The Colts sacrificed their perfect season amid angry boos from a home crowd.  Like everything in sports it was trivial. Going 19-0 is trivial, winning a Superbowl is trivial, a ball flying through two sticks in the ground is trivial, etc.  So all’s relative in the ‘Caldwell’s a jerk’ versus ‘He did the right thing’ debate.  I think it was the wrong way to go, but that’s not what interests me about this mini controversy: I want to know why the fans weren’t even a part of the discussion.

Kudos to Howard Bryant for at least bringing up the fan factor.  He’s in the minority.  Last night I watched oh-so-serious football men Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison sagely opine that the Colts had no responsibility to anyone but the team.  Really?  What about all those angry people who bought tickets for that game? What about all the Colts fans who wanted a perfect season?  I understand Caldwell’s perspective on the matter, but the arrogance of the talking heads is staggering.

For all the daily sports jibber jabber about what team’s number one, what team’s a fraud, and which coach is on the hot seat, the fans get ignored with alarming frequency.  These all-important sports moments are presented as though they occur in a vacuum and that we intrinsically understand their profound impact on our lives.

I didn’t hear or read one argument like the following: Caldwell has a right to pull his players, but he should have informed ticket buyers ahead of time.  Or how about this one:  The Colts should have put their decision to a local fan vote, seeing as how the fans watch the games and buy the tickets.  Such arguments are considered subversive and deviant in the ultra corporate NFL, a league that can’t possibly fathom a world where Americans no longer care about football.  Hey, we’ll blackout your games in a recession, our coaches will intentionally roll over upon clinching playoff berths, and our sport will cripple your heroes for life…but you suckers will never turn away, right?

The NFL has an underlying assumption that Americans will do anything for pro football—as though it’s encoded in our national DNA.  That’s a mistake.  Football is popular here, but it’s continued dominance isn’t assured.  The United States boasts one of the fastest changing, most diverse populations in the world.  Not everybody wants to hunker down and watch the start-stop-timeout-challenge ‘action’ of the NFL.  I do, but most of my friends who emigrated here don’t.  Soccer and basketball have done far more to ride the globallization (get it??) tsunami.  I’ll still root for the Chargers, but part of me wants America’s other sports to overtake this self-important, fan-hating concussion mill.

I don’t wish to offend, but the point of this post is that such ruminations shouldn’t be offensive.  I’ll skip past the perfunctory statements about who Chris Henry was and how sad his early passing is.  I’m commenting on a related phenomenon:  When athletes die, sports kabuki follows.  In the wake of a wake, famous deaths get used by the less principled for sleazy ends (see: the aftermath of Reagan’s death).  Sports are no different.  Subconsciously or consciously the big sports leagues seek to maximize their benefit from tragedy.  And we’re stuck in the sand—frozen by social mores, and a powerful impulse to avoid the ‘Not cool, dude’ chide.

Last Sunday was disgusting.  Chad Johnson probably feels real pain for his lost teammate, but all of that is mixed in with a staggering narcissistic streak.  He cries for the cameras, claims he’ll wear Henry’s jersey, dress in his locker, whatever. Dude…it’s not about you.

Perhaps it’s Ocho’s way of dealing with the pain, but he certainly doesn’t hate the attention.  And neither does the NFL.  This is drama, a chance to further hype a marquee matchup between two top teams.  By all means, keep the cameras on Chad as he weeps on the sidelines! How compelling!  It’s also a chance for the NFL construct an alternate memory of who Henry was, and deflect the casual fan from thinking ‘human crimewave.’

Look, I hate when guys like Colin Cowherd jump into these stories as though someone rang a racial paternalism bell.  But I also hate how we scrub history clean in the name of sensitivity.  We don’t have to cruelly say ‘he deserved it,’ or dismissively say, ‘it wasn’t surprising.’ We don’t have to act as though (this is directed at Cowherd) a freak incident is the perfect template for shaking our fists at young black athletes—as if Henry is indicative of some grand social problem that must be solved right NOW.  What society should do is stop large corporations from manipulating our humanity. I wish some sportswriter would say, “Gee, NFL, CBS, it’s death, not a commercial for your game.”

