The first part of my interview with Michael Cooper, the head coach of the Atlanta Dream, is here:
http://www.swishappeal.com/wnba/2013/12/9/5189960/wnba-atlanta-dream-michael-cooper-interview
Some observations:
1) Since I've followed only women's basketball, and have stayed away from men's basketball strictly for time purposes, I really wasn't aware of Coach Cooper's fame and success with the Showtime Lakers. I don't know if having non-starry eyes is an advantage or a disadvantage.
2) I watched some footage of him playing on YouTube. I don't know how good he really was - given that in what I watched they choose the clips at his best - but the man could play some basketball.
3) He is as skinny as they say he is.
4) He talks fast. Not too fast, but he could give Pokey Chatman a run for her money.
5) He was a very nice guy. At least I thought so. This could just be me falling in love with an Atlanta Dream head coach, the same way I fell in love with Marynell Meadors and Fred Williams.
6) I learned a lot. He was willing to answer all of my questions and had to give a "no comment" on only one of them.
My worry is about the inevitable Michael Cooper/Angel McCoughtry clash of personalities. Frankly, if McCoughtry can't get along with Cooper, it's time to conclude that there is no coach she can get along with. (The man has won just about everywhere.) McCoughtry might be able to get along with Fred Williams, but Williams is no longer with the DFO.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Perfection isn't compelling
I got a chance to see Connecticut at Maryland recently.
Before I begin my remarks, there is an important caveat - I don't like to see anyone injured. Period. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis's injury against Stanford was pretty scary for anyone who saw it live. It looks like nothing was broken and in about four months, she should be all right. Morgan Tuck needed some scoping, and that left Connecticut short-handed in their game against the Terps.
That being said, these injuries actually made Connecticut vs. Maryland - interesting. Could Maryland beat a short-handed Connecticut? Alyssa Thomas carried Maryland on her back for a while, and it looked like the Terps had the chance to shock the #1 Huskies.
But no. Maryland was NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME.
There's a play which I think exemplifies part of the reason why UConn can win games. Laurin Mincy pops a long range shot against UConn and pops up her fist in triumph, smiling. A dagger, right?
No. The Huskies act as if they weren't even paying attention, fast break down the other end of the court and catch Maryland's defense asleep. So much for Laurin Mincy's triumphal moment.
There was a comment by USC football coach Pete Carroll that rang in my head:
“We’re not going to do anything different for this game since we’re not treating this game any different than another game. Every game is a championship game for us, so we’ll treat this one, the last one and the next one exactly the same. And that goes for our practices leading up to it as well.”
Connecticut plays every game like it's a championship game.
"It's about us getting ready to play. It's not about the other team. We'll beat ourselves before they beat us. That's always our approach."
Another quote from Carroll. The only team that Connecticut is playing against is Connecticut, it always has been. Connecticut always attacks, always, always wants the perfect play, always wants to play killer man-to-man defense.
Maryland tried to get Stefanie Dolson in foul trouble. That's a mistake. You don't give the enemy rope and hope that she'll hang herself with it. If Dolson had five fouls, it would have been a big benefit for Maryland - but that didn't happen, Dolson continued to exploit Maryland inside, and game over.
My wife - not a basketball fan - watched this game with me. "They must spend a lot of their practices passing," she said. Connecticut can execute and execute quickly. When they speed up a play, there's not much "what am I supposed to do now?" The only player I know who improvised at UConn was Maya Moore, because Auriemma complained once that Moore was invariably out of position on plays, trying to guess where she should be based on instinct and making the right play anyway.
But there's only one Maya Moore.
Given that UConn-Penn State is on in the background - and Connecticut is up 30-18 - I wonder if anyone is going to be able to beat Connecticut this year. Perfection might be the goal for Connecticut, but it doesn't make their dismantlings of the enemy that compelling unless you're a Huskies fan. As Mike Peden said on Twitter, if this is the way that the women's BB season is going to be, I'm already counting the days until the WNBA starts up again.
(* * *)
From RebKell, someone posted a link that Jenny Boucek was talking to both Tulsa and Atlanta about that last open coaching job.
Interesting comments about Boucek's grind-it-out style. As for running with the Dream, well, we Ran with the Dream and we're 0-9 in WNBA Finals play. Maybe we should try something else.
But here's my big prediction - the team that gets Jenny Boucek is the team that is going to eventually relocate to Oakland. The Atlanta experiment or the Tulsa experiment is about to come to an end if either of these teams hires Boucek. If the Dream pick Boucek, McCoughtry should start looking for apartments in Oakland.
Before I begin my remarks, there is an important caveat - I don't like to see anyone injured. Period. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis's injury against Stanford was pretty scary for anyone who saw it live. It looks like nothing was broken and in about four months, she should be all right. Morgan Tuck needed some scoping, and that left Connecticut short-handed in their game against the Terps.
That being said, these injuries actually made Connecticut vs. Maryland - interesting. Could Maryland beat a short-handed Connecticut? Alyssa Thomas carried Maryland on her back for a while, and it looked like the Terps had the chance to shock the #1 Huskies.
But no. Maryland was NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME.
There's a play which I think exemplifies part of the reason why UConn can win games. Laurin Mincy pops a long range shot against UConn and pops up her fist in triumph, smiling. A dagger, right?
No. The Huskies act as if they weren't even paying attention, fast break down the other end of the court and catch Maryland's defense asleep. So much for Laurin Mincy's triumphal moment.
There was a comment by USC football coach Pete Carroll that rang in my head:
“We’re not going to do anything different for this game since we’re not treating this game any different than another game. Every game is a championship game for us, so we’ll treat this one, the last one and the next one exactly the same. And that goes for our practices leading up to it as well.”
Connecticut plays every game like it's a championship game.
"It's about us getting ready to play. It's not about the other team. We'll beat ourselves before they beat us. That's always our approach."
Another quote from Carroll. The only team that Connecticut is playing against is Connecticut, it always has been. Connecticut always attacks, always, always wants the perfect play, always wants to play killer man-to-man defense.
Maryland tried to get Stefanie Dolson in foul trouble. That's a mistake. You don't give the enemy rope and hope that she'll hang herself with it. If Dolson had five fouls, it would have been a big benefit for Maryland - but that didn't happen, Dolson continued to exploit Maryland inside, and game over.
My wife - not a basketball fan - watched this game with me. "They must spend a lot of their practices passing," she said. Connecticut can execute and execute quickly. When they speed up a play, there's not much "what am I supposed to do now?" The only player I know who improvised at UConn was Maya Moore, because Auriemma complained once that Moore was invariably out of position on plays, trying to guess where she should be based on instinct and making the right play anyway.
But there's only one Maya Moore.
Given that UConn-Penn State is on in the background - and Connecticut is up 30-18 - I wonder if anyone is going to be able to beat Connecticut this year. Perfection might be the goal for Connecticut, but it doesn't make their dismantlings of the enemy that compelling unless you're a Huskies fan. As Mike Peden said on Twitter, if this is the way that the women's BB season is going to be, I'm already counting the days until the WNBA starts up again.
(* * *)
From RebKell, someone posted a link that Jenny Boucek was talking to both Tulsa and Atlanta about that last open coaching job.
Interesting comments about Boucek's grind-it-out style. As for running with the Dream, well, we Ran with the Dream and we're 0-9 in WNBA Finals play. Maybe we should try something else.
But here's my big prediction - the team that gets Jenny Boucek is the team that is going to eventually relocate to Oakland. The Atlanta experiment or the Tulsa experiment is about to come to an end if either of these teams hires Boucek. If the Dream pick Boucek, McCoughtry should start looking for apartments in Oakland.
Monday, November 11, 2013
The Cobb County Braves
It looks like the Braves are going to pick up shop from Ted Turner Field and travel to Cobb County, of all places. Apparently, the Cobb County Government offered $450 million for the Braves to pick up and git. The Braves have (graciously) offered $200 million. Now of course, if you think that the tab in Cobb County is going to be just $450 million, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, $20, dirt cheap.
Basically, they tried to pressure Kasim Reid into paying a zillion dollars for Liberty Media's new toy. Reid said, "don't let the door hit your asses on the way out". The Braves are trying to spin this as "we simply decided to end our lease" but I don't believe it happened that way. Good for Reid, he's got my vote in the next election. Sports teams bring nothing financially to a community, and I say this as a diehard Dream fan. If Liberty Media wants a new stadium, fine, but I'm not paying a dime for it. Let the billionaires pay for their own stadiums and let not a dime of the public's money be spent. I'm already paying for the @#$@#$ Falcons as it is; I would have rebelled if I were asked to pay for the Braves, too.
Supposedly, the lack of MARTA access to Turner Field was an issue. Well, MARTA isn't even in Cobb County but that wasn't a deal-breaker. My take on things was that the area around Turner Field was "too poor" and "too crime ridden" and if you can read between the lines in the Deep South, you know exactly what they're talking about. I'm surprised they didn't go for the trifecta and claim that Cobb County "has better schools".
Well, the Braves decided to meet their whitebread fans half-way. I don't think it's going to do much for Cobb County. They'll be paying a lot more than $450 million dollars in the end because cost overruns just mysteriously happen when new stadiums are being built. If you have no interest in baseball, you're not going to go to Cobb County to see it. All of the "new revenue" that Cobb County is expecting with their mall will just be cannibalized from other sources - every $ the Cobb County Braves see is one $ that will disappear from some other business in Cobb County. It's not going to be any easier for some Atlanta out of town visitor to see the Braves than it is now. How much transit do you think there is between downtown Atlanta and Cobb County?
Good thing I got out of that circus and into the WNBA. By the time WNBA teams have the clout to extort cities with threats to move, I figure I'll be dead.
Basically, they tried to pressure Kasim Reid into paying a zillion dollars for Liberty Media's new toy. Reid said, "don't let the door hit your asses on the way out". The Braves are trying to spin this as "we simply decided to end our lease" but I don't believe it happened that way. Good for Reid, he's got my vote in the next election. Sports teams bring nothing financially to a community, and I say this as a diehard Dream fan. If Liberty Media wants a new stadium, fine, but I'm not paying a dime for it. Let the billionaires pay for their own stadiums and let not a dime of the public's money be spent. I'm already paying for the @#$@#$ Falcons as it is; I would have rebelled if I were asked to pay for the Braves, too.
Supposedly, the lack of MARTA access to Turner Field was an issue. Well, MARTA isn't even in Cobb County but that wasn't a deal-breaker. My take on things was that the area around Turner Field was "too poor" and "too crime ridden" and if you can read between the lines in the Deep South, you know exactly what they're talking about. I'm surprised they didn't go for the trifecta and claim that Cobb County "has better schools".
Well, the Braves decided to meet their whitebread fans half-way. I don't think it's going to do much for Cobb County. They'll be paying a lot more than $450 million dollars in the end because cost overruns just mysteriously happen when new stadiums are being built. If you have no interest in baseball, you're not going to go to Cobb County to see it. All of the "new revenue" that Cobb County is expecting with their mall will just be cannibalized from other sources - every $ the Cobb County Braves see is one $ that will disappear from some other business in Cobb County. It's not going to be any easier for some Atlanta out of town visitor to see the Braves than it is now. How much transit do you think there is between downtown Atlanta and Cobb County?
Good thing I got out of that circus and into the WNBA. By the time WNBA teams have the clout to extort cities with threats to move, I figure I'll be dead.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
New Historical Coaches File added to blog link
Since the 2013-14 women's college BB season starts tomorrow, I've updated the Historical Coaches Register. The link should be visible to your right.
The new file:
a) corrects a handful of errors
b) adds subtotals by era and conference
c) rearranges the team tabs to reflect current conference alignments
d) adds the Atlantic 10 as a conference
e) adds information about consecutive visits (or non-visits) to the NCAA Tournament.
I'll release this publicly about 5 pm ET - but if you're a visitor to the blog, you get a special treat. Enjoy.
The new file:
a) corrects a handful of errors
b) adds subtotals by era and conference
c) rearranges the team tabs to reflect current conference alignments
d) adds the Atlantic 10 as a conference
e) adds information about consecutive visits (or non-visits) to the NCAA Tournament.
I'll release this publicly about 5 pm ET - but if you're a visitor to the blog, you get a special treat. Enjoy.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
On the Hot Seat
Slightly warm: Joe McKeown, Northwestern: He has a 71-85 record at Northwestern, but his tenure has been the most successful of the three coaches that have followed Don Perrelli. Furthermore, he's gotten the Wildcats to the postseason - when Northwestern went to the WNIT Quarterfinals in 2010 it was the first post-season visit in 13 years. However, in five years the best he's finished in the Big 10 is 8th place. Is Northwestern satisfied with 8th?
Warm: Pam Borton, Minnesota. In her first seven years at Minnesota, Borton went to the NCAA tournament six times. In her last four seasons, she has only a WBI championship and a WNIT first round loss. However, she's also the school's winningest coach - but those last four years included her first two losing seasons and management has to wonder if she can turn her tailspin around.
Warm: Bobbie Kelsey, Wisconsin. Two disappointing years in a row from Kelsey might be causing Wisconsin fans to wonder why it is that they fired a coach that who had five straight post-season appearances for Kelsey? Was it the Stanford pedigree? If Wisconsin makes the move up this year that many expect them to, that seat will get a lot colder but she will need asbestos underwear if the Badgers can't break .500.
Warm: Dennis Wolff, Virginia Tech. Last year was the sixth consecutive year where the Hokies won four games or less in conference. Two of those years were under Wolff, who is 17-43 in two years. He's won 7 and 10 games respectively, and his predecessor Beth Dunkenberger's worst season was an 11-19 finish. The question is whether or not Virginia Tech cares enough about women's basketball for that to make a difference.
Warm: Jamelle Elliott, Cincinnati. I don't think anyone will be happier to leave the Big East than Jamelle Elliot. Her finishes have been 14th, 15th, 10th (tie) and 13th. In four years she has one .500 season and the rest are underwater. I don't know that they really care enough at Cincinnati for it to make any difference. After her first season in the American, management will probably re-access.
Hot: Niya Butts, Arizona. In five seasons at Arizona, four of those are under .500. The last time that happened at Arizona was in the beginning of the Joan Bonvicini years of the early 1990s. Another sub .500 season and the Wildcats might finally run out of patience.
Hot: Charli Turner-Thorne, Arizona State. Unless your leave of absence is for health reasons, leaves of absence usually don't solve much. After a 13-18 season, Arizona State boosters might wonder if she's still got it. This is the season to "get it" whatever it is.
Hot: June Daughtery, Washington State. Six straight losing seasons for Daughtery, but that's okay, as WSU has had 17 straight losing seasons. They're used to it. Even so, about every five or six years even a losing program does some cleaning, and the crystal in Daugherty's palm is starting to blink.
Hot: Todd Buchanan, Houston. He's in trouble. After a undefeated season in Conference USA, he went 3-26 and 13-17. Going from feast to famine will raise eyebrows, and the pressure is on in the AAC.
Boiling Hot: Paul Westhead, Oregon. That 4-27 finish last year and his age make it a question of not if, but when.
Might be gone tomorrow: Sharon Dawley, Massachusetts or Cathy Inglese, Rhode Island. Dawley has had three 20-loss seasons in three years; Inglese has four 20-loss seasons in four years. Then again, no one seems to care about women's BB in Massachusetts or Rhode Island.
Warm: Pam Borton, Minnesota. In her first seven years at Minnesota, Borton went to the NCAA tournament six times. In her last four seasons, she has only a WBI championship and a WNIT first round loss. However, she's also the school's winningest coach - but those last four years included her first two losing seasons and management has to wonder if she can turn her tailspin around.
Warm: Bobbie Kelsey, Wisconsin. Two disappointing years in a row from Kelsey might be causing Wisconsin fans to wonder why it is that they fired a coach that who had five straight post-season appearances for Kelsey? Was it the Stanford pedigree? If Wisconsin makes the move up this year that many expect them to, that seat will get a lot colder but she will need asbestos underwear if the Badgers can't break .500.
