The WWE, Hollywood, soap operas and the NBA front office have something in common: they all understand that a compelling narrative requires what the pro wrestling biz calls a “heel.” A bad guy. An anti-hero. A villain. A black hat. The only thing different about the NBA is that they won’t admit they’re in the compelling narrative business.

But trust me, they are. And ever since last summer you have been very good for them. You’ve been Godzilla, Hannibal Lecter, Stefano DiMera, Freddy Krueger, Snidely Whiplash and Andre the Giant all rolled into one, the looming über-evil thug who rigged the game, casting a long, dark shadow over any hope of prosperity and fair play for years to come. For a league that’s built on marketing individual storylines, The Decision was a gift from the gods. At the end of the season, there was going to be one more reason to flip on the TV. Some people love the Lakers. Some love the Celtics. Everybody loves the home team. But even if all those teams were at home on the couch, the Miami Hate Heat was something we could all agree on. And when it comes to ratings dollars, hate spends just the same as love.

I’m not sure it’s been so good for you, though. Yeah, you got out of a going-nowhere situation and became the center of the sports talk universe, but right now you look just as lost as you ever did in Cleveland and you still have zero rings to show for all your remarkable talent.

Part of the problem has to do with the makeup of the Heat, of course. It’s a team built around you and Dwyane Wade, two guys who need the ball in their hands a lot, and once they got through paying you and Wade and Chris Bosh there wasn’t a lot of money left for a top-tier supporting cast (although some of the role players did perform fairly well). ESPN hoop stats guru Dean Oliver points out that the team ranked next-to-last in the league in the points per assist metric – only Oklahoma City was worse about hogging the ball – and for a coach who gets defense as well as the Mavericks’ Rick Carlisle, it really helps knowing that you don’t have to worry about the other team doing a lot of insightful passing into scoring opportunities.

So you went from a team without a lot of talent to one with plenty of talent, but some flaws of nigh-Shakespearean magnitude. Still, this can be overcome. Once Miami turfs Erik Spoelstra and replaces him with a coach who has a track record and some street cred (Pat Riley, maybe, or even Phil Jackson, who says he’s done but I’m not sure I believe him) the on-court issues can be addressed. Besides, these days over-expansion, the AAU system and the one-and-done rule have conspired to assure that every team has flaws. Huge ones. This was never more evident than during these playoffs.

The more immediate problem has to do with LeBron the Human Being. See, some guys are good at being the heel. Some people are born to be bad and they thrive on being booed. Think about Bill Laimbeer, one of the biggest assholes in NBA history. Even Pistons fans had to feel conflicted cheering for him, and you got the sense that being loathed was his only reason for living.

You, though, you strike me as a very different guy emotionally. You have a quick, infectious smile. You seem like a fun-loving guy who enjoys people. Maybe I’m wrong – I don’t know you and maybe what you project through the media isn’t at all like the real you – but I’m betting that underneath it all, the real LeBron James is a more sensitive guy than he lets on. If so, there’s no fault in that at all. Truth be told, I’m the same way, albeit without all the fame and financial solvency. A guy like you might have good reason to want to keep parts of his personality to himself, because we live in a world where too many people treat sensitivity like it’s a disease, and yes, they will take advantage of it.

My guess is that, public bravado notwithstanding, the searing wave of raw hatred that has been aimed at you over the past year has hurt. It’s probably hurt a great deal. If so, that’s natural – I’d wonder about you if it didn’t, honestly.

There’s a lot of haters out there, LeBron, and I have been one of them. I thought you were right to leave Cleveland – as I wrote last year, I’d have criticized you for staying, because I think we all know that the Cavs aren’t going to win any titles, not unless the NBA implements some drastic changes to its free agency rules. You need to be in a situation where you can compete for titles.

But in that same article I inducted you into the Punk Hall of Fame – not for leaving, but for how you left. I’m not going to mince words, Bron: The Decision was one of the most gutless, classless things I have ever seen a public figure of your magnitude pull. If I had been your PR agent I’d have done all I could to talk you out of it, and if I had failed (which I suspect I would have) I’d have resigned.

So I have been a devoted LeBron hater for the past year, but here’s a confession: as I watched you in the Finals, it just felt wrong. I’m happy Dirk got his ring finally, but the look on your face, lost and bewildered and seemingly all alone in the world…I don’t know, I guess I’m sucker for prodigal narratives or something and I feel like we’re about halfway into a great one.

In sum, I don’t think you make a very good heel. I don’t think you’re emotionally cut out for being hated, and I think the basketball public – a lot of it, anyway – wants to like you. Finally, I think that getting positive with the world again will be a big boost for you as you tackle the challenges on the court. Happy people tend to be better at what they do, no matter what that is, and I think you feed on love better than you do hate.

Here’s how it starts. Call your friends at ESPN. Call Jim Gray, too, because after the way he sold his soul last summer he needs some redemption as bad as you do. Tell them you want to do another special. This one is going to be called The Apology. No excuses, no waffling. You’ll man up, face the camera, and say “Cleveland, I’m sorry.” You won’t apologize for leaving: you’ll say that you love Northern Ohio with all your heart. It’s home. But you wouldn’t be true to the gifts you have been given if you didn’t try to win a title, and you’ll say that the way the NBA’s rules are constructed that wasn’t going to happen in Cleveland. You tried to recruit other talent to join you there and nobody was biting.

But you are sorry for how you did it. The Decision was a mistake, it hurt people who had never done anything but believe in you, and if you had it to do over again you’d have gone about things in a more professional, adult manner.

Then you’ll announce a new foundation which will be devoted to helping Cleveland continue its transformation into one of America’s great cities. You may need a little help figuring out how to word this part, and I’ll be happy to chip in. Give me a call.

This is how it ought to go, LeBron. You and me and America, let’s get back together.