The power of sports kabuki prevents us from doing this. We have to ‘mourn’ the loss, turn Henry’s life into an acceptable narrative (Chris Henry was reformed! Pat Tillman was a hero!), and help the NFL  squeeze as much good press as they can from the contrived emotion.  Any major figure who questions this dance will be chucked into the realm of deviancy faster than post-911 Bill Maher.  Perhaps it doesn’t matter, but I like veracity. Not ‘oh-so-serious’ NFL bullshit kabuki.  What I saw last Sunday just didn’t seem honest.

Ironically sports are all about emotional manipulation.  They are totally trivial without our collective feeling irrationally poured in.  But a ‘NBA on NBC’ Marv Albert-narrated montage gooses your feelings in a positive way.  The NFL appealing to your sensitivity for the sake of its own ratings and image just erodes your capacity for sympathy from a distance.  If media companies constantly gun for our empathy, we become a cynical, silly people.  I don’t have the Hollinger stats to prove this, but Jacko death hysteria+Tiger Woods hysteria+ongoing wars+feudal healthcare system = a country without emotional perspective.

My Jewish Christmas has me thinking NBA lottery gifts.  Is it too soon to think about the lottery? That question is rhetorical.  Thanks to the GSoM scouting project, much of that thinking will be refined to a tasty pulpy paste that Nellie should happily gobble or drink…if he’s heard of the internet.

Just for fun, I’ll add my rusty two cents about four months too early.  The Warriors are this year’s Grizzlies: They have redundancies of redundancies, which could force a dumb decision.  Who among us watched the Grizz glumly pick Thabeet and thought it would work out well? No one, except the rare breed of character who would actually admit to having thought anything other than ‘STIFF’ on draft day.  I respect that person’s honesty, and perhaps Thabeet will hit a championship-winning half court shot before it’s all said and done.  But in the pre-Thabeet half court shot era, the pick looks awful–especially since Conley’s looking like a guy who merely rode Greg Oden’s coattails (which will eventually lead to Greg Oden fracturing both coattails).  I guess my point is that W’s management shouldn’t worry about redundancy because we barley know who’s good on this youthful, crazy team.

If the Warriors Secaucus their way into the top 3, almost any pick should force a trade.  I love Derrick Favors as Amare 2.0, but what happens if we actually have the luck to get him? Biedrins trade? We give up on Randolph?  Another Monta vs. Curry situation among bigs? Same problems arise with the glorious John Wall.  This isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just an interesting place to be after so much pre-season playoffs hyping. Winning the lottery will set off a Tim Kawakami speculation bomb. Just prepare for it, no biggie.

Given our lotto luck, I wouldn’t be surprised if we slip past top 3 pay dirt.  If that happens, remember Evan Turner. I may be getting ahead of myself, but his talent will most likely exceed his draft selection number.  Hell, I’ll prematurely conjecture my mental mind into thinking we’ll get him.  So why does Turner Talent>Turner Selection?  He fractured two back vertebrae and is out two months.  This is a concern, but it is also a chance to get a DuJuan Blair bargain.

I heard an interview with Daryl Morey once, where he said that the Rockets consistently take on injury risk as a means of beating the basketball market (paraphrasing).  Perhaps Mr. Quantum physics was merely playing a Jedi Mind trick so he could laugh when Donnie Walsh signed Jonathan Bender, but Morey’s words seemed pregnant with the veracity of a thousand George Washingtons.

In Morey I trust.  And in Evan Turner’s awsome rebounding, passing, and driving ability I sort of trust.  He’s six-foot-seven and ath-a-letic, as the announcers say. Check out this Turner youtube mix set to Eminem’s ‘Till I Collapse’ and try to keep from getting pumped (He looks like Tyreke Evans on some of the drives!).  Behold, his mighty rebounding and assist numbers (two huge Warriors concerns). With a little luck, we can add him and at least compensate for our suckitude with a historically youthful, compelling cast. Call it ’suckcitement.’

stay tuned.

Tweet Feed.…

One thing I wanted to make clear before the post starts: I’m not against drinking, in fact I find it necessary for getting through Warriors games (joke). I just find it odd that Nellie’s drinking could be an issue and yet we only obliquely refer to it….

It’s not libelous or even improper to ask the question. There are veiled references to it everywhere—on this site, ESPN, and in the local papers.  We all know that Nellie loves his scotch.  Back in the day, we almost reveled in his possible alcoholism. It was amusing to watch a guy beat the No. 1 seeded playoff team, and pop open a beer in the post game.

