Give Kobe Bryant this much: He saw the end far more clearly than some have.
The dimming of the light is never so imperceptible as when you are within its circle, and we have seen the sad results all too often. Think Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield for the Mets. Think Peyton Manning now, hurting and rag-armed and watching some kid named Brock Osweiler beat the Patriots in his stead.
Or, think Kobe, who announced Sunday that he's known for a long time this would be his last season. The fire is gone, he says. The jumpshot is, too.
He acknowledged that his play has been pathetic this season, a statement that only bows to the obvious. He went 4-of-20 Sunday in a loss to the Pacers, a performance that was hardly an anomaly. So far this season, he's averaging 15.7 points on 31.5 percent shooting, and he's shooting just 19.5 percent from beyond the 3-point arc.
These are not Kobe Bryant numbers. Anita Bryant numbers, perhaps, but not Kobe Bryant numbers.
And so he will step aside after this season, a decision with which he says he's entirely at peace. It has, after all, been a hell of a run. His pro career began in 1996, when he was a teenager. He's 37 now. In between have come five NBA titles, more than 25,000 points, more than 6,000 rebounds and more than 6,000 assists.
Only four players in NBA history have attained all of those last three numbers. So, the Hall of Fame is his next stop.
It has not all been sunshine and roses, of course. The great parlor game with Kobe is how many titles he would have won had he not been such an insufferable ass. He couldn't get along with Shaq, and that probably cost him another couple of titles. He couldn't get along with a succession of players who came after Shaq. By the final years of his career, his presence with the Lakers became something of a reverse selling point, with quality free agents looking elsewhere rather than entertain the prospect of playing with Kobe. Accurate or not, he had a reputation, and it wasn't good.
But history has a habit of obscuring those sorts of things when the numbers are right. And the numbers are beyond any question right.
So is Kobe Bryant's timing.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
A win for the good guys
I could write about Notre Dame this morning, watching its playoff hopes sail away through the uprights on the last play of Stanford 38, Irish 36. I could write, too, about Indiana 54, Purdue 36, Kevin Wilson's program getting bowl eligible and, right before our eyes, turning a corner that has been long in coming.
I could do that.
Instead, I'm going to write about this.
I'm going to write about two men with their arms around each other, one of whom was handed an immense job and did it impeccably, and one who was handed an even more immense job and has so far carried it off just as impeccably.
The first man, the one on the left, is Ernie Bojrab, who was asked last summer to take the reins of one of Indiana's premier high school football programs, because the man on the right couldn't do it. That man is Chris Svarckopf, smaller and less robust now than we all remember, because hand-to-hand combat with cancer will take it out of you even if you're as tough and stoic a guy as Svarczkopf.
Because of the lymphoma with which he was diagnosed last summer, he had to sit and watch on game nights this year as Bojrab took his Saints on the ride of all their lives, and don't think that wasn't the hardest thing he's ever had to do. But the lymphoma and the chemotherapy to treat it wouldn't wait, and so Svarczkopf -- though he still coached the defensive backs and tight ends in practice -- had to take a literal step or two away on Friday nights, always there but not really there, at least not in the way he always had been.
But what a show he got so see.
The Saints lost to Bishop Luers right out of the gate, and then they never lost again. Beat everybody in a beefed-up SAC. Beat even Snider, which went on to win the state 5A title Friday night. Beat, finally, East Central, 27-3, shutting down one more vaunted offense to hoist their first 4A state championship trophy, and their first in any class since 1991.
It capped a weekend of validation for the SAC, too often dismissed downstate as Indianapolis' poor relation. Not this weekend, it wasn't. This weekend, two Fort Wayne schools won titles, while Indy had to make do with one.
And there, at the end of it all, as he had been all year, was Chris Svarczkopf. With his usual reflexive deference, he downplayed his role as inspiration for his football team's dream autumn, choosing instead to credit his players for writing the real inspirational tale. And crediting Bojrab, of course, for stepping in and pushing the Saints to a place they hadn't seen in almost a quarter century.
