Bounce And Squeak

On a random weekday last month, Stan Pietkiewicz beat me in "Horse."

You'd have to be a serious basketball freak to remember 'Stan The Man.' A six-five shooting guard, Pietkiewicz averaged 19.1 points per game as a senior at Auburn in 1978, good enough to earn second-team All-SEC honors, but his professional career was brief -- less than three full seasons in the NBA, followed by a couple of seasons in Italy. He's 51 years old now, a little thin on top, but in great shape. And, as I can attest, he can still shoot it.

Seeing Stan at the gym coincided with the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Like most of you, I'm captivated by this rite of spring, particularly the early upsets. I'd love to know how many brackets were destroyed this year in "Treacherous Tampa," as CBS labeled it. The place where higher seeds were sent to perish. The "Tampa Turmoil" claimed two 4-seeds and two 5-seeds in one 48-hour period. What's better than that?

While the field of 64 was whittling itself down, the NBA season is hurtling toward its own version of madness. Call it the "stretch run," the "playoff push," what have you - this is simply a great time to be a basketball fan. It even lessens the pain of getting creamed by Stan The Man in "horse," although I should point out that I was shooting in sandals while waiting for a yoga class. Still, I got him to "h-o-r." So there's that.

As a representative of Sun Sports and FSN Florida, the cable home of the Orlando Magic, Miami Heat, ACC and SEC basketball, and the FHSAA high school basketball championships, I am often asked for my opinions on certain players. When it comes to the pro game in particular, I have a stock answer for anyone who accuses any NBA player of being a stiff: "yeah, but he was probably the best player ever to come out of his high school."

Think about that for a moment. The 12th man on most NBA benches, depending upon his hometown, is most likely one of the most celebrated and decorated players that said hometown has ever seen. For that matter, a legendary high school career provides no guarantees at the college level, either. The kid waving a towel on the far end of the North Carolina or Kansas bench may have been an absolute stud. You just never know.

I mention this because Stan Pietkiewicz may well be the best player that Winter Park High School ever produced. Some might point to Georgetown sophomore Jeremiah Rivers, son of Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers, as Winter Park's most notable hoops alum; Stan himself claims that Austin Rivers, Jeremiah's kid brother, will be better than all of them, maybe the best ever. Of course, Austin is only a freshman at Winter Park this year. We'll have to wait and see.

Basketball can be described as timeless. The bounce-and-squeak marks the rhythm of the game from year to year and season to season. For me, the attraction of the game's playoff season is the "what if" -- the possibility that some otherwise unknown player will shine on the big stage. This is the time of year that gave us Lorenzo Charles, Keith Smart, Tate George, Ty Edney, and Bryce Drew. In the pro game, springtime produced Derek Fisher and Kenny Smith and Reggie Miller and Robert Horry. John Paxson and Steve Kerr. They were all already famous in their hometowns, probably the biggest celebrity in their old neighborhood, until a big shot at a big moment catapulted them into something else.

Those moments, by the way, are what drove those players, and thousands more you've never heard of, to spend countless hours in the gym in the first place. For every Christian Laettner or Dwyane Wade, there are hundreds of Stan The Man's - guys who had the tools, had the talent, but never got the opportunity. Don't feel bad for them; Stan Pietkiewicz, as far as I can tell, is a very happy, well-adjusted adult. His son, John, who was Jeremiah's teammate at WPHS, now plays college ball for Flagler College. Stan The Man is doing fine, living quietly in his hometown and giving me a hard time at the YMCA. Life is good.

When you celebrate the game, don't just celebrate the stars. Respect the guy on the end of the bench, too. For all you know, he was the best player you've never heard of.

Blog Long And Prosper

According to Blogger.com, this will be my 200th post since the blog went online in July of 2005. Coincidentally (and unintentionally), the topic is, well, blogs.

I recently received an column by Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News entitled "Let's Embrace The Age Of Now." The piece was a response to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and his clubhouse ban on bloggers, who are no longer being granted Mavs media credentials for reasons that Cuban explains at length, ironically enough, on his personal blog (BlogMaverick.com).

