NBA Draft In Hindsight

I've held off writing my review of the latest NBA draft for a very specific reason: I needed to make sure that there was enough distance between my current time and the time of the draft to avoid saying something that I might regret. I know that a good portion of my writing style involves writing such that you really hear my "voice" coming through the page, but I didn't want that voice in this case to be that of a raving lunatic. A mildly upset lunatic will have to do. I was so upset after the draft that I could hardly see straight. Here's the crazy thing, though: I actually wasn't all that upset about trading away Mayo.

Now I probably need to clarify a bit. In our mock draft, I desperately called for McHale to draft Mayo with the third pick. I know that the Wolves had a glut of guards at that point. In fact, some of the guards could have been viewed as having similar skill sets as Mayo. Both McCants and Foye were of similar statures to Mayo, at least physically. Mayo, however, brings a significant amount more talent to the table. There's a reason that a team selects in the top five positions in the draft. Either it's through shrewd dealings with other teams, or the fact that your team was horrible and in desperate need of help. The Wolves definitively fall in to the latter category. Falling in to the former category are the Pistons who, for all of their smart decisions in other cases, learned this the hard way in the 2003 draft when they skipped selecting Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosch, or Dwyane Wade because they had those positions "covered" and instead selected Darko Milicic with the second overall pick after the Cavaliers took LeBron. They've been haunted by that selection ever since. When you're drafting in those slots, regardless of how you received the pick, you need to select the best possible player. You don't draft with need in mind at all.
Mayo was widely considered the third best prospect in the draft, so when the top two prospects came off the board, he became a no-brainer. I would have been very upset with almost anyone else being drafted in this slot.

I was actually still awake when the trade came down. When I saw that the Wolves had gotten rid of a horrible contract (Marko Jaric) to go along with Mayo and received Love, Miller and a reasonably-serviceable defensive center (Collins), I thought that it was a reasonable trade for both sides. Did I like giving up the potential superstar in Mayo? Of course not. Did I mind giving up the potential headache in trying to get him signed? Again, of course not. I didn't think there would be too much of a problem signing Mayo to the rookie deal, but there were already people talking about how the Wolves would have a hard time getting Mayo signed to an extension. Then again, if you make your roster moves in basketball based on what could happen in four years, you don't deserve to be a basketball executive. Of course, we've been saying that about McHale for years, so anything is possible. I'm not crazy about Al Jefferson having to play more time at the center position when he and Kevin Love are on the court at the same time. However, I love the fact that the Wolves have a legitimate three-point threat in Miller. To me, the combination of Love and Miller makes the deal worth while. I would have liked to get one of the Grizzlies' young point guards and one of Milicic or Marc Gasol, but it's still a reasonable deal.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you're probably wondering what it was that infuriated me about the Wolves' draft night. It all comes down to the second round. The Wolves had the first pick of the second round along with the fourth pick (34th overall). By the time their pick came around, I looked at the "best player available" list. I saw two surprises in that list: Chris Douglas-Roberts and DeAndre Jordan. They were both thought to be border-line lottery picks, so to see them still available was a shock. Needless to say, I was very disappointed to see the Wolves pick someone I had never heard from and in researching him, found that he won't be a help for at least two years. Then the 34th overall pick came up and they were both still available. The Wolves picked...neither of them. They selected Mario Chalmers, a point guard who had hit the final shot to win the NCAA tournament. I suppose I could deal with that. Then they traded him away for two second round picks next year. How exactly does this make sense? Yes, there were stories about Jordan's "stock" dropping because of "poor workouts." The infuriating thing is that in games, you don't go through workout drills. You play basketball! Jordan is admittedly still quite raw. In 20 minutes per game, he averaged almost 8 points and 6 rebounds per game to go with 1.3 blocks. If those numbers were to hold over 40 minutes in a game, that would be 16 points (reasonable), 12 boards (very nice) and 2.6 blocks (great). What Big Al needs right now in a front-court mate is rebounding (check) and defense (check). Most importantly in my mind, is the fact that Jordan would allow Al to play his natural position. CDR is a very skilled scorer who gets to the basket and to the foul line, which are two skills the Wovles could really use. And the Wolves could have had both of these players. I love the thought of having a lineup of Foye, CDR, Brewer (defense), Al, Jordan with Kevin Love and McCants coming off the bench. That is a very young, skilled lineup. You're still hoping that Brewer, Jordan and Foye progress and make use of their potential, but that potential is huge. That's what upset me about the draft. Having two very high second round picks and getting nothing immediately useful out of them. Way to go, McHale.

