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Perfecting the Round Table: The Passion for Jeremy Lin

In Basketball, New York, Perfecting the Round Table on February 15, 2012 at 2:33 PM

Perfecting the Round Table is a series where our contributors discuss various topics back and forth.  We encourage you to participate in the comments below.

Rahat Ahmed (): How important is it that Jeremy Lin is an Asian-American? Would we care less if he was black or white? Is Lin’s rise to sudden stardom more important for basketball, New York or Asian-Americans?

Douglas Chau (): Asian American identity, by far. It doesn’t hurt that he plays in NY, where he’ll get huge media exposure, but it’s more the curiosity that comes with being unfamiliar. If this was a black player, we wouldn’t give it a second thought. That black player would be thought of as keeping the seat warm until STAT and Melo get back. Instead, the media is making this a team of Lin, Stat and Melo. While I don’t think he’ll keep this up, I’d be more than happy with a 15 and 8 line at the end of the season. The scouting report still holds true on him: He can’t go left very well, he certainly can’t finish left and his jumper is shaky, at best. Plus, he is Turnover City. Besides, his first games have come a third of the way into a season where the schedule is compressed, and everyone he’s playing against is tired of the back-to-backs.

In essence, J-Lin plays like every Asian guard you’ve ever played pickup ball with: He has a quick first step, gets into the lane and keeps coming. You probably won’t see him mentally check out at the end of a game. That’s what I like best about his game, but let’s leave all that “on pace for hall of fame numbers” hogwash to Skip Bayless and the “tiny pecker” jokes to Jason Whitlock.

Marcus Bui (): Everybody loves the underdog story: David “pwnz” Goliath in a 1-on-1 duel, ’84 Americans beat the Russians, Eli does it again against the patriots.

I’m personally happy for the guy because as much as I’d love to be an NBA Basketball player, there’s simply no hope for me: I’m just lacking way too much.  Size, strength, skill, a last name that is catchy, etc. Jeremy Lin represents the average American—not just Asians—that similarly lacks elite athleticism but has a high basketball IQ. In a league where players are drafted and given millions of dollars based on just potential and physical size/strength (e.g. Kwame Brown, Hasheem Thabeet, Bismarck Biyombo), these types of players are deemed much more valuable than the plethora of players who are 6’10 or shorter and are much more skilled (i.e. hit at least 3 consecutive free throws) because, in the end, “you just can’t teach size.”

However, I’m annoyed at certain publicity that Jeremy Lin is getting. Because Lin is in a Knicks uniform and is on the “Big Stage,” there’s just simply way too much knee-jerking about how great this guy really is. MVP chants? Come on MSG, you’re better than that. The thing that irritates me to no end is that the Rockets and Warriors forums are filled with hundreds of posts regarding the “Lin-sanity” DNPs and how they lost out… These types of reactions are big slaps in the face to Kyle Lowry, Stephen Curry and Monta Ellis who are truly elite PGs in the NBA. Don’t get me wrong, what Lin has achieved in his starting position for the Knicks is great, but there are many factors playing into how “great” he really is.

1) The level of competition/matchups have been really generous to Lin. The one team that should have posed a threat to the Knicks, the Lakers, have their biggest weakness at point guard. When you’re seriously considering a 36-year-old Allen Iverson as an upgrade offensively and defensively, you’ve got some serious issues.
2) The Knicks offense stuffs PG stats. Look at Raymond Felton and Chris Duhon as examples. Their statistics as a Knick are much higher than their career averages.
3) Any wins right now for the Knicks are much better than the amount of losing they were enduring—especially with two all-star players at the helm. It’s extremely irritable to see knee-jerk reactions like “What are we going to do with Melo and STAT now? Trade?” You just gave up 6 players for Melo!

In the end, Jeremy Lin is displaying some enjoyable entertainment—it’s not everyday my wife (who has a minimal desire to watch sports) will sit glued to a Knicks-Timberwolves game and complain about me switching channels during commercials for fear of missing a Lin highlight.

Nick Britton (): I’m not Asian-American so his being Asian doesn’t really have the impact on me that it would if I were. I was a little amazed at all of the comments along the lines of “this is the biggest story in Asian-American sports history!” but after a little discussion, it dawned on me that in the big four, there really hasn’t been that much in the way of Asian American athletes. Or, perhaps more telling, the Asian athletes, your Ichiros and Nomos and Yaos, have dominated the discussion of Asian, American or not, influence on sports. When I made a mental list of Asian-Americans in the big four, I got Dat Nguyen and Kurt Suzuki. That’s it.

Jeremy Lin is a good story for the traditional underdog reasons: He was all-everything in California, but no one recruited him. He went to an Ivy League school without a scholarship, led Harvard to their best season and got very little love from the pros. But he’s interesting because underdogs in the NBA are just more interesting: The elite college kids get the hype, all of the love, the focus from ESPN and all of that. And it’s non-stop. So when a smaller kid from an Ivy League school who played four years in college comes and shows up Deron Williams, John Wall and Kobe Bryant, I’m interested. Especially Kobe Bryant.

Douglas Chau (): Being Asian-American is a big part of that underdog story that people are talking about, whether they admit it or not. If he was a black kid (using black because they’re the majority of basketball players, not because I hate white people) and he was Mr. Basketball in California, he wouldn’t have gone unrecruited. He wouldn’t have gotten zero Division I scholarships. Whether people care or relate to him because he’s Asian-American is one thing, but it’s a big part of why he’s the underdog that those people identify with.

To a certain extent, he’s easy to identify with for some of the same reasons that Iverson was. He’s relatively small, and he’s going at bigger foes (how I’d imagine most people view their challenges in life).

Rob Boylan: I’m pretty sure Richard Park and Devon Setoguchi (and Nazem Kadri is from Lebanon, to be fair) are the only Asians in the NHL. Park is a good fourth line grinders/penalty kill guy, the kind of guy who gets under your skin with hard work (I remember him scoring a 5-on-3 short handed goal against the Rangers a few years ago), while Setoguchi is probably an AHL player who got a huge bump in his rookie year by playing with Joe Thornton. If any of us played on a line with Joe Thornton we’d score 30 goals too.

Not being Asian or a basketball fan though, I have a limited interest in the story, but I do admit to finding it interesting as long as he doesn’t start writing bible passages on himself like Tebow.

Andrew Feingold (): Bottom line is if he didn’t play in New York, his jersey would not be the top seller. The media loves this, and it’s saved D’Antoni’s job for now.

Rahat Ahmed (): We’ve read that Lin was Mr. Basketball in California, but that is incorrect. Chase Budinger, incidentally, won it before going onto Arizona and then getting drafted by the Houston Rockets—the same team that cut Lin earlier this year. He was, however, Northern California Division II Player of the Year and first-team All-State. So, while it wasn’t Mr. Basketball, that’s still a resume that should have gotten some attention for a Division I basketball university. Alas, such was not the case, and I cannot help but agree with Doug that it was because he was Asian. Other than that factor, what other reason could there be? Because even if you’re not a prototypical size, the kind of production he had in high school still demanded attention from some podunk college of mediocrity. And even that he apparently did not receive.

Andrew Feingold (): Fun listening to New York sports radio and a caller already comparing him to Steve Nash…

Rahat Ahmed (): It’s true that he’s got the basketball IQ to possibly manage D’Antoni’s court game, but we’ve seen that in the absence of the $180 million men, he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. His fearlessness reminds me considerably more of Russell Westbrook than Nash, though I worry if he’ll continue forcing it as he did against Minnesota when Melo and Amare come back. What I can’t tell, though, is if him taking 20+ shots a game is a bad thing or a good thing. If he ends up disorienting defenses, creating space (especially on the perimeter for a sharpshooter such as Steve Novak) or simply being more efficient than Melo, maybe he should shoot 25 a game!

Marcus Bui (): ESPN SportsNation asked, “Who is the NBA’s best point guard?”  Clearly 14% of the country has gone full retard.  It was 20%+ earlier…

Rahat Ahmed (): It’s Paul, Williams or Rose. Anyone who answers Lin is clearly not a real basketball fan. And non-basketball fans do read ESPN.

Douglas Chau (): It’s CP3 in my book. But seriously, I hate the Internet generation because of things like this. Jeremy Lin hasn’t played nearly enough for him to even be allowed to be in this conversation, yet somehow Facebook and Twitter allowed him to be mentioned. Did anyone realize that Rondo threw up a 32-10-15 trip dub last night?! And we’re still talking about a dude that struggled to finish against a long armed Spanish rookie?

Andrew Feingold (): Skills-wise, Kyrie Irving is better than Lin, just on a worse team and now hurt. Again, look at the numbers Felton was putting up with the Knicks…

Ethan Kim (): I’m Asian-American. I am a die-hard hoops fan. Lifelong Knicks fan. This approach is not about his skills on the court, something I can address later as I’ve tracked his career since Harvard and have been to every Knicks home game since his breakout Nets game.

This time of year, like all other years, there are no pro sports of significance (sorry hockey fans). The New York media was busy focusing on the Giants’ incredible run but once that was over, all eyes were going to be on the Knicks anyway. This Jeremy Lin thing just gives them much more ammunition.

Identity: I really really want to say, “I don’t care that he’s Asian-American, as long as he can put the ball in the hoop, make the right pass and win games for my beloved Knicks.” If I said that, I know I’d be lying, and nobody likes a liar. As a die-hard hoops enthusiast who plays in multiple basketball leagues, all that matters to me is how you perform on the court. That’s the bottom line. But in this case, it’s different. I was, and still am not (although I may sound like one after reading this), one of those overly “Asian Pride” type of guys. Growing up on Long Island, I guess you can call me the cookie-cutter Asian-American embracing both cultures due to my parents’ influence, but identifying myself to the American culture more. What I’m trying to say is, I identify with this guy Jeremy Lin so much and I’ve never had someone like that in the sports/entertainment industry before. Jackie Chan? Jet Li? Yao? Yi? Nope. The closest I have is Anthony Kim but golf just doesn’t do it for me. Jeremy grew up as an Asian-American and had to deal with the same issues that come with that territory. He’s not a Yao nor a Yi who I have nothing in common with except the way we look. I grew up watching Saved by the Bell, Fresh Prince, etc. I’m sure Yao nor Yi have watched Saved by the Bell, but I’m pretty sure Jeremy has. Yao and Yi are products of the Chinese Government athletic programs whereas I just tried to make the varsity basketball team in high school. To put it simply, that’s the difference in why I never found myself rooting for or even being a fan of Yao/Yi. I can see myself in Jeremy, and if I were younger, he’d be my role model and inspiration that if I work hard, I can make it to the NBA and not have to be 7 feet tall.

