Don't measure GOATs by counting stats

Wimbledon was a disappointment for those hoping for clarification that Roger Federer and Serena Williams are, in fact, the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) when it comes to singles tennis.  Federer lost two match points on his serve and eventually succumbed to Novak Djokovic, who didn’t win a single set but won three tie-breakers.  Serena “cruised” through her draw (more about that later) but lost in the Final to Simona Halep, thus losing another opportunity to tie Margaret Court at 24 majors.

There are many, many ways to determine who is the GOAT, but using a counting stat like most majors won is not a good one.  Players play in different eras, against different opponents, using different equipment and strategies, and a simple one-to-one comparison of most majors won is pointless.

So, is Margaret Court better than Serena because she leads in majors won 24-23?  Hardly.  Court played at a time when tennis players outside of Australia rarely made the trek Down Under to play in the Aussie Open.  11 of her 24 major wins were in the Aussie Open, defeating other Aussie players like Jan Lehane, Kerry Melville Reid, and Yvonne Goolagong in the finals.  Serena is playing in a much more competitive environment, so saying Court is better by 24-23 is not really relevant.

Of course, Serena is considered better than Steffi Graf because she has 23 majors to Graf’s 22, but that’s not really relevant either.  Graf won her 22 majors by age 30, while Serena took until she was 35.  That means Serena had 20 more bites at the apple before she caught up with Steffi.  And you can’t blame injuries; Serena missed 9 majors between the year she first won one and when she won her 22nd, but Steffi missed 10.  Throw in the fact that Steffi completed a “Golden Slam” in 1988, winning the Grand Slam plus an Olympic Gold Medal (Serena has to be content with a “Serena Slam” by winning 4 majors in a row in 2014-15) and I could make a case for Steffi being the GOAT despite being a mere one major behind Serena.  I also think Graf beat better players when she won; Serena got to the final at Wimbledon despite not meeting a player ranked above 15 in the prelims.  Steffi usually faced more serious opposition in her quarters and semis.

On the men’s side, Federer is in first place 20-18 over Nadal and 20-16 over Djokovic.  But Nadal could pass him simply by winning the next three French Opens, and Djokovic, at 32, could have as many as 20 more opportunities to get an additional 5 major wins (and he’s won 4 of the past 5 majors, missing only the French Open which Nadal owns).  Federer could win more majors, but at 38 years old his window is closing, despite just missing a victory at Wimbledon against Djokovic.

Frankly, I will continue to consider Federer as the men’s GOAT, even if his total number of majors gets surpassed.  Maybe if Djokovic passed him by 4 or 5 I’d have to reconsider, but if Joker ends with 22 and Federer 20, I’m still voting for Fed.  He’s nearly 6 years older than Djokovic yet had two match points against Joker at Wimbledon; let’s see how Djokovic’s game is when he is 38.  Federer had to battle a younger Nadal for much of his career as well as a much younger Djokovic, while few of the players younger than Joker are much of a threat.

My favorite cautionary tale of counting stats is Rafael Palmiero, who had 3,000 hits and 500 home runs and was considered a lock for the Hall of Fame until he failed a drug test after wagging his finger at Congress.  He is now off the ballot and will only make the Hall if voted in by the Veteran’s Committee (probably likely given how nutty they have been in the past), but my point is even if you take away the failed drug test, what did he ever DO to get into the Hall?  He ran up some impressive counting stats, but that only proves he had a long, injury-free career during a period of high offense and played in parks that also favored offense.  He never led the league in any major statistical category (I think he led in doubles once), he never led his team deep into the playoffs, he never did well when he got to the playoffs, and in a 19 year career he started one All-Star game as a DH.  He belongs in the Hall of Pretty Good, but not the Hall of Fame.

So, put not your faith in counting stats when choosing a GOAT.  Jim Brown may not own the record for most yards gained, but he is still the best running back of all time.  Tiger Woods probably won’t catch Jack Nicklaus’ record for majors, but he was more dominant when he was at his peak.  

