Game 5 Predictions

The tide has already turned. Last week everyone was, "OKC in 5. OKC in 6." Now most everyone is convinced that Miami takes it tonight, which has led to reverberations of the "these All-Star teams built through free agency ruin the NBA". To the latter DBSF says--see Knicks, Clippers and Nets (for a failed case). The All-Star through free agency model doesn't work unless it includes acquiring LeBron James. Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Carmelo Anthony are a high 40 win team that makes it to the second round at best. The only unfortunate part about this is that two-and-a-half years ago LeBron probably could have convinced Bosh to come to Cleveland and, thus, there would be no uncertainty that this and all following championships were his.

With respect to tonight DBSF sees OKC by high single digits. James Harden has had only one decent game this series. He averaged 16 points on 60% shooting against Miami during two games in the regular season. Look for Harden's regression to the mean. Not to mention, OKC is too good to lose 4 straight. They'll take it back to OKC where they'll win game 6 and in game 7 LeBron will remind us why he will probably end up being considered the greatest athlete of the 21st century. Heat in 7. Still.

Eddy Curry: Stream of Consciousness

At Sunday's Game 3 win over the Thunder, Miami Heat PF/ C/ FD (Power Forward/ Center/ Future Diabetic) Eddy Curry secured his 21st straight DNP -- Inactive. (For those keeping score, he last appeared in a 4 turnover, 0 assist, 34 point season finale loss to America's [Other] Team, the Washington Wizards. There are rumors that the team managers have even stopped bringing his jersey to games.) The following is an excerpt from his conscious mind during Sunday's game.

Somebody needs to bring back the t-shirt under the jersey look. Not everybody's LeBron. Some of us have excess shoulder skin and subskin or whatever you call that malleable, flesh that grows beneath the epidermis. We just need some young generation of kids in the league to bring it back. Like the Fab 5 did with baggy shorts. What's up with shorts anyway? All of a sudden everyone is okay with having them above the knee again? Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan, Jimmy King. Those guys broke barriers. That and baggy shorts hide any excessive build-up of that fleshy sub skin around knees. Would it be unreasonable to ask Spoelstra if we could have the option to wear sweatpants as part of our uniforms?

So LeBron shoots 53% on the year and he's brilliant but I secure a loan at an 85% interest rate and I'm a dummy? 

Top 5 NBA Arena bench cushions. No specific order. Judging criteria are cushion area, density, and durability (maintaining sufficient cushion to metal folding chair adhesion/ stitching). Again no specific order except for maybe the top three, which are again in no order but superior to the fourth and fifth. Houston, OKC, Orlando, Milwaukee and Golden State. That Knick's series was a nightmare--blue and orange taught leather basically duct taped to metal. My legs were asleep before they got to Chalmers in the player introductions. I had to fake a torn Achilles-Meniscus combo when I couldn't get up at the first TV timeout. Riley said something under his breath like that the injury could only help my play.

Basketball was meant to be more sedentary. Leeping, verticality--ruin it. Sure LeBron sells tickets but he basterdizes the game. The set jump shot--second only to the rule change that enabled dribbling--set Dr. Naismith's beautiful creation down a perilous descent from which it could never recover. I'm a purist. I think that's what's at the root of my and LeBron's relationship issue. I think we should be friends and he thinks I should have to run to and from my home to practice or get cut from the team. Thus, we've reached a bit of an impasse.

Stern needs to figure out a way to combine the idleness of baseball with basketball. There at least needs to be a shooter's box or something where players are offered unlimited timeouts to maintain focus, collect their thoughts, and catch a breath.

Why they added 8 minutes to the college game I will never know. Some people have better things to do with three or so hours in the evening.

NBA Finals Prediction

Before the season started DBSF predicted the Heat would win it all. Down 1-0, the Heat will lose again tonight (by about 15ish?) but will win game 3 and take the series in 7. How DBSF sees it there are four factors necessary for a Heat win. Interestingly, most were met in game 1 and they lost.

