LeBron James became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer last night, and in typical modern NBA fashion, the occasion was a mixture of momentous and silly. The shot, the reaction, and the formal celebration were stirring. The Lakers also went on to lose the game to a team, like them, outside of playoff position, and the round of “we may never see this record broken again” commentaries were punctuated with news that Cam Thomas, of all people, had just become the youngest player in NBA history to score 40 points in three consecutive games. Distilled, it was the perfect reflection of the man at its center. What is LeBron James if not outrageously impressive and farcically silly? What is today’s NBA if not something crafted in the image of, for the last two decades, its greatest player?
With the accomplishment, LeBron joins Wayne Gretzky, Rickey Henderson, and Adam Vinatieri atop the lists of the Big Four American sports’ all-time leading scorers. It’s a funny list: One undisputed greatest player of his sport, one disputed potential greatest player of his sport, one all-time great within his sport (Henderson is 14th in career bWAR), and a kicker. This, too, reflects the accomplishment well: What does it say about a player that he’s his sport’s career scoring leader? A lot, yes, but there’s a range within “a lot.” There is little more to sport than scoring the most, but the same is less true when applied to individual athletes. Willie Mays didn’t score as many runs as Rickey Henderson. Tom Brady didn’t score as many points as Adam Vinatieri. It’s a little nebulous how much this means.
I’m wary of not giving LeBron his due. He’s scored more points than any other person to ever play in the NBA. This is incredible. It’s sensational. He has been a sensation for 22 years now, and compared to Brady, who had so many to prove wrong, he was tasked with the lower-upside challenge of proving everybody right. He passed the challenge. He took the highest of expectations any athlete has likely ever faced, and he met them. While he’s met them, he’s appeared to be a pretty good guy. His most significant personal flaws have always been either geopolitical or petty. He has never been in the tabloids in a negative light. Not a single scandal of that genre accompanies his name. He’s been annoying—it was just a few weeks ago that he praised Shannon Sharpe for, as a fan, causing a disruption at a live NBA game by threatening to fight players—and he’s managed to draw warranted criticism for refusing to condemn multiple genocides, but compared to most United States Presidents and Presidential candidates, from Jefferson to Kennedy to Nixon to Trump, he’s been the better human being. This, despite being thrust into the spotlight at the age of sixteen. This, despite being born to a single mother and an absent father. LeBron James deserves his due. But he’s still a goof.
So congratulations to LeBron James, the well-deserved pride of Akron, Ohio. Your name will, for approximately a few decades, be remembered alongside those of Wayne Gretzky, Rickey Henderson, and Adam Vinatieri. Whatever it is that means.
North Carolina’s Iron Four
Last year, North Carolina made it all the way to college basketball’s national championship and punked Mike Krzyzewski in his career’s grand finale largely through the performance of five players some called the Iron Five. If the Tar Heels are to repeat that turnaround, from a spot not dissimilar to where they were last February at a time, they’re going to need a similar heroic performance. UNC’s bench, per KenPom, plays fewer minutes than that of all but five other teams in the country. It’s the Five or nothing. With one problem:
One of them is gone.
It’s not picking on Pete Nance to say that he isn’t as good as Brady Manek, but that’s a lot of what’s going on. Brady Manek graded out on EvanMiya last year as the 32nd-best player in the country. Pete Nance is currently ranked 375th by the same system. He’s a good player—375th isn’t bad out of the 3,195 Division I players who’ve been on the court for 250 possessions or more—but he isn’t Brady Manek. And with every returning player of the four performing worse statistically than they did over the whole of last year (there’s still a lot of time), North Carolina is missing Brady Manek.
Last night’s loss could have been even more disastrous. For a long time, it was looking like UNC was going to be blown out on the road against Wake Forest, and in the NET era, margin matters like never before. Instead, the visitors closed the gap and the loss became a rather routine one, one not out of line with expectations for a solid–not–great ACC team. Solid teams lose to fine teams on the road. That’s how college basketball often works. The problem with the loss was that it was yet another, UNC’s third straight and now their ninth on the year, ninth against a schedule within which a reasonable expectation would be to have currently lost only six or seven times, and UNC’s initial expectation was to be somewhere around 20–4 right now, like Tennessee or UCLA. UNC was always a suspect title contender this year—the fervency of the anticipation around them ignored the Manek–Nance gap as well as how surprising last year’s team’s final destination was. We love to point out how KenPom is the best approximation out there of a team’s ability entering a given game. Entering a hypothetical game following even last year’s national championship, UNC ranked 16th on KenPom.
