Ron Artest at his worst was everything that the NBA was trying to avoid with ‘The Brawl’ at The Palace of Auburn Hills in 2005 marking the NBA’s lowest point in all of its history. David Stern deemed fit to give the man formerly known as Ron Artest another shot, a chance to prove to all, and perhaps more importantly to Artest himself, that he was still a man that could prove his worth as a public figure.

Everything since then has pointed to the fact that indeed, misunderstood and irrational men can make amends for their past mistakes as Ron Artest became a peaceful and humble person doing his all to help and inspire young kids who also grew up in the same tough conditions he did. He even changed his name to ‘Metta World Peace’ prior to the 2011-2012 season and many began to think that if a man as evil at one point in his life as Ron Artest could become so exemplary – then really anything is possible.

However the chance of a sustained ‘World Peace’, just as much for the man as the ideal itself, evaporated within a split second on Sunday when Metta delivered a cold elbow to back of James Harden head, and was subsequently thrown out – perhaps in his last game as a professional athlete. It’s not that Ron Artest is a bad guy – the elbow was a heat of the moment reaction that was sparked more by muscle memory and years of vented frustration rather than a conceited attempt to hurt someone.

Still, this inconvenient truth emerging out of all of this is that Ron Artest is not fit to be on an NBA floor. Despite the man’s best attempts, he is still a danger to those around him especially because his problem is one that he himself can’t control – and he needs extensive psychological help to even have a shot at erasing his dark past and the underlying fabric of what he can be when tempers do flare. Metta’s post game denial that Harden simply got caught in the middle of his celebration speaks volumes on his still fragile state of mind and his unhealed state despite his repeated trips to the psychologist.

So while the pursuit of ‘World Peace’ is one that is commendable, it isn’t a simple switch that can be turned on or off as one wishes – it’s a culmination of many layers of complex problems that need special attention and not simple concealment and re-branding. At this point David Stern must ask himself once again, is ‘World Peace’ something really worth hanging onto.

LeBron James is in the midst of one of the most dominant statistical seasons in all of the NBA’s 66 years and has clearly surpassed Kobe Bryant as the consensus most dominant player in the world playing today. Yet ‘The King’ is hardly acting or being treated like royalty and it is evident that there is ‘something’ wrong with LeBron as evidenced by his inability to win a ring and his mysterious shrinkage in crunch time. But a closer look at the matter reveals that perhaps it is us the basketball fans that are being unfair in analyzing LeBron and expecting him to be godly, when he is simply just really damn good. After all it is late game heroics and championships that turn mere mortals into legends, and as vast as LeBron’s arsenal might be, he is not without a dent in his armor. Precisely, it is this specific weakness in his game that is holding the ‘Chosen One’ from being the superhero that everyone is expecting him to be and will hold him back from being the best player in the world.

LeBron’s play down the stretch has resurfaced as a talking point this season following his back to back inability to close the deal at the 2012 All-Star game and last night’s nail-biter against the Jazz. But anyone who’s followed LeBron’s career closely knows that this has become a recurring theme, whether you look at his amazing series against the Pistons in 2007, against the Celtics in 2010, or against the Mavericks in 2011 – LeBron has always fallen short when it mattered most because of his inability to close out games.

Analysts are quick to point to LeBron’s willingness to always make the ‘right’ play as the culprit for his shortcomings, but the issue lies deeper than that. It is an undeniable fact that the pressure barometer increases exponentially at the end of games (and this applies to every competitive undertaking). Therefore the ‘right’ play in the first 46 minutes of the game is not the same as the ‘right’ play in the last 2 minutes of ball games. At this point, besides looking at the player’s scoring ability you have to also consider how cool headed the player is, how good of a game he is having, and how much confidence he possesses at the time. Basketball is very much a mental sport in these key final moments.

Those are factors we never take into play, but ignoring them would be a foolish mistake. As stated in the opening paragraph, it is here that fans make the defining mistake. We wrongly assume that the best players are also the best ‘mentally’ down the stretch. However, there is no denying that some average players in the league suddenly become great in crunch time (Hedo Turkoglu, Robert Horry) and some great players are unable to deliver in the same high pressure moments (LeBron James, David Robinson).

The reason this part of the game is rarely talked about is because of the automatic assumption we have that great players must also be great mentally but also because frankly the sample size is too small and skewed. For LeBron’s case however, there is definitely a pattern forming and his reluctance to man up and take/make the big shot is increasingly becoming evident.

After having said all that, if LeBron James really feels that ‘the right play’ is passing to Udonis Haslem 20 feet from the basket when the he has only scored 4 points in the game, then that’s pretty clear evidence of a lack of confidence on the part of James. If this is the case, and LeBron James is indeed weak mentally at the end of games, then this single and perhaps now only weak point in his game is enough to prevent him from surpassing Kobe Bryant and certainly Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time.

You might be thinking that close games packed with high pressure moments are few and far between in the course of the regular season, but that’s certainly not the case in the Playoffs where championships are won and lost. Those series mentioned above in 2007/2010/2011 boil down to exactly that: LeBron unable to make the big plays down the stretch that his team needed.

Now in the case of the Miami Heat, Eric Spoelstra has enough talent on his team to be able to resort to some other players down the stretch and still win a championship. As many have admitted, including LeBron fans, LBJ can keep continuing being the best player on the planet in the first 46 minutes and Dwyane Wade can close after that. As neat and dandy as that strategy might be, that in itself removes LeBron James from the conversation of all time greats. Those last few minutes might be a minuscule time frame – but they are the undeniable turning points that separate the good from the great, the losers from the champions. You don’t get to be the best when the entire fate of your team falls on the shoulders of someone else.

Can you imagine someone as team-minded as LeBron James suddenly growing a killer instinct as coldblooded as that of Kobe Bryant? Me neither, and that’s simply why LeBron James will never be the best player in the world.

