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Game Three TeeVee

Posted by :James Howden On : October 25, 2006
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I was disappointed when the Cardinals got smoked in Larry Walker’s last chance for a Series ring in 2004. My friend The Don has been a Cards fan at least since Tony LaRussa got there – he’s a fan of coaches more than of players, although he wants eligibility requirements rewritten so that Albert Pujols can go straight to the Hall of Fame this week. So as St. Louis is reborn after their Undead stagger to “winning” their division, it was time for me to actually watch a game. Regular readers will know that, for a guy who loves sport, I have an atrocious television. I depend on the kindness, well, not of strangers (though I have picked up a few games in restaurants), but of whatever friends I can impose myself upon.

I went over to the Sélégers’ place, where my Haitian-born buddy Fanfan required only slightly more basic education in baseball than his Canadian-born wife and brother-in-law. Mind you, he didn’t wander downstairs until about the sixth inning, so I wasn’t able to get too much wisdom in between pitches. He has the athletic eye, though. At first, he didn’t know how a pitcher even got a hitter out – or even know what “out” meant (or retrait in French) – but it didn’t take long before he realized that Chris Carpenter was dominating the Tigers. I don’t mind watching the game alone, but it was fun to help a new Canadian with one of the essential aspects of autumn living, not to mention his blissfully baseball-impaired family.

Good game. Baseball rocks. (Slowly, but it rocks.) Fox’s telecast is good, if a little too busy, and I love some of the inventive camera angles, especially the one embedded in the turf in front of home plate. I don’t have much patience left for commercial television, though. Maybe I take life too seriously, but when one of the major sponsors of an athletic event is a video-game maker, I draw a curmudgeonly line. Sure, there’s always been the irony of sporting excellence being underwritten by performance-decreasing substances (greasy foods, cigarettes in the bad ol’ days, beer forever). But something about sitting through an ad for a thumb-friendly entertainment called “Kill All Humans” made me feel dirty, and a little worried about the mental hygiene of some of my fellow viewers. What kind of audience are they aiming at? How did I get in? Not long after came another promo for a zombie chew-em-up game. Yecch. Makes me yearn for Skoal and Copenhagen commercials. At least there, the fantasy was of killing only yourself with style.

World Series? What World Are You Talking About?

Posted by :James Howden On : October 21, 2006
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My buddy Fanfan didn’t have a clue. (Work on your French nasal “a-n” if you want to pronounce his name properly in your head.) Though he loves sport, and was my video connection, player biographer and technical guide to the World Cup last summer, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. “Hé, Fanfan, tu es excité pour le début de la Série du Monde?” His face was delightfully blank. “La Série du Monde. World Series. Tu sais, le championnat de baseball?”  His growing grin said why do I need to know anything about that?

Here’s an odd little sporting artefact of history and geography. Fanfan comes from Haiti. On his half of a small Caribbean island, le foot is everything. The other half is the Dominican Republic, an absolute assembly line (no wait, an open pit mine) for baseball players. (It is estimated that one in seven major leaguers, and an incredible thirty percent of minor league ballplayers in the U.S., come from this poor and tiny nation. For a politically charged view of this, take a trip to the edge of sports .) Fanfan was a bit surprised to learn how dominant the D.R. is in baseball, because “when we play them, we win 10-0, 15-0.” He was talking soccer, of course. Has anybody written the history of the island in sporting terms? Are there any geographical reasons for the ancestors of slaves to have talented feet in the west of Hispaniola and beautiful hands in the eastern half of the island? What colonial distinctions led to Haiti siding with the world’s athletic consensus, while the Dominican turned its sporting eyes to the great American pastime? (Am I the only one who thinks about stuff like this?)

Be that as it may, Fanfan couldn’t name a single baseball player, I don’t think, let alone know that the Detroit Tigers were facing the St. Louis Cardinals. (Small “World”!) He knew everything there was to know about the big game between Manchester United and Liverpool, mind you, and he could have given me a detailed breakdown of the title race in the German Bundesliga. But baseball? Who cares? Well, in the communities he’s involved with, there’s pretty much nobody except me. It’s funny: baseball is more international than it has ever been, with many Asian players alongside the majority of American and Latin American ones. (Also, there are more significant Canadian players than there may ever have been, even though the Cards lost Larry Walker to retirement.) But in an international city like Ottawa, there have probably not been pockets of apathy this deep about baseball since, oh, World War II.

