MLB: ALL STAR Game-2014 // NBA: "Dreams & Fears"

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . FOR MORE ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team---milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed., Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. . . //. . .MLB: “ALL-STAR Game, 2014” // NBA: “Dreams & Fears”. . . // . . MLB--- IN THE coming week, the American League and National League of Major League Baseball will meet for the year’s All-Star game, a tradition since July 6, 1933, thus another chance for the one league to decide that it is better than the other. Not a very accurate measure, of course, for how could just one game give us the answer? Truth be told, not even the World Series can prove which of the 30 MLB clubs is best, and surely the most meticulous handling of data, i.e., “Metrics,” cannot get the job done accurately. Baseball is incredibly subjective in all of its directions of offense and defense, possibly as complicated as particle physics. Yet believing that a team of choice can always dominate, prevail, can high-five along a victory path game-after-game, that never hurts, hey, maybe so can we within our own endeavors. So, let’s look at the numbers anyway, see what they have to say, and then wonder greatly in coming days how come the other league won? For example, let’s observe total number of won games since the current season began. As of today, the AL has 693 wins, the NL 683 wins, a differential of only 10 wins favoring the AL, which the 15 NL Clubs could turn around in a week or two. Besides, the NL has five franchises each with 51 or more games while the AL has four in this category, starting with the AL East’s 50-41 Baltimore Orioles. But the AL is ahead here with the AL West’s Oakland A’s having 58 wins versus. best in the NL, the Milwaukee Brewers, having 52 wins. Oops! The AL has the worst team in both leagues re. won games, the AL West’s Texas Rangers having 38 wins over 54 losses. Do we have the question about which is best solved now? No way, because the NL has three teams with but 39 wins, they are the NL West’s Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks and the NL Central’s Chicago Cubs, while the AL has just one team with 39, all other AL teams having from 41 on up. That AL worst is the AL West’s 39-54 Houston Astros. But neither the AL nor the NL has a division leading all others, in that the AL West and the NL Central are tied today at 238 wins apiece. Lowest division re. won games is the NL East, with 226 wins, but that’s just one less win than the AL East’s 227 wins. Get the big picture in all this? It’s that as soon as you think one league is best, the other comes up on top? Players, managers, owners and fans are always reminded that as soon as we think we’re about to win again, we can drop one, maybe another and then another; then, whoosh! we’re back, breaking the opposition. Now note that during the past 10 years, the AL has put down the NL seven times during All Star events, but the three All Star games won by the NL in this period were during the last four held, and if we go by “streaks” the AL has never been able to match the 11 All Star games won in a row by the NL, 1972 -1981, although the AL could have achieved 10 in a row were a streak not interrupted by a tie game during 2002. An upshot is this: If there is anything close to a real fact here, it’s that the AL and NL keep dancing close to parity, the one leaping ahead of the other and then going behind the other, which is a good thing, it makes for a team’s need to strive, compete, improve, while delivering the tension and the outcomes that make baseball + other sports so necessary and so enjoyable for the culture-at-large, ditto re. the All Star game itself. . . NBA---NOT one of the 30 NBA franchises is without a vulnerability or two, and so it could never be that the association that binds them to a degree of sorts, the National Basketball Association, would lack a vulnerability, that which could hurt the sport. One of these NBA vulnerabilities is being highlighted this off-season, the impact of superstars as free agents and how that affects the rest of the NBA. Another is the sleaziness of the L.A. Clippers ownership “sell”-battle that emerged from owner Don Sterling going foot-in-mouth and revealing a racist undertone within his particular practice of boss-player relations. The danger of the former vulnerability is in superstar-dom causing the NBA to exist as a lop-sided enterprise, with just a few teams lucky enough to afford the very best, the rest either copy-catting them and failing or unable to rise up against them in the standings year after year for financial reasons. Competed here, then, are two team-development concepts, (1) Win repeatedly because you’ve paired a LeBron with an Anthony, or a Durant with a Paul George, or (2) Win because you’ve built a team that puts “teamwork” above everything else, with say a roster including 11 above-the-margin teammates who can make playing for each other paramount, this via a combination of finely sharpened skill-sets, though none of the 11 can ever reach the athletic heights of the superstar. Yes, it’s a battle that’s been going on since James, Wade and Bosh joined the Miami Heat, between (a) the Heat idea, and (b) that which a no-superstar team like the Denver Nuggets coached by George Karl and now Brian Shaw can do by diminishing ego-dominated athletics with the notion “teamwork wins best.” Also, it can be said that players like James, Durant and George are at a premium in the basketball world, there can be just so many of them; rather, only a few “greats” in any decade. To copycat the Heat turned out to be a blunder for a lot of teams that went for it, e.g., that which has happened to the L.A. Lakers from constructing a post-Phil Jackson team of superstars has been sad indeed, and believing in the teamwork-team, in all players equally capable of leadership as well as having a broad array of skills, like the San Antonio Spurs led by Gregg Popovich, can be the answer for an NBA comprising competitive franchises all with a chance of prevailing one over the other, in effect, an NBA with sufficient parity for any team to come up big in the post-season. Maybe there could be a comeback Orlando Magic, “and take note of LeBron James just announcing his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, possibly with a lesson that he learned this year, that a teamwork-dominant team like the Spurs could be the better answer for himself and the NBA all-around.” AS to the Sterling-Clippers affair, it’s junk food for persons who have an appetite for the gaudy, who snap, crackle and pop over what reported low-ends of behavior can present for them, tabloid-stuff. Unfortunately, this affects perception-growth within the country of what the NBA can be about, taints it as if Sleaze, Inc. Yes, the NBA has managerial, administrative and leadership flaws, but by-and-large it works, it has kept more to the side of decency and growth for one of the world’s most captivating sports, which, as seems to be happening, a corner of media that likes to cover megalomania, mendacity and dumb + dumber could care little about. Should the matter worsen, one hopes for some NBA damage control. END/ml