Okay, that’s not precisely true. There has been a bit of comment and analysis. But so far, no controversy. No homophobic ranting, no athletes stepping up to say that Jesus doesn’t approve, none of that. This is a wonderful thing. That the public response so far has amount to a collective shoulder shrug is evidence that America is finally getting over the idea that sports just isn’t ready for gays in the locker room.

That’s what sports talker Jim Rome said back in 2007, when former NBA player John Amaechi came out, and at the time I sort of agreed with him. Subsequent dumbassery from Tim Hardaway and LeBron James lent credibility to Rome’s argument, although perhaps we were underestimating locker room culture because it is by no means clear that Hardaway and The Decision represented a majority viewpoint even at that time.

In any case, we may now be on the verge of a tipping point regarding gay athletes. As today’s Washington Post column from Mike Wise notes: “sports has undergone a very gay spring.”

First the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant was hit with a $100,000 fine for uttering a gay slur at a referee, an incident Bryant later called a “teaching moment” as he and the club partnered with a gay-rights group to educate others.

Then, there was the New York Rangers’ Sean Avery’s endorsement ad for the Human Rights Campaign’s “New Yorkers for Marriage Equality Campaign,” an instigator in the most testosterone-laden of sports, no less.

Over the weekend, Grant Hill and Jared Dudley, coincidentally two Phoenix Suns players, participated in an NBA public service announcement that denounced the use of the term “gay” as acceptable trash talk on the playground.

It was also revealed that former Villanova player Will Sheridan came out to teammates during his career with the Wildcats, with no ramifications whatsoever.

There’s more. Just announced yesterday: “The San Francisco Giants will become the first professional sports team to jump into the burgeoning anti-homophobia campaign with an upbeat ‘It Gets Better’ video designed to bring hope to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people.” And while Atlanta Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell unleashed a homophobic tirade against some Giants fans, which is bad, his actions earned him a two-week unpaid vacation to reflect on how he might be a better citizen in the future. That the institutions of the sports world are implementing zero-tolerance policies is a welcome development, to say the least.

Wise interviewed NBA Hall of Fame player and popular TNT analyst Charles Barkley for that story, and Chuck’s thoughts should go a long way toward dispelling the myth that jocks cannot and will not abide an openly gay teammate. Barkley, who just a few days ago praised Sean Avery’s support for gay marriage rights, doesn’t mince words in explaining the salient points:

• On two of the three teams he played for he had teammates he knew were gay.
• It was no big deal.
• They were professionals who contributed to the betterment of the team.
• Talent matters more than sexual orientation.

“I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.”

So, how many gays are there in America’s pro locker rooms, anyway? In the 2007 post I link above, I ran some numbers.

Estimates for how many gays there are in the US vary wildly, but it looks like the most reliable number for men is in the 2.8% range. So let’s take that as our working estimate.

There are 32 NFL teams, and each carries around 60 players. So that’s 1920.

30 NBA teams, 12-man rosters: 360 players.

There are 30 Major League Baseball franchises (if you count the Colorado Rockies) and they have 25-man rosters for the bulk of the season. So that’s 750.

NHL teams dress a 20-man rosters for each game, and there are 30 teams, so that’s another 600.

Note: I’m being conservative here. If you factor in practice squads, injury lists, minor league call-ups and the like these numbers get significantly larger. But for the sake of discussion, let’s just stick with active roster numbers and see what happens.

By my math, this means we can expect the following to be about right:

• NFL: 54 gay players
• NBA: 10 gay players
• MLB: 21 gay players
• NHL: 17 gay players
• Total in “Big 4″ American sports leagues: 102 active gay players

I don’t know that Sir Charles has done the math, but he clearly understands the reality:

“Any professional athlete who gets on TV or radio and says he never played with a gay guy is a stone-freakin’ idiot,” Barkley said. “I would even say the same thing in college. Every college player, every pro player in any sport has probably played with a gay person.”

Perhaps the two most refreshing insights of the interview came when Barkley linked discrimination against gays to other forms of discrimination and then fingered those responsible.

“First of all, society discriminates against gay people,” Barkley said. “They always try to make it like jocks discriminate against gay people. I’ve been a big proponent of gay marriage for a long time, because as a black person, I can’t be in for any form of discrimination at all.”

…

“The first people who whine and complain is them Bible-thumpers, who are supposed to be non-judgmental, who rail against them. [emphasis added]

As I said back in December, it’s only a matter of time before a major star comes out of the closet. Thanks to the courage of people like John Amaeche, Dave Kopay, Roy Simmons, Esera Tuaolo, Glenn Burke, Billy Bean, Dave Pallone, Rick Welts and dozens of others, I expect the furor to last about five minutes – and that will be due to the “major star,” not the “gay.”

Meanwhile, thank the gods for smart, no-BS media personalities like Charles Barkley, huh? I don’t know that he ever set out to establish himself as a progressive cultural icon, but he always does his best to tell the truth. And, as they say, the truth shall set you free.

_____

Also, if you have a minute, read Frank DeFord’s comments today on gay athletes coming out at NPR.

The Mavs have a 2-16 record in playoff games officiated by Crawford, including 16 losses in the last 17 games. Dallas is 48-41 in the rest of their playoff games during the ownership tenure of Mark Cuban…

Wow. 11% with Crawford in the gym, 53% when he’s somewhere else. At a glance, that does look suspicious, doesn’t it? So I pinged my buddy Dr. Michael Pecaut of Pecaut Lab and Loma Linda University and asked if he’d run the stats for me. He did, and the results are about what I’d expected: these numbers are statistically significant at the .05 level. Which means that you’d only get this kind of variance by random chance one time in 20.* (Actually, Pecaut’s analysis says that the variance is actually higher than .05, so the odds are less than 5%, but that will work for purposes of this discussion.)

Okay. So what does this mean, in practical terms. I see three possibilities.