I still have baseball dreams, though. I don’t follow it as avidly as I used to, but hey, it’s the World Series! I may not know the complete starting lineup of either team, but I do have a lot to teach my footy Haitian friend about the mysteries of bat and glove. Besides, he has a way better TV than me.

I’m Trying Out for the METS, Now?

Posted by :James Howden On : September 14, 2006
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It begins with me walking out of a friend’s house. Stephen Downs was his name. I’m wearing the off-white pants with the thin black stripe down the side, and the skimpy green T-shirt that was our uniform top. Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 154, lettered in white across the chest, no identity lettered across my upper back. (We didn’t have numbers, so you couldn’t tell the players even with a program.) (No program, either. Who would read it?) It was the last ballclub I played on as a teenager. We were pretty good, winning a B-level provincial championship that year.(Wait, Steve wasn’t on that team!) I played centre field and a little shortstop, and hit mainly leadoff. Now I’m walking along streets that aren’t as familiar as they should be. My sneakers are unlaced. I’m not carrying my spikes.

I’m chilly in that skin-tight T, but I guess I look okay and there’s a bounce in my step. It feels like fall and rain, but I have my glove under my arm and I’m excited. I get to play! I get to shag and run and hit. I feel ready, but there’s a vague realization that it has been awhile. I walk into the park. Two guys are throwing. They’re wearing a very different uniform, much better than mine. The other team. Except that one of them looked familiar from the corner of my averted eye and his belated ‘hey’ confirms that he is a friend and, I guess, teammate. And then I see Monte (remember Monte? Good writer, a cafeteria kibitzer, could’ve been a decent basketball player), and he’s wearing that same high-quality Mets pinstriped uni. I don’t get it. Since when are we the Mets?

I’m not so sure about this. When was the last time I played? And why am I just getting started in September? Something about Monte being here, tall and splendid-splinter slim in his ‘stripes, makes me question: can I still do this? I still can’t find my spikes, my glove looks dry and flat, and it dawns on me in slow but inevitable motion that I’m a long way past 19, or even 29. I’m twenty-five pounds heavy with a rusty right shoulder. My ancient ankles make the wide swing before first base, and that hard cut across the inside of the bag, painful to imagine. I remember now. It’s a cruel, cruel dream. I’ve had it before, about tryouts for basketball and football teams that I suddenly realize I’m far too old for. It’s a reminder, as if I needed it in my friggin’ sleep, that my sporting days lie far behind. It hurts every time.

 

But I don’t need a flat belly and quick feet to play guitar.

Dream On, Yanks

Posted by :James Howden On : September 1, 2006
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If you’re a basketball lover, 1992 seems like a long time ago. In Barcelona, the American “Dream Team” of mainly NBA pros (‘member who the lone collegian was?) waltzed and shimmied and giggled and jammed their way to uncontested wins over the world. (It was Duke U’s Christian Laettner.) Only ten years later, Dream Team Whatever was griping and stumbling its way to a sixth place finish in the world championship, right in Indianapolis. Then came another shock with the scuffling bronze in Olympic Athens. And so the Americans have gotten serious. They have player commitments through to Beijing in 2008. They have had actual tryouts. They have trained. And they hammered most of their opponents, though the Italians obviously got neither the memo nor the white flag. And come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve heard anybody dropping the “Dream Team” name for a while now.

And then came Greece. Did you see it? I’m fascinated by this surprising (but the more I think of it, not stunning) semifinal result, 101-95 for the Greek national team. They have not one NBA-er. (That will change.) In part, this is due to a 180 degree turn in the sociology of sport — turnabout fair play? — a case of a racism reversal from the once-widespread resistance to accepting black athletes. In basketball, certainly among its North American fans, there is now obvious suspicion about Caucasian ones, Nowitzki and Gasol and Nash notwithstanding. Perhaps a topic for another day.

Anyhow, I wouldn’t have thought the Americans would lose with their improved preparation, but then I’m a Coach K fan and a Bosh/Wade/Heinrich/Battier/Brand fan AND a build-for-the-future fan. Once (if ever) the basketball public in the States gets over the bitterness, it may be a good thing that they did lose. (I’m a big Silver Linings fan, too. It helps make sense of all the seemingly lost causes I’ve embraced, not to mention the ones I’ve coached!) At least now the Americans can’t so easily say “our game is fine”, even though it’s tough to find great shooters or passers or, apparently, defenders. Meanwhile, the Canadian hockey establishment continues to bellow exactly that, even when the NHL’s dash and delight are mainly imported from Europe. That’s where the NBA goes looking for outside shooters now, too, although the top scorers are still homegrown.

