ShamSports.com: Not as baseball-centric as the decor would suggest.
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Darnell Swallow? I bet he does.
Repeatedly, I have commented about the television coverage that the NBA receives in this, the most fabulous of countries, my homeland, and the place I reside in while I write this: England. For those who thankfully missed previous rants, one game a week is screened on a Tuesday night on a free-to-air channel called Five, and that's all we get. It's not presented very well, either.
I have yet to offer glimpses into what I'm talking about for those who have never seen the coverage in question, partly due to my laziness in recording a video, and partly because a typical Mark Webster question transcribes roughly as "well see, this is the thing, isn't it, because you know, he's, err, he's, he's, err, err, y'know, he is THE MAN, and y'know, he's going to make them do things his way, y'know, isn't he?", which isn't good blog material. But I've ranted anyway because it annoys me. And now I'm going to do it again.
What bothers me the most about the coverage - moreso than Webster's stammer, moreso than Andre Alleyne's less than insightful insights into the NBA, and moreso than the forced chemistry and bad laughter that permeates everything they say - is the channel's dedication to only promoting the sport towards a black market. Be it through crappy pre-game advertisements, or by only interviewing black people, Five somehow ensure that Mark Webster is your only dose of vanilla for the night.
That is, except for last night. Last night, they finally had a white guy. Sort of.
If this face looks familiar, it may be because you saw it before, in this blog post. This is the impossibly named Darnell Swallow, an Albino black guy and former drug dealer, who found his fame and fortune as a Big Brother contestant. Not, as you might have thought, as an expert NBA analyst. But apparently that's not important to whether you get a job promoting the NBA or not. Nope. Not in Britain. Not when Five are involved.
At some point, I will turn this constant complaining into a hopefully-read letter of complaint to the TV channel in question, in doing so hopefully sparking a chain of rebellious events that sees the current regime overthrown and a new militant republic taking charge, leading the people to a promised land of analysis, insight and telestrators. But for now I'll just piss and whinge in this blog.
(Congratulations to Darnell, by the way, who has somehow turned a shady past and congenital skin defect into a television career that sees him feature in sporting broadcasts that he's dangerously underqualified for. That takes some doing. Actually, wauit, what am I saying? He's not underqualified at all. He's black and has an American accent. He must LOVE basketball.)
Also, on a completely unrelated note, last night I dreamt that Allen Iverson sent me a text message containing a joke about Hitler, and that former Sacramento Kings summer league participant Patrick Sanders berated me at knifepoint about some gossip I had written in this blog that told about how he once shared a bed with Milwaukee Bucks guard, Luke Ridnour (which, I should stress for legal reasons, is something that never happened. Or if it did, it's a coincidence.) I just wanted to tell someone this. It worried me.
All those who read my diary type thingy from last year's preseason game in London will notice how I have a little bit of problem with Five's marketing policy of the sport, which seems to want to solely appeal to the "hip hop" (which you can probably go ahead and change to "young black") market. Of the ten courtside interviews conducted that day (Brian Scalabrine excluded), all ten were of black celebrities, this coming immediately after an advertising campaign exclusively focused on the street demographic. (If that last sentence wasn't enough of a clue, I'm white. Bravo, top hole, jolly good chap, rather bracing, tea and scones, "I say Biggles, how awfully uncouth", et cetera. Basically I'm from a Battle Of Britain war film.)
Apparently my opinion fell on deaf ears, though. This may have been my fault for never actually voicing it to anyone other than your powerless selves, but still. I was right, and changes needed to be made.
They weren't.
Right now, our national team is making the headlines, and actually becoming significant on the world stage. With Luol Deng, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Joel Freeland, Dan Clark, Nate Reinking and (hopefully) Ben Gordon in our team now, amongst others, we finally have a side worth knowing about in Europe, and we've recently qualified for the European Championships, after only recently being so bad of a basketball nation that we were ranked behind Chinese Taipei in the world rankings. In addition to this, the NBA apparently loves us and our swanky new arena, resulting in the rare but special sight of an annual proper NBA game played in this country. (Note to other countries out there: if you build a spectacularly pointless dome shaped building to "celebrate" the new Millennium, then after you flush millions of pounds down the shitter as it struggles to be financially viable for the one year of its existence, it eventually becomes worthwhile when you completely rebuild and re-design it into something entirely different to what it was before! FISCAL FINANCIAL PLANNING FTW!). For the first time since I've been alive, and for the first time perhaps ever, basketball has a modiocum of significance in this country.
And who do we get to bring the sport to the general public? Why, it's only the blackest fifty one year old white man in rural Lowestoft, Tim bloody Westwood.
Just not good enough, is it?.
Try a bit harder next time. Find someone who knows something about the game, rather than vapid "celebrity" interviews of people who pretend to love the game but only when doing so gets them free airtime. Try and blag some interviews with the NBA people on show, or even with some of the American press sent to cover the game. Fuck it, interview me. I scrub up all right in a tie, and I actually know proper English words and stuff about basketball and stuff. I also don't gesticulate with my hands like a crack addled twat, and pensioners love me. I look perhaps a bit too much like Andrew Bogut to be good TV material, but......Tim Westwood? Are you kidding me?
Can you see why we might not have the biggest fan base for the sport in this country?
