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The Two Faced Perpetual Motion Of Hype, Or, Why I’m A Hater’s Hater That Hates

November 22, 2010 in by with 25 Comments

Photo by kayepants on Flickr

On top of everything that has been said of the world of sports coverage, you may now add another achievement: the destruction of the basic laws of physics.

The premise of perpetual motion is an engineer’s dream and a physicist’s nightmare. The idea is to create a self-sustainable mechanism that will operate either for a given period or time indefinitely, producing more work and/or energy then it consumes. It’s a great idea in theory – how cool would it be if we had cars that burnt fuel, then collected the fumes and turned them back into new fuel that we could use once more? Oil crisis solved, gas prices irrelevant, everybody happy.

Sadly, the concept is physically impossible. The conservation of energy in any given system is a physical necessity, and one that does not apply in the scintillating case of perpetual motion.

I dare you to tell that to the national sports media, though. To them, Newton is a quarterback from Auburn, and Einstein is a sarcastic, derogatory term used to describe the guy who signs Darko Milicic to 4 year deals.

The hype machine is not only a self-sustainable mechanism, it’s a self-sustainable monstrosity. Consuming only the basic energy of a strong rooke year or a single impressive game, it produces hundreds of articles, message board comments and cooler talk. Once that first blow is created, the hype just feeds on itself.

Of course, the hype cannot live without its brother, the anti-hype. Whenever people go out of their way to promote something or someone, natural resistance always takes place. Some of it is rational (Blake Griffin is probably the funnest player in the league right now, but lets take it easy until he actually learns how to rebound and doesn’t just grab caroms by jumping really really high). Some of it is cruel, yet merited (I’m extremely high on DeMarcus Cousins and hate the constant “attitude” murmur, but until it’s proven wrong, DMC has to live with it). And some of it is just plain stupid (Colin Cowherd – if he wants to, then John Wall can dance, John Wall can jive, having the time of his life).

And when the hype and anti-hype collide, that other H word comes out.

Stand in the way of the hype at your own peril, lest you be called a hater. It’s a ridiculous argument, of course, one that basically admits all other arguments were lost and yet you refuse to admit discussional defeat. And yet it’s incredibly hard to prove otherwise – YOU HATE HIM, I KNOW IT, DON’T TELL ME OTHERWISE is as irrefutable as cherry pie.

The worst thing about this terrible debating technique is how easily it can be thrown your way. You don’t even have to show any dislike for a certain player or team – all you have to do is rationally promote your position as to why he’s not the best ever or why the team can’t win 83 games in a season and you’re a hater.

The NBA player with the most haters is, obviously, Kobe Bryant. One of the league’s most polarizing figures ever, combined with the league’s largest fanbase – both rabid and casual – and, to top it all, a player whose statistical output never truly caught up with the general perception of his game, all create a situation where the “KOBE IS THE GREATEST” camp and the “Kobe is amazing, but A, B, and C are better” camp both have enough die-hard members that conflict is inevitable.

However, Kobe will eventually retire, and “haters” will have to find another person to rationally explain why he’s not the best, or, to hate. After spending night after night on the Daily Dime Live chats, the heir apparent seems certain to be Derrick Rose.

He has the rabid, mainstream, big market fanbase of Chicago. He has the support of the national media. He has the athleticism that makes the casual fan think “whoa, he can jump the highest, he’s probably the best!”. And, most of all – and this is the key part – he’s not as good as we are constantly told, or yelled at through keyboards and television sets.

Now, I’m not going to break down Rose’s game and tell you why he’s really good but not really, really good (should I remind you that I’ve done this before?). You probably know about the free throw thing, and the defense thing, and the 3 point shooting thing (although apparently, now that he went 2 for 4 from long range on national TV, the fact that he’s still only shooting 34% for three means nothing). No, what interested me happened during one of those DDL chats.

DDL is an interesting situation. On the one hand, over the past year it has developed a die hard, long running community of people who watch basketball every single night and want to talk about it. On the other hand, because being on the front page of ESPN makes it so easily accessible, it also has a very large casual fan component. Thus bringing the conveyors of both hype and anti-hype to the same place.

Wednesday night, as Rose was lighting up the Spurs and single-handedly kept the game competitive before eventually running out of gas, I pointed out in the chat that taking 27 field goals and only one free throw was, and I quote, “disgraceful”. Was I going overboard to create a heated discussion? Of course I was. Is a free throw to field goal rate of 1:27 for a player with Rose’s athleticism disgraceful? Yes.

The usual flurry of comments followed. “You’re a hater!”, “He’s not a hater, he’s right!”, “I like bacon!”. However, one specific comment caught my eye. From commenter ToeKnee:

“I just think Bulls fans get mad at you because you are bashing Rose, yet he is the only reason the bulls are above 500.”

This comment had me re-thinking about the entire premise of hype. We often say that for certain players, expectations are raised too high, and they fail to deliver. However, to my eyes, this is a case of raising extremely high expectations, only to get mad at those who aren’t satisfied with lesser accomplishment.

Is this unfair to Rose? Maybe. He has undoubtedly been fantastic this season, and this Boozer-less Bulls squad probably has no business being 6-4 right now. But we are constantly led to believe that Rose is more than this. His name has been repeatedly thrust into MVP discussions, both by the media and by himself. If this is the case, then the standards by which we must judge him are MVP standards. Not young-stud standards, not perennial all-star standards, but MVP standards. Either that, or re-adjust your expectations. Otherwise, we’re just being hypocrites.

