Don’t Leave Early -- You Might Miss Something

So today we’re all remembering Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe faux pas from a little over a year ago. I suppose that’s where all of this stuff started.

We must have reached a point in our shared cultural history where we were all getting a little too comfortable with the idea that “it’s all been done” or we’ve “seen it all before.” Like lifetime poker players who’ve been one-outed on the river enough times to be numb to it, we were all lulled into thinking we could safely shut the teevee off before the end and not miss anything.

Just off the top of my head here, I’m thinking back to that absurd second-round game in last year’s NCAA playoffs between Texas A&M and Northern Iowa, the one in which the Aggies were down 12 with just 44 seconds left in regulation and somehow managed to tie the sucker -- without even calling a timeout (!) -- and win in double-OT.

You have to think a few folks shut the set off before the conclusion of that one.

Sports provided a couple more similarly preposterous finishes last year, highlighted by the Cleveland Cavaliers overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the NBA finals to defeat the seemingly unbeatable Golden State Warriors. Then came the Chicago Cubs similarly coming back from 3-1 down (and from a 108-year title drought) to beat the Cleveland Indians, although not until after the Indians stunningly scored three runs late to tie things up (with an apocalyptic-seeming rain delay prior to extra innings adding further to the delirium).

Then came election night, another stunner for many that seemed to take a crazy turn mid-evening when all of the projections suddenly swung the other way. And of course that completely loopy 25-point comeback engineered by the New England Patriots against the Atlanta Falcons to win Super Bowl 51 is still fresh in everyone’s minds, a game that absolutely no one other than perhaps the Pats thought could possibly play out the way it did.

Vera and I watched the beginning of the Oscars last night, but didn’t bother to stick it out until the end. We hadn’t seen most of the movies. Indeed, we probably only go to the theater about once every other month or so, if that.

Whenever Vera and I do go to the movies, we have a routine where we always stay through the end credits, which invariably makes us the last two people to exit the place. Not sure why we do that, to be honest, although by doing so we necessarily catch any of those funny little post-credits like Ferris Bueller telling the audience to leave or the rider still waiting in Ted Striker’s cab in Airplane!

We were curious to see how the Oscars started, then, but not engaged enough to stick with it. Vera did, however, ask me to DVR the rest before we gave up. I didn’t ask to add the extension when recording, and while I haven’t checked it yet I’m sure I didn’t get the ending as I understand it ran quite late.

I’ve heard about it though, of course, and watched a clip this morning of the remarkable gaffe that saw the wrong film named as best picture, and multiple acceptance speeches being given before the correction came. Seemed fitting, I guess, after more than a year’s worth of such improbable twist-endings.

Hang around poker tournaments enough and you see examples of players all in and at risk leaving the table before the last card is dealt, sometimes when they are still drawing live. Every once in a while -- I’ve seen it happen maybe three or four times -- the departing player’s unlikely runner-runner actually comes, leading to the player having to be recalled to the table by staff or a friendly opponent.

After all of these head-spinning conclusions, gotta think people are going to stop being in such a hurry to get to the exits. Now everyone is going to start sticking around past the end.

For an explanation of all this that is fun -- or frightening, depending on your point of view -- check out Adam Gopnik’s piece for The New Yorker today, “Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?”

Image: “ P1080262,” Jon Seidman. CC BY 2.0.

The Shape of the World

Kyrie Irving, the star guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers who hit the winning shot in Game 7 of last year’s NBA Finals, believes the earth is flat. No, really.

When I first heard the story a few days ago, I thought perhaps it was a prank of some sort being pulled by Irving, meant to illustrate how outrageously easy it is to manipulate social media, which in turn makes it trivially simple to make any sort of absurdity go “viral.” After all, if you had thought about it a week ago, the idea that Kyrie Irving believes the earth is flat probably would have seemed almost as unlikely as the earth actually being flat.

But, no. He wasn’t joking. Given that Irving spent part of a year at Duke University before going pro provides this UNC fan a ready opening, of course. But I’m more interested in a larger issue connected to this story.

Irving made his position known on an episode of a podcast hosted by two of his Cleveland teammates, Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye. Amid talk of conspiracy theories, Irving mentioned his view about the planet’s shape, defending it as not a conspiracy but a fact (in his estimation). “If you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel,” Irving explained, “the way we move... can you really think of us rotating around the sun, and all planets align, rotating in specific dates...?”

There’s more, but it’s hardly worth transcribing. The gist of his position is to insist that “there’s a falseness in stories and things that people want you to believe and ultimately what they throw in front of us.” Or, to put it another way, “I think people should do their own research, man.”

Some, like NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, shared my initial, skeptical response to the story of Irving’s skepticism and tried to contextualize Irving’s comment in a way that made it seem less patently ignorant. “He was trying to be provocative and it was effective,” Silver said, reflecting on Irving’s own later comments about the furor he’d created.

“I think it was a larger comment on the sort of fake news debate that’s going on right now... and it led to a larger discussion,” added Silver, who didn’t omit appending the sanity-affirming disclaimer “I personally believe the world is round.”

The denial of objective truth is difficult to combat. It’s quite challenging to convince a superstitious poker player who refuses to accept that the cards dealt on one hand are wholly independent of the cards next on the next one that the “pattern” he perceives is in truth wholly subjective and not at all meaningful. You have to find some sort of common ground even to communicate with someone refusing to accept something as fundamentally obvious as the planet’s shape, rotation, and orbital path.

Existentialism encourages us to make our meaning, emphasizing subjective experience over the blind acceptance of received ideas about “reality” -- that is, not to receive “what they throw in front of us” without applying a little of our own rational analysis as a test. That doesn’t preclude, however, accepting certain (nominally) objective truths, even tentatively. Like, say, the laws of physics.

If Irving really understood the science, he’d understand how gravity works, which explains why when he launches a basketball skyward it comes back down toward the spherical planet’s center and doesn’t careen toward the center of his imagined “flat” earth, wherever that might be (one of dozens of easy-to-observe phenomena proving the earth’s roundness). Irving apparently hasn’t considered this or if he has he doesn’t find convincing the evidence he necessarily witnesses every waking moment of his life.

Silver -- who probably doesn’t care too much about one of the league’s stars espousing what might be called “fake science” -- grabs that “fake news” thread, trying to suggest that Irving was himself making some sort of point about the need to be skeptical amid what can certainly be a confusing climate of reporting and news-sharing.

But that kind of twists what Irving was saying. Rather, he was only referring to his incredulity that people would care so damn much about his position that the earth is flat.

