Tag Archives: basketball

Thinking about the lack of outdoor basketball courts, Part 2

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Yesterday, I wrote about a discussion a friend and I had about what we perceive as a lack of decent outdoor basketball courts. Perhaps we aren’t the only ones who think this is an issue. Here are the thoughts of one writer in Burlington, North Carolina:

One thing I’ve noticed as an adult is that there are fewer outdoor courts than there used to be. There’s not a single one in my neighborhood, which does have a pool, tennis courts, fields, walking trails, a lake and a playground. Those portable goals you find along streets in the suburbs don’t count.

I don’t know if residential developers at some point came to see basketball courts as hotbeds for malfeasance, but I think it’s ridiculous that in the middle of one of the three-most basketball-crazed states in the Union I can’t walk to a basketball court from my house.

Here is another example from a writer in Lima, Ohio, though he seems to be referring also to basketball hoops in driveways:

Taking my game to Bradfield was not exactly breaking down a barrier, but it was a difficult step for a 15 year old looking for the best competition in the city. I sat on the sidelines for two days before one of the older players, Cleo Vaughn, picked me for his team. Vaughn, whose own athletic odyssey was stuff of dreams, took me under his wing and I owe much of my own emergence as a player to his guidance. Cleo began picking me up in his car and taking me to courts all over the city. Each one of these basketball courts was unique and presented its own challenges.

Whittier playground offered great full-court games with a colorful and vocal crowd of onlookers but if you lost, you were forced to wait for hours because there were so many young players waiting their turn. The most physical games could be found at Mizpah Mission in the deep south end. There was only a single basket there at the time, but those three-on-three games were the most intense in the city. You could always find a great game at Northside playground but the courts were so long it felt like you had run a marathon when the game ended. And there were many other great outdoor venues, all unique in their own design and makeup.

But my favorite courts remained the outdoor courts at Bradfield Center and the most memorable times were the nights that the flame from the Standard Oil Refinery was turned up full blast and the light it shed was powerful enough to allow us to play late into the evenings and avoid the heat of midday.

Both of these stories talk about particular places and are also tinged with nostalgia. These columnists have good memories of playing on outdoor courts and now see fewer young adults playing on outside courts. The first writer suggests developers may not be interested in building courts while the second suggests kids grow up playing indoors in organized sports rather than free-wheeling games in driveways or neighborhood parks.

Of course, this is anecdotal evidence and these two columnists disagree about the cause of this.

The problem may not just be limited to the United States: here is an online petition signed by 554 people asking for at least one nice outdoor basketball court in all Australian cities:

Kids around Australia, as well as teenagers and young adults, always email us (MSF) and tell us that the new highschool court in their area is closed after school hours… so what’s the point of having a facility when the local youth can’t use it to it’s full potential? Where’s the night lights? Where’s the support for the people who want to play sports instead of hanging out with friends at nightclubs or at home playing video games? not just at night though, we’re talking about during the day also. The youth do not have enough positive recreational facilities to unite at. And if there are a few, the basketball courts are usually ALWAYS the cheapest and worst quality that end up steering kids away. Fact.

Our proposition; on behalf of millions of other Australians; build ONE Superior outdoor basketball court in each Australian City… central to all suburbs. Close to transport. Secure and Safe. Night lights. Open 24 hours. The highest standard of ring systems and surface. And then you will all see; the Domino Effect. These superior outdoor courts will become populated with positivity and energy; believe it. And once it succeeds in one community, other communities and councils will follow in these footsteps.

It is interesting that this petition tries to flip Reason #1 for fewer basketball courts (they create more problems with the people they attract) on its head by suggesting these courts are actually helpful in combating other social problems. If kids play on outdoor courts, they are not just sitting around playing video games and they are not getting into more active trouble elsewhere. If this argument is correct, could this then a NIMBY issue where immediate neighbors don’t want the basketball courts even though the courts would benefit society as a whole? If this is what happens, the neighbors win out, courts can’t be built near where people actually live, and fewer communities decide to build outdoor courts overall. Parks themselves, basketball courts or not, can become NIMBY sites as their public space threatens nearby public space.

(At least New York City claims to have plenty of outdoor courts: “There are hundreds of outdoor courts in New York City. In the basketball capital of the world, it’s possible to find a game within walking distance of any location. Recreation Centers in all five boroughs have indoor courts as well.”)

