Why risk playing basketball?

There’s an odd mojo going on in the basketball world right now.  In college basketball, presumptive number one pick Zion Williamson is being urged to “shut it down” and not play anymore out of fear of aggravating the knee he sprained when his shoe exploded during a game.  Meanwhile, in the pros, the New Orleans Pelicans are being urged to not play their one star, Anthony Davis, for fear of him getting injured before they can grant his request for a trade to another team. 

Basketball players are apparently too important to risk having them play basketball.

I won’t even get into the question of whether Williamson should have to return his college scholarship money if he decides he doesn’t want to play for Duke anymore.  Nor will I ask if the Pelicans will have to pay Anthony Davis for NOT playing, or if Pelican season ticket holders should get a refund on the seats that they bought with the expectation of seeing one of the premier big men in the NBA ply his wares.  I think these are excellent questions, but they can wait.

Several notable people, such as Scottie Pippen, were urging Williamson to stop playing even before he tweaked his knee.  The idea was that he had already established his bona fides as a number one pick, so any additional time on a basketball court was too great of a risk to the millions he’ll presumably earn in the NBA.  What is there to be gained by his playing?

Well, there’s the ability to play alongside other talented ball players, a facility that would come in handy playing on most teams in the NBA (okay, maybe not the Knicks).  Basketball is still a team game, and you can’t perform at a high level unless you know how your teammates can help you, and how you can help them.  Practicing free throws in a gym will only get you so far.

There is the chance to learn from one of the greatest coaches in NCAA history, maybe one of the greatest in any sport.  If anyone knows how young players can improve their game, it’s Coach K.  He’s proven in his long career at Duke (and on the US Olympic team) that he can take talented young men and make them better.  I would think that would be of use to an NBA team considering its draft options.

There is the experience of learning how to win, and learning how to lose.  The experience of handling the pressure of the ACC tournament, and then NCAA March Madness.  The experience of interacting with the media, fans, and other players with a smile.  The ability, as Rudyard Kipling said, to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.  These are all things that can’t be learned in a gym by yourself.

The logic of the “shut it down” advocates is that Zion Williamson is too valuable to risk playing college basketball.  But if that’s true, he’s also too valuable to risk practicing; after all, that sneaker mishap could have happened in practice.  For that matter, when he’s in the NBA he’s probably too valuable to risk in regular season games; he should lie in bed for ten months then get up and join his team in the playoffs.

Except, of course, by then his muscles will have atrophied and he wouldn’t be able to hit a basket from two feet away.  Athletes have been injured in all sorts of odd ways, from walking their dog to doing the laundry.  For Zion Williamson to progress beyond his incredible physical skills he will need to practice, he will need to play with other players, he will need to risk injury.  There is no way for him to get better without risking injury.

This is different from college football players who choose to sit out a college bowl game.  Such games are usually meaningless, unless they are in the Championship Bowl system. Bowl games are now a dime a dozen and frequently feature teams at or around .500.  A guaranteed draft prospect can skip the Chips Ahoy Mango Bowl without losing out on a valuable learning experience.

Charles Barkley is right on this subject: people telling Zion Williamson to skip his one year in college because he might lose out on a valuable NBA contract (not to mention a shoe deal; Nike had better make it worth his while to endorse them given their product nearly racked up his knee) are missing the point of basketball, or of all sport.  The important thing in sports is the competition; the money is secondary. 

Of course, that’s easy for someone whose earned millions as a basketball player and analyst to say.

Bryce Harper: Why the hype?

Back in the 1970’s, catcher Johnny Bench hit 45 home runs in 1970; the next season he hit 27.  When a reporter asked him why he had such a down year, Bench said that maybe 27 was typical and 45 had been the aberration. 

Who knew Johnny Bench was a natural statistician?

I bring this up because of all the hype over the signing (or not signing) of Bryce Harper.  He turned down $300 million over 10 years from the Nationals, figures that Manny Machado found acceptable (Machado’s stats are far better than Harpers, with a lifetime War of 33.8 compared to Harper’s 27.4; check out this indirect comparison). People point to Harper winning Rookie of the Year in 2012, then following it up with an MVP season in 2015.  In 2015 he had a WAR of 10 and an OPS+ of 198, which means he was twice as good as the average MLB player.

But 2015 may not be a typical Bryce Harper year.  In 2014, 2016 and 2018 he had WARs of 1.1, 1.5, and 1.3 respectively, which . . . is not great. His average WAR over seven seasons is 3.9 (27.4 divided by 7) which is . . . good.  His overall OPS+ is 139, meaning he is about 40 percent better than an average player.  According to his Similarity Scores at Baseball Reference, only three of the ten most similar players is in the Hall of Fame (but Mike Trout is probably a lock for future induction and Miguel Cabrera will get a lot of support).  His 2019 projections from Baseball reference is a batting average of .265 with 27 home runs, which again is . . . nice.

