Normally, I’m a believer in the concept of the salary cap. But I’m now noticing things that are kind of unexpected. Basketball has a salary cap, but teams are thinking more and more in terms of building through big fee agent signings. The most extreme example being when the Knicks traded young superstar Kristaps Porziņģis so they’d have more money to go free agent shopping this summer. In contrast, Baseball has no salary cap, yet dozens of free agents remain unsigned at the start of spring training because there’s little interest from teams.
How did we get here? Mainly it is a result of the NBA’s relatively low maximum on individual salaries. That is, it’s low compared to the total salary cap, and the small number of players on a basketball team, and the very small number of players who make a difference in a superstar-focused sport. It’s a real distortion of the market: if salaries were free (other than the limit of the salary cap) star players would be paid much more than they are now: In the NBA, a superstar is a huge advantage, so teams would be paying large percentages of their cap for one player to build around. That would drive the salaries of star players through the roof, with the result that no team would be able to fit more than one or maybe two under their cap. Super teams with many superstars wouldn’t exist.
The irony is that now things are looking bad for small teams. As others have pointed out, if a player can only make so much money from salary, then that means there’s a big financial advantage to play on a team that’s either in a big city or is already successful, so they’ll have more chances to do endorsements and supplement the salary. So strangely, while the salary cap may help smaller-market-teams compete, artificially keeping the maximum salary low is hurting them.
It’s a very different dynamic than other sports: in baseball and hockey, there’s a huge emphasis on youth. In baseball, young players are a way for small-market teams to compete without breaking the bank, and in hockey, it’s a way to get value out of the cap. You wouldn’t see anything like the Knicks trading a young star to get cap space so they can sign veterans. On the other end of that trade, people were complimenting the Mavericks on getting two great young players to build around. But I’m wondering what good that is. They may end up getting crushed by a hastily-assembled team of veterans.
Meanwhile, baseball had its own strangeness: no one wants to sign free agents. That’s strange in a sport that used to be dominated by rich teams with expensive players. Many people are blaming this on collusion, a conspiracy of the owners agreeing not to sign anyone. That's happened before, so it's hardly tinfoil hat territory.
But I have to disagree. I don't have much faith in the morality of team owners either, I just think there's a simpler explanation. The fact is that with modern statistics, we know that a good-but-not-great player will only add two or three wins for a team. And while it’s true that more wins generally means more fans (and thus more money) a small improvement like that won’t make a big enough difference to be financially worth it. Say you’re a .500 team: signing one of these “good” free agents would mean spending $10 million a year to go from 81-81 to 83-79. There’s no way that makes financial sense. Sure, you could pay for several of these players to improve the team enough to get into the playoffs, but then you’re talking about spending about $50 million a year just to get into the wild card game.
Baseball’s high costs and hard-to-make playoffs have lead to an all-or-nothing approach by the teams, in which they either spend big to make a great team, or emphasize the farm system to slowly groom a winner. That means the market for mid-range free agents is very small. Teams waiting for the youngsters to develop don’t want free agents because they aren’t trying to win at the moment, and once those youngsters are ready, they don’t want many free agents, because they have a team full of young, talented, and inexpensive players. And the few rich teams have spent most of their money on superstars, and have little need for good players. So if you’re a good player at age 30, there simply aren’t many people looking for your services.
So now the business of sports is even stranger than it normally is. Basketball has a salary cap but may be about to grind into a no-parity rut, while Baseball has no salary cap, but is very frugal, but still has no parity. And I continue to think that the NHL may actually have the best system.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Find An Ending, But Don’t Cheat
There’s a concept in storytelling called deus ex machina , which is when a conflict is resolved by an unreasonably lucky occurrence, rather than the characters overcoming the obstacle. I first became aware of it when I took drama in high school. It stuck out for a few reasons:
Now I see that there’s another game coming out called Daemon x Machina. Sure, that’s funny and appropriate to the subject matter (battling giant robots.) And old-school Unix users will appreciate the use of “daemon.” But really, can’t we come up with some new ways to describe stories involving robots, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics? It’s becoming a cliche and something should end it. I don’t even care if it’s something unanticipated that comes from out of nowhere.
