On Lebron and the Final Shot

The instant the ball left Lebron James’ hands for the last time Monday night, headed for Donyell Marshall instead of the basket, talk shows around the country had the next day’s leading piece.

It’s strange how much one player’s reputation can depend so much on another’s jump shot. If Marshall had hit his three-pointer, the Cavs win the game and Lebron is the second coming of Magic Johnson (well, Charles Barkley would still have criticized him, but Barkley probably would have criticized Magic too). Instead, the shot clanked off the rim and Lebron was once again the scared player unwilling to take the last shot.

But the real story behind the decision never really hit the airwaves. While I’m sure Lebron appreciates that Steve Kerr supported the kick-out pass (of course Steve Kerr supported him – his entire career was defined by one kick-out pass), Donyell Marshall should never have been standing in that corner.

Let’s go back over the situation.

On one end of the play was the marquee name left in the postseason. Lebron James was mired in a miserable scoring night, for reasons we’ll come back to. He had poured in just 10 points on 5-15 shooting, hardly numbers that really warranted taking the final shot. He hadn’t been to the foul line all night, which probably left him somewhat uncomfortable trying to draw the foul. All important considerations.

On the other end was Donyell Marshall. And while everybody mentions that Lebron hadn’t been to charity stripe all night, Marshall hadn’t been to the three-point line. He had played just nine minutes and taken three shots, making one of them. Outside of the threes he jacked during the halftime shoot-around, Marshall was completely unprepared to come in and drain an ice-cold jumper.

But Marshall is a professional sharpshooter, right? Even if he hadn’t been in the game much, it’s his job to knock down threes. And, as everybody is fond of pointing out, Marshall hit six three-pointers in the finale against New Jersey.

The thing is, Donyell is one of the streakiest shooters you will ever see, and not the sort of streak that carries over from game to game. In the other five games against the Nets, he shot a combined 3-for-15. It’s been a season-long trend: Marshall will hit five threes in one game, then hit one three in five games. So while Marshall hit about one-third of his threes for the season, he was really hitting in about one game out of five.

What you had in the end, then, was an ice-cold power forward that only makes his jumpers about once a week, with the game in his hands as time runs out. The press praising Mike Brown for his great play call need to take another look at the state of the game. Even as wide-open as he was, there was almost no chance Marshall was going to make that jumper. It’s not Lebron’s fault; Marshall should never have been in the game.

Going for the win on the road is a great idea, in theory – when your team actually has somebody that can make a three-pointer.

As we’ve already established, Donyell wasn’t that guy Monday night. The Cavs have three other players that were clearly more qualified to be in that corner: Sasha Pavlovic (40.5 percent threes), Daniel Gibson (41.9 percent) and Larry Hughes (33.3 percent). Pavlovic and Hughes had each gotten into the flow of the game, and Gibson is a substantially better three-point shooter than Marshall (Lebron obviously would never get that open for the shot).

But on that night, none of them were hitting their shots; the Cavs were a combined 1-9 in threes before the final play. The one make was from Pavlovic, who was 4-14 on the night. Clearly the Cavs had no business looking for a three-point shot. It wasn’t a bad decision on Lebron’s part; it was just a bad play.

Consider for a moment the two players who really led the Cavs Monday night: Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao. Neither were in the game on the final play, replaced instead by Donyell Marshall and Drew Gooden.

Now imagine that, instead of Marshall standing in the corner, it was Varejao barreling unchecked to the hoop while the defense collapsed on James. With Lebron shooting, the hoop was almost guaranteed to begin with, and Varejao would have been there to clean up whatever was left. Who knows what would have happened in overtime, but at least the Cavs would have had a chance.

Seattle Gets Screwed

It's a sad fact of life that to own a sports team you have to be a billionaire, and to become a billionaire you have to be enormously successful in business, and to be enormously successful in business you have to be a greedy bastard.

That fact is plain to anyone that puts a little thought into it, but we still manage to be surprised when the owner of our team turns out not to give a damn about us. It's easy to pretend our owner is the good one, the charitable one who loves his city, but as Seattle Supersonics fans are finding out, they're all too willing to twist the knife.

