Category Archives: NBA

Chris Paul, Dan Gilbert, David Stern, Dell Demps, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA, New Orleans Hornets

Obey Your Master

It’s official, NBA commissioner (czar, dictator, whatever you feel most comfortable with) is drunk with power to the point his ego is running the NBA. And to clarify, I literally mean David Stern’s ego in running the NBA now, now David Stern himself.
How did we reach a point where an American professional sports league is ran by a man who believes he is so powerful he can control everything? Can anyone stop him? He reminds us of any run of the mill movie villain, who has the crazy eyes and drives the car 180 miles towards the cliff, demanding, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it! And I’ll do it because I can.”
Stern was willing to set his own league afire this past summer and fall. In fact, he poured the gas and held the matches. He even lit a couple and waved them near the rubble that had become the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations.
He did this despite knowing how that worked out for the NHL several years ago. He did this despite the fact that the country is still in a recession and was just pissed off enough from the NFL lockout (one that did not miss any games but was still irritating) that everyone thought it was stupid. He did this in spite of a growing and shared belief that the NBA has been overpaying players for years.
The rationale for the lockout was not much better. “Hey, we know our teams can’t manage money very well and often give out 6-year, $60 million to the likes of Eddy Curry, but help us out of this jam.”
That’s like buying a mansion, not making the payments for a couple years and then right before foreclosure, asking your 70-year-old parents for money.
Ironically, this isn’t even about the NBA lockout and how Stern has lost his foothold with league owners who are no longer scared of him. It’s about how Stern is perhaps scared of them.
How else does one explain the blatant collusion involved with blocking New Orleans’ trade of Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers last week? By all accounts, Hornets general manager Dell Demps had been given full authority to execute a trade. Teams had contacted the league to check if deals for Paul would be blocked. Everyone did their due diligence. And so they proceeded in putting together a trade that took many days and man hours to pull off.
It didn’t take long for Stern to squash it. Coincidentally, everybody’s favorite moronic owner, Cleveland Cavaliers whiner Dan Gilbert, wrote an e-mail to Stern demanding that he stop the trade. The e-mail was leaked to the media shortly after the NBA blocked the trade.
The league may own the Hornets because basketball can’t survive in New Orleans, but they did themselves a huge disservice. Demps nearly resigned, reportedly. He was undermined in this whole thing and now his authority has been undercut, his team micromanaged by Stern.
As has been pointed out before, there’s no way Chris Paul is resigning with the Hornets when his contract expires at the end of the season. They will get nothing for him if he stays. By all accounts, most around the league felt the Hornets had won the purposed trade with the Lakers and Rockets.
But not Stern apparently.
All this on the heels of his posturing during the lockout, demanding the players had chosen a “nuclear winter.” And on the heels of reports that Stern belittled stars like Dwayne Wade and Paul Pierce during the negotiation sessions.
And let us not forget Stern’s changing the rules as we go style of leadership, the dress code, the headband rule (where you can’t wear your headband any way but right side up, logo facing forward).
I enjoy the dress code and the professionalism, as do others. But that’s not the point. Stern’s ego is driving the bus now. He doesn’t oversee a league and try to ensure balance, he enforces what he believes is fair and right and just. Too much hip-hop flavor? Dress code! Too many guys showing creativity in wearing arm bands or headbands, let’s get a rule out on that. Memo-style, double-spaced.
The league berated the players during the lockout with a hard line agenda that meant to imply they would not become Major League Baseball, where a few teams spend tons of money and have dominating rosters while two-thirds of the league meanders through the season in mediocrity ever year.
There’s just one problem: the NBA has always been that way, whether they pretend to want parity or think they once had it. From the period of 1980-2005, only seven teams even won NBA championships. And that list grows to only nine when you expand from 1980-2011. Thirty-one years, just nine different franchises have won championships. That’s quite a bit less than Major League Baseball during the same period.
The small market owners are trying to fight the power and demand they should compete with the big markets. They actually believe superstars want to play in Milwaukee and Cleveland and Indianapolis. Forget the lack of state income taxes in places like Florida, factors like weather and big cities like New York and Chicago. Who wants to play in a state that has beaches and sunshine 300 days a year when you can play in a gray, dreary place?
You can’t control free agency, David. You can’t control players like LeBron James and Dwayne Wade taking less to play together. If Chris Paul really wants to play in L.A. or New York, he might take $10 million less to do it.
You can be mad that the Heat’s trio (James, Wade and Bosh) chose to all play together instead of fight against each other. You can be mad the Celtics pulled off trades and signings that netted them Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen (along with Rajon Rondo) four years ago. You can be mad that the Lakers are always a draw to superstars who love the media, Hollywood, sunshine and being a star in a town of stars.
You can be mad. You can hope to change it.
But you can stop none of it.
That is, unless your name is David Stern and you believe yourself to be the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster. Are we gonna have to zap him like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man one of these days?
His ego has overtaken his once strong and level-headed mind. Stern is no longer the same man that brought the NBA out of tape-delay and made it global. He’s an egomaniac who thinks everyone is a puppet whose strings he can pull.
It’s time to step away, David.
And if you won’t, then somebody needs to cut the strings.
With you.
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Allen Iverson, Brett Favre, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, Sports, Tiger Woods, Yankee Stadium

