The Empire Strikes Back: David Stern Steps In

Last night, the Hornets, Rockets and Lakers completed a three-team deal which sent All-Star Chris Paul to the Lakers.  But then they didn't.  In the era of good feelings following the end of the NBA Lockout, teams wheeled and dealed (whelt and dealt?) for the chance to acquire either Chris Paul or Dwight Howard (or both).  It seemed that the veil of negativity had lifted from the NBA, and teams and players alike looked forward to doing what all professional athletes and franchises do best- Get Paid.

But The League didn't account for one thing: the Commissioner.

As the tzar of the NBA since 1984, Stern has held almost complete control over NBA ownership, creating a unified front in negotiations and decision making for nearly a quarter century.  However, as the NBA ownership demographic has shifted from older owners invested for the long-term towards younger owners with expectations of short-term returns, Stern's influence has waned.  The recent lockout only served to drive that point home - many owners' statements ran counter to Stern's statements, and Stern's strong-arm approach to negotiations came across as more Andropov than Stalin.

Enter Chris Paul: the latest in a line of NBA stars to attempt to force a trade in a contract year to have his cake and eat it too (choosing his team and getting the salary benefits of resigning instead of entering free agency).  This issue was one the new CBA tried and failed to address, but now the vicious cycle was repeating itself.  And David Stern wouldn't stand for it.

The vetoing of the Chris Paul trade by the league office will have an immediate, tangible impact; today the players involved in the trade had to report to training camp (or not) and face their teammates and team officials, and Chris Paul is preparing to do his best Oscar Robertson impersonation and sue the NBA.  However, the psychological impact of this decision by Stern is much more interesting.  Sports fans tend to view every franchise as sovereign, independent to do as it pleases (unless you're Frank McCourt), but the reality is much different - David Stern just crossed the same line that he and other league executives (Bud Selig, for instance) have toed for decades.  Our shock at his willingness to attempt to control superstar movement between franchises speaks to the naivety of sports fans as much as the audacity of David Stern.

Joe Silvestro is a regular contributor to Sports Casual, check back every Funday Friday for his witticisms concerning the Wide World of Sports.  Email him at jsilvestro21@gmail.com

Tim Tebow

It's been several weeks since I explained why I feel the way I do about Tim Tebow. So I don't want to go into that again. Let's just talk football.

I want to first begin by explaining why Tebow was successful in college. The formula for winning in college football is simple: play great defense, make plays on special teams, and then you run up the middle every single play with your star player. Seriously. In college, having an ordinary passing game is ok.

Cam Newton, Mark Ingram, Percy Harvin, Tim Tebow, Vince Young, Joseph Addai, Jacob Hester (not a stud, but converted so many critical 3rd/4th and shorts), and Reggie Bush.

College is all about the running game, because college football is all about consistency. A power run team never changes. You don't have off days when it is raining or windy. That star defensive end doesn't matter as much. You get long drives, and make less mistakes. You control field position. You don't turn the ball over. You hold onto leads. You convert key short yardage situations. You don't need a superstar QB. You merely need a game manager, which is why Greg Mcleroy, Matt Flynn, Matt Mauk, and this year's champion can win.

Based off those requirements, Tim Tebow was the ideal college QB.

Consistency means you have a chance to go undefeated. That's why prolific passing offenses lose against teams like Iowa State every year. Although your peaks with a great passing games are higher, your valleys are much lower as well. Better to bring your B game every week in college football than fluctuating between an A and an F, because 1 loss could end your season.

The NFL is the complete opposite. Consistency doesn't mean anything. Teams that struggle during the regular season often times get hot and win Super Bowls. Their overall body of work may not be pretty, but when they play at their best, they can compete with anyones. Having a higher peak is more important than being consistent. Which is why the passing game is so important in the NFL. Aaron Rodgers, Big Ben, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and Eli Manning are all capable of playing a perfect game. You need that kind of QB, because you'll need that kind of game at some point in the playoffs.

Which leads us to Tim Tebow. We all know that building the team around Tebow will be more difficult (can't have receivers with big egos, have to have a playmaking D, enough running back depth to handle the load, ect.), but let's assume Denver does a great job of managing the roster and putting the right players around Tebow. In that case, I wouldn't be surprised if Tebow continues winning regular season games like he's been doing. He doesn't turn the ball over, he keeps the clock moving, he keeps his team in the game, and he can convert key short yardage sitautions. He's consistent, which makes his team consistent. A consistent team should be good for 9-10 games a year. Tebow will probably lead his team to the playoffs almost every year from here on out (assuming they still play the same field position time games). Tim Tebow's been a much better pro than I ever thought he'd be, and his game against Minnesota was the best of his career.

