HOW can you tell, you Son of a Bitch?

AS best as I can tell with out anybody of consequence confirming or denying - or, for that matter, returning a phone call/e-mail - there's sweeping validity to a rival tabloid's report that James Dolan met recently with Donnie Walsh in Indianapolis to discuss taking over the Knicks as soon as the season is over.
-Peter Vecsey

Knick Fans Have Mainly Lost Their Minds

Knickerblogger.net is a site that I like a whole lot since it has a lot of good statistical information along with some sensible explanations of how statistics work, and some opinions about the Knicks that aren’t completely insane. Their recent recap of Isaiah Thomas’ tenure as coach of the Knicks does a much needed job of putting things in some sort of perspective.

The point to be taken from their recap is that the team that Thomas took over was not only awful, but also old. In that situation, one thing to do is let the contracts expire and try and build from the draft, with the hopes of becoming relevant in the future. Had Thomas gone that route four years ago, the Knicks might, right now, be approaching semi-serious contention. Thomas, however, proceeded to make trades with the goal of winning immediately, some of them with draft picks, and assemble what has finally revealed itself as one of the worst rosters known to man.

It’s not as if Thomas’ employers or the Knicks fans would have had much patience for re-building at any point during Thomas’ tenure. Possibly they could have been won over by it, but the temptation of immediate wins and playoff appearances was not something felt by Thomas alone. The people concerned with the Knicks all honestly believed that making the Knicks immediately relevant could and should be attempted.

The route that Thomas went thus involved taking a number of chances, and, unfortunately, none of them paid off. This can, in part, be attributed to bad judgment by Thomas, but one has to keep in mind that, as a GM charged with turning a bad team into a winning team, while suspended over the piranha-tank that is the New York Press, it was pretty much Thomas’ job to take those chances. The Dolans gave him a handful of chips, and we all looked nervously over his shoulder as he walked to the crap table.

Thomas’ first move was the trade for Marbury. Marbury has had serious flashes of brilliance throughout his career, and there was reason to believe that he could carry a team. There was also, even then, a good case to be made that Marubury was bad for teams and threatening to chemistry, but it wasn’t as if there were dozens of super-star point guards for Thomas to choose from. Thomas’ gamble didn’t pay off, but, given the overly ambitious goal of the Knicks, it wasn’t one that Thomas was necessarily unwise in taking. Given the short-term (and ultimately more important) goal of generating buzz around the team, it was practically inevitable.

Only someone with a serious problem with depression could have anticipated how badly the Curry trade worked out. When Thomas got him, Curry was very young and had led the league in field goal percentage one year. He was seven feet tall: it defies reason that someone seven feet tall could be so incapable of rebounding. It was almost impossible not to see potential in Curry and it seems unfair to expect Thomas to have anticipated Curry’s miserablness.

Furthermore, it is not as if the Bulls, who should seem to be on the winning end of the Curry deal, are much better, right now, than the Knicks, but, at the time that Thomas took over the Knicks, the Bulls had a far more interesting and talented young roster than the Knicks have had at any point in recent history. Despite that, the Bulls are so bad this season that they lost a game to the Knicks. The Bulls are so bad that they would probably be better if they had hung on to Eddy Curry.

So why aren’t people assembling with gigantic pink-slips to demand the ousting of the Bulls management? If the Mitchell report has taught me anything, it is to be less hesitant in calling out the sports establishment for ridiculous racism. Thomas was given an extremely difficult task, and he proceeded to do it badly. Looking back over the league’s last few years, it is not exactly as if there were many sure-fire ways of catapulting the Knicks into contention that Thomas passed on. Top notch talent is extremely hard to come by—particularly when you don’t have much to offer in return. With the benefit of hindsight, Thomas’ biggest mistake was probably not mortgaging the farm to get Kevin Garnett from Minnesota—but even that would have been a risk that he would understandably have shied away from. The series of more minor moves that he did undertake worked out badly, but any move that he could have made would have been a gamble with a significant chance of failure. The Knicks roster is a mixture of bad luck and bad judgment, for which Thomas deserves a significant amount of responsibility, but in no way warrants the bitterness of the anti-Isaiah campaigns, which are very revealingly deconstructed by Basketbawful’s Evil Ted.

There is something about successful, outspoken black men who disappoint expectations that brings out an ugly edge of hatred in American sports fans. It makes what happens on the floor at Madison square garden seem relatively pretty.