Counting stats can measure linear feats, but greatness is rarely measured linearly.

Jessica Jones Season 3--A Review (spoilers, I guess)

Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 3—a review (spoilers)

The final episode of season three of Jessica Jones on Netflix presumably marks the ending of the Great Marvel on Netflix Streaming TV experiment.  The process included the three seasons of Jessica Jones and Daredevil, plus the two seasons of Luke Cage and Iron Fist (The Punisher was also involved but I never watched it).  The results were vaguely disappointing, but not as disappointing as the series all being cancelled not for poor ratings, but because the corporate overlords at Disney that now owns Marvel don’t want their product on a network owned by someone else, even if they have no plans to show them on their streaming service.  That said, I actually liked the Daredevil/Jessica Jones/Luke Cage/Iron Fish mashup The Defenders a lot.  Just saying.

Season one of Jessica Jones was a thrill, even if there were some flaws in the overall structure.  Season two was largely seen as a disappointment, one that featured Krysten Ritter’s excellent work as the deeply flawed hero Jessica Jones but struggled to find anything worthy for her to use her superpowers on.  Season 3 is an improvement, but not as successful as season one.  If I were to indict season three for one thing, it would be its insistence on maintaining a season-long arc format while producing what turns out to be 13 individually produced episodes with no attempt at continuity whatsoever.

I could give half dozen examples of plot points emphasized in early episodes that are subsequently forgotten, but I’ll just give one minor one.  In the second episode, Jessica is recovering from an attack at the end of the first episode and is told by her doctor that her spleen has been removed (the title of the episode in “AKA I Have No Spleen,” so this is not exactly a spoiler).  She is told that this will have a significant impact on her life, and that she’ll need to be on an anti-biotic regimen for the rest of her life.  She subsequently collapses from the injury later in that episode, but she never has any ill effects in any subsequent episode.  Is one of her superpowers growing a new spleen?  Or did the writers just forget she was injured?  I don’t want every episode to come to a halt and have Jessica say, “Oh wait, I have to take my antibiotics,” but would it kill her to every so often roll her eyes, pop a pill, and wash it down with a slug of bourbon?

You can’t treat a 13-episode show order like a game of Telephone where one person starts a message and each subsequent writer is free to make changes before passing it on to the next writer.  Several times Jessica is shown carefully preserving evidence that is never brought up again; given that she is supposedly battling a genius serial killer who never leaves behind any evidence, you’d think some of this would find its way to the police.

Which brings me to the second problem with Jessica Jones Season Three, the Big Bad.  Jessica spends much of the season trying to get the goods on the sort of villain who only exists in fiction, the hyper-intelligent sociopath who has the excess time on his hands to commit murders so carefully planned that the police don’t even know he exists.  We are told repeatedly that the killer is a genius, but this is an example of writers telling, not showing.  He does absolutely nothing that indicates he’s of even average intelligence, yet he has five or six advanced degrees in disparate fields like law, engineering, and chemistry.  His job?  He’s a wrestling coach!  Yes, a man smart enough to earn multiple advance degrees works as a wrestling coach (which hardly explains how he can afford an apartment in New York City, but that’s a TV trope for another day).  He is so stupid that he challenges Jessica Jones, whom he knows is superpowered, to a wrestling match, somehow thinking that his training will allow him to defeat an opponent who can pick him up with one hand.

The season also suffers from an excess of Trish Walker (Rachel Taylor), one of the most annoying characters ever to grace a TV screen.  Jessica’s adopted sister is constantly coming up with simplistic, ill-thought out plans, and when Jessica points out their inadequacy Trish's inevitable response is that Jessica never believed in her.  Two of the 13 episodes are “Trish-centric,” and she is perpetually inserting herself into Jessica’s investigations in the other 11.

The plus side?  There is, as always, Krysten Ritter’s performance as Jessica Jones.  Other actresses might lobby to make Jessica more attractive, more feminine, or more likable, but Ritter embraces the concept of Jessica Jones that she doesn’t care what she looks like or what anybody else thinks of her.  Carrie-Anne Moss is back as Jeri Hogarth, the hot shot lawyer who was Jessica’s boss and is now an adversary.  Moss also embraces the negative aspects of her character, someone whose efforts to control everything around her inevitably blow up in her face.  The show makes good use of minor characters to make this fictional world feel lived in, but at the cost of making it less tidy than good fiction should be.

It is a shame that this is the end of the line for Jessica Jones, unless she somehow makes a comeback in a couple of years on Disney+ streaming.  But maybe three seasons is enough?  In the modern television landscape, shows either run forever (Survivor, Law & Order SVU) or go away after a couple of seasons, at most.  All of the Marvel properties at Netflix started off good (except Iron Fist) and then were unable to re-find that magic. 

Season Three of Jessica Jones is worth a look, especially if you don’t find Trish that annoying (really?) and you didn’t want to pull the plug after Season Two.  As I understand it, word that the series was finished came down during production, so the producers were able to fashion what they knew would be a series finale.  My only question is, did they go back and consult the previous episodes before making up the grand finale?

Optimism is a bad way to go

One of the more amusing (or disturbing, depending on your perspective) images on ESPN several weeks ago was cell phone footage of one of their New York based personalities going ballistic when he learned that the New York Knicks did not get the first pick in the draft, thus losing out on drafting future superstar Zion Williamson.  What were the odds that the Knicks, who had the worst record in the NBA last season, wouldn’t get the first pick?  Astronomical, right?

Well, we know the answer: 86%.  Because of the bizarre use of ping pong balls to determine draft order instead of teams’ records, the team with the worst record does not get the first choice in the draft; in fact, it is unlikely that they get the first pick.  This supposedly deters teams from tanking in order to improve their draft chances (the efficacy of this tactic is certainly debatable).  Knick fans were sure that they would get the first pick in the draft.  But in reality, the chances that the Knicks would get the first pick were only 14%.

Move ahead to the NBA finals, a battle between Goliath Golden State Warriors and Lilliputian Toronto Raptors.  Warriors’ superstar Kevin Durant had been out for a month with a lower leg injury, but with the series in the Raptors’ favor by 3-1, Durant was ready to come back and lead Golden State to another title.  The medical staff of the Warriors said that Durant re-injuring his leg was “impossible.”

Those medical personnel might want to buy some lottery tickets, as the impossible happened and Durant tore his Achilles tendon.  This not only took him out for the rest of the season, but also for most, if not all, of next season.

What were the odds of such a disaster?  Unlike the ping pong balls, we can’t put an exact number of the probability, but judging from the medical staff’s prognosis the answer should be “very small.”  I would argue that despite the medical staff’s assurances, the chances of an Achilles injury would never be zero for a basketball player playing in an NBA game.

In both instances, something perceived to be an unlikely event by fans turned out to be a very, very likely event in retrospect.  Both the Knicks and the Warriors fell victim to an age-old curse that befalls of fans of a professional sports team; they were far too optimistic about something that was actually very unlikely, or very likely to occur.

The old adage is that in spring training every baseball fan thinks his or her team will make it to the World Series, no matter how bad they were the season before.  That journeyman pitcher you acquired as a “player to be named later” will win 20 games; that kid shortstop who’s been bouncing between AA and AAA for 10 years will be Rookie of the Year; that manager with the lifetime sub-.500 record will turn into George S. Patton overnight.  

I seem to recall Bill James writing in the late 80’s about how fans think a single player will improve a team’s win total by 10 or 12 (or more) when in fact a superstar barely moves the needle more than a couple of wins.  In his best seasons Mike Trout (who has been so consistently phenomenal that we have stopped talking about how he is the greatest player of all time) is worth maybe 10 wins to the Angels, but no one else is even close to that.

In sports, all fans are optimists.  I heard one wag on ESPN say that if Lebron James hadn’t gotten hurt, the Lakers would have made the playoffs as an eight seed, beaten the Warriors in the first round, and then gone on to the NBA finals.  Way to bootstrap a team that lost 55% of their games during the regular season and that hasn’t been to the playoffs in six years.

