Some Thoughts About NBA Teams on November 22, 2013

Teams in the NBA fall into four categories: Competitors, Over-Achievers, Under-Achievers, and Non-Achievers. Competitive teams are those that have a realistic chance to go far in the playoffs. Over-Achieving teams are those that have limited personnel but are working hard as a team and could surprise, but in the end don't have a chance of going beyond the first round of the playoffs. The Underachieving Teams are the ones with reasonably strong personnel, but not playing to their potential for one reason or another. In my experience, underachieving teams usually don't get it together. Non-achieving Teams are just that, weak. They are weak for a number of reasons: marginally talented players, players who are quite talented but don't play as a team, ineffective coaches, ineffective administration, ineffective ownership or team in the midst of rebuilding, the Magic and Celtics for example. These teams will remain at the bottom of their divisions throughout the season.

Competitors: LA Clippers, Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies, Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls. However, these team should not be too caught up in their greatness or one of the over-achieving teams will surprise them.

Over-achievers: Dallas Mavericks, Philadelphia 76ers, Atlanta Hawks, Minnesota Timberwolves, Portland Blazers. Charlotte Bobcats, Toronto Raptors. Each of these teams are probably one solid draft pick or strong trade away from becoming a Competitive Team. Hats off to these teams, especially the Bobcats.

Under-Achievers: Brooklyn Nets, Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets. On paper, lots of star power, but. . . Get your s--t together fellows or you're going to be an embarrassment.

Non-Achieviers: LA Lakers, Sacramento Kings, New Orleans Pelicans, Utah Jazz, Orlando Magic, Washington Wizards, Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavs, Boston Celtics. Something is fundamentally wrong with these teams. Such as: they lack the right personnel, good coaching, imaginative administration, inspired ownership. They maybe on their way up (rebuilding, Magic and Celtics for example) or on their way down, (teams that don't have a clue), but you won't see any Non-Achievers in the playoffs this season.

The Winter Olympics are coming up. I've been watching the U.S. Curling Trials on TV. It's more exciting than watching the Bucks play the Cavs. Here's a poem I wrote about the sport of Curling.

Curling by Tom Meschery

Let's hear it for curling, a sport in which
two brooms, like blockers in the NFL
(I"m thinking Packers, Greenbay in the snow)
lead the running back, a guy named Stone
(not exceptionally fast, but relentless)
down the icy field; masked fans in parkas,
sipping from flasks. They're watching curling
on local ice, while I'm enjoying building
this extended metaphor, thinking that Milton,
had he a sense of humor, which there's no
evidence he possessed, might have appreciated.

My wife also enjoys curling. "What's not to like
about a sport played with brooms?" she asks.
"The ice needs cleaning, and the players
are only doing what any good wife would do."
She's talking to me while dusting,
which comes before vacuuming, a rule
in her sport that must never be broken. 

Saturday November 16th

This morning's sports section provided lots of food for thought. Lots to chew on, lots to digest, but I'm not swallowing what Matt Barnes said; "Obviously, the N word I used is a word that's used on the court, is used in the locker room, is used by most of my friends and family." Family? Really? You mean mom and dad use it? How about uncles, aunts? I'm having a hard time believing this. In the locker room? Used by friends? Can it possibly be as common to use the N word as Barnes makes it out to be? Barnes makes it sound like a generational kind of thing.

I listened to Charles Barkley at half time of an NBA game go off about how the media (and whites) simply don't get how black people use the word amongst themselves. On the same half time show I listened to Shaq quasi agree with Charles. Come on, Shaq, make up your mind. Later I watched Isiah Thomas on NBA Gametime answer Barkley with an unequivocal No. No! Never! The n word should never be used. According to Thomas, it is a word that is historically far too loaded to ever be used in a comradely way among African Americans. Thomas rightly brought up that Martin Luther King and Malcom X would never have used the word. But, perhaps, these Icons of African American history no longer mean the same to a younger, hipper generation of black men of which Barnes is a spokesman.

