To Tebow or not to Tebow? That is the question. And no, I am not talking about whether it is insensitive to get down in a prayer stance as an homage/mockery of Denver Broncos Quarterback Tim Tebow. Instead, I’m talking about whether or not John Elway and the Broncos organization should commit to their first-round pick as the franchise signal caller of the future.

Just as recently as two weeks ago, in the middle of a 7-1 stretch by Tim Tebow, Elway told the listening Denver public that he was not committed to Tim Tebow as his franchise quarterback. That obviously sat with many different people in one of two ways. The people who believe in Tebow were observably upset. And the people that don’t think Tebow can quarterback in the NFL were glad that Elway’s trepidation supported their analysis of Tebow.

But regardless of what you think about Tebow’s long-term viability as a quarterback in the NFL, I want you to think about what’s fair and what isn’t.

Tim Tebow is 7-2 as an NFL starter this year. Sure, he hasn’t beaten up on much of any team that’s worth a damn, and his two losses came at the hands of quarterbacks that are considered inarguably better passers. But a record of 7-2 is a record of 7-2, and even if Tebow’s passing numbers do not seem to suggest that he can sustain such a high-level of winning over a long-period of time, his play on the field does.

One of the things that Tebow gets unfairly charged with when his critics are coming at him is that he has been extremely lucky that the defense is playing for him in a way that they didn’t play for Kyle Orton, who was the starter the five games before Tebow entered the lineup. Now, in some ways, those critics are right; Tebow has posted a 20-point game just twice in his nine starts. But what those critics are unfairly failing to recognize is that Tebow’s protection of the ball keeps his defense from being in unfortunate positions. Additionally, Tebow’s ability to run the ball for first downs keeps the clock running and his defense on the sideline.

Tebow’s critics also charge him with getting the added benefit of a recharged Willis McGahee, who like the defense, was not playing this well at the running back position when Orton was in the lineup. Problem is that Tebow has contributed to McGahee’s resurgence as much as McGahee himself has. Tebow’s ability to run the football softens up the defense throughout the game, nevermind his ability to take the ball on a read play and go out the backdoor against the defense for a 15-yard gain. So those who say that Tebow is lucky that McGahee is producing like this for him are just being unfair.

Of course, I understand that completing just two passes in a game is something that his critics are going to find hard to consider “winning football,” but the other things he does on the field are inarguably contributing to his team’s ability to win.

That’s why it seems unfair not to commit to Tebow at this point. At 7-2, he can’t do much more to prove he can win the NFL. What John Elway is doing right now by not committing to Tebow is saying that the young quarterback has been lucky, and that over a larger sample-size, you will likely see him fail. While that may be the prudent and smart way to approach this, as larger sample sizes almost always yield more worthwhile results, it’s just not fair to do that to a guy who is potentially the future of your franchise.

How would you like it if at your job, you were the best salesman in your department during a boom in the economy, and your employer refused to give you and your team salary increases and better benefits because he wasn’t sure you could maintain your level of work when the boom went away?

You wouldn’t like it. Hell, you would be mad about it. After all, you didn’t bring the good economy, but now you’re being forced to pay for it? And if a couple years later, you were still producing at that same rate and another, better opportunity came along, you don’t think you would hold your employer’s previous lack of faith against it when making that decision?

Well, in this case, Tebow’s not the reason the defense and running games were bad when Orton was the quarterback. And even if you don’t believe that he’s part of the reason each of those aspects of the Denver Broncos games are better, you shouldn’t be punishing Tebow for flourishing in the success of them.

This whole Tebow situation kind of reminds me of another quarterback that was constantly told that he couldn’t be a long-term guy in the NFL because of what were “literally” his shortcomings.

Doug Flutie just couldn’t maintain a starting job in the NFL because he wasn’t considered tall enough to do so. This in spite of being a killer quarterback in the Canadian football league and having a winning record in the NFL. Instead of being deemed the starter in New England after going 6-3 with the team, he was sent packing. Instead of being named the starter in Buffalo after going 14-6 during his last 20 games there, Flutie was booted for another quarterback. And instead of getting the gig in San Diego, albeit at the ripe age of 40, he was sent to the bench after a 5-11 season with a team that had been the worst team in the NFL the season prior.

Granted, Flutie wasn’t the purest passer ever, he wasn’t very conventional, and his stature in the pocket, or lack thereof, certainly did hurt him at times. However, 38-28 is a pretty decent record, especially after 16 games with the worst team in the league. And his 86-68 touchdown-to-interception ratio is better than what you see from the Mark Sanchezs, Joey Harringtons and the Akili Smiths of the world; all of which got handed the keys to their franchises without really earning them.

Which brings me back to Tim Tebow. Have you ever seen Mark Sanchez go 7-2 for a stretch? Is Sanchez protecting the ball like Tebow is? Can Sanchez affect the running game the same way that Tebow can from the quarterback position? The answers to all of those questions is no, and yet Sanchez is the guy that had the full support of the franchise behind him from Day One.

Listen, I’m not trying to tell Elway what he should do with his budgets, because at the end of the day, it’s his neck that is on the line. Quite frankly, I can’t even fault him for being prudent after watching the Buffalo Bills throw away millions of dollars to Ryan Fiztpatrick because he looked above average for six games. And as a numbers guy, I certainly am not going to sit here and say that Tebow is owed a commitment due to his play, as I know very well that business is business, and sometimes being “fair” has no business in business.

However, in some rare occasions, being unfair in the name of your business can actually do harm unto it.

Maybe Tebow will never be a confident passer in the first three quarters of games because he always feels as if a bad throw will cost him his job; kind of in the same way Doug Flutie felt back during his mess.

Maybe Elway never finds out what the full potential of Tebow is by not committing to an offensive style and personnel that is befitting of his quarterback’s talents.

Maybe, just maybe, Elway forgoes one of the few quarterbacks that can tangibly make his defense better without playing a single snap on that side of the football.

And maybe, in the name of “business,” Elway and the Broncos never get to see Tim Tebow at his best until they are playing against him and the Chiefs. And maybe that Tebow-led team beats the Broncos, but what’s fair is fair—when it comes to business.

The post "Elway’s Question: To Tebow or not to Tebow?" was originally published at TSW.

I know I am kind of late to this, but due to the nature of my constant eating, frequent television watching and unjustified laziness, I hadn’t gotten around to the whole “Tebowing” thing until recently.

Actually, it was only minutes ago that I finished reading a week-old piece on ESPN.com by Jemele Hill, who took exception to the Detroit Lions players that “Tebowed” after making plays against the Denver Broncos in the Lions 35-point win over Tim Tebow. And boy do I have a response to her piece.

To put it simply, I think the “Tebowing” done by the Lions was fair game, funny and I don’t agree with Hill’s assertion that the Lions mocking of Tim Tebow’s prayer stance was mocking religion. To believe that, you either have to be blinded by your own beliefs or you lack nuance and perspective. Because if you remove Tebow from the situation, the Lions do not do the “Tebow.” So to say that they are mocking religion, when it isn’t religion that is driving the actions they are taking, seems a bit perspectiveless to me.

Here are a few other points of contention I had with what Ms. Hill had to say…

“I’m sure Tebow wasn’t trying to create a craze when he knelt to the ground and prayed as his teammates celebrated wildly around him following the improbable victory over Miami.” – Jemele Hill

In all honestly, I agree with Hill here. I don’t think when Tebow decides to pray on a knee that he is doing so to create a craze or even to promote his religious beliefs. I honestly believe he has an emotional reaction that causes him to do that. But for Hill to make a positive assumption about Tebow’s intentions and not that of the Lions actions that mocked Tebow is unfair.

In her piece, Hill says that the Lions that did the “Tebow,” (Tony Scheffler and Stephen Tulloch) “disrespect[ed] Tebow’s faith” with their actions. That’s quite an assumption and a hell of an accusation, even if she admits that they did not do so on purpose. For her to assume that Tebow is not trying to start a craze nor bring attention to himself, but label Tulloch and Scheffler’s actions disrespectful is inequitable. On one hand, she is alleviating Tebow of any responsibility for bringing attention to himself, yet on the other hand, she’s chastising two people for responding to the attention Tebow gets and mocking one of the very things that Tebow does (intentionally or not) to bring attention to himself.

“Making fun of someone else’s spiritual connection is on par with ridiculing them about their family.” – Jemele Hill

When Hill says something like this, she is holding up a strawman. In general, of course you shouldn’t go around mocking someone because of the family they come from, nor should you mock their family. The key phrase there though is “in general.” In context, of course it’s okay to mock someone because of their family. It happens all of the time in entertainment. I saw a plethora of comedians mock the Sheens when Charlie was going through his whole debacle. I hear a “Royal Family” joke just about every week. And what late night host didn’t take shots at the Clintons and the Bush’s when their respective family members took to the election cycle one administration removed?

I will take it a step further. It’s okay to make fun of somebody for a plethora of reasons, if done in the right context. Do comedians not make race jokes all the time? Do friends not make fun of each other for being too short, too tall, too skinny or too fat? Have you never made fun of somebody who was too nerdy, too narcissistic or too forgetful?

So when did one’s “spiritual connection” become more sacred than the hundreds of other things that are beyond one’s control?

“…If Tebow were Muslim or Jewish, would Tulloch and Scheffler have been so quick to execute a prayer parody?” – Jemele Hill

Hill’s point here is well-understood. Tulloch probably would have been scared shit-less had someone come to him with the idea of doing the Hora after sacking quarterback Sage Rosenfels (albeit, I think that would be funny too). However, if Rosenfels did the Hora after he made big plays in games, making fun of his Hora dance would be fair game. Yes, in our society, it would be much less accepted to make fun of a Jewish or Muslim person’s religious-based on-field actions, because Jews and Muslims are the minorities and their religious beliefs were once (and still are) unfairly treated in society. But just because there might be more backlash doesn’t mean that doing the Hora when playing against Rosenfels would be any worse; it just means society would have a bigger reaction to it. But that’s on society, not on the person, who (within the context of entertainment) was mocking an individual and not the religion. So I say to Jemele, “No, those two guys probably wouldn’t have been so quick to execute a Jewish parody, but they should have been, if Rosenfels did the Hora after each touchdown pass.”

Again, this point of Hill’s is a strawman. Everyone already knows that, in a vacuum, society has more trouble making fun of minorities than they do making fun of the majority. It is far more socially acceptable in comedy to make fun of white people than it is to make fun of black people. But people still make black jokes. And as a black man, I have no problem saying that the closer we get to black jokes being as acceptable to make as white jokes, the closer we are to having a society that is as open and willing to talk about race.

“Just Lighten Up.”

To some degree, that’s really what all of this boils down to. Did you interpret the Lions players making a joke that Sunday or did you see them making fun of a religion? When Terrell Owens did Ray Lewis’s dance after scoring a touchdown against the Ravens, was he making fun of Lewis, or was he disrespecting the art of dance? When Hines Ward scored against the Eagles and flapped his arms, was he disrespecting the endangered Bald Eagle, or was he making fun of Brian Dawkins? You may sit here and think that I’m comparing apples to oranges, but I’m not. While religion is of the highest importance to some, for others, dance and endangered species are held in higher regard, but I didn’t see J-Lo and PETA come out against Owens and Ward.

To parody is defined as “to imitate for purposes of ridicule or satire.” There’s a clear difference between disrespect and parody. As a writer, it’s hard to even fathom a far superior journalist like Hill speaking out against what was undoubtedly a parody of Tim Tebow by the two Lions players.

I hope the next time Hill is in search of her next metaphor, analogy (like the one that got Jemele suspended) or other literary devices (such as these others that also got her in trouble), that she realizes that we use such devices in writing, as well as other forms of entertainment, for not just disrespect, but for humor and self-expression too. Then again, maybe with all of the controversy Hill has seen her use of literary devices get her into, perhaps she now feels the need to make sure that anybody that “crosses” society’s line of acceptability be taken to task as well.

The post "Zo Knows: Neither religion nor “Tebowing” is off-limits to comedy" was originally published at TSW.

I’m comfortable enough with my sexuality to say whether another man looks good. And in covering sports, I see good looking people in-person and on my television screen all the time. The NFL hides all of their players’ faces, but in commercials and in-person, the good-lookers make themselves apparent.

Adrian Peterson, Mark Sanchez, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Tony Romo, Cam Newton, Calvin Johnson and Braylon Edwards are among some of the more symmetrical faces in the NFL.

What you may notice is that some of the best players in the league are also really good looking people. Take for example, Brady, Peterson and Calvin Johnson—all are arguably the best at their respective positions, and all of them are good-looking men.

While some of their handsome qualities are the results of being in-shape, testosterone-filled men in their mid-20’s, the names I mentioned also have the key aesthetic that has been scientifically proven to be a prominent factor in assessing one’s attractiveness: facial symmetry.

So if some of the best players in the NFL are also some of the most handsome players in the NFL, is it fair to correlate attractiveness with athletic prowess in the league?

Maybe.

This brings me to Andrew Luck. Luck has been figuratively deemed the best thing since sliced bread, and literally labeled the best quarterback prospect since Peyton Manning. But can he actually be all that great at quarterback without having the looks of an Adonis?

While Manning may not be considered a Tom Brady in the looks department, he still scores a 96 or better in facial symmetry, which is significantly higher than the average person. Luck, on the other hand, didn’t score so well on any online tests that I conducted. His scores were all in the 80’s, depending on the image I used (I used four in total).

Scientifically speaking, since I’m using two different tools to produce scores for Manning and Luck, this probably is not exactly a fair comparison. However, being that I am that confident in my sexuality, I don’t mind saying that Luck isn’t as pleasing to the eye as Peyton Manning. Come on now; you know you agree with me!

I present most of these measurements and assertions about players’ looks in jest, but seriously speaking, who is to say that good looks don’t affect a player’s ability to succeed at the quarterback position? They affect just about every other aspect of human life. So does it really stop when you get between the lines of sports?

It should. After all, sports are supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy. But even in the NFL, money, ratings, money, egos and money get in the way. And maybe there is a chance that Luck’s looks, or lack thereof, will affect how he plays, or is interpreted of playing, on Sundays in the NFL.

It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s not entirely impossible. When you think of the most successful quarterbacks of all-time, who do you think of? You go right to Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Brett Favre, Dan Marino, John Elway, Joe Namath, Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman. All good looking dudes. And while it seems ridiculous to say the reason they were successful is because they look good, don’t you get the sense that there are just some guys out there who have it all? There are just beautiful people out there who get the brains, beauty and talent, and it shows in their work each and every day. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that “beautiful people” earn considerably more money than “non-beautiful” people.

Now, I know what you’re saying, for every good-looking Tom Brady out there that has three Super Bowl rings, there’s a Matt Leinart who can’t play dead—and I see your point. However, the same study that shows beautiful people earn more than non-beautiful people also stated that beautiful people are more likely to receive backlash in the workplace the second they appear not to be pulling their weight. Essentially, people with good-looks have certain expectations, both good and bad, and when their performance falls into the bad category, their good-looks start to count against them.

Again, it’s almost crazy for me to take the average working experience and bring it to the NFL, but for as much as we would like to say that success is determined Sundays on the football field, when you take into account draft position, leadership, money, likeability and character, there’s a lot of non-football stuff that goes into determining who gets a fair shot at succeeding and who doesn’t. Just about any football player will tell you that there are plenty of players out there not getting the chance they deserve.

But look, I’m the first person to tell you I don’t like discussing intangibles and love stats, so I’m saying most of this tongue-in-cheek. So I’m not suggesting that Luck is doomed because he doesn’t look good. Hell, there are plenty of Ugly Betty’s in football.

Nonetheless, based on a study done a couple of years ago, I’m not sure that any of the “non-beautiful” signal-callers start at quarterback, but that may or may not be a coincidence. Then again, before we go around saying that Luck has exhibited everything we have seen from the great quarterbacks, there is one thing missing. Is that one thing important? I don’t know, but I think we are going to find out in the years to come.

The post "Andrew Luck the next Manning? That’s up to the beholder" was originally published at TSW.

Why don’t you like Tim Tebow?

He’s a nice guy, who has done far more good in the world than he has done bad–if he has ever done anything bad in his life. His coaches love him. His teammates love him. Hell, an entire subsection of Florida loves every morsel of his being. From winning football games to saving kids lives overseas, Tebow is the personification of the modern-day do-gooder.

Why do you like Tim Tebow?

The man is far too perfect—suffocatingly perfect. He is one of the cockiest sons-of-bitches you will ever meet, and he seems to have very little self-awareness about this professional abilities. On top of that, he justifies a lot of what he does on his faith, and while admirable, it makes it impossible to know whether or not he actually knows what it is he is talking about sometimes.

What does it say about us a people that a guy like Tim Tebow is so polarizing? In this allegedly “post-race” society that we live in, aren’t we supposed to be better at accepting people for who they are? Shouldn’t we save our true disdain, dislike and displeasure for those that are a negative influence on us, our kids and the world as a whole?

Certainly, Tim Tebow is nothing but positive—so why the hate? Is it because we can’t handle his religious stance, even though we are supposed to be  a religion-tolerant people? We see this all the time outside of sports, where religious politicians on the right make the people on the left sick to their stomach, and where irreligious folks on the left make the right want to change the course of the country. But why bring that to sports?

Sport is supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy. Tebow’s fame is not supposed to rest on an overpowering religious stance that he more or less made public while he was in college. The way we judge him is supposed to be based on how he plays on the football field. And given that we have seen very little in the way of Tebow on a football field, I really do not see how on Earth people have made such definitive stances about Tebow.

But boy are there a lot of stances! There is a plethora of Tebow-apologists that think the world of Tebow. With their faith in his ability to play professional football lying squarely on what they saw him do at the University of Florida, Tebow fans have defended their loved one from Day 1 of the NFL draft. Fresh out of college, Tebow’s jersey was the #1 seller in all of football, and he hadn’t so much as stepped on to a football field yet.

Perhaps that’s why the haters exist though. In a sports world that is one of the closest things to a meritocracy we have in America, people hated to see Tebow praised as a pro before he had even made the roster. In their defense, Tebow had to be the most celebrated, pumped-up, exalted, cheered for, and publicized third-stringer in the history of the NFL, sports and the world. Needless to say, if you believe in sports being a meritocracy, you hate to see Tebow put on that pedestal before he had played a game.

What truly is amazing, in regards to Tim Tebow, is that most of the public falls into one camp or the other, and there is very little room in the public’s eye for nuance, concession or compromise. And I ask again, what does that say about us a as people?

Actually, it says five things about us…

1. We do not know how to separate the person from the profession. 

Is Tim Tebow for real? Is he really that nice of a guy? Is he really that religious? Was that infamous speech an emotional rally cry, or just some guy looking to get in front of the camera? Does Tebow really embody who I want my child to see as a role-model, or is he some guy that is bound to show his true colors down the road?

Those are the questions asked of Tebow on Google, in forums, on the radio and on message boards. But none of it has anything to do with why we know or care about Tebow. Sure, the next time I see Tebow running for the Senate, I will be sure to pull up a background check on his criminal history, but that should have nothing to do with how I, a man looking from thousands of miles and a world away, should be judging a football player. I know Tebow because he was a great quarterback at the University of Florida, not because he went on some mission to Asia and performed circumcisions. All the other stuff about Tebow is irrelevant to his profession and should not be tolerated by football, the media or the public.

But aye, there’s the rub. We as a people consistently make an assessment of a person’s job about more than the person’s performance. Call it nature, nurture or capitalism, but we see it in the workplace everyday. Complete idiots rise to positions of power merely because they talk a good game and fit into the ENTJ mold that businessmen are supposed to align with. I’m sure you have seen somebody get a promotion that they do not deserve, and I know you didn’t feel good about it. Or worse yet, you may have been passed up for a position because your work took a backseat to how somebody felt about you. How did that feel? I know it has happened to me.

So why do that to other people when we don’t want it done to ourselves? Who knows? That’s just yet another inconsistency of human behavior, and Tim Tebow is feeling the effects of it in the early stages of his career.

2. We let arrogance cloud our judgment of otherwise good people. 

So let’s assume that judging a person’s profession based on a person’s personality is just a part of life that we have come to accept. I’m actually okay with that. After all, there are some things that are always going to be a part of this world, like drunken guys who try corny pick-up lines on sober women in bars.

However, what I cannot accept is that with Tebow, we are letting some of his personal flaws outweigh his more positive traits. In particular, Tebow is a rather arrogant guy. He is not necessarily arrogant in an outlandish way, he just really believes in himself and in his team, and he refuses to surrender to facts that suggest that he or his team will fail.

And that irks a lot of people. Don’t get me wrong; it is easy to understand that people don’t like the guy that just can’t take “no” for an answer even when “no” is the only answer. But in the case of an athlete, isn’t that what we want? You don’t want to your favorite team’s quarterback going on to the field thinking that his 32nd-ranked passing offense cannot beat this week’s 1st-ranked secondary, do you? The hell you don’t. Because if he thought that, how on earth could he ever stand a chance?

But if for some reason, that damn athlete actually comes out of his mouth and verbalizes that arrogance, we get mad at him? That makes no sense. Damn the political-correctness. If an athlete is arrogant, naïve or supercilious when it comes to his profession, let it be that way. It’s freaking sports for crying out loud! It’s already a shame that we let things like flag pins, tradition or bad quotes get in the way of electing our presidents. So let’s please get out of this habit of letting someone’s attitude get in the way of judging an athlete, namely, Tim Tebow.

3. The media is not objective; not even on their best day.

I sit here before you today, a quasi-member of the media. And as such, I still have no problem saying that we are not objective. Objectivity has boundaries, requirements and associations that the media can only wish it partook in. For example, CNN is supposed to be the most objective news entity on television. However, in their quest to be objective, they let both sides (left and right) say their peace, no matter how ludicrous one side may be. So even if the right is standing up for what’s good and pure, and the left is lying and propagandizing, CNN still allows each side to have their equal say and analyzes the validity in each statement. In a world where objectivity is defined as an “external reality,” CNN’s approach to objectivity does not hold up.

And neither does that of ESPN, Yahoo, Fox Sports or NBC Sports. They all have their columnists, their reporters and TV gas bags that say and do things so far out of the realm of objectivity that it puts any analysis of anything ambiguous into question. From covering sexual assault charges to matters of race, or even when those two topics intertwine, it’s hard to sit back and see any of those sports reporting entities as being purely objective.

It makes sense though. The media is run by people, and as I mentioned before, people are inconsistent. So when one media entity feels one way about Tebow, and another entity feels the opposite way, it’s clear that no one is being objective. As we sit here today, a day after Tebow proved both his critics and his believers right in some of the worst 57 minutes of football ever played in a win, we can’t dare cry that the media is being objective. To feel one way or another about Tebow’s performance, a reporter would likely have to rely on his incoming feelings about Tebow. That inherently makes their assessment of yesterday’s game subjective, and while that may be unavoidable, it’s that lack of objectivity that makes Tebow the polarizing figure that he is.

4. Football players are forever and always, an inconsistent body representative of the nation as a whole. 

If people are inconsistent, players are crazy. Forget about the fact football players do not mind running into each at the fastest speeds possible, knocking each other, suffering concussions and broken bones, but then are afraid of heights, dogs, needles or women, but they have other more pronounced inconsistencies as well.

Take for example the fact that most athletes will admit that some players cannot handle the pivotal moments of game-ending situations, however, you can’t find a single athlete worth his paycheck to say that they have ever succumb to the moment in the 4th quarter of a close game.

Carry that inconsistency over to Tebow, and you have what we have today, players on the Broncos roster polarized by Tebow’s play. Brandon Lloyd got traded out of Denver because he was so against having Tebow in a as a starter, yet some of his teammates love everything Tebow represents as a player and a person. And last year, Broncos General Manager John Elway would have led you to believe that Tebow was where this team was headed entering this NFL season, then they started Kyle Orton in Week 1. Now we enter NFL Week 8, and the players on Denver remain divided. It’s one thing for the media and the fans to be confused, but for the players, the coaches and the GM to be that close to the situation and still not be in agreement, it makes you wonder how fair we all are in our assessment of Tebow.

5. We do not believe in meritocracy unless we are talking about ourselves. 

It sounds crazy that I am sitting here pointing out the flaws in myself and human behavior to show why a one-week removed third-string quarterback is being unfairly upheld and criticized. At the end of the day, Tebow’s polarizing stature is the result of limited data. Once the data set grows, we will get a better sense of who he is, and the consensus will either be that he is a winner or he is a loser.

Even once the data is in, why do we find it so easy to judge an athlete, even when the data is in our favor? It could be because we as individuals constantly feel judged, and we find it easy to cast aspersions about an athlete that is used to the public light, even though we do not know that person.

But let’s say Tebow turns out to be a sub-.500 quarterback, his completion percentage is barely average and he never even sniffs 3,000 yards in his next 16 starts, some people would still stand behind him and say that he deserves more chances.

On the flip side, if Tebow was an out-right winner, with mediocre stats in the 1st through 3rd quarters, but won his team games late, many people would accuse him of being limited, lucky and incapable of consistency.

It’s called confirmation bias. No matter what the situation is, if the stats allow for an out, people will find an out that backs up their viewpoint—after all, who can’t lie with statistics these days?

In a true meritocracy, there is no room for debate as to who the better performer is. In sales, if you sale the most, you win salesman of the year. In school, the kid with most correct answers on the multiple choice test sets the curve. And obstetrics, the obstetrician that delivers the most and healthiest babies wins obstetrician of the year. At lest 2 out of 3 of those are right. But you get my point!

Our sports are supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy too, right? Everyone wants to play their best players, don’t they? Unless of course the season is over and you want the #1 pick in the draft. Unless of course, you have a senior on the team and there is sophomore that’s only a tad bit worst than him. Unless of course the shortstop’s dad is the coach of the little league team. Unless of course, you invested a lot in that free agent, even if he isn’t working out for you. Unless of course—you get my drift.

And let’s not even talk about the fact when we don’t really know who the better player is.

My point is that even in a meritocracy, the better player doesn’t always get the start, and sometimes, we don’t even know who the better player is. As fans, there are few circumstances where should not be rooting for the better player to get the chance, as if we were ever being pitted against someone else for an opportunity, we definitely want the meritocracy to win out in the assessment of us.

So why did Denver fans cry for Tebow in preseason even though we know Kyle Orton is better?

It’s an inconsistency, but it’s who we are. We want to be judged based on our merits, but we don’t mind playing politics, future and nuance with other people’s lives. The people who want to judge Tebow on his merits probably aren’t saying too much of anything right now, which leaves those prejudging the young quarterback to take the stage. With the public’s inconsistencies, the media’s lack of data, confirmation bias and the ever-present subjugation of athletes, Tebow had become the most polarizing, third-stringer in the history of sports. And thanks to the people who made Tebow a topic of discussion in a debate that he had no business being in at this point in his career, Tebow is now the most polarizing first-string quarterback in the NFL.

The post "The Unfair, Media-Induced Public Polarization of Tim Tebow" was originally published at TSW.

Gruden, seemingly steps away from football by signing a 5-year deal with ESPN.

All my life growing up, I wanted to be an NFL coach. My best friend and I spent countless hours playing Madden in what can only be considered an unhealthy fashion. From playing complete dynasties, limiting ourselves to only fair trades and spending entire Summer mornings, afternoons and evenings lodged between the couch and Playstation, we took the playing of Madden to a level beyond that of kids just out to have fun. We wanted to learn the game of football in a way that would make us bona fide candidates for NFL coaching positions some where down the line.

In my friend’s defense, he is out coaching football right now. He’s a wide receiver coach down in Texas, where football means more to people than energy and oil. He’s got dreams of moving up the ranks, coaching in college then in the pros, and I am as sure as day that he will one day achieve his—our—dreams.

But here I am, writing about football instead of coaching it. While I love the aspect of coaching, leading and being around the game of football all day and everyday, writing, content and business were things I loved to do well before I ever picked up that first game of Madden or strapped on my first set of shoulder pads. So even though coaching has long been one of my dreams, I do not regret where it is that I sit today.

And I’ve been offered the chance to coach, but over the years of playing college football and being behind the scenes of the NFL at CBS Sports, my adulation of the coaching profession isn’t what it once was. Again, I assure, I love it, and there aren’t many things I would put before a career as an NFL head coach, but it doesn’t stand where it used to for me. The profession just doesn’t seem to be what it once was.

I take it that Jon Gruden feels the same way. He took yet another extension from ESPN, one that is said to keep him alongside “everybody’s favorite” Mike Tirico and the rest of the Monday Night Football crew for the next five years. Now, Gruden’s decision to take the money is not all that surprising given his track record. But if freaking Gruden is willing to stay out of the game for five years, or at least verbally agree to do so, what does that say about the luster of the head coaching career in the NFL?

Perhaps it’s the roster of coaches that has taken away from what it means to be a head coach in the league. Several teams have gone the route of hiring lesser-known, lesser-accomplished head coaches to head their football squads as a way to save money. Now, I’m the last guy to say that paying the high-profile, big-name head coach is the way to go, but I’m certainly not advocating not hiring the high-profile guy for the sole purpose of saving money.