To summarize, Cuban argues that a blog is a blog is a blog, no matter who employs the writer, and no matter where the entries appear. If he allows one Dallas Morning News blogger access to the Mavs' locker room, he must grant all bloggers the same respect - even the ones who write for free from their basement. Fearing a slippery slope of dozens of average Joes applying for press passes, Cuban decided on a blanket policy of "no bloggers."

(On that note - what if, back in the early '90s, major market radio stations, college teams, the NBA, and the NFL had told the young founders of AudioNet to take a hike? You know, it was a silly Internet-based thing. Not "traditional" media at all. What if those properties had never allowed AudioNet to carry their broadcasts online? We would never have heard of Broadcast.com, as it was later called, and we might never have heard of Mark Cuban, who became a billionaire when Broadcast.com went public and was eventually sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Good thing for Cuban that nobody had any blanket policies back then.)

Had Cuban stopped at the ban, this would be a much smaller story. But he didn't stop. Instead, he devotes hundreds of words at BlogMaverick.com to his contention that newspapers are making a seismic marketing and branding blunder by adding blogs to their Internet sites. You can read the posts yourself if you like, but essentially, Cuban is lecturing newspapers on how they should be running their businesses. His points are valid, by the way. An abuse of power by leveraging his role as an NBA franchise owner to make those points? Probably. But valid nonetheless.

Cuban argues that newspapers must differentiate their Internet content from the basement blog of an average, non-credentialed Joe; Kevin Sherrington counters that the only way to pull that off is to have the behind-the-scenes access routinely granted to members of the traditional media. Whether Mark Cuban likes it or not, Sherrington writes, the desperate focus on Internet content by major newspapers is a fact of life, something that's unlikely to change. As he puts it, "if we're going to continue to evolve, we have to blog." The newspaper business is not good, in case anyone hadn't noticed. Writers across all disciplines are in a desperate fight to save their jobs, and if management says "blog," it shall be blogged. Cuban considers this a mistake; Sherrington, and dozens of other sportswriters like him, just wants to remain employed, minus the marketing lecture.

As one who straddles the line between "traditional media" (Sun Sports & FSN Florida) and "new media" (this here blog thingy), I'm siding with Kevin Sherrington on this one. Not that I think Cuban is necessarily wrong in his conclusions about newspaper bloggers; rather, Cuban's too late. That horse has long since left the barn.

Every major newspaper in Florida, and many more across the country, now includes enhanced web content as part of its coverage. Whether Mark Cuban agrees with this business decision is irrelevant; what's done is done. Readers, and sports fans in particular, have come to expect web content from established writers like Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, and dozens more. It's already out there, a result of declining circulations and sagging profits in the daily newspaper business. These papers are trying to stay with the curve; you can call their web contributions a "blog," call it "RealTime reporting" (as Cuban suggests), call it what you will. Banning bloggers from the clubhouse, as Cuban has done, will do nothing to stop newspapers from exploring every avenue of the Internet in an attempt to salvage their business.

And that's another point - why is it so hard to distinguish an independent blogger from one who works for a legitimate media outlet? If some guy in Ft. Worth calls the Mavs and says he's got a kickin' sports blog that he updates in between shifts at Best Buy, I have no problem with the Mavs denying him a credential. If, however, said blogger draws a paycheck from the Dallas Morning News or the Austin American-Statesman or Yahoo or CBS Sportsline, the only difference between that writer and a print guy is the medium. The answer is, it's not a tough distinction at all.

I performed a highly unscientific survey of a few of Sun Sports & FSN Florida's professional team partners - the Miami Heat, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Orlando Magic. Media relations officials from all three teams told me essentially the same thing: as long as a blogger represents an established media outlet, be it a newspaper, TV station or network, or a website like Yahoo or ESPN.com, there is no policy against credentialing those writers. All three teams used some version of the phrase "case-by-case basis." In other words, no blanket policy required. Take a little time, ask a couple of questions, and then use your professional judgement to determine whether or not a credential request is legit. It's not that hard, and it's part of the job in media relations.

So why does Mark Cuban decide to flatly deny bloggers, even those who work for legitimate media outlets? It seems we are to be educated, even if we never asked for the lesson.