Seattle's team, as you probably know by now, is hightailing its way out of the proverbial party--but not before stopping to shit on the coats. Owner Howard Schultz, the head of Starbucks, had the audacity to throw a celebratory press conference--complete with green and gold balloons--as he handed over the team to an Oklahoma City-based group led by Clay Bennett, who once pledged to bring a team back home with him.

The new owners said they would give Seattle every chance to keep their team, but the city has been set up to fail. They would need to finance a new arena to keep the Sonics, but the ill will created by the sale left an already-unlikely stadium proposal all but dead. Attendance will drop next season as angry fans give up on their lousy team, giving Bennett and friends the chance to announce the regrettable necessity of leaving the area. It's almost straight out of Major League. And just like that, another city loses its team.

Perhaps it should be no surprise that the head of one of the country's most obnoxious corporate entities turned out to be a heartless villain, but he's just the latest in a long line of owners backstabbing their cities. We Cleveland fans tend to forget that Art Modell was revered for a time, before he squandered his holdings, packed up his bags and took our beloved team to Maryland. In so doing he joined a legion of despised executives populated by Bob Irsay (Baltimore), Al Davis (first Oakland, then Los Angeles) and all of Major League Baseball (Montreal). Schultz and Bennett could soon enter those ranks, along with New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson (perhaps the worst of all), who wants to abandon the hurricane-ravaged city for the sunnier streets of San Antonio.

It's a sad fact that these owners, who were no doubt huge sports fans as kids, are unable to abandon their cutthroat business ethos when they buy a franchise. They enter the league, I'm sure, idealistic, excited and naive. But after losing a few million in their first season, the owners quickly jack up prices, abandon expensive players and demand new stadiums. Somehow, for all their financial acumen, these shrewd dealers miss the fact that lots of sports teams lose money on a year-to-year basis. This oversight is the only explanation for Schultz's complaints about his stadium lease (the same one that was there when he bought the team) and the costs of operating a team (Really? NBA players are paid too much?). It's possible that these owners have been made so arrogant from their success in the business world that they think they can succeed in sports where others have failed.

And yet, for all their complaints, Schultz's group made a lot of money as the owners of a sports franchise. Even if you believe their claim that they lost $60 million while owners of the Sonics (doubtful), they still made a $90 million profit in the long run. Since buying the team just five years ago, it has appreciated from $200 million to $350 million--that's $30 million per year! With that kind of investment rate, I think a team can afford to lost a little cash on Danny Fortson.

But the added value just isn't enough. When the opportunity comes to make even more money, whether via a new stadium or moving the team, most owners are all too willing to jump at the chance. The idealistic notion of public stewardship has long since passed sports by.

Whatever happens to the Sonics, the chain-reaction could hit other cities. The Blazers could jump at the chance to move to Seattle (if that market is so bad, why is Portland's team so eager to go there?), and George Shinn hasn't ruled out taking the New Orleans Hornets to Oklahoma before Bennett can--the Hornets already played there last season after Katrina left their home city unable to host a team. Whatever happens, more fans will lose the teams they love, and the owners will rake in more money.

The sad thing is that Seattle did try. They offered a pretty sweet deal to Shultz, in which he would have had to pay only $49 million towards a $198 million arena. At the rate the Sonics were appreciating in value, he could have made that money back in less than two years just by hanging on to the team. And with the new stadium revenue coupled with a more favorable lease, he would have been in the black in no time.

But accepting that deal would have meant backing down, and that's not how the NBA works. Leaving Seattle will scare other cities, who will give even sweeter stadium deals just to keep their teams from bolting. Fans in Oklahoma will pour into the arena for about a year and a half, until they realize that these are still the Sonics and they don't win any games (see: Washington Nationals). Then revenue will dry up and the process will start again, with little regard for the hometown people that are dedicated to these teams.

It happens in every sport, but the NBA's motto sums it up in a way that I'm sure Sonics fans can appreciate:

The NBA--it's fannnnnn-tastic!

