On sports pages and websites, “the league” and ”the NBA” refer to the billionaires who own the franchises — not the athletes they employ. The owners appoint a commissioner to pursue their collective interests and be their mouthpiece. Currently it's a sepulchral lawyer named Adam Silver. who is said to “speak for the NBA.” Which means he speaks for the owners.
Mark Stein, who covers the National Basketball Association for the New York Times, is an obvious company man. This week he filed a piece that was snotty towards the great LeBron. ”James Insists Season / Was Too Much too Soon” was the hed in the print edition. Insist hints that the man was stubborn, maybe even irrational. ”James Says NBA Season...” would have been a better fit.
The so-called regular season has ended and we are now getting towards the end of the NBA play-offs. (The addict watches the dwindling of his stash.) There have been so many injuries that who wins will have been a matter of who survived. It is super-obvious that the athletes have been overworked. From the billionaires' POV, their horses are dying and their hoopsters are pulling up lame.
The season is too long. Bruce Jenkins of the SF Chronicle has been calling for a shorter season, but no one is campaigning for it... yet. LeBron James is a de facto leader of the players (meaning the athletes, the employees of the franchise owners). He spoke out strongly against the “play-in” devised by the owners to extend the season. A blatant speed-up but he didn't organize against it. Will he lead a push for a shorter season? That's the situation as of last week, when Stein of the Times weighed in with a snotty-but-informative analysis:
“...James took to Twitter to commiserate with fans about the record-setting eight current All-Stars who have missed at least one game this postseason — and to criticize league officials for not doing more in this pandemic season to ‘protect the well being of the players.’
“By more he meant less: James said he warned them of the injury risks in wedging a 72-game regular season between Dec. 22 and May 16, with the playoffs timed to end right before the Tokyo Olympics, compared with starting in mid-January and possibly playing fewer games. The 2019-20 season, remember, strayed into October and spawned the shortest off-season in league history after a four-month interruption because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“‘They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James wrote. “I knew exactly what would happen.’
Self-serving? Yes. Vague? Yes again. There was an undeniable whiff of convenience to James’s remarks, as a rationalization for the swift end to the Lakers’ title defense, along with a lack of clarity. James did not specify who was warned, or when or where. He was also surely aware that the league and the players’ union agreed on the 2020-21 season schedule and that starting later, as James had hoped, likely would have cost both parties significant television revenue...
“The players’ union agreed to that timeline after learning that the N.B.A.’s television partners pushed for it. The players, who split annual basketball-related income almost evenly with team owners, were told that starting in January instead of December would cost roughly $500 million in revenue, after last season’s shortfall of $1.5 billion. No less important to the league office was the opportunity to wrap this season up in time to return to its usual October-through-June arc in 2021-22.
“In retrospect? It was a giant ask. The physical and mental toll of last season’s restart in the Florida bubble, combined so soon with the rigors of a season in home markets governed by strict Covid-19 protocols, had teams fearing a spate of soft-tissue injuries. Daily coronavirus testing cut into rest and recovery time. Player stress and training time lost, with fewer practices and a second-half crush of games to make up for earlier virus-related postponements, only increased those fears.
“As the number of injuries to stars — because of bad luck or the compressed schedule — became a dominant second-half story line, questions surfaced. One of the biggest: How will the franchise cornerstones who shoulder such demanding loads rebound next season?...”
Which side Mark Stein identifies with when management confronts labor is revealed in “It was a giant ask.” The owners were asking the athletes to start working full-time a month early. I wonder if they still get depreciation allowances as their athletes age?
Which side Mark Stein identifies with when management confronts labor is revealed in “It was a giant ask.” The owners were asking the athletes to start working full-time a month early. I wonder if the owners still get depreciation allowances as their employees age?
As the previous season was nearing its end with the pandemic on the rise, the NBA team owners announced plans to hold the play-offs in Orlando. Then the Black Lives Matter movement was propelled by George Floyd's killing. LeBron James and others discussed calling off the Orlando trip as a health risk and in support of Black Lives Matter. There was so much support for a dramatic work stoppage that Barack Obama got involved, advising that the more effective tactic would be to play in the bubble and wear uniforms that made righteous statements to the hoops-loving masses. If Obama had not performed this small service for capital, if the players had pulled off an effective strike, fans might have gone into withdrawal but we would have survived. And today, as we ponder what to do when the fascists get voter-suppression laws on the books, it would be useful to have, fresh in memory as a tactical option, the great NBA Players Strike of 2019-20.
Why the American People are Crazy
Watching the NBA play-offs on television, viewers are exposed to an ad for a movie called “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.” The footage is bizarre and disturbing — the genre is called “horror” for a reason. The ad claims that the flick is “based on a true story.” Intrigued by the “true story angle,” I checked out the Times review.
“‘The Conjuring’ movies offer a fascinating peek into the American psyche. Based on the lives of the Northeastern paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, the franchise demands viewers invest in a worldview ruled by Christian dogma, where Godly good must battle satanic evil. “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” is by far the most well-constructed, terrifying entry in the franchise, but its plot relies all too heavily on that same bizarre evangelism.
“‘The Devil Made Me Do It’,” helmed by the ‘Curse of La Llorona’ director Michael Chaves, opens on a slickly stylized exorcism. Heavy fog introduces a series of imposing, angular shots as Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) work to free an 8-year-old boy from demonic possession. Top-notch sound mixing and a booming score keep this sequence taut, even exhilarating, as the demon slips from its child host to the unsuspecting Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor). In an even more chilling series of scenes, a possessed Arne later stabs his landlord to death. It is then up to the Warrens to prove that Arne is not guilty by reason of satanic curse.”
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from abridging freedom of speech, but culturally-promoted insanity needs abridging. Those bad Chinese are trying to impose a secular POV on the Uighurs, but in so doing are said to be violating their “human rights.” I'm plumb out of ideas.
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