Pressures: Being the starting PG for the Knicks is pressure enough for any basketball player with the New York media and fans watching and judging every move. Throw in the fact that we were supposed to contend for a title this season. We’ve also been on a ridiculously horrible losing streak that was temporarily masked by the Giants’ success. Factor in the insane media hype of “Linsanity” that is now reaching Tebow’ish proportions. Don’t forget the millions of fans in Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Philipines, Thailand, etc.) who are also getting enamored with this guy. Then there are guys like me all over the country: The Asian-American kid who instantly identifies with hm. And then to a smaller degree, there are religious people who see him as an ambassador for Christianity in sports. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid to deal with. He’s dealt with it humbly with a certain maturity beyond his years while putting up numbers and winning games.

So while the Knicks finally found the PG that can run the offense, Jeremy Lin’s impact transcends just the basketball court into a whole new arena of cultural and social importance. It gives hope to the Asian American male that it is indeed possible, and shows mainstream America that hey, an Asian-American guy can also be a sports “star.” What made me the most happy at the Lakers game this past Friday were the 6 Caucasian kids (ages 6-12 roughly) begging their dads to get them a Lin jersey.  Every time Lin made a play, these kids were cheering hard because Jeremy was a good basketball player.

Personal Note: I’ve actually met him twice through a friend and got to hang out with him. I’ve seen him play in person in college many times as I tracked his career since his junior year at Harvard. What you see in the interviews is the real deal, this kid isn’t letting this get to his head. That’s refreshing especially in the NBA.

With that said, Kobe is still my favorite player.

Douglas Chau (): The interesting question from a basketball perspective is whether the Knicks will have this type of stifling defense when the stars come back.

And very well thought out, Ethan.

Marcus Bui (): That was a refreshing read Ethan, I thoroughly enjoyed your response.

I play a lot of basketball—both leagues and for fun at the gym. I’m taller than the typical asian guy, just a tad over 5’11. The thing is, Jeremy Lin is 6’3, and they were surprised that he could dunk. He has a standing reach of 8’2—that means he has to jump approximately 26+ inches to dunk a basketball, which is pretty low standard for a professional athlete. I know plenty of Asians that can dunk that are much shorter than him or me.

This is the Asian bias that we have come to tolerate. At the gym, there are plenty of times when people are selecting teams and the black guy gets picked over an Asian guy with superior athleticism, skills and basketball IQ. You choose an Asian guy to do your math homework, not score you buckets.

I have been following him for a while too as I also have a sense of AzN PrYdE (you have to write it that way… you just have to), and I do consciously/self-consciously look for that similar identification. Herein lies the issue that I have with Lin right now: It’s not that I hate Lin, I want him to succeed. It’s the awareness of what you’re capable of. As you stated before, Lin has been really humble about his play, I believe he knows that the stars just lined up for him perfectly, and it won’t last long. It’s the “fans” that make this hype truly unbearable for me.

It’s my opinion that it’s CP3 > D-Rose > D-Will > everyone else. It’s still amazing how many people who you imagine would know better are proclaiming Lin to be in the same ranks.  When it comes to point guards, my arguments are along the lines of “Nash vs. Kidd” (aka pure offense vs. everything but a shot pre-2008).

However, this Lin hype is ridiculous. If you watched the Knicks-Wizards game, you would know that Wall outplayed Lin on almost ever single facet. That dunk wasn’t even the product of Wall’s bad defense but Trevor Booker’s failure to pick up the help defense.

Again, I reiterate that I am not hating on Lin but I’m definitely more “grounded” on what it seems he is truly capable of. As I’ve pointed out to people before, Nikola Pekovic is averaging 17 points and 10 rebounds in 7 games as a Wolves starter—should I start thinking that he’s better or on the same level as Al Jefferson, Marc Gasol, Al Horford and LaMarcus Aldridge?

Ethan Kim (): John Wall played great but a point guard’s job is to run the offense. John Wall didn’t do that. He looked to score more than run the offense. John Wall is a better basketball player than Lin, no doubt. Also agree with you on the dunk thing. Wall was expecting Booker to hedge early and high on the screen.

You can’t discount how Lin took over the game in key moments and ended with a dub-dub playing with the likes of Jeffries and Walker.

CP3 is the best point guard in the nba. Then Rose. Those two are by far the top two in the league.

Marcus Bui (): I agree to a point about your point guard comment. I believe the better statement is “your most skilled player” should be directing the offense, and generally, the shorter you are, the more skilled you have to be to be in the NBA. You have to be insanely skilled at the height of Muggsy Bogues or Earl Boykins to make it in this league, but you have your LeBrons and T-Macs that kind of go against the grain.

John Wall is a pass first PG. He’s just asked to score on a very crappy Wizards team. I don’t want to compare Lin to Wall.  To me, there isn’t a comparison.  It’s just that the public makes these comparisons that drive me up the wall. Right now, I can guarantee that the Knicks would rather have (pick one): Teague, Rondo, Augustin, Rose, Irving, Knight, Monta, Curry, Lowry, Collison, CP3, Conley, Jennings, Rubio, D-will, J-Jack, Westbrook, Holiday, Lou Williams, Nash, Tyreke, Parker or Wall. That’s just the PGs that I know for sure that the Knicks would rather have and not the debateable ones like Jameer Nelson, Felton, etc.

Rob Boylan: Excuse me everyone, but it’s now Eastern Conference Player of the Week Jeremy Lin, not just Jeremy Lin.

Douglas Chau (): Thoughts on Mayweather’s comments? I think he’s right. Lin is getting tons of press because he’s a novelty who happens to be playing in the major media market. If it was a black dude in Milwaukee putting up the same numbers, I highly doubt he’d be generating this much interest.

Also, I had someone argue with me that Lin’s appeal is that he’s an underdog (cut from two teams, D-league, etc), not that he’s Asian. Opinions on that?

Nick Britton (): His appeal is that he’s an underdog.  It’s a feel good story about a guy making the best of his opportunity despite being cut twice and being a D-Leaguer in a league that offers very little in the way of opportunities for guys like him, of his size, etc. Him being from Harvard and not being recruited is way, way, way more interesting to me. His being Asian is part of that, sure, but I really don’t find his being Asian on its own that huge of a thing. I’ve seen Asians in the NBA before. His being Asian-American doesn’t really mean all that much to me personally.

But, to address your first point, he very much is a novelty to many—possibly most—people and him being in New York absolutely helps that. And, to be honest and probably a little crass, black dudes putting up the same numbers in Milwaukee… as long as we have the Bucks and Marquette, we’re always going to see that.

Isn’t this similar to Jason Williams of the Kings back in the late 90s? A white guy from West Virginia playing street ball at the pro level? Perhaps it’s not as novel, but it’s just the perceived fish-out-of-water thing.

Douglas Chau (): Granted, it’s all a package with this guy, but I don’t know if many people are relating to him because he’s an Ivy League grad. He’s also not undersized at 6’3, 200. There have certainly been guys smaller than him that were better (Iverson for one). Isn’t part of the reason he wasn’t recruited in the first place because he is Asian? The PC thing to say is that judgment was based on ability, but those judgments were made by humans.

I understand the underdog aspect of the story, but even in terms of that, his story doesn’t really stack up with other recent stories. Kurt Warner being exhibit A and Tom Brady being exhibit B. Those guys went from out of the league/end of the roster to Hall of Famers. This dude has played well in a few games by jumping into the middle of a compressed schedule where everybody else was already tired. Maybe my exasperation with the Internet age is manifesting itself with hate against Jeremy Lin. To me, this is like knowing about an indie band before everyone else and then they hit it big and everybody jocks them and then everybody hates them. (Read: Black Eyed Peas) Honestly, I’m just preparing myself for the backlash.

Total side note about the fish out of water thing: Since you brought up J-Will, I want to bring up his running mate from high school. Why doesn’t Randy Moss get more love for owning a NASCAR truck team?

Rahat Ahmed (): Nobody actually cares that he went to Harvard (at least not anyone outside of Ivy institutions). It’s more about the underdog combined with the racial angle that creates the perfect storm. Of course, he’s performed on the court, and that’s the most important part. And as you say, Doug, he wasn’t recruited because he was Asian. There’s no other reason at all to think why he didn’t get a scholarship. There are too many schools who scout in California for there to be another explanation.

And David Stern has said he will not send a special invite to Lin for the Rising Stars game. I’m all for tradition, but they run the All-Star game on such a whim that I find this decision to be ridiculous.

•••

Lin just drained the game-winning three against the Raptors with the coldest of staredowns. Are we buying? If so, at what value?

Andrew Feingold (): What a second half comeback. Real nice game out of Calderon but the Raptors are not very good either.

Rob Boylan: You can only beat what’s in front of you. It’s a professional league.  Even the bad teams are pretty good.

Andrew Feingold (): Bobcats and Wizards would say different…

Marcus Bui (): I’m buying in that Jeremy Lin is an NBA player, though I’ve felt that way the whole time. I’m not saying that Jeremy Lin doesn’t deserve to be in the NBA, what I’m saying is that he isn’t a “superstar.” We’re being critical over 6 games, in a shortened season that Lin hasn’t been exhausted in the first 20+ games.

Against the Raptors, he was:
1) Getting manhandled by Jose Calderon (who isn’t by any means a top-tier PG) for the majority of the game
2) Scored alot of tough baskets, which were only tough because he can’t go left
3) Had 11 assists, many of which were really bad passes
4) Made the game tying 2 + 1 on a layup that was harder because… well, he couldn’t go left
5) Game-winning trey was good

For as much as everyone (and by “everyone” I mean everyone) talks about how meaningless the NBA regular season is, people sure are making a big deal out of Jeremy Lin. Again, there are a lot of factors into play: Nothing else for New York to talk about right now sports-wise, Asian-American succeeding, undrafted player riding an awesome roller-coaster ride, etc.

