Poor Man's Commish » tournament

Through NBA Eyes: 3 reasons why NCAA Tourney expansion is good

poormanscommish — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:38:11 +0000

These potential lottery picks would not have been left out.

If you’re an NBA guy like me, you should be rooting for the NCAA Tournament expansion. Sometimes, excellent NBA Draft talent just so happens to be stuck on not-so-great teams, as alluded to in the previous four posts in the “Through NBA Eyes” series (1 2 3 4). And with all the variables that go into a successful team, can you really blame these players?

Warrior fans ought to know!

Not only that, but the atrocies that CBS has committed this year only solidify the need for the Tournament to move to ESPN. CBS doesn’t have enough channels to handle such a load — heck, they can’t even handle 64 teams, as I’ll explain – while ESPN has the depth and breadth of broadcasting logistics and talent.

Here are the three reasons why NCAA Tournament expansion is good, especially if you’re an NBA fan…

Read the rest of the story at GoldenStateOfMind.com

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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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Jeremy Lin heads to “The Heart of High Country”

poormanscommish — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:03:23 +0000

In case you didn’t know, there are four NCAA post-season tournaments. The 65-team NCAA field and the NIT are probably the two you already know about. The third is called the CBI (College Basketball Invitational) and has a contract with HDNet, which is owned by Mark Cuban, to broadcast all of its games on TV.

Last year, I was told that Harvard would’ve made the CBI had they won their last game. Unfortunately, they lost that last game and extended the streak of zero post-season appearances since 1946.

With this year’s 20-win team, I figured the CBI had to be a lock, since this year’s team is way, way better than last year’s. Not so. By finishing in 3rd behind Princeton and Cornell in the Ivy League, and with a bevy of “BCS” powerhouse teams such as UConn and UNC underachieving this year, there weren’t many spots left in either the NIT or the CBI.Alas, Harvard finds itself in the fourth tourney, the CIT (short for “CollegeInsider.com Tournament”), which didn’t exist not too long ago, so we can be thankful for the Internet era. They are paired against Appalachian State, which came in 2nd place in the Southern Conference (Wofford won their conference tourney and is headed to the NCAA Tournament).

Appalachian State is located in Boone, NC, which was named after — you guessed it — Daniel Boone, on the far west side of the state of North Carolina, the opposite side of the state from Tobacco Road, home of college hoops meccas UNC, Duke, and Wake Forest. The nickname for Boone is literally, “The Heart of High Country”.

Let’s get to it. Who are these Appalachian State Mountaineers? I got a chance to watch video of their Southern Conference Tournament semifinals and championship games (thanks to the wonderful ESPN360.com)…

pg: Brandyn Curry vs Donald Sims. Sims plays like a Welfare Man’s Stephen Curry. You know, poorer than a Poor Man, but not quite as destitute as a Homeless Man. Seriously though, it’s a bit ironic that I call him that, not only because he’s light-skinned, kind of short, kind of skinny, and tends to manufacture shots from all over the court, but also, Curry’s alma mater Davidson also plays in the Southern Conference! Sims is leading the conference in scoring at 20 ppg. Just think Steph Curry, but not quite as sweet a stroke, not quite as quick, not quite as fast. For a mid-major, however, Sims is solid although he did make some questionable decisions in the championship that they lost. Perhaps it’s because he’s still a junior. Harvard’s Brandyn Curry (no relation), a freshman, will have his hands full.

sg: Jeremy Lin vs Kellen Brand. Now, this is a matchup. Kellen Brand is not that tall, about 6′1″. But he is rock solid as an athlete and gets up and down the court with relentless speed. He scored 37 points in the semifinal over the College of Charleston (for you Georgia Tech fans, the coach of CoC is now Bobby Cremins, believe it or not!). However, those points came against a beaten squad and he had his best shooting night of his career. Brand doesn’t normally shoot a lot of treys. He’s a slasher. He likes to get out on the open court and run. There’s not much else to his game. He does look very mean, though. His face looks like Tommy “Tiny” Lister, the guy who played the big scary prisoner on the convicts barge in The Dark Knight; the guy who ended up throwing the detonator out the window. It’s a good thing Harvard has its best player covering this guy. On the other end of the court, Brand may be surprised by Jeremy’s athleticism and moves. Again, there’s nothing special about Brand’s game except that he hustles, is strong, and can finish a layup.

