BEHIND THE MICROPHONE

Kobe or LeBron?

This week, the NBA’s top two marquee attractions will play Philips

Arena.

You can decide for yourself who is better. Kobe or LeBron?

Wednesday night, the Lakers make their annual visit. Bryant has been sensational this season, leading a rejuvenated Laker attack.

Bryant is averaging 28.4 per game this season. Since Philips Arena opened, Kobe has led the Lakers to five wins here in six decisions.

He’s averaging 30.2 PPG here in his career, with a high game of 37 here in ’05.

Over the years, the Hawks have managed to keep it close with LA, only to see Kobe take over at the end of games to seal the deal for the Lakers.

Friday night, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers will be here.

Of course, we see LBJ a little more often, but his impact is just as big as Kobe’s.

LeBron scored 31 here, with 10 boards and six assists but the Hawks prevailed, 90-81, in January. Joe Johnson had 29 in that one.

In his career, James has averaged 30.1 in eight career games in Atlanta, with the Cavaliers winning six of them. In fact, that January win by Atlanta ended a six-game Cleveland winning streak here.

So far this season, LeBron is averaging 30.1 PPG. His high-game this season is 51, and has turned in four triple-doubles.

So, do you have your tickets? Wednesday and Friday look to be pretty special nights for basketball in the ATL!

Unbelievable Super Bowl! For the first time in recent memory, the game was better—much better—than the commercials! Hey, the Giants deserved it. They outplayed the Patriots. It’s a Super Bowl that will go down as one of the greatest sporting events of the last 25 years.

Duke and North Carolina Wednesday night in Chapel Hill…Duke is good, not great. Look for the Tar Heels to win this one, setting up the rematch in Durham that will tilt toward the home team. Clearly, the best two teams in the ACC. Hot right now—the Maryland Terrapins. A gritty victory Saturday at Georgia Tech keeps a positive roll going for the men of Gary Williams…

Tennessee held off Mississippi State last Saturday night and now owns the outright lead in the SEC East. The Vols quality depth makes them the SEC’s best. That game with #1 Memphis later in the month should be tremendous.

All Great Leaders are Readers

OK, troops, how are those New Year’s Resolutions coming?
Well, all righty then! Let’s hit that re-start button!
One of the great people in sports and education is Dr. Paul Schempp from UGA’s Sports Instruction Research Laboratory.
Paul was kind enough to send along his study of readings recommended by expert coaches.
One distinguishing characteristic propelling experts to consistently superior performance is their extensive knowledge. One source often identified by experts as fundamental to their knowledge base is reading. Paul has done us the favor of asking coaches to identify the books that the great coaching leaders would recommend to beginning coaches.
I can think of no better way to get 2008 started than by going out and getting these books to start your own high performance library.
392 coaches from 29 different sports were sent letters explaining the study. 107 coaches from 17 sports responded. The participants recommended 156 authors and 177 book titles.
With Paul’s permission, here are the Top 5:

1. The Winner Within. Pat Riley, 1993. New York: Putnam’s Sons.
2. Wooden, A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court. John Wooden and Steve Jamison, 1997. Lincolnwood, IL: Contemporary Books.
3. Search for the Perfect Swing, The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your Game. Alistair Cochran and John Stobbs. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books.
4. My Personal Best, Life Lessons from an All-American Journey. John Wooden and Steve Jamison, 2004. new York: McGraw-Hill.
5. Season of Life, A Football Star, A Boy, A Journey to Manhood. Jeffrey Marx. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Isn’t it interesting that three of the top five books are authored by basketball coaches? And Paul notes in his research that the authors most frequently identified were Wooden, Riley, and Dean Smith.
Marx, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, wrote A Football Star to chronicle the work of Joe Ehrmann, the former Baltimore Colt, and his teaching of life lessons through football at Gilman High School in Maryland.

Dr. Schempp will present these findings later this month in Japan at a Sport Science Conference. The entire reading list of 177 book titles would keep you going for years. Exceptional material.

