R.I.P., "NBA Sucks" Guy

If there's one stereotypical sports fan out there that I'm increasingly running out of patience with, it's the "NBA sucks" guy.  Huge numbers of people out there just don't give the NBA the credit it deserves (for absurd reasons like "the college game is better," or "nobody in the NBA plays defense").  Further, they simply don't recognize the current wave of talent in the NBA - a wave that just might perhaps make today's NBA the most-talented basketball league ever.

One thing that I can't seem to get through to people is this:  I maintain that during the '90s (the Jordan Era), the NBA was down, from a talent standpoint.  That's not to take anything away from Jordan - again, he' s the unanimous G.O.A.T. (also, part of it may be that Jordan was so good, everyone else looked bad by comparison) - but let's take a closer look at the talent level in the NBA throughout the decades by using the Hall of Fame as an indicator of elite talent.  Broken down by decade, here's a cliff notes version of the number of active HoFers that were playing during any given time-span, starting with the '50-'51 season.

From the '50-'51 season, through the '59-'60 season, the most active HoFers in any season was 26 (in both '55-'56, and '56-'57).  The fewest number was 18 in '50-'51.  You get the idea, here's the breakdown by decade:

From '60-'70: High -  29 ('68-'69;'69-'70); Low - 23 ('60-'61; '61-'62)
From '70-'80: High - 31 ('70-'71); Low 21 ('75-'76)
From '80-'90: High - 29 ('85); Low - 24 ('81-'82)

From here on, it gets a bit tricky because some players are still active or haven't been retired long enough for induction, but for simplicity sake, the following players are added to the HoF list: Kobe Bryant, Shaq O'Neal, Jason Kidd, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Allen Iverson, and Kwame Brown. So, adding those guys:

From '90-'00: High - 20 ('90-'91) Low - 8 ('09-'10)

Now, the low of 8 in '09-'10 is misleading (stay tuned) because so many HoFers are still active/not yet eligible.  However, I think it's safe to say that anybody who played during the '90-'91 season that's worthy of HoF induction is in already ... okay, maybe not, you could talk me into Tim Hardaway, Glen Rice, and maybe a couple others.  But even if we add 3 more guys to the 20 already in, that number (representing the highest number of active HoFers during the decade) is still equal to or less than the low of any decade save for the '75-'76 season. Also, keep in mind that through the '70s, the talent was divided between the NBA and ABA (that's a very important sub-plot to all of this).

This brings us up to the present.  Who are the active HoFers playing today?  Well, of the years I looked at, the absolute highest number of active HoFers in any season is 31 (during '70-'71), but the number playing in today's game could eclipse that rather easily.  Let's break it down:

Sure-fire HoFers playing now: LeBron James, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Kevin Garnett, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Tim Duncan, Chris Paul, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen.  (16 players)

Well on their way: Chris Bosh, Blake Griffin, Kevin Love, Steph Curry, LaMarcus Aldridge, James Harden, Paul George, Russell Westbrook, and John Wall.  (9 players)

Work to do, but in the conversation: Rajon Rondo, Damian Lillard, Anthony Davis, Al Horford, Al Jefferson, Ricky Rubio, Serge Ibaka, Andrew Bogut, Deron Williams, Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng, Eric Bledsoe, DeMarcus Cousins, Roy Hibbert, Chandler Parsons, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, Joe Johnson, David West, Kyrie Irving, Andre Drummond, Bradley Beal, Klay Thompson, and Paul Millsap. (25 players)

And that's to say nothing of this year's draft class - supposedly one of the deepest drafts ever, and the draft prior.  So, combining the "Sure-fire" and "On their way" categories, there's 25 players set to be enshrined in the HoF.  That means out of the remaining players, we're 6 short of tying the record for most HoFers active during one season. (I think we'll get there.)

By breaking it down like this, one can see the level of elite talent in any season relative to the overall talent in the league itself.  I may be bias, but given the names mentioned of players active today that could one day be immortalized, it becomes clear that the NBA is rebounding nicely from the apparent lack of elite talent in the prior generation.  Enjoy the present, NBA fans, this is as good as it gets.  And to you, Mr. "NBA sucks" guy, I say good day, sir.

