As a sports fan, I pretty frequently am asked why I spend so much time following sports. I find this question to be pretty difficult to answer. It’s such a complicated question for me, but like, “how’s it going?” I don’t think people who ask it are actually looking for a ten minute answer. One of the reasons is that the sports world provides a consistent source of humor and inspiration. On days like today when you awake to news of a dozen artists being killed by men with AK-47s, that facet of sports is a real comfort. Sports doesn’t help you escape the horrible things in the world but it does remind you that there’s a balance. Today I want to share a couple of elements of sports humor and inspiration that cheered me up. They’re not the funniest or the most inspirational things ever but they brought a smile to my face today. Hopefully with some explanation, they will to you too.
The New York Times Trolls the New York Knicks
You wouldn’t expect irreverence from the Grey Lady, but yesterday, the New York Times took a shot at New York’s primary professional basketball team, the New York Knicks, it this short piece. The background of this piece is that the Knicks have lost almost all their games so far this season — 32 losses out of 37 games — and that was before they traded two of their best five players earlier this week to the Cleveland Cavaliers. In return, the Knicks got… basically no one who will help them win this year. Trades like this are a common peculiarity of the NBA, which has a relatively hard salary cap and therefore teams are frequently willing to make trades to benefit their financial situation even if it hurts their basketball situation. After the trade, the New York Times had this to say:
We feel it’s only merciful to give our Knicks beat writer, Scott Cacciola, a break from such woeful basketball. He deserves to see the game played at a higher level. For the next month or so, we would like to point him to some good, quality basketball, wherever it might exist. Any suggestions? Maybe there’s another N.B.A. team that warrants his attention, or perhaps a high school or a college squad. For that matter, maybe you know of a strong coed team at your local Y that Scott should write about. Tell us where to send him.
Coach suggests a reasonable strategy. Hilarity ensues.
Last night, the Detroit Pistons played the San Antonio Spurs in just one of the 2,460 NBA regular season games. It was a totally ordinary game, interesting perhaps to Pistons and Spurs fans as well as NBA junkies but what happened at the very end of the game transformed it into must-see TV; into an event; a happening. The situation was this: with less than a second left, the Pistons went ahead by 1 point. The Spurs were able to take a time-out so that they could talk about what to do once they threw the ball into play from the sideline just over the halfway line into the Piston’s half of the court. The game clock was set to 0.1 seconds. Two rules dictate what can happen here: first, the clock does not start until a player on the court touches the pass that’s thrown in; second, a tenth of a second is officially not enough time to catch the ball and shoot it, so the only thing the Spurs could try to do was to tip the ball into the basket; more a volleyball move than a basketball one. The Pistons coach, a man named Stan van Gundy who famously bears a slight resemblance to an infamous 1980s era porn star (this is already getting funny, right?) quickly recognized the situation and began to instruct his team to simply create a human wall around the basket and keep the opposing team on the outside. The exact phrase he used to convey this idea, which was caught and broadcast live on television, was equal parts profane and hysterical in its simplicity.
Mike Prada broke the whole thing down with game analysis, diagrams, screenshots, memes, and close reading for SB Nation. Give it a look!
NHL stars try their hand at sledge hockey
Okay, so this one is tainted slightly by its commercial association with Gatorade, but you know what… if a brand wants to spend money to inspire people, I’m okay with that. In an idea that was surely ripped from Guinness’ moving commercial last year that showed a group of friends playing basketball in wheelchairs so they could compete on an even playing field with the one of their group who actually needed a wheelchair, Gatorade arranged for a handful of NHL players to play in a sledge hockey game. Sledge hockey is the ice hockey equivalent of playing in a wheelchair. Players play from a seated position on a sled with a single blade running down the middle. They have two short sticks which are used for propulsion around the rink as well as stick-handling, passing, and shooting. The best part of this video for me is seeing the sledge hockey players skate circles around the NHL players as they try to adjust to playing without their legs. Still, by the end of the game, it looks like the NHL stars had picked up some tricks.
Watch videos of game highlights, the day from the perspective of the sledge players, and the NHL players.