Show Some Respect

Things turned ugly during Chris Mullin's jersey retirement ceremony on Monday night when fans at Oracle Arena booed new Warriors owner Joe Lacob throughtout what should be been a celebration of an all time great's illustrious career.  In a game that the Warriors lost to Minnesota, fans vocalized their displeasure with Lacob's decision to trade star player and fan favorite Monta Ellis last week, interrupting Mullin's ceremony and forcing Mullin and former Warriors legend Rick Barry to speak up in the owner's defense.

"This is crazy. Seriously. Come on, you're doing yourself a disservice," Barry said. "All of the wonderful accolades being sent to you [the fans], for you to treat this man [Lacob] who is spending his money to do the best that he can to turn this franchise around -- and I know he's going to do it. So give him the respect he deserves."

I can understand that Warriors fans are upset with Lacob.  When he bought the team last year, he promised fans to quickly bring a competitive team to the Bay Area.  The excitement that surrounded the hiring of new coach Mark Jackson quickly fizzled as the team struggled through the first half of this season and Lacob responded by agreeing to trade Ellis to Milwaukee for injured Australian center Andrew Bogut.  The fans were promised change, and so far the only thing that's different between this season and last is the fact that the team's best player has been traded.  Fans are unhappy, and they're allowed to vocalize their frustrations and let ownership know that they expect more out of their team.  As you'll see in the video below, they certainly did that during Mullin's halftime ceremony.

That being said, Monday night's halftime celebration was not the right time for the fans to display their displeasure with Lacob.  Monday night should have been about Chris Mullin, and all that the Hall of Famer did for the Warriors franchise during his 13 seasons with the organization.  The night could have been special for Mullin and fans alike - #17 was joined by former Warriors stars Barry, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond (among others) - but the boos shifted the focus away from Mullin's on-court accomplishments and towards Lacob's front office failures.  Out of respect for their hero, I think the fans should have saved their aggression for another time.  Instead, all anyone will remember about Monday night is Lacob's embarrassment and Mullin and Barry's awkward defense of the Warriors owner. 

The look on Rick Barry's face says it all - Warriors fans were out of line on Monday night.

I've been to a few Warriors games over the past two years, and I've been impressed by the Oakland-area crowd.  Despite rooting for a mediocre team over the last few seasons, the fans have come out in droves to support Golden State.  Warriors fans are better than this.  They have every right to be upset with Lacob, but should know better than to ruin a celebration of Chris Mullin's career by shifting all of the attention to Lacob.  It takes a ton of hard work, effort and dedication to earn a jersey retirement ceremony.  Unfortunately, it only takes a few thousand thoughtless fans to ruin it.

Note:  I'll be out of the country until the end of March, and probably won't be able to blog much (if at all) while abroad.  I'll do my best to get a post or two up over the next week and a half, but be sure to check back in first thing in April for your regularly scheduled blogging.

It's About Time

In early January, I called for Mike D'Antoni's head after the Knicks lost an uninspired home game to the Charlotte Bobcats.  Just over two months later, D'Antoni was finally replaced as New York's head coach when he "resigned" this week.  His resignation followed an awful stretch of basketball highlighted by an inability to work "superstar" Carmelo Anthony into an offense that had previously been firing on all cylinders under the direction of point guard Jeremy Lin.  Had Lin not miraculously led the Knicks to an unlikely winning streak in February, D'Antoni would likely have been fired a month ago (and he probably should have been, anyway).  To me, though, D'Antoni was headed out the door as soon as Mike Woodson was brought on as an assistant coach.

I just finished taking a class called "The Paths to Power" in which we discuss what people need to do - and have done - in order to obtain and retain positions of power.  I think we'd all agree that NBA head coach is a pretty powerful position, and that the league's best coaches establish themselves as the leaders of their squads early and often.  When D'Antoni hired former Atlanta Hawks head coach Mike Woodson as an assistant, he relinquished a tremendous amount of his power by admitting weakness and making himself easily replaceable.  Bringing on a defensive-minded guy like Woodson was D'Antoni's way of saying that he couldn't cut it as a coach that could lead a team on both ends of the floor.  And once Woodson, a former NBA head coach, was on the staff, the team had somewhere else to turn as soon as things got a little ugly.

