Duke

Long story short: blog has been silent for the past two weeks because I didn't have the InterWebs at home. Now I do. Regular blogging to resume shortly. In the meantime, I managed to score a ticket to the 1st round NCAA games yesterday. Saw Duke barely beat Belmont. Here's the thing: the crowd was so anti-Duke they booed the cheerleaders.

Read that again: they BOOED THE CHEERLEADERS. Who does that? Sure, Belmont is a great story. Boo our basketball players. But our cheerleaders? Jeez...

Sports!

Despite being inhabited by relatively fit and athletic people, hosting three professional franchises and being home to a pretty big university, Seattle would not strike anyone as a "sports" town. Like most major cities people are rabid about football. Locals care about the Mariners until they fall out of contention in July (about three months after my Orioles have fallen out of contention back East), and after that the crowds are mostly Japanese tourists excited to see Ichiro. The Sonics get so little love that they are going to get moved to Oklahoma City.

Anyways, I'm a big sports fan. Back in DC I would usually go to a couple of Redskins games (thanks to my friend Todd's parents), maybe a baseball game or two, and a Wizards/Caps/Georgetown game if I could luck into Capital One's box seats. If you look at my sports attendance in 2007 you'd notice a difference:

• Three Seahawks games;
• One UW football game;
• One UW basketball game;
• 10 Sonics games (3 pre-Durant, 7 post-Durant);
• Five Mariners games

That's 20 sporting events in 12 months. I feel like that's a lot. I was talking with the girl who cuts my hair on Friday about how hard it is to make same-sex friends in a new city. She is young and hip and "Myspaced" someone, which I think means that she met someone randomly on Myspace who ended up as her best friend. Anyways, we were talking about the awkwardness of the "friend date", and got to talking about how men have sporting events, which are nearly perfectly designed for man-dates (firm stopping times, requires paying attention to something else making silence okay, excuse to drink obnoxious quantities of beer, etc). We couldn't decide if there was a female equivalent, although she thought shopping could qualify.

I was hoping to have a lot more to say other than "I went to a lot of sporting events" last year, but it turns out that I've got nothing. But I do have Sonics/Jazz tickets in two weeks if anyone is interested.

A ruined post

A couple of weekends ago I went to see the UW/Pitt basketball game. The UW arena is a nice little gym that reminds everyone of Cameron, only with no sense of history or awe. What was memorable about the game for me was that our seats were row 2, mid court. This is how the 2nd half started:

There's no zoom on that shot. They were just that close. It was pretty cool.

Anyways, the blog post is ruined because Pitt, after surviving a last second scare against UW, beat Duke tonight. During the game my friends (also Duke alums) and I observed that Pitt, while not great, is exactly the kind of team that would give Duke fits. They're big, slow, and rebound like crazy. Spurs vs. Suns.

I will give the UW fans some credit, as they made several "taser" cheers when the Pitt point guard shot free throws. It would seem he got tased, bro, this summer back in Pittsburgh. Taser or not, the guy is pretty clutch; he reminds me of Khalid El-Amin (fat, Duke-killer). He beat Duke on a crazy 3-pointer tonight, and made some tough free throws at the end of the UW game. I even had a picture of one:

My life as a season ticket holder

I live about 8 blocks from Key Arena, home to the Seattle (Super)Sonics. If you are a basketball fan you know that Seattle has made its mark on this basketball season in two ways:

1. It managed to draft Kevin Durant, supposedly half of the pair of 19 year olds who are going to save professional basketball.
2. It's the only NBA team to have the owner suing the city and threatening to take the team to Oklahoma City, and the only NBA host city to be countersuing the owner of its basketball franchise.

This, of course, sets the stage for a fantastic season. Young team, two-time failed head coach who is mainly known for being choked by one of his own players, and an ownership group investing $0.00 in the franchise... How could I not get involved?

I managed to find a pretty great deal on a 25 game plan: $25 per ticket for lower bowl seats, kind of behind and above one of the baskets. Key Arena may be old, and may not have enough corporate boxes to keep the franchise in business, but it is a fantastic venue to watch a game. I picked out my 25 games to maximize weekends and games against Duke players (easier to do these days).

I've always been a sports fan (Orioles, Redskins, Duke basketball, Wizards/Bullets), but it has never been convenient enough to get to sporting events to warrant any sort of season ticket purchase, so I've never really been able to see the progression of a team with my own eyes. I can tell you this after 5 games: I can see how being a beat writer wouldn't be a great deal of fun. To be sure, the games I've attended have all been close, with the Sonics being tied for or in the lead in the last couple of minutes.