From the Vault: A Few Good Fans

(Note: The following was originally written a little over two years ago, but some portions have been updated to fit the current times. It is being re-posted on this blog at the request of a Cube follower)
Dear Sports,
I hope this letter finds you well.
Oh, who are we kidding? We both know where this letter finds you – and it’s a hell of a long way from well.  
We need to talk, sports. We need to create a dialogue, an open line of communication – something you have a hard time doing amongst your owners and players in nearly even major damn sport America has.
If we don’t start communicating and conducting some much needed group therapy, I fear that we’ll drift further apart until our relationship is irrevocably damaged.
And the truth is, a divorce would hurt you much more than me or the rest of us fans.
You need fans, you really do. You think we just follow you in droves? We survived for hundreds of years without you, frankly. We made things in this country. We can get obsessed over muscle cars again, if we have to. We can play Angry Birds, we can all get into music and films. We don’t need you to survive.
We love you, but we’re not feeling the love from you right now.
Sure, you secretly despise us for our irrational behavior, our lofty expectations and our demands. And granted, it’s embarrassing for you when we wear paper bags during a bad decade or two. Or when we drink ourselves into a stupor and throw empty cups onto your players. Or when we confront them in the parking lot after the games.
We can take responsibility for our actions. Can you?
You haven’t exactly been treating us like royalty as of late.
Some of your guys (we’re looking at you, Charlie Villanueva) are Twittering, er, Tweeting (whatever bird sound it is) – at halftime, no less – to stay in touch with us. Sweet, really. But, um, maybe they should take it just a tad more serious?
See, we think that our favorite teams paying triple what a doctor or president makes (or roughly about 300 times what we make in our profession) brings on expectations that for six months during the season, they should, you know, try really, really hard and stuff.
And yes, Allen Iverson, I’m talkin’ about practice too, man.
Speaking of taking things serious, that’s part of the problem. Most of the time, when we fight, you accuse us of taking things too seriously and we don’t think you take it quite serious enough.
Different worlds, I suppose. You are not the one who has to clumsily explain the Tiger Woods sex scandal or baseball’s steroid era to their impressionable, inquisitive and sports obsessed nine-year-old.
Thanks for that, and all the naked athlete cell phone pics, by the way. It’s been a real treat spraining my thumbs trying to change channels when a new story breaks. And I’m fairly certain my children think I have a stutter because of my stumbling and baffled responses to their questions. But I digress.
As fans, we lack the resources, the guilty pleasures, the comfort of the payday you provide your players and coaches. In fairness, the vast majority of us don’t have the inherit skill to break down film, the athleticism, the stamina required or the knowledge of a particular sport. Then again, neither do many of the “gifted” people who announce the games for you, but that’s another story.
The one place we seem to outnumber you is in the passion department. We care about you a heck of a lot more than you care about us.
As professional leagues, you lack the passion that got you there – you forgot what it was like to be where we are. Remember empty stadiums? Remember when very few people wanted your autograph or thought your sport was a tad stupid?
Yet the passion of the athletes, owners and league offices pushed you to new heights from the 1950s-1990s. And the growing fan bases of your various sports helped a little bit, don’t you think?
So we ask, where’s the passion?
And that passion has little to do with work ethic. Most athletes are workout fanatics, busting their humps to chase a variety of things: respect, pride, trophies and, of course, a little coin.
Generally, though, pleasing the fans comes last. That’s cool, we’ve dealt with it and that simple fact explains so much.
It’s apparently why roughly 1,100 seats at the new Yankee Stadium are obstructed view. We’re not smart enough, apparently, to figure out why, in this day and age, any stadium – let alone Yankee Stadium – would be built with obstructed views. To us, that’s so 1920s.
The seats in new Yankee Stadium certainly don’t cost 1920s prices, though, do they? Even though we’re living an economy that reminds us of December 1929.
And yet, you still want $1,500 for ticket. For a single game.    
I gotta tell ya, Sports, the vast majority of us don’t make $1,500 every two weeks. And those that do are pulling into gas stations and watching it float away in a river of oil. 
So cut us some slack, will you? We’re looking for a little latitude, the same as you were with the steroid era, the NBA referee scandal and the BCS.
Now, we’re not dumb. We don’t expect $10 tickets to the Super Bowl. But work with us a little.We’d at least like to have seats that we paid for at the Super Bowl. Don’t shuffle us under the bowels of the stadium to watch it on TV because your people couldn’t get the stands together in time.
This is why we’re asking, and here’s the juicy part, where we hold all the power in this relationship – the part where you need us, but we don’t need you.
Oh, we want you, all right. Like a fat kid wants a cupcake. We lust after you, but if we can’t afford you – if you come between us and the mortgage, our kid’s college tuition, our groceries or potential family vacation…well, you’re gone.
This means that eventually, you’re really gone.
Oh sure, we don’t directly pay your salaries. These days ticket sales are just a small piece of the cash pie. But we fans find it more than ironic that your leagues are all arguing over pieces of that pie – a pie that’s adding up to $9 billion in revenue for football.
But if we stop coming to games, due to the economy or just being plain pissed off, well, who buys your $7 hot dogs and $8 beers? Who buys a t-shirt or jersey? Still think you’ll have $9 billion to argue over?
If concessions and novelties aren’t moving in the arena or the stadium – does the provider wish to continue leasing its services to you? If you have no place to play because no one is coming to your games, what are your franchises worth to rich Russians then?
Seriously, if it gets that bad in other aspects of life, if we’re just scratching for crumbs and we’re all shopping at Goodwill – if it’s a depression…well, you can think that far ahead can’t you?
If we can’t afford TiVO, cable TV, DirecTV, DISH, whatever…well, forget about live attendance – who’s watching from home? And if we’re not watching, how do the advertisers’ spots get noticed? And if the sponsors aren’t selling any products or finding any value, their money comes off the billboards, pregame shows…you get the point.
Or maybe you don’t. Maybe, for once, we need to explain it for you.
As an individual, what I spend on you over the course of a year is probably equal to what Frank McCourt spends in an hour of divorce attorney fees. If you lose me, or better yet, pieces of my wallet, you could care less because there are millions more just like me that will shell out the cash.
But what if a large portion of us fell by the wayside? What if 30 percent suddenly stopped spending our greenbacks on you? What about 50 percent? What about 60 percent?
Working up a sweat just thinking about it, aren’t you, Sports?
If this recession affects 95 percent of Americans, which has been indicated, isn’t it reasonable to think that a large percentage of that group might be cutting back on those things deemed unnecessary?
Sports, in times like these, your prices become unnecessary.
So, again, you need us.
In the spirit of Jack Nicholson and “A Few Good Men“, let me paraphrase:
You need us in your stands. You need us in your seats, holding beers, brats, gloves and banners. You need us on that wall – you want us on that wall. And our absence is the very thing your athletes and coaches don’t talk about in locker rooms.
You survive under the very blanket of security that we provide and we’re starting to question the manner in which we provide it. We’d rather you just said thank you by slashing prices and making things more affordable. 
We’d appreciate it if you built stadiums in the 21st Century that you can actually see the entire field from any seat, instead of giving us another worthless bobblehead night. Either way, we don’t give a damn if the economy has affected your bottom line – we are your bottom line!
And the bottom is about to fall out of this relationship.
Sincerely,
One of a Few Good Fans
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Chris Bosh, Dallas Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Miami Heat, Michael Jordan, Michael Wilbon, NBA, NBA Finals

