According to this story from the AP, fans in Japan are embracing and encouraging the U.S. team at the World Championship of Basketball. Dwyane Wade noticed, says the story, that as opposed to the '04 Olympics in Athens, there has been "no booing.''

Of course not. He'd have to be back here in the States to hear the booing. Or, in lieu of anything to boo about, the silence in the face of the team's unbeaten march to the semifinals (thanks to this morning's win over Germany). Or, in desperation for something to criticize, the occasional rip job when the games are not enough of a blowout, or even when it's too much of a blowout.

This phenomenon was detailed nicely in a recent column in the Orlando Sentinel; Jemele Hill wondered why and how recent U.S. basketballers got the distinction as the only teams representing this country that its citizens root for to lose. It's not a new phenomenon, either; contrary to the retroactive praise regularly heaped on the first Dream Team, most people here fervently wished for some country to do to that group what the U.S. hockey team did to the Soviets in 1980. Punish it for its perceived arrogance, that is.

Nowadays, lots of people (including, sadly, plenty in this business) take the cheap route and compare the current team to the much-despised '04 group. (Fine example in this New York Times column last week.) Others pounce on any window of opportunity to berate the team with outdated criticisms that have no relevance to this group. When the Americans beat Italy by only nine after trailing in the first half, one national radio host - who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are C.C. - spent the better part of a half-hour dusting off the same old, decade-old arguments: can't shoot, can't pass, don't play defense, don't play as a team, have poor fundamentals, are all selfish - the usual euphemisms for what most of the relentlessly critical don't want to say out loud.

It should be the new U.S. team motto: Damned if we do, damned if we don't. But, at least the Japanese appreciate them.

Posted by David Steele at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

So, which nationwide hot-button topic this week has left you feeling the most manipulated, has played with your emotions most blatantly, has exploited your most base instincts the most shamelessly?

The "Survivor'' plan to divide contestants up by race? Or the latest Terrell Owens "controversy''?

Tough call. With both, you do feel as if whoever threw both issues out at you, did it with a maniacal cackle, pointing a finger and laughing at how bent out of shape you are about them - and, worse, at how helpless we felt when we fell for it all.

Honestly, don't we all feel just a little bit guilty that a reality TV show that hasn't even aired yet has got us debating it so ferociously - and that, regardless of how we feel about it, we're all going to be tuned in for at least the season premiere? CBS and the "Survivor'' producers are grabbing us by the ankles and shaking the money loose from our pockets, and we're so busy debating whether they're evil or brilliant in conceiving the idea that we don't even notice we're hanging upside down.

As for that stuff going on in Dallas - the "Survivor'' people may be calling their scheme a "social experiment,'' but it's hard not to think that the Cowboys and the NFL, and maybe the networks, had their own collective social experiment in mind, with us as the guinea pigs.

I mean, imagine if MTV had started running promos saying, "The temperamental, ego-driven superstar wide receiver! The gruff, ego-driven Super Bowl-winning coach! The money-crazed, ego-driven celebrity owner! We've gathered them all together on America's Team, the one with the stars on the helmets, in the stadium with the hole in the roof so God can watch his favorite team! Watch the Texas-sized sparks fly! Stay tuned for 'The Real World: Dallas!'''

We would have spit out our drinks and spluttered, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life! How gullible do you think we are? Is this the most contrived, phony, manipulative piece of garbage this juvenile, bottom-feeding network has ever come up with, or what? I don't want any part of it!''

But it's the Cowboys and the NFL and ESPN involved, so we glue ourselves to the screen and waste countless hours on radio and barrels of ink debating its merits. Everybody could have seen it coming a mile away, yet we got sucked into it anyway, the moment it finally ignited.

And face it - what has really ignited? T.O. has been injured, and has managed to attract camera time anyway. Bill Parcells has managed to create waves of news and speculation by his manner of "not'' talking about it. (Last week, he even mimicked the classic Allen Iverson "practice, practice'' press conference.) Now Jerry Jones claims that he doesn't know how on earth anyone found out that T.O. had missed sessions and been fined, and that he's going to find the rat and fire him. He said this while surrounded by cameras and mikes, of course.

