Too Many Games Turns a Sport into Entertainment and Not Competition

Back in the day, there was scarcity.  I watched NBC's "Game of the Week" because I got to see teams other than the one that played in my home city.  And, as for the team in my home city, no home games were televised, and not all road games were either.  We listened to many games on a transistor radio.

We appreciated those games the same way we appreciated the telecasts of the "ECAC Game of the Week" for college basketball.  In my city, a UHF station would televise college games of the schools in the area, dramatically so.  It was the ECAC Game of the Week, the local games, an occasional national telecast, what was on ABC's "Wide World of Sports" -- and nothing more.  We appreciated what we saw because there was no internet, there was little if any cable television. 

Today, you can get almost anything on your phone -- through subscriptions, yes, but still on your phone, on your pad, on your PC.  And when I saw anything it could be a game from the Big Sky Conference at 11 pm eastern time on a Thursday night.  It's hard to appreciate much of anything when the airwaves overwhelm you with everything.

My particular bone to pick is with hockey and basketball, where so many teams make the playoffs as to render the regular season all but meaningless.  I mean, why play 82 games in basketball and 80 in hockey if half the teams in the league make the playoffs.  What is the point of the regular season if there is no crowned regular-season champion and if all that matters is the post-season playoff system?  With respect to the NBA, so unimportant is the regular season that teams regularly rest key players later in the season, when playoff seedings all but have been determined.  And that is just awful.

People pay very good money for NBA tickets.  After getting years of data, the NBA teams have priced their tickets in such a way that season ticket holders pay top dollar and then suffer when they try to sell tickets for almost any game on the secondary market.  I have experienced this myself with my town's team.  A top team came through the other night, and the secondary market's prices were one half of what I paid for my tickets.  And if a star sat out, well, that's insult to injury.  After all, you are paying top prices to see the best play.

Except the way the NBA is set up, if it's all about winning the title for an elite team, it has no incentive to play key players in meaningless games.  And it's hard to argue that among 82 games, some are not meaningless, especially if it's the fifth game in eight days on a road trip.  The players get exhausted -- from the travel and from the exertion.  Hard to blame the players for not wanting to get injured and the teams for not setting themselves up for deep playoff runs. 

But it's also hard not to blame the fans for getting really frustrated.  Let's face it, many games are just entertainment because the teams know that either they are saving themselves for the playoffs or because they have no chance of making the playoffs and are playing to create good film for individual players on the trade market or to get a better chance at a top draft pick (which means they are fielding lineups that cannot beat even average teams).  The NBA thinks it has a good thing, but good league evolve just when they think that they have solved their biggest problems.

My solution:  shorten the season, adopt some one-and-done "cup" tournaments among teams with trophies that over the years will matter, and have fewer teams make the playoffs.  Take some pages out of the international soccer playbook, but give all teams more to play for.  And consider moving franchises and compelling ownership to sell if a team finishes in the bottom 10% say three times in a five-year period.  No one wants to pay good money for a franchise that is poorly managed.

Make the games mean something again.  Enough of the hip public address announcers, dancers, gimmicks between quarters, flashing lights, big scoreboards.  Give us good games, games with meaning.

Making Way for the Next Generation -- of Players, Leaders, and Even Owners

We see people age quickly in sports.  Coaches get sentimental, so do teammates, do does the media, and so do fans.  It is sad to see aging stars fail to keep up, fail to make the runs they need to, fail to do the things that made them stars in the first place.

What also is hard is that when players have seniority, they set all sorts of examples for the younger players as to conduct.  Some of those examples are bad.  For example, a leader gets into the clubhouse early, leaves late, and talks with the younger players about how to sleep, how to eat, how to take care of their bodies so that they can have long and productive careers.  An aging star who is not a leader expects his own set of rules, and while he might play hard, he does nothing to elevate the team.  In fact, some of these leaders, who insist upon deference because they have been there and done that, do the opposite.  And then there are those veterans whose experience gets them deference whether they seek that deference or not. Put differently, those veterans can set the tone and the mood for the team.  That can mean that a laid back veteran's approach to the game blocks the energy that a younger group of stars ready to take over might want to display.

My crucible for this particular theory is Arsenal FC, which discovered something very interesting yesterday when it removed David Luiz from the lineup.  There is no doubt that Luiz commands respect -- he was an instrumental figure on the Brazilian national team (which while not successful according to Brazilian standards in recent World Cups is still a very difficult team to make and start for) and Chelsea (which did win titles while he was there).  But the 32 year-old Luiz is far from the player he was five years ago.  Chelsea fans were happy when he left for Arsenal; their view was that he was well past his prime and because his skills had eroded, he would take chances that created goal-scoring opportunities for opponents, and too many of them at that.  Some of those gambles cost Chelsea games.

Yet so desperate did Arsenal believe itself to be that it purchased Luiz from Chelsea and anointed him a starting center back.  His personality is such that it can be dominating -- you can see that on the field.  The problem is that Arsenal had gambled with aging and/or underskilled center backs -- Laurent Koscielny (aging and frequently injured), Shkodran Mustafi (underskilled for the EPL), and Sokratis (perhaps not performing as the skills he demonstrated at Dortmund predicted he would for Arsenal.  Then there were younger defenders -- Mavropanous (injured and developing), Rob Holding (missed last season according to injury) and Callum Chambers (perhaps just not good enough).  So, they added Luiz.

The problem is that he has not performed nearly well enough to suggest that the club is better off with him.  Yet, he started almost every match for the Gunners, except for yesterday.  And free of his opinions and actions, the Gunners played a more low-key duo at center half and then opened the club up for younger players -- Kieran Tierney (went off because of an injury), Ainsley Maitland-Niles (best match in months), Lucas Torreira (who finally showed what we all had expected of him when he joined the club from Sampdoria two years ago) and, of course, Gabriel Martinelli, a generational attacker in the words of that great developer of talent, Juergen Klopp.  What result was an Arsenal that threw its cares to the wind, was not paralyzed at the back, relaxed in the second half and put on a show against, admittedly, a struggling West Ham team.  That said, any football manager will tell you that three points for a win is three points, and you take them regardless of how well your opponent is playing at the time.

I don't want to put all of Arsenal's problems on Luiz.  I think that 65% of the issue is with management.  The good news is that they parted company with Ivan Gazidis; the bad news was that they lost outstanding talent scout Sven Mislintat in a power struggle with Raul Sanellhi, a former Nike executive who did a stint at Barcelona, but who seems more like an influencer/operator than a real football guy.  The other bad news is that they still have Stan Kroenke as their owner, and his track record says that he owns without passion or commitment to using personal funds to take a team to an elite level.  That has not cut it in North London, and it is time for the Kroenkes to make that commitment or sell the team to someone who really cares about winning.  To crystallize the problem -- Daniel Levy, Tottenham's chair, has out-"ownered" Stan Kroenke markedly in the past five years and has made gutsy decisions that have made Spurs an elite team, in contrast to Kroenke's actions, which have made Arsenal a complicated puzzle wrapped inside a riddle.

On the pitch, the good news is that the team started to do yesterday what everyone thought it would do when all players got healthy -- turn it loose on offense and make themselves difficult to defend and to challenge.  That said, the team still has needs at center back and center defensive midfielder, needs that former manager Unai Emery wanted to fill but met with rebuffs from management, and my guess is was Sanellhi speaking for Kroenke.  On the pitch, the club is turning to its very talented younger players to help forge a path forward and build some belief. 

Off the pitch, though, is where to watch if you are an Arsenal fan or observer.  Will Stan Kroenke be a dilettante, or will he be a passionate football fan?  Arsenal, its former players, and its fans deserve a lot more than they are getting at the moment for this jewel of a club. 

They are capable of and need to find a manager who is not inexpensive but who can develop players and make key acquisitions -- someone like "the next Juergen Klopp."  Some of the names bandied about -- Sousa, Marcelino, are not top-tier managers and have had enough experience to suggest that they never will be.  There will be much eloquence in who the next hire is.  The more you hear Arteta, Pochettino, Nagelsmann, the more you hear smart football people talking.  The more you hear Marcelino and Sousa, the more you hear puppetmasters talking through enablers.  It's that simple.

And they need to become an ownership that has a passion for winning, not just for owning.  If the Kroenkes cannot muster that level of commitment, they should do the honorable thing and sell the club to someone with much more of a deep-seated caring about Arsenal as a way of life, and not just as investment.

Lou Whitaker Should Be Very Annoyed

So whatever they call the Veterans Committee for Baseball's Hall of Fame met over the weekend.  They announced that they had voted two people into the Hall of Fame -- Marvin Miller, who led the players' union into becoming the most powerful and feared union in the history of organized labor, and Ted Simmons, a good hitting catcher who spent his career with the Cardinals and Brewers. 

What is much more noticeable is who they left out -- Lou Whitaker, who, along with Alan Trammell (who is in the Hall), formed the longest-standing double-play combination in Major League history.

A player needed 12 votes to get into the Hall.  Dwight Evans, who played right field for the Red Sox on teams with Hall of Famer Jim Rice, got eight votes.  Dave Parker, who played right field for the Pirates and Reds, got seven votes, and Steve Garvey, the first baseman on some very good Dodger teams in the 1970's and early 1980's, got six votes.  As did Whitaker. 

I am not going to tear down the players who got as many as or more votes than Whitaker.  All were fine players in their own right; I am not sure that any of them belongs in the Hall of Fame, though.  Then again, given who is in the Hall of Fame, good arguments can be made for each of them.  (At one point in history, the Veterans Committee was so populated with former players that they decided to vote in their teammates -- including many Cardinals and Giants, some of whom, by today's standards, are not Hall-worthy). 

Wins Above Replacement Player is a measure that many use to determine who the best players are and were and who belongs in the Hall and who does not.  Here is the WAR for Simmons and the others above:

Lou Whitaker -- 75.1
Dwight Evans -- 67.2
Ted Simmons -- 50.3
Dave Parker -- 40.1
Steve Garvey -- 38.1.

