A Clearly Canadian Riot

While it’s probably impossible to condone a riot, it’s not too hard to understand the general motivation behind them. A group of people, disenfranchised with their political or economic situation, angrily convene to show their displeasure in a town square or public place. Bricks are thrown, cars are burned, businesses are looted, people are jailed, no one involved wins. The idea is that some form of greater good is achieved by the action, which is supposed to inspire policy change or improve awareness of a community’s issues.

So when I awakened this morning and the only topic anyone was talking about was people rioting in Vancouver about the stupid Stanley Cup loss, I paused for a moment of introspective reflection before coming to this conclusion:

Sports are stupid.

That doesn’t mean I won’t still watch them, and that doesn’t mean I won’t still write about them. There was a time in my life not that long ago when I would have thought the Vancouver riot was the coolest thing ever. It would have seemed honest, passionate, metal. I would have said; “wow, those fans are a lot better than the fans of the teams I root for.”

Now I’m just saying “wow.”

I understand that the whole “riot” basically consisted of one pile of burning rubble and one overturned car that some 14 year kid in camo pants kicked the shit out of. From the reports I’ve read, it spiraled out of control because the police essentially weren’t prepared for it. I’ve been to Mudvayne concerts in open fields that looked more dangerous than this “riot.”

What is this, a James Cameron movie?

Sidenote (fuck you, Grantland!): In college I denied myself the pleasures of booze and women for the first two years to essentially go to as many metal concerts as possible. I realize now that these things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive, but at the time I didn’t know that. The Mudvayne show, which took place at the Pickens Speedway in Pickens, SC, was one of these shows. I think there might have been a track there, but I didn’t see it, it basically was an open field with a stage, a food stand, and turnstiles. At this show, I’m not really sure why there was a bonfire, but there was, and it got really big. Now I’m all for bonfires and metal shows, but it would have been a lot more enjoyable for all involved if the bonfire had been located somewhere not IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN MOSH PIT. Kind of like how the commute home from Game 7 for Vancouverites (Vancouverans? Vancouvans?) would have been a lot more enjoyable without overturned burning cars in the road. It’s an apt comparison, since nobody died in either situation as far as I know.

Imagine this with 300 pound rednecks moshing around the fire.

It’s incredibly stupid to risk prison time because you got drunk at a hockey game and decided to burn some cars. Nobody over the age of 19 is saying “those are some awesome fans up there in Vancouver, eh!” I’ve watched sports for a long, long time. I’ve suffered some pretty horrible losses from my teams, and I’ve taken them way too seriously. The Titans losing the Super Bowl in 1999/2000 is probably the most similar loss to a Game 7 Stanley Cup loss that I’ve suffered with a team I was rooting for. You know what I did after that game? I went home and played NFL2K on my Dreamcast. No cars were harmed. I felt like shit for about three days, and then I moved on.

You have fires and stupid people, I have this.

UT blowing the SEC championship game in 2001 was a pretty awful experience. Furman blowing a pretty easy run to the I-AA national championship in 2004 against James Madison, that one really sucked. The Ravens’ smackdown of the Titans in 2008/2009 – I got horribly drunk after that one. After the Rusty Smith game against the Redskins last season (as the one Titans fan in the Redskins bar) I didn’t want to speak to anyone for hours and by all accounts was an insufferable prick for a couple of days. It’s not worth risking your relationships to brood over what millionaires or entitled prick college football players did or didn’t do on a playing field. Nobody gets upset when Nic Cage makes a terrible movie. I get taking sports too seriously. I’ve been there, done that, and bought the jersey.

Here are some things to riot about: lack of AIDS research funding; lack of green technology funding; coalition wars with no timetables for pullouts or transparent goals; an Energy department willing to allow BP to slide on numerous safety violations leading to the Gulf disaster; out of control deficit spending by administrations from both major political parties and a lack of an alternative to those parties; ousting politicians for twitter penis pictures; Glenn Beck; Ke$ha; antitrust practices from major media corporations; a reliance on foreign oil that is becoming less necessary; a three year recession brought on by the misuse of technology and idiot bankers; the longest sentence pieced together with semicolons I’ve ever seen.

Riot about one of those things, and I’ll bring the matches and lighter fluid. But sports aren’t worth it. Especially hockey.

Nothing to Say

Me too, Big Sexy, me too.

Do you think real sports columnists sometimes wake up and say to themselves the following?

“Damn, I have nothing to write about. I guess I can write about LeBron?”

