This is a two-part post, one each about two of the major issues going on right now in the two sports that are currently in-season (so... not about David Wright and BJ Upton signing large contracts).
.) David Stern vs. Gregg Poppovich
I rarely write about the NBA midseason. I generally find the first three months of the NBA season as a lazy, slow drive on inner roads on the way to the highway that is the post-All Star Break of the NBA season, but what the Spurs did yesterday, and the reaction by David Stern forced me to. Here is a commissioner I have never really liked, a man who has overlooked the NBA becoming a star-drive and star-coddling league, a league dominated by the tenet of having one great player, with teamwork shunned for great individual talents, something I fear the NFL is becoming with team's reliance on QBs. David Stern is hailed as a genius of a commissioner, but I've never seen it, and his decision to basically announce he will punish the Spurs for resting Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili (and Danny Green, but nowhere cares about that) is simply the latest misstep by Stern.
I have many problems with Stern's statement, but first is it is entirely phony. He claims that this is about the fans, but directly it is about TNT and the National TV Deals. TNT pays a ton of money to broadcast NBA games once (and sometimes twice) a week. This was a marquee game anyway, but it was on a Thursday on TNT, when no other game was on. It was a matchup of the two teams that have dominated their conferences the last two seasons (the Spurs only in the regular season). Poppovich ruined the face of that specter by sending his top guys home (I'll leave out for now that the Spurs 'B' team played really well and it was a very good game). Stern didn't like it, but there is only one explanaion: because TNT didn't like it.
Gregg Poppovich has done this before. Three times last season he sat his Big Three, including once in Portland and once in Utah, both games that ended 11-game win streaks. Poppovich was faced with the second day of a back-to-back, and the last day of four games in five days, and the last game of a six-game road trip, and a showdown with 11-2 Memphis coming on Saturday, and made the decision to rest his guys in a game that easily could have been a loss anyway. Stern only cares about any of this because he did it for a National Game.
There is some legitimacy to that. It is the TNT & ESPN/ABC deals that really makes a sport like the NBA profitable, but then again, this is one game. I seriously doubt the ratings dropped that much, as this is still football season. I don't think many casual fans watch NBA during these months (especially head-to-head against a particularly enticing NFL game), and my guess is many fans may have started watching just to see Patty Mills, Nando De Colo (who looks the exact opposite of what his name makes you think he looks) and Corey Joseph, play with the Heat for 46 minutes. But Stern didn't come out and say that it was about TNT, but said it was about the fans, and that is just wrong.
If the Spurs did this the night before in Orlando, would it have been about the fans then? No, just like it wasn't about the fans when Poppovich did it in Portland and Utah last year. Just like it wasn't about the fans when other teams did it. By claiming it is about the fans, Stern is essentially saying that the Miami fans are more important to please than the Magic/Blazers/Jazz fans. However, the bigger issue is, what Poppovich did is smart, it works, and it isn't anything that Stern actually has the power to do anything about.
David Stern may hate it, but what Poppovich did was smart, it works, and even if it doesn't, there is no way the commissioner should have power to tell a team what to do about their players in terms of game management. Roger Goodell faced this issue in 2009, when a ton of teams rested starters in Week 17. He brought up a potential idea to reward the teams that wouldn't rest their players, but he quickly took it away. He was smart, Stern's actions were not.
Instead of focusing on the Spurs giving away a November game, maybe he should look at himself and his league. He is overseeing a league that is quickly becoming highly polarized between large, rich areas that are attempting to assemble Super-teams, like Miami and Los Angeles. So many people complain that the NBA is dominated by these big-market teams, that smaller areas, and boring areas that can't attract premium free agent talent, and the Spurs are the one exception.
Instead of praising a team for its brilliant year-to-year management, for extending their period of dominance well longer than anyone could have imagined, for having the smarts to manage and older core and keep them healthy for the playoffs, Stern decides to villainize them. David Stern should use the Spurs as the one shining gem of his system, as evidence that there is hope for the Milwaukee's and Utah's, but instead he chooses to do what he always does, only care about the marketibility of the big teams that dominate his league way too much.
