In Defense of Nicolas Batum's Crotch Shot

It might seem hard or ridiculous to come to the defense of an athlete for intentionally hitting another athlete below the belt, but I’m about to do just that.

The quarterfinal Olympics basketball game between Spain and France ended in controversy on Wednesday afternoon when France players became angered by the Spaniards flopping to draw fouls and in the case of France forward Ronny Turiaf’s foul on flopping Spain forward Rudy Fernandez a hard foul.

Incensed by the flopping by the Spanish team France forward Nicolas Batum decided that he was going to give Spain guard Juan Carlos Navarro a parting shot that he wouldn’t forget toward the end of France’s 66-59 loss to Spain that would end their Olympic run. Near the end of the game Batum ran at Navarro and made a violent slapping motion toward his mid-section that caught Navarro in the groin. This action set off a slight incident between the two squads, but Batum was not ejected from the game.

Not only was the French team angered by Spain’s flopping, but they also felt that Spain had intentionally blown a 12-point fourth quarter lead in a game against Brazil so they could face France in the quarterfinals instead of a tougher matchup against the United States.

Batum, who plays for the Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA, would’ve most certainly received a fine and quite likely a game or two suspension from NBA commissioner David Stern had this incident occurred in an NBA game. However, I’ve got to say that I don’t have the slightest problem with Batum’s actions, even though Batum would later apologize for it.

Here’s why …

After the loss to Spain, Batum told reporters “I wanted to give him a good reason to flop.” Batum’s response is not only humorous, but also a fairly decent way to combat the shameful act of flopping. In my opinion, it’s not a whole lot different than a pitcher beaning a batter (which I approve of, as well) for admiring his home run a little too much in baseball. In sports athletes really have to police themselves and that’s what Batum was doing.

Flopping is a major problem in basketball. Fans know it. I’m sure if you polled fans it would be near the top of a list of biggest problems with NBA basketball. Players and coaches know it. NBA commissioner David Stern even knows it and has mentioned trying to figure out ways to put an end to flopping.

The league putting an end to flopping is something that would be hard to do. I have mentioned before that I would approve of officials giving technical fouls to players that they see as flopping, but like many other things in officiating it’s merely a judgment call and if officials are calling fouls already on these plays than they likely don’t view them as flops in the first place.

Players policing themselves like Batum did on Wednesday could be one way to end flopping. Hit a dude in the crotch enough times and I think he’ll probably get the message. After all, there aren’t many more things in this world that dudes are afraid of than getting hit right in the marbles.

Many people see what Batum did as a heinous act that deserves to be punished. I see it as getting a message across about another heinous act that should be punished.

Olympics Unfair to Banish Strategic Badminton Players

One of the biggest controversies from the first week of the 2012 London Summer Olympics was the dismissal of eight women’s badminton players for reportedly “violating the Olympic ideal and spirit of fair play.”

It seems that the majority of people agree with the International Olympic Committee’s decision to exclude the players from the remainder of the games, however, I certainly do not.

I understand that it seems ridiculous to attempt to lose in any sporting event and I also understand that people paid good money to see this event and the result was not what they expected. However, I don’t support the removal of athletes from the games when they didn’t do anything against the rules. Yes, these badminton players were throwing their games, but it wasn’t written anywhere that they couldn’t.

This was the first year that Olympic badminton included a round-robin format instead of a win-or-go-home format. This meant that teams could lose and still compete in the next stage of the tournament. In fact, the way things were going losing could help out a team because the team with the worst record plays the team with the best record first in the quarterfinals. When a surprising team beat a high-seeded team in the round-robin stage it set up a scenario where teams were intentionally trying to lose to face the expected weaker team that had won.

That may sound confusing to some, in fact it’s a little confusing to me, but what it boils down to is that these eight athletes, or four doubles teams, were playing the best strategy they could think of to succeed in the games.

Some people have called their actions cheating, but that is an extreme over-exaggeration, in my opinion. If you’re not breaking any rules than you’re definitely not cheating. This is simply an example of athletes being punished for making the best of a bad system. I’ll be surprised if the round-robin format returns to Olympic badminton in the 2016 games, because it can lead to this type of controversy, but as long as it is a part of the format, athletes shouldn’t be banished for manipulating it.

To Spoil or Not To Spoil

The biggest controversy from the first few days of the 2012 London Summer Olympics has been the tape delayed coverage given to Americans by NBC. NBC has chosen not to show some of the bigger events (mostly swimming and gymnastics) live on any of its television networks and instead hold them until primetime when there’s a bigger audience.

This decision by NBC, which almost everybody seems to agree is poor, has led to many viewers finding out the results of these events prior to the airing on television through news outlets like ESPN and social media outlets like Twitter.

You really can’t blame news outlets like ESPN because one of the biggest goals and responsibilities of journalists are to break the news when the news breaks. So, if Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte win swimming medals in London when it’s early or mid-morning in the United States the news will report it when it happens, as they should. It’s not the American media’s responsibility to wait until Americans have had the chance to see it to announce the results. However, NBC News giving the results before its own broadcast is another story.

This poses a major issue for me that I struggled with for the first few days of the Olympics. What should I do about my Facebook fanpage for my sports podcast Basement Sports?

Typically when sports news breaks I publish it immediately upon seeing or hearing it on the podcast’s fanpage (because I view it as a form of media). However, some of these updates are a few hours old before I get the chance to post them, because of my day job that does not include access to a computer throughout the afternoon hours five days a week.

The 2012 London Summer Olympics are the first Olympic games during my podcast’s tenure and so I found myself having to deal with something new in attempting to cover a sporting event (the largest one at that) on such a time difference.

