So all the radio controlled monster trucks and robots that cannot do anything you really want, like clean up cat vomit under a Noble Fir, or wrap Hanukkah presents for 8 consecutive, excruciating days, or sew a Santa suit that actually fakes some one out that is not doing the Ray Charles, or that can do the mambo with momma so you don't have to miss a KU game, when the wild duty calls.
And I wake up this morning still clean.
Let me explain--without the OAD DTs I went through after the Temple game when everyone scattered to the wind for the holidays. I went a whole three days without mainlining any OAD hype, without any opiated wondering if they would go pro, when everyone that is clean knows everyone of the OADs will go pro if in the top 20. Period. Finito. End of addiction.
The OAD DTs are really tough to get through. I rent a furniture dolly and ratchet myself to it and have my significant other wheel me into the garage and padlock me to the work bench. I tell her to come back in 3 days--sometime before XMAS eve.
The hallucinations start out all good. I envision OADs living up to their hypes, which they never do...EVER. As the fever comes on they start saying they are done with legal, informal shoe endorsements protected by attorney client privilege, and that they will never again go 3/4 speed to protect the merchandise, or run from contact with 4 year prison bodies that their 4-year teammates have to expose themselves to. Then things break waaaaaaaaaaay bad. They start refusing to play defense, while applying Lush skin cream on the bench, while real hoopahs like Frank Mason go to war on both ends of the floor without credible threats on either wing, because it turns out the OADs and TADs can't hit the broad side of a legal, informal shoe contract protected by attorney client privilege from the three point stripe, while Frank drains them at 50% even playing through a bad ankle.
Don't get me totally wrong. There are a few warriors among the OADs. Josh played in a boot. and Wayne played on a bad knee.
But for the most part the OADs are reintroducing non contact basketball for all the wrong reasons.
Regardless, I am left with this one outrageous idea.
OADs are meaningless to the college game, whether they are the future of it, or not. Who the F wants to watch these lame-ohs act like deer caught in headlights half a season, then play adequately January till March, then play hard once against an opponent with a big EST branding footprint, and then phone the last two in in March and leave without really knowing anything about them, except some boiler plate fictions that some PR flack is paid to cut and paste into an email that is sent to a reporter loving reporting but having to take a stiff drink as he schleps out the least dull parts of the boiler plate with connecting paragraphs he could have written in third grade.
This is what OADs mean to me, once I am dry--once I am off the hype needle--once I am 12-stepping with a couple days growth and pale skin and broken blood vessels on my face from having heaved my guts out for three days after Temple to get clean in time for Christmas.
My family is ashamed of me.
My extended family is ashamed of me.
I look like Jeff Bridges in "Eight Million Ways to Die."
Hell, I bet some of you guys look like a combination of Denzel and Robert Downey Jr. in some post apocalyptic nightmare gig where they play act one and two with blood shot eyes and flecks of vomit in their three days growth.
I swill dank coffee and serially light Winstons as I sit before the plasma wall screen TV with 2000 channels but never more than one Budd Boetticher Randolph Scott western on at a one time.
I can't even surf to see if Shaft is playing on some blaxploitation encore channel, because I might accidentally run into an ESPN channel 'hood, where foppish men, and cheese cake, of every race, color, creed and educational background prostitute themselves promoting OADs with apparent legal informal endorsement agreements apparently protected by attorney client privilege, while real playuhs struggling to get old fashioned, 20th Century analog college degrees and a couple of years of pro pay scrambling Eurasia actually do the heavy lifting, actually develop skills, actually get better.
And if I see even one of these talking media-gaming complex heads interviewing Vinny the recruiting ranking mule, it is like I have been put back on an IV drip at the Big Shoe Hype Cartel's bent silver spoon, hype free-basing conference for OAD advisors and family.
I go all glassy eyed and floaty and nodding. I start talking about how this perimeter OAD's shot is going to dial in, which iy rarely will, or that interior OAD's rim and guard game is going to soon shine when he learns how not to foul by having 4 year guys start and shorten games for him.
I get a bunch of OAD-hype swagger where I start talking tough about March and about how this guy just needs more PT to play like Mike. I forget the Mike paid his flipping dues. Played at 11/10ths his whole career and when looking for play ground games with metal nets to try to keep his canine teeth sharpened. I completely forget Mike went through a phase where he too sharpened his finger nails to points for scratching the living be-jeezus out of anyone that tried deny him a lane. I forget that Mike played a long time before the legal, informal Jordan rules were instituted around the league.
Make me wanna holler, Marvin!
I love me some Cliff.
I love me some Kelly.
I love me some Svi.
I loved me some Andrew.
I loved me some Wayne.
I loved me some Jo-el.
I loved me some Xavier and Josh.
Like a junky loves his sugar!
But the bottom line on these OADs is that unless you've got just incredibly limited guys coming back at the positions they play, they really can't beat them out even up for half a season, and then are only half good the second half of the season, except for a few draft showcase games against a weak match up at their position that lets them hang 30 charging the iron.
And the only reason they come back for a TAD season is because they've got an injury to work through that has usually cost them their pop.
And an OAD without pop is like a day in Aruba without sunshine.
Why go there and put on the sunscreen at all?
So, 'bate, what has this cleaned up OAD junky rant got to do with Ballbotics, or going beyond the Analog OAD?
Simple.
Ban OADs.
Let Tesla and Google, which are pioneering the driver-less technologies in their electric car prototypes, when Elon is not launching shizz into space and Google is not reputedly valving intel on us all, build Basketball robots that fulfill the roles of OADs now. It is already within our technological grasp. The OADs are not setting a very high standard for the robots to meet, or beat.
And the thing about robots is that they are a sunk cost that could be amortized over ten years. They could be part of the internet of things. They could get wireless firmware and software updates even during games to keep them cutting edge.
Every college would be allowed three robots and no OADs. The other spots have to go to 4 year guys.
And to keep things traditionally unfair, every elite program would be given 5 robots. But the rest of their rotation has to be 4 year guys.
The robots would be given four year identities, after which they would be given a new identity for another four years. We would all get to know and love them the way we like to do. They would get caught doing the wild thing with robotic coeds created for them. We might even program them to flirt with bee-bee guns their first years of play. They would never protect the merchandize. They would have no steep learning curve that bio-players had to shorten games for. Injuries could be simulated, or,my preference, completely eliminated.
Plug and play.
Rock Chalk!
And happy digital New Years.