2.) Kaepernick vs. Smith
Now we get to the other big debate of the last two weeks, which, despite Harbaugh's strange comments that both his QB are starting Quarterbacks, has essentially ended with Jim Harbaugh picking Colin Kaepernick. While I didn't like the decision last week and that ended well, I still don't like the decision, and there are quite a few reasons.
A.) There is no evidence that Colin Kaepdernick is playing any better than what Smith was doing.
Jim Harbaugh claimed after the Bears game that he would "go with the guy with the hot hand," and then repeated that same phrase when ultimately choosing Kaepernick this week because "he has a hot hand." Well, the last time we saw Alex Smith in a full game, he went 18-19 for 232 yards and 3 TDs with no picks against the Arizona Cardinals in Arizona. QBs have averaged a 74.3 passer rating against the Cardinals, and it would be lower if you take out Smith's game, and Alex Smith was great. Smith also has mobility, which I feel like many forget when talking about Kaepernick. Smith has been incredibly accurate all season, and accuracy at this point is not Kaepernick's strength. There just is no evidence that Kaepernick, right now, is any better. Sure, Kaepernick might have more potential (let's remember that there is a reason that Alex Smith was the #1 overall pick, while Kaepernick was a 2nd rounder), but who is the better QB right now? Alex Smith was just as good, and the last time we saw him, he was better than Kaepernick. Alex Smith can run that offense. Another claim people mention about Kaepernick is that the 49ers need him if they want to beat the Packers/Giants and the other Big Boys of the NFC. Of course, this forgets the fact that a Smith-led offense dominated Green Bay in Week 1. Also, I have serious doubts that Kaepernick would have made the 49ers any better in their loss to the Giants this year.
B.) The Negative Concussion Externality
Let's be clear, if Alex Smith doesn't suffer a concussion against the Rams, Colin Kaepernick is still the starting QB. Everyone agrees on this. Of course, you could have said the same thing about Drew Bledsoe, who lost his job because of injury to Brady, and then got healthy by mid-year. The one difference there is in his previous 1+ year, Bledsoe was 5-13 as a starter. Alex Smith was 19-5. Alex Smith has essentially been benched because he got a concussion. The NFL has a serious concussion fight on its hand, and one of the biggest steps is admitted and fixing the problem in diagnoses, in making it harder for players to lie about not having a concussion, to hiding their symptoms, and this is a huge blow to that. Other players that aren't the most secure in their positions have seen a precedent, have seen a player been benched long term because he got concussed. If they feel that their coach could follow that precedent, it sets up incredible incentives to hide symptoms, to play through a concussion. I have heard this angle mentioned a couple times, but it should be repeated. While the NFL faces their largest medical issue since the days players routinely died, a head coach of an NFL team just undermined that effort by benching a player because he had the gall to get a concussion.
C.) Harbaugh is Messing With Camelot
The 49ers were once deemed as Camelot in the DeBartolo/Walsh/Montana/Rice days, and there is truth that this current ressurection of the 49ers is just as fun. They have a dominant defense with a slew of great players playing really well. They have a multi-faceted offense that uses every ounce of talent from their varied weapons, including making guys like Kendall Hunter, Delanie Walker and Michael Crabtree into matchup nightmares. And it was all centered around their gem of a coach, but now the coach is really messing with the chemistry. It could work great. Keapernick could be better than Smith ever would have been. But this team isn't building for 2015. They are built for right now. They have the 2nd best record over the past 1.7 seasons (21-5-1, a half game behind the 22-5 Packers). Their defense has a lot of youth (Aldon Smith, Bowman, Brooks) but also some age (Justin Smith, Whitner, Rogers). They are perfectly situated to win right now, and does Kaepernick make their chances of winning right now higher than Smith? Maybe he does, but this is a huge risk, and here, the conventional, risk averse approach (going with Smith) was absolutely defensible, and a proven approach. It is obvious that Harbaugh was never really tied to Alex Smith. He openly (although later tried to hide) went after Peyton in the offseason, but settled back for Smith. Well, Smith responded playing great football, save for one bad performance against the Giants. But Harbaugh got his out, he got his chance to go with the guy he drafted, and so far it has worked. I just worry that it won't work in January, and then he might have to face some scrutiny for the first time in his tenure.