But that’s what’s happening in today’s league. Teams do not want to relinquish the money and/or power it takes to get a proven head coach. That probably has a lot do with why guys like Jon Gruden, Bill Billick, Bill Cowher and Marty Schottenheimer are sitting on the sideline. Instead, those big names have been replaced by guys we have never heard of, such as Jim Schwartz, Raheem Morris and Tony Sparano. Those guys have had and are having varying degrees of success that in no way can be correlated with their level of “prestige,” but one still has to wonder that if a preponderance of no-names are getting jobs, will the profession hold its current level of stature? Or is it too late?

Who are the biggest names in coaching right now?

You have the Super Bowl winners in Bill Belichick, Mike Shanahan, Mike Tomlin, Tom Coughlin and Sean Payton. You have the long-tenured guys like Andy Reid and Lovie Smith. Then after that, you have a bunch of guys out of left field, which for all intents and purposes, are as good as the aforementioned names, but their lack of proven success certainly does take away from the cache of the profession.

Fans don’t respect a guy who has never won before. Fans don’t buy tickets and watch games for a coach they have never heard of. It’s a fact, and its why some big name franchises are always willing to pay for the big name. Take the San Francisco 49ers. They could have easily saved money by going with a young, unproven head coach, but instead, they made Jim Harbaugh, successful in college but not in the NFL, one of the highest paid coaches in football. Proven? No. Big name? Yes. And it’s those kinds of signings that, if not productive, at least keep the NFL head coaching phenomenon interesting.

Cache aside, who needs the trouble? Part of reasoning behind not moving towards the head coaching profession at this time in my life is that it requires taking on a lot of unneeded stress. Call me crazy, but there’s no reason that anyone should have to lock themselves up in a film room for 6 nights of the week. That to me is going way past the tipping point, where one will only see diminishing results. I’m sure Gruden would agree that the stress and work load was way too high for a profession that really doesn’t have as much control over the outcome as one would come to think.

And that brings me to my last point, how much control does a head coach really have over a game? Don’t get me wrong, I still respect the coaching profession enough to say that coaching has a say in who wins and loses an NFL football game, but it is not as big of a “say” as it once seemed to be.

In the late 90’s and early part of this century, it would seem that a coach who put in place a sound defense and a an offense that took care of the ball could bludgeon his way to a 10 to 14-win season and compete for a Super Bowl. But that’s not the case in today’s NFL. If you don’t have Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers or one of the Mannings at quarterback, good night and good luck. Yeah, you could get away with a young Ben Roethlisberger in 2006, but just 5 years later, even Big Ben was tossing the ball all over the field to get his team to the Super Bowl—and naturally, he lost to the more talented quarterback with a lesser team.

My point is that talent prevails in this league. As much as I still want to believe the old say, “He’ll take his and beat yours, and take yours and beat his,” I don’t know how true that is. Even Bill Belichick hasn’t won a damn playoff game five seasons, and he is supposed to be the best head coach out there. What does that say about the overall effect of the position?

Do I, and millions of others, still dream of the day when they can be a head coach in the NFL? Sure. But is it as enticing as it once was. I don’t think so. We’re losing talented individuals like Gruden and Cowher to television, and I don’t see how one can say the profession is at its highest levels when that is the case. Just imagine, if we’re losing enthusiasts like Gruden, imagine all of the smart minds out there with options that are choosing different routes.

While a loss in coaching capital isn’t exactly like having a shortage of public school teachers, the NFL could suffer is all we have left is the cookie-cutter guys that are afraid to challenge the norms, be different and pioneer new ways of coaching in the same manner that the greats did before them.

So be weary. With a new agreement with ESPN, today we lost Gruden. Maybe tomorrow we lose Cowher and Schottenheimer forever. Then in the days, weeks, months and years that follow, perhaps we lose the next Belichick, Madden, or Jimmy Johnson. Then where will be. Sure, the nature of the NFL is such that much like there will some day be another Peyton Manning or Tom Brady; there will also be another Jimmy Johnson or Belichick. But how many of those and how often they come by is important, and if the decisions of Gruden, Cowher and Johnson say anything about the state of NFL coaching, perhaps our talent pools has shrunk beyond belief.

The post "Is Being An NFL Coach What It Used to Be?" was originally published at TSW.

There’s not a dog day in summer that goes by in which somebody does not mention the fact that baseball is the only sport that deems going 3 for 10, or 30%, a success. That propensity for failure is what makes the sport so random, so unpredictable, and sometimes, so unfair.

But let’s take it beyond the .300 average that is deemed great. Let’s look at the end result. This past season, one of the best regular season teams of the past several years, was this year’s 2011 Philadelphia Phillies. They won 102 games, had a run differential 100 runs higher than any other team in the National League, and because of their league low ERA, they were the best road team in the Majors.

What did all of that buy them? A 63-point winning percentage.

Now, I don’t know where you went to school, but in most parts of the baseball viewing world, 63% is about as close to failing as you can get without actually flunking out. When you think about it, 63% really isn’t that far away from 50%. Who doesn’t like their chances of flipping a coin and getting 6 heads on 10 flips? Well, that’s essentially the equivalent of what the best baseball team in the majors did this season. In some schools, the grade-point average derived from a 63% success rate would get you suspended from the baseball team—kind of ironic, no?

Now let’s take a look at the other side of the coin—no pun intended.

The worst baseball team in the majors this year was Houston. The Astros won a paltry 56 games, which is historically bad. So, for both the sake of statistical relevancy and my argument, let’s take a look at the second worst team in baseball, the Minnesota Twins.

Destroyed by injuries and a catcher that just didn’t play up to his expectations, the Twins managed to win just 63 games in 2011. They were as horrible at home as they were on the road, and according to run differential, they actually were worse than the aforementioned Astros.

However, those 63 wins translate into a 39% winning percentage. That’s 24-percentage points less than that of the Philadelphia Phillies. While a 24-percentage point difference is considerable in many realms, it’s a weird differentiation in the vacuum of winning sports games, and even in winning baseball games.

In the NFL, if the Detroit Lions go on to win just 24% more of there games than the worst team in the league, an way too kind, hypothetical, undefeated Lions team would have 16 wins to the hypothetically worse Miami Dolphins, which would have a record of 12-4.

In the NBA, the Chicago Bulls won 62 games. If the worst team in the NBA were only 24-percentage points worse, they would win 42 games, which is typically good enough to make the playoffs—although, not in a scenario where they are the worst team in the league, obviously.

In baseball though, that’s the difference. A mere 24 percentage points separates the best team in baseball from the worst team in baseball, when defined by run differential. Based on those winning percentages, the Twins have 25% chance of winning a single game against the Phillies. While 1 in 4 isn’t great, it’s certainly worth a “gamble,” and far more likely to happen than the improbable or unbelievable scenarios we sometimes see in sports.

Let’s take that to the playoffs. In a five-game series, the Astros chances of winning are 30%. That means that nearly 1 in 3 times, the worst team in baseball could be expected to knock out the best team in baseball. And it’s stats like that which just make this whole damn sport a random crapshoot—excuse the redundancy.

So if the Twins have a 30% chance of winning a series against the Phillies, one can imagine what the chances were that the Cardinals would win this series before it started. Then you can surmise how likely it was that the Texas Rangers would beat the Tampa Bay Rays, or that the heavily favored New York Yankees would lose to the Detroit Tigers.

In a sport where the difference between the best team and worst team is a mere 24 percentage points thought, that’s what you get. You get randomness. Teams we think are really good, aren’t really that good in comparison, because the teams that are bad, aren’t that far behind them. If baseball were to let bad teams like the Twins, Pirates and Orioles in the playoffs, who knows how many upsets we would see? The damn randomness of it all could put the postseason in a tailspin, which is why opening MLB playoffs to more teams is a tad bit ridiculous.

Don’t confuse randomness for parity though. Parity is when the tables turn, teams get better, other teams get worse, and the odds of winning change. Because of its lack of a salary cap, baseball doesn’t have parity. Baseball clubs don’t bubble up all that often, and the best teams, the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Phillies and the Angels, are usually good year after year.

The reason baseball has had so many different champions in comparison to the other sports is that when a team gets into the playoffs; its chances of winning a single series are much higher than we inherently give that team credit for. Nobody should be surprised by the Twins beating the Phillies in the first round of the postseason, because as I mentioned, there’s a 30% chance of that happening. Being surprised by that is like dropping your draw when Michael Jordan makes a three-pointer—it’s really not all that surprising!

The randomness of the baseball postseason is what it is. It makes for great television, and we can shoot down the big dogs an awful lot. Fact is that when it comes to baseball, there are no guarantees. For a sport full of stats, analysis and projections, all it really amounts to in strategy is calling a bluff or not calling a bluff in poker. It’s random, managers are guessing, and the whole damn thing can change with a whim. It’s why we love it, and it’s probably why purists don’t want teams like the Twins getting an extra shot at making the playoffs.

The post "The Baseball Playoffs and the Randomness of it All" was originally published at TSW.

When it was 3rd and 21 in last week’s Monday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins, Tony Romo came through for his team, when he ran away from the blitz to create enough time for his injured receiver to break open from the not so steel-curtain defense of cornerback Deangelo Hall.

It was a great play for Romo, one that will go down as one of his most courageous. And given that he had jacked up ribs and no receivers around him, the entire game can viewed as somewhat of a “legend-maker” for Romo.

But that’s only if he ever becomes a legend. When I text messaged my Dallas Cowboys fan for a brother after Romo made that play, he promptly exclaimed that very fact, that Romo was indeed headed for legendary status and that this game was the first step towards it. I quickly reminded my brother that in front of Tony Romo, in the line for legendary status, is both Eli Manning and Trent Dilfer—and they have lawn chairs on hand.

That’s not to say Romo isn’t a better talent than both of those guys, because he certainly is. But do you know really is a legend? Tom Brady. John Elway. Joe Montana. Peyton Manning. Those guys are legends, and Tony Romo is no Peyton Manning.

In fact, there was a great example of just how un-legendary and how un-Manning-like Romo really is. Down on the goal line, the game on the line, and the Cowboys looking for their first touchdown of the game, Romo had inexperienced receivers that didn’t seem to know the formations or the routes. And on 3rd and goal, faced with having to score a touchdown or kick yet another field goal, the play resulted in Romo mis-throwing a receiver who ran the wrong route.

Now, for any normal quarterback, that is perfectly understandable, and I do not fault Romo in the least for his receivers failing to run the right routes throughout the entirety of the game. After all, he’s been out all week, likely placing an entire cow on his ribs for the last few days, he shouldn’t also be tasked with having to teach his receivers the finer art of—well, receiving.

Or should he?

As faultless as Romo is for his receivers’ lack of knowledge, that crap never happens to Peyton Manning. Sure, he and a receiver will have a miscommunication from time to time, Peyton will throw a hissy-fit in front of the camera, and 9 times out of 10, it was probably Peyton who was right. But that doesn’t happen 10 or 12 times a game like it did to Romo the other night, and believe me, Manning has had his fair share of injured receivers. Yet for some reason, when you throw an Austin Collie, a Pierre Garcon, an Anthony Gonzalez and a Jacob Tamme in front of Peyton Manning, they don’t just run the right routes, they become all-world wide receivers.

That’s what makes Manning, and his other peers, legends and so-called “leader guys.” They actually lead their receivers not just to wins, but to performances beyond their means. Dan LeBatard always jokes that if you lined up a shopping cart at tight end and had the left tackle give it a push down the field at the start of every play, Manning would make the shopping cart a 1,000 yard receiver. On the flip-side, Romo would yell, scream and embarrass the shopping cart 12 times per game, throw an interception in the direction of the shopping cart, and lose the game.

Am I being unfair? Not really. Again, it’s not Romo’s fault that his best receivers that night were injured, and the remaining ones didn’t know how to play football. But the great ones, the ones that demonstrate true leadership, make others rise to their level of excellence. It’s why Rob Grownkoski is the best fantasy football option in the world right now, and it’s why Jordy Nelson is practically Pro Bowl bound. Their quarterbacks make lesser plays better players, and they do it over a season, during the playoffs, or even in as small a sample size as a one-game spin-off, in which all other 10 starters have been stricken by the 3 hour flu just before kickoff.

That’s not what Romo does. It’s not what he did Monday Night. What Romo did Monday night was single-handedly get a victory, despite everybody around him messing up. But that’s not what the great quarterbacks do. That’s not what the Hall of Fame quarterbacks do. With those guys, you can’t tell that they are doing all of the heavy lifting, because the demand the best out of everyone around them, and the lackluster crap that went on with Romo’s receivers on Monday night is not something you see Brady and Manning dealing with throughout an entire game—ever.

But big ups to Romo. He came through Monday night. He is a great quarterback, one of the top 10 in the league. But legend? Hall of Famer? Leader guy? Peyton Manning? Those things he is not.

The post "Romo Was Great, But Leader Guy He Isn’t" was originally published at TSW.

If it sounds like I went for a play on words in the title, let me assure you that I didn’t. I’m neither clever nor funny enough to pull off such a pun, even one as bad and as obvious as that one. The title of my piece merely speaks to how I feel about Michael Vick’s post game comments yesterday, following the Philadelphia Eagles 29-16 loss to the New York Giants.

“I felt I got hit late. No flag…At some point something catastrophic is going to happen. Not to blame the refs, but more precautions should be taken. I’m on the ground all the time in the pocket… I’m on the ground getting hit in the head and I don’t why… I don’t get the 15-yard flags like everybody else. Buy hey, I’m not going to complain about it. I’m just making everybody aware of it. Hopefully, somebody will take notice.” – Michael Vick after the Eagles loss on Sunday.

It’s an obvious joke, but I would hate to see what Vick says when he actually starts to complain. Truth is, Mike Vick does get hit a lot in the pocket. And I’m even to willing to admit that defenses get away with a little bit more than they do against the league’s other premiere quarterbacks. But the correlations Vick is presumably hinting at aren’t true, and there are only two things Vick could possibly be hinting at as reasons for his lack of penalty drawing: his mobility and race.

Oh yeah, I brought out the race card, but I will get back to that in a second.

Before I get killed for going into Vick’s mind, digging around a little, diving past the dog killings and the late-night prison mopping with Tink-Tink, and presuming that he’s pointing at something about him that makes referees less likely to call a penalty in his favor let me just say this: of course that’s what he’s doing!

Vick didn’t go to the podium to complain about not getting flags because he thinks its the luck of the draw, or that some kind of randomness was the reason he was getting hit late. No! He complained about not getting the flags that “everybody else” is getting, because he believes that there is something about him that is different from everybody else that causes referees to keep the flags in their pockets. Now, whether Vick has identified that in his own mind, I have no idea. But even if he hasn’t, I have no problem saying that the reason he thinks he has not gotten a fair shake is because something about him is different from everybody else. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that, but every now and then, you have to check the strength of the branch you walk out on.

So what does differentiate Vick from other quarterbacks that might cause him not get a flag that he deserves? We can toss out the dog killing. As much as that would be a viable excuse in other walks of life and million-dollar professions, it doesn’t work in the NFL. Vick is considered one of the players NFL athletes would most want on their team, and the league is making a considerable amount off of them. Even with referees, I find it hard to believe that they could make moral stances on Vick but let the women-beaters, drunk drivers and drug pushers off easy.

So the felony card is out.

ESPN's "White Vick" - http://es.pn/qMl4bq

Then there’s everybody’s favorite card in the deck…the race card! In case you didn’t know it, Mike Vick is black. Of course, this picture from ESPN might suggest otherwise. Truth be told, I can’t even discuss the hypothetical of Mike Vick getting flagged for being black with a straight face. All I can think of is every other joke I have ever heard about being ticketed for “driving while black,” and those jokes actually some credibility with them. I also go back to the studies that once suggested that NBA referees were more likely to call fouls against certain players because of their race. While such a study and ensuing conclusion does lend some sense of plausibility to the idea of Vick not getting calls because race, it’s hard to compare NBA referees to NFL referees, who use a lot more collaboration in penalty-calling. I will say this, as Mark Cuban pointed out in response to the aforementioned NBA study of referees, everyone has prejudices, and a hit against Vick were late or on time by milliseconds, maybe the judgment call does go against him because of his race. But how many “close call” situations is Vick really getting into?

Actually, that was a trick a question. Vick is getting into a lot of close-call situations, and that my friend, is the difference between Vick and “everybody else,” and it’s why he doesn’t get all of the flags that the other quarterbacks are getting.

Vick likes to run. And because he can run, he holds on to the football longer than other quarterbacks. And because he can escape the grasp of defenders with his speed and leg strength, he absorbs and plays through hits that his peers cannot. As a result of having the football in his hands longer and escaping defenders, Vick leaves himself open to more blows to the body.

It’s not rocket science. You hold the ball longer, you expose yourself to more blows. If you’re Peyton Manning, who gets rid of the ball before the defensive end can come out of his stance, you get hit less. And when you have the quick release of Matthew Stafford, the time between your letting go of the football and the defender falling at your legs is that much greater, and the referee does not have to make as many judgment calls as he does with a guy with a slower release who holds on to the football, i.e., Michael Vick.

But Vick isn’t the only one who falls victim to holding on to the ball, playing Houdini and having a slower release. Ben Roethlisberger takes more hits because of that, Aaron Rodgers gets blown up a lot, and Steve Young was the record holder for getting blown up as a quarterback. But the common thread there isn’t that they are all black, because obviously they aren’t. The common thread is that they are all mobile guys who extend plays. And when you extend a play you extend yourself to more hits. Now do referees subconsciously give defenders a little slack against quarterbacks who move around a lot?

Clearly they do. But who can blame them?

Referees can’t go around throwing penalty flags on judgment call after judgment call throughout the entirety of NFL games. It would slow the game down and put the game in the hands of the referee. It’s far better to swallow the whistle on a judgment call than to blow it and risk calling something you didn’t see.

Thus, the only thing Vick is victim to is the competitive spirit that I’m sure he’s in favor of. If Vick were playing football in the neighborhood park, a hit that’s half a second late doesn’t get called, and he would call “foul” if somebody called out that late hit against him. Close, ticky-tack penalties are seen as cowardly and against the competitive spirit of the game, and it’s up to referees to maintain that competitive spirit, while keeping within in the blurred boundaries of the rues. And as much as I would rather see Vick on the field than off it, you can’t play quarterback the way he does and expect to be treated like the quarterback he is not.

The post "Zo Knows: Mike Vick Is Not a Victim" was originally published at TSW.

Football season is back!

How many times have you read that?

Hell, if you haven’t read it, you have definitely seen and heard it. Even the NFL is excited about football being back. For the first time in a long time, they have run a season opening marketing campaign that has some semblance of creativity to it—albeit, not much. If the commercial doesn’t do it for you, how about the opening week games we have to start the season?

The NFL schedule for this weekend’s slate of games includes the Atlanta Falcons and Chicago Bears, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens, the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Jets, and of course, the New Orleans Saints and the Super Bowl winning Green Bay Packers.

Sports would not be sports if it were just about the games though. The opening week of football marks the point when interns become full-timers, the inexperienced become experienced, the experienced hit a crossroads, and where crossroads spit out legends and busts.

So what storylines are we exploring in Week 1 and throughout the 2011 NFL schedule? That’s what we will cover in each and every edition of “Zo Knows Football Storylines.”

Is the being a black quarterback a moot point yet?

Cam Newton, starter. Michael Vick, starter. Josh Freeman, starter. Tarvaris Jackson, starter. Donovan McNabb, starter. Jason Campbell, starter. David Garrard was a starter a few hours before I started writing this article. If Vince Young hadn’t shown some troublesome signs, he would be a starter. And if JaMarcus Russell gave two, flying you-know-whats, perhaps he would have a home somewhere in the NFL.

I ran down that list of starting, black quarterbacks not to say that we have achieved some type of quota by having a little more than a handful of brothas calling the plays, but because it really hasn’t been a big deal–at least not to the general public. From what I can tell, the average black person isn’t talking about it either. Then again, generalization is a funny thing, because having more than a handful of starting black quarterbacks in the NFL is a big deal to me, and I think people should be talking about it.

Remember when everyone made a big deal out of how Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith were facing off in the Super Bowl, marking the first time that a black head coach had reached the final game and won it? Tons of analysts expressed (ironically, with little thought) that they would know we are in a good place in America when having two black coaches in the Super Bowl is no longer a big deal.

The problem with that is that it will always be a big deal. Barack Obama winning the Presidency in 2008 was a big deal, because he was the first guy to do it. And while the second guy who wins it in 2060 (and it will probably be that long before that happens again!) may garner less coverage, it will still be a big deal.

Why?

Because we, black people, are the minority—the underdog of the real world. And the underdog is always sexy. Has been that way in the NCAA Tournament for years, and it will be that way in the tournament, and in life, for years to come.

This, in a roundabout, stream of consciousness kind of way, brings me back to the black quarterback. As nice as it is that having all these black quarterbacks is not a big deal, I really wish it were. The black quarterback is the underdog of the NFL. Say what you will, but being a black quarterback is not a moot point. Nowadays, no one wants to hear that Warren Moon was forced to play in Canada back in 1979, because racism in the NFL was preventing him from playing his natural position, but that stuff still matters today. A white kid and a black kid can walk down the street holding hands now (in most cities that is), but that doesn’t mean we stop listening to the “I have a dream speech” or talking about race in America.

I would love to believe that time will make being a black quarterback an issue of the past, but that type of thinking is what has plagued this country for the last couple of decades. We see a problem eradicating itself, and we say “Okay, it’s fixed.” We saw controlled use of drugs in the 70’s, so we let it go, and then we got an onslaught of drugs in the 80’s. We saw man reach the moon in the previous generation, and now we’re essentially not in space anymore. We saw credit default swaps making people money, and then let them ruin our country. And we saw affirmative action put minorities in some powerful positions, and now the black population has been the hardest hit by the recession in terms of unemployment.

Again, I would love to see the issue of being a black quarterback become a moot point, but it won’t, and it probably shouldn’t. Just five or so years ago, McNabb’s race was used against him by a prominent voice in society. And as a fervent lover of Texas high school football, I know for a fact that young quarterbacks are being pushed away from the position. So let the black quarterback issue lie there if you want to, but it is far away from dying.

Is Kevin Kolb the great white hype?

God bless Andy Reid’s heart. If my real remarks wouldn’t come across as kiss-ass homerism, I would write an entire article about the genius of Andy Reid. The entire league is scouring high schools, alley ways, backyards and shooting ranges for a decent quarterback, and Reid has a quarterback tree in his office. Yet again, Reid has taken an undervalued commodity and turned it into first-rate trade bait.

It started with Donovan McNabb, a pick that some people in Philly thought was inspired by a bad eating on the part of Andy Reid.

There was A.J. Feeley, who Reid got a few good games out of then benched for the playoffs. Reid wounding getting a second round pick for him from Miami.

Then there was Jeff Garcia. He too benefited from Reid’s system, and he got a nice paycheck when he landed in Tampa Bay.

And now recently, Reid has taken both Vick and Kevin Kolb, on the cheap, and made one a top five salary earner, and the other got a $65 million contract with only a handful of games under his belt, while leaving the Eagles with a pick and player via trade.

However, neither Garcia nor Feeley worked out all that well in their next stops. And McNabb was not a success in Washington.

But why?Each of those quarterbacks was good enough to help the Eagles win games the season before he left. Was it the Eagles system? Has Andy Reid developed the Texas Tech offense of the NFL? Or is it the talent the Eagles surrounded the quarterbacks with? After all, the Eagles have always had solid offensive players either on the line or at the skill positions, if not both.

When you consider the fact that none of Reid’s castaways have faired that well, one would have to think that Kolb is being over hyped in Arizona.

But I ask again…why?

Slow down, you will be glad to know this has nothing to do with race, but it does have everything to do with expectations. Fact of the matter is that all of Andy Reid’s quarterbacks have excelled out of a foundation of low expectations. Even McNabb was booed on draft day, and nobody thought he would be the guy to lead the team for the next 10 years. So when Reid’s quarterbacks leave Philly and go on to teams that expect them to bring some legitimacy and stability to the quarterback position, every one, from McNabb to Garcia, has failed to live up to the expectations.

So what should I really expect of Kolb in Arizona? Ironically, the evidence suggests that if I want him to succeed, I sure as hell shouldn’t expect him to.

Does Michael Vick deserve redemption?

If you haven’t copped yourself a copy of ESPN the Magazine’s Michael Vick issue (and why would you have? Nobody reads magazines anymore), then you need to at least check it out on the web (like a normal person). In that issue, was an article detailing Vick’s stint in jail, and while I was reading it, I was overwhelmed by the question, “Does the rest of America think Michael Vick deserves redemption after experiencing all of this?”

I’m black.

And as we have seen with many a topic in society, black people, as with any historically oppressed culture in this country, do have a tendency to stick with each other, even on the most controversial of issues. We are king of like the Tea Party, only without the propensity to discriminate. For example, I was but a mere 10 years old when O.J. Simpson was accused of murder in 1994. Even then, barely aware of the fact that there was a reason there had never been a black president, I was rooted in the black culture enough to know that I was supposed to be on O.J. Simpson’s side. Why? Because everyone I knew—correction, every black person I knew (not that there is much of a difference between those two statements for a black kid growing up in a glorified ghetto)—didn’t think O.J. did it.

Now, almost 20 years and a decent education later, I know better than to go to the place where I am essentially rooting for a murderer. But even I, or at least some part of me, voted for Barack Obama because he was black, and didn’t think twice about it. (That doesn’t mean I don’t have some discretion, as Chris Rock infamously said, black people would not have elected Flavor Flav.)

I say all this, because as with O.J. Simpson, as with Kobe Bryant, as with Barry Bonds and as with Michael Vick, black people initially took the sides of their cultural brethren. It is what it is. And so when you go back to my original question, “Does the rest of America think that Vick deserves redemption?” all you have to do is look at poll after poll when Vick came out of jail to see that most black people approved of Vick and almost half of white people thought he should have been banned from the NFL.

That shit is crazy, right?

Same person, different voters, disparate results.

People always want to say that sports are beyond race, but not always. Poll results like the ones I generalized (and the major one in the Rasmussen Poll), tell us that your race correlates with a specific answer to the Vick question, “do you like him or not?” So what sports actually are is a meritocracy on the field, with a business and political system that creeps into the arena of play from time to time, if not everyday. Sports business and politics are sometimes why some people start and others don’t, and they are why some guys get paid and others are left for broke.

But in most cases, merit does win out in sports. It’s why despite nearly 50% of the dominant race in this country suggesting Vick should be banned from the NFL, Vick became just the third player in sports history to sign two $100 million contracts. As to whether the country at large thinks Vick deserves redemption after killing dogs, I’m not sure—I know the Eagles do though.

Should Hollywood have based “Moneyball” on Bill Belichick’s life?

It’s funny that some studio head decided to run a bunch of “Moneyball” commercials during the NFL season opener. Not because he won’t see the ROI he expects on that, but because of the irony. Here I am, watching the return of America’s greatest past time, as touchdowns are being thrown all over the place, bodies are being crushed and the play ends on a goal line stand at the 1-yard line after a pass interference call, and in between this sports spectacular, are commercials about a sport where in the infamous words of George Carlin, their game is “played on a diamond, in a park—the baseball park.”

Sorry, Hollywood,” but Billy Beane isn’t the quintessential sports leader. Yes, among elite sports circles, his work with the Oakland Athletics is all the rage. But in the real world, football rules and championships trump all. Beane is the general manager of a clubhouse that hasn’t won anything under his watch. Bill Belichick is the three-time Super Bowl winning head coach of a football squad. He’s the really “moneyballer,” not Billy Beane.

You all know, I am as geeky as the next guy when it comes to sports statistics, but I know when a guy deserves a movie and when a guy doesn’t, and Hollywood got it wrong here. Not that I’m saying that the all-knowing, say-nothing personality of Bill Belichick would make for a summer blockbuster, but at least his success on the field worth a movie—Billy Beane on the other hand; his success resides on “going home.” Not exactly the stuff legends, movies or legendary movies are made of.

The post "Zo Knows: Football Storylines – NFL Week 1" was originally published at TSW.

Michael Vick on the Cover of ESPN the Magazine - ESPN.com

On the front cover of the latest edition of ESPN the Magazine is Michael Vick. It’s yet another example of the media profiting off someone’s notoriety, but it is what the media does.

Standing there, tall, confident and with a stare that would make most people turn the other way, the image of Vick on the ESPN cover is that of a man on a mission. More importantly, however, is the fact that his image is on the cover. Damn the mission, if Mike Vick is allowed to be on the cover of a major magazine it is a sign that he is closer to being accepted by the masses.

But bigger than Vick’s redemption, is the revival of the Philadelphia Eagles. Once the NFC’s perennial favorite to win the Super Bowl, the Eagles went through a long-stretch in which the expectations were greater than the talent on the roster. Sure, Donovan McNabb was always there, but for most of that time, the receivers weren’t, and when they finally got there, the defense was gone.

Alas, the Eagles have talent. They brought in six former Pro Bowlers, and not just names from the past, but true NFL professionals who were significant contributors a year ago. Cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha was the biggest acquisition, and coincidentally enough, he fills a void that was likely the Eagles biggest weakness a season ago. With other new acquisitions on the defensive line, in the secondary and on the offensive side of the football, the Eagles finally seem to have the talent to match the city of Philadelphia’s expectations.

Yet, we know what happens when that becomes the case…

On a recent episode of “Pardon the Interruption,” Michael Wilbon fervently rejected the notion that the Eagles are the favorites in the NFC to reach the Super Bowl.