My journalistic experience and instincts tell me to publish the results of the events when they occur or at least when I see or hear about them. However, I’ve refrained from doing that thus far and have made the decision to keep doing so until the events have completed on American television. Here’s why …

I’ve long believed and told people that I didn’t think spoilers affected my feelings about movies or television shows and I honestly believe that to be the case. Does knowing Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father prior to watching the “Star Wars” trilogy affect the movie’s greatness? No. Knowing a surprise twist or ending to a film or TV show ultimately doesn’t change whether or not a movie is good and it shouldn’t have any result on whether or not you enjoy it either.

However, when it comes to sports spoilers are everything. Because the sole intention of sports is to win or lose knowing the outcome of the event really takes all of the fun and excitement out of watching it. Sure, many people will still watch the event despite knowing the results just to see exactly how it happened, as NBC’s Olympic ratings have suggested, but it just isn’t the same.

Unfortunately I’ve known almost every single major result before it aired on primetime. I just can’t manage to stay unplugged long enough not to find out the results even accidentally. For this reason the Olympics simply haven’t been nearly as fun or exciting as I anticipated.

I know that my not posting Olympics results until after they air on NBC on the Basement Sports podcast fanpage is likely not going to make a whole lot of difference for most sports fans, who like me probably already know the results anyway. But, I don’t want to spoil the fun and the excitement of the Olympics for those intentionally staying away from the results, because I know how much that sucks.  

NBC Idiotically Spoils Own Olympic Coverage

Seventeen year old U.S. Olympian swimmer Missy Franklin won the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London early on Monday. The event wouldn’t be shown until hours later during NBC’s Olympic primetime coverage on tape delay, meaning viewers would have to successfully avoid Internet spoilers and watching sports networks like ESPN all afternoon and early evening.

NBC has been ripped by viewers and critics alike for holding the perceived most important or popular Olympic events until primetime without ever showing them live earlier in the day on television. It only makes sense for the network to show the events in primetime, but it’s inexcusable not to also show them live and then replay them in primetime. It’s something that’s no doubt hurt the experience for fans that accidentally view or hear spoilers, but hasn’t been a hindrance to the network’s ratings.

However, what NBC did on Monday night during their primetime Olympic coverage was just stupidity at its highest level. Just a handful of minutes before the network was going to air the 100-meter backstroke, which Franklin won, the network aired a promo for Tuesday morning’s “Today” episode in which it mentioned the gold medalist would be reunited with her parents for the first time during the games. Thus by showing this promo NBC spoiled their OWN EVENT.

This wasn’t the first time during the opening days of the Olympics that NBC has spoiled one of its own primetime events either, though it is the first time it’s done so during its actual primetime showing. On the opening day of the Olympics on Saturday NBC’s Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who’s generally one of the best around, idiotically gave the final results to the highly-anticipated Ryan Lochte/Michael Phelps event in the men’s 400 IM, which the network later aired in primetime.

It’s hard enough for fans to go almost an entire day without seeing or hearing who won certain events via television or the Internet, but hearing the news on NBC’s own coverage is just irresponsible and bad business on the part of NBC. It also goes against everything NBC Sports anchor Bob Costas said during the opening night of the events when he told the audience that the events they’d be seeing were previously recorded, but that they wouldn’t be spoiled on the air. The commentators haven’t done the spoiling, but the network certainly has.

NBC really should be ashamed of their coverage thus far during the Olympics, but I’d almost guarantee that they don’t and won’t care, because they’re shattering records according to EW.com.   

'What just happened?' ... 'I don't know, but I think I like it'

What's going on?

Saturdays are extremely slow at my job. It’s not unusual to turn on the television that sits in the dining room to a sporting event and try to catch bits and pieces of it in the sporadic moments of working. This Saturday was no different. Everything was cleaned and stocked and there weren’t any customers so I sat down at a table and switched on some sports. Pretty soon a co-worker joined me at the table. Then a few minutes later another co-worker joined us. Shortly after that my supervisor made the group a foursome.

Typically during the summer the television has been on a golf tournament or a baseball game. Today it was on fencing coverage during the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

We sat there and we watched two Italians fencers compete in something called women’s foil. I really don’t know exactly what that is or means, but the gist of it appeared to be to see how many times you can stick somebody in their body armor with your sword-like weapon. For the purposes of this piece I just looked up what “foil” means … it’s actually the name of the aforementioned “sword-like weapon”… you see, doesn’t that take some of the fun out of fencing already.

None of us four really had any damn clue what was going on. We didn’t know how the scoring system worked. We didn’t know what the lights meant. We didn’t know any of the rules. I was shocked, and I think my feelings were shared, to find out that the event had three periods.

I do think I was the most fascinated with the sport out of the group. It’s not the most exciting sporting event I’ve ever seen by any means, but I didn’t for one second find it boring. However, maybe that had to do with the exceptionally slow pace of the work day. But, it’s certainly not one of the five or maybe even 10 most boring Summer Olympic sports.

It’s something that I’ve spent minimal time seeing before in Olympic action and would enjoy watching again, though I don’t know if I’ll catch it again during these games. In my entire life I probably won’t see enough fencing action to ever know exactly what’s going on (when and where, after all, can you see fencing when it’s not an Olympic games?).

The fact that four of us were captivated together by this foil event for the maybe 15 minutes that we watched before returning to our responsibilities was unique because it really explains the allure and specialty of the Summer Olympics. Typically none of us would really care about this event, but for one moment on a quiet Saturday afternoon it captured us. Why? Because it’s the Olympics and you must watch the Olympics.

Sundays aren’t typically as slow as Saturdays at work, but they are often slow enough to have moments were there isn’t anything to do … maybe tomorrow will find us entranced in some water polo action or perhaps some field hockey. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a thrill two weeks every four years.