• Brett who? Oh, Brett Favre. Yeah, I’ve heard of him before. Sports Illustrated’s Jeff Pearlman weighs in (with a glorious intro) on Favre’s recently announced return to football.
• The SEC has been doing some waffling of their own recently, going back and forth about whether to allow the use of social media by fans at their games. Adam Ostrow of Mashable has done an excellent job covering the story as it has unfolded.
• You may remember the media firestorm ESPN set off with its (lack of) coverage regarding the Ben Roethlisberger civil suit. New ESPN ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer addresses that decision and provides some answers in his first column.
• One way a sports story is guaranteed to get my attention every time is to show me as a fan something that I normally don’t have access to. Seeing how athletes operate beyond the playing field is one of the most interesting parts of sports for me. Greg Bishop of the New York Times did just that in his article on the players’ lounge at the Rogers Cup tennis tournament in Montreal.
• To end, a video by the New York Times that all you fellow NBA nerds will appreciate. Commissioner David Stern heads to a Harlem barbershop to talk hoops with columnist William Rhoden and the locals. Not visually stunning, but the content is worth your time.

I ran into the same friend the next day, and she asked me how I liked the piece. I replied that it was interesting enough, but I thought the writing was stereotypical print style and that it didn’t do much for me. “How so?” she asked. The best way I could think to respond was with an analogy:

If a middle school teacher asks their class to draw an apple, what will the majority of the apples look like? Probably most will look like a red delicious: bright red coloring, a cleft at the base, and a slightly curved stem with maybe a leaf or two sprouting from the top. That’s how the article read to me, as unsurprising as the typical red delicious.

Don’t get me wrong, the reporting in the piece was solid, and the point of the article was surely to make the I-Team’s story the focus. But I’ve realized in the last few months that, due mostly to the proliferation of blogs I read, I have come to not only enjoy but also to expect a voice and an opinion in sports articles.

That seems to be the big difference between the net and the printed page: people get to be their own columnist online. Generalization, sure, but I believe there’s warrant to it. What I’m finding troublesome, though, is when writers I would classify as “print writers” convert to the online world and bring their newspaperman voice with them.

What do I mean by newspaperman voice? The type of writing that makes you think of trench coats, typewriters, kitschy headlines, and newspaper bundles tied with twine. The type of writing that smells faintly of ink and printing presses. The type of writing that has become so standard it can be called a “type of writing.”

Rick Reilly’s a perfect example. He’s still print guy per say, with a column that appears in ESPN The Mag, but, like his supposed nemesis Bill Simmons, he writes for the website between magazine articles.

The problem is, his website postings are just the same as his magazine pieces (something he said he would do from the start). For example, this is from his latest “Life of Reilly” post about cheap ticket options as a result of the bad economy:

Sure, times are rougher than Russian toilet paper. Your 401K is now a 101k. Donald Trump just laid off three blow-dryists. But because of it, you can see great sporting events for the price of a can of Spam Lite!

Some fans with season tickets can’t afford the parking, the $7 Cokes or even the razor to shave beforehand. They’re dumping them like AIG stock on places like StubHub.com and eBay. I have a friend who got two tickets to the Orange Bowl this year, plus parking, for $10. That’s cheaper than an actual bowl of oranges!

Rougher than Russian toilet paper. Cheaper than an actual bowl of oranges. Just a graf later, he uses the word “loaf.” All that’s missing is a “gee-williker” and a glass bottle of Coca Cola.

I liked Rick Reilly’s writing growing up. I was never lucky enough to have a subscription to SI, so trips to the dentist became crash reading sessions of as many back pages as I could finish before my check-up. I found his stuff is clever in a pull a quarter from behind your ear way — much cooler before you figure out the trick. But a lot has changed since my dentist reading days — especially in the journalism world. So why not Reilly’s style? His print stuff can stay the same, that makes sense. But couldn’t he at least use his online platform for something a little different?

