Steve Kerr

Congratulations to the Warriors for selecting a smart basketball mind to replace Mark Jackson, who I never thought possessed a particularly smart basketball mind, not dumb by any means, but nothing that had me standing up on the edge of my seat like the cartoon movie critic, clapping and cheering.

 Jackson did a good job for the Warriors, but good is not excellent. As a retired English teacher, I'd give Jackson a solid B. However, what the Warriors need is a coach who will earn an A. Kerr might be that guy.

I only hope that Coach Kerr understands the significance of Coach Phil Jackson's choice of assistant coaches when Phil started his first season with the Chicago Bulls by wisely selecting Tex Winters and Johnny Bach, two of the brightest basketball coaches in the business with tons of roundball experience.

I've already used this excerpt from a longer poem by Edward Hirsch, but I'll use it again, since it is profound and is at the heart of good coaching.

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

Mark Jackson.

I see in the sports news that the Warrior players support Mark Jackson as rumors have been floating around that his job is on the line. Warrior administration should take these player endorsements seriously, but not too seriously. From what I've seen of the Warriors the last three seasons, I have no problem believing that Jackson is a good coach. Note, that I did not say a great coach. No doubt good coaches can become great coaches. Sometimes it takes a while to figure things out. In Mark Jackson, one needs reminding, while he is clearly on the hot seat, that he had no experience coaching on any level before he was hired to perform on the highest level, a mere three years ago and may require some more time before reaching his coaching potential. There have been a lot of coaches that started without any prior coaching experience: Lenny Wilkens, for example, had to suffer losing in Portland before he won a championship in Seattle. It took Jerry Sloan a long time to turn out a winning team. Larry Brown's early teams, the Carolina Cougars and Denver Nuggets (ABA/NBA) played well (like the Warriors) but never won.

So, what is it about Jackson's coaching that troubles me? First: Inconsistent defense and what seems to me a lack of a solid defensive strategy. Jackson came in preaching D. He needs to walk his talk.  It's not that the Warriors don't play D, it's that they don't play D consistently. The team's emphasis, as in the past under Don Nelson, remains on the offense, not to the same silly degree as under Nelson, thank god, but still wearisomely there as the Warrior's approach to the game, i.e: let's get up and down the court and out score our opponents. Second: Turnovers. This speaks for itself, a team can't turn the ball over as much as the Warriors do, and expect to win big. Okay, with as much offense as the Warriors have, there's a good chance they'll via for a playoff spot every year. But can they make it to the Western Division Finals? To the NBA Finals. Win the NBA title.

If a team doesn't value the ball and does not play smart aggressive defense, it can only succeed to a modest level, never to greatness.

Klay Thompson recently said, "I love playing for coach. He makes it so fun to go to work everyday. . ." I wonder if any of the San Antonio Spurs have fun at practices? I wonder if the Celtic practices under Doc Rivers were fun. Could Pat Riley's players (Miami and LA Lakers) say they had fun at practices? I'm thinking of all the great coaches: Doctor Jack Ramsey, Phil Jackson, Red Aurebach, Bill Sharman, Alex Hannum. Having played for Sharman and Hannum, I can assure you that practices were not fun, instructive and exhausting, yes, but almost never FUN.

What is the one persistent thread that all great coaches possess? They set the bar high and hold their players accountable for mistakes.

Could it be that to reach the next level and head for greatness, the Warrior players need to have less Fun?

It's not surprising to me that in teaching, on any level, from elementary through college, when students are asked to name their favorite teachers, the easiest teachers, the "fun" teachers were never the ones selected. The teachers they remember as the best were always the ones who demanded the most, teachers they respected, but did not necessarily like.

This blog may sound like a criticism of Coach Mark Jackson. It's not, not entirely. Under his leadership, the Warriors are far more competitive than they have been in recent years. That is to Jackson's credit. But the bar must be higher. Both he and his players have to jump higher to hurdle that bar, and that will take hard, tireless, work, not fun.

Who needs fun in the NBA anyway? I'll take a championship over fun any day.

Let's hear it for J.B. Holmes, having recovered from brain surgery and numerous physical injuries, he won the Wells Fargo Championship. Great shot of his wife planting a $1,242,000 kiss on her husband in this morning's sports page.

Also a nice article about Gregg Popovich teaching WNBA All-Star Becky Hammon about coaching. Are we talking a female NBA coach in the future?

A poem about golf by me from my latest book of Poetry: Sweat: New and Collected Poems About Sports

Confession

To George and Gary,my teammates and golfers
and all other friends that I've bad-mouthed
for playing a sport I ridiculed, I apologize.
I'm older now. I have learned to appreciate
a sport played in silence, where the slightest
sound from the gallery is frowned upon, where,
if it were possible, birds would be forbidden
to sing while a player is teeing off or measuring
a putt. Gentlemen, I'm no longer enamored
of crowd noises, the bellowing of athletes
drawing attention to themselves, the circus
acts at half-time, rockets firing into the sky
at football games, of loud music, loud fans
rising around and around the stadium
like giant second hands. I yearn for the peace
of grassy dog-legs right or left, the silent
sandtraps, wind whispering through the trees.

