Follow-up on yesterday's "silly timeout" post:

The Wisconsin-Florida State game was on way too late for your humble Nachoman. But I read this from Deadspin's Live Blog (emphasis added):

0:07 - Douglas bricks a dagger 3. Badgers get the rebound and break the other way, Bohannon jacks up a 3 but Bo called a timeout. The shot went in too!!! Ouch. Badgers are down one with the ball. I like their chances. It could go to anyone on this play.

Good thing Wisconsin won, eh, Bo Ryan? Nonetheless, you called a bonehead timeout. Trust your players.

Why the timeout bugaboo? Have sports pundits never played basketball before?

The Nachoman is getting more and more weary of basketball observers demanding that coaches call timeouts.

The trend started innocently enough (or not, depending on your point of view) with Dick Vitale shouting “get a TO, baby!” whenever a team made a 10-15 point run. Dicky, a former coach, was usually on the money with his pronouncements. Often, an extended run can be indicative of an underlying issue that the coach can correct by stopping play. Perhaps his team is gassed and needs a break. Perhaps he needs to sub back in his best player. Perhaps he had underestimated a player on the opposing team, and a brief discussion of how to adjust the defensive or offensive scheme might stop the bleeding. In any case, Dicky V knew what he was screaming about.

Now, though, I hear broadcasters call for timeouts in every conceivable situation, especially near the end of games. Then, if the coach chooses NOT to call the timeout, I hear criticism, as if the coach were derelict in his duty. I even saw written criticism of Roy Williams, of all people, for failing to use timeouts. Forget the probability that Mr. Williams knows a wee bit more about basketball than a deadspin editor; his proven competence and his national championship should earn him some benefit of the doubt when it comes to subtle points of his game management. I argue that a good coach should NOT be calling timeout much, even at the end of games.

Critical commentators seem to misunderstand the purpose of the basketball timeout. I see two types of timeouts: the tactical, and the strategic. By “tactical,” I mean spur-of-the-moment timeouts based on the immediate game situation: for example, a timeout to avoid a 5-second call, or to preserve possession as a player falls out of bounds. A “strategic” timeout, on the other hand, is usually called by the coach as a calculate move to affect the progress of the game. The Dicky V timeouts described above are all strategic timeouts.

I propose that virtually all tactical timeouts are worthwhile. Is it worth a timeout to maintain possession, and possibly to prevent an opponent’s fast break at the same time? Certainly – that could be a two to five point swing! I’d spend a timeout to gain that many points any day.

Are strategic timeouts useful? They must be measured against the 2-5 point value of a tactical timeout. The Dicky V midgame timeouts, if they stop an opponent’s run, certainly meet the standard. But, what about the timeouts proposed by pundits?

Near the end of the game, a good strategic timeout might be called after a made basket to set up a press, or to make defense/offense substitutions. That’s pretty much it.

Pundits, though, usually give other, ridiculous purposes for a timeout. Usually they expect the coach to “set up” a shot, or to prepare the team to run a set play.[1] What, you didn’t ever practice the shot or the play you want? Why not? What the heck have you been doing in practice, then? If the coach is diagramming a play the team has never seen before, most likely the coach hasn’t been using his practice time wisely.

I especially laugh with scorn at the idea that a coach can magically create a basket on the possession immediately following a timeout. Commentators imply that by listening to a coach’s wisdom for 30-6o seconds, the offensive team has become more likely to score, presumably because the coach “set up” the offense. Has it ever occurred to anyone that the defensive coach likewise had a chance to “set up” the defense?

I’ve witnessed the extremes of the “setting up a last-second shot” silliness, and I’ve never heard an announcer take the coach to task for his mismanagemement.[2] In the last year, I’ve seen:

* With three seconds left, a player starts a reasonably open drive to the basket for the winning shot… but the coach calls timeout to “set up” what becomes a contested fallaway 3 pointer.

* With a few seconds left, down by 1, a player quickly inbounds after a missed basket, catching the opponents off guard, and connects with a streaking teammate for the winning layup… except the coach called timeout to “set up” a play from 94 feet away.