Thinking about the lack of outdoor basketball courts, Part 1

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While playing basketball during good weather on a popular outdoor court, a friend and I discussed what we perceive to be an issue: a lack of well-built outdoor basketball courts. To be well-built, we don’t ask for much: decent basketball poles and backboards, a decent court surface, and somewhat close to a regulation court size (and I have seen a number of courts that don’t meet one or more of these conditions). While I don’t have hard evidence that there is a lack of basketball courts (outside of personal experience living within a rather populated suburban area), here are some reasons why there may not be very many:

1. Basketball courts attract a certain kind of crowd: young men who can be loud and who might loiter around waiting for a game. This could be problematic for nearby suburban neighbors.

2. Basketball courts could be a liability risk for communities. People can run into poles, hang on the rim, suffer injuries on the concrete, etc. (I suspect this could be a problem for all sorts of outdoor equipment but I’m sure communities are prepared for this.)

3. Basketball courts could be expensive to maintain. The surface has to be pretty good because cracks aren’t great for dribbling. Nice nets would be helpful but these have to be replaced. (I can’t see how this would be that more expensive than maintaining a tennis court, however.)

4. Basketball courts are safer to monitor and maintain inside or in the driveway. Kids can be watched more closely. Indoors, the courts don’t get wet and players can’t loiter or throw litter in the sight of local residents in the same way. (Indoor courts can often require money, particularly if attached to a health club or park district. While these courts are often nicer, there is still something about playing outside – as long as the temperature is reasonable.)

5. There may not be much public outcry for basketball courts. The National Association of Sporting Goods has some numbers about basketball participation in 2010: 26.9 million Americans played more than once and this is 13th on the list of activities (though this includes non-exercise activities such as camping and fishing). According to 2008 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the “16% of persons who engaged in any sports or exercise activity on an average day,” 5.1% played basketball. And in a later chart looking at the same 16%, more 15-24 year-old people engaged in basketball than any other activity.

My friend was firmly for reason #1. Perhaps the closest equivalent I can think of are skate parks. Proposals for these recreational sites often draw interesting public reactions because of the crowd they attract.

Several pieces of data could shed light on whether this hypothesis is correct:

1. It would be interesting to see where basketball courts are typically built. Poorer or richer neighborhoods? Near homes or elsewhere?

2. How does the number of outdoor basketball courts compare to the number of outdoor tennis courts?

3. Who exactly pushes for basketball courts? Are outdoor basketball courts typically included in proposals for parks from developers or municipalities? Do residents have to make a suggestion?

I don’t know if any of this data exists. In Part 2 tomorrow, I will look at a few recent commentators that make their own argument about why there are not many outdoor basketball courts.

The conservative musical selections at Chicago Bulls games

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While I think this Chicago Tribune piece about the DJs at Chicago Bulls games was supposed to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how musical selections are made, the real crux of the story seems to be that the music selections are quite conservative:

Every Bulls game at the United Center has its own soundtrack. Just as each game is different, roller coasters of emotions and shifting fortunes, the music and sound effects roll with the changes. A team of about 20 technicians plays DJ each night at the United Center, accenting the ebbs and surges on the floor.

The head DJ is Jeff Wohlschlaeger, the Bulls’ senior director of game operations, who sits courtside and communicates on a headset to music and scoreboard operators to wed sounds and game action. There are cavalry-charge bugle calls and countless ways of imploring “De-Fense,” but there are also more than 1,000 songs and song snippets available to enhance every movement and mood…

When the home team has the ball, just about anything goes. Nothing is explicitly banned, but all teams know they’re programming for a family-friendly event, so songs deemed the least bit salacious or provocative won’t be tolerated, the NBA says. Teams that bend the rules often end up paying for it. The NBA’s “Game Operations” department monitors every game; one source in the office said that at least two NBA franchises were fined in the last month for inappropriate sound and video while the visiting team was on offense.

The Bulls don’t push the envelope by design, Wohlschlaeger says. The music selections are “conservative,” reflecting a mix of classic rock and contemporary pop hits that is determined by audience surveys. During Game 2 of the Hawks series, songs leading out of timeouts designed to get the crowd pumped included the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!),” AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” John Mellencamp’s “Authority Song” and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels’ “Devil With a Blue Dress On.”…

Mostly, it’s about what the paying customers want, Wohlschlaeger says, “tried and true stuff that you or I would never listen to in a car, but that gets a positive reaction from the fans.”

On one hand, the article suggests that the DJs have a lot of music and sound effects at their disposal and try to respond to the action on the floor. On the other hand, it sounds clear that the actual music/effects played is quite limited in order to please the NBA and the fans. I can’t quite say why I find this depressing: it still sounds like an intriguing job but at the same time, much of it sounds scripted. For example, the article mentions the playing of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” which every Bulls fan who has watched a game this year or in recent years knows is played during a timeout with about 4-6 minutes left in the game. So all of this is simply canned, fan-friendly entertainment?

