On the Court For A Good Cause

This post originally appeared in the Blotch section of the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To consume it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/09/19/sports-rush-court-sports-for-a-good-cause/

Donald Young, 28, won a tennis tournament Saturday. He and doubles partner Justin Whitman triumphed in the final and received trophies. Young has played on the ATP Tour since 2004 and won 115 professional matches, but this performance earned him no ranking points. So why did one of the top American players – a man who’s been ranked as high as 38th in the world – come to Dallas to play this event? He did it for basketball and a good cause.

Saturday at SMU, the Dirk Nowitzki Foundation held its second annual Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic. The fundraiser began with a dinner event and auction the evening before and continued with the open-to-the-public tennis tourney Sunday. A group of celebrities  included non-tennis professional athletes like J.J. Barea and Mike Modano; former tour players like Mark Knowles, Andy Roddick, and Benjamin Becker; and, for good measure, actor Owen Wilson (who has a decent forehand). A dozen amateurs made sizable donations to the foundation for the privilege of playing with and against those luminaries. Each amateur and pro accumulated wristbands as they won tie-breakers with different partners, with two of each with the most bands meeting in the final. Young and Whitman defeated Barea and Jim McKinney in that last match.

In this video interview, Young talks about the whys and hows of playing in such a setting, and also touches on what the U.S. women’s showing at the recent U.S Open (four Americans reached the semi-finals) means for the sport in this country.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports, Mint Farm Films, and FourNine Productions.

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How The WNBA Can Succeed in North Texas

This post originally appeared on the Blotch page at the Fort Worth Weekly. To read it on their site : http://www.fwweekly.com/2015/07/28/sports-how-the-wnba-can-succeed-in-north-texas/

It’s got the makings of a great story. Oklahoma girl, originally from Detroit, leaves the hinterlands of Northwest OK and heads to the big city in Texas to make her fortune.

We recently learned of such a story in the offing, although it involves not one girl, but rather several women (really tall ones at that). The ladies in question play basketball for the Tulsa Shock of the Women’s National Basketball Association and the team’s owner announced last week he wants to move the franchise to North Texas. They expect to play home games at UT-Arlington’s College Park Center.

To that, I say super. It means more high-quality basketball in the area, with visits from the best women’s players in the world. It also pleases me because I have two nieces who like hoops and could benefit from the chance to observe, and become invested in, a team of that caliber.

So I hope the team does well, but they should know success won’t come easily. Local arenas are strewn with remnants of pro teams that have come and gone. I still own Fort Worth Fire jerseys and a Fort Worth Cavalry golf shirt. Maybe your attic houses a Fort Worth Cats cap (old or modern) or a Dallas Chaparrals program your dad bought. To help the A-Town Shock (or whatever decide to call themselves) avoid the fate of, say, the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, I put together a committee to make some recommendations.

It’s a committee of two. I got a spot because I write this column and because I did broadcasting work for a lot of the defunct teams and marketing work for some of the ones still in existence. The better half of the committee (in so many ways) is Nancy Lieberman. She made the cut because she’s in the dang Basketball Hall of Fame, she played pro ball here, and she knows a heck of a lot about the WNBA and hoops in general. I also picked her (blatant plug alert) because she runs a really great foundation that helps a lot of kids. I’ve done some videos for it and helped at some NLF events.

Lieberman pointed out “You get one chance to do it right,” which means the team has to hit the ground running and have a good plan.

Let’s start with the challenges. This seems like an attractive market because of its large population and affinity for sports. The NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and MLS certainly liked the looks of it and their teams have shown staying power here. The newest of the Big Five pro franchises, the one I wish they still called the Dallas Burn, has lasted in the area since 1996.

In 1992, the new Central Hockey League began with, among others, the Fort Worth Fire, Dallas Freeze, and Tulsa Oilers. The Oilers won the league’s first championship and still reported drawing 5,479 fans a game last year despite never having won another title. The Fire and Freeze exist only in my closet, I think. I might still have a Fire puckhead somewhere.