He is also a defensive liability, with a defensive War of -3.0 over his career.  He’s been in the top 10 of outfield errors committed three times.  He’s only been in the top 10 of home runs twice.  He’s only been in the top 10 of OPS twice.  He’s been in the top 10 of runs batted in twice.  Bottom line—he’s had two good seasons in seven years.

But more than $300 million over a decade?  I wouldn’t take that chance until he put together two great years in a row, which he hasn’t.  In three of the past five seasons he’s had a WAR under 2; I’d look at that as more likely being typical and 2015 as the aberration. His supporters will point out that his low War in 2014 was due to playing in only 100 games (and that he put up impressive War numbers in other injury-shortened seasons), but that just highlights his history of injuries.  He’s often gotten injured by hustling a little too much on occasion; maybe Manny Machado is on to something when he says husting “isn’t his cup of tea.”

Harper is a player with a high ceiling, but a history of injuries and a history of mediocre seasons.  Someone will probably pay him what he thinks he’s worth, because all it takes is one fool to screw up the market.  But I wouldn’t write whatever team pays him into the playoffs.

baseball free agents: collusion or risk management?

Note: While I was writing this, Manny Machado signed with the Padres for $300 over 10 years.

When it comes to baseball owners vs. baseball players, I will side with the players almost every time.  Baseball owners did a despicable job of grossly underpaying a labor force that was close to illiterate (at least football and basketball players are forced to spend some time in college, where some book learning might rub off on them).  Thanks to Marvin Miller and the MLB Players’ Association, baseball players became the best paid athletes in the world with a powerful union that beat the owners so often the owners basically gave up and stopped fighting.  They did refuse to admit Miller to the Baseball Hall of Fame, an honor Miller has shown no interest in.

One of the stupidest things the owners did when they were fighting the union was their collusion in the early days of free agency, when Commissioner Peter Ueberroth suggested that just maybe the players could be put in their place if all the owners got together and agreed not to bid on any free agents.  This highlights one of the more amusing aspects of antitrust law; the fact that businessmen get together to fix prices thinking they are being clever when in fact they are breaking federal law.  The final tab for violating federal law (both antitrust law and labor law) was a $280 million settlement with the MLBPA.  Obviously after a lesson like that, baseball owners would never, ever collude to restrict the signing of free agents.

If you believed that last sentence, you obviously don’t know much about baseball owners (might I suggest a book called Lords of the Realm for a history lesson on owner arrogance and stupidity).   Here we are in 2019, days away from the start of spring training, and several free agents have not been signed to new deals, including superstars Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.  Once again, the players are starting to utter the C-word.  Rob Neyer, in his Big Book of Baseball Blunders, called collusion the single biggest blunder in the history of baseball.

As I said, I tend to take the players’ side in labor issues, but I’ll defer judgment here.  Why has there been an impasse; are teams reluctant to pay player salary demands, or are they reluctant to take the risk of signing a long-term deal?  Are teams not offering Harper $30 million a year, or are they not offering $300 over ten years?  If the risk is the issue, I can see the owners’ side.

Some people will use the Hall of Fame’s biggest mistakes to justify more mistakes; if Jesse Hines got into the Hall of Fame, then Joe Schmo should get in; as applied to contracts, players like Harper are saying if Albert Pujols got a ten-year deal worth $254 million, then Harper should get a ten-year deal too.  But the Angels are now seeing the result of offering a long-term guaranteed contract to a player whose age is at a point of diminishing returns, with his injuries becoming more frequent and his stats becoming more mundane.

One player with an unhelpful suggestion opined that maybe every player should play with a one-year contract.  No doubt many owners started salivating at the proposal, but they should re-think that attitude.  If long-term contracts are a bad deal for owners, short-term deals are not any better.  Imagine you are an owner of a team that does everything right, drafts well, develops players, and makes astute trades.  Your team improves dramatically and looks ready to vie for a pennant and then—you’d have to negotiate with every team member who had a good season, meeting all of their salary demands.  The key to the success of the Cubs and the Astros was locking in young players to extended contracts while they were still arbitration-eligible, establishing a low payroll that you can use to try and spend to eliminate your weak spots.  Having to negotiate with all 40 players on your roster would also over-tax your manpower by having to evaluate every player and negotiate with all of their agents.  It is hard enough under the current system to know how much to pay and when to let a player go; the odds of making a miscalculation would go up dramatically if you negotiated with 40 free agents instead of four or five.

