We'll Always Have Paris

Amid a grey and soggy spring featuring two distinctly uninspired Major League Baseball teams, the Chicago Sky began their defense of the franchise's first WNBA championship. But it wasn't as pretty as their eventual league-best won-lost record would indicate.

An opening night defeat to the Los Angeles Sparks bordered on ugly, with repeated turnovers (especially on the offensive end) short-circuiting possessions. The Sky appeared unfocused and distracted. But six games in, the Sky stood at 4 -2.

It continued, with the Sky winning twenty-one of their next twenty-seven games. To that point, they never lost two in a row. Need more? How about their 3-0 record versus the Connecticut Sun, a team that had presented a major hurdle in last year's playoffs.

With just three games left in the season, a pair of sloppy losses to the Seattle Storm and Las Vegas Aces gave the Sky their first two-game losing streak. A lifetime spent as a Cubs fan was not required to wonder if perhaps the Sky might have gotten a bit too comfortable.

Thankfully, they finished the season strong with a decisive win against last year's Finals opponent, the Phoenix Mercury.

Bring on the playoffs!

They started as ignobly as had the regular season. The seventh-seed New York Liberty exploded out of the gate and beat the Sky in Chicago, outscoring them by eight in the fourth quarter. This was not good.

The Sky were able to refocus and take games two and three.

Next up was the Sun. After seven straight losses to the Sky, I don't imagine motivation was an issue in Connecticut. Nor do I imagine a lack of confidence was an issue for the Sky. With home court advantage in the five-game semis, Chicagoans had every right to feel optimistic.

Owing to a brutal third quarter, game one went to the Sun. No big deal. A team that good was bound to win one sooner or later, right? Game two was a reassuring win for the Chicagoans. They were confident and dominated the game.

On Connecticut's floor, the Sky also took game three. I permitted a small smile to manifest itself upon my face—the Sky were back in control.

Game four was a chassis-shaking, tire-shredding disaster. The Sky were never in this one as the Sun took out their long-simmering frustration and punished them over four quarters of a WNBA playoff game.

Ouch.

Would a return to Chicago re-animate the Sky? Or had Big Mo shifted irreparably to the team from the East coast?

Connecticut took the quarter number-one 24-16. Chicago took the second quarter by the same score. They also took the third quarter 18-8. A certain Cubs fan was ready to let go.

But as the hoary old sports cliché goes, the Sky had been here before. They knew what they had to do.

Only they didn't.

They shot 2 for 15, snagged 3 rebounds and dished out 2 assists. They did not visit the free throw line. Not once.

The Sun? They shot 8 for 15, pulled down 14 rebounds and handed out 8 assists. They went 8 for 8 from the free throw line. They outscored the Sky 24-5.

I can't imagine a WNBA title contender ever played a worse quarter of basketball.

Under different circumstances, I would have called Candace Parker's early exit from the court a bad case of over-indulgence. The byproduct of a bloated sense of entitlement. But given the Sky's fourth-quarter meltdown, to come so close only to have it ripped from your hands had to have been excruciating.

And with the expected retirements of Parker, Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley, the look of next year's Sky will be very different. They're still talented. But will they remain legitimate title contenders? Not so sure.

We are often told to appreciate the moment. To be in it. That a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And sports is pretty good at imparting those lessons. The unexpected run to a title by last year's Sky team was as inspiring and as mind-blowing as it gets.

And I'm happy to say I wallowed in it.

But being in the moment and being vested and engaged ain't so hot when your team crashes. It eventually renders us as Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca, when he ruefully tells Ingrid Bergman “We'll always have Paris.”

So it goes.

Priorities

In my previous post, I pondered the possibility of our relentless tuition hikes somehow ending up in the hands of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. This is what's known as a rhetorical question; a question one poses without really expecting an answer.

So it was interesting that a related story emerged shortly thereafter.

College football fans will recognize the University of Nebraska as a traditional gridiron powerhouse. But the gluttony of twelve-win seasons, high-profile bowl games and season-ending finishes among the collegiate top ten that used to constitute the diet of Cornhusker fans hasn't been a thing since Tom Osborne's retirement following the 1997 season.

