On The Week's Top Five

1. Royalties

You know what upsets me far more than garish ceremonies celebrating a vestigial institution? It's people who utilize garish ceremonies celebrating a vestigial institution in order to engage in self-righteous condemnation. Let us say, for instance, that you are a sports fan, and you condemn the royal wedding largely because it is an exercise in garish symbolism. Does this mean that you are also in favor of the abolition of marching bands? Of school mascots? Of player introductions? Of uniforms? At some level, myths and symbols infuse every aspect of our culture, but nowhere more than sports. You may argue about the need for/cost of such symbols, but to completely disregard the notion that these symbols hold emotional weight for a great number of people is as ignorant as declaring that pep rallies are a national embarrassment.

2. The Culmination of the NBA Playoffs...

Will be that moment when Kobe Bryant finally engages in physical assault on Pau Gasol.

3. Proof of Life

You know the best part of those early seasons of The Apprentice? It was those segments when Trump would deliver his advice on business and on life, because I imagine the advice Trump would give to young entrepreneurs is very similar to the advice Ahmedinejad would give to young terrorists, if Ahmadinejad played golf.

4. Listening to...


"The Envoy," by Warren Zevon. Because I am feeling especially cynical today.*

5. Reading...

"An Accidental Hero," by John Ed Bradley, SI.** 

"True Colors," by Malcolm Gladwell.

*See Number 3.
**I would argue that Bradley is one of the most underrated writers in that magazine's history. I have yet to read any of his novels, but his memoir about playing college football at LSU is outstanding.

On The Week's Top Five

1. Giant Heads and Talking Basketballs

Does the person who concocted the NBA's advertising campaigns have some sort of fetish with gigantism? I don't know when or how oversized craniums became the rage among America's youth--appearing on posters and in the stands at college basketball games and now in these bobblehead advertisements and talking basketball soliloquies narrated by Moe Szyslak that resemble a Timothy Leary fever dream--but it makes me think the American advertising industry is in desperate need of some new ideas, preferably packaged inside a case of Benadryl.

2. Playoffs

I confess: I did not watch enough of the NBA regular season to determine with any accuracy which teams were the favorites coming into these playoffs, but here's what I've realized: It doesn't matter. All that watching the regular season would have done is confuse me, as (with the possible exception of the final 8-10 games) it seems to mean less than it ever has before. The talent among the top 16 teams is dispersed enough that an eight-seed seems fully capable of defeating a one seed, which is a great thing for the NBA, but further proof that college basketball is far better, since in college basketball, this happens in a single-elimination format every single year.

3. Predictions

That said, I will take O.J. Mayo's beard, followed by Pau Gasol's blithe nonchalance, followed by:

3.) Kevin Garnett's Nelson Muntz-like facial contortions.
4.) Derrick Rose's soon-to-be-depleted modesty.
5.) Knicks fans' delusional sense of self-importance.

4. Baseball's Problem...

centers entirely around the fact that Kyle Farnsworth is a competent closer.*


5. Goodreads

SI's Thomas Lake on the shooting death of Denver Bronco Darrent Williams.

The St. Pete Times' Ben Montgomery on the baffling disappearance of a local diver.

*And I say this as someone who drafted Farnsworth in a fantasy league, fully expecting to release him before tax day arrived.

On Cinema, Sports and Predictability

I think we can all agree that this year's Oscar ceremony was particularly terrible. What we might not agree on is the reason why it was terrible. You may single out James Franco's blank pseudo-stoner visage, or Anne Hathaway's array of cheerleading yodels, or that horribly uncomfortable moment when Spartacus nearly toppled off the stage, or when one of the characters from Strange Brew was hired to mimic the voice of Bob Hope. You may have found the transitions from silent film to the E.T. soundtrack somewhat jarring, and you may have found the daisy chain of celebrity introductions particularly bizarre, and you may have been distracted by the dearth of Charlie Sheen jokes. But we all know the real reason this year's Oscars were so eminently forgettable is because they were so utterly predictable.*

This is the problem with an event like the Oscars: Given the flood of awards shows that come before (and the amount of coverage given to each), the winners seem patently obvious by the time the ceremony arrives. Imagine if there were five National League pitchers with 20 victories apiece, and sportswriters voted for the Cy Young Award every week in September before the final vote at the end of the season; that's essentially what the Oscars have become. They're predictable, and there's nothing worse, in cinema or in sports, than predictability.

This, above all else, is what's riding on the NFL and NBA labor negotiations, from a fan's perspective. Baseball, whether true or not, suffers from a perceived lack of parity--even if the Yankees or Red Sox don't play in the World Series, there is a perception that they are going to, and that spending six months following a small-market team may result in the occasional anomalous playoff run, it is generally a futile pursuit. And so baseball has suffered, and the NFL--despite a growing uncomfortability with the repercussions of violence--remains America's most popular sport, because a socialist collective can win a championship...and the NBA is in a state of flux, especially now, as power increasingly becomes concentrated in a handful of major markets.

Of course, I'm not saying sports will ever be as predictable as the movies. This is why, if I had to choose to eliminate one of the two from my life, I would choose film (though I'd prefer if it didn't come to that). Entertainment value is in the eye of the beholder, but I'd still prefer a world with surprises.