Congrats to him and his success.  I personally feel that there are decisively 20+ players I’d much rather have over Lin as my starting PG and another 20 I’d most likely would rather have. If his play continues against better competition, through the end of the year, through the end of his career, then I’ll eat crow; but I’m legitimately asking: Would you want him as your starting PG for a championship contender?

Also, anyone else wonder where the defense was on that game-winning three-pointer?

Andrew Feingold (): I don’t think it wouldn’t have mattered. That shot was destined to go in?

Douglas Chau (): I don’t think anything is destined at the end of a game when your moron coach is playing you 43 minutes.

Sreesha Vaman: I’ve been away so missed most of Lin-sanity. But this is much more about him being in New York than anything else and helping the Knicks make a run to the playoffs finally. He wouldn’t get nearly the attention he does if he was in Oklahoma City or New Orleans or any of the 20+ “fodder” markets in the NBA.

The racial angle is secondary to him being on the Knicks.  It’s the side salad of the story but isn’t the main course. The NBA made tremendous in-roads into the Chinese-American community over the past decade through players like Yao coming over to play in the NBA, so I wouldn’t say that Lin has galvanized a new fan base for the league.

Plus, like Marcus, I’m reserving judgement on his game until the end of the season. He’s on a great 6-game run, but let’s see what happens when teams get enough film on him to be able to figure him out. And. he started getting big-time minutes because the Knicks took a lot of injuries; what happens when those guys come back and his playing time is reduced?

I’m glad that David Stern didn’t send him to the Rising Stars event at the All-Star Game. Six games do not make a season. Saying that, if there is a last-minute injury, gotta think Lin is the first name to go as a replacement.

Rahat Ahmed (): The most important thing at this moment is perspective: We’ve got to let his game speak for himself, not the media hype.  That being said, I’m going to bite the bullet and agree with Momofuku’s David Chang that Lin’s emergence is “the most important event for Asian-Americans in sports history.”  As much as we want to praise Michelle Kwan, figuring skating is simply not a mainstream, national sport. In effect, there are three: Football, basketball and then baseball. The latter has had its share of successful Asians, but no Asian-Americans that I can recall. Football has had players, but none that have stood out. Dat Nguyen was a beast, but he was generally under the radar and made his biggest impact in college. Yao Ming, may I add, is not “Asian-American,” and his success can be attributed heavily to his size. But Lin, at a “normal” height and body, is doing wonders through six games. He’s made a dent into the mindset of vast areas of America (and the world) that lack a masculine, athletic Asian presence.  Lin has also, in a span of a week, given hope to all the Asian-American kids who play basketball but never follow through past high school because it isn’t considered something “Asians” can do. Going pro is now suddenly a reality.

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Perfecting the Round Table: The NFL is Back

In Florida, Football, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Loyalty, New York, Perfecting the Round Table, Philadelphia, Washington DC on August 5, 2011 at 1:30 PM

As a companion to our Perfecting the Big Question series, we bring you Perfecting the Round Table where our contributors discuss various topics back and forth.

Rahat Ahmed (): Now that this NFL season is more or less a reality, we’ve seen an unusual amount of big-name players changing teams.  The first thing that’s struck me involve two teams who, if I had to choose at this very moment, would be my Super Bowl picks: The New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles.  The former’s coup of both Haynesworth and Ochocinco is a massive blow to the Jets, Steelers and other competitors in the AFC.  The latter somehow straggling away Asomugha from the Jets and then picking up Young in “free agency” (which is a completely underrated and potentially quite deadly move) puts them in a spot to fend off the constantly underachieving NFC East.  Some would argue that the Falcons are better equipped than the Eagles (and honestly, considering what they gave up for Julio Jones, you pretty much have to assume they think they’re going all the way), but does Vick simply have that redemption factor backing him all the way to Indianapolis?

Andrew Feingold (): I think the whole Nnamdi talks to the Jets was a smokescreen he apparently wanted to play for the Eagles all along. It was a wise decision not to sign him giving them the cap to go after Plax and re-sign Cromartie and Eric Smith. Restructuring the cap for players like LT, Sanchez, etc. gave them some more flexibility. Next up is to re-sign Harris to a long-term deal. Of course, Rex Ryan said today it’s the best roster he has seen while with the Jets.
I think the Rams and Jags did some under the radar moves which should help them out for the upcoming season. I’m sure SI will predict a Pats-Eagles SB but one thing we know is that the best team on paper does not always make it to the big game.

Marcus Bui (): I agree with Rahat’s forethought into the NFL seasons so far, that on paper, the Patriots and the Eagles are the best teams—that’s on paper though. However, with the NFL’s incredible parity, I’d like to draw the attention to two teams that I think have a legitimate chance of surprising everyone with a deep post season showing: The Texans and the Lions.

Let me be the first to say that I am a Houston fan, and as such, you have to be a realist and not an optimist if you are going to root for a Houston team or be prepared to blow your brains out. As such, this is the first time that I am excited enough about the Texans that I don’t have to start any relevant sentence with “if [insert optimistic event here] happens, we’ll make the post season for sure.” Having a top 5 offense (with arguably the #1 WR and RB), multiple D-line Pro-Bowlers with a good defensive coordinator in Wade Phillips and having the only “major” loss in free agency so far be Vonta Leach—the Texans did what teams need to do during free agency in fulfilling needs with reasonable contracts. Johnathan Joseph was considered by most to be the second best DB available after Asomugha and they picked up Danieal Manning as well. This doesn’t provide the Texans with a top 5 defensive secondary but they no longer possess the type of secondary that literally loses them 5 games a year. Pair this with a weakening AFC South, where Peyton Mannings’s shoulders has to carry not only an aging Colts team but also his recently surgically repaired neck and a below average Titans (sorry, Rahat) and Jaguars, if the Texans go anything less than 10-6, then perhaps Houston really is just a cursed city.

The other team I’d like to draw attention to is the Detroit Lions. It’s crazy that it was only a short time ago that the Lions were 0-16. It’s not crazy though that being bad makes you good—with draftees like Stafford and Suh—I would say that the Lions are my pick for this year’s NFL dark horse. The Lions have a plethora of talent throughout their team. The Lions defensive is scary good—Ndamukong Suh, Nick Fairley, Kyle Vanden Bosch, Stephen Tulloch (sorry again, Rahat), etc. I also feel that their offensive side is definitely something to watch as well. Dynamic RBs in Jahvid Best and rookie Mikel Leshourne, the league’s most athletically talented wide receiver in Calvin “Megatron” Johnson, an underrated O-Line (#6 in fewest sacks allowed) and finally, Matthew Stafford—who I personally think is better than fellow young QB’s Mark Sanchez and Joe Flacco (both whom also lead playoff anticipating teams). Consider that the only real threat in their division are the Packers (sorry, Vikings and the Bears fans) but being bad in the prior year is so rewarding to NFL teams that not only do they get high draft picks, but they also get an easier NFL schedule the following year. I think saying that the Lions going 8-8 wouldn’t be too hard for anyone to swallow, but if they can steal a couple games, they’ll be in the heart of the postseason battle as well.

And with that, remember that you read it here first at Perfecting the Upset—“The Marquee matchup of Super Bowl XLVI is Texans and Lions.”

Rahat Ahmed (): As much as I like the Lions (mostly because of the Jim Schwartz-connection and his siphoning off of former Titans), they’re still a year too early.  Most importantly, as C.D. pointed out in his article, I don’t trust Stafford’s health.  And Stanton, while sufficient for running a middle-of-the-pack offense, is not the guy who can manage a game for a Super Bowl contender.  And if we’re talking about the NFC, I can see both wild card spots going to the Bucs, Falcons or Saints—whichever NFC South team doesn’t win the division.  That is a brutal division that, sadly for the Panthers even with the reassuring moves they’ve made, has 3 legitimate Super Bowl contenders.

C.D. Hale (): My thought on big-ticket free agents is this: More often than not, you’re paying big bucks for what a guy has done, not what he’s going to do. For instance, Asomugha isn’t going to improve as a cornerback, nor are other big-ticket free agents. The key is to find young, cheap guys through the draft and free agency that serve as building blocks for a championship contender. Let’s be honest, for all the high-profile pickups of the Jets and Patriots, it’s teams like Green Bay and Pittsburgh—those who build their franchises in-house—who experienced the most success last year.

As for everyone’s Patriots vs. Eagles Super Bowl prediction, it’s a simple one; it’s also the wrong one. Michael Vick can’t stay healthy, and let’s not forget that his short-armed pass into the end zone last year cost the Eagles a playoff victory against the eventual champion Packers. Meanwhile, the Patriots have become uber-reliant on aging vets the last few years. Meanwhile, they haven’t won a Super Bowl since 2004. This is not a coincidence.

Nick Britton (): I can safely predict that the Miami Dolphins will not be in the playoffs this year. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to watch the Jets and Patriots get better by the day while Miami re-signs 74-year old Jason Taylor. I don’t know that Kyle Orton is the answer but I’d prefer him to any other QB on the roster now. Unfortunately, I don’t think it matters at this point: Matt Moore of Panthers fame was signed the other day. Still Henne’s team, though. I think we’ve seen the best Henne has to offer.

The big news for the Dolphins was Reggie Bush. A lot of people were down on Ronnie Brown, but I always liked him. And I really liked Ricky Williams, as ineffective as he was. If Brown goes to the Patriots [Ed: Brown has since signed with the Eagles.], I can assure you he’ll have an excellent season. The Wes Welker Effect. I wouldn’t mind seeing Williams back. I think he might return but I doubt Brown does. My guess is Miami starts the season with Bush as the feature back and rookie Daniel Thomas out of K-State backing him up. I say just keep handing it off to Lousaka Polite. And I don’t want to make light of a serious illness, but Brandon Marshall being not right in the head was a given, no? In all seriousness, I think it’s good he’s addressed it publicly and he’s getting treated for it. Let’s just hope he can get treatment for the QB problem.

Anyway, I think you can pretty much bank on either the Pats or the Jets winning the AFC East and getting a wildcard.