- It sounds cool in a way that other Latin phrases like habeas corpus and carpe diem don’t.
- It sounds even cooler when you realize it literally means “god from a machine”
- It allows you to condemn stories for a reason that would be too hard to explain otherwise. So many people want a happy ending and don’t care how it comes about, and it’s a struggle to explain why these happy endings aren’t satisfying. But now I can just say it’s a deus ex machina, and they say, "huh?" But I feel better.
Now I see that there’s another game coming out called Daemon x Machina. Sure, that’s funny and appropriate to the subject matter (battling giant robots.) And old-school Unix users will appreciate the use of “daemon.” But really, can’t we come up with some new ways to describe stories involving robots, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics? It’s becoming a cliche and something should end it. I don’t even care if it’s something unanticipated that comes from out of nowhere.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Lotto Super 7
All sports have a physical component to them. We tell ourselves it's all about heart, effort, practice, character, hussle, intangibles. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. But we know that those things can only do so much. All things being equal, I'm betting on the big dog.
But no sport has that physical side shoved in our face quite like basketball. There are examples of small people in the game, but there are far more examples of tall folks that clearly don’t have the athletic ability of most professional athletes, but are nevertheless able to make meaningful contributions in the game.
So I wondered: if you were seven feet tall, what are your chances of making it into professional basketball. I mean, it's clear that there are plenty of tall players in the sport that could never make it without their extra vertical advantage, but how much of a difference does that make?
I googled the question, and got a reference to a widely quoted article claiming that it's 17%. However, this other post points out that there are a few problems with that:
But still, it’s not like they’re just grabbing random tall people and shoving them on the court. Even among the tallest, they’re getting particularly athletic people. But the standards are not nearly as astronomical as it is for your average person. To put it in perspective, in my high school, there were about a hundred boys in each grade. Imagine you just had to be the best athlete in your grade, and that would be enough to get drafted into the NBA. That’s essentially the situation for a seven-foot-tall individual.
But when you think about it, their lot isn’t really any different from anyone else. After all, if you were, say, six-feet tall and wanted to make the NBA, you’d have to be blessed with your own set of physical gifts, like speed and agility. But in that case, your genetic traits are not nearly as obvious or measurable. And they can be augmented by exercise and practice, allowing us to believe that their success is more than just a genetic lottery. But basketball’s big men shove it in our face that their ticket to success came largely from their DNA.
But no sport has that physical side shoved in our face quite like basketball. There are examples of small people in the game, but there are far more examples of tall folks that clearly don’t have the athletic ability of most professional athletes, but are nevertheless able to make meaningful contributions in the game.
So I wondered: if you were seven feet tall, what are your chances of making it into professional basketball. I mean, it's clear that there are plenty of tall players in the sport that could never make it without their extra vertical advantage, but how much of a difference does that make?
I googled the question, and got a reference to a widely quoted article claiming that it's 17%. However, this other post points out that there are a few problems with that:
- The calculation is based on comparing the number of Americans who are seven-feet tall or more, with the number of seven-footers in the NBA. But most of the seven-footers in the NBA are not American.
- The heights you see quoted in NBA statistics are measured with shoes on, while most people measure heights without shoes. So really, there are hardly any seven-foot-tall players in the NBA.
But still, it’s not like they’re just grabbing random tall people and shoving them on the court. Even among the tallest, they’re getting particularly athletic people. But the standards are not nearly as astronomical as it is for your average person. To put it in perspective, in my high school, there were about a hundred boys in each grade. Imagine you just had to be the best athlete in your grade, and that would be enough to get drafted into the NBA. That’s essentially the situation for a seven-foot-tall individual.
