The New Enthusiast

Nerds vs. Jocks

June 25, 2009 · 4 Comments

Given the recent surge in productivity by my fellow enthusiastic webloggers, the occurrence of the NBA draft this evening as well as the release of the screenplay for the Moneyball film, I have decided to address, anecdotally of course, some of my thoughts regarding the rise of rational analysis in the National Basketball Association, and its seemingly quick infiltration into the corridors of power in the league  compared to the stubborn reaction it has received from the baseball establishment.

1.  The self-sustaining principle

I had a conversation recently with the other fellas here at the New Enthusiast about why there is less resistance to rational analysis in basketball as opposed to baseball.   Yes, we do spend time away from our computers.  There were a couple of facts that came up about baseball. I will concentrate on one of those facts; baseball’s old.  Because it’s old it has had many incarnations.  It’s not 1968 anymore although there are some baseball analysts, managers etc. who think it is.  Point being, as in other old bureaucracies and institutions, power gets entrenched and its tendency is to sustain and further entrench itself in the institution (Thanks Max Weber).

Relative to baseball, basketball’s widespread popularity is recent.  Because of this recent ascendancy, the game is  similar (zone defense, no hand checking, impact internationals and LBJ notwithstanding) to the game that made it popular, and the fans and subsequent coaches, management are younger.  One can assume that with this less entrenched power, newer ideas, such as rational analysis of player performance may be more easily adopted.

2. Economic constraints

Here’s yet another fact; collective bargaining agreements (CBA’s) are complicated.  That being said, I understand that there is one large difference in the CBA’s of the NBA and MLB.  That difference is the salary cap.  Unlike the large disparity in payrolls in Major League Baseball, the payrolls in the NBA only vary by about 40 million dollars and many of those dollars are doubled because of the luxury tax. Because of these constraints, owners can’t go spending their money willy nilly (don’t tell the Knicks). Management may be more willing to use rational analysis to find the undervalued, non-jean models and defensive specialists yearning to breathe free.

3. The draft

As in most forms of analysis, it is always best to triangulate methods. One of the best scenes in Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball is when Paul DePodesta gets introduced to the scouts before the 2002 draft. Billy Beane sets out his constraints for whom they will be selecting in the draft. The scouts don’t like it. Billy does this because he had been talked out of picks in previous years in favor of young toolsy baseball players. Beane didn’t like that, mostly because they reminded him of himself as a baseballer. The answers, in drafting, especially in the NBA, lie somewhere in the middle of the geeks and the scouts.

This year’s draft in the NBA brings into stark relief what the NBA draft has become since the One-and-done rule took affect in the NBA and really since they started taking high schoolers. It looks more like a really mini-version of the MLB draft. Without more than one sure bet, there is no real consensus on who is going to be a good basketball player.  Blake Griffin and Ty Lawson are a couple of analysts’ favorites.  Aesthetes and potentialists really like Brandon Jennings and Ricky Rubio. Regardless it is clear that Jennings, Rubio and DeMar Derozan fall into the archetype of the toolsy guys that scouts love while Lawson, Griffin, and to a lesser extent Hansbrough, DeJuan Blair, guys with serious college track records are the darlings of the statnerds.

My long-winded point is that the NBA draft is very important. Management doesn’t want to mess it up. Some organizations such as the Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers unabashedly triangulate with scouts and statnerds to try and get it right. Their track records prove that they are pretty good at it too.

4. Playoffs

“My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is fucking luck.”

–Billy Beane

Like the addage of having to manufacture runs in the MLB playoffs, there are equally common conceptions of what it takes to win in the NBA playoffs.


Teams have to have a superstar, go to player to win the title.

It takes a dominant big man to win the title.

and so on…

Luckily for the reader I’m not going to get into specific examples, but it is my inclination that, given the amount of opportunities NBA basketball players have, luck plays a lesser role in the NBA playoffs compared to their MLB playoff cousin.  It seems as though given the larger number of opportunities players have in a single game much less over a seven game series, players will tend to  play more like themselves compared to players given the limited opportunities October baseball provides.

Basically, I think that the rational analysis merde could work in the playoffs especially with the all enthusiastic lineup of Billups, Rudy, Battier, Rashard Lewis, Tiago Splitter

Oh and in case you missed this classic Nerd vs. Jock case study

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Matinee Idle

June 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

For reasons unknown and unknowable, the New Enthusiast is experiencing an unprecedented groundswell of new readership of late. First off, we’d like to say, enthusiastically, “Welcome, likeminded ladies and gentledudes!”

