Rethinking Basketball

Friday, August 28, 2009

It did not occur to me that there were almost 70 people at the University of Washington women’s basketball gathering at Key Arena last night until head coach Tia Jackson called the group together for her remarks about the team.

“Come on, get closer,” said Jackson with a casual and unassuming demeanor, before saying something to the effect of I won't bite.

After dispensing with the formalities of making small talk with the crowd of season ticket holders donning a mix of Storm gear and civilian clothing, she moved into the business of discussing the team. She introduced the players accompanying her – guard/forwards Kristi Kingma and Sami Whitcomb and center Regina Rogers -- and then went into some more formal remarks and Q&A for about 15 minutes.

The event took place in the northwest corner of Key Arena just behind section 111 about 30 minutes before the Seattle Storm clinched a playoff berth with an ugly 86-74 victory over the Connecticut Sun.

But one thing that can be said about Jackson: she’s honest while simultaneously maintaining a positive tone about some potentially trying circumstances. Expectations for this team are low after finishing last place in the Pac-10 in Jackson’s third season last year and this season will be about searching for bright spots as the team tries to escape the cellar.

I am intent on following women’s college basketball this season and UW will likely be my gateway into the Pac-10. Since I was already planning to be at Key Arena to watch Lindsay Whalen with Shoals, I figured I’d drop by Jackson’s chat just to get a sense of where the team is coming from and whether there are any particularly interesting story lines to follow and get excited about.

Of course, a pre-season talk for a team with low expectations is going to be more about cultivating faith than enabling hope. But that’s part of what I like about college basketball: although some people may find it depressing to watch a losing team full of players who will probably “go pro in something other than sports”, I actually enjoy it. At it’s best it becomes basketball for the sake of basketball, with the added incentive of a fully funded college degree. I will always like the pros more, but the sappy side of me cannot avoid folks playing for pride while getting an education.

Seventy percent of the UW team has been around during the summer, sophomore forward Liz Lay has “lost 26 pounds and looking remarkable”, and Jackson is also excited about recruiting -- UW has two early commitments from the state of Washington and one from California.

Another emerging bright spot entering the season is point guard Christina Rozier who started 19 games last year, but wasn’t in shape so it took her awhile to find her rhythm. She’s worked in the off-season to get in shape, is in “extremely good shape” right now and is looking forward to being a larger contributor this year.

However, the most intriguing bright spot for the team this season is undoubtedly Rogers, a 6’3” transfer from UCLA who is returned home to Seattle for family reasons. The former McDonald’s All-American who received an honorable mention on Pac-10 All-Freshman team is expected to make an impact this season after red-shirting last season.

“If you just take a look to your left,” Jackson said, referring to Rogers amidst laughter in response to a fan’s question about expected changes in offensive philosophy, “I think that should sum it up right there.”

Rogers exudes confidence in speaking about her own game and Jackson spoke briefly about some of the things she brings to the team in addition to a large physical presence.

“She’s probably one of the most physical players…at UCLA in her freshman year, she ate us alive,” said Jackson, referring to a January 2008 game. “I thought she would score over her right shoulder, we jumped over there and she didn’t care – she said, ‘Ok, I’ll just stay here.’ And she ate us alive.”

Rogers may not really have eaten UW alive that game, only scoring 6 points and grabbing 3 boards off the bench. Nevertheless, she will be interesting to watch for me because she represents the type of player and attitude that many people don’t expect from women’s basketball – the dominant physical player who looks to over power opponents rather than out-finesse them.

Even if Washington ends up struggling to define themselves again this year in this new era, I find the transition of Rogers into a major contributor on the team to be a compelling story and worth watching.

Transition Points:

The main reason I went to last night’s game was to get a glimpse of Connecticut Sun guard Lindsay Whalen and even in a loss, I still believe she’s the best point guard in the country not playing for Russia. So congrats to Whalen for making the national team. It’s about damn time…

Shoals came to the game as well and posted about Whalen and the WNBA on his blog FreeDarko.com. Could more players like Whalen attract more people to the WNBA? I don't know. I’ll have more to say about Whalen tomorrow.

Continue reading...

Friday, August 21, 2009

There are plenty of creative ways to expand the WNBA's fan base and most recently, we've seen efforts to "convert" NBA fans.

Getting NBA writers to games is one way to create positive press through someone considered a "credible source" to NBA fans.

Mercury blogger Ben York has challenged a hater to watch a live game and actually base their opinion on evidence rather than spurious assumptions.

But I saw a different strategy yesterday while clicking around the University of Washington website to check out their women's basketball schedule: why not tap into local university season ticket holders?

Women's basketball season ticket holders are invited to attend a meet and greet session with Husky head coach Tia Jackson and members of the 2009-10 women's basketball team, and attend the Seattle Storm vs. Connecticut Sun game at Key Arena on August 27.

I don't know whether this has been done before at UW or elsewhere. And perhaps UW is in a unique position to do this well because head coach Tia Jackson is a former WNBA player coaching a team in a WNBA city.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting idea.

NCAA women's season ticket holders likely don't have the same biases as NBA fans or outright haters. And they might enjoy watching the "best of the best" compete as an extension of a sport they already follow.

But most of all, you know they're willing to spend money on women's basketball, which makes them particularly attractive as potential fans.

Of course, I know that college and professional basketball don't mix for everyone -- I know plenty of fans who like one and disdain the other. (Update: Clay Kallam has written about this problem as part of larger phenomenon of "Our Girls Syndrome".)

But if the goal is to expand a fan base, this seems to be a strategy worth pursuing more aggressively, even if the assumption is that this demographic of NCAA season ticket holders have already consciously chosen to either follow the WNBA or ignore it. In the event they have not been to a game, it might be a good way to tap into a group of people who you know are willing to pay to watch women's basketball.

I am planning on being at that August 27th game with two UW students...so maybe I'll check out Jackson's meet and greet before I fixate on comparing Storm point guard Sue Bird and Connecticut Sun point guard Lindsay Whalen. And maybe, we'll come away wanting to check out a UW game as well.

(Extended) side note: I took a look at season tickets for UW women's and men's basketball, which are both reasonably priced, I think. The men's team figures to be better than the women's (again), but I want to give women's NCAA basketball a shot this season. But wouldn't it be cool if you could get some sort of discounted package deal for getting both? Wouldn't that be another interesting way of attracting fans to the NCAA women's game?

Continue reading...

Monday, July 6, 2009

If you are a) interested in the education of our nation’s youth, b) interested in civil rights, and c) interested in women’s sports (as I am), you probably took note of the White House’s commemoration of the 37th anniversary of Title IX on June 23rd.

However, lest we assume that 37 years of existence is equivalent to the eradication of sexism in education generally or sports in particular, Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts turn our attention back to the issue of enforcement.

In a recent column entitled, “Title IX a start, but women athletes still seek level playing field” Roberts & Roberts write:

But girls need something more than the encouragement of exemplary women — they need the enforcement of the laws. That’s why a White House birthday celebration for Title IX matters. But it’s only a beginning. Valerie Jarrett, chairman of the president’s Council on Women and Girls, vowed to review every federal program affecting sex disparities with the promise that “we’re not going to rest on our laurels until there is absolute equality.” That’s a tall order, worth studying as anniversaries of other civil-rights bills occur.

As scholars continue to study Title IX, it will be interesting to keep track of the previously withheld documents released from the Nixon archives. A friend of mine brought one such document to my attention that speaks directly to the challenges of achieving full gender equity sports via Title IX.

Memo on Title IX and Sports

In a May 31, 1974 memo responding to concerns about “the potential effects of these regulations on intercollegiate athletics”, particularly concerns raised by the NCAA and Senator John Tower that Title IX would harm “revenue-producing sports”. The memo came 11 days after Senator Tower’s proposed amendment exempting “revenue producing sports” from Title IX regulations was rejected.

Ken Cole, a Nixon staff member, describes a proposed regulation for Title IX to clear up this controversy (link to library here, pdf here):

Finally, and most significantly, the proposed regulation states expressly that, "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted to require equal aggregate expenditures or athletics for members of each sex."

While HEW's [Department of Health and Education Welfare] treatment of athletics in the proposed Title IX regulation is designed to minimize the impact of the statute on competitive intercollegiate athletics it should be recognized that the mere fact that the statute covers athletics will increase pressures on competitive collegiate athletic programs to broaden athletic opportunities for females.

The complete set of regulations did not go into effect until 1979 and included the now famous “three-prong test”. However, it would seem that this proposed regulation from the Nixon administration took the teeth out of Title IX to some extent.

Granted, there is an argument to be made for major “revenue producing sports” like men’s basketball or men’s football to be funded in proportion to the money they bring into the school. Furthermore, consistent with the final HEW Policy Interpretation, differentials in expenditures neither prove nor disprove discrimination – an institution could conceivably fund men’s and women’s sports equally but still engage in discriminatory practices in terms of how funding is allocated.