Don't get me wrong. There have been plenty of fine seasons in the nearly quarter-century since. But the Nebraska Cornhuskers haven't provoked terror in the hearts of opponents since the Clinton administration. And if that weren't bad enough, the 'Huskers have enjoyed just one winning season in the last seven. Their five-straight losing seasons is something not seen in Lincoln since the late-fifties and early-sixties.

So yes. All things being relative, this is a program in need of a pick-me-up.

And Scott Frost was the coach entrusted to do that. But the thing is, only one Nebraska football coach has a worse won-lost percentage. And a chorus of impatient fans, nervous alumni and (I presume) a toxic media have been begging for his removal. Following a home loss to decided underdog Georgia Southern, this has come to pass.

None of this is much of a surprise, is it? Especially given the elevated expectations Nebraskans have for their football team.

But what is fascinating is that had the University waited until October first, the penalty for the early-termination of Frost would've been cut in half, from fifteen-million dollars to seven and-a-half. But what's $7.5 million-dollars to a humongous university?

A national championship is not at stake. Nor is a season that would find the 'Huskers winning as often as they lost. What's the big rush? 

There isn't one. At least, not one a sentient human being would understand. But I think we have a window into the kind of thing mad tuition money often fuels.

Thankfully, tomorrow's gifted electrical engineer or barrier-breaking medical researcher is being denied access to higher education for a good reason. Ditto a nurse, an urban planner or an accountant. And that reason is the restoration of a football program.

It's the pattern we see in many aspects of life these days. Self-serving ego, shortsightedness and display overriding the more understated virtues of purpose, long-term growth and commitment to the greater good. 

But that's so easy to do when the money you're spending isn't yours, isn't it?

Student Debt Forgiveness Isn't Fair?

Back in the bad old days, it was commonly agreed that education was a good thing. That an educated citizenry moved a country forward and that it behooved a government to make this possible.

Then the sixties backlash hit and Ronald Reagan was elected president.

Like all candidates, he made a lot of tough-sounding campaign promises. He was going to eradicate crime, play hardball with the Soviet Union, eliminate wasteful spending and streamline the federal government so that it would operate with the seamless efficiency of your favorite small business.

(This isn't to overlook the promise that he was going to bomb Iran into the Stone Age after bringing home the hostages held within the American embassy.)

To be sure, Reagan benefited enormously from the presidency of Jimmy Carter and his struggle with the Iran hostage crisis. But that crisis also seemed to coalesce conservative frustration with the liberalism that had taken root throughout the seventies and Reagan's landslide victory was the proof.

After his election America went into two recessions that the manufacturing-centric Rust Belt still hasn't recovered from. And that wasteful government spending? It wasn't eliminated, it was re-arranged.

I'm sure most of your remember your mom re-arranging the living room or another room in the house. Or maybe you altered the layout of your bedroom. The dimensions of the room remained the same as was the furniture within. But the room was...different.

Ditto our fortieth president. In his view, he did eliminate wasteful spending by cutting federal aid to education. After all, what point was there in having the government subsidize the liberalizing of American students by aiding their access to higher education?

(Further illustrating the depths of his anti-education stance—and one could add anti-poor--was his deft manipulation of school menus. He was the man behind having ketchup declared as a vegetable in order to cut costs on school lunches—not to mention having them appear more nutritious than they actually were.)

Needless to say, the savings weren't passed on to your folks or mine.

As he so often did, Reagan had a better idea. He would re-appropriate the newly freed-up cash to the Pentagon and its motley collection of defense contractors. Always eager for another handout, those contractors would transform that money into a shiny new thing that would bamboozle our elected representation until they were eager as hell to shell out whatever was necessary for research, development, manufacture and implementation.

(Anyone from that era will recall the ultimate hustle of the defense contractor era, the Star Wars project. It cost approximately thirty-billion dollars (in nineteen-eighties money) and did absolutely nothing. It was scrapped by President Clinton in 1993.)

So. After tripling the nation's debt and quadrupling the defense budget, at least an ever-increasing number of students could be shut-out of higher education.

According to the Education Data Initiative website, college tuition has increased 130% since 1990. (And that's adjusted for inflation.) Off the top of my head, I'm thinking the only things that can compare are the salaries of professional athletes and the cost of healthcare.

Professor's salaries haven't exploded in a similar fashion, nor are schools assuming a student's room and board. Is Chateaubriand (accompanied by a pleasing—but never intrusive—Chateau Lafite '59) adorning dining hall tables these days?