My goal for 2008 is the same as 2007—a book a week, minimum of 52. I’ve got my first one done, working on number two. Paul has given us five must-reads!

What to Think?

Wow, that was some week last week.
From Bobby Petrino to Roger Clemens, we’ll not soon forget the events of the last seven days.
And what to think of all that?
First, the Falcons.
One thing I have learned in a lifetime of covering college and professional sports is this—unless you are on the inside, and I mean the inner sanctum of these teams—you don’t know the whole story.
There is so much more to all of these stories that what you have heard and read is just the tip of the iceberg.
But with limited knowledge, the entire Petrino affair looks distasteful.
From the outside looking in, it is hard for me to believe that a coach would leave his team in the middle of the season. An NFL coach headed back to college should not have any trouble telling that new team to wait three weeks while he finishes his season.
And what about Arkansas? What kind of program wants a coach that would jump ship to captain yours?
(Let’s not get into the sanctity of the signed contract, shall we? How long was that deal you signed in Louisville, Bobby?)
Certainly, the Petrino Follies will be used against him in recruiting. I’ve heard it said that Petrino will have a hard time in the living rooms of potential recruits. Theory holds that Ma and Pa want Little Johnny to have his coach the whole way thru his college experience.
Well, that’s a nice fairy tale. But the truth is there are plenty of parents who just want Petrino to get their kid to the NFL as soon as possible so the paychecks can start rollin’.
Maybe they could start a conga line with the coach and in unison shout, “We’re Gonna Get Paid!”. They don’t much care how long Petrino lasts in Fayetteville just as long as Their Kid can make it to the league.

The Mitchell Report on steroids was another disturbing bit of news. Not so much for the names that were revealed but how there has been a seismic shift in the values of baseball players, never very high to begin with in the first place.
The history of the game is replete with players trying to gain an edge any way they can. From Slippery Elm to greenies, from sign-stealing to HGH, players will stop at nothing in their quest to beat the system.
But for me, the story of the Steroids Era is this: In years past, players (Pete Rose comes to mind) always held the standard of the Hall of Fame to be bench mark as the highest point in the game. Rose certainly feels this way, and his lifetime ban is keeping him from being in amongst the games greatest players. He never thought he would get caught. And if he did, he’d find a way out. After 13 years of denials on gambling before his admission of guilt, Pete still finds himself on the outside looking in. And looking back, I’m sure Pete feels that it was not worth doing what he did if it will keep him out of the Hall forever. That’s just a guess on my part, but knowing how Rose truly loves the game of baseball I can’t help but think he feels that way in his remorse.
Not so with today’s stars. To use Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens as examples, those players, when faced with a decision to use steroids, picked money over the Hall.
Money is now officially (not that there was much doubt) the most important thing in baseball. Money that the clubs generates. Money that the border-line player can make if he juices and can stay in the big leagues. And money (Bonds and Clemens have made tons) is more important than the Hall. If the allegations are true, then Bonds, Clemens and the like will be recognized as the first players that made the conscious decision to violate first, the laws of the USA and in so doing, thumb their noses at the baseball establishment by using, for profit, performance enhancing drugs.
The money won out. Sad to say, but when has it not? Unfortunately, the money is so big now for the players and the owners in major league baseball that for the first time in memory, the game has taken a back seat.
Get rich. Stay rich. And do what ever it takes to stay at the top. If it keeps me out of the HOF and convicts me in the court of public opinion, so be it.
It was worth it to be a cheat.
What a great message to send to our young people.

Bring It On!

Midnight Madness means only one thing—the start of the college basketball season.
And the blessed day is coming Friday.
And this season, you won’t have to wait until Midnight to get the party started.
By golly, common sense has prevailed in this tiny corner of the college basketball world, and teams will be allowed to practice at a saner hour, around 7-8 pm.
Memphis is picked by many to make it to the Final Four this year, and just might win it all. Head coach John Calipari had a confident look about him last week, when he stopped by the first day of Hawks camp.
Long the class of Conference-USA, the Tigers are as deep and talented as anyone this year. The city of Memphis has the fever. Memphis will be one of four schools highlighted during ESPN’s Midnight Madness coverage. There are no single game tickets available this season in the massive FedEx Forum.
Memphis, just to refresh your memory, returns all five starters from a team that went 33-4 last season, a win shy of the Final Four.
UCLA, North Carolina, and Kansas round out the consensus top four.

