Month: January 2015

Three Souls From The Sports World Are Gone…

The sporting world lost three recognizable folks over the last week or so:

    Tommy Mason passed on. He was the first player drafted by the Minnesota Vikings back when they were an expansion team.

    Bill Monbouquette passed on. In addition to his own achievements as a major league pitcher, I recall in the late 60s when he spent some time late in his career in the National League that his name was a tongue-twister for By Saam who did the Phillies’ games then. Saam said his name as “Mon-cue-bet”.

    Ernie Banks passed on. Mr. Cub can now get ready to “play two” in the Celestial Baseball League.

RIP, Tommy Mason, Bill Monbouquette and Ernie Banks…

Given the monstrous weather conditions in the eastern parts of New England this week, here is a suggestion for the folks-in charge there to make chicken salad out of chicken … “you know what”:

    Why not try to pay off the good folks in Alaska and get the Iditarod moved from “Wherever, Alaska” to Wherever-Else Alaska” and have it start this year in Boston. Two laps around a route from Boston to Albany, NY to Portland, ME and back through Boston would come awfully close to the 1000 mile trek for the dogs and the mushers. Why might this be interesting?

      First, it might show the folks at the IOC the organizational skills of the folks in Boston. If those Beantowners can pull off this sporting event on short notice – even though there is no history of any such event in the same general area as is the case with the Olympics – think about what that might mean about those same folks doing something “grand” with almost a decade to prepare.

      Second, the grand prize for the winner of the Iditarod has been a mid-five figure payoff and a pick-up truck for the past several years. With two weeks’ notice, the Boston folks should be able to match that – or double it – without breaking a sweat.

No need to thank me here; win-win situations are my specialty…

If you can force yourselves to do this, I want you to take your sporting focus off of the Super Bowl for just a moment today and pay attention to what is going to happen tomorrow in the NFL. On Friday of this week, Commissioner Roger Goodell will give the annual “State of the League” address to the assembled scribes and talking-heads. Face the facts here; even Rudolf Nureyev could not dance around the embarrassments of the NFL over the last 12 months gracefully. Goodell is not Nureyev; he will be lucky to dance around them without winding up with his foot in his mouth – or in the orifice at the other end of his alimentary canal.

How has the NFL embarrassed itself in the last year? Let me count the ways [with apologies here to Elizabeth Barrett Browning]:

    Ray Rice
    Adrian Peterson
    Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald as a juxtaposition
    Robert Mueller’s report
    Jim Irsay
    Dean Blandino on the Cowboy’s “Party Bus”
    The Washington franchise name
    Concussion lawsuits
    Player safety juxtaposed with more Thursday Night Football
    Deflated/Underinflated footballs (note a fundamental difference here!)

Standing up there and giving a prepared speech with all that monstrous vomit in the background is not any better than being President and having to give a State of the Union address when times are bad and the “other guys” are in the majority in the audience. It would not surprise me a bit to know – if I could read minds – that what Goodell really wants to do is to build his address to a crescendo and then to drop his pants and moon everyone who is paying rapt attention to the speech. Then he can “leave the building” and live off the approximately $100M he has earned in his tenure as NFL Commish and at the same time, tell the rest of the world to “do this with your that”.

I will not be able to watch the speech live and in color; I will be assisting a family member in the events surrounding a change of venue for a business venture. However, you may be certain that I will watch whatever snippets of the speech are available in the mass media and will be sorry to see that the address did not end with the fullest moon that Arizona ever saw…

Just in case you think that Goodell’s ownership embarrassments end with folks like tone-deaf Danny Boy Snyder or rumblin’, bumblin’ stumblin’ Jim Irsay or two steps ahead of indictment Jimmy Hasalem, perhaps you have not yet heard about the fun and games surrounding Tom Benson, the Saints’ owner.

According to reports, Benson decided to cut his daughter and her two kids out of the ownership of the team when Benson goes to the great used car lot in the sky. Instead, reports say that the Saints’ ownership will pass to his third wife when Benson “assumes ground temperature” so to speak. This seems as if it should not be such a big deal – except for the fact that his daughter and two grandkids have sued him over this action. They claim that he is mentally incompetent, that he has only brief moments of lucidity and that he still thinks that Ronald Reagan is President – or perhaps it is Harry Truman. No matter how this proceeds from here, it will be a PR nightmare for the Saints, the Benson family and the NFL.