Paul Sokoloski of the Times Leader said the Eagles “dream” looks more like a nightmare.

John Gruden said the Eagles were not good enough to win 11 games and said the Dallas Cowboys would win at least 10.

The Associated Press, at no fault of their own, ran an article addressing the Eagles self-proclaimed attitude of Super Bowl or bust.

Ron Jaworski, a former Eagle himself and well-known Eagles homer, couldn’t bring himself to predict that the Eagles would win 11 games this season.

The BleacherReport.com, a popular vehicle for fan reaction, is full of articles suggesting that the Eagles are not as good as advertised.

And everyone’s favorite NFL football analyst, Kevin Durant, said Michael Vick is not a top 5 quarterback, while dozens of “actual” opiners cried overrated too.

But what else would expect from the media when a team goes out and gets the kind of talent that is associated with a Super Bowl winning team in a matter of 7 to 10 days?

Actually, you should know the answer to that, because we just saw it happen a year ago in the NBA. And much like that Miami Heat team, the Eagles do have the talent to accomplish much of the hype that is surrounding them. In fact, the Eagles are the favorite to come out of the NFC. It would be a disappointment if they did not win the NFC East. They better win 11 games in what most people believe will be another down year for the NFC East. And if Michael Vick is not a top five quarterback, somebody should tell that to last year’s MVP voters.

Again, nobody should be surprised when the hype does not match up with reality, or when the naysayers fail to do so either. But what’s happening here? Why are people bringing the Eagles down before they have done anything? More importantly, why is it that the same mediums that hyped up the Eagles are the ones that are slowly poking at the Eagles shield of armor they created?

Dare I say their name again?

What happened to the Miami Heat last year was a media miracle—one the media created themselves. The hype of “The Decision” across ESPN and other media outlets (ehemm, Larry King) helped turn a decision that has been made countless times in sports into one of the most anticipated events ever. And when his decision brought about a change of the guard in the NBA, the media was quick to anoint the Heat one of the best teams in the league. For example, ESPN covered and promoted the Heat’s start to training camp, something I have never seen at a national level since I began watching the NBA 20 years ago.

And with the media’s hoisting of Miami, fans turned on the Heat. After all, it was “Miami, Miami, Miami” 24/7, and people got sick of being told that their team has no chance. But smartly, the media took advantage of that too. After and while hyping up the Heat, the media quickly took to bringing them down. Analyst after analyst poked holes in the Heat’s talent, chemistry, coaching and execution. People blew up shoulder-bumping incidents, tears in the locker room and some people in the media even hinted at the fact that LeBron purposefully played horribly in the NBA Finals.

And what did all of that result in? Only one of the most watched NBA seasons in the history of the NBA. The only thing that could have made the season more watched would have been more eyeballs during the Finals, as the Dallas Mavericks aren’t exactly the league’s best draw. Still, never before did basketball games in October and November mean so much to fans of the NBA, and ESPN, ABC and TNT reaped the rewards via ratings highs all season long.

Enter the new Heat, the Philadelphia Eagles.

The quick acquisition of several Pro Bowlers made the Eagles one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl. Vince Young called the team a “dream team” (despite the fact he does not start), and the Eagles general manager essentially said Super Bowl or bust. However, there was no rush to hype up the Eagles as the future champions. Yeah, they are good, but the assembling of talent in the NFL does not correlate to winning championships like it does in basketball. In the NBA, there are dozens of champions we point back to and say there was a key pre-season or mid-season trade that helped them win the title. But in the NFL, I dare you to find more than a handful of teams that won the Super Bowl as a result of a trade that occurred a few weeks before the start of the season or during the season. You can’t do it.

But after a short while, maybe a few days, of talking about the Eagles talent, you saw the pressure amount. Young’s and the GM’s statements did not help matters, but all of a sudden, the Eagles were looked at as an all-star team, a team with too much talent and a team trying to buy a championship. Essentially, they became the Heat. The only difference is that the Eagles are not nearly as talented as the Heat were.

Thus, what we have here is a strawman situation. Again, you know and I know that trades and free agent acquisitions rarely amount to Super Bowls in the NFL, and nobody is expected to win the Super Bowl on the basis of a few moves. Favorites? Maybe. Contenders? More accurate. But are the Eagles realistically expected to win the Super Bowl in the same fashion that the Heat were expected to win the NBA Finals? Brotha please!

But the media has found Moby Dick. They have their white whale, and they will not let it go. They saw what a team “destined” to win it all can do to a fan base, and they want to get the same result out of the Eagles. If the media can hold up the Eagles as a team trying to buy a championship and then express the viewpoint of the fans that buying a championship is wrong, they can get that same backlash they got for the Heat that turned into big ratings. It’s a beautiful ploy, as many media outlets, bosses and personalities made money and big names for themselves off the backs of the Heat and the fan hatred spewed their way.

I do not blame the media for doing this, because first of all, it is sports, and sport was designed to be two things: fun and profitable. So you won’t hear me blaming the media for taking advantage of my favorite team—it’s what they do.

But the media should do so at their own peril, because this strategy will not yield the same results it did when it was applied to the Heat.

First of all, the Eagles are strawman. The Heat actually had about a 33% shot at winning the championship—the Eagles odds are far below that. The Eagles are but a strawman. Nobody really believes they have definitively built a championship team, but the media wants you to believe that’s what the Eagles have done while turning around to say the Eagles will not succeed in doing so. It’s like when politicians argue in favor of assisting the less unfortunate in their search for jobs and those opposing it say, “you can’t give handouts to the poor,” when nobody was talking about handouts in the first place—just job assistance. It suffices to say, the media wants you to believe that everyone has the Eagles winning the championship, when in actuality, nobody actually believes they have successfully bought the best team in football.

Second of all, there is no sex appeal with the Eagles as there was with the Miami Heat. The Heat had Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, the coolest President in the history of sports, and they play in Miami, a city that’s home to beautiful women, beaches, the Cocaine Cowboys and cruises. That is a very sexy scenario, one that could gather eyeballs from both sides of the isle. The Eagles, on the other hand, have one oft-talked about player, and the team plays in a city known for brotherly love, blue-collar workers and fattening cheesesteaks. That is not exactly must-see television.

Last but not least, as oft-talked about as Michael Vick is, he is no LeBron James. Maybe once upon a time he was. For instance, when Vick went into Green Bay and beat Brett Favre in the NFC Playoffs, that was probably as defining a moment for him as LeBron’s 29 of 30 to beat Detroit in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. But in all reality, Vick has failed to live up to those expectations since that moment, while LeBron James has won 2 MVPs has been the best player in basketball for at least the last four seasons. And for the media to successfully make the Eagles a villain that everybody should root against, they would have to give it a face. For the Heat, it was easy, LeBron James was the best player in the NBA, and he seemingly colluded to win a championship. But with Vick, he was in Philly prior to this media hoopla, and most everyone that came to Philadelphia was either through trade or through a very competitive free agent search. There was no hint collusion involved on the part of Michael Vick.

Besides, the media does not know what to do with Vick. He was a dog killer, and yet he has made a comeback—and America loves a comeback. Now Vick is being featured in likes of ESPN and GQ magazines. So on one hand, the media could profit off a nationwide, Yankees-like disdain for the Eagles, but they could also profit off of the love of the Mike Vick redemption story. It’s a catch 22 that wasn’t apparent in Miami, making it hard for me to believe the media can pull off this strawman argument. They will try though. Because doing so successfully means big ratings. And if big ratings come at the cost of Vick or the Eagles public adoration, so be it. It’s what the media does, and I think I am okay with it.

The post "Zo Knows: Eagles Are Good, But Don’t Make Them a Strawman" was originally published at TSW.

When I say to you that the caddy has little to do with how well a golfer performs, I don’t suppose that what would then arise from your head is a fiery smoke, produced by the raging inferno churning deep within your brain as you try to process how on earth I could possibly insult the righteousness of the caddy profession like that.

Glad we can agree on that.

However, if I were to suggest that the manager of a major league baseball team had just about as much to do with his team winning as a caddy does, you probably would be a little bit upset.

If I took it a step farther and said that an NBA coach is no more to his team than Steve Williams was to Tiger Woods, that too might inspire you to confront me.

And if I even dared suggest that a purveyor of America’s pastime, a head coach of NFL football, was nothing more than the football equivalent of a guy who carries around a bag all day, you might be enraged enough to hurt me.

Before you go too crazy with that 2×4, let me assure that is not “exactly” what I think of the “coaching” profession. But I will assert that there is little more to coaching than there is to what the caddy does. And no matter what your retort is, I can almost assuredly connect something a head coach of a professional sports team does to that of what a caddy does in golf.

A caddy gives advice to his golfer. A head coach advises his players.

A caddy helps pick the tools the golfer will use in the act. A coach chooses the overall equipment requirements of his team—within the overall regulations of the league, of course.

A caddy tells the golfer where to hit the ball. A coach tells a player where to hit, throw or shoot the ball.

A coach chooses the play, but sometimes the player audibles out of it. A caddy defines the best route for a putt, and a golfer sometimes overturns the caddy.

The only real differences between a caddy and a head coach are the fact that a head coach is given institutional control and the head coach is responsible for more than one player.

Those are the only two things that separate the caddy profession from the head coaching profession. Well, that and the whole “carry my bags” thing.

Yet, with those mere two differences, we as a public are immediately ready to castigate the very person who suggest that the a coach is nothing more than an overpowering caddy with at least two players dumb enough to listen to him. And it’s those two differences that allowed us to go to town on Steve Williams, Woods’ former caddy, when dare suggested that he was the impetus behind Tiger’s and Adam Scott’s success. However, when a head coach is given all the glory in the world, we say nothing. In the wake of three Super Bowls in four years, we gave Bill Belichick lifetime immunity from football criticism, skepticism and maybe even a rule or two (i.e., “Spygate”).

Despite the only difference between Williams and Belichick is that Belichick has to manage a group of players and he actually calls the plays. But in every other way, they are the same. When Belichick was designing the game plan, Williams is out reading the greens. When Belichick was working one-on-one with Tom Brady, Williams was out measuring Tiger’s distance with the 3 iron. When Belichick was calling plays, Williams was calling shots. When Steve Williams won tournaments, it was coincidentally with one of the best golfers in the history of the world. When Belichick win Super Bowls, it was coincidentally with one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the world. We don’t get off this merry go-round of similarities until we get to the point where Tiger Woods fires Steve Williams in a situation where Belichick makes Tom Brady take a pay cut.

So I guess the question is, if we as a society, myself included, are going to have such disdain for the caddy vs. coach comparison, what are we putting value in? Is it the managerial role that coaches are granted by the organization? Is that the value? That really isn’t a skill so much as an earned privilege. Sure, you have to be a good manager in order to maintain such control over multiple people, but how much do we think that lends to the winning of football, basketball and baseball games? Sure, you can’t have the inmates running the asylum and win a Super Bowl, but you can be darn to close to it. Just ask the 90’s Cowboys, the 80’s Bears or the 70’s Steelers. With a history of anarchy succeeding like that in the sanctity that is the National Football League, I’m not sure I can grand the coach so much respect for being given control of something as a means to win football games.

I will say that being in charge of designing an offense, shuffling players around and implementing strategy is a skill set becoming of winning coaches, and it may fall into line with being the manager, but doesn’t a caddy strategize for a course in the same way?

I’m not sure I can buy the “manager” argument that puts the coach ahead of the caddy, so maybe it’s the institutional control. Coaches aren’t in charge of just players, but the strategy, implementation of strategy and the execution of it. We blame coaches when a play doesn’t work. We don’t blame a caddy when a swing doesn’t go through. We blame Belichick when he goes for it on 4th down and loses the game, but we don’t blame Steve Williams when Tiger tries to get to the green ahead of regulation and the ball lands in the water. For some reason, when the athletes fail in team sports, we feel as if the coach’s organization of multiple players caused the poor result, not the players themselves. And that my friend is the difference.

That’s the difference we see between coaches and caddies that we can’t let go of. The caddy has no blame, and with that he gets no reward. We can’t celebrate Steve Williams when he is on the winning team with Adam Scott, because we wouldn’t massacre him, or even know if we should, had he cost Scott the win with one of his “suggestions.” It’s a matter of risk-reward. The head coach puts his neck out there, and if he fails, fans chop it off. If he wins, he’s hoisted as the all-knowing leader of athletes.

Fact is though; coaches neutralize each other, whereas caddies can’t. A bad coach on one team increases the odds of success for a good coach on the other. The good coach comes out looking as if he has more of an impact than he did, because his suggestions are directly pitted against the suggestions of the opposing, but worse off, head coach on the side of the field. A caddy’s suggestions are not weighed directly against another’s, only against an index score that can’t fight back. So when a caddy has a better suggestion than the other caddy, we can extricate the suggestion from one point to another and say he out-suggested the other golfer’s caddy. But with a coach, it’s right there on film. Belichick calls a screen against your blitz, and I can tell you why Belichick is the better coach.

But inherently, institutional control and direct competition aside, the jobs of a coach and a caddy are the same—or at least they have a similar effect on the outcome of their respective sports. Personally, and perhaps to fault and in spite of my own argument, I will continue to prop up the NFL coach for the “nuance” involved in designing plays that work and putting 11 people in a position to win against schemes that can beat a superiorly athletic team.

However, when you start going down the line to basketball, soccer, hockey coaches and baseball coaches, it’s hard not see the delineation from caddy to coach. Very hard indeed.

The post "Coach v. Caddy: Is Steve Williams the Belichick of the PGA?" was originally published at TSW.

I have reached a certain point in my life. I now know what it’s like to see a generation of quarterbacks grow old before my very own eyes.

First it was Kurt Warner retiring. Donovan McNabb to Minnesota. Matt Hasselbeck to the Titans. Favre to Philly. And now Carson Palmer retiring?

The boy wonders have gotten old. And now they are steady hanging on to their careers as desperate coaches try to hang on to their jobs. The game of football is a hard thing to let go of, especially when you play the position of quarterback.

The quarterback is the most glorious position in all of sports. From pee-wee football to the pros, nobody on the field is more recognized or more celebrated than the quarterback, and ESPN’s homage to the “Year of the Quarterback” is proof-positive of that. As we speak, ESPN is planning all kinds of interviews, television specials, insider reports and in-depth statistics on the quarterback position.

And that’s why those guys can’t let go. That’s why Brett Favre would rather hang on one year too long than go out on top. What’s one bad year on the field for another season full of adoration, adulation and congratulations? People depend on quarterbacks for their success, their financial livelihood and sometimes their sanity. Even a non-household name like Matt Hasselbeck got treated like the prom queen of the NFL when the Titans were in pursuit of him. Hell, even an unknown name like his quarterbacking brother, Tim Hasselbeck, is married to the prom queen of morning talk, Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

So when that dependence and adulation seems to be in jeopardy, who could blame these guys for wanting to hang on? I don’t, because they should try to hold to every bit of it they can for as long as they can. Because once it’s over, it’s over.

What I don’t understand is the preponderance of football teams keeping these guys around. Personally, Donovan McNabb may be my favorite player of all-time, but considering what he did last season, I have no idea why the Minnesota Vikings would consider bringing him in for $6 or $7 million. It just seems ridiculous; especially since I’m not sure McNabb should even be guaranteed starter status on a team that has Joe Webb and the 12th overall selection from this year’s draft at the same position. Was I the only one that saw McNabb play last year? That’s not to say he can’t be better in 2011, especially in a system he is more familiar with, but I wouldn’t bet six million dollars on it either.

And then there’s talk about Brett Favre backing up Michael Vick in Philadelphia. Am in the twilight zone? That is ridiculous. As if the Eagles need any more fodder on their team with an ex-con at the helm, they are going to bring in the penis-text-messaging king that could barely walk off the field in his last game as the backup quarterback. There’s something to be said for having an experienced veteran as your backup QB, but it’s a whole other thing if you are not sure whether he has 0 or 1 good ankle.

Don’t even get me started with Matt Hasselbeck being deemed the savior in Tennessee. Hasselbeck hasn’t had a good game as a quarterback in half a decade. Okay, that’s a stretch. But he didn’t throw for three touchdowns in all of his 14 games last season, and he had just two 300-yard passing games in 14 outings. The season before that he threw 17 touchdowns and 17 interceptions for the 5-11 Seattle Seahawks. And in 2008, Hasselbeck played in just 7 games while throwing 10 interceptions and only 5 touchdown passes. Yeah, good luck with that, Titans.

Then there’s Carson Palmer, who’s starting to confuse himself with Brett Favre. If Palmer thinks he’s in a position to force himself off a team, he’s got another thought coming. The Cincinnati Bengals traded Chad Johnson before they were willing to trade their threatening-to-retire quarterback, and I imagine they aren’t moving away from that stance. Perhaps if Palmer had the charisma, charm, popularity, or better yet, the success of a Brett Favre, he could win the public relations war and get himself on another team. Unfortunately, nobody cares that Palmer is retiring—not his fans, not fans of other teams without quarterbacks, and the front office of the team he plays for doesn’t seem to care either. It’s actually quite amazing that a guy who had Chad Johnson, Terrell Owens and Cedric Benson on his team managed to throw for just 26 touchdowns and 20 interceptions thinks he’s in a position to say my way or the highway. At least Brett Favre had a Super Bowl ring and was coming off a really good season when he pulled his act in Green Bay. Palmer is about as valuable as a Billy Ripken baseball card. There is no room for him to be making demands.

But again, who can blame him for trying? Who can blame any of those quarterbacks for believing they have what it takes to keep making a difference in the NFL? Every single one of those quarterbacks was an MVP candidate at some point in their career, and they all were loved and recruited by half the league at another point in time. Sadly, that time has come and gone. From Brett to Palmer, the show is over. A generation of quarterbacks is disappearing before my eyes. There’s still Peyton Manning. There’s still Tom Brady. But that’s about it. The future of the quarterback position is upon us, and most fans recognize it. Some time will have to pass before the aforementioned signal callers recognize it, but like me, they too will reach a certain point in their lives when the inevitable is unmistakable.

The post "Zo Knows: Old Quarterbacks Die Hard" was originally published at TSW.

One of the reasons for this year’s NFL lockout is that football players are some of the most expendable athletes there are in all of professional sports. They may be the toughest, fastest, most athletic athletes there are in sports, but just about every player can be replaced without changing the way you or I enjoy watching the game of football.

That said, there are still some players that are quite indispensable. Peyton Manning really can’t be replaced. It does the Tennessee Titans no good to get rid of Chris Johnson. Losing Troy Polamalu would change the entire structure of the Pittsburgh Steelers defense. And as the San Diego Chargers found out last season, letting Vincent Jackson sit out the season kept their team out of the playoffs in what is a very, weak, weak division.

On the flip side of that, there are several players out there that are very expendable—and I’m not just talking about the 51st guy on the roster. I’m talking about bona fide starters and guys with names that every ardent NFL football fan has heard of. Many of these guys are going to find out just how expendable they are once this lockout is over and free agency turns into a game of musical chairs. So without further adieu, here are the NFL’s ten most expendable players as we enter into the 2011 NFL season.

Tony Gonzalez, TE, Atlanta Falcons
There’s no question, that in the history or tight ends, Tony Gonzalez might be the least replaceable guy in the annals of American football. However, Tony is old now. Very old. And his ability to get open and change the game as a receiver has made him very expendable as of late. With just 70 receptions, 656 receiving yards and 6 touchdowns, Gonzalez isn’t just expendable to the Falcons, he’s expendable in fantasy football leagues across America! The fact that he was never the best blocker in the world doesn’t help him cause. Tony just better hope the Falcons can’t pick up a healthy Todd Heap or something like that on the free agent market, or else he could see his playing time, or worse yet—his roster spot, become something of the past.

Kevin Kolb, QB, Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles backup quarterback has a lot of value on the trade market right now, and so he’s probably one of the more obviously expendable players in the league right now. With Michael Vick as the Eagles starter, Andy Reid knows that he can’t invest too much time and money into a guy who is not the future of the team right now. Sure, Vick is an injury-case waiting to happen, but a solid backup quarterback (ehemm, Brett Favre) is not a hard thing to find—especially for a guy like Reid, who makes solid backups out of ant hills on a yearly basis.

Reggie Bush, RB, New Orleans Saints
Reggie Bush was a star at USC, but he has been everything but since entering the NFL. He’s not the best runner on his team—hell, he isn’t one of the five best runners on the team. As a receiver out of the backfield, he’s great, but he’s no threat to run the ball (just 4.2 yards per carry on 36 attempts last year), then teams don’t account for his rushing ability and his receiving skills are accounted for by the opposing defense. Let’s face it; as long as the Saints can sign a running back—any running back—there’s no chance that Reggie Bush is getting that $12 million salary on his current contract, and he will be cut or that contract will be restructured to reflect his true value once free agency begins after the lockout is over.

Jermichael Finley, TE, Green Bay Packers
At its roots, the term expendable means I don’t need you to do what I do. Well, the Green Bay Packers job is to win football games, and that they did last season—all the way to the Super Bowl. They did it without Finley too, who was on the IR during the Packers run to the championship. In that time, the Packers found a worthwhile tight end in Donald Lee, who essentially did everything quarterback Aaron Rodgers asked of him. That begs the question, who was making Finley look so good prior to the injury? Was it Finley’s talents or Rodgers’ arm? Maybe it was a little bit of both, but the latter certainly found a way to compensate without Finley when he wasn’t just expendable, but nonexistent during the Packers championship season.

Nick Barnett, LB, Green Bay Packers
See “Jermichael Finley.”

Ricky Williams, RB, Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins actually have a need at running back. As good as Williams and Ronnie Brown have been in the past, they are no longer dependable for 16 games, especially behind a non-veteran offensive line. Williams will likely get the door during free agency, as the Dolphins seek to get a younger, more explosive backfield.

Roy Williams, WR, Dallas Cowboys
Roy Williams is one of the highest paid receivers in the NFL, and yet he’s one of the worst. He’s not even the second best wide receiver on the team, and he was slated to be the first when he was initially traded for a couple of seasons ago. Now the Dallas Cowboys are struggling to get back under the newly proposed cap after a season without one. It’s very likely that Roy-boy is sent packing if the Cowboys have a hard time restructuring his or other players’ contracts.

Kyle Orton, QB, Denver Broncos
Kyle Orton has put up the yardage in Denver, but unfortunately, he may become a victim of young-person potential. The Broncos were moving the ball early last season, but they weren’t winning games. And with a new regime in place, who wants to go with the old quarterback who can’t win? That makes Tim Tebow the likely starter in Denver this season, and it makes Orton a casualty of Tebow’s potential. He may or may not get cut, but he’s not leading that team out of the locker room in NFL Week 1.

Dallas Clark, TE, Indianapolis Colts
Again, we face the question of, “who’s making the player?” The player himself or the all-world quarterback? Peyton Manning has made many a receiver look like a Pro Bowler in his day, but some guys never get attached with that label. We all just assume that Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison were good receivers all along, they just happen to play with Manning. We also make the same assumption of Dallas Clark. But can we be sure that’s the case—especially with Clark? When Clark went down last season, Jacob Tamme looked like the reincarnation of Ben Coates after being an unheard of entity the year before. That leads me to believe that anybody can play tight end in the Colts system, and if I were Clark this season, I’d do my best to show I was worthy of keeping around—because I’m not 100% sure that he is.

Casey Hampton, NT, Pittsburgh Steelers
Last but not least is one of our generation’s best nose tackles. He never got a lot of credit or publicity, because of the nature of his position, but Casey Hampton was one of the best that ever did it. Keyword: “was.” Bless his soul, but Hampton isn’t what he used to be. In 15 games last season, Hampton had just 20 tackles and a sack. To put that in perspective, he had more than twice as many tackles and sacks a season ago. At 33 years old, it’s natural that Hampton is on the decline. But being on the decline makes you more expendable, and the Steelers would be better off getting a younger, more athletic player to take some snaps away from Hampton during the 2011 NFL football season.

The post "The NFL’s Ten Most Expendable Players – 2011" was originally published at TSW.

Miami Herald’s Dan LeBatard has said it over and over about his hometown fans lucky acquiring of the Big Three: “Miami doesn’t deserve this.”

And Dan is right. The city of Miami didn’t deserve to get three of the NBA’s best 15 players. They are a fan base that shows up late, if not infrequently to games. The town itself is not inclined to celebrate, love or appreciate basketball. And the fans would much rather spend their time on South Beach at a party then at American Airlines Arena—and you know what? So would I!

Of all the fan bases in America, Miamians are among the least deserving of a basketball franchise’s instant rise to relevance. And Americans are just as non-deserving of a World Cup winning Women’s Soccer team.

Hell, Americans aren’t deserving of a World Cup-winning soccer team of any gender! We don’t love soccer. We don’t appreciate soccer. And that’s why I don’t feel sorry for the country or myself after watching our women’s team lose to Japan on penalty kicks in the World Cup final.

Sure, at the end of the day, who’s deserving of anything when it comes to the bird’s eye-view relevance of sports? But relative to the support, care and energy other nations put into their soccer teams, Americans are lucky if we deserve to even be in the tournament—never mind win it.

Now, the earnest soccer fan may disagree with me, and rightfully so. After all, he or she as an individual certainly deserves a championship-caliber soccer team if they put forth the kind of passion and energy other top soccer nations do. However, as with the game of soccer, being a fan is a team sport. In the NFL, if your city doesn’t collectively come together to support the team at the stadium with its dollars, you don’t get to watch the game on television. In college basketball arenas across the nation, it’s practically against the law to sit down before the home team scores. And in baseball, if the road team hits a game-defining homerun into the stands, you better throw that damn ball back on to the field and join your fellow fans in booing the home team.

That same team-mentality is required of US soccer fans if they really want to deserve a championship. If Americans want to feel entitled (and we love being entitled!) to a great team every World Cup, every year and every game, then we need to put the same kind of energy into soccer that we put into the NBA and NFL.

Of course, we have been trying to do that for years in America. I actually grew up playing soccer. Among all the organized sports I wound up playing during my childhood, soccer was my first and possibly my best. I love soccer. Or at least I used to. The second I made my Varsity football team in high school and saw the fun, excitement and athletes involved in the sport of football, I abandoned soccer like an open bar that suddenly starts charging for liquor.

So perhaps I do not even deserve to see the USA Women’s team win a soccer championship. Don’t get me wrong, the women on the team deserve to win. They put in the time, energy and effort that’s required of them to do so. But as fans, Americans do not deserve soccer success. We just started paying attention to women’s soccer five minutes ago, and all of a sudden the entire country jumped on the bandwagon—myself included. But bandwagoners do not deserve medals, championships and world bragging rights. That belongs to the faithful, like the Brazilians, the Germans and apparently, the Japanese.

Some of you may view this as treason. Here I am, a “so-called” American, telling the world that America didn’t deserve to see its country’s team win, and you think I’m being un-American in doing so. But you only think that because we were so close. Had we been eliminated two weeks ago, or if we didn’t make the tournament, you wouldn’t even read this article. And that’s understandable, because we don’t really care about soccer, men’s or women’s, in this country.

Now we can get to a point where we do deserve soccer glory. We can start watching soccer on prime time television, going to MLS games and buying Landon Donovan’s jersey instead of Donovan McNabb’s. But until we get there, I will continue to say that we don’t deserve the women’s soccer team we have, never mind the one that won the World Cup in 1999. I wish, hope and even pray we will win despite our lack of allegiance, but as with any other aspect of life, I expect nothing I have yet to earn.

The post "Women’s World Cup: Truth Be Told, We Didn’t Deserve It" was originally published at TSW.

I am not unlike most of you out there, women included, when I say that I was not all that drawn in by the Women’s World Cup when it initially began. I know that the immediate accusation against me admitting that is that I have a sexist agenda, and that I am not giving the same chance to female soccer players that I give to male soccer players.

Let me assure you, however, that I am anything but sexist. My lack of initial interest in women’s soccer has nothing to do with the fact that women are in the game, but only with the fact that the best people in the world are not.

It’s an issue of athletic talent, not a player’s gender.

It’s more or less the same reason most sports fans don’t watch women’s basketball. Same game, same sport, and same consequences as men’s basketball, only instead of dunking, there are a lot more jump shots, and dominate players stand out more than Dennis Rodman at a Baptizing ceremony. To put it simply, the lower standard athleticism makes watching women’s soccer less interesting.

However, after USA’s win over Brazil today, athleticism matters no more.

Today, women’s soccer quite possibly gave us the game of the year. They beat the heavily favored Brazilian Women’s soccer team in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, and they did it in about as dramatic a fashion as one can dream up.

First, the US took the initial 1-0 lead on an “own goal” by Brazil. Then the U.S. gave up a goal to Brazil on the second attempt of a penalty kick in regulation. The game would go into extra time, where Brazil caught the US looking for the referees and scored a goal from inside the goalie’s box. But the US women’s soccer team responded with a beautiful cross into the box, where Abby Wambach headed the soccer ball into the net, which tied the game in what was the latest goal ever scored in the history of the World Cup.

In penalty kicks, the US made all five of their kicks, and USA’s namesake, Hope Solo, performed a solo act; blocking one of Brazil’s penalty kicks to give USA the win.

Oh, and did I mention that the US was down a man after Brazil’s first goal?