1. It could be random chance. There’s a one in 20 (or whatever) chance. Over the next 20 games Crawford calls involving the Mavericks, they could win 50-55% of the time, which would lend credence to the idea that we’re seeing an anomaly here. Or it could mean that this story becoming public caused him to reflect on his performance in Mavericks games and make changes to how he approaches them. Hard to say unless we have someone who can read minds.
2. It is theoretically possible that Crawford is calling the Mavericks straight-up and the NBA’s other 50-60 refs are badly biased in Dallas’ favor. If so, and we had a way of replacing fallible human refs with infallible refbots, we’d expect the Mavericks win percentage to be closer to 11% than 53%.
3. Or it’s possible that Crawford is biased against Dallas, either intentionally or unintentionally. The numbers don’t allow us to accuse the man of anything untoward, obviously, but they do allow us to assert that something is up and to suggest that we find out what it is.

The league has faith in Crawford:

“We have no concerns about the fairness of Danny Crawford’s officiating in Dallas games, whether in the playoffs or regular season,” NBA senior vice president of referee operations Ron Johnson said via email. “And there has never been any consideration given to not scheduling Crawford or any other referee to a particular team’s games.”

Of course, we’ve seen how the NBA handles criticism of its officiating in the past, so this is about what we’d expect them to say if a ref were caught on video fixing the game with the Gambinos at halftime.

What to Do, What to Do?

The NBA would do well to wake its dumb ass up. Those numbers are fact. They either mean something really bad or they appear to mean something bad in a way that defies easy explanation. Now they’re out in public. And the league’s fans already have plenty of reason to suspect the worst about its officiating. My guess is that if you ran similar tests on all of the league’s refs you’d find statistical indicators of potential bias in a number of places. It might not always be as stark as what we see in the Crawford/Mavericks case, and statistical variation might not always mean conscious bias, either.

If the league were bright, it would be running these kinds of analyses instead of waiting for ESPN to do it for them. And when they detect a potential issue – say, a ref’s results with a particular team vary at the .75 level, for instance, you pull the ref in for a talk. You don’t accuse, you just make the ref aware. If the refs are honest, as the league assumes, then they’re going to appreciate warning signs suggesting that their objectivity needs a tuneup. If a ref is working out a grudge, well, this kind of program is just the thing to scare him or her straight.

In the meantime, you might want to keep refs whose impartiality is statistically in question away from the teams they appear to have issues with, especially, you know, during the playoffs. Just saying.

UPDATE: As of this moment, Dallas is leading Portland by seven in the third period and Crawford just called three seconds on the Blazers.

(Notice how I did a whole post on NBA officiating and didn’t once mention Tim Donaghy?)

_____

* If you’re a stats wizard and want to subject this case (or any other involving NBA refs) to some analysis, let me know.

I did, in fact, turn the game off. At about the 12:00 mark in the second half UConn had built a seven-point lead that was clearly insurmountable, and life is too short to flush precious minutes on two teams making a mockery of a sport you love above all others.

And please, let’s not have any silliness about the intensity of the game and how hard the defenses were playing. Yes, it was intense (as desperate flailing about in quicksand often is) and yes, the defenses played well. But the defenses succeeded because of the abject ineptitude of the offenses. Anybody who has played the game can tell you that an athletic guy who works hard can defend a player with no particular offensive skills. And when the other team only has one player with offensive skills, you can absolutely minimize their effectiveness by loading up on him and making the other guys beat you.

This is something that critics of the NBA (where “nobody plays any defense”) fail to grasp. The defense in the NBA is even better and more intense than in college, but it doesn’t look as effective because NBA players can score. Event the worst among them were pretty good offensive players in college.

In a way, the UConn/Butler debacle was the most fitting finale possible for the 2010-11 season, in which I watched the least college hoops of any year since I was a kid. Part of my disinterest results from the haplessness of my alma mater, Wake Forest, which bumbled to its worst season in memory. But beyond that, the sad truth is that college basketball just keeps getting worse. And worse. And worse. An unwatchable title game was an appropriate cap to an unwatchable season.

But why has the quality of the game deteriorated so badly? The short version is that we have evolved a system that underdevelops talent at the high school level and then quickly siphons the top players into the NBA.

• In a radio interview the other day, Louisville’s Rick Pitino talked about the challenges of being a college coach these days. He described recruiting, where he routinely encounters players that weren’t good enough to play for the Cardinals, but who think they’re ready for the NBA. These players are nearly impossible to coach, he says, because they don’t see the need to put in the work required to excel.
• These kids have such badly informed ideas about their ability because the high school and AAU systems do nothing but tell them how great they are. They never hear “you aren’t good enough” or “you need to buckle down and learn some fundamentals” – it’s all about the show-dunk.
• The top players in high school may have NBA level raw talent, but they lack the experience and the seasoning required to succeed. Back in the old days these players would spend three or four years in college learning the game from top coaches, and when they then entered the NBA they were able to contribute. Think about – who’s more prepared, an 18 year-old high school graduate or the same player after three years under the wing of a John Wooden or Dean Smith?
• Now, though, it’s one-and-done – put in a year because you have to, listen to the coach if you feel like it, and then cash in. The coach isn’t going to jack you around because if he does he’ll never be able to recruit another prima donna talent for the rest of his career.

This structure produces two problems. First, it damages the college game. You now have college teams comprised of a couple types of player: the phenominally talented physically who have no clue how to actually play the game; and players who know how the game works but who lack top-flight talent. There are exceptions, but make no mistake – upperclassmen who are high draft picks are the exception, not the rule. In last year’s draft, for instance, seven of the top ten picks were freshmen or sophomores and the first senior wasn’t taken until #23.