Roger Goodell may be looking for someone to introduce Tom Benson to V Stiviano before the year is out…

Finally, if Al Davis were still alive and wanted to poke a stick in Robert Kraft’s eye, Davis might invite Lance Armstrong to join him in an owner’s box at the game and put a bunch of deflated balls in plain view for the TV cameras to see. Sadly, Al Davis will be watching this game from the owner’s box in the cosmos…

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

Media Day…

Yesterday, I wrote about MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred, being open to rules that would limit “extreme defensive shifts”. I said I knew such ploys existed back to the time of Ted Williams and left it to baseball historians to date it even earlier than that. It could not have been more than an hour and a half later when I received an e-mail from a regular reader in Houston who is a repository of sports stats and history. He reports:

    The shift was used by the Cardinals in the 1946 World Series against Williams who went 5 for 25 in that Series.

    It was used earlier in 1946 against Williams by Indians’ manager Lou Boudreau and when that happened it was known as the “Boudreau Shift”.

    The first use of an “extreme shift” goes back to 1924 when it was used by several teams against the Phillies as a counter to Cy Williams – a left-handed power hitter.

So, the shift was used against Cy Williams and then against Ted Williams… Is this an example of profiling?

Yesterday was Media Day in the march toward Super Bowl Sunday. As usual, it provided far more heat than light. If I may pretend for just a moment that the Super Bowl is mostly a football event around which a circus-like aura has developed – rather than vice-versa – I think the league and the folks who attend Media Day leave a lot to be desired.

Predictably, Marshawn Lynch was “uncooperative” with media questioning. His answer to every question put to him was “I’m just here so I won’t get fined.” One report said that he repeated that answer to 29 questions. That behavior leads me to several conclusions:

    Marshawn Lynch is not going to say anything interesting in these sorts of settings and so it is sort of stupid for the folks at Media Day not to realize that asking more questions after four or five identical responses from Lynch.

    The NFLPA – and the NFLPA – negotiated into the CBA a provision that would mandate player appearances at various press events. It seems clear that both sides recognized the benefits to the “NFL brand” if players became better known to the public and so the CBA codified standard media/player/coach interactions wherein players and coaches had to attend. If not, there was a fine for I guess what you would call “breach of contract”. Marshawn Lynch has demonstrated the fecklessness of that mandate.

    The “NFL brand” is not advanced by Lynch’s behavior; and when the “NFL brand” is not advanced, there is likely a deficit to both the league and to the players. The current structured and legalistic framework surrounding media interaction(s) with players and coaches demonstrates the significant limitations of the existing rules.

There is a real challenge for the NFL and the NFLPA here; and frankly, I am not sure that either side is up to the challenge. They need to modify these rules and regulations using common sense and good will as the framework for the new – and badly needed – reworked regulations. These two sides have tried the “one-size-fits-all” model and it clearly does not work. Here we have Marshawn Lynch at one end of the spectrum and in the recent past we had players like Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco who never saw a camera they did not like. One size does not fit all. Adults ought to be able to recognize that. And so, the challenge for the NFL and the NFLPA also represents a test to see if there is any real adult supervision in either organization.

One more question about Media Day if I may:

    Given the juvenile sort of “look-at-me” behaviors on display (a man wearing a barrel and a black cowboy hat for example) and given the stupid and irrelevant questions asked by the people in attendance (what is Bill Belichick’s favorite puppet?) and given the spectacle of players dancing with “reporters”, who asks for a press credential to this mess and is denied one?

Honestly, the ghost of King Henry VIII – who would not know a damned thing about the NFL or American football – would be hard pressed to pose the dumbest question of the day. Moreover, do not get me started on the folks who paid $28.50 a piece to sit in the stands and watch goofs interview players and coaches. Next thing you know, those folks will pony up cash money to sit in an amphitheater and watch players and coaches eat a team meal. It’s just sad…

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times did not attend Media Day to come up with this observation but it could have been a line of questioning had he chosen to attend:

“Super Bowl injury update: Patriots QB Tom Brady (hurt feelings), probable.”

According to a report in the SF Chronicle, after Boston was selected by the USOC as the US city to bid for the 2024 Summer Games, Boston mayor, Marty Walsh signed an agreement with the USOC that bans City of Boston employees from making negative comments about the Olympic Games, the USOC or the process(es) involved in securing the games for Boston. Negative comments here are ones that might “reflect unfavorably upon, denigrate or disparage” the Olympic Games, the USOC and/or the IOC. As you might imagine, there are folks involved with organizations such as the ACLU who do not think that agreement is a very good idea…

All I can say is that it is a good thing I do not work for the City of Boston…

Finally, Brad Rock of the Deseret News looked upon this agreement between the Boston mayor and the USOC from a different perspective:

“The mayor of Boston has signed an agreement banning city employees from speaking negatively about the Olympics.