1. Battier and Mike Miller must combine for at least four threes. Miller has deteriorated to a non-entity so Battier will likely have to cover all or at least three of them.
2. Russell Westbrook must take at least 20 shots. Westbrook is probably the second most athletical player in the NBA and arguably a top ten talent. But every shot he takes is a shot Durant and Harden don't. The Heat need him to get into those games where Westbrook tries to shoot himself out of a slump.
3. Dwade needs to shoot 50%. After having his knee drained in the Pacers' series DWade appeared to back to superstar form. But after the Celtics's series and Tuesday night's game one DBSF is beginning to believe that Wade's knee injury is serious and he's not letting on. Forcing him to be a jump shot shooter that doesn't penetrate basically transforms a top ten player into Monta Ellis but with better D.
4. Bosh must consistently knockdown jump shots (say over 40% from outside the paint) to keep Ibaka  out of the paint. When LeBron faces no second line of defense by the basket the Heat's offense becomes exponentially better.

LeBron and Durant are going to produce regardless of the game's circumstances to the point that they will likely offset each other (but with a slight edge to LeBron). The key for the Heat is getting Wade to negate Westbrook and enough of Harden and for the Heat's role players to extend the court so LeBron can get to the basket with being double-teamed.

Addressing Anti-LeBronism

LeBron is often cited as one of the most hated athletes in professional sports. The basis for this animosity rests solely on his televised news conference (aka "the decision") where he announced his plan to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Miami Heat. This essay addresses two issues. First, it explains why "the decision" must represent the only point of contention with respect to LeBron. Second, it elaborates on how foolish it is to villanize LeBron for the decision.

LeBron is arguably the greatest all-around basketball player of all time. While people challenge his play and focus in the waning minutes of games, in terms of per minute production there are few players who can be objectively placed in his class. This isn't an opinion. This is based on statistics. So outside the decision what has LeBron done to make him so anathema?

It certainly cannot be his style of play. Arguably three of the most cherished American values are effort, toughness, and unselfishness--three characteristics LeBron exemplifies in his play perhaps more than any other athlete. At the most elite level of basketball, defense is predicated on two qualities: athleticism and effort. Although quantitative measures fail to truly define a superior defender (i.e., there are many intangible hustle or help defense plays that aren't necessarily quantifiable), LeBron should be the first name that comes up for the greatest defender of all five positions in basketball. Catch three minutes of any game he is playing in and you cannot question LeBron's effort in containing world class athletes night-in and  night-out.

There's also the quality of toughness. Unlike the Europeans and Argentinians and the LA Clippers, LeBron is not a flopper. He plays excellent straight-up defense and slashes to the hoop with an unparalleled fierceness. While he might appear emotional over calls he felt should have gone his way, one must recognize that every player and coach in the NBA complains over calls as it is a critical part of the psychological warfare. Appearing passive to calls actually comes at a cost to one's team as the player is making no effort to gain the favors of referees on ensuing violations.

Then there's the fact that averaging 7-8 assists per game indicates just how unselfish LeBron plays. And if there were any doubt about his abilities to score at will and, thus, not depend on his passing game to supplement his offense, LeBron exhibited in the Indiana and Boston series that he was virtually unstoppable in transition and in half-court sets. (It should come as no surprise that LeBron had a playoff low 2 assists in the game 7 win over Boston as he couldn't risk relying on Battier or Miller to make critical shots.)

It is also worth briefly addressing the relationship between LeBron's ability to pass and the narrative created by ESPN analysts, like Stephen A. Smith, that he isn't clutch. In many final shot scenarios LeBron--rightly--draws double teams. Anybody with a familiarity of basketball understands that it then becomes the duty of the player that is getting double-teamed to find the unguarded teammate as the opposition now has three players guarding his four teammates. LeBron does this better than anyone. However, just because an unguarded teammate fails to execute on an open shot, the fault should not be assigned to LeBron. Bear in mind that these are professional basketball players playing at the most elite league. If they cannot knock down an open 15-20 foot shot then they bear full responsibility.

So from a non-sports 'values' perspective it seems irrational that anyone harbor any animosity toward James. DBSF also recognizes that you'll hear the casual fan express frustration of LeBron's traveling or some nebulous violation of rules. Whether or not LeBron travels on every single possession, the responsibility for the call rests on referees and the league, and not players. Surely the speed at which world class athletes move makes it prohibitive to capture every rule violation. But the assertion that LeBron personally benefits from some sort of collusion with the league is baseless and inaccurate.

