Your NBA Losability Update

A FIFTH of the way into the NBA season seems like a good time to revisit the In Play Lose Losability rankings. Remember, the point of Losability rankings is what is interesting to me at the moment, not necessarily whether or not anyone is good or bad. You’ll notice the bad teams moving up in the rankings, of course, as the inevitable post-New Year tankathon shall soon commence and some of these bad teams will suddenly get really bad. But I’ve got some NBA story lines brewing and percolating in my head at the moment, and so I’m keeping a close eye on a few different things. So here’s what’s interesting me about the NBA at the moment:

30. Charlotte (-2): because you are doing just fine, Buzz City, so carry on.
29. San Antonio (-9): because nothing to see here, just move along (and, oh yeah, Pop is god and you should not forget it.)
28. Utah (-6): because I am reserving all judgment about this team until they finally get healthy.
27. Cleveland (-17): because a supersoft opening schedule with a heavy amount of home cooking hasn’t given them a whole lot of challenges yet, which means they can go out and show off and have some fun here at the start of the season – which is something that they’ve certainly earned the right to do.
26. Brooklyn (-13): because the Nets are just bad. They’ve been a fun bad so far, but still bad.
25. Detroit (0): because this offense is a cure for insomnia; because SVG would fit in well with any sort of political commentary that I do after his post-election rant in Phoenix.
24. Toronto (+2): because I should write a post about how I think instant replay in sports, as presently constructed, is nonsense, and use this ridiculous Raps game in Sacramento as one of many examples; because this team desperately needs a stretch four, but may not have the guts to pull the trigger on a deal; because I love DeRozen and his old school game; because otherwise, all is well in the North so carry on.
23. Atlanta (-8): because in spite of a couple of klunkers here recently, this team has been pretty good; because it’s amazing what happens when you have a coach who understands, first and foremost, that you have to adjust the scheme to the personnel like Mike Budenholzer has done with Dwight Howard, who has suddenly looked quite useful in the center of the Atlanta defense.
22. Memphis (-4): because this team is actually pretty good when everyone is healthy; because how long will the run of good health last?
21. Dallas (+2): because the Mavericks are having that sort of lost season which can happen to a mid-level veteran team where the injuries pile up and nothing goes right and everyone suddenly looks old and slow; because after 16 straight winning seasons, this is one team which has certainly earned a mulligan and a disastrous season like this one won’t count against anyone; because holy shit, Harrison Barnes has actually been good; because Andrew Bogut has been mediocre, just as he was in Golden State, but everyone around here talks about how much they miss Bogut’s rim protection, which is weird to me, as it would appear Bogut is the type of player who is really good in everyone’s minds when he isn’t actually playing.
20. Miami (-6): because this team is the most prime candidate for a full-on tank job and a rebuild; because until that happens, they are simply unwatchable.
19. Milwaukee (+8): because Greek Freak and Jabari Parker and Co. have a few really good moments and a few really bad quarters of an hour; because you can see the potential there, especially with Greek Freak at the point, but there’s just not enough focus nor consistency, and they still can’t shoot; because they’re probably not good enough to make the playoffs, but not bad enough to get a good pick in the draft, and that’s not really an ideal place to be.
18. L.A. Lakers (-6): because as expected, this team is bringing back the fun and Luke Walton is doing a great job with his young players; because at some point, teams will start to figure them out and all of that youthful enthusiasm stops working, and you have to actually act like you know what you’re doing out there on the court; because this team will probably keep getting super amped up for big games against big teams, but it’s all of the games against the league’s middle class – playoff level teams who don’t take the night off – that will be ugly.
17. Denver (+12): because this is a weird team; because you’d think that, if you’re going to turn over the keys to one guy and expect him to run the show, you’d do it with someone unlike Emmanuel Mudiay – i.e., someone who actually knows how to play NBA basketball.
16. Orlando (+8): because this is one of the ugliest offensive teams I’ve seen in the NBA in a long time; because their offseason moves would indicate they had aspirations of being a playoff team; because that’s about the only thing their offseason moves indicate, since the roster is so misfitting that I have no idea what they honestly thought they would accomplish.
15. Indiana (+6): because this is one of the many Prometheus Bound NBA franchises at the moment, a nightly act of Greek Tragedy in which the hero is chained to a bad roster and forced to move boulders all by himself in order to be successful – in this case Paul George, who has to do everything on both ends on the floor; because George’s burden is especially large on the defensive end, given that the rest of the Pacers can’t guard the floor they are standing on.
14. Houston (-6): because this is Prometheus Bound, Act II, with James Harden putting up some ridiculous numbers far and beyond anything else his teammates are doing; because unlike the others franchises of this type, the Rockets are actually halfway decent; because the offense hasn’t been as good as I hoped, and the defense hasn’t been as bad as I hoped, which means they’re sort of meh at the moment.
13. Philadelphia (-8): because I love me some Sixers, of course, and I have felt their pain, and the Sixers have been frisky and feisty here of late and I always appreciate them playing hard; because I enjoy watching Embiid and think he is a special talent, but I still don’t think I’ve ever seen him throw a pass; because the offense is still a claustrophobic mess and, even with the unforeseen quasi-revival of Sauce Castillo’s career, this team still needs to improve its guard play; because now that they’re not tanking and simply bad, they’re not nearly as interesting.
12. L.A. Clippers (-5): because they’ve been impressive at both ends of the floor so far this season and have been refreshingly drama free; because there is something to be said for continuity in an ADD league where the tendency is to gravitate towards fads and shiny objects; because having said that, they still need a three, and Mbah a Moute making a bunch of unmissable shots because he’s so wide open doesn’t change that; because I’ll be curious to see how they handle this first game coming up against the Dubs next week, since the Dubs have had their number and that was even before KD arrives, whom the Clips don’t really have an answer for. Speaking of which …
11. Golden State (-10): because welcome to the fish bowl, where every single thing that ever even slightly goes wrong gets magnified and blown out of proportion; because this is what’s bound to happen when you sign KD; because jesus, KD is even better than I thought, which is saying something, because I already thought he was one of the 5 players in the league; because nothing else matters between now and April, anyway, so just sit back and enjoy some beautiful basketball.
10. Chicago (-6): because maybe this team is better than we thought they would be; because I suppose it makes sense they would get off to a good start, given that we’ve got here some seasoned vets and old pros and title winners on this team who do, in fact, know what they’re doing; because I’m still somewhat skeptical, seeing as how D-Wade is suddenly nailing threes off the dribble; because I’m not at all skeptical about Jimmy Butler.
9. Phoenix (+2): because I have no idea what this team is trying to do; because while it may make sense to draft a raw talent like Dragan Bender and bring him along slowly, or draft a raw talent like Marquese Chriss and bring him along slowly, it doesn’t make sense to have two of those guys on your roster at the same time and playing the same position; because the guard rotation doesn’t make much sense, either; because this team would be smart to move Bledsoe and Knight at the deadline, build around Booker and TJ Warren and give up on this season completely, but the words “smart” and “Suns” are rarely uttered in the same sentence.
8. New York (-2): because in a shocking development, the Knicks have more or less junked the Zen Master’s triangle offense and started running more stuff through Porzingis and, lo and behold, they actually look like a competent basketball team; because that terrible contract they gave to Joachim Noah looks worse every time he steps on the floor; because so long as you have Phil Jackson around to pop off and say something stupid, there is always high potential for needless drama.
7. Boston (+2): because I wouldn’t read much of anything into their so-so start to the season, given the injury problems at the outset; because at 9-7 as of this writing, they’re in pretty good shape and should get better; because this is still the most interesting team in the league by far in terms of their possibility to make a move and add players, and how likely they are to make a big move may depend as much as what they see taking place in Brooklyn as anything they’re doing, since every Nets win makes that #1 pick the Celtics hold in the 2017 draft potentially less valuable, and so it is something of a tricky balancing act trying to figure out if/when to buy/sell.
6. Washington (+24): because this is our big mover in these rankings, all the way up from 30th, which is where I had them because I figured they’d be a boring .500 team that went nowhere; because instead they are a mess, and their two best players don’t like each other, one of whom – John Wall – feels he’s underpaid now and the other of whom – Bradley Beal – got a max contract despite being made of glass; because oh yeah, the bench sucks; because the Buzzards sunk $35 million into Scotty Brooks as a coach, when it seemed to me that the entirety of Brooks’ success in OKC was predicated on having KD and Russ and James Harden on his team.
5. Portland (+14): because I hated their offseason moves, and this is one of the perils of the NBA, whereby having money to spend one season translates into sunk costs the next, and it’s impossible to look at Evan Turner and Alan Crabbe and Festus Ezeli as anything other than sunk costs at this point; because the defense sucks, which makes for wildly entertaining games but doesn’t translate into wins; because regressing to the mean is a bitch, and because another peril of the NBA is overachieving, as the expectations rise further upward than you may be able to deliver.
4. Minnesota (+12): because I hate the way this team is being coached, as you’ve already got Thibs overplaying his starters and refusing to go small and saddling his lineup with a point guard in Rubio who can’t shoot and a four-man in Dieng who just seems to get in everyone else’s way; because Thibs is also the president of the club, and I don’t think anyone should have both of those jobs; because all of those moments of individual brilliance don’t add up to anything remotely resembling a cohesive unit.
3. Oklahoma City (0): because Prometheus Bound, Act III; because for all of his hellfire and fury, Russell Westbrook alone cannot possibly win enough games through reckless abandon and sheer determination; because it’s amusing to watch him try, since what else is he going to do?; because can anyone on this team make a shot?; because with so few shooting options on this team, defenses are just packed in, which means that Adams and Kanter, OKC’s two excellent bigs, have no room to operate on the glass and turn the ball over too much when they do actually get the ball; because are we sure that Billy Donovan can actually coach an NBA team?
2. Sacramento (0): because Prometheus Bound, Act IV; because the NBA’s most delusional franchise will likely not do what they should, which is to trade Boogie Cousins before the deadline, because they still think a) he’ll re-sign with them, and b) they can still make the playoffs; because Rudy Gay has looked decent so far this season in a “hey, he’s a decent player and maybe we should trade for him” sort of way; because how bad did the in-fighting within the Memphis organization have to be in order to make Dave Joerger think that taking the Kings coaching job was an upgrade?
1. New Orleans (+16): because Prometheus Bound, Act V; because the idea that Anthony Davis is going to spend the prime of his career with this abject and utterly hopeless franchise is depressing.

