Category Archives: Los Angeles Lakers

Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Lakers, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, Yasiel Puig

Rules Meant to be Broken?

Most likely, it is as old as the law of the jungle.
Someone probably scribbled it on ancient papaya with one of those really official feather ink pens.
And it could be encased in glass in some national museum that you cannot probably get into at the moment (cough, cough).
They are the official, unwritten Rules of Baseball.
And I say official and unwritten with the same intent as I used ‘most likely,’ ‘probably’ and ‘could be’ – because the unwritten Rules of Baseball just don’t exist. Like Captain Barbossa says in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” their more what you would call guidelines.
As such, there is no punishment or fine for breaking them, except for those called for the in unwritten Rules of Baseball guidebook, which no one has ever seen, but referred to often.
And based on his latest actions, Los Angeles Dodgers rookie sensation Yasiel Puig is apparently getting dangerously close to setting off the unsounding alarm. The elders may be gathering and the keeper of the code will be looking up just how to deal with him.
Because you just can’t show boat like that. You can’t hit a deep ball, flip your bat, throw up your hands like you’re in a club and watch it like a firework on Independence Day.
Well, you can if you’re Puig and you can make up the time and stretch what you thought was a home run but hit the fence into a triple. And then you can celebrate that like someone who just drove in the go-ahead run in Game 7 of the World Series.
Except it was Game 3 of the NLCS and the Dodgers were down 0-2. And Puig didn’t have a hit in the series.
Then again, there was more energy in that moment than any other so far in the postseason, outside perhaps of David Ortiz’ grand slam on Sunday night that gave the Boston Red Sox new life in their ALCS matchup with the Detroit Tigers.
And if there is something that is and has been sorely lacking in baseball, compared to so many other sports, it’s the massive star power, that excitement, that ability that brings oohs and aahs each game.
As I had said before, we’ve spent way too much time talking about a relief pitcher in his early 40s this summer. Mariano Rivera has been great, and was one of the greatest players of the past couple decades. Notice the has and was in that last sentence? Because it’s in the past, which is the point: the game is stuck in the past.
Everything good and bad about baseball is intrinsically connected to the past. Past players, historic numbers and legends born long ago, grainy images giving us a link to our fathers heroes.
Case in point: one of the main stories on SportsCenter and ESPN today? The 25thanniversary of the Kirk Gibson Home Run in the 1988 World Series. While no doubt a legendary moment in the game, with an incredible call from another legend, Vin Scully, it’s a lead story? Baseball is having some trouble here finding a modern narrative.
While other sports, like the NFL and NBA honor the past, they put great emphasis on the present and future. And because baseball prides itself so much on history, when something like PEDs comes along, it causes such a tremendous uproar because it would create a space-time continuum shift the likes of which would make Doc Brown squirm in his lab coat.
How can we possibly compare all of these numbers we’ve pointed to and prided ourselves on if we don’t know which ones are legitimate? Do we go back and asterisk the books? Do we have eras? What do we do? It’s been a decade long headache.
Meanwhile, the NFL and NBA, which have similar, yet not as publicized issues with PEDs, escape relatively unscathed, partly due to the fact they have not propped up their historical numbers as a thread. The games evolved. The three-point line was invented. It moved back. New rules came into play that increased or decreased scoring. The field goal posts moved to the back of the end zone and headshots were addressed. They are dealing with player safety.
But in baseball, they’ve always been slower to adopt the game to the changing of times. It’s grand ties to history remain both its greatest asset and curse.
Which is why it was strange to hear so much today on TV and radio about Puig and how he carried on last night – and how he carries himself. Many of the old guard talk about doing things the right way, they brought up his struggles with the Dodgers and giving maximum effort, and partying with LeBron James and hanging out with Jay-Z.
They don’t want that, not from a rookie. It messes with those unwritten rules of baseball. But the game might need that if it wants to grow and gain new fans or earn lost fans back.
Did Puig look foolish last night? Oh, most definitely. He embarrassed himself by watching his hit and then over-celebrating on third base. It tends to ruffle less feathers when our athletes act a bit more professional, possibly because in our daily lives, we have to act a bit more professional.
