Bellevue Supersonics? Why It Wouldn’t Work

A few days ago, David Aldridge published a very well-researched, informative, and overall wonderful column on NBA.com about the lingering discontent from the Supersonics’ shady departure from Seattle. There’s an interesting paragraph about two-thirds of the way through the story where Aldridge brings up former Sonics coach Lenny Wilkens, who then discusses the possibility of returning the Sonics to the area. Only this time, the Sonics might move to Bellevue, which Aldridge describes as “a suburb about 15 minutes from downtown [Seattle].” Aldridge writes:

Wilkens says there are groups with Eastside ties that are discussing coming together to make another run at the legislature, with the intention of buying an existing team and moving it to a new arena in Bellevue. He acknowledges that he doesn’t even know all of the players, so nascent are the plans — “I know some of them, and I know they’re pretty solid,” Wilkens says — but that a plan is coalescing.

This is the point where I want everyone to pause and go ahead and back the eff up. While Aldridge cites the reasons Bellevue would make a good landing spot for a new team—most notably the fact that Bellevue is full of rich people (mostly from Microsoft money) to build the new arena the Sonics would demand—I’d like everyone to think about the reasons a team in Bellevue wouldn’t work. None of the following is really about basketball, I don’t think.

The primary reason it wouldn’t work is simple: traffic. Only in the dreams of anyone living in the Seattle Metro area is Bellevue 15 minutes away from anything. Sure, it might not look that far on a map, but if you’ve ever driven on I-90 or the 520 floating bridges (the two main routes connecting Seattle and Bellevue), then you know it can take hours (yes, plural) to drive those 10 or so miles to Bellevue, especially between 5 and 7 p.m., when people will be driving to the games. A proposal to build a light rail system connecting Seattle to Bellevue has been on the table for years in order to combat the traffic, but I don’t see that as a real solution. Not only would it take years to build because it would necessitate construction on one of the existing floating bridges, but the proposal has been continuously met with opposition from the same rich Bellevue-ites who don’t want a fancy rail system decreasing their property values. I also don’t believe the light rail would combat the culture of driving in the Seattle Metro area, especially when the markets of Everett (north of Seattle) to Tacoma (south of Seattle) and the other Eastside areas are accounted for.

The cultures of the two cities is another problem. Bellevue has been on the rise for years. To call it a suburb is a disservice in a way: it has grown to become its own city—a smaller, more compact version of Seattle. I would say a minor rivalry has been brewing since Bellevue began its ascension, and I don’t think Sonics supporters would claim a team in Bellevue as their own, even (or especially) if it was still held on to the Seattle forename. I would predict a brief honeymoon period where the Bellevue Supersonics would be embraced by most of western Washington, only to see attendance decline as fans stop braving the stop-and-go traffic to see a team that would still belong to a city other than their own. Then the Sonics could find themselves in the same position that led to their departure in the first place (minus the owner publicly making the team worse so he could pack it up and skip town).

Yes, I’m getting ahead of myself, just like everyone else. I want a team to return Seattle as much as any Seattlite, but I want it to succeed.

P.S. Any Sonics post is reason enough to link to the Presidents of the United States of America song, “Supersonics” and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Not in Our House.”

A Little Creative Outlet

Lately my writing has been a little sidetracked by what I’ll just refer to here as real-life writing and trying to get the blog moved and redesigned. In search of another creative outlet, I decided to grab a pencil and paper and attempt my first drawing in years. Well, here it is. It’s not perfect; there are some crazy issues with proportion and foreshortening there, but still, not bad for shaking off the rust, if I do say so myself.

Starter: Blake Griffin

Who is he? After playing two seasons at University of Oklahoma, Blake Austin Griffin was the first overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Clippers.

Why do we like him? Most notably, we’re making Griffin a TNIB starter for his basketball fury. A knee injury forced him to miss all of last season, and last night he made his NBA debut in spectacular fashion. Dude scored 20 points, grabbed 14 rebounds, and had four assists in his first game, which is a great stat line but doesn’t show how good he really was. Not only did he dunk over pretty much the whole Blazers team and seemed like he wanted to break the Staples Center, but he ran fast breaks like a (very large) guard. Griffin’s feel for the game is impressive, as is his willingness to sacrifice his body despite a history of injuries (he also had two minor knee injuries and a concussion in college). Unfortunately, his team lost because he disappeared in the second half. That wasn’t really Griffin’s fault, though. He disappeared because the Blazers defense played well toward the end of the game, his teammates forgot he existed and refused to pass to him, and he was clearly exhausted from carrying his team through the first half.


*Youtube videos via @Jose3030, who you need to follow if you’re on the Twitters.

State of Major High School Basketball

With prospects that arrive and depart from campus within a year, college hoops stars are often gone before we get to know them. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always interested in where these guys came from as much as where they end up going. I decided to dig into three recent recruiting classes to see what the numbers tell us about where the future stars of the NCAA tourney and the NBA are coming from.

