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How to do a 96-team tourney the right way (88: better, 112: do-able)

poormanscommish — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 19:15:46 +0000

96 teams, 32 per regional (click)

As someone who runs tournaments and mints brackets for a living, here’s how I would’ve structured the new 96-team format that the NCAA just announced. First of all, since I’m an NBA guy, I’m all for the expansion because it allows NBA’ers to better evaluate draft prospects under one roof – but that’s for another blogpost.

NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen yesterday suggested the following changes to the existing 65-team format…

Eliminate the 65th- vs 64th-seeded play-in game, which was originally played on Tuesday, two days after the last conference tournament championships on Sunday.
The top eight seeds in each of the four regionals get a first-round bye. Therefore, there are sixteen teams competing for the bottom eight spots in each regional. It follows that there will now be 24 teams in each regional. 24 x 4 = 96.
The new play-in games amongst the #9 thru #24 seeds will occur on Thursday and Friday, effectively pushing everything back one round, which leaves an extra two days of games to reach the Sweet Sixteen (one day for half the field). This extra round causes an overflow to be held the Tuesday and Wednesday immediately following the first weekend. That means the Sweet Sixteen will still continue as normally scheduled, still occurring on the following Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. There is controversy surrounding the fact that a team that happens to traverse the bracket will have to miss almost an entire week’s worth of classes.

The issue I have is that, if you click on this NCAA-proposed 24-team regional bracket above (remember, there’s four of these regional brackets!), it becomes incredibly confusing for fans, completely altering the established fun of bracket-filling. Yep, now you have to fill out an additional thirty-two bracket pairings than before, or eight more bracket pairings per regional (8 x 4 = 32)! And the strategy does not do that much to eliminate the blowouts that we so often see amongst the #1 vs #16 and #2 vs #15 matchups.

IMPROVE, NOT INTRUDE

In the following descriptions, I’m going to loosely use the terms “NIT” and “play-in”, so that it’s a bit easier to follow. My idea centers around the notion that the NIT is the play-in for the NCAA, but officially the whole thing would be called the NCAAs and they’d probably eliminate the “NIT” moniker.

There is a better way that is less confusing and does a better job of eliminating the throw-away low-seeded blowouts. I’d actually even go further to say that an 88-team format is the absolute best, but I can understand the NCAA not wanting to eliminate 9 teams. 65 in the NCAA plus 32 in the NIT, in the present system, minus my 88-team suggestion means there would be 9 fewer teams in the NCAA+NIT. That’d be 9 more teams for the upstart/obscure CBI and CIT tournaments – not a good competitive business move by the NCAA on that front.

If it were up to me, the NIT would become the play-in for the last few seeds in the NCAA. After all, in the present system the NIT already starts on the Tuesday after conference tournament championship weekend. The underlying assumption for doing this is that East Tennessee State probably would have still lost to Dayton or UNC, the NIT finalists, and that most casual observers would rather see Kentucky play against a more recognizable name, such as a Dayton or a UNC, in the first round of a 64-team field, not an obscure team that happened to win a conference tournament for the automatic bid. In short, you’d get less of a fan revolt by explaining that you’re merely attaching the NIT field to the existing NCAA bracket, effectively letting at-large teams go to war over just the last 2 seeds per regional.

BEST ALTERNATIVE: 88 TEAMS

To the casual observer, the notion of the NIT champion being the 66th-best team this season would still hold. With my 88-team system, it’s less of intrusion into the 64-team field and more of an improvement of the bottom feeders. We’re not really rocking your world all that much, is what the NCAA should or would say.

88 teams, 22 per regional (click)

So you start with 32 NIT-ish teams on Tuesday at the same 16 venues that make up the current 64-team field (4 teams per venue in the first round). By Wednesday morning, you’re left with 16 teams. On Wednesday night, the 16 teams play again to whittle the field down to 8.