The Don, my one-time coach and long-time coaching buddy, wasn’t short of opinions. He views the American game as follows: about looking good, not about winning…can’t defend…it’s all 1 on 5…it was men against boys – talented boys, but boys…they don’t create for anyone but themselves…Coach K needs more time, I suppose, and so do a trio of superbly talented captains whose average age must be about 22.7. Yup, they’re young. From what I can tell, the players had their heads on pretty straight, but they started into their victory lap a bit too soon in the Greece game. For a change they had started quickly, and maybe they thought they could cruise from there. (That worked against Angola in ’92, but not against Greece on an ’06 evening in Japan. The Americans would even have to pay attention against a massively improved Angola squad, these days.)

Post-game email of the day was The Don at his most acerbic. Answer: BALL MOVEMENT. (Question: What aspect of the game does Team USA know nothing about?) John Stockton, come back! But he acknowledges their youth, and recognizes what the American players themselves may be starting to get. The international game is different. Clearouts don’t work so well. The individualism that sells so many NBA tickets, but that remains the bane of purists such as the immortal Coach John Wooden, can now be countered and even overcome by the teamwork and experience of national sides whose players have spent so much of their development together.

There are a few voices, mostly drowned out by the And 1 videos, that have been crying in the American sporting wilderness about how poorly taught too many of the best American kids are. (It’s the same in Canada for hockey.) While most thoughtful youth sports people advocate a 2:1 ratio of practices to games, it’s often the reverse (or worse), especially in the summer camps, the AAU all-star tournaments, and the high school hoops factories masquerading as private academies (the “diploma mills”).

Athletic kids can pick up flashy ballhandling, dunk-sickness and a certain kind of brittle, macho competitiveness from each other. Many of them, though, suffer from a lack of fundamental coaching – glaringly evident when it comes to shooting the ball – as opposed to just playing game after meaningless game. There are some who think this accounts for some of the problems in American ball. Kids play so many games that are really just about an individual’s Oooh Factor that, quite aside from limited skills, they develop an “oh, well” attitude toward team wins and losses. The elite kids must be playing 80 or more games per year for four or five different teams. Loyalty? Team feeling? The hoary old benefits of playing team sports? Hmmm.

Maybe the K can develop these things with the marvellously talented young men he has chosen. (And maybe a few others, speaking of Kobe.) Canada will have a heckuva job just qualifying for Beijing, especially since this loss means that the Americans will now have to compete for one of the same qualifying spots as we are. (Good luck, red ‘n’ white!) But that’s not the only reason I have for not gloating over the American loss, as many will. As long as they’re not playing against the maple leaf, I have no problem cheering for this American squad. Maybe what they’re learning will help make team play cool again. Now there’s a dream.

Rome: Replaced in a Day?

Posted by :James Howden On : August 14, 2006
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I tuned in for a while today to the Jungle, the Jim Rome Show, which occasionally rants from my radio between noon and three. Rome is off this week, and Jim Lampley faces the wrath of Rome’s faithful clones for part of it. (And it’s oddly touching how encouraging they are of Mr. Lampley, and how they miss the sarcasm in his voice as he thanks them for their support. After all, he’s only been a national sports voice, and a remarkably articulate one, since the ‘70s.)

For me, Lampley is to Rome as the gifted and accomplished athlete is to the undertalented plugger. I admire Rome’s preparation, how writerly his stuff is, which partly accounts for those famous pauses and repetitions. He never says um, but he also doesn’t compose elegant rants on the fly like Lampley can. (Who does?) As a word freak and former High School Creature, I get a small thrill when Professor Lampley points out a sentence fragment in reading a listener’s email, or insists prolifically that “unique” is a word that cannot be qualified. (Must point out, Jimmer, that a word needlessly and senselessly modifying “unique” would be an adverb, not an adjective. But carry on.)