I don't care what colour they are, but let's try and get some people who know of the sport that they supposedly "love". Maybe the broadcast could then be used to relay some interesting facts, snippets or insights into the game. And then maybe it could be used to inform and entertain the public. You know, like they did back in the olden days.
I like receiving your email. I do. Even when it's stupid and completely useless to me. (NB: If you're emailing me to tell me a link is broken, do me a favour and tell me what page you're talking about. Thanks.)
Receiving them makes me feel wanted. It makes me feel important. It makes me feel like Bertie Bigbollocks. I welcome it, and messages of all varieties. I welcome your questions, your non-ridiculous suggestions, your savage arse-kissing, your bilious hate, and your "Buy discounted art products here" spam. I endeavour to respond to them all, and, if I don't, then that's either because I'm ignoring you, or because I forgot you because your message was boring. (Ha! Joke! Funny!)
I even welcome the groupie messages, and I am somewhat upset that they've largely gone away.
However, please for the love of Christ stop asking me if certain NBA players have kids. I don't freakin' care. Please dear God make this stop. I can't and won't answer you, because I don't know. And I don't know because I DON'T FUCKING CARE. Neither should you.
I am here appealing publicly to make this stop, because appealing privately doesn't seem to work. If you want to know how many children Penny Hardaway has, Google it. If you can't find the answer, assume that he has none, and move on with your life. Take that time to reanalyse your life's priorities, and think about quite why you wanted to find out this information in the first place. It is, after all, none of your business.
Do NOT invest this time in e-mailing me about it, because I do not know, and I do not care. I will never know, and I will never care. Also, if you do then email me about it, and I respond with "I DON'T CARE, GO AWAY" (or words to that effect, then don't respond with a response that ridicules me for not knowing, as if this was in some way a failing on my part. Instead, leave me alone altogether. That'd be good.
See? See what you made me do? You made me write this. This has to end. This has got to stop. This, and child cruelty. So please send just £2 a month, or whatever you can afford, and together we can help fight the good fight against annoying women. Just two pounds a month.
Please.
This has been a public services announcement. A-thank yaw.
I don't really like heckling. I'm English, and we play sports the same way that we used to fight wars - like gentleman. And it's not very gentlemanly to shout at people at work under the misguided idea that it's totally fine because you paid to be there. Regardless of what level of entitlement you feel that you have from handing over your entrance fee, you're still being a twat if you heckle. And we should all strive at all times to not be a twat. So this is why I'm against the practice.
("Sledgling", though, is another matter. Player on player heckles are fantastic. But the fans should probably just shut up.)
If you're going to heckle, though, at least be good at it. If you're going to heckle, plan it in advance. Think about your statements, and compile a rotation of barbs, a menu, a plan of attack, a pincer movement. Research your facts, from such basic ones as learning the names of the people and teams you are heckling, to somethiung more obscure that might actually get a player's attention, and make your endeavour worthwhile. It's absolutely imperative that you are better at the art of verbal warfare than the player you are yelling at. If you're not, you're going to look like a shitarse. Particularly if your girlfriend films it and puts it on the internet.
The Toronto Blue Jays fan in this video demonstrates exactly how not to do it. Seemingly acting on a whim, the fan goes at Tampa Bay Rays reliever Troy Percival with the only Percival-related facts that he has:
a) Percival is old. b) Percival has only won one World Series.
That's not a lot, really. Indeed, so short of ammo is this fan, that he tries to somehow fashion that second factoid into a negative. (Since whenw as winning a World Series a reason to heckle a baseball player? Strange times.)
Worse than his firepower is his delivery. Awkward, incomplete, and suffering from a distinct lack of knowledge towards the names of the guys in the bullpen (readers note: like I said, research is fundamental), the fan compounds his problems by leaving long pauses, getting the team name wrong, letting his girlfriend join in (always a mistake) using the shittest jokes you've ever heard, and filming himself dying this painful death. He sets himself up for an easy downfall.
Percival puts him away comfortably.
Annoying Fan To A Warming Up Troy Percival: "That pitch was high and outside!" A Warming Up Troy Percival To Annoying Fan: "Your mum is high and outside."
A textbook dispatch.
That is how to kick your own ass. If you're going to heckle, you need to win. The people you're shouting at, as the invisble female voice helpfully points out, are professional athletes. You aren't the first people ever to heckle them, and you're probably not even the first ones to do so on that particualr night. So they've had plenty of time to think up their retorts, particularly the old farts like Percival. If you don't have any good weapons in your arsenal, rest assured that they will.
And it's at that point that you'll wish that you hadn't filmed the debacle, because now immature British juveniles like me are laughing at you too.
Well, at least the NBA is in a British newspaper finally. Even if it's one of those "Really Interesting Things David Beckham Does While Alive"photo segments that are used by hugely shite third rate publications to pad out their pages with pictures of pretty girls.
Amusing if only for the fact that it calls Didier Ilunga-Mbenga an "ace". Seven years ago, when I didn't know any better, I might have bought that.
(Note to English readers - I only bought the Daily Mirror for the I'm Alan Partridge DVD giveaway. And it wasn't worth the agony that stemmed from actually owning the Daily Mirror.)
You're 49-32, fighting for the 8th seed in the playoffs. The team you're battling is 48-32. Even though you have the tiebreaker, you really need to win your last game to ensure the final spot. And it's not going to be easy. It's All Hands On Dick time, with the playoff intensity needing to be in full swing.
