The Primal Foot

These People Seem To Like It

So I've been watching more than a little of the World Cup for the past week and a half. The nice part about it is that it rewards any level of interest. You can just have it on in the background and look up when the announcers get excited, or you can fully buy in and work out some rooting interest based on, well, whatever reason you like to enjoy a country or not. Someone's got a friend who is from Ghana? Well, go Black Stars, assuming they aren't playing the U.S. The Nigerians look plucky, and African sides don't usually make it real far, so yay, Super Eagles. Wait, the Bosnia-Herzegovians are called the Dragons? I may have to rethink this. And so on.

There's also this. The Shooter Kids don't really give a damn about sports. I don't watch them with them, and while I think they can tell one from another, it's really pretty much an open question as to whether they'll be able to tell basketball apart from football or baseball. They are much more like their mom than me on this one, and the only way they are staying in the room with me if the game is on is if it's almost over, or they are trying to openly avoid someone else in the house. I'm a writer, and the TV is in my basement cave. They've got tablets ad laptops and a million better ideas to entertain themselves than to look at my screen, assuming my screen isn't showing them something they are interested in.

And then there was today, and the World Cup.

Ghana played Germany today, and the second half of it was flat-out great. End to end action, four total goals scored, Ghana coming back from giving up the first one to take a lead, only to lose it to Germany late, both sides with opportunities to get the win late. The Shooter Wife was mesmerized. No second screen, no questions about the rules, no getting up to find knitting, a snack, or anything other than the primal moment of Ghana, the team her best friend is rooting for due to genealogy, trying to get the win. I've been married to this person for 15 years, have brought her to baseball and basketball games, have had games on when she's walked into the room a few thousand times. Never saw that before.

Later in the day, the Eldest comes downstairs. The game was Nigeria vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina, and since there was just 15 minutes left and the game was close, I had her wait until the end of the game until I gave up the screen to her and her sister. And within five minutes, because Nigeria had irritated her with timewaste tactics to try and hold their 1-0 lead, she was fully invested and bent when B-H got close but not quite to the tying goal. And while it's not as if she took the defeat very hard, but it was still more than any investment I've ever seen from her, even when I've been watching a game with high investment.

So what is it about futbol, really? Well, it helps immensely that they aren't asking me questions about why something happened, or what the rules are, every few minutes. This game is downright primal in its Good Event or Bad Event experience, and the clear and non-stopping ticking clock in the top left also gives everyone involved a clear indication of just how much longer they are going to have to invest in this. No commercial stoppages is huge, especially to the younger generation of people for whom ads have always been something you can skip or switch off.

Now, I don't think there's going to be much more to it than this, really. I doubt that we're going to do the hopelessly hipster move of picking a Premier League team to support, or rooting for the Union or the Red Bulls. I am a long way past the event horizon of adding new sports to my viewing list, and considering the size of my Netflix queue, and the fact that parenting is not something you move away from just because the kids are getting old enough to do things on their own.

But there's still something telling that this sport reaches them, in a way that no other has. And if you've been giving it all a big miss because well, it's soccer and you've tried it before, it's time to look at it again. This is the highest-scoring World Cup in history, and people from six continents are into this in ways you can barely imagine. I'm not asking you to like it more than other sports, but for a few weeks in the summer dead zone, it's a freaking godsend.

The Joel Embiid Situation: Which History Repeats Itself?

Slip Sliding Away

So we've got a mild consensus big man for the top pick in the NBA Draft, but there are health issues. Scared off by the specter of Sam Bowie, Greg Oden, Andrew Bynum and every other 7-footer who breaks down, team after team shies away from the best player available...

And that's how the Sixers wound up with Nerlens Noel with the 6th pick in the draft, who I'm pretty sure no one would trade for Anthony Bennett, Otto Porter, Cody Zeller or Alex Len right about now. Victor Oladipo might be a decent swap at #2, and lo, it was a terrible draft, but I'm thrilled with Sixers GM Sam Hinkie for avoiding all of those guys, and winding up with Noel at six and Michael Carter-Williams at 11. (Seven through ten, for the masochists, were Ben McLemore, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Trey Burke and C.J. McCollum.)

Today, of course, Sixer Fan is aghast at the horror that is Kansas center, Hakeem Olajuwon comp and sudden foot surgery patient Joel Embiid becoming the new Can't Draft This guy, because this was clearly the guy we didn't want (in that he's too similar to Noel), and it's just going to raise the price on the guy we do want (shockingly athletic shooting guard Andrew Wiggins).