Can you imagine sprinting around the office celebrating every time you closed a deal, or came in early on a timeline? Our frame of reference dictates a lot of that discussion.
Yet I can’t forget what I heard my Dad say when I was a little boy, watching the Lakers with him in the mid-1980s, as Magic Johnson led Showtime. It was fast, up-tempo and exciting. You never knew what was going to happen.
“I work hard all day, every day, doing the same things,” he said. “And that’s fine. But I’d like to get a little excited watching basketball and not know what they’re going to do.”
And some people hated that style of play. They didn’t like all the flash, just wanted the classic substance they grew up with and were used to. Totally a matter of opinion. But Magic wasn’t breaking any unwritten rules with no-look passes and a faster tempo. Just speaking to a different crowd.
There’s room for both.
Which is why baseball needs Yasiel Puig just as much as they do retaliation plunking and a hundred players who, as Carlos Beltran said, pretend like it was an accident when they hit a home run so to not give the pitcher motivation. It can all work in baseball – there’s room for everyone.

Just have to see if those unwritten rules have room for a section on it.
Because it might be just as much fun to talk about Puig’s antics as it is for someone else to watch Puig do it so dramatically, so recklessly.
Now, who keeps the code, anyway? 
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Dallas Mavericks, Dwight Howard, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA, NBA Free Agency

The Plight of Dwight


If there were a soundtrack to the life of Dwight Howard, these past two years would simply feature Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” being played on a continuous loop.
At least that’s the song I’d pick for him, because to watch Howard agonize over where he plays professional basketball, it requires a heavy dose of the reality elixir being administered in high dosage – to himself.
If we thought LeBron James was bad, if we despised the posturing, self-aggrandizing and egocentric ways of 2010’s “The Decision” – then what do we make of this, the Indecision?
You cannot even put a year stamp on it, because it’s spanned two years now – and who knows if it will truly end when Dwight picks a place to play.
Being disgusted by the nerve of professional athletes as they cleverly maneuver from Point A to Point B kind of comes with the territory. Every few years, with someone like James, or Alex Rodriguez, it reaches new heights among sports fandom. We gripe, complain, let out our angst, burn some jerseys and then move on.
But what happens when the athlete – in this case, Dwight Howard – really seems tormented by such decisions? It’s like Howard didn’t get the memo. He’s supposed to be running this joke of a process. Yet Howard seems to be earnestly unaware of how preposterous this charade has become.
Perhaps, as was pointed out the other day by another talking head on the radio, Howard truly doesn’t know what he wants because it changes constantly. And this could be due to not going to college, as was suggested. It could be that by never being in charge of his direction at the age of 18 and selecting where he wanted to go, he’s always had this lingering thought in the back of his mind that other people held the cards.
So you didn’t go to college, Dwight? Well, that too, was your decision. Blaming others is a weak façade, especially in the world of professional sports – no matter if it works or not.
But this is what Howard believes: that currently, this free agency period is his first chance to control what he wants to do.
Problem is, he doesn’t know what he wants. Putting deadlines of making a decision today won’t change that.
What’s weird is how Howard reacts and handles his business after a decision is made. It’s been revealed he still talks with Stan Van Gundy – even after that awkward moment when everyone knew Dwight had told Magic management to let SVG go. He wants to be legendary, to be remembered in the lineage of NBA bigs, but somehow doesn’t seem the connection with the Lakers and oh, Wilt, Kareem and Shaq. Instead, he’s leaning towards Houston, Golden State and Dallas.
Whatever.
There was a time this drama would captivate us, now it feels like updates on Howard are force fed, and they are wildly uncomfortable for everyone, from the people doing the reporting, to those analyzing on radio and TV, to basketball fans that must be in the know, even if they don’t really want to know.
Of all people, Kobe Bryant probably said it best. It’s been reported that during the Lakers pitch to Howard earlier this week, Bryant looked Dwight in the eyes and told him to “put some roots down.” In other words, just make up your mind, man. At this point, we’ve forgotten whether or not we care – just that we want some finality to it.
