Category Archives: NBA

Allen Iverson, Boston Celtics, Danny Ainge, ESPN, Kevin McHale, Larry Bird, NBA, Philadelphia 76ers, Robert Parish, Stephen A. Smith

The Chief & The Answer: Old & Entitled


Some old and familiar faces made headlines this week, and what they want is respect.
Problem is, they already had it and lost it. Now, they expect the “Powers That Be” to give it to them again.  
No, it’s not Randy Moss proclaiming he’s the greatest receiver in NFL History. No, it’s not Alex Smith demanding he be named starting quarterback of the 49ers before Super Bowl XLVII.
It’s a couple of former NBA stars.
And if you are as tired of the same old story lines from Super Week and Media Day in New Orleans as I am, this might catch your attention.
Allen Iverson
Former All-Star Allen Iverson wants back in the NBA, at the advancing age of 37. And so does 59-year-old former Celtics great Robert Parish.
They just want to be back in totally different ways.
Iverson wants back on the court, a chance to – as he calls it – complete his NBA legacy. Weird part is, he just turned down a chance to play for the Legends in the NBA D-League.
“I think the D-League is a great opportunity, it is not the route for me,” Iverson tweeted Tuesday.
Oh, that’s right, it’s only the route for aspiring ballers who need some work, those not ready for prime time players who need more practice. And we all know how Allen Iverson feels about practice.
Far be it for NBA executives to want to get a quick look at an under-six-foot guard who hasn’t played in three years and who relied heavily on foot speed, you know still has foot speed and quickness at 40.
Iverson last played in the NBA in 2009-10, briefly, with the Memphis Grizzlies and Philadelphia 76ers, the team he had the most impact on after they drafted him out of Georgetown. What Iverson forgets is what so many remember: he wasn’t very good. But Iverson wants the NBA to look past all that, and grant him a spot on a roster so he can finish what he started.
And some, like ESPN personality (and sometimes reporter/journalist) Stephen A. Smith, who covered Iverson in Philadelphia, agree with The Answer’s assessment. When asked if Iverson should have taken the Legends offer and worked himself back up through the ranks, Smith had some interesting words.
“He should,” said Smith, “but he shouldn’t have to.”
Confused yet?
“To do what he’s done in this league and for this league…to then sit there because of practice or his attitude or whatever the case may be, and to look at it and say that you don’t need it anymore – I’m one of those guys who’s sensitive to…taking care of [those guys].”
So…if we’re understanding this correctly, the NBA owes guys like Iverson – and as Smith went on to allude to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish – some sort of servitude clause? Is that how employment works?
Smith contends that Iverson is being avoided because of his attitude, his work ethic in practice and varying other factors. Well, frankly, that’s probably true. There’s a tipping point with athletes. We’ll put up with them as fans and defend them for a great number of things that seem out of bounds with our own standards and ethics because they do extraordinary things. When those things stop happening, the spotlight tends to shine brightly upon those character flaws.
Robert Parish is looking for a job, too.