sf: Kyle Casey vs Jeremi Booth. Here’s where Harvard can take advantage. Booth has a solid body and is athletic, but he doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary. When Appalachian State subs in Andre Williamson for Booth, that’s when things start to even up. Williamson is taller and better at blocking shots. He’s also a bit more potent on offense, sporting a left-handed midrange. Although Casey is a freshman, he’s vastly more talented than either of these guys. But, he’s a freshman. By definition, anything can happen.

pf: Pat Magnarelli vs Josh Hunter. Down low, Appalachian State has a pretty thick and mobile big man in Hunter. Again, nothing spectacular. You’ll notice him by the ponytail dreadlocks. Incidentally, he’s a very poor free throw shooter.

c: Keith Wright vs Isaac Butts. ASU fans will have their placards that read, “I L’Ike big Butts” on hand! Butts is a really big center, but he’s slower than molasses and sometimes displays stone hands. His FT shooting is also not that good. Harvard’s Wright isn’t the quickest guy either, but I think he’s finally found someone slower than him. Wright should be able to maneuver around Butts, but Wright cannot get into the habit of killing his dribble with nowhere to go. He has to make his moves in fluid motions and have Butts chasing him. Wright will also need to stay out of foul trouble. As we know from this entire season, Harvard’s frontline is dangerously thin.

Bench. Harvard’s got Oliver McNally and Max Kenyi off the bench. With McNally, just hope that he hits his open jumpers. With Kenyi, you have a spidery defender and someone who can knock down an open trey every now and then. ASU has Ryan Abraham off the bench. A senior from Puerto Rico, he could easily start, but he’s a bit too short to have two guys (Sims the other one) under 6-foot at any given time. But Abraham is tough, he’s fearless, and like Derek Fisher, he just does what’s needed to get the job done. I already mentioned Williamson, who can be a sparkplug for the frontline. ASU probably won’t go to deep on their bench, nor will Harvard.

Intangibles. Per the NIT, CBI, and CIT format, the lower seeds must travel to the higher seeds’ homecourt. ASU will be in front of their home crowd, which seats over 8,000. I doubt many Harvard fans will make the trek to the back country. It will be more than 99% ASU fans, in an arena that’s probably double or triple the capacity of your typical Ivy League stop. This is a huge concern, especially since Harvard’s talent other than Jeremy revolves around freshmen and sophomores. On the flipside, at least Harvard is finally playing a team that likes to “play”. ASU wants to get up and down the court and they’re not particularly interested in the Bobby Knight style of play where you completely sacrifice your game (and basically the “fun” of playing) for the good of submitting to the team machine and execute plays like robots, as was so prevalent in Ivy League conference play — because most Ivy League schools simply do not have the talent.

As it should and assuming Wright will ultimately find himself in his chronic foul trouble, assuming Casey has no more than a solid game, this matchup will come down to Jeremy Lin. Again, he is the best player on the court. In fact, I’m not sure that anyone else in the entire CIT got an invite to Portsmouth. He’s got 8,000 people rooting against him. He’s got 8,000 people who’ve probably rarely seen an Asian man walk down the street, let alone lead a basketball team. But I’m sure the crowd will have no effect on Jeremy.

ASU will try to dictate an uptempo game. That is fine by Jeremy. What will be difficult is if Jeremy’s teammates mentally check out and he has to start shouldering the burden. Does he shoulder it? Or will he continue to defer to his teammates until they finally check in?

Throughout the end of the Ivy League season, I’m not sure if it was the Ivy League defenses or if it had to do with Jeremy, but he seemed to defer much more than earlier in the season. I tend to think that Jeremy is glad he doesn’t have to face another Ivy foe. It’s like when I take my Dream League All-Star team to the Japanese League tournaments. There, they slow the game down, keep it close, sacrifice individuality, and do everything they can to turn the game of basketball into a chess match. There is no way that’s happening against Appalachian State, thankfully.