Nevertheless, what is alarming about this particular memo is the intent to deliberately "minimize the impact" of Title IX. The concern here was clearly not the welfare of female athletes, but protecting the male athletes, which seems to contradict the spirit of the legislation. That it was withheld has to raise an eyebrow as well...

Further weakening of Title IX

And it’s worth noting that Nixon’s was not the last attempt to undermine Title IX. Further weakening of Title IX occurred during the Bush administration, as described by the National Organization for Women:

On March 18, the Department of Education (DOE) released an "Additional Clarification" that greatly weakens Title IX. Under the law, federally-funded schools must provide equal educational opportunities to female students, including equal opportunities to play sports. The education department's regulations give schools a "safe harbor," allowing a school to be deemed in compliance with Title IX if it meets any one part of a three-part test. With the DOE's new policy guidance, schools will now find it much easier to comply, while at the same time restricting athletic opportunities for young women.

The new guidance allows schools to show compliance with part three of the test—i.e., that they are "fully and effectively accommodating the interest and abilities of the underrepresented sex"—if they can provide evidence that their female students just aren't that interested in sports. Under the new guidance, this can be demonstrated through email surveys of female students. The result is that it will now fall to female students to show that: 1) there exists interest sufficient to sustain a female varsity team at a school, 2) female students have sufficient athletic ability to sustain an intercollegiate team, and 3) within the school's normal competitive region, there exists a reasonable expectation of intercollegiate competition.

This is not to say that Nixon’s initial weakening of Title IX was is the correct point of attack 37 years later – adding an explicit funding prong would clearly present institutions with a number of challenges and may result in more “gaming of the system” rather than less discrimination.

But it does make you wonder: What would Title IX look like if it provided guidelines for equal– or even equitable – funding? Would a three-prong test that included a concrete standard such as funding equity in addition to more tenuous standards like participation, opportunity, and interest be much stronger?

One major organization that claims to advocate for equal funding for women’s sports is the National Organization for Girls and Women in Sports, but it’s not clear exactly how they advocate an enforceable implementation of that vision.

The Nixon memo should certainly not come as a revelation, but it does provide some insight into how we’ve gotten to this current place with Title IX legislation. It’s a reminder that the struggle against sexism in sports still faces significant challenges at all levels and that these challenges are the result of deliberate action on the part of high-level officials.

In response to the recent announcement of the All England Club to take physical appearance of women into consideration when creating court schedules for Center Court matches at Wimbledon, Dave Zirin of the Nation wrote the following, which seems like an appropriate way to end this little exploration:

We like to think that women's sports can be a avenue for liberation--a place where young girls can sweat, frolic, compete, get healthy and have the safe space to do anything but have to feel "ladylike." I can't help but remember the words of Martina Navratilova who complimented the great Billie Jean King by saying she "embodied the crusader fighting a battle for all of us. She was carrying the flag; it was all right to be a jock." It's long past time for a new generation of women athletes, coaches and sportswriters to grab the flag and say that having a zero-tolerance policy for sexism is at heart about asserting the humanity of each and every participant.

Related Links:

Title IX: A Picture of Dorianna Gray? (A critique of Title IX)
http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/07/07/title-ix-no-gender-equality-women-sports/#idc-container

Continue reading...

Thursday, May 21, 2009

There are probably a few hundred commentaries floating around the web about Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece entitled, “How David Beats Goliath”.

While the early commentaries were positive saying the article was “worth a read” or provocative, the latest commentaries have torn Gladwell to shreds for the most part.

Most of the critiques are focused specifically on his framing of basketball strategy (I find that the basketball arguments are best articulated by Brian McCormick’s article at the Cross Over Movement blog). The two major themes of McCormick’s argument are that teaching girls to press abdicates the coach of responsibility for skill development in youth basketball and that the press as a strategy has diminishing returns at the higher levels of basketball.

I agree with McCormick on his assessment of basketball strategy in Gladwell’s article (with a caveat described below).

However, I am also sympathetic to the fact that Gladwell was not actually talking about basketball in that article at all. He was talking about the underdog broadly. And a few people who defend Gladwell’s article have picked up on that point.

In an article written yesterday (thus giving me another chance to finally jump in with my opinion) entitled, “Leave Malcolm Gladwell Alone” by John Gassaway at Basketball Prospectus, Gassaway writes the following.

What I took from Malcolm Gladwell’s piece was that far too often coaches–much like everyone else–rely on custom and the settled inertia of habit when instead they should, particularly if they’re facing a team that’s better than theirs, ask themselves a simple question: How can I surprise and discomfit my opponent? Gladwell found two coaches who have asked themselves precisely that question, as did T.E. Lawrence some 90 years ago. Coaches, writers, or anyone else can surely benefit from trying to attain their own prosaic “Aqaba, from the land!” In this Gladwell is better than correct. He is correct on something foundational.

While multiple people have taken this “element of surprise” argument from Gladwell’s article, it seemed like Gladwell clearly had a more specific claim. And perhaps that more specific claim was lost in the fact that his article tried to connect rather divergent examples and extract common principles, occasionally at the exclusion of critical attributes…which led to the complaints about his representation of basketball strategy.

Thankfully, Gladwell actually restated his argument more concisely…in two separate places. Which opened up a whole other can of worms for me: should we even accept his fundamental premise? And if we were to develop a theory of the underdog that “worked” for basketball, how would we do it?

Gladwell’s Argument

After I read Gladwell’s article and made a few notes, I came across two separate explanations of the article from Gladwell himself:

One from his own blog on May 13th (emphasis added):

The press is not for everyone. But then the piece never claimed that it was. I simply pointed out that insurgent strategies (substituting effort for ability and challenging conventions) represent one of David's only chances of competing successfully against Goliath, so it's surprising that more underdogs don't use them. The data on underdogs in war is quite compelling in this regard. But it's also true on the basketball court. The press isn't perfect. But given its track record, surely it is under-utilized. Isn't that strange?

And another from a ESPN Page 2 e-conversation with Bill Simmons (always a fan of the WNBA) also on May 13th (emphasis added):

Then, of course, Pitino takes one of his first Louisville teams to the Final Four in 2006 and this season's team to the Elite Eight, and no one's going to argue that either of those teams were filled with future Hall of Famers. Given that, then, why do so few underdog teams use the press? Pitino's explanation is that it's because most coaches simply can't convince their players to work that hard. What do you think of that argument?

…

After my piece ran in The New Yorker, one of the most common responses I got was people saying, well, the reason more people don't use the press is that it can be beaten with a well-coached team and a good point guard. That is (A) absolutely true and (B) beside the point. The press doesn't guarantee victory. It simply represents the underdog's best chance of victory. It raises their odds from zero to maybe 50-50. I think, in fact, that you can argue that a pressing team is always going to have real difficulty against a truly elite team. But so what? Everyone, regardless of how they play, is going to have real difficulty against truly elite teams. It's not a strategy for being the best. It's a strategy for being better.

So the point Gladwell is trying to make is not really about basketball at all – he’s using a basketball example to represent a broader principle that had apparently captured his interest: substituting effort for ability and challenging convention.

At one point I was really sure that I hated this underlying argument. Now I’m not sure what I think because it still just seems like a narrow and shortsighted argument…for two reasons.

My counter-argument: Re-articulating insurgent strategies…?

What I came to realize is that what I take issue with in Gladwell’s article is a matter of articulation more than a true disdain for his argument. So let’s just take his premise and examine it a little more closely:

...insurgent strategies (substituting effort for ability and challenging conventions) represent one of David's only chances of competing successfully against Goliath.

1) Is there really a true substitution of effort vs. ability in the case of successful underdogs or is it a matter underdogs developing the ability to do something very well?

For example, it is unclear whether Ranadive did in fact have to teach fundamental principles of defense – exploiting angles, good defensive stance, steering ballhandlers, or properly trapping (as explained by Glenn Nelson of HoopGurlz) -- in the process of teaching the press. The way he framed the Redwood City case did in fact represent the point he wanted to make about effort over ability. However, one could argue from the same argument that with the help of Rometra Craig – a defensive stopper who played for Duke and USC, according to Gladwell – is that this team actually just developed the ability to play defense really well.

Which brings me to one of my initial gripes with the article – a good press is not imposing “chaos” on an otherwise orderly game of basketball. As Kevin Pelton describes on Basketball Prospectus in his article entitled, Gladwell On Underdogs,

...if you talk to head coaches, you find that there is so much that is out of their control that they become borderline obsessed with consistency. From a mathematical perspective, consistency is good for good teams and bad for bad ones, but it’s easy to see its allure to the coach.

Basketball is not really an “orderly” game to begin with, so it’s not as though the press is imposing chaos. The press is a systematic means of speeding up the game by forcing the offense to make quick decisions.