Jay Mariotti is kind of a similar case. His style has always been a little more progressive (aggressive?) than the traditional print style. He was an outspoken columnist while at the Chicago Sun Times, and he remains an outspoken columnist at AOL’s Fanhouse. But he hasn’t taken advantage of what the internet can offer, either. If you were reading closely enough, perhaps you could have seen that coming–in his inaugural post, he hinted that the only real change would be the process:

The difference is, the column won’t go through the 20th-century, ink-and-newsprint monkey grind where you hope the truck driver doesn’t stop at Dunkin’ Donuts and the delivery boy doesn’t hit your dog on the ass. The column simply will go from my computer to an editor to you.

Mariotti’s articles read like big print pieces, right down to the way he uses quotes, often taking them from press conferences broadcast on TV and throwing them in his piece like he reported it.

Let me be clear, I don’t have a problem with a “print voice.” Although it may not be my preferred style, I understand that newspapers and those who wrote for them shaped the sports journalism world of today.

It’s simply that, in this time, newspapers have been confronted by the internet, and they are losing. To think that you can dump print content online and just keep on going may be exactly why journalism is having such a hard time marketing itself today.

It’s no longer just a print world. Perhaps it’s time for something more than a print voice.

(The original report on the loan was filed by the Sports Business Journal on Feb. 16, 2009)

NBA Commissioner David Stern was quick to say that this move wasn’t a bailout, but rather an example of how well the league is doing:

“It’s exactly the opposite” of a bailout, Stern told The Associated Press “This was a show of strength in the creditworthiness of the NBA’s teams.”

…

“It’s a great sign of confidence in us and that’s wonderful that the market is opening up, so we’ll take it,” Stern said. “And we turned to our teams and said, ‘OK, we’ve got this much more to distribute under the facility for those of you who want it now.’”

What he says makes some sense — why would banks lend that money if they weren’t sure the NBA was a solid investment? At the same time, if the league has an existing credit facility of $1.7 billion, doesn’t it seem a little strange that they are jumping at the $200 million and have already planned how it will be allocated (evenly between the needy franchises)? Can we trust what Stern is saying?

The NBA is known for keeping its financial info under wraps, and Stern for always presenting the league in its Sunday best (no jerseys please). That’s not to say Stern is lying about the league being affected by this economy — he’s spoken fairly openly about it at times — he just doesn’t seem to be telling the whole truth.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution had this tidbit from All-Star weekend:

Commissioner David Stern said the financial crisis makes growth difficult, but the league is holding steady. “I have been concerned for 25 years, and so I always worry about everything,” Stern said. “But … we are going to maintain our attendance and our revenues.”

It seems that Stern’s claim of maintaining attendance numbers is a bit misleading. The league says attendance numbers are up slightly from last season. But, attendance and turnstile numbers are two different things — teams are allowed to share the numbers of tickets they distribute, but not the number of trips through the turnstile.

The Sports economy blog Sparty and Friends offered this interesting fact:

Richard “Grits” Walker, who covers the Bobcats for the Gaston (N.C.) Gazette, reported that a recent Wolves-Bobcats game with a crowd count of 9,285 had an actual turnstile count of 4,003. How can teams really expect to make money in that type of environment?

Bill Simmons delved deeper on the issue in his epically long article “Welcome to the No Benjamins Association:”

How did we get here? The economy turned in August, well after deposits had been sent in for season tickets, courtside seats and luxury suites. The league would love for you to believe that attendance hasn’t been affected, but the NBA’s official tally counts only total “customers,” counted as paid tickets, comps (seats given to celebrities, sponsors, friends of the team or whomever, a number that can be fudged any way you want), discounted tickets and no-shows. The numbers don’t reflect any falloffs with parking money, concessions, merchandise and restaurant/bar revenue around arenas. (For instance, at least half the concession stands have been closed for every Clippers home game this season — except when the Lakers or Celtics were the opponents.)