* With 20 seconds left, a coach calls timeout to set up the last shot… which consists of four players backing up until they’re practically out of bounds, while the fifth guy dribbles into a double team and throws up a prayer.[3]

In the same timeframe, I’ve not seen a single last-second shot set up during a timeout that worked. Yeah, there was that Laettner-esque Minnesota craziness in last year’s big 10 tournament, when Tubby Smith seemed to have designed a full-court game winning play. But it turned out that the actual play went nothing like Tubby had drawn it up.

What started the Nachoman on this rant? Deadspin’s Rick Chandler interviewed Keith Smart, the Indiana player whose 15-foot jumper beat Syracuse back in 1987. (Brent Musburger’s excellent call: “Smart… takes the shot…”)

Chandler: “The thing I remember most about it was that Knight didn't call a time out before the play. Not that that was unusual

Smart: People say, well you guys didn't call a time out. But that was Knight. We knew what to do in different situations; that all came out in practice. As a coach now I see that sometimes when you call a time out and draw up a play, the player only sees what you show him and doesn't take what the defense is giving. That shot came out of the motion offense, and that's an offense where you learn to take what the defense gives you. Playing at Indiana and playing for coach Knight has given me a tremendous base for basketball.

On the other end of the famous NCAA non-timeouts, I wonder how many timeouts Michigan coach Steve Fisher wasted in the 1993 title game, leading to Chris Webber being charged with a technical for calling an excess timeout. No one has ever asked that question that I know of. Is it possible that, if Mr. Fisher had a more Knight- or Williams- like attitude toward timeouts, Webber might have called a useful tactical timeout, and the team might have scored to win?

NM

[1] Or, they want the coach to “ice the shooter.” Do we have any evidence that icing the shooter even works?

[2] Have you EVER heard an announcer correctly criticize a coach for blatant game mismanagement? For example, if a player gets a technical, his selfishness has hurt his team; if a coach gets a technical, he’s calculating that he can inspire his team to better play. No one else sees a ridiculous double standard?

[3] … and then bitches to the ref that he was fouled. I call this the NBA offense.

Which of the following is not based on a true story?

(A) Ox suspended for mustache theft

(B) Inmate breaks out of jail, steals cigarettes, breaks back in

(D) Grow tomatoes upside-down without backbreaking work!

(C) Woman drives motorcycle, man hangs on behind her

Answers:

(A) True Story: At the Utah State / New Mexico State basketball game in the WAC semifinals, a (presumably) drunken fan offered USU mascot “Big Blue” $100 for the mustache of NMSU mascot “Pistol Pete.” Mr. Blue stole the mustache, and got throttled for his efforts. Much public gnashing of teeth followed, the large blue ox was banishéd from the tournament final, and the ill-gotten $100 was donated to a local charity. But, I have a feeling that Big Blue won’t have to buy his own milk for a while at Utah bars.

You can read the Associated Press story here, and marvel that the spokesbeings for both schools were named “Tiffany.”

(B) True Story: In Georgia,* a 25 year old inmate, in the pokey on drug charges, broke out of jail through an unlocked door. He burgled a local convenience store, taking 14 packs of cigarettes, and then returned to prison. He was arrested upon arriving back at jail. (How is it possible to arrest someone who is trying to get into jail?)

The best version of the story – just 74 words long, with a pithy comment appended – can be read here via Fox News.

(C) True Story, or at least true enough for advertising purposes. During some basketball game or other Burrito Girl and I saw a commercial for an upside-down vegetable grower. You can take a look at the infomercial at hangingtomato.com. The claim is that by watering and feeding the plant directly on the roots, the plant will “explode” downward and fruit without “backbreaking work.” If you look at the pictures, though, you’ll notice that someone has carefully swept up all of the detritus that fell out of the planter onto the ground.

I was actually going to buy one for the NachoGrandma, who extols the virtues of home grown tomatoes despite the fact that she has actually, personally harvested precisely three tomatoes in the past three decades. The device would allow her to grow a tomato plant on her second story balcony. However, the actual price is not just $20, but $36, when shipping costs are included. Too rich for my blood.

(D) No way in heck. Our trip to Florida must have coincided with Bike Week, as motocyclists were converging on Daytona Beach from all directions. Most of these bikers were helmetless; many consisted of a man driving with a woman hanging on behind him. The USA may have sent a man to the moon, may have a black president and a female secretary of state, but I will not truly believe in social progress until I see a man hanging on behind a woman on a motorcycle.


