The Sports Curmudgeon

The NBA Draft has one thing going for it over the NFL Draft. It doesn’t take 18 hours to finish. Other than that, the NBA Draft barely makes it over the threshold as an event worthy of television at all. Even a goofy set of analysts – including Jay Bilas who had to have been slipped about dozen “greenies” just before airtime to have been so superlative with every phrase he used – couldn’t make this show into something bordering on entertaining. And to really make things worse, David Stern is probably one of only a handful of people on the face of the Earth who could make Paul Tagliabue seem like a natural born emcee.

One aspect of why the NBA Draft is far less interesting than the NFL Draft is that far too many of the players chosen in the NBA Draft are ones that none of the fans have seen play basketball. There are some obscure picks in the late rounds of the NFL Draft to be sure; but for the most part, fans have seen them play or have seen the teams they played for play. Hey, in some of my previous NFL Draft Evaluations, I pointed out names of people taken in the seventh round. That’s just not the case in the NBA anymore and here’s how I will try to demonstrate that to you. Of the following list of nine names, which were taken last night in the NBA Draft and which two are “ringers”:

Oleksly Pecerov
Kosta Perovic
Marcus Vinisius
Lior Eliyahu
Vladmir Veremeenko
Yotam Halperin
Ejike Ugboaja
Milko Bjelica
Damir Markota

OK, so I didn’t play fair. The correct answer is that none of the above is a “ringer”; each and every one of them was a selection last night. And if you have seen even 5 of these 9 players in more than one game, then you have obviously qualified yourself as an Elite Level frequent flyer – probably on multiple airlines.

The point is that teams are drafting players you don’t know and so you don’t have any way of figuring out how they might – or more likely might not – fit into the team’s needs and plans for next year. And so your eyes begin to glaze over…

Kevin Pittsnogle (West Virginia) went undrafted. On Pardon the Interruption, someone said he had 20% body fat and guest Jay Bilas said that was high even for a sea lion. That’s a great line – even if the premise here may be inaccurate. Pittsnogle now can pick the team he wants to try to play for. Off the top of my head, I can’t come up with a team that needs a 6’11” catch and shoot player who cannot dribble and who will not rebound. But, I wish him well. My advice would be to learn Belgian quickly…

The Portland Trailblazers added four draft picks last night, traded away some players and reshaped their roster after a 21-61 season. Looking at the pieces of the puzzle that are in place, I suspect they will lose only 55 games next year assuming no one gets hurt. LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, Raef LaFrentz and Sergio Rodriguez need to become the new and less anti-social face of the franchise in Portland. Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells are already gone; Darius Miles could be had by anyone in the league for a BLT on rye if the sandwich cost enough to make it legit under the salary cap rules and Zach Randolph might be “available” for less than a potential Hall of Fame player. As the Blazers’ losses climb towards 50 and fans pray they doesn’t reach 60 again next year, those fans need to hope Brandon Roy has a great year. That way they can push for him to be Rookie of the Year and everyone in Portland can have fun with bumper stickers reading:

Roy For ROY.

When your team is that bad, you need to find your happiness wherever you can.

The Charlotte Bobcats took Adam Morrison because they need a scorer. Morrison will probably be able to score in the NBA but as Bob Knight says derisively about some players, he can’t guard the floor. And he does not seem even remotely interested in rebounding either. Let me try to put it this way for you; if Adam Morrison is an average defensive player on your team, then your defensive strategy for any game would have to be:

Damn, I hope those guys have a cold shooting night so we can hang in there till the final minutes and try to sneak out of here with a win.

The last player taken at the top of the draft who was a prolific scorer and who could not play any defense at all and would not work to rebound much at all was Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson. I’m sorry to have to bring up that comparison because “Big Dog” was indeed a big dog and his teams never won diddley-poo.

On one of the myriad interactive blogs related to the draft, one person said that Morrison was taken because he’s white and the Bobcats need that to sell more tickets in Charlotte. I think that’s nonsense. First of all, if the Bobcats could win more than 30 games in a year, that would do more for attendance than any white player on the roster would. Secondly, please picture Michael Jordan – the new CEO for basketball operations – and Robert Johnson – the principal owner of the team who made his fortune founding BET Network – sitting in a room and agreeing that they need a white player to save their franchise. Sorry, I can’t get my brain around that one.

