Is Pele the Bradman of Football?
The death of George Best has raised, among other things, a lot of talk about who was or is the best all-time player. The “rebuttable presumption” is Pele. Does his 1200 or so career goals put him in the same league as Bradman? No-one seems to have scored anywhere near this number of goals. This question raises some issues that are the same as those that apply to cricket and some that point to important differences between the two sports.
The first problem is the comparability of Pele’s goalscoring achievement. When we look at Pele’s record in international matches there’s no longer this wide margin between Pele and everyone else. Indeed, Pele is not the all-time leading scorer; that honour goes to Ferenc Puskas. When we look at the comparability of eras, similar to those that may be relevant to assessing The Don’s record, it is not apparent that this makes Pele look any better. (See earlier posts.)
Football has an even more severe “quality versus statistics” problem than cricket. Earlier this site has included an exploration of the comparison of all-rounders to batsmen. While the approach discussed is far from satisfactory there is no conceivable statistical method for comparing defenders, midfielders, goalkeepers and forwards. So, it is interesting that when discussions among peers comes up that there is a considerable degree of consensus regarding the elite group of names that deserve consideration as “best ever”: Pele, Best, Maradonna, Beckenbauer, Cruyff. Other names that crop up a lot are; Charles, Matthews, Finney, di Stephano, Charlton and Eusebio.
Obviously there are generational and national factors at play here including the selection effect of these as the gleanings from the sources that I happen to read. The focus on George Best in all of the recent punditry gives this a UK bias yet almost everyone recognizes non-UK players other than Best as leading candidates. Personally I don’t entirely agree with this perceived consensus. I need to be convinced that Maradona was the best Argentinian and I give greater weight to the older generation that venerate Matthews, Finney, Charles and Puskas (and di Stephano).
To answer the question in the header, I would say, no, Pele is not a Bradman but the leading contender in a small elite group that also contains Best, Beckenbauer, Cruyff
and Maradona. (Although, as noted in previous posts and above I have personal dissents). In a later post I may try to take a stab at the “next circle”.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Friday, October 07, 2005
The Best
I noticed that George Best is hospitalized yet again. This is as good a time as any to say briefly why I think he may have been the best footballer the game has yet produced. What it boils down to is that he was the complete package plus he was fearless to the point of recklessness. (Not to mention amazingly tough.) It’s actually a bit more than that; he actually seemed to relish the physical danger of the game. This is confirmed by Best’s own words, in Mike Parkinson’s books about him, for example. Without denigrating the great Pele, the presumed greatest player, it’s this that separates the two. It’s not that I’m alleging Pele lacked courage or daring or toughness. No, it’s that Best was extraordinary. However, let me put it bluntly. Pele would not have scored 1,000 goals in English football. Based on how he was hacked out of the ’66 World Cup, I have my doubts that he would have had a ten-year career. Best took that kind of thuggery week in and week out and came up smiling. There’s always a reluctance in official media to discuss the intimidation side of football, just as there is in ice hockey (Don Cherry’s honesty in this regard is why he’s like by hockey fans and why he’s always on the edge of being canned). Which is why George will always be not quite given his full due.
I noticed that George Best is hospitalized yet again. This is as good a time as any to say briefly why I think he may have been the best footballer the game has yet produced. What it boils down to is that he was the complete package plus he was fearless to the point of recklessness. (Not to mention amazingly tough.) It’s actually a bit more than that; he actually seemed to relish the physical danger of the game. This is confirmed by Best’s own words, in Mike Parkinson’s books about him, for example. Without denigrating the great Pele, the presumed greatest player, it’s this that separates the two. It’s not that I’m alleging Pele lacked courage or daring or toughness. No, it’s that Best was extraordinary. However, let me put it bluntly. Pele would not have scored 1,000 goals in English football. Based on how he was hacked out of the ’66 World Cup, I have my doubts that he would have had a ten-year career. Best took that kind of thuggery week in and week out and came up smiling. There’s always a reluctance in official media to discuss the intimidation side of football, just as there is in ice hockey (Don Cherry’s honesty in this regard is why he’s like by hockey fans and why he’s always on the edge of being canned). Which is why George will always be not quite given his full due.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
How valuable are all-rounders?
“Freddy” Flintoff’s heroics in the Ashes series highlights the role of all-rounders. Elsewhere in this blog I’ve indicated that the only plausible contestant to Bradman for greatest cricketer is Sobers. Is there any way that an all-rounder’s batting average may be manipulated to move Sobers closer to Bradman?
It’s tough.