People say I am a pessimist, but I am a realist.  Not that I resist the pessimist imprimatur.  Studies have shown that pessimists are more well-adjusted, cope with loss better, have a more realistic assessment of their circumstances, and are overall better at dealing with reality than optimists.  Pessimists are better at preparing for stressful events because they anticipate everything that might go wrong.

What could go wrong?  Your best player could blow out his Achilles in an important game.  Your team might lose a lottery it had a 14% chance of winning.  You might not pay off your debts by buying a lottery ticket. 

My favorite sports quote is attributed to Damon Runyon, who said, “Remember my son, the race is not always to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that the way to bet.” 

There is a reason why Han Solo never wants to know the odds; they’re always right.

The US Constitution is Broken

The US Constitution is permanently broken

The American form of government has been amazingly resilient for over 230 years.  It has withstood economic panics, world wars, depressions, do-nothing Presidents, Presidents with delusions of grandeur, incompetent leadership and dazzling leadership.  It has vacillated between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, and has always, seemingly intuitively, course corrected when it seemed on the edge of going too far in any direction.  It is a testament to the genius of the Founding Fathers who drafted the Constitution with the zeal of academics grounded by a solid understanding of human nature.

But the Constitution is broken, and it can’t be fixed, at least not easily.

This is the result of a number of cultural forces in American life, coming to a head in the early 21^st century.  The Founding Fathers were (I sincerely believe) geniuses, but even James Monroe couldn’t have envisioned the impact of social media and Fox News.

When the Constitution was formed, the Founders were skeptical of pure democracy and so put a number of safeguards in the document to avoid a “tyranny of the majority” from throttling minority rights.  One of these safeguards was the composition of the US Senate, where each state got the same number of senators despite the state’s relative population.  This was to protect states with smaller populations from having their opinion over-ridden by the more populous states.

Back at our country’s origins, everything was smaller, including the size difference between states.  Let’s look at data from the 1810 census (the third census done after the nation’s founding) to give them a couple of tries to get it right (and only looking at the original thirteen colonies, to exclude newly created states from territories).

state	pop	% of NY
New York	959,049
Virginia	877,683	91.5%
Pennsylvania	810,091	84.5%
North Carolina	556,526	58.0%
Massachusetts	472,040	49.2%
South Carolina	415,115	43.3%
Maryland	380,546	39.7%
Connecticut	262,042	27.3%
Georgia	251,407	26.2%
New Jersey	245,555	25.6%
New Hampshire	214,360	22.4%
Rhode Island	76,931	8.0%
Delaware	72,674	7.6%

The largest state was New York with 959,049 inhabitants, and the smallest was Delaware with 72,674, or 7.6% of New York’s total.  The second smallest state was Rhode Island with a population of 76,931, or 8.0% of New York’s; the third smallest was New Hampshire with 214,360 people, or 22.4% of New York.

Obviously, the spread has gotten wider as the population grew, but the gulf between small states and large states is now a chasm.  In the 2010 census the most populous state was California with 37,253,956 people.  The smallest state is Wyoming with 563,782 people, or 1.5% of California.  To find a state with a population that is 7.6% of California’s you have to go all the way up to Kansas, which is the 33^rd largest state population.  So, the United States now has 17 states with a percent difference in population from the biggest state that is larger than the difference in 1810.  And 1810 had two unusually small states; using the figure from the third smallest (New Hampshire’s 22.4% of New York), in 2010 you’d have to go all the way up to #12 Virginia.  There are now 38 states with a relative population to the largest state that is larger than the spread between the biggest state and third smallest in 1810.

Now the United States has a plethora of teeny tiny little states.  But each of these states has as many Senators as California or New York.  The population of the 26 smallest states, which controls a majority of the Senate, is a little under 51 million, or 16.5% of the nation’s total population.  Yes, 17% of the country’s people control a majority of the Senate.