But when you think about it, their lot isn’t really any different from anyone else. After all, if you were, say, six-feet tall and wanted to make the NBA, you’d have to be blessed with your own set of physical gifts, like speed and agility. But in that case, your genetic traits are not nearly as obvious or measurable. And they can be augmented by exercise and practice, allowing us to believe that their success is more than just a genetic lottery. But basketball’s big men shove it in our face that their ticket to success came largely from their DNA.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Wake Up, You Need To Make Money
I read this interesting article about why the current generation of kids is so stressed. The main reason is that they have so much pressure to plan for their career. Teachers and parents make them keenly aware of how big a difference a career makes in the current environment. So from an early age, they know that their education is a make-or-break situation.
I can kind of relate to this feeling myself. When I was in high school, Teachers worked hard to communicate the idea that we were building our future. I remember one correcting people who talked about the world outside of school as “the real world.” He reminded us that school is part of the real world, since our actions in class would have real consequences.
But it was clear that our elders were fighting an ingrained perception that we’d be alright no matter what. I think everyone understood that life would be better if you got more education, but there wasn’t a sense of disaster if you failed to get it. But by the time I was in university, the manufacturing sector was shrinking, and people were really getting the idea that there wasn’t much of a Plan-B. That’s when the Millennials were starting to go through high school and college, so I’m assuming that was the message most of them were given as they grew up.
But a point from the article is that while Gen-X’ers and Millennials may have been exposed to threats of failure, we were at least promised a payoff. The message of study-or-you’ll-always-work-at-McDonald’s might have been stressful, but we were also assured that we could have a good life and feel good about Making A Difference if we got a good job and worked hard. In contrast, the article says that we no longer give that carrot along with the stick. Now we just present the message that you have to get everything just right or you’ll face disaster. So kids are growing up with the idea that you have to work hard just to get a middling existence, with any sort of good life out of the question.
This follows on a popular article in Buzzfeed (cited in the above article) about burnout among millennials. My reaction to that was to ask for some respect: we Gen-X’ers invented early burnout. This multigenerational freak-out is just confirming something I’ve suspected for a while: Though the media may talk about the different generations as though they are different, we really don’t have distinct generations anymore. It’s now just a slowly-changing set of circumstances. So we divide ourselves into Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation-Hurry-Up-And-Get-A-Name-Already, but really it’s just one long spectrum of angst. It seems like we’re having this societal conversation that goes like this:
Millennials: We sure hate adulting. We made a meme about it and everything.
Generation X: We hated adulting first! But seriously, great word, “adulting.” Wish we’d thought of that.
Post-Millennials: Adulting sounds terrible! We’re never leaving home!
Baby Boomers: The millennials are such wimps that they can’t stand adulting. And they keep inventing stupid words.
See, the media keeps telling us that the millennials are completely alien and can’t be understood, but really it’s the boomers are the only generation that don’t fit in and don’t make sense to the others. Indeed, it’s been them that have been the primary drivers behind making society as unforgiving as possible. And that brings us back to the central problem that the exceptional make plenty of money, but for everyone else, the effort-to-outcomes ratio doesn't seem very promising. It would be nice if there was something to reward the average person who works hard, even if they aren't a superstar.
But you know what they call a reward for doing your job even if you’re not the best? A participation trophy. Yes, the concept that's come to symbolize millennial-bashing, and the general point of view that we’re too forgiving of our young people. But if we were too nice to young people, we’d all be less stressed. Really, we've got it all backwards. We're so obsessed with the fear of rewarding people for doing nothing that we've created a world where almost nothing gets rewarded. As much as the world portrayed in the article seems alien to us, we also have to admit that it's the world we've spent the last four decades crafting: one in which there is as little help as possible.
I can kind of relate to this feeling myself. When I was in high school, Teachers worked hard to communicate the idea that we were building our future. I remember one correcting people who talked about the world outside of school as “the real world.” He reminded us that school is part of the real world, since our actions in class would have real consequences.
But it was clear that our elders were fighting an ingrained perception that we’d be alright no matter what. I think everyone understood that life would be better if you got more education, but there wasn’t a sense of disaster if you failed to get it. But by the time I was in university, the manufacturing sector was shrinking, and people were really getting the idea that there wasn’t much of a Plan-B. That’s when the Millennials were starting to go through high school and college, so I’m assuming that was the message most of them were given as they grew up.