In The Garden of Good and Evil

A guest writer and I tackle the sordid story of the 2011 NBA Finals and LeBron James:
 
Thanks, LeBron
By Wes Carmony
America owes LeBron James a thank you card.
I wouldn’t go as far as sending a gift, but a short, punchy exclamation of appreciation at the very least. We all owe him, probably no one more than Dirk Nowitzki.
Through James’ complete lack of self awareness, his preening, his championship predictions and yes, even his brilliant play, James managed to turn the Miami Heat into the greatest wrestling heels of all time. The only thing missing was LeBron distracting Joey Crawford while Dwayne Wade struck Dirk with a metal folding chair.
The man who has managed to become the most polarizing athlete of our generation turned one of the most beloved NBA superstars in the game (Wade) and an unassuming, soft spoken All-Atar (Chris Bosh) into super-villain running mates.
“The James Gang”, were led (though often times from the back) by the most physically gifted basketball player since Wilt Chamberlain. The Heat transformed the 2011 NBA Finals from a mere sporting event into a referendum on good versus evil, team versus individuals, instant gratification versus the sustained effort.
I am not a Mavericks fan; truth be told I don’t particularly care for anyone on their team.
Jason “Jet” Terry annoys me, JJ Berea reminds me of a Y-Leaguer who plays way too hard and fouls all the time. Dirk is soft, Shawn Marion and Jason Kidd are washed up and possibly decomposing. Their coach, Rick Carlisle, is a retread; their owner, Mark Cuban, a loudmouth. The Mavericks are not particularly fun to watch, and I predicted they’d be ousted in the first round of this year’s playoffs.
Yet I watched every minute of every game of these NBA Finals. Down the stretch of every fourth quarter I sat on the edge of my seat, heart pounding, pleading for the lanky German to toss in another twisting, fall away 18-footer. 
Thanks LeBron. Without you these finals would’ve been an afterthought.
As much as I rooted for you to fail before you got to these Finals, I see now how wrong I was. You wanted to be a global icon, a brand, something bigger than the game. Well, you are all of those things. You are perhaps the single biggest villain in the history of team sports. Well done.
As an avid NBA consumer this past decade, I’ve watched Dirk Nowitzki and thought the same thing everyone else thought: he’s soft, shrinks in big moments, probably a good player, but not an all time great. 
Not anymore. 
Some would say winning an NBA title regardless of the opponent would erase all of those stigmas, I call BS. Dirk presided over two of the larger post season collapses I’ve ever witnessed. Being eliminated in the first round by the 8th seeded Warriors a few years back, just days after receiving what should have been Kobe Bryant’s MVP trophy for one, completely derailing in the 2006 Finals against the Heat for another.
I suspect we won’t be hearing about those failures anytime soon. Dirk’s legacy is forever changed, partially through his own brilliance on the court, but even more so by the man he denied a title.
A Mavs victory over the Chicago Bulls wouldn’t have sparked the same rhetoric, the same reverence, or the same cache Dirk now enjoys.
Dirk owes LeBron the biggest thank you of all.
Without LeBron, Dirk is just another aging superstar capturing an elusive ring on the back nine of his career, a nice story to be sure, but one we’ve seen before.
Without LeBron, the story could just as easily have been about the Los Angeles Lakers collapsing in the second round, Derrick Rose’s growth as a player, or even the Mavs winning their first ever championship.
Instead the story is about one man standing against all that is wrong in the (sports) world, hard work and substance overcoming glamour and preening, good triumphing over evil.
Dirk isn’t just an NBA champion, he’s a hero to all of us who wanted the “good guys” to win one. 
Admittedly it sounds a little clichéd, a little fantastic – after all it’s just a sporting event. But my goose bumps and racing heart would argue otherwise.  I watched a player I never particularly cared for hoist the championship trophy last night and felt tears well up in my eyes. I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one. 
In the aftermath of the collapse, James sat at the podium and responded to a question about the effect of all of America rooting against him. He said (in true heel fashion) that essentially we would all have to go back to our little lives, our same problems tomorrow, but that he’d still be LeBron James. And he’s right, but I have to be honest, my little life is a little brighter today because of his failure.
Thanks LeBron, we all owe you one. 
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The Hypocritical Oath
By Brian Moore
Our own hypocrisy has led to this moment – one where LeBron James is evil incarnate, some combination of The Emperor from “Star Wars”, Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Gordon Gekko from “Wall Street”.
Oh, sure, James has blood on his hands for his own wrecked image. The prediction of six or seven titles did not help. The preening and mockery of the “Welcome Party” last summer did not make us all warm and fuzzy. And “taking my talents to South Beach” became an epic punch line within days. As did giving money to the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich, Connecticut.
He’s not innocent in all this. James wanted to be the man with his words and actions.
We are all witnesses to so many different things. Poor shooting. An ego run amok. Possible shrinkage in tight games in the fourth quarter. But also witnesses to our own hypocrisy.
I certainly can’t defend James on the shooting, the non-aggressive play, the shying away in big moments. I cannot defend the preening, the ego, the narcissism. I can’t and I won’t.
But I can’t defend our sick obsession with James, either. We kill James – and I mean shred him – for doing things others have done and continue to do. The only difference is they get a pass.
