Monday, July 16, 2012

Blake Griffin's injury proves Mark Cuban's point: NBA owners must protect their assets from Team USA

Blake Griffin's injury proves Mark Cuban's point: NBA owners must protect their assets from Team USA

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NBA owners must protect their assets


Sam Gardner
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Sam Gardner

Sam Gardner covers the NBA and a variety of other sports for FOX Sports. Originally from Orlando, Fla., Sam spent last season covering the Orlando Magic for FOX Sports Florida. He now lives in New York City.
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Updated Jul 16, 2012 1:04 AM ET
When Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin went down with a torn meniscus in his left knee at Olympic training camp in Las Vegas this week, somewhere in Dallas, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban probably couldn’t help but mutter a quiet “I told you so” — even if only to himself.

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Cuban’s presumed rancor, of course, wouldn’t be intended for Griffin, who, through no fault of his own, will be forced to miss this summer’s Olympics as a result of the untimely injury. Instead, Cuban’s venom would be aimed directly at the NBA for allowing the injury to happen in the first place. Earlier this year, Cuban slammed the league for allowing its players to participate in the Olympics free of charge, calling it “the worst decision the NBA makes.”
“If you look up 'stupid' in the dictionary, you see a picture of the USA Dream Team playing for free for corporate America so the US Olympic Committee can make millions of dollars,” Cuban told FOXSports.com's Greg Couch at the time. “If you come up with something that you own, that you give it to me for free so I can make billions of dollars, I want it.”
Cuban’s argument, as an owner, is simple: These players are essentially assets, and they’re putting their livelihoods — and, by virtue, the owners’ livelihoods — on the line to play for Team USA. Meanwhile, USA Basketball has seemingly everything to gain and nothing to lose from their participation.
If a player can’t play in the Olympics, there’s always going to be another All-Star ready to replace him on behalf of the country and expand his global brand. But there’s not always someone there to take the injured player’s spot on the team that actually pays for his services. Donald Sterling can’t just call up Anthony Davis and have him fill in for the Clips while Griffin is out.
Cuban is no stranger to conflict, and his position — one that is actually shared at least in part by NBA commissioner David Stern, who has suggested limiting NBA involvement in the Olympics to players age 23 and younger — isn’t necessarily a popular one. Some even view it as downright unpatriotic.


These players grew up in the Dream Team era and hoped one day to play for their country, as well. It’s a matter of pride and responsibility and devotion to something greater, and many see it as fulfilling a duty as much as anything.
Limit this year’s roster to those players 23 and younger, and you’re taking that opportunity away from all but five players — Davis, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Kevin Love. But the stances of businessmen like Cuban, who finance these teams and essentially allow the NBA to exist and thrive as it does, are also not without merit.
Teams pay players exorbitant amounts — Griffin actually signed a five-year, $95 million extension the day before his injury — to be the best in the world at what they do. Every time they step on the court for their country, they’re putting their team’s investment at risk with no insurance in the event that something goes awry.
The NBA, in allowing these players to play, is essentially tightrope walking without a net, which isn’t recommended for anyone with his own best interests at stake. And these owners didn’t become owners by being naive. They’re looking out for No. 1, at all costs.


Don’t get me wrong. Freak injuries happen, and sometimes there’s nothing that owners can do to stop them. Guys are going to slip on the kitchen floor or fall down the stairs or hurt themselves playing with their kids in the yard. That’s life. But when their players can exercise better judgment, they should.
In this particular case, it seems the NBA can breathe a sigh of relief. Griffin, who already has missed an entire season because of a stress fracture in that same left knee, should be back at 100 percent in time for Clippers training camp this fall.
Additionally, when reached Friday, a USA Basketball spokesman was quick to point out that the soreness in Griffin's left knee dated back to the Clippers’ playoff series against San Antonio.
“Blake worked extremely hard in our training camp, and certainly would have been a valuable contributor,” USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said in a statement. “This is another unfortunate injury, but we have to continue to move on.”
The spokesman also noted that in 20 years of international competition, no NBA player has ever been seriously hurt — but what happens when someone isn’t so fortunate?
What happens when a guy gets hurt while playing for his country and has to miss an NBA season as a result? What happens if that injury impacts his career? Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it won’t.