But a point from the article is that while Gen-X’ers and Millennials may have been exposed to threats of failure, we were at least promised a payoff. The message of study-or-you’ll-always-work-at-McDonald’s might have been stressful, but we were also assured that we could have a good life and feel good about Making A Difference if we got a good job and worked hard. In contrast, the article says that we no longer give that carrot along with the stick. Now we just present the message that you have to get everything just right or you’ll face disaster. So kids are growing up with the idea that you have to work hard just to get a middling existence, with any sort of good life out of the question.
This follows on a popular article in Buzzfeed (cited in the above article) about burnout among millennials. My reaction to that was to ask for some respect: we Gen-X’ers invented early burnout. This multigenerational freak-out is just confirming something I’ve suspected for a while: Though the media may talk about the different generations as though they are different, we really don’t have distinct generations anymore. It’s now just a slowly-changing set of circumstances. So we divide ourselves into Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation-Hurry-Up-And-Get-A-Name-Already, but really it’s just one long spectrum of angst. It seems like we’re having this societal conversation that goes like this:
Millennials: We sure hate adulting. We made a meme about it and everything.
Generation X: We hated adulting first! But seriously, great word, “adulting.” Wish we’d thought of that.
Post-Millennials: Adulting sounds terrible! We’re never leaving home!
Baby Boomers: The millennials are such wimps that they can’t stand adulting. And they keep inventing stupid words.
See, the media keeps telling us that the millennials are completely alien and can’t be understood, but really it’s the boomers are the only generation that don’t fit in and don’t make sense to the others. Indeed, it’s been them that have been the primary drivers behind making society as unforgiving as possible. And that brings us back to the central problem that the exceptional make plenty of money, but for everyone else, the effort-to-outcomes ratio doesn't seem very promising. It would be nice if there was something to reward the average person who works hard, even if they aren't a superstar.
But you know what they call a reward for doing your job even if you’re not the best? A participation trophy. Yes, the concept that's come to symbolize millennial-bashing, and the general point of view that we’re too forgiving of our young people. But if we were too nice to young people, we’d all be less stressed. Really, we've got it all backwards. We're so obsessed with the fear of rewarding people for doing nothing that we've created a world where almost nothing gets rewarded. As much as the world portrayed in the article seems alien to us, we also have to admit that it's the world we've spent the last four decades crafting: one in which there is as little help as possible.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
The Future Is Bunk
Ford has a new ad featuring Bryan Cranston in a variety of guises talking about innovation. The premise being that some unknown "other guys" are talking about doing futuristic things while Ford is and always has been actually building it.
The most dramatic part is the android Cranston, which is quite well done. It's like the ad grabs you and holds you out over the Uncanny Valley, and teases, "gonna drop you, gonna drop you!" Of course the fake TED talk is good too. But the president in the plane just looks so old-fashioned now. I mean, a president swamped with work? Weird. But I appreciated the concept the best, since I've always hated it when companies make vague claims about future technology. "Use Smith Brand soap. One day soon we'll bring you cyber soap."
The ultimate in future promises was a series of ads AT&T did in the early nineties. They made a lot of promises about future products like video phones and smart homes. That really ticked me off, because they were trying to sell us on things that they clearly were nowhere near delivering. Why not just promise us warp drive while you're at it?
At the risk of getting even further off track, someone uploaded the entire series to YouTube, and it's fascinating to see the view of today from a quarter-century ago. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much they got right. Well, they "got it right" in the sense that it would happen. In most of the cases, it wasn't AT&T that brought it to us. I wonder if there's grounds for a class-action suit here?
But back to Ford. Much as I like the idea of the ad, it all comes off pretty flat. For one thing, is "Paint it Black" really the best song to accompany the monologue? Let's talk about building the future with a song about depression. Okay, now that I think about it, I guess it was a reference to the Model T coming in black only, which was for the sake of standardization and efficiency, which was one of the innovations they're talking about. Just think, they've been sitting on that one since the song came out in the sixties.
