This story from Aaron Wilson of The National Football Post about the accusations of domestic violence against St. Louis Rams' running back Steven Jackson is horrifying. According to the piece(which picks up on a TMZ report), Jackson allegedly attacked his girlfriend, Supriya Harris, in March 2009. She was nine months pregnant at the time and gave birth 10 days later. Here's the key part:
"In a complaint filed with the Las Vegas police department, Harris claimed: "Steven became enraged and pushed me to the ground, repeatedly."
And she alleged that the Rams runner: "forcibly grabbed my arm and flung me against the door. I was crying and trying to protect my stomach from the blows, as I was 9 mos pregnant. .. continued to shove me against the door until his nephew ... interceded and yelled, 'uncle, she has a baby, stop.'"
Harris said she was "bleeding heavily," after being smashed into a door handle."
This is a horrifying story. If there's any grain of truth in this whatsoever, Jackson should face severe punishment from both the law and the league. Commissioner Roger Goodell has come down very hard on offenders during his tenure, so I would expect the same from him here.
What bothers me, though, is that this story won't get anywhere near the amount of coverage something like the stupid Gilbert Arenas - Javaris Crittenton gun story drew. When NBA players goof around stupidly with guns without actually hurting anyone, the whole league gets branded as "thugs" and we're in for sanctimonious moralizing from columnists, talk-show hosts and everyone else. Yet, over the last decade alone, the NFL has had a ridiculous amount of incidents that were far more severe than the Arenas-Crittenton flap, such as Ray Lewis' involvement in a situation that led to two people being stabbed to death, Donte' Stallworth pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter after running down a pedestrian while drunk, Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg in a nightclub, James Harrison's domestic violence arrest (which led to this piece looking at many of the other domestic violence cases in the NFL), Shawne Merriman's domestic violence arrest, and Marvin Harrison's alleged involvement in both a shooting and a murder. These incidents are reported, but they're rarely the subject of moralizing columns and they're almost never used to impugn the credibility of the entire league and its players the way the Arenas-Crittenton feud has been.
Why is this? Well, there are plenty of reasons for it; I had a good discussion on the matter on Twitter with National Post columnist Bruce Arthur (who wrote one of the best pieces on Arenas, by the way) and PPP, the editor of Pension Plan Puppets. We touched on several of the factors involved, including the perception of the NBA, the higher visibility of players (thanks to no helmets), the relative popularity of the two leagues and the discipline David Stern hands out. However, I think it all boils down to two main factors.
The first factor in my mind is the nature of the game. Basketball is a physical sport, but football, by nature, is much more physical and extremely violent. We read about players such as Vikings' defensive end John Randle saying "I want to kill that guard!", or Bears' linebacker Dick Butkus saying " I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something," and we laugh it off (quotes from Jonathan Rand's excellent 300 Pounds Of Attitude, which I'm planning to review here soon). We think, "What warriors these guys are!" and we glorify them for their violent urges. That isn't necessarily wrong, but we need to establish firm boundaries about what's acceptable and where and we need to make it clear that we love them for their skill and their intensity, not just their violence. If players grow up hearing about guys like Butkus and Randle, and hear about them through the prism that it was their violent urges that made them great, aren't they going to try and cultivate their own violent urges, and wouldn't that make those urges more likely to spill over off the field?
This leads to a problem in coverage, because it's more difficult to call out a James Harrison or a Shawne Merriman for violent behaviour off the field when you've just been praising their violent behaviour on the field. I don't think that has to be an issue; we should be able to clearly draw a line between athletes' play on the field and their behaviour off it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that many people are interested in doing that.