The point is that the North Texas market is a lot different from Tulsa and so are the teams that stick here long term. The Shock moved to Tulsa from Detroit, so they could have some institutional memory about the challenges of sharing a large media market with teams from the country’s dominant sports leagues. In fact, Lieberman coached them their first three seasons in Motown. She had a strong opinion about the most important thing they could do to start carving a local niche.

“Grassroots, grassroots, gassroots!,” she said emphatically. Trust me, you could hear the exclamation point in her voice.

She suggested the team be everywhere from “camps to birthday parties.” She cited a model used by the NBA D-League team with which she is affiliated.

“Every team in the WNBA should borrow from the Texas Legends,” she said, noting also their kid-oriented approach to game presentation

My top point of emphasis relates closely to Lieberman’s: “Group tickets, group tickets, group tickets!” I didn’t actually say that out loud, but if I did, you would hear the exclamation point.

They can’t monetize their grassroots strategy without building in reasons to come to a game. Not only does a solid groups strategy allow a team to sell a bunch of tickets at once, but it can do so before the season starts. Preseason sales offer some revenue certainty that isn’t subject to the vicissitudes of a won/loss record.

Speaking of “Ws,” that “W” in WNBA matters. It’s a point of differentiation for the team brand. Lieberman pointed out one has to “get with the parents who are going to send their kids to you.” Parents who see value in inspiring their girls to pursue sports and fitness would seem a vital community outreach target.

Geography matters when it comes to the grassroots outreach. A WNBA team will have the advantage of being the most high-profile women’s pro team in the area, so they can draw some fans from throughout North Texas. Because the area is so enormous, however, driving distances will discourage fans in East Dallas and the northern suburbs from coming to games in Arlington. The Shock, then, need a solid strategy for establishing a base of fans near where they play. I’d start a lot of the grassroots activity by identifying pockets of likely ticket buyers in Arlington, Grand Prairie, and eastern Fort Worth.

They must keep regional tensions in mind as well. The Cowboys can play in Tarrant County and get away with having “Dallas” for a first name. Another team that tried that would risk alienating potential fans in Fort Worth and its environs.

The size of this media market can seem daunting as well. Going beyond the grassroots in Tulsa by, say, buying TV ads or airtime to broadcast games, incurs costs appropriate to the 61st largest media market. In North Texas, top-five market costs mean major sticker, um, shock. One has to pay to reach millions of viewers/listeners who live too far away to drive to many games. Big-market media costs make a more targeted PR strategy really important (and grassroots outreach, too).

The franchise will still want earned media attention, certainly, and an NBA-affiliated entity offers advantages there that are unavailable to, say, the Grand Prairie Airhogs. But one has to keep in mind that the media will expect major-market service. The D-League’s Fort Worth Flyers, for instance, didn’t put an emphasis on PR support. They lasted two seasons (with lack of media savvy helping compound lots of other issues).

One tricky part, then, of operating in this market is that one has to act major league without having the budget of a team that generates substantial TV revenue and draws 18,000 fans a night. Lieberman believes that doesn’t have to be an insurmountable problem.

“Even if you don’t have the budget, what you have to do (to be major-league) is work hard,” she said. The Shock do have to go the extra mile as a little fish in a big pond, and have to show creativity as well. For instance, they may not be able to afford to shell out the scads of money the Mavs spend to produce scoreboard features, but digital technology has made it possible to create really good ones much less expensively than ever before. Quality concepts can make up for lack of cash outlay.

Part of the hard work element comes in the form of digital strategy (creativity is pretty important here, too). A strong social media plan, one that goes hand-in-hand with the grassroots fan engagement plans, is a must, especially with a spread-out fan base and high traditional-media costs. Constant updates and new features require a significant time commitment.

So, to summarize, here’s what our committee thinks the team needs to do to succeed:

1.      Get involved in the grassroots (with an exclamation point).

2.      Sell group tickets like crazy.

3.      Understand the market and overcome its challenges with creativity and hard work.

One thing I didn’t add to the above list: Win.