The same is true of Parish. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Parish said he was “restless” and needed “money”, therefore, wanted to get into coaching. He said he’d been trying, but had been avoided. Former teammate Larry Bird wouldn’t return his calls, Parish says.
Except that Bird countered that Parish never called him.
Then you find out that even Parish is willing to admit that his sometimes surly and aloof demeanor is still there and that he doesn’t have many friends in and around the game. He’s jealous of former teammates like Danny Ainge, Kevin McHale and Bird, who have worked in the NBA since they retired as players.
“Across the board, most NBA teams do not call back,” Parish told the Globe. “You need a court order just to get a phone call back from these organizations. I’m not a part of their fraternity.”
Welcome to the real world, Robert. Times are tough out here, too. As McHale eluded too, he attempted to get Parish on with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but they were cutting back on positions, and then, you know, McHale was horrible in Minnesota and got fired. Not really a great reference for Robert in the Twin Cities.
This is just like if you’re telling a buddy to get you an interview at a place that isn’t really hiring and then he gets laid off and you’re angry he didn’t hook you up with some work. It’s not realistic. Parish hasn’t worked much since retiring after 21 seasons in the NBA in 1997. He coached briefly, has had done some personal appearances and had a few minor brushes with the law.
He says he gave too much money away. He says he wasn’t particularly close to his teammates, but scolded Ainge and described him as selfish.
How can I help get “The Chief” a job, again, this guy is aces!
Then again, it must be hard to be a former star. You grow accustomed to the pay, the lifestyle, the pace of it all. Parish is whining about an $80,000 salary in communications for the Celtics? Know how many people would like that job? I know my hand just went up. Parish turned down that job in 2004, because he needed something in the six figure range. He also  said he didn’t like the weather in Boston and didn’t want to live there full time.
Let me just ask, Robert: what are you interviewing for again? If you don’t like the weather or the city enough to live there, you know, where the job is located, then what do you want them to do? Send you a royalty check?
There are many fine former athletes out there who are turned away simply because people don’t want to work with them, with their attitudes and their baggage. This happens all the time in the professional world. Employers are allowed to turn you away simply because you don’t fit the culture. Tough luck.
Iverson and Parish were once both great, but are owed nothing now. It must be earned again. They must prove themselves again. And they must change the attitude of entitlement. Who wants to work with that?
Quite frankly, Stephen A. Smith, I’m shocked that you’d defend Iverson, Parish and Abdul-Jabbar in this instance. Surly demeanors and people who don’t work well with others don’t typically get taken care of just because of what they did once upon a time. Wait…Smith wouldn’t understand that.
If Iverson and Parish want back in the NBA, I’ve got The Answer right here:
Be just a little bit more grateful and a little less condescending. 
 Shut up and work for it.
 