The Florida team to watch this year is easily Tampa Bay. Josh Freeman is a stud and I think he’ll be a top 5 QB this year. I think they need another WR, though, to line up opposite (the other) Mike Williams. I thought Steve Breaston would be a good fit but he’s on the Chiefs now. And Maurice Stovall went to the Lions. But I think Freeman and Boise State fan LeGarrette Blount make Tampa Bay the favorite in the NFC South. Blount was a monster last year in just half a season.  I do agree with Rahat that this division is brutal.

I don’t think Michael Vick is what the Eagles need. Regardless of what I think about him as a person, I don’t think highly of him as a QB. I’ll say that last year was flukey and he comes back down to earth this year. I like the Vince Young signing though, and I like the Asomugha signing. Even with a down-to-earth Vick, there’s no way anyone in the NFC East competes with the Eagles this year.

I agree on the Patriots. I still think they win the division or a wildcard, but the balance of power in the East has shifted. They’re too old.

Bradley Freedman (): I find it hard to argue that both the Patriots and the Eagles aren’t going to be even better this year than they were last year. They are both real threats to win a Super Bowl, even though neither of them are my pick. (For the same reasons given by some of my colleagues: Vick’s unreliability and the Patriots’ age.) For what it’s worth, my Super Bowl pick is the Packers. There’s that old football cliche that when a good player comes back from an injury, it’s like adding a new signing. Considering that they were able to win a championship in spite of numerous injuries last year, I see a healthy Packers team repeating by virtue of adding the players who were supposed to be there last year.

Whether or not any of the big free agents lead their team to a Super Bowl, the nature of these signings is fascinating. I don’t remember a time when so many teams have doubled-up with superstars at key defensive positions. Vince Wilfork and Albert Haynesworth on one team? Who ever heard of a team being deep at nose tackle? Based on the early reports from Patriots training camp, Belichick may be switching to a 4-3 with Wilfork and Haynesworth in the middle. This would no doubt make Haynesworth happy, and Haynesworth is frightening when he’s happy. If Belichick is moving to a 4-3, then, along with the Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairly pairing up in the middle for the Lions, I’m looking forward to watching these two 4-3 schemes more than any team’s 3-4 in 2011. Hell, I’m looking forward more to those defensive fronts than I am most teams’ offenses.

Like many fans I was also looking forward to the sheer audacity of a Revis-Asomugha project in New York. But the trio of Asomugha, Rodgers-Cromartie, and Samuels in the secondary for Philadelphia is almost as ridiculous. Of course, this is assuming the Eagles keep all three players and keep them all at corner. If that’s the case, at any given time the Eagles are going to have a Pro-Bowl corner standing on the sidelines. It will probably be Samuels.

Defense seems to be where much of the top-level talent is in this free agent class. And defense seems to be where much of the creativity is going to be this year. Yes, it’s a heavy-handed creativity, based on the premise that two stars are better than one. But I’m looking forward to it, especially since it is not going to be the sort of thing that every team can copy. Any team can decide to incorporate multiple eligible passers with the wild cat or go to a running back tandem. But not every team will be able to stack multiple Pro Bowlers in the same position.

Andrew Feingold (): Despite the age of the Pats at certain positions, they have young pieces in line at the RB, O-line and defensive positions. They are also the favorites to win the AFC East, which means home field advantage once again. For the Jets to take the next step, they need a home playoff game and for Sanchez to develop further. While the Packers are a popular pick to make it back to the SB, I want to see if the Falcons can breakthrough.

C.D. Hale (): See, I’m not so sure being the favorite in the East is a path to home-field advantage. The Jets are tough, and the Dolphins (despite their mediocrity) tend to play the Pats hard. Meanwhile, teams like the Chargers and Colts can feast on weak divisions and perhaps carve out their own path to home-field. Plus, I’m just not sure where the Pats’ game-breakers are. Ocho and Welker are both solid No. 2 receivers, but they lack a go-to threat. The running game is good but not great. And Brady, for all his other worldliness, hasn’t exactly set the playoffs on fire the last few years. If you get to him, the Pats are extremely beatable, as evidenced by the Divisional Playoff round last season.

Call me crazy, but I think the Colts or Chargers have one more run left in them. Maybe San Diego needed to be humbled last year, to show that you can’t start the season halfway through and still make the playoffs. Plus, again, awful division.

Andrew Feingold (): The Texans are on the cusp of winning that division even though they have a tough schedule this year. Peyton just lost his left tackle, and this is the first time I can remember he’s had a major health concern coming into the season. The Chargers have an easy path but Ryan Mathews is already banged up and the defense lost Brandon Siler and Kevin Burnett. While they should win the division, the Chiefs are still a solid team and when was the last time Norv Turner won a big game?

By the way, the Pats beat the Dolphins 41-14 and 38-7 last season, and this year they will have the quarterback carousel. Clearly the Steelers and Ravens have to be in the discussion as well.

C.D. Hale (): All good points, and while I picked the Texans to make the playoffs, that division still belongs to the Colts, Manning injury or no. Manning is a machine. Yeah, he’ll miss the preseason, but he’ll be there in Week 1 steering the ship, throwing to a (finally!) healthy receiving corps. As for the Chargers, yeah, Mathews is banged up, but Tolbert is solid enough, and let’s be honest, that offense goes through Rivers anyway. The NFL is a league now won with passing and pass rushing (e.g., the Packers last year), and I’m not sure the Pats have enough of the latter to go all the way. And while Brady is a stud, Welker hasn’t been the same player since he blew out his knee and Moss left town, and Ochocinco is a Pro Bowler in name only at this point. I’d argue their best receiver is up-and-coming tight end Aaron Hernandez.

As for Baltimore and Pittsburgh, they might be the two best teams in the AFC for all we know. However, I don’t trust Flacco or those receivers, and Pittsburgh is quietly getting older on defense.

As for the NFC, it’s a toss-up. My best guess is Green Bay, as they won the Super Bowl with some of their best players on the shelf, but damn, that’s almost too easy a pick. Atlanta could get it done, but there’s something about Matt Ryan I just don’t trust. Maybe it’s that crappy nickname. Philly? Super teams rarely work in the NFL. Dallas? Wishful thinking. Tampa? Not ready. Same for Detroit. I’d say New Orleans, but they seem like a team that caught lightning in a bottle and rolled to a title. I don’t see them doing that again.

Here’s a question to turn this on its head a little bit. Who will be the worst team in football? I vote Carolina. Tough division, no QB. Hell, aside from the fact that Ric Flair is their most famous fan, they have no personality of which to speak. Plus, Jimmy Clausen seems like a punk.

Sean Koo (): I know my timing is off, but going back first I would say that there is no team that did not want Nnamdi. Regardless of his age or injury history, he is worth the risk and the Eagles got him at a bargain. Second, while both the Patriots and the Eagles made the biggest splash, neither of them will be in the Super Bowl. I think you guys have thoroughly picked apart the Patriots, so I’ll just throw in a note about the Eagles. Not even considering a Michael Vick injury, the Eagles need the most help on defense, and everyone has forgotten about how they have a new defensive coordinator who was the former O-line coach. Aside from him being completely new to coaching that side of the ball, he has never put a defensive system in place and no one can expect him to do wonders in his first year. If it was as easy as plugging any coach in, Sean McDermott would still be there.

My vote is that the Packer or Saints will come back out of the NFC. The NFC South will be brutal, but I expect the Falcons to come back to earth—by the end of the season teams were figuring them out. As much as I would love the Bucs to win the division, they’re still a season away from really contending. They need to find stability with another winning season and getting into the playoffs will be a more likely goal before making a real push the following year.

My dark horse for the NFC is the Vikings. Yes, McNabb is old, but with Percy Harvin and AD, McNabb will get them as far as Favre did, and the defense should still be solid, even with Edwards leaving.

I’d say it’ll be the Steelers again out of the AFC, but there’s just too many good teams to really tell. Colts, Pats, Steelers and Chargers as division winners—as usual aside from the 1 or 2 off years, but that’s the AFC.  Good teams stay good and the bad teams stay bad.

Worst team is going to be the Bengals. They don’t have a QB, their head coach has been through the wringer, they’re in a division with two superior teams and a promising team in the Browns. Somehow they are signing defensive free agents, but they still seem to be standing still. The Bengals challenge the Raiders for worse franchise but they even have less talent than the Raiders (who would be the best Vegas bet on possibly doing something out of no where like win the division).

Marcus Bui (): I’d agree with you Clint with the Panthers as the worst team in football. I do think they will have a 4 win season though—which might net them second or third to last though. For them to not be in last place, they need to play at their biggest strength: Their running game. Last year, they hardly ran the ball, I know, I had both Deangelo and Stewart on my fantasy team. Since their QB, WR, TE is mediocre (I think I’m being pretty lenient there), that too should promote running the ball more. The panthers are solid enough on the O-line and defense that I could feel hopeful for them. You never know, maybe they’ll surprise us. “Worst” case scenario would be they just had to wait a year for Andrew Luck.

Sreesha Vaman (): I’d nominate the Redskins as worst team in football. They might look better than they really are because they are in a tough division, but they’d be equally miserable in worse divisions. At the moment, their only QB options are John Beck, a marginal backup, and Rex Grossman. Don’t get me wrong, there is talent there.  The defense isn’t all terrible—I even started them once last year and did well that week—and they definitely took a step in the right direction by getting younger this off-season, but that means growing pains before results.

Nick Britton (): If John Beck is even on your roster, hell, even your practice squad, you’re really up shit creek. The Bengals are looking at the Redskins and saying, “Well, at least we don’t have Beck, right?”

I’ll nominate the Raiders by default. The Raiders win the title automatically until they make the playoffs or Al Davis dies.

Shaughn Balezentes (): I’m surprised no one has nominated the Seahawks as the worst team in football. They had Matt Hasselbeck for years and brought in Charlie Whitehurst last year to be his eventual replacement. Obviously they didn’t see enough in Charlie after a year with the team to think he could be an adequate replacement, so they’re solution is to go out and sign Tavaris Jackson. Granted they signed Sidney Rice as well, but who is going to get him the ball? their offensive line was a mess last year, and they think they’ve got those problems solved through the draft and the signing of Robert Gallery, except all the draft analysts say they reached for all of the linemen they drafted and Gallery has been injury prone the last few seasons. Maybe hiring Tom Cable as the O-line coach will help, but in the NFL talent wins and the Seahawks don’t have much.

Masahito Ogasawara (): As much as I’d like to feel optimistic about this season, and there certainly have been good moves made by the Texans, this culture of failure that has existed since the franchise’s inception still makes me a pessimist when it comes to this team. It seems like every year, the so-called experts on TV declare Houston as the “sleeper” or “dark horse” in the preseason, and for the past few years, they predicted that this team will finally get over the hump and make the playoffs. We all know that didn’t happen, and I’m starting to feel that those analysts jinx us every year. So regardless of all the great moves we’ve made this off-season (I have to admit, bringing in Wade Phillips alone gave me false hope for a few days that our defense got better already) until I see it, I won’t believe that this team will make the playoffs.

First, it doesn’t matter how great our offense is, it’s proven to be a moot point in the last 3 seasons when we finished in top 5. This league is about defense, as it is in any other major sports league, and until we prove on that side of the ball, we will never make the playoffs. Talking about Wade Phillips and the improvements he can bring as well as his track record of success is all fine and good, but one thing this team still lacks is the ability to pass rush. Mario Williams moving to OLB is a huge risk and still a big unknown. As great as he is, he’s still 6’7, 285 lbs. DeMeco Ryans is coming off of an Achilles’ tendon rupture and history doesn’t bode well for him as far as type of injury is concerned. I’m not optimistic how Cushing will transition to the 3-4, and he hit a major sophomore wall last year. One glaring need that our GM has ignored is the NT position.  We’re not gonna survive with Earl Mitchell/Shaun Cody at NT all season, unless you are playing Madden. Signing Jonathan Joseph and Danieal Manning was huge and will definitely help our secondary, but Wade Phillips 3-4 defense is all about the front 7 generating pass rush, and until we improve in that area, the improvements in the secondary won’t be as beneficial. And speaking of which, we still have Kareem Jackson and Jason Allen at our other CB spot, and they are very good at “escorting” opposing WRs into the end zone on a regular basis.

Finally, I think the loss of Vonta Leach will hurt our running game a lot more than people think. He did make Foster look good last year, and our running game will suffer this year in my opinion. And no, the Colts are not going to suck, and I think Peyton’s neck will be just fine. If anything, he will have more weapons available this year (hello, Dallas Clark) and he still had the Colts winning the division last year despite all the injuries that offense had. Once again, it’s their division to lose, and they are still the clear favorite to win the AFC South.

Rahat Ahmed (): The team with the worst record in the NFL this year will not be the worst team.  The Panthers will get mauled in their divisional games and are slated to play the Colts, Texans, Packers and some other very competitive teams.  They’ll once again have the worst record, but in terms of actual gameplay, I may have to pick the Buffalo Bills.  Fitzpatrick is not a solution, though I do like him.  And losing Posluszny is going to hurt them a lot in a division packed with offensive threats (yes, the Dolphins make this list because of Marshall and Bush).

The major power that I don’t see making the playoffs this year is the Colts.  The Texans breaking out has become a broken record, but things have to click sometime.  Regardless of the final standings, the team has progressed quite a bit over the past three years, and this is the year they take the division.  The Jaguars and Titans are wild cards, but Manning can only do so much for a team that should have gone no better than 7-9 last year with the talent present.  In fact, if he does take this team to an 11+ win season and a trip deep into the postseason, we may have to once and for all anoint him the greatest quarterback ever—though that’s a different discussion altogether.

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Professionals and Paranoia in Kansas City

In Baseball, Football, Kansas City on August 4, 2011 at 2:27 PM

Last week in Kansas City two different players left two different teams. Neither of the players chose to leave.

The first was Brian Waters, five-time Pro Bowl guard for the Kansas City Chiefs and 2009 Walter Payton Man of the Year in the NFL. One of the first orders of business the Chiefs took when the lockout ended was to release Waters. There had been some minor rumblings about this possibility during the off-season, so it was not entirely a surprise, given that Waters is 34 years old. But Waters was also a member of the executive committee of the NFL Players Association, and people in Kansas City immediately began to speculate about whether his union activities played a part in his release. (Aside from his role in the NFLPA, Waters has also been known to be generally outspoken during his career and not one to shy away from giving the media a good quote.)

The second player was a Kansas City Royal that few people outside of KC have heard of unless they are die hard baseball fans. Mike Aviles is a 30-year-old utility second baseman with a solid bat but below-average defensive skills. He was traded to the Boston Red Sox one day after making comments to the Kansas City Star expressing his unhappiness at being largely relegated to AAA this year. As with Waters, the speculation immediately began about whether it was his mouth that got him moved.

It seems unlikely that the Royals would engineer a trade in one day all because of a quote given to the local paper. Word is that the trade had been in the works for weeks. And Waters was no doubt nearing the end of his career. But that didn’t stop fans from wondering whether one or both of them were whacked. Some of this suspicion is part of the age-old battle between players and their front offices. But Kansas Citians have their own reasons to be a bit paranoid about the motives of their two major sports franchises.

Both the Chiefs and the Royals are run by general managers who made their names elsewhere. Chiefs GM Scott Pioli is the former vice president of player personnel for the New England Patriots; and the Royals’ GM is Dayton Moore, formerly an assistant GM of the Atlanta Braves. Both men were brought to Kansas City to replicate their former success, and both men have created organizations that put a premium on silence. The first anyone heard about either Waters or Aviles being finished in KC was when the teams announced their decisions in press releases.

Pioli is famous for saying and revealing as little as possible. And Moore is infamous for being thin-skinned when it comes to criticism. (“Classic Dayton Moore. The absolute first rumor of an Aviles trade came when the Royals’ official Twitter feed announced the deal.” This was the tweet from Kansas native and Baseball Prospectus co-founder Rany Jazayerli immediately after Aviles was traded. Jazayerli knows about Dayton Moore, because a couple of years ago he wrote a blog post that was critical of a Royals athletic trainer, which led to the Royals denying Jazayerli access to Royals players and management as punishment.)

Kansas City fans, for now, are willing to put up with the mafioso attitudes of their two major sports franchises. In some ways, it is a natural fit as midwesterners usually prefer their sports teams to be no-nonsense. In the KC area, this most clearly plays itself out with University of Kansas basketball, where the overwhelmingly white, suburban fan base is forced to reconcile itself to teams made up largely of black kids from the East Coast. Trash talking before games is an inevitable controversy in Kansas.

Fans of both teams are also desperate for a championship—or even any type of a significant post-season game. So they are willing to put up with front offices who exhibit a creepy bureaucratic efficiency as long as it results in the type of success that Pioli and Moore experienced with their previous teams. The good news is that both franchises do appear to be on the upswing, even though they are each a year or two away from being likely post-season threats.

So even though it is possible that neither Waters nor Avila were ousted for the nefarious reasons that swirled around Kansas City talk radio and the sports blogosphere last week, the suspicions were not unwarranted. Conspiracy theories are most fertile in closed societies, and in Kansas City both the Chiefs and the Royals have created a corporate breeding ground for paranoia. It may all pay off if the teams are able to contend for championships. But if they don’t, Kansas City will be left with dual legacies of controlling, humorless organizations. Not only will they not have won, but they will have refused to have a little bit of fun along the way. There’s nothing tragic about not winning, but there is something pathetic about refusing to have a little bit of fun along the way.

The Future of Hockey on the Isle

In Hockey, Loyalty, New York on August 3, 2011 at 11:10 AM

Before I get to the main thrust of this article, it should be noted I’m a Rangers fan, thus hate the Islanders with an intense passion, and that colors everything I think about this situation.

But contrary to how you might interpret that sentence, I want the Isles to stay on Long Island.

I want them to stay badly.

I value this rivalry more than the Yankees and Red Sox or Arsenal and Spurs. Certainly more than the Rangers and Devils or Rangers and Flyers.

But despite Chris Botta’s original optimism on ESPN NY that the Isles would win the crucial vote, the chances of that happening are getting very slim after Monday’s referendum on the $400m loan from Nassau County to fix the old Mausoleum was voted down.

Sure, they are a perennially awful and mismanaged franchise. Nothing Charles Wang, or the people Charles Wang has put his trust in, has worked out for them, and for as bad as they’ve been over the last decade, you’d expect them to have built up an amazing team through the draft, as Pittsburgh and Washington did and Edmonton are in the process of doing. Tavares and Niederreiter aside, there are some major question marks in their system, despite Hockey’s Future ranking the organization #6 (the Rangers are #7, for the record)—especially in goal.

How mismanaged are the Islanders? The two key players from this year’s Stanley Cup finals were drafted by them: Roberto Luongo was traded after they drafted Rick DiPietro, and Zdeno Chara was traded away because they wanted Alexei Yashin, giving Rangers fans plenty to laugh at for a long time (and the Rangers returned the favor by signing Chris Drury and Wade Redden).

It’s curious to me, actually, that a lot of younger Ranger fans don’t have the raging hatred of the Islanders that older Rangers fans do. The split seems to come circa 1994, in the Cup year. Fans too young to remember the Cup hate the Devils more, or the Flyers or Penguins (mostly Crosby). But to me, and most fans who are old enough to remember the Cup (and sweeping the Isles in the first round en route to that Cup), the Rangers prime rival will always be on Long Island.

I think their fans are goobers (Gary Bettman grew up rooting for them, for Christ’s sake!), personally, but more in a playful way, not in the same way Thrashers fans were. Thrashers fans, with a few die-hard fan exceptions, deserved to lose their franchise. In the case of the Isles, it’s more that the franchise-as-run deserves to lose their fans, which has the unfortunate knock-on effect of the fans potentially losing their franchise. And the Rangers losing their prime rivalry.

It’s an interesting rivalry, in that whichever team is doing worse in the standing tends to win the season series. There’s such an intense hatred that the worse team plays with a motor that they don’t have against other teams, and it leads to absurd chants like You can’t beat us! with a callback of Make the playoffs!

So, what now though?

Might the Islanders move to Kansas City, who have an arena and desire for a hockey team? The surging St. Louis Blues wouldn’t be a fan of this idea, and might make the team less desirable as they are about to be sold by Checketts’ group.

