Losing Kings Are Doing Just What I Would Expect

The Sacramento Kings are losers. Always have been. I grew up listening to them lose on the radio and watching them lose gloriously on the rare occasion they made national TV. For nearly a decade, the team would be lucky to win 35% of games. Forget about the playoffs. They had no chance. No good free agent wanted to be a King. No good player wanted to be traded to Sacramento. Their draft picks were horrible, and they finished just about last every year.

But then, for a brief blip in time, they were a good team, running and gunning, and challenging the league leaders, including Shaquille O'Neal's Lakers, and Karl Malone's Utah Jazz. Oh but for a moment. Now the team has crashed down to their historical sub-mediocrity. Yes, they're in last again. Yes, they've lost all their games on the road, again. Yes, we're still paying attention and trying to care. But for some odd reason, this return to normalcy brings comfort, like a beaten prizefighter coming back for more after he's lost his quickness. It's the pummeling that reminds us of who we are as Kings fans.

More of my pessimistic, yet nostalgic, comments can be found on Sactown Royalty:
Now This is the Team I Know

When Can I Celebrate Winning Again?

In my youth, my favorite sports teams seemingly challenged every year. The 49ers won Super Bowl after Super Bowl. The Oakland A's were in the World Series from 1988 to 1990, taking the title in 1989. Before I liked the Sacramento Kings, I liked the LA Lakers, and saw Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar take home their share of championships. But for nearly two decades, as fans from across the country have celebrated their teams, at least for one season, I'm growing fatigued of seeing my hopes for a pennant - in any sport - fade early.

Yesterday, Cal, once expected to challenge for a BCS berth, got dumped on by the UCLA Bruins in Los Angeles, going down to their second straight defeat after a season opening run to the #2 ranking in all the country. Now, the team will be lucky just to find its way to the unrewarding and poorly named Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

This disaster comes only months after the Oakland A's played their way into near last place in the AL West, avoiding the playoffs, which itself was preceded by a season-long funk by the Sacramento Kings. While the Kings' season is on the verge of opening up, I don't harbor any misguided belief that the team's fortunes will change.

As for the 49ers? First of all, as I've made clear before, I don't really care enough for their wins or losses to make much difference. But the truth is, they still stink. I came home from church this afternoon to see them completing yet another weak showing, as they lost 33-15 to the New York Giants.

A friend of mine says he knows not to jump on to a bandwagon unless he's absolutely certain they will win. I can't do that. I can cheer for the Rockies' improbable run to the World Series, but it's a hollow cheer. I can't root for the Cal Bears to find a way to finish with less than 4 losses. I had higher expectations. And what am I supposed to ask of the A's next year? A record above .500? How can I accept that as a real goal?

I'm not switching the teams I root for just because it's become so inconvenient to see them lose and lose after teasing me into thinking they had a chance. But I would like to be positively surprised for a change. Soon.

Can The Kings Pick Up Yi Jianlian?

Cross-posted to Sactown Royalty...

It has hardly been a quiet off-season already for the Sacramento Kings. They fired their coach, then saw the search for a replacement go from one candidate to the next before settling on Reggie Theus. The team looks to be a mess, with owners forecasting a second consecutive losing season, and last week's draft pick, Spencer Hawes, didn't exactly light the world on fire. That's why when I saw today that Yi Jianlian, a 7 foot Chinese superstar, has declared war on Milwaukee and is demanding a trade immediately, that I'm practically begging for Sacramento to get in on the discussions. After all, the city has an extensive history with its roughly 20 percent population with Chinese descent, and needs a player with his skills in the worst way.

For more of my comments on the Sacramento Kings this off-season, make sure you haven't missed:

• Tark: Petrie Strong-Armed into Theus Hire
  
• Reggie Theus to Be Kings New Head Coach
  
• Left at the Altar: Van Gundy Says NO to Kings
  

SportsBlogs Nation Revamps Home Page

SportsBlogs Nation, which bills itself as "a network of individual blog communities run by fans, for fans and united by a common devotion to their favorite team or sports", as well as the mother ship for both Athletics Nation and Sactown Royalty, two sites where I contribute, revamped their Web site today at www.sbnation.com, in an attempt to best highlight the massive amount of new content being generated daily from the site network's legion of bloggers, who have signed up to cover everything from the major national sports to collegiate, fantasy games, soccer, golf and boxing.