I kinda do. Because I’m sitting here wanting to post something and I don’t have anything. I thought I was going to do a UFC tiers list, but I lack both the desire and the knowledge base to do such a thing. I could write about golf since it’s here in the District this weekend, only I know less about golf than I know about knitting. I could write about the difficulties of starting in MMA that few people really know about, only I’m not one of those few people. I could write about hockey, except I’ve watched a grand total of one hockey game, all season, and the only thing I’ve read about it is that the goalies hate each other. I could write about LeBron, but I’m pretty sure I did that on Friday and with Game 6 going the way that it did I don’t have one change to make or statement to retract. I could write about the greatness that is the spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, but that would make me a corporate sellout (I wish, I would totally write that for money). I could write about the LSAT, except that I’m contractually obligated not to write about the LSAT, like it’s Fight Club or something. I could write about pollen, but that would be boring and stupid. I could write about Chuck Norris’ failings as a political pundit, but sometimes a link says a thousand words. I could rate wines, but considering all I buy are $6 bottles, you might as well just go to the store and try them yourself.

Action jeans? I can't say I'm not interested.

This blog somehow morphed into a railing against sports media, which is one of the stupidest things anyone could rail against. And I’m afraid I’m about to do it again, because quite frankly, I just don’t have anything else to say.

The coming NBA lockout is one of those things that not a lot of people understand. The NBA just concluded its best, most exciting, most watched season in a very long time, and should be ready to capitalize on the NFL’s giant greed-fueled lockout that might be the dumbest potential work stoppage in the history of the planet. Trouble is, the labor deal negotiated between NBA owners and players is unprofitable to the owners, meaning they are being asked to lose money by the players. It’s an unsustainable business model that favors the current players, but not future players of a league weakened by financial trouble. The timing of this couldn’t be worse, but it needs to be done.

It is very likely that a hard salary cap, like the one in the NFL and NHL that dictates how much a team can spend on players per season, will be negotiated. Baseball doesn’t need such a thing to work, because they make all of their money from TV thanks to it essentially being a nightly program for six months (and other reasons that I’m too lazy to explain). A hard cap will prevent teams like the Lakers and Mavericks from amassing huge payrolls through the various cap exceptions presently available that cause the salary cap to be considered “soft”. It also will force teams to dump players and potentially lead us into a crazed scenario where a significant percentage of the players in the league will change teams, not because GMs are making moves to improve their teams, but because they have to get under a cap figure. There are going to be a lot of contract buyouts and waived fringe players from these teams.

The point I have with all of this, is that respected national media writers have ignored the potential brave new world the NBA is facing. Monday, Jason Whitlock wrote that the Miami MoHeatOs need to blow their team up and trade one of their Big Three players, as this team isn’t set up to win a title. If the labor deal coming was going to be a similar one to the one we have now, it wouldn’t be prudent to move one of those guys. They’re all in their primes and there’s no way the Heat could get close to equal value for any of them. But what if the new labor deal ended up FORCING one of them out the door? What if the hard cap figure came in below their current payroll? I don’t know if this is possible, because it’s been ignored, but I imagine it's very possible.

Last night, Bill Plashcke proclaimed “It’s time for Lakers to recapture some Magic and trade for Dwight Howard.” Terrible puns aside, this headline and article make absolutely no sense. It’s not going to be “time” to do anything until the labor agreement is settled. His proposal, for the Lakers to trade Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom to the Magic for Dwight Howard and J.J. Redick, makes sense from a basketball perspective, and he argues that well. But what if the Lakers, suddenly $30 million or so over a hard cap, have to buy one of those guys out or trade one of them for a fringe player? If this is the case, and I believe it will be, then the likelihood of this trade is zero. So why write the article? I guess these guys have to write about something.

Sucks to be them.

LeBron: Proving People are Stupid Since 2003

I am amazed at how much of the story I’m seeing unfold is overshadowed by the flawed mythologizing of one single man.

Just kidding.

I understand how mainstream narrative works. People want easily digested stories that they can consume before moving on with their day. And that’s exactly what all of the LeBron meltdown stories have been since he was shut down Tuesday night and followed it up with a game below expectations last night. Everything about this admittedly excellent NBA Finals has focused on what LeBron James did or didn’t do; say or didn’t say; is or isn’t historically. It’s 24 hour tabloid coverage that has conveniently ignored three truths about these NBA Finals.

First, Dallas is the better team and should be ahead three games to two returning to Miami, as they are.

Second, LeBron, for all of his alleged greatness, plays small forward, the least important position on the basketball court, and accordingly, the most difficult position from which one can make an impact on the outcome of any particular game.

Most importantly, this series doesn’t just have one guy. It has three of the five best players in the league this year and interesting supporting casts on both sides.

So forgive me for being a bit disenchanted with LeBron being all the news, all the time, when to me he is only an increasingly small part of what’s interesting about this particular series.

The reasons LeBron dominates the rhetoric behind this NBA Finals have nothing to do with basketball. LeBron was handed “next Jordan” expectations before he ever stepped foot on an NBA court, in a manner far beyond what Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, and Harold Minor (!) went through. He has an inordinate number of endorsements, creating a cycle of fame that doesn’t fit his accomplishments (fame to endorsements to fame). He was drafted by his hometown club, then “abandoned” them to go to a better team. None of this has very much to do with basketball.

