All Ball Sports: Will it take the death of a superstar? Chargers fourth and down

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by Paul Teetor

What’s it going to take for the sports world to realize the threat it faces from Covid-19, and the newly dominant Omicron variant?

Will it take the death of a superstar? 

No one loves sports more than All Ball, but the common-sense conclusion after the chaos of the last week is inescapable: the sporting world needs to take a timeout.

The stories broke one after another: The Rams-Seahawks game was postponed from Sunday to Tuesday because so many players were unavailable. UCLA’s nationally televised basketball showdown with North Carolina was canceled for similar reasons. Even UCLA Head Coach Mick Cronin was put in health and safety protocols.

Meanwhile, the NBA and the National Hockey League are canceling or postponing dozens of games because too many players are out of action due to being placed in Covid-19 Health and safety protocols. As of Monday night, more than 20 percent of the NBA’s players were out of action for health reasons.

Right here in LA, the entire UCLA basketball program – men and women — was shut down Friday while school officials assess the situation. Monday afternoon USC announced it was doing the same, although the Trojans called it as a “pause” rather than a shut down.

High schools? Really?

Have you been to a high school basketball game lately? The players on the sidelines are wearing masks they often let slip down their noses and sometimes rest on their chins while they cheer on their teammates.

The coaches and their assistants try harder to follow the CIF guidelines, but every time they have to yell at their players they pull their mask down and let fly with advice that may very well be carrying the airborne virus.

The players on the court breathing hard and expelling their used air? Not one has their mask actually on. They wear them as chin-straps, as if to say we know there’s a pandemic going on so we’ll put on these stupid masks, but we’re not going to use them. We might miss a layup.

Every coach from the great – Sean McVay – to the good – Frank Vogel – to the mediocre – Chip Kelly — knows the most important time to call a timeout: when things are going so badly you need to come up with a new strategy to win. 

It’s time for the powers-that-be – the multi-billionaire pro sports owners, the million-dollars-a-year college chancellors, and presidents, the $10-million-a-year college coaches — to do the right thing, and shut it all down.

Eat the financial losses. It’ll be painful, but you make so much money from sports-as-entertainment that you can afford it.

Have you been to SoFi lately? Strangers are packed together yelling and screaming. Ten percent – or fewer – are wearing masks. And who knows if that pony-tailed fat guy in the too-tight Rams jersey who keeps demanding you high-five him every time Matthew Stafford connects on a pass is double vaccinated, and has his booster shot? Odds are he doesn’t.

You want to know why we’re in this mess some 20 months after Trump assured us it would disappear when the warmth of spring came – spring 2020, not spring 2022?

Because of all the knuckleheads who refuse to get vaccinated, who peddle conspiracies and mis-information online and on TV. They’re the ones the virus feasts on, and use to replicate itself and create these scary new variants.

No one wants to say it out loud, but the one thing that could force the sporting world into an instant timeout is the Covid-related death of a big-name star – or even a one-name superstar – due to Covid-19.

Every coach knows the most important time to call a timeout is whenthings are going so badly you need to come up with a new strategy to win. 

In celebrity-obsessed America that will be a game-changer.

Right now the big-time, revenue producing sports are scrambling to figure out how to keep their seasons going with schedules intact.

We tried that once. Remember the NBA bubble without fans? Remember NFL football games without fans screaming, and fighting and drinking beers, and eating pizza? Remember the 60-game major league baseball season with no fans – the one where the Dodgers won the World Series that was played entirely in a Texas Stadium and then didn’t get to have the parade their fans had been waiting 32 years for? 

That didn’t work, despite the great sacrifices we all made.

If we’re genuinely interested in public health, sincerely interested in slowing the virus and saving lives, we need to look at the tsunami bearing down on us, run for the high ground and figure out a new game plan.

If we play this the right way, work together to slow the spread and the emergence of new variants – the scientists say as long as infections keep rising there will always be more new variants — we can eventually get back to the games. 

Case study of a knucklehead

Dozens of players have been sidelined in the NBA, including most of the Chicago Bulls and half the Lakers. But no team has been harder hit than the Brooklyn Nets, coached by Manhattan Beach’s own Steve Nash.

All three of his superstars – Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving – are out of action after being placed in the NBA’s health and safety protocols.

Irving is the most interesting case. He is by far the most prominent anti-vaxxer in a league that says 97 percent of its players are fully vaccinated.