Or is all this money going to Alabama football coach Nick Saban?

Maybe it's the byproduct of the dire warnings we hear to the effect that without a college degree, you're nothing. Pair this with the news of the ever-worsening outlook for low and mid-income families and we have a driver for our nation's fanatical pursuit of higher education.

And yet, what is an enhanced education worth when students are graduating with a debt load that will take decades to pay off? Do the conservatives who endorse this see the long-term effects of shutting out would-be consumers from the economy?

And those are the students fortunate-enough to see graduation day. Many more abandon their education because there simply isn't money available. And that's just the biggest factor which can influence a decision like this.

Since President Biden's announcement that he was enabling eligible students to receive ten-thousand dollars in loan forgiveness, outrage has erupted. Students with six-figure debt say it doesn't go far enough. Conservatives say it's not fair and are challenging its legality.

I am compelled to ask: not fair to whom?

It should be obvious that to the owners of the financial institutions that make these loans, this is a pay cut. This is government interference in what they consider to be sacrosanct domain—their businesses.

Never mind that the United States in the only first-world nation that places access to higher education on such a lofty shelf. Never mind the hypocrisy of placing students into decades-long debt merely for the chance to earn a living wage. Never mind the social stratification these incessant tuition hikes engender.

These aspects constitute a conservative wet dream. But how do they further the ambitions and abilities of the United States? How is a nation denying so much of its citizenry access to higher education advancing itself? How does this line-up with the ideals espoused by the founding fathers?

If you ain't got it now you ain't never gonna get it?

As the citizens of so many big cities see on a daily basis, hope is a critical element in a functional society. Hope is what keeps us moving forward, stretching ourselves to grasp the next branch on the tree. Hope is what keeps us engaged.

Without it, we are a dispirited population with no skin in the game. People who, incorrectly or not, feel that if they have nothing to live for, you don't either. While an admittedly extreme example, I see it in the seventeen-year olds armed with automatic weapons, killing, raping and carjacking; utterly unconcerned with your life or their own.

We can change this. But first we have to want to.

Where I Was

One month it's the demands external activities make on your time. The next it's head trauma. At least I have a good excuse for being gone so long. Ironically, it was at the very job I had taken to sand-off the rough edges of inflation where I incurred my injury.

I work in a store that dabbles in many things; furniture, home decor, women's clothes and odd bits of gourmet food. I do a little of everything, like most people on the payroll. On this hot and humid Saturday, I was preparing to liberate some overstock when I collapsed, resulting in an unscheduled meeting between my head and the store's cement floor.

Afterwards, I briefly regained consciousness and surveyed the damage. But I soon lapsed back into the netherworld of unconsciousness.

My next waking moment was in an unfamiliar room with oddly-dressed people I didn't recognize. I was in a bed and felt intensely uncomfortable. There were monitors and tubes and catheters connected to me. Where was my job? Where were my clothes? What have you people done to me? I felt like I had been kidnapped and then disabled. 

The nerve-endings in my head were abusing my central nervous system as if it owed them money. My fight or flight mechanism was gearing-up and preparing for escape.

I needed to get the fuck out of there.

Then there was a voice.

“La Piazza?”

It was a nurse, standing next to my bed.

“Is that your name?”

“Yes” I replied weakly.

“Do you know where you are?”

My memory began its long, slow emergence.

“A hospital?”

“Yes. Do you remember what happened to you?”

I pondered. There was a vague memory of the fall, which now seemed like a long time ago. Then blanks. There were questions: how did I get here? How long had I been here?

“I fell at work.”

“Yes. You hit your head and did quite a bit of damage. An ambulance brought you here and we performed brain surgery and your anesthesia is just now wearing off. How do you feel?”

Collecting such events and reducing them to a four-word question seemed woefully inadequate. But given the circumstances, that four-word question was the best that could be managed.

“Tired.”

I remember shifting in my bed, unaware of the significance.

“Okay. Drink some water first. You're really dehydrated.”

I obediently drank and then drifted off to sleep.

The next few weeks are fuzzy, with sketchy memories of incessant checks on my vitals, random personal visits and scattered phone calls. Then there were the unending entreaties from the medical staff to eat. (I lost ten pounds in my first two weeks and didn't resume semi-regular consumption until I was threatened with being fed via a nose tube.)

