A Couple Sporting Thoughts

And the Lakers have a new coach, former Cavaliers coach Mike Brown. What to think? When rumors of Brown’s imminent hiring first began to be passed over ESPN radio during Mike and Mike in the morning and on sports website blurbs I at first hoped that it wasn’t true. Certainly, Brown’s 66.3% winning percentage during five years as coach of the Cavs is a positive but that team’s well known failures in the playoffs had to be considered as well. The difficulty in assessing Brown’s coaching performance comes from the fact that LeBron James was on all five of those Cavs teams and he was let go the same off-season that James left for the Miami Heat. This past season, the Cavs finished with the second worst regular season record in the NBA and there’s no way to determine how much of the difference from last season (42 less wins!) was due to either James’ or Brown’s departure from the team. It can be argued that coaches receive too much credit for good teams and too much blame for poor teams but it’s unreasonable to assume that a coach is simply a bystander and some part of those 42 wins has to be attributed to Mike Brown. Those last several sentences were an illustration of me talking myself into the hire. And as a day has passed I upgraded myself from doubtful to cautiously optimistic. Truth is, I can’t think of anyone who would be appreciably better as Laker’s coach. It’s an unknown. Like many casual observers I would have liked to see Brian Shaw, Laker’s assistant coach, be given a chance but it isn’t my choice and there really isn’t a sure thing and perhaps Brown will be very successful. As a Laker’s fan, I wish him luck and hope he succeeds.

Being contrarian, I often find myself wondering “what’s the big deal” in regard to a lot of things and yesterday I found myself rolling my eyes at both Mike’s “think of the children” concocted consternation over NASCAR driver Kyle Busch driving 128 mph in a 45 mph zone on the Mike and Mike show on ESPN radio. I’m not in favor of Busch’s action but I’m not in the position to pass judgment either. Busch will have a rather large speeding ticket and possibly face other consequences based on wherever he got the ticket. That wherever is what makes me incredulous about the whole thing and unwilling to define Busch as some kind of hate object. I’m fairly certain he wasn’t driving that fast through a school zone or anything like that, as it would have been stated. Details are lacking in the story and unreleased are details in regard to when and where this incident occurred. Mike and Mike went on to label Busch’s driving as unsafe, which I think depends on a lot of unknown (to the public) details and I won’t just call speeding unsafe just because, even when the limit is surpassed by 83 mph. The car he was driving was capable of that speed and he didn’t wreck or hurt anyone else meaning that the road apparently was fit for that speed. Finally, Mike and Mike devolved into the silly, pondering if NASCAR requires driver’s licenses (it doesn’t) and whether or not drivers would have to carry them while racing (they don’t) and if Busch should have his license suspended (that’s up to the jurisdiction he got caught in) and if he did lose his license, if that should influence his career (it shouldn’t). The takeaway, speeding isn’t always unsafe and conclusions are difficult absent details.