The NBA's Identity Crisis

Last night, the Knicks made a statement when they beat the Heat 91-86 in a nail-biter. The game was exactly the type of game that the NBA has been waiting to market to its fans, filled with big names like LeBron, Wade, Bosh, Carmelo, A'mare and even Chauncey Billups. The NBA is finally back to being exciting again, and David Stern must be jumping for joy over the fact that New York once again has a great basketball team, and that the Knicks-Heat rivalry is on its way to being renewed.

Ever since Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett joined forces in Boston, it seems as if the new fad in the NBA is friends creating super-teams. This past summer for example, LeBron decided to take his talents to South Beach to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Heat. Now the Knicks are hoping to form a similar trio of superstars; in addition to signing A'mare Stoudemire this past summer, the Knicks recently acquired Carmelo Anthony to form a dynamic duo and a trio if you count Billups. Based on what happens with the labor situation in the NBA this summer and whether a hard salary cap is installed or not, there are rumors floating around that Chris Paul or Dwight Howard may be the next big acquisition for the Knicks this upcoming summer.

On the surface, these super-teams seem great for league publicity, as it seemed as if ESPN was on constant LeBron watch for a week during last summer's free agency, something I know I followed every hour of every day. The teams also provide great games to watch; Sunday games featuring teams like the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks and Heat make for some of the best entertainment in sports. So sure, it's nice to have the big talent in the big cities, but with the majority of the NBA's top 10 players in four markets, what are the 26 other NBA teams left with? Not much.

There is only so much grade-A talent to go around and if it all goes to the same place, a lot of teams are going to be left out of the picture. The quality of basketball that the majority of the country will be seeing, especially fans living in small markets, will plunge dramatically, and the marketability of teams in small markets, who may have even less of an ability to attract big names, will also go downhill. As a result, fans of these teams will instead turn to their city or state's other sports teams, opting for the likes of college basketball, baseball or God forbid, hockey.

The league can always take the road of promoting big market teams however, and hope that fans from small markets without big stars tune in not just to watch their local team, but also to watch the superstar teams that are beginning to take shape. If the NBA markets its big teams the right way and is able to have at least one big game most nights of the week, ratings may keep going up and the NBA may keep making gains in popularity.

Of course, there is always the possibly of contraction. A lot of the small market teams were already losing money before super-teams started forming - hence the possibility of a lockout this summer. However, if the NBA decides to cut some franchises, the amount of talent on each team would increase, and the gap between the top teams and the bottom teams would diminish. This move would also bring back the attention of fans in smaller markets whose teams would get a boost. Cutting teams like the Clippers and Nets, who have other franchises like the Lakers and Knicks for fans to switch allegiances to could be a good move; the NBA saves money without losing fans.

The league is undergoing a huge transition phase right now. Its young stars - from the 2003 and 2005 drafts especially - are now all grown up, and entering their primes. The magnitude of talent that the NBA currently has does not come around very often; the league better know how to use it.

Revenge of the Nerds

Most teams don't dwell too long on one victory with coaches always pushing their players to move on to the next game, but with Caltech, the coach may be encouraging his players to dwell on this victory for as long as possible. Why? Because Caltech's win over Occidental College the other night was the team's first conference win since January 23, 1985.

Caltech probably went into their game Wednesday night with the same feeling that they've gone into every conference game with, looking optimistic on the outside, but feeling gloomy, distressed and fearful on the inside. There was no reason to feel very optimistic; the Caltech Beavers had lost their last 310 games against fellow teams from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference; no one on the team was even been born the last time Caltech men's basketball won a game. Their opponent Occidental College was 12-13 on the year, not great but better than Caltech's 5-20 overall record. So why would this game be any different than the rest of them? Because of a senior named Ryan Elmquist.

Elmquist, a computer science major and future software engineer for Google, had one free throw to hit to win his first conference game as a Caltech Beaver. Elmquist, a forward/center, has by no means been automatic from the charity line - on the year, he had only managed to hit just over two-thirds of his free throws - but with 3.3 seconds, in his last game as a Beaver, he let it rain from the line and finally, the streak was over.

Slumps are scary, aggravating, unnerving, etc. for athletes, for coaches, for fans, for everyone involved with the team that is going through the slump. There is an unmentioned feeling that everyone on the team has, a questioning of one's ability and whether they actually are as good as the team on the other side of the court is. The longer a team goes without winning, the more it forgets about what it feels like to win, and the more it expects to lose. And on top of that, I'm sure at least one guy on the Caltech team was calculating the probability of the team winning any of its conference games, a number that was probably never too promising.

But slumps do end - teammates pick each other up, helping one another work things out, doing whatever possible to accomplish the task at hand, to win a game. And maybe that's the main reason why slumps and losing streaks end, because athletes live in the moment, not focusing on the past or future, only the present, only the singular game at hand. In that moment there are no other games to worry or think about, no losing streak to fret about, no slump to agonize over, just the one single game to win.

The Caltech student body may not dwell too long on this win; Caltech is more of a school concerned with winning Nobel Prizes (which they have 31 of) than athletics (Caltech has year-in and year-out been the laughing stock of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in all sports, besides fencing, the one sport Caltech is D-I in). Still, those linked to Caltech basketball will most certainly be savoring this win for a long time, because as they can attest to, no team ever knows whether its next win will come tomorrow or twenty-six years from now.

Is Baseball Back?

From now on, all of my stories will feature story highlights, outlining the arguments and points I will be making in the story. Enjoy the new feature:

• NFL Lockout may increase popularity of MLB
• More fantasy baseball players may help baseball's popularity
• Younger players in small markets are key to growth of baseball
  

For the past decade, while football has rapidly gained popularity, baseball has sunk into obscurity. America's pastime has become a thing of the past, too slow-paced and long-winded for a modern audience that lives in a fast-paced world and has a seemingly short attention span.

But an impending NFL lockout might just be the thing that delivers Major League Baseball from dark times. This past year, for the first time ever, an NFL game garnered more viewers than a World Series game; The Sunday Night Football match-up between the Steelers and Saints drew 18.1 million viewers compared to the 15.5 million people that tuned in to Game 4 of the World Series. Even though the next night, the World Series had a 10.6 rating, compared to Monday Night Football's 8.6 rating, a game which featured the Colts and the Texans, the World Series game that night was the clinching game for the Giants, making it reasonably more popular.

If there is no football to watch in early September, sports fans will have to rationally turn to the next best thing, the MLB playoffs. If the MLB is lucky enough to have big market teams make it deep into those playoffs, you can bet that more and more people will be reaching into the depths of their closets, brushing the cobwebs off of their baseball jerseys and tuning into baseball games.

Another reason that the MLB may benefit from an NFL lockout is because of fantasy sports. Fantasy football nerds - the smart ones at least - may be turning to fantasy baseball this year, in fear that a lockout may shorten or even completely cancel their fantasy football season. You gotta get your fantasy fill somehow right? Currently an estimated 18 million Americans play fantasy football, as compared to 7 million Americans playing fantasy baseball. That means at least an additional 11 million Americans could be turning to fantasy baseball to get their fill. With fantasy baseball being more of a commitment with games being played every day, it is possible that millions of people that usually would only be football fans will start following baseball extremely closely.

Another big reason that baseball is on the rise is that currently, Major League Baseball is undergoing a transition of popularity from its old stars like Jeter and A-Rod over to younger guys like Hanley Ramirez, Joey Votto, Ryan Braun, Evan Longoria, Carlos Gonzalez, Robinson Cano and Tim Lincecum. These youngsters are presumably steroid-free, and best of all many of them play in small markets, big stars in little cities. Without the NFL, many sports fans in small markets will only have their baseball teams to look forward to; the only towns that have NFL teams but no MLB teams are Buffalo, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte and New Orleans and some of those cities will have teams in-state or close-by to adopt in September.

Small market teams like the Twins, Reds and Rockies are looking poised to make the playoffs this year, and may just create the most excitement out of any team with the core of young stars that each team has. And if there is one thing the MLB needs right now its excitement, and a group of young stars to reach its toughest demographic: kids. Just look at the NBA; when young guys like LeBron, Wade, Carmelo, Dwight Howard, etc. took over the league from guys like Shaquille O'Neal, Allen Iverson and Karl Malone, the league was revitalized, and the NBA got as much attention as it did during the Jordan days.

As the shadow that steroids have casted over the sport for the past decade dissipates, the NFL struggles to get a new collective bargaining agreement done, and rising young stars continue to join MLB's ranks in small markets, Major League Baseball is looking poised to make a comeback. Baseball may not return to prominence as America's favorite sport, but it will certainly regain some of the viewership that it lost the past few decades while the NFL took over the sports world.

New York Basketball Is Back

Last night, New York basketball was born again, or at least so we think.

Around 11 pm last night, news broke that the Knicks had acquired Carmelo Anthony in a blockbuster trade. The Knicks gave up Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Timofey Mozgov, a 2014 first round draft pick and $3 million for Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter and former Knick Renaldo Balkman.

Some Knick fans are lamenting the loss of Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler, complaining that the Knicks gave up to much for one guy. They are upset about all the "fake" Knick fans coming out and supporting the trade and the team. Well you know what I say? Let 'em, let the people who have not been to or watched a game in years, pull their Knick jerseys out of the back of their closets and make a mad rush on Madison Square Garden for games. The Garden needs to be back to being the arena it was in the 90s, full of life and most importantly, hosting a good basketball team.

One of the most important thing to realize when looking at this trade is that essentially, the Knicks are giving up Gallinari, Felton, Mozgov and a first round pick for Carmelo, Billups and the rest of the gang. You have to discount Chandler because he becomes a restricted free agent this off-season, and had the Knicks not included him in the trade and had still gotten Melo, they would not have been able to re-sign Chandler anyway. Also, Felton was not going to be a long-term Knick; whether or not the Knicks traded for Melo, they surely would have been gunning for Chris Paul or another big time point guard in the off-season or future. Then there is Timofey Mozgov who despite a 23 point, 14 rebound game a couple of weeks ago, does not seem to have much potential. The only real big loss here is Danilo, who was a great, developing young player, despite being doubted coming into the league by many (including me).

Let's not forget that the Knicks are not only getting Carmelo; Chauncey Billups isn't chopped liver. Granted he's 34 years old but he has had two of his best years the past two seasons with Denver. For the past eight full seasons that he has had (not counting 2008-09 when he only played in two games) he has averaged above 16 points per game, and so far, this season has been his best ever scoring-wise. Felton is younger and is also having a great year but the Knicks needed veteran leadership, which is what Billups can provide.

New York City is not a football town, and it's not even a baseball town; at its core, New York is a basketball town, and it finally deserves to have some star power again. It sounds and probably is ethnocentric coming from a New Yorker, but New York is not supposed to have some middle-of-the-road team with boring, middle-of-the-road players playing in the most famous arena and the most famous city in the world. Even if the Knicks did have to dump what seems like their whole roster to get Melo, they needed another big name, and now they have set themselves up to acquire another big name this off-season; some rumors have included Chris Paul and Dwight Howard coming to Broadway. Of course it could be tough to pay another star, with the tumultuous labor situation in the NBA, and a hard salary cap looking likely, but at least the Knicks are finally in a good position to get some talent to surround a solid core.

The Knicks are not the only New York team who is back in action after a decade-long hiatus. The St. John's Red Storm found its way into the Top 25 this week for the first time in 11 years. Under the leadership of Steve Lavin, the Johnnies have made college basketball relevant again in NYC. The Red Storm, at 17-9 overall and 9-5 in the conference, should have as strong of a resume as anyone going into the conference tournaments, especially with wins over then-No. 13 Georgetown, No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 3 Duke, No. 10 UConn and most recently, No. 4 Pittsburgh.

The Red Storm have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2002, and being a team with nine seniors, this may be the year they make some noise in the tourney. Of course, if they do not do it this year, like the Knicks, they are set up to keep winning for a long time. So far this year, Steve Lavin, has pulled together the second best recruiting class in the nation according to ESPN.com, with six players from ESPNU's Top 100 recruits.

It will be tough to tell what the future exactly holds for the Knicks and the Red Storm, two teams that know all to well what it is like to have their dreams and high hopes shattered. Let's face it, the Knicks are still terrible defensively and may not be able to get another big name this off-season, while the Red Storm are losing nine proven seniors this year, and welcoming six highly-ranked but still unproven freshmen. Still, with Carmelo and A'mare it would be tough for the Knicks to falter and not be a top team within a few years and with the Red Storm, it seems as if they are back on their way to becoming the Beast of the Big East that they haven't been in ten, arguably twenty-five years.

The cynics and pessimists have every right to question how good New York basketball will really be in the future after the suffering of the last decade, but with the talent assembled recently by both teams and the position of New York as the Mecca of Basketball, I think it is safe to say that Madison Square Garden is back to being alive and very, very well.

LeBron James: Even Better Than We Thought

It's been a long time since the debate of Kobe vs. LeBron has been raised, being that Kobe just won his fifth title and LeBron has become everyone's least favorite person behind Tiger Woods and President Hosni Mubarak for going to the Miami Heat. Well, new evidence has come to light to show us once again that yes, LeBron is better than Kobe.

No, the new evidence is not the Lakers' recent struggles nor LeBron's unbelievable season thus far (the man is averaging 26.1 PPG, 7.2 RPG and 7.3 APG) nor the fact that he is the only non point guard in the top 25 in APG this year (he ranks 13th), even though he's a forward. OK, maybe it is a little bit about those things, but the best evidence that shows how good LeBron really is, is the fact that the Cavaliers have lost 25 straight games, more than 30% of their NBA season and the longest losing streak in NBA history.

Woah, woah, woah, hold the phone. Let's pause for questions. Do I mean the same Cavaliers that went 61-21 last year and 66-16 the year before that (both of which were the best records in basketball their respective seasons)? Those Cavs? Yes, that is exactly the team I am talking about.

What is the difference from last year then? Well, there is no more Zydrunas Ilgauskas, whose softness down low must be truly missed. Then there's Shaquille O'Neal, whose immobility and old age must be heartbreaking for the Cavaliers not to have this season (I'm sorry, I still love you Shaq). Maybe it's Mike Brown? You mean the guy the Cavs paid to sit on the bench and watch LeBron? Even if these guys did have some positive impact, which they did, it is obvious that 99.9999...% of the problem is the absence of LeBron.

It can be argued that the Cavs are extremely bad this year because LeBron did not give them enough time to go out and get free agents. The first response to this is that LeBron made his announcement only a week into free agency, and the second response is that even if the big stars had still been around, they probably would not find the idea of going to a Cleveland-less LeBron very enticing. Most of the stars got max contracts from either their own team or other teams in big cities, so why would any big star have gone to Cleveland?

So how can one player have that big of an impact? Because great players like LeBron - and dare I say MJ in the same sentence as any other player - are not only themselves great, but they make everyone else around them great, and therefore make the team as a whole great. That is exactly what LeBron did in Cleveland, but he never won any titles; well it is now clear that the reason for that was, LeBron was surrounded by the worst supporting cast known to man while he was on the Cavs. Yet, unlike Kobe Bryant ever did on his own, LeBron was able to constantly win with such a bad team in the regular season.

So let's get to Kobe. As we all know, Mr. Bryant has a more than impressive resume; 5 NBA titles, 13 time All-Star and one MVP award all make him one of the best players of all-time. But, the first bone to pick with those stats, is that all of those titles were won with an All-Star supporting cast. When Kobe won the first three of his titles, he was a sidekick to Shaq (who won all three Finals MVP awards in the three-peat and one MVP in the first of those years). Then, tensions between Shaq and Kobe became unbearable, and when it was clear one of them had to go, the Lakers smartly gave the boot to Shaq, who was exiting his prime, and gave the team to Kobe, who was entering his.

So how'd Kobe do as the ringleader? The first year without Shaq, the Lakers did not even reach the playoffs, going 34-48. The next two years the team barely managed to make it over .500, losing in the first round of the playoffs in both years.

So under Kobe, in what was the prime of his career both age and stat-wise, the Lakers were a mediocre team. The Western Conference during that time was extremely good, but the talent in the Eastern Conference over the past few years that LeBron had to face has been almost just as talented.

Then in 2007, the Lakers started winning. Does that mean that Kobe became a better leader? No, the wins started coming because the Lakers acquired Pau Gasol, Trevor Ariza and Derek Fisher. Surely, it is impressive on Kobe's part that he won the last two titles and has made the finals the last three years, but the facts show that he can only win when surrounded by a huge amount of talent.

Kobe is an outstanding and clutch player; his ability to make seemingly any jump shot on the court astounds me. But he is not in the top tier of greatness. Those spots are reserved for the MJs, the Magics, the Birds, the Wilts, the Kareems, the Russells and the LeBrons of the world (in no particular order), guys that can win and make their teammates better no matter how bad those teammates are. Being a great player is not just about excelling on your own, it is about helping everyone around you excel and leading your entire team to victory.

The James-less Cavaliers who only lost 21 games all of last year with LeBron, have lost 25 straight without him; that is not opinion, those are the cold hard facts, do with them what you wish.