This was an absolutely amazing game. It was full of physicality, skill and will power. Of course, having grown up around female athletes, I never doubted that any of those traits existed in women’s sports. What I doubted was the exemplary play late in the game and the incredible circumstances surrounding the game. Admittedly, those are not things that are indicative of male sports alone, but rarely do we see games of this magnitude play out like this in female sports. Usually, the better team wins in convincing fashion because of a sheer difference in talent, which is rarely the situation in male sports.

But not today.

Today, U.S. Women’s soccer did more than advance to the semi-finals of the World Cup; they advanced the sport of women’s soccer, and soccer in general, in this nation.

So you can rest assure that I won’t be chilling at Hudson River Café the next time this team takes the field in a meaningful game. I will be watching Wambach, Solo and the rest do their thing for the rest of this World Cup and World Cups of the future. Granted, it’s unlikely we will see one of the three remaining games play out the way it did between USA and Brazil, but at least now I know it’s a possibility.

The post "Zo Knows: Women’s Soccer Is Worth Watching" was originally published at TSW.

Can you feel it?

It’s the sound of pads. It’s the smell of barbeque at a tailgate. It’s the sight of collisions. Hell, it’s the sound of another diva wide receiver complaining about not getting enough passes thrown to him.

All of that is the feeling of football in the air. Even though September seems far, far away and both sides of the labor negotiations are even farther apart, football is still the next “interesting” sport on the docket, and you know you can’t wait for it!

However, before you enter the 2011 NFL Season with the same approach you took to the last one, why not take a minute to reevaluate your perception of the league?

Last year, we entered the season with Drew Brees as the Super Bowl champion and Peyton Manning as the runner-up. Both of their respective teams had little running game and depended on their quarterbacks a great deal. And by the end of the last football season, the four finalists for the Lombardi trophy were all teams with big-arm quarterbacks, such as Jay Cutler, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger and Mark Sanchez.

Now, I would be a fool to sit here and say that the majority of football watchers don’t already know that football is a quarterback’s league. There’s really little doubt about that anymore. However, while we recognize the importance of the passing game, I fear that we are not recognizing the importance of great wide receiver.

If you want to win in this league, the whole “conglomeration” of wide receivers just is not working anymore. You have to have a true #1 wide receiver or two really good #2-wideouts that cannot be defended by most of the NFL’s cornerbacks. Don’t believe me? The proof is in the pudding.

Take last year for example. Remember the four finalists I just mentioned? Well, which of those quarterbacks advanced? That’s right; Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger. Which two quarterbacks had at least one wide receiver that they could consistently depend on getting open or drawing the double team? You said it! Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger.

With Rodgers throwing to Greg Jennings and Big Ben throwing to either Mike Wallace or Hines Ward, those two quarterbacks were never at a loss for options. Truth be told, neither of those wide receivers had excellent games in the final two matches of the season, but that’s because defenses were too busy taking them out of the game plan.

Greg Jennings didn’t do squat in the Super Bowl, but Jordy Nelson was open like a mug because of the all the double teams Jennings was drawing against a weak Pittsburgh Steelers defense.

And while Mike Wallace had a good effort in the Super Bowl, his team lost that game and he had just six yards in the AFC Championship Game prior to it. Who stepped up in his place though? Well, actually it was the running game, but that was in part because the Jets did not want to leave Mike Wallace one-on-one, not even with their collection of quarterbacks.

As important as quarterbacks have become in the NFL, wide receivers are almost of the same importance. People say Peyton Manning can make any wide receiver into the 2004 version of Brandon Stokley, but the minute Reggie Wayne had a bad start to the season and Dallas Clark got hurt, the Colts passing game looked egregious and people were questioning whether Manning was on the decline.

And don’t forget how old Brett Favre looked when there was no Sidney Rice or a healthy Percy Harvin to chuck the ball to down the field. Injuries to wide receivers forced one of the game’s most heralded quarterbacks off the field and out of the league.

The importance of the wide receiver is why I stressed that the Green Bay Packers get Rodgers some help the day after he won the Super Bowl. Greg Jennings is a true #1, but even with him on the squad, the rest of the lackluster and injury-riddled receiving core of the Packers almost cost that team several playoff games.

Besides, the days of building your organization around defense and an offensive line are far behind us. The Packers just won a Super Bowl without much of either, and the Saints accomplished the same task the year before. If you want to win, invest in the passing game in this league—for the foreseeable future, wide receivers are the hot stock on the market that is NFL football. Like it or not, there’s a reason those wide receivers act like divas that control the league; it’s because on the field, they kind of do.

The post "It’s a Wide Receiver’s World" was originally published at TSW.

Whew! I didn’t think I would have to ask myself this question for a very, very long time. At most, I thought I would ask the general sports-viewing audience, and even then, I didn’t think many more people needed any persuading. But all of a sudden, I too, am no longer sure whether or not LeBron James is the best player in the NBA.

Issues with LeBron’s off-court actions and statements aside, when James entered the 2011 NBA Finals, he was the best player in the NBA. There’s very little wiggle-room with that statement. He was the most efficient offensive player in the NBA this season. He was the best perimeter defender in the NBA this season. And did I mention he was the two-time reigning MVP?

But what a difference six games make!

I know the NBA Finals is a small sample size, but it’s the most imperative sample size. Not to mention, while it’s convenient to call a series a small sample size, I and many others, have always contended that seven games is enough to determine the better team—so why wouldn’t it be enough to determine the better players?

That’s not to say that Dirk Nowitzki is better than LeBron James, but for six games he was, and if that’s capable of happening, that says something about LeBron James.

The other amazing thing about LeBron and these past NBA Finals is that he was horrible in the fourth quarter. Stats be damned, he looked like a guy who wanted no part of the basketball in the determining minutes of the game. As many people say, the first three quarters count as much as the last one, but that’s on the scoreboard, not on the stat sheet.

You can score crapola in the first three quarters, but if you make just 10 points in the fourth quarter (ala Dirk Nowitzki), then you’re the Finals MVP.

Hell, I can even take it a step farther than that. If you make the final go-ahead shot of the game, and those points are your first points, you’re still the person everyone talks about; ala Steve Kerr, who’s still riding the success of that final shot.

Sorry to say it, but great players have to be great at great moments. When it comes to measuring stature, ability and performance, what you do in crunch time is far more important than what you do when the game is not on the line. And that’s not specific to basketball, it’s specific to life. Do you have any idea how many “A” students go on to become paper-pushers in life? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but C students like George Bush Jr. (not the greatest politician ever) are running the country because he came up big in the moments leading up to the election.

But I digress.

I could sit here and give you stat after stat to prove that no player in the NBA is as productive and efficient at the game of basketball as LeBron James is. Over the past two seasons, only Dwight Howard even compares. Shot-for-shot, pass-for-pass and defensive possession for defensive possession, LeBron James gets it done collectively better than anybody in the game.

However, when LeBron’s efficiency suddenly fades in the greatest moment of the greatest stage of the greatest season of his life, can I still call the NBA’s most efficient player the best player?

I don’t think I can.

Michael Jordan isn’t Michael Jordan without the Finals performances. Magic Johnson isn’t Magic Johnson without them either. Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, even Big Shot Chauncey Billups are nobodies if they don’t dominate the NBA Finals the way they did. So while I could sit here and be the big, boring stat guy who is out to prove that LeBron is still the best player in the NBA, I’m not going to do that today. I need time to reflect. Time to decide just how much the fourth quarter, the NBA Finals and the ability to win championships really factors into a player’s productivity.

I will tell you one thing; those who say players do not need rings to validate their careers, I’m rejecting your theory out of the blocks. In a game where one player can control so much about the outcome, and in a game where anybody who has even been considered the greatest has won at least one championship, I have to put weight on winning championships. How much weight that is remains to be seen. I just know winning weighs enough to knock LeBron James off the top of my top list.

The post "Is LeBron James the Best Player in the NBA?" was originally published at TSW.

Many of you have accused me of playing both sides. When the 2011 NBA season started, I said that the Miami Heat didn’t need “heart” to win the NBA Championship. When the NBA Finals began, I picked the Heat to win in six. When the Dallas Mavericks took the NBA Finals in six games, I said that I was rooting for the Mavericks to win all along.
First of all, I hope it’s clear that those aren’t two mutually exclusive positions. Second of all, if I have not been clear, let me say it loud and proud: “I was wrong, America.”

While all of you were predicting that the Miami Heat would lose against the Boston Celtics, then again against the Chicago Bulls, I was picking the Heat to win it all. You all finally got it right when it came to the Finals, and I finally got it wrong when it came to the Finals. The way this thing winds up playing out is that the Dallas Mavericks were the better cohesive unit that played like the proverbial “team,” and the Heat were a lesser composition of talented individuals that did not fit or play well together.

As you know, as much as I understand the notion that teams need chemistry and experience in order to be champions, I never thought it trumped talent. The great John Wooden once said, give me talent over experience any day. And there’s a reason for that. I can teach the things that come with experience, but I can’t teach height, I can’t teach speed and I can’t teach vertical jump.

But when the Mavericks ousted the Miami Heat from the proverbial pedestal, it was a victory for the people who believe in the fact that talent does not wholly trump anything and everything. Granted, it was something that became clear to me when I was in college and during a two-a-day practice on the Columbia football fields, I was confronted with the news that USA Basketball did not win the Gold Medal. There was no doubt in my mind that the USA basketball team had the most talented group of players in the 2004 Olympics, and yet they lost?

It was clear then that chemistry, fit and personalities mattered—to some degree.

However, I thought time together as a group could heal that whole “chemistry” thing, and the 2008 Olympic team proved me right. Again, the USA put together the most talented team, and this time around, they practiced, ran offense and played defense. The other teams played a more inclusive, “team-oriented” brand of European basketball, but the USA had talent, and finally, time on their side. The result? USA won the gold.

Enter the Big Three of the Miami Heat. They certainly got the talent. They came into the 2010-2011 NBA Season with 2 of the NBA’s best 4 players and Chris Bosh. They also signed two well-sought after free agents in Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem. With the latter group sidelined for most of the season, the Big Three still managed to secure one of the best records in the NBA and needed only 15 games to reach to the NBA Finals.

To that point, talent was winning out. Talent beat a Philadelphia 76ers team that while overmatched, did every thing right, and still watched the Heat nearly sweep them. Talent beat a veteran Boston Celtics team, which like Dallas, had all the elements of a “team,” but still lost out when LeBron James and Dwyane Wade played at their best. And then there was Chicago: the epitome of the “team” theory. They had one star, the MVP, and a supporting cast that earned the best record in the NBA. But at the end of the day, all the MVP and the best “team” in the league earned the Chicago Bulls was a five-game series elimination from the 2011 NBA Playoffs.

So entering the Finals, I picked the Heat to win in six games. I had already seen them beat “team” ball. I had already seen them shut down a team with just one great player. I had already seen LeBron and Wade eliminate prolific scorers from games. I had already seen—well, I had already seen everything but what the Dallas Mavericks ultimately brought to the table. And only now, after the fact, lacking any thought or perception whatsoever, do I see what should have been as clear as day to me.

The Dallas Mavericks are the more talented team.

While I was wrong about the winner of the series, it wasn’t my philosophy on basketball that failed me. Talent still wins out in the NBA. And the only experience that a veteran group of players like LeBron, Wade and Bosh need is training camp—well, that and a regular season’s worth of games. That’s all talent needs in order to prevail in a seven-game series in the NBA. That’s my philosophy, and my belief in that philosophy has not been shaken.

To say that Miami lost because Dallas was a more cohesive “team” sounds foolish to me when they already beat the consummate teams that everybody was touting before the NBA Playoffs started. Not to mention, I don’t know anybody who thought the Mavs were a better team than the San Antonio Spurs or Los Angeles Lakers, who Dallas surpassed en route to the Western Conference throne. Let’s face it; the Mavericks were no different “team-wise” than the squads Miami had already beaten during the playoffs. Those teams all shared the ball, shared the moment and played relatively cohesively. Between the Mavericks, Bulls and Celtics, Dallas was the lone team that didn’t play “team defense,” so what does that say about them being this great “team.”

That’s why I choose to give Dallas the real respect they deserve. They didn’t win this series just because they were a more cohesive “team” than Miami; they won it because they were a more talented team than Miami.

Yes, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James are better than Dirk Nowitzki. But after that, the pickings are slim. I will honestly debate the fact that the Mavericks had several players not named Dirk that are often as efficient as Chris Bosh is. All of Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion and Jason Terry can be as good as Chris Bosh on any given night given the role that Bosh plays now. And when you account for everything those players do, those players are in the same conversation as Chris Bosh when it comes to efficiency.

Now while I understand some people might not agree with that, you do have to concede that JJ Barea, Jason Kidd and Peja Stojakovic were better at what they did this postseason than what Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem were at what they did this postseason, right?

That’s a lot of talent that the Mavericks put out there. In fact, they have 8 players that were above league average in terms of PER. So it would seem to me, that when I tried to pick the more talented team, the only place I went wrong was by going too top heavy. My philosophy is broken not because “team-ball” trumps talent, but because having the best player in the game isn’t “AS” big of a factor as I thought it was. Don’t get me wrong, having Dwyane Wade and LeBron James is a tremendous advantage. But when the Mavericks have 8 guys capable of scoring 15 points and can shoot lights out from 3-point land at so many positions, the diversity and depth of talent seems to trump having two stars. Just ask the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers.

Before I get accused of making excuses, let me say this again: I was wrong. I was wrong to pick the Heat. Clearly, the Mavericks were better than the Heat. But I won’t admit that I was wrong about talent. Talent still trumps all, and that “team” theory, as it relates to chemistry and all that intangible stuff, still doesn’t hold water, other than you have to put the time in at practice. So go make your Big Threesomes NBA owners and players. Don’t believe that this somehow disproves the philosophy that having the best players results in championships. It’s still the case. The more talented team won this year’s finals, and the same thing will happen again next year—only this time, philosophy “adjusted” and all, I plan on having a better idea of just who the more talented team is.

The post "I Was Wrong, But My Philosophy Still Runs True" was originally published at TSW.

Admit it, America. That’s what you feel right now. As great as it is that the Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat in 6 games to win the 2011 NBA championship, it’s even sweeter for you that the Miami Heat lost in six. With all due respect to the Dallas Mavericks and Dirk Nowitzki, outside of fans from my home state of Texas, the 2011 NBA Finals were about the Miami Heat losing.

I was walking home with a friend after watching the game at a bar in New York City, when something she said epitomized exactly how everyone else on Earth felt about this Miami Heat team. She said, “I just don’t like the way they expected to win.” Now of course, there’s nothing the Miami Heat said prior to the series or any of these games that would lead you to believe that they “expected” to win. Sure, they probably thought it and had the confidence that they would win, but other than “cough-gate,” the Miami Heat said and did every thing right during the NBA Playoffs. Now, you can go all the way back to the premature celebration in the preseason when the Heat’s Big Three came out of the ground to an arena full of smoke, but if you still hate the Heat for that, you have your own personal problems.

Certainly, my friend isn’t the only one that hates the Heat. At the bar, I heard people saying they think the Heat are selfish, don’t play as a team, and don’[t have enough heart. I heard people actually say things like J.J. Barea has more heart than certain Heat players, or that some Heat players weren’t trying all that hard. Again, there’s no evidence that proves any of that, but people believe what they want to believe when the story line fits their confirmation bias.

More specifically, people are going to hate this Heat team so long as LeBron James is on it. America didn’t like “The Decision,” they didn’t like LeBron counting off his championship rings and they certainly didn’t like his attitude—or did they?

A mere 12 months ago, LeBron James could do no wrong. He was a basketball prodigy who said and did everything right from age 16 to age 25. But after one mere decision that moved him from Cleveland to Miami, people began to hate everything about him. Twelve months ago, he was a great dresser, a media darling, a commercial success, the next Michael Jordan, and a good looking guy. Now as I roam the streets of New York, read blogs and have random chats with fellow bar-goers, everyone thinks LeBron’s press-conference suit was too snazzy for a Finals loser, he disrespects the media, his commercials suck and his receding hairline is unattractive.

LeBron can do no good.

The Heat can do no good—at least not in the eyes of a basketball-watching nation that can’t help but wait to see a guy fail merely because they don’t like a personal decision he made—one many of them would have made, or relatively speaking, have made.

I will confess though; I too was happy that the Miami Heat loss, and it’s not because I’m from Texas and am rooting for the Mavericks. I just like anarchy. My rooting against the Heat had nothing to do with a disdain for LeBron James, Dwyane Wade or Chris Bosh. No, I just hate Eddie House! Just kidding.

But seriously, I (incorrectly) predicted Miami to win the championship, and rooted for them several times throughout the 2011 NBA Playoffs. The only reason I rooted against them at all is because of the very crap-storm that would ensue after they lost. It’s nothing personal, and I still think LeBron James is the best player in the NBA (as of this moment anyway). I just enjoy the soap opera that is sports, and this off-season wouldn’t have been as dramatically-inclined as it now will be had the Heat done what they set out to do.

For those of you who also rooted against Miami winning it all because you too wanted to see the drama that ensued, obviously, I think you have great taste in entertainment. However, for those of you who hated against the Heat just because of your own personal feelings against Miami and LeBron James, well, you’re entitled to do so. But own up to it. Admit it. Hell, enjoy it. Your dream came true—this year. The Miami Heat did not win the NBA championship. LeBron James is not Michael Jordan. And as Dwyane Wade put it, America is happy now…the Miami Heat are losing.

The post "The Miami Heat Are Not Your 2011 NBA Finals Champions" was originally published at TSW.

It’s just 10 minutes before tip-off of the 2011 NBA Finals, but I had to let TheSportsWatchers’ prediction be known.

The Miami Heat will win the championship. I said it once the season began, I said it at the start of the NBA playoffs, and I’m saying it now. The Heat just have too much talent.

A week ago, I considered picking the Dallas Mavericks, because Dirk Nowitzki may be an impossible cover. Truth is, I don’t know how impossible a cover he will be for LeBron James and Chris Bosh. Hell, Joel Anthony might be able to guard him.

However, the reason the Heat are going to win the NBA championship has nothing to do with Dirk and has everything to do with their five games against Chicago. Miami proved that one superstar, no matter the supporting cast, could beat their three superstars. While some may say that Dallas has a supporting cast of scorers that tops that of the Chicago Bulls, I don’t know how many people were saying that when Chicago finished with the best record in the NBA.

So I’m no fool. I won’t let history do me in. I learn from the past, even when I didn’t make a mistake. Simply put, the Heat have three stars and the Mavericks have one. Need I say more?

Heat win in 6.

The post "NBA Finals Prediction: Miami Heat Win in Six" was originally published at TSW.

Here we are. The 2011 NBA Finals.

Playing for the NBA championship is essentially the place everyone with any common sense thought the Miami Heat would wind up. Certainly, Dallas comes as a bit of a Finals participant surprise (somewhat of a surprise, I took out 20:1 odds that they’d win the whole thing!). However, the Heat have the two best players in the NBA, and we shouldn’t be shocked that they are four games away from winning the NBA championship.

These NBA Finals have a lot riding on them. The media and fans really, really want the Miami Heat to lose. They don’t care to see the player manifestation of greatness, and they don’t want LeBron to succeed after “The Decision.” Other NBA players won’t admit this, but they know that if Miami proves championship-worthy, the NBA competitive landscape will have been changed for the foreseeable future. And people from Cleveland, specifically, would rather forfeit 100 years of sports success than see LeBron James hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy in two weeks time.

Of course, legacies are on the line too. Dwyane Wade can become a two-time champion. Dirk Nowitzki can get his first championship. Mark Cuban can prove that he is not the Daniel Snyder of the NBA. And Pat Riley can again ascend to the top of the NBA brain trust.

But the person with the most on the line is undoubtedly LeBron James. Say what you will about “The Decision,” the pre-season championship talk or the fact that he bailed on Cleveland, but you can’t call the man a bad player. He’s a two-time MVP (he should have at least 3 MVP awards, if not 4), he carried this Miami Heat team on his back for most of the regular season, throughout the playoffs and especially against the Chicago Bulls. And of course, the guy does nothing but say and do the right things as a public figure and spokesperson for the NBA.

Despite all of that, the game of basketball is about winning. And in a game in which only 10 people are on the court, one player makes a whole lot of difference. One player can make all of the difference. From Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, we have seen single players not only change their respective teams but change the entire league.

And then there’s Michael Jordan.

Jordan changed the world—well, the world with respect to basketball. Not only did the Chicago Bulls get better, the NBA got better and USA basketball got better. Furthermore, the entire world of basketball got better. Jordan’s influence on the game was that big. His ability to win games, dominate the scoreboard and make his teammates better has caused the way people perceive, play and understand basketball to change. And for that reason, there has only been one Michael Jordan.

But can LeBron be the next Jordan?

It’s a ridiculous question from a subjective point of view. After all, Jordan introduced new people to the game, and then he changed the game. He brought a new style to basketball that everyone has since replicated. He made it okay to be a bit more selfish, so long as you were efficient. He made defense a requirement of being deemed one of the best players ever. He won dunk contests. He sold shoes. He won MVPs. He sold underwear. He played during a time when basketball was played like football and yet he won as the most graceful player on the court—without ever being pushed around. He overcame battles—internally and externally. He was revered by all and hated by none. He turned a losing franchise into six-time champions, and he made nobody coaches and players into perennial NBA greats.

So yeah—subjectively, Jordan may never be replaced, because a lot of what he accomplished was the result of great timing.

However, objectively, LeBron can be Jordan. Let’s start with the easy stuff: the stats—the stuff that has already happened.

People will easily throw around the fact that Jordan is the better scorer, but that’s not necessarily true. Jordan averaged 33 points per game in the postseason, versus LeBron’s 28. LeBron’s scoring average will probably go down, as it is at a mere 26 this season with Wade and Bosh on his team.

However, when we’re talking about averages of 28 and 33, really high numbers, we need not look at the prolificacy but the efficiency. Essentially, when it came to scoring on a shot for shot basis, LeBron and Jordan are the same. Jordan’s post-season true-shooting percentage is 56.8%. LeBron’s is 56.2%. LeBron’s effective field-goal percentage is a tad bit lower than Jordan’s (0.8%), but that just means LeBron is better at getting to the free-throw line. Jordan isn’t even a much better three-point shooter, hitting just 33% of his threes versus LeBron’s 32% clip. Granted, these numbers give a slight edge to Jordan, but if the rest of LeBron’s career looks like it did the last three seasons, he will easily surpass Jordan in those categories.

Rebounding shouldn’t even be argued. LeBron is a better rebounder. If this were a pound-for-pound sport, Jordan would get the edge, but in the NBA, size matters and it doesn’t count against you.

Passing is something LeBron gets the edge in as well. LeBron assists on 34% of his team’s field goals in the playoffs, while Jordan did so on just 28%. Funny thing is that assist-percentages tend to go down the better the team around a player gets. So LeBron could come back toward’s Jordan percentage in the next few years. Thus, the passing category isn’t as definitive for LeBron as it may seem, especially given that LeBron turns the ball over a lot more than Jordan ever did.

Defensively, this is where the stats can lie. I personally don’t have any defensive/plus minus ratios for Jordan, and even if I did, that’s not a perfect stat—not even when adjusted. That said, possession for possession, LeBron’s teams have allowed fewer points in the playoffs than Jordan’s did. Now that could be a result of the eras they play in, as much as it could be a result of the teams they played for. When looking at some of the defensive statistics, like rebounding, steals and blocks though, one might lean toward the fact that LeBron’s presence on defense is a bit stronger than that of Jordan’s.

In looking at the stats, we see these players aren’t far apart. In fact, it’s hard to argue one player over the other, statistically. But that’s just what the numbers say. What about the intangibles?

Listen, I’m not going to sit here and talk about leadership, will or sportsmanship. I might be willing to have a conversation on clutchness; however, I don’t have the appropriate stats for Jordan. What I will discuss is the one intangible that matters in basketball: winning.

I know winning NBA championships is more than a reflection of a single player. However, basketball is the closest team sport there is to having one player control the outcome of a game. That’s why one player can change an entire team. In fact, I have three minimum requirements when it comes to determining who’s a Hall of Famer. One, your team must consistently make the playoffs. Two; you must have advanced out of the first round at some point in your life. And three; if you have another player of high-caliber on your team, you should be a championship contender.

LeBron met all three of those requirements, even before he came to Miami. However, there’s one more requirement when it comes to being considered one of the best NBA players; the number of rings on your fingers.

Sorry, I know it may not be fair, neutral or objective, but winning matters to me in this sport. I don’t put the same pressure on football players, baseball players or hockey players, because we’ve always seen the best player in those sports fail to win it all. But in basketball, the best guys all have championships. Hell, most of them have multiple championships. So to tell me that championships don’t correlate with greatness is unthinkable, and while that may not be considered a statistically-driven statement, it’s pretty damn close to it.

LeBron has to win rings if he’s to surpass Jordan, and he has to win a lot  of them. In fact, given his retreat down to Miami, I don’t think six will do it. Hell, four championships in Cleveland might have done it, but six in Miami would still make it hard. LeBron would literally have to win all six NBA Finals MVPs in those six championships, and that’s hard to do now with Dwyane Wade on his team.

I wrote at the beginning of the season that LeBron can’t be Jordan. In my haste, admittedly, I failed to say that it’s going to be really hard for him to surpass Jordan, and that I don’t believe he’ll do it as a result of deferring a stint as the main man in Cleveland. However, if health and luck are on his side, and he can win 6 championships and 6 Finals MVPs, then yeah, he certainly can be the next Jordan, and as I’ve illustrated, the statistics prove that he’s about as close an approximation as we have ever seen. But without the wins, I can’t see it. The 2011 NBA Finals will give LeBron yet another crack at the right path to His Airness’s throne, unfortunately, that path has more twist and turns than the yellow-brick road, and LeBron’s red Heat shoes aren’t quite ruby slippers.

The post "NBA Finals Offer LeBron Chance at Jordan Throne" was originally published at TSW.

Dwyane Wade was feeling himself a little bit too much when he said the world was a better place since the Miami Heat were losing, but he certainly wasn’t wrong in suggesting that a lot of people didn’t care to see the Miami Heat and the Big Three thrive. And assuming that’s the case, then a whole lot of people just got a whole lot less happy last night, as the Heat beat the Chicago Bulls 96-85 to go up 2-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals of the 2011 NBA Playoffs.

Say what you will about the Heat, but they are good. Their three stars carried them to victory again last night. Chris Bosh, believe it or not, was last night’s leading man with 34 points. LeBron James and Wade scored 22 and 17, respectively, while nobody else on the Heat scored more than 8 points.

Why was the unbalanced attack of the Miami Heat able to outdo a Bulls team that is supposed to be the more team-oriented contender?

Talent.

I was very surprised when going into this series, all three TNT analysts, and all three ESPN analysts picked the Chicago Bulls to win this series. Actually, it was quite amazing. Granted, I’m not surprised on one hand, because I know that many members of the media are sour on the Heat and would love to see this “experiment” come crashing to an end. However, people in the media would much rather be right than stubborn, so part of me has to believe that at least the majority of the people who picked the Bulls actually believe Chicago is the better team. And then Kenny Smith explained it to me.

I don’t have the tape, but during the pre-game show leading up to Bulls-Heat Game 1, Kenny Smith picked the Bulls, and in doing so, explained that he thought the Bulls had the better team. By “team,” he meant that they share the ball, have a great bench, and have players that can contribute in a lot of different ways. That’s exactly what Miami isn’t, and so in Kenny’s mind, the Bulls were the better basketball team and would win the series because of that.

I don’t disregard the “team” theory, because it does play some role in basketball. After all, how on earth does the 2004 U.S. Olympic team not win the Gold Medal if “team basketball” does not play a factor? Because no one will question whether or not we had the best talent—that team simply didn’t play well together.

Still, the Miami Heat is not filled with a bunch of guys who have never played a certain brand of basketball and are learning to play with one another over the course of just a few weeks. Unlike that Olympic team, the Miami Heat, star-driven or not, practice everyday, have been playing with one another since last August, and they run a typical, NBA-style offense that most of the players on this team have played in throughout their professional basketball careers. So no matter how driven by their super stars they are, the Heat still play some semblance of “team” basketball.

This is why it’s absurd for anyone to think that the Bulls were the clear favorites to win this series. Simply put, the Heat has more talent than the Bulls. If you’re picking teams, three of the first four picks go to the Miami Heat. And MVP or not, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are better than Derrick Rose, no matter how much the NBA writers will tell you otherwise.

What has happened through the first three games of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals is that the more talented team has prevailed. As I mentioned earlier, nobody outside of Bosh, LeBron and Wade scored more than 8 points for the Heat. But those three combined for 73 points, and led a defensive surge that saw the Bulls score just 15 points in the first quarter and shoot 41.6% from the field for the game. Team ball or not, having three players on the court that are capable of the offensive and defensive wizardry that these guys are capable of is enough to beat a Bulls team that doesn’t even have one of the two best players on the basketball court.

I have been wrong many times before, and I am sure that I will be wrong again, but this Heat team isn’t going to lose to the Bulls this series. It’s just not a fair matchup. The Bulls can have all the offensive chemistry and bench play they want, but as long as the Heat can get five people they have practiced with for the last 10 months on to the court, their talent will outdo that of the Bulls. You saw that talent prevail last night, and you will see that talent prevail this Miami Heat team to the NBA Finals.

The post "The Heat Burn the Bulls and Kenny Smith’s Theory" was originally published at TSW.