Second, it hurts the pro game, and every time the subject comes up you hear analysts, players, former players and coaches talking about how they wish players would stay in school for two or three years before turning pro. To understand just how much things have changed, compare last night’s teams to, say, UNC’s 1982 championship team, which featured Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, James Worthy and Matt Doherty. Kemba Walker is a good player, but it isn’t clear that he could have even started on that UNC team.

Sure, that’s one of the greatest teams ever, but look back through the history of NCAA champions. How many teams from before the one-and-done era could the 2010-11 Connecticut Huskies beat?

This time yesterday I could have made a case for some structural reforms, and that case would have been in line with what a lot of the experts are saying. Step 1: adopt an NFL-style rule requiring a player to wait until three years after his high school class has graduated to enter the draft.

An NCAA official, charged with toeing the company line, could have responded by saying that this year’s tournament was one of the most exciting ever, so what’s all the carping about? Today, though, the all the talk is all about how horrible the game was. Nobody is going to remember the exciting 66-game preliminary – all they’re going to yap about for at least the next year is the debacle of UConn/Butler, a game so bad that the people being paid to call and analyze the game couldn’t find anything nice to say about it. It was like a Miss America pageant with Tommy Davidson as the MC and Wanda as the winner: “Theeere she is….Miss Amsweetgodamighty!!” They couldn’t even pretend. If next year’s final also underwhelms, you’re going to have a trend on your hands.

The unfortunate thing, if you’re the NCAA, is that this is primarily your problem, but you need the NBA to solve it for you. And they might – the one-and-done rule is likely going to be on the table as The League wades into its forthcoming collective bargaining process. The thing is, while there are going to be some who prefer the NFL’s approach, there are others who are likely going to lobby to let players enter the draft straight out of high school, a strategy that will assuredly make a bad situation worse.

I’m not sure how hopeful to be, even though both NBA and NCAA management seem clear on what is in their shared best interest. But I’m going to be hopeful, just the same. I grew up in North Carolina, where college hoops is religion. I got my BA from Wake Forest, the school responsible for two of the NBA’s top stars, Tim Duncan and Chris Paul.

So I love NCAA basketball. And I’d like to be able to watch it again with a sense of joy instead of disgust.

Actually, it has several problems, none of which look like they’re going to be easily solved. (And I’m not even talking about the officiating, although I have in the past and no doubt will again in the future). The collective bargaining agreement is up after this season, at which point The League is going to have to address declining revenues, player salaries, salary cap structures, the fact that the inmates are running the asylum and what to do about the fact that star players have no interest whatsoever in playing in the Outback (you know, Cleveland, Memphis, New Orleans, Toronto, Sacto, Charlotte, etc.) when their superstar friends are living most large in NYC, Boston, South Beach, Chicago and the part of LA associated with the Lakers.

This is going to be painful under the best of circumstances, especially if Commissioner David Stern decides to walk his talk about the importance of everybody in the league being competitive and how they have to find ways of helping teams – all teams – keep their star players. This has always been the party line, but in the aftermath of last summer’s LeBron/D-Wade/Bosh circus, this year’s Melodrama and the forthcoming sequel starring Chris Paul and Dwight Howard, you can fairly feel the tension as the union and the owners swagger toward the OK Corral.

Something has to give, and the fallout from the looming negotiation process may well change the structure of pro basketball for a generation.

Every once in awhile, as the punditry discusses the NBA and the collective bargaining process, someone will drop the C-word: contraction. For reasons having to do with everything from economics to competitive balance to the aforementioned Outback issue, there are great arguments to be made for getting rid of a team or two. Or three. Or six. And this brings me back around to our reason for being here, namely the NBA’s WWE problem. Here’s what I mean by that.

In professional wrestling (which I used to follow fairly closely because I’m a popular culture scholar and also because I grew up a simple hillbilly child) you have three kinds of wrestlers:

• Jobbers
• Mid-Carders
• Main-Eventers

Jobbers are the bottom of the food chain. Their responsibility is to go out there and lose. It’s okay if they manage to put on a bit of a show, but in the end their shoulders are going to be on the mat or they’re going to be tapping out.

The mid-card guys get to be involved in real storylines with each other and sometimes they work against the main-eventers, especially on TV. They often have a good bit of heat (popularity or crowd animosity, depending on whether they’re “faces” or “heels”) and they frequently wind up in TV main events against the superstars. It will usually look like they have a chance at the upset, but in the end it’s always close, but no cigar.

The main-eventers are the superstars, the guys who headline the PPVs and who are the promotion’s marquee attractions. These are the people the audience pays to see (via cable, pay-per-view or live shows). Main-eventers pay the freight.

As it turns out, you can divvy NBA franchises up into Jobbers, Mid-Carders and Main-Eventers, too. Like so:

• Jobbers
  • Milwaukee
  • Minnesota
  • Charlotte
  • New Orleans
  • Cleveland
  • Golden State
  • Indiana
  • Sacramento
  • LA Clippers
  • Toronto
  • Memphis
  • Washington
  • Utah

• Mid-Carders
  • Atlanta
  • New Jersey
  • Denver
  • Orlando
  • Detroit
  • Philadelphia
  • Phoenix
  • Houston
  • Portland

• Main-Eventers
  • Boston
  • Chicago
  • New York
  • Dallas
  • Oklahoma City
  • San Antonio
  • LA Lakers
  • Miami

Granted, these categories are not cast in stone forever. As with pro wrestling, there can be upward mobility and performers can drop down the ladder, as well, according to all kinds of factors. Take the Knicks. They’re regarded as a main-eventer, no matter what, because they’re in New York. Madison Square Garden is regarded by some as the center of the hoop universe, and if you ever needed an example of how this works the courtship of Carmelo Anthony should have been all you’d need. If the Knicks win, it’s all ESPN can talk about. If they lose, why they’re losing is the big story. If they have the day off, it’s an opportunity for the analysts to reflect on where the team is going. Never mind that they haven’t won anything since the Nixon administration (and there’s no rational reason to expect this to change during the lifetimes of James Dolan and Isiah Thomas). New York is a big deal no matter what.

