Tuesday, August 18th, 2009...8:51 pm
Ordering the Acronyms: Are FIBA and FIFA Useful Analogues?
What hath Barca to do with basketball? Based on our recent posts, much, and in every way. On Monday I took a stab at the vexed question of whether NBA owners should restrict their players from international competition. My post was inspired by Kevin Arnovitz and it, in turn, inspired a number of insightful comments from our readers. The sort of comments that made me brag to the neighbors-”our readers are smarter than yours, neh, neh, neh, neh.” No shame.
Those comments pushed me to think harder about the issue. A behind the scenes exchange of emails ensued, largely centering around Mark Cuban’s claim that no other commercial industry would simply loan out its best employees for someone else’s slave labor. Our international readers took umbrage and issued a polite “ahem”. What about FIFA and local clubs? The Euroleague and FIBA? “Reasonable questions,” I thought. “Better flash a bat signal high above Gotham.”
Enter Brian Phillips, atop his Underwood and properly attired, as you might expect, in a handsome cape, armored abs and a steely cup of zinc-iron alloy . Brian is, simply put, a masterful sportswriter. He helms The Run of Play, the flagship blog for all things soccer. Brian kindly contributed the following post in an attempt to distinguish between the NBA’s relationship with FIBA and [insert local club] with FIFA.
*****
A Troublesome Comparison
The trouble with comparing international basketball to international soccer is that international basketball is a quaint sideline, an activity designed for small gyms and pale Lithuanians, and international soccer is a gigantic, dripping sea-god of money. In basketball, the NBA runs the world, because the NBA makes a billion dollars a year in TV money and nothing at FIBA can stand up to that. In soccer, things are more complex, because while the domestic leagues are rich, FIFA is rich, too—it’s expected to clear around $2.5 billion in TV rights for the next World Cup alone, a tournament that lasts one month—and has the power to keep the clubs in line.
On top of that, the satellite economy around international soccer crushes—just absolutely dwarfs—anything to do with international basketball. Dirk Nowitzki might suffer some marginal loss, in German shoe profits or something, if the Mavs don’t allow him to suit up for Germany, but it’s still a better investment for him to stay on Mark Cuban’s good side and work toward his next contract. That’s not the case in soccer, where huge swathes of the sport-celebrity industry—measured in media exposure, kit sales, shoe sales, book sales, endorsement deals, posters, sticker books, celebrity girlfriends, replica doggie sweaters—revolve around the international game. David Beckham would have been a star had he only played for Manchester United, but he became a galaxy-swallowing ur-phenomenon when he “completed the transformation from villain to hero” (thanks, Wikipedia) with the English national team.
The National Team is an Economic Force
So if a soccer club chafes at having to send a multimillion-dollar superstar to have his ankles hacked at Ginobili-style in a midseason international game against Kyrgyzstan—and the teams chafe all the time; club managers hate the international game, and fanatic club supporters sometimes do too—the soccer club can’t just pull a Cuban sulk and expect Ronaldinho to fall in line. There’s a gray area to this, and it often happens that a famous player who’s been called up to their national team for an insignificant friendly will coincidentally come down with a minor groin strain and have to pull out of the squad at the last moment. (Friendly wave to Steven Gerrard.) But for the most part, in most countries, the national soccer team is a force to be reckoned with, rather than, say, a venue for the display of Mike Krzyzewski in shorts.
So that’s the crass material explanation for why NBA owners might have a stronger hand in discouraging their players from competing in international tournaments than soccer owners do. FIFA can afford to pay clubs some compensation for players who feature in major tournaments (around $110 million for the next World Cup, in what is essentially a take-this-and-shut-up kickback), has more and broader regulatory power than FIBA (FIFA sanctions the individual domestic leagues, while the NBA plays by no one’s rules but its own and possibly Leon Rose’s), and has the self-interest of the top players on its side.
Clubs Deeply Rooted in Community
But there’s more to it than that. As Tim’s Monday piece showed, we’re very comfortable in America thinking of teams as businesses and of players as “assets” and “employees.” Our leagues are made up of a small number of extremely valuable franchises competing in closed competitions in perpetuity, and—probably because of the geographic distance separating many fans from their teams—we’ve basically accepted that everything revolves around the displaced reality of TV. It’s not that we have less of a personal stake in our teams, and we definitely don’t love it when crass Oklahoma billionaires swoop in, move them halfway across the country, and rename them after abstract weather phenomena. But we’ve seen it happen before, and we’re able to pick ourselves up from it.