I know I sound like a seventy year man whining about "star systems" and the reduction of team play. I’m far from that. When I go to an NBA game I go because “Chris Paul is in town,” or “Kevin Durant is in town.” I get that this league, above all others in team sports, is a league where stars put asses in seats. But when a star player, even one as polarizing and interesting to the mainstream consumer as LeBron, dwarfs a series with many stars and subplots, it reeks of corporate influence in the media. If you think about the basketball aspects of LeBron dominating everything even on a fairly rudimentary historical level, it’s never really happened before. Even if he was as great as we all think he can or should be, it wouldn’t necessarily make that much of a difference because of his position on the basketball court. Much like Julius Erving, Dominique Wilkins, and Charles Barkley, LeBron James is not an elite guard, and he is not an elite center. He is a small forward, and he is a damn good one.

In the history of the NBA, three players have been the best player on their team and won championships while playing small forward. John Havlicek did it in 1969 and 1973 with the Celtics, Rick Barry did it in 1975 with Golden State, and Larry Bird obviously did it three times in the 80s. Maybe the reason this is never discussed is a racial one (as all three of these guys are white), but that’s incredibly stupid and I’d like to think in 2011 we’re past that. I think the reason is ignorance towards the game of basketball. The point I’m trying to make here is that we’re asking LeBron to do something that hasn’t been done in a really long time, against a very strong team that deserves a title, and we’re asking him to look really good while doing it for reasons that have nothing to do with basketball. It’s one of the reasons I bristle when people compare LeBron to Scottie Pippen and do so as if that were an insult. If LeBron ends up having a better career than Pippen, why would you say his career wasn’t a success?

Not to mention, LeBron has much better hair.

The desire to deify LeBron in the post-Jordan era has led us down this road to perdition, this need to tear down a player who is rated on a scale different from any other player that has ever played the game. This, sadly, belittles everything else going on in a very good NBA Finals. Dallas should be the team with the interesting subplots much like the Celtics’ Big Three did in 2008. You remember that team, right? That team played LeBron too. Dirk, Kidd, Marion, even Tyson Chandler, are all players that have given great contributions to this league and are all championship-level basketball players. Unlike the Celtics’ Big Three, the window is closed. If they don’t win either Game 6 or 7, none of them will win a championship. The pressure should be all on them. How is THAT not more compelling than LeBron James? That is as dramatic as a basketball situation can be. Does Miami have anything similar to offer? Juwan Howard can finally be the first member of the Michigan Fab Five to have ever won anything at all. You know why that’s getting no play? Because no one outside of Michigan gives a shit about the Fab Five. It’s true.

It's a basketball hoop, not a toilet, Chris.

And why exactly did people think LeBron was going to be able to do something Kobe couldn’t do in round two, and Durant couldn’t do in round three? Dallas has traditionally been a high scoring team that couldn’t defend well, so the national consciousness is conditioned to say Kobe choked, Durant choked, and LeBron choked. How about this pearl of wisdom? Dallas shuts down perimeter players about as well as any team I’ve watched since the current hand check rules took effect. Shawn Marion and DeShawn Stevenson have looked like taller NY Jets corners all throughout the playoffs. These guys have been as important to Dallas’ playoff run as Dirk’s brilliant offense. This is the story. Not LeBron.

Different jerseys, but the exact same story.

When LeBron first exploded onto the scene in 2003, I was a college sophomore. I’m two months older than LeBron. He should be my favorite player. He’s a non-stop highlight reel, he plays defense, he never takes a play off, and he cares about winning. He’s the greatest athlete in the history of American sports, a 6’8” Bo Jackson. I think people want to see him fail because there’s no way anyone else could be him, not because he ditched a bad Cleveland organization to play for an extremely flawed “Super Best Friends” team in Miami. But he’s not the story I care about. It’s Dallas’ time. They’ve been an underdog all four series! How are they not the story? I thought Americans loved underdogs!

The DVR Revolution

Yesterday grantland.com launched, promising new takes on sports matters from people slightly more interesting and talented than the traditional hack sportswriter currently present on major sites and blogs such as this one. One of these people is the great Chuck Klosterman, who cares about sports in a way I've never seen before. He doesn't root for any teams; rather, he simply follows the games for the competition and entertainment value, not unlike the way I watch UFC. Klosterman manages to discuss items about sports that get to the heart about why sports are so different than other forms of entertainment, such as their unscripted nature and their tendency to occasionally highlight the absurd.

