Begging to Differ

Why the Miami Heat's winning streak is not all it's cracked up to be

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I'm getting tired of this.

Once again, for reasons unknown, it falls to me to point out what should be obvious to everyone.

If you have the slightest interest in sports, and have not been living under a rock these past two months, you know that as of this writing, the Miami Heat have won 25 games in a row. And all the sports media types have been stumbling all over themselves to celebrate the team's apotheosis.

We haven't seen this much Kool-Aid imbibed since Georgetown, Guyana in '78.

Clearly, I'm not as impressed by this achievement as everyone else. The reasons for this should be obvious; unfortunately, we seem to have reached a point in human history where the obvious no longer catches the eye of anyone blessed with a media pulpit, so I will attempt to set the record straight and explain why this performance--while noteworthy and respectable--falls short of the Olympian heights to which the NBA's press flacks wish to raise it.

First, there is the matter of the Heat, who plays for the Heat, and how they got there. I discussed this issue nearly two years ago on this site (see Miami's Vice, from June 2011). All the points made in that essay remain very much in play to this day. It should be no wonder that the collusion worked by James, Wade, and Bosh--which (as I pointed out then) damaged the game's competitive balance--would lead to this kind of result down the road. How do you expect other teams to compete against the squad that has hoarded a plurality of the league's best players? It stands to simple reason that the hoarding team will be able to dominate its competition to an exaggerated degree. The only thing exceptional about winning 25 games in a row is the fact that the streaking team has refused to take a night off and mail one in for such a long stretch of the schedule.

And remember, James and Bosh came to the Heat from other Eastern Conference teams (Cleveland and Toronto, respectively). No surprise then that the moves that weakened those two franchises would pay dividends down the road for the stars' new team. And, indeed, four of the Heat's 25 consecutive wins came against the two teams abandoned by Miami's prized additions.

That, of course, reflects a larger reality within the Heat's winning streak: beating up on Eastern Conference teams. The Heat, in winning their 25 games, have done so against only eight Western Conference teams (one game apiece against each of those teams). And of those Western teams, only five would make the playoffs today (Minnesota, Portland, and Sacramento are on the outside looking in, and will almost certainly remain there). That leaves 17 wins collected against the teams of the notoriously weaker Eastern Conference. Only six of those games against Eastern teams featured squads in playoff position.

So when we break down those 25 wins, we find that only 11 of those victories came against good teams. And, as noted before, there's a dearth of solid competition in the league because...hello!...most of the best players play for the Heat.

One game that many thought might snap the streak, against the Celtics on March 18, proved to be challenging but ultimately victorious for Miami. Perhaps Boston could have put up a better fight if the injured Kevin Garnett had played in the game. Or maybe the Celtics could have prevailed if they had kept one of their recent star players, Ray Allen, on the team. Of course, Allen now plays for...wait for it...the Miami Heat.

Thus, it's no surprise that the Heat, having plucked several of the best players away from their competition, are now dominating that rest of the league.

As they say on late night TV ads, "But wait...there's more!"

One of the favorite lines of hype, employed by the media lickspittles when waxing poetic about Miami's streak, is how the Heat are achieving something "historic" in winning this many games in a row. In more than one sense, this is true--but not necessarily in the way these pundits mean.

That the Heat have achieved the second longest winning streak in NBA history is undeniable. If they match or beat the Lakers' record 33 game streak, that will be a laudable accomplishment. The streak's value will be debatable (see above), especially if the team does not win the championship in June. But the trouble with this winning run is that it serves as yet more evidence that the NBA has a problem with delivering a truly competitive sport.

The game's history shows that dominance by one team (or, at best, two teams) during a given period of NBA history is not an anomaly--it is very much the norm. In the very beginning (during the late 1940s and early 1950s), the Minneapolis Lakers repeatedly prevailed. Eventually, the Celtics took the mantle and ran with it (championships consecutively from 1959 to 1967, with three other wins bookending the run). After the interregnum of the 1970s (when the title changed hands frequently among several teams, probably because of the competing presence of the ABA), we had the NBA's alleged Golden Age in the 1980s, when every championship except two was won by either the Lakers or the Celtics (only Philadelphia in '83 and Detroit in '89 crashed the two-team party). During the '80s, only five teams even played in the Finals. The 1990s saw six championships for the Bulls--a streak broken only because of Michael Jordan's fanciful two-year excursion through baseball's minor leagues. Competition during recent years has been slightly more open, but the turn of the 21st century still saw the Lakers add five titles in eleven years (and they lost two other Finals in the same period).

Noticing a pattern here? The history of the NBA can be summed up simply: flat out dominance by (usually) one team. Again and again, one team in the league has stood head and shoulders above the rest, often for years at a time. That such supremacy has not resulted in lengthy winning streaks more often should probably be chalked up more to fluke than a level playing field. Past teams, just as dominant as the Heat in today's NBA, may have taken their foot off the gas to rest up for the playoffs, rather than go all out looking to etch their names into the record books. Or perhaps, back in the day when the competition was better, they never got rolling on a long streak to begin with.