That’s not the case with soccer, especially in Europe. Teams are clubs, not franchises: they’re, at least in theory, institutions with ancient local roots whose role in the community is more important than their ability to buy diamond-studded horn-rims for the local equivalent of Al Davis. Every tiny town has its own club, and they’re all linked together in multi-tiered league systems that mean (again, in theory) that Scunthorpe United could one day supplant Manchester United at the top of the major leagues. It may be unrealistic, given that the top teams all act like American sports franchises anyway, but fans expect owners to act as responsible stewards for clubs that fundamentally belong to the community. There’s a deep-rooted sense that soccer isn’t supposed to be all about the money, which can be jarring for American fans who’ve known what the mid-level exception was since Keith Jackson explained it in doodle-bug terms when they were on their mother’s knee. Again, it’s unrealistic, since soccer is often transparently all about the money, but in practice, an owner who huffed about risking his “assets” in international play would likely wake up to an exploding Porsche. At least rhetorically, owners have to play a different game. More idealism, more hypocrisy.
A Passionate Public, Globalization and the Future
And that’s the thing about international soccer compared to international basketball: the situation holds because everybody really freaking cares. The paradox of the situation I’ve described here (more materialism supported by more idealism) is possible because billions of people love international soccer. The World Cup, the European Championship, the Copa América, and so on just matter in a way that even Olympic basketball, even outside the United States, doesn’t, except possibly within the heated inner sanctum of Jerry Colangelo’s imagination. The fans’ passions set the limits of the organizations’ powers, and determine where and how the players are going to get paid.
At the moment, the NBA doesn’t have to contend with anything like this parallel reality of loyalty and competition, and that may be a good thing (because it means we’re the center of the universe of basketball, and because our teams’ top players may be less likely to get injured in spasms of charitable patriotism) or a bad thing (because international soccer is an absolute blast, and how cool would it be if there were other great teams around the world for us to compete with?), but it’s the way things are at the moment. What’s intriguing is the thought that if all the hoops-globalization/Stern-in-China memes we’ve had to swallow over the last few years turn out to be right, that could eventually change.
If basketball does start to approach the worldwide popularity of soccer, one question will be whether the more open mercantilism of the NBA, combined with its independence from FIBA, will keep the international game in second place, or whether a surge of fan interest could make country vs. country matter. David Stern would trade Tony Parker’s ankle for another billion fans in a heartbeat, but it’s not clear whether his NBA-centric vision of the game’s growth would ultimately kill international basketball or give it new life.
To read more of Phillips-and why wouldn’t you?-visit The Run of Play.
32 Comments
August 18th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Man, I love this site. The writers are great, the posters are respectful and knowledgeable. This is the oasis in the center of the internet. Well, at least as far as sports goes.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Woah, this is THE post I’ve been waiting for a looong time (FIBA-NBA as opposed to what happens in football).
Nice!
August 19th, 2009 at 12:43 am
The difference between franchises and clubs is a huge key to understand the NBA/Other BB competitions divide.
Obviously you can’t expect A.C.Milan to play in Rome, but the exploding Porsche part of your article isn’t far from the truth. The fan base in Europe or south America is sometimes crazy.
I’ve seen some basketball fans throw their own cell phones (even their wallet!) to the court, towards their own players because they felt the athletes weren’t giving all to win. And I’m not talking about hooliganism, but fans being overly concerned by the result of the team they root for.
A quote from the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” (three of the characters are about to die and are toasting one last time:
_ to England, one says.
_ to mankind, the second says.
The last one ends the scene by toasting:
_ to Manchester United.
To some degree in many nations, soccer is more than a sport. It’s a religion. Hence “fan” sometimes leads to fanaticism.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:12 am
[...] The brilliant San Antonio Spurs blog 48 Minutes of Hell has been hosting a conversation about parallels between soccer and basketball, one of my favorite subjects. Knowing that it was, and being kindly of temperament, Tim invited me to say some things about the international arm of both sports. [...]
August 19th, 2009 at 4:24 am
Great post.