“There are so many real things going on, actual, like, things that are going on that’s changing the shape, the way of our lives,” Irving told ESPN a couple of days after the initial blast. In other words, he doesn’t view the news of his belief as being “real” or “actual” (as in “significant”) compared to other, more important issues.

Irving even unwittingly puns on the word “shape,” saying (to paraphrase) that we should concern ourselves much more with the things certain people are currently doing to shape our world in a figurative sense than with the literal shape he imagines the world to be.

I agree with Irving on that point. In other words, I’m glad to know that our perspectives regarding the world in which we both live overlap at least in this way. I’m also more worried about the “things going on that’s changing the shape” of our world -- particularly about the people who are doing those “things” -- than about Irving’s flat-earth folly.

I’m additionally concerned, though, when the people shaping our world seem influenced by ideas about it that are easily discovered to be false.

Need examples? People can do their own research, man.

Image: “Fragile Planet,” Dave Ginsberg. CC BY 2.0.

Goals and Outcomes

Cleveland finally did it. Was a highly entertaining finale to the NBA season last night.

LeBron James gets the hero title, of course, even if Kyrie Irving was the one hitting the game-winner. Meanwhile the Warriors couldn’t find a hero of their own despite a valiant effort from Draymond Green to play that role. I want to say relying on three-pointer necessarily invites the sort of variance shown last night (GS hot in first half, cold in second), although the way the Dubs shot from the arc this year they seemed to challenge that oft-cited claim to the point of making us all doubt it actually applied to them.

James’s streak of going to six straight finals (four with Miami, two with Cleveland) and winning three is remarkable. The whole going-back-home narrative is intriguing, too, no matter where you happen to stand on “King James.”

Speaking of going home, looks like the Cavs hit Vegas last night on their way back to Ohio. That’s where I was the last two times the NBA Finals featured a Game 7 -- in 2010 and 2013 -- so it was fun to be able to sit down and actually watch such an event this time around.

Incidentally, Jason Mercier’s last seven days in Vegas have been something else, too, with the two bracelet wins a runner-up, and his securing added bounties of all those many side bets. It feels like this summer the side action is in some cases overwhelming the main prize pools, creating some added storylines.

Looking back at my post from Friday, I made a few predictions for Game 7, although most were non-specific enough to have a better than average shot of being accurate.

There’s no doubt the Warriors suffered a most ignominious conclusion to their record-setting season, becoming the first team to lose a 3-1 lead in the finals.

I also said the Cavs wouldn’t be as consistently brilliant as they’d been in the previous two games (they weren’t) and the Warriors wouldn’t be as consistently bad (they weren’t either). Suggested there would be evidence of some nerves, too, especially at the start and the finish, and that’s exactly what happened as the game started very slowly, then both teams had trouble scoring during the endgame (with GS incredibly going the last four-and-a-half minutes without scoring a point).

In a way all of these predictions were a little like “side action,” not unlike prop bets or inventing other in-game contests to up the interest level.

My “hot take” on Friday was to suggest there’d be a controversial call (or non-call) that many would highlight after the game as having affected the outcome, but I can’t really say that happened. There were a few missed calls and questionable fouls during the course of the game, but on the whole the refs did an admirable job, I thought, and I noticed nothing especially egregious down the stretch when it really was a situation when a single whistle could’ve changed everything.

In fact, the only example I can think of was Andre Iguodala’s block of LeBron James’s layup with exactly three minutes to go in which Iguodala got mostly hand and little ball.

As it turned out, it was over at the U.S. Open where it looked as though a ruling really would inordinately affect the outcome. I won’t go into the whole story of the delayed one-stroke penalty assessed to eventual winner Dustin Johnson -- you can read about it here -- but will say it seemed a terrible example of the rules and the mechanism of enforcing the rules potentially overwhelming the players’ control over the competition.

Can’t say I had much of a rooting interest in that one, although like most I was glad to see Johnson overcome what seemed an unfair circumstance to succeed. Didn’t really have a rooting interest in Cavs-Dubs, either, which I realized I was glad about as the fourth quarter was winding down.

I was flashing back both to this year’s Super Bowl (where my Panthers fell) and the NCAA final (where my Heels lost a heartbreaker). It’s much less stressful watching without such intense feelings about how the sucker is going to turn out.

Makes it easier, too, to be less critical of the refs. Without a focus on perspective-altering goals, outcomes can be more clearly assessed.

Image: “Basketball Net” (adapted), Akash Kataruka. CC BY-ND 2.0.

A Game Seven Hot Take

So the NBA Finals has turned into some kind of weird, twisty-turney soap opera with six fairly non-competitive games resulting in a 3-3 tie between Golden State and Cleveland. Even if Game 7 results in yet another blowout, it will nonetheless provide an intriguing climax to an unexpectedly gripping series to punctuate the season.

One sure-fire prediction -- whoever loses the game will be forced to endure an incredible letdown. For the Warriors, it would mean failing to cap a record-breaking regular season with a title. The Cavs would similarly suffer greatly with a loss, coming one step shy of completing a never-before-accomplished comeback from 3-1 down in the finals to lose in the finals a second straight time.

I’ll add a few other predictions I’m less sure of, but in which I’m still reasonably confident. The Cavs probably won’t be as consistently brilliant as they were in Games 5 and 6. Neither will the Warriors be as consistently bad. Both will likely show some evidence of nerves, too, especially early in the game and perhaps again near the end (depending on the closeness of the score).

But here’s a less obvious prediction I’ll throw on top of the bonfire of “hot takes” that’s already starting to build, will grow higher by Sunday night, then disappear like so much ash in the wind once a result is determined. This one is probably contingent on the game being close at some point beyond the start -- i.e., in the second half, either early or late.

Here’s the “hot take”...

From the referees there will be a judgment call (or non-call) that will be agreed upon afterwards by most viewers to have affected the game’s outcome.

Every sport adjudicated by human beings involves some degree of error. Happens in poker, too, when rulings based on partial or even incorrect evidence sometimes occur, or even incorrect rulings based on clear and complete (and misunderstood or misinterpreted) evidence occasionally arise.

Over the course of an NBA basketball game, refs collectively make hundreds of decisions. They never make it through an entire game getting every decision correct, although generally do hit the mark on most of them. I’m not predicting (necessarily) that there will be an incorrect decision that will affect the outcome of Sunday night’s game; rather, I’m suggesting that some judgment call (which may or may not involve bad judgment and thus an incorrect decision) will be considered by most watching as having inordinately affected the outcome.

