Is an old sarcasm "sarchaic"? 😎
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
@et al
If the refs call it the same as last season, steals remain an endangered species. Here is why.
There are two ways to steal: crowd and strip; or jump in the passing Lane and strip.
Last season, if you crowded, they just drove in to you and got the whistle.
So crowding is out.
Second, so much driving the ball forces off-ball defenders into help defense positioning and limits when they can jump in passing lanes.
Inference: the trend of declining steals is probably not over, unless the refs restore XTReme Muscle Ball on the perimeter.
P...%#@?!...HOF!
Tulsa and Title IX: will Danny have some 'splainin' to do, or was this player gone before his tenure?
C of Charleston to get civil tongue soon?: after reputedly verbally abusive Woijik, CoC leaders look to insider vs. outsider replacement options. Will going inside suggest skeletons? Or reconnecting with genteel tradition?
MAC, ESPN extend 8yr deal to 13 yr TV deal with unstated revenue bump. Is MAC hedging against possible mid major famine post O'Bannon Case?
Prince Ali joins growing cast at Alford's UCLA: so much for rings helping recruiting in the Petro-SHOECO era, eh, UCONN?
Stallings, Vandy sign six, flush two; deficient responsibility strikes again?
Smart, VCU make player miss one game as petit larceny charge of an iPhone5 reputedly indicated by police records. New iPhone out soon, fool.
Tarheels bounce back from Bahamas exhibition loss with 61% shooting. No word on how hard Heels studied.
(Note: all opining, spec and/or satire.)
Strange bounce.
AW3...we hardly knew ye.
The B1G will be a good smash mouth ride!
We have to hope Hudy has worked on Lucas' hops the way she did with the Morri. Landen with leaps becomes KU's starting big man, because he has the horizontal game down. Alas, the AIA feed shows him blocking short, low ground clearance types. His dunks are on the way up, not on the way down; that is the dead give away in a 6-10 guy that the springs are still not explosive.
U sed it bedder than me!
What ever talent level you have at PG, the 2-5 guys have to be able to be get to spots and fill the lanes that the PG's abilities permit him to service effectively.
Ability to play TOGETHER--to dance well TOGETHER--is paramount in a team game!!!
Rock Chalk!
I have delayed making this comment a few months, because I haven't had a hat big enough for what it probably would make come down. :-)
But your post is such a fresh angle on what we've all been dry washing about this summer that I now feel emboldened to journey outside the box.
Before I do, I do agree that between Frank and Conner we should have the bases covered with most PGs. The tall ones will be a problem, however, because they may force us to guard them with Selden, and if the opponent has a long, active 2, the pain locker could be open in a hurry.
Nevertheless, having a super dynamic point guard on offense is ONLY important if the rest of your talent requires you to play up tempo and penetrate from the point in order to optimize it.
If you have a bunch of dynamic athletes, good trey shooters and an imposing big, or two, then you can slow it down to whatever speed your PG can play under control at and beat down opponents at positions 2-5.
Without putting too fine a point on things, last season, Tharpe was perhaps the weakest, most uneven performing PG ever to start for KU post WWII. But KU still won a conference title and very likely would have gone to the Final Four had Embiid not gotten injured.
Great point guard play is a frequent ingredient of championship play, not because it is absolutely necessary in order to win championships, but rather because, unlike top notch big men, which only come along about half the seasons, top notch point guards show up almost every season. Each year there seem to be a half dozen, D1 point guards capable of leading a point guard dominant team to a ring. But at least half the seasons there are no big men capable of dominating and leading a team to a ring. The other half of the seasons, there are, at most, one, or two, big men capable of dominating and leading a team to a ring.
What this implies is that without a dominant big man, you have to have truly dynamic point guard play to go deep and be a threat for a ring. But with a dominant big, you can get by with an average point guard, so long as he is quick enough to guard the dynamic PGs he will face.
"The thing that drives the OAD bus is potential..."
I agree that potential drives the bus, but potential needs to be disaggregated into at least two variables--potential variables (PVs)--to be usefully understood.
