Moving from college football transgressions to college basketball transgressions, Dana O'Neil was at the Peach Jam summer tournament last week, and interviewed twenty coaches off the record about the state of basketball recruiting. I don't know if Roy Williams was among them – there are a couple of quotes that sound like him, but they're also amongst the most anodyne – but no matter who's saying them, there are some interesting ones. First:

"Here's what I think happens a lot -- a team loses a kid to someone else and all of a sudden that someone else is cheating. Every time North Carolina loses a kid, someone else is cheating. It's like there's so much arrogance with them; they can't believe someone would rather go somewhere else, so the other team has to be cheating.''    

That's from a coach who argues that recruiting isn't a cesspool, but everyone thinks they are because UNC whines a lot. I don't know if he means the staff – I've never heard any complaints like that – or the fans, who don't complain any more than any other fans, or the team is just a hypothetical inserted to hide the coach's identity, but someone is very, very, bitter. And I don't think it's Roy Williams.

 Of the 20 coaches surveyed, 11 said the Big Ten was the cleanest in the country. Three others cited the land where time stood still, also known as the scholarship-less Ivy League. (Although even the Ancient Eight earned one disparaging nod: "The Ivy League,'' one coach said before pausing to add, "I mean the Ivy League a couple of years ago, before all of that stuff at Harvard.")   

Former Duke star Tommy Amaker has been the coach at Harvard since 2007. To quote Wikipedia, "Allegations of possible improper recruiting practices at Harvard arose after an article in The New York Times in March 2008, but after an investigation the Ivy League concluded that no violations of NCAA or Ivy League rules occurred, clearing Amaker and his staff."

All twenty coaches also claimed to have lost a recruit because they failed to provide a job for a family member or coach, which the NCAA will have to crack down on sooner than later. And then there are these ways for agents to funnel players money, which look likely to surface in the current football investigations:

• Loans or lines of credit: "Say you've got a top-10 kid but you don't have a lot of money,'' one coach explained. "The agent will get a line of credit through his financial adviser for you in your name. When your kid goes pro, you pay it back.''
• Prepaid debit cards: Slightly different than a loan, these allow an agent to offer a constant stream of cash by giving a prospect or a prospect's family member a card with a cash value that can be constantly stuffed with more money, not unlike an actual bank account. The kicker: As of now, the NCAA has no way of tracking the transaction.

"That's the latest one I've heard,'' said one coach.

The money really is seeping in from all over the place, it seems.

I'll get back to the two depressing stories hovering over UNC in a moment, but I'd like to take a brief detour. Hua Hsu has an interesting piece over on Ta-Nehisi Coates' site about, well, a lot of things that don't necessarily mesh together. But among those things are Michael Jordan's comments about LeBron James, which spins off into this:

Or maybe, in the case of LeBron James and his decision to join his friends on the Miami Heat, the rules of friendship and the logic of business have become interchangeable. James' decision has earned him a torrent of abuse, and yesterday, no less than Michael Jordan dismissed these "kids" by offering that he was more interested in beating his rivals than joining with them. "But that's ... things are different," Jordan remarked. "I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys." Things are, indeed, different nowadays. Players rarely try and strangle each other, most of them become friends years before entering the professional ranks, and many of them studied Jordan not only for his on-court success but the acumen of his marketing team, as well.

[...]

LeBron's entire persona rests on being merely likable: the entire reason for his television special was to have his decision be understood, to come across as someone who had struggled through all of this as any of us might have. What he has done is become unlikeable. To be hated? It takes a certain temperament—a certain luxury, too—to court hatred, to not give a fuck what anyone thinks. And LeBron doesn't have it.

This struck me as odd at first, as one of the big criticisms attached to Jordan in his prime was his corporate-ness. It most famously came to the front in his possibly apocryphal quote about not supporting Harvey Gantt in his election against Jesse Helms, saying "Republicans buy sneakers too." The rap was, he was always too concerned with being liked to take a public stand for anything.

Of course, there's also the grief Jordan got at his most recent high-profile appearance – his Hall of Fame acceptance speech last fall. There, he was the competitive, vindictive, unlikeable player everyone is now saying LeBron James should be... and Jordan was pilloried for it. Basketball fandom wants, apparently, their heroes to walk a fine line. They have to ant to go it alone like Jordan, with a competitive fire that produces greatness, but to leave that same fire in the 94' by 50' rectangle. Or the political arena. Or wherever it suits the fan.