I’m not sure UNC is in bubble trouble yet. Our “lite” estimation had them finishing as a 10-seed on Monday when we last ran it, affording a little more than a full seed line’s worth of space between them and the cut line. They used up some of that cushion yesterday, but beating Clemson at home this weekend would gain a little bit back, and beating Miami on Monday (again at home) would leave them in a better place than they started the stretch. UNC is fine. But UNC isn’t good. It takes at least five for that.
SMU to the Pac-12?
A number of reports have emerged linking SMU to the Pac-12 over the last two days, and I’m not sure that’s a great situation for the Pac-12. One line of reporting says a major digital TV partner (presumed to be Amazon) with whom the Pac-12 is negotiating would really prefer twelve teams rather than ten, and the thinking with SMU is then that they’re among the largest brands directly located in a large media market (excluding the Eastern Time Zone) where the Pac-12 doesn’t already have a presence. It lines up if you’re trying to rebuild the Pac-12 and you’re forced to choose somebody—if you can’t poach from the Big 12, football competency and market size makes it pretty much either SMU or Boise State behind San Diego State for the last spot—but for Pac-12 members weighing what seems to be an open invitation to join the Big 12? Members like Oregon and Washington and presumably Stanford? I suppose the Big 12’s marriage with ESPN+ involves streaming, like Amazon’s, but ESPN+ is closer to the mainstream than Amazon, and it comes with appearances on ESPN itself. If you’re trying to keep your teams in front of the eyes of conventional, national fans, you’d prefer ESPN to Amazon. Now you might have to go to Dallas in most sports to play a small brand and teams who’ll likely drag down your strength of schedule?
My understanding of Oregon and Washington and Stanford and Utah and Colorado and the Arizona schools and probably Cal’s choice is that they can either stick together, stick with Oregon State and Washington State, and take good money alongside poor visibility and potentially trips to Dallas; or that they can jump ship and join the Big 12, where they’ll play generally better competition and generally comparable brands for generally comparable money and more visibility. The first option, waiting it out, makes sense if the thought really is that a Big Ten invitation is coming. But what evidence is there that a Big Ten invitation is coming? Washington and Stanford might be next on the list if television is still a cable world, but if that made sense for the Big Ten, it would have happened already, and cable isn’t exactly growing, which pushes the importance of Seattle and the Bay Area down as time goes on. If television consumption needs to switch more fully to streaming before the next big round of Big Ten and SEC expansion occurs, market size is suddenly a much smaller deal, and Kansas is suddenly a more attractive option than any Pac-?? school, and that’s without mentioning UNC and Virginia, each of whom will have fewer years remaining on their hellish ACC contract by the time this hypothetical shift occurs.
It seems like what’s happening here is that George Kliavkoff is courting the remaining Pac-10 schools on behalf of one another right now, building an expansion plan and compiling TV offers to go with that expanded league. It seems like what will happen from here is that the remaining ten members of the league will view this plan and then decide whether to stay in the conference. It seems like unanimous approval will be necessary if the league is going to stick together. If one domino falls, it’s hard not to see seven others following, either for the Big 12 or the ACC. I don’t see how SMU is enough to keep those dominoes upright. It seems like the only thing that can do that is hubris regarding the future Big Ten or earnest concern about travel.
The Cubs Will Not Make the World Series
Northwestern and Illinois are scheduled to play football at Wrigley Field on November 4th, the date current reporting lists as the date of Game 7 of the 2023 World Series.
I’m sure the game would be moved were the Cubs to be not only playing in the World Series but also holding home field advantage, but it’s a bad sign to see it announced by the Cubs themselves without any caveats. The team’s going to be bad. ZiPS’s AL Standings projections are out and they’ve got the White Sox—whose roster grades out better than that of the Cubs—as a 74-win team. I don’t know where the narrative of playoff contention is coming from, but the Cubs are nowhere close to that on paper, which is why they can do things like schedule football games at Wrigley Field during the World Series.
**
What’s happening tonight:
College Basketball (the good ones)
- 6:30 PM EST: Creighton @ Seton Hall (FS1)
- 7:00 PM EST: Iowa State @ West Virginia (ESPN2)
- 10:00 PM EST: San Diego State @ Utah State (CBSSN)
College Basketball (the interesting ones)
- 7:00 PM EST: Tennessee @ Vanderbilt (SECN)
- 8:00 PM EST: Tulsa @ Houston (ESPN+)
- 8:30 PM EST: Wisconsin @ Penn State (BTN)
- 9:00 PM EST: Florida @ Alabama (ESPN2)
NBA (best game)
- 7:30 PM EST: Philadelphia @ Boston (ESPN)
NHL (best game)
- 8:30 PM EST: Minnesota @ Dallas (TNT)
