It began with S and I trekking down to Banker’s Life Fieldhouse to watch the Pacers take on the Charlotte Hornets. We were lucky enough to be invited by the CEO of her hospital, and were sitting in the company suite. We took along one of S’s med school pals and his wife, who are great company but who we sadly do not see often enough. There were only a handful of other people in the suite, so it was kind of like having it to ourselves.
(A quick aside, this game was a makeup for the game we were supposed to go to: the Colts-Cowboys game back in November. We were offered and accepted tickets to that, but then were told the hospital “Forgot” they owed some kids charity the seats. I think it’s more likely some other exec wanted to come to that game and we got bounced. Oh well…)
Anyway, the game was good. The Pacers came in having won five in a row and had new signing Wesley Matthews in uniform for the first time. While we were doing the obligatory conversation with the CEO, they ran up a 20-point lead and all looked good. We had chicken fingers, some tasty mac and cheese, and free beer. And then the Pacers proceeded to play like garbage. Charlotte got the lead down to one before a final Pacers run put the game away.
Our suite was right behind the Charlotte bench. We walked in just as the players were lining up for the national anthem. I scanned their team, looking for distinctive hair, but could not find the one I was searching for. When the anthem ended, I checked my phone and saw that Devonté Graham was out for the night with an illness. Bummer! Later in the evening I saw a couple wearing KU gear sitting right behind the Hornets’ bench. They were no doubt more disappointed than I was since they were within shouting distance of DTae.
The beauty of NBA games is they generally move quickly. When we walked out of the suite, I glanced at the TV and saw that KU was up on TCU 14–12. By the time we got home, the game was three minutes into the second half. I was able to sit down and enjoy KU looking really good…until they didn’t. Hey, a theme for the night!
When KU pissed away a late, 11-point lead and trailed by four with about 90 seconds to play, I muted the TV. I was going to watch one more possession then kill it so the sight of TCU fans rushing the court didn’t lead to me tossing and turning for hours. Only KU scored, got a stop, and scored again to send it to overtime.
If you’ve read any of my sports posts over the years, you know what happened next: I kept the TV muted until there were 10 seconds left in overtime and KU was assured of the win. I know, I know… But it worked!
A very large road win in very difficult circumstances for a team that has looked like garbage on the road this year and has also had trouble closing out any tight game. I think they should take some heat for blowing that lead, and playing so, so poorly for about three minutes. But they also get credit for getting the game to OT and then putting it away. All while losing three players to DQs. Seriously, the guys sitting at the end of the KU bench last night would be a top 10 team.[1] KJ Lawson hit two massive shots. KJ Lawson! David McCormack hit a couple shots, a couple free throws, grabbed some huge boards, and played solid D. Hell, Charlie Moore played the back half of OT and Bill Self generally keeps him as far away from crunch time as he can. And Devon Dotson and Ochai Agbaji both had massive games.
Somehow they pulled that win out and kept their Big 12 title hopes alive.
I still don’t think it’s going to happen. The Streak is over. Seriously.
But I like seeing them going down swinging instead of giving in and meandering to a 10–8 finish.
Udoka Azubuike, Silvio De Sousa, and Marcus Garrett all out to start the night. Dedric Lawson, Mitch Lightfoot, and Quentin Grimes all fouled out. Oh, and LaGerald Vick was back in Memphis getting his stuff together, possibly. ↩
Yeah, I know I said I was drastically reducing my expectations for KU after Udoka Azubuike was lost for the season. But, still, that loss to West Virginia last Saturday was fucking stupid. It put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Seriously, it’s been awhile since I’ve been that angry after a loss.
Why the change in attitude? Because West Virginia only showed the mildest of interest in winning that game for the first 37 minutes, because slightly smarter play over that stretch would have put the game out of reach, and because KU had a complete meltdown in the closing three minutes to hand the game to the Mountaineers. No matter what my expectations for KU are, I still can’t deal with them pissing away a game against the last place team in the conference. A team that went out Monday and got pounded at home by Baylor to go to 1–6 in the league.
Sheesh.
And then came Iowa State on Monday, followed by a trip to Kentucky, a trip to Texas, Texas Tech at home, and then on to Manhattan to face the suddenly hot Purples. Man, this could get ugly quick. As Iowa State led by nine in the second half Monday, I texted a couple of my buddies and suggested, only kind of jokingly, that we might not win another game this season.
Then KU promptly ripped off a 14–0 run to take control of the game.
When Iowa State tied the game with about 2:00 left, I sent the same text again.
KU righted the ship and closed out the game to get a very important win.
So I guess I’ll be texting how we may not win another game a lot over the next two months. Hey, I might have given up hope on the Big 12 title and a Final Four trip, but I’ll be damned if I stop being stupidly superstitious during games!
Fortunately for KU, the teams I thought would be ahead of them, Iowa State and Texas Tech, have both struggled over the past two weeks. Unfortunately, K-State is healthy and playing great.
I don’t think there is a great team in the Big 12 this year. I expect that there’s going to be a lot of beating each other up between now and March, with a team getting a big win one night only to give it back a couple days later. Six losses might still win the conference.
Hey, KU has a chance. They are playing better defense. Marcus Garrett has been a revelation, except at the free throw line. Ochai Agbaji looks confident, steady, and explosive…other than when he peed himself in Morgantown.