Whitaker is in rarified air -- his career WAR is higher than those for Luke Appling, Reggie Jackson, Frank Thomas, Jim Thome, Arky Vaughan, Paul Waner, Derek Jeter, Harry Heilmann, Johnny Mize, Trammell, Ron Santo, Frankie Frisch, Barry Larkin, Gary Carter, Tony Gwynn, Al Simmons, Eddie Murray, Pudge Rodriguez, Carlton Fisk, Edgar Martinez, Ryne Sandberg, Fred Clarke, Ernie Banks, Roberto Alomar, Joe Cronin, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Goose Goslin, Craig Biggio, Andre Dawson, Willie McCovey, Dave Winfield, Richie Ashburn, Billy Williams, Lou Boudreau, Home Run Baker, Harmon Killebrew, Zach Wheat, Yogi Berra, Mike Piazza, Vladimir Guerrero, Bill Dickey, Hank Greenberg, Willie Stargell, Luis Aparicio, Willie Keeler, Bill Terry, Tony Perez, George Sisler, Joe Tinker, Orlando Cepeda, Ralph Kiner, Nellie Fox, Mickey Cochrane, Johnny Evers, Jim Rice. . . and, well, you get the point.

So, what were the following people thinking -- George Brett, Rod Carew, Dennis Eckersley, Eddie Murray, Ozzie Smith, Robin Yount, Sandy Alderson, Dave Dombrowski, David Glass, Walt Jocketty, Doug Melvin, Terry Ryanb, Bill Center, Steve Hirdt, Jack O'Connell and Tracy Ringolsby?  These are the members of the Modern Era Committee.  What was so awful about Whitaker's body of work and so wonderful about the work of Simmons that he gets elected and Whitaker does not?  And, likewise, why did Evans and Parker get more votes than Whitaker and Garvey the same amount? 

I watched all of the above-named players play, as well as Tommy John, Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, each of whom was eligible for votes.  All were very good players.  But in a sport where the numbers supposedly do not lie and the metrics matter, it is hard to ignore the difference between Whitaker's WAR and everyone else's.

The question is -- the others might have had strong advocates for their election.  Who was advocating for Lou Whitaker? 

And should it matter.

Sentimentality and NFL Rosters

There is a saying in business that if you are at the front of the back, you will end up face down riddled with bullets and that if you are at the back of the pack, the cheetah will pick you off and devour you.  Better to be in the middle of the pack and be a fast follower of what works. 

Evidence seems to suggest that this is the case, that no coach or general manager seeks to innovate markedly because their tenures can be so short and the patience of ownership and fans so fickle and brittle that to dare greatly is to end up out of a job.  So most general managers and coaches seem to trend toward the average of what everyone else does.  What they expect that is that out of this behavior they will transcend and excel, when, in fact, they probably will not after several years. 

What fascinates is that teams do not follow the principles that the New England Patriots do.  Talk about establishing a dynasty, and talk about doing it with some stars, a generational quarterback (and there are others out there who could have done the job very well if not as good as Tom Brady over as long a period of time) and many interchangeable parts.  It's not as though the Hall of Fame will be overrun with Patriots' players, although many will be worthy because of their outstanding contributions to a dynasty.  No, what has worked for the Patriots has been the opposite of wanting to see iconic players play out their careers in Foxboro.  Instead, the Patriots let good players go.  And they have done it all the time.

The Patriots do not stand pat.  They win a Super Bowl and then some good players who become free agents get lucrative deals with other teams.  Some players play well, others struggle..  Now it could be that they were good players on a very good team who could not become great players on an average to below-average team.  It also could be that they were average players on a very good team who got the most out of their abilities on the dynasty because the coaching staff coached them within their limitations and did not ask them to do what their new teams had to ask them.  Whatever the case, Bill Belichick in a way is to the NFL what Schroeder is to Lucy Van Pelt of "Peanuts."  Destroy his bust of Beethoven, and he goes to his closet, has an inventory full of them, and pulls out yet another one.  In NFL terms, that means if a player falters or cannot perform at a level New England deems necessary, they go into their box of tricks, their list of players who might be available, and they solve their problems in a different way. 

Contrast Belichick to Howie Rosemann, Doug Pederson and the Philadelphia Eagles.  The Birds won a Super Bowl in 2017-18 thanks to some good leadership. some great play from a young quarterback, the maturity of an offensive line and the fact that they had a backup QB who was ready to shine when the lights shone brightest.  The fans were elated, but then everyone -- the team, the media, the players, the fans -- started talking about a "new norm" and how they were going to win more titles. 

The fact of the matter is that no one in the organization was ruthless enough to do so.  The coaches got complacent, the veterans got complacent, and the front office got complacent.  They started to believe too much that they deserved to be where they were and got drunk on the Super Bowl to such a degree that the hangover prevented them from thinking clearly.  Jason Peters, who will have a place in Canton, was done perhaps before the big game.  He should have been released after the season.  Jason Kelce had flirted with retirement after last season -- so much so that you wonder if he had anything left -- and this season has shown that he doesn't have much left.  And so forth. 

The average age of a player in the NFL is not that old, and players age quickly.  Tread on the tires not only means a decreasing physical ability to get the job done, but at times a decreasing emotional wherewithal to do what is necessary to get the job done.  And just because someone was on the roster to help you win a Super Bowl does not mean you have to keep them around.  For every Matthew Slater there are dozens of guys who for one reason or another cannot contribute at a level to keep the team playing at a high level.  The Patriots know this better than everyone else and have enough confidence in their coaching and system to keep the team young and strong and hungry enough.  Strangely, it seems that few others, if any, have figured this out.

So the Eagles keep on saying that their 5-7 record does not represent who and what they are.  The fans are angry because they are "losing games that they should not be losing."  But the question that should be asked is whether this is true?  Perhaps they should be losing these games because the talent is not there, the coaching is not there, and the front office has mis-judged who should remain on the team.  It is hard to keep players forever, and the key is not to keep them for too long. 

When the Eagles went into this season, there was a lot of hype that a healthy squad could return to the Super Bowl.  The team believed it, and the press and the fans bought into it.  But something smelled from the beginning.  The team got older.  Did anyone really believe that a 38-year old Jason Peters could play at a Hall of Fame level and could play for more than 10 games?  Did anyone really believe that DeSean Jackson would play a full season after not having played 16 games in a season for years?  Did anyone believe that the team would get out of the starting gate strongly with so many players not playing a down in pre-season.  Finally, did anyone believe that one of the oldest teams in the league would stay healthy enough to win a Super Bowl?

Put simply, the strategy of the team going into the season was bad.  They made some big, bold assumptions and let sentimentality get in the way of practicality.  By doing so, they chose the easier wrong over the harder right.  Yes, the team would have risked some blowback from the fans from cutting loose some key contributors to the Super Bowl. 

But I'd bet that their record would be better than 5-7 right now.

If You Listen to the Fans Too Much. . .

Most of us have heard the full adage, one that veteran general managers or directors of football or whatever they are called in any sport tell the newbies -- if you listen to the fans too much, you will end up sitting in the stands with them.

I hearken back, though, to advice that King George VI gave to Winston Churchill when the latter was pondering how to guide England right as France was falling and the entire British Army was stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk.  There was sentiment among some in the leadership of the Conservative Party to negotiate a peace with Adolf Hitler, on the grounds that Britain could not win a war and also out of the hope that Britain really wasn't part of Hitler's plans.  Churchill was most uneasy about this, but the circumstances were dire.  Britain was on the brink of having its army wiped out, and its island attacked mercilessly from the air and sea. 

The king, who admittedly did not have a vote in the democracy, told the prime minister that in tough times he should listen to the people, and they will guide him.  And what Churchill discerned was that the people by and large had the same thoughts and instincts that he did -- not to settle, but to fight to the bitter end.  And fight Britain did.

There is a tough balancing act that leaders must achieve.  On the one hand, their followers look to them for vision and energy and to set out a course for success.  On the other hand, the voters expect to be listened to, to have access, and to feel like they count.

The same holds true for soccer fans.  If you were to submit the course of a team to a plebiscite of the fans, you would end up with an unmanageable amoeba that could not win a a match in a Sunday pub league.  By the same token, if you do not listen to the fans at all -- and do not admit to seeing the same problems that they do when the problems are obvious -- you risk having them not purchase tickets and staying home. 

Such was the case for Tottenham, but perhaps much less desperately so than for Everton, Newcastle and of course Arsenal.

Let's dispatch with Spurs first.  Mauricio Pocchetino is one of the five best managers in the world.  He turned Tottenham from an important if disappointing team into a force than can be reckoned with. True, he did not win any titles, but he turned chaos into order after the team sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid and made a bunch of signings that did not work out.  Yet, the team probably ran its course with Poch, sad is it was to see.  The players got older, and perhaps older players aren't as responsive to such an intense style after they have been playing at the highest level for years.  Atop that, well, it appeared to many that passing Liverpool and City were just too hard to do under this manager.  So, Daniel Levy, the owner, made a bold decision, one that surprised the fans because they were not asking for Poch's head.  And that was to bring in Jose Mourinho, the successful if controversial manager and won who has won plenty of silverware.  Mourinho did good things at Real Madrid and Chelsea twice, struggled at United, and will try to summon his old magical ways to propel Spurs to some silverware.  While Spurs struggles resulted from an inflexible Poch, a perplexing Levy and some poor efforts from players, you have to give ownership credit where credit is due -- the team seemed stuck, and when that happens, it's much easier to sack the manager than sack half a dozen players mid-season.  This was, after all, the same squad that went to the Champions League finals a year ago.

Now let's get to Arsenal.  After ownership pushed out legend Arsene Wenger in a clumsy way (it says here that they should have urged Wenger out when Juergen Klopp rocketed to the top of the coaching most wanted list after his run at Dortmund), it struggled to come up with a good short list to replace him.  Remember, even though Arsenal has been in the bottom third of the world's top 15 clubs for much of the past 10 years, it remains an iconic club in a great city.  And their short list -- former player Mikel Arteta, the top assistant for Pep Guardiola at City although not long-tenured, Max Allegri, very successful in Italy and at Juventus (with the concern that Juve had on its roster 10 of the top 12 most highly paid players in Serie A, something that Arsenal could not come close to matching in the Premier League) and the guy who got the job, Unai Emery, under fire at PSG after a successful stint at La Liga's Seville.  Not exactly an overwhelming short list. 

And they chose Emery.  One of the proffered reasons was that he had success managing a roster in its league and in the Europa League competition, and that would augur well for fifth-place Arsenal.  If that was a major factor, it was very short-sighted.  This is a club that was used to playing Champions League soccer, and it selected a manager for a parochial reason.  Liverpool did not hire Klopp to get it over a hill; it hired Klopp, with a track record of developing players into superstars, to climb the biggest mountain in world soccer -- the Champions League.  Emery seemed like a consolation prize.  Sure, Wenger was plucked as an unknown from the Japanese League, but he had great foresight into what modern soccer would look like.  Emery did not seem to be any sort of visionary.

Then Arsenal did the unexpected in the off-season.  It started to overhaul its roster.  It hired well-respected former player Maurice Edu to be its director of football, and then it loaned out or sold some players who were surplus or not performing well, promoted some exciting young talent and made its most expensive acquisition to date, a fast winger with a "box of tricks," Lille's Nicolas Pepe.  The thought was that the Gunners might struggle at the outset of the season -- its fullbacks were injured and Pepe had to get up to the fitness standards of the Premier League, but once that happened Arsenal would challenge for third or fourth place and return to the Champions League.

But instead of building patiently toward getting everyone healthy and fit, and instead of creating a tasty salad whose ingredients enrich each other, Emery put the team into a blender and said to the fans -- "it might not look great, but it should taste good, trust me."  Except the ingredients changed from match to match, players were playing out of position, Emery was feuding with the team's best passer and most highly paid player, and Emery was refusing to play Pepe consistently.  Atop that, he had no faith in his midfield, to the point where he was playing five defenders and two defensive midfielders and no center attacking midfielder who could pass the ball well.  Which meant that instead of putting on an offensive show with all its talent, Arsenal was playing not to lose. 

And then they started drawing and losing.  All fans saw this train wreck for what it was -- either a manager in over his head or one who was so worried about defense that he forgot that the strength of the team is the offensive talent that has been amassed.  So bad has the team become that all opponents start their matches against Arsenal with a full-field high press, as if to say, "hey, we do not believe you can get the ball up the field under pressure, so until you do, we will make your lives miserable."  The exclamation point happened this past weekend, when Southampton's high press created a goal in the first minutes of the game that set the tone for a stoppage-time goal and late draw against 19th-placed Southampton -- on Arsenal's home turf.

It's one thing to have fans react after a disastrous match and call for the sacking of the manager.  Relying on single data points can lead to terrible decisions.  But Emery has amassed a significant body of work -- and one that is no better than Wenger's during an equivalent period at the end of Wenger's tenure.  What makes this point critical is that if you are going to replace your manager, you had better hire someone better.  And while the decision to hire Emery was questionable at the time, it looks bad now.  He is not better than Wenger; he isn't nearly as good.  The fans see it, and apparently the players do, too. 

Management, though, has created a vacuum and said nothing publicly.  From my experience on a management team, what happens when management says nothing on a critical point is that a vacuum emerges.  And the rank-and-file fill the vacuum with whatever they want to, whatever they're thinking, and whatever seems obvious to them.  And it can be horribly wrong. 

There has been all sorts of speculation about Emery's future, as follows:

* management totally backs him.
* management will wait until the end of this season to decide his fate.
* management will let him work for the remainder of his contract (1.5 years)
* management will wait until after the results of the next 3 (very winnable) matches to decide his fate.
* the manager they really want will not be available until after the season ends
* the players are starting to want out -- Aubameyang, Lacazette, Torreira, Ozil, Bellerin.

All of this is very bad.  Management historically has been tone deaf; the results of much of the Stan Kroenke era have been sub par when compared to Arsenal's historical standards.  Ownership gave fans some hope over the summer after the major fan groups banded together to send a public letter expressing their frustration to Stan and his son, Josh, as it hurts very much as to the personal monies the owners of Chelsea and City have put into their teams.  To his credit, Josh responded the next day, and Arsenal most surprisingly was very active in the transfer window.  Mostly all agreed that Raul Sanellhi and Edu vastly improve the team.  Emery, though, remained a question mark.

Now ownership is at a precipice.  Sure, they would have to pay Emery a rumored 4.5 million pounds sterling as a severance payment.  But that's a cost of doing business these days.  And how can ownership let its archrival be bold, make a 12.5 million pounds sterling payment to Poch and commit even more money to Jose Mourinho.  How can they let themselves be upstaged? 

Arsenal's current record is bad enough.  But risking losing a core group of players is too much to bear.  Bravery and decisiveness are required.  Ownership must terminate Emery's contract and either bring in Max Allegri or Poch or make Freddie Ljunberg, the assistant manager, the caretaker until the season's end and then consider whether to bring in Arteta (now more seasoned), Bournemouth's miracle man Eddie Howe, Allegri, Poch or someone else, perhaps even Zinadine Zidane if he parts company with Real Madrid (a position for which Poch might be waiting). 

Doing so will fill the news vacuum with the fans, as well as, more importantly, the leadership vacuum.  Doing so will restore credibility.  And doing so is likely to keep all of the players in line and ready to move forward -- positively together.

If ownership does not do this, the Kroenkes should sell the team to someone who will.  For their track record is one of owning, not winning.  It is time for Stan and Josh to think hard about their legacy -- and start to take steps to win silverware. 

Now is a good time to start.

Jose Mourinho and Tottenham

How much money does Daniel Levy have in the bank or available to him in terms of a line of credit?

The reason I'm asking is that Tottenham has not spent a ton of money on the transfer market, especially when compared to the likes of Manchester City and Manchester United.  Of particular interest is that recently United spent a lot of money after it hired -- you guessed it -- Jose Mourinho -- as its manager.  That hire did not work out for either party.  United continues to search for the magic after the great reign of Sir Alex Ferguson, and Mourinho is looking to attain the glory that he achieved in Spain and in West London and that eluded him in Manchester.

What's curious is that Mourinho likes to spend on transfers.  Historically, Spurs have not.  And Spurs have to pay off their stadium, and they had to pay a tidy sum to Mauricio Pocchetino as an exit payment and a good deal of money to bring Mourino to the lane.  So what happens next?

Mourinho recently said that he doesn't need more players, he just needs to see what he can get out of the players at Tottenham.  Fair enough, but this is a fourteenth place team, a team that has four veterans who might want out, and a team that might have more veterans wanting out should the methods of Mourinho not suit them.  Atop that, Poch did magic with the squad, given that most pundits did not believe Spurs to be deep enough to make deep runs in Champions League or for cup trophies.  Poch got Spurs close to Champions League glory.  Now the roster is even older.

Did Poch lose the locker room?  Or did the locker room lose belief because they started to feel that last year was as good as it was going to get -- not necessarily with that manager, but with that squad?  To me, the answer to the latter question is the most compelling, as the consensus of the pundits seems to be that the team hit a wall, that Poch is a great manager, and that Mourinho is a great manager but that hiring him is a risk, as he seemingly has gotten battier as he has gotten older.

All of this seems to suggest that Spurs might overhaul the roster after this season.  It could be that Christian Eriksen and Danny Rose exit in January, and who knows what the fates of Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld will be?  This is where Mourinho comes in -- he likes to acquire, and he might have some leeway to do so.  That explains why Daniel Levy hired Mourinho to begin with.

Spurs should elevate in the standings with a new manager, at a minimum because the squad has to be embarrassed that their play managed to get a great manager sacked.  And it could be that Mourinho unlocks some problems in the lineup and strengthens the attack.  But the risk also is there that he goes to war with a key player or too, creating more disharmony.  Whatever the case, it all should be good theater.

Meanwhile, Poch now is the best manager available.  It was surprising that Arsenal did not grab him, but then again, they should have changed out Arsene Wenger years before they did to get the red-hot Juergen Klopp.  Their ownership is not decisive or that insightful, so they remained sentimental and loyal to Wenger.  Now it appears that they are just plain stubborn.  They missed out on Klopp, and it could be that Poch is at the Theatre of Dreams come this summer.  The odds, though, suggest that Poch will end up at Santiago Bernabeu, and enjoy lovely Madrid and taking that team back to winning Champions League trophies.

Artificial Intelligence and the NFL Draft

It has to happen soon. 

How many times can teams blow draft picks?  How many times do we have to read that one half of quarterbacks taken in the first round do not make it?  And how many times do we have to watch Todd McShay and Mel Kiper, Jr. wax eloquent on potential draft picks when they turn out to be wrong a lot of the time.  Put differently, if either were an NFL executive, they wouldn't last too long.

There's an old saying in law enforcement that eyewitness accounts are not reliable.  Well, what about scouts and scouting?  And then, what about the drills that the players are compelled to do at their pro days and at the combine and matching them up with film studies of how players perform?  Even with all that homework, NFL teams miss a lot of the time.  Tell me of any other multi-billion dollar industry where a business could misfire more than half the time in recruiting key talent and succeed.  You cannot.  But the NFL is a closed system that puts a floor under a team's poor performance -- it just cannot go out of business. 

So what is my solution?  I think that the math guys need to take over more.  They need to measure the best players in the league against a bunch of variables and set a standard for what is success -- and then measure every draft pick against that.  I'm talking micromovements -- how long does it take JJ Watt to get outside on a tackle and then to turn the corner?  How long does it take in one-on-one blocking and a double-team?  How fast does he go in pursuit of a running back running around the end?  How quickly does the average running back hit a hole?  And on and on and on.  With this information, not only would a team be well-situated to draft players who just get it done faster (even if misused at the college level), they also could game plan based upon getting intelligence on the other team's reaction times and micromovement times.  And when I say micromovement, I mean how getting off a snap say 0.15 seconds faster than another defensive tackle might make the difference between a five-yard gain and a tackle for loss?  Right now, it seems that those who write game plans do it by feel -- with widely varying results.

Teams should invest in a super-simulation software that enables them to "war game" against the upcoming week's opponent.  Sure, lots of variable are involved, because you cannot predict totally how, for instance, the Cowboys might use Ezekiel Elliott or whether Cam Newtown will stay in the pocket or take off.  But even then you can figure in tendencies and figure out how to game plan using your available personnel.  So, for example, suppose you have to start a cornerback you just plucked off another team's practice squad who has taken no snaps in the league and who you have to start because you are depleted.  You know that you will have to have a safety give him help, and, in turn that this help comes at a price -- the safety will have to vacate another part of the field to help out this rookie.  So, you'll have to compensate for that, too -- do you blitz a lot, do you play an extra defensive back?  AI software could help you come up with solutions constantly -- even during the game.

For all of its attempts at sophistication -- and my guess is that teams are doing proprietary stuff that they are not sharing -- game planning can be a disaster, as can picking guys in the draft.  By looking at what I call microdetails -- and what makes players successful -- teams will be able to draft better.  And by looking at microdetails within the context of a game, teams will be able to create strategies to enable them to win with the personnel that they have on the field, even if it means abandoning strategies that they had relied upon when everyone was healthy.  After all, it is not comforting to hear a coach say, "well, our strategy was good, but we just didn't execute."  That's a smokescreen for, "If I had a healthy roster, we could have won with this strategy."  An appropriate writer and fan reaction would be the following:  "Hey, coach, if you created a strategy that gave the group on the field a chance, your team would have fared better."  Because it's true.

Now I realize that there are only so many schemes a team can dial up and that a team can get to a point where its personnel is so depleted than even the best AI cannot help it, because too many players on the team are only marginal.  I get that.  But there is a sufficient supply of players out there that creating strategies to win games shouldn't be that difficult in the abstract when using AI. 

Because right now,there are too many broken plays, broken players and broken teams.

International Soccer -- Disparity

In the English Premier League, there are the big six teams, and then there is everyone else.

In Ligue 1, the top French league, there is Paris Saint Germain, and then there is everyone else.

In La Liga, the top Spanish league, there are Real Madrid and Barcelona, and then there is everyone else.

In the Bundesliga, the top German league, there is Bayern Munich, and then there is everyone else.

And in Serie A, the top Italian League, there is Juventus, and then there is everyone else.

Now, before you jump on me -- fans of Everton, Leicester City, Olympique Lyon, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Napoli -- look at the data.  I am talking about when it comes to spending money on player salaries.  Players in the EPL make the most on average, but what staggered me were the following statistics:

Something like 11 of the top 12 most highly paid players in Ligue 1 play for PSG.  Something like the top 20 most highly paid players in La Liga play for either Real Madrid or Barcelona.  The top ten most highly paid players in the Bundesliga play for Bayern Munich, and 9 of the top 10 players in Serie A play for Juventus.  Talked about the need for better parity, financial fair play, a salary cap, a luxury tax or some or all of the above, and the European leagues not named the English Premier League have fact patterns that scream for remedies.  As for the EPL, it would be much more intriguing if it wasn't always the case that the following teams will finish in the top 6 -- Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham.  But at least in the UK there are six teams with a fighting chance to win a title.  How many can say the same in the other leagues?

No, I am not advocating for a "Super League" consisting of the top 20 teams in Europe.  Instead, I am advocating for competition within all leagues that at least gives those near the bottom some chance of winning a title every once in a great while.  That chance does not exist outside the EPL, and even there it is rare (Leicester won the title several years back).  And while paying top dollar does not guarantee a team a championship, suffice it to say that if a team doesn't spend money on players it won't have a chance to win the title. 

Do a search or two and look at the distribution of salaries.  You'll be amazed at what you find.

The Den of Despair (Again)

I went to the Philadelphia Eagles game yesterday, a disappointing 27-24 loss to the Detroit Lions in Philadelphia, and came away with the following observations:

1.  Make no mistake, the Lions deserved to win the football game.  They played mistake-free football for all but the last minute of the game (when Malcolm Jenkins blocked a field goal attempt), forced a couple of turnovers, did not commit dumb penalties, did not turnover the football, sacked the QB a few times, tipped a few passes, covered receivers well and created space for their wide receivers.  In contrast, the Eagles committed some dumb penalties, had no pass rush, could not cover the Lions' receivers well, dropped passes and fumbled the football.  In certain ways, the game was not as close as the 27-24 final score indicates.

2.  The Eagles won a sloppy affair in the home opener against the Redskins, fell behind on the road against Atlanta and at home against Detroit, lost two close games (score-wise) and are now 1-2.  If Nelson Agholor catches that ball in Atlanta, if he doesn't drop a few yesterday, if JJ Arciega-Whiteside does not drop a ball and if the entire Eagles offense honored Jenkins' block and marched down the field as a good offense should, the Birds would be (a shaky) 3-0.  But wins are wins, and you are what your record says you are.  At 1-2, the Birds just are not that good a football team.

3. From my vantage point, the squad went into the season old, over-hyped, overrated, over-injured and under-prepared (if for no other reason than too many key players were recovering from injuries).  Atop that, they have suffered many injuries since the season started, perhaps more than any other team.  Which means that something was wrong with their readiness and with their training.  Then again, it could be that the age of the players is such that they might be more prone to injury.  Take WR DeSean Jackson, around whom there was so much hype when he re-joined the team after an exodus that took him to Washington and Tampa Bay.  Jackson is 32, and had not played a full season in several years.  Surely, the Eagles could not have been thinking that he would play the entire season.  Ditto the now-enigmatic starting left tackle, Jason Peters, who apparently has his own set of rules.  How could management expect the 16-year veteran to play an entire season, especially since few can remember the last time he did just that?  Jackson got hurt early in the game in Atlanta; Peters had to take himself out of yesterday's game.

4.  It is common for Eagles' fans to diss the Cowboys' Dak Prescott, but Prescott is a very good QB who is much more than a game manager.  And in close games, he is something like 17-6; Carson Wentz is something like 8-14.  Big edge:  Prescott and the Cowboys.  My guess is that most player evaluators in the NFL still would prefer Wentz, but it is not as though these guys get it right more than half the time.  They don't.

5.  Miles Sanders might be more effective as a receiver for the Eagles than a running back.  The discerning fan noticed that the Lions started kicking returnable balls to the Eagles after they scored, if only because they thought that Sanders might cough one up on returns, too.  As it was, he fumbled the ball twice yesterday, exacerbating his already subpar start to his career.  Both Sanders and the fans should be patient -- Tiki Barber fumbled a lot early in his career and then changed his tactics and had a wonderful tenure with the Giants.

6.  Fletcher Cox obviously is not healthy.  The Eagles had no discernible pass rush.  The Eagles' cornerbacks had difficulty covering anyone yesterday, and it wasn't as though Matthew Stafford channeled his inner Tom Brady or Drew Brees and had a career day yesterday.  But time and time again, the Lions' receivers were wide open when Detroit needed them to be.

7.  I sat in the fifth row.  Offensive linemen are big people.

8.  Carson Wentz still holds onto the ball for too long.  And he seemed to have little confidence for much of the game in receivers not named Agholor or Ertz.  On many plays, Mack Hollins and Arciega-Whiteside lined up on the left side, and almost never did Wentz look their way.  Perhaps those fellows had trouble getting open, but the failure of Wentz even to look their way made it easier for Detroit to defend the receivers he was looking at.

9.  The Birds failed to honor Malcolm Jenkins' block of the field goal attempt late in the fourth quarter.  Jenkins' committed a penalty on the run back that cost the Birds' about 28 yards of field position, but they still had the ball at midfield with 1:49 left and 3 time outs.  That they could not get the ball at least into field goal position to tie the game and send it into overtime was very telling.  The Eagles had the momentum and should have pushed the Lions out of the way to score a TD and win the ball game.  That's what good teams do.  Instead, they blundered and found themselves out of field goal range with fourth and long.  And then Wentz found Darren Sproles, and somehow the smallest guy in the league gets called for offensive pass interference when it appeared that both players were fighting for the ball.  And then Wentz found Arciega-Whiteside, who was drafted to make catches of 50-50 balls in traffic.  He did not, and that was the ball game.  It was an awful sequence and an awful end to an awful day. 

10.  The officials were bad; the Eagles were worse.  Yes, they missed a glaring facemask penalty against Detroit during which Miles Sanders almost was decapitated.  The NFL's explanation as to why this was not a penalty was such sophistry as to be fit for a laugh track.  And one of the officials is so out of shape that he could not have gotten into position to make the call.  And then there were three offensive pass interference calls against the Eagles.  The second of the three -- against Mack Hollins -- was obvious, but the first one, against Hollins was questionable and the last one, against Sproles, seemed wrong.  That said, had they Eagles dropped the ball less, not fumbled the ball, rushed the QB better and covered better, they would have won the game. 

11.  Had the Eagles pulled out the victory, everyone would be talking about the Jenkins' block and the great drive that ensued.  Everything else would have been considered small in comparison and not worthy of much discussion.  That they lost puts everything on the table -- and there is much to discuss.

12.  Finally, one distinction between the Patriots and everyone else is the lack of sentimentality when it comes to their roster.  They trade players right before they decline, they release veterans who cannot produce, they recycle players who can produce, especially if they do what they are told (Patrick Chung failed with the Eagles; he returned to New England and became a much better player).  The Patriots traded Richard Seymour to Oakland when he was one of the best defensive tackles in the NFL and let Nate Solder become a free agent and sign with the Giants (if you are asking "who?" about the latter, you get my point).  The Eagles, in contrast, have let the team age, keep patching and tolerating Peters and brought back Jackson, who is not the player he was when they drafted him out of Cal about 10 years ago.  To be elite -- truly elite -- you have to be ruthless with personnel decisions.  Among other things, that ruthlessness distinguishes the Patriots from everyone else.

Andrew Luck and Buddy Teevens

You have heard of Andrew Luck.  You probably not have heard of Buddy Teevens.  Both now are former quarterbacks.  One is figuring out what to do next; the other is an innovative FCS football coach.  So you might be asking the question -- who cares?  Or, if you are the least bit curious, you might ask, why am I linking the two men?

Luck's story is well-known.  He is the son of a star college QB (a Rhodes Scholarship semi-finalist, if I recall correctly -- the dad, that is) and a former star at Stanford (the son, that is), the QB who was set to become a generational quarterback and pick up the mantle where Colts' all-timer Peyton Manning left off and perhaps win a few Super Bowls.  That was how the script was supposed to have gone down.  Instead, Luck got pretty banged up, missed a lot of games, and, a week ago, decided to hang up his cleats.  He just couldn't get healthy, and the toll on his mental health was rough.  Outside of some criticism about the timing (those who felt he left his team in a bind and could have retired before the draft and someone who suggested that he conspired with the Colts' owner to retire after season ticket holders' commitments were locked in and, yes, some who suggested he just was not tough enough), his decision to retire was met with support and empathy.  Luck wanted to walk away while he could still walk and have feeling in all of his extremities and lower back.  And he has skills to do other things.

Teevens was a quarterback for Dartmouth in the late 1970's, and a pretty good one at that.  He then coached in various places and stepped up to what is now FBS at Tulane a while back, although he was not successful.  He then returned to Dartmouth and has been the most successful coach over the past decade or so, which is an outstanding accomplishment when you have the recent tradition of Penn, the longstanding excellence of Tim Murphy at Harvard and the recent juggernauts that Bob Surace has built at Princeton.  What makes Teevens successful now is that he is an innovator.  While the Ivies have eliminated almost all hitting in practices, Teevens has eliminated all of it and has employed robotic tackling dummies and virtual reality as substitutes for preparation. His motivation?  "If we don't change the way we coach, we will not have a game to coach," he told a reporter from ESPN the Magazine. 

Now, before you anoint Teevens as the innovator on the topic of hitting in practice, he wasn't.  That title belongs to the all-time winningest football coach in Division III history, the late John Gagliardi of St. John's College in Minnesota, who won several national titles and over 400 games.  I could not find a link to a Sports Illustrated article from decades ago touting the magic of Coach Gagliardi, but I do recall a quote from him on hitting.  His teams did not hit in practice.  Ever.  His thought -- "Our players have mothers.  Who wants to see their kids get hit more than they have to?"  Teevens, ergo, is an extension of Gagliardi, and now he is taking Gagliardi's thinking in this area to another level.  As is former Princeton linebacker Glenn Tilley, the CEO of Defend Your Head, which is working on new technology to protect football players for when they do have to hit and get hit.

So what is the link between Luck and Teevens?  Perhaps it is a tenuous one at best.  There's an adage that innovation does not always start with the biggest companies because they are just so big and it is hard to innovate at the biggest places and that they are risk averse to very conservative and that the smaller companies can take bigger risks because the risk of getting fired is smaller or the magnitude of an error with the innovation is a lot smaller.  In other words, try a big innovation at IBM and fail and earnings tank, people get laid off and the company is a mess; try an innovation at MBI in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with 25 employees, and well, you might be onto something that all of the big companies will want.  Why?  Because you've tested it in a smaller environment and proved the commercial concept.  At least it's a thought.  Teevens has more room to innovate; there is less pressure to win in the Ivies than the SEC.

So Teevens has innovated a lot about hitting and preserving players' health and sanity.  Perhaps that thinking moves from the hallowed halls of the Ivies to FBS schools, places where the elite players get their training for the pro ranks.  And then perhaps it moves to the NFL.  And then perhaps careers last longer and injuries -- physical and emotional -- are less devastating.  And perhaps a guy like Andrew Luck does not get as beat up and can play for longer, as well as hundreds of others who plays with awful injuries for fear of losing their place on their team and their livelihoods, especially when careers are so short and when for some of the players, well, their best earning days could be right now.

Teevens is onto something big.  The big boys should take notice -- both at the FBS level and the NFL.  Teevens' words are foretelling and could be haunting if not heeded -- "If we do not change the way we coach, we will not have a game to coach."

He could help save football as we know it.

For the players.

For the fans.

And from itself.

U.S. Women's Soccer and Equal Pay

Mediation is not binding arbitration.  Remember that.

There was nothing generous or magnanimous about the members of the U.S. Women's Soccer team's agreeing to mediation in its lawsuit against U.S. Soccer to obtain equal pay.  Most courts require mediation, and while judges are supposed to be disinterested parties litigants can tick them off if they do not agree to sit down with a mediator to try to work out there differences.  Secondly, it was a good public relations move.  Most people don't want to be involved in litigation let alone understand it.  By agreeing to mediation before the World Cup took place, the USWNT was sending a message that it was willing to. . . well, what exactly?  Compromise?  Perhaps.  All that we can read into this is that the USWNT was willing to sit down and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of its case with a mediator, who has the job of going back and for the between the parties and trying to hammer out a deal.  Sometimes that works, sometimes it does not.  If mediation does not work, litigation proceeds.

It always has struck me that there is nothing really to mediate and that if the USWNT does not get everything it wants -- and "equal pay" is a broad statement that thus far the USWNT has not defined with precision -- it will litigate its case.  It has every right to do that.  Given the UWNT's success and popularity, it just might win.

But what is "equal pay," exactly?  That is the question that a court will determine, if the parties do not reach an agreement through mediation.  U.S. Soccer added fuel to the fire yesterday by releasing a statement that it is its contention -- if not a fact in their minds, at least -- that it paid the members of the USWNT more than the members of the USMNT over the past years because it paid the women both salaries and bonuses and the men just bonuses.  On paper, the statement looks reasonable.  But, as the USWNT members point out, the contention of U.S. Soccer mixes apples and oranges and thus is contaminated.  U.S. Soccer wants credit for backing the women's league in the U.S. and paying the salaries of the women's club teams; the plaintiffs will argue, vigorously, that the salaries should not be part of the equation because the subject in dispute in court is a narrower one -- the pay they receive as members of the USWNT.

Here are some facts that are good background:

1.  Men's club teams have been around for roughly a century longer than women's teams.

2.  Men's club teams enjoy far greater commercial success than women's club teams.

3.  The revenues of men's club teams far exceed those of women's club teams around the world.

4.  The competition among nations to qualify their men's teams for the men's World Cup is much more difficult right now than the competition among the women's teams, in large part because of a historical emphasis on funding men's national programs and teams over women's national teams (the latter which are much more recent in formation).

5.  The U.S. culturally is ahead of most other countries in women's club and international competition.  Some other countries are catching up fast.

6.  The U.S. culturally is behind in men's club (heck, the MLS's season does not even coincide with that of the major leagues in Europe) and international competition -- and, as to the latter, might never catch up so long as the top athletes in the U.S. are not playing the sport, the "pay-to-play" culture persists and the top U.S. professional players (by the hundreds) are not playing for the top club teams around the world.

7.  The U.S. women's national team has a strong brand in the U.S., so much so that it enjoyed better TV ratings this summer in the U.S. than the men's World Cup did in the U.S. a year ago.  Of course, the U.S. men's team did not qualify for the men's World Cup (which explains to some degree, if not in large degree, why the TV ratings for the men's World Cup were lower).

8.  The U.S. women's national team is a perennial annual force.  The U.S. men's national team blundered and stumbled through its World Cup qualifying in 2019, losing at Trinidad & Tobago in its ultimate qualifying match and thus failing to qualify for the World Cup (U.S. men were in good company -- Italy and Netherlands failed to qualify, too).

9.  The U.S. women's professional league in the U.S. does not enjoy the financial support that MLS does and might founder without the financial support of U.S. Soccer (which includes payment of salaries for players in the league).

All of this will come up in the litigation.  U.S. Soccer has played its hand -- its support for the U.S. women's league should count in the equation that computes the pay of the plaintiffs.  The plaintiffs will counter that only their pay -- as U.S. women's national team members -- should figure into the discussion.

This is where the difference seems to lie.  A mediator will do her/his best to try to find common ground between the parties and a solution to the problem.  But don't bet that this will happen unless the members of the USWNT get everything they ask for.  They have been public about this, and they have been very vocal, putting themselves in a position that to take anything less will be a defeat.

But do the plaintiffs, the members of the USWNT, have to be careful that they can win the battle but lose the war?  Is there more to yesterday's statement of U.S. Soccer than meets the eye?  Is the statement a foretelling of U.S. soccer's arguments in court or a threat?  What is the threat -- that we are supporting a league that has failed to get commercial support and our well is only so deep, so, members of the USWNT, take this to court if you wish and you might win and get your bonuses as USWNT players increased, but we could take away our financial support for your domestic league, either because it has been a bad business proposition or because if we need to pay higher compensation for USWNT appearances we will not have the money to support your professional league in the U.S.  Is that where U.S. Soccer is going?  Would that be a good strategy, or is that a "scorched earth" policy that will set back soccer and women's soccer for years if not decades in the U.S.?

There are two sides to the argument, and both sides clearly are frustrated.  U.S. Soccer should remember an old adage -- you don't always win by being right all the time.  Put differently, if you have too good a deal, the other side will figure it out and get really annoyed.  That time is now.  Good dealmakers understand that a good deal is not getting everything you want and leaving little or nothing on the table for the other side.  And they have a chance, with the right focus and marketing, to propel women's soccer in the U.S. and globally to heights that no women's team sport has ever experienced.  Likewise, they have the opportunity to set it back years, too.

This could be what business people call a "high class" problem.  The key will be to craft a solution that enables both sides to get what they want and maintain their dignity in the process.  That type of solution benefits everyone, especially at a high water mark for the sport.  Nasty litigation battles do not tend to do that.

In the end, it is very understandable that the plaintiffs are doing what they are doing and fighting hard for their compensation.  After all, how can we expect them to battle hard for every ball in the air, every loose ball and every ball in front of the goal if they don't battle hard for themselves and their livelihoods?

Stay tuned.

Nick Francona

He is the oldest of Terry Francona's four children, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, a former military sniper and employee of MLB teams.  Sadly, he did not find traction in his career with MLB teams.  I do not know what he is doing now, but I highly recommend that you read his Tweets if nothing else.

Francona is candid, so much so that he probably will not work in MLB again.  He certainly speaks like someone who does not care whether any team will hire him.  Unlike most writers who cover baseball, he is very critical of the game and its future.  He is bright, and he is insightful.

My guess is that those inside MLB are trying to tow the line between abjectly disliking Francona and telling people to stay away from him and tolerating him at a distance because he is the son of a future Hall of Famer.  A national network or publication would be wise to hire him and give him a platform.  Now, more than ever, baseball needs very tough critics who challenges every aspect of the game.  The game has some significant flaws which, unaddressed, could contribute to making it a shadow of what it once was.  So long as the game currently is lucrative for the owners and they enjoy a favorable collective bargaining agreement, the owners will be content to sit tight and only offer slight tweaks. 

And that would be a shame. 

So, if you have a Twitter account, follow Nick Francona.  As Hemingway once wrote, write not because you want to say something, but because you have something to say. 

Nick Francona has something -- actually many things -- to say.

Baseball -- The Balls are Not Juiced

I know.  I know.

What I am about to write is heresy.  The easiest explanation for all the home runs in baseball is that the balls are wound tighter, are juiced, jacked, however you want to describe them.  What else explains the wacky number of home runs that future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander has yielded?  What else explains that the Phillies are on pace to shatter the record for home runs yielded in a season?  What else explains, well, all of the home runs?

Except that there are some holes in this argument, and that I think that there might be a better explanation.  I am not a math guy and do not have access to the databases and underlying results that could help prove my case.  So take this post as an outline of an argument -- for a sportswriter to pursue and test to see if it is correct.

First, if you look up all of baseball's numbers, there are other numbers that are compelling, such as how awful bullpens are doing this year.  Second, it isn't as though offense has taken off to the point that the average league OPS or batting averages are way up.  I haven't been able to locate a free site that gives me these numbers, but you would think that if batting numbers overall were way up that topic would be the subject of many broadcasts.  If you go back to the late 1960's, hitting numbers were way down, so much so that MLB lowered the pitcher's mound to take away the pitcher's advantage.  Seemingly, that change worked.  And, yes, now there is talk -- primarily among pitchers and their parents -- about un-juicing the baseballs to reduce the number of home runs to "normal" levels (even though fans like the long ball).  But MLB denies that they are juiced.

So what is going on?

Here is an alternative theory.  The balls are not juiced.  They are the same as they ever were.  It is the deployment of analytics and the changes in batters' behavior that are creating the extra home runs.  

Let's talk about the changes to hitters' tactics.  First, there is significant talk about exit velocity and launch angle.  Take those two approaches together, along with the fact that hitters keep on striking out in record proportion, and you get a partial explanation as to why home runs are way up.  The hitters simply are trying to hit more home runs.  And lots of them.  The numbers guys will tell you that they would prefer strikeouts to balls in play that could end up in double plays.  So, hitters now try to hit the ball up and out as opposed to down and through.  Look at games today; balls are in play an average of about every four minutes.  Players are not trying as much as they used to for singles and doubles; they are trying to hit the long ball.  And they are succeeding.  Presumably, if you place an almost singular emphasis on trying to hit home runs, you will hit more of them, and at the expense of other hits.  To put it differently, if the balls truly were juiced, more of them would be getting through the infield and creating higher batting averages for players.  But that isn't happening.  True, players are trying to hit the ball harder (exit velocity) and further (launch angle), but presumably they would be more successful if you added the juicing of the balls to their approach.  Except the numbers do not seem to bear that out.

Secondly, the pitching.  Pitchers and pitching have not evolved as much as hitting has.  The recent approach to pitching is to have pitchers throw as hard as they can, especially relievers.  That's all well and good, but the analytics are so good that the hitters have been catching up to the overwhelming power of pitchers (who have had an upper hand).  There are a few dynamics going on.  First, starting pitchers are having increasing trouble getting through lineups the second time around and even more so the third time around.  Why?  Because the hitters are getting more and better information and because they get time to adjust to the approach of the pitcher that night.  Second, relievers have very few pitches, making it easier for the hitter to guess what's coming.  Typically, a reliever has a setup pitch and his "out" pitch.  Each is thrown at one speed, hence only two different varieties for the most part.  The analytics guys can help hitters figure out what is coming much more easily than say even five years ago.  Okay, so you'll argue then that averages should be way up, and you'd have a point.  Except one fact remains true -- it is very hard for a human being to hit a baseball.

So what's the solution for pitchers?

Change speeds.  Much more frequently than they currently are doing.  Right now a starting pitcher throws three or four pitches, and some are better than others.  Typically, he throws each of these pitches at one speed.  That means he is throwing only three or four varieties.  That number of pitches makes it easier for the analytics folks to guess the tendencies of the pitchers and teach the hitters what to expect.  The variables are not all that many.  But what if a starting pitcher threw his two- and four-seam fastballs at three different speeds, his change-up at two and his breaking balls at three different speeds, true old-time pitching.  It would be hard for the hitter to know what was coming.  Atop that, this approach could save wear and tear on arms.  Gibson, Koufax, Carlton, Spahn, you name it, all used this approach.  And each could rear back and throw and amazing fastball with a few men on in the seventh to kill a rally.  Increase the number of variables the hitter has to deal with, keep the hitter guessing more than ever.  It just might work.

The same holds true for relievers.  It's easier to tattoo a relief pitcher who throws one out pitch with confidence and a mediocre fastball.  Sure, it was still impossible to hit Mariano Rivera's cutter, but he was an outlier.  Most guys do not have that talent, grit or innate confidence.  The reliever who masters a few pitches and changes speeds just might have more success.

Right now, though, the combination of hitters' focusing on launch angle and exit velocity and an increasing predictability of a pitcher's tendencies because of analytics combine to form the foundation for the additional home run numbers in Major League Baseball.  That is the counterargument to the notion that the balls are juiced.

It's just that contending that the balls are juiced is the easier argument, the one that draws headlines.

Except that it just well could be wrong.

Paul Holmgren's Departure from the Flyers

Mike Sielski is absolutely correct.  His column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer nails it.

The Flyers' organization has a problem, a big one at that.  It continues to permit the vastly overrated legacy of Ed Snider to rule the roost.  While the legatee in power -- Paul Holmgren -- departs, two of his Hall of Famers -- Bobby Clarke and Bill Barber -- still have significant influence within the organization.  This influence suggests that the organization is stuck in a doom loop of wishing that the past could recur, that these guys -- no matter how well intentioned -- seem intent on reprising the glory days in the same mold that they created them.

And that just has not happened, does not happen and will not happen.  Looking back turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt.  Focusing on the past has prevented this organization from winning a Stanley Cup in 44 seasons.  Oh, there were some trips to the Cup finals, but no Cup.  And in between?  Train wrecks or mediocrity.

The past -- when it happened -- was vigorous and exciting.  But then the Canadiens interrupted the Broad Street Bullies with a combination of skills (of which the Bullies did not have nearly as much) and toughness that enabled them to dethrone the champions and hold onto the cup for years, and then the Islanders skated around everyone for years more.  And then came a guy named Gretzky in Edmonton.

This organization has failed in so many ways.  It has failed to adapt.  It has failed to overcome the idolatry about Snider.  It has failed to overcome the idolatry over Clark, Barber and the Bullies.  Yes, there is a core group of fans -- some would suggest that the only fans the team has are those who go to the games and then, of course, those who support the team when they go on a winning streak.  Those fans for the most part keep on coming back.  Perhaps they are old, nostalgic, still yearn for fighting, old-time hockey, "putting on the foil."  Perhaps they just love hockey.  But the game has changed, times have changed, and yet the Flyers still keep on disappointing.

Mike Sielski has right.  Holmgren has departed, but nothing really has changed.  The team is what it's record say that it is.

Which is not very good.

The Phillies Could Have Themselves a Huge Dramatic Moment

The Phillies need pitching.

Desperately.

The Cubs need to make some decisions about whether to go for it or to trade some assets.

Cole Hamels might be available.

The Phillies traded him several years ago, at the end of the Ruben Amaro era, for a handful of prospects, none of whom has turned into a good player, at least just yet.  What they have to show for that trade, in part, is all-star catcher J.T. Realmuto, whom they received in a trade for several prospects, among them catcher Jorge Alfaro, who was one of the players received in the Hamels trade to the Texas Rangers.  Hamels didn't excel in Texas; he found some new life in Chicago.

Hamels made one of the all-time last starts in a team's uniform when he no-hit the Cubs in Wrigley.  That is not easy to do, and it was a great punctuation mark on an outstanding career in Philadelphia.  Remember this, since World War II, the Phillies have developed only five #1 starting pitchers -- Robin Roberts, Ferguson Jenkins (who was traded to the Cubs so early in the career that it is a stretch to take credit for him), Curt Schilling (okay, he bounced around, but he blossomed in Philadelphia), Hamels and now Aaron Nola.  That's it.  For what it's worth, the Phillies weren't so good at developing #1 starters before WWII, either.

So imagine that GM Matt Klentak gets on the phone with the Cubs' brass and talks a trade for Hamels, a hard worker, a cerebral pitcher, a clutch pitcher.  Imagine that it won't cost too much for a 35 year-old starter with a recent history of injuries.  That needs to be the case because the Phillies' farm system isn't the strongest these days.  Yes, they have some promising position players, but they are untouchable.  Pitching prospects seem the most likely to be dealt, and lesser ones than that because of Hamels' age.  Translated -- the team traded Sixto Sanchez to Miami in the Realmuto deal, so it's unlikely they'll trade one of their top three pitching prospects for Hamels.  But, seemingly, there is always a way to make a deal like this work.

And, if it were to work, imagine the turnout at Citizens Bank Park for Hamels' first start.  Ticket sales would rocket, and unless the temperature will traverse 95 degrees or the game will be played in a downpour, there will be a sellout.  Good feeling will abound, and the fans will leap to their feet the moment #35 walks out to the mound to take his first warm-up pitches.  The ovation will reverberate.  

Because that is how much Cole Hamels means to them.

He can come home.  

Now it's up to the Phillies' management to make it happen.

The U.S. Women's National Team -- Reflections

The first word that comes to mind when I think of this team is "juggernaut."  Another thought is a rap that the Oakland Raiders sang when they were the biggest, baddest team on the planet -- "we never retreat, we always attack."  This is the team that you hate to play but love them if they are the team from your town, reflecting the toughest and most relentless elements of the Raiders, "We are Family" Pittsburgh Pirates, the Splash Brothers, Steel Curtain, Green Bay Packers, New York Yankees and name any other dynasty for that matter.  This team does change up its roster every four years -- only a handful of starters from '15 started in '19 -- and it keeps on rolling.

And it seems that with its popularity, a strong pipeline of talent and competition down in the ranks that helps ensure that the best players surface, this team will keep on rolling forward.  In Rose Lavelle, they had a star and have their centerpiece for 2023.  Of this squad, Megan Rapinoe will be 38, Tobin Heath 36 and Alex Morgan 34 during the next go-round, so it figures that new players will rise up and have center stage.  Some will play a role, but if the powers that be hold true to form four years from now (and, no doubt, with advanced analytics will evolve their thinking even more), these folks will play diminished roles.  Rose Lavelle, Mallory Pugh and Tierna Davidson seem primed for greater ones.  The pipeline, to borrow a phrase from those studying whether to invest in pharmaceutical stocks, is loaded.  Bet against them at your own risk.

Those who formed the foundation of this effort, and those who continue the excellence, should be lauded for all their accomplishments.  They are huge, they are many, and they are inspiring.

While I'm at it, let's not avoid the quest for these women to get paid for their national club service at the same rate as the men.  We are not talking about whether a player for the Portland Thorns should make as much as a player for teams with much more revenue, enterprise value, endorsements and exposure, and neither are the members of the women's national team.  That is not the point of the lawsuit, whether, for example, someone for a professional women's team in the US league should make what her equivalent is making for Liverpool or Real Madrid.  What we are talking about is whether the players of the USWNT should make what the players on the USMNT should for their national team service.

The answer is a resounding yes, for many reasons.  First, they have earned it.  The women have put soccer on the US map more so than the men have.  I would argue that if soccer is more popular among young boys, it is because of the influence of the international stars and league more so than MLS and because finally many parents are waking up that kicking a ball is a healthier way for junior to spend his fall afternoons than banging heads on a gridiron.  Put differently, you can argue and win that the "brand equity" in the women's team is much greater than that of the men's team in the U.S.

How?  How many members of the U.S.men's team can the average fan name?  Christian Pulisic is the one that comes to mind.  True, he is very good, perhaps even the best player in U.S. history -- and he is only 20.  But his career has a long way to go and he needs to develop to become an international star.  Anyone who thinks he can replace Eden Hazard at Chelsea is mistaken right now -- Hazard is one of the top five players in the world.  He is very good.  But he is not at the elite level of his sport the way [fill in the blank -- Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Julie Ertz, Rose Lavelle] is in hers.  Many Americans can name more than a handful of the U.S. women's stars.  After Pulisic, most Americans will come up empty.

Second, the numbers have to add up, despite FIFA's emphasis on the men's game and the huge disparity of the dollars FIFA puts into the men's game versus the women's.  The TV ratings for the US women's team were great, and the results were terrific.  Contrast those ratings and the results of the U.S.men's team in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, a concoction of the regional soccer authority to create a tournament and opportunity for TV money for teams in various parts of the world during a year when there is not a World Cup or continental championship.  The ratings were not great, the stadiums were half empty and the US men's team once again fell short and lost to Mexico.  Not only that, but they lost to Mexico in the U.S.and in a stadium where Mexican national team jerseys far outnumbered (according to people who were there) U.S. men's national team jerseys.

Third, forgetting the economic arguments, it is the right thing to do, sends the right message and will not cost the US Soccer Federation all that much money (we're talking probably less than $3.5 million) to get the U.S. women on par with the U.S.  men.  US Soccer does not want to litigate this before a jury, especially right after a World Cup where the U.S. women made quite a statement.  The members of the US women's team agreed to mediation to take the temperature down and try to settle this matter reasonably, but remember that mediation is not arbitration.  If the parties cannot work out a deal in mediation, then litigation will continue.  And that will be bad for US Soccer and its governing body.  Even if it is right on some of the numbers -- numbers that are skewed because of FIFA's historic emphasis on the men's game and the money that FIFA can command from sponsors of the men's game -- US Soccer will not win.  Not providing equal pay to this juggernaut will stain US Soccer for a long time.  And let's face it, the women need this money to remain elite.  They do not command the sums that their male counterparts make in MLS (a second-tier league) or in Europe (for the few ambitious, aggressive, tough, and good enough to make a leap into top-tier leagues).  The gap in club team play -- and that is not at issue in the litigation -- is not even close.  If US Soccer wants the women's team to continue to excel, it needs to level the playing field when it comes to compensating members of the national team.

The time is right to do the right thing.

* * * * *

That the men's team trails the women's team in international success is no surprise.  There are several reasons for this.  First, soccer has not been a priority among boys in the United States since, well, forever.  In contrast, it has been the primary obsession in many other countries in the world -- for decades.  In short, the men's team started way behind and continues to be way behind, despite all the effort put into elevating the men's team to a level where it can be competitive with the top countries in the world.  Second, the team still is a game of the suburbs and the well off, for the most part, areas that do not always give rise to the hungriest, best or most talented athletes.  Look at stars in the NFL and NBA -- I am sure that almost none of them gave any thought to playing soccer.  But imagine if they did -- Allen Iverson as a center attacking midfielder, Calvin Johnson as a goalie, LeBron James as a striker, Dwayne Wade as holding midfielder.  The possibilities are endless.

The U.S. -- for men -- has many other sports that are key parts of its culture and have been for over a century.  It is difficult for soccer to compete with that.  Third, there is a culture of going to college -- at 18 -- and playing four years there.  In contrast, kids in Europe enter academies at very young ages and start playing for their clubs' youth teams thereafter.  By the time a kid is 18 in Europe he is expected to draw the notice of the manager of the top team within the club -- the one that competes in the likes of the English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, etc.  By the time a kid is 18 in the U.S. he might be a freshman at Indiana, playing against other collegians.  The contrast is striking, although it is changing (recent case in point -- the Philadelphia Union last season traded all of its draft picks as a concession that it is getting its best players from its academy, the way clubs do in Europe).  Almost no elite men's players come out of college -- they are just too far behind.

As former U.S.men's team player and current English Premier League player Geoff Cameron observed, unless and until the top players -- dozens of them -- play in the elite leagues in Europe and make the sacrifices that he did (moving to a small city, where it rains a lot, living in a small apartment, not knowing the culture) to play against the world's best, the U.S. will have difficulty competing against the world's best.  And before you start to argue that many of the USMNT players play in MLS, let me ask you this -- who would you pick to win a series -- the Miami Marlins, with all their flaws, or a team from AAA baseball, from Scranton or Lehigh Valley, Tidewater or wherever?  People make the show, the big club, for a reason.  They are that good, even if the Marlins in their current format are struggling.  In other words, the current model is not sustainable.

I went to the CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinals a week ago in Philadelphia and texted my son afterwards that the four players who distinguished themselves were Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tim Ream and Zack Steffen.  His response -- well, sure, because they are the four guys who play in Europe.  The rest of the guys lacked the zing and oomph that you see in an average Premier League match, even between teams at the bottom of the standings.

Even with all of the U.S.'s resources, even with a country that is the fifth-most populated country in the world, even with all of the thinking involved, the U.S. remains an also-ran for men's soccer in the world.  Soccer has made gains, but you can argue that the popularity of the best teams from the elite leagues in the world comprise part of the new-found popularity.  Witness the crowds at bars to cheer on teams in the Champions League final or during the home stretch of the unprecedented dog fight in the Premier League between Man City and Liverpool.  But that still does not mean that the kid who is the outstanding option quarterback in Tyler, Texas (but undersized for FBS football) or the kid who is the 5'6" point guard in Indianapolis putting up 28 points a game) are even considering soccer as an option.  And I'm not talking about every kid considering soccer over football, basketball and baseball first.  I'm just talking about 20% of them, with equal access (translated, let's have academies where professional teams pay for the kids as opposed to access determined because parents can pay for all the fees that go into travel sports).  The culture that the U.S. has helps ensure that the men's team will be climbing a steep hill without much of a chance to win more than one game in the knockout round for the World Cup for decades to come.