At this point, it's pretty clear that Mike D'Antoni was not the right coach for this team.  Going into the season, however, a lot of Knicks fans were optimistic that the pieces were finally in place to efficiently execute the former Phoenix coach's game plan.  Most of those fans, myself included, didn't see anything wrong with D'Antoni hiring Woodson, and if anything praised the move at the time.  What we missed, however, was what the hiring signalled - D'Antoni had lost confidence in his ability to lead the New York Knicks deep into the playoffs.  And once D'Antoni lost confidence in himself, it was only a matter of time before his team lost confidence in him as well.

According to Stephen A. Smith and others, that's exactly what happened by the end of the D'Antoni reign.  Like many people at the top of organizations, D'Antoni was stubborn, stuck in his ways and unwilling to adjust even when it was clear that his way wasn't working.  As a result, he lost the support of his players and, in particular, his high-priced stars.  Whether or not you like Amar'e Stoudemire (I'm neutral) and Carmelo Anthony (I despise him at this point), you have to acknowledge that they were not being used effectively.  It's too early to say if Mike Woodson - or anyone else - will be able to turn this mess into a basketball team again.  What is clear, however, is that Mike D'Antoni's time as head coach of the Knicks was long past due.

Upset with the Lack of Upsets

UPDATE: Well, Norfolk State just gave me everything I could have asked for and more.  What a dominant performance from the Spartans from the game's first minute.  Most impressively, though, were the humble-yet-confident postgame interviews from the team's head coach and star player Kyle O'Quinn.  Wow.

While watching the first second round of the NCAA tournament today, I found myself rooting aggressively for #12 Long Beach State to win its game over #5 New Mexico.  But why?  Other than the fact that I think they might have the best uniforms in all of college basketball (see right), I have no particular allegience to the 49ers, the city of Long Beach, the Big West conference or any of the team's players. I also have nothing against the University of New Mexico - if anything, I like the fact that "Lobos" is Spanish for "Wolves." The only reason I was rooting for LBSU was because I wanted to see an upset.

In the first round of the NCAA tournament, the most exciting games should feature the 8's vs. the 9's or the 7's vs. the 10's - these are, after all, the closest matchups.  However, seeing a #10 or #9 pull an "upset" doesn't provide enough of an adrenaline rush.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, there isn't much excitement when watching a #1 play a #16 (although seeing Syracuse sweat out a close victory over UNC-Asheville was mildly entertaining), because top seeds literally don't lose (109-0 as of this writing).  It's the sweet-spot in between, however, that makes the first week of the NCAA tournament unlike anything else in American sports.  That's why there was no better way to wrap up a long afternoon than by watching #12's LBSU and Harvard hang tough against #5's New Mexico and Vanderbilt, respectively.

During the Syracuse game earlier in the day, the TV commentators noted that in the last few minutes of any close tournament game, the mostly-neutral fans suddenly become die-hard supporters of the underdog.  After spending year after year watching replays of Princeton over UCLA and Valparaiso over Ole' Miss, we all want to be a part of the next great March Madness upset.  Just being able to say that you were pulling for a #14 seed when they knocked off a #3 on the opening Thursday of the tournament is enough to turn seemingly passive college hoops fans into lunatics screaming for Belmont, Virginia Commonwealth or Bucknell.

On that note, I'm off to see if #12 VCU can finish off #5 Wichita State.  Enjoy the rest of the tournament's first few days.  Once we move into the second week and the bulk of the double-digit seeds have been sent home, we'll be longing for the previous week when we had the opportunity to root for schools like Loyola (MD), South Dakota State and Davidson.

Fans On A Plane

I spent this past weekend out in Tucson, Arizona for a friend's wedding.  Normally, a 8:25 AM flight out of San Francisco is pretty quiet; given that most people on the plane had to wake up before 6:00 AM in order to make it to SFO in time to catch Southwest's first flight to Phoenix of the day, I was anticipating a relaxing and peaceful flight.  When I made it through security and found my flight's gate, however, I saw that the area was buzzing with activity.  Almost every single person waiting to board the flight was decked out in black and orange.  It was either some crazy March version of Halloween, or a plane full of die hard San Francisco Giants fans heading to Scottsdale to watch Spring Training baseball.  Turns out it was the latter.