Second, and we have this on very good authority, when it comes giving the crowd what they want, the best way to keep laissez-ing la bon temps to roulez is to post more frequently than semi-fortnightly. Unfortunately, we don’t exactly have anything of substantial substance ready to share, so instead here are a few unripened fruits plucked from our idle minds:

IDLE! The Red Sox recently celebrated their Major League record 500th consecutive home sellout. That’s great! Strangely, the fans celebrated it, too. Huh? That seems a bit…perverse. Now, revenue from ticket sales is (for the most part) funneled back into player salaries, so good attendance is tied to continued on-field success. But something tells me that isn’t exactly what the team is thanking the fans for, since it’s the sellout which has allowed the Sox to raise the price of an average ticket for 14 straight years until 2009, hiking the cost to the highest level in the majors*. Now that’s an impressive streak!

*Pre-Yankees Stadium and Citifield data.

IDLE! Ronny Paulino…Ron Paul. I’m just saying…

IDLE! The harshest decrescendo of awesomeness possible in a three word span? Vacation Bible School! If you’re a kid hearing it, that phrase starts off real, real good, but gets real sucky in a hurry.

IDLE! So there is a bit of a kerfuffle about Manny Ramirez playing in the minors before his 50-game suspension is up. While it does seem like this loophole is letting Manny skirt around his punishment, TNE is more curious about whether Manny will be eligible for the Triple A All-Star Game on July 15th in Portland’s PGE Stadium.

IDLE! Speaking of Portland, howzabout a “Portland Stadium Financing Debacle Update”? In case you need a quick recap, lemme sum up:

1. Way back in 2007, megasuperrichdude Merritt Paulson buys the Timbers, a United Soccer League* team, and the Beavers, the Triple A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. The teams currently share PGE Park in lovely downtown Portland**

1. Paulson uses the promise of unimaginable windfall from a Major League Soccer team*** to extort tens of millions of public dollars for his stadium upgrade.

2. In exchange, he promises to build a new baseball stadium in the city, contingent on the city securing the land.

3. Due to civic resistance, negligent oversight, and general nincompoopery, the city drops the ball on finding a location for the new stadium.

4. Paulson keeps all the public money for the soccer stadium, doesn’t have to build baseball stadium, and…

5…is now free to shop the Beavers around the “Portland area” to see if any suburb might be willing to foot the bill for a new stadium. Hello, Hillsboro!

Well played, trusted civic leaders!

*Wikipedia informs me that this is the second tier on the American Soccer Pyramid. That is a much cooler nickname than is warranted.

**Just ask the New York Times.

***Sarcasm.

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Viva La Blanks!

June 23, 2009 · 4 Comments

Because you’re the sort of Astute Reader who makes it his (or her) business to periodically check up on us here at The New Enthusiast, then you might very well also be the sort of Informed Fan who caught wind, last Friday, of man-tower Kyle Blanks’s promotion to San Diego from their (i.e. San Diego’s) Triple-A affiliate, the Beavers of Portland, Ore.

More than its great coffee, myriad farmers’ markets, and roving bands of New York Times travel writers*, the greatest pleasure in the Rose City this spring has been watching Monsieur Blanks jack dongers out of Portland’s PGE Park — something I’ve been able to do (i.e. watch Blanks) with considerable frequency in my capacity as Official Baseballing Journalist for the-little-website-that-could, the Portland Sportsman. Some might even go so far as to say that I’ve developed a bit of a man crush on KB. “Some,” I say; having been born and raised in New England — where the bucklehat remains a viable fashion option — I endeavor always to distance myself from such vulgar expressions. Still, it’s true: Blanks possesses a certain je ne sais quoi that I, for one, am not able to comprends entirely but enjoy nevertheless.

*I mean, seriously: bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

While my instinct is to greedily hoard each and every little thing that brings me pleasure, I’ve learned from years of Disney animated features that sometimes, if you truly love something, you’ve got to set it free. Furthermore, I have little choice in the matter: unbelievably, San Diego GM Kevin Towers isn’t in the business of consulting middling interweb journalists like yours truly on personnel decisions involving his organization’s top prospects. That being the case, I’ve decided to accept the facts and turn these lemons (i.e. Blanks’s departure from Portland) into lemonade (i.e. by introducing my fellow Americans to the Big Fun that is Kyle Blanks).

I don’t know what y’alls opinion is of calls-to-action, but if it doesn’t rankle you excessively, I encourage any and all of you to get yourselves in front of a television box for one of the Padres’ upcoming games at Seattle, during which series Blanks will very probably make an appearance at designated hitter, if not elsewhere.

“Why would I do such a thing?” maybe you’re asking, nor do I fault you for doing so.