Previously serving as something of an RSS feed aggregator for the network's sites, the new SBNation.com highlights featured posts, recent posts by sport, and showcases each of the network's 112 different sports blogs. That's right, 112, and growing. That's an amazing number, first of all, and if you take the time to visit a few of the sites, you'll be sure to find the quality of fanaticism of the sites' writers and their coverage to be as good as any you'll find in more traditional media.

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, the site's co-founder, has often said that the world of blogs was best suited for the types of topics where people can take diametrically opposing positions, such as politics, sports and religion. Anybody who has ever tried to see if a Yankees fan and a Red Sox fan could reach consensus, or asked a mixed political crowd on the benefits of gay marriage can see that. The massive growth and acceleration of new sites and users for SportsBlogs Nation has proven Markos true time and again, and today's site revamp just may make SBNation.com a destination site in the way ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports are for more casual fans.

As for me, it's been a long time since I relied on ESPN for my sports news. Truth is, I can usually find all I need to know about sports from the SportsBlogs Nation network and Ballhype. The move from mass media to fan-driven media is in full swing.

A screenshot of the new site from tonight is on the left. Click it to gain a full image, or simply visit www.sbnation.com.

Application Stability is as Important as OS Stability

Just last week, I set off a bit of a minor firestorm over at The Apple Blog by my complaining about having to restart my PowerBook after installing Apple software updates. But what's even worse than the occasional restart is the issue of locked up applications, which can dramatically impact productivity. With the expanded move toward Web-based applications, the opportunity to lose in-progress activity looms large.

It's common practice for any seasoned computer owner to frequently save work in progress, especially when working in Microsoft Office applications, like Word, Excel and PowerPoint (sorry, Microsoft, but it's true). Hitting save while penning long e-mails isn't a bad idea either, although most modern e-mail applications, including Microsoft Outlook, have an auto-save feature. It's as if as users, we anticipate the applications will be less stable than the operating system, and could go down at any time. It's not too infrequent for me to be in the middle of launching a new application only to see it hang, and require a force quit. It's not too uncommon for me to force PowerPoint or Word to quit and hope that the next time I open the application, that enough of my work has been automatically recovered.

But now, the Web poses a new problem, and last night, I got bitten by the issue in a big way. As Web 2.0 applications move toward the Web, for example, my moving to blogging within the Web browser instead of a desktop application, hitting the Save button isn't really an option. Hitting save won't capture the state of my blog post, but instead will drop an HTML file on my desktop. Last night, near 1 a.m., I saw the Sacramento Kings had released a list of seven candidates for their head coaching position. Keen to post that to Sactown Royalty, I had written up a detailed summary, including links to Wikipedia for all seven candidates, relevant background information and recent articles. During this process, I was writing in one browser window, and opening new window tabs to confirm correct URLs and find more data. Sure enough, as I got near completion, my hard drive started to whir, my cursor locked up and my Safari Web browser was completely useless. Waiting 10 minutes didn't bring it back to life either, as I was eventually pushed to force quit and lose everything. Instead of starting over from scratch, I closed up the laptop, and went to bed.

While it's true that Apple's operating system has excellent stability, and no longer locks up the machine when apps crash, as it did in the 1990s, part of an excellent user experience certainly is the applications themselves. A buggy application that can't be relied to stay open, and threatens to lose my data, dramatically impacts the total computing experience. As more applications move to the Web, Internet application vendors should put their best engineers on the case to ensure stability.

This Week's External Blogging Contributions

At times, I feel guilty that I simply don't have enough time to devote to additional blogging activities outside of louisgray.com. For The Apple Blog, Athletics Nation and Sactown Royalty, I play a supoprting role on each - happy to help whenever possible, but without the full devotion the site owners need. Yet over the last few days, I've found some time to contribute.

At Sactown Royalty, the season's over, but the off-season, which could be just as busy, is just getting started. The Kings have fired their coach and the fans aren't happy with the players who are left. Yesterday I asked, if you could run the team for a day, who should stay and who should go? So far, after 42 comments, the consensus is that Kevin Martin is a must and some of the youngest players are probable. Everyone else can be kicked to the curb as far as the fans are concerned.