Just to follow the movie reference Buns made in a comment above & bowing to the dominant gunners group here, reading classic Nick Hornby’s “Fever pitch” (and, to a degree, watching the 1997 movie) may give North American fans a good idea of the commitment of European fans (maybe not of South American fans, who are even more passionate, I hear).
Best,
N
August 19th, 2009 at 4:50 am
Brilliant post, Brian. Kudos to you.
I agree 100% with everything you said, and buns is also right on the money. The difference between franchises and clubs is key, and European leagues might not have been the best examples to show the contrast between those realities. In South America, where the clubs’ pockets aren’t so deep, small clubs that represent a town really have a good chance to improve their status with time and effort. The clubs belong to the community in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for them to bankrupt, too, which must be mind-boggling for Americans. Whenever an important football club has declared bankruptcy in Argentina, the government has been forced to step in and help them cover their debt. Can you imagine Obama sending Seattle bailout money to keep their Sonics afloat?
Brian is absolute right when he says: “The fans’ passions set the limits of the organizations’ powers.” That’s all it boils down to. What I think that Brian forgot to mention is that in countries where football is religion, basketball could easily become a secondary faith. People that were born in an environment where fanaticism was understood in football terms won’t easily make the switch to “just caring but hey, no big deal” when it comes to basketball. Being called to play for their national team holds nearly as much weight in basketball and tennis as it does in football, at least in Argentina, even if the number of people who care is smaller. That’s a pressure American players don’t feel, but you can bet that many foreign players that grew in a football culture do, and it will color their actions.
Regardless of the Cubans of this league.
August 19th, 2009 at 5:05 am
fantastic article. thank you.
August 19th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Broadening it out beyond just soccer vs. basketball, I think that because the most popular American team sports are traditionally not played much elsewhere, Americans just don’t have the same sense of the importance of international sport generally.
If you look at other big sports in the UK, like cricket and rugby, they are even more dominated by the international game than soccer is; soccer is unusual in that club competitions can even begin to rival tournaments like the World Cup. Club rugby pulls in enough spectators to be a decent business, but it is completely dwarfed in terms of money and public interest by international rugby. County cricket is mainly played out in front of almost-empty stadiums, but international games, like the current series between England and Australia, are big business and can be front-page news. Lots of people, like me, follow international rugby and cricket quite closely but don’t watch any domestic competitions at all.
And there is a constant round of international sport: the annual Six Nations rugby tournament, the Rugby World Cup every year, three or four international cricket series every year, the Cricket World Cup, and of course the soccer World Cup and European Cup. These international games produce some of our most iconic sporting moments, particularly because they are shared national moments.
The whole idea of representing your country at sport is just much more vivid and important for us than it seems to be for Americans, not just in soccer but generally. We have an emotional attachment to our national teams as entities in their own right, built up over decades; you have perhaps never had a reason or an opportunity to build up that connection.
August 19th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Looking at the club/franchise thing with a different angles, it always struck me that American leagues operates in a socialist way. I mean:
- the closed leagues
- the draft, with advantages for the weak
- salary cap
Of course, I don’t mean ideological socialism, but only practical one, aimed, quite efficiently, at getting more revenue for the league as a whole.
In comparison, European/S-American leagues are actually pure unregulated capitalism. Many giants from the past are now in the lower leagues (like if the Lakers where playing in CBA) and nothing can stop Real Madrid to splash a billion dollars and buy the best players - if they want to.
August 19th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Great read. I love insightful writing.
To expand on Scotian’s point, I would love to see relegation in American sports. Bottom 3 teams in the NBA drop down to D-league, top 3 D-league teams promoted to NBA.
The system keeps relevance at the top of the standings to the bottom.
How many teams would tank the end of the season then??
August 19th, 2009 at 8:16 am
There are many aspects of football that can’t really be related to American sports, e.g. the class issue: many towns have one “rich guys’ club” and one “poor guys’ club”.
Another important aspect is that many competitions are organized so that the “little guy” can win, or at least to give that impression. I remember being in Ecuador shortly before they qualified for WC 2002 (their first qualification ever) and people would tell you “if we qualify for the WC it will be the greatest day in my life” (they did, partied for days, and some people even died in the celebrations…)
When France won the WC in 1998 there had not been that many people in the streets since… the end of WW2. Ahem.