What he's doing with the ban, and reinforces on his own blog (has the irony of that sunk in yet?), is lecturing newspaper management and the unwitting general public on his business theories. He's using his ownership of the Mavericks as an avenue to make his point, which he is free to do, although I disagree with it. Put simply, if Mark Cuban didn't own the Mavs, would anyone care what he thought about newspaper writers as bloggers? But he does own the Mavs, and therefore it is a story - a story that will apparently not be written by anyone in Dallas who admits to being a "blogger."

At some point, the NBA - which has shamelessly promoted Gilbert Arenas' blog and the league's own enormous pile of web content at NBA.com - will have to address the issue of bloggers as it pertains to credentials. For that matter, I would imagine that similar stories have popped up with other franchises in other leagues, as local bloggers and media outlets compete for precious space in the press box. The difference, of course, is that no other owner in any other league has chosen to blog about the fact that he's banning bloggers. So now we know Mark Cuban's opinion on the matter. We didn't ask for it, but we got it.

And every day, more and more print coverage of sports will move towards the Internet, whether it's at a newspaper's site or not. This is where it's going, and there's no catching that horse.

What If

ESPN.com's Bill Simmons plays the "What If?" game in a recent post, limited to the last couple of seasons in the NBA. I love these scenarios; imagining the what-could-have-been when it comes to trades, free agent signings, and drafts is one of my all-time top five bar conversations.

(On that note, everybody needs one indestructable bar bet, and here's mine: I can name all 50 states in less than sixty seconds. Alphabetically. Never, ever test me on this. I'm digressing.)

Reading the Simmons post the day after I attended an Orlando Magic home game to gather interviews for an upcoming episode of "Inside The Magic" on Sun Sports and FSN Florida, I started thinking about the single greatest "What If?" in Magic team history:

What if Nick Anderson had made his free throws?

A refresher for all you young punks who think that Tracy McGrady was the first star ever to play for Orlando:

Nelison D. "Nick" Anderson was the Magic's first ever collegiate draft pick, entering the NBA in 1989 after his junior season as one of the "clones" at Illinois (Nick, Kendall Gill, Kenny Battle, Steve Bardo, Marcus Liberty. Another great bar bet). He was the first real star player in Orlando, a rebounding two-guard, a player skilled enough to eventually compete in both the Slam Dunk and the Three-Point contests at two separate All-Star Weekends. To this day, Nick Anderson holds a handful of Magic team records, including career scoring, minutes played, field goals attempted and made, three-pointers attempted, defensive rebounds (really), and steals. Nick was a star. The first star the Orlando Magic ever had.

But when the Magic rode the young legs of Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway to the 1995 NBA Finals against Hakeem's Rockets, Nick became a goat.

History shows that Nick Anderson missed four consecutive free throws at the end of Game One, any one of which could have sealed a win over Houston. Instead, the game went to overtime. An Olajuwon stickback and a Kenny Smith tornado-ball three-pointer later, the Magic were down 0-1, and never recovered. Sweep. One could argue that the franchise still hasn't recovered, but that's another blog entirely.

(Another digression: Nick's steal against Michael Jordan in Game One of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals -- perhaps the most significant on-court play in Magic team history -- catapulted the Magic towards the Finals in the first place. If we are to re-live his bad days, let us also re-live one of his best. Amen.)

The purpose of this entry: what if Nick had made his free throws?

I was working as a television producer for the Magic at the time, and during the following summer, we produced an annual season recap video. Bob Hill was an assistant coach under Brian Hill in Orlando, and during his interview for the video, he predicted the following when asked that Magic question:

"If Nick makes those free throws," Bob Hill intoned, "we win Game One, and probably win Game Two. From there, we go to Houston with a 2-0 lead and the whole series has changed."

Then, he curled into the fetal position under his chair and began whimpering softly. No, wait, that was me.

Anyway -- what if Nick makes them?

Let's assume that Bob Hill is right -- the Magic win Game One, and then win Game Two in Orlando. That, alone, probably would have changed the course of franchise history. Two wins or more in the '95 Finals may have convinced Shaq to stay beyond his contract date in the summer of '96. Maybe.