Dallas and San Antonio are main-eventers right now because they have superstars who decided to stay (Dirk Nowitzki and Tim Duncan), making it possible for free-spending (Dallas) and extremely intelligent (San Antonio) ownership and management to attract and retain the kind of talent that you need to compete for titles. When these superstars retire, though, we’ll probably see both slip back into the mid-card.

One great player can push a team up into the mid-card. Look at New Orleans. With Chris Paul, one of the three or four best point guards in the league, they’re a team you want to watch. Without him they’re Tulane.

You also have fringe cases. Utah is genetically as jobber as a market gets, but they landed a great coach (Jerry Sloan, now departed) and a couple of outstanding players in John Stockton and Karl Malone who were culturally fine with living in the 14th Century, so the Jazz climbed almost to the mountaintop before succumbing to Michael Jordan’s Bulls. (In one of the most exciting finishes in NBA history, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan climbed up on the ring apron and clocked The Mailman in the head with a steel chair while the refs were conveniently distracted. Or something like that. This was the absolute definition of what happens at the end of a match between a main-eventer and a mid-carder.)

Now, though, Utah’s next-generation superstar, Deron Williams, has returned Utah to Jobberland for good. First he forced out the coach and then got himself moved to a high mid-card operation with main-event aspirations in New Jersey. And ain’t nobody going to Utah if they have a choice. It’s the Cleveland of the West. Sometimes the NBA’s storylines even sound like they were scripted by WWE writers, don’t they?

We’re also seeing some potential star power in the mid-card right now, mainly in Oklahoma City. Let’s be honest – OKC is a jobber city if ever one were built. But they have Kevin Durant, and if he stays in town permanently they might turn out to be what a lot of people thought Cleveland was going to be before The Decision. Operative word in that last sentence: “if.”

The upshot of this three-tier dynamic is that today’s NBA franchises play a set of defined roles, and the current star-driven structure, which allows players to collude in deciding where they’ll play, assures that Stern’s talk of everybody having a shot is as full of hot air as Vince “Mister” McMahon cutting a heel promo on The Rock. I bet that two or three times a week David Stern wakes up screaming. It’s the same recurring nightmare, where Boston and the Lakers miss the playoffs and Milwaukee and Charlotte somehow make it to the Finals. He can stand in front of the microphones and pay whatever lip service he likes, but do you believe it for a second? His job is to maximize the sport’s popularity and revenues, and few things serve that mission better than a Boston/LA championship series. That goes to seven games.

But the system lives in no-man’s land. On the one hand, the draft allows the jobbers to pick the best incoming college talent. The salary cap rules allow these teams to provide financial incentives for these players to stay. But the system doesn’t lock the players in, nor does it apparently provide sufficient incentive for players to stay. Exhibit A: LeBron James. Exhibit B: Chris Bosh. Exhibit C: Carmelo Anthony. And so on.

If one were cynical, one might suspect that this is how The League wants it. There are just enough pro-parity mechanisms in place that they can claim they’re supporting the championship ambitions of the Outback Jobbers, but the reality of the system predictably funnels the superstars to the sexy TV markets.

What can the league do? What should the league do? Well, they can leave it like it is and trust that hoop fans in Minneapolis prefer being jobbers to having no team at all. That is, they’re fine with the charade represented by the National Basketball Entertainment Association. Or they can get serious about parity, moving toward a hard salary cap and free agency structure that’s more like the NHL or NFL. This would make it more likely that you’d get a serious contender in the Twin Cities for the first time since George Mikan left town.

Or they can think about the C-word. Contract the Hornets, Grizzlies, Raptors, Bucks, Clippers and Kings, distribute those teams’ talent to the survivors and let the league be what a lot of people seem to want it to be.

I don’t know. Frankly, contraction seems unlikely (with the possible exception of New Orleans, which the league already owns) for a lot of reasons. The union is going to have no interest in creating 75 fewer jobs and the NBA is hell-bent on more, not less. My best guess – the present system allows a lot of cats to get fat and we shouldn’t expect a lot of sweeping change. We should expect the owners to do all they can to reclaim control over player movement.

So if you’re the best player in the draft and you get picked by Toronto, you might as well study up on curling and cultivate a taste for poutine.

[Aherm]

Anyway, I am now more convinced than ever that I see a predictable, systematic pattern (of a non-objective nature) in how certain games are officiated, and I bet I could prove it. Here’s how the study would work.

• First, I’d need to identify a Las Vegas sports book that would take just about any bet I want to make. On the fly.
• At the midway point of the 3rd quarter in any NBA game where the spread is 20 points or more (we’ll start with 20 – the actual break point might wind up being lower), bet the under on the final margin. If Team A is up by 20 at the 6-minute mark, bet the house that the final margin will be fewer than 20 points.

What’s the rationale here? I have seen blowouts in the making time and time again this year. I’ve seen one team that was on it like a pit bull on a raw ribeye while the other team clearly wanted to be anywhere but on the floor. 20-point margins on the fast track for 40, and all of a sudden, WHAM – three touch fouls, a questionable charging and an offensive 3-second call. Two minutes into the 4th and it’s a 12-point game.

Sure, there are blowouts (did you see the beatdown El Heat laid on Los Spurs last night?) but it has gotten to the point where, at a certain point, with things threatening to get out of hand, I sit up and beginwaiting for the tone of the reffing to shift. My suspicions are frequently rewarded.

But why? Ummm, random chance, I suppose. We certainly have no evidence that the officials are doing it intentionally, right? No conspiracy theory here, folks.

Now, if I were the sort to speculate about conspiracies, I might be tempted to speculate that:

• The League likes dramatic finishes.
• They like game-winning shots.
• They like all the commercial breaks you get at the end of tight games, where eight seconds takes ten minutes of real time to complete.

