Heavy is the head that wears the crown

In an article featured on CNNSI.com today, Miami Heat Forward and presumptive league MVP LeBron James opens up about last season with the Heat and about his legacy as a player.  This season has been maybe the best statistically of  James’ illustrious career so far, with LeBron putting up numbers on a nightly basis not seen in more than 20 years.  But all of the sporting world knows that LeBron will go down in basketball annals as a shorter Wilt Chamberlain if he doesn’t start bringing titles along with his talents to South Beach.

Perhaps the most revealing quote from “King” James comes in the first third of the article when discussing not having a championship on his lengthy resume’:

He went for rings, presumably fistfuls of them. “No, not a fistful,” James says. “I don’t need a fistful. But I need one. I need to get one first. I have short goals — to get better every day, to help my teammates every day — but my only ultimate goal is to win an NBA championship. It’s all that matters. I dream about it. I dream about it all the time, how it would look, how it would feel. It would be so amazing.” 

Now, the phrase, “(Insert NBA Legend here) would never say” has become a cliche’.  But the problem with LeBron is that it keeps ringing true.  Kobe Bryant, after 16 years in the league is still maniacally obsessed with winning a 6th ring.  The pursuit of another ring is what kept Shaq on the court well past his time and made him an NBA nomad in the latter stages of his career.  In my heart I think Michael Jordan believes that with the right players around him and enough time to get in shape he could win a 7th championship even at the ripe old age of 49.  After all, didn’t LeBron himself create the high standards for the Miami Heat with his self made proclamation that he had come to Miami to win “Not two, not three, not four, not five, not, six, not seven…”  So why back off now LeBron?

There has never been a question regarding LeBron’s physical talents.  In fact, “The Big Dipper” may be the only other athlete so blessed and cursed with the kind of athletic prowess that James displays on a nightly basis.  But it becomes more and more apparent as the years go by that the media and the basketball public have placed a burden on LeBron James that he was never equipped to bear.  Noted journalist Buzz Bissinger, of “Friday Night Lights” fame and co-author of LeBron’s autobiography “Shooting Stars” observed of James in high school:

“As for being a team leader, the very notion is a joke. James doesn’t have the presence; his affect is flat and dull, eager to avoid confrontation because of a difficult childhood in the Akron projects in which his only goal was to stay away from trouble. For all the endless hype, he wasn’t even a leader on his high school team. The role belonged to a fiery point guard name Dru Joyce III, who routinely got into fights with teammates during practice. James was a silly kid, fond of passing gas with booming impact.”

LeBron is too deferential, a teammate almost to a fault.  Greatness in many regards requires selfishness.  Michael Jordan never learned to defer to Scottie Pippen, even knowing that he needed him to succeed.  He famously said, “There is no I in team, but there is one in ‘Win’.  After going 3-14 through 3 quarters against the Oklahoma City Thunder this past Sunday, Kobe Bryant still knew he was going to be the difference between winning and losing and made difficult, yet for Kobe wholly expected, shot after shot to pull out a double overtime victory.  We were seduced by that night in the Palace of Auburn Hills when LeBron scored 48 points including 29 of the Cavaliers’ last 30.  But that was 5 years ago.  LeBron may just be 27 years old, but this is his 9th season, and when he entered the NBA no one believed we would have reached this point with this player.

LeBron may win that elusive championship this season, maybe he won’t.  But if LeBron thinks that one title will change the perception that has been  building over these last nine years, he’s mistaken.  We won’t be satisfied, and he shouldn’t be either.

– David Grubb

Is the NFL really more fair than MLB?

IT IS A COMMON REFRAIN AMONG FANS OF THE NFL, “Everybody has a chance to win a championship in the NFL.  It’s way more fair than baseball.”  Now before I attempt to deconstruct this myth I have to admit that I find it amusing that the most popular sport in America is heavily influenced by socialist principles such as revenue sharing, a draft that rewards the worst teams with better draft position and a system of scheduling that gets more difficult depending your previous season’s finish.  Funny. Anyway, I digress.  The point that I’m really trying to make is that baseball is working just fine, thank you very much and is actually much more competitive than commonly held beliefs would make you think.

There are some factors that make it very difficult to make a direct comparison between the two sports, considering that baseball did not have a playoff system until 1969 when the League Championships were first added. Over the entirety of the “Super Bowl Era”, a dramatically smaller number of teams in MLB have been able to compete in the postseason.  In the last 16 years in particular, since the addition of the Wild Card, only 27 percent of teams can make the playoffs.  In the NFL, following the merger with the AFL in 1970, 31 percent of teams could reach the postseason.  Currently, the NFL playoffs include nearly 40 percent of the teams in the league.  So right off the bat, excuse the pun, we can see that NFL teams have a greater opportunity to participate in postseason play which in turn gives them more opportunities to win a championship.

But let’s not focus on that.  Instead, lets look strictly at the championship round.  Who’s participating?  Who’s winning?  Who doesn’t have a chance?

Looking at the period since the first Super Bowl following the 1965 season, I examined the last 46 championship games/series of the two leagues.  What I found were some very telling numbers.

