I should mention, sometimes I’m not quite connected to what’s…going on.  It isn’t that I don’t pay attention; I just pay attention to what’s important and fliter out some/most of the other stuff.  I came to Miami to write about the Heat (important) and meet their fans (important), especially the ones in string bikinis (imperative).  That the popular tourist city of Miami might be booked the f#ck up for the week of New Years didn’t occur to me until I found out that almost every hostel bed in Miami was booked for days.

I finally found a bunk, on Miami Beach, for $24—but for just one night; they were all booked up for the 29th-Jan 2nd.  That was fine, because I’d find a couch to surf.  But I didn’t, and before I went to sleep on the 28th, I booked the only hostel spot I could find for the 29th.  They also had an opening for the 30th, but thaat place charged $45 a night—double their normal rates—through the 5th of January.  I needed it for one night, but just couldn’t stomach it for two.  I figured I’d give myself another chance at couchsurfing for the 30th and after.  And if that didn’t work I’d sleep on the beach and cover myself in patchouli oil to keep away the muggers.

My spirits were bolstered when I received a couchsurfing confirmation from Brian, for Jan 4th, 5th, and 6th (and we later added the 7th).  Then, after some craftying, I found a place in the interim. There was a couchsurfing New Years Eve outing that I said I would attend, but I wrote on the event page that I didn’t have a place to stay yet.  That’s how I met Agata (and Jamil, her boyfriend), who agreed to host me through the 3rd.

I have couchsurfed every night since that first with Agata and Jamil—74 straight nights.  Until tonight.  Alas, I’m in a Comfort Inn, now, in The Dalles, OR.  It was a crappy day for hitchhiking, including a late start and persistent rain.  And there was no couchsurfing available tonight.  Tomorrow is Sunday, so I don’t know what kind of luck I’m going to have.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, if I can piece it together before I fall asleep, I thought I’d list the Dates, Locations, and (first) Names of the people I’ve stayed with, during the streak:

12/30 – 1/3 – Miami Beach – Agata and Jamil

1/4 – 1/7 – Miami Beach – Brian

1/8 – 1/13 – Orlando – Alex

1/14 – 1/15 – Atlanta – Jarrett

1/16 – 1/18 – Atlanta – Kimbi and Karl

1/19 – 1/24 – Atlanta – Ehsan

1/25 – 2/2 – Asheville – Patrick and Johanna

2/3 -2/4 – Charlotte – Robert and Sassha

2/5 – Charlotte – Jason

2/6 – 2/7 – Charlotte – Robert and Sassha

2/8 – 2/16 – Little Switzerland (NC) – Susan

2/17 – Eli’s car, passing through Nebraska – Eli

2/18 – 2/21 – Salt Lake City – Travis and Wendy

2/22 – San Francisco – Alana and Michael

2/23 – 2/27 – Los Angeles – James

2/28 – 3/1 – Mountain View – Brent

3/2 – 3/5 – Sacramento – Charlotte and Caleb

3/6 – 3/13 – Portland – Sarah

~ Fin ~

Growing up in NYC, I just sort of learned to assume that people would steal anything from me that they could.  And not without some reason.  Here?  People get up and walk away from their stuff all the time.  Many leave their houses and cars unlocked.  It took me four days before I stopped asking people to keep an eye on my stuff.  The wonderment in their eyes finally got through to me; they practically didn’t understand.  Was there something really nifty about my stuff they’d want to wait and watch for?

It’s nice.  This place, there are flaws, ugly flaws, but this comfort, this sense of safety, it’s nice.  I’m leaving it now.  I’m driving to Salt Lake City, tomorrow, with two cats from craigslist.  I’m in Utah to cover the Jazz/Hornets game on the 21st, before thumbing it down to LA.

I’m pretty excited; I’ve heard about Jazz fans for years, apparently as loud an arena as I’ll come across.  Looking forward to it.

He reminds me of what Bill James wrote about prime-of-career Pedro Martinez: there were guys who had better fastballs, better curveballs, better changeups, but no one threw such an assortment of top notch pitches, could throw them with such control, and from so many arm angles.  Now peak-of-career Pedro is the best pitcher ever, and Kobe is certainly not top ten all-time in basketball.  I may have been kidding when I wrote that Bryant’s abilities are closer to his father’s than Michael Jordan’s (yes, I was kidding) but the storyline of Kobe as Best Player on the Planet garbage annoys me.  Sure, he’s a Hall of Famer, but I can think of three players who are certainly better than Kobe: LeBron, Duncan, and Chris Paul.  It’s quite something to be the fourth best player in the NBA, but he’s not the best, and in an article about careful thinking, I wish Lewis would consider his big statements more carefully.

