The upside-down

 Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White did a little hollering during a timeout the other night, and now it's all over the Great Social Media Crazysphere that she's about to be fired.

As with everything in the GSMC, you can take that with a grain of salt. Or less.

What's instructive, however, is why it's all over the GSMC that White's about to be fired.

It's because the person she was mostly yelling at was Caitlin Clark.

Some goober in the stands caught it on video, because there's always a goober in the stands catching stuff on video. And now there's this viral clip of White speaking a trifle, well, passionately to Clark, after which Clark stands up, takes a swig out of a water bottle and shakes her head in disgust.

Now, none of us are as fluent in body language as we like to pretend we are. But Clark's body language seemed to suggest her reaction to being, well, coached, was this: You're full of (bleep), Coach.

Which brings us to the Superstar Effect, and how it tends to turn upside-down the way sports hierarchies are supposed to work.

Because if Caitlin Clark were just another player -- say, some anonymous kid on some middle school team -- her hindparts would have been on the bench for the foreseeable future, and Coach would have been carried through the streets in triumph for it. Because no one has any patience for attitude cases, and everything about the way Clark reacted screamed attitude case.

But what happened?

The Superstar Effect kicked in. And suddenly it was Caitlin Clark, Superstar, who was the victim of a mean, incompetent bumbler who clearly shouldn't have the privilege of  continuing as Clark's coach.

White's mistake was failing to recognize that. Her mistake was assuming she could coach Caitlin Clark the way she's coached other players -- by getting in her face when necessary -- without understanding she was CAITLIN CLARK. Savior of the WNBA, unrivaled mover of merch and tickets, all that.

So White hollered at her (Guard somebody!, seemed to be the gist), and then benched her in favor of Raven Johnson, a better defensive player. It was the correct move, given that the Fever was playing like ten pounds of you-know-what in a five-pound bag and getting their asses handed to them on the defensive end. And if Clark were merely that callow middle-schooler, and not, you know, CAITLIN CLARK, no one would have said a thing.

But she is Caitlin Clark. And they did.

On every other level of sport, see, Coach is the clear-cut winner in disputes with a player -- even a star player. In the upside-down of the professional level, however, it's the exact opposite. When Coach takes on a star player, Coach is going to take the "L" every time. 

RIP, in other words. As in, "rest in priorities."

In a sense, then, this is not really Clark's fault. She didn't invent the hierarchy; she's merely its latest beneficiary. Against all those kids and grownups in their Fever No. 22 jerseys, White has no chance in the court of public opinion. She is, after all, merely a coach, and thus an eminently replaceable part.

Is Caitlin Clark a wonderful basketball player, with otherworldly court vision and a knack for getting the ball in the basket? Indeed. Does she also turn the ball over too much, miss more of those logo threes than she makes, and become a liability when the Fever's on the defensive end?

Also indeed.

 But, again, none of that matters, here in the upside-down. And so here comes all this interwhatsis chatter that White should be fired, with even analysts who should know better weighing in.

One of them, the other day, said White was "the wrong coach for Caitlin Clark." 

Know what's most revealing about that?

No one wondered if perhaps Clark was the wrong player for Stephanie White.

Pots calling out kettles

 Drove down to the old neighborhood the other day, just to remind myself how many years have flown past. And how the world keeps turning no matter how much we wish it would stop in its tracks, or -- better yet -- reverse course.

What I discovered was the world is never going to do either. And that's OK, because it's how the cosmos operates and always has.

And so I almost drove past the street I grew up on -- Castle Drive -- because the trees have grown large and encompassing around the entrance, as trees will do after 60 or so years. The house I grew up in looks pretty much the same, except, again, the saplings of my childhood are mighty pillars now.  Which makes the yard look like a postage stamp compared to the yard I remember. 

And the neighborhood?

Different, too. When we moved there early in the 1960s, it was almost exclusively white, de facto racial and economic segregation being what they were then. Now an eyeball count suggests it is largely black, Hispanic, Asian and Middle Eastern -- in other words, the sort of American palette a certain species of American fears and loathes these days.

And yet ... 

And yet, the kids who live there now still ride their bikes up Castle and across the little cut-through to Stinson (named Sitko Drive for Emil "Red" Sitko, a 1940s Notre Dame football star who lived in the neighborhood). They cruise the same streets, and follow the same paths, we cruised on our Schwinns and Huffys six decades ago.

In other words: The world changes.  But only cosmetically.

I wish more people would understand that. I wish they wouldn't be so easily exploited by the demagogues and fear-mongering politicians who love to manipulate them.

Which brings us to our esteemed Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, who has raised fear-mongering demagoguery to high art.