As a kid, I made semi-regular trips to Grapefruit League Spring Training sites in Florida.  My Grandparents lived in Delray Beach, and we would periodically make pilgrimages to the Spring homes of the Mets, Braves or Expos while visiting.  One year I took a family trip to Phoenix and actually watched the Giants play in their Scottsdale facility, but I had no idea that San Francisco fans traveled to Arizona en masse for Cactus League games each March.  Apparently, though, as soon as the Spring Training schedules are released each winter, hundreds of San Francisco-area Giants fans book Southwest flights to spend a weekend watching their team play.  People on the plane knew each other from previous trips, creating an impressive fan community that I was jealous not to be a part of.

I thought the bright orange sneakers were a particularly nice touch.

I was clearly out of place holding my suit bag while surrounded by fans wearing a vast variety of jerseys, shirts and caps.  Once we boarded the plane and the flight attendants started making the introductory announcements, some fans in the back started a "Let's Go Giants!" chant that amazingly got over half of the plane cheering despite the early hour.  When we landed, the flight attendants wished the Giants luck during their weekend games against Milwaukee, Chicago and Cincinnati, which again got a big cheer from most of the passengers on board.  These fans were clearly jazzed up for a weekend of baseball.  I don't know how common these trips were prior to the team's 2010 World Series title or if they'll last once the team starts to struggle, but I was impressed nonetheless.

I have never seen anything like it on a flight before.  The fans were an interesting mix of twenty-somethings traveling in groups, families taking their kids out for some weekend baseball, and retirees looking for a few days of sun and quiet relaxation at the ballpark.  While I'm sure fans from other cities make similar trips to see their teams each March, I think the relatively minimal distance between SFO and PHX (only ~110 minutes by air) and abundance of Southwest flights between the two airports (probably ~8-10 each way per day) bring the Giants fans out in droves.  While I was expecting a weekend virtually absent of sports culture, the Friday flight to Arizona provided an unexpected level of entertainment.

Making Them Earn It

When I first heard about MLB's plans to add another Wild Card spot in each league, I didn't like it.  After all, I'm a traditionalist who longs to return to the days when baseball had two divisions in each league, and only the division winners were granted entrance into the postseason.  For years I've been arguing that the Wild Card and Interleague play have ruined what used to make professional baseball so unique, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that I wasn't in favor of additional playoff expansion.  As I've thought through it and listened to the arguments on either side of the debate, though, I've recently come to like the idea.  In fact, at this point I would say I'm a fan of MLB's new plan.

In recent years, we've seen Wild Card teams sneak into the playoffs on the last Sunday of the regular season and run the table through the World Series.  In fact, it's happened a lot.  Despite playing only mediocre baseball for most of the season, these teams get hot at exactly the right time, and the result is that the 162-game regular season seems "cheapened."  At first, I thought that adding another Wild Card slot would only increase this phenomenon; with another underachieving Wild Card team in the mix, we'd be more likely to have a non-division-winner representing one of the leagues (or both) in the Fall Classic.

The more I think about it, though, this seems unlikely to be the case given the way MLB is structuring the new playoff system.  In fact, the revised postseason finally rewards teams adequately for winning their divisions.  Whereas before Wild Card teams and division winners were, more or less, treated equally, now the two Wild Card teams will be forced to play each other in a one game playoff before the "real" postseason even begins.  While the division winners can take an extra day to rest and position their starting rotations for an October run, Wild Card teams will be scrambling to determine how to win the one game playoff while still preserving the possibility of upsetting a division winner in a five game LDS.  It will become much trickier for a Wild Card team to get out of the first round, especially if that team relies heavily on one or two top starters.

