World Cup 2010, thank you Green!

[BaconForTheSoul]

Basketball is dead to me, football hasn't started, baseball isn't a real sport, and it's not an Olympic year...

Normally that means a boring ass summer... but IT'S WORLD CUP YEAR!

Dunno if anyone watches it or even cares.

So yeah moving on.  South Africa tying was awesome.  It'd be great if they could get out of the elimination round considering they're ranked 80something in the world.  Still need to grab a win somewhere though.

United States tying was... meh not as cool as you'd think.  They probably don't even need the tie if they win their next 2 games like they should, and they really looked like shit.  They had all of ONE decent shot on goal.  Britain had 5-6 legitimate looks.  We'll have to do a lot better than that to get past the round of 16.

[Grefter]

Football/Soccer is a fine game and the outcome of the World Cup is abstractly interesting.  However the results really highlight everything wrong with the game in the World Cup.

Frankly with the kind of elimination used games end up as really low scoring draws way to often.  Because the game trends towards that they have to play so many freaking games.  Because they have to play so many games everyone plays really conservatively because losing a player to injury during the world cup is so brutally bad for the team.  There is so many games played incredibly conservatively that score like 4 goals at best in the whole game.  It just totally turns people off the game.  Then by the time you get to the finals, the teams have played so many games that they are all worn out and tired as all fuck, so the game is slow and totally snooze worthy, but this is the final!  So you can't have it be a draw or just play another game to decide it.  So you end it all on a penalty shoot out after 4 rounds of overtime (which no one can score in because everyone has been running around for 2 hours).  Now I know Football fans freaking HATE penalty shoot outs because it puts the entire game which is reliant upon a great deal of skills down to one single skill being played out over about 10 minutes of play.  It is like they get to the end and just go fuck it, time for Russian Roulette to see who wins.  Personally I am just glad to not have to be exposed to 5 hour Football matches.

The issue is though that scenario wouldn't come up nearly as much if they could do something similar during rest of the tournament to get more definitive victors, which actually might sound like an argument for implementing penalty shoot out more frequently, but that just lends itself to having players that spend all their time on the bench except for the penalty shoot out.  You just recruit someone who is really good at kicking.  Then you trend way more towards having Special Teams like the NFL does, which is way more gigantically retarded and stupid than the normal shit you get in Football, so no one at all wants that.  Football is big on having a diverse skillset for what makes a good player.  A good forward is so much more than someone that can shoot goals.

So yeah one more sport that I flip the bird to for being boring as all fuck by design.

[NotMiki]

There's two, possibly three games of basketball left.  Still not too late!

[BaconForTheSoul]

There's two, possibly three games of basketball left.  Still not too late!

Basketball is dead to me.

1. Los Angeles Lakers           
$91,377,313
2. Dallas Mavericks
$86,972,067
3. Boston Celtics
$86,455,429
4. New York Knicks         
$85,060,747
5. Cleveland Cavaliers         
$84,453,809
6. Orlando Magic         
$82,132,126

You'll note that the 3 best records in the NBA are up there.  The two teams in the finals also are.  The two exceptions are
1. A team run by a billionaire who swears by a statistical system that ranks JASON KIDD as the second best player in the game.  (They were also the 2 seed in the West.)
2. A team that bought 6 gajllion expiring contracts to have a shit ton of money to spend this summer.

So... the 1,2 in the West and the 1,2,4 (finalists) in the East have top payrolls.  Basketball is the new baseball!  Teams that can afford to go way over the cap because of their location or having Lebron win more than teams that have to budget.

26. Los Angeles Clippers   
$61,447,297
27. New Jersey Nets   
$59,397,133
28. Oklahoma City Thunder         
$58,469,999
29. Memphis Grizzlies
$57,406,448
30. Portland Trail Blazers         
$55,834,419

It is nice to see that the bottom 3 teams all did something this year.  And yes, you'll notice that these are all small market teams as the NBA goes.  The other two teams are copycats of the Lakers/Knicks, hence no one giving a damn about them.  (Blazers will take a nice sized jump when Roy/LMA's new contracts kick in though.  Same with Durant/Westbrook for OKC.)