We Can Do Better Than This

IT’S BEEN a tough couple of weeks here in America, one which has shown deep divisions within our country. But I do think there is one thing that Americans of all persuasions can come together on in complete agreement.

Jürgen Klinsmann sucks as a coach.

Klinsmann’s response to criticism, in the aftermath of USA FC’s appalling two-step misstep – first losing to El Tri in Columbus, followed by a 4:0 pasting at Costa Rica – was to tell reporters that his critics don’t know anything about the game.

“The fact is, we lost two games. There is a lot of talk from people who don't understand soccer or the team. What you need to do is stick to the facts. Soccer is emotional, and a lot of people make conclusions without knowing anything about the inside of the team or the sport.”

Which is interesting, of course, because it plays upon the whole “idiot American” complex that U.S. soccer has spent most of the past 26 years trying to rid itself of. That’s right, we here in the United States don’t know anything about the game and how it’s supposed to work. Never mind that, you know, the professional league in the U.S. has the 6th highest attendance of any league in the world – higher than Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, or what have you. Never mind that the one World Cup held here is the most attended and widely considered the most successful of such tournaments of all time. Never mind that the Copa América, when held in the U.S., drew more than double the attendance of the previous rendition of the tourney in Chile in 2015. For a country that doesn’t know anything about the game of soccer, we sure do seem to like it.

And we obviously don’t know anything about soccer here, because the fact of the matter is that in any nation on earth where they do take the game seriously, Jürgen Klinsmann would’ve gotten himself fired by now. That he hasn’t speaks to the level of patience and the relatively modest set of American expectations. Hell, Dunga got fired last summer about 10 minutes after Brazil lost to Peru and got ousted from the Copa América Centenario. Mexico went through four coaches during their traumatic and dysfunctional qualification campaign for the 2014 World Cup. In places where they “know about soccer,” they also tend to be knee-jerk and pessimistic and believe that the sky is falling after every bad result. Jürgen Klinsmann has had it easy for most of his tenure, working dual roles as both the head coach of USA FC and the technical director of the national federation. He’s been given far more time than anyone else, in any other high-profile footballing nation, could ever expect to receive given the results that he has produced.

Well, the time is up. After last week’s World Cup qualifying debacle, which saw the U.S. lose its first two games of the CONCACAF Hexagonal, Sunil Gulati and the rest of the USSF had finally seen enough. Klinsmann is out, having been fired today from both positions.

And you have to put these two games in proper context here. These are two games against the two best teams in this part of the hemisphere. In the U.S., you are judged by how you stack up against Mexico and against Costa Rica. You play El Tri in Columbus, where you have dominated them in the past. Just totally, completely dominated them. “Dos a cero” has become a rallying cry for the U.S. soccer faithful because of this. Columbus is every bit the house of horrors for El Tri that their home grounds, the Estadio Azteca, has been for the Americans. You have the mental edge and confidence and swagger on your side – factors which should never be discounted – and what does Klinsmann do with this?

