April
22nd – April 28th
-Metta
World Peace Concusses James Harden (April 22nd): There are
many
things that don’t make sense about Ron Artest. He has had an exceedingly odd professional
basketball career, from the time he considered retirement to become a
rapper,
to rumors of drinking cognac during games, to changing his name to
something as
ridiculous as Metta World Peace, a name so
maddeningly inappropriate to his aggressive style of play as to make
one think
it is some ironic joke he is forcing on the public.
His most infamous moment was climbing into
the stands during the Malice at the Palace to fight random fans. Of that epic moment of sports gone horribly
wrong, World Peace is still unapologetic.
Years after, he said, “It wasn't my fault...I don't see
anything I could
have done different. The only thing I could have done was have God
pause time
so I could have said, 'Oh, look, you're about to run in some stands, so
stop.” Metta
was back to his old violent ways on Sunday, crushing the back of James Harden’s skull with a vicious elbow. This incident was peculiar and nonsensical
for many reasons, including the fact that it came after a great play
from Artest which resulted in a breakaway
dunk, the fact that Artest was having a
good game against a good team, the fact
that the victim, James Harden, hadn’t been getting into it with Artest, nor does he have any history whatsoever
of being an
instigative player, and the fact that, once again, THE GUY CHANGED HIS
LAST
NAME TO WORLD PEACE! Only a fool would
believe the elbow was a heat-of-the-moment mistake; it was a
deliberate,
spiteful, and merciless display of violence by a deranged psychopath. But the NBA shrugged off the incident and
gave Artest a seven game suspension,
despite his long
history of suspensions (including a full season for his actions in the
Malice
of the Palace), which proves that suspensions do absolutely nothing in
the way
of deterring his future outbursts. The
failure of sports commissioners to issue severe punishments for hostile
acts
has allowed for a sort of sanctioned violence in our beloved
professional
leagues. Artest’s
penchant for violence is only noteworthy for his sport, whereas NHL
rosters
aren’t complete without one or two “enforcers” whose
only job is to physically
attack the other team’s players.
Football is a sport predicated on brutal violence (with or
without the
motivation of bounty programs). Even
baseball teams like to clear the benches every once and while after a
pitch drifts
a little too far off the plate and throw a few punches or get an
opponent in a
head lock. And, okay, I get it. Sports, especially at the highest level, are
played with an extreme amount of passion.
That’s how they find the drive to keep after it with such
reckless
abandon night after night, sacrificing their bodies in the eternal
struggle. And passion can easily tip
over into something resembling rage or hostility. But
hello, that’s what penal codes are in
place for: when emotion gets the better of us.
I am troubled by the disparity between the act and the
punishment; I am
not surprised by the occurrence of violence.
When a man gets too heated and hits another man in the face,
hard enough
to give him a concussion, he likely will be charged with aggravated
battery. He will be arrested, fined
extensively, subpoenaed
to appear in court, have his criminal record tarnished by a conviction,
and
possibly even be sentenced to time in jail or at the very least myriad
hours of
community service. But why is it because
Metta World Peace is wearing a Los Angeles
Lakers
jersey that he is somehow immune to appropriate punishment? Why are we surprised when the same players
act out time and time again? To me,
it’s
never a surprise. The offender will
either be a player with a history of willingness to commit aggressive
acts of
violence or a player put in a desperate situation.
Players like Artest
need to be officiated more closely and punished more severely, as his
past
discretions make him more of a potential risk.
Other times, when a game has gotten too physical to be
considered safe
or a team has taken to cheap shots to avenge an embarrassing loss, the
officials need nothing more than their own two eyes to stop the problem
before it
happens. Last year in the NBA playoffs,
the Mavericks were finishing off a humiliating sweep of the Lakers. The game was already out of hand in the
fourth quarter when Lamar Odom issued a violent hip check on Dirk Nowitzki, which was appropriately called as a
flagrant
foul. A couple plays later, Andrew Bynum
undercut JJ Barea in a blatant act of
criminality. It was more than a cheap
shot; it was a damn felony on a man half his size, who was caught
helplessly in
the air. Bynum got a five game
suspension, which he served at the start of this season.
