The Braves... my favorite basketball team (12-27-11)

I don’t root passionately for any NBA team. I’m a Buffaloian and well, Buffalo doesn’t have a team… at least not anymore. For only 8 years in the 1970’s the Buffalo Braves dazzled and disappointed the crowds at Memorial Auditorium. In the 8 years spent here there was plenty of dazzle and unfortunately also plenty of disappointment. In a brief recap; the first three years were typical expansion team growing pains while the next 3 were fun, as the young team was finding its’ way and beginning to blossom with one of the best players in the NBA at the time, Bob McAdoo, leading the way. Unfortunately something ugly and horrible happened during the last few years robbing Buffalo of it’s basketball team and me of the team I would have unquestionably rooted for when I was old enough.

Without a team or rooting interest, basketball was the last major sport I cared about. I became a football fan as soon as I saw it on television. The game looked larger than life. My first memories as a football fan are of watching Bills fans tearing down the goalposts in 1980 after beating Miami for the first time since the 60’s. I remember Bill Simpson’s late interception sealing the first Bills playoff game I ever watched in 81. I can still close my eyes and see images of Gilbert Perreault and Phil Housley dashing up the ice for the Sabres in the early 80’s and the Yankees losing in the World Series to the Dodgers in 1981. Little did I know they wouldn’t be back for 15 years.  

When I did stumble into basketball in the mid 80’s I rooted for the Celtics. I think my first basketball memories might be seeing highlights from the 1984 finals between the Celtics and Lakers. Boston intrigued me. I liked that they won with a bunch of overachieving un-athletic players. Their best 3 guys; Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish were not exceptionally fast, could not jump well and didn’t possess the kind of athletic ability you’d expect to see in star basketball players. But boy were they smart. They were technically sound and more than that they were savvy. McHale had the best post moves I’d ever seen, Parish would quietly produce game in and game out and Bird in his own way had some flair with his deft passing and ability to score with either hand. Their desire to win against more athletic and flashier teams impressed me and I rooted for them often but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t like they were MY team so while I’d want them to win it wasn’t so traumatic when they didn’t. I had what you might call a casual interest.  

As I got older I continued to root for the Celtics and even the Knicks during the 90’s because Knicks games were on television all the time and I got to know that team well. Now Celtics fans and Knicks fans aren’t exactly chums so to root for both illustrated how in search of a team I was and how emotionally invested I wasn’t. To give you a comparison that would be like rooting for the Sabres and the Leafs! Inconceivable!

All these years have passed and I still don’t really root for any one NBA team with the passion I do the Bills, Sabres and Yankees. I need a basketball team. About 5-6 years back when I started to research the Buffalo Braves I tried to become a Clippers fan… I mean, they ARE the Braves. I tried but it was too hard. Los Angeles is so far away from Buffalo, both literally and stylistically. Plus there are the circumstances of why the Braves left which make it hard for me to embrace the Clippers. Their existence is evil!

See you can’t really understand my feelings on the matter until you understand the history at work here, the history behind the Clippers Curse and the resentment. I want to like the Clippers but their existence, out on the west coast should not be and Buffalo and its’ innocent fans are/were the victims. How could I root for them? It makes me wonder if the Bills ever leave whether I could still root for the L.A. Bills or Toronto Bills. Now I don’t have the same deep, loyal allegiance to the Braves as I do the Bills, or the Sabres for that matter, built over a lifetime of being in a relationship with them and I was too young to know or remember what happened to the Braves exactly so research and several sources will help me tell the story.

