Hustling Backwards: The NBA’s Perplexing Alliance with College Basketball

Now that the hysteria involving the latest NCAA tournament is couple week’s history, I like to examine a phenomena completely counter-intuitive organizational success through the NBA and its partnership with NCAA basketball.

Two Different Games

From how halves and quarters are set-up, the duration of the game, to the court dimensions and the rulebook, I can list dozens examples of how NCAA basketball and the NBA game differs but I’d like to focus on one particular person, Jim Boeheim.

The Syracuse coach has leveraged his fancy two-three zone to catapult his career, his employer and his former conference to amazing heights. Boeheim is considered a basketball legend who’ll be mentioned among the greatest basketball coaches for all of eternity.

I am of the perspective that Boeheim, his ilk, and his philosophy is the greatest danger to the NBA game.

Follow me for a second!

Boeheim runs a two-three zone. It’s what he’s known for and it is very effective as Boeheim has tallied the second most wins of any active NCAA coach. Every off-season, Boeheim enters the living rooms of college kids and lies to their face. He cites Derrick Coleman and Carmelo Anthony as examples of how his players make the leap from Syracuse to the NBA.

What Boeheim doesn't tell them is, unless you’re an otherworldly offensive talent like Carmelo or DC, going to Syracuse will severely limit any chances at sustained NBA success.

See, Boeheim’s two-three zone is a nightmare for NBA TV programming partners. The zone slows the game and limits scoring which is bad for business. The NBA has fought the zone throughout its existence. But somehow Boeheim is able to trick youngsters to attending Syracuse when effectively half of the skills they’ll need to excel in the NBA (you know, man to man defense) is not nurtured at Syracuse.

Somehow, Boeheim, a guy who in nearly decades of leading a prominent NCAA basketball program, has never had an NBA All-Defensive player. Boeheim regularly recruits players whose physique and athletic make-up seem well suited for the demands of NBA man-to-man defense (i.e. Hakim Warrick and Wesley Johnson), yet they never can make the transition to the NBA style.

Remarkably, basketball media has somehow overlooked decades of developmental sabotage committed in the name of contract extensions by Boeheim and voted him into the hall of fame.

NBA Support of NCAA Basketball

While Boeheim is the most prominent saboteur of player development, major program NCAA basketball is rife coaches implementing systems counter-intuitive to the development of their players. Instead of pressuring the NCAA to adhere to player developmental standards suited to the pro game, the NBA encourages players to go to and stay in college!

I cannot think of any successful organization that encourages its future work force to develop in an environment antithetical their desired environment.

I get that college basketball, with its regional TV contracts and NCAA tournament is a huge platform to introduce basketball fans to the future NBA stars but that paradigm is increasingly becoming antiquated.

First, top tier college talent are normally one-and-done. Next, and contrary to popular belief, basketball fans are not ditching work to watch the tournament all-day. Most fans, scoreboard watch to keep up with their brackets.  Most basketball fans do not watch a full NCAA tournament game until the Final Four.

While NBA thinks that NCAA basketball is promoting their future stars, fans are only likely to see a half dozen to a dozen future NBA players over a duration of 80 minutes. God forbid, a coach has a weird substitution pattern or the kid gets into foul trouble, a fan might only catch a kid for 40 minutes over the entire final four.

Such a short promo is not worth a future NBA talent enduring 100 practices and 40 games a year in a environment that’s aligned with his future goals.

The D-League Solution

Considering the NBA has a developmental league lends credence to the argument that NCAA basketball has underwhelmed in quickly developing talent, particularly in the one-and-done era, for NBA readiness.

If I were Adam Silver, I’d invest heavily in the D-League. The merits of the D-League are plentiful for the players, the league and its franchises. Players play under the same system as NBA teams, the receive NBA level coaching, refereeing, scouting and strength and physical development.