When I was watching Game 1 of the NBA Playoffs Eastern Conference Finals, I couldn’t help but think about how much was being asked of Dwyane Wade and LeBron James to win the game for the Miami Heat. Ultimately, they lost, handedly, and neither of those two players came up big. On the contrary, Chris Bosh, the third-great player on the team, poured in 30 points. It was a great effort from the big man, unfortunately and understandably, he doesn’t have as many of those great nights as he did when he was the best player on his team.

Even though Bosh scored 30, he’s still the third-wheel on the Miami Heat. However, when he first came to Miami, this vehicle was supposed to be a tricycle. But since last July, it has turned into more of a bicycle, with the occasional spare tire—you know, just in case.

So it dawned on me, despite Bosh being the wonderfully talented player that he was presumed to be coming in the 2011 NBA basketball season, is Chris Bosh really nothing more to James and Wade than what Horace Grant was to Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen?

The numbers don’t lie.

Before I get to the details, I will point out that the statistics I’m using are a little favorable to Horace Grant in this argument, but not because of me—I’m just trying to make the most accurate assessment that I can. So for Chris Bosh’s numbers, I’m using this season—the lone season in which he’s comparable to Horace Grant as the supporting actor on his team. For Grant, I’m using his 1991-1992 season with the Chicago Bulls in order to get him at his prime, when he was contributing to a championship-caliber team. That is also when Grant was 26, which happens to be the same age Bosh was going into this season. Still, by selecting one of Grant’s best years, in which he was also in his fifth season with Scottie and Jordan, I’m picking a year when Grant was comfortable with the offense, as opposed to the year I’m choosing for Bosh, when he probably hasn’t settled in as the third-man on this Miami Heat basketball team.

My defense for using Grant’s 5th season in the NBA is twofold. Firstly, I’m asking the question is Bosh better than Grant (as a third-man), so why not compare Bosh against one of Grant’s best seasons? And secondly, they’re the same age in this comparison, so it actually hits both of them in their athletic prime, despite the fact that Bosh’s numbers might “stabilize” once he gets used to playing with LeBron and Wade.

On to the comparison…

Scoring
Per 36 minutes, Bosh was an 18.5 points per game player this season, while Grant was 14.5 point per game scorer. Clearly, Bosh is more prolific. However, he takes four more shots per game than Grant does, so we can’t give him the nod quite yet.

A closer look at the numbers shows that Grant was far more efficient when it comes to shooting the ball. Grant had the higher field-goal percentage, 57.8% vs. Bosh’s 49.6%. Some will say that’s because Bosh shoots the outside shot, but Grant was an effective outside shooter as well. Unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers on “jumpers” for Grant as I do for Bosh, so I can’t give either player the “jump-shooting” advantage Thus, I have to go with the collective total of the shots they took, and even when you account for free-throws, Grant was a better scorer with a true-shooting percentage of 61% vs. Bosh’s 57%.
Scoring Advantage: Horace Grant

Rebounding
Both Bosh’s and Grant’s rebounding numbers are hurt by the fact that they played with wingmen that could rebound the ball extremely well for their positions. Not to mention, their wingmen were very efficient shooters, so it didn’t leave as much to clean up off the offensive glass either. Still, when you look at rebounding percentage, we can get a pretty good glimpse at whether or not a player is a good rebounder. So as far as total rebound percentage goes, Grant has the advantage, having pulled in 16% of every rebound grabbed when he was on the floor. On the contrary, Bosh grabs just 13% of all the rebounds.

However, I don’t often like to put too much weight on offensive rebounds, especially since Bosh takes four more shots per game than Grant, and thus has four less opportunities to grab a rebound each game. So when you focus on defensive rebounding, Bosh has the edge, pulling in 20% of defensive rebounds, whereas Grant pulled in just 18% of the defensive rebounds during the 1991-1992 NBA season.
Rebounding Advantage: Chris Bosh

Passing
Passing is much more of a subjective measurement than it is an objective measurement. So I will give my subjective take on this in a second. First, objectively, the stats say that Grant was more involved in assisting his teammates than Bosh has been this season. Grant assisted on 10.0% of the fields while on the court, and Bosh assisted in 8.9%. It’s fairly close, there as well as in volume, as Grant averaged just 0.8 assists more per 36 minutes. As close as it is though, Grant still has the advantage—objectively speaking.

Subjectively, I still give the nod to Grant. Maybe it’s just because he’s less of a scorer, but he was much more of a pass-first guy than Bosh is. Again, this could be because Bosh is just now getting comfortable playing in this role. Then again, Grant averaged more than Bosh’s 1.9 assists per 36 minutes in his first year as a starter with Mike and Scottie. So even subjectively, I give the nod to Horace Grant.
Passing Advantage: Horace Grant

Efficiency
We will keep this short; especially since this is objective stat has subjectivity built into it. That said, Grant was the more “efficient” player, with PER of 20.6 vs. Bosh’s 19.4 this past season.
Efficiency Advantage: Horace Grant

Defense
Again, defense is more of a subjective category. And while I would love to tell you that my memory of Grant as a wonderful defender of the power-forward position, I don’t recall how much of that was him versus how much of that was Michael and Scottie. That said, Bosh has a lot of help too, but I have watched them play recently and am still able to judge Bosh’s defense individually. Thankfully for Bosh, I don’t have a good enough memory to isolate Grant’s defensive ability in a subjective fashion.

Objectively, the numbers still favor Grant. Grant is the better shot blocker, the better theft and he had a “slightly” better defensive rating—which measures how much the other team scores when said player is on the court.
Defensive Advantage: Horace Grant

Overall Effect on Game:
Here we look at “Overall Rating,” which really is a fancy plus-minus calculation. Ideally, plus-minus measures everything a player contributes. So whether it’s setting screens or hustle plays, if it helps the team win on the scoreboard, it is reflected in the stat. Unfortunately, it doesn’t account for the other players on the court. Obviously, if Grant plays a good number of minutes with out Jordan and Pippen on the floor, and Bosh only plays with Wade and LeBron on the floor, then clearly, Bosh would have the better Overall Rating. There is a stat called “adjusted plus-minus,” which accounts for such a phenomenon, but again, that statistic is not available for NBA players from Grant’s generation.

So what do the numbers say? Per 100 possessions, Grant’s Bulls were 30 points better than the opposition whenever Grant was on the basketball court. Conversely, Bosh’s Heat are a mere 12 points better than the opposition when he was on the floor. Again, these numbers can be skewed by the type of players on the court and their coach’s respective player rotations. But I would venture to say that a difference that great, along with the numbers we have already discussed, speak highly of one Mr. Horace Grant.
Plus-Minus Advantage: Horace Grant

Playoffs
Last and least, we go to the NBA playoffs. I say “least,” because clearly we don’t have an entire postseason on record for Bosh. But if you want to know where this ship is headed, it’s certainly not in Bosh’s favor. In fact, the only thing Bosh has done better than Grant this postseason is rebound the ball better. Yes, he’s scoring 6.2 more points per game, but he’s doing it less efficiently than Grant scored his 11. That might suggests that Bosh’s scoring is more important to the Heat than Grant’s was to the Bulls, however, Bosh is taking 5 more shots per playoff game to get those 6 extra points—that’s not efficient at all.
NBA Playoff Advantage: Horace Grant

I think it’s pretty clear, that at the very least, Bosh isn’t any better than Horace Grant was a third-man. Maybe he’s a little more prolific, but in being so, he’s less efficient and turns the ball over more—something I didn’t mention when going over the earlier stats. However, I will admit that Grant did have the advantage of always being a third-man and never having to adjust from being the best guy on a team all his life in the very season I’m using for statistical purposes.

Thus, this question begs to be asked again after next season, when “comfort” can no longer be used as an excuse. Until then though, this analysis begs to ask the question, why did Grant make $1.75 million that season, while Bosh is making $14.5 million this season?

Yes, there’s inflation and league growth to account for, but it doesn’t account for the nearly $13 million difference between those salaries. I’m not saying Chris Bosh is overpaid, but maybe both his and Grant’s NBA values were much closer the average of their respective salaries.

The post "Is Chris Bosh Better than Horace Grant?" was originally published at TSW.

There are countless physically-imposing, scary players in sports. I know that I don’t want to get into any kind of altercation with the likes of Ray Lewis, Kendrick Perkins, AJ Hawk or Manny Pacquiao.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

When I think of the scariest players in sports, I’m talking about the players that scare you as a fan of the opposing team. What are those players, moments in games, circumstances or plays that concern every fan when they see a game-changing superstar in a particular situation?

Here is a list of the Top 5 Scariest Players in sports from the last decade.

Ray Allen, NBA – Is there anything more joy-sucking than when you see Ray Allen spring across the baseline, turn and catch the ball with nobody even near of him? As a New York Knicks fan, my heart stopped every single time Ray Allen caught the ball after alluding his defender via several screens. He just shoots way too well from three-point land to be left wide-0open, and yet he gets open all the time. It makes watching your favorite NBA team play him about as uneasy a viewing experience a basketball fan can have. Especially when it happens in the fourth quarter or on a last-minute shot. No fan wants to see Ray Allen wide open from behind the arc with the basketball in his hands—it’s just one of those situations that doesn’t end well for the opposition.

Randy Moss, NFL – He’s well past his prime now, but there was time when if the football was thrown in the air, deep down the sideline, to the side of the field Randy Moss was lined up on, it was as good as (in the words of Randy Moss) “straight cash, homie.” No fan of the opposition ever wanted to see Randy Moss in single coverage, and to the NFL’s credit, very rarely did that happen. But sooner or later, throughout some point in a game against the Minnesota Vikings or New England Patriots, the coach of your favorite football team would opt to blitz or run three-deep zone, resulting Moss going one-on-one with what was usually a terrified cornerback. And when Daunte Culpepper or Tom Brady would throw a bomb down the field to the side of the field Moss was on, your mind was probably going crazy, just hoping for a “simple” 50-yard catch, all the while knowing that it would probably result in a touchdown.

Shaquille O’Neal, NBA – You may have to go back a ways for this one, but there was a time when if Shaquille O’Neal caught the ball on the block, it was as good as two points. Even during his days in Miami, Shaq shot careers highs in terms of field goal percentage. Sure, some of what Shaq brought in scariness from the block was negated by the joy you had in seeing him go to the free-throw line. But from 2000-2002, Shaq was one of the most efficient basketball players the NBA has ever seen, and I’m not exaggerating that one bit.

Peyton Manning, NFL – There are a few quarterbacks out there with more “actual” fourth quarter comebacks, i.e., John Elway, Dan Marino, Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas. But over the last decade, there’s no doubt who the king of the fourth quarterback is. I’m not sure what the number is right now, but according to a 2009 Pro Football Reference article, Peyton Manning has had more fourth-quarter comebacks than anybody else in the NFL right now. And when you’re the fan of the opposing team that’s up by less than one score and Peyton Manning walks on to the field, you cannot help but think of how he is going to manage to comeback and beat your team. Simply put, Manning is a precise, deep-throwing, defense-dissecting pocket passer. And when the game is on the line, he calls only the plays that he knows will work to his offense’s advantage. While the Indianapolis Colts have certainly had their fair share of fourth quarter losses, Manning has dolled out more than his fair share of heartache, making him the most feared quarterback in the NFL.

Mariano Rivera, MLB – When looking at baseball players, it was hard to determine what exactly gives a player’s opposing fans the most to worry about. Hitters certainly can end games with one swing of a bat—but then again, that rarely happens. And starting pitchers can routinely hold a team’s entire offense to 1 or 2 runs for 8 or 9 innings. But a closer, as lackluster and undemanding as their job actually is, is put in the best position to strike fear in a fan’s mind. Because when Mariano Rivera comes jogging out of the bullpen, in pursuit of the pitcher’s mound and with a lead at his disposal, it’s hard for any fan to imagine themselves coming away with a win. Essentially, for over a decade, whenever Rivera came out to the mound, the game was over. From his placement to his trailing cutter, Rivera just couldn’t be hit. He got out after out and saved game after game. Sure, hitters and starters have been just as dominant as Rivera has. But for the better part of the last two decades, the sight of Rivera essentially meant the game was over, and for a fan of a team that’s losing, there is nothing scarier than that.

Honorable Mention: Tiger Woods
I don’t actually consider golf much of a sport; otherwise, Woods would be among my top 5. For goodness sake, he doesn’t just scare fans, he scares the people he’s playing against. That’s a level of fear unprecedented in most sports, nevermind individual competition.

The post "The Scariest Players in Sports" was originally published at TSW.

Last night, when the Celtics loss to the Heat 98-90 in Game 4, it was the end of an era.

I know the series isn’t over. I know the fighting Boston Celtics are still alive. I know they wouldn’t be the first team in the history of the NBA Playoffs to come back from a 3-1 series deficit.

But I also know that for all intents and purposes, this basketball series is over.

I hope—I just hope—that the Boston Celtics make the rest of their series with the Miami Heat worth watching, because I won’t put it past this aging team to quit in Game 5 in Miami. Sure, you would automatically think they’re interested in playing this thing out to the finish. But if I told you that the Los Angeles Lakers were going to lose by more than 30 points against the Dallas Mavericks, you would have asked me how much money I had on me and conjured up a bet.

The reality is that reality has already set in. In fact, it set in a long time ago. Long before Dwyane Wade made Ray Allen spin around in circles. Long before LeBron James batted Kevin Garnett’s dunk attempt away. Long before Wade dropped damn near 40 points on the Celtics head in Game 2.

Reality really set in when these three guys got together back in July. Reality set in when LeBron James made Paul Pierce about as offensively efficient as Paul Revere in two out of the last three postseasons. Reality set in when Dwyane Wade lit up the Celtics for 40+ in last years postseason. Reality set in when Chris Bosh was worth more on the open market than Kevin Garnett. The fact is, Boston’s big three knew long before their loss in Game 4 that they weren’t capable of beating a young threesome like the one the Miami Heat have assembled. They knew this was coming a long time ago. And even though there were bumps in the road, losing streaks, and even beat downs from the Celtics themselves, one thing was always in LeBron’s, Wade’s and Bosh’s favor, and that one thing was Father Time.

And time is up for Boston.

This thing went one year longer than it was designed to go anyway. When these three guys got together in the summer of 2007, it wasn’t supposed to last forever. Hell, some wondered if it would last a season given Pierce’s string of injuries and Kevin Garnett’s mileage. But here we were in early 2011, and the Celtics were atop the NBA standings, looking like the best team in the NBA. And here they are in the Eastern Conference Playoffs, a legitimate NBA Finals contender.

So kudos to them. This three-man group went four whole seasons displaying the basketball talent worthy of a championship. Unfortunately, Miami did the same thing they did four years ago. Miami got three stars—younger ones at that—and are beating the Celtics at their own game.

For Celtics fans who think a comeback is in order, I’m sorry to have to be the one to write the obituary. Sure, this is an easy stance I’m taking. I’m a nobody blogger playing the odds of a team down 3-1 with its best stars hobbled by injuries and age.

But easy stance or not, the truth is the truth. And when Paul Pierce’s desperation shot at the end of regulation clanked off the glass, courtesy of LeBron James’ defense, the truth set in that the “the” Truth, the Big Ticket and Jesus Shuttlesworth have had their final take as the dominant trio they once were.

The post "Zo Knows: It’s the End of an Era in Boston" was originally published at TSW.

Sunday afternoon failed to produce the same results the Boston Celtics had experienced the previous two Sundays. In their series with the New York Knicks, the Celtics had a nice comeback victory two Sundays ago, and last week, the Celtics closed the Knicks out in convincing fashion.

But this Sunday was different. This Sunday was the start of a new series, one that we have all been waiting for. Sunday was Game 1 of the Boston Celtics vs. Miami Heat series, the one we have dreamed about since LeBron James made his “decision” last July. Game 1 certainly provided exciting plays, physical play, intense defense, intense emotions, and otherwise, great NBA playoff emotion. Unfortunately, it did not produce a great game, and Miami won 99-90.

For much of the game, the Miami Heat dominated the Celtics. After averaging just 13 points against the Celtics in their four previous meetings during the regular season, Dwyane Wade put up 38 points on just 21 shots against a Celtics defense that often holds high-scoring wing players to incredibly inefficient performances. Team-wise, the Heat led the Celtics by as much as 19 points in the third quarter. The Celtics made some runs here and there, and even got the lead down to 8 late in the fourth quarter after Paul Pierce had been tossed out of the game with his second technical foul. But in actuality, the Heat were never in danger of losing this game.

So why did the Heat prevail?

In what is sure to be one of the most scrutinized Round 2, Game 1’s in the history of the NBA Playoffs, here are three reasons why Miami won this game, and will likely go on to win this series.

#1. Dwyane Wade was unstoppable.
As I mentioned in our “Heat-Celtics” keys to victory post, Wade has to show up in order for the Heat to win this series. Now, 38 points in the series opener is certainly one way to do that. But in addition to that, Wade played “better” defense against Ray Allen, who despite scoring 25 points on just 13 shots, was at least pushed off the three-point line by Wade more often than he had been in their previous meetings. It’s unlikely that Wade’s jump shot will be as accurate as it was this game for the remainder of this series. However, if he keeps playing defense like he did, he can possibly minimize the damage that Ray inflicts upon the Heat.

#2. Where the hell was Kevin Garnett?
Listen, everyone is destined for a bad night, but Round 2 of the NBA Playoffs is not a time to play so below your averages that I don’t even recognize you. The Celtics started the game giving the ball to Kevin Garnett in the post. Garnett has the best matchup, scoring-wise, as Bosh shouldn’t be able to guard him down on the block—or at least hasn’t done so in the past. Yet, with Bosh on him for most of the game, Garnett was held to just 3 for 9 shooting, 6 points and 8 rebounds. Garnett did not get to the free throw line once, and for 37 minutes of play, Garnett looked like somebody else. Granted, he did do a pretty stellar job on defense, subsequently holding Chris Bosh to just 7 points on 3 for 10 shooting. But the Celtics can’t win this series if Garnett isn’t better than Bosh. We already know that the Heat have the best two players on the court. But if Miami winds up 3 of the best 5 performances in this series, it’s lights out for Boston.

#3. Paul Pierce can’t get abused…or thrown out of the game!
Maybe I wasn’t clear with my keys to victory. When I said that Paul Pierce couldn’t afford to get abused by LeBron James in this series, I didn’t mean he could just not play and get tossed out of the game. And while I wholeheartedly disagree with the referee’s decision to give Pierce a second technical foul (one the NBA says was given for taunting), Pierce never should have gotten that first technical—so I don’t exactly feel all that sorry for him. Before he got thrown off the court though, Pierce wasn’t spectacular. He had hit a couple of jumpers just before leaving, but he was a mere 6 of 14 for 19 points, had 4 turnovers and let LeBron play an extremely efficient game. Now that I’m sure my statements no longer need further explanation, the Boston Celtics are far more likely to win this series if Paul Pierce is on the basketball court.

The post "Heat Romp Celtics; The Hungry Take Game 1" was originally published at TSW.

Play Chris Paul!

I don’t like second guessing coaches—okay, I take that back. I love second-guessing coaches. And the fact that Monty Williams, head coach of the New Orleans Hornets, found it in his heart to site Chris Paul as much as he did last night is atrocious.

In Williams defense, it is not his fault that the Hornets were outrebounded by the Los Angeles Lakers by 17 boards in a 106-90 loss in Game of the series. Still, it was Willaims decision to take Paul out of the game at the beginning of the second quarter, and boy did he pay for it.

When Paul left the game at the end of the first quarter, the Hornets were up by 9 points. When Paul came back into the game mid-way through the second quarter, the Hornets were down by 1 point. And that my friends, is where the game was lost.

Now it’s easy to point out that Paul still had a plus/minus of -7 for the game, but most of that was accrued during the fourth quarter, long after the Hornets had relinquished the lead. And anybody who watched that game could tell you that the Hornets were in bad need of Paul’s presence during that second quarter, as the offense went to crap for a good six minutes, and it never recovered after that.

The Hornets 19 points in the second quarter was a direct reflection of the Paul’s absence. Not only did not having Paul on the floor take away from the Hornets offensive efficiency, but it also diminished their defensive efficiency. When Paul was on the floor early on in the game, it forced Kobe Bryant to pay more attention to the point guard position, and it actually made Kobe guard Trevor Ariza a little more closely. However, without Paul on the floor to make Ariza an offensive threat, Kobe didn’t have to spend too much energy on the defensive end, and that allowed him to find his groove in the second quarter.

I will reiterate, however, that head coach Monty Williams can point to many other problems with his team last night. The team only shot 66% at the free throw line, Jarrett Jack was essentially worthless, and Chris Paul himself had just 5 assists after a 7-assists first quarter. But for me, and many other “basketball minds” out there, you have to think that had Paul played those crucial minutes early in the second quarter, his team might have won, or at least kept this close.

In fact, Paul should have played the entire game. Shoot, he playd 41 minutes, what’s the reach in going the other 7 minutes? Besides, if Monty Williams uses his timeouts correctly, there’s nary a problem making a 7-minute increase in one players on-court time.

So, Williams, you know what to do now! Play Paul every 48 minutes of the game. He’s your best player and offense looks ghastly without him on the floor! I suppose you could go with the alternative, but that certainly will cost you a spot in the second round of the 2011 NBA Playoffs.

The post "Hey, Monty, Play Chris Paul!" was originally published at TSW.

In a couple of the days, the 2011 NBA playoffs are really going to begin. Sure, this has been one of the best first rounds in the history of the game, but it’s still the first round. And as I much as I care for the Indiana Pacers and Denver Nuggets of the world, it’s time to see the matches we all have wanted to see all season long.

And thanks to the lowly New York Knicks and the hapless Philadelphia 76ers, this season’s most anticipated postseason matchup appears to be headed our way. The Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics will square off for seven of what I’m not afraid to call the best basketball games of the 2011 NBA season. It’s going to be tough, arduous, slow, defensive, start-studded basketball, and I am going to love every moment of it.

I could sit here and predict who was going to win the series and how many games they are going to win it in, but you can go to my pre-postseason NBA predictions for that. Instead, I am going to take this opportunity to pick out the four things that will determine this series. As one might expect with five potential Hall of Famers on the court, we have a lot of big names weighing in on this discussion.

#1. Dwyane Wade must be efficient.
In the four games that the Heat have played the Boston Celtics, the Heat are 1-3. In those three games against Boston, Wade has been atrocious. Not just bad, but “the Heat would be better off with him on the bench” bad. In those three games, he shot just 26% from the field. Even when you throw in the fourth game in which he was 4 for 12 from the field, he shot just 28% in all of his games with the Celtics. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Wade has to guard Ray Allen. Allen loves to run around picks—hell, he just loves to run. That likely tires Wade out and takes his legs away from him on the offensive end. Unfortunately, the Heat will need him to be above a 28% shooter if Miami is going to win this series.

#2. Jermaine O’Neal must be BIG.
As a Knicks fan, during the first round, I honestly thought I had been taken back to 2002, when Jermaine O’Neal was actually good. In all likelihood, O’Neal was only able to be as effective as he was against a porous Knicks front line, because he surely wasn’t that effective a season ago, when he was playing for Miami. Then again, Doc Rivers claims O’Neal was a beast on the defensive end, so perhaps that’s where his value is. Well, he sure enough better demonstrate that value, because low-and-behold, Jermaine, not Shaq, is the O’Neal that has to be the force inside for the Celtics. The Heat have two weak spots, center and point guard. Boston wins one of those by default, but if they leave that center spot up for grabs, they are giving the Heat an edge that may win them the series.

#3. LeBron James has to come through in the clutch.
I know that the entire Miami Heat team has failed in the last few seconds of games this season, but to me, that lone stat is rather arbitrary. I don’t even know exactly what the stat is, but you know which one I’m talking about. The one where we see that the Heat suck at making shots in the last 10 seconds of a close game. Well duh! That’s a hard shot to make, especially when everyone knows who is getting the ball. My bigger concern is how they play in the last five minutes of games. Are they going to let LeBron stand way back at the top of the key and iso, or are they going to give Wade the ball on the wing? It will likely be a combination of both, and to be honest, LeBron is going to have the better matchup. He has to come through for the city of Miami, or he really will have let his team and that franchise down. There are no more excuses for LeBron. He has more help than dozens of Hall of Famers and champions before him have had. If he doesn’t come through and deliver in big moments this season, there’s no reason to believe he will do it consistently enough in the future.

#4. Paul Pierce cannot get abused.
Speaking of LeBron James, he has often had his way with Paul Pierce. Even in last year’s debacle in Cleveland, LeBron’s presence on Boston’s defensive end kept Pierce limited on the offensive end. Well, Pierce can’t afford to slip away in this series. There’s too much firepower on both teams for certain players to go missing in action for long periods of time, or as has been the case in previous Pierce-LeBron matchups, for the entire series. Pierce can’t let defending LeBron result in losing his shot. Sure, LeBron is bigger, stronger, faster and younger, but Pierce has to find a way to use his help more effectively and not take punches from LeBron all night. You will never win a fight without throwing any punches, so no matter what LeBron does on one end of the court, Pierce must throw a couple of blows (i.e., hit shots) on the other end.

The post "Boston Celtics vs. Miami Heat Series Keys" was originally published at TSW.

Those two guys around him aren't soft!

I know that the NBA isn’t exactly the NFL when it comes to being tough, forceful and physical. Still, while the product on the court won’t ever be as physical as the product the NFL puts on the field, does that mean my announcers have to be “soft?”

I confess; I don’t like Mike Tirico and Mike Breen as announcers. As people, I’m sure they’re fine, but as announcers, they get on my last nerve. It’s probably not the smartest thing in the world for me to say, especially since I hope my career leads to prominence in the media and entertainment worlds, and I could possibly be working for, with, under or over one of those two lead play-by-play announcers.

But I can’t help what I feel. Whenever I’m watching an NBA game on ESPN and something that’s not apropos happens, one of those two guys, Breen or Tirico, always takes the “politically correct” side that darts away from the tough NBA player for the “soft” approach to sports. For example, Kenyon Martin made a big play that essentially closed out a game on the road late in the 2011 NBA season, and after making the play, Martin started spewing some expletives in the general direction of the entire crowd. Breen immediately jumped all over Martin for using those words in a “family” environment like an NBA game. But in my opinion, he has every right to say whatever he wants in his place of work, so long as its acceptable to the people he works for. And last time I checked, the NBA isn’t handing out fines for saying curse words during the game.

Then there is Mike Tirico. To be fair, I can’t even give you a concrete example of what I’m talking about, but oh boy do they exist. I can’t even begin to guess just how many times Tirico has criticized an NBA getting in a scuffle, getting a technical foul or losing their temper. He just has this “almighty” approach to judging basketball players on the court, to the point where he seemingly forgets that this is an emotional sport. Which is quite convenient for him to do, especially since he has been known to let his emotions get in the way of Mike Tirico, the “almighty.”

I hate to say it, but those guys are kind of soft. It’s one thing to stand up for what’s right, but it’s another thing to criticize something because it isn’t ideal. Sure, kids might be better off not hearing Martin spew out curse words after a big play, but then again, it might not have an affect on them at all if the kind of places they find themselves in have 25-year old men at the height of their emotions.

Thankfully, the players on the court aren’t as soft as the announcers—most of the time. Then again, we have a few players in the NBA, who are often called soft, and it is deservedly so.

Chris Bosh is one of those guys who gets labeled soft, and this season has kind of proven that label to be quite accurate. Much like Tirico and Breen, Bosh has “recently” found the spotlight. And upon arriving in the spotlight, his game has fettered away. Specifically, his defensive rebounding percentage has dropped from 25% last season to 20% this season. We could say that some of that is because he’s playing with better rebounding guards in LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, however, the quality of big men around him, which would have much profounder impact on his rebounding numbers, has dropped precipitously in the rebounding department. Now does a lack of rebounding make a player soft? In my book, “Yes.” And for as great a player as Bosh is, he kind of deserves the soft label.

But then there is a guy like Amare Stoudemire. A guy who makes all of the wonderful dunks, the occasional “huge” block, and for the most part, looks the part of tough guy in comparison to other NBA forwards. As a result, Stoudemire is rarely a guy who gets labeled soft. However, when it comes to playing defense, Stoudemire isn’t very good at it. In fact, he sucks at it. And that’s hard for me to say as a Knicks fan, but the proof was in the pudding last night, when Stoudemire looked like a civ, back spasms or not, on the defensive side of the court. This is why it’s quite hilarious that Stoudemire is fresh off calling Pau Gasol soft. It’s also convenient that he did it in a season when there’s no chance of him seeing Gasol in the playoffs. I didn’t see him call him soft last season when the Los Angeles Lakers beat his Phoenix Suns brains in. Then again, he did call Lamar Odom lucky, only few minutes after Odom had grabbed 19 points and 19 rebounds while Amare was on the court. Amare Stoudemire…soft!

Last but not least, how about another player we just saw last night in Day 7 of the NBA Playoffs, Josh Smith of the Atlanta Hawks. He’s not the guy most people would go out of their way to call soft-especially since he’s considered such a versatile defensive player and decent rebounder at 8.9 rebounds per game. However, it’s on the offensive end that Smith’s softness prevails. For a guy with his size and athleticism, he spends way too much time shooting jumpers and three-pointers. Zydrunas Ilgauskas has been labeled soft throughout his career because of his propensity to take outside shots, despite his value as a defender in his younger days, so we shouldn’t give Smith a pass either. Almost two-thirds of Smith’s game, 63%, is via the jumper. Compare that 63% to Stoudemire, Bosh, Gasol and another “soft” player like Dirk Nowitzki, and Smith fits right in with those guys as big men who shoot the ball from the outside way too much. Josh Smith…soft.

