Category Archives: NBA

American culture, Donald Sterling, NBA, Uncategorized

A Wrong to Write

Over the past week, as Donald Sterling’s disturbing remarks came to light and the world reacted, I watched it unfold. From the statements to the ban to the talk of boycotts, I just listened, read and absorbed.

But for the first time, I wrote nothing.

It was not for lack of something to say, an angle or an opinion. Anyone who has read what I write about knows that I have no problem diving into a topic, sensitive or not, and navigating through it with thoughtful intent.

Donald SterlingOn Thursday, I finally had a complete, nuanced outline in my head of what I wanted to say on Sterling and the entire situation. About halfway through putting it from brain to laptop, a dear friend texted me and asked me what I thought and why I had not posted something about it.

I bounced my draft his way. It was a thought-provoking piece about race, racism, and the new social media justice that has evolved into a speedy, mob mentality that we should be fearful of should the topic not be something we could universally agree on (you know, like Donald Sterling being a slumlord scumbag who should certainly not own a basketball team.)  I asked if there was anything in it that could somehow be misconstrued or viewed as insensitive – certainly the last thing anyone wants, but especially on this topic.

His response was probably more thought-provoking than my piece.

“It’s good, and you certainly spent a good enough amount of time making sure it was crystal clear that you didn’t agree with Sterling while making an entirely valid point. Freedom of speech and this social media component are an important distinction from this particular topic, but some might not make that distinction. You have to ask is it worth it for you? The sad part to me is that you even have to think about it.”

It wasn’t the response I was expecting, and it affected me. Why was I struggling to post it? Why did I wait so long? Was it because of the topic?

That’s not me – or at least it used to not be. More frequently than ever, I pass on stories that I feel I have a well-informed, researched and thought provoking opinion on. The mental war over what the fallout of negativity might be is just not worth it. This makes me slightly sad.

Are there more out there like me? Writers and journalists and bloggers afraid to post about certain topics because of the mob mentality of social media and the speed of judgment made now in America? I re-read my draft on the Sterling situation and found at least eight different instances where I used multiple adjectives to describe how disgusting I personally found the man to be – whilst trying to make a broader point about being careful how quickly we react. I was so concerned to make one thing clear (I’m not racist) that it was interfering with my other points (social media has changed how we react, is this a good thing?, etc.).

Do I really need to guard myself that much?

This is my passion. I admired and devoured the work of Frank Deford, Tony Kornheiser, Gary Smith, Ralph Wiley, Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons growing up. I favorite author is probably George Orwell. Kornheiser’s piece on Nolan Ryan from the 1980 Sporting News is perhaps one of the finest pieces of long-form I’ve ever read. And Deford’s “The Deer Hunter” piece on Bob Knight in the fall of 1980 for Sports Illustrated rivals it.

Wiley’s catalog stands next to most as some of the best, thought-provoking and ingenious writing I’ve ever come across. I was deeply saddened when he passed away too young. Simmons was the first to use the internet, pop-culture and sports and wrap it up into a massive piece that left you laughing for hours.

Writing is an art. It is powerful. It has always inspired me because I believe words can inspire others, sway them, inform them and move them. Which is why I was perplexed by my hesitation to post what I knew would be a good take on this mess with Donald Sterling, the NBA, race and social media.

But I didn’t feel safe enough to post it because frankly – regardless if it was this topic or not – free speech is dying, if not dead. There are too many topics that immediately spark a response – no matter what the take or angle, no matter how thoughtful and sincere. You’re better off making fun of PED users, bad calls and questioning the NCAA than you are to actually discuss the nuanced issues facing both sports and society.

The reason free speech is dying is because of the very place that would seem to promote its use the most: the Internet.

Twitter and Facebook have caused a rapid shift in society and our culture. You can share whatever you want, but whatever you share is spread more rapidly than ever before. And it is not only shared, but dissected and rapidly responded to.

On the surface, this seems good. We tend to associate speed with progress – like the swift speed of booting Sterling from the NBA in 72 hours. In 1914, this would have taken months, if not years. In 2014, we do it in a matter of hours.