I'm sorry, but I can't begrudge LeBron for wanting teammates he enjoys playing with, or a change of scenery, or whatever motivated him to pack his bags. I think psychoanalyzing him based on this decision, or the stupid dog-and-pony show that announced it, and projecting it onto his chances of bringing home a champion and his place in history is a mug's game. The popular opinion of James will have changed within a season, depending on his performance (outside of Cleveland, at least) and any failure to win a title will not be from a lack of competitive spirit. And if he succeeds, there will still be no shortage of perceived flaws to focus on when summer comes.

So the NCAA yesterday ended the suspense of how the new tournament bracket will look, by releasing a bracket... that you can't actually draw. Also, it's a bad idea.

I really thought that as silly as the expansion to sixty-eight teams was, the NCAA would try to actually make it work. Instead we get this. There are now two 16/17 games like the current Tuesday game in Dayton, to be played by the four worst automatic qualifiers. No surprise there. The other two games making up the "First Four" – trademark almost certainly pending on that little gem, with t-shirts available in the lobby – are to be played among the last four teams in. The winners of those two will be slotted in wherever, as a twelfth, eleventh, or tenth seed typically. Because that's what the tournament really needs, a way to make those thrilling first-round upsets a little less likely.

Basically, the Solomon approach taken here is just going to annoy everyone. Fans on the automatic qualifiers will see it as a second team being shoved off the stage before the tournament gets underway. On the other hand, fans of taking in more mid-level teams will be annoyed that the NCAA is basically punting on those last four in/first four out they currently decide between, letting them wear each other out before being sacrificed to their "second round" opponents. And make no mistake, the NCAA isn't even going through the motions of pretending these games count. They're being aired on Ted Turner's affront to capitalization that is "truTV." Unfamiliar with the station? It used to be called CourtTV, and on the list of Turner properties suitable for airing basketball, it falls somewhere between the ones that air cartoons and the one showing Nancy Grace. 

Every move since the announcement of a 68-team tournament has been that of a group scrambling to make as little waves as possible. The games are now Tuesday/Wednesday games, abandoning the nightmare scenarios of a full second week Greg Shaheen was babbling about back in April. Nothing changes, except three more teams get a little tournament scratch. Move along here, nothing to see.

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MIAMI - JULY 09: LeBron James #6 of the Miami Heat is introduced during a welcome party at American Airlines Arena on July 9 2010 in Miami Florida.

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There's been a lot of silly commentary in the wake of the LeBron James Comedy Hour and Cleveland Heartbreak since last night. Most of it has been faux outrage for his choice of taking an hour to make the announcement and the cruel way he went door-to-door all across the country and tied people to their chairs and stealing their remote controls, forcing them to watch. That, or how his choice of playing with other talented folks reveals some deep character flaw that puts him beneath Jordan and Bryant, who won hundreds of championships while playing with teams of fifth graders or something. As someone who didn't catch ESPN's coverage and doesn't care for the state of Ohio, I was more than willing to just ignore the whole thing.

The dumbest argument, however, is that taxes played a role in his decision. I've seen this a lot, and it mainly shows an ignorance in the way states charge taxes. The observation, of course, is that Florida, designed as it is to cater solely to the retirement set, charges no income tax, while Ohio's highest rate is 5.93%. OMG! He's getting a windfall!

Except he's not. The New York Times comes the closest to explaining this, but as someone who's done the tax-in-multiple-states thing, I can elaborate. Most states charge tax on money earned within their borders, so every state an NBA team hits, the players have to pay taxes in that state. That's 22 states and one Canadian province; accountants love athletes. I'm not about to crank through 30 NBA schedules to figure everyone's effective tax rate, but I'm willing to put together a basic model. 

The chart below has the top tax rate for each state (LeBron's salary should be big enough to ignore progressive tax rates) and what the effective rate would be. The model taxes 42 of the 82 games at the home state rate, and the other 40 at the average rate for the remaining 29 teams. Why 42 and 40, and not 41? Well, there's the strange case of Washington, D.C..