The biggest problem, however, is that it's so out-of-step with reality. Ford is a company that just decided to dedicate itself primarily to Trucks and SUV's. Sure, those are popular, but in the public's imagination, they represent the Walmart parking lot more than the future. And they don't have a Prius or a Bolt in their line-up to point to as something they're pushing the limits with right now. So the climax of the ad is Cranston dissing other companies for not being futuristic enough while driving a bulky pickup that looks like it could have come from any time in the last couple of decades.
What's especially perplexing is that the ad and the campaign it's a part of is apparently supposed to be putting down tech companies. I had assumed that the vague "other guys" mentioned in the commercial were other car companies. But no, they're thinking of the tech companies that have been encroaching on the car biz. What? I know, I've been critical of such companies, but let's face it, it's quite an indictment of the American car business that Tesla has gotten as far as it has. Meanwhile, when I just went Googling for the latest on Ford electric vehicles, I just got promises that they have electric trucks coming soon. So this is the biggest self-own in advertising since Diet Coke's "Just For the Taste of it."
The most dramatic part is the android Cranston, which is quite well done. It's like the ad grabs you and holds you out over the Uncanny Valley, and teases, "gonna drop you, gonna drop you!" Of course the fake TED talk is good too. But the president in the plane just looks so old-fashioned now. I mean, a president swamped with work? Weird. But I appreciated the concept the best, since I've always hated it when companies make vague claims about future technology. "Use Smith Brand soap. One day soon we'll bring you cyber soap."
The ultimate in future promises was a series of ads AT&T did in the early nineties. They made a lot of promises about future products like video phones and smart homes. That really ticked me off, because they were trying to sell us on things that they clearly were nowhere near delivering. Why not just promise us warp drive while you're at it?
At the risk of getting even further off track, someone uploaded the entire series to YouTube, and it's fascinating to see the view of today from a quarter-century ago. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much they got right. Well, they "got it right" in the sense that it would happen. In most of the cases, it wasn't AT&T that brought it to us. I wonder if there's grounds for a class-action suit here?
But back to Ford. Much as I like the idea of the ad, it all comes off pretty flat. For one thing, is "Paint it Black" really the best song to accompany the monologue? Let's talk about building the future with a song about depression. Okay, now that I think about it, I guess it was a reference to the Model T coming in black only, which was for the sake of standardization and efficiency, which was one of the innovations they're talking about. Just think, they've been sitting on that one since the song came out in the sixties.
The biggest problem, however, is that it's so out-of-step with reality. Ford is a company that just decided to dedicate itself primarily to Trucks and SUV's. Sure, those are popular, but in the public's imagination, they represent the Walmart parking lot more than the future. And they don't have a Prius or a Bolt in their line-up to point to as something they're pushing the limits with right now. So the climax of the ad is Cranston dissing other companies for not being futuristic enough while driving a bulky pickup that looks like it could have come from any time in the last couple of decades.
What's especially perplexing is that the ad and the campaign it's a part of is apparently supposed to be putting down tech companies. I had assumed that the vague "other guys" mentioned in the commercial were other car companies. But no, they're thinking of the tech companies that have been encroaching on the car biz. What? I know, I've been critical of such companies, but let's face it, it's quite an indictment of the American car business that Tesla has gotten as far as it has. Meanwhile, when I just went Googling for the latest on Ford electric vehicles, I just got promises that they have electric trucks coming soon. So this is the biggest self-own in advertising since Diet Coke's "Just For the Taste of it."
Friday, January 11, 2019
The Best Games You Can Name
I just saw an ad for the video game Civilization VI. It’s been out for a while, but ever since it’s introduction, they’ve had difficulty getting players to upgrade from Civilization V. But I might be convinced thanks to a new expansion for it, which adds a number of new scenarios and new civilizations you can take on.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Civilization series has you controlling one of the great empires of history, exploring the world, expanding your territory, dealing with other nations. For the most part, the empires play the same, though they are each given unique abilities. For instance, the Iroquois are able to move their units through forests more quickly, and the Mongols can create powerful mounted archers.
What has me excited is that they’re adding Canada as one of the civilizations you can play as.
So what sort of unique abilities will we have in the game?
If you’re not familiar with it, the Civilization series has you controlling one of the great empires of history, exploring the world, expanding your territory, dealing with other nations. For the most part, the empires play the same, though they are each given unique abilities. For instance, the Iroquois are able to move their units through forests more quickly, and the Mongols can create powerful mounted archers.
What has me excited is that they’re adding Canada as one of the civilizations you can play as.
So what sort of unique abilities will we have in the game?
- Can get more production out of tundra territories, allowing you to use land that other civilizations ignore (more or less accurate)
- Your unique troops: the Mounties (You kind of had to go with that)
- Extra diplomatic abilities prevent allies from turning on you and pre-emptively attacking (a little stereotypical)
- You can build hockey rinks to improve your civilization’s morale and culture (okay, now you’re just making fun of us.)
- Pokémon Go: the game is the same, but it’s presented as an episode of Hinterland Who’s Who
- Need For Speed: can you keep up with 401 traffic in a blizzard?
- Madden: renamed Buono and played with CFL rules
- Bioshock: It's a nice, orderly underwater community where everyone respects the law. Until the cod fishery is shut down, then all hell breaks loose.
- Asteroids: no guns; you have to grab the asteroids with the Canadarm
- Guitar Hero Rush Edition: for experts only
- Metal Gear Solid: the stealth classic is made more challenging by Snake’s inability to stop saying, “Sorry” and “Excuse Me”
- Red Dead Redemption: the Mounties show up and prevent the game from happening
- Frostpunk: if you're not familiar with it, this game is about building a city in an inhospitable frozen environment. Not only is no Canadian edition necessary, I think we should sue them for copyright infringement or something.
Monday, January 7, 2019
Are Friends Eclectic?
I saw this meme on Facebook a while back. That really stood out to me, since It’s become accepted wisdom among many that modern technology has left us more “connected” with people but emotionally distant. I’m sceptical of this concept, since I’d always noticed how superficial a lot of our interactions used to be even in the pre-social media world. I mean, you talk to far fewer people in the course of an average day now, but most of those lost moments of human contact were forgettable rote interactions. If you now buy things on Amazon instead of a store, you don’t really lose any emotional involvement, since the interaction with a store employee is usually just you playing a part based on expectations.
This meme takes that same concept to new heights: in the same way that you may play a part in your interactions with/as service workers, you also play a part as a high school student. In each case, you act as expected, and this prevents you from having a meaningful involvement. Yes, I know, lots of people develop really deep friendships in high school. But compared to the total number of people you go to school with, and the amount of time you spend with them, it’s amazing how little you know about them.
This comes back to a point I realized a few years ago. It’s not something that’s easy to say, and some people will be shocked by it, but The Breakfast Club lied to us. Its message was that teenagers can be pushed into different roles, but still have commonalities. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also true that high school forces a sameness on us. As I watch my friends and I age, I keep noticing personality come out that couldn’t be expressed before. In school there's so much pressure to play the roll of a teen that you suppress your unique features.
This might be a product of age: we just need a lot of time to explore the world and find ourselves. Our maybe it's due to the same modern technology that delivered that meme: The Internet has allowed us to connect with others with similar inclinations instead of having to fit in to a community of others that we have little in common with. Certainly that’s one thing I’ve envied today’s kids for: the Internet gives them a chance to pursue their interests regardless of how isolated their real-life situation.
But I suspect that my new understanding is because of the different perspective you have of your high school friends now. For adults, social media is more a respite from the world than a part of it. It's the people you choose to be around rather than those you must be around. Thus, it's safer to keep your guard down and be yourself. If people don't like what they see, you're an unfriending away from ending the problem. The irony is that the people you're now allowing to peek behind the mask are the people you used to show the mask to.
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