I haven’t done the research to find out when the last time 7 games separated one conference’s top 10 teams, all with a winning record and playing good basketball this late in the season. It hasn’t happened in the 8 years I have owned the Mavs.

This year is shaping up to be a crazy one. A 5 or 6 game losing streak and any of the 4 teams who have had the best record in the west over the past month could find themselves out of the playoffs.

This scenario is not lost on players or fans. The feel in arenas lately have been very playoff like. You can feel the energy as fans know what is at stake. Players are looking at the standings and paying far closer attention to game by game results of division and conference teams. They know what is at stake with every game.

This season, at least in the Western Conference, no one is going to ask the question of whether the regular season is important. For the remainder of this season, EVERY game is important. Every team will have their up and down streaks simply because its going to be hard to play playoff quality basketball for 40 games. Back to back games in the West are going to be brutal.

The playoffs to make the playoffs has started and it doesn’t look like any team will get a breather between now and when their season ends.

That will make this the Best NBA Season Ever !

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Since the conversation on this topic was interesting, I thought it would be appropriate to add some more information and answer where I stand on the question. After all, I asked the question in my previous blog post, I didn’t answer it.

First , my opening comments as Will and I sat down for the interview. (these come courtesy of Will in an email to me about this subject)

>> WL: Okay. I want to start off actually, this is going to be
>> just a big Q&A, pretty much straight up and everything. So I want to
>> start …
>> MC: This is just for GQ now.
>> WL: Just for GQ, not for Deadspin. No Deadspin stuff, and no
>> … yeah, I have the journalist hat on. And I have the journalist
>> hat on at Deadspin, too, but anyway, let’s … another debate for
>> another time.
>> MC: We won’t call that journalism.
>> WL: Another debate for another time.

So i made it clear that I wanted no association with his blog at all.

Does his writing a piece about me with a link back to the very item that he knew I wanted nothing to do with constitute a lack of ethics ? I think so. It certainly is a major fuck you.

Does making the following comment “Cuban was not amused and spent most of the interview accusing Deadspin of being the Inside Edition of sports. So that was fun.) ” diminish the integrity of the interview itself ? Probably not, but to some readers of ValleyWag and GQ, it could. Unethical ? Probably not. Stupid business, definitely.

For the record, I certainly didnt spend most of the interview talking about his blog, but I certainly had fun at his expense from time to time and I never said it was off the record. Although , again, this was a GQ interview. Setup and arranged with the magazine with no consideration on my part as to who would do the piece until Will showed up.

Which leads to my conclusion about all of this.

Its my fault. I was stupid to think that the guy who runs Deadspin could stop being the guy who runs Deadspin. I should have asked for GQ to send someone else. Better yet, I should have stuck to my rules and only do interviews via email.

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A couple months ago I agreed to do an interview with a major national magazine that I enjoy and respect. I rarely do face to face interviews because I have significant trust issues with how an interview can be reflected in a story.

I try to stick exclusively to email for all my interviews. In this case I made an exception because I had developed a good relationship with the magazine.

The interview process was unexceptional. Meaning that it went well. The writer and I got along and I thought it was a fun interview to do.

The article came out last week and I liked it. No problems at all.

Then yesterday, the person who interviewed me, who is also a blogger, decided to blog about our interview. The blog ran on a site that he is associated with, but is not affiliated at all with the magazine the interview was for. He never asked, nor told me that our interview would be blogged about. While I respect the magazine, I am not a fan of the site he works for, or of its affiliated site that the blog ran on. A point I let him know. I would not have done the interview had I known he would blog about it for this site.

As it turns out, he did not clear the blog with the magazine either.

So he traveled on their dime to do an interview for their magazine and then used the interview to generate a blog for his site from a subject that was not expecting to be blogged about.

Ethical or not ?

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I ordered a MacBook Air site unseen. That’s a first for me.

As I write this I’m about to go workout and it dawns on me that I’m on my 3rd generation of Apple IPod. I started with the original, switched to a bigger version (to back up all my pics and show off my kids to my friends) and then for the holidays, got myself and wife an ITouch.

Goodbye Ipod. With the new $20 dollar software that I downloaded yesterday, my ITouch gives me music, pictures and now email, calendar and a very cool basic GPS system that leverages the WiFi available. Touchtyping is still impossible for me on it, so it wont ever replace my phone for texting or primary mobile email, but its definitely encroaching on its territory. Solve the keyboard problem for fat fingered typists and I might even buy an IPhone.

I like the ITouch enough that I just sent an email to the Mavs IT head to see how we fans with ITouchs (and Wifi devices like Nokia among others) could leverage WiFi in the American Airlines Center before , during and after Mavs games, HDNet Fights and other events…

After many PC years, I’ve crossed over. Me the fanboy.

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I ordered a MacBook Air site unseen. That’s a first for me.

As I write this I’m about to go workout and it dawns on me that I’m on my 3rd generation of Apple IPod. I started with the original, switched to a bigger version (to back up all my pics and show off my kids to my friends) and then for the holidays, got myself and wife an ITouch.

Goodbye Ipod. With the new $20 dollar software that I downloaded yesterday, my ITouch gives me music, pictures and now email, calendar and a very cool basic GPS system that leverages the WiFi available. Touchtyping is still impossible for me on it, so it wont ever replace my phone for texting or primary mobile email, but its definitely encroaching on its territory. Solve the keyboard problem for fat fingered typists and I might even buy an IPhone.

