Month: January 2011

Reporter’s Notebook

January 28, 2011 / DB

A few tidbits from the road.

I don’t recall if I shared this story in a previous notebook, but late last month I had back-to-back games that were completely awful. In the first, one of our best girls teams, WCHS, won easily but in very ugly fashion. They should have won by about 70 but apparently decided to play down to the level of their competition that night. After the game, one of the assistant coaches, who used to be the boys coach at WCHS and who I’ve known for a few years, walked by me and said, “Whew! That set basketball back about 20 years!”

Two nights later I covered one of our boys teams, FCHS. They are struggling this year and were playing a school that is traditionally solid. Midway through the first quarter FCHS was down by about 15 and their players pretty much gave up. I’ve seen some bad games over the years, but this might have been the worst. It wasn’t just that FCHS was outclassed or didn’t have talent or something else like that which easily explained their performance. This night, the players quit caring once they got behind. It was not fun to watch as player after player took quick, long threes as soon as they were open. The post-game interview with the coach was the most awkward thing I’ve been through in four years at the paper. He’s under some pressure and you could sense he knew his grasp on his job was slipping away.

That week was so bad, after the boys game my editor promised to give me some good games for awhile.

So that’s the set-up for last night. I was covering the ICHS girls, who were trying to close out their second-straight undefeated conference season. They’re a 2A school that has played a tough schedule and only lost four times this year. Their opponent was a 1A school that somehow managed to win six games so far this season. I was expecting a blowout, but little did I know…

ICHS won the tip and scored in about five seconds. Then they stole the ball and scored again.

And again.

This continued for the first nine-plus minutes of the game, until they were ahead 29-0. I’ve seen some one-sided runs, but this was ridiculous. And it wasn’t just because ICHS has talent and plays beautiful, team basketball. Their opponents, for some reason, kept dribbling the ball into the middle of the lane, where the ICHS defense would collapse and steal the ball easily. 80% of ICHS’ made baskets during the run came within five feet of the hoop. By the time they hit a shot, the opponents had already turned the ball over 13 times. They didn’t give up, but they were playing mind-numbingly dumb basketball.

The final margin was 64 points, which I believe is the biggest I’ve seen. At least my team won, which made the post-game stuff easier.

One last note. A few weeks ago I wrote about the buzzer-beater game I covered, which featured one of the top scoring players in the state. She got three fouls fairly early in the game and had to sit the final 5:00 before halftime. She was limited in the second half as well, and eventually fouled out in the final minute. Her team won, but she only scored 15, about half her average.

I will give her this: one of the fouls was pretty weak. But the rest were all legit. Her coach didn’t think so, though.

Once she sat down, he spent the rest of the game working any ref that got close to him about her foul situation.

“I have the number two scorer in the state sitting next to me on the bench because you’ve given her three fouls.”

“She’s an All-State player and she has three fouls. You think this is the first time she’s played the game?”

“She hasn’t had three fouls in a game all year but she’s sitting her next to me because you put her there.”

Unfortunately, other than some loud warnings to knock it off, I couldn’t hear what the refs were saying back to him when they came over to chat. I trust they were reminding him that a foul is a foul, no matter who commits it. And, if they were being shitty, they might have even pointed out how his team had been called for fewer total fouls than FCHS.

It was just another sign that even if I was capable, I would never want to be an official.¹ I would let a jackass coach who complained about his player not getting her points because she’s on the bench pop off no more than twice before I got angry and either T’ed him up, or got vindictive and started calling every touch foul.

Tonight I’m covering the boys’ half of a girl-boy double header featuring that same coach. The girls game is between two ranked teams, so I’m going to get there early to see part of it. I’m looking forward to hearing him spend more time yelling at the refs than coaching again.

❖

;I officiated 6-7 year old basketball one year in high school. I blew one call that still haunts me. I’m pretty sure I would suck as a ref. ↩

Darnell Vs. Jacque

January 26, 2011 / DB

More thoughts on the Coolest Athlete thread on Twitter.

This isn’t an original observation – I even think I’ve written about it before – but something else struck me about how we view athletes while reading through the Coolest Kansas City Athletes meme on Twitter over the weekend: athletes are a lot cooler when we’re kids.