The news that actually spurred me to finally write this all down is the Wovles trading a 2.8 million dollar trade exception to the Sixers for two players and a first-round draft pick. This means that if everything falls in to place as expected, the Wolves would have four first-round picks and three second-round picks in the 2009 draft. The Wolves would have to fall in the top ten after the lottery, the Celtics would have to be out of the top three, the Sixers would have to be out of the top ten, and the Miami Heat would also have to fall out of the top ten (I think). All of this has started me thinking that the Wolves strategy is to constantly have the Wolves' fans in the worst state in the world of sports. "Maybe next year..."

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Today's Gaming Tip: Don't be a Dink

Here's a confession: I'm not a very high-level gamer. Sure, I enjoy playing video games and spend quite a bit (too much?) of time playing them, but I'm not very good. In a real-time strategy (RTS) game, I tend to "turtle" or hang out in my primary base building up my forces, fending off the paltry attacks that the computer brings to bear until I'm ready to break out and demolish them. In a first-person shooter (FPS), I walk very slowly and carefully, making sure to uncover every thing possible in a room before moving on just in case there's that extra health pack or ammo laying around that could make a difference in the next room. Neither of those practices is conducive to playing these games online. The people online playing an RTS have the first five minutes of any match mapped out to the point that they know exactly what each character will be doing, what will be built and what forces they need. It's like playing Axis and Allies against my brother (old-school geeky reference). The people playing FPS games online have obviously been bionically enhanced to heighten their reflexes so that the commands sent through their FIOS connection (to make sure that they have minimum ping) are exactly the right move at the right time. That or they have ESP so that they know exactly where to fire the rocket so that it splatters my virtual self all over the floor. But I'm not bitter.

Here's the thing, though: I know I'm not good. I'm OK with that. What I'm not OK with is a player who is more advanced being a dink. Let me give you a couple of examples.

I had been playing WarCraft 3 with a friend of mine online. Both of us were not very good. We both acknowledged that fact. We would play 2 vs. 2 battles against other people that the WC3 service would deem as being "on our level." We were playing one such match and completely got our butts kicked. As we're congradulating our opponents on a well-done match, one of them makes the comment that they created new accounts to play against lower-tier players. In other words, they were "slumin' it." So much for the match-making service.

Lately, I've been playing a bunch of Team Fortress 2. This is a completely online FPS, so there isn't a single-player campaign to get your feet wet. You're immediately thrown to the wolves, trying to learn the ropes. I was momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer number of servers on which you can play when by happy chance, I stumbled on a server marked as being just for someone like me: a complete Newbie. I was over-joyed. I was still noticably worse than the other people on the server, but I felt like I was among my own, for the most part. Then, tonight as I was playing, I asked what I thought was the fairly innocuous question of what control I use to activate the cloak for the spy, since I hadn't much experience running the spy before. Someone voice chats, "Don't tell him! Because then he'll play the spy and suck. Read the manual, noob!" In fairness, could I have looked at the keyboard layout in the options menu to find out? Yes, of course. It just didn't occur to me at the time. However, I didn't expect such a response on a server marked as being for people who aren't completely up to speed on the game. Silly me.