“However, … sources say the agreement indicates it’s just fine to say any horrible thing they want about the Celtics.”

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

“Deflategate” Is A Conspiracy Theory

I have a new computer but still none of my old documents and information. I would guess there is a 10% chance that I will ever see any of that old info. So, here I go, starting from scratch.

You cannot possibly be any more tired of hearing about “Deflategate” than I am. Since I do not know what happened, I am not going to pretend that I do. What I would like to say here is that there are lessons for all of us when we are faced with stories of this kind and I would like to use the current “debate” to illustrate.

    Here is one sure way to tell if a story is really about a conspiracy theory and not just the events that triggered the story. In a conspiracy theory, the absence of evidence about some aspect of the story becomes proof of the conspiracy itself. Because Tom Brady did not say some specific thing at his news conference or because the NFL has not made the referee and other officials publicly available becomes part of the “proof” of a conspiracy. Not exactly Aristotelian-level logic there.

When someone says – as a talking head on ESPN or as a caller to a sports radio show – that such-and-such MUST have happened, there is an immediate follow-up question that has to happen. The question is:

    OK, if you are CERTAIN that such-and-such happened, then how did the perpetrators effect it?

The answer to that question has to be just as certain as the first assertion plus there has to be good objective evidence for how it all came about. Certainty is a very robust stance and when someone claims to KNOW what HAD TO HAPPEN, that person had also be ready to provide some specifics when facing follow-up questions.

ESPN New York reports that the Yankees are “devising legal arguments so Alex Rodriguez won’t be able to collect any of the bonuses he is owed per the $30 million ‘milestone home run’ marketing agreement he signed in 2007”. As I understand the contract, A-Rod can collect $6M each time he gets to a milestone along the way to the all-time home run record. The nearest of those milestones comes if he hits 6 more and ties Willie Mays for #4 on the all-time list. You can read the entire report here. Frankly, I think this makes it look as if the Yankees are sinking to A-Rod’s level. He and they signed a contract; neither side coerced the other to agree to the terms.

The new Commissioner of Baseball said that he is open to ideas for rules changes that would prevent teams from using “extreme defensive shifts”. I am not trying to nit-pick here, but this is not enough of a big deal that it qualifies as something the new Commish should jump to as soon as he takes office. I have no idea when “extreme defensive shifts” started in baseball, but I recall seeing teams use what was called the “Ted Williams Shift” back in the 1950s. Perhaps that was the origin of shifting; perhaps it goes back a lot further than that; I will leave that to baseball historians. I guess one could argue that by limiting defensive shifts the amount of scoring would increase in baseball. The problem with that simplistic view is that if nothing else materially changes, increased scoring will necessarily have to increase the length of games and the games are already long enough thank you very much.

Personally, I think the best way to defeat an “extreme shift” is for left-handed hitters to learn to lay down a solid bunt that will end up in the vicinity of where a third baseman would normally play. It would not take a jillion of those events to convince managers to put players in more “normal defensive positions”. I do not want to jump all over the new Commish and draw any wide-ranging negative conclusions about him from this one early statement. So, I will chalk this one up to him trying to do something to keep MLB in the sports conversation while the majority of the focus in the US is on the impending Super Bowl game.

One other thing about MLB is interesting at this moment. The folks who are in charge of MLB have named a new Chairman of the MLB Finance Committee. Normally, that would be no big deal but in this case the new Chairman is Fred Wilpon – the owner of the NY Mets. Recall that Wilpon was a “major investor” with Bernie Madoff and basically lost his shirt in that Ponzi scheme. I recall reading one estimate that he might have been into the investment club to the tune of $300M. Assume that number is the right order of magnitude and then realize that this guy is now in charge of the MLB Finance Committee… What could possibly go wrong?

One last baseball item… The Nats’ acquisition of Max Scherzer took a starting rotation that was as good as any in baseball and made it clearly the best starting rotation in baseball. The Nats now have 6 quality starting pitchers; most teams do not have three. Nevertheless, I do not think this acquisition will scratch the itch for Nats’ fans. Consider:

    The Nats have had the best team in the NL East by a wide margin for the last two years. They waltzed into the playoffs.