The reasons are pretty obvious. We don’t see the flaws as clearly when we’re little. We don’t hear the rumors about how players act off the court/field. We don’t see selfishness and instead see superior talent. We have less technical understanding of sports so we see their raw physical accomplishments outside the realm of what is proper and what is not.

I thought of two clear examples from my own fandom that show how our perception of athletes changes as we grow: Darnell Valentine and Jacque Vaughn.

We moved to Kansas City when I was nine. At the time Darnell Valentine was about to begin his senior year at KU. All I knew about him was that he was KU’s best player, so he immediately became my favorite. His number, 14, became my favorite number (still is). I wanted to be 6’2″ when I grew up, like him. (I should have wished for 6’6″!) When I listened to games on the radio (this was back in the day when it was rare that games were on TV before March), I paid closest attention to what he did. When I heard that he earned Academic All-American status for the third-straight year, I decided next to George Brett, there was no better example for a young boy to follow than Darnell.

Fast forward 15 or so years. By then, I had discovered the Internet and discussion groups and had latched onto a group of likeminded KU fans. At some point, we were listing our all time favorite Jayhawks. I put together my list, which included Darnell. I expected that to elicit all kinds of cool stories about him from people who were in school at the same time he was.

Instead I got a bunch of “Mehs”.¹

I didn’t understand it. He was clearly the best player in the program between the early 70s and Danny Manning’s arrival. He was an All-Conference and All-American player. He hit the books. He was a first round draft pick. What wasn’t to like?

I asked a few of the older fans and the responses were similar: Darnell was a good enough player, but he was supposed to carry KU back to the Final Four. He never got the Jayhawks past the Sweet 16 and could only win one conference championship, when he was a freshman. Many mentioned his failure late in the Battle of New Orleans, when he missed the front end of a one-and-one and then blew an open layup as KU let a late lead slip away against Wichita State in the 1981 Sweet 16. ² He was good, but he didn’t deserve a spot as one of the greatest players in the program’s history, according to them.

Idiots, I thought.

Then Jacque Vaughn came along. He entered KU with a similar amount of hype that Darnell did. He was also an outstanding student who, for four years, was used an example of all that was right with college sports. And he, too, had an awful end to his KU career, playing like garbage for 39 minutes against Arizona then passing the ball rather than taking the shot that would have tied it up after a furious comeback.

All the good feelings I had for Jacque went away in an instant. That night, in the bars of Sacramento, fellow KU fans and I cursed Vaughn. We erased all the good things he had done over four years and replaced them with his two big failures: never getting KU to a Final Four and choking in the biggest game of his career. Suddenly, what those alums from the 70s said about Darnell made sense.

When I was young, I could follow Darnell and revel in his accomplishments without seeing the flaws. I didn’t know about the promise he arrived with, the expectations that fans hoisted upon him. I just knew that he was my favorite player on my favorite team, and for that he earned my adulation.

By the time Jacque came along, I was older, wiser, and getting more jaded. Still, I believed the hype he carried with him. I bought into the myths surrounding him that the program pushed to the public. Even when I saw flaws in his game, I could look past them.

But, for the first time in my life as a fan, I was seeing those flaws. The Arizona game was a tipping point in how I viewed players. No longer was I blindly loyal. I began to view games more like a coach, always finding something to pick apart even in an otherwise excellent performance. “Sure, that guy scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, but he missed that block out that nearly cost us the game.” ³

I think that’s a change we all go through, to one extent or another, as we get older. It’s especially rough in the age of hyper-information. Back in the day, athletes could cover up all but their worst misdeeds. Now, even the smallest transgression gets broadcast across a slew of information outlets. Our cynicism and the scars we’ve developed over the years make it hard enough to be a fan, but the onslaught of data makes it even harder.

We all know people who are still blindly loyal as they grow older. They can be annoying, especially when they constantly defend a point guard who turns the ball over every other possession or a receiver who will always drop a pass in a key situation. But there are times when I wish I still had that innocence I had when I was younger. The belief that my teams and players were unconditionally good and their opponents were unconditionally bad. It was a lot easier to watch games when I could view the world through that kind of lens.