One way to look a the issue is to say that playing an all-rounder avoids having to play another bowler with a typical bowler’s batting. So a rough measure might be: batting average plus (difference between bowling average and the average cost of a wicket in the relevant era). Here’s how the top all-rounders fare using a rough and ready average of 30 for the cost of a wicket.
Flintoff: 33.4 + (30-32.3) = 33.4-2.3 = 31.1 (bit of a shocker, eh?)
Sobers; 57.8+(30-34) = 53.8 (don’t fear, the Don!)
Miller: 37+(30-23) = 44
Khan: 37.7+(30-22.8) = 44.9
Kapil Dev = 31+(30-29.6) = 31.4
Botham: 33.5+(30-28.4) = 35.1
This obviously needs some work but suggests the somewhat shocking conclusion that all-rounders are not that valuable. Don’t tell that to the Barmy Army!
“Freddy” Flintoff’s heroics in the Ashes series highlights the role of all-rounders. Elsewhere in this blog I’ve indicated that the only plausible contestant to Bradman for greatest cricketer is Sobers. Is there any way that an all-rounder’s batting average may be manipulated to move Sobers closer to Bradman?
It’s tough.
One way to look a the issue is to say that playing an all-rounder avoids having to play another bowler with a typical bowler’s batting. So a rough measure might be: batting average plus (difference between bowling average and the average cost of a wicket in the relevant era). Here’s how the top all-rounders fare using a rough and ready average of 30 for the cost of a wicket.
Flintoff: 33.4 + (30-32.3) = 33.4-2.3 = 31.1 (bit of a shocker, eh?)
Sobers; 57.8+(30-34) = 53.8 (don’t fear, the Don!)
Miller: 37+(30-23) = 44
Khan: 37.7+(30-22.8) = 44.9
Kapil Dev = 31+(30-29.6) = 31.4
Botham: 33.5+(30-28.4) = 35.1
This obviously needs some work but suggests the somewhat shocking conclusion that all-rounders are not that valuable. Don’t tell that to the Barmy Army!
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Law Before War
Winston Churchill is quoted to have said “Better jaw, jaw, jaw than war, war, war”. It is ironical that the English in general and Churchill, a descendant of the Marlboroughs, in particular, should have come to be among the most ardent advocates of non-violent means of resolving disputes. Or maybe not. Too much blood on the hands, perhaps, eventually leads to Lady Macbeth – out damned spot! The essence of diplomacy and of law is convention. Natural language is an imprecise tool. Where interpretations differ, conventions step in.
Which brings us to one of the great inventions of the English - cricket. The phrase “it’s not cricket” has come to capture the English love of convention; “sound fellows” play by the rules, keep a straight bat etc. whereas “bounders” do not. At the centre of cricket is a classic convention – the interpretation of the Leg Before Wicket (LBW) rule. Cricket’s dirty secret is the way that the distinction between “sound fellows” and “bounders” has been somewhat blurry over the years.
Despite the merriment made of the LBW rule by those ignorant of cricket, it is a perfectly sensible concept. In cricket, the batsman defends a “wicket” which consists of three sticks (“stumps”) evenly spaced with two small pieces of wood (“bails”) joining them at the top. A batsman is “out” when the balls strikes the wicket and causes at least one bail to fall off. This called “bowled out” .The width of the wicket is nine inches and the height 28 inches. LBW occurs when a ball that would have bowled out a batsman hits one of the batsmen’s legs (which are covered in protective pads).
The accepted convention on LBW is that, except in very unusual cases, a ball striking the front pad of a batsman making a full front-foot stroke cannot be judged with certainty to have hit the stumps. Geometry makes this a very a sensible convention. The front pad of even a short batsman playing a full forward stroke is about seven feet in front of the wicket. In contrast, a back-foot stroke would find the batsman’s legs about one to two feet in front of the stumps. It is not difficult to judge if a ball would have hit the wicket with certainty in the latter case but extremely difficult in the former.
Most of the time the LBW rule has worked but very so often the “bounders” push the envelope. What is more interesting is how “sound fellows” have reacted. The most egregious case is that of Pakistani umpires from about the mid 1950s to mid 1980s. It was virtually impossible to for a Pakistani batsman to be out LBW. The greatest beneficiary of this policy was Javed Miandad; his test average puts him in the exalted over 50 bracket but outside Pakistan he only averaged 45.5 versus 61.4 in Pakistan. (Incidentally, most of the other over-50s class have very little difference between their home and away averages – e.g Tendulkar; home 58.1, away 56.6.) On the other hand, visiting batsmen had to be wary of letting any delivery hit their pads. The most extreme case of this was Gary Sobers in 1958, after his record-setting 365 not out the previous year in the West Indies.