And as I said in the Sterling piece I will not be posting, that’s just fine in this instance. But is it fine because we all agree on who it was and what was said? What happens if the topic is more ambiguous next time? Will we still move so rapidly towards the decision?

How many times do you write something snarky on someone’s Facebook post or reply to a Tweet without truly thinking about what you are saying? What implications there might be in 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 days? You don’t think, because you are reacting. And reacting is 100 percent emotional and spontaneous.

Social media has increased the speed and the volume of reaction and therefore emotion. We have a lot of emotion in the social media world today. This emotion, this anger over your opinion, mine and theirs is what leads to the reduction of use of free speech.

Free speech is a principle. You may not agree with it in its various forms, but the point it supposed to be that it is allowed. Like so many, I cannot fathom how Donald Sterling thinks the way he does in 2014. It is beyond insensitive, beyond embarrassing and beyond rational.

Free speech is also not something to hide behind. You cannot run from your words, or avoid a fallout. There can and will be consequences for the things we say – as there were and should be for Sterling. But if the person still wants to say something, under the Bill of Rights, it is allowed.

The absolute key, however, is that to check and balance this, we must make sure we do not lump in allowance with tolerance or permanence. They are each separate entities.

A principle has to be defended because it is a principle, not because we all happen to agree in this instance it was violated was for a perfectly good reason. The Sterling situation is obvious; what do we do and how do we react if this happens again, but it’s not about race? Are religious comments OK? How about sexual orientation? What happens when there are other shades of gray and moral ambiguity involved?

Why we must practice some patience is because of that very thing: next time. Here, the punishment and the reaction were befitting and deserving in this instance because we all agree it was offensive and there is no place for racism in this country.

But we must be aware it will now serve as a reference point to any and all future situations that may not be so unifying.  Better still, how do we feel about social media being able to so quickly affect decisions in this country, in our society?

This is a real thing, and it’s a reason that someone like me, who loves writing more than most and has been doing it for years, is left wondering whether I should or can freely express my opinions anymore.

Then again, I guess I just did.

Sigh.

I should have just scraped this whole thing and wrote jokes about quarterbacks and crab legs.

Twitter loves that sort of thing.

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Brooklyn Nets, Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson, Kevin Garnett, Lawrence Frank., Mikhail Prokhorov, NBA

No Kidding

Jason Kidd put top assistant Lawrence Frank in a long timeout.

Or he treated him like Fredo in “The Godfather.”

You could apply a hundred jokes and analogies to this – and I just might.

But let’s not kidd ourselves (sorry, couldn’t help it).

Jason Kidd is a megalomaniac, a certified nut-job and this shouldn’t surprise anyone. A man who’s been in domestic abuse situations, was in a public rivalry with Jim Jackson over Toni Braxton back in the day and just this past summer had a DUI that got him suspended for the first two games of the season might have a few emotional issues.

The fact that Lawrence Frank’s punishment is to do daily reporting for roughly $1 million per year because of some comical fallout the first week of the NBA season shouldn’t surprise anyone. Jason Kidd flew off the handle all the time as a player, why should this be any different when he’s a head coach?

Out of timeouts against the Los Angeles Lakers last week, he did what any logical basketball coach would do: begged a player to run into him to spill his drink onto the court – and then wonder aimlessly like a confused mental patient trying to pick up the ice while his assistants drew up a play.

Some people call this gamesmanship. For anyone else, that might be true. But for Jason Kidd – the man who once dyed his hair blonde in Phoenix – it’s just par for the course.

Jason Kidd doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. Not a surprise. He smooth talked his way into Mikhail Prokhorov’s deep, unassuming pockets to coach a team that on the surface was tailor-made for a new head coach: a cast of veterans like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Deron Williams and Jason Terry.

But Jason Kidd couldn’t come up with something like Doc Rivers did in Boston, preaching unity, Ubuntu and whatever else Doc did that made Boston such a special place from 2008-2011(ish).

Jason Kidd certainly isn’t Phil Jackson, a Zen master of player management who got the most out of the biggest stars and somehow has loyalty to this day from the sport’s biggest egos.

But Kidd is not even capable of managing his own ego, let alone anyone else’s.