Why Are We So Astonished?

Donald Sterling has been an out-of- the- closet Racist all his life, so why didn't the NBA do something about him long ago? Could it possibly be that Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Coach Doc Rivers and other African Americans employed by Stirling never heard even the slightest rumors about their boss? Didn't Elgin Baylor warn the general public and the NBA about Sterling's "Plantation Mentality" years ago? And, what in God's name, was the Southern California Chapter of the NAACP thinking that it was going to honor Sterling with a Life Time Achievement Award? Is this the same Sterling who wouldn't allow people of color to rent his apartments?

Talk about bizzare. This man has been a public bigot all his life and only now are we coming to grips with him.

Our country, in so many ways a great country, is still a long way away from racial equality. It has been a state by state slog. We tell yourselves the coasts do better about race, then a guy like Sterling raises his slimy head. How many Sterlings are there left in the United States? Way more than we'd like to think, I'm afraid.

When will racial prejudice end? I don't know, but I'm sure that at least the next three generations, starting with Sterling's generation, people in their 80's and 70's and the two following generations (my wife's and the baby boomers) must die off before the X generation has a chance to make the world color blind.

We human beings will be color blind to race only when we look at each other's skin color the way portrait painters do. They pay more attention to undertones, chroma, high lights and shadows than the skin's primary color, which is obvious. And all color is beautiful.

Adam Silver's tenure as commissioner of the NBA will be decided by how quickly and how forcefully he acts in resolving the Donald Sterling fiasco. If he prevaricates even slightly, he might as well resign.

So, as this grotesque Sterling story swirls around us, here is a poem I wrote for one of the great African American players of all time, Hall of Fame center, Hakeem Olajuwon of the Houston Rockets.

Hakeem Olajuwon

    Aka, Hakeem the Dream

In Africa each morning practice starts
with warm-ups. The youngest on the team,
perhaps sixteen, always the first waiting for me,
sits in the thin shade below the backboard,
reading the latest article about Hakeem.
We stretch ham-strings, then slow jog
around the court. He keeps pace, all the while
talking about The Dream. "Dis doc," he says,      *Listen up
"With The Dream we would defeat Senegal
and be champions of West Africa.
Que pensez vous, entraineur? What do I think?     *What do you think coach?
I can't think about anything other than the red
and smoky sun rising over the opposite basket,
the heat already sweating my shirt, and how
the rains suddenly begin half way through practice.
I shag his jump shots, the ones he swears
are like Hakeem's. He says he too will attend
The University of Houston, later play in the NBA.
"Vous m'assistez?" But his shots are ugly, too flat;      *"Will you help/assist me?
they lack the back-spin, the softness of the Dream's.
I nod my head, whatever I can do - my best shot.
I am in the country of Burkina Fasso.
Its name means Land of Up-Right People.

More knuckleheads and morons

Colin Kapernick and Quinten Patton, now Aldon Smith, not to mention the other NFL players vying for membership in the Knucklehead Club. Has any statistic minded person figured out the percentage of athletes in trouble in comparison to other professions, say dentists or plumbers? Well, you might argue (being a defender of athletes) that Athletes work under constant pressure and are strung tight. Humm? I wonder how many ballet dancers have been arrested for talking about having a bomb while in an airport. How about Air force pilots putting themselves in a room alone with a woman serving them drinks? Oops, I guess this has happened. It might be a tight race to see who has the most members in the Knucklehead Club, athletes or military personnel. All right, if not the military, how about teachers or computer engineers?

Let me suggest that Professional sports teams draw up a list of NO, NO's and deliver them to all  the players at training camp. Memorization required. Examples:

YOU WILL NOT PLACE YOURSELF IN A COMPROMISING POSITION ALONE OR WITH OTHERS WITH A WOMAN OR WOMEN IN WHICH THERE IS ALCOHOL BEING SERVED OR DRUGS BEING USED OR ANY CLOTHES BEING DOFTED.

YOU WILL NOT CARRY A FIREARM IN YOUR VEHICLE. YOU WILL NEVER SHOOT A PISTOL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DURING A PARTY INTO THE AIR OR INTO A PERSON.

YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE THE SCENE OF AN ACCIDENT IN WHICH YOU WERE INVOLVED NO MATTER HOW DRUNK YOU WERE.

DO NOT TAKE MUSCLE ENHANCING DRUGS.

DON'T BULLY, OR WE'LL SEND YOU  TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE. HOW ABOUT FIRE YOU?