To summarize there is nothing in LeBron's play that justifies the malice directed at him. Therefore it must be based on "the decision" (which is the argument reverberated in this Slate article). But what was wrong with "the decision"? ESPN volunteered to air the hour-long program. LeBron used it to raise $6 million for charity. To repeat: As part of a business decision to pursue an option that he felt was in his best career interests--an action assumed to be of primacy to virtually every American--LeBron found a way to also raise $6 million all of which went to charity. Somebody was angry about this?

Well, maybe it was the event at American Airlines Arena where LeBron, DWade and Bosh all first wore their Heat jerseys and LeBron proposed that the Heat would win "not two, not three, not four" etc championships but seven or so. Many fans perceived this as unnecessarily arrogant. But what they miss was that the event was a gigantic pep rally for the organization's new stars. In what pep rally do the players come and predict that they "might make the playoffs" or are going to "try" to win a championship? The whole point of a pep rally is to invigorate a fan base and what does that better than telling them that your team will win championships? How people can malign LeBron for exhibiting optimism at such an event is baffling.

In the end, all of the anti-LeBronites are remiss in acknowledging what LeBron does so well. It would be an insult to James to suggest that the fact that he has never been involved in any criminal wrong-doing or sensational negative publicity merits approbation. But he has been subjected to vitriolic rumors involving the relationships of his family members and teammates, and has had to manage the legal issues of family members. Every time the media confronts LeBron with such events--and when they confront him it is incessant--he handles it with the aplomb of a White House press secretary. He never rattles or lashes out at reporters for inquiring about personal, non-basketball matters. He makes it clear that it is a personal issue and that he will deal with it appropriately.

Of course, all of this is ignored because he chose to leave a team that he personally was contributing anywhere from 20 to 42 wins a year too so he could have a better chance at winning a championship. It will be interesting to see how perceptions of LeBron change if he can lead the Heat past the Thunder in this season's Finals. But considering the number of championships that Kobe and Jordan accrued, fans will probably continue to castigate LeBron for raising $6 million for charity for years to come at fans' own cost as it is they who are failing to appreciate arguably the greatest all-around athlete of a generation.

Stanley Cup: NBCSN v. Not-NBCSN

Yesterday The New York Times published a story about how NBC, the carrier of this year's Stanley Cup, decided to air games 3 and 4 on its upstartish NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) as a means to raising the network's ratings, which might enable it to push more cable and satellite providers to carry it. While this is a common broadcasting ploy, the fact that one of the US's four major professional sporting championships was aired on a network with an audience that is only 80% of that of ESPN and ESPN2 is of consequence. (Consider that a professional championship is being played on a channel that you don't know the number of off the top of your head.)

The Times reports that game 3 on NBCSN drew 1.7 million viewers, which represented a 37% decline from game 3 on the previous Stanley Cup. By contrast, the NBA Western Conference Finals, which are being played between two small market teams (LA and NY/NJ, the Stanley Cup teams, happen to hail from the two largest markets) are averaging just under 8 million viewers per game.To grant you some perspective the NBA Finals usually averages around 10 million viewers, the World Series 10-12 million and, the Superbowl trumps all at about 110 million. 1.7 million viewers is about what a new episode of Tosh.O or Storage Wars draws.

One argument would be that hockey simply isn't that popular anymore. While it might not possesses the audience of the other three major sports, historically its averaged between two and three times what it's received on NBCSN. The real problem is that since 2005 when ESPN dropped NHL the league lost its best platform for publicity. On Sportscenter, anchors, like John Buccigross, who openly push for more hockey coverage, often joke that analyst Barry Melrose is the ESPN hockey department.

ESPN, and Sportscenter in particular, represents the definitive platform for general sports news. Of course, the internet has infinite sports information--including a site dedicated to the sociocultural misunderstandings of LeBron James, the foolishness of even thinking of comparing Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan, and other issues of far left femi-radicalism--but it operates more to fulfill individuals' niche interests. Besides gaining close to 2 million viewers for its most watched episode in a given day, Sportscenter is where the NFL fan that is seemingly disinterested in any other sport finds out that Clippers play a form of lay-up-line, dunk contest basketball that is worth a look or that opiates appear to exhibit a similar effect to that of conventional performance enhancing drugs in baseball as Josh Hamilton continues to bash home run after home run. In the end the NHL needs ESPN. Without it it runs the danger of becoming mentioned with the likes of the MLS as a second tier major sport and of being carried by networks not dedicated to hockey or sports but to using the NHL's existing popularity as a means to gain leverage on cable and satellite providers.