I just don’t see them having enough shooting to weather the beast that is the Big 12 schedule. There are going to be nights when they can’t count on Dedric Lawson scoring 29 because the defenses are swarming him, and I don’t see enough guys around him to pick up the slack.
They should get pounded pretty good in Lexington Saturday. Bill Self has beaten John Calipari three-straight years and you know Cal wants that shit to end. Plus Kentucky is playing really well right now, and they are crazy big. If Self had a couple shooters, I could see him figuring out a way to out-coach Cal as he usually does when they meet. Just get out of Lexington injury-free and be ready to fight next week.[1]
Since L has become a big Indiana Pacers and Victor Oladipo fan, we watch at least part of every Pacers game. Or rather I turn it on, she kind of drifts in and out, and after she goes to bed I settle down with the second half. That’s been a good routine because the Pacers have been excellent for the last month. To me they look like how you would want to build a really good college team: balanced across the entire roster with shooters, bigs, athletes, defenders, and depth. Good enough to beat any team on any night. The issue, though, is are they good enough to beat Boston, Philadelphia, and/or Toronto four times in seven games in the playoffs?
L was out of the room last night, and I was staring at my iPad, when I noticed the sound of the game had changed. I looked up and saw Oladipo lying on the floor, holding his knee, and waiting for a stretcher to take him off the court.
Damn.
There’s been no official word yet, but given Victor’s reaction – he pulled down the sleeve covering his knee and then started screaming – you have to figure he’s done for the year. Which pretty much wrecks this season. The Pacers have a bunch of good players, which is enough to keep them in the playoff picture. But they will surely slide from the top four in the Eastern Conference where they’ve been all year to the bottom half, meaning they have to face one of the teams they really struggle with in the first round of the playoffs. It was one thing last year to take on, and really push, Cleveland. That was with Oladipo doing everything he could to match LeBron. Without him? Not happening.
Which is a damn shame because this team was a lot of fun to watch. The good thing is they are, for the most part, pretty young. If Oladipo can come back healthy next year and they are again smart in the off-season, hopefully they will be as good and fun to watch in the ’19–20 campaign.
Happy New Year! Hope your celebrations were safe, happy, and the headaches/stomaches that resulted have passed.
Our New Year’s Eve went well. The Pacers game was good. Well, other than spending 15 minutes to travel three blocks right before our parking garage. Not sure what the hell was going on but traffic was a nightmare. The Pacers won by 8, the girls seemed to enjoy it, and our seats were decent. We were actually in the same section I sat for the KU-Michigan State game in November, just 17 rows higher and slightly to the side. Still low enough to clearly see the game.
New Year’s Day was our standard, put away the Christmas decorations while watching football day. Always weird to see your home after six weeks of having a tree and decorations fill the open spaces. Our house feels much bigger today.
Ah, but the highlight – to me at least – of the week has been a musical discovery. Or rediscovery, rather.
I had forgotten there is a station on iHeart Radio that plays nothing but old American Top 40s. I haven’t checked it in months, maybe over a year. I don’t listen to it often because the countdowns are random. Unlike the ones on local radio or SiriusXM, they do not correspond with the same week back in the day as the current calendar shows.
For some reason I decided to check it Monday afternoon before we left for the game. The song playing was something not immediately familiar, but likely from the late ‘70s. So I decided to listen until the end of the song to place it properly. That’s when I heard Casey say he was counting down the top 50 songs of 1979. Nice! I enjoyed the next 90 minutes or so of listening to the end of that countdown. There were some great songs in there.
Anyway, the 1979 countdown ends and they roll straight into the 1980 countdown.[1] You might see where this is going…
I listened to a little of 1980 before we left. I caught a little of 1981 later in the evening. And we listened to a big chunk of 1983 while taking the decorations down. With 1984 coming up, you might think I would huddle up for six hours and listen to the entire thing. Somehow I resisted that urge, and only listened to a couple bits here-and-there, along with a longer stretch when I went to the gym. And I listened to a long chunk of the ’85 countdown while reading before bed. As I write this I’m in the middle of the 1987 countdown, which was right when my listening preferences were beginning to separate from what was on AT40 each week.
As you will expect, I’ve really enjoyed listening to these countdowns. Lots of fun trivia. Several songs I’ve mentally flagged to write about if I hear them later this year. Plenty of notes I’ve texted several of my brothers in music about. And tons of great songs. To be fair a lot fo really shitty songs, too.
I was going a little crazy when I couldn’t matchup the songs Casey was playing with the lists I found online of the Billboard Hot 100 from each year. It took some digging, both online and into my memory as I think I’ve battled this issue before, but turns out the radio show’s top 100 was based on a December 1 – November 30 year, while the official top 100 was based on January 1 – December 31. I was going crazy especially in 1984, when Casey insisted “Say, Say, Say” was the top song while every list I’ve ever seen lists “When Doves Cry” as the #1 song of that year. Knowing the radio show cut back into 1983 made that make perfect sense, as “Say, Say, Say” was huge at the end of ’83.
I suppose, when much of the countdown was put together without the use of computers, it was a huge effort to count the songs, gather interesting tidbits about the list, and then record the show in-between the regular December shows in time for its late December release. Makes sense that they had to start several weeks early to meet that deadline.