As Glenn Nelson pointed out, you have to have a pretty good command of some basic defensive principles to even make a press work. Moreover, you really need to have quick guards that can even rotate to apply the pressure. A slow “David” would be foolish to apply the press.

Which leads to my second point…

2) Is defying convention really the best underdog strategy? If we think of the NBA circa 2007, we can see that defying convention was actually an underdog and dominant strategy – both the Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns played an up-tempo small ball strategy. Now if you really want to argue that a team with Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, and Shawn Marion is an underdog, that’s your own business (which is an entirely separate point).

Being innovative at some point is probably the most effective strategy for anyone to win anything. Does the underdog bear an increased burden to be innovative? Possibly. But what happens when an underdog (Golden State) faces a dominant team (Phoenix) that employs the same unconventional strategy?

Prior to adding Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington, Golden State lost 3 times to Phoenix. After adding them, they went 3-2 over two seasons. One could argue that what happened there was a change in talent, not the deployment of an unconventional strategy (that Nelson has used forever with differential effects).

So just being unconventional is neither sustainable nor inherently effective for the underdog. They have to have the ability to apply their effort to a strategy that wins games.

So I would argue a slightly different point that we might find more applicable to a wider range of underdogs – what the underdog does is know the conventions exceedingly well such that they are able to challenge the assumptions that the dominant team’s dominance is built upon. Therefore, it’s not just being unconventional for the sake of doing so, but making a reasoned decision to attack the dominant team at a blind spot that may have been disguised by their own assumptions of dominance.

Maybe what the underdog needs is a really good understanding of their own abilities and the abilities of their opponents and a strategy that attempts to exploit weaknesses. When you frame underdog strategy in that way, suddenly you come to the conclusion that the underdog might not ever be defying convention but challenging assumptions of what that convention means in practice.

And this still leaves a third question that I don’t have an answer for within Gladwell’s framework…

3) What is an underdog?

Kentucky’s 1996 team was not an underdog. Pitino’s team was loaded – “eight [NBA] journeymen and one marginal star” as Gladwell asserts is what I call loaded (and people often forget that Derek Anderson may very well have been the best player on that squad before his injury).

Given that Pitino’s 1996 squad could make a legitimate claim as one of the best teams in NCAA history, it’s puzzling to use them to support an argument about “underdogs”.

(This leads to another point that one could glean from watching the 1996 Wildcats: full court presses in my experience work best when the other team is taking the ball out after a made basket, which means the effectiveness of the press is partially dependent on a team’s ability to score baskets, which means that contrary to Gladwell’s argument, pressing is probably a better strategy for teams that can score more frequently.)

But it seems like Gladwell here is not talking about an underdog in the game to game matchup sense (as in who’s favored) but more about maximizing talent.

And that’s where I want to go here – the better discussion for youth basketball in particular is how do you maximize talent while simultaneously encouraging positive youth development (not only skill development, but learning that learning is hard and failure is a part of life)?

For that, I look at a different model from men’s NCAA basketball in 1996.

The 1996 Princeton Tigers

If you haven’t seen Princeton’s 1996 upset of the defending champion UCLA Bruins, check out the clip…and think about Coach Pete Carrill’s description of the game and his relationship to conventions:

Back cuts are quite conventional.
I’m not saying this clearly disproves Gladwell – it could be the exception to the rule. But in watching NCAA tournaments year after year in which there are a number of true underdogs (by any definition of the term), this certainly calls into question whether being unconventional is the way to go for an underdog.

What can we gather from this story?

Perhaps we could extend Gladwell’s inquiry by saying that what the underdog did here was control the tempo of the game to maximize their abilities.

Would we say that Princeton substituted effort for ability?

I wouldn’t…and in fact, I’m not even sure what that really means – unfocused effort does not win basketball games. It’s usually some combination of effort, ability, discipline, and reflection. Sometimes that might mean challenging conventions, sometimes not.

You figure out how to control the game, you execute your strategy, and find a strategy that puts your players in position to succeed.

Implications for Youth Development

The idea that underdogs substitute effort for ability is problematic for me because I’m not sure it reflects reality…or what reality it reflects.

I’m not going to apply this to other social phenomena at this time because there are some significant differences between underdogs in basketball, war, politics, or the workforce that I think are really difficult to ignore.

But in terms of youth development, if I were to coach an underdog squad, I think I would focus on their strengths and bolster those in addition to strengthening their weaknesses so if they wanted to go on in basketball they would have the skills to do so. In other words, I would maximize their talent and empower them to play to their best ability, rather than trying to challenge conventions.

And to reiterate, it’s not clear from Gladwell’s account that Vivek Ranadive failed to teach some skills. I would in fact assume that the girls did learn quite a bit about basketball strategy…since there was a D1 player present in Rometra Craig. A press does not work if you cannot score…or defend…or cut off certain angles.

To be clear, it’s not that Gladwell is completely wrong as much as that he’s just partially right – certainly effort is one part of the equation, but I would venture to guess that there is much more than that to basketball, war, or politics.

I’m not as revolted or disgusted by Gladwell’s article as others, I think the article just reflects a shallow understanding of successful basketball and what underdogs do in order to succeed.

Transition Points:

The PostBourgie blog makes an important point about a problematic racial undercurrent of Gladwell’s article that I think the Princeton-UCLA example is susceptible to as well. An excerpt:

But the other part speaks to a very old, very insidious meme in the sports world, and basketball in particular: Black players are natively talented, and white players work hard and play smart. This is in no way a compliment to black folks, of course, what with its insinuation that black athletes are lazy, dumb, and possessed of some kind of peculiar physicality. But the idea is so much a part of the way sports are discussed in America that people will try to shoehorn reality into it.**

Remember the whole Geno Auriemma controversy around his comments about race and how some people dismissed his claims about racial stereotypes mattering in sports? This is exactly what I believe he was talking about and demonstrates how pervasive these stereotypes are in society. And the problem is not that they affect how we see sports, but that those perceptions have concrete consequences for how we understand race (and gender…and class) in the world beyond sports.

What intially caught my eye about Gladwell’s argument is the age-old belief (myth?) of hard work leading to success. The same myth that everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Booker T. Washington to George Bush or Barack Obama might advance. We in the U.S. love the idea of “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps”. We U.S. citizens love the Horatio Alger myth. Hard work is fundamental to our adherence to the “American Dream”.

And it’s a farce.

But there is no need to challenge the Horatio Alger myth here – even the Wikipedia page contains a summary of those critiques. The point here is that there is something else at work underlying the success of an underdog. And really, I don’t think Gladwell believes that… so consider this point moot.

It would be really interesting to look across a broader range of NCAA “Cinderellas” and see how they worked within/outside of conventions…but that would take way more time than I have.

Continue reading...

Friday, May 1, 2009

Brian McCormick, whose writing about coaching and training I have enjoyed and respect, posted an article yesterday exploring the training habits of some Division I female athletes.

I coach and train a lot of girls and have worked with many very good female players. Too often, the lack of progress in the women’s game is blamed on males or sexism. However, I think the biggest problem holding back the game is the female athlete.

Not every athlete. As I said, I have worked with great players and enjoyed every minute of my time working with them.

Instead, I mean the female athletes who are all too willing to allow their femaleness to be an excuse for a lack of ability.

I worked out with a Division I college player today who could not do a push-up. When I told her that her little elbow dips were not push-ups, she said that they were push-ups to her. She was unwilling to try a full push-up and preferred to give up.

I hate this mentality. “I’m a girl. I can’t do…” That’s crap. You’re an athlete. If you are a Division I player and you cannot do a push-up, it is not because you are a girl. It is because you are lazy and do not care. Have you ever seen former Sacramento Monarch Ruthie Bolton? She would take out 98% of guys in a push-up contest. It has nothing to do with being a girl. It has everything to do with being a selective athlete.

Certainly, I think we can all agree with McCormick’s conclusion:

If you’re an athlete, never use “but I’m a girl” as an excuse. It’s not. You’re an athlete and you should hope that your coaches treat you like an athlete, not like a little, helpless girl.

However, where I would diverge from McCormick is on the idea that this phenomenon is not due to some measure of sexism or at the very least, entrenched gender stereotypes. To argue that girls are playing out a mindset of inferiority but that sexism is not the problem seems like a difficult claim to support.
To argue that girls are making these excuses independent of their social context, one must assume that the girls are independently developing that line of deficit thinking about being female. And anyone who has been around children knows that no child is born assuming they cannot do things…they learn their limitations over time. It’s the beauty of childhood that adults contemptuously strip away from kids.

Instead, I would argue that those perceptions of what it means to be a girl are acquired from people with whom they interact, whether it is coaches, teachers, peers, or media representations. I would argue that it’s not as easy as sucking it up and demanding better. There has to be encouragement and support to do that. And while the support systems are there for some girls, far too many girls lack that.