On Athletics Nation, baseballgirl called me up this evening and asked me to step in to run the recap. Of course, it would be my luck that the A's DH and big name free agent acquisition in the off-season, Mike Piazza, was injured, and looks to be out as much as 4-6 weeks. Ouch. Meanwhile, the team made three errors which gave the Red Sox the margin of victory. This is noted in the game summary: "DE-FENSE! (Clap! Clap!) DE-FEN... Uhoh"

Meanwhile, off of sports and back to tech, Apple's Steve Jobs looks like he's getting the hang of this blogging phenomenon. Following his "Thoughts on Music", which reset the labels' expectations on DRM, he posts a note on "A Greener Apple", stating Apple's efforts to promote a clean environment, including increased recycling and fewer chemicals. I wrapped his note up for The Apple Blog in "Apple Gets the Lead Out".

With NBA Season Complete, Forecast the Playoffs on Ballhype

For the few of us who remained dedicated Sacramento Kings fans all the way through game 82, the season ended with a whimper. The Kings teased us with occasional strength, but ultimately drove us crazy and fell way short of expectations. Now, our only hope is that they somehow finagle an early pick in the upcoming draft and look to rebuild what is truthfully not a very good team.

Until then, our friends at Ballhype are ready for the next stage: playoffs.

The site is offering Ballhype users the option to choose the winners in each round of the NBA playoffs, just as is popular during March Madness with the NCAA college basketball tournament. Unlike the typical March Madness bracket however, Ballhype will allow you to change your picks after the series have started and give you more credit if you picked against the grain. The earlier you pick correctly, and the fewer the people who correctly selected as you did, the more points you get. Should be very interesting to see how this shakes out.

As of today, my pick to win it all? Houston. Over the Cavaliers. I anticipate being wrong.

Sign up for yourself at Ballhype.

Baseball Season is Upon Us, Sports Priorities Outlined

The A's, and much of Major League Baseball, had their first game on Monday, which just so happened to coincide with the last game of the college basketball season. Meanwhile, at the same time, the NBA and NHL seasons (clearly less important) are nearing their stretch drive for the playoffs. While continuing to ignore all the outlying sports (i.e. golf, tennis and all things racing, wrestling or winter), one could keep themselves quite busy by trying to stay on top of the sports world at large.

That's why I have a somewhat clear prioritization of my sports consumption, accounting for pure fanaticism of teams, importance of games, and the sports themselves.

1. The World Series (With A's participating)
Clearly the holy grail. My lifelong favorite team playing on the big stage.
1a and 1b would be other playoff games involving the Oakland A's.

2. NCAA basketball tournament (With Cal participating)
Again, the national stage, rooting for the blue and gold.
2a would be a bowl game with the Cal Bears football team.

3. Opening Day of baseball
This is exciting stuff. Kicking off the season knowing you can follow the teams day in and day out the rest of the way. Also, at this point, all teams have a chance to win it all.

4. The Super Bowl
I don't have a preferred football team, honestly. I rooted for the San Francisco 49ers as a kid, but that time is long gone. Still, the spectacle of the Super Bowl is unmatched.

5. The Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford)
It's a storied rivalry 100+ years in the making. Cal has the axe and intends to keep it.

6. NBA Playoffs (With the Sacramento Kings participating)
I can skip this process this year. The Kings are horrible. That will reduce conflict with baseball now, I guess.

7. The World Series (Any two teams)
Only if the Yankees are playing does it really diminish the game, but baseball's the best sport, and each game marks history.

8. Any Oakland A's game
I will watch any A's game, regardless of their record, over the playoffs of most leagues. Baseball and the A's are simply superior.

9. Any Cal football game
We've had season tickets for the last three years. The tradition. The band. Oski. Go Bears!

10. Select Olympic events
Track and Field events in the Olympics can be dramatic. Heck, even gymnastics can keep you riveted for every one-tenth of a point, or in rooting for the random Romanian to take a header off the beam. On the flip side, there are a ton of events that could go away and nobody would notice.

11. The NCAA tournament final
There's something exciting about the buildup of 65 teams fighting for a single championship, winner takes all.

12. Any Sacramento Kings NBA game
There's something wrong with me. For some reason, I still root for this team.

13. Any baseball game between any two clubs
I'd rather listen to the radio play by play of the Marlins vs. Phillies than watch the NHL ever, the NFL or NBA on most nights.

14. NFL Playoffs
The march down to the Super Bowl

15. Other
Insert here: The NBA Playoffs, random NFL Sunday contests, the occasional Cal basketball match, San Jose Sharks games in person.