Recognizing time and place, the officials
should have stopped things before they ever got that far.
Throw players out, tell coaches to get their
players under control, disqualify the whole team – whatever it
takes. Because the thing is: someone is
going to
die. A human life will be lost to the
violent force enacted in a game. Freak
things happen, of course; athletes of all types die tragically every
year. But I am referring to a death
resulting from
a violent, intentional act. AKA: a
murder. There is no doubt in my mind
that it will happen. For as athletically
gifted as professionals are and for how resilient the human body is, it
mostly
comes down to a question of physics.
When enough force is exerted, bones snap, spines crack, and
nervous
systems fall silent. It’s a morbid
thought, and certainly one worth preventing.
Do I have the answer to stopping this inevitable outcome? Not entirely.
But I certainly believe that ditching naivety over the actual
perpetrators of the violence would go a long way. There
should be an escalating system of
punishment, much akin to the steroids policy in baseball, whereby
repeat
offenders can be punished exponentially more than others who lose
themselves in
a fit of aggression atypical of their usual personality.
Artest, without
equivocation, is a lunatic. We let that
thug roam around the same court as the basketball greats of our
generation and
when he goes after a blossoming young star like James Harden,
it’s a vicious
reminder of how much of a threat he is to the well-being of the league. He should have been banned from basketball
long ago for his brute-like pillage through the stands in
-Matt Kemp Redefines
“Hot
Start”: On Saturday night, Matt Kemp hit a walk off home run in
the bottom of
the tenth to beat the Washington Nationals.
It was yet another example of the player with the most momentum
getting
the hit in the clutch, evidencing that other intangible explanations
for clutch
hitting are mostly nonsense, but aside from that, it seemed to be an
adamant
punctuation on what many are calling the best start to any season of
all
time. True, Larry Walker’s start to
the
1997 season was probably better (better average, better OBP, more extra
base
hits, more runs scored, more RBI) but he was benefited by playing the
majority
of those games at Coors Field hitting in the middle of a stacked
late-90’s
Rockies lineup. Barry Bonds’ 2004
season
likely would have blown Kemp out of the water if it wasn’t so
easy to just walk
him. Kemp has walked 13 times thus far
this season. In 2004, Barry had already
walked 39 times after the same amount of games.
In April alone of the start of that season, Bonds reached based
64 times
in 92 at bats, for a mind-boggling OBP of .697 (still managing 10 home
runs and
22 RBI in that time). Still, Kemp
doesn’t have to top everyone else who ever played baseball to
make our jaws
drop with his insane early season production.
He is hitting .417, has 12 home runs, 25 RBI, 24 runs scored,
and a
staggering 1.383 OPS. He leads the
National League in any statistical category worth a damn: BA, HR, RBI,
R, SLG,
OPS, and on and on. Most importantly,
Kemp has led the Dodgers to a blistering 16-6 start, playing for a
franchise
that has been turned inside out by one of the strangest owner fiascos
in the
history of professional sports. Kemp is
currently projected to end the season with 85 home runs and 176 RBI. I’d bet my last nickel he won’t
quite get
there, but even if he maintains any semblance of his torrid start, he
will end
with some gaudy, legendary numbers of the type we just don’t see
any more. For fun, I decided to see how
much Kemp’s
production would be worth compared to the salary of another player. Kemp is getting paid $10,250,000 this season,
but what would his stat-adjusted salary be if he were to replace a
different
player? Completely at random (Wink
Wink), I
selected Albert Pujols to do this
calculation. Pujols
is getting
paid $12,000,000 this season and his batting average is .220. Because Kemp is hitting .417, he would
deserve a salary of $22,745,545 for outperforming Pujols. But the adjusted salary changes depending on
which stat you utilize. For example, if
we adjusted for RBI production, Kemp’s 25 RBI, over Pujols’
4, would earn him $75,000,000 this season.
Finally, if we adjust for home run production, though
technically Kemp
would earn infinitely more than Pujols,
because Pujols has yet to hit a home run,
Kemp would earn twelve
times Pujols’ salary, making a tidy
$144,000,000. And, if nothing else, that
would buy plenty
of Dodger Dogs.