But man, does he pontificate! What has built Rome, at least in part, is that callers who “don’t suck” can get paragraphs, sometimes entire smack-filled essays, in edgewise. All Dr. Lampley needs is a reference – ABC College Football? Yes, when I was there, Keith Jackson had just been turfed from Monday Night Football… — and away he goes! Since his youthful sideline ventures for ABC, I’ve lost track of Lampley a bit, mainly because I don’t pay much attention to boxing, and apparently he’s the Guru of Pugilism. (How does such a bright and voluble guy put up for so long with such a primitive sport? I’ve had my moments, especially during Ali’s career, where I could begin to feel the attraction of the intelligentsia for boxing. But I still can’t quite get with a sport whose purpose is brain damage.) I don’t know if I could stand him in heavy rotation, as he does get rather Cosellian, rather Dennis Millerite, I dare say, in his loquacity. Still, it’s fun to hear eloquence on sports radio. Sentences.

Dr. Jay Saves Soccer

Posted by :James Howden On : July 9, 2006
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Let me not be the last I never played the game North American pundit to step forward with some Golden Bull to save le foot from itself. Shoot, five billion people aren’t necessarily always right.

The Jim Rome Show normally saves its most juvenile smack for ridiculing the game North America forgot. “How very soccer of you!” is Rome’s favourite word of dismissal for any example of mob violence, shameless fakery or terminal dullness in sport. But the sportswriter John Feinstein was a guest host on the Rome radio show this week, and he actually has some intelligent regard for the game without being blindly attached to its traditions. He had a couple of interesting suggestions to make if FIFA ever decided it wanted to appeal more to North American audiences.

First, he said, eliminate the offside rule entirely. Or, follow the dearly departed NASL with its 35 yard lines that marked attacking zones within which offsides are allowed. Second, whatever you do, Feinstein argued, you can not decide a championship-calibre soccer match with something other than soccer. (You don’t decide a baseball series with a home run derby, or the Super Bowl with a field-goal competition. And now the Bus. Jerome Bettis once kicked a field goal in junior high, and now he’s doing it for all the marbles…) Feinstein was a bit vague on how you’d solve the Game Without End phenomenon, except to suggest that teams knowing they have to score to win will, well, try to score. There’s some truth to that.

Dona and Paul and I watched the 3rd place game, Germany/Portugal, together. I pay occasional attention to international soccer news, but almost never watch anything in between World Cups. What a pleasure to watch with these guys – one from Haiti, one from Togo – who know and love the game so well. (Good practice pour mon français, aussi!). Starting at halftime, I tried out Mr. Feinstein’s ideas, and a few of my own. No offside? My buddies just grinned. Silly idea. (The game would get all stretched out of shape, the beautiful buildup would dissolve into full-pitch dump ‘n’ chase; hockey with no icing, only worse. I could see that.) But what about no offside once a team has crossed midfield? They still weren’t too keen on the idea, though the 35 yard “freedom zone” seemed to intrigue Dona, at least briefly. Hey, would a 4-3 game be so bad?

No life and death by penalties? The guys had cautious agreement with the idea of deciding the game by playing the game, but how to do it? To my surprise, Paul and Dona were interested in hockey’s regular season (partial) solution, opening up the ice by going 4 on 4 for the overtime period; they also hesitantly admired the post-season “however long it takes” approach to deciding tied games. We kicked around the idea of removing a defender in extra time, the need for freer substitution, or at least a greater number of allowed changes. (By the way, how would you like to be Guy Number 23 on a World Cup squad, knowing that you’ll get 10 match minutes – if you’re lucky – in a month-long tournament?) But beyond all that, I also argued that the mentality of the game would change. If teams gotta score to win, then they’ll score. Or give up a goal in pressing to get one. Clearly, the Italians were content to go to penalties, even with their disappointing history in games decided by them. In a way, the penalty lottery ends up being an escape from risk, even though it is such a nervous affair.

Hey, how about simulation scoring? You know, if a guy’s going to dive, he should be scored by the judges. I’m like a lot of North American sports fans in finding the “simulation” of fouls and injuries bloody disgusting. If FIFA goes to two on-field officials, maybe that will help, but so would a video replay panel. Not during the match, mind you. The flow that FIFA maintains by refusing to allow commercial timeouts is a marvellous blessing. (I’m a basketball guy, but the TV timeouts, in addition to the strategic ones teams are allowed, makes the pace especially of pro ball infuriating.) Athletic matches complete in under two hours. WOW! How wonderful is that? No, here’s my plan: a team of judges watches match video, including replays. They count the number of times players are caught, as replays so regularly did, trying to draw a penalty by diving, writhing in badly-acted agony when there was NO CONTACT. Then the scores are made public. In yesterday’s match, Germany’s Michael Ballack received a mark of 3 from the simulation judges. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo still holds the single-game high, with 7 certified dives. I suggest that 2 dives in any match equals an automatic retroactive yellow card. Or a scarlet letter on the match jersey. ‘D’ for ‘dishonour’, ‘S’ for ‘shame’, ‘W’ for ‘wuss’. I’m not particular.