The more you know…
Finally, I was reminded yesterday about how I’m getting older.
I consistently go to the gym 3–5 times each week. I’ve been on that schedule since the girls went back to school in August. I’m on ok shape, although I haven’t switched my routine up for awhile. I have been on a medium weight, high repetition program since mid-October.
I mixed things up yesterday, moving to a plan for men over 40 I found online. I would be using lighter weights, almost exclusively dumbbells, and focus on form. For example, rather than doing leg presses on a machine, I would do squats with dumbbells. Easy enough, I thought. Those had been part of my routine until October, when I went to pressing more weight on the machine.
I decided to throw in shoulder presses at the top of the squat, something I used to do in every strength session. It’s a great movement that hits your whole body. After the first set, my legs felt a little weird. After the second I thought all the supporting muscles in my upper legs were going to tear. On the third, my back seized up. Terrific.
This morning my back is still crazy tight, the legs are sore. All this just from doing different exercises with 15 pound dumbbells, much lighter than what I had been lifting last week.
Getting old sucks.
1980 seems to be the year that the year-end countdown went to 100 songs. ↩
College hoops is here! And it kicked off in a big way for those of is who are in Indianapolis.
I did not plan on going to the Champions Classic. I have a couple acquaintances who I know could have easily gotten me decent seats. But L’s city basketball tournament was starting last night, at the exact same time as the KU-Michigan State game, so I decided to be a good dad and stick with her.
Until I got an email late Tuesday morning with the offer of a free ticket. I scrambled to make sure L could get a lift to her game and then jumped all over that ticket. That was a wise course of action, as I had a solid night downtown.
One of my acquaintances is a very well connected booster. I met him and some other friends at the team hotel for a drink before the game. While I was enjoying a Woodford Reserve I got to meet several people who work in the basketball office, a few coaches wives, a member of the coaching staff, and a member of the broadcast crew. I acted like I was supposed to be there and listened quietly as folks discussed the search for a new football coach, past coaching searches, and how each of the last two KU athletic directors made colossal fuck ups that brought KU football to its current lowly state.[1]
That was fun!
On to the game. I was sitting with a guy I know very casually, who lucked into some great seats when his brother-in-law got called away on business. We were 15 rows off the floor, behind the basket on the KU bench end of the court. Other than the basket being in the way on some plays, they were great seats.
Even better was how KU play for the first 30–35 minutes of the game. A steady, controlled effort that built a big lead and answered every Michigan State run. Those last five-plus minutes did get a little ragged, and I think KU’s relative inexperience really showed in that stretch. But MSU never had the ball with a chance to tie, so I’ll chalk this up as both a nice W and a learning experience.
Oh, and I got off my Indy losing streak! KU had played here two other times in the 15 years I’ve lived here. I saw both games, and both were losses: to Michigan State in the 2010 Sweet 16 and to Kentucky four years ago. Throw in driving to Louisville to watch the Elite 8 loss to Villanova three years ago and it had been a long time since I had seen KU win a game in person.
Quintin Grimes looked really good in his first real collegiate game. He seems like one of those kids who can do anything he wants, but at the same time never tries to do too much. And he still has clear room for improvement in his game. Despite kind of a ragged stat line, I thought Devon Dotson was really good, too, at least on offense. MSU really didn’t have an answer for his speed. He just needs to learn how to be smarter in using that speed.
Dedric Lawson seemed to have an off-game, yet he still went for 20–14–6, which is a hell of a night. That came without hitting any jump shots, missing several relatively easy shots at the rim, and struggling against MSU’s size. You always wonder about these high-tier transfers, who come in with impressive stats at another school, and how they will fit into a different system where they’re surrounded by other great players. But, man, he is legit.
So plenty to feel good about in a game that shouldn’t have been as close as the final score. I was worried about this one, figuring although KU is more talented, they are new to each other where MSU was loaded with experience. KU needs to find consistent shooting, teach the freshmen how to play defense, and build a solid bench. But there’s a lot of promise with this squad.
It was fun looking around before and during the game and seeing how many former KU players were in attendance. I had confirmed sightings of: Scot Pollard, Raef LaFrentz, Mario Chalmers, Sherron Collins, Brandon Rush, and even Joel Embiid who is in town to play the Pacers tonight. I saw another guy who played way back in the day but couldn’t place his face. I couldn’t decide it if was Roger Morningstar or other dude from the 1970s.
Fortunately we were in a mostly KU section. The building was probably 75% crazy Kentucky fans. I still have PTSD from the experience against UK in that building four years ago, so I was really glad we weren’t playing them. We were pretty much opposite the one big MSU section, although there were a few Spartans scattered around us. It is always hard to tell how the fans are split when you’re in the middle of one of those groups. I would say KU and Duke probably had about the same number of fans, each spilling into two sections, slightly more than Michigan State.
My favorite UK fan was sitting two seats from me. He was a good ol’ boy who would constantly take videos while narrating them. I really should have asked for his YouTube name so I could check them out. He was also hitting the beer pretty hard. He ordered two Bud Lites and two “Coolers” Lites, acting like he was buying for his friends and then proceeded to pound all four. “Coolers” Lite might be my favorite name for a shitty beer I’ve ever heard. He was all fired up for the 30 minutes between games and the first five minutes or so of the UK-Duke game. Then he got sullen and quiet and just complained about all the “pussy ass calls” the refs were hitting his Cats with. Pussy ass is an interesting phrase, too.
