FTB poised for breakout season, literally, Part I.

10.7.2008 | 8:30 am | FTB On the Road, Fun with Ex Warriors, Great Beards in History, The Clippers, The Warriors, The X Factor

According to he who roams the sidelines and the blogosphere covering the Golden State Warriors—Matt Steinmetz—Fear the Beard is the third best blog covering the team. Perhaps even more shocking, he said that we would have been his number one pick had it not been for our tendency to be, well, all over the map with our coverage. Nonetheless, he went on to say that we were like a player that’s all upside, one that’s poised for a breakout season.

Rodney Stuckey of the Pistons was the player he compared us to. Not a bad comparo. And while I too am recovering from a hand injury that’s impacting my (blogging) career, the comparison got me to thinking. Thinking about where FTB is headed, how this relates to the Warriors and what it means vis-à-vis our choice of avatar and his departure.

When I was writing this, the airplane in which I was traveling was smashing across Nebraska at 500 miles an hour. The world is shrinking. And technology is closing the distance faster than wings and kerosene. That a roving sideline reporter and I can now be engaged in a swift and orderly online festivus of mutual admiration is exhibit “A.”

Exhibit “B” is perhaps best set up by paraphrasing an old bit from a long-ago episode of Seinfeld. There is a simple and cruel truth about professional athletics. One that is magnified by a factor of 10 for underfunded franchises with a history of losing. And it has to do with parity. And it has to do with television. And it has to do with free agency. And it has to do with—as Seinfeld famously noted—laundry.

See, the simple truth is that it gets hard to see your favorite players routinely leave as free agents. Where pre-free-agency pros—however compromised by servitude to a franchise they may have been—were agents of the public trust, now players are agents of themselves first and then of the league. So it is that now, after some considerable investment of time and energy, am I supposed to blindly root for whoever the next Warrior is with a beard or the jersey number 5? I am not this simple. Thankfully, neither is the game we love.

As one who has been watching the bourgeoning rosters of teams in more robust TV markets—or moreover, those with less frugal ownership and management entities—I have been struck by the futility of Seinfeld’s theorem as it pertains to our beloved Dubs. This is magnified by the fact that I write for an entity that takes as its avatar the roaring mug of a star departed. I don’t want to root for laundry. I want to root for people. Preferably those people that I respect. And I’d rather root for a 48-win team that misses the playoffs but reflects back some mirror of what I like about the world and myself than root for 70-win team shepherded to victory by a phalanx of douchebags. No matter how strongly I may be tied to the laundry, and to the history and relationships that shared fandom represents, laundry alone is insufficient.

Nowhere was that point made more abundantly clear to me than on my little trip to the NBA store on Fifth Avenue last week after work. The only Warriors jersey available was Marco Belinelli’s, presumably to appeal to the twin likelihoods of his staying at least through the end of his rookie deal and the fact that New York City is a frequent destination for Italian tourists. In another aisle was a $185 Los Angeles Clippers game jersey bearing the name and number of Baron Davis. And finally, in the “household items” section, there was an improbably overstocked Golden State Warriors toothbrush, presumably capable of brushing the foul taste of summer out of my mouth. Not surprising I suppose, but I opted to leave my oral hygiene in the hands of the Crest people.

But life is funny. I went back to my hotel some hours later and was greeted by an e-mail from the aforementioned Steinmetz. And it was not an accident that it came hot on the heels after my walk through David Stern’s hall of merchandising. No, it came then. And it had a particular effect. I’ll admit it. It was nice to be recognized. One e-mail and all of the consternation that I have felt since a certain Aston Martin left for LA with the face of our franchise in it—well, the face of this website at least—was finally crystallizing. And perhaps with a huge splash of Seinfeldian irony it was Matt frickin’ Steinmetz who was the one to give me the one word that I needed to finally shed the pesky gravity of my allegiance to laundry. The guy who reports on the fortunes of an ankle twisted or a strategy employed, was throwing me the word I was looking for.

Breakout.

Part II to follow on Thursday,

Turman

PS. And yes, I will take a moment to gloat. Tim Kawakami finished fourth. We also outpointed local beat writers Janny Hu, Marcus Thompson II and Geoff Lepper. Now can we get some press credentials already?