So I would not dismiss McCormick’s argument, but I would likely take it in a different direction: we need to demand better of the coaches, parents, and other adult figures that interact with girls. That includes the teacher who will give the boys the football and the girls the pink hoola hoop for recess (and yes, that does happen). And we need to demand better of those in the public eye who demean, dismiss, and ignore the accomplishments of the female athletes.

While I won't deny the importance of individual responsibility, the problem in this case is not the person making the excuse, but the source of the excuses. It’s a stretch to claim that girls are individually responsible for creating those.

Continue reading...

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I'm guessing that by now you've already seen President Barack Obama's comments about the University of Connecticut women's basketball team that went 39-0 and won the NCAA national championship.

I found his statement touching and if you haven’t watched it, check out the video above (courtesy of Poltico).

Anyway, the reference to his daughters got me thinking about a post I read on the SmartLikeMe blog a while back that responded to a critique of Obama’s Council on Women and Girls.

At issue was the way in which a Washington Post blog by Chris Cillizza appeared to reduce Obama’s reasons for supporting the council to personal and posturing reasons rather than a genuine concern for gender equity.

From SmartLikeMe:

So Obama’s “personal” reasons for putting the council into place are that he has a wife and daughters. Yawn. How insulting to think that men are only concerned about women’s issues and the male-centric models of citizenship and public policy because they have daughters. I would hope that there might too be fathers of boys who are concerned about gender issues so their sons could have the socially-supported ability to be at-home dads if they choose, without their masculinity being denigrated and without threat to family finances because their female partner’s career is being stymied by gender discrimination (by pay or “mommy tracking”) or sexual harassment in the workplace.

There were other critiques as well, ranging from the idea that he did not give the office enough power to the idea that there should be a parallel effort to look after boys (see the blog Jezebel for more on the criticism of Obama’s Council).

Obama's Council has the power to influence women's sports...and beyond

Regardless of what we think about Obama’s motivation, Theresa Moore of Women’s eNews makes the point that Obama’s Council on Women and Girls has the potential to have a major impact on the enforcement of Title IX:

We need to push for an updated image and understanding of Title IX. Too often it is perceived as "the sports law." It is much more. Access to financial aid for women, scholarships and admissions to professional schools; all have been supported and enhanced by the Title IX legislation.

And today, Title IX can and will be pushed into play in some of the most contentious of contemporary issues: educational budget cuts, sexual harassment on campuses, availability of financial aid and single-gender classrooms.

In a hard-pressed economy, the access of students and families to financial aid is more important than ever to preserving educational opportunity.

At the same time, laid-off workers who are returning to school to sharpen up their skills or change fields will also need financial aid. Prior to Title IX, financial aid was withheld from women who were married, pregnant or had children.

The White House Council will have the power to ensure that these types of harmful limitations do not creep back into practice and that Title IX is used to promote the needs of girls and women so they have full access to and receive an equitable allocation of every type of financial aid.

In summary, what makes Obama’s comments about UConn and his daughters significant is that this is not just the routine acknowledgment of a championship women’s sports team that most every president is willing to follow through on. In this case, Obama’s words might actually have teeth if the Council on Women and Girls beefs up enforcement of Title IX in its full sense.

I will confess that it is difficult to "read" Obama's intentions in many cases. But in this case, I think we can come to the conclusion that Obama legitimately cares about the issue of gender equity and may even push the country forward in that regard. I will eagerly await results...

Transition Points:

Ok, maybe it’s not such a big deal. It’s quite possible that I’m still just a little awestruck by the fact that we have a POTUS who can put together more than two sentences on the path to a narrative in public. It’s just nice.

Continue reading...

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Far more interesting to me than Geno Auriemma’s initial comments about the racial stereotyping of Stanford and Connecticut women’s basketball players is the ongoing commentary about the “incident”.

Of course, there have been many different reads of Auriemma’s comments on race…which is pretty much what he anticipated with the opening line of his statement:

I know this is going to get played out the wrong way. But I'm going to say it anyway. And I know I'm going to get criticized for this.

But what has caught my eye in the current political environment (you know, people think we’re all post-racial now that we have a black president) is the way race is talked about in response to Auriemma’s comments. However, rather than critique others and make a negative argument of how not to talk about race, I was in the process of writing a piece about what I thought we could learn from this latest Auriemma episode.

Then I saw a Sunday article by Casey Gane-McCalla on Huffington Post about Auriemma's comments that I think is worthy of our attention:

The problem with stereotypes in sports is that they often lead to general stereotypes. If you say "white men can't jump," why not "Black men can't read defenses"? And if Black men can't read defenses, maybe they can't read books either?

Sports stereotypes have a real effect in the real world. Most employers are not concerned with employees' natural athletic abilities, so stereotypes of African-Americans being athletically superior for the most part do not help Blacks in the real world. However, the stereotypes of whites being hard working, disciplined and smart are helpful to them in finding employment.

The problem is not that Auriemma “inserted” the issue of race into an otherwise racially neutral social context – race does have an impact on how we see athletes. Nor is the problem that he detracted attention away from the success of an outstanding University of Connecticut team (as described nicely by the Women's Hoops Blog). Race is there like it or not and it’s worth talking about.

The problem in my opinion is actually perfectly phrased by Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer (although I’m not entirely sure we agree with his conclusion):

Honestly, I think we often fall into this trap of blasting anyone who tries to address racial issues. It is OK and even necessary to discuss the role race plays in various situations and circumstances. The problem here isn't that Auriemma decided to "go there." The problem is he apparently got himself lost on the way.

So building upon Sheridan’s comment, I want to extend Gane-McCalla’s argument and suggest that in addition to the harms of stereotyping on society, Auriemma’s comments and the ensuing responses demonstrate a fundamental difficulty that we in the U.S. have with talking productively about almost all topics regarding race – whether it be the significance of having a black president or the “achievement gap” in education or gang violence and police brutality.

Are we a “nation of cowards”? Not quite. But we do still have a long way to go when it comes to racial dialogue on the path to challenging racial injustice.

The U.S. is a Nation of __________ (???)

Just to be clear, I am not advancing the argument of Attorney General Eric Holder by calling the U.S. “a nation of cowards” in all matters of race.

Aside from the fact that I found the comment to be politically unproductive, I think it may even misrepresent the problem we’re facing regarding racial dialogue. What’s worse is that it may have even done more harm than good in terms of moving race relations forward – antagonizing the nation that you’ve been appointed to lead in some capacity is probably not the best strategy for moving people to action.

Instead, I would identify a different problem and an important consequence:

First, contrary to what Holder states, I think we do talk about race quite a bit, but in a number of coded and implicit ways. This is essentially what Auriemma has alluded to…or really should have alluded to more clearly – implicit racial stereotypes shape how we describe and talk about athletes (and people in the real world) everyday. A very simple point.

Second, racial discrimination, racial stereotyping, and structural racism have differential consequences on men and women that cannot be ignored.

When we consider the dearth of mainstream black female role models in our society, the way we discuss and portray female athletes therefore has “a real effect in the real world” on how we think about black women. Moreover, considering that the WNBA is the most prominent and well-established professional sport, the way black female basketball players are portrayed and perceived takes on more significance than I think some people grant it.

So consistent with Gane-McCalla, I am going to just state up front that the way we apply racial stereotypes to athletes does indeed matter. Second, I think it’s important to continue this conversation as a lens or platform with which to understand issues of race in broader society.

But sticking to women’s basketball, once again I think this goes back to that issue of narrative creation and maintenance – what are the narratives we are presented about black female athletes and how does that affect how we understand women’s basketball generally and the WNBA in particular?

Not Just a Matter of Finding Examples, But Thinking About How We Describe Those Examples…

I first read about Auriemma’s comments on Jayda Evans’ blog. Given that Ms. Evans is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, I almost just accepted her thoughts about Auriemma’s statement:

I mean, as far as the color divide on toughness goes, hello, does Auriemma have Alzheimer's? While I'm not going to say former UConn PG Sue Bird (Seattle) is the toughest beak on the block, does he remember Diana Taurasi (Phoenix)? What about Svetlana Abrosimova (Connecticut)? With the Storm, I'm drowning in tough "white" examples from Michelle Marciniak to Lauren Jackson, so it's ludicrous to spend much time on the subject.

And my first thought was yeah, I agree – and she even forgot Janel McCarville and Lindsay Whalen!! (I assume they were somewhere in that body of examples she was drowning in.)

But then as I thought about and read more about the story, I began to disagree with the notion that it’s “ludicrous to spend more time on the subject”. In fact, I think it’s the perfect time to discuss race.

At issue here is not whether there are examples to counter the stereotype, but how people perceive others through the lens of these stereotypes. We do hear these stereotypes often in sports. Auriemma is not just making that up, although it is unclear exactly what he was responding to in that moment.