Ever since Chris Jericho was forcefully escorted out of a WWE arena in what feels like too many months ago, fans of the “The Ayatollah of Rock ‘n’ Rolla” have been clamoring for his return. There have been more popular and overall entertaining characters in WWE’s history, especially during the Attitude era where everything and anything was fair game, but in the confines of the new PG-era WWE that aims to be more entertainment than wrestling, no one can intrigue fans weeks on end like Y2J himself.

His return on 2January was no coincidence, nor was it really a surprise. Even during last night’s Raw there were several messages reminding the ‘Universe’ of his return and that he was in the building. Many fans were watching the Ziggler vs Punk match closer than normal, knowing very well that it would be an opportune time for the ‘mystery man’ to crash the party. It wasn’t to be. Instead Jericho came out unusually in the mid-show and did so to what looked like a (obviously fake) earthquake. It was probably playing to the ‘end of the world as we know it’ angle that was pushed heavily over the past several months, but still felt a bit strange.

Then the lights went out and ff it wasn’t clear before, the return of Jericho was validated as soon as his silhouette appeared wearing a jacket that would have made Michael Jackson’s wardrobe look bland. It was visibly too large, had blinking lights that even a style-less Christmas tree would refuse to wear, and if that wasn’t enough it had sleeves made out of mail armor. If you thought Jericho’s jacket, or anything else Y2J did in his previous return was overly lavish, then we were witnessing the 2.0 version.

The next 10 or so minutes consisted of the Canadian born wrestler ‘soaking in’ the return into his still six-pack rocking body, or perhaps it was a case of leeching out the excitement from the ‘hypocrite’ fans’ souls. There was a definite air of parody and sarcasm involved, which only became more apparent as the segment aired on and on without a single word. Was it satire, was it a move to turn heel, or was it just a part of something much bigger? It didn’t matter as Jericho left the building with a huge grin on his face and seemed to walk away having accomplished what he came to do.

The joke, it turned out, was on us

No one really knows where Jericho is going with this, and whether it will be worth all the hype and build-up. But at this point, it doesn’t really matter because Jericho has already gotten us hooked to whatever he chooses to do next. Many believe Chris Jericho to be the best speaker on the mic in the WWE, but last night he proved that his command of the crowd and his acting ability was just as equally impressive. Who else could go from the biggest pop in months to boos within 10 minutes without a single word or offensive action AND become the number 1 trending topic on Twitter worldwide. With most returning stars, simply having their music drop, seeing them walk down the aisle, hearing their catch phrase, and witnessing them doing their finisher once again is more than enough. For Jericho, he’s the unique type of performer that innovates, surprises, and sometimes bewilders – but he always does it his unique way and it’s something that is truly amazing to witness when it’s pulled off right.

While watching Jericho’s return for the first time yesterday many different possibilities and scenarios were rapidly shooting inside my head, none of which materialized:

-Jericho is drunk, or high, or both
-Jericho is really really happy to be back in the WWE
-Jericho perhaps just came back one last time to say hi to the fans and then quit wrestling forever
-Jericho wanted to stick it to McMahon and the WWE creative team and create havoc one last time before he would be fired forever
-Jericho wasn’t actually there himself, it was just his doppelganger that showed up
-Jericho would show up later in the evening and bomb the six man tag team match that main-evented Raw

When the RAW credits initially rolled I had a slight sense of disappointment because after months of anticipation, I felt there was something missing. Then it hit me as that overly grand smirk of his replayed in my head…we had been trolled. Chris Jericho performed the WWE version of ‘rickrolling‘ and we watched and cheered for it for 10 minutes before ever realizing it. Classic Jericho – the best in the world at what he does.

In football, you can intentionally physically hurt another player, you can swear profanities to players and refs alike, you can cheat your way to penalties and game deciding decisions, dive your way to getting other players sent off, but none will incur as much wrath as using a racial slur.

It’s a battle that FIFA has been battling for years, nearly costing FIFA president Sepp Blatter his job after suggesting players should just shake hands and forget following racially provoked exchanges. The FA took matter into their own hands this week, handing Luis Suarez an 8 match ban and will most likely follow up with a similar punishment for Chelsea captain John Terry.

Reaction from media was overall positive for the FA, who were lauded for leading the battle against racism in football and serving as a model that the likes of UEFA and FIFA ought to look up to.

At first glance, the decision looks solid – racism has no place in modern society and anyone who engages in it ought to be punished in some way. Luis Suarez being on the opposite end of this decision doesn’t really hurt society’s perspective on the matter, as the Uruguayan stands as one of the most hated athletes in the sport following his Hand of God 2 in the 2010 World Cup, his cannibalistic tendencies in Ajax, and his overall manner of conducting himself on the pitch.

Having said that, it does strike as particularly peculiar that Luis Suarez referring to Manchester United’s Patrice Evra as a ‘negro’ gets a 8 match ban while Wayne Rooney kicking another person (as he did against Montenegro during the Euro 2012 qualifiers) only gets a 3 match ban (which the FA themselves appealed and had it reduced to two games).

Could this timely decision to hand out a landmark penalty have anything to do with the recent denial by Blatter that racism doesn’t exist in football? After all, the FA’s disdain of Blatter is no secret and what better way to undermine the FIFA president than to take the exact opposite stance.

If you go even deeper into the case, it turns out that in Uruguay, the word ‘negro’ has no negative connotations and the whole situation has sent Uruguay into a fury, with officials from the country claiming the FA’s decision to be ‘absurd’. With foreign players becoming a core part of the Premier League – surely the FA should have used cultural discretion in its decision making process? Suarez should be educated enough to know the negative feelings his words could inspire, but his honest admission that he indeed did use the word ‘negro’ would back-up his claims that his words didn’t hold any malice – why else openly admit it?