So yeah, derailing the soccer thread as to why the NBA is pissing me off.  It's turning into baseball, with the rich teams being able to buy players from the poor teams.

[Shale]

I don't care about the World Cup, but that goal was hilarious.

[NotMiki]

There's two, possibly three games of basketball left.  Still not too late!

So yeah, derailing the soccer thread as to why the NBA is pissing me off.  It's turning into baseball, with the rich teams being able to buy players from the poor teams.

Yeah, further thread hijacking.  Sorry.

Turning into baseball?  Not exactly.
Money in any sport enhances the chances of success, but baseball and basketball both have mitigating factors.
Baseball is low-scoring and streaky.  There is a comparatively high likelihood of any team beating any other team on a given night.  When the Mariners beat the Yankees, it's not a shock.  Nets beating the Celtics earlier this year?  That was fairly catastrophic.

Money should theoretically matter a lot more in basketball than in baseball because basketball is so high-scoring, and good teams beat bad teams so consistently.  But as the Cavaliers have shown us, it isn't the be all end all.  A good basketball needs synergy and teamwork, not just good players.  Not really true with baseball, since offense is an individual affair, and team defensive schemes aren't too complicated.

In any case, even if money correlates to success, I'm not convinced it causes it.  What do you think Cleveland would be paying the other four guys on the court if LeBron weren't there?  Jack shit, that's what.  Teams spend big on supporting casts when they have star players because they have the expectation of making the money back.  The only reason a town like Cleveland is on top of that list is because in the summer of 2002 a few ping pong balls went their way.  Cleveland needed to spend to succeed, but first they needed to suck to get a good draft pick.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Well, Cleveland is the only one of those 6 teams not in a huge market, and that is because of the Lebron James factor.  (And Shaq's rofl salary.)  Lebron by himself effectively turns any city he is in into a big market, hence the spending.

When he leaves and Shaq goes bye bye, the team will die and Cleveland will drop back to a bottom 5-10 spending team like before he came.  Meanwhile, whatever team he goes to will jump to a top 5 again.  Partly because of his salary, partly because his GM will get him support, and partly because he won't go to a low budget crappy team.

Even if they did fail in the playoffs via awful chemistry, they were still easily a top 5 team in basketball and they had the 5th best salary.

Let's look at 2 massive examples.
1.  Los Angeles is a crappy 7th seed team in the West.  They pick up Gasol, costing them a shit ton of money, but who cares, they're L.A.  Do you think that an identical OKC team could magically pick up Gasol and go waaayy into the luxury tax for the forseeable future?  Probably not.
2. Boston dismantles their team to get Allen and Garnett.  Not sure if this put them over the cap back them, but it's pretty likely that their salary 2 years ago was about the same as this year.  Once again, normal cities can't do this.  Boston is one of 5 or 6 that can via money and tradition.

Nothing would make me happier than a Tampa Bay Devilrays type scenario in the near future.  OKC or Portland look like good bets... although Portland will be a middling salary team once LMA and Roy's raises kick in.  New Jersey... only if Wall/Harris works out and they pick up someone useful in the offseason to assist them.  (Bosh?)  That'd raise their salary to middling too probably, but seeing a 15th ranked salary team go deep would be more fun than seeing 5/6 top salaries having 5/5 best records in the NBA.

Granted I'm not sure how to stop this really...  maybe make a real penalty for going over the luxury tax by 14 million than having the billionaire owner pay a little extra money?

[Hunter Sopko]

This is why salary cap hockey is awesome. Not that teams can't get loaded with talent for whatever reasons (look at Detriot, who has players actively take pay cuts to remain on the team).

[Scar]

I love the World Cup. It's fun to watch a sport where there is actual defense and the final scores don't ever look loopsided. a 2-0 lead is almost insurmountable, which is great. Why do people need tons of scoring to be interested in a game in the first place?

Also, I am totally rooting for USA and England. That goal was so bad though!