James got killed for walking off the court a few years ago and not shaking hands with the opponents following the end of a playoff series. Um, didn’t Dirk bolt off the floor with seconds remaining last night? He ran off the floor so fast, I thought he was heading to the restroom due to something he ate. Oh, that’s different because Dirk has been cast as the hero and the hero can’t do something in poor sportsmanship when he just won the title. Give him a pass.
Right this way, Dirk. Sorry LeBron, your hairline is receding at 26. You’ll be blasted for that in a column tomorrow. Plus, I didn’t like your tie.
That is not meant to be a defense for James’ actions – just pointing out the double standard.
These NBA Finals were a referendum on good versus evil? Please – it was a referendum on basketball.
I can poke holes in James’ game – the lack of aggressiveness in Games 4 and 5, the disappearing act in Game 3. But anyone notice Dallas shot something like 98.2 percent from the 3-point line? Anyone notice scrubs like Brian Cardinal and Ian Mahinmi contributing jumpers, charges and threes? JJ Barea playing out of his mind?
This all factors into the equation – or at least it should.
But we choose to only see LeBron James vs. Dirk Nowitzki. Or James vs. the Mavericks. Or James vs. the fourth quarter. Or James vs. Wade. If it’s truly a referendum on team vs. individuals, why are we doing this?
I’ve been saying this repeatedly: James is not in the same category as the greatest players of all-time. He’s a special hybrid of Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson, perhaps the most talented athlete we’ve ever had in the NBA. He does not have the mental make-up of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant or Larry Bird.
If you move past the emotional, which is difficult for most, just realize what he is: Scottie Pippen upgraded with a dash of Magic. Now, take out the part of the driven, motivated, blood thirsty reputation. He doesn’t have it. He is what he is.
If he was like Jordan, and punched teammates in the face – well, we’d rip him for that, too. At 26, James has his legacy discussed and valued like a piece of stock on Wall Street.
Granted, he doesn’t help himself often, by you know, speaking. But this isn’t just a LeBron problem – it’s a we problem.
The media picked up on the reaction to “The Decision” and spun it the best way possible to reach the crowd. We’re a blood thirsty bunch, real sharks in the water – always looking for an enemy. If we smell something foul, we make it putrid and vomit inducing.
Our collective hatred of the Heat and dislike for James has made us sound like the people shouting for Barabbas. Dirk Nowitzki should thank James. Dirk’s career, however spotty in the past, is now made because he slayed the dragon. But was it really a dragon?
We’re forgetting why James went to Miami. By joining the Heat, he openly admitted he was not good enough to do it on his own. James wanted and needed help. He waved the white flag and joined another star’s team.
We should acknowledge every team needs multiple stars, we just didn’t like the way LeBron did it. That’s what this is all about: we don’t like how LeBron James handled himself, now and in the past. That’s totally fine. We are allowed to dislike how people handle themselves.
James and the Heat are hated – but they’ve sold the most the most jerseys in the NBA this season.
People say, “I can’t root for a team that came together like that – a bunch of superstars playing on the same team!” Weird, we all were pretty big fans of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, aka, “The Dream Team”. Oh, that’s different though, because we’re the United States and it was to beat all those dirty foreigners, right?
I hear Jordan would have never left the Bulls to play with another superstar. He didn’t need to – the team drafted a top 50 player (Pippen, who who was an MVP candidate and led the Bulls to 55 wins in 1994, during Jordan’s first retirement). Charles Barkley practically burned down the city of Philadelphia trying to escape the 76ers in the early 90s, until he was traded to Phoenix, where a much better team awaited him. Then, in the late 90s, he joined Hakeem Olajuwon, Pippen and Clyde Drexler in Houston. Magic Johnson came to a team with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then they drafted James Worthy. Bird had McHale and Parrish, as well as Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge.
When you are desperate to win multiple championships – which is what you have to do now in the post-Jordan era – all bets are off the table. I hope we go after Carmelo Anthony, once the New York Knicks add Chris Paul in a couple years. And we’ve never really had a problem with Boston putting three stars together.
So it has to be about the whole marketing of “The Decision.”
By my friend’s own admission, if the Mavericks would have beaten the Chicago Bulls, it would not have meant as much. Doesn’t that tell us something?
Aren’t we a little too wrapped up in this? We should see ourselves for who we are, too.
Dante Stallworth ran over someone with his car and killed the man a few years back. He served about 30 days in jail and is playing football.
And this is where our outcry, venom and moral outrage lies? With LeBron James and the Miami Heat? You know what will be funny? When time passes and everything comes full circle.
People will stop paying attention and it will die down. Comedians like Jon Stewart will start cracking jokes about how ironic it was we took this whole thing so personally and seriously. “60 Minutes” will do some piece called “The Lonely Life of LeBron James” or he’ll save some cat from a tree and James and the Heat will become sympathetic figures at some point. James will have some good games, remind people of a better version of Scottie Pippen, Wade will led them and the Heat will win a title or three.
And the media will shower LeBron and the Heat with praise, call him unselfish and one of the top 10 players all-time.
We’re all witnesses, all right.
To the biggest hypocrisy I’ve ever seen. 

