Audition

This afternoon I read this column by Tim Keown of ESPN.com’s Page 2. I often like and/or agree with the things Keown says. Today…not so much. In today’s column, he committed one of this generation’s most manipulative, yet effective, argument techniques: he pulled something completely out of context and reshaped it to fit his point. This is one of the least effective ways to argue with me, but I find that the vast majority of people fall prey to it day after day after day.

What Tim Keown pulled out of context in this instance is Harrison Barnes’ attempted pass to himself in North Carolina’s game Sunday versus Kentucky. If you did not see the game, Barnes drove to the basket, got surrounded by Wildcats, and could not find an open teammate. Instead of trying a low percentage pass, he threw it off the backboard and tried to catch it himself. Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, Barnes mistimed his jump and Kentucky secured the ball. As someone who believes a bad shot is better—that is, less defensively destructive—than a bad pass, I thought it was a smart play by Barnes. Keown saw it differently. He wrote, “And so, in one act of self-glorification, Barnes exemplified why everybody is so excited about VCU and Butler in the Final Four.” A couple of paragraphs later, Keown added, “Nothing against Barnes. It's just that he's the one who thought to pass to himself in an Elite Eight game at a time when it's becoming increasingly clear that balancing team basketball and future NBA plans is not the simple act we once supposed.” Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like the writer took an arguably intelligent act in a moment of basketball desperation and described it to the masses as an act of selfishness exemplifying a me-first attitude. Pardon me, but would a me-first player who is billed as a scorer just shot the 10-foot turnaround?

But Keown doesn’t stop there. Nope, his very next words are “For what it's worth, I'd pay to see Barnes play before I'd pay to see any single player on VCU or Butler. But the thing is, I'd pay to see VCU or Butler before I'd pay to see Barnes.” With these two statements, Keown employed the technique of saying something utterly stupid and expecting people to nod their heads in agreement. Unfortunately, too many people do just that. What does that statement even mean? If you break down what Keown says here, he is saying he’d rather spend his entertainment dollar on lesser skilled players who work together than higher skilled players who work alone. Maybe that’s a fair point, but he hasn’t yet shown me that Harrison Barnes works alone.

To emphasize this point, the writer invoked the name Kyrie Irving. Of the Duke freshman, he wrote, “Kyrie Irving is another fabulous freshman talent, but his play against Arizona is the main reason the Blue Devils' season ended before most people thought it would.” Flat out lie. If you watched that game and came to any conclusion other than Irving’s play kept the game as close as it was, then you don’t know basketball. But Keown had a point to make here, and he was not going to let facts or circumstances get in his way of making them. He added, “It was nearly impossible to believe that Duke’s game plan was to have Irving take over while the best player on the court—Nolan Smith—was reduced to an innocent bystander.” There was no mention of the fact that Kyrie Irving is a true point guard and Nolan Smith is not. There was no mention that this was Smith’s first year playing as the primary ball handler and that moving to the point after Irving’s December injury may have been as responsible for his improved statistics as anything else(for evidence of this, look at Smith’s freshman through junior year statistics as well as how much his numbers improved this season once Irving went down and Krzyzewski was forced to move him to the point). It seemed to me that both Irving and Smith need the ball to play their best; it also seemed to me that Irving’s best is significantly better than Smith’s best. You can chalk Duke’s poor play in the second half versus Arizona to poor coaching, a talent deficiency, or to one of those nights. But you absolutely cannot say it was Kyrie Irving’s fault. You just can’t. Keown did it anyway.

Near the end, Keown wrote that he feels like he’s watching an audition when he watches “these guys” play. He doesn’t fully define these guys, but logic dictates that we can use the phrase as a euphemism for talented players with realistic NBA dreams. Well, Tim, considering the way professional team sports operate, wouldn’t you say these are their auditions? At the same time, wouldn’t you also admit that each player’s career is more important than a college basketball team? And wouldn’t you agree that showcasing talent while playing in the framework of a team is what the NBA coaches and general managers want to see?