NBA 2010-2011 Video + TNIB Update

Content has been a little slow on There’s No “I” in Blog lately, and that’s because we’re doing a little bit of upgrading to the blog. We’ll be back in full force soon. For right now, we’ll leave you with the new NBA commercial. Kevin Garnett totally steals the show.

Son of a Beach!

9:09 PM EST, Thursday, July 8, 2010…doesn’t it feel like all of our sports lives are about to change as we know them? LeBron announced where he will be playing basketball for the next five years or so. As much as I’ve been smearing him for setting up this media carnival and showcase for his ego, I have to admit, I didn’t change the channel. Like it or not, whether LeBron ever wins a ring, the NBA next season is going to look vastly different than it did in ‘09-‘10, and LeBron is the at the center of this universe in flux. It fits in with the idea of LeBron the Global (Universal?) Icon, who over the past couple years seems much more determined perhaps than LeBron the player.

Granted, this is unfair: I’m torn on how to feel about LeBron’s considering fleeing the Cavs to get help to win his rings elsewhere. People are continuously saying “Jordan wouldn’t do that; Kobe wouldn’t do that,” but Jordan a) was unquestionably the best player who has ever lived and b) played in one of the worst eras talent-wise the NBA has seen. When Bird and Magic’s generation faded, teams could get by on one superstar being surrounded by marginal players, but even Jordan had Pippen, often overlooked and yet a member of the NBA’s silver anniversary team in his own right. Kobe almost left the Lakers after missing the playoffs, and the same people who are now chastising LeBron were the ones who were irate when the Lakers stole Pau Gasol from Memphis. LeBron, Wade, and Bosh are playing during an extremely competitive time in the NBA. It takes six, seven, eight guys to win a title, not three.

Anyway, here is a key to what we’re learning about LeBron based on his decision:
Cleveland - Is loyal like a dog with a sick owner; admirable, but a poor professional decision.
Miami - He wants to win without the pressure of being “the man.”
Chicago - He wants to win with the pressure of being “the man” (in Jordan’s shadow no less).
New York - He wants to be a global icon.
New Jersey - I don’t know. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s kind of not. The icon level is low in Jersey, but when they move to Brooklyn? I don’t even know what I would make of this, but it’s not going to happen unless he has beer goggles that make Travis Outlaw look like David Thompson.
LA Clippers - He hates winning, money, and his ACLs and wants them to be shattered instantly.

Here is a breakdown of my thoughts as his infomercial unfolded on what it means for him, for the Eastern Conference, for the NBA over the next decade, and for us as human beings.

9:27 - Still waiting. I would like to note that I had the same beard as LeBron my senior year of college, but I don’t hear anyone calling him Abe Lincoln.

9:28 - So it’s Miami…Pat Riley, Bosh, Wade….uh…Beasley (for now)….umm…Chalmers? This is what we suspected for the past 24 hours, but now that it’s final, let’s quickly break down what it means for everyone involved.

First and foremost, the Heat. They now have three all-stars and two superstars to go with a handful of second-round picks and not much money to fill out the squad. The Celtics won a title with three just-past-their-prime guys in Pierce, Garnett, and Ray Allen, so there is some precedent for this, despite what everyone in the media wants you to think. However, these three are all younger and in their primes; that’s the difference here and why everyone wants to, to quote Denny Green, “crown they ass.” But let’s pump the breaks. The Heat have no money to invest elsewhere. They have no quality point guard and no depth. Let’s imagine that the Heat run into the Lakers in the finals next season. Personally, I take Gasol over Bosh, who has played 11 playoff games in seven years and never won a playoff series, and I think Kobe and Lebron cancel each other out. The Lakers would have no one left to equal Wade on their own, BUT a cast of five or six decent role players, all giving Gasol and Kobe rest while El Tres Grande can’t afford to come out? The Celtics were in a position to win because of the new big three, but they were the best team in 2008 because of guys like James Posey, Eddie House, Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins, and P.J. Brown. I don’t see how Miami could possibly fill out their roster with quality unless their three stars take less money (not likely, isn’t that what a large part of this was about?) One last thought on the Heat: LeBron was asked how he planned on sharing the spotlight in Miami and responded, “For me, it’s about everyone having their own spotlight and doing what’s best for the team.” What?

And then there is the poor Cavs. Jesus. “It’s not about leaving Cleveland…” is the equivalent of “It’s not you, it’s me.” They’re going to go from back-to-back top seeds in the East to out of competition for the next decade. Yes, it will be that drastic. Frankly, I think the Cavs should be shipped to Seattle. Seriously. Seattle should’ve never lost its team in the first place, they have a good fan base, and the city of Cleveland really just needs to be single for awhile and focus on itself. Five years from now, we’ll give them the Hornets or something. By the way, who is their best player now? The ghost of Antawn Jamison? Mo Williams? (Shuddering.)

9:49 - ESPN shows a burning LeBron jersey on a street in Cleveland. His response: “I can’t get involved in that.” No one has burned their home this badly since David Koresh.