I wonder if there are any pro sports teams who are known for pushing the envelope a bit more in their musical selections. Does everyone play the same stuff that the DJs “would never listen to in a car” but they think is safe for fans? Having attended a number of San Francisco Giants games over the last 10 years or so, I know they play a lot more salsa music, fitting in with the atmosphere of the Bay Area. Some baseball stadiums have music for individual home team players when they come up to the plate. There may not be the same opportunities for other sports though perhaps music could be introduced in situations when they make a reception or step up to the free throw line or at other points.

Of course, perhaps this is just good business: don’t alienate your fan base that can afford to go to NBA basketball games. Change up the music too much or make it too edgy

If President Obama kicked teams out of the NCAA tournament for low graduation rates

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The discussion over the graduation rates of men’s basketball players on NCAA tournament teams has grown in recent years. One columnist wondered what President Obama might say if he addressed the issue:

“While nine of every 10 white players graduate on the top-32-seeded men’s teams, only five of every 10 black players graduate. As an African American, I am personally outraged that 21 of the 68 men’s teams have black player graduation rates ranging from 44 percent down to zero.

“Thus, beginning today, I will do my bracket with this new stipulation: I will not write in your team if either your team or black player graduation rate is under 50 percent.

“This decision is not an easy one to make for a basketball purist. It leaves out nearly a third of the teams, including prestigious programs that account for 10 of the last 21 titles. It is with regret that I will leave blank spots for Syracuse, Indiana State, Missouri, Southern Cal, Michigan State, Tennessee, Florida, Nevada-Las Vegas, UC-Santa Barbara, Michigan, Morehead State, Kentucky, Georgia, Temple, Connecticut, Alabama-Birmingham, Texas, Washington, Arizona, Kansas State, and Akron…”

If Education Secretary Arne Duncan already made a similar suggestion, why not the President, who is an avid basketball fan and fills out men’s and women’s brackets on TV?

This is a complex issue that the NCAA doesn’t seem to want to talk about. Instead, they would rather run commercials (one example here) saying that “most [college athletes] go pro in something other than sports.” This may be true in many sports but there are racial gaps in a number of schools in both men’s basketball and football (read about troubles at Auburn here), the major revenue-generating sports.

Grant Hill, Jalen Rose, and race and class

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ESPN recently aired the documentary The Fab Five which earned the network its highest ratings for a documentary (though its unclear how this stacks up against their typical Sunday night programming). One part of the documentary that has drawn attention are the comments Jalen Rose made regarding Grant Hill, Duke, and race. Here is what Rose said in a short segment:

I hated Duke and I hated everything Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn’t recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms … I was jealous of Grant Hill. He came from a great black family. Congratulations, your mom went to college and was roommates with Hillary Clinton. And your dad played in the NFL — a very well-spoken and successful man. I was upset and bitter my mom had to bust her hump for 20-plus years. I was bitter that I had a professional athlete that was my father that I didn’t know. I resented that more than I resented him. I looked at it as they are who the world accepts and we are who the world hates.

Hill responded to Rose’s comment on the New York Times website. Here are a few relevant points:

In his garbled but sweeping comment that Duke recruits only “black players that were ‘Uncle Toms,’ ” Jalen seems to change the usual meaning of those very vitriolic words into his own meaning, i.e., blacks from two-parent, middle-class families. He leaves us all guessing exactly what he believes today…

This is part of our great tradition as black Americans. We aspire for the best or better for our children and work hard to make that happen for them. Jalen’s mother is part of our great black tradition and made the same sacrifices for him…

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous. All of us are extremely proud of the current Duke team, especially Nolan Smith. He was raised by his mother, plays in memory of his late father and carries himself with the pride and confidence that they instilled in him…

I caution my fabulous five friends to avoid stereotyping me and others they do not know in much the same way so many people stereotyped them back then for their appearance and swagger. I wish for you the restoration of the bond that made you friends, brothers and icons.

While this appears to be a conversation about race, I wonder how much of this might be about social class. While Rose used terms that invoked race (particularly the reference to “Uncle Toms”), what also might have been describing differences in social class: Grant Hill grew up in more of an upper-class family where his dad was a known athlete and his mom had connections. Rose did not have the same opportunities that Hill’s family provided and felt bitter about Duke, a private school known for its wealth (according to the National Association of of College and University Business Officers, Duke is #15 in its 2010 endowment with over $4.8 billion).