    In the playoffs, they have laid eggs and they have been ostrich-sized eggs.

    Nats’ fans – many of whom are bandwagon-hopping front runners – want to see the team in the World Series.

    A six-man starting rotation is not of great use in a playoff scenario.

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

Finally, The Mueller Report

The NFL hired former FBI Director, Robert Mueller, to investigate what happened within the NFL such that the league botched the handling of the “Ray Rice Affair” so badly. That was about 4 months ago which seems to me to have been a supremely protracted length of time. Finally, The Mueller Report is finished and delivered.

Please recall when this story was fresh, I said that if Roger Goodell was telling the truth about never having seen or known about the “inside the elevator video” of the “Ray Rice Affair”, then the folks in charge of NFL Security and whoever was in charge of this specific investigative task needed to be fired immediately. According to The Mueller Report:

“We found no evidence that anyone at the NFL had or saw the in-elevator video before it was publicly shown. We also found no evidence that a woman at the NFL acknowledged receipt of that video in a voicemail message on April 9, 2014.”

Let me deconstruct that statement for a moment and assume that what it says is true because indeed no one at the NFL did have or did see the in-elevator video prior to TMZ springing it on the public consciousness.

    1. NFL Security – by reputation a paragon in its field – has more than just feet of clay. The reason no one in the NFL had or saw the in-elevator video is because the folks in NFL Security did not figure out how to get it. TMZ figured that out so it probably was not exactly equivalent to untying the Gordian Knot.

    2. There were stories of a reporter – or reporters, I really do not recall if it was singular or plural – hearing a voicemail message from a female who called from an NFL telephone number saying that they had received said video. If The Mueller Report is accurate, someone went to elaborate means to concoct a forgery of a message. The reporter(s) for that story need now to come forth to demonstrate the level of veracity of their report based on the credibility of their source(s). If this was a hoax, it was an elaborate one indeed.

The above deconstruction focuses specifically on the quotation taken from The Mueller Report. No one should generalize from my comments here to assume that I find Roger Goodell or any other NFL employees exonerated by the findings. In fact, no report can possibly be written by anyone on the planet that might explain away the following logic chain:

    Originally we all saw a video of an elevator door opening and Ray Rice standing over the unconscious body of a woman later identified as his then-fiancée with no other folks exiting the elevator. Immediately, I concluded one of three situations obtained:

      1. She was conscious getting on the elevator and passed out during the descent to the ground floor.
      2. She was conscious getting on the elevator and he rendered her unconscious during the descent to the ground floor.
      3. She was unconscious prior to getting on the elevator meaning she had been dragged/carried onto the elevator in that state and some kind of investigation as to how she found herself in that circumstance needed to be done.

It turns out that #2 is indeed the case now that we have seen the in-elevator video…

However, if someone with even a meager background in investigations at NFL Security saw only what I saw, the implications presented by #2 and #3 above would have to have sparked a sense of awareness that this situation might just turn out to be a steaming pile of equine ordure. Now, with that heightened sense of potential “problems” I would think that a trained, focused and savvy investigator would have made sure that the full expertise of the elite investigative unit that is NFL Security was brought to bear on this matter. Evidently, not…

Not only did the first person in NFL Security to run across the original reports seemingly shrug his shoulders and move on to the next issue; it would also seem that as the first few days of the awareness of Janay Palmer Rice exiting that elevator in a comatose state no one else in NFL Security or anyone else in a position of influence in the NFL thought this was any kind of big deal. They did not have much in front of them – other than a completely unconscious woman in the company of an NFL player – but they did not throw it into high gear to find out what had happened here.

The Mueller Report says that the NFL knew a little something soon after the outside video had hit the streets. The NFL had a copy of the summons written by the local police and that summons report said that Ray Rice had struck Janay Palmer with his hand and that led to her unconscious state. Still, no one at 345 Park Ave in NYC screamed something akin to:

“Holy domestic abuse, Batman, this could become a PR nightmare!!”

Not only did everyone in NFL HQs go about their business and ignore what everyone else saw, the league and the security folks who nominally keep the league safe from all manner of evil-doers did not do any of the following:

    Contact the local police who wrote that summons report
    Contact the local prosecutor’s office who might be handling this matter
    Contact the casino security folks who might have more info

Moreover, as time passed and as the local prosecutor was contemplating some kind of action against Ray Rice, Rice’s attorneys were given copies of the in-elevator video as part of the discovery proceedings. Seemingly, the league did not know that ever happened and it never asked either Rice or his attorneys anything about the existence of an in-elevator video let alone to see a copy of the video they had in their possession.