Give me a break. I don't know about you, but I feel used. By somebody. It probably wasn't intentional at all - but then again, to think that any of the people involved didn't weigh the possibilities of that player, that coach, that owner and that team generating as much attention as possible together, is probably a touch naive.

It all makes the "Survivor'' thing seem tame by comparison.

Anyway ... someone's going to ask the question, but I am insisting here and now that I'm not going to answer it. That's the last time the "Survivor'' idea gets any play here. It's on the Banned-Topic, Look-Somewhere-Else-For-Your-Fix list, along with a certain Orioles pitcher's attention-hungry wife.

Except for one thing: one problem with picking "Survivor'' teams is deciding who belongs to what group. Too hard to do in this multicultural society (now there's a debate we really don't want to get started). But, as always, Dave Chappelle has the answer for us. Just as he did in envisioning the natural followup to televised poker by producing The World Series of Dice (uncensored here), long before dominos, darts, dodgeball and rock-paper-scissors made their network debuts, he was ahead of his time in suggesting the solution to all "Survivor'' theme-related arguments ...

The Racial Draft.

Not to give anything away, but Tiger Woods, Mariah Carey, Halle Berry and Eminem are mentioned. Enjoy.

Posted by David Steele at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Vacation is over, and there's so much catching up to do. For one thing, I noticed not long after getting back into town Sunday night, the Steve McNair bandwagon is emptying fast. Wow. The last thing I remember was the first drive of the preseason opener against the Giants. Something happened since then? Anybody? Help me out.

Also, the week before last, I was at the annual National Association of Black Journalists convention in Indianapolis, which produced enough blog topics to last me at least until the Ravens regular season opener next week. Yet I have to put off those topics, plus T.O., plus the one-year anniversary of Katrina (which I did do my weekly podcast on earlier today), the world basketball championships, the end of the Jeff Conine era and the latest BALCO developments - because I can't let anymore time go by before you see this:

Barry Bonds on the cover of MAD magazine.

Now, until I saw it in a drugstore in Westchester County, N.Y. last week, I didn't even know MAD magazine was still being published. I'm pretty sure MAD TV doesn't come on anymore, except the reruns on Comedy Central. Even though it apparently is still out there, I can't say I remember the last time I read it (maybe freshman year in college, 25 years ago), and I hadn't seen it since maybe a few years after graduation. With everything else satirical that's available out there in so many formats (like, for instance, smart-ass blogs), who knows if it even has the cache it used to?

Having said that, the sight of Alfred E. Neuman's mug perched atop the rendition of Bonds' steroid-inflated, syringe-studded body is startling.

And having said that, you have to wonder a couple of things about Barry. (1) Has he seen it? (2) If he has, what exactly has prevented him from hurling himself off the highest flagpole in AT&T Park into the waters of McCovey Cove? Is it some perverse notion that there's still yet another level of shame and degradation to which he can sink, and he's just curious to see where that level is? Because one look at that cover - before you even see the abuse he and baseball in general absorb inside the mag - tells you that he and his reputation has crossed a line no one, including him, ever thought they would.

For goodness sakes, less than a decade ago Barry Bonds was considered a surly guy who might be the best all-around player of his day and one of the greatest of all time. The biggest insult you could inflict on him was to make fun of his postseason stats.  Now, his name is being dragged through the mud in, literally, every corner of American culture. Who's gonna bust on him next, Bazooka Joe and his pals?

More to come ...

Posted by David Steele at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

My thoughts about what went on with Maurice Clarett early this morning in Columbus will be in tomorrow's Sun. It pains me, a little, to remind myself and everyone else what I wrote about him in the past, but I pretty much have no choice. The piece I wrote after he was drafted by the Broncos last year is in the paper's archive, which means it will be a big pain to call up, and it will cost you. Sorry. Don't worry, though; the abstract is embarrassing enough, especially this line: "Maybe, just maybe, his desire to play football burns hotter than he's getting credit for, and supposedly that's what teams like.''