*For what it's worth: I would have voted for Fincher, Jesse Eisenberg, Jennifer Lawrence and Exit Through the Gift Shop.

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. I understand the Nets are taking a risk by trading for Deron Williams without (as far as we know) any real knowledge of whether or not they can re-sign him, but two things seem relatively obvious: A.) If I had to choose between a pure scorer like Carmelo Anthony and a dynamic point guard like Deron Williams, I will choose the point guard every time, and B.) If anything, people are probably underestimating the lure of both Brooklyn and a team owned (at least in part) by Jay-Z. I've covered high-school basketball in Brooklyn, and even that realm is ridiculously intense. If this team is any good at all, it could be far bigger than most people imagine it to be.*

2. I have no idea if Steve Lavin is a good coach, but the fact that St. John's is a completely different team this year as compared to years past seems like proof that in college basketball, coaching can change things in radical ways. In fact, it almost seems unfair that St. John's has one of the greatest coaches in Division I history as an assistant. It will be difficult not to choose St. John's as an early-round sleeper in my yearly experiment in self-immolation, just as it will be difficult to pick against Wisconsin, which seems to do more with a gang of pale slow Aryan-looking youngsters than anyone since Aaron Sorkin.

3. This is the greatest piece of self-satire Deadspin has ever published. In fact, they should have splashed across their new "front page" and Tweeted about it endlessly, and Craggs should have written a brilliantly crafted 1,200-word screed about why Oddibe McDowell's water bill is proof that the conventional wisdom about the water bills of ex-Texas Rangers is completely misguided.

*This piece is a fun read today. Zoinks!

On Carmelo: A Rough Notebook of Ideas

I. I cannot recall ever knowing more details about a trade in which I had no real rooting interest--and not even a great deal of interest, period--than this Carmelo Anthony deal. There are several reasons for this. First, the team acquiring Anthony, the New York Knicks, has degenerated into one of the more dysfunctional franchises in professional sports, and happens to be based in the largest media market in America. Second, Anthony himself (and his representatives) accomplished the bizarre feat of telegraphing precisely where he wanted to wind up long before he got there, which has happened in the past but never quite like this. These factors led to a third reason, which is that the media, already kineticized by The Decision and the proliferation of Twitter and recognizing the rampant dysfunction on both sides, felt obligated to report every single rumor and supposition in real time, for fear that, given the parties involved--and the continued meddling of a Drago-esque Russian billionaire only contributed to further weirdness--anything could potentially be true.

This is why it seems like the Carmelo thing has been going on since the Pleistocene era; because since it began, it's never really stopped. And since I am only a casual NBA fan (at least until the playoffs commence), I will leave it to others to debate the merits of the trade for each respective franchise. I think the bigger question here is what it says about the future of the NBA.

On Inconsequential Things (and One Consequential Thing) That Matter To Me

1. I wrote a couple of short pieces for GQ's new NBA package, one of which--on the NBA's new villains--can be found here. But you should check out the whole thing, if only because that Oklahoma City Thunder illustration is hyperawesome. 

2. I was going to write something about this mind-boggling piece* on the Huffington Post, but then Stephen Colbert said everything that needed to be said right here. Seriously, this is the most innovative website in the modern** history of the Internet.

3. Years ago, when I was a cub sportswriter in Akron, I took a phone call from a man named Pat Williams, who was looking for someone to help him write a book about his mentor, a baseball owner named Bill Veeck. I did not know much of Pat Williams' past history, beyond his remarkable role as an NBA lottery good-luck charm--I certainly did not know that he had once wrestled a bear--but I agreed to do it, and I was glad I did, if only because it acquainted me with two of the more fascinating people I'd ever come across. Pat is a force of nature, so relentlessly positive that I often had trouble believing he actually existed, and I have little doubt that if anyone can wrestle bone cancer into submission, it's him. And I don't normally do this, but if you happen to have the means and you'd like to make a donation toward a cure for what sounds like a truly nasty disease, here's a link.

*My favorite part is when he writes that the content written by HuffPo staff is the "most widely read" and is "the primary driver of everything else." Read that paragraph, then cast your inches two inches to the right and consider how many of the "top stories" on the site involve photos of a pantsless Jessica Simpson or video of an animal wreaking havoc.
 **Meaning, "the past 48 hours."

On He Who Shall Not Be Named, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Hamburgers

I don't know what will happen in Cleveland on Thursday night. I'd like to think nothing out of the ordinary will take place. I'd like to think that some people will jeer, and some people will laugh, and LeBron James will pour in 46 points and we will move on to the next overscrutinized twist in Miami's Season of Overkill. But since we have arrived at this crossroads, and since there is much navel-gazing taking place,* allow me my own indulgence.

I have stated this before, but I lived in Akron from 1995 until 2000. Those years happened to coincide with the modern heyday of Cleveland. I was young, and I would often find myself in a car on weekend night, hurtling up I-77 toward the Flats or the Warehouse District or Tremont to see a concert or to drink far too many beers. I was an outsider, but it seemed to me that Cleveland was the place you went when you wanted to experience urbanity; Cleveland is a small large city.

