Category Archives: Sports – General

Say what, Richard Justice?

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richardjustice032009 The Chronicle’s primary sports page columnist, Richard Justice, is gushing over the Houston Rockets’ management now that the local club has seized first place in the NBA’s Southwest Division going into the last ten games of the regular season:

[Rockets General Manager] Daryl Morey has been perfect. Two years ago, he took over a playoff team, a team that had just won 52 games, and he did something remarkable with it.

He made it better. He did it without having a high draft pick or spending on a big-ticket free agent. He just evaluated talent better than some other teams evaluate it.

His hiring is a tribute to Rockets owner Leslie Alexander, too. Actually, everything the Rockets do begins with Alexander. [ .  .  .]

He’s this city’s best owner by miles, .  .  .

Of course, this is the same Richard Justice who less than two years ago was derisively calling Alexander "Clueless Les" and Morey "Boy Wonder."

So, which is it, Richard?

Well, the reality is neither.

Alexander has actually been a quite mediocre owner who had the good luck to inherit a strong roster when he bought the team. That group promptly won two straight NBA titles for Alexander in the mid-1990’s.

However, under Alexander’s management, the Rockets now have failed to win a playoff series in 12 straight seasons. That is a streak of futility that is matched by only a few other NBA teams.

Although Justice didn’t think so at the time, Alexander does appear to have made a good decision in hiring Morey, who has rebuilt the Rockets’ roster over the past two seasons despite having to deal with Tracy McGrady’s bloated contract. But geez, can’t we at least have a playoff series victory before deeming Morey the basketball version of Billy Beane?

How did someone such as Justice — who lacks any meaningful ability to analyze sports — become the Chronicle’s top sports columnist?

The real March Madness

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basketball_c As I’ve noted many times, big-time college sports in the U.S. is structured in a corrupt manner, but it’s an entertaining form of corruption that makes reform difficult (how would reform affect my team?).

That reality rears its rather unsavory head each March as the nation looks forward to the NCAA Basketball Tournament, in which predominantly young black males entertain us in return for legally-sanctioned, below-market compensation. Most of the players do not make it into the high-dollar dream world of the less-compensation restricted forms of professional basketball (the NBA and the other professional leagues), and many of the players do not even receive a real college education or graduate. Many end up with little other than a life of dealing with the after-effects of serious injuries.

To make matters even worse, as Andrew Zimbalist notes in this WSJ op-ed, most academic institutions lose their shirt attempting to compete in this entertaining form of corruption:

The annual three-week orgy of basketball, involving the nation’s top 65 college teams, is once again upon us. March Madness they call it, and madness it is. [.  .  .]

So, a captivated national audience, a massive television deal and dozens of corporations drooling to get a piece of the action must all add up to a financial bonanza, right? Not quite.

There are a few winners. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, for instance, makes out quite well. Last year, Madness brought in $548 million from TV rights and an additional $40 million from ticket sales and sponsorships, together representing an eye-popping 96% of all NCAA revenue.

Amid this cornucopia, the schools themselves are usually the losers. According to the NCAA’s latest Revenues and Expenses report, in 2005-06 the median Division I men’s basketball team generated revenue of $480,000 and had operating costs of $1.33 million, yielding a net operating loss of $850,000. If capital expenses and full university overhead were included, these results would be even more dismal.

The most successful programs, of course, will do better (the top 10 basketball teams had revenues of more than $11 million), but even these programs frequently lose money when the accounting is done properly. Why?

Most of the 300-plus Division I schools aspire to make it to the March tournament. To do so, they have to spend big. Since they can’t go to a free-agent market to hire the best high-school players, they attempt to attract them in other ways. First, they spend lavishly to court the players during the recruitment process.

Next, they attempt to provide state-of-the-art arenas and training facilities, complete with luxury suites, Jumbotron scoreboards and spacious locker rooms. They invest in academic tutoring facilities, costing as much as $15 million, to help the athletes stay eligible for competition. Then they hire well-known coaches with a reputation for sending an occasional player to the NBA.