Now, it’s not so amusing.  As the losses pile up, and the Warriors start to disintegrate, the question goes begging: Does a non functional alcoholic have a huge hand in our team’s present and future? This is the elephant in the room (no Don Nelson weight jokes, please).

Just a short time ago, Nellie called KNBR from a bar, in the daytime.  If that’s not remarkable, what followed was: He said he was drinking scotch, and told Ralph it was “harder than hell” to trade Stephen Jackson.  I would add that, subjectively, the guy sounded sloshed.  How many other teams would countenance their coach getting drunk (probably) and publicly harming a player’s trade value?

I didn’t hear a whole lot of outcry about that PR disaster, possibly because we’ve become immune to Don’s drinking.  Now, after his health problem (pneumonia is a disease that disproportionately impacts alcoholics), his odd practice behavior (Mavericks jacket?), and recent lineups that boggle the mind in only bad ways Vladimir Radmanovic at center?), I wonder how much longer we dance around the issue.  Nellie could be the coaching version of Robert Irsay, and we’re acting as though it’s normal for a 69 year old man to lament the loss of a drinking buddy when his star wants out.

Obviously there are many attributions for the current Warriors disaster.  But this could be the most underrated one of them all.  I have issues believing anyone in his right mind would start SF VladRad at the center position in an actual game.  I don’t think I’m alone. In the meantime, the wrong players keep taking shots for Nellie.

New twitter account, btws:

Unlike Tim Kawakami (he’s often amusing), I refrain from deriding fans who still show up to Warriors games.  I’m a sucker like everybody else, and I occasionally find myself grinding teeth in the Oracle.  But I’m not going to our first nationally televised game on Friday–witnessing the Bobby-Cohan brigade suffer a revenue drop is just too much fun. For those who are going, allow me to be an arm chair general. To Warriors Nation, I propose a compilation of snarky in-game activities.  I’m not endorsing outright subversion per say–the following is just a collection of things fans ought not to not to do:

• The old bag on the head: Classic. Concise. Still comical.
• The ‘All I want for Christmas…’ signs:  We have so many desires this holiday season–new ownership….a sober coach….new coach…Randolph starting. I also would enjoy a “Happy Hannukah, our coach is meshuganah” sign. 
• The ‘We Suck’ signs: Whoever came up with that is a genius. Bagheads, this would be a great sign to rock.
• Start a campaign for Bill Simmons as GM:  The ESPN cameras would be more inclined to pick that one up than would the PR friendly CSN operation.

• ‘Bring back Mullin’ chants
• ‘Fire the drunk’ chants
• ‘Fire Nellie’ chants
• ‘Where’s Randolph at?!’ chants (’The Wire’ reference):  You could also go with ‘Where the F*** is Randolph?!’
• Boo Nelson at any opportunity: Any bad substitution, any time he gets up off the bench, pre-game intros, whatever. Don’t feel badly about it either, this guy made a scotch-soaked call into KNBR on a gameday.  Nellie needs some harsh consequences to break through that fog around his dome.

I’ve been reading a trope around here, one that really bothers me in lieu of recent events: It’s the idea that fans can’t judge the jackasses running this awful team.  For every reasoned critique of Warriors madness, there are a few comments that fall into the ‘oh what do we poor little fans know, we have no clue what’s happening behind the scenes!’ category. In a way that theme is correct: Warriors operations are so murky that it indeed is hard to know what the hell is really going on. But that shouldn’t take away our ability to judge. Hell, a big part of the problem is the lack of transparency.

I’ve worked for the NBA (low level, of course) and followed it my whole life. Trust me when I say the league is replete with incompetence at every management ladder rung.  Yes, Morey, Presti, and Buss are a part of this league. But the NBA also has its share of doddering ex-jocks (McHale, I. Thomas, Kiki V), and looney ‘businessmen’ (Sterling, Cohan&Bobby).  Yes, we damn-well can harshly judge an operation that fails to make the playoffs 15 out of 16 years. And we have more evidence at our disposal than ever before:

Notice the two starters (now one due to surgery) at the bottom of this list:

And here are some Hollinger PER stats:

Randolph PER: 18.11

Radmanovic PER: 7.84

Moore PER: 11.42

(Note: I don’t buy the bad Ellis rating because he’s in virtually all game for a terrible team, sort of like Kevin Durant last year. Plus/minus is best when comparing guys who don’t play )

So if there is a rationale for letting Randolph rot on the bench, it can’t be winning now. But hey, we can’t judge.  We don’t know the game like the guy who plays Vlad Rad at center. Unless Randolph has a Michael Beasley situation on his hands (i.e. addiction), this is inexcusable. Please, give em’ hell on Friday.

