NBA

Things are about to get even better for the NBA Champions…

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Apparently Fox can compete for local team rights in a competitive, high-value market as well.

Fox is breaking the bank and is about to at least quadruple the money they pay the Miami Heat – only the reigning and future NBA Champions and the most-talked-about team in the second-most demo-friendly league – closer to the per-viewer average the Lakers are getting from Time Warner Cable. This in a market where Comcast could have conceivably swooped in and snapped up the rights if they wanted to. Certainly there’s room for it – Florida, like Los Angeles, is a market where Fox runs two regional sports networks.

To be fair, though, this is an extention of a deal that still had three years left on it, so this is more of a case of Fox using its incumbent status to lock up a team without giving anyone else a chance in an open market. It doesn’t mean Fox has a massive advantage when it comes to locking up Dodgers rights…

@sportsguy33, the Sonics, and me

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I have a confession to make. When the Sonics were stolen from Seattle? I was kind of apathetic about it.

Part of the reason was that the Sonics were in a lengthy phase ranging from mediocrity to sucking. Part of it may have been that even then, I was developing into more of a national sports fan than a local one, or a fan of any particular team. Part of it was the aura of inevitability surrounding the notion of Oklahoma City getting an NBA team after the Hornets’ post-Katrina exile there, even though, of all the teams it could have been, why did it have to be the Sonics? Why couldn’t the Hornets have just stayed there?

Whatever it was, I couldn’t get myself too worked up about what was happening to the Sonics, even though like everyone else I could see it coming.

These days? These days I simply cannot refer to the Western Conference champions directly. The closest I come is to call them the “Sonics-in-exile”. It’s hard for me even to refer to the city they play in.

What changed? Bill Simmons. While Clay Bennett was still holding the city hostage, Simmons started repeatedly harping on the issue in his columns, pointing out what an asshole Bennett was being and how David Stern was falling asleep on the job. After the team moved, Simmons refused to refer to it by name, coming up with a wide variety of euphemisms to refer to it.

But the funny thing is, as time went on, even as Simmons’ outrage was affecting me, he seemed to be becoming less outraged. He regularly referred to the team as “Oklahoma City” with “Zombie Sonics” becoming the only euphemism used. He praised the team, Kevin Durant, the city. And in yesterday’s column, he basically announces he doesn’t hold a grudge against OKC, while noting at the end he still doesn’t like the situation in Seattle (complete with “Thunder” in the title!). I’ve been ginned full of outrage I never felt in the first place by someone who doesn’t feel as much of it himself anymore.

Honestly, even before that column I wasn’t sure how I felt. I wasn’t sure whether I should root against the Sonics-in-exile, because they stole our team, or for them, because… hey, if they win, it’s really the Sonics winning! The general consensus around here seems to be to root against them, and I do already have reason to root for the Heat, and I’m not sure I’m ready to live in a world where the Sonics-in-exile have a championship after leaving Seattle. But if they do, I hope Seattle throws them a faux “championship parade”, if only to give one last reminder to the rest of the country where they came from.

Why I’m rooting for LeBron James

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I think I might be a pretty weird sports fan. While most people root for the underdog, I root for the favorite.

Now don’t get me wrong. I get as much of a rise out of upsets in the NCAA Tournament as anyone else. But at some point, when the theoretical gap between the two teams gets beyond a certain point, my rooting interest shifts in the other direction. When one team becomes so dominant, so fantastic, I root for them to get their just reward for their effort. Maybe it’s my experience in the trenches of the college football playoff debate (where a lot of people don’t actually want to see March Madness in football) speaking, but I root for history, I root for greatness, and where appropriate, I root for perfection. And I root against history and justice being hijacked in order to film a real-life sports movie.

But even discounting my own neuroses, when you look at it purely objectively… how can you not feel for LeBron James?