I guess my prediction itself involves a kind of judgment, although I’m saying most of those watching will come to the same conclusion that a key call (or non-call) more or less decided the game. It’s a prediction partly about the game and partly about how it will be discussed Monday morning, and it’s based both on the way the NBA games currently are officiated and tend to play out and the way games are scrutinized and discussed today.

Within a minute or two, the call (or non-call) will be a Vine, delivered instantly like an outlet pass starting a fast break all over the web. And many will be hot, hot, hot about what they are sharing.

Image: Emojipedia.

Surrender, But Don’t Give Yourself Away

Am following those NBA finals, natch, and intrigued by this phenomenon that’s been occurring here and there throughout the playoffs -- teams falling behind by double-digits, then essentially getting “knocked out” early in games that subsequently become lopsided, ending with margins of 15 or more.

That’s what happened to the Golden State Warriors in Game 3 in their game in Cleveland versus the Cavaliers. Happened a couple of times to the Dubs during the Oklahoma City series, too, causing them to fall to a dangerous 3-1 deficit before they stormed back to clinch that one.

Other teams have shown that tendency as well. Just went back counted and out of 82 playoff games so far 33 of them have been decided by 15 or more (just over 40%) -- including all three so far in the finals -- with well over half having ended with wins by at least double-digits.

I don’t know if this is typical or not for the NBA playoffs, but it’s sure seemed like there have been more blowouts than normal this year. Feels as though a lot of it has to do with fatigue -- that teams get down, then reach a “tipping point” of sorts where the energy needed to mount a comeback either isn’t available or needs to be conserved in order to remain competitive in the next game.

“On to the next one,” teams seem to be saying, although in a few cases the “next one” has meant next season, as the blowouts have happened in series clinchers. More often than not, that’s what has happened to all this season’s losers of the year.

It reminds me a little of “taking a hand off” (so to speak) in poker after having gotten involved in several in a row, or even just one important one that required an extra dose of attention and focus.

It’s the sort of thing that makes the more conspiracy-minded fans (and sports bettors) wonder about things being “rigged” somehow, since technically speaking teams are more or less conceding games (without giving it away that’s what is happening).

But like I say I think it’s probably just the product of the natural rhythm of energy and attention available to non-perfect humans, perhaps exaggerated somewhat given the challenge of such a long season.

In other words, the Dubs are all right, the Cavs are all right, they just seem a little weird.

Image: “A white flag,” Viktorvoigt. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Watching the Super High Roller Bowl

I actually had Day 1 of the 2016 Super High Roller Bowl on from start-to-finish yesterday.

Took a little while for the live stream to work out the kinks during the first hour or so, but the PokerCentral channel finally got up to speed and I had it on the teevee via the Roku. Then starting at 7 p.m. ET I switched over to the CBS Sports Network (which I rarely watch but thankfully get) and left it running all night until 3 a.m.

That’s not to say I paid close attention every step of the way, and indeed I think that would have been hard to do even for dedicated televised poker watchers. But I watched a lot, generally enjoying the show and tolerating well enough all of those Dollar Shave Club commercials.

We’ve been listening to Ali Nejad do poker play-by-play for a decade now, and he was solid as usual. Nick Schulman was doing commentary as well. I haven’t heard him do a lot before, but he was an absolute natural (I thought), very funny and quick with Nejad while also giving good analysis, often smartly directed toward a wide audience.

Interestingly, a $300K buy-in “super” high roller doesn’t really provide all that much novelty anymore. Or excitement, even, given how common six-figure buy-in events have become since they first started cropping up in early 2011. But this free-to-play “MVMT Million Dollar Final Table Challenge” game being put on by PokerCentral and MVMT watches has added an extra incentive to follow this one, even if the challenge being presented by the contest is all but impossible to meet.

You probably heard about it. Seven players will cash in this tournament, splitting a $15 million prize pool with $5 milly going to the winner. For those who entered the contest, guessing all seven cashers correctly -- in order -- wins a $1 million prize. (No shinola.) And if no one gets that, the closest to doing so wins $10,000, with the top 25 getting fancy watches.

Sure, as Fedor Holz (one of the players who I’ve picked to make my final table) joked on Twitter yesterday, “Don't miss the 0,000006$ EV and bet the Final Table order in this 300k @PokerCentral #SuperHighRollerBowl #value.” Even so, the game added a bit of fun to watching, and the ability to change your line-up at the end of Day 1 (and jettison those who had already busted) enables that to continue into today for most who are playing along.

Just for fun, I pulled together an article on Friday for PokerNews titled “Finding a Million-Dollar Strategy for Picking the Super High Roller Bowl Winners.” I didn’t really pretend to present a sure-fire strategy for playing what is mostly a lottery-like contest, but rather went through and gave a history of sorts for all 49 players in events with buy-ins of $100K or more. That is to say, I shared how many times each had cashed in such events before (or not, as some never have), not being able to share also how many times the players had entered super high rollers.

I then picked a final table comprised of dudes who’d gotten to the money in these things many times. Two of my original picks -- Scott Seiver and Isaac Haxton -- didn’t make it to today’s second day of play, and so before the window closed to change picks I swapped them out for Timofey Kuznetsov and Daniel Negreanu (both of whom finished Day 1 with big stacks).

Looking at past super high rollers seems as good a way as any to play a game like this. I was just reading this afternoon an ESPN article by Bill Barnwell discussing tonight’s Game 7 between the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder (which is going to interrupt my SHRB viewing for certain). He essentially did something similar, going back through history and looking for examples of teams who like OKC blew Game 6 leads in which they’d have clinched series (both in basketball and baseball), then seeing how they did in Game 7s.

In truth I think the only people who can truly handicap something like this are the players themselves, as they know more than anyone the relative skill level and potential for success of those who are participating.

Anyhow, that’s my card up top. Wish me -- and those seven guys listed above -- luck.

Travel Report: EPT12 Grand Final, Arrival -- From Green to Blue

Bonjour mes amis. I am writing late on a Monday night from a hotel in Monaco, having arrived here earlier today. It’s my home-away-from-home for the next couple of weeks as I’ll be helping with the reporting from the European Poker Tour’s final stop of Season 12.

Took the red-eye to London, then had another two-hour hop down to Nice. Both flights were fine, with the first half of the transatlantic one occupied by dinner and a viewing of Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Had seen it long ago, of course, but this time through watched with a much more thorough understanding of the different conspiracies Stone weaves together to create his narrative. Also knew practically all of the bit players introduced throughout the story -- i.e., the historical versions, I mean -- and so was even aware of embellishments and omissions here and there.