Twenty-four hours ago, we thought the Knicks were going to obtain the services of the King, and being a Celtics fan, I said, “pretty please.” With LeBron and Amare, the Knicks become a 50-win team, fourth or fifth seed because there is again, no point guard, and Amare doesn’t play defense or rebound well for his size. Now with just Amare and no LeBron? We also just found out David Lee was signed and traded to Golden State, not for Monta Ellis as had been reported, but high upside risk Anthony Randolph and a couple of role players. I’m saying an eight seed and prompt first round exit. Sadly, the remaining Knick fans in the room are applauding that idea happily. I also predict that by the All-Star Break, Amare will be deeply regret underrating spending his entire career playing with Jason Kidd and Steve Nash and will be putting in calls to Tony Parker, Carmelo, and Chris Paul, pleading with them to join him on his 45-37 team.

The Eastern Conference as a whole has fluctuated a bit. The Cavs are annihilated from contention, and the 2001 All-NBA team…I mean, 2010 Boston Celtics and Orlando should still be among the elite contenders for a title. Whether the Celtics window just closed or has a year to go remains to be seen, but they are one DeJuan Blair away from having the All-Bad Knees team after signing Jermaine O’Neal, who, somehow, I think the Heat will miss. The Heat become a top three team unquestionably and where they fit among those other two teams depends on who else dons a Heat jersey this winter. The Bulls, Bucks, and Hawks are decent, but a definite level below the previous three teams. The biggest loser besides the Cavs (and new coach with an empty cupboard Byron Scott)? The Nets, who actually have a foursome of promising youngsters in Derrick Favors, Brook Lopez, Devin Harris, and Terence Williams, tons of spending cash, a rich new owner, future Brooklyn arena, and currently nothing to show for it. The worst thing they could do, however, is take that money and go hand out bad contracts to the leftover free agents still grubbing for fat deals.

The other big winners? Jarvis Varnardo, Da’Sean Butler, Dexter Pitman, and Latavious Williams. Not only did these second-round picks luck out by getting drafted, but they got drafted by a team that is a legit finals contender, AND has at least eight holes to fill in their lineup on the cheap. Williams spent last winter playing in the freakin’ D league after skipping college. Talk about lucking out.

Out west, I’d urge people not to overlook Lee going to the Warriors, where Randolph never got a legitimate chance to show his mettle. Lee’s a great scorer and rebounder, but his weakness is defense, and he just went to the one team in the NBA that doesn’t care whether you play defense or not. Look around the conference—Phoenix just got a lot weaker without Amare in the post, Dallas kept Dirk but overpayed Brendan Haywood (shades of Erick Dampier—some people never learn) and Utah lost Carlos Boozer. The West should be in flux too after free agency finishes up and may actually be weaker than the East for the first time in over a decade.

Which brings me to my last point: A bold prediction. Jon Barry predicted two NBA titles for the Heat over the next five years. Michael Wilbon went three in four years. Me? I think Kevin Durant wins more rings over the next decade than this current Heat squad. Under the radar this week (the way it should be), the defending NBA scoring champ and 22-year-old wunderkind Durant signed a five-year extension to stay with Oklahoma City, a rising team that has surrounded Durant with young talent and smart management/coaching. As a player, one-on-one, Durant is not better than LeBron, but in regard to intangibles and how he goes about being a part of a team, I’d much prefer Durant over the next five years than LeBron. He pushed a top seeded Laker team to six games despite being outgunned by a superior squad, has the work ethic and developing game to continue growing as an elite player, and contrary to popular belief, he’s not just a scorer: this past season, there were dramatic spikes in his rebound, steal, block, and assist numbers. At only 22, those should continue to trend upwards. So you heard it here first: OKC is where the future of the NBA is at.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so brief. But on a night where everything has changed, it’s not so bad to simmer and dwell on the shifting battle lines of the NBA.

Interview with Rafe Bartholomew, Author of Pacific Rims

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew. Even after the first few pages, I could tell the book would make a lasting impression on me. There are the portraits of athletes throughout the book and the Filipino culture that are both entertaining and enlightening. Then there is Bartholomew’s writing that reveals his passion to learn about the nuances of Filipino basketball, athletes, and culture. The words become evidence of an author who truly loves his subject. Recently, Bartholomew was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about Pacific Rims. Also, be sure to check out more about the author at his website, RafeBartholomew.com.

Is there anything you’d like readers to know about you before diving into Pacific Rims?
My background is that I was born and raised in lower Manhattan, which nowadays people probably associate more with litigious talent than hoops skills, but back in the early nineties we had a lot of good players downtown, most notably Smush Parker, who was my teammate on traveling teams until we were about 16. Anyway, I grew up playing and loving basketball, and when I learned about the sport’s role in Philippine culture, I went out there on not much else but inspiration and faith that I’d find the basketball-mad country of my dreams there.