❖

Well, not Mehs. That term wasn’t in en vogue yet. So whatever the mid-90s equivalent was. ↩
Worth noting, I cried shortly after Darnell blew the layup and Mike Jones drilled his second-straight long jumper to win the game for the Shockers. ↩
See: Darrell Arthur, 2008 National Championship game. ↩

The Coolest

January 24, 2011 / DB

There was a thread on Twitter Sunday soliciting suggestions as to who the coolest Kansas City athletes of all time were. While I was never a true Chiefs fan, I did spend 23 years in the city and have some thoughts on the subject.

First, let’s go ahead and admit this covers the 30-35 years that I’ve been aware of Kansas City athletes. So there won’t be any members of the Scouts or A’s included. And Tom Watson dominated golf for a few years, but I wouldn’t ever say he was cool.

I think I was seven, and not yet a KC resident, when an uncle mentioned the name Amos Otis to me. I didn’t know anything about AO, but his name sure sounded cool. And the way Willie Wilson ran was cool. Phil Ford and Otis Birdsong were cool when the Kings were still in town. Gino Schiraldi, Enzo Di Pede, and Yilmaz Orhan all seemed cool for about five minutes when the MISL was hot. But none of those guys were transcendently cool. Well, maybe Willie was, but he had some competition on his own team for coolest guy status.

Anyway, this are the guys who stood out for me. I’m sure I’m forgetting one or two people who are obvious to others.

Bo Jackson. One of the coolest athletes ever, in any sport, in any city. It wasn’t just that he could, seemingly, do anything. It was that he didn’t act like any of his freakish accomplishments were that big of a deal. To him, throwing a ball 400 feet on a rope¹ was like you or me tossing a wadded up piece of paper three feet into a trashcan. Bo was so cool that when I was debating what Royals jersey to have Santa bring me for Christmas this year, I spent a lot of time with a Jackson 16 jersey at the top of my list.
Joe Montana. He wasn’t really Kansas City’s, the city just rented him for the final two years of his career. But it was a big freaking deal when he arrived. The city tried desperately to claim him, and he politely kept his mouth shut. He knew it was silly. No matter how the 49ers treated him in his final year there, he was always going to be associated with San Francisco. But there’s no doubting that when the Chiefs acquired him, they went from just being a good team to being one of the NFL’s marquee teams.
Frank White. He wasn’t cool in an awe-inspiring way. He was cool in a smooth way that made you admire the way he went about his business. I love the shot of him right before George Brett exploded in the Pine Tar game: casually sitting next to Brett with one foot up on the bench. Brett was already stewing, telling teammates that if they called him out he was going to go kick someone’s ass. Frank just chilled, not seeing any reason to get worked up about something that hadn’t happened yet. He exuded cool.
Derrick Thomas. DT had all kinds of issues off the field. But he was so good on the field that most Chiefs fans looked the other way. Even non-Chiefs fans could not help buy admire the havoc he brought to the football field. Once George Brett began to fade, DT was the most nationally recognized athlete from KC. Unlike Montana, he always seemed to embrace the city as it embraced him, giving him some bonus coolness.
George Brett. The coolest ever. There was a 10-15 year period where every little boy in Kansas City wanted to be him. He was one of the five best players in baseball and played every game all-out. Fathers would point to Brett and say to their sons, “That’s how you play the game.” That style cost him numerous games to injuries each season, but you knew when he was on the field he was going to try to stretch every single into a double, break up every double-play ball, and not take any shit from anyone in the other dugout. Throw in his well known hard partying ways off-the-field, and to a little boy he seemed like everything you wanted to be when you grew up. In many ways, Thomas mimicked his career as his popularity made people overlook a lot of sins in Westport.
Buck O’Neil. OK, this is a stretch. He became famous and cool well after his playing and managing career ended. So I suppose he was more of a cool sports figure than an actual athlete. The dignity with which he lived his life, and the causes that he embraced, were a way of life we can all aspire to.

Still my favorite Bo moment that I witnessed first hand. Anyone who follows baseball knows about his famous throw in Seattle that nailed Harold Reynolds at the plate. I was at a game when he grabbed a ball at the wall, turned, and fired home. The ball didn’t just reach home in the air. It went 20 feet over Mike Macfarlane’s head and hit the screen another 25 feet behind him. And it was still at least 10 feet off the ground. So Bo threw a ball at least 400 feet and it still had another 15-20 feet of range if the net hadn’t interrupted its flight. ↩

The Super-Quick Pour

January 19, 2011 / DB

I forgot to mention this amazing use of technology I first experienced at the Colts-Jets game a week ago. Trust me, when you’ve already had a few, it’s even more amazing. And when you go to a traditional beer stand later, it’s kind of a let-down.