The all-encompassing monologue delivered by Donald Sutherland’s “Mr. X” (based on L. Fletcher Prouty) is the great highlight, of course, signaling a recognition, I think, that the scope of the mystery is ultimately too great for any single person to be capable of tackling alone. In other words, a conspiracy of investigators (which now would have to involve members of several different generations) would have to come together in order to unravel fully a conspiracy that resulted in JFK’s killing.

A shuttle carried me from Nice to Monaco, one I shared with Jason Mercier and Natasha Barbour, both here to play, of course. Talked playoffs with Mercier a bit, as he’s a Heat fan and I’m for the Hornets, although I’m not too enthusiastic about Charlotte’s chances against Miami.

Took it easy during the afternoon, then met up with several of the fellas for a delicious dinner at an Italian place called Risotrante Mozza located not too far from where we’re staying. For an appetizer had insalata tiepida di polpo, that is, a salad with potatoes and octopus that was mouthwateringly flavorful. Then it was pizza for the main course, the tartufo featuring truffle and potato slices with rocket salad on top, also delicious.

Expect to have a few more nice meals along the way here, although there will be the occasional 20-euro cheeseburger thrown in as well.

Weather here is comparable to back home -- blue skies, sunny, and a light wind making it very spring-like. The deep blue water of the Mediterranean Sea out back (see above) contrasts sharply with the green on the farm, though, which I’m already missing as Vera sends me another picture of Sammy, Maggie, and our yearling, Ruby (a.k.a., the “Roobster”).

It’ll be a late start tomorrow as the first big event, the €10,000 Single Re-Entry High Roller, doesn’t get going until 6 p.m. local time. You can follow reports over on the PokerStars blog.

Gonna try while here to provide some brief reports on the blog each night after things conclude. Have a big day, in terms of the history of Hard-Boiled Poker, coming up this Thursday, though, where I may have to write about something else, too. Any guesses what that might be?

The Attraction of Audacity

We love audacity. Love it. Of that I am convinced.

There are many different types of human behavior or accomplishment that fall under that heading, of course -- boldness, courage, outlandishness, novelty... even rudeness (when not directed toward us personally). But all of it fascinates and therefore attracts our attention, and often our approbation, too.

Think about it. Audacity is often attractive. It’s true in politics. It’s true in entertainment. It’s true in poker, too -- why else would we all have become so infatuated with such a long sequence of daring, intrepid players with “alligator blood”?

It’s true in sports as well.

I sat up late last night with a lot of you watching those two regular season-ending NBA games -- the one in which Golden State defeated Memphis to finish 73-9 and set a new standard for wins in a season behind Stephen Curry’s out-of-this-world shooting, and the other in which the L.A. Lakers came back to beat Utah behind Kobe Bryant’s jawdropping 60-point performance.

Both Curry and Bryant were utterly audacious, although in different ways.

Curry hit 10 three-pointers and in his usual effortless-seeming manner tallied 46 points in just three quarters before sitting the fourth. He also finished the season with 402 three-pointers, breaking his own record set last season of -- get this -- 286! That’s a Bob Beamonesque leap ahead. Outrageous!

Then there was Kobe, shooting 50 times last night (!), something he’d never done in 20 years in the league. In fact, no one has shot that many times in a game in 33 years. (Again, outrageous!) Sixteen of those shots came in the fourth quarter, during which he reached the 40-point plateau, then hit 50, then after hitting a go-ahead basket finished with 60 even, the most of any player this season.

Different degress of audacity -- Curry’s more smooth and masterly, Bryant’s kind of stubborn and ferocious. But similar in that in each case an individual played and performed in a way that completely transcended the idea of a team game. (Or “undermined,” I suppose some might say of Bryant’s unembarrassed and endorsed-by-all ball-hog-itude.)

Both were a lot of fun to follow, too, and almost impossible not to enjoy.

Breaking the Game

Watched that Golden State Warriors-Oklahoma City Thunder game on Saturday night, the one in which Stephen Curry capped off a truly jaw-dropping week by draining a game-winning jumper from 32 feet (or so) for a record-tying 12th three-pointer of the game. Take a look:

I’ve already written here once this season about Curry and the Warriors. I freely admit I’m kind of fascinated by both the player and the team (now 53-5 and a genuine threat to break the ’95-’96 Bulls record of 72 wins in a season), as well as this idea that they’re somehow “breaking” the game with their unprecedented efficiency.

Curry made 12 of 16 three-pointers on Saturday, scoring 46. That was two nights after getting 51 against Orlando via 10 three-pointers, 10 two-pointers, and a free throw. The night before that he scored 42 (with “just” six threes) and back on Monday he scored 36 (with five from beyond the arc).

You might’ve heard some of these crazy percentages Curry has been shooting from especially long range. I’d seen one stat prior to the OKC game that he was 35-of-52 on shots between 28 and 50 feet (the range from which he fired up Saturday’s game winner). No shinola.

If a player shot 52 lay-ups and made them all, that’d be 104 points. Curry meanwhile had scored 105 points shooting 52 shots from 28-50 feet.

I used to play a lot of pickup ball. I remember once getting into a series of games with a dude who would frequently launch shots from 30 feet or so, hitting just enough of them to keep his teammates from getting too angry about him doing so.

It was a little disruptive, in a way, causing not just his team but the defense also to play differently in expectation of the long one going up yet again. Rather than chase our guy around in a standard man-to-man, we essentially had to start blocking out as soon as the dude crossed midcourt. Makes me think a little of what occasionally will happen in microstakes games online when a crazy raiser gets bored and starts shoving every single hand, necessarily changing the game for everyone.

But these latter examples of the pickup game pooh-bah and the maniac at the micros only partly parallel Curry, who can also very ably make his way inside that 28-foot arc where everyone else is and play it “straight.”

I guess that’s what makes what Curry is doing even more remarkable to watch -- the fact that he doesn’t have to make shots from 32 feet to be the best player on the floor, but he can do that, too.

Games, Grins, and Meadowlark

Was sad to read this morning about the passing of Meadowlark Lemon, the famous Harlem Globetrotter and North Carolina native. Spent time this morning reading about his interesting life, then remembering the time when as a kid I had a chance to see Lemon and the Globetrotters in the late 1970s.

It had to have been one of Lemon’s last games with the team, as I’m being reminded today he left the Globetrotters in 1978 after 22 years with the barnstorming group of riotous roundballers. They played the Washington Generals, natch. And beat them, natch. Lemon sunk a hook shot from half-court, tossed a water cooler full of confetti on spectators in the first row, and shot a free throw with rubberbands attached to the ball so it sprung back into his hands.