[Hunter Sopko]

Except you have to listen to crying and whining about the ball being hax.

Also, if a 2-0 lead is insurmountable, thats still lopsided. But I guess not LOOKING lopsided is better than not actually BEING lopsided, right?

Not sure who you're really directing this at. There's defense in every sport, really, except for Basketball. Defense in baseball is sort of unfair comparitively as well, as it's much less fluid there and even good defenses can have trouble if they can't hit. I would say Football and Hockey are the best for it, really. Hockey got blasted for the Dead Puck Era a lot, but I enjoyed the defensive play. Winning > Criticism of your playstyle.

Also, Germany beat Austrailia 4-0 today.

[Grefter]

Entirely expected.  They have a thing going on here where you get half your bet back if you lose a bet when you bet on Australia, this is still free money for book keepers.

[Kilgamayan]

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Also, I hope I'm not the only one that found this mildly amusing.

Basketball is the new baseball!

Tampa Bay Devilrays type scenario

I know it's fun to rag on baseball not having a salary cap, but they actually have pretty good playoff turnover from year to year. It's certainly not always the big market, big-spender teams that always win, either - look at the 2001 D'backs or the 2003 Marlins or the 2005 ChiSox. (I don't think the 2006 Cardinals or the 2008 Phillies were huge spenders either, but the Phillies, at least, are a larger market than those other teams, and St. Louis is definitely a larger market than Florida or Arizona.) The 90s title run in New York was also before they started throwing cash all over the place with reckless abandon; they've only won once since they started that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Baseball pretty much sucks because it has so few playoff teams and the season is so interminably long; you can usually figure out who is going to make the playoffs minus a small number of borderliners when there are stlil 60-100 games remaining in the season and that's a bad joke. Baseball is pretty much dead here because the local teams aren't good enough to compete for the playoffs, even though one of them generally hovers around 500. This is also true in many other parts of the continent. The lack of salary cap ensures that for the most part those 8 playoff spots are generally half eaten up by the same teams most years, leaving only a very few spots that are volatile. Sure, it's fun when the Devil Rays or whatever grabs one of those and runs with it, but those are few and far between.

Every other sport has far greater parity and a far greater chance for the team you're cheering for to do well, which helps a lot. There's a reason most baseball fans live in the Northeast.

Oh right, this topic is about soccer. Uh... I cheer for Britain because the soccer fans I know are mostly my family who lives there! Haven't watched any this year, though. The sport itself is only above baseball to me as far as major competitive team sports go.

(Funnily enough baseball and soccer are the two team sports I most enjoyed actually playing.)

[Kilgamayan]

Baseball pretty much sucks because it has so few playoff teams

I actually like this about baseball. Basketball and hockey need to trim the fat, if anything. Hockey can be okay about it, but look at how utterly BORING the NBA playoffs were this season outside of the faint glimmer of hope provided by Kevin Durant.

Sure, it's fun when the Devil Rays or whatever grabs one of those and runs with it, but those are few and far between.

Again, 2001 D'backs, 2003 Marlins, 2005 ChiSox. Unless you're referring to "a perennial cellar dweller drafts well for several years and suddenly turns into a powerhouse", but how often does that happen in other sports? Even teams like the Blazers had to make several moves to accomplish what they did and they're not nearly on the Rays' level in terms of feel-good story.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I actually like this about baseball.

Spoken like a man who lives in a market that actually has a playoff team. I don't see how this is defensible otherwise, it really ruins the second half of the regular season or so. Oh shit the team I like is around .480 time to stop paying attention. In hockey and basketball everyone has a chance until the last 10-20 games except for a small handful of real basement dwellers, and football sidesteps this problem entirely with the shorter season. It's a lot more exciting to follow.

Also:

Yankees: Made the playoffs all but 1 year since the lockout (14 of last 15 years)
Red Sox: Made the playoffs 6 of last 7 years
Angels: Made the playoffs 5 of the last 6 years
Cardinals: Made the playoffs 7 of the last 10 years
Braves: They've fallen off of late, but not long ago they made the playoffs 11 years in a row.