While seeing is most definitely believing when it comes to matters Blanksian, there are perhaps some salient facts which might serve to enrich the Reader’s Kyle Blanks Experience. For example, it would benefit anyone to know that:

  • Kyle Blanks is ginormous. He’s 6′ 6″ and listed alternately at 270 and 285 lbs, though I’ve heard from entirely reliable, and equally anonymous, sources, that he might be closer to three bills. Fact: that’s a big man.
  • Kyle Blanks is a real prospect. As a 22-year-old in the Pacific Coast League this year he’s batted .283/.393/.485 while playing in what has generally rated as a pitcher’s park (PGE has sported park factors of 938, 950, and 960 over the last three years, respectively, according to this year’s installment of Baseball Prospectus). And while his contact rate is low-ish this year (27.0 K%), it’s been better in the lower levels (18.3 K% last year in Double-A, 21.1 K% two years ago in Single-A). And again, he’s only 22.
  • Kyle Blanks puts the pain in Au Bon Pain*. I’m serious, ask anyone**.
  • Owing to his size, Blanks is almost assuredly destined for first base-dom somewhere in his future. Only problem is, a kinda good baseballer already mans that posish for San Diego. As such, Blanks has played a number of Triple-A games in left field, where — anecdotally, at least — he’s looked fine. How that translates from PGE’s relatively friendly confines to the mostly treacherous ones at Petco is another question. In his debut, he made two plays on two chances — one out of his zone, according to Hardball Times.
  • Blanks defeated Levi’s Jeans in a copyright infringement lawsuit for their (i.e. Levi’s) “Livin’ Large” ad campaign from the early 90s, citing the fact that, if anyone were “Livin’ Large”, it was definitely he, Kyle Flippin’ Blanks, and not some jerks in Silver Tabs or whatever*.

*Denotes probable lie.
**Don’t do this. You’ll look like a fool.

As of Sunday morning*, Blanks has a single and two strikeouts in 4 major league plate appearances — good for a .224 wOBA. But if there were a metric called something like Joy Factor, Blanks would probably have like a gazillion. Enjoy, is all I’m saying.

*He also played Sunday and went 0-for-2 with a BB and K.

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No Clear Option

May 30, 2009 · 1 Comment

So it seems some other sports blogger has noticed the recent aesthetic abasement of the NBA.

Simmons ties a lot of the game’s woes back to poor officiating, and in many ways he’s right. As he points out, many of today’s prominent officials are, well, old. Kinda really old, in some cases. He suggests that these officials might have difficulty following the action of the game, a problem which would only be exacerbated during the playoffs, when the NBA prefers to assign its most experienced, and therefore most senior, refs to the games of greatest importance.

While senescence may account for some of the problem of consistently enforcing the rules, also think about this: the rules have changed. Like, for instance, it’s hard to imagine any 1975 vintage player hacking it in the NBA of today. Doesn’t matter if that player was as kinesthetically wondrous as Dr. J or an immobile wall of sopping manflesh like Billy Paultz, any player from that era would have difficulty adjusting to the current game, and one reason is because the rules are subtly but vastly different. The three-pointer, 8-second backcourt violations, the crab dribble–it takes a lifetime of practice to perfect and embody these things at a professional level. Yet the NBA expects Dick Bavetta, whose been an official since 1975, to call the game the same way as Zach Zarba, who was born in 1975. Fans who grew up watching Oscar Robertson have a different view of what constitutes a traveling violation than those who accustomed to Michael Jordan–might not refs harbor the same sort of biases?

Another issue Simmons notes is the seeming paradox that, despite the league’s specific measures to do so, there hasn’t been an apparent reduction in excessively physical play. There are a couple of reasons this might be true, though Simmons uses a faulty analogy to highlight the league’s failures:

Finally, the logic behind “flagrant fouls” was that it was supposed to prevent … (drumroll, please) … flagrant fouls! Do you feel like that mission has been accomplished? Imagine your local police force telling you, “Since our crackdown on home robberies, home robberies have doubled in the past three years. We couldn’t be happier!”

Well, no, these aren’t exactly the same scenarios. It might be more apt to say that the police had previously dealt with burglaries by pretending they didn’t occur, and are now more aggressively combating the problem–which could plausibly result in a greater number of reported incidents.

Also, it shouldn’t be surprising that a strict prohibition actually results in an increase in the activity targeted by the prohibition. For instance, take the NBA’s new rule that if a player accumulates a 7th technical foul during the playoffs, he is suspended from the next game. As many commentators have pointed out, this puts the league in an awkward position–having to suspend, say, Lebron James or Kobe Bryant during the finals because of something they did in an earlier round. Dwight Howard was assessed his 6th technical on a call that was pretty weak sauce–and the league agreed, rescinding the technical foul after reviewing the game. Still, the NBA couldn’t be real pleased with the prospect of having to suspend one of its marquee player during the playoffs.

This is reminiscent of the illogic at the heart of nuclear deterrence. When Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles unveiled the “New Look,” they placed massive nuclear retaliation at the center of America’s foreign policy, the thought being that the Soviets would never instigate hostile activities in the face of total annihilation. As smart dude John Lewis Gaddis pointed out, this wasn’t a credible policy–the U.S. would never follow through on “less-than total challenges,” which left the U.S.S.R. free to do as it wished, like intervening in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It’s argued that in some ways the threat of massive retaliation emboldened the Soviets, as they increasingly raised the stakes while calling America’s bluff.