And even in this world in which we can find plenty of examples to contradict our stereotypes, stereotypes carry with them quite a bit of inertia – they are extremely hard to break once they are established. And as long as they go unspoken and thus unchallenged, they will continue to persist and influence the way we think.

Michel Martin describes this phenomenon nicely in her story last month on NPR in response to Holder’s comments:

Is this active hostility, fear, resentment of blacks? At one time, sure it was. But right now, maybe it's more likely unchallenged assumptions you've forgotten you have — the store clerk who assumes the black woman can't afford the dress she's trying on, the law firm hiring partner who just assumes the black kid made it through Harvard on a wing and a prayer, the cop who just assumes every black motorist is a gangbanger in training.

In other words, even when we don't think we're talking about race, we sort of are. It's not that we don't talk about it.

Leaving these subtle forms of stereotyping unchecked will do nothing to move this country forward in terms of race relations. And as I think Gane-McCalla and Martin point out, they happen all the time in our daily life – whether we are talking about sports, at work, or even among friends. If we believe that challenge racial discrimination is important, then finding ways to unearth and challenge these assumptions is of great value.

But how on earth do we do that?

Petrel from the Pleasant Dreams Blog made a great comment on Chantelle Anderson’s blog post, “The choice between sports and sex appeal” that addresses the issue of stereotyping and the trouble with combating them (it’s comment #47):

One of the common putdowns of women in sports is "women ballplayers are ugly" - and how do you fight someone's loaded personal opinion? Trying to prove that you're pretty is just playing the same game - "I'll show you!" To some men out there, "female" and "athlete" are contradictory terms…Posing has the power to break the All Female Athletes are Ugly stereotype - if you look at Lauren Jackson's photos and still think she's ugly, there's no help for you but opthamology. Anything that expands the boundaries of what a woman can be - athletic, attractive, intelligent - is a good thing. Posing not only highlights the "attractive" side, but throws positive light on the "athletic" and "intelligent" sides as well.

Although the problem Petrel and Chantelle are pointing out concerns gender, I think a very similar argument can be applied to matters of race.

The problem -- that I think Petrel rightly pointed out -- is that if you directly attack the stereotypes, you are essentially playing on the turf of the ignorant. It’s similar to the argument George Lakoff makes in his book, “Don’t Think An Elephant” – if political candidate 1 presents platform X and candidate 2 presents a counter platform of anti-X, candidate 1 has already one because they’re controlling the discourse (which is what the Republicans had mastered in the past eight years).

This is why it’s even more difficult to undo these racial stereotypes when race and gender meet – already it’s hard to imagine an athletic and intelligent woman. It has to be doubly hard to imagine an athletic and intelligent black woman. And likewise, in broader social interactions, black women are routinely facing more barriers than their black male counterparts – it’s hard to simultaneously fight racism and sexism…and not always at the same time.

And yet the only way to break a stereotype seems to be to provide frequent and substantial evidence that changes the way people see patterns that create the stereotypes. So hmm… how do we avoid that bind?

Breaking the Inertia of Our Entrenched Stereotypes

It does seem like the first thing to do is call out a stereotype for what it is…

Obviously, Auriemma attempted that.

And obviously, it didn’t go over so well.

However, what I think we should pay attention to is that it’s not like it was blatant white supremacists coming out of the woodworks to lambaste the guy.

Most of the critiques that I read have been of a different nature – color-blind dismissals of race discussion.

Color-blindness is what might inform a comment such as the following in response to a pretty good article about Auriemma’s comments from Uncle Popov on Bleacher Report:

I would say that hardly anyone thinks of race when they are watching Tiger Woods and Venus Williams, two of the most visible black athletes in history.

And of course if nobody is thinking about race when they watch sports – or politics for that matter given that the heads of both major political parties are black – then there can’t possibly be an appropriate time to discuss race. Especially in this post-racial society we live in (please someone explain to me how a post-racial society is even possible). Race just becomes nothing more than a distraction, as described in the following quote:

Is it time to talk about race in college athletics? No, not really. What purpose would it serve? What territory are we supposed to be driving towards by noticing that there’s only one white guy playing meaningful minutes in this Final Four game between Michigan State and UConn, and he’s not even from America? That’s a fact. So what?

So one of the primary problems then with confronting racial stereotypes (much less than discrimination or structural racism) is that many people don’t even think there’s a problem to begin with, as nicely summed up by Uncle Popov:

Nevertheless, it is much easier to generalize and it happens so much that we tend to overlook it and not think about the consequences of doing so. It is as though we have naturalized these labels and do not critically challenge the notions of the "gutsy" white player or "naturally gifted" black player. It tends to be accepted unproblematically.

These generalizations fuel some people's longstanding beliefs about what type of players can play which position or in which sport. This was part of the central thesis of my previous article on race in sports.

And what’s worse, is that in the current climate, if I do accuse you of having these assumptions you don’t think you have, you assume I’m calling you a racist…and that’s a whole separate (though obviously related) matter. The very acknowledgement of race becomes completely taboo.

It’s a sort of strange paradox – it’s politically correct to denounce racism, so it’s incorrect to be a racist, so it’s easiest to prove one is not a racist by not talking about or ignoring race, which means that when confronted with a situation in which race cannot be avoided we simply go silent.

Race talk thus becomes the territory of extremists – those dangerous black radicals pumping their fists and threatening to occupy a state capital near you or those evil hooded Ku Klux Klan guys who are looking to burn a cross on someone’s lawn. Either way it supports two completely false beliefs: race is a thing of the past and people who discuss it are some hardline wingnuts trying to shove some racialized agenda down your throat.

Yikes!

So let’s bring it back…

Really, it’s not about going around calling people racists or proving to people how stupid they are. It’s about finding a way to clearly represent the world so that we discuss it on some sort of common ground and begin to make well-reasoned arguments about how to collectively move forward and (hopefully) create a better, more just society.

Ultimately, anti-racism is not even about talk (which is why these discussions about implicit biases and stereotyping usually annoy me)…it’s about action of some sort. And ideally, collective, targeted multi-racial action that critiques the elements in society (institutions and people) that maintain racial inequality and presents alternative ways of existing as a happy community.

(That feels so much better.)

But we can’t even reach the fantasy world of a racially just society unless we can talk to one another and respect one another as human beings, who are different but ultimately have a stake in each other’s success.

So I argue the problem here is not that race is a distraction that should never be brought up, it’s that race is a “distraction” because we have no language to collectively discuss it or listen to it in a productive way.

To take the point further, what incentive is there for a white person – particularly a rather privileged white male – to talk about race anyway? (Whole other discussion – see George Lipsitz’s “Possessive Investment in Whiteness” – decades and decades of white supremacy create a whole system of white privilege and maintaining that system often becomes a motive at the expense of non-whites, whether intentionally or not)

This tangle of complexity summarizes why most people won’t even venture into that feared territory of race talk.

Auriemma did…and did so with a disclaimer…because he knew there was no way to clearly communicate anything about the topic as a white man without getting himself into trouble. So he fumbled through a discussion of the issue and tried to end with a joke about how the West Coast is full of pansies to sort of relieve the tension. Which of course made his point even harder for some people to decipher.

Um…ok…so…?

Resolving Race Talk Dilemmas in U.S. Sports…and How That Might Push Racialized Assumptions

Mica Pollock has described this strange paradox of not talking about race but always talking about race in her book “Color Mute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School”. Gloria Ladson-Billings summarizes the main argument nicely in the Foreward to another book, “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Attaining Equity in Schools”:

Race is the proverbial “elephant in the parlor.” We know it’s right there staring us in the face—making life uncomfortable and making it difficult for us to accomplish everything we would really like to do—but we keep pretending it isn’t.

We do not know what to call each other or if we should call each other anything that has a racial designation. But Pollock demonstrates that even when we avoid talking about race, we are talking about race; that is, even in our avoidance of the subject, we are engaging it.

Ladson-Billings goes on to present us with a kernel of insight that sort of explains why talking about race is relatively important:

…in a study of teachers teaching early literacy (Ladson-
Billings, 2005), my colleague and I observed teachers regularly talking about students’ failure to read without ever mentioning race. Almost all of the struggling students were Black or Latino. It was not until six months into the project that teachers recognized the salience of race in the students’ achievement. At this point, we were able to deal honestly deal with the students’ academic issues.

So let me try to make the leap here: if we cannot talk about black women in the sphere of a basketball game, it will be a whole lot more difficult to talk about black women in society at large. In recognizing the salience of race in everything we do and that it has “real effects in the real world”, we can start to honestly deal with the huge elephant in the parlor that Auriemma wanted us to pay attention to.

But why bother placing so much weight on sports? Can’t we just enjoy the game? Why does someone always have to make it about race?