What a really stupid time for that. A really, really stupid time. There's never a good time, but this is a particularly stupid one.
If I was earning $13 million this year, I'd get some hired help on the driving. I really would. At the very least, you'd get one of your millions of hangers-on to help you out. That's what they're there for, isn't it? Make them earn their free tickets.
It really is amazingly stupid that DUI's (or DWI's, depending on what state you're in. So to speak.) continue to be so rife in the world of professional sports. And I have no idea why it continues. At least no one died, or crashed while watching porn. So that's something.
In other NBA news, I don't know why this is funny, but it is, and it needs posting, but doesn't merit its own post. So we'll make it an addendum to this one.
Coach Jim Boylan came up with a creative plan to try and lighten the mood among the Bulls.
During their off-day in Atlanta on Thursday, the players boarded the team bus before the scheduled practice time. But instead of practice, the bus drove to a nearby bowling alley.
At 11 o'clock in the morning, the Bulls essentially had the lanes to themselves. So they ordered some food, split up into teams and started bowling.
Every time Shaquille O'Neal leaves a franchise - be it his decision or otherwise - he is always sure to piss on the siblings of whoever he feels like, once his overweight ass is finally squeezed out of the door. It's an act that used to be amusing and/or coute, but the cuteness dried up long ago.
This season is no exception - after leaving Miami, who gave him $100 million for 50 games of work, O'Neal decided to try and make the circumstances of his departure acrimonious, even though they weren't.
"[In Phoenix] I love playing for this coach and I love playing with these guys," said O'Neal yesterday. "We have professionals who know what to do. No one is asking me to play with Chris Quinn or Ricky Davis. I'm actually on a team again."
Shaq must get some kind of pleasure out of throwing whomever he chooses under the bus for the purposes of getting a good quote to give to the press, because he does it a lot despite it having no practical purpose. In this instance, though, his quote is wildly hypocritical.
Little about Shaq is professional. He tries hard when he feels like it, and at no other times, times which are becoming increasingly few and far between. Shaq has also never tried to control his weight in the offseason, leaving himself having to play his way into shape during training camp, preseason and the early regualr season, which leads to the inevitable injuries that leave him having to sit out half of the season. (Oh no! How bad that must be for him!)
Annoyingly, he's been able to get away with it historically, due to his being so much better than everybody else. But this no longer applies. These days, Shaq isn't that good, and even though his confidence is unwavering (someone should ask him if he still makes free throws when it counts after his 33% shooting from the line in last season's first round sweep by Chicago), his skills are not. And so now, you're left with a player whose play is far beneath what it was, but whose persona refused to adapt.
Chris Quinn and Ricky Davis are not very good NBA players, but they play hard every night, even if they don't play very well. There's a whole lot more to being a "professional" than just being very good - as with any job, that tag brings with it an agreement to try hard as much as is reasonably possible, to shut your face, and to not cause trouble. O'Neal does not adhere to these things - consistently, he talks up new teammates to make them happy, to ease in his arrival, and to get the media and the public talking. Then when he leaves, he is sure to demean his former teammates while touting his new ones, just so that some of the blame for previous failures can be deflected away from him. Oh, and also to get his laugh.
Maybe his news Suns teammates can umpart some of their professionalism on him, before he knifes them in the back too. We;re now just awaiting the Championship guarantee.
A while ago - about two years, to be inexact - I wrote this:
.......one of my most extreme pet hates is the hand slapping after a free throw. It seems to lead to nothing but awkwardness. What if the free throw shooter doesn't step forward, leaving himself agonizingly out of reach of the rebounder? They're then both left to slap air. Does one of them make the final push to close the gap? Or do they leave it as an air shot? And is that a good precedent when shooting a free throw? Also, when the players come in from behind and smack the shooter on the arse, he generally is not expecting it. This often leads to them instinctively flailing out behind them to try and return the gesture, again coming up with nothing but air. Who is this helping? Does it help the shooter to do this? Do they get the feeling that his team mates are not rooting for him, unless this mindless routine is adhered to? Makes no sense to me. I would outlaw this instantly.
And I stand by it. It is, truly, an extremely gay ritual. However, I decided against a fully fledged campaign against it, for fear of its abject pointlessness being used against me.
Andrew Bogut has never been one to fear alienating himself, after incidents in the past such as deeming the majority of NBA players as being obseesed with "bling" (for which he was right), and after growing a seriously weird pony tail (for which he was oh so wrong). And seemingly his alienating worked, for not one teammate tried to touch his hands or his arse after this made free throw versus Atlanta, which is normally an automatic gesture of affection, comaraderie and slight homosexuality after every free throw, made or missed.
So he improvised.
Despite implications to the contrary on his profile - one which needs rewriting, after Bogut's recent and totally unexpected improvements in his weak side shotblocking - I like Andrew Bogut. In a league devoid of personality, Bogut has the outlines of one. And even if it's an extremely self-confident personality with the tiniest hints of martyrdom, that is, nevertheless, a personality.
......there's just so so much wrong with this that I can barely even begin.
48 minutes for Chris Quinn? Ricky Davis as the best player? 25.6% shooting? 10 free throws? Mark Blount rebounding line Mark Blount? 12 assists to 13 turnovers? Needless question marks?
