Stephen Jackson has just been sentenced to three years with the Charlotte Bobcats. All those who thought he got off easy for going into the stands in Indiana can rest easy. It is the day of retribution.
Of course, Jackson said all the right things. Just happy to be here.
In Charlotte, where he'll once again have to go up into the stands. In search of fans not disguised as empty seats.
On the other hand he will be playing for Larry Brown.
On the other hand he will be playing for Larry Brown.
Maybe he'll even get to meet Michael Jordan, the Bobcats GM. Or the late Howard Hughes. Both are very mysterious. Neither attends any of the Bobcats games.
Jackson also won't run into Don Nelson in Charlotte. He's probably happy to be away from an ego driven coach on a team going nowhere.
Oh, wait.
Maybe the trade will work out. Jackson is a scorer. The Bobcats need a scorer. And if you're going to be doing time on a losing team, you at least want it to be somewhere you'll get the ball.
Charlotte's not a bad place to live. You can get just about anywhere in forty-five minutes. As long as you're headed out of town. Coming into town from the burbs by car? Pack a lunch.
Speaking of headed out of town...
Jackson's contract is for three years. Will the Bobcats still be in Charlotte three years from now?
Not at 14,600 fans a night. Then again, where would the team go? The league won't let them go under, if for no other reason than Sacremento, Memphis, and Indiana are in front of the Cats' in line.
When you reach that point in life you shouldn't be embarrasing yourself for a relationship. Some guys that age do it with younger women. Roy Williams, head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina, did it for a relationship with a seventeen year old basketball player.
Granted, Harrison Barnes, has the potential to be a great player. Like many marquee recruits, he also has the potential to be a disappointment. And, most likely, he will be a NBA bound college dropout within two years.
Barnes is very articulate for a seventeen year old. But, like most seventeen year olds, he has nothing meaningful to say. But he does love to talk.
"We developed a lot of trust in our relationship. It was great to see how, even though we developed that relationship, he didn't get comfortable with that. he still kept coming to see me. He still kept calling me. He really put in the time and effort."
Translation-Roy Williams didn't let the fact he's the coach of the NCAA national champions interfere with him prostrating himself before a seventeen year old, six foot seven, blue chip basketball recruit.
After all, nobody likes an uppity coach who has the idea that you earn your place in basketball as part of a team. What you want is a coach who plays along with a ego driven press conference and pretends there was some suspense over where Barnes was going.
Like Roy Williams.
When Williams went along with the charade and said "Well, alright!" and brought his team out of practice to crowd around the video camera at Friday's signing video conference he sent a message. His dignity as an adult has a price (about $1.8 million annually).
The morning after the Barnes signing was treated in the North Carolina media the way the launch of Sputnik by the Russians was covered way back when. An escalation of the arms race, a loss of face. The face, in this case, belonging to Duke and it's coach Mike Kryzyzewski, the runners up in the courtship of Harrison Barnes.
Down here in North Carolina we have an expression. "I don't have a dog in that hunt". I'm not a fan of UNC or Duke. I respect their coaches, enjoy their rivalry, but don't live and die based on what goes down at the Dean Dome or Cameron indoor.
But as an outside observer, I'll offer this heretical opinion. The real winner in the Harrison Barnes signing was Duke, and more specifically Coach K.
You suspect somewhere in Barnes comments was a message that Duke, widely reported to be his first choice, didn't kneel down in front of him and kiss the ring. That Coach K didn't "put in the time".
If that's the case, good for Coach K and good for Duke. Because once you make blue chip players bigger than the program, once you start flying across the country to prove how important they are, and once you start huddling in front of video cameras with your team for a seventeen year old who hasn't ever played for your team you've got trouble on the way.
You've sent a message to Harrison Barnes, who apparently isn't lacking in the ego department to begin with, that the world turns around him. You've told the rest of the team basically that. And, for what it's worth, you've made yourself look like a teenage boy with a crush on the prettiest girl at your school.