What the Hell is Wrong with People?

According to northjersey.com, John Maine and Oliver Perez attended the Knicks game on Monday, and were booed when they were shown on the Jumbo-tron. Seriously, what the hell?
I am not that happy with the Mets at this moment. On sober reflection, my initial optimism about the Milledge trade was unfounded/insane. They gave away a guy with some up-side, for two guys with zero-upside, who don’t seem to meet any immediate needs (ok, they needed a catcher. But they’re up to the eye-balls in outfielders. And Church is an unfortunate guy to replace Shawn Greene with.)

And the not-signing Santana or some other amazing pitcher thing is pissing me off. And I wish that Schoenwise had been busted for steroids and gotten the 50-game suspension just so we wouldn’t have to watch him for the first chunk of the season.

But, at a Knicks game, there are simply too many other things to boo; and in the context of Madison Square Garden, the Mets franchise is a paradigm of winning, responsibility and success.

The Mets were a huge disappointment and ought to have made the playoffs. I try not to be a mean-spirited fan, but I can understand the urge to hold that fiasco against all the players personally. However, the Knicks are so bad that I like the Met’s chances against them in a game of basketball.

Center: Mike Pelfry—dude is 6’7”
Power Forward: Moises Alou—played hoops in high-school.
Small Forward: Carlos Gomez-- 6’4”, athletic, fast as hell.
Shooting Guard: Jose Wright/David Reyes—young, in good shape, could probably make a lay-up.
Point Guard: El Duque—extremely competitive man; a state-mandated test once revealed that he had the highest basketball IQ in Cuba.

I would bet on that team to beat the Knicks. And if I saw Maine and Perez at Madison Square Garden, I would not boo them: I would try and see if there was an extra jersey lying around and if either of them could make a jump shot.

And of all of the Mets to boo, Maine and Perez are two of the worst. Both of them were pleasant surprises in 2007. Neither was anything like an ace, but neither of them was completely terrible. They both showed tons of upside. They are fun guys to have on a baseball team that you root for, because every game they start has the possibility of being either an amazing performance or minor disaster. The fact that they both over-performed in 2007 was the only reason that the Mets got to go through the worst collapse in sports, as opposed to just spending the season in second place. And, in the face of a non-Santana ’08, they are the closest thing that Mets fans have to a reason for not being completely depressed about the state of the pitching.

Basically, if you feel so strongly about the Mets that you are booing Ollie and Maine on the jumbo-tron, you better be at the Garden because you are waiting to go to Penn Station to catch an Amtrack to Atlanta, where you are going to burn down both Turner Field and Tom Glavine’s house.

The Knicks are Awful; Milledge is Traded

The major crisis with the New York Knicks, at this point, is that the fans and commentators are running out of bad things to say about them, but the team keeps on getting worse. Everyone has been going on for years about how awful the Knicks are, but the Knicks, undeterred, find ways to sink to new lows. I wish we hadn’t been that hard on them before: that way it might be possible to put games like last night’s in some kind of sane perspective.

I like that Nate Robinson hit a three-pointer in the last second of the game to bring the score to 59, one point above the Knicks’ franchise all-time low. That is the best you can say about the Knicks right now: certain players (Nate among them) are not as insanely horrible as one might have expected based on last year.

According to The Post, Milledge just got dealt to the Nationals for Catcher Brian Schneider and Left Fielder Brian Church. I swear on Casey Stengle’s grave that the following conversation happened:
Phoenix Park Bar, during the Met’s pen-ultimate game. I had left work to catch what I hoped were going to be the last frame’s of John Maine’s no hitter. The no-hit bid was still going on at the time, and another Mets fan and I were having good thoughts.

Mets Fan: And this guy on the Nationals guaranteed a sweep of the Phillies.
(we both know the Nats lost the first game)
Sam: That’s awesome. The Met’s should trade for the guy who said that. Who was he?
Mets Fan: Ryan Church.
Sam: The Mets should totally get him. What position does he play?
Mets Fan: Outfield.
Sam: huh. I guess that could be a problem…

I’m intrigued. I guess I think that pitching is a more important upgrade than whatever they hope to accomplish with this deal, but Church and Schneider both seem like good guys to have around, and I’m not sure what they really could expect from Milledge. I could see him going on a tear and putting up near all-star numbers, but mainly because stuff like that happens to the Mets. I can also envision him turning into a fairly average big-league outfielder. I will be intrigued to see the first time he plays against the Mets, particularly if he gets to bat against Billy Wagner.