Akron was not that place. Because Akron, even as it was undergoing its own brief renaissance, even as it constructed a minor-league baseball stadium downtown, even as nightclubs sprouted up around it, felt like something much less urban. Akron is a large small city; you'd see the same people in the same places night after night, and there was something kind of comforting about it. Akron, my friend David Giffels** once said, has one of everything, but only one of everything. Akron, my friend Chuck once wrote, could be the Springfield we know from The Simpsons. Inexplicable things happen in Akron, news stories that capture the national imagination for their sheer weirdness. Akron incubates a great band approximately once every generation (Chrissie Hynde, Devo, the Black Keys), and Akron breeds serial killers, and Akron boasts an unimaginably great hamburger franchise, and now Akron has produced the most purely talented basketball player who ever lived. If Cleveland resides in some ignominious corner of the nation's cultural framework, Akron is an ignominious afterthought for Clevelanders. This is a town that identifies itself through several layers of inadequacy; whatever it produces is seen through that filter.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say that in some perverse way, it makes sense that LeBron James would continue to identify with Akron while dismissing Cleveland. One is a city of underdogs; the other is a forgotten place. At some level, they can't blame LeBron for leaving town. You can only go so far in Akron before you've done everything.


*Of course, much of this navel-gazing is well worth reading. Here is one well-crafted piece from Bill Reiter of Fox Sports, about Akron and its complex relationship with Cleveland how LeBron straddles both worlds. And here is another from my friend/noted raconteur/reporter/writer extraordinaire Wright Thompson, about the city of Cleveland.

**If there is a human being more loyalty to Akron, more of an understanding of what it means to live in Akron than David, I haven't met him.

On Several Things I Pondered Over The Thanksgiving Respite

1. I understand why the question must be asked, but I'd like to think there's a dividing line between those of us who temper our irrational affinity for sports with a certain amount of perspective and sanity, and those who actually believe laughing in the midst of defeat is some sort of capital offense, and are probably the same the people who bother to phone death threats to college sports bureaucrats, and are in danger of some kind of grand, Buffalo 66/Big Fan-esque spiral of humiliation and ignominy.

2. Which brings me to Boise State, and the worst column I've ever written. I was in college, of course, and Penn State's kicker missed a field goal to lose a game. I cannot remember the game, and I cannot remember the circumstances, but for some reason, this inflamed my sense of righteous indignation to the point that I ended my column with the emphatic declaration: "Leave (said kicker) alone." A few days later, I was at a fraternity party when some girls recognized me from my photo. "You wrote that column about (said kicker)?" they asked, and when I nodded in the affirmative, they giggled and walked off. And so went my first lesson in the dangers of overt self-righteousness; that column was the first of many missed attempts in my career. Which is why I am glad I fell asleep before the end of that Boise State game, because there is nothing more demonstrably more painful in sports than a kicker failing in a clutch situation; it is a nightmare come to life. It is us standing in our underwear. It is us forgetting our lines. It is a scenario that makes for great literature, of course--and I suppose there's a bit of irony in the fact that I shanked my first attempt at capturing those emotions in such a major way. I still wish I could take it back, that I could have tempered my thoughts in a more elegant manner, but I can't. I'm sure, at some minute level, Kyle Brotzman feels the same way.

3. It is amusing how everyone tacitly acknowledges that the NBA regular season is essentially meaningless until March/April, but the Heat appear to be dead in the water after eighteen games.

4. Just when I thought narrative journalism, I returned from frigid New England to read this excellent piece on Laura Hillenbrand, and this outstanding piece by Chris Jones on Randy Quaid, and this edifying two-part interview with magazine writer extroardinaire Michael Paterniti, who published this ridiculously good Thurman Munson profile a few days after I'd published my own Thurman Munson profile in the Akron Beacon Journal Sunday Magazine, which even now serves as a humbling reminder that I'm not too far removed from being the clumsy bozo who wrote all those terrible columns in college.

On Blair Thomas, Greg Oden, and Level of Bustitude

He stopped short, dropping his arms. "I..." he said, gasping a little, though his condition was fine and the run hadn't winded him. "I--once I played here."
--Irwin Shaw, The Eighty Yard Run


In my mind, Blair Thomas is not a punchline. In my mind, Blair Thomas is not a bust. In my mind, Blair Thomas is the running back in this video, the running back who, at the 6:25 mark, propels himself through the Syracuse defensive line and then bursts past five defenders for one of the most picturesque 92-yard runs you will ever see. In my mind, Blair Thomas is the running back who took his next carry forty yards for another touchdown, and finished the day with144 yards on three carries, announcing his presence in a way I've never seen a young running back do before or since. In my mind, Blair Thomas was a first-tier talent who tore up his knee before his senior season and never regained the same burst; I was a teenager who never played football and even I recognized that the Blair Thomas of 1989 was not the Blair Thomas of 1986. It is not his fault that the Jets were too inept to realize this; it is not his fault that the Jets overvalued him.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons: First, Jeff Pearlman, in compiling a list of the 100 Worst Players in NFL history on Deadspin, cited Thomas in his introduction. Not as one of the worst players in the NFL history, but as a "larger-than-large bust." Now, let's leave aside the fact that I can find no citation of Joe Paterno actually calling Thomas "the best player I've ever coached" (he did call Thomas the best all-around running back he'd coached, a relatively major distinction given the defensive stars who have come through Penn State's program); let's just ask the larger existential question that hovers over Pearlman's rankings (which are generally a goofy and well-rendered conceit): What is a bust? How do we determine a bust? Shouldn't mitigating circumstances be factored in?