$1.8 million a year? That would be a nice pay day. Selling your dignity when you're at the top of your profession and don't have to?
There are things you just can't tolerate. The country next to you getting nuclear weapons before you do. Your daughter marrying someone who is known by a single name (except to the authorities in Georgia who have accumulated much more detailed biographical information). Rain the day after you mowed the lawn.
And, apparently, losing to the United States Naval Academy football team.
Notre Dame lost to Navy 23-21 the other day. In South Bend. As the Shakespearian crowd says, "treble woe".
As they say among the Irish faithful, "Fire Charlie Weis".
Then again, they say that alot anyway.
As a Navy fan since the days of Roger Staubach (I think I watched the Cotton Bowl from inside my crib, but I do remember it), it's a bit annoying.
Why are fans so shocked when Navy wins? And why do they treat it as some sort of indication the world has been turned upside down?
A few weeks back it was Wake Forest. In a driving rain storm in Annapolis the Midshipmen won a tight game against an ACC team which hardly the 1985 Chicago Bears. For that matter, Wake this season wouldn't match up well against the Yogi Bears.
There was the predictable outrage on the internet.
"How can we lose to a team running a gimmick offense?" "How could we lose to Navy?"
Actually it's quite easy. You simply fail to stop the fullback, give up the occasional "Oh, no, they're actually throwing deep" deep pass, and get outhustled by a highly disciplined group of over achievers who don't know they are supposed to lose.
As for the triple option, if it were such an unfair advantage why doesn't everyone run it? Probably because it requires split second timing, complete avoidance of penalties, and sublimation of egoes. Not to mention that if you get behind more than a touchdown and you are sunk.
Still, Navy has accumulated 7 wins against three losses running the triple. Paul Johnson, the former Navy coach, took Georgia Tech to 9-1 running it with a win against Wake Forest (how well that must sit with Deacon fans).
The world hums along. Navy will close with Delaware, Hawaii, and Army and go to a second tier bowl. The Army game carries the potential for a dog fight. Despite a 3-6 record, Army is much improved and anything can happen in an Army-Navy game.
Charlie Weis? He'll get to stay unless the wheels fall off. What the administration at Notre Dame understands, but their fans don't, is that BCS bowl teams are built in Florida, Texas, and California and those players aren't rushing to middle America to play football.
Weis will develop, and Notre Dame will again develop, into a good coach and team combination. But not one which annually competes for the national championship.
So it will be with the New York Yankees, who are sowing the seeds of their own destruction with a 1 million payroll.
Baseball has always been a sport of great teams, especially great New York teams. They have built baseball's traditions, expanded the fan base, fed the media. So it isn't a bad thing to see the Yankees winning.
But not by spending million above the next closest competitor. Not by eliminating the Orioles, Rays, and Blue Jays before the season starts. Not by driving up the price of tickets throughout baseball by setting arbitration salary standards out of reach of many teams. Not by creating "the Yankee contract" as the ultimate goal of stars under 27 years old, depriving the teams which developed those players of any chance of retaining them.
This is where we are at.
$75 million is the salary base to make the playoffs. The Twins are the only exception this season and they'll be gone faster than the memory of summer on a cold, October night. Unless the Phillies return to the World Series, it will cost 0 million plus to play the final games of the season.
A family of four must spend well in excess of 0 for a night at the ball park. Some will pay, but go less often. Some will stop going. A quick look at attendance this years says the downward spiral has started.
It is a foregone conclusion Joe Mauer of the Twins, the best young talent in the American League, will command at least a million a year contract after 2010 and will be the center of a bidding war between the Yankees and RedSox. The Twins and Mauer will say the right things about a return to the twin cities, but it isn't going to happen.
In a weak free agent year, the Yankees could turn over some free agents of their own like Matsui, Damon, and Petitte and restock with the likes of Jason Bay, Matt Halliday, or John Lackey, making 2010 the second year in a row the Yankees have drained the pool of marquee free agents. While the economy limits the number of bidders, the Yankees could upgrade at several positons without adding huge amounts of salary.