The second factor is even more important in my mind, though, and it has to do with how the league is marketed. It's not the Shawne Merrimans or Donte' Stallworths who are seen as the faces of the NFL and plastered all over commercials; it's the Peyton Mannings and Brett Favres. The NFL's not a league of violent criminals, it's a league of goofy white guys who play pickup football in Wranglers and watch movies on their Sony Bravia televisions! I'm sure at least part of that's thanks to race, but another big part of it is thanks to the glorification of quarterbacks (which I wrote about way back when). That's why Michael Vick's dogfighting charges, and not any of the murder, manslaughter or domestic violence cases, were the first scandal in a long while that caused any damage to the league as a whole. However, even those were quickly swept under the rug and blamed on Vick as a lone bad apple.
I'm not arguing that all NFL players are thugs or that all NBA players are pure as the driven snow. All I'd like to see is some consistency in the coverage of the league's issues. Personally, I fall into the camp that each player is responsible for their own actions and not reflective of the league as a whole. Thus, I'd argue that all of these incidents should be covered thoroughly, but as individual cases, not indictments of one league or another. However, if you want to moralize about how Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton's stupid ideas on how to use guns are responsible for the decline and fall of western civilization, by all means be my guest. Just make sure you apply the same standard to the NFL while you're at it.
Showing posts with label cross-sport comparisions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cross-sport comparisions. Show all posts
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Comparing the NBA and NHL drafts
Here's the second part of the 2002 draft comparison I started the other day, looking at the success rates of players in the NBA and NHL drafts. See that post for an explanation of what I'm trying to accomplish and a discussion of some of the limiting factors of this type of analysis. The format is almost the same, but the ratings are tweaked slightly to allow for the differences in each sport; full explanations are below. I've also included the ratings as a column in the actual spreadsheets to make it easier to see how players performed relative to their draft position. I have an analysis of the differences between leagues at the end of the post as well.
NBA:
[Table from Wikipedia]
System:
5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection)
4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season)
3 – Marginal (played in the NBA last season)
2 – One-off (played at least 100 career NBA games)
1 – Bust (played less than 100 games)
Ratings:
5 – Ming, Butler, Stoudemire: three players, 10.7 per cent of all 28 picks.
4 - Nene, Wilcox, Prince, Salmons: four players, 14.3 per cent of all picks.
3 – Jeffries, Ely, Jones, Dixon, Dunleavy, Rush, Krstic, Gooden: eight players, 28.6 per cent of all picks.
2 – Tskitishvili, Wagner, Nachbar, Haislip, Welsch, Woods, Jacobsen, Dickau: eight players, 28.6 per cent of all picks.
1 – Jay Williams, Borchardt, Humphrey, Frank Williams, Jeffries: five players, 17.9 per cent of all picks.
Notes: The NBA draft is limited to two rounds, so every player taken in the first round got at least some time in the league; thus, the one-off standard is set higher than in any of the other leagues, where just making the big show bumps you from a 1 to a 2. Also, some players play considerable amounts of games but relatively few minutes, inflating their ranking by this method, while others play a lot of minutes but few games thanks to injury, reducing their ranking. The classic examples here are Stoudemire, Wilcox and Jeffries. Stoudemire only played 53 games last season before he was injured, but racked up 1948 minutes; if not for his previous All-Star nod, he would have been a three in this system. Jeffries played 1310 minutes in 56 games before an injury, so he's a three that easily could have been a four. By contrast, Wilcox played 62 games but only recorded 1049 minutes, so he's a four who probably deserves to be a three. The team situation of each player also comes into play; a good player on a terrific team may get less time than a bad player on a lousy team. As pointed out earlier, this isn't intended as an absolute evaluation of any one player, but rather an attempt to measure how these draft picks stack up against those found in other sports.
On specific players: Dunleavy was injured last year and only played in 18 games. Jay Williams, the #2 overall pick, only played in 2003. Tskitishvili hasn’t played since 2006 and Wagner's out of league since 2007. Haislip hasn’t played since 2005; he only played nine games in his last season and 79 in his career. Nachbar was in the league and playing 60+ games until 2008, but went to Europe; he may return this year. Humphrey and Frank Williams haven’t played since 2005, Woods hasn’t played since 2006 and Jacobsen played in 2008 but not last year. Rush played only 25 games last year, while Dickau went to Europe last year but played 67 games in 2008.