“They get hurt, you both get hurt, player and team,” Cuban told FOXSports.com in that April interview. “And players do get hurt. And then what? Just stupid. They should play high school players. Give them experience.”
Perhaps Cuban is overstating a bit by suggesting that the Olympic pool should be derived from prep stars, but the point he makes is still sound. The risk NBA teams take isn’t a worthwhile one when it comes to their players participating in international play.
The answer might come in the form of a partnership between the NBA and FIBA, resulting in a World Cup of Basketball.
This venture, should it ever materialize, wouldn’t have the prestige of the Olympics, or perhaps even the FIBA World Championship. But it would allow NBA teams and owners to benefit financially from the use of their players, which seems like a fair enough return for putting their own investment at risk.
It may not be the most patriotic answer to the problems at hand, and some may have difficulty sympathizing with the financial hardships of 1 percenters like Cuban. But in the end, rich or poor, we all need to cover our assets.
Follow Sam Gardner on Twitter: @sam_gardner
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Close the deal on Thomson

         

      Close the deal on Thomson

      A Virginia congressman is blocking the sale, but Illinois Republicans aren't helping matters.

       

             
          The state's sale on the Thomson Correctional Center to the federal government has been on hold for more than a year. (Chuck Berman, Tribune photo / July 16, 2012)
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          July 16, 2012
          For more than a year, one person has held up the sale of Thomson Correctional Center to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The Republicans in Illinois' congressional delegation seem to think that person is Gov. Pat Quinn.
          In fact, it's Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who probably couldn't find tiny Thomson, Ill., on a map. As chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees prison spending, he's refusing to sign the paperwork to free up the funds for the sale. The Justice Department wants to "reprogram" unspent money that was originally appropriated for other uses. Wolf's counterpart in the Senate signed off on the transfer long ago.
          Wolf can't sleep at night for fear that terrorists currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be transferred to Thomson. That was the original plan, and apparently it scared the Virginia congressman a lot more than it scared the people who live in and around Thomson.
          Sure, they were attracted by the prospect of thousands of jobs. But they also know that Thomson is a state-of-the-art maximum security prison, and that federal prisons in the U.S. house hundreds of international terrorists already. Most of the noise about loosing terrorists on Main Street was coming from politicians — and it still is, even though the Obama administration long ago agreed not to bring those detainees to Thomson after all.
          With the federal prison system dangerously overcrowded with non-terrorists, Sens. Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk pressed for a deal contingent on assurances that Thomson would not become "Gitmo North." Last spring, the state agreed to sell the prison for $165 million — a bargain, given that it was appraised for around $220 million. But Wolf won't release the money.
          Never mind that Congress has passed a law to prevent the Guantanamo detainees from being imprisoned in the states. Never mind that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate panel last month, under oath, that the administration has abandoned plans to do so. Wolf won't budge.
          So the state's Republican congressmen — all except retiring Rep. Tim Johnson of Urbana — sent a letter to Quinn, urging him to drop the price. To which we can only say, "Huh?"
          Is there a price point at which Rep. Wolf will suddenly lose his fear of terrorists under the bed? He didn't return our call so we couldn't ask him. The Republicans' letter did not recommend a figure or explain how a discounted price would get around the roadblock. Durbin's right: The Republican lawmakers are making excuses for their failure to move the recalcitrant Wolf.
          Thomson cost $128 million to build in 2001. It was supposed to replace aging lockups around the state, but union workers at those prisons didn't want to move and state officials didn't have the backbone to make them. So Thomson sat mostly empty for a decade. It was declared surplus property in 2010, clearing the way for a sale.
          In their letter to Quinn, the Illinois Republicans point out that a functioning Thomson would create 1,100 jobs and pump more than $200 million a year into the local economy. Taking into account the resulting state income taxes ($6.2 million a year) and sales taxes ($3.8 million), "the state would gain back any lost revenue from lowering the sales price of the prison within eight years," the letter says. If we're doing the math right — $10 million times eight years, or $80 million in recovered revenue — it sounds like the congressmen are suggesting the state could let the prison go for as little as $85 million.
          Lowballing the governor on a distressed property? Excuse us, lawmakers: You are supposed to be representing the seller in this transaction, not the buyer.
          The federal government needs that prison. The negotiated price — $165 million — is more than fair. And the foot-dragging in Congress, by your own calculations, is costing Illinois $200 million a year in economic activity.
          So you're absolutely right: It's time to close this deal. But you are leaning on the wrong guy.
          Gov. Quinn is looking out for the taxpayers. He could use your help. But apparently it's easier to try to strong-arm Illinois into taking a big hit on the sale than to confront your hard-headed colleague from Virginia.
          Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
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          Sunday, July 15, 2012

          Check out this great MSN video: How the weather will impact your wallet

          Check out this great MSN video: How the weather will impact your wallet
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          In the Age of Anxiety, are we all mentally ill?




          In the Age of Anxiety, are we all mentally ill?

