The way I see it, the same thing is wrong with both the Knicks and Nets – location.
They are competing with each other and everything else in the New York market, and that is a dangerous thing for a sports franchise. The operative mentality for a New York team is that fans in Big Town will tolerate only a winner. (See: Steinbrenner, George, in Tyler Kepner’s excellent analysis of the Jacoby Ellsbury signing in Wednesday’s NY Times.) While the Gene Michael vein of home-grown superstars has worn down, the Yankees keep trying to dominate with players who made their mark elsewhere. It’s a tricky formula for a baseball team, but much more problematical for a basketball team with a smaller roster, less margin for error, that decides it needs a quick fix to win a championship. Yes, money can create a championship team, as Pat Riley did in Miami, but that involves brains and vision, all lacking in Madison Square Garden, and maybe in Brooklyn, too. But a team can also be built for the long haul, as the Spurs did. The Knicks have been doomed since ownership blew up a nice team that was working in unison and brought in the empty calories of Carmelo Anthony. Anybody could see Anthony cannot be the core of a championship team because he lacks the leadership and teamwork skills. But James Dolan went for the points. His puppet regime then let Jeremy Lin get away because Anthony iced him out. Now the Knicks are stuck with old players falling apart, Anthony gunning it up from anywhere, and a rebellious fan base paying insane money for the privilege to boo. Dolan deserves it for his arrogance and his distance. He always seems to have a rehearsal for his rock band. What a dilettante. The Boss always backed up his moves, right or wrong, in person. The Nets are also suffering from the quick fix syndrome. Owned by the Russian, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, they tried for a transplant of the Boston Celtics’ success, in a trade for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry. What they missed was the Celtics’ coach, Doc Rivers, who was heading west. Instead, they got a Steinbrenner version of Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson – too expensive, and too late. Now the Nets players are falling apart, and the coach, Jason Kidd is pulling a bush trick like spilling a soda on the court to force a timeout and pushing out his hand-picked assistant Lawrence Frank. Nothing worse than not being ready for prime time in New York. There is good basketball news in New York, however. One of the New York teams will win a game Thursday night – inasmuch as they are playing each other. Your take on why the two New York teams both stink? `
Thor A. Larsen
12/4/2013 03:58:49 am
I share your sentiments, George. The long term success of the Yankees had been their farm system and now, only Derek Jeter remains of the phenomenal nucleus brought up by Gene Michaels. These new players just signed by the Yankees are at least young. It is also very unfortunate that the new representative for Robinson Cano is unrealistic because Cano would be a superb player to retain with the Yankees. As far as the Knicks and the Nets, I fully agree with your assessement. I gave up on the Knicks when they did not sign Lin, a remarkably bright and talented player. As far as the Nets, whom I had been hopeful for, before they bought these old Celtics, they are a sad shell of their last year team. I now root for the Houston team with Lin as they seem to have a plan and vision. 12/4/2013 06:47:10 am
George and Thor
Dave Kaminer
12/4/2013 09:58:01 am
i know that we live in a 'free' country, but then again, a 'free' agent is anything but.
John McDermott
12/4/2013 12:12:10 pm
What exactly qualifies Jason Kidd to be a head coach? It can't be coaching experience. The drink spill and throwing his hand-picked assistant under the bus were definitely bush league stunts, and perhaps signs of desperation. He needs to take a good look at Brian Shaw's career and go from there. Better luck next time Jason.
Ed Martin
12/4/2013 12:21:18 pm
I don't have any heavy creds, but I played several team sports and when I watch the Knicks, (haven't seen Nets), I do not see a "team." What I see is a variety of guys with strengths and weaknesses. My thought is that the Knicks leadership thinks a team comes from sticking miscellaneous talent together. I think it comes from selecting folks who understand how to work together, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. From the start you, GV, and others have said nothing that Anthony showed suggested team. Not all the blame goes to Anthony, he is a symptom, not the cause.
George Vecsey
12/5/2013 01:06:42 am
Harvey Araton, aka The Rebbe of Roundball, has done the work to explain the two owners of the Knicks and Nets in Thursday's NYT.