Now, it is true that Blair Thomas did not live up to expectations. And so perhaps, at some level, at least in the minds of Jets fans, this makes him a colossal bust. In my mind, if you had to measure Level of Bustitude*, it is fair to rank Thomas higher on the scale than, say, poor Ki-Jana Carter, who may have actually been the greatest running back of the Paterno era but never could stay healthy when he reached the NFL. (Thomas might be 7; Carter is probably a 2 or 3.) The problem is, we don't make these distinctions. The problem is that there is no nuance in the classification of a bust; there is no measure of injuries and the mental burden of fame and the attendant pressure that may affect certain personalities in different ways than others.  And that brings us to Greg Oden.

Oden's career, of course, has been a story of failure. His body is flawed; his body has betrayed him, over and over again. This happens, but when it happens to an athlete like Oden, it somehow becomes his fault. In a matter of time, Oden will be inexorably connected to Ryan Leaf, even though the individual circumstances of their Bustitude could not be more different. This is not fair, but this is sports, and in sports, we never really consider the notion that the human body is a fickle and undependable instrument. Failure is failure, and Greg Oden is not possessed of the health and/or talent of Kevin Durant, with whom he will forever be compared (see Leaf: Manning). The circumstances are irrelevant, and the past matters to no one but ourselves.

*TM

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. The Value of Insults

Here's my question about the Kevin Garnett-Charlie Villanueva dust-up: Isn't it worse if Garnett was actually attempting to call Villanueva a cancer to his team and to the NBA? If Garnett did call Villanueva a "cancer patient," it is undeniably stupid and insulting, but it's a juvenile taunt born of anger and spontanaiety, as Tommy Craggs ably points out. But Garnett essentially calling Villanueva a mental and emotional cancer, a bad teammate, and a lazy person, seems far more premeditated and far more deeply felt. Either way, Garnett is an extremely talented jerk, but isn't it better if he's just a jerk who spouts off like a child rather than a jerk who judges the character of people he doesn't know at all?

2. The Value of Insults, Part II

It always amuses me when the blogosphere holds a collective freak-out over something a talk-radio host says. The very notion of talk radio is built on drawing attention, on creating compelling narratives, even if those narratives are false.* That's true of both political talk radio and sports-talk radio. Either way, it is an entertainment, based entirely on perpetuating whatever news cycle happens to be capturing the public's attention, and in most cases, we do it a disservice if we take it too seriously.

On a semi-related note, there are few things more intriguing than watching pundits furiously attempt to break down the lessons learned from an election in the 24 hours following an election (watch an historian like Doris Kearns Goodwin address those same issues). I have to imagine the wild political swings in this country are not entirely isolated from cable news' nimble ability to massage the narrative in opposing directions, based on the outcome of an election.     

3. Shazzactor!

I have an idea for an IPhone app that serves as proof of how intellectually lazy I've become: I would like someone to conjure a program which would work like Shazam does for music, except it would apply to television and film actors. So I could hold my phone up to the television, shoot a photo of an actor, and in a matter of seconds, it would tell me who this person is, link to his/her IMDB profile, etc. This seems like something that should exist (I don't know, maybe it does)--so much so that I've occasionally found myself holding my phone up to the television set for no apparent reason. This is how the Internet has conditioned my brain: I now find it reflexively confounding that there is ever any mystery about anything at all.

*In other words, it's a lot like the blogosphere.

On LeBron, Nike, and the Deconstruction of America

You've probably never heard of Jim Riswold,* but I could make a case that he's one of the most influential figures in modern sports. Riswold is an ad-man--or at least, he was; now he's a really clever pop artist--and in the 1980s, he worked at Wieden and Kennedy, the Portland firm outsourced by Nike to devise its ad campaigns. It was Riswold who came up with the idea to marry Spike Lee and Michael Jordan; it was Riswold who came up with the catchphrase "Bo Knows." It was Riswold who helped shape and define athletes through commercial imagery, and sell a generation on both shoes and subversiveness; it was Riswold who would admit to me, years later, that he essentially created a monster.

I thought of Riswold when I watched this new LeBron James advertisement. It is an homage to the work he did; it is the natural descendent of this utterly brilliant Bo Knows ad from 1992, when Bo, rehabbing from injury, faced the inevitable end of his career. At that point, the notion of an athlete deconstructing his own career in his own advertisement seemed subversive to the point of mutiny; there's a moment in that ad when Bo actually stares down the logo of the shoe he's trying to sell. In 1992, that was unheard of. In 1992, this was the closest Nike could come to rebelling against itself, and what company in its right mind would do that?

Now, of course, all we do is deconstruct. Most of us don't actually believe LeBron James to be a terrible person; we just think he made a terrible PR decision, which, in this day and age, seems to be almost as inexcusable an error as actually doing something terrible. This is how we see things now. Turn on any cable station and tell me how much time they spend judging the political effectiveness of any given campaign's image versus the actions proposed by any given candidate. It's the reason Chris Matthews has a career.