PV1: Performance ceiling, i.e., how much MUA could result at an NBA position, if an OAD were to raise his game to the ceiling his abilities suggest feasible,
PV2: Marketing ceiling, i.e., how much increase in franchise value would result if the OAD were to reach his performance ceiling.
Andrew Wiggins had the highest PV1 since Lebron.
Andrew Wiggins, because of adidas apparent deep commitment to his promotion, in part because of his handsomeness, and in significant part, because Andrew is not only marketable through the conventional bandwidth of NBA superstar endorsers (i.e., the North American market with some spillover effect abroad), but also has unprecedented marketability throughout targeted global markets, like the British Commonwealth of Nations, that a Petro-ShoeCo, like adidas, was well positioned in the target market to leverage, had perhaps the highest PV2 ever (so far).
In comparison, Embiid offered similar PV1, probably even more, but his PV2 was more complicated and risky (Cameroon is a former French colony and so not a strong marketing tie to any foreign market segment as ripe for exploitation as the British Common Wealth of Nations, and Cameroon made Embiid a much less well branded endorser in North America--the bread and butter NBA endorsement market), plus Embiid got injured.
You have to think of these guys in marketing envelope terms, not just performance envelope terms. Performance envelope will increasingly simply be ante to the game as the global market becomes increasingly rationalized over time. The big increment of value to Petro-ShoeCos, to franchises, and to the players themselves, will lie in how much strategic marketing advantage they create; i.e., how much can they EXPAND demand over already marketed to segments.
Thus, when one talks about the potential of guys like Oubre, or Alexander, or Bragg, at the NBA level, for draft purposes, they really have modest PV1 and almost no PV2. If Oubre, Alexander, or Bragg reach their ceilings in the NBA, they might possibly have a few all pro seasons, but will probably never dominate in the NBA the way Wiggins and Embiid most certainly would were they to reach their respective PV1s. And again, none of them are ever going to have the combined domestic and foreign appeal needed to create a super high PV2 in the global Petro-ShoeCo age. And it is the synergy between global Petro-ShoeCo endorsement power and franchise promotion of such a player that can now drive franchise value to levels beyond what largely domestic based superstars have been able to do in the past.
Your approach makes sense, but...
If the game continues to be called as it was last season, rim protection, which has always been a decisive weapon on the defensive end, becomes the ONLY failsafe weapon on defense.
Withey carried us two seasons, when a lot of contact was being allowed. During the high contact era, a big skinny like Withey and a brawny type like TRob were a very good match.
But last season, when driver's were given the edge, KU could control inside shooting percentages with Embiid healthy, even with Mr. Anti-contact, Perry Ellis, at PF, and Wisconsin was able to do the exact same thing with their big skinny, and a non-dom power forward also.
As a result, any rim protector that comes along probably has to be signed for his immediate value, even though his NBA jump may create a quick hole to fill.
The logic, if a bit reductive, be this: one year of rim protection is better than a year of none, even with the hole it may create the year after.
Why?
The hole this approach creates is actually the absence of a rim protector big, not the absence of a non rim protector big.
If you fail to recruit another rim protector big (i.e., to replace the departing OAD rim protector big), the worst case scenario is you default to the players of the type you are proposing to recruit that have presumably been on your bench getting seasoned filling in for the soon to depart rim protector big.
Wow, that sounds convoluted. :-)
How about this way? Recruit exactly the way you propose, but anytime a rim protector will sign, then sign him and move those guys you have recruited into 10-20 minute back ups for a season, since they will be sticking around for 3-4 regardless.
In the age of refs favoring the driver, the only unfair advantage on defense becomes the capacity to block and alter without fouling; that is the realm of the rim protector; that is what KU needs to keep attracting in the recruiting game.
Big Man U may have to be altered to Rim Protector U for the sake of clarity of marketing and recruiting signals.
The government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul. --- George Bernard Shaw
And will always have to support Peter!--batemalion
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Imagine world with Fizzou with 10 straight titles and a ring!!! 😱
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Imagine a world in which Mangino got the Al Roker surgery and some AM therapy and KU was a perennial power.
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Imagine Memphis having vacated a ring, too!
Just keep doing it. You are there.
I love that image you posted. Thx.
Landen has always had three things that made him worth developing: height, lateral movement, and a sense of where play was going. You can't teach any of them. What he lacked was a matured body, basic big man skills and a big man's territoriality. The body has matured, though still another year of Hudy will likely turn him from matured to seriously meaty. He now has two years to add offensive moves one at a time. He will probably be a solid backup this season. But when he adds the meat and the moves, He is going to be a DOMINANT big man! Regardless, Landen already evidences the thing I most prize in a big man--territoriality. He plays like he owns the paint. It is a temperament. I don't think he is big enough and strong enough not to get his ears pinned back on him by some more talented bigs this season. But he shows that youthful sense of paint ownership that all bigs have to feel before they can grow into actually owning it. He lacked this last season. He is playing with dweebs here. But you have to start dominating somewhere. Jeff Withey proved the same thing when he travelled with AIA. The season after this upcoming one he should be ready to take out a mortgage on the lane.
Gee, I wonder if KU may be very incrementally growing an alternative to ESPN/CBS?
There are 1000 channels after all on my cable, even before getting into another 1000 or so in HD.
Plenty of bandwidth and changing technology for the right way guys to slow grow alternatives to those devoted to the wrong ways, while at the same time taking care of minor sports. :-)
Thx to all. It means something special, when I can still hit a chord that resonates.
@Lulufulu85 Alas, it is not finished. It has turned into a great unruly beast that keeps wanting more. I am laboring now, caught up in some grind it out, and hoping to squirt out into transition sometime soon. But it has turned out to be rather more challenging (and more fun) than I at first expected. Also, I just haven't got the same pop on my fast ball that I used to have. But that is not complaining. I am grateful to still be able to write at all.
OSU
At ISU
OU
At UT
In January when OADs' bodies are saying the season should be just about over, when there are 2.5 months to go, the above stretch could be pretty tough.
Travis will cheap shot us, like the newbies aren't used to.
Fred will run that stuff the kids will have never seen in Stalkerville, IA.
Kruger's Hartman brand of Okie Ball will be our first game, where another team is doing to us what we do to others regarding tempo.
And Barnes in Austin means butcherball away on the heels of 3 tough games.
And a similar stretch of 4 to close out.
Until you stare down the barrel of these stretches, it's easy to shrug off ten titles, but it really is a great sports accomplishment, even if it isn't as memorable as rings.
Go, Bill, go!
Rock Chalk!
ABSOLUTELY THE BEST KU FOOTBALL UNIFORM EVER.
HELL, I WANT A MOTORCYCLE HELMET WITH THAT LOGO.
ADIDAS MUST HAVE HEARD THE RIDICULE OF MOST OF THEIR UNIFORMS AND WENT OUT AND SPENT SOME REAL MONEY ON A SERIOUSLY TALENTED DESIGNER!!!!!!
THIS UNIFORM IS THE ESSENSE OF WHAT KU FOOTBALL SHOULD BECOME.
"Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot,
For one brief, shining moment
That was known as Camelot."
--from the 1960 production of the lerner and Lowe musical "Camelot" directed by Moss Hart and starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton
What made me think of these words now applied mostly to the JFK era?
(Does anyone under 30 even remember the initials now?)
It was a quote by Ed Obannon cited in a recent post by our host: approx. The quote went like this:
"These rules have been in place for a hundred years and there has been no change. Times have changed, the economy has changed, the players themselves have changed, the salaries of the coaches have changed. Everything has changed except for how a player is compensated. And whether [they're paid] while they're in school, or whether it's once their eligibility is up, that part of the game has to change."
I agree with Ed that that part of the game has to change.
And I agree with approx that OBannon's quote had implications…
KU Basketball is the living myth. It goes on so long as KU administrators, coaches, players and fans live it, rather than become seduced by marketing hype and digital simulation into believing it, or worshipping it, or reducing it to the thin veneer that is human logic, or regarding it as an art form, or otherwise crucifying it on the altar of the mind and its abstractions of logic, faith and fantasy and fanaticism.
KU basketball is mind AND body. It is lived. It does what living myth, and only living myth can do: it bridges the desiccating duality. It arcs Lawrencian across the gap. It is lived by us from our first encounters with it. It is lived by us in our decade by decade changes of POV in life. It is lived by us as we die.
All talk of it that does not arise out of living it is mere meaning--not living.
The living myth of KU basketball appears to be the only living myth left in America. It is therefore not only deeply important to us, but perhaps down the road may someday offer some cultural and archaeological significance to anthropologists trying to understand the varieties of human experience in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
The living myth is not James Naismith, or Phog Allen, or Larry Brown, or Roy Williams, or Bill Self, or whomever will follow the remarkable Self one day. It is not Naismith Court, nor Allen Field House, nor the decibel levels, nor the light shows, nor the coaching salaries, nor the OADs, nor the TADs, nor the four year players, nor the walk ons, nor the players that return, nor the reporters that grapple with tradeoffs between access and authenticity, nor the broadcasters that shape bettor's expectations, nor the bloggers, nor the board rats, nor "The Legacy," nor Petro Shoecos, nor Big Gaming, nor the titles, nor the championships, not the total wins, nor any cluster of legendary players, nor anything else you can point to and praise, or loath.
The living myth is the thing beyond words that courses through all of the above. It is the game lived by everyone year after year, since James Naismith put up the first basket on Mt. Oread and called boys in physical education onto a floor and whistled the start of play that has never stopped since.
The living myth is the capillary action in the tree of the game that draws up a portion of our life forces as a sap that makes the tree grow inspite of ourselves.
The living myth IS.
The Obannon suit against the NCAA, and judgement finding players were denied billions made off their likenesses, does not kill the living myth, does not end it. Only we can end it.
But it does change the greatest game ever invented--the game the living myth is embedded in; and that will have consequences.
But it is the game that will change.
And probably forever.
OREADIAN BASKETS
Not every man has baskets at his house
in red October, at crisp-passed Forrestmas.
Oreadian baskets, rim safron, only bright--
brightening the daytime torchlike with the saffron spectra of
Saturnian
rings,
ringed and torchlike, with the blaze of brightness spread orange
down rounding eyelets, hooked, threaded with white net of
chilled day
white-diamond net and the saffron- brightness, Buddhism's
bright-orange phase,
Mercury lamps, burning white blue,
giving off lightness, blue whiteness, as a farm yard's or play
ground’s lamps give off
light,
lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a basket, give me a rim
let me guide my shot through the white, blue light of this saffron
iron, arc the shadows and tenement stairs,
where white is darkened on blueness.even where Carmen Jones
went, just now, from the crisped October
to the sightless realm where lightness was awake upon the rim
and Dorothy Dandridge herself is but a voice
or a lightness, an invisible brightness--in the deeper white blue
of the saffron rim, and pierced with the passion of inviolate
circumference,
among the splendor of lamps of lightness, shedding darkness on the
leather ball and rim.
...
The game will never be the way it was again.
But it will be some way.
And that it will be is, finally, all that matters.
(Note: Oreadian Baskets is a gentle riff on "Bavarian Gentians" by D. H. Lawrence, which I first heard read by a rare and beloved KU Professor Thomas O'Donnell, who died too young, at 57, in 1996 without my knowledge for quite some time and so my grief has been delayed. And that poem you read so beautifully, and not The Road Not Taken," has made all the difference. RIP)
This is the living myth in action.
During what at times appears a reign of terror against the right way guys in college hoops, during a time the Empire appears to strike back for the wrong way, the living myth of KU Basketball is balm in sneaker Gilead.
This is KU Basketball healing and uniting as it carries on.
This is KU taking Roy back in the fold BEFORE he is done recruiting against us, because he appears to be being preyed on at UNC in what appears a power struggle for control of UNC HOOPS SOUL AND REVENUES.
This is THE GREATEST BASKETBALL COACH OUTSIDE OF WOODEN, LARRY BROWN, an old man come back to the greatest game ever invented at SMU and being outrageously snubbed by the NCAA selection committee and losing his star recruit conspicuously and KU Basketball manning up and saying, "look...here...the wronged great one is still recognized here."
This is Ted Owens, the man we wronged, being invited back yet again to continue paying back our debt to him.
This is Bill Self, maybe the one to top them all getting out of his own moment and limelight and being a part of the legacy and the myth.