The Braves began in 1970 as an NBA expansion team and for the first three years they stunk. This tends to happens when you start a team from scratch. You have to assemble the parts; good young players taken with high draft picks combined with useful veterans to help the team grow acquired through trades and free agent signings. Ideally you find a young cornerstone to build a team around and the Braves were lucky enough to get one in Bob McAdoo. The future NBA Hall of Famer was the Braves 1^st round pick in 1972 and immediately made an impact. In just his 2^nd year during the 1973-74 season he led the Braves to their 1^st ever playoff appearance and went to his 1^st All Star game while putting up averages of 30 points and 15 rebounds a game. No one has done that since. The next year he was even better, winning league MVP (the only one in Braves/Clippers history) and leading the Braves to the playoffs again. McAdoo was the best of a new breed. He was a big man who could run the floor and stroke the mid-range jumper. Centers normally did all their damage in the paint but McAdoo was a pure scorer who could hurt you all over the court. For those of you who need a contemporary comparison think Dirk Nowitzki, with a tiny bit less shooting range but more physical and a better rebounder. With an improving supporting cast the Braves gave the eventual Champion Boston Celtics all they could handle in the 2^nd round of the 1976 playoffs before losing out in 6 games. With one of the best players in all of basketball and 3 straight playoff appearances, the Braves looked ready to make the next step towards potentially winning the NBA championship but behind the scenes something terrible was happening.

It started with the Braves’ original owner Paul Snyder. Snyder was an area businessman who is responsible for Darien Lake among other things. He bought into the NBA the same time the Knoxes bought into the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres. Both teams shared the Aud and there was room for both however their management styles were very different. While the Knox family embraced the young core of the Sabres along with the fanbase, Snyder’s impatience was well known. The Braves featured a carousel of coaches and supporting players around Bob McAdoo. Finally, Snyder wanted out of the basketball game and tried to sell the Braves right after their 3^rd straight playoff appearance in June 1976 to a rich couple that would move the team to Hollywood, Florida. Talk about taking the money and running!

Before it was finalized the city of Buffalo filed a damage suit and stopped the sale. After it fell through the team and city signed a new 15 year lease. Things seemed to be all better but there was a provision in the new lease which gave the team the right to break it if season ticket sales fell below 5,000. The team averaged 12,000 fans a game so this number didn’t seem likely to be a problem but Snyder still wanted out.

Later in the summer of 76 he sold 50% of the team to a man named John Y. Brown. Brown was from Kentucky and owned the ABA team The Kentucky Colonels before they folded during the NBA-ABA merger in the summer of 1976... around the same time Snyder’s previous sale fell through. The NBA absorbed 4 of the 6 remaining teams left in the ABA but the Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis were forcibly folded. Brown was paid 3 million by the league plus nearly 2 million more for the rights to his best players from NBA teams for his trouble. He used that money to buy the share in the Braves. Snyder included a provision in the sale. If Brown sold the rights to any players on the Braves it would count against the purchase price. Essentially, if he sold some of the players on the team and got a good financial return on them, his purchase of the Braves could be for very little or for next to nothing.   

Before the 1976-77 season was half over the team sold a 21-year old Moses Malone to Houston after a whopping 2 game career in Buffalo. Yep, they gave up on him after 2 games. By the way, Malone would go on to be a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest to ever play the game. Shortly after, the Braves biggest star Bob McAdoo was sold to the New York Knicks for 3 million and a journeyman player who was gone within a year. Can you imagine trading away a 25-year old NBA MVP just entering his prime and not because of ridiculous contract demands or because he demanded it, simply because you are trying to save some money. The trade was lopsided in the Knicks’ favor and reeked of something else going on. McAdoo’s presence alone brought people down to the Aud to watch the Braves so to sell him off seemed to hurt the franchise more than help the pocketbooks of an already rich new owner. There was indeed something else at work here, something evil.

One of the most famous sports movies of all time is the late 80’s baseball film Major League. In this film, the long-time owner of the hapless Cleveland Indians dies leaving the team to his gold-digging ex-showgirl wife who absolutely hates Cleveland. So she conspires to get rid of every good player and put together a team of stiffs that would play so badly that attendance would drop below a threshold allowing her to break her lease with the city of Cleveland and enabling her to move the team to Miami trading the history of the team and it’s relationship with Cleveland for better weather and selfish perks like free membership in prestigious social clubs. Does any of this sound familiar? Of course in the film it backfired but in Buffalo, New York in 1978 this very thing occurred. 