.) David Stern vs. Gregg Poppovich
I rarely write about the NBA midseason. I generally find the first three months of the NBA season as a lazy, slow drive on inner roads on the way to the highway that is the post-All Star Break of the NBA season, but what the Spurs did yesterday, and the reaction by David Stern forced me to. Here is a commissioner I have never really liked, a man who has overlooked the NBA becoming a star-drive and star-coddling league, a league dominated by the tenet of having one great player, with teamwork shunned for great individual talents, something I fear the NFL is becoming with team's reliance on QBs. David Stern is hailed as a genius of a commissioner, but I've never seen it, and his decision to basically announce he will punish the Spurs for resting Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili (and Danny Green, but nowhere cares about that) is simply the latest misstep by Stern.
I have many problems with Stern's statement, but first is it is entirely phony. He claims that this is about the fans, but directly it is about TNT and the National TV Deals. TNT pays a ton of money to broadcast NBA games once (and sometimes twice) a week. This was a marquee game anyway, but it was on a Thursday on TNT, when no other game was on. It was a matchup of the two teams that have dominated their conferences the last two seasons (the Spurs only in the regular season). Poppovich ruined the face of that specter by sending his top guys home (I'll leave out for now that the Spurs 'B' team played really well and it was a very good game). Stern didn't like it, but there is only one explanaion: because TNT didn't like it.
Gregg Poppovich has done this before. Three times last season he sat his Big Three, including once in Portland and once in Utah, both games that ended 11-game win streaks. Poppovich was faced with the second day of a back-to-back, and the last day of four games in five days, and the last game of a six-game road trip, and a showdown with 11-2 Memphis coming on Saturday, and made the decision to rest his guys in a game that easily could have been a loss anyway. Stern only cares about any of this because he did it for a National Game.
There is some legitimacy to that. It is the TNT & ESPN/ABC deals that really makes a sport like the NBA profitable, but then again, this is one game. I seriously doubt the ratings dropped that much, as this is still football season. I don't think many casual fans watch NBA during these months (especially head-to-head against a particularly enticing NFL game), and my guess is many fans may have started watching just to see Patty Mills, Nando De Colo (who looks the exact opposite of what his name makes you think he looks) and Corey Joseph, play with the Heat for 46 minutes. But Stern didn't come out and say that it was about TNT, but said it was about the fans, and that is just wrong.
If the Spurs did this the night before in Orlando, would it have been about the fans then? No, just like it wasn't about the fans when Poppovich did it in Portland and Utah last year. Just like it wasn't about the fans when other teams did it. By claiming it is about the fans, Stern is essentially saying that the Miami fans are more important to please than the Magic/Blazers/Jazz fans. However, the bigger issue is, what Poppovich did is smart, it works, and it isn't anything that Stern actually has the power to do anything about.
David Stern may hate it, but what Poppovich did was smart, it works, and even if it doesn't, there is no way the commissioner should have power to tell a team what to do about their players in terms of game management. Roger Goodell faced this issue in 2009, when a ton of teams rested starters in Week 17. He brought up a potential idea to reward the teams that wouldn't rest their players, but he quickly took it away. He was smart, Stern's actions were not.
Instead of focusing on the Spurs giving away a November game, maybe he should look at himself and his league. He is overseeing a league that is quickly becoming highly polarized between large, rich areas that are attempting to assemble Super-teams, like Miami and Los Angeles. So many people complain that the NBA is dominated by these big-market teams, that smaller areas, and boring areas that can't attract premium free agent talent, and the Spurs are the one exception.
Instead of praising a team for its brilliant year-to-year management, for extending their period of dominance well longer than anyone could have imagined, for having the smarts to manage and older core and keep them healthy for the playoffs, Stern decides to villainize them. David Stern should use the Spurs as the one shining gem of his system, as evidence that there is hope for the Milwaukee's and Utah's, but instead he chooses to do what he always does, only care about the marketibility of the big teams that dominate his league way too much.