The living myth of KU Basketball--not the money-- is still everything that once was good about college basketball that could be again.
I only wish one of Dick Harp's descendants would be invited to stand up with these four men to close the circle of men who carried Phog Ball and James' Game beyond Doc Allen.
Summer speccing now seems fraught with too much unknown about other teams' potentials to have much predictive significance. Nevertheless, it would seem very tough to beat UK, when UK's apparent possible future Nike endorsers starting would have had a season under their belts, whereas KU's apparent possible future adidas endorsers starting would be rookies. I am not sure how a coach overcomes seasoned potential endorsement talent with unseasoned potential endorsement talent.
But another way to look at this year's KU team may be to recall Self's comments about his first KU team. In the face of high expectations, when Roy left after reaching the finals, Self said it was unrealistic to think the team could be as good after losing 3 draft choices without adding 3 players as good as those lost.
So while many of our returning players should be better with an another year of experience, as were players returning on Self's first team, the calculus may reduce to this: are Oubre and Alexander better than Wigs and Joel?
On the surface, no way.
But recall Joel sat the last month and Wigs down the stretch appeared to alternate between big numbers in meaningless games like WVU and merchandise protection vs. Stanford.
So if Oubre can play better late than Wigs did against Stanford and Alexander can avoid injury the last month, KU this year could be much better the last month of the season than KU was last season, after not being as good most of the season.
Anything is possible in March.
But winning another conference title will be a real chore, unless the talent level falls way off around the B12.
No.
Football nihilist.
Weiss for 5!
DoubleDD,
You are lifting the curtain on the apparent Wizard(s) of Oz here--the ShoeCos. Your post gives a new angle I had not thought of. I am on the road and so will have to think on it. Rock Chalk!
There are two enduring mysteries.
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How does Sean Penn get such incredible women (Madonna, Robin Wright and Charlize Theron)?
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What length will boot camp be?
@icthawkfan316 and HEM
Physically, Lebron is up here.
Wigs is down here.
Wigs has great, great springs. And he has the best first, second and third steps I have ever seen.
But Lebron is just so much stronger there is no comparison. And Lebron is just as fast and quick. And he started out with a lion's heart that Wigs so far appears to lack entirely.
Lebron struggled his first couple of years in the L, but he was good enough to start and play all season, if I recall correctly. Lebron's was the kind of struggling an already great player goes through entering the L at 18. Lebron truly had an NBA body to start with.
Wigs seems about two years away from an NBA body that can punish anyone. What he has is some NBA grade moves, but you can bet every NBA team will have footage of Wigs getting smashed in the face and doing nothing. And they will have footage of him unwilling to finish. They will show that footage along side of some of his awesome 3 step drives and dunks. They will tell the latter day Ron Artests of the NBA world something like: "Take him out on his first step and there is nothing to worry about. He does not like pain. Let him get moving though, and the kid can be dangerous. Fuggedabout his trey. Sit on his right hand before you hurt him."
Right now, my greatest fear is that Wigs lands with a team with out enforcers; that could well signal an injury shortened season his rookie season.
Whoever gets Wigs, if they don't have an NBA superstar on the team (e.g., Lebron), then they will have to do what LB did for Reggie Miller in Indiana and Iverson in Phillie. He will have to put the ball in Wigs hands to score most plays, and go out and sign a bunch of prison bodies and send them to enforcer school.
Otherwise, that rookie season...
"Mistuh Kurtz, he dead."
--Joseph Conrad
With the caveat that the trade talk appears all rooted in Cleveland apparently having moved into a Nike schema with the signing of Lebron, and the presence of Irving, and adidas seeing zero marketing benefit to piggy backing Wigs with Nike Lebron and Nike Irving, I am sooooooo glad you seized on this assist issue with Andrew, because I harped on this all last season to the point of annoying folks.
I finally resorted to a metaphor/code to save peoples' feeling's. I talked about it as: high ceiling, low foundation.
I realized no one wanted to say anything bad about Wigs, because: a) he was the most glamorous OAD added to our team ever, and b) everyone wanted to see him go UNO in the draft-o.
But assists are just one part of his low foundation and, frankly, the easiest part to fix, if the driver feeding into the assist issue were fixed.