Which is why an international conglomerate like Nike, and an international brand like LeBron, can get away with a commercial like this. It's because men like Jim Riswold, unwittingly or not, set us on this path, of athletes become constructs, and of us becoming as interested in the construct as we are in the people themselves. "What should I do?" LeBron asks, and these days, everyone has an answer to that question. These days, the best way to rebel is to stare down your own image.

*Unless you happened to somehow come across this book.

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. Promotional Notes

ESPN Chicago ran an excerpt of Bigger Than the Game, as part of their '85 Bears commemoration. Also, Daniel Brown of the San Jose Mercury News quoted my book in evoking comparisons between the Alex Smith-Singletary confrontation and the back and forth between Ditka and Jim McMahon (see Chap. I, Section II, which you can read online or on a Kindle for free).

2. Knee-Jerk Contrarianism, Part I

I credit Dave Jones of the Patriot-News for his provocativeness, but to me, this proposition is the equivalent of randomly altering the punctuation in The Sun Also Rises. Some of us happen to like 1950s milk bottles, Mr. Jones. We don't need silver, and we don't need additional swooshes (the blasphemy of adding one to the greatest outfit in sports was egregious enough), and those Nike combat uniforms (above) look like Phil Knight conjured them during a fever dream. The only acceptable addition to Penn State's uniforms would be to add back the numbers on the helmets, as it was pre-1974. Sometimes, old and staid is the best possibility of all.

3. Knee-Jerk, Contrarianism, Part II

I could take issue with many of the points Slate's Jack Shafer makes about the media criticizing athletes for hanging on too long (and I even agree a few things he says), but when he says Michael Jordan's years with the Wizards were "great and meaningful," he loses me for good. Somebody might want to send him a copy of this book.

On The Decision

 1.  I lived in Akron, Ohio for five years. And then I left. I was 22 when I arrived, and 27 when I departed, and I'm not going to lie: It was a bizarre place to be a young and single and unmoored. The first piece of advice I received from a co-worker when exploring places to live was that a certain township to the south of Akron had no property taxes; at that point, I didn't even know how property taxes worked.

So I guess what I'm saying is that there's an inherent hypocrisy to me criticizing anyone for leaving Northeast Ohio, because I once left Northeast Ohio myself. It wasn't the place I wanted to live my life--though my memories of it grow fonder as the years pass--but it is the place where several of my friends live their lives, and quite happily. Many of them were born there, and many of them have never left. And yet none of them expected LeBron James to stay at home. They have been conditioned to presume the worst. They have been conditioned to believe that nothing good ever lasts.

2. Maybe it was my own naivete, but I thought they were wrong. Even as the Miami rumors built to an inevitable pitch, I kept thinking it was all a ruse. LeBron was different, I thought. LeBron is not like me at age 25--a transient, in search of something bigger. LeBron is one of them. He came of age in Akron. At heart, he was a nativist; this was what set him apart from every other high-profile athlete of the modern age. He wouldn't possibly grind his hometown into his heel like this. Beneath the unavoidable bubble of egotism, his loyalty to his hometown and his sense of humor and his inherent showmanship made him appear surprisingly self-aware. And so I had a theory: The television show, the rumors flitting about on Twitter, the whole ridiculous years-long free-agency parade...it was a ruse, and once LeBron chose Cleveland, he would reveal that this had all been an exercise in media criticism, a statement on our own misplaced mores and outsized passions. Once LeBron said, "I'm staying in Cleveland," it would all make sense. It would become the biggest Rope-a-Dope since the heyday of Muhammad Ali. It would be a thumb in the eye of New York, a fist in the face of Chicago, and the greatest victory for Cleveland since the heyday of Otto Graham.

3. One of my close friends, Ryan Jones, once wrote a book about LeBron James. He also wrote this piece in the hours before the announcement, and managed to put my upcoming book into a modern context in a way far better than I ever could. "They might not see it, because they don’t live in the same world the rest of us do," Ryan wrote of LeBron's handlers. "Or they might agree and not care, because they’re committed to doing this their way, all the way, trusting that history will eventually prove them wise."

I was at the beach last week when it happened. I watched it on a tiny, standard defintion television, and for that, I am grateful. Outside of live reality television, I have witnessed few events more uncomfortable than The Decision. The thing is, I didn't blame LeBron for doing it. I didn't blame him for doing it because I presumed it was all part of an orchestrated fake-out, that it was more of a comment on what sports have become than an unironic and tone-deaf event. I didn't blame LeBron because I presumed he knew that history would prove him wise, because he had his mind made up all along.

About that, I suppose I was correct.

4. "Remember MORE THAN A GAME?" my friend Bob wrote from Akron the morning after. "Practically the first event that is recounted in the film is LeBron deciding to not play for the public school (Buchtel), but instead going to St V.  Anyone who has a kid playing sports in a public school is familiar with the phenomenon - the gifted athletes running off to the moneyed schools.  In GAME, LeBron even says that he 'knew it would make a lot of people angry.'  And that he was going to play with his friends. To do 'what was best for him. To win.'"