The new system won't be perfect, especially in its first iteration.  As many have pointed out, this year's playoffs will be a little messy because of last minute scheduling quirks, and if a one game playoff is needed after the regular season to determine the postseason participants that will really scrunch everything together.  The Huffington Post also notes that "it's unfair to teams that spent their offseason preparing for the old format," which may be a bigger concern than people realize, and it will be interesting to see if teams make in-season moves with the new format in mind.  These worries aside, I'm excited to see how the new system works out.  Any format that rewards teams for doing what they should do - winning as many games as possible during the regular season - is fine by me.

Caught in the Middle

Last night, Princeton basketball ended Penn's season - and sent Harvard to the NCAA tournament - by defeating the Quakers 62-52 at home.  I'm never one to complain about a Princeton victory, especially one that comes during the last game of the season against Princeton's most hated rival (as well as covered on ESPN3.com).  That being said, this was one of those weird games where I didn't exactly know how to feel about the win.  On one hand, it's always nice to send Penn home for the spring. At the same time, though, I've always loved the fact that the Ivy League has historically been dominated by the Tigers and the Quakers, and having the Crimson crash the Big Dance dilutes that.  Princeton forward Patrick Saunders put it nicely:

"It was an interesting game coming in.  We don’t have much love for either team. It was nice to get a win, but it was kind of tough to swallow knowing our win put Harvard in the tournament."

As a Princeton fan, I've been taught to hate the University of Pennsylvania.  My annual trip to the Palestra in Philadelphia was always one of the most anticipated nights of the school year for me, and the two teams played some classic games there while I was in college.  There was certainly no love lost between the two schools, and in seasons where Princeton wasn't heading to the NCAAs the games against Penn were the basketball highlights of the year.  Accordingly, any win against the Quakers is a sweet one, especially when the stakes are as high (at least for Penn) as they were yesterday.  When the NCAA tournament starts next week, Penn will not have a chance to pull a Cornell-like upset or two, and Princeton played a huge role in that.  As a diehard Tigers fan, that doesn't make up for a non-NCAA season, but it's nice to know.

As much as I hate Penn, though, I respect its basketball program.  For almost 20 years spanning the 1990s and most of the 2000s, the Ivy League's automatic bid to the Big Dance fluctuated between the Tigers and the Quakers, with the other six schools always on the outside looking in.  That streak was snapped a few seasons ago when Cornell made a few trips to the NCAAs, highlighted by their Sweet 16 run two years ago, but it seemed like Princeton got the league back on track with their miraculous one-game-playoff win over Harvard at Yale last March.  A Penn victory over Princeton on Tuesday, combined with a neutral site playoff win over Harvard this week, could have further righted the ship for Princeton-Penn dominance.  Having Harvard of all teams join the party is a tough pill to swallow - the Crimson will make their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1946.

The Crimson are the Ivy League's strongest team, and I sincerely hope they put on a strong showing in the NCAAs starting next weekend.  With a relatively impressive resume, they are expected to be around a #11 seed and have a realistic chance of pulling at least a first (or, as we now call it, "second") round upset.  In a way, though, I might have been happier with Penn taking the Ivy League crown and automatic bid, heading into the NCAAs as a #14 or #15 seed and getting crushed by a Missouri or a Duke or a Michigan.  While Harvard's success is probably better for the Ivy League as a whole, it's not fun having another historically weak basketball program join the Ivy's exclusive club of NCAA participants.  Next thing you know we'll be watching Dartmouth represent the Ivy next season.

The Big Game, Basketball Style

Sunday was the last regular season game for Stanford basketball before the Pac-12 tournament starts this week in Los Angeles, so it was my last opportunity as a Stanford student to visit Maples Pavilion.  The game was against Cal, and since I missed my chance last season to see the two Bay Area rivals battle on the hardwood at Maples, I made sure to make it out for this year's game (which Stanford surprisingly won 75-70).  While the game lacked the energy that follows the two teams when they square off in football for the annual "Big Game," it was at least a rare opportunity to see the Cardinal's gym virtually filled to capacity.