Looking at that photo of the two of them now, I'm taken back to a warm night in early September, when I was on the Dwenger sideline at Zollner Stadium working on a freelance piece for Fort Wayne Monthly. I'd come to see how Svarczkopf was handling his step away, see how such a fiercely intense competitor was focusing his intensity on something other than what happened on 100 yards of chewed turf on Friday nights.
He said things were going well. He said he felt pretty good. Then he moved a few yards down the way from his football team, and sat down in red canvas camp chair positioned about the 25-yard line.
"So how hard is this gonna be for you?" I asked.
He folded his thin hands in his lap and answered without taking his eyes off the field.
"Well, we're about to find out," he said.
Damned if he didn't.
I could do that.
Instead, I'm going to write about this.
I'm going to write about two men with their arms around each other, one of whom was handed an immense job and did it impeccably, and one who was handed an even more immense job and has so far carried it off just as impeccably.
The first man, the one on the left, is Ernie Bojrab, who was asked last summer to take the reins of one of Indiana's premier high school football programs, because the man on the right couldn't do it. That man is Chris Svarckopf, smaller and less robust now than we all remember, because hand-to-hand combat with cancer will take it out of you even if you're as tough and stoic a guy as Svarczkopf.
Because of the lymphoma with which he was diagnosed last summer, he had to sit and watch on game nights this year as Bojrab took his Saints on the ride of all their lives, and don't think that wasn't the hardest thing he's ever had to do. But the lymphoma and the chemotherapy to treat it wouldn't wait, and so Svarczkopf -- though he still coached the defensive backs and tight ends in practice -- had to take a literal step or two away on Friday nights, always there but not really there, at least not in the way he always had been.
But what a show he got so see.
The Saints lost to Bishop Luers right out of the gate, and then they never lost again. Beat everybody in a beefed-up SAC. Beat even Snider, which went on to win the state 5A title Friday night. Beat, finally, East Central, 27-3, shutting down one more vaunted offense to hoist their first 4A state championship trophy, and their first in any class since 1991.
It capped a weekend of validation for the SAC, too often dismissed downstate as Indianapolis' poor relation. Not this weekend, it wasn't. This weekend, two Fort Wayne schools won titles, while Indy had to make do with one.
And there, at the end of it all, as he had been all year, was Chris Svarczkopf. With his usual reflexive deference, he downplayed his role as inspiration for his football team's dream autumn, choosing instead to credit his players for writing the real inspirational tale. And crediting Bojrab, of course, for stepping in and pushing the Saints to a place they hadn't seen in almost a quarter century.
Looking at that photo of the two of them now, I'm taken back to a warm night in early September, when I was on the Dwenger sideline at Zollner Stadium working on a freelance piece for Fort Wayne Monthly. I'd come to see how Svarczkopf was handling his step away, see how such a fiercely intense competitor was focusing his intensity on something other than what happened on 100 yards of chewed turf on Friday nights.
He said things were going well. He said he felt pretty good. Then he moved a few yards down the way from his football team, and sat down in red canvas camp chair positioned about the 25-yard line.
"So how hard is this gonna be for you?" I asked.
He folded his thin hands in his lap and answered without taking his eyes off the field.
"Well, we're about to find out," he said.
Damned if he didn't.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
SAC attack
And so, to reiterate: The Blob prides itself on not being particularly provincial.
Except when it is.
Which brings us to last night, and a moment that should bring out the provincialism in all of us who call the Fort home. The moment happened with eight seconds to play in the Class 5A state championship football game last night, when Isaac Stiebeling of Snider wormed his way into the end zone to give Snider a preposterous 64-61 lead in a football game that had already been preposterous.
The Panthers, after all, once led No. 1 and undefeated New Palestine 42-14. Preposterous.
The Dragons proceeded to score 35 straight points to take a 49-42 lead. Preposterous.
The Panthers then rallied for the victory, winning head coach Kurt Tippmann his first state title, Snider its first in 23 years, and everyone outside of Bishop Luers in the Summit Athletic Conference its first since Wayne won the 4A title in 1995.
Preposterous.
Even more preposterous, however, than winning a football title by a basketball score -- a not all-that-rare circumstance in a world where no level of football below the NFL plays defense anymore -- was that the Panthers did it against a football team that was as close to a mortal lock as you get on the high school level. Under head coach Kyle Ralph, the Dragons had won 41 of their last 42 games, and showed no inclination to stop now.