Recent Activities of Starbury

Reading over the previous post, I realize that I failed to place Stephon Marbury’s mysterious departure from the Knicks in any kind of context and that someone relatively oblivious to Knicks basketball might have gathered the impression that this was just some relatively normal guy who decided to go AWOL. Let me assure you that this is not the case, and offer a brief review of things that Steph has been up to in only the last six months:

THE STARBURY 1’s: Stephon released a line of inexpensive ($15-20) basketball shoes. He spent a lot of the time promoting the line over the summer. The idea was to provide a good looking shoe, which underprivileged fans (mostly kids) could reasonably afford. This is actually a very good project—most great NBA players spend a lot of time selling ultra expensive shoes, to relatively poor people, with commercials that make it seem as if owning a $100+ pair of sneakers is part of some journey to self discovery. Doubters point out that Stephon Marbury shoes would never move at Air Jordan prices, and some people have said that they are very cheaply made, but I actually give Steph a lot of points for this one. While a lot of basketball players make a big deal about having come from strained circumstances, Stephon is very unique in having actually attached his name to a product designed for underprivileged fans.

PROMISED TO MOVE TO ITALY: Stephon and family went to Italy and had a great time. Steph said that once his contract with the Knicks was up, in two years, he would move to Italy and play in the basketball league over there—he said that he absolutely was going to do this and compared himself to David Beckham.

SAID THE KNICKS WERE ON THE VERGE OF A CHAMPIONSHIP: When he was asked if he would follow through with his Italy plan even if it seemed as if the Knicks were on the verge of a championship he said, “I think we’re on the verge of a championship now.” That is the craziest thing on this list.

CAME OUT IN MILD SUPORT OF MICHAEL VICK: Steph bucked the sports establishment party line, and introduced the possibility that Michael Vick’s dog fighting activities did not necessarily mean that Vick was the son of Satan. He pointed out that other behaviors that are not overly kind to animals (he mentioned deer hunting) are more or less accepted in our society, and suggested that the revulsion to dog fighting had to do with its association with hip-hop culture. I don’t support Michael Vick at all, but you have to see Steph’s point. The outrage over Vick seems kind of odd, when you consider that over the last winter the vice-president of the god-damn country, while probably drunk, went out to shoot some birds that had been bread in captivity for the express purpose of being released right in front of a group of probably drunk white-men with guns. Of course, the vice-president actually shot an old man by mistake and Stephon got mercilessly blasted by the media for having said anything non-condemning about Vick.

HAD TO TESTIFY IN COURT ABOUT FUCKING A KNICKS INTERN IN HIS TRUCK: The fact that this was part of a lawsuit by a different woman brought against Isaiah Thomas made me speculate on Thomas’ innocence, since the Marbury/truck/intern episode seemed more scandalous than relevant. The intern had previously been dating Marbury’s cousin. The truck was parked outside of a strip-club.

BECAME A BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN

UPDATE: Looking over my Starbury list, one might get the impression that African-American athletes who try to break the mold (sell cheap shoes or point out that Michael Vick doesn’t have a monopoly on animal cruelty) are subjected to a myriad of degradations (like having to testify about intern/truck sex) and forced into a lot of weird ideological positions (like becoming Christian/Italian) as part of an effort to reconcile themselves with their public and their consciousness of the world—although these efforts are likely to cause the athlete to appear even more absurd and further their alienation. Then I was going to say something sarcastic about how this is obviously not the case and I’m sorry for misleading you, but fuck it, here is the un-ironic truth: the racial situation in this country is a god damn travesty, and all of us, every mother’s son, should be FUCKING ASHAMED.

Steph

I guess, in times like these, we Mets fans need to stick together. So if you see famous Met fan Stephon Marbury wandering around the city with a kind of a dazed look on his face, you should probably say something supportive (“At least you’re a better husband than Jason Kidd…well probably”) and offer him directions back to the Garden.