But wait, as the ads say, there’s more!  Given the fact that there is a correlation between population density and political leaning, then the Senate is effectively gerrymandered for Republican control.  According to the FiveThirtyEight article linked to above, 31 states lean to the right, mostly small, homogenous ones.  The Democrats made large gains in the more representative House of, um, Representatives in 2018, but even with a hugely unpopular GOP President and a motivated Democratic Party, it seems unlikely that the Democrats will take the Senate in 2020.

The skewing of the Senate towards small states also skews the Electoral College, where votes are apportioned by the number of Representatives and Senators. This gives small, conservative states extra influence, which has manifested itself in two Republican Presidential candidates winning despite getting fewer popular votes than their opponent.  Quick, name the last non-incumbent Republican candidate to win the most votes in a Presidential election: if you said Ronald Reagan in 1980, you win the prize.  No GOP candidate has won a Presidential election without the benefit of incumbency in 38 years, yet the GOP have controlled the White House for 22 of the past 40 years.

Maybe you consider this good news.  Maybe the though of permanent Republican control of the White House and the Senate makes you chortle with joy.  Fine.  But it’s not sustainable.  Given the partisanship that currently exists, and is likely to continue to grow, a Democratic Party permanently subjected to minority status by an increasingly radical Republican Party, despite being favored by a majority of American voters, will lead to . . . well, I don’t know what.  Democratic Party control isn’t regional so there can be no secession like the Civil War (unless the coasts can secede from the mid-west and south).  But at some point, and soon, there will be a breaking point.

What is the answer?  I have no idea.  The problem lies deep in the heart of the US Constitution, a document conceived before social media, mass communication, and leaders without souls or morals.  This will take a fundamental re-thinking of the structure of the Government, more than tinkering with the composition of the Supreme Court.  And it will have to be done by leaders who care more about creating a valid system of government than winning political advantage.

The three people in Washington, DC, that qualify can meet in a phone booth, if DC still has phone booths.

Update: A quick clarification based on one of the comments (thanks for the comment!).  George HW Bush won in 1992 as the incumbent Vice President running to succeed a termed-out President, so he was the incumbent in that election.

And while Bill Clinton won in 1996 with less than 50% of the vote, he did get more popular votes than George HW Bush.  So, in the past twenty years, the number of Republicans who won the Electoral College despite getting fewer popular votes = 2, Democratic winners in the Electoral College despite getting fewer popular votes = 0.

And by the way, Clinton got fewer than 50% of the popular vote largely because of third party candidate Ross Perot who, contrary to myth, did NOT cost Bush the election.

The future of TV is the past

“What’s past is prologue.”  The Tempest, act 2, scene 1

“The past isn’t dead.  It isn’t even the past.”  William Faulkner

Once upon a time, in a far away era called the 20^th century, a new form of entertainment arose called television.  Despite the vast resources available, and vast fortunes to be made, there were only three networks (let’s just forget about the Dumont network, okay?).  And so it was for many decades until Rupert Murdoch said, “Let there be FOX,” and lo, there was a fourth network.  And all was good, until the rise of cable, and premium channels, and DVDs, and streaming.

The monolith that had been “broadcast TV” broke wide open, and suddenly there was a din of voices in the ether, all competing for attention.  Where once TV shows needed an audience of 10 million to survive, now pulling in less than a million in the right demographic kept the lights on.  But despite the seeming chaos, there was one force that brought cohesion to the world of televised entertainment; one force that enabled people to have one portal for most (but not all) of their entertainment needs.

I am, of course, referring to Netflix.

Netflix has acted as a cohesive agent, being a portal for almost all movies and a lot of TV shows for the past several years.  If you are a curmudgeon who finds going to a movie theater annoying, just wait and you can either stream or get the DVD in the mail a few weeks after the film closed (and films don’t linger in theaters the way they used to).  TV series from all the networks were available.  In the ocean of visual entertainment, Netflix was your one-stop place to get not quite but almost everything.