Unlike the other states, D.C. is prohibited by federal law from taxing residents from other states. That's what happens when you don't have Congressional representation and Maryland and Virginia really don't want to lose the tax money that goes to the folks who commute into the district. So games against the Wizards are taxed at the home team's rates, presumably. Also, Wizards' players will be taxed wherever the live, hence Maryland and Virginia making the chart.

Once the numbers have been run, the rates aren't that different, unless you're stranded in Toronto. (Now Chris Bosh, he's making out like a bandit.) Now this doesn't factor in local rates, or whether they're split by time spent in the state versus games played. Although in the latter case, assuming James keeps a house in Ohio where he's always left, the state will get their tax money there. The whole concept is silly. James hit Florida for a number of reasons, from money to more enjoyable work to championships. Taxes didn't make the list.

Here's an interesting postscript to the previous post. While looking up Cedric Simmons for yesterday's post, I worked my way over to David Noel's Wikipedia page, where I learned that the season following the one chronicled in this book found Noel as the import for the aforementioned Gin-Kings in the Phillipines. With Pacific Rims under my belt, I'm now aware of just how difficult it is for an import to succeed in this country. With only one import per team, the expectations are immense and more often than not they're sent packing within a week. Noel took the Gin-Kings to the Finals, as well as put on this display in the All-Star game:

That was from the local vs. import dunk championship, a two round dunk-off between Noel and the Filipino dunk champion, Gabe Norwood. Norwood played college basketball in the states for, of all schools, the George Mason team that ended Noel's college career. You cannot make these things up. The whole thing is here.

And again, read Pacific Rims. You'll thank me for it.

One of the downsides of blogging all official-like for SB Nation is that I get quite a few press releases e-mailed to me. PR-types just love to send anything tangentially sports-related to me and everyone else whose e-mail addresses they can get their hands on. Most of it is thoroughly ignorable, and when someone offered to send me a book on basketball in the Philippines, of all places, I was all ready to delete it unread. The book's complete title didn't help, as it bears the unwieldily name Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Phillippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball. Heck, I drifted off halfway through reading that sentence.

I didn't delete that e-mail on first read, though. And a day or two later, I was looking at a couple of weeks devoid of reading material, so I responded and gave the PR folks' and address to send a copy to. You never know, after all. Filipino basketball might be diverting enough to pass a couple of hours.

I was wrong; this book was absolutely fascinating. The author is a guy any Carolina basketball fan would recognize, despite absolutely no connection to Chapel Hill. A kid born into and fully stepped in the game of basketball, one who dribbled since he could walk. The difference is, Rafe Bartholomew somehow convinced the Fulbright program to send him from New York City to the other side of the globe, because of a chapter he read in an Alexander Wolff book a decade earlier. Come hell or high water, he was going to experience Filipino basketball.

The Philippines is apparently the only country outside of the United States that doesn't put soccer at the top of their pantheon of sports. No, this country of people who rarely crack six feet instead have a basketball court on every flat surface, no matter how crude. Their professional league runs two seasons a year (it used to be three), only one of which allows players from outside of the country – one per team, and no taller than 6'6". And how those rules have been tweaked and twisted over time is a story onto itself. Bartholomew's book is framed around one such season, as he is given total access to the Alaska Aces. The Alaska in this case refers to the sponsoring Alaska Milk Corporation, and the team faces off against such opponents as the Talk N' Text Phone Pals and the Barangay Ginebra Gin-Kings. (Yes, it's like a Neal Stephenson book come to life.)  Alaska is the PBA equivalent of the Chicago Bulls, a force in the '90s now trying to find their way back to a championship title after a long absence, and they've put together a good team around import Rosell Ellis and mercurial, slightly-unhinged native guard Willie Miller. 

Interspersed between Barthlomew's courtside tale of the Aces season is, well, the rest of the Philippines. He hits the history of the sport and how it came to dominate the lives of a people, his own misadventures on the court in a small semipro tournament that's the battleground for a feud between two resort owners, the politicians who came out of hoops, the college game and the Duke-UNC rivalry of the country, and tiny courts built on the top of mountains. The man's love for the game and exuberance for  country that's devoted to it exudes from every page, and the result is a book that's a great read throughout. I'm not sure I'd ever want to visit a Filipino basketball game – the descriptions of the crowds strikes fear in my heart – but I feel better knowing that they exist, that there's an entire country that feels the same way I do about a sport. This is the best sports book I've read in at least a couple of years; I can't recommend it enough.

