LAST TEAM STANDING?

 

               OK sports fans, time for a quiz. What do these eight men— Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Joel Embiid, Ja Morant, Julius Randle, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Chris Paul and Jimmy Butler-- have in common?

               All are National Basketball Association stars and the best players on their teams, or nearly so. And all have missed games due to injury during the current NBA playoffs.

               Some of their absences already have been crucial. The Los Angeles Clippers, minus George for the duration and Leonard for three games, were bounced from the tournament’s first round in five games by the Phoenix Suns, and the Milwaukee Bucks, top seeded in the East, suffered a similar fate to the Miami Heat with Giannis out for two of those games.  Without playmaker Paul for the last four games, the Suns lost in six to the Denver Nuggets in round two.

               More rounds remain so the injury story of this year’s playoffs hasn’t been completed. Many of the games so far have been brilliantly played, with epic individual performances by Butler, Stephen Curry and Devin Booker, among others, but the way things are going the race could be won not by the best team but the last one standing. The NBA season has gotten so tough and grueling that it rivals the National Football League’s in having injuries dictate its outcomes. And instead of looking for ways to limit the damage, the league mostly makes it worse.

               Schedules in our major spectator sports long have been governed more by commerce than by competition, but nowhere has the “more is better” philosophy been more damaging than in the NBA. The league has had a 82-game regular season since the 1967-68 campaign, but the game today is immeasurably faster and rougher than it was then, and the playoffs are longer. First-round playoff series’ used to be best-of-five-games, now they’re best-of-seven like the other three rounds, and this season a six-game “play-in” tourney was added among the seventh-through-10^th-place finishers in the two geographic divisions to determine who made the final eight in each. A winner now could play as many as 30 playoff games, against 28 before. Maybe that’s not a big deal, but it’s not nothing.

               In the NFL, the injury bug bites hardest on the quarterbacks. They’re the most important players on the field but also the most vulnerable, often gazing at receivers downfield while behemoth lineman intent on their demise bear down upon them. It’s a wonder they aren’t hurt more often than they are. In basketball the stars bear the injury brunt because they play more minutes than lesser lights and are more the defenses’ focus.

               Basketballers aren’t bent on mayhem the way footballers are, but the cagers play unpadded—in their underwear, by appearance—and they don’t call the courts “the hardwoods” for nothing. Spectators and photographers sit only a few feet from the side and end lines, adding to the danger. Both effort and intensity increase during the playoffs, and the unwritten but real refs’ dictum to “let the boys play” kicks in. And even an elderly gent like 38-year-old LeBron James is logging 40-minute games during the current go-round.     

               You can’t make any money while the store is closed so the NBA, like our other pro leagues, is loath to cut back on its schedules. It has addressed its injury problem in part by going corporate, legitimizing what it calls “load management.” That means it’s okay for players to sit out games from time to time for no other reason than rest.

 The injured parties here are the fans, who no longer can count on seeing their favorite players when they buy tickets. To find out how often that happens I counted the absences during the just-concluded regular season of the dozen players I considered the league’s best. Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Luca Doncic, Antetokounmpo, Curry, Leonard, James, Kevin Durant, Booker, Morant, Damian Lillard and Butler missed a total of 274 games for rest or injury, with Durant’s 35 the most and Jokic’s 13 the fewest. That works out to about 23 games each, or about 28% of their teams’ schedules.

Other players get hurt, too; 10 seasons ago 28 players appeared in all 82 NBA games but this season the total was 10. The league record for consecutive games was set by A.C. Green, a much-traveled frontcourter, whose streak totaled 1,192 games from 1987 through 2001. That’s way short of the baseball mark of 2,632 games set by Cal Ripken Jr., but it’s just about as remarkable; as Green put it, “Ripken didn’t have to fight off two or three guys every time he went to catch a pop up.”   The NBA’s current streak is 392, held by Mikal Bridges of the Brooklyn Nets, so Green’s mark won’t be topped soon, if ever.