The NBA finds itself in a situation similar to the U. S. of A. in the ’50s. The league really, really doesn’t want to have to follow through on its threat, and one way to avoid having to do so is to be much more lenient in assessing technical fouls. Players probably realize this, too–Kobe Bryant, et alii basically have impunity from the refs throughout the playoffs. That’s one way in which stricter policing of an activity can actually increase the activity’s frequency.

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A Cav in a China Shop

May 27, 2009 · 1 Comment

Recently there was a post over at the Goliath to our David of blogs freedarko.com challenging their dear readers’ memories concerning the actual happenings of basketball contests versus how the NBA wants us to remember them. I was immediately reminded of the “Where will amazing happen this year?” commercial featuring Dwayne Wade.   Now, I freely admit that my memory lapses are frequent and my recall ain’t what it used to be. In other words I couldn’t tell you from which year that Dwayne Wade layup/Gerald Wallace impression is, but that commercial immediately brings up in my mind the 2006 NBA finals and brings up into my mouth my last meal from my stomach.

I have a visceral reaction to the mention of the ‘06 Heat/Mavs series because, at least in my memory, it was like watching the NBA die again after rising from death during those ‘04 and ‘05 finals when it was teams playing against one another or at least “Big Threes” playing against teams or other “Big Threes”. After those fun and competitive series it seemed as though the basketball black hole strategy was back.

I don’t want to come off as some sort of curmudgeon or traditionalist.  I have thoroughly enjoyed watching Orlando launch trey bombs and Hedo Turkoglo run the point forward in ways even the Prez appreciates.  It has also been pleasureable watching the high-wire, clusterpooping, head scratchers that are both benches in the Western Conference finals (in different ways of course).

Less enthusiastically and with alarm it seems that the beautiful basketball period of Lebron James’ career is officially over or at least on hiatus in the second half of these games. Being confronted with the continued ineptitude of his teammates on the offensive end (Delonte West a slight exception in game 4), we viewers of hoops have been subjected to the back up and drive, basketball bull-rush version of Lebron on seemingly every possession.  He inevitably ends up on the free throw line just like Dwayne Wade did in June of ‘06.

The interesting part about this is that at least during Game 4 the strategy did not help them win and although outcomes often take a backseat to other more ethereal concerns here at The New Enthusiast, hopefullly the Cavs can find again Lebron’s missing beauty at the end of Game 5 Thursday night. Hell, they might even pull out a victory.

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Feeling Greene

May 19, 2009 · 2 Comments

What follows is actually about sports. I apologize sincerely to our dozen readers.

Among the (I’m sure) many things he did today, Rob Neyer wrote this (a response to this) on his blog in re sometime Cardinal shortstop and surfer-looking dude Khalil Greene, who’s been struggling this season — both with his lack of performance and, apparently, issues of self-abuse:

He needs to play better?

We still think he’s capable of playing?

What, are we still living in the Dark Ages? What’s next, maybe a good bleeding? Or some wisdom teeth removed? Is there anyone outside of St. Louis who doesn’t realize that Greene needs a long break from baseball, during which he engages in some serious talk therapy and perhaps a bit of medication.

I do not mean to make light of this situation. Khalil Greene was a good player for four seasons, a league-average hitter and a decent enough shortstop. And then, suddenly and shockingly, he was not. Suddenly, he went from being worth $10 million per season to being worth nothing. As a ballplayer, I mean.

I know that’s harsh, but it’s the truth. Still, one might have assumed that Greene’s 2008 season was a fluke, the product of some terrible convergence of randomness or (more likely) an injury that wasn’t enough to impress his manager but was enough to limit his abilities on the field.

Now, though? Greene apparently looked fine in spring training with the Cardinals, and yet now he’s playing worse than ever. Now, you simply can’t say things like “He needs to play better” or “We still think he’s capable of playing.”

Really? Why would you think that, exactly? John Mozeliak is not a foolish man. But the notion that Greene’s once-impressive skills are going to suddenly snap back into place is approximately as reasonable as believing in fairies and unicorns and leprechauns who wear little pointy shoes.

My guess is that Neyer might have uberpitcher Zack Greinke in the back of his mind as he writes this — the same Donald Zackary “Zack” Greinke who left baseball for almost a year to better understand and treat social anxiety disorder and depression.

If Greene’s brain chemicals are f-ed then, yes, it is advisable that he seek medical counsel.