Segura's Tragedy Offers Moment of Reflection

I just read about how Brewers' Shortstop Jean Segura's nine-month old son died last night, and felt compelled to write something.  I kind of feel bad about this, because I feel like I'm using that tragedy to draw attention to myself (or something like that), but I hope you trust me when I say this is done with good intentions.  Back to Segura ... when I found out about the death of his young son today, I obviously felt bad - felt bad for him, his family, his son, and kind of oddly, Brewer fans.  I felt bad for Brewer fans (myself included) because Segura's recent misfortune - his son had been sick for a while - wasn't in the news until the child died hours ago.  We had no idea.  All we knew was what we saw on the field, and that was that Segura, as well as the Brewers as a whole, are struggling mightily as of late.  After such a great start to the season, how could the Brewers (and/or Segura) be this bad?  We needed an explanation.  As far as Segura goes, that explanation grimly led us to the harsh circumstances of his reality.

I can't put my finger on when it was exactly, but at some time or another, I sort of flipped the way I looked at sports.  Before, I never thought twice about blasting the "over-paid, selfish athlete" for hurting my team's chances to win.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with rooting for a sports team (that's what makes it so much fun).  But when you root for a team, you tend to lose sight of the individual players that make up that team.  Often, team takes precedent over the athlete(s), and it becomes easy to be overly critical of said athlete(s) in the name of allegiance to team.  We applaud teams for trading or releasing under-performing players, or celebrate when an opposing player goes out with an injury.  It's all done in the name of team.  We root for the cursive-M with the barley leaf underline found on Segura's hat more than we care about the man wearing the hat.  Much like the cliché-ish story of the comedian who got heckled in the club going to the office job of the audience member to heckle them, athletes' work is out there for all to see, warts and all.  And because their jobs dictate that they play in stadiums in front of large crowds, the criticism of their work is public, if not infectious.  But athletes don't come to our workplace to yell at us for our deficiencies.  Even as I wrote the first line of this note, I felt a little uncomfortable writing "Brewers' Shorstop Jean Segura," as if his identity exists only as property of the Brewers organization, and even more specifically, that patch of dirt between second and third base where he can be found game-to-game.  But Segura (and all athletes) are so much more than [Insert team/position-followed by-name].  

For Segura, he is a son, husband, father, player, and native of the Dominican Republic.  Baseball led him to America.  Baseball will make him millions (if it hasn't already).  Baseball will leave him suseptible to boos and taunts coming from fans in a language he still doesn't quite have a full grasp of.  But in the wake of the death of his son, baseball means little to nothing.  He would toss aside that navy blue hat with the cursive-M and barley leaf to have one more day with his son, and nobody would blame him.  But over the past month or so, we have sat in the seats at Miller Park, at our homes, or at our favorite bar criticizing Segura for his regressing stat line.  Little did we know his son lie dying, and we were yelling at him for an errant throw to first base or for *only* managing to connect with a 95 mph fastball enough to hit a lazy grounder to third base.  We had no right to know his son's status, but it's stories like this that give me pause when the urge hits me to throw an athlete under the proverbial bus in order to rationalize the struggles of my favorite team; it's stories like this that make me lean back on my barstool of judgement and think "When I turn off Fox Sports Net, these guys have lives that continue, these guys have sons that are sick, or daughters that are facing real-life challenges, and I'm evaluting their play like it represents their entire existence."  We've all let personal issues affect our lives in ways that has nothing to do with those personal issues, we do this because we're human.  

It's easy for us to stand by our favorite athlete in the face of tragedy when Brett Favre goes out and throws 4 touchdowns hours after his father's death.  It's hard to ease off the criticism of a slumping Jean Segura when we don't have context.  But given that context, we find out that we were bitching about Jean Segura's 0-for-4 game at the plate while his son lie dying.