In Defense of the NBA

 Why the Quality of Basketball Is Better Than Its Critics Think

The NBA doesn’t need me to defend it. National broadcasts average nearly 4 million viewers — the most since Michael Jordan’s first title run. More unique viewers watched regular season games this year than at any point in the last 24 years. Its biggest stars are globally famous.

Still, I talk to a lot of sports fans who don’t like the NBA, and I find many of their criticisms remarkably ill-informed. The conversation usually goes something like this:

“I don’t watch the NBA because…”

…and then they say something so profoundly dumb that I’m forced to respond:

“Yes, it’s obvious you don’t watch the NBA, because you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

Now look, I genuinely don’t care what sports people like or dislike. In fact, I’m very much in favor of my favorite sports becoming less popular because, frankly, Knicks playoff tickets are so insanely expensive that I recently told my wife we may need a slightly less comfortable retirement if the Knicks make the Finals this year.

But some criticisms are so persistently wrong-headed that I feel compelled to respond.

Let’s start with my favorite.

“They Travel All the Time in the NBA and It’s Never Called.”

This is wrong on multiple levels.

Let’s do a thought exercise. Imagine you’re watching an NBA game with a notebook and pen beside you. Every time you believe you’ve seen an uncalled travel, you write it down.

I can virtually guarantee you won’t end up with a very long list. One? Maybe two? And even if you somehow get to three or four, there’s a very good chance you were wrong and simply don’t understand what actually constitutes traveling under NBA rules.

Put differently: there just aren’t that many uncalled traveling violations in the NBA.

But even if there were — so what? Why does this particular non-call inspire so much outrage, as though civilization itself is crumbling?

The average NFL game contains numerous uncalled holding penalties. Until this season, balls and strikes were routinely blown in baseball. In hockey, players constantly clutch and grab opponents in ways that technically constitute holding. Every sport has infractions that go uncalled.

Yet for some reason, this one drives people into a frenzy.

Why?

Partly it’s Selection Bias. If, instead of watching actual NBA games, you consume nothing but Instagram clips posted by outrage-farming engagement trolls, and those clips happen to feature missed travels, you’ll naturally conclude that traveling happens constantly.

Partly it’s Confirmation Bias. Once you decide uncalled traveling runs rampant, every borderline footwork sequence confirms your belief, while the other hundreds of possessions where players don’t travel completely disappear from your brain.

But mostly, it’s Cranky Old Guy Bias. (Or younger guys with a cranky-old-guy disposition.) The sort of people who reflexively believe everything was fundamentally better “back in my day.”

Either way, sorry: there simply are not nearly as many uncalled traveling violations as people think.

“They Shoot Too Many 3-Pointers”

They certainly shoot more threes. A lot more.

In 1979, when the three-point line was introduced, teams averaged about three attempts per game. Today? Around 37.

That is a lot more.

But is it “too many”?

When people say that, I’m never quite sure whether they mean:

• It’s strategically unsound to take so many threes 

• It’s aesthetically unpleasant to watch 

• Some combination of the two 

If you believe the first, I can assure you that no basketball team on Earth will ever hire you.

The strategic advantages of taking lots of threes are obvious:

1. More points. Duh. If you shoot 38% on 100 three-pointers, you score 114 points. To match that with two-pointers, you’d need to shoot 57%. 

2. Floor spacing. Defenses have to guard the perimeter, which opens up driving lanes and interior offense. 

3. Long rebounds. Missed threes often produce rebounds that are easier for the offense to recover. 

If you were my head coach and thought high-volume three-point shooting was strategically unsound, I would fire you faster than George Steinbrenner firing a Yankees manager after a 10-game losing streak.

As for aesthetics…

Outside shooting is a basketball skill. Alongside dribbling, it may be the quintessential basketball skill. It’s the thing kids practice more than anything else. The word swish was literally coined to describe the beautiful culmination of a perfect jump shot.

So why does it suddenly make people angry?

Did it make people angry when Larry Bird hit outside shots? I’d wager many of the same people who complain about today’s three-point shooting once treated Bird’s 20-foot jumpers like they were watching Michelangelo paint a ceiling.*

Outside shooting is far more of a basketball skill than using your 7'2" frame and Volkswagen-sized rear end to back into defenders before gently depositing the ball into the basket from two feet away.

For a long time, basketball was dominated by giants: Shaq, Moses Malone, Kareem, Olajuwon, Ewing. Great players, obviously. But none of them would’ve made their high school varsity team if they were a foot shorter. Coaches exploited size advantages because size wins basketball games.

You don’t really see that anymore.

Today, if a 7-footer can’t shoot - like KAT or Wemby - he’s probably getting pushed into a limited rebounding-and-defense role.

So the next time you see players raining threes, remember: you’re still watching basketball.

*To give you an idea of how good today’s shooters are: Larry Bird’s career three-point percentage was 37.6%. That would’ve tied him for 74th in the NBA this season, alongside Atlanta Hawks center Onyeka Okongwu. Bird’s best shooting season would’ve ranked 9th this year, between Cameron Johnson and Kon Knueppel. And Bird took far fewer attempts than modern shooters, meaning he was likely getting cleaner looks than many players today. Give even an average shooter a clean look today and you expect him to bury it.

By the way...

The same people who insist that “traveling happens constantly” also complain that “nobody drives anymore because everyone just hoists threes.”

Well… which is it?

How exactly are all these rampant traveling violations occurring if nobody is attacking the basket?

“They Don’t Play Defense Today”

This criticism usually comes from the “I prefer college basketball” crowd.

Here’s what happens.

Between September and February, many casual fans watch very little basketball. Maybe they tune into Duke–North Carolina. Maybe they catch the NBA on Christmas Day. But that’s about it.

Then March Madness arrives.

Suddenly they’re filling out brackets, memorizing rosters, and confidently discussing Alabama’s defensive rotations despite discovering roughly 36 hours earlier that Alabama is also good at basketball.

Then they binge college hoops for four straight days. There are 32 games on Thursday and Friday. Twenty-eight are blowouts. The other four contain multiple horrific scoreless stretches that resemble basketball being played underwater.

But there are also dramatic finishes, buzzer-beaters, and upsets, so everyone becomes intoxicated by the atmosphere and concludes that college basketball is “better.”

It isn’t.

These are players with substantially lower skill levels.

But here’s the thing that does make March Madness incredible: every game is win-or-go-home. For many seniors — or future NBA players who’ll only spend a year or two in college — it may literally be the last college game they ever play.

So yes, they’re playing with maximum desperation and effort.

People then compare that intensity to a random NBA game in January and conclude that NBA players “don’t care.”

But college players don’t go all-out every second of every November nonconference game either.

The difference is context.

Watch an NBA playoff game and you’ll see the exact same level of intensity, only with athletes who are bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, and incomparably more skilled.

Honestly, when someone says, “They don’t play defense in the NBA,” I immediately realize I’m talking to somebody who fundamentally does not understand basketball.

An average college team trying to score against an average NBA defense would look like a middle school orchestra attempting jazz improvisation. The speed, power, anticipation, and physicality of NBA defenses are beyond what most college players can even process.

Conclusion

So the next time you’re about to say, “I don’t watch the NBA because…” and follow it with one of the arguments above, maybe just finish the sentence this way instead:

“I don’t watch the NBA because I don’t enjoy basketball played at the highest possible level.”

Which is fine! People like what they like.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for Knicks tip-off. Because watching Jalen Brunson dissect defenses, Josh Hart fling himself around like a human wrecking ball, and OG Anunoby erase opposing wings from existence is one of life’s great pleasures.

The Unanimity Exception

Cooperstown Follows Up The Baines Blunder with The Mariano Mistake

Before I begin, let’s get a few things straight:

• I fully and firmly support Mariano Rivera’s induction into the Hall of Fame.  He is, without question, the greatest reliever of all time.

• I understand that a unanimous selection technically doesn’t mean anything.  Harold Baines was on the ballot for five years and never got more than 10% of the vote – but thanks to the Eras Committee (which should be pronounced 'Errors Committee', ba-dum-bump), he will be as much of a full-fledged member of the Hall as Mariano and his 100%.

• I believe the New York Yankees are the source of all evil in the universe, and I am not to be trusted as any kind of objective source.

That said…

The Unanimous Selection thing is important.  Yes, I know the history, about how Joe DiMaggio didn’t get on till the fourth ballot and how voting was different in Babe Ruth’s day and all of that. 

BUT – things matter because we, collectively, agree they matter.  There is no reason whatsoever that the Nobel Peace Prize should matter.  Over a century ago, the guy who invented dynamite set aside some money and some vague instruction that five obscure Norwegian legislators should give out a peace prize.

