Miscellaneous articles from around sports media.
MODI, Sports on My Mind, “REAL Crimes: Sammy Sosa and Outlaw Reporters“
The New York Times Michael Schmidt should go to jail. Sports Illustrated?s Selena Roberts should be in jail. And Game of Shadows authors Mark Fainaru-wada and Lance Williams should have gone to jail (and they almost did before their source revealed himself!). As I recently addressed in more detail with ?Selena Roberts: Ethical or Criminal??, when a judge orders testimony or information sealed, and a journalist defies that order, this is called ?civil contempt?. You won?t hear much from MSM on this score as they act like a gang protecting its own interests ? precisely the code that they condemn amongst baseball?s steroid culture. …
If witnesses feel that a judge can?t protect their testimony, then witnesses will have a greater incentive to lie in their future. But as long as reporters get rewarded with increased fame or book deals, then reporters will have greater incentives to defy judges. … These reporters are so consumed with their self-importance that they justify their criminal behavior by convincing themselves that the ?public good? outweighs their lawlessness. They like to cite absurd analogies like Watergate and Deep Throat with a straight face.
Andrew Perna, RealGM.com, “Where Is The Criticism?“
Basketball was widely criticized for allowing young men to make the jump from high school to the NBA just days after their graduation, so they instituted a rule forcing kids to wait at least one year after high school to enter the professional ranks of their craft.
It didn’t matter that some of these kids either weren’t cut out for college or simply had no desire to attend. All that really counted was the NBA looked more a little better in the eyes of critics for forcing kids to “grow up” a little more before becoming millionaires. …
That brings us to baseball. A game that not only allows players to be drafted right out of high school, but gives them to option to survey what kind of money that can make before deciding whether or not college is worth it.
They also have one of the strangest draft rules in all of sports, forcing players that do go to college to stay through at least their junior year (or when they turn 21 years old). The rule might keep players in school for two more years than the NBA does, but the results are the same, if not worse. …
The decisions that young baseball players, and their families, are given allow them to be much more money-driven than their basketball counterparts.
If a basketball player decides to play in college for just one season before entering the NBA because his troubled family needs an influx of cash, he’s looked at as a greedy youth. However, a baseball star can weigh his options and see whether he’d make more money and have better opportunities going pro right out of high school or after playing in college.
David Aldridge, NBA.com, “The state of officiating: Conspiracy charges hard to swallow“
Last month, I wrote a column decrying the wingnuts and loons that, this time around, just knew the fix was in on the NBA’s part in order to assure that Kobe Bryant and LeBron James would meet in The Finals. Every whistle against their team — if their team wasn’t L.A. or Cleveland — only proved it. Reality destroyed that thesis, with Orlando beating the Cavaliers in six games. But next year, when the Playoffs begin again, so will the conspiracy talk.
Forget that such a conspiracy would have to involve, at minimum, dozens of people — at the league office, among the refs and their associates and, in all likelihood, the networks. None of these people could talk. Ever. All would have to be paid for their silence in perpetuity. …
A longtime front office team official says thusly: “If the league gave any indication –either directly or tacitly — to the referees that it wanted a certain player or a certain team to win in the Playoffs, it would be in the press within an hour.” …
The league, in 1997, suspended five Knicks players, including three starters — Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston and Larry Johnson — after a fight between New York’s Charlie Ward and Miami’s P.J. Brown in the final seconds of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals … With the Knicks’ bench in tatters, Miami won [Games 6 and 7] and the series.
New York was 57-25 that season and a legitimate title contender. A Knicks’ victory would have set up a New York-Chicago conference final, a ratings dream between storied rivals, in the No. 1 and No. 3 markets in the country. …
In 2007, the NBA suspended Phoenix Suns Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw one game each for coming off the bench during an altercation between the Spurs’ Robert Horry and the Suns’ Steve Nash in the waning seconds of Phoenix’s Game 4 victory in the Western Conference semis that tied the series at 2-2. In doing so, the league severely hurt the NBA’s most exciting, fan-friendly team. …
As I said last week, if Stern and his fellow executives are trying to put a thumb on the scale, whether it’s trying to rig the Lottery for the Knicks or to get Dwyane Wade back in the Finals, they either are incompetent at it or go about it in a very odd way.
