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.

State of the Los Angeles Sports TV Wars

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Since forming a new regional sports network to show Lakers games, Time Warner Cable has not won many prizes… but the next-biggest prize has still not been settled.

While TWC was able to add Galaxy games, Fox Sports has locked up Angels and Clippers rights, and just did something very important: lock up the primary team in a sport. As the Kings go on a historic run to the Stanley Cup, Fox Sports has locked up rights to their games through 2024.

It’s a big PR win for Fox, but it might ring a little hollow; Los Angeles isn’t much of a hockey market, and by all accounts hasn’t even been paying attention to the Kings’ run. The real prize, and determinant of the balance between Time Warner Cable and Fox, will be the Dodgers rights expected to be awarded in October. In the end, all the awarding of the Kings’ rights may amount to is a sign that the Ducks may end up moving to Time Warner Cable.

My Adventures with HP Tech Support

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So I mentioned a week ago that my power cable broke, right? Well, here’s the story of what happened to my replacement:

Apparently I didn’t get it as early as WEDNESDAY because HP sent it to my old address but my new city and ZIP code, despite my giving them the correct address AND their not having a problem with the address before. Neither FedEx nor HP directly told me of the problem until SATURDAY MORNING, and when Mom called them only TWO HOURS later she was initially told we were out of luck because it was already scheduled to be shipped back to HP. When we picked it up I got the impression that whoever called me went out of process, meaning I SHOULD have never been notified at all.

Making matters worse, I found out later that day I’d wasted my saved-up money faster than I thought and I’m counting on the donation drive on the left side of Da Blog more than I thought just to get back to being able to pay for a year’s hosting. With auspicious timing, I’m probably going to have a lot of filler throughout the drive, specifically a continuing short story I might bang out, so I can concentrate on schoolwork, though I will still post on any breaking developments in the webcomics I’m reading.

So yeah, not the best day I’ve ever had, but hey, my power cord is back!

The Great MorganWick.com Donation Drive of 2012

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I’ve bit the bullet and added a donation button to the left side of Da Blog. My hosting bill comes due later this month, and while I’m reasonably confident I have enough money to cover one year of hosting, the more money I have the more years of hosting I can buy.

This is not me going to “donation as a business model” or anything like that. This is a short-term pledge drive to pay for as much long-term hosting as I can. The donation button will be removed once the hosting is paid for, which could be anywhere from one to two weeks. I’m hopeful that within the next year I’ll have at least laid the groundwork for a more sustainable income stream for the site.

I don’t seriously expect to get much in the way of donations anyway – based on my number of visitors, I probably shouldn’t expect more than one or two donations, and I’m pretty sure one of those is going to be my dad…

USA Today and the Future of Journalism

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USA Today recently laid off a number of sports columnists as part of a broader restructuring of its sports department – and the vision they’ve set for their sports department going forward may well be a vision of the future for newspapers all over the country.

A leaked memo from publisher Larry Kramer effectively completely redefines USA Today Sports’ mission:

As we recast ourselves into a multi-platform sports organization, it is clear that we must be more aggressive and proactive about how we cover breaking news. While the newspaper remains an important source of news for our sports consumers, we can no longer operate with a print-first mentality. Stories move 24-7 and we need to move at that same rapid pace. The USA TODAY Sports Media Group intends to be the conversation starter, breaking news in Sports faster and in greater depth than anyone else.

It’s been said in the past that the Internet completely obliterates the traditional “news cycle”, giving people access to breaking news instantaneously. This has had its pluses and minuses, foremost among the latter the race to get scoops first potentially coming at the expense of getting them right. USA Today has effectively recognized that they are facing a future in which newspapers look increasingly obsolete, a drain on resources from the web site, and that the new world of the Internet is a far different world than the print world they’re leaving behind. This appears to be at least a first step towards embracing the new rules of the game. USA Today has generally been one of the “little three” of national general sports websites (alongside Sporting News/Fanhouse and NBC, and behind ESPN, CBS, Fox, SI, and Yahoo in some order), and they appear to be taking proactive steps to emerge from that status.