2.) Kaepernick vs. Smith
Now we get to the other big debate of the last two weeks, which, despite Harbaugh's strange comments that both his QB are starting Quarterbacks, has essentially ended with Jim Harbaugh picking Colin Kaepernick. While I didn't like the decision last week and that ended well, I still don't like the decision, and there are quite a few reasons.
A.) There is no evidence that Colin Kaepdernick is playing any better than what Smith was doing.
Jim Harbaugh claimed after the Bears game that he would "go with the guy with the hot hand," and then repeated that same phrase when ultimately choosing Kaepernick this week because "he has a hot hand." Well, the last time we saw Alex Smith in a full game, he went 18-19 for 232 yards and 3 TDs with no picks against the Arizona Cardinals in Arizona. QBs have averaged a 74.3 passer rating against the Cardinals, and it would be lower if you take out Smith's game, and Alex Smith was great. Smith also has mobility, which I feel like many forget when talking about Kaepernick. Smith has been incredibly accurate all season, and accuracy at this point is not Kaepernick's strength. There just is no evidence that Kaepernick, right now, is any better. Sure, Kaepernick might have more potential (let's remember that there is a reason that Alex Smith was the #1 overall pick, while Kaepernick was a 2nd rounder), but who is the better QB right now? Alex Smith was just as good, and the last time we saw him, he was better than Kaepernick. Alex Smith can run that offense. Another claim people mention about Kaepernick is that the 49ers need him if they want to beat the Packers/Giants and the other Big Boys of the NFC. Of course, this forgets the fact that a Smith-led offense dominated Green Bay in Week 1. Also, I have serious doubts that Kaepernick would have made the 49ers any better in their loss to the Giants this year.
B.) The Negative Concussion Externality
Let's be clear, if Alex Smith doesn't suffer a concussion against the Rams, Colin Kaepernick is still the starting QB. Everyone agrees on this. Of course, you could have said the same thing about Drew Bledsoe, who lost his job because of injury to Brady, and then got healthy by mid-year. The one difference there is in his previous 1+ year, Bledsoe was 5-13 as a starter. Alex Smith was 19-5. Alex Smith has essentially been benched because he got a concussion. The NFL has a serious concussion fight on its hand, and one of the biggest steps is admitted and fixing the problem in diagnoses, in making it harder for players to lie about not having a concussion, to hiding their symptoms, and this is a huge blow to that. Other players that aren't the most secure in their positions have seen a precedent, have seen a player been benched long term because he got concussed. If they feel that their coach could follow that precedent, it sets up incredible incentives to hide symptoms, to play through a concussion. I have heard this angle mentioned a couple times, but it should be repeated. While the NFL faces their largest medical issue since the days players routinely died, a head coach of an NFL team just undermined that effort by benching a player because he had the gall to get a concussion.
C.) Harbaugh is Messing With Camelot
The 49ers were once deemed as Camelot in the DeBartolo/Walsh/Montana/Rice days, and there is truth that this current ressurection of the 49ers is just as fun. They have a dominant defense with a slew of great players playing really well. They have a multi-faceted offense that uses every ounce of talent from their varied weapons, including making guys like Kendall Hunter, Delanie Walker and Michael Crabtree into matchup nightmares. And it was all centered around their gem of a coach, but now the coach is really messing with the chemistry. It could work great. Keapernick could be better than Smith ever would have been. But this team isn't building for 2015. They are built for right now. They have the 2nd best record over the past 1.7 seasons (21-5-1, a half game behind the 22-5 Packers). Their defense has a lot of youth (Aldon Smith, Bowman, Brooks) but also some age (Justin Smith, Whitner, Rogers). They are perfectly situated to win right now, and does Kaepernick make their chances of winning right now higher than Smith? Maybe he does, but this is a huge risk, and here, the conventional, risk averse approach (going with Smith) was absolutely defensible, and a proven approach. It is obvious that Harbaugh was never really tied to Alex Smith. He openly (although later tried to hide) went after Peyton in the offseason, but settled back for Smith. Well, Smith responded playing great football, save for one bad performance against the Giants. But Harbaugh got his out, he got his chance to go with the guy he drafted, and so far it has worked. I just worry that it won't work in January, and then he might have to face some scrutiny for the first time in his tenure.