           
          Anxiety
          Miles Shebar waits his turn during round three of the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center at National Harbor (Molly Riley Reuters, REUTERS / June 1, 2011)
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            By Sharon Begley Reuters
            12:12 a.m. CDT, July 13, 2012

            NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Cynthia Craig was diagnosed with postpartum depression eight years ago, she told her family doctor she felt anxious about motherhood. She wondered whether she had made a catastrophic mistake by quitting her job, whether she could cope with the long, lonely hours stay-at-home mothers face - and even whether she should have had children.

            "Anxiety is something I have always had, especially during times of change," said Craig, 40, who lives in Scotland, Ontario. "But I was never worried about the level of anxiety, and it never prevented me from leaving the house, driving, socializing or even speaking in front of people."

            Her doctor referred her to an anxiety clinic, where a nurse asked Craig dozens of yes-or-no questions - are you afraid of snakes? do you hear voices? do you vomit from anxiety? - and made a diagnosis. "She said, 'Let's call it Generalized Anxiety Disorder with a touch of social phobia,'" Craig said.

            That didn't feel right to her, but the clinic's psychiatrist agreed with the nurse and said Craig's concerns about motherhood constituted an anxiety disorder, a form of mental illness, and prescribed Pfizer's Effexor and then GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil. Craig says the drugs exacerbated the very anxiety that she doubted required medication.

            Craig's case is one of millions that constitute an extraordinary trend in mental illness: an increase in the prevalence of reported anxiety disorders of more than 1,200 percent since 1980.

            In that year, 2 percent to 4 percent of Americans suffered from an anxiety disorder, according to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders, used by psychiatrists and others worldwide to diagnose mental illness.

            In 1994, a study asking a random sample of thousands of Americans about their mental health reported that 15 percent had ever suffered from anxiety disorders. A 2009 study of people interviewed about their anxiety repeatedly for years raised that estimate to 49.5 percent - which would be 117 million U.S. adults.

            Some psychiatrists say the increase in the prevalence of anxiety from about 4 percent to 50 percent is the result of psychiatrists and others "getting better at diagnosing anxiety," as Dr. Carolyn Robinowitz, a past president of the APA who is in private practice in Washington, D.C., put it. "People who criticize that are showing their bias," she said. "When we get better at diagnosing hypertension, we don't say that's terrible."

            Critics, including other leading psychiatrists, disagree. They say the apparent explosion in anxiety shows there is something seriously and dangerously wrong with the DSM. Its next edition, due in May, would lower the threshold for identifying anxiety.

            The criticism rests on three arguments. First, the DSM fails to recognize that anxiety is normal and even beneficial in many situations, so it conflates a properly functioning brain system with a pathology. Second, the DSM's description of anxiety is more about enforcing social norms than medicine.

            Finally, they say, anxiety is adaptive. Its brain circuitry was honed by evolution for a purpose. Only when that mechanism misfires should a person be diagnosed as mentally ill.

            "No human emotion is more basic than anxiety," said sociologist Allan Horwitz of Rutgers University. "Many forms of it simply should not be categorized as disorders, because they're the result of the way people evolved thousands of years ago, rather than something going wrong."

            IDENTIFYING THE TRULY ILL

            Horwitz and other critics recognize that when the brain's anxiety system misfires it can prevent people from functioning, as when someone is unable to leave home, interact with friends and family or walk past even a leashed dog. But the anxiety system is working properly when it makes someone afraid of heights or wild dogs or threatening strangers.

            "Anxiety or panic symptoms that have been severe, persistent and cause clinically significant distress or impairment need to be diagnosed promptly," said Dr. Allen Frances, a psychiatrist who led the previous DSM revision and questions some of the new criteria. "Very effective treatments are available."

            "We don't oppose people getting treatment," said Horwitz, co-author of the new book "All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry's Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders." "But people are much too willing to think they have a disorder that requires treatment."

            Many psychiatrists don't see it that way. Under changes for the DSM-5 proposed by experts convened by the APA, symptoms such as excessive worry, restlessness, feeling on edge, avoiding activities that cause anxiety, and being overly concerned about health or finances or family would have to be present for only three months rather than six to justify a diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). And people would have to display one physical symptom, not the current three.

            "Because its threshold for GAD is set so ridiculously low, DSM-5 will mislabel as mentally ill many people who are experiencing no more than the normal and expected worries of everyday life," said Frances.