Maybe Brett Favre changed that for us. Or LeBron. Or the unending coverage. Or a combination of all the above, plus other events. Either way, we’ve become intolerant and resistant to the manufactured drama.
NBA free agency has always been this weird process that sits outside of what is normal in sports or the world. The circus comes to town, everyone loses their mind like they are drunk at a friend’s wedding, making promises they can’t keep about staying in touch.
There are recruiting calls from those loyal to a franchise, packaged presentations with videos, billboards, fake jerseys, Pat Riley tossing down a bag full of rings. Franchises in Texas and Florida always pull out the “no state income tax” card, because stuff like that matters to someone earning $16 million a year. Weather, wives, schools for their children, the possibility of a player becoming a “global brand.”
It’s nonsense. It works. It’s part of it, yet it’s also out of control.
Americans already live in a world of excess compared to the rest of the globe, a country obsessed with gadgets, gossip and material goods. Oh, and money. So it says quite a bit that we, as a collective whole, feel disgusted over a situation like Dwight Howard’s free agency. The disgusting have become the disgusted.
And for what, really? A relatively young center with lots of miles on the tires, with a bad back and a fragile ego who’s never won anything other than individual awards, considered the best at his position during a period of the game when that position happens to be at its weakest? If I were the Lakers, I would have rethought the billboards and banners based on how the season played out.
If this feels like an attack, well, it probably is. Mainly because Dwight Howard is the epitome of an ego run amuck. At least Allen Iverson kept his cornrows and never changed a bit. We knew what was going to happen. In fact, most players are who they are.
Howard, however, came into the league sporting his religious background and a massive smile. He spoke like a cross of the religious Baldwin brother and Champ Kind. He was all about having fun on the court. The east coast home of Mickey Mouse seemed a perfect and wholesome place for Howard.
Somewhere along the way, Howard looked around and thought he was just as good and marketable as all these other fools. He deserved rings and love. Neither came in Orlando. Not much in of either in L.A. My assumption is he won’t find much in the next city as well, until he can forget about what everyone thinks and just becomes happy with being Dwight Howard.
And working on his offensive game more than five feet from the basket, but I digress.
The underlying fear of all this is that even once Howard picks a place, puts down some roots, they will be soft roots. What happens when he gets injured? If the media turns on him a bit? If the team doesn’t perform up to expectations? Howard has spent so much time pointing fingers at everyone else the past few years, there’s no one left to point to.
Except maybe if he found a mirror.
Notice how little of this has to do with money? It’s always been about conduct unbecoming. We’ll forgive a lot and forget a lot as Americans, as sports fans. Just don’t whittle away our patience for your plight.
But Howard has reached that point, probably long ago. We don’t care, Dwight. And it seems the people who play with you and that are pursuing you are growing weary to this saga as well.
If any redemption can be found, this is the recommendation: decide. Stick and stay. Go away from our public stream of conscious. Let some other jerk take the spotlight. Let us look at a stat box next March and say, “D12 had 34 and 18 again last night? Dang.”
For now, just go sell your crazy somewhere else. We’re all stocked up here.
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Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, Mike D'Antoni, NBA, Orlando Magic, Phil Jackson, Shaquille O'Neal, Stan Van Gundy

Howard’s Hotel California


Dwight Howard never wanted the Los Angeles Lakers. 
He knew he would never match up to the expectations, the history, the legacy. Yet true to his personality, Howard smiled on the outside in the preseason following his trade from the Orlando Magic to the Lakers. He said mostly all the right things, mostly because there’s no way he’d say the wrong things.
Howard told us he wanted to win a championship. As opposed to telling everyone he doesn’t? And that’s the thing with Howard: his actions have always spoken louder than words.
From arriving as such a fresh-faced teenager who spoke about his Christian faith and all that he hoped to accomplish until this moment, wearing the famed Lakers purple and gold nearly a decade later, Howard’s hopeful words have never changed.
He always says what you want to hear, you just can’t tell if he believes it or only says it because he longs to be liked.
Howard had it all in Orlando: a small-market team that embraced him as Shaq The Second, willing to let him run the roost and act like a kid, because, that’s what he was. 
The Magic had a coach in Stan Van Gundy who exhausted all options in making Dwight’s strengths obvious, while hiding his weaknesses. Van Gundy protected Howard, both on and off the court. He defended him in the media. He surrounded him with shooters.
In Orlando, it was all about Dwight – and mainly only the good parts. Taking cues from Disney World just down the street, it truly was Dwight’s Magic Kingdom.
Just four short seasons ago, it looked like it couldn’t get much better: there was Howard, strong, agile and dominant in his own way, the centerpiece of a team that reached the NBA Finals. 
In retrospect, Stan Van Gundy did more for Dwight Howard that even Dwight Howard. 
Van Gundy put Howard at the rim, drawing defenders and creating a defensive scramble that forced help and freed up shooters like J.J. Redick, Courtney Lee, Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis to fire away or attack the rim themselves. Throw in Jameer Nelson and Mickael Pietrus, the Magic had athleticism, shooters and tons of ball movement.
It was perfect for Howard, who was allowed to control his environment, in the middle of the paint, and took the spotlight off his offensive weaknesses, like creating his own shot, developing a mid-range jump shot or a series of post-moves.
But nothing lasts forever. And everything ends badly or it wouldn’t end. Yet it’s still perplexing why exactly Howard grew so sour on Orlando. Or on Stan van Gundy.
Howard got SVG canned and himself traded out of town. He was indeed the second coming of Shaq in that regard, but nothing like him on the court. Which is why following Shaq’s path to L.A. is a big problem.
The Lakers are the complete opposite of the Magic, and it shouldn’t take much knowledge of professional sports or the NBA to know that. The Lakers are the Yankees of pro basketball, and therefore, everything is magnified. Every comment, every missed free throw, every loss and win. Howard’s worn out on the drama already – and we’re barely 50 games into his stay in L.A.
This could be Heaven or this could be Hell for Howard. If he committed himself to the Lakers, it would end part of the merry-go-round and media circus. But he only perpetuates it with his non-committal attitude. He thinks he’s being coy; he’s just being annoying to Laker fans and the media.
Likewise, it could be heavenly if Howard would develop the parts of his game that were masked by the Magic and Van Gundy. But he hasn’t shown signs of improvement and remains very limited offensively. You still have to have Howard close to the rim to be effective. You can’t just toss him the ball in the post and let him go to work. He’s not Shaq. He’s not Ewing, Mourning or Olajuwon, gifted big men who could score in a variety of ways.
Howard doesn’t need to shoot threes, even though he likes to joke about it. None of those guys did. But he’s got fewer offensive capabilities than Dikembe Mutombo. Howard’s also missing something else nearly all of the great and dominant centers have had: a mean streak. All of the best go into beast mode, where they physically take over games, snear and mean mug it down the floor, their presence known and felt. Howard just smiles, afraid that someone won’t like him.
So instead of being the awesome match everyone assumes it will be, it’s been Hell so far for the Lakers and for Howard. It’s exacerbating all of his flaws: his need to feel wanted and loved, his limited offensive ability, his cloak-and-dagger comments about the future.
Yet truthfully, the Lakers didn’t lose out on this trade, even if Howard doesn’t stay. The guy they traded, Andrew Bynum, has lost his knees and his mind (seriously, check out his hair). Bynum hasn’t played this season for the Philadelphia 76ers, and might not ever be what he once was – which was the No. 2 big man in the NBA.
And there’s the point: the Lakers needed to find someone to transition the face of the franchise to once Kobe Bryant retires. Howard could be that guy. And they didn’t really give up much to get him. If it doesn’t work out and he bolts town, then at the very least they have cap space to spend in 2014 on some other big name free agent.
Trust me, someone will want to play in L.A. and take over after Kobe is gone. The Lakers biggest mistake was in choosing Mike D’Antoni over Phil Jackson (which is still too weird to talk about). Jackson certainly would have made this work better and Howard would be more apt to stay. Then again, Jackson wouldn’t have stayed as long as Dwight, so you’d be right back here in a few years anyway.
Howard is an enigma, perhaps even to himself. He doesn’t know what he wants, and perhaps when he does, he’ll be too old to use it. He’s looking for what he already had and in the process of doing so, he’s created a beast, fed daily by the overactive L.A. media. But just like the Eagles sang, you just can’t kill the beast. This thing has spun out of control now.
Mitch Kupcheck says he’ll stand firm, that he won’t trade Howard today and that Howard will be another in a line of legendary Lakers.
At least someone believes that. At least someone wants that.
Problem is, it’s not the guy the Lakers need wanting and believing it.
Problem is, Howard can’t get out so easy now. There’s too much money on the table. Too much damage to Howard’s rep should he leave another team when times got tough. And that, for many reasons, matters to Howard. He may want things a certain way, but it goes hand in hand with being liked. You’re not well liked when you bail on the league’s marquee franchise, not when nearly everything for your future and the team’s is set on you. And he’ll have about $30 million extra reasons to make it work.
Howard just really hoped he would be able to recreate the magic he had with the Magic in some nondescript, less pressure-packed place like Dallas, Brooklyn or Atlanta, where he’d be revered as a much as he was for his first eight years in Orlando. But this is the Lakers. They focus on winning banners, not the happy pursuit of them.
In a way, he really did find the Hotel California.
Howard is caught looking for a passage back to the place he was before, and while he can check-out, he can’t really ever leave.
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Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Mike D'Antoni, NBA, Pau Gasol, Phil Jackson

Showcase Showdown?


Now that football has entered hibernation period, and just before baseball begins its long warm-up to a long season, there is basketball of the college and professional variety to help us pass our weekend time.
And while the amateur ranks of college have produced a wildly entertaining and wholly unpredictable state of affairs, with the nation’s No. 1 ranked team losing each of the past five weeks, the NBA hums along toward its mid-way point with little surprise in its pecking order. As usual, you will find the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, and of course, traditional powers like the Los Angeles Clippers and Indiana Pacers.
Wait, what’s that you say? The Pacers and Clipper aren’t traditional powers? You wouldn’t know the Pacers had won 15 straight at home until Friday night’s loss to the plucky Toronto Raptors. Hell, you may not remember Canada still has a team. Or that the New York Knicks – yes, the Knicks – have the second best record in the Eastern Conference, or that the Chicago Bulls are hanging around and doing pretty good without former MVP Derrick Rose, still out because of his knee injury suffered last year.
You might not know the aging Spurs are 40-12, and have only lost two home games all year or that the Golden State Warriors are an emerging young team out West.
But as a casual fan coming out of a football coma wouldn’t know these things because no one is talking about them.
It’s all Los Angeles Lakers, all Dwight Howard, all Kobe Bryant and all the time.
The Lakers are a 24-28 team – good enough for 10th place in the Western Conference. They are old, injured and plagued by infighting. As I highlighted a few weeks ago, they aren’t really worth watching. Yet I couldn’t turn down the chance to watch at least a little of the ABC “Sunday Showcase” game featuring the Lakers at the Miami Heat.
For three-and-a-half quarters, the game was competitive and close. And then the Heat blew the Lakers doors off in the final six minutes before winning 107-97. Eric Spoelstra out-coached Mike D’Antoni, LeBron James continued to outplay everyone and Kobe Bryant tried to will his team back in the game, even as a five or six-point lead felt insurmountable.
You could glean several things by just watching the second half, where the Lakers couldn’t keep pace and allowed the Heat to score 29 in the final stanza. Even more telling – the Heat outscored L.A. 25-16 the final nine minutes.
First, LeBron James has no peers right now. It’s all come together and he’s at the peak of his prime. Google “LeBron James” and “shooting streak” and you’ll get a good idea of why. Efficient doesn’t even really begin to describe what James is doing, shooting 75 percent on his last 65 shots. He just broke the franchise record with five-straight 30-point games as well.
It’s a reminder of when Michael Jordan was in the midst of his reign of awesomeness: the only way James won’t win another MVP is if, much like Jordan, the voters get tired of it. No one else should win. He’s just that good.