If they actually won the title in '95? I say he stays, no question. He sees the potential to build a dynasty. He adds a few bathrooms to the house in Isleworth. Furthermore, flush with overflowing ticket sales and Lord-knows how many other revenue streams that come with winning a championship, the Magic never think of low-balling O'Neal with their first offer in '96, as they inexplicably chose to do in real life. No, they have a banner in the rafters already -- they show him the money. With a title, Shaq stays, for at least one more big contract.

So then what?

I posit that Shaq becomes a free agent magnet in Orlando. Hell, if McGrady and Grant Hill were willing to sign with the Magic without him, imagine what the market would have been had Shaq stayed. Consider this:

Shaquille O'Neal signed as a free agent with the Lakers in the summer of 1996. Here are some of the other free agents who signed deals prior to the 1996-97 season:

Dikembe Mutombo, Atlanta
Tim Hardaway, Miami
Reggie Miller, Indiana (re-signed)
Michael Jordan, Chicago (his one-year, $30 million contract...okay, so he probably doesn't sign anywhere else, but this IS the guy who seriously considered the Knicks that summer, and later suited up for the Washington Wizards. Maybe Orlando is a serious stretch for MJ in '96, but don't you think that a motivated and ring-wearing Shaq might have been an attraction?)

Alonzo Mourning, John Stockton, and Latrell Sprewell were also among the dozens of players who could have been available in free agency that summer. Remember, that was the year that the NBA eliminated restricted free agency. The summer of '96 was supposed to be a free-for-all. While it didn't turn out that way -- the Jordans, Stocktons, and Millers of the world stayed put, while O'Neal himself was the one big fish who jumped -- the air was right for player movement. At least one of those stars goes to Orlando, probably at a discount, if a ring-wearing Shaq is there in 1996.

And then what?

I submit that the presence of Shaquille and one other "star" would have extended the career of Penny Hardaway, who went downhill in a hurry after O'Neal left. In three seasons next to Shaq, Hardaway missed a total of five games; the very first season after Shaq left, injuries limited Hardaway to 59 games, and he never played a full 82-game schedule in any season after that. The wear and tear, mentally and physically, that came with being the sole option in Orlando broke him down. If Shaq stays, and the Magic get free agent help in that summer of '96, I'm not convinced that happens. At least, not as quickly.

And then -- well, we're off the board. Does Orlando become what we now know as the San Antonio Spurs? Does Brian Hill keep his job a little longer? What about former GM John Gabriel? And here's a big one -- do the Magic get a new arena in Orlando a full ten years earlier than currently planned?

If Shaq stays, does Chuck Daly ever coach here? Doc Rivers? Is there any "Heart & Hustle" roster in Orlando? Does Tracy McGrady ever play for the Magic? What about Grant Hill? Which team would currently be trumpeting Dwight Howard as its franchise player? For whom does Hedo Turkoglu break out this season? If the Magic win a title in 1995, virtually none of their recent history comes to pass. It changes everything.

Understand, I'm not hanging all of this on Nick. Four free throws do not lose a series, regardless of how it was portrayed at the time. It was one game, and plenty of teams have come back from 0-1 in the Finals. For that matter, there's no guarantee that the Magic would have won that '95 championship series even if they did capture Game One. Houston, you may recall, was pretty good.

But What If?

Cinderella Wears Red

Rolled back into Orlando at 10:30 on Saturday night, absolutely cooked.

This was my schedule for the last ten days: host the Chevy Florida Fishing Report on Thursday, February 21st. Drive to Lakeland that night. Do play-by-play for three Florida High School Athletic Association girls' basketball state championship games on Friday, which requires several hours of preparation. Do three more on Saturday. Drive back to Orlando. On Monday, fly to New Jersey. Host the Magic pregame show prior to the Nets game on Tuesday. Fly back Wednesday. Host another Chevy Florida Fishing Report on Thursday. Drive to Lakeland again. Three boys' basketball title games on Friday, three more on Saturday, again, each one necessitating copious amounts of homework. Drive home.

So yeah, I was cooked.

However, before I crashed back into my own bed for only the fourth night in the last ten, my spirits were sent soaring by a teeny, tiny bullet point in the far-right corner of the Bottom Line ticker on ESPNEWS:

"Cornell becomes first team to reach NCAA Tournament."