Bollocks to it all. That's awful. Deliberately awful, and thus not amusingly awful. Bad times.
Still, it's not the worst lineup of all time. That honour goes to the 1999/00 Chicago Bulls, who offered up this joy of joys.
Do you ever stop and think about that time that Mark Madsen shot seven three pointers in an overtime game, when Minnesota and Memphis had the most blatant tank-off that history has ever seen? No, nor did I. That is, not until this morning, when I woke up thinking about it.
(For those unaware of what the hell I'm talking about, here's a box score.)
It's not an entirely normal thing to wake up thinking about, even for the most hardcore Madsen fans amongst us. (For we are all Mark Madsen fans. Obviously.) But some part of this must have ruffled my feathers, stoned my crows and enraged my loins, because this was all that i could think about for about 3 minutes after waking up.
It is now a permanent blot on the NBA landscape. The situation Minnesotas found themselves in - not good enough to make the playoffs, not bad enough to suck mightily without trying to - left them deliberately trying to lose games. It needn't have done, but General Manager extraordinaire Kevin McHale had already pissed away Minnesota's first rounder that season, as it was owed to the L.A. Clippers along with Sam Cassell in exchange for the mesmeric insignificance of Lionel Chalmers, along with Marko Jaric and his bevvy of minge. The pick, however, had top ten protection, and so in order to be able to keep it, Minnesota had to lose with a bit more regularly and finesse than they were doing up until that point.
They did this with aplomb, telling Kevin Garnett to stop playing (or so we thought), playing their better players for merely token minutes, and letting their worse players do whatever the hell they want, in what then-head coach Dwane Casey called "letting them have some fun" (read: "playing really badly so that we lose".)
The fact that they met an equally tanking Memphis team, who were tanking for a different reason, was an unfortunate coincidence. Memphis had comfortably made the playoffs, but was trying to lose for a different reason - they were residing in the fifth spot, with the Clippers in sixth. Whoever finished 5th would face the 60-22 Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs, without homecourt advantage, but whoever finished 6th would face Denver with homecourt advantage. After *accidentally* losing four of their last five games, the Clippers secured the worst (and, thus, the best) seed, in spite of Memphis's valiant efforts on the final day.
(The Clippers then beat Denver comfortably. The Grizzlies were swept by Dallas even more comfortably. Memphis were right not to want it.)
The whole exchange highlighted two key flaws in the NBA's system - the new playoff system and the protection of draft picks. The playoff system has been somewhat resolved, as the possibility of a team finishing lower down the seedings than a team with an inferior record has been decreased with the new decision to grant division winners no less than a top four seed, as opposed to a guaranteed top three seed. But the other situation remains intact, with lottery teams able to lose at will to either retain traded picks, or better their lottery chances. And it remains a travesty based around a communist idea of parity.
(The draft lottery isn't a million miles away from what Stalin was trying to do. Remember that.)
At this point, this post would benefit greatly from a well thought out and heavily critiqued suggestion for a better way of going about these things, so that such a deplorable situation won't ever happen again. (The concept of teams deliberately trying to lose is still prevalent - Miami, for example, has told Dwyane Wade to stop playing, and Memphis recently gifted away Pau Gasol just to take them out of purgatory.) However, as mentioned at the top, this post had a mere three minutes of thought, and so I haven't got one.
Any scenario in which teams are deliberately losing, though, is a gaping flaw in the otherwise well-constructed NBA machine. Therefore, it gives me something to bitch about. And so, I did. Quietly. To myself. For about three minutes.
Coincidentally (and it really was), a report came out on this very day (note: this note was not published on the day that it was written, which was the 18th) on the subject of Minnesota's recent tanking.
Responding to claims that his team tanked it down the stretch in recent years to improve draft position, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor fired a barb at Kevin Garnett on Tuesday, as reported by Yahoo.com.
Taylor pointed out that Garnett, who was traded to the Celtics this offseason, took himself out of the lineup late last season and missed the last five games with a sore right quadriceps.
“It was more like, I’d say, K.G. tanked it,” Taylor told the Pioneer Press. “I think the other guys still wanted to play, but (the loss of Garnett) sure changed the team and didn’t make us as (good).”
While the quote may have been taken out of context, or Taylor had not necessarily said what he meant, it does sure as shit look like he is trying to pass the blame onto this entire situation onto Garnett's shoulders. This hardly seems entirely fair, given the Madsen situation that inspired this post. But it DID lead to me googling Glen Taylor's name, and thus seeing for the first time a picture of his grin.
For those unsure, NBA Media Day is the day at the start of training camp set aside for the taking of photos of everybody involved within a basketball team. Really pointless. The photos are usually surreal, awful, or both. And the only saving grace of the day is when the occasional gem is offered up, such as this'un from George Karl last year:
For the most part, though, it is bland crapness. To illustrate this point, I have compiled the media day photos of long time Chicago Bulls assistant coach Ron Adams, the creepy looking bespectacled arm grabber, from the last 4 years. View them and judge for yourself quite how necessary media day is.
This is Ron Adams from 2007:
This is Ron Adams from 2006:
This is Ron Adams from 2005:
And this is Ron Adams from 2004:
Did this need doing? Does anybody want or need this to happen? Does Ron Adams need it to happen?
The only discertainable differences between the photos stem from Ron Adams's skin colour. Thus it stands to reason that the sole purpose of NBA Media Day is to help inform us commoners quite where assistant coaches went on their summer holidays.