Winning a lot of games never hurts, but finishing first is actually not as important at driving fans as it is for the Mavs or Rangers. The Shock won three titles in Detroit and moved. The Houston Comets won four and folded. Establishing a loyal fanbase matters more than even championships.

Lieberman won a title in this area in the WABA and also led a team to the WBL finals. Her Dallas Diamonds drew sustainable crowds but the rest of those leagues did not. Since the current well-established NBA-backed women’s league seems unlikely to fold like those earlier circuits, the Shock would seem to have a chance at success.

For the record, Lieberman thinks they will. “(Owner) Bill Cameron is a wonderful person,” she said. She believes he will put a plan in place to turn the move to Arlington into a success story. Heeding the recommendations she made in this piece would probably be a great place for Mr. Cameron to start.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.comLinkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

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Winning the NBA Without a Hall of Famer Would Make History

Assertions around which this blog will revolve :

• Atlanta, Memphis, and Toronto each currently occupies first-place in its NBA division. None of the three teams has a 20-points-per-game scorer on its roster.

• Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant will earn election to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame when they become eligible.

• Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, and Paul Millsap probably won’t join them in the Hall.

The Hawks’, Grizzlies’, and Raptors’ presences among the league’s elite has given rise to a new theory : You don’t need a superstar to win a championship.⁽¹⁾

This runs contrary to the sort of traditional thinking that led to the Heat’s three-headed monster taking its talents to South Beach, Jerry West’s machinations to acquire Shaquille O’Neal, and the Knicks’ recent run to the top with Carmelo Anthony. OK, that last jab wasn’t very nice. As Charles Barkley, Bob Lanier, and Stockton/Malone know, it does take more than a superstar (or even two) to win a ring. But historically, you’ve pretty much had to have at least one to do it.

No NBA champion whose complete roster has become eligible for the hall won the title without at least one Hall-of-Fame player on the team. Assuming we’re correct about our list of future inductees (which could also include Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and others), that trend will continue among all the recent winners, save one.

The Detroit Pistons of 2003-04 will likely become the first NBA champs with no playing inductees (Hall-of-Fame coach Larry Brown doesn’t count). They had a great mix of stars who put up some outstanding years and went to consecutive finals, but Billups, Wallace, Hamilton and company seem real long shots to enter Springfield’s shrine without a ticket.

Historically, those Pistons show up as an amazing aberration. HoFers George Mikan, Jim Pollard, Slater Martin, and Vern Mikkelson led the Minneapolis Lakers to a non-showtime title in the NBA’s first season, 1949-50. For good measure, one of their forwards, Bud Grant, later earned election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.⁽²⁾ That core set a precedent with three more titles.

Actually, the precedent had already been set. The Lakers, whose nickname made sense in those days, had won a title the previous season in the third and final year of the NBA-precursor Basketball Association of America. Both previous champions of the BAA boasted Hall of Famers, and half those of the league with which they merged, the National Basketball League, did. The latter number would rise if you believe one can make a Hall-of-Fame case for Oshkosh All-Stars standout Leroy Edwards.⁽³⁾

All those teams competed before there was a Hall of Fame, but they knew you needed superstars. Heck, even in the ABA, only the ’70-'71 Utah Stars won the title without a Hall of Fame player. The likes of Julius Erving, Artis Gilmore, and Roger Brown proved needed components for championships in that league, too.

Just making the final seems to require a transcendent player. Pending what Dwight Howard does the rest of his career, the ’75-'76 Phoenix Suns may stand as the only NBA runners-up without a Hall-of-Fame player (although 4.6 ppg-man Pat Riley did achieve that status for his post-playing accomplishments).

Since the beginnings of pro basketball, then, “nice" teams, plucky bands of no-names, and Don-Nelson-matchup-nightmare squads have struggled to break through a wall composed of Russells, Chamberlains, Jordans, Birds, and Magics.

Hall of Famers have traditionally stood tall, in this case Wilt Chamberlain with the author's father (left)

With only ten competitors on the playing surface at any one time, the game lends itself to individual brilliance. What could change it? How about big data?

Brett Koremenos of Sports on Earth wrote that "in today's NBA, it's becoming increasingly possible to compete for titles without elite players.”⁽⁴⁾ He did so while making the case that the Celtics might be adopting a new-school Moneyball approach to building his team.

As an aside, I feel old because I just used “new-school” to modify “Moneyball.” I remember interviewing former Oakland A’s assistant GM Grady Fuson about player evaluation tools back when there was only a book, not a Brad Pitt movie.

The last decade, however, has seen an explosion of fresh statistical evaluation approaches, ala the Moneyball premise, across all sports. The baseball A’s needed to find a way to compete with the Barry Bondses and Alex Rodriguezes. Have some of these newly successful hoops teams found market weaknesses they can exploit?

If so, you might offer the widely-imitated Spurs some credit, as they found ways to discover Kawhi Leonards and Danny Greens to take up the slack as their core closed in on aging out of MVP contention.

Better information on how a player's activity contributes to winning may result in superior player evaluation. Coaches willing to incorporate such data into their substitution patterns and floor sets may further improve their teams’ chances to get past star-laden opposition.

Innovative salary cap management can play a role, too. Paul Georges, Bill Waltons, and Derrick Roses get hurt sometimes, and superstars do cost a lot. Not every all-NBAer will injure himself, however, so a new power can still expect to face its share of Stephen Currys and Chris Pauls come playoffs.

Can the upstarts deal with the powerhouses? They might. The ’03-’04 Pistons did. So did the ’70-’71 Stars (their coach, Bill Sharman, had been a Hall-of-Fame player) and the ’48-'49 NBL champs Anderson Duffey Packers.

Still, a one-year wonder might prove possible. The trick, I think, might be how to make it more than a limited phenomenon, since teams that have big-time players can take similar approaches. In baseball, the big-market franchises began to pay attention to Bill James, good teams started to spend big on prospects, and defensive shifts began to reduce BABIPs across the big leagues. History does not rest comfortably on the side of the Hawks, Grizz, and Raptors.

Unless, that is, you go back to the Akron Firestone Non-Skids. No Hall-of-Famers, back-to-back champs.

They did it in the NBL. In 1939 and 1940.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

Note : Statistical records drawn from http://www.basketball-reference.com/

⁽¹⁾ Ian Levy  “Does A Team Really Need A Star To Get To The NBA Finals?,” FiveThirtyEightSports.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/does-a-team-really-need-a-star-to-get-to-the-nba-finals/ (accessed February 25, 2015)

⁽²⁾ Andrew Astleford “From hardwood to pigskin: Bud Grant understands basketball skills translate to the NFL,” Fox Sports Florida. http://www.foxsports.com/florida/story/from-hardwood-to-pigskin-bud-grant-understands-basketball-skills-translate-to-the-nfl-051714 (accessed February 25, 2015)

⁽³⁾ “NBL alums snubbed by Hall,” apbr.org. http://www.apbr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2058 (accessed February 25, 2015)

⁽⁴⁾ Brett Koremenos “THE CELTICS' INNOVATIVE REBUILD,” Sports On Earth. http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/109916244/boston-celtics-veteran-contributors-nba-draft-isaiah-thomas (accessed February 25, 2015)

Pop Culture Impacts Issues

You may think it wonderful that LeBron James wore an "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt on the court before he played a basketball game.⁽¹⁾ You may think he did the wrong thing. Or you may have agreed with his sentiment but found the garment unfashionable.

Whatever you thought qualitatively of James' gesture, one thing you couldn't do was not think about it.

The Cavaliers forward's brand offers more than just standout athletic abilities. His commercials, gold medals, O'Brien Trophies, and, yes, talent-taking-to-South-Beach have given him notoriety that stretches beyond his primary profession.