(thanks to Seattlest for the picture)

The headbutt--a retrospective

This year's World Cup could have been devastating to soccer in America. The national team embarassed themselves, thanks in part to a tough schedule, an unrealistically high ranking and foolish promotion from ESPN. The images etched into our heads weren't soaring headers and beautiful goals but red cards and players writhing on the ground. The Italians, known as a team of divers without any flair, won the whole thing. And the pundits were louder than ever, claiming that soccer was boring and girly.

And then something happened that changed the way Americans looked at soccer. Zinedine Zidane--an aging legend in his final game, the best player in the tournament and France's national hero--flat-out leveled Marco Materazzi. With his head. And while the media erupted in outrage, Zidane's legend was permanently tarnished and his team sunk into defeat, the average American had just one thought--that was the coolest thing I've ever seen.

In the two weeks since the headbutt, it's erupted into a phenomenon. It's all over T.V. and has become a full-fledged internet meme (See Zidane headbutt the Death Star! See Materazzi's head fly off! See Zidane K.O. the Karate Kid!). Even Conan O'Brien has a new sketch where Zizou saves choking victims with a cranial Heimlich maneuver. A month ago, could you have imagined soccer appearing on the Late Show?

So what makes the moment so appealing? The circumstances, obviously, along with Zidane's stature in the game and the fact that he used his head--no hands allowed in futbol, after all. If Materazzi had been hurt, it would have been much less exciting, but really, how much damage could that headbutt (planted in the chest, not the face) have really done? Instead we just have a man felled in his tracks, curled in a ball, clutching his ribs--all from a standing header. It could have happened in a Chuck Norris movie, but this is the World Cup!

It also helps that the whole thing just feels so damn justified. Materazzi, by all accounts, is a vicious thug--a quick search through YouTube will show him stomping on players' legs, delivering knees to the testicles, and dispensing one especially brutal elbow to the face of Juan Pablo Sorin that left him crumpled and bloody on the ground. He was also suspended for two months for punching an opposing player after a match and even accused of match-fixing after he scored an own goal to prevent another team from being relegated.

Let us set the scene then. We have the petulant punk, the cheap-shot artist, who was cursed even in his own country. Away from the play, he comes up behind Zidane, the superstar playing in his final match, and starts tugging at a handful of his jersey. Zizou makes a flippant remark--"We can trade shirts after the match, if you like"--and turns the other cheek. But the hoodlum follows, dispensing an insult (to Zidane's race or to his mother, depending on who you believe) that curdles the champion's blood. And our hero turns, eyes the villain, and plants him on the turf without raising a finger. Sweet.

In a world that thinks Samuel L. Jackson is cool because of what he says out of a script, Zidane must be the pinnacle of a badass.

In an instant, Zidane's legacy became not just his World Cup title or his Fifa Player of the Year awards, but his cranium and red card. Is it really tarnished? Well, it would have been better had he won the cup, but France's chances were slim anyway. Though they were controlling the ball, they had managed only two decent looks at goal in the last 60 minutes against the tough Italian defense. Three of Les Bleus' four best players--Henry, Ribery and Viera--had left the match, leaving the offense crippled. It seems unlikely they would have broken through in the 10 minutes remaining before penalty kicks. And once the kicks began, Italy's Buffon clearly outclassed France's Barthez in goal; it would have taken some extremely good luck for France to win.

So instead of leaving the field in likely defeat, Zidane left it in a small bit of triumph, if only in a physical altercation. He did not win the match, but he left his mark on it, and for that reason alone he is much more likely to be remembered than if he had kept his head to himself. He wasn't in the class of Maradona or Pele as a player, but he will be just as talked about. And to a generation of soccer-apathetic Americans watching on YouTube, he is now way cooler than either of those former stars.