Even if they don’t care who wins, late-game drama buys them lots of shelf space on SportsCenter, and that’s free promotion for I Love This Fucking Game. You know, Where Amazing Stuff Happens. Like time travel.

Or maybe I’m completely wrong. I suppose the data to prove or disprove my theory exists already, doesn’t it? Game logs should be able to tell me the score of any game at any particular point, you’d think. So somebody in the NBA offices could probably tell me in a couple of hours if I’m imagining things.

And that’s exactly what they’d tell me, isn’t it?

In any case, that’s some data I’d love to see with my own eyes, because if I’m wrong I’d like to know it. Paranoia does not make for an ideal sports viewing experience.

One friend, a Bama fan, was especially annoyed this evening, going so far as to suggest that perhaps the March Madness process isn’t any better than the much-maligned Bowl Championship Series is for football. Now, this is a sharp guy we’re talking about (and if he’s reading, I hope he’ll offer his thoughts in the comment thread), but I think his BCS/March Madness argument is flawed on two important points.

First, there is a difference between a bad system and a poor execution of a good system. The Bungling, Corrupt and Stupid Series is a joke. There are lots and lots of specific problems with it, but let’s focus on the one that matters the most: it is the only high-level athletic system in the world where you can go undefeated and still be denied any opportunity to compete for the championship. (At least, it’s the only one I know of – there’s no telling what kind of rules they use in the Azerbaijani Goat-Dressing Premiership, but you get my point.) And we’ll have no dodges about the BCS only excluding teams from one-horse hillbilly conferences, either. In 2004-5 Auburn went undefeated in the freaking SEC, the best football conference in the nation every damned year, and were left on the outside looking in. Not only can it happen, not only did it happen, but there is absolutely no theoretical reason why it can’t happen every single year.

The NCAA hoops tourney, on the other hand, gives everybody a shot. At the beginning of the season, literally no team in Division I is denied a chance to win it all. And since most teams play conferences with tournaments where the winner gets an automatic bid, a vast majority of these teams are still technically alive – even if they’re 0-30 in the weakest league in the country.

In basketball, if you win every game, you are the champion. Period. No exceptions. No arguments. No controversies.

If you want to argue that the system is bad because it leaves the door open for the dregs, fine. Go ahead and make that argument. And to be fair, a number of credible commentators have criticized the NCAA for the composition of the committee, arguing that it should be represented by more “basketball people.” Perhaps there is some merit to this suggestion. But even if both points are completely true, let’s be clear about something: the process we have assures that when you’re eliminated, you’re eliminated on the floor instead of on paper. This is not insignificant.

If my friend (and thousands of others from schools that got left out this year) have an argument, it isn’t with the system, per se. It’s with the specific decisions of the committee populating the brackets. I might be sympathetic with those appeals, too, since I hold a degree from the University of Colorado (a team that I and a lot of other people, including most of the professional analysts I’ve seen this evening, think belongs in the Dance). But these issues are not systematic – there is nothing inherent in the system that guarantees corrupt and unfair outcomes on a routine basis.

The second problem with my friend’s argument is that, frankly, March Madness controversies don’t revolve around legitimate contenders. The aggrieved in this year’s process are teams that were vying for #12 seeds – that is, the #48 slot. The lowest seed to ever win the tournament was Villanova in 1985 at eight (NC State in 1983 was seeded sixth). So while it may seem unfair that a particular team gets shipped to the NIT instead of taking their rightful place way the hell down in the bracket, we are assuredly not talking about teams that represent any plausible threat to go all the way. Alabama lost 11 games this year and Colorado dropped 13. That’s a far cry from undefeated. Get back to me when a #12 wins the tournament.

With the BCS, of course, the arguments aren’t taking place at #48, they’re taking place at #1 and #2. They’re revolving around teams that might stand a very good chance of winning the title.

So in the end, I’m extremely sympathetic to people whose teams may have gotten screwed by the selection committee. Especially since I’m one of them. But let’s not clutter up the argument by comparing it to the BCS. Both may be flawed animals, in their own way, but they have about as much in common as buffaloes and banana slugs…

I’m trying to figure out who the best former Dukies would be and am wondering if there’s a HoFer in the bunch. I guess the best of the lot would be Johnny Dawkins, Grant Hill and Carlos Boozer? Maybe Elton Brand? Am I missing anybody?

If so, has there ever been a more epic combination of great college/weak pro talent?

So, who got the better of the deal? We’ll know for sure in two or three years, but that’s no reason not to pontificate a bit now. There are all kinds of opinions, as you’d imagine. Many people think New York gave up way too much, especially since they believe that the Knicks could have waited and signed him as a free agent this summer. There are problems with this view, though – mainly, waiting could have cost Anthony $40-50 million, depending on the new collective bargaining agreement. Also, the way they’re constructed right now the Knicks wouldn’t have had room to make him a max offer, so they’d have had to offload salary, anyway.

Others don’t think NY gave up anything crucial, and they think tat when you get a crack at an alpha-scorer like Melo, you do whatever you have to do, period.

Here’s how I see it.

• I’m desperately happy I’m not a Knicks fan. Yeah, they just got a top-tier scorer, but I’ve been watching Melo for years, and top-tier scorer isn’t the same as top-tier player. I’ll allow that he may be one of the top five scorers in the league, but I’d have no problem coming up with 10-15 players I’d take ahead of him.
• He doesn’t make those around him better (he’s even less impressive in this category than Kobe was for most of his career), and when you look at the Nuggets’ greatest success during the Carmelo years (the conference finals run two years ago), it’s easy to argue that it resulted not from Anthony’s efforts, but from the over-performing members of the supporting cast. Specifically, you take away Chauncey Billups and that team doesn’t get out of the first round alive.
• Melo isn’t Batman. In many ways, he’s Robin. Although, unfortunately, he has a Robin temperament with a Joker-sized ego. Amare ain’t Batman, either, although he thinks he is. So who’s going to lead this team? Well, Billups is the guy with the game, the personality and the experience, but nobody who’s watched Amare or Carmelo lately can possibly expect them to do a lot of deferring.
• Neither Amare nor Melo plays a lot of D or rebounds with much fervor, and Ronny Turiaf can’t guard everybody.
• The Knicks just shipped out a lot of important supporting cast-type pieces. The starting five better make a habit of outscoring the opponent two-to-one, because you can’t hope for a lot of domination out of the bench.