Given the in-depth nature of your research into another culture (I think you referred to it as “amateur anthropology”), I’m sure you gathered a great deal of material for this book. Can you describe the process of deciding what to include and cut out?
Yes, my amateur bona fides are legit. But since academics have tended to overlook basketball’s place in Philippine society, I was happy to dive in and do my best. Over three years, the xeroxed newspaper and magazine articles, gigabytes of audio interviews, and spiral-bound reporter’s notebooks certainly piled up. I tend to write with a pretty loose outline, sketching out a theme for each chapter in my head and a couple scenes I plan to include, and then let it flow from there. Alaska’s 2007 season, being the narrative backbone of the book, determined a lot of what made it into and out of the book. I think having that arc makes Pacific Rims a better read, but it also made it hard to fit in a lot of PBA history that just would have taken me too far away from the narrative to explain.

I would have loved to write more about some of the great players and moments in PBA history—Ramon Fernandez, Samboy Lim, Bong Alvarez, Allan Caidic, and many more. Instead, they’re mentioned very briefly. And then there are the players who aren’t all-timers but who just appealed to me—imports like Shawn Daniels and Anthony Johnson and local oddities like Ryan Bernardo and Jimwell Torion. I wish I could write about all of them. Hopefully, someday I will.

You wrote about the differences in how the homegrown Filipinos, Filipino-Americans, and even the import players interacted with each other. Was there a difference in the way these players interacted with you?
For sure. A lot of the time imports just seemed happy to be talking to someone else from back home. Even though Fil-Am players also grew up in the States, they tend to have very settled lives in Manila, with stately homes, large families, and household employees to oversee. They just don’t have as much time to sit around and gab after practice. Imports are in the opposite situation. Aside from basketball, their entire lives are thousand miles away, so they have all the time in the world to go shopping, watch bootleg DVDs, sleep, or, in my case, spend afternoons and evenings telling me about their experiences.

Fil-Am players were easy to get along with. We shared a lot of cultural touchstones—often the players were only a few years older than me and had grown up listening to the same music, watching the same movies, and admiring the same basketball players. We usually had an easy time relating to each other.

Because of language and cultural differences, it probably took the most time to get to know the born-and-raised Pinoy players. These guys were often the most courteous members of a team. They would always greet me when I arrived and left from practice, and they’d make small talk about what I’d done the previous night, etc. But they seemed the least comfortable in direct interviews, partly because my Tagalog was not as strong in 2007 as it is today and also because there isn’t a very strong tradition of probing sports journalism in the Philippines, so when I asked for an “interview” they often thought of a 90-second quickie about the upcoming game, while I was thinking of a 90-minute session that included questions about their childhood and where they first played and all kinds of things that usually didn’t come up when they spoke with the media. Over time, however, we got more and more comfortable with each other and I was able to learn a lot about the players through direct interviews and regular old observation.

Describe the process of selling American publishers a book on Philippine basketball.
I didn’t exactly have agents and publishers banging down my door for a chance to sell this book. Awareness of Philippine anything—not just basketball—is woefully low here in the States. I received several rejections telling me that I had a really interesting story to tell but that they feared there was just no audience for it. It took more than two years from the time I signed with my literary agent to the day that I received an offer for Pacific Rims, and in between came several rounds of proposals and rejections. I never got too phased by it, however, because I really loved what I was doing (playing ball, following a pro team around, living in Quezon City) and I felt pretty confident that eventually, some editor would see the project the same way I did. It didn’t matter how many publishers rejected me as long as one of them didn’t.

Was it difficult to get acclimated to the culture in the Philippines?
It’s hard to answer this question, because my brain now tells me that I feel more at home in the Philippines than anywhere else and it can’t really make room for other realities. But if you look at my early blog posts from the Philippines, I think you can chart my acclimation, from a typical, semi-thoughtful visitor who had never lived in a developing country before to someone who’s interested in writing about something deeper than quirky nicknames and technicolor jeepneys.

How much Tagalog did you pick up during your time there?
Over the years I became a very adequate Tagalog speaker. I get a lot of compliments for my language skills, not all of which I think I deserve. Because most foreigners put forth so little effort in picking up Tagalog or any other Philippine language, the handful of people who manage any respectable level of proficiency get plaudits up the wazoo. I think if I were Filipino American and spoke the same exact Tagalog as I do today, people would consider it decent but also tell me endlessly how stilted my grammar was and how foreign my accent sounded. Still, I’m very proud that I can converse fluidly in the language, as well as read and write it pretty well, and I’m still studying so hopefully I will only get better.

It wouldn’t be very Filipino of me if I didn’t ask you about the numerous mentions of food throughout the book. Tell me about the best/worst foods you ate in the Philippines.
The best food, hands down, was the seafood. Crabs in coconut milk, grilled tilapia and lapu-lapu with tomatoes and onions stuffed inside, squid adobo. It was always fresh, unbelievably cheap, and unfailingly delicious. But I miss street food—squid balls, barbecued pork intestines, bananacue, and kwek-kwek—the most. The only thing I had a hard time eating was papaitan, a stew with broth made from goat bile. Serious gag reflex there.

