Catching Up

I went out and finally did it--I got a smartphone. In my case, an iPhone 5c, in a lovely lurid green color (high visibility). I've had it since Thursday. So far, I'm finding it at both delightful and slightly frustrating.

The good:

• more space (16GB vs my old 8GB iPod)--more music available to me, space for all photos, and room to grow
• more features (the biggie: constant connectivity via the network; slightly lower down the list: a better camera, and more newer apps available to me)
• combining my music player with my phone (not trivial; I've missed plenty of calls in the past by not being able to hear my phone due to headphones and music via my iPod--now, of course, my phone is my iPod)

The bad:

• its a slippery little devil (this has been a pox on the iPhone from its first incarnation, and it hasn't changed yet--purposefully, of course, in order to prop up the secondary market for accessories like cases)
• a more baffling interface (iOS 7 is not as user friendly as the earlier operating systems; at first I found using it confusing and non-intuitive, plus the visual design is not as friendly and inviting)
• loss of some settings/data (several of my apps did not transfer their data; I had to restore some from backups, and others needed direct input of info; plus using iCloud [since disabled] killed some features like syncing my contacts directly--not good)

But, as with the ACA, among other things, I'm sure this is a thing that will iron itself out with time. I'm happy to have joined the 21st century (or at least its second decade) with my communications device, at last. I gratefully accept your congratulations. Selah.

Recently Read

Season of ‘42
Joe D, Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball’s Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War
by Jack Cavanaugh

Season of '42
By Jack Cavanaugh

Baseball is, famously, the “talking game,” and a lot of that talking takes place in the pages of books. Each year, the depths of winter bring a longing for the summer game, a desire that directs us to the bookshelf in search of yet another of the delightful “conversations” that are so much a part of the game’s literary tradition.

This year, I chose Jack Cavanaugh’s Season of ‘42 for my January baseball fix. That turned out to be an a major error.

The first warning sign should have been the title: Season of ‘42. That title--so closely echoing earlier efforts, in various media (including David Halberstam’s vastly superior Summer of ‘49)--feels unmistakably unoriginal. To be fair, baseball’s 1942 season is Cavanaugh’s focus, so the title may be considered apt. Certainly, being derivative could be overcome by exceptional execution. Great writing, like winning, cures a lot of ills.

Wordsmith

Another term for Stephen's Dictionary:

Paperize
[verb]
To take your collected, rolled up coin change to the bank and exchange it for paper money; to convert metal money into paper money

Recently Read

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke

This book surely must hold the record for longest time it took me to complete reading any work.

Does that mean it’s an awful book? Hardly. In fact, Clarke’s premiere novel delivers an excellent story told with plenty of sharp, witty writing. While the novel has a handful of inherent weaknesses that make for slow going, the bulk of my lengthy fulfillment time derived from my own extenuating circumstances. Had I not chosen to start reading this book just as I was in the midst of working full time (for the first time in ages), and at the same time trying to follow the baseball playoffs, surely this tale of two Georgian gentlemen and their efforts to revive English magic would have held my interest much more deeply than it did.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke

The basics of the tale--how the owlish Mr Norrell achieves prominence as the wizard who brings magic back to the forefront of English life (in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, no less); all that comes of the thaumaturgical efforts of both Norrell and his brilliant student, Jonathan Strange; and the consequences of the magicians’ spells, for both themselves and others within their orbit--provide more than enough grist for an imaginative, enchanting literary mill.

Reel Reviews

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter -- For the most part, it's utterly preposterous. It’s difficult to say why this movie’s authors thought this story was a good idea; nothing, beyond some ham-handed symbolism about vampires vs. freedom, indicates why no less an historical figure than Lincoln should personify yet another fairy-tale fight against the undead. And the distortions of history depicted here are not merely conceits, but vaguely insulting; as if the true story of the events depicted, such as the battle of Gettysburg, need to be fictionalized to make them extraordinary. I’m not sure what they were thinking, and I don’t really have a desire to waste any more of my brainpower pondering that puzzle. Follow that lead and skip this one. Posted 1/8/14.

