The world according to Jim:
• Does that In-Season Tournament title mean the Lakers now lead the Boston Celtics in championships won, 17.084 to 17? …
• The Lakers indeed will display a banner commemorating their tournament championship going forward. And while there will be pains to distinguish it from the real banners on the wall, this does represent slippage from the tradition of a franchise that only displayed NBA championship talismans. …
• I had predicted, during an early October session of The Audible with colleague Mirjam Swanson, that if a team used to winning in June won this first-ever December prize, it wouldn’t hang a banner. I underestimated the persuasion of Adam Silver and others in the NBA hierarchy. The league really wants this concept to take hold – you can expect a catchier name, I suspect, and likely one with a tie-in to one of the league’s commercial partners – and so I guess it would be bad form for the first winner to treat it as a lesser accomplishment.
(Even though that’s exactly what it is.) …
• This piece of cloth might have the same level of respect as the “Taylor Swift Most Consecutive Sellouts” banner that went up in then-Staples Center back in 2015, after she’d packed the place for 16 straight shows. Clippers fans hated it because it was a reminder she had more banners than their team. Kings fans hated it because they considered it a jinx. It finally came down to make room for the Lakers’ 2019-20 banner.
And now? Swift packs NFL stadiums. Selling out a 20,000-seat arena is a layup. …
• That first paragraph is bound to get some Celtics fans going, and that’s good. One school of thought in New England is that the Lakers and Celtics aren’t really tied in NBA championships because the five in Minnesota shouldn’t count. But look at it this way: Lakers 12, Boston 6 since Bill Russell retired. …
• Hey, Gang Green is coming to town – Saturday against the Clippers, then Monday against the Lakers. Why not fan the flames a few days early? …
• The December Sports Illustrated landed in the mailbox – yes, I still get the printed version, which doesn’t appear to be produced by ChatGPT as far as I can tell – with Deion Sanders on the cover as Sportsperson of the Year. First reaction: The editors made the choice after Week 3, when Colorado was still the talk of college football.
But seriously, you could justify Deion’s selection this way: College football has always been a business; it was just hidden under a bunch of true-to-your-school platitudes. It’s now out in the open, nakedly capitalistic for players as well as those above them. Sanders’ actions when he reached Colorado, putting players on notice that some – many – of them would be hitting the road, were cruel but honest. …
• Which brings us to today’s exercise in reader participation (you supply the punch line): On day one of the court case in L.A. regarding whether college athletes should be considered employees, the attorney for USC described intercollegiate athletics as extracurricular activities.
Bonus points if you can work in a reference to Caleb Williams’ NIL income. …
• So, have there been any additional revelations about Shohei Ohtani’s contract lately? …
• The $680 million in deferred salary and the creative nature of the contract Ohtani and agent Nez Balelo negotiated likely did not have other agents applauding. In an interview with The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drelich, Scott Boras noted that with the average annual present day value of $43.8 million, just a couple of ticks above the previous record AAV of $43.3 million negotiated for pitchers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, “the market remains status quo … Clear evidence of a strategic and managed effort.”
Those last words, I’m guessing, weren’t said with a smile. From the viewpoint of those negotiating future contracts, a negotiation that should have sent the market value of elite players skyrocketing didn’t. …
• Major League Soccer committed an own-goal when it announced last Friday that its first teams would no longer participate in the U.S. Open Cup tournament, this country’s oldest soccer tournament. Instead, MLS development teams will participate. Translation: We can’t monetize this sufficiently, so we don’t want any part of it. …
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar suffered a broken hip over the weekend while attending a concert. But none of the reports said whose concert he was attending, which kind of goes against the journalistic principle that in reporting a story, you get every ounce of detail you can. (Example: “Get the name of the dog,” and if you were wondering why reporters were so fixated over the name of Ohtani’s dog, that’s why.)
And now it can be told: Kareem was attending a Manhattan Transfer concert at Disney Hall when the accident occurred. And who broke the news? Kareem himself, in his Substack newsletter. (No wonder the L.A. Press Club keeps honoring him as Columnist of the Year. And nah, I’m not jealous.) …
• For those who missed it, state football champion Riverside City College shares the mythical national juco title with Iowa Western (both 12-1) in Brad Hoiseth’s national rankings at JC Gridiron. It’s RCC’s third national title and second in four seasons (with a pandemic break in 2020), and Coach Tom Craft is 137-20 in 13 seasons at the school and has won five national titles, three at Palomar and two in Riverside.
And before you ask, Craft was approached by the producers of Netflix’s “Last Chance U” a few years ago and declined. The opportunity to show a contrast to the bombastic coaches earlier in the series was tempting, he said in a 2019 interview, but “there’s also the part where maybe the players get distracted with the camera on ’em all the time, and they work real hard at promoting themselves.”
Smart man.