Thor A. Larsen
12/5/2013 09:40:15 am
I would like to add that I am very dissapointed in the new players from Boston that Mikhail Prokhorov brought in from Boston, but Mikhail is very colorful and difficult to assess. He does drastic moves (as getting an arena in Brooklyn etc), so I do not think it is totally unrealistic that he does not try to bring Felix Lin to the Nets which would be a great move, even though it would be very expensive.
George Vecsey
12/5/2013 10:09:00 am
Thor, Bruce Ratner, the builder, was the owner who got Barclay's done -- looming over the crossroads of Brooklyn -- as part of a big real estate deal. Prokhorov came along later.
Ed Martin
12/6/2013 06:32:23 am
After reading Harvey Araton's article I read many of the comments. Here is one, (courtesy NYT) I felt was really on target.
Thor A. Larsen
12/5/2013 12:33:21 pm
You are certainly correct, George, that Bruce Ratner, the builder and early owner of the Nets and Prokhorov came along in 2009 with $200M etc, purchasing the Nets and it seemed to me that additional push helped realize the arena etc. (I had given Prokhorov too much credit!) Anyhow, I like the guy also because he has enough 'hrutzpah' to challenge Vladimir Putin. A guy like that may still find new ways to strengthen the Nets and I will just keep dreaming about Lin returning to NY (Brooklyn, that is!) 12/6/2013 02:08:57 pm
With all of the pleasant distractions that NYC offers, I'm fine with inept sports franchises. Adults shouldn't spend a lot of (increasingly) precious time worrying about what the professional basketball owners are doing, unless they own a hot dog cart near the arena. Otherwise, you can take in a game almost any night and who-the-hell-cares who wins, as long as it's entertaining.
George Vecsey
12/7/2013 12:29:02 am
Or, avoid it completely.
Charlie Accetta
12/7/2013 04:11:51 am
... Which, honestly, I have. I went to the Barclay Center for the Coaches vs. Cancer finals. I had a good time and no rooting interest whatsoever. I can live without the fabricated drama of the NBA.
Ed Martin
12/7/2013 09:23:45 am
Is it baseball season yet? Or the World Cup? Did the Dolan's buy Brazil?
George Vecsey
12/8/2013 12:39:42 am
They'd screw it up. They have boiled all the juice out of Newsday.
Mike C from Whitestone
12/8/2013 02:11:23 pm
The Orange Uniforms have added more fluff to this Dolan Disaster. Nice game today vs those same Celtics who sort of followed the Red Sox plan of removing the over the hill gang and starting over. Maybe Melo can hire Jay-Z and end up in another city,anywhere would be fine. 12/9/2013 04:17:38 am
New coaches need time to implement their system and to get to know their players. Successful franchises continually assess their needs and plan long range.
George Vecsey
12/9/2013 04:32:39 am
Alan is right. The Numbers Game explores and debunks a lot of common sports wisdom -- particularly on corner kicks in soccer.
sam toperoff
12/10/2013 02:13:18 am
I don't know what I'm getting into here. You guys all sound so damned knowledgeable I'm afraid to say something dumb. But here goes. I think George hit it on the head at the very beginning of his post when he talked about the difference in "markets." New York and Portland are very separate and provide a different ethos and species of fan. In fact, calling them markets--which implies the selling and not the playing--is where the problem of deciding what kind of basketball you want to sell or play begins. Another important distinction for me is the one between a customer and a knowledgeable fan. The last American sporting even I went to was a ball game at Shea five years ago; the evening was all about pleasing the customers, about the Jumbotron, about having pictures taken with your kids...it was NOT about baseball, even though Tim Hudson pitched a complete game gem. I had a free ticket. Ticket prices and ticket availability for the Knicks at the Garden finished me years ago. In its heyday the Garden brought in grown-ups and their kids who had played schoolyard ball. My god, did they appreciate the smart ball and the players of the Knicks' golden age! Look around the Garden these days, what do those "customers" really want? What do they really know? Wins, I suppose, but wins now because that's what they're paying for! That and a peak at celebrity row.
George Vecsey
12/10/2013 03:48:39 am
Sam Toperoff, lefty basketball player for Hofstra a while back, recently received a very nice review in The New York Times for his novel, Lillian and Dash, later an editors’ choice. He lives in France. Comments are closed.
|
QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
All
|