But can he win a Super Bowl? I still don't think so. Not until he learns to throw the football. Put me down for being a non-believer. I think this is as good as Tebow as we're going to see for a while. I don't think this Denver Broncos team has that extra gear. I don't know if he can make the perfect throw to covered receivers over and over again in the playoffs. If you saw Aaron Rodgers on Sunday, you saw a QB who threw receivers open almost every throw down the stretch. Tebow still can't do that. I don't think he ever will.

The reason John Elway is hesitant to commit to Tebow is he may be what I think is the most dangerous QB to own. The type of QB that can get you the playoffs every year, but never win the Super Bowl. Matt Hasselbeck, Kerry Collins, Steve McNair, McNabb, ect. All those guys won a lot of football games. They put up great numbers. Franchise committed to them for a long time. Never won a Super Bowl. Looking back, they would have been much better served finding a new QB earlier. John Elway doesn't want to spend 10 years falling short. He wants a QB capable of being elite. Or he wants to keep looking for someone new.

Penalty Shootouts

Soccer is a team sport in which the most important games
are settled with 10/11 of the team watching what happens from midfield.

Before I was old enough to form independent opinions, I thought penalty shootouts were the best part of the World Cup. As much as I loved watching actual soccer, there was something irresistible about letting five minutes trump the previous 120. Clean slates. New rules. Same outcomes. Since then, I have added "fair" and "manufactured excitement" to my vocabulary. Shootouts have a time and a place, but they have no place in important sporting events such as the World Cup, Champions League, the Olympics, and the MLS Cup Playoffs because the importance of determining a deserving winner and the need to do this by continuing the original sport outweigh the benefits of saving time and the excitement of this premature and abrupt finish.

Big time sporting events value the ability to schedule events for known time intervals to allow for multiple use of the same facilities and the simplification of television coverage. The Olympics would likely have difficulty in implementing sudden death overtime for these reasons. The honorable and respectable soccer governing board, FIFA, on the other hand, is largely unaffected by this concerns. Scheduling matches with the potential for overtime in a manner to avoid conflicting with later events that require the same facility and utilizing online streaming and the increasing number of channels would avoid these concerns.

The immediacy of a shootout is pretty sexy, but it lacks the suspense and emotional connection only seen in sudden death overtime. In a shootout, the outcome unfolds over its course, granted quickly, instead of appearing spontaneously; in sudden death, any shot can win it. Further, the highlight goals from a soccer penalty shot are few and far between, although the same can't be said for hockey. Unexpected is exciting, and soccer shootouts fail in this category as well (with the exception of the the three possible kick directions: left, right, or center): the closer the probability of the two potential outcomes is to 50%, the more unexpected the outcome is. Hockey has been able to gain a large national following because of the excitement created by a nearly 50-50 shootout situation. If only there were a way to make this the case for soccer...

Despite the difficulty of scheduling for sudden death matches, and regardless of your opinion on the entertainment value of a shootout, ending a match in one sport with a completely different competition featuring a fraction of the original players and a mild overlap of skills is ridiculous. Beer league kickball allows for chug-offs if a play is challenged--a different contest, beer chugging, is used to decide the outcome of the original game, kickball. This is ok because it is beer league kickball. This is not ok in the belle of world sports. It would be excusable to end soccer with something logical that utilized more relevant skills and included the full team, like mayan deathball, roller derby, or tagteam MMA, but a contest of kicking a ball into a net that is 192 square feet from 12 yards away doesn't cut it. Of all the skills required in soccer, shooting is the one that has the least overlap across all positions, and it isn't even used that much in a game--compare the number of dribbles, passes, or tackles to the number of shots; penalty shot ability is not a good predictor of the quality of a soccer player.