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions Day 7: I Could Do Without “Soft” In My NBA" was originally published at TSW.

When I was in college and high school, all of my better games were reserved for the road. Granted, I didn’t play in front of the enormous crowds that some major college programs and Professional NFL and NBA teams play in front of, but I definitely was in places that anybody would consider hostile environments.

So why was I better on the road than I was away from home? Factually, there is nothing that could tell you why; there’s only the stats that will tell you that it indeed happened. In my mind, however, I know exactly why I played better on the road. It’s because I wanted to prove everybody wrong. And quite frankly, whenever I played in front of my home crowd, it never dawned on me that anybody on my side would doubt me. It was those haters on the road that I knew had disdain for me, and so I had disdain for them. And while no one can statistically measure motivation, there’s no doubt that mine was higher whenever I walked out of the visitor’s locker room.

In the NBA, however, that just isn’t the case. Players and teams play better at home, and you don’t have to look past your average NBA Standings page to find that out. The best team in the NBA during the 2011 season was the Chicago Bulls. They won 75% of all their regular season games. However, they won 87% of their games at home and only 63% of their games on the road. Case and point: the best team in the NBA played more like the fourth best team in the Eastern Conference if you only measure their road games.

But why is that? Why does a group of professional NBA players, who are among the top 1% of people in the world that play that sport, have its performance altered so drastically when they play in front of a group of people rooting against them?

Again, objectively speaking, there’s no answer for this. There are no “actual” reasons why a player should be affected by people booing them. All of the basketball statisticians in the world disagree on why players play differently at home than they do on the road, and rarely do you see these numbers people disagree so fervently. The one thing they can agree on is with information like the one I just gave the Bulls—that for whatever reason; teams do play better at home.

That really makes gambling on the 2011 NBA Playoffs a ridiculous notion. For the first two games of a series, it’s actually quite easy to make predictions. After all, the favored team is at home, so we think the style of the game will be in the better team’s favor, and we can make our bets with that assumption, even accounting for the upset or a close game if we know the teams are fairly evenly matched. However, when the series shifts to the underdog’s home floor, what in the hell are you supposed to do then?

In looking at the lines for Thursdays NBA playoff games, you will see that the #3 seed, the Dallas Mavericks, is slated to lose to the #6 seeded Portland Trailblazers by 6 points. This goes against the very fact that Dallas is considered the favorite, and it’s all because Portland is playing at home. But it’s not just that Portland is favored to win the game despite being the underdog in the series, but it’s also ludicrous that they were favored to win by six points. If you look at the fact that Dallas was favored by 3.5 points when they were at home, that means Vegas (and the people who make the bets) are telling you that Portland will play 9.5 points better at home than they will on the road.

While logically that makes sense given the history of the NBA, a bettor can’t do anything with that information. How is someone who just won money off of betting Dallas to beat Portland by at least 4 points supposed to bet on the exact opposite happening because of a change in scenery?

I couldn’t do it, and I imagine there is a lot less action on Game 3’s in the NBA Playoffs. There’s just too much one doesn’t know. Is the underdog of the series actually going to play better at home? Is the favored team actually going to play worse? Sure, their regular season performances suggest that those are indeed the scenarios that will play out when the series goes from one arena to the next, but the postseason is a different monster, and teams like Indiana all of a sudden start playing defense.

So, I confess, I don’t get home court advantage. I know that statistically speaking, I have to recognize that it exists, but like all of the gamblers out there, I have no idea when and where it’s going to rear its ugly head. Frankly, I think all gamblers would be better off to avoid placing bets money on Game 3’s, such as the one coming up between Boston and New York in which the Knicks are actually favored to win at home. Seriously? Even as a Knicks fan, I can’t put money on that one!

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions Day 6: I Preferred Playing on the Road" was originally published at TSW.

Anybody born within five years of 1984 has to have watched an episode of “Underdog” or two growing up—even though the show was in complete re-runs by the 1980’s. Sure, it wasn’t the most popular cartoon among the Saturday morning favorites, but much like the name suggests, it was an extremely underrated cult classic among young children and pre-teens.

I know that I personally liked. In fact, I confess; I still like Underdog. I watch clips of it online to this day, mainly to refresh my memory on scenes I watch regularly. Part of my continued infatuation for the cartoon is its simplistic writing and ironic plots. But the main reason I like watching Underdog is because it is literally an underdog story. The cartoon is all about a superhero that’s not so super. Despite his supernatural powers, Underdog isn’t as strong, fast or smart as his life-saving contemporaries. He is always prone for a mistake and never gets things right the first time, yet more often than not, he was capable of coming through with a win.

My love for the cartoon has carried over into my love for sports. I can’t help but root for the underdog. The only time I don’t root for the underdog is when one of my favorite teams is the favorite. Outside of that, and maybe the Olympics, I mine as well say that I’m a fan of the underdog. Who wants to see the favorite win? They always win—that’s why they’re the favorite!

The underdog in sports, much like the cartoon, is usually lacking something. In the case of my New York Knicks and this Boston Celtics series, the Knicks lack a consistent outside shooter and scorer that can stretch the Celtics defense. In the Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Hornets series, New Orleans lacks a strong interior presence. And in the Miami Heat and Philadelphia 76ers series, the 76ers lack a true star player (and no, Andre Iguodala does not count).

But you know what? It’s bigger than that.

My love for the underdog isn’t just about the less-blessed coming up big; it’s about the instant community built around the underdog. You see it in the NCAA Basketball Tournament all the time. The favored seed usually has more fans in the house. But let the game get close with four minutes left in the match, and all of a sudden everybody in the arena, and bars across the nation, is cheering  for Cinderella.

The same thing happens in the NBA Playoffs. If you didn’t find yourself rooting for Tyler Hansbrough and the Indiana Pacers during Game 1 of their series with the Chicago Bulls, then you must be a Bulls fan. If a part of you didn’t get goose bumps when the Memphis Grizzlies beat San Antonio in Game 1, you must have had money on the Spurs. And if you weren’t on the edge of your seat when Chris Paul was leading the underdog New Orleans Hornets over the Los Angeles Lakers—well, you just don’t know sports or basketball.

And the 2011 NBA Playoffs appear to be the year of the underdog. In an NBA season that began with the focus all about a new trio of players and another team going for a trio of championships, the postseason is full of talent-challenged teams fulfilling the role of the underdog. Between Pacers-Bulls, Grizz-Spurs, Hornets-Lakers and Celtics-Knicks, if you don’t like basketball this season, you either really hate the underdog, or just don’t like basketball.

I don’t fall into either category, and I don’t mind admitting that I’m about to ride out to this Underdog theme song when I leave work.

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions Day 5: I Still Like to Watch Underdog" was originally published at TSW.

Who doesn’t want to give 100% effort all of the time?

Of course, everybody wants to, it’s just not possible to give 100% effort 100% of the time. In fact, I believe that’s exactly why they created the 80/20 rule. I literally believe that you’re supposed to give 100% of your effort only 20% of the time. If you did anymore, you’d probably burn out or become one of those overachievers that can’t ever stop overachieving. And who wants to do that?

Just take our nation’s presidents. They take vacations all the damn time, but they don’t take a whole lot of days off during the campaign trail.

How about restaurants? Sure, they try to give you the best of service 24 hours a day, but the truth is that if you show up during non-peak hours and they’re understaffed, good luck having your usual dining experience.

So I confess; I don’t give 100% all of the time. Maybe, it’s my background as an athlete. Yes, I gave all of my effort during every snap of football that I played in high school and college. But during the other four days of practice during the week, I didn’t go full board all the time, and I certainly didn’t put forth the effort on those days that I did on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. If I did, I wouldn’t have had a body to go into the game with after four days of all-out practicing.

Hell, even with my daily confessions and my effort to watch as much NBA Playoff basketball as possible, I have slacked off. After the New York Knicks lost on Tuesday night, I didn’t stick around at the bar and watch the Atlanta Falcons play. Nah, I got on the damn subway, angrily, and went home, waited until I settled in, and then watched the rest of Dallas vs. Portland.

Unfortunately, people expect more from their athletes. They expect 100% effort all of the time. Sports fans will light the radio and internet airwaves on fire if they catch a player slacking off in 3rd quarter of the 21st game of the NBA Regular season. And they expect this constant effort from their athletes, even when most of them don’t care enough about their jobs to put forth half the effort athletes put forth in a single game.

But that’s what the NBA Playoffs are for. The NBA Playoffs are when you get your 100% effort. There’s no more “let’s wait until the fourth quarter and exert our dominance” during the postseason. NBA basketball teams give it their all in these situations, which by the way, makes it increasingly difficult to bet on these damn games. Who the hell thought the Indiana Pacers would decided to play defense in their 83rd and 84th game, but not the other 82? Who foresaw the Memphis Grizzlies beating the #1 seed in the Western Conference? I mean, these are things that no one would have predicted the day before the playoffs started, but once the playoffs started and the games began to mean something, the regular season stats did not mean much of anything.

And I’m perfectly okay with that.

Call me an athletic homer if you want to, but I don’t need my basketball players going 100% all night every night. That crap is hard. Harder than you think. Why else do 20-something year olds not play as well on the second half of a back-to-back? It’s because that first game, 100% effort or not, takes a lot out of players. If NBA games were so easy, players would play all 48 minutes, wouldn’t they?

So let it go. No more complaining from those of you who don’t like the NBA. Granted, not many of you would read this post anyway, because you’re too busy talking about how NBA Players don’t try hard enough. Truth be told though, most people don’t exert as much energy as NBA players do. And while it would be an easy stance to take, I’m not going to sit here and say that the millions of dollars they earn make up for the physical toil they volunteer for.

I’d much rather say they earn their paycheck the same way you do, by putting forth the effort their employers require of them—sometimes more, sometimes less, but never 100% all of the time.

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions Day 4: I Didn’t Give it 100%" was originally published at TSW.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I grew up wanting to be the same type of basketball player that Charles Barkley was. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I loved how Barkley told me that he wasn’t my role model. And maybe this has even more to do with the fact that Barkley is the most entertaining sports personality there is in or out of the game right now.

But whatever it is, I’m embarrassed to say this but, I’m confessing that I’d rather be Charles Barkley.

If you don’t already know what that is in response to, it’s based on a question oft asked by many sports writers to players during the NBA Playoffs. Actually, it’s more of a hypothetical proposition, a la the “Indecent Proposal” scenario that every couple had to play back in the 90′s with their significant other. The proposition is as such, “Would you rather be Charles Barkley, get all the fame, glory, stats and win nothing, or would you rather be Robert Horry, a 5th or 6th man on seven different NBA championship teams?”

It’s a hell of question, one that really requires some deep introspection. Obviously, the politically correct thing to say is that you’d rather be Robert Horry, because in this scenario, Horry gets the wins and comes across as more of a “I’ll do anything for the team,” sort of guy. But that’s just the politically correct thing to say. The real answer, in actuality, will differ from person to person. Some people don’t want all the glory. Some people don’t want all the fame. Some people will do anything to be a part of triumphant organization, and some people will do anything to be triumphant at their organization.

But to go back to my point, I fall in the camp of the latter–when it comes to basketball that is. I’d much rather be Charles than Horry. Personalities aside, Barkley lived the life he wanted to lead. He had the commercials, the women, the TV time, the money, the resounding respect of his peers and the ability to do as he pleased on the basketball court. Robert Horry, more or less, had luck on his side. Sure, Horry made sure to get with the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs when they gave him a good chance to win titles. However, he had already won two championships in Houston, where he was  an instrumental part of the team, and he had absolutely no choice in the matter since he was drafted by the Rockets. In addition, Horry’s championships had very little to do with him outside of a few well-timed three-pointers.

I know what you’re saying about me though, “He’s one of those guys! Ballhog!” Yeah, I don’t know about that though. I think you’re a lot like me. You want to say you’d rather be Horry, but perhaps you don’t know what you’d be giving up. Horry didn’t have a line of TV gigs waiting for him upon retirement. Horry didn’t make $9 million in one season like Barkley did at his high point. And do we even talk about Horry any more? Isn’t he completely irrelevant to anything going on in sports right now?

So how did this issue come up for me while watching the Miami/Philly series and the Chicago/Indiana game? Well, I couldn’t help but think that among all the great players we saw playing on the court tonight, one of those guys may never win a championship. Derrick Rose is good, but if he doesn’t beat LeBron James and the Miami Heat with this squad, he may never have this exact same talent around him ever again. And the opposite is true too. If LeBron, Wade and Bosh can’t win the NBA championship this season, who knows how things will work out season after season as the Heat get older?

In fact, let’s stick with that hypothetical. If LeBron loses to Chicago in the Eastern Conference Finals, do you want to be him or do you want to be Lamar Odom–sans the reality show? Again, I’d rather be LeBron James, a bonafide superstar that gets everything he wants and misses out on few opportunities of importance to him. Yes, Lamar Odom is rich, has two championship rings and a famous wife. Yet at the end of the day, I still saw him sitting in his car, sad that he didn’t make the All-Star team–yet again.

Of course, Lamar has experienced another feeling that LeBron simply hasn’t–winning. Then again, I’m sure LeBron can teach Lamar a thing or two about the life of  a superstar.

It’s just a matter of being willing to be mediocre at a really good company, or being a star-performer at a not-as-great company. Yes, in real life, you can have it both ways. Michael Jordan was the man on his team, and he got the championships. Barkley had his shots at it too, he just failed…miserably.

Still, if forced to choose from living the life of Barkley or Horry, I’m going with Barkley 100 times out of 100. He got the talent and everything that comes with it. Horry got the rings as one of the greatest co-signers in the history of the NBA and will be forgotten about in five years.

Call me a maverick, selfish, ball-hog, or whatever else you’d like to call me. But you know that deep down inside, you too would chose the life of Barkley. Outside of a few errs in judgment on the basketball court, Barkley has been able to do whatever he wants to do in life. Robert Horry hasn’t, and if you don’t believe me, just ask yourself what he’s doing right now.

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions Day 3: I’d Rather Be Barkley" was originally published at TSW.

I confess. I’m a hopeless romantic. Even though I grew up a fairly normal-looking guy and was the captain of my high school football team in the state of Texas, I always went after the girl that didn’t want me. And I don’t mean once or twice, but always. And it’s not as if I didn’t have any mutual-feeling options, I just seemed to be more interested in the girl that wanted nothing to do with me—even in the oft occurrence that there was a seemingly more “attractive” option to choose from.

Call it self-destruction, self-hatred, lack of self-esteem, or a flat out love for the thrill of the chase; I was more interested in the female that had no interest in me.

Apparently, that has carried over into other areas of my life. I love spicy food, even though it doesn’t love me three hours later. I tried like hell to work at NBC for four years, even though both Disney and CBS were the ones who gave me opportunities. And to top it all off, I graduated college in the summer of 2006 wanting to go into the journalism industry and be a newspaper writer like good old Michael Wilbon of PTI fame. That same summer of 2006 also happened to be the very year The Economist wrote its famed article, “Who killed the newspaper?”

Of course, my inclination for loving something sure to only hurt me carried over into sports. I am a Philadelphia Eagles fan. I am a Philadelphia Flyers fan. I heart the Philadelphia Phillies, who up until recently were devastatingly disappointing. And lastly, I will confess that my favorite NBA team is the New York Knicks.

In fact, I’m so disillusioned by unrequited sports love, that I will also confess that I think the New York Knicks can beat the Boston Celtics in the first round of the 2011 NBA Playoffs.

Yes, I still believe that, even after today’s game, when the Knicks (mainly Carmelo Anthony) collapsed in the second half, and gave the Celtics a 1-0 lead in the Knicks first NBA Playoff series in seven years.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that if you asked me to bet my life on it, or predict who was going to win the series, I would pick Boston 100 times out of 100, as our Eastern Conference NBA Playoff predictions would confirm. But much like when I was 16 and there was a pretty, young girl that I knew wasn’t interested in me, I hope and believe the Knicks actually have a shot at scoring a win this series—four of them to be exact.

I know. I know. It’s crazy. The Knicks can’t play defense. They can’t rebound. And their shot selection at the end of basketball games is atrocious, as was exhibited in their Game 1 loss against the Boston Celtics. Still, there’s a part of me that won’t let my hopes for the Knicks die. As objective and fact-driven as I try to be when conveying my sports thoughts and opinions to TheSportsWatchers.com readers, my emotions always get in the way when it comes to the Knicks.

As I think about it though, I’m sure my confession about the Knicks winning this series isn’t all that surprising. I’m just another hopeless romantic sports fan rooting for my favorite team, the one that “nobody else is giving a chance.” I’m just another guy in a long line of people wearing rose-shaded glasses, and I don’t even like roses.

But I do like the Knicks. I like them so much that I’m allowing myself to go against every journalistic principle of mine and present to you a feeling of emotion backed up by nary a single piece of evidence that supports my stance. That’s what hopeless romantics do though. We beat ourselves up with our own emotions until the truth punches us in the face. And while I’m sure my “fist to the head” is at the end of this tunnel we call the Celtics-Knicks series, I will continue to hope; blindly, irresponsibly and evidence-less. That’s my confession on Day 2 of the NBA Playoffs.

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions, Day 2: I’m A Hopeless Romantic" was originally published at TSW.

It is my intention to write each and every day during the 2011 NBA Playoffs.

That’s how much I love the sport!

That’s how much TheSportsWatchers.com loves the sport!

And that’s how much you all who read my crappy blog must obviously love the sport!

But I don’t want to use this daily diary to give you your “Daily Dime” as ESPN does, or as a number of multi-faceted news organizations can do 1,000 times better than I can. Instead, I’m more interested in confessing something related to the each of the day’s NBA Playoff games.

What exactly will I be confessing?

Well, everyday will bring its own revelations, but rest assure, we certainly have some things in mind. For example, with the Chicago Bulls set to play today, one of the things I will lead the 2011 NBA Playoff Confessions series with is the fact that I don’t like roses.

I don’t think Derrick Rose was the best basketball player during the 2011 NBA season.

Of course, you’ve seen me bring up Derrick Rose before, but as the 2011 NBA Playoffs open, it has become quite clear who is going to win the MVP Race, no matter how erroneous the voters appear to be.

Derrick Rose is not the MVP by any measure. He isn’t the best offensive player in the NBA. He isn’t the best defensive player in the NBA. There are several good players who have a bigger impact on the scoreboard for their teams than Rose does. And on top of all that, Rose is not even the best player at his position.

I say all of that to prove my point, and trust me, the stats back me up. What the stats don’t measure is how quick Rose is with the basketball, how prolific he has been in some games this season, and how big he has come up with in a couple of fourth quarters.

Conversely, the stats will tell you that despite Rose’s quickness, he’s bad at defense player (the second worst on his team in point differential), he’s been average in his shooting (55% True shooting percentage) despite his high scoring numbers, and he’s been wildly inaccurate and turnover prone in “clutch” moments.

So I confess; I’m not a Derrick Rose fan. And it’s not that I don’t think that he’s good, it’s just that Rose hasn’t earned this unbelievable praise that he has been given just because he has improved so immensely.

The NBA MVP?

Are we serious people? He’s been good, and the Chicago Bulls will go far in the playoffs, but Rose is not LeBron James. He’s not Kobe Bryant. Hell, he’s not even Chris Paul yet. He’s a great offensive player on the best defensive team in the NBA, and so he manages to stand out.

The post "NBA Playoff Confessions Day 1: I’m No fan of Rose’s" was originally published at TSW.

The Eastern Conference has been full of surprises this year, which makes our 2011 NBA Playoff Predictions all that much harder to make.

So what have been some of the surprises?

For starters, the Chicago Bulls are the best team in the Eastern Conference; nobody saw that being the case after all the events that took place this summer. Then how about the Orland Magic being a middling four-seed? Yes, they won 50 games, but their inclusion as one of the elite teams in the NBA seems to have expired. And then there are the Philadelphia 76ers. This team was left for dead entering the season and even a few weeks into it. Now they have been one of the best teams in the East since the All-Star break and could be well on their way to making some playoff noise.

So what is our prediction for how this year’s NBA Playoffs will play out? Let’s get to it, round by round.

First Round Predictions:

Chicago Bulls vs. Indiana Pacers
These two teams are about as unevenly matched as possible. The Bulls dominate the Pacers at every position except for one, small forward, where Danny Granger has a decided advantage over Luol Deng. And while I’m sure the Bulls can overcome that with Derrick Rose’s advantage over the Pacers point guards, it will be a much easier series if Deng can step up and counter Granger. But even if he doesn’t, Bulls still win. Our prediction is that Bulls close this out in 5, 4-1.

Orlando Magic vs. Atlanta Hawks
Last year, these two teams were the #2 and #3 seeds playing each other a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. This year, they are both middling #4 and #5 seeds that are expected to get thumped in the second round. While many may have the Magic winning this series in easy fashion, the four regular season series games between these two teams suggest otherwise. The Hawks have taken three out of four from the Magic, with a couple of easy wins. And while Dwight Howard is the best player on the court, the Hawks may have the next three or four best players. That said, I’m going to go with the numbers, which show that the Magic have an average point differentia of plus-5.3, while the Hawks have a point differential of minus-0.6. Statistically speaking, this series shouldn’t even be close, so I’ll go against what I’ve seen and let the numbers take hold of my prediction. Orlando wins, 4-1.

Miami Heat vs. Philadelphia 76ers
This match isn’t set in stone as April 11, 2011, however, we don’t think the Heat will lose for the rest of the season, and the New York Knicks have a tiebreaker over Philly. But I digress. The Heat are just better than the 76ers at their own game. Both teams like to run and both teams play great perimeter defense. But at the end of the day, the Heat have Dwyane Wade and LeBron James running, while the 76ers have Andre Igoudala. See what I’m saying? Heat win, 4-1.

Boston Celtics vs. New York Knicks
This is a tough one for me since, admittedly, I am a New York Knicks fan. And as I write this, knowing that the Celtics and Knicks play on Wednesday, on the last game of the season, I’m not afraid to say that the Knicks can play with these Celtics. They can’t play with the same Celtics that were in first place going into the All-Star break. But they can play with the Celtics. Especially since over their last 20 games, the Celtics scoring margin is a mere plus-1.55, while over the Knicks last 20 games, their scoring margin is plus-2.45. On top of that, the Celtics lone “big” man is Jermaine O’Neal, and if Shaquille O’Neal isn’t back for the postseason, the Knicks could dominate inside with Amare Stoudemire. Don’t get it twisted though; I’m not going to go pick the underachieving Knicks to win this series. I’m just saying, that if they did play up their abilities, and the Celtics play like that have over the last 20 games, the Knicks could win this series. But they won’t. Celtics win, 4-3.

Second Round Predictions:

Chicago Bulls vs. Orlando Magic
The best thing about this series is that we have a complete clashing of styles. The Bulls like to slow the pace and get to the basket, while the Magic like to run and shoot threes. On top of that, their offensive styles are in complete contrast with their best players. Rose would be better in perimeter game the Magic offer, while Howard is better suited for the motion offense the Bulls like to run. As a result, I have no idea what these games are going to look like, other than the fact that they will look awesome! Because I don’t know what how the demeanor of the NBA Playoffs will affect the style of this game, again I’m going to lean on the numbers that say the Bulls have been much better in their last 20 games than the Magic have. So Bulls win, 4-2.

Miami Heat vs. Boston Celtics
Everybody wants to say that losing Kendrick Perkins will costs the Celtics this series. I don’t see it that way, especially since the Celtics didn’t even have Perkins win they were winning the majority of those game. Again, I will point to Shaquille O’Neal, who has the third best adjusted plus/minus on the Celtics team. For me, it’s pretty simple. If Shaq plays, the Big three can do their thing on the perimeter and win this series. If he doesn’t, the Big Three will have a hard time stopping the Heat’s Big Three from getting into the paint and doing their thing. It’s been a long time since a team could rely on Shaquille O’Neal, so I’m going with the Heat in this one. Miami wins, 4-3.

Eastern Conference Finals

Chicago Bulls vs. Miami Heat
As you all know, the Miami Heat have lost to the Chicago Bulls three times. However, they have lost by a combined total of less than 8 points, and all of the games have come down to the last two are three possessions. Now, it is quite possible that the Heat are bad in close game situations. Yes, I am a firm believer in the fact that winning 5-point games is not a matter of skill, but one of luck. However, if I flip a coin 20 times, and I only get heads three times, I’m going to start to question the validity of that coin. And with the Heat’s close game record being less than optimal, I have to believe that their stagnation at the end of games is causing them to lose the close contests, and I haven’t seen any signs of them fixing that problem. However, I don’t like the Bulls late-game strategy either. As good as Rose has been, he is not the MVP, and he is not that good late in games. In fact, he shoots just 39% down the stretch of close games, and he turns the ball over way more than an MVP point guard should in that situation.

What bodes in Miami’s favor is the fact that we have yet to see them nearly at their best. Currently, the Three Kings average about 35 minutes a piece. However, when the Heat reach the 2011 NBA Playoffs, you can be assured that they will average about 40 minutes per game. That’s a very significant increase, especially when you consider the players they are replacing. Forty minutes a game means guys like Juwan Howard, Joel Anthony, James Jones and Mike Bibby can spend more time on the bench. Bringing in LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade for those games will increase the team’s efficiency tremendously. Thus, I like the Miami Heat to win the Eastern Conference Finals over the Chicago Bulls, 4-2.

The post "NBA Playoff Predictions: Eastern Conference" was originally published at TSW.

The NCAA Basketball Championship Game is tonight. Usually, when giving out championship predictions, I have no fear about what we’re projecting. I try to use the numbers and our perception of the game to come to a decision, and we let the chips fall where they may.

However, this game is different. This game is special. This game has two entities that just won’t die. Nobody thought Connecticut, the #3 seed in tonight’s championship game, would be entering the NCAA Championship Game having won the Big East Tournament and five straight games in addition to that. As for Butler, the #8 seed in tonight’s game, a lot of people didn’t think they could beat Old Dominion, which seemed apparent when they were down a point with only a few moments left in their Round 1 matchup.

Whether it was their first game or their second, most people thought that the five wins in five days would catch up with the Connecticut Huskies and send those basketball players reeling for oxygen back to Stores, Connecticut before too long. But when that didn’t happen in the first weekend, people should not have been surprised that Kemba Walker and UCONN came to play in the Sweet 16 and the Elite 8. They’re college kids, not senior citizens; four days of rest will certainly suffice.

Still, the emotion they overcame, by being forgettable at-large bid contenders entering the Big East Tournament to being on the verge of one of the greatest college basketball runs in the history of the sport, is a lot to deal with. Whether it was Kemba looking like his legs had given out half way through Big East play, to questionable losses on the road to sub-par Big East schools, Connecticut was about as championship-worthy as a dried up Kenny Powers, and yet here they are, championship game bound.

But don’t forget Butler. How many times have they been counted out this season? From being deemed doomed from the beginning when they lost their underclassmen “superstar” to the 2010 NBA Draft, to their failures in the Horizon League, where they weren’t even the best team in a mid-major conference, it seemed like Butler may not even make the NCAA Tournament at one point, never mind win the damn thing. But after essentially four upset wins and a victory over a red-hot VCU team in the Final Four, Butler is riding a roller coast of emotion that probably started the second Gordon Hayward’s last chance attempt at winning the championship game over Duke bounced off the backboard.

So the question is, with both teams riding a wave of emotion, will either of these teams sputter out in front a national audience, or will they will both rise to the occasion just one more time and put on a show for the ages? Even with a myriad of permutations in between those two options, each scenario feels quite plausible. Butler has a great knack of playing good basketball even when they aren’t playing good basketball. That is, when their shots aren’t going down on offense, hustle on the offensive boards and at the defensive end is so consistent, that they can easily overcome a long stretch of field goal shooting woes.

As for UCONN, they have on the most exciting players in the nation, and when he’s on, he’s almost impossible to stop. And for as much credit as Butler gets for its defense, UCONN is seemingly just as good at that end of the basketball court too, as was proven when they held Kentucky to 21 points in first half of Saturday’s Final Four game.

Both UCONN and Butler rode their strengths on the court to get to the championship game, but it’s their emotions that helped pave the way. Say what you will about the production of motivation on the court, motivation will drive a player to prepare more and focus more than he ever has in the past. In these cases, motivation drove Butler to that defensive focus that they had seemingly gotten away from during a long stretch in the Horizon League. And UCONN has seemingly gotten too caught up in Kemba Walker fever and needed some Big East smack downs to get them back to playing the team basketball they needed to help Kemba be at his best.

Now, I’m not saying that motivation actually willed UCONN to 10 straight unbelievable wins, but it sure did help in the preparation process, and that preparation has showed in the execution of each of tonight’s championship contenders.

Of course, luck had something to do with it, as well.

But no matter how this game plays out in terms of luck or performance, you can rest assure that emotions will determine the winner. Neither team has faced severe, basketball agony in the last month, and that lack of defeat almost always translates into unmitigated confidence. But what happens to a team’s confidence when faced with the realization that with five minutes left, only one team’s dreams are going to come true. The Butler players know all too well what that feeling is like, and they have to be scared to death of seeing that happen again. UCONN players were recruited by Jim Calhoun just for moments like this, so they have to be a little bit emotional about realizing their dreams too.