Assuming, of course, it can get out of its own qualifying region.

The women, in contrast, have made the most of their opportunities.  Let's face it, field hockey and lacrosse are easy to compete with, and not every kid plays basketball.  The advent of Title IX created massive opportunities for women in sports in the U.S., and soccer eagerly and happily filled the vacuum (hoops did too).  You can argue that the best athletes among girls who were not going into basketball were going into soccer; there were no equivalents for football and even baseball (although softball has made great strides).  And the rest of the world had showed the chauvinism that the U.S. did by not putting money into its girls' and women's programs that it did for the men.  To make a long story short, the U.S. women did not have to overcome two things that the men's team has had to overcome and failed -- the ingrained culture of other major men's sports in the U.S. and decades' long lead that other nations had over it with respect to soccer.  The U.S. women, in short, could start say thirty years ago mostly on a level playing field; it was not playing from way behind.

And those in charge of the U.S. women's game applied mythical and historical U.S. ingenuity to the women's game, and fast.  Great athletes flocked to the sport (although not from economically disadvantaged areas -- not everyone can be perfect, at least not yet), and the numbers were there to foster intense competition that helped the best players -- the Michelle Akers, the Mia Hamms -- to rise to the top.  And stay there.  The U.S. women's team has created a great culture of excellence to help ensure continued success; the men's team has not.  Yes, the obstacles for the men have been tougher, but those obstacles have existed for half a century at least -- without that much improvement in terms of the team's overall record.  The women's team has established a high standard; the men's team has yet to crack the code.

I cheer hard for both teams.  I admire the women for their grit, determination and skill.  I root for the men with more optimism, knowing, though, that until the top 100 U.S. men's players play for club teams in Europe, until the top athletes in the U.S. pick soccer, until there is better access for kids from the cities to play soccer, and until the U.S. men's team establish a deep culture of the academy system that exists in Europe, not much will change for them.

It is a tale of two teams, a tale of contrasts, a tale of relativity, a tale of rapid ascension, a tale of utter frustration, a tale of two cultures, a tale unique to the United States.  Let's make sure to honor the excellent -- the women's team is what its record says it is -- outstanding!  And let's hope that U.S. soccer can give us a men's team that is worthy of mention in the same breath as the women's.

Until then, the women's team deserves more praise and more attention.

And equal pay.

The US Men's National Team -- CONCACAF Gold Cup Quaterfinals

I went to the match at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

A few observations:

1.  The US Men's team still is not a draw.  Don't blame Philadelphia.  26,000 people did come out -- they would have filled a US soccer-sized stadium.

2.  The US has roughly 320 million people.  Curacao has 161,000.  So, the U.S. something like 2,000 times the size of Curacao.

3.  The US got off to a hot start, and you thought that they would go on to score four goals.  At least.  But something crazy happened after 15 minutes.  The US slowed down its attack, dramatically, and the mighty Curacao team did not flinch when under pressure.  They were patient with the ball, and they picked spots when they used their speed.

4.  Zack Steffen, who made two great saves, was the man of the match.  Had he not made either, Curacao would have won.  He plays overseas.

5.  The US's only goal was a Chelsea-Schalke combination, with Christian Pulisic making a great cross to Weston McKennie.

6.  Only Tim Ream was playing really solidly on the back line.  He, too, plays overseas.

7.  No one else distinguished himself, and Michael Bradley at holding midfielder looked well past his prime.

If this is the best lineup the US can field, it has a million kilometers to travel before it can challenge and defeat the world's powers. The team lacked talent, creativity, zing and oomph.  It played half asleep through most of the match, failing to show energy at critical times.  This lackluster effort should suggest to coach Berhalter that he experiment with his lineups and put in some players with better motors than the guys he had in there.  And, oh, sure, Jozy Altidore was not available, but his absence was not the sole or even primary source of the team's woes.

There just was not enough there there.  The U.S. needs to do better, be crisper, be quicker, and show more decisiveness in order to improve.  Pulisic has it.  The question is, how many of the other outfield players do?

The Philadelphia 76ers -- The Emperor is Naked

People tell themselves lies to get through the day.

People tell people what they want to hear so that they continue to have access to them, to feed at their trough and to remain relevant and important.

People look at things through the lenses they have and know, but perhaps not through the lenses they should expend the effort to deploy.

All of these observations apply to the Philadelphia 76ers and the moves that they just made.

The actions of ownership in the post-Sam Hinkie era continue to fail to impress me and continue to fail.  Ownership let the league foist Jerry Colangelo (who had a hidden agenda) and his son Bryan (who was less than competent) on the team, disrupting an innovative theory that Sam Hinkie had put into place.  Post-Colangelo, the team hired Elton Brand to be their General Manager.  Brand had a long career and had a reputation as a good teammate, but his experience as GM prior to last season was one season as a GM -- of the team's G-League team.  The last time I checked, the job responsibilities did not include massaging the egos of stars, dealing with the agents of good NBA players, dealing with a salary cap or the league's labyrinthine rules about salaries.   Brand was a guppy in a league full of sharks.

So what happened yesterday?  The 76ers let Jimmy Butler walk, figuring that at age 29 he was not worthy of a five-year max deal because instead of focusing on winning soon they were worried that they would be saddled with his contract at age 34.  Translated -- they let the guy walk who was one of the two adults in the room during the playoffs, where a much different type of basketball is played.  They let the guy walk who you wanted to have the ball in crunch time.  The only guy on the roster who you wanted to have the ball during crunch time.  And they did not replace him with anyone who you want to have the ball during crunch time.  And they also did not replace him with anyone who can run a half court offense the way he did, even if he was out of position, so bad was the 76ers' situation at guard.

They also let JJ Redick walk.  Apparently, they tried to play hardball with a guy who enjoyed the city and the team, and who was one of Joel Embiid's two favorite players on the team not named Joel Embiid, the other being Butler.  Redick is a perpetual motion machine, in great shape, and a guy who can shoot the three consistently.  Not only has the team lost a leader, it also has lost one of its best shooters.  What compounds this problem is that the team's other young star (allegedly) is Ben Simmons, who does not shoot and probably right now cannot shoot.  Take way an outside threat like Redick and teams will pack in defenses and double- and perhaps triple-team one of the league's best players in Embiid.

Management was active and is taking a victory lap over its moves.  The spin is that they will have the best starting lineup in the league, one of the best defensive teams in the league and one of the tallest starting lineups in league history.  But remember that some reporters usually spin things positively because if they get too critical or too negative their sources will dry up.  Access at times for the media is more cherished than accuracy, if only because the competition to break a story is so keen.  Translated, don't believe all of the positives you read.

The 76ers gave a max deal to Tobias Harris, for whom they paid a steep price mid-season last season.  To Harris's credit, he endured during the 76ers' season if only because chances to practice and mesh with his teammates were very limited, and few plays were designed for him.  That said, as celebrated a talent evaluator as Jerry West traded Harris precisely because he did not think Harris to be worthy of a max deal, saw him as a nice guy without a killer instinct who is a third option on a good team.  Now, the 76ers are paying him money usually reserved for a superstar and asking him to be the second top force on offense next to Embiid.  That's a lot of money and it could be a big ask.  The team was more willing of give Harris a max deal because a) he is three years younger than Butler and b) in all likelihood easier to manage.  That said, how many teams' true mega-stars are not at times combustible hot-blooded competitors who want to win so badly?  Put differently, Harris has a lot to prove.  Butler had much less to prove.  And Harris has to show he can take over a game in crunch time.

The 76ers signed Butler and traded him to the Heat for Josh Richardson, a decent defender whose shooting tailed off miserably at the end of last season.  Many are touting this as a brilliant move, but Richardson is not an elite player the way Butler is and has to shoot very well to replace not only Butler but also Redick.  That's a big ask, and it's an even bigger ask to say that yes, it will be Josh Richardson who can take over a game in crunch time in the playoffs.  Butler could.

The team also signed thirty-three year-old Al Horford to a four-year deal that could be worth $109 million, when they could have had Julius Randle for a lot less, Julius Randle the true four.  Okay, Randle might have a few unpolished spots, and Horford is a respected veteran, but he has played the five his entire career and is 33 years old.  He will be 37 when his contract expires.  So the logic about Butler doesn't make sense if Butler would have been 34 at the end of his contract while Horford will be 37 at the end of his sizable deal.  Sure, he gave the 76ers fits by compelling Embiid to come outside the arc to guard him, but how can he complement Embiid?  This transaction is a puzzler.

The team still has little in the way of a bench.  It still has no one who can guard a speedy, scoring guard for an opponent.  How many times did an opponent's guard torch the 76ers last season?  Joel Embiid has yet to prove he can get into shape and stay on the floor.  And, most of all, Ben Simmons still cannot shoot.  The latter's lack of a shot is the biggest gating item for the team's elevation to the elite level in the league.  If Ben can hit outside shots consistently, you can make a good argument that he becomes the best player in the league.  If Ben can hit outside shots consistently, then he can take over in crunch time.  If Ben can hit outside shots consistently, then opponents cannot double team other 76ers.  If Ben can hit outside shots consistently, the team can win 65 games and get to the league finals.

What seems more likely is that it will take 12 games to get the chemistry right, maximize the strengths and expose the holes.  The team needs shooters to take the pressure off Embiid.  It needs defenders who can neutralize the Irvings, the Walkers, the Lillards and even those at the next few levels down who have tormented the team.

The 76ers' moves yesterday are nothing to do cartwheels over or get excited about.  It is unclear whether the team got any better.  The team's great spin machine will tell you that this is part of the process and that this is the best lineup since the team with Doc, Moses Malone, Andrew Toney and Mo Cheeks.  They will tell you that they will stifle opponents and run by them.  They will tell you a lot of things.

The problem is, they already have over the past five years.

And how has that worked out -- for them and for you?