Not only would the Blues not like this idea, but the rest of the Eastern Conference also wouldn’t like this idea. After moving the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg, and the probability that they will end up in the Western Conference once the dust settles (meaning one team currently in the West would move east—probably the Columbus Blue Jackets), moving the Islanders west of Detroit would up the likelihood of the Red Wings entering the East, something Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch has reportedly been pressing the NHL commish for years.  That’s not something any of the 14 remaining teams in the East would welcome, though something that would make Bettman want to touch himself (extra Wings games with the Rangers, Leafs, Bruins, Flyers and Habs? A ratings boon for sure).

Might they move to Brooklyn, into the Barclay’s Center, when their lease is up? It would keep them in the East, and in New York, thus keeping the rivalry alive. But as a Brooklyn native and resident, this sends shivers of disgust up my spine. The Brooklyn Islanders? No, no, no. I vote no.

Despite what Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz says, this is not a good idea. Not a good idea at all, dammit. With the bad blood between Madison Sq Garden and the group that own their farm team, the Hartford Whale, many Ranger fans were hoping it would be the Baby Rangers moving into the ice rink that the Barclay’s Center will have (which is thought to have about 14,500 seats, or 4,300 seats fewer than MSG’s 18,200 hockey capacity). Also, there’s the fact that Nets partial owner Mikhail Prokhorov says he has no interest in owning another sports team, though Wang would be admitting defeat if he sold anyway, and he doesn’t seem like the type who would give in, especially not after sticking it out for this long.

The Islanders must move out of their awful arena, of course. But they must stay on the Island, just as the Devils had to move out of their awful arena, but stayed in North Jersey.

I don’t know how this can be achieved, however. Most Nassau County voters and politicians don’t seem to want to lift a finger to help owner Charles Wang keep the Isles on the Island.

Hockey fans aside, it was the oddly ironic coalition of Tea Partiers and Democrats who turned out in force to vote in Monday’s referendum, which was expected to be an extremely low turnout, but ended at up at a “high” 17% of registered voters. This may be the only thing the two sides have ever agreed on, and was seen as a referendum on the debt ceiling bill passed in Congress over the weekend.

Long Island has some of the highest property taxes in the country already, so the early optimism seems a bit misplaced. This always seemed doomed from the start to me. Nassau Count Executive Ed Mangano (R) might have signed his political death certificate with this vote, but that’s a story for another article.

The thing is, though, if we’re to take Charles Wang at his word, he has lost around $250 million dollars on a team that hasn’t won the Cup since 1983, and Nassau County, who loved those 1980s teams so much but have the worst current attendance record in the league, are still unwilling to throw him a bone.

That’s not right.

The Joshie Franchise in Tampa Bay

In Florida, Football on August 2, 2011 at 7:00 AM

Craig Erickson, Trent Dilfer, Eric Zeir, Shaun King, Brad Johnson, Rob Johnson, Brian Griese, Chris Simms, Bruce Gradkowski, Tim Rattay, Jeff Garcia, Byron Leftwich, Luke McCown, Josh Johnson, and finally… Josh Freeman.

The first 14 men on this list welcomed me to the rough and heart-wrenching road of what its like to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneer fan. Like every team, the Bucs have gone through transformations through the years. Bucco Bruce and his orange and white turned into the pirate ship of pewter and red. The Old Sombrero became Ray-Jay Stadium. The team went from laughingstock to Super Bowl champions to bottom feeders to up-and-coming. And the team calling card changed from dominating defense to an offensive force, led by the ultimate gamer: Josh Freeman, our franchise quarterback.

What is a franchise quarterback? What defines a Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or Drew Brees? For years I looked at those teams and watched in envy as season after season having a steady QB ensured stability in the entire organization. Fielding a franchise quarterback meant having the position locked up for the next 10 years. It meant having an identity molded after his personality and a team led by his leadership. The Colts are meticulous and ultra-prepared for every game. The Patriots have the swagger of a winner and can’t ever be counted out. And the Saints have the biggest hearts and theatrics in the league. For the Bucs, we’ve relied on journeymen, backups and busts for too long. Now we have our own answer.

In a little over a season and a half, Freeman has turned our franchise around and led a revolution in Buccaneer fandom. In my 20 years of following the Bucs, I’ve never followed a signal-caller that truly lived up to the hype as a franchise quarterback. We drafted Trent Dilfer and watched him break our hearts too many times. In his rookie season, Shaun King almost led us to victory in the NFC Championship Game over the eventual Super Bowl winner Rams, but fell short and then fell off the map. Next came Brad Johnson, who was an accurate and successful QB, but hardly the franchise cornerstone. I started saying to myself, who needs a franchise QB if you’ve got a defense that’s humming, and the defense was the one thing you could always rely on in Tampa Bay. Our dominating Super Bowl win not only left us on top of the football world, but proved that we didn’t need a franchise quarterback—just a really good one as long as our defense was rolling and Gruden’s mastermind was scheming. But that’s when the wheels started falling off. After a couple of years of giving it another go with Johnson, we started searching for our next answer. Brian Griese was the next Rich Gannon, until we found out he was best suited as a backup. Chris Simms was our future until the Panthers jack-knifed his spleen. Soon, in a series of moves that left me questioning everything about the Bucs, Gruden was out and unproven rookie head coach, Raheem Morris, was in.

In the 2009 draft, the Bucs had the 19th pick. They traded up to take Josh Freeman? At the time, I hated everything about the move. Who was this Josh Freeman? What had Kansas State done? I know Raheem was the former defensive coordinator there, but did that mean he knew more about the kid than most others or was he blinded by his biases? Could we afford trading away a draft pick—even a sixth rounder—when we had so many holes to fill? And wasn’t this a weak quarterback draft? Why were we reaching for the position when most other teams were steering clear of QBs? I hated this new regime.

As a rookie, Freeman didn’t get a start until our season was lost. By that time, we’d been through a brutal half season of Leftwich, McCown and Johnson, and two departed coordinators who left us way out of the playoff picture. This was a far cry from Gruden’s division-winning teams, and I was still wishing all the moves were a bad dream. As for Freeman, I wasn’t excited about him and didn’t think he was our long-term solution, but his play on the field soon won me over. We didn’t win a lot of games, but Freeman was showing a flare for the dramatic. Fourth quarter scores to win rivalry games against the Packers and Saints and competitive losses were all we could ask for at this point, and Freeman made our season exciting again. He made our receivers look serviceable and Kellen Winslow like a top tight end in the league. We finished the season 3-13, but I held my breath all off-season wondering if we’d finally found a franchise quarterback. Our own Peyton that we drafted and played as a rookie and would be here to stay until the end. But I’ve seen this movie before—young quarterback wows us at the end of the season, we get our hearts broken and then we’re looking for a signal-caller in the first round of the draft again. Let’s wait a bit before we put the “F” word on him.

In 2010, Freeman’s sophomore year, the Bucs went in with low expectations and became the feel-good-story of the season. Going 10-6 with the youngest roster in the league and then missing out on the playoffs because of tie-breakers with the eventual Super Bowl champion was an extremely successful year for a club that was supposed to finish last in the division. The main constants of the team throughout the year were Raheem Morris and Josh Freeman. The way Raheem has changed everyone’s opinion of him in the span of eight months is enough for another article. In Josh Freeman, we got to watch a player blossom on the field into the gritty fourth quarter hero that he is now. Five of our ten wins were decided in the fourth quarter with Freeman making game-winning drives. Winning games is how you make a name for yourself. Coming up clutch is how you become a legend. And in Tampa right now, there’s no bigger sports figure than Josh Freeman.

In this off-season, Freeman continued building on his resume with his off-the-field leadership. Before the lockout was lifted, Freeman was running camps for the entire team. You might expect that from a Drew Brees, but from a third-year quarterback on a team lacking veteran leadership, Freeman taking initiative turned heads. He’s said all the right things and has connected with the players, including talented stars with baggage like Mike Williams and LeGarrette Blount. It’s on Freeman to get the team to perform to their fullest potential, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. In this upcoming season, Freeman will have to deal with the pressures of expectations, multiple personnel issues on the defensive side and an increasingly harder division. Still the Bucs look to contend not only for the NFC South, but also to be the “best team in the NFC.” A lot falls on the shoulders of the twenty-three-year-old, but that’s how being a franchise quarterback works.

We finally have him Bucs fans: the franchise quarterback who’s going to deliver. Thanks to Freeman, there’s optimism all around the Bucs organization. We’re a young, exciting team that’s fearless against any opponent. People still doubt our abilities, but we’ll keep proving them wrong and keep getting better. We’re a team on the rise, and we’ll beat you with talent, guts and style. We’re a team molded after our quarterback, Josh Freeman, our franchise now and tomorrow.

NFL 2011: Who Will Rise?

In Football, Houston on August 1, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Let’s get this out of the way—I don’t like the Houston Texans.

To me, they are saccharine, the master-planned suburban community of the NFL. Sure, it looks nice, has that glean to it, all the amenities you could ask for, and yet, you’ve completely forgotten it the moment you drive away. It’s all there, and yet, something’s missing.

In the Texans’ case, that certain something is personality.

From bland superstars like Andre Johnson and Arian Foster to their cookie-cutter stadium to the fact that Texans gameday feels exactly as you think it would (right down to the crowd chanting predictabilities in unison), there are no surprises with the Texans, no “wow” factor. That includes the annual inevitability that is the Texans’ disappointing record.

That changes this year. In 2011, talent finally prevails, and the Texans have plenty of it. Mark it down—the Houston Texans, after years of not quite getting there, are finally going to reach the postseason.

History dictates as much. Think of the Cincinnati Bengals of two years ago, the Chicago Bears of last year, the near-Super Bowl champion Arizona Cardinals of 2008. Every year, someone rises from a gang of also-rans to reach the postseason. This year, in the post-lockout world where stability will be of extra importance, the Texans—with vets like Matt Schaub, Johnson, DeMeco Ryans and Mario Williams—are primed for a playoff berth.

Let’s dissect how this conclusion was made.

For starters, go ahead and eliminate all of the last year’s playoff teams, as you can’t exactly rise from the ashes when the house was never on fire. That eliminates the New York Jets, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, New England, New Orleans, Seattle, Green Bay, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta.

Secondly, let’s go ahead and remove teams that underwhelmed in 2010, but are expected to rebound and contend for a playoff spot in 2011. That takes care of Arizona, Dallas, San Diego and the New York Giants.