As both Loot Guv and a minister of the fire-and-brimstone sort, he has both a bully pulpit and a literal pulpit, and he's used both to advance a theology a lot of Christian folk find alien. But we're just plain old Methodists or Episcopalians or Presbyterians, and perhaps are not as privy to the Lord's revealed wisdom as the Loot Guv.

Whose latest pronouncement -- that he hates Islam because it's a "demonic death cult" -- has not only united Muslims, Jews and Christians in public condemnation, but summoned echoes of another demagogue in a collar: Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit radio priest from the 1930s. Increasingly virulent the longer he had a microphone and an audience, by the end of his 15 minutes of fame he was all but Sieg Heil-ing the madman of Germany, Adolph Hitler. That's how unhinged Father Chuck had become.

Now, it might be a reach at this point to say Micah Beckwith is traveling the same trajectory. But, like his 1930s doppelganger, he does seem to get more irrational every time he opens his mouth. In so doing, of course, he ignores the obvious irony: That he's every bit the religious extremist he accuses the followers of Islam of being.

Muslim extremists call America is the Great Satan; the Loot Guv, in so many words, says Islam is evil incarnate. Two sides of the same fanatical coin.

In any event, Beckwith seems to stand not far from the crowd that wants to throw all the Muslims out of the country, on account of we're a Christian nation and the Muslims want to take over America and institute Sharia Law in Mayberry and Mount Pilot and every other wholesome All-American town. So they'd best either convert to Christianity, or get to packing.

All of this is of course preposterous, at least to any rational person. No Mayberry in the U.S., even those with large Muslim communities, operates under Sharia Law or anything remotely like it. Nor is it ever likely to.

But never the twain shall meet between hysteria and reality, and so go the Loot Guv and his fellow travelers out there in the remotest wilderness of American thought.  So, too, goes the supreme irony of the pot calling out the kettle when it's the pot that wants either to convert every kettle, or effectively outlaw them in violation of one of America's most cherished founding principles.

Hmm. What was that about "Sharia Law" again?

Which brings me back to the old neighborhood.

To be sure, we've taken the long way around the barn to get there, and maybe I've gone on long enough in the interim. But stay with me, because there's one more thing I want you to see.

No, it's not the faint outline of the old cinder track behind the now-boarded-up Village Woods Junior High, grassed over now but still carrying a faint whiff of oxygen debt. And it's not the overgrown field where we used to play baseball, with someone's sweatshirt serving as first base, someone's mitt serving as second and (invariably) someone's brand-new jacket serving as third.

It's this building over here, a few yards away.

When I was growing up, it was the Southeast YMCA. Now, though, it's a mosque; Masjid Akhoon, to be precise. It serves the Muslim community on the southeast side of town just as St. Henry's over on Hessen Cassel serves the Catholic community, or Bethlehem up on Anthony serves the Lutherans. All of them worshipping as they see fit.

Because that's America, you see. And no matter what the Loot Guv and his ilk say, that's exactly what America should always be.

Throwbacks

 Well, then: It's the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.

Just like 27 years ago.

Just like the last time the Knicks played in the Finals, and the Spurs won their first NBA title.

Now it's a different Knicks team, this one led by a watch-fob veteran guard (6-1 Jalen Brunson) and not a 7-foot veteran center (Patrick Ewing). And it's a different Spurs team, only ...

Only in some ways it's not.

Back in 1999, see, the Spurs were led by a 23-year-old center who'd been the No. 1 pick in the draft just two years before. This time, they're led by a 22-year-old center who was the  No. 1 in the draft three years ago.

The first guy was Tim Duncan, a platinum-card Hall of Famer everyone called the Big Fundamental. The guy this time is Victor Wembanyama -- who's on a Hall of Fame trajectory, and whom some folks call The Alien on account of he's 7-4 but runs the floor like a man a foot shorter, and plays anywhere the Spurs need him to play.

On the perimeter, he has a silky stroke that regularly bottoms threes. Down in the low post, he blocks shots and rebounds the way you'd expect a 7-4 guy with a 7-9 wingspan to. Out on the floor, he takes it to the rim like a guard, and even dishes like one occasionally.

And he's got the Spurs in the Finals just two seasons after they went 22-60.

Just like Tim Duncan, who took the Spurs to the Finals two seasons after they went 20-62.

I don't know about you, but I sense some harmonic convergence here. A little throwback soft-shoe, if you will. One of those occasions when time's river turns back on itself.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about the Knickerbockers? Don't they have some deja vu going on, too? And haven't they blown through the playoffs in historic fashion, winning 11 straight games by an average margin of 23.8 points?"