Then there are potential 2011 free agents like Carl Crawford and Roy Halliday. Adding Halliday to the Yankees rotation is almost a nuclear option. After cornering the market on marquee free agent pitchers in 2009 with Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, it is hard to imagine the Yankees adding a pitcher. But Yankee paranoia about the RedSox pursuing Halliday could put him in pinstripes in 2010.
If the Yankees make even two or three of these plays, where does that leave baseball? The economy and attendance are in decline, arbitration will keep salaries high, and the public will be in a surly mood over Yankee imperialism in the AL East.
The current collective bargaining agreement will expire in late 2011. Baseball owners will be under pressure to make changes in free agency. Yankee domination will increase demands for change.
If the economy stays bad, and I believe it will, we will see deep divisions among owners and ultimately attempts to negotiate a salary cap. So much money will be lost in smaller markets the next two seasons, there will be owners hoping against hope for a long lockout.
the Yankees aren't the only reason we'll likely see a prolonged strike in 2012, but they are a big part of why we may end up with some form of a cap. Bad for baseball (witness the pariocrity of the NFL) and worse for the Yankees.
We can hope the Steinbrenner family excercises some common sense and judgement during the off season. Maybe they won't vulture the cream of a limited free agent crop. Perhaps they won't get into insane bidding wars with the RedSox.
Who believes that?
The Yankees would argue, and not without some logic, that the problem is with the industry model and not their spending. If there is not enough talent available, if some teams can't compete, the answer is obvious. Let them go out of business. Fewer teams with the same number of players equals lower salaries and better competition.
Baseball won't buy that. The powers that be will come up up with some Rube Goldberg version of a cap.
The MLBPA won't buy into a cap. Then comes the strike, then comes a lost season, and then?
Maybe a cap so severe it will be the end of the Yankees as we know them.
There are many reasons to watch sports. One is, it's not politics.
Rush Limbaugh on Monday Night Football? Bad idea that didn't last long. Keith Olbermann on the Sunday Night Special? Worse idea not going away any time soon.
Olberrmann and Limbaugh have in common the ability to turn serious issues into a carnival sideshow. They also share legions of detractors. Which meant when Limbaugh was on Monday nights it took away from the enjoyment of half the audience.
Olbermann offends the other half.
Did anyone watch Monday Night Football because of Limbaugh? Is anyone tuning into Sunday Night Football who wouldn't, just to hear Olbermann?
Not very likely.
So what's the point?
Cross promotion. The idea that maybe someone will watch Olbermann, enjoy his schtick, and end up watching MSNBC. Anything to get some kind of a buzz going for a network with lots of ink and not so many viewers.
Watching Olbermann reminds you of the great movie "A Face In The Crowd". Andy Griffith, in a deadly serious role early in his career, played a huckster who parlayed an image as a good old boy into a national radio program and enough power to influence public opinion. Enough, as it turned out, to turn him into a loathesome creature consumed with the sound of his own voice.
Griffith's character, "Lonesome Rhodes" eventually was so consumed by his own narcissism he became a parody of himself. Olbermann is well on his way to being a Saturday Night Live sketch.
On the Andy Warhol Fifteen Minutes of Fame Scale, Olbermann is at 14 minutes and thirty seconds.
But will NBC pull the plug?
Not yet, not until he crosses the line and starts pontificating about politics during his pregame show, or makes some statement so far beyond the pale as to end up in the national headlines.
Let it be quick.
My politics are hard to define. I happen to think the country functions best when the two parties are pushing against each other in a battle of ideas from which some general consensus often emerges.
In all honesty, my biggest wish for politicians is that they would follow the physicians oath and simply "Do No Harm". That, alas, is not going to happen. Most of the problems we face in this country are a result of politicians either ignoring what they should fix, or trying to fix what they should ignore.
Come the weekend the chattering classes usually take a rest from their mischief and leave the rest of us to enjoy sports. We don't need them, or members of their clown show entourage, turning up on our TV screens.
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