The 50 game season and accompanying practices can allow for a smoother assimilation into the travel and practice schedules of the NBA. D-League players are filled with former high-performing college players and NBA players on the end of rosters, so the competition is greater in the D-League than in the NCAA. Players also benefit by being paid. The current D-League salaries are low compared to international leagues ($13,000-$25,000 annually, plus a $40 per diem for road games) but the figure, along with free housing and free healthcare, is substantially greater than the current NCAA compensation (nada) and shared dorms.

The Plan

The NBA should expand to 30 teams, one for each pro franchise and do away with its one year requirement to enter the NBA allowing high school athletes the ability to jump directly to the NBA. The high school players not drafted into the NBA could then enter the D-League draft with the NBA franchise drafting the player retaining their rights and the ability to call-up a player to the NBA franchise (essentially a true minor league system).

The D-League could also aggressively pursue players in the NCAA. Stories of NCAA players having a fall-out with their coach or a NCAA player being stuck at a college after the coach he committed to playing for took a different job at a another or in the pros are plentiful. The D-League could implement these players into the league and begin the true preparation for the NBA.

Moreover, the D-League can expand the aims of its rookie symposium by offering forums for players focused upon financial management and domestic and social decision making.

The NCAA, faced with real competition, would be forced to alter its environment, rules, and compensation strategy or perish. 

Your Reign on the Top was Short Like Leprechauns: First Impressions of Jason Whitlock's The Undefeated

I just read the DeadSpin piece on The Undefeated, ESPN's & Jason Whitlock's upcoming site centered upon sports, popular culture and social commentary from the African American perspective.

While I've never been a huge fan of Jason Whitlock's work, I respect his opinions. I do not subscribe to the notion of the Black Monolith so I was excited to get his perspective on sports, popular culture and social commentary.

Prior to the DeadSpin piece, I read the entirety of the content available at The Undefeated and found it thought provoking but counter to my sensibilities.

Reading the details of the day-to-day operations at The Undefeated troubled me. According to Whitlock, one of the goals of the site is to raise young black journalists.

In essence, The Undefeated is as much as educational institution as it is a journalistic institution. This is where my troubles are centered. A primary tenet of action science research, a leading methodology in the organizational development of educational institutions, is comprehensive collaboration "where each person’s ideas are equally significant as potential resources for creating interpretive categories of analysis, negotiated among the participants.  It strives to avoid the skewing of credibility stemming from the prior status of an idea-holder."

Reading the DeadSpin details about Whitlock's authoritarian rule substantiates my lack of affinity for the site.

What would Google Do? author Jeff Jarvis asserts that Google, and innovative companies, create elegant organizations where like-minded individuals can engage.

The strategy and leadership of the Undefeated counters Google's philosophy. The site is not an elegant organization where African Americans can engage in the discourse of sports, pop culture and social commentary. It's a platform where Whitlock can spout his disdain for anything associated Hip-Hop culture and Black Millennial sensibilities.

I fear, with Whitlock at the helm, The Undefeated will fail as a site and, most unfortunately, fail as a spring board for young black writers!

I’m In Love with the So-Co: An Examination of American Sports Fan’s Infatuation with Selective Socialism

A Lesson on Kim Kardashian and Lebron James

I’m sitting some Boutique Diary Sofa, feigning interest in some Kim Kardashian television show adequately enough to not offend the sensibilities of this chic-o-stick complexed cutie sitting beside me.

I’m eagerly awaiting the end of this show while mentally forecasting positions suitable for smashing on such a funny shaped couch, when a pop-up on the television screen appears.

It read, “Kim Kardashian’s net worth is 65 million dollars.”

The next pop-up read, “She made 28 mil in 2014.”

How in the world can Kim Kardashian, whose only readily discernible talent is leveraging her exotic looks and impressive hind-parts for athlete/entertainer and diva consumption, earn 33% more money than what THE MIAMI HEAT paid LEBRON JAMES in 2014?

One phrase, Free-Market Capitalism!