As a kid I recall that the distinction between the Globetrotters and other basketball teams -- i.e., “real” ones such as in the NBA -- wasn’t exactly one hundred percent clear. Eventually I figured out their games were more like highly entertaining exhibitions than actual competitions, but I don’t think I understood that to be the case that night at the Greensboro Coliseum when I saw them.

Of course, the Globetrotters were always about making audiences laugh and have fun, with basketball serving as a kind of unique comedic medium in which to perform their specialized brand of theater. That Lemon was inducted into both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Clown Hall of Fame is fitting, given how his contributions were equally significant in both realms.

I often write about poker being about more than simply winning money or even competing, but like other games (and sports) also about enjoying others’ company and also perhaps participating in a kind of “show” in which the players are the performers. Poker also obviously brings together people of disparate backgrounds, providing a context to interact and even create communities among themselves. Basketball (and other sports) function similarly for many as well.

Doyle Brunson was also a basketball player, and in The Godfather of Poker he writes a bit about other parallels between the sport and the card game. There’s also a chapter in there near the middle where Brunson describes a kind of crisis of faith he endured following the death of his daughter, Doyla. In the early 1980s he got reacquainted with Christianity and even for about a year-and-a-half helped organize some “Bible studies” among players in Las Vegas. To make things more interesting, he’d bring in celebrity speakers and Meadowlark Lemon -- who’d become an ordained minister in 1986 -- was one of them.

One other thought comes to mind when searching for connections between the Harlem Globetrotters and poker. As the Globetrotters became more and more popular during the 1970s -- a true pop culture phenomenon -- they helped make basketball more popular, too. Many point to that moment at the end of the 1970s and start of the 1980s when the NBA really took off (with Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and a little later Michael Jordan), saying how the Globetrotters had kind of set the stage for that explosion in popularity some respects by having brought b-ball to larger audiences in the preceding years.

The Globetrotters played what might be called an “exaggerated” version of the game, a somewhat distorted image perhaps which -- as I mentioned before -- as a kid I didn’t necessarily realize was all that different from “real” basketball. Poker kind of underwent something like that, too, with the “boom” of televised poker in the 2000s and a presentation that introduced poker to many in a kind of “exaggerated” fashion that wasn’t exactly what most poker really was (or is).

I guess there’s something about that image of the Globetrotters in a circle, passing the ball around as “Sweet Georgia Brown” whistles along as the soundtrack, that resembles a poker table, too.

Except it’s chips we’re passing back and forth, not a ball. And perhaps doing a few tricks with as well.

Kiddin’ Around

So much of what adults do can be regarded as exaggerated versions of children’s behavior.

For all the ways poker resembles or can be regarded as a variation of other “mature” endeavors like, say, a business negotiation, a political conflict, a type of social intercourse, and so on, it also simulates entirely playful diversions such as kids pursue so earnestly. After all, the game does involve a lot of pushing around of cards with different shapes, numbers, and pictures on them, not to mention passing tiddly-winks back and forth according to an agreed upon set of procedures.

Vera was scrolling through the channels on the teevee yesterday and for a while settled on some show involving artists (of a sort) who painted bodies. Like so many shows, this tiny little creative niche had been made into a competition (“reality TV”-style), with judges and votes and so on. The program reminded me of kids’ doodles in the margins of notebooks, just elaborated much more thoroughly and overlayed with a patina of weightiness.

Also enjoyed some of the funny business conducted by several NBA players over Twitter yesterday, the kind-of-hilarious “emoji war” that served as a comical chorus to the whole DeAndre Jordan flip-flop whereby after verbally agreeing to sign with the Dallas Mavericks, he changed his mind (as allowed) and decided to stay on with the Los Angeles Clippers.

I won’t sort through all of the details of that story -- here’s a good recap of it all that also includes several of the tweets players were sending out with emojis as well as photos attached, many of which were very clever and highly amusing.

Couldn’t help grinning both at some of the tweets as well as the whole idea of adults communicating via little pictures in this way, never mind the fact that the context for the whole conversation was a business deal involving more than $85 million.

Was like poker, I guess. And other things adults do that kids do, too. Make pictures. Doodle. Compete. Laugh and play.

Long-Term vs. Short-Term Success in the NBA Finals

Got back to the farm from Savannah in decent shape earlier today after a very fun, quick visit.

Yesterday afternoon Vera and I took one of those trolley tours around the city, then ended up walking even more as we explored just about all of the 22 different squares contained within the very pedestrian-friendly city. Had to laugh at one point about how convenient the city happens to be laid out, something I greatly appreciated thanks to my notoriously bad sense of direction. Was easy to stay oriented the entire time, given all those friendly right angles.

Did manage to watch Game 4 of the NBA Finals last night back in the Nixon room, which I realized today kind of illustrated in miniature a truth about the difference between short-term and long-term success.

After losing two of the first three games of the finals, Golden State coach Steve Kerr went with a smaller starting line-up last night, a move many had been discussing as a possibility before the game.

The argument against changing the line-up was essentially rooted in the team’s overwhelming success during the regular season and previous playoff series, a sample size considered large enough to support the argument that a change wouldn’t be welcome. But recognizing the match-ups presented by Cleveland and the potential advantage that could come from the change, Kerr opted to make the move.

That wasn’t the illustration of the difference between short-term and long-term success to which I’m referring, though. Cleveland jumped out to a 7-0 lead to start the game, and I recall seeing tweets in my feed right away suggesting the new Warrior line-up was a big mistake. Kerr called a quick time-out -- they were barely two minutes into the game -- and talked to his team.

They did one of those “Wired” segments a little later sharing a snippet of Kerr’s comments to his team during that time-out. “They’ve got a lot of energy right now with their crowd,” Kerr said. “But over 48 minutes, they’re playing seven people -- they’re gonna wear down.”

It’s true -- during the first three games of the series, Golden State played 10 players each game, with Cleveland playing only eight (and in truth, only six or seven of those got significant minutes). And as it happened, Kerr was dead right about the Cavs wearing down during Game 4, as the Warriors easily pulled away in the fourth quarter to win by 21.

The game played out very much like a cash session in which a lesser-skilled player enjoys a fortunate start to win the first few pots at the outset, then gets grinded down to the felt by better opponents over the course of the longer session.

The best-of-seven format obviously favors better-skilled teams, especially those with a solid bench as Golden State has, thus making it less likely for an underdog to get “lucky” as could happen in a one-and-done format. But you can even compare short-term and long-term success in a single game, looking at the relative significance of a few plays compared to the nearly 200 possessions the two teams will have.

Crazy Parallels

“When are the finals already? Or did the NBA decide to do the November Nine thing, too?”