Wigs real killer is his one handed-ness and it is partly responsible for his low assist ratio. He is as one handed as Brandon Rush was, but without Brandon's superb outside touch. I never saw Wigs dribble with his weak hand more than 3 dribbles, and mostly never more than two.
Wigs' defenders always knew where the pass was coming from. They were always sitting on his good hand and daring him to bounce and hook pass with the weak hand, not just daring him to dribble with it. Wigs' athleticism is so off the charts that even with a college defender sitting on his good hand, he can STILL get around most of them with his good hand after a weak fake, or he can go way wide with his weak hand and high dribble 2-3 times and go up. But in the NBA, the guys will probably be able to sit on his good hand and keep him from ever getting around with his good hand, and with the man/zone hybrid played in the L, the move wide with his weak hand will not be open at all.
As a result, Wigs like Brandon cannot really play championship level ball at the 2 spot in the NBA out of the box, and unlike Brandon, Wigs lacks the big-boned frame to play the 3 as physically as NBA 3s that cannot be dangerous from trey have to play.
Without putting too fine a point on it, Wigs is a project.
What he has--athleticism-- is a 10 out of 10.
What he lacks--ambidexterity, assistance, a trey, plus muscle--he probably scores 3-5 on ambidexterity, 1 on assistance 1, 5-6 on trey, and 5-6 on muscle.
His body will mature into a muscular and awesome mature man's physique probably within two years, maybe five at the outside. So that is just a waiting game.
But the one-handedness, the related assists issue, and the trey are issues one just can never say for certain what level of proficiency a player can eventually attain. Jordan was mediocre as a trey shooter for quite a long time, then the second most driven player in the history of the game behind Bill Russell, willed himself to three years of greatness as a trey shooter in the NBA. But then as his legs aged, and the we are and tear built up, and perhaps as his teammates abilities altered, he returned to being a merely satisfactory trey gunner.
It may sound trite to say this, but whatever happens with Wigs career is going to be hugely dependent on how driven he is to become one of the great ones. There is no doubt that he has the equipment at an early age to set his sights on this quest. But many have had a lot of equipment. Few have the furious and relentless drive to keep getting better for as long as Wigs' will have to in order to join the great ones.
It might have been much better for Wigs to have gone 2-5 in the draft; then he might have entered with a chip, as slayr likes to say.
Now he has to enter the NBA and will not develop a chip for a season, or two, after getting the hell beaten out of him physically by grown men--all of whom have a chip, or they wouldn't even last in the NBA.
Having said all of the above, what makes Wigs particularly hard to assess is that IMHO, Wigs appeared to play 1/2 to 2/3 capacity last season at KU with a few exceptions, so assessing him is akin to assessing a very good gambler across the table in a game of seven card stud, or whatever they call it, where five cards are up and two are down. You can evaluate the five up cards, as I have done above, but you cannot evaluate the two hole cards.
I believe Wigs is a LOT better than what we saw last season.
But I also believe he has the basic flaws in his game that I have enumerated above; this is a strange combination of strengths and weaknesses he possesses.
The greatest of the great players, i.e., the guys that do the most BOTH as individuals AND win the most championships have no acute holes in their games.
For example, Bill Russell was not as talented overall as Wilt Chamberlain, but Bill had no acute holes in his game as a center at that time in the NBA. Wilt was stronger in every way, but he had the acute hole of 50% free throw shooting. Underneath all the talk about who had the better teammates and coaching, which can be debated, remains Wilt's achilles heel--free throw shooting.
If Andrew can fix his holes, and operate with competitive greatness, as Wooden labeled it, then there seems little doubt he could be THE great one of this decade of players entering the game.
Not if not.
Go, Andrew, go.
Miscellaneous...
Wigs' trade appears entirely Petro-SHOECO driven. GM = Nike. Lebron = Nike. Consonants = Nike. Irving = Nike. Nike = Nike. Wigs = adidas.
BGreene = most improved player!
Frank and Claire Underwood just seduced their Secret Service man in HOUSE OF CARDS!!! Help me, help me, help me, I think I'm going insane!!!!!
Thx for that link!
Imagine what they make on the Petro-Wear to be able justify that marketing fee!