Much of it has already been chronicled to death. He’s one of the great talents in the history of the league, but has never been able to take advantage of it when it matters most. He’s been paying his penance for “The Decision” for the past two years. He’s under pressure to live up to his own promise to win more championships than anyone in history, after having already blown one chance. The blame inevitably falls on him whenever the Heat lose, even if Dwyane Wade would get a pass in the same situation. He gets booed every single time he leaves Miami, forced into the role of the villain even against his will.

One thing and one thing only can lift, if not all of it, at least the greater portion of it off his shoulders. An NBA championship.

If it weren’t playing out in real life, it’d be a sports movie in its own right, wouldn’t it? The star quarterback under enormous pressure, taking criticism from all sides, earning redemption by coming through in the big game. We’re the ones getting on his back about his past failings, but if we were looking at it from the outside, we’d be rooting for him to overcome it all. LeBron just won, I believe, his third MVP award. There’s a form of history he’s on the verge of making he doesn’t want: everyone else who won that many MVP trophies also had at least one championship ring by the end of that season. I don’t want that on his record; I don’t want him to be one of the greatest who ever played the game in the regular season who let it all slip away in the playoffs. I don’t want him to confirm his reputation as someone who can’t get it done in the clutch. I want this to work out. I want this to all be worth it.

I don’t want five, not six, not seven. For LeBron’s sake, I’d settle for one. Just one to vindicate himself against all the doubters. I don’t want the history books to look back on everything, on “The Decision”, on the next night in Miami, on all the hatred and drama, and say that it amounted to nothing, that it all ended after two years, that LeBron hadn’t won anything going in and hadn’t won anything going out.

I’m worried that even if they come back, maybe Miami no longer deserves the title, that they can’t just flip a switch and become the best team in the NBA. Then again, maybe no one left deserves the title, if only because I refuse to accept a world in which the Seattle Supersonics have a title, potentially the first of many, when they’re no longer the Sonics or in Seattle anymore. I don’t know if Miami can come back, win Game 6 in Boston, win Game 7 in Miami, and go on to beat the Sonics-in-Exile for the title.

But I have this feeling… I have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind… that LeBron is about to deliver one of the classic performances of all time.

And one day, we may look back on it… and realize we were all playing our roles in his ongoing drama all along.

Cox, the Hornets, and the local sports TV wars

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Fox may be losing its regional sports dominion to Comcast and Time Warner Cable, but that doesn’t mean it’s shrinking elsewhere, and for that it has Cox to thank. Fox was able to set up an FSN network in San Diego largely because then-rightsholders Cox pulled out of the bidding for Padres rights, and history appears to have repeated itself in New Orleans, where Cox, whose regional sports networks have had trouble getting carriage on non-Cox systems, has decided the best way to save itself from rising sports rights fees isn’t to join the party, but to do the opposite, give Fox a monopoly and hope that means Fox can shortchange the team on rights fees and pass the savings on to Cox.

My impression is that Cox can only do this because ESPN and CBS aren’t in the regional sports network business. (NBC is, but their RSNs are tied to Comcast’s cable business.) If there were multiple RSN groups that weren’t tied to cable operators, Fox wouldn’t be able to set the price for local sports rights, and Cox wouldn’t have any other options. If Root Sports were at all interested in expanding outside the three regional sports networks it already has, Fox wouldn’t be able to escape competition anywhere. That they are not could have a number of causes, from DirecTV not wanting to go head-to-head with the organization that spawned it to only holding those three regional sports networks until they can spin them off to someone else like Comcast. But Cox could find itself inside a nightmare if ESPN or CBS decided to take a piece of Fox’s RSN pie.

Comcast SportsNet has become a money-making machine, but I can’t help but wonder whether Time Warner Cable might find itself going the same route as Cox. If its new Southern California networks have trouble getting carriage on non-TWC carriers, they may decide they were better off on the other end of those carriage disputes. On the other hand, the Lakers are a far bigger deal than the Padres or Hornets, and other RSNs for big-name teams like YES managed to survive early carriage disputes, so Cox’s struggles might have more to do with the teams involved than anything else. Certainly Fox isn’t likely to be able to count on other cable operators having Cox’s generosity anytime soon.