A big issue with basketball is that you can’t play it everywhere. You need some kind of hard surface, a ball that actually rebounds and a basket. Whereas as long as there’s something you can kick towards some vaguely defined “goal”, you can play football - on the beach, in the streets, in the backyard, with a tennis ball, with a tin can, with jumpers or motorcycle helmets as “poles”, the list is endless. That’s the greatest characteristic of football, and in my view the reason why it’s so popular. Basketball isn’t quite there, obviously - even if the French team won the World championship in basketball, most people in France wouldn’t care. France won a ton of stuff in handball, people will watch the big games on TV, they will talk about it for a day, that’s it. I’m not sure basketball can really make it to the next level.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Oh… and great article btw
August 19th, 2009 at 8:46 am
On the money and regulation matter. Michel Platini, head of UEFA (the european football governing body) is attempting to put some tighter regulation on the clubs’ spendings and especially their debt. Like in the NBA, the goal is to preserve the product by having rules in place that keep the money/talent gap from being too large thus making the games more competitive and unpredictable.
It should be noted that right now european leagues each set their own rules (or lack of there of). The French Ligue 1 has an office that crunches all the relevant financial information of each club and relegates any team whose budget seems too fragile. Meanwhile, elsewhere, the general rule is that the club can spend at will…until he’s faced with a bill that forces it to sell assets/players. Just this year Valence FC in spanish football and Fortitudo Bologna in italian basketball had to dismantle their team in order to avoid going under.
Bonus: an explanation of Real Madrid’s debt financing http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/11/how_the_recession_helps_real_madrid
August 19th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I wonder if the differences has to do with how much inter-connection Europe has with the rest of the world via conquering. At some point, including the US, but our games our different because our opulence is far greater, I think this comes into play as the rest of the world is filled with generally the same idea’s minus the parts of the world like the US.
Cricket is huge. Where? India (conquered by Britain), Australia (ditto), England (conquered itself many times over), and who knows where else. There is so much inter-personal connection in these games that the evolvement of them came in part that different parts of the world was playing them even if the games themselves originated from England or Mainland Europe.
I might be off-base here, but well, I don’t think so.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Another note on FIBA. Its hold on pro basketball in Europe is very tenuous. In 2000, 24 of the richest european teams joined forces and decided to organise their own closed league, outside of FIBA competitions. They even were able to steal the “Euroleague” name which FIBA had never trademarked. Hence, two european champions were crowned during the 2001 spring.
The Euroleague, as we know it today, is the result of a compromise that ended the rift between FIBA and the richest clubs. They are given “licences” that give them the right to compete in the Euroleague for several seasons, regardless of their results in domestic leagues. This way, it takes several bad seasons for one big club to lose its berth in Euroleague, as opposed to the previous system when one season of bad luck was all it took.
So there has been a power struggle in European basketball, and one is brewing in European football. Arsene Wenger, manager and coach of London Arsenal FC declared recently that he is convinced that a semi-closed european league will replace the Champion’s League in the near future. The biggest football clubs have already formed their own association, a move which, in basketball, had been the first step toward the creation of a new league.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Orlando, I guess you are the one from the Miami Herald and 790 tehe ticket. Good that you have come to appreciatte the “boring” Spurs and its fans.
Mr. Phillips, awesome report. I didn’t think of it this way, but you are absolutely right. In soccer, money rules, but only if it goes attached to the passion of the fans.
One of the best articles ever comparing basketball and fútbol.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I just learned that Kevin Garnett and Adidas are releasing a new Chelsea-themed basketball shoe. In case you haven’t had enough “how basketball is becoming more like soccer” for one day.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:07 am
here huge swathes of the sport-celebrity industry—measured in media exposure, kit sales, shoe sales, book sales, endorsement deals, posters, sticker books, celebrity girlfriends, replica doggie sweater..
