December 24, 2004
Up in Arms
I awoke with a start early this morning. What time was it? 4, 5 a.m.? I didn't know, but I sensed instantly that something was wrong. As I tried to get my bearings, I realized what was troubling me: my left arm was completely numb below the shoulder. I tried to move the thing around, but I felt nothing, and it flopped around like an elephant's trunk swaying in the breeze (or, perhaps like something else, if you prefer X-rated similes). The point is, it was completely lifeless. In frustration, I whipped it against the mattress to try to restore life to it, but it just recoiled, and for a moment, in my half-delirious state, I was crippled by a terrifying notion: my arm had no bones in it. It would have to be amputated. I would never shoot another silky mid-range jump shot again, never lace a single to the opposite field for all my remaining days. I let out a yelp of panic -- it may have even been a scream, to be completely honest. Whatever the case, it wasn't my proudest moment. Then, from my right, I heard a voice of reason cutting through the shadows: "It's probably just asleep," the voice muttered.
I knew immediately that my girlfriend was absolutely right. I had simply been lying on my arm awkwardly, and the entire thing had fallen asleep. Writing about it now, I feel rather silly, but I may never forget that feeling of panic. I've had parts of limbs fall asleep before, but never had the paralyzing feeling of an entire limb not responding. And for a few minutes this morning, my left arm was completely gone. I could have jammed the thing in a scalding pot of jambalaya and I wouldn't have felt a thing.
More often than you'd think, you hear stories about athletes missing games because they woke up with a strained neck or sore shoulder because they slept the wrong way. (Now, of course, I have no way of knowing if this is just code for "Athlete X got really intoxicated last night or was involved in some naughty behavior we can't tell you about, so he's not playing today," but we'll assume that athletes really do injure themselves on occasion while sleeping.) But you never hear about the kind of thing that happened to me last night, even though it almost certainly happens to pro athletes. Can you imagine being Randy Johnson and waking up in the middle of the night to find that your prized left arm had all the feeling and range of motion of a slab of pork tenderloin? You'd probably soil yourself right then and there.
Not that I'd know anything about that...
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December 22, 2004
Kobe vs. Shaq: a Closer Look
It's being billed as the big story of the NBA season -- Kobe vs. Shaq, Christmas Day. Unfortunately, it's been horribly overhyped. Forget being beaten to a pulp; this thing has been bludgeoned into a puree. We've heard it all time and time again. Kobe ran Shaq and Phil Jackson out of town after last season's loss in the finals. Shaq thinks Kobe's a selfish punk. Kobe accused Shaq of paying "hush money" to women in the midst of Kobe's own legal trouble. Kobe wants to apologize but says he doesn't have Shaq's phone number. Shaq says if Kobe comes in the lane on Christmas Day he's going to lay him out on the deck. Kobe's also feuding with Karl Malone because Malone allegedly hit on his wife. Blah blah blah. Honestly, it's
getting kind of old. Basically, two big babies don't like one another, and on Christmas they're somehow going to settle it by playing hoops. Am I sick of all this talk? Absolutely. Will I be tuned in? You bet. (I guess in that regard, the hype machine has done its job.)
Strangely enough, there's one angle to this story I haven't heard mentioned a single time. Granted, pursuing it wouldn't necessarily constitute the most noble or profound of journalistic pursuits, but I'm sure that others have noticed it, and it raises some interesting questions for me. (Besides, it's not like we haven't seen some pretty silly things printed and said in conjunction with this story already.)
If you're an avid sports fan at all, you've certainly seen this thing as you browse through the latest happenings in the Kobe vs. Shaq feud. It's been attached to basically every article about Shaq this season. But have you really looked closely at it? This is not your standard sports head shot, where the player is either staring blankly ahead, or perhaps flashing a half smile. Here, Shaq's head is tilted just slightly to his left, eyebrows raised as he looks at the camera with a coy smile and an odd glimmer in his eye. Yes, there's something definitively creepy about this photo. For a while, I didn't know -- or didn't want to admit -- what it was. Then, suddenly it hit me:
Shaquille O'Neal is giving us a "come hither" look.
I know it's hard to admit, but look closely and there's no denying it. That's a boudoir shot if there's ever been one. Ths sooner you admit it to yourself, the sooner you can start answering the difficult questions. Most mportantly, what happened here? You'd like to think that the camera simply captured Shaq's visage at a strange moment, and the resulting image was entirely an accident. But knowing Shaq as a perennial jokester who constantly says ridiculous things just to get a reaction, it's impossible to think that he wasn't completely aware of what he was doing on the day of that photo shoot. Operating under that theory, Shaq deliberately made a seductive face while being photographed for his head shot, quite possibly just to mess with our minds.