Kim K, like Lebron is a physical abnormality. Like Lebron, Kim has legions of adoring fans. Unlike Lebron, Kim can charge the apex of what the market demands for her…. services?

See, when Kim’s shows rate well or when her photos “Break the Internet” she simply ups her fees and quotes and her industry cuts the check. When Lebron wins two NBA championships and four MVP awards BY THE AGE OF 28, the powers that be in his industry cry broke and lament that his salary is unsustainable.

And remarkably, fans agree!

Simply Playing a Game with God Given Talent

To a lot of sports fan, and by that I mostly mean white people, Lebron a just playing a game with the gifts bestowed to him by God. Nevermind him being one of the greatest outliers in sports history; nevermind the endless hours in the gym and film room perfecting his craft; nevermind the forfeiture of any semblance of privacy, to sports fans, Lebron’s occupation amounts to the activities of eight year-old boys and girls displayed in the average family’s driveway- aided by the blessings of the almighty.

When NBA players and their billionaire owners come to a financial impasse, fans think, “I’d kill to make eight figures to play a game!” What they are really saying is, “Be happy you get paid to play basketball nigger!”

Awe shit, I just played the race card! But did I? Question, what distinguishes the roughly 500 active NBA players from Fortune 500 CEOs? They are both outliers to the highest order yet sports fans are overwhelming proponents of a NBA salary cap while American voters regularly support politicians who’d die before placing regulations around corporate compensation and bonus structures.

The logical retort to my argument is Fortune 500 CEOs drive commerce while NBA players wear tank-tops at work and don tats. Really? When Michael Jordan was drafted, the average NBA franchise valuation was 22 million dollars. When Jordan retired in 2003 the average NBA franchise valuation was 294 million dollars!

During the Lebron era, according to Forbes.com, the average NBA valuation jumped from 369 million before the 2011 LOCK-OUT to 1.1 BILLION and in just FOUR short years. If increasing your industry’s value by 298% in four years isn’t economic stimulus then I’m done.

Meanwhile, during the same span (2011-2015) the average NBA salary DECREASED from 5.15 million in 2011 to 3.9 million in 2015! Let me reiterate, in a four year span where NBA franchise valuations grew by 298%, the average NBA player salary decreased by 24.2%

Yet according to a Business Insider poll, 76% of fans (mostly white folks) believe NBA players are overpaid.

Why, in a world where start-up CEOs are rock stars, can’t the dominant culture recognize the economic value of NBA athletes? I say white folks because I frequent sports message boards and comment sections on the daily, if not hourly, and the vastly superior amount of negative refrain regarding athlete salaries come from Caucasian fans. I don’t have the time to survey the responses of commenters but I’d bet the figure from white commenters white negative views of NBA player salaries is higher than 76%.

But why? Why in a country where free-market capitalism principals are the cornerstone of our daily existence do fans, mostly white, so fervently express disdain for NBA salaries?

Wages of Whiteness

In an examination of working-class racism in the formative years of the United States, David R. Roediger described an environment largely omitted in the history of U.S. of labor conditions but wholly applicable today. Back in the colonial days of the New World, prior to fully implemented chattel slavery, European and African servants worked hand-in-hand bondage. There were revolts and general unrest among the European and African servants.

Vastly, outnumbered, the colonial proprietors gambled that they could appeal to the white skin of the European servants in an effort to quell the labor uprisings. They painted the African servant as a beast and a heathen and the white servant as simply as a man down on his luck. Without the right to vote, nor own land, colonial aristocracy was able to sale to European servants the fallacy that their white skin amounted solidarity with the aristocracy and thus made them superior to their African peers.

The same thing occurs every time athletes and their leagues come to a financial impasse. The owners cry broke and the fans side with them. As a labor force, pro-athletes have more in common with fans than what fans have in common with billionaire sports franchise owners.