Sometime during the 1976-77 season John Y. Brown bought the other 50% of the team from Snyder and obtained full ownership. Being a rich Kentucky businessman did nothing to endear him to the lunch pail, blue collar Buffalo fans and the feeling was mutual. Brown almost immediately sought to move the team from the second he bought it. Brown’s real dream was to own the prestigious history-laden Boston Celtics franchise but unfortunately they weren’t for sale in 1976.

During the next season the then Celtics owner Irv Levin, a movie producer, wanted to move the Celtics to California. However he could not get league approval since the Celtics were one of the cornerstones and signature franchises of the league. With the attendance for what was left of the Braves falling below the threshold to break its lease with Buffalo, a compromise was offered by an NBA lawyer named David Stern. John Brown and Irv Levin could swap franchises. Brown could own the team he’s always wanted to own and Levin could take over the Braves and move them to San Diego, California. Everybody is happy! Unless of course you count Buffalo basketball fans.

Basically all the rich guys would get what they want and screw Buffalo. But wait there’s more! Along with the franchise swap, the two teams made a complicated 7 player trade with 3 players going to Boston and 4 going to Buffalo. Don’t worry, Buffalo or should I now say San Diego didn’t get anyone good. With the unbalanced swap of franchises (the Celtics being worth far more than the Braves) the Braves had their choice of Boston’s first round picks. They could demand their 6^th overall pick or the 8^th overall. Of course the Braves took the lesser pick, the 8^th who turned out to be Freeman Williams who lasted about 4 seasons in the league before departing to be the rapper and frontman for the C & C Music Factory. The other pick, the 6^th which Boston got to keep turned out to be a young player named Larry Bird. 

In the early 80’s when that same NBA lawyer David Stern became commissioner of the league (and is to this day) the NBA changed the rules on collusion so that no owners could ever conspire again to do the tank and swap they did in 1978. How convenient.

The new San Diego Clippers began the first of 33 mostly terrible years on the west coast where they’ve had barely more many playoff appearances (four) in those 33 seasons then they had in the 8 years in Buffalo (three). Some say that the franchise is cursed. The truth is weird things have happened there. Draft picks went bust; good players would go there and promptly blow out their knees or have down years. The Clippers would give away great players in foolish trades. They often made boneheaded decisions drafting forgettable players ahead of future Hall of Famers. They traded for guys who were past their primes and those younger promising players they did get either suffered awful injuries or simply departed the franchise for more money or the chance to be more competitive elsewhere. The Clippers could do little right. Moving from San Diego to Los Angeles would do nothing to reverse their fortunes. Even when Irv Levin sold the Clippers in 1981 to Donald Sterling, things did not improve as Sterling has earned the reputation as one of the league’s worst owners during these past 30 years, accused of being cheap, racist, sexist and last year he even sat in the stands and heckled some of his own players because they weren’t performing to his expectations.

When current can’t miss star Blake Griffin was drafted by the Clippers in 2009, he promptly blew out his knee before his first season even started and missed the whole year. When he came back last season to be every bit the star he was predicted to be, I wondered or more like worried when he’d be struck by lightening. I always liked Blake Griffin in college and love him in the pros and last year I flirted with the idea of trying to root for the Clippers again.

This year a friend of mine was talking with me about letting things go and not holding grudges… even the sports related kind. So with those new lessons in mind and using rational thinking maybe I am finally ready to embrace the Clippers. Honestly, no one who was part of the Braves debacle is still there from the previous owners Snyder, Brown and Levin on down and just about every player currently on the team wasn’t even born when it happened. I couldn’t blame anyone there for what happened long ago and it was time to move on, right? Although I was close I was still on the fence. I wanted to do it. I weighed the pros and cons but I still couldn’t make up my mind.