Duke - Carolina
El Molé says that if Duke wins the ACC championship to tie Carolina for the most conference titles in history, “Duke’s fans will become insufferable.” That’s funny, the way he talks about Duke fans, they reached that stage long ago. (“How would we tell?” El Molé commented a moment after his statement sunk in.)

I’m moderately neutral, but leaning toward UNC, in this heated rivalry. Why leaning toward Carolina? Aside from the fact that El Molé wouldn’t consent to appearing in this column if I leaned the other way? Well, it is MUCH more fun to tweak a Duke fan than a Carolina fan.

I briefly mentioned the two missed traveling calls on Duke a few weeks ago, video of which made all the sports blogs, to Duke alumnus and squash afficianado Bill Robertson. He went on a rant, with footnotes, about how Duke does not actually get more than their share of calls. He went on to wonder why people keep thinking that Duke is favored by the refs.

Well, fellow squasher Paul Deigl answered that one for us… “Very few people REALLY believe that Duke gets an unfair advantage. But we love watching the Duke folks get so defensive!”

Hey, ESPN, I pay for high definition and a large television for a reason.
In one of the worst gimicks ever to grace sports coverage, ESPN decided during an ACC tournament game to split the screen. On the right side, we saw the NC State coach squatting, gesticulating, and generally exhorting his charges. On the left, shrunk to about 1/4 the screen, we saw the actual basketball game going on.

My issue goes even beyond my tired old complaint to broadcast networks to just show the dang game. (The Nachoman thinks that in their quest for sports emmys and simmilar awards, TV producers ignore their primary mission of game coverage to show off how awesome the TV producer can be.) Not only did ESPN break their covenant with their audience (again), they did so to show a coach's antics. A separate Nachoman thesis states that brilliant coaching is far rarer than the sports media would have us believe. And, a good coach can simply let his players play on game day -- his players should be so well trained that gesticulation and exhortation are unnecessary! Yet, ESPN contributed to the :cult of the coach" by showing coaches' antics as if they were important. No, folks, the game is about the players, not the coaches. Maybe if university trustees recognized this fact then Pete Caroll and Jim Calhoun might be making closer to my salary, and about 1000 more poor but smart folks would be attending USC and UConn.

Next week:

I get El Molé and Bill Robertson together to debate the quality of coach K’s hairpiece.


*Of course. Don’t all humorous prison stories take place in the Southeast, where it’s additionally considered appropriate to sing a country song about the event?

Spring training for the Nachoboy

Yesterday marked our first, and probably last, excursion to a Cardinals spring training game. Three years ago, my wife and sidekick Burrito Girl proposed heading to Florida for spring break. I suggested we head to Jupiter, located just north of the Miami-Lauderdale-West Palm Beach megalopolis, for a couple of reasons: (1) Jupiter is relatively close to the Nachoman’s former haunt of Boca Raton, and (2) Jupiter is the spring home of two major league teams, the Cardinals and the Marlins. The idea was, with two teams in town, I’d be able to see a game every day if I wanted to, with or without the Nachoboy, while Burrito Girl got to stay on the beach as she wished. The vacation was a success; we’ve been back to Jupiter three times now.

I no longer go to major league baseball games very often, because of the enormous financial and time commitment necessary nowadays. I think I’ve been to two games in the past decade. But back in the day, when I lived a few miles from Riverfront Stadium, I might decide to go to a game 45 minutes before the first pitch. I’d buy walk-up tickets in the upper deck behind home plate for four bucks. For dinner, I’d buy hot dogs for $1 each.* Total commitment: less than 5 hours and about 7 dollars per person. According to the inflation calculator, that works out to about $13 in today’s money to completely cover attendance at a meaningful game.

At yesterday’s spring training game, my ticket alone for the grass berm in right field cost $15. Hot dogs were $3.50 each. For friggin’ SPRING TRAINING.

Three years ago, those same grass berm tickets were only $8. I took the then-3-year-old Nachoboy a few times, knowing that he would be more interested in roaming around the stadium and eating dippin’ dots ice cream than in watching the game. But that was okay, ‘cause I didn’t care about a preseason game any more than he did. He only lasted about three innings each time, but the combination of the gameday atmosphere, the large number of fans at the game and at our hotel wearing Cardinals jerseys (Nachoboy has recognized ornithological cardinals since he was two), and the baseball he was given by the nice bullpen catcher turned him into a Cards fan.