But Jeremy needs to turn the Ivy League switch off now, like he did earlier this season in non-conference play. It’s the Year of the Tiger now. Hopefully he doesn’t remain a crouching tiger.

Possibly looking ahead, the CIT doesn’t announce its seeds and I can see why. You don’t want the rest of the world to know that your #13 seed is playing, say, the #9 seed for your championship. Not good for marketing or credibility purposes. You just announce the pairings, say who has the higher seed, give them homecourt, and see what happens. Then, based on who wins, you re-seed accordingly. Bottom line: don’t bother looking ahead. We have no idea who Harvard would play if they were to beat ASU. They just need to win four games in a row, most likely on the road, and that’s that!You might also like:

Concrete jungle where Dream League has a tourney

poormanscommish — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:34:09 +0000

Shawn Carter puts on the stripes for dreamleague (j/k)

It was about three weeks ago when listening to Hot108.com I heard what sounded like Jay-Z and a booming chorus sung by some lady. A couple quick clicks later from the RealAudio player and it was cool to see the name Alicia Keys. But of course! Empire State Of Mind even got ol’ “golden aged” me wanting to memorize the lyrics of a rap tune for the first time since Check The Rime by A Tribe Called Quest. Got me juiced about coming back to NYC for the 4th annual Gotham Games tournament this December 19-20, 2009 hosted by Dream League New York.

Incidentally, the above is a pic of ref Charles “Stick” Crawford, who appeared at Dream League Bay Area’s Fall-Winter league launch this past Sunday with a new haircut (or lack thereof). I couldn’t believe the resemblance! From now on, we must call him “Stigga”. You know, Stick mashed with Jigga. And get this, Stick’s Stigga’s nickname from the local Oaktown dreamleaguers is none other than “Downtown”. Manhattan = Uptown/Downtown!

So anyways, I can’t believe a critic could call any of Jay-Z’s work “[feeling] dangerously close to rote”! That’s like sitting in a Chicago bistro looking up at a 15″ television bolted just below the ceiling, and seeing Michael Jordan, in only his 4th game back from retirement, light up the Atlanta Hawks for 18 of his 32 points in the 3rd quarter, only to cap it off with a buzzer-beater — and calling that “rote”. Yeah, I was really there in that little Chicago restaurant on March 25, 1995, exactly one week after his return, paying no attention to my food or my company, fixated on that CRT, that small memory etched and treasured in my brain.

(click to view at YouTube)

I mean, after all these years, you can’t fall into that trap of taking greatness for granted. C’mon!

In an old dreamblogue post called The passion of community basketball, via the VH-1 Hip Hop Honors series — the first time I really learned about JZ because during my personal “saturated rap” era I kind of took a break from the genre — I referenced JZ’s passion, hard work, and determination (near the end of the post) in comparison to how the Poor Man’s Commishes out there keep running their tournaments and leagues. Man, JZ’s a role model for us all.

I wish I coulda been there in the studio seeing it all happen. Like watching MJ in practice or shootaround, then putting it all together for real. Can you imagine watching JZ puttin’ work with no pencil and paper needed? Then picture Russell Simmons, Spike Lee, Special Ed, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and maybe even Sean Combs hearing this track for the first, second, or third time, chuckling at the shout-outs in the lyrics and feeling some pride in the anthem to the City, shaking their heads in respect during the third verse and saying to themselves, “He’s back and he’s still got it.” I’ll betcha it was like Shaq, Reggie Miller, and Gary Payton watching highlights of his Airness’ buzzer-beater in Atlanta, shaking their heads in respect, and saying, “He’s back and he’s still got it.” Here’s Alicia Keys giving us a tiny bit of an insight…

“I always figured that we would do some type of collaboration, and finally, it came together with this. He reached out to me said, ‘I have this big New York record. I feel its right for us to do it together. It has this big Frank Sinatra, take-it-there feeling. I feel like you could really do something with it.’