The remaining 8 NIT-ish teams are given the #15 and #16 seeds in each of the four regionals. For example, it’d be #16 UNC vs #1 Kentucky and #16 Dayton vs #1 Duke. There’d be a much, much better chance of a #16 overthrowing a #1 than before. And a #2 beating a #15 would be far more likely than it is today. Quite simply, there would be fewer thirty-point blowouts in the #1 and #2 first-round games. From an NBA perspective, those are currently throw-away games because you can’t really continue to evaluate John Wall in a blowout. And does anybody still tune into those #1 vs #16 games?

Besides, an 88-team field certainly has a lot more marketing potential than 96. Eighty-eight is just a more aesthetically pleasing number than ninety-six.

96 TEAMS, IF YOU MUST

Alright, well let’s assume that the NCAA absolutely cannot let go of 96 teams, instead of my proposed 88. I just think that they haven’t thought about the mathematics of bracketing when they simply add the NIT’s 32 to the NCAA’s 64 (okay, 65) to get to 96. It’s so back-of-the-napkin right now. If you have 88, then you’re letting 8 teams go to the competition (CBI, CIT). I can understand the business decision, but I still think the elegance of the number “88″ and the fact that you are effectively making the #1 vs #16 and #2 vs #15 games more competitive outweighs the loss of 8 (okay, 9) teams, but that’s just me.

So then let’s expand my 88-team format to 96. It’s clunky, but it’s do-able. You end up with 44 NIT teams vying for the #16, #15, and #14 spots, instead of just the #16 and #15 seeds in the 88-team format. With 3 NCAA bottom seeds per regional up for grabs, that means you have 13 seeds locked and loaded. 13 x 4 = 52 and 96 – 52 = 44. That’s how we arrive at 44 NIT-ish teams.

With 44 NIT teams, that’s 11 per region. Here’s where it gets clunky because eleven is not a “nice” tournament number to work with. Again, you’re vying for the #14, #15, and #16 seeds in each region. As a bracket-maker and someone who determines the seeds, you have to assume that you were fair in your seeding and that all the top seeds will advance. Of course, it never ends up that way, but at least you covered your bases and did your best in fair seeding.

That being said, you must assume the #1 NIT seed in that regional will survive and be the best team from that field. It follows that with 11 NIT teams per regional, the assumed #1 team should have earned the right to play the assumed lowest-seeded team, the #2 against the next-lowest, and so on and so forth.

96-team bracket, bottom 3 seeds play-in per regional

That results in a first-round NIT bye for the #1 NIT seed in each regional. Again, the sanctity of the top 64 slots is maintained, only altered with an appendage that determines the bottom 3 seeds in each regional, or the bottom 12 seeds overall. That means 52 seeds are as good as they’ve always been.

The play-in brackets are somewhat imbalanced if you look at the graphic (click on the image), which creates some scheduling difficulties down the line. All the first-round play-in games obviously will start again on Tuesday immediately following conference tournament Sunday championships. But when we get done with the play-ins, we’ll have three spots, not just two, which causes problems with the Thursday-Saturday and Friday-Sunday setups. I don’t have a solution for this at the moment, but an easy out would be just to extend to Monday and, if need be, Tuesday at the same venue.

By the next round, things go back to normal (Sweet Sixteen on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of the following week). However, this is a Tuesday-to-Tuesday-then-Thursday scenario and casts a slightly wider net than the NCAA’s Thursday-Tuesday-Thursday strategy. Again, I’m sure there’s a way to get the clunky 11-team play-in bracket done by Monday or even Sunday, if they put their minds to it.

This also appeases the fans. They can, like in years past, ignore the NIT-ish play-in games and just concentrate on the remaining 64 teams, which was the same bracket on that Thursday, as before.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, 112 TEAMS IS DO-ABLE

Now, let’s say the NCAA wants this whole endeavor to end up with a knockout punch of its competition, the CBI and CIT. Well, due to the format of the brackets, this is very do-able if they expand to 112 teams. I kid you not. It’s certainly much easier logistically than 96 teams, as you’ll soon find out.

In a 112-team field, we are now on a mission to replace the last 4 seeds in each regional — #13, #14, #15, and #16 — by putting those spots up for grabs with teams that would’ve been relegated to the NIT, CBI, and CIT in years past. When you lock and load the top 12 teams in each regional, that means you have 48 teams out of the original 64 field already sealed.

