The Sports Curmudgeon

The Lakers swept the Nuggets out of the playoffs. That the Lakers advanced is hardly unanticipated; that they swept is not all that stunning. Nevertheless, this does provide a glimpse at the potential for another NBA chronic underachiever. I have talked about how Tracy McGrady has never gotten his team out of the first round of the playoffs and how that indicates that he might be underachieving his “$20M salary”. Consider now Carmelo Anthony. He has been in the NBA for four years now and like McGrady, Anthony has never been on a team that made it out of the first round of the playoffs. I believe that the Nuggets with Anthony have gone 4-19 in playoff games.

In a couple of previous versions of the Nuggets, Carmelo Anthony did not have a whole lot of help on the squad. However, this year the Nuggets have Allen Iverson and Kenyon Martin out there with him. Iverson is a top shelf player; Martin was an overall first pick in the draft at one time. In one of the more interesting ironies, Marcus Camby was just named defensive player of the year on a team that allows almost 107 points per game. So, Carmelo Anthony is not out there alone trying to fend off opponents; he has a bit of help. Nevertheless, the Nuggets are going home at the end of Round 1 yet again.

Lamar Odom and Ron Artest were once on the same AAU basketball team. (I believe that Elton Brand was on that team too.) Odom shares an off-court interest with his former teammate, Artest; Odom is an aspiring music company executive. Odom has a music company called Rich Soil Entertainment and that company will release an album by a rapper known as Ali Vegas in August. [I am informed that Ali Vegas is indeed known to folks who actually listen to rap music; I do not.]

Odom, however, seems to understand a bit of how the world works that might have escaped Ron Artest’s cognitive view. Artest asked for time off during the NBA season to promote an album that he had released under his own record label; Odom is purposely waiting to make the release in August, which is the off-season in the NBA for every player. It would seem as if Odom has indeed made the connection that playing basketball provides him with the resources and the status to do other things in his life and that the resources and status from basketball need to be maintained if he wants to do other things in his life that rely on resources and celebrity status. Maybe Ron Artest should give him a call…

As the horseracing season stumbles toward Kentucky Derby Day – it’s this Saturday if you had not been keeping track – the state of horseracing is moribund. The fact that this year’s crop of three-year olds has excited exactly no one has shone the light on many of horseracing’s significant problems. Some of those problems have to do with changing demographics and changing interests of new sports fans to be sure. Other problems fall into the category of self-inflicted wounds.

The people who run racing and who own the racetracks make their money on the “take-out”. In pari-mutuel wagering, all the money goes into a pool; the track takes a percentage off the top and then distributes the remaining money to all people holding winning tickets. So, large betting pools mean large revenues for the track. That’s not so hard, is it?

The problem comes when betting pools shrink – as they have been doing for some years now. What the racing moguls have done is to raise the percentage of the “take out” thereby reducing the amount of money returned to people who have made winning wagers. Guess what that does. It makes some of the people who used to bet the races take their money and wager it elsewhere – such as on football games or basketball games or in casinos. In some of the exotic wagering pools such as superfectas, the “take out” can be as high as 25% and that is abject nonsense. On a simple sports wager, the biggest “take out” I can recall is 15% and often you can find sports wagers with 10% as the “take out”.

After the moguls have driven away some of the bettors who might provide money for the betting pools, these same geniuses card too many races on too many racing days. It may not seem logical at first, but overdoing the number of races available for betting actually decreases revenue. When the fields are short and uncompetitive or if the quality of horses entered on a day are so miserable that it is obvious that the only reason they are there is to fill out the card for the day, bettors will turn their attention elsewhere. When they turn their attention elsewhere, that is like asking the Grim Reaper to show up and do his thing.

Oftentimes, the arrival of the Triple Crown races rejuvenates an interest in horseracing. If that is the case this year, then that rejuvenated interest is muted far more than in any year that I can remember. A friend of mine who is of British extraction suggested that the reason for horseracing’s decline here is found in American history. He said that racing is indeed the sport of kings and that Americans fought a couple of wars to assure that they would have no kings. He could be right; but I think that horseracing’s decline has more to do with the blockheads who run it.

Speaking of wagers on sports, one of the Internet sportsbooks listed the odds for teams to win the MLS Championship this year. The defending champions – the Houston Dynamo – are not nearly the favorite. The Dynamo are listed at 6-1. Teams with lower odds are:

DC United (5-2)

New England Revolution (7-2)

Chivas USA (5-1)

Interestingly, the LA Galaxy is listed at 7-1 and I wonder how that can be since they have Landon Donovan (US national team star player) and David Beckham (asserted by his acolytes to still be a top-shelf player) on the Galaxy. How can there be two “world class players” on one team in a second-tier or third-tier league and still that team is not one of the top three favorites to win that league championship?

I absolutely could not make this up. Last week, on msnbc.com there was a story about three teenagers who were practicing synchronized swimming in a pool at St. Edwards State Park in Washington. They are members of the Seattle Synchronized Swim Team. All three passed out and went under at the same time. They were taken from the pool and to the hospital. I have never held synchronized swimming in any measure of high regard but synchronized swimming is more than a few steps above synchronized drowning.

Finally, Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald recently:

“Marlins players served food Friday at Camillus House of Miami, a homeless shelter. Given the team’s baseball-low payroll, there might or might not have been doggie bags involved.”

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