Billy Beane’s thinking and process of deliberation might be the same, but valuations are often conditional, and they change all the time.  Lewis would have you believe that success is all to be found by signing high OBP players at the expense of anything else.  The Athletics, rather, look not just for the most significant ways of valuating players, but (having relatively limited resources) the best deals available—undervalued players.  I haven’t paid attention in a few years, but last time I checked, Oakland was acquiring cheap, excellent defenders, and drafting high school pitchers.

Lewis wrote this Times article about analytical thinking in basketball, centered around Shane Battier, one of my favorite players, ever—I have always maintain that the Rockets got the better of the deal, acquiring him for (essentially) Rudy Gay.  And at one point he discusses the plus/minus stats that annoy me so much—which I go into here, and here.  One thing that’s very interesting to me, quoted below, is the talk on +/- stats.  Lewis gracefully calls the raw numbers “hardly perfect”, but I think it’s more accurate to say “utterly useless, absent more data to provide context.”  Daryl Morey says they can do that, isolating a player’s value by using +/-, adjusted in certain ways.  Cool:

“One well-known statistic the Rockets’ front office pays attention to is plus-minus, which simply measures what happens to the score when any given player is on the court. In its crude form, plus-minus is hardly perfect: a player who finds himself on the same team with the world’s four best basketball players, and who plays only when they do, will have a plus-minus that looks pretty good, even if it says little about his play. Morey says that he and his staff can adjust for these potential distortions — though he is coy about how they do it — and render plus-minus a useful measure of a player’s effect on a basketball game. A good player might be a plus 3 — that is, his team averages 3 points more per game than its opponent when he is on the floor. In his best season, the superstar point guard Steve Nash was a plus 14.5. At the time of the Lakers game, Battier was a plus 10, which put him in the company of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett, both perennial All-Stars. For his career he’s a plus 6. “Plus 6 is enormous,” Morey says. “It’s the difference between 41 wins and 60 wins.” He names a few other players who were a plus 6 last season: Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady.”

I can understand them “being coy about how they do it” but it’s annoying for outsiders like me, especially those who don’t have the stats chops or data (like me) to dig out answers, by themselves.  Their methods are “black box” by intent, rather than Hollinger’s condescending tendency (paraphrased) “the way I put this together is complicated, so I’ll just give you my results, not my methods.”  But either way, it just leaves me with the choice of accepting that their valuations or not accepting them.  Hollinger’s thinking is so blatantly flawed that his PER is easy to discard, but the Rocket’s valuations?  I don’t know, except that Morey seems to have a better idea of what he’s doing, and my feeling there is partially influenced by his credentials, academic and professional.  But I don’t know, and I don’t like accepting things as given without understanding them.

The real problem is that basketball just doesn’t seem to have the massive stats community that helped push the sabermetric movement, in baseball.  Yes, Bill James started it, and Rob Neyer and Michael Lewis re-broadcast that thinking to a much wider audience, but I think it’s the stats community outside baseball and popular media that finally cemented it’s place in baseball, in part by making it an open discussion for anyone to see.

Anyway, I don’t have a strong opinion yet, as I haven’t seen him play this season.  I’m going to try to get a Miami game into my schedule on the East Coast.  I love watching Wade, of course, and I really want a look at Michael Beasley, who seems a lot more impressive to me than he does to a lot of other people.  I’ll get back to that in a sec.

As I’ve previously written, I’m a big fan of O’Neal, not just for the play, but because of the way he backed up the prep-to-pro kids, when almost no one else did.  Barring high schoolers going directly to the NBA was terribly wrong, violated their rights to work, and O’Neal said just that in various interviews the NBA and Players Association colluded to prevent high school basketball players from jumping directly to the NBA.

The issue is simple enough for me.  If teams are willing to draft players that means those players are ready to go pro ipso facto.  It’s age descrimination to prevent players from competing for employment in the NBA, and it’s done partially to protect owners’ investments.  High school players may take a while to develop and owners don’t want to spend the players’ rookie-scale contracts developing them just in time to see them hit free agency when they ripen.  Tough sh*t.  Owner coddling has always pissed me off; condescendy nonsense about players getting an education in college pisses me off; holding high school players resposible for the NCAA’s deterioration is absurd.  And the most ludicrous argument that you still hear sometimes, “Sure, there’s Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, but what about all of those players who don’t succeed?  What about them?” Players who have gone directly from high school to the NBA have been phenomenally successful.