On Saturday afternoon, I went to a non-league football match. Football is a sport that we have in this country, which involves people kicking a ball with their foot (hence the name). It's a tremendous sport of flair, innovation and foul language, which unites the whole entire world in its single minded appreciation of how wonderful the beautiful game is.
(There is an American variant out there called "soccer", but it is marred by terrible broadcasting, stupid gimmicks, and a seriously shite standard of play. It is not recommended.)
The game was between Tonbridge Angels and Oxford United, an F.A. Trophy first round match. Oxford United were at home, which meant for us Angels fans a day trip out to a 12,000 seater stadium. For those unaware, Oxford United were good, back in the day. Then they went bankrupt. A man named Kassam saved them, bailed out the finances, and built them a big stadium. But it hasn't done the team much good, and they have since fallen out of the Football League (and also fallen out with Kassam, although they are stuck with the stadium named after him). They're also now flat broke again.
Despite the team not befitting the stadium that houses them, the importance of the event and size of the stadium made it a highly entertaining day out for us visitors. The official attendance for the game was 1547, and if you don't know what having 1547 people in a stadium that seats 12,000 looks like, then either watch the Florida Marlins at home, or look at the picture below:
Of the 1547 people to attend, about 220 were Tonbridge Angels fans who had travelled a helluva long way to support their team. These 220 people gave great voice, and showed the world (or at least, the rest of the world that was there) quite what being a sports fan is about.
Chants were everywhere. The songs were not particularly intelligent, and a lot of them were not politically correct. But dammit, was it fun. Songs included "Tommy Warrinow's Blue And Red Army", "Your Support Is Fucking Shit", "Did you sleep in until half time?", "CRAAAAAAAACK!!!" (toward the Oxford goalkeeper Billy Turley, who once failed a drugs test), "Who needs Mourinho, we've got Tom Warri-low", "Someone nicked your other stand" (in reference to the way that Oxford's stadium has, bizarrely, only three sides), and the mighty "who are we? TONBRIDGE!" chant that aired regularly.
That selection is merely tip-of-the-iceberg type stuff. Songs were being invented on the fly, with about 50 invented in all. The Oxford supporters in the other two stands eventually chimed in, and a call-and-response got going, with the Tonbridge faithful ridiculing the dismal turnout of the Oxford fans which such seminal smashes as "We Forgot You Were Here" and the aforementioned slightly rude one about their support, while Oxford fans responded in kind with jibes at Tonbridge's amateur status.
It was all good natured fun, brought to you by people who actually care about the teams on show. They care so much that they willingly travelled for hours to get to the place, just to stand around outside in the frankly arctic weather, in a largely desolute stadium in the city's ugly industrial suburbs, drinking Bovril out of a paper cup, and shouting for sustinence. The health and safety man may keep ordering you to sit down, but you don't, because you're enthused and genuinely interested in the action. He eventually relents, not wanting to piss on your strawberries. The old man alongside you with mild tourettes screams enthusiastically at any mildly interesting piece of action (usually random shouts of "Hey! Ho!"), and the ambitiously dressed middle aged woman to his right hisses the word "shit!" in a really sinister way every time your team loses possession. At stoppages in play, you chant out your players names, daring them to signal acknowledgement of your chant. And when they do, you woop with joy. You cheer, wail, antagonise, ridicule, toot air horns, throw your apparel with pride, and just generally make your own entertainment, while always fixated on the action.
You don't get any of that in the NBA.
Instead, you get arena music. *BOOM BOOM* "Defense!!!!!", and the like.
You get signs telling you when to make noise, and 'entertainment' ushered onto and off the court with military precision every time play stops for more than 10 seconds.
You get an experience, but you don't get to enjoy yourself. You do what you're told, and you're told to do everything.
There's a reason that Golden State Warriors fans managed to put on such a spectacular showing during their first round playoff matchup against Dallas last year - it's because they gave a shit. And they didn't care who knew it.
The NBA isn't faaaaaaan-tastic until people start being fans. This means passion. And passion doesn't generally involve sitting down, clapping appropriately.
Forget the family experience that the NBA looks for when selling tickets. Let's start stocking these arenas with people who will actually want to be there, and who will follow the action without prompting. Instead of banks of seats filled with people sitting down eating, let's have people up and cheering, singing, bringing atmosphere into a place that's supposed to ooze it from every turnstile. Let's not have 46 minutes of gentle appreciation and two minutes of giving a toss.
If you don't think this is possible in a game of basketball, watch the Euroleague some time.
(And don't sell alcohol at the venues, either. Lest we forget what happened three years ago.)
(By the way, I've never been to an NBA game. This ignorance may or may not be painfully obvious in the above. I hope not.)
Actually, no, it pissed me off a great deal (re: NBA in London)
The following note is too long.
People have repeatedly asked me what my thoughts are/were concerning the NBA preseason game played this Wednesday in London. I'm not actually from London, living about 30 miles north of the city's northernmost point. But it's close enough to count, and as close as the NBA is ever going to get to me.
So I will share those thoughts with you now.
I did not go to the game. I originally intended to, but even from several months in advance, I could not seem to get any tickets. I don't care about Boston or Minnesota, but I just wanted the NBA experience, and to be in the same room as this sport and these athletes who I spend a ridiculously huge amount of my life following. There's also maybe an outside chance that I get to hump Fred Hoiberg's leg, so that would be another good reason for going. But alas, it wasn't to be.