Now I mentioned how I like Blake Griffin. He’s a hard working, dynamic player. The kind of player I always hoped Shawn Kemp would have been back in the day. You know the type; awesome athletic ability but a good work ethic as well. Kemp was lazy, ate his way out of the league and squandered his gifts. Griffin is the opposite of Kemp in that regard. He’s probably one of my 5 favorite players in the league along with Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Durant, Steve Nash and Chris Paul. Oh, did I forget to mention Chris Paul now plays for the Clippers too? That might have tipped the scales for me.

When the whole Chris Paul thing went down a few weeks ago I was elated he went to the Clippers. Since New Orleans “had” to trade him and the Lakers were the first up and most aggressive trying to get him I thought along with a lot of people he’d end up there… one of my favorite players on one of my least favorite teams. But when the league stopped a perfectly fair deal between New Orleans, Houston and the Lakers I started to wonder what was going on. It wasn’t like Chris Paul was being traded for a journeyman and a few million bucks.

When the Clippers finally snuck in and stole Paul away from the Lakers with a comparable but not much better deal I wondered if something else really was at work here. Perhaps the basketball gods came to collect on Commissioner Stern. Or maybe Stern has had some Scrooge like holiday season epiphany and sees the errors of his ways after a night with the spirits of basketball past, present and basketball yet to come. While David Stern didn’t sell the Braves and move them out of town, he certainly had a whole lot to do with it and several thousand fans and the basketball gods have not forgotten.

While he has had a mostly solid run as NBA Commissioner the Clippers have been a wreck. Perhaps denying the Lakers more riches and giving Chris Paul to the Clippers is in some way Stern paying his penance. Maybe the curse will end. This summer if the Clippers are hoisting up the championship trophy we’ll know the gods are appeased and the curse has been lifted. If not, we’ll still understand that some good karma for Stern and the Clippers is a nice start to lifting the great Braves Curse. While it’s too early to know if the curse is over it isn’t too early to jump on the bandwagon of my rightful team. So I root for the Clippers now, except you’ll have to forgive me when I still call them the Braves.

Why So Serious? (12-1-11)

Yesterday the National Football League fined Buffalo Bills Wide Receiver Stevie Johnson $10,000 for his excessive celebration in the Bills 28-24 loss to the New Jersey Jets. If you haven’t seen the video of what he did, after scoring a touchdown late in the 2^nd quarter he pretended to pull out a couple of 6-shooters with his hands and did a bang, bang, bang thingy and then pretended to shoot himself in the leg ala Jets receiver Plaxico Burress, who shot himself in the leg at a New York city nightclub in 2008 and is finally back playing football again this year after nearly 2 spent in jail on the related charges. But wait, Stevie wasn’t done, then for his coup de grace he stuck his arms out and pretended he was a “Jet” like several Jets players do after they score touchdowns except Stevie didn’t have a happy landing. He sputtered out and crashed his fictional jet into the turf and was promptly penalized for excessive celebration, costing the Bills 15 yards and less than 2 minutes later Burress himself caught the game tying touchdown for the Jets as the game went into halftime tied instead of with the Bills ahead. Would the Jets have scored without the 15 yard penalty and the disaster of a kick by substitute kicker Dave Raymer that followed? We’ll never know but it certainly couldn’t have helped the Bills cause. That said; I am not one of these “fans” so upset about Stevie’s antics that I want him fined more, suspended or even off the team.    

I thought his biggest "crime" was trying to squeeze in 2 celebrations for 1 touchdown. The unwritten rule goes: 1 touchdown, 1 celebration/dance. As for Stevie’s celebrations, I laughed hysterically. One, he mocked the Jets TD dance and secondly he mocked a guy who brought a loaded gun into a nightclub because he thought he was above the law and shot himself in the leg. When you bring a loaded handgun into a nightclub stuffed into your pants and then accidently shoot yourself in the leg, I think you deserve the ridicule that comes in the aftermath. People were outraged with Burress when this happened. Now, he’s a sympathetic figure? I think people should lighten up a little. Stevie’s only mistake was overdoing it (with 2 dances) and picking up the penalty thus hurting his team.