The second thing you’d notice from yesterday’s game is just how dysfunctional the Lakers truly are. Steve Nash looks like a broken man who regrets agreeing to this trade. When they showed a close-up of his face, I pictured him with a thought bubble over his head: “I really think losing in Phoenix might be better than this.”
And for as great as Kobe is, as he himself has admitted recently, he is a difficult player to play with. He clogged up the offense good and gross down the stretch Sunday, using an array of back-to-the-basket moves, faders and leaners, appearing to me like a guy who’s legs were fading. This is understandable considering the Lakers were completing their long annual Grammy/Eastern road trip with the game in Miami.
Maybe Kobe was just tired. But he looked like a guy who was old, the one who’s shots at the end of the open gym are bouncing around the rim four or five times and falling out. And with each passing possession, his teammates are less and less interested in watching the same show. Keep in mind, Kobe’s heroics were half the reason the Lakers were even in the game midway through the fourth quarter, but the outcome was all too familiar: another loss.
We haven’t even touched on Dwight Howard (frankly because everyone else spends too much time on him). But Howard’s either not right physically, disengaged with all the drama mentally or most likely, a little bit of both. This week alone featured another round of media clips of Kobe calling out Dwight, Dwight responding and even Dwight’s dad getting involved to take a shot at Mike D’Antoni for not stopping it all.
But forgetting all that drama, the Lakers lack scorers, speed and aggression. They have no bench. There’s relatively little that’s likable about this team on our off the floor.
The Heat play, as do many of the aforementioned teams, with a sense of aggression and attitude. The Lakers have only Bryant with that mindset. Pau Gasol, currently out 6-8 weeks with a foot injury, attacks once every three weeks. Dwight Howard shows more aggression in trying to make his teammates laugh than he does on the court. Howard has one of the most forgettable 15-point, 9-rebound games I can remember. Howard ought to be getting 20 and 10, every night.
The Heat have let our out their inner beasts, the Lakers their inner child.
It’s clear the Lakers made a mistake in not bringing back Phil Jackson, who’s perhaps the best there ever was in the professional ranks at bringing massive egos like Howard and Bryant together under a common goal, while nurturing bruised ego’s like Pau Gasol’s and crazy-in-the-head egos like Metta World Peace/Ron Artest.
What does it say about Mike D’Antoni that the Knicks were a mess during his time in New York, yet a year later, they have the second best record in the Eastern Conference and seem to be playing quite well together? All you need to know about D’Antoni is what he said following the game yesterday: “We’re making strides. We can still do this. [Miami] set the bar and this is where we got to get to.”
I suppose I don’t know what I expect D’Antoni to say. I really don’t expect that truth, which would be: “We’re horrible and we really aren’t getting better. We should be left alone to become an afterthought on what has been a compelling and entertaining NBA season.”
He can’t and won’t say that, I know. But it’s outlandish to think the Lakers are making strides. Or that they are close. Not only can this team not win a championship, it shouldn’t out of sheer principle.
But sadly, this won’t go away. They are the Lakers. It’s 2013. The media cannot not hammer this story, this team, even though there is more going on in the NBA than this mess. So I beg of you, turn on NBA TV, check out some other games this week and then All-Star Weekend. You’ll find so much more going on in the NBA than what you might have seen Sunday from the team in purple and gold.
Otherwise, March Madness won’t just be reserved for the college ranks, as I’m not sure how much more of this ongoing soap opera in L.A. we can take.
It certainly was a Showcase Sunday for both James and the Heat and Kobe and the Lakers.
Yet only LeBron and Miami can feel good about what’s on display.
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Baltimore Ravens, Bill Belichick, Chuck Klosterman, Code of Conduct, Los Angeles Lakers, Manti Te'o, Morals, New England Patriots, Ray Lewis, Tom Brady

These Lines in the Sand


These lines in the sand,
they keep hurting my hand,
because I redraw them all the time
And covering my tracks
shows me what lacks
’cause life is more than just a climb…
Perspective and introspection are a funny thing.
It’s easy to admit when you are right, and often times hard to accept that you’re wrong. Somewhere between those two places lies our own rationalization, a vague area where we’ve justified our thoughts, our reactions and our perspectives. It’s here, in this place, where we identify what we stand for.