Sports franchise owners, fueled by the American legacy of white privilege, have created a make-believe bridge of commonality with the white sports fan. The white fan rationalizes a false sense of solidarity through skin color. They think, “That’s my American Dream.” When they, through similarity in skin color, side with franchise owners, sports fans are expressing a displaced fantasy where they put the athletes in their place.

But when the fantasy ends, athletes are poorer and ticket but merchandise prices are higher.

The owners are the only beneficiaries.

Champagning and Campaigning with Jalen Rose in Real Life

Part of the sports experience fans indulge over is the off the court lifestyles of athletes. Many of us would sell souls to live like a pro-athlete for a day. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to hang out with an NBA star for a few hours and it was epic.

As an analyst, Jalen Rose has some improving to do but he is really one of the most genuine guys on sports television. The following is a full recap of a night I had kicking with him.

In the mid-2000s I used to bartend so I had a lot of cash and worked evenings. During my time off in the afternoons, I used to frequent an Atlanta strip club called Goosebumps. Afternoon strip clubbing is awesome, the strippers aren’t in money making mode so the experience is much cooler, you should try it.

I’m getting a lapdance in a dark corner of the club when Jalen Rose and one of his homies walks in. It’s about 4:30 in the afternoon so the club at this point literally consists of Jalen, his homie, a bartender, a waitress, one security guard, the DJ, about 12 strippers and myself. I’m stoked to see him. He’s wearing a white Polo, camo shorts and a pair of Air Force 1’s.

The stripper showing me her vulva is getting annoyed that I am not paying enough attention to her and looks at me funny. I say to her, “You know that’s Jalen Rose?” She says, “Who?” I tell her nevermind and wait for the song to end so she can get out my face. Side note- I am just as intrigued with strippers as I am with athletes so they will be a reoccurring theme on this blog.

The song ends and while I’m handing this curvy dancer a few twenties, I get the bright idea to give her an extra ten so she can give Jalen a lapdance. She takes the money and goes over to Jalen to dance for him.

Jalen looks at her awkwardly when she points at me, apparently telling Jalen that I paid for the dance. She finishes the dance and Jalen calls me over.

He thanks me for the dance. I tell him no problem and that I enjoyed his stint on the Bulls. He asks me if I’m drinking, I say yes and Jalen calls the waitress over. Simultaneously, his homie is signaling dancers over to the area. Next thing I know, I have a huge cigar in mouth, a double shot of Hennessy in my hand and two strippers contorting in my lap and on my torso.

This goes on for about 2 hours. At the time, I lived with my ex-girlfriend and I can tell she was pissed as over the past few hours I had to have ignored at least 10 of her calls. Jalen and his homie rises to leave. Jalen says to me, “We’re headed to Magic City, you wanna roll?” Everything in my soul wanted roll, but it would have caused me to get dumped and kicked out so I turned him down.

Jalen drops a couple hundred on the table and says, “Get you a few more dances.”

I got a lot more dances and double shots of Henny before I took my drunk ass home.

Jalen is a cool dude!

postscript

I should have taken Jalen up on his offer. I wound up dumping the girl I was dating at the time. To this day, I blame her for missing out on potentially one of the best nights of my life!

Down with Analytics: How Advanced Statistical Metrics in Sports is Ruining the Fan Experience

The Sophisticated Fan

I had just got my tax refund and decided to take a mini-vacation to relax. I’m sitting in front of my laptop going through destinations and settled upon two options: the Sloan conference or the CIAAs (for the white readers and/or those unfamiliar with HBCUs, the CIAAs is the postseason basketball tournament held annually in Charlotte for the D-II CIAA conference whose schools consist of small black colleges. The actual basketball tournament is of no significance but the partying is epic).

I considered the merits of both. I really want to blog seriously about sports and attending the Sloan conference would have been a good investment in achieving that goal. On the other hand, I could go up to the Charlotte, party hard, get fucked up, meet a few women, and, if fortunate enough, lay down with one of them.