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Derek Jeter, Drew Storen, Ed Reed, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, MLB, NBA, NFL, Peyton Manning, Ray Lewis, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Tom Brady

The Grind


Here’s to The Grind.
Or more importantly, here’s to the ones who went through it and excelled in it.
Because you can survive The Grind, but it changes you forever. If you don’t know what The Grind is, quite simply, it’s the torturous side of sports. The pain, the hurt, the injuries, the travel, the hard work, the rehab.

It’s the nights in an empty gym while your friends go out on dates. It’s the sunny afternoons of summer spent in batting cages, on dirt fields under a blazing sun, while others soak their feet in a pool. It’s the mildly grotesque smell of a weight room, which you strangely learn to embrace. The Grind is the scars, the rock hard calluses on your feet and toes, the lack of hair on your knees from floor burns.

And there’s a secret to it, that only the best of the best learn, which is simply that The Grind cannot be beaten, it’s barely survived and at your best, you simply manage and muddle your way through it.
The Grind is the journey, and it’s rarely understood by those who merely watch.
We are about to embark on a period over the next few years where some of the best in their profession – of all time – will step away from The Grind and reach The End. They survive it, embrace it and succeed in it.
The first comes Sunday, as Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis will retire – win or lose – following the Super Bowl. Whatever you think of Lewis as a person, or how the media lovefest has gone a little overboard the past month, considering, you know, this, it doesn’t change the fact that Lewis is indeed a warrior and a throwback NFL player along the lines of a Butkus or a Singletary. Ultimate competitor, passionate, and perhaps most of all, maximum effort at all times.
And he lasted 17 seasons in the NFL, a place where brain damage and physical disability are rampant after retirement. In 2011, a study found that the average NFL career was 6.86 seasons, a major league baseball player, 5.6 years, and in the NBA, ballers can expect to last on average 4.8 years.
That’s not very long. And that’s because of The Grind.
As spectators and as fans, we see the glitz, the glamour, the fame and the money of professional sports. And never mistake that they are well-paid. But few, very few, make it to The End. The Grind often ends it for you.
It becomes less and less about the money, but more and more about the legacy and about a unique competitive drive few can understand.
Within the next few years, many other outstanding, Hall of Fame caliber NFL stars could be joining Lewis: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Randy Moss (again), Tony Gonzalez and Ed Reed. Each of these players changed the game, impacted it in some significant way and broke records. Each will be a Hall of Fame player. Heck, maybe Brett Favre will finally hang ‘em up, too.
In baseball, guys like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, Ichiro Suzuki (basically, the New York Yankees roster) and David Ortiz will call it quits. And in the NBA, there’s this list: Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, and Steve Nash. All are winding down MVP-heavy, record breaking, Hall of Fame careers.
We’ve watched, we’ve enjoyed or hated them as members of rival teams, but we don’t know a thing about them, really. And we don’t know about The Grind.
Some of these athletes have been playing professional sports that span over three presidents – the second term of Bill Clinton, all of George W. Bush’s years in the White House and now, with Barack Obama beginning his second term as commander-in-chief. Cell phones weren’t heavily used, Justin Timberlake was in a boy band and we still feared the Y2K bug.
Just think, where were you in 1996, when Ray Lewis and Kobe Bryant started their NFL and NBA careers, respectively?
Simply put, the world has changed, but many of these guys haven’t. Think of what they’ve endured? To start, I think of how my story is 1/100th of theirs.
I am a has-been, former high school hoopster, and tried to play college ball at the D-III level. In my early 20s, I played pick-up ball a couple nights a week for a few years, didn’t do anything for a few in the middle and then played Y-League ball on Sundays for eight weeks, once or twice a year, for three years. Didn’t play again for awhile and now, over the past four months (in much better shape finally), I’m playing once a week again.
Keep in mind that fact – that I’m 33, haven’t spent the last 15 years in a 6-to-8 month season, traveling, maintaining, playing two games in three nights, back-to-backs or doing a West Coast road trip.
But I played. I’ve had my version of The Grind.
Frankly, I hurt more than I’d ever admit verbally, mostly in the mornings. And that’s mainly because I don’t want to be a whiner, a complainer and partly because those around me can’t understand.
In the winter, due to way too many ankle sprains, my feet just plain ache. They pop and crack constantly. They’re typically always cold, unless the calendar is between May and August, due to poor blood flow and bad tendons and ligaments. My wife shudders when my feet brush her leg and says they feel like ice cubes.
My back hurts, my left shoulder slips out of socket occasionally if moved the wrong way, or slept on for too long, from three separations. After diving for a loose ball once and landing on my elbow, I basically split my elbow cap into four or five pieces of bone. I’ve played with what amounts to a black and blue golfball on the side of my foot – several times and on each ankle. I’ve played in an Aircast, a shoulder harness (that I wouldn’t wear except for one practice), and routinely stuck my legs from the calf down into 5-gallon buckets of ice water.

Twenty minutes in, 20 minutes out. After pulling them out, with my feet still a blue-ish purple color, I’d do ABCs with my feet, then, plunge them back in for another 20 minutes of torturous cold that cannot be described, only experienced.