Consider: Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal, Tracy McGrady, Al Harrington, Rashard Lewis, Darius Miles, LeBron James, Josh Smith, Dwight Howard, Amare Stoudemire, J.R. Smith, Andrew Bynum,  Al Jefferson, Monta Ellis, Louis Williams, Amir Johnson, C.J. Miles, Kendrick Perkins, Shaun Livingston, Tyson Chandler, Travis Outlaw, Martell Webster, DeShawn Stevenson, Desagana Diop.  Are you kidding me?  25 out of 39 high school draftees, since 1995, are/were major contributors, according to my quick look judgement (which is impeccable).  These successful players include a plethora of Allstar-caliber players, a few perennial MVP candidates, a bunch of rotation players (some still young enough to make big strides), and Shaun Livingston and Miles, who were promising until severely injured.  Sure, Eddy Curry and Kwame Brown were huge busts.  Tough sh*t.  There are too many college players for me to calculate their success rate, but I’ll bet they don’t come close to matching the high schoolers’ 64% success rate.  Considering the upside you also find in high school players, there’s no question which group gives you favorable odds, on draft day.

Finally, what happens if a high school player gets injured in his mandated year away from the NBA?  It’s going to happen someday, and I hope the player/players sue the NBA and Players Association for a max contract.  The MLB has an Anti-Trust exemption.  The NBA doesn’t, and I look forward to the day they get rudely spanked, in court.

Look, I’m as big a fan of the game as you’ll find, but I’m not going to let my principles go to sh*t (after all, I have so few) because Leon Smith was nuts and Kevin McHale drafted an undersized high school point-guard who can’t pass, shoot, or defend.

There, I’ve said my piece, how’s your mother?

Elisha Mitchell had a bet on which mountain in North Carolina was the tallest.  Well, he went up there to prove it, and did.  But in the process, he took a header into a waterfall, banged himself up good, and never came out.  But at least he got a mountain named after him.  But he was dead.  But he got a mountain named after him.  But dead.

Anyway, we were two of the first people up on the new observation deck, perhaps the first not wearing dorky green outfits.  Two rangers were heading down from the peak as we were heading up, and Susan asked about the observation deck.  They said it hadn’t been opened to the public yet, but added that they were leaving for the day and wouldn’t be around to see what we did.  So…

I posted on craigslist last week, looking for a ride-share, and got a response yesterday.  A guy in Asheville, NC is heading to Montana and I’m going to ride with him as far as Salt Lake City.  He also found another guy on CL, so we’ll be splitting gas three ways.  That sounds A-OK to me.  Hitchhiking is a means to an end for me, not the end in itself.  And this will be a very quick trip, since we’ll be driving around the clock.  And once I get to Salt Lake City, I will hitchhike south west, in longjohns, I imagine.

I won’t be stopping in Salt Lake City to cover the Jazz this time around, because they definitely will get my full attention for a week.  I’m looking to be in SLC to see them in the playoffs.  And yes, they will be in the playoffs.

I might see if I could just catch a game though.

It’s a fairly simple issue.  Ride-sharing is vastly more comfortable and vastly more expensive.  I needn’t really go into detail about the discomforts of hitchhiking; it’s about what you can imagine, without elaborate drama.  It will entail standing on the side of the road for many hours trying to get rides, never knowing when I’ll get a ride, subject to nightfall and inclement weather.  It’s a pain in the ass to do it 250 miles; just multiply that by ten and you get the idea of NC to LA.  That said, I must admit that though I only hitchhike because I don’t have a car, I have never hitchhiked long distances without getting great stories.  That’s worth something to me, not to be discounted.

On the other hand, I’m not aimless.  I want to arrive in Los Angeles no later than, maybe…February 20th?  [Actually, that would be sensational timing.  I've heard tell there are many, many beautiful women in Los Angeles, and there's no better of the year to meet single women than a week after Valentine's day.  And I have a friend or two out in LA who know people.  So that's something to consider.]  I’d like to get a good two or three days of good rest before the Clippers/Celtics game I’ve covering on the 25th.  How long will it take me to hitchhike to LA?  Dunno.