Here’s the thing, though: thanks to the baseballing nerdbones at Hardball Times, we can see that Khalil Greene is actually playing better now than he has in a long time. When adjusting for the random variation of batted balls, Greene’s line of 202/283/303 (AVG/OBP/SLG) actually ought to look alot more like 286/359/421.*  That line would constitute his best performance since placing second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2004 while batting 273/349/446 for the Padres of San Diego.

The most likely culprit? An unsustainably low BABIP of .212 (compared to a league average of ca .300). Greene has always sported low-ish BABIPs, yes, but that is due most likely to having played half of his games in the terrible, cavernous Petco Park. His recent move to the slightly less terrible and cavernous Busch Stadium should only help the situation.

My second guess** is that Khalil Greene’s self-abuse issues are a reaction to what he perceives as poor performance — not to fielders making plays on well-hit balls. And if that is the case, then Greene has nothing to worry about. If his BABIP begins marching towards league average, as it’s almost sure to do, his slash stats will make a comparable march towards respectability.

So, the question is: what is he worried about?

Well, my third guess is that Khalil Greene doesn’t read baseballing nerdbone websites like yours truly does and yours truly’s co-bloggers do and yours truly’s other favorite people in this world do. In fact, outside of Kansas City’s Brian Bannister, there seems to be very few other baseballers who make it their bidness to acquaint themselves with the little lower layer of baseballing analysis. I say that, of course, without intimate knowledge of even one baseballer. Still, I’ve never been one to reserve my generalizations, no matter how sweeping.

The point of all this is, if Khalil Greene needs to do anything, it is not “play better,” as Tony LaRussa has suggested — or even, probably, “seek treatment.” The real answer seems to be “get nerdier.”

And that’s good advice for anyone!

– Carson

*Which, for the non-baseball fans who read the blog, is good.

**My first was the thing about Neyer and Greinke.

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Press Credentials

May 11, 2009 · 2 Comments

I’ve always had problems with fables. Like take, just for instance, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” A speed-merchant hare mocks a tortoise for clogging up the bases. So the tortoise challenges the hare to a race, which the hare naturally accepts. Then, just while he is totally cruising to a victory, the hare decides to take a nap. When he wakes up, he discovers that the tortoise, just pluggin’ along like a lil’ plugger, has passed him by and won the race. Moral of the story: Slow and steady wins the race.

Wait…what? Isn’t the moral something more like, “Don’t take a nap in the middle of a race?” The tortoise’s slow-and-steadiness doesn’t really seem like the salient bit of info in this little narrative. But that’s the thing about fables: they can be told in such a way as to impart any lesson the fabulist chooses, whether it’s the edifying virtues of perseverance or the importance of always leaving a note. And the more fantastically implausible the scenario, it seems, the less likely the audience is to notice that the conclusion is pretty much nonsense. It’s maybe worth noting here that fabulist also means liar.

I’ve always gotten a similar feeling reading Macolm Gladwell. To be sure, he’s a super-duper, glow-in-the-darkly talented writer, a keen observer gifted with sight-beyond-sight for small but important things. But, as with Aesop’s fables,  Gladwell’s conclusions don’t always necessarily follow from the stories he tells.

Gladwell’s usual brilliance is on display in his recent New Yorker article, “How David Beat Goliath,” but so are his shortcomings to a more than typical degree. For starters, and this is just personally irksome and could be considered a corollary to my complaint about fables, and that is this: the story of David and Goliath didn’t happen. Or, at the very least, it’s unlikely that it happened, and it certainly didn’t happen exactly the way the Bible would have us believe. Chances are, Goliath was not over 9 feet tall, and there is some healthy contention amongst scholars regarding David’s real age when he slew the giant. That is, if David even did the deed. Some commentators surmise that the true story involves an obscure dude name Elhanan, and that his opponent was just some generic Philistine, and that as the story was transmitted through time, it took on tall-tale qualities and was ascribed to the more famous David. Still others contend that Elhanan was actually David, but using an assumed name. Even more still others think that the Philistines had nothing to do with the whole thing, and that somehow the ancient Greeks are mixed up in it. Point is, it’s a real convolved and messy story.

But Gladwell wants to use it as a concise and firm basis for his grand thesis, which is that underdogs win to a surprising degree when they adopt the assymetric tactics employed by David to defeat Goliath. In doing so, he wants to ground his theory in a larger historical perspective, and give his observations more heft by piggybacking them on the holy solemnity of the Bible. Maybe this criticism is a bit unfair; Gladwell, after all, ain’t suggesting that underdogs would do well to literally mimic David, just to draw inspiration from his victory.

But, tellingly, just as the story of David and Goliath isn’t literally, entirely true, neither is Gladwell’s story about the power of the full-court press to allow longshot teams to defeat superior opponents . First off, in describing iconoclastic basketball coach Vivek Ranadivé’s path towards implementing the press, Gladwell describes National Junior Basketball, in which he, Ranadivé, coaches, as “the Little League of basketball.” Then, describing the mostly 12-year old girls who comprised Ranadivé’s team, Gladwell writes:

Nicky, Angela, Dani, Holly, Annika, and [Ranadivé's] own daughter, Anjali, had never played the game before. They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening.