Which brings us to the current Ashes series. As much as I would like to join the chorus proclaiming this as a famous victory and the series “one of the greatest” my joy is marred by the following series of numbers: 0,3,2,0,0,1,2,0,2,1; 2,1,3,1,2,2,4,2,4,0. These are the LBWs given against England and Oz, respectively, (separated by the semicolon) in the five tests. Overall 21 LBWs against the cobbers and 11 against the Poms (18:8 after the first test, won by Oz), out of 90 and 93 dismissals, respectively. Empirically LBWs represent about 10-15% of dismissals in general. England’s total is about the average expectation but Australia’s is way beyond statistical variation. 21 LBWs can only be explained by biased umpiring. 21 LBWs are as likely on a random basis as 1; would anyone not think that a team that had only one LBW in five tests was not the beneficiary of some strange umpiring?
Why are the Aussie not whingeing? Is it a conspiracy? I think it’s far more subtle. The two teams are quite close, it turns out, but I think “everyone” understood the shot in the arm for cricket in England from an exciting series, preferably won by England. So, an LBW here or there helped along and the Aussies have gone along with it. Sound fellows don’t rock the boat.
Winston Churchill is quoted to have said “Better jaw, jaw, jaw than war, war, war”. It is ironical that the English in general and Churchill, a descendant of the Marlboroughs, in particular, should have come to be among the most ardent advocates of non-violent means of resolving disputes. Or maybe not. Too much blood on the hands, perhaps, eventually leads to Lady Macbeth – out damned spot! The essence of diplomacy and of law is convention. Natural language is an imprecise tool. Where interpretations differ, conventions step in.
Which brings us to one of the great inventions of the English - cricket. The phrase “it’s not cricket” has come to capture the English love of convention; “sound fellows” play by the rules, keep a straight bat etc. whereas “bounders” do not. At the centre of cricket is a classic convention – the interpretation of the Leg Before Wicket (LBW) rule. Cricket’s dirty secret is the way that the distinction between “sound fellows” and “bounders” has been somewhat blurry over the years.
Despite the merriment made of the LBW rule by those ignorant of cricket, it is a perfectly sensible concept. In cricket, the batsman defends a “wicket” which consists of three sticks (“stumps”) evenly spaced with two small pieces of wood (“bails”) joining them at the top. A batsman is “out” when the balls strikes the wicket and causes at least one bail to fall off. This called “bowled out” .The width of the wicket is nine inches and the height 28 inches. LBW occurs when a ball that would have bowled out a batsman hits one of the batsmen’s legs (which are covered in protective pads).
The accepted convention on LBW is that, except in very unusual cases, a ball striking the front pad of a batsman making a full front-foot stroke cannot be judged with certainty to have hit the stumps. Geometry makes this a very a sensible convention. The front pad of even a short batsman playing a full forward stroke is about seven feet in front of the wicket. In contrast, a back-foot stroke would find the batsman’s legs about one to two feet in front of the stumps. It is not difficult to judge if a ball would have hit the wicket with certainty in the latter case but extremely difficult in the former.
Most of the time the LBW rule has worked but very so often the “bounders” push the envelope. What is more interesting is how “sound fellows” have reacted. The most egregious case is that of Pakistani umpires from about the mid 1950s to mid 1980s. It was virtually impossible to for a Pakistani batsman to be out LBW. The greatest beneficiary of this policy was Javed Miandad; his test average puts him in the exalted over 50 bracket but outside Pakistan he only averaged 45.5 versus 61.4 in Pakistan. (Incidentally, most of the other over-50s class have very little difference between their home and away averages – e.g Tendulkar; home 58.1, away 56.6.) On the other hand, visiting batsmen had to be wary of letting any delivery hit their pads. The most extreme case of this was Gary Sobers in 1958, after his record-setting 365 not out the previous year in the West Indies.
Which brings us to the current Ashes series. As much as I would like to join the chorus proclaiming this as a famous victory and the series “one of the greatest” my joy is marred by the following series of numbers: 0,3,2,0,0,1,2,0,2,1; 2,1,3,1,2,2,4,2,4,0. These are the LBWs given against England and Oz, respectively, (separated by the semicolon) in the five tests. Overall 21 LBWs against the cobbers and 11 against the Poms (18:8 after the first test, won by Oz), out of 90 and 93 dismissals, respectively. Empirically LBWs represent about 10-15% of dismissals in general. England’s total is about the average expectation but Australia’s is way beyond statistical variation. 21 LBWs can only be explained by biased umpiring. 21 LBWs are as likely on a random basis as 1; would anyone not think that a team that had only one LBW in five tests was not the beneficiary of some strange umpiring?