Who they pick shouldn’t matter at all.  And yet, it’s arguably the most prestigious prize a human can win because, well, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY IT MATTERS.

It shouldn’t matter.  But it does.  It does because we’ve agreed it does.  

And I can guarantee you that the term “first-time unanimous selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame” is an honor permanently attached to the name of Mariano Rivera.  It will not be attached to the name of Greg Maddux or Tom Seaver or Bob Gibson.  It is how he will be introduced at every speech he ever gives, in every article ever written about him.  It will be in his obituary.  It will be trotted out in every baseball argument about him.  

It matters.

And as great as Mariano is, the idea that this incredibly prestigious honor should go to a relief pitcher, well…

But First, The Good Stuff!

Let’s get all of the good stuff out of the way first.  

Mariano Rivera was the most unhittable pitcher of the modern era.  He has the 13th lowest ERA of all time, and you haven’t heard of most of the other 12 because they pitched in an era when men wore Civil War beards unironically.  There are some legends ahead of him on the list like Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson, but also such forgotten hurlers as Jack Pfeister and Tommy Bond.  

Those other guys I mentioned above – Maddux and Seaver and Gibson?  They are ranked 234*, 125, and 142.

Nobody born after the invention of the bra has been better at keeping the other team from scoring than Mariano Rivera.*

* I'm using ERA as my uber-stat for this post.  It's the one very valuable stat that traditionalists and saberemetricians can all agree on.  If only hitters had such a stat...

And he was truly otherworldly in the post-season.  Over a decent sample size of 96 games – games in which he was facing generally better hitting than he would in the regular season, his ERA dropped all the way down to 0.70.   Are you kidding me?

This doesn’t happen.  Take Derek Jeter, for example.  Jeter and Mariano are unique in baseball history because they are the only two players to have a very long career spent entirely in the Wild Card era on a team that not only played every October, but often advanced deep in the playoffs.  As a result, their post-season stats amount to just about a full MLB season.

And Derek Jeter, in the post-season, was, well, Derek Jeter.  He hit .310 in the regular season, and .308 in the playoffs.  His OPS was .817 in the regular season, .838 in the playoffs.   Give Jeter credit for maintaining his high performance in the post-season, but he didn’t become a better player.  He was almost exactly the same player.  

But Mariano Rivera got into the playoffs and – I mean – what the hell?  He takes the best regular season ERA since Hoover was President...and shaves 2/3rds of that in the offseason?

My only question is:  how did he throw that cutter with his Superman cape on?

The Dubious Value of Closers

And yet…there is significant, powerful, arguably irrefutable evidence that the Closer is just about the most useless position in all of professional sports.

Now if you're one of those people who rolls your eyes at the truths uncovered by baseball researchers lo these past many years, you should click away from this page.  Here's a crotchety old "get off my lawn" anti-stats piece for you.

Project Retrosheet is an organization that goes back and looks at old box scores, at every inning of every game ever played.  And one thing they learned - I should say, one thing they proved, because we all kind of know this anyway - is that teams with 9th inning leads tend to win those games.

And I mean, they win them all the time, and they win them regardless of what relief pitcher strategies team employ.   Back when guys were starting 65 games and going 40-15, they won 90% of the games.  Back when Goose Gossage was coming in for 3 innings and blowing 1/3 of the save opportunities, they won 90% of the games.  And now, in the age of the 9th inning specialist, they win 90% of those games.

Specifically, for all of baseball history, going back to the days before basketball was even a thing:

- teams leading by one run after 8 innings win 85.7% of the time
- teams leading by two runs after 8 innings win 93.7% of the time
- teams leading by three runs after 8 innings win 97.5% of the time

Do you know what Mariano Rivera's save rate is?  89.1%.  Which is, you know, almost as good as Joe Nathan's.

In just about every game Mariano has ever played, the Yankees were going to win anyway.

But Wait, There's More!

There are, of course, other reasons to wrinkle your brow at a closer getting the unanimity honor.

• Rivera pitched 1,282 innings in his career
• Mike Mussina, Rivera's Hall of Fame classmate and Yankee teammate, pitched 3,562 innings in his career
• Tom Seaver, who used to be able to say he was elected to the Hall of Fame with the highest %, pitched 4,783 innings in his career

When you're only pitching 70 innings per year...when you don't have to go through the lineup 3 or 4 times in one night...it is a LOT easier to be dominant.  That's why Rivera has no ERA titles, despite that tiny ERA; he never pitched nearly enough innings in a season to qualify*.

  *  Last year, Jacob DeGrom won the ERA title, posting a glittering 1.96 ERA over 217 innings.  But this guy you never heard of, Blake Treinen, had a 0.71 ERA for the Oakland A's.  He pitched only 80 innings, a total Rivera only reached once as a reliever


Want more proof that closer is kind of an easy gig?

Terrible starters become great closers (like, um, Mariano Rivera; turns out having just one pitch isn't particularly useful for a starter).

Mediocre starters can have epic seasons as closers (see Isringhausen, Jason).

And legitimately good-to-great starters like Dennis Eckersley and John Smoltz?  Tell them they only have to pitch one inning a couple times a week, and they set records.

Some Trivia!

- Who is the only closer in major league history to blow a Game 7 World Series lead in the 9th Inning?

o Hint: it’s not Kent Tekulve

- Who is the only closer to blow two saves as their team blew a 3-0 lead in a Championship series?

o Hint: it’s not Dan Quisenberry

Okay, now I'm just being a jerk.  But also making a point.  Mariano Rivera mowed people down in the post-season, but he wasn't perfect.  In fact, he was 42 of 46 in save situations which is 91.3%.  It's very good.  But 5 closers in baseball last year had better save %'s.



In Closing
So everyone enjoy this year's Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, where the inductees will be:

- One guy who only pitched 70 or 80 innings a year
- One guy who didn't play defense
- One guy who never got more than 10% of the vote while eligible
- Two guys who would never have gotten in with their Wins totals if not for the impact of advanced metrics on voting

Meanwhile, the greatest pitcher of all time and the greatest hitter of all time will be denied entry once again.  But that's a subject for another day.

The Volunteer Commissioner

Due to popular demand (okay, one guy asked), I'm compiling all the pieces in the Volunteer Commissioner Series into one helpful post.

In the VCS, I graciously offer my services to fix broken sports.  Or rather, to enhance sports who have not asked for my help.  Some of my suggestions have already been enacted (You're welcome Baseball!) and some I've changed my mind about (the USA-Portugal match in the 2014 World Cup showed me the entertainment value of a draw).

Anyway, enjoy:


Fixing Softball (Women's softball)

The Loser's Out Manifesto (Pick-up basketball)

The Beautiful Game's Flaw (soccer)

The Slowest Game (lacrosse). 

The Winter Classic  (Major League Baseball)

Swimming is Boring (Swimming...which is unfixable.)



I was going to help out Major League Baseball again - incredibly long low-scoring games are not good for the sport - but MLB is already testing out some of the suggestions I was going to make.

And eventually I'll get around to fixing Women's Lacrosse, which has the single stupidest - and easily fixable rule I've ever seen in any sport.  

Why I Rooted for Lebron James

Being a sports fan is a lot like belonging to a religion.

There is a core belief system that makes perfect sense to you, but seems ludicrous to others*. There are  sacred stories, fiery preachers, and creation myths. Among the congregation are the fanatical, the merely devout, and the ones who only show up on the High Holy Days.  There are prayers.  

There are houses of worship - some old and majestic and rich in history, some new and modern and rich in technology. Conversions are rare, and usually caused by marriage or moving far away. Pilgrimages are made, saints honored, and sacrifices endured. The child is often raised in the religion of the parent, and people of the same region often have the same beliefs. Perhaps most importantly, there is faith – a faith that is often challenged, occasionally doubted, and sometimes rewarded.

And there is heresy.

*  To quote the great Dave Barry:  “…the thing about religion is that everybody else’s always appears stupid.  For example, if you read about some religious sect in India that believes God wants people to drink their own urine, you don’t say to yourself, ‘Isn’t that amazing, the diversity of belief systems Man has developed in his never-ending quest to understand and cope with the intricate moral dilemmas posed by a complex and uncertain world?’  No, what you say to yourself is, ‘These people have the brains of trout.’”


I have been guilty of a terrible heresy these past few weeks. You see, I’ve been rooting for Lebron James and the Miami Heat to win the NBA Championship. Yes, yes, I know all the reasons I should be burned at the stake. As a Knicks fan, my Heat hatred pre-dates the Decision. And the Decision itself is indefensible - I won't spent a single pixel on this screen defending it.  And all those Miami fans in white - they seem like a High Holy Day bunch, don't they - have not earned the joy of a championship**

**  Though if anyone deserves it less, it's that blue-clad crowd in OKC, who stole their team from Seattle, and near as I can tell are unfamiliar with even the basic rules of the sport.