And the coaches don’t fare too shabbily either. In 2005-06, the head coaches of the 65 Division I teams in Madness had an average maximum compensation of $959,486, with the top paid coach earning a guaranteed salary of $2.1 million and a maximum salary of $3.4 million. These figures exclude extensive perquisites, including free use of cars, housing subsidies, country-club memberships, access to private jets, exceptionally generous severance packages, handsome opportunities for outside income, and more.

These guys are making almost as much as NBA coaches, even though their teams’ revenues generally are below one-tenth those in the senior circuit. The trick, of course, is that the players aren’t allowed to be paid, so the coaches, in essence, get the value produced by their recruits. It doesn’t hurt that college sports benefit from state subsidies and federal tax exemptions, and that they have no stockholders looking for quarterly profits.

There is a better way.

It’s tough following sports in Houston

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mike_hampton As noted earlier here, given all of the incredible disappointments over the years, there must be a special place in Heaven for folks who continue to follow Houston sports teams.

The latest example The Stros haven’t even held their first full team workout in Spring Training yet, but the news is already .  .  . well, .  . not so good.

First, Baseball Prospectus lists precisely one Stros farmhand — catcher Jason Castro — in its Top 100 baseball prospects, and Castro is no. 76 on that list. I guess that new "build from within" program is going to take some time.

Or course, this comes on the heels of an extremely quiet winter for the Stros, who didn’t make any major moves in a depressed free agent market. They aren’t admitting it, but Stros management apparently realizes that this club’s window for competing for a playoff spot is closed.

Although an improbable 36-18 second-half record allowed last season’s Stros to win 86 games and at least con some naive fans into thinking that they actually had a chance for the NL wild-card spot, Baseball Prospectus‘ PECOTA prediction system projects this season’s Stros to contend for the league’s worst team. PECOTA has the Stros topping the woeful Pirates by only one win, 65 to 64.

In view of that, it probably makes sense that the Stros spent most of the off-season cutting costs. In one of their key moves, the Stros withdrew a $27 million three-year offer to reasonably effective pitcher Randy Wolf in favor of a relatively cheap, one-year, $2 million deal with 36 year-old lefty Mike Hampton, who has pitched a total of 147 innings over the past four seasons.

Granted, that’s not much production over that stretch. But that means chances are he’ll break out and be more productive this season, right?

Well, so much for that theory.

Battier Finally, to put a punctuation mark on another dismal day of following Houston sports teams, I flicked on the car radio to a local sports talk show Monday afternoon while driving between meetings.

The two hosts and a caller were addressing Michael Lewis‘ NY Sunday Times Magazine article about Rockets forward Shane Battier.

In the article, Lewis provides an in-depth analysis of how the Rockets are on the cutting-edge of modifying traditional statistical analysis to find undervalued players such as Battier. It is clearly one of the most interesting, erudite, well-researched and important articles written about sports so far this year.

Despite that, Here is how the conversation went between the two sports talk radio hosts and their caller:

Caller: "Have you guys read the Michael Lewis article in the New York Times about Shane Battier and the Rockets?"

Host One: "I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet."

Host Two: "Oh yeah, I also heard about it, but I haven’t read it yet, either. What’s it all about?"

Caller: "Well, I haven’t read the article, either. I was hoping you guys had read it and could tell me about it."

Mercifully, I turned off the radio.

Chalk it up to just another episode in the continuing sordid story of following Houston sports teams.

The real A-Rod tragedy

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a-rod As predicted here last year, the names of the MLB players who tested positive for steroids or other performance-enhancing drug use in MLB’s 2003 survey test of 240 players are finally being leaked to the media (previous posts on PED use in sports are here).

That survey test was done under a deal between MLB and the MLB Players’ Association for the purpose of encouraging voluntary and confidential disclosure of PED use by players so that MLB and the Players’ Association could develop a productive program for helping the players get off the juice and monitor future use.

