Elsewhere in the world of underperforming MLB teams

To quote, I am shocked-- shocked-- to find out that Grady Little is still a lousy manager

This is the way the world ends.

Between the desire, And the spasm
Between the potency, And the existence
Between the essence, And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is, Life is, For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (1925)

With critics like these, who needs friends?

Alright, here’s the inevitable blog post about the great Patriots videotaping scandal. The following was mostly typed up last night, as the Pats beat the stuffing out of the Chargers on national TV.

Perhaps this reveals something unflattering about me, but the more attention this gets the less serious a story it appears to be. Specifically, the more I read people criticize Belichick and the Patriots the worse their case looks.

I will start by making a number of observations of context, and then add some speculation and opinion.

Context (all of which I believe to be factual, although I am prepared to be wrong):

1 - In the wake of the commissioner's ruling, the Patriot’s activity clearly violated league rules

2 - Every NFL team has multiple cameras taking still photographs and videotape of games in progress to help the coaching staff make real-time adjustments. I have seen what I understand to be these cameras and video recorders above the field over the end zones and above the field along the sidelines. The photos and video they produce clearly capture the opposing sidelines and the opposing team's coaches.

3 - A large number, if not all, NFL teams make at least periodic attempts to steal opposing signals and anticipate opposing plays. I have repeatedly seen NFL teams use multiple people to deliver defensive signals from the sidelines so that they can disguise who is delivering the right signals. The fact that this is regular practice would suggest to me that teams anticipate that they will be observed and have devolved routine practices to thwart these efforts. Along these lines: teams reportedly change their signals from week to week and sometimes from half to half to prevent detection

4 - At this point in his career, Bill Belichick has a clear reputation as an incredibly competitive, intelligent and driven person who is perfectly willing to defy conventional wisdom in order to gain an advantage on the field. There have been a number of things the Patriots have done over the years that have caused some NFL purists in and out of the media to cluck their tongues and complain that the team just isn't playing the game 'the right way'. One relevant example, of many: several years ago (after yet another playoff loss) a number of Colts players and coaches complained loudly about how physical Patriots DBs were playing Colts WRs near the line of scrimmage. Such activity, they observed, was against the rules and the Pats shouldn't do it. Lots of press coverage ensued focused on whether or not the Patriots were 'dirty', 'cheaters', and/or 'couldn't win if they played fair'. It also became clear that while the playbook set one standard for what DBs could do, NFL refs were overwhelmingly consistent in calling a different standard on the field. This last fact was common knowledge enough to be regularly mentioned by sports journalists.

5 - Belichick began his career as a scout and still does an unusually large amount of scouting compared to the tasks commonly done by other head coaches. When he was coming up through the ranks Belichick developed a reputation for anticipating what other teams were going to do before they did it. For years players have said things about Belichick like 'he tells us the week before the game how the other team will play in different situations and then they do exactly what he said they would' and 'our coaching staff explains the other team so well we know their game plan better then the players on the other side'. Halberstam's book on Belichick included a least one story relayed from someone who sat in the stands next to Belichick when he was a young scout and listened to him predict, play after play, exactly what the team he was scouting was going to do before it happened.

6 - There is a great deal of resentment around the league over the Pat's consistent success. There is resentment of Belichick personally among coaches and players he has defeated, resentment among those loyal to the people he has defeated, and resentment among those who dislike his poor people skills, lack of charisma, and unwillingness to schmooze his peers and the press in the manner of other coaches (within the NFL Bill Parcells, Jimmy Johnson and John Gruden come to mind; locally Doc Rivers seem to walk on water as far as the sports media is concerned). Belichick's (lack of) popularity on this front is not helped by his image as an intellectual in a sport whose culture can be strongly anti-intellectual. A certain number of people in the NFL don't see it as admirable to beat another team by being smarter then them. Consistently positive converage of the Pats by folks like Len Pasquarelli and John Clayton certainly are exceptions to this.

7 - Roger Goodell is both relatively new at his job in the league office and appears highly motivated to crack down on discrepancies between the official rules and what actually goes on around the league. The penalties handed down in the Pacman Jones and Michael Vick cases were both seen as severe and unprecedented given the nature of the infractions.

8 - In the wake of the NBA officiating scandal that broke a month ago the sports media is to some degree primed and attentive to stories about this kind of illicit activity.



Speculation / opinion:

A - One of the hallmarks of Belichick's time as a head coach has been his willingness to be unconventional in pursuit of on-field advantage. A number of times (e.g. the Colts example, above) Belichick appears to have observed a difference between the official rules and the rules that were enforced, and prepared his team to take advantage of the game as it was actually called, instead of the way it was supposed to be called. A certain number of Belichick's successes as a coach and a GM have been based on recognizing and acting on situations where conventional wisdom doesn't best prepare a team to win.