While his hoops talent is off the charts, he has always been a knucklehead, a flat-earther who claimed early in the season that he refused to get vaccinated because he wanted to be “a voice for the voiceless.” Irving was so adamant about it that he chose to sit out his team’s first 30 games because New York has a vaccine mandate for workers in large venues, like the Barclay’s Center, where the Nets play.

Just before the season started, Irving offered to sit out the Nets home games in New York, but play on the road. The team rejected his offer, saying it would be disruptive to have a star player in and out of the lineup. But they did agree to pay him his normal rate – an astounding $380,000 per game – for the road games, on the theory that he was ready, willing, and able to work for those games and thus deserved to be paid even though he wasn’t playing.

Late last week, after both Harden and Durant were placed under health and safety protocols, the Nets announced that they had reversed their stance. They were now willing to take Irving back on his terms: he would play in their road games.

So Saturday morning he showed up for his first practice with the team. Saturday afternoon the Nets issued another press release: Irving had been placed under the league’s health and safety protocols, and would have to sit out until he tested negative twice on consecutive days.

Had Irving tested positive for Covid-19 the day he returned? It was impossible to tell from the press release, because under the league rules there are two ways you can enter the protocols: with a positive test, or through “close contact” with someone else who had a positive test.

At this point, though, it hardly matters. Irving’s crazy situation is just one more leading indicator: the entire sporting world needs a timeout.

Chargers shoot themselves in the foot

Live by the fourth down gamble, die by the fourth down gamble.

That’s the painful lesson the Chargers and their young coach Brandon Staley (hopefully) learned Thursday night, after suffering their biggest loss since they came to LA five years ago.

The match-up with a top-tier team, the Kansas City Chiefs, and their all-pro quarterback Patrick Mahomes, was a chance to do so many things with a victory.

First and foremost, to solidify their new-found status as legit Super Bowl contenders.

Second, to push their record to 9-5, and contend for a first-round bye in the looming playoffs, which start next month.

Third, to establish that Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert is a younger, bigger, stronger, faster version of Mahomes.

And fourth, to beat the Chiefs for a second time this season and establish home-field advantage, should they face the Chiefs in the playoffs.

Unfortunately, they failed in all those objectives.

But boy did they come close, losing in overtime by an uber-painful score of 34-28.

They should have won this game long before it went to overtime. That’s because three times the Chargers had a fourth-down-and-short situation near the goal line, and on all three the Chargers declined to kick a chip-shot field goal, went for it on fourth down, and failed all three times.

That’s nine points they could have and should have had, nine points that would have carried them to victory in the back-and-forth fourth quarter.

Those calls were, of course, made by the 38-year-old Staley, and you have to understand the context they were made in.

When the Chargers jumped out to a 4-1 record way back in September and October, Staley made that same call on eight fourth-and-short situations and on all eight the Chargers succeeded in getting a first down and continuing a touchdown drive that helped fuel their early winning record.

Staley made his rep as a defensive genius when he was the defensive coordinator for the Rams last season, and they had the league’s top-rated defense. But suddenly the mainstream media was now hailing him as an offensive genius. Some local columnists even claimed he was revolutionizing modern offensive thinking by routinely disdaining the traditional conservative approach of punting the ball away on fourth-and-short situations.

That approach failed a couple of times during the mid-season slump when they lost three out of four games, but they came into the Chief’s game on a two-game winning streak and Staley seemed to have his go-for-it mojo back.

After the game, in a defiant press conference, Staley claimed there was no lesson for him to learn from this game.

“I love the way we managed this game,” he said. “It didn’t go down for us today, but we gave ourselves an opportunity.”

Regardless of the happy talk, the reality is the Chargers record fell to 8-6, with three games to go. They are still well positioned to get a wild-card spot, but they can forget about being the first LA team to host a playoff game at SoFi Stadium.

They face the sad-sack Houston Texans the day after Christmas, and if they can’t beat them then they don’t deserve to be in the playoffs anyway.

In the last two weeks of the season they face the Denver Bronco, and the Las Vegas Raiders, two teams that are still mathematically in the hunt for a wild-card spot in the playoffs, but two teams that they should beat.

If they can win all three of their remaining games, they should be a lock to make the playoffs as a wild-card entry with an 11-6 record.

If they do indeed make it to the promised land, Chargers fans can only hope that Staley has learned his lesson: when you live by the fourth down gamble, you will eventually die by the fourth down gamble.

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER                 

      

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