Now his drop towards the end of the game, that's another story. Between last year’s wide-open drop of a potential game winning touchdown in the overtime of the Pittsburgh game and this, you can’t help but think he’s developing a reputation. People are starting to question whether the kid can come through when it matters most. The fact of the matter is that because of the high profile drops, there’s an issue with his focus. To be a number one receiver for a team, he has to improve his focus out there. That drop was a backbreaker which diminished an otherwise stellar performance. Penalty notwithstanding he was having a great game and instead of celebrating how he roasted the best cornerback in the game for 9 catches, 120+ yards and 2 TDs while leading the Bills to a HUGE win, we are talking about this. He's still very young and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Will the rest of the fanbase forgive him? Some will.

Usually with a tone of contempt you often hear fans say that these guys are getting paid millions to play a kid’s game. That’s true but if we are willing to go that far let’s not be hypocritical. I think these overgrown, overpaid “kids” should be allowed to act like kids and feel that youthful enthusiasm the game generates both now and then. Part of that is acting like a fool when you score or do something large or impressive. Now before you oldschoolers dismiss what I am saying, I don’t condone the over-celebrating of first downs, 4 yard catches or making a basic tackle. That’s different. That’s just doing your job. Celebrations after basic, garden variety moments are the ones that should be penalized. That’s like a father patting himself on the back and feeling proud of himself because he takes care of his kids… Hello! You’re supposed to! But going above and beyond, like making an amazing play, scoring a touchdown or making a tackle, sack or interception that means the game, well I think you should be able to let out your joy and live in the moment. Those moments are few and far between (unless you’re the Packers). Besides, the pressure and scrutiny are intense out there. You gotta release some of it.

Can you imagine the stress and expectations a pro football player has to deal with, especially when they are a good player? Getting ready for a game all week long while you and your team’s every move is put under a microscope. Everywhere you turn someone is talking about what will happen and/or what has. It’s on television, in the paper, on the radio and all over the internet. Slip up and you temporarily become an even bigger celebrity for the wrong reasons. Can you imagine the pressure? Unlike other modern day celebrities who get judged less on their body of work but more on their latest offering, these guys are put under a similar microscope while sacrificing more than just a reputation. They are also putting their bodies on the line. We’re talking about people’s health here. Guys retire due to injury all the time and many ex-players have health problems later in life, some even have brain damage due to the constant collisions they endured for the life of their careers. Can Tom Cruise make a similar claim? Yeah they get millions to play a kid’s game and they get idolized as celebrities but you know what? They SHOULD! Football is HUGE business! Billions of dollars are generated through this “kids game” and even though football is big business, adult business, let us not take out the delightful roots of where it began… in the streets, parks and playgrounds of America. “You run to the Oldsmobile, turn around and I’ll throw it to you. The end zones will be this light post and the big oak.” Many boys played this game this way and when we scored, we danced! We danced like Michael Jackson then MC Hammer and now Chris Brown. We did the Electric Slide, the Tootsie Roll and the Dougie. Like it or not, it’s part of our culture. Now in the NFL or as they frequently get called the “No Fun League” power to the people would mean no limits so I’m not saying to let guys dance the whole game away at will… guys that don’t even get into the game would be dancing on the sidelines. I say let people dance and show the joy and emotion after big, important plays and then regulate the rest so that it’s not overdone. When you score touchdowns, especially dramatic ones I say let these kids be kids. Unfortuntely for Stevie, I'm not in charge of the NFL.

So by the league’s rule do I think he should have been penalized, yes... Fined? no... Criticized? Yes. Do I think he overdid it? Not at all… Stevie is just a big kid out there having fun and scoring a touchdown against the best cornerback in the league is something to be pretty excited about. Unfortunately the rules are what they are with that in mind, here's hoping Stevie learns and grows from this incident and here’s hoping fans lighten up and stop being hypocrites complaining about how the league won’t let the guys have fun out there and then jump all over Stevie for going too far. Why so serious indeed?