Got feedback? E-mail bri_moore@hotmail.com to share.

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Kentucky Wildcats, Larry Bird, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, NBA, Rick Pitino, Scottie Pippen, Walter McCarty

The "It" Factor and LeBron James

“They are who we want to be, but can’t be because they can do things, or at least have the ability to do things, we couldn’t. We idolize them, though we shouldn’t, because it’s what we want.”
This was a statement made by a friend at the conclusion of a nearly four hour conversation around sports, athletes, our reality, their reality and what it all means. Some alcohol may have been involved.
It all centered around LeBron James and his play, not just in the NBA Finals, but the nonsensical idea of debating a 26-year-old’s legacy when he is not even halfway through his career.
My stance is and remains simple: I’ve accepted James for who he is. He is a hybrid version of Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson, two of the greatest basketball players I have ever seen. Noticed I said two of the greatest, not the greatest. James is not in the same league or category as Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. And not just because of the rings. It is because he is a completely different kind of player.
My friend’s stance is and remains just as simple: As a former athlete, like myself, he can never understand why James has all the physical tools, but none of the mental makeup of the all time greats. To him – and even a James defender like me – we cannot understand how he has shied away from the leadership, the hunger and desire required to be in the realm of Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kobe and Bill Russell.
“We had that desire and 10 percent of the talent,” my friend says, voice raised and fists clutched. “I can’t root for a guy like that – it’s wrong against every notion of what sports are supposed to be about.”
And then he dropped the quote on me that led this blog.
Is that why we watch sports? Move beyond the entertainment and escape from our everyday lives, and ask yourself why you watch sports. We have a vested interest in teams and players we know nothing about. We loathe them and love them at the same time. We bemoan their salaries and then turn around and buy their jerseys.
For me, I do it because I am a history guy. I majored in it in college and love the stories. That’s really all history is, somebody’s story or interpretation of what happened. Their reality becomes ours.
So for someone like me, sports are a big part of my life so that one day I can tell people, we were there when “it” happened. I do not often recall games from 10 years ago, but I can tell you who won and the interactions I had with the people in the room. I know where I was for the 2004 American League Championship Series, when the Boston Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to come back from a three game hole and win a seven game series.
I can tell you where I was when the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons had their brawl. I can tell you about being in Yankee Stadium, as a Red Sox fan, with my dad, a Yankee fan, on September 11, 2008 – when the emotion of the seventh anniversary of 9/11 and the eighth-to-last game ever to be played in the “House That Ruth Built” had grown men in the Brox bleachers in uncontrollable, sobbing tears.
Basically, whatever “it” is, it was great and you should have been there.
But do we really want to be the people we watch? Do we wish we had their talents and their reality?
The only way I can explain it is this: our reverence fades and we try to replace it, but never can. I have a personal example with this.
In 1996, the University of Kentucky won the NCAA men’s basketball championship. I watched the game with my family as a high school sophomore on Spring Break in Sanibel Island, Florida.
The team was loaded with NBA talent: Tony Delk hit seven threes in the game, Walter McCarty was an athletic freak who ran, dunked, slashed and defended. Antoine Walker was too big a star to be in college. Jeff Sheppard was a pogo stick with deadly range. Ron Mercer was a sensational freshman destined to led the team the following year. Not to be listed as footnotes: Derek Anderson, Nazr Mohammed, Wayne Turner and coach Rick Pitino.
They were called “The Untouchables” because they were so good, no one could hang with them. Nine players ended up in the NBA from that team.
Two months after they won the title, I found myself in a Lexington dorm room at Rick Pitino’s basketball camp. One of my good friends was a huge Kentucky fan and had talked me into going with him for a couple of years. It was always enjoyable and you picked up some good drills, plus, every now and then, some of the players would be around and you could watch them play pickup ball in the evenings after dinner.