I like the ITouch enough that I just sent an email to the Mavs IT head to see how we fans with ITouchs (and Wifi devices like Nokia among others) could leverage WiFi in the American Airlines Center before , during and after Mavs games, HDNet Fights and other events…

After many PC years, I’ve crossed over. Me the fanboy.

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I ordered a MacBook Air site unseen. That’s a first for me.

As I write this I’m about to go workout and it dawns on me that I’m on my 3rd generation of Apple IPod. I started with the original, switched to a bigger version (to back up all my pics and show off my kids to my friends) and then for the holidays, got myself and wife an ITouch.

Goodbye Ipod. With the new $20 dollar software that I downloaded yesterday, my ITouch gives me music, pictures and now email, calendar and a very cool basic GPS system that leverages the WiFi available. Touchtyping is still impossible for me on it, so it wont ever replace my phone for texting or primary mobile email, but its definitely encroaching on its territory. Solve the keyboard problem for fat fingered typists and I might even buy an IPhone.

I like the ITouch enough that I just sent an email to the Mavs IT head to see how we fans with ITouchs (and Wifi devices like Nokia among others) could leverage WiFi in the American Airlines Center before , during and after Mavs games, HDNet Fights and other events…

After many PC years, I’ve crossed over. Me the fanboy.

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There once was a time when the release date of an album was exciting. For our favorite artists we knew when the last album came out and when the next album was due. If you loved the artist you bought it. If you didn’t you either bought the single or you listened to the album with your friends and then decided.

As the price of records and then CDs increased year by year, spending 20 bucks for a CD became a purchase you needed to be sure of rather than a no brainer or impulse buy.

Then free became an option.
Then aggregating almost unlimited free music on a PC and then an IPOD became easy.

So here we are in 2008 and the only given in the music industry is that CD sales have and will fall. And fall. And fall.

Reading last weeks billboard, something interesting popped out at me. The song Low Rider by Flo Rida sold 467,000 units in a single week. There were 27 digital singles that sold more than 100k units in that week. The obvious trend continues that people are ready, willing and able to buy singles of songs they like.

So the question arises, why don’t artists serialize the release of songs ? Why not create a “season” of release of songs, much like the fall TV season and promise fans that Flo Rida is going to release a new single every week or 2 weeks for the next 10 weeks ?

Sure, its not easy to come up with a great song every 2 weeks. But isnt that exactly the same problem you have with an album ? Maybe thats not the “creative process” for certain artists. That’s a problem for them.

What we do know is that music fans will spend 99c and that its easier to ask them for 99c a week than it is to get 9.99 at one time from them for 10 songs.

Serializing the release of music also allows for the marketing arms to be in constant touch with sales and radio outlets. Rather than having to initiate marketing plans and hope to reinvigorate the interest in an artist, it becomes a digital tour that never ends.

If an artist commits to release music on a weekly or bi weekly basis, then consumers can make a commitment knowing they are going to get something new and hopefully exciting for their 99c. If the commitment is strong enough its feasible that artists could sell subscriptions to their serialized releases. My guess is that consumers will feel better about subscribing to an artist and getting a song a week or every 2 than dropping 10 dollars at a time for an album.

In reality thats exactly how I buy my music right now. I dont do it by artist. I go to ITunes and I go through the top 10 lists and listen to samples and thats how I determine what music im going to buy.

If there was an option when I bought a single to subscribe to an RSS feed that would send me a sample of that artists song when they released a single, I would add that RSS feed to my browser. Add a 1 click to buy, and chances are Im going to buy a lot more music.

Is this idea so great Im going to start a music label ? No chance. I wouldnt get in the music industry if you paid me. However, as a customer and a buyer of music , if I knew that my favorite artists were releasing music weekly, i would certainly check by every week or listen to what was in my RSS aggregator to see what new stuff they had for me.

Consumser are buying music 1 track at a time. I think people will pay 99c to get a single rather than steal it. I think people would rather steal a full album rather than pay 10 dollars or more for it.

Labels need to make the effort to get artists to deliver in a manner that realizes these perspectives.

The album is dead

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As the clock ran down on the final seconds of the Cowboys game yesterday they showed Jerry Jones. I knew exactly what he was feeling. There is no worse feeling in sports than losing a season ending playoff game. It hurts.

It hurts so much because you know how much pain that the players, coaches, staff and every fan of the team are going through and there is nothing you can do about it. It hurts because you know how deflated everyone around you is and will be.

It hurts because you know the media is going to bother you and everyone around you that you care about with assinine questions and commentary and there is nothing you can or should do about it. The competitive spirit inside of you wants to lash out and try to beat some common sense into them, but you know there is no point.

You know that you are going to have to go through the drill of being calm so that everyone else is calm. Shutting out everything blasting at you when you leave your house or office, recognizing that its just noise that doesn’t change all the work everyone around you has put in to get this far. It doesnt change all that they have accomplished.

You know that the difference between winning and losing at this level is a very, very fine line. You will relive every moment that changed the outcome a thousand times over the next weeks. All the what ifs.

Then there comes a point where a smile comes on your face. You think of all the joy and fun of the season. The moments you would never ever trade. The knowledge that your team and organization has reached a level where the stakes are much higher. You take pride and satisfaction in where you are, knowing that its a foundation.

Then the competitive juices kick back in and you go to work. Looking for that edge. Wishing that next season was now.

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Mar 18th 2006 12:41AM

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Mar 18th 2006 12:41AM

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