B - The degree to which a DB can push a WR-- or the kind of equipment a team can have on the sidelines-- both seem to me like the kinds of operating standards that are equally clear to every team. Put another way, refs and officials have not been enforcing the rules in a manner preferential to the Pats and the situations in question were entirely transparent to those paying attention. It is hard to imagine an area under more extensive observation-- by dozens of cameras and hundreds of team employees-- then a football field and sidelines during an NFL game. It is hard to see this as clandestine activity. When the story broke It appears to have been an open secret within the NFL and among sports journalists that multiple NFL teams have been doing stuff like this for years, suggesting that Belichick's actions were neither unique nor based on an un-level playing field.

C - I suspect that Belichick perceived that the rule regarding videotaping of the far sideline was poorly if ever enforced, and took advantage of the opportunity this presented. Coaches that knew the rules and were paying attention seem to have taken actions to keep this from happening (e.g. as Mangini did, calling in security to remove the cameraman; or in the reported incident in Green Bay or Minnesota last year). Those that didn't or weren't, did not (e.g. as in the Matt Millen quotes in the article linked, below). I suspect Belichick would consider this an example of the difference between coaches who are both good at their jobs and well prepared for games, and those who are not. To me, that somebody like Matt Millen remains ignorant of NFL rules at this point does more to strengthen widespread rumors of his stupidity and incompetence then they do to make Belichick look bad.

D - Goodell probably assumes that there is a lot more going on around the league then he can realistically uncover and respond to more discreetly. By coming down like the wrath of God on Belichick and the Patriots, however, he sends a powerful signal to the entire league that bending or dodging the rules will not be tolerated, whether or not those rules have been consistently monitored or enforced in the past.

E - If anything, the Patriots success over this last decade increases the incentive by Goodell to make the penalty significant. It sends the message 'nobody is above the law, not even the most successful franchise in the league'.

F - In light of all the above, the media coverage of this story feels like it has been somewhere between four and five times the noise level warranted. It has provided lots of people an opportunity to take shots at the Patriots, under the guise of 'standing up for the integrity of the game'. Some of the resulting articles (this bit of idiocy from Dr Z comes to mind, linked on Bill Simmon's page) have taken the apparent position that 'cheating was noble and admirable when the people doing it were stupid and clumsy' while using the occasion to vent what comes across as a lot of largely irrelevant anti-Belichick spite. In the Dr Z piece, for example, Zimmerman fantasizes about sending Belichick to prison for a few weeks (or alternatively having him publicly whipped and put in the stocks), gushes about how much fun he’s having fantasizing about the punishment Belichick will get from the league, and repeatedly gloats about how much he's enjoying seeing 'the mighty Patriots brought down to earth'. This while painting a rosy picture of the good old days when the person he calls 'the king of cheaters', Al Davis, pushed the envelope in all sorts of other ways. The overall picture that develops from this article is not so much of Belichick’s actions as unusual or criminal (to borrow the word in the headline), but of Paul Zimmerman as the sort of bitter hypocrite who doesn't care so much about the way the game 'ought to be played' as about whether the people he likes come out on top.

Lots of the Patriot’s critics might prefer a league in which plenty of people cheated, but only in simple-minded and feeble ways. To use an example Zimmerman fondly waxes nostalgic over: by having a large former offensive lineman get on the other team’s bus, presumably in hopes of overhearing state secrets without getting noticed. It seems to me that to these folks Belichick’s great crime is not that so much he pushes the envelope in search of ways to give his team the advantage, but that he is so intelligent and creative in how he goes about it.

Was this incident against league rules, and was Goodell right to punish the Patriots? Clearly, yes and yes. In addition, against the charges of competitiveness, intelligence and drive Belichick can only plead ‘guilty’, and I see no reason to expect any of those things to change. If the league has decided to get serious about enforcing certain rules that they have not previously paid much attention to, I expect Bill to go about beating other teams in different ways.

Get ready for another long year, guys.

Oh dear.

Team salaries and performance.

Check this out. Via Kottke.

Random, fun reading

I am reminded today by something Kelly Dwyer mentioned that I have been meaning for a while to throw up a link to ShamSports.com, a site filled with largely run-of-the-mill NBA information (rosters, salary information, etc).

I rather like Sham largely because the person behind it, whose name I've since forgotten, has something of a sense of humor. For example, his 'contact us' page includes

Groupies: If you are writing to enquire after the availability of an NBA player that you either intend to have sex with, or just did have sex with, then please contact us at redhotgroupieloving@shamsports.com. This happens a hell of a lot more often than you may think, and it's great fun for me to read.