Warm: Dennis Wolff, Virginia Tech. Last year was the sixth consecutive year where the Hokies won four games or less in conference. Two of those years were under Wolff, who is 17-43 in two years. He's won 7 and 10 games respectively, and his predecessor Beth Dunkenberger's worst season was an 11-19 finish. The question is whether or not Virginia Tech cares enough about women's basketball for that to make a difference.
Warm: Jamelle Elliott, Cincinnati. I don't think anyone will be happier to leave the Big East than Jamelle Elliot. Her finishes have been 14th, 15th, 10th (tie) and 13th. In four years she has one .500 season and the rest are underwater. I don't know that they really care enough at Cincinnati for it to make any difference. After her first season in the American, management will probably re-access.
Hot: Niya Butts, Arizona. In five seasons at Arizona, four of those are under .500. The last time that happened at Arizona was in the beginning of the Joan Bonvicini years of the early 1990s. Another sub .500 season and the Wildcats might finally run out of patience.
Hot: Charli Turner-Thorne, Arizona State. Unless your leave of absence is for health reasons, leaves of absence usually don't solve much. After a 13-18 season, Arizona State boosters might wonder if she's still got it. This is the season to "get it" whatever it is.
Hot: June Daughtery, Washington State. Six straight losing seasons for Daughtery, but that's okay, as WSU has had 17 straight losing seasons. They're used to it. Even so, about every five or six years even a losing program does some cleaning, and the crystal in Daugherty's palm is starting to blink.
Hot: Todd Buchanan, Houston. He's in trouble. After a undefeated season in Conference USA, he went 3-26 and 13-17. Going from feast to famine will raise eyebrows, and the pressure is on in the AAC.
Boiling Hot: Paul Westhead, Oregon. That 4-27 finish last year and his age make it a question of not if, but when.
Might be gone tomorrow: Sharon Dawley, Massachusetts or Cathy Inglese, Rhode Island. Dawley has had three 20-loss seasons in three years; Inglese has four 20-loss seasons in four years. Then again, no one seems to care about women's BB in Massachusetts or Rhode Island.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
The fate of UConn
On Swish Appeal, a good friend asks the question "How will UConn do in the AAC long-term?" It's such a good question that it deserves an expanded answer.
If things really don't change between now and x number of years down the line, Connecticut bumps into the select mortality problem. Select mortality is an actuarial science concept dealing with life insurance. There is something called a mortality table which is used to set rates for life insurance. However, when you underwrite life insurance, you're not going to sell any to a 40-year old with terminal Stage IV cancer. In general, the group of people to whom you sell life insurance is a select group, with mortality rates slightly better than the average American. This allows you to lower the prices a little bit, and to be competitive in the market, because the probability of a person in the select pool dying in the short term is less than that of the general population.
As a rule, however, after something called the select period, the pool you started out with starts to look more and more like the general population. After this period, the mortality of your starting group is no different from that of the average American. That period could be two years, three years, five years depending on how you underwrite, but after x amount of time you can no longer assume that your underwritten pool members are any healthier than Joe or Jane Six-Pack.
Thus, Connecticut. Connecticut is in the American conference, which I have as a mid-major conference. Will Connecticut be superior this year? Yes. But the forces of being in a mid-major conference - decreased access to money and media attention - will slowly wear Connecticut down and after some given select period, Connecticut will be no different from any good mid-major team. Good for maybe one or two wins in the big tournament, but going no farther.
Geno Auriemma is what, 59? He's good for probaby another decade, if he stays healthy. But you never know. Pat Summitt is only two years older than Geno, and health took her out of the picture at Tennessee. As you get older, your energy flags and health problems which were non-existent at 20 and nagging at 40 become serious at 60. Do you really think that Auriemma can fight being in a mid-major conference single handed? Connecticut won't have the cash for facilities or salaries that the power conferences have. The Huskies will start to fall behind on the athletic side, and if there's another Pat Summitt out there waiting in a power conference, then you can't even confirm that Auriemma can make the American Conference great single-handedly.
Of course, this is all if things stay the same. But they don't.
Zhou Enlai, first premier of the People's Republic of China, supposedly said about the impact of the French Revolution that "It is too soon to tell". That would be the right answer to give, it's too soon to tell.
A lot can happen "in the long term":
SCENARIO ONE
The American Conference is a very poachable conference. By "poachable", I mean that its membership can be picked off for future expansion.
Cincinnati: Could end up either in the ACC or Big 12 someday.
Central Florida: A longshot to ACC if Miami or Florida State leave, but would be behind South Florida.
Houston: Big 12 if Big 12 loses members.
Louisville: Already out the door to the ACC next season.
Memphis: Big 12 if Big 12 loses members.
Rutgers: Already out the door to the Big Ten next season.
South Florida: If either Miami or Florida State leaves the ACC, South Florida could be the replacement.
Southern Methodist: Future Big 12 option.
Temple: Longshot to the ACC, see below.
East Carolina (2014): Probably not going anywhere after they join the American. A great football team without a television market.
Tulane (2014): Really shaky, also glad to have a home somewhere.
Tulsa (2014): Ditto.
So as you can see, many current teams in the American could be snatched if either a) a power conference wants to expand someday, or b) a power conference gets poached by another power conference and the victim needs an emergency replacement.
But what about Connecticut? Connecticut brings ESPN. The problem is that
a) geographically, the team isn't a fit for the Pac-12 or the SEC.
b) the academics at Connecticut aren't good enough for a Big Ten team.
c) the Big Twelve probably doesn't want to expand that far.
The only real fit is the ACC. God knows Connecticut wants to be in the ACC; they'd jump ship in three seconds if given any sort of opportunity. But Boston College doesn't want them in the ACC - there's some bad blood between both schools.
If the ACC gets poached - or wishes to expand - the Huskies could team up with Temple and join the conference in a two-fer. Hey, stranger things have happened. Coming in with UConn would be the only way Temple could ever get into the ACC.
What does this mean for women's basketball if it happens? A lot. Being in the ACC would give Connecticut instant credibility and Geno can be on top of the mountain all he wants to be. On the other hand, if other teams EXCEPT Connecticut get poached and the conference has to replenish itself with the Sun Belt teams of the world, then expect the deceleration to happen sooner rather than later.
SCENARIO TWO
Connecticut gets better at football. Unfortunately, we don't really know if football is expected to be the driving engine of the Connecticut athletic universe. Basketball had that job previously, and I think that Connecticut has only had a D-I team for less than 20 years (and they ain't doing so hot this season).
But if Connecticut could somehow transform itself into a powerhouse - well, a lot of conferences will make a lot of exceptions for a great football team with an ESPN affiliation. A powerhouse football team would bring revenue, which means revenue for women's basketball.
Either that, or the entire conference (including Connecticut) gets better and somehow lifts itself to true automatic qualifier status. I don't see that happening with the current motley crew in the American.
So what are Connecticut's chances of being a Top Four Division I women's basketball team?
Short run: good
Long run: depends on football or conference realignment. And Connecticut shouldn't hang its laundry on either one of those. The chances are better than even that Connecticut will decline. That's just the way things go.
If things really don't change between now and x number of years down the line, Connecticut bumps into the select mortality problem. Select mortality is an actuarial science concept dealing with life insurance. There is something called a mortality table which is used to set rates for life insurance. However, when you underwrite life insurance, you're not going to sell any to a 40-year old with terminal Stage IV cancer. In general, the group of people to whom you sell life insurance is a select group, with mortality rates slightly better than the average American. This allows you to lower the prices a little bit, and to be competitive in the market, because the probability of a person in the select pool dying in the short term is less than that of the general population.
As a rule, however, after something called the select period, the pool you started out with starts to look more and more like the general population. After this period, the mortality of your starting group is no different from that of the average American. That period could be two years, three years, five years depending on how you underwrite, but after x amount of time you can no longer assume that your underwritten pool members are any healthier than Joe or Jane Six-Pack.
Thus, Connecticut. Connecticut is in the American conference, which I have as a mid-major conference. Will Connecticut be superior this year? Yes. But the forces of being in a mid-major conference - decreased access to money and media attention - will slowly wear Connecticut down and after some given select period, Connecticut will be no different from any good mid-major team. Good for maybe one or two wins in the big tournament, but going no farther.
Geno Auriemma is what, 59? He's good for probaby another decade, if he stays healthy. But you never know. Pat Summitt is only two years older than Geno, and health took her out of the picture at Tennessee. As you get older, your energy flags and health problems which were non-existent at 20 and nagging at 40 become serious at 60. Do you really think that Auriemma can fight being in a mid-major conference single handed? Connecticut won't have the cash for facilities or salaries that the power conferences have. The Huskies will start to fall behind on the athletic side, and if there's another Pat Summitt out there waiting in a power conference, then you can't even confirm that Auriemma can make the American Conference great single-handedly.
Of course, this is all if things stay the same. But they don't.
Zhou Enlai, first premier of the People's Republic of China, supposedly said about the impact of the French Revolution that "It is too soon to tell". That would be the right answer to give, it's too soon to tell.
A lot can happen "in the long term":
SCENARIO ONE
The American Conference is a very poachable conference. By "poachable", I mean that its membership can be picked off for future expansion.
Cincinnati: Could end up either in the ACC or Big 12 someday.
Central Florida: A longshot to ACC if Miami or Florida State leave, but would be behind South Florida.
Houston: Big 12 if Big 12 loses members.
Louisville: Already out the door to the ACC next season.
Memphis: Big 12 if Big 12 loses members.
Rutgers: Already out the door to the Big Ten next season.
South Florida: If either Miami or Florida State leaves the ACC, South Florida could be the replacement.
Southern Methodist: Future Big 12 option.
Temple: Longshot to the ACC, see below.
East Carolina (2014): Probably not going anywhere after they join the American. A great football team without a television market.
Tulane (2014): Really shaky, also glad to have a home somewhere.
Tulsa (2014): Ditto.
So as you can see, many current teams in the American could be snatched if either a) a power conference wants to expand someday, or b) a power conference gets poached by another power conference and the victim needs an emergency replacement.
But what about Connecticut? Connecticut brings ESPN. The problem is that
a) geographically, the team isn't a fit for the Pac-12 or the SEC.
b) the academics at Connecticut aren't good enough for a Big Ten team.
c) the Big Twelve probably doesn't want to expand that far.
The only real fit is the ACC. God knows Connecticut wants to be in the ACC; they'd jump ship in three seconds if given any sort of opportunity. But Boston College doesn't want them in the ACC - there's some bad blood between both schools.
If the ACC gets poached - or wishes to expand - the Huskies could team up with Temple and join the conference in a two-fer. Hey, stranger things have happened. Coming in with UConn would be the only way Temple could ever get into the ACC.
What does this mean for women's basketball if it happens? A lot. Being in the ACC would give Connecticut instant credibility and Geno can be on top of the mountain all he wants to be. On the other hand, if other teams EXCEPT Connecticut get poached and the conference has to replenish itself with the Sun Belt teams of the world, then expect the deceleration to happen sooner rather than later.
SCENARIO TWO
Connecticut gets better at football. Unfortunately, we don't really know if football is expected to be the driving engine of the Connecticut athletic universe. Basketball had that job previously, and I think that Connecticut has only had a D-I team for less than 20 years (and they ain't doing so hot this season).
But if Connecticut could somehow transform itself into a powerhouse - well, a lot of conferences will make a lot of exceptions for a great football team with an ESPN affiliation. A powerhouse football team would bring revenue, which means revenue for women's basketball.
Either that, or the entire conference (including Connecticut) gets better and somehow lifts itself to true automatic qualifier status. I don't see that happening with the current motley crew in the American.
So what are Connecticut's chances of being a Top Four Division I women's basketball team?
Short run: good
Long run: depends on football or conference realignment. And Connecticut shouldn't hang its laundry on either one of those. The chances are better than even that Connecticut will decline. That's just the way things go.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Who Needs a Championship Trophy?
We're rolling on into the women's basketball season again. On Twitter, someone quoted a comment from Geno Auriemma (or maybe from an Auriemma fan) that out of the handful of players that have left the Connecticut program, none was ever successful anywhere else.
I countered with two. One was Elena Delle Donne, but both of us agreed that Delle Donne's case comes with a big asterisk. The other case is that of Samarie Walker, now a senior at Kentucky. Walker averaged 6.2 ppg/5.8 rpg during her lone season as a Huskie. At Kentucky, she's slightly better:
2011-12: 8.7 ppg/7.2 rpg
2012-13: 8.7 ppg/8.1 rpg
Maybe Walker was no more successful at UK than at UConn - but you couldn't argue that she was less successful, and she'll probably be a WNBA Draft pick.
The important thing - in Samarie Walker's eyes, anyway, is the following stat:
2010-11: 18.8 mpg
2011-12: 20.7 mpg
2012-13: 26.6 mpg
Walker left supposedly because she had other priorities - lost her passion for basketball, wanted to study design in Chicago, whatever - it looks like Connecticut cut her loose and basically shoved her out the door.
Anyway, the details aren't important to the point I want to make. The point I want to make comes from, of all places, one of those awful Star Trek paperback fiction novels I used to be into. It was about Commander Chekov's career outside of the Enterprise in a book that took place in the (old) movie universe.
Chekov faced a dilemma in his life. He was a talented officer, but he wasn't James T. Kirk. Chekov was never going to command the Enterprise, or a ship even remotely like the Enterprise. He thus faced two choices: he could be a first officer on a so-so ship like the Reliant, or he could be a role-player on a elite ship like the Enterprise. So which one is it going to be?
This is a question that a lot of recruits face. Take a look at the bottom part of Connecticut's bench. That would have been Kiah Stokes and Heather Buck if I'm reading things right. Both of them started a grand total of one game. They averaged 2.8 and 0.8 ppg, respectively.
At a low major program, they probably would have started. But they chose to be role players at Connecticut. They're the Ensign Chekovs of the Huskies.
Why? Well, I assume if you asked them in an unguarded moment, they'd say, "Because Connecticut wins national championships, and I want to win a national championship."
To which - if I'm being perverse here - I might ask, "Why?" (If I were recruiting against Connecticut, I'd ask this question.) What exactly do you get out of being the 10th or 11th bench player on a championship team? Not much, I'd say. You might get to go on a lot of trips and have Obama shake your hand. You might get a ring out of it and the chance to tell some great stories.
You also get a front row view of everyone else playing basketball, while you applaud from your bench seat. You also get to work as hard - even harder, perhaps, than Mosqueda-Lewis or Faris for the privilege of NOT getting to play.
Everyone knows who Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird are? Can you name the 10th or 11th players off the bench on those teams? Ever hear of Kiana Robinson or Stacey Marron? Unless you bleed Connecticut blue, you're probably scratching your heads. (Geno never talks about them.) Diana Taurasi might have heard of them; they were the bench players during the 2003-04 season when UConn beat Tennessee.
Someone recently pointed me to an essay on the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, particulary the famous "motivational" scene from Alec Baldwin. My wife - who is in sales - loved this movie, and I hated it because Baldwin's character was such a preening narcissist. But I finally understood it and appreciated it.
In it, Baldwin has been assigned to light a fire under an under-performing sales staff:
Blake: You certainly don't pal. 'Cause the good news is -- you're fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonights sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them! You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, you ARE shit, hit the bricks pal and beat it 'cause you are going out!!!
In the essay, the author talks about the idea of "prizes" as motivators. You can always work hard to get a set of steak knives. And if steak knives don't motivate you, there's always the negative motivator of being fired. The problem is that Levene and Moss and Aaronow need some kind of motivation, positive or negative.
But the essayists makes the point that guys like Blake aren't even motivated by the first prize - the Cadillac Eldorado. Oh sure, he'll show it off. "That watch cost more than your car". But the Blakes in this world are motivated to be the best. They don't need external motivations to do what they do.
"It takes brass balls to sell real estate," he later says, using an appropriate prop. That's Blake's motivation. To show the world that he has brass balls.
Pete Rose used to say that he'd run through hell in a gasoline suit to play basketball. I think that Diana Taurasi is the same way, she'd play just as hard for Binghamton as she'd have played for UConn.