That may all be true, but couldn’t it also be true of the competition? Gladwell notes later in the article that some opposing coaches were rankled by Ranadivé’s tactics, feeling that he was being unfair to “twelve-year-old girls, who were just beginning to grasp the rudiments of the game.” If this is true, then can we really consider the opponents to be the Goliaths in this analogy? Troublingly, Gladwell allows Ranadivé, whose players were “all blond-haired white girls,” to suggest another team was superior to his own because they were an “all-black team from East San Jose.” That aside, Gladwell never convincingly establishes Ranadivé’s team as the underdogs, or that it was their tactics that allowed them to overcome superior opponents, and not just that their opponents were inexperienced. Could a full-time, full-court press work in, say, the NBA, where the players are not just grasping the rudiment of the game? Does a tactic that works in Little League have any significance beyond the beginner-level? Perhaps, but it’s hard to make that leap without actually applying the theory under those conditions.

Next, and kinda really lazily, Gladwell says this about Rick Pitino, one of the few big-time coaches to really embrace the press the way Gladwell argues for:

College coaches of Pitino’s calibre typically have had numerous players who have gone on to be bona-fide all-stars at the professional level. In his many years of coaching, Pitino has had one, Antoine Walker. It doesn’t matter. Every year, he racks up more and more victories.

Say huh? Here is a quick list of solid NBA contributors who played for Pitino at Kentucky: Derek Anderson, Tony Delk, Jamal Mashburn, Walter McCarty, Ron Mercer, Nazr Mohammed, Mark Pope, and, yeah, Employee #8. Ok, sure, we’re not exactly talking the Dream Team here, but it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest, as Gladwell does, that Pitino is winning despite his personnel. Furthermore, except for Mashburn, all those players plus Jeff Sheppard and Wayne Turner, who each made an NBA roster for one season, were on the same 1996 team, which won Pitino’s sole championship. Yeah, they may have been “the greatest example of the press [Pitino] ever coached,” but it’s not like they were some ragtag band of hopelessly overmatched yet plucky dreamers–they entered the tournament ranked #1 in the country, and finished the year with a 34-2 record. Like “The Tortoise and the Hare,” Gladwell seems to be drawing the wrong conclusion–the secret to Pitino’s success, at least as it is described by Galdwell, isn’t so much due to the full-court press as McDonald’s All-Americans.

To lend his argument some sabremetric-style analysis, Galdwell turns to political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft, who “recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants,” and found that Goliaths only won 71.5% the time. Gladwell feels that it is a “remarkable fact” that in conflicts where one side held a 10-to-1 advantage in armed might and population, the underdogs emerged victorious almost a third of the time. Maybe. But just citing the results of the study aren’t convincing enough. Like for instance how did Arreguín-Toft score conflicts like the Korean War and Vietnam, where not only were there no clear victors, but the U.S.’s apparent advantage was mitigated by aid from China and the Soviet Union? Or what about the mujahideen who used David-like insurgency tactics to repel the Soviets from Afghanistan, but learned those tactics from CIA operatives? And also what about those conflicts that didn’t happen because one side held such a huge advantage, the other side opted not to fight? Certainly those countries “lost” in the sense that the larger country was free to annex the disputed territory or whatever–are these included in the study? Would they lower the weaker combatants’ Pythagorean record?

Gladwell’s larger point isn’t really about basketball as such, it’s about how undermanned, overmatched, and outspent dark horses can thrive in a competitive environment, and in that sense his thesis is unassailable: if you can’t beat them at their own game, change the game. And like him, I’m curious about why there isn’t more strategic experimentation in athletics. Sports (at least its on-field aspect) is a zero-sum game–there can be only one champion (more or less). Still, over and over, a new season begins with most teams having no real chance at winning, yet continuing to employ the same exact strategies of the overwhelming favorites. Why not switch to a four-man rotation? Why not go for it every fourth down? Obviously, calcified conventional wisdom and institutional inertia are pretty tough to overcome, but every so often a team does something truly innovative and achieves a stunning success. Gladwell may have found another example, and I want to believe he did, because there are few things in sports, or life, as awesome as some Cinderella story out of nowhere, following the same rules as everyone else but playing a totally different game. I just don’t think he’s done enough to convince me he has.

Plus, he really should’ve just written about Grinnell’s men’s basketball team.

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If Mudville were really Chicannati…

April 29, 2009 · 4 Comments

Many things have been said about the month of April. I think I speak for all the contributors to the New Enthusiast when I say that primarily it is important because April is when hope springs eternally, and baseball returns to the country that invented it. Sure, flowers are blooming all over Portland, they fall with the rain and make the streets look like they are covered with spilled cotton candy, but tizzy forms in the hearts and minds of many when things like this start to happen on the baseball diamond.