Recently Read

Cat Sense
by John Bradshaw

Cat Sense
by John Bradshaw

It’s not exactly a mystery: cats are a mystery. Perhaps no animal is so beguiling in its actions, its sense of itself, its mere way of being, as the domesticated cat. And all that enigma wrapped in riddle surrounded by puzzle invariably leads interested parties to both write books about cats and read books about them. No surprise, then, that this cat fancier found his way to the pages of Cat Sense, the recent exploration of all things feline by researcher John Bradshaw.

The book’s subtitle--How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet--makes multiple promises, which the text comes close to delivering. Bradshaw reports on any number of cat related phenomena using data derived from fairly rigorous scientific research; so the “new feline science” part rings quite true. That stuff about making you a better friend to your cat? Well...maybe. That may depend less upon the information presented, and more upon how you use that information--and even then it may be a dodgy proposition.

Time Flies When You Can't Remember Why Time Flies

I'm shocked and appalled to discover that it has been damn near three months since I posted anything other than a movie review to this blog. Not coincidentally, for most of the last two and a half months I've been working almost full time five days a week--something I had not been doing since 2009. No wonder I've been so tired, and distracted, and thwarted in most of my efforts to be doing what I want to do, rather than what I'm required to do.

It is my sincere wish that all that will change soon. I think I'm just a week or two from working out the details on how I may be able to keep on working but have more time for the good stuff--an arrangement that, if it works out, will probably radically transform my current situation. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy a few recent movie reviews, posted at the right under their usual place. Keep watching the screens...

Reel Reviews

Zero Dark Thirty -- Depending upon your politics, you may be predisposed to hate this movie before the first scene. But a more practical reason to hate this movie might be its simple banality. Certainly that’s true in the early torture scenes; it’s surprisingly easy to be blase about the evils men do, especially this many years down the line. There’s also a certain predictability--even beyond the already well-known endgame--that pervades much of this film’s story structure. I certainly wouldn’t call it a Best Picture worthy film, despite the nomination, but it’s probably worth your time, perhaps to be watched with a certain amount of clinical detachment. I guess that’s the cost of doing business within the notorious muddle this film seeks to depict. Posted 8/21/13.

Reel Reviews

The Cabin In The Woods -- Oh, shit. The Initiative lives, and it’s way more fucked up than anyone ever imagined. Whedon probably deserves a markdown for cribbing from himself, but the results justify the recursiveness. Because man, once this thing gets going, it really gets going--with enough gusto to overcome the horror genre cynicism of even the most jaded and skeptical viewer. Definitely worth a look. Posted 8/21/13.

Taylor's Laws

An occasional series in which I promulgate certain laws of nature, to help us better understand the universe around us

---

Taylor's Vehicular Follicle Law

Any luxury car, when being driven with at least one passenger accompanying the driver, will contain at least one blonde person.

Explication: This law is described purely from observational sources. Having lived in enclaves frequented by luxury car drivers for many a year, I can attest from personal witness that this law is true. Why this circumstance is the way it is, is probably an exercise best left to the intelligence of the reader. The socioeconomics of blondness being what they are, this is almost axiomatic, in an a = a sort of way. Nevertheless, this law is worth recording for posterity, if nothing else. Note that the blonde person in question need not be the passenger; it is only necessary for there to be at least two bodies in the vehicle for the law to be operative. (It is entirely possible for a solo luxury car driver to be raven-haired; but if said person is accompanied by a passenger, that passenger will be blonde.)

Recently Read

Fat Chance
by Robert H. Lustig, M.D.

Fat Chance
by Robert Lustig, M.D.

I'm not qualified to judge the science presented in this book. I am, much to my chagrin, overly qualified to judge the judgments that Dr. Lustig makes about being obese--and that is why I highly recommend this book.

There are two sides to the issue presented in Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. On the one hand, you have the science mentioned above. Lustig delivers a strong case--as strong a case as you can make in layman's terms for a very technical argument--that the obesity pandemic that is now ravaging the world is largely the product of the over consumption of sugar, specifically fructose in processed foods. Making heads or tails of the effects of leptin, insulin resistance, ghrelin, and other hormones on the hypothalamus, and how all that translates into weight gain and "metabolic syndrome," can be a bit of a slog, especially if you're not technically minded. Suffice it to say, Lustig explains these medical matters with enough simplicity and clarity that a reasonably well-informed reader will likely judge his thesis to be sound and consistent.