So what is the point of playing basketball? It's to get better. The best players want to get better all the time. But if you're not on the court, how on earth are you really going to get better? You can't get better at basketball unless you play basketball. Who knows, maybe Kiah Stokes and Heather Buck are really, really great basketball players. But looking at the box scores, that's kind of hard to say.
The number one consideration for any basketball recruit should be playing time. There are lots of coaches out there who can make you better; Geno Auriemma doesn't hold the monopoly. Can you honestly tell me that Auriemma is really a better coach or a better developer of basketball talent than Kathy Delaney-Smith over at Harvard? And don't point to the national championships; Delaney-Smith will never have the raw talent that Auriemma has. One of Delaney-Smith's teams was the only team in NCAA basketball history where a #16 seed beat a #1 seed (with caveats).
You really think that Auriemma can make you a better player than Delaney-Smith could? Really? Tell me what metric measures that.
If I were in the shoes of the 11th or 12th player on the UConn bench, if it looked like I'd be saying "nice job!" to the Maya Moores and Tina Charleses and Sue Birds of the world, I'd ask for a transfer immediately. An NCAA basketball player gets four years to play basketball. A recruit should go to the place where her chances of playing basketball are maximized - period - because how is she going to get better if she doesn't play?
"But you'd be giving up a national championship!" That's an externality. That's like playing for the Cadillac Eldorado. The best players don't need the external motivation. They want to be the best they can be whether they're playing at Division I or Division III. The best players play hard all the time, no matter where they're playing. (Not coincidentally, those are exactly the players that Auriemma looks for.)
If someone told me that the cost of transferring out of UConn was abandoning a national championship, I'd reply that I'd rather be Chekov on the Reliant than Chekov on the Enterprise. You might end up with an earworm digging a tunnel into your brain -- but at least you'd be in command.
I countered with two. One was Elena Delle Donne, but both of us agreed that Delle Donne's case comes with a big asterisk. The other case is that of Samarie Walker, now a senior at Kentucky. Walker averaged 6.2 ppg/5.8 rpg during her lone season as a Huskie. At Kentucky, she's slightly better:
2011-12: 8.7 ppg/7.2 rpg
2012-13: 8.7 ppg/8.1 rpg
Maybe Walker was no more successful at UK than at UConn - but you couldn't argue that she was less successful, and she'll probably be a WNBA Draft pick.
The important thing - in Samarie Walker's eyes, anyway, is the following stat:
2010-11: 18.8 mpg
2011-12: 20.7 mpg
2012-13: 26.6 mpg
Walker left supposedly because she had other priorities - lost her passion for basketball, wanted to study design in Chicago, whatever - it looks like Connecticut cut her loose and basically shoved her out the door.
Anyway, the details aren't important to the point I want to make. The point I want to make comes from, of all places, one of those awful Star Trek paperback fiction novels I used to be into. It was about Commander Chekov's career outside of the Enterprise in a book that took place in the (old) movie universe.
Chekov faced a dilemma in his life. He was a talented officer, but he wasn't James T. Kirk. Chekov was never going to command the Enterprise, or a ship even remotely like the Enterprise. He thus faced two choices: he could be a first officer on a so-so ship like the Reliant, or he could be a role-player on a elite ship like the Enterprise. So which one is it going to be?
This is a question that a lot of recruits face. Take a look at the bottom part of Connecticut's bench. That would have been Kiah Stokes and Heather Buck if I'm reading things right. Both of them started a grand total of one game. They averaged 2.8 and 0.8 ppg, respectively.
At a low major program, they probably would have started. But they chose to be role players at Connecticut. They're the Ensign Chekovs of the Huskies.
Why? Well, I assume if you asked them in an unguarded moment, they'd say, "Because Connecticut wins national championships, and I want to win a national championship."
To which - if I'm being perverse here - I might ask, "Why?" (If I were recruiting against Connecticut, I'd ask this question.) What exactly do you get out of being the 10th or 11th bench player on a championship team? Not much, I'd say. You might get to go on a lot of trips and have Obama shake your hand. You might get a ring out of it and the chance to tell some great stories.
You also get a front row view of everyone else playing basketball, while you applaud from your bench seat. You also get to work as hard - even harder, perhaps, than Mosqueda-Lewis or Faris for the privilege of NOT getting to play.
Everyone knows who Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird are? Can you name the 10th or 11th players off the bench on those teams? Ever hear of Kiana Robinson or Stacey Marron? Unless you bleed Connecticut blue, you're probably scratching your heads. (Geno never talks about them.) Diana Taurasi might have heard of them; they were the bench players during the 2003-04 season when UConn beat Tennessee.
Someone recently pointed me to an essay on the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, particulary the famous "motivational" scene from Alec Baldwin. My wife - who is in sales - loved this movie, and I hated it because Baldwin's character was such a preening narcissist. But I finally understood it and appreciated it.
In it, Baldwin has been assigned to light a fire under an under-performing sales staff:
Blake: You certainly don't pal. 'Cause the good news is -- you're fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonights sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them! You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, you ARE shit, hit the bricks pal and beat it 'cause you are going out!!!
In the essay, the author talks about the idea of "prizes" as motivators. You can always work hard to get a set of steak knives. And if steak knives don't motivate you, there's always the negative motivator of being fired. The problem is that Levene and Moss and Aaronow need some kind of motivation, positive or negative.
But the essayists makes the point that guys like Blake aren't even motivated by the first prize - the Cadillac Eldorado. Oh sure, he'll show it off. "That watch cost more than your car". But the Blakes in this world are motivated to be the best. They don't need external motivations to do what they do.
"It takes brass balls to sell real estate," he later says, using an appropriate prop. That's Blake's motivation. To show the world that he has brass balls.
Pete Rose used to say that he'd run through hell in a gasoline suit to play basketball. I think that Diana Taurasi is the same way, she'd play just as hard for Binghamton as she'd have played for UConn.
So what is the point of playing basketball? It's to get better. The best players want to get better all the time. But if you're not on the court, how on earth are you really going to get better? You can't get better at basketball unless you play basketball. Who knows, maybe Kiah Stokes and Heather Buck are really, really great basketball players. But looking at the box scores, that's kind of hard to say.
The number one consideration for any basketball recruit should be playing time. There are lots of coaches out there who can make you better; Geno Auriemma doesn't hold the monopoly. Can you honestly tell me that Auriemma is really a better coach or a better developer of basketball talent than Kathy Delaney-Smith over at Harvard? And don't point to the national championships; Delaney-Smith will never have the raw talent that Auriemma has. One of Delaney-Smith's teams was the only team in NCAA basketball history where a #16 seed beat a #1 seed (with caveats).
You really think that Auriemma can make you a better player than Delaney-Smith could? Really? Tell me what metric measures that.
If I were in the shoes of the 11th or 12th player on the UConn bench, if it looked like I'd be saying "nice job!" to the Maya Moores and Tina Charleses and Sue Birds of the world, I'd ask for a transfer immediately. An NCAA basketball player gets four years to play basketball. A recruit should go to the place where her chances of playing basketball are maximized - period - because how is she going to get better if she doesn't play?
"But you'd be giving up a national championship!" That's an externality. That's like playing for the Cadillac Eldorado. The best players don't need the external motivation. They want to be the best they can be whether they're playing at Division I or Division III. The best players play hard all the time, no matter where they're playing. (Not coincidentally, those are exactly the players that Auriemma looks for.)
If someone told me that the cost of transferring out of UConn was abandoning a national championship, I'd reply that I'd rather be Chekov on the Reliant than Chekov on the Enterprise. You might end up with an earworm digging a tunnel into your brain -- but at least you'd be in command.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Fred, We Hardly Knew Ye
As time passes, more and more ties are broken from the founding of the Atlanta Dream franchise. When Fred Williams was fired on Friday - let's skip the euphemisms, we're adults here - the only person who is either a player or coach still left from 2008 is Erika de Souza - and she didn't even start playing at the beginning of the season due to injury.
So why get rid of Senor Fred? Clearly, the DFO weren't happy about the Dream's oh-for-three again in the Finals. (They had to pay for a game in Gwinnett that they were probably going to lose. That cost money.) That 25 percent or so shooting game in Game One of the Eastern Semifinals might have sealed Williams's fate right there.
The fact is, in basketball a team can get lucky in a short three-game series and more so in the WNBA because there's more parity there than in the NBA. The Noll-Scully Index for the league this year was 1.88 - much better than 2012's 2.49 or 2011's 2.30. (As a matter of fact, 1.88 is the weighted average Noll-Scully across all 17 seasons.)
Not a single team in the league finished with less than 10 wins. The last time that happened was in 2009, the most competitive season in WNBA history.
So with so much parity (relatively speaking for basketball), the Dream escaped the first round alive when Washington handed Game 2 right back to them and the Fever choked. The DFO should have been happy that Senor Fred even got as far as the Finals; it wasn't as if anyone thought the Dream had a chance anyway.
Why was he fired? Who knows? Williams was a player's coach, and sometimes it showed. McCoughtry playing one-on-four against the Lynx in the paint. Thomas jacking up shots less than 10 seconds into the shot clock.
The problem the DFO have is that the current configuration of the Dream won't work with anyone but a player's coach. I suspect that Williams was more McCoughtry's traveling confidante/psychiatrist than anything else. The Dream were playing smart ball the first 11 games of the season; then Lyttle got hurt and it was back to the same old McCoughtry-vs-the-world gameplan.
You could get Corey Gaines as our new coach, I suppose. Hey, the Dream wouldn't even have to play defense under him! But who wants that?
As someone said on RebKell, there are three scenarios that could explain why Williams had to eat boot.
1) "Pump and dump": The owner of the Golden State Warriors has been talking about getting a WNBA franchise to match his NBA toy. However, he doesn't want an expansion franchise that will stink up the joint for 10 years (see: Lynx). So he's in the market for a experienced franchise with talent.
Therefore, the Brock/Loeffler team are going to make one last push. They'll spend what they're allowed to and connive as much as they can. If the team can't win with Williams, they'll get a new coach and a deeper bench to make that push. Maybe another conference championship.
Then, when the Dream stock is high again, they call Mr. Golden State. He offers them a couple of million dollars for their losses over the years and guess what? We have the California Dream. (Hint: if the new coach is Jenny Boucek, players should start looking for apartments in Oakland.)
2) McCoughtry left for Europe and her Turkish season sometime around Thursday. She had a hand in getting rid of one coach, why not get rid of a second one before the European season starts? When Meadors lost her power struggle with McCoughtry, that meant that McCoughtry ran the team in the eyes of the DFO. McCoughtry - never one to blame herself - might have put a bug in Brock or Loeffler's ear.
"Hey, if Williams wasn't our head coach, we could have won." Dolchstoss!
3) It could be that frankly, the DFO is tired of McCoughtry's bullshit.
There are three constants over these three finals - Erika de Souza, Armintie Herrington, and McCoughtry. We got in a new coach; nothing changed. More finals failure. If it's not the coach's fault, then it must be the players.
So who do you get rid of? You get rid of the biggest pain-in-the-ass, McCoughtry. (It's not like we're selling tickets because of her, anyway.) Willliams's dismissal gets rid of her defender. The new coach (whoever that is) is told to deal McCoughtry off. I bet Bill Laimbeer is pounding his pillow at night in frustration, swearing because he has no player of McCoughtry's caliber to deal. Of course, if the Libs get the #1 pick...then he'd get Charles, who isn't the PITA that McCoughtry is.
The idea is that the old order doesn't work, so you blow crap up. No one is safe. Not Williams, not McCoughtry, not nobody. We get a new coach and a brand new team after all the parts are dealt. (Hey, why not get Laimbeer as head coach? He'll call a few friends!)
What do I think about Fred Williams? I think he's a great guy. I think that under the right circumstances, he's a great coach. (Although he's definitely laid back.) He can evaluate talent. With the right mix of players, he's just as capable a head coach as anyone out there.
He's a great person. Easy to talk to. I'll miss him, definitely.
I suspect that Julie Plank is going to be offered the baton next. Rumor I heard was that Fred Williams was let go because Tulsa started asking about Julie Plank and the Dream didn't want another Carol Ross situation to happen. Don't know what Julie Plank is like. I might have the chance to find out.
SIDE RANT: The 2013 Lynx finished 1.377 standard deviations above the mean in the regular season. That won't even get you into the Top 14 WNBA teams of all time, and yet Minnesota's fans talk as if Minnesota is the 1927 Murderer's Row. Sorry, but you need a lot deeper bench and you need to play against a lot tougher competition to be considered a dynasty. (Furthermore, if Minnesota is so great, how did they lose to Indiana in 2012 in four games? The Fever finished fourth overall in the WNBA and no WNBA team to win a championship had ever finished so low overall.)
So why get rid of Senor Fred? Clearly, the DFO weren't happy about the Dream's oh-for-three again in the Finals. (They had to pay for a game in Gwinnett that they were probably going to lose. That cost money.) That 25 percent or so shooting game in Game One of the Eastern Semifinals might have sealed Williams's fate right there.
The fact is, in basketball a team can get lucky in a short three-game series and more so in the WNBA because there's more parity there than in the NBA. The Noll-Scully Index for the league this year was 1.88 - much better than 2012's 2.49 or 2011's 2.30. (As a matter of fact, 1.88 is the weighted average Noll-Scully across all 17 seasons.)
Not a single team in the league finished with less than 10 wins. The last time that happened was in 2009, the most competitive season in WNBA history.
So with so much parity (relatively speaking for basketball), the Dream escaped the first round alive when Washington handed Game 2 right back to them and the Fever choked. The DFO should have been happy that Senor Fred even got as far as the Finals; it wasn't as if anyone thought the Dream had a chance anyway.
Why was he fired? Who knows? Williams was a player's coach, and sometimes it showed. McCoughtry playing one-on-four against the Lynx in the paint. Thomas jacking up shots less than 10 seconds into the shot clock.
The problem the DFO have is that the current configuration of the Dream won't work with anyone but a player's coach. I suspect that Williams was more McCoughtry's traveling confidante/psychiatrist than anything else. The Dream were playing smart ball the first 11 games of the season; then Lyttle got hurt and it was back to the same old McCoughtry-vs-the-world gameplan.
You could get Corey Gaines as our new coach, I suppose. Hey, the Dream wouldn't even have to play defense under him! But who wants that?
As someone said on RebKell, there are three scenarios that could explain why Williams had to eat boot.
1) "Pump and dump": The owner of the Golden State Warriors has been talking about getting a WNBA franchise to match his NBA toy. However, he doesn't want an expansion franchise that will stink up the joint for 10 years (see: Lynx). So he's in the market for a experienced franchise with talent.
Therefore, the Brock/Loeffler team are going to make one last push. They'll spend what they're allowed to and connive as much as they can. If the team can't win with Williams, they'll get a new coach and a deeper bench to make that push. Maybe another conference championship.
Then, when the Dream stock is high again, they call Mr. Golden State. He offers them a couple of million dollars for their losses over the years and guess what? We have the California Dream. (Hint: if the new coach is Jenny Boucek, players should start looking for apartments in Oakland.)
2) McCoughtry left for Europe and her Turkish season sometime around Thursday. She had a hand in getting rid of one coach, why not get rid of a second one before the European season starts? When Meadors lost her power struggle with McCoughtry, that meant that McCoughtry ran the team in the eyes of the DFO. McCoughtry - never one to blame herself - might have put a bug in Brock or Loeffler's ear.
"Hey, if Williams wasn't our head coach, we could have won." Dolchstoss!
3) It could be that frankly, the DFO is tired of McCoughtry's bullshit.
There are three constants over these three finals - Erika de Souza, Armintie Herrington, and McCoughtry. We got in a new coach; nothing changed. More finals failure. If it's not the coach's fault, then it must be the players.
So who do you get rid of? You get rid of the biggest pain-in-the-ass, McCoughtry. (It's not like we're selling tickets because of her, anyway.) Willliams's dismissal gets rid of her defender. The new coach (whoever that is) is told to deal McCoughtry off. I bet Bill Laimbeer is pounding his pillow at night in frustration, swearing because he has no player of McCoughtry's caliber to deal. Of course, if the Libs get the #1 pick...then he'd get Charles, who isn't the PITA that McCoughtry is.