While it’s always said that emotions and visions of grandeur dissipate when players step in between the lines, the later it is in the game, the more likely those feelings are to creep back into a players minds. Will emotions affect the outcome of the game? Maybe. Maybe not. But chances are, emotions will run wild, and with one game to go in the college basketball runs of a lifetime, each team knows that while emotions helped get them to this point, emotions might bring their seasons to an end.

The post "NCAA Basketball Championship Game: UCONN, Butler and Emotions Collide" was originally published at TSW.

Your bracket is messed up! So what!

Let’s face it, when it comes to picking teams in the NCAA Tournament, it’s about as lucky as winning the lottery. You can’t predict these things; the odds are against you.

The better thing to worry about now is if these damn games will be worth watching on Saturday. With all due respect to VCU and Butler, the Final Four underdogs that I rooted for in every contest this tournament, they aren’t “sexy” teams that I want to necessarily watch at college basketball’s highest level.

Obviously, their stories are amazing, and if I lived to see a #11 seed like VCU cut down the nets next Monday after the NCAA Basketball championship game, it would be rather amazing. But I don’t know any of the players on that team, and I don’t know that I will know any of them after the game on Monday. At least Butler has 1, maybe as many as 2, potential NBA players, but even those guys are long shots. And when it comes to historical, championship basketball, I want to see names that I know and care about. I don’t want to get invested in people that will come and go out my life.

That’s what makes the NCAA Basketball Tournament great, right? The fact that throughout the entire first four days of the tournament, the fun thing to do is to root for the underdog and watch some young basketball player make a name for himself for a couple of days. Then during the second weekend, we typically watch any remaining underdogs get their heads beat in like they stole something and don’t belong. It’s that ultimate little man hope, big man thrive theory. We all love to see the underdog win, until he’s up against our favored team. Then we want to see that underdog beat down.

But this year, with VCU and Butler intruding into the Final Four, along with Kentucky and UCONN, the underdogs won the battle. And what we potentially have brewing here is a Georgetown-Villanova situation, where in which Villanova knocked off Patrick Ewing and the highly-favored Georgetown Hoyas in the 1985 NCAA Basketball Tournament Championship Game.

Will this Final Four play out like that and as worthwhile and as memorably? It certainly has a chance to do so. #8 Butler and #11 VCU play each other on Saturday, to assure basketball nation that a mid-major school will play for the NCAA championship on Monday. And with UCONN and Kentucky coming out of the other side of the bracket, we also assure ourselves that a historical basketball power will be on the other side of the eventual underdog winner.

Thus, the story lines have written themselves for the championship game before we even get there. Much like last year’s game between Butler and Duke, we have a battle between David and Goliath, only this time, David’s got a little swagger. Butler has too much senior experience to be even mildly intimidated by the names on a jersey. Furthermore, VCU has the balls of a bull, as they exhibited when they knocked off the #2 overall team in the tournament over the weekend. In fact, VCU reminds me a lot of that 1985 Villanova team. They were bold and brash with a brazen, young, head basketball coach and some guys that could really shoot the lights out of a basketball arena. And if VCU does advance to the championship game, and when we do get that David vs. Goliath matchup, it’s hard to imagine this year’s Final Four not being worth the watch. Because even if I have to invest my emotions in a couple of guys I will never see play basketball again, sometimes the magnitude of the moment is strong enough to live on forever. Just ask that 1985 Villanova team.

The post "Zo Knows: The 2011 Final Four Is Worth Watching" was originally published at TSW.

The debate itself is ridiculous. Jalen Rose made some comments with racial undertones that reflected the way he felt two decades ago. Grant Hill responded to what he considered hurtful comments, which is more than appropriate, given not-so-positive things were said about him.

But as inflammatory as some may have found Rose’s use of the term “Uncle Tom” in The Fab Five documentary, Rose was clearly not attacking Hill in the present tense. And as hurt and offended by being labeled an Uncle Tom in the documentary as he was, Grant Hill made it a point to say in his New York Times opinion piece that Rose and the Fab Five are his friends.

However, I will go ahead and indulge in this heated argument for a couple of paragraphs. Let’s say Hill and Rose really were at each other’s throats over some comments made in a documentary—comments Rose already apologized to Hill for, albeit via the 21st century equivalent of a telegram, Twitter. If they really were caught up in this debate, can’t they still both be right? Rose said that as a 19-year old, he felt that black, Duke basketball players were Uncle Toms—the key there being that he felt that way two decades ago, not now. And if that’s how he felt then, he’s only being honest about his feelings. As people, we grow, we mature and we learn the arrogance of our ways. Jalen never said that he feels that same way about Duke players today. The fact that Rose’s words are being misconstrued to suggest that he is currently stereotyping a certain type of black person, or in the words of Jason Whitlock, he is preaching in favor of self-hate among black people, is a completely ludicrous notion. Jalen is simply expressing a way that he felt in the past!

To that point though, Grant Hill can be right, too. Grant Hill feels Jalen did not go far enough to express that he no longer feels that Hill nor his Duke brethren are Uncle Toms. Jalen was the executive producer of The Fab Five documentary, and he has had many opportunities to step away from the comments in various media platforms and interviews. The fact that I have yet to have heard Jalen express a clear disdain for the way he felt about black, Duke, basketball players allows me to understand why Hill, and those in his position, may be taken aback by Jalen’s comments.

So I guess that’s what we’re arguing about. While Rose and Hill took to film and the NYTimes to express their sentiments at the highest levels of media possible, the rest of us want to pretend as if there is some real verbal feud going on between these two people that have suggested nothing about their relationship other than the fact that they have been friends since they were teenagers. But we, myself included as I write this piece, are taking these differing viewpoints to mean that there is a clear divide between Jalen and Grant, and between the groups of black people they are seen to represent.

But that’s not what we should be talking about! What we should be talking about is how the Fab Five documentary made many, many points about the state of NCAA basketball in the early 90’s and the way that five, young, black kids came together and became life long best friends. Not to mention, the documentary spoke to the exploitation of the college athlete, the state of poor black individuals, cultural divides, personal failings, collective triumphs and an eventual fall from grace. Instead, we as a nation, one that many people love to say is beyond race, find a way to hang on to the most polarizing mention of race in the film.

The fact is that, Barack Obama or no Barack Obama, race is still king in this country. It affects our lives everyday. The second Rose broke out the trigger word “Uncle Tom,” I could hear the smattering of keyboards across the nation getting ready for their 750-word columns. Race is just an easy topic to use as a fuel for a debate, even though sports writers, who are typically white Americans, fail to address the topic with the same objectivity and lack of caution that they address most other topics with. Thus, instead of talking about whether Jalen is right in saying that Duke recruits a certain type of player, the headlines focus on the use of an uncomfortable and hurtful word, that while dangerous, is by no means strong enough for me to accept our nation’s unwillingness to have a more thoughtful discussion.

However, while I read article after article about Rose’s use of the word “Uncle Tom,” I don’t feel sorry for Rose. He has been given opportunity to make it clear that he no longer thinks Duke players are Uncle Toms, and he hasn’t used those opportunities to do so. Why? I’m not sure, only Rose can tell you that. But since he hasn’t done so, I can’t worry about how all of this backlash is affecting him.

That being said, Rose shouldn’t have to make himself any clearer than he already has. So while I don’t feel sorry for the backlash he has received, I still don’t feel the backlash is deserved. Again, watch the documentary. Listen to what Rose has said since then. In 1991, Rose thought Duke players were Uncle Toms. In 2011, there is no evidence that Rose feels that way. Show me the evidence (ehemm, Jason Whitlock), and I’ll concede to the fact that Rose should be more contrite. But in my opinion, we as an English-speaking people have past and present tense in the English language for a reason, and to have to explain ourselves past the point of structuring our sentences in a way that any 4th grader can understand, is something I find foolish and unnecessary.

Another thing I find foolish though is why we aren’t looking more into what Rose actually said. As opposed to getting hung up on the word “Uncle Tom,” why have we failed to prolifically discuss why head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, or Coach K, didn’t recruit Jalen Rose? Was it because Rose was from the inner-city? Was it because Rose didn’t go to private school? These are legitimate questions to ask, and ones that certainly broach upon some semblance of truth about Duke’s recruiting standards. I’m not even saying that Coach K is wrong for not recruiting Rose, but if talking about whether Rose thinks Hill is an Uncle Tom is worthy of my time, than certainly a discussion over Duke’s pristine image and a seemingly lack of diversity in certain aspects of the recruiting are worthy a conversation.

But no. What gets covered on television, radio, the internet, and now my blog, are the two inflammatory words that are oft used as conversational fire-starters. And while I find our unwillingness to go further into the documentary and get past some mean words said 20 years ago, I understand that the issue of race continues to be a polarizing issue, one that has transcended from blacks defending blacks and whites defending whites, to people taking the sides they legitimately feel responsible to. Sixty years ago that wasn’t the case, and now, perhaps through fire-starting conversations like these, we have reached a different place.

So even though these conversations fail to explore deeper, more though-provoking issues, they still have some value in that they expose emotions and get us talking about a sensitive issue. I only wish that at the end of this discussion, and look back and realize that this wasn’t about Rose vs. Hill, or about how bad of a person Rose is for saying something and how good of a person Grant is for defending Duke. This really is about race in America and why we are overly sensitive to it. These aren’t always the most thoughtful conversations, but they serve a purpose, and perhaps, just maybe, it’s okay if we have more of them.

The post "Rose vs. Hill: Not a Fight I’m Interested In" was originally published at TSW.

This is said every year: “Be prepared to tear up your NCAA Tournament brackets after the first weekend.”

And usually, that is indeed the case. But I can only think of one year, the NCAA Tournament from a season ago, where chalk wasn’t the predominant theme by the time the Final Four rolled around.

Daring to be controversial, I am again going to say that the 2011 NCAA Tournament will result in you tearing up your bracket by the time the weekend ends. However, to take it a step farther, and to let you in on a little secret, if you go chalk, chances are your bracket won’t even survive the Dinner break on Friday.

This tournament is bound for upsets. While my buddy Dennis Johnson thinks that the “March Madness” in the 2011 NCAA tournament went out the window with the NCAA committee’s terrible seeding, I on the other hand, think not even their misdoing can mess this tournament up. In the words of ESPN’s Jay Bilas, this tournament is idiot-proof.

It was also Bilas who said that this is the weakest NCAA Tournament field in the history of college basketball. He’s a lot older than me, so I will take his word for it on this one. And if Bilas is right, expect upset city all Thursday and Friday long—only in grave proportions.

For you bracket busters who are looking for the latest 2011 NCAA sleeper pick in all four of the tournament’s regions, this tournament was made for you. For the gamble-aholics that love picking the underdog to win straight up, this may be your best year yet.

Just look at the potential in this tournament for madness. A lot of people think Texas’ athleticism matches up well with Duke, who is in their same region; however, Texas might not even get out of the first round if they lose to #13 Oakland, a team that boast a big front line with Keith Benson (a surefire NBA talent) anchoring the middle. Then you have a team like Pittsburgh, for which many people think has the easiest road of all the #1 seeds in the tournament. Still, Pittsburgh’s poor offense could see them take an early bow in the Round of 32 if they can’t handle the efficient scoring of the Butler Bulldog offense. And what about everybody’s favorite, BYU, which got a #3 seed but are without their second best player for the remainder of the NCAAs?

Chaos!

I will admit. The seeding in this tournament made the propensity for a chalk-like Final Four scenario possible. Again, I point to Pittsburgh’s easy run, a clear path for Ohio State and also, a possible walk-into the Final Four for the Duke Blue Devils. A few bounces of the basketball, and that’s what we will have. But a few rotations the other way might have us headed for the freakiest of NCAA Tournaments, and so long as I’m watching them, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

The post "March Madness 2011: NCAA Bracket of Doom" was originally published at TSW.

The Miami Heat finally got back on track. After beating the Los Angeles Lakers in a hard-fought basketball game, the Heat followed that up with the utter destruction of the late-surging Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday. However, the Heat’s gain was the Lakers loss. And Kobe Bryant was not happy about it.

After the game on Thursday, Kobe “Bean” Bryant had a post-game shoot-around—by himself!

That’s right! A 14-year veteran, 32-year old, 13-time all-star had a post game shoot-around by himself, after he loss to the Miami Heat on national television. Kobe said it was the first time he had a post-game shoot-around in 7 years, but that the agony of that defeat affected him so immensely that he immediately had to improve upon his game.

Of course, any intelligent person will tell you that a post-game shoot-around won’t do much for Kobe Bryant. First of all, he’s 32-years old; thus, his body was far too tired to truly handle a productive shoot-around after playing a game that went right down to the wire.

Secondly, Kobe has been in the NBA for 14 years and hadn’t found the need to have a post-game shoot-around in the last seven seasons. You know why? Because there isn’t much he can do to improve his shot at this point in his life—especially not when he’s entering the shoot-around with a body that was clearly fatigued throughout the entire fourth quarter of that game.

Lastly, what good does shooting by himself do him at this point in the season? Let’s face it, Kobe gets enough personal workout time in during the day, and he surely gets plenty of shots up during a game. There’s nothing Kobe can do in a gym by himself and after a game that’s going to make the Lakers better. If he wants to do that, he should have had all of the Lakers out their taking shots and improving their games. While the loss to Miami was in part a result of Kobe’s poor night, if he had some better interior help, we would have seen the Lakers win that game.

Then again, Kobe knows that. You know how I know Kobe knows that? Because anybody you talk to who is close with Kobe Bryant will tell you that Kobe is one of the most calculating individuals in NBA basketball history. Kobe doesn’t do anything without thinking about the outcome, consequences and prospects of a single, public act. Ever since the rape charges against him, Kobe’s public persona has been as manicured as women’s nails. And there are instances that attest to that. From getting Shaq out of LA but not saying anything about it, to new grimace-look he developed a couple of postseasons ago, Kobe makes his mark on the public what he wants it to be, including arranging sit down dinners with reporters when he was trying to get his image back in line.

So what’s the motivation behind a post-game shoot-around? That’s simple. He wanted to change the narrative around the very game that he just lost.

If Kobe is one thing, it’s prideful. The man doesn’t like being outscored, and he hates taking a backseat to anyone, even if they are on his team (i.e. Phil Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal). You can only imagine how mad it makes him that this whole experiment in Miami is forcing him and his team to take a backseat to LeBron James and the Heat. And to lost to them on national television? Oh no! Kobe wasn’t having it.

So in a move to make the story about him and to “defend his honor,” Kobe went back on to the court, after the game, and took shots. Mind you, he didn’t do this after his basketball ego should have been shook in Cleveland when the Cavaliers put a whooping’ on him. Instead, Kobe saved his post-game antics for Miami, when TNT and ESPN were in the house and every basketball fan in America was watching.

How convenient.

Listen, Kobe is a great basketball player, but the next person to tell me he is a great guy is worthy of having his own bubble popped. Kobe has a problem with being second fiddle. But it’s one thing to be mad about Miami taking precedence over his last 2 NBA championships, but it’s another to try and steal attention away from somebody after you severely got outplayed by Dwyane Wade on the court. Kobe’s decision to go shoot around after the game like a young Jesus Shuttlesworth trying to get picked up by a top-flight Division I program is foolish. Kobe needs to be a man about his loss, and go back to his locker room and cry about it. Just like the Miami Heat would have done.

The post "Kobe Bryant Doing Work…After the Game" was originally published at TSW.

I would love to sit here and tell you how bad the Miami Heat are. As happy as I was to see the spectacle of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh do what they did last summer, like most of America, I too joined the collective groan as I realized how unappetizing it would become to listen to these three guys try to boost their egos—even if in the process they gave up stats, money and adoration to do so.

And as much as I would love to see the first season of this experiment come crashing to a sobering end in the playoffs, the chances of that are extremely unlikely.

To put it simply, the Miami Heat’s recent losing streak has not show too many flaws that one can say are truly representative of what the Miami Heat are capable of doing. For example, much of Heat’s losing has had to do with their opponents’ three point-shooting. Miami’s opponents are hitting 43.2% of their threes during Miami’s five-game losing streak. To put that in perspective, the best three-point shooting team in the league, the San Antonio Spurs, shoots 40.1% from behind the arc. This means that collectively, the Heat have seen three-point shooting that is almost 7.7% better than the NBA’s best, and is 22% better than the median NBA team.

That, my friend, is unlucky.

Of course, some of you will say it’s the Heat’s defense, but that’s entirely unfair, given that the Heat are one of the five best teams in the league defensively, and even with the last five losses included, the Heat are the 7th best team in the NBA at defending the three-point line. That just stresses how much luck goes into defending the three-pointer, because at the end of the day, good NBA players can always get off a good jumper unless you crowd them to point of sacrificing the drive. Essentially, defending the three comes down to whether or not the other team is making them, and if they are and they keep shooting it, ala the Orlando Magic comeback last Thursday, there’s not TOO much an NBA team, even as good as the Heat, can do about it.

But don’t worry, Heat fans, the luck will run out, and teams rarely shoot as many threes in the post-season as they do in the regular season anyway. I don’t like saying things like the stats will come back to their statistical mean, because people who say that, rarely ever admit when that doesn’t happen, and as a stat guy, it happens a lot more than most stat guys would like to suggest.

Another thing that can solace Heat fans is this whole 1-18 shooting by Miami when they are tied or down by 1-3 points with 30 seconds left in the game. I could make those Larry Bird shots from the McDonald’s commercials at a better rate than 1 for 18, so that stat is just a tremendous outlier. If you think LeBron James driving to the rim against Carmelo Anthony or Joakim Noah is a 1 for 18 proposition, you’re only kidding yourself.

Now a smart basketball fan might suggests that the 1 for 18 is more indicative of a stagnant, late-game offense, and the defense’s ability to hone in on LeBron James on the final play of the game. That no doubt has contributed to that woeful percentage, but it still shouldn’t be this bad. Over the last five years, LeBron James, by just about every statistical measure out there, is among the leaders in clutch stats. (I won’t even give you the stats myself, because for most people, if you don’t seem them for yourself, you won’t believe them. Well, the stats are at 82games.com, and I dare you to find any measurement of clutch and come back with one that does not have LeBron ranked among the Top 10.) How did LeBron achieve this high-level of late-game performance?

Well, as the 1 for 18 mark connotes, he didn’t do it in Miami, where he has a lot of help. Instead, those stats were achieved in Cleveland, where the players around him were worse, but the plays were the same. In Cleveland, LeBron did the same thing in the clutch. He backed the ball out to basically half-court and he took his player one-on-one. He’s doing the same thing in Miami with better players around him, and it just hasn’t worked out yet. I am in no means a LeBron apologist, but in the examples noted above (the drives against Carmelo and Joakim), one could argue LeBron was fouled, but of course, another might argue that LeBron just choked. Either way, this same method has proven to work for LeBron in the past, which is why I think it will work for him again in the future. Now, the Heat could help him by having a little more backside movement on the play so guys like Amare Stoudemire can’t swoop over and block the shot, but perhaps neither Miami fans or Miami haters believe Coach Erik Spoelstra can make that happen.

However, to that point, even if LeBron delivers more often, it does appear that the Heat are not that capable at winning close games. With a record of 5-13 in games decided by 5 points or less, we can statistically reject the notion that the Heat have a 50% chance of winning close games, which is the general hypothesis made by basketball sabermetricians. In fact, it is even more likely that the Heat are no better than a 39% winning team in close situations.

Still, Heat fans need not worry. Even if the Heat win close games at 39% clip, it should not affect their chances to win the playoffs too much. All of their playoff games won’t be decided that few points, and if they win 40% of the ones that are, their chances of winning a given playoff series aren’t much worse than they are if the Heat had a 50% chance of winning those games.

So buck up, Miami! It’s been a while since you had a team to root for, so jump off the bandwagon now! Your team may have failed you as of late, but the numbers and history show that none of this means they will fail you later in the NBA Playoffs.

The post "Miami Heat’s Losing Steak Not Indicative of Postseason Play" was originally published at TSW.

It was the legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum that once said, “Yesterday, I was lying. Today I’m telling the truth.” At the time he said that, it was misconstrued as him saying something whimsical about being a little deceitful. But in actuality, there was nothing deceitful about that. The man changed his mind. Sure, it was overnight, but sometimes things happen that fast.

Now, I have stood by the Miami Heat for much longer than one night. Since the beginning of the season, I have touted them as the favorite to win the NBA Championship. Now, I have had my doubts, but I haven’t backed off my statement that they are the favorites.

Until today.

Call me a liar. Call me a flip-flopper. Call me Bob Arum. Whatever it is you want to call me, just don’t call me late for supper—although, that might help me shed a few pounds.

Truth be told, I was right there with the Heat and LeBron James until last night, when they lost to the Chicago Bulls for the second time.

Now, by no means am I saying that the Heat can’t win the championship, but I’m no longer going to sit here and say they are favorites. They just aren’t that good. Hell, and with reports having surfaced that the Heat were floating Mike Miller around as a trade piece, it is clear that the Heat don’t think they are that good. And teams that are THAT good don’t lose to the Chicago Bulls in the fashion that they did, for the second time around. Time to face the Heat, Heat fans; your team isn’t nearly as dominate as we thought they might be.

Losing to the Bulls in a close game, however, is not the sole reason I’m backing off my prediction. I still think the Heat with Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh are the better team. I’m backing off my prediction because of the way they lost. Here the Heat are, 50-something games into the season, and they have an 8-man rotation in which their top three players all played 40 minutes are more. Meanwhile, the Bulls threw 10 players at the Miami Heat, only one player eclipsed the 40-minute mark, and that guy wasn’t even named Derrick Rose.

On top of that, both LeBron and Wade were really productive last night against the Bulls. Wade had 34 points on 24 shots, and LeBron had 29, 10 and 5 assists. The lone bad performer was Chris Bosh, who was 1 for 18 with 9 rebounds, and while he will probably never have another game like that in his life, it was more than evident that the Bulls interior defense had no problem guarding Bosh, and the Bulls big men were just too tough for Bosh to handle in the post.

The fact that the Heat cared about this game enough to play their three stars 120 minutes and still couldn’t win a game against the Bulls shows how beatable they are. All this time my theory has been that in a seven game series, with everything on the line, the Heat can’t lose four out of seven games. But that’s not true, and it was made apparent last night. That game was played with a playoff intensity and strategy. Wade and LeBron don’t play those kinds of minutes without having a playoff-like interest in winning that game. And Joakim Noah for the Bulls doesn’t play 27 minutes in his first game back unless somebody on that Bulls team really wanted to beat the Heat.

Thus, the Heat’s loss proves they are beatable. Again, that doesn’t mean they can’t win it, but the nod to the Boston Celtics and the Chicago Bulls is looking all that much better right now. And I certainly don’t think the Heat stand a chance against the Dallas Mavericks or the San Antonio Spurs as presently constructed here after the trade deadline.

My other point of contention concerning the Heat is their MVP. A little a while ago, and with some foolishness, it appears that we wrote a piece stating how LeBron James is the clear-cut MVP. Now, I actually do stand by that selection, because LeBron James is the best player in the NBA, and I don’t think the MVP should be determined in this “value” metric that we have created as a means to make this more of a team award than an individual award. That being said, it’s hard to justify giving the award to LeBron James, if Derrick Rose, in every instance, proves his Bulls to be a better team than the Miami Heat.

The Bulls aren’t supposed to beat the Heat twice, once without Noah, and have essentially the same record as the Heat. But that’s the case. And with that being the case, how can I say that LeBron James is better than Derrick Rose when Rose is doing more with less talent around him?

I can’t say that.

So sorry, Miami Heat fans. In the same article that I’m casting doubts about your team, I’m casting doubts about your best player. I still think he’s the best player in the NBA, but if Derrick Rose has a better record at the end of the season, I might have to change my mind on that. I am putting a lot of emphasis on last night’s game? Yes. Too much? Perhaps. But I can’t help the fact. And the facts are that the Bulls have beaten Miami twice. The Mavericks have beaten them twice. The Celtics have beaten them twice. And Rose and the Bulls are one-game back of the Heat and LeBron, and they aren’t the team that raised three 100 million players out of a stage prior to the season.

So call it a knee-jerk reaction. Call it crazy. And call me a liar. Just don’t call me later, when you realize that the Heat just aren’t living up to expectations, and other teams, like the Chicago Bulls, are exceeding them.

The post "Miami Heat Cause Me to Rethink My Stance on NBA Finals and MVP" was originally published at TSW.

Alright, New York Knicks fans. It looks like you are going to get what you asked for. You are going to have your chance at Carmelo Anthony, even if it means selling your souls to do it.

It was just last week that the video above was released. In it, New Yorkers, a questionable bunch of New Yorkers might I add, told an ESPN reporter that the Knicks needed to get Anthony no matter what.

Well, “no matter what” appears to be the Knicks stance. Over NBA All-star Weekend, the Knicks offered the Denver Nuggets the whole kitten-caboodle. After months and months of drawing a line in the sand stating that they were not going to give up both Wilson Chandler and Danillo Gallinari, the Knicks have offered both of their promising young wings to the Nuggets in return for Anthony. In addition, the Knicks will also ship a first round pick and Eddy Curry to the Nuggets. Not to mention, the Nuggets are currently asking for Timofey Mozgov. And as part of secondary trade, the Nuggets have offered Chauncey Billups for Raymond Felton, which would help the Nuggets get under the salary cap for the year.

So to reiterate, the Knicks would get:

Chauncey Billups
Carmelo Anthony
Bench players to make the trade cap-friendly

The Nuggets would get:

Wilson Chandler
Danillo Gallinari
Raymond Felton
Eddy Curry
First-round Pick
Timofey Mozgov (maybe)

That my friend is called highway robbery!

Don’t’ get me wrong, Carmelo Anthony is a better offensive player than all of those guys. But even if I were to agree with the notion that he’s worth all of these players in a relatively normal situation, he certainly isn’t worth that much talent when the team trading him is afraid of losing him for nothing the second that season is over.

In fairness to the Knicks though, they did get screwed by the Nuggets and the New Jersey Nets. The Nuggets, in all likelihood, reached out to New Jersey and told the Nets that they should get back in the trade talks unless they wanted to see their cross-river rivals land Carmelo Anthony in the off-season for nothing. It was a great tactical move on the part of the Nets to jump back in this thing, especially since the two franchises have been taking jabs at one another since Mikhail Prokhorov purchased the team last summer.

Of course, the real masterminds here were the Nuggets. By bringing New Jersey back into the fold and reportedly allowing Anthony to talk with the Nets, they made it seem as if Anthony was willing to go to New Jersey. The Knicks, having seen videos like the one at the start of this post, know that they can’t afford to see Anthony playing in Brooklyn a year-and-a-half from now. So the Knicks upped their offer and will be left with what amounts to two all-stars and an aging point guard when it’s all said and done.

On the flip side, the Knicks are unlikely to maintain all of their talent even if Anthony waits until the off-season to join the team. The Knicks have no intention of keeping Eddy Curry around. Moreover, to sign Anthony, the Knicks probably would have to release Wilson Chandler. While they possibly could do a sign-and-trade with the Nuggets to keep Chandler, that would mean giving up somebody. That likely somebody, however, would have to be a player of remote interest to the Nuggets; i.e. Wilson Chandler.

So, one way to look at this is to say that the Knicks are giving up Gallinari, Felton, possibly Mozgov and a first round pick for Anthony and Billups given that they would lose Chandler anyway. That’s the argument some people are making to back this trade, but I still have one point of contention with that.

Carmelo Anthony should want to keep as much talent on the Knicks as possible. After all, it’s he who is going to get a lot of blame for the Knicks downfalls when they are incapable of beating the Miami Heat, Chicago Bulls, and possibly the aging Boston Celtics, during Anthony’s first couple of years in the Eastern Conference. Having players like Gallinari and Chandler on the Knicks roster are beneficial to Anthony and his soon-to-be teammate, Amare Stoudemire, since neither of these so-called forwards can rebound worth a damn.

However, money is a funny thing. And there are so many variables that could mess with Anthony’s money. The new Collective Bargaining Agreement could insert hard caps, salary limitations and the elimination of many player benefits. These possible insertions into the CBA could subtract as much as $20 million from the Anthony’s salary over the next three years. Now, forgive me from sitting here with less than $20 million in my pocket and making a comment about Anthony’s money, but I would think that he’s willing to sacrifice that to play with a contender, which is what the Knicks could possibly be with him, Amare, Chandler, Gallinari, Mozgov and Felton. Even if the Knicks can’t compete with that rotation, they could turn those pieces into other pieces. But no matter what they do, giving up the kitchen sink for one guy won’t get them on the Heat or the Bulls level anytime soon.

But there is one more caveat, and it has nothing to do with money. Carmelo may not even care about the money, if what his real concern is that he may not be able to leave Denver this off-season. If Anthony truly wants to go to New York and is forced to wait until this off-season to do it, it’s quite possible that he may not have the option. Once the new CBA is all said and done, there may be a new clause that introduces the franchise tag to the NBA. If that’s the case, the Nuggets could then tag Anthony and keep him Denver until somebody offers them what they want. Of course, the franchise tag is only something that has been brought up, and given the uneven value of a player in basketball, as opposed to in the NFL, it would be hard to come up with “fair compensation” for a franchise player (e.g. two first round picks for a franchise player in the NFL) in the NBA.