What will you write about next?
I’m not sure. I’d love to continue writing about the Philippines. Every day in the country I felt like I saw something that would make a great story. But as we already talked about, it’s not always the easiest sell. Hopefully, after Pacific Rims, the publishing world will be a little more open to books and articles about the Philippines.

*Author photo is from the Pacific Rims Facebook page.

Why basketball is my 5th-favorite sport.

Don’t let the title of this post fool you. I like basketball. When the Celtics were in the finals just a couple weeks ago, I wore my Kevin Garnett jersey and my “Banner 17” shirt for a week straight. I get pumped up for a clutch 3 as much as anyone, and I love playing a pickup game at the park, though I’m not any good. And like everyone else who follows the game, I’m eagerly awaiting word on which of the top free agents in this year’s class ends up where.

But it’s far from my favorite sport, and the previous sentence is one of the reasons why. I am a big fan of the team-building side of sports, as anyone who has read my writing knows. While it has its flaws in retrospect, and the shine is off the Billy Beane “rose” (As he apparently is just obsessed with soccer now, to the detriment of the A’s), I am a fan of Moneyball, and follow the salaries, minor leagues and feeder leagues of all sports avidly. Unfortunately for my liking, there are a few things about the structure of basketball, both in-game, and out of it, that conspire together to make the team-building aspect of the game not as interesting.

The main reason is that individual players have an enormous impact on the outcomes of games. This is pretty self-explanatory, but allow me to illustrate it a bit. Each team has 5 players on the floor at any one time, and there are 48 minutes in regulation. So there’s 240 minutes to distribute in each basketball game, and the best players, besides power forwards and centers, play near 40 a night, and more in important or close games and the playoffs (Monta Ellis of Golden State led the league with 41.4 minutes per game, and Kobe Bryant was at 38.8 per game). So that’s at least 15% of a team’s total available “team minutes” being taken by one player, far more than any other sport. This point is intuitive, but I’ll spell it out for effect. Applying this same formula to other sports we get:

Hockey: 5 positions (besides goalie) * 60 minutes per game = 300 “team minutes.” Hockey has the same number of positions as basketball, but players need much more rest during a game. The best defensemen play around 25 minutes per game, and maybe up close to 30 in the playoffs, or 10% of their “team minutes.” Top forwards play around 20 minutes.

Soccer: 10 outfield positions * 90 minutes = 900 “team minutes.” No one can go over 11% of their team minutes in a game, by the rules, unless someone is red carded (which of course puts their team at a disadvantage).

Football: This is a little tricky, as time of possession isn’t always the same for each team, but there are 11 players on the field and 60 minutes in a game, so there’s 660 team minutes to go around. A player isn’t likely to see more than 40 minutes or so on the field, or around 6% of his team minutes, but the quarterback almost always handles the ball, so I’m willing to buy the argument that he’s as important to his team as any basketball player — but only for half the game.

Baseball: Baseball of course doesn’t have a clock, but each offensive player wouldn’t get any more than 1/9th of his team’s at-bats, and the most active fielders (the shortstop) are only involved in 4 or 5 plays per game, or around 16%. But considering that they share those plays with the first baseman and the pitcher, their share of the contribution is certainly less than the 15% given by most basketball players. Starting pitchers have a great impact on a game, but they can only pitch every 5th game, so their impact is lessened. Possibly most importantly, the players must bat in a set order, and can only field when balls are hit to them, so no one knows who will have the chance to win the game in its most important moments. How many games have teams lost with their “fearsome slugger standing in the on-deck circle?”

Basketball, on the other hand, not only depends greatly upon individuals in my invented stat of “team minutes,” but also, in “clutch” moments, you can choose who to have handle the ball, take important shots, and defend the other team’s star player. Therefore, one player can have a much greater impact in basketball than in any other major sport.

Because of the importance of one player, great players dominate the sport. It is very rare for a team to win a championship without having one of the top 5 players in the league (and usually another of the top 20). The 2004 Pistons were an exception to this, and the 2008 Celtics may be (though they probably had 3 of the top 20 and some crucial role players). But generally, if you have a player who is one of the five best in the game, you have a good chance to win a bunch of games even if you just surround him with average players (see James, LeBron). If you can give him another top player, preferably a player who plays a position opposite his (see Gasol, Pau and Bryant, Kobe, or Jordan and Pippen, or Shaq and Bryant, or Shaq and Wade), you’re going to be very tough to beat in the playoffs.

So, building a good basketball team is mostly about having a top 5 player. And how do you get a top 5 player? Mainly by being a really bad team and winning the draft lottery. It’s not too often that a player like Rajon Rondo (who isn’t even a top 5 player, at least not yet — and can’t win a championship by himself unless he develops better shooting touch) falls all the way to a pick in the 20s and then is discovered by a team and develops into a star. For the most part, teams know who the stars in each draft are going to be and they don’t fall much lower than 4 or 5 overall.

