That first team, the Capitals, plays ice hockey, and I pay the scantest attention to anything NHL. My good friend at work is a big Los Angeles Kings fan, so we'll chat sometimes about their prospects. I just pretty much let him tell me stuff because I know very little about the sport.
There are two key things about the Caps that remind me very much of our Kansas City Chiefs. One, they wear red jerseys on the ice, and two, their playoff history has been just as abysmal as the Chiefs.
After they won it all, the broadcast put up a stat there on the screen -- the Capitals have had the most playoff appearances before getting their first championship as anyone, 20-some-odd playoff appearances without a title until last Thursday night.
The thing I want to point out here is that after their last playoff catastrophe, I'd read an article that went into how improbably and wrenchingly painful their playoff losses have been, describing each one, how each time the Caps were the better team but this crazy-ass stupid thing happened and that crazy-ass stupid thing happened -- most often at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins -- over and over and over again.
It was like reading the playoff history of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Seriously. It was so much like it.
Then you have the Warriors. I am indeed a big fan of the Warriors and have been since I was a kid, as I've mentioned in this blog before, and yes, I was faithful when they were contemptibly miserable for years upon years upon years. I'd even recently come across this piece from Grantland, from Bill Simmons himself, pretty comprehensive research there, really, and completely and wholly heart-breaking -- that it was that horrific, this Warriors team and its still somewhat recent long agonizing history.
But it is sometimes quite gratifying to review what your team had been through to truly enjoy the mountaintop experience. For those who don't know about the most recent Warriors history, they are now truly the most dominant team in the NBA, and it isn't even close. They'd just won their third title in four years, they aren't even done with their dynastic run, and they are changing the way pro basketball teams do their business. Everyone is working like crazy to emulate the Warriors way, and yet, what is that way?
Well, there was some luck when they snatched some pretty prime players in the draft. Still you needed to get the scouting right and my goodness, did the Warriors ever need some splendid luck after all the rotten luck they'd had for years with their personnel moves. But that is a lot of the point. Once new ownership took over bringing along bright front office decision-makers, that set in motion an environment of winning these players wanted to perform in.
He was attracted to that.
What does this have to do with the Chiefs? Two things. And neither of them are the whole we-were-once-so-bad-but-now-can-be-good thing, though that certainly applies here, no doubt.
First, to be the best you've got to position yourself to be the best, and the only way you can do that is to insightfully grasp the reality of what you're up against. If an NBA team wants to beat the Warriors, it has got to do the right things and be damn serious about those things to compete. The Warriors not only have so many skilled players out there but have so many options to utilize their talents. Most teams have a couple very good players and a handful of decent play designs. The Warriors simply overwhelm you with far more than anything anyone's got for them.
As for the Chiefs? Brett Veach got serious about getting players like Sammy Watkins and Anthony Hitchens this year, picking up Reggie Ragland last year, being in the mix of securing Pat Mahomes, keeping Eric Berry in the fold long-term, keeping Andy Reid happy who for all those ugly things we know about him is still a phenomenally gifted coach at developing players and devising a multi-schemed game plan that gets the most from his players on the field.
Maybe losing in the playoffs in such horrific ways is moving us to get going really doing what it takes to compete at the Warriors level.
That second thing simply gets back to the ownership, the upper levels of commitment, and for several blog posts I ruminated long and hard about Hunt, the idea that our postseason nightmares are the result of something from the deep past related to something Lamar Hunt that is somehow carrying over into Clark's leadership. Not going into any of that at all, because I'd like to think I've still been quite respectful of Lamar's legacy and Clark's current stature.
But I can't refuse to make the critically salient point that any team's success --
Starts at the top.
I say this because a couple months ago I thought I'd get into The League by David Harris. It's a bit older book, from something like 1986 if I remember. Now I absolutely loved his book on Bill Walsh, The Genius, but this was rather a dry read. Some good stuff in it, but much better is America's Game by Michael MacCambridge -- who, by the way, is himself an admitted Chiefs fan.
But I perused The League a bit and much of it is about Pete Rozelle and his battle with Al Davis and in and around all that is about all the bickering among the owners about this and that and...
And there is stuff about Lamar. Yes, he does write a bit about the silver debacle, not flattering at all, not just to the Chiefs but to the entire NFL. Harris does get quite a bit into Lamar's other sports holdings, and how much this really chafed the other owners. Hmm! I just did not know that.
There was even a court case about it all, in 1980, about just how much should NFL owners have their hands in other sports ventures as presenting a serious conflict of interest. Lamar's North American Soccer League was essentially on trial. What I wanted to share with you here was something amazing Lamar said in court. Here it is:
"Probably the most important reason [for the AFL's success] was having a solid ownership group... Not all were of the same resource capability, but they were pretty well all of the same dedication toward getting the job done. Sound ownership is very important to a sports team operation and I believe success in one [sport] leads to success in another."
Here is Lamar plainly confessing that the key is the ownership. Want success? Gotta have that owner.
Ironically, it has always been my contention that Lamar's involvement in forming those other sports leagues truly compromised the ability of the Chiefs to be competitive for years and years. He may have said that good ownership carries over into other things, but if you spread yourself too thin, you aren't doing any favors to any of the things in which you have an interest.
Was that a legitimate aspect of Hunt that afflicted the Chiefs as much as it did? I can't say that it wasn't. It may now be reasonably asked, what does any of that have to do with us now? No worries, I got you, I understand.
I'm just looking at what the Capitals did.
I'm with you.
See that photograph there at the beginning of this post? See the sea of red in Washington D.C?
Here's to seeing it in Kansas City in February.
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