He wrote, “It's rare to find a team relying on a one-and-done player who displays the same kind of camaraderie and share-the-ball philosophy we see in the upstarts.” He then listed Kemba Walker, Derrick Rose, and Derrick Williams as exceptions who “manage to combine transcendent talent with the ability to make their teammates better.” I counter that Kemba Walker is nothing close to a one-and-done player. He is a junior who still causes scouts to wonder if he can play in the NBA. I would also add that we have seen plenty of other one-and-done players raise the level of their teams. Players like John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Michael Beasley, and many others took their college teams to levels far beyond what their teams’ talent and coaching should have achieved.

I fully understand the point that Keown wants to make in this column. The one-and-done players do present a challenge for coaches trying to build programs and win championships. But they are not evil. They are not the problem. They most definitely do not make teams like Butler and VCU more enjoyable to watch. And they aren’t all selfishly bad teammates.

Keown took his point, backed it up with manipulated evidence that does not at all support his point, and will, I am sure, convince the majority of people who read the column that he is 100% right. And it pisses me off.

Changing the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

The big change in the NCAA man’s basketball tournament this year is the First Four. I believe I am one of just a small number of people who thought the First Four was a good idea. A lot of people slammed the idea. I heard all the noise, and before the tournament began I stated that the First Four would never have any relevance with fans until the year after one of those teams reached the Sweet Sixteen. When it comes to the NCAA tournament, fans only care about three things: their team, their team’s biggest rival, and their brackets. I think it’s safe to say that Virginia Commonwealth destroyed a few brackets these past two weekends.

First, before any new early rounds can be fully accepted and appreciated by the public, they must start on the Thursday after selection Sunday. This year, the First Four began on Tuesday, about 24 hours after the brackets were released. That’s not enough time for people to fill out brackets and put money into their office pools.

(And if you happen to be one of those people who believes that the NCAA tournament would be a big deal in America without the brackets and pools, then this planet Earth is not quite the place for you. The NCAA must consider the brackets in every change they make to their big moneymaker. And since the NCAA neither benefits from nor runs the bowls, this is their big moneymaker.)

If the First Four began on Thursday—and were televised on a network not named TruTV—there would have been a bigger buzz for those games. Also, the NCAA could have made the First Four matchups between the last eight at-large teams selected for the field. Nobody cares about the lowest rund of automatic qualifiers outside of those schools’ fans and alumni. A First Four comprised entirely of BCS, MVC, and A-10 conference teams would have been a much bigger ratings draw.

But I want to be more drastic than that. Taking into consideration VCU’s run this March as well as those made in recent years by George Mason, Davidson, and even BCS conference schools like Marquette, I think it’s time to do a full expansion of the tournament. The mini-expansions from 64 to 65 and 65 to 68 were small changes without much effect. Remember, the brackets are the big thing.

I’ve read various pundits suggest changes for the selection committee. I saw one man say that Selection Sunday should occur before the conference tournaments because teams that feel assured of a place in the field don’t take the tournament seriously anyway and teams that don’t really belong in the field play their way in. I don’t happen to believe that, but fine, that guy is entitled to his opinion. It got me thinking though…

There are enough teams out there that can compete. Maybe there aren’t 50 schools that can reasonable win a national championship each year, but there are a hundred or so who can compete on a night-to-night basis. Teams’ tournament profiles are judged on records versus the RPI top 50 and top 100. Isn’t it time the tournament fields 96 teams? I think so.

A 96-team tournament would feature 32 first round games that would produce winners to face 32 teams who had earned first-round byes. And I say let’s give the byes to the teams who earned their conferences’ automatic bids (I know there are only 31 conferences; they can create another or we could just give the last bye to the highest ranked team who did not earn an automatic berth).

24 teams per region. The top seed would face the winner of the game between the teams seeded 16 and 17 in the region. I know what you’re wondering. What if a top-seeded team failed to win its conference tournament? Of this year’s top seeds, only Pittsburgh failed to win a conference tournament. In such a case, Pittsburgh could have been seeded #1 in the Southeast. They would have played a first round game against the 24th (lowest) seeded team. Teams with byes don’t necessarily have to play teams that played a first round game. This can be flexible depending on who wins conference championships and who doesn’t. The only hard rule would be 8 byes per region.

This makes sense to me. It gives teams a reason to play for the conference championship, it is more inclusive, and it gives fans who care about such things a reasonable expectation that any team left out of the field wasn’t going to win the thing anyway. Tell me what the downside is.