There’s also the fact that Patrice Evra is involved in this, a person with a history of crying foul over racial prejudice without pretense and even being fined for exaggerating. In this matter where concrete proof is lacking and the players’ words are all we have, it is rather bewildering for the FA to conclude that Evra was the more credible witness and going as far as punishing Suarez without any other substantial proof.

According to Suarez’s claims, Evra said to Suarez “Don’t touch me, you South American” to which the Liverpool player responded “Porque, Negro?”. Evra’s account was that he had asked Suarez why he kicked him to which Suarez apparently said “Because you are black”. Evra claims Suarez used the word seven times. Regardless of who’s take you believe the outcome is one sided: Suarez 8 match ban, Evra 0 match ban.

Racism is a huge problem in Europe, perhaps worse so than any other part of the developed world. I remember watching an England vs Turkey international match years back in which a large part of the stadium were shouting “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk”. Nothing came of that day. No penalties were handed out, no fans were banned..heck, it didn’t even grab any paper headline. Skip forward to today, and not much has REALLY changed besides the advertising campaigns, the pre-match banners, and stiffer penalties on offending players that governing bodies are starting to enforce.

Yet whether it is Luis Suarez or John Terry – neither is facing losing their job by their respective clubs and their managers are turning a blind eye, standing firmly behind them going forward. It’s not exactly hard to understand why. The assumption is that the person is ‘just’ muttering a specific ‘taboo’ word at the heat of the moment. It’s rather safe to say that most football players are not actually racist types hell-bent on creating a supreme race, and if they were, they would have a hard time surviving in a career where ethnicity is as diverse as the shades of green on a football pitch. Amid all the negative headlines you will hear about this story in the coming days few will tell you that Patrice Evra himself in his written statement in this case said ‘I don’t think that Luis Suarez is racist’. Furthermore, even the FA in their opening remarks accept that Luis Suarez is not racist.

The point made by Blatter was that when players engage in physical competition, adrenaline and testosterone get in the mix, and people can end up doing and saying things they don’t necessarily want or believe. Wayne Rooney kicked a Montenegran player after carelessly losing the ball, but no one in their right mind will accuse him of being a serial ninja. In the same way, players might say something below the belt to each other amid the pushing and shoving and the battle to get under each other’s skin. It’s called trash-talk and it’s widespread in pretty much every single competitive sport. Some might insult the other person’s mother or kids, while others who are less well versed in the subtle craft go after the person’s race, knowing the cheap but guaranteed reaction that it will garner. Either way, sports can often get ugly when normal player conduct is replaced by frustration and anger, which has a habit of transforming itself to non-sportsman like conduct. None of the reasons why this behavior occurs is excusable, but it needs to be put in the proper context.

In England’s case, they have decided to put its war against racism at the forefront of its agenda – but that does not make racial slurs necessarily more evil than physical abuse or cheating. This is the cultural, or should I say political element that gets lost in the midst of the witch-like-hunt against Luis Suarez. An argument could be made that this draconian control of what people can and can’t say is against libertarian principles of freedom and liberty and that it undermines more substantial efforts to create true social harmony.

I’m not suggesting the FA are wrong in their approach of having racist offenses command more repercussions compared to other misdeeds. After all, racism is deeply rooted in perception and public figures play a huge part in shaping society’s senses of right and wrong. However, governing bodies must also know that public figures are the tip of the iceberg in the fight against racism and deeper more structural factors are at the root of the problem. Using sports as the battleground against racism, while the legal, economical and political branches of society watch idly from the corner is similar to bringing a knife to a gunfight – it’s unjust, insufficient and it’s probably not going to help your cause a whole lot.

Call me crazy, but I have a feeling that the NBA lockout will actually end up being a positive development for the sport and league in general. I’m not even looking at it from the standpoint of the owners, who can stop hemorrhaging money and get the system back on track, or the players who showed pride and resolve in sacrificing their own wellbeing for future generation of players.

My feeling is, despite the NBA turning into a sub-par legal soap opera over the past several months, the NBA lockout will help the league in the long haul, as people start properly valuing and appreciating a league that has for far too long been treated as a second class citizen in America.

Why The NBA Lockout Is A Good Thing

Worry not Mr. Stern.. sometimes, being locked out is a good thing.

Criticizing the NBA has become a fad akin to planking, you see other people doing it and decide to join in because it looks fun and harmless. Some feel the NBA lacks the excitement of the NFL, others view the players as a band of thugs, while there are those who complain about the over-abundance of games. Regardless of the reasons, you will hardly ever see a headline in US media along the lines of “Thank God the NBA exists”. To the contrary, the NBA haters have used the recent lockout as a chance to reiterate their indifference for the world’s premier basketball league, comforted by the fact that they are in the middle of another riveting NFL season.

A taste of the reaction to the NBA lockout on Twitter..

Yet, you can see the general mood is fast changing, as the chance of the NBA’s version of a ‘nuclear winter’ as Stern adamantly put is almost guaranteed and the NBA season as a whole is under real jeopardy. Now, slowly but surely, sports enthusiasts are taking a look at their sports calendar and see a huge gap from February onward. All of a sudden, the disappearance of the NBA will affect them on a personal level. Those weeks of posting ‘LeBron sucks’ comments on their favorite forums, those countless hours of watching Blake Griffin dunk videos on YouTube, those Thursday nights chuckling along with Charles Barkley, those fall season playoff tripleheaders – all of a sudden will have to be replaced with something entirely different, but surely not as fun.

If an NBA lockout is what it takes for the league to earn some respect and appreciation from sports fans in America, then I’m all for it. For those not convinced their feelings on the NBA will ever change, it might be wise to go over the facts and question why you really don’t value the NBA highly.