In my brain's distorted view, my personal doctor had set-up a personal diet years earlier and I just didn't need these interlopers interfering. Left unanswered was how I would consume—much less obtain—that food from my hospital bed.

Eventually I was able to leave the confines of my bed and begin various forms of therapy. Beyond the relief of escaping my room was the challenge of recovering my muscle tone and making sure my brain was capable of handling the mundane but essential rigors of everyday life.

It is noteworthy that on the eve of my discharge, the speech therapist went back to one of our initial visits and shared my responses to some questions she had asked about a short story. To put it nicely, my answers were unrelated.

I remain ignorant of how my brain repaired itself—all things being relative—but it is one of the wonders of my life.

Accompanying my emerging appetite was behavior that, while hardly qualified for a Miss Manners forum on civility, at least wasn't outright hostile. If I have any regrets (aside from falling on a cement floor, of course), it's the uncooperative manner in which I initially treated the medical professionals attending to me.

It's par for the course for people with head injuries to treat all concerned with distemper and disregard. It's the byproduct of the shock, dislocation and confusion that accompanies a head injury.

I am thankful for those who had the wherewithal to see through those temporary conditions and focus on bringing their patient to the best realization of their post-fall potential. I have never participated in that profession, but I am positive it is as challenging as it is fulfilling.

It is because of them I am able to write this. And am able to operate a computer, measure a tablespoon of paprika needed for the Hungarian goulash I ate last night and recall where I stored a spare bottle of body wash many months ago.

It is the wildest of understatements, but it could have ended so very, very differently.

FYI

Dear Readers of the Square Peg:

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted. I apologize. The world has really knocked me off my axis the past couple of years (as it likely has you).

Between a part-time job, a volunteer gig and exploring some mental health issues (what—you thought this shit came from a balanced and healthy perspective?), I've been pretty busy. And frankly, the national news is often a bit much for me to digest. So there goes a favorite source of material.

2022 is just so fucking weird! I know this isn't factually true, but I feel as if I'm the only one who sees the creepy dude with nothing but a demented gleam and a machete climbing through the bedroom window.

Am I?

Disgusted with the presidency of Joe Biden (I mean, let's face it: Biden could invent sex and sixty-percent of America would say they got screwed), for whom everything that could've gone wrong essentially has, people are actually embracing Republicans.

Republicans!

What the fuck?

You think Republicans are going to fix the supply chain shortage and inflation and keep us safe from the eruption of tyrants happening all over the globe?

The same way Trump protected us from foreign interference in our elections? Or his sparkling handling of the pandemic? Or the laissez faire attitude he took towards Vladimir Putin as Putin was planning to upend the western hemisphere?

That kind of protection?

Oh that's right—Republicans hate the same people I do! Seeing my hate reflected in the faces of my elected representation is worth all...

Of.

This.

How can people embrace the short-term, zero-sum ideas that constitute Republican “policy”? Even with my modest eyesight I can see where they will lead. And how monstrously difficult they will be to undo.

While the scientific community continues its debate over time travel, it is incredibly ironic the party which makes such a show of denying that community is the one to accomplish it and get to the finish line first.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dark Ages.

Props

Thank you, Dan Bernstein, for having the stones to speak an ugly truth out loud on the radio. You had the temerity to say “We want this. We vote for this.”

I have never, ever heard those words spoken out loud.

As you said, a vote for a Republican is a vote for dead kids. Republicans are complicit. And indefensible. In light of all the complexities that surround gun violence, it is remarkable we can draw a line back to a single political party and its unswerving, unwavering support of all things gun.

It also happens to be the same political party given to anointing itself as the 'defenders of the sanctity of life' via their plans to revoke Roe v. Wade--even as they enable previously-unseen numbers of guns to find a home here.

This is on you, Republicans. First, last and always. May it not be long before you and your loved ones know the terror of those children in Uvalde, Texas.

God damn you all.

The Zach LaVine Conundrum

After I openly questioned the Bulls moves over the summer of 2021, they went and got really good really fast. To the point where in early-January, they were playing at a sixty-win clip—a stunning turnaround for a team that had won just 31 games the year before.