The idea is that the old order doesn't work, so you blow crap up. No one is safe. Not Williams, not McCoughtry, not nobody. We get a new coach and a brand new team after all the parts are dealt. (Hey, why not get Laimbeer as head coach? He'll call a few friends!)
What do I think about Fred Williams? I think he's a great guy. I think that under the right circumstances, he's a great coach. (Although he's definitely laid back.) He can evaluate talent. With the right mix of players, he's just as capable a head coach as anyone out there.
He's a great person. Easy to talk to. I'll miss him, definitely.
I suspect that Julie Plank is going to be offered the baton next. Rumor I heard was that Fred Williams was let go because Tulsa started asking about Julie Plank and the Dream didn't want another Carol Ross situation to happen. Don't know what Julie Plank is like. I might have the chance to find out.
SIDE RANT: The 2013 Lynx finished 1.377 standard deviations above the mean in the regular season. That won't even get you into the Top 14 WNBA teams of all time, and yet Minnesota's fans talk as if Minnesota is the 1927 Murderer's Row. Sorry, but you need a lot deeper bench and you need to play against a lot tougher competition to be considered a dynasty. (Furthermore, if Minnesota is so great, how did they lose to Indiana in 2012 in four games? The Fever finished fourth overall in the WNBA and no WNBA team to win a championship had ever finished so low overall.)
Monday, October 14, 2013
The Off-Season
The WNBA has a ridiculously long off season. It will be seven or eight months before we even see as much as a pre-season game. The players are now in the process of fleeing to their clubs overseas; we might not see some of them back until the season starts (if then).
There's a saying that "idle hands are the Devil's workshop" and it's never been truer with me. In the past, I've tried two things to try to pass the time.
1) Cover Georgia Tech basketball. The problem is that it's not only generally hard to get to a Georgia Tech game (Georgia Tech's in the city, same as the Dream), but it's cold. I also got the impression that despite my single-handed efforts, no one really cared much about Georgia Tech women's basketball.
2) Cover basketball overseas. Even fewer people cared about that than Georgia Tech. No sense in doing hours of work a week with virtually no feedback. No writer wants to feel like he's talking to himself.
Now, if I wanted to cover Connecticut or Tennessee women's basketball, then bar the door! You'd definitely get page views if that was your be-all and end-all goal. But UConn is too far away and really, so is Tennessee. I really feel for these fans who love a team but live nowhere near it.
Therefore, I think I'll give girls prep basketball a try. Why not? I really don't know much about the scene anyway and it might be interesting to experience firsthand - to watch players at the prep level and see how they progress (or fail to) over the season. There are lots of good schools in the area and I'm sure I can see lots of good basketball over the winter.
I once posted on Twitter about possibly creating a website dedicated to Atlanta Prep basketball. A friend strongly advised against it, thinking that I was trying to create a scouting service. He said that a lot of people who produce scouting reports for pay are okay, but there are a lot of people who are just in it for the wrong reasons (fame/power/influence) and he hoped that I wouldn't be one of those people.
To which I might respond. "Yeah, but everyone knows that I don't know what I'm doing." It's not like I'm trying to keep my overall lack of knowledge a secret. Anyone who buys a scouting report from me is throwing his money away.
So you might be reading about my adventures of sitting on wooden benches over the winter. One month (maybe) till prep season!
There's a saying that "idle hands are the Devil's workshop" and it's never been truer with me. In the past, I've tried two things to try to pass the time.
1) Cover Georgia Tech basketball. The problem is that it's not only generally hard to get to a Georgia Tech game (Georgia Tech's in the city, same as the Dream), but it's cold. I also got the impression that despite my single-handed efforts, no one really cared much about Georgia Tech women's basketball.
2) Cover basketball overseas. Even fewer people cared about that than Georgia Tech. No sense in doing hours of work a week with virtually no feedback. No writer wants to feel like he's talking to himself.
Now, if I wanted to cover Connecticut or Tennessee women's basketball, then bar the door! You'd definitely get page views if that was your be-all and end-all goal. But UConn is too far away and really, so is Tennessee. I really feel for these fans who love a team but live nowhere near it.
Therefore, I think I'll give girls prep basketball a try. Why not? I really don't know much about the scene anyway and it might be interesting to experience firsthand - to watch players at the prep level and see how they progress (or fail to) over the season. There are lots of good schools in the area and I'm sure I can see lots of good basketball over the winter.
I once posted on Twitter about possibly creating a website dedicated to Atlanta Prep basketball. A friend strongly advised against it, thinking that I was trying to create a scouting service. He said that a lot of people who produce scouting reports for pay are okay, but there are a lot of people who are just in it for the wrong reasons (fame/power/influence) and he hoped that I wouldn't be one of those people.
To which I might respond. "Yeah, but everyone knows that I don't know what I'm doing." It's not like I'm trying to keep my overall lack of knowledge a secret. Anyone who buys a scouting report from me is throwing his money away.
So you might be reading about my adventures of sitting on wooden benches over the winter. One month (maybe) till prep season!
Friday, October 11, 2013
2013 WNBA Finals: Minnesota @ Atlanta (Game 3)
I guess you could call Atlanta "Titletown". I've been fortunate enough to see three WNBA champions crowned at my home arena; the problem is that none of those three champions were called the Atlanta Dream.
I suppose that the best analogy to the Dream losing Game Three and getting swept again is like being in a bad relationship with someone. You know things are going downhill, and you hope that you can reignite that spark. So the two of you stick it out, but you've had two nasty arguments and you suspect that on Thursday, she's going to talk to you and tell you that she never wants to see you again.
Sure enough, Thursday comes, and she says softly "It's not working out." As she walks out the door, frankly, you're glad that it's over. You can now begin to put the heartache away, and frankly, the suspense was killing you.
The Dream have really been against the wall in those three years. The combined playoff records of the three teams they played are 21-1, only Minnesota in 2011 dropped a game against San Antonio. All three of those teams - Seattle in 2009, Minnesota in 2010 and 2011 - were full on first seeds, regular season champions of their conferences.
It makes you wonder how things would have gone if:
a) Sancho Lyttle was healthy. She injured her foot on July 9th in a game against Minnesota. (How apropos.) Atlanta was simply a different team without Lyttle, a difference as stark as blood and water. If the defense on Angel McCoughtry became too heavy, she could always look for either Lyttle or de Souza; Lyttle's foot injury limited her options and the Dream took a long time to adjust.
Really, the Dream never adjusted. Le'coe Willingham was no Sancho Lyttle. Henry was at best a stop-gap and the Dream stumbled into a surprisingly effective small ball lineup out of necessity.
b) We had played a weaker Western Conference team. There are those voices calling the 2013 Minnesota Lynx the Greatest Of All Time; I think the old Comets or Sparks teams would have begged to differ. If the Dream had played, say, the 2008 San Antonio Silver Stars things might have worked out differently.
c) The Dream had made substantial changes after Game One. Most people don't think that the Fred Williams Dream is different than the Marynell Meadors Dream, but there is a difference - the present-day Dream defends harder; Meadors's teams were more offense-based. However, the Dream's offense doesn't seem to have changed much - either McCoughtry shoots or the ball is shoved into the post, with the point guard as facilitator and a decent shooter to distract defenses.
Everyone on the Lynx knew where the ball was going. Our playbook has been around since 2008.
d) We had a decent three point threat. Oh, the effort that has been wasted to try to get someone who could hit a three-point shot. As Meadors said, "We don't hit threes, but we sure get a lot of twos." Minnesota showed the disadvantages to that strategy.
Last night, we actually hit three-pointers and stayed in the game for big stretches.
e) McCoughtry had decided to pass more. Sometimes you just can't pass to someone because they're not open; but sometimes I feel that she just didn't look. It's odd that the Dream did a lot better with McCoughtry on the bench for a while; Minnesota had to adjust to NOT expecting her to play one-on-three ball in the paint.
All of the above? Doesn't mean anything. Coulda, shoulda, woulda - didn'a.
f) Thomas and Bentley didn't jack up so many shots early in the shot clock. Sometimes, you saw shots and wondered "what they hell were they thinking?"
So congratulations to the Minnesota Lynx. They are clearly an excellent team; they've shown it all season. I think the dynasty label is a bit too early to hand out; being a dynasty is a step up from winning a championship. If Minnesota wins it all in 2014 well, three titles in four years (and four visits to the Finals in four years) will cement their dynasty status.
But right now, I'm still in the dumps from last night.
Attendance was...uh...not great. The calls came out again to move the Dream, but what the fuck did you expect?
* Playing all the way out in Duluth. Our transportation-challenged fans who use MARTA couldn't get there.
* We had been stomped two games and it looked like a third-game stomping was sure to come.
* That late 8:30 start on a weeknight? That's a killer. You don't get home to 11 pm and people have to work in the AM. I went to bed around 2:30 am last night; I'm still feeling it.
So no, WNBA - you're stuck with us. We might be the least popular kid on the block, but we're not moving unless ownership wants to move. President Richie isn't going to move the Dream. Why would she if Brock and Loeffler are still willing to pay the bills? (Although she might want to firm up their commitment.)
The best revenge for 2013 would be coming back in 2014. Lyttle healthy. Some needed personnel shakeups on the Dream's side. (And don't tell me Minnesota's bench is particularly deep; they only played seven players last night.) An even better revenge would be coming back against the Lynx in 2014 with Atlanta wearing the mantle of underdog.
No, there's not going to be a trade of McCoughtry. You're going to trade the top scorer in the WNBA? For what? Unless that name is "Delle Donne" I'd suggest you consign those theories of a McCoughtry trade to the realm of fantasy. People claim that Bill Laimbeer would trade his first round draft pick for McCoughtry and add value; but a bird in the hand is worth a lot more than one in the bush.
We will recover. The Dream players will scatter. McCoughtry will probably win another championship in Turkey; ditto for Lyttle in Spain. They'll take that feeling of victory and want to translate it into reality in 2014. That's something you can bet on.
I suppose that the best analogy to the Dream losing Game Three and getting swept again is like being in a bad relationship with someone. You know things are going downhill, and you hope that you can reignite that spark. So the two of you stick it out, but you've had two nasty arguments and you suspect that on Thursday, she's going to talk to you and tell you that she never wants to see you again.
Sure enough, Thursday comes, and she says softly "It's not working out." As she walks out the door, frankly, you're glad that it's over. You can now begin to put the heartache away, and frankly, the suspense was killing you.
The Dream have really been against the wall in those three years. The combined playoff records of the three teams they played are 21-1, only Minnesota in 2011 dropped a game against San Antonio. All three of those teams - Seattle in 2009, Minnesota in 2010 and 2011 - were full on first seeds, regular season champions of their conferences.
It makes you wonder how things would have gone if:
a) Sancho Lyttle was healthy. She injured her foot on July 9th in a game against Minnesota. (How apropos.) Atlanta was simply a different team without Lyttle, a difference as stark as blood and water. If the defense on Angel McCoughtry became too heavy, she could always look for either Lyttle or de Souza; Lyttle's foot injury limited her options and the Dream took a long time to adjust.
Really, the Dream never adjusted. Le'coe Willingham was no Sancho Lyttle. Henry was at best a stop-gap and the Dream stumbled into a surprisingly effective small ball lineup out of necessity.
b) We had played a weaker Western Conference team. There are those voices calling the 2013 Minnesota Lynx the Greatest Of All Time; I think the old Comets or Sparks teams would have begged to differ. If the Dream had played, say, the 2008 San Antonio Silver Stars things might have worked out differently.
c) The Dream had made substantial changes after Game One. Most people don't think that the Fred Williams Dream is different than the Marynell Meadors Dream, but there is a difference - the present-day Dream defends harder; Meadors's teams were more offense-based. However, the Dream's offense doesn't seem to have changed much - either McCoughtry shoots or the ball is shoved into the post, with the point guard as facilitator and a decent shooter to distract defenses.
Everyone on the Lynx knew where the ball was going. Our playbook has been around since 2008.
d) We had a decent three point threat. Oh, the effort that has been wasted to try to get someone who could hit a three-point shot. As Meadors said, "We don't hit threes, but we sure get a lot of twos." Minnesota showed the disadvantages to that strategy.
Last night, we actually hit three-pointers and stayed in the game for big stretches.
e) McCoughtry had decided to pass more. Sometimes you just can't pass to someone because they're not open; but sometimes I feel that she just didn't look. It's odd that the Dream did a lot better with McCoughtry on the bench for a while; Minnesota had to adjust to NOT expecting her to play one-on-three ball in the paint.
All of the above? Doesn't mean anything. Coulda, shoulda, woulda - didn'a.
f) Thomas and Bentley didn't jack up so many shots early in the shot clock. Sometimes, you saw shots and wondered "what they hell were they thinking?"
So congratulations to the Minnesota Lynx. They are clearly an excellent team; they've shown it all season. I think the dynasty label is a bit too early to hand out; being a dynasty is a step up from winning a championship. If Minnesota wins it all in 2014 well, three titles in four years (and four visits to the Finals in four years) will cement their dynasty status.
But right now, I'm still in the dumps from last night.
Attendance was...uh...not great. The calls came out again to move the Dream, but what the fuck did you expect?
* Playing all the way out in Duluth. Our transportation-challenged fans who use MARTA couldn't get there.
* We had been stomped two games and it looked like a third-game stomping was sure to come.
* That late 8:30 start on a weeknight? That's a killer. You don't get home to 11 pm and people have to work in the AM. I went to bed around 2:30 am last night; I'm still feeling it.
So no, WNBA - you're stuck with us. We might be the least popular kid on the block, but we're not moving unless ownership wants to move. President Richie isn't going to move the Dream. Why would she if Brock and Loeffler are still willing to pay the bills? (Although she might want to firm up their commitment.)
The best revenge for 2013 would be coming back in 2014. Lyttle healthy. Some needed personnel shakeups on the Dream's side. (And don't tell me Minnesota's bench is particularly deep; they only played seven players last night.) An even better revenge would be coming back against the Lynx in 2014 with Atlanta wearing the mantle of underdog.
No, there's not going to be a trade of McCoughtry. You're going to trade the top scorer in the WNBA? For what? Unless that name is "Delle Donne" I'd suggest you consign those theories of a McCoughtry trade to the realm of fantasy. People claim that Bill Laimbeer would trade his first round draft pick for McCoughtry and add value; but a bird in the hand is worth a lot more than one in the bush.
We will recover. The Dream players will scatter. McCoughtry will probably win another championship in Turkey; ditto for Lyttle in Spain. They'll take that feeling of victory and want to translate it into reality in 2014. That's something you can bet on.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
2013 WNBA Finals: Atlanta @ Minnesota (Game Two)
“The Bourbons never forgot anything and never learned anything.” - old French saying
I don't know if the Dream forgot anything, but they certainly didn't learn anything from their Game One loss to the Lynx except to start Aneika Henry. Once Minnesota adjusted to that, the game was over because Atlanta's game plan was exactly the same otherwise. I wasn't in Minneapolis, obviously, but what little we saw of Fred Williams on the screen, his emphasis was repeated - do what got you here. Stick with the game plan.
This, apparently, was Atlanta's game plan.
* - Allow McCoughtry to drive to the basket at will against three or four Lynx defenders all stacked up in the lane. Minnesota knows all too well McCoughtry's tendencies, they're beating her to her spots, drawing charges, and challenging her in the paint.
Remember Maya Moore's massive block of McCoughtry? (WNBA.com will not let you forget it for the next five years.) Moore comes off the weakside and reads her like Green Eggs and Ham. She couldn't have blocked McCoughtry's shot any sweeter if she (Angel) had cooperated.
* - Take dumb shots. Take them early in the shot clock and make sure they're as far away from the basket as possible. Atlanta needs to stretch out the Lynx defense - we get that - but they are not a 3-point shooting team and now is not the time to learn how to become one.
* - Don't help out McCoughtry, since you know that she's going to face pretty much every Lynx player defending her at one point, double-teaming her at times. The strategy is simple - keep a fresh body on McCoughtry at all times. Make her play a full thirty minutes; make sure that no one Lynx player guards her more than ten.