You could then have four more teams vie for each of the four bottom spots in each regional, or 16 teams in a play-in. 16 + 12 = 28 teams per regional, which is 112 teams for four regionals. It’s a rather straightforward and elegant solution. Each of the four bottom seeds, #13 thru #16, is determined by a mini-final-four bracket that whittles 4 teams down to 1, for each of those spots. On Tuesday, you have the four teams play two games. On Thursday, the winners play each other. By Thursday late night and even staying in the same venue (this year there were 16 venues, 4 teams or 2 games per venue, in the field of 64), you’ll have your #13, #14, #15, and #16 seeds determined.

112-team bracket, bottom 4 seeds play-in

Then on Saturday, that #16 seed plays the #1 seed. To reach the Sweet Sixteen, we need to extend the regional out until Monday. This is a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday-Monday strategy, all at one venue. It follows that the other side of the regional, for logistics and TV purposes, can go with Wednesday-Friday-Sunday-Tuesday.

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for the concern over athletes being out of class, but if you think about it, if a low seed actually makes it through that whole week beginning on Tuesday, with the Sweet Sixteen looming as early as Thursday after that (two days of rest, in that you might as well head straight to the next venue without flying back home), it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime Northern Iowa type of experience. The mid-major will take it.

On the other side of the coin, if you’re a #1 seed, you don’t play until Saturday, then probably Monday barring an upset. If you’re a high-seeded team, you actually stay in school longer that first week!

WHY FOCUSING ON PLAY-INS IS THE KEY

Basketball is basketball. Not only in all of my leagues and tournaments, but in leagues all over the world and at all levels, you have elite teams, very good teams, and the middle of the pack. You also have the cellar dwellers, but those are already weeded out here in the NCAA Tournament. It’s a standard bell curve. The difficulty is figuring out the middle-of-the-pack teams. And with the NIT and low-seeded NCAA field as we know them today, we are talking about the middle of the pack.

By focusing on just (replacing) the bottom seeds of the traditional 64-team format, you’re simply letting nature take its course. Better, you’re eliminating a difficult task of the Tournament Committee. You’re admitting that seeds #13 thru #16 might as well be determined by actual competition. And you’re not just cutting off regular season champions who happen to lose their conference tourneys.

The evidence is already there. #13 and lower seeds upsetting #4 and higher seeds just does not happen all that much. Worse, they are blowouts, more often than not.

I really like the expansion approach because of this bell curve, but I think the NCAA’s proposed solution is flawed and will only draw the ire of fans who can’t fathom how they’ll fill out their brackets now. And isn’t that the life-blood of this whole thing? That’s why the ratings are so high. The casual fan knows that a #5 seed is going to fall, so that’s why they tune in.

In my rec leagues, I’ve done 22-team quasi-double-elimination playoff formats in the past, so when analyzing a one-and-done bracket, that stuff is a piece of cake. Here’s an example of a 13-team quasi-double-elimination bracket that I did earlier this year (click to expand)…

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Get ready for many more views from beneath the ivory tower

poormanscommish — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:56:22 +0000

Today is the dawn of a new era here at Poor Man’s Commish (and Dream League, for that matter). From this day forward, blogposts will be more frequent, as will — as a direct result — our Twitter and Facebook posts. Best to explain with a Q&A…

How is this different than before? Well, with my busy schedule and extremely limited extracurricular time in front of the computer, it was ultra-difficult to get posts up, even though I still had a steady pulse on the stream of Poor Man’s Commish-related activity out there. Plus, it was a very disparate process, updating this site, Twitter, and Facebook. A pain, as it were.

Why should I be interested? I’m a basketball news fiend and there’s no way you could possibly keep up with everything like I can, so you’ll get a firehose of information directly relevant to you, your upcoming Dream League game, good hoops knowledge and experience and your surrounding community, such as other dreamleaguers.

Wait, I thought you just said you’re too busy to find yourself in front of computer? Ha! That’s the secret sauce I’m not telling you about. Anyhoo, you’ll get more stuff coming from me, although my schedule hasn’t really changed all that much. Call me Flash.