Yup, he sure showed that desire last summer, when he got cut before the first preseason game basically for being an out-of-shape, lazy, possibly drunk prima donna. That desire just keeps burning hotter every day, at least the desire to see what the inside of a state prison really looks like. Or the desire to die young and leave a good-looking corpse, as the old saying goes.

To show you that I didn't become that brilliant overnight, here's what I wrote three years ago while in San Fran. In portraying the future gun-toting, cop-eluding, prison-CD-listening, vodka-swigging, Kevlar-wearing Clarett as somewhat of an innocent victim, well, it's easier to make fun of that in hindsight. At the time, it really made sense.

Yet I contend, today and forever, that even if he is a stone-cold knucklehead, he deserved the option of going pro if he was no longer welcome in college, especially if he was unwelcome because of the school's own questionable acts. Who knows - had he gone into the pros earlier before he had a couple of more years to become disillusioned, and ended up with an organization that actually helped him grow up, none of this today might have happened. It's a thought.

So I can live with having written this:

"Sue the NFL? Love the idea. Football has been begging for a taste of what basketball and baseball and hockey and tennis and golf and figure skating and all the Olympic events have had to swallow the last few decades. If Maurice Clarett has to force his way into pro football through the courts, destroying one of the last vestiges of false amateurism along the way, he'll have more support than he realizes.''

This is the problem, though, with having the wrong pioneer. One, whoever picks up the baton now will have Clarett hanging around his neck like a concrete life preserver. Two, a noble attempt gets attached permanently to a less-than-noble player. See how far down his challenge to the NFL age limits is buried in the story about the arrest - yet it's still in there.

Don't be surprised if the NFL stretches the age limit further. It's the sort of thing a chronically arrogant commissioner would do, but it remains to be seen if Paul Tagliabue passed that trait down to his right-hand man and successor, Roger Goodell.

All of which is something of a digression. Clarett is in huge, huge trouble, even if you take the prospect of a long time in prison out of it. He sounds as if he's at rock bottom in life, period. That's a shame.

UPDATE: In my column today, I referenced an appearance on ESPN Wednesday night by Tom Friend, who spoke about a phone conversation he'd had with Clarett before the incident took place. Here's his story about that conversation, on ESPN.com this morning.

Posted by David Steele at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

So, do you like Johnny Unitas?

OK, dumb question, especially in this town. But on the off-chance that the answer is "yes'', you should do a couple of things. (1) Check out the most recent Sports Illustrated, the one with Joe Mauer on the cover, for an excerpt of the upcoming Unitas biography, Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas, by Tom Callahan. (As always, only subscribers can see the entire story on SI's website.)

And (2), get the book itself. It's not available until September 5, but you can pre-order it on Amazon and, most likely, the major bookstore websites.

Book excerpts in magazines tend to go a couple of different ways. They're either engaging enough only to get you through the excerpt, but not enough to make you want to read the entire book. Or they make you want to rush out and get the book right away. This falls into the latter category. SI has nailed it twice this year on that front - the first time was with Game of Shadows back in March, and if you still haven't read that, then you're behind the curve on all the BALCO and performance-enhancing talk. (Brief digression: my podcast this week, which will be up on the Sun website later today, gets into Floyd Landis, public pariah, and I honestly wouldn't be able to talk about that or any other related topic had I not read Game of Shadows. Take that for what it's worth.)

I've always been a big Callahan fan, ever since his days with the Washington Star, which tells you how old I am (the Star went out of business in 1981). The Unitas excerpt in SI reads as much like a history of the Colts as it does a biography of one player, yet it still goes into depth about what made Unitas great better than anything I've seen yet. And this is in an eight-page magazine article. It was so good, I'm not only going to read this, I'm going to finally and belatedly take the time to read Lenny Moore's book from last year, All Things Being Equal, because the mentions of him in the article piqued my interest.

I'm not gushing just to be gushing. This book sounds tremendous. If the rest of the book doesn't maintain the level and pace of what's in SI, I'll be extremely disappointed.

By the way, watch here (and possibly in the paper itself) in the near future for a review of a very, very intriguing new book by New York Times columnist and Morgan State grad William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves.

Posted by David Steele at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)