But my religion has a core belief.  If you're a regular reader you know that I have long believed there is a great debate that happens in sports - the debate over the Great Player who piles up statistics, records, and awards, but either don't win enough titles (Wilt Chamberlain), take too long to win (Manning, Elway, A-Rod), or never win (Marino).

Most fans believe there is something inherently wrong with these players.  Sure, they break dozens of records, hit hundreds of homers and score thousands of points.  But they don't know how to win.

Critics ignore the weakness of their teammates.  They unfairly focus on a few post-season struggles.  And they exaggerate the abilities of lesser players who were blessed with superior teammates and/or coaching (Russell, Jeter, Montana, Brady).

In an ESPN poll conducted before the Finals - done in Electoral College fashion - 49 states voted that the Thunder would win the title (the lone dissenter being, of course, Florida).  They weren't merely rooting for OKC - they believed OKC would win.  They had so convinced themselves that Lebron had some sort of character flaw that his scoring, rebounding, assisting, and defending skills couldn't overcome.

This was complete nonsense. Lebron James had carried a bunch of horrendous Cavaliers teams far deeper into June than they had any right to go.  In his first season with the Heat, he won the Eastern Conference Championship and went to Game 6 of the Finals.  His career is absolutely filled with playoff and 4th quarter heroics.  And his game is so damned complete - he does EVERYTHING at a ridiculous high level - it seemed unlikely to me that these teenagers in powder blue had a chance.

And of course, I was right.  Oh yeah - that's the other reason I was rooting for the Heat.  Pre-season, I predicted they would go all the way, and was told by many people that they lacked all the necessary qualities of 'true champions'.

And boy, I love being right.  Or to go back to our religious analogy, righteous.


Related Content:

Manning-Brady: Best "Who's Better?" Debate Ever

What do Robert E. Lee and Derek Jeter Have in Common?

The Duper Level: Why Lebron should come to the Knicks

The Era of Mediocre Champs

The reigning Stanley Cup Champions are the Los Angeles Kings .  All available evidence suggests they are not a great team, or even a very good one.  

An 8 seed that barely squeezed into the playoffs, the Kings won fewer than half their games.   They fired their head coach during the season.  LA was particularly bad at putting the puck into the net, which I'm told is sort of important in hockey.  There are 30 teams in the NHL, and 28 of them scored more goals than the Kings.

The reigning Super Bowl Champions are the New York Giants.  All available evidence suggests they were not a great team, or even a very good one.

At 9-7, they barely squeezed into the playoffs.  Only 8 teams gave up 400 or more points this year, and the Giants were one of them (the other 7 missed the playoffs).  And while they scored a lot of points, it was still fewer than non-contenders like the Panthers, Chargers, and Eagles.   In one particularly bad late-season stretch they went 1-5, including a 13 point home drubbing at the hands of the woeful Redskins. 

The reigning World Series Champions are the St. Louis Cardinals.  All available evidence suggests they were not a great team - though they were a pretty good team.  Just not as good as the teams they beat in the playoffs.

In the Divisional Series they beat the Phillies, a team with more wins and a better run differential*.    In the Championship series they beat the Brewers, a team with more wins and a better run differential.  In the World Series, they beat the Texas Rangers, a team with more wins and a better run differential.

*  Run differential is a great simple stat to compare teams.  It measures the gap between your average runs per game and your average runs allowed per game - thus it covers EVERYTHING.  Hitting, Pitching, Fielding, Luck.  The Cardinals were 8th in Rdiff last year, which is good but not great.  They were tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  

Sports fans, welcome to the Era of the Mediocre Champion.

Before we move on, though, let's examine whether or not Champions really are more mediocre.  Maybe we're just in a bad stretch these past 10 months.  To the cloud!

Ok, I'm back.  And the answer is yeah, mediocre teams really are being fitted for rings more often. 

This is most obvious in baseball, where the expanded playoffs have changed everything.  4 of the last 10 World Series champs have been Wild Card winners.  Put another way, 40% of the last decade's titles would not have even made the playoffs in other eras.  

But in football, too, the champs' pedigrees have weakened, even though the playoff structure hasn't changed.  In 1979, the NFL went to a 16 game schedule, and from then till 2007 every Super Bowl Champ except the 89 Niners won at least 11 games, and all but three won 12 or more.  In the past 5 years, though, 3 of the Champs won 10 games or less.

And in hockey...well, who cares.  It's hockey.  But the Kings are the first 8 seed to hoist the Cup.*

*  I try to get into hockey, I really do.  It's a fast and furious sport, non-stop action from start to finish.  It has great traditions - there's no better championship celebration than the skating of the Cup.  And I grew up on Long Island in the early 80's when the Islanders were winning all those Cups, right after the Gold Medal win at Lake Placid.  But for some reason, it just won't take.

But the bigger question is:  does it matter?

As a Giants fan, my answer is a Big Blue No.  The past two Giants Super Bowls, coming from teams that struggled throughout the regular season, were far more exhilarating than the first two, won by teams that went 27-5 in the regular season.   The underdog, the Cinderella, the scrappy can-do kids who overcome doubt and failure and put it together for the championship run is the ultimate sports story.

The fact that the Cardinals, Kings, and Giants all beat better regular season teams on their run proves their championship mettle.    The sheer unlikelihood of it all makes for great drama, and a more satisfying win.

But there is a downside*.  Will the average sports fan, 20 years hence, remember the heroics of David Freese the way we remember the heroics of Reggie Jackson?  Will even Kings fans remember the players on this team the way even casual hockey fans can rattle off half the roster of those great Edmonton Oilers teams?  And while Eli Manning has secured his place in the sports pantheon, the rest of these Giants will not be remembered the way Terry Bradshaw's supporting cast is.

*  The other downside is the overuse of the most tired cliche in sports:  "Nobody believed in us, but in this locker room we always believed."  Yeah, as the Giants were getting thumped by the Redskins, when the Kings were being introduced to their new coach, when the Cardinals were losing pretty much every game in August to fall 10 games back, their locker room believed.

Cinderellas are great.  But greatness endures, and it would be nice if every once in a while a team for the ages impresses us with their dominance.

But fear not - we're in the midst of an NBA Finals that will give either Lebron James or Kevin Durant their first of what could be many titles.  This one we'll remember.


Related Content:  If you want a sport whose champions have really gone declined in quality, see this piece on NCAA basketball:  Heaven without the Stars.

  

Tebow Has All the Tools...but One

Here at FreeTime, we like to kick them when they're up and lift them when they're down. This is partly because we're pathologically obsessed with The Overrated and The Underrated*, and partly because debate is sort of like Olympic diving - degree of difficulty matters.

* In fact, when I was coming up with a name for this blog, one idea was Overrated/Underrated, with every story focused on someone/thing that was overrated (Jeter! Clooney!) or underrated (John Adams! Eli Manning!). Notice how the Underrated guys need their full name spelled out?

Which brings us to the matter of Tim Tebow. I had a Tebow column halfway written on December 11, after the Broncos defeated the Bears. Tebow was riding high: the Broncos had won 7 of 8, his passing yards had increased 5 straight games, his TD-to-INT ratio was 8-1, and his critics were cowering in the corner. It was time to strike.

But alas, on December 12th I was diagnosed with a detached retina, and two days later had surgery. While I was recovering Tebow fell hard. The Broncos got crushed by the Patriots, trampled by the Bills, and in week 17, an important game against the Chiefs to guarantee a playoff spot, Tebow put up the following line:

6 for 22, 60 yards, 0 touchdowns, 1 interception.

The Broncos scored 3 points and needed the Raiders to lose in order to backdoor the playoffs. I don't care how much you mistrust stats: that is some seriously crappy, unclutch, non-winning football. And as anyone who saw the game will attest, it wasn't just a statistical nightmare; it was an avert-your-eyes horror show.

So the moment had passed. I couldn't pile on then.

But now Timmy's back! He had his best game as a pro Sunday. It had the usual Tebow dramatics but with a twist: big passing numbers! He even broke John Elway's Broncos' record for playoff yards. So, it's time for me to enter the fray.

Now let me stipulate a few things first:

1. I like Tim Tebow. He seems like a genuinely good guy in a sports world filled with bad guys.

2. I like the Tebow story. It is like every sports movie every made - the underdog who is told he can't do it but pulls it off in dramatic fashion.