During my first visit to Maples last year, I commented that the arena could be a great place to watch a basketball game if the crowd was into it.  Unfortunately, that hasn't happened much during my two seasons in Palo Alto - the team's relative lack of success has pushed prospective fans away, and all of the school's spirit has been transferred over to the football team.  Even when the Cardinal hoops team is mediocre (they finished 7th in the Pac-12 this year), though, people will come out to see Stanford battle the Golden Bears.  The Cal fans showed up in numbers, too - around a quarter of the upper section was taken up by navy-and-gold-clad Berkeley fans, many of whom were holding "Occupy Maples" signs.  Between the two fan bases and their dueling bands and mascots, it was a shockingly great atmosphere.  

A (nearly) packed house at Maples Pavilion?  Yep, it actually happened.

The Cardinal seemed to feed off of the crowd's energy, and won the game because of hustle and determination, not necessarily skill.  It should be hard to win basketball games on the road in the NCAA, but Stanford's fans have made it way too easy on the opposition to come into Maples and steal a victory.  It's impossible to say how the Cardinal would have played if the crowd wasn't so into it, but I have to think the fans made a difference.  For their part, the Stanford players seemed to really appreciate the support - there's been a big push to get more people, particularly students, to the games this season, so hopefully this is the start of something bigger and better for Cardinal hoops.  After the game, the players showed their appreciation by walking through the Stanford student section on their way to the locker room.  I have no idea if that's an annual tradition or something new, but I thought it was a smart and classy move.

Led by the seniors, the Stanford players thanked their fans after the game.

Stanford starts the Pac-12 tournament against #10 seed Arizona State this week, and hopefully the Card can ride the momentum from the Cal victory to a nice little tournament run.  If they beat the Sun Devils, their next game will be against the #2 seeded Golden Bears, a team the Cardinal now knows it can beat.  While they won't have the support of their home crowd behind them this time, hopefully enough fans will travel down to Staples Center for the games to at least sprinkle a respectable amount of cardinal red and white throughout the stands.  Between the Cal and hometown UCLA fans, we can be sure that there will be plenty of blue and gold everywhere.

One Nation, Under Soccer

Everyone knows that sports can be a unifying force for a community.  Jeremy Lin's emergence, for example, has rallied New Yorkers, Asian Americans and Ivy Leaguers around Knicks basketball, while during the NFL season people across Colorado (and the rest of the country) were swept up in Tebow Mania.  During the Summer of 2010, the World Cup and USA Soccer had a similar effect on American sports fans - everywhere you went, people wanted to talk about Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey, celebrate our improbable last second victory over Algeria or lament our crushing Round of 16 defeat at the hands of Ghana.

We're more than a year and a half removed from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, however, so I wasn't expecting much of a reaction when I wore my USA Soccer jersey around Stanford's campus yesterday.  I was, of course, showing support for the squad after Lead Day's impressive 1-0 win over Italy (in Genoa, no less) in an International Friendly, but guessed that most people would assume that I just hadn't had a chance to do laundry recently.  Little did I know that the jersey would become a major conversation piece throughout the day, however, and would prove to be a secret key that opened the door to a room full of hidden international soccer fans.

As a predominantly New York sports fan living in California for the past two years, I usually find myself with virtually no one to share my rooting interests with.  When I'm back in New York, on the other hand, almost everyone you meet considers himself a New York sports fan, so conversations about the Knicks or Giants come as no surprise.  Wearing my USA Soccer jersey around yesterday, however, struck a perfect balance, sparking a number of surprisingly insightful conversations about the team's upcoming schedule, Terrence Boyd's emergence and our chances in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.  My outfit provided a signal to others that it was OK to approach me about USA Soccer, and that I wasn't the typical American out to prove that the world's game was inferior to everything the U.S. has to offer.

It wasn't too long ago that I would have poked fun at some guy wearing a USA Soccer jersey on a seemingly random, non-World-Cup-year Thursday (don't get me wrong - some people did that to me, too).  Now, I realize the beauty and joy of being a fan of Team USA's soccer team, and have come to truly appreciate being part of a modest-but-growing group of supporters.  While soccer may never overtake baseball and football (or even basketball, for that matter) in my heart, I think I've enjoyed identifying with USA Soccer fans  as much as, if not more than, I have connecting with Braves or Giants supporters.  I'm looking forward to wearing my jersey a bit more often over the next two years, before World Cup 2014 hysteria settles in and the secret fraternity of American soccer fans is temporarily breached.