Tweeted that last night while waiting out yet another off day until the NBA Finals finally gets started tomorrow following a seven-day gap since the end of the last round.

Really does feel like a WSOP Main Event-style delay, with all the banged-up players getting a chance to recover before the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors finally get on the court.

Today I saw ESPN explaining how the two teams’ best players -- Stephen Curry and LeBron James -- were in fact born in the same hospital in Akron, Ohio, about three years and three months apart. It’s true!

Speaking of crazy parallels, Tuan Le’s victory in the $10K 2-7 Triple Draw event yesterday (Event No. 7) was kind of nuts, given that he’d won the same event a year ago.

Earlier this week Robert Mizrachi also won another bracelet after winning one a year ago, taking down the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo (Event No. 3). That’s his third bracelet and 35th WSOP cash. Was listening to the latest Two Plus Two Pokercast where they pointed out only one other person has exactly three bracelets and 35 cashes -- Michael Mizrachi.

Of course that’s nothing compared to what happened tonight at the conclusion of the $565 Colossus (Event No. 5). Out of 22,374 entries, two guys rooming together in Las Vegas this summer made the final table -- and they nearly made it to heads-up.

Ray Henson started today ninth of nine, but climbed all of the way back into the chip lead for a time before falling in third. Then his roomie Cord Garcia won the sucker. (That is Garcia on the left above with Henson on the right just after the latter busted.)

Both are from Houston and have known each other for 10 years and are rooming together, which seems too wild to be true.

But it is true. All of it. No shinola!

Ever Heard of the “Silent Bowl”?

Was reading an article over at the newly-designed ESPN site this afternoon about the NBA playoffs in which there was a reference to LeBron James’s practice of watching recorded games with the sound down. In the article his teammate Kyrie Irving noted how he’s picked up the habit, too.

“One of the things I took from Bron is putting the games on mute and just listen to music while you watch the game,” Irving is quoted as saying. “No disrespect to the announcers or halftime show, but you want to be in silence. Watch good basketball, high-intensity basketball, just watch the game.”

I love watching basketball, and indeed sometimes will have games on with the sound down as it is eminently easy to follow nearly everything without the commentators. More often than not I’ll keep the sound up, but it’s not a problem at all knowing where things stand at any moment after hitting that mute button.

The story reminded me of an NFL game from way back in 1980 aired on NBC, a late-season contest between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins that came to be known as the “Silent Bowl.” In an effort to boost ratings for a meaningless regular season game between a couple of mediocre teams, Don Ohlmeyer (then the executive producer of the network’s sports division) came up with the experiment.

A quick search about that game took me to a feature about it from a few years back on the ESPN site. There a few more details about the broadcast are shared, including how NBC used more graphics than usual while also having the stadium’s public address announcer make more descriptive comments to help viewers track the action.

They didn’t have the score on screen at all times, though, nor an inset showing the clock. In fact, those didn’t become regular features for televised football until 1994 (later than I would have guessed).

Ratings were higher for the game than would have been expected without the gimmick, and apparently response to the broadcast was more favorable than not, although no one ever thought for a moment that announcerless games would ever become the norm. From the perspective of three decades later, Ohlmeyer sounds like he kinda sorta regrets being remembered for the stunt, but I think it was an interesting idea to have tried.

While not perfectly analogous, televised poker seems as though it cannot do without commentators (even though some live streams -- including at the WSOP -- have tried to do without). That said, I spend a fair share of time watching online poker tournaments which though not necessarily nail-biting are nonetheless easy enough to follow given all of the detailed information available -- including “instant replay,” even.

Now that I think about it, I turn the sound down for that and listen to music, too.

Playing By the Book, Playing By Feel

Almost exactly two years ago I wrote a post here about the 27-game winning streak of the Miami Heat which had just been snapped, in particular focusing on Shane Battier’s level-headed comments afterwards which evoked the idea of an intelligent poker player recognizing he’d been on the good side of variance for longer than should be expected.

“What’s amazing is that we’ve avoided that for so long,” said Battier, referring to the “garden-variety road loss” to the Chicago Bulls they had just suffered. “That was my first thought after the game,” he said, that the Heat had “avoided a loss like this for a long time.”

This afternoon I dialed up Dan Le Batard’s show on ESPN on which Battier was a guest host, and I found him thoroughly entertaining with his commentary and various anecdotes. When talking about his playing days (he retired last year), he once again evoked that same balanced, even intellectual approach to the game.

Early during the first hour, Battier referred to his lengthy NBA career and how even though he was a gifted player he wasn’t necessarily the most skilled or physically imposing. “You don’t play 13 years in the NBA at 215 lbs. as a power forward without having a few tricks in your bag,” he said.

Among those tricks was to study his opponents, in particular the players he’d be matched up against, and even crunch numbers in order to determine the best percentage plays over the long term. “I play basketball like blackjack,” he said at one point, using an analogy to explain his approach. “There’s a ‘house’ way to play it, and a ‘feel’ way to play it. I tried to play basketball like a game of blackjack -- by what the book says.”

Battier elaborated on that idea again during the second hour as they brought up a statistic regarding Kobe Bryant who in “iso situations” (one-on-one) versus Battier shot only 34% during his career, his lowest versus any defender who had played at least 350 minutes against him.

“That makes me blush,” said Battier, earning a round of laughter from the others as he joked about having a plaque made to commemorate the accomplishment. Then he offered to explain how exactly he had managed to be such a strong defender against one of the game’s best offensive players ever.

“Most of that probably happened during the first half of my career when I didn’t know what the heck I was doing,” he begins, sounding a little like a lot of professional poker players who started out their careers running especially well, thereby enabling them to stay in the game longer than they might have otherwise. And, importantly, to gain some experience to help them learn the game better, thereby helping them later in their careers.

“It wasn’t until the later half of my career when I was introduced to basketball analytics [that] I understood what was a good shot, what was a bad shot, what was inefficient... what a player’s weakness actually was,” Battier continued. “I didn’t know for the first six years. The first six years defense was all about heart and toughness and grit.”

I add the italics in the last sentence to indicate how Battier pronounced those words through clenched teeth, kind of exaggerating their importance. It was after those first six years he was traded to the Houston Rockets, got introduced to a couple of people in their organization with knowledge of advanced stats (including Daryl Morey, the team’s GM who is well known for such knowledge), and from that point forward used that information to help himself perform at a level that might well have been above what he would have otherwise.

Interesting to hear Battier talk about basketball in this way, and again to evoke ideas that so closely mirror how we hear poker players -- good ones, especially -- talk about like variance, understanding probabilities (versus playing by “feel”), assessing opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, and so on.

