Mudiay's Decision

Emmanuel Mudiay is making a lot of people very angry.  People tend to be very angry when the issue of American college athletics is brought up these days, no matter which perspective they take.  Depending on who you ask, college athletics are either the literal rebirth of slavery or the last refuge of moral values in America(admittedly, you'd probably only get the latter answer if you asked Mark Emmert).

                But the reason Mudiay is making such big waves in the college sporting world is not because of how he will enter, but rather that he will not enter it at all.  Instead, he opted to sign a 1.2 million dollar contract to play with Guangdong of the Chinese Basketball Association. 

                Less than ten years ago, it was common to see top tier basketball prospects fresh out of high school immediately enter the NBA draft.  Their ability to do so had been fought for decades ago when the Supreme Court decision in Haywood v. National Basketball Association ended the collusion between the NBA and NCAA to prevent non-college players from being drafted. However, this protection for players was weakened by the regulation colloquially known as the "one-and-done rule," instituted in 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

                This rule states that draft eligibility require a player to be 19 years old and at least one year removed from his high school graduation.  Since the rule's institution, it has become common for high level prospects to join a college basketball program for one year before jumping ship for the NBA.  Like watching Andrew Wiggins play for Kansas?  Well too bad he's gone now to greener pastures and shinier hardwood of Cleveland. 

                Now, these high school graduates are not obligated to spend this interim year in college.  Some, such as Australian prodigy Dante Exum, opt to take a year off from competitive basketball to insure themselves against injury or bad performance which could hurt their draft stock.  Mudiay has taken the approach which, on paper, might seem the most fruitful.  Playing professionally in China allows him to play against high levels of competition while still being paid for his services.  However, the few who have tried this path in the one-and-done era have not been met with great success.

                The two most well-regarded prospects to spend their gap year playing abroad professionally were Brandon Jennings in 2008 and Jeremy Tyler in 2010.   Jennings played a year in Italy's Lega Basket Serie A before being taken by Milwaukee with the 10th overall pick in 2009.  Sounds pretty good, except that coming out of high school he had been ranked as the number one prospect by ESPNU.  HIs performance in Italy was documented by a New York Times piece which reads more like a post-mortem than sports analysis.  Tyler went so far as to forgo his senior year in high school, spending two years abroad.  The first was spent with Maccabi Haifa of the Israeli Super League, the ugliness of his season only surpassed by the 2011 earthquake which followed his stint with the Tokyo Apache of Japan.  Like Jennings, his time overseas got the New York Times treatment.  He was drafted with the 39th overall pick of the 2011 draft, and has yet to find significant playing time with any NBA team.  Jennings has enjoyed a solid if unspectacular career thus far as the primary scoring option Milwaukee before moving to Detroit last year.  His draft stock was certainly damaged by his decision, but it seems that his career has not. 

                It's only a small sample size, but going pro overseas seems to hold more risk than reward.  The vast majority of NBA players go through American colleges, even when including the era from 1995 to 2005 when 39 players were drafted out of high school.  Even exceptional foreign born players who are drafted without seeing college frequently take more time to adjust to the NBA than a similarly talented player out of college.  The style of play in foreign leagues significantly diverges from the NBA, focusing much more on passing and half-court sets.  Division I college basketball on the other hand mimics the NBA's look; pick-and-rolls and fast breaks are all the rage. 

                But whatever the risk, I'm glad that Mudiay is going to play in China next year.  I'm going to break one of my personal rules and get a little preachy, but I believe that the one-and-done rule is collusion between the NBA and NCAA for the purpose of exploiting laborers, plain and simple.  I think that legal adults should be allowed to pursue any profession for which they are qualified, and playing one year of college basketball is not exactly taking the bar.  It may be better for the players to enter college so as to develop their skills, but it is also their legal right to do what they think is best for them, even if it turns out to be a mistake.  

McIlroy can't commit...does that matter?

It's hard to be consistently excellent in any sport, especially in the case of an individual sport such as golf.  Teammates can cover for a bad day from one or two others here and there but as anyone who plays golf knows, there is no one to help you out on the course.  For a professional, a bad day means you're not going to win the tournament.  A select few golfers have been able to develop a consistently high level of play over a long period of time.  Tiger Woods was the Number 1 golfer virtually from the time I was aware of golf as a human until his pancake house adventures were discovered in 2009, with only a slight Vijay Singh-fueled blip in the middle.  Jim Furyk seems as if he's been in the top 20 for as long as golf has been played professionally.  It's not easy.  It takes talent, practice, and commitment.

                Commitment is not something that Rory McIlroy  seems to have mastered at this point in his professional career.  He has an absurd amount of talent, so check that box.  His technique (that beautiful whip-like drive) indicates a very high level of practice so no fault there.  His golf is flawless...until it isn't.  Even in the midst of his staggering success, being the best golfer in the world through 2011 and 2012, he has had had some pretty low moments.  He melted down so dramatically at the 2011 Masters that even Greg Norman had to wince.  His title defense at the 2012 US Open was cut two days short by the monster disguised as the Olympic Club course.  He withdrew from the 2013 Honda Classic under bizarre circumstances.  In fact, we can safely characterize the entirety of 2013 as a low point for McIlroy. 

                A lot of outsiders pointed to McIlroy's personal dealings to explain his 2013 collapse, focusing on his tumultuous relationship with former Number 1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki.  After dumping his high school girlfriend for the Danish tennis pro, his game slipped noticeably (as did Wozniacki's, funnily enough).  She was viewed as a distraction by observers, keeping him from reaching his full potential.

                That's a lie of course, everyone with half a brain knows that McIlroy struggled in 2013 because he changed his clubs in exchange for a bajillion dollar contract with Nike and failed to adjust.  It's an occupational hazard of being near the top of any sport that Nike or Adidas will start throwing huge bags of money at you, and the unwary will trip over those bags.  This was McIlroy's true commitment issue, his decision not to follow through on a long term relationship with old partner Titleist more impactful than his insidious mindgames decision to separate from Wozniacki. 

                But finally after text message breaking up with Wozniacki, then proposing to her, then breaking off the engagement after weddings invitations had been printed, and going through a similar but more fruitful process with his Nike clubs, he won his first major tournament since the PGA Championship in 2012.  In winning the Open Championship this past weekend, McIlroy showed the steady and dominant play that won him both the PGA and the 2011 US Open.  Despite a slight dip on Sunday to keep things interesting, the result of the tournament was never in much doubt after Friday's round.  Now he looks to be on the upswing.

                So maybe McIlroy has proven me wrong after all.  Maybe commitment is overrated in terms of long term sports success.  He dropped the clubs, he dropped the girl, but he's gone right back to winning again.  Maybe we'd like to think that athletes have to hold themselves to certain standards, and that it's about more than just talent.  But talent really does win out where athletics is concerned.   But then again, maybe we're all taking this just a bit too seriously.  He's a 25 year old playing some golf.  He's bound to be kind of a screw-up where life is concerned.  His future is a lot less certain than the result was this past Sunday.  

Carmelo and Cookies

A few years ago I read about a study which concerned young children and patience.  The subjects, all very young children, were offered the choice of receiving one cookie immediately or waiting for 15 minutes or so and receiving two.  Follow up studies determined that the children who had opted to wait for the extra cookie were more likely to make smart decisions in managing their money and were generally more successful at life than their hungrier peers. 

                I had a somewhat irrational annoyance at this study, perhaps because I feared that in that situation I would have opted for the one cookie, exposing myself as a fraud who had lucked into some small success in life and who would inevitably fail.  I am indeed, often pretty bad at organizing my day-to-day existence. 

                I was reminded of this study recently when thinking about Carmelo Anthony and his recent decision to remain with the New York Knicks.  For him , it essentially came down to a choice between joining a title-ready team in Chicago or staying in New York and trusting NBA legend Phil Jackson to build a contender around him.  Like the cookies, this was a choice between instant gratification and long term reward.  But there is one key difference between the study and Carmelo's decision: there is no guarantee of the long term reward for Carmelo.  I bet those smart-ass kids would've had to think twice if the testers told them they would "try" to bring them two cookies after a short wait. 

                And don't think one championship is as good as another.  Not for Carmelo.  In New York(where he was born, it should be noted) he would be the star of the first title team in more than three decades, the first building block upon which that team was built.  In Chicago he would simply fill a hole; he would be a plug-in superstar whose legacy would remain in the shadow of the greatest basketball player ever, whose memory is still fresh for Bulls fans.  New York represents the greater risk and the greater reward. 

                But while Carmelo was the only one making a tangible choice, fans of the New York Knicks like myself had a similar choice to make concerning what outcome we actually wanted.  We may not all have ended up like those two-cookie taking future hedge fund managers, but sports fans these days have gotten pretty savvy about alternatives to immediate success.  The strategy of "tanking," deliberately fielding a bad team to leverage a higher draft pick, is far more viable now that fan bases have the understanding necessary to tolerate short term losing for the promise of long term success. 

                The Knicks are no doubt better immediately with Carmelo.  And after some of the bad contracts are cleared off the team's books in the next two years or so, building a contender is entirely possible.  But after years and years of mismanagement wherein opportunities were missed and assets were squandered, I do feel some desire for a completely clean slate from which to start.  However good Carmelo has been in New York doesn't change the fact that the trade that got him here was one of those bad decisions.  We could have had the chance to build up a younger team from scratch using the draft and maybe nabbing a youngish free agent a few years down the line.  With Carmelo resigned, we're pinning our hopes on the 3-5 more years of top level basketball that he has left, plus the services of a potential big free agent signing. 

                With the draft being such a crapshoot, Carmelo is the sure thing.  But is that sure thing going to take us where we really want to go?  Neither we fans nor Carmelo will know for years whether his resigning was the right decision.  We're left to wonder: did we make the smart decision and wait for the cookies down the road or did we just snatch up the one because we were hungry?

The Man in the Machine: Messi vs. Germany

When I first heard the nickname of the German national team, "Die Mannschaft", I guessed that in English it would translate to "The Machine."  This would have perfectly fit the squad's reputation: Cold and unfeeling, brutally efficient, and above all dominant.  It also perfectly fit the narrative going into their final fixture against Argentina and Lionel Messi: The one man against the evil empire; the super star against the deep team; the man against the machine.

                This was always a false narrative, although I'll admit that I didn't realize it until I watched the first few minutes of the final itself.  What I saw was not Messi weaving around German lines trying to make something happen for himself or his teammates.  Instead I saw the tightly coordinated German offense trying earnestly, and at first failing, to crack the stingy and sticky Argentinean defense. 

                The clockwork-like German offense had gotten its due coming into the match thanks to its unprecedented deconstruction of Brazil in the semifinal, but the same can't be said for Argentina's defenders, who had not conceded a single goal during the knockout stage going into the final match.  They plainly carried Argentina forward, given that their offense had scored only two goals of their own in those same three matches. 

                But the Messi narrative was strong, and in the group stage it was actually the correct narrative, as his four brilliant goals were the difference in all three matches.  But he was only one man, and despite the occasional flash of brilliance, he needed his defense to shut out the opposition just as much as they had needed him in the group stage.  And for the first twenty or thirty minutes of the final, it looked as if they were going to stay impenetrable even to the potent German opposition. 

                That's when the real story of the match became more apparent, with the German forwards and midfielders prodding and poking at the Argentine back third, at first unable to even enter the penalty box cleanly.  But they slowly worked their way in, creating chances which got better and better and the half went on.  It looked to be something of a race: Would Germany solve the Argentine defensive puzzle first, or would one of their increasingly common defensive errors be exploited by Argentina for what might be the only goal they would need.

                In the end, Argentina cracked first.  The machine had won.  But did it?  I mentioned earlier how I had believed that "Die Mannschaft" meant "The Machine" in German.  I found out recently that I was incorrect.  In actuality, it means "The Team." And I realized that nothing could be more fitting for this World Cup final.  These Germans were not cogs in a machine, they were men working together.  Far from faceless, I remember many of the players distinctly.  Thomas Müller and his brashness; Miroslav Klose's quiet determination; the heartbreak of Sami Khedira's warm up injury; Bastian Schweinsteiger's bloody perseverance in extra time, and of course Mario Götze's game winner for the ages. 

                This was never about the collective against the individual.  Football has always been and remains the most team-oriented of all team sports in the world.  There were simply two teams of eleven men on the pitch.  Germany's individuals were better, and their team was also better.  They are the best team in the world and now have the hardware to prove it.

Afterthought on the Golden Ball Award:

It's not completely clear why Lionel Messi was awarded the Golden Ball for best player of the tournament(the narrative I've already discussed has a lot to do with it, as well as his being the most popular player in the world) but not a lot of people seem to agree.  He was given credit for dragging Argentina through the tournament, which in the group stage was absolutely true.  But in the knockout round, teams keyed in on Messi as the Argentines' focal point, forcing the defense to step up to get the team through.  Some cite this extra attention as reason to give him the award, but I would instead point to the Netherlands' Arjen Robben, who was also the focal point of his team's offense and yet was not stopped in that same way. 

The Netherlands were only outscored by Germany in the tournament, and even in games when they struggled to finish in the penalty box, they consistently created tons of scoring chances.  No one was more responsible than Robben.  On most possessions, the team would rely on his incredible speed and have him run at the penalty box to create openings for his teammates.  He was never subbed out in a meaningful match, including two consecutive overtime games.  And through all of them he never lost a step, relentlessly attacking opposing defenses with that ridiculous speed.  He ended up winning the Bronze Ball award for the third best player in the tournament, behind Messi and Germany's Thomas Müller.  But in my mind, Robben deserved the top prize, though it would have been small consolation after losing what was likely his last chance to win the cup for Holland.

Unconventional World Cup Viewing

With the World Cup nearing its conclusion, there aren't a lot more opportunities to gain new experiences in watching the tournament.  I've watched most of the matches from the comfort of my living room either alone or with my dad, but I was still able to find some more exotic viewing locales and people to watch with.  Perhaps you can experience a few of them this weekend, or at least keep them in mind for 2018.

1. Half Asleep sitting at an airport bar

This was the perch I had found myself in for the group fixture between Uruguay and Costa Rica, in Chicago's Midway Airport on my way home from school.  The game was only playing in bars, so my dad and I set up in one and ordered an endless stream of cokes for fear of the indignity of actually being asked to leave an airport bar.  After a sleep deprived finals week, the cokes were enough to keep me awake, barely.  At least enough to look up every once in a while and see the replay of Costa Rica scoring yet another goal while wondering what had happened to Uruguay.  Perhaps it is fitting that in this most inauspicious of places I would witness both the beginning of Costa Rica's utterly unexpected quarterfinal run and a preview of Uruguay's lifeless(ie, Luis Suarez-less) defeat against Colombia.  I can't have been in a great state of mind at the time, since I remember deciding for a few moments that Uruguay would win the tournament based entirely off of Edinson Cavali's threatening demeanor.  As it turned out, he had more bark than bite, or at least less bite than Suarez.  He had fewer goals too.  I followed up this match by sleeping through most of England-Italy.  I don't think England fans will be too upset with me.  Overall I can't recommend the airport bar as a viable viewing area.

2. Watching Penalty Shoot-outs with your mom

There's a large camp of football fans who hate penalty shoot-outs.  If you're English, it's practically a requirement.  But they do set the heart racing, even if you have no rooting interest in the match.  And it's inevitably heartbreaking, as it forces the players to be perfect; each tiny miscue here is a soul-crushing disaster. The pain of defeat is magnified tenfold and its ending will result in more congregated grown men crying then you will see on any other occasion.  There have been a record-tying four shoot-outs in this World Cup, and I'm pretty sure that my mom has been present for all of them.  And somehow, all four times she's ended up pulling for the team that ended up losing.  Or maybe it just feels that way, since she's particularly quick to sympathize for the runner up in a situation where sympathy already comes easily.  It's a tough spot with my tendency to harden up when a team I like but am not officially supporting loses.  My mom inevitably makes me second guess my own empathy.  An experience unlike any other.

3. Small TV with a spotty signal in your dad's office

Had it been any other match, I probably just would've forgone it and enjoyed my day out in the city.  But this was US damn it.  And by that I mean the U.S. of course.  One of the best efforts by one man during the tournament.  One of the worst by a team.  But I've written about that.  As you might guess, the venue did not exactly improve the viewing experience.  The TV was a bit on the small side but more importantly very high near the ceiling, meaning you had to crane your neck up to watch.  The thing was tied to some kind of central server or cable box, causing the image to skip every couple of seconds.  Then there was the slightly awkward environment of a legal office lounge.  As best I can tell, law is a profession that's white collar enough to allow good leeway to its employees, but demanding enough to keep the pressure on. As one of them noted, the game started too early to justify going home to watch it, but too late to stay at the office afterword for a full day's worth of productivity. So the lounge is filled with lawyers who feel comfortable enough taking a break to watch the football, but just uncomfortable enough with the work in the back of their minds that everyone just kind of stands in subdued silence.  A silence only to be broken with a resounding groan at Chris Wondolowki's Wonder-Shank at the 90th minute. 

4. Any game with your sarcastic Scottish uncle

I think it is a profound shame that so many in the world watch this tournament but relatively few have the privilege of a sarcastic Scottish uncle to watch with.  He has the cynicism of an English fan but none of the bitterness associated with actually having a team enter and fail in the tournament.  This, combined with being a virtual encyclopedia of 40+ years of football knowledge, makes him a treat for any viewing experience.  He'll know the club of all major players in the field, plus their various short comings.  He'll have hilarious anecdotes about footballers and World Cups past as well as depressing ones.  With him, they are like a wacky Venn diagram with a huge crossover.  And just like your Scottish dad, he has a near infallible sense for when a team is soon to score.

5. That Brazil-Germany game with your brother

My brother doesn't watch sports all that often, but one factor never fails to entice him viewership: humiliation.  Perhaps this should concern me, but considering I rarely see this mean streak in his daily life I just kind of roll with it.  It is appropriate that Germans coined the word schadenfreude, the only word I am aware of that expresses joy in another's misery, seeing as they were responsible for the best implementation of said word in recent history.  I don't know if I have the words for Germany's win asskicking annihilation(?) of Brazil.  It's almost certainly the most devastating loss in the history of football and may well be in the history of sports.  So what is there left to do but laugh?  I could not help but feel a bit giggly from my bro's horrified yet contagious enthusiasm for what he was witnessing. Although, I imagine that wherever and with whoever I watched this match it would've left an impression.  It certainly has on Brazil.     

Same Old Story

Sports are the easiest form of storytelling available to humans.  While any story teller can easily fail to craft a compelling plotline, all that sports has to do is gather a bunch of competitive people together and tell them that only one can have the big, shiny trophy in the room.  Boom.  Compelling human drama literally writes itself before our eyes. 

                What's really most amazing about this process is how easily the sports we watch seem to neatly fall into logical storylines complete with conflict, tension, and even themes.  They say the best stories always end with what seems, in retrospect, the only fitting way to end.  Despite the variable outcomes, sports seem to do this too.  The only element affected by the outcome is the ending's tenor: Is it a happy or sad ending? 

                Of course, a lot of this is just a result of compulsive human need to organize the world, our minds imposing order onto the chaos in front of us.  But sometimes the set up just seems too perfect.  Take this past semi final round at the Men's Singles at Wimbledon.  On one end, six time major winner Novak Djokovic faced 23 year old wunderkind Grigor Dimitrov.  On the other, 17 time champ Roger Federer faced 23 year old giant Milos Raonic.  Old guard vs. new.  The potential passing of the torch.  One of the oldest stories in the book.  Does youth trump experience?

                The answer is no.  Resoundingly no.  Not in men's tennis anyway.  Djokovic had to work for his win, but he got it after four tough sets against Dimitrov.  Federer was never in any such trouble, taking Raonic down on cruise control in straight sets.  Nothing wrong with that story, except that we've seen it before.  A lot.  Last year's Wimbledon was dubbed the tournament of the upset.  Federer and contemporary Rafael Nadal fell in the first two rounds and an unknown youngster (Jerzy Janowicz) and an occasionally brilliant but unproven competitor(Juan Martin Del Potro) reached the semis to square off against the established Andy Murray and Djokovic.  Both lost, and after all those upsets the final was still contested between two of the top seeds.  Within a few years, no one will remember it as the tournament of upsets. 

                Last year's US Open progressed in much the same manner.  The semi finals saw Djokovic and Nadal face normal major non contenders in Stanislas Wawrinka and Richard Gasquet.  They lose.  Djokovic-Nadal final.  This is not to call such tournaments totally anticlimactic.  There remain many compelling storylines in the star studded finals, from Murray ending the decades long wait for a British men's champion at Wimbledon to Federer attempting to prove that he is still relevant to tennis in his old age.  But these narratives are all in service to the greater narrative of men's tennis over the last ten years: No one is winning outside of about four guys.  That narrative is persistent, and many fans are ready if not desperate for a slight diversion. 

                That's probably why we latch on to the storylines like the one we saw at Wimbledon this week. But stories don't always end the way we want them to.  That's the mark of a classic tragedy: we see exactly where the story is going, and are still pretty sad when it comes around.  The semi final and final results at Wimbledon, were exciting for certain, but also predictable.  For as much as we value those neat and meaningful storylines which surround our sports, it is the unpredictable that gets our blood pumping at the end.  Hence why the final between Djokovic and Federer was such a treat.  Too bad we can't say the same about those semi final clashes.  We'll have to wait at least until August to see if the story of the young guns finally comes to the forefront of men's tennis. 

Requiem for a Dream

When we were eliminated by Ghana in 2006, I remember former ESPN personality and (at that time) MSNBC liberal demagogue Keith Olbermann joking that the US could go back to "not caring about soccer for the next four years." Harsh, and not what anyone involved with US soccer wanted to hear.  But it was probably true.  Major League Soccer remains a nonfactor in TV ratings; American viewership of European football leagues is limited to ex patriots and a few enthusiasts.  Ditto for the 2010 edition.

                Maybe this time is different.  For sure, the interest in our national team seemed to be at the highest which I can remember in my lifetime.  Perhaps our sense of public interest was inflated by social media, which really had not come into its own by 2010.  Maybe the perception was fueled by ESPN's aggressive marketing of the US's games in order to drive up overall World Cup ratings.  Maybe the next few years will see nothing change in regards to American interest in soccer.  But for a few weeks at least it felt real.

                Which makes the way it all ended even sadder.  In a lot of ways it was a very American way to lose a soccer game.  We saw one man, Tim Howard, raise his game to an almost unfathomable level.  We love that kind of storyline in our sports.  We love watching the one basketball player take control and just pour in shots, singlehandedly keeping his team afloat.  We love the quarterback who puts the team on his back when the defense just can't seem to get it done.  We loved watching Tim Howard take one Belgium virtually by himself.  It reinforces our American love of the individual, the one man who can rise above and in turn elevate his peers.  It seemed almost in rebellion to many Americans' (I'm looking at you Anne Coulter) wrongheaded notion of soccer as a sport which devalued the individual.

                Of course, all team sports remain team sports, no matter how good one man plays.  Tim Howard was able to make up for a slow and overmatched defense, at least for a while, but not for the disorganized and sloppy midfield and forwards.  If you can't score goals, you can't win games.  As a team, Belgium had us on our heels and severely outplayed us for most of the match.  If not for Howard, we might very well have lost 5-0.  But for one moment, it looked like we were going to steal it.  That's one more thing we like in American sports: the clearly inferior team taking one from the greater.  Even after a century as one of the two or three most powerful countries on Earth, we still hold a fondness for the time when we were an upstart rebel colony that managed to land a sucker punch on then-superpower Great Britain, and that fondness mainly manifests itself in sports.  If Chris Wondolowski doesn't shank an open shot on goal in stoppage time, then I'm writing an entirely different article.  Belgium deserved to win, but for that one second, we deserved to win in a messed up kind of way.  We totally should've won that game.

                I'll still watch the rest of the World Cup.  I'll enjoy it.  But it won't be the same.  It certainly won't be the same for ESPN's domestic ratings, much to their dislike.  Now we can treat ourselves to Germany trying to overcome the flu to beat France, Argentina and Belgium doing nothing for 80 minutes before one of them decides to get it together and win the game, and Brazil trying to block out the knowledge that losing will lead to their deaths by mob and the likely dissolution of their government. But in the end it's going to be a punchout between the major European and South American football powers, unless Costa Rica can avoid the pitfalls of Arjen Robben falling over in the penalty box..  The US has the potential to be the biggest game changer in the World Cup.  All it takes is one North American, African, or Asian side to win, and the floodgates might just open for all others.  Over the last four cups, the US has been the closest relatively speaking.  We've got the resources and population to have staying power.  We even have a German coach.  I don't know what else we need, but we're gonna need to wait at least another four years to find out.