FIFA's decision today to punish the players involved only helps the hero's cause. Soccer's governing body passed down a three-game suspension to Zidane, which matters little to a player that already retired. As a show of good faith he'll "serve" his suspension with community service. Materazzi, though, faces a two-game suspension that will cause him to miss qualifying matches for Euro 2008--including a potential match with France. In this case, his actions didn't appear to warrant the suspension, but FIFA appears to have adopted the position of "You're a douchebag, so we don't really care." It seems only fitting that the man who made a reputation doing things behind the referee's back is finally punished for something he didn't really do.

And thus Zidane walks away from the pitch with another small victory, as his victim suffers the only real punishment. Zidane will look at his 1998 World Cup trophy on the mantle (along with, perhaps, his Euro 2000 trophy), watch Materazzi stew on the bench in Euro qualification, and think about how good it felt to put that punk in his place. Then, perhaps he'll go online to enjoy some funny videos.

The one where Materazzi bursts into flames is particularly good.

Not to go all firejoemorgan on you, but I had to point out a gem from John Kruk on Sportscenter this morning. Krukie--best known for being a star on some pretty wild Phillies teams and now a totally incompetent baseball analyst--proclaimed that the only chance the NL had to win today's All-Star game was if Albert Pujols hit a three-run first-inning homer.

Now, that's a pretty bold prediction, and raises some questions: can the NL win if Pujols hits a grand slam instead? Will the runs not count if he hits a homer in, say, the third inning? And why couldn't David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, or Home Run Derby Champion Ryan Howard hit the home run instead?

But it's best not to question Kruk, the guy that said Randy Johnson would win 30 games last year. Needless to say, it'll be interesting to see how this bold statement plays out.

Also, did anyone see Kruk look like a tub of goo in the celebrity softball game last night? And how about the fact that, of all the random celebrities in the game (including Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, and Dean Cain), the one idiot that managed to get caught in a rundown was John Kruk, former baseball player?

Someone really should have live-blogged that game. Unfortunately, I tuned out whenever the camera left Sarah Silverman. But here's another juicy tidbit from ESPN's helpful little graphics: Danny Masterson (from That 70s Show) says that he would give up acting in a second if he could make millions of dollars playing softball.

Well, that's a pretty wild statement, Danny, but I'll go even farther--I would give up writing and computer programming in a millisecond if I could make even a single million playing softball. Heck, even $50,000 a year would do it for me.

How's that for going out on a limb?

The sporting youth

I haven't been around for a little while because of a weekend excursion to the wilds of Illinois, and then another day spent recuperating. In the meantime, distressed about keeping up with my fantasy team and numerous sports blogs, I thought about the lengths that modern sports fans go to in following their sport. I think the young sport fans today don't quite get the credit they deserve. Allow me to ramble for a bit...

I've noticed an interesting trend in my generation--and no, I don't mean drunkenness, bad music and Paris Hilton (sometimes all at once!). This is a sports blog, goddammit, and that's what I'll talk about. See, there just aren't as many sports fans as there used to be. People are doing other things, and it's becoming more and more acceptable for a young Clevelander to just say "Hey, you know what? I just don't care whether the Indians score more goals than the Steelers."

I mean, sure, there used to be guys like that, but they would just get shoved in a locker by a burly jock and never heard from again. Now these are the cool kids. And it's not like I begrudge them their interests--most of these guys are the ones I hang out with--but I miss the time when you could go up to a random stranger on the street and say "Hey. Browns, eh?" and the other guy would go "Man, do they suck this year," and you'd be buddies just like that.

But while my generation might not boast as many fans, we sure have a lot more FANS. My grandfather talks about the good old days, listening to games on the radio and getting up each morning to check the box scores in the newspaper. I scoff at that. I've got one game going on the T.V. while I keep a running tab on the others over the internet. My daily routine takes me through my local paper, over to the online wire stories about last night's action, past my fantasy baseball team (The Evil Dead) and then into five different sports blogs (but never to ESPN.com; the true modern sports fan hates ESPN)--all before lunch.

There's just so much more to engross yourself in these days. There are more sports, and where there isn't sports, there's content about sports. If the major sites aren't enough for you (they aren't), then Deadspin will tell you what pickup lines the broadcasters use. On the DL will show you Major League Baseball players playing beer pong at frat parties after games. Fire Joe Morgan is even devoted to writing about sportswriting. And all it takes is a couple of fantasy teams to give you a rooting interest in every single game.

We even communicate about 'em differently. When I went off to college in Illinois and my fellow Cavs fan went to Purdue, we still talked after every game--but usually through smiley or frowny faces in instant messenger. There's some perception that we don't have the passion that the older crowd does, but it's there.

But in Cleveland, where the misery is the currency of sports credibility, it's all about your age. You might have experienced the '97 Indians World Series collapse and Bernie Kosar being cut, but are you old enough to remember The Shot? What about the Indians' 30 years of futility? Oh, and you weren't even alive for Red Right 88? Then don't even talk to me, whippersnapper.

Well, old fellas, you've got me there. But were you young enough to sob all night after the Tribe lost the 1995 Series? Did you write a letter to Kosar when Art Modell moved the Browns because your 9-year-old brain knew you had to do something?

We've had our misery in spades, too, but if anything our youth insulates us. The older generations were pounded down by the defeats and have all but given up, but the young crowd still believes in Lebron and holds out hope that Charlie Frye will turn out differently than Vinny Testaverde.

In the end, we'll be beaten down too, by steroids and failure, pitchers punching their wives and GM's trading future all-stars. But until then, despite our growing numbers of disinterested peers, we read more, watch more, know more and care more.

Kids these days.

Dee and Deron, Together Again

Folks, I have a new second-favorite basketball team (sorry, Timberwolves, it was fun while it lasted). The Utah Jazz have shot up on the coolometer the past couple of years, culminating in the selection of Dee Brown in Wednesday's draft. Dee joins fellow Illini Deron Williams to create the best college basketball team in the NBA.

Dee and Deron will attempt to recreate their 2004-2005 magic, when they led Illinois to a number one ranking, made the NCAA finals and had Dee named National Player of the Year by the Sporting News. They'll be recreating the Illini dynasty out in the land of Mormons, white people, and--uh--Jazz, I guess. Unfortunately, they'll be doing it despite probably never being on the floor at the same time.

You see, for three years Deron played point guard and Dee was a shooting guard at Illinois. But when Deron entered the draft after their Final Four run, Dee knew he had to prove he could run an offense if he wanted to get drafted to the pros. So, after being pushed out of his natural position for three years by Deron Williams, Dee devoted himself rigorously to passing, moving the ball, and demonstrating that he could play the point in the NBA--where he will be promptly be pushed out of position again by Deron Williams.

Except this time, Dee won't be able to play shooting guard. He's just too small to guard the Kobe Bryants of the NBA, and he certainly won't be able to shoot over them. No, he's going to have to spell Deron off the bench if he wants to make the team. But I think he has a lot of potential as a sparkplug off the bench, the sort of guy that is loved by the crowd, who all want him to start because they don't realize that he isn't really that good. He'll come in for 5 minutes at a time, run like crazy, make two steals and an open three, then go sit down again before somebody realizes "Hey, this dude is only 5'9"--we could step on him." He'll be like Anderson Varejao, except 18 inches shorter. Guys will be pimpin' his headband, his throwback Illini jersey will be all the rage, and the ladies will wave "Marry me, Dee!" signs.

Yes, even in Utah.

Because the ladies have always loved Dee. Since he's just been drafted, is looking to make the Jazz, and is still beloved in Champaign, his notoriety will probably never be higher than right now--making this the perfect time to tell my favorite Dee Brown story, about one of the greatest pickup lines ever.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine (I would say former friend, since I haven't talked to her in 18 months, but Facebook says we still like each other) lived in the same apartment complex as Dee. They ran into each other on occasion, hung out a few times, and I think he even had her cell phone number. She says he was a great guy, very friendly and fun to be around. She couldn't speak highly enough of him.

So it came as a great surprise to her late one night when a very drunk, very naked Dee Brown walked through her front door and right into her kitchen. She stared at him, wide-eyed, and he shrugged his shoulders.