Now, a point in passing: I desperately want the Sixers to get Wiggins. He's already on my keeper fantasy league team, in a masterwork of sneaky behavior in the end moments of last year's draft, when the league's owners were unaware that you could draft a guy who wasn't in the league. (My karma from such a move was so bad that I overcame Derrick Rose's explosion to finish second to the guy that's so loaded, he barely needs to show up to the draft.) And yet... I just can't freak out about this just yet.

First off, there are the teams picking ahead of the Sixers. There's Cleveland, who keep getting the first pick of the draft, and haven't seemed to do anything very good with it yet. Put me on the fence as to how good Kyrie Irving is. so far, he just looks like Stephon Marbury II to me. And the less said about last year's surprise choice, UNLV forward Bennett, the better; pretty sure there's never been a top pick with DNP-CDs by his name quite so often in the rookie year. It doesn't seem possible to bone this pick, and yet, well, it's Cleveland. The club that couldn't win with LeBron James, couldn't get anything for him prior to free agency, and then salted the earth with comic sans petulance for the ages, ensuring that no free agent worth a damn will ever want to go there. Hope springs eternal that they'll bone it.

After the Cavs, it's Milwaukee, the team with the actual worst record in the NBA last year, in a season where they were *not* tanking. No, I'm serious. The club that thought the missing piece to a playoff roster that depended highly on Ersan Ilyanova showing up consistently, the team that thought Larry Sanders would try just as hard once he had money in his pocket, the club that was sure Caron Butler would be the missing piece after years of decay in the hyper-stacked Clipper lineup, with a bench that's so bad these guys played in front of them... well, they make the second pick. If you were at a poker game, and the Cavs and Bucks were in your blind, you are loving your table. Doesn't matter who else is there, or what your cards look like.

Finally, there's this. There were three good players in the first eleven picks of the 2013 draft. Sam Hinkie got two of them (and yes, I'm assuming Noel will be good). He turned Jrue Holliday, instantly injury-prone once he got out of town and about to get really expensive assuming he's got any kind of per-game numbers, into the #3 pick in one of the more stacked drafts in recent NBA history. Even if he stands pat and takes a guy that probably won't help them very much next year (I'm thinking Embiid or Australian PG enigma Dante Exum, or even PF Noah Vonleh from Indiana), that's a winning trade. At the 10 pick, assuming once again that they stand pat, I think they'll wind up with something from the enticing range of F Julius Randle from Kentucky, SG Nik Stauskas from Michigan, PF Dario Saric from Croatia, or PF Aaron Gordon from Arizona. All of those guys are going to have NBA careers, and all of them look a lot better then the slugs that populated the non-Sixer picks in 2013. They also have five second round picks and a roster so thin that several of those guys might actually pan out, along with Iranian rebounding machine Arsalan Kazemi, and the potentially useful rehab experience that is Jason Richardson. Put that together with some of the potentially useful flotsam from the end of last year (James Anderson, Jarvis Varnado, Henry Sims) and the long-suffering Thaddeus Young, and that's an immensely more appealing roster than what was here just two years ago. As tear-downs go, this has been quick and evidencing A Plan.

So, am I thrilled that Embiid is hurt? Hell and no. I was really hoping that the Cavs would take him, especially as they were said to love him, and *then* he'd get hurt, with the Bucks jumping on the NBA-ready and Duke-ceiling capped level of Jabari Parker. But what I know about these guys is what I've learned from the highly suspect NBA media, and they are getting their information from franchises that would be actively penalized for telling the truth. If Hinkie decides that he's OK with rolling the dice on Embiid at 3, well, he knows more than I do. If he flips the script and goes for Exum, that's a pretty exciting backcourt, and the way that the NBA is now, maybe that's the best way to build. Short of trading down to load up on more second round picks, or going all-in on some obvious dead-ended like Carmelo Anthony, in Sam We Trust.

So, disconsolate Sixer Fan? Breathe. Relax. Wiggins is not necessarily the next Michael Jordan or LeBron James. Embiid is not necessarily the new Oden or Bowie or Bynum, and 7-footers don't always stay hurt. If the club winds up with him, it could easily be the second straight year where the club winds up with the best big man in the draft. Hell, even if they wind up with Parker, there have been good players from Duke, and his skill set works well in terms of creating an entertaining team.

