TRANSITIONS

               The start of a new year usually is associated with new beginnings, but this year’s turn smacks more of endings. We’re in a time of transition in each of our three “major” professional sports—basketball, football and baseball.

               The turn in basketball came on New Year’s Day with the death at age 77 of David Stern, his game’s most consequential individual who didn’t dribble or shoot. By that time Stern had been retired as the National Basketball Association’s commissioner for five years, but the changes he wrought outlasted his 30-year term (1984-2014) and will continue to do so. They extend geographically as well as temporally, touching just about all parts of the globe.

               To measure how much the NBA changed businesswise during Stern’s tenure, a look at one team— the Chicago Bulls— should suffice. The team changed hands with little notice several times in the dozen years before 1985, when a group headed by the real estate man Jerry Reinsdorf bought controlling interest for a reported $16 million. Today, says Forbes magazine, it’s worth $2.9 billion, with Reinsdorf still in charge. The league’s overall revenues and TV-rights values have increased apace during that period.

               Stern had help in achieving those gains from the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and, now, Lebron James, stars with both charisma and supernatural physical skills, but the New York lawyer secured for them the platform on which to display their talents and the mechanisms to spread their acclaim. During the 1980s he literally gave away NBA TV rights abroad to hook the rest of the world on the league and its personalities, an effort that culminated in the U.S. “Dream Team” at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, which captured the world’s attention like few other sporting entities ever. Now revenues flow from many lands and boys there—as well as girls tuned into the WNBA that Stern helped start and nurtured-- go to bed dreaming hoops dreams. Some of them—such as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic— live out those dreams nightly on their sport’s biggest stages, to the benefit of all.

The switch in football was made clear when the New England Patriots were bumped from the first round of the National Football League playoffs at home by the underdog Tennessee Titans.  The Pats’ season-ending 12-5 won-lost record was good by most measures, but the loss had an ominous ring because it might have marked the last game with the team of Tom Brady, the quarterback who has anchored its success.

The loss to the Titans smarted especially because that team’s coach, Mike Vrabel, used a wrinkle in the rules regarding intentional penalties to milk about two minutes off the clock in the late going while nursing a one-point lead. Steaming on the sidelines while the ploy unfolded was the Pats’ coach Bill Belichick, who’d first exploited it.  Vrabel is a one-time Belichick pupil, having played for eight seasons with the Pats. The league is catching up to wily Bill in many ways.

The Pats’ NFL domination has included six Super Bowl victories between 2001 and 2018, three other trips to pro football’s annual Big Game and 18 straight seasons of winning records. It’s astonishing because the league’s worst-goes-first draft system is designed to promoted parity and the Pats have been draft bottom feeders for just about all of their title run.  The team has thrived by making useful parts out of other team’s discards. That knack seems to have waned of late, leaving it with roster gaps that might not be filled easily.

Brady, a new free agent, says he has “more to prove” and probably will keep playing, but he doesn’t say where. In any case he’ll be 43 years old next season and ain’t the man he used to be (who is?).  Odds are it’ll be a while before a new “Titletown” emerges.

William Safire said it took three examples to support a column theme, and my third is my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs. They’re headed for transition after a five-year run that transformed them from chumps to champs with their 2016 World Series victory but petered out in a near-.500 (84-78) finish last year. Team boss Theo Epstein vowed to shuffle the deck after that one.  That came a season or two late, in my opinion; unused to success, the Cubs celebrated far too long after their trophy triumph.

The ’16 Cubs were a young team, full of players 25 years old or younger, and Chicago fans had visions of a dynasty. That they’ve been disappointed in this isn’t new for their city; the hockey Blackhawks won the 1961 Stanley cup when Bobby Hull was 22 years old and Stan Mikita was 20 but never repeated while those two greats played, and the 1985 football champion Bears were a young bunch that met a similar fate. The Cubs may rise again but it will be with a different cast.

What moves the team make will depend in large part on a soon-to-come arbitrator’s ruling on whether their biggest star and juiciest trade bait, Kris Bryant, will be eligible for free agency after this season or the next one. If the Cubs win they’ll control him for two more seasons and his trade value will be highest. He’s rumored to be on the block because his performance has slacked off since his ’16 MVP season and he might not be worth the enormous contract he’ll demand when he’s free to move. The Cubs will have many mouths to feed over the next few years and don’t figure to be able to satisfy all of them.

Trading Bryant would be just part of the Cubs’ new course. The team already has cast off its championship manager, Joe Maddon, and two of its ’16 cogs, shortstop Addison Russell and utility man Ben Zobrist. Other trade candidates include the young slugger Kyle Schwarber, a natural-born designated hitter, the agile catcher Willson Contreras (hope not), and the once-promising outfielder Albert Almora. We fans root for our teams no matter who wears their uniforms, but any changes to our cast of ’16 heroes will be tough to take. Whatever, none of them ever will have to buy themselves a drink in Chicago.