NY Magazine - Why is Michigan Good at Basketball Again?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/how-did-the-michigan-basketball-team-get-good.html
Nice little article about the resurrection of UM Basketball.
To the guy in the video on Morning Joe, it's McGary, not McGrath.
Chait's point
Stopped reading after the sight of the phrase "got good." And acting like it is a complete shocked annoyed me as well.
Who is Harold Ford, Jr.?
He's the son of Harold Ford, Sr.
Well played.
He's UM Law class of 96 or so (he took a year off to run his dad's campaign, so I'm not sure when he graduated.) His father was a long-time US Rep, and he held the seat for a few years before redistricting got him. Now he does political commentary and is probably a banker or something.
He ran for a Senate seat in Tenn as a moderate/conservative dem. Used to be a conservative dem from the south meant you were just this side of the Klan. Now a black guy can be one and come fairly close to a guy like Bob Corker in a red state.
It's funny to see Jon Chait committing fratricide on Harold Ford Jr.
Indeed, you got it exactly right. Ford has made a mark as a centrist Democrat, who came close enough to winning the Tennessee Senate seat that Bob Corker now occupies. And Harold Ford has since been in the business of doing talking-head punditry wherever they would have him. Mostly, NBC.
No doubt Harold Ford Jr.'s 'extreme moderation' hacks off Jon Chait who is true-believing ideologue of the left.
An ideologue, that is, unless Chait is running down Michael Rosenberg in which case Jon Chait is the King of the Universe. Chait would never make a mistake like "McGrath" and he probably realizes that it was a mark of Harold Ford's low-level phoniness.
Love how he kept saying "we" and doesn't even know the names of the players. Classic.
Thanks.
I liekd the link in the article about inventing his own offence. I hadn't read that article before.
http://www.michigandaily.com/sports/let-ball-talk-twenty-five-seasons-b…
I don't entirely agree with this:
It was a bad idea for all involved, but especially for Michigan, which was deservedly hit with serious sanctions and fell into a spiral of being unable to recruit good players, and thus unable to win at a high level, for more than a decade.
We had good players under Amaker. They just didn't develop or play mistake-free basketball.
I get the sense that Chait himself is one of those guys who didn't follow the program that closely when it was down, and just jumped on the bandwagon a little earlier than the guys he pokes fun of.
We didn't have great players who could win at a high level. The last good NBA player we had was probably Crawford. You want to regularly go to Final Fours, you may not need one year of Anthony Davis every season, but you probably need a few guys who are going to at least get cups of coffee in the league.
Edit to your Edit: I agree, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was one of those guys who hated the Fab Five before everything came out anyway.
Yeah, we didn't have national-champion talent or anything - but we definitely had enough talent to make the tourney and win a game or two, and if we had, it could have gotten the ball rolling to bring in more, and get donors to step up for facilities - as happened with Beilein. But we always fell short and had to settle for some NIT wins.
If we don't make the Tournament the first year Beilein took them, with the way they regressed the next year....is he still coach here? Amaker could never get the luck to get over that hump. But then he's not as good a coach either.
"Nothing opponents throw at McGary seems to be able to stop him now – not even punching him in the balls:"
How long did it take for him to come up with that?
You mean if you hire a good coach and recruit good players, you'll win basketball games? Dang, that's hard-hitting analysis there.
Chait can be interesting to read, but this article seems like it was thrown together in about 20 minutes.