He made a trade last year that no one is complaining about, in re Holliday. He also got rid of Spencer Hawes and Evan Turner for anything at all, and nothing in their post-Sixer play showed this to be a bad move. He drafted Michael Carter-Williams at 11, in a draft that looks worse with every passing day.

In short, he's earned your trust.

So... just ignore everything that happens between now and the draft, and check out what Hinkie does then. It's all you can do anyway.

Top 10 ways the Spurs celebrated their championship

Wear the same shirt, say Woo

10) Only translated the proceedings into some of the languages their players speak

9) Watched all of Gregg Popovich's sideline playoff interview answers on Vine

8) As per Tim Duncan's demands, raised the roof, but in an architecturally sound manner after receiving proper zoning paperwork

7) Boris Diaw and Tony Parker laughed at some of those obvious Frenchie jokes they've heard a few million times, all while secretly pondering the meaninglessness of existence

6) Paddy Mills prepared for his JJ Barea-esque lucrative and forgettable future as an overpaid out-of-town benchie with a ring

5) Kawhi Leonard allowed, and scandalously even encouraged, to drink adult beverages

4) Support staff, along with the rest of San Antonio, extended their Cheat Month to a Cheat Quarter

3) Manu Ginobili accepted contact without falling down theatrically

2) Allowed each member of the team to walk right up to the table and eat without passing salt, pepper, bread or side dishes

1) Took the entire morning off before getting back to practice

The World Cup Epiphany, Or Oh, What A Lovely Holy War

Excommunicated

So I had a mild and probably obvious epiphany today while watching the World Cup. Indulge me, or not.

It was during the South Korea - Russia match, a 1-1 tie where the Koreans scored on a terrible bobble by the keeper, then the Russians got the goal back to salvage the tie. As the cameras panned the stands to find traveling loyalists in facepaint, I realized that what was a trailing diversion and cheap source of humor (in that Vladimir Putin was sure to do something Bondvillainish to the poor keeper's family) for me was life and death to the people in the stands... and that wasn't a moment to get snotty or superior.

Rather, this was, in all likelihood, the game that they watched when they were eight years old or so, otherwise known as the age of declaration. Think back to your own life, and I bet that the teams that you rooted for then are the ones you root for now. That's certainly the case for me, on two of four teams, and it took active deprogramming to stop caring about the Philadelphia Flyers (and hockey) and Philadelphia Phillies (and for a long time, baseball).

Here comes the impertinence: I bet that for many of us, this is when we became identified with a religious affiliation. This isn't to demean your choice, or to cause anyone to question their faith. Whatever gets you through the night, so long as you don't harm someone else on their own journey. You might get a lot out of your faith, just as you might get a lot out of your laundry affiliation; similarly, you might feel victimized by this choice, if you've spent decades paying for tickets or tithing without any sense of payoff. It's really up to you.

But to me, the corollaries go deeper. There are people in this world who want to talk about that South Korea - Russia game to distraction, and if you are one of those people, you really need to find other members of the congregation, fast. We all dream of having others join our group due to its overwhelming success, while simultaneously hoping to keep the same intimacy and comfort that was there before the congregation got big. After all, we were here during the lean years, when the sun wasn't shinning and there was nothing in the nature of redemption promised or delivered.

OK, yes, the analogy is strained. But doesn't it hit at the core of why people get so irritated with futbol proselytizers, especially when they tell us how beautiful or clever their game is, and by extension, ours is not? We didn't have this in the mix when we were eight. we can tolerate it, even like it for all sorts of non-game reasons (architecture, artwork, tradition, pageantry, etc., etc.)... but we're never going to feel it in the gut, take a loss to the soul and mourn it for a week or more, see the fateful moment when it all went wrong in our nightmares and on other team's all-time highlight reels. In baseball, I was on the wrong side of the Kirk Gibson and Joe Carter home runs, along with Derek Jeter's flip, and any number of other gutpunch moments. Other members of my congregations feel my pain.

Oh, and one final point on this before I put it to bed... this is also why people freak out over this game so much. I've got games and seasons coming out the wazoo here, with one sport almost always overlapping another. Futbol Fan doesn't, especially World Cup Futbol Fan; he's going to wait years, and maybe decades, for redemption. My sports spread out the pain over multiple game series in baseball and basketball, and it's unlikely that any singular moment is going to be the only reason why it goes south. You can ease into the pain. Futbol? Other than a first half blowout that just rubs your nose in it for an hour or more, not so much. My sports have hundreds of scoring opportunities that aren't necessarily going away due to the opinion of a ref that, history shows, really might not be on the up and up. Put it all together, and the story becomes not why futbol fan riots, but why it doesn't happen all the damned time.