Of course, this is all short-term thinking. Analysts like Jeff van Gundy and Tim Legler agree that the Knicks didn’t offload anything that they can’t replace easily enough. If you want to win a title, lock in the core stars and build from there, goes that line of thinking. If you’re New York, especially, you have cash, you have the center-of-the-universe mystique of Madison Square Garden and you have two superstars. Those are serious magnets that allow you to solve any problems that this trade created in due course, right?

Maybe. But this is an argument that makes a lot of assumptions. For instance:

• Melo says he wants to go to New York to win a title, which is kind of like majoring in Engineering for the chicks. Put directly, way too much is made of that Knicks mystique I mentioned earlier. The franchise has managed precisely two titles since 1946 and the last time they won anything Richard Nixon was still President.
• Isiah Thomas is on the way back. May already be back, depending on who you believe. Want to scare the shizzizzle out of New York sports fans? Next Halloween dress up like Zeke and go door-to-door. Panic and screaming and crowds running for their lives? Bitch, it’ll be like the return of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. So that whole process of putting the right pieces in place around the core of stars won’t be in the hands of probable NBA Exec of the Year Donnie Walsh, it’ll be in the hands of James Dolan (worst owner this side of Donald Sterling) and Isiah Thomas (worst GM this side of the Crab Nebula).
• There’s the nagging issue of the new collective bargaining agreement to be considered. Or maybe I should says issues, plural. For starters, that salary cap is coming down dramatically. If the numbers being tossed around at this point are valid, we’re looking at a cap reduction of maybe 40% – or something like $22.4 million per team from this year’s max. Now, the extension Melo is signing will pay him an average of $21.6M and Amare will make $18.2M next year and that keeps climbing to $23.4 in 2014-15, which I think is also the final year of Melo’s deal. So that’s a commitment to two players for $45 million or so that year – when the cap may well be in the $35 million range. Hypothetically.
• In addition, the owners seem to want a hard cap – which means no Larry Bird rule, no luxury tax, nothing. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that it might be tricky putting that supporting cast in place.
• Of course, whatever the CBA does, it will have to make some allowances for existing contracts, but…
• …no way in hell Amare and Carmelo win without a lot of help. And there has been much speculation (well justified speculation, at that) over Chris Paul and Deron Williams, who will be free agents after next season. If you put a legit superstar point guard in the mix, all of a sudden the Knicks do get a lot scarier. But those are both max contract guys, period. And given how the owners are talking right now, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the Knicks, at the beginning of the 2012-13 season, have anything like the room to pay their current stars and that critical third piece.
• Even if you could make the money work, how damned dumb would CP3 or Williams have to be to put their career hopes and dreams in the hands of the guy who … oh hell, just read it for yourself.
• And even if you did get one of the two into one of those godawful ugly-ass NY uniforms, how do they stack up in the East? Is Amare as good as Bosh? (I don’t think so.) Is Melo as good as LeBron? (Can I get a hell no?) Paul/Williams vs. Wade? Not really an apples-to-apples comparison, but let’s call it a push for the sake of argument. Assuming that nobody else in the East gets any better, I don’t see Amare + Melo + anybody matching the Heat for talent, and I don’t see them building a superior team-first chemistry around those two personalities, either.
• The second issue is that the owners are feeling like they’ve been clowned a couple times in a row. Last summer’s LeBron debacle had to be absolutely humiliating for them – these are by god billionaires and they got taken to school by three spoiled kids. Now it has happened again, and with Paul, Williams and Dwight Howard entering the last year of their deals next season, there’s every reason to think that the curtain will be rising on Act III as soon as the Finals are over. Even if there weren’t valid questions about competitive balance (and there are), you can just about guarantee that the owners are going to be adamant about structuring a CBA that allows them to retake control of their league. Whether that’s through mechanisms like a hard cap, or something like the NFL’s franchise tag, or even something more complex and innovative (and entirely unworkable) like a player-focused anti-collusion clause, expect something to happen that’s going to get in the way of the Knicks’ master plan. (Which might be a shame, because few things in all of sports are more entertaining than watching Isiah Thomas execute a master plan.)

Van Gundy and Legler are probably right on paper and if the new CBA looks more or less like the current one. But there’s a lot of if in that equation, and you have to dumber than James Dolan to bet on it going down that way. Oh, wait – Dolan already did bet on it, didn’t he?

Prediction: The Melo/Amare incarnation of the New York will win precisely as many NBA titles as every other version of the franchise has won since Willis Reed was around.

None of this makes my Nuggets any better, sadly, although if they’re smart and get lucky maybe one of those picks turns into something. And it sounds as if they may not be through dealing. There’s talk that they may move Gallinari and/or Felton and if they can’t sign Nene to an extension you have to figure he’ll be gone over the summer, too. They’re going to have scads of cap room, but can they find talent willing to take it? Or will it be like the ’90s all over again, when Dan Motherfucking Issel (the original Isiah Thomas) overpaid for the likes of Tariq Abdul-Wahad, James Posey, Raef LaFrentz, Antonio McDyess and Nick Van Exel, apparently on the theory that the team had money and they had to spend it on somebody.

So again, we have an equation with more variables than constants.