What are you going to be posting? Just like the new tag line at the top of the page says: “Views from the beneath the ivory tower”, the ivory tower being the NBA and related entities.

What about all the Jeremy Lin stuff? FYI, this is not a Jeremy Lin site, although the content is heavily weighted in his direction, for obvious reasons (the fact that he’s Asian-American and Dream League the second-biggest league catering to Asian-Americans in the world, being the first and foremost reason).

Then what is this site about? Anything in the ivory tower that somehow trickles down to either touch or act in parallel to we rec league minions, down here in the grassroots. Actually, it’s been like this since Day One, but I haven’t really had the bandwidth to tie each and every post back to our “Bizarro” world. Or, is the NBA the Bizarro world and we’re reality? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

So this analogy to David Stern, what gives? Seriously, all the stuff he has to deal with? The complaining about refs. Team owners who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Courts that get drenched with water when a pipe breaks. Expanding to China. Defense and role-players winning championships. Oh, did I mention the bitching and moaning about this or that that didn’t go your way when you lost your game? Believe it or not, I deal with it too. The only difference is that David Stern can hire someone to shield him from the crap. I can’t. Oh, and he gets paid gazillions for his job, while I make the inverse of that.

Do you still think “What happens in the NBA happens in Dream League”? Absolutely, which is the whole point. Well, maybe except forfeits and ticket sales. And dance teams with beautiful women. And mascots. Craig Sager. Dunks would be another thing. Getting paid to play. Alright, alright, maybe not much that happens in the ivory tower happens amongst the minions. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?

Does your posting this on April Fool’s Day have any bearing? Actually, no. I wanted to post this late night yesterday, but fell asleep. I guess in case I can’t come through with the above, I’ll have an excuse in the future!You might also like:

Nobody likes to be called out by Mister Nobody

poormanscommish — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:07:14 +0000

Ron Artest gets hit by a cup right before the malice.

Whenever I see an anonymous insult posted as a comment, it reminds me of Ron Artest when he got hit by some random cup (although they eventually figured out who it was), which ignited the “malice at the palace”.

On Dream League’s YouTube account, I recently uploaded a clip of Brady Morningstar (3 million views in 3 days, who woulda thunk?!) where he was about to shoot a free throw with no one else on the blocks, and the ball slipped out and he tried to save the situation by quickly catching the slip and throwing it up for a shot, while losing his balance.

I probably see one airball free throw per season in our leagues, so I posted it and shared on Facebook and Twitter, to poke fun to our hoops community. However, I said in the video description that I think Morningstar is a fantastic player. I saw him play in a few closed scrimmages this past summer and he was solid and held his own. I had no idea who he was and was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a starter for what is now the #1 college team in the nation: Kansas.

But soon the influx of YouTube comments came in and many of them were sh*tting on him, about 50% of them.

TrueHoop recently bemoaned (1) the posting of nasty comments and (2) posting them anonymously. The blogpost referenced a New York Times blogpost about a high school basketball player’s mom who dug around and found that…

Sports fans are a zealous bunch, to be sure, so I thought I would investigate the wider blogosphere; surely rabid fans were to blame for such a breakdown in civility. Wrong. Political blogs, celebrity blogs, literary blogs and, yes, even some mommy blogs had one overwhelming thing in common: snark.

But the beginning of her post summed it up perfectly…

Who are these people? Seriously. I want names.

That, of course, is exactly the problem when it comes to online commenters, even on high school sports blogs. Hiding behind a screen name allows the unidentified to say anything without taking responsibility for their words.

There’s a couple of things going on here. One, TrueHoop and the NYT allow for anonymous commenting. Back in the day before ESPN bought it out, TrueHoop was a thriving community and when you commented with something of value to add, someone usually reciprocated with a well-thought-out response.

ESPN and the NYT are stuck in the beginning of Web 2.0. That was when you wanted as many comments as possible — even spam! — because doing so got you ranked higher on Google. That’s how TechCrunch was built. Big companies like ESPN and NYT are always a few years behind the curve and, quite frankly, don’t get it (not like they need the extra traffic). They’re just trying to keep status quo, for whatever reason.

