The Turning of the Karmic Wheel

While football fans in western New York are questioning the NFL's overtime format, this citizen of Illinois is questioning the NBA's flagrant foul protocol.

To wit, when a bench-riding substitute needlessly and capriciously injures a starter critical to his team's success, a one-game suspension just doesn't cut it. Yeah, talking about Grayson Allen's petulant foul of Alex Caruso as the latter was about to dunk.

Allen's initial reaction seemed to be surprise and concern, as he paused and then leaned over as if to check on Caruso. Whatever that body language might have indicated, footage of Allen smirking as he left the court revealed another, very different truth.

Many people (especially athletes) mask public embarrassment with defiance, and Allen certainly adopted that posture.

As a marginal NBA talent, his is an existence fraught with insecurity. Already with his third team in four seasons, this late first-round pick came into the league under a cloud. And this high-profile foul isn't going to do him any favors.

Basketball is not hockey.

On the other hand, fresh-off missing a dozen games because of a foot sprain and a COVID infection, Caruso now heads back to the injured list for six to eight weeks as he rehabs a broken wrist—the direct result of Allen's thuggery.

This while Allen sits out but a single game. Hardly seems fair, does it?

As it happens, Lonzo Ball (the Bulls PG), is disabled for a similar length of time by a knee injury. Zach LaVine just returned from missing five games (and all but three and-a-half minutes of a sixth) to, yep—a knee injury.

Acting PF Javonte Green (who himself is subbing for injured PF Patrick Williams, out for the season after injuring his wrist in game number-five) finally returned to action after sitting out a dozen games with a groin strain.

So it is ironic, then, that after the oft-injured Bulls of the GarPax era (Otto Porter, Jr., Lauri Markkanen, Thaddeus Young, Wendell Carter, Jr. and Denzel Valentine), these Bulls—despite the heightened profile—find themselves battling the same demons.

Which in turn provokes memories of the failed promise of the Tom Thibodeau-era and of Derrick Rose, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer, forever hamstrung by their star guard's knees.

Is there a goat in the Bulls past? A curse? Is this payback for the (largely) injury-free dynasty of the nineties? Is Grayson Allen both goat and curse, further derailing a team that had instantly coalesced into a high-flying contender?

Ball and Caruso are the engines that drive the Bulls resounding transition game, and their absence has been a wrench in the works. And on a roster without a lot of bigs, options are few.

Will Billy Donovan and staff concoct a workaround? Discover an adjustment that compensates for a missing backcourt? Or are the Bulls destined to struggle through what remains of January, the entirety of February and that portion of March for which Ball and Caruso are unavailable?

On the plus side, even if their absences extend for the maximum eight-weeks, both should have a dozen games with which to play themselves into shape and re-establish the groove that made the Bulls the NBA's lead story earlier this season.

On the negative side, a rookie (Ayo Dosunmu) and a third-year guy (Coby White) will have been playing starter minutes with very little precedent—or support. Will they have hit the proverbial wall by then, robbing the Bulls of valuable bench play?

As a (presumably) lower seed by that point, will the Bulls be able to recapture their early-season mojo? Will they be able to defeat higher-ranked teams without the benefit of home court advantage?

And finally, should Grayson Allen be suspended for as long as Alex Caruso is on the IR? I'm thinking 'yes'. Absolutely, positively yes. Like the Buffalo Bills fans who watched their team lose a game no one deserved to lose, there's an acute sense of betrayal.

Of life not being fair. 

I'd like to believe this is its most-painful lesson. Alas, probably not.

Hearing Republicants

Incredible as it may seem, I occasionally grow impervious to whiny Republicants and anti-vaxxers.

It was Nora Joyce of Wilmette, Illinois who acted as my personal pallet cleanser and refreshed my ability to hear Republicants anew. Her recent letter to the Chicago Tribune goes as follows:

 

Mandating proof of vaccination for Cook County Park District facilities is a violation of taxpayer's rights. It is wrong to deny entry and participation in Park District facilities to people who pay Cook County property taxes just because they're unvaccinated. This vaccine order is not about safety.

I am embarrassed to reach into my wallet to show my card and continue this nonsense. Going to a facility with only vaccinated people will not prevent anyone from spreading COVID-19.

It is time for taxpayers to speak up about this nonsense.

Ah, Nora. What a lovely read. And continuing on the bright side, thank you for getting vaccinated.

But now I must journey to the not-so-bright side.

In your letter, you fail to mention what the vaccinate mandate is about. 

Perhaps the big, evil government you presumably dislike is a believer in the axiom use it or lose it, and is throwing its weight around merely to sustain its ability to throw it around.

Or perhaps they're trying to discourage people from using Park District facilities, so that one day a vulture capitalist might buy them and convert same into gated communities with the (yawn) attendant golf course.

