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i had to reply in a comment to this particular blog post by henry abbott on truehoop because… IT IS INSANE and it is the perfect example of how the Media as a whole (even effective bloggers like abbott) are completely losing their f___ing minds with this whole donaghy scandal.

in the past week or two, i’ve read articles and columns that have been based on such ridiculous premises as:

• one ref bet on the nba. the nba is doomed, no one will ever watch again
• the nba has a referee database that they use to evaluate referees? they should open it up so everyone can see it
• we need ultimate transparency in the nba
• phoenix lost the nba championship because of donaghy

there are news stories where the scale of the media coverage is equal to the public interest and outcry. this story is not one of them.

and to speak bluntly about the whole “we need transparency into the referees,” that is one of the more idiotic ideas i’ve ever heard. these are not elected officials. they are highly-trained and scrutinized private employees who are (of course!) evaluated heavily by their employers. why in the world should they disclose which refs did better or worse? doesn’t that just lead to public roasting of non-corrupt referees that perform worse than their peers?

and why the hell does it even matter? what are we going to do, assume that all bad refs are corrupt and gambling addicts?

every nba fan that i’ve talked to is fairly confident that donaghy really was a single, rogue official. i don’t think there’s anyone, besides the overreacting media, who think we need to out every referee and their performance.

i think sportswriters are blowing this out of proportion, particularly when they insinuate that david stern would trade this for baseball’s steroid crisis. that’s absurd. they need to get their heads on straight and put down the peace pipe.

in one case you’re talking about one single referee calling games to manipulate the point spread (maybe) and in the other you’re talking about the complete undermining of more than a hundred years of records and history by widespread usage of dangerous chemical products, culminating in and represented most effectively by this complete farce of a home run chase that barry bonds is finishing off this week. i’d take one illegal gambler every day of the week.

donaghy? he’s going to blow over. bonds and mark mcgwire? i’m going to be explaining that one to my grandkids.

the buzz of the poker world yesterday was the computer program Polaris playing heads-up limit hold’em against phil laak and ali eslami (nytimes article here). the humans came out ahead in a close match.

to me, building a computer program that can beat pros at their game of choice is a really great academic and intellectual endeavor. i’d love to read more about it. just sounds like a lot of fun.

that being said: 1) there is a reason they chose limit hold’em, often the most mechanical and simple form of poker, and 2) there is a reason they chose phil laak, much more well-known as a no limit cash game and tournament player.

Love this, particularly the video. Does anyone want to start a Faceball tournament? perhaps with beers involved.

“In all of my years of watching sports figures, celebrities and politicians face the bright spotlight in a crisis situation, I thought NBA Commissioner David Stern was as graceful as anyone I have ever seen during his press conference today.”

David Stern Delivers in the Clutch | Sports Business Radio

watching the david stern press conference right now on espn…

all serious nba fans know that there are basically two david stern personas. one is the funny, witty, jovial stern who jokes in a dry demeanor, but has a slight glint in his eye. the other is the ultra-sarcastic and biting stern, who will regularly put down reporters and clearly patronize them.

today’s david stern is different from both of those. very deliberate. very careful about his words. very somber. and very very serious.

he’s going over the details (nba referee processes, gambling, donaghy in particular…), but it’s not in the usual slanted, politician-like demeanor of david stern. it’s objective and it’s measured, with little color. it’s also obvious that there were signs with donaghy. interesting…

clearly this is serious business.

i’m the biggest david stern fan in the world, but i’m hoping to hear some more color to his words. i probably won’t, but i’d love to.

somber day for the nba.

so i awoke today seeing a couple of ants crawling around my desk. “that’s odd, haven’t seen any of those around my room.” as i started looking closer, i saw they were coming from the end of my desk and if i just followed a couple of them back, based on the direction they were walking i found that… BAM! 90 million ants crawling around the floorboard in a strategic approach that can most succinctly be described as an INSANE ANT INVASION…

after tracing the source of their interest to my trash can, i can confidently say:

good idea: eating korean bbq.

bad idea: eating korean bbq and moronically leaving the box of remnants in the wastebasket that’s right next to the corner of your room.

the good news is that i can take this opportunity to learn about and try Raid’s newest generation of products. more on that soon…

so where are we now, a couple of weeks after the complete and utter hysteria of the iPhone? well first of all, from what i can tell, it looks like most of the lucky folks who went out and picked up an iphone have now stopped floating in the thin air of pure euphoria.

but more than that, it seems like we’ve moved past the standard and expected sequence of reactions: first, “holy crap, this is the most amazing thing i’ve ever seen in my life! where can i sell my first-born for it?!” and then, “pssh, that thing ain’t shit. it doesn’t even have a cupholder, steering wheel, or lava lamp. and it doesn’t wash my car.”

to me, i think the impact of the iPhone is going to be most dramatically seen in two places within the US, and both of them for the better:

1) us mobile internet: i think those of us in tech generally realize how absurd the us mobile internet industry is. internet access on the phone is ridiculously slow and the user experience is usually awful. i think the new safari browser on the iphone, coupled with the countless complaints about how slow at&t’s edge network is, can only help to drive adoption of mobile browsing.

seriously folks, as we speak, there are 10 year-olds in korea and japan that would laugh at how awful the us mobile experience is today.