3. I especially liked the fact that Tebow beat Ben Roethlisberger, who is, let's say, not a good guy.

Finally, he has many qualities that are useful in an NFL quarterback. Useful, but not necessary. For example:

1. He is big and strong, which is useful but not necessary (see Drew Brees).
2. He is very good at running the ball, which is useful but not necessary (see Peyton Manning)
3. He is fiery and animated, which is useful but not necessary (see Eli Manning).
4. He had great success in college, which is useful but not necessary (see Tom Brady).
5. He is a morally upright person, which is useful but not necessary (see Ben Roethlisberger).

Those five quarterbacks won 8 of the last 10 Super Bowls. All but the injured Peyton made the playoffs this year, as usual. And while all of them are different, they share one thing in common: they are really really good at throwing a football.

And that's my problem with the Tebow Debate. It's become, like most sports arguments, a litmus test on Stats vs. Winning*.

* And unlike most sports arguments, a litmus test on religion. But I'm not going there. For that, I recommend this piece by Fran Tarkenton in today's Wall Street Journal.

But all of this ignores the most important question: Can a quarterback have long-term success iin today's NFL if he can't throw well? And Tim Tebow cannot throw well:

• His YPA (yards per attempt) is 6.4, 29th in the league behind, well, pretty much everyone but Curtis Painter. YPA is arguably the single most important passing stat.
• His completion % is 46.5%, 34th among the 34 QBs who threw enough passes to qualify. He is the only QB in the league under 50%.
• TD % is 4.4 (meaning, he throws TDs on 4.4% of his passes). Not bad, at 13th in the league, but still beyond such stalwarts as Christian Ponder, Mark Sanchez, and Matt Moore
• His INT% is solid. At 2.2 he is 9th in the league.
• But that is offset by his QB rating. At 29th, he is behind Colt McCoy, among other mediocrities. QB rating measures efficiency and loves a low INT %. But the rest of Tebow's game is so horrendous, the paucity of picks doesn't help much.
• His Yards Per Game is 34th. The only starter in the league who is lower is Josh Freeman.

And finally, there is Game Winning Drives*. Ah, the fans say, what do you have to say now, Smart Guy? He's tied for the league lead with 6, which is impressive. But there are two problems with that. One is that a guy like Aaron Rodgers has only one - not because he can't do it, but because he's so damn good all day long he generally spends his final drive taking a knee.

* Definition: An offensive scoring drive in the 4th quarter or OT that puts a team ahead for the last time.

But the other is this: do you know who has been better than Tim Tebow at game winning drives? Go ahead, I'll give you a minute. No, it's not Eli Manning, who also has 6 but was the starter in more games. It's not Alex Smith, with 5, though he was good, too. Drew Brees? Good guess, but he only had 4.

No, the best comeback quarterback in football this year was John Skelton. Casual fans don't even know who he is, but football fans know he took over the Cardinals' starting job in November. He played in 8 games for the Cards this year, starting 7 - and had 5 game-winning comebacks. 5 comebacks in 8 games? That's amazing...but something tells me he won't be on the cover of Madden next year.

Finally, the last worrisome thing for those who picture a Tebow plaque at Canton someday...

Tim Tebow isn't playing in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or even the first decade of this century. He's playing at time when explosive passing attacks have taken over the sport. You've seen all the stats elsewhere, but this paragraph by Gregg Easterbrook captures well what a passing league the NFL is right now:

It's the year of offensive stat-a-rama throughout the NFL. There have been five 5,000-yard passing seasons in NFL history; three of them were this year. Drew Brees and Tom Brady both eclipsed the previous passing yards record in the same season. Records were set for passer rating, completion percentage and team yards from scrimmage. In the regular season, NFL teams averaged 235 gross passing yards per game, surpassing the previous high of 221 in 1995 and way above the 1971 average of 156 yards. Three of the top five rushing teams missed the playoffs while all the top five passing teams made the postseason. Detroit just gained a spectacular 882 yards passing in two games over six days -- and lost both because opponents gained 928 yards passing. The Packers and Patriots, with the league's lowest-rated defenses, just used scoreboard-spinning to win the conference top seeds. The league's No. 1 defense, the Pittsburgh Steelers, is already out of the playoffs, torched by Denver. In this year of offensive stat-a-rama, even a sputtering offense trumped the best defense!

I like Tim Tebow. It's a truly great sports story. And I'll be rooting for him this weekend against Patriots.

But enjoy the show now. This is the modern NFL, where a quarterback has to be able to consistently throw balls into very tight spots. And that is the one thing Tim Tebow cannot do.

I Got Thome

The other day, the great Joe Posnanski* wrote a piece about how in sports we don't need a reason to choose what we celebrate, we just need a consensus. In other words, if we all agree that hitting streaks are worth celebrating, we celebrate them. But if we all agree that 10,000 rebounds, a feat achieved by 34 men, isn't such a big deal, we don't celebrate them.

* When I do these little asterisk/italics things, I am using a Posnanski invention called the Posterisk. It is superior to parenthesis and footnotes, and I hope it catches on.

As it turns out, his timing was perfect. Because last night Jim Thome hit his 599th and 600th home runs. It was an astonishingly rare achievement, one of the rarest in sports. Only 8 men in baseball history have accomplished the feat, and the other 7 are baseball legends, admitted steroid users, or both.

And yet...the world yawned. There will be no HBO special commemorating his chase for 600. His achievement did not pass the Lucille Test. Few people marveled at the way he achieved it, being the first man to hit back-to-back jacks to get to a six-pack.

Most importantly, ESPN's SportsCenter this morning followed up the highlight of this game with a segment titled "Hall of Famer?" The report, by Tim Kurkjian, concluded he was a Hall of Famer. But that's quite a question mark. 600 homers does not punch your ticket to the Hall.

This is in stark contrast to the celebration around Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit. 3,000 hits is a much more common achievement. 28 guys have gotten to that level.*

* In a related note, sometime this September Clinton Portis will become the 26th NFL player to rush for 10,000 yards. Will anyone care?

In fact one can argue Thome has been a better player than Jeter. He's almost certainly a better hitter. He got to his 600th homer with far fewer (around 900) plate appearances than Jeter needed for 3000. He has a lower batting average (.312 to .277), but a higher On-Base Percentage (.403 to .383) and a much higher slugging % (.557 to .449).

Of course, Jeter was a far superior fielder and a much better base runner (335 stolen bases to 19). The Captain was not quite the October superhero people think he was, but he was a very good post-season player, whereas Thome wasn't. Most importantly, Jeter is the rare modern athlete who has spent his entire career with one team, so his connection to that fan base is greater, certainly, than Thome is to Minnesota, or even Cleveland.

The point here isn't to bash Jeter, who deserves the credit he received. It's to wonder why Thome's far rarer achievement is virtually ignored.

It's not because he's a bad guy - in fact by all accounts he's a great guy. According to Joe Pos, he's won the Clemente Award and the Gehrig Award. He's been voted the nicest guy in baseball by his peers. And it has something to do with the fact that homers have been devalued in our post-Bonds era.

But still...there's a good chance that in about 8 or 9 years, Jeter will be cruising to Cooperstown as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And Jim Thome might be on his 3rd year trying to get in. Will he be joining him?

Note:

About the name of this post...in 1992 my friends and I founded the Madisox Fantasy Baseball League. (Odd Couple fans know the name comes from an episode involving television's greatest sportswriter). That first year, well, the details are hazy but my buddy Costello drafted this Indians prospect named Jim Thome. Later, somebody tried to draft Thome but Costello, looking over his roster, said, "No, I got Thome. I definitely got Thome." Only he pronounced it with a Th- sound, rhyming with home. Anyway, "I got Thome" is one of the catchphrases of our league, and has been repeated at every draft since.

A Nod to the Gods

The Appeal of Golf

All tastes are subjective.

If your tastes run to bluegrass, biographies, bratwurst, and brunettes, that’s what you like – and no amount of persuasion will change your preferences to rock and roll, romances, ratatouille, and redheads.

That’s why I never defend Bob Dylan. Many people hate Dylan’s music – or at least, don’t understand his appeal. They acknowledge his greatness as a songwriter, but can’t for a second grasp why any sane person with working eardrums would choose to listen his raspy warble.

I could make a reasoned case for Dylan. I can explain his revolutionary role in American music, play songs from Blood on the Tracks that don’t have the nasally twang of his bigger hits, explain the complex rhyming structure of a masterpiece like "Tangled Up in Blue". I can argue that singing isn’t just about a perfect voice, it’s about acting – and that Dylan’s singing gift is the ability to convey humor, anger, sadness, intelligence, sarcasm, even surrender. I can logically argue that if all we wanted in singing was a perfect voice, opera would rule the charts and rock and roll would only be played on the ass-end of the AM dial.

But if you don’t like listening to Dylan, I can’t persuade you with reason, logic, and facts that you should.