Except, of course, they did.
So raise a cheer for Snider, and for the SAC in general. It's a strong conference that only got stronger when Homestead and Carroll came aboard this season -- and if Bishop Dwenger can follow Snider's lead tonight and win the 4A title, it'll own two of the state's 12 state championships this fall.
And that's well worth getting provincial about.
Except when it is.
Which brings us to last night, and a moment that should bring out the provincialism in all of us who call the Fort home. The moment happened with eight seconds to play in the Class 5A state championship football game last night, when Isaac Stiebeling of Snider wormed his way into the end zone to give Snider a preposterous 64-61 lead in a football game that had already been preposterous.
The Panthers, after all, once led No. 1 and undefeated New Palestine 42-14. Preposterous.
The Dragons proceeded to score 35 straight points to take a 49-42 lead. Preposterous.
The Panthers then rallied for the victory, winning head coach Kurt Tippmann his first state title, Snider its first in 23 years, and everyone outside of Bishop Luers in the Summit Athletic Conference its first since Wayne won the 4A title in 1995.
Preposterous.
Even more preposterous, however, than winning a football title by a basketball score -- a not all-that-rare circumstance in a world where no level of football below the NFL plays defense anymore -- was that the Panthers did it against a football team that was as close to a mortal lock as you get on the high school level. Under head coach Kyle Ralph, the Dragons had won 41 of their last 42 games, and showed no inclination to stop now.
Except, of course, they did.
So raise a cheer for Snider, and for the SAC in general. It's a strong conference that only got stronger when Homestead and Carroll came aboard this season -- and if Bishop Dwenger can follow Snider's lead tonight and win the 4A title, it'll own two of the state's 12 state championships this fall.
And that's well worth getting provincial about.
Friday, November 27, 2015
Haunted still
Those of us of a certain bent watched football yesterday, and we will watch more today and tomorrow and Sunday. It's what we do in America on a weekend given over to being thankful, even if the thanks are sometimes less about substance and more about seconds.
Never once do we give thanks that we're not one of the poor dopes we're watching between courses.
Never once -- or hardly ever -- do we wonder about the guy who lands on his head out there, or lowers his head and drives hard into another helmeted skull, or cartwheels over the goal line, the way Cam Newton did yesterday to a whole lot of oohs and aahs, at least in the living room I was occupying.
I never once stopped to think what Cam Newton's life will be like 20 years from now, after he's finished cartwheeling over goal lines or taking on tacklers. No one stops to think about that. And that is what the National Football League is counting on.
It's counting on entertainment trumping the ghost that haunts it, which this week was the ghost of Frank Gifford. In a comparatively small item lost in the tumult and shouting of Thanksgiving Day, it was revealed that Gifford's brain, examined post-mortem, showed signs of CTE, the degenerative malady that has been found in the brains of so many former NFL players who've died too soon, afflicted with early-onset dementia. That it's directly related to all of the Sunday afternoons (and Saturday afternoons, and Friday nights) in those players' lives is beyond any question.
In other words: The concussion thing is not going to go away for the NFL, no matter how much we ooh and aah over Cam Newton. It's going to be the dark presence gliding just below the surface of the glitter show, occasionally rearing its head the way it did this week -- and not just in the quiet item about Frank Gifford.
Last Sunday, for instance, a St. Louis Rams quarterback named Case Keenum was slammed hard to the turf on a pass play, and everyone except the people who were charged with doing so knew his brain got the worst of it. You could see his head ricochet off the ground, for one thing. Then he grabbed his head. Then he stayed on his knees for awhile, clearly woozy.
Finally he got to his feet and literally wobbled around out there, like a fighter climbing off the deck after catching a particularly thunderous left hook.
And yet, somehow, no one thought it would be a good idea to get him out of the game.
Not his head coach, Jeff Fisher. Not the trainers specifically charged with enforcing the league's concussion protocols. Not anyone.
And so Keenum stayed in the game, and you were left to wonder if the league's belated attempt to safeguard its players was a futile exercise. Protocols are weak sauce when matched up against athletes who continue to get bigger and faster and stronger. And so you were also left to wonder just when Keenum would begin forgetting things, like where he'd left his car keys or where he lived or how to feed himself.
Twenty years? Thirty years? Sooner than that?
Questions with no answers. Because the game in all its glory will march on, regardless of what happens to Case Keenum or Frank Gifford or any of its sad victims. We'll watch. We'll cheer. And if we think about the cost, about the carnage, it will only be fleetingly.
The NFL is counting on it. Because, in the end, what choice does it really have?
It's not like anyone can do anything about it.
Never once do we give thanks that we're not one of the poor dopes we're watching between courses.
Never once -- or hardly ever -- do we wonder about the guy who lands on his head out there, or lowers his head and drives hard into another helmeted skull, or cartwheels over the goal line, the way Cam Newton did yesterday to a whole lot of oohs and aahs, at least in the living room I was occupying.
I never once stopped to think what Cam Newton's life will be like 20 years from now, after he's finished cartwheeling over goal lines or taking on tacklers. No one stops to think about that. And that is what the National Football League is counting on.
It's counting on entertainment trumping the ghost that haunts it, which this week was the ghost of Frank Gifford. In a comparatively small item lost in the tumult and shouting of Thanksgiving Day, it was revealed that Gifford's brain, examined post-mortem, showed signs of CTE, the degenerative malady that has been found in the brains of so many former NFL players who've died too soon, afflicted with early-onset dementia. That it's directly related to all of the Sunday afternoons (and Saturday afternoons, and Friday nights) in those players' lives is beyond any question.
In other words: The concussion thing is not going to go away for the NFL, no matter how much we ooh and aah over Cam Newton. It's going to be the dark presence gliding just below the surface of the glitter show, occasionally rearing its head the way it did this week -- and not just in the quiet item about Frank Gifford.
Last Sunday, for instance, a St. Louis Rams quarterback named Case Keenum was slammed hard to the turf on a pass play, and everyone except the people who were charged with doing so knew his brain got the worst of it. You could see his head ricochet off the ground, for one thing. Then he grabbed his head. Then he stayed on his knees for awhile, clearly woozy.
Finally he got to his feet and literally wobbled around out there, like a fighter climbing off the deck after catching a particularly thunderous left hook.
And yet, somehow, no one thought it would be a good idea to get him out of the game.
Not his head coach, Jeff Fisher. Not the trainers specifically charged with enforcing the league's concussion protocols. Not anyone.
And so Keenum stayed in the game, and you were left to wonder if the league's belated attempt to safeguard its players was a futile exercise. Protocols are weak sauce when matched up against athletes who continue to get bigger and faster and stronger. And so you were also left to wonder just when Keenum would begin forgetting things, like where he'd left his car keys or where he lived or how to feed himself.
Twenty years? Thirty years? Sooner than that?
Questions with no answers. Because the game in all its glory will march on, regardless of what happens to Case Keenum or Frank Gifford or any of its sad victims. We'll watch. We'll cheer. And if we think about the cost, about the carnage, it will only be fleetingly.
The NFL is counting on it. Because, in the end, what choice does it really have?
It's not like anyone can do anything about it.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Deja lose
This is not the Hawaiian getaway Tom Crean likely envisioned, sun and sand and palm trees notwithstanding. He's half a world away from Bloomington, but this morning he no doubt felt the seat he occupies there warming up again. He's used to that by now, but still.
Still, it would have been nice to get past Thanksgiving without awakening the firecrean.com crowd.
That perpetually annoyed segment of Indiana's basketball fan base could not have been pleased with what it saw last night, when the Hoosiers -- freshly risen to No. 13 in the latest polls -- tripped and fell from their new perch. They had unranked Wake Forest down by eight with less than five minutes to play, and then they didn't. A missed 3-pointer here, a missed 3 there, a little turnstile defense somewhere else -- and before long, the buzzer was sounding on an 82-78 loss that felt all the worse for its suddenness.
And for the way it happened, which seemed awfully familiar.
This was supposed to be an Indiana team that would not live and die on the perimeter, but once again last night it lived -- and ultimately died -- on the perimeter. James Blackmon and Yogi Ferrell, the engines of the Hoosiers' outside game, missed 14 of 19 shots overall and eight of nine 3s. That pointed the way for Indiana to 26-of-60 shooting overall and 10-of-29 from the arc.
Live by the 3, die by the 3. Same storyline, different day.
This would be easier to take if not for the arrival of Thomas Bryant, the presumptive solution to Indiana's deficiency on the low blocks. Bryant did take eight rebounds, but the Hoosiers were out-boarded 43-30. Their second leading rebounder was Ferrell, with seven. That looked disturbingly like last year, when the guards had to go hard to the glass to give Indiana any sort of presence there.
And so, let the low grumbling begin. Low for now, anyway.
Still, it would have been nice to get past Thanksgiving without awakening the firecrean.com crowd.
That perpetually annoyed segment of Indiana's basketball fan base could not have been pleased with what it saw last night, when the Hoosiers -- freshly risen to No. 13 in the latest polls -- tripped and fell from their new perch. They had unranked Wake Forest down by eight with less than five minutes to play, and then they didn't. A missed 3-pointer here, a missed 3 there, a little turnstile defense somewhere else -- and before long, the buzzer was sounding on an 82-78 loss that felt all the worse for its suddenness.
And for the way it happened, which seemed awfully familiar.
This was supposed to be an Indiana team that would not live and die on the perimeter, but once again last night it lived -- and ultimately died -- on the perimeter. James Blackmon and Yogi Ferrell, the engines of the Hoosiers' outside game, missed 14 of 19 shots overall and eight of nine 3s. That pointed the way for Indiana to 26-of-60 shooting overall and 10-of-29 from the arc.
Live by the 3, die by the 3. Same storyline, different day.
This would be easier to take if not for the arrival of Thomas Bryant, the presumptive solution to Indiana's deficiency on the low blocks. Bryant did take eight rebounds, but the Hoosiers were out-boarded 43-30. Their second leading rebounder was Ferrell, with seven. That looked disturbingly like last year, when the guards had to go hard to the glass to give Indiana any sort of presence there.
And so, let the low grumbling begin. Low for now, anyway.
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11
And now this week's installment of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature National Geographic hails as "the missing link between cave drawings and hieroglyphics" and "compelling reading except for the lame Phoenician jokes":
1. Brock Osweiler is ...
2. Sammy Baugh.
3. Johnny Unitas.
4. Brock Osweiler.
5. Matt Hasselbeck is ...
6. The real Andrew Luck.
7. 67.
8. Matt Hasselbeck.
9. The Bengals!
10. Wouldn't have lost (again!) if they had Tony Romo, the greatest quarterback in the entire history of quarterbacks, and the man who's going to singlehandedly lead the Cowboys to 15 gazillion straight wins and the Supe-- oh, never mind.
1. Brock Osweiler is ...
2. Sammy Baugh.
3. Johnny Unitas.
4. Brock Osweiler.
5. Matt Hasselbeck is ...
6. The real Andrew Luck.
7. 67.
8. Matt Hasselbeck.
9. The Bengals!
10. Wouldn't have lost (again!) if they had Tony Romo, the greatest quarterback in the entire history of quarterbacks, and the man who's going to singlehandedly lead the Cowboys to 15 gazillion straight wins and the Supe-- oh, never mind.
Monday, November 23, 2015
No Busch league here
OK, first of all: Yes, the rumors are true. I was right.
(Last time it happened: 1975)
I was right, Kyle Busch was the man to put your chips on if it came down to one race, which is what NASCAR's endlessly tweaked playoff system finally does. And that's a good thing. Not everyone thinks so, but it is.
Found that out in a Twitter exchange with a couple of people, who seemed to think it was a joke that a man who broke his leg before the season even started should have had a shot at winning the title anyway. Apparently, because he missed the first 11 races, Busch was supposed to spend the rest of the season driving around out there to no real purpose. Sorry, son, but them's the breaks. Pun intended.
But NASCAR rightly gave Busch a waiver that exempted him from the rule that says a driver must compete in every race to be eligible for the Chase. That rule, NASCAR explained, was never intended to punish a driver who, through no fault of his own, was forced onto the sideline due to injury. Thus the waiver, of which Busch took full advantage.
He went on to win four races in the regular season and then the season finale Sunday at Homestead, sealing his first Sprint Cup title. No one besides Matt Kenseth, Joey Logano and Jimmie Johnson, who each won six races, won more than Busch. And even at that, NASCAR decreed he still had to finish in the top 30 in points to get into the Chase, even though he had only 15 races to do it.
This does not sound like NASCAR gave him some kind of freebie. Strangely, opinions on this varied.
For some, the fact Busch was allowed a waiver somehow became NASCAR changing the rules in midseason, even though it didn't. A waiver is not "changing the rules." The rules remained the same for Busch as for any Chase contender. He got in on ability and results, not on a hall pass from the principal.
Look. I have my issues with NASCAR. I think its product is sometimes manipulated, particularly in regard to on-track and off-track feuding. In that regard, I think punishing drivers for doing what you have implicitly endorsed is, to say the least, a bit two-faced.
(Not that I entirely buy some of the "feuds." The only thing phonier than a NASCAR driver brawl is a baseball brawl)
That said ... I think Busch won this title on his own merit. No farce was involved -- unless you consider the New York Giants winning the 2012 Super Bowl after going 9-7 in the regular season a farce, too.
Like the Giants, Busch had to first make the playoffs, then win the playoffs. He did. No one made everyone else pull over so he could go past. No one gave him more points for winning a race than anyone else got. He beat the people he had to beat when he had to beat them. What else is there?
So, no, this result is not a joke. But to have kept him out of the Chase when he was demonstrably one of the top 16 performers in the 2015 regular season?
Now that would have been a joke.
(Last time it happened: 1975)
I was right, Kyle Busch was the man to put your chips on if it came down to one race, which is what NASCAR's endlessly tweaked playoff system finally does. And that's a good thing. Not everyone thinks so, but it is.
Found that out in a Twitter exchange with a couple of people, who seemed to think it was a joke that a man who broke his leg before the season even started should have had a shot at winning the title anyway. Apparently, because he missed the first 11 races, Busch was supposed to spend the rest of the season driving around out there to no real purpose. Sorry, son, but them's the breaks. Pun intended.
But NASCAR rightly gave Busch a waiver that exempted him from the rule that says a driver must compete in every race to be eligible for the Chase. That rule, NASCAR explained, was never intended to punish a driver who, through no fault of his own, was forced onto the sideline due to injury. Thus the waiver, of which Busch took full advantage.
He went on to win four races in the regular season and then the season finale Sunday at Homestead, sealing his first Sprint Cup title. No one besides Matt Kenseth, Joey Logano and Jimmie Johnson, who each won six races, won more than Busch. And even at that, NASCAR decreed he still had to finish in the top 30 in points to get into the Chase, even though he had only 15 races to do it.
This does not sound like NASCAR gave him some kind of freebie. Strangely, opinions on this varied.
For some, the fact Busch was allowed a waiver somehow became NASCAR changing the rules in midseason, even though it didn't. A waiver is not "changing the rules." The rules remained the same for Busch as for any Chase contender. He got in on ability and results, not on a hall pass from the principal.
Look. I have my issues with NASCAR. I think its product is sometimes manipulated, particularly in regard to on-track and off-track feuding. In that regard, I think punishing drivers for doing what you have implicitly endorsed is, to say the least, a bit two-faced.
(Not that I entirely buy some of the "feuds." The only thing phonier than a NASCAR driver brawl is a baseball brawl)
That said ... I think Busch won this title on his own merit. No farce was involved -- unless you consider the New York Giants winning the 2012 Super Bowl after going 9-7 in the regular season a farce, too.
Like the Giants, Busch had to first make the playoffs, then win the playoffs. He did. No one made everyone else pull over so he could go past. No one gave him more points for winning a race than anyone else got. He beat the people he had to beat when he had to beat them. What else is there?
So, no, this result is not a joke. But to have kept him out of the Chase when he was demonstrably one of the top 16 performers in the 2015 regular season?
Now that would have been a joke.
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