In contrast to the worst of the football world’s fakery, all respect to Thierry Henry, star striker of the French side. He plays through fouls, still trying to score. “He never dives,” Dona told me during the championship game today. Alongside his strong anti-racism efforts, here was the Man of the Hour for me. And here, Fédération Internationale de Football Association and soccer lovers everywhere, are one Canucklehead’s prescriptions for what ails your sport. There’s so much right with the beautiful game – its simplicity, its universality, its accessibility to the poor, the often-genuine sense of fair play that is such a contrast to the blot of diving – that I can’t help throwing my suggestions your way. (You’re welcome!)

According to Albert

Posted by :James Howden On : May 17, 2006
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I came across a brief and simple meditation on the virtue of humility this morning. As ammunition for my argument that you can find spirit everywhere if you’re willing to look, I’ll point out that this exercise in quiet virtue was found in the on-line version of Sports Illustrated magazine. It was an interview with the Cardinals’ monstrously good batsman, Albert Pujols. Alongside other things I’ve read about the great Dominican, I think we can take this straight up, no grain (or mitt-full) of salt required.

Albert’s Law:

As long as you don’t get caught up thinking you are better than the game, or you think that you’re better than everybody else, as long as you don’t get caught up in that, you’ll be fine. If you stay humble, you’re going to survive to play this game — if you stay healthy — for 15-20 years. That’s what I want to do. Stay humble before God. Stay humble before my teammates. And just have fun out there and play the game.

It might not sell too much beer or get a Manly Personal Fragrance named after him, but it makes it all the easier to appreciate Mr. Pujols.

How do you do it, Mr. Nash?

Posted by :James Howden On : May 8, 2006
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How do you explain a kid from Victoria who doesn’t just build NBA castles in the air but also manages to “put foundations under them”, as Thoreau advised? How does a guy go from barely holding his own playing pickup ball as a freshman at the University of California-Santa Clara to being two-time Conference Player of the Year? (And, in a Sports Illustrated feature, being labelled “Little Magic” by Mr. Johnson himself.) What changes that fine college player from a three-year professional backup to an NBA All-Star? And what took Steve Nash, in his 30s, from “nice little player” to two consecutive Most Valuable Player trophies, something that Larry and Wilt, Kareem and Michael have done, but that only Magic had ever done from the point guard spot?

I just re-read Jack McCallum’s SI feature “Point Guard from Another Planet” from the January 30 edition. The best quote came from Nash’s younger brother Martin – clearly a superior athlete to Steve – who asked, “How do you explain where drive comes from? That Steve drive – who knows?” We just have to shrug our shoulders and acknowledge the ridiculous: this double-MVP coup is the greatest individual athletic achievement by any Canadian, ever. And I include Number 99, the one that Nash most resembles in his intuition, his modest physique and subtle way of dominating his sport. Nash won’t have Gretzky’s astonishing career numbers – it is likely that nobody in any sport ever will – but he is swimming circles around enormous fish in a much bigger pond than the Great One played in.

And never mind Canadian accomplishment: this is one of the most astonishing athletic trajectories we’ve ever seen. To come from a basketball backwater and join the pantheon of basketball greats, in a time when the game has a world profile second only to soccer, is incredible. To improve upon that first MVP performance the following season, with his team having endured injury to its other star and wholesale changes, is just plain silly.  Giftedness in anything is, as Martin Nash knows, a pretty mysterious thing, but his big brother is leaving behind some tremendous clues.

 Size and strength are nice, but not essential.
“Athletic ability” is not stored only in the legs.
 Good eyes. Sure hands. Balance. Imagination. These are athletic qualities, too.

 And they still don’t tell the whole story.

 How do you respond to adversity? What happens when you fail?
 Do you know how to learn? Do you have a plan that you never lose sight of?

