A bean for a bean because that’s how we do things around here

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Mannybeaned
Chris Pizzello / AP

When you shorten the word “weblog” you get Blog – a regular, running commentary usually maintained by an individual on a website, according to Wikipedia. It’s a conversation unless people just read the daily post and don’t provide comments. I’m new to the world of blogging and guiltily I don’t always comment on what I’ve read. But I do know controversy evokes reaction so here we go.

Manny Ramirez is a target both literally and figuratively. “Man Ram” was suspended for 50 games this season for testing positive for a drug banned by Major League Baseball. The suspension cost Ramirez $7.7 million, or roughly 31% of his $25-million salary. On Monday the Dodgers played the Brewers, famous for their sausage races in their home ballpark. The Brewers starting pitcher threw inside to Manny as others have of late and wound up hitting the slugger. So you know what followed – a retaliation by Dodger pitcher Guillermo Mota who dotted the Home Run Derby champ, Prince Fielder in the the 9th inning. Well, tempers flared and Mota was thrown out. Fielder attempted to confront Mota in the tunnel but was restrained.

Baseball Man Law says that if you hit our guy, we’ll hit yours and send you a message you’d be foolish to forget. Mohandas K. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” So baseball and its fraternity along with probably that of any male-dominated professional sport would say Gandhi never stood in the box with a 3-2 count. They’d be right but in the world of debate such logic is called “Red Herring Fallacy”. It means somebody side-stepped the issue instead of answering the question. What say you? Is the normative practice of sport what we want to perpetuate as we continue to live in a sports culture? Sorry if you’re more the artsy type. 80-90 thousand attend baseball, football and even Galaxy games. We’re a sports culture in Southern California if not the whole Western Hemisphere. And we always talk about the morality, the bad ethics, the stupidity of athletes. So now that the Blog is loaded, if you’re on the mound and the opposing team hit your batter last inning, do you throw at their best guy?

Teams will do anything to gain an advantage over your slugger. Imagine that you’re on the best team in baseball poised to bring a World Series back to Los Angeles for the first time since 1988. I remember. I was in 8th grade when we beat the Oakland A’s. I’m ready to bring it back. The other teams in the league are coming for Manny every at-bat. What are you going to do with your 90-mile-an-hour fastball because your loyalty can only be to one thing – YOUR CONVICTIONS or THE LAW OF THE CULTURE. If you don’t bean that guy with a pitch, you could be on a fast track back to the minor leagues and/or in the dog house with your teammates. How’s that for a blog post that doesn’t tell you what to do. Sound off.

When TEAM is the only Option, Why is it so Hard to be One?

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Castle Tower Looms

Something peculiar happens when you travel to a foreign country with a team of guys you barely know but who have similar goals. Camaraderie and team chemistry are developed .

In 2008 I traveled with and coached a Canadian team of high-school aged boys + 1 American baller. We stopped off in Cardiff, South Wales, the place Princess Diana hailed from. And for many on the team, including myself, it was the first time seeing: castles, a Cricket match and a Rugby stadium.

Being from Southern California the only castle that comes to mind is an overpriced theme attraction we call “Medieval Times: Dinner and Tournament”. There you can eat a big piece of chicken while you watch actors joust and basically render a World Wrestling Entertainment type of experience. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it the one time I visited.

But enough about Buena Park, California. In England we traveled by bus, “Tube”, Train and by foot…together as an army would. It’s not hard to become someone’s brother when separation from the team would mean getting lost in an unfamiliar country. We needed one another and the need seemed to necessitate the camaraderie.  The team of strangers who boarded a plane in Calgary built relationships that extended onto the floor as evidenced by the diving for loose balls and peer-to-peer coaching.

The experience in England eliminated all of those false pretenses that pit teammates against one another – things like competing for playing time (Everybody played) or  showing off for people in the stands (Bleachers were often empty). Again, we marched together, one time in the rain with our luggage. We squeezed onto a Double-Decker bus with bags in tow frustrating the people already on board. We laughed when the only American on the team missed our stop and waved good-bye to us as the train left with us off of it and him headed to…somewhere else. Man, we became a team off the court because interdependence was an obvious requirement overseas. It’s not so obvious at home. But the fact remains that if you’re on a team, you need the team and without chemistry there is no TEAM.devotionstanleyparkcompress What’s the chemistry like on you team?