The ShoeCos are coming. The ShoeCos are coming!
Should donors to college athletic departments be allowed to own interests in casinos?
Should college athletic departments be allowed to sign advertising contracts with casinos the way they sign contracts with Petro-ShoeCos and other businesses?
Should college athletic departments be allowed to hold interests in casinos?
Should college sports arenas have betting kiosks?
Just trying to get a feel for board rats' sense of the tolerable threshold of college sports' involvement with the gaming industry.
@JayHawkFanToo or anyone else...
Do you think owners of NBA franchises owning interests in casinos and perhaps online bettiing portals will alter the risks of gambling exploits of professional basketball in the years to come? Or have they already been altered as much as they are going to be?
I appreciate that, slayr, no offense taken. But really I'm not a dot. I am just like you, only without as much hoops talent. I'm just with you in the Greek chorus of KUBUCKETS trying remotely through the give and take of online discourse to piece together what is happening to the greatest game ever invented. We both want the game to look after the interests of all the players, because we grew up in a time long ago making moves toward somewhat more social, educational, and wealth distribution equity, and we have seen that time eclipsed by something else that introduces a new distribution that makes us a bit concerned for many of the players and sometimes for the quality of play.
I personally don't much care what regime the powers that be industrializing the game decide upon, so long as it is transparent enough ensure accountability and looks after the players and coaches education and life needs rather than exploiting them and tossing them aside. No system can be perfect but some can be a lot more regressive than others.
My philosophy at this point in such discourse is to try to understand what goes on by formulating hypotheses, hope others can advance or refute them, thus perhaps enabling new hypotheses, and have some fun, rather than pass judgement. Industrialization, if I were even correct in that hypothesis, would be an evolving process and the last word might take decades to be written. I find legislature, lawyers and the judiciary capable in those regards. They, not us, decide, as our representatives and agents, what is legal. We just get to be fans trying to hypothesize what, how, and why things are evolving as they appear to be. I sense board rats get a little too serious about all this stuff at times. I mean anything is possible in online discourse. You and I could even turn out to be the only two aliases attached to identities on the site. Or only one of us. Or even neither of us!!! 😄
As always, good to hear from you.
Rock Chalk!
@jaybate 1.0
Back fill here. 😄
Nice back peddle. 😄
I actually don't think about this much at all. I just notice a considerable amount of posting either about it, or about issues that appear perhaps to gain more clarity through recalling the Petro-ShoeCos participation in the basketball industry.
One of the things I believe may slightly differentiate (for better or for worse) my takes is that I have gone back and read some of the muckraking books from the 1990s that to some degree were reporting about the 1950s-1990. These books, if they have any legitimacy, establish a long steady migration of basketball from compromised amateur sport to what I now call, for lack of a better term, a contemporary basketball industry. It happened, if the old books were legitimate, slowly and incrementally starting almost from the origins of amateurism, certainly well before you played. If one views basketball today as a much more advanced stage of migration to a sports industry, then all of this seems much less startling and shocking, even if it has its unfair and perhaps tragic aspects. The greatest game ever invented has slowly become industrialized with all the good and bad and in between that suggests.
I don't really know more than the little that I post. I don't know if industrialization is good or bad for sport. I just believe that it appears to have been evolving for a long time. If you look at what happened to other human activities that were industrialized, then you can have some informative idea about where basketball is head, at least that's my hypothesis so far.
Interesting stuff. I didn't even realize Phil was with the Knicks. From Nike's POV, burying Wigs in Tundraville might make good tactical and strategic sense. And Melo and Lebron would make a much better transcept type team than Love and Lebron would make an in-out type team.
On the other hand, NYC media could be very tough for Wigs to grow up with as an NBA PLAYER. The best trade off of market size and market friendliness would be a Texas franchise.
But there are risks any way. The best thing for Wigs is to get with a great coach/organization ASAP. Wigs' posse got him to Self. My guess is they will get him to a great NBA COAC/organization setting too. Phil certainly qualifies as a great. The Knicks were great once and could be again.
Good diamonds can't look their best without good setting!