Lakers y Facebook

On Friday, May 18, Facebook submitted its initial public offering at $38 a share and the Los Angeles Lakers won their last  playoff game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Both were based on or inspired by irrational exuberance and neither should have happened. Here's why.

Here's the thing with IPOs. When you have pre-IPO financial stake in a company it's in your interest to increase the asking share price (based on the assumption that more money > less money). In other words, the more you ask for the more you get. Normally, there is some issuing body--Morgan Stanley in the case of Facebook--that bases the offering price on some objective measure. (A reasonable, simple metric would be price to earnings--you would expect the price of a share of Facebook to be similar to the price of a share of a similar tech company with similar earnings.)

But the excitement surrounding Facebook, Justin Timberlake, 'what's cooler than a million dollars' granted those with a stake in the company leverage on their issuing partner, who usually makes the same amount of money regardless of the asking price. As a result, the price of a stock that based on conventional, objective measures should have opened in the teens and taking the once-in-a-lifetime excitement into account maybe the mid-twenties per share, became grossly inflated, which resulted in the character that plays Jesse Eisenberg in real life and his real life friends to prosper quite handsomely.

Now the Lakers. The Lakers benefit from a similar irrational exuberance however theirs is much more sustained (in less than three weeks since its IPO FB shares have dropped almost 35%). The Lakers hype is based in the belief that Kobe Bryant is superior to the rest of the NBA. It's what enables the Lakers to continue to recruit a dominant supporting cast--bear in mind that John Starks would have won back-to-back rings if he played with Shaq in Shaq's prime--while protecting Kobe from objective analysis that definitively shows that he shoots the ball a whole heck of a lot while not making it all that much and when things go South is quick to accuse Pau Gasol or some other not equally alpha-male of lack of aggressiveness.

Kobe is given such leniency because there is a whole generation of basketball fans--and a coast of the United States--that wants desperately to believe that Kobe is Jordan. Unfortunately, these individuals cannot accept that while he shares Jordan's elite scoring and defense, Kobe is an inferior passer and defender, couldn't force turnovers like Jordan, and didn't age nearly as well. (At 33 Kobe shot 43% and had a 22 PER; Jordan, on the other hand, shot almost 49% and had a 28 PER. In fact at 39, Jordan shot 45% and had a 20 PER. This latter year was on a team, of course, that included the dual threats of Jahidi White and Christian Laettner--the early 2000s version of Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol if the early 2000s were 15 years after the USSR conquered the US in the Cold War and attendance merited the same acclaim as achievement.)

It is this Kobe hysteria that led many analysts to pick the Lakers over the Thunder in a series that the Lakers were lucky to push to five games. In the off-season this popular misconception of Kobe's worth might land the Lakers Dwight Howard or Deron Williams, which will ensure Los Angeles a top five finish in the West but it won't hide that in highly competitive and defensive playoff games Kobe's FG attempt to point ratio is coming increasingly closer to one. In the end the obsession will benefit the elite Western teams, like the Thunder, as the Lakers and Kobe dilute free agent talent that could build elsewhere in the West, like Dallas, by accumulating talent in Los Angeles and mitigating its potential as Kobe fires off 30+ field goals because he and most everyone else want to compare him to Jordan.

NBA Lottery

On Wednesday the NBA held its 2012 Draft lottery, which has resulted in two main stories. One was that the NAIA Charlotte Bobcats did not secure the first pick. And related to number one is the argument that because the league-owned New Orleans Hornets won the draft there is grounds for accusation of collusion. The issue with lottery conspiracy talk is that considering the  the Hornets had the fourth and tenth overall picks that meant that their combined chance was actually better than that of the Cavaliers, who had the third best probability for any teams' single pick. Not to mention, conspiracy theory is the norm in recent draft lotteries. When the Wizards had only a 10% chance in 2010 but secured the first overall pick there were rumors that the league did that out of compensation for the recent passing of their long-time owner, the magnanimous Abe Pollin. Even last year when the Cav's had the second and eighth best odds but won the first overall pick some intimated that the league manipulated the lottery so as to recompense the franchise for LeBron's departure and their meteoric descent in the East.