NHL:
[Table from Wikipedia]
System:
5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection)
4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season)
3 – Marginal (played in the NHL last season)
2 – One-off (played in the NHL at some point)
1 – Bust (never played in the NHL)
Ratings:
5: Nash, Bouwmeester: two players, 6.7 per cent of all 30 picks
4: Pitkanen, Upshall, Lupul, Bouchard, Nystrom, Ballard, Eminger, Semin, Gordon, Grebeshkov, Paille, Babchuk, Eager, Steen, Ward, Slater: 17 players, 56.7 per cent of all picks
3: Lehtonen, Higgins, Bergenheim: three players, 10.0 per cent of all picks
2: Taticek, Klepis, Johansson, Toivonen: four players, 13.3 per cent of all picks
1: Niinimaki, Koreis, Vagner, Morris: four players, 13.3 per cent of all picks
Notes: As with the other leagues, some players could easily move between categories. Higgins played 57 games last season, but played 82 the year before, so he could be a four instead of a three. Johannson only played one career game (with the Washington Capitals in 2006), so he could easily be a one instead of a two. Slater notched exactly 60 games last year and has bounced up and down, so he could certainly drop from a four to a three.
Overall comparison:
There's some pretty revealing data here. From 2002, the NFL teams were by far the best at drafting future superstars. The NHL teams were the best at drafting all-star and solid players, though, with 63 per cent of their picks falling into categories five and four compared to 50 per cent in the NFL, 46.6 per cent in MLB and a horrible 25.0 per cent in the NBA. The strength of those NHL numbers may be thanks to the comprehensive junior hockey system; most of the players drafted in the first round have already been competing at a high level for several years, and there isn't as much difference between the junior game and the NHL one as there is between the college and professional games in football and basketball. Not every junior stud becomes an NHL star, but most of them are good enough to hang on to a spot somewhere in the league.
The NBA numbers are quite surprising, actually; there are only two rounds of the draft, so it's not like there's a massive amount of picks competing for spots the way there are in the other leagues. Despite that, an incredible amount of their players still turned out to be marginal at best and complete busts at worst. Part of that may be thanks to the considerable differences between the college and professional styles of play. Another part of that is the time frame we're looking at here; this draft saw a lot of European players without a great deal of high-level experience drafted early on, mostly because of their size and potential. In recent years, there appears to have been a bit of a shift away from that philosophy, perhaps thanks to the large amount of busts from drafts like the 2002 one.
Questions? Thoughts on what it all means, or different ways to evaluate the drafts? As mentioned, this is just a starting point, so leave your ideas on how to improve it here in the comments, or e-mail me at andrew_bucholtz [at] hotmail.com!
NBA:
[Table from Wikipedia]
System:
5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection)
4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season)
3 – Marginal (played in the NBA last season)
2 – One-off (played at least 100 career NBA games)
1 – Bust (played less than 100 games)
Ratings:
5 – Ming, Butler, Stoudemire: three players, 10.7 per cent of all 28 picks.
4 - Nene, Wilcox, Prince, Salmons: four players, 14.3 per cent of all picks.
3 – Jeffries, Ely, Jones, Dixon, Dunleavy, Rush, Krstic, Gooden: eight players, 28.6 per cent of all picks.
2 – Tskitishvili, Wagner, Nachbar, Haislip, Welsch, Woods, Jacobsen, Dickau: eight players, 28.6 per cent of all picks.
1 – Jay Williams, Borchardt, Humphrey, Frank Williams, Jeffries: five players, 17.9 per cent of all picks.