OH MAH GAWD DUKE. Holy shit, man. Seriously, they put on the most impressive layup line I’ve ever seen. They had skinny white dudes throwing down 360s. Zion Williamson was casually throwing lobs to people. He’d occasionally toss down a dunk of his own, but would often stop at the 3-point line and drain a 3. The UK fans were all over him. “Fall in love with it!” is what the drunkard to my left said every time he took a 3 in warmups.
And then the damn game started. Kentucky just ripped KU apart in this game four years ago. It honestly looked like KU was a D2 team bussed in for an exhibition game that night. I think what Duke did to UK last night was even more impressive. It was downright scary. Every single piece Duke has looked amazing. And the scary thing is, they weren’t really playing good team basketball. They just overwhelmed Kentucky with their raw talent. RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish were just putting their heads down and beating people one-on-one, or pulling up and drilling threes. It’s not like Kentucky doesn’t have talented, athletic kids on their team. The scary thing for the rest of the college basketball world is that if Coach K can get his team listening to him and playing together, this Duke team could be untouchable. Us Duke haters can hope they either never click and are always trying to just play hero, AAU ball, and that good coaches will find tendencies to exploit and ways of slowing them down. But good Lord they looked amazing. And I only watched the first half!
My favorite Coach K moment of the night came when Kentucky was shooting free throws in the first half. It was a two-shot foul. I noticed after the first shot K jumped off his bench and started screaming at the ref nearest to him, pointing at the three-point line. A couple subs were checking in, so he had a 10–15 second break when he could just lay into this ref. My best guess was that he was complaining that one of the Kentucky guards who was standing behind the shooter had stepped over the arc before the first free throw. Again, on a two shot foul. This is like the most meaningless thing you could complain about, but K was red in the face and screaming. I guess this is part of his method – Dean Smith used to do the same thing – arguing about tiny little things to just wear down the refs over the course of the game. It seems silly and petty to me, but I haven’t won 1100 D1 games, so what do I know.
Anyway, college hoops is back! Way too early; what can’t we play these games the first week of December when the teams have shaken the rust off? But, still, the Road to the Final Four has begun.
(Oh, and L’s team won their tournament game. I was getting text updates from other parents, one of whom described the first half as a “shit show.” They were playing a team they beat by 20 in the regular season but were only up 5–4 at halftime. Fortunately they pulled away to win by 10, L scoring six, all in the second half.)
Dang it. Once again my slowness in writing has caused someone with a lot more readership than I have to hit the same topic. Will Leitch has a piece in New York Magazine about whether the NFL is on a downward spiral. He hits a lot of the same notes I wanted to hit in a more personal post. His piece is really good, so I do recommend reading it. But I won’t let it stop me from sharing my own thoughts. Finally.
Over the past month I’ve seen a pretty big shift in the sports I watch. After several years of watching the NFL less and less, I’ve kind of given up on the game. My Sundays are more often spent watching the Food Network with one of my girls, if we’re going to spend the day watching TV, than going back-and-forth between Fox and CBS with the afternoon games. Where once NBC’s Sunday night game was required viewing, I don’t think I’ve watched it for more than 30 minutes all season combined.
Why the move away from the NFL? Long time readers know how our fall soccer schedule started the process a few years ago. September and October Sundays were all spent on soccer fields watching the girls play. That’s what began to break the life-long pull the NFL had on me. Then – again as I’ve written about before – the mismanagement of the Colts has taken a toll on me. I don’t have much interest watching a poorly constructed team lose by playing bad football most Sundays.[1]
All the issues around football this year don’t help. Most of you would guess correctly I’m firmly on the side of the players in the kneeling during the anthem controversy. But I understand how some folks will be put off by that. I, though, am more put off by owners and advertisers trying to silence players. And I’m put off by the drama of Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell fighting about if Goodell should remain as commissioner and how much he should be paid. All these issues strike me as a league that is unclear on what its path forward should be, or worse attempting to distract from the real issue surrounding football that could threaten its future.
Yes, all we’re learning about the terrible toll football takes on the bodies and brains of its players has some effect on me, too. It’s hard to watch massive hits we grew up cheering knowing the long-term effects they carry. It’s frustrating to know that the NFL put off giving the players more protections for so long. And it’s terrible to see nearly every Sunday a player somehow avoids going under the concussion protocol despite taking a fearsome strike to the head.
Biggest, though, is simply the quality of play. The NFL just doesn’t seem as good or exciting as it used to. Part of that is just about every Sunday another superstar suffers a serious injury. Part of it is various rules and strategy changes that have made the games feel interminable. I fondly recall when the Peyton Manning Colts were at their zenith, when they were playing wide-open, pass-first football, but were so efficient at it that 1:00 games would sometimes end at 3:45. That was outside the norm, but it was possible. Games now, with all the replays and challenges and incomplete passes, are lucky if they check in at three hours fifteen minutes. That extra half hour, in which nothing happens, feels much longer.