Today he discussed why recording games on the DVR makes for a lesser experience than watching the games live. The gist of his argument is that drama is lost as games leave the present and enter the recent for rational and irrational reasons. This is true; you wouldn’t purchase a UFC card, record it, and then watch it 3 hours after it ended. If that was your plan you might as well just wait for the DVD. But the difference between my view and Klosterman’s view is the social aspect. If I’m watching Game 4 of the NBA Finals on a Tuesday night, I can do one of two things. I can walk ¾ of a mile down to the bar and watch it with some friends with beers. Or, I can DVR it.

Why can’t I just watch it live at the house? Simple - there is just too much other stuff to do at the house. I can watch movies. I can play Playstation. I can watch other shows I’ve recorded. I can watch other shows that are live. I can smoke the hookah. I can play with my dog. I can write, study, do laundry, go for a run, listen to music, talk on the phone, talk to my girlfriend, make a sandwich, read a book, or, god forbid, I can go to sleep. All of these things sound better than listening to Magic Johnson ramble about “winning time” or Charles Barkley calling out paying fanbase X for being the worst fans in the league. I’m a fairly intelligent person. I’ve watched basketball for a long time. Hell, I even PLAYED basketball for a long time. I don’t need people to explain to me what I’m seeing. And I don’t need to watch commercials.

"Winning Time!"

I freely admit that watching a sporting event on the DVR is a less than desirable experience. It’s honestly a lot of work. If someone could invent an auto DVR that edits on the fly and turns live games into episodes of “NBA’s Greatest Games”, eliminating free throws (except at the end), timeouts, inbounds, halftime, and Jeff Van Gundy, it would catch on immediately. But I don’t have three hours I’m willing to spend watching these games, so this is what I do now:

If a game starts at 9, I start watching at 10:30, and I catch up with the live feed with about six minutes remaining. I call it the 90 minute rule, and I use it with all sporting events I’m watching at the house.

This solves most of the problems Klosterman mentioned. His article never mentions the possibility of using the DVR to start a game late and catch up with real time. His problem only mentioned that it is less than desirable to watch a game in its entirety after the fact, which I won’t do. You still get the drama of the live game when it counts, and you still know what happened to bring the game to that point. The only type of person this doesn’t work for is the irrational karma fan, the fan that feels they have some control over the outcome of the game from their rooting interest. This fan generally watches in a social setting, thus the DVR concept does not apply to these sorts of fans anyway.

There are simply too many entertainment options, and too few hours in the day, for the time commitments the big three leagues ask of you to follow their games live. The NBA is actually better than the NFL and MLB in this department. I only used them as an example because it’s the most current.

I love Chuck Klosterman and I’m glad his take is going to be more rooted in the mainstream now that grantland.com has launched. I like that he takes chances and writes about goofy things. But I feel he missed about the DVR and sports. The DVR is a tool that makes serious following of sports possible for people that don’t write about sports for a living. Without it, I don’t get to watch the NBA Finals or MMA cards on cable. Without it, I don’t get to watch four or five NFL games each week for the sake of fantasy research. The DVR is a tool to increase the volume of sports watched, and it should be treated accordingly.

"The Miama Heat fans arr TURRIBLE!"

Howdy!

So today, I took the LSAT. And they made me sign a Fight Club style contract not to talk about it. All I can say is, the vast majority of the people that took it today are DUMBER THAN ME!

I wasn't going to flaunt that shit. My actual plan was to sit at home, drink some wine, and play some video games online. But I decided to first check twitter to see if anything special was happening.

Blah, blah, wait a minute....Anderson Silva is trending? Really? Worldwide?

Anderson Silva is the best fighter in the world. He's the modern day Bruce Lee. He's the fighter my girlfriend, who doesn't give three shits about fighting, would watch every night live if that were an option. He's the real, no BS, Tiger Woods with no limits, that American media has managed to miss. So I innocently tweet:

Anderson Silva is trending. No idea why. Every tweet is in Portuguese.

The fact that I had to tweet that is fucking appalling. MMA is typically covered in every facet, all the time. I have every base covered. This is a person that should be constantly covered. This is MMA's Michael Jordan. And this blog post will be the first English mention of the real reason Anderson Silva trended tonight. He was on a Brazilian variety show.

As god fucking intended! Anderson Silva is the best fighter on this earth today. This is not a debate. There is no man, woman, or alien that would defeat him in a mixed martial arts arena. And I learned an hour ago that his home nation of Brazil had no idea who he was until tonight.

Is that not ludicrous? Apparently, Anderson Silva was not a star in Brazil until he defeated his nation's legend, Vitor Belfort, in the octagon. Vitor Belfort is apparently a great reality TV star in Brazil. When I was sent this synopsis, I laughed, before I realized it was potentially true. Anderson Silva is as obscured in his home country as he is in the USA.

Two conclusions can come from this. 1. MMA media just got outreported by a tired, drunken fan. 2. Anderson Silva needs a new manager.

I will learn Portuguese.