Well, yes. Sure. They also beat the Spurs two out of three times during the regular season -- the first in the finals of the NBA Cup, and the second on March 1, when they won by 25 points and smothered the Spurs defensively, forcing 21 turnovers and limiting them to just 41 percent shooting.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, that was one of only two regular season losses Wemby and Co. suffered after the first of February. And on the further other hand, even though they lost the season series to defending NBA champion Oklahoma City, they blew out the Thunder in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals, then took Game 7 from the champs in Oke City. 

So they've got that going for them.

And all the rest?

Well, 27 years ago, the Spurs beat the Knicks in five games in the Finals. 

Something to think about, harmonically converging-wise. Or not.

Today's requiem

 I wrote my obit for Sports Illustrated almost two-and-a-half years ago now, on account of the magazine I grew up reading and that steered me into 38 years of writing about our games was long gone by then. Great writing and photography and by-God journalism had surrendered to the omnipotence of The Brand by then, and I mourned appropriately.

Here's what I wrote, if you're interested. Or, you know, not.

Anyway, I'm back on the subject today because SI jettisoned another crop of its writers yesterday, because writers don't matter there anymore. Hell, the bosses can just get AI to do the writing, right? And in some cases (I can hardly say this without throwing up in mouth a little), they have.

I can imagine Dan Jenkins throwing a young scotch against the wall up there in the celestial press box, hearing that. Or Frank Deford or Gary Smith or Rick Reilly or any of the other authors who made Sports Illustrated such a glorious festival of words, images and, again, by-God journalism.

Know what I don't have to imagine?

What another SI alum, Jeff Pearlman, thinks about it. Needless to say, he ain't too happy, either.

Here's how he put it on what can only be described as a seething TikTok video yesterday, and re-posted by the website Awful Announcing:

As a guy who wrote for Sports Illustrated for a long long time and a guy who loves Sports Illustrated, like loves, loves, loves ... this stuff carves me up. And it's one thing that they get rid of writers, they lay people off. What I hate the most is that these corporate douchebags who have taken over the magazine view it just as a name now ...

I do want to remind people, because I think it's important, and I know this makes me a dinosaur. To me, Sports Illustrated is Gary Smith, it's Rick Reilly, it's Grant Wahl, it's Ron Fimrite, it's Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Jon Wertheim, Phil Taylor. It's the great, great, great writing and reporting, where once upon a time they put money and pride into bringing you the absolute best in sports ... every Tuesday or Wednesday, you'd open you mailbox and there would be this bible every week  of what's going on in sports.

As someone who actually opened that mailbox every week as a kid, I say this: Amen, Jeff Pearlman. Amen.

Street fights over America

 Saw a photo the other day of the massive UFC build on the South Lawn of the White House, and I gotta say, Woodrow Wilson doesn't look so bad, suddenly. All he did was let sheep graze on the South Lawn to keep the grass in check.

I imagine some people thought that was an abomination, too, Americans being Americans. Never met anything we wouldn't complain about, after all.

In any case, this thing really is an abomination, or at the very least a big ol' thumb in the eye of a national landmark. I'd say it would be like holding a UFC card on the White House lawn, but they really are going to hold a UFC card on the White House lawn.

Some folks just have no couth, I guess. Or manners.

Anyway, this Street Fight Over America on June 14 is part of Fearless Leader's celebration of the nation's 250th birthday, upon which the founders told George III and the British to stick it up their nose with a rubber hose. It's probably just me, but I can't think of anything less evocative of that great shouting day than a bunch of half-naked tattoo enthusiasts rolling around inside a cage. 

Unless, that is, the founders settled on the wording of the Declaration of Independence by pitting Thomas Jefferson against John Adams in the octagon. "It's 'we hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT', dammit!" cried John, submitting poor Tommy with his deadly Roxboro Armbar.

Yeesh. What a country.

Of course, it's not just a glammed-up brawl on the South Lawn we've got look forward to these days. There will also be an IndyCar race through the streets of D.C. this summer -- keep it off The Wall, Sting Ray Robb! -- and, before long, Fearless Leader will have his very own Reichstag bunker, cleverly disguised as a ballroom. And how about that lovely Albert Speer Memorial Arch welcoming visitors to Arlington National Cemetery?

Talk about not reading that particular room.

But enough about all that. I just want to know what it's going to look like on June 14, which is also Flag Day. I also want to know how fast the new sod will grow in after it's all over.

That Donald J. Trump Presidential Pitch-And-Putt won't wait forever, you know.

Unknowable anguish

 Claude Lemieux was never cut out to be Mr. Nice Guy. If you'd handed him the NHL's Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly behavior, he'd likely have told you to stick it, and into what orifice, and with exactly how much force.

He grew up in Buckingham, Quebec, a mill town 24 miles north of Ottawa and 110 west of Montreal that was swallowed up by the city of Gastineau in the early Oughts. He died this week in Lake Park, Fla., just three days after serving as the honorary torch bearer in Montreal before Game 3 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals between the Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes.

Police say his son found him in the back warehouse of a furniture store showroom in Lake Park, apparently dead by his own hand. He was 60 years old.

In passing he leaves a quirky sort of legacy from his years as a player, primarily with the Canadiens, the New Jersey Devils and the Colorado Avalanche: Clutch performer and (not to tiptoe around it) a genuine horse's ass.

In his 1,215 games in the NHL, he won four Stanley Cups -- one with the Habs, two with the Devils and one with the Avalanche -- and finished with 786 career points on 379 goals and 407 assists. In 1995, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP, leading the Avalanche to the Stanley Cup with 13 goals in 20 games.

Of course, along the way, he also delivered one of the all-time cheap shots in the '96 Western Conference finals, running Kris Draper of the Red Wings from behind and leaving Draper with a fractured skull and a rearranged face. Because that was Lemieux, too.

On the ice, he was that annoying fly buzzing around your head, an agent provocateur who accumulated 1,777 penalty minutes in his career. If he played for your team, he was a hard-nosed guy who played hard-nosed hockey, because it's  hard-nosed game. But if he played for the other guys?

Well. Then he was just, you know, a horse's ass.

"A fierce competitor who rose to the occasion in big moments, Claude was a relentless, courageous and tenacious player who the team to the highest honors," Canadiens owner Geoff Molson eulogized.

To which opposing fans would no doubt reply, channeling The Dude in "The Big Lebowski": Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.

What is not opinion is he's gone now, and the "how" of it is is ineffably tragic. That's because, as is true so many times when someone takes his or her own life, there is no "why" to go with it at this point.

The signs may have all been there, leaving those who are left to deal with a grim emotional stew of guilt, grief and, yes, anger ("How could he/she do this?"). On the other hand, sometimes the signs are not there. Sometimes hard-nosed guys are too hard-nosed, and shielding whatever is churning inside them in the armor they've built up across the years. .

Claude Lemieux?

Who knows what drove him to the back of that showroom? Who knows if the signs were there, or if he'd walled them away from the world? 

All I know for sure is there's this video clip of him bearing that torch in Montreal three days before he killed himself, and the roar that washes down around him from every corner of the Bell Centre is huge, huge. In its midst, Lemieux wears a sort of fixed half-smile as he enters the arena, holds the torch up, shakes his other fist. The fixed half-smile never changes through all of it, never blooms to full wattage.

I don't know what that means. I don't know that it means anything. And I don't know that we'll ever know. 

The unknowable anguish: The tragic core of a tragedy.

Bee time!

 And now the big news from the Blob's favorite sporting event that's not a sporting event, even though it's aired on ESPN. 

It's Scripps National Spellin' Bee time, y'all!

(And, OK, so it's "Spelling", not "Spellin'." But this is my Blob and I'll say "Spellin'" if I want to.)

Anyway, the Big Bee went to a lightning-round spell-off, and a 14-year-old from California won. Shrey Parikh correctly spelled 32 words in 90 seconds, beating out Ishaan Gupta and Sarv Dharavne.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Did any Americans compete in this thing?"

OK, first of all, Parikh, Gupta and Dharavne are Americans. They're as American as George Washington, despite all the yahoos out there who think the only real Americans are named John-Boy Winthrop and came here on the Mayflower.

 Anyway, as their names suggest, Parikh, Gupta and Dharavne are of Indian descent. Americans of Indian descent own the Bee, having won 31 of the past 37. They're like ... well, they're like India in cricket, another pursuit Indians dominate.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're asking now. "Is there a pursuit Indians don't dominate?" 

No. Well, maybe cross-country skiing. The Norwegians are all over that.

Anyway, Shrey smoked the lightning round, leaving Gupta and Dharavne choking on the dust of his correctly aligned P's and Q's. The winning word was "bromocriptine", which was not John-Boy Winthrop's nickname. It's a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics dopamine.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What is a polypeptide alkaloid? And why didn't the spellin' bee people say, 'OK, now spell polypeptide' after Shrey rattled off bromocriptine?"

Beats me. What do I look like, a chemistry major? And I suppose they didn't make Shrey spell "polypeptide" because that would have just been picking on a 14-year-old, and nobody likes a bully.

Steal his lunch money and kick his schoolbooks into the street, that's one thing. But make him do extra spellin'? Unacceptable.

That's u-n-a-c-c-e-p-t-a-b-l-e. Unacceptable.