Luckily I’ve sensed that snarky comments aren’t as prevalent as they once were. People have grown tired of them and if there are enough negative comments on a post, there will be enough people out there to help balance things out, to put things at 50/50. I think it will continue to improve, back to the point where, for example, TrueHoop used to be (although TrueHoop will never be the same, sadly).

Times have changed. We’re now in the Facebook era where, for the most part, you know who you are talking to. MySpace is pretty much dead and people want a real social “network”. Facebook’s users have a real identity, be it a person, a corporation, or a group/organization. There’s a way to reach people; it’s a two-way street. Thank goodness.

I think the popularity of Facebook reveals that most people are sick of seeing the snark. I hope more and more blogs get their readership somehow integrated into Facebook as well.

For the record, I like Twitter better than Facebook because of its versatility and have criticized Facebook for being a “walled garden” many times, which requires a bit more upkeep, but Twitter’s great in that you can only post 140 characters. Facebook’s “real people” policies and Twitters limitations will discourage trolls. Both services also allow you to block other users.

Pretty soon, I hope the advancement of Facebook and Twitter reinforces that snark is cheap and is a waste of time.You might also like:

Deep confessions from another Poor Man’s Commish

sungmcho — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:14:23 +0000

EDITORS NOTE: The following is from the former Deputy Commish of Dream League NYC, “SMC”, and originally appeared on the DLNY NL division site. This is why we do what we do…

DLNY in LA - L to R: Chock (GenX), Park (Da Bien), S. Park (3rd Floor), Scott (Oh Holla), SMC (Yale, Gen X, GNB).

I have a confession to make. I don’t love you. This may come as a surprise to you seeing how devoted I was to you the past few years and how my life revolved around you. I’ve been away from NYC for 3 months now and I can’t say I really miss you.

I mean, I still like you, but I don’t love you like I once did. I don’t know when it happened, but the love has slowly been eroding for me the last couple of years. I don’t know when it happened? I just know that when you took the Seattle Supersonics away from me, I felt like my very soul was ripped out. That was when I knew we had major problems. It was one thing that you took my hometown Grizzlies away, but you took away the team I grew up watching and my first introduction to you? And what’s with the superstar attitude? I thought it was a team game? You even have the referees trained to call a game that way. Let’s face it. You’re just not as sexy without Jordan, Magic and Bird as you once were when we met. You’ve even hurt me in the collegiate level. Nobody wants to stick around or even go to college to play anymore.

It’s not you. It’s me. I know I just haven’t been able to perform for you like I once could. My body just hurts. The bone spurs in my feet were agonizing me the past few years and my mind still thinks I can do some of the things I used to be able to do athletically, but my body does it 2 steps slower. I’m sorry, I just don’t have it anymore and I refuse to take medication for it prescribed by my doctor that says if it lasts for more than 4 hours I should stop using it.

My confession sounds very contradictory when I say I miss the Dream League. The Dream League has defined a big part of my 5 years in New York and will resonate with me with everything I do. But when I say I miss the Dream League, I don’t think of the 30 point games, the all-stars, or the championships or beating up on the Tri-State Invasian and SKWD teams. Basketball is a backdrop or the setting of what Dream League NY is about, much like Spike Lee’s movie He Got Game is more about a young kid finding his way and re-connecting with his father through basketball than the game itself. To me our Dream League is more about bringing the community together and witnessing the human spirit through basketball.

Don’t get me wrong. The basketball played and the services provided are above any other league in the city. No other rec league puts in as much effort in services such as stats, pictures and stories than anyone else. The community aspect is an outgrowth of this excellence. I’ve witnessed and have been a part of some awesome basketball. I’ll never get bored of watching Shawn De Los Reyes or Nic Echevestre effortlessly take over a game or Tony Hu, George Chan and the rest of the RL Cruisers run their system like clockwork to another championship. I stopped watching cable and never really missed it because of the great basketball I’ve been privy to. Despite all that I’ve seen through the league, what sticks out to me more than anything were the things that tugged at my heart.