However the details may have played out, history shows that the Heat's standing within the league is not something exceptional and rare, but is in fact par for the course.

Indeed, seeing Miami dominate the league to this extent, and recognizing the flaws in the rest of the league that have helped create this streak, actually works to downgrade the accomplishments of past teams. That championship run forged by the Celtics in the '60s has always had a mythic aura to it; we've come to view that achievement as something almost herculean in scope, as heroic as any deeds reported in the Illiad or the Odyssey. But when viewed with a more jaundiced eye, when analyzed via the intelligence that has been honed by studying the causes and effects of the Heat's run, the shining victories of the past start to dim. Such superiority is simply what always happens in the NBA.

All of this truth telling comes from fairly straightforward analysis that can be done even by amateur sportswriters such as myself. No particular secret wisdom is required to see what there is to see in Miami's streak, and thus to keep the hyperventilating to a minimum. Instead, we get hysterical hype, ad nauseum. This failing by the sports media echoes the blindness we saw a few years ago--those same shortcomings I called out in the post referenced above. Those failings may ultimately prove to be one of the truest legacies of LeBron James's career: his actions, his team's exploits, have provided a backdrop against which the shallowness, the amateurism, the outright incompetence of what is currently alleged to be sports journalism have been exposed.

Sports fans deserve true reporting and insightful analysis; instead, all they get are shameless shills and hagiography. The Heat may keep winning; but the sports fans will continue to lose when it comes to what they get from the people reporting on the games.

Reel Reviews

Captain America: The First Avenger (+) -- This may very well be the most comic book of all comic book movies ever made; you can practically see the panels and the block lettering. Some of the action sequences are among the most audacious I've ever laid eyes on, and that helps; so too does the almost atomic perfection of the recreation of the period setting. The script even pokes fun at what is obviously a fairly ridiculous, propagandistic character, and then takes all the right steps to redeem him and make him worth cheering for. Nice work. Posted 3/24/13.

Recently Read

A twofer for one of my favorite authors!

Once Upon a Time in the North
by Philip Pullman

It's been such a long time since I've had the chance to dig into anything by Philip Pullman. Part of the blame falls with me, as I've been wandering further afield, and part must fall on Pullman, who has been lax lately when it comes to producing works that just scream "Read me!" (More on this matter below.)

Once Upon A Time In The North
by Phillip Pullman

Here's a case in point: the novella Once Upon a Time in the North, the second short story entry into the His Dark Materials canon (the first being Lyra's Oxford). Since the HDM books were the magnet that drew me to Pullman in the first place, and still retain their place in my pantheon of favorite books, I felt true delight when I discovered (thanks to a library catalog search) that there was another addition to the series. Add in the fact that it's a story focused on the early career of Lee Scoresby and his soul-mate hare Hester--two of the best characters in the original trilogy--and I was ticked a ruddy shade of pink.

And Once Upon a Time in the North delivers the goods: the witty Texan Scoresby and his snap-tounged Hester are in fine form this quick moving adventure tale of a couple of hairy (harey?) days in an Arctic town. It is a delight to spend a few more minutes with Lee and Hester, who are characters a reader wants to follow anywhere: brave, smart, able, and only lightly touched by a non-incapacitating cynicism.

Unfortunately, minutes are all we get here. While brevity may be the soul of wit, and 96 small pages do serve to tell the story of the pair's involvement in a bit of local politics--with a touch of mayhem and potential murder thrown in to keep things exciting--the ultimate outcome is to leave the reader wanting so much more. It seems unlikely that we're going to get more; Pullman produced Once Upon a Time... back in 2008, and the HDM trail seems, in the intervening years, to have grown colder than Iorek Byrnison's Arctic homeland. The failure of the film version of The Golden Compass may have made that inevitable; perhaps Pullman has pulled up creative stakes and headed for greener literary pastures.

Still, Once Upon a Time... demonstrates how robust and rich a source the HDM world could still be, if the author is so inclined. Other characters from the original work could have their own past/origin stories brought to fruition and presented to an eager reading public. And for those who are not already fans, Once Upon a Time...  (or similar series-based novellas) could serve as a terrific intro to the wider works: a brief, excellent, entertaining entryway for those not already familiar with just how good Pullman and his work can be.

At the very least, I am grateful I had the chance to get a little more joy from one of my most loved literary adventures. And I'll welcome any more chances to reenter that world, should they come down the line.

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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
by Philip Pullman

News flash: Philip Pullman is not a fan of Christianity, or organized religion, or "the Church," however you want to put it.

So why, then, did he decide to write a Gospel?

Whatever the motivation, Pullman's impulse led to the publication of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, the author's attempt to reconcile what he perceives to be the admirable qualities of Jesus's message with his personal world view--and the anathema status that the Church has within that world view.