Once, I got 12 stitches in my calf after diving for a ball and landing on the jagged metal edge of a bleacher – but I didn’t notice my sock was covered in blood for nearly two minutes. And I didn’t notice that muscle and fat from my calf were slightly exposed from the gash.
But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
The Grind can give you an adrenaline high, a natural charge from competition that you can’t really replace, a euphoria that you’ll spend trying to replicate. The Grind can hurt. I’ve got friends with knees that have been repaired or scoped three, four, five times. Herniated and or bulging discs in their back. Some have addiction to pain killers, to alcohol, to Tylenol, Advil or nicotine.
I’ve done it, too. They are simply numbing agents to offset The Grind and its effects.
And our stories – especially my stories – are literally nothing but a drop in the bucket of those mentioned above. Think of the amount of needles endured just to play. Lewis is coming back from a torn tendon in his arm that he suffered in October. Imagine that rehab. Surgeries and pins placed into bones. Kobe flew to Germany to have a controversial surgery on his knee, where they put new blood platelets in, because The Grind had made his bones, well, grind.
And that’s just before they are done.
At some point, though, it ends. And that’s when the mental aspect, not just the physical, begins. An identity crisis, or sorts. Who are you without (insert sport name here)? Some, like me, only did it for 12-15 years. I thought I had a hard time. Guys like Kobe, Duncan, Jeter, it will have been for 25 or 30 or more. You don’t remember a time when it didn’t revolve around the game. Your life is defined by it, you are who you are because of it.
The younger you are, the less painful the transition I imagine. Those who get it and did it, no matter what the level, have their demons related to giving it up or losing it. And it’s harder to understand for those around them. The competitiveness is wired into you, somehow, perhaps before birth or at a young age and you can’t turn off will and desire.
It cannot be replaced. The beast cannot be fed with desk jobs or investments, or even announcing and analyzing games on TV. Some do well with post-sports life, like Larry Bird, others, like Michael Jordan, not so much.
Some don’t want The Grind, which is when they get The Filter. That’s why they quit their high school teams, to go out and do their thing. They date. They party. They grow their hair out and spend their summers in flip flops, going to concerts and pool parties. There are more who wave it off after they get to college. Not worth it, too much. Or they don’t play as hard. They quit diving for loose balls or line drives in the gap, quit chasing down receivers 15 yards downfield. The funnel gets tighter the higher you go in the sporting ranks.
Until we are left with the few you can survive all The Grind has to offer. Twenty or more years, from childhood on, of aches, pains, missed dates, failed relationships, lost friendships over wins and losses, the travel, sleeping in chairs, living in training rooms with ice wrapped around every limb, doctors, surgeries, and rehab.
The Legends, they’ve been hurt, too, far worse and for far longer than many of us can even comprehend. Broken feet, torn ACLs. Dislocated this, that and parts in between. Peyton’s neck, Brady’s knee, Kobe’s knee, Jeter’s ankle. Paul Pierce was nearly stabbed to death. These are just the big ones, the ones that we know about. We don’t know anything of all the nicks, bumps, scraps, twists and turns. Banging into bodies, diving on the ground, on the floor. Flying from city to city, sleeping in cycles of naps on planes and buses.
At The End, if you’re lucky, you got a few rings to show for it.
This weekend, I heard rising star and young Washington Nationals pitcher Drew Storen speak. He was encouraging many in the audience, who were young baseball players, to focus each and every day on getting better at one little thing, and how, over time, it adds up to make a big difference.
But he also spoke of The Grind. What he does never changes. There’s just more of it. The same way he played the game at 11, 15,  or 17 is the same way he plays today. He gets just as excited – still gets that rush – to strike someone out, to make them look foolish, like he did his neighborhood friends as a little kid.
“Just more people watch now,” Storen joked.
They watch, but they can’t know. It’s a lonely place, The Grind. Going through it, only few understand. And the further your go with it, the fewer people that know what it feels like. That’s probably why it’s so hard to let it go.
Lately, I have been writing pieces about the moral side of sports, of society and how we view these events, and what’s right and wrong. But you think of it from this lens, of these outstanding few, of The Grind, and you think how many shades of gray enter into someone’s logic and rationale.
I may not agree with the PEDs, with the personal life or off court issues, but I can see why they are there. Why taking something to give you an edge is a tempting devil on your shoulder.
There are not many left after a dozen, 15 or 17 years. So very few can survive that long. That’s what makes these guys special in a sporting sense. We rarely get them, and when we do, they often have baggage near The End. Scars unseen they hide from the world, because frankly, the world can’t understand. It’s too cut and dry by that point for them.
Other times, it’s simply a numbing agent, a way to survive, to press on. Many started out, like Storen, chasing it. And as life often does, so many are filtered out over time. These guys aren’t like us, which is why I’ll tip my hat to them all, no matter who they are, simply because The Grinders reached The End.
And I hope and pray for the beginning of the rest of their life. 
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Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, Mike D'Antoni, NBA, Pau Gasol, Rasheed Wallace, Steve Nash