With the leaking of A-Rod’s name and the ensuing public outcry, so much for the notion of encouraging players to get help by assuring confidentiality.

Predictably, the mainstream media and much of the public are castigating Rodriguez, who is an easy target.

Of course, much of that same mainstream media and public contribute to the pathologically competitive MLB culture by regularly reveling in players who risk career-threatening disability by taking painkilling drugs so that they can play through injuries.

But players who used PED’s in in an effort to strengthen their bodies to avoid or minimize the inevitable injuries of the physically-brutal MLB season are pariahs. Go figure.

Meanwhile, the fact that MLB players have been using PED’s for at least the past two generations to enhance their performance is not even mentioned in the mind-numbingly superficial analysis of the PED issue that is being trotted out by most media outlets. Sure, Barry Bonds hit quite a few home runs during a time in which he was apparently using PED’s. But should Pete Rose be denied the record for breaking Ty Cobb’s total base hits standard simply because he used performance-enhancing amphetamines throughout his MLB career?

As noted here last year in connection with release of the Mitchell Commission report, witch hunts, investigations, criminal indictments, morality plays and public shaming episodes are not advancing a dispassionate debate regarding the complex issues that are at the heart of the use of PED’s in baseball and other sports. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that the controlled use of PED’s to enhance athletic performance is as dangerous to health as many of the sports in which the users compete.

A truly civilized society would find a better way to address these issues.

A couple of questions regarding the proposed soccer stadium

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dynamo-stadium-khou-above The always-entertaining Houston real estate blog, Swamplot, provided this post last week with typically pretty pictures from a KHOU-TV video of the long-proposed soccer stadium for the Houston Dynamo MLS soccer team.

Have we really been talking about this for almost two years now?

At any rate, now that the City of Houston and Harris County have committed a total of $25-30 million to the deal, and the City is on the hook for millions more in infrastructure improvements, Dynamo management is publicly representing that it is prepared to contribute another $80 million to build the stadium.

Now, I’m never seen the Dynamo’s financial statement, but my guess is that it generates between $10-15 million in revenues. Maybe that increases by 30-40% if the club gets its own stadium. A nice small business, but .  .  .

In these lean economic times, what bank is going to take the lead in loaning $80 million to a business that would have to dedicate a substantial amount of its revenue base just to pay debt service on the loan?

Is this a bankable deal? Or just pie-in-the-sky absent the local governments coughing up substantially more dough?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The Rockets at mid-season

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houston_rockets_wallpaperThe Rockets narrative— i.e., "Tracy McGrady is a superstar and the Rockets can’t win in the playoffs without him, but he’s not the type of clutch superstar who can win in the playoffs, blah, blah blah." — continues to be the dominant theme among most of the mainstream media in regard to the local NBA team.

In reality, McGrady is long past being a bona fide NBA superstar and really is not much more than a bit above-average NBA player at this point in his career.

However, despite McGrady’s and newcomer Ron Artest’s relative mediocrity this season, the Rockets are muddling along with a 29-19 record and — barring further injuries — are in the thick of the race for an upper division Western Conference playoff spot.

Given the Rockets’ narrative, how is that possible? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Dave Berri doesn’t rely on subjective narratives and instead continues to provide some of the best objective analysis of what is really happening in the NBA over at his Wages of Wins blog. Here are his mid-season player rankings (organized by team here), which are much more revealing than the Rockets narrative.

Berri’s ratings, which he calls the "Wins Produced Model," begins with a player’s statistics — his points scored, shot attempts, rebounds, steals, turnovers, etc.. — and translates them into how many wins those statistics create over the course of a season. 

Under Berri’s system, players who do many things well — such as former stars Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon, as well as current stars LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, and Kevin Garnett — are among the most productive players, just as most of us know intuitively.