The Nets –a team that should most definitely be vying for a spot in the top three of the Eastern Conference – are a mess. At 5-13, the Nets are in 13th place in the East. The roster is built for now, but is playing like it’s built for 2015. This doesn’t all fall on Jason Kidd – but the mismanagement does.

Like begging for Frank to join your staff and begging the front office to make him the highest-paid assistant in the NBA, then turning on him because you disagree with his schemes? Well, J-Kidd, what are YOUR schemes? Do you have any original thoughts?

A typical dictator move, to force your assistants to do the heavy lifting and then throw them under the bus when it doesn’t go right. And throw some stank on it, please, by calling it a reassignment. And for an extra kick in the pants, let’s tell people you’re writing reports for the foreseeable future and banned from the bench.

The buzz on Kidd around the league is that once he turns on you, you’re going to get the brunt of his crazy.

Clearly, there’s plenty of that to go around.

No Kidding.
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Andre Wiggins, David Stern, Duke, Jabari Parker, Julius Randle, Kentucky, NBA, NCAA College Basketball, tanking

Empty Tanks

Riggin’ for Wiggins. Sorry for Jabari. Scandal for Randle.
The catchy phrases are already piling up as NBA teams make themselves into ugly ducklings for the 2013-14 season in an effort to maximize their chances at landing one of the premium talents that have hit the college hardwood this season.
And alliteration aside, this happens all too frequently in the NBA. The Draft Lottery is a joke, a punch line to the league and the more you look at it, should be a mark on David Stern’s legacy.
From Andre Wiggins at Kansas, Jabari Parker at Duke, Julius Randle at Kentucky, Aaron Gordon at Arizona to a host of other heralded freshmen, the 2014 NBA Draft has GMs everywhere lining up to give away an entire season in hopes of landing one of these potential franchise players.
But should they even be allowed?
In an exchange years ago will ESPN’s Bill Simmons, noted thinker Malcolm Gladwell had this to say:

                “I think, for example, that the idea of ranking draft picks in reverse order of finish — as much as it sounds “fair” — does untold damage to the game. You simply cannot have a system that rewards anyone, ever, for losing. Economists worry about this all the time, when they talk about “moral hazard.” Moral hazard is the idea that if you insure someone against risk, you will make risky behavior more likely. So if you always bail out the banks when they take absurd risks and do stupid things, they are going to keep on taking absurd risks and doing stupid things.”