@JayHawkFanToo and @JAF
Thanks for responding. I raised this issue hypothetically and in the abstract, after reading that the Cav's owner, Dan Gilbert, or maybe one of his organizations, also reputedly has some kind of interest in several casinos and an online lending business. I am not suggesting Dan Gilbert looks at his investments in the way I hypothesized. But I do wonder how many NBA owners have interests direct, or indirect, in casinos these days?
Curious why you use the C-word with Embiid signing with adidas?
Using the C-word implies to me something nefarious or illegal.
There seems to me no illegal conspiracy with the activities of the Petro-ShoeCos.
Everything they appear to be doing that I can recall remote observation of through media appears to be legal.
It appears one of the things that may be making it hard for board rats to analyze meaningfully the evolving role of the Petro-ShoeCos in hoops and in sports generally is an apparent tendency to assume the Petro-ShoeCos evolving role as suggestive of operating improperly or illegally.
Use of the C-word appears to suggest something illegal could be happening and this IMHO discourages constructive strategic and tactical analysis about the role Petro-ShoeCos may actually be evolving toward.
I operate from the assumption the Petro-ShoeCos have good legal counsel and do nothing in this regard intentionally illegal, including not conspiring illegally.
Instead I hypothesize the Petro-ShoeCos as a large, significantly influential player in college and pro basketball industries with an evolving role; this appears to be where I differ from some. Some appear to believe that if the Petro-ShoeCos were to play an increasingly influential role in sports industries that it must necessarily be a somehow an illegal conspiratorial role. I believe this is an assumption that makes it very difficult for board rats to think clearly and objectively about the probable actual evolving role Petro-ShoeCos are playing in re-shaping the sports industry.
Looking for conspiracies is often a way to mistake the forest for the trees IMHO.
Plus I vaguely recall reading somewhere or other that military-intel propagandists and psychological operations specialists were at one time actually schooled to use the C-word as a means of redirecting mass media focus, hijacking thread discourse and smearing messengers in public discourse. The frequent apparent assumption and use of the C-word appears perhaps to have significantly "trickled down" into common usage--if so an unfortunate consequence.
So I always like to make clear I so far see no illegal conspiracy in what appears to be a significantly evolving role of Petro-ShoeCos in the college basketball industry.
I approach the role of large private donors similarly. They appear to have a significantly evolving role in re-shaping parts of the college basketball industry. But it appears they have able legal counsel and appear so far not to be involved in any illegal donative activities like illegal conspiracies.
Starting from this assumption frees one to analyze and hypothesize about what they appear to be doing, rather than starting from an assumption they are doing something wrong and/or illegally conspiring.
Starting from the illegal C-word appears to direct us into asking the wrong questions.
And as Thomas Pynchon reputedly said, "if they get us to ask the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
Rock Chalk!!
Why would adidas want their marquis endorsement player playing in Lebron's Nike shadow? Doesn't make a lick of sense?
Going long has become normalized.
I can't keep with our prolific posters any more!! So: I'm staying.
Suppose you owned an NBA FRANCHISE, plus a number of gambling casinos (maybe with online betting portals) in the state where the franchise was located, and an online lending business that could perhaps help bettors finance their betting with collateralized credit lines. What roster composition would you want to optimize betting? Would it simply be the best team you could put on the floor, or the biggest star, or do you want to fill the roster out so there were individual players that have targeted appeal to the various demographic cohorts of bettors you are trying to get to bet on your team? In short, what kind of team and roster composition tends to attract the most bets that you do not have to pay out on? Or do you just want the most aggregate betting regardless of level of payout? Anyone have a clue?
To reiterate the hypothesis: Wiggins' posse and adidas want out of the Cleveland-Lebron-Nike complex and that is why trading for Love resurfaced.
Suggestion: you start a new shoe brand holding company called "Globally Untraceable Bailouts Petro-Ware" with incorporation in Lichtenstein and a P.O. Box in Vail, CO. Then I snail mail you a proposal to sponsor KUBUCKETS 2.0!!!!!! 😄
Whatever you decide, I want to thank you for this online experiment. It has been remarkable and greatly appreciated by many!
Hypothesis: Wigs and adidas want out of Cleveland and LBJ's shoe market shadow. Next.
Backfill here. 😃