Destructoid had a very good tongue-in-cheek article about online gaming. One of the best lines in there, using the ever-interesting second person point of view, is "You, however, were never a noob. You were playing games online before the Internet was even invented." Let's try to remember, folks, that we all had to start somewhere. I'm starting with TF2. I'm trying to get better, and I think that I have. For one thing, I'm not trying to be a front-line soldier with my medic any more. That was just silly.

My name is Jeff Kamp, and, for now, I'm a newbie. So if you see my spy fumbling with his cloaking watch, please pause for just a second before killing me. I'm sure I'll give you ample time to actually take me out. Thanks.

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Disappointment Unlimited

I love our local library. I've been able to catch up on quite a bit of comic book reading (Ultimate Spider-Man) and read some that I've always wanted to but never had the chance (Watchmen, V for Vendetta). I've also been able to watch a few shows that I wanted to see (Lost). I've also been a bit disappointed. I'm a really big believer in being truthful in advertising. If you say that your product does something, or is something, I would greatly prefer that your product does or is that thing. That's why I was mildly frustrated with the people who produced the show that I borrowed from the library: Justice League Unlimited.

I've always been more of a Marvel guy than a D.C. guy. I'm sure that it's partially because the first comic that I started buying on a regular basis was the Amazing Spider-Man. From there, I went on to the the Incredible Hulk, the Uncanny X-Men, and Wolverine, among others. It's only been in more recent years that I've started getting more of an appreciation for the "Distinguished Competition." Mainly in the form of liking to read Batman, but also reading some of the Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Justice League stories. When I saw a disk that was labeled "Justice League Unlimited, Season 1," I was excited to see the Justice League crew in cartoon form and able to see it from the beginning. Boy was I wrong.

The animation was in a style that we've come to expect from the WB/D.C. studios that started with the animated series for Batman. The voice work was top-notch. We had Kevin and Jason from the Wonder Years. We had Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Gina Torres from Firefly. The characters were many and diverse. We had the heavy-hitters (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern), the mystic (Dr. Fate, Zatana) and the lesser-known (Hawk, Dove) characters. The stories were interesting and mostly self-contained, but with an over-arching story that carried with it clues to where the show was heading. Unfortunately, that also included some information (or lack thereof) about from where the show had come.

You see, this wasn't what I would call a "pure" season one of the show. It had continuity that it had carried over from a previous show. There was some whole thing with Hawkgirl so that she was hanging out in some pocket dimension with Dr. Fate along with the fact that there seemed to be some unrequited love thing between her and Green Lantern. To top it all off, one of my favorite characters in the D.C. universe, the Flash, who is one of the major, flag-ship characters of the entire comics line along with being a founding member of the Justice League (Well, really, it was his predecessor, Barry Allen, who was one of the founding members, at least in the comics, but that's not important right now. Well, to you it's not important; to me it's a detail that they missed. Where was I? Oh, yeah: the Flash) doesn't even make a single appearance in the series besides the opening credits until the seventh episode of the series. How does this make sense?

So, to sum it all up: If you're looking for the Flash, expect to be disappointed until mid-way through the first season, and please don't mind the fact that they said it's a first season, but really it's not, and they don't completely explain the stuff that they figure you should already know because, after all, you watched the previous series that wasn't actually named Justice League Unlimited, right? I mean, why would you be watching this series if you didn't watch the first one? It's not like they said that this was the first season of a brand new series, right? Oh wait! They did. (Deep breath.)

My name is Jeff Kamp, and I approve this rant.

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Pullin' for the Underdog

I was listening to my normal lineup of podcasts through my work day. I had finally gotten to the third part of the marathon known as the Bendis Tapes on the Wordballoon podcast. Brian Bendis is one of my favorite current writers. He's one of the master minds behind the re-thinking of the Marvel universe referred to as the "Ultimate" line. He's also done some fantastic work in a universe of his (and Michael Avon Oeming's) creation in Powers. Basically, anything that he writes, I recommend picking up. It's also a lot of fun to get a peek in to the thinking behind his writing through the Q&A session that he does with John Siuntres on a semi-regular basis. Check both of them out if you get the chance. Here's what Mr. Bendis had to say:

"We as a society - particularly Marvel readers as a group - tend to always root for the underdog. Spider-Man is the perpetual underdog and he is the...poster boy for the Marvel universe. That is who we are as readers. That is what we like." Brian Michael Bendis - Wordballoon, The Bendis Tapes, Feb '07, Pt. 3 34:31. (You can also find more Wordballoon episodes here.)