Notes: The NBA draft is limited to two rounds, so every player taken in the first round got at least some time in the league; thus, the one-off standard is set higher than in any of the other leagues, where just making the big show bumps you from a 1 to a 2. Also, some players play considerable amounts of games but relatively few minutes, inflating their ranking by this method, while others play a lot of minutes but few games thanks to injury, reducing their ranking. The classic examples here are Stoudemire, Wilcox and Jeffries. Stoudemire only played 53 games last season before he was injured, but racked up 1948 minutes; if not for his previous All-Star nod, he would have been a three in this system. Jeffries played 1310 minutes in 56 games before an injury, so he's a three that easily could have been a four. By contrast, Wilcox played 62 games but only recorded 1049 minutes, so he's a four who probably deserves to be a three. The team situation of each player also comes into play; a good player on a terrific team may get less time than a bad player on a lousy team. As pointed out earlier, this isn't intended as an absolute evaluation of any one player, but rather an attempt to measure how these draft picks stack up against those found in other sports.
On specific players: Dunleavy was injured last year and only played in 18 games. Jay Williams, the #2 overall pick, only played in 2003. Tskitishvili hasn’t played since 2006 and Wagner's out of league since 2007. Haislip hasn’t played since 2005; he only played nine games in his last season and 79 in his career. Nachbar was in the league and playing 60+ games until 2008, but went to Europe; he may return this year. Humphrey and Frank Williams haven’t played since 2005, Woods hasn’t played since 2006 and Jacobsen played in 2008 but not last year. Rush played only 25 games last year, while Dickau went to Europe last year but played 67 games in 2008.
NHL:
[Table from Wikipedia]
System:
5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection)
4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season)
3 – Marginal (played in the NHL last season)
2 – One-off (played in the NHL at some point)
1 – Bust (never played in the NHL)
Ratings:
5: Nash, Bouwmeester: two players, 6.7 per cent of all 30 picks
4: Pitkanen, Upshall, Lupul, Bouchard, Nystrom, Ballard, Eminger, Semin, Gordon, Grebeshkov, Paille, Babchuk, Eager, Steen, Ward, Slater: 17 players, 56.7 per cent of all picks
3: Lehtonen, Higgins, Bergenheim: three players, 10.0 per cent of all picks
2: Taticek, Klepis, Johansson, Toivonen: four players, 13.3 per cent of all picks
1: Niinimaki, Koreis, Vagner, Morris: four players, 13.3 per cent of all picks
Notes: As with the other leagues, some players could easily move between categories. Higgins played 57 games last season, but played 82 the year before, so he could be a four instead of a three. Johannson only played one career game (with the Washington Capitals in 2006), so he could easily be a one instead of a two. Slater notched exactly 60 games last year and has bounced up and down, so he could certainly drop from a four to a three.
Overall comparison:
There's some pretty revealing data here. From 2002, the NFL teams were by far the best at drafting future superstars. The NHL teams were the best at drafting all-star and solid players, though, with 63 per cent of their picks falling into categories five and four compared to 50 per cent in the NFL, 46.6 per cent in MLB and a horrible 25.0 per cent in the NBA. The strength of those NHL numbers may be thanks to the comprehensive junior hockey system; most of the players drafted in the first round have already been competing at a high level for several years, and there isn't as much difference between the junior game and the NHL one as there is between the college and professional games in football and basketball. Not every junior stud becomes an NHL star, but most of them are good enough to hang on to a spot somewhere in the league.
The NBA numbers are quite surprising, actually; there are only two rounds of the draft, so it's not like there's a massive amount of picks competing for spots the way there are in the other leagues. Despite that, an incredible amount of their players still turned out to be marginal at best and complete busts at worst. Part of that may be thanks to the considerable differences between the college and professional styles of play. Another part of that is the time frame we're looking at here; this draft saw a lot of European players without a great deal of high-level experience drafted early on, mostly because of their size and potential. In recent years, there appears to have been a bit of a shift away from that philosophy, perhaps thanks to the large amount of busts from drafts like the 2002 one.
Questions? Thoughts on what it all means, or different ways to evaluate the drafts? As mentioned, this is just a starting point, so leave your ideas on how to improve it here in the comments, or e-mail me at andrew_bucholtz [at] hotmail.com!
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