Oh hey, let’s play a back three! Sure, we’ve never played this before, and we have no idea whether or not it would work, but what could be better timing for going into some experimental art house period with the team than when they’re playing their biggest rival in a World Cup qualifier?

What the actual fuck?

But Klinsmann does this sort of shit all the time. He plays guys out of position, he switches things up for no apparent reason and you never have any idea what the team is going to look like. It’s all a big mystery, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when it doesn’t work – which it often doesn’t, and which often shows itself to be a problem right at the start of the game.

Somewhat predictably, this shift to a 3-5-2 3-4-3 3-4-1-2 3-in-the-back formation against Mexico in Columbus was a complete, utter mess. The U.S. was down a goal after 20 minutes, but it easily could have been 2-0 or even 3-0. And not only are you losing here, but you’ve now ceded the mental edge you had, at the start of the game, and your team has lost all of that confidence and all of that swagger, because El Tri has figured out that you don’t know what you’re doing and are running rampant. It was all so pointless, so unnecessary.

And here is where something very, very important comes into play which people haven’t really thought enough about. During a break in the action, Michael Bradley and Jermaine Jones – two of the senior players on the team, one of whom is the captain – go over to the sidelines and tell Klinsmann that this cheeky new 3-in-the-back formation doesn’t work worth a damn, at which point the formation gets changed to their usual 4-4-2 and then, lo and behold, the U.S. suddenly starts playing well! How about that!

The U.S. equalizes and controls play for most of the second half, only to lose on a header from Rafa Marquez late on a corner – a combination of a brilliant finish, terrible man marking from the U.S., lack of communication among the defense and a set-up which made no sense, as the U.S. had no one marking the posts on the corner. This is a sloppy, disorganized mess of a play – but as I say, it still took a pretty great finish from Rafa Marquez to result in a goal. But this is what happens in soccer. Scoring is often a mixture of both the ridiculous and the sublime.

The bigger issue here, of course, is the fact that the U.S. basically conceded the first 20’ of the game to their opponent, got themselves in a hole and were thus chasing the game, and why were they doing this? Because Klinsmann decided to be cute with his tactics. And when asked about it after the game, Klinsmann said basically that it didn’t work because Bradley and Jones – the two guys who said “get this back three nonsense out of here” – didn’t play it right. He goes and throws two of his vets, including his captain, under the bus in the press. It’s true that Bradley didn’t play worth a damn, but you don’t go throwing the captain under the bus, outing him in the press like that. Players take their cue from the captain. That’s a pretty good way to get yourself in trouble as a coach. It was at that very moment that I knew the Costa Rica game was likely to be a disaster.

Which it was, as the U.S. got crushed and deserved to get crushed. Honestly, they looked like they were trying to get Klinsmann fired. Another guy Klinsmann felt free to throw under the bus after the Mexico game, John Brooks – who was, without question, the best player on the pitch for the U.S. in the Copa América – perhaps unsurprisingly made a whole series of comedic errors in the central defense which led to easy goals for the Ticos. But he wasn’t alone, of course. The entire back line was a shambles, the central midfield was a turnover machine, and the U.S. created one good scoring chance in the entire match. Once this game got to 2-0 early in the second half, the players quit on Klinsmann. They flat-out quit on him, and quite honestly, you cannot blame them for doing that. You look to the guy on the bench for guidance, for leadership and for decision-making, and instead you’ve got this guy slagging you in the press and calling you out while showing himself to have a tin ear for tactics. Who needs that?

Klinsmann had clearly lost the locker room, and when that happens, you can’t go back and put it back together. And unlike club football, where the solution is always just to throw money at the problem, you don’t have that option on the international level. You cannot go out and buy another center back or central midfielder (even though nations have certainly tried). You have to dance with what you brung.

And if you’re a player, why would you want to play for this guy? Remember, international soccer is something which players do on their off time. They play professionally for nine months, and they shoehorn in a couple of weeks here and there, when a lot of their teammates essentially get in-season vacations to rest and heal up, and they go jetting across the globe to play for their country, often for very little compensation if they even get compensated at all. (Time and again, most often in Africa, you hear stories of federations not paying players for their international duty and creating needless strife.) Guys do this out of loyalty and because it’s a huge honor to be capped by your country. They take it very seriously. But if your coach shows himself to be arrogant, selfish, and a tactical amateur, then why do you want to go through with that? Why do you want to put yourself through more games, risking more chances of injury? At that point, it isn’t worth it.

Gulati really had no choice but to fire Klinsmann, at this point. At zero points and -5 spread, all of the margin of error for USA FC is gone. CONCACAF has 3½ places in the World Cup, with whomever finishing fourth in The Hex having to play a logistical nightmare of a playoff series against an Asian team in order to reach Russia in 2018. The apologist could say “oh, it’s fine, just win the four remaining home matches and there is 12 points right there, which would at least get you into the playoff, and then scrounge up some draws here and there on the road,” but given how generally bad this team has played in the past couple of years, I wouldn’t make that assumption. This team lost to Jamaica at home in a Gold Cup semifinal. This team lost to Guatemala earlier this year. This team shouldn’t lose to Guatemala ever under any circumstance. And like I say, the margin for error is gone. You lose the next game at home to Honduras in March and you’re toast. There was no more room for “wait and see” here, since there was no guarantee Klinsmann could rally any enthusiasm at all from the players he would have at his disposal.

Thus concludes a frustrating, stop-and-start tenure for Klinsmann, who came in talking big about how he was going to transform American soccer and make it proactive and attacking and exciting, but whose successes mostly stemmed from the time-tested American footballing ethos of pragmatism and mental toughness. Don’t go promising one thing and then getting your nose bent out of joint when people complain that you’ve failed to deliver on it.

And guess what? There is nothing wrong with pragmatism and mental toughness. I’m totally cool with that. It’s a results-oriented business, in the end. Ask the Portuguese which means more to them: all of the beautiful football they’ve played in the past 20 years which amounted to nothing, or the tenacious and resourceful approach which brought them a championship at Euro 2016? And you can still be exciting even in that context. I watched the better part of all 64 games of the World Cup in 2014, and the two most exciting games of the entire tournament involved the U.S. – the 2:2 draw with Portugal and the loss in OT to the Belgians in the Round of 16 which was one of the nuttiest, craziest, wackiest World Cup matches I’ve ever seen.

God damn it, Wondo ...

But one of the things about that particular match with the Belgians, which I wondered about at the time, was that I felt like, when it came to tactics, Klinsmann got it wrong. His team turned into a donut, with a big gaping hole in the middle of the pitch through which the Belgians sent one rampaging attack after another. Wondo’s missing of a sitter in stoppage time cost them a victory, to be sure, but this game could have been 8-0 if Tim Howard hadn’t put in the most heroic goalkeeping performance I’ve ever seen. Klinsmann got brutally out coached in that game by Marc Wilmots, of all people, whose lack of tactical prowess on the Belgian bench got him fired this summer after they looked completely confused and clueless in the Euros.

