9 years on

I was in NYC on 9-11. For five days I roamed those wounded streets in the aftermath. I saw the ascendancy of the human spirit in those New Yorkers as they dug out the remains and carted off the bodies of the fallen. I read the most piteous signs people put up, "Has anyone, anyone, seen . . .?" I pray for all those New Yorkers directly and indirectly affected by that unconscionable, despicable, corruption bloated evil. Let New Yorkers have their peace to mourn and to heal! Respect them! Console them! But let them grieve in peace. A pox upon those measly, contemptible men and women who would seek to filch a shred of political or religious gain from those most detestable evil acts. A pox, I say, upon all their houses!

The King is dead, his replacement is in South Beach

Nobody can fault LeBron James for joining up with his pals Bosh and Wade in Miami to try and win an NBA championship. That’s why they play the games. Let’s be fair, he gave seven good years to Cleveland. He paid his hometown dues. He earned, as they say in big-time sports, his payday.
What we can and should fault LeBron for, though, is the manner in which he did it. Let’s put the best face on it and say it was a poorly-conceived marketing event gone badly awry. By endeavoring to make a grand gesture on a grand stage for a grand plan, and thus launch the new era of his career with huge positive fanfare, King James, in a stunning one-hour mock-event, came off looking more like King Henry VIII—mean, small, selfish, defensive and haughty. James dumped Cleveland much as Henry dumped Katherine of Aragon, in a glaring public spectacle, with dubious rationale, utter selfishness and needless over-the-top pageantry.
Not as tone deaf (and we should all hope not as prescient) as “Bad Newz Kennels,” this, “The Decision,” was similar in that its details were delegated to and orchestrated end-to-end by James’ closest lifelong cronies, guys from his childhood who glommed onto James at an early age and never bothered to learn the subtleties of the craft of public relations, so busy have they been at harvesting the superstar’s low-hanging fruit. They learned to throw his weight around, though, and that’s what “The Decision” looked like—James, throwing his weight around for all to see on national TV. “Look at me! I’m BIG; really BIG.” He almost salvaged some measure of grace by contributing all of the proceeds from “The Decision” to the Boys and Girls Clubs, but he blew it in the end when he ad-libbed, “maybe another LeBron James will come outta one of those clubs.” We can only hope . . .
“The Decision” and all the preliminaries leading up to it, in a single stroke, morphed James's image from the noble, dutiful, devoted scion of a struggling hometown, into LeBron James, the crass commercialist who speaks of himself in the third person, whose disdain for his adoring hometown fans is only exceeded by his desire for more loot and more luster. In that regard, even if none of the other aspects of it pan out, his decision to “take my talents to South Beach,” was right on pitch.

Go, went, gone

Every time I read "he had went" or "I had went" in a sports story or a news story I cringe. How hard is it to use the "to go" verb correctly? Consider the following: "Reid was a big reach who wouldn't have stood a chance of being drafted had the Thunder not went out on a limb with him." That is what one unidentified sportswriter wrote--not in a blog post, not in a tweet, but on a respected news outlet (FOXSports) presumably after having passed the piece by an editor or two.

I'll admit that a verb conjugation error (not to mention the "out on a limb with him" metaphor mashup) in a wrapup story assigning grades to all the NBA teams for their performances in the draft isn't going to cause any harm to the language, but it would have been a nice touch if Fox had gone out (or is it "went out"?) and drafted a competent copy reader who knew standard journalistic style and how to employ it.

Reynolds Harbinger of NBA Draft Trend

Item from Miami Herald, "Villanova's Scottie Reynolds has become the first AP All-American since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976 not to be taken in the NBA draft."
A 34-year streak is broken. Bear in mind, this is a 4-year player (point guard) who averaged 18.2 points as a senior, has not been seriously injured, and as a point guard had a positive 1.24 assist to turnover ratio in a big-time college program (Villanova). First team AP All-American. Either this is an anomaly, or it is the harbinger of a trend.
The first senior player taken in the draft went at number 23. Two data points do not a trend make, but the phenomenon of college seniors faring poorly in the NBA draft has been inflating for some time. As the one and done draft pick numbers have dramatically increased, the later-year college players entrances into the draft have concurrently fallen.
What does this mean for college basketball players in the US? It means more and more of them will go to Europe, Taiwan, China, Korea, South America, Africa, Australia and elsewhere in the global bball arena. As the global rise of high-level basketball continues its explosive growth, the market for experienced, so-called “high Basketball IQ” players increases with that growth. Tools a successful four-year player in any college basketball program bring with him are a “high basketball IQ” and a high-level skill like scoring, rebounding, shot-blocking, playing defense, running a ballclub on the floor or some combination of all these. Any on of those characteristics makes him a commodity worth having in nascent basketball regions.
On the other hand, there will be some who, like the Boston Celtics great point guard Danny Ainge, drafted in the old third-round (now somewhat optimistically called “free agency”) will rise to elite levels in the NBA. These “diamonds in the rough,” guys like Scottie Reynolds could be, will find a home either somewhere in the NBA, Chinese Basketball Association, Developmental League, or in the other exponentially expanding international leagues. But NBA Gms and Coaches , as coldly analytical as they all are and must be, still look for diamonds in the rough. Ainge now the Celtics GM, for one, knows and understands their value all too well.

The Great LeBrotto

The most interesting take I have seen on "The Great LeBrotto of 2010" is the recent post in Forbes magazine which predicts the Knicks will get the great marketing turbine because, "this January they (the Knicks) became the only franchise that can use their stock as currency. They cannot pay James (directly) with MSG stock because it would violate the league's collective bargaining agreement. But there is nothing to stop James from buying shares of MSG with his money. This would allow James to in essence work for himself and capture the upside in revenue from higher ratings on the MSG RSN, a soon-to-be renovated Madison Square Garden and much higher profits he will bring to these platforms." This is a compelling argument for James, if he wants to be an "owner," and if making money is his core issue.

It's difficut to imagine that building an entire team around him pretty much from scratch, which is what he and the Knicks would have to do, makes any sense to him at his next team since he's been doing that in Cleveland ever since they won the First LeBrotto.

My personal belief, though, and I know this is hopelessly romantic, is that he's most interested in having some fun and winning some championships. His brand equity is already far beyond internationally platinum, and, unless he does something too stupid to even contemplate, it will remain so for many years to come. Plus he already makes, has made, will make colossal lucre.

Who wins The Great LeBrotto of 2010? Who knows? My personal favorite scenario is Dallas with Dirk voluntarily taking a giant salary cut to make it happen, Phil signing a huge contract to coach them and Chris Bosh joining in for good measure. Hey, it's my blog, and I can dream, can't I?

Whoever gets LeBron's imprimatur, it will be almost as much fun watching the contortions the owners and the commentators put themselves through as it will be guessing which team will win The Great Lebrotto.