On the other hand, players who only score a lot of points but who have deficiencies such as low shooting efficiency, high turnover rates, and poor rebounding skills are not as productive as many folks believe based on their high scoring. Current examples of that type of player are Allen Iverson, Antoine Walker, and Carmelo Anthony.

Finally, players who are excellent rebounders — such as the aforementioned Russell or Dennis Rodman, or current players Ben Wallace and Marcus Camby — are usually much more productive than most folks give them credit for.

So, players who do not shoot efficiently, or who turn the ball over frequently, do not help their team win many games.  On the other hand, players who generate large numbers of rebounds, or who score consistently and efficiently, or who create steals — they generally help their teams win more games than average.

Thus, Berri’s Wins Produced statistic tells us how productive a player has been. What it does not tell us is why a player shoots inefficiently, commits turnovers, rebounds well or creates steals. That’s a question for team management and coaches to figure out.

Having said all that, the following are few observations on the mid-season statistics:

The most productive players by position are as follows:

  • Point guard: Chris Paul, who is currently the most productive player in the NBA with a 15.9 WP (an average NBA player’s WP is 1.0). Paul is the best NBA point guard since Magic Johnson.
  • Shooting guard: Dwyane Wade
  • Small forward: LeBron James
  • Power forward: Kevin Garnett
  • Center: Dwight Howard

The Rockets most productive player so far this season is Yao Ming, who is the NBA’s 17th most productive player at 7.1 WP, which is only three spots below the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant (7.4 WP).

The Rockets second most-productive player this season is not McGrady, or Artest (120th-ranked at 2.0 WP), or PG Rafer Alston. It’s PF Luis Scola (62nd most productive at 3.8 WP).

Even with all his physical problems, McGrady (73rd-ranked at 3.2 WP) is the third most productive player on the team. Having said that, the Rockets aren’t any more productive by playing McGrady than SF Carl Landry (74th-ranked at 3.2 WP).

Are the Rockets ever going to have a highly productive point guard again (Alston — 134th-ranked at 1.6 WP; Aaron Brooks — 196th-ranked at .7 WP)?

Also, SF Shane Battier (157th-ranked at 1.3 WP) is a marginal starter at this point in time, although fan favorite Von Wafer (173rd-ranked at 1.1 WP) really isn’t a better alternative.

Although the Rockets do not have many highly-productive players, they also do not have any players who are actually counter-productive — i.e., who have a negative WP. Most teams have at least a few counter-productive players.

If McGrady and Artest ever get healthy, then the Rockets’ best chance of finally winning a playoff series (it has been 12 years now) may well be playing a lineup of McGrady at the point with Artest at shooting guard, Landry at SF with Scola at PF, and of course Yao at C.

By the way, in view of all this, why do so many folks continue to expect so much from McGrady?

Call it the curse of the big contract — McGrady is pulling down a total of $40 million guaranteed over this season and next. Many folks just can’t come to terms with the fact that sometimes the player gets the better of management in contact negotiations.

Me, I just think McGrady has a good agent. ;^)

Can Mayor White pull off another "win-win" deal?

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Bill White Although the developers of the proposed Ashby high-rise condominium project didn’t know it at the time, Houston Mayor Bill White did the developers a huge favor by putting up roadblocks to that project.

Can you imagine trying to peddle those condos in the current real estate market? Mayor White’s blocking of the condos ended being a classic "win-win" deal.

Accordingly, I wonder if Mayor White might be inclined to do the same thing in regard to Houston’s proposed soccer stadium?

Things aren’t looking too rosy for MLS soccer these days:

Major League Soccer is not quite ready to carry its own night on TV.

After two years of anemic ratings that started low and finished lower, ESPN executives decided to cancel the league’s regular Thursday night telecast on ESPN2 this season.  .  .  .

“We didn’t see the kind of ratings climb we’d like to, so we’re trying something different,” said Scott Guglielmino, ESPN vice president of programming.