A stark reminder of our impact in the community was when I first moved to LA and I went to a concert called Kollaboration, a showcase of Asian American performers, at the Hollywood Bowl. During a break they had representatives of the Project Michelle/Cammy Lee Leukemia Foundation speak. At first, it was comforting to see a recognizable cause that Dream League supported. It then turned to heartbreak when they announced that Michelle recently passed away. I encouraged my friends to swab that night, but became even more heartbroken when I saw others and even my own friends not want to participate. We never had this problem during our drive. Dream Leaguers were more than willing to help the cause.

We also had 2 very successful shoe drives. I had complete strangers email me wanting to donate their shoes. Some shoes I collected were pretty much brand new. We were able to send over 70 pairs of shoes to Africa to our friend and former DL’er Marshall Cho, who was teaching in Mozambique at the time (he has since moved to Baltimore to be the first assistant coach at the famed basketball factory DeMatha High). I talk about this effort to my friends all the time.

Those were just some of things that we did that were larger in scope that made a difference, but it really was the small things that made a difference to me personally. I once had a terrible toothache last season. Arif Ansari recommended that I call Josh Prensky, a dentist who also played for the Tri-State Sands of Time. Dr. Prensky picked me up from home the next morning and drove me to the hospital and checked on me free of charge.

Other than my bone spurs, I also have chronic problems with my colon, which also makes me anemic. I didn’t have medical insurance, but fortunately for me, we have several doctors in the league to diagnose me and also give me some solid advice. Our resident doctor, Mo Ghumman, offered his services to get some blood work done and also recommended over the counter medication that helped me tremendously.

The emotional support was even more poignant, as I will never forget the time when I was in the library catching up on DL game summaries when I received a phone call that my uncle passed away. I was pretty tight with my uncle when I lived in Seoul. He was the youngest of my mother’s siblings and he was most definitely the fun uncle. He owned a gym I worked out at, so I saw him almost everyday, so needless to say I was devastated. For some reason, I posted something about it on my Facebook. Many friends offered kind encouragement through my Facebook wall and emails, but it was the people from the DL who called or chatted with me to make sure I was ok. I’ll never forget my chat with former teammate Len Kamdang, who chatted with me for over an hour and offered words of encouragement. I think I was laughing by the end of our chat.

I once spoke to the commissioner about expanding the DL into Queens and proposed that we’d have an easier time setting it up if we didn’t have to do articles. He wisely kaboshed the idea explaining that it’s the articles that set the DL apart. It’s also one of the driving forces that bring our community together. Writing the articles was a hate/love thing for me. I write very slowly, so it did take up a lot of time. It’s also not easy when you’re amongst such great writers. Here are some past articles that have stood out for me:

Will Balton (aka the commish) has written some brilliant articles. This early one is one of my favorites of all time: Early One.

This article, another Balton masterpiece, made me want to become a DL writer and it could also mark the first time I peed myself laughing: Peed Myself.

As a result of the above Balton masterpiece, I wrote this as my very first DL piece: First Piece.

This was undoubtedly last season’s Pulitzer Prize winning article by Arif Ansari: Pulitzer Prize.

Out of all the articles I’ve written, this one is my personal favorite: My Fave. Writing the article about Andre’s greatness is one of the reasons I loved writing the articles. As painful as it was for me to write them, it was a great way to learn about most of you and show my appreciation for you.

I love you, but I don't miss you Y2K.

My last stint as the deputy commissioner was taxing at times. It is a full-time job, especially when you write as slow as I do. I did miss a lot of events that would’ve been a lot of fun and it probably didn’t help me in my dating life either, but there isn’t a lot I would trade for the experience I had. To me, it was a chance to see my closest friends every week, so it was fellowship. It was a chance to watch some great basketball, so it was entertainment. I didn’t have or need cable for 4 out of the 5 years I lived in NY, so it saved me some money. It helped me develop managerial and people skills, so it was professional growth. Writing those articles was the chance to provide me with a creative outlet, so it was creative growth. From being the only person to work the score clock, shot clock, game stats, hustle stats and take pictures at the same time during some games and then tabulating stats, while uploading stats and thinking of story lines for articles when at home, it was the ultimate multi-tasking frontier.