So that's the priority list. If established, and acted upon correctly, if there are multiple games on at once, you know where you can find me. If it's A's baseball, I'll be there, with very few exceptions. But my loyalty to the Cal Golden Bears and Sacramento Kings isn't far behind.

That's why you can find me on almost any night on Athletics Nation, Sactown Royalty, or making my picks on BallHype. Spring and summer were made for sports, and the action is heating up.

Artest's World: They're All Out to Get Me

Cross-Posted at Sactown Royalty...

Following on to today's news that Kings forward Ron Artest had been jailed on charges of domestic violence, just weeks after being fined for animal neglect...

Ever wonder just what is going on in the head of Ron-Ron? With today's news piling on to issues with coaches, teammates, opponents and man's best friend, we thought we'd give Artest the floor for a bit to tell his side of the story, satirically speaking...


Click for Larger Comic

Take the Poll: Who Is the Real Artest?

The Kings Have Won 5 Straight. So What?

Cross-posted at Sactown Royalty...

Below is a graph showing the Kings' progress against the .500 mark so far this season. It's been quite the ride. Even with the recent spark, we're back where we were at game #32, on January 9th. For the record, that's a month of hoops, running in place.



Are the Kings a good team because they've won five games in a row? No. Are they a better team than the one that lost seven in a row not too long ago, or the one that lost three straight before this current streak? Probably not.

While it's fun to see the Kings finally put a string of W's together, it's not as if the Kings have finally found their true identity. They've been an inconsistent team all year long, beating on the bad teams, losing to the bad teams, eking out wins against average teams and getting blown out by the best.

After this recent mini-streak, the Kings are still 16 full games back in the Pacific Division, in last place, behind the other-worldly Phoenix Suns, and they are two games back of the LA Clippers for the 8th spot in the Western Conference standings, with Minnesota, New Orleans and Golden State needing to be leapfrogged.

Believe it or not, this team is neither good nor bad. After 192 full quarters and four overtimes (all losses), the Kings have scored exactly TWO points fewer than their opponents, with the current tally being "Them: 4,810 and Us: 4,808". Sounds pretty even to me.

For all the latest stats, Download the Database (Updated on 2/10/07).

Tidbits from the Link Blog: February 7, 2007

If Steve Jobs were to create a blog, how popular do you think it would be? Yesterday, Jobs posted a note on Apple's Hot News section of the company Web site, saying that Digital Rights Management (DRM) was the product of a few large music labels, and that Apple would be happy to not use DRM if allowed. This ran contrary to most thinking, which believes that Apple embraces DRM, in order to tie the iTunes Music Store to the iPod. His comments set the blogosphere ablaze.

Some of the highlights:

Don Dodge: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs agree - DRM is broken
PaidContent: This Just In: Steve Jobs To Music DRM: Drop Dead
Blog Maverick: What should the music biz do next?
Robert Scoble: Steve Jobs: world’s best linkbaiter
TechCrunch: Apple Openly Supports Death of DRM

Yet, there was more going on besides a bunch of chatter about iTunes. This morning, I was surprised to learn that Sacramento Kings player Ron Artest had recently had his Great Dane taken away from him by the local ASPCA, as the animal was malnourished. Artest, a millionaire ballplayer with a spotty track record, says it's not his fault, but that his bulldog ate the Great Dane's food. Even so... that's no excuse, and I said so this morning on Sactown Royalty.

Sactown Royalty: "The Man" Says Artest Doesn't Feed "The Dog"

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Stats Corner Shows How to Win 80% of Games

Recent Stats Corner Features:

• Why the Kings Won: Selective Shooting
  
• Kings Drawn and 3rd Quartered
  
• Suckitude Doesn't Compute
  
• Losing the Close Ones
  

Playing the role of sports stats geek for Sactown Royalty this NBA season has been a lot of fun, as it lets me combine my inner nerddom with my fanatacism for sports. Over the months, as we Kings fans have lamented the team's various issues, we can see trends. Oddly enough, by keeping a running database game by game, we're finding our hunches are often correct. Tonight, we exposed an unknown fact - that the Kings win more than 4 of every 5 games in which they make more 3-point baskets than their opponent. Yet, when they don't win that single stat, they tend to lose more often - to the tune of 6 out of 7 times.

It's rare a stat like this will show such a disparity in wins and losses. But don't believe me. Talk to Stats Corner. (Or Download the Database)