I didn't think much of it at the time, but it was one of those things that started percolating in my head.

There are many things in life that people try to break down, ad nauseam, into two groups: red vs blue, butter vs margarine, DH vs pitcher batting, etc. The one that I'm going to focus on, though, is the underdog vs those with advantages. The two major comics publishers are a good example of the dichotomy. Marvel has characters like Spider-man where Peter is a kid who lost his parents at a young age along with his uncle several years later and is raised by his poor aunt. DC has Batman who also lost his parents at a very young age and, like Spider-Man, the death of loved ones is a major driving force. However, for Bruce Wayne, he has the advantage of an enormous personal fortune along with his own personal butler to raise him. Bruce Banner is incredibly smart and the leader in his field of research, but he's haunted by the demons of an abusive father and an abused mother along with the very real monster inside that gives him the ability to right wrongs through his incredible strength but comes at the cost of any sort of self control. Superman also has incredible strength and the ability to champion justice in the world. However, unlike Bruce Banner, Clark Kent is the epitome of sentient life and is revered by the populace where the Hulk is feared and reviled. This is one the reasons that I've been more of a fan of Marvel comics as opposed the DC comics: The fact that I can identify more with the characters in Marvel stories. No, I haven't been caught in the explosion of an experimental explosive device or been bitten by a radioactive spider (though there was the case of a really nasty bee bite a few years ago), but the people behind the mask/transformation had real-life problems and struck me as real people. I knew what Peter felt like to be a bit of a geek (imagine that) and to have the issues of having a job and school and a girlfriend to all be making demands on his time. Not to mention the fact that I'm a masked crime fighter during the night that is constantly cracking wise at my adversaries, but that's not important right now.

I've always been one that appreciates the underdog. I prefer the Marvel heroes. I pull for anyone that's playing against the Yankees, the Lakers, the Cowboys, the Giants (football), and Duke. They're the ones that always have an advantage of money/prestige/officiating/cheating. Part of this comes from the fact that I was raised in a "flyover" state by a man who was a third generation farmer (i.e. not rich).

One of the things that struck me as interesting is that we as a culture are being strongly encouraged to be pulling for the underdog. Our movies have many examples of those that have the circumstances against them but are able to move forward and excel at something. Little Hickory High playing the Hilliard Gates basketball powerhouse. Rudy trying to get on the Notre Dame football team. The hapless Indians vs the powerhouse Yankees in Major League. We're encouraged by the media to be cheering for those that shouldn't win. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself. However, this mentality can get annoying. I'm weary of having to listen to every team that wins some form of championship get in front of the first camera/microphone they see and immediately start talking about how no one believed in them and that everyone was picking the other guys. I can almost guarantee you that the other team would have been saying the exact same things had they been on the winning side. Coaches just feed this mentality of "us against the world" to keep the reporters from getting any information because "they might be out to get us."

We carry this mentality as a society as a whole when we talk about how Europe and many other places in the world "hate America." We're one of the strongest and most influential nations in the world and we're supposed to view ourselves as underdogs? Really? Part of this comes from the strong Christian heritage in the US which traces its roots back to a time when Christians were strongly persecuted by the Roman Empire, specifically the emperor Nero. Also, there's the fact that the US was a huge underdog in the War for Independence because of the strength, funding and training of the British forces.