The Seattle Supersonics took Mouhamed Saer Sene. He’s from Senegal via the Belgian League where he really lit it up scoring 3 points a game, grabbing 4 rebounds a game and blocking 1 shot a game. He’s 7’ tall and you can’t teach that, but then again so was D’Sagna Diop (also from Senegal) and it’s been about 5 years that he’s been in the league and he still can’t play at the NBA level any more than I can play a piano concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra. [In the spirit of full disclosure, when it comes to musical talent, I play the radio very well.]

To make things even goofier, the Sonics already have three guys on their roster who are 7’ tall and who can’t play. Mikki Moore, Johan Petro and Robert Swift combined last year to give the Sonics 15 points a game and 12 rebounds a game. That’s fine output from one player but not from three. Saer Sene may not be able to take the place of one of those guys and increase the combined output so you have to wonder how he was the 10th pick of the draft.

The Golden State Warriors took a 7’ tall project too. The Warriors haven’t been in the playoffs for about a decade now; and at some point, someone ought to ask how many lottery picks they need to get something going there. Obviously, eight was not enough. Patrick O’Bryant was unknown until he had two good games in the NCAA tournament and his good games were more related to his defense and his rebounding because the scouting reports are ever so gentle in pointing out that he is “limited offensively”. I hope no one in the Golden State marketing department is thinking about a promotion next year celebrating the “Irish” front line of Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy and Patrick O’Bryant…

The Sixers supposedly tried to trade Allen Iverson – and may yet do so. I’ve said for years that they needed to do that and to blow up that squad in order to remake it and try to return to being a playoff team on a regular basis. But it didn’t happen. The Sixers did draft a South African via Switzerland named Thabo Sefolosha and then promptly traded him to the Bulls. As of this moment, I am rooting for the Bulls to make it to the NBA playoffs next year and to go deep into the playoffs because I want to hear Bill Walton try to get his mouth around the name Thabo Sefolosha as the game is going up and down the floor. The Bulls may indeed be a playoff caliber team next year but I do have some doubts that Thabo Sefolosha will be involved in much of anything that they accomplish…

And of course, I have to comment on the Knicks’ draft because the audience in Madison Square Garden was probably the most interesting part of the telecast last night. Let’s just say that they were less than fully enthralled with the selection of Renaldo Balkman from South Carolina with the 20th pick. I’m not sure, but I think that Rolando Blackman might be able to help the Knicks just as much next year – and Rolando is 47 years old now. Later in the first round, the Knicks took Mardy Collins from Temple; at least it wasn’t Mardy Fish. These are not – repeat not – the missing pieces of the puzzle that will take the Knicks from a 23-win season to the playoffs next season. And the franchise Pooh-Bahs will be fortunate if in March of next year the fans are not re-enacting the final scene from the movie, Frankenstein, where the villagers are march on the “castle” armed with pitchforks and torches.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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The genesis of this rant is complicated. I’ve enjoyed visiting the Halls of Fame in Cooperstown and in Springfield, Mass. and in Canton. I’ve not been to the horseracing Hall of Fame near Saratoga, but several people who have been there assure me that I will like it when I eventually go there. So, I can’t say that I have a longstanding prejudice against the establishment of Halls of Fame for sporting events but I do have to admit that I much prefer watching games than I do looking at artifacts of games.

In late April, the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inducted its class of 2006. The only person in that class I had ever heard of was Geno Auriemma and there isn’t a whole lot of doubt that he’s a man. There were five women inducted simultaneously and I never heard of any of them. I thought that was unusual and that maybe this organization had already inducted its really famous folks - - and then I didn’t think about it anymore. But right on the heels of reading that item, I had the occasion to be driving across the northern part of Indiana and noticed some construction underway by the side of the highway. A large sign proclaimed that this would be the future edifice containing the RV and Motor Home Hall of Fame. As we drove by that partially constructed building, I asked my long-suffering wife who was in the shotgun seat a simple question, “Why?”