If you are an NBA player writing to enquire about where dem hoes at........why the hell are you asking me? Get off the net and walk into any bar/club in America. You'll find someone.

The site was launched as a place to record his personal ambition of writing up scouting reports of every player in the NBA. He's perpetually behind on this quest, and it seems that the exercise of writing so many scouting reports makes him somewhat punchy. Below, for whatever its worth, are what he has to say about various folks now on the Celtics roster:

Tony Allen

A walking turnover and the king of garbage time, Tony Allen is not afraid to gun, in more ways than one.

A far worse shooter than he thinks [he] is, Allen is a decent athlete, both strong and with good leaping ability, and a good defensive player, with offense that borders on atrocious at times, and bloody awesome at others. There's a few too many comma's in that sentence, so give it as many readthroughs as it needs. Is 'readthroughs' a word? Fuck this, I'm stuck in a grammar loop. Whatever. Proceed.

This is all changed, of course, once the game is all but over. At which point he seems to play a lot better. This can be annoying, but can also lead to the funny sight of him posing and trash talking when his team is down by 20. And that never gets old.

Tony Allen has recently learned how to dribble, which has bettered his game in a big way. This means that he can now use his athleticism to his advantage. And this means that he can now play basketball well. It's a beautiful thing

Kevin Garnett

Every now and then, players come along that are described as being able to play every position on the floor. Magic Johnson was one of the few that could, and he did this so well that he was able to go by the rather grandiose nickname of Magic without anybody calling him out on it. Boris Diaw can and has done this, although he hasn't done it well enough to get the grandiose nickname. Antoine Walker (in his prime) and Lamar Odom are two others who have done it, to some degree.

Kevin Garnett has been named in the past as one of these players. It's not true, for he cannot play the guard spots. But to even be considered as one of these players is a testament to quite how skilled he is.

A hall of famer despite his lack of silverware, Garnett is very athletic, very strong, very intense (oh Jesus is he ever intense), and supremely skilled. He can pass and initiate most of the offense. He can play from the high post, the low post, and the perimeter. He can shoot consistently out to about 20 feet, and can hit the occasional three. He has a lethal (LETHAL, I say) turnaround fallaway jumpshot from the post, that no one can block and which goes in at a tremendous rate. He's one of the game's best rebounders. He's a good defender, both on his man and when helping from the weak side. He has every skill in the book, and every fundamental. He makes his teammates and his team better.

And yet people still like to moan at him for not being "clutch", and for only advancing beyond the first round once in his career.

Some people just like to bitch, don't they?

I mean, here we have one of the most unique and gifted players to ever play the game, and all people can do is criticise, be it for his supposed lack of 'leadership' (a copout if ever there was one), or for his huge salaries over the years (is there really anybody more deserving?).

Even that guy that Garnett once accidentally hit with a ball pretended to be seriously hurt in order to piss Garnett off and force him to open his wallet for compensation, when the bastard didn't even have a mere skin contusion.

Kevin Garnett on the court is so intense and consistently amped up/angry that it looks like he might kill someone one day after a foul call. Given that all people do is rag on him mercilessly because they can, I'd say he was pretty freakin' justified.

Then again, he earns 8 figures a year and then some, so that numbs the pain a bit

Eddie House

Eddie House is something of a textbook definition of "one trick pony". House does one thing well - shoot. He can shoot set shots, off the dribble and falling away, and is an elite free throw shooter (even though he hardly takes any).

He's very small, can not get to the rim or finish, has extremely few point guard skills and is not a good defensive player.

But he can shoot. Really, really shoot. That, his very good points-per-minute average and decent quickness, has gotten him a multi-year NBA career. And there's millions of people out there that are extremely jealous.

Fun Eddie House fact that isn't strictly a fact: Eddie House has brothers called Light, Green, Haunted and Boat. Indeed, Eddie's real Christian name is "Brick Shit", but he rightly figured that having "shit" in his name would give negative implications about his game, and that "brick" wasn't the name a jumpshooter would ever want to be referred to.

Kendrick Perkins

Some fans will tell you that Kendrick Perkins is superior to Eddy Curry. Bite your thumb at this people, for these people are wrong.

Bereft of any real ability on offense, Perkins is a good rebounder and a decent post defender, with what is best described as an "ugly as fuck" jumpshot. He has not much touch around the rim and a real affinity for fouling. But he's a good rebounder on both ends, except for the days that he isn't.