It “pours” a draft beer nine times faster than traditional methods and dramatically reduces spillage. It’s so cool to see, it’s generated viral YouTube videos and dragged fans away from the actual events to stand around and watch suds get served.

Reader’s Notebook, Early January 2011

January 18, 2011 / DB

ESPN columnist Jim Caple kicked off his book blog this week. Coincidentally, I just finished the first book he highlights, George Dohrmann’s Play Their Hearts Out, a terrific, numbing look inside the world of “grassroots” basketball, the name now used for what used to be called the AAU circuit.

Dohrmann focuses on one coach, Joe Keller, and his prodigy, Demetrius Walker, following their relationship from their meeting when Walker was just ten until the end of Walker’s high school career. Along the way, Walker becomes a phenom – anointed by some as the next LeBron – a complete bust – falling from the #1 ranked prospect in his class down to the mid-200s – and finally salvages his career enrolling at Arizona State.¹ Keller, in turn, leverages Walker’s talents to build a nationally ranked team, gain support from adidas, and eventually build a large business around exploiting the talents and dreams of young players.

I first heard about Walker in 2003, while on a business trip in California. I had the local news on while I worked through my e-mail. There was a feature about “the best 12-year-old basketball player in the country,” Walker. There were some clips of him working out, dunking, along with effusive praise from various talent evaluators. Keller was probably in the piece, too. I made a mental note of Walker’s name in case he indeed became a highly regarded recruit down the road.

Two years later, Sports Illustrated did a story about grassroots basketball, with Walker as the focus. That’s when the “Next LeBron” label was first applied.

Dohrmann was there for all of this. The result of nearly a decade following a player and his coach and the people around them is stunning. There really aren’t too many surprises in it; if you follow college basketball closely you’ve heard a lot of this already. But rather than just hearing about the payments and shoe company attachment to middle school kids and so on, we get to see all sides of the equation. The insane pressures put on what are still little kids. The adult decisions they’re asked to make. The petty jealousies that arise. The coldheartedness of coaches who have no tolerance for kids who stop growing or are a step slow or just easy to cast aside when there’s a chance to bring in a better play.

Read this and you’ll feel guilty and dirty for getting excited about some 15-year-old with apparently limitless potential that has been sitting behind the bench at your alma mater’s home games.

Caple just writes a little about the book. Most of this post is dedicated to an interview with Dohrmann, who he used to work with. But he also lays out some rules for sports books, most of which I agree with. For example, why does every coach that has a little success need to write a business book with their “Triangle of Triumph” or whatever? One coach is especially annoying in this area.

In 1998, Rick Pitino gave us “Success Is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving in Business and Life.” Three years later he had more advice in “Lead to Succeed: 10 Traits of Great Leadership in Business and Life.” He later wrote a third book. None, unfortunately, involved proper table manners when a restaurant closes for the night.

Zing!

After a year at ASU, Walker transferred to New Mexico where he will be eligible to play next fall. ↩

Second Season

January 12, 2011 / DB

KU begins the final Big 12 season tonight at Iowa State.¹ They enter the game #3 in the country, 15-0 against a solid schedule (#31 according to collegerpi.com, which also has them ranked #1 overall). Seems like just another good season in Lawrence, right?

Maybe.

Fact is this team remains a mystery halfway through the season. Do they still have room for growth, are they playing about as well as they are capable, or do they have glaring weaknesses that can’t be addressed by the current roster? I’m not certain, and I don’t think anyone is.

The most obvious reason for this uncertainty is the late arrival of freshman Josh Selby. While he sat out his nine game NCAA suspension, there was a feeling that everyone around the program – players, coaches, fans – were in a holding pattern. We wouldn’t see the real KU team until he took the court, and even then it would take awhile for he and his teammates to get acclimated to each other.

The early returns were great; he was the best KU player in his first game, and hit the game winning three pointer for good measure. He’s been quite good in every game since then with the exception of the Michigan game Sunday.

He’s obviously an enormous talent. But it’s still going to take awhile for his role to get carved in stone.