Sports are not some panacea of facilitating race talk, but it’s a contained context in which there are some very clear racial undertones. There’s no reason not to talk about race in sports as a pre-cursor to the much more significant problems we face. Why not check our assumptions on something so small if it could pave the way to eliminate general stereotypes?

And a Brief Response to Eric Holder…

So if we’re color mute as a society, then we can’t possibly be cowards, as described nicely by Michel Martin:

I have been thinking a lot about what Attorney General Eric Holder said in his now-famous Black History Month speech, that we are a "nation of cowards" when it comes to race. But I wonder whether it's really that we are just comfortable. Cowardice requires consciousness — a conscious awareness to choose not to do something you know you should do.

But what if you don't know?

And that’s exactly where I would argue we are – we simply don’t know what to do (and many whites – not to mention non-whites -- are never encouraged to know). Those of us that do know what to do get sick of dealing with those poor saps who don't have it figured out yet...which is (again) a whole separate problem of the self-righteous anti-racist that must be addressed with equal tenacity.

Auriemma’s comments and the responses demonstrate our struggle with finding ways to talk about race in public. The question, as described by Martin, is what we do about it:

I think if we are honest with ourselves, we can admit that we all do it. We make assumptions, and we don't bother to test them because we don't have to.

So now the question really does become one of moral courage and, yes, cowardice. What are we prepared to do to break free of untested assumptions? What hard questions are we prepared to ask ourselves? What are we prepared to do to know what we don't know?

And these are questions that extend well beyond basketball and manifests itself in national politics…even after we have elected a black man president, as described by Barbara Crosette of the Nation just yesterday:

Would an American delegation bearing a message from Obama have made a difference? Critics will say no. Nicole Lee, executive director of the Washington-based TransAfrica Forum, has long argued that the United States belongs at the Durban review. In a message in March asking advocates of American attendance to write to anyone and everyone in Washington, she recalled the comment by Attorney General Eric Holder that Americans are a "nation of cowards" when it comes to discussing race.

What she wrote then still rings true: "The decision to boycott the Durban Review Conference not only underscores the difficulty that we have discussing race, but it also potentially undermines the solid progress made by groups and governments around the world that have worked hard to address racism and intolerance. And, unfortunately, for many in the US it raises questions about the racial lens through which this administration develops and implements policy."

Real effects…in the real world…on real people.

Transition Points:

The intersection of race and gender is complicated. Race x Gender x Sexuality?!?!? Shiver-me-timbers! Yo, head for the hills! I’ll leave that to folks like Chantelle Anderson.

Big props to Uncle Popov on Bleacher Report for managing to cite Edward Said, Marion Young, and Skip Bayless in one article. I wonder what a discussion would be like if you put those three in a room together?

Is this just a knee-jerk response to some knee-jerk palaver after the Women’s Final Four as DWil suggested would come out about this situation? Eh, possibly. But why should folks be expected to end this discussion? I say keep it going…

Continue reading...

Monday, April 20, 2009

Kristi Cirone’s situation – going undrafted and then being picked up by the Connecticut Sun with an outside chance to make the roster – made me think about just how completely unscientific this whole drafting process is…and how every year some player defies the odds.

For example, remember Michael Redd?

Well, yeah of course, says the collective voice of the handful of NBA fans reading this blog.

He’s an NBA all-star, an Olympian, and one of the league’s top shooters.

What I’m wondering is if anyone remembers the Michael Redd from Ohio State – the high scoring “shooting guard” who could not, you know, shoot. People can look back now and do these "draft do-overs" and say look at how silly people were to pass on Michael Redd, but realistically, there was no reason to believe he'd become this type of player.

It’s what made his decision to leave college in 2000 after his junior year a little surprising to me. Really, what good is an NBA shooting guard that can’t shoot? And it’s not like he was delusional – he knew he couldn’t shoot…or as he said, he had an “inconsistent” shot (“inconsistent” being code for “I say a little prayer every time I put one up there”).

Asked about the strengths and weaknesses the pro scouts saw in him, he said, "They liked my size. They liked my quickness for my size.

"Ball handling wasn't an issue. It's not that big a deal. The negative thing is shooting. They want me to be more consistent on that. But nobody's a great shooter going into the draft. You have to work on that."

What an attitude – either Redd had already looked into the crystal ball and seen his metamorphosis into an NBA all-star or he is just one of the most confident players ever to enter a draft.

Unfortunately, NBA GMs did not necessarily feel the same way on draft day – Redd was drafted 43rd by the Milwaukee Bucks and struggled to even get in a few games his first year playing behind perennial all-star (and one of my favorite players) Ray Allen. Fortunately, the Bucks stuck with him and we know the rest.

Anyway, I’m not saying Cirone is another case of Michael Redd -- she might not make a roster this year. But what I find interesting is that in this drafting process we never know as much about player as we think we know (even if we crunch a whole bunch of fancy statistics). Ultimately, we have no way to know how much a player’s desire, passion, and will power will influence their success in the pros. It would be great if we could find a way to identify every future Michael Redd, but in the meantime I think it’s worth just appreciating the story as the newest crop of WNBA rookies prepares for the season.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics

I knew Michael Redd couldn’t shoot just from watching collegiate games. But for those of you who didn’t see him or can’t find highlight film of his misses, we’re talking about a shooting guard who shot 43.6% from the field and 31% from the three-point line. He was by no means a marksman.

But how does one go from that to world class All-Star shooting guard?

After being drafted #43 by the Milwaukee Bucks and going on to average 2.2 points per game on 26% shooting, I just kinda said oh well and moved on. Afterall, he and I are about the same age and I had just been accepted to the University of Michigan for grad school…so who cares about an unsuccessful Buckeye?

Then something somewhat miraculous happened – sometime between his first and second seasons he developed a shot. And a good one. He even became, like, a shooting threat. I thought yeah, whatever, fluke (by his 2001-02 breakout season fully marinated in Maize and Blue). But no – his career field goal percentage is about 45%. Though he has not repeated the 44% 3 point percentage of his second season, he has shot 38.6% for his career, well above what he shot his senior year in college.

Maybe he just likes the challenge of longer shots against more athletic defenders? Many people might attribute his improvement to playing behind Ray Allen his rookie season, who clearly has the most beautifullest jump shot in this world. Maybe he just has a chip on his shoulder after being dissed on draft day by the NBA’s evaluators and decision makers.

But it’s hard to deny that part of it is just the completely unpredictable intangible factors of hard work, desire, and pure passion.

The great thing about Michael Redd’s story just after a draft is that he completely defies our tendency to put players in boxes or assume we know what they are based on watching an always incomplete body of work or crunching a few vacuous stats.

Check Your Biases

So in light of my last post, I just want to make clear that I didn’t go through the effort of crunching all those stats because I think there is some perfect formula to understanding basketball performance. Further, it’s not like there’s some statistics vs. observation dichotomy where one can be privileged over the other.

To stat haters who only trust their own eyes, sometimes, even our own observations of players completely deceive us – NOBODY predicted Redd as an all-star. I like stats because I’m a basketball junkie, plain and simple, and it’s just one more way to try to understand the game. It's a nice complement to observation...and claims based on observation should be supported by stats.

Knowing that we cannot possibly predict the 2009 WNBA Michael Redd-like story, I wonder, who will be this year’s Michael Redd in the WNBA? The player we all thought we had figured out even though they had another agenda?

Not Quite the Arenas Story…

For those of you who are wondering whether this is the same as the Gilbert Arenas story, let me clarify the difference. Arenas’ fall to the second round was a bit of a surprise -- he was expected to go in the first round by many. Although there were question marks around him (particularly regarding whether he had the height to be a NBA scorer) it was clear he was a solid NBA player to most analysts. Sure, he’s a little quirky, but the guy could play ball and should have gone higher. And he showed what a mistake GMs made in his rookie season once my beloved Warriors figured out a way to get him on the floor.

So although the Arenas story might get more press (and even resulted in a new salary cap rule for the NBA), the Redd story is special because he’s a player who literally grew as a player and added to his game in the jump from college to pro.

Either way, it's also worth knowing that these stories of second round (or undrafted) gems are somewhat rare. Heather Allen and Paul Gearan wrote a nice article on DraftExpress.com looking at second round picks' success in the NBA. You're lucky to even get a rotation player out of the second round. It would be interesting for someone to do a similar article about the WNBA. Shorter drafts, of course, but I would assume that the results might be similar...

It probably has as much to do with the situation as it does the player's attitude, but it's even more unpredictable once you get past the first round or so.

I don’t know enough about Cirone to identify her flaws, but it seems like she was more overlooked as a result of playing for a smaller program than punished for her weaknesses… so could she be this year's draft surprise in the WNBA?

Three Questions I’m Pondering

So here are my questions for those who know the WNBA better than I:

1) Has there been a Michael Redd-like case in the WNBA (in which a player went from being a rather flawed college player to an effective pro)?