And this happened time and again. It’s hard enough for the U.S. to match up with teams who have superior talent, but it’s made even harder when you get out coached. Klinsmann got out coached by a temp last October in the CONCACAF playoff with El Tri, his team unable to adjust to a very simple ploy from the Mexicans of bunching three center forwards and having them interplay with one-another. Boom, quick goal for Mexico, you’re down 1-0 and you’re chasing the game. I went to their match with Colombia this summer at The Pants in Santa Clara, when Los Cafeteros scored so fast that I’d not even reached my seat. Boom, quick goal, you’re down 1-0 and you’re chasing the game again, and no point, in the rest of that match, did I nor any of the others who had made the trip with me down the peninsula think that the U.S. was going to figure out how to get back in the game. They never did. His idea for combatting Argentina was to run out a bunch of tired old retreads in a lineup that screamed “we’re parking the bus and playing for penalties.” Boom, quick Argentina goal, you’re down 1-0 and you’re chasing the game again, this time with a team on the field that is incapable of even getting a shot off, much less scoring. I’ve seen this movie and I know how it ends.

Klinsmann apologists like to point out that they lost games to the Belgiums and the Mexicos and the Argentinas of the world because they didn’t have the talent – which is true, I suppose, but the U.S. didn’t have the talent in 2010 and 2002, either, and did a whole lot better in the World Cups in both cases. If anything, Klinsmann can’t use the ‘lack of talent’ excuse, since as technical director, his role is supposedly to develop that talent. He has, in fact, done a really good job beating the bushes for players overseas and finding Germans and Mexicans and Icelandics with American lineage who are eligible to play. Some knuckleheads may have a problem with this, but if the rules say you’re an American then, by God, you’re an American. The U.S. talent pool presently has players plying their trade right now with clubs in the Premiere League, the English Championship, the Bundesliga, the Eredivisie, Serie A, Liga MX, etc., etc. He has more talent as his disposal than any American coach in history, and he’s trotting out a team that’s losing to Guatemala.

In the end, this team has not improved. Three years ago, this was the best team in the region. Given the recent spate of results, that is clearly no longer the case. The team is stagnant at best, and regressing at worst. And you can’t come in making promises and raising expectations, and then recoil when those expectations haven’t been met. Personally, I wanted him gone in 2015 after that disastrous Gold Cup, when the U.S. finished fourth and even the victories were shaky and unimpressive, and that 3:2 loss to El Tri in the playoff at the Rose Bowl was appalling for just how needlessly incoherent the U.S. were while playing a Mexican team with a stop-gap coach that seemed almost as rudderless and directionless as the U.S. was before the game. I had no confidence going forward from there, and this team has failed to meet even my meager expectations since then. I was supportive of the hire of Klinsmann when it first happened, as I felt Bob Bradley’s tenure had gotten stale, and since Klinsmann had done a good job contributing to the ‘Das Reboot’ of German football in the early 2000s, but I’m tired of all of the promises which are unkept, and I’m tired of substandard results.

But then again, I’m an American, so what do I know?

And where does the USSF go from here? The obvious candidate at the moment is Bruce Arena, who led USA FC to the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 2002 and has won all sorts of silverware with the L.A. Galaxy in MLS. I’m not really crazy about this idea, since I’d like to see some new blood and new ideas, but Arena does represent a safe pair of hands, and a compelling argument could be made here for some stability. Arena spouting off last year about how he believes all USA FC players should be American-born doesn’t help matters either – he needs all hands on deck at this point, and the fact is that in the present a whole bunch of his best players happen to have been born abroad, and the future holds the same sort of quandary (eight of the members of the U-23 squad are foreign born). Another name that’s been floated is Peter Vermes, who presently coaches at Sporting Kansas City, and he doesn’t excite me either although I admit there may be some recency bias here, since all I ever seem to hear about him is his whining about officials all of the time, which I’m tired of.

I’d like to see the USSF take a broader look here and see what sorts of candidates are out there, as there may be more good ones than they realize. Because this is a good job. Lots of resources, a stable federation, a generally patient and supportive fan base, a relatively easy region in which you play – what’s not to like about that? My ideal possible candidate who they’ll never, ever hire is former El Tri coach Miguel Herrera: the guy knows CONCACAF, he knows American soccer very well from coaching at Tijuana, and anyone who can keep getting great results with the Xolos clearly knows what the hell he is doing. He won’t get the job, of course, because of his off-field behavior, but the point is that the USSF should be looking for something more than just a run-of-the-mill MLS guy. We need some new ideas, but my suspicion is that the USSF won’t be willing to take that kind of a risk.

US Soccer finds itself in a strange place at the moment. The demand for MLS is growing, as there are cities lined up clamoring for franchises. The product on the field, meanwhile, continues to be somewhat muddled as the league still can’t figure out what it wants to be. Some of the most recent forays into big name foreign signings – guys like Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard – have proven to be massive wastes of money, but few clubs seem to be putting in due diligence in regards to figuring out the right sorts of players to be signing. The USSF also has a big mess on its hands in dealing with the Women’s National Team, who are now threatening to strike over equal pay and understandably so, seeing as how its they, and not the men, who are the brightest stars of the American game.

But then again, U.S. soccer has always been in a strange place. FIFA doesn’t like the U.S., but know they can’t get by without it, at this point. At a moment’s notice, FIFA knows they could move any tournament in the world to the U.S., hold the event there and have it be a massive success. And what other nation on earth serves as a de facto home field for another nation the way the U.S. does for Mexico, who pretty much exclusively play their home friendlies stateside? It’s a strange, strange place to be.

But I personally have always liked the fact that, on the world scale, the U.S. is an underdog in soccer. I like the fact that we’ve had to win people over, both on and off the pitch, and generally done so, be it through overachieving or through our loyal, enthusiastic, positive followers in the stands. I liked all of that, but you can still keep all of those characteristics while also improving on the pitch. I wanted to see USA FC get better and the bottom line is that it isn’t. And Klinsmann trivialized a lot of what has made American soccer good over the years. He demeaned it and belittled it, but in the end, wound up no better off than any of his predecessors. I don’t like seeing anyone lose their job, but that performance against Costa Rica was as abject as any I’ve seen from an American side in the last 30 years. We can do better than this.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Don’t get too cocky, Chicago. You still have the Bears.