Good stuff. And -- again, I shake my head -- coming from a Dookie! (I evoke my own irrationality in the face of such a logical thinker.)

Here is a short video of Battier discussing the same subject (and from which the image above comes), titled “How Analytics Made Me a Better Basketball Player.”

Highlight TV

Last night there were a couple of shows on against one another that ended up drawing a lot of eyes -- that three-and-a-half-hour 40th anniversary Saturday Night Live show and the almost-as-long NBA All-Star Game.

Reading over on ESPN today, it looks like the ratings for the SNL show added up to 23.1 million viewers, which they’re saying is the “most watched prime-time entertainment telecast” for NBC since 2004. Meanwhile the NBA says the All-Star Game drew 6.1 million viewers -- big for the game, but still behind shows like 60 Minutes (10.4 million), CSI (almost 7 million), and a couple of others (according to TV by the Numbers).

I had various work to do during those prime time hours last night -- including taking care of the horses as we ready for a winter storm later today -- but when in front of the teevee I ended up flipping back and forth between SNL and the NBA. Neither was all that compelling, as it turned out, which made it easy to tear away from one to check in on the other.

There was a lot of buzz for that SNL special, and while the show featured a lot of fun “call backs” it overall seemed to fall well below expectations. The All-Star Game was hyped as usual, too, although I think most basketball fans know better than to expect too much from what is traditionally more an exhibition than a competition -- although really all that gets exhibited is a predilection for three-pointers, alley-oops, and lackadaisical defense.

Perhaps going back and forth between the two artificially encouraged the identifying of parallels, but the two programs struck me as being very similar in both form and content.

Both were in New York. Both were essentially live, albeit with a lot of pretaped material interspersed and a healthy percentage of time taken up by commercials. The SNL show was sort of a “best of” or “greatest hits”-type package, while the All-Star Game is also nominally presenting the NBA’s best, though in truth there was a lot of non-greatest stuff mixed in with both.

The SNL show featured a lot of montages that rather than present entire skits just showed a few seconds so as to trigger the memory for those in the know. The All-Star Game similarly kind of boils down basketball to a nonstop highlight reel of dunks and flashy plays, with both teams operating as if the shot clock were six seconds rather than 24. (I suppose one might compare both to the all-in fests that characterize many televised poker shows, although there you still often get some variety in the pacing.)

I guess both programs were varieties of entertainment once-removed -- shows about shows, in a sense -- that served as reminders of the actual entertainment to which they referred without exactly providing the same.

Let’s Get Ridiculous

Last night Vera Valmore and I went to see the Charlotte Hornets play the Milwaukee Bucks.

Was our first game since the team dropped the Bobcats name to reclaim the old Hornets nick. Of course, we couldn’t help but be reminded of the Bobcats early on when Charlotte missed 16 straight shots in the first quarter (including several open, close-range ones) to fall behind by more than 20. They were down 17 at the half, then finally hit a few and made some stops to cut the lead to seven after three.

They then completed the comeback in the fourth to take the lead by two during the final minute, but the Bucks tied it to send the game to OT. Sadly the Hornets appeared to have expended all of their energy making the comeback, and never competed in the extra period to lose by 10.

Our lower level seats were fantastic, though, and we enjoyed every minute of the game despite the frustrating performance of the home team. Time Warner Cable Arena was packed, too, and the fans were enjoying all of the noise and craziness during every timeout, including the constant firing of t-shirt cannons, parachutes dropping Xbox games (pictured below), the “Bongo Cam,” the dancing of the Honeybees (the Charlotte cheerleaders), the blaring of “Rock and Roll (Part 2),” the Rocky theme, and other anthems, and so on.

There was one sequence in which the soundtrack pounding through the timeout was Redfoo’s dance hit from last year “Let’s Get Ridiculous,” which prompted a lot of fun silliness on the big screen. Heck, whenever bald-headed Bucks coach Jason Kidd would walk out on the floor amid the Honeybees and pulsating beats, I thought for a moment I was watching a Pitbull video.

It’s almost odd, if you think about it, how the loudest cheers and greatest excitement for many at such events are not responses to the actual game, but to the extracurricular activities. Some talk about “sportifying” poker, but meanwhile sports are being turned into something other than what they once were (although I can’t come up with a clever gerund to describe it). Still fun, though, and there’s something undeniably cool about seeing lots of kids dancing and laughing their way through an evening out with the family.

Driving home Vera and I chose not to play the radio, enjoying the quiet after what had been two-and-a-half hours of nonstop sensory overload.

Games weren’t always that way. I thought a little about how the filling of every moment with music and distractions was like other aspects of our lives today where the constant checking of phones for Facebook or Twitter updates, channel-flipping, web-surfing, and so on leaves zero “down time” regardless of one’s activity.

Made me think as well about playing poker and the often pleasurable, unhurried rhythm of that game -- I’m referring primarily to live poker, although even online one doesn’t have to play 16 tables or “fast-fold” games or turbos all the time.

It’s fun to get ridiculous sometimes. Fun, too, to slow down once in a while.

Humility and Hubris

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times how over the last several months I’ve gotten hooked on The Dan Le Batard Show. It originates each weekday afternoon from Miami where they have an hour just for the locals, then three more hours syndicated nationally.

The show was especially fun to follow during the latter half of the NBA regular season, playoffs, and the post-Finals drama involving LeBron James that ended with his decision to leave the Miami Heat after four years to return to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

James, you’ll recall, made that announcement via a letter published in Sports Illustrated. The general response to the move was much more positive than had been the case four years ago when James decided to leave for Miami, with “The Decision” still earning him derision as a poorly-conceived bit of PR. Here, though, James saying “I’m coming home” played a lot more favorably among most observers (outside of Miami, anyway), and it does set up an intriguing storyline for the NBA next year.

They’ve predictably spent a lot of time discussing both James’s departure and the future of the Heat on Le Batard’s show. Also capturing the attention of folks in Miami was how James conspicuously failed to thank the Heat fans in his letter. He refers to Miami as a “second home” and thanks his teammates and Miami management, but doesn’t specifically thank Heat fans.

Today there is a big “Welcome Home LeBron” event happening in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. As a prank, the Le Batard show bought up several billboards telling James “You’re Welcome” from the Miami fans, humorously drawing attention to the omission in the letter.

Regular listeners of the show knew all about the billboards as well as the fact that the show was readying a “multi-pronged attack” involving some more hijinks today. They also know that Le Batard himself is much more interested in having fun than anything else, and his buying up the billboards to deliver a message genuinely felt by some Miami fans was mainly just a goof to fill some downtime in the sports calendar (and drum up publicity for his show).