2) Who is this year’s flawed WNBA rookie who has a shot to learn from a veteran and vastly improve upon that weakness?

3) Who is this year’s second year player who like Michael Redd struggled with the glaring flaw in their first year but had time to develop behind someone else and have a potential breakout season?

Of course any answers one came up with to questions 2 & 3 would be pure speculation.

There’s no real way to predict a Michael Redd-like transformation. But isn’t that the fun of sports – speculating and then observing closely to find the unknown, unpredictable outcome? I think so…and it gives me something to ponder while WNBA rosters get settled.

Transition Points:

One caveat for the Redd story: I’ve often thought that when folks evaluate NBA rookies who came out early, they have to be given time to make up for the years lost in college to develop. In other words, since Redd skipped his senior year, we have to give him a grace year for the development time he missed out on. (This simply reinforces my opinion that most college players should stay four years.) Therefore, one could argue that Redd just matured, whereas WNBA players complete four years (usually) before coming out and are therefore more polished and less malleable once they come out. So it could be that we won’t really see many WNBA versions of the Redd story…but I thought it was interesting.

Continue reading...

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

If you’ve ever paid any attention to any draft in any sport, you’ve probably figured out that drafting is by no means a scientific process – people often make arbitrary decisions or use shaky evidence to justify decisions.

I would argue that there is no position more difficult to unscientifically evaluate than that of the point guard, a position that people struggle to evaluate to begin with. I think a lot of people have gut feelings about what a good point guard “looks like” but have a much more difficult time describing what a good point guard “does”, much less what differentiates a good point from a great one.

Along these lines, I find Chicago Sky coach Steven Key’s comments about his selection of Kristi Toliver over Renee Montgomery particularly interesting.

"We knew we might have the option [Toliver or Montgomery]," Sky coach and general manager Steven Key told the Chicago Tribune. "We all just felt Kristi on the next level had more of our style of play. If you put them head to head, the numbers are pretty much the same. I think Kristi has a little more of that drive, that oomph and the ability to create her own shot."

Key’s comments seem to embody everything that makes drafting difficult, especially when drafting point guards.

First of all, there really are no strong predictors of how well a player will make the transition from the NCAA to the pros. There are so many intangibles like work ethic, adjusting to new coaching styles (not to mention lifestyles) and how well a given player “fits” with their team, not to mention factoring in differentials in college competition between any two given players.

Second, it’s not as if there’s one way to play point guard – there are many styles of point guard play and the extent to which one is more effective than another depends as much on the system and one’s teammates as it does on a given player’s skills. So the team’s style of play becomes as important as the player’s style.

Third, as a result of the first two challenges, people resort to statistics, which are always misleading for point guards if you look at the basic points, assists, rebounds, and steals, and not much more clear if you make the step to assist-to-turnover ratio.

Last, when the statistics fail to help in evaluating a player, the next move is to focus on intangibles that aren’t only difficult to measure but difficult to even define (I’m not sure exactly what “oomph” is, though I might agree that Toliver has it…I think…).

So in trying to figure out how well Toliver fits with the Sky’s system, I decided to take on these challenges, which I will follow up on throughout this season (thus embedding motivation to write more frequently into my own analysis).

The question: what, if anything, does NCAA point guard performance say about a player’s potential to be an effective pro point guard?

Here’s how I tried to answer this question (acknowledging that this is not necessarily statistically sound):

1. I compared the senior year numbers of this year’s group of rookie point guards to one another using the point guard statistics that I used to rank WNBA point guards last summer.
2. I compared this year’s group of rookie point guards to rookies from the past.
3. I tried to identify patterns (not correlations and certainly no causal relationships) in college performance that might serve as indicators of pro performance.

Ultimately, I came up with the following response to Coach Key (which I would love feedback on from readers):

1. Toliver and Montgomery are not “pretty much the same” statistically as point guards.
2. Based on her senior year statistics, if history serves us well, Toliver might be a solid WNBA player, but might be more effective as a scoring guard than the type of player who can run a team.
3. Statistically, based on past performances of WNBA point guards, Toliver might not even be a better point guard prospect than Briann January (who was drafted #7 by the Indiana Fever).

So obviously, I’m violating one of my fundamental rules – I’m looking at statistics without really observing the players extensively. Nevertheless, the statistical story here is actually pretty intriguing.

1. Toliver and Montgomery are not “pretty much the same” statistically as point guards.

When Coach Key made the argument that Toliver and Montgomery are “pretty much the same” statistically, it’s likely that he was looking at basic averages (pts, rebs, asts) so it’s not that his claim was way off, though each player clearly provides different strengths:

Montgomery: 15.8 ppg, 6.03 apg, 1.93 rpg, 44% FG
Toliver: 18.4 ppg, 5.48 apg, 3.35 rpg 44% FG

Since we know that the basic statistics say very little about the quality of a point guard, it seems to make sense to at least attempt to compare the two as point guards since that is the argument being made (again, I acknowledge that there really is no way to evaluate a whole host of intangibles a point guard brings to the court).

So even if we are to start with assist-to-turnover ratio – a very flawed statistic – we see increasing separation between Montgomery and Toliver:

Montgomery: 1.99 a/to
Toliver: 1.34 a/to

But given the arguments against that statistic, it may serve us to move beyond assist-to-turnover ratio. And it sort of starts with the fundamental question of what it means to be a good point guard. Subjectively, you want someone who can handle the ball, get the ball to her teammates, run the offense, make good decisions with the ball.

Last year, I used a set of statistics to rank point guards, four of which are attainable for college players (descriptions and formulas available in the RB statistics glossary):

Points per zero point possession (p/zpp): how often is a player individually responsible for scoring possessions and non-scoring possessions? (in other words does a player make good decisions with the ball).

Assist ratio (ast rat): how often does a player create a scoring opportunity for others (as opposed to scoring or turning the ball over)?

Pure point rating (ppr): how well does a player create scoring opportunities for others?

Usage % (usg): what percentage of a team’s plays does a player “burn” – either scoring or turning the ball over? (can be a good indicator, along with the other statistics of whether a player is “ball dominant” or really moving the ball around)

So what happens when we look at those stats? We see that Montgomery and Toliver are actually different types of point guards.

Montgomery: 2.64 ppr, 2.11 p/zpp, 23.16% ast rat, 25.50% usg
Toliver: -1.03 ppr, 2.01 p/zpp, 20.12% ast rat, 25.42% usg

The number that stands out is the huge gap in pure point rating. I will confess it is not a perfect statistic (which is why I don’t like using it alone) but what we see here is that Montgomery was much better in college at creating scoring opportunities than Toliver.

We also see that there is a differential in assist rate, though it might be hard to put that in perspective without a comparison to other guards. So to help put that in perspective: last season in the WNBA, the average assist rate for the point guards in my top 25 was 26.82 as of August 3 (Sue Bird, Kelly Miller, and Lindsay Whalen were all about average). I don’t have the average for NCAA point guards, but neither Montgomery nor Toliver should have been expected to have a high assist rate in their senior year as they also did a considerable amount of scoring.

So if we take it a step further and apply the point guard styles framework that I created last year, Toliver is something of a scoring point guard whereas Montgomery is closer to being a distributor who can score. To summarize these statistics, they might both be good WNBA players, but Montgomery seems to be much better at running a team, which I argue is what the Sky currently need.

2. Based on her senior year statistics, if history serves us well, Toliver might be a solid WNBA player, but might be more effective as a scoring guard than the type of player who can run a team.

Yet despite the statistical evidence, Coach Key seems to have a different perspective on Toliver:

“Toliver is a true point guard,” said Sky General Manager and Head Coach Steven Key. “Our point guards in the past have done a great job for us but I think Kristi will make us that much more versatile and allow us to move Dominique Canty over to the shooting guard role as needed. Canty is very good at getting to the basket; adding Kristi and some shooting to the team will help create some space for our inside players in Sylvia [Fowles] and Candice [Dupree]. It’s a great selection for us!”

But how can we really determine whether Toliver will be effective at running a WNBA team? Or better yet, how can we determine whether she might be better than Canty, Jia Perkins, or KB Sharp?

Well, one thing we can do is compare her statistics to those of past college point guards…but I do that with an obvious caveat.

Clearly, college statistics are difficult to compare because players have vastly different schedules, play with a wide array of supporting talent, and are asked to do very different things within the system. For example, an argument could be made that Toliver was not very focused on creating for others because she was asked to score for Maryland. However, even with that caveat, I think there’s a convincing argument that college point guard styles do have some bearing on how a player will play at the next level.

So without further delay, here are the senior year statistics for the point guards from my top 25 in WNBA compared to Montgomery, Toliver, and the rest of this year’s rookie point guard class. As I’ve done with these stats in the past, I simply ranked them by category just to get a sense of their relative value, which by no means implies that there might be some objective standard.