Or, you can get a top 5 player in the free agent market, as many teams are trying to do currently. There’s two problems I have with this. First, it’s boring to follow. We as fans have no idea what the players are thinking, what the teams are saying or where anyone will be until it happens. Second, you have to gut your team for years to open up the space for one of these free agents. The Knicks, Nets, Bulls have held off on making moves that could help them in the hopes of signing a top player this year, and that’s not good for competition.

Once LeBron, Bosh, and Wade sign we will know which NBA teams are going to be good next year. If two of them go to one team, they will probably be the favorite to win it all. There’s no drafting a player in the 62nd round as a favor and having him turn out to be the second-best hitting catcher ever. There’s no demoting a struggling player, having him master a pitch in the minors and keep his confidence level high, and become one of the best pitchers in the league. There’s no players who go undrafted and win Defensive Player of the Year. It’s unfair to say basketball doesn’t require skill in scouting and drafting, but there certainly aren’t as many gems to be had by teams who can see through the knocks on players as there are in other sports.

Sure, teams can certainly be helped by players who are undervalued and drafted late. The Celtics are a great example of this, with Glen Davis and Leon Powe, who were both drafted in the second round, playing crucial roles off their bench, or the aforementioned Rondo. But Davis and Powe aren’t starters, and it wasn’t just his stubbornness that made Rondo fall in the draft — he’s also a poor shooter, and likely always will be.

I don’t know that there’s a better way to set up the NBA. The lottery works well to discourage teams from tanking and the salary cap does encourage player movement and parity (though the various “levels” of cap are confusing and encourage salary dump trades, which are disappointing). I think as long as one player can have such a huge impact on the game, teams are going to luck into great players, or teams are going to tank for a few years as their whole focus is opening salary cap space in a player’s crucial free agent year. Maybe at some future time when either there are 10-20 players as good as Kobe, LeBron and Wade teams will have to do more than sign one of them to win, but I don’t see the talent level being that high anytime soon. Until there are radical changes in the way teams build and rebuild, basketball will trail the other sports in my world.

*photo courtesy of Cody Mulcahy via Creative Commons License

Optimism Reigns or Rain on Optimism?

Who is going to prolong Boston’s run of success?
Ahh, summer. If you’re not a baseball fan, it can be the slowest time of the year, the few month period where baseball is the only sport going on until NFL training camps convene and the season begins at the end of August. With the drafts now completed for the NBA and NHL, it is a time where fans who enjoy having three or four of their teams competing at the same time are forced to dwell on what could’ve been this past year and be optimistic about what is to come.

Boston fans still smarting from a Game 7 loss at the hands of the Lakers really have nothing to complain about. From 2001 to 2008, the city underwent an unprecedented run of success not just for Boston, but any sports city. We won six titles in eight finals appearances across three different teams. The Red Sox broke an 86-year string of disappointment only to repeat three years later, the Celtics won their first title since 1986, and the Patriots dynasty won the franchise’s first three Super Bowl titles. In the past decade, Boston teams have 25 combined playoff appearances, dominating other four-sport, four-team cities such as Phoenix/Arizona (13), Atlanta (13), and DC (10). Toronto has 14 and I even gave them the six postseason appearances of the Toronto Argonauts in the CFL.

These things go in cycles, of course. The nineties were a relatively down time in Boston sports with only the Bruins being a consistent playoff contender and never reaching the Stanley Cup. With the Celtics lost title, the Bruins historically embarrassing second round exit to the Flyers after being up three games to none, and the Patriots losing their first home playoff game of the Belichick/Brady era, there are ominous signs of lean years approaching. Both the Celtics and Patriots are led by aging veterans and the Bruins are starting to have the stench of perennial underachievers.

That being said, we still have a lot going for us, including four bonafide playoff teams, and as I said, ‘tis the off-season when optimism can reign supreme. The question is this: Whom am I most optimistic about for when the leaves turn orange and baseball goes into hibernation?

The case for the Patriots
First and foremost, we still have Brady and we still have Belichick. We also still have the veteran offensive line led by Logan Mankins, who may be the best interior lineman in the NFL, and rising tackle Sebastian Vollmer. Vince Wilfork, Jerod Mayo, and Brandon Meriweather are Pro Bowl caliber defenders. Randy Moss is still “straight cash, homey” and the Patriots have gotten a much needed infusion of youth in the past two drafts that should hopefully start to pay dividends this season. Specifically, I’m excited about cornerback Darius Butler and rookie linebacker Brandon Spikes, who’s got the leadership and instincts reminiscent of former Pats stud Mike Vrabel.