"What?" he asked. "You know you want it."

She informed him (and I'll never know why) that no, she didn't want it, and he turned and left amiably enough. She said he seemed genuinely surprised. But this was during the Illini's magical Final Four season, when Dee was probably the biggest celebrity in the state (sorry, George Ryan, racketeering only gets you so far), so I'm certain he found somebody else that night that did "want it." I have no idea how many girls that line got him that year, but it was probably more than I spoke to.

So now Dee takes his smooth moves to Salt Lake City, where Deron won't be his only incredibly cool teammate. Joining them is Andrei Kililenko, whose wife lets him sleep with one groupie a year. Can you imagine the team going out on the town? Dee walking around naked telling girls they want it, Andrei debating whether this particular chick is worth using his freebie on, and Deron sitting with his incredibly hot girlfriend and wondering why Dee is more popular than him.

In short, these guys are way cooler than Stockton and Malone.

Federer's new look

It's almost a rite of summer at this point. Come late June, the flowers are blossoming, Ozzie Guillen is making a fool of himself, and Roger Federer is humiliating people at Wimbledon.

The Swiss star is so untouchable on the grass that even he seems to have stopped taking the tournament seriously. Faced with a doozy of a first-round match against Richard Gasquet, the young French hope, Federer showed up in an absurd, cream-colored blazer instead of the usual warm-up suit.

Apparently Feds had the top custom-made, and he seemed quite enamored with it. He made quite a show of draping it elegantly over his chair before he began play and putting it back on as soon as the match was over. The Telegraph called it "terribly tongue-in-chic," but I think that might be giving him a little too much credit. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate affront to Wimbledon's all-white dress code (If he can wear cream, what's next? Beige? Taupe?) or just to fashion.
But in the end, Federer could probably have worn his jacket out onto the court and still won. Better yet, he might have tied the arms around his neck to fashion a cape. For all of Gasquet's (deserved) hype, and even despite the defeat he handed Federer last year, he should never have come back out after the match's interminable rain delay. Roger took the first set 6-3 before the downpour and made things look even easier the next day, surrendering just four games in the last two sets.

And this was to a player that was supposed to provide one of Federer's stiffer Wimbledon challenges.

There were, I suppose, some nagging doubts coming in. After Federer lost to Rafael Nadal in the French Open final, a desperate writer searching for a storyline could have questioned his mindset going into Wimbledon. But after this display, I can't envision anything sort of a tank (or a racquet flung by Nicholas Keifer) stopping the champ. I harken back to the days when Pete Sampras would show up deflated and demoralized after a second-round French loss, then breeze through two weeks without losing a set--all while nursing a back injury. There's just that feeling of certainty that would make the whole thing seem bland if Roger wasn't so much fun to watch.

Still, it's almost a shame that Federer is so good, because there are lots of potential storylines here. Rafael Nadal is still looking to take that step from lovable dirtballer (and he is lovable--for all his naked agression, those capris still make me giggle) to somebody that's a factor year-round. Lleyton Hewitt is yearning for that wonderful two-year span when there were no dominant players and he could sneak out a grass-court title. Ivan Ljubicic and James Blake are both climbing the rankings, and nobody knows what to make of Marcos Baghdatis.

And hey, how about this one--if Roger Federer weren't around, we'd all be talking about three-time Wimbledon Champion Andy Roddick.

You might as well throw out those plots, though, because Federer's almost certainly going to win again. Nobody that saw his first-round match could really disagree. For all his grace and skill, Roger just doesn't look comfortable in France (or even in Australia), where he just plays solid defensive tennis with the occasional spectactular winner. But as soon as he sets foot on those lawns, his game turns explosive. That right arm starts whipping through the ball, and angles appear that you thought were impossible. The shots that were just deep groundstrokes at Roland Garros become untouchable. And as Gasquet found out, instead of just chasing after every ball, Federer will track it down and hit it past you.

For all his lack of fashion off the court, Roger certainly compensates with some pretty tennis between the lines.

Let's hope he wears that blazer for the trophy presentation.