Why are the Aussie not whingeing? Is it a conspiracy? I think it’s far more subtle. The two teams are quite close, it turns out, but I think “everyone” understood the shot in the arm for cricket in England from an exciting series, preferably won by England. So, an LBW here or there helped along and the Aussies have gone along with it. Sound fellows don’t rock the boat.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Tiger, Tiger burning bright
In the face of the deluge of articles by the mass sports media on Tiger's "return to form" just before this year's last major - the PGA at Baltusrol, let me quote myself from a year ago.
There's a lot of rubbish in the sports media about Tiger Woods in the aftermath of the US Open at Shinnecock. While sports media are paid to "hype", in the belief that controversy increases media purchases, listening and/or viewing, which, in turn increasing adverizing revenues, the commentary on Woods is particularly bad. There is a systematic feature of the coverage of golf by the sports media that is prominent here.There's a fundamental misconception of the nature of winning at golf which focuses on single events and on individuals with respect to "clutch" performance. This is true of all sports journalism (although preoccupation with "clutch" performance is worst in Baseball. Let's take the "turning point" obsession. Which shot of Goosen's "won" him the US Open? Clearly the answer is "none of them". He won by hitting 278 golf shots to Mickelson's 280. ALL OF THOSE STROKES COUNTED, FOLKS! True Mickelson 3-putt the 17th in tht last round but I'm sure he one-putt some greens, too. The 17th seems significant because of the drama of the last few holes but that drama would have been absent had Mickelson not holed an awful lot of putts before then.What's the key point here? Like all sports golf has a random element. At the level of play of tour pros chance determines the outcome of x% of tournaments, where x is very difficult to figure out but my guess is in the vicinity of 50%. The remaining determinants are the relative strengths of the all-round game of the strongest players.
Think of the PGA tour as the urn beloved of statistics texts. Balls representing the 200 or so players are put into the urn each week and one of them is drawn as the winner. If the balls were identical and the selection process unbiased the winners would follow closely a uniform distribution, with equal probabilities of a win for each player. However, in a year there are only 30 or so draws plus the week-to-week composition of the draw changes. While over a ten year period, if the draw composition were fixed, we would expect wins to equalize over all players, in each year we would expect, by chance alone, some apparent anomalies, such as one player winning three or more times, possibly in closely adjacent draws.The phrase "at the level of play" is emphasized for two reasons:(1) the "balls" are not all the same, some players do have better games than others; and, (2) golf pros are on a completely different level than 999.9% of people who play golf. Taking the second point first, pressure is a huge factor for you and I but it isn't for tour pros. They wouldn't be there if they weren't all able to handle pressure. The way they handle pressure is all the same: they have techniques that are so well-honed that they have extruded the effect of nerves that keep everyone else off the tour. This is not to cavil at their mental strength, but no more so than their superior techniques in the wide variety of strokes that a pro must have in their repertoire. The first point brings us back to Tiger.Tiger is just better than the others. Just as Nicklaus was. Els is not as good as Tiger but better than everyone else, Singh is not as good a Els but ...and so on. How much better Tiger is compared to Nicklaus is the extended experiment that we're seeing played out. Whether either or both are "Bradman Class" is good issue for debate. What is not debatable is that both are or were much better than everyone else. This is reflected very clearly in their performance records: they finished in the top ten mcuh more often than their contemporaries and if you keep adding your "ball" to that smaller urn, you're going to get drawn as winner more often. Incidentally, Nicklaus has always said this, in non geek-speak; go back and check how many times he's been quoted as saying that to win tournaments you have to be on the leaderboard on the last day "to give yourself a chance to win". Easier said than done! Unless you're as good as Jack, which no-one has been until Woods. What we saw with Woods in his early years was partly a measure of his superiority and partly chance. We don't know how much to attribute to skill and to chance. We can say this: winning 7 of 11 majors in a stretch was an incomparable achievement. Whether chance will stretch out his "drought" to 9, 10,11 we don't know; the balls will keep going in the urns and the one labelled "T" will get its draws. Irrespective of what Butch Harmon says.
So, will Tiger win the PGA? I can't predict that but here's a high confidence prediction: he'll either win or be in the top 10. On the day (Sunday) Vijay's ball may get drawn from the small urn, or Retief's or someone else's but Tiger's ball will be in the urn, the others may not. That's the difference.
In the face of the deluge of articles by the mass sports media on Tiger's "return to form" just before this year's last major - the PGA at Baltusrol, let me quote myself from a year ago.