Name	PPR	Rank	Pts/ZPt	Rank	Ast Ratio	Rank	Usage	Rank	Total
Bird, Sue	5.22	22	2.45	24	0.30	22	20.92	9	77.00
Mitchell, Leilani	4.46	20	2.06	16	0.30	21	25.97	18	75.00
Whalen, Lindsay	-0.38	11	2.40	22	0.21	12	30.88	23	68.00
Renee Montgomery	2.64	16	2.12	19	0.23	15	25.51	17	67.00
Taurasi, Diana	2.72	17	2.24	20	0.23	14	25.49	16	67.00
Miller, Kelly	3.31	19	2.49	25	0.25	16	19.70	7	67.00
Briann January	3.25	18	2.08	17	0.28	18	22.40	11	64.00
Sharp, KB	5.34	23	2.02	14	0.28	20	19.68	6	63.00
Wiggins, Candice	0.78	14	2.43	23	0.14	2	30.44	22	61.00
Johnson, Temeka	7.59	25	1.71	7	0.38	25	19.28	4	61.00
Shalee Lehning	4.51	21	1.66	5	0.38	24	20.28	8	58.00
Whitney Boddie	6.87	24	1.64	4	0.36	23	19.60	5	56.00
Harding, Lindsey	1.00	15	1.97	11	0.20	10	23.45	12	48.00
Perkins, Jia	-2.74	2	2.40	21	0.11	0	31.92	24	47.00
Johnson, Shannon	-2.95	1	2.08	18	0.13	1	34.06	25	45.00
Quinn, Noelle	-0.37	12	1.60	3	0.21	11	27.18	19	45.00
Kristi Toliver	-1.03	7	2.02	13	0.20	9	25.42	15	44.00
Sha Brooks	-1.51	5	1.75	8	0.20	7	29.24	21	41.00
Canty, Dominique	-3.11		2.05	15	0.16	4	27.76	20	39.00
Blue, Nikki	-0.83	9	1.40	1	0.26	17	22.06	10	37.00
Camille LeNoir	-1.25	6	1.70	6	0.20	8	25.40	14	34.00
Nolan, Deanna	0.24	13	1.99	12	0.18	5	18.89	3	33.00
Latta, Ivory	-2.43	3	1.81	9	0.19	6	23.98	13	31.00
Moore, Loree	-0.88	8	0.99	0	0.28	19	14.43	0	27.00
Brown, Kiesha	-0.47	10	1.86	10	0.14	3	17.72	2	25.00
Bobbitt, Shannon	-1.84	4	1.59	2	0.22	13	16.34	1	20.00

Here are the two patterns that seem to stand out:

First, having a college pure point rating above 2.5 seems to mean something. All of the point guards in the top of the list -- who are mostly initiators, distributors, facilitators, and highly effective “combo” guards – had relatively high pure point ratings. The exceptions are Whalen and Candice Wiggins who you may remember were also big time scorers in college (both with usage percentages of 30% and both among the most efficient scorers on this list).

Conversely, having a pure point rating below 2.5 does not bode well for one’s effectiveness managing a team. The exceptions are Loree Moore (ACL surgery before here senior year) and Shannon Johnson (who like Whalen and Wiggins was relied upon as a big time scorer for her team and had a usage percentage of 34%). Deanna Nolan did not really play point guard in college (as far as I know, given the presence of Coco and Kelly Miller) so it’s hard to hold her accountable for point guard statistics.

The lesson: if you’re going to have a low pure point rating, it helps to have a high usage percentage to demonstrate that you were relied upon as a scorer.

Second, the average assist ratio among this set of point guards is 23%. If you’re above that (with the exceptions noted previously) it seems like you’re in the company of playmakers. Fall below that, and it appears you’re in the company of shooting guards trapped in point guards’ bodies. Montgomery seems to be on the border, Toliver seems to be among the scoring crowd. Toliver might be a better playmaker than Canty, but neither (nor Perkins) appears to be the type of point guard you would want running a team consistently.

So there might be some hidden qualities within Toliver that make her able to manage a WNBA team, but the combination of college statistics she accumulated doesn’t seem to bear that out.

3. Statistically, relative to the past performances of WNBA point guards, Toliver might not even be a better point guard prospect than Briann January (who was drafted #7 by the Indiana Fever).

Would I draft Briann January ahead of Kristi Toliver?

If I was looking for a point guard to run my team, then yes – I would just trade down and pick up January. The odds are that a player with January’s statistical profile will be more effective at running a team than Toliver, if you take into account their statistics relative to others. Toliver might turn out to be a great player, but based on her college numbers, she seems destined to replicate what the Sky already get from Canty and Perkins at the point guard spot.

Again, a caveat: January and Sharp have very similar profiles, which means that Janurary may be nothing more than a glorified initiator. Really, Montgomery is somewhat hard to figure based on these statistics as well.

Furthermore, I realize I’m comparing across styles in this analysis. It’s quite possible that certain styles fare better than others. But there’s still an interesting little tidbit that may seem superficial but seems to stand up to a test of reason.

If you look at the total points in these rankings that I constructed, there are two gaps: Sue Bird and Leilani Mitchell were both pretty outstanding college point guards in a class of their own. There is a drop off and then a second tier between Whalen and Whitney Boddie. Then there is another drop off and a third tier between Lindsey Harding down to Shannon Bobbitt.

Given the caveats for Shannon Johnson, Loree Moore, and Deanna Nolan, is there really a point guard in that third tier that you would anoint as your starting point guard? Dream fans might point to Ivory Latta, but she has not proven herself just yet as a consistent (winning) starter at the point.

You may also be wondering, what about all the point guards with great college stats that just didn’t make it in the WNBA? Were there other anomalies?

I went through the first round of WNBA drafts back to 2001 and identified all of the players that came out of college as point guards and ended up playing point guard in the WNBA. Here’s what I found (in no particular order):

	PPR	Pts/ZPt	Ast Ratio	Usage
White, Tan	-4.95	1.90	0.12
Swanier, Ketia	3.09	1.62	0.33	15.52
Baker, Sherill	-1.32	2.44	0.15
Thorburn, Shona	5.19	1.53	0.32	21.35
Haynie, Kristin	3.81	1.82	0.30	23.98
Wright, Tanisha	-1.61	1.86	0.14
Jacobs, Amber	-1.52	2.07	0.22
Creamer, Molly	-4.28	1.92	0.17
Brown, Coretta	-1.56	1.71	0.21
Curtin, Allison	-4.27	2.00	0.16
Miller, Coco	0.62	2.20	0.15	23.34
Dales, Stacey	0.00	1.77	0.18

So while those with stats in that third tier seemed to maintain the third tier pattern, there does seem to be some variation in second tier players – most notably, Kristin Haynie, Ketia Swanier, and Shona Thorburn.

Swanier is an interesting case not only because she spent her rookie year on a very deep Connecticut Sun team that changed rotations a number of times, but also because she was not a full time starter in her senior year of college. When you look at her low usage numbers, it’s possible that she simply didn’t do enough statistically in college to evaluate her based on these stats. In any event, it’s hard to say she’s a failure yet.

I looked up the history of Thorburn and it appears that she had injury problems more than performance problems.

So that leaves Kristin Haynie. She is a major anomaly, even moreso than KB Sharp. There is nothing that really stands out in the statistics or her history in the WNBA as an explanation.

Wishing Toliver the Best of Luck

Regardless of whatever the statistics say, I do hope Toliver does well, if for no other reason for the sake of the Sky. I like them. I want to see them win. I have nothing against Toliver. It just strikes me that she might not provide the Sky with what they need.

I'll look forward to hearing more critiques and observations...

Transition Points:

I was unable to find turnover and minutes statistics for Ticha Penicheiro, Vickie Johnson, Becky Hammon, and Katie Smith, all players I had in my WNBA point guard rankings last summer. If anyone has any leads, let me know. I’d be curious.

Comparing Toliver’s stats to those of past prospects was interesting – the best player with a similar statistical profile seems to be Lindsey Harding whereas the bottom seems to be Amber Jacobs.

What, if anything, do these stats say about Shalee Lehning and Whitney Boddie? Not sure, but Bob Corwin seems to believe that at least Boddie has a shot at being a solid backup for the Monarchs, whereas Lehning might be caught in a numbers game.

Leilani Mitchell was an impressive college prospect. GMs really snoozed on her.

I chose to focus on senior stats because they're what jumped out at me. But here are some other angles I thought about taking: career statistics; the rate of change between years; strength of schedule; some way of figuring out how much the player contributed to team wins.

John Hollinger has suggested in the past that steals are a strong indicator of guard college to NBA success as a proxy for athleticism. I chose not to do that here, but it would be interesting to add to the mix.

Continue reading...

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