The risk of having to stay in Denver for another year would probably do considerable damage to Anthony’s psyche. If that’s what he’s afraid of, then I can understand why he might want to force the Knicks to trade for him now.

However, the Knicks have more insider information that either Carmelo Anthony or myself. As the NBA’s most valuable team, they have a pretty good feel (if not influence) as to what the future CBA will look like. If they couldn’t convince Anthony to get on board with them given the information they have available, it’s their own poor negotiating skills they have to blame. That is ultimately why I have to deem this trade proposal by the Knicks an absolute failure on the part of their front office. Sure, in the long run, the Knicks win, because they can only get better with Carmelo and Stoudemire on the same team.

However, if they can’t get the right pieces around those two guys before their respective primes evaporate, Knicks fans will look back at this trade and wonder what would have happened had they waited to get Anthony in the summer. While waiting means possibly losing out on Carmelo, a wise person once told me something very valuable the day after I got rejected by a girl for the first time: “There are plenty of fish in the sea.” And while Carmelo may be in a special category, but he’s not alone in that category, and I don’t think anything is worth giving up everything. Unless your name is Michael Jeffrey Jordan or Tim Duncan in their primes, no one player has been that solely responsible for a team’s ability to win championships.

The post "Carmelo Anthony Trade Talks: Knicks are offering too much" was originally published at TSW.

Shortly after 6pm, some 100 million people will tune into the Super Bowl game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. Many of those millions are casual fans, just gong to Super Bowl parties and bars to watch the game and have fun doing so. Serious “football-watchers” like you and myself, however, watch for different reasons, like strategy, rooting interest, gambling, fantasy football and of course, making sure our predictions go as planned.

As noted in TheSportsWatchers NFL section, our site has predicted that the Steelers will reign supreme, but I don’t feel the need to rehash the entire prediction.

One point that was made in that piece, however, is that this Sunday’s football game is all about the quarterbacks. Here you have a Steelers team that throughout history has been a proponent of running the football and defense, and yet all anyone can talk about are Ben Roethlisberger’s “comeback” and his pursuit of a third Super Bowl ring that will propel him past guys like John Elway and put him in the famed company of Tom Brady.

Then there is the other quarterback. While the Green Bay Packers are pretty accustomed to celebrating great quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers is not used to being celebrated. Sure, he has had statistical success since Day 1, but he didn’t win his first playoff football game until this season, and all of a sudden he’s being mentioned among the top 3 or 4 best quarterbacks in the league.

But we’ll come back to the quarterbacks in a second.

What’s really important here is how you feel about the game?

Are you happy to take all of Sunday off and do nothing but enjoy the pleasure of watching a game with 100 million other people that don’t have anything better to do than eat chips and watch television?

Can you not wait to get your mouth on that first bite of pizza just as the opening kick goes into the air?

Does the thought of having a Super Bowl party make you the least bit excited about that new couch that you spent way too much money on?

Are you happy that as we approach the Super Bowl, we may be witnessing the last football game for quite some time now? Unless of course, you’re talking about futbol, which of course, is played on a regular basis anywhere outside of Harlem.

Let’s face it; American football is a part of our souls. It’s the fun part of our souls, a part that has very little do with anything tangible, and a part that makes us throw wonderful parties in the name of sport Still, we take our football way too seriously. When somebody messes up, we immediately want him to take blame for it in the post-game press conference. If a coach appears to mismanage the game, we have to know why he didn’t make this substitution or call that play.

During the Super Bowl, that criticism, born out of a place of fun and happiness, will come down upon the heads of Coach Mike Tomlinson and Coach Mike McCarthy like a linebacker down the “A” gap. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly have taken the opportunity to make sports a bit more serious than it needs to be in a column or two. However, in such instances, I was wrong. I was wrong to make the sport of football, or any sport for that matter, too serious. Mike McCarthy won’t be a bad coach if he loses this game. And Mike Tomlinson isn’t lucky if manages to win his second Super Bowl in three years. I’m letting bad coaching off the hook, but the fact is that coaches are what they are. The players control the game. And the only things about football that should be taken seriously are the players on the field.

Then again, should the players even care so much?

As we approach the Super Bowl, it’s easy to see how players lend themselves to the serious nature of football. Afraid to say the wrong thing or piss of the wrong person, football players shy away from the camera like a 7th grader shies away from asking the pretty girl to dance at the school Halloween party. Of course, in this age of media and new media, a lack of sound bites from some only means more air time for the big mouths. Enter Chad Johnson’s dating reality show and Antonio Cromartie’s curse-filled rants.

You won’t hear any Cromartie-like statements coming out of the lead up to the Super Bowl though. We haven’t heard trash talk on Media Day of the Super Bowl since Plaxico Burress predicted the final score to the New York Giants eventual win over the 18-1 New England Patriots. While Burress ultimately delivered on his promise, statements like those didn’t lend to his favor when he needed all the creditability he could get once he fired a gun off in the bowels of a Manhattan nightclub.

Burress isn’t alone though. People don’t like Cromartie because he spoke his mind. People don’t like Joey Porter because he runs his mouth. And who the hell loves Terrell Owens when he’s barking up and down the sideline at the closest head coach or quarterback that will listen to him?

Still, the guys who talk the most and speak their mind are the reason we love the NFL. If nobody said anything, the NFL would still score huge viewing numbers, but if you don’t think Cromartie’s telling Tom Brady to go bleep himself didn’t draw in a few more casual (and valuable younger) viewers, you’re crazy.

The NFL needs more vocal football players. People who entertain us with their mere presence are what make the world go round. It’s why Keith Olbermann will always have a job on television. It’s why Mike Ditka is a commentator on ESPN’s NFL Countdown. And it’s why our current President was elected into office. People like soaring speeches, daring claims, and the gumption of the underdog. They eat that stuff up for lunch—hell, I eat it up.

And that is why it would be great to see Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger go at it in the media this week. That of course is just a media member’s dream that won’t come true. The biggest stars on their teams, playing in the NFL’s biggest game, on television’s biggest stage going at it like two name-calling teenagers would make for one heck of a story. Because unlike the matchups in the Super Bowl, Rodgers and Roethlisberger can actually be on the same “playing field” during the week. On the field, there can be no such battle. Rodgers can’t run out and tackle a Steelers wide receiver headed for the end zone from his place on the bench. And Big Ben isn’t pass-rushing Rodgers. Thus, any nonsense talk about this game being Rodgers vs. Roethlisberger is crazy.

I wish I could make this game about Rodgers vs. Big Ben and their respective race for career-defining Super Bowl wins, but I can’t. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing real. They’re too good to knock down even in a loss, and the fact that they’re too serious to come at each other during the week takes away any potential spice their non-dueling positions could conjure up. For two guys who play with such reckless abandonment, they are amazingly constrained in front of a microphone.

Call it good PR-prep or home training, but whatever it is, these quarterbacks, like the many quarterbacks before them, take the game too seriously to talk about anything other than football this week. Maybe that’s what they should do to play their best game, but in reality; a few moments on the mic can’t take away from hours, weeks, months and years of preparing for the Super Bowl. Serious is who they are though—just like the teams they represent.

You, however, can take it upon yourself to make football a little bit more fun. Toss the pre-game analysis. Forget about Big Ben’s pursuit of #3 or the monkey on Aaron Rodgers back. Don’t listen to the pundits try to make an underdog out of one team, or make a mountain out of mole hill when there’s nothing else to report. Just sit back, enjoy your nachos, pizza and beer, and watch a game that was meant to be fun, while having fun. Millions of casual fans will do just that, and I want you to do that as well. For many major sports fans, football has been far too serious for far too long, and with an impending lockout after the last game of the season, enjoying this Sunday’s Super Bowl might be your last (and maybe your first) chance to enjoy watching football. So make is Super.

The post "Super Bowl Game, Parties and Quarterbacks" was originally published at TSW.

Let’s not beat around the bushes here. You think Jay Cutler is an NFL football-playing wuss for a quarterback! You think that because he didn’t play in the second half of the biggest game of his life, he somehow bailed on his team, his city and all things Chicago Bears, right?

Get out of here!

Jay Cutler is no wuss. You don’t have to go too far back to prove that. This is a guy who played 15 games this season while being sacked 77 times. Wusses don’t sign up for that game in and game out, and they certainly don’t bow out of the NFC Championship game after 15 games worth of beat downs in the regular season.

The fact is that Jay Cutler’s sprained MCL was too much of a hinderance for Jay Cutler to finish that game for the Chicago Bears this past Sunday. Of course, don’t tell that to the myriad of professional football players and Chicago Bears fans, as they took to social media and television to absolutely destroy Cutler and his integrity.

There were many loud mouths that took to the air when Jay Cutler bowed out of the NFC Championship game due to an injured knee. Deion Sanders, who never made a tackle in his life) Darnell Dockett (who barely knows what the playoffs feel like) and Derrick Brooks (whose career ended in oblivion due to injuries) were some of the big names out there criticizing Cutler.

However, the biggest culprit of them all was Maurice Jones-Drew, who said of Cutler on Twitter that “I think the Urban Meyer rule is [in] effect right now…When the going gets tough….QUIT.” He later followed that up with, “All I’m saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee…I played the whole season on one.”

Problem is, that contrary to what Jones-Drew would have you believe, he didn’t play the whole season on a bad knee. In fact, he missed the final two games of the season because of that bad knee, and played like a bum in his last game, which could have sent the Jacksonville Jaguars to the playoffs.

The audacity of that to criticize Jay Cutler for missing the second half of a game with a bad knee, when he missed two games and played like crap in a third because of a bad knee, is one of the most ignorant things I have ever seen on Twitter, and that’s coming only a few days after Sarah Palin responded to Barack Obama’s State of the Union with flawed facts about Sputnik.

Of course, Jones-Drew wasn’t alone, and it wasn’t just football players that got after him. The media actually spared Cutler from criticism, but the people they usually convey information to did not.

For once, social media took it upon themselves to disagree with the sports media. They went after Cutler with an unmitigated vitriol for a guy they don’t know and injury most of them have never endured. But instead of taking Cutler at his word or his lack of confidence in his knee, many people, aimed with little more than email addresses and Twitter handles, accused Cutler of being a quitter.

Unbelievable.

It just goes to show you how gullible people are. Gullible to illusions that is. Had Cutler been carried of the sidelines with two crutches in his hands, people would have seen a guy that couldn’t walk and they would have understood that Cutler couldn’t help them any longer. Had Cutler been carried off the field like the Pittsburgh Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey was, nobody would even question his knee injury. And had Cutler missed the eight previous games going into the NFC Championship, nobody would have said anything had he missed the ninth, much like Troy Polamalu had done with an injury to the knee.

But people need to see those things to be convinced. They need those illusions. They can’t comprehend that Cutler is incapable of playing when they see him standing on the sideline. They don’t think he’s in any pain when they don’t see him being carried off on a stretcher. And they certainly don’t understand why he would miss the second half of a football game when he entered the locker room at halftime, seemingly with nothing having happened to him on the field.

With the illusion of pain, people don’t get it. They don’t understand. They’re gullible. Fact is, crutch or no crutch, Cutler’s knee injury could have an induced a form of pain that nobody but Cutler could have assessed. Paul Pierce was taken off the court of an NBA Finals game via a wheelchair. Had he not returned to the game, everybody would have easily been okay with it. But that same guy who was taken off the court in a wheelchair finished the game with some spectacular shots. But because he was in a wheelchair, people would have believed the most severe statements about Pierce’s injury, whether or not they were completely erroneous.

I don’t like standing up on a high horse saying that people are gullible, but the truth is that we are. We are a nation that is incensed by dissenting rhetoric that means nothing, and inspired by the same rhetoric so long as it agrees with us. We are a nation that reacted to the President’s State of the Union as if it were filled with contractual action items, all because Obama used certain buzz words and avoided others.

Thus, when we take our politics at such face value, it comes as no surprise that we view our sports on such a superficial level. Thankfully, there is nothing wrong with that, since this is just sports, an almost trivial notion in our society that we, myself included, derive too much joy, money and pleasure from given its complete irrelevance to the progression of society. But that doesn’t mean that I have to be okay with the way we view our athletes.

Yes, athletes, by definition, are the embodiment of sports, but they are still people and we should see them for more than facial expressions and illusions. Cutler’s disposition on the sideline or lack of a crutch does not give me enough information from which to ascertain whether he is in any true pain. Cutler’s actions suggested he was hurt, and his doctors suggested he was hurt. To question Cutler, or the Bears doctors, two entities armed with far more information on Cutler’s injury than me, you or Maurice Jones-Drew, is absurd and superficial. Cutler says he was too hurt to play and so he didn’t–something Maurice Jones-Drew knows far too much about, and really shouldn’t be commenting on given that he missed more time on the football field this season than Cutler has missed in his entire career.

The post "Jay Cutler’s Injury Proves People Need Illusions" was originally published at TSW.

During a radio interview in Miami, Miami Heat Head Coach Erik Spoelstra was asked if having Chris Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade was all the Heat needed to win the NBA championship. Spoelstra said “no,” and rightfully so, because after all, that was just a ridiculous question in the first place.

However, there is something to be derived from the combination of that question and Spoelstra’s answer. Six months ago, nobody was talking about Miami Heat’s “supporting cast.” Nobody said that the Heat would unequivocally need Carlos Arroyo, Mike Miller and Joel Anthony to play championship-level basketball to win the NBA title in 2011. When this Miami Heat triumvirate was put together last July, everybody thought that as long as the Big Three were healthy and learned how to play together, they would carry the team to success. In opinion, that’s a fair notion. Yet with the Heat’s string of troubles at various points during this 2010-2011 NBA basketball season, many people, Coach Spoelstra included, have said that the Heat need their supporting cast to be a big part of the Heat’s playoff run. And to me, that’s a ridiculous notion.

Think back to the Chicago Bulls dynasty. Their first three championships came with the expertise of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and I suppose you can throw Horace Grant in there as their #3. Back then, nobody expected John Paxson to be the difference between the Bulls winning a championship and them flaming out in the playoffs. Sure, Jordan’s supporting cast couldn’t have been God awful, but never in a million years would anyone have faulted poor play by the supporting as the reason for the Bulls losing. The media would have said that Jordan and Pippen didn’t come through, and they would have criticized them non-stop, until the Bulls eventually won a championship.

Same thing with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal during the Los Angeles Lakers dynasty. Robert Horry and Derek Fisher were nice players, but if they had their worst stretch of the season during the playoffs, nobody would have said they are the reasons the Lakers failed to win championships. The media just would have blamed Shaq for missing one-too-many free throws and Kobe for taking one-too-many shots.

Now before you get all traditionalist on me, let me clarify what I’m saying. I’m not saying that we don’t ever take into consideration the supporting cast around a player. It’s well documented that the players around Kobe after Shaq left were not enough for him to win a championship. To take it to another sport, Dan Marino was not what kept the Miami Dolphins from winning Super Bowls. And Barry Bonds didn’t fail to win a World Series because of how he played either.

However, you have to be able to differentiate between not having a championship-caliber team and having a championship team that fails to execute. Right now, the Miami Heat has all the pieces it needs to win a championship. Those pieces are called LeBron, Wade and Bosh. As far as anything else goes, there only needs to be two other players on the court. Last time I checked, those two other players will always be professional basketball players; most often times first round NBA selections. So as long as they aren’t playing Ray-Ray from the hood, they have what they need to win a championship.

Thus, when Erik Spoelstra says that just having his big three healthy isn’t enough, while true, it does make me recognize where we are with this Miami Heat team. While yes, the other two players (and sometimes three) on the court can’t take the ball on offense and kick it into the stands, the supporting cast will never be the reason the Heat do not win. When the Big Three came up out of the floor during a welcoming pep rally, I didn’t see Carlos Arroyo and Mario Chalmers behind them. When the Boston Celtics won the championship three years ago, I certainly don’t recall Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins being the reasons that the Celtics brought home the hardware. And when the history books are written, Derek Fisher and Trevor Ariza won’t go down as the reasons the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA title in 2009.

So while Spoelstra’s answer to an over-the-top question was accurate; let’s be sure about one thing here: the successes and failures of the Miami Heat will be squarely on the shoulders of LeBron, Wade and Bosh. The fact that we are even discussing how vital it is that Mike Miller gets healthy, or what a loss losing Udonis Haslem for the season is, just goes to show you how short of expectations the Miami Heat have fallen so far this season. In a mere few months, we went from crowning them for the next 4 seasons, to saying that they need Mike Miller’s three-point shooting and Haslem’s interior presence. And if that’s the case, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh aren’t as good at winning basketball games as we thought they were, and we’ll find out this summer whether or not that is the case.

The post "Miami Heat’s Big Three…Are They What We Thought They Were?" was originally published at TSW.

The immovable object met an unstoppable force on Sunday. The New England Patriots, winner of 14 regular season NFL football games, lost their home playoff game to the trash-talking New York Jets, 28-21 in Foxborough.

It was a pretty convincing win for the New York Jets, who seemed to dominate most facets of the game. On offense, quarterback Mark Sanchez was efficient, and on defense, the Jets made sure Tom Brady was not. This was quite the occurrence given how badly the Patriots had beaten the Jets several weeks ago on the very same field. It was an even more special occurrence, because this game ended with the proverbial smirk on the Patriots mug being wiped off with a devastating slap to the face.

After all the trash talk, all the complaining, all the promises of revenge, the New York Jets came back to Foxborough and beat up their big brother New England Patriots, who in an act of superiority, looked down upon all of the Jets actions all week long. Antonio Cromartie called Tom Brady an ass—-. Nick Mangold had a few words to say about the Patriots as well. And the ever-quiet Jets head coach Rex Ryan came out and said he was out to beat Bill Belichick—personally. Nobody, however, on the Patriots side responded. Brady went to his usual, “I respect them” move. Bill Belichick certainly avoided saying anything about this game was personal. And the rest of the Patriots followed suit too—well, except for Wes Welker, who at a press conference, continued to reference foot metaphors to make fun of Rex Ryan’s reported foot fetish videos. Naturally, Belichick suspended Wes Welker—for all of one series. Funny enough, the Patriots lost the game because they needed just one more efficient series, so perhaps that suspension/benching was more than the slap on the wrist it appeared to be. Then again, it really wasn’t.

But I have to admit, I’m so happy that the Jets beat the Patriots. There is absolutely nothing more entertaining than a team that goes out of its way to sound like a bunch of trash-talking idiots, only to come back and backup everything they said. Cromartie called Brady an ass—-, and relative to his recent streak of interception-less football, Brady played like one, finishing the game averaging just 6.6 yards per attempt and a quarterback rating of 89.0. Wes Welker, who had jokes during the week, had just 57 yards receiving and no touchdowns. And that overrated Patriots defense left the game having given up over 100 yards rushing, a 127.3 rating to Mark Sanchez, and 6 of 13 third-down conversions to the Jets.

Another great aspect about all of this is that the Patriots didn’t have much to gloat about all game long. They were never ahead by more than a field goal, and that was just for a few minutes. We know from previous games, that had Tom Brady thrown a 50-yarder all up in Cromartie’s ass—-, he would have been all up in his face, just like he did against the Steelers a couple years ago, and just like he has acted in the past when he beat trash-talking football players for big plays. However, Brady never got that chance. That would have been a more likely scenario had Randy Moss been on the team, but that’s a story for another day.

Oh, and let’s not forget about ultra-hypocritical Deion Branch. Branch, despite being behind for the majority of the game, was talking to the Jets sideline all game long. He even had a few choice words for Rex Ryan. And then, as only a hypocrite of his fashion could do, he went out and blasted the New York Jets for celebrating on the Patriots home field. After the game, Branch called them classless. And while the coach running into the end zone and a star wide receiver doing back flips isn’t the MOST sportsman-like thing to do, calling out someone for being classless when you barked up and down at a sideline and a coach all game long isn’t exactly going to win Deion Branch the sportsman of the year award.

Besides, who wants to hear about classless after the way the Patriots have acted on the field in the past. Tom Brady’s occasional over exuberance, Wes Welker’s jokes, and Randy Moss’s statements just this season have never been the epitome of class. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with any of those things, because after all, these are sports that we are talking about. But you can’t call other people out for being classless, Branch, when you and your team haven’t been on your best behavior either. And might I remind you, it was these very Patriots that acted a damn fool when they beat the San Diego Chargers in California back in the 2006-2007 NFL season. So the last thing I want to hear from anybody on the Patriots team is that somebody else acted classless after the game.

The best part about all of this though, is that the Patriots now have to watch the New York Jets trash-talk their way to the AFC Championship. Maybe even better, is the fact that you and I get to watch it. Listen, everybody can talk about how they want to see players shut-up and play football, and how everything they say is just disrespectful to the other team, but I love it. Trash-talking is a part of sports—hell, it’s a part of any competitive part of business. Some people do things tongue and cheek, and some people come right out in the open with it. But there’s not a major corporation out there that hasn’t slighted a competitor or two with a few less-than-benevolent words. The Jets just happen to use more than a few words; hell, they use all of them. But that’s okay too. They have fun doing it, and on this particular occasion, they backed up their talk by beating the best team in NFL, or at least that’s what we thought they were.

The post "Zo Knows: Loss to the Jets Should Wipe that Smirk off the Patriots Faces" was originally published at TSW.

Do you know what’s good to see? A team that goes out and gets a coach that isn’t considered some football profit from on high. And that’s exactly what the Denver Broncos did when they hired John Fox. They looked past his failures with a horrible Carolina Panthers team last season, and they saw a guy who knows one side of the ball very well, has had some semblance of success and is still hungry enough to commit to winning a Super Bowl, no matter what the talent around him looks like.

Now, you may be saying, of course they got a guy like that–what else would they go out and get?

Well, I don’t claim to know what the Broncos options were in terms of the coaches interested in working for their franchise. However, names like Bill Cowher and John Gruden loomed, and you have the oft-recycled coaches like Eric Mangini and Wade Phillips out there–not to mention another dozen names I can’t remember, or don’t care to remember.

Granted, the Denver Broncos did apparently go after Jim Harbaugh, who despite having no better record than Randy Shannon of Miami, has been anointed the next great thing in coaching. I’m not saying he’s not deserving of it, because if he has proven himself capable of grooming quarterbacks, such as he did with Stanford’s Andrew Luck, then perhaps he has a very valuable skill. However, I question any notion that he has indeed proven himself to be great at grooming quarterbacks. Scoring a great talent like Luck doesn’t automatically mean Harbaugh is this great talent, it could just mean that he’s–well, Lucky.

But I digress. My point here is that I’m happy that Denver didn’t go with the big name coach, or the sexy-up-and-comer. They went with a head coach that really has no name to speak of, and is the farthest thing from sexy. Perhaps it took giving a young man like Josh McDaniels all the power that gave the Broncos organization some perspective. McDaniels was about as hot as they come after he had constructed one of the greatest offenses in the history of the NFL and then followed that up with grooming Matt Cassel into 11-win quarterback in 2008. However, it was clear from the very beginning that McDaniels was in no position to be the head man. He didn’t handle personnel correctly, he angered players, and his strategic game-planning all of a sudden became a sideshow to what his defense and special teams were producing. Ultimately, the Broncos came to the conclusion that this guy wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, and that the “sexiness” that came with hiring him wasn’t going to result in anything tangible.

It’s a shame that Denver had to go without a fielding a competitive team for the better part of two seasons to figure all of this out, especially since history could have told them all they need to know. Almost never before has a big name football person become a great head coach with another team.

Just look at Nick Saban’s run in Miami. How about Bill Parcels since leaving the New York Giants? He hasn’t done anything. Then there’s Jimmy Johnson’s stint with the Dolphins, Joe Gibbs’ return to Washington, and now Mike Shannahan’s likely fall in D.C. Even the few exceptions to this pattern are questionable. Mike Holmgren left Green Bay and had a modicum of success in Seattle, but he only challenged for the Super Bowl once, and that took eight years to go down. John Gruden was a big name when the Buccaneers traded for him from Oakland. Yeah, he won a Super Bowl, but that was with Tony Dungy’s defense, and Gruden didn’t even make the playoffs with that team after that Super Bowl run. As for Tony Dungy who went from Tampa to Indy, yes, he had success in Indianapolis. Then again, I don’t know that he isn’t more of the sensible hire like John Fox, or if was a big sexy name, but even if he was, he won with Peyton Manning one time–something many people would view as a failure.

There’s no question that bringing that sexy name to your team has its benefits. Ticket sales spike, the team all of a sudden has hope, and the front office saves its ass. But none of that creates success on the field, especially not for a sustained period of time. You know what’s better than excitement and hope in football? Reliability and excellence. John Fox is reliable and he is an excellent defensive mind. His name won’t sell box seats, nor will it increase the Broncos TV ratings. But more than some Hall of Famer who’s better days or behind him, or some college coach who has no NFL experience, John Fox’s likelihood for success is high. I’m not promising Super Bowls. I can’t even promise wins. I can promise that the results Fox will see will be no better or worse than anyone else that was on the market, because everybody else’s qualifications were no better than that of Fox’s.

The post "Zo Knows: Hiring John Fox was Smart" was originally published at TSW.

Ready to make some money off gambling on these on this weekend’s NFL Playoff games? Well don’t come here! Last week, out “super staff” was an unbelievable 0 for 4 in predicting last week’s games, and that’s without the spread!

So, in an effort not to continue embarrassing TheSportsWatchers brand in that fashion, I’ve decided to be wholly responsible for all predictions for the rest of the NFL football season. That doesn’t mean that my predictions will be any more accurate than the ones we come up with as a staff; however, now at least, you have nobody to blame but me, instead of judging all of our writers as a collective waste of sports column space.

New York Jets at New England Patriots

The New York Jets are a good team, with a lot of good parts. They have an above-average defense. They have some nice skill players on offense. And their special teams are right there at the top of the league. However, it’s at the quarterback position that they can’t be trusted. Mark Sanchez has come through on more than one occasion this season, but he has often been apart of the reason the Jets have something to come through. Last week against the Colts, Sanchez missed a lot of throws and didn’t get on point until the game was on the line. That’s all fine and dandy, especially when you have a defense like that of the Jets. But unless the Patriots game is close in the 4th quarter, Sanchez’s late-game heroics will be of no use to him.

The Patriots clearly have the advantage in this game; and I’m not even sure they have the better team. The Patriots defense is more suspect than most people are willing to admit. The Patriots have little in terms of a deep threat—especially against this Jets defense. And the rushing game of the Patriots, while improved, has much to be desired.

To put it simply, the deciding factor in this game is Tom Brady. He’s the reason the Patriots are the better team. He’s the reason the Patriots defense doesn’t look as bad as it is. He’s the reason they have some semblance of a deep threat. And he’s the reason the Patriots can run the ball worth a damn.

Patriots win, 24-20

Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers

These two teams really should play more often, no? Last time these two battled it out, it was essentially for the AFC North crown. The last time they battled it out in the playoffs, it was for a trip to the Super Bowl. This meager little game before us is only for a trip to the AFC Championship, which probably will be played on someone else’s home field. Nevertheless, the game will be about as bloody as it ever is.

The Ravens have an advantage in the intermediate passing game. The Steelers cornerbacks aren’t that good, and they’ve never been that good. They play off the blitz well because of great coaching, and they don’t give up too many deep balls, but if you catch them in man coverage, without pressure, they are liable to be picked apart. Expect the Ravens to get a lot crossing routes going while driving Troy Polamalu off deep. If they can keep him out of the play and still attack the intermediate areas of the field (especially on the sideline) the Ravens have a good chance at sustaining an offensive attack.

The Steelers advantage actually comes with the deep ball. They aren’t a team that is known for airing it out play after play, but they may need to do that this weekend. The Ravens biggest weakness is also at the cornerback position, only their cornerbacks don’t play any part of the game all that well. With Mike Wallace in tow, Ben Roethlisberger should be able to hook up on a couple of long balls if the Steelers rushing game can get the Ravens out of any deep zone or Cover 2 looks.

At the end of the day though, I like what the Ravens did against the Chiefs rushing attack last week. If they can maintain that kind of edge against the run with only 7 players in the box, the Ravens will be able to stay back in their coverages and make the Steelers dink and dunk their way down the football field. That’s not a recipe for success against this Baltimore defense.

Ravens win, 21-17

Seattle Seahawks at Chicago Bears

In the game that nobody cares about, the Bears face off against a team that nobody thought would be in this position. But after one of the most epic runs in the history of the NFL, Marshawn Lynch and the Seattle Seahawks are divisional round bound! But that shouldn’t last long.

The Seahawks looked great last week, but a lot of that was on the New Orleans Saints defense—which isn’t good. If there is anything the Bears were good at this season, it was defense, and I fully expect them to come through with a stellar performance at home, in the cold, with a week’s worth of rest. I don’t’ trust their offense all that much, because Jay Cutler can be a tool on the field at times, but that defense should limit what is typically a putrid Seattle offensive attack.

Bears win, 24-7

Green Bay Packers at Atlanta Falcons

Okay, so I lied. I did leave one game for the whole site to tear apart. Don’t judge the whole on the basis of this. Our picks are only as good as the players we’re picking, no?

The post "NFL Playoffs: Divisional Round Predictions" was originally published at TSW.