Then I said to myself, “why the fuck am I even considering Sloan.” There aren't any women in Boston, the conference is in February and who wants to spend a mini-vacation in 30 degree weather. Why is Sloan, and its analytics movement, a dignifyer (I’ll make up words in this blog) of a “serious” sports blogger? Why do I even want to attract the “sophisticated” sports fan?

This exercise in trip planning led me to the conclusion that sports, basketball specifically, is (I’ll make some grammatical errors in this blog) becoming too white collared. I shouldn't have to have league pass, frequent shot charts, or have to understand space & pace and defensive wins shares to “know” sports as a fan. With that said, fuck analytics and the treachery it’s imposing upon fans.

Reclaiming my Fandom

A few co-workers and I were taking a smoke break when the conversation of Kobe vs. MJ came up. To me, the conversation isn't close, its MJ all day for me (full disclosure, I was born and bred in Chicago and a huge Bulls fan). My coworkers are card carrying Kobe stans. Me, then the sophisticated, analytics-based argument maker, rattled off a bevy of stats proving MJ the better player (I used to live on basketball-reference.com). Their position didn't budge. Frustrated, I asked, “What are Kobe’s signature playoff moments?”

The only Kobe playoff moments I could remember were his airball game early in his career against the Jazz and the alley he threw to Shaq to clench the series against the Blazers. With MJ, I rattled off the 63 point game against Boston when he crossed up Bird, the shot over Ehlo to sink the Cavs, the (in my Marv Albert voice) “spectacular move” reverse against the Lakers in the 91 finals, the shrug game against the blazers, and “the shot” against the Jazz after pushing off on Byron Russell.

I somehow made the argument that since MJ had more defining playoff moments, he was an overall better basketball player than Kobe. A totally illogical argument right? But you know what, it worked! I’d been having this argument with these guys for months and the position I used to win them over was one void of data and a complete logical fallacy!

I won the argument because I framed my position in emotional context. MJ made them feel a way that Kobe could never achieve. As a fan, what sports are really all about are context, excitement and emotion.

The Day Analytics Died with Me

I was officially done with analytics as a fan on January 27^th, 2015 after watching my Bulls play at the Warriors. In the game Derrick Rose scored 30 points but he went 13-33, had 1 assist, zero free-throw attempts and 11 turnovers. The game was an analytics nightmare. Rose’s performance marked only the second time in NBA history where a player missed at least 20 shots and had more than 10 turnovers. Analytics folks will also point out that the overtime shot Rose hit to win the game (a 20-ft step back jumper) is the worst shot in basketball.

As an avid Bulls fan I can say with conviction that night was the best basketball Derrick Rose ever played! Moreover, it was one of the top 10 games I’d ever seen played by a Chicago Bulls player! Analytics folks would cry blasphemy, but analytics cannot capture the context that surround games.

For instance, up to that point, the Warriors had only lost one game at home during the season. Steph Curry was ascending up the lists as one of the league’s best point guards and players. On the other hand, Derrick Rose wasn't trying to hear none of that shit. It was one of those games where a player says to himself, “That muh’fucka aint better than me and we aint losing tonight.” Derick Rose made a lot awful plays that game but in the process he intimidated everyone on the Warriors. It was beautiful to watch!

The problem with embracing advanced sports metrics is analytics tell you that you are a dumb and unsophisticated fan for appreciating Rose’s performance that night. To that I say, Bullshit!

What this Blog Will Be

This blog will focus on the context, excitement, and emotion in and around sports (mostly basketball). I’ll try to post two or three times per week. If someone gets dunked on, we’ll talk about it. I someone gets crossed-up, we’ll talk about it. If a player gets a groupie pregnant, we’ll talk about it.

 I’ll try to throw in a podcast when I can. I’ll talk shit about sports with a lot of my friends. Some of them know sports, some don’t, but they’re all pretty funny cats.

On a side note, I wound up not going to the CIAAs nor Sloan. Unfortunately, I blew a lot of my tax refund at Club Blaze on a stripper named Now’Laters! I had a good time though!