There's a lot of rubbish in the sports media about Tiger Woods in the aftermath of the US Open at Shinnecock. While sports media are paid to "hype", in the belief that controversy increases media purchases, listening and/or viewing, which, in turn increasing adverizing revenues, the commentary on Woods is particularly bad. There is a systematic feature of the coverage of golf by the sports media that is prominent here.There's a fundamental misconception of the nature of winning at golf which focuses on single events and on individuals with respect to "clutch" performance. This is true of all sports journalism (although preoccupation with "clutch" performance is worst in Baseball. Let's take the "turning point" obsession. Which shot of Goosen's "won" him the US Open? Clearly the answer is "none of them". He won by hitting 278 golf shots to Mickelson's 280. ALL OF THOSE STROKES COUNTED, FOLKS! True Mickelson 3-putt the 17th in tht last round but I'm sure he one-putt some greens, too. The 17th seems significant because of the drama of the last few holes but that drama would have been absent had Mickelson not holed an awful lot of putts before then.What's the key point here? Like all sports golf has a random element. At the level of play of tour pros chance determines the outcome of x% of tournaments, where x is very difficult to figure out but my guess is in the vicinity of 50%. The remaining determinants are the relative strengths of the all-round game of the strongest players.
Think of the PGA tour as the urn beloved of statistics texts. Balls representing the 200 or so players are put into the urn each week and one of them is drawn as the winner. If the balls were identical and the selection process unbiased the winners would follow closely a uniform distribution, with equal probabilities of a win for each player. However, in a year there are only 30 or so draws plus the week-to-week composition of the draw changes. While over a ten year period, if the draw composition were fixed, we would expect wins to equalize over all players, in each year we would expect, by chance alone, some apparent anomalies, such as one player winning three or more times, possibly in closely adjacent draws.The phrase "at the level of play" is emphasized for two reasons:(1) the "balls" are not all the same, some players do have better games than others; and, (2) golf pros are on a completely different level than 999.9% of people who play golf. Taking the second point first, pressure is a huge factor for you and I but it isn't for tour pros. They wouldn't be there if they weren't all able to handle pressure. The way they handle pressure is all the same: they have techniques that are so well-honed that they have extruded the effect of nerves that keep everyone else off the tour. This is not to cavil at their mental strength, but no more so than their superior techniques in the wide variety of strokes that a pro must have in their repertoire. The first point brings us back to Tiger.Tiger is just better than the others. Just as Nicklaus was. Els is not as good as Tiger but better than everyone else, Singh is not as good a Els but ...and so on. How much better Tiger is compared to Nicklaus is the extended experiment that we're seeing played out. Whether either or both are "Bradman Class" is good issue for debate. What is not debatable is that both are or were much better than everyone else. This is reflected very clearly in their performance records: they finished in the top ten mcuh more often than their contemporaries and if you keep adding your "ball" to that smaller urn, you're going to get drawn as winner more often. Incidentally, Nicklaus has always said this, in non geek-speak; go back and check how many times he's been quoted as saying that to win tournaments you have to be on the leaderboard on the last day "to give yourself a chance to win". Easier said than done! Unless you're as good as Jack, which no-one has been until Woods. What we saw with Woods in his early years was partly a measure of his superiority and partly chance. We don't know how much to attribute to skill and to chance. We can say this: winning 7 of 11 majors in a stretch was an incomparable achievement. Whether chance will stretch out his "drought" to 9, 10,11 we don't know; the balls will keep going in the urns and the one labelled "T" will get its draws. Irrespective of what Butch Harmon says.
So, will Tiger win the PGA? I can't predict that but here's a high confidence prediction: he'll either win or be in the top 10. On the day (Sunday) Vijay's ball may get drawn from the small urn, or Retief's or someone else's but Tiger's ball will be in the urn, the others may not. That's the difference.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Basketball continues to baffle. What’s with this apparent obsession with letting star shooting guards do whatever they want? Is it the legacy of His Airness and Magic? Last year in the Finals and again in the Miami-Detroit series wilful egomania by Bryant and Wade, respectively, clearly cost their teams dearly. I find it hard to believe that, in the last two minutes of game seven of Miami-Detroit the highest-percentage play would not be to feed the Big Man. Yet Wade decided he was the new MJ and was going to win it on his own. By professional sports’ standards in general and basketball’s in particular, Wade is not an egomaniac. What was going on? Is this what commentators mean when they say that the coaches have lost control? What about the team-mates of the Bryants, Iversons and Wades? I find it hard to believe that they really approve of seeing all their sweat and toil go down the toilet.