• 4 teams in the NFL have never played in the Super Bowl (13 percent) while only 3 MLB teams have not made the World Series in that same time (10 percent).
• Almost half of the teams in the NFL have never won a Super Bowl (15 of 32), but since 1965, 20 of the 30 teams in MLB have won at least one World Series.  That’s 2/3 of the league.
• Both leagues have produced almost an identical percentage of teams who have won multiple titles. 14 of the 20 MLB franchises that won one title were able to collect a second and in the NFL,11 of 17 Super Bowl winners were able to hoist at least one other Lombardi trophy.
• And even when they don’t win, baseball teams tend to get a second shot at the brass ring.  20 out of 27 franchises that reached The Fall Classic were able to do so again (74 percent), where less than two-thirds of Super Bowl participants ever make it back to the big game.

“What about teams like the Yankees that win all the time?”  What about them?  Let’s use something I like to call, “The Steelers Standard” to see just how much dynasties dominate either sport.  Since the Pittsburgh Steelers were the first team in either league to win 4 championships in this era, I looked to see how many teams in each league had made at least 4 championship appearances.  Here’s what I found.

• 13 NFL teams have appeared in at least 4 Super Bowls, (Pittsburgh and Dallas tied atop the list with 8 apiece) representing 41 percent of all teams.
• In baseball, however, just 10 teams have played in more than 4 World Series (The Yankees 11 and St. Louis’ 8 leading the way) or just 33 percent of the major leagues.

Even among the very elite teams the disparities are significant.  The Yankees lead both leagues with 7 championships in the past 46 years while the Steelers are close behind with 6.  But after that, where baseball has a pretty even distribution of its titles, the NFL’s are clustered among a small group.

• MLB: Yankees (7), Athletics (4), Dodgers (3), Reds (3), Orioles (3), Red Sox (2), Blue Jays (2), Tigers (2), Twins (2), Marlins (2), Mets (2), Phillies (2), Pirates (2), Cardinals (2), White Sox (1), Royals (1), Angels (1), Braves (1), Diamondbacks (1), Giants (1).
• NFL: Steelers (6), Cowboys (5), 49ers (5), Packers (4), Giants (4), Patriots (3), Raiders (3), Redskins (3), Dolphins (2), Colts (2), Broncos (2), Jets (1), Ravens (1), Chiefs (1), Bears (1), Saints (1), Buccaneers (1), Rams (1).

“Big market teams have an inherent advantage in baseball don’t they?”  Here’s where we get into another apples and oranges conversation.  MLB is predominately in major markets. Only 6 Major League teams exist outside of the top 25 television markets.  In the NFL however, there are 9 such teams.  Baseball has 13 teams in the top 10 markets, where the NFL has just 11.  Further skewing the market discrepancy, MLB has just one team outside of the top 35 television markets, the Toronto Blue Jays.  The NFL on the other hand has 4 teams in markets 47 or lower (Buffalo, Jacksonville, Green Bay and New Orleans).

With all of that said the leagues again are just about dead even with 52 percent of World Series Championships  won by teams in the top ten media markets and the big boys winning 54 percent of all Super Bowls.

“What about teams like the Cubs?  They haven’t won in forever.  Or the Pirates, or the Royals?”  Part of the argument against baseball is the entrenched failures of franchises like the Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs.  They will talk about the ability for teams to go from worst to first in the NFL.  Now, that may be true in earning a postseason berth, but the ultimate goal of any franchise is to compete for and win championships.  So when we look at the numbers we see that the percentage of teams that fail over the long term in both sports are pretty comparable.

• 21 NFL teams have gone at least 10 years since their last Super Bowl appearance (66 percent) and 31 percent of  teams have gone more than 20 years.
• Half of all MLB teams have gone at least 10 years without a World Series appearance with 37 percent of ball clubs going more than 20 years.

“In the NFL you can’t buy a championship!” No you can’t.  But it doesn’t buy one in baseball either, no matter what someone may have told you.  In the last 14 years, when baseball player salaries really began to explode, the team with the highest payroll in MLB has won exactly 3 World Series titles.  Teams in the top 5 of salary expenditures have won a combined 6 championships, slightly less than half.  Teams ranked 10th or lower in salary won 7 titles over the same period.  While the NFL may produce seasons like 2008 when the Giants, who ranked last in payroll beat the Patriots who ranked 2nd, MLB can counter with the 2003 season when the Marlins who ranked 25th in payroll knocked of the Yankees.  Both sports have shown that a bad owner with deep pockets is a recipe for failure.  Tell me the difference between the Washington Redskins and the Los Angeles Dodgers or  the New York Mets and the Dallas Cowboys.

“So class, what have we learned?” What we’ve learned is that MLB is doing a pretty good job of ensuring competitive balance.  Is it perfect, of course not.  No league can guarantee that every team will have success, it can only try to create an environment in which teams that do what good teams have always done have a chance. Teams that are successful will typically be that way because they identify and acquire  good young players in the draft; provide the resources to develop that talent; act responsibly with the contracts that players are signed to; and they have a clear commitment from management and ownership to winning.  If you’re a baseball fan approaching the age of 50, you’ve seen just about every team in the majors reach the game’s ultimate stage at least once.  The youngest teams in your sport (Marlins, Diamondbacks, Rockies and Rays) have 5 World Series appearances and 3 titles in less than 20 years.  Teams once considered outposts can quickly turn into potential dynasties (Texas Rangers) with smart player development and good leadership.  So there’s no shame in defending baseball and liking it for what it is.  So hate baseball for it’s slow pace, or its adherence to traditions or lack of action if you’d like but don’t hate it for being unfair.  Because it simply isn’t.  Now the NBA…that’s a story for a different day.

– David Grubb