Thursday, June 27, 2013

Who else puts the “Happy” in Happy Birthday?


Fittingly, June 27 is typically the midway point between the beginning of summer and the Independence Day holiday. For someone who loves both almost as much as liberal causes, it’s fitting that was the day my wife Whitney popped out and said “Hello, world!”

Thanks to Facebook remembering birthdays is not necessary. We receive a reminder on our home page and proceed from there. Some people make birthdays a big deal, whereas others like to celebrate another year without much fanfare.

Despite Helen Keller, director J.J. Abrams, designer Vera Wang, legendary soccer player Raul, a former girlfriend and the famous for no reason Khloe Kardashian having birthdays on June 27, it’s a day that is dominated by one person — Whitney. She was aware of her sisterhood with Keller and Kardashian. A Google search revealed the rest.

My wife is one of those people who believe birthdays are a big deal.  

They are days where birthday cake, confetti, balloons and random silly things should be done to commemorate another year. Birthdays are times when family and friends battle to be the first one to blow up her phone at midnight in an attempt to be the first to share their well-wishes. To her, it’s a reminder her favorite holiday is in a week and summer has arrived.

To know Whitney is to love her, especially on her birthday.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Friday, June 21, 2013

You can’t spell H-A-T-E-R without H-E-A-T?

A basketball championship was decided Thursday. Apparently the legacies of a handful of contestants also teetered on the balance. Could Tim Duncan win a fifth championship? Would LeBron James handle business in the Finals? Would the Miami Heat repeat as champions? Could a core of 30-somethings win another title in San Antonio?

Miami committed more turnovers and had fewer fast break points, yet the Heat surged late to win. Much to my initial disgust James and the Heat celebrated again.


You see, I’m a closeted Heat Hater. Not even being a fair weather Orlando Magic fan, could encourage me to root for that team down south out of Floridian solidarity. For some reason this particular gang of superstars irked me to the point I was nonplussed about their success. Even though I was well aware that nearly every championship-winning team in the last 35 years had at least one Hall-of-Famer on its roster, the gobs of talent in South Florida evoked disdain.

(Dennis Johnson was the only Hall-of-Famer on the 1979 Seattle SuperSonics and the jury is out about the 2004 Detroit Pistons.)

San Antonio seemed a more organically grown team. Its core of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker were drafted by the franchise. Defensive stopper Kawhi Leonard was acquired via a trade on 2011 Draft Night and other players were cultivated from the basketball wilderness. That background, combined with spending two years in South Texas, earned my respect.

Basketball is not a game won on sentiment, or respect —especially when both are coming from me.

Thursday’s game was won because the best player in the world played like it. San Antonio dared James and his sidekick Dwayne Wade to shoot jump shots. The two snipers obliged as James shot 52.1 percent from the field and Wade shot 52.3 percent. Combined the duo scored 60 of Miami’s 95 points.


No matter how much the Spurs tried to dethrone the Heat, the self-proclaimed King and his court would not be moved Thursday night. Of course it helped that Ginobili could not turn back time for the second time in the series, Danny Green played like… Danny Green circa 2009 and Tony Parker was once again ordinary.

It’s not like those things happened in a vacuum.

James was dared to shoot and he made shots. He and Wade kept abusing Green on the defensive end. At the end of the first half I joked with my cousin that “Whenever someone mixes Danny Green and shoots, it’s a guaranteed basket.” From my vantage point, on the couch, James and Wade defensively discombobulated Green at least five times in the first half and it resulted in 11 points.

The bantering with my cousin continued all night. He, the diehard Heat fan, and I, the Heat hater, were going back and forth. Though when a soft foul was called against the Spurs he wasn’t so rooted to his position to point it out and I waffled between bewilderment and awe at the shooting of Heat role players Shane Battier and Mario Chalmers.

After Duncan missed twice inside of three feet with less than a minute remaining to essentially end the game my cousin, who is a professional athlete in his own right, stated that if LeBron did the same thing he would be pillared by the press.

It was a point I had not considered. As I drove home I wondered whether we, the sports media, and the fans are too critical of James and his band of merry men.

With the exception of Michael Jordan, most of the best players in basketball with multiple championships lost in the NBA Finals. Bill Russell lost in 1958. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lost in 1973. Wilt Chamberlain had a handful of failures. Julius Erving had a 1-3 record in the NBA Finals. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon and Isaiah Thomas all lost at least once in the 80s. Thanks to 37 points and 12 rebounds from James, Tim Duncan also joins that elite list of Finals losers.

I may be a Heat hater, but an appreciation for basketball history, and a belief the Heatles were defecating on it by banding together, is what led to such a snobbish attitude about the franchise in the first place. If history was going to be my gauge, Thursday’s winners certainly deserve their place.

Miami had the third best regular season record of any reigning champion in NBA history. The only other teams with better records were led by some Jordan guy. Another reason even the haters, and diehard Spurs fans, can’t discredit their work? Miami beat every team in the NBA at least once this season.

Thursday proved this Heat team deserved its legacy among the pantheon — even if others may disagree.

Laughs and liveliness,


-Wb

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

When will Jacksonville kick through?



When it comes to soccer the First Coast only had one chance to make a first impression. Though it passed the test, as far as hosting U.S. soccer matches, it appears the area may be overlooked when it comes to joining the rotation of cities the U.S. Soccer Federation routinely uses to host marquee matches.


Unlike the five other teams the Americans are fighting for a place at next summer’s World Cup there is not a designated stadium for soccer. There is not a designated stadium or arena for any sport in this country, but that’s another issue.

United Stats Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati told the Times "it immediately becomes obvious that it doesn't make much sense" for soccer to be the first sport to break that trend.

“Gulati listed a few of the basic obstacles, including erratic weather patterns, differing needs in terms of the size of the stadium and concerns about ensuring a crowd that is pro-United States against certain opponents. He also noted that ‘we’re in the business of promoting the game’ in the United States, which is a task surely helped by the national team’s barnstorming persona.”
There are mitigating circumstances for the crowds at US men’s national team games such as opponent, location and date. For instance every January the US plays a friendly with a B-squad of players against a middling opponent such as Denmark, Canada and Chile. The draw for that match is typically lower than World Cup qualifiers, and contests against marquee teams.

Despite some of those circumstances weighing against Jacksonville 13 months ago the city still attracted 44,000 people for a friendly against Scotland. Yet, the city that drew the biggest crowd to witness a US men’s national team match in Florida has yet to be rewarded with another match.

The Scotland match on May 26, 2012 was the 19th time in the last 11 years U.S. soccer has drawn 40,000 fans to a match on American soil. In all, it’s been done 22 times, in the past 11 years, including a June 11 World Cup qualifier in Seattle.


The biggest crowd during that period was the 93,420 who filled the Rose Bowl two years ago when the U.S. lost to Mexico in the Gold Cup final. Not everyone was happy about the fact an estimated 70 percent of those in attendance rooted against the stars and stripes.




Why 11 years, instead of a more even number?  Simple, FIFA mandates all stadia that host World Cup games have a capacity of at least 40,000.  Also, on June 17, 2002 the U.S clinched a spot in the World Cup quarterfinals.

Since that historic victory over Mexico at the 2002 World Cup the biggest soccer crowds in this country have been friendlies against some of the world’s elite teams, knock-out games in the CONCACAF Gold Cup or contests against Mexico. These games have been in larger metropolitan areas whether it’s greater Washington, E. Rutherford, N.J. Chicago, Houston and Pasadena, Calif.

Two cities that are surprisingly on that list of locales to attract 40,000 for a USMNT match: Jacksonville and Salt Lake City. It’s the latter that will host tonight’s big World Cup qualifier against Honduras — the game is in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

Jacksonville mayor Alvin Brown has been quoted by local media expressing his interest in attracting more soccer to this area. Whether it’s of the club or international variety remains to be seen. Besides, if Brown, or anyone in Northeast Florida needed a closing point they could mention the U.S. men’s national team is undefeated in four games (3-0-1) in Northeast Florida.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Who would have thought the daggers would be Green?

This will be the 45th time someone has been named Most Valuable Player of the NBA Finals.

Should San Antonio complete its fifth championship season, the winner of the 2013 award would be unheralded shooting guard Danny Green. Not the half dozen other surefire Hall of Fame players in this series, but a man who has been released three times in his career.

Green would be the first Finals MVP who will not wind up in the Basketball Hall of Fame in more than 30 years. Chauncey Billups, the 2004 Finals MVP, will likely wind up in Springfield; but, it make take him awhile to get inducted.

Cedric Maxwell (1981) and Jo Jo White (1976) are the only two Finals MVPs that are not in the Hall of Fame.  Maxwell was an All-American in college, twice led the NBA in field goal percentage and won a pair of titles with the Celtics. White also won multiple titles with the Celtics and a seven-time All-Star.

Danny Green doesn’t have credentials like that.


“There have been a couple games where I have had some a couple heat flashes and made some, but nothing like this. Not for long stretches of time,” Green told NBA TV after Game 5.

He is someone who has scored more points in the NBA Finals (90) than in his first two seasons in the NBA (81). What’s so surprising is not the fact that Green set a NBA Finals record for 3-point field goals. It’s the fact Green is making 66 percent of those shots.

Who does that? Apparently, Danny Green.

Should San Antonio win Green would join a fraternity that includes Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and other basketball immortals. For context it’s an award that has been renamed after the greatest winner in North American sports — Bill Russell.

Russell’s 11th, and final, championship came in 1969 when his Boston Celtics held off a furious rally from Los Angeles in Game 7 of that series. That year was also the first time a MVP award was given. Jerry West won Finals MVP in a losing effort after averaging 38 points and seven assists. Not even his 42 points in the deciding game were enough to save his Lakers from 108-106 loss.

All those winners and men whose accomplishments are the fabric of NBA history and Danny Green is on the cusp of joining them. His 24 points, on 53 percent shooting, Sunday night moved the Spurs one game away from a title.

“The numbers are nice, but they are not important,” Green said afterward. “The big thing for us is to continue to execute and give ourselves a chance to win. We want to win the next game. Tonight we had too many turnovers, but luckily some guys got hot.”


Sunday’s performance means Green will have at least one more opportunity to singe the net. This time it might be for a championship. 

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

How tempting is a shortcut to success?





Taking the road less traveled is easier in theory than practice. 

Baseball is considering its biggest mass punishment in 93 years after a Miami area entrepreneur agreed to share his knowledge about providing performance-enhancing drugs to a litany of players. Whether the players will be suspended, and for how long, remains to be seen.

The story is another case of a professional trying to seek an edge by any means necessary.

A Sports Illustrated columnist argued Wednesday that he wouldn’t take performance enhancing drugs if he were an athlete. The column was in response to outfielder Ryan Braun being caught in the crosshairs of another investigation that he used performance-enhancing drugs. There are more than a dozen other players linked to the Miami-area clinic, but Braun’s backstory may be the most intriguing.

In truth, most of us would have to look long and hard at the person in the mirror if a shortcut to professional success and financial security was thrown in front of us like a thong in front of a throng at a bachelor party.

In some ways, one can empathize with Braun. Baseball is a sport where the difference between very good and elite can be as much as $50 million.

Then again, Braun’s road to riches was much shorter than many of his baseball brethren. He was a first round draft pick in 2005, breezed through minor league baseball and reached Major League Baseball before his 24th birthday.

He, allegedly, chose to take performance-enhancing drugs in search of additional success.

After driving in his rookie season, Braun signed a $45 million dollar contract with the Brewers. Four years later, the player and the team were once again at the bargaining table. In April 2011 Braun signed a $105 million extension.

Few complained when Braun went out and won the NL MVP award in 2011 and helped the Brewers win a division title for the first time in 29 years.

The bottom fell out that winter when a doping test revealed Braun had elevated levels of testosterone. In his case, the house of cards was too fragile to conceal the deceit in perpetuity.

Those who are seduced by the shortcut to success may not have such a public shaming.

What Braun is accused of doing, taking a banned substance to get ahead of his peers, is no different than offering a young judge a seat at the federal level if they ensure a certain verdict. Perhaps it’s the aide to a politician who is promised support for a future run for office if they help the politician deceive the people they serve. Maybe, it’s the journalist who works in Middle-of-Nowhere, America who is tempted with a cushy position in New York City and a six-figure salary, but only if they report a story from a specific angle.

An athlete who chooses to take performance-enhancing drugs has a choice, just as those other professionals. Athletes are just in the limelight more than your wayward judge, politician or journalist.

Of course it’s the latter whose misfeasance has the broader impact on society — albeit with fewer press clippings.

Braun made $4.27 million in his MVP season. He’s scheduled to make $8.5 million this season. And who can forget the $113 million in guaranteed money the Milwaukee Brewers owe him through the end of the 2020 season.

Many of us joke our principles have a price. It’s likely that price falls below the nearly $130 million in compensation Braun will earn by combining his talent with temptation.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be on traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as far that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

What’s more fearsome than living without opportunities?


Deacon Jones was found dead earlier this week. He was universally considered one of the best defensive linemen in the history of the NFL. He is credited with creating the term “sack” before it became an official stat two years after he was admitted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Jones played at South Carolina State for three seasons before transferring to Mississippi Valley State for his final season of collegiate eligibility.

Despite being drafted in the 14th round of the NFL Draft, the Eatonville, Fla. native did OK for himself professionally. Throughout his football career, Jones was one of the pillars of a defensive unit called the Fearsome Foursome.

In athletics, if someone has talent, they will be spotted. This is especially true in football and baseball. Whether someone is from an isolated town in Middle-of-Nowhere, America, or the latest All-American, if they are talented some scout will “discover” them.

One question that has been asked in some HBCU circles is why black athletes prefer to attend schools that are more interested in their brawn than their brain. Clearly, it’s a question that is not discussed as much as the major issues plaguing collegiate sports, but one that has been discussed away from the mainstream.

For the last 40 years African-American athletes have been more likely to accept a scholarship from Alabama rather than Alabama A&M. Additional opportunities are a good thing. But, are those chances coming at a cost?

Of the 70 teams that played in a bowl game last year Notre Dame, Georgia, Rice and San Jose State were the only schools where the graduation rate of African-American football players was equal to or greater than the graduation rate for white players in the football program.

The curious case of another talented defensive end is a spectacular example. Taurean Charles was a high school All-American from Miami initially enrolled at the University of Florida in 2003. Charles got into trouble and was quickly dismissed from Florida’s football program. He made his way to Bethune-Cookman University, never fulfilling the potential many thought he had coming out of high school.

Bethune-Cookman would have loved to have an athlete of Charles’ caliber after a 2002 season where the Wildcats were 11-2 and won its conference for the first time in 14 years. However, Daytona Beach was seen as a step far below Gainesville in the realm of college football — despite the fact the two cities are 96 miles apart geographically.

Jones’s death, as well as the fact there has been a HBCU graduate on four out of the last six teams to win the Super Bowl, reaffirms the fact there is talent coming out of the colleges in Itta Bena, Miss.; Pine Bluff, Ark; Jackson, Tenn. and elsewhere.

Grambling has just as many alums in the Hall of Fame, four, as the University of Florida and Florida State combined. Jackson State and Oklahoma both have three former players enshrined in Canton.

Clearly, the Hall-of-Fame is the pinnacle of any profession. Whether someone attended Penn State or Prairie View A&M, they still must possess the talent to not only make the NFL, but thrive once there.

Deacon Jones’ humble beginnings, outstanding personality and football legacy illuminate what athletes, or anyone for that matter, can achieve once put in an environment that fosters their strengths — on and off the field.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

How can a cucumber tell time?



For years wife and I have maintained our similarities, but with individual wrinkles. Her juicing infatuation in the mornings is the newest example. A combination of kale, carrot, apple, strawberry and cucumber go in the juicer for her breakfast. Stray strawberries and bananas go into the blender for my breakfast smoothie.

A recent trip to the local farmer’s market harkened back to a summer where a cucumber was the length between adulthood and adolescence.

It was 2002 and I was a packaging engineer at a grocery store. Scrawny and lacking self-awareness it was a period where the summer seemed endless.

On that steamy Florida evening the boy whistled a Beatles song. From Me To You was in his mind because it was on a relatively new compilation release. Upon hearing the lyrics, the cucumber-carrying colleague at the grocery store inquired about the lyrics.

“If there’s anything that you want,
If there’s anything I can do,
Just call on me and I’ll send it along…” 

The lyrics were just the opening she needed. Instantly, she quipped there was something she needed and I could provide it. The cucumber the coitus-seeking-cashier was twirling in her hands answered the question before her bespectacled brown eyes.

The boy’s joke about being able to answer the question and her desire received a woman’s response. A raised eyebrow and a lustful look were enough to unnerve the lanky wiseass.

She was 10 years older. A combination of being older, with money and interested in my comings and goings made her seem exotic to someone who had no responsibilities other than saving spending money for college. 

She drove a brown Ford. It was probably a Taurus, but his memory evades him. The open ended invitation was too much for his synapses to compute while coolly strolling to his car. Sensing his insecurity, she said the cucumber would suffice.

At the time the cashier was 27. It was an age that seemed beyond imaginable and well into the future. Four weeks before my wife’s 27th birthday, the case of the curious cucumber arose again.

Wife’s eyes didn’t bulge at the sight of the massive cucumber at the market. To her, it was going to make a lot of juice — the type that was far from the tongue of a teenager a decade ago. Throughout the years the cucumber remained the same, its application, by two different women wasn’t the same. In short, it was the difference between adolescent and adult.