When I was working at the table in between or after games, often someone would ask me, “hey, how much do you pay these guys to do stats and stuff?” My answer to the Brian’s, Jae Ha’s, Andre’s, Arif’s, Seth’s, Tony’s, Joe Yen’s, Varun’s, Kash’s and everybody else who has volunteered and makes this league happen is that they’ve paid me and I am forever in debt to all the friendships I’ve made through this league. Even in my new surroundings, my closest friends here, Brandon Chock and Dave Scott, are guys that played in our league. There have also been some late night Kevin Park sightings from time to time.

As you can tell, I’m having a tough time trying to have this long distance relationship with all of you. I know I haven’t been great at returning the emails and texts sent to me. I guess in a sub-conscious way, it’s a defense mechanism of mine to not respond right away to well-wishers and supporters because it already hurts to read and it would probably hurt more trying to respond to it. We can’t go on like this, so I guess I’ll have to find/form a new Dream League where I am. She won’t be like you at first, but I hope with all that I learned from you it can be special like what we had in New York. Just know that all of you have a friend in LA when visiting. Please email me when you do or just to say hello. We can still be friends.You might also like:

The Return of Poor Man’s Commish

poormanscommish — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:29:33 +0000

On a more descriptive tip than the one we had before, I’m pleased to announce the relaunch of Poor Man’s Commish, aka the Dream League Blog aka “dreamblogue”.

What’s different about the blog this time than the last one? Well, let me start by saying that the last one was more of an experiment. I didn’t really know where I was going with it. Now that some time has passed and I’ve gotten into a regular mode of seeking out basketball stories, along with a better grasp on when to expect something to drop in my lap, I’m more confident with what needs to be said. It’s kind of like that day when you, as a basketball player, not only finally realize you’ve learned how to play the game, but you’re cognizant of it. Btw, if you haven’t reached that point yet, don’t worry, you will (okay, probably you will, haha!).

I still think I’m quite possibly the Bizarro (or at least one of the bizarros out there) of David Stern. It amazes me how many things that happen in the NBA, happen in Dream League amateur ball — be it at high-intensity/talent levels like our national tourneys or even at the lowest “for fun” recreational levels. I’m sure that Dream League’s adoption of the NBA’s rules and regulations has something to do with that.

When I started Dream League back in 2002, I was still very much an active player in the local community — namely, the Japanese League and tournaments (aka NAU or “Nisei Athletic Union”) — and very much wanted to score 20 ppg and help lead teams to championships, but as the years have gone by and my role as Commish increased exponentially, I’ve come to appreciate the game more wholly from a more “global” perspective. Even if my body were in tip-top shape, I don’t necessarily have a desire to succeed as a player anymore. When I do play, all I care about is helping my team win, making my teammates rise up, and I don’t necessarily have to be playing for this to happen. Being Commish has helped me mature into a basketball “manager”, if you will.

I hope to share this knowledge with you. That’s my primary goal with this blog. But there’s also a secondary goal.

My closest friends know that I’ve had some Forrest Gump basketball-related experiences ever since I made being the Poor Man’s Commish — the running of the leagues, not the writing of this blog! — my full-time endeavor (I think there are only two other people I know who are full-time Poor Man’s Commishes). And things keep happening. My favorite class in college was Sports in Society, with awesome lectures from Professor Harry Edwards. His whole thesis is that sports is a reflection of society. Not only do I wholeheartedly agree, but I would also like to add that even the smallest thing that happens in your immediate community of basketball could have ramifications in the bigger world of basketball and society itself, be it NBA-related or not. I hope to share these stories, both as I reminisce and as they happen.