What do I think? I'm not a virgin. I've been in locker rooms and on the streets and playgrounds and have heard the word even back in my day used just as Charles described it. It never failed to make me feel unhappy, uncomfortable, and unclean. I would have felt the same if my Japanese friends would have playfully called each other japs. Or my Chinese friends called each other chinks. Or my Hispanic friends called each other beaners or spics. Or my Jewish friends called each other kikes. Poles, polacks; Italians, wops. I can go on and on. So, I ask myself, why does the Hip Hop generation of African Americans feel the word Nigga is ok? Ugh! Typing it just now made me cringe. All I see when I hear or see this word is centuries of evil, exploitation, and racial inequality. (Isiah said he saw black men hanging from trees)

But reactions like Isiah Thomas' must not be the case with the younger generation of African Americans. To me, such relinquishing of history is bewildering. All I can think of is it must have something to do with tone. I'm reminded of one of the opening scenes in the novel The Virginian by Owen Wister set in the wild west when the Virginian faces down his enemy, Trampas who has just called him a son of a bitch. The Virginian whips his pistol out, lays it on the table and says, "When you call me that, pahdna, smile."

If tone is what matters, there must be a whole lot of smiling going. As for me, I'm a white man (with some Tartar and Jewish blood mixed in) who knows where he stands vis a vis the n word. I can never utter it.

Also in today's sports, food for thought: I know it's only early in the NBA season, but isn't it revelatory that the three teams that hired Coach Gregg Popovitch's assistants are doing so well? In the same breath, let's hear it for the Indiana Pacers who are making the word Defense and team play fashionable. I do not mean to slight the Miami Heat. I have never subscribed to the notion that the Big Three were responsible for winning the two NBA championships. The entire Heat team play a rugged, in your face, type of defense. And, as far as I could tell, would have lost both championships had it not been for the inspired play of Battier and Allen.

Team matters. It's all that matters. The Warriors get it. The other strong teams get it. Teams that don't get it, better wise up. From this morning's sports: Roy Hibbert talking about well the Pacers were doing. "Some guys on this team before (in the past) were just trying to get a paycheck and go home and then chilling on the beach and sipping mojitos or something like that. That's not us." Am I impressed or am I impressed?

The following poem is about bull riders, a sport that doesn't have much to do with basketball, but the advice in it has a lot to do with how to play any sport.

The Bull Rider's Advice   by David Allen Evans. 

What I'm saying is
you can't take this thing light
and there's no saddle to sit in

you can do it one of two ways
as far as I'm concerned
if you want to do it

you can get on just for the ride
take hold of the rope like it was 
any old rope and pray for a quick 8 seconds
and no spinning

or you can wrap your fist into his back
so deep he knows you plan to stay awhile
dig in with your whole soul
until the sonofabitch is sick of you
and lets up

What I'm saying is 
it's up to you

Bullying

I'm in the process of finishing editing my recent writing project a Young Adult novel about bullying. As an ex high school teacher, I know how wide-spread bullying is among young people. With the intro of social media, that kind of behavior has increased dramatically. Now we not only have physical bullying, we have cyber-bullying. There's bullying going on, not only in our schools, but on all levels of society. We just have different names for it: Hazing, sexual harassment, intimidation, etc. So, I wasn't surprised to read about the bullying going on with the Miami Dolphins of the NFL. I'm glad to read that Johnathan Martin is bringing charges against Richie Incognito. (incognito: disguised or concealed identity, according to Webster's) From my experience with bullies, all of them are at their core concealing they are COWARDS. By bullying, Richie has probably been concealing this part of his identity for a long time. Incognito is what he is. What else is he hiding? He may change, he may not. It is highly probably that he will remain a big bully for the rest of his life.