The case against the Patriots
There have been reports that Tom Brady is no longer seeing eye to eye with the coaching staff and other veterans, causing fans to worry if he’s gone too “Hollywood” on us. Mankins has requested a trade (never a good sign), and you have to wonder when that offensive line will go from being “veteran” to “old.” We have no idea what, if anything, we’ll get from Wes Welker, and the options to replace him are the gritty but limited Julian Edelman, second-year man Brandon Tate, rookie deep threat Taylor Price, and Torry Holt, who is entering the “Babe Ruth with the Braves” portion of his career. The scheduling doesn’t do us any favors with non-division games against Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Minnesota, San Diego, and Baltimore. Perhaps the biggest concern of all isn’t anything to do with the Patriots themselves, but the fact that the Jets and Dolphins have continued to get significantly better; they have better people in their front offices now than in the past, and have been huge players in the free agency market, with the Jets acquiring Antonio Cromartie, LaDanian Tomlinson, and Santonio Holmes, and the Fins picking up Karlos Dansby and Brandon Marshall. The Patriots could possibly go 10-6 again and not make the playoffs.

The case for the Bruins
Seguin! Seguin! Seguin! Thanks to the inept Maple Leafs trading two high first-round picks in successive years to the B’s for Phil Kessel, the Bruins drafted forward Tyler Seguin Friday night, one of two players in the draft to be considered star caliber. The Globe’s pre-draft coverage of Seguin detailed how following a playoff loss to number one overall pick Taylor Hall and a superior Windsor team, Seguin went into seclusion, working out and training with intense competitive fervor for sometimes ten hours a day leading up to the draft. Kid’s got moxie. The Bruins’ off-season will also look to be the most animated of the three teams; they’ve already traded playoff scapegoat Dennis Wideman, resigned hard-nosed young defender Johnny Boychuk, and acquired talented scorer Nathan Horton. Seguin’s arrival gives them a back log at center, but the kid can play some wing and the Bruins have promised more moves are on the horizon.

The case against the Bruins
How do you bounce back after coughing up a 3-0 lead in a Game 7 of a series you once led three games to none? The second round exit was a stain on the franchise and nearly wiped out the memory of the gutsy first round upset over Ryan Miller and the Sabres. In fact, it was probably the worst playoff loss after being up 3-0 since this infamous game. Scoring was the chief concern this year, and despite the talent down the middle, there is no promise that the Bruins will get enough from the wings to change that. Mark Recchi, the veteran leader, is a free agent-to-be, and there is concern about the sizeable contract of now backup goaltender Tim Thomas. At what point do we start calling former top sixteen picks Zach Hamill and Joe Colbourne busts?

The case for the Celtics
Out of the three, they’re coming off the most successful previous season, and the heart and soul of the team, Paul Pierce, should have a few good years left. Despite an erratic and sometimes downright puzzling finals, Rajon Rondo has established himself as one of the top five point guards in the league, and is locked up for the next five years. Rasheed Wallace, we hardly knew ye: the NBA career technical foul leader’s pending retirement, paired with some shrewd contract restructuring with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, could leave the Celtics enough money to pursue a second-tier big man, the likes of a Carlos Boozer, as well as set them up to have Pierce, Allen, and Garnett’s contracts all expire at the same time. Celtics fans will love rookie Avery Bradley—he fits the Celtics mold of an athletic, stud defender who should develop an offensive game and give Rondo (fourth in the NBA in minutes last season) and Allen (if he returns) a breather off the bench. It was only a year ago that Bradley was ranked ahead of top overall pick John Wall by ESPN scouts.

The case against the Celtics
Another year goes by, another hundred games of wear and tear on Pierce, Allen, and Garnett. I’d ask at what point the age starts to take its toll, but I think we already saw it this past season. The Celtics should still be good enough to be a top four team in the East, but their window of being a legitimate title contender may have just ended at the Staples Center last Thursday. Also, what happens with Doc Rivers? I have a feeling he’s going to leave, and it’s not easy to find quality NBA coaches. One thing that the Celtics have no control over is what the rest of the league will look like. LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Amare Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitzki, David Lee, Joe Johnson…all available and possibly on the move. Personally, I think James is out of Cleveland, which will probably immediately drop them out of playoff contention. Orlando will certainly be around, and if talks to acquire Chris Paul go anywhere, they will be downright scary. But what if James joins Wade in Miami? What if he takes someone like Amare with him to Chicago to team with Derrick Rose? If he joins Jay-Z with the Nets, they go from a 12-win team to a suddenly intriguing squad with a scoring point guard in Devin Harris, two young big men with high ceilings in Brook Lopez and rookie Derrick Favors, and potentially solid role players in Terence Williams, Courtney Lee, and Yi Jianlian. Whatever happens, next season’s Eastern Conference should have a completely different look to it, and where the C’s fit in will largely depend on how they replenish themselves with youthful talent and how starting center and resident banger Kendrick Perkins comes back from knee surgery.

Ideally, I’d like to see all three teams at least continue to make the playoffs, and in truth, that’s what I expect of each. But the law of averages tells us that disappointment will eventually rear its ugly head and one or more of these teams will go through another rough stretch. So whom am I most optimistic about?

I promised myself when the Bruins were eliminated that I wouldn’t just go back to them, that they had to earn my trust back, like a friend who had lied to me. Their Game 7 loss made me want to reenact the shower and crying scene from Ace Ventura. However, I trust in Coach Claude Julien and I trust in General Manager Peter Chiarelli. I like the guys they’ve built this team around, and defensive stalwart Zdeno Chara is still in his prime. Injuries and inconsistency hurt the team this year and you got the sense that they never were operating on all cylinders.