…

Again, don’t trust those attendance numbers. Walk-up sales and short-term packages (12-game packs, eight-game packs and the like) haven’t gone into a free fall only because of steep discounts, and the drop-off for the Big Attendance Three (premium season tickets, suites and courtsides) won’t be felt until next season.

Misleading attendance numbers weren’t the only signs of trouble Simmons touched on. He wrote that a source told him “20 of the 30 NBA teams will lose money this season.” Simmons spent a good portion of his article writing about teams putting finances first and nothing else second this season, something he found especially noticeable at the trade deadline.

Perhaps the best example of that was the Tyson Chandler trade that was nullified. Chris McCosky of the Detroit News offered this perspective on the deal that wasn’t:

… the New Orleans franchise, always a fragile business enterprise, is bleeding money. When New Orleans was trying to lure an NBA franchise, certain financial inducements were offered. With the economic collapse, those inducements have gone away.

The Hornets will be luxury taxpayers next season, which is why they tried to trade center Tyson Chandler to Oklahoma City for two expiring contracts. Since that trade was nullified when he failed his physical, you can bet they will try to deal him again this summer.

As All-Star forward David West told the Times-Picayune, “The move had nothing to do with basketball. It was strictly a business decision. Using some common sense, that’s what it came down to.”

I’m not sure why David West is the right person to talk about team business matters, but he says what many others have: the move was only about the money. McCosky went on to say that because the Hornets are in penny-pinching mode, young star Chris Paul could be shipping out of New Orleans before his contract expires in 2012. That means he thinks the Hornets would consider trading the best point guard in the league to save money.

With all these financial woes, with talk of a lockout in 2011, team relocations, and a falling salary cap, what are we to make of the $200 million credit loan? Knowing Stern to be the shrewd manager and businessman he is, can we believe that it is shows the league’s staying power?

The loan seems to hint that things could be far worse than anyone has yet to grasp. It should be worthwhile to watch the battle of information play out over the next few months — Stern trying to keep the situation hush and reporters (hopefully) pushing to expose it.

The game is not only cresting in level of play, though; it’s also reaching new heights in how it is measured. Over the past few years, there have been big steps taken in both the creation and utilization of some exciting new statistics: things like wins produced per 48 minutes (WP48), a stat created by the triumvirate at Wages of Wins; Player Efficiency Rating (PER), a metric designed by ESPN stat guru John Hollinger; and the field-goal efficiency couplet of True Shooting Percentage (TS%) and Effective Field-Goal Percentage (eFG%), the latter a statistic created by current Clippers’ coach Mike Dunleavy.

However, the creation of stats doesn’t necessarily translate to their implementation by teams. Stat geeks and basketball nerds have been playing with these new metrics for years now, but there have been few reports of teams taking advantage of these methods. Until this weekend.

In the most recent edition of the New York Times Magazine, writer Michael Lewis (he of Money Ball fame) penned an article entitled “Money (Basket) Ball!” In the piece, Lewis simultaneously presented Shane Battier as a player who, by traditional stats, has immeasurable worth, and used him as a lens through which to view the Houston Rockets incorporation of new metrics.

The entire article is full of fascinating stuff (well worth the read if you’re a basketball fan of an type), but there are a few topics that stood out. First was the look at basketball as the most life-like, and therefore most complex, of any sport:

“Like professional card counters, the modern thinkers want to play the odds as efficiently as they can; but of course to play the odds efficiently they must first know the odds. Hence the new statistics, and the quest to acquire new data, and the intense interest in measuring the impact of every little thing a player does on his team’s chances of winning. In its spirit of inquiry, this subculture inside professional basketball is no different from the subculture inside baseball or football or darts. The difference in basketball is that it happens to be the sport that is most like life.”

At first, the final comment seems to be unwarranted. Basketball is free-flowing compared to sports like baseball and football, so perhaps it makes sense that Lewis says it’s most life-like. But, then again, soccer is free-flowing. So is hockey. And so is team handball for that matter.