(Quick aside: How can a guy who loves baseball complain about football games taking too long? Well, A) baseball does have a time problem, too. But B) length is part of baseball, and much more manageable as a fan watching at home. You can do other things while watching baseball. For football, you really need to be locked in lest you miss something important.)
I don’t know which of those factors is the biggest, but when you combine them they all result in me having no interest in watching the NFL. I still watch plenty of college football on Saturdays, which likely makes me a hypocrite on one level or another. College football just seems a lot more exciting despite still having the injury issue, games taking forever, and my favorite team sucking big time.
Balancing this somewhat is my slow shift into being an NBA fan again. I’ve watched a good chunk of most of the Pacers’ games this season, and often spend some time watching the national NBA games each evening.
Reasons?
For starters the Pacers are a lot of fun to watch. At least so far I was dead wrong on their return for Paul George. Victor Oladipo has been fabulous when thrust into the role as primary scorer. He’s exciting, plays with flair and passion, and is much better than I expected. Domantas Sabonis has also been great as the Pacers primary bench weapon. Kevin Pritchard made some other wise roster moves resulting in a team that runs, shoots, plays defense, and is generally fun to watch. They’re not going to challenge the Cavs or Celtics in the East, but they at least make you want to watch and root for them.
It also helps that the NBA is in a really good place right now. Most teams are about getting out and scoring. Most of the Pacers games I’ve watched this year have checked in at just under or right at two hours, which is the perfect amount of time for a regular season game. The games are brisk and entertaining.
You have the Warriors, who are an all-time great team, at least in terms of talent and style. That’s a sexy team to watch. You have LeBron, who is doing things no one his age should be able to do. You have Kyrie Irving, who has reinvented himself and is leading the Celtics to do things no one expected of them. You have James Harden and the Rockets, who are spectacular. You have Joel Embiid, the man-child who (for now) is healthy and doing amazing things. There’s the Greek Freak, the Thunder, The Zinger, the promise of the T-Wolves, and a couple dozen young guys who are loaded with potential to take over as older stars age out. It feels like every time you turn on an NBA game, you’re going to see something amazing that you’ll want to start texting people about.
Oh, and the NBA has embraced the idea of its players taking social and political stands. Granted, those views are generally progressive and fit with my world view. But, still, unlike the NFL which tries to turn its players into nameless, faceless, voiceless, interchangeable jerseys, the NBA appears much more open to allowing its players to both emote and entertain.
Put simply, the NBA is a lot of fun, while the NFL seems joyless.
I don’t miss the NFL. Whatever hole it leaves in my sporting life has been filled by trying to re-learn the NBA. Once the NFL was my perfect generic sport. College basketball was my passion. Baseball was my first love. But the NFL was the sport where it didn’t matter who was playing. If there was a game on, I could sit and watch for 15 minutes or 30, and be entertained. Those days are over.
Emblematic of the Colts’ issues, after keeping the roof of Lucas Oil Stadium closed on several perfect Sundays earlier in the season, they opened it for last Sunday’s game, when it was nice, but still fairly cool inside the building. Appropriately the roof got stuck when they attempted to close it that night. It was fixed Monday but, still, symbolism and whatnot. ↩
L was attending her first ever Pacers game – a preseason game against a team from Israel – with a buddy from school. Their family gets tickets from a family friend, so several times a year they get to sit on the floor, right next to the basket on the visitor’s end of the court. She was super excited.
So that she was attired properly, I ran out to find her a Pacers shirt. Now I know it was only October 10, we’re in the midst of football season, and the Pacers are kind of a hot mess right now. But I was only able to find one kid-sized shirt in nearly two hours of searching. Basketball capital of America my… Clearly the basketball gods were mocking me, because that shirt was a Victor Oladipo shirsey. You know, the IU alum and general good guy who was the centerpiece of the return for Paul George, but is dramatically overpaid for what he does and drew my ire when the trade went down last July. I presented it to her after school and her reaction was, “Ola-what?!?!” I helped her to pronounce it properly, explained who she was, and she seemed cool with it.
I would have been cooler with a Myles Turner shirsey, but whatevs, it’s not my shirt.
She popped up on TV just seconds into the broadcast. As the teams were walking to mid-court to do the international ball exchange of gifts, we saw her head between two players, tilted up to look at the scoreboard above. We could also tell she and her friend had been playing before the left for the game because her hair was all jacked up. Par for the course with that kid.
All night they were right on the edge of the camera view when the ball was on their end of the court. They were a little hard to see because the two floor cameramen for TV were right in front of them. Three times the ball rolled to them and they got to flip it back to the ref. We also saw the Pacers mascot, Boomer, messing with them a few times. He gave them a sign to hold up, but it was pointed to the crowd rather than the screen. And he gave them the big cat paw gloves he wears and we saw them waving them to the fans around them. They got some pics with Boomer and made the scoreboard screen dancing before the night was over. They were also just feet from Larry Bird, Donnie Walsh, and Kevin Pritchard. I thought about texting the dad to send Lia over to Pritchard to give him some shit about losing the Paul George trade, but figured that wouldn’t work well for anyone.
She got home pretty late, but was so wound up it took her nearly two hours to relax and get to sleep. She had a great time and wants to go back. Hope she’s not disappointed when we are not sitting in the front row next time.