As in, March Madness. The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The Dance. Cornell University, my alma mater, had wrapped up a stellar 12-0 Ivy League campaign to claim the conference title, and the accompanying tournament bid, for the first time since 1988 -- one year before I arrived on campus in Ithaca. It's the first time over those twenty years that a school other than Princeton or Penn will represent the Ivies in the Big Dance. And just to make it a little more delicious, the Big Red trounced those ninnies from Harvard to do it.

Let's back up for a moment.

Academically speaking, I had some game in high school. I also had a strong interest in the broadcasting and media field, so I narrowed my college options to those schools that offered a balance of academic reputation and opportunities in journalism. Taking all factors into account, I ended up applying to six schools as a high school senior: Cornell, Penn, Virginia, North Carolina, Stanford, and Florida. Stanford rejected me; UVA placed me on a wait list, and I was eventually offered a spot, but it was very late in the game. The other four schools admitted me.

I chose Cornell. There's a long story behind it, but it came down to reputation, course offerings, the desire to see a different part of the country, and the campus itself, which is pretty much Central Casting when it comes to what a university is supposed to look like. My experience there is worth a novel, which I might write someday. But the relevance here is this: in terms of athletics, well, it's the Ivy League.

The Ivies are non-scholarship I-AA programs. In Cornell's case, the men's hockey program is probably the school's most successful and notable, having claimed two NCAA titles, eleven ECAC crowns, and 19 Ivy League titles, including five in a row from 2003 through 2007. But that's college hockey, a niche sport if ever there was one. When it comes to the marquee sports, like basketball and football, Ithaca is a long, long way from Chapel Hill or Gainesville. At Lynah Rink, a Cornell hockey game is a religious experience along the lines of Cameron Indoor Stadium or The Big House. Everything else, however, was a diversion, an innocent way to kill a couple of hours between studying for a Calculus exam or reading another 200 pages of "The Odyssey."

As a result of choosing Cornell, I've always found myself left out of the conversation come tournament time or bowl season. It's a part of the college experience that I missed, quite frankly. Now that I'm back home in Florida, the land of Gators and Seminoles and Hurricanes and Knights and "Bulls in the BCS" and conference titles and postseason berths, it comes up all the time, especially when you consider what I do for a living.

And then, boom -- "Cornell becomes first team to reach NCAA Tournament."

I have to admit, I haven't followed Cornell basketball at all this season. Nor have I followed it for any of the fifteen seasons that have passed since I graduated. I can tell you that Jan van Breda Kolff and Mike Dement both coached at Cornell at one time; I can assure you, from personal experience, that my former roommate Stuart Roth played one season on the Cornell JV. That's the extent of my Big Red hoops knowledge. So I looked it up.

First off, there's a blog dedicated to the 2008 Ivy League Champions, a sure sign of success. I learned that head coach Steve Donahue spent ten years on Fran Dunphy's staff at Penn, another good sign (see the note above regarding Ivy League champs over the last twenty years). I also learned that one of the Big Red's star players is Ryan Wittman, son of former Indiana University star and NBA head coach Randy Wittman. And he's only a sophomore.

In fact, the Red have but one senior on the roster this year. Can you say "repeat?"

Never mind, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The last time we made the tournament -- and you have no idea how cool it is to write "we" and actually have a legitimate claim to it -- was 1988. The opening-round game was against Arizona. We were the 16th seed in the West region -- such respect -- and lost by 40. However, that was Arizona's first Final Four team, a squad that won 35 games that year behind Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr, and Kenny Lofton (really). No shame in that loss.

Now, we're back. I can finally watch a first-round game at the NCAA Tournament with a rooting interest.

Bracketography.com has us as a 14-seed in the South. Joe Lunardi of ESPN.com says Cornell is a 13-seed in the West. I've seen a couple of sites that claim we'll play Connecticut in the opening round -- another delicious coincidence, as Storrs is about 30 minutes away from West Hartford, where I lived for nearly seven years while working at ESPN.

Know what? I don't care who we play. I'm just thrilled to say "we" and mean it.

First ones in, baby. Cinderella wears Red.