Soon after that journey ended and I was back in Curmudgeon Central, I came to read that the US Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota will probably have to close this year. It had two full time employees who have been cut back to part time and the rest of the work is done by volunteers. Nevertheless, it cannot remain economically viable. And that is when I began to think that there are just too many Halls of Fame. Whether or not you are a baseball seamhead, you have to recognize that there are millions of baseball fans out there and so maybe there is enough interest in the game to create and support a hall of fame. The same goes for football and basketball. The same will be true when the NASCAR Hall of Fame is finished its construction sometime soon. Maybe there are a few other things in our society that really deserve a hall of fame, but maybe – just maybe – there are too many of them out there.

Consider a few halls of fame that I “discovered” that might not be essential to the furtherance of Western Civilization. I don’t mean these institutions are evil or subversive in any way; I just think they might border on irrelevant or trivial. The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame might be one such institution. It was all started over a casual lunch of red beans and rice. That’s not my statement; that is how they describe the beginnings of that institution. So, was that a flash of insight and inspiration that came upon the founders at that lunch or was it a gas attack?

While there are lots of people who pitch horseshoes and enjoy doing so, I think that I’m on safe ground declaring horseshoe pitching to be a minor sport that has a niche audience. I don’t doubt for a moment that there is skill involved in this endeavor, but this is not a big deal in the sporting – or societal – firmament. But opening in 2006 will be the Horseshoe Pitchers Hall of Fame and Museum in Wentzville, MO. For the record, Wentzville is not all that far from St. Louis.

In the metropolis of St. Louis itself, you can visit the International Bowling Hall of Fame. Being as close as it is to the hall of fame opening in Wentzville MO, this will provide data for physicists who worry that too great a density of halls of fame in a small area might create a wormhole into a parallel universe. At this institution, you can learn that bowling started in ancient Egypt; that revelation could also cause you to ponder when – if ever – it will become a major sport…

There is a Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy in Colorado Springs. The centerpiece here is an exhibit featuring the original saddles, ropes, clothing and hats used and worn by rodeo contestants. I couldn’t find out if they also had an exhibit of the X-rays taken of these participants showing the multiple fractures and the MRIs done to show all of the soft tissue damage done to the contestants. I shan’t be traveling all the way to Colorado Springs to find this out.

If you want to see how precisely one might parse the term “hall of fame” in order to create such an institution, consider that there exists a Greater Cleveland Slo Pitch Softball Hall of Fame and Museum. If you don’t believe me, use Google and you’ll find out all about it. Once again, softball is an endeavor that requires skill; but other than the family members of the inductees, what is the deep-rooted societal interest in this institution? Let me put it this way, I hope these folks pay their electric bills on time because if the exhibits are dark, I figure I’d stay awake in them for something approaching eleven minutes.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is also in Cleveland and once again – presuming that I can choose the individual pieces I would be listening to – I would much prefer to listen to rock and roll music than to look at artifacts of the musicians. For example, this hall of fame displays John Lennon’s report card from primary school. That’s nice, but I doubt that it will alter in any way the appreciation I have for Hey Jude. If I were to visit there, I might also gaze upon Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout uniform. Other than a different human DNA sequence imprinted upon the fabric there, just how might looking at that uniform be different than gazing upon the Cub Scout uniform of Joe Flabeetz? This institution says it tries to shed “an intimate light on people whose real lives have been obscured by glamour”. Maybe it would be better if they didn’t pay their electric bills and had that intimate light shut down?

The Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville is a counterpart of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and once again I’d rather listen to the music than look at the guitar pick used by someone who was in the back-up band for someone else. But that’s just me; at least there are a jillion people who follow country music. There are other niche halls of fame in the music world that seem to be right near the line of relevance. For example, the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in Detroit Michigan is open by appointment only. I think that is tantamount to admitting that they do not have throngs of folk storming the doors to get in each and every day. And there is a Canadian Music Hall of Fame in Toronto. I know there are many famous and accomplished musicians from Canada some of whose work I have enjoyed in my lifetime; but when I learned that the 2004 inductee to this institution was a person or persons known as “The Tragically Hip”, I thought that they might be running out of new blood. I’m sure someone will let me know if “The Tragically Hip” consists of people who have had unsuccessful hip replacement surgery…

Another Canadian hall of fame caught my attention. In Parry Sound, Ontario there is the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame. There can be no doubt about Bobby Orr’s greatness in the world of hockey; I will cast no aspersions in that direction. Bobby Orr changed the way that hockey was played in the 1960s. However, I do wonder about who might be the inductees into the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame. Is this for Bobby Orr look-alikes? If so, might that presage a new wing on the Rock and Roll Hall of fame for Elvis impersonators?