There’s one caveat, though. I have no desire to transform into a journalist, by definition. Sure, this blog could be deemed a journal and at times I may be trapped by the ethics of publicizing something, but I am not a real journalist, aside from abiding by copyright laws as I would expect others would abide by with anything I write. I’m a decent writer, though, and I know that if I really put my mind to it, I could become a true journalist, but I really don’t have the time. It’s not like I’m out to obtain a press pass to an NBA game. Furthermore, I will not be spending extra time to make my posts particularly witty or perfect. I will not be sending drafts to editors prior to posting.

I will also not be going out of my way to have a blogroll, but of course I will link as appropriate. Some of the basketball info out there is initiated from well-known basketball blogs, but it usually turns out that they got it from somewhere else! You should see the tricky things that some of the bigger blogs do to make it appear that the story came from them. I wouldn’t do that. And now everyone’s using Twitter and re-tweeting left and right. As long as we give props to the source, that should be enough.

Speaking of source, unless something happened in Dream League, happened to a dreamleaguer, or is a Forrest Gump experience, I doubt it got sourced here. And if it did, I would only put my heart and soul behind a story if it is something unique to being the Poor Man’s Commish and is important for you to hear. Other than that, I’m just here to pass on basketball knowledge, preferably in much shorter form than this particular post.

Most blogs, you’ll find that the knowledge being passed needs to have some wit, humor, complaining or other argument added to it. Or the part they excerpt isn’t as interesting as another part, because they are so focused on supplying you with “commercial” NBA material or what have you. Suffice it to say that if you’re looking for standard NBA debate fare which doesn’t necessarily expand your mind as a student of basketball, this is not the blog where you’ll find it, at least not in general.

I must admit, however, that having carved a “self-employed” profession as a Commish, sometimes I just need an outlet for basketball stuff crying to get out of my brain. I think that’s a situation for most bloggers though. They don’t really have a watercooler place to go and vent. Also, I’m usually too busy running leagues to get a chance to talk shop with people at the gym, which is seriously something that I miss. Ah heck, we’re all going Facebook and Twitter with each other anyways! As I have often seen in the basketball world, somehow it all works out.

Also, I’ll be inviting other writers to contribute as well, especially if they are also a Poor Man’s Commish. Brian Yang and the rest of the Gotham crew at Dream League New York come to mind. Matter of fact, there’s a few old DLNY-sourced stories that I hope to squeeze in as we go to catch up, especially if it’s an unusually slow week, such as the Xmas holidays or something. Incidentally, Brian has a wonderful blog with observations from his alter ego life as a professional actor. Trust me, there are other Poor Man’s Commishes — as well as Poor Man’s Players, Coaches, and General Managers — out there with good stories to tell (definitely contact me if you’re one of ‘em!).

I’d also like to keep some topics open-ended so that the Dream League community can comment on them, but at the same time, true to being the Commish and ensuring sportsmanship on the court (and knowing that basketball players can often act very immature), I plan to adopt similar commenting rules as one of my favorite off-topic blogs, LifeHacker.

To comment, I encourage you to use your Facebook account, which you can login with in our comment box. However, you may leave a comment as a Guest without logging into anything. I decided on going with the IntenseDebate comment engine since it is somewhat “portable” in that, theoretically, if we ever have a bigger dreamleague website with its own player/user logins and stuff, we can output those comments which are essentially stored on an accessible, centralized database. Well, that’s all in theory.

And speaking of Facebook, now that I’ve tied this blog to Dream League’s facebook account — http://facebook.com/dreamleague, btw — I hope to connect with more of you through Facebook, as I really haven’t had the time nor the motivation to do so in the past. This goes for Twitter as well — http://twitter.com/poormanscommish. Yeah, I know, Poor Man’s vs Dream League. It’ll get confusing, but I’ll do my best to delineate the differences and, well, make it less confusing as we go.

Finally, how many posts do I expect to make? Well, I don’t really know. I do have an obligation to run my leagues first. I certainly expect to make more than before and on a regular basis. And I truly hope it fills a niche for you amongst all the other stuff you’re getting fire hosed with!

Alright, enough of the background and ground rules. I’ve been dying to post the first real, new post for Poor Man’s Commish, the blog. Can’t wait to tell you what it’s all about!…You might also like: