Whoops, that was supposed to say "kayfabe". I heard there was some wrasslin' going on yesterday.
61 thoughts on “April 9, 2018: Key Fob”
R. I. P. Joe McConnell, radio broadcaster for the Twins (1978-1979) and Vikings (1971-1976, 1985-1987), at age seventy-nine.
If the Twins were an Oracle database, adding a new right fielder would cause turning the double play to suddenly have problems.
If we thought we knew how the new extra innings format would play out, we were wrong.
I feel like I’ve almost reached a level of — phlegmatic? — interaction with baseball that I can decide to step away if I don’t like something without getting mad about it, like when TR brought i-i back for his mentorship & inner-circle-under-bus-teammate-tossing clubhouse character. I disliked that decision, and stayed away until the situation was resolved. But if Manfred institutes this rule change for extra innings, I feel like I’ll be hopping mad. I get its utilitarian appeal in the minors, where you might not want to stress developing players, but — even in this exceptional instance — everything about cuts against what makes baseball fun to watch.
Agreed this new format, even think I haven't seen it in action, sucks. I'm also of the opinion that there wasn't anything wrong with the pace of play (Yankees excepted.) and that all these attempts to speed things up aren't needed. I like the pace and length of a baseball game, dammit.
Ayyup. This is an abject case of fixing something that ain't broke.
The amateur (collegiate? Olympic?) OT rule in hockey of 4-on-4, on the other hand, is, I think, a great innovation. The ice opens up and invigorates otherwise tired players to make something happen.
When most of the fans leave the game before it ends, I think it’s fair to say something is “broke.” In MLB I would say they shouldn’t start adding the runners at second base until the 11th or 12th inning, but I see no problem with how it played out in this case. One team executed better than the other in the extra frame and got the win.
I disagree on that because, while I get your point, I don't think super long games happen often enough to where its a significant problem. So its only "broke" in relatively few occurrences.
That cuts both ways. If 12+ innnng games don’t happen often, I don’t see the problem with changing the tiebreak procedure in those few games to help so more fans are around for the end of the game.
I am assuming that playoff games would stay the same, similar to the NHL.
I would say I like the idea of going straight to a tie at some point, but then I think teams would really empty their bullpen, knowing exactly how many outs they need, and the bullpen parade is my least favorite part of the game today.
And I'm going to say what's broke is the starting time. Yeah, some people are going to leave still when it hits extra innings, but at least they don't leave in the seventh or eighth (like I did last night because bedtime)
I mean, if you could start games a half hour earlier and get average game length to 2.5 hours, which I think still gives you a deliberately paced game that doesn’t feel rushed or dragged, and ended most games by 9pm local, that sounds great to me, but I think teams probably lose revenue in that scenario, so we will probably have to keep dreaming on that.
I'd be happy with 10PM, but yeah.
Exactly. Plenty of fans leave all sorts of sporting events early, for a variety of reasons (e.g., past bedtime; beat the traffic; whatever).
Free, marginal baseball is a payoff to completionist fans. If baseball wanted to keep fans around to the end, they could find other ways to speed up the game. Such as enforcing expectations about batters not stepping out of the box to adjust everything on every. damn. pitch. And on pitchers dicking around. Grip it and rip it. It worked just fine for Earl's Orioles, damnit!
I guess the question is what problem are they trying to solve with this?
In the 2017 season, the average game lasted 8.9 innings (43,257 innings pitched over 4,860 games).
In the 2016 season, the average game lasted 8.9 innings (43,306.33 innings pitched over 4,856 games).
Extra inning games happen at a rate of around 200-250 per season, or about 8-10 percent of the games. In 2017, team-average outs pitched per game varied between a low of 26.3 and a high of 27.4, suggesting that games going beyond the 10th are quite rare.
As a somewhat of a baseball purist, my first reactions was "what?" Then I thought about hockey. As a hockey purist, I was not too happy about the way overtimes are decided... at first. Now, when I think about it, I am more supportive. For one thing, having a game end in a tie sucks worse for me than a game decided by a shoot out. Hockey has 82 regular season games, and I would rather have regular season games end in a somewhat reasonable time frame than see a bunch of 3 1/2 hour games that still end in a tie. As a consumer, a tie feels like a waste of money. I should feel elation in the win or dejection in the loss. Ties leave me feeling empty about the experience.
Now with baseball, we have a 162 game regular season. I don't want to sit through a 4-5 hour extra inning game. I just don't. The fact that, as Ubes points out, so many people leave is proof enough that the current system is broken. I am ok with these new rules for minor leagues, and honestly hope MLB does something to address this. One possible good thing to come out of it, might be shorter games that result in teams less likely to fill their roster with 13 pitchers. Maybe we see teams adding another bench bat to create more roster flexibility. I get the purist reaction of "don't change the game". But I think MLB has to look at this, as it truly does suck watching the end of a 14 inning affair in which there are only a few thousand fans left in the stands.
I think I will be okay if they change a rule to make the games shorter. In the playoffs I couldn't stomach it, but there's nothing worse than staying up until 1 in the morning to watch a loss for 1/162 of the season.
That said, there is something special about being at a game that has a second 7th inning stretch. 11 inning games are dumb, but I'll never forget the 15 inning game I was at.
I would suggest that not everyone who leaves early or turns off the TV wants the rules changed. Some undoubtedly do, but not all. Unless it's a day game, I can never stay up for the end of an extra inning game, but I still don't want them to use the Manfred Rule to decide it in an artificial way. I'd prefer just calling the game a tie to doing that. But what I'd really prefer is to leave the rules alone.
I still think the resolution to long extra inning games is to implement the Tie after X amount of innings (12, 13, 15?). That way you are still playing baseball, but protecting players by not having them go 4 innings or whatever, and games decided by position players (unless your manager is burning through arms, but thats a different story)
I think this is baseball's equivalence to college football's overtime where they start each team on the 25-yard line and give them each a possession to resolve the game. I really don't see too many people complaining about that anymore. Of course, the NFL has yet to go so far. The only OT adjustment they've made is to make sure each team gets a possession if the team that wins the coin flip only makes a field goal in their first possession of OT. Of course, the NFL still allows ties, but those are extremely rare. The NHL, of course, has gone to shootouts to resolve ties after a short OT. However, gaining a point for going to a shootout often appears to make teams too conservative in OT. I think sometimes the same thing happens in the NFL when teams play conservatively on offense to prevent turnovers and big loss plays (sacks, etc.) knowing that if they don't score, they can be rewarded with a tie instead of a loss.
I don't complain about college football's overtime anymore because it would be pointless, but I don't like it any better than I did initially. In fact, having seen it for quite a while now, I like it less than I did at first. The NFL's system isn't perfect, but it at least makes the teams play under pretty much the same rules they played under for four quarters. If I actually cared about the NHL I wouldn't like the shootout rule, but I don't, so it doesn't matter to me.
Started watching Black Mirror this weekend. Finished the first season. For those who have seen all of it, does it get any less soul-crushing? Wife and I had to watch Kimmy Schmidt after "The Entire History of You" just to cleanse our psyches so we could go to sleep. I enjoy the format of the show, and I don't know if I can take hating humanity after every episode.
Skip ahead and watch San Junipero next.
And after that....I guess....stop watching?
Uh, yeah, pretty much. I've only watched the first two seasons, though. I've been meaning to watch more, but every time I get time to watch, I end up playing video games.
That sounds kind of glib, but I don't really mean it that way. There's a reason I'm not binging through it, and it has nothing to do with the quality or relative artistic merit of the show. It is very often a hell of a bummer.
thank you!
I've been working my way through Luther. I do the same thing, finishing my night with Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee or somesuch to come down again. I've enjoyed the series, although for as much as John can delve into the criminal/psycho motives, he sure has problems seeing his own sometimes.
Soul-crushing is definitely the norm. There are few happy-if-you-squint endings, and as stated, San Junipero feels wholly different.
I would add Hated In The Nation to the different feel list. It's not happy, but it's not quite as soul crushing.
I've watched all of Seasons 1 - 3 and the first 2 episodes of Season 4. Season 4 has not been up to the caliber of the earlier seasons so far, though Star Trek fans may enjoy the first episode. Certainly not a show for bingeing, but often worth watching.
"Nosedive" is painted with a brighter palette, and I definitely took it as.
And "White Christmas" hits all those dark tones in the best way possible. (I guess I watched through all but the last episode of season 3.)
Funny - when I hear “key fob” I actually think about how closely it resembles kayfabe.
Fun show last night, and a lot of hardcore fans have their panties in a bunch over a twist they can’t handle, which is always a bonus.
I did the $49 Twins deal for SRO for all April home games. I've got a bit of a streak going at 5 spanning back to last season, so I'm going to try to make most of the games this week until Saturday (which I can't make because of MinneBar @ BB HQ). Hopefully, the weather cooperates, it would be fun to hit double digits.
Also, thanks again to Can o Corn for chilling at the Home Opener with me after others bailed. It was a really fun time.
If anyone happens to be at a game this week and wants to meet up for a bit as I'm pacing the concourse shoot me a message.
It sounds like Memphis is sitting half their team for the game tonight. The NBA needs to change the lottery.
Could still lose.
That would be the most Wolvesian way to do things.
Do they? What comes to mind as a viable option? No matter how convoluted the system, I don’t see a way around bad teams tanking at the end.
Ubelman suggested rank based on how log it's been since they made the playoffs.
I think it should just be an auction using the salary cap dollars available.
There are better options.
There might be, but my assumption is that the NBA will commit to one and it’ll be exploited in no time just like any other. I’m open to something new, though, including either of your suggestions.
Anything that prevents the cigar chomping grin of the corpse of Red Auerbach from gracing the draft night TV coverage.
I'm partial to the auction just for the viewing spectacle of it.
An auction could work, too. That way, tanking would be limited to saving cap space, which you can actually enforce, rather than effort on the court, which is difficult/impossible to do really well. Though I’m sure the league could do better than they are today.
Some NHL stat guys proposed going by points (or wins) accrued after mathematical elimination from the playoffs.
The worst teams get more games to add up points/wins, and a reward system in place for winning games.
Haven't thought about it much, but it seemed kind of smart. Some teams might tank in the middle of the season, I guess, but that's less infuriating than a team tanking as they face teams battling for playoff spots.
I wonder honestly if such a method would be rejected as too complicated for sports fans to follow.
To calculate for themselves midway through the season? maybe. But by the last couple weeks, it's just another set of standings easily available everywhere.
I'm still gonna advocate for splitting the season into halves or quarters and assigning pingpong balls proportionately for standings after each season portion. That at least confines the tanking a bit, and also has the advantage of rewarding teams who make a comeback after a bad start.
You could also just get rid of the draft and the whole rookie-scale contract business and make everyone not under contract a free agent.
Yea, that's not happening.
But intriguing. Problem is two-fold. First, too many players want to go to the "cool" cities and not enough to the Salt Lakes as it is. Second, while the CBA specifies a revenue split with the players, the union is dominated by veterans. They have little incentive to let the 1st, 2nd and 3rd-year players get paid what they are worth, since it comes out of the hides of veteran non-superstars.
I think the auction exacerbates superteams and kills small market. I'm definitely not saying that tanking or taking advantage of rookies is perfect, but I don't think an auction or straight free agency fixes any of our problems in ways that don't potentially make worse problems.
The real problem is that the teams know how the draft order is determined, so they can exploit it.
What we need is a lottery to determine how the draft order is determined. Maybe this year it's free agency for all, and next year it's by the percentage of the team logo that is the color red! No one knows, so we might as well just play ball.
Random snake drafts! It's good enough for fantasy leagues, it's good enough for the real thing!
The solution for getting star players to all the markets and reducing superteams is to let each team spend unlimited money on one player and have a strict cap on the rest of the team. There’s no way Durant and Curry are on the same team if one of them has to give up $20M/yr to do it.
The current situation is still awful for small markets because even if you tank hard to get a top draft pick, which sucks in the first place, it’s not long before they can “take their talent to South Beach”
You would think that eventually the market (consumers) would dictate change. Why anyone continues to shell out thousands (or even millions) of dollars to support some of these franchises who tank, or the franchises who don't stand a chance of being competitive, is beyond me. You would think that, but alas, money keeps flowing in.
I absolutely love the game of basketball. I know, shocking right? I truly do. I lost much interest in the NBA decades ago, as it was so star driven and not a team game anymore. It has gone through stretches where defense matters, but as a whole, it is tough for me to watch. As a result, I watched a ton of college basketball. But the one and done, the dirty behind the scenes aspects, and other issues have caused me to lose interest again. A good DII or DIII game, or high school match up is more my style now. I guess this all explains why I am more of a hockey fan. One or two players does not a team make. I know hockey has it's issues too, but basketball at the pro and college level is an absolute mess.
The NBA has done an incredible job essentially blackmailing fans of tanking teams—if you don’t support your team, it gets moved to a different market. I think they are leaving money on the table by not spreading the superstars around the league, but apparently their calculations are different than mine.
Yup, it seems to me like they want their league of 30 teams who all draw well, but also want their big market teams to do as well as possible for the ratings boon. I guess most pro sports are like that to some extent, it just feels like the NBA is more blatant about it, and it is a sport where 1 or 2 elite players can make it happen much easier.
Ticket alert!
They're having trouble finding takers for the company tickets this week. I said I might be interested in Wednesday or Thursday, so they dropped them on my desk. I don't think they'll care if I find a user for them. In all likelihood, I won't make it.
4 tickets in the Home Plate Box Mid. Let me know if you might be able to use them.
4/11 12:10p
4/12 7:10p
R. I. P. Joe McConnell, radio broadcaster for the Twins (1978-1979) and Vikings (1971-1976, 1985-1987), at age seventy-nine.
If the Twins were an Oracle database, adding a new right fielder would cause turning the double play to suddenly have problems.
If we thought we knew how the new extra innings format would play out, we were wrong.
I feel like I’ve almost reached a level of — phlegmatic? — interaction with baseball that I can decide to step away if I don’t like something without getting mad about it, like when TR brought i-i back for his mentorship &
inner-circle-under-bus-teammate-tossingclubhouse character. I disliked that decision, and stayed away until the situation was resolved. But if Manfred institutes this rule change for extra innings, I feel like I’ll be hopping mad. I get its utilitarian appeal in the minors, where you might not want to stress developing players, but — even in this exceptional instance — everything about cuts against what makes baseball fun to watch.Agreed this new format, even think I haven't seen it in action, sucks. I'm also of the opinion that there wasn't anything wrong with the pace of play (Yankees excepted.) and that all these attempts to speed things up aren't needed. I like the pace and length of a baseball game, dammit.
Ayyup. This is an abject case of fixing something that ain't broke.
The amateur (collegiate? Olympic?) OT rule in hockey of 4-on-4, on the other hand, is, I think, a great innovation. The ice opens up and invigorates otherwise tired players to make something happen.
When most of the fans leave the game before it ends, I think it’s fair to say something is “broke.” In MLB I would say they shouldn’t start adding the runners at second base until the 11th or 12th inning, but I see no problem with how it played out in this case. One team executed better than the other in the extra frame and got the win.
I disagree on that because, while I get your point, I don't think super long games happen often enough to where its a significant problem. So its only "broke" in relatively few occurrences.
That cuts both ways. If 12+ innnng games don’t happen often, I don’t see the problem with changing the tiebreak procedure in those few games to help so more fans are around for the end of the game.
I am assuming that playoff games would stay the same, similar to the NHL.
I would say I like the idea of going straight to a tie at some point, but then I think teams would really empty their bullpen, knowing exactly how many outs they need, and the bullpen parade is my least favorite part of the game today.
And I'm going to say what's broke is the starting time. Yeah, some people are going to leave still when it hits extra innings, but at least they don't leave in the seventh or eighth (like I did last night because bedtime)
I mean, if you could start games a half hour earlier and get average game length to 2.5 hours, which I think still gives you a deliberately paced game that doesn’t feel rushed or dragged, and ended most games by 9pm local, that sounds great to me, but I think teams probably lose revenue in that scenario, so we will probably have to keep dreaming on that.
I'd be happy with 10PM, but yeah.
Exactly. Plenty of fans leave all sorts of sporting events early, for a variety of reasons (e.g., past bedtime; beat the traffic; whatever).
Free, marginal baseball is a payoff to completionist fans. If baseball wanted to keep fans around to the end, they could find other ways to speed up the game. Such as enforcing expectations about batters not stepping out of the box to adjust everything on every. damn. pitch. And on pitchers dicking around. Grip it and rip it. It worked just fine for Earl's Orioles, damnit!
I guess the question is what problem are they trying to solve with this?
In the 2017 season, the average game lasted 8.9 innings (43,257 innings pitched over 4,860 games).
In the 2016 season, the average game lasted 8.9 innings (43,306.33 innings pitched over 4,856 games).
Extra inning games happen at a rate of around 200-250 per season, or about 8-10 percent of the games. In 2017, team-average outs pitched per game varied between a low of 26.3 and a high of 27.4, suggesting that games going beyond the 10th are quite rare.
As a somewhat of a baseball purist, my first reactions was "what?" Then I thought about hockey. As a hockey purist, I was not too happy about the way overtimes are decided... at first. Now, when I think about it, I am more supportive. For one thing, having a game end in a tie sucks worse for me than a game decided by a shoot out. Hockey has 82 regular season games, and I would rather have regular season games end in a somewhat reasonable time frame than see a bunch of 3 1/2 hour games that still end in a tie. As a consumer, a tie feels like a waste of money. I should feel elation in the win or dejection in the loss. Ties leave me feeling empty about the experience.
Now with baseball, we have a 162 game regular season. I don't want to sit through a 4-5 hour extra inning game. I just don't. The fact that, as Ubes points out, so many people leave is proof enough that the current system is broken. I am ok with these new rules for minor leagues, and honestly hope MLB does something to address this. One possible good thing to come out of it, might be shorter games that result in teams less likely to fill their roster with 13 pitchers. Maybe we see teams adding another bench bat to create more roster flexibility. I get the purist reaction of "don't change the game". But I think MLB has to look at this, as it truly does suck watching the end of a 14 inning affair in which there are only a few thousand fans left in the stands.
I think I will be okay if they change a rule to make the games shorter. In the playoffs I couldn't stomach it, but there's nothing worse than staying up until 1 in the morning to watch a loss for 1/162 of the season.
That said, there is something special about being at a game that has a second 7th inning stretch. 11 inning games are dumb, but I'll never forget the 15 inning game I was at.
I would suggest that not everyone who leaves early or turns off the TV wants the rules changed. Some undoubtedly do, but not all. Unless it's a day game, I can never stay up for the end of an extra inning game, but I still don't want them to use the Manfred Rule to decide it in an artificial way. I'd prefer just calling the game a tie to doing that. But what I'd really prefer is to leave the rules alone.
I still think the resolution to long extra inning games is to implement the Tie after X amount of innings (12, 13, 15?). That way you are still playing baseball, but protecting players by not having them go 4 innings or whatever, and games decided by position players (unless your manager is burning through arms, but thats a different story)
What, you couldn't link this?
yeah, my bad, I hadn't gotten there yet :/
I think this is baseball's equivalence to college football's overtime where they start each team on the 25-yard line and give them each a possession to resolve the game. I really don't see too many people complaining about that anymore. Of course, the NFL has yet to go so far. The only OT adjustment they've made is to make sure each team gets a possession if the team that wins the coin flip only makes a field goal in their first possession of OT. Of course, the NFL still allows ties, but those are extremely rare. The NHL, of course, has gone to shootouts to resolve ties after a short OT. However, gaining a point for going to a shootout often appears to make teams too conservative in OT. I think sometimes the same thing happens in the NFL when teams play conservatively on offense to prevent turnovers and big loss plays (sacks, etc.) knowing that if they don't score, they can be rewarded with a tie instead of a loss.
I don't complain about college football's overtime anymore because it would be pointless, but I don't like it any better than I did initially. In fact, having seen it for quite a while now, I like it less than I did at first. The NFL's system isn't perfect, but it at least makes the teams play under pretty much the same rules they played under for four quarters. If I actually cared about the NHL I wouldn't like the shootout rule, but I don't, so it doesn't matter to me.
Started watching Black Mirror this weekend. Finished the first season. For those who have seen all of it, does it get any less soul-crushing? Wife and I had to watch Kimmy Schmidt after "The Entire History of You" just to cleanse our psyches so we could go to sleep. I enjoy the format of the show, and I don't know if I can take hating humanity after every episode.
Skip ahead and watch San Junipero next.
And after that....I guess....stop watching?
Uh, yeah, pretty much. I've only watched the first two seasons, though. I've been meaning to watch more, but every time I get time to watch, I end up playing video games.
That sounds kind of glib, but I don't really mean it that way. There's a reason I'm not binging through it, and it has nothing to do with the quality or relative artistic merit of the show. It is very often a hell of a bummer.
thank you!
I've been working my way through Luther. I do the same thing, finishing my night with Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee or somesuch to come down again. I've enjoyed the series, although for as much as John can delve into the criminal/psycho motives, he sure has problems seeing his own sometimes.
Soul-crushing is definitely the norm. There are few happy-if-you-squint endings, and as stated, San Junipero feels wholly different.
I would add Hated In The Nation to the different feel list. It's not happy, but it's not quite as soul crushing.
I've watched all of Seasons 1 - 3 and the first 2 episodes of Season 4. Season 4 has not been up to the caliber of the earlier seasons so far, though Star Trek fans may enjoy the first episode. Certainly not a show for bingeing, but often worth watching.
"Nosedive" is painted with a brighter palette, and I definitely took it as.
And "White Christmas" hits all those dark tones in the best way possible. (I guess I watched through all but the last episode of season 3.)
Funny - when I hear “key fob” I actually think about how closely it resembles kayfabe.
Fun show last night, and a lot of hardcore fans have their panties in a bunch over a twist they can’t handle, which is always a bonus.
I did the $49 Twins deal for SRO for all April home games. I've got a bit of a streak going at 5 spanning back to last season, so I'm going to try to make most of the games this week until Saturday (which I can't make because of MinneBar @ BB HQ). Hopefully, the weather cooperates, it would be fun to hit double digits.
Also, thanks again to Can o Corn for chilling at the Home Opener with me after others bailed. It was a really fun time.
If anyone happens to be at a game this week and wants to meet up for a bit as I'm pacing the concourse shoot me a message.
It sounds like Memphis is sitting half their team for the game tonight. The NBA needs to change the lottery.
Could still lose.
That would be the most Wolvesian way to do things.
Do they? What comes to mind as a viable option? No matter how convoluted the system, I don’t see a way around bad teams tanking at the end.
Ubelman suggested rank based on how log it's been since they made the playoffs.
I think it should just be an auction using the salary cap dollars available.
There are better options.
There might be, but my assumption is that the NBA will commit to one and it’ll be exploited in no time just like any other. I’m open to something new, though, including either of your suggestions.
Anything that prevents the cigar chomping grin of the corpse of Red Auerbach from gracing the draft night TV coverage.
I'm partial to the auction just for the viewing spectacle of it.
An auction could work, too. That way, tanking would be limited to saving cap space, which you can actually enforce, rather than effort on the court, which is difficult/impossible to do really well. Though I’m sure the league could do better than they are today.
Some NHL stat guys proposed going by points (or wins) accrued after mathematical elimination from the playoffs.
The worst teams get more games to add up points/wins, and a reward system in place for winning games.
Haven't thought about it much, but it seemed kind of smart. Some teams might tank in the middle of the season, I guess, but that's less infuriating than a team tanking as they face teams battling for playoff spots.
I wonder honestly if such a method would be rejected as too complicated for sports fans to follow.
To calculate for themselves midway through the season? maybe. But by the last couple weeks, it's just another set of standings easily available everywhere.
I'm still gonna advocate for splitting the season into halves or quarters and assigning pingpong balls proportionately for standings after each season portion. That at least confines the tanking a bit, and also has the advantage of rewarding teams who make a comeback after a bad start.
You could also just get rid of the draft and the whole rookie-scale contract business and make everyone not under contract a free agent.
Yea, that's not happening.
But intriguing. Problem is two-fold. First, too many players want to go to the "cool" cities and not enough to the Salt Lakes as it is. Second, while the CBA specifies a revenue split with the players, the union is dominated by veterans. They have little incentive to let the 1st, 2nd and 3rd-year players get paid what they are worth, since it comes out of the hides of veteran non-superstars.
I think the auction exacerbates superteams and kills small market. I'm definitely not saying that tanking or taking advantage of rookies is perfect, but I don't think an auction or straight free agency fixes any of our problems in ways that don't potentially make worse problems.
The real problem is that the teams know how the draft order is determined, so they can exploit it.
What we need is a lottery to determine how the draft order is determined. Maybe this year it's free agency for all, and next year it's by the percentage of the team logo that is the color red! No one knows, so we might as well just play ball.
Random snake drafts! It's good enough for fantasy leagues, it's good enough for the real thing!
The solution for getting star players to all the markets and reducing superteams is to let each team spend unlimited money on one player and have a strict cap on the rest of the team. There’s no way Durant and Curry are on the same team if one of them has to give up $20M/yr to do it.
The current situation is still awful for small markets because even if you tank hard to get a top draft pick, which sucks in the first place, it’s not long before they can “take their talent to South Beach”
You would think that eventually the market (consumers) would dictate change. Why anyone continues to shell out thousands (or even millions) of dollars to support some of these franchises who tank, or the franchises who don't stand a chance of being competitive, is beyond me. You would think that, but alas, money keeps flowing in.
I absolutely love the game of basketball. I know, shocking right? I truly do. I lost much interest in the NBA decades ago, as it was so star driven and not a team game anymore. It has gone through stretches where defense matters, but as a whole, it is tough for me to watch. As a result, I watched a ton of college basketball. But the one and done, the dirty behind the scenes aspects, and other issues have caused me to lose interest again. A good DII or DIII game, or high school match up is more my style now. I guess this all explains why I am more of a hockey fan. One or two players does not a team make. I know hockey has it's issues too, but basketball at the pro and college level is an absolute mess.
The NBA has done an incredible job essentially blackmailing fans of tanking teams—if you don’t support your team, it gets moved to a different market. I think they are leaving money on the table by not spreading the superstars around the league, but apparently their calculations are different than mine.
Yup, it seems to me like they want their league of 30 teams who all draw well, but also want their big market teams to do as well as possible for the ratings boon. I guess most pro sports are like that to some extent, it just feels like the NBA is more blatant about it, and it is a sport where 1 or 2 elite players can make it happen much easier.
Ticket alert!
They're having trouble finding takers for the company tickets this week. I said I might be interested in Wednesday or Thursday, so they dropped them on my desk. I don't think they'll care if I find a user for them. In all likelihood, I won't make it.
4 tickets in the Home Plate Box Mid. Let me know if you might be able to use them.
4/11 12:10p
4/12 7:10p
I’d be interested in Thursday. Let me check something and I’ll send email.
Apparently, some people have actually taken this story seriously.
This makes me hate the Rose signing even more.