There's no way an athlete or a fan can grow up in Northeast Ohio and not feel the weight of losing. It trickles down. It's in the bloodstream. My guess is LeBron felt it, too; maybe that self-doubt is what made him choose to escape, to take an easier path, to embrace almost certain victory. (He was a Yankee fan, after all.) At 25, every male is conflicted, and LeBron was, too: He loved his hometown, even if his hometown had trouble loving itself. He could either attempt to alter that self-image almost entirely on his own, or he could do what people have done for years now: He could escape. And it is to his credit, and to his blame, that he presumed the worst.

On Unlikely Ends To the NBA Free-Agent Frenzy That While Take Place While I'm On Vacation

1. LeBron James chooses to keep it "especially real," and, citing the counsel of Ron Artest, re-signs with Cleveland and accepts a part-time position at the Champs Sports at Chapel Hill Mall.

2. LeBron James signs with the New Jersey Nets, refers to team's owner as "that Grand Theft Auto dude."

3. LeBron James signs with the Knicks, claims the three free months of Showtime and Cinemax were the deciding factor.

4. LeBron James signs with the Bulls. Michael Jordan, attempting to repair his reputation, volunteers to bequeath James his No. 23, then spends the following decade quietly undermining him.

4. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh all sign with Miami, win a single championship, then retire to become tarpon fishermen in the Florida Keys.

5. LeBron James signs with the Clippers, then team owner Donald Sterling attempts to trade him to the Seattle Supersonics.

6. Dwyane Wade signs with Toronto, citing his affinity for Canadians.

7. Amare Stoudemire signs with no one, chooses to travel through Eastern Europse on rail pass and "find himself" instead.

8. Feeling especially abandoned, Cleveland sets itself on fire voluntarily. Their effort fails.

9. J.J. Redick signs with Miami, winds up having a better career than Wade, Bosh, or James.

P.S. I'll be back in a few days. Until then, you know the drill.

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. The NBA Regular Season

In no other sport could the verities of a seven-month season be entirely invalidated over the course of several weeks. In other words, the NBA regular season has once again proved itself to be an utter waste of time; this, I would argue, is the biggest problem the league faces, given its financial realities. That the NBA playoffs defy conventional wisdom may seem like a plus, but it really isn't--it just reinforces every negative stereotype about professional basketball players. It makes people think they only care when it matters, which may be true, but it's a problem when it's so patently obvious.

Also, I have a bad feeling this may be the least interesting Celtics-Lakers finals matchup in modern history, but it's either that or start pretending that baseball matters.

2. Futbol

Let me just get this out of the way up front: I see no real reason that I should be obligated to cheer for the U.S. soccer team. I am (in general) proudly ignorant of this sport, and yet I am excited about the World Cup, but the reason I'm excited about the World Cup is because it is a chance to feel connected to a global event. Therefore, isn't it counterproductive to engage in jingoistic patriotism? Shouldn't I feel equally connected to Slovenia, which looks rather beautiful and, as a burgeoning Democratic republic, probably needs the confidence boost much more than we do? Or, as they say in Ljubljana, Moje vozilo na zračni blazini je polno jegulj.*

3. Cleveland Has an Edge


First time this phrase was uttered since Joe Walsh released "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get."

*Translation: My hovercraft is full of eels.
 

On Angry Men

So basically, Phil Jackson will say anything at this point, if it may afford his team some kind of miniscule competitive advantage. I don't know if this makes him a genius or just an arrogant Zen-infused bozo, but I suppose it works, because it generates animosity where none exists, and that seems to be the most effective motivator. There is nothing particularly likeable about the Lakers or the Celtics at this point in their history, and they seem to prefer it that way; they continue to generate granite blocks on their shoulders for reasons that are entirely illogical--at times, it seems like they don't even like each other very much--but also fundamentally effective. I suppose that's the model for the modern champion in the NBA: You have to be ornery and miserable. Anger is the new success, which is why the Suns are doomed.

So maybe that's LeBron's problem. Maybe he's had it too easy. Maybe someone should kidnap his dog; maybe if Delonte West had actually made a move on his mother, he might have played less like a catatonic. Maybe he should sign with the Clippers, just so he can learn what it feels to hate.

On Jumping the Shark

Strange happenings on Tuesday night: I skipped off from Cavs-Celtics to watch Lost for an hour, and when I came back, the Twittersphere was abuzz with schadenfreude: Both for an athlete and a television show, each of which had seemingly set us up for disappointing conclusions. Of course, this is the worst thing about the Internet: Lost is not over, and Cavs-Celtics is not over, but because of the instantaneous ability for everyone to respond to everything, it already feels that way. It feels like LeBron's career is a failure, and it feels* like six years of Lost are a failure. This is ridiculous--I actually have a weird feeling the LeBrons will pull it out tonight and then lose Game 7, just to maximize the Cleveland heartbreak factor. But watching LeBron on Tuesday night--his body language, his demeanor--was one of the strangest things I've ever seen. It was almost as if he suddenly felt the weight of all those decades of Cleveland failure, and absorbed them into his skull. It was almost as if the mythology bled into the reality.