To the question of why all the basketball injuries, the reasons are several. One, of course, is that even with load management the NBA schedule is too long. Another is the increased speed of the game, which ups the stress all around. A third, by me, is the fact that the wealthy pro athlete of today (and just about all NBAers are wealthy, or should be) is a jock in season and out, and probably is working out somewhere when he isn’t playing.

 All proper workout schedules have a rest component, but given the competitiveness of big-time sports few jocks can resist thinking that one more rep, or lap, could be the difference between a starting job and the bench, or somesuch. There’s a thin line between peak fitness and a pulled hamstring,  so all teams and their fans must hope their star’s next step won’t put him on the injured list. 

 

              

                

DERBY PICKS

 

               In the “Who Says There’s No Good News?” department, a notable entry last year. The Stronach Group and the state of Arizona settled their dispute, allowing AZ horseplayers to again watch the simulcasts from Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita, among other Stronach tracks. Thus, at Kentucky Derby time, I’ve had a decent chance to be prepared and share my views on the race with you, my dear readers.  At no charge, of course-- extra or otherwise.

               The Derby has been interesting during my two-year hiatus. In 2021 the winner on the race course, Medina Spirit, was disqualified months later for a drug violation, and last year an 80-to-1 shot, Rich Strike, snuck past two battling favorites at the wire to cause agita coast to coast. Add the 2019 race, when winner Maximum Security was taken down for interference and the 65-to-1 runnerup replaced him in the winners’ circle, and the warning to “hold all tickets” never has seemed more apt.

                  A return to what Warren G. Harding called “normalcy” would dictate that a favorite prevail this year, and there’s a clear one. He’s Forte (post position 15), who leads the field in wins (6, of 7 starts) and money won (about $2.4 million), and was both the two-year-old champion and the dominant three-year-old on the busy Florida winter circuit. About the only knock against him was that he won the Florida Derby by a scant length after going off at 1-to-5. A 1-to-5 shot is expected to win by a city block.

               So I’ll have Forte in my exacta tickets, but he’ll go off at 3-to-1 or less and to make any money I’ll have to pair him with longer shots. Also on both my tickets will be Angel of Empire, (PP.14), 8-to-1 in the morning line. He’s a late-runner who won two Derby preps by daylight margins. Because of the odds I’ll be rooting mainly for him.

                 The nice thing about the Derby is that you get double-digit odds on very-good horses. I’ll put two of those—Kingsbarns,  (PP. 6) and Two Phils, (PP.3)—on one of my tickets. Both are 12-to-1 in the morning line. Kingsbarns runs in front-- always a good place to be—and Two Phils travels well, having won races at four different tracks.

               On my other ticket I’ll have Derma Sotogake, (PP. 17), and Mage, (PP.8). Derma, off at 10-to-1, is Japanese owned and trained, and those horses have been doing well worldwide. Mage, 15-to-1, was a close second to Forte in the Florida Derby, so he seems to belong among the best.

               To summarize, barring late scratches and mind changes I’ll bet two $1, four-horse exacta boxes—3-6-14-15 and 8-14-15-17—costing a modest $24. Putting down a few bucks makes any race more interesting.  Enjoy.

              

RACE TO THE BOTTOM

 

               A few weeks ago the Dallas Mavericks played the Chicago Bulls in the final NBA regular-season game for both teams.  The Mavs sat Kyrie Irving and three other usual starters and limited their best player, Luca Doncic, to the first quarter. Their remaining players made a game of it but eventually bowed, 115-112. A spot in the “play in” tournament, the precursor to the playoffs, was on the line, but while the loss cost the Mavs that distinction they gained a better place in the next player draft.

In a word, the Mavs “tanked”—lost on purpose. That’s not uncommon in our big-time professional sports but it was unusual that the team was frank about it — “an organizational choice,” coach Jason Kidd called it.

The league responded with outrage, fining the Mavs $750,000 and saying their action (inaction, really) “undermined the integrity of the sport” and “failed our fans and our league.” But note the careful wording of that statement, the “our” instead of “their.” Chances are that many if not most Mavs fans, aware that their mediocre team’s title chances were close to nil, thought that a better draft position was worth more than a play-in game or two. Likewise, the three-quarters-mil fine was a pittance to the team’s famously rich owner, Mark Cuban; indeed, he was docked $600,000 for doing pretty much the same thing in 2018. “Losing was our best option,” he said then.

               What we have here is a classic example of unintended consequences. All four of our major pro- sports leagues— in baseball, football, basketball and hockey-- replenish their rosters annually with a worst-goes-first amateur-player draft, designed with the laudable purpose of improving their laggard teams. But what we see annually is the unedifying spectacle of a race to the bottom among teams who believe that’s their best road to the top.

               Now, losing on purpose isn’t as easy as it may appear.  No athlete, pro or weekend hacker, wants to lose, and with few exceptions will put out his or her best effort once the opening bell or its equivalent sounds. Fact is, in contact sports like football and hockey, less than whole-hearted effort can lead to injury. What happens, then, is that clubs will pare their rosters by trading away useful players for prospects or draft choices, hoping that their fans will stick with them while the kids they acquire grow up to fuel a renaissance. If they pick wisely, it’ll work. If not, it won’t.

               That’s been an option for decades but it took the baseball 2006 Washington Nationals to formalize it. That team, transplanted from Montreal the year before, and with dim short-term prospects, embarked on what top execs Stan Kasten and Mike Rizzo publicly called “The Plan,” whose essence is expressed in the paragraph above. The Nats endured losing seasons from 2006 through 2010 but accumulated the wherewithal to draft such worthies as Stephen Strausburg, Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon. A period of success followed, culminating in a 2019 World Series victory.

               Other teams took note. Theo Epstein tanked the Chicago Cubs in 2012 through ’14 while he put together the roster that won the 2016 Series, ending an epic, 108-year title drought. The Houston Astros were doing the same thing at about the same time, with longer-lasting results. It’s noteworthy that those things happened in baseball, where the gap between the Majors and draft-level players is the widest among our Big Four. That entrenched the lesson.

               Baseball and football have straight-out worst-goes-first rules, and the NFL’s exciting bottom race this season came down to the final game. The Houston Texans, who do few things right, led most of the way, but surprised by winning two of their last three games to finish at 3-13-1 in the won-lost-tied column. That allowed them to be aced out by the Chicago Bears, who came in at 3-14.

               The Bears, with a new coach on board, were not terrible to start, standing at 3-4 after the first seven games. Then they traded away (for draft choices) their two best defensive players—lineman Robert Quinn and linebacker Roquan Smith—and went into a 10-game swoon. Among the early losses in that stretch were a few in which they were competitive, but they finished in full fade, being outscored 39 to 105 in their last three outings. Of such performances are No. 1 draft positions made. The team being hard up all around, they traded that top spot for more picks, but their talent deficit is so large it’ll probably take at least one more quite-bad season to get them into any title mix.

               The NBA and the NHL have tried to avert too many overt tankings by creating draft lotteries involving the several worst teams every season (their number has varied), but last placers still have an edge for the top spot, so the races continue. In hockey this season three teams—the Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks and Columbus Blue Jackets—battled to the wire for last. The Blue Jackets were bad, finishing 4-9 in their last 13 games. The Blackhawks were worse at 2-11, but the Ducks put the puck in the net by going out at 0-13. The Ohioans and Chicagoans tied for second-worst in the standings, with the former getting the best of the tie-breakers. Anaheim will have a 25.5% lottery shot at No. 1, the Blue Jackets 13.5% and the Hawks 11.5.

               The top draft prize in hockey this year is substantial. He’s Connor Bedard, a smallish, beardless Canadian youth of 17 years who averaged better than a goal a game in his last two seasons of junior play.  He’s hailed as a unique talent, one who can set the league afire, but there’s many a slip ‘twixt the juniors and Bigs and any sport’s draft remains a crapshoot. Remember that when the numbers are drawn and the names are announced.