* - Don't find Erika de Souza in the paint. However, it might be the Lynx to blame for that - sometimes, you just can't pass the ball. All Erika could do was sail around in the paint like a rudderless boat with no one to get the ball to her. She scored when she got it, but she barely got it.
Okay. That's about it.
Officiating? This wasn't Game Two of the 2011 WNBA Finals, which I feel was flat-out robbed from us and which I'm still mad about. (Minnesota's 2011 win comes with an asterisk.) Yes, the WNBA referees were pretty bad, but a) we've all seen poorly officiated games before, and b) even if they were in the tank for the Lynx trust me, the Lynx didn't need any help in that respect.
It's a sad comparison between this series and the 2011. In 2011, the better team won. Both teams were good, but Minnesota was better than us (at least two out of three times, anyway). This year, the Dream have stunk up the joint.
* Two 25 points losses in a row.
* Their eighth straight WNBA Finals loss. They are now 0-8 in the Finals. Someone said that the Dream are the Buffalo Bills of the WNBA; the New York Liberty are the Minnesota Vikings. They were previously the worst team in the WNBA Finals at 1-7; now they've lost that title at last.
These losses are so bad that someone on RebKell proposed that the current Finals format be scrapped. (Can't have the Dream going oh-for-the-Finals again. It's bad for business, is the argument.)
Minnesota shot a Finals record 56.9 percent. we shot 35.8 percent. Game over.
Armintie Herrington went 1-for-5, Tiffany Hayes 3-for-9, Alex Bentley was 3-10. McCoughtry? 5-for-18, fouled out. Both McCoughtry and de Souza had three fouls on them early on; no Dream player broke 30 minutes. In the fourth, Riley and Clements were back on the court, and we had struck the tent.
Of course, after the game, Angel McCoughtry became her own worst enemy again. Some choice quotes:
"I feel like I played football, not basketball," McCoughtry said. "I mean, the game should be respected better than that. We are two teams and we are going to fight until the end, we are all going to play hard. But there's a difference, you know?"
...
"The whole pulling me down on the fast break, all that crap, it's not needed," McCoughtry said. "I really hurt my elbow when Maya pulled me down on that play. I feel like it wasn't needed. We don't play that way. We are going to play hard and we are going to play scrappy, but we aren't going to pull you down and hurt you. I just felt like I deserve a little more respect than that."
It doesn't matter if it's true or if it's not true. It makes you look bad complaining about the other team's tough play when you got blown out for 25 points in the second game in a row. It seems like whining rather than an honest complaint.
As for respect, well, respect is earned. I think it comes with winning a title.
There was an image last night of Armintie Herrington - clearly the team's leader - with her head buried in a towel, possibly to hide her tears. The three of them - Herrington, McCoughtry, de Souza - have showed up to the Finals eight games, and have been turned away each time. If Herrington is shaken up, does the rest of the team follow?
No time to think about it. Tomorrow, we have Game Three in Gwinnett, although I wonder if anyone will show up given the Game Two rout. One of my basketball friends has declined to come. He said he would show up if the Dream had a chance of clinching a win at Gwinnett, but they would have needed to win one game in Minneapolis. So no dice.
I'll be there. Hopefully, the Dream I saw at the beginning of the season will be there too, not the Dream of Games One and Two. Hey, the Lynx lost three games in a row in August this year. It could happen.
I don't know if the Dream forgot anything, but they certainly didn't learn anything from their Game One loss to the Lynx except to start Aneika Henry. Once Minnesota adjusted to that, the game was over because Atlanta's game plan was exactly the same otherwise. I wasn't in Minneapolis, obviously, but what little we saw of Fred Williams on the screen, his emphasis was repeated - do what got you here. Stick with the game plan.
This, apparently, was Atlanta's game plan.
* - Allow McCoughtry to drive to the basket at will against three or four Lynx defenders all stacked up in the lane. Minnesota knows all too well McCoughtry's tendencies, they're beating her to her spots, drawing charges, and challenging her in the paint.
Remember Maya Moore's massive block of McCoughtry? (WNBA.com will not let you forget it for the next five years.) Moore comes off the weakside and reads her like Green Eggs and Ham. She couldn't have blocked McCoughtry's shot any sweeter if she (Angel) had cooperated.
* - Take dumb shots. Take them early in the shot clock and make sure they're as far away from the basket as possible. Atlanta needs to stretch out the Lynx defense - we get that - but they are not a 3-point shooting team and now is not the time to learn how to become one.
* - Don't help out McCoughtry, since you know that she's going to face pretty much every Lynx player defending her at one point, double-teaming her at times. The strategy is simple - keep a fresh body on McCoughtry at all times. Make her play a full thirty minutes; make sure that no one Lynx player guards her more than ten.
* - Don't find Erika de Souza in the paint. However, it might be the Lynx to blame for that - sometimes, you just can't pass the ball. All Erika could do was sail around in the paint like a rudderless boat with no one to get the ball to her. She scored when she got it, but she barely got it.
Okay. That's about it.
Officiating? This wasn't Game Two of the 2011 WNBA Finals, which I feel was flat-out robbed from us and which I'm still mad about. (Minnesota's 2011 win comes with an asterisk.) Yes, the WNBA referees were pretty bad, but a) we've all seen poorly officiated games before, and b) even if they were in the tank for the Lynx trust me, the Lynx didn't need any help in that respect.
It's a sad comparison between this series and the 2011. In 2011, the better team won. Both teams were good, but Minnesota was better than us (at least two out of three times, anyway). This year, the Dream have stunk up the joint.
* Two 25 points losses in a row.
* Their eighth straight WNBA Finals loss. They are now 0-8 in the Finals. Someone said that the Dream are the Buffalo Bills of the WNBA; the New York Liberty are the Minnesota Vikings. They were previously the worst team in the WNBA Finals at 1-7; now they've lost that title at last.
These losses are so bad that someone on RebKell proposed that the current Finals format be scrapped. (Can't have the Dream going oh-for-the-Finals again. It's bad for business, is the argument.)
Minnesota shot a Finals record 56.9 percent. we shot 35.8 percent. Game over.
Armintie Herrington went 1-for-5, Tiffany Hayes 3-for-9, Alex Bentley was 3-10. McCoughtry? 5-for-18, fouled out. Both McCoughtry and de Souza had three fouls on them early on; no Dream player broke 30 minutes. In the fourth, Riley and Clements were back on the court, and we had struck the tent.
Of course, after the game, Angel McCoughtry became her own worst enemy again. Some choice quotes:
"I feel like I played football, not basketball," McCoughtry said. "I mean, the game should be respected better than that. We are two teams and we are going to fight until the end, we are all going to play hard. But there's a difference, you know?"
...
"The whole pulling me down on the fast break, all that crap, it's not needed," McCoughtry said. "I really hurt my elbow when Maya pulled me down on that play. I feel like it wasn't needed. We don't play that way. We are going to play hard and we are going to play scrappy, but we aren't going to pull you down and hurt you. I just felt like I deserve a little more respect than that."
It doesn't matter if it's true or if it's not true. It makes you look bad complaining about the other team's tough play when you got blown out for 25 points in the second game in a row. It seems like whining rather than an honest complaint.
As for respect, well, respect is earned. I think it comes with winning a title.
There was an image last night of Armintie Herrington - clearly the team's leader - with her head buried in a towel, possibly to hide her tears. The three of them - Herrington, McCoughtry, de Souza - have showed up to the Finals eight games, and have been turned away each time. If Herrington is shaken up, does the rest of the team follow?
No time to think about it. Tomorrow, we have Game Three in Gwinnett, although I wonder if anyone will show up given the Game Two rout. One of my basketball friends has declined to come. He said he would show up if the Dream had a chance of clinching a win at Gwinnett, but they would have needed to win one game in Minneapolis. So no dice.
I'll be there. Hopefully, the Dream I saw at the beginning of the season will be there too, not the Dream of Games One and Two. Hey, the Lynx lost three games in a row in August this year. It could happen.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Would you rather that your city win an NFL championship, or have $5?
This question is almost a slam dunk question - which is funny because we don't have many slam dunks in the WNBA. The Super Bowl's future locations are determined all the way to 2017, where Houston will host the game. So there's no direct economic benefit to Atlanta in the Falcons winning a Super Bowl. (The last time the ATL hosted a Super Bowl was in 2000.) Some Atlanta players might get paid more and might spend some more in the city but there's no proof of that. I certainly won't see more than $5 worth of benefit if the Falcons win it all.
With economic benefit off the table, the question is "is the emotional experience worth $5"? To that, I can answer a resounding no.
I follow the NFL entirely through cultural osmosis. By "cultural osmosis", I mean that phenomenon by which most people know who Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are without necessarily watching a single Star Trek episode. Generally, you can't escape the NFL and certain players/teams/incidents are going to break into the popular culture. If you study sports at any level, you can find some intersection with the NFL.
But in terms of caring whether the Falcons go 16-0 vs. going 0-16? Well, if the Falcons lose I feel some sympathy for my close friends who do follow the Falcons. I do generally want to see Atlanta sports teams do well.
But to give up $5 so that the Falcons do well? As Clay Davis would say, "Sheeeeeeeeet!" The Falcons have enough fans, frankly. Yes, the city will be hitting visitors with money from the hotel-motel tax, but the Atlanta taxpayers - of which I am one - will be paying for the upkeep of this stadium boondoggle until the year 2050. So I have to pay for the Falcons in one way or another regardless of how well they do.
If you count the bundling cost of the NFL Network - which I do not watch but am pretty much forced to pay for - that's a monthly fee of $0.75 I am paying out of my cable bill. So I end up paying $9.00 a year to the fucking NFL, regardless of if I want to or not.
Furthermore, if we do win a NFL championship, that means one thing - riots in the streets by fratboy douchebags of all races. That's just what I need to see on my local news.
In summary, give me the $5.00. Frankly, you should be giving me an extra $5.00 for next year, when we don't win either.
____________
(*) This is my response to the "would you rather that your city have a WNBA championship or have $5?" poll that seems to make the rounds every year.
(**) My opinion might change if it were some other sport that the NFL. Fuck the NFL.
(***) If my friends were to beg me to reconsider in this hypothetical bet so that the Falcons could win a Super Bowl strictly out of the sake of friendship, I would forego the $5. But they owe me a bennie somewhere down the line.
With economic benefit off the table, the question is "is the emotional experience worth $5"? To that, I can answer a resounding no.
I follow the NFL entirely through cultural osmosis. By "cultural osmosis", I mean that phenomenon by which most people know who Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are without necessarily watching a single Star Trek episode. Generally, you can't escape the NFL and certain players/teams/incidents are going to break into the popular culture. If you study sports at any level, you can find some intersection with the NFL.
But in terms of caring whether the Falcons go 16-0 vs. going 0-16? Well, if the Falcons lose I feel some sympathy for my close friends who do follow the Falcons. I do generally want to see Atlanta sports teams do well.
But to give up $5 so that the Falcons do well? As Clay Davis would say, "Sheeeeeeeeet!" The Falcons have enough fans, frankly. Yes, the city will be hitting visitors with money from the hotel-motel tax, but the Atlanta taxpayers - of which I am one - will be paying for the upkeep of this stadium boondoggle until the year 2050. So I have to pay for the Falcons in one way or another regardless of how well they do.
If you count the bundling cost of the NFL Network - which I do not watch but am pretty much forced to pay for - that's a monthly fee of $0.75 I am paying out of my cable bill. So I end up paying $9.00 a year to the fucking NFL, regardless of if I want to or not.
Furthermore, if we do win a NFL championship, that means one thing - riots in the streets by fratboy douchebags of all races. That's just what I need to see on my local news.
In summary, give me the $5.00. Frankly, you should be giving me an extra $5.00 for next year, when we don't win either.
____________
(*) This is my response to the "would you rather that your city have a WNBA championship or have $5?" poll that seems to make the rounds every year.
(**) My opinion might change if it were some other sport that the NFL. Fuck the NFL.
(***) If my friends were to beg me to reconsider in this hypothetical bet so that the Falcons could win a Super Bowl strictly out of the sake of friendship, I would forego the $5. But they owe me a bennie somewhere down the line.
Monday, October 7, 2013
2013 WNBA Finals: Atlanta @ Minnesota (Game One)
So how was it?
It was pretty bad. It wasn't historically bad. We didn't beat the record for Worst Defeat in a WNBA Finals, although we certainly threatened it. Other teams have suffered big losses in Game One of the Finals and came back to win, but I'm not getting a Detroit Shock kind of vibe around the Atlanta Dream.
It was the seventh time we've lost a WNBA Finals game - in seven attempts. We're 0-for-7. Our seventh loss ties the New York Liberty, who are 1-7 all time in Finals games.
So why did we lose? Lots of reasons. It was rumored that Janel McCarville was injured, but not only was she *not* injured but she had a very good first quarter. Maya Moore hit a couple of big threes early on, and away we went.
The second quarter was a Lost Quarter, which is what I call any quarter where one team scored less than ten points. Teams generally don't win games with a Lost Quarter, unless the other team also has a Lost Quarter to match it. We scored nine points in the second quarter - the Lynx just played Great D - and we were down by 20 points at one point coming into the half.
Minnesota would eventually lead by 31 at one point. Late in the fourth quarter both sides were playing their scrubs. It was Atlanta's time to strike the tent, shake it off and as someone suggested on the air, watch more tape of that regular season game where we beat the Lynx. (And hope that the Lynx haven't ever watched that game since their loss.)
Part of the problem was McCoughtry. There is no nice way of saying it. On RebKell, they coined the phrase "Hero Ball", which I intend to steal. Hero Ball is where the game plan is to put the ball in the hands of your most talented player and hope she can carry the team to victory on her back.
I don't think that was Fred Williams's plan, but it was Angel McCoughtry's. You could almost predict when she was going to take a shot; at times it seemed like shot selection or ball distribution were foreign concepts. It reminded me of Geno Auriemma's friendly (?) knock that MCcoughtry wouldn't even pass someone the ketchup at lunchtime. (To which she might reply, as before, "I get paid to score, not to pass.")
McCoughtry was willing to go full Iziane Castro Marques on Minnesota, playing 1-on-3. The only reason the Lynx didn't have more players in the lane waiting on her was that they couldn't fit that many large women into such a small space. She has moments of pure transcendence where she's unstoppable, but I wonder if Hero Ball can really work against such a complete team like the Lynx.
It showed in the box score stat. MCCoughtry went 6-for-24. But in her defense, it wasn't exactly like she could trust that anyone on the Dream was going to step up. De Souza scored her 10 and 7 but seemingly with little impact. Aneika Henry came off the bench with a great game, 14 points and 14 rebounds.
Everyone else? Not so much:
Jasmine Thomas? 3-for-15, a veritable black hole of offense.
Alex Bentley? 2-for-9.
Dream outside shooting? 0-for-15.
McCoughtry could answer me, "Okay, JB, tell me who I was supposed to give the ball to?"
Minnesota switched off on her multiple times. They must have had everyone but the intern who brings the Gatorade guarding her at one point; Reeve always had a fresh body to put on McCoughtry. "You want to play Hero Ball? Fine. But we'll make you work for it."
Maya Moore was Maya Moore, 23 points and seven rebounds. Monica Wright had a great game, 20 points, and doing all the little things well. (Although I still believe that Wright is the Most Overrated Player in the WNBA. She can be good, but not when she's a starter.) Given Atlanta's abysmal output, Moore and Wright were really all that the Lynx needed; everyone else just needed to be decent and play good defense.
So now it's on to Game Two on Tuesday. Some people are predicting a "rout" on the order of Detroit/San Antonio in 2008. But that wasn't much of a rout. Detroit won by margins of +8, +8 and +16. For Atlanta, starting at -25 is like being two games down.
It was pretty bad. It wasn't historically bad. We didn't beat the record for Worst Defeat in a WNBA Finals, although we certainly threatened it. Other teams have suffered big losses in Game One of the Finals and came back to win, but I'm not getting a Detroit Shock kind of vibe around the Atlanta Dream.
It was the seventh time we've lost a WNBA Finals game - in seven attempts. We're 0-for-7. Our seventh loss ties the New York Liberty, who are 1-7 all time in Finals games.