The most powerful scene** I've witnessed in my sportswriting career came in the Cleveland Indians locker room after Game 7 of the 1997 World Series. I stood in front of a veteran pitcher named Charles Nagy, who had just given up the game-winning hit. And Nagy just sat there, wearing a soggy T-shirt and a pair of tights, staring at the carpet. He had struggled throughout the playoffs, but he'd actually pitched well in relief that night. There is nothing athletes hate discussing more than curses, yet it honestly didn't feel like that team had been done in by the futility of the city of it represented; it just felt like their luck had run out.

LeBron on Tuesday night felt different. How can he not feel the weight of all these questions, of all this uncertainty, of the considerable expectations he's built up for himself? And it's not over, and he still has a chance to make it right, but LeBron is not just battling the Celtics anymore. He's fighting against the mythology he's built up for himself. He's fighting against the mythology of an entire city. And he's fighting against those people who expect any great cultural creation to inevitably end in disappointment.

*To some people, though not to me. While I thought this week's episode was relatively weak, the reason it was weak is because Lost has always been a character-driven show, and this was an answer-driven episode. Ambiguity is always better than absolutism.
**Or at least, the most powerful scene that didn't directly involve a human tragedy.

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me (Extraterrestrial Edition)

1. Where Amazing (Finally) Happens

There is nothing in the world quite like the National Basketball Association, which is why most of us have a love/hate relationship with said entity. For six months, thirty teams travel from one major airline hub to the next, laboring through eighty-two glorified scrimmages, only to emerge from their cocoon of indifference one day in mid-April, acting as if they felt this way all along. The NBA playoffs are utterly transformative: Suddenly, elbows are being thrown, and the children of French pop stars are hurling insults at beleaguered cities.* The Nuggets stop pranking each other. Kobe becomes Frowning Kobe. LeBron becomes Hyperdrive LeBron. Everyone is suddenly serious, and combative, and the commissioner deals out unwarranted suspensions. There is no reason** the NBA regular season should not be cut back to 50 games, or even 35 games, the length of the college season.

2. Alien$

If you didn't watch this performance on Saturday Night Live--and there's absolutely no reason why you should have...well, I can't exactly recommend you watch it now. It's like a Weird Al video, if Weird Al had a sex change and donned spandex. But there is a moment at the 3:10 mark when this curious, financially obsessed Scrubs character pauses the action, steps into a shower of lime-colored lasers, and declares, "Did anyone ever stop to think maybe we are the aliens?" If Carl Sagan had grown up listening to Aqua and joined a sorority, this is what he might have become.

Also, brushing your teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniels seems like it would not do a commendable job of preventing tooth decay.

3. The Red Sox Are Mediocre Again

Which means single-game tickets should be available in approximately 2016, once the final pink hat is disposed of in a trash can on Lansdowne Street.

*Speaking of which: I enjoy a manufactured controversy as much as the next rabid media mob, but this Joakim Noah thing is ridiculous. And it's not ridiculous because Noah insulted Cleveland--I lived outside of Cleveland for five years, and much of what he says is absolutely correct. It's ridiculous because, well, he's insulting Cleveland. This is the best he can do? There's got to be a cultural statute of limitations on insulting Cleveland, and I believe it expired with the April 1977 issue of MAD magazine. If a guy is going to mouth off, at least come up with some new verses. David Stern is missing an opportunity on this one: He should fine Noah $10K for Unoriginal Taunting. That will set a precedent. Even if won't help the city of Cleveland.

**Other than money, the only reason that matters.

On Several Decisions That Seem To Defy Logic

Because it's Friday the 13th. Because the sky is angry. Just because.


1. So just last night, LeBron James made a command decision to shed his signature number, 23, out of respect for ruthless egotist, tongue-contortionist and expert shoe salesman Michael Jordan. That's all very nice, as is LeBron's overarching desire to retire Jordan's No. 23 altogether, thereby elevating an undeniably transcendent basketball player whose greatest political stand came when he used an American flag as a sponsorial shield to the level of, say, Jackie Robinson. "There would be no LeBron James, no Kobe Bryant, no Dwyane Wade if there wasn't Michael Jordan first," LeBron said, and then he declared he would change his number to 6, which is Julius Erving's number. Of course, it is not difficult to argue that without Julius Erving, there would be no Michael Jordan. Therefore, I propose that the No. 6 be retired, as well, along with every number worn by any Hall of Fame player in the history of basketball, and that LeBron, in an overarching tribute to capitalism itself, replace his jersey number with an oversized American flag.

2. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, America's Failed Presidential Candidate, has named his top candidates for Time magazine's Person of the Year, since either A.) His opinion still matters to some indiscernible demographic of xenophobic hotheaded Yankee-lovers, or B.) He will do your panel discussion the cheap. Giuliani's choices were The Economy and Derek Jeter. Now, one of these things is not even a person, and the other is simply based upon the ways people use their environment to meet their material needs. Then again, this is a man who once spent several minutes on the radio berating a ferret. How he still has any career at all is one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 world.