Another reason for the reservations about this team is the hangover from last year. The brutal Northern Iowa game was just the latest reminder that anything can happen in March, and one bad game can wipe out the work of four months. It’s only been four years since the National Championship, but it feels like KU fans are again the mode of enjoying the regular season, but always fearful of getting too excited because of the crapshoot of the NCAA tournament.

There’s another hangover from last year, too. A year ago, the offense revolved around Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich. Sherron dominated the ball and was the guy who took big shots. The offense waited for Cole to get into position and made sure he got a touch. On defense, Cole was the constant equalizer, able to both shut down the opponent’s big man and block the shots of anyone who beat their man.

With those two players gone, the offense looks a little more like it did from ’06-08. The ball moves more. It goes inside, but the Morrises and Thomas Robinson operate more like Darrell Arthur than Aldrich. And when the team needs a big shot, who takes it depends on who is playing rather than just getting it to #4 and getting out of the way.

I guess you can boil it down to there being fewer sure things this year. This year’s team may have, top-to-bottom, more athletic talent than last year’s. But that talent does not yet translate to having better players.

But they are capable of getting there.

As KU kicks off the pursuit of another Big 12 title, the conference seems as even as it has ever been. Every road game is dangerous, and you can’t expect to just show up and win all your home games. KU kicks off with two winnable games, tonight at Iowa State and Saturday when they host Nebraska. They will be favored in both, but neither is a gimme.

After that comes a stretch where the Jayhawks play at Baylor, host Texas, go to Colorado, host K-State, travel to Nebraska, go to Texas Tech (where Bill Self has never won), and then host Missouri. That’s a stretch where KU could either blow the race open before mid-February or be in a dogfight with several other teams.

Each season begins with a lot of questions. While KU has moved into the role of favorite because of K-State’s early struggles, no one expects this to be a year that the Jayhawks run away with the title. This year’s squad feels like it still has significant upside. But potential doesn’t always get recognized. While there is uncertainty, that also makes the season more interesting. For the first time in a long time, it feels like there’s a rather large range of where this team could end up seven weeks from now.

The old cliché of every game mattering certainly applies this year.

I wanted to throw in a comment about the Mario Little situation. When Little was first arrested for allegedly beating up his girlfriend and several others, I was a proponent of kicking him off the team. I think athletes who beat up non-athletes should be punished severely. And when the victim is a woman, that punishment should be even more severe.

So I was both confused and disappointed when Little was reinstated earlier this week. It sounds as though none of the victims involved were willing to press charges. There is always concern in domestic abuse cases when the female decides not to move forward in court. The fact others were involved gives Little some leeway, but it still feels wrong for him to be working through a number of terms, including anger management sessions, that are part of a diversion agreement.

Little quickly took responsibility and apologized after his arrest in December. Most accounts paint him as a decent guy for which this behavior was out-of-character.

That’s fine, but I’m not sure it should earn Little a place back on the active roster. It’s one thing to say he’s still a part of the team, can remain on scholarship and earn his degree, etc. It’s another to let him back on the court.

I think we all jump to conclusions when athletes are involved in legal scrapes. They deserve the same right to due process and presumption of innocence we would all expect. But when violence against a woman is at the core of the charges, I think the punishment should be a little more than just letting the legal process run its course.

But I have three daughters so maybe I’m biased.

❖

Although I guess it’s still going to be called the Big 12 next year, despite losing two schools. Whatever. You know what I mean. ↩

Change Of Scenery

January 11, 2011 / DB

Some good stories never go away.

A few of you may recall that two years ago, there was a boy in C.’s preschool class that she constantly insisted had hit her. She talked about it every day. “DJ hit me.”¹ The way she made it sound, DJ beat her up every Monday. We never heard a thing about it from the teachers, so we figured it was probably a benign, one-time event.

C. and DJ were in different classes last year, but the mere mention of his name brought back those memories for her. “Remember that one time when DJ used to hit me?” This year, they are classmates again and after some rough moments early in the year, C. and DJ seem to have become friends.

Last week C. told me that DJ wasn’t in class on Monday. Then again on Wednesday. And still on Friday. When I picked her up this Monday, she had news for me.

“Mrs. W said the DJ is at another school now.”

No reasons were given, and I’m not going to speculate, but her old nemesis seems to be gone.