According to the Post, with whom Stephon actually has a surprisingly decent relationship, the Knick’s point guard got on a plane out of Phoenix (where the poor Knickerbockers are going to get just brutalized by the Suns in a little while) and headed back to New York—for reasons that are unclear. Now, in sports, it is kind of a big deal that the guys on the team are supposed to travel with the team and hang out with the team unless some very emergency/life-or-death stuff is happening; this is so much the case that when Roger Clemens signed a deal that allowed him to miss road-trips with the Yankees to spend time with his family, certain people started talking about the collapse of Western civilization. The logic with Clemens was that the guy was so damn good that he could make his own rules (he turned out not to be…but that joke was on the Yankees, good times); Starbery is not Roger Clemens (this is actually the great tragedy of the man’s life) and likely to be in a lot of trouble/not a Knick any more.

Steph is simply not as good at basketball as he thought he was—and just how crazy this relatively simple revelation has made him is an interesting commentary on the state of our athletic culture. Stephon entered the NBA in 1996, and ever since then has been making a specious argument that he is one of the very elite players in the game. He simply isn’t. His numbers aren’t that great, and teams always improve their record after he leaves. It is ok to be worse at basketball than Michael Jordan—Stephon Marbury is a good basketball player, perhaps even above average in the NBA. But he never seems to have quite gotten his head around the idea that there is no shame in not being the absolute best—in being a good (not great) pass-first point guard, playing limited minutes, or, in certain situations, coming off of the bench. Stephon could obviously have been an amazing role-player on a great team; but the philosophy of motivational posters has very little to offer role-players, and very little encouragement for those players who need to make terms with their mediocrity to succeed.

In 05-06, when Steph was in the process of getting Larry Brown run out of New York, he came through with the claim that he was the best point guard in the NBA. This claim was ridiculed at the time, and Marbury, whose play has deteriorated while other guard’s play has maintained and even improved, has to wish that he’d kept his mouth shut. Tonight, Marbury’s Knicks will get eaten alive by Steve Nash’s Suns, and the fact that Nash has been considered (by manny) the best player in the NBA, let alone point guard, since approximately the time of Steph’s comments, might have something to do with Marbury’s absence.

What was it like?

Examining recent history, I feel as if I ought to have turned this blog into some kind of anatomy of despair a week or so ago, and the posts in that time should paint a grim portrait of futility and desperation climaxing in the Sunday’s fiasco. Indeed, the progression of recent games seemed almost exquisitely calculated for baseball fan torture: the ray of hope that lasted with the lead, finally replaced with resignation, and then despair following Perez on Sunday, only to be suddenly re-kindled with Maine’s no hit-bid, followed by the perfectly disastrous game on Sunday.

The termination of the Met’s seasons raises ‘important’ questions that I would like to think Sam’s Mets blog’ had been in a unique position to answer: what does it feel like to be on the bad end of the worst collapse ever, in sports? What does it say about you when your team fails so miserably? What can be learned from the absolute depths of baseball misery?

First off, and one of the reasons that these questions are not readily answered, I have to say that denial and selective perceptions of reality play a significant role. On some level, I think everyone who closely followed the Mets saw the seeds of futility all along, but chose not to pay them too much attention. There were problems with the team, the inability of the offense to pick up the pitching, the occasional ineffectiveness of the bullpen, the perceived lack of spirit on the squad, that were there all along. Everyone remembered the 2006 Mets, the energy, the rallies, and the excitement. We knew that we weren’t getting that this year, but chose to emphasize the fact that the team was in first—the extent to which that might have also been true of the players is impossible to determine. Indeed, the coverage, both among blogers and print journalists, always hinted at a need for the team to pick things up—but felt that the failure to do so would hurt the team in the playoffs and not the regular season. Much of the difference between ’06 and ’07 was chalked up to an improved NL east, yet at the same time the other contenders, the Braves and the Phillies, were both demonstrably flawed teams, and nothing really made the notion of either of them surpassing the Mets seem like a certainty. Indeed, up until the final game, the possibility of success had never been completely removed, and it was always easiest to focus on that possibility, rather then the unpleasant options.

On a personal level, the 2007 baseball season was when I began to develop a minor interest in advanced baseball statistics, particularly the ones relating to the debate about the existence of clutch hitting. At some point, it became reasonably clear that I was looking for some sort of excuse for the Mets players, for a model of the baseball world that would attribute their shortcomings to bad luck rather than a deficiency of character or ability. In other fans, I think a similar anxiety expressed itself in the debate about Willie Randolph’s competence.

Perhaps, for me, a final moment of despair happened last week when I realized that I was on the Knicks website, looking up the date of the first game of the season; when I saw what I was doing, I somehow finally understood that things with the poor Metropolitans had gotten very, very, bad indeed.