could you elaborate on this more? it seems like an arrogant comment to me
August 19th, 2009 at 11:07 am
ignorant*
August 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Nike commercials revolving around the Brazilian national team; England players timing the release of their autobiographies to coincide with the World Cup; innumerable players, ranging from Ronaldo to Zinedine Zidane, seeing their fame escalate from “impressive” to “legendary” based on a great, decisive or crazy performance in a major international competition; the most iconic (and thus most marketable and most insistently marketed) moments in the sport being taken from major international competitions (Pele’s bicycle kick in the ‘68 World Cup against Belgium, the Hand of God goal, et. al.); the fact that the antics of camera-seeking wives and girlfriends of English players in the ‘06 World Cup became such a distraction that it led to a new word being entered in the Oxford English Dictionary; the fact that famous international players are invited on talk shows, profiled in magazines, analyzed by pundits and slapped all over billboards in the buildup to major international tournaments; Adidas creating one of the coolest advertising campaigns in recent memory around the Confederations Cup in South Africa; the U.S. national team beating Spain two months ago and suddenly getting talked about on PTI…
Is that enough? Do you want me to go on?
August 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Also, Impitoyable, the “association of the biggest football clubs,” the G-14, disbanded in early 2008 as part of the deal that led to clubs receiving compensation for sending their players to international tournaments. There’s definitely a push-pull between the big clubs and UEFA/FIFA (which is driven by money, as was reflected in Wenger’s comments), but the threat of a breakaway Super League is arguably a bit further away than it was a few years ago. Even if one forms, it’s not going to have much luck keeping the players out of international tournaments, because the players would never agree.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I understand that the point here was not to compare soccer to bball as sports, but NBA and FIBA as organisations, but I’d like to bounce from Will’s comment (and that might be my longest introduction phrase ever).
Football is indeed very popular not only because its cultural, historical and societal roots, but because that’s one of the simplest organised sports.
Only a few important rules that are a little more complex than “eleven per team / put the ball between these posts” have been added to the previous codes of a game that was voluntarily made simple.
The only rules that are hard to understand are the offsides and those related to the goal keeper.
Compared to Rugby or Basketball, that’s a huge gap (travelling violation, shotclock violation, backcourt v., goaltending , three seconds, two-or-three points, fouls limit, pivot foot, timeout and so on…)
Lets put it simply: no sport will top football (in terms of global audience, global revenues, and licensed players) in our lifetime. My guess is my 4 month old daughter won’t see that either, nor any grandchild I may happen to have.
Another interesting point is the fact that USA are (and have been) so dominant in basketball that basically every other domestic league has stated rules that limits the number of US players in their roster. They all wanted to avoid all US rosters, about which — so they thought — people wouldn’t care.
[ Quick thought: I wonder if the contrary would give the same result: if local US fans would cheer the same way an all foreigner team and an all US team (gee, Toronto is in Canada!) and the NBA forcing franchises to foreigners quota. ]
This dominance from US basketballers translates to NBA dominating the basketball world scenery. I can’t remember the NBA stating a new rule to reduce the differences with FIBA rules. Instead, FIBA “recently” went from 30 to 24 shot clock and to quarters instead of halves. the NBA doesn’t need to adopt any FIBA rule to be succesfull whereas FIBA (or rather every other basketball organisation) must stick as close as possible to NBA rules otherwise they might well loose some fans more attracted to the NBA-on-a-screen than the club in their own town.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Good points. No doubt FIFA have their hands far deeper into the clubs’ pockets than FIBA ever has or ever will. And I agree the cultural factor plays a huge part. But I’m going to repeat a comment I made on the original Cuban-inspired debate, because this post is good but doesnt really say much about Cuban’s original point-
1/ Stern must look at the FIFA WC and the TV money they get and want something similar for basketball. And its obvious that NBA franchises have had financial benefits from hiring foreign players who often bring legions of fans with them (Yao and Dirk are the most obvious examples)
2/ In the end the players have the leverage. If a player like Messi or C. Ronaldo gets offered a contract worth double what they have now, except they cant play for their NT, another team would come along and match it without that clause. Add in the money they can get from sponsors as the face of their NT and its an easy decision.
The same would happen in the NBA. Guys like Lebron and Kobe would not pass up the money, media presence and glory that comes with being a NT player (unless they’d already done it and didnt feel the need to repeat, but they still have a financial incentive). No name guys dont have that leverage, but the players with huge contracts do.
Cuban said no other industry loans 100 million dollar assets and used that to justify blocking Dirk from playing the Euros. Cuban is wrong. Soccer teams do, and even though they bitch they realize the pros outweigh the cons- all the financial stuff aside, they keep that player happy. When Dirk’s contract runs out, another team will offer him the same contract without excluding him from representing his country, and I think Dirk would choose that contract over one that limits him (even if he eventually decided to retire from international ball, I’m sure he’d rather do it on his terms than because his boss ordered him).