The Antidote to Shortcuts is on YouTube

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Age of ResourceDo you know who the time lady is? You know. She’s the one that you could call, once upon a time, to find out that, “At the tone the time will be…”. Before there were online, cosmic and cell phone clocks, there was a number you could call to find out what time it was. Or what about 411? Who calls information anymore when you can stop at a library and get online to find out what time the movie is playing. Better yet, take what I’ve been doing of late. I believe in sharing just like they taught me in kindergarten and as much as possible, I share YouTube videos on how to do workouts, practice basketball skills or just get inspired for the fuel to compete. We are in the Age of Resource.

By definition a Resource is a source of supply, support or aid, especially one that can be readily drawn upon when needed. (Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.) The advent of the Internet or at least its mainstream use eliminated much of the labor associated with researching answers to questions about how to improve in sports. Since I cater to those of you striving to become better prepared athletes, you couldn’t have been born during a more exciting era. You can go to YouTube to: Increase your vertical leap by 7 inches, get shooting tips from Ray Allen as if he’s your big brother, see a visual example of how to properly stretch the hamstring and gluteal muscles and even watch an inspiring video of a man who swam (wearing a Speedo) in the freezing waters of the North Pole.

Basketball is as popular as it is today because of the spread of information and if you’re a competitor there is no excuse in 2009 for you not to acquire skill that you can practice on your own. The most common reason for not participating in technology is, “I don’t have a computer at home.” When I started college there were computers but I didn’t own my own. In fact I still don’t. I’m typing on a work computer right now. In college I lived in the computer lab, emailed from the library and finished those all-nighter papers in the Chapman University Newspaper offices. The supply you need is at your disposal now and the only warning is that you learn to access the resources that will move your game and your character toward maturity. For the athlete, you probably want to YouTube, Google, or Yahoo the following practical elements of your respective sport:

  • Injury Prevention
  • How to defend the ball one-on-one
  • How to move without the basketball
  • How to defend a corner kick
  • How to lengthen my stride for sprinting

In the Age of Resource many have justified shortcuts that were more defensible before 1996 when learning “how-to” depended on the coach who lived across the street from you. Make no mistake about my feelings concerning cheating. But if it was frowned upon before, which for the record it was not, there’s simply no viable justification for shortcuts. Why would you cheat now when there’s a 3 minute video that teaches you how to recognize the angles and spacing between defenders that allow you to run a seamless passing route for a 10-yard gain? I know why. Many of us are immune to working hard and doing over a 10-week period what illegal substances could in 6. But I’ve digressed into a tirade. What’s important today is that you wake up and hire the trainer you’ve always wanted without the start-up fee. It’s 2009. Increase your technological capacity and get in the game.

Do the Detail

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Staring at Nothing is not a detail.
Staring at Nothing is not a detail.

Have you ever complained about the referees? They’re cheaters right, ruining your chances to win close games with their late calls, phantom calls, biased calls, no calls etc. You fallin’ for my set-up yet? Forget the refs because if you’ve ever not done the details that lead to winning you don’t deserve to file a grievance. I mean, I don’t either.

I play in a basketball league on Sunday afternoons and today we lost by one. Let’s start with the end. There’s four seconds left on the clock and we’re in bounding the ball when we throw it away to the other team. Two seconds go off the clock and the other team calls a time out. We’re up 76-75 with 2 seconds on the clock (my wife said all four seconds expired). At any rate, the enemy now has 2 whole seconds to pass the ball in bounds and get a shot off which they do. But we defend well, initially, and disrupt the shooter so that it’s an air-ball (Never hits the rim) but lands in the hands of an unsuspecting teammate who catches it and lays it in while in mid-air. The Buzzer sounded and the refs counted the basket. THE DOG GONE REFS MAN!!! Somebody started the clock late; time had to have expired.

Let me tell you why we really lost and I’ll only address my own mistakes:

  • Missed at least two lay-ups
  • Missed two free-throws
  • Got beaten baseline on a play
  • Fell down while driving to the basket and turned the ball over
  • Missed two shots in the post against smaller defenders
  • Was passive in attacking the defender 1-on-1
  • DID NOT PREPARE BY MAINTAINING A WORKOUT DURING THE WEEK WHILE AT A WORK CONFERENCE!!!!!!

Remember, I was just mentioning my own contributions to the losing effort which is not to say I didn’t have help from my teammates. 🙂 Do you make the lists based on accountability because if not you should. The next time you’re prone to blame the officials for your loss, consider this: DO THE DETAIL!

My girls varsity basketball players at Ramona High have had it drilled into them that details have a way of adding up. For every advantage gained by the opponent, there is a detail neglected. No one is above doing the deeds of daily faithfulness to a sport, a job, a role , etc. Two weeks ago I made a promise to my girls during a game that if they did exactly what we’ve talked about all summer, they would be pleased with the outcome. I never used the word WIN. I hate that word. I want my girls to hate that word because WIN is a product not a method. It does not speak to the nuances required to overcome adversity or an opponent who wants to win just as bad as you. My girls concentrated on three things #1 on-ball defense #2 Rebounding #3 Looking to pass the ball to open teammates who run hard up the floor. Three details are all it would take to rally from 10 points behind. We did the detail taking us to overtime and then did it again for two more minutes in OT. The details determined the outcome just like I promised. I’ll make you the same promise if you’ll make me one. Devote time to figuring out your goals, the details associated with them and the support you need to actually do them. Keep me posted!

It’s Okay to be Proud of Someone Else

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Yesterday I enjoyedandre-miller spending some time with a longtime friend who now plays in the National Basketball Association. My grandmother, “Nana” as we know and love her, called and told me my childhood friend was doing a shoe giveaway down in Watts and that I should pick up some things for my girls Varsity Basketball team. So I sacrificed a couple hours of sleep on a Saturday and hit the road before 7 a.m. to get down to Imperial and Central just off the 105 fwy. The line outside the gymnasium was short, as if word hadn’t spread the “Dre” was gonna be doing an event in the neighborhood. But that changed about two hours later as droves lined up outside of Verbum Dei High School with kids and strollers to sneak a peak of the pride of Nickerson Gardens and get some free gear. Of course there’s always a few people taking more than their share at a giveaway but all-in-all, it seemed like people were grateful for what they received and thanks to my friend’s mom, everything was organized and well executed.

Andre Miller and I are the same age, 33 and he’s now considered a veteran player that brings experience and court savvy to the younger team for which he now plays. It’s safe to say it’d been probably 10+ years since we’d seen one another in person. His career in the NBA has spanned 10 years and landed him on five teams despite the fact that every where he’s played he’s been a “court general” – an impact player who dictates tempo and brings structure to the offense. He plays point guard, one of the most difficult positions to master in all of sports with its demand for team management, physical conditioning and ball handling. Add to this the off-the-court strain from the pressures of being recognizable in public and Dre now appears to be a much stronger man than I remember from childhood. As kids there was baseball games in the street in front of my Nana’s house, Dodger games, arm wrestling and Hungry-Hungry Hippo on the living room floor. Come to think of it, our friendship even preceded Nintendo but fast forward to 2009 and it’s clear that neither of us are kids any longer.

Yesterday was one of those moments where you’re catchin’ up with an old friend, reminiscing about past people and events all the while processing the maturation of the person who stands before you. I’ve seen Andre on TV like everyone else, lightin’ up my Lakers. In fact, last season when he played for the Philadelphia 76ers, he beat my guys at the buzzer as his teammate Andre Iguodala hit a game winning three-pointer. Home is home I guess.

Yesterday I was simply proud of my friend and all I could think was, “I wonder if he’d like to get away for a a minute, a day, a week and just be Andre.” As we were standing in the gym of his Alma Mater, Verbum Dei high school located in Watts near the Nickerson Gardens housing projects, we joked about family and the OG’s in the gym with their green and white jumpsuits. We talked about his trade from Denver to Philly, which he was unaware of up until the day it occurred. I watched the predominantly African-American crowd wait in line for a couple of hours to get some free shoes and t-shirts and catch a glimpse of the hometown hero. It’s weird to be so proud of someone who grew up just like you, in the same inner-city with the same poverty and the same dreams. Every NBA player has a story but I guess it’s weird when you know that your own background is being represented on a world stage. Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt. I guess you can be proud of a friend who does what you could not. Envy is always a choice and yesterday it was no where to be found. This year, I’ll be rooting for the Portland Trailblazers (when they’re not playing my Lakers).

Triple Threat Position

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Triple Threat One of the things I’ve learned from playing and not playing basketball is that you have to be a threat in more than just one way. On the basketball floor you receive a pass and instinctively move to triple threat position from which you can dribble, pass or shoot. The idea is to be unpredictable so that the defender never knows which of the three you’re about to do. But study an offensive player’s tendencies and you can easily tell whether or not he/she is a real “Triple Threat”.