But what of Johnathon Martin? What is it about him that he attracts a bully like Incognito? Martin is by no means a small man, nor is he weak, nor does he lack intelligence, nor courage. It takes a good deal of courage to play in the NFL. Why, for goodness sake, has he put up with this behavior from Incognito and some of his teammates for this long? Weaker, smaller, vulnerable kids, I understand how they find it difficult, near to impossible to fight back, frightened to raise the issue with authorities. I understand the history of women being exploited by men (bosses) in the workplace, the military being one of those oft repeated workplaces. But in Martin's case, I'm having a problem understanding why he didn't kick the hell out of Incognito. Or, at least try. There's an old expression I learned a long time ago: He who gets the first punch in, has the first punch in. Okay, okay, Johnathon, you probably did it the right and legal way. But you missed out on another possible and very satisfying way to stop being bullied called the playground, down and dirty way.

And what about the coaching staff and administration. Miami has a head coach and numerous assistants, trainers, locker room personnel. Are you telling me that not one of them had any idea of what was going on?
Give me a break! If the GM didn't know, he should have. If the coach and his staff didn't know, they should have. The owner should fire the lot of them.

I'll probably take some flak for this blog, but I have no sympathy for bullies. In another history, they would have been recruited by the Nazi to run their death camps. I do not believe this is an exaggeration. There are people who love to hurt people. I wish it wasn't so.

On a lighter note in the NFL, aren't we all cheering for Alex Smith, a decent man and a damn good QB, as he leads the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs. The universe is rewarding him.

Here's a football poem from my upcoming book - Sweat: New and Selected Poems About Sports

Why I Never Played Football  by Tom Meschery

It's not that I lacked courage.
I was big and weighed enough to make
a decent tight end or with a little work
an offensive lineman or a fullback.
What I couldn't see myself doing
was getting dirty, playing in mud
or freezing in snow which back then,
when I was young, is what you had 
to endure. Perhaps these days
with covered stadiums I'd think
differently. Still, there was bound
to be more blood playing football,
yours or somebody else's, than
playing another sport. Golf
for example. See how clean
those guys are out on the links,
how civilized in their cardigans,
in their nestly pressed trousers?

Camaraderie

One of the certainties about life I've learned over the years - and there are not many - is that the world is governed by IRONY. The results of irony can be both good or bad. Recently, I've been experiencing one of the good ironies. For the last few months, I've been attending a gathering of ex California Bears athletes, mostly basketball players, many of whom were part of the Cal Bears team that won the 1959 NCAA Final Four and, here-in lies the irony, the same team that beat my team, the Saint Mary's Gaels in the Elite 8 ruining our chances for a crack at the championship.

Why am I breaking bread with many of my old rivals? Because I was invited by two of the players from that renowned Pete Newell team, Bill McClintock and Ned Averbuck. Tht too might be considered an irony. Just typing the name McClintock makes my ribs hurt with the honest pain of competition. I attended the first lunch with trepidation, not knowing what to expect, and drove away knowing I would be back. These men are my fellow Bay Area jocks. At each luncheon, we introduce ourselves and say a few words about our current lives. At our age, sometimes health problems are spoken of, but mostly, we talk about projects, about grandchildren, about sports in general, today's game sometimes. It's witty nostalgia and cogent observation. Smart guys all.

Recently, jocks from other colleges have been turning up. Mike Farmer (USF and NBA Hawks fame) has been coming. At the last lunch Kenny Flowers (Lowell High Prep Hall of Fame and USC starting guard) showed up. Flowers was my hero when I was in grade school. Dave Newhouse, legendary sports writer of the Oakland Tribune is a regular. Rene Hererias, the great Saint Ignatius High School and University of California Bears coach (he succeeded Newell) attends. After every lunch, I drive home feeling good that we celebrated our time as athletes, our camaraderie.