My friend Michael tried to sell me his ticket, but I couldn't take him up on the offer. He's well off, and I'm not. He had a good seat, and I could only afford a nosebleeder. So that wasn't an option.
I was therefore stuck with watching the game at home. That wasn't an altogether unpleasant experience, as it marked the first and only time I've been able to watch a live NBA during normal daylight hours from the comfort of my bed. It's only a minor victory, but I'm a man of simple pleasures.
However, being able to do this had its consequences. For those unaware of how this works - which is probably most of you - there's incredibly little coverage of the NBA whatsoever over here in the wonderful island nations of Great Britain. Our basketball leagues themselves are shite, and there's almost no following or foothold for the sport.
In 1997, a terrestrial (meaning free) TV channel was launched called Channel 5 (now simply known as "Five"). One of the channel's earliest features, which has survived to this day, was the concept of having live American sport on throughout the night. They began with baseball, screening ESPN's Sunday and Wednesday Night Baseball games live, along with an occasional but extremely rare showing or two of This Week In Baseball. They also had some hockey, picked up some small NFL coverage (major satellite channel Sky Sports also has some of this, for it is the biggest of the major American sports here), and picked up NBA coverage just a couple of years ago.
Their coverage of the sport features a live game every Tuesday night, with a taped run of NBA TV's highlight show thing played beforehand. It's not much, but it's all that we've got, and so we run with it. The internet is a great resource for us hardened and pathetic fans, but this is all we get TV wise. It's not a lot.
What they do provide, though, is reasonably well done. The in-studio pairing of Mark Webster and Andre Alleyne doesn't offer much in the way of knowledge (Webster is the ultimate utility player, who can present any type of sports show, and who also seems to find radio work as a music, movie and "lifestyle" critic, yet he hasn't watched any basketball since about 1994), while Alleyne knows everything about the British basketball scene but not the NBA. Nevertheless, they provide good comentary and entertainment, play to their strengths, and don't get above their station. The game itself is just a replayed feed of the ESPN/NBC game itself, using American commentary. Which is probably safest.
However, in the run-up to this event, Five have made a bit of an effort. Adverts have run for a few weeks in advance, and they even cobbled together a preview show.
What they did in these adverts, though, annoys me intensely. So much so, in fact, that I did something that I've only done once before in life - I wrote a complaint letter.
I won't go into details, for most of it is outlined below. But basically, Channel 5 insulted our intelligence and potentially half of their viewership by adveritising the NBA brand to only black youths and wiggers. I'd go into this in more detail in this space, but as you're about to see, this post is way too long as it is. So I won't.
Anyway, onto the game itself. Here's what I noticed:
- During introductions, which went on for an overly long time as every single scrub managed to get his name announced, Kevin Garnett absolutely stole the show with a ridiculously long ovation. People in this country don't know anything about basketball, and those that do know merely only the basics (more on that later, re: Darren Bent interview). I firmly believe that I'm the only hardcore fan around. So you can imagine how greatly it disappointed me when Mark Madsen got one of the most underwhelming receptions of anybody. What? Why don't people know and respect who Mark Madsen is? Bastards. I'll have to change this.
- The game started with Boston playing reasonably well on both ends, and with Minnesota having absolutely no offensive strategy whatsoever. However, they hold the lead for almost all of the first quarter, as Ricky Davis is taking (and hitting) everything he can get his hands on. A sequence towards the end of the quarter is extremely indicative of the entire Ricky Davis Experience - off a Boston miss, Davis brings the ball up on a 2 on 5, goes behind the back to evade a gamble for a steal, then pulls up and shoots a three with no one in offensive rebounding position. He makes it. The crowd goes "yay!".
On the next possession, he shoots a 30 foot three in rhythm with 21 seconds left on the shot clock. He does not make it. The crowd does no go "yay!".
Thus starts and ends your entire Timberwolves offense so far without Al Jefferson (who, for some bizarre reason, is starting on the bench, as are all the regularly scheduled Timberwolves starters other than Davis and possibly Ryan Gomes. So it was nice of them to bring their A-game to this one-off sporting event of great importance in a country that really needs to see the cream of the crop to make the sport catch on. Thanks for that, Randy Wittman).
- The experience of this decidedly mediocre game featuring two wildly mismatched teams is awkward enough, without it having to suffer from sloppy presentation. But it does. All NBA basketball coverage in this country is played in with the American audio feed, like I said earlier. But if it's a British Basketball League game, or some Eurobasket/ULEB Cup games, the same commentator does every single game. I've never learned his name other than "Roy", and I don't like him, So it fills me full of dread when I find out that he is the play by play commentator for this game. I'm not going to enjoy this.
Sure enough, within minutes, he fluffs his first name. Struggling for words after a Minnesota miss, Roy stumbles out this seminal phrase:
"And the rebound there.......by the big fella.....number 55.......whose name is.........Estebaaaaaaan, Basteeta!"
He took so long over looking up the guy's name that Brian Scalabrine (who is apparently going by the name Scallerbreen tonight, or so says our Roy) has had to time to run down the other end and clank a jumpshot. And when Roy does stumble upon the right name, he gets it wrong anyway.