So essentially, he's the polar opposite of the aforementioned Eddy Curry. All that they really have in common are extremely hot-and-cold fan bases, and similar heights. And weight problems.

And race, obviously.

Paul Pierce

Pierce is a truly gifted all around player who can pass extremely well, shoot well, rebound very well, penetrate, create, handle the ball, run the offense, and wear a headband. He does all of this from the wing, where he often has a strength advantage over players, while combining that with good athleticism and speed. He has also shown a knack for some clutch play in his career, although not so much lately.

He's not the best defender - although not bad - and his jumpshot will take the occasional night off, but as an all around player he's pretty complete.

He also has this weird knack for being in the background of photographs in one of a number of strange poses. A gift I'd like to think that I shared with Paul. Except that I do it on purpose, because I'm a twat

Scot Pollard

A surefire way to tell when somebody isn't very good at something is when you remember them for other things that they did whilst they were supposed to be doing that something. If that makes sense. Which it doesn't.

To give an example, Scot Pollard isn't very good at basketball. His shooting range is about a foot, although he's hit a few baseline jumpshots in his time. He rebounds fairly well due to his size, but fouls a lot, and his defense is basically limited to being tall and big, which means he can stay in the way of other tall and big players. It's fair to say that Scot Pollard is a very Scot Pollardy type of player.

And that's why you'll find that for the most part, people remember Scot Pollard for his hair, which fluctuates between stupid and gay.

It's nice to see an NBA player with a little pizazz and breaking-the-moldishness, which Scot appears to do. So he gets a point for that. However, that doesn't excuse the dyed blonde mohawk, or indeed some of the other things he's produced over the years, the list of which is too painful to mention.

Just Google it. You'll see.

Bad times.

Leon Powe

Leon Powe's name is pronounced to rhyme with "Show", or Po the Tellytubby, This is disappointing. It should be pronouced "POW!", as in Gasol, or a very lame 60's Batman caption. It carries more authority that way.

Pow (which I'm calling him from now on, just so's you know) is undersized for the NBA game, and has a history of knee trouble despite his young age. He takes charges, blocks shots, and rebounds a bit, but offensively has to somehow overcome the fact that he's just too bloody short for most people's tastes.

Fun Leon POW! fact: He's so anti-passing, that he won't even do a shit on game days

Brian Scalabrine

"Enigma" would be one adjective for Scalabrine. Alternatively, so would "piss poor".

Scalabrine is what you''d be left with if you took a prime Chris Webber, made him white and ginger, and also rid him of any semblance of athleticism and talent.

Brian Scalabrian is eerie in that he does a bit of everything. But you have to be very generous with the words "a bit". Because it's, very literally, a bit.

He'll make a nice pass, once a week.
He'll make a jumpshot, once a week.
He'll make a tough rebound, once a month.
And occasionally, he'll make smart basketball plays and do something correctly.

In the interim periods, though, he'll just stumble around fouling and looking sexy.

And ginger.

A propos of random JD Drew hatred

Just got this from a friend who was at the Sox game last night, in apparently pretty good seats

"Have we sufficiently discussed the fact that Drew fucking sucks yet? Did the TV show the guys in the dugout rolling their eyes in disgust when Drew struck out looking with the bases loaded and one out in the 7th? When Drew came up, I said to myself, "Okay, bases loaded, 2 outs, let's see what Youks can do!" It was automatic. JD is not a popular human being. If I had to guess, I'd say that the reason no one likes him is that he fucking sucks. Not only that, he sucks the most when it matters the most. Holy fuck he sucks."

Starbury.

Gilbert Arenas gives (scroll down a little) this interview with Stephon Marbury his "Interview of the Century" Hibachi Award. Says Agent Zero:

If you don’t think this is the best interview in history, something is mentally wrong with you. It was so good, I watched it 12 times just to make sure that what I was watching was actually real and I wasn’t imagining it.

He’s like, “I’m going to average 10 points, 11-12 dimes, four assists …” And I’m like, “What? Last time I checked, dimes and assists were the same thing.” Then he answers his cell phone in the middle of the interview. And at the end he just starts screaming, “Do it with me now! Do it with me!” I had to rewind it just to make sure it was really Stephon Marbury on there.

Without further ado:



(I appreciate Arenas's blogging, but would it be so hard to link to the YouTube clip?)

KG celebrates Labor Day

by starting his work out at 8am instead of 7am. Because his trainer told him to.

I'm not sure it's fully sunk in with Celtics fans how much they're going to love rooting for this guy.

Also: welcome to the Globe Marc Spears. If this first piece is any indication, the KG trade is going to end up having all kinds of benefits.