There’s a lesson here for newspapers all over the country looking to recast themselves in the new Internet age. They must effectively become less like newspapers, as they have known the term up to this point, gathering up all the stories they can for a single daily or weekly edition, and more like twenty-four-hour news networks, reporting the news as it happens. Certainly there will be people who just want to get the news in one big dose, but the core of that one big dose will utterly depend on being able to stay on top of all the news the moment it develops.

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.

I don’t think this post was a great idea in the first place, and it doesn’t help that I had to work on it on school computers where I couldn’t concentrate.

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(From xkcd. Click for full-sized synchronization.)

xkcd has never been one to shy away from introducing new, out-there concepts, or cause you to rethink the way you look at the world – concepts its sizable fanbase is never slow to leap on.

At first glance, this comic would seem to fall into the same category… but then it begins to go off the rails, effectively pulling the rug out from under the audience.

It’s hard to tell what this comic is trying to do. Is there a particular geekly phenomenon it’s making fun of? Is it trying to trick its fanbase, or just having fun, or is it even making fun of itself?

The funny thing about this comic is, it’s entirely possible to actually do something like this, without the nonsense rules that come up towards the end, and indeed self-consciously to avoid those nonsense rules. But any actual attempt to do so would be so geeky that even considering how geeky Randall Munroe’s audience is, the reference would undoubtedly go completely over most of their heads.

In short, I’m not entirely sure I get this comic. Is there supposed to be a joke? Does the joke rely on some sort of knowledge I’m not privy to, or am I just supposed to have a vague sense of uncomfortableness as I increasingly wonder what’s going on as the elements of the plan become increasingly nonsensical? If, as some of the “rules” imply, the comic is making fun of the sort of real-life nonsensical rules it initially claims to discard, what exactly is the point? Because if that’s the case, I get the sense it changes what it’s trying to do as it goes along. Or is it just a rehash of the joke from this comic?

And of course, it doesn’t help that it’s so long and narrow that I have to pad out this post to make sure the image doesn’t interfere with everything below it…

Aargh.

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I thought I might have a potential post on Homestuck, Gunnerkrigg Court or xkcd today. But I didn’t have as much new information from Homestuck as I thought, the Court hasn’t yet reached the point that it’s postworthy, and by the time I started working on an xkcd post it was too late for me to get it in in time to continue the streak.

To make matters worse, my power cable broke at the worst possible time, when I need my laptop to work on all the schoolwork I need to catch up on in the next two or three weeks. And the ETA for a replacement cable to arrive isn’t until Friday, though I’m holding out hope to get it sooner.

Not a day worth remembering.

Fair warning.

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As you might have guessed, the level of activity on Da Blog the past month-plus has taken a bite out of my schoolwork, and it’s coming up on time to catch up on it.

As such, don’t be surprised to see activity on Da Blog ratchet down considerably. I’ll try to maintain The Streak, but I might miss a week or two on the full webcomic reviews, and engage in more filler.

I will still post on events in webcomics I already read as they happen, though. For example, judging by the fact I can’t get to the MSPA site right now, I have a feeling I’ll be posting on that on Monday…

Yes, this is just filler to continue The Streak, but you gotta admit, that last panel gets downright existential.

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(From Something Positive. Click for full-sized origin stories.)

Click on the name of Something Positive above. You’ll be taken to the main S*P page.

You may notice that most of the first screen is taken up by ads, navigation, and plugging of merchandise and con appearances.

Below that, you get the actual comic.

Below that, you get the latest edition of Randy Milholland’s side project Super Stupor.

At an earlier point in the site’s history, you’d have gotten one or two more side projects.

Finally, below all of that, is the site’s blog.

Now that you’ve seen all of this, I ask you: do you think Milholland would benefit from a PVP-style reimagining of his site?

Perhaps even more than Scott Kurtz, Milholland seems to already be running Something Positive as more of a hub for his own brand than as a site for one particular webcomic. Certainly I imagine taking a cue from PVP here would have to be better than how the S*P home page is laid out today.

(Damn, for someone who’s occasionally seemed to be in the lap of Bengo I’ve been praising Kurtz and PVP quite a bit lately, haven’t I? And I’m not even done! I have more to hammer this point home with!)