“You need stuff that sucks to have stuff that’s cool.”
– Beavis and Butthead

IT ISN’T hyperbole to suggest that Wednesday night’s World Series Game 7 between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians will go down in the annals of baseball history as the most memorable game of all time. Given what was at stake, given the two clubs involved and their tortured histories, given the massive audience – it was the most-watched baseball game in the past 25 years – and given the drama which unfolded over the course of 10 innings and more than four hours, you’re not likely to ever see a game quite like it again. The Cubs’ 8:7 win over the Indians in 10 innings was one helluva roller coaster ride, with twists and turns and huge momentum swings all over the place. When it was over, the Cubs were so spent that many of them were completely overwhelmed emotionally and were decidedly subdued in their celebrations. It was gripping theatre and incredible drama.

And the game itself was something of a mess. The Cubs won in spite of Joe Maddon’s repeated managerial gaffes – seriously Joe, what the hell was that bunt on a 3-2 pitch? – and Terry Francona didn’t have his best night, either. The Indians continued the clownshoes approach to outfield defense which had cost them in Game 6 and also got a runner picked off. The pitchers for both teams were running on fumes, missing their spots, and generally ineffective, with the difference being Chicago’s batters hit ’em where they ain’t a bit more often than the Tribe’s. You could hardly say this game was particularly well played.

But that’s often the case with these sorts of games. Mistakes are part of the game. Hell, they ARE the game in a lot of cases, in that the team who makes the fewest mistakes winds up winning. Every game comes down to mistakes, in the end. You just hope that the last mistake isn’t the one that kills you. (Run the damn ball, Seahawks!)

Perhaps the most memorable baseball game of my lifetime – the Red Sox v. Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series – ended with a wild pitch and a routine grounder rolling between Bill Buckner’s legs. People forget just what a comedy of errors that entire game was. It was a preposterous mess filled with mistakes, mess-ups and managerial malfeasance. Had that been a spring training game, or some meaningless mid-summer game, both teams would’ve taken the game film out back and set it on fire in the dumpster. The circumstances, however, made it memorable and magnificent.

It’s easy to confuse a great game with a great quality of play. You don’t need the latter for the former. Oftentimes, it’s something outside the realm of “great play” which makes the game memorable: sometimes it’s a big mistake at the wrong time, sometimes it’s one moment of individual greatness, sometimes it’s a terrible decision by an official. If everything goes well and everything goes according to plan, the game itself is actually not that interesting a lot of the time.

I’d actually been thinking of writing this Lose post for quite some time, and watching that terrific and exciting game between the Indians and the Cubs has spurred me to act. Here at In Play Lose, we often talk about stuff which is done poorly – but I don’t think I speak often enough about stuff that’s done really well. Or, if not really well, stuff that has become memorable to me for a variety of reasons.

The first sporting event that I ever attended was a football game in Berkeley in 1976 between Cal and Washington State, and I barely knew the rules of football, and I still remember how Cal jumped out to a 23-0 lead before W.S.U. rallied … it was 23-8, and then 23-16, and then the Cougars scored late to make it 23-22 and went for the 2-pt conversion and the win, and my dad and I were seated in the end zone where the Cougars were attacking and I can remember the whole play developing, as WSU QB Jack Thompson dropped back to pass, looked to his right, had an open receiver in his sights and … got sacked. Cougars lose by a point. (I found this crazy old silent video of some of the game action on YouTube.) Now, neither of those teams were any good at all, but that was A GREAT GAME of football in that it was tense and dramatic, which is ultimately what you want. The beauty of sports is that they are ultimately unscripted and unpredictable. You have no idea what it is that you’re going to see.

So I started thinking about all of the various sporting events I’ve attended in the past 40 years, trying to think about what were the best events that I’ve seen in person. Not on TV, mind you, but actually in person, because as much as I enjoy watching games on TV, I find the live experience to be so much more satisfying in that you share a common experience with those who are seated around you and the atmosphere in the arena adds to the experience.

But touching on all of the really good sporting events that I’ve attended strays from the mission of this blog, which is document and contemplate and pontificate about losing. Well, in keeping with the epigram of this blog, if I’m going to celebrate the great events that I’ve attended, I would also do well to recollect the truly terrible events that I’ve attended as well. You do, in fact, need stuff that sucks to have that’s cool, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff that sucks over 40 years.

Here then is my good, bad, and ugly list of sporting events that I’ve attended in my lifetime. You will find that the definitions of those three are somewhat mutable and flexible – sometimes it’s due to circumstance, sometimes to quality of play. This was a fun list to put together, brought back a lot of good memories (and some bad ones), and required a variety of digging about the archives. And to qualify this further, I will say here that nothing on either the “bad” or the “ugly” side of the ledger will involve a team that I was rooting for actually winning the game, because this is In Play Lose here and we’re all about the Lose. I can say, without a doubt, that the worst pro football game I have ever attended was at the Kingdome on Nov. 14, 1993, a 22:5 win by the Seahawks over the Cleveland Browns which featured only 450 yards of offense, two safeties, a fumble returned for a TD, and a QB duel between the illustrious Rick Mirer and Todd Philcox – the latter having gotten the job when Browns coach Bill Belichick rage cut Bernie Kosar earlier in the week. This game was absolutely dreadful. Even for a fan of bad football, this one was tough to take. But the Seahawks won, so the desired outcome had occurred – but we’re not interested in desired outcomes here. I’ll take an ugly loss over an aesthetically pleasing win any day. Anyway, permit me this ambling down Memory Lane – even though some of these memories are rather fuzzy, and some feel like really bad dreams.