What do I stand for? I’d like to think I know, but truthfully, I’m all over the place. Frankly, we all are.
Last night, following the Baltimore Ravens 28-13 victory over the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship, I commented on Twitter how much I was not looking forward to the next two weeks of The Ray Lewis Farewell Tour. It makes my skin crawl every time we hear another gushing commentary about what a warrior, what a competitor and what an inspiration Ray Lewis is.
And as I wrote a few weeks ago, my visceral reaction is in large part due to the fact I’m uncomfortable with the elephant in the room regarding Lewis’ legacy. I was blown away by a couple of good friends saying 1) they didn’t care as much as I did, and, 2) they’d rather hear about Lewis than Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
As one of my friends said, we’re not the Moral Police, so whether the story lines revolve around Lewis or Brady, it was a toss up to him. I knew they were partly needling me, as a Patriots fan and someone who loves Brady, over the team’s defeat. Yet another part of me couldn’t comprehend the comparison: Brady is disliked because he wins, because his coach is unlikable and because the Patriots are always good. Ray Lewis’ story is a little more sordid and scandalous, revolving around the night of the Super Bowl in 2001, when two men were stabbed to death after getting into it with Lewis and some of his crew.
How are these things even comparable?
In short, to me, they are not. But I’m not the Moral Police either, so just because I find something gross, distasteful or just plain wrong doesn’t mean others have to. Not everyone thinks the same way I do – and I shouldn’t expect them to. Further, even you could find 49 other people out of 100 to agree with you exactly on something, you’d easily find another 50 who didn’t.
And that’s where we are, really, as sports fans and as a society: split. We justify and rationalize things all the time depending on our own perceptions and values, calling some things wrong and other things right when really, that’s just our own justification for holding some ground on an ever moving target.
Our codes of conduct, our moral lines, are drawn in the sand.
As another friend pointed out, I had no problem with Kobe Bryant’s rape accusations, but I’m getting high and mighty over murder charges? Well, clearly I did have a problem with it – but the point remains, I continued to, and have continued, to root for the Los Angeles Lakers despite Kobe Bryant’s 2004 rape charges.
In my head came the rationalization, where I moved the line in the sand. The Lakers have been my team since childhood. Do you stop rooting for your favorite team because its star franchise player doesn’t seem like a very good dude? Do you allow yourself to call him one of the greats and celebrate the championships he helped guide that team to? In my case, the answers were no and yes.
So I just basically took my hand and made a new line in the sand.
Likewise, the reason I’m a Patriots fan is Tom Brady. New England isn’t my childhood team. And Bill Belichick, despite being decorated with rings and trophies, isn’t the fairest coach around (I get that’s an understatement). Between Spygate and his constant unsportsmanlike behavior, he’s, well, a jerk. But I like Tom Brady, so I neither agree with his actions or defend them; I just ignore and pretend it’s not there.
Many revel in the Patriots losing and often refer to Belichick and “Belicheat” – which is clever, and most likely true. Yet other teams have been accused of pumping in sound to their stadiums. From high school to the pros, coaches will leave the grass longer or shorter to gain a slight advantage. Is there a difference between taping your opponent to gain an advantage and using all the tools in the stadium to slow them down, break their communication and so forth? Probably so, and the former is certainly a more aggressive form of cheating, but it still feels like we’re justifying one over the other, when in reality, they’re all probably some form of wrong.
Is it all or nothing? Does it have to be?
Additionally, I’ve got no problem rooting for Brady, someone who left his pregnant actress girlfriend for a Victoria’s Secret model, but for years I held local rumors of infidelity against Peyton Manning. Rumors which were never confirmed or exposed in the media, just friend of a friend stories and word on the street type stuff. Nevertheless, I drew my line in the sand: I liked Brady better, so naturally, I looked for the flaws in Manning and ignored character traits of Brady that didn’t jive with my own personal Moral Police.
And really, that’s what we all do. It makes it easier to root for the laundry, since, as I’ve said many times, we don’t know these athletes at all.