When you only have 8 playoff spots total this is ridiculous. I'm too lazy to go leafing through things but I'd suspect there are probably around 10 teams that have gone over a decade without a playoff appearance. Seems a pretty good way to kill a fanbase. Again, I've watched it happen here. The steroid scandals are probably a large part of it too, but I really don't think the lack of parity does the sport any favours.

[Shale]

Also, it seems kind of ridiculous to say that the NHL needs to trim the fat in a year when the two lowest seeds in the playoffs met in the conference final.

[Kilgamayan]

Oh shit the team I like is around .480 time to stop paying attention.

I have no sympathy for the fair-weather fan attitude. Contrary to what ESPN wants you to believe, Boston sports have not always been the best in the world. I sat through my city wasting the time of players like Mo Vaughn, Chris Slade and Ray Bourque year in and year out and I still remained a fan even when they got mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

Taking a look at the last 10 years of MLB playoffs, I count 6 teams that have not made the playoffs at least once: Orioles, Blue Jays, Royals, Expos/Natinals, Reds and Pirates. I have some sympathy for teams like the Expos and Pirates, but the Blue Jays, Royals and Reds have all won championships within the last 25 years, so they've had "recent" success (given that pure probability says any given baseball team should win one World Series every 30 years).

I don't see this as particularly worse than, say, basketball, where in the Western Conference the Lakers, Mavericks and Spurs have combined for 29 of a possible 30 playoff appearances in the last decade (while the Suns, Jazz and Nuggets all chip in 7/10 of their own, the Nuggets' 7 being the last 7 consecutive years).  Not to mention that two teams have literally more than half of the total number of NBA titles in history (and are going to add another one to that count this season one way or the other). How's that for parity?

Shale: I had that in mind when I said "Hockey can be okay about it", but I'm not going to let a single-season anomaly stop me from disliking the idea that a sub-.500 team can make the playoffs.

[DomaDragoon]

Braves: They've fallen off of late, but not long ago they made the playoffs 11 years in a row.

And prior to that they averaged 65 wins a year between 1985 and 1990. You can criticize Atlanta for a lot, but they got to their power status through the draft and farming pitchers rather than just buying players.

I'm too lazy to go leafing through things but I'd suspect there are probably around 10 teams that have gone over a decade without a playoff appearance.

Seven currently. Texas (1999), Baltimore (1997), Cincinnati (1995), Toronto (1993), Pittsburgh (1992), Kansas City (1985), Washington (1981).

Oh, and yay soccer.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I have no sympathy for the fair-weather fan attitude.

Your personal views on what makes a good fan notwithstanding, it's a simple fact that interest drops when your team has no real hope left in the season. And even from the hardcore fan's point of view (i.e. the type of person who won't just tune out, i.e. people like you), isn't it better to have fewer lame-duck, mean-nothing games in a season? And no, jockeying for draft position does not make for interesting games.

I don't see this as particularly worse than, say, basketball, where in the Western Conference the Lakers, Mavericks and Spurs have combined for 29 of a possible 30 playoff appearances in the last decade

The difference is that basketball has twice as many playoff slots, so the Lakers dominating doesn't prevent other teams from making playoff appearances. Now, how good the Lakers have been in the playoffs recently has arguably been bad for the game, but at least that's not a fault of the system itself.

I'm not going to let a single-season anomaly stop me from disliking the idea that a sub-.500 team can make the playoffs.

And what's wrong with that? It seems much more wrong when a team can go .600 and still not make the playoffs because 3 specific teams (two division leaders and a wildcard) happened to be better.

Regardless, in hockey/basketball, 16/30 teams make the playoffs, so you can't go much under .500 and still make them. Quibbling over the difference between 470 and 500 seems pointless.

And prior to that they averaged 65 wins a year between 1985 and 1990. You can criticize Atlanta for a lot, but they got to their power status through the draft and farming pitchers rather than just buying players.