2) creativity in phones: i’ve been spouting this off to everyone who has the misfortune of listening to me speak daily, but i’m hoping/expecting that the iPhone will be a tremendous catalyst for creativity among the phone makers. sure the iphone product is nice, but i think it’s much more important that they looked at the phone features with a fresh pair of eyes. it’s not all perfect, but at least it’s DIFFERENT.

trying out my brother’s new iphone, i couldn’t help thinking that apple threw out the book and started with fresh sheets of paper in designing it. instead of looking at some master matrix of “these are your four options when choosing the keypad,” apple chose entirely new approaches to the design. it’s refreshing, especially when you consider the commodities that are called cell phones in the US today.

i’m not looking at buying an iphone any time soon, but i am excited to see what other new phones pop up. at least apple’s gotten me that excited.

nice to see soccer get some good buzz and interest the other evening, but i’m going to give this beckham business 9 days before it’s completely forgotten in LA. sound about right?

Blogged with Flock

so i’ve been in miami (for work) for over 24 hours now and i can say, definitively, that some things you see on television are not true:

1. i have yet to see a high-speed boat chase scene, a la miami vice. in fact, i haven’t even seen a single high-speed boat fly into the air off one of those marineworld-style ramps (what the heck is going ON here?)
2. i have yet to see shaq, dwyane wade, or damon jones (or as jones put it on tv once, “the king and two princes of miami”), a la NBA tv (which makes it look like you can’t walk outside without running into one of them).
3. i have yet to see anyone doing lines of coke off a glass table, a la “every miami movie/show you’ve ever seen”.

that being said, there are some very “miami-ish” things (which i only know from the fantasyland of TV/movies) that i’ve seen:

• incredible percentage of men walking around with women that are completely f’ing out of their league
• these men usually also have prolific chest hair and seem to have lost the top four buttons of their shirts (perhaps they were torn off by the copious chest hair. must send someone not gross out by forests of chest hair to investigate further).
• highest concentration of escalades on one street (ocean ave.) anywhere in the world
• tons of very miami-looking buildings with 70’s era white concrete architecture
• hundreds of men wearing bright teal or white sport coats.

i made that last one up.

great article at nytimes.com about costco, a retailer that so many of us know and love. it centers on costco as the antithesis of wal-mart (read: treats employees well), but it also brings up some interesting philosophies of the business. i thought one particular quote was really poignant, from jim sinegal (ceo of costco):

Mr. Sinegal, whose father was a coal miner and steelworker, gave a simple explanation. “On Wall Street, they’re in the business of making money between now and next Thursday,” he said. “I don’t say that with any bitterness, but we can’t take that view. We want to build a company that will still be here 50 and 60 years from now.”

when i was working at oracle, one startling revelation was the “we’ll do anything to hit our numbers today” attitude of the sales force. the result was often laughable price-cutting and discounts for software. it was not uncommon to hear that some big customer was given a 90% discount after months of negotiations because it was the day before the end of the quarter. it was so important for the quarterly numbers to “look good” that we were willing to mortgage away tomorrow’s business.

it was so shortsighted though, because it created a bizarre business ecosystem by setting the wrong expectations for everyone involved. shareholders would be sheltered from the reality of the business. analysts would come to expect certain numbers. employees would be disheartened or cynical (often both). and, worst of all, customers would come to expect that they could always negotiate for a lower price. it was acidic.

if you were trying to explain to someone the difference between tactics and strategy, that would have been it.

i mean, if you were planning on selling lemonade for a whole week on the street and some guy came up in the first day and offered to buy a whole pitcher for 1/10 of what he should pay, would you do it? you wouldn’t, unless you 1) didn’t believe in your stand/product, or 2) weren’t willing to go out and work hard for the next six days.

that’s why i find myself respecting companies and executives who cultivate a sense of “f*** massaging the numbers, let’s just do what’s best for the long-term life of the business.” their businesses are planning to be around for more than a quarter and they act like it.