(This post started out as a post on golf, but I'm half-tempted to change gears here and talk about the role of criticism. For what is film, music, literary, or art criticism but the very attempt to persuade others with reason, logic and facts that they should like or not like something? Nah, let’s get back to golf.)

I bring all this up because I got in a conversation with someone recently who was opposed to golf. I mean, really opposed. Morally opposed and emotionally opposed and athletically opposed. He railed on about how it’s not a sport and it’s an expensive time-waster and that the world would be a better place if golfers would spend their time and money on more constructive pursuits.

What a moron.

Okay, that’s not fair; he’s entitled to the things he likes and doesn’t like. But I found myself, against my better judgment, making the case for golf. Or at least, making the case for why he should give it a shot. And I came up with two arguments:

The first, admittedly weaker, argument is that the great and powerful golf. Presidents golf, billionaires golf, movie stars golf. My point isn’t that we should imitate these people, God no. Or even that they are, in fact, great. My point is that these people have options. Barack Obama and Jack Nicholson can do pretty much what they want on weekends, but they mostly choose to golf. And, in the case of Obama and Nicholson, these are not people who grew up at country clubs; they came to golf later in life and fell in love with it. This should say something to the non-golfer. This should say, hmm, maybe I should give this a shot.

But the second, and more powerful argument, is that athletes golf. Michael Jordan has options, too. But more than that His Airness, perhaps more than anyone alive, knows what it is like to perform majestic athletic feats – to soar through the air with grace, ingenuity, and power. To outrun, out-jump, outwit, out-compete and out-everything the opponent. To hear thousands roar in ecstatic approval of his physical prowess.

Well, Michael Jordan spends the bulk of his free time golfing. And it is not just Michael Jordan – seemingly every baseball, hockey, soccer, football, basketball and tennis star on the planet are passionate golfers. Even those like Charles Barkley, who remains committed to this pursuit even though all available evidence suggests he should try an easier hobby, like nuclear fusion.

Why is that? What is the appeal of golf?

Everyone who loves the game already knows the answer to that question. But for those who don't, I'll turn to Ron Shelton, the writer/director of Tin Cup (and, not incidentally, a former minor league baseball player). In the following exchange Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy (Kevin Costner) explains the golf swing to Molly Griswold (Rene Russo):

At another point in the film, Tin Cup offers a more direct explanation for the appeal of golf: “Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them.”

I explained all this to the moron. Got nowhere. He probably likes Mariah Carey, celebrity self-help books, black licorice and pink Mohawks. There’s no accounting for bad taste.

What If?

There are three kinds of baseball teams.

There are teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies that, barring catastrophe, are likely to win 90+ games.

There are teams like the Pirates, Mariners, and Diamondbacks that, barring a miracle, are likely to lose 90+ games.

Then there are the What If Teams. The What If teams are those that, if everything breaks right, something magical could happen. The San Francisco Giants were a What If team last year. They were 22-1 odds to win the World Series. Yeah, they had some young live arms, but their best hitter was Aubrey Huff – Aubrey Huff! They finished ten games behind the Dodgers and Rockies in 2009, a lot of ground to make up. The Giants needed a lot of things to break right for a magical season.

And they all did. The young pitchers delivered. They scored just enough runs, mostly at the right time. Minor league prospect Buster Posey came up in late May and hit 18 homers. The Dodgers and Rockies, both of whom won 90+ games in 2009, dropped to the low 80’s. And the Padres, oh the Padres, who were the Ultimate What If team all year, fell apart in September.

I bring this all up because the New York Mets are one of those What If teams.

If Everything Breaks Right

I won’t go into detail here (I did in this post), but look at the Mets’ Ifs.

- If the starting pitching does what it did last year (7th in team ERA; 19 shutouts);

- If K-Rod continues to punch out batters the way he did last year (before punching out his kids’ grandpop);

- If Wright, Reyes, and Bay play like the great offensive players they’ve been most of their careers;

- If young players like Ike Davis, Mike Pelfrey, and Jonathan Niese continue their growth;

- If you get some great performances from unexpected places (my vote is on Chris Young, who I took in the 23rd round of my fantasy draft Sunday night);

- If a new manager - one that doesn’t look like, sound, and manage like a Jazz bassist backing a beat poet in 1968 Greenwich Village basement cafe- can inspire this team

- If all these things happen, well...

But you don’t just need good internal things…it helps if bad things happen to other people. And the Phillies could be ripe for the sort of catastrophe that derails a promising team.

Would I like to have their rotation? Sure. But remember, the Big 3 are over 30, and candles in a birthday cake hit pitchers faster than hitters. And here's some Did You Knows...

Did you know Cliff Lee, before his great October, was 4-6 with a 3.98 ERA as a Ranger?

Did you know that in 2009 Roy Oswalt’s ERA was 4.12

Did you know Cole Hamels’ record the past two seasons is 22-22?

And did you know Roy Halladay’s given name is Harry Leroy Halladay? (I have nothing bad to say about his pitching. Guy is awesome.)

And that’s the pitching vulnerability. It’s on offense where they can have real problems.

Ryan Howard, Team Stud, took a significant step backwards last year. Instead of 45 HRs/140 RBIs he went 31/108. And while he played fewer games, his OPS also dropped, from .931 to .859. He is nowhere near the monster player he was in 2006and his comps on baseball-reference.com aren’t encouraging*.

* If you like baseball stats, one of the coolest features on baseball-reference is the comps – where you can compare players to other players in history.The player most like Ryan Howard, at the same age, in all of baseball history, is Richie Sexson.

But Howard isn’t the problem. Chase Utley’s injury, Jayson Werth’s absence, and Jimmy Rollins’ overall suckiness – the guy’s career has been in a free fall since his undeserved MVP in 2007 – are the problems. That’s a lot of Ifs, but all are possible.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they all happened?

And wouldn’t it suck if they all happened…but the Braves had all their What Ifs happen and won the NL East?

Finnegan's Revenge

In 2002 Bill Simmons wrote one of his most famous columns, The 13 Levels of Losing, updating it five years later with 3 more categories (one for my 2007 Mets. Ug.) The incredible, devastating, painful, shocking, humiliating, debilitating, mind-numbing, gut-wrenching, soul-destroying loss – no, loss is too weak a word - murder suffered by the New York Giants this past Sunday doesn’t quite fit one of the 16 categories perfectly. It matched eight of them.

XV. Achilles Heel: A fatal flaw is revealed (we knew special teams would cost us eventually)

XIV. Alpha Dog: A stud on the other team is too much (the Mutt-Murderer)

XIII. Rabbit’s Foot: Where seemingly everything goes wrong (let's not relive those 8 minutes)

XII. Sudden Death (no, it wasn’t overtime, but the clock showing zero as DeSean Jackson proved he’s the league’s next wide receiver ASSH0LE* made it feel like it)

XI. Monkey Wrench: Your coach makes an idiot decision (TMQB breaks down Coughlin/Fewell's Quartus Horribilis)

VI. Broken Axle: Where the wheels come off (um, yeah)

IV. The Guillotine: Where even the fan feels like he contributed to the karmic evil (I confess I started thinking through the playoff scenarios with Giants as a 2 seed)

III. Stomach Punch: Where the opponent makes an improbable play and/or your guy screws up (see above, multiple times)

* I don’t usually curse here at FreeTime, but DeSean Jackson – who has clearly learned from TO, Randy Moss, Ochocinco, and other members of today’s wide receiving prima donna community, cannot be described with a lesser word. How is that one position attracts so many individuals so badly in need of a beating?

Yes, the Giants collapse against the Eagles used up 8 of the 16 levels of losing! But you know that here at FreeTime we traffic in Optimism. We’re all about the silver lining, our cup is half full, we look on the bright side, we turn lemons into lemonade – yes, we’re delusional as Martini in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest!

So I’m going to ask my Giant fan friends to take a step off the ledge…yes that’s it, open the window, yes, c’mon back in the room. Okay, finger off the trigger, put the gun down. Okay? Listen to me. This loss was many horrible things, it contained 8 of the 16 levels of losing all wrapped up in one giant fetid steaming smelly pile of elephant dung. Bu here’s what it wasn’t:

A Level I Loss: That Game
A Level IX Loss: The Full-Fledged Butt Kicking

“That Game” is Simmons’ name for Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. And “The Full-Fledged Butt Kicking” – well you can figure out what that is. (Interestingly, the example he uses for this is the New York Giants 41-0 beatdown of the Minnesota Vikings in the 2001 NFC Championship Game. )

It’s important to remember this is not a Level I loss because Level I losses end seasons. The Giants 39-38 playoff collapse to the Niners in 2003 – a game in which they led by 24 in the third quarter - was a Level I loss. The 23-22 playoff loss to the Vikings in 1997 when the onside kick bounced off Chris Calloway’s chest and the Vikes scored 10 points in the final minute was a Level I loss. They had all the horror of Sunday’s game but no chance at redemption.

Nor was it a Level IX loss. The NFL had a wonderful example of a Full-Fledged Butt-Kicking recently – the Patriots’ 45-3 humiliation of the Jets. When the most common phrase said about your team the following week is “exposed as a fraud”, that’s a tough loss.

But the Giants did not get their butts kicked Sunday. And they did not end their season Sunday. Indeed, they remain well-positioned for a playoff spot.

So as you look for some scrap of optimism to hold onto, think about it this way: if you asked Tom Brady and the Patriots if they would like to face the Jets in the playoffs, that locker room would erupt in cheers. But if you asked Michael Vick to answer in complete honesty whether or not he wants to face the Giants again – indeed, whether he ever wants to be in the same room as Justin Tuck again – I suspect he’d answer like Apollo Creed at the end of Rocky: “Ain’t gonna be no rematch.”

As for redemption…I think we all know what that looks like. A six seed for the Giants, followed by a victory against the Bears in the playoffs, followed by a trip to Philadelphia in the 2nd round.

In these days of sensitivity around football injuries I’ll say what I know all Giants fans are feeling: no matter what happens after that, that loss will be expunged if the Canine Killer and TO's Spawn leave the field on stretchers - not seriously hurt, mind you; just a little shaken up - and the Giants leave it in victory.

Oh, and as for the title of this post...Finnegan is my dog's name. He hates Michael Vick.

Do Managers Matter?

We humans are stubborn creatures. We form an opinion, grab hold of it, and over time tighten that grip until “changing your mind” becomes nearly impossible. This is true if it is something trivial, like believing defense wins NFL championships, or of life-and-death importance, like believing holistic medicine cures disease better than modern medicine.

When we receive new data about the issue, we filter it through our bias. For example, I can provide reams of data to a “defense wins championships” believer that prove a good offense is as or even more important than a good defense, but he will discard the facts that don’t support his belief, and latch onto the ones that do. “Sure, the Saints scored with more frequency than a rich nerd at a gold digger convention,” he’ll say, “but they didn’t win a championship until Gregg Williams started blitzing like Rommel.”

Cognitive scientists call this “confirmation bias” – we naturally select data that support our existing beliefs, and discard data that refute those beliefs. Think about confirmation bias, and it will change how you look at everything from the Middle East to marital spats.

I bring all this up because I’m changing my mind about a long-held belief, a belief of enormous magnitude: I’m beginning to believe baseball managers matter.

###

Many of you are saying, well of course managers matter (or you’re saying, sheesh, another sports story? I’m outta here). But I’ve always believed managers had a minimal effect on a win-loss record. Take any intelligent baseball fan and side him up with a decent bench coach, and he could do a passable job managing. Write the lineup. Set your rotation. Change pitchers. Talk to the press. Lose arguments with umpires. Spit. Is that it?

I have no doubt I can perform that job with fewer embarrassing blunders than I would as, say, a plumber or biochemist or Federal Reserve chairman or software engineer or submarine sonar officer or sous chef or air traffic controller or ambassador to Norway* . Or, for that matter, football coach, where you need to not only know what Red-Z Omaha Split means, you have to create it, teach it, and decide when to employ it.

* Sidenote: congratulations to the obscure Norwegian politicians who pick the Nobel Peace Prize winner - you didn't screw it up this year! As for the Swedes who give out the Literature prize, I'm still waiting for you to honor Cormac McCarthy or Philip Roth or pretty much anybody with an American passport, but at least you didn't give it to a total obscurity this year.

In fact, I figured (and still do), it is harder to manage baseball in the minors and college where teaching the fundamentals is a big part of the job. I’m reasonably sure Phillies manager Charlie Manuel doesn’t have to tell Chase Utley how to pivot on a double play or Shane Victorino which cutoff man to hit or Ryan Howard to never ever EVER bunt.

And so, for years, I didn’t particularly care who managed my team. What I mostly hoped is he would be entertaining in interviews, like Bobby Valentine.

But here’s the thing: I’m watching these baseball playoffs and, except for the Yankees and Phillies – which are absolutely loaded with talent – I see a bunch of lineups and rotations that aren’t particularly impressive. And yet, these teams are in the playoffs, and my Mets are home again.

The Elements of Winning

I was recently in Minneapolis and had a chance to visit Target Field, the Twins’ new digs. I looked up at the Twins’ lineup and saw Joe Mauer and…well, a bunch of guys few people outside of Minnesota had ever heard of before. Michael Cuddyer has been on my fantasy teams a couple times, and is a pretty good hitter. But this is not an all star team. Justin Morneau missed most of the season with an injury, closer Joe Nathan hasn’t thrown a pitch since spring training. And yet here they were, in first place as usual.

And it got me to thinking about my team, the Mets, who have most of the elements of a winning team, but were once again muddling through a meaningless September:

Established stars
David Wright and Johan Santana are proven superstars. Carlos Beltran missed most of the season, but has been one of the premier centerfielders of his generation.

Up and coming players
Ike Davis had the second best rookie season by a hitter in Mets history. Mike Pelfrey broke through this year, pitching on an ace level most of the year. Jonathan Niese opened eyes all year long.

Unexpected performances from journeyman

Angel Pagan and R.A. Dickey? Did any journeyman hitter/pitcher combination have better unexpected seasons than these two?

Consistently good starting pitching
The Mets threw 19 shutouts this year. They had a team ERA of 3.73, a ¼ run better than the league average, and the 7th lowest in all of baseball.

A reliable bullpen
Francisco Rodriguez’s season ended in disgrace, and he had a few tough blown saves this year. But look closely and you’ll see that he had his best season since 2006, when he finished fourth in the Cy Young voting. His ERA was 2.20, he had a career low walks per nine innings, his WHIP was the second lowest of his career and he struck out an astonishing 3 batters for every one walked. A lot of Mets fan believe he struggled this year, and he had his patches – but those patches were surrounded by multiple weeks and even months of unhittable dominance.

Good baserunning
The Mets led the league in stolen bases. Again. In fact, the Mets have led the league in stolen bases every year since 2004, except for 2008 when they finished 2nd.


Established stars. Up and coming players. Unexpected performances from journeymen. Consistently good starting pitching. A good, occasionally great closer. Speed in the basepaths. The Mets took all of these elements and ended up…79-83.

Ron Gardenhire has been manager of the Minnesota Twins for nine years. In those nine years his team finished 1st six times. In eight of nine the Twins had a winning record. His only losing season was 2007 when they finished with the same mediocre record the Mets finished with this year, 79-83.

Mets manager Jerry Manuel has also managed nine seasons in the majors, with the White Sox and Mets. He had one first place finish. He’s had back to back 4th place finishes with the Mets. And he gives boring interviews.

The Mets just fired Jerry Manuel. Can someone else take this collection of promising talent and bring them to October? As the great Tug McGraw said, Ya Gotta Believe.

Meadowlands 2 is Up

Part 2 of my review at HomerJones is up.

Meadowlands Review

I went to Opening Day at the New Giants Stadium and wrote a review of it for the Giants fan site, Homer Jones. Part 1 is here.

Something Borrowed

I generally surf the web at lunch, and these two sports-related things both brought me pleasure:

1. A beautiful piece by the great Joe Posnanski about Armando Galarraga's "perfect" game: The Lesson of Jim Joyce

2. This link was sent by KMac in Chicago about Blackhawks fans getting on the bandwagon. I was in Chicago the week they won the Conference Finals (is that what they call it in hockey?) and the city was aflame with Hawk Love. Even the Art Institute had huge Blackhawks banners hanging out front. Anyway, a fun video about fans jumping on the bandwagon:

The Slowest Game?

" Don't Shoot!"

Lacrosse bills itself as “the fastest game on two feet”. But if fans of hurling (“the fastest game on grass”), hockey (“the fastest game on ice”), and jai-alai (“the fastest game on earth”) tuned in to yesterday’s NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Final, they can be forgiven for scoffing at this notion. Because the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame slowed the game down so much it could have been sponsored by Sherwin-Williams and called the “Watching Paint Dry” Lacrosse Final.

* All of these sports base their “fastest” claims on the speed of the ball or puck, but none are faster than a badminton shuttlecock, which can travel as fast as 206 mph.

Okay, I’m being unfair. On many levels it was a very exciting game. Notre Dame and Duke traded goals in the game’s opening minutes and the score was close or tied the entire game. A sudden death OT lasted only five seconds, thanks to a thrilling faceoff-scoop-run-and-score by longstick middie C.J. Costabile. And in a sport that has been dominated by a quintet of teams (Johns Hopkins, Syracuse, Virginia, Princeton, and North Carolina have won every title since 1978) the appearance in the Final of two teams who had never won a title is a great thing for the sport.

But still…lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in America (that claim might actually be true) and many people tuned in to ESPN yesterday to see this exciting sport they have heard so much about. Sadly, they were treated to a game that, as announcer Sean McDonough said, looked like a North Carolina Tar Heel basketball game before the shot clock.

Credit Notre Dame for the right strategy, which we’ll dub the Irish Famine. Coach Kevin Corrigan, realizing he had the least talented team in the tournament, slowed the pace of the game down to a crawl, starving the Duke offense of the ball. On nearly every possession, his offense was content to pass the ball around and bleed the clock. They were given multiple stall warnings and half their shots seemed designed to miss, so that instead of turning the ball over their X attackman can race to the back line and reclaim possession. (for lacrosse newbies, when a shot goes out of bounds, possession goes to whatever team gets to the out of bounds spot first)

The result: a 6-5 decision, the lowest scoring title game in NCAA history. And while Notre Dame goalie Scott Rodgers was as good as advertised, let’s not pretend that this game was about defense. This game was about Notre Dame playing keepaway, holding the ball for huge chunks of time doing nothing but playing catch. Duke features the best attack in the country, but Ned Crotty (63 assists this season), Max Quinzani (68 goals) and Zach Howell (51 goals) spent most of the game standing and staring at the other end of the field.

In a showcase moment for the sport, with its popularity at an all-time high and the first finals team from West of the Mississippi, it delivered a snoozer.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger (and if the Irish has the ball, I don’t have to worry about that)
This is not meant as a critique of the sport in general. I played a little lacrosse myself back in the day (with an emphasis on the word “little”). I sat at the end of the bench for a Long Island high school in the early 80’s, and found my way to the middle of the bench (3rd and 4th midfield line) for a Fairfield University club team that dominated New England club lacrosse in the late 80’s.

* I graduated in 88, and from 87 to 89 the Stags went 33-2. In ’93 they went Division I and today are good enough that earlier this year they beat one of the teams in yesterday’s final.

I picked up the game late and wasn’t very good – I scored 3 goals in my entire college “career” - but I loved the sport and still do. Today, lacrosse is wildly popular where I live in Rockland County. My 10 year-old daughter plays, as do all five of my Rockland nephews. My two brothers-in-law coach their sons, and a buddy announces high school lacrosse on MSG.

Lacrosse is a genuinely great sport – one that offers the ideal combination of speed, athleticism, toughness, knowledge and grace. But one has to ask: how many coaches across the country watched a mediocre Notre Dame team – one that was unseeded and went 10-7 on the year – get to within one goal of a title, and think, hmmm? Maybe I’ll slow down my offense next year…

And that would be a terrible thing for the sport.

The Fix
Luckily, FreeTime is here to propose a solution – to fix the problem before it manifests itself. You already know what it is, don’t you? You knew it as soon as you saw the basketball shot clock reference above. It was once said that the only man who could stop Michael Jordan was his own coach at North Carolina, Dean Smith. And basketball as a sport does not benefit if the rules can stop Michael Jordan.

Well, we don’t want to stop Ned Crotty, Max Quinzani and Zach Howell either. The NCAA – the only governing body of the sport that matters – should institute a shot clock immediately. I’ll leave the details up to smarter laxheads than me, but there’s no need to be too aggressive right away. I’m leaning towards two minutes but even three might be fine.

But you also need an intent rule. In other words, you can’t have guys launch shots 10 feet over the goal just to reset the clock.

The sport is at a key moment in its growth. Don’t let the Irish Famine slow it down. Literally.

(Hat Tip to the Rock Star, who suggested this post and served as research assistant.)

[This is the fourth in an unplanned series called The Volunteer Commissioner in which I helpfully point out the flaws in various sports and suggest fixes. Previous installments were The Losers Out Manifesto, Swimming is Boring, and Fixing Softball. And before World Cup fever has passed, look for a piece on soccer.]

King James Redux

In late March I wrote a piece called The Duper Level in which I argued that Lebron James needed the Big Apple to launch himself from mere Superstar to Super Duper Star (The Duper Level). At the end I speculated about how this year's post-season could affect his decision:

"I think the results of this year's playoffs could impact his decision. If, for example, the Cavs choke in the postseason, he may feel he needs to stay and win a title for Ohio. And good for him if he does. But if he wins a ring for Cleveland, and does so over Utah in a 6-game series that gets lower ratings than Conan O'Brien, he just might want to hear what those folks in the Garden have to say."

But here's the thing: when I said "choke in the post-season", I meant an upset in the Finals, not a 6-game ass-whupping in the Conference semi-finals*, one that included multiple blow-outs and the entire world calling into question whether Lebron is the second coming of Karl Malone or Patrick Ewing rather than the Second Coming of the Lord.

* It's May 14th, and the 2009-2010 seasons of Lebron James, Sidney Crosby, and Alexander Ovechkin are over, further proof that making sports predictions is for fools and con men.

This unexpected development could play into the Knicks hands. Here's the Sports Guy:

"See, there was only one way LeBron was leaving Cleveland this summer: if the team fell apart so badly and indefensibly before the Finals that he could get talked into a 'You just need a fresh start with a new team' case. He couldn't leave if they lost in the Finals to Kobe's Lakers; he'd look like a coward. He couldn't leave if they won the title; no great player leaves a defending champ at the altar -- it's never happened before. But if it plays out like this? He could leave. Absolutely. It's conceivable."

Now Bill Simmons knows more about the NBA than all of us combined, but he also predicted* the Celtics would lose in the first round and the Mavericks would go to the Finals. So who knows?

* Simmons is neither a fool or a con man, but makes more wrong predictions per week than most people make in a year. But hey, ssports passion makes us foolish.

I’d like to add one other thing into the mix. Here is what Kevin Garnett told reporters about his conversation with Lebon after the game:

"If I could go back and do my situation over, knowing what I know now with this organization, I'd have done it a little sooner. Loyalty is something that hurts you at times because you can't get youth back."

KG, of course, spent his prime in Minnesota getting booted out of the first round, then came to Boston and won a title. Now, I’m only a world-class superstar athlete in my dreams, so I don’t know about these things. But I bet that the words of Kevin Garnett – somebody who has walked in Lebron James’ high-tops - have more impact than those of agents, sneaker company executives, sports writers, and maybe even the members of your entourage. And what Kevin is saying is, “Get out!!!”

Who knows? Maybe he’ll end up with the Bulls. Maybe in his own heart he needs to stay in Cleveland. I’m not foolish enough to make a prediction.

But the futures market on Knicks season tickets just went up.

Opening Eve

The United States government is going bankrupt, unemployment remains at 10%, and the NBC series Chuck* is at risk of being cancelled. But as far as I’m concerned, all is right with the world because, ladies and gentlemen, baseball is back!

* Seriously, I have completely fallen for Chuck. I’m mildly embarrassed by this; should I be?

So as I bask in the glow of the Mets' ritual Opening Day victory (32-9 on ODs since the 69 Miracle Mets), I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you.

Naming the Day
These days its unclear which day actually is Opening Day. Was it Sunday night when the New York Billionaires lost to the Boston Multi-Millionaires? Or Monday, when the other 30 teams get their mojo on? Well, here at FreeTime, we don’t complain, we propose solutions.

Let me start by saying I have no problem with change and innovation. Folks who sit around growling that the Cincinnati Reds should kick off every season at Noon on Monday because “Dadgum it, that’s how we did it when I was a boy” are trapped in a time warp. They should stick to the New York Times sports section and their lineup of octogenarian columnists who think 1950’s New York baseball should be frozen in amber and replayed over and over and leave modern baseball to the rest of us.

That said the Sunday night game has caused a bit of a linguistic problem. Monday is the true Opening Day, with 15 games played across the continent, grown men scheming to leave work early, with sunshine and American flags and hot dogs and rookie debuts and “recording artists”* you’ve never heard of singing the National Anthem.

* That would be a good name for a band, The Recording Artists. “And now, to sing the National Anthem, Columbia recording artists, The Recording Artists!”

Where was I? Right, our linguistic problem. Some have proposed we call Sunday night Opening Night, but c’mon, this isn’t theater. This is Baseball with a Capital B. Opening Day is a holiday, not a show making its debut and hoping not to be cancelled. (Okay, it was cancelled in 1994. But that was different).

We are all very comfortable with the concept of Eves. December 24 is Christmas Eve, December 25 is Christmas Day. December 31 is New Year’s Eve; January 1 we nurse our hangover and watch East Illinois State play Acorn University in the Fremulon Insurance Who Gives a Crap Bowl. Why not do the same thing for Opening Day?

From here on, Sunday Night is Opening Eve and Monday is Opening Day. My will be done. Now let’s move on to other, more pressing issues.

Sympathy for the Devil
And what a wonderful Opening Eve! The New York Stormtroopers blew a 4-run lead with their best pitcher on the mound. The Yankees are in last place!

But of course they won’t stay there. How glorious it must be to be a Yankee fan. To root for a team that finishes in 1st place nearly ever season, a team that plays in October nearly every season. A team for whom Opening Eve really is like Christmas Eve, because Daddy George has bought us the most expensive toys in the off-season.

To root for a team that has won 1/3 of all the Championships since the Hoover Administration. Think about that.

There are some 120 teams in the 4 major sports in North America. Throw in the major college football and basketball teams and we’re talking almost 200 teams with serious rooting interests.

But none of them has a sustained record of winning like the New York Yankees, not even close. The Lakers you say? Please. Ruth, Mantle and Company had 20 rings before the Lakers even moved to California. North Carolina basketball? Yanks had more titles during Clinton’s second term than the Tar Heels have racked up since Dean Smith’s first season.

But there is a dark side to all this winning. A basic human truth is that when something is hard it is more rewarding. Reading Shakespeare, drinking single-malt scotch and running a marathon are significantly harder than reading James Patterson, drinking Coors Light and watching a sitcom while eating an entire bag of Cheetos. But the rewards are far greater.

Being a sports fan offers the same rewards. Sports teams are supposed to follow some natural arc – promise, disappointment, dejection, promise again, heartbreaking loss – and then, occasionally, a championship! The sweetness of that title is accentuated by the depth of the despair.

Ask a New York Rangers fan about the 1994 Stanley Cup and you’ll hear a game-by-game breakdown of the entire playoff run. Ask a Yankee fan who they beat in the 1999 World Series and you’ll get, quite often, a thoughtful frown followed by an answer with a question mark. “The Braves? No, that was ninety, um, six. Wait, okay, Braves were 96, then 98 was the 114 wins and they beat the Pa-a-a-a-dres…and of course 2000 was the Mets! Maybe it was the Braves again. I dunno. Doesn’t matter.”

It’s like being a drug addict. The high is awesome at first, but eventually it loses its power to excite. In fact, for some portion of Yankee Nation last year’s title was like a junkie’s relief at the moment the needle goes in.

So today, my friends, as the Yankees defend yet another title, I ask for just a little sympathy.

Hope Springs Eternal
Oh, who am I kidding? It must be awesome to be a Yankee fan.

My team, the New York Metropolitans, is in one of those deep, jagged valleys that teams not named the Yankees occasionally find themselves. In 2006 they ran away with the NL East and had a lead late in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. But then, well, if you’re still reading this you know what happened next. Stunning collapses in 07 and 08, and an avalanche of injuries in 2009.

But it’s April and every fan from Kansas City to Seattle and everywhere in between should be filled with hope. Here’s my quickie case for Mets hope: And yes, I know that if ifs and buts were candy and nuts every day would be Christmas. And my case for Metsie Hope is drowning in ifs and buts. But dadgum it, it’s Opening Day!

- If Jose Reyes comes back (as expected) and Carlos Beltran comes back (who knows?), the foursome of Reyes/Wright/Beltran/Bay is pretty fearsome. Throw in a bit of Francouer power, Castillo’s .390 OBP and 20 steals, and you’re gonna score some runs.

- Only five closers have strung together 5 consecutive 35-save seasons. Two of them are over 40. K-Rod is one of the other three. He’s as close to a sure thing you get this side of the Bronx.

- Yes, the starting rotation is filled with question marks, but question marks are better than negative answers, no? John Maine, Oliver Perez and Mike Pelfrey have all proved they can pitch on the major league level, and all are young enough to have strong seasons in them. Last year was rough and spring training worse, but I wouldn’t be surprised if any of these guys won 15 games with a low 4 ERA.

And if not, it'll be easier to get good seats at CitiField this year!

Carthago delendo est
Allow me to repeat a rant from last year, a point I plan on remaking in all future baseball pieces moving forward.

"Maybe I'm a little OCD, but it drives me crazy that the AL West has 4 teams, the NL Central has 6, and the other four divisions have 5 teams. Isn't that unfair? Everything else being equal, an AL West team has a 25% chance of winning the division, whereas an NL Central team has a - um, hold on, let me get my calculator - shoot, I dunno, a 17% chance. Something like that. And it's not like this is a hard problem to fix. You simply take the Brewers, who used to be in the AL anyway, and move 'em to the AL West. Voila! Six teams with 5 divisions each! Why don't they do that? Oh wait, I remember..."

The Duper Level

Last week I found myself at Shaw's Crab House in Chicago, drinking beer and talking sports with a couple of work friends, JK and Brando. JK is Chicago born and bred and Brando is an Ohio boy now in the Windy City. And we got on the subject of Lebron James' future.

I suggested that Lebron James will be tempted by the Big Apple and make his way to the New York Knicks. They dismissed this as typical New York arrogance, and clearly believed that Madison Square Garden harbored snakes as evil as any in the Garden of Eden.

Like all good sports arguments this one got me thinking, and I thought I would helpfully share my thinking with Knicks management as they prepare to make their case to Lebron. They all fall under the broad argument of achieving what we'll call the Duper Level. In other words, there is no doubt Lebron is already a superstar, but if he wants to be a Super Duper Star, he's got to come to New York. Here are a few ways of thinking about The Duper Level.

The Lucille Test

One way to look at whether or not an athlete has achieved the Duper Level is the Lucille Test. Lucille is my Mom, and she is aware of sports but not what you'd call a passionate fan. And I just had the following conversation with her:

Me: Do you know who Lebron James is?

Mom: Who?

Me: Lebron James.

Mom: Legron?

Me: Lebron. With a B.

Mom: Lebon James...wait, I know that name. He's some kind of sports player. I know this because I just read it somewhere. He plays sports.

Me: Do you know what sport?

Mom: (pause). Football?

Now, my Mom knows Tiger Woods (and not because of recent scandals). She knows Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant and Brett Favre, and back in the 90's she knew Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. But if Lebron James walked into her kitchen right now and said "Hi, I'm Lebron James and I play for the Cleveland Cavaliers", she'd have no idea what the hell he was talking about.

There are Lucilles all over this great land of ours and across the globe and part of achieving the Duper Level means having the Lucilles know who you are. Play in New York, and I assure you, you'll pass the Lucille Test.

Stern's Nightmare

There's a pretty good chance we'll see a rematch of Kobe vs. Lebron in the NBA Finals. But it's not unlikely we'll see Denver-Cleveland, or even worse, Utah-Cleveland. David Stern's nightmare is wasting the greatness of Lebron James on a Utah-Cleveland series. That thing might get Stanley Cup ratings.

But Lebron in New York? A Knicks-Whomever Finals? This could return the NBA to its glory days. And what is good for the NBA is good for Lebron - yet another step on the way to the Duper Level.

The Jeter Parallel

Another way of thinking about this is to remember my old friend Derek Jeter. Now Derek Jeter is a fine ball player, but he's no Mickey Mantle. He has won no MVPs, no batting titles, no home run titles. And yet, he is a Super Duper Star while clearly superior players like Albert Pujols couldn't pass the Lucille Test if you spotted her the Albert and the Pujo.

And why has he achieved the Duper Level? Because 15 years ago a Yankee team that did everything well went on a 5-year run, and he was arguably the best player on that team. Amazing what winning titles in New York will do for you.

What is Lebron Thinking?

Of course none of this matters if Lebron wants to stay in Cleveland. He's a hometown boy, can make a higher salary in Cleveland than anywhere else, and already has national endorsement deals. One could forgive him for thinking he is quite Duper enough already, thank you very much, regardless of what Lucille thinks.

And of course you don't have to play in New York to go Duper. Peyton Manning plays in the tiny little town of Indianapolis, population 784,118, where until recently the NFL was the fourth most popular sport behind college hoops, auto racing, and cow-tipping. Brooklyn has neighborhoods bigger than that. At rush hour, the 7 train holds more people than that. And yet Peyton is as Duper as you get.

But the NBA has lost some of its power to create stars. Random fun fact: the two worst-selling newstand issues that Sports Illustrated and ESPN Magazine had in 2009 were ones featuring Dwight Howard on the cover. The NBA does not have the star-making power it once had.

That said, I think the results of this year's playoffs could impact his decision. If, for example, the Cavs choke in the postseason, he may feel he needs to stay and win a title for Ohio. And good for him if he does.

But if he wins a ring for Cleveland, and does so over Utah in a 6-game series that gets lower ratings than Conan O'Brien, he just might want to hear what those folks in the Garden have to say.