Speaking of the Tar Heels, I couldn’t help but think back on a women’s college basketball game I did for ESPN years ago.
The North Carolina Tar Heels were playing at Carmichael Auditorium, when one of their guards stole the ball near mid-court.
It seemed that she was laying the ball in the basketball before the player she had stripped turned around.
That player? None other than Marion Jones, who showed her world class speed on the hardwood as the world was learning of her amazing abilities on the track.
It was sad watching her life, for all intents and purposes, end on the court house steps in White Plains, NY, last week.
Broke, humiliated, and now looking at prison time, Marion Jones, like Michael Vick, had it all and threw it all away.
After her years of denials, Marion Jones finally spilled the beans about her illegal drug use.
Makes you wonder if anyone involved in that darkness is capable of telling the truth.

NBA exhibition games started this week. The Hawks will host Portland Sunday afternoon at 2 pm at Philips Arena.
Douglasville native and former Georgia Tech Jacket Mario West is playing great in Hawks camp. He’s a hard nosed defender, just like he was on the Flats, and is making a case to stick as the Hawks 15th man on the roster….Chris Ellis, Dale’s son, late of Wake Forest, is in Portland’s camp…Georgia State’s Brad Stricker is with the Nuggets, as is GT’s Alvin Jones…Seattle’s Damien Wilkins has changed his number to 21….scouts are telling me that Golden State’s Marco Belinelli is the real deal, perfect for coach Don Nelson’s system....GT’s Javaris Crittendon debuts with the Lakers this week against the Warriors in Honolulu.

Let’s hope that this weekend is better than last: Thrashers lose their home opener in front of a sellout crowd…Dogs get spanked at Tennessee…Tech loses at Maryland….the Falcons found a way to lose against the Titans…Andruw Jones leaves the Braves and no one seems to care…Marvin Williams didn’t have a hoop in the Hawks open scrimmage. Yuck.

A Method to the Madness

You probably didn’t read his name last weekend. You might have caught a brief glimpse of him on TV. But Boston College offensive coordinator Steve Logan was a very important piece in the Eagles win over the Jackets.
Logan, the former head coach at East Carolina and FSN South analyst, rejoined his pal Jeff Jagodzinski in Chestnut Hill when Jeff got the head job last winter.
I covered Logan’s ECU teams regularly when FSN had an East Carolina package. I got to see first hand what a brilliant offensive mind the man possesses.
If you watched the Falcons game at Jacksonville, you saw David Garrard quarterbacking the Jags. Garrard was Logan’s QB in Greenville and rewrote the Pirates record book.
Logan reminds me of one of those football coaches that will draw up a few plays before the kids wake up on Christmas morning.
You give him a quarterback like Matt Ryan and Logan is like the mad scientist in the laboratory.
Of course, there was more to BC’s win than just Logan and Ryan. BC’s line play was tremendous, they were on top of the Tech blitz package, and were in control all night.
But it was fun watching one of my former broadcast partners back in his element, calling plays for a great QB.