Courtesy of Golden State Worriers, this pretty much drives home my point:

Let me begin by saying Vlad has the physical tools of a good NBA player. He’s 6-10 and used to have a three point shot.  He could wake up tomorrow and turn it all around.  And he wouldn’t be the first player to repair his image amid Warriors chaos.  Odds are against it, though.  My last post dealt with some fairly objective Anthony Randolph stats, but my Radman doubting has a subjective attribution: Fringe NBA hopeful Paul Shirley used to constantly joke about Vlad’s apathy and lack of work ethic. This can be dismissed as uninformed NBA gossip, but Vlad hasn’t improved since 2003 (this is where subjectivity meets cold, hard evidence of suck). 

Phil Jackson used to call Vlad a ’space cadet,’ and it’s not hard to see why.  Passes fly into the stands with alarming frequency, so much so that Vlad cranked out ‘the worst turnover rate at his position’ last year, according to ESPN’s John Hollinger.  In the past, Vlad’s shooting offset some his spacey ways. But it’s been awful of late.  He plays decent perimeter defense, which would be a plus….expect he’s always playing power forward or center for us.  Expect him to keep getting bludgeoned by the Joakim Noah’s of this world.  For all the hate directed at Maggette (yes, he sometimes drives me crazy too), I wonder how Vlad Rad escapes criticism.  He can’t shoot, can’t pass, can’t run, can’t jump, can’t block, can’t steal, can’t defend the 4 position.  And is rumored not to care or work hard. 

Predictably, this earns him a starting spot upon arrival.  What the hell am I missing here? Am I misreading his PER of 9?  Should I be hypnotized into lauding Vlad whenever he slobbers all over his mouthpiece like a horse chewing an apple?

I’m not trying to deliver a cliche, ‘That guy’s a bum!’ argument.  I just think management sends a bad message when they play someone who can’t contribute and probably doesn’t care.  Since the Warriors coaches are supposedly so intent on rearing Randolph like a child, I’d like to know what the lesson is here.  At least the impotent Mikki Moore looks like he wants it.  And that’s the sad state of Warrior Land positivity: At least the comically washed up player playing over the young talent looks concerned, unlike the apathetic starter who might be even worse.

Some bitter, semi-related post Bulls game thoughts….

I don’t even know why I care anymore. I don’t know why any of you care anymore.  I guess I just love basketball and I love the Bay, and I can’t not watch the flashy car wreck on my TV.  Perhaps it’s because some primal part of me loves to yell at Don Nelson through my TV.  My intellectual curiosity pushes me towards finding the ‘why’ behind the badness.  I suppose it’s happening because people in large organizations subconsciously work within whatever pattern solidifies.  Maybe the pattern of needlessly alienating and trading promising players set in awhile ago. Of course this isn’t a conscious goal of Warriors management, but it sure could be subconscious. I’m grasping at straws here, because so little makes sense.  My intellectual curiosity is no match for Warrior Land madness.

Following this team is like watching a friend stab himself, and then seeing the friend turn the knife on you. Does the Warriors organization hate its fans? Why else would a team mired in a lottery season play Mikki Moore over Anthony Randolph?  Ticket revenue is down 22%, and the coach/es insist on starting the two worst players in the rotation and playing ESPN’s #6 ranked sophmore a meager 22 minutes per night. Then we have to listen to mumbled paternalistic Gary St. Jean sermons about how Anthony Randolph must ‘earn his minutes.’

Well the Warriors sure are earning their losses. They’re earning them every time Vlad Rad plays minutes at center. They’re earning them every time they start Mikki Moore in a real life NBA basketball game.  It’s apt to say they’re ‘earning them’ because the Warriors coaching staff is losing games while employing inherently losing strategies.  The path of regular basketball knowledge (i.e. least resistance) would win games that ‘all SG’ lineups lose.  Losing like this takes effort.  The Warriors are giving up games using bizarre strategies, not backed by basketball metrics.  And they’re doing this night after night, to the detriment fan interest.  Doing the same ineffective thing over and over again is one definition of madness.  They might have to create a new word for what ever the hell this is.