Wouldn't that be nice?

There, you could cavort with unvaccinated folk minus the paralyzing social embarrassment of having to show a vaccine card and play the discreet form of Russian Roulette you seem to crave.

On second thought, maybe the big, evil government just wants to embarrass you.

Yeah, that's it.

Your repeated mention of 'taxpayer' and 'taxpayer rights' intrigued me. Is there a separate set of rights accorded to taxpayers? Because I spent hours scouring the Internet and couldn't find them, much less how paying them guarantees you access to anything. 

If you'll trouble yourself to look at the breakdown of your annual property taxes, the overwhelming percentage of them goes to your local school district. Only a teeny-tiny percentage goes to your local park district. 

To quote the late, great Groucho Marx: would you like to leave in a huff or shall I call a cab?  

And finally, Nora, I'm not aware of a health care official ever saying that gathering solely with vaccinated folk would prevent the spread of COVID-19. I think the word you're looking for is reduce. Lessen. Mitigate.

Surely your either-or, black-or-white brain remains capable of making such distinctions?

Alas, probably not.

But the biggest question your letter presents is why you even got vaccinated in the first place.

Really hoping your ovaries are dried up and shriveled, Nora. Please don't reproduce.

A Thaw in Cincinnati

Fandom. It can be such a weird thing, especially when it isn't centered on the hometown team. Using myself as example number-one, I never cottoned to the hometown Bears. In contrast to the era's Cubs, Bulls and Blackhawks, they were bad, boring and backwards.

(I should add that all these years later, those words still apply.)

Which is why I strayed. I was searching for a football team team worthy of my earnest. wide-eyed devotion. As it happened, the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs simultaneously caught my interest. I loved the color scheme of the Cowboys' uniforms and the talent which inhabited both rosters.

But the Chiefs I idolized in Super Bowl IV faded just as the Cowboys were entering the brightest era of their existence—the seventies. Not so surprisingly, the Cowboys gained the upper hand.

The Chiefs battled back just as the Cowboys were likewise being renewed under Jimmy Johnson, albeit without the postseason success. To quote Albert King, Marty Schottenheimer was born under a bad sign.

God rest his soul.

In the interim, another team had inserted itself into my nascent fandom. An expansion team with very little in the way of pedigree aside from the fact its owner—Paul Brown—founded the Cleveland Browns. I speak of the Cincinnati Bengals.

It's not widely remembered, but the nineteen-eighties Bengals gave the Joe Montana-era 49ers the stiffest challenges of any of their Super Bowl adversaries. Twice.

The Ken Anderson-led 1981 edition required the 49ers make two fourth-quarter field goals to maintain a tenuous and fragile lead, while the 1988 Boomer Esiason-led version demanded a last-minute pass from Montana to John Taylor to secure a 49er victory.

Think the high-profile Miami Dolphins of Dan Marino or Denver Broncos of John Elway came close to doing the same?

Nope.

So, yeah. I became a fan. Despite their small-market status they consistently won. And they drafted well. To wit, James Brooks. David Fulcher. Issac Curtis. Ken Riley. Anthony Munoz. Chris Collinsworth. Max Montoya.

But they declined after the 1988 Super Bowl. And for a long time. Relief didn't arrive until 2003 in the form of first-round draft pick QB Carson Palmer, who helped resurrect the franchise and returned them to the post-season in 2005.

Alas, only a pair of wild card appearances were the result.

Sustained success came in the person of Andy Dalton. Paired with wide receivers A.J. Green and Chad Johnson, the Bengals visited the post-season five-years in a row. Sadly, all were as wild-card entrants, culminating in an excruciating 18-16 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in January of 2016.

With another generation waived, traded or otherwise put out to pasture, the Bengals floundered. To the point they were awarded the number-one overall pick in an NFL draft. With that pick, they selected LSU QB Joe Burrow, who has single-handedly ignited a franchise turnaround.

To wit, the Bengals won their first post-season game in thirty-one years Saturday. They appear unfazed at finding themselves in the post-season so quickly and already possess a potent QB-WR combo in Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase.

(Whatever their success, the Bengals can at least draft and develop high-quality quarterbacks with a regularity unknown to Bears fans.) 

Along with the fresh-faced Bengals are the inspired Buffalo Bills, who destroyed their long-time nemesis from New England and looked as seamless, as perfect as any playoff team I've ever seen.

With upcoming divisional round contests like Bengals versus Titans and Bills versus Chiefs and 49ers versus Packers, I almost wish I had my cable back.

Happy Anniversary

Tradition dictates that to celebrate a first anniversary, a gift of paper is the time-honored way to recognize the occasion.

And I agree.