I think it’s just silly of Cuban to imply that it is OK for his player to get injured playing for him, but not OK to get injured playing for his country. Its a physical sport where injuries happen and they suck regardless of where. In fact, the NT has to have insurance so financially it is worse for the injury to happen playing for the club than the NT. But that’s besides the point. Cuban as a business man should understand all businesses have risk and that sports are particularly risky. If he is truly concerned about the health of his “assets”, he should lobby to shorten the length of the season or the length of the games themselves.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
The G 14 wasn’t really disbanded but rather merged with the European Club Forum to form the European Club Association, which promotes club football.
While this association isn’t likely to keep players from competing for their NT, it could gain enough leverage to reduce the UEFA/FIFA qualification calendar for the WC or European Championship.
One of the reason European NTs play all year long is that there is so many countries involved in the qualifiers. Huge countries like Germany, UK, France, etc have to play ridiculously weak teams from micro countries (Liechenstein, Andorra, etc. basically one or two in each qualification group). More than the occasional friendly game, these matches are club coaches’ nightmare. Since they are must-win games for NTs, there is no way they rest their best players.
In that regard, FIBA is probably further along. They split NTs into separate divisions, thus reducing the number of teams (and games) contending for berths in Eurobasket. FIBA acknowledged that it’s pointless to have the mighty Lithanians or Serbs playing against countries with no basketball culture and zero talent. But under this system, if Great Britain lucks out and enroll Luol Deng they can move up and then qualify for Eurobasket.
For FIFA and FIBA/NBA the length of the season and number of games are probably the next conflict.
August 20th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I think something that is being ignored during the discussion is the rich history of the World Cup competition versus Olympic basketball.
Let’s be honest, before the Dream Team (1992), Olympic basketball did not have the best players in the world playing (at least not for the US). Instead college players were used.
Since 1930, the best soccer players from around the world meet to play in the World Cup.
I suppose the main point is that FIFA is a powerhouse and has been around for a long while, while FIBA is just getting its feet wet.
Maybe a more realistic comparison, for argument sake, would be Olympic basketball to Olympic soccer?
August 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Hi guys off topic, Could deeper Spurs be best in the West? just a link I thought fellow Spurs fans might have interest in reading… Cheers! Go! spurs! Go!
August 20th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Absolutely right on the history point, Sean. The Olympic soccer/Olympic basketball comparison is a bit skewed because soccer still enforces a kind of quasi-amateurism: countries use their under-23 teams but are allowed three exemptions for older players. It’s a bizarre and unsatisfying format.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure there really is a good comparison in soccer to Olympic basketball.
August 20th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
off-topic
Here is an article that most on this site will not like -it rates the top 5 SF in the league. Needless to say that 1 RJ is NOT on the list and one crazy Artest is on the list.
http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=13628
I agree. I don’t really like RJ and do not think that he will turn to Spurs into a championship team. What will turn the Spurs into a championship team is if Manu comes back like the Manu of old and Duncan can squeeze another great season out. The addition of Dice and Blair, in my opinion, is much more meaningful than the addition of RJ. Still, it will be very difficult to get past the Lakers. I don’t see it happening. However, if both teams are 100% healthy, it is going to be a great series though.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Sorry for the off Topics posts guys: just want to share some more good reads Tim Duncan: The Silent Giant and what do you guys thinks about this? Should the Spurs Be Shopping Tony Parker? …
This off season is really slow…. can’t wait for the season to start…
August 21st, 2009 at 8:36 am
[...] though, it’s some excellent writing on the topic. Particularly, 48 Minutes of Hell ran a tremendous post by soccer writer Brian Philips on how FIFA’s power to compel players of renown to ignore their club’s wishes for the [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 7:29 am
[...] case simply tired. Then it’s all about loyalty (starting with a NBA organization, of course), who signs the paycheck, owners grumbling, fans praying (that players don’t get injured, more rarely that national [...]
February 15th, 2010 at 4:41 am
Strange this post is totaly irrelevant to the search query I entered in google but it was listed on the first page. - It�s absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities. - Samuel Goldwyn 1882 - 1974
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