While watching the Pacers game, I was also following the final night of World Cup qualifying on Twitter and the ESPN app. As most of you know, it turned out to be an utter shitshow of a night. The US men’s national team went down 2–0 to lowly Trinidad & Tobago in the first half. But, because both Honduras and Panama were also losing, the US was still in the World Cup at that point. When Christian Pulisic pulled one back early in the second half, it looked like the US would find a way to salvage a tie and move through by the narrowest of margins. But they continued the theme of this qualifying campaign, and sleep walked through the next 40-plus minutes and fell 2–1.
Meanwhile Honduras tied Mexico, then put a ball off the crossbar that ricocheted off the Mexican goalkeeper’s back into the goal to take the lead. And Panama got a very controversial winning goal. The soccer gods were saying, “Yeah, you don’t belong in the World Cup,” to the US.
First time the US won’t play in the World Cup since 1986.
It was both a disaster and a completely deserved fate for this team. Whether the fault of the players, the two coaches who have guided them through this 18-month process, or the folks who run US Soccer, this team looked terrible throughout the qualifying games. They played with disinterest, got pummeled far too often, and never found the spark they needed to beat teams they should have beaten. They didn’t deserve to go to Russia. I guess this saves them the embarrassment of being the worst team in the tournament as they were in France ’98.
Not only do they miss the next World Cup, but if they somehow get their shit together and qualify for the 2022 World Cup, that one will be played in the fall, when most of the US is focused on football and the baseball playoffs. The USMNT is going to have a very hard time moving the needle in the US again until 2026. Along the way they may waste the prime of Pulisic, the first “Savior of American Soccer” who appears deserving of that title.
Oh well. I root for the USMNT because I’m an American, and I hope someday they can consistently go deep into international tournaments. But I’m generally rooting for Italy in the World Cup, and whatever other teams are joys to watch in that particular year. Or against the countries I don’t like. The US not being in Russia doesn’t mean I’m not going to watch the World Cup.
How’s this for symmetry: when the calendar passed from Saturday to Sunday, we were officially on the backside of 2017. And when we passed from Sunday to Monday, we were officially on the downhill slope of our summer break. Weird!
We’ve been busy with several family events: gatherings, trips to the lake, visitors from Boston.
But I did want to check in quickly to share some words in which I try to figure out what the hell my man Kevin Pritchard is thinking.
In case you missed it, in a shocking deal last week, the Pacers traded Paul George to Oklahoma City for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis. Now Pritchard and the Pacers were kind of up against it, as George had said a couple weeks back that his goal was to sign with the Lakers next summer when he becomes a free agent. And, just before the trade, he further added that even if the Pacers sent him to another team this summer, he would still be most likely to head to LA after he plays out his contract. So the Pacers weren’t holding many good cards.[1]
Even when you consider that, this was a terrible trade.
First off, Pritchard didn’t get a single draft pick back in the deal. The way you rebuild in the NBA is collecting as many draft picks as you can. You can hoard them and draft a ton of players over a couple drafts, you can use them as chips in trades for other players, to jump from weak draft years to deep ones, or as several teams did in this year’s draft, you can take a couple low picks and turn them into a much higher single pick. But the Pacers, faced with a total rebuild, improved their ability to draft players zero percent when they moved one of the 10 best players in the league.[2]
You can only trust rumors so much, but there is a persistent rumor that Atlanta was offering four draft picks for George. None of them were potential lottery picks. But they were still four assets that can be used on or before draft night to augment what should be high picks for the Pacers anyway.
Shaking my damn head.
And then there is the return. Oladipo is a nice player. He was overrated when drafted #2 four years ago. He’s a good guy. He went to IU. But he’s making TWENTY ONE MILLION FREAKING DOLLARS PER YEAR. FOR FOUR MORE YEARS. He made $3 million more than Paul George did this year. And will make $2 million more than George will next season. And he’s not even 3/4 the player George is. Adding a guy who is guaranteed $84 million over the next four years and is a sixth-man talent is just dumb.
There’s been talk they went after Oladipo because of his off-the-court character and IU connection to be the new face of the organization. Again, they way overpaid if that is what they were looking for. Besides, Myles Turner is/should be the face of the organization. He’s the guy who is poised to be the Pacers’ next elite player, someone who lands on All-NBA teams, goes to All-Star games, and has his name amongst the game’s statistical leaders. Oladipo checks none of those boxes.
Banging my damn head.
Domantas Sabonis is an innocent bystander in all of this. Regardless of who they traded with, the Pacers were likely to get someone similar to Sabonis in the deal. He’s a young big guy with potential to be a role player. He also did little to impress during his rookie year. He doesn’t move the needle.
But the assessment of the personnel of the trade is all about Oladipo. Pritchard needed to do better there.
It’s hard to say anything about the trade is worse than the return in talent, but the timing of it is actually far worse. It feels like Pritchard panicked. There was no need to make the trade at the exact start of the NBA free agency period. You wait and see where all the big free agents go, what other trades are made, and let the market develop. Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, Houston, Denver, and of course the Lakers were all at least testing the waters on PG. Now that Gordon Hayward has signed with the Celtics, maybe Utah jumps in. You hold on as long as possible for the simple fact perhaps LA freaks out that PG signs with the Celtics or Cavs, plays there for a year, and then thinks, “Wow, this is great! I’m signing here for two years and I’ll worry about LA later.” That was the only leverage Pritchard had: getting LA to think the smart move was to offer players and/or picks now rather than just sitting back for 12 months and signing George then.