This draft has been touted as one of the deepest in years. So far the hype has mainly surrounded Anthony Davis, who--assuming he stays healthy--some have argued will automatically make a team playoff bound in his first year and after further development guarantees perennial 50 win seasons. So Davis is a lock at one. But what's interesting about this draft is that while it is far deeper than most years, DBSF predicts it will also have a high number of lottery busts.

Consider this Yahoo! mock draft. There are two sure stars in the top ten--Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist. Then you have player(s): with heart/ effort/ desire to compete outside of the second quarter issues (Drummond and Barnes); whose size, which was a huge commodity  in college but gets neutralized in the NBA because most threes and up are that big, no longer guarantees commensurate production (Robinson and Sullinger); who is a 6'3" two-guard, who shot under 35% from threes in college, which is concerning considering that they move the line-back in the NBA (Beale); who is a PG that didn't compete against premier talent in college (Lillard . . . outside of Nash and Lin think of a successful NBA PG that didn't regularly play against top college teams); and, yet another 6'10-11" North Carolina forward that doesn't really play the four and will likely take years to adjust physically and ability-wise to have a serious impact in the NBA (Henson).

That leaves Jeremy Lamb, who DBSF sees as a Richard Hamilton-type, and is surely worth his lottery status. In other words, in this highly acclaimed draft DBSF predicts 3.5 of the top ten--based on this Yahoo! mock draft--to truly pan out. (Henson is the 0.5 because by the time he finally develops into the defensive presence that will justify the pick he will likely be on a team that didn't draft him.)

Likely to fall out of the top ten are two PGs that will have ten-plus year careers in Marshall and Rivers. (Yes, Rivers isn't Wall/ Irving but at times he can get to the hoop at will and his Dad is Doc Rivers, who in the discussion of living human beings not named Greg Popovich, is the best for parental advice on professional matters when one's profession is basketball.) There's also Perry Jones, who if he doesn't Eddie Curry/ DeMarr Johnson his way out of the NBA, could be LaMarcus Aldridge.

Tyler Zeller will be a ten-and-ten guy, which while that might not blow your pants off, when you're trying to win championships it's usually a lot harder to find someone who consistently battles for 10 defensive rebounds and affects a dozen or so shots with his length on the defensive end than it is to find a 6'5" two-guard that likes to bring the ball up the court and needs 18 shots to warm up before he scores 29 points for every three times he score 15.

Terrence Jones could become a Thaddeus Young exponentiated, and Moe Harkless is one of those super-talented 6'8" 18 year olds that in most drafts goes in the first five picks but justifies the pick at about a one-in-four rate. Of course, that 'one' ends up being Rudy Gay and the other 75% is Eddie Griffin, Brandan Wright or any of those uber-athletic low-skill UNC 6'9"ers that abstain from playing in the post on religious grounds, or anybody did a one-and-done under Bob Huggins. Later in the first round there are promising scorers in Ross, Miller and Waiters, good back-up PGs in Teague and Taylor as well as some size in guys like, Melo, Moultrie, and Leonard, who while they'll never dominate an NBA game could prove quite serviceable in providing key bench minutes--think Darko Milicic or Jason Thompson.

In other news, Wally Szczerbiak questioned Kevin Garnett's play during clutch moments in the Celtics-Heats series on Twitter. DBSF always felt that Twitter exists for one of the NBA's softest perimeter players, who's entire basketball career is defined by his play in a late 1990s NCAA first weekend pair of games, to critique one of the NBA's all-time tough, high effort players.Also, apparently Michael Jordan cares much more about Patrick Ewing than DBSF expected as Jordan eliminated Ewing from the running for head coach of the Bobcats. DBSF always thought Charles Oakley was Jordan's best friend but even Oakley had to pay a tax for all the Vegas nights with Jordan and Barkley by becoming a Bobcats' assistant. 

Roger Clemens and the Cost of Potentially Incarcerating Someone in a Minimum Security Prison/ Wellness Center for 2 or so Months

The likes of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Paul Ryan et al have all made bashing big/ small/ medium government trend worthy^. The thinking goes that government should be minimized or in some cases eliminated because of frivolous spending or because it won't let landowners develop properties that rest on watersheds or because the current Administration wants everyone to share the cost of healthcare^^.

While such a pejorative view of government tends to disregard the vast majority of good in government, some of the waste is conveniently ignored while it buzzes on every few nights on Sportscenter and the nightly news. It might come as a surprise to some but Roger Clemens' steroid trial-cum-debacle has been going on now for its fifth year. In February 2008 Clemens, an all-time great pitcher who probably cheated and used steroids but is as worthy of Congressional attention as a national spelling bee champion, lied to Congress about his use of performance enhancing drugs.

Consider that his--along with other baseball players of questionable repute--Congressional hearing probably consisted of a dozen-plus members of Congress (likely more considering there were high profile baseball players involved; in other words this wasn't some appropriations hearing for the Department of Transportation), who make in the $170K per year ball park. Each member of Congress also has her/ his personal phalanx of aides who can make anywhere from $30-$150K. This says nothing of the utilities and security costs associated with protecting one of the US's most cherished institutions. For those keeping score its reasonable to assume that it cost tax payers over $1 million to have Roger Clemens' lie to Congress about his steroid use.

(As luck would have it committee members noticed inconsistencies in Clemens' story and involved the FBI, which if you don't think Michael Vick was shocked to learn he could do time for dog-fighting there was no way Clemens was prepared for the penal crap-storm blowing his way.)

Fast--or slow motion--forward three and a half years and Clemens has a trial set for July 2011 on charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements to Congress. Inevitably there is a mistrial followed by a new trial, which we are now weeks into--but maybe longer, people have kind lost track. Federal prosecutors have called seemingly countless witnesses, and the judge has had to scold both sides for making the whole judicial experience "boring", which probably explains why one juror got dismissed for sleeping during the trial. All the while the cost for federal prosecutors, judges, the opportunity cost of applying these resources to non-Cy Young winners that allegedly lied to Congress about taking bovine muscle enhancers (or whatever) grows.

The costs will likely continue to accrue until the judge can take no more and a jury will decide that Clemens can either return to Texas and play golf six times a week or spend 90 days in a minimum security prison and then return to Texas to play golf six times a week. If convicted the taxpayers will pick-up the Cy Young winner's tab and the whole time the champions of small government will continue to argue that the problem and cost of government result from some combination of other people's elected representatives and any governmental action aimed at regulating behavior that imposes long-term social cost. Regardless if Clemens is convicted DBSF just hopes that since he's contributing to Clemens incarceration at the security-wellness center that there at least be a putting green so while resting he can maintain his short-game.


^DBSF aside: Regardless of what anyone might tell you, no one is actually opposed to government. Proselytes of the anti-government philosophy simply want a government that provides them the services that they use while eliminating services they don't use. Others recognize that some of those non-personally used programs offer some social benefit and, thus, are worth maintaining. The national dialogue might seem infinitely complex but in reality it's not much more than that.

^^DBSF aside 2: From a strictly policy-no-politics perspective we always, like 100% of the time, pay for other people's healthcare whether it is government-mandated or not. Without government-mandated healthcare we simply pay higher fees at the hospital or healthcare provider, which increase costs for insured patients to recoup costs associated with servicing the uninsured. So we either pay for the un- and under-insured through increased hospital and healthcare bills or we contribute to their health insurance. Like, literally no other option. Of course, the alternative to eliminate any support for the the un- and under-insured requires that we urge our legislators to demand that healthcare providers reject the Hippocratic Oath so the un- and under-insured don't receive any healthcare. Of course, this alternative drags one into the depths of a psychological quagmire that challenges some of the most fundamental tenets of Western thought.

Protesting Kerry Wood's Final "Strikeout"

Coming in with an 8.3-plus ERA, Kerry Wood's final "strikeout" of Dayan Viciedo arouses a degree of suspicion for DBSF. Unless "Dayan Viciedo" is Spanish for "Adam Dunn", which DBSF doubts is the case seeing as Viciedo is a career .270 hitter, then it seems odd that the Cubs' reliever, who functioned primarily as in-game BP for opponents during the 2012 season, could retire Viciedo on only three pitches (the last of which you will notice just makes it to home plate).