OK, so Rice and his attorneys could have stonewalled the league and conjured up reasons to keep that information from the league as a way to protect Rice’s future economic interests. However, The Mueller Report says that the Baltimore Ravens had been in contact with the local authorities and the Ravens were given:

“…a detailed description of the in-elevator video [by a local police official]… The Ravens did not volunteer that information to the league.”

Well, of course the Ravens did not divulge that information to the NFL. Ray Rice was the #1 RB on their depth chart and Roger Goodell was/is the league’s “Disciplinarian-in-Chief”; it was in the best interests of the Ravens’ brass to keep this under wraps as much as possible. But according to The Mueller Report, the NFL was less than dogged in asking the Ravens what all they might know about the incident.

What the NFL did was to conduct an investigation that you would praise if you called it “junior varsity”. I said this before and I will repeat it here:

    Heads must roll in NFL Security and heads must roll in any and all departments tangentially related to the incident where no one questioned the lack of information and insight coming from NFL Security.

What seems clear to me now is that someone – or some ones – along mahogany row in the NFL decided early on that the NFL did not want to know exactly what happened in that elevator and so there would be no impetus given to the folks in NFL Security to get to the bottom of this mess. If The Mueller Report is correct in saying that the NFL never had or saw that in-elevator video, it almost certainly has to be the case that the NFL never really wanted to see it and therefore never expended much effort to get it.

And speaking of not expending a lot of effort to get hold of some critical information, I can find no reference to any of the investigators involved in The Mueller Report busting their butts trying to get information from the guy who claims he sent that copy of the in-elevator video to the NFL. If the investigators can find no record of it ever reaching the NFL by examining the NFL’s records, would not a prudent next step be to find the guy who says he sent it to the NFL and report on what he has to say?

The Mueller Report as I read it does not exonerate Roger Goodell in this matter except to confirm his assertion that at the time he issued the 2-game suspension to Ray Rice for the Atlantic City assault, he had not seen the in-elevator video. The problem is that he had ample opportunity to have had more information at his disposal – to include the in-elevator video – if the folks who work for him had done their jobs efficiently and effectively. They did not and when that happens some of the fault for that nonfeasance has to reside with the guy in charge.

Roger Goodell has said more than once that the league made mistakes in its investigation of the Ray Rice Affair. The Mueller Report confirms that statement in spades. The question for the NFL now seems to take the league on two different paths:

    1. The league moves on to another Commissioner and the new guy/gal domes in with a mandate to change the foundations of NFL Security and to give it an entirely new structure, charge and leadership.

    2. The league sticks with Roger Goodell – mainly based on his demonstrated ability to increase league revenues for the owners and secondarily for the players – but it forces him to make significant personnel changes both in NFL Security and along NFL mahogany row.

Make no mistake; if major changes in personnel and in the way things are reported and tasked within the NFL do not happen as a result of The Mueller Report, this is going to happen again. If the Ray Rice Affair was uncomfortable and smarmy, it will look like a glimpse of Nirvana once the next issue of this kind breaks if the NFL reacts in the same way.
Bob Molinaro of the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot had this terse but cogent summation of The Mueller Report and the events surrounding it:

“See no evil: To no one’s surprise, an independent investigator says there is no evidence that the NFL saw the elevator video of Ray Rice hitting his then-fiancée. I guess there’s no way to prove the NFL didn’t want to see it.”

In addition, here is how Greg Cote of the Miami Herald summarized The Mueller Report:

“An independent investigation found NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was not aware of the Ray Rice video when meting out his initial punishment. Which sort of means Goodell was both exonerated and called incompetent at the same time.”

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

Character Issues/Maturity Issues

About a week ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Chin-Hui Tsao to a minor league contract. This is the kind of item one sees in the agate type section of the sports page every day; you read over it and figure that the odds are you will never hear anything from or about this guy again. However, Chin-Hui Tsao has a backstory…

He is Taiwanese and has been in MLB in the past. He is 32 years old and made his major league debut in 2003. After an undistinguished time in MLB with several teams, he went to play in the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan in 2009. That is where the backstory gets “verrry interesting” [/Arte Johnson]. The Taiwanese equivalent of a District Attorney’s office said in 2010 that Tsao had accepted “improper benefits” from gamblers and had agreed to throw two games for their benefit during the 2009 season. He never actually threw the games because they did not take place for various reasons. So, he was never tried and convicted but his Taiwanese team – the Brother Elephants – parted company with him.

