Yesterday on television, I watched the primo director of the PGA talking about the newly formed LIV sometime after it started and had convinced some ot the PGA's elite players to jump ship. For Big Bucks, needless to say as every sports fan knows. (Phil Mickelson received $200 million, Dustin Johnson, $97 million and Bruce Koepka $69 million dollars.) He didn't waste time to remind the golfing world that this league - the LIV - was solely sponsored by the Saudi government, a government that supported the twin towers bombers and routinely murders its own people. He didn't say it but the message was clear, the money these players were receiving was stained by blood. The league itself was bloody. I remember back then how appreciative the World Trade Center survivors and victims' families were for the PGA's stance.
Yesterday, those same survivors and victims' families were betrayed. The PGA announced that it would be merging with the LIV. which is to say they will be partners with terrorists and killers. Phil Mickelson stated joyously that it was an amazing day. Yes, Phil, amazing it is that GREED ounce again triumphs over honor, but it is by no means joyful. It is sad and dishonest and unpatriotic. And you have the audacity to call it joyous. Just as the past president our country Donald Trump has the audacity to allow Saudi sponsored golf to be played on his golf courses. Just as the PGA now has the audacity to provide the Saudi government with a world public relations coup. Shame on the PGA.
Let's be clear, I have no problem with competing leagues. That's fair business practice and we've seen it happen often in the United States. What I object to strenuously is with a league owned by the Saudi government. As most Americans did, on 9/11/2001, I watched Saudi nurtured pilots steer their deadly planes into the Twin Towers in the heart of New York City. Unless the Saudi government divests its entire ownership interests in the LIV, I will never watch PGA golf again. I would hope all Americans to similarly pledge.
THE NBA FINAL. Now to something truly joyous: basketball. The Heat and the Nuggest are tied. This is a surprise to me. I would have thought the Nuggets would have dominated on the Mile High home court. As it turned out the Heat had other plans. I do recall for responding to some Athletic Writers that the only chance the Heat have lies not with their two stars, Butler and Adebayo but with Vincent, Straus and Martin. I like being right. I do, however, add that Adebayo played the last two games like he was better than Anthony Davis, not a less talented version of AD. He played the entire 50 by 90 feet of the court and Jokic, as great as he is, and his help D, had trouble finding him. I still believe the Nuggets will win, but it is possible it will take 7 games. Here, however, in closing, is a question to ponder. Are these two games of Adebayo an aberration or a new norm? The Heat's centers inconsistent offensive highs and lows have alwasys mystified me. What Heat fans can hope for is that this is the year, in these Finals, that Bam finally internalizes how talented he truly is.
In honor of the NBA Finals, I offer this poem I wrote about my beloved Dubs.
One small change and the line begins: Good luck,
Curry’s three float through the sky of the arena
reminding me of a lesson in geometry:
An arc is a segment of the circumference
of the circle – from foot (the flat plane of release)
that travels in silent degrees over the moon.
That it drops into the hoop is a matter
both of mathematics and imagination.
I am watching this arc with my arm in a sling
having had my shoulder replaced with titanium,
a science of a lesser degree than the one
Curry, and his teammate, Thompson,
use to turn mathamatics into a sport.
As far as my titanium shoulder will allow,
I raise my arm to salute the Splash Brothers
and their teammates, three out of five,
Bogut, Barnes, and Green
and all the other players off the bench,
no small part of the equation called teammates.
And raise it up again through pain
to honor the others: players and coaches,
Gentry, Adams, and Kerr for his coaching
that were it not intense, looks much like joy.
Something so old inside me called desire
yearns to play again, to shake off years,
travel through the television screen
and be six-six again, called undersized
like Draymond Green snatching rebounds,
playing beyond our skills because we will it,
because we know that timing gives us wings.
And wherever they are, the old Warriors,
Nate and Rick, Al and Jeff, I wonder, if like me,
they’re watching these new Warriors, Dubs,
seeing how luck, timing, and the stars triangulate.
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