I’ve never attempted this long a trip, so I can’t begin to estimate how long it might take to go from NC to LA.  But I can probably get a rough idea of the minimum.

If I were the luckiest hitchhiker on earth and were to get ride after ride from westbound truckers, I could probably do…say, 30 hours in the passenger seat, with an absolutely implausible low of 5 hours total thumbing for rides, I’d need to leave (dawn of) the 19th to get there on 20th.  However, considering my hitchhiking luck so far, a more plausible low would be…say, 10 rides total, each with 3 hours of thumbing, in-between, so 30 hours of waiting, three naps at truckstops, another…10 hours there, so 40 hours, plus 35 hours on the road itself, call it three days+, as a safe absolute low estimate.  So really, the 17th is the absolute latest I would want to leave.  Being conservative then, if Little Switzerland is breathtakingly beautiful and I’m breathtakingly productive, I spend a max of a week there, leave on the 15th, more likely the 13th.  After all, there’s the post-Valentine’s day thing.  Nothing wrong with spending a few extra days in LA doing research on the basketball fan culture of single (or unhappily coupled) 20-something or 30-something actresses.

Oh, and briefly, I’ve more or less talked myself out of ridesharing.  Some website calculations say a 2008 Honda Civic (the most efficient non-hybrid car I’m aware of, unless the 2009 model perhaps?) does the trip for an estimated cost of $160 in gas.  I put in a 2008 Ford Explorer as an example on the other end (it’s not the worst, but it’s lousy) and it would cost around $260 for the trip.  So the lowest range of expected gas expenditures would be $80 to $130?  That sucks.  I’m really poor and can live on $100 for a good while.  Nah, I’ll thumb it.

OK, I’m set.

- Michael Mandlin

My next game is the Clippers/Celtics, on February 25th, in Los Angeles.  My plan is to stay in Little Switzerland for a few days, doing some writing work, filling in some blanks on this blog.  I have things to add, from Oklahoma City to Atlanta, and I’d like to make sure the blog is entirely up to date before heading out west.  During my time in Little Switzerland, I’ll post on ride-share boards, couchsurfing, craigslist, maybe some other I might find online.  I’m not sure whether I’ll wait for rides.  That is, if someone on craigslist is going all the way to LA, but four days after I want to leave, to I go?  It might take me three or four days, or more, to hitchhike out there.  But I don’t like waiting, period.  It’s a big part of why I don’t like taking public transportation.  You’re just sitting/standing there, waiting to be some place, traveling slowly, stopping, stopping, stopping at other bus/train stops along the way.  Sure, sometimes I can read, but sometimes being on public transportation makes me so restless I can’t read.  For any reasonable distance, when I have the time, and am not carrying a 50 lbs pack, I like to walk.  3 miles, 6 miles, 8 miles, whatever.  I have legs; I walk.  It helps me think, helps me write.  But that’s neither here nor there…

I’m a little concerned about the hitchhiking today.  The exit I need off I – 40 to get to Little Switzerland is on the way to Asheville, and that’s the only major attraction on my trip.  Traffic density is, rather obviously, an important part of hitchhiking; the greater number of cars that pass me, the more likely I am to get a ride. If you take a look on google maps for Charlotte (on I – 85) out to Little Switzerland, you’ll notice a good deal of highway changing, a lot of small cities and towns.  That means I’ll quite possibly need a number of rides to go where I’m going, especially as people frequently go to Asheville via another route, well out of my way.  Furthermore, it’s Saturday, cutting traffic density, and, worst of all, I’m starting late, very late.  It’s 12:51 PM and I should have left 5 hours ago.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get to sleep until very late and then I (probably foolishly) am waiting for a ride from my couchsurfing hosts to get to a good entry ramp to I – 85.  And it’s winter, get’s dark early.  Basically, today’s hitchhiking trip entails almost everything I try to avoid.  I like to get out on the road before 8 AM (latest) get on a major and keep to major, heavily trafficked, highways.  And if I can I hitchhike on weekdays, to try and catch truckers.  But what are you going to do?  This is my plan.

I’m five minutes from calling it off and starting tomorrow, dawn.  I can spend the rest of the day getting lots of work done here, writing up last night’s game…ummmmmmmmmm, yeah.  Yeah, I’m going to wait until tomorrow.  See, just blogging the situation out helped me figure things out.  I’ll leave it up as is, maybe give you a sense of considerations you make when hitchhiking.  OK, off to the library.

- Michael Mandlin