In the long run, both men have done well for themselves: Hill is still playing in the NBA while Rose is an analyst for ESPN and also played 13 years in the NBA. But these discussions about opportunities and race and class are ongoing in sociology: is it race that is the primary issue or is it social class? A sociologist like William Julius Wilson has written about this, most recently here, invoking a lot of discussion over the last few decades. How this particular discussion ends up between  Rose and Hill remains to be seen but there will be plenty of ongoing talk about these larger issues.

Can the NFL over-hype itself?

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As the NFC and AFC title games slowly approach, I wonder: can the NFL over-hype its product?

On one hand, it appears not. NFL television ratings have been excellent this year (regular season stats here). The league has a number of stars that draw a wide range of attention, from the good (Tom Brady, Peyton Manning) to the bad (Brett Favre, Michael Vick’s sage in recent years). Particularly at this time of year, talk about the NFL dominates the airwaves – a number of other sports are mid-season. The final four teams remaining in the playoffs are historic franchises that have passionate fan bases. Even with Bill Simmon’s recent claim that there is “there’s at least one great [NBA] game” each night, other sports can’t match the popularity of the NFL. The NFL even thinks it can sell $200 tickets for a “party plaza” outside of the Super Bowl.

On the other hand, it is A LOT of talk. In the weeks between playoff games, it seems that ESPN can’t stop talking about the next match-ups. In Chicago, everyone has been talking Bears-Packers. The teams already have played twice so how much more is there to discuss? Could it get to the point where fans tune out the week before and are just happy to get the game over with? And interestingly, it only gets worse for the Super Bowl: then we get the infamous “Media Day.” Though the Super Bowl gets tremendous ratings, how often does the game match the hype? In my lifetime of watching Super Bowls, I distinctly remember being disappointed by most of them. (A couple stand out in memory: the Giants-Bills match-up in 1991, Rams and Titans in 2000, the Bears-Colts in 2007, Patriots-Giants in 2008, Steelers-Cardinals in 2009.)

From a broader perspective, there is no guarantee that the popularity of the NFL will be maintained over the years, let alone continue to increase. (Gregg Easterbrook, ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, points this out.) The first non-sports comparison that comes to mind are presidential elections. Yesterday, the New York Times reported how President Obama is getting his next campaign in order and plans to formally declare his candidacy in two months. From now until November 2012, this is what we will hear about in the news: who will challenge Obama, how much money will be raised, what are the issues, who has the best image, what do the latest polls say, etc. Don’t voters, at least some of them, get burned out by all of this by the time the actual election takes place? The idea that some countries have of holding more defined election seasons, typically announced by the current leader and lasting for a few months, seems preferable to this endless, over-hyped presidential election season.

I am sure someone has done research on over-hyping. For the NFL, the question is when will it saturate its market. Of course, one way around this is to expand your market and head overseas. (They are trying to do this with games in Toronto, London, and Mexico City in recent years. But the NBA is way ahead of them.) In the meantime, the sporting public will get heavy doses of talk, analysis, and replays. I, for one, will be very happy when it finally gets to 2 PM Sunday afternoon and we can actually see whether the Bears and Packers will win.

The NBA, referees, Malcolm Gladwell, and race

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Henry Abbott at Truehoop reexamines an issue that emerged a few years ago with a paper written by several economists: do NBA officials exhibit implicit race bias when calling fouls? Here is Abbott’s take on the findings and implications of the original study:

Basically, the more black referees on the court, the better the calls for black players. And the reverse is true for white players. The entire combined effect is fairly limited, around 4 percent, but the pattern is certainly there.

All of this means not all that much about NBA referees, other than that they’re human. The research was about human decision making in the workplace, and the referees were just a handy group to study.

And nothing about these findings do much to undermine the NBA’s position as one of the most successfully race-blind organizations on the planet.

Abbott writes that the NBA essentially lost the scientific battle as experts pored over the economists’ paper as well as the NBA’s study and found the NBA’s study to be lacking. (It is also interesting to note that the economists made all of their data available online, making it open for scrutiny from others.)

Malcolm Gladwell enters the picture because of his book Blink where he looks at how people make quick decisions. In instances where race matters, such as calling fouls or making a decision about whether a suspect is about to pull a gun, a person making a decision nearly instantaneously makes judgments based on knowledge or associations they make about different races. Abbott sums up this research on race and judgments (read more about it at the Project Implicit website):

The lesson Gladwell, Winfrey, Harvard researchers and others took from this was about environment: We may have reached a point where a lot of explicit racism (the kinds of things we’d associate with hate speech, the klan, segregation and the like) is largely behind us. But our brains are still bombarded with images of “bad” black people and “good” white ones, which affects our quick reactions to white and black faces.