Call it hate if you want, but I refuse to sit back and be satisfied with what Rose is now when what he can be – and hopefully will be in the near future – is so, so much more. MVPs. Titles. Unheard of athletic dominance. This is what we were promised, and what we should look for. We are looking for Derrick Rose to become DERRICK ROSE, not some kind of glorified Steve Francis/Stephon Marbury, sans the headcase.

Great, I just compared Derrick to Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury. Now I’ll get killed.

Point is, we expect more. And we are right to expect more. Because this is a promise that Derrick Rose can keep. He really can be that good. He just isn’t that good right now. And we shouldn’t pretend that he is. We shouldn’t strive for anything less than excellence. That’s an injustice to Derrick, an injustice to other players that are better than him, and an injustice to us as fans.

Enjoy what Derrick Rose does on the court. You really should. It’s truly mind-boggling. But never let that blind you into believing he already is all that he can be.

All Your Bandwagon Is Belong To Them

November 23, 2009 in by with 1 Comment

Pau Gasol struggled offensively, but he still managed 15 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists, so it’s hard to fault him. Some shots that he would usually hit rimmed out, and he struggled a bit with the physicality of the Thunder’s bigs. I’m sure his physical condition has something to do with the latter, and he’ll deal with that challenge easier when he’s back in shape and has the physical endurance to fight back on the block for extended stretches. Still, his impact on the game can only be seen as positive. His passing means so much to this team, but beyond any of that, I can’t describe it any better than to simply say that things seem so easy and effortless for the entire team with Gasol back on the court. It’s impossible to articulate all the ways in which he has this effect on the team, but it’s undeniable.

Lamar Odom and Ron Artest struggled with their shots as well, but they rebounded the ball, played solid defense, and still contributed to a very positive effort overall for the Lakers. Hard to complain. (Speaking of rebounding, it’s worth pointing out that while no Lakers broke double digits, five different players had five or more boards.)

via Bynum Joins the Kobe Show as Lakers Trounce Thunder – Silver Screen and Roll.

Take a good long look at that first paragraph, NBA fans outside of LA/non-bandwagon fans across the country, and despair.

Josh nails this analysis of Gasol which I think we’re just now starting to really understand about the Lakers. We saw it last year, but we didn’t understand it. It was just “Wow, Kobe with someone who gives a damn! Who knew?” But the fact that it looks so easy really rings true. What are you going to do? You can’t clog the lane, they have too much size between he and Bynum. Unless you decide you’re going to give up 7,000 3-second violations, you’re sunk.

You can’t play them straight up, Gasol’s more than capable of hitting one of the fifty shots he has at his disposal. You can’t double, because they have three other-All-Star caliber guys around, and the rotting corpse of Derek Fisher which can still hit threes out of mechanics.

This is a Thunder team that beat LA earlier in the year. And they had no shot last night. NO. SHOT.  LA wasn’t dominant last year, they were just better. We may be looking at dominance now that Gasol’s back.

In Defense Of The 48 Shot Shooter

February 2, 2008 in by with 2 Comments

David Friedman from 20 Second Timeout chimed in with this defense of Kobe and clarification of his thoughts on the Shaq trade from a few years ago. As David knows about a bajillion more than I do about basketball, and his arguments are salient, I thought I’d share.

Just for the record, I said that trading Shaq was the “right move” several years ago. It’s not even so much that it was the “right move”–it was the only move if you understand all the circumstances involved. Jerry Buss is not willing to go into luxury tax territory, so he was unwilling to pay Shaq max dollars for max years. That is why Shaq demanded a trade and the Lakers complied. The Lakers’ only other choice would have been to let Kobe leave and give Shaq the money that they gave to Kobe, which would have enabled the Lakers to become the current Miami Heat–only without the solace of winning a title in ’06.

Miami’s owners are willing to pay the luxury tax, so they spent a lot of money for a short term gain and figured that they’d deal with the consequences later. They got one title–and “later” arrived perhaps a bit sooner than expected. The Lakers decided to rebuild around Kobe. They only missed the playoffs the year that Kobe and Odom missed a ton of games due to injuries and now with the development of Bynum and the acquisition of Gasol the Lakers have a chance to be contenders again. When you look at this from the perspective of the two team, both L.A. and Miami made the “right” moves.

You assert that because Kobe needs help from Bynum and Gasol to possibly win a title that this proves that he does not make other players better. Would you care to cite one example of a great player leading a team to a championship without receiving a lot of help from either (A) another great player and/or (B) a collection of above average players who know their roles? Since 1980, titles have been won by Hall of Fame duos or trios such as Bird-McHale-Parish, Kareem-Magic-Worthy, Erving-Moses, Isiah-Dumars, MJ-Pip (top 50 players who will surely be inducted in the Hall), Olajuwon-Drexler, Shaq-Kobe (also HoF locks), Duncan-Robinson (ditto), etc. The Piston won one title by putting together multiple All-Stars and playing great defense. In other words, no star wins a title by himself. If Kobe could do that then he would be hands down the greatest player ever because no one else has ever done it. Kobe was the leading playmaker on the Lakers’ championship teams, is one of the top rebounding guards and annually makes the All-Defensive team (selected by coaches), so the idea that all that he does is score is demonstrably false.

For what it’s worth, Kobe is currently 1st in average rebounds per game for small guards, and 8th for guard-forward combos. So he’s got that going for him.

It’s funny, because I’m aware of Kobe’s defense, I’ve lauded it before. I just never seem to give him credit for it.

So yeah, he’s good, real good.

I still think he’s more of a problem than he’s worth and that he won’t be able to win a championship with this core of players. Of course, then Kupchak will go out and trade for a panzer tank and MechaGodzilla. So there’s that. But my assertion that he’s a pure scorer is flawed in the best sense and outright wrong in the most accurate sense. So there you go.