And he’s right. Nowhere else on earth is poor performance, malfeasance, mismanagement rewarded. Well, except in Washington, D.C.
Think about it. Everything else that we do must be done to the best of our efforts – or at least some minimum level of trying – or we lose it.
From relationships to our jobs, we can’t tank and get ahead. And when we’ve tried it – as Gladwell said, with banks, it proves to be a hazard to society and one that doesn’t work.
Just picture it: going all George Costanza and sleeping under your desk all day and earning a promotion? That was funny because it was ridiculous to us.
What if we put no effort into our relationships? Just try not taking your girlfriend or wife out for dinner and a movie, even every now and then, and see how quickly your single. You even have to put effort into that – the pick-up. Try going to the bars in sweats, smelling like a dirty sock and looking like you just woke up from a bender. No woman would come within five feet of you.
Think of how outraged we’d be if this practice existed in schools?
Teacher: “Johnny is failing tests, farting in class, humming the Star Wars imperial theme when I lecture and demanding peanut butter and cheese sticks be instituted as the school lunch. We’re going to have to move him up a grade, name him Student of the Month and recommend he teach my class.”
Parent: “Well, we were worried, but hopeful this would happen. We’ll now make sure to reel him in and try a little harder on his schoolwork and behavioral issues.”
Cheat your taxes? How about some money back to make sure you have enough for next year?
It used to be that NBA teams would at least try to not be horrible, or at least be less obvious about it, until after the holidays. It was a passing rite of spring, really. Hit March, and go into full tanking mode. Now? Teams are trotting out a collection of barely passable NBA talent in hopes of getting a head start at being at the bottom by season’s end.
The lack of logic in this practice is astounding. After 30 years, aren’t we clear that this doesn’t work? A handful of well-run teams keep winning the championship. The bad teams stay bad because they are poorly run and because just getting one young superstar doesn’t fix the problem.
How many times do the Bobcats/Hornets, Hornets/Pelicans, Clippers, Raptors, Timberwolves, Grizzlies and Kings have to get a lottery pick before they are good? Those teams have had at least 6 or more lottery picks since the 1984-85 season.
In a recent case study, it was discovered that nearly 90 percent of teams that win 25 games or less are still not contenders five years later. This is the same as saying someone who sits on their couch, plays video games online and tweets about not having a wife or a job is still doing the same thing five years later.
Not exactly surprising.
While I would agree with Gladwell’s theory that we should not reward this kind of team, I think the most egregious thing is that it has become such a glaring problem that everyone openly acknowledges it but nothing is done about it by the league.
David Stern will fine San Antonio for not having their star players face the Heat last November, but he won’t do anything about this? Oh, wait, that’s because he’s helped create it, incentivize it and continue it. Stern will never admit how failed this logic is.
The question, I suppose, is why doesn’t the NFL have this problem? Why is the NFL, the envy of the NBA and Major League Baseball, facing this issue? Because management doesn’t last if they tank. There’s too much risk in throwing away a season.
What I’ve never understood is how you convince people to throw away an entire year of their careers? Imagine telling Michael Jordan, the player, you were going to openly stink for a season to get him some help? Now, Jordan the executive is managing one of the worst teams in professional sports – in any league – in an effort to build a roster of young players where one might pan out.
Not that anyone cares, but it must be difficult to be a fan of these teams. It’s against everything we know to root for losing. Yet, the NBA allows it and rewards it.
Yup. The NBA.

It’s fantastic.



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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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Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, PEDs, Ryan Braun