More broadly, this lines up with sociological thinkers who have suggested that in recent decades, racism and discrimination has become less overt and more covert. But just because racism appears less present doesn’t mean that the problem has been solved or that we have entered into a color-blind world. Gladwell and others suggest that it is even built into our snap judgments.

As Abbott suggests, how the NBA responds to this remains to be seen. The initial response of strongly denying the economists’ research appears no longer tenable. For a league that aspires to become global (involving even more ethnicities and races) and also wants to gain a larger audience in America (fighting football and baseball as the big sports), recognizing that this issue exists and also demonstrating a willingness to work at reducing the effect may matter quite a bit.

Again trying to link the fate of Cleveland with LeBron James

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With LeBron James returning to Cleveland, ESPN has another story about how Cleveland has suffered. But let me take a few pieces of this story and offer an alternative explanation of what has happened to Cleveland:

The issue is not really sports – LeBron James is just the symptom. The real issue is similar to that of many Rust Belt cities – manufacturing jobs left, the population shrunk, and the city’s glory disappeared. The city has tried some various tricks: funding new sports stadiums and building the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

So when LeBron James, a local kid become star, joined the Cavaliers, the city perked up. Having James meant recognition, new money, and a chance for lasting glory with championships. When James left without bringing the championships, it turned into a cruel joke – the city is still recognized but as the place with terrible luck.

Having James for as long as they did masked the true problems of Cleveland. In fact, if James hadn’t played for the Cavaliers, there may be no one writing anything about Cleveland at all. For almost a decade, Cleveland could dream of sports and glory rather than thinking about what should be done to turn the city around. It won’t be easy: some of the ideas associated with reviving Detroit, which has drawn its own share of attention, are pretty drastic. Some other ideas that could be tried: developing park land along the water, building upon academic institutions, or trying to attract or develop newer industries.

Ultimately, the losing sports teams aren’t the issue. Sure, most cities would like to win championships. But the bigger issue is coping with or reversing the Rust Belt decline. LeBron wasn’t the answer – and Cleveland is still searching.

The presence of error in statistics as illustrated by basketball predictions

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TrueHoop has an interesting paragraph from this afternoon illustrating how there is always error in even complicated statistical models:

A Laker fan wrings his hands over the fact that advanced stats prefer the Heat and LeBron James to the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. It’s pitched as an intuition vs. machine debate, but I don’t see the stats movement that way at all. Instead, I think everyone agrees the only contest that matters takes place in June. In the meantime, the question is, in clumsily predicting what will happen then (and stats or no, all such predictions are clumsy) do you want to use all of the best available information, or not? That’s the debate about stats in the NBA, if there still is one.

By suggesting that predictions are clumsy, Abbott is highlighting an important fact about statistics and statistical analysis: there is always some room for error. Even with the best statistical models, there is always a chance that a different outcome could result. There are anomalies that pop up, such as a player who has an unexpected breakout year or a young star who suffers an unfortunate injury early in the season. Or perhaps an issue like “chemistry,” something that I imagine is difficult to model, plays a role. The better the model, meaning the better the input data and the better the statistical techniques, the more accurate the predictions.

But in the short term, there are plenty of analysts (and fans) who want some way to think about the outcome of the 2010-2011 NBA season. Some predictions are simply made on intuition and basketball knowledge. Other predictions are made based on some statistical model. But all of these predictions will serve as talking points during the NBA season to help provide some overarching framework to understand the game by game results. Ultimately, as Gregg Easterbrook has pointed out in his TMQ column during the NFL off-season, many of the predictions are wrong – though the makers of the predictions are not often punished for poor results.

Comparing greatness of players past and present an enjoyable part of sports fandom

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As the NBA season approaches, discussion this week has centered on the relative status of several players: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan. While the first three players in this list were involved in a question about who is the best current player and potential MVP, Jordan also has been inserted in the discussion due to his starring role in NBA2K11 and comments he made about the number of points he could score if he played today when more fouls are called.

Several quick thoughts come to mind:

1. The new era of statistics in sports offers more opportunities to make comparisons of players across different eras, particularly if you can control for certain features of the game at each time period (like the average pace in basketball).

2. I wonder how much current players think about issues like these. Fans seems to like these discussions. It allows the average guy sitting on the couch to say, “my guy, whoever that may be, can match up or beat your guy.”

3. Jordan, like some other old players, still likes to be part of these discussions.

4. All of these discussions are magnified by the non-stop media attention for sports these days. I can hear it on local sports talk radio which all sound like the CNN of the radio airwaves; stories are repeated all day long with slightly different interpretations.