It isn’t until later where his statement becomes clear:

“There is a tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group.

…

It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them.”

What Lewis appears to be saying is that, in basketball, there is an effect for every action, and there are many, many actions throughout the course of a game. Due to the amount of scoring, basketball inherently increases the amount of times where there are decisions to be made, and therefore the amount of ramifications that occur.

More importantly, as much of the article covers, these effects are becoming quantifiable.

In talking about the new era of stats, Lewis also discusses the old ones: points, rebounds, assists — stats that are “easy to measure” and that offer “warped perceptions of the game.”

As Rockets’ General Manager Daryl Morey told Lewis, these stats are the cause for inefficient play by many players in the league:

When I ask Morey if he can think of any basketball statistic that can’t benefit a player at the expense of his team, he has to think hard. “Offensive rebounding,” he says, then reverses himself. “But even that can be counterproductive to the team if your job is to get back on defense.” It turns out there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly. “We think about this deeply whenever we’re talking about contractual incentives,” he says. “We don’t want to incent a guy to do things that hurt the team” — and the amazing thing about basketball is how easy this is to do. “They all maximize what they think they’re being paid for,” he says. He laughs. “It’s a tough environment for a player now because you have a lot of teams starting to think differently. They’ve got to rethink how they’re getting paid.”

Morey’s point is one that I have heard before. Late last year, I interviewed David Berri, co-author of Wages of Wins and current associate professor of applied economics at Southern Utah University. In the interview, Berri said there is a league wide deficiency in player analysis, with too much emphasis put on scoring:

“If you look at the link between free agent salaries and what players do on the court, the factor that dominates the discussion, dominates the decision, is how many points they score. It’s not how efficiently they score, it’s how many points they score total. So the players have this incentive to take as many shots as they possibly can.”

Berri said that many GM’s make systematic mistakes year after year, something he thinks stems from them basing most of their decisions off of simply watching the games. Because scoring is the most dramatic thing in basketball, Berri surmised, it has historically dominated decision making instead of more useful stats.

And players are smart. They understand this. They know there are far more Ricky Davises and Tim Thomases in the league than there are Ben Wallaces. Said Berri, “The players know that the guy who scores the most is they guy who gets paid the most, so they have every incentive to shoot as much as possible.”

Lewis reported something similar about Battier:

‘…in the final second of any quarter, finding himself with the ball and on the wrong side of the half-court line, Battier refuses to heave it honestly at the basket, in an improbable but not impossible attempt to score. He heaves it disingenuously, and a millisecond after the buzzer sounds.”

If you watch enough NBA games, you’ll see many players doing this. The rationale is simple: it’s a field goal attempt that has very little chance of going in, so it’s almost guaranteed to lower their shooting percentage. Rockets GM Daryl Morey told Battier that they didn’t count “heaves” in their field goal percentage, but Battier didn’t buy it: “… Shane’s smart enough to know that his next team might not be smart enough to take the heaves out.”

Basketball is a business, and there’s no guarantee that Battier will finish out his career as a Rocket. Since not every team has the statistical awareness that Houston does, it’s in Battier’s best interest financially to use every advantage he can when it comes to maximizing his stats.

It may not be too long, though, that the stats Battier’s worrying about aren’t measuring points and field goal percentage as much as efficiency and his effect on wins.

***UPDATE***

Matthew Yglesias at the Think Progress blog writes that, contrary to Lewis’s claim that Batter’s impact can’t be measured, David Berri actually did so, analyzing Battier’s effectiveness through his statistical methods back in 2007. Here is the conclusive point from Berri’s post:

“As we can see in Table One, the story we tell about Battier from the box score depends on how we view the data.  When we rely on scoring — or scoring dominated metrics like NBA Efficiency and PER — we see a below average player.  But when we consider Battier in terms of efficiency, we see a player that is above average and a key player in the success the Grizzlies had from 2003-04 to 2005-06.”