On another subject: the passing of Bill Sharman and Walter Bellamy. Bill was hired by the Warriors after Franklin Miuli, the Warrior owner, fired Alex Hannum. Hannum was a great coach and well-liked. Bill was not as well-liked, but he was an excellent coach. He took us to the NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76er coached by? Think of irony and fill in the blank. If you said Alex Hannum, you are on your way to understanding how irony governs our lives. Alex and the 76ers beat us in the 6th game. As for Walt Bellamy, center for Chicago, he won Rookie of the Year in 1961, the year I also was drafted by the NBA. Walter never saw a shot he didn't like, often shooting jumpers from the corner - 3 pointers in today's game. He played D like a matador. He was a funny man. He talked to himself during games, always referring to himself by his first name. "Walter doesn't get a break." "Referees don't like Walter." "Walter's going to the free throw line." He should have been a fiction writer.

In honor of Bill Sharman, a short poem by Edward Hirsch

Coaches

". . . a constellation of players
Shinning under his favorite word,
Execution . . ."

Should Division I Universities and Colleges Pay Student Athletes?

This month my wife Melanie, and I have been driving her grandson and his girlfriend to Saint Mary's College, my Alma Mater, on college visits. Both kids were duly impressed, and why not? Saint Mary's provides one of the best all around, personal, community oriented educations in the country...Suffice it to say that after the presentations ended, my wife was ready to enroll, and I was ready to re-enroll, although I doubt they would see fit to offer me a scholarship the way they did in 1957.

The one downer of these visitations was discovering what the cost of attending a private college is today. I haven't thought about tuition since my kids were looking at colleges back in the eighties. It was high then, but nothing like it is today. Saint Mary's charges a whopping $58,000 per year tuition, room and board. If a student did not receive a dime of financial aid that amounts to $232,000 over 4 years. You could buy many of the condos in our area for that price. Saint Mary's College is not alone--all private colleges around the country charge similar prices.

For example Santa Clara, another private Catholic University costs $59, 589 per year. UCLA, a public university, costs $32,415; Chico State University costs $24,604 which = $98,416 at the end of 4 years. (We're talking a state university system school here, folks.) And just to be sure you don't think you can leave the state and get a break, out-of-state tuition room and board at the University of Mississippi will cost a student from California $27,294 per year or $199,176 after 4 years. Of course, you might believe living in Oxford, the same town in which William Faulkner lived and wrote, is worth the bucks.

What are all these facts about? Between thinking about the outrageous cost of higher education in this country and the ongoing controversy over whether scholarship athletes should be paid for their efforts on the fields of sports, I am reassessing my previous position. I was pro.

Now, I'm not so sure. I'm finding myself less impressed by the argument that scholarship athletes are being exploited because the universities are racking in the millions off the efforts of their athletes. I find myself thinking more about the middle class parents in our country who are just wealthy enough that their kids don't qualify for financial aid and don't have the money to pay the exorbitant cost of today's tuition, room and board (Imagine those parents having more than one kid of college age). It seems to me that the athletes need to be more appreciative of what they're getting in return for their services: Play a sport you love and get paid a free education. Sounds reasonable to me, considering starting annual salaries for teachers in any state fall below what it costs to go to Stanford for one semester.

My daughter and her husband fall into this middle class category. When I told her the costs of a private university education for a year, she said, that even if they could somehow afford it, she would not send her child to such a school as a matter of principal. There is no way I can disagree with her. And if things keep going the way they are, public higher education will soon also be out of the reach of most Americans.

Addendum:  Stipends for scholarship athletes should increase because studying and practicing make it nearly impossible to hold down a job. I'm talking about ALL student athletes, not only Football, Basketball, and Baseball players.

I don't blog much about baseball, but it is World Series time, so here's a terrific poem by Halvard Johnson

The Extra -Inning Ballgame

Wanting things to go on forever,
yet craving the apocalypse.
Reading the last few pages at one word a minute.
Wanting to teeter forever at the brink of the abyss,
and loving every minute of it.

The solid single lashed over second.
A shortstop's arm, just long enough to catch it.