NFL
The Good: I have to be honest here: I’ve been to pro football games in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, and I’ve never, ever been to a game that was any good at all. The team I’ve seen in person most often – the Seahawks – were terrible when I lived in Seattle in the 1990s. I went to a smattering of games and they were all pretty dismal.
The Bad: Since I’ve never been to a good one, you can imagine I have several bad ones to choose from. Two stand out in particular.
My one venture to a game at Candlestick Park, on Nov. 28, 2004, certainly was dubious – the Dolphins and the 49ers had the two worst records in the league, and the game was an error-strewn affair, with the 49ers fumbling on five straight possessions in the second half on their way to defeat. The box score lists the attendance as being 66,156, but about 25,000 of those fans were dressed as empty seats. And you’ve not really had a truly miserable sporting experience until you’ve been to Candlestick at a time with a number in it on a day ending in Y. My girlfriend at the time was a Miami supporter, so we were sitting with the other Fins fans on the side of the Stick that was out of the sun, and I was wearing about five layers of clothing in order to combat the constantly swirling winds, but then I’d go down to the concourse to the concession stands, which were in the sun, and I instantly started roasting. It amazes me that people put up with that shithole of a stadium for as long as they did. When I went with five other friends to the very last sporting event played at Candlestick – a friendly between the U.S. and Azerbaijan in the run-up to the World Cup – I told everyone “bring a coat” even though it was about 80° in San Francisco that day. People thought I was kidding. “I’m serious. Bring a coat.” They were all grateful that they took my advice.
But the Seahawks 19:0 loss to the Raiders at the Kingdome on Oct. 18, 1992 simply cannot be ignored, because this is the only time I’ve ever cheered about an offensive holding penalty against my own team. The Seahawks went 2-14 that season and were so injury riddled that 3rd-stringer Stan Gelbaugh started most of the games at QB. This was the most lopsided 19-pt. game in NFL history, because at no point did I ever think Seattle was going to score. And it’s not like the Raiders were any great shakes, either: probably half of their meager yardage total came in the 4th Quarter when the Seahawks D was out of gas. Anthony Smith of the Raiders got four sacks against the Seahawks sieve of an offensive line, and after whiffing on a block on the previous play against Smith which resulted in a sack, the Seahawks OT promptly got beat again by Smith and just went for the full-on takedown. It was one of the best form tackles I saw all year. Sure, it cost them 10 yards but at least kept Gelbaugh standing upright and we cheered, as this constituted progress.
The Ugly: My trip to New Jack City in Landover on Nov. 23, 1997, was particularly absurd. The game between the Redskin Potatoes and the Giants wound up a 7:7 tie, and that final scoreline should indicate to you just how inept this game was. Oh, I guess you could call it a “defensive struggle” since there were 6 turnovers and 11 sacks. What made this game infamous was Potatoes QB Gus Frerotte concussing himself after head-butting a wall following his 1-yard TD run. I’m about 6 miles from the field where I’m sitting, which is the norm in that cavernous and soulless stadium, and none of us could figure why Jeff Hostetler was suddenly on the field and Frerotte was out of the game, and then a guy a row back who was listening along on the radio told us what happened and myself and the others in my section all just looked to one another in stunned silence, dumbstruck and incredulous.

NBA
The Good: I’ve posted about this previously here on the blog, but the single-best sporting event that I have ever attended was on Apr. 28, 1992, when the Sonics defeated the Golden State Warriors 129:128 in Game 3 of their Western Conference playoff series. The Warriors were one of the great offensive teams in the history of the league, but the Sonics upset them 3-1 in this series and beat them at their own game. (Shawn Kemp’s ultimate act of posterization in Game 4 became the series’ most iconic moment.) In this game, the Warriors shot 56% and lost, because the Sonics shot 61%. The defenses weren’t even all that bad, per se – it was just a case where the offenses for both teams were incredible and were completely unstoppable. And there was no relief in this game. It was just a relentless onslaught from both teams. At one point in the fourth quarter, the Sonics built a double-digit lead, and then the Warriors probably wiped that lead out in about two minutes. The Sonics broke the tie in the final minute with a 3-point play by Kemp on the most insane fast break I’ve ever seen and wound up winning by a single point. People were literally falling all over each other in the stands when Kemp dunked that lob from Payton, jumping up and down in a frenzy and completely losing their minds. I’ve never been so exhausted from watching a game before.
The Bad: Pretty much from the moment this game began on Apr. 6, 1993, I had a bad feeling about it. The Sonics weren’t playing with any intensity, and the 7-64 Dallas Mavericks were playing with urgency. You watch a game like this one unfurl and you think to yourself that at some point, the team that actually knows what it’s doing is going to get it together and clamp down on these guys and force some turnovers and go on a run and blow that awful team away. It never happened. What I remember the most about this game was coming to a strange point of acceptance that the Sonics were about to lose, on their home floor, to one of the worst teams in NBA history, and being remarkably okay with this fact when the game was over. Dallas was the better team and deserved to win and, hey, my team had a bad night. It happens sometimes. And it’s weird to look back at these old NBA box scores and realize just how much the league has changed in 20 years. The 3-point shot was a novelty back then, and the pace of play was incredibly slow. This is why I get really, really bored with every pundit and analyst who talks about how the game was so much better in the era of the Jordanaires. It wasn’t. The game was becoming pretty dull and growing extremely predictable and uncreative. 
The Ugly: What on earth was I thinking?

MLB
The Good: I’ve been to some great baseball games in my life. I was fortunate to see Chris Bosio pitch a no-hitter in Seattle. I went to two Mariners playoff games in 1995, and I also went to the impromptu AL West playoff game between the Mariners and the Angels, a 9:1 win by Seattle in which Randy Johnson threw a 3-hit complete game and a tight game wound up being blown open by Luis Sojo’s ridiculous Little League grand slam. I say this game was “impromptu” because the Angels played a night game against the A’s the evening before, they had to win to force a playoff, and the game went on forever, and the result of this was people waking up in Seattle on that Monday to discover that the Mariners were a) playing that afternoon in the Kingdome, and b) tickets were on sale now. The whole affair was hasty and cobbled together and that extra spontaneity made it memorable.
As I was saying before, what constitutes “good” varies dramatically: it can represent a high quality of play, it can represent an amazing atmosphere, etc. The “best” baseball game I’ve ever attended took place on Oct. 22, 2012. It seemed, at first, like it was a beautiful night for some baseball – if only the St. Louis Cardinals had bothered to play any. It was Game 7 of the NLDS between the Cardinals and the Giants and, early that afternoon, I was at my office down in Palo Alto and I got a text message from The Official Girlfriend of In Play Lose: “Section 330.” Kismet! And it was a scramble to make it to Phone Co. Park for the early start time, and I didn’t make it until the top of the 2nd inning. The Giants pushed two runs across in the bottom of the 2nd, and then all hell broke loose in the bottom of the 3rd, as the Cardinals kicked the ball all over the place and the Giants scored five runs, three on the weirdest play that I have ever seen on a baseball diamond:

Only Hunter Pence could do something that weird.
From that point onward, it was basically a party with 41,000 of my new-found friends. And as I said, it was a beautiful night for some baseball, right up until it wasn’t:

It started pouring down rain in the top of the 9th inning, the storm coming seemingly out of nowhere. The field was barely playable, but the game quickly ended as the Cardinals hitters swung at most everything, just wanting to get the game over with. We slogged back to the BART station, a 45-minute walk in an absolute downpour, chanting “Beat Detroit!” along with 30,000 other joyously happy people. We were completely soaked and we both threw our ruined shoes straight into the trashcan. Now that right there, that was a good day.
The Bad: I’ve been to so many bad Seattle Mariners games in my life that I’ve lost count. They all run together. So we’re going to pivot here and go in a different direction.
During a dark time in life when I was living in western Colorado, a Colorado resident. From a sporting standpoint, you could do far worse than be in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 1998. The Broncos won the Super Bowl, which put everyone in a good mood; Steamboat is actually closer to Salt Lake City than it is to Denver, and I wound up spending a lot of time in Salt Lake City, where people there were pretty excited about the Utah Jazz reaching the NBA Finals, and also the University of Utah reaching the NBA championship game; and 1998 also meant the Winter Olympics were going on, and Steamboat Springs has produced more Olympians per capita than any other city in America. So while a lot about my life in western Colorado sucked – don’t ask me to go into the details – at least I had some pleasant diversions.
And then I’m in Denver in late April and I like Denver, it’s a really nice city and I am always happy to go there for a little while. And hey, look, the Rockies have a series against the Cincinnati Reds at Coors Field and that would be fun. So I make the decision to try and become a Rockies fan, and so I go to the game and it’s a cool ballpark and I’m having a good time and the Rockies are up 4-3 after six but then Kile runs into trouble on the mound in the top of the 7th and can’t get anyone out and here comes the arson squad that is the Rockies bullpen to throw gasoline on the fire and the 7th inning takes about two years off my life. The Reds score eight runs in the 7th, three more in the 8th and four more in the 9th and win 18:7. Yeech.