Next, let’s discard all the teams that are in rebuidling mode in 2011, throwing out young, unproven quarterbacks or washed-up vets (to play in front of those unproven youngsters) in the hopes of playing playoff spoiler to division rivals while potentially building for a more prosperous future. Include Carolina, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Denver,  Cleveland, Minnesota and Tennessee on that list.

Moving on, throw out the teams who came out of nowhere last year to contend, and while falling short of the playoffs, are primed for numerous playoff runs. These teams are no longer unknowns. That’d be Tampa Bay and St. Louis.

From there, let’s just go ahead and toss the franchise train wrecks out, since these organizations—as currently constructed—will never be anything beyond mediocre. We’re looking at you, Oakland and Washington.

That leaves five teams vying for status of “uprisers,” including the aforementioned Texans. Here is why the other four won’t get there in 2011.

Detroit: Because the Lions, like the Texans too many times before, are this year’s hot playoff pick. The problem is this, Matthew Stafford can’t stay healthy, and Detroit is housed in a division with Chicago and the defending Super Bowl champs. Maybe in 2012, but not now.

Jacksonville/Miami: I’m lumping these two together, as they’re pretty much the same team. Both based in Florida, both average and forgettable in every way, not awful, but not exactly awe-inspiring either. Wouldn’t be surprised if both finished 8-8; it would only be fitting for both to land right in the middle of the NFL pack.

San Francisco: Alex Smith. Need I say more?

That leaves Houston, who thanks to stable vets, an upgraded defense (both on the field and in the coaching box), and a weak division (even Indy isn’t a sure thing anymore), will finally reach the playoffs in 2011. 10-6. See you in the postseason Houston. Yes, I’m just as surprised as you.

Perfecting the Big Question: The First Game

In Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Houston, Loyalty, New York, Perfecting the Big Question, Seattle, Wrestling on July 29, 2011 at 12:03 PM

With a varied list of contributors to Perfecting the Upset, we decided it made sense to start a series of articles where we’d throw out a question to the crew and see how they stand.  This week, we ask:

What was the first game you ever attended?

(Don’t forget to check out our Allegiances table to know our loyalties.)

Rahat Ahmed
The first professional game I attended soon became part of one of my first memorable heartbreaks: Game 6 of the 1992-93 Western Conference finals between the Houston Rockets and the Seattle SuperSonics.  My uncle surprised me with tickets, which led to me frantically printing out “banners” on our old dot matrix to cheer on Olajuwon and crew. (They were terrible, but an eleven year old has to make do with the technology he has access to.)  The first five games of the series had been decided by an average of 14.4 points, all won by the team at home.  Game 5, in fact, ended in a 25 slaughter by the Shawn Kemp-led Sonics.

The game was tight through half-time until Kenny “The Jet” Smith took it upon himself and ripped the Sonics 36-15 in the third quarter with his 13-for-16 shooting.  We won 103-90.  But the real memory of that series remains in two parts: The first was Game 7, which ended in a 3 point loss at Seattle in overtime.  It was the only game in the series that went down to the wire, where The Jet had a chance to clinch it at the end of regulation but failed.  We lost 103-100 because we simply couldn’t stop Sam Perkins.  Brutal.

But what I’ve never forgotten was outside the series, and why I’ve come to hate David Robinson and the San Antonio Spurs so much: Game 82 of the regular season was against them. We won the game outright during regulation, but Hugh Evans decided to count a tip-in at the buzzer that was clearly too late.  It was enough to send the game to overtime and help the Spurs eek out a 119-117 victory.  Most importantly?  It gave Seattle home court advantage against us, even though we both ended the season with the same record.  And considering we were 2-6 against them over the past two seasons due to our inability to contain Kemp, Payton and Perkins, we could have used that.  (Perkins, especially, was one of the few players in the league who gave Olajuwon problems due to his range and height.)

We know that one decision in the regular season doesn’t lead to your final seeding, but I’ve never been able to forget about it.  My first experience at The Summit remains blood-stained by Robinson and Evan and kept us from having a go at Jordan.

Nick Britton
I assume that the first sporting event I went to was a minor league baseball game but I don’t remember anything about it. And when I was a young’un I saw the Washington Bullets a couple of times and the Washington Capitals once. That’s all I remember.

The first game for which I remember any details was a Seattle Mariners/Baltimore Orioles game on June 6, 1993 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. The stadium was only about a year old then. I remember this game for a couple of reasons: One, my dad had procured access to the Tyson Chicken corporate luxury box, so I got to watch the game in style; and two, there was a giant brawl in the middle of the game.

The fight I remember well but the people involved faded from my memory over the past 18 years until a friend of mine found the box score for me. I knew Harold Reyonlds, Mike Mussina and Norm Charlton were involved and that Lou Piniella got thrown out for a temper tantrum. It was an epic fight by baseball standards, and it started as baseball fights usually do: Team A’s pitcher throws at or hits Team B’s batter and then Team B’s pitcher retaliates shortly thereafter. In this case, Chris Bosio of the M’s went headhunting and Mike Mussina of the O’s nailed some dude I’ve never heard of. Fight!

What I remember most was how the fight never seemed to end. Usually, these things end quickly and everyone’s standing around. The guys from the bullpen run in just to get some cardio in. But this fight just kept going on and on. The pile kept moving around the infield like those cups in that cup game they always throw up on the video board. Fights were breaking out all over the place. McNulty and Bunk tried to break things up until the umpires stopped them (the police did try to intervene). Apparently, Ripken was at the bottom of that mess. Everyone in the stadium was standing up just in awe of a real, honest-to-god fight on the baseball diamond. I was pretty sure it was the greatest thing I’d seen in my 14 years of life so far.

The end result: Chris Bosio broke his collarbone for the second time that season. Two guys on the O’s got all bloodied up. Norm Charlton threw some punches. Eight players were ejected, including Piniella (shocker).

I only knew who won thanks to the box score. But two teams brawling out all over the diamond, that’s the kind of thing that sticks with you. The only equivalent would be Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer to the ground like a bag of flour. But I wasn’t there for that.

Oh, and Cal Ripken? Ripken lived to see another day (or so).

Andrew Feingold
Technically, the first game I ever went to was Rockets vs. Knicks at Madison Square Garden on December 3, 1983, when my mom was pregnant with me. When I was old enough to hear this story, I instantly became a Knicks fan. During the 1983-84 season, the Knicks finished 47-35 and lost in the Eastern Conference Semifinals to the Celtics. As a Knicks fan, this was just the beginning of losing series to playoff rivals. Hubie Brown was the coach of the team at the time, and to this day he remains one of my favorite announcers to hear on the radio.

C.D. Hale
Survivor Series ’94. San Antonio. Freeman Coliseum. I was 12, and our poor asses smuggled food in from the outside, a pseudo-white trash family of four taking in the ‘rasslin for the night. Couldn’t have enjoyed it more, particularly when Undertaker extracted revenge by defeating Yokozuna in a casket match. The special enforcer for that main event match? A Mr. Chuck Norris, the man who doesn’t read books, but rather, stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

Sean Koo
In September ’94, my dad took my brother and me to our first Buccaneers game. It was at the Old Sombrero against the New Orleans Saints, and little did I know that this would be the start of my hatred of the ‘Aints. In the midst of the Bucs’ thirteen year run of losing seasons, Sam Wyche was trying to put a consistent winner out on the field, but even his Super Bowl resume couldn’t get it done in Tampa. In a game that you could call a “defensive showdown” or an “offensive letdown,” the Bucs lost to the Saints 9-7. It would be a couple of more games until I saw my first win, and years until my first winning season, but being in the stadium for the first time and taking in the experience in all of its smash-mouth-football glory had me hooked. Buccaneer football at the Old or New Sombrero was the only way to go.

Sreesha Vaman
My first sporting event was a Capitals regular season game against the Minnesota North Stars in 1987, but it wasn’t the first one I was supposed to go to.

On November 1, 1985, my Capitals hosted an early-season home game against the New York Islanders—those New York Islanders, who had won four straight Stanley Cups and came one win away from a fifth.  Bossy.  Trottier.  Smith.  Potvin.  Gillies.  LaFontaine.  Two Sutters.  Tonelli.  A stacked line-up, one of the greatest teams ever assembled in the NHL.

So needless to say I was excited for weeks when my friend told me that his dad got four tickets to the game from work, and I was getting the fourth ticket.

The day before the game, I stayed out playing night roller hockey with my friends in the cold Indian summer air wearing a t-shirt and shorts… and got sick.  I could barely move the next morning.  I skipped school, slept as much as I could, but couldn’t convince my mom I was healthy enough to go to the game.

The 4pm vomiting didn’t help my cause.

At 5pm I succumbed, and another friend went to the game.  I watched the Caps beat the Isles, 5-3, on television.  My friend’s dad brought me a Capitals team calendar, which was the promotion that night.

Missing that game was a source of inspiration from then on, though: I watched every minute of every Capitals game on TV (unless I went to the game in person) from that year until I went to college outside of the DC area 12 years later.

In my junior and senior year, there was some home tape-delaying involved since I was working, playing club hockey, and, for a little bit, entertaining a girlfriend who wasn’t a sports fan; go figure—but I made it happen.

Still, I wondered how great it would have been to see my Caps perfect the upset (pun intended!) against the vaunted 1980s Islanders.

I still am jealous to this day.

The Seattle Mariners: A Sinking Ship that Was Already Sunk

In Baseball, Seattle, Sport on July 28, 2011 at 2:46 PM

Prior to yesterday’s 9-2 rout of the New York Yankees, my beloved Seattle Mariners made headlines for all the wrong reasons as they dropped a club record 17 straight games.

Just a few weeks ago, the M’s record sat at 43-43, only 2.5 games back of 1st place in the AL West. Seventeen straight losses (and 1 win!) later, the season is essentially over. The question seemingly on everyone’s minds is, “How did it all go so wrong, so fast?” The problem though, is that the question exhibits a general lack of understanding regarding the state of the team. (Grab your forks and knives, folks. Pancho is about to dish out a healthy serving of perspective.)

Last season, the Mariners had a historically poor offense, batting .236 for the season and scoring a paltry 513 runs, both numbers by far the worst in the majors. That team lost 101 games. This season has actually been statistically worse than that: A team batting average of .224, and 336 runs scored through July 27, 2011. Again, both categories rank dead last in the majors by a considerable margin.