Until this year, it was news to me but April also happens to be National Poetry Month much to the delight of one of the bloggers here and to the chagrin another who writes amazingly pithy, Pulitzer-level stuff though he has no access.

Well, the natural convergence of these two phenomena brought to mind a particular poem. It is a conventional rhyming story about a slugger named Casey and a particular plate appearance he had in an end game situation. Here is one version of the poem in its entirety. “Casey at the Bat” is best known for the final phrase “But there is no joy in Mudville, mighty Casey has struck out”. What I have found fascinating in reviewing the multiple versions of “Casey” is the following couplet from one version:

“So, when Cooney died at second, and Burrows did the same,
A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of the game.”

The intimations of this scenario are worthy of note. It seems as though when the Mudville team was in most need of baserunners, and Casey, their best hitter still five spots away in the lineup, Cooney and Burrows both TOOTBLAN all over themselves and run into outs at second base. Their run expectancy just went from roughly 1.6 runs to .117 (I understand those numbers are for the 99-02 seasons, nerdhead)!!!! I didn’t know that Mudville was managed by the worst possible amalgam of Dusty Baker and Ozzie Guillen.

Miraculously, in spite of on-base foolishness of Mudville, Casey comes to bat with 2 men in scoring position and proceeds to watch two strikes (is Casey really Adam Dunn?). Casey swings and misses for strike three and the fans of Mudville go home disappointed at Casey when had his teammates not been nincompoops his plate appearance would likely have come in a tie game.

This I leave you with to ponder for the rest of April. One day should be enough. I will also add that even though April is coming to an end, poetry and baseball in my humble opinion is preferably enjoyed at the very earliest, after the 4th of July, with a tallboy.

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Unclipped Wings

April 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment

If it went unnoticed that the Atlanta Hawks are back in the playoffs and beat the pants off of Miami in Game 1 on Sunday evening, that is understandable.  They have flown (get it) below the radar, especially here on left coast and have remained a tough home team. Surprisingly, in spite of starting Mike Bibby, the Hawks are an exceedingly enjoyable team to watch play hoops.

What is not understandable and would be surprising however is how anyone could ever say that Josh Smith is not a “man beast/machine/bird of prey/choose your own exemplar”.

Evidence “Remix” style:

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Monorail! Did Somebody Say Monorail?!

April 21, 2009 · 6 Comments

One day in 1983, the Mendocino Commentary, a small newspaper in Northern California, began receiving strange, playful, and erudite letters to the editor from a reader name Wanda Tinasky. Like many small-town cranks, Wanda weighed in cantankerously on the issues of the day, but she aimed most of her bizarrely eloquent vituperation at obscure local poets. Her excessive rants got her banned from the Commentary, but she eventually resurfaced in the pages of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, an even smaller small-town newspaper with a caustic worldview that more closely echoed Tinasky’s. For several years, in dozens of letters, Wanda shared the details of her life. She was, it seemed, an octogenarian bag lady who dwelt beneath a bridge, someone equally at home discussing the coiffure of Phil Donahue or the theology of the 15th century polymath Nicholas of Cusa. She was, in short, too good to be true, and her real identity was the subject of much local speculation until 1988, when Wanda fell silent.

But then, as is often the case, something happened. Thomas Pynchon, a legendary enigma of the first order, published his fourth novel, Vineland. Set in a fictional Northern California town that reminded some residents of Mendocino, Vineland displayed the vast erudition and entangled paranoia that is the hallmark of Pynchon’s work–and of Tinasky’s correspondence. Brian Anderson, publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, felt sure that this was more than a coincidence, and concluded that the two authors were in fact one. The letters were gathered into a book, The Letters of Wanda Tinasky, and sent off in search of a publisher.

The story is interesting enough, but here’s where it gets real good and, I sincerely hope, relevant to the larger, soon-to-be-made point: Though Pynchon was able to use the threat of legal action to stop Anderson from making any overt links to his (Pynchon’s) name, he wasn’t able to stop the book being published. He adamantly disavowed authorship, and in doing so relinquished any control over the material, leaving Anderson free to make any subtle implications about its authorship he wanted.  But if Pynchon had wanted to kill the book entirely, he could have claimed authorship, and then denied Anderson the rights to reprint the letters–which he didn’t write*. This strategy is mindbendingly paradoxical and downright Pynchonian–to maintain your innocence, you must admit your guilt; To protect you identity, you must pretend to be someone else. Nothing is what it seems like, and every single thing is actually something else entirely.