Unfortunately they've lost all 5 of those games.

And the two other games they've played at home.

And seven of the nine games they've played away from home.

Since I don't have anything invested in the team I don't care that much; I've been able to see pretty fantastic teams (Suns, Jazz, Pistons, Spurs, Nets), and at some point I've got to believe that the team will get better, because they actually don't have very bad talent. But if the momentum builds for the team to leave for OKC I could see the 2nd half of the season being pretty brutal, especially after Durant and Jeff Green realize they are moving to the 44th largest TV market in the country where it is 200 degrees in the shade in summer. (I don't know this to be true, but I figure OKC has to kind of be like Dallas, which mean it has to kind of be like the worst place in America.)

What's likely to be way more entertaining than the basketball is the row of seats behind me. They seem to be reserved for the 2nd tier friends and family of the opposing team. On opening night there were a bunch of kids who were "DJ's cousin". It took me the entire game to realize they meant "DJ Strawberry", and I would have gladly bet $250 that he couldn't possibly be an NBA player. (Turns out that bet would be a loser.) Against the Nets some guy walked in with a 3" in diameter piece of diamond-encrusted jewelry. In the center read "#21", encircled by "The Truth." Turns out Antoine Wright is The Truth. Unless there is another 21 I don't know about.

Anyways, in honor of the best sports blogger in the land, I'll keep bringing you updates on the friends and family of 2nd tier players for the Sonics opposition. Not a full time job, but a job nonetheless.

More posts on the way

I have few more posts written, but I'm going to try and space them out over the week so that there is always fresh content. In the meantime, here are some pictures from the Suns/Sonics game last Thursday. I'm now a season ticket holder, which I'll discuss in a future post.

I'm starting to hate Duke

In his professional blog Huan does a nice job explaining why this is the one of the worst pieces of sports-writing in 2007. Or ever.

I struggle to find words to describe how upset this makes me. Part of being a Duke fan is recognizing that people hate Duke. If you can't deal with that singular fact then you probably shouldn't be running a website dedicated to cheering on Duke basketball. And you certainly shouldn't write long essays explaining (incorrectly) why people hate Duke.

In case you don't know, here is why people hate Duke:

1. The hating started in the early 90s after the back-to-back championships (think Yankees) and the Laettner stomp. While DBR would have you believe that the stomp wasn't that big of a deal, they miss the whole point. Perception is that Laettner did it on purpose (he probably did); it doesn't matter whether Timberlake was hurt or not. It was a jerk thing to do, and thence started Duke hating.
2. The hate grew in the mid-90s as Coach K started appearing in sanctimonious TV ads and Vitale/ESPN started to broadcast every Duke game. I mean every game. We've been overexposed for a decade. As a fan this doesn't bother me, as it saves me from buying ESPN's college channel. But if something annoys you, and then you see it all the time, well, it probably annoys you even more.
3. The past 10 years have seen Coach K appear in even preachier ads, a resurgence of talent that reinforced the Yankees image, and Battier the flopper. I don't mind K doing the ads... I'd eat glass and live in a barn for a year to get an Amex deal. But the fact that DBR completely ignores his polarizing effect when "analyzing" Duke-hating is just ignorant. Also, I have no beef with Battier... he's a great person, great basketball player, etc. But people didn't like him because they thought he got all the calls. Deal with it.

So DBR needs to understand that the downside of success is that people don't always love a winner. What's especially sad about the essay is that it papers over a very interesting point: why has the hatred toward Duke grown vitriolic? I would feel safe walking down Franklin Street in full Duke gear... there's always been some level of respect between UNC and Duke. But I'd be terrified to even mention that I was a Duke fan in College Park. When VCU knocked Duke out of this year's tournament the entire bar was cheering loudly against Duke (not really for VCU). In Seattle. There were reports of journalist at neutral sites cheering Duke's loss. This is a new, somewhat disturbing trend. One that would be interesting to explore. Unfortunately DBR just whined.

So, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert, I've decided that DBR is dead to me. I can find other sources of recruiting information, and if I really feel like I need to talk to a homer I'll call Jordan, who is still convinced that Duke will go undefeated last year.