How LeBron salvaged Kobe’s reputation

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I was originally saving this post for the big relaunch of the site, when I would have a week of exciting, interesting posts. Various factors have been continually pushing that back much further than I ever intended. But the relaunch should go through next weekend, sometime between the 15th and 17th, as I’m very close to taking care of both those factors and the last few tweaks needed before relaunching the site.

In the interim, in our 24/7, hypermedia world, we’ve already forgotten and moved on from the LeBron dunk story. The word came out that Nike suppressed the tape of LeBron being dunked on by a college journeyman, we all laid shame on Nike and LeBron, crappy, Zapruder-like tape came out and we all ridiculed Nike and LeBron some more, saying we would have seen the footage and forgotten about it if LeBron had just let the tape go… and then we forgot about it.

But I think that, in the big picture, LeBron James, in the space of a few months, has done more to salvage the reputation of Kobe Bryant than anything Bryant himself could have ever done.

LeBron was supposed to be the good guy. He was supposed to be the guy who helped his teammates, didn’t get into legal trouble, came from Akron and helped the local small-market team to an NBA title. He was supposed to be everything big-market, me-me-me Kobe wasn’t. Kobe was a petulant individualist who was accused of sexual assault in Colorado and was poison to team chemistry, ultimately driving out Shaq and demanding to have the Lakers to himself, to carry a team on his own shoulders. The hopes of NBA purists rested on LeBron to give Kobe what for.

But three things have happened to completely reverse the roles. In reverse order: One, the LeBron dunk controversy. Two, Kobe DID carry a championship team by himself. And three, LeBron’s reaction to losing the Eastern Conference Finals, refusing to shake hands or address the media.

Bracketing Kobe’s title win were two events that create a new narrative of LeBron James. The dunk controversy in particular makes LeBron come off as a carefully crafted persona, too perfect, a fake, a creation of Nike. (After a shorter career with fewer titles, LeBron is more visible in Nike ad campaigns than Kobe.) Getting dunked on may have seemed harmless, but it didn’t fit the Nike storyline of perfection, so Nike tried to erase it from the narrative and in the process exposed the true LeBron. Kobe Bryant, by contrast, is human, and (unlike LeBron) lets his human foibles come through. Kobe is one of us, what we would be like if we had Kobe’s talent. According to this narrative, LeBron couldn’t handle losing the Eastern Conference Finals because it didn’t fit into The Plan as laid out by Nike, which says that LeBron must always find success.

We may end up seeing Kobe’s career from 2004 to 2008 very differently than we did at the time. We may see it as the struggles of a tortured man to find his individuality and find fulfillment, struggling to balance the demands of NBA stardom with his own needs and desires. Finally he managed to find the magical combination that could lead him to the title he could claim as his own. As for LeBron, probably the only way he can even hope to kill the narrative, the only way he can go back to being Michael Jordan instead of Tim Tebow, is to stay in Cleveland, or at least move to another mid-sized market. If he moves to New York, the Clippers, or even Portland (capital of the Nike empire), all moves that would be driven by Nike’s marketability needs more than anything else, I’m going to start calling him LeNike or LeSwoosh.

The legacy of the 2009 NBA Finals.

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Of all the Kobe Bryant-Phil Jackson titles, this one is especially special.

But not because it’s Kobe’s first without Shaq. No, this title is special because it locks up Phil Jackson’s legacy.

Phil Jackson now has more titles than any other coach in NBA history, even Red Auerbach, but has rarely gotten any respect for them. After all, people say, he just so happened to be the coach who won six titles with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, then won three more with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Lucking into two all-time great, title-winning pairings shouldn’t be the criteria that gets you seen as great.

Well, this year, Phil Jackson proved he really is that great a coach.

This wasn’t a Jackson/Pippen or O’Neal/Bryant situation. Jackson had Bryant, but he came into the 2005-06 season without much else. Those years proved that Jackson and Bryant were in fact human; they would have to earn a fourth title together. You can attribute the Lakers’ success to shrewd front-office decisions, but it was Jackson that turned Bryant into the leader he always wanted to be, and Jackson that created the environment that allowed the team to gel and succeed.