We look up to them, but we shouldn’t. We should always be our kids role models. And even when we are, athletes provide some sort of third party credibility to the narrative when you’re coaching your child through a tough defeat or a loss, to say, hey, look at Player X on our favorite team – he fought through that, so good things can happen. Meanwhile, Player X fought through it by taking PEDs, and hasn’t paid child support in six years.
Time to redraw the line in the sand, again.
As I am sure my friend would remark at this point, who cares? Stop with the morality play and just be entertained. What does it matter, anyway? But I can’t.
At the height of the Manti Te’o story last week, Chuck Klosterman wrote on Grantland, in a piece with Malcolm Gladwell, that in essence, our reaction to Te’o shouldn’t necessarily change all that much because some of the story was omitted or embellished or a hoax. He compared it to a best friend of telling you that 10 years ago, he had murdered someone and never been caught. He was sorry now and a changed person. Would you still be his friend?
Klosterman argued that you’d put aside your own moral code and disdain for this action because you knew your friend as someone completely different than the person he was describing and you would remain his friend – unless you were a self-righteous individual. A self-righteous person would say they could never be friends with a murderer because actions have to have consequences.
Basically, you’d move your line in the sand to accommodate your friend.
I guess you can call me a hypocrite for all of my rationalizing on which teams and athletes I root for, and I will be the first to do so, frankly. Because it is hypocritical to blast Ray Lewis, but not turn my moral guns on Kobe Bryant. And I guess according to Chuck Klosterman, I’m self-righteous, because I don’t think I could be friends with someone who committed a murder and got away with it.
We do this justification and line drawing all the time, in normal life, too. The clerk forgot to scan a 24-pack of water bottles, did we go back and tell them? No, because they charged me more for hamburger than the store down the street. Your co-worker comes in an hour late every day and it makes you mad that the boss never says anything, but you’ll take that extra 15 minutes at lunch for a few days a week for six straight months and justify it as a wash.
Let’s say I finally got the break I was looking for in writing, that all my dreams could come true, but all I had to do to get there was write a scathing lie that everyone would believe about an athlete or coach. I’d never be exposed and it would propel me to the top of the sports writing genre.
Would I do it?
I say no. I couldn’t allow myself. Just like I would not have taken a pill to get to the pros. My best friend thinks I’m saying that in retrospect, that I’m standing on a moral high ground by proclaiming that. And there’s really no way for me to confirm that I would have turned it down. And there’s only one way for me to confirm I wouldn’t write the column to break my career open (that’s a hint for someone out there to field me an offer).
But I have to believe that I wouldn’t, otherwise, what do I stand for?
I presuppose that many others are like me, but perhaps there are not, who want to know that you can reach your goals without lying and cheating, and that when you do, you won’t become an insufferable jerk.
It seems more logical to stay true to what I say I believe, based on my own personal Moral Police than to continue to stay loyal to a team or an athlete. When the information we have changes, so too does our opinion or allegiance, right? It’s been confirmed the world is round, so just because, let’s say, I was a World is Flat guy for 20 years doesn’t mean I keep my head in the sand, right?
I suppose what’s left is this: perhaps it is time for a break from the morality writing I’ve been doing for the past month or so, because I’m no more qualified than anyone else to tell you what’s right or wrong for all of us. It’s quite possible that I am self-righteous and a hypocrite. In fact, I think I’ve learned that I’m as human and guilty as the next person when it comes to who I root for and what I justify in my head.
But can I change it – and should I – now that I realize it? Should I put away the Lakers gear? Stop rooting so hard for Touchdown Tom? Maybe it’s time to start living out what I believe, instead of just writing it – maybe I should watch sports with a sort of distant attachment, because it’s getting more difficult the older I get.
As I heard someone say recently, life is not the way it’s supposed to be, it’s the way it is. The way you deal with it makes all the difference.
We can’t make these athletes and coaches do what we want, behave like we want or do what we expect. We can only barely do that with ourselves most days. We’re all just human, prone to fall short and incapable of perfection. Yet in between, we have to decide, what will we stand for.
Or at least I will. So until Kobe retires, I’m renouncing my Lakers fandom.
And next time, I’m going back in the store to pay for the water bottles.
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