The decision to cancel the regular Thursday night game marks a stunning turnaround for a league that two years ago believed it was creating destination programming that would increase interest in MLS. But even the 2007 arrival of David Beckham couldn’t boost MLS ratings.

MLS games averaged a 0.2 rating and 289,000 viewers on ESPN2 in 2007. Those numbers dropped to 0.2/253,000 viewers the following year. Its highest rating during that period was Beckham’s second regular-season game in August 2007 that earned a 0.6/658,000 households.

Canceling “MLS Primetime Thursday” is a tacit admission that MLS is not strong enough to anchor a regular prime-time slot on its own. ESPN is entering the third year of an eight-year rights deal that pays MLS $8 million annually.

So, MLS franchises are being downgraded by the most important sports programming network in the nation, which can’t be good for the value of those teams. The attendance at MLS games is poor, at least outside Houston and a couple of other cities. And the perception in sophisticated soccer circles is that the MLS is decidedly minor-league.

Meanwhile, Mayor White has already had Houstonians invest $20 million or so in buying downtown property at a premium price for the proposed soccer stadium, despite the fact that the city already owned nearby property that would have been perfectly fine for such a stadium. Moreover, the city will be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars more in infrastructure improvements if the Dynamo owners somehow cobble together their private financing for the stadium.

Now, it’s looking as if the Dynamo may not even have a viable league to play in by the time the proposed soccer stadium is completed in a couple of years.

Pull the plug on the soccer stadium, Mayor. It will be another "win-win" deal.

Marathon madness

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chevronmarathon The annual running of the Houston Marathon is this weekend, so the Houston Chronicle is running its typical series of supposedly inspiring stories about various participants.

A couple of days ago, the story was about a couple of folks who had lost huge amounts of weight while training for marathons. Richard Justice wrote this column about some fellow who is so obsessive about running that he has run in "82 marathons across 26 years, four continents and 29 states."

Yesterday’s Chronicle article, however, takes the cake. Check out the headline:

Sunday’s race will be extra special for Stacie Rubin, who will be competing five months after suffering a heart attack

The story goes on to describe a Kingwood mother of four children who has run long distances daily for years. She had a heart attack while training one day and didn’t even go to the doctor’s office for several days because she was so convinced that someone as "healthy" as her could not have anything seriously wrong with her. Even after the heart attack, she was so obsessed about her long-distance training that she was back running again within a couple of weeks of the heart attack and is now planning on running in the marathon this weekend.

The Chronicle article presents all of this as heroic and the epitome of physical fitness.

Frankly, I think these stories are grossly misleading and the people telling them are badly misguided.

In my younger days, I used to run long-distances, too. I even ran a 37 minute flat 10K — 6.2 miles — once. As with most folks in my generation, I bought into the myth that long-distance running was excellent aerobic exercise that allowed me to maintain good health while eating most anything I wanted.

However, about 15 years ago, after falling out of shape during a busy time in my practice, I decided to do some extensive research into exercise protocols and nutrition to put myself back on track. After about six months of research, I concluded that most of my pre-conceived notions about exercise and nutrition were flat-out wrong.

For example, I discovered that long-distance running is neither a particularly healthy form of exercise nor an effective method of weight control.

Note, for example, this abstract from the a study published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences:

Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1977;301:593-619. Related Articles, Links

Coronary heart disease in marathon runners.

Noakes T, Opie L, Beck W, McKechnie J, Benchimol A, Desser K.