Perhaps it’s something to do with the angst that seems to have gripped the NBA about “entertainment”. It’s not that entertaining to watch Shaq power to the hoop. But it’s much higher percentage scoring. It’s not even close. Shaq scores above 50% of his attempts, regular season or playoffs. None of the would-be Jordans shoots anything close to that (nor, in fact, did Jordan himself). This wouldn’t be quite so compelling if Shaq were not so obviously skilled at feeding out passes when he’s double and triple-teamed. But he is. Surely anyone wanting to win would feed Shaq “down the stretch”. I don’t know much about hoops but I do realise that over a full game there’s bound to be a variety of plays. The point is that if the game is close towards the end and there’s very little chance of an easy basket surely you just pound the ball into your best shot? Shaq’s low-percentage free-throw shooting doesn’t help but he still shoots about 60%, which is better odds than Kobe et al (bearing in mind there’s a mixture of two-point and three point plays that result from hack-a-Shaq).
This leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that teams in the NBA, on the whole, are prepared to sacrifice their chances of winning on the altars of the egos of star guards. The most amazing example was Iverson a few years ago. He shot for a much lower percentage than his teammates yet everyone would yammer on about how he’s so willing to “step up” to take the shot. Don’t get me wrong, Iverson, Bryant, Wade, James are amazing athletes; but if someone could just get them to rein in their egos they’d win a lot more as well as entertain. They’re not that much better than Ginobli, Parker, Billups and Hamilton, on display in the current Finals, and these guys, because, presumably, they haven’t been labelled “superstar”, are a whole lot more effective at winning playoff games.
I suspect that it is a question of a new generation of players and their expectations, which will ultimately end up as a labor dispute to restore a new equilibrium. MJ and Magic were stars but they were all-round pros. Magic was all about coolly assessing the percentage play, not showboating. MJ was as much remarkable for his fierce defence as his offensive repertoire. The Bryants et al inherited the money and the flash without paying their dues. The core of any sport is the discerning fan: each sport ebbs and flows as the latest fad of the corporate set (and the media take their cues, accordingly, from them), but any sport that insults the intelligence of the core for too long is heading for trouble. It’s likely that the NBA as a whole will have to pay the piper, soon.
Perhaps it’s something to do with the angst that seems to have gripped the NBA about “entertainment”. It’s not that entertaining to watch Shaq power to the hoop. But it’s much higher percentage scoring. It’s not even close. Shaq scores above 50% of his attempts, regular season or playoffs. None of the would-be Jordans shoots anything close to that (nor, in fact, did Jordan himself). This wouldn’t be quite so compelling if Shaq were not so obviously skilled at feeding out passes when he’s double and triple-teamed. But he is. Surely anyone wanting to win would feed Shaq “down the stretch”. I don’t know much about hoops but I do realise that over a full game there’s bound to be a variety of plays. The point is that if the game is close towards the end and there’s very little chance of an easy basket surely you just pound the ball into your best shot? Shaq’s low-percentage free-throw shooting doesn’t help but he still shoots about 60%, which is better odds than Kobe et al (bearing in mind there’s a mixture of two-point and three point plays that result from hack-a-Shaq).
This leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that teams in the NBA, on the whole, are prepared to sacrifice their chances of winning on the altars of the egos of star guards. The most amazing example was Iverson a few years ago. He shot for a much lower percentage than his teammates yet everyone would yammer on about how he’s so willing to “step up” to take the shot. Don’t get me wrong, Iverson, Bryant, Wade, James are amazing athletes; but if someone could just get them to rein in their egos they’d win a lot more as well as entertain. They’re not that much better than Ginobli, Parker, Billups and Hamilton, on display in the current Finals, and these guys, because, presumably, they haven’t been labelled “superstar”, are a whole lot more effective at winning playoff games.
I suspect that it is a question of a new generation of players and their expectations, which will ultimately end up as a labor dispute to restore a new equilibrium. MJ and Magic were stars but they were all-round pros. Magic was all about coolly assessing the percentage play, not showboating. MJ was as much remarkable for his fierce defence as his offensive repertoire. The Bryants et al inherited the money and the flash without paying their dues. The core of any sport is the discerning fan: each sport ebbs and flows as the latest fad of the corporate set (and the media take their cues, accordingly, from them), but any sport that insults the intelligence of the core for too long is heading for trouble. It’s likely that the NBA as a whole will have to pay the piper, soon.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Yet another obituary!
I hadn’t thought about Jim Baxter for years but it was his name that came to mind when I was trying to, think of whom Carvalho of Chelsea reminds me. Carvalho doesn’t appear to have Baxter’s endearing cheekiness, borne of his obvious joy in sharing his gifts with the crowd, but Carvalho has that unhurried precision of movement that is reminiscent of Baxter. Of contemporary players, the only one who has a similar spirit is Ronaldinho. Besides televised games, such as the bravura 1967 performance against England that most writers are justly mentioning, I saw him play live for Sunderland against United. He was a joy to watch. A truly unique, great player.
The Ronaldinho connection reminds me of how football is a kind of universal language. Poor kids from around the world, growing up in tough, tough places learn to express themselves as artists with the ball. I’ve always, I admit, found the Scots particularly interesting in this regard. In my mind, Scots produce among the toughest and the greatest finesse players. In the latter category, besides Baxter we have Alex Young and in the former players like Ian Ure and Billy Bremner. Paddy Crerand was a combination. Not that Baxter couldn’t take a knock. He could; it’s just that the ball artist in him predominated.
I’ll have a Glenmorangie to your memory, Jim.
I hadn’t thought about Jim Baxter for years but it was his name that came to mind when I was trying to, think of whom Carvalho of Chelsea reminds me. Carvalho doesn’t appear to have Baxter’s endearing cheekiness, borne of his obvious joy in sharing his gifts with the crowd, but Carvalho has that unhurried precision of movement that is reminiscent of Baxter. Of contemporary players, the only one who has a similar spirit is Ronaldinho. Besides televised games, such as the bravura 1967 performance against England that most writers are justly mentioning, I saw him play live for Sunderland against United. He was a joy to watch. A truly unique, great player.
The Ronaldinho connection reminds me of how football is a kind of universal language. Poor kids from around the world, growing up in tough, tough places learn to express themselves as artists with the ball. I’ve always, I admit, found the Scots particularly interesting in this regard. In my mind, Scots produce among the toughest and the greatest finesse players. In the latter category, besides Baxter we have Alex Young and in the former players like Ian Ure and Billy Bremner. Paddy Crerand was a combination. Not that Baxter couldn’t take a knock. He could; it’s just that the ball artist in him predominated.
I’ll have a Glenmorangie to your memory, Jim.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Steroids Rant
The latest advance leak of Jose Canseco’s forthcoming book focuses on supposedly shocking revelations about steroids use among baseball players, including Mark McGuire. The non-denial denials are amusing. Several notables have leapt to Mark McGuire’s defence by pointing out that he spent hours working out.
I may have this wrong but I thought the entire point of taking steroids was so that you can work out more. This is why I’ve never understood what the fuss is about. If people want to push their bodies beyond “normal” limits in training and to use chemicals to help them do this, what’s the problem? Steroids don’t make anyone faster, better coordinated or even stronger. The don't help Barry Bonds or anyone else hit a baseball travelling at 95 miles per hour. They just allow people to train longer and more intensively.
Steroids and other drug controversies in athletics are just a perpetuation of the hoary traditions of “sham amateurism”. Drugs just replaced money as the forbidden ingredient in athletic accomplishment. As for the harm the drugs do, well, people do a lot of harm to themselves and others in the pursuit of ambition. The worst harm is done by those for whom power itself is a drug. Athletes are pretty low on the scale of causers of collateral damage. Unfortunately a lot of people have now built careers, reputations and businesses around drug testing.
One of these is Dick Pound, the uber-lord of the international drug testing cartel. I’ve always suspected that Pound set up Ben Johnson back in Korea in 1988. Those with long memories may recall that there was a lot of talk about someone spiking Johnson’s water. Here’s my theory.
Start with the hypothesis that the IOC muckamucks wanted to hand someone’s head on a platter to the media to prove they were “cracking down”. Who better than the winner of the signature event, the 100 meters? All the better that this would hand a likely victory to poster-boy Carl Lewis, who was fiercely protected from his now-admitted drug use by the US Olympic godfathers. All it need was for someone in the Canadian establishment to agree to make Johnson the fallguy. Step forward Mr Pound, eager to please the IOC cabal. The Canadian Olympic mafia never liked the renegade Francis and the inarticulate Johnson, well – he was from the Caribbean.
Under the testing protocols of the era, it wasn’t enough to find the metabolic breakdown chemicals from known steroids in the urine; there had to be a “smoking gun”, evidence of the steroid from which the chemicals could have been derived. Charlie Francis, Johnson’s coach, was too smart to have allowed his protégé to take nandralone, or whatever, within a critical period (say two weeks) of the Olympics. So, spike the water, do the test and the rest is history.
I’m not a big athletics fan and I’m now a distinct non-fan of the Lords of the Rings and their periodic circus. Yet Johnson’s run in the final at the Seoul Olympics is among the most exciting sports events I’ve witnessed. Dulce et decorum est pro dux veritas. All the tawdry accomplishments of the Pounds and Rogges of this World are nothing compared to burning off the World’s best over 100meters in 9.87 sec. If that’s all Ben can take away that’s still a lot more than the great majority of us.