DON'T SEND PHOTOGRAPHS OF YOURSELF NAKED TO ANYONE OVER THE INTERNET OR FACEBOOK OR WHATEVER.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL YOU SAY THE WORD, "BOMB" IN AN AIRPORT, TRAIN OR BUS STATION.

EVERY MORNING, STAND IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR AND REPEAT, I'M NOT SPECIAL.

I can think of at least 50 more rules athletes could stand to take to heart. But, then, they might have to give up thinking they were special and thus not required to follow normal human behavior. Ooops, again. Has anyone seen Wolfman of Wall Street? Enough said about normal behavior. On the other hand, perhaps, greed is normal behavior. As for sex, the second theme of the movie, (There are no others.) I'll leave it up to you to decide if the sex your were watching on screen represented normalcy.

Perhaps there is no such thing as normal behavior?

How about classy behavior, then?

As an NBA rookie I was taught by word and by example by older teammates (Hall of Famer Paul Arizin comes to mind) that I should always "show class." Can't say I always succeeded, but I tried.

Being a snazzy dresser and driving extravagant cars does not mean you have class, which is what I think some of today's pros think. Although, I have to say D Wade puts on quite a show in the fashion department.

Returning to the title of my blog, let's talk about Morons. Who was the talking head on Fox News recently who objected to the movie Noah because it was not a documentary?

I love movies and taught film at Sierra College for years. Noah is the kind of movie that would turn me off  movies forever. As soon as the Ex Angels Rock People came on the scene to protect Noah and help him build the Ark, I was ready to head for the exit. There was a Kings game on TV I could watch if I wanted to torture myself.

I thought it was a put-down on Live at the Masters following  Bubba Watson's win that the course suited him because he's a lefty, naming other lefties that have won The Masters, the implication being that the course favors lefties, the further implication being that Bubba is not as good on other courses.

Here is a poem I wrote about golf from my new collection of poems - Sweat: New and Selected Poems About Sports.

Why I Never Played Golf

I didn't trust myself. Imagine
losing a match by one stroke
on the eighteenth green, his putt
longer than mine. He sinks it
for a birdie, and I sink mine
for a par, and I have my putter
in my hand and a bad temper,
and he is smiling at me.
You understand, smiling.

College Athletes' Unions

Forming unions has always been the best way to force recalcitrant ownership/administration to do the right thing. I'm speaking as the son of an Old Union Man and a great believer that unions have been and still are at the heart of a prosperous America. Proof? All of a sudden athletic departments are all over the news promising to create long term medical benefits for their scholarship athletes, which seems to me one of the most critical goals of the college players unions, and to do right by them. We'll see.

As for paying the athletes, sure. Why not increase their monthly stipend so they don't have to take off campus or on campus jobs? Being a full time student and full time athlete is hard enough without having to worry about money for bus fare home to visit mom. It was tough when I was in college and it's still hard to juggle full time athletic and academic commitment. A few more shekels can't hurt and it won't break the bank.

What about salaries? Nonsense. I'm all for unions, but they should not be used for frivolous demands. Scholarship athletes are not really employees. Even if they could be called employees, their salaries are four year, room and board, scholarships, which amount to' beaucoup' bucks. Tuition, room and board at my Alma mater, Saint Mary's College in California these days is approximately $58,000 dollars per year, about the average for private colleges and universities nationwide. You do the math for four years. State schools are not much less for out-of-state students. $40,000 to $50,000 per years is a pretty good starting salary, the equivalent of starting salaries in the world of business and far better than starting salaries of first year high school teachers.

In my opinion, if the revenues from university football and basketball indeed support all the scholarships and costs of the "so-called" minor sports, then the Big Time Television Embraced sports are doing a great service for a lot of amateur men's and women's athletics. I would, however, if I were the union, demand to see an independent accounting of where all the money goes by college sport. I'd hate to see too much more money spent on ridiculously high salaries for most coaches of big time athletic programs, Duke, Alabama, Kentucky, etc. Until each major university opens up its books there will always be a question marks.

The most important consideration by the union organizers should be how the union can help ALL the men and women playing collegiate sports, not just the elite football and basketball players.

Since I'm advocating for more attention being paid to "minor" college sports, here's a poem about Archery

Archery Instructor   by Richard Aldridge

My boys walk down the range intent to find
Lost arrows well beyond the target flown
Tomfoolery forgot, they scuff around
The underbrush, each searching on his own.
To them it's treasure hunting of a kind.

But since it's I who am responsible
For all the archery equipment used,
I wait here hoping hey will find them all.
The boys move dimly in the woods. Bemused,
I slowly let the scene be blurred unreal

And dram that I might well be Cupid here
Whose orders were: 'Bring back my misfired darts!'
Except on second thought I feel more sure
That what I'd mean is 'halves of broken hearts.'

A very foolish fond old man, said Lear.