James and other NBA players wore their shirts to bring attention to an issue. This one specifically involved an incident of allegedly improper policing practices. Some St. Louis Rams players made their own controversial gestures referencing a similar situation. ⁽²⁾

As content marketing plays go, these initiatives don't involve substantial creativity. They do, however, demonstrate that pop culture can drive discussion of an issue.

News coverage may initially alert one to a controversy. Once aware, a consumer can turn to his or her preferred online or traditional media sources to gather further information. However, not everyone is a news geek (and I use that term affectionately - some of my best friends are news geeks, at least judging from their Facebook posts). To truly keep an issue top-of-mind with a broader cross-section of the population, it helps to have push from entertainers, whether they be athletes, movie stars, musicians, or whatever we classify Jon Stewart as.

Today's interconnected world lends itself to widely distributed discussion. You can get your co-workers' perspectives at the office coffee pot. You can talk about it with your father on a drive to the airport, which is how I got the idea for this blog post. Or you can discuss it online with Facebook friends, or Bono's fan club, or some other dude who commented on the news story you Googled after you saw LeBron's pre-game wardrobe.

Did John Lennon's bed-ins for peace meaningfully impact the anti-Vietnam War campaign? Did Rambo: First Blood Part II call attention to POW-MIA issues? Did Shaq's performance in Kazaam help convince Los Angeles officials to use eminent domain to clear space for a new basketball arena?⁽³⁾

One cannot precisely measure Q-score-to-issue-advocacy correlation. The actions of those with the power to effect such decisions suggest they see some cause-and-effect, however. When the Benghazi incident happened, officials initially assigned a generous portion of the blame to a motion picture.⁽⁴⁾ The CIA smuggled Russian-language versions of Dr. Zhivago into the Soviet Union.⁽⁵⁾ A recent Electronic Frontier Foundation anti-surveillance campaign featured like-minded celebrities appearing on video to encourage the public to take political action.⁽⁶⁾

This last example leads me to my reason for creating this blog post. There is no doubt that pop culture can, at the very least, create debate about an issue. Its capabilities may even include substantially influencing that debate. Sometimes the issue pays pop culture back, too. The Lennon estate still sells lots of Give Peace A Chance gobbledygook, I bet. Maybe POW advocates still watch Stallone movies as well.

I've got a movie in development called I Am Douglass. Its plot revolves around the same surveillance issues the EFF campaign addresses. Could the film be the next vehicle for fomenting discussion, no matter what side of the issue you occupy? The evidence says that's a real possibility.

I Am Douglass online sites :

Website

http://iamdouglass.com

Facebook

http://Facebook.com/iamdouglass

Twitter

http://Twitter.com/iamdouglass

Google Plus

https://google.com/+Iamdouglassmovie

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/IAmDouglass.

Zazzle

http://Zazzle.com/iamdouglass

Rush Olson has spent two decades making movie-like creative products for companies, sports teams, broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ Nolan Feeney, “LeBron James Wears ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Shirt During Warm-Ups,” Time. http://time.com/3624684/lebron-james-i-cant-breathe-eric-garner/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽²⁾ Chris Strauss, “Five St. Louis Rams players took a stand for something bigger than Ferguson,” USA Today. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/st-louis-rams-ferguson-tavon-austin-hands-up-dont-shoot (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽³⁾ Tibby Rothman, “Los Angeles Corporate Welfare: Ritz-Carlton and AEG ,” LA Weekly. http://www.laweekly.com/2009-10-08/news/los-angeles-corporate-welfare-ritz-carlton-and-aeg/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁴⁾ “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 9/14/2012 ,” White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/14/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-9142012 (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁵⁾ Luke Harding, “How MI6 helped CIA to bring Doctor Zhivago in from cold for Russians,” The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/10/mi6-cia-doctor-zhivago-banned-boris-pasternak (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁶⁾ Steven Nelson, “Actor John Cusack Says 'Democracy Itself Is Dead' With NSA Surveillance,” USA Today. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/10/23/john-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead?s_cid=rss%3Awashington-whispers%3Ajohn-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead (accessed 12/11/14)