NBA

By TERRY LYONS

BOSTON – The organization dates back to 1784 and was originally known as the Society of St. Andrew’s Golfers. By 1834, King William IV recognized the club as Royal and Ancient and the name was changed to the Royal Society of St. Andrew’s Golfers and what is now known as The Old Course was proclaimed the Home of Golf.

In 1897, the Society first recorded the rules of golf and the sport was soon to become popular throughout the world. Anyone who calls themselves avid golfers marvels at the thought of playing a round at what is now known as The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.

The Royal moniker was bestowed upon golf clubs the world over. From Scotland to England to Wales to Ireland to Malta to South Africa to Australia and Hong Kong. This weekend The Open is being contested for fifteenth time at Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, England. In 2021, it has been splendid just as it was in 1894 when the golf club hosted its first Open.

As the game became more and more popular, the rules were solidified and – unlike most other sports – they are self-regulated. In golf, you keep your own score. You honor the game by not improving your lie of the ball. You only utilize 14 different golf clubs packed in your bag on any given round. The rules apply to golfers of all abilities and the respect given to the rules by golfers is much the same as their respect for the game itself.

In many other sports, competitors often try to cheat the system. In Baseball, it is not uncommon to attempt to “steal” signs (codes from pitchers/catchers or from the dugout/Manager to players). In Basketball, a quick travel with the ball, an illegal screen, a flop to draw an offensive foul is almost coming practice. In Football, a little extra surveillance of your opponent, or taking some air out of the ball brought scandals sized to rival Watergate. Athletes and organizations bend the rules in many ways, sometimes in any way they can. They hope not to get caught – by the referees, the league or the organizing body.

What about Golf?

In Golf – how dare you – as the respect of the game and its rules carries on to higher ground, as well. There is no other sport where sportsmanship is more highly regarded. As golfers, especially weekend hackers, we are really competing against ourselves with hopes of setting personal records, rather than competing in a match against the others in our foursome.

Picture a single golfer joining a threesome of friends on a late afternoon round at a public course. Immediately, the single has three cohorts helping (him/her) find an errant tee shot or high-fiving a great hole-out from a sand trap. The single golfer respects the space and lie of his newfound partners’ putting line. He is quiet and motionless on and around the tee until it is his turn. Honors go to the golfer who scored the best on the prior hole.

Golfers are taught the written and un-written rules in their first few rounds of their golfing lives. The sport of golf is a sport for your entire life and respect of the game is paramount.

Then along come Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka.

The two professionals – both among the very best the game has ever seen – have been feuding like school children out on the playground at recess. They bicker verbally, non-verbally and even electronically via Twitter. They’ve been bickering since 2019 when one slighted the other on “slow play” and the feud festered from that point onward.

This week, with the British media fueling the theatrics of such a “juicy” story, the questioning about Ryder Cup pairings of the two paved a landing strip for their duel to last all the way to Whistling Straits (September 24-26 in Wisconsin). It’s all become such foolishness – eye-rolling and all.

This week, some predicted it was all “made for tv” and the two would hold a grudge match – on pay-per-view, of course. Others fuel and wallow in the gossip like girls at an Eastside NYC private school.

Some of us have simply had it and urge the PGA, the R&A, the PGA of America (who oversee the Ryder Cup) to lock the two golfers in a room and call for them to cut it out – once and for all – as they are ruining the one sport we could all count on to abide by rules and decorum.

HERE NOW, THE NOTES: Whether you are a student of Greek Mythologyat the University of Texas – San Antonio, Seton Hall, Harvard, or just an NBA fan, the main focus of study in the past month or two has been a total analysis of the Greek god of Milwaukee, by way of Athens. The study of Giannis Sina Ugo Antetokounmpo … also admirably known as “The Greek Freak.”

An MVP-level player in the National Basketball Association, Antetokounmpo has led his Milwaukee Bucks team to the NBA Finals, a difficult task for any god of the hoop. Antetokounmpo, however, has now taken it to another level.

As the Bucks compete against the Suns of Phoenicia, a mighty group themselves, Antetokounmpo went all Freudian on us. He did so, in of all places, the NBA Finals media interview room where he dazzled all with his interpretations and his own philosophy on Ego & Pride.

In a setting common to The Finals, media inquiries delved into Antetokounmpo’s upbringing, family life, his practice habits, his state of mind, the pressures of the game at such a high level, and now, with even higher stakes, the god of a Great Place on a Great Lake had a way of explaining how he absorbs and synthesizes the pressure.

“Obviously, as I said, the ball gets heavy. But if you are only thinking about winning and you don’t think about what’s going to happen next, it can get heavy,” he explained. “Because you want to win so bad, you know?

“So it can get heavy. But if you go back and think about the specific three minutes of Game 2, Game 4, and it could go either way, now the environment kind of gets heavy. But at that specific moment, I wasn’t thinking about what’s going to happen at the end of the game. I was thinking about that specific play. How can I set a good screen for Khris (Middleton), how can I block a shot, how can I rebound the ball, how can I run, how can I get the easy layup, what can I do to help the team win?

“So my mind is so occupied by that that I don’t think about the pressure, all that.”