            Dr. Donna Rockwell, a clinical psychologist who has organized opposition to aspects of the DSM-5 process, warned that "unless come to their senses, GAD will be identical to the existential worries all of us face as part of being human." That will bring "a bonanza to the drug companies," she added, opening the floodgates to "more inappropriate, expensive and potentially harmful drug use."
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            Sweet! Where to celebrate National Ice Cream Day

            Sweet! Where to celebrate National Ice Cream Day
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            Thursday, July 12, 2012

            Nothing tells me more about the political shift in the news media than the abscense of coverage of the Orange Parades in Belfast. Without fail, American Newspapers always covered these contentious marches that were the equal of Nazi skinheads marching through Skokie, or the KKK marching through Birmingham. Someone flipped the script.


            Minor scuffles break out during Orange Order parade in Belfast

            Riot police clash with small number of republican demonstrators as parade passes Ardoyne district
            Orangemen parade through Belfast's Ardoyne district Link to this videoRiot police clashed with a small number of republican demonstrators as the most contentious Orange Order parade of Northern Ireland's marching season ran a sectarian gauntlet in Belfast.
            One man was asked to delete pictures of police officers from his camera as up to a dozen residents from the republican Ardoyne district broke away from the main protest against the loyalist march along the Crumlin Road on Thursday morning.
            Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers spoke to the man after they said he was seen taking photographs of police during the scuffles near Brompton Park – a street traditionally where riots erupt during controversial loyalist marches.
            Loyalists on the opposite side of the road exchanged insults and threats with republicans penned in by riot squad officers and police Land Rovers as the parade passed the Ardoyne shops around 8.45am.
            A republican cried out towards police lines during the fracas: "See you at four o'clock and bring your body armour."
            Violence flares up annually on the return parade up the Crumlin Road, although this year the Parades Commission – the body that adjudicates on contentious marches – has ruled that the local Orangemen from north Belfast have to return early at 4pm, a decision the Orange Order has criticised.
            The Orange Order claimed on Thursday it has come up with a peaceful solution to the most potentially dangerous parade of the marching season.
            Ahead of the annual 12 July demonstrations across Northern Ireland to mark the Protestant victory of King William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, Orange Order spokesman Rev Mervyn Gibson said they had found a solution.
            "All present have agreed a course of action that will guarantee a homeward parade for the Ligoneil lodges," he said.
            One possible option will be the Orangemen from the nearby Ligoneil district returning early from the main demonstration in Belfast via bus and adhering to the ruling by marching at 4pm along the Crumlin Road to their local Orange hall.
            Northern Ireland's first minister, Peter Robinson, welcomed the Order's decision in a tweet: "Good to see Orange Order giving responsible leadership to maintain peaceful outcome in spite of outrageous Parades Commission ruling."
            Police have said they will "robustly uphold" the commission's decision banning Orangemen from walking past shops in the nationalist area of north Belfast after the deadline passes.
            There was violence overnight in Belfast and Co Armagh as the marching season reached its climax. Nationalist youths attacked police in the Catholic enclave of The Tunnel in Portadown. In nearby Lurgan, army technical officers carried out a controlled explosion on a van left abandoned by the Continuity IRA outside the town's main police station.
            Seven men meanwhile were detained in Belfast after rioting broke out at Broadway, which links the republican Falls Road area and the loyalist Village area across the M1 motorway.
            Last year, the Ardoyne parade resulted in 48 hours of rioting with police bombarded with bricks, bottles and petrol bombs from republican youths. Sixteen police officers were injured during sustained disturbances in the area in 2011.
            Hundreds of armed police officers – many in riot gear and fireproof overalls – have been deployed across the city in preparation for any trouble once the main Orange Order celebrations conclude at a field on the southern outskirts of Belfast. Thousands more officers are on standby in case of widespread disorder.




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            Remember my post about starting a blog.  Well I did some investigation and found that I already have several blogs out here in blogosphere and that they have been sitting here for over a year and not being utilized.  Oh, bother...


            I really want to focus on helping Heather Van Ranvenhorst who was burned out of her home this past Tuesday night July 10th, 2012.  Heather has been a long time assistant to Sara in many ways.  I met Heather for the first time in Milwaukee.  I remember it was terribly cold that night. 

            Heather was recently married a couple of months ago to Jared Van Ravenhorst.  I'll try and plug in the news video of that awful night.  Okay, that didn't work, let me try something else. You'd think I was a newbie or something. Not that theres anything wrong with being a newbie, in many ways I still am a newbie. http://kstp.com/news/stories/S2685171.shtml?cat=1  You can follow the link, wait a minute?http://kstp.com/news/stories/S2685171.shtml?cat=1 Well that didn't help much.  We'll have to work on that.  Anyway, follow the link to the story of the fire on that night.

            Okay, we're going to have to improve this if we are going to use this as a fundraiser.

            HOW TO CONTRIBUTE:  Would you donate to Help Heather I just figured it out.  Click on the link and you will be directed to a site to donate.

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