Nowhere did I criticise Atlanta. However, because of their dominance, during those 11 years, if you played in the NL East you couldn't make the playoffs short of a one-per-league wildcard berth, which is a shit deal for those teams.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Success 'in the last 25 years' won't help float a large amount of people who are under-25 who want to care about the sport. The team closest to where I lived features a team who has never gotten past the first-round! Ever! And hasn't gone to the playoffs in 11 years! And has won one playoff game! Ever! Fair weather fan my ass. How do you even fucking develop a fanbase?

So myself, like most people who live outside the northeast, put baseball on /ignore and watch other sports. I have met like three baseball fans in my life in Oklahoma, and one of them is my older brother, who was a college baseball pitcher. I have met more hockey fans which is hilarious considering I live in one of the hottest, least hockeyfied places in the U.S.!

Oh, baseball is however excellent for taking naps. Great cure for insomnia.

[Kilgamayan]

In the case of baseball, I don't mind lame-duck mean-nothing games so much because September callups are used for those teams out of the race to showcase their future talent, which is enough of a reason for me to tune in. (Unless you're the Astros and have a farm system that looks like the Sahara.) Admittedly the immediate meaning is less because titles should be your #1 goal as far as I'm concerned, but it's arguable that using those lame-duck games to see what young talent you have on hard right now better prepares you for the future, possibly even more tanking so you can move up two spots in the draft will.

Anyway, I think the problem here is that we're defining "parity" and "success two different ways, and the Braves thing is a great example of it. You look at the mid-90s Braves and see a power success story that served to block other teams from the playoffs for a long time. I look at the mid-90s Braves and see an almost complete failure for winning exactly one World Series in their 14-year run despite having arguably one of the best rotations of all time (anything comparable to Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz should be illegal, honestly). In the case of, say, the Yankees, I don't particularly care that they've started throwing money everywhere, because they've only won one World Series since adopting that strategy (the late-90s teams were build pretty well on home-grown talent as I recall, though their pitching staffs had several big name free agents come and go). I don't have the exact numbers handy, but in terms of the number of different teams having won titles in recent years, baseball actually does pretty well. I believe it might actually have the most different champions over the last 25 years or so, but I'm not entirely sure.

Success 'in the last 25 years' won't help float a large amount of people who are under-25 who want to care about the sport. The team closest to where I lived features a team who has never gotten past the first-round! Ever! And hasn't gone to the playoffs in 11 years! And has won one playoff game! Ever! Fair weather fan my ass. How do you even fucking develop a fanbase?

Frankly, that sounds like management's fault, not the system's.

[Kilgamayan]

And, for the record, I would not mind a salary cap in baseball - as long as it comes with a salary floor.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'd define "success" mainly in ecomomic terms - do you attract fans with your play? Fans like a team that wins, of course, but also one that shows the capability of winning. It isn't just about championships, nice as they are - the Vancouver Canucks fanbase is loud and dedicated, and I don't think they've failed to sell out a game in about a decade; they've never won a Stanley Cup ever - it's about making your fans believe you could nab one. In that regard, the Braves certainly experienced success; quite apart from the fact that they -did- have a World Series title in there, they threatened for many more. I somehow doubt they had too much trouble selling tickets or TV deals, or that they lacked for people in Atlanta talking about the Braves (or, for that matter, people outside Atlanta; they were a pretty darn popular team).

A system thus should encourage situations where people believe their teams have a legit chance to win, since it's pretty clear fans like that.

You approach things like a hardcore fan of the game, which is fine, but keeping people like you happy isn't what sports are in the business of; you'll follow them regardless. If the way a sport operates is losing them their more fickle casual fanbase (as baseball is), chances are they're doing something wrong.

[Scar]

Anyways, the US needs a strong win against the remaining two teams in their bracket. They are the better team and as long as they don't screw up those games they will advance with no problems.

[Rozalia]

England should have won but these things happen and both will be going to the next round anyway. Personally I'm rooting for my two countries of origin Portugal and England, knowing Portugal though them'll find a way to mess up somehow