So why did we lose? Lots of reasons. It was rumored that Janel McCarville was injured, but not only was she *not* injured but she had a very good first quarter. Maya Moore hit a couple of big threes early on, and away we went.
The second quarter was a Lost Quarter, which is what I call any quarter where one team scored less than ten points. Teams generally don't win games with a Lost Quarter, unless the other team also has a Lost Quarter to match it. We scored nine points in the second quarter - the Lynx just played Great D - and we were down by 20 points at one point coming into the half.
Minnesota would eventually lead by 31 at one point. Late in the fourth quarter both sides were playing their scrubs. It was Atlanta's time to strike the tent, shake it off and as someone suggested on the air, watch more tape of that regular season game where we beat the Lynx. (And hope that the Lynx haven't ever watched that game since their loss.)
Part of the problem was McCoughtry. There is no nice way of saying it. On RebKell, they coined the phrase "Hero Ball", which I intend to steal. Hero Ball is where the game plan is to put the ball in the hands of your most talented player and hope she can carry the team to victory on her back.
I don't think that was Fred Williams's plan, but it was Angel McCoughtry's. You could almost predict when she was going to take a shot; at times it seemed like shot selection or ball distribution were foreign concepts. It reminded me of Geno Auriemma's friendly (?) knock that MCcoughtry wouldn't even pass someone the ketchup at lunchtime. (To which she might reply, as before, "I get paid to score, not to pass.")
McCoughtry was willing to go full Iziane Castro Marques on Minnesota, playing 1-on-3. The only reason the Lynx didn't have more players in the lane waiting on her was that they couldn't fit that many large women into such a small space. She has moments of pure transcendence where she's unstoppable, but I wonder if Hero Ball can really work against such a complete team like the Lynx.
It showed in the box score stat. MCCoughtry went 6-for-24. But in her defense, it wasn't exactly like she could trust that anyone on the Dream was going to step up. De Souza scored her 10 and 7 but seemingly with little impact. Aneika Henry came off the bench with a great game, 14 points and 14 rebounds.
Everyone else? Not so much:
Jasmine Thomas? 3-for-15, a veritable black hole of offense.
Alex Bentley? 2-for-9.
Dream outside shooting? 0-for-15.
McCoughtry could answer me, "Okay, JB, tell me who I was supposed to give the ball to?"
Minnesota switched off on her multiple times. They must have had everyone but the intern who brings the Gatorade guarding her at one point; Reeve always had a fresh body to put on McCoughtry. "You want to play Hero Ball? Fine. But we'll make you work for it."
Maya Moore was Maya Moore, 23 points and seven rebounds. Monica Wright had a great game, 20 points, and doing all the little things well. (Although I still believe that Wright is the Most Overrated Player in the WNBA. She can be good, but not when she's a starter.) Given Atlanta's abysmal output, Moore and Wright were really all that the Lynx needed; everyone else just needed to be decent and play good defense.
So now it's on to Game Two on Tuesday. Some people are predicting a "rout" on the order of Detroit/San Antonio in 2008. But that wasn't much of a rout. Detroit won by margins of +8, +8 and +16. For Atlanta, starting at -25 is like being two games down.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
I Scream at Kids for a Living
Okay, they're not exactly "kids" and his job description isn't limited to just screaming. I'm writing about Keith Brown, the head coach of the Georgetown women's basketball program, who according to the Washington Post was suspended (along with an assistant) for:
"unprofessional conduct and the use of inappropriate language in coaching the Georgetown University women’s basketball team"
This is more interesting for what it doesn't say that what it does say. What sort of conduct? What kind of language? The reader is left to guess. What type of language does the Georgetown athletic department not consider appropriate? This is written in admin speak.
In June, 2013 the Georgetown University Athletics Department adopted a new policy, “Maintaining a Respectful and Professional Relationships with Student Athletes. In addition, members of the Georgetown Athletics Department attended mandatory training sessions led by University leadership and outside counsel to ensure understanding of the new policy and to discuss issues relating to appropriate behavior between coaches, trainers and student athletes.
Note the lack of closed quotes, and the disagreement between plural and singular. Someone's asleep on the job either at Georgetown or the Washington Post. You can try to find this policy somewhere on the web, but you won't have any luck.
Georgetown is a Catholic school - nominally, anyway - and I don't think a "shit" or a "fuck" tossed out a few times would get someone canned. (Unlike that coach at Ave Maria who probably got fired for that very reason - as someone put in the comments thread, "I know of NO sports activity in which profanity is NOT used including high school athletics....What happens when their opponents use such language in their gym? Is the game stopped and forfeited?")
It gets weirder:
ABC7 News has learned from multiple sources that a member of the women’s team attempted to take her own life a few days prior to the coaches being suspended. And while there is nothing to indicate a connection between the two events, the news is startling to those on campus.
...
Five players on the team - for of whom were freshmen - came to ABC7 news and stated that:
...they admit he swears at them when they make a mistake and that he is very demanding – but they say they don’t take it personally.
...
“I think a lot of this is blown out of proportion. It’s unnecessary, to be honest,” said McCormick. “We just want to play. That is all we want to do and we want our coach back."
Sports Illustrated goes into even more detail:
According to a report from WJLA in Washington, D.C-Maryland-Virginia, several players on the team said Brown’s treatment left them “broken and demoralized.” The report goes on to say that Brown used “swearing, demeaning, and humiliating tactics” with his players. Two of the players who had been on the team while Brown was on staff reportedly left the Hoyas because of “run-ins” with the coach, according to the report.
(* * *)
No matter how this plays out, it's going to end badly.
Brown loses job/guilty of charges - coach screwed up and lost his job.
Brown loses job/not guilty of charges - coach was run out on a rail by a clique of players with an axe to grind. Not good for the program.
Brown doesn't lose job/not guilty of charges - coach now has to deal with a divided squad one month before the women's BB season starts.
Brown doesn't lose job/guilty of charges - Brown now has an axe to grind with certain players.
I wonder (without any evidence) if this is just a bad hire. I've had a suspicion that Georgetown really didn't give much of a damn about women's basketball - Terri Williams-Flournoy fled to Auburn when she got the chance. He was an easy hire as Williams-Flournoy's assistant (translation: they didn't look very hard). Brown's background is in AAU basketball, more recruiting/evaluation than coaching. Maybe he just wasn't prepared and crossed a line that he didn't know he shouldn't cross.
I guess we'll either know more, or we won't. I think I've covered all of my bases here.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
What WNBA fans need to know about the Gwinnett Center (or rather, what I know about it)
I've been to see games at the Gwinnett Center a few times. I saw the infamous Elmo Game in 2009, and I also saw a few Georgia Tech games at Gwinnett when their arena was being renovated. Here are some things that you might want to know:
1) It's smaller that Philips Arena, obviously. The listed capacity for basketball is about 12,000, so you'll be able to get all of the Dream's fans (and then some) inside. Attendance for the Elmo Game in 2009 was listed at 4,780 although it seemed a lot smaller than that.
2) The impression I got is that seating is a little bit farther back than Philips, so expect to crane your neck a little.
3) Parking is ample.
4) There is no overhead jumbotron. The electronic scoreboards are at either end of the arena.
5) If you're press, I expect they'll do what they did for the Elmo Game - they'll put a row of tables at one of the baselines. Which means that you will get to experience the game up close and personal when an errant basketball sails in your general direction.
6) The innards of the arena are a little bit confusing. Phillips's innards are more straightforward; leave the court, and then turn left (or right) respectively for the locker room area. You'll need a little bit more direction at Gwinnett.
7) Georgia Tech did have press parking, but I don't know what they're going to do about Gwinnett.
8) Concessions? I don't know.
9) There is a hotel nearby, but dogged if I know what the name of it is.
10) I don't know how hard it is to get to Gwinnett by car. I got there early during the Elmo Game. I suspect that the Dream fans that depend on MARTA to get to the games are going to be screwed.
1) It's smaller that Philips Arena, obviously. The listed capacity for basketball is about 12,000, so you'll be able to get all of the Dream's fans (and then some) inside. Attendance for the Elmo Game in 2009 was listed at 4,780 although it seemed a lot smaller than that.
2) The impression I got is that seating is a little bit farther back than Philips, so expect to crane your neck a little.
3) Parking is ample.
4) There is no overhead jumbotron. The electronic scoreboards are at either end of the arena.
5) If you're press, I expect they'll do what they did for the Elmo Game - they'll put a row of tables at one of the baselines. Which means that you will get to experience the game up close and personal when an errant basketball sails in your general direction.
6) The innards of the arena are a little bit confusing. Phillips's innards are more straightforward; leave the court, and then turn left (or right) respectively for the locker room area. You'll need a little bit more direction at Gwinnett.
7) Georgia Tech did have press parking, but I don't know what they're going to do about Gwinnett.
8) Concessions? I don't know.
9) There is a hotel nearby, but dogged if I know what the name of it is.
10) I don't know how hard it is to get to Gwinnett by car. I got there early during the Elmo Game. I suspect that the Dream fans that depend on MARTA to get to the games are going to be screwed.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Atlanta @ Indiana, Game 2 2013 ECF Finals
As you can tell, the Dream are going to the Eastern Conference Finals and I am very happy about that. It was farther than I thought we'd get, but there's a reason we play these games, you know.
The Dream did it three ways. They did it with defense, holding the defending WNBA champions to just 28.1 percent shooting. (This is the second time in the playoffs that Atlanta forced their opponents to under-30 percent shooting.) I don't have stats about playoff shooting, but that's just insane.
The second is with rebounding, a 43-33 overall advantage over Indiana.
The third is that Angel McCoughtry finally had that game she was looking for - 27 points on 10-for-21 shooting. The great thing about McCoughtry is that even if she's not shooting well, the mere potential that she might blow up can give opponents fits.
This puts Atlanta in the position of playing Minnesota, the team that swept us in the 2011 WNBA Finals. Since Atlanta is 0-6 all time in the Finals, the usual suspects are preaching sweep. Minnesota had the best record in the WNBA this year and of course, those first two games are going to be played on the road, where the Dream have struggled in the regular season (but are 2-0 on the road in the playoffs.)
My prediction is that the Dream should get at least one win in the Finals. This is the third time they've been there; they now know what it takes to win Finals games. Whether or not they'll actually win the Finals, I can't say; Minnesota is about as tough an opponent as you could pick and this is their third straight season as Western Conference champions. To go to Full Wishy-Washy, don't be surprised if the Lynx win Game One by 20 points...but don't be surprised if Atlanta takes a 1-0 lead, either.
(* * *)
In 2009, the Dream had the infamous "Elmo Game", where the Dream were shoved out of Phillips for a performance of "Sesame Street Live". Atlanta was forced to play in Gwinnett, where the Dream lost the second game of the opening round to the (then) Detroit Shock.
Due to arena availability, it looks like Atlanta will be forced to play Game Three and Game Four (if necessary) back in Gwinnett. Last time it was Elmo and Friends shoving the Dream out of Philips, this time it's Disney princesses, with Disney on Ice: Let's Celebrate! Disney has the arena locked up from October 9th through 13th.
I remember being in the Dream locker room after Game Two, where someone was handing out paychecks to the disconsolate Dream. There's some bad mojo there that will need to be dispelled.
(* * *)
I was up and down all morning about whether to see the Full Court Fresh 50. I couldn't abandon Atlanta in its hour of need, and I rubbed Malcolm the Cat's foot for good luck. I believe the Full Court game was a blow-out; I went over to Fullcourt.com this morning, but no writeup. Maybe later. Hoping for video, as the game was apparently live-streamed.
(* * *)
The next question is what the hell am I going to do until Thursday? Much less, what am I going to do when the pro women's season ends?
Friday, September 27, 2013
Indiana @ Atlanta, Game 1, 2013 Eastern Conference Finals
Going to be a busy day, so I'll try to keep this blog entry short.
Let's assume that you don't know who to root for out of the four remaining teams - Atlanta, Indiana, Minnesota, Phoenix. (This would imply that you're new to the W, because most W fans have strong opinions.) You're looking for some guidance. My advice is to root for the Atlanta Dream.
Why? Because it makes all of the right people unhappy when the Dream win.
(* * *)
I didn't have much of a reason to put that there. Apparently Diana Taurasi of the Mercury and Seimone Augustus got double fouls in last night's Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals after some game-based shoving. Taurasi then lightened the mood by smooching Augustus. Besides, Augustus is an open lesbian, that's probably not the way you'd intimidate her.
Normally, YouTube comments are a wretched hive of scum and villany, but one commenter wrote, "If that happened in the NBA, everyone's head would explode." Well, maybe not if Metta World Peace did it.
(* * *)
I had a chance to talk to Lin Dunn before the game. That article will be part of my game writeup which should show up around 12 noon Eastern, so you know where to go to find it.
Her first remarks were, "Let's get this over with, so I can concentrate on the game!" But otherwise, she was very friendly. I didn't report that she was suffering a gluteous minimus injury in my writeup, to avoid the inevitable LOL Butthurt response.
She also spilled her Diet Coke by accident on the floor - she placed it under her seat, and probably bumped against it with her foot. Makes me feel good, because I can now say, "Hey, WNBA coaches are human just like me. They even spill soda just like me!"
(* * *)
It was a great game, one of those games that you use to sell the game to other people. That last minute was a real nailbiter, and I could probably talk about that for years. That TO Lin Dunn called that erased a McCoughtry steal/fastbreak. McCoughtry fouling Catch at the three point line. Indiana getting the rebound on Catch's missed free throw but doing nothing with it. That stupid dead ball foul with 16 seconds left. Great game, looking forward to Game Two.
(* **)
Speaking of Game Two, I'm leaning towards putting it on DVR. Nothing I can do in Atlanta to affect the outcome; that game's in Indianapolis. Even if the Dream lose - which is a real risk, given that Indiana is a very dangerous team to put in the corner of elimination, and the Dream are terrible on the road - we still get a Game Three on Tuesday. I'll go watch the Full Court Fresh 50 in person and look at some of the up and coming high school players.
(* * *)
I got an e-mail from a radio station that wanted to use me as a contact person for all matters WNBA. I called them back, agreed, and then told them the name of a local beat writer they should also contact as this wasn't an Atlanta radio station. It was the radio station from a WNBA town I won't be naming. Given that their beat writer is prominent, they probably won't be asking me for any more WNBA info any time soon. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Let's assume that you don't know who to root for out of the four remaining teams - Atlanta, Indiana, Minnesota, Phoenix. (This would imply that you're new to the W, because most W fans have strong opinions.) You're looking for some guidance. My advice is to root for the Atlanta Dream.
Why? Because it makes all of the right people unhappy when the Dream win.
(* * *)
I didn't have much of a reason to put that there. Apparently Diana Taurasi of the Mercury and Seimone Augustus got double fouls in last night's Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals after some game-based shoving. Taurasi then lightened the mood by smooching Augustus. Besides, Augustus is an open lesbian, that's probably not the way you'd intimidate her.
Normally, YouTube comments are a wretched hive of scum and villany, but one commenter wrote, "If that happened in the NBA, everyone's head would explode." Well, maybe not if Metta World Peace did it.
(* * *)
I had a chance to talk to Lin Dunn before the game. That article will be part of my game writeup which should show up around 12 noon Eastern, so you know where to go to find it.
Her first remarks were, "Let's get this over with, so I can concentrate on the game!" But otherwise, she was very friendly. I didn't report that she was suffering a gluteous minimus injury in my writeup, to avoid the inevitable LOL Butthurt response.
She also spilled her Diet Coke by accident on the floor - she placed it under her seat, and probably bumped against it with her foot. Makes me feel good, because I can now say, "Hey, WNBA coaches are human just like me. They even spill soda just like me!"
(* * *)
It was a great game, one of those games that you use to sell the game to other people. That last minute was a real nailbiter, and I could probably talk about that for years. That TO Lin Dunn called that erased a McCoughtry steal/fastbreak. McCoughtry fouling Catch at the three point line. Indiana getting the rebound on Catch's missed free throw but doing nothing with it. That stupid dead ball foul with 16 seconds left. Great game, looking forward to Game Two.