Here's the point: In competitions, it's at the least acceptable to have an us against them mentality. I just don't want to hear you spout the "no one believed in us" drivel when you were "underdogs" by three points. That said, the world is not a competition. Today more than ever, we have a global community. Don't believe me? Look at the ratio of things in your home that are made in the US and those that are made overseas (specifically China). We're all the same team. We might not always have the same goals or ambitions, but when it comes right down to it, we have to work together and there is no underdog. Wow. I got serious there. Crap.

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It Ain't Me, Babe

Those who know me, or for that matter spend more than twenty minutes with me, know that the Simpsons is one of my favorite shows. I just consider it to be very funny and incredibly well-written. The guys writing it know what they're doing. Besides which, watching it is one of the very few ways that I rebelled during my formative years. Yeah, I was a weenie. Anyway, there was an episode where Bart gains his 15 minutes of fame by becoming the "I didn't do it" kid after causing a mild disaster on television looking at the camera guiltily and saying (imagine this), "I didn't do it." I'm sure that it was, for the most part, the writers' way of pointing out the absurdity of all of the merchandising that was being created at the time with Bart's mug and signature lines ("Don't have a cow, man" and "Eat my shorts) all over them. However, if you want to look at it a different way, it's also a horrible snapshot of our modern culture. We've become a society of "I didn't do it" kids. The Devil made me do it. It's not my fault that I'm overweight, Gigantic Fast Food Place is making me overweight. It's not my fault that I smoke and have emphysema, it's the fault of the cigarette companies for selling a product that I wanted to buy. You can't blame me for having kids that are out of control, it's the fault of their other parent for being too lenient, harsh, absent, violoent video games (a personal favorite), etc. How long until people are suing the cola makers and coffee companies for making a product that makes some people have headaches if they don't have it? How long until we're suing the automobile industry for making a product that lets me drive at an unsafe speed and crash? There are getting to be too many areas in society in which the concept of personal responsibility is nothing more than a nice turn of phrase or something that should be applied to everyone and anyone but the person that we see in the mirror.

I was watching According to Jim tonight since I'm addicted to the TV (blasted broadcast television!) and gravitate towards the situational comedy (I'd blame my father for that, but it'd be too easy). It was an episode in which Jim takes his daughters to a football game and gets into a fight with a fan from the opposing team. He becomes the town hero and ends up being very proud of punching another guy in the face. Of course his wife Cheryl is appalled, and it ends up biting him in the rear when one of his daughters gets upset and punches the other in the face, just like Daddy. Jim's response? Paraphrasing, "It's all of these violent cartoons! Pigs hitting ducks and rabbits walking around without pants? It's a recipe for chaos!" Again, the buck is anyone's responsibility before his. Later in the same episode, after everyone has reconciled and Jim has seen the error of his ways, they are going to have hot fudge sundaes for desert. Well, at least that's the intention before one of the girls (who's around seven) says, "I don't want any. I'm too fat. My butt looks like two hams." Jim looks at Cheryl, who says, "It's all of these fashion magazines that are giving them an unrealistic view of their bodies" while refusing to recognize the words that she herself used earlier.

You want your kids to have a positive self image? Model a good self-image for yourself in front of them. What your kids to respect your spouse? You need to respect your spouse. This is one of the things that I greatly appreciate about my wife, Anne. Even if we have disagreements about exactly what the appropriate consequences are for something or how quickly those consequences were enforced, we don't air those concerns in front of the kids and we never counteract an instituted consequence. That would only serve to undermine the authority of the other.

We even see this attitude in some of the sports' personalities. Terrell Owens always has some excuse for why he didn't play very well or had those three dropped balls. So many excuses except the very obvious one, "I didn't play well, and I need to do better the next time to come through for my teammates." You'd think that wouldn't be too hard for someone who enjoys talking about himself so much already.

All of this, of course, begs the question of whether or not I, your humble writer, am also guilty of passing the blame on to someone else? Of course not. And if I ever have, it must have been the fault of someone else. Oh, I know, it was society. Or maybe it was the gremlins. Yeah, let's go with the gremlins.

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