That year was different. We’d be watching the players of the current reigning National Champions. That week was different, too. Every player was there – and they were acting as camp instructors and coaches.
As luck would have it, I ended up on Walter McCarty’s team.
The week was a blur. McCarty was on cloud nine after winning the title and, as a senior, he was headed to the NBA Draft, so he was in a great mood and fun loving. The seven of us chosen to play on his team felt like his buddies, members of a special posse for the man they called “Ice”.
We had a pregame chant (we played twice a day in between drills and stations and McCarty was with us at least 12 hours a day):
McCarty: “Who you with?”
Us “”Ice!”
McCarty: “Who you with?”
Us: “ICE!”
McCarty: “What time is it?”
Us: “Game time!”
McCarty: “What time is it?”
Us: “GAME TIME!”
It’s been 15 years and I still have that etched in my brain. McCarty laid down a nickname for me – “Flyin’ Brian” – for the way I hustled and flew all over the court. He nicknamed everyone on the team. We had pizza and video game parties in his room several times and he’d point at us during the player scrimmages when we did something. We’d all yell out “Ice!!!” in unison.
We were hooked. It was surreal. At 16, I spent a week hanging out with a future NBA player who was riding a wave of good reviews following the NCAA Tournament. In two weeks, he’d be picked 19th overall in the first round by the New York Knicks.
Throughout the week, I felt terrible for my friend. He was the Kentucky fan, but not as lucky with his assigned coach. Each night, I’d relay to him in graphic detail the events of the day, from what shoes McCarty had on to how funny his jokes were. It was a simultaneous feeling of guilt and joy. I could not contain the joy of having hung out with McCarty all day, but telling him made me feel like he was dying a little on the inside.
I left that camp the biggest Walter McCarty fan on the planet. For his first year in the NBA, I followed his box score every day, hoping to see how well he did. It was personal. I had shared experiences with him and we were buds.
Except we really were not. I suppose it’s the same feeling someone gets from a fantasy camp, those guys that spend $50,000 to go and play with Michael Jordan at his camp for a day. You want to share that floor, that moment, with them.
Over the years, I lost track of McCarty’s career and certainly didn’t follow him as closely as I did as an impressionable teenager. And like many fans, you follow a player you like and then you move on – always looking for the next one, the next superstar, the next thrilling moment, the next time you’ll be sharing real time and hard reality with them.
And so it is with LeBron. He’s dealing with an entire generation of media and fans that grew up with Jordan, Magic and Bird, Pippen and Kobe. We’ve seen greatness and we want it again. We just want it to be better than it was before, we want LeBron to be better than anything we’ve ever seen, mainly just so we can say we saw it and we were there.
But it can’t be better, because nothing can ever be replicated. Take my week hanging out with Walter McCarty. I will absolutely not have another experience with an athlete as cool as that. Too many mitigating factors at play: my age, my peak interest in basketball, McCarty’s rise to mid-level celebrity, Kentucky on the heels of a title, Pitino the hottest coach in basketball, possibly playing some of my best ball and growing into my own as a shooter that summer and the hype of “The Untouchables.”
It was unexpected and could not be compared. Jordan wasn’t expected to win six rings. At 28, when we won his first one, we just hoped he’d win a couple and be in the conversation. James is 26. Every game his legacy is dissected, every game our opinion of him moves.
And yes, some of it is deserved. When you preen and dance and take the mantle of King or Chosen One and join up with two of the top 10 players in the league, you’re going to be despised. That’s a whole other discussion, frankly.
Just for now, we have to stop doing a disservice by comparing James to Jordan and the other greats. Not for James’ sake – but for our own. Because no matter how good or how bad, he’s never going to be good enough for us.
Remember, we can’t make them be what we want as people or athletes. And even if we could, we wouldn’t really want it that way because it wouldn’t feel real. But it does not stop us from wanting that of athletes and of sports. 