The ESPN folks didn’t find the billboards as funny or harmless, though, actually suspending Le Batard and knocking his show off the air for two days in response. Saying the “stunt does not reflect ESPN’s standards and brand,” the network weirdly claims they “were not made aware of his plans in advance” despite the fact that the idea was discussed repeatedly on the show beforehand.

ESPN’s reaction is silly, although it kind of helps promote even further that sense of “fun anarchy” surrounding the episode (to use Le Batard’s phrase describing the “stunt”). In any case, the story made me think about how sports fans relatively value humility and hubris, a topic that comes up in poker sometimes, too.

James’s move to Miami was overtly cloaked in hubris, with his infamous prediction of multiple championships (“not one, not two, not three...”) still being endlessly quoted as a mark against him. He scored points for humility, though, with his SI letter, explicitly saying “I’m not promising a championship” and “I know how hard that is to deliver.”

The jokey, indirect complaint about James failing to thank the Heat fans, though, refers again to a lack of humility -- something most missed when reading the letter initially.

We see this in poker sometimes, such as in the reaction to Ryan Riess saying after winning the WSOP Main Event last fall that “I just think I’m the best player in the world.” Or Daniel Colman stirring things up by proclaiming after winning this year’s “Big One for One Drop” that “I don’t owe poker a single thing.”

We like competitors to express confidence, but I think we like hearing expressions of humility a lot more. Perhaps in poker it is different, where the element of luck is more conspicuous than in basketball or in other sports (where it exists, too), thus making it appear even more unseemly not to acknowledge that one isn’t actually invincible.

In any case, will be interesting to hear Le Batard when he returns, including where he will position himself on the humility-to-hubris spectrum regarding ESPN’s humorless action.

(EDIT [added 8/11/14]: For more regarding Le Batard’s suspension -- which sounds as though it was more for some planned-for hijinks than for the billboards alone -- read his column over at ESPN.)

Just Play; or, the Work Is Its Own Reward

The Heat-Spurs series -- like the most recent Super Bowl -- turned out quite anticlimactic with San Antonio’s three straight blowouts to clinch.

Was certainly intriguing to watch the Spurs team handle the ball so flawlessly, and that crazy 19-for-21 start to Game 3 was simply stunning. It shouldn’t have seemed so surprising, really, given the Western Conference’s clear edge over the East throughout the year, but it still was kind of amazing to watch one team dominate the other so thoroughly on basketball’s biggest stage.

While recalling the previous four championship teams San Antonio has had since 1999, the victory also kind of reprised the 2004 Detroit Pistons insofar as the “team” concept as exemplified by the winners so obviously overrode all other narratives to become the story of the series. You might remember Detroit’s coach Larry Brown speaking of “winning the right way” a decade ago, alluding to the promotion of team over individual, and the Spurs obviously demonstrated something similar during their season and playoff run.

To a man so uniformly humble, the talk that came from the Spurs perhaps sounded a little at times like generic sports-speak. Still, one theme I found kind of interesting -- and with obvious connections to poker -- was the Spurs’ repeated insistence upon “just playing” and not worrying overly about results.

The guiding quote from coach Gregg Popovich from several years back insists “You don’t deserve anything. You just go play. You start thinking about what you deserve and what you don’t deserve and it just makes you soft. You just go play the game.”

In practice, such a principle translates into focusing on performing as well as possible and not fretting over outcomes, in particular not fooling oneself into thinking certain outcomes are “deserved.” In poker terms, we think of doing our best to “get it in good” -- i.e., with a favorable chance of being successful -- then not being overly affected by results, be they positive or negative.

Kevin Arnovitz focused on that theme last night in his post-series column for ESPN titled “The work speaks for itself,” speaking of “commitment to process” as an emblem for the Spurs, a formulation that sounds a lot like a different way of saying not to be “results oriented.”

Luck did play a role in this series -- though perhaps not as conspicuously as happened between the same two teams a year ago. But so did skill, with the Spurs playing their hand about as well as it could be played. And, as happens more often than not, the favorite came out on top.

On Mental Toughness

Well, I guess that finish to Game 1 of the Miami Heat-San Antonio Spurs NBA Finals last night tended to support that point I was making yesterday about luck mattering in sports, wouldn’t you say? Sure, the Spurs might well have won even without LeBron James’s going down as he did in the fourth quarter, but it certainly appeared as though his cramping and being unable to continue had a lot to do with Miami suddenly being unable to guard anyone.

Watching that game play out, I was reminded of my own basketball days, including having on several occasions experienced leg cramps which would usually occur right at the very end of a game (or after a long period of play). Often they’d happen when I would be physically exerting myself, jumping one... last... time for a ball, then suddenly being cut down.

Cramps can be utterly debilitating, and while the pain usually subsides quickly (at least in my experience), those initial moments can be full of panicky fright. “Seize” is the verb that seems most appropriate to describe what happens, the wince required to say the word altogether fitting.

Reactions to James’s end-of-game distress have ranged from laughable to lamentable, with those wanting to use the occasion to question his “manhood” making spectacles of themselves by their demonstrations of inanity. Not only is it a silly observation, but it includes an assumption about masculinity and professional sports that while shaped by many years of cultural influence is itself misguided.

Such thoughts stem from the mistaken idea that James might have defied medical science somehow and willed himself to play through injury. Commentator Mark Jackson’s cliché-filled coachspeak late in the game when it appeared James might have to sit down -- “The great ones have a way of willing themselves past their bodies... they tell their bodies ‘No, no, not now... I’ll talk to you tomorrow, but not now’” -- serves as an emblem for such absurdity, and probably encouraged a lot the commentators, too.

The mistake a lot of James’s critics are making has to do with interpreting a physical injury as though it were a mental one. Sports commentators love to advance such psychobabbling analyses -- this is something I’ve complained about here before -- and so the talk is about James’s mind breaking down, not his body (or the AT&T Center’s air conditioning).

I think of how poker -- a game that also has a significant legacy of reinforcing gender-related stereotypes -- constantly provides occasions in which players’ mental toughness is genuinely challenged. The fortitude required, say, to run a bluff or suss out the willful misdirections of an opponent, is significant. And real. And (it might well be added) sometimes the way players handle such challenges gets connected to those same ideas of “manliness” or toughness that have been handed down to some extent by the legacy of poker’s past.

Assessing something like “mental toughness” is hard enough to do in a game like poker where it is so obviously being tested at every turn (and flop and river). I’d venture that performing such assessments is harder to do in sports like basketball, yet so many seem so willing to try anyway.