I believe in the moves they’ve made so far, and the moves they’re going to make. I believe in Tyler Seguin. I believe in goalie Tuukka Rask. I believe that over the next few years, I will see the Bruins in their first Stanley Cup since 1990. I believe in the B’s.

*Photo of Tom Brady courtesy of Keith Allison via Creative Commons License
**Photo of Tuukka Rask courtesy of 4rilla via Creative Commons License

Book Review: Pacific Rims

Being half Filipino and growing up in Hawaii, much of my youth was filled with the sights, smells, and tastes of my grandmother’s Filipino cooking, as well as the sound of her chatting up other old women in Tagalog, their native language. I’ve eaten some of the food and know a small selection of Filipino phrases (the naughty ones), but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I’ve been told by a number of Filipinos that I need to go see my homeland. I would be all for it, but I wouldn’t know where to start, since I have no idea where in the Philippines my family came from or when my grandparents moved to Hawaii.

I’m telling you this because Rafe Bartholomew’s Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball is as much about Filipino culture as it is about basketball. Bartholomew, an assistant editor at Harper’s Magazine and 2005 Fulbright Scholar, embeds himself with the Alaska Aces of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) for a season. The PBA is the second-oldest professional basketball league behind the NBA. Like other PBA teams, Alaska was named after its corporate owner, in this case, the Alaska Milk Corporation (the Aces arch-rivals are the brewery sponsored San Miguel Beermen).

That the immense popularity of basketball in the Philippines makes a franchise an effective marketing tool is only one hint of how the sport permeates through Filipino culture. PBA players and coaches often translate their basketball fame into government positions. Politicians build high-end, roofed courts not only to appease local constituents, but also because courts are often used as community centers.

Bartholomew catalogs the basketball culture by linking its introduction to the history of the Philippines and pointing out that its popularity is not as unlikely as his title suggests. Like Catholicism, which was brought to the country by Spain, Bartholomew writes, “Basketball was also introduced by a colonial power,” this time the United States. The Philippines embraced it, created their own style of circus lay-ups instead of flashy dunks, and even became a dominant international basketball powerhouse from the early to mid 1900s.

Basketball is everywhere. Bartholomew begins the book by finding a pickup game simply by following the sound of dribbling basketballs. Many kids learn to play on makeshift hoops with backboards of planks of wood nailed together. Jeepneys—”a form of public transportation from U.S. military vehicles that once carried GIs around the American naval and air force bases”—are often painted with NBA team logos and players’ faces.

Pacific Rims also boasts its share of fascinating characters. There is Willie Miller, the Aces’ star player and PBA’s “clown prince,” providing moments of levity. There is Rosell “Roe” Ellis, the Aces’ star import player. Roe attended Rainier Beach High School, the same high school in Seattle as Nate Robinson and Jamal Crawford. Roe’s history is presented with the clarity of amazing self-awareness. Before diving headfirst into the events that brought Roe to the PBA, Roe begins his story of how he ended up in the Philippines by asking, “You know I choked a ref, right?” Then there is the unforgettable Billy Ray Bates. Bartholomew picks up Bates’s story where David Halberstam left off in Breaks of the Game. The pages devoted to Bates are simultaneously joyous and heartbreaking. They tell the story of a tragic-hero type figure finding and losing direction through the game of basketball.

Like any good sports book, Pacific Rims has its sequences of cinematic highlights, including a suspenseful game recap where I found myself turning the pages, wondering what would happen next, and rooting for the Aces to pull off a hard-fought win. But the best parts of the book are when Bartholomew links basketball to Filipino culture. When speaking to Michael Tan, who researches gender, sexuality, and public health in the Philippines, Bartholomew writes:

The sport had become not just a pastime for young Filipino men, Tan explained, but a rite of passage. When boys reach adolescence, they receive privileges. Their mothers begin to allow them to roam their neighborhoods freely, getting into trouble but also learning how to carry themselves as men. Inevitably, these boys end up playing basketball, first in their own neighborhood, but then branching out to compete against kids in other areas. These early trials teach them masculine virtues like teamwork, aggression, and machismo…So basketball is there to make friends, build alliances. It even crosses class barriers.

Finally, there is the passage that reminded me of my childhood family dinners, my grandmother’s cooking, and her sitting around the table, chatting forever with her Filipino friends: “Togetherness is one of the most rigid social norms in Philippine culture, and it played a major role in the chemistry of PBA teams. There’s a powerful urge in Philippine society to be part of the group, whether it’s a family, a bunch of classmates, or a basketball team.”

There’s a wealth of information on the internet regarding Pacific Rims. Bartholomew’s website is a good place to start (and has links to order the book, which you should do ASAP). Check out the book’s Facebook page, which also includes a bunch of photos of Philippine basketball. Last but not least, be sure to check back here, where I will be posting an interview with Bartholomew in the near future.