We still want to be there when it happens.
Whatever “it” is.
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Amare Stoudamire, Carmelo Anthony, Charles Barkley, Chicago Bulls, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Miami Heat, Michael Jordan, NBA, New York Knicks, Ray Allen

We’re Not So Different, After All

Roughly 20 years ago, the NBA revolved around just a handful of teams: The Boston Celtics, the Chicago Bulls, the Detroit Pistons, the Los Angeles Lakers and occasionally, the Houston Rockets, Utah Jazz and the Portland Trailblazers.
These teams featured rosters filled with two or three All-Stars and future Hall of Famers.
And no one had a problem with it.
In fact, it’s revered as the Golden Age of the NBA.
So why is it any different now? Why are we so bitter about superstars teaming up? Is it because we forgot the past?
That trend of stars playing with stars began again in earnest nearly four years ago, when the Boston Celtics acquired Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett in the summer of 2007 to team with Paul Pierce. It continued with LeBron James and Chris Bosh signing with the Miami Heat last summer.
Then, there was the now infamous toast at Carmelo Anthony’s wedding last summer – you know, the one where Chris Paul, Amare Stoudamire and Anthony toasted to playing together in New York for the Knicks.
The latest is the trade of Anthony to the Knicks from the Denver Nuggets, after Anthony basically told Denver to trade him because they would face long odds of resigning him. The Nuggets, for their part, were terrified of being LeBron’d – since James left the Cleveland Cavaliers during free agency, they didn’t get anything back. (Sorry, I don’t acknowledge the ridiculous compensation pick they were awarded by the league as compensation for losing James.)
In a way, Anthony did the Nuggets a favor. Instead of just signing with the Knicks this summer (well, presumably, since there’s a pesky little collective bargaining issue looming), Anthony gave the Nuggets ample opportunity to trade him and get value in return. And they did – four of the Knicks starters, three draft picks and $3 million.
It’s honorable of us as fans to long for a mystical time when professional athletes sought their own path.
It’s human nature for us to say that we wouldn’t go about it like LeBron did, televising “The Decision” and ripping the hearts out of Cavs fans.
And we can speculate freely that we would want to win a title “on our own” without help because we’re really not in that position.
What’s comical is former NBA stars pretending history isn’t repeating itself. Last summer, it seemed like everyone on the 90s All-Stars had a quote about it. His Airness, Michael Jordan, said he’d never do what LeBron did. Same for Charles Barkley.
Funny, as I recall, Jordan played with Scottie Pippen – and only won titles with Scottie Pippen. LeBron didn’t have anyone who could even resemble Scottie Pippen’s skill set in seven years in Cleveland.
Funny, as I recall, Barkley forced his way out of Philadelphia to Phoenix, where he played with Kevin Johnson and Dan Majerle to have a better chance at a championship. Then, in the later stages of his career, The Round Mound of Rebound played with Clyde Drexler, Pippen and Hakeem Olajuwon in Houston, trying to get a ring.
Um, fellas…I don’t see the difference between you, James, Bosh and Anthony in that regard.
What’s different about how the Celtics came together with Allen and Garnett joining Pierce, versus James and Bosh joining Dwayne Wade in Miami? Their age? 
Maybe we just felt bad for Garnett for wasting his prime toiling away in Minnesota. Ray Allen is Jesus Shuttlesworth, a pure shooter, and seemingly a nice guy, so we gave them a pass.