(* **)
Speaking of Game Two, I'm leaning towards putting it on DVR. Nothing I can do in Atlanta to affect the outcome; that game's in Indianapolis. Even if the Dream lose - which is a real risk, given that Indiana is a very dangerous team to put in the corner of elimination, and the Dream are terrible on the road - we still get a Game Three on Tuesday. I'll go watch the Full Court Fresh 50 in person and look at some of the up and coming high school players.
(* * *)
I got an e-mail from a radio station that wanted to use me as a contact person for all matters WNBA. I called them back, agreed, and then told them the name of a local beat writer they should also contact as this wasn't an Atlanta radio station. It was the radio station from a WNBA town I won't be naming. Given that their beat writer is prominent, they probably won't be asking me for any more WNBA info any time soon. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Eastern and Western Conference Semifinals, Conclusion
Atlanta's victory over Washington in Game Three of the Eastern Conference Semifinals was personally satisfying to me as an Atlanta Dream fan for a number of reasons. Most of those reasons have to deal with various arguments asserted that since:
* Atlanta is a "bad sports town",
* Fred Williams is a bad coach,
* Angel McCoughtry is cranky/crazy, and
* Atlanta hasn't had good playoff attendance, that, therefore:
* Atlanta doesn't deserve a WNBA franchise.
To which I reply, "Suck it haters, PTHBTHBTHBTHBTHB." This might not be seen as a deserving counter-reply, but the arguments above aren't very good either.
* Even if Atlanta is a bad sports town - and I think this is true - who made you the boss of whether or not Atlanta "deserves" a team?
* If Fred Williams is such a bad coach, then how did such a bad coach win this series? (Unfortunately, this is the kind of question where haters will just move the goalposts. Even if Senor Fred is holding up the Silver Boob at the end of the season, the haters will just figure out a way to avoid giving him any credit for it - See: Meadors, Marynell.)
* As Charles Barkley might say, "Who made me your role model?"
* Okay. The playoff attendance hasn't been good. Even so, looking at attendance in isolation from a host of other factors - civic culture, sports history, attitudes, psychology, etc. etc. - is not the best approach.
I had a chance to chat with Mike Thibault before the game. Not all of the stuff we talked about made it into the article, but that was to keep the article from going to 4,000 words. He told me something interesting - namely, that going into this season, he was more interested in seeing what kind of team he actually had than setting a playoff appearance as some kind of arbitrary benchmark that would make or break the Mystics season. After 11 wins in two years, he certainly couldn't expect to go there and it would have been unfair for him to make it as a demand. His goal was to teach the team a winning culture; a playoff appearance is just icing on the cake.
Not that Thibault doesn't like winning. Far from it, he expects to win. He was very disappointed after the game because this was a "winnable" game and the Mystics lost it. The players were disappointed, too. Ivory Latta could barely speak after the game.
Yes, the goal is to Win The Whole Damned Thing. But Washington's accomplishments should not be overlooked, they are clearly a Team on the Rise.
I asked him if he would rather have Latta overseas or coaching at North Carolina. His reply is not that one was necessarily better than the other, but coaching will teach Latta a few things. He stated that the point guard is the representative of the coach's philosophy and in efforts to teach others, she'll have a few "aha!" moments about why he can be so frustrated sometimes. He joked that he plans to call her some time during the season if there's a rough patch and ask her, "See what I mean?"
He also liked the energy that she brings to a team. Latta brings energy. Everyone loves Ivory Latta. *I* love Ivory Latta, and she's not even my team and for Meadors's purposes I thought that Lehning was better than Latta. If you talk to Ivory Latta, you either fall in love with Ivory Latta or your heart is made out of granite.
(* * *)
I also had a chance to talk to Senor Fred. One of the topics was Erika de Souza. Even though Erika's English is a lot better than five years ago, she still needs her translator so it's not perfect. But she can understand basketball terminology, or as Williams put it, "coach-speak".
(* * *)
When I got home, I missed Phoenix @ Los Angeles - all but the last play of the game, after I had settled into bed with Bunny and I said, "Flip over to the Phoenix @ Los Angeles game." The only problem with Phoenix winning is that it will make some of Phoenix's fan base more insufferable than they already are.
Then again, it could just be the five percent rule in action. During a graduation ceremony, a police commissioner told his newly graduated cadets that out of the entire class, five percent exemplified everything that a policeman should be. An additional five percent would turn out to be nothing more than criminals wearing badges. "An entire squad, an entire precinct, an entire force will go in the direction of whichever five percent turns out to have the most influence."
The message is to give support to good behaviors. A lot of Phoenix Mercury fans are nice people. Ben York is a mensch. Seth Pollack is cool.
I like the Mercury. Brittney Griner seems sweet. I like Diana Taurasi, we were going in opposite directions under Philips Arena and she made the briefest of incidental contact with me. She apologized immediately, even though it wasn't the kind of contact - a mere brush in close quarters - that even deserved an apology; if she said nothing I wouldn't have thought any worse of her. Russ Pennell is a hoot to talk to. Not only do I like the Mercury, I respect them, I love their history, I loved the old Michelle Timms-Mercury.
Some "trash talk" however, belongs right in the sewer.
* Atlanta is a "bad sports town",
* Fred Williams is a bad coach,
* Angel McCoughtry is cranky/crazy, and
* Atlanta hasn't had good playoff attendance, that, therefore:
* Atlanta doesn't deserve a WNBA franchise.
To which I reply, "Suck it haters, PTHBTHBTHBTHBTHB." This might not be seen as a deserving counter-reply, but the arguments above aren't very good either.
* Even if Atlanta is a bad sports town - and I think this is true - who made you the boss of whether or not Atlanta "deserves" a team?
* If Fred Williams is such a bad coach, then how did such a bad coach win this series? (Unfortunately, this is the kind of question where haters will just move the goalposts. Even if Senor Fred is holding up the Silver Boob at the end of the season, the haters will just figure out a way to avoid giving him any credit for it - See: Meadors, Marynell.)
* As Charles Barkley might say, "Who made me your role model?"
* Okay. The playoff attendance hasn't been good. Even so, looking at attendance in isolation from a host of other factors - civic culture, sports history, attitudes, psychology, etc. etc. - is not the best approach.
I had a chance to chat with Mike Thibault before the game. Not all of the stuff we talked about made it into the article, but that was to keep the article from going to 4,000 words. He told me something interesting - namely, that going into this season, he was more interested in seeing what kind of team he actually had than setting a playoff appearance as some kind of arbitrary benchmark that would make or break the Mystics season. After 11 wins in two years, he certainly couldn't expect to go there and it would have been unfair for him to make it as a demand. His goal was to teach the team a winning culture; a playoff appearance is just icing on the cake.
Not that Thibault doesn't like winning. Far from it, he expects to win. He was very disappointed after the game because this was a "winnable" game and the Mystics lost it. The players were disappointed, too. Ivory Latta could barely speak after the game.
Yes, the goal is to Win The Whole Damned Thing. But Washington's accomplishments should not be overlooked, they are clearly a Team on the Rise.
I asked him if he would rather have Latta overseas or coaching at North Carolina. His reply is not that one was necessarily better than the other, but coaching will teach Latta a few things. He stated that the point guard is the representative of the coach's philosophy and in efforts to teach others, she'll have a few "aha!" moments about why he can be so frustrated sometimes. He joked that he plans to call her some time during the season if there's a rough patch and ask her, "See what I mean?"
He also liked the energy that she brings to a team. Latta brings energy. Everyone loves Ivory Latta. *I* love Ivory Latta, and she's not even my team and for Meadors's purposes I thought that Lehning was better than Latta. If you talk to Ivory Latta, you either fall in love with Ivory Latta or your heart is made out of granite.
(* * *)
I also had a chance to talk to Senor Fred. One of the topics was Erika de Souza. Even though Erika's English is a lot better than five years ago, she still needs her translator so it's not perfect. But she can understand basketball terminology, or as Williams put it, "coach-speak".
(* * *)
When I got home, I missed Phoenix @ Los Angeles - all but the last play of the game, after I had settled into bed with Bunny and I said, "Flip over to the Phoenix @ Los Angeles game." The only problem with Phoenix winning is that it will make some of Phoenix's fan base more insufferable than they already are.
Then again, it could just be the five percent rule in action. During a graduation ceremony, a police commissioner told his newly graduated cadets that out of the entire class, five percent exemplified everything that a policeman should be. An additional five percent would turn out to be nothing more than criminals wearing badges. "An entire squad, an entire precinct, an entire force will go in the direction of whichever five percent turns out to have the most influence."
The message is to give support to good behaviors. A lot of Phoenix Mercury fans are nice people. Ben York is a mensch. Seth Pollack is cool.
I like the Mercury. Brittney Griner seems sweet. I like Diana Taurasi, we were going in opposite directions under Philips Arena and she made the briefest of incidental contact with me. She apologized immediately, even though it wasn't the kind of contact - a mere brush in close quarters - that even deserved an apology; if she said nothing I wouldn't have thought any worse of her. Russ Pennell is a hoot to talk to. Not only do I like the Mercury, I respect them, I love their history, I loved the old Michelle Timms-Mercury.
Some "trash talk" however, belongs right in the sewer.
A quick sum up of Washington @ Atlanta
It looks like the next couple of days will be busy. Projects at work. A game on Thursday night to attend, possibly games on both Saturday (WNBA, to watch) and/or Sunday (high school). So for that one blogger who is reading this, you might have to wait for future posts.
However, I only have one comment to those in dismay that Atlanta advanced to the Finals - to ESPN2, to NBA-TV, to any one in the WNBA front office, and to those self-appointed guardians in women's pro basketball fandom who doesn't think Atlanta deserves a team.
To them, I say: "Suck it, haterz, PTHBTHBTHBTHBTHB!"
However, I only have one comment to those in dismay that Atlanta advanced to the Finals - to ESPN2, to NBA-TV, to any one in the WNBA front office, and to those self-appointed guardians in women's pro basketball fandom who doesn't think Atlanta deserves a team.
To them, I say: "Suck it, haterz, PTHBTHBTHBTHBTHB!"
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Atlanta @ Washington; Los Angeles @ Phoenix - WNBA Conference Semifinals, Game 2
Last night's game answered the question, "Out of Atlanta and Washington, which team wants to go to the Eastern Conference Finals the least? In this case, it was Washington's turn to stink up the joint, by default sending this Eastern Conference Semifinals to a decisive Game 3 in Atlanta on Monday night.
The good news is that we only have three games in a semifinals; there might have been riots if it went to five games. Generally one dead quarter (<10 points) will kill a team, and the Mystics had two of them. (We can name those quarters "suck" and "blow" respectively.)
Atlanta shot a high-school 35.2 percent FG percentage, but Washington topped that with a 25 percent (14-for-56) "effort". I don't know much about the mental game of basketball, but in golf that would be a serious case of the yips. Frankly, it's hard to lose a game when you opponent only makes 1 out of 4 attempts, and I wonder how much of that can be attributed to Atlanta's D.
One change was Willingham did not start. She hurt her right knee (how can you tell?) and was replaced in the lineup by Aneika Henry. Henry scored 10 points and 12 rebounds against the Mystics, and with Willingham looking doubtful for Game 3, if Atlanta wins that game the story is going to be why didn't Senor Fred start Henry sooner over Willingham?
Some statistics, copped from Paul Swanson:
Lowest field-goal percentage, playoff game
.224 -- Phoenix vs. New York, August 28, 1997 (15/67)
.250 -- Washington vs. Atlanta, September 21, 2013 (14/56)
.260 -- New York at Connecticut, September 27, 2012 (20/77)
.267 -- Atlanta vs. Washington, September 19, 2013 (20/75)
.268 -- Sacramento vs. Utah, August 19, 2001 (15/56)
Lowest field-goal percentage, both teams, playoff game
.299 -- Houston (.288) vs. New York (.309), September 5, 1999 (32/107)
.301 -- Connecticut (.278) vs. Washington (.324), August 20, 2006 (43/143)
.307 -- Washington (.250) vs. Atlanta (.352), September 21, 2013 (39/127)
.314 -- Indiana (.281) vs. New York (.354), September 1, 2005 (33/105)
Fewest field goals, playoff game
14 -- Washington vs. Atlanta, September 21, 2013
14 -- Charlotte at New York, August 27, 2001
15 -- Sacramento vs. Utah, August 19, 2001
15 -- Houston vs. New York, September 5, 1999
15 -- Houston vs. New York, September 4, 1999
15 -- Phoenix vs. New York, August 28, 1997
Most rebounds, playoff game
53 -- Atlanta at Washington, September 21, 2013
52 -- Indiana at Connecticut, August 23, 2007 (3OT)
50 -- Detroit vs. Phoenix, September 8, 2007
49 -- Seattle vs. Phoenix, September 15, 2011
So Henry's rebounding performance doesn't look that great. Everyone got a chance at the boards for Atlanta - de Souza had 15, Henry had 12, Hayes had 11. Even Armintie Herrington had 7 rebounds, and she only friggin played 20 minutes!
McCoughtry came out knowing that she'd have to carry the team on her back, but after a while it became clear that that was unnecessary. Crystal Langhorne evaporated. Zero points, 3 rebounds. Atlanta did whatever it wanted to do on the glass.
I'll be there Monday night, obviously.
As for Los Angeles @ Phoenix, I was impressed with both Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi. That game was a nice contrast to the sucky Atlanta-Washington series. Parker had 31/11 rebounds, Ogwumike had 15/11 rebounds, and clearly, Los Angeles wasn't going to disappear into the desert night. This has been a good series; a shame I won't get a chance to see it live on Monday night.
The good news is that we only have three games in a semifinals; there might have been riots if it went to five games. Generally one dead quarter (<10 points) will kill a team, and the Mystics had two of them. (We can name those quarters "suck" and "blow" respectively.)
Atlanta shot a high-school 35.2 percent FG percentage, but Washington topped that with a 25 percent (14-for-56) "effort". I don't know much about the mental game of basketball, but in golf that would be a serious case of the yips. Frankly, it's hard to lose a game when you opponent only makes 1 out of 4 attempts, and I wonder how much of that can be attributed to Atlanta's D.
One change was Willingham did not start. She hurt her right knee (how can you tell?) and was replaced in the lineup by Aneika Henry. Henry scored 10 points and 12 rebounds against the Mystics, and with Willingham looking doubtful for Game 3, if Atlanta wins that game the story is going to be why didn't Senor Fred start Henry sooner over Willingham?
Some statistics, copped from Paul Swanson:
Lowest field-goal percentage, playoff game
.224 -- Phoenix vs. New York, August 28, 1997 (15/67)
.250 -- Washington vs. Atlanta, September 21, 2013 (14/56)
.260 -- New York at Connecticut, September 27, 2012 (20/77)
.267 -- Atlanta vs. Washington, September 19, 2013 (20/75)
.268 -- Sacramento vs. Utah, August 19, 2001 (15/56)
Lowest field-goal percentage, both teams, playoff game
.299 -- Houston (.288) vs. New York (.309), September 5, 1999 (32/107)
.301 -- Connecticut (.278) vs. Washington (.324), August 20, 2006 (43/143)
.307 -- Washington (.250) vs. Atlanta (.352), September 21, 2013 (39/127)
.314 -- Indiana (.281) vs. New York (.354), September 1, 2005 (33/105)
Fewest field goals, playoff game
14 -- Washington vs. Atlanta, September 21, 2013
14 -- Charlotte at New York, August 27, 2001
15 -- Sacramento vs. Utah, August 19, 2001
15 -- Houston vs. New York, September 5, 1999
15 -- Houston vs. New York, September 4, 1999
15 -- Phoenix vs. New York, August 28, 1997
Most rebounds, playoff game
53 -- Atlanta at Washington, September 21, 2013
52 -- Indiana at Connecticut, August 23, 2007 (3OT)
50 -- Detroit vs. Phoenix, September 8, 2007
49 -- Seattle vs. Phoenix, September 15, 2011
So Henry's rebounding performance doesn't look that great. Everyone got a chance at the boards for Atlanta - de Souza had 15, Henry had 12, Hayes had 11. Even Armintie Herrington had 7 rebounds, and she only friggin played 20 minutes!