You compare an NFL Sunday night game or a NCAA College Basketball ‘March Madness’ match to a regular season game between the Atlanta Hawks and San Antonio Spurs and naturally think it’s infinitely times less exciting. Sure, but that’s not a fair comparison at all, and if you took the time and compared the NBA on equal grounds you would be surprised at how attractive of an entertainment source it becomes. Can you imagine a 16 game NBA season followed by a single game elimination playoff? Do you realize how packed NBA stadiums would be if there were only 8 home games per season? The NBA trades excitement for longevity – and that’s something no one seems to notice, let alone appreciate. It’s natural for people to associate scarcity with value, and abundance with boredom – but wouldn’t you rather have a juicy burger twice per week rather than a filet mignon once per month?

In terms of fluidity of the game, the NBA is head and shoulders above baseball and American football – whose broadcasts are filled with hours upon hours of non-action bits. A recent study by the Wall Street Journal estimated that NFL games have on average 11 minutes of action, only 6% of the average 174 minute telecast. How is the rest of the time spent? 43% is spent on viewing players huddling, 34% on commercials, 10% on replays and 7% on shots of coaches and referees. Those are the ugly statistic behind an NFL game. No one really notices it because it only happens once per week, on a given day, for a limited time during the year, and the hype (aka adrenaline) pretty much erases that from your memory. If you were subjected to this every day, and watching an NFL game became a common occurrence, the obsession over the NFL would quickly subside. A similar study for baseball showed there were only about 14 minutes of action in your average baseball game.

The NBA also has the more marketable stars, not only on an international level where it dominates the other two sports by a long shot, but also on US soil where only a select few quarterbacks and pitchers have managed to become household names. We won’t get into which of the sports is more aesthetically pleasing to watch, but judging by the highlights that dominate SportsCenter and YouTube, you can get a feel of what people really prefer seeing.

As for the whole deal with the NBA players being referred to as ‘thugs’, it is a racist comment that holds no place in our modern society. A baseball or hockey brawl is regarded as a spectacle, American football involves shoving and grabbing and hitting every other play, but when NBA players engage in physical action it becomes national news. Ron Artest hitting an actual fan definitely crossed the line, but it was a one-off event, and you didn’t see that ruining soccer when Eric Cantona did a similar thing while playing for Manchester United.

Not that Yahoo Answers is a perfect representation of public opinion, but thoughts such as the above are rampant on the internet

If you really want to channel your inner psychiatrist – you will realize that Ron Artest does indeed have a turbulent past, but a look at him in recent times shows that ‘Metta World Peace’, as he’s now known, has become an all around good guy who is heavily involved in helping less fortunate people. He even took the selfless move of auctioning his championship ring for charity. Hip-hop music, tattoos, a rough upbringing, lack of proper education, playing cards or even carrying guns – does not a thug make.

How much do we really need the NBA? It will take a couple of months of NBA sobriety for the true answer to that question to surface but I’m hoping fans wake up from their detox with a new found appreciation for the NBA. The NBA players will miss their paychecks, the owners will miss the sight of a packed stadium, but it’s the fans above all that should be missing the hardwood action, and ultimately be the ones clamoring for its return.

It was a moment MMA fans had been dreaming about ever since the sport took off 18 years ago, but the way it all went down, the UFC’s debut on network television was a far cry from the event that took the sport to where it is today. Velasquez vs Junior Dos Santos was no Griffin vs Bonnar, or anywhere close to it for that matter. The Ultimate Fighter 1 finale of Forrest Griffin vs Stephan Bonnar was a culmination of real hype – with fans growing attached to the quirky and interesting characters by seeing them in their most raw state, as opposed to an overproduced Primetime show that painted the fighters as the embodiment of the American dream, a tactic that has already been employed to death on television.

UFC on FOX Criticism

UFC on FOX ultimately ended up being a poor first showing for MMA, and the fighters are not necessarily the ones to blame

A major source of the blame has to be placed on FOX, who somehow managed to convince the usually unyielding Dana White that his product needed changing in order to be accepted by a wider audience. FOX used a production template that has worked well for its team sports, but that ultimately came off as overly flashy for a gritty brawl between two fighters. Brock Lesnar was in the studio stumbling over his sentences, Dana White was visibly fuming and openly bashed his former Heavyweight champion, and even the usually formidable duo of Goldberg and Rogan were obviously constrained by the tight production and rehearsals that took away from the natural flow of things. What was missing was the gladiator intro, the healthy trash talk, the highlight of a nasty stare down at the weigh-ins – you know, the appropriate ambiance to precede the two best fighters in the world about to settle their differences inside a steel cage.

We also have to put some blame on Dana White, who’s over-abundance of hype and expectations on this one fight ultimately didn’t play out like he envisioned. There is no doubt that the UFC President indeed tried to put the organization’s best foot forward, but in this case the best foot forward proved to be the one that Zuffa had taken in each and every step from their humble beginnings until the lead up to this event. Educating the viewers was made into too much of a priority, lifting the magic away from the adrenaline pumping action that made millions fall in love with the UFC in the first place. Let the millions of first time viewers be shocked, blown away, and actually interested in the product first – then you can worry about answering questions about the background of these fighters, the safety regulations in place, and everything else about the sport that people are misinformed about.

If it was my first time watching MMA, I would not have learned anything about the organization, the weight classes, the rules, what moves are employed – heck they hardly ever showed ANY actual fighting footage in the combined 2 hours this fight was talked about in the Primetime show and the UFC on FOX pre-fight show combined. If the whole purpose of this was to prove that UFC fighters are everyday people like you and me – then good job UFC, you were successful as the whole thing came off as rather ordinary. The last thing the UFC is, is ordinary. We didn’t expect Gerard Gordeau vs Teila Tuli or even Forrest Griffin vs Stephan Bonnar – but UFC on FOX 1: Velasquez vs Junior dos Santos was not a good representation of the sport, which is the saddest part about the whole thing.