3. And then there is Bud Selig, who seems wholly determined to tether his legacy to a nostalgic sense of intransigence. As baseball failed to consider expanding its instant-replay policy, Selig said this: "Life is changing and I understand that. I do like the human element and I think the human element for the last 130 years has worked pretty well. There have been controversies, but there are controversies in every sport." It's a good thing you enjoy controversies, Mr. Commissioner, because that's pretty much been the default position of the game itself since you took it over and began running it slowly into the dirt. Since the 1990's baseball has become defined by series of tangential controversies and concerns--over drugs, over economics, over statistics, over umpiring, over labor disputes, over Giuliani's seat placement. On most of these, Selig is at least partly to blame; in fact, can I blame him entirely for No. 2 (above)? After all, he is the human element in baseball. He's right, though--life is changing, and this is why baseball no longer matters the way it once did.

(Photo: AP/Cleveland.com)

On Things I Am Just Not Buying Today

Like everyone else who is engaged with these here Internets, I find myself besieged by a flurry of contrarian analysis. I often wonder if contrarian opinion is in fact the primary reason the Internet--well, at least Slate--was invented.* And if someone endeavors to convince me that, in fact, Paul Shirley is a more effective post player than Shaq, or that Kevin Faulk is the primary reason for the Patriots' success, or that we should think without thinking, or that we should not decide anything, ever, or that pineapple is the root cause of most cancers, I wish them well. I will still eat pineapple; I will still feel indifferent toward the Faulk family; I will still struggle to decide what to eat for dinner. But today, I stumbled across a pair of well-crafted contrarian opinions that simply ceased to convince me.

On SI.com, Scott Howard-Cooper makes a valiant and well thought-out attempt to persuade me that it is not necessary--and, in fact, may be a waste--to choose a point guard with a top-10 pick in the NBA draft. "Two starting point guards among the last 12 champions have been All-Stars," Howard-Cooper wrote. "No Hall of Famer was in the role since Isiah Thomas with the Pistons in 1990." And these are fair points, but then Cooper lists the past twelve point guards to win a championship, and while it is true that none of these men were the best player in their starting five, certainly none of them were the worst player in their starting five, either. In fact, nearly every one of them--from Derek Fisher to Chauncey Billups (who might wind up in the Hall of Fame) to Tony Parker (ditto) to Rajon Rondo (who appears on track to be a perennial All-Star)--is actually quite good (even Jason Williams did not detract from Miami's title run).

At the moment, Ricky Rubio, the Spanish phenom, is projected to go with the third pick to Oklahoma City, and my question to Cooper is this: If Rubio has as good a career as any of the four players listed above**, wouldn't he be a pretty solid pick, even at No. 3?

In fact, here are the No. 3 picks in the draft since 1998, grouped by results:
That Worked Out All Right--Deron Williams, Ben Gordon, Carmelo Anthony, Pau Gasol, Baron Davis
Eh/Oops--Mike Dunleavy, Adam Morrison, Darius Miles, Raef LaFrentz
Undetermined--O.J. Mayo, Al Horford

So: Of the five No. 3 picks that have worked out in the past 11 years, 2 1/2*** were point guards in college. And if Mayo pans out, it will be 3 1/2 out of six.

And none of the busts were guards.

To quote Isaac Mizrahi, who appears on the pale imitation of Project Runway that my girlfriend insists upon watching, despite the notable absence of Tim Gunn: "I'm just not buying your design, Scott."
--
And then there is Deadspin's resident contrarian, Tommy Craggs, whose indignant screed centers around journalist Steve Wilstein, who broke the McGwire-androstenedione story in 1998 and has now been nominated for the Baseball Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink award, given for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing." Somehow, Craggs (an undeniably talented writer/reporter, who seems gifted with the ability to see the hypocrisy in everything, a skill I sometimes wish I had), argues that Wilstein's story was the kickoff of a decade-long witch hunt which has "helped create a phony atmosphere of crisis." At one point, even Nancy Reagan gets swept up in this whole argument.

Having spent the past two years of my life writing about the mythology of the drug war in the 1980s, I certainly sympathize with Craggs' point: There is reason for cynicism on all sides in baseball these days, and there is certainly a case to be made that the steroid argument is itself based on a phony/flimsy/questionable premise, and that exposing the results of tests that were never supposed to be revealed is in fact a violation of privacy, a travesty, the end of civilized humanity, etc. But all Wilstein did was expose an issue that probably should have been opened up for public discussion five to 10 years earlier; if it had been, maybe these issues could have been handled in a more rational and sensible manner, without the ensuing witch-hunt (though given that this is baseball we are talking about, probably not).

I mean: Would it have been best to act as if the issue did not exist? It is true that andro was legal at the time but raising the question of whether it should be legal--or if perhaps this was only the exposed tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg--was not unreasonable, and this is all Wilstein did. It doesn't matter whether we care or not; given that we are subsidizing this sport with our season-ticket purchases, we at least deserved to know what was happening so we could judge for ourselves, didn't we? This is not about the moralizing that followed in Wilstein's wake; this is about exposure of information and examination of the issues, which, last I checked, was still our job. And I happen to think Wilstein did just that.

Then again, I probably would have dropped out of baseball either way.

*If I were forced to summarize the overarching impact of the Internet on the past two decades of American culture in just two words, it would be these: You're Wrong.
**Presuming Rondo does not devolve into Harold Miner.
***Gordon played both guard positions in college.

(Photo: Associated Press)