Frankly, if I were a baseball owner, I’d be leery of offering Bryce Harper a long-term deal.  He’s had some great years, but he’s also been inconsistent and streaky.  He only hit .249 in 2018; okay batting average is one of those old-timey stats, so let’s say his WAR was 1.3.  That’s not worth $30 or $40 million a year for ten years.  Sign a five-year deal and if you have five great years, we’ll talk about an extension.  Or, sign a ten-year deal but with the salary in the out years tied to production.  It’s called betting on yourself.

I think collusion is a likely explanation of the failure of recent free agents to find gainful employment, but if the problem is players expecting guaranteed contracts of ten years with increasing salaries throughout, then I’ll reluctantly agree that the owners have a point. 

I suspect what is happening also is that owners are taking the wrong lesson from the success of the Cubs and the Astros.  I can just imagine owners thinking, “So that’s it!  All we have to do is suck for two or three years, then we’ll be great.  Let the sucking commence!”  It’s like the underwear gnomes from South Park: Step one is suck for several years, step three is win World Series. To these owners, step two is a little vague; the idea that you need to draft intelligently and evaluate talent accurately to be successful is lost on them.

Don't judge a quarterback by his height

The decision has finally come down from the mountain, and we now know that Kyler Murray will try and be a football star instead of a baseball star.  My main confusion over this turn of events derives from something I heard in passing on ESPN about how he now had to return “most” of the bonus money he had received from the Oakland A’s; shouldn’t he have to return all of it?

The choice between football and baseball has perplexed several athletes over the years, although not many have the skills to excel at two very different sports.  John Elway chose football but used the leverage of switching to baseball in negotiating his early contracts.  Kirk Gibson chose baseball because he was less likely to be injured, and then spent a large part of his career on the disabled (excuse me, injured) list.  Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson tried to do both at the same time, but neither was able to excel at both for long.

Baseball might want to re-think how it develops young talent, vis-à-vis how the NFL does it.  High draft picks in football are immediately ushered into the professional ranks, given a large (but not magnificent) salary, and in many cases the chance to start right away.  The days of Aaron Rodgers sitting on a bench for three years behind Brett Favre are largely over; any team with a high enough draft pick to select an elite quarterback (or other position player) is probably bad enough to want him to start playing immediately.

There is no immediate glory for athletes choosing baseball.  Even elite draft picks are sent to the low minors, forced to live in small towns, paid a paltry amount, required to endure long bus rides, and are only able to most up after a full season, if then (and then where they move to is a slightly larger town but not much more money).  And then, after all that, the chance to star in the majors may never develop.  Maybe a hot prospect struggling in AAA will be brought up to sell a few tickets or jerseys, but mostly you have to be exceptional in AAA to even get invited to Spring Training with the big club.  Compared to that, the prospect of immediate fame in the NFL seems to be worth the higher risk of injury (assuming the risk is higher; almost all hard throwing pitchers seem to require Tommy John surgery at some point, and Kirk Gibson was perpetually impaired by injury but managed to succeed despite this).

I am sick of hearing about how teams might be leery of drafting Murray with a high draft pick because he is “only” 5’ 10”.  Despite the fact that success stories do exist among the vertically challenged (Drew Brees, Russell Wilson), skeptics argue that being a successful quarterback is impossible for anyone under 6’ 4” because short players can’t see over the defensive line.  This is poppycock; shorter quarterbacks learn to look around or through the on-rushing linemen.  I’ll say the same thing about Murray that I said in response to claims that Tim Tebow wasn’t a good quarterback; if Tebow was such a bad QB, then how did he win so many games in college (and a Heisman and two National Championships)?  Was every defensive coordinator in the SEC incompetent? 

Going back further in history, the “impairment” of shortness seems less critical.  Eddie LeBaron succeeded in college and the NFL in the late 1940’s/1950’s despite being 5’ 7”.   After being an All-American in his senior year of college (and subsequently being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame) he was the NFL Rookie of the Year in 1952, was named to 4 Pro Bowls, and threw for a total of 13,399 yards.  Did I mention he was 5’ 7”?

Fran Tarkenton was somewhat taller at 6’0” (and weighed only 190 pounds), but despite this crippling handicap he managed to win an NFL MVP award in 1975, was named to 9 Pro Bowls, threw for 47,003 yards and is in both the College and Pro Halls of Fame.  Just imagine how much better he would have been if he’d been able to see over those pesky defensive linemen!

Of course the most discriminated against tiny quarterback was Doug Flutie.  In college Flutie won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award for best all-around player, and the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award, but for some reason he was drafted in the 11^th round of the NFL draft.  Oh wait, the reason was that at 5’9” he was obviously too short to be a successful quarterback.  He ended up going to the Canadian Football League, where he had some success, if you call winning 6 MVP awards in 7 years a success). 