But the writing is on the wall, and soon streaming services will resemble the plethora of channels you see listed on your cable directory that you’ve never heard of.  First Hulu, then Amazon Prime, rose as alternatives to Netflix.  Okay, three sources aren’t that bad.  Then Netflix announced that they were aiming at making most of their content “original” content, and in 2018 they spent more on original content than acquired content. To me, this meant that if I wanted access to long gone TV shows, Netflix wasn’t going to try and outbid Hulu for them.  That was the first crack I noticed in the Netflix monolith.

The huge iceberg on the horizon, though, was the threat of a Disney streaming service.  In 2017, Disney announced that when they started their own streaming service,  Netflix could kiss Marvel and Star Wars goodbye.  In 2019, Disney has fulfilled its promise and has announced that the most popular film in history, Avengers Endgame, will not be available on Netflix.  So now there is Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ (please ignore the fact that Disney is also in control of Hulu). 

But there is also the fact that every network has their programs available as on-line content.  And with media corporate mergers, media companies that once had small on-line content now are subsidiaries of conglomerates with lots of on-line content.  Increasingly, everyone will want to control their own on-line footprint instead of letting Netflix make money off of it.

Netflix used to be the one-stop place to go for streaming services.  But then Hulu arose to mainly carry TV series, but also to develop shows like The Handmaid’s Tale.  Then came Amazon Prime, and then CBS All-Access, and now Disney+.  Now that Netflix is no longer a monolith, will networks still be willing to sell the rights to their shows to them, or will they keep them on their own streaming platform, or on Hulu? 

One survey found that nearly half of subscribers between 18 and 29 would drop Netflix if it lost The Office and Friends along with the Marvel content (28% said they’d drop it if it lost Marvel, which is about to happen).  The default, as far as subscribing to streaming services, used to be “Netflix and . . . “ but in the new Balkanized universe it might be “Netflix or . . . .”  Before, I might do Netflix and Hulu, or Netflix and Amazon, but with so many options I might do Hulu and Disney+, or Amazon and CBS All Access.  This might be why Netflix chose to focus on original programming; it knew at some point the non-original programming would migrate to other streamers.

Or maybe the universe will re-order itself.  In a marketplace of multiple streaming services, will someone like Roku sell bundles of streamers?  That is, create a marketplace where you can choose from among various streamers and pay one bill instead of subscribing separately.  This is the accordion theory of organization—first options contract and there is only Netflix, then they expand, and multiple streamers enter the market and things become confusing, then in order to avoid competition the streamers start getting bundled together or buy each other up until there are fewer option.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

This sort of reminds me the shift that took place in the economics of TV networks.  For years, local affiliates paid the networks in order to gain access to their content; then at some point networks had to start paying affiliates in order to gain access to their audiences.  At first creators of content were eager to sell their wares to Netflix for access to Netflix’s vast subscriber base, but now everyone wants to have their own streaming service and Netflix is left to become a content creator to fill the void.

I don’t know how this will ultimately work out.  It was convenient having Netflix being the premier streaming service, just like having three major networks made picking shows to watch simpler.  How people choose to watch content on their TV screens will be resolved through a combination of economics and technology.  Will the technology ever exist where we can choose WHICH of the 500 cable channels we want to buy?  Will it ever be economically feasible for someone to offer an “a la carte” menu for channels instead of forcing customers to buy content they don’t want? 

The trend has always been for increasing amounts of customer control, so maybe buying only cable channels we want to pay for is only a few years away.  Then after we get that, Detroit can start working on those flying cars we’ve been promised for decades.

Tanking redux

I’ve written before about the futility of ending tanking through minimizing the chances of winning the draft lottery, but after hearing the talking heads on ESPN declare tanking to be over after 3 of the 4 worst teams in the NBA got bad draft picks thanks to poorly bouncing balls, I guess the subject is worth going back to.

The Knicks tanked, going so far as trading their only good player, and finished with the league’s worst record.  In any normal system, this would mean they would have the first pick in the upcoming draft.  This is fair; how can poor teams get better unless they get dibs on talented players coming out of college?  Talented free agents don’t want to go to losing franchises (although a lot of people think NBA superstar free agents will sign with the Knicks or the Lakers, two of the worst franchises going right now).

The Knicks, Cavs, Suns, and Bulls had the 4 worst records last year, and they got (respectively) the 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th picks in a draft where experts say there is a huge drop off in talent after the third pick.  The pundits argue that with three of the four top teams failing to get a substantial draft pick, teams will no longer try to lose when they see the playoffs slipping away.

There are two reasons why the revised draft format, which reduces the odds of bad teams getting good draft picks, won’t eliminate tanking.  The first one is obvious: the team with the worst record still has a 14% shot at the number one pick; teams with better records have less than a 14% chance.  Which is better, the 14% chance the worst-record Knicks had, or the 9% chance the 6^th worst Wizards had?  It may not be a one-to-one correlation, but losing more games still gives you a better shot at the glory of a first pick in a draft; the fact that yu subsequently got unlucky doesn’t alter the odds.  The Sacramento Kings just missed the playoffs and had a 0.1% chance at the #1 pick; so, were they better off than the Knicks with their 14% chance because they tried to win and failed?

The second reason is that tanking does not just increase your chances of picking first, but it also decreases your chances of picking 9^th.  The experts on ESPN have announced that there are exactly 3 good draft picks in the 2019 draft; the Lakers at #4 are out of luck.  The NBA draft isn’t like the NFL draft, where you can pick up a Hall of famer like Tom Brady in the 6^th round.  I haven’t done the research, but I suspect few members of the Basketball Hall of Fame were drafted after the first round (of course the NBA draft only has two rounds).  The Football Hall of Fame lists 16 members drafted in the 4^th or 5^th rounds.  Heck, Bart Starr was drafted in the 17^th round.

If you draft outside the top two or three, the best you can reasonably hope for is a low-price role player.  That’s not going to turn your franchise around, so if you aren’t going to make a deep dive into the playoffs, tanking gives you the best chance of drafting someone that will make a difference, instead of someone who will allow you to dump the salary of a bench player.

One could argue that the paucity of talent around in the NBA draft is due to the one-and-done rule, where athletes with natural talent shine after one year in college but players that need development don’t get the chance to hone their skills before being drafted.  When players spent three or four years in college, the NBA draft was a lot deeper.  Heaven knows what would happen if they get rid of the one-and-done rule and let kids out of high school compete in the draft.

So tanking will continue, even if the best a team can do is get a 14% chance at the #1 pick.  This means the worst teams will stay bad, but the NFL has never been about equity (look at all the championships hogged by two teams, the Celtics and the Lakers).  The mere fact that Philadelphia was able to go from doormat to NEARLY making it to the conference championship round will be a model for other teams with no other way to get better.

TV Review: Lucifer season 4

TV Review: Lucifer season 4

What an age we live in!  In days of old, when a TV series was cancelled, that was it.  Finito.  Oh sure, a few shows switched to another network, but it was rarely successful (JAG being the major exception).  But now when a niche genre show bites the dust, and a popular streaming service just might bring it back from the dead.

So it is with Lucifer, FOX’s adaptation of a graphic novel about the Price of Darkness getting bored and solving murders in Los Angeles (as the Devil says in the pilot episode, where else would the Devil go for a vacation?).  I wrote a favorable review of the pilot episode, but the rest of season one was hit and miss.  Then, surprisingly, things improved dramatically in season two.  There was a murder case to solve each week, but they gradually got less important as the show’s theological musings got more entertaining.  The show’s producers read the Bible and found lots of references to Lucifer’s Father but none for his mother, so they created one.  Better yet, they put her in the form of actress Tricia Helfer, better known from Battlestar Gallactica.  Helfer was a great addition to the cast: well known inside the SF/fantasy genre, smokin’ hot, and a very good actress.  The show got better, but FOX thought it ran out of steam after season three.

Based on the 10 episodes produced for Netflix, FOX was wrong.  The Netflix incarnation of the show delivers the same bawdy humor, off-beat theology, and entertaining musical numbers that made the show so irresistible (the season four finale begins with a music video set to Kenny Loggins’ “I’m All Right” that ranks with this fight in an Asian drug den as Lucifer’s best set piece).  

A quick recap: The Devil (Tom Ellis) got bored and decided to spend some time in LA, where he runs the nightclub Lux as Lucifer Morningstar.  He met an attractive homicide detective named Chloe Decker (Lauren German) and so he decided to become a consultant to the LAPD and share his expertise on the dark side of humans with her.  She works with her ex-husband Dan (Kevin Alejandro) and a forensic expert named Ella (Aimee Garcia).  Lucifer spends his time, when not engaged in orgies or other debauchery, with his brother, the angel Amenadiel (DB Woodside), and his protector, a demon named Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt).  Because it’s LA, Lucifer also has a close relationship with his therapist (Rachel Harris).

The good news is that the Netflix version of Lucifer is successful in keeping the team together, with all of the cast members (except Tricia Helfer, whose character died at the end of season 3) returning.  Often when shows are resuscitated a few minor cast members are sacrificed for budget, but everyone is back (well, Chloe’s daughter Trixie is absent for most of the episodes, but with the episode count reduced to 10 there is less time for Decker’s home life). 

The major addition to the cast in Inbar Lavi, who plays an old crush of Lucifer’s.  A VERY old crush, as she plays Eve, as in Adam and. . . .  This follows the show bringing back Lucifer’s mother in season 2 and Adam and Eve’s son Cain in season 3.  While Lavi is no Tricia Helfer, she does an excellent job of portraying Eve as a party girl who means well but has been out of circulation for a few thousand years. 

If there is a down side to the Netflix reincarnation of Lucifer it is that the homicide “case of the week” (I guess that is a non-sequitur in a binge environment instead of a weekly network show) are given even shorter shrift than they were when the show was on FOX.  The cases always served mostly as a tent-pole to hang Lucifer’s antics on, but the Netflix version makes almost no effort to portray any of the murder investigations as the least but interesting; in fact, I’m pretty sure at least one case was solved with no explanation as to what the killer’s motive was. 

The upside of being on Netflix, as Tom Ellis mentioned in a Hollywood Reporter interview, was a slightly more permissive Standards and Practices attitude.  Mostly it is the language, which gets a little saltier, but there is a visit to a nudist colony in episode 6 that shows off aspects of both Lucifer and Ella that had previously been unseen.  It’s hard to do a show about the Devil without some cursing and mild nudity.

The returning actors are all at the top of their game.  DB Woodside, as Amediel, manages to be the stern, humorless big brother of Lucifer and also the funny fish-out-of-water interacting with humans on Earth.  Brandt, who generally got to do little more than look menacing as a demon, gets a chance to shine as she slowly falls in love with Eve, even as Eve only has eyes for Lucifer.  Mazikeen always solved all of her problems with violence, so watching her deal with unrequited love is something new.

The one actor who doesn’t come off well is Alejandro.  His character, Dan, reverts to his uninteresting “Detective Douche” mode from season 1, when he was just a bad cop and Chloe’s ex, before he started doing improv and getting into a relationship with a woman whose body was possessed by Lucifer’s mother (you have to follow he show to understand).

The arc of the 10-episode season 4 mainly deals with the tension between Lucifer and Decker, who saw Lucifer in his persona as the Devil for the first time at the end of season 3.  With them on a break, Eve enters as Lucifer’s old flame, and they pick up where they left off; the problem is, while they both are fond of the other, neither feels good about themselves in this new relationship.  Oh, there is also a fanatical Vatican priest determined to send Lucifer back to Hell.

If you were a fan of Lucifer when it was on FOX, then by all means check out season 4 on Netflix.  If you are a fan of the graphic novels, probably skip it as I understand the TV show is significantly different.  If you are unfamiliar with Lucifer, go to Netflix and either start at the beginning or, maybe better, pick it up at the start of season 2.  Season 4 is good enough to work your way through seasons 2 and 3 for.