So have some pity for futbol fan. He's not watching a sport, he's watching a religious war. That only happens once every four years, and matters more than any of your laundry does to you. And probably always will.

U.S. v. Ghana, Or The Levee Breaks, And Then Reappears

Dempsey, Early, With A Good Nose

Every four years, the World Cup comes around to remind casual U.S. sports fans how much fun it is to watch an ad-free, continuous action game of unrelenting tension. It's especially good when it distracts us from the game we don't watch anymore (baseball) as we wait for the game that we watch too much (American football).

And so it has been this year, and the magical thing has been that just about every game has been fun to watch. Well, OK, not Iran-Nigeria; that was everything that's wrong with this game in spades. But you get the gist, and so far, that's the only tie of the tournament. There's been a lot of scoring, not so much awful officiating outside of the Brazil game, comebacks and no riots or stadium failures. As good as you can hope for, really.

Today's US 2-1 win over Ghana was, well, a game script you've never seen before. Clint Dempsey scored one of the fastest goals in World Cup history, a nifty little bit of sleight of foot and post banging that was flat out gorgeous. Gradually over the rest of the first half, Ghana got the better of play, especially once strike Jozy Altidore went down with a horrible looking hamstring pull, then Dempsey damn near got his nose broken on a kick to the fact that somehow didn't draw a serious penalty to the Ghana side. Defender Matt Besler was next to go with another hamstring problem, and the game was looking increasingly more essential, as the squad was melting in the Brazilian heat and humidity. New coach Jurgen Klinsmanm subbed in people no one has ever heard of (Stupid German! Where's our Landon Donovan security blanket!), and the Black Stars (their name, not mine) seemed to control every ball, with only goaltender Tim Howard standing between them and a tie or worse.

Now, regardless of your familiarity with the sport at hand, you've seen this game. Underdog team takes a lucky early lead, players get hurt, they turtle up and cling to a lead for all they are worth. Either they escape or lose that lead, and if they lose it, that's it. The air is out of the balloon, the jig is up, and their fans try to talk themselves into moral victory noise or call for some goat's head. (Klinsman for leaving Donovan behind! Howard, for tragically leaving the short post open...)

What doesn't happen is a stunning and damned near immediate response goal. What doesn't happen is getting that stunning and damned near immediate response goal from one of those anonymous rookie subs, in this case 20-year-old John Brooks, converting a corner kick opportunity with a picture-perfect spiking header. Oh, and it's Brooks' first goal, and he was set up by some guy named Graham Zusi, another sub who came in due to injury and infirmity.

And just like that, the U.S. flipped the deck and has a 2 to 1 chance of escaping the so-called Group of Death, especially now that Portugal is a smoking ruin after a 4-0 flattening by the Germans, accented by a red card suspension for a starting fullback. 85% of the teams that win their opener advance in the current format, and while it's not out of the realm of possibility that the US could be in that sad 15%, the chance would have been much worse without Brooks' miracle.

And, well, the natural tendency of fans, especially of niche sports like futbol in America, is to look to moments like this as the spark that starts a new era. But that's not how it works, really. The U.S. did not become dominant in ice hockey after the Winter Olympics in 1960, or 1980. Women's soccer did not become a big deal after Brandy Chastain scored and disrobed. The WNBA didn't explode after women started dunking. Any number of niche Olympic moments were nice and then passed under the waves, without us starting to give big media numbers to weight lifting or Greco-Roman wrestling or volleyball or whatever.

No, what matters is when you have that moment, and then another, and then another. Or when those moments turn into people going to games at the lower level. The U.S. has had pro soccer for decades now, intermittently but with an increasing amount of frequency. That's where Zusi plies his trade, rather than for some Euro team; roughly half of the team work there. If the US makes a run that translates into more ratings for Kansas City, Seattle, San Jose and Salt Lake in MLS, and more plus athletes staying with the game into their teen years, that's when the spark is more than a treasured memory. For now, it's just fun to see a game end in a way you've never really seen, and a team that that does the incredibly rare and wonderful thing of making damn near everyone mark out for the flag.

The next game is Sunday against the wounded animal of Portugal, and that's going to be difficult even if Altidore and Beasley are healthy. But that's for another day, and another chance at a spark... with more people watching, on the weekend.