Six highly trained marathon runners developed myocardial infarction. One of the two cases of clinically diagnosed myocardial infarction was fatal, and there were four cases of angiographically-proven infarction. Two athletes had significant arterial disease of two major coronary arteries, a third had stenosis of the anterior descending and the fourth of the right coronary artery. All these athletes had warning symptoms. Three of them completed marathon races despite symptoms, one athlete running more than 20 miles after the onset of exertional discomfort to complete the 56 mile Comrades Marathon. In spite of developing chest pain, another athlete who died had continued training for three weeks, including a 40 mile run. Two other athletes also continued to train with chest pain. We conclude that the marathon runners studied were not immune to coronary heart disease, nor to coronary atherosclerosis and that high levels of physical fitness did not guarantee the absence of significant cardiovascular disease. In addition, the relationship of exercise and myocardial infarction was complex because two athletes developed myocardial infarction during marathon running in the absence of complete coronary artery occlusion. We stress that marathon runners, like other sportsmen, should be warned of the serious significance of the development of exertional symptoms. Our conclusions do not reflect on the possible value of exercise in the prevention of coronary heart disease. Rather we refute exaggerated claims that marathon running provides complete immunity from coronary heart disease.

This recent University of Maryland Medical Center study examines another health risk of long-distance running.

Art DeVany — who has been studying physiology and exercise protocols for years — has written a series of blog posts over the years regarding the unhealthy nature and outright dangers of long-distance running. DeVany points out that many endurance runners in fact are not particularly healthy people, often suffering from lack of muscle mass, overuse injuries, dangerous inflammation and dubious nutrition.

Similarly, in this timely article, Mark Sisson lucidly explains why endurance training is hazardous to one’s health. Here is a snippet:

The problem with many, if not most, age group endurance athletes is that the low-level training gets out of hand. They overtrain in their exuberance to excel at racing, and they over consume carbohydrates in an effort to stay fueled. The result is that over the years, their muscle mass, immune function, and testosterone decrease, while their cortisol, insulin and oxidative output increase (unless you work so hard that you actually exhaust the adrenals, introducing an even more disconcerting scenario). Any anti-aging doc will tell you that if you do this long enough, you will hasten, rather than retard, the aging process. Studies have shown an increase in mortality when weekly caloric expenditure exceeds 4,000. [. . .]

Now, what does all this mean for the generation of us who bought into Ken Cooper’s "more aerobics is better" philosophy? Is it too late to get on the anti-aging train? Hey, we’re still probably a lot better off than our college classmates who gained 60 pounds and can’t walk up a flight of stairs. Sure, we may look a little older and move a little slower than we’d like, but there’s still time to readjust the training to fit our DNA blueprint. Maybe just move a little slower, lift some weights, do some yoga and eat right and there’s a good chance you’ll maximize the quality of your remaining years… and look good doing whatever you do.

In this recent post, Sisson describes a weekly method of aerobic exercise that provides most of the health benefit derived from long-distance running at a fraction of the time expenditure and at far less risk of injury. Add in a couple of short (about 20-25 minutes sessions) weight-training sessions per week to maintain your lead body mass, lead an active recreational lifestyle and observe balanced
nutrition, and you are likely to be far healthier than the folks who are spending untold hours beating themselves up running long-distances.

If you are interested in developing such a plan, check out both DeVany and Sisson’s blogs. They provide a wealth of information on how to tailor an efficient exercise and nutrition plan.

As the Rockets’ World Turns

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les_alexander With the football season winding down in these parts, folks are finally noticing that the Houston Rockets are approaching the halfway point of the NBA season and again look like an also-ran in the playoff race. It’s now been a dozen years since the one-time back-to-back NBA champions have won a mere playoff series.

What happened this time? Dave Berri thinks that Ron Artest has not been the answer.

Meanwhile, Rockets owner Les Alexander has been getting hammered in areas other than basketball, too:

Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander has seen his 20% stake in First Marblehead Corp., once valued at nearly $1 billion, plunge to about $15 million. The company, which packages student loans and sells them to investors, saw its business evaporate in 2008. Its shares fell more than 90% last year to about $1.

Thankfully for Alexander, his original investment in the company was only $4 million and — before the 2008 meltdown — he sold a portion of his company stock for $250 million, a substantial portion of which was probably used to pay a $150 million divorce settlement.

What I can’t figure out is whether all of that makes it harder ("We’re paying him what?!") or easier ("It’s only money!") for Alexander to pay Tracy McGrady a total of $40 million over this and next season?