Last night at dinner, C. was telling M. about DJ’s departure. M. had this genius theory about why he may have left.

“Maybe he’s going to a school where he won’t get in trouble for punching people,” she said completely seriously.

Solid reasoning. I’ll admit it made me laugh, too.

Name changed to protect the innocent. ↩

Buzzers

January 10, 2011 / DB

Some weekend.

Friday night I was on the road, covering one of our better teams, FHS (11-3 entering the game), against the #10 team in the state, MHS. MHS had just lost their first game of the year, one they played without their best player, who is the #2 scorer in the state at nearly 30 ppg. They are also very tall, starting three girls over 5’10″. It seemed like a tough matchup for my girls at FHS.

They fell behind early but slowly worked their way back into the game. FHS took a lead in the third quarter, the teams spent four minutes going back-and-forth, and then MHS pulled away again. Midway through the fourth quarter, it was a seven-point lead and the result seemed certain.

But FHS fought back once more. They tied the game with just under two minutes to play, got the rebound off a MHS missed free throw, and ran over a minute off the clock before MHS fouled. FHS hit one free throw and led by one with 13 seconds left.

MHS brought the ball up, tried to get it inside, nearly lost it as the FHS defense collapsed into the lane, and then somehow the ball came out to a girl wide open at the top of the key.

Release.

Buzzer.

Swish.

Game over.

A terrific effort by FHS, but not quite enough to get the win.

Saturday, as my Facebook friends probably know, we went to the Colts-Jets game. We had fantastic seats, sixth row on the 25 yard line, thanks to some friends whose family business is a Colts sponsor. After being in Lucas Oil Stadium three times for high school football and college basketball, it was very different seeing every seat filled and the entire crowd roaring.

I would love to offer one of my famous, detailed breakdowns of attending a sporting event, but the truth is I got kind of drunk during the game, and it’s all a little fuzzy. And, as good as our seats were, we were low enough where it was difficult to follow some of the plays.¹ Thus, for example, I could not understand why the Colts kept running the ball. I received a text during the game from my buddy Coach Hebs that said, “It’s bad when the Jets are daring them to run and they still can’t do it.” I took his word for it.

Still, with 53 seconds left, it looked like my prediction would come true: Adam Vinatieri kicked a 50-yard field goal to put the Colts up by two. Kick it deep, cover, and keep the Jets on their side of midfield and the game is over.

Instead, short kick, the same horrible kick coverage the Colts have had all year, and the Jets have a short field. Throw in one of the worst time out calls ever² and the Jets get a chip shot for the win.

Snap.

Hold.

Kick.

Good.

Game over.

So my first ever Colts game in person, and first NFL game in 16 years, was a total failure. I wore the Colts shirt I bought earlier this season, and this brings their record to something like 2-5 when I wear it. Clearly I can’t go to games and can’t wear that shirt anymore.

It was a little strange walking out of the stadium. Most people just quietly left their seats and exited. Some fans near the tunnel where the Colts locker room is located remained and cheered as the players left the field. But just about everyone else slowly faded out. I got the sense that everybody knew the Colts were fortunate to have even made the playoffs this year and thus there wasn’t a lot of angst as we left. Or maybe everyone was just shocked by the result. And drunk.

So two days, two three point plays at the buzzer to win games. You would be correct if you thought I was a little tense Sunday as KU blew a 15-point lead at Michigan and the Wolverines had the ball down two with under 20 seconds to play. I was expecting another three pointer at the buzzer.

Luckily Michigan only hit a two, KU’s chance at a game-winning three rimmed out, and the Jayhawks did just enough in overtime to remain undefeated. It would have been a very difficult Sunday night if I went 0-3 on the buzzer beaters.

Throw in a fantastic brunch with friends Sunday morning and an even better nap Sunday afternoon, and it was a pretty excellent weekend.

All the beer didn’t help. ↩
Seriously, WTF was Caldwell thinking? Didn’t he learn his lesson earlier this year in Jacksonville? He just earned a place with Andy Reid and Mike McCarthy as one of the worst time management coaches in the NFL. There was a guy two rows in front of us who grabbed his coat and walked out, muttering about Caldwell as soon as the ref announced the time out. Caldwell might be lucky that Jim Irsay is a pretty nice guy. I doubt his old man would be as understanding. ↩