As far as putting on just one fight, whoever made that decision ultimately sits at the top of culprits in this whole letdown of a night. 59 minutes of hype for a 1 minute fight is not a recipe for success. Of course it’s easy to criticize in hindsight, but it was hardly a surprise to see this result considering that a large majority of the two fighters’ fights had previously ended in the first round. Dana White’s post fight press conference tirade against those complaining about this arrangement stemmed not from the fact he believed they were wrong, but in his frustration of having not been able to make it happen.

As for the actual fight itself, there’s not much to say. It lasted only 64 seconds, with Junior Dos Santos throwing a well timed punch that glanced over Cain Velasquez’s temple, but managed to do enough damage to send the then undefeated Mexican to the floor, JDS wasted no time jumping on him and finishing him off with a susceptible ground and pound that left enough doubt to question whether referee John McCarthy was right to stop the fight as he did. The pro-Velasquez crowd in attendance at the Honda Center in Anaheim were in shock, Dana White was probably off somewhere cursing his like there is no tomorrow, and that is probably all the MMA a select member of the American public will ever see of this sport. After all is said and done, the sport is simply too big and exciting to be stopped by such petty things, but the lofty goals of making this the biggest sport in the world in 10 years will most probably have to be revised.

It started with the wildest off-season in sports history and concluded with the most exciting NBA Finals in recent memory. It contained more twists and turns than a Dan Brown novel, bigger villains than a Tarantino epic, and more drama than a season of Jersey Shore. The 2010-2011 season will be forever remembered as the year of the Miami Hate. Now that the first season is all over, it’s time to look at the 5 big questions that need to be answered as the Heat big 3 head into their sophomore season.

Miami certainly knew how to gather a lot of heat..

Is LeBron James’ legacy forever ruined?

Who would have thought that upon revisiting LeBron’s famous words from a year ago “I’m taking my talents to South Beach”, it would be his lack of talent that would be the wrongest part of that whole phrase. Yes, LeBron stormed past the regular season and the first couple rounds of the NBA playoffs in comfortable and dominant fashion, so much so that it prompted Scottie Pippen to proclaim LeBron the G.O.A.T.

However, as far as superstars and championships go, it’s only how you perform when you’re most needed that really matters – not scoring easy breakaway baskets against a young Bulls team when the series is comfortably in your grasp. LeBron clearly has a problem performing when things get tough, the sweep by the hands of the Spurs, the breakdowns against the Celtics, and the no-show against the Mavs affirmed this fact beyond doubt. LBJ now has 2 of the 5 biggest superstar drop-offs in scoring in NBA Finals history. LeBron lacked heart, lacked class, lacked the killer spirit, and ultimately lacked talent. Forget his legacy if he even has one at this stage, it’s the confidence within himself and his image around the league that took the biggest hit.

Is it unfair to put so much blame and criticism on a single player?

The way that criticism works is that it’s a natural response to the failed expectations that have been set forward. We wouldn’t, for example, criticize Chalmers if he was held scoreless in the fourth quarter because frankly nothing is expected out of him. On the other hand LeBron has built himself up in such a way, that it’s almost impossible not to criticize him. Calling himself ‘King’, being labeled the best basketball player ever before winning a single Finals game, proclaiming to win 8+ championships before being introduced to your teammates, and “The Decision” which showed that he cared more about showmanship than important attributes like loyalty, dedication, or let alone respect all led to his current predicament. He can brush off the criticism anyway he wants and try to shun the media and fans from his mind, but this is a sport and in sports besides championships, it is fan and media opinion that decide history.

Was this a disappointing season for the Heat?

You could easily make the mistake of assuming that just because this was their first season together and that they’re still a ‘young’ team, that this season shouldn’t be scrutinized too heavily. That would be a historically wrong way to look at things. Look at the ’95 Magic of Penny, the ’96 Sonics of Kemp and Payton, the ’99 Knicks of Ewing, the ’00 Pacers of Miller, ’09 Magic of Dwight Howard – none have gotten another chance after getting so close and looking so promising. Injuries, an off series by one of the superstars, mental lapses, dissolving chemistry in the team, clashing egos, ever improving opposition, building teams specifically to beat a certain type of opposition all contribute to the heightened difficulty of making another trip to the Finals.

What did Miami REALLY accomplish this season? The Heat beat out a Philly team that was out of its depths, an aging Celtics team that was battling injuries all postseason long and a Bulls side that was just too young and unequipped for a championship. The Miami Heat ended up losing to a starting 5 of a 38 year old point guard, a 5’8 point guard, a small forward who’s known for having the ugliest shot in the league, Dirk Nowitzki who was meant to be the biggest choker ever, and a center that the Thunder refused to take at a time they were starting Nenad Krstic at Center. Their second best player and backup center was out injured, and they were ridiculed by the likes of DeShawn Stevenson and Jason Terry that not only ripped them verbally, but had the audacity to back it up. An unmistakable smear in the legacy of the ‘Big 3′ and one that could halt their dynasty from developing before it was ever formed.

Do the Heat need to break up the Big 3?

The answer depends on what is meant by ‘need’. The Big 3 have enough talent within it that they could win a championship or two with the right parts added. It’s clear that the team composition this year was not optimal, with Pat Riley having limited time and resources to work with. The gaping holes after this first season has become much more apparent. Miami made the mistake of acquiring players with big names instead of big upsides – something that worked well for them in their last championship run, but clearly backfired this time around. JJ Barea, James Harden, Taj Gibson – these were the type of players that Miami should have invested in. Riley will surely have learned his lesson, but let’s see if he still has the nack of picking these type of players at a bargain. If you want to take another shortcut at the title, there’s no easier way to do it than trade any one of the big 3 for Dwight Howard. That’s right, you put Dwight Howard next to two of these Big 3, and you have a insta-dynasty right there. So the Heat ought to break up the big 3, but don’t necessarily NEED to do it.

How will the Wade/LeBron dynamic work moving forward?

Unless LeBron James goes back and develops a killer jump shot or mean post-up game, it’s time to set the roles of this team as they have been apparent since day one. Dwyane Wade is clearly the natural scorer of the team and it should be set forward as such. LeBron and Wade can still take turns as they have been doing in the first 3 quarters, but when it’s time for the fourth and baskets are a must, it should be Wade that is set up for the basket. LeBron could still have a hand in playmaking, and it would be nice to see him hit the offensive glass more, but he just doesn’t have the type of skill set that can breakdown a tough 4th quarter zoned in defense like Wade can.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for the Heat. I have a feeling that we’re in for a whole lot drama including: an imminent LeBron vs Wade feud, Chris Bosh questioning his identity, a high profile new coach, revealing confession/testimonials from the ‘role players’ who will be let go, and some summer signings from Pat Riley that will certainly shake things up. As you can see, the Miami Hate drama is just getting started.

Henry Abbott over at TrueHoop has been stirring up drama in the NBA for the past several months with his claims that Kobe Bryant isn’t as clutch as people think. The debate was taken a step further today when he said that humans were not capable of analyzing sports (or anything for that matter) very well over a long period of time, as “our brains can’t handle that much information, no matter what you had for breakfast”. This is why he believes that stats and spreadsheets are a better means to solving these complex questions.

Earlier in the month, we had a chance to witness IBM’s Watson Super Computer destroy two of the smartest humans alive in a game of Jeopardy!. It seemed like indeed the era of machines overtaking humans in information analysis was well underway. But can pure facts, figures, and raw data really out-think intelligent people who are experts in their field?

Can Watson become an NBA coach one day?

We know that machines, spreadsheets, stats are only as effective as the process and sense behind their data and analysis parameters. Of course, it’s humans that draw up the formulas, algorithms, and data definitions behind these machine tasks. Artificial Intelligence will always be born out of human input.

In many situations as we have seen over the years, whether it may be factual competitions like Jeopardy! or in routine tasks like calculating the investment rate of return in a business spreadsheet, this has worked well and shown the real value of machine analysis. But when we get to subjective topics of basketball that matter, that’s when ‘machines’ start to show their limitations.

In his arguments against Kobe’s ability in the clutch, Henry Abbott naturally points out that Kobe’s shooting percentage in the clutch is average at best. Looking at the pure stats during ‘clutch time’ (and letting go for a second the subject definition of what is considered ‘clutch’ time), Henry is correct in stating that Kobe is not nearly as impressive as people might think.

Kobe was somewhat clutch on this given night

But of course the argument doesn’t stop there, or else this whole matter wouldn’t be much of a debate. What Henry’s numbers proves, if anything, is that within the situations Kobe has found himself in during this ‘clutch’ period, he hasn’t been as accurate in making shots as some other players in the NBA. This by no means proves that he’s not the best clutch shooter in the NBA. If we used that sort of logic we would have to label Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal the best shooters in the game with their overall shooting percentages being off the charts.

The debate of ‘best at’ in practically anything in sports is much more complex than mere numbers can indicate. Why? There are thousands if not millions of factors that impact every single shot or moment in a game that machines simply can’t analyze. It’s not because computers are limited in processing power or spreadsheet softwares are not sophisticated enough. The problem lies in the data input and analysis parameters.

The state of NBA stats (data) is so primitive in this stage that it’s hard to take ANYTHING away from pure numbers. I’ve already let my distaste for NBA stats be known, but let me quote a section from that article which epitomizes how ridiculous some of the most widely accepted ‘data’ we have in the NBA really is:

There are so many things wrong with that [assist] stat I don’t know where to begin. First of all it includes as an assist many instances where the person who passed the ball might not have done anything significant. Imagine Smush Parker passes the ball to Kobe, Kobe takes couple of seconds to eye down his opponent and throw a couple of jab steps, then he dribbles takes one step back and hits a fade away three. Assist goes to Smush Parker. Now imagine theres a 2 vs 3 fastbreak and Steve Nash cleverly misleads the 3 defenders and passes to a wide open Amare Stoudamire, and Amare dunks the ball in after two quick dribbles – Nash gets no assist. These two examples hopefully help point out the problems associated with trying to track how well a player is setting up his teammates. I’m not even going to get into the whole, ‘PG creates a perfect setup and Center misses a layup’ argument.

When analyzing how ‘clutch’ someone is, there are lots of factors that need to be analyzed which no machine has tried to analyze, let alone recorded data for. These are some questions that not only stats and spreadsheets fail to consider, but have no means of figuring out in this juncture in time:

-How clutch are the other players in your team?

If you’re stuck on a team with players who freeze up, choke a lot, or make many mental mistakes, you will naturally have to take more responsibility than someone on a team with veteran big shot makers. The defense will also adjust how much pressure they will apply to a star player based on players around that individual. This will naturally impact shooting %.

-How many good vs bad decisions were made in the ‘clutch’ period?

It doesn’t just end with the ball going in or out. Some players might never shoot the ball in the clutch unless they have a wide open shot. Sure their shooting percentage will look great in the clutch, but they might have passed up on some great looks and forced it to a lesser team mate who had to force a shot with the clock winding down.

-How many ‘true clutch’ shots were actually attempted?

Even the data that is being used in analyzing the clutch shooting percentage is flawed because it puts equal weight on a wide open cherry-pick basket with several minutes left in the game as a desperation three attempt with 0.3 seconds on the clock. Both makes will count as 1/1 (100%) in the spreadsheets, but its impact in the ‘who’s the clutchest player’ debate should certainly not be equal.

Will ESPN’s PTI soon replace Wilbon and Kornheiser with IBM and Google supercomputers?

These are just some of the nuances when dealing with sports analysis. Sure some of the factors might be small and only create a small margin of error in the overall machine-based analysis, but in a game of basketball with 10 players all performing unique actions each second, backed up by years of personal history and states of mind, the amount of factors NOT included in the analysis made with pure stats tends to add up rather quickly.

While the brain might not be good at remembering every single play over a long time stretch as Abbott states, at least the brain processes most of the critical bits of information at least once when they are watching the game, and can call these bits of scattered data later if a trend seems to develop. On the other hand, not once does a spreadsheet ever consider any factor but the pure raw and limited stats that humans feed it through self-made statistical categories we have come up with and choose to follow.

This take on the ‘debate’ doesn’t advance any sort of argument on the degree of Kobe Bryant’s clutch prowess. Rather, it aims to remind us that while machines have shown their uses throughout history, the human brain can and should be more capable in sports analysis than a machine. Funnily enough, sometimes it’s not the quantity of data that matters in analysis but more so the quality. Until stats evolve way beyond their current status today, man should be able to out-analyze a machine in subjective sports questions.

To add fuel to the fire, let me end with these thoughts. Is it possible that while stats show Kobe is not accurate in the clutch, some basketball brains are reminded of the un-clutch, soft and daft players (Kwame Brown, Smush Parker, Ron Artest, Lamar Odom, Andrew Brynum, Pau Gasol) Kobe’s had to play with and the increased pressure this has caused him? Is it possible they remember all those valiant efforts at come backs with seemingly no time or chance left to win? Is it possible they think of the fear that Kobe instills on the whole opposing team when the game is on the line? Is it possible that humans dare to consider all these intangibles in forming their opinion? Yes it’s certainly possible…and I would go as far as saying that a machine can’t handle that much information – no matter what it’s given for breakfast.

The sports media has seen a dramatic evolution over the last several decades – to a point where today, it is out of control and Gilbert Arenas has become the latest tragic casualty.

There was a time when obscene events in the sporting world would see brief mention in a local paper, and disappear from memory soon thereafter – but that is now in the distant past. The 80’s was the start of the movement towards the increased importance of sports media in pop culture. Legendary players like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were defining what it meant to be a superstar and were gracing covers of magazines from Sports Illustrated to Time Magazine. The 90’s were all about Michal Jordan, and he single-handedly transformed the industry from being a sport to a form of entertainment. During this time, ESPN became a brand deeply imbedded within the DNA of sports with its highlights and opinions often becoming the apparent judge of success. The new millennium brought with it wide use of the internet, and thousands of Blogs were born everyday dissecting every small little topic humanly thinkable.

This rapid development of the sporting world and the way it has been covered has spiraled out of control – with plenty of reasons to explain how we have come where we are. Take the state of the media today: unprecedented competition with everyone having relatively equal access to finding and sharing information, the slow death of traditional media and its gasping effort to survive, and a fast drop in ethical standards. This landscape has resulted in everyone in the business blowing stories out of proportion and resorting to anything from lies to sensationalism, non factual rumors to biased opinions – in hopes of securing a piece of the pie.

If you’ve read this far down and are not sure what is wrong with the media today, perhaps a short recount of some recent stories might shed better light on the issue.

For example, Michael Vick went to jail and had his whole life destroyed because…he engaged in dog fighting. This isn’t exactly the right place to discuss the degree of severity of dog fighting – but I would personally place fighting (physically) with your wife on a higher level of evil. If you put together the suspensions of all these players with assault and battery histories (and believe me, there’s plenty), it wouldn’t come close to adding up to the losses both financially and emotionally that Vick has had to endure for his distasteful hobby.

Then you have Tiger Woods – his story probably received more media coverage than anything since 9/11. At the end of the day he was cheating on his wife – but last time I checked, the USA is not part of Saudi Arabia where such an act can be considered a crime worthy of being stoned. The amount of destruction the sheer amount of press coverage brought onto this previously angel of a human being resulted in an insurmountable and irrecoverable situation with his wife and family. The lost sponsorships were deserved, but complete loss of privacy and sensitivity in these private matters at times of crisis was a casualty of today’s media.

And this bring us to Gilbert Arenas – everything that could potentially have been written about him has been written. All his words have been published, his tweets followed, his list of pranks revealed, his interviews broadcasted, his thoughts and dreams shared, and everything you could ever want to know has been shoved down our throat by the media up to this point like it’s humanity’s shared child and we all need to know more about him than we know about our own family members. The same people who laughed at his jokes and wrote about how great he was now are using his pranks against him in explaining how he was a psycho megalomaniac bully.It wasn’t too long ago, the NBA even employed this guy themselves on their official website to write about all the crazy things going on in his mind – but following the gun incident Agent Zero, much like a spy who has gone offstray, got terminated.

What bothers me most is the breaking point came not as a result of his breaking the law but during a pre game huddle: the few seconds before a game where the leader of a team makes a final attempt to bond with his comrades before they go off to battle, like Spartacus in ancient times, like a King before his disciples, like a coach during a huddle. These speeches can be offensive, vulgar, downright offensive at times… but at the end of the day it’s none of our business what a core of individuals need to do to bond with each other. If you’re really looking for a punishment to teach a a lesson, you need to do it at the right time, right place, and right manner – and David Stern along with the Wizards organization dropped the ball on this one. If you’re going to completely break ties with someone, throw him off to the media wolves, do it correctly (that means doing something about Javaris Crittenton too).

Don’t get me wrong, what Gilbert Arenas did was wrong of course, and he needs to be punished. But his punishment should not be graver than the likes of Stephen Jackson, Laterell Sprewell, Delonte Jones, and Ron Artest. At the end of the day, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and Gilbert Arenas is not a killer. The United States’ recent gun problem, and the mentality of its people towards highly paid celebrities and investment bankers following the financial crisis made this an easy home run for the media to escalate the situation to its current heights. Now Arenas is facing 5 years in prison, a loss of 80 million dollars, completely abandonment from his long time sponsors and NBA team, and a life where tags like ‘thug’, ‘bully, ‘criminal’, ‘maniac’ will follow him and haunt him for the rest of his life. Does he really deserve this?

Arenas as a kid had a rough upbringing, being raised by his father in one of the most dangerous communities in the United States. He had to battle adversity, failure, being a complete nobody. He made himself a somebody, and there are countless stories of Arenas having a generous and kind soul and helping others. A few years ago, people in Washington would scoff at the idea of trading Gilbert Arenas for Kobe Bryant but today, the word on the street (hint: the media tells us) is that the Wizards have the worst contract in the league.

In fact there is some truth to that, but it is Arenas who has the worst contract in the league. You bring revolution to an age old industry by popularizing the idea of celebrity blogging, you take a battered team to their first playoff series win in years, you donate your time and money to the community, you give your heart and soul and spend 2 years trying to get back to form to help your team and in the snap of a second, a slip-up in judgment, you find yourself the biggest enemy in the nation after Osama bin Laden, and you’re threatened to have your livelihood taken away from you forever.

I urge those in the media to reconsider their approach and demeanor in this story. At times I have also been mad and frustrated with the behavior of Gilbert Arenas – but it is time for the media to step in and do the opposite of what it is normally trained and shaped to do: it must make as little of this story as possible. The media, even if it is against all its interests, needs to kill this story, focus on the positives, and welcome him back to his rightful place in the NBA once he has served the punishment sentenced to him by the law.

You know what’s a really stupid and really overused sports cliché? Well, all clichés are pretty idiotic but one that particularly annoys me is the saying: “We gave it a hundred and ten percent..”. First of all, there is no such thing as over 100% in real life, it’s impossible by definition. 100% is the most that you can get from something if every possible things works without a flaw. Machines are able to operate at near 100%, but humans? Not even close. Thats what I want to talk about today, the limits of a person, but more specifically the limits of an athlete.

I’m gonna go ahead and forgive that little cliché we use about working in overdrive, but something more concrete to ponder over is whether athletes really play up to anywhere near their capacity, and my belief is an astounding no. Don’t believe me? Then read on.

There are ways to get athletes to 'play harder'

The regular season of most sports league is one area where we see players constantly playing way below their potential. Any single tough and physical game where players really seem to care about is referred to as a ‘playoff intensity’ game. Now why would players intentionally play at below their levels and perhaps more importantly how can teams who pay them millions of dollars just stand by and do nothing about this unacceptable behavior. Especially teams that probably won’t make the playoffs should be playing games like it’s the last game of their life right? I’m not even going to talk about the huge discrepancy between players’ performance in contract years as opposed to other years, its a subject that makes my stomach ache.

Let’s assume for a second that athletes play a notch below their ‘hardest’ during the regular season so they avoid injuries and keep energy for more important games that will come in the post season. Ok.

The thing is, I also don’t think the level of competition being played in playoff games, or even finals games is anywhere near what the athletes are capable of either. I absolutely don’t believe it when players say ‘we played our hardest’ or ‘we gave it everything we had’. Nonsense. If you had kidnapped the families of the players in question and told them if they didn’t win, they would kill their families…don’t you think they would have hustled a tiny bit more out on the floor? Don’t you think they would be chasing loose balls like their life depended on it? Do you think any player would show a hint of selfishness at the cost of the greater goal? They might not win, but I’m willing to bet that they would do better than if they weren’t motivated in such a way.

It’s a scientific fact that people produce adrenaline in times of extreme danger or excitement. Imagine a woman lifting a very heavy object to save their kids’ life. You know what I’m talking about.

There will be some that argue that people can’t perform well under such extreme pressures because they will be too scared to do something wrong. If that’s the case then the right sort of ‘punshiment’ needs to be found in order to motivate these players to really play closer to the 100% level they are capable of. I remember my days playing basketball in high school and university, when our coach threatened to make us run suicides if we made mistakes. Immediately, the amount of mistakes would go down, people would focus more, and we played better. Did it take out some of the fun, and made us more uncomfortable? Sure, but people perform at their highest level not when they have fun, but when they are intimidated.

The theory is that this kind of extrinsic motivation has some serious negative aspects which I’ll quote below:

1. It’s not sustainable – As soon as you withdraw the punishment or reward, the motivation disappears.
2. You get diminishing returns – If the punishment or rewards stay at the same levels, motivation slowly drops off. To get the same motivation next time requires a bigger reward.
3. It hurts intrinsic motivation – Punishing or rewarding people for doing something removes their own innate desire to do it on their own. From now on you must punish/reward every time to get them to do it.”

Sure, its not a nice thing to constantly pressure your athletes and punish them. It will quickly kill of the team chemistry and motivation of ever playing on the team. But at the same time, sports is a billion dollar industry where teams are constantly looking for the slightest of advantages they can find over their opposition and this often times is enough to translate to victory and success.

Look back at some of the successful basketball teams of the last decade. Besides the overly talented Lakers and Boston squads, you only have the Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons, and the San Antonio Spurs who have won the championship. The three coaches in question: Larry Brown, Greg Popovich, and Pat Riley are widely known around the league as the some of the most serious and strict coaches in the NBA. It seems like discipline, and a sense of intimidation does result in higher levels of play. Contrast this with ‘loose’ teams that have a care free attitude like the Warriors, and you will see immediately that focus decreases and players hustle less, commit more turnovers, and overall play at a lower level than they are capable of.

The lesson of all of this is not that every team should go out and adopt a draconian system where players are treated like lab rats and tortured until they can produce at their optimal level. The more constructive idea to take out of all of this is that there is definite room in sports for better management of athletes’ performance levels. Whether it is flexible and custom motivational schemes, player specific psychiatrists, and more correlation and trends analysis of what makes different players ‘take nights off’ or have ‘career nights’. Teams that do so have better chances of making the most of the players they have, and in an industry where games and championships are decided by a single point, isn’t it all worth it?