Consider that the "strikeout" came in the midst of what is now a 7 game hitting streak where Viciedo raised his batting average from below the Mendoza line to almost .250 and was after four straight games with an RBI. During this 7 game period Viciedo struck out only once besides his Wood's "strikeout". Delving further into the more esoteric baseball statistics--the kind which blur the line between baseball enthusiast and someone that has accomplished off the charts D&D Nature and Healing skills--you see that Viciedo strikes out in less than one and four at-bats.

Perhaps it was just an off-game for Vicieddo? Ironically his only other at-bat in the game was a hit off Jeff Samardzjia, who was in the midst of a 2.00 ERA May. Somehow Wood's bounce passes seemed to be too much for an otherwise hot batter. The "strikeout" was made all the more troubling by the fact that Wood's kids runs on the field to hug him, which DBSF believes is in direct violation of MLB rules after the fiasco with Dusty Baker's son a decade ago.

All DBSF is saying is that if you're going to script a monumental pitch then follow the structure of the definitive baseball movie--Summer Catch. Have Freddie Prinze, Jr come in the game in a Kerry Wood jersey and have Ken Griffey Jr. play in  Dayan Viciedo's jersey and demolish a first pitch 400 foot-plus home run. 

Deconstructing the Kobe Clutch Narrative

Spurred by the likes of ESPN, and Tim Legler in particular, there exists a narrative in the NBA that Kobe Bryant represents if not the, one of the most clutch players. DBSF thinks this narrative is rooted in a deeper narrative fed by the NBA that there is a an intergenerational competition between Kobe and Michael Jordan. From a marketing stand point it makes sense to promote this narrative as it maintains a connection between the current game and a time when the NBA was at its prime and when Jordan--the league's JFK--reigned.

Unfortunately, people who entertain that narrative exhibit a certain degree of ignorance with respect to objective analysis. Save NBA titles where Jordan has only one more than Kobe, statistically speaking Jordan is the far superior player player. Simply Google "Kobe Bryan basketball reference" and "Michael Jordan basketball reference" and compare for more detailed support to this statement. There's also another side that's not captured  quantitatively, which for anyone who watched Jordan and followed his career would lead them recognize what an insult it is to put Kobe in his company. Jordan never demanded to be traded or openly called out the heart of his teammates to the media. Jordan simply led and while he was probably intolerable to deal with as a teammate because of his exceptional demands and expectations, he never made it a spectacle in the media or a That's So Kobe drama. It was always about winning.

Considering that one can easily debunk the Kobe-Jordan myth, it is reasonable to challenge the Kobe-clutch narrative as it is rooted in this notion that he is this generation's Jordan. Despite the fact that Kobe seems to miss all of his recent late-game-deciding shots (save the one against the Raptors earlier in the year, which because it's the Raptors only kind of counts) analysts on programs, like Sportscenter, continue to champion his clutchness. Therefore, review of objective efficacy deserves consideration to gain some measure of his aptitude in late-game situations.

Fortunately, there is an excellent website, 82games.com, dedicated to measuring clutch performance. After what had to be absolutely tireless data collection, they present analysis on a range of factors, two of which are relevant to this topic. In this first data set they collected statistics on game winning shots that occurred between 2003 and February 2009.  They defined game winning shots as "24 second or less in the game and the team with the ball is tied or down by 1 or 2 points".While Kobe has the fourth most makes he also has the most misses with 42. In fact of the 76 players listed, Kobe's FG% in these scenario (25%) is tied for fifth to last.

For the 2011-12 season 82games.com collected data on 5 minutes or less in the 4th quarter or OT where neither team is ahead by more than 5 point (all stats are extrapolated over 48 minutes). Similar to the previous analysis, Kobe seems a reasonably clutch player as he averages the 12th most points. However when we look at FG% Kobe ranks 102nd out of 140 players. Further Kobe averaged the 15th highest number of turnovers. There's no denying that Kobe Bryant is an all-time great shooting guard. But the belief that he merits comparison to Jordan is specious and the notion that he is one of the league's more clutch players lacks objective, statistical support.