Just another day at Coors Field

The Ugly: And I’ve also bought a ticket for the game in Denver the following day as well, where the Reds proceed to score 5 in the 1st, 4 in the 2nd, and single runs in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, meaning that I’ve now seen Rockies pitchers contrive to yield 27 RUNS over 8 consecutive innings of baseball spread over two days. I was no longer a Rockies fan.

NHL
The Good: Along the way to an unlikely appearance in the Stanley Cup finals in 1994, the Vancouver Canucks fulfilled the ambition of a good number of my Canadian friends, which was to beat the hell out of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Game 3 of that series is noteworthy because of a line brawl late in the game, after which the Canucks scored again to further rub Toronto’s nose in it, and Game 5 is notable because it went to double OT, but Game 4, on May 22, 1994, was probably the tensest and most intense game that I have ever seen, because it was 0-0 deep into the 3rd period. It was a tight, defensive, somewhat claustrophobic game and the tension ratcheted up with every minute that passed. The game was balanced on a knife’s edge and the crowd would just sort of surge collectively to the edge’s of their seats with every rush up ice. So much nervous energy, so much anxiety.Finally, at 17:35 in the 3rd period, Cliff Ronning broke the deadlock with a goal to give the Canucks the lead and you could feel the wave of jubilation rushing over the crowd. I’ve never felt such a palpable, collective sense of relief. The vibe stayed with me, a rush of endorphins and a tingle in the central nervous system that just sort of lingered on for several days.
The Bad: This one was horrible. On one of my two trips to see a Canucks game against the L.A. Kings at the Fabulous Forum, the Canucks got beat 9:1 by the Kings but that really wasn’t the story. No, the story was that the night before, the Canucks players were sitting on their team plane on the tarmac at LAX when a plane crashed nearby. Suffice to say, the players were shellshocked, and it was pretty obvious that they just flat didn’t care a whit about the game. There was also a crazy backstory to this game, in that it was the first game coached by Pat Quinn – whom the Canucks had basically stolen from the Kings several years earlier, and paid a steep price for it – but none of that really mattered in light of what had happened at the aeroport the night before. And it was a weird atmosphere at the game. The fans didn’t really get into the game, as it felt almost like a scrimmage out there at times, since the Kings were basically playing against a group of ghosts.
The Ugly: I went to see the Canucks play the Washington Capitals in one of the Caps’ last games at their old building, the Capital Centre in Landover, on Nov. 4, 1997, and it was probably the most lopsided 2:1 hockey game that I’ve ever seen. It should have been about 10:1, actually, but Kirk McLean stood on his head in goal for the Canucks, who were on a long losing streak at the time and all throughout this game, I was saying to the guy next to me, “Pat Quinn is getting fired after this game.” Sure enough, he was. Quinn had built the Canucks from one of the worst teams in sports up to being a game away from winning a Stanley Cup, and now in 1997 they were completely disintegrating: they’d dumbly signed Mark Messier as a free agent that summer, who was useless, and there was complete disunity and discontent in the team, and then the Canucks replaced Quinn with Mike Keenan, who was also useless and lasted only into the middle of the following season, and Pavel Bure then demanded a trade in the offseason and vowed never to play for the Canucks again. It was sad to see this team which brought me quite a bit of joy completely collapse before my eyes.

Soccer
The Good: The beatdown at Carrow Road on Jan. 21, 1990, was thorough and systematic. The final score was only 2:0 but it very easily could have been more. Norwich City F.C. were one of England’s best teams, having led the First Division for most of the season prior, only to falter down the stretch and wind up finishing in fourth. The Canaries played attractive football that was creative and geometric and dynamic, and they ran all over their pathetic, inept opponents on that day.
“Norwich were absolutely brilliant. That was the best performance by any side I’ve seen since I joined United. They certainly reached a peak today. But that effort from my side was not acceptable. I know there is a distinct lack of goal threat from us. That was certainly a low for my lot today and there is absolutely no excuse.” – Alex Ferguson
Yes, that Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United, who got walloped by Norwich that day in a game that was nowhere as close as a 2:0 scoreline would indicate. United were abject and atrocious in this game, which was their 10th straight without a win and they were hovering just above the drop zone. And the Yellow Army at Carrow Road were yukking it up at United’s expense, since mighty Man U was six kinds of crap, and that Ferguson guy was obviously a shit-for-brains who couldn’t coach and would soon be out of a job. Suffice to say, Sir Alex figured it out.
The Bad: It was appropriate that this game took place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, because El Tri were absolute pants. We had a great time going to the Copa América Centenario matches this past summer, and the atmosphere for the Mexico v. Chile quarterfinal on June 19, 2016, was truly electric: 70,000 fans, with about 68,000 of them wearing the green of El Tri. Among our watch party assembling in the South Bay for this game was César, the Official South American Correspondent of In Play Lose, who had also brought along his dad, and after about 2 minutes – during which Alexis Sanchez absolutely roasted the El Tri right back and his pinpoint pass almost resulted in a goal – the Official Father of the Official South American Correspondent of In Play Lose leaned over to his son and said, “Chile is going to win and it isn’t going to be close.” And in the first half, Chile were great. They were absolutely great. Alexis was making all the plays up front on the left and some of his touches were just exquisite. Come halftime, Chile are up 2-0 and we’re in line to get a beer and a Mexican fan comes up to Phonerz and I, asks if we’re Chilean, and we point out that we’re Americans and, thus, not the enemy combatant in this game, and he shakes his head and says, “we suck.” And El Tri completely collapses and capitulates in the second half, giving up two quick goals in succession while I’m still standing in line to get a beer, and after Chile makes it 4-0, someone in line smashes a trash can, at which point security moves in and the kiosk selling beer immediately closes, which pissed me the hell off. But Mexico’s matador defense continues on and soon it’s 5-0, and then 6-0, and then 7-0, and by this point the El Tri fans are openly mocking their own team with chants of “Olé!” as they go chasing the ball while the Chileans play keep away. Security had been heightened for this game, as authorities were wary of possible crowd trouble – a threat I didn’t take all that seriously, as I’ve been to Mexico games before and there’s never been an issue that couldn’t be attributed to anything other than people having had too much to drink – but nothing takes the sting out of a crowd and diffuses a situation quick like a systematic beatdown. We like to give El Tri some shit from time to time here at In Play Lose, but it’s good-natured razzing and I’m generally a fan of what they do. But this game was, without question, one of the most shockingly awful performances by a team that I have ever seen.
The Ugly: there is no ‘ugly’ because soccer is ‘The Beautiful Game’ … *foolishly makes trip to White Hart Lane* … uh, OK, so maybe there are ugly soccer games after all.

NCAA Football
The Good: I went to a small Div. III school, the University of Redlands, and in my freshman year, the football team won one game – and it was the best ending to a football game I’ve ever seen, because they were losing to Pomona-Pitzer 27-24 and, on the last play of the game from around midfield, the QB flung a Hail Mary pass towards the end zone … which came up about 10 yards short of the end zone, and there were two Redlands receivers down there, one behind the other, along with three Pomona DBs, and the front guy jumped for the ball and got crunched by the defenders early, and the official down there reached for his flag to call pass interference, saw the other Redlands receiver jumping up and down in the end zone with the ball, and signaled a TD, having been so fixated on calling the pass interference that he hadn’t noticed a) the ball had hit the ground; and b) the Redlands guy behind the pass interference melee had gone down to one knee to field the ball, which meant he was down on about the 5 yard line. Touchdown, game over, we win 30:27. So not only did the Redlands football team only win a single game that entire year, but they cheated in order to do it. My heroes.
The Bad: Back in the days when Washington State knew what they were doing (and I should point out that those days have returned, given that Wazzu beat Arizona 69:7 this afternoon), it was fun to venture either to Berkeley or Palo Alto to mingle with W.S.U.’s chapter of Bay Area alums and see The Good Guys beat up on Cal or Stanford. But it was more morbid curiosity which led me to do this on Nov. 1, 2008, venturing down to Palo Alto in the driving rain to watch W.S.U. get beat 58:0 by Stanford. This was absolutely, without question, the worst football team that I have ever seen. Given that the Cougars had already lost games that season 66:3, 63:14, 66:13, and 69:0, only giving up 58 against Stanford constituted progress. I didn’t stay for the end of it, because I was soaked.
The Ugly:  The 1985 Washington State team had a dazzling array of future NFL talent, including a future Super Bowl MVP at QB, but negated this talent with perpetually brain dead play on the field, including two games where they committed seven turnovers, and it was after the Cougars coughed up yet another winnable game, losing 21:16 to Arizona State on Oct. 26, that Spokesman-Review columnist John Blanchette coined the verb “to coug,” which has since became a staple in northwest sports vernacular.

NCAA Basketball
The Good: Given that it was a record-setting game, it’s somewhat surprising that it’s so hard to find more info about it online. I went to a couples of basketball games at the Gersten Pavilion, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, including this one, from which I found this snippet on a website about Gonzaga basketball:

That doesn’t tell the half of it. Loyola Marymount were setting records during this period of time. It was the wildest, craziest variation of basketball imaginable. They led this game against the Zags 61-50 at halftime, and each team scored 86 points in the second half. The 172 points is an NCAA record for most points scored by two teams in one half. The spectacle was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen on a basketball court.
The Bad: I actually found this article from the archives of the Spokane Chronicle detailing a truly awful game between Washington State and Arizona which had to be moved to an auxiliary gym because of a power outage. Arizona was building towards a Final Four team a season later – their entire starting lineup wound up playing in the NBA (not including Steve Kerr, who was hurt and out for the season) and their backup point guard was Kenny Lofton, who played CF for the Cleveland Indians – while W.S.U., meanwhile, was abysmal that season. Whatever electricity could be garnered from having a sellout crowd in such an intimate atmosphere was negated pretty much from the opening tip, the spectators being rendered to sitting in embarrassed silence during the course of this 37-point smackdown.
The Ugly: The meanest, nastiest, most competitive, most cynical college basketball game I have ever seen was also the lousiest in terms of quality of play. The first round of the NCAA West Regionals was at W.S.U. in 1984, and #1 ranked Georgetown came all the way to Pullman along the way to winning a national title, but they almost didn’t make it out of Pullman, because they got pushed around and beaten up by S.M.U. on Mar. 18, 1984. The game was brutally slow, overly physical, and neither team could throw it in a lake. S.M.U. was ahead 24-16 at half, and when Georgetown finally got the lead late in the second half, they went into a four corners, all-out stall – this was before the shot clock had become the rule – which brought boos cascading down from the crowd. Patrick Ewing wound up tipping in a missed FT late and the Hoyas won 37:36 to advance, but the whole experience was decidedly unpleasant.

Other Random Sports
The Good: On a whim, I went to see the All-Blacks play Barbarians in 1989 in London at Twickenham, which is the sport’s Valhalla. New Zealand won the match by 21 points to 10, and I was pretty much hooked on the game. It gets no better than that. (And now I am seeing here on the wire that today in Chicago, Ireland beat the All-Blacks for the first time in 111 years of trying. Yet more proof that Ireland is cool, as if we needed more evidence of that.)
The Bad: I’ve attended two college baseball playoff games in my life, both of which were ridiculous. In the first, Washington State played Arizona, who would go on to win the national championship and whose best player at that time was current Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona. Arizona batted around in the first inning … and the second inning … and the third inning … sigh … the final score was 22:14, and the only reason it was even that close was because the Cougars scored 10 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning – an impossible late game rally which, honestly, felt like it might just go on forever.
My second college baseball playoff game was in 1991, in the Div. III days at Redlands. I was good buddies with one of the guys on the baseball team and they were hosting local rival Cal St. San Bernardino in a playoff game, and so I wandered over to the diamond to check it out – and wandered back after an inning, because I didn’t need to see any more, not after San Bernardino scored 18 runs in the inning. That one didn’t end very well.
The Ugly: I got so annoyed on a trip to a horse track – having gone 0-for-9 and not won a cent – that for the final race of the day, I said to hell with it and bet on a horse named Garage, who was a long shot of 100-1 … and who finished about 100 lengths behind the horse who finished second to last. Garage was huffing and puffing down the final stretch long after all of the horses had finished and after some had even left the track. Seriously, slugs move faster than that thing did.

This was fun. It made me happy and made me laugh, just thinking about this. Laughter is life’s best medicine and, at the moment, I could use a few laughs.