The Good Man Jesus
and the Scoundrel Christ
by Philip Pullman

Pullman tries to pull this split personality trick by cleaving the Savior himself into two separate characters: Jesus, who is more or less the traditional prophet most of us have come to know, and Christ, the other's younger, sicklier, shrewder, and somewhat more contemptible twin brother. Throughout the narrative, Jesus goes about living his life as described in the canonical Gospels, while the brother Christ shifts about on the periphery of the "greatest story," serving as both scribe and secret mover of the action, both by his own volition and through collaboration with "the Stranger"--a mysterious character who may or may not ultimately turn out to be the Apostle Paul. (Pullman hints, but never comes right out and identifies who the Stranger actually is supposed to be.)

Naturally, this manipulation of the story causes problems for the reader, especially those who are familiar with the standard story (which is to say, virtually everyone in two thirds of the world, at least). Jesus, in most respects, comes across as a character worth rooting for; but Christ is presented much more ambiguously. The character never seems like an organic creation; from the start we are highly conscious that we are reading the tale of a literary device. Despite his titular appellation, and a story thread that obviously implies plenty of envy, Christ has admirable qualities, too. Too bad, then, that the character ultimately comes across as a stooge who serves the narrative role of the slightly reluctant tool by whose deeds the Christian Church is to be founded.

It is for that sin--being the necessary component in the Stranger's machinations to found an organized religion--that Pullman ultimately damns his own creation. Conversations between Christ and the Stranger, concerning the philosophical underpinnings of the Church, and why it must be founded upon lies, read like wiretap transcripts of racketeers caught in the midst of their conspiracies. When at last Christ, long after the unfortunate events, voices his pain and regret, the reader has little clue about how he should feel for this made up man.

Not only does the plotting suffer at the hands of Pullman's ulterior cause, but the author's own writing comes across as damaged by his agenda. Some passages retain their power, despite Pullman's tinkering with story, character and meaning. The Sermon on the Mount can still inspire and move the reader, even when presented in the author's purposefully banal language. (Much of this work comes across as a new, revised version of The Book, that laughably lowbrow version of the Bible that came out back in the 1980s.) In a few places, the author's talent still shines through, as with the very subtle manipulations that cast more than a little doubt upon Mary's pre-motherhood purity. At other times, however, Pullman's text degenerates into little more than philosophical screed. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus has a one way conversation with God that neatly refutes every word of Christ's and the Stranger's conceptual architecture for building a Church. The reader knows with absolute certainty that these words are Pullman's, with no attempt made to portray them as anything that might have sprung from Jesus's own philosophy. If you were at a pub talking religion, or lack thereof, with the author over a pint, such direct personal opinion might be accepted and welcome. But when the author is trying to make his own ideas into those of a character many consider to be the Son of God, it's fair for the reader to accuse him of being a little full of himself--especially when the presentation of those ideas makes for less than riveting reading.

I am a fully confessed Pullman fan. I have delighted in any number of his works. So I expected to come to The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and find an admirable work. Even as I read the book, I figured that the work would merit a "so-so" (~) review once I got around to posting it on this site. But in retrospect, I can not view this book as anything but a failure; perhaps a noble failure, but even that is questionable. And considering the successes that have come before this work, it would be the worst kind of "grade inflation" to give Pullman a pass for this effort. If you too are a Pullman fan, one with a completist bent, or someone whose interest in interpretations of the Christian story is limitless, then I suppose you will want to read The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Otherwise, the not so good news is, you can skip it.

Reel Reviews -- Y

Yojimbo (+) -- A wonderful movie, more than worthy of being the inspiration for one of the classic westerns, A Fistful Of Dollars. The best part has to be Toshiro Mifune's towering performance as the out of work samurai--the original man with no name--who plays the rival factions like a concert violin. Certainly a classic, probably would be a Best Of All inductee, were I truly equipped to judge the nuances of Japanese movie culture. Don't miss it. Posted 9/7/04.

You Can Count On Me (~) -- It has its moments, but most of it is fairly obvious. Laura Linney (Oscar-nominated) is good, but Mark Ruffalo is better. A "not quite" movie. Posted 10/1/02.

Young Adult (+) -- I enjoyed watching Patton Oswalt play reluctant Sancho Panza to Charlize Theron's demented Don Quixote. And, with the exception of one major misstep towards the end, the movie remains refreshingly, brutally honest throughout. It certainly provides a fine meditation on who lives 'those lives,' if you know what I mean, so if you're prone to that sort of thinking anyway, check this one out. Posted 3/1/13.

You've Got Mail (+) -- I'm tempted to write this thing off for being a blatant and obvious advertisment for the shitheads at AOL, but the combination of Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and director Nora Ephron works well enough for forgiveness. Funny and charming, though ultimately a bit depressing in its "there's no room for the little guy" philosophy.