McCoughtry came out knowing that she'd have to carry the team on her back, but after a while it became clear that that was unnecessary. Crystal Langhorne evaporated. Zero points, 3 rebounds. Atlanta did whatever it wanted to do on the glass.
I'll be there Monday night, obviously.
As for Los Angeles @ Phoenix, I was impressed with both Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi. That game was a nice contrast to the sucky Atlanta-Washington series. Parker had 31/11 rebounds, Ogwumike had 15/11 rebounds, and clearly, Los Angeles wasn't going to disappear into the desert night. This has been a good series; a shame I won't get a chance to see it live on Monday night.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Indiana @ Chicago, Minnesota @ Seattle (Game 1)
I found this old article from John Altavilla. It reads:
Meadors was an assistant with Doug Bruno and Sun assistant coach Jen Gillom. She is currently not working but is still being paid by the Dream, who fired her late last season.
The Dream initially extended her contract in 2011 to the end of the 2013 season. This means that Meadors can now return to coaching in 2014, if she wants to. The question is, does she want to ? Meadors is now 70 years old, and most people are thinking about retirement at that age. I'd like to see her back in the league at some capacity, but we'll probably never see her in Atlanta again as long as either Angel McCoughtry or the current ownership are still there.
(* * *)
I got a call from an old basketball friend last night, where we talked about the woeful state of the Dream.
* Le'coe Willingham's contract extends to the end of the 2014 season. So Senor Fred's only hope is to trade Willingham. However, now that the rest of the league has seen her play, that might not be possible. The only other option might be to hide her at the bottom of the bench until we make a trade where the price of the trade is taking Willingham, too.
* I agreed with him that the Dream are sort of doomed. His west coast friend swears up and down that the Dream are going to be relocated to California the second that Brock and Loeffler get tired of running the team. His friend's claim is that the Dream will move to Oakland and the Minnesota Lynx will be shuffled over to the Eastern Conference.
Indeed, there are lots of people out there - a surprising number - that are not only willing but eager to ax Atlanta's franchise. The logic is that since the team doesn't draw, it must be moved.
The only kernel of real logic there is that empty arenas look bad on TV. But Atlanta suffers from a great deal of woes that only time can overcome:
1. It's a town of transplants, and many transplants have an attachment to the teams where they grew up.
2. Towns like New York, Boston, Chicago have had pro sports for over a century. So they have thriving sports cultures. But pro sports didn't give a damn about Atlanta at all until the 1960s or so.
Braves: 1966
Falcons: 1966
Hawks: 1968
That's not even fifty years, people.
3. We don't own the arena. That's a big one. Teams like New York, Phoenix, Minnesota are owned by the NBA owner, so they own the arena. Our owners don't. They have to lease it. I'll also bet money that the Dream don't get a slice either of parking or of concessions. Every dollar you have to spend on necessities is one that you can't spend on promotion.
But until the Dream truly are doomed, I'm hanging on. I know they'll be around at least until the end of 2014. And as the proverb says, "Maybe the donkey will speak Hebrew."
(* * *)
Watched most of Indiana @ Chicago and part of Minnesota @ Seattle. The latter one can be ignored, the only question was not if the Lynx would win, but when. Seattle is now off to the Tacoma Dome on Sunday where they'll probably end their season.
Indiana vs. Chicago was surprising. Looks like Katie Douglas is hurt again. Even so, Indiana turned on the intensity and just showed the Sky what playoff basketball looks like. Chicago kept trying to high-lo the ball into the interior and the Fever just weren't having it. Game Two at Indiana is going to be very interesting; what is the WNBA going to do if the Eastern Conference Finals are Indiana vs. Washington?
WNBA and ESPN officials would love to see Chicago vs. Phoenix in the Finals. That's the difference between Three to See and Nothing to See Here.
Meadors was an assistant with Doug Bruno and Sun assistant coach Jen Gillom. She is currently not working but is still being paid by the Dream, who fired her late last season.
The Dream initially extended her contract in 2011 to the end of the 2013 season. This means that Meadors can now return to coaching in 2014, if she wants to. The question is, does she want to ? Meadors is now 70 years old, and most people are thinking about retirement at that age. I'd like to see her back in the league at some capacity, but we'll probably never see her in Atlanta again as long as either Angel McCoughtry or the current ownership are still there.
(* * *)
I got a call from an old basketball friend last night, where we talked about the woeful state of the Dream.
* Le'coe Willingham's contract extends to the end of the 2014 season. So Senor Fred's only hope is to trade Willingham. However, now that the rest of the league has seen her play, that might not be possible. The only other option might be to hide her at the bottom of the bench until we make a trade where the price of the trade is taking Willingham, too.
* I agreed with him that the Dream are sort of doomed. His west coast friend swears up and down that the Dream are going to be relocated to California the second that Brock and Loeffler get tired of running the team. His friend's claim is that the Dream will move to Oakland and the Minnesota Lynx will be shuffled over to the Eastern Conference.
Indeed, there are lots of people out there - a surprising number - that are not only willing but eager to ax Atlanta's franchise. The logic is that since the team doesn't draw, it must be moved.
The only kernel of real logic there is that empty arenas look bad on TV. But Atlanta suffers from a great deal of woes that only time can overcome:
1. It's a town of transplants, and many transplants have an attachment to the teams where they grew up.
2. Towns like New York, Boston, Chicago have had pro sports for over a century. So they have thriving sports cultures. But pro sports didn't give a damn about Atlanta at all until the 1960s or so.
Braves: 1966
Falcons: 1966
Hawks: 1968
That's not even fifty years, people.
3. We don't own the arena. That's a big one. Teams like New York, Phoenix, Minnesota are owned by the NBA owner, so they own the arena. Our owners don't. They have to lease it. I'll also bet money that the Dream don't get a slice either of parking or of concessions. Every dollar you have to spend on necessities is one that you can't spend on promotion.
But until the Dream truly are doomed, I'm hanging on. I know they'll be around at least until the end of 2014. And as the proverb says, "Maybe the donkey will speak Hebrew."
(* * *)
Watched most of Indiana @ Chicago and part of Minnesota @ Seattle. The latter one can be ignored, the only question was not if the Lynx would win, but when. Seattle is now off to the Tacoma Dome on Sunday where they'll probably end their season.
Indiana vs. Chicago was surprising. Looks like Katie Douglas is hurt again. Even so, Indiana turned on the intensity and just showed the Sky what playoff basketball looks like. Chicago kept trying to high-lo the ball into the interior and the Fever just weren't having it. Game Two at Indiana is going to be very interesting; what is the WNBA going to do if the Eastern Conference Finals are Indiana vs. Washington?
WNBA and ESPN officials would love to see Chicago vs. Phoenix in the Finals. That's the difference between Three to See and Nothing to See Here.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Washington @ Atlanta
My writeup on this game is here at Swish Appeal. So go read it first, and come back.
This is the kind of game that gets WNBA coaches fired. The Dream have hit the franchise low point in scoring (56) two times this season, once against Chicago and once in the first round of the playoffs. The Chicago game set a franchise low in shooting percentage at 28.6 percent, and congratulations! Atlanta just broke the record again.
The best thing to do about that game is to just forget it. Treat it as a fluke, no one was ready, and move on. Right now, I'm sure Atlanta fans have the feeling of a resident of Death Row. You know that you're going to be executed, you just don't know when. Will your stay be commuted on Saturday? Or will the warden show up with the preacher and say, "It's time to go?"
What's the problem? Here are the Eastern Conference standings before July 1:
Atlanta: 10-1
Chicago: 7-3
New York: 5-4
Washington: 5-6
Indiana: 3-7
Connecticut: 2-7
Here are the Eastern Conference standings since July 1, after we started 10-1.
Chicago: 17-7
Indiana: 13-11
Washington: 12-11
Atlanta: 7-16
Connecticut: 8-17
New York: 6-19
Yeah, a few of these things are not like the others. Not only is the 7-16 (now 7-17 after last night's game) cause for serious alarm, but this puts Atlanta as tied with the Connecticut Sun for fourth place after July 1st. How bad are we? We'd be a lottery team, that's how bad we've been after July 1st.
Lottery teams don't win championships. We don't even have the advantages of a lottery pick for all our sorriness. We'll probably end up with a #8-#9 pick, if I've got it calculated correctly. The 2014 draft might be deep, but it ain't that deep.
I have very little faith that we can get out of the first round, but they play these games for a reason. If you shoot 26-point-something percent against the Mystics, how well do you think you'll do against Chicago? Or Minnesota? Richard Cohen stated that Atlanta's outcomes were very "variant", in that we have a 50 percent chance of shooting the lights out or shooting ourselves, depending on the day. But I don't think that's true. He's looking at those first 11 games as well, but we've just been a very bad team after that, and now it's been exposed.
If the Dream started 7-16, got Sancho Lyttle back after her being out all year, and went 10-1, we'd be calling Fred Williams a genius and Sancho Lyttle MVP. But it's not going to happen that way.
(* * *)
The worst stat, however, is hidden somewhere in the box score.
Attendance: 3862
I know we've had a couple of games over the last six years where we had less than 3,000 in attendance. So it's not the worst game attendance ever from the Dream. But it is pretty low. And for a playoff game, it's embarrassing.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that teams don't get the playoff schedules until very late in the year. By the time a team learns if it's playing on Thursday or Friday, it's very difficult to promote the game or sell tickets to it.
But the bigger problem stems from the nature of Atlanta itself. I've made excuses for Atlanta for a long time but Atlanta is just a bad sports town, period. You'll read a lot of posts from trolls on the internet about Atlanta sucking, and a lot of it is trolling.
But hey, Atlanta. Prove me wrong. Show up at games.
A lot of it is just plain ineptitude over the years. The Braves went to the playoffs every year for a wild string of years, but only have one championship to show for it. The Falcons and the Hawks have - historically - not been all that great. We ran two hockey teams out of town.
I think another problem is where the arenas are located. If you are building a sports complex in Atlanta, midtown Atlanta is a terrible place to put it. Traffic is awful, making it a real ordeal to get to. (It took me a full hour to travel the 13 or so miles from work to the game between 5 pm and 6 pm.) There is mass transit but no one likes riding a subway - I lived in New York for three years and I didn't like riding the subway on good days.
However, there are great advantages to life in Atlanta. James Sinclair wrote:
Point is, if that's what it would take for Atlanta to turn its reputation around — stadiums and sports bars and message boards full of despondent, entitled assholes (and I think that is what it would take) — then I don't want to see it happen. Rob Parker is merely the latest member of the sports media to chastise Atlanta by rehashing the narrative that being a good sports fan means supporting your team with equal fervor win or lose (instead of behaving rationally by rewarding good management and punishing bad management), and being upset that your neighbor still pulls for the team in whatever city he's from (instead of being proud that he'd rather live in your city than his), and conflating on-field misfortune with real trauma (instead of displaying the emotional maturity of an actual adult).
Touche. I'm going to borrow a footnote from Sinclair, slightly modified:
But still the game goes on. The in-bound pass goes to Le'coe Willingham and she surveys the court, looking for an opening, but in that place inside her where there should be strength and hunger and aggression there is only the unshakable feeling that nobody gives a shit — that on this court, in this city, there is no difference between winning and losing — and so she puts up a 12-footer that misses everything.
(* * *)
Naturally, my late return kept me from watching Phoenix @ Los Angeles. Seems like Diana Taurasi was making a statement about whom she felt should be MVP.
This is the kind of game that gets WNBA coaches fired. The Dream have hit the franchise low point in scoring (56) two times this season, once against Chicago and once in the first round of the playoffs. The Chicago game set a franchise low in shooting percentage at 28.6 percent, and congratulations! Atlanta just broke the record again.
The best thing to do about that game is to just forget it. Treat it as a fluke, no one was ready, and move on. Right now, I'm sure Atlanta fans have the feeling of a resident of Death Row. You know that you're going to be executed, you just don't know when. Will your stay be commuted on Saturday? Or will the warden show up with the preacher and say, "It's time to go?"
What's the problem? Here are the Eastern Conference standings before July 1:
Atlanta: 10-1
Chicago: 7-3
New York: 5-4
Washington: 5-6
Indiana: 3-7
Connecticut: 2-7
Here are the Eastern Conference standings since July 1, after we started 10-1.
Chicago: 17-7
Indiana: 13-11
Washington: 12-11
Atlanta: 7-16
Connecticut: 8-17
New York: 6-19
Yeah, a few of these things are not like the others. Not only is the 7-16 (now 7-17 after last night's game) cause for serious alarm, but this puts Atlanta as tied with the Connecticut Sun for fourth place after July 1st. How bad are we? We'd be a lottery team, that's how bad we've been after July 1st.
Lottery teams don't win championships. We don't even have the advantages of a lottery pick for all our sorriness. We'll probably end up with a #8-#9 pick, if I've got it calculated correctly. The 2014 draft might be deep, but it ain't that deep.
I have very little faith that we can get out of the first round, but they play these games for a reason. If you shoot 26-point-something percent against the Mystics, how well do you think you'll do against Chicago? Or Minnesota? Richard Cohen stated that Atlanta's outcomes were very "variant", in that we have a 50 percent chance of shooting the lights out or shooting ourselves, depending on the day. But I don't think that's true. He's looking at those first 11 games as well, but we've just been a very bad team after that, and now it's been exposed.
If the Dream started 7-16, got Sancho Lyttle back after her being out all year, and went 10-1, we'd be calling Fred Williams a genius and Sancho Lyttle MVP. But it's not going to happen that way.
(* * *)
The worst stat, however, is hidden somewhere in the box score.
Attendance: 3862
I know we've had a couple of games over the last six years where we had less than 3,000 in attendance. So it's not the worst game attendance ever from the Dream. But it is pretty low. And for a playoff game, it's embarrassing.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that teams don't get the playoff schedules until very late in the year. By the time a team learns if it's playing on Thursday or Friday, it's very difficult to promote the game or sell tickets to it.
But the bigger problem stems from the nature of Atlanta itself. I've made excuses for Atlanta for a long time but Atlanta is just a bad sports town, period. You'll read a lot of posts from trolls on the internet about Atlanta sucking, and a lot of it is trolling.
But hey, Atlanta. Prove me wrong. Show up at games.
A lot of it is just plain ineptitude over the years. The Braves went to the playoffs every year for a wild string of years, but only have one championship to show for it. The Falcons and the Hawks have - historically - not been all that great. We ran two hockey teams out of town.
I think another problem is where the arenas are located. If you are building a sports complex in Atlanta, midtown Atlanta is a terrible place to put it. Traffic is awful, making it a real ordeal to get to. (It took me a full hour to travel the 13 or so miles from work to the game between 5 pm and 6 pm.) There is mass transit but no one likes riding a subway - I lived in New York for three years and I didn't like riding the subway on good days.
However, there are great advantages to life in Atlanta. James Sinclair wrote:
Point is, if that's what it would take for Atlanta to turn its reputation around — stadiums and sports bars and message boards full of despondent, entitled assholes (and I think that is what it would take) — then I don't want to see it happen. Rob Parker is merely the latest member of the sports media to chastise Atlanta by rehashing the narrative that being a good sports fan means supporting your team with equal fervor win or lose (instead of behaving rationally by rewarding good management and punishing bad management), and being upset that your neighbor still pulls for the team in whatever city he's from (instead of being proud that he'd rather live in your city than his), and conflating on-field misfortune with real trauma (instead of displaying the emotional maturity of an actual adult).
Touche. I'm going to borrow a footnote from Sinclair, slightly modified:
But still the game goes on. The in-bound pass goes to Le'coe Willingham and she surveys the court, looking for an opening, but in that place inside her where there should be strength and hunger and aggression there is only the unshakable feeling that nobody gives a shit — that on this court, in this city, there is no difference between winning and losing — and so she puts up a 12-footer that misses everything.
(* * *)
Naturally, my late return kept me from watching Phoenix @ Los Angeles. Seems like Diana Taurasi was making a statement about whom she felt should be MVP.
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