And if you come back to read the next post, I'll explain what this all has to do with David Noel.

If you've been following my Twitter feed – and God help you if you are – you're aware I spent the last week in South Bend for work. Which means I saw the most important sports events of the week from an on-campus bar; Landon Donovan's injury time goal against Algeria at lunch, John Isner collapsing in relief after winning the 188th game of a match at lunch the net day, and Ed Davis's selection by the Toronto Raptors one evening when we were holed up as tornados menaced the area. Also, I got to see where they store Lou Holtz in the offseason, lacquered up to keep him from spoiling:

But now that I've puled myself away from the campus bar (which had a surprisingly good beer selection, but awful mixed drinks), I can devote a little more time to Ed Davis. Probably the most perceptive thing I read about him pre-draft was this Basketball Prospectus article that equated every draftee with another pro of the last ten years. Davis was paired with... Cedric Simmons, the N.C. State power forward who bumped around the league for three seasons, playing in 32 games over the last two. I know Davis has a more optimistic take on how things will turn out, but it was rare last season to see him truly play with a competitive fire, and I don't know how he'll do in the more unstructured NBA. Especially on a team like Toronto, who isn't expected to be all that successful to begin with.

As for James McAdoo, the 2011 recruit who flirted with coming to Chapel Hill before sensibly deciding to play his senior year of high school, I can't say I'm disappointed. I didn't write anything about it when the rumor was going around in part because I had nothing to add ("Here's a rumor. Is it true? I dunno. Is it a good thing? I dunno." Blogging gold!) but mostly because it seemed wrong to insert my opinions into a seventeen year-old's life choices. McAdoo will only be a better player after his senior season, and Carolina will do just fine next season with who they have. There's no reason to be constantly rushing things.

Case in point, analysis of the 2011 NBA Draft. Not quite as dumb as Bracketology in April, but only just. The most commonly used phrase in Parrish's ten profiles – even he can't come up with anything to write about the other twenty – is "right from the start." Why? Because he's profiling eight college freshmen. That he did it three days after writing a column on the perils of labeling high school stars is just proof he thinks irony is something thats kind of like an iron. Look, there's an entire season of basketball at a level none of these guys have ever played at between now and the next draft, but why focus on that? No, column inches don't fill themselves, after all. Sportswriters need to stop criticizing players for looking ahead and leaving school early, becuase they do the exact same thing. They just do it for a lot less cash.

In the midst of an otherwise decent article on why this round of conference reshuffling is different from the last couple times around, Michael Rosenberg wanders of track with a statement that is technically true but wholly irrelevant:

And since this is all being done for TV money, it is all about football. It is telling that in the last two decades, no league went after Kansas, Kentucky, Duke or North Carolina. College basketball, a national obsession every March, is not even part of this discussion. And if the school presidents aren't giving a thought to basketball, you can be sure they don't care a bit about the various soccer players, lacrosse players, sprinters and swimmers who will be going pro in something other than sports.    

Sure, conference expansion is – and always has been – solely about football, but the above example isn't realy proof of that. UNC and Duke are only geographically situated to be in one other conference, the SEC, which they snub academically and basically abandoned to start the ACC in the fifties to begin with. You won't see that happening. Kentucky is in the SEC, the conference with the biggest pot of money, and often dominates the conference in their preferred sport. They'd never leave for browner pastures, either. Only Kansas being conferenceless is a testament to basketball's unimportance at this stage, and even that's being overblown. Unlike football, a basketball team can have quite a bit of success while not being in a top-flight conference, and if the thought of seeing the Jayhawks in a February bracket buster seems strange, fans can adjust.

I wonder, though, if the rapid changes this time around could possibly lead to the decoupling of football from the conference system all together. It's not unprecedented. College hockey alignments bear no relation to the typical BCS conferences, and the Big East is already a completely different conference on the gridiron than anywhere else. If they're raided again, they could instead add more basketball teams, and just allow the football programs to be independent. It's not likely – unlike hockey, football is the primary revenue generator in college athletics – but a bifurcated system where only three or four superconferences exist in football, and the rest of college athletics exist in a more suitable eight to ten team conferences, might be a more reasonable way of doing things. After all, do you think those UCLA water polo teams have the cash to travel to Texas a couple of times a year?