The Modern Arrogance of PEDs

As a society, it feels like we are always operating under the assumption that modernity is good, that being a part of a modern era means that we are advancing. Perhaps it is experience gained as we age, or perhaps it is because of all the technological and communication advancements made make us just feel so efficient, so intelligent, so very advanced as people.
Or perhaps it is just arrogance.
We find value in purpose if we convince ourselves that we are “better” people than those who came before us, those insufferable rubes we call our ancestors.
Just look at us now, with our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds, our Vine videos. We think we’re pretty special, taking pictures of our food with camera filters. We think people care to know what we think of the latest scandal in 140 characters or less.
But we’ve missed the point of the social media medium. It is not the technology that is too blame, instead it is how we use it. Communication and connection were made easier by these software applications – how we implement them is another manner entirely.
What does this have to do with sports, you might be wondering?
Really, it has everything to do with sports, especially right now, as the sports world as we know it sits bathing in performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Almost daily, another user is identified, another lab busted, another player suspended or under suspicion of use.
Are all of these men and women, accused or proven guilty one and the same? Most assuredly not. Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong and Ryan Braun are in a different world from the junior tennis player who took the wrong over the counter medication and tested positive.
We should all fear the kind of athlete, like Braun or Armstrong, who not only seeks to gain these advantages, but maliciously works to destroy those who stand in their path.
This is simply modern arrogance transferred into sports. We are scrambling to justify players using PEDs with a litany of fun excuses: hey, it’s just part of the culture of sports now; it’s really not that bad; does it matter if everyone is doing it; if they want to risk their health for my entertainment, who cares?
Rationalizing the use of PEDs in this manner is almost adolescent in nature, which is to say, does not make us very advanced.
Those excuses sound like lectures parents dole out on their kids during teenage years: if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you? What does it matter if my friends Johnny and Tommy are doing it as long as I am not? Hey, it’s just what the kids do now.
So many of us have grown weary of this issue, the collective groan could be heard on the moon every time another story breaks.
Speaking of the moon, how would we feel if we heard Neil Armstrong had taken something that enhanced his ability to get to, and walk on, the moon? Cheapened a little? Like maybe we believed in something that wasn’t entirely real? Here is a landmark in the accomplishments of man, a moment that people of every race, faith and stature can point to and say, “humans can do anything.”
With the asterisk: as long as we take something to enhance our performance.
Look, I get it. It’s a tired and seedy story. It’s a slippery slope. It’s an argument we’ve all had in offices, living rooms, sports bars across the nation. What defines the line? Wouldn’t any drink that isn’t water that replenishes nutrients faster be categorized as a performance enhancer? Are all supplements bad?
There is most definitely no easy answer. No real, concrete line. How do we justify taking prescription drugs or medicines that improve your health when sick, physically or mentally, but stand on a bully pulpit when it comes to PEDs?
After all, those drugs allow you to perform your job better and possibly get a raise. They hide your mental or physical flaws from the outside world, giving off a false image.
The only response I can offer is this: there is a big difference between taking those kinds of drugs, which allow you to get back on a level that everyone else is on, and PEDs. If you are depressed, for example, not everyone around you is. A drug that helps level out the chemicals in your brain to a normal range simply put you back on par and allow you to live a life close to what many others enjoy.
They do not falsify your accomplishments and put you above the rest of your peers who are not doing the same things.
But I suppose, just ask yourself, do you feel something isn’t right about drinking Gatorade? About taking daily vitamins? Probably not.
Look, I take supplements. Just not the ones that improve hand-eye coordination, increase my muscle mass considerably and allow me to recover faster than people who aren’t taking them. Whether or not you’re just trying to get back out there and you owe it to the team, using HGH does still imply you are gaining an edge. You can call it speeding up your recovery, if it helps you convince yourself you weren’t looking to cheat – but it is still an edge over every other injured player who isn’t using it.
And there’s the rub, really. This is why we call something cheating: doing something that someone else in a similar position is not. It’s not so much about the morality of right and wrong, we blur those lines all the time.
Really, this is another mixture of PEDs and our society. We distinguish all the time what we will tolerate and what we won’t.
Barry Bonds was a noted jerk, as now is Braun and Rodriguez. However, guys like Derek Jeter use “good” steroids like cortisone to recover and we cheer their gutsiness. David Ortiz was caught with a positive test, and we just smiled. He’s Big Papi, so he’s cool. And I’m sure it was just for a little while to recover from something.
And this says a lot about our society, too. What kind of person you are, or portray yourself to be, will largely determine how willingly we accept or forgive you for a future issue. Do what we expect, based on what we know, and we will react accordingly.
This war, this battle in sports on drugs and PEDs, is driven by the media, and by people like me, too. Sons of old school fathers, fathers to young athletes. The last thing I want my three sons and daughter doing is taking something that enhances their performance to gain an edge on somebody else.
Remember the Ice Cube movie, “Friday”? (Oh yes, I’m going there.) Ice Cube is getting ready to fight the dude who played Zeus in “No Holds Barred” and wants to grab his gun. His father begs him to do it without the aid of a weapon, outside his fists.
I’ll give you another example, from an episode of the last season of “Boy Meets World” (yes, I’m going there, too). Cory and Topanga are just married and living in a dump. The pipes are spouting brown water, the place should be condemned and there’s a screaming baby in the apartment next to them.
They beg his parents for a loan to buy their dream house. Cory’s dad firmly says no, with little explanation of why they won’t. Later, Cory fixes the pipes himself (without deer antler spray), takes a clear glass of water from the faucet and demands his father drink it.
Finally, Cory gets it. It’s not that they couldn’t help – or did not want to. But if they would have, it would have robbed them of something that can’t be completely explained, that sense of accomplishing it on your own, of figuring it out, or doing it.
My argument against using PEDs and my reasons for continuing to wish for a cleaner sports world cannot be explained much better than that, with a hokey reference to a TGIF show and a the only semi-serious part of a comedy starring Ice Cube and Zeus.
Call me self-righteous and tell me I am naïve. Tell me I need to get with the times and just accept where the world is now, that all the athletes do it and have been for 20 years. Call them gentleman’s rules, unwritten guidelines, or just fair play.
Without that, what are we doing this for anyway? Money? Fame? Glory?
If that truly is the case, then we are far from advancing our society and culture.
Modernity is a myth for us, or at least it will continue to be, until we actually fix the faucet ourselves.

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