Coming off the 101-loss season, the M’s were picked to again finish in the basement of the AL West by most experts. So, why is it suddenly a surprise to everyone that the Mariners are where they are in the standings? On July 27, 2010, Seattle was 39-62. A year later, with a worse offense, this team is 44-60. The record is exactly where it should be.

I’m a believer that the 162-game regular season does the best job of crowning division champions in any sport. Because there are so many games, the law of averages tends to even things out to where they should be statistically. The statistics should then, in turn, translate directly to the standings. The fact that this team was .500 only a few weeks ago was a statistical anomaly. The losing streak was the statistical Mother Nature’s way settings things straight again. The losses should’ve been there all along. It’s just really unfortunate (and newsworthy) when they all happen in a row like that. Really, the only difference from a year ago is that we already knew last season was over in May. I appreciate that this team was able to stay in the race into the summer months this year. Was it blind ambition? Foolish hope? Perhaps. But when the only direction to go is up, any and every small positive thing can be built upon.

You're Our Only Hope, Dustin Ackley

As for me, I’ve taken much from this season and learned a lot about the state of the franchise going forward. I’ll take Felix Hernandez and Michael Pineda against any 1-2 pitching duo in baseball for the next five years. Dustin Ackley has lived up to the hype of being the #2 overall draft pick two years ago, and he’s now the object of my current mancrush. I’m also a big fan of slugger Carlos Peguero, who was recently sent back down to AAA. He has no plate discipline, but he sure can mash the living hell out of the ball. Once he figures it out, you can pencil him in for 30+ home runs a season. There are also other prospects (Beavan, Carp, Seager, just to name a few) who look the part of being positive contributors in the future.

On the negative side, the M’s should bench, trade, or release the overpaid veteran bats who can’t hit. It makes no sense to pay $9 million a year for a third baseman with no power to hit .180. It also makes no sense to keep starting an outfielder who is hitting .190. Don’t care if he’s supposedly the best defensive centerfielder in the game. There’s a perfect role for him based on his production: Late-inning defensive replacement.

These are very trying times for this lifelong Mariners fan. It’s never fun when your team is in the dumps. There are two months left in the season, and I really hope that the M’s use this time to call up more prospects and give them all a shot. At this point of another lost season, the thing that keeps me coming back is the hope of a promising future, patiently waiting to be realized. More foolish hope? Perhaps. But there’s only one way to find out: Play ball. Go M’s!

Nadeshiko and the Power of Healing

In Japan, Loyalty, Soccer on July 20, 2011 at 7:00 AM

It’s ten past five o’clock in the evening of July 17th, 2011. The bar is completely silent except for one voice… My own. In New York City—the one place in the U.S. with a sizable contingency of faithful soccer followers—and I’m the only one cheering for Japan over the red, white and blue in the Women’s World Cup Final. The “short little ladies,” as the Japanese coach called them, of the Nadeshiko Japan has just pulled off one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports.

Going into the game, the sentimental value on Japan’s part was well publicized and documented due to the tragedy of the March 11th earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclear disaster in northern Japan. Many of those affected by the calamity are still living in shelters, and in a nation like Japan with its homogeneous society, the tragedy has truly united the country. Men and women. Young and old. Soccer fans and baseball fans. For this reason, and not because they were such heavy underdogs, Japan was easily the sentimental favorite for anyone outside of the U.S.

There was no doubt that the U.S. played better overall and should have won the game. The first thirty minutes put supporters of the Japanese in constant fits of agony. Every five minutes, it seemed like the U.S. was on a break, threatening the Japanese goalie, only to see the ball somehow go wide or hit the post. The more the U.S. threatened, the more Japan escaped without conceding a goal, the more I began to wonder if I was about to witness one of those magical sports moments. Even when the U.S. went ahead 1-0, then 2-1, I had a feeling Japan was somehow going to come back. It was one of those inexplicable moments where the weight of a catastrophic tragedy propels the game to a whole new level of drama, inspiration and magic. In such moments of pure emotion and adrenaline, better talent and performance doesn’t always equate to victory. And when element of perseverance in the face of tragedy is associated with the underdog team, the story often seems to end in a fairytale fashion: A perfect upset. Japan, while clearly being dominated for much of the game, scored their first goal off a lucky bounce that resulted from a clearing miss by the usually reliable Ali Krieger. Their second goal came off a corner kick where Homare Sawa somehow, almost magically flicked the ball off the right side of her foot from a spot where math would deny her an appropriate angle. Two unbelievably fortuitous goals that were in stark contrast to the beautifully crafted goals by Alex Morgan and Abby Wombach. How did this happen? While religion lies low on my mind, do I dare call it divine intervention? There’s just no other way to explain how Japan won a game where they didn’t have possession, typically their area of strength, were outclassed at almost every position and went up against Hope Solo in penalty kicks with a very shaky goalkeeper on their side. Studio heads take note: Hollywood couldn’t have scripted this any better.

Whether it was sheer luck or divine intervention, it was yet another reminder of the power of sports and its healing power. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t directly affected by the tragedy in Japan. But knowing that my own father, who never sacrifices sleep in order to catch a game on television, woke up at 3:30am Japan time on a Monday to watch this game, I know how much this game meant to him, how much this game inspired him and how much he wanted to be inspired by this game. There is no doubt there were more cheers and tears at dawn across the country on Monday than any other moment in its sports history. Consider what the Saints winning the Super Bowl meant for New Orleans, even five years after Katrina. Now, make that an entire nation and only four months after a tragedy of much bigger magnitude. The degree to which this victory has both inspired and healed the country cannot be stated in mere words.

Finally, I leave you with the meaning of Nadeshiko, the nickname of the Japanese women’s team: While the literal translation is “pink dianthus flower,” which is known to be very tough and resilient, the term-in-use actually comes from the phrase Yamato Nadeshiko, which signifies “ideal Japanese women with grace and beauty.” Japan not only won the World Cup, but also received the FIFA Fair Play Award, a recognition fitting for Nadeshiko, especially for their graceful, technical style of play. Even an average Japanese soccer fan can’t even name more than a few players on this team, much less know that there’s a women’s league in Japan. But these previously unknown “short little ladies” of Japan are now standing taller than ever, and for many days, months and years to come, will forever be revered as heroes in the Land of the Rising Sun.

A Goodbye to Scholes and the Youth of United

In England, Soccer on July 19, 2011 at 7:00 AM

When Paul Scholes first joined Manchester United’s youth academy at the age of 14, the trainers had concerns about his size and were hoping for a growth spurt.

A couple of decades, 676 United first-team appearances and 150 goals later, United’s trainers are still wondering about that growth spurt.

Both Real Madrid/France star Zinedine Zidane and current Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola are known to have credited Scholes as the greatest midfielder of his generation.

Every United fan has a favorite Scholes moment, whether for United or England.  For me, it was the way that Scholes elevated his game whenever the United fixtures list said “Liverpool,” “Manchester City,” “Arsenal” or “Aston Villa.”

He terrorized the opponents that United fans love to see terrorized.  His 30-yard volley against Villa in 2006 is still a YouTube favorite.   He terrorized Argentina star Ariel Ortega at the 2002 World Cup, playing for England, earning man of the match honors.

His retirement, coupled with that of Gary Neville earlier this season, leaves just Ryan Giggs in the United squad from that fabled Class of 1992: Gary’s brother Phil is still at Everton (if only just), Nicky Butt ended his career as a Newcastle United loanee to Birmingham City five years ago and a largely-unknown midfielder named David Beckham apparently is collecting paycheques here in Los Angeles.

(Digression: ever notice how a celebrity’s biggest fan will never meet him, but someone who can’t recognize him will get a great photo opportunity?  I had lunch with my friend John a few months ago.  He said “So I was just at the Apple store in Century City, and David Beckham was there.” I asked John if he talked to Becks, and he said, “No, I didn’t really know which one he was.  But somebody told me he was there.”  I thought not being able to recognize Beckham was a mathematical impossibility at this point, like dividing by zero or taking the square root of a negative number.)

Scholes’ retirement also makes a burgeoning hole at United even more glaring.  The Class of 1992 are so-called because they represented players who not only grew up in United’s youth academy, they also—bar Beckham—grew up as kids in the greater Manchester area: Scholes in Langley, the Nevilles in Bury, Butt in Gorton and Giggs in Salford (via Cardiff, hence the allegiance to Wales).

Since then, United’s youth academy has provided scant help to the first team.  Wes Brown and John O’Shea have developed into decent role players, and the jury is probably still out on the recent harvest including Federico Macheda, Darren Gibson, and Johnny Evans.

But it’s very thin after that.

True, United aren’t the only Premiership squad in this quandary.  But just because other title contenders struggle with this question doesn’t mean that it’s just a “sign of the modern era.”

The youth academy does more for United than just produce quality footballers.  It produces evangelists for the squad.  Athletes always talk about how excited they are to play against the teams they grew up hating as fans; the youth academy instills that spirit into the players at a young age.

Gary Neville famously jeered at the Kop after scoring a goal at Anfield.  Anti-Liverpool is in his blood, he later would admit, causing him to elevate his game against the Scousers.  Can you imagine any of United’s current back four saying that today, in their Serbian, French or Brazilian accents?

Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying as xenophobia.  Far from it: United’s scout team has done a masterful job bringing in players from around the world.

Nobody knew the scrawny teenager Sir Alex Ferguson signed from Sporting Lisbon would turn into Cristiano Ronaldo.

How many teams passed on a little fellow from Mexico who ended up stealing the starting striker’s job—from the guy who led the Premiership in goals, Dimitar Berbatov?

Even the fabled Class of 1992 needed star imports, including Eric Cantona, Roy Keane, Dwight Yorke, Peter Schmeichel and Ole Gunnar Solkskjaer, to achieve the haul of trophies they did.

But what made United ferocious was the combination of global star power coupled with the club’s values being instilled in the first team’s leadership from a young age.  It’s what propelled United to be equally motivated against Reading as Real Madrid, against Bolton as Barcelona.

It’s the edge that is currently missing at Old Trafford.  Scholes’ retirement makes it all the more acute.