Certainly Antetokounmpo was not the first NBA player to philosophize on the methods to cope with pressure. Philadelphian philosopher Julius “Vocabularius” Erving was a master at post game analysis. But Antetokounmpo was going deeper.

At age 26, who was teaching him these coping mechanisms that years of study and advanced degrees in Psychology might not produce?

“I think I would say life,” he thought. “Usually, from my experience, when I think about – Oh, yeah, I did this, I’m so great, I had 30 (points), I had 25-10-10, whatever the case might be – you’re going to think about that.

“Usually the next day you’re going to suck, you know,” he said smiling? “Simple as that. The next few days you’re going to be terrible. I figured out a mindset to have that when you focus on the past, that’s your ego.

“I did this. We were able to beat this team 4-0. I did this in the past. I won that in the past.

“When I focus on the future, it’s my pride,” he noted. “Yeah, next game, Game 5, I do this and this and this. I’m going to dominate. That’s your pridetalking. It doesn’t happen.

“You’re right here. I kind of try to focus on the moment, in the present.

“That’s humility. That’s being humble. That’s not setting no expectation.

“That’s going out there, enjoying the game, competing at a high level. I think I’ve had people throughout my life that helped me with that. But that is a skill that I’ve tried to, like, kind of — how do you say – perfect it.

How can he continue to win while spreading and sharing such deep knowledge?

“I think it starts from the environment, the leaders, the message that they push back to the team, to everybody,” said Antetokounmpo. “But we’ve been down before. When we were down before, we didn’t act like it was the end of the world. We were like, Okay, we know what the deal is.

“We’re going to try to go and execute. We weren’t worrying about going and trying to win two games in a row. We didn’t worry about that. We’re going to try to go back and execute. Try to put ourselves in a position to win. Now, if it went our way, we’re extremely happy, but it could go either way. It could go the other way and we’d be back home right now and nobody would be talking about us. But I feel like as a team we’re really good at turning the page — the next one.

“Okay, on this page – this, this, this, this – is what we got to do in order for us to be in a position to have a chance to win games down the road. I think the team has a great mindset in that. Hopefully we are going to keep doing it moving forward.”

Which takes us right back to Antetokounmpo’s birthplace – Athens and the Greek goddess of Athena – the goddess known for knowledge, a calm temperament and a huge understanding of others.

TESTING: The NBA and its players (and the WNBA, too) have managed the COVID-19 health crisis about as well as any organization on the planet – sports, business or other. As we’re going to post this Saturday evening, Milwaukee Bucks forward Thanasis Antetokounmpo entered the NBA Health and Safety Protocol and missed/will miss (depending on when you are reading this) Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night. Antetokounmpo, the older brother of two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, was not listed on the league’s early afternoon injury report but was noted Saturday evening at 5:30pm.

Recent break-outs of COVID-19 – largely due to a delta variant to the original virus – hit Major League Baseball hard, causing the cancellation of a post All-Star break Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees game at The Stadium. All-Star Aaron Judge was among six Yankees players sidelined under the MLB protocols for COVID+ testing and a number of their teammates have been battling nagging injuries. Of note, 1B Luke Voit returned to the MLB injured list.

Crosstown from The Bronx to Flushing, Queens and the New York Mets are tending to pitching ace and Cy Young favorite Jacob deGrom and his right forearm tightness. deGrom will miss his planned start Monday.

DIAMOND DUST-UPS: After the MLB All-Star break, Jarren Duran was selected to the Boston Red Sox major league roster from Triple-A Worcester. Duran is likely to be the fifth player to make his MLB debut this season with the Red Sox (Bazardo, Sawamura, Whitlock, Wong). But, if he plays in the weekend series, he’ll have one other distinction. The last Red Sox position player to make his MLB debut at Yankee Stadium was the great Mookie Betts (6/29/14). … The Red Sox earned their fourth shutout win of the season Friday night and their first against the Yankees since June of 2018.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION in ANAHEIM: LA Angels second baseman David Fletcher notched two hits and extended his league-leading hitting streak to 25 games. He’s now tied with the great Rod Carew for the second-longest in franchise history. The Angels play the Mariners (July 17) at 9:07pm (EDT). Keep an eye on that boxscore.

FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER DEFICTS: (With an emphasis on the higher) – The Tokyo Olympics will cost an estimated $28 billion (3 trillion yen), say media outlets Nikkei and Asahi, far exceeding the organizing committee’s claims. The decision to ban spectators will cost nearly $1 billion in ticket revenue. Ouch.

Looking back, the International Olympic Committee granted the USA broadcast rights across all media platforms, including free-to-air television, subscription television, internet and mobile to NBC Universal (call it Comcast, too). The agreement runs from 2021 to 2032 and it’s valued at $7.65 billion, plus an additional $100 million bonus to be used for promotion of Olympic ideals.

JAPAN HOOPS to COMPETE in TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES: There will be a number of NBA players dotting the rosters of most men’s Olympic team rosters when the basketball tournament tips off July 25th. Japan-Forward previews the Olympians from Japan and there’s a few names you’ll recognize, notably NBA forwards Rui Hachimura (Washington Wizards) and Yuta Watanabe (Toronto Raptors). Japan’s men’s national basketball team last competed in the Olympic Games in 1976 in Montreal.