Believe me; I do understand the precept of “innocent until proven guilty” and have a sense of what the concept of “due process” entails. However, I have to wonder what might have gone through the minds of the folks who run the LA Dodgers when it came time to make the decision to offer this guy a minor league contract. Over the course of 4 seasons between 2003 and 2007, Tsao threw a total of 88 innings with an ERA of 5.40 and a WHIP of 1.392. Those are not eye-popping stats; the guy is 32 years old; he has a whiff of “game-fixing” around him. What made the Dodgers’ front office think this was a good PR move?
Can you imagine the conversation in the Celestial Starbucks between Kennesaw Mountain Landis and A. Bartlett Giamatti if this guy makes it back to MLB?

TMZ Sports has a report from yesterday saying that some bar patrons threw drinks at Johnny Manziel in a Houston club earlier this week. According to TMZ, some fans were shouting at Manziel and “aggressively trying to take pics” which led to Manziel flipping off one of the patrons and then “drinks started to fly”. Some folks might be tempted to use this report to reinforce their thinking that Johnny Manziel has “character issues” and that the Browns never should have drafted him because of those “character issues”. I prefer to interpret this incident – in the context of other reports of Manziel’s behaviors – a bit differently.

I cannot recall any reports regarding Manziel that would lead me to believe he is an evil person; I do not think he is a nascent serial killer or a totally amoral sociopath. I am, however, convinced that he is very immature and has a heightened sense of entitlement. And it is for those reasons that I believe that the Browns never should have drafted him and it is for those reasons that I believe he is not going to achieve the level of success one would hope for from a first round quarterback selection. Like most team sports, football has a large mental component and for a quarterback, the mental component is as important as the physical component. There have been a few “quarterback prodigies” – guys who excelled at the position despite their neglect for things like preparation or conditioning. Bobby Layne, Joe Namath and Ken Stabler come to mind here. However, most of the guys who neglect preparation have brief and undistinguished careers.

I know that Johnny Manziel is only 22 years old and that he does have time to grow up and to behave like an adult. Nonetheless, I have not seen any reports that would lead me to believe that he recognizes that “maturation” is something he needs to put high on his list of “Things To Do”. Until someone realizes that importance, becoming a responsible adult does not happen; one becomes merely a chronological adult.

I mention this because teams talk about “character” when they draft players and I think in many cases that is not what they should focus on. Yes, if a potential draftee at the age of 21 already has 9 arrests for violent behaviors along with stories that he belongs to a Satanic Cult that sacrifices kittens weekly, a team should play the “character issues card” and pass on him. However, the more prevalent problem is “maturity” and not “character”. What teams need to figure out how to measure is the degree to which a potential draftee – actually a physically large and gifted man-child in most cases – has internalized concepts such as responsibility and/or logical consequences of one’s actions and/or self-control.

Johnny Manziel is an example in football of a young player who does not seem to have a great awareness of those sorts of characteristics of maturity. The NBA faces the same problem with its yearly influx of “one-and-dones”. Kids – and I use that term here very purposefully – come into the NBA after one gaudy year of college basketball and often fade into mediocrity. For some, it is because they are boys playing against men and need to catch up physically to players who have had years of physical training to build themselves up. Others fade into mediocrity because they do not recognize that what they have to do to continue to excel goes beyond merely showing up sufficiently before game time that the coach does not suspend you for being late.

Self-awareness leads to a dedication to one’s craft and that leads to development as a player and as a person. That is what teams need to focus on; maturity versus immaturity is a far more common issue than is the good guy/bad guy dichotomy. Maybe what teams need to do with potential draftees is to give them another test after the Wonderlic:

    Make the potential draftee watch the movie Bull Durham and then talk to the potential draftee about Nuke LaLoosh and what they think about his future in MLB.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this item in Sideline Chatter in the Seattle Times recently dealing with a young player who might have “character issues” or “maturity issues” or perhaps both:

“Police in Buffalo arrested Ole Miss recruit Chad Kelly after Kelly allegedly punched a bar bouncer, fought with police and said he’d open fire on the club with an AK-47.
“Guess recruiting gurus weren’t kidding when they called him a triple-threat quarterback.”

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