Someone give me this fucking job. Do it now.
- One thing Roy does have going for him, though, is that he is a honky. This isn't necessarily a positive, and nor would being black necessarily a negative. But in relative terms, it's a rare and beautiful thing. As outlined above, Channel 5 has apparently decided to try and appeal to one extremely specific market, like a minority insurance broker would. But they didn't stop at the aforementioned adverts - they decided to black out the entire lineup of presenters. While still featuring the regular studio pairing of Mark Webster and Andre Alleyne (one of each there), the sideline reporter for this game is wheelchair basketball star Adrian Adepitan, and in the in-studio special guest for the game is DJ Jazzy Jeff, of all people. Jeff's inclusion in the show is extremely pointless, although he does OK. But Adepitan, while he brings plenty of energy and enthusiasm to the proceedings, doesn't exactly endear himself to the masses. Again, more on this later - racial intergration is going to be something of a subplot to this post.
- Back to the game, and Tony Allen has subbed in. The first two seasons of Allen's career were marked by decent defensive play and athleticism, but incredibly shoddy offensive skills. Without any real ball handling skills and with a bad jumpshot, Allen would turn the ball over a lot, and didn't exactly fit in fluidly with any schemes the Celtics put him in. However, for a two month cameo last season, Allen seemed to have turned the corner, with vastly improved dribbling skills, improving his scorng efficiency roughly tenfold. His knee then blew out, and his season was over. So now that he has returned, is he the Tony Allen of old, or the Tony Allen of old? (If that makes sense. Which it doesn't.)
Based on the incredibly small sample size offered up by this first quarter, it's the old Tony Allen that we see before us, not the reformed Tony Allen. He looks......bad. So here's to small sample sizes - the ultimate ignorance conraceptive.
- Considering this game was a sell out months in advance, there's a ridiculously large number of empty seats in this o2 arena, which wasn't particularly big to begin with. This annoys me. It's a similar problem to what the English Football Association is having with national games in the new Wembley Stadium - corporations and men in suits buy the tickets as a novelty rather than due to their passion for the sport, and then they don't turn up. The same happens in the front row of every year's World Snooker Championship Final. It's stupid. It also appears to have happened here, and so despite the organiser's best efforts to replicate the usual NBA product with unnecessary mid game music, cheerleaders and other such stupid shit, the place lacks atmosphere. Inbounds plays are accompanied with a deathly silence, and you can hear Kendrick Perkins run around shouting on defense. It's eerie, and very unpleasant.
If the NBA had put a better product on the floor tonight (and if Randy Wittman put his best product on the floor), people would focus more on the game. Then they might have a good time. Then they might want to watch it again some day. And then they might become fans of the game. Just a wild strategy I'm throwing out there.
- Towards the end of the first quarter, after a highlight play, the camera pans briefly to a shot of the Minnesota bench. A player who I can't identify (may have been Chris Richard) is seen standing in front of the bench, with no warm-up top on, but with his warm up pants jacked up extremely high. The resulting Simon Cowell-esque trousers look, combined with the garish colour clash of the jersey versus the warm-ups, made him look incredibly stupid. This needed pointing out.
- Another weird facet of this game is that both teams are being treated by the crowd as the home team, getting whooped and cheered in equal measure. The ringside announcer does likewise, shouting names such as Ricky Davis and Brian Scalabrine with similar enthusiasm. This is an odd experience that I've never had before. But it's not necessarily a bad one.
- Kendrick Perkins opened the game with an isolation play that resulted in him making a nice fallaway jumpshot. Since then, he's missed The World's Easiest Layup, flumped around awkwardly, tried to make a putback off the shot clock, and hasn't exactly oozed offensive efficiency. Still, he's alongside Kevin Garnett. It's not that important that he scores, really.
- By this time, Minnesota's lack of offense from anyone not called Ricky is proving to be a going concern. They finish the first quarter ahead, but only because Davis has 16 of their points. No one else has done anything of note, with the exception of surprise starter Theo Ratliff, who has 4 points (one off of an isolation play), and who looks like the Theo Ratliff of old. More on this later, because it's too baffling of a thought at this moment.
- When Minnesota comes off the court to end the quarter, the cameraman (who suffers from a bad case of the shakes all night) once again pans to the Minnesota bench. Juwan Howard comes off the bench to greet the players coming off the court, and puts his arm around Gerald Green, doing the Mr-Miyagi-Daniel-san thing for which he is there. He slaps Gerald on the arse. Then he rubs his arse in a circular motion. Then he slaps it twice more. This didn't need to happen. The athletic bumslap NEVER needs to happen. But if you are ever compelled to do it, just do it once. Anything more and it turns awkward. Juwan has proven this.
- Esteban Batista has grown his hair into a rather fluffy fashion. It doesn't make him look very menacing. Someone needs to have a word.
- Oh by the way, I forgot to mention something. At the top, when I was rambling about commentator Roy McWonderface and the all-black lineup surrounding him, I neglected to mention Roy's (ironically named) colour commentator. The choice for tonight's broadcast is former NBA scrub Steve Bucknell, a man whom you've either never heard of, or whom you confused for the international cricket umpire of a very similar name. The reason I forgot to mention this is that Bucknell has barely said a damn word throughout the entire broadcast to date. This, however, is a good thing, because it doesn't take long to transpire that he is really bad. He may know the game of basketball fairly well, but he, like Roy, does not know anything about any of the NBA players on show. Nevertheless, Buck is a trooper, and after Eddie House comes in and knocks down a three, Bucknell offers up this golden nugget:
"Eddie House is good."