“I went by [the studio], took a listen to it,” she continued. “I really felt the energy of New York all through it. It felt classic, it felt so good; the piano obviously was in there. I said, ‘I love it, so let’s do it.’ We communicated a lot during the process. I think we both are really happy with how it came out.”

So, to appreciate a living legend and like dissecting highlights of an MJ classic in slow motion, I hereby present the correct and annotated lyrics of the track that epitomizes the honed and refined skills of a master.

Yeah, I’m out ‘that Brooklyn, now I’m down in Tribeca
right next to DeNiro, but I’ll be hood forever
I’m the new Sinatra and since I made it here
I can make it anywhere, yeah they love me everywhere
I used to cop in Harlem, all of my Dominicanos
right there up on Broadway, brought me back to that McDonald’s
took it to my stash spot, 560 State Street
catch me in the kitchen like a Simmons whipping Pastry
cruising down 8th Street, off-white Lexus
driving so slow, but BK¹ is from Texas
me I’m out ‘that Bed-Stuy, home of that boy Biggie
now I live on Billboard, and I brought my boys with me
say wat up to Ty Ty, still sippin’ Mai Tais
sittin’ courtside, Knicks and Nets give me high fives
n-gga I be Spiked out, I could trip a referee
tell by my attitude that I’m most definitely from

in New York
concrete jungle where dreams are made of
there’s nothing you can’t do
now you’re in New York
these streets will make you feel brand new
big lights will inspire you
let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York

catch me at the X with OG², at a Yankee game
sh-t I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can
you should know I bleed blue, but I ain’t a crip tho
but I got a gang of n-ggas walking with my clique tho
welcome to the melting pot, corners where we selling rock
Afrika Bambaataa sh-t, home of the hip hop
Yellow cab, Gypsy cab, Dollar cab holla back
for foreigners that ain’t fit they act like they forgot how to act³
eight million stories out there in the naked
city it’s a pity half of y’all won’t make it
me I gotta plug Special Ed “I Got It Made”
if Jesus’ payin’ LeBron, I’m payin’ Dwyane Wade
three dice cee-lo, three card molly
Labor Day parade, rest in peace Bob Marley
Statue of Liberty, long live the World Trade, long live the King⁴ yo
I’m from the Empire State⁵ that’s

[chorus]

⁶lights is blinding, girls need blinders
or they can step out of bounds quick, the sidelines is
blind with casualties who sippin’ life casually
then gradually become worse, don’t bite the apple Eve
caught up in the in-crowd, now you’re in style
and as the winter gets cold, en vogue with your skin out
City of Sin, it’s a pity on a whim
good girls gone bad, the city’s filled with them
Mommy took a bus trip, now she got her bust out
everybody ride her just like a bus route
Hail Mary to the city you’re a virgin
and Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church ends
came here for school, graduated to the high life
ball players, rap stars addicted to the limelight
MDMA got you feeling like a champion
the city never sleeps better slip you a Ambien

[chorus]

one hand in the air for the big city
street lights, big dreams all looking pretty
no place in the world that can compare
put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeaaahh

[chorus]

See you in the Big Apple a few weeks!

I think this is a reference to the countless number of pickup trucks that speed by you in Beyonce Knowles’ home state of Texas (I once had first-hand experience in Houston at 2006 All-Star).

I think Jigga’s saying that you can spot him accompanied by any OG at any (“X”) event. Then I believe he moves on to a new sentence that actually starts with “At a Yankee game…” he can make a Yankee hat, etc., as opposed to seeing him specifically at a Yankee game with the aforementioned “any OG”. This is significant because Jay is saying that even at a Yankee game, not just in general and with his presence there, he makes the Yankees more famous than the Yankees themselves.

My personal favorite line of the entire track!

In his live performance at the MTV Music Awards, the slide show in the background shows a picture of the outside of the Apollo Theatre with Michael Jackson’s name on it. Speaking of passion, how about the King MJ’s passion? Now that’s a role model to the role models!

Wouldn’t it be funny if Weird Al Yankovic did a parody of this song called Golden State Of Mind, which chronicled the futility of the Warriors?

My favorite verse of the track!You might also like: