Let's shift again

In one of the best scenes in the movie Moneyball, a crusty old scout tells A’s GM Billy Beane, “You can’t build a baseball team with a computer.”  Beane thinks for a moment and then replies, “Adapt or die.”

A lot of GM’s and other baseball people have adapted to Beane’s use of analytics, mostly because you can’t argue with a team having a microscopic payroll winning division titles.  But the anti-analytics people have dug their heels in again, refusing to adapt to one of the more recent uses of Big Data.  They refuse to adapt, so they want the use of defensive shifts to die.

I've talked about this before, but there continues to be a push for eliminating defensive shifts in baseball. The logic goes that fans like offense, defensive shifts reduce offense, therefore they should be eliminated.  Of course, the managers advocating for this usually are those who rely on left handed power hitters for offense, and they are the ones most disadvantaged by the shift.  Hey, I’m losing, so the rules that have stood for 150 years must be changed!

Players have always been free to position themselves where ever they want on the diamond; only the pitcher and catcher are restricted to designated spots.  The defensive shift started back in 1948 as a way of negating the impact of Ted Williams, possibly the greatest hitter of all time (if he hadn’t lost 5 seasons to military service it wouldn’t be debatable).  The shift started 70 years ago, so why is it being debated now?

Because now it’s not just the greatest hitter of all time that pulls everything, it is every left-handed hitter.  Of course, any logical, rational person would simply start hitting the ball in the other direction, and after a while teams would stop putting on a shift.  But these are baseball players and managers, so logic is a rare quality.  They don’t want to hit the ball the other way because a) it’s kinda hard, and b) it isn’t manly.  So they try to beat the shift by hitting the ball “over” the shift for a home run.  Yet, even though they have accepted the shift and don’t take steps to combat it, they still maintain it is hurting offense, which is bad for baseball.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself—the shift isn’t hurting offense, failing to adapt to the shift is hurting offense.

Baseball is a little schizophrenic at the present time.  People in the Commissioner’s Office will likely tell you that the two biggest problems in baseball are a) games take too long, and b) there isn’t enough offense.  If there was more offense, games would take longer, so the whole thing is a catch-22.  But anti-shift people are betting that the desire to increase offense will get a perfectly reasonable adjustment based on data banned simply because it is bad for offense.

The fact that defensive shifts diminish offense (something the stats aren’t exactly clear on, but let’s not quibble) is not, by itself, a reason to ban the shift.  Lots of things diminish offense: fielding gloves, the slider, 105 MPH fastballs, declaring a batter out when he gets three strikes.  MLB did fiddle with the offense/defense equilibrium in the late 1960’s when ERAs plummeted, Carl Yazstremski won a batting title hitting .301, and 21% of the games played ended in shutouts.  But MLB didn’t outlaw wholesale defensive strategies, they just tweaked the strike zone and lowered the mound by 5 inches.

If baseball has a problem, it is the mentality that calls for the elimination of defensive shifts; that is the mindset behind all of the “all or nothing” swings batters take even when they have two strikes.  The philosophy of modern baseball was exemplified by the 2018 all-star game, in which 13 of the 14 runs were scored via a record setting 10 home runs.  An increasing percentage of at bats are resolved via “three true outcomes,” namely strikeouts, walks, and home runs. 

To quote another great baseball movie, in Bull Durham catcher Crash Davis told his pitcher, “Strikeouts are boring.  Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls, it’s more democratic.”  Walks are also not terribly interesting, and home runs are only interesting for about five seconds.  What baseball needs is more offense, meaning singles and doubles, long multi-hit rallies leading to crooked numbers on the scoreboard, not more guys taking home run trots.  Other than moving the fences back to match the dimensions of center field in the legendary Polo Grounds (which was nearly 500 feet away from home after 1963) I’m not sure how you fight all the modern swingers who upper cut everything and who find no shame in striking out (Joe DiMaggio once struck out 14 times in a season; Aaron Judge once struck out 8 times in one day). 

Maybe if we made players do something humiliating after striking out, they’d concentrate more on making contact.  Thanks to defensive shifts all they have to do is make contact for a sure base hit, yet they prefer to swing for the fences.  People have been predicting the downfall of baseball for over 100 years, but a game that focuses entirely on strikeouts and homers might just be what is needed to kill the sport.

Oh no, they're rebooting Buffy

In this blog, I usually try and find a position that is new, and not just a drumbeat with others in the blogosphere.  Sometimes I try and take the exact opposite opinion than the “conventional wisdom” if for no other reason than to challenge the accepted operating paradigm.  But sometimes the accepted operating paradigm is so right that I can only add my assent.

Reboots suck.

Reboots are lazy, unimaginative ways that “creators” who are bereft of inspiration continue to cash a paycheck in Hollywood.  If the original was good, why make it again?  If the original sucked, why make it again?  With the lone exception of Battlestar Gallactica no reboot has ever even moderately improved upon the original (remember the reboot of The Prisoner?), and only a washed-up has-been would stoop to creating a reboot of their own creation.

What’s that?  Joss Whedon is rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a Black actress? Crap.

Okay, maybe a creative genius like Whedon has a few tricks up his sleeve that he never got to try out on the original Buffy.  Maybe he wants to do an episode with no dialogue for 30 minutes, or kill off the main character’s beloved mother for no reason.  No, wait, been there, killed that.   But still, he could have some good ideas.

But count me skeptical.  The main reason is this; for ANY show or movie too succeed, there have to be about 5,000 decisions that ALL have t be made correctly.  Plot structures, tone, casting, should this character be gay, should that character have blonde hair or dark hair, should the comic relief come from a single-parent family, and so on and so on and scooby dooby do on (as Sly and the Family Stone once said).  The odds of doing it once are astronomical.  Twice?  That’s like winning the lottery five times in a row.

Here are two specific things about the original Buffy that will be hard to replicate (I am going to assume that Joss will be too busy with his other projects  to have the writing input he had on the original Buffy (in one DVD extra writer Jane Espenson said the most frustrating thing about working for Joss Whedon is that fans come up to you and say, “I loved that episode you wrote!  My favorite line was . . . .” and they invariably name a line Whedon added).  One is the writing room, which Uproxx included as one of the 10 most influential writers; rooms in modern TV drama.

First, there was Joss Whedon, who was Emmy-nominated for the show’s episode Hush, which famously did without any of his trademark pithy dialogue for half its run time (he also got an Oscar nomination for Toy Story).  The show’s writers include Drew Goddard (Oscar winner for The Martian), David Fury (Emmy nominee for the Lost episode that revealed Locke had been a paraplegic), Jane Espenson (Warehouse 13, Gilmore Girls), and Marti Noxon (Dietland, UnREAL) to name just a few.  To think you can replicate an amalgamation of writing talent like that a second time is an act of unmitigated hubris.

Second, there was the cast.  Casting is a notoriously unscientific process; you have to find good actors, good actors who are right for their roles, and good actors who are right for their roles who have chemistry with the other actors.  That’s a tall order.  Buffy lucked out in spades (of course it wasn’t all luck, as luck is the residue of design).  Sarah Michelle Geller brought a gravitas to Buffy that few photogenic actresses her age could match.  After Cruel Intentions came out during her stint on Buffy, there was anticipation about her film career once she was off the show, but after marrying Freddie Prinze Jr. she seemed content to make bad Scooby-Doo movies and mediocre remakes of Japanese horror films.

The supporting cast included Allyson Hannigan, who went on to a successful post-Buffy career on How I Met Your Mother, and David Boreanaz who went from being a professional dog-walker pre-Buffy to now being a TV mainstay for the last 20 years thanks to Angel and Bones.  Even the cast who didn’t go on to major success were excellent, evidence to the proposition that it isn’t enough to succeed in Hollywood if you have looks, talent and luck.  Charisma Carpenter did the cliché move of posing for Playboy post-Angel, not that it helped her career (it never does); Emma Caufield was gorgeous and great at comedy, but that is such a rare combination there are no roles for actresses like that; and Nicholas Brendon had some personal problems and no other roles showcasing his great comedic timing (the episode he starred in, The Zeppo, is one of my favorites).

The idea that a writing team can be assembled that is as talented as the original one, and that the casting process hits as many home runs as the last one did, is not impossible but is inconceivable.  I wrote a post a while back about Whedon’s career blues since he got some unfortunate publicity, and I had thought to suggest he go back to TV where he had success but then I realized something: he never had that much TV success.  Buffy had abysmal ratings and only survived for 7 seasons because it was on weblets; Angel had unspectacular ratings and was killed off because The WB got mad at Whedon for taking Buffy to UPN; Firefly, despite the legendary post-run success, was cancelled after a few episodes, and Dollhouse’s best episode was the season one finale that was never broadcast. 

The word is that Whedon will have input on the writing of the new Buffy but the voice of the show will be that of showrunner Monica Owusu-Breen, who wrote for Alias, Lost and Agents of SHIELD.  Buffy was so much Joss Whedon’s baby that I can’t imagine anyone capturing what he gave to Buffy.  Heck, they had some incredible writers and producers working on Buffy after Whedon turned over showrunning duties in seasons 6 and 7 and the show was a disaster (compared to seasons 1-5). 

Rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer is yet another attempt of someone trying to improve perfection.  If Joss Whedon wasn’t on-board, I’d write it off, but then lots of critics wrote a show with a stupid title like Buffy the Vampire Slayer off 22 years ago and yet it survives.

This is how you apologize

We live in a culture where, as The X-Files once said, “Apology is policy.”  No one seems to behave properly because it is too easy to enjoy being bad and apologize later. 

After playing in the MLB All-Star Game Milwaukee Brewer pitcher Josh Hader had to apologize for racist and homophobic tweets he made when he was 17. It helped that a couple of his non-white teammates stood up for him, but he had to fall on the old excuse that the tweets were made when he “was a child.”  Okay, technically 17 is not old enough to vote, drink, or buy cigarettes, but it’s not like he was randomly typing letters and happened upon the combination, “I hate gay people,” something he not only believed but felt was important enough to share with the world on twitter.  As apologies go it’s not perfect, but better than most apologies from athletes.  MLB sentenced him to complete sensitivity training, which seems a little late given the tweets were done seven years ago, but those things are so boring it will discourage him from saying those things again (at least on Twitter).

Another person doing some apologizing was James Gunn, the author of the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, who was fired  from the third chapter after some inappropriate tweets surfaced. If you go to the linked article and read his apology in full, you should come to one conclusion; this is the gold standard of apologies. No self-indulgent explanation of why he made the tweets, other than he was an idiot.  No “I’m sorry if anyone was offended,” which makes it sound like the problem lies with the offendee, not the offender.  No, “This happened a long time ago and I’ve learned my lesson so let’s put it all behind us, can I have my money now?”  Gunn says what he did was wrong, takes full responsibility, and accepts the consequence that he loses a lucrative, high prestige job doing something he is very good at. 

A good apology is a rarity.  So many people try to use the message to justify their actions, or make it seem like they are the put-upon party.  Some people seem to be saying “Sorry I wasn’t PC when I called that [fill in the slur] a [fill in the slur].”  My all-time favorite is when an athlete calls someone a homophobic slur, and explains by saying it was a joke, he didn’t mean it literally.  Yes, because saying a man had sex with other men would be a huge insult, and you would never say that about another man except in jest. 

Gunn’s apology is such that I hope he gets a chance to be forgiven and to work on movies, maybe even Guardians of the Galaxy 3.  There are some actions for which no apology can ever be adequate, but there are some where forgiveness is appropriate.  Maybe he’s a lying scumbag who regrets nothing, but he certainly sounds sincere.

I wish I had more to say on the subject, but that’s it.

Sorry.

soccer is dying in America; viva la baseball

The data is in and the result is inescapable: soccer participation is rapidly declining in America.  What’s that, you say?  There must be some mistake!  Soccer is the fastest growing sport in America!  More kids play soccer than baseball, which is dying out!  Soccer is far safer than football, which is losing participants because of concussion fears! 

Wrong, wrong, and , um, wrong.  According to a thoroughly researched article in that bastion of good journalism, the New York Times, youth soccer participation has fallen significantly in the good old U.S. of A.  Over the past three years the percentage of 6-12 year olds playing soccer on a regular basis has dropped by 2.3 million players, or nearly 14%.  The problem, according to the article, is cost.

This is ironic, as one reason why people have long predicted that soccer would supplant baseball as a youth activity was that baseball required expensive equipment while soccer needed just a ball and a couple of goalposts.  Apparently leagues such as the American youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) charge $190 for kids to compete in a 16-game season.  Given that all that’s needed is a ball and some goalposts, that’s a lot of overhead.  Hope Solo, the goalkeeper on the US 2015 World Cup champion (women’s) soccer team, was quoted as saying her family would not be able to afford to support her soccer playing if she were a kid today.

If cost is an impediment to kids playing baseball and developing into professional players, then how has it been possible for San Pedro de Macoris, a city in the Dominican Republic that in no way resembles Beverley Hills, to produce 76 major league players and earn the nickname “The Cradle of Shortstops”?  As someone who spent many summer days playing baseball with odd-sized bats, a rubber ball, and only half of us wearing gloves, kids will find a way (when prices aren’t jacked up by adults).

There is also the issue of placing too much pressure on players when they are too young.  Players in other countries have numerous options when playing competitive soccer; no such infrastructure exists in America, where young players must either make prestige traveling teams or play pick-up games in the park.  Imagine the pressure if a young baseball player wanted to be in the major leagues, but there were no college teams, or AAA, AA, or A minor league clubs.  Talented players are being weeded out before their talents have the chance to manifest themselves.

The methods by which future soccer superstars are identified is the subject of the book The Away Game by Sebastian Abbot, which raises these concerns.  A book review in The Atlantic compares that book on women’s soccer (Under the Lights and in the Dark, by Gewndolyn Okenham), and points out that girls' soccer has a better system of developing talent than boys' soccer.  Maybe that explains why the American women’s soccer team has won the World Cup while the pathetic men’s team was eliminated from this year’s World Cup by losing to Trinidad and Tobago, a nation with the population of Dallas, Texas.

The development of youth soccer should be taking on a certain urgency in the United States, given that we are co-hosting the World Cup in 2026.  Given that the field will be expanded from 32 to 48 teams, and that the host country is traditionally given a bye into the proceedings, we should at least avoid the humiliation of not even playing on our home turf.  But what are the prospects that the United States can go from a country incapable of beating Trinidad & Tobago in a preliminary round to one that can credibly challenge France, England, Brazil, Belgium, Croatia, and Germany for the championship in eight short years?  The answer is, of course, “None whatsoever,” especially if kids continue to abandon youth soccer in droves, as they are doing now.

But let’s look on the bright side—there’s always women’s soccer, where we have some of the world’s best players and a winning tradition.  Let the boys play baseball; we won the World Baseball Classic in 2017, and our odds of winning the next one are slightly better than the odds of our men’s team winning the World Cup in the next 50 years.

Scarlett Johansson and who's playing who

After a storm of protest (okay, maybe just a squall; it’s hard to quantify these things) Scarlett Johansson has dropped out of the movie Rub & Tug where she would have played a trans man.  She had previously dismissed criticism by citing three award-nominated performances of cis actors playing trans characters, but the fact that she had been criticized for previously starring as a “whitewashed” Asian character in Ghost in the Shell apparently added enough fuel to the fire to get her to back out.

I’ve written before on this subject, and as I said before, I don’t think you can draw bright lines as to what is “right” and “wrong.”  The three actors Johansson cites, Jeffery Tambor in Transparent, Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club, and Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, are examples of excellent actors playing roles different from their everyday existence with sensitivity and integrity.  This is fundamentally different from a buck-toothed Mickey Rooney playing an Asian stereotype in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was offensive to both Asians and those who appreciate good acting.

You can point to hundreds of examples of movies and television shows (particularly in the past when there were fewer minority actors) of egregious casting decisions when anyone with dark hair could play someone Hispanic or Native-American.  And if those roles had been filled by race-appropriate actors, Hollywood would have been a more diverse place then and now.

But I can’t condemn instances like German actor Peter Lorre playing the Japanese character Mr. Moto in a series of films in the 1930’s.  Lorre was a brilliant actor who portrayed the character not as a stereotype, but as a three dimensional person who was intelligence and fought for justice.  Add to the fact that there were almost no Asian actors available at the time, and that attitudes towards the Japanese in pre-World War II America weren’t positive (subsequently Pearl Harbor didn’t help matters), I would argue that Lorre’s performance enhanced diverse attitudes rather than impeded them.

With relatively small films like Rub & Tug, landing a name star is possibly critical to getting funding.  Now that Johannsen has dropped out, will the film get made?  Is there a trans star with as much star recognition as the actress who plays Black Widow in the Marvel Universe (and will soon have her own stand-alone film)?  I don’t think so.  If only a trans actor can play a trans man, can trans actors complain that they don’t get cast in cis roles?

Let’s apply this to the controversy over the character of Apu in The Simpsons.  The Simpson’s showrunner has said he doesn't have a problem with the way the show has handled Apu, but the voice actor who plays Apu has said that maybe they should recast the role with an Indian actor.  But what has helped the The Simpsons survive for 30 years is the fact that their cast of actors includes three suburb voice artists (Dan Castellaneta, Hank Azaria and Harry Shears) who are capable of playing multiple accents and dialects. If they have to hire an actor with an Indian background to play Apu, do they have to hire someone from Scotland to play Groundskeeper Willie?  A Jewish actor for Krusty the Clown?  An Hispanic actor to play Bumblebee man?  A gay actor to play Wayland Smithers?  Their cast is going to have to get much, much larger if each character is entitled to its own ethno-socio-sexualogical cast member.

Where do you draw the line?  Is a white voice actor playing a stereotypical Indian character bad, but the same actor playing a stereotypical Scottish character okay?  Is it okay to cast an actor of Korean descent as a Japanese character in Star Trek (John Cho playing Hikaru Sulu), which was blessed by George Takei, the Japanese actor who played Sulu on TV and in previous films?  Can a Native-American actor from one tribe play a Native American character from a different tribe?  Can someone from Michigan play a character from Texas, or someone from England play a Frenchman (Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau)?

It is the nature of actors to want to stretch, to play characters as different from themselves as possible.  It may be a mistake when Marlon Brando wants to play an Asian in Teahouse of the August Moon, or for Johnny Depp to play Tonto in The Lone Ranger.  But it can be amusing, as when Alec Guiness played both male and female members of a royal family in Kind Hearts and Coronets.  American actress Linda Hunt played a Chinese-Australian man in The Year of Living Dangerously and won an Oscar; Robert Downey Jr. played an Australian actor playing an African-American character in Tropic Thunder and got an Oscar nomination. 

On the one hand, we shouldn’t put people in boxes; on the other, putting people in boxes sometimes serves a purpose.  Increasingly there are questions about what constitutes a “box,” what elements a part of someone’s identity.  Color-blind casting sounds like a good model until there is a multi-race production of A Raisin in the Sun.  What constitutes an element of a character’s identity that must be shared by the actor playing them—their race, their nationality, their gender, their left- or right-handedness?  I don’t think the answer is black and white.

RIP Ghosted

Ghosted, the Fox comedy that was mostly a parody of the slightly more successful Fox show The X-Files, has been cancelled.  But the network, in its wisdom, is showing the remaining episodes.  Why?  Either they want to provide closure to the, um, dozens of fans of the show, or it’s summer or there is nothing but crap on anyway.  Frankly, the episodes that have aired since the show was rebooted have increasingly demonstrated that the attempt to transform the show from an X-Files spoof to a workplace comedy were doomed from the start.

For the millions of you who have never watched Ghosted, it was about a pair of investigators who looked into paranormal activity, just like Mulder and Scully on that other show.  Unlike Mulder and Scully, one was not a porn-obsessed nerd and the other was not a hot, brilliant woman doctor; one (Craig Robinson) was a former LAPD officer with some emotional baggage, while the other (Adam Scott) was a brilliant Stanford astrophysicist whose belief in the paranormal took over his life after his wife left him (or was abducted by aliens).  The two are recruited by a clandestine government agency called Bureau Underground (I am glad they didn’t go with some awkward “Agents of SHIELD” type acronym) that investigates the paranormal because, it was later revealed, Harry Truman had a ghost cat in the White House.

The show's weakness, at first, was an over-reliance on the inestimable charms of Robinson and Scott (hey, I just realized those were the names of the Bill Cosby/ Robert Culp characters on I Spy!).  The show didn’t put a lot of effort into the plots or the supporting characters, but instead seemed content to put the two leads in weird situations and then let them riff their way out of it.  After it had been on for a month Fox announced it was ordering more episodes, but they were replacing the showrunner with Paul Lieberstein, who had been on the American version of The Office and who would presumably transform it into more of a workplace comedy.

The show went on hiatus after December and returned in June with the rebooted format.  The first three episodes took place almost entirely in the Bureau’s office, and most of the tertiary cast members were finally given character names.  The secondary cast was also given more to do, especially boss Ava Lafrey, played by Ally Walker who proved to have unexplored comic chops.  But the whole thing came across as just another version of The Office, only weirder, and the show was cancelled.

Changing the format of a show in mid-stream almost never works.  Scrubs tried to transition to Scrubs: Med School and lasted 13 episodes.  Burke’s Law, a 60’s police mystery-drama starring Gene Barry, didn’t succeed when it switched its format (and title) to Amos Burke: Secret Agent (possibly because no one took a secret agent named "Amos" seriously).  The only show I can think of that successfully changed its format after a problematic start was Cougar Town, which began as a high-concept star vehicle for Courtney Cox and successfully transitioned into a low-concept ensemble comedy.   Shows can get better; for example, Angel started off fairly mediocre but got better with each successive season.  But tossing out the initial premise and starting over rarely works.

The shift in format has raised some uncomfortable questions with character continuity.  One of the running bits in the original format was that Scott’s character, Max Jennifer, was attracted to co-worker Annie (Amber Stevens West), but was hesitant to ask her out because of some baggage regarding his ex-wife.  However, the new showrunner must have decided not to go in that direction, and in the most recent episode the whole idea of Max and Annie getting together is killed by 1) Robinson’s character telling Max that he slept with Annie after a party several weeks earlier, and 2) Annie telling Max that she didn’t want to go out with him and that she never flirted with him in the first place.

Okay, if the new showrunner wanted to put the kibosh on a Max/Annie hook-up, that’s fine.  But doing it this way raises all sort of awkward questions. First, it makes Max look like the poster boy for the #MeToo movement when we are supposed to consider him the most relatable character on the show.  Second, we (the audience) saw Annie flirt with Max, so she comes off as a woman who flirts with men then yells “#MeToo” when the guy follows up on her flirting.  Third, it turns Robinson’s character into a guy who’ll have a one-night stand with an inebriated co-worker he otherwise has no interest in, which doesn’t make him look good.  Further, the fact that he insists on telling Max about the, uh, sleepover makes it look like he is more considerate of Max’s feelings than Annie’s, who probably didn’t want the incident related to anyone in the office, particularly a man she flirted with (except she didn’t).  Also, in true sitcom fashion the information was stupidly spread to everyone in the office, making the two men look even more insensitive. 

But Rest in Peace to Ghosted, a sort-of-clever idea that no one apparently knew what to do with.  The show had two well-utilized stars, some under-utilized supporting actors, but needed better writers to make it all work.  Of course, what television show doesn’t need better writers?

LeBron and Superteams

King James has spoken from the top of the mountain, announcing that he is taking his talents to Los Angeles (although he has abandoned the verbiage he used when making prior relocation announcements).  He wants to go to a team with a tradition of winning, so he has joined a team that over the past five years has amassed a winning percentage of .307 and didn’t make the playoffs.  This is like when he announced where he was going when he left Miami and some people (mostly New Yorkers) speculated that he might go to a team where he could win a championship like the NY Knicks (who had last won a title in 1973).  Okay, this is unfair; the Los Angeles Lakers suck now, but they were good way back in the 20^th century.

The most surprising thing is that he made the announcement without waiting to see if the Lakers would snag another big name free agent to co-star in his next title run.  Most of the coverage of LeBron’s future was connected to the possibility of teaming up with other NBA superstars to form a “superteam.”  However bad the Lakers were in 2017-18, the addition of LeBron and one other superstar would immediately assure them a playoffs berth, and even possibly challenge the Warriors for Supremacy in the Western Conference (but this was before the Warriors acquired Boogie Cousins and became even more, um, super-er).

This is where basketball is different than baseball or football; merely signing LeBron would make the worst team in the league a contender for their conference finals.  There is no baseball or football player who alone could have that impact on a team.  Free agency has now wrought this system where players can get together and decide where they want to team up, and with the dominance of the Warriors over the past four years it would take a superteam of at least three superstars to contend.  LeBron, Kevin Love, and three guys chosen at random from the audience (which is the rotation the Cavaliers essentially used during the 2018 playoffs) just won’t cut it.

But what all this manipulation by the players amounts to is that no team will be able to have any chance of winning in the NBA unless they assemble a rival superteam, and the number of cities that can attract a superteam is very small.  From now until doomsday, teams located is such garden spots as Sacramento, Portland, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Denver, Memphis, or Orlando (to name only a few) will have absolutely ZERO chance of winning an NBA championship (especially Sacramento, given that it is a well-known fact that the NBA fixed the 2002 Western Conference Finals to make sure that the Lakers, and not the Kings, went to the NBA Finals). 

In other words, three fourths of the NBA will exist only because the other 25% of the teams need someone to lose to them.

The NBA has always been this way; between 1980 and 2010 only 6 teams won 28 of the 30 NBA championships.  But at least in the “old days” a team had the hope that a good draft could bring an emerging star who would immediately elevate his team’s quality.  The problem was that good college players were joining bad NBA teams, but there was a chance.

Unfortunately, now almost all college basketball players are “one and done” and enter the NBA as a callow 19-year-old, with just one season of college ball under their belt.  They tend to be undersized and inexperienced, and not capable of providing a significant impact for at least a few years.  The draft doesn’t level the playing field like it used to.

There are exceptions, like in Philadelphia which implemented “the Process” which called for tanking over several seasons to amass multiple high draft picks and now are favored to vie for the Eastern Conference title in 2018-19.  But this required a half-decade of squalid basketball, fortuitous ping pong ball drops, and a series of quality choices in the draft, all of which cannot be relied upon by another team seeking to emulate their success.

Teams that have a legacy of winning tend to keep it until years after the fact. Maybe successful teams in boring places, like Cleveland, San Antonio and Oklahoma City, will be able to contend for a while by attracting stars to a successful system.  But at some point, the geographic advantage of being in a big city with a pleasant climate, like LA or Miami, will lure the majority of superstars there to form superteams, and from that point on the majority of NBA teams will just be cannon fodder. 

Michele Roberts, the head of the NBA Players’ Association, said that the players should be faulted for competitive imbalance, that it is a factor of some teams being better managed than others.  That assumes that Lebron James seriously sat down and considered signing with the Sacramento Kings, but chose the Lakers not because of money (the salary cap means he’d get the same amount anywhere) but because the prospect of playing with Lonzo Ball appealed to him.  I tend to support player unions, but she’s off her rocker if she doesn’t get that players getting together and “colluding” to go to attractive destinations together is not making rich teams rich and relegating teams in smaller markets to perpetual oblivion.

What’s the solution?  Normally I would oppose anything that restricts player movement, as that helps owners sign players for below-market salaries.  At least it has in baseball, but the economics of the NBA are such that players like Ian Mahinmi can make $16 million in 2017 for playing 15 minutes and scoring under 5 points per game.  Sacramento, Portland and Indianapolis will never be able to compete with LA as an attractive destination for young, wealthy, athletic young men, but there should be some way to stop all of the talent in the league from flowing to a half-dozen teams while preserving salaries and giving the rest of the league a modicum of hope.