Yep. Thank you Steve, you champ. Why don't you stop talking for a while?
Bucknell also delivers his lines in a monotone and yawn-enducing fashion. But more on that later, too.
- Gerald Green walks around between plays with a snarl on his face and an unnecessarily gangster lean in his walk, rivalled only by that of Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher J.P. Howell. I'm not sure I like it. At least look a bit happier with your life. You're a millionaire for bouncing a ball around, your life could be worse.
- By the way, Violet Palmer is still Violet Palmer.
- A broken play winds up with the ball underneath Minnesota's basket, in the hands of Esteban Basteeta. The fluffy headed one sells an ever-increasingly elaborate series of up fakes to try and get his defender, Craig Smith, to bite. Smith does not do so, and the reason he does not do so is probably because the fakes were the most unimpressive ones since the days of Anthony Mason. Perhaps Batista should put those toys away now. Or just tone them down slightly. No pump fake should start from the knees and end up with full skyward extension. That's just overkill.
- OK, seriously? To quote Iain Dowie and Twiztid at the same time, Theo Ratliff's bouncebackability is off the chain. He looks younger, he is moving with a freedom not seen since his brief cameo with Portland immediately after his trade from Atlanta, and he's once again trying to block everything with varying degrees of success. He has also demonstrated at least three offensive moves. It's wild stuff. At this point I wish I was able to say something like "if Ratliff has a bounce back year, and Juwan Howard's second wind continues, then don't sleep on these young, talented Timberwolves this season". But I can't. Neither could you if you'd just watched them in that first quarter.
- This is the first game that I have ever seen Corey Brewer play. He has been absolutely unredoubtably awful. His awfulness was highlighted by a wide (wiiiiide) open corner three that hit the side of the backboard. Probably best to just scratch this game of his from my mind and pretend it didn't happen.
- Shave off the beard, Al Jefferson. I know a thing or two about shit beards, for I own one. And you, sir, have a shit beard.
- Roy The Commentator surpasses himself, calling Marko Jaric "Maric" twice on two straight possessions, and then calling Rashad McCants something too unspeakably funny to type here. I wish I could believe that this was on purpose, for it would make me like Roy more. But I can't. He's just that much of an idiot.
- Speaking of McC*nts: serious knee injury aside, has this guy improved any since his first year? All I see is the same one dimensional wild-jumpshot-jacking player as before. I'd quite like that to change. I think Minnesota would quite like that to change, too. He also chews his gum with way too much gusto. It's nice to have a bit of passion and energy in your life, but this shouldn't be the way that he chooses to express it. The gum chewing is so loud, and the arena is so quiet, that we can hear it on the broadcast.
- In my free hand notes, I have written this:
"gerald green has no idea what he is doing"
I can't remember what it references exactly, but I stand by it.
- 7 minutes left into the second quarter, and Minnesota's jumpshot airball count stands at 4. None were worse than Brewer's miss from the corner, athough Ryan Gomes had a very short range shot that he put way too much mustard on that was also pretty ugly. Amazingly they're still winning, despite Boston playing better on both ends of the floor. And it was all because of Ricky Davis's lucid moment.
- Coming up to half time now, and sideline reporter Ade Adepitan has landed us four sideline interviews with celebrities thus far. Those four have been West Ham United footballers Anton Ferdinand and Carlton Cole, Chelsea star Didier Drogba, and Simon Webb from the boy band Blue.
What do those 4 have in common?
(Hint: do a Google image search. And remember what I said earlier about subplots.)
- During a timeout, action cuts quickly back to Webster, Alleyne and Jazzy Jeff in the studio. Alleyne conducts a brief interview with Jazz, whom he calls "Jeff". I thought that was noteworthy. Anyway, Webbo asks Jeff who the best celebrity basketball player is. Jeff responds with "R Kelly's pretty good". Hmm, OK. Not the story I heard, but OK.
Webster then says that he wishes he was R Kelly, then quickly retracts it. Probably best.
- You know, I might like Boston this year. I have no reason to dislike them (apart from James Posey), yet historically I always have. I think it's because I'm naturally adverse to the colour green. This year, though, they have acquired Garnett and Ray Allen, as well we know. This now gives them three eloquent superstars with some semblance of personality and intelligence. I look for these characteristics in basketball players, and Boston now has it. I like that. They also have Scot Pollard.....
....and I'll leave that sentence hanging so that you can finish it to suit yourselves.
- Tony Allen needs wart surgery on his left shoulder. That thing is disconcerting.
- I'd just like to say that I love the fact that Brian Scalabrine is in this league. The only thing that makes me happier than being able to root for him day in and day out, is the fact that he's not on my team. Much like kids falling over in car parks, it's great fun when it happens to somebody else.
- Roy called him Marko Maric again. For God's sake. How hard is your job, Roy? Couldn't you have spent at least 15 seconds learning these things before the show started? Jesus H.
- By the way, speaking of Marko Maric, he's not playing very well today, but I'd dearly love to have him on any team of mine. That is, if he wasn't on a 6 year $40 million contract. And since he is......screw it, Minnesota can keep him.