 Steve Nash put it like this back in January: “Most guys somewhere along the line will meet an obstacle they aren’t willing to clear….They will not keep on going. I kept on going.” Simple as that, eh?

Sure it is.

Thanks for comin’ out, Miguel

Posted by :James Howden On : May 1, 2006
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Today is May Day. Pinkos everywhere still celebrate it, though it never became a big deal in the Excited States, where it began. (Where credit is due: “Excited States of America” is all Allan Fotheringham, booted from Maclean’s magazine but still kicking at www.drfoth.com .) It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out today, though, as the minds behind “A Day Without Immigrants” try to show Americans how their lives would be changed without the newcomers that so many former newcomers would love to deport.

There’s a very interesting article by Dave Zirin on www.edgeofsports.com on how this would really come home to Americans. What if fifteen big-league games happened today and no Latinos played? Some clubs wouldn’t be able to field a lineup without Triple A call-ups. Over 35% of today’s MLB players, including many of the greatest stars, are from Latin America, and the numbers are going to rise. The third world doesn’t only produce our cheap T-shirts and cool shoes; it also produces our favourite athletic entertainers, including the ones coming from the poverty of the black American underclass. (Hockey, for the most part, avoids this by “virtue” of its fantastically expensive nature. The game has luxury taxes right at the roots.)

Mr. Zirin, as usual, is caustic in his latest column. I can’t always get with his extremism – I like George Will on baseball, for example, though I confess that I haven’t read him otherwise – but Zirin jabs a finger directly on a blister that we don’t want to acknowledge: we will cheer ourselves hoarse for an athlete that many of us wouldn’t want living next door. And there’s the other side of idolatry, too; when we turn against black players (Terrell Owens, Barry Bonds) or Latin ones (is it just me, or did Sammy Sosa take a harder ride than Mark McGwire after the Congressional hearings on steroid use?), it tends to be vicious.

The same dynamic applies to white athletes, too, but to a lesser extent. In professional sports, the performers are idolized or demonized, two sides of the same dehumanized coin. We think little of what conditions they have come from or how many like them are on the scrapheap of thanks for comin’ out, now get lost; and we care little about where they go after their legs do. And we hate them for how much money they make, though we’ll cheer as long as they make us feel better about ourselves.

All the Way With LBJ

Posted by :James Howden On : April 24, 2006
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Here’s a big question in the Toy Department, professional basketball division: has LeBron James, 21-year-old hoops wizard and savvy Goliath of the sneaker wars, done enough this year to be named MVP of the National Basketball Association? Or will he, as I suspect, need to pay further dues? (And just by the way, by what club are these “dues” being collected? Presumably, it’s the CREWS – the Chronically Resentful and Envious Writers of Sports.)

I wish I was seeing more LeBron Live than Magazine LeBron and King James the Pitchman. Even a jaded old dunks-are-overrated dude like me can get a buzz from some of his highlight reels, but there are several things about James that excite me a whole lot more. One of the first times I saw him play, he tapped a loose ball toward a teammate and hustled out to fill a lane on the fastbreak. The dunk at the end was sweet, but I was blown away by his hustle and speed; I’ve ever seen a big man so fast. And he fills up scoresheets, not just the points column, not to mention that with a Sports Illustrated cover in 11th grade (and another at 20 musing about him being “The Best of All Time” when he hadn’t even made the playoffs yet), James has every reason to be a flaming idiot.

My impression is that he isn’t. He speaks thoughtfully, doesn’t appear to think he’s bigger than the game, and his teammates seem to enjoy playing with him.  Best of all – at least until he becomes a philanthropist and advocate for the disadvantaged – LeBron James loves to pass. For a young guy with hops and scoring ability, he understands the game at a high level. He’s rare. I loved what he said last week, which went something like this: it’s cool to get that ‘Oooh’, but when you make the great pass, you get two ‘Ooohs’, one for the dime and one for the dunk. Not to mention that, suddenly, the game isn’t all about ME anymore. Imagine: brothers in short pants doing their thing together. Unselfishly!

Things are looking good for the Association when its Most Valuable Player is likely to be either King James or the reigning king of delivery, Steve Nash. And looking at the dominance of the Pistons, it looks like Team Ball and “playing the right way” (ah, but Larry Brown, where are you now?) are getting cooler by the quarter. Nice!!