The latest advance leak of Jose Canseco’s forthcoming book focuses on supposedly shocking revelations about steroids use among baseball players, including Mark McGuire. The non-denial denials are amusing. Several notables have leapt to Mark McGuire’s defence by pointing out that he spent hours working out.
I may have this wrong but I thought the entire point of taking steroids was so that you can work out more. This is why I’ve never understood what the fuss is about. If people want to push their bodies beyond “normal” limits in training and to use chemicals to help them do this, what’s the problem? Steroids don’t make anyone faster, better coordinated or even stronger. The don't help Barry Bonds or anyone else hit a baseball travelling at 95 miles per hour. They just allow people to train longer and more intensively.
Steroids and other drug controversies in athletics are just a perpetuation of the hoary traditions of “sham amateurism”. Drugs just replaced money as the forbidden ingredient in athletic accomplishment. As for the harm the drugs do, well, people do a lot of harm to themselves and others in the pursuit of ambition. The worst harm is done by those for whom power itself is a drug. Athletes are pretty low on the scale of causers of collateral damage. Unfortunately a lot of people have now built careers, reputations and businesses around drug testing.
One of these is Dick Pound, the uber-lord of the international drug testing cartel. I’ve always suspected that Pound set up Ben Johnson back in Korea in 1988. Those with long memories may recall that there was a lot of talk about someone spiking Johnson’s water. Here’s my theory.
Start with the hypothesis that the IOC muckamucks wanted to hand someone’s head on a platter to the media to prove they were “cracking down”. Who better than the winner of the signature event, the 100 meters? All the better that this would hand a likely victory to poster-boy Carl Lewis, who was fiercely protected from his now-admitted drug use by the US Olympic godfathers. All it need was for someone in the Canadian establishment to agree to make Johnson the fallguy. Step forward Mr Pound, eager to please the IOC cabal. The Canadian Olympic mafia never liked the renegade Francis and the inarticulate Johnson, well – he was from the Caribbean.
Under the testing protocols of the era, it wasn’t enough to find the metabolic breakdown chemicals from known steroids in the urine; there had to be a “smoking gun”, evidence of the steroid from which the chemicals could have been derived. Charlie Francis, Johnson’s coach, was too smart to have allowed his protégé to take nandralone, or whatever, within a critical period (say two weeks) of the Olympics. So, spike the water, do the test and the rest is history.
I’m not a big athletics fan and I’m now a distinct non-fan of the Lords of the Rings and their periodic circus. Yet Johnson’s run in the final at the Seoul Olympics is among the most exciting sports events I’ve witnessed. Dulce et decorum est pro dux veritas. All the tawdry accomplishments of the Pounds and Rogges of this World are nothing compared to burning off the World’s best over 100meters in 9.87 sec. If that’s all Ben can take away that’s still a lot more than the great majority of us.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Rooney Watch Update
Now that he's moved to United from Everton, I've now had the opportunity, courtesy of the sports package on our cable menu, to watch Rooney a fair bit. He's a very good player, I'm happy to report. He's far more intelligent than would be apparent from reading the conventional clippings, which emphasize his volatility and ruggedness. In some respects, he's like Beckham, who also appears not to be someone who would do well on a Stanford-Binet test but has "football intelligence" of the highest order. He reads the play excellently and makes some wonderful through-passes. He also has an excellent shot, which he keeps low.
But George Best he ain't. By a long shot. In fact, watching United these past months have emphasized that Giggs remains United's most exhilarating individual player. On occasion, Giggs will have the defence twisting and turning the way George did; "like a fox going into a chicken run" was the memorable phrase, coined, I think, by Hugh McIlvanney. I haven't seen Rooney do that.
Now that he's moved to United from Everton, I've now had the opportunity, courtesy of the sports package on our cable menu, to watch Rooney a fair bit. He's a very good player, I'm happy to report. He's far more intelligent than would be apparent from reading the conventional clippings, which emphasize his volatility and ruggedness. In some respects, he's like Beckham, who also appears not to be someone who would do well on a Stanford-Binet test but has "football intelligence" of the highest order. He reads the play excellently and makes some wonderful through-passes. He also has an excellent shot, which he keeps low.
But George Best he ain't. By a long shot. In fact, watching United these past months have emphasized that Giggs remains United's most exhilarating individual player. On occasion, Giggs will have the defence twisting and turning the way George did; "like a fox going into a chicken run" was the memorable phrase, coined, I think, by Hugh McIlvanney. I haven't seen Rooney do that.
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