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Trump’s Moral Price

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I was speaking to my cousin John about the most recent New York Giants game the other day when their kicker, Josh Brown, missed a 53-yard field goal attempt. Brown had just returned from serving a one-game suspension for domestic violence charges against his wife, and I expressed dismay when he missed the field goal. John correctly pointed out that 53-yards is far away for any kicker, and that Brown’s miss was understandable. However, while I acknowledged that kicking from such a distance is difficult, I explained that the Giants are paying a high moral price to employ someone as ethically questionable as Brown is, and that because of that cost, Brown does not have the luxury to be held to the same standards as the average kicker. For the Giants to justify Brown’s spot on the roster, he has to be a great kicker, and great kickers make 53-yard field goals, and while I personally do not believe that any performance, no matter how great, excuses domestic violence or other crimes, professional sports teams obviously disagree with me. The Giants are keeping Brown because he is good at what he does, the Pittsburgh Steelers have kept quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in spite of being accused of multiple rapes, and the Los Angeles Lakers kept building their team around now-retired superstar Kobe Bryant for a decade despite rape charges of his own. It seems that there are few crimes and moral outrages that will compel a sports team or a business to cut ties with its best players/employees as long as those players produce at a high level or make their businesses lots of money.

After the conversation, it occurred to me that such a standard could be applied to other aspects of life, and I immediately thought of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump has spent 70-years as an ignorant, lying, bullying, xenophobic, sexist, bigoted, racist, narcissistic, anti-semitic, buffoon, and has amply demonstrated his utter unfitness to become the President of the United States of America. For someone to cast his or her ballot for Trump in November, he or she must love other things about Trump so much that he or she is willing to shrug off all those other horrible things about the man. So I am asking Trump supporters (literally, this is not a rhetorical exercise): what is it that you like about Trump so much that you can suppor him in spite of all the frightening things he has done, said, stands for, and plans to do in the future? Is it Trump’s proposed economic plans? How about his stated environmental plans? Do you believe that his ‘wall,’ between the United States and Mexico will make things so much better here in America that his other flaws do not matter to you? Are you willing to put up with his past attitudes towards women, minorities, and people with disabilities (and pretty much everyone else on earth who does not share his last name, or is not Vladimir Putin) because you feel that he will make America stronger and more respected abroad?  What about him personally do you like so much that you want to vote for him in spite of all I mentioned before?

Trump on Economics

When President Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, he made America’s rapidly growing national debt a major campaign issue, but even at the time economists and critics, including his leading opponent for the Republican nomination in ’80, George H. W. Bush, (who would be Reagan’s Vice President, and eventually his successor as president) who famously called Reagan’s supply-side economic theory, ‘voodoo economics,’ during the campaign, correctly protected it would greatly expand the national debt. Of course, Reagan’s policies did explode the debt at unprecedented rates  due to the not-so-shocking problem that if you take in $10 and spend  $15, you wind up deeply in debt, and his policies devastated American manufacturing by making it easier than ever before to outsource jobs overseas. We have now had over 35-years of evidence to suggest that former President George H. W. Bush and other critics were correct: ‘trickle down’, ‘Reaganomics,’ were horrendous for all but the ultra rich.

As a whole, the American public has been paying atention to the real cost of trickle down, which is part of the reason that the Democratic Party’s nominee for president has defeated the Republican candidate in the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Trump seems to understand the widespread distrust of the efficacy of huge tax cuts for the rich benefitting the middle class and the poorest Americans, and he has responded by speaking like a populist who is for bringing back American manufacturing jobs and undoing the free trade policies that have been supported by every president from Reagan through George H. W. Bush , Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and up to Barack Obama. But in spite of the language he used, the economic plan that Trump has proposed is just Reaganomics repacked in populist language, and not only is the core of his plan a new massive tax cut for the wealthiest American, but according to CBS, his economic plan would add $5.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plan would add $200 billion. And while I happen to share the belief of economists like Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that neither a budget deficit nor national debt is necessarily a bad thing, many of those who today worship at the Cult of Reagan, and who take it on faith that  ‘trickle down’ economics always works and profess to care so deeply about the national debt that they support a Constitutional Amendment mandating a balanced federal budget, intend to vote for Trump even though the economic policies he has announced publicly and on his own official campaign website lay out an economic policy that will further explode the debt and continue the pace of outsourcing more American jobs. So, if you truly care about the deficit and you are against free trade agreements like NAFTA or the TPP, then why are you voting for Trump? Trump may attempt to cloak his re-packaged trickle down economic plans in populist language, but what about his entire life history has convinced you that he would govern by populist policies? Why do you believe his populist talk when the plans on his own website prove what his actual intentions are? Can you really trust him on the economy?

Trump on the Environment

Once upon a time, environmental conservation was a non-partisan issue, with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act created and signed, respectively, by Republican President Richard Nixon, but those days ended long ago. Today the Republican Party is largely united by, at best, severe skepticism about climate change – especially man-made climate change – and at worst a total hostility to climate change and the very ideas of conservation and environmental protection. Trump’s environmental plan places him firmly in the ‘hostile,’ wing of the Republican Party, and he has declared an intention to abolish the EPA and dramatically weaken or totally abandon all environmental regulation in the United States. Combatting climate change is perhaps the most important issue to Millennial voters, and Trump is on what most of those voters consider to be the wrong side of it.

If protecting the environment matters to you, then why would you vote for Trump in November? Hillary Clinton’s policy is far easier to nail down, and is the most progressive environmental position ever staked out by a major Party nominee, and commits both Secretary Clinton and the United States as a whole to fighting to minimize the rapidly unfolding catastrophe (environmental, human, and economic) that has already begun. The Republican Party, many of its largest donors, and even some on the Democratic side of the aisle have tried to muddy the water – and compared to what some of the corporations on the anti-climate change side of the issue do to water every day, mud would actually be an improvement – on this issue by acting as if there is widespread disagreement within the scientific community about climate change. In reality, there is no real disagreement among scientists, who are in almost universal agreement about the threat that our nation – and our world – faces. If you care about this issue, then why would you vote for Donald Trump?

Trump on National Security

Our nation faces many threats, and simply having the most powerful military in world history does not eliminate all dangers to our nation. In today’s world, the idea of conventional warfare, with one nation-state at war with another, seems almost quaint. We have made ourselves so powerful that no nation has the ability to wage a conventional war with the United States, but that does not mean that we do not have committed enemies. The Islamic State in Syria, or ISIS, is one of these threats, and while under President Obama we have degraded and punished the group to near annihilation, but ISIS, like al Qaeda, is more about an idea, and as such simply killing their leaders (and we have) or taking their territory and weaponry (and we have) does not insure our safety. That we face such threats and others, including the cyber threats we are currently facing from Russia, makes the Presidency as important now as it has ever been. Not only has Donald Trump shown himself to be unworthy of the massive charge of being Commander in Chief, with his lack of temperament and tendency to fire off and attack all of those who criticize him for even the most trivial things, he has shown himself to be unwilling to criticize or stand up to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s strongman dictator.

If that does not raise any red flags with intended Trump voters, what about the fact that the man is actually running on a pro War Crimes platform! He has declared his intention to violate the Geneva Convention not only by torturing human beings, but he has proposed capturing the civilian families of terrorist suspects and either imprisoning, torturing, or killing them in an absolutely despicable attempt to keep their family members from attacking the USA. All the things that Trump admires about Putin are the things Trump wants to project about himself, but he has an inability to realize that just projecting strength does not make one strong. Putin grandstands and invades neighboring nations, and tramples democracy, but nothing that he has done has restored Russia to the superpower status once held by the Soviet Union. Trump sees Putin as his role model, his exemplar of strong leadership, while he continually attacks President Obama for perceived weakness. And yet, Obama has been the one to degrade ISIS and to kill Osama bin Laden, and Obama has killed more terrorists than any other president in American history. And while Russia’s economy has gotten weaker under Putin because his bullying invasions have led to economic sanctions, when Obama came into office in January 2009, he inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and has pulled us out of that fire. Yet Trump admires Putin, not Obama; is that not a red flag in and of itself?

I can understand why some people don’t like Hillary Clinton, but for me there are more than enough things that I can find in her readily accessible and detailed policy positions on the environment, minimum wage, foreign policy, and more that I whole-heartedly agree with, which allows me to support the former Secretary of State even though I feel that she often acts entitled (as if rules do not appy to her), is seemingly allergic to transparency, and is too closely aligned with the financial powers that reside on Wall Street. Of course when she is compared to Trump, with his flat refusal to either release his income tax returns or any legitimate health records, the notoriously guarded Clinton might as well be running her campaign from within a glass house under an electron microscope. But to support Trump, one must truly love something about his positions, since it is hard for me to understand how any non-racist, non-hateful/fearful person can tolerate Trump’s racism, bigotry, sexism, dishonesty, xenophobia, attacks on people with disabilities, homophobia, Islamaphobia, bullying, narcissism, megalomania, and ignorance just because he or she hates Hillary Clinton. If someone does not love Trump’s stated positions, and trust that he will hold to them if he is elected, then how can he or she give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not really an anti-semite in spite of having Alt-Right, Breitbart hero Steve Bannon, as his campaign manager or flirting with David Duke (who has made no secret of the fact that he believes his chance has come again because of Trump)? That he’s not really a racist in spite of his nakedly racist championing of Birtherism? That he’s not really a bigot when he calls all Latino immigrants rapists and drug dealers? That he’s not really a sexist when he calls women dogs and pigs? That he’s not really a bully when he mocks a journalist for having a physical disability? That he’s not a liar when he claims that he saw hundreds or thousands of Muslims across the Hudson River in New Jersey celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11th, 2001? That he’s not classless and temperamentally unfit to be the President of the United States when he questions the impartiality, loyalty, and even citizenship of an American judge, Gonzalo Curiel, because he ruled against Trump’s bogus university, or attacks the Khan family because they were critical of him? That he’s not a demagogue trying to turn Americans against each other when his initial response to the deadliest mass shooting in American history was to brag about his plan to ban all Muslims from traveling to the United States?

It is cliché to say it, but neither this election nor any other has ever taken place in a vacuum. Hillary Clinton is not running against a perfect candidate who will be the best possible choice and with whom one can agree on every single policy position: she is not even running against Senator Bernie Sanders, her opponent for the Democratic nomination. Instead, former Secretary Clinton is running against Donald Trump, and regardless of whether or not one decides to support either Libertarian candidate, former Governor Gary Johnson, or Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, neither of them is going to be president on January 20th, 2017, and if anyone says otherwise, and concocts a scenario where either Third Party candidate, or someone else entirely, will be the 45th president of the United States, then that person is not telling the truth. It will either be Hillary Clinton who, warts and all, has shown the intelligence, skill, capacity for hard work, and temperament to do the job, or it will be Donald Trump, a dangerous demagogue who has shown ignorance, hatred, bigotry, an unpredictable temperament, displayed extreme narcissism and megalomania, has a notoriously short attention span, and has lied more often and more easily than any major Party candidate in history. If you love Trump’s stance on immigration, crime, the environment, the economy, and foreign policy so much that you are willing to live with endless stream of offenses he has committed just since he entered the race in June of 2015 (not to mention all the horrible actions and statements he’s made in the 69-years he lived before last June), then perhaps voting for him makes sense to you, but remember also that there are plenty of people in this nation – people who deserve to be called ‘deplorables,’ as former Secretary Clinton recently called them – who are voting for Trump because he is a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, insults the disabled, is a bigot, a liar, a bully, a narcissist, and has surrounded himself by anti-Semities and White Nationalists who believe Eugenics is a real science and that ‘less desirable,’ people should not be allowed to reproduce so that they do not ‘pollute,’ or ‘contaminate,’ our bloodstream. Perhaps you love his policy proposals so much that you honestly don’t care about any of this, but you would have to have chosen willful ignorance to pretend that there are not plenty of people voting for him because of his most vile views and the despicable Nazi-wannabes like Bannon who now have his ear.

And if you really do abhor the grotesque things that Trump has said and done, but you are going to vote for him anyway because you hate Clinton and hope and expect that a President Trump’s most dangerous and vile tendencies would be kept in check either by the job itself, the other branches of government, social norms, his top advisers, or some other mitigating factor, please remember that such logic was precisely the reason that many educated, intelligent Germans elevated Adolf Hitler to power in 1932/33. I despise comparing anyone or anything to Hitler and the Nazis because some people tune out as soon as the comparison is made as it is over-used, so I do not do it lightly, but it fits here scarily well because the things those Germans knew better, and were personally disgusted by Hitler’s views on Jews, Communists, eugenics, and more, but they supported him anyway because they felt his most harmful, hateful, and deadly tendencies could be contained. If one cuts out all the noise and analysis and just reads everything Trump has said and done in this campaign concerning Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, women, people with disabilities, soldiers, war heroes, Jews, and more, and simply decided to take him at his words, it should be impossible to support the man with a clear conscience. Put another way: unless Trump starts kicking field goals from 99 yards away and makes 30 of them each game, he shouldn’t have a place on our national team, and I would honestly feel dirty if, outside the election, he simply  purchased any of my four favorite pro sports teams, but there is not enough soap in the universe for me to feel clean with Donald Trump as my president.

 

Baseball, Basketball, Championships, Dynasties, Football, Hall of Famers, History, Hockey, MLB, MVPs, NBA, NFL, NHL, Sports, Sports Dynasties

The Greatest Dynasties in Sports History Part II

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Which Sports dynasty is the greatest of all-time? I listed the first half of the top 10 a few days ago, and now will list the five greatest of them all.

To refresh your memory, to be on this list a team must win at least four championships in a 10-year period. Also, one of the key tools used to rate the best seasons of these teams is the Simple Rating System (or SRS) used by Sports-Reference.com. If a basketball team has an SRS of six it means that they would beat the average team in the league that season by six points.

10-6 were:
10.) 1981-89 San Francisco 49ers

9.) 1980-88 Los Angeles Lakers

8.) 1984-90 Edmonton Oilers

7.) 1961-67 Green Bay Packers

6.) 1980-83 New York Islanders

And now, the top Five Dynasties in Pro Sports history:

5.) Chicago Bulls (1991-1998): Michael Jordan. If I just left Jordan’s name there next to the years of his Chicago Bulls’ dynasty, people would still get the idea. Jordan is the greatest player in NBA history, and his excellence propelled the Bulls to win six championships in eight-years between 1991 and 1998.Sure, Jordan had a Hall of Fame head coach in Phil Jackson, hall of fame teammate and fellow Dream Team member Scottie Pippen, and for three of the six championships, hall of famer Dennis Rodman, but it was absolutely MJ’s team. Before the 1990-91 season even began, Jordan had already won one regular season MVP (1988), had become the game’s best statistical player, and had quickly eclipsed Magic Johnson and Larry Bird as the game’s most popular star, but unlike Magic and Bird, Jordan’s team had not yet won the championship. Jordan and Pippen had been getting closer to achieving that goal with each succeeding season, and during the 1989-90 season, they pushed the defending champion Detroit Pistons to a seventh game in the Eastern Conference Final, but the Pistons won game seven in Detroit before winning their second consecutive championship. However all the Pistons had done was delay the Bulls by a year, and when Chicago entered training camp before the ’90-91 season, they started a run in which they would win the NBA championship EVERY year that Jordan was in camp with them. The Bulls cruised to 62 wins and the best record in the Eastern Conference as Jordan won his 2nd regular season MVP and in the playoffs the Bulls left absolutely no doubt about which team was the best when they eviscerated the two-time defending champion Pistons in a sweep in an Eastern Conference Finals rematch, and then they slammed the door shut on the Magic Johnson era for the Lakers in a convincing five-game Finals victory after which Jordan won his first Finals MVP. Jordan had finally accomplished his goal by winning the championship, so in 1992 he set his sights on making history and had arguably the single greatest year any athlete has ever had. MJ began the run by leading an all-time great Bulls team to the best record in the sport at 67-15 and winning his second straight MVP award. Returning to the Finals, a dominant MJ won his second consecutive Finals MVP in a six-game victory over the Portland Trail Blazers. Then in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain – the first in which professional athletes were allowed to compete instead of just amateurs – he led the 1992 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball ‘Dream Team,’ to a gold medal (Scottie Pippen was also on the Dream Team and surprised many people, including the team’s Hall of Fame head coach Chuck Daly, with his incredible play. Because he was always overshadowed by MJ in Chicago, not everyone had realized how truly great Pippen was too, but they realized it in the summer of ‘92); Jordan ended the year with a regular season MVP, his Bulls having the best record in the sport and one of the best in NBA history, a second consecutive World Championship, a second consecutive Finals MVP, and a Gold Medal in the Olympics that was actually MJ’s SECOND Olympic Gold medal as he had been on the ’84 Men’s Team because he had not yet played in the NBA. In ‘93 the Bulls became the first team since the ’59-’66 Celtics to win at least three consecutive championships in a six-game series victory over the Phoenix Suns in which Jordan decisively outplayed fellow Dream Teamer Charles Barkley, who had won the regular season MVP in spite of Jordan’s far superior numbers, and MJ became the first player to win three straight Finals MVPs.

With Jordan on top of the entire sporting world, his life changed forever when his father James was murdered in a carjacking less than a month after the Bulls defeated the Suns for the title. Jordan soon after retired from the NBA, saying that his father’s favorite sport had always been baseball and that he had always wanted to see Michael play in the Majors. With MJ playing in the minors trying to make the Big Leagues for the Chicago White Sox – a team also owned by Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who kept paying MJ his basketball salary – Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson kept the Bulls among the best teams in the NBA during the ’93-’94 season. While a deserving Hakeem Olajuwon would win the MVP that year, Pippen had an MVP-level campaign of his own, but the Bulls lost a controversial seven-game series to the New York Knicks (who were the Bulls’ chief rival in the Eastern Conference in ’92 and ‘93). Then in the summer of ’94, with Jordan starting to show significant progress in the minors, the MLB Players’ Association went on strike and Jordan – himself a member of the players’ union in the NBA – refused to break the strike. The uncertainty of the strike led MJ to return to the Bulls very late in the ’95 season – after sending out a fax that read simply ‘I’m back.’ With Jordan wearing the number 45, his body still in baseball shape, and the Bulls having lost some of their key players from the ’91-’93 three-peat including power forward Horace Grant, the Bulls fell to Shaquille O’Neal’s Magic (a team that also included Grant) in second round of the playoffs to Shaquille O’Neal’s Magic.

Angered by the loss, Jordan spent the offseason rebuilding his body for basketball while the Bulls added Dennis Rodman to the team to replace Grant while providing the interior defense, rebounding, and attitude that the Bulls needed. MJ, again the best player in the sport, put back on his world famous #23 jersey and, with Pippen and Rodman in their primes, the Bulls were primed for a special season in ’95-’96, but no one really knew how special it would be. In fact, the Bulls put together the greatest team in NBA history and one of the greatest in sports history, going a ridiculous 72-10 as MJ easily won his fourth regular season MVP award. The team romped through the playoffs to win the Finals in six games over the Seattle Super Sonics and MJ won a record fourth Finals MVP award in the process; in a coincidence the Bulls had won the championship on Father’s Day and Jordan was overwhelmed with emotion and sobbed on the floor of the victorious Bulls’ locker room. In ‘97 the Bulls were again the NBA’s best team, winning 69 games and taking the championship for the fifth time in seven-seasons, beating the Utah Jazz in six games. In game five, Jordan had what became known as the ‘flu game,’ and he played while violently ill and dehydrated Jordan scored 38 points and made the game-winning shot. Although the Bulls just kept on winning in ’98, it gradually became known that Chicago was going to be broken up after the year, mainly because Bulls GM Jerry Krause loathed Phil Jackson and refused to pay Scottie Pippen fair market value for his talent (the Bulls had been underpaying the excellent Pippen for his whole career, even insulting him by paying more money to the far less great and important Toni Kukoc).Jordan, who won his 5th and final MVP award during the season, had to shoulder even more of the burden than usual because Pippen badly injured his back late in the season and Rodman was well past his prime. All those issues did not stop the Bulls from making a Finals rematch with the Jazz, again winning in six games as Jordan won his sixth Finals MVP award and made the game-winning basket in game six to give the Bulls their second three-peat sixth title in eight seasons.

The Jordan/Pippen/Jackson Bulls were absolutely dominant and they not only never lost in the Finals, they never even faced a game seven, as if Jordan refused to allow it. Jordan’s six championships have also become the modern standard by which all great players across the Big Four measure themselves, and it is why Derek Jeter and Kobe Bryant, who have both won five championships, pushed themselves so hard in pursuit of a sixth. 17-years after he last put on number 23 for the Bulls, Jordan remains the gold standard not just in terms of his greatness on the court but for a brilliant ability to market himself that turned him arguably the biggest star on the planet. Even ignoring how successful he has been off the court, we need to realize that we will never witness another athlete that great again and, in that way, Jordan’s legacy may actually become more impressive with time.

Key figures:

Phil Jackson (HC)

Michael Jordan

Scottie Pippen

Dennis Rodman

Best season during the run: 1995-96 – Were you paying attention? Those Bulls went 72-10 and their SRS is 11.8 (the best of all-time). They lost only a single game in the playoffs before they made it to the Finals vs. the Sonics, quickly went up 3-0, and then after relaxing a bit in two losses, closed it out in game six for the first championship of the second three-peat.

Most Memorable Moment: There are almost too many to count, from Jordan’s famous shrug during his destruction of the Blazers in the 1992 Finals, his flu game in the 1997 Finals against the Jazz, and his final shot to beat the Jazz again in 1998. However, it was Jordan’s win in 1996 that stands out. With their game six, series-clinching victory coming on Father’s Day, Jordan, who until that moment had been able to celebrate every single sports championship with his father, broke down and cried on the locker room floor. It was a stunning display of emotion and humanity for a man who tried hard to never let us see him as vulnerable or human until that time.

4.) Pittsburgh Steelers (1974-79): When the 16-team National Football League merged with the upstart American Football League and its 10 franchises in 1970, the new entity kept the NFL’s name and history, but in order to be an even league with two conferences (the National and American Football Conferences, respectively), three teams were selected to leave the NFC for the AFC. The first and most desirable franchise was the perennial contender Baltimore Colts, who would win Super Bowl V, the first one played after the leagues had fully merged; the second team was the Cleveland Browns, who had won three NFL championships in the 1950s and another in 1964. By far the least desirable team to move into the AFC was the Pittsburgh Steelers, and if Pete Rozelle and the NFL had known what was coming, perhaps they’d have kept the Steelers and handed over the Detroit Lions.

The Steelers began play in the NFL in 1933, and in the 35-seasons they played before the merger, the team had won more games than it lost only six-times, only made the playoffs once, and never made it to the championship game; the next time the team made the postseason was 1972. Widely viewed as an irrelevant laughingstock, few took notice when the Steelers began accumulating good, young talent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, adding a cast of future Hall of Famers on both offense and defense who would be coached by another future Hall of Famer, Chuck Noll. In ’72 the Steelers finally returned to the playoffs and even won their first playoff game in history, defeating the Oakland Raiders with the help of one of the most famous plays in NFL history: “The Immaculate Reception.” The Steelers lost in the AFC Title game to the undefeated ’72 Miami Dolphins, but they had announced their arrival as serious contenders. By ’74 the Steelers defense, full of hall of famers like ‘Mean’ Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, and Mel Blount, became known as the ‘Steel Curtain,’ and led the team to its first ever championship by winning Super Bowl IX over the Minnesota Vikings 16-6. In ’75 the Steel Curtain was even more dominant and the team finished with a 12-2 record and won Super Bowl X over the ‘America’s Team’ Dallas Cowboys of Tom Landry and Roger Staubach 21-17. In 1976 the Steelers’ defense was perhaps at its best, but the Raiders finally broke through and beat the Steelers in the AFC Title game. The Steelers would fall short again in ’77, but the league had decided that the Steel Curtain defense was bad for the game ecause there was too little scoring. They passed new rules to limit the defense, with one of them becoming known as the ‘Mel Blount rule’ after the Steelers’ hall of fame corner back. It was then that the Chuck Noll’s Steelers dynasty would do one of the most impressive things in sports history: it did not lament the rules made to weaken its legendary defense, it just switched the emphasis to its offense, which was ALSO filled with hall of famers from quarterback Terry Bradshaw to wide receivers Lynn Swan and John Stallworth, running back Franco Harris, and center Mike Webster. Bradshaw won the 1978 regular season MVP as the Steelers finished with a league best 14-2 record and advanced to Super Bowl XIII for a rematch with the now defending champion Cowboys. It was a huge matchup because whichever team won would have the most Super Bowl victories in NFL history; the Steelers took the prize again, winning 35-31 as Bradshaw added a Super Bowl MVP to his regular season one. In ’79 the Steelers returned to another Super Bowl, Bradshaw won his second straight SB MVP award, and Pittsburgh defeated the Los Angeles Rams 31-19 to win SB XIV for their fourth championship in six-seasons. A team that had started the ‘70s as a laughingstock ended the decade with more Super Bowl wins than any franchise in the league. The Steelers organization also earned a reputation for consistent excellence over the decades since, and with Super Bowl wins after the 2005 and 2008 seasons, the team again has the most Super Bowl championships of any team in the league with six.

Key Figures:

Chuck Noll (Head Coach)

Terry Bradshaw

Mean Joe Greene

Mike Webster

Jack Ham

Jack Lambert

Mel Blount

Franco Harris

Lynn Swann

Best season during the run: 1975 – the Steelers went 12-2, led the league with an SRS of 14.2 and won a 21-17 victory over the Cowboys in Super Bowl X for their second straight Super Bowl win.

Most Memorable Moment: Although it took place outside the six-year title run that featured many, many memorable moments (such as Lynn Swan’s acrobatic catch in SB X and Dallas tight end Jackie Smith dropping what would have been a game tying touchdown in SB XIII), the choice is obviously the Immaculate Reception. It is tough to top what just might be the most famous play in the history of the league.

3.) Montreal Canadiens (1976-79): The Montreal Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup an NHL record 24-times, and many of those 24 have been won in multiple periods of excellence, but it is harder to rank some of Montreal’s dynasties because the majority of those championships came in a league with only six teams. It was during that ‘Original Six’ era when the Habs (a nickname for the Canadiens) set the NHL record by winning five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 to ’60. But in 1967 the league began the first of several expansions, making sustained success far more difficult, however the Habs won Cups in 1968, ’69 with much of the core they had built during that Original Six era. In ’71, won again, this time pushed forward by the late season arrival of goaltender Ken Dryden (who may be the greatest goalie in NHL history). The team won again in ’73, but after that the Habs suddenly seemed like a team of the past in comparison the hard-hitting and physical Philadelphia Flyers team that became known as the ‘Broad Street Bullies,’ won back-to-back Cups in ’74-’75. In 1976 the Flyers had a better record than they had had in ’74 and ’75, earning 118 points and Bobby Clarke won the Hart Trophy as league MVP, and the Broad Street Bullies advanced to their third consecutive Stanley Cup Finals. However, the problem was that as great as they were, the Canadiens were better, leading the NHL with 127 points of their own, and when the two teams met in the Finals, the Habs swept the Bullies to win the Cup and the greatest dynasty in NHL history was off and running. With Hall of Fame head coach Scotty Bowman – probably the greatest HC in NHL history – calling the shots and a core built around future Hall of Famers Dryden, Guy LaFleur and the great defenseman Larry Robinson, the Habs followed up their terrific ’75-76 season with what is likely the greatest team in NHL history in ’76-77. Those Habs led the NHL with a remarkable 132 points and a record of 60-8-12, led by League MVP LaFleur, and going a combined 12-2 in the three rounds of the playoffs, culminating with a sweep over the Boston Bruins.  The Canadiens destroyed the league in 1978 as well, with LaFleur winning his second straight Hart Trophy, the team earning a league-leading 129 points, and beating the Bruins in a Stanley Cup Finals rematch four games to two. In 1979 the Canadiens failed to lead the league in points for the first time during their run, finishing with 115 points to the New York Islanders 116, and they were more vulnerable in the playoffs than in the previous years. They met the Bruins again in the playoffs, this time in the semi-finals, and beat them in a hard fought seven game series when, in game seven in Montreal, the Bruins got caught with too many men on the ice and the Habs scored on their ensuing power play to tie the game and bring it into overtime, where the Canadiens won to advance to their fourth consecutive Finals, this time defeating the New York Rangers (who in the previous round had knocked out the league-leading Isles, which would end up being the last playoff series the Islanders would lose until the 1984 Stanley Cup Finals against the Oilers) in five games.

The ’79 season had shown that the NHL had finally caught up to Montreal, but with Bowman and their legendary core, it was far from certain that their reign would come to an end, which is why it stunned the hockey world when Ken Dryden abruptly retired after the season at the age of 31 and after only nine seasons in the league (nine seasons in which Dryden’s Habs had won the Cup six times) in order to go to law school. Dryden became a successful lawyer and politician who eventually served in Canadian Parliament, but hockey fans interested in the game’s history were left wondering how things would have played out if Dryden had remained in net for the Canadiens. The dynasty might have been over regardless of Dryden’s decision as the Islanders outstanding club was ready to initiate a dynasty of their own, but Dryden’s retirement meant that hockey fans would never get to see one of those clashes of old and new the way there was when the Habs beat the Flyers in 1976 and would happen again when the Islanders dynasty ran into the rising Edmonton Oilers in both the 1983 and ’84 Stanley Cup Finals. The fourth championship would be the Canadiens’ 22nd Stanley Cup, but it was the end of their dominance of the league. Montreal would win the Cup again in 1986 and 1993 (led by another all-time goalie in Patrick Roy), but they have not returned to the Finals since then. However, none of that changes the fact that the ’76-’79 Canadiens had the most utterly dominant run in NHL history, and it is very unlikely we’ll ever see any teams that great ever again.

Key figures:

Scotty Bowman (head coach)

Guy Lafleur

Ken Dryden

Larry Robinson

Guy LaPointe

Steve Schutt

Best year of the run: 1976-77 – This was the team that went 60-8-12, wound up with 132 points, won the Cup in a sweep over the Boston Bruins, and finished with an SRS of 2.54. They are almost certainly the greatest team in NHL history.

Most Memorable Moment: How often does the hall of fame centerpiece of a dominant dynasty just walk (or skate) off at 31-years-old and in great health? But the most memorable moment may have come in the 1979 semi-finals against the Bruins. During the dynasty the Habs had defeated the Bruins in both the ’77 and ’78 Stanley Cup Finals and each time the Bruins had creeped a little closer to Montreal, losing in a sweep in ’77 and in six in ’78. In ’79 when they met in the semi-finals, the Bruins took them to game seven and even led late in the third period in the Montreal Forum when they were called for a ‘too many men on the ice’ penalty, and the Canadiens scored during their ensuing power play.

2.)  Boston Celtics (1957-69): In the autumn of 1956, rookie Bill Russell played the first game of a legendary career in which he played 13-seasons for the Boston Celtics and the Celtics won the NBA championship in 11 of those seasons, and Russell would earn his legacy as the greatest winner in the history of team sports. Along the way the Celtics would set the record among the Big Four sports leagues by winning eight-consecutive championships between 1959 and 1966.

It is hard to overstate just how incredible Russell’s Celtics were or how big an impact he and Hall of Fame head coach Red Auerbach had on the entire NBA. After winning consecutive NCAA championships in his last two-years at college, Russell joined a Celtics franchise that had never won anything in spite of already having future Hall of Fame players like Bill Sharman, Tommy Heinsohn, and the great Bob Cousy. Russell changed that in just his first season in the NBA, leading the team to its first championship in 1957 (in its first ever Finals appearance). When a late injury to Russell kept the Celtics from repeating in the ’58 Finals in a rematch from ’57, it would mark the last time a team other than the Celtics would win the NBA Championship until 1967. In 1959 the Celtics met the Minneapolis Lakers in the Finals and won in four games; in retrospect it was a historic meeting between the teams because it was the first time the Lakers ever lost in the Finals after five earlier championships, was their last Finals appearance before they moved to Los Angeles, and was the first of a record 12 NBA Finals between the Celtics and Lakers (the Celtics have won nine of those meetings). After beating the Hawks again in the Finals in both 1960 and ’61, the Celtics would have their best season of the Auerbach/Russell era by going 60-20 before beating the Philadelphia Warriors of Russell’s great rival, Wilt Chamberlain, in seven games in the Eastern Division Finals, Boston returned to the Finals for the sixth straight season before beating the now LA Lakers in seven games for their fourth-straight championship. The Celtics were so consistent that you could have set your calendar by them: if it was spring they’d be in the playoffs, advance to the finals (usually against the Lakers) and win the championship. In ’63 it played out that way, in ’64, with Chamberlain’s Warriors moving across the country to San Francisco, the Celtics took the opportunity to beat them in the Finals instead of in the semi-finals as they previously had. In ’65 Chamberlain was traded to Philadelphia’s new team, the 76ers, and the Celtics responded with their best season of the run, going 62-18 before meeting Wilt’s 76ers in the Eastern Finals and beating them in seven games before beating the Lakers (who, led by the incredible Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, became a sort of shadow dynasty of their own) again in five games. In ’66 they beat Chamberlain’s team and outlasted the Lakers in a classic seven-game series to win an almost inconceivable eighth straight championship.

After winning an eighth-straight title and the ninth in 10-seasons, Red Auerbach retired as the head coach of the Celtics and moved into the team’s front office and he promoted Russell to HC (he would be a player-coach), making him the first Black head coach in any of the Big Four sports leagues. In his first season as head coach, Russell’s Celtics (who during the run had been replacing retiring hall of famers like Cousy with future hall of famers like Sam Jones and John Havlicek) ran into the best team Wilt ever had with the Sixers, and they beat the Celtics in five games in the Eastern Finals and went on to win the NBA championship; it ended the Celtics’ streak at eight and stands as the only time in Russell’s career that Boston did not make the NBA Finals. Although the 76ers were great again in ’68 and built a large three games to one lead in the Eastern Finals, the Celtics came all the way back to knock off the defending champions before another matchup (and another victory) over the Lakers. By 1969 the NBA was changing and Lew Alcindor (soon to change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) was on the horizon, but the Celtics were not through winning. The Lakers had acquired Wilt during the season to give them a ridiculous roster featuring Chamberlain, West, and Baylor, and the Celtics again advanced to meet them in the Finals, although this time the Lakers had home court advantage. A closely contested series went to yet another game seven and Bill Russell, who never lost a game seven in his entire career, was not intimidated. He and Havlicek led the Celtics to another win over the Lakers; it was the seventh-time Boston had beaten the Lakers during the Russell era, his second championship as the team’s head coach, and the 11th in his remarkable 13-year career.

After the game, Russell retired, leaving the game as the greatest winner in its history and, along with Auerbach, turning the Celtics into NBA royalty (they still have the most NBA championships in history with 17 to the Lakers 16). To try and understand just how much of a winner Russell was during his career, just take a look at the other two NBA dynasties on this list and consider that if Michael Jordan (six championships) and Magic Johnson (five) put their rings together, they would still only equal the 11 of Russell. Yes: he is the greatest winner in the history of team sports.

Key figures of the dynasty:

Red Auerbach (Head coach)

Bill Russell (player during the whole dynasty, HC from 67-69)

Bob Cousy

John Havlicek

Sam Jones

Bill Sharman

Tommy Heinsohn

Best year of the run: 1964-65 – the Celts went 62-18, finished with a 7.46 SRS, defeated Wilt’s 76ers in a classic seven game series in the Eastern Finals, and beat the Lakers in five games to win their seventh consecutive championship.

Most Memorable Moment: Russell becoming the first Black head coach was a big moment, but because Russell was a silent, thoughtful person who was not very popular in his day in heavily segregated Boston, the best on court basketball moment might be a better choice, and John Havlicek’s steal during the 1965 Eastern Conference playoffs against the 76ers, as one of the most famous plays in NBA history, will serve nicely.

Note: There are three reasons that these Celtics are listed 2nd and not first in spite of winning more championships. Those reasons are that Boston won most of its championships in an NBA of only nine franchises, never had a single-season team that is considered to be one of the best ever (no single Russell team is even listed on top five all-time NBA teams, and rarely is one of the teams even listed among the top 10), and Boston never had a moment that equaled the one chosen for the top dynasty, which might have THE most famous and poignant moment in sports history.

1.)  New York Yankees (1936-41): The Yankees are the most successful franchise in the history of the Big Four, having won 27 World Championships from 1923 to today, more than any team in any sport. The Yanks won 20 of those 27 championships in a 40-year period between their first championship in 1923 and their 1962 victory over the San Francisco Giants. However, the Yankees did not have one, uniform 40-year dynasty, but several distinct periods of greatness. In terms of the most fruitful period of the dynasty, it was between 1947 – 1962, when the Yanks won 10 World Series in 16-seasons, highlighted by the ’49-’53 squad that set the MLB record with five-consecutive World Championships. However, as great as those teams were, the true heart of the Yankee dynasty was the 1936-41 bunch that won four-straight championships between ’36-’39 and won another in 1941 for five in six-years.

When Babe Ruth was traded by the Yankees after the 1934-season, critics could be forgiven for believing the Yankees would return to the bottom of the standings and the irrelevancy that had defined them before the arrival of the greatest player in baseball history. Sure, Lou Gehrig was the best player in the game, but the Yanks did poorly in 1934 and ’35 in spite of his excellence – he even won the triple crown for all of baseball in ’34 by leading in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in, but he didn’t even win the American League MVP that year and the Yanks didn’t win anything either. In 1936 Gehrig, already surrounded by future Hall of Famers like Bill Dickey, Red Ruffing, and Lefty Gomez, got some real help in the form of rookie centerfielder Joe DiMaggio. Managed by one of the all-time greats (Joseph McCarthy), the 1936 Yanks won 102 games (out of 154) and met their cross-river rivals the New York Giants in the World Series, beating the Giants in six-games. ’37 was the same story as Gehrig and DiMaggio drove the Yanks to another 102 wins and another World Series victory over the Giants, this time in five games. However, things started to look bad for the Yankees in ’38 when their captain and leader, Lou Gehrig, started struggling to produce – he was already suffering from the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis that would force his retirement less than a month into the ’39 season and lead to his death by the summer of 1941 – but DiMaggio picked up the slack and the Yankees won their third straight AL Pennant by winning 99 games before sweeping the Chicago Cubs in the World Series for their third consecutive Championship, setting the MLB record in the process.

1939 would be a special season for the Yankees in many ways. Although Gehrig took himself out of the lineup only weeks into the season due to the progress of the ALS, he remained on the bench and inspiring his teammates. DiMaggio had also established himself as the best player in the game and was well on his way to his first MVP award. The Yankees would win 106-games and sweep a great Cincinnati Reds team to win their fourth-straight World Series championship (and that Reds team that would win the World Series the following season) and are today considered arguably the greatest team in the long history of Major League Baseball, but neither DiMaggio’s MVP, the all-time excellence of the team, or the fourth-straight championship is what stands out most in history from the 1939 season. Today what stands out most about the 1939 season is what happened on July 4th, 1939. The Yankees declared the day ‘Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day,’ and invited back Babe Ruth and the legendary roster of the 1927 ‘Murderer’s Row,’ of which Gehrig had been so large a part. Between the two games of a double-header, the Yankees had a ceremony to honor Gehrig, who was so emotional and nervous that he decided he would be unable to speak to the fans who had come to honor him. Pressed to speak, he gave the most famous speech in sports history as he spoke of how lucky he felt to be honored and respected by the fans, his teammates, the Yankees, and even opposing teams, and mentioned to the crowd, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

In 1940 the Yanks failed to win the AL Pennant for the first time in five-years, but they were not done. In ’41 as World War II raged across the globe (although America wouldn’t enter the war officially until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, several months after the baseball season ended), Joe DiMaggio captured the national attention and turned it away from war when he got at least one base hit in 56-consecutive games, setting a record that still stands today. During his hitting streak in the summer of ’41, Lou Gehrig succumbed to the disease which today carries his name, and the Yankees mourned but kept winning while DiMaggio kept hitting en route to a second AL MVP and leading the Yanks to 101 wins and their fifth Pennant in six-seasons. In the World Series the Yanks would meet the Brooklyn Dodgers for the first time in history (and between ’41 and ’56 the teams would meet in seven Fall Classics and the Yanks would win six of them). The Yanks would win the Pennant again in ’42 and ’43 and the World Series again in ’43, but by 1943 many of the Yankees’ biggest stars, including DiMaggio, had joined the military for WWII. The Yanks would continue winning after the War and bring in new legends like Yogi Berra, manager Casey Stengel, and the great Mickey Mantle, but the heart of their dynasty was the run from 1936 to ’41 that proved they were not going to fade after Babe Ruth was gone, but would go on to become the winningest franchise in the history of the Big Four.

Key Figures:

Joseph McCarthy (Manager)

Lou Gehrig

Joe DiMaggio

Bill Dickey

Red Ruffing

Lefty Gomez

Best year of the run: 1939 – The Yanks went 106 – 45 and swept the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. The team is considered to be maybe the greatest in baseball history, and their 2.4 SRS (For reference, the 1927 Murderer’s Row Yanks, who are widely held to be the greatest baseball team in history, finished with an SRS of 2.1) is the best ever.

Most Memorable Moment: Under normal circumstances, DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak would be the choice due to how big it was for the Yanks and the entire country, but it could not come close to the power of Gehrig’s famous speech. That speech may indeed be the most iconic and heartbreaking moment in sports history.

Cheating, Legacy, New England Patriots, NFL, Scandals, Seattle Seahawks, Sports hatred, Super Bowl XLIX, Winning

A Legacy on Fire

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I hate the New England Patriots and their organization, and the only National Football League franchises that I loathe more than the Patriots are the divisional rivals of my beloved New York Giants, and I root for the Pats to lose every game they play except for the three games every four-years when they play the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, and Washington Redskins. However with all of that said, I have always respected the dynasty that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady have built in New England, and I hate this scandal about New England deflating the footballs to give them an advantage in the AFC Title Game vs. the Indianapolis Colts even more than I do the team that is seemingly responsible for the scandal.

As someone who loves and respects sports history, the last things I want to think about are cheating and related scandals. I enjoy some of the more nerdy aspects of sports (and history in general), and one of them is compiling lists of which teams, players, coaches, and dynasties are the best. I devote more time to these things than I probably should, and I hate thinking of cheating because it gets in the way of my rankings. How should I rate Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens when there is clear evidence that they used performance enhancing drugs? How should we view the Baltimore Ravens 2012 Super Bowl-winning team when Terrell Suggs and Ray Lewis both suffered injuries that should have cost them the entire season (a torn Achilles tendon for Suggs, who was the reigning Defensive Player of the Year at the time of his injury, and a torn bicep for Lewis) and both came back with almost superhuman quickness and playing better than they had when they were initially hurt? I hate having to answer these questions rather than just trying to place Bonds, Clemens, and the 2012 Ravens in some historical context.

However there is one element to the Patriots’ role in what’s being called “Deflategate,” that makes it easier to be morally outraged about the Pats’ alleged behavior than the other scandals I mentioned, and that is that the act – which seems small and was almost certainly neither the cause of nor necessary for the Patriots 45-7 thrashing of the overmatched Colts – seems par for the course with the image that the public has of Bill Belichick as an arrogant cheater who views himself and his team as being above the petty rules that must govern the other 31-franchises in the NFL. Most of this perception is the fault of Belichick’s own administration and the fact that he was caught back in 2007 recording the defensive signals of other teams during games, a practice that was and is banned by the NFL, in a scandal that became known as “Spygate.” It has not helped the case of the Patriots and their fans that before Belichick was busted for spying in 2007, the Patriots routinely won big games as heavy underdogs, as they did on the way to the franchise’s first championship in the 2001 season, and that since Spygate the Patriots have not won the Super Bowl and have lost some big games as heavy favorites; most famously, they went into Super Bowl XLII as the first team in league history to win its first 18-games of the season, only to lose that Super Bowl to the Giants and finish 18-1, costing them what would have been prime position in the ‘best single-season team ever’ conversation.

Spygate has slightly tarnished the Patriots’ legacy as the first true NFL dynasty of the post-free agency era, but until now Patriots defenders could brush off criticism from players like Marshall Faulk and Kurt Warner (the two most prominent members of a 2001 St. Louis Rams team that came into Super Bowl XXXVI against the Patriots as 14-point favorites before losing 20-17 to those Patriots, and who have both accused the Patriots of secretly taping a closed practice session for those Rams in the days before the Super Bowl and using the ill-gotten knowledge to upset the Rams) as mere sour grapes. However, the existence of Inflategate means that Spygate is news again because it all seems just as much a part of the Belichick/Brady years as the usual 12-13 win season and accompanying first round bye. Patriots’ fans are nervously hoping that the scandal doesn’t somehow get worse and that the penalties the franchise will likely have to pay for this latest shady scandal doesn’t get in the way of the fourth Super Bowl trophy they have been chasing since the 2004 season, and that they all expected long before now.

The historical implications of Super Bowl XLIX are what I’d much rather be writing about today; we have a game where the last NFL team to repeat as champions is trying to keep the Seattle Seahawks from being the first team since them to win back-to-back Super Bowls; a game where the two teams that were the best in their conferences for most of the season made it to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. The Patriots come in having played in four-consecutive AFC Championship games, and with a win they would join the 5 teams in NFL history to win at least 4 Super Bowls, a club led by the Pittsburgh Steelers with 6, the San Francisco 49ers and Cowboys with 5, and the Green Bay Packers and Giants with 4; with a loss they would tie the Broncos (who were also dispatched there, as the Pats will be if they lose, by the Seahawks) for the most losses in SB history with 5. Tom Brady is making his third attempt to equal the record 4 Rings won by Steelers’ hall of famer Terry Bradshaw and 49ers legend Joe Montana, and it his fourth attempt to equal Montana – Brady’s boyhood idol, by the way – with 3 Super Bowl MVP awards. This is what I want to talk about, but instead we’re left trying to determine where to rank one more scandal for the man Patriots’ haters can resume happily calling “Belicheat.” Belichick, in his arrogance, has sullied his own name, but he has also made the history of the NFL a little foggier, and for a sports nerd like me, that’s only slightly less distasteful than the thought of Belichick standing atop the podium after winning his fourth Super Bowl and sporting his familiar smug grin, secure in the belief that he’s gotten the best of us once more…and us knowing that he’s probably right.