But what’s different about it, really? Bosh certainly isn’t Garnett’s talent, but he toiled away in Toronto for seven years. James saved Cleveland basketball for seven years, took them to the Finals and won MVPs with the likes of Boobie Gibson as a running mate. 

How can we hate a guy like James, who spent seven years making his teammates better, because he basically wanted better teammates? Why does he have to make them so much better, year after year? Why not go play with better teammates and focus on other aspects of the game?
Perhaps the focus of our rage is or should have been on the character they showed in the process. Which, as I have written before, I completely agree with.
You can handle yourself better, LBJ.
You too, Melo.
You can show respect for the fans that turned out in droves, bought your jersey and were witnesses.
That aside, we’re all hypocrites.
Can any of you honestly say, with a straight face, you wouldn’t want to work with your friends? That you wouldn’t want to work in Miami, New York or Los Angeles?
That’s what this all comes down to. Do professional athletes get paid more than you do in your 9-5? Is the job more fun than TPS reports and Excel spreadsheets? More attention and glamor in the NBA than in Human Resources or Finance?
Undoubtedly, yes to all those questions.
I would work with five or six of my closest friends in a heartbeat if the situation presented itself, period. Add in that we have some of the best skill sets for our respective positions, it increases our chance of success.
And if someone told me we could do that in Florida or California instead of Cleveland, Minneapolis or Indianapolis, I wouldn’t even hesitate.
We forget that these people are human.
That doesn’t mean you have to agree or sympathize – or like it.
But tell me you can see the reasons why.
Let’s look at it this way: Since 1984, only seven different teams have won an NBA championship (Boston Celtics, L.A. Lakers, Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls, Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat). Of those, only the 2004 Pistons didn’t have a superstar – just a bunch of really good players with different skill sets that complimented each other.
Many of those teams featured multiple All-Stars or superstars.
Combine that with how fans and media increasingly weight championships and multiple championships into an athlete’s legacy, guys know they have to team up with someone to win a title. It’s either that, or pushing management to get better talent around them.
Jordan did it.
Barkley did it.
Kobe Bryant tried to get traded just three years ago because of it. The Lakers promptly brought in Pau Gasol and have been to the NBA Finals three years running, winning the last two titles.
As fans, we say we want athletes to do it alone, but when have we ever willingly done it ourselves?
If you play open gym, pick-up basketball or a Y-League, do you pick the four worst guys or the four best?
If you coach a Little League team, do you take the best player and then surround him with lesser players intentionally, just to see if he can carry you, because that’s all you need?
If you work on a project team, do you want team members that have made mistakes and are apathetic about their jobs, or do you want someone in each position – all the way down to who answers the phones – who’s done it before, won awards and is recognized as one of the best?
How about if you were in a legal dispute? Do you want one good lawyer, or would you prefer a team of them?
It’s obvious we’re asking professional athletes to make decisions in the exact opposite manner we would.
Now, would I televise my decision to join a project finance team? Probably not. Nor would I say that I was taking my talents to Company X.
It may be that what we’re really frustrated about is the ego, the fame, the glory and the poor manner in which these athletes conduct themselves. They have so much that we want, that we believe we would do anything for – the talent or the opportunity, that we can’t believe they act this way. We’re allowed and entitled to be disgusted by it, to despise them for it in some ways.
Let’s just not be hypocrites, too.
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