Sadly, Denver isn’t regarded as a destination – it’s an awesome place to live, but where A-list hoopsters are concerned it’s regarded as a cow town, far far away from the bright lights and nightlife of New York, LA and South Beach. And there’s nothing about our management to inspire awe, either. So whereas the Knicks have all those attractors – cash, star players, the city – Denver has a set of advantages more likely to attract world-class cyclists or freestyle skiers. Which is great, but it’s not going to get you a lot of NBA titles.

So I’m honestly not sure that there is a winner in this deal, aside from Carmelo. He gets the big-money extension, he gets to play in MSG, and let’s be honest, that’s all that mattered. If he really cared about winning he’d have shoehorned his way into Chicago instead of New York.

Update: The four newest Nuggets were in the building for tonight’s game vs. Les Grizz and received a warm welcome from the fans. High point of the evening: sideline reporter Maya Starks attempting to interview Capt. Ivan Drago Timofey Mozgov, who was wholly unprepared to comment on the altitude, his initial impressions of Denver, or anything else involving the English language.

Update 2: The nine remaining members of the Denver Nuggets (none of the players involved in the trade were available) tonight stomped an absolute mudhole in a Memphis team that has been very hot lately. I know it’s just one game, but Denver looked better without Carmelo than they did with him in at least a couple of months. 28 assists in 41 made baskets – are you kidding me?

You got the impression that guys like Ty Lawson, Aaron Afflalo and JR Smith in particular were, for the first time, playing without shackles. There’s talent coming in the door and while I don’t expect the Nugs to win the title, this is a playoff-caliber team. Not only that, it may well be a team that nobody wants any part of in the post-season. The team as it was constituted before the trade wasn’t going anywhere, anyway…

Like I said above, time will tell. For the moment, though, I don’t see any reason for despair.

Here’s the scenario. You’re a pro athlete. One day the coach calls you in and says “son, you’ve been traded to ___________.”

What the worst team you can fill in the blank with? Four leagues, and feel free to elaborate on why if you feel so led.

In thinking about this, a few things jumped to mind right off the bat, but then I stepped back to think more about it. Is this just about a team that I hate (NY Rangers)? Is this about a team that has been mismanaged horrifically but I like them (Knicks)? Is this about a team that consistently has good young talent but trades it away (Pittsburgh Pirates)? Is it about a mediocre team that seems to be around .500 but never inspires the city/fans and has little shot at going deep in the playoffs in the foreseeable future?

In making my decision, I took a combination of the above – since there are a few factors at play here: state of franchise now/last 5-10 years and potential for winning in the next 5 or so, fan base, ownership/mgmt, city life and other sports teams (would be a plus in GB, not so much somewhere else with no other teams) and a few “intangibles” based on nothing other than my own (relatively) uninformed opinions.

With that being said, here is what I came up with and why:

MLB: Kansas City Royals. Owner David Glass has run this franchise into the ground in the 11 years he has owned the team. Only one winning season in the past 15 years. Phenom Zach Greinke is sure to be the next star to leave – following Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, David Cone, Mike Sweeney and Jermaine Dye (ok, so Cone was before Glass). The team ownership makes little effort in actually building a strategy for winning and keeping a core together – witness how the Marlins have done it more than once, for example. A depressing team which was once a proud franchise packed with all stars. While I’ve never been to Kansas City (and am sure I’d love the ribs), the only other sports team is the Chiefs which is a minus for me in terms of overall pro sports. And no hope for the future really either.

NFL: Jacksonville Jaguars. Not a horrible team by any stretch. But not a good team and not really an inspiring team either – not by a long shot. Buried in a division with Jeff Fisher’s Oilers Titans and Peyton Manning’s Colts, it is nearly impossible to make the playoffs consistently, if at all – at least not for a while. A few good seasons lately (2 playoff appearances since 2005 and one playoff win since 1999), but almost exactly a .500 record over the past 8 seasons, which won’t do much. No other sports teams in Jacksonville and a city that, while in “sunny” Florida, is fairly cold, pretty dreary and has little else going on. I once took a day trip (flight) to Jacksonville for a meeting, had lunch “downtown” and couldn’t get back to the airport soon enough. Nothing horrible, but very little redeeming – not for the team, not for the city, not for the future.

NBA:Memphis Grizzlies. I almost picked the Indiana Pacers or Toronto Raptors here, but Toronto breaks a few of my rules, given that the Maple Leafs and Blue Jays are in Toronto and it is a great city (from all I have been told). With Memphis, a city that I’ve never been to and probably is a fine city, there is no other sports, I am NOT a fan of NASCAR and the Grizzlies are woeful other than a 3 year stretch a few years ago but have won less than 25 games in 3 of the past 4 years. The potential to not suck is there with a couple of solid players (Gay, Randolph, Conley) so maybe things will turn around. And just in case they do, I’ll put the Pacers as my runner-up, who have been similarly horrific over the past 7 years, are in a city that fits a lot of the profile above (auto racing, other sports teams – except here it is all Colts who likely relegate the Pacers to minor league status nowadays, etc).

NHL: Columbus Blue Jackets. This was the toughest one. I thought Nashville initially, but they have been real good lately. Then I thought Calgary (because I’ve been there in the winter) but they’ve made the playoffs almost every season. And even my Islanders are in NY with a bit of promise, even though the history and ownership over the past 15 years make this ripe for a choice, so there is hope there. I picked Columbus because there is no tradition whatsoever and expansion/team movement has hurt hockey more than any other sport in my mind, because the little tradition they have since 2000 includes one playoff appearance and one .500 record, and because Ohio already has college football, college basketball, Cincinnati and Cleveland for other sports (even though there is no hockey in either city) and I’m not sure that Columbus, Ohio is a real “hot spot”.

So there you have it. Apologies to any residents of these cities that I pissed off – and that’s more because they have to deal with these shitty-ass franchises.

What are your thoughts?