That may very well be the most disturbing twist this saga has taken yet.
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December 15, 2004
Can't Stop the Flop
Ray Allen, bad haircuts or rotten three-point shooting, though those are all problems to varying degrees. The epidemic I'm speaking of is a little more subtle, but still has a profound effect on the quality of the game.
I'm speaking, of course, of flopping, the "art" made popular in this era by Vlade Divac, in which a defender throws himself to the floor in order to convince the referee that he was bowled over, thereby drawing an offensive foul. Don't get me wrong here -- I have no problem with a player taking a charge when there is legitimately contact and the offensive player is out of control. Flopping, however, is an entirely different beast. Instead of actually taking a real charge, defenders nowadays go sprawling out on the floor at the slightest brush from an offensive player. Basically, a flop looks like a cheesy stunt from a crappy kung fu movie, and the worst part is, the referee almost always buys it, making him the jackass in the front row who's standing and applauding the crummy flick.
Like any potent disease, flopping is contagious, and spreads quickly. I can say this because in my recreational hoops league, I do it all the time. All it takes is one ref rewarding you for throwing yourself to the floor, and next thing you know you're hitting the deck every time an offensive player comes within four feet of you. A bad flop looks comical, but within the framework of the system, it's a good play. If the refs are going to reward it, there's no reason not to do it. The problem is, it has a profoundly negative effect on the game. With defenders flopping left and right, and referees rewarding them for their B-grade acting skills, offensive players are, somewhere in the back of their minds, less inclined to take the ball to the basket because they're afraid of picking up cheap fouls. The result of that mentality is more jump shots, and with outside shooting not exactly at a premium these days, that leads to lower field goal percentages. In the resulting low-scoring games, defense becomes the focus, and before you know it, every coach in the league is looking for "gritty defensive players" -- in other words, guys who are good at flopping. The cycle feeds upon itself.
Obviously I'm over-simplifying things here, but if you watch a lot of NBA hoops, it's blatantly obvious that getting rid of the flop would make the product immeasurably better. Getting rid of it is simple. All refs have to do is stop rewarding it. When Ernest Goes To Camp comes on HBO, you don't rise up off your couch and applaud during the climactic scene (more importantly, you don't admit to anyone that you've watched this movie -- oops). The point is, when something sucks, you stop rewarding it, and generally speaking, it will go away.
Unfortunately, it's never quite that simple. Do you know how many movies are in the "Ernest" series?
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December 12, 2004
Success is Optional
Have you ever found yourself in your kitchen one weekend afternoon, standing on a footstool with the telephone tucked under your ear, a hot iron in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other as you attempt to reach as high as you possibly can to get a frying pan from the top shelf? Okay, maybe you've never found yourself in this precise situation, but it seems that all too often, we humans find ourselves stubbornly insisting on doing things the hard way. Ever tried to open a beer bottle with your teeth because you don't have a bottle opener? Shoved a scalding hot slice of pizza in your mouth even though you know it's going to singe you beyond belief?
Let's face it, we are idiots, and it's during moments like these that you wonder how the human race has made it this far.
By the same token, at times I find myself thinking it's a small miracle that sports are anything more than people smashing rocks off one another's heads. During the 10 hours I spent on the couch watching football this afternoon, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the idiocy plaguing the mind of NFL coaches. On three different occasions today, I saw teams run a halfback or wide receiver option. Just in case you don't know what this is, I'll explain (and I won't call you an idiot for not knowing, even though it seems fitting here). Basically, a halfback or wide receiver option is where a team sets up a play for one of its position players, as opposed to the quarterback, to throw a pass so as to catch the defense off guard. The problem with this play is quite simple: running backs and wide receivers play their respective positions, and don't play quarterback, for one simple reason: they don't throw very well. Of the three times I saw this play run today, one was a game-breaking interception (thrown by the Vikings' Randy Moss), another was a throw so hideously ugly it looked like it hit a seagull mid flight (by Redskins' RB Clinton Portis). The third use of the option was a success: Steelers' RB Jerome Bettis found Jerame Tuman for a 10-yard touchdown.
More often than not, this play completely and totally backfires (see Moss and Portis, above). Usually the defense is totally prepared for it, but the position player is so excited about his rare chance to play quarterback for one play, he's going to throw that damn ball no matter what, even if it means a turnover. However, this play, this enduring emblem of our stubbornness, has survived for exactly one reason: once in a blue moon (see Bettis' throw today) the pizza somehow doesn't scald the roof of our mouth. The play works, it's beautiful to behold, and everyone calls the coach who dreamed it up a genius. Therein lies the problem: it only takes one success to divert the masses from all your past failures.