On the other hand, there is the matter of the experience of obesity, both from Lustig's patients (related as illustrative anecdotes throughout the book's chapters), and the reader's own understanding of that experience. This is where the rubber meets the road--or, to be more apt, where the sugar hits the liver--for making the case that Fat Chance represents an honest, accurate reflection of what has happened to people all over the world, what is happening to more people as time goes by, and what the legacy of that crisis will be for our world if nothing is done to change society's course.

If you read this book as someone who has suffered through a lifetime of weight problems, you can't help but recognize in this text descriptions of the mechanics of obesity that dovetail perfectly with your own life story. Who hasn't grown up fat and wondered why you were made that way? What fat person hasn't felt the frustration of failure to control his or her behavior--supposedly the key aspect of how people get to be obese? Lustig has answers for these and other questions that contradict the received wisdom about obesity: the long-standing philosophical position that if you're fat, it's because you make bad choices.

Not so, according to the author; Lustig presents ideas that explain why so many of the treatments for obesity that have been preferred up till now--by the medical community, by government, by fat people themselves--simply haven't worked. He argues that behavior follows biology, not the other way around; that a calorie is not a calorie (meaning, different types of calories affect the body differently); that changing environment is more effective than changing diet; that our modern food industry has a stake in making us sick, despite the costs to the rest of society. All of this rings all too true, both to someone who has been trapped in an overweight life, and to anyone who has been paying attention to the overarching trends in our world, especially societal and political trends regarding the production of our food supply. In that ring of veracity the reader finds a forceful argument in favor of Lustig's view of the problem, and thus the utility of this book.

While Lustig makes it clear that the odds are indeed stacked against us, he does offer a blueprint for fixing the problem, for both the individual and society. The doctor's advice on how to overcome your personal obesity challenge--raised awareness about sugar in the foods you eat, getting more fiber in your diet, exercising as much as you can, and having manageable expectations about your health--may not seem revolutionary, but it strikes this reader as the best possible message on the subject. Lustig's prescriptions for societal cures--higher taxes on sugar, changes to subsidies and tariffs on various foodstuffs (discouraging sugar, encouraging fresh foods, etc.), using the fight against tobacco as a model for fighting the food industry--seem more far-fetched, if reasonable given the scope of the problem, simply due to the corruption and intransigence of governmental agencies. But at least the ideas are there, and given the seemingly insurmountable odds against putting any of those top down reforms in place, perhaps that hopelessness itself can spur the individual to take the necessary steps himself. After all, can you really expect help to come from Congress, or McDonald's? Fat chance, as the doctor might say.

I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially to anyone who is obese and wants to understand what has happened to him or her. Knowing about science and politics is all well and good, but knowing about yourself is always the key to any number of mysteries. In Fat Chance, anyone who cares about the obesity pandemic may indeed find that crucial key.

Route of Lesser Evil

I was recently discussing my bicycling exploits with several folks here and there, and describing my current typical route seemed unsatisfying. Most folks who live around here probably got it in general terms, but even so it may have been a bit unclear on the whole dimensions of the thing. So I got to thinking: why not show instead of tell?

The result of that thought is sitting above: a composite, courtesy of Google Maps, of the length of my now typical standard route, marked in red with arrows to show direction of travel. Click on the map above for a full sized view (your browser window may or may not show the full pic in one shot; you may need to right-click and choose "View Image" to get the 100% view).

Most of the trip runs along the same path, but towards the end--where I've been stretching out the distance lately--the route follows a loop instead of a simple out and back. I'm not sure what the total distance is; I know that from Alamo Plaza (starting point) to downtown Danville, where the trail crosses the boulevard, is almost exactly 3 miles, so 6 miles to there and back. The total distance of the attached loop is a bit of mystery, but I know the leg of the Iron Horse Trail that goes under the freeway is .71 miles, and that part below Sycamore Valley Road (to Paraiso) is almost half a mile by itself (.43 mile, to be exact); so the full loop has to add at least 2 miles to the total. So the total round trip must be something just beyond 8 miles. If I'm feeling good that day, and the weather's good, I usually take around 57 minutes to complete the circuit.

I don't know if this impresses anyone or not. I know it impresses me, considering that last year at this time I rarely went beyond that point where the trail crosses the boulevard. My fitness has certainly gotten better, thanks to the lengthier workout, and as noted in the previous post, my weight has now gotten down to a number I haven't seen since 2003, at least. "Best physical condition in 10 years" is something worth crowing about, I think.

So there it is. Hope you're impressed.

For The Record, Scale Check

Finally, about 10 months later, I've reached another downward milestone. I haven't seen 282 on my scale since at least 2003--ten years ago; and it's probably more like since 2002, so you can really chalk it up to an even longer period.

Hopefully, the next time I see an even smaller number will be fairly soon. Keep watching this space.

Recently Read

Eats, Shoots & Leaves
by Lynne Truss

Eats, Shoots & Leaves
by Lynne Truss

I’ll admit it: I’m baffled by this book.

In the past, whenever I wanted to consult an oracle on matters of punctuation, I would grab my copy of Strunk & White’s venerable The Elements of Style. But I’m willing to modernize when the occasion seems suitable, and my writing has had recurring issues with certain matters grammatical and syntactical; consulting a new oracle seemed like a good idea.

Enter Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. This book was an unexpected bestseller when it hit the shelves some ten years ago, and it seems to have received rave reviews from anyone who had cause to care. Thus, I opened this small volume expecting both help with my writing and an entertaining discourse on all things punctuation.

As it turned out, I didn’t really get either one.

Regarding the punctuation: I consulted this book specifically for a definitive judgment about my personal punctuation hobgoblin, the “Oxford” comma. (It’s the comma that cradles the penultimate item on a list, just before the ‘and’ that marks the last item in the sequence. For example: red, white, and blue; versus today’s kinda/sorta standard usage: red, white and blue.) This comma question always puzzles me, so I figured, let’s see what the current standard bearer for correct punctuation has to say about it. Surely a book boasting a “zero tolerance approach to punctuation” would be able to provide the kind of ironclad guidance I needed. Right?

Well, no. Truss, the self-described “stickler” who authored this work, grabs the Oxford comma with both hands...and then punts. Her stance on the Oxford comma:

My own feeling is that one shouldn’t be too rigid about the Oxford comma. Sometimes the sentence is improved by including it; sometimes it isn’t.

Oh, of course. And sometimes my asshole needs wiping; sometimes it doesn’t.

What the hell? That waffling statement sure doesn’t seem like a “zero tolerance” approach to punctuation. Truss’s indecision left my writing in exactly the same place where it started--not exactly the sort of help I was seeking.

To be fair, Truss provides examples that underscore the uncertainty that lies beneath her Hamlet-like vacillation about the Oxford comma. The reader can see some sense in the author’s equivocation on this admittedly esoteric point of contention. But when readers pick up a book about punctuation, they expect to find firm rules to follow, rules that provide the intellectual framework that will improve their writing. As in all things in life, uncertainty doesn’t help.

Nevertheless, I’m willing to strike another blow for fairness and note that, on most matters of punctuation, Truss hews much closer to her stated goal of “zero tolerance.” Much of Truss’s instruction comes in clear, concise, definitive directions on usage that, if the reader can absorb it all, will undoubtedly improve his writing, especially for those writers who have weak spots that need buttressing. The Oxford comma stumble is somewhat anomalous, though for someone like myself it’s a most inconvenient anomaly.

As for the entertaining discourse...well, that leaves much to be desired, too. Truss writes in a tone that may be shooting for light, breezy, and conversational, but that actually comes across as pedantic, supercilious, and perhaps a little bit crazy. (Note: two Oxford commas in that last sentence; I think they work in that context...but can I really be sure?) The author’s almost celebratory account of her nitpicking life does less to convince you that Truss knows her grammar and more to make the case that she can be a real pain in the ass. Reading her manifesto of moral outrage over bad punctuation makes it seem like you’d have a better time staying at home with your sciatica than spending a night on the town with Truss--especially if she brings along her markers, paper cutouts, and various other implements of grammar guerrilla warfare. (Given her account, Truss seems destined to get arrested for defacing private property with her on-the-go editing, and if you’re hanging around with her you’ll probably get hauled in, too.) The worst of this pomposity pervades the Introduction; Truss has enough sense to play things closer to the vest in the heart of the book. Thus, a word to the wise: skipping the Introduction entirely may make Eats, Shoots & Leaves a better, more useful read from the start.

So Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a classic “mixed bag” of a book. You can get something out of it, if you want to (or need to) improve your writing, and if you can stand an author who is quintessentially too geeky for her own good. Just skip that Introduction and try to absorb the main body of the text directly. Or better yet: get a secondhand copy of the book and keep it on the shelf near your desk as a reference, checking on the rules of usage on an as-needed basis. (The book lacks an index--another point of demerit--but it’s short enough that you can find what you need quickly by checking the table of contents and browsing a few pages.) Any book that achieved bestseller status ten years ago should be readily available at a used book sale for a dollar or two at most.

Whatever you may think about the tone of this book, or using the Oxford comma, or crazy grammar people in general, this can be said for certain about Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Truss is right that too many people don’t know good grammar--and thus, any grammar guide, if used, is better than none at all.

It's Worse Than You Think. Much Worse.

Put that Kool-Aid down. The Heat are not heroes

---

(This is a very long post. Apologies in advance, but I wanted to make my case as comprehensively as possible.)

So here we are. The Miami Heat have just won the second of two straight championships, and the hype and hagiography machine is rolling on, as expected. Here's a sample of the  headlines in reaction to Thursday night's game:

Litke: Victory Validates LeBron's Decision (AP, via the Comcast home page)

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade deliver another NBA title in a Game 7 to remember (Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports)

Back-to-back champ LeBron James helps elevate beauty of game with help from tenacious Spurs (Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports)

The articles are pretty much what you'd expect: plenty of laudatory prose showered upon LeBron James, some for Dwyane Wade, not so much for Chris Bosh. A bevy of "One Shining Moment" style salutes to the King James and his Heatles. A touch of "ends justifies the means" rationalization in favor of James and "The Decision"--but with very little cogent analysis of what was so wrong with the Heat from the very beginning.

And no one bothers to say the magic word: collusion.

Dan Litke, at the very least, comes closest. In his column Litke addresses the fact that Miami's assemblage of superstars came together under a very dark cloud of criticism. He writes:

James was already the best player in the game when he made "The Decision'' nearly three years ago, a move that the rest of the basketball world pounced on as a sign of weakness, a tacit admission that he couldn't win a championship all by himself.

James was right on that score...

The Heat were convenient villains, fair or not, for skipping most of the preliminaries and assembling the core of the team with little more than a checkbook. James' move to Miami touched off free-agent envy among his superstar brethren - everybody wanted to be a part of a Big Three somewhere - and the rest of the league is still scrambling to put one together as formidable as Riley's troika in Miami.

Indeed. No team has yet put together a viable counterpunch to Miami's Big Three--and that inability to match up has been the crux of the problem right from the start. That line about "free-agent envy" makes it seem like the issue rests only within the psyches of other NBA superstars; but, as I've argued all along, what happened in the summer of 2010 struck right to the core of the Association and its ability to showcase a truly competitive professional sport. And, of course, it also highlights the other end of this grim reality: the brutal failure of the so-called sports "journalists" to get this story in any way correct in fact or analysis.

As I first argued in this post, non-Miami based NBA players, executives, and (especially) fans had cause for howling in protest against James's move, not out of simple envy, nor because LeBron made a social faux pas (actually staged one, that is, on ESPN no less), nor because the three amigos then backed up the original faux pas with that ridiculous pep-rally/smoke machine show days later. No, the problem lies in the fact that three of the game's best players colluded to try to rig the sport by placing themselves all on one team.

In some ways, it's a simple numbers game. In the Summer of 2010, James, Wade and Bosh were clearly among the top fifteen players in the game--possibly even top twelve or ten. (James was and is the consensus best player in the game, while Wade certainly ranked in the top six or seven. For all the criticism he gets today, Bosh back then was clearly an All-Star and a sought-after free agent--at least the 15th best player in the game). All three had been members of the 2008 gold medal winning USA basketball team at the Beijing Olympics--a sign that they were certainly among the twelve best American hoopsters, at least. James, Wade and Bosh were the pick of the 2010 free agent litter; any players who could match them in stature were either already on the decline, or securely under contract, or both.

So then, you scoop up the three best available players in free agency, all of whom are at least top fifteen quality players, and you put them on one team. What does that mean? Well, it leaves only twelve of the top fifteen players remaining--for the other twenty-nine teams. Even if each of the four remaining best players had their own two running mates on one roster, that would still limit the fifteen best players in the game to only five teams (out of thirty). More likely, due to reasons of contract status, age, and a host of other variables, those other twelve players will remain scattered, singly or in duos, throughout the rest of the league. If all the remaining top players are evenly distributed on other teams, that still leaves seventeen teams in the league without one of those top players at all.

Does that affect the league's competitive balance? Of course it does. Remember, in the best of scenarios, the NBA is the least competitively balanced of the four major North American professional sports leagues. (I discussed this fact in the research article "The Champs-Chumps Ratio," still available online at Scribd.) Start clumping the superstars together on just a few teams, and that propensity towards competitive imbalance will become overwhelmingly decisive. Already, few teams go into an NBA season with a viable chance to win the championship; let the best players pick and choose their own teams and teammates, and the trophy being passed among two or three teams (at most) will become a foregone conclusion. All the rest of the teams in the league become nothing more than well-paid versions of the Washington Generals.

And the fans of those out-of-the-superstar-loop teams? What do they do? Apparently, they can go pound sand, for all James, Wade and Bosh care.

Remember, Miami's Big Three were not assembled through good scouting, drafting and coaching (a la the Spurs of Duncan, Parker and Ginobili); nor were they constructed by way of shrewd trades at just the right time (like the Celtics did with Garnett, Pierce and Allen). No, the Heat's superstars came together because they colluded to put themselves together on one roster. In doing so, they raised a gigantic middle finger in the faces of the fans of every team that could have been helped by any one of those guys, had there been a true market for their services.

And to what end was that middle finger raised? "Not five, not six, not seven..." Those words are treated as a joke these days--an arrogant joke, to be sure, but somehow not reflective of James's true intentions. But taken at face value (as they should be), that's a pretty lofty mission statement, one that defines the players' intrigues as an action taken with the goal of creating a competitive imbalance designed to secure multiple championships.

In other words, the Heat's Big Three colluded to rig the sport in favor of their success. And in doing so, they unleashed a torrent of consequences, both intended and unintended, that will shape the NBA for years to come.

We've already covered one consequence: more competitive imbalance. The Heat were prohibitive favorites to win the championship from the moment James, Wade and Bosh inked their contracts; they were only thwarted from their original stated goal by the Mavericks, coming up a mere two games shy of winning three straight titles.

This imbalance plays out not just in the postseason, but in the regular season, too. Think about the Heat's 27 game winning streak this year. I covered that phenomenon at the time in this post. To briefly recap the point made there: one of the reasons the Heat were able to go on that streak was because, thanks to the collusion that put James and Bosh on the same team with Wade, two other teams in the East were weakened to the same extent that Miami was made stronger. And, of course, its even worse than that, because not only were Cleveland and Toronto stripped of their best players three years ago, but every other team around the league that could have been made better by signing one of those free agents in 2010 didn't get better. Not only were the Heat playing the Cavs and Raptors, who were with out James and Bosh respectively, but every other team they played was without the services of James and Bosh, too. No wonder they had such an easy time winning in such a streak.

But wait--it gets worse. Remember when the Heat signed James and Bosh to go with Wade? Many pundits suggested that paying the salaries of all three players would be so onerous for Miami that it would be the Big Three and a roster full of rookie free agents for the foreseeable future. Yet, who was playing for the Heat during this year's playoffs, besides the Big Three? Names like Miller, Andersen, Battier, and Allen all appeared on Heat jerseys this season--all veterans of more than a decade in the Association, and all made valuable contributions to the Heat's championship run. How is it possible that the Heat could employ such veteran (and theoretically high-priced) talent when they have to pay three superstars--under a salary cap, no less?

Now we see just how insidious is the effect of what James, Wade and Bosh did back in 2010. Veteran NBA players aren't particularly stupid. They're jocks, but they ain't so dumb that they can't see which way the wind is blowing. With James and Bosh moving to Miami and making the Heat overwhelming favorites to win the championship, other players could see that, if they wanted to be playing for anything other than second place and a smaller playoff share, they would do well to sign with the Heat--for less money than they might otherwise make somewhere else--and make up the difference in championship prestige, a higher playoff share, maybe even some endorsements that would not have been on the table if they'd been playing in, say, Portland. So the Heat get the veteran help they need, just the right players to fill the roles and cement their championship pedigree, despite the burden of having to pay the superstars' salaries. Salary cap? What salary cap? In effect, the Big Three's collusion to rig the game in their favor didn't just bring them together, didn't just weaken other teams by drawing their own selves away from those other teams and by denying other squads their services, didn't just weaken other teams by prying away veteran role players--it actually in a de facto sense abrogated the salary cap. You don't have to worry so much about staying under a salary cap if players are begging you to play for your team--for less money than they would make somewhere else.

What that means is, the collusion by James, Wade and Bosh effectively changed the league's rules--but only for their team. Other franchises, without the drawing power of playing beside the Big Three, remained hampered by the NBA's salary cap. For a team that, before the ink was even dry, had an enormous edge over its competitors as soon as the Big Three were signed, the cumulative effect of the advantages gained from those acquisitions was overwhelming. Rigged is almost too weak a word for it.

Oh, yeah, and another thing: what about the precedent these shenanigans have set? Will it be good for the NBA as a whole when, in six years or so, Damian Lillard, Harrison Barnes, and Anthony Davis get together (assuming the continuing upward progress of their careers) and dictate where the three of them will play together--most likely in New York, or Los Angeles, maybe Boston or Chicago? Sure, it will be good for them as individual players, but what about the fans and franchises they leave behind (Portland, Golden State and New Orleans, respectively)? Again, pound sand, fellas. Inevitably, teams that are not constantly, aggressively in the spotlight, that are not traditional glamour teams, will not be able to hold onto their star players, max contracts or not. If you're a fan of one of those lower caste teams, you should be saying, "You want me to pay how much? For tickets to this shit?" Not exactly a sustainable business model. Contrast that with the NFL, where even a team in the hinterlands of Green Bay, Wisconsin can compete on an even level with everyone else, can keep its star players, can always (given competent management) promise its fans a legitimate shot at a title. Does that sound like. let's say, the Utah Jazz to you? Not in LeBron James's NBA.

Remember all this as you read the continuing cascade of fawning words that will come in the following days. We're all supposed to love/adore/suck off LeBron James and his Heatles now, even if we were a little bit angry about that whole sideshow thing at the start. The sages of the sports pages have declared it so. But...how are you really supposed to feel about someone who wins with a stacked deck? I seem to recall a nation, back when I was young, where people actually cared about fairness. Rigging things in your favor was looked down upon, if not actively censured or beaten back. And sports, after all, are supposed to be about competition--fair competition. There's a reason why, when kids get together on a playground, the two captains (usually the best players) are on opposite teams, and they take turns picking players for their respective teams--they do it to make sure the game is fair. That should always be the goal whenever games are played.

Fairness has taken a beating in our society; it has been so for decades now. Working people see the beating fairness has taken in shrinking wages and lost jobs; homeowners see it in unfair mortgages and unjustified foreclosures; poor people see it whenever they butt heads with the criminal justice system. Perhaps this condition reflects the larger society around the game, but what goes on in today's NBA cannot be called fair. The deck is very, very stacked now.

And while others may get lost in the fog of hero worship, I can't bring myself to cheer for someone who wins with a stacked deck. All the talk about LeBron James and his legacy, about how it has just gotten so much better, represents in my view little more than wishful thinking--or perhaps a deliberate attempt to engineer that version of "the truth." Seen in the cold hard light of a clear day, I think that legacy has in fact gotten much, much worse.