It never gets old watching Tech’s Durant Brooks punt the football. I’m sure Tech fans would like to see him punt a little less often! But, gosh, what a leg. He’ll be making a ton of money on Sunday’s starting next season…Didn’t you hold your breath in the first half when GT’s James Johnson collided with BC’s Wes Davis? I did. You just pray these young men get up after a collision around the head and neck area…there must be 10 million Division One high school football players in the state of Florida. Good grief! Enough talent to supply Florida, FSU, Miami, UCF, USF, Florida Atlantic and all the other schools that come in and get guys…watching GT/BC reminded me what an advantage football has over college basketball in keeping a team together for a few years and growing a winning culture. The hoop coaches don’t have that luxury, given the way players jump after a year, sometimes two. And the basketball practice time is so limited; you used to be able to outwork people. No more…..Speaking of keeping a team together, the 2007 national champion Florida Gator basketball team was honored in a ceremony 20 minutes before Florida's kickoff against Tennessee at Florida Field. Players and coaches were presented with their championship rings after a brief video tribute.
The Hawks Al Horford was there, along with the rest of his “04” teammates. That group made history last April, becoming the first college basketball team since Duke in 1992 to win back-to-back national titles. More history followed in June, when Horford, Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer became the first college teammates in history to get picked within the first 10 selections of the NBA draft. Horford went third overall, with Brewer going seventh to the Minnesota Timberwolves and Noah going ninth to the Chicago Bulls. In all, five Florida players were picked in the draft with Chris Richard (Minnesota Timberwolves) and Taurean Green (Portland Trail Blazers) going in the second round…..the folks at East Lake deserve a lot of credit for getting that storied course in shape for last week’s Tour Championship. The pin placements over the weekend were set up so the best could slug it out atop the 30-man leaderboard…..Congrats to former Georgia Lady Dawg Kelly Miller on winning the WNBA championship with the Phoenix Mercury Sunday. Miller scored 11 in the finale, which saw Phoenix capture a winner-take-all game on the road. Miller was a two-time SEC Player of the Year at Georgia and with twin sister, Coco, a Sullivan Award winner….By the way, how rare is winning the final game of a championship series on the road in professional basketball? The last time a team won a Game Seven on the road for a title was in 1978, when the Washington Bullets won in Seattle for the NBA championship…admit it, you loved seeing Bill Laimbeer going down in flames, didn’t you?

Bad Newz and its Aftermath

Now that the Michael Vick story, has basically, played itself out, I’m left to wonder what this story will do to change our teams, the players, and the pro sports culture in our town.

Surely, the Falcons have been scarred for some time to come. The legal wrangling that a waits in the coming weeks and months is sure to be distasteful.

But I’m left with the question: to what extent do professional (and college for that matter) teams know about what their players are doing away from the field or the gym? To what extent should they know what is happening? If they do know something, should they act on it? Is it possible to be pro-active in private areas?

These are all very difficult questions.

There are all kinds of legal issues. Employer/employee relationship questions. Can the team go sticking its nose in areas where it can not?

And, if it does go where it legally can, what is the team supposed to do if it finds out something that it is a potential bombshell?

What then?

It reminds of how after-the-fact the NCAA operates, for example.

The NCAA Manual that governs college athletics resembles the

Manhattan

white AND yellow pages combined. Every by-law and subset paragraph in that literary monolith is there because someone, somewhere tired to circumvent a rule. Cheaters are going to cheat, liars lie.

How much can a team or a league legislate the rules of its very existence?

As we all know, it comes down to a case of ethics and integrity.

Certainly, players should know how to behave in a polite society as an adult. No serious observer absolves Vick of any wrong-doing because he is a grown man, and goodness, if he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong, heaven help us all.

But to get back to my point about what teams should do: it seems the path to follow is to hire the best people.

I know what you are thinking. “Bob, didn’t the Falcons do that with Vick? (of course they did) They traded to up to get him and he’s was lauded by management from day one.”

Yes, all true.

All teams put players through exhaustive background checks. In today’s pro sports environment, if your best player is not your best person, you don’t have a real chance to succeed. Oh, you might get close, make the playoffs, but name for me a team that wins big with players of dubious character?

No, you just have to go out there and do everything you can to pick the right employees. No team is exempt from the bad apple ruining the whole bunch. Not the Falcons, not the Hawks, not the Braves, not the Thrashers.

But to think that a team can watch these guys 24/7/365 is not only impractical but also wrong. Much like parents sending their teens out on the weekend, you just pray that they will make right choices.

We have seen what happens when the wrong choices are made. It can be devastating.

But there is only so much a team can do. The rest is up to the guys.

And as fans, we have to know the difference and where the true responsibility lies.