And thus, the cycle of idiocy rages on...
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December 8, 2004
Mike Tyson: Redefining Insanity
You know it's a slow day on Planet Sports when Mike Tyson jumping on the hood of someone's car is front page news. Yes, that's right, Iron Mike apparently forgot to take his medicine, again. And this time it ended with him allegedly mounting the hood of someone's vehicle in a parking lot outside a club a couple of weeks ago.
Perhaps I'm jaded, or maybe I'm just numb after a deluge of disturbing sports news of late, but for whatever reason, this news about Tyson didn't even faze me. Tyson made like the "Meesta Meesta" lady in Happy Gilmore, and it didn't so much as warrant a double-take. And there's no doubt in my mind that the fact that it was Tyson played a strong part in that. I mean, honestly, at what point does it stop being newsworthy when this guy acts out his sociopathic impulses? The headline, which read "Tyson Arrested on Suspicion of Jumping on Car," might as well have read, "Crazy, Deranged Person in Need of Psychiatric Help Does Something Crazy Again." Sounds like a poorly written headline for The Onion. Honestly, Tyson's just not really compelling news anymore. And if he wants to be, he's going to have to do one of two things: start acting even more crazy (which may not be possible), or flip it on everyone and suddenly start acting sane.
Now that would be disturbing.
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December 5, 2004
'Roids and Wrongs
Surely you've seen the headlines by now -- Barry Bonds testified in front of a grand jury last year that he unknowingly took steroids. The "unknowingly" part certainly raises some eyebrows -- it's hard to imagine a pro athlete not knowing what he is putting into his body -- but we'll give Barry the benefit of the doubt on that. The important fact is, the game's greatest player has admitted to juicing, a revelation that seems surreal and shocking even though many have suspected Bonds' use for years.
An interesting subtext to this story is that, now that Barry's aura of invincibility has been pierced, a number of current and former players are doing their best to ensure that Bonds' legacy remains intact. When the story broke this week, Twins' center fielder Torii Hunter was one of the first to come to Bonds' defense. At the same time that he was condemning steroid use in general, Hunter said, "Steroids don't help your hand-eye coordination. Steroids don't help you break a walk record. Barry's been knocking out people for a long time."
Then today, a story appeared on ESPN.com in which all-time MLB home run king Hank Aaron expressed his disapproval of Bonds' steroid use, but in virtually the same breath, took measures to qualify it. "Since I played the game myself, I know that you can't put something in your body to make you hit a fastball, changeup or curveball," Aaron said.
Now, I know that Hank Aaron is a legend and one of the most esteemed individuals ever to play the game, but what he and Torii Hunter are saying here is absolute bollocks. Of course steroids help you break a walk record. Of course they help you hit a fastball, changeup and curveball. Are you kidding me? Bonds' greatest asset as a hitter is his quickness to the baseball; his ability to wait until the last second and fire the bat through the strike zone at lightning speed. You're trying to tell me that steroids, which build up your muscle mass and help your muscles recover, haven't improved, or at least maintained his remarkable bat speed? Doesn't it make sense that the more finely tuned and fresh your muscles are, the faster you can whip a bat through the strike zone? It is exactly that tremendous bat speed which allows Bonds to hit curveballs and changeups because he can wait longer than most hitters to see what pitch is coming, and then still have the quickness to catch up to the fastball.
On some level, I understand the point that Hunter and Aaron are trying to make, and it's one I've heard often about Bonds: sure he might be using steroids, but just about everyone in baseball is, and it just so happens that Barry is better than all of those guys, so we should give him his due. But you only have to think about this argument for a second to realize it's ridiculous. We're supposed to forgive the guy for cheating because he's got great hand-eye coordination and is an incredibly gifted athlete in the first place? If anything, we should be calling the guy a jackass for feeling the need to cheat when he was already one of the game's best players. To some degree, I can understand the career minor leaguer taking steroids because his baseball career, his livelihood, is in jeopardy if he can't get that extra edge. Right or wrong, guys like this are struggling to keep their jobs. But one of the elite players in the game going on a 'roid binge in the later years of his career to change himself from superstar into Superman? That's simply unforgivable.
The bitter irony is, Bonds' status as a superstar -- buoyed, even kept alive by his steroid use -- may be exactly what saves him. As Torii Hunter and Hank Aaron showed us this week, no one wants to be responsible for tarnishing a legend.
-Matt Stroup 
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