So it is only appropriate that on this, the first anniversary of the seditious attacks on the nation's capitol, a blizzard of paper gifts be bestowed upon the participants. Things like warrants. Subpoenas. Complaints. Indictments. Citations. Etcetera.

While a fair number of the rioters have already been charged, too few have been treated with the severity their acts of insurrection demand.

Sentencing is always a nebulous affair, with judges given to wide interpretation of events and circumstances. But how is that tears and flimsy excuses are exchanged for slap-on-the-wrist sentences of (gulp) probation and home detention?

Seriously?

That's the price for participating in an organized effort to overturn and deny the results of a presidential election? For storming the nation's capitol and killing three cops? Taking part in a mission with a stated goal of hanging the vice-president?

Huh?

Too typical is the case of Anna Morgan-Lloyd. In an Oscar-worthy performance, Morgan-Lloyd convinced judge Royce Lamberth she was ashamed of the “savage display of violence” she oh so eagerly partook in.

Just a day later she related to Fox News that people were actually “very polite” during the riot and that she saw “relaxed” police offers conversing with rioters and that she didn't really believe the events of that day constituted an insurrection..

(Don't you just hate it when Trumpers don't take their meds?)

Furthermore, when do Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Josh Hawley take the stand? Ted Cruz? Tommy Tuberville? How about Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who ordered—in advance—that the National Guard not respond to any calls for help originating from the nation's capitol?

The events of January sixth were as spontaneous, as impulsive as the Super Bowl. We know everything we need to know. January 6^th demands top-to-bottom accountability. Scrutiny. Investigation. Hearings, trials and imprisonment.

Excuse the raw language, but we need to treat the participants as if they were Black.

We need to get angry. Stay angry. And make sure January 6th is treated as seriously as it needs to be, with severe punishment for the participants at each and every level.

And to impart to the mentally-ill folks across the aisle and their brain-damaged supporters that sedition is not okay.

Never.

Ever.

The Woulda Coulda Shoulda Hunch

Whatever your thoughts on regrets, I admit to having a few. Having them means I'm human. And admitting them probably means I'm less-fearful of appearing vulnerable than you are.

Sure, I wish I had bought Amazon stock in 1996. And seen the Jam and XTC while they were extant. But mostly, I'm bummed that I failed to act on a powerful hunch and not bet on the New York Giants to defeat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

It was through YouTube that I was finally able to watch the game last night. (I only saw the last few minutes back in the day.)

Like any football fan in 2007, I was fascinated by those Patriots. With an already formidable offense bolstered by the addition of wide receiver-slash-savant Randy Moss, I was curious how high they could go.

As it turns out, the answer was 'very'. They stormed through the sixteen-game schedule without a loss, shredding their opponents by an average of 19.6 points a game. But if you were as observant as you were interested, you noticed that month by month the league was catching up with them.

The Pats won in September by an average of 26.3 points a game. In October by 25. In November that dropped to 17.6. And in December to 11.6.

Now, there isn't a coach in organized football who would refuse a team beating its opponents by 11.6 points per, but in light of those September and October margins being cut in half by December, something was very definitely up.

And if the rest of the league even needed it, those same Giants provided a prime time tutorial on Sunday night, December 29, 2007. Behind 28 – 16 with just minutes left in the third quarter, the Patriots were forced to engineer three unanswered scoring drives, not icing the game until just four minutes were left.

And while New England played well-enough in their two post-season games, it was obvious the epic slaughters of autumn were history. And when it became clear they would again face the Giants in the Super Bowl, wheels began to turn. No. Spin.

I wanted to bet big—a thousand dollars. That is how convinced I was. Being the less-impulsive half of a couple, my wife put the kibosh on that. I cajoled and begged and insisted, half-scaring myself with the insistence of my entreaties.

But all was for naught.

My partner's logic was impeccable. The the Great Recession had already hit in New Mexico (my former employer had laid me off and would soon lay-off another hundred). Full-time-with-benefits job listings had all but disappeared. And as she happened to work for the same company, her position was anything but secure.

As it turned out, my wife lost her job, too. This hastened our decision to leave New Mexico—just as the Great Recession hit nationwide.

What's that about timing being everything?

Given the Giants were 8:1 long-shots to win the Super Bowl (which they incidentally did in an exciting and highly-competitive game), I'll always reflect on how that handsome, tax-free pay-out could've sustained us in the bleak days that lay ahead.

But so it is with regret. It remains an unanswered question, sometimes echoing life-long like an unrequited love. While the purchase of Amazon stock would have had a far-larger impact on my life, there isn't (thankfully) a YouTube video to remind me of that squandered opportunity.

So. Now you know. And if you're wondering, I haven't had a similar, sure fire hunch since.