A topic that only interests me

Since I read a lot of Bill Simmons' column I have read countless mediocre jokes about NBA teams trying to tank games in order to improve their chances in the draft lottery. The obvious prize is a chance to pick Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, assuming they leave college this year. As a newly developed NBA fan and pseudo-statistician there are two things about this that bugs me:

• It bugs me the fan in me that professional athletes can give up and still earn huge contracts. I don't mean to be naive. I know that the players can't control their coaches trying to throw games; I understand that players earn their money to draw in crowds, not necessarily win games. But the idea that teams could throw games for the chance to maybe pick a player is a complete misalignment of incentives.
• It bugs the statistician in me that the draft lottery results in a fixed percentage chance to pick 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Here is a description of the draft lottery. What annoys me is that the worst team may only be slightly worse than the next worse team, yet they have a 25% better chance of winning the lottery. It would seem that it would be a much better system to have the chances of winning the lottery proportional to how bad the teams are. This year Memphis is pretty clearly the worst team, but you can throw a rug over Boston, Milwaukee, Charlotte, and Atlanta.
  
• My proposal: make the odds of winning the lottery proportional to the number of losses each team has. You can weight this in various ways to make it more likely for the worst team to win (i.e. proportional to the square of the number of losses, etc). Simultaneously I would fix the standings at some date before the end of the season to make intentionally tanking harder to do. Maybe fix the lottery order on the same day that the first team clinches a playoff spot. That way if you tank, you have to tank the whole season.
  

An intervention

I heard a couple of disturbing stories from back East tonight. One involved a friend who went out with a "guy" who "wasn't in to March Madness." I'm not sure how anyone could say that, much less mean it. And I'm really confused as to why someone would admit that while on a date.

That said, I received far more disturbing news just minutes later. Franko is getting a cat. A (presumably) live cat. With fur and claws and meows and stuff like that. It is not a dog disguised as a cat either, which is what I was hoping for. It seems an odd choice for someone to take on that kind of responsibility out of the blue. Especially when that pet is a cat.



When hearing the news Huan called Franko to confirm that he didn't mistakenly type "cat" when he meant "dog." Franko also confirmed that he wasn't having a stroke, so it appears as if there really will be a cat in his life. And not a dog.

To compensate Huan for the mental anguish this has caused, Franko allowed us to pick a new name for the cat (it's currently called "Johnny Cash"). Here is the list we're choosing from:

• Mr Wiggly
• HuanandTyler
• The Aristocat
• Dewey Beach Cougar
• Pussy Galore
• Sex Panther
• Mrs Whiskerson
  
• Bad Idea
  

Please vote via the comments, and we'll announce the new name of Franko's cat after the Elite Eight is over. If you have to ask when that is, get a cat.

It would appear I wasn't actually on TV

But I was at the game. Despite a rather compelling ending to the actual game, the crowd got much more excited about one of the on-court diversions during a fourth quarter timeout. Some guy from the stands had to make a lay-up, a free throw, a three pointer, and a half court shot in under 60 seconds. If he made them all he won a 50" plasma TV (no one seems to have a spare one of these to offer me, BTW).

He quickly made the lay-up. It took him a couple tries but he hit the free throw. He struggled for a long time on the three pointer, but finally made one with about 15 seconds left. He ran into the half court circle and I figured he'd have nothing left. His first heave drew back iron... pretty close. His second nearly banked in. With 2 seconds left he throws up his third shot... crowds watches skeptically... buzzer sounds... nothing but net. Key Arena blew up. Tyler H, Cory and I actually exchanged hi-fives. Not sure who the dude was, but he came up big.

Of course, it would have been more interesting with me on TV. I was wearing bright orange. Oh well.

Watch for us on TV

There's a pretty good chance that I'll be on TV tonight (Wednesday). I'll be going to the Sonics/Wizards game with Huan and Tyler H, and I'll be wearing this. Check Comcast Sports Net at 10:00 EDT.

Bright orange t-shirt + horrible upper deck seats = guaranteed air time.

I'm going to the game for a couple of reasons; I've become a big Wizards fan, Key Arena is 5 blocks from my apartment, and the tickets were presumably $5. The Washington State Lottery is running a promotion that upper deck seats are $5 in March... even with $8 beer that's a reasonable night out. Except that you have to buy the tickets from Ticketmaster, which charged me the following:

• Tickets: $5/each
• Convenience charge: $2.75/ticket
• Processing fee: $3.75
• Tickets Now: $2.50

Total? $21.50. More than double. Now, I know I'm beating a dead horse, but Ticketmaster is just absurd. So they want to pile on fees... that's fine. Do they really need to spit in my face and charge me a 55% fee for "convenience"? I'm not exactly sure who is getting said convenience. The "Tickets Now" fee is absurd ($2.50 to email you tickets... that's right, email), but at least it provides a service. The $2.75 is just recouping costs. Or adding to profit. Ticketmaster execs will reside in a special place in the afterlife.