Shootouts are a marginally better method of deciding a match than flipping a coin; they make away goals seem like a good idea. Because soccer and hockey are low scoring, they can't add an additional period to decide a winner immediately like basketball or tennis (depending on where it is played). However, this is not an excuse for not continuing the game until there is a winner. If overtime is too long, people don't have to watch it, and if more people watch overtime than would watch whatever it would be running over, the station should be able to make more money from advertisements. Spectators tend to enjoy the excitement and emotional connection that develops throughout overtime, rather than complain about it taking too long. If they were interested in watching the game when it was less exciting in regulation, they're probably interested in watching overtime. If for whatever reason overtime can not be played, a subjective scoring by judges, like in boxing, or a formula from a regression that weighted the importance of various game statistics, such as possession and shots on goal, in winning a game could get the job done. Shootouts are fine when they have no effect on the course of an 82 game season and are actually entertaining to watch, but elimination games should not be decided by a shootout. Deciding a deserving winner should take precedence over brevity.

The Declaration of Independence: What Will It Take to Make Chris Paul a Knick?

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one player to dissolve the professional bands which have connected him with others, wild speculation ensues.  Almost immediately after the NBA Lockout was settled, Chris Paul's agent informed the Hornet's management that he "wants to be traded to the New York Knicks" and would not be signing a contract extension.  There is certainly a precedent for this type of conduct; for better or worse, players holding their teams hostage during a contract year has become the norm (a norm preserved in the form of extend-and-trades as part of the new CBA).

However, while Chris Paul has expressed a serious interest in the Knicks, the Hornets have good reason to not be seriously interested in making a deal with them.  The Knickerbockers unloaded essentially all of their tradeable assets (assuming Amar'e and Melo are untouchable) in their dealings with the Denver Nuggets, leaving them very little with which to entice New Orleans.  However, if the Knicks get creative there's still a chance that this deal can happen - here are the three most creative trade options which end in Chris Paul in the orange and blue.
__________________________________________________________________________________


1) Knicks Get: Chris Paul    Greece Gets: Bailout   Hornets Get: Greece

Although the Knicks lack trade assets, the one thing Jim Dolan can always count on is money.  Everybody wins in this deal: the Knicks get Paul, Greece gets solvency, and the Hornets get the rights to all players and olives coming out of Greece in the next 10 years.


2) Knicks Get: Chris Paul      Hornets Get: Rights to Isiah Thomas, Marv Albert

The Knicks' current players may not be attractive trade bait, but the Garden's famous player and play-by-play man represent a tantalizing deal for the Hornets.  If anything, the Knicks are overpaying with this one.


3) Knicks Get: Chris Paul     Hornets Get: Spike Lee, Landry Fields, 2030-2035 first round picks

The 2030-2035 first round picks are the only first rounders the Knicks haven't already traded away.  Spike Lee is essentially Chris Paul with more Knicks gear and two fewer knees, and after Landry Fields retires he can put his Standford degree to good use in the front office.  There's no downside to this deal.

Joe Silvestro is a regular contributor to Sports Casual, check back every Funday Friday for his witticisms concerning the Wide World of Sports.  Email him at jsilvestro21@gmail.com

A Done Deal

Given the context, it is all the more surprising that Major League Baseball was able to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement without any turmoil. After all, no American sport has seen more labor turmoil through the decades than baseball. Yet quickly and quietly, Major League Baseball deprived us of the 2011 lockout trifecta.

Of course, the collective bargaining process may have lasted a little longer if either side brought up competitive balance / revenue sharing issues. For better or for worse, however, Pirates fans don't get a seat at the bargaining table. With the players making a decent living and teams - even perennially awful ones - profiting each year, the MLB followed an age-old adage and decided not to fix "ain't broken" things.

A few highlights from the new deal:

-Two additional wildcard teams, one from each league, who will play a 1-game playoff for the right to be in the ALDS or NLDS. With such impressive TV ratings from 1-game playoffs in previous years, the MLB has essentially decided to force a tie in every wildcard race each year. You know what I can't wait for? A tie for the 2nd wildcard. Which teams will be the first to have a 1-game playoff for the right to play in a 1-game playoff for the right to be in the actual postseason?

-A move from the NL to the AL by the Houston Astros, which will take place in 2013. The Rangers-Astros rivalry will be an exciting one, assuming Houston is able to snap out of a current trend and actually find 9 guys who know what a baseball is. The move will create a scheduling headache, but for now it looks like we're stuck with two 15-team leagues. The MLB is reluctant to expand, and the league shot down my proposal of traveling back in time and un-adding the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays.

-A partial ban on smokeless tobacco, which prevents players from use during team appearances and TV interviews but allows them to keep dipping on the field. The iron fist of Bud Selig strikes again.

-Blood testing for HGH, which is the Players' way of saying "We've found something better and less detectable than HGH."