By my sophomore year in college, the mechanics of my jump-shot had changed so often that I couldn’t repeat the same shooting form twice in-a-row. Elbow in, Fingers on those seams, am I using my legs? Check, check and check. And when one thing was adjusted, another technical aspect of my shot seemed to go wrong. So I spent the summer after my sophomore year doing nothing but shooting. The previous summer I had spent it lifting and gaining 10-12 lbs. of muscle. During the summer of ’94 I wanted to become a marksman. And to some degree I did. I was now a double threat who could dribble and shoot.

When I started my junior year, however, coach had a conversation with me…kind of a preseason observation and he said it looks like you’ve been shooting a lot all summer. Your shot looks good but how much basketball did you actually play? Truth was I hadn’t played much except for the college summer league games that were held at CSULA (Cal State Los Angeles). Any basketball trainer will tell you that you’ve got to play against high level competition as much as possible during summer to make the gains against live competition. I didn’t do that because I was so consumed with becoming  a better shooter. Drum roll for the outcome.

I had become a predictable player. We have a term in basketball called a ‘Black Hole’. You don’t want to be one and you dang sure don’t want to play on the same team as one. They get the ball and no one ever sees it again because they cast it up, jack it, they shoot it every time. I wasn’t a Triple Threat. I didn’t defend well either so I was an athletic 19-year old with an aggressive mind-set and no real value for the team. It’s funny how universally applicable basketball terms can be. Imagine that the principle of being a Triple Threat doesn’t materialize unless YOU ARE A THREAT TO POSSIBLY INVOLVE OTHERS. It’s not until the defender thinks you might actually utilize your teammates that you become dangerous. The selfish player will almost always ensure defeat the same way a selfish parent can destroy a child or a selfish spouse his/her marriage. Dribble, Pass, Shoot and the details will produce an outcome of which you can be proud.

The Barest Minimum

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blurryroad$457,588 is the minimum salary for rookies during the upcoming 2009-2010 NBA basketball season. That’s gross income of course. One more year and the incremental increase moves to $736,420. After that, it gets disheartening for us average folks…average given how hard most people work everyday to make ends meet. Salary.com reports that the average teacher’s salary is roughly $50K. This could tailspin into a post about overpaid athletes but that’s not where I’m going.

You see that photo to the left? I can’t remember the name of the road in that English town we were riding through but I snapped a picture with my phone and that’s what came out. The clearest thing in the photo is the road on which we were traveling and the distorted portion is the foliage along the way that, even out of focus, makes the image captivating. The green in England is what this hastily taken shot brings to mind. It’s greener than any California native shrubbery, no disrespect to my home state. We live in a freakin’ desert. But there was a stillness, an exotic but welcoming peace in that lush beauty along the paved road. The speed we were traveling caused the photo to turn out the way it did and all because I didn’t bring my real camera on the basketball touring trip for which I coached in the summer of 2008.

With all due respect, the road has an attractiveness of its own for without it, travel in the vehicle is far more difficult. But the road is kind of like the exorbitant salary that rookies can demand. It is the thing for which high school boys lust and yet it’s like the road, alluring in its own right but superficially pale in comparison to what adorns the highway. It’s kind of a reminder to me of how we take for granted the $0 – $50K job because we perceive limitations. A rookie says to himself that all his problems are eradicated because his entry level salary is equal to a lifetime of earnings for an entire village in far reaches of the planet. That’s not to say he should regret accepting what his hard work and skills have afforded him. Hey, if the market will pay you well to do what you do, assuming what you do is both legal and ethical, than by all means do it. The point is to not focus so much on the road/highway that you miss the natural decor of life that existed long before your dream was realized. In England there was real Fish&Chips, J-2-0, Cricket, crisply spoken English, Round-Abouts instead of stop signs, no flies, hospitality and thousands of years of history. The asphalt road had little to do with those things but the “green” was meshed together with all of them.

There are successes and stresses in the worlds of teens and adults, both of which arrest your attention turning it to the road. IT’S A TRAP! Ironically the road is a means to end no different than the car you drive and yet we worship those too. We have become fascinated with fabrication but whether you’re an athlete navigating the waters of Division I college life, the NBA or just dealing with twin girls who don’t sleep simultaneously or for very long, you do well to appreciate the distorted trees in the image. Unlike my JPEG, if you wish to get a clearer look tomorrow, you can always take your foot off the gas pedal or even pull over carefully to capture life so it doesn’t blur past ya.