Ball Don’t Lie


Ready for an understatement?
This isn’t Showtime. And this isn’t fun.
This isn’t even the 2007-10 Los Angeles Lakers that made three straight trips to the finals and captured two NBA titles.
It’s a Hodge-podge group of veterans, past primes and no names. The Lakers have an egocentric star, and his name is not Kobe Bryant. Another player’s psyche is highly susceptible to breakdowns. Their coach has a warped sense of reality and apparently doesn’t see the roster like the rest of us does.
If this weren’t the Lakers, we’d ignore them, tell them to blow it up and check back in a year or two to see if they’ve made any progress.
But this is Los Angeles and these are the Lakers. The Yankees of the NBA. And drama and theater go hand-in-hand with the purple and gold.
The media will keep talking about them, but even Jack Nicholson’s waved the white flag.
The Los Angeles Lakers are a 16-21 team.
Can we stop talking about them now? If not, just let me know when, because it’s at that moment I’d love to talk about the NBA with you.
The most interesting, dynamic and contending team in Los Angeles is the Clippers. There’s a better story in terms of collapse in Boston with the Celtics. New York finally has a decent Knicks team. The Thunder are rolling in Oklahoma City, the Pacers have saved their season in Indiana, the Heat are bored in Miami and the Spurs keep fighting off father time in San Antonio.
But everywhere you turn it’s the Lakers, who frankly, just don’t matter. Lack of depth on the bench, old age on the court, chaos in the front office. Jim Buss is calling the shots, more and more frequently, if that tells you anything.
You already knew most of this. It’s nothing new. But for some odd reason, they won’t go away.
The players keep talking. Everyone involved is trying to stay relevant and pretend the Lakers matter right now. But it’s just an act.
Maybe it’s their coach, Mike D’Antoni, who continues to say outlandish things on a nearly daily basis. The man touted the return of Showtime when he took the job in November, promised things would get better when Steve Nash returned and just yesterday said the Lakers season was just starting.
D’Antoni has turned into a walking, mustachioed cliché. One game at a time? Season just starting? You’re 16-22! There’s just 45 games left in the season and it’s reasonable to suspect that in a difficult Western Conference, the Lakers need to go around 30-15 the rest of the way to make the playoffs.
Can this team win 30 of it’s remaining 45 games?
It can. But it won’t.
Which means all of this is just a sideshow. It’s window dressing on an embarrassing season. To preach to the masses to not give up hope is an affront to the masses. We all might not have made it to the NBA, but we can tell when we see a train wreck on the court and in the locker room.
We were asked to give it time, to exercise patience while this group figured it out. Many pointed to the way the Miami Heat started two years ago with Chris Bosh and LeBron James. By this point in the 2010-11 season, the Heat were winning games, not losing six straight. The Heat struggled with things like who’ll take the last shot. The Lakers struggle to get their shot at the end of games.
This isn’t a team that’s close, on the cusp and showing potential signs of greatness.
It’s a mediocre team. Kobe Bryant wants it, Dwight Howard just wants his. Steve Nash wants it, but can’t use it the way he used to. And Pau Gasol just wants to be wanted. There’s too much noise in Lakerland.  
Now, for all the poking and prodding on D’Antoni, what is it that I expect him to do? Hold pressers with a drink in his hand and say things like the uncle in Home Alone: “Horrible, just horrible.”
No, Mike D is doing just what anyone would, trying to paint a face of hope and optimism on a dire situation. And Kobe can tweet staged photos that make light of reports he and Dwight are sparring behind the scenes. And the Lakers can claim a 10-point home win over a 9-29 Cavs team is righting the ship.
They can do all those things. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. But it doesn’t mean we have to watch.
What do we typically do when we see a proverbial sports train wreck? We watch until it’s over. Well, this is over. We pay attention to things only as long as they are interesting. Most people pay attention to politics the six weeks to two months before an election. Within days of the election being over, we’re not watching Hardball, Morning Joe or CNN as much.
We needed to see how this would play out: Kobe, Nash and Howard on the same team. How it would go, what egos would get in the way, how they would run D’Antoni’s offense, if they complemented one another (both with their play and their words in the media).
We wanted to see if this was as fun as everyone said it would be (like on the NBA preview issue of SI, above).
It’s not.
And that’s the thing with sports, you watch until you’re spinning your wheels and wasting your time. We know what’s going to happen from here on out. Is success possible? Well, as Mike D and many of the Lakers players will try and tell you, anything’s possible.
Our eyes see a different story. And it’s just not one worth paying attention to. Let’s just close the curtain on this season and focus on other things, other storylines and teams that are worth our time.
Remember Rasheed Wallace’s famous line about how the “ball don’t lie”? Meaning, if you’re given the ball and you shouldn’t have been, the story will be told with the next shot. If it doesn’t go in, the ball told the truth. 
The ball isn’t lying on the Lakers season. Whether it’s turned over, bouncing off the rim and careening into the stands from a bad pass, the ball don’t lie.
And there’s no talking around that.
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David Stern, Gregg Popovich, Manu Ginobili, Miami Heat, NBA, San Antonio Spurs, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker

Bad for Business


There are reminders, occasional ones, that sports are most often a business first. People pay money to a group or person to see their contracted workers perform. The group that employs the workers have agreed with a sanctioning body to sell the rights to broadcast these events on television. The network has paid a large sum of money to broadcast a set number of performances each year. In turn, the network gets to decide, based on which performers the public likes, which performances it broadcasts.
And this is roughly how we got to the San Antonio Spurs at Miami Heat game on TNT last night.
Except the Spurs weren’t all there to perform.
San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich sent star performers Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and key reserve Danny Green home. On a commercial flight, of all horrors. For those playing at home, that’s four of the Spurs top five leading scorers. Popovich did this because he wanted his stars to rest up before Saturday’s home game against the current best team in the NBA, the Memphis Grizzlies.
He did it because the Spurs have played 10 road games in November, including six straight since Nov. 21. He did it because last spring, deputy NBA commissioner Adam Silver, David Stern’s heir, said the Spurs wouldn’t be penalized for bringing Duncan, Parker and Ginobili to a road game in Utah. Though it should be noted that Silver qualified that in the shortened, condensed season, the league understood. And Popovich has done it before, dating back to 2009.
He did because he thought he could and he has before.
But it doesn’t make it right.
Look, we all get it: the Spurs are old. And if they are going to contend, they need some nights off. Some of us may like it, others may argue that players should play if healthy. But he had to send them home before everyone else? That’s the part, right there, that really twists the knife. Stern issued a statement that basically apologized to everyone and promised sanctions and punishment.
Popovich’s move, while not unprecedented, was unique. And it brought up several questions.
Why couldn’t Duncan, Parker, Ginobili and Green just sat at the end of the bench all night? They are so exhausted they had to catch the next flight out? Why couldn’t Popovich have called the NBA, so they could notify TNT? How long did Popovich know he was going to do this? Was it him trying to stick it back to the league because of the scheduling quirk that’s had them on the road much of the past month?
And all this has done is put the argument of sports or business right back on the table.
It’s entertainment, to be sure. It’s basketball, for certain. But make no mistake, it’s a business. Large sums of money are changing hands. TNT was counting on huge ratings for this early season matchup. The defending champs at home against the legendary Spurs. The fans came to see Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, not Splitter, Bonner and…and…and I can’t even think of who else played for the Spurs last night.
It doesn’t matter that the game was close after the fact. Advertisers don’t pick slots on TNT on a Thursday night game for the Spurs backups against the Heat. The league and the network don’t promote it as a marquee game. Fans don’t buy tickets to see that.
Popovich may be kind to his players. He may care about their well being. He may be smart and strategic as a basketball coach. He’s just not much of a businessman. And he didn’t go about it the best way.
“Perhaps it’ll give us an opportunity to stay on the floor with Memphis on Saturday night,” Popovich said prior to the game.
It’s just so…condescending.
Here’s the thing: If the Spurs need to rest this early into the season – to the point the players are flying commercial just to get home and in bed – then maybe this team is done. Maybe these guys should just retire. If they can’t even sit on the bench for a few hours and then fly home with the team, then call a spade a spade. If every single second of rest is that vital to the Spurs long term viability as a contender, I’ll go out on a limb and say they won’t win the NBA title come June.
Most teams do this in March and April, not the week after Thanksgiving. And most teams will rest a player or two one night, then a couple others the next game. But to rest four – including a younger player like Danny Green, who’s 25 – makes this situation all the more strange.
Then Popovich said he made the decision about resting players for this game in July – you read that right, July – when the schedule came out. He said it didn’t matter the opponent or the interest level of the game.
Maybe not to Gregg Popovich, but it mattered to a whole lot of other people who paid a whole lot of money. Again, why this game? Why not any of the previous three games? The Spurs beat the Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards and Orlando Magic over the previous four days. The Spurs won by a collective 52 points over three teams with a combined record of 9-34.
Why not rest your guys for the entire fourth quarter of each of those games, against inferior teams that you knew your reserves could handle? Why this game?
It just seems as though Popvich wanted to not give anything away to the NBA. He wanted to stick it to the league for the schedule. And he did everything he could to rub their noses in it, going to great lengths to get those four as far away from AmericanAirlines Arena as possible.
While you can’t entirely fault him for his reaction to the schedule, Popovich is employed by a franchise in the NBA that has partnerships and deals with many, many payors. And the Heat counted on them too. Like most teams, the Heat employ a ticket-pricing system that fluctuates based on the opponent. So the Spurs game costs more than a game against the Phoenix Suns or the Charlotte Bobcats.
I wonder if the Duncan, Parker, Ginobili and Green were paid for Thursday’s game. DNP – Coach’s Decision? Could they refund some of that money to the fans who paid to see them?
That won’t be happening.
If Popovich is doing what’s best for the team, he could have had the fortitude to tell everyone beforehand so the rest of us didn’t waste our time and money. But instead, Pop got mad at the league for scheduling his aging team for so many road games, so he took his proverbial ball and went home, simple as that.
Maybe next time, we’ll do the same with our proverbial money and bypass Spurs games in person or on TV. 
We can’t trust that they’ll be there.

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Adam Carolla, Culture, NBA, President Barack Obama, Society

The Culture of Me

Someone find me Doc Brown, because I need a flying DeLorean to get me the hell out of here.
Because I’m terrified of present and scared of the future.
The future used to hold so much intrigue: what we would be, how technology would shape us, how life would be different. But what I’ve come to realize is that all we’ve done in the course of our history as a society is screw up a really good thing.
This isn’t about politics or gender or any one particular thing. It is wholly about a feeling that we’re not as dignified as we once were. Not stuck up, or hoity-toity. Just dignified. Certain things were beneath us as individuals or as a collective unit known as America.
Not anymore. There’s nothing beneath us because we’ve reached the bottom.
Two things this week have made me very sad and very sacred and very, very certain that we’re headed down a path that apparently only bothers people like me.
First, President Obama appeared on “The View” yesterday. Talked shop with Babs and Whoopi, got in a little celebrity gossip time about Kim Kardashian. Showed those middle-age housewives who are home at 10:00AMon a Tuesday that he’s totally cool in touch with how they feel on important issues like knowing that Kim was married to a basketball player for 72-days last year.
What?
How is this dignified? How is this befitting the stature of the office of the President of the United States? How is this a good resource of government time and money? And those who say he’s just like everyone else are missing the point – I don’t care about the party as much as the office he holds and what it should mean to us. At least Adam Carolla agrees with me.
I had friends who claimed it was a ridiculous argument or conversation to have. And therein lies my point: why is this out of the question that someone would find this to be beneath the President? How far have we slipped that this doesn’t warrant some commentary from someone in the media? It has little to do with politics. Again, I could care less about which party is doing it – I want them all to stop and have some dignity. Carry themselves with class. Why is that so much to ask?
My second travesty of the week was the news that the NBA is planning on allowing advertisements on uniforms at some point in the next few years.
“We told our owners that it was not something we were considering doing for next season,” NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver said a few weeks ago, “but that it was something we should at least discuss doing for the season after next. We showed them some of the traditional soccer jerseys used in Europe and we showed them some of the valuations that soccer jerseys are getting and some estimates of ranges of values for logo rights on NBA jerseys.”
Wow. Well, by all means, let’s be like Europe. And let’s make the concession that we won’t be doing it next year – we’ll keep our dignity, damn you – until 2014. Then, let’s kill the last bastion of decorum in sports by squeezing out every available dollar possible.
Do you like the MLS New York Red Bulls? Then you will love the Toyota Spurs. Estimates say that the four major sports leagues in the United States are losing about $370 million by not advertising on uniforms. What about the dignity gained by not advertising on uniforms?
This isn’t us. Or at least tell me it isn’t us. Do we honestly care that much about squeezing in every revenue dollar that we’re willing to put a name or logo on everything? At least Nike makes the uniforms.
Please tell me that we still hold a few things valuable. Please tell me we have a little bit more integrity and decorum than this. My fear is, we don’t, because in so many others sectors of our daily lives and our society, well, we don’t.
Just take a look around sometime – our self-involvement is all encompassing. Because people believe they, themselves, are the most important person in the world. That’s why people cut you off in traffic: wherever they are headed is more important that where you are going. It’s why they sneak in and grab the nearly-sold-out-hot-toy-of-the-season from your hand during Christmas shopping – their kid or relative is much more deserving or more important than yours is.
People who have no children or one child and a part-time job will look someone who has two jobs, five kids and a whole lot more going on in life and tell them without sarcasm and in a completely straight face that “I am are just so busy, you couldn’t possibly understand.” It’s why your kid’s accomplishments top anything another kid could do. It’s also why your wedding, birthday or bar-mitzvah is the most important day in everyone else’s life – because it’s yours.
We are inherently self-centered people that have very little self-awareness and thus we’ve lost all appropriate decorum in a given situation.
We go to people’s homes and don’t offer to take off our shoes because we don’t even think about it. We don’t offer to clean-up or bring a dish when invited to dinner. We don’t call and cancel reservations we can’t keep. We are rarely honest, rarely sincere.
And we are dumb enough to expect more from our politicians and from athletes? We’re just like they are. They fail to keep promises. Fail to be more dignified than someone else in debate. We don’t clean up our messes (like the national debt) and we bring nothing to the table – like taking a pay cut as a member of Congress, giving back healthcare or pensions.
Well, what I meant was, YOU need to give back…I’ve earned mine.
We are what we are now: greedy and selfish. I’ve had people thank me for being so kind for opening up doors recently. That’s because my father taught me politeness. You compliment people. You walk on the outside of the sidewalk to protect people. You say pardon me, excuse me and thank you. Or at least we used to do those things.
Now, you can be on a Monorail with a stroller in Walt Disney World, the doors open and there’s a crush to push your stroller with a sleeping two-year-old out of the way just to get 14 extra seconds in the Magic Kingdom. That thing is in MY way!
What the hell is wrong with us?  Everyone’s gotta get theirs. We are reaping what we’ve sewn. Decades of telling everyone they are special in their own right, passing out trophies and awards to everyone for everything – for just participating – so that no one feels left out.
Here’s the thing: it’s OK to work harder than someone else and have that acknowledged. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. There is a lesson in both.
We should open doors. We should be polite.
But we are not. We are just plain rude.
We are obsessed with us. We are a Culture of Me and Is.
We have no sense of unity, no common purpose. We can’t even agree to disagree most of the time.
If “Back to the Future” were made now, Marty would have just taken the DeLorean and not tried to save Doc. He would have used the Sports Almanac and never admitted his mistake. He would have left Doc in the Old West to get run down by Mad Dog Tannen.
Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon (at the ripe age of 32), who thinks with longing about a simpler time when we actually gave a damn about manners, decency and showed a little decorum in how we presented and carried ourselves.
And maybe that never truly existed.
But man, if it did, I’ll be waiting on a time machine to take me there. 
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