I will say this: none of us know for sure exactly what offers Pritchard entertained. Perhaps after PG’s public assessment of love for LA, no one was offering anything decent. Maybe Atlanta’s offer really was for four second round picks. Or LA was offering three guys from the end of their bench. Or Boston wasn’t really offering their #1 pick back in May, or a choice of two of their current starters. I will give him like 8% slack because of the overall difficulty of the situation and not knowing what his conversations with others were.
Still, terrible deal for the Pacers. Even if Oladipo and Sabonis were all he could get back in terms of current NBA talent, he has to get at least one draft pick back. And he needs to not bring over a player making $84 million. And he has to wait until the last possible moment, not jump at the first opportunity.
The Thunder are taking a huge gamble that PG and Russell Westbrook can coexist. I don’t think they entertain huge hopes that they can re-sign PG, but this may be more an incentive to get Russ to re-sign. Oh, and they shed a terrible contract in the process. In every single way, they killed it in this trade.
Oh well. I watch like five Pacers games a year anyway. My winters are spent watching KU and Big East and really any college ball before I watch the NBA. But I’d really be pissed if I spent my winter watching them and hoping they could climb back into the league’s elite. And it really sucks that it was a former Jayhawk who pulled the trigger on the deal.
Well, other than one of the 10 best players in the NBA. ↩
OK, that’s not totally true. They’re going to be much worse next year, so they will draft higher than any recent year. Except the Eastern Conference is barren right now and they might still sneak into the playoffs and be stuck outside the lottery. ↩
I’ll run through a whole spring sports roundup next week. But one quick, funny story worth sharing now.
Wednesday L had soccer practice and C had a softball game at the same time, at the same complex. I dropped C off at her diamond, walked L over to her field, and then returned to the softball side and dropped my chair beyond the left field fence. The girls were still warming up and I heard a group from the other team talking, in excited, high-pitched voices, about something that had to do with the Indiana Pacers. I couldn’t quite get the details, though, so forgot about it.
The game began, C’s team batted first and scored a run. In the bottom of the first, she ran out to her spot in centerfield. She saw where I was sitting and kept going until she reached the fence in front of me. She had a huge smile on her face and her eyes were wide. Something had her wound up.
“Dad!” she said. “Monte Ellis is here watching his son play baseball! He signed the jerseys of the other team. YOU HAVE TO GO GET SOMETHING SIGNED FOR ME!”
And then she ran back to her spot.
I just shook my head. The kid has never watched a Pacers game. She has no idea who Monte Ellis is. But she heard other girls got his autograph and wanted one for herself. Which I had to laugh at.
Later I found out that Ellis indeed was a couple diamonds over. A dad I know from St. P’s said his son played Ellis’ son’s team and Ellis signed autographs for all the kids that came over between innings.
I’ve paid almost no attention to the Pacers this year. I bet I’ve watched a total of 60 minutes of their games. Seems like every time I turned on their games they were blowing a lead at the end. So I hadn’t developed any strong feelings about Ellis, who was their big free agent signing last summer. But based on how he handled a bunch of annoying kids the day after a crushing loss, he’s now one of my very favorite Pacers.
Worlds collide to make the first post of the week an easy-to-name one.
First, a few words about Naadir Tharpe leaving the Jayhawks basketball program.
I felt sorry for Naadir all season. He was clearly miscast as a primary point guard for a national championship contending caliber team. But, thanks to several misses on the recruiting trail by Bill Self1, the job was his. And despite his obvious limitations, people looked back at his performance against Michigan a year earlier, when he played wonderfully, and expected him to be a step up from the always wild ride that was Elijah Johnson’s year at the point.
And, to Naadir’s credit, he played wonderfully again in a few games this year, notably in the second Oklahoma game. While the rest of the team tried to piss that one away he hit a series of big shots and then sealed the win at the free throw line.
But it was always a roller coaster ride with Naadir. He’d counter every good game with another where he would turn the ball over constantly, often in a mind-numbingly dumb manner. He would go scoreless on a night when no one else was hitting. He would fail to do anything to stop the guy he was guarding. He would attempt the difficult pass when the easy one was both smarter and better.
And then came the stuff that made me feel for him. Bill Self will jump all over any player that’s messing up. But he’s especially hard on the older players and on his point guards. Naadir got it both ways last season. I believe it was during the Oklahoma State game in Stillwater when, after throwing a ball out of bounds without being pressured, Self just destroyed Naadir during the subsequent time out. At that moment, I wondered if Naadir might transfer when the season was done.
Whether it was all that or his stupid social media move in the off-season (look it up if interested), but enough became enough and he’s gone.
Everyone’s probably better for it. I think he’s a player who has maxed out his abilities, and it would be a miserable season if he continued to struggle with the basics of running the offense. Throw in the expected reaction by opposing fans to his selfie exploits, and I don’t blame him for leaving.
There is some question as to whether he was asked to leave. I haven’t heard anything to suggest that he was forced out. But I’ve also heard the coaching staff wasn’t too disappointed he is leaving. It saves them having to publicly discipline him for his naughty pic and a season of the fans killing him every time he did something wrong.
I hope the best for him, wherever he lands. His career at KU might have been different if he never had to be more than the backup he was recruited to be.
On to the Atlanta Hawks, who nearly knocked the top seeded Pacers from the NBA playoffs in the opening round. It took a determined, gutty effort in game six for the Pacers to bring the series back to Indy for game seven. Then, finally, for most of the night, the Pacers played free and easy while Atlanta was missing shots they had hit through the first six games. It was a bit of a rout, although Atlanta made enough runs to keep it interesting.
Getting to the bigger point, man, I don’t know what happened to the Pacers. They looked awesome through the first three months of the season. Then Paul George threw down that nutty 360 tomahawk against the Clippers, the paternity rumors about George and an exotic dancer, Larry Bird signed Andrew Bynum and traded for Evan Turner, Lance Stephenson started fighting with everyone, and they fell apart. Only Miami’s struggles in the final weeks of the season kept the Pacers in the #1 seed slot.
The Pacers just feel like a team that has come completely unmoored. I don’t think getting by Atlanta suddenly fixes that. Maybe they’ll get it together enough to win four games against Washington. And then the hope is that getting a third crack at Miami, with home court, will suddenly focus them and we’ll see the Pacers from the first half of the season.
That’s a lot of wishful thinking, though. I have a feeling they have a new coach next year, because someone has to take the blame, and Larry will look long and hard at moving everyone but Paul George in the off season.
Finally, real hawks. As in we have a couple living in our backyard trees. I’m not sure whether it’s a mom and her juvenile hawklet, or a mating pair. But two birds have spent the last several weeks reeking havoc amongst the wildlife in our neighborhood. Each morning our front yard is covered in feathers from the hawks’ morning kills. Occasionally I find little bird parts scattered around, too. Sadly the hawks have either eaten or scared off all the songbirds and our normally busy bird feeder is desolate and quiet.
I’m not sure what kind of hawk they are, but a neighbor mentioned he talked to the city two years ago, when a pair was in his trees, and was told you can’t shoot at them because they’re a protected species. Not that I would take a shot at them, but I don’t know of another way to get rid of them. I guess it will be a birdless summer, and we’ll hit the mosquito spray extra hard. Or hope the bats clear them out.
The one notable failing of Self’s recruiting has been with primary guards. After getting Mario Chalmers and Sherron Collins, each ranked #2 in their class, in back-to-back years, he has not signed his top point guard target since. Tyshawn Taylor only came to KU because Tom Crean left Marquette for Indiana. Tharpe was a third or fourth choice. Frank Mason was a fall-back option. I suppose Conner Frankamp might qualify, but I doubt Self ever expected him to be a starting point guard. ↩
Ominous skies here in Indy today. We’ve had a couple of small snow events already, nothing that accumulated, but tonight we may get as much as an inch. And then the temperatures are expected to to tumble for most of the week. I guess Mother Nature still has some bitchiness left after the (seemingly) endless winter of 2012-13. We have a clear view of those skies, too, now that most of our leaves have fallen. I do hate that about fall. Suddenly seeing our neighbors behind us after being hidden for five or six months is always a shock.
Those skies match how sports went over the weekend. KU got trounced again in football, Big 12 loss #27 in a row. I’m beginning to think that Charlie’s not going to get things turned around this year. Then the Colts shocked the world by coming out as flat as they possibly could against the Rams yesterday. I haven’t gone back and looked yet, but setting the 2011 season aside, when Peyton was injured, I do not recall a loss like that to a bottom feeder team during our decade in Indy. The Colts have generally been pretty good about not losing to bad teams, and certainly never in that kind of fashion. Exception that proves the rule, I hope, rather than an alarming sign of how important Reggie Wayne was and how over-rated Trent Richardson is.
Adding to the gloom is the prospect of tomorrow night’s KU-Duke game. Friday’s KU season-opener was predictably sloppy.1 But with Duke hanging 111 on a decent Davidson team, I’m pretty sure tomorrow night will be ugly for the Jayhawks. The Champions Classic comes to Indy next year, and KU will play Kentucky. I’d love it if KU could enter one of these things without working four or five new starters in.
There was good sports news, though. The Pacers ran their record to 7-0 with two more wins over the weekend. I missed Friday’s win over Toronto while watching the KU game, but it’s worth mentioning the Pacers lost a November home game to the Raptors a year ago. And then Saturday they went to Brooklyn, took the Nets’ best shot and made some huge defensive plays late to remain undefeated.
Paul George appears to have filled some of the holes in his game. The upgraded bench is performing as expected. Lance Stephenson seems poised to take another step in his development. The Pacers blew open a tight game against Chicago a week ago with a huge run by the second squad early in the fourth quarter. Perhaps I sold the Pacers a little short when I said they weren’t quite elite. I know, I know, it’s still early. But so far, they look like the best team in the league.
This two-and-a-half hours for a college basketball game shit has to end soon. I understand referees are charged with calling the rules as written, in an effort to clean up the game. And I expect teams to adjust as the season goes on, and referees will likely loosen up a bit as well. But games that last that long because of endless stoppages is what the NCAA was trying to get away from, not turn every game into. ↩