It’s still nice to be around so many Cardinals fans. But for $15 each plus hot dog and ice cream, it becomes ever more annoying when the boy decides in the fourth inning that it’s too hot outside and he wants to go home.

And this is why I won’t take him to an actual major league game. The cost would be astronomical; traveling to a big-league stadium is no longer trivial for me; and if I’m going to go through the trouble to get to a game, I want to keep a scorecard and pay attention to everything around me. That’s tough to do with a six-year-old along.

So, was this game worth the $62 we spent for three tickets and sundries? Probably not, but consider what we saw. Not just three innings of spring training baseball, which was rather boring – Adam Wainwright works extra-slow with a man on base; the Cardinals defense is beyond poor, as I observed two nominal errors plus two further failed plays that were not officially scored errors.

The big news was the skinny bleached blonde girl in the section next to ours. She asked for and was granted permission to approach the bullpen players from the grass berm area. She handed a scrap of paper to the nearest Cardinal, who smiled, and passed it along the line. Every player trained his eyes on this girl as she walked back to her seat, while the ultimate recipient of the paper earned nudges and smirks from his teammates.

They say you see something new every time you go to a baseball game, and in this case they're right.

NM

*One of only three positive aspects of Marge Schott’s legacy was that she absolutely insisted on capping the price of hot dogs at $1. The 14 year old Nachoman on a limited budget considered even $1 to be somewhat expensive.

Spring Training 2009

Welcome back, Nachoman! I'm still technically on hiatus, because the Fundamental Thesis of Nachodom states that a baseball writer should primarily discuss baseball games. (Imagine that.) Since actual games don't begin until early April, my hiatus will end then.

Nevertheless, I'll start writing again now. I'm on spring break, which means I only have 50 rather than 500 other things going on. More importantly, the family -- Burrito Girl, the Nachoboy, and I -- is about to embark on an odyssey to Cardinals spring training in Jupiter, FL. We pick up the Nachoboy after school on Friday, drive for two straight days, and we'll be ensconced amongst the Cards fans.

Perhaps the highlight of our trip is that we will be driving past the McDonald's on US 1 in Fort Pierce. This is the very McDonald's made famous by Ms. Latreasa Goodman, who called 911 three times because the restaurant was out of Chicken McNuggets. "This is an emergency," she told the operator. "If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one. This is an emergency." Ms. Goodman, of course, was charged with misusing the 911 system.

Clearly, this woman has the brains of a McNugget. Problem is, upon further investigation, we can find out that the McDonald's cashier has merely the brains of the barbecue dipping sauce. A couple of days after the initial news reports, the full story came out: when Ms. Goodman requested her money back because of the lack of McNuggets, the cashier refused. The cashier stated that all sales were final, and that Ms. Goodman had no choice but to order something different. In Ms. Goodman's mind, the McDonald's was stealing her money... so she called 911 like she would on any other thief. McDonald's has subsequently issued a public apology and refunded Ms. Goodman's money.

Perhaps the greatest part of the story is the news coverage. Some sites, like the Palm Beach channel 12 page linked above, treated the story as humorous throughout. Their lede: "You could say she flew into a 'McFury' "

Others tried to maintain a dignified tone throughout their article, but used subtle barbs, as on the Washington, DC Fox News site: "The situation was so dire that she called three times in order to get help."

Then there are the sites who try to fill out their otherwise-straight report with further information, such as the following from the trail end of the article on WPTV.com: "McNuggets, introduced to the McDonald’s national menu in 1983, are sold in more than 100 countries and, unlike the McDouble, are often dunked in barbecue or hot mustard sauce."

And finally, lest you think that Ms. Goodman is a unique resident of the Sunshine State, The Smoking Gun reports: "Last month, a Florida man was arrested after he called 911 to complain about his displeasure with a Burger King combo meal."

With apologies to deadspin commentator Chamomiles Davis: Can we just pretend that this story ends with Ms. Goodman driving a stolen golf cart into a pond and being devoured by an alligator? Then this story about Florida Hijinks would be complete.

And yet it is into McNuggetless Florida that I lead my family. I'll send updates.