The jury’s still out on whether Jackson is the greatest coach of all time, but he’s locked up his spot in the top five to ten. If you don’t think Jackson had something to do with the Lakers’ win, you’re effectively saying that coaches never have anything to do with successful basketball teams. After all, didn’t Auerbach have Bill Russell for much of his career?

Now, maybe that’s the case. But here are the last 25 Finals winning coaches, from most recent to least recent: Jackson, Doc Rivers, Gregg Popovich, Pat Riley, Popovich, Larry Brown, Popovich, Jackson, Jackson, Jackson, Popovich, Jackson, Jackson, Jackson, Rudy Tomjanovich, Tomjanovich, Jackson, Jackson, Jackson, Chuck Daly, Daly, Riley, Riley, K.C. Jones, Riley. The only possible duds (or even non-Hall-of-Famers) of that bunch are Rivers and Jones, and Rivers had three great players working for him (and arguably, Jones did too) and Jones comes close to being the oldest name on the list.

It seems apparent that even great players can’t get to the Finals without a good coach by their side, especially with how egocentric NBA superstars tend to be. If Phil Jackson is the luckiest coach in NBA history, there should now be no doubt he created some of his own luck. He deserves to be on the same level as Red Auerbach and the other great coaches. That can no longer be disputed.

NBA Playoffs First Round Ratings

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Source: Sports Media Watch. This is an experiment. Asterisks indicate rating not reported by SMW; if there is an asterisk and no network, I couldn’t determine whether it was on ESPN or NBATV. I can forgive the lack of NBATV ratings and even the one missing ESPN2 rating. But asterisked ESPN games could get over 2.0 and appear on my year-end roundup! (CLE @ DET Game 3 is most likely to do so and all the others are rather unlikely, and it might not be SMW’s fault, but still.)
EASTERN CONFERENCE FIRST ROUND
DET @ CLE Game 1, ABC, 2.2
DET @ CLE Game 2, TNT, 2.4
CLE @ DET Game 3, ESPN, *
CLE @ DET Game 4, ABC, 3.5

CHI @ BOS Game 1, ESPN, 2.0
CHI @ BOS Game 2, TNT, 2.5
BOS @ CHI Game 3, TNT, 2.2
BOS @ CHI Game 4, ABC, 3.3
CHI @ BOS Game 5, TNT, 2.5
BOS @ CHI Game 6, TNT, 3.5
CHI @ BOS Game 7, TNT, 4.4

PHI @ ORL Game 1, TNT, <2.0
PHI @ ORL Game 2, NBATV, *
ORL @ PHI Game 3, ESPN2, *
ORL @ PHI Game 4, TNT, <2.0
PHI @ ORL Game 5, *
ORL @ PHI Game 6, *

MIA @ ATL Game 1, TNT, 2.2
MIA @ ATL Game 2, TNT, <2.0
ATL @ MIA Game 3, TNT, <2.0
ATL @ MIA Game 4, TNT, 1.8
MIA @ ATL Game 5, TNT, <2.0
ATL @ MIA Game 6, *
MIA @ ATL Game 7, ABC, 2.6

WESTERN CONFERENCE FIRST ROUND
UT @ LAL Game 1, ABC, 3.2
UT @ LAL Game 2, TNT, 2.3
LAL @ UT Game 3, TNT, 2.6
LAL @ UT Game 4, ESPN, 2.2
UT @ LAL Game 5, TNT, 2.4 (SMW has this game listed as Game 4)

NO @ DEN Game 1, TNT, 2.0
NO @ DEN Game 2, TNT, 2.0
DEN @ NO Game 3, ESPN, *
DEN @ NO Game 4, *
NO @ DEN Game 5, TNT, 1.9

DAL @ SA Game 1, ESPN, 1.7
DAL @ SA Game 2, TNT, 2.0
SA @ DAL Game 3, NBATV, *
SA @ DAL Game 4, TNT, <2.0
DAL @ SA Game 5, TNT, 2.2

HOU @ POR Game 1, ESPN, 2.1
HOU @ POR Game 2, NBATV, *
POR @ HOU Game 3, ESPN, *
POR @ HOU Game 4, TNT, 2.1
HOU @ POR Game 5, *
POR @ HOU Game 6, TNT, 2.5

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 11/8-9

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I think I need to take another break from the Watcher in a few weeks. All times PST.

Saturday
9-12:30 PM: College football, #20 Georgia Tech @ #16 North Carolina (Raycom Sports). Wait, why didn’t ABC pick this up for their ACC package? Clemson-Florida State? The Bowden Bowl is less than pointless this year!

12:30-4 PM: College football, #2 Penn State @ #19 Iowa (ABC/ESPN). There are no fewer than six games between two teams ranked in my Top 25 this week!

4-7:30 PM: College football, Kansas State @ #7 Missouri (FSN). The item below bumps out the latest Big 12 Battle of the Century.

7:30-9:30 PM: MLS Soccer, Real Salt Lake @ Chivas USA (Fox Soccer Channel). Didn’t we just do this last week? Who cares about a team with a name like Real Salt Lake?

Sunday
10-12:30 PM: NBA Basketball, Raptors @ Bobcats (CBC). Wait, the Raptors are on a national network that penetrates into parts of the United States???

12-4 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Checker O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 presented by Pennzoil (ABC). Judging by the ads, the Chase is actually getting interesting???

Honorable Mention: 1-3 PM: PBR Rodeo, Built Ford Tough World Finals (NBC). Thank God for NASCAR bumping this bleep off the Watcher.

5-8:30 PM: NFL Football, Giants @ Eagles (NBC). Flex Scheduling Watch is probably coming later tonight, folks.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 11/1-2 (with a Halloween bonus!)

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All times PDT, or PST, as applicable. I briefly forgot I had set this for the morning…

Friday
5-7:30 PM: NBA Basketball, Bulls @ Celtics (ESPN). Whatever.

7:30-10 PM: NBA Basketball, Spurs @ Trail Blazers (ESPN). Without Oden it’s just “Spurs @ a non-playoff team that doesn’t have its much-hyped superstar that’s proving to be Sam Bowie 2.0”.

Saturday
9-12:30 PM: College football, Miami (FL) @ Virginia (Raycom). Probably the only ACC game I’m going to spotlight all year.

12:30-4 PM: College football, defending 2008 BCS titleholder #2 Florida v. #11 Georgia (CBS). I’m going to be watching this but mostly writing my platform examinations. Speaking of which, due to rain any examinations I complete today won’t be posted until after 9 PM PT.

3-5 PM: MLS Soccer, Chivas USA @ Real Salt Lake (Fox Soccer Channel). The other two MLS playoff games today would have fit in perfectly well on one tripleheader, but only this game is on TV.

5-8:30 PM: College football, defending Princeton-Yale titleholder Texas @ #6 Texas Tech (ABC). Watching this while writing examinations as well.

Sunday
12-4:30 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Dickies 500 (ABC). You can tell we’re in the home stretch of the Chase when the start times start moving to noon PT.

5-8:30 PM: NFL Football, Patriots @ Colts (NBC). Without Tom Brady and the Colts being any good it’s just “a possible wild card contender with a nobody QB @ a total scrub team”.

Very interesting. (To me at least.)

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I noticed that the logo on at least the first couple of FSN college football broadcasts included a new logo… and regionalized games were shown as “FS Arizona” or “FS Big 12”.

Now it seems that the Oklahoma City Thunder will play on a renaming of FSN Southwest to… “FS Oklahoma“. Not FSN Oklahoma. Just plain FS Oklahoma.

I smell similar changes coming to other markets and maybe even the linewide update of FSN graphics I didn’t think was strictly implied, or necessarily possible.