I mention all this because of all the recent attention given to new stadiums. The Yankees and Mets moved into new digs at the combined cost of $2.5 billion. President Obama has thrown his support behind Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics and The U.S.’s effort to woo the World Cup in 2018. Even the New Enthusiast’s hometown, Portland, OR, is moving briskly down the path of converting PGE Park into a MLS-ready soccer-only facility and building a new home for the minor league Beavers. Every new venture has its opponents, people who would rather not see public money used to subsidize private facilities. Cost overruns, sweetheart deals, and tax loopholes are all par for the course in the world of stadium financing. But these criticisms don’t even begin to describe how perplexing, how preposterous, how conspiratorially convoluted–or, in other words, how downright Pynchonian–most deals really are.

For just one instance, when new owners took control of the Seattle Supersonics, they promptly broke their lease with Seattle’s Key Arena and began the process of relocating the team to Oklahoma City. In an effort to forestall the relocation, the City of Seattle sued the ownership group for $200 million, the amount they claimed the community would be deprived of if the Sonics left town. Ownership’s response? They called on a prominent economist to testify that professional sports teams have no discernible economic impact on their surrounding community. While the Sonics generate activity, he maintained, that activity is likely due to the substitution effect, meaning that if the Sonics left, the fans would just spend their entertainment dollars somewhere else in town. I’m sure the citizens of Oklahoma City were totally psyched to hear that.

Or how about this. In 1996, the San Diego Chargers intimated that they were going to pack their bags when their lease at Jack Murphy Stadium expired. To avoid this unspeakable calamity, the city agreed to spend $76 million dollars renovating the Murph while adding 10,000 seats, plus threw in a guarantee that 60,000 tickets would be sold for each game, and any shortfall would be made up by the city. Here’s where it gets weird: for every ticket sold under the existing agreement, the Chargers owed 10% to the city for rent, and then had to give 40% of the remaining amount to the NFL for revenue sharing. However, the city’s ticket guarantee wasn’t made up by actual ticket sales, just in a lump payment equivalent to the face value of the tickets needed to be sold to meet the 60,000 total. Meaning the city’s payment guarantee wasn’t subject to either the 10% rent deduction or the 40% league revenue sharing scheme. Meaning the Chargers could keep 100% of the payment. Meaning, the Chargers could make more money by not selling tickets than by selling them.

And then there’s the curious goings-on right here in the Rose City. Yesterday’s Oregonian had a howler of an article looking into the recently approved stadium financing deal. In order to pay for the soccerization of PGE and construction of a new minor league baseball stadium, the city is taking on $65 million in debt by issuing what amounts to the municipal equivalent of subprime loans. The payment plan is so risky, Portland’s debt manager isn’t convinced there will be any buyers for the bonds. Thankfully, Merritt Paulson, owner of the newly-MLS-promoted Timbers and the Beavers, and at whose behest this debt is being assumed, has personally guaranteed that he (with help from his old man, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson) will find willing buyers. As David Logsdon, manager of the city’s spectator facilities said, with a personal guarantee from the Paulson family “it’s less important to the city how we scrub through all the numbers.” Great!

But scrubbing through the numbers would’ve been a little difficult, anyways. The city-commissioned study to evaluate the revenue projections for the Timbers and Beavers contained numerous basic math errors. But that’s okay, too–Logsdon said no one on his staff checked the numbers, and anyway, task force chairman Steve Maser doesn’t recall anyone discussing the numbers in committee since they reflected “what everyone was expecting.” Yeah, why bother looking at a study that’s just going to tell you what you already know? No whiff of bias here, folks! Also, helpful NB to Maser–if a study reflects what you were already thinking, but that study contains critical mistakes…well, maybe it’s worth rethinking what you thought you knew.

As is the usual tactic, Paulson claimed that the new stadiums would yield 600 well-paying new jobs in Portland (critics think the number is more like 160 ok-paying jobs, but whatever, let’s take Paulson on his word–he did make a personal guarantee, after all!). That means, when factoring in $65 million in new debt, Portland is essentially paying over $108,000 for each new job. Yikes! They would almost literally be better off just dropping the money into Pioneer Square from a helicopter.

Stadium deals, from Portland’s relatively small-beans amount to China’s $40 billion+ tab for the ‘08 Olympics, are almost always uniformly bad for the host municipality. There are reasons to support your local team, though they aren’t much more tangible than plain ol’ civic pride. But don’t expect a meaningful, positive economic impact to come from the public financing of such a limited private enterprise. If you think otherwise, I’ve got a monorail I’d like to discuss with you.

*Literary sleuth (meaning that he does his sleuthing about literature, not in literature) Don Foster later identified forgotten Beat poet Tom Hawkins as the author behind Tinasky. After abandoning poetry, Hawkins moved to Mendocino County and went progressively off his rocker, wearing disguises and running petty scams with his wife. Shortly after the Tinasky letters stopped, Hawkins murdered his wife, set his house on fire, and drove his car off a cliff. The end.

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