But as is so often the case, gravity showed up and asserted itself. Injuries smacked the Bulls around like a right uppercut from Mike Tyson. Brutally efficient, they didn't even wait for the season to get ten-games old.

The first Bull to go down was young forward Patrick Williams. Beginning just his second season, Williams was being counted on to provide some scoring heft in addition to his emerging defensive chops.

But in game-five against New York, Williams was felled by a wrist injury. It kept him on the bench for five months—or until the Bulls' freefall was well under way.

The talented-but-fragile Lonzo Ball lasted until mid-January. He, as much as anyone, was responsible for the Bulls' sudden ascent. His knack for disrupting opposing offenses created fast-break opportunities, which fed right into the Bulls' transition-oriented offense.

Such a fast-paced offense served to minimize the Bulls' height deficit up front and masked several defensive deficiencies.

As of Ball's last game (Golden State January 14^th) the Bulls stood at 27 – 12 and were in the thick of the battle for the Eastern Conference's top seed. From that point on, they went just 19 – 24, landing with a thud at the sixth seed.

And exactly one-week later, (Milwaukee January 21^st) fan-favorite Alex Caruso sustained a wrist injury. The same physical, gutsy play that endeared him to ticket-buyers also seem to guarantee he will miss portions of every season.

Caruso's injury knocked him out for two-months. And that was after a COVID protocol removed him from service from just after Christmas until two days prior to his fateful encounter with the Bucks.

With three long-term injuries to critical personnel, it's not really much of a puzzle why that sixty-win pace couldn't be sustained.

And yet there was one more injury that would befall the Bulls. Piling on? Absolutely. Life in the NBA? Absolutely.

Zack LaVine, the centerpiece of the long-ago Jimmy Butler trade with Minnesota, had become an all-star caliber player. He excelled in transition and was never afraid to take the big shot. A rising talent? Without question.

Except for one thing. LaVine has a bad knee which resists easy diagnosis. In his contract year, it must be driving LaVine to distraction to have his knee go bad now.

While he never missed the block of time so many of his teammates did, LaVine's knee impacted him even when he played. It neutered his first step while introducing a previously unknown element of hesitancy in his game.

Max contract? Huh. What was once a no-brainer is now one steeped in second thoughts.

How bad is his knee? Would LaVine accept a less-than-max contract loaded with incentives? If not, how would it impact his value in a potential sign and trade? Even in the worst-case scenario, would the Bulls be able to replace him at a similar salary?

Despite LaVine's resolute language about exploring free-agency, his leverage as been dealt as big a blow as the Bulls'. After all, who wants to hand a max contract to a potentially damaged superstar? Especially with Anthony Davis' stay in L.A. so fresh in everyone's mind?

In many ways, LaVine and the Bulls are stuck with each other. They can't adequately replace him without incurring the luxury tax. LaVine would suffer a giant financial hit by signing elsewhere. Unless revelatory news arrives about LaVine's knee, I have to feel interest in him will be fraught with reservations. The question of which Zach are we getting looms large.

If LaVine is serious about getting out of Chicago, the Bulls should be able to extract significant recompense for their twenty-seven year-old superstar. You know, like the Sixers and Nets did for theirs last year.

Right?

On the other hand, would the absence of LaVine conceivably free-up Nikola Vucevic? Speed the development and consistency of Coby White? Ayo Dosunmu? How about Patrick Williams?

Despite his offensive fireworks, LaVine is not much of a defender. In a purely theoretical sense, I would be curious to see what those Bulls looked like. Additionally, we have to remember: in the player-centric NBA, an individual's worth to his team is often overrated.

Remember that Chicago sportswriters didn't think the 1993/94 Bulls would even make the playoffs after MJ's retirement. I wanted to laugh—and did.

Best-case scenario? LaVine's knee gets an all-clear, he gets his max contract and the Bulls are able to make the roster tweaks that propel them deep into next year's post-season.

Worst-case scenario? The condition of his knee remains inscrutable, he balks at the less-than-max contract offered by the Bulls and out of spite signs elsewhere, where he enjoys many productive years unhindered by knee trouble.

Take your pick.

Beyond the obvious, this could undo the recent advances Bulls leadership has made in making Chicago a free-agent destination.

Like the mountain of debt that can fit on a 3.37” x 2.12” piece of plastic, there is much riding on Zach LaVine's knee.

It will make for an interesting summer.