There is an International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo NM. Given the proximity of this institution to Roswell NM, I wonder if they have an “intergalactic wing” too. Meanwhile in Titusville, FL, you might choose to visit the Astronaut Hall of Fame. I don’t want to be too abstruse here, but I suspect you can figure out who the honorees might be in the Astronaut Hall of Fame…

Once again testing the limits of how many halls of fame can exist in close proximity to one another without damaging the space-time continuum, you can leave the Astronaut Hall of Fame and travel across town in Titusville, FL to visit the American Police Hall of Fame. Included here are replicas of jail cells and gas chambers and “Old Sparky” in addition to more than 10,000 items on permanent exhibit ranging from weaponry to police badges to old photographs. I sure hope that the folks who provide the security for the American Police Hall of Fame are on their toes. Imagine the headlines:

Police Hall of Fame Robbed
No Leads As To The Perps

In California, there is a Burlesque Hall of Fame; and wouldn’t you know it, the building is located on Wild Road. One important section of the artifacts collected here is the display of G-strings used by performers. If I could stay awake for something close to eleven minutes in the Slo Pitch Softball Hall of Fame, I think this one might hold my attention for about four minutes…

In Akron, there is the National Inventors Hall of Fame. One of the co-founders of this hall of fame is the US Patent Office, which may explain why one needs to have a patent on one’s invention to be eligible for induction here. The subjective criterion for being inducted is that one’s invention must have done something to further society. I guess that would include the person who invented the wheel but would eliminate the person who invented the flat tire. Maybe some of these folks need to invent a reason or an excuse to get out of Akron Ohio…

Once out of Akron, those folks can visit Pickerington, Ohio to see the Motorcycle Hall of Fame and Museum. It should be no surprise that Evel Knievel is honored there; you might be surprised to know that cycling enthusiast Jay Leno has a plaque in the hall. They once had a temporary exhibit on the “evolving sales strategies of motorcycle manufacturers through the years”. Sorry I missed that one…

In a few cases, we have dueling halls of fame. The Cycling Hall of Fame in Westminster, CO is dedicated to “preserving the history of cycling’s greatest races and the riders who rode them.” Down the road – to coin a phrase – in Crested Butte CO, there is the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame originally founded to “chronicle the history of mountain biking”. But now it has expanded to include highlights of the greatest mountain bike races – presumably ones that were missed by those folks up there in Westminster CO. The Saskatchewan Hall of Fame in Regina has a new wing dedicated to “Pedaling Across the Prairies” and it honors the 100-year history of cycling and bicycles and bicycle accessories. And back east in Bridgewater NJ, there is the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame founded to preserve the history and promote the sport of cycling. Are all of these places really necessary?

You can get pretty far afield in the world of halls of fame when you get to inanimate objects. There is a Robot Hall of Fame recently founded at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Honorees here include robots from science fiction that have “served as creative inspiration” in the field of robotics. There is also the American Textile Hall of Fame near Boston honoring folks who “contributed to advancing the art, science or history of textiles in America.” I mentioned earlier the RV and Motor Home Hall of Fame under construction; I wonder how long it might be until there is a Vacuum Cleaner Hall of Fame or a Garbage Disposal Hall of Fame and Museum. I’d like to put the expansion of halls of fame on a slower track. Surely the world can do without a Bloggers Hall of Fame.

In New York City, there is the Hall of Fame for Great Americans founded in 1900. Here’s the basis for this institution:

“By wealth of thought, or else by mighty deed, they served mankind in noble character. In worldwide good, they live forever more.”

That is impressive indeed. But where is the Hall of Fame for Mediocre Americans? Remember that former Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska asserted that putting a mediocre American on the Supreme Court was a perfectly good idea. And recognizing the danger in advocating for self-interest, where is the Hall of Fame for Curmudgeonly Americans?

Finally, in Springfield MO, there is a Writer’s Hall of Fame. You may all rest easy in the knowledge that I am not on their short list for nomination or induction.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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