He made it back to the NFL in 1998 at age 36 when the Buffalo Bills decided he might just be good.  He took over as starter after several weeks and the Bills subsequently went 8-3, with Flutie being named to the Pro Bowl.  He went 10-5 the next season but the owner ordered Coach Wade Phillips to start a taller quarterback in their playoff game, which they lost.  He had sporadic success after that, but at the advanced age of 38 there was alternative reason for his not getting playing time.  He did set a record, at age 41, as the oldest player ever to score a touchdown in the NFL, and in his last game he became the first person to score a point by executing a drop kick since 1941 (a play designed by a then-obscure coach named Bill Belichick). His overall record as an NFL starter was 37-28; he should have won more games if only the NFL had given him a chance.

Not bad for a 5 foot 9 inch tall quarterback.  Just think what Kyler Murray could accomplish by being a whole inch taller!

TV reboots rarely work

Nothing I am going to say in this post is particularly groundbreaking or innovative, but I’m going to say it anyway, because sometimes there is a purpose in stating the obvious.

What was my biggest takeaway from the Super Bowl?  That it was one of the most boring football games ever played, but that’s not important.  After all, what can you say about a game that is most notable because it set a record for longest punt in a Super Bowl?  My second biggest takeaway was that I thought I had entered some sort of time warp, based on CBS’ advertisements for its TV shows.

CBS took the opportunity of having an audience of about 100 million people to tout its current lineup of TV shows.  Their line-up includes such cutting edge shows as Hawaii 5-O, MacGyver, Magnum PI, and SWAT.  For a second I felt like I’d been transported to the 1980’s.

Those four shows were never on television at the same time, but it was close.  Hawaii 5-O was originally on from 1968-80, and in fact Magnum, PI (1980-88) was created in part to allow the production facilities that had been used for 5-O to continue to be used.  SWAT was only on for two seasons, 1975-76, but there was a movie version in 2013.  McGyver lasted from 1985-92.

So, watching CBS’ current line-up of TV shows is like being back in 1985, when Magnum and McGyver were on the air and maybe Hawaii 5-O and SWAT were in syndication.  That’s not a lot of progress after 33 years.

Of course, that’s not the end of the story.  Networks are seemingly resurrecting any show that was even modestly successful, and if they aren’t actually bringing the shows back, they’ll talk about it just to gauge the reaction.  The head of ABC programming just talked about rebooting Lost and Alias while announcing that they weren't rebooting Lost and Alias.

I’m not making snarky comments about networks rebooting past successes to make a point about the intellectual desert that is the entertainment industry.  I want to ask, why do reboots fail more often than they succeed?  My answer is casting.

Of course, they don’t all fail; the 5-O reboot is going on season 9 and may very well pass the 12-year life of the original.   But maybe this is the exception that proves the rule.  The original 5-O wasn’t popular because of the fine acting by Jack Lord, James MacArthur, or even Kam Fong, but because of the scenic Hawaiian vistas (still somewhat exotic in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s) and gritty crime plots.  So, plugging Alex O’Loughlin, Scott Caan and Grace Park into the same scenery could work just as well.

Magnum, PI, has been renewed for a second season, but while the original show made Tom Selleck a household name, the same hasn’t happened for the guy who stars in the reboot (I looked it up; it is Jay Hernandez).  MacGyver made a star of Richard Dean Anderson, but I can name the star of the SNL parody MacGruber [Will Forte] faster than I can name the star of the rebooted MacGyver.

Both Alias and Lost benefitted from brilliant casting choices.  Could a reboot of Alias find an actress for the main role as gorgeous as Jennifer Garner who was able to do action scenes effectively AND carry the emotional gravitas that Garner had?  As a side note, the series Chuck had trouble casting the role of Sarah because they couldn’t find an actress who was gorgeous, funny, and looked convincing throwing a punch; thank heavens they found Yvonne Strahovski.

Lost probably hold the record for the best casting ever, largely because when they auditioned an actor or actress whom they liked but who wasn’t quite right, they changed the character to suit the actor.  The conman named Sawyer was originally supposed to appear more smooth and urbane, but when actor Josh Holloway slipped into his natural Southern accent after flubbing a line, they made the character a good ol’ boy.  Recreating the show without the incredible cast that the original had would be an exercise in futility.

I've previously written about my skepticism about the proposed reboot of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer because it would be a miracle if they found an actress with the gravitas that Sarah Michelle Geller brought to the title role.  And then there was the excellent supporting cast, which included then-unknowns Alyson Hannigan, David Boreanaz, and James Marsters, all of whom had successful subsequent careers.

Old TV shows are often successful because of a fortuitous casting choice that can’t be easily replicated.  Good ideas for TV shows are a dime a dozen, but a casting director who can find a Tom Selleck or a David Boreanaz is a rare commodity.  TV reboots (and movies based on old TV shows) often capture the form of the original, but not what made them worth rebooting in the first place.