Yankees, and Devil Rays (or is it just Rays?), and without providing adults with a compelling interest in its 162 games each year, the sport would suffer a fate similar to the NHL (or itself in the mid-nineties), relegated to Channel 325 on most cable dials. But fans will be fans, and if the product on the field - sunny Sundays, the smell of hot dogs and sound of bat cracking ball, and countless other pieces of American nostalgia - remains what it is, the MLB should be able to pass its costs on through middlemen (Majestic Athletic, its 'official supplier of Little League uniforms, and ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS Sportsline for fantasy baseball) to the fans, gouging us once more like an $8 beer, $15 parking voucher, or advertising-generated 1 a.m. World Series finish. In the end, the fans will pay, somewhat unknowingly, and the league can continue to overspend in the free agent market.
Where is the solution? It's all about name licensing - and here is where the fans (should) have the upper hand. In my mind, the single-greatest marketing achievement of professional sports is the fact that each team is aligned with a city, creating a sense of allegiance for even casual fans to one particular team. Growing up in Michigan, I identified with the Detroit Tigers, Pistons, and Lions before I was old enough to know the rules of each game, and have stayed with that loyalty ever since. The same is true across the country - fans identify with their teams if only due to the marketing that assigns a logo and team of representatives to that city. Cleveland Browns fans are a terrific example - that team in brown and orange isn't at all the team that they rooted for in the 80s, which is now the pride-and-joy of Baltimore. But this new, expansion variety bears the Cleveland branding, and the fans revel in the ability to wear the jerseys, chant the slogans, and buy the merchandise. It's no coincidence that the MLB's Angels have shifted geographic brands in search of the right quantity of loyalty - California was too big, Anaheim was too small, and the Goldilocked front office decided that Los Angeles was just right, even if it had its own team and resided 20+ miles (and several hours' worth of traffic) north.
Which all leads me to the solution - if sports teams want to license their names to squeeze every penny out of them, fans should have the right to expect the same protection. The "Los Angeles" in Los Angeles Dodgers is infinitely more important than "Dodgers" - few in Southern California care that anything east of the Mojave exists at all, so virtually no non-Brooklyintes would care about a team from Western Long Island if it weren't branded as LA's native team. So why shouldn't we Angelenos have licensing rights to the name of the city in which we live? The most important brands that sports franchises possess belong to the communities in which they reside - and the same communities that they seek to exploit with tactics such as this Supreme Court case. If the suit holds, precedent should be used to ensure that the cities that host teams are fairly compensated for the use of their names - and the teams, by my calculations, would have a hefty price to pay.
Naturally, the idea is a pipe dream - geographic names are exempt from licensing rights, to the dismay of oft-branded parties like the City of Hollywood, State of California, and Amerigo Vespucci (who, if alive, would have one heck of a lawsuit on his hands for all that the Western Hemisphere uses his name). Still, the point remains that professional teams should realize that their considerable revenue comes from the naming rights of their cities that they are permitted to use. Part of that should come with responsibility back to those communities, in the form of enabling kids to use the animal (and laundry) names that follow, and anyone to use the public-record statistics for amusement. For too long, fans have had to sit silent while ticket prices, team values, and player salaries have risen exponentially; they should at least be able to do so while knowing that the leagues will continue to let them enjoy the sports that they have come to identify with.
Introduction
Welcome! This blog is my attempt at sharing the deeper-than-surface-discussion thoughts I have about sports when watching games, discussing trends, and running off the frustration that results from being a little too invested in sports. That more-than-appropriate investment in sports has led me to believe that sports often provides the most interesting conversation topics around - partly because, to a large extent, they're almost entirely inconsequential to everyday life, and therefore great entertainment to talk about. More than that, though, I think they reflect major components of everyday life, which adds that legitimacy to almost any sports-related discussion. Nowadays, with Congress involved in regulating most professional sports, the Olympics posing as a United Nations conference / global economy boost, and athletes taking prominent roles in government and business, that overlap seems to be that much more pronounced, and that's why I've decided to create a venue to share the best of my run-on thoughts on the subject.
A little about me: I'm a native Detroiter living in Southern California, having traded a city with a hopeless NFL team for a city in which the chances for an NFL team become more hopeless each day. I'm a die-hard University of Michigan and Detroit Pistons fan; a very big Detroit Tigers fan (the fact that they played under .500 ball from the time I was 11 until I was 27 took a toll, and I won't claim to have stuck with them for all sixteenish down years), a battered Detroit Lions fan who has taken to rooting for Michigan alumni and my fantasy players until Matt Millen is fired, and a casual Detroit Red Wings fan. I love the Tour de France, the Olympics, and endurance triathlon sports (swimming, biking, and running) in general. And, like many others, I've found that discussing sports has replaced actually watching sports as my second-favorite sporting activity (participating is, of course, number one).
Thanks for stopping by - I won't claim these thoughts to be organized or insightful, at least not always, but hopefully they're consistently thought- and discussion-provoking. After all, that's what I think sports are best at.
A little about me: I'm a native Detroiter living in Southern California, having traded a city with a hopeless NFL team for a city in which the chances for an NFL team become more hopeless each day. I'm a die-hard University of Michigan and Detroit Pistons fan; a very big Detroit Tigers fan (the fact that they played under .500 ball from the time I was 11 until I was 27 took a toll, and I won't claim to have stuck with them for all sixteenish down years), a battered Detroit Lions fan who has taken to rooting for Michigan alumni and my fantasy players until Matt Millen is fired, and a casual Detroit Red Wings fan. I love the Tour de France, the Olympics, and endurance triathlon sports (swimming, biking, and running) in general. And, like many others, I've found that discussing sports has replaced actually watching sports as my second-favorite sporting activity (participating is, of course, number one).
Thanks for stopping by - I won't claim these thoughts to be organized or insightful, at least not always, but hopefully they're consistently thought- and discussion-provoking. After all, that's what I think sports are best at.
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