The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Magic & Bird – A Courtship of Rivals (an awesome HBO Sports documentary)

Duality.  It’s yin and yang; it’s black and white contrasting, yet completing the circle, so as to create a unified whole.

When I was in junior high school, that yin and yang was Bird & Magic.  Magic (Johnson) and (Larry) Bird.  These were the respective icons for the team that I loved (and still love), the Los Angeles Lakers, and the team that I hated (and now, begrudgingly respect), the Boston Celtics.

My personal connection runs a bit deeper, inasmuch as the Lakers drafting of Magic happened to coincide with my first writing “gig,” writing sports stories for my junior high school newspaper, the Madison Journal. 

Showtime, as that era came to be known in Laker-land was literally the galvanizing moment when I transitioned from casual fan (dating back to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar joining the Lakers in the 1975-76 season) to diehard, so the time, place and events of the HBO documentary are well-imprinted in my brain.

As the beautifully told ‘Magic & Bird – A Courtship of Rivals’ shows, prior to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson putting their stamp on the game, the NBA was of borderline national interest and on the cusp of relevance. It was a time when the game was perceived as “too black,” searching for an identity following the NBA-ABA merger, and reeling from prolonged scandals pertaining to cocaine/drug abuse (which touched all sports leagues, most notably baseball) .

The story of Magic versus Bird was perfect, right of out Hollywood Casting.  The extrovert black player, who has just won the NCAA championship (by beating Larry Bird’s Indiana State team, no less), heads to the glamour of Los Angeles, flanked by arguably the greatest player in the game, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Meanwhile, the more introverted, but street-wise and mentally tough, Larry Bird is the great white hope (literally speaking), leading one of the most sacred of sports teams, the Boston Celtics, who had fallen on hard times, but to prominence.

East Coast versus West Coast. Street fighters versus the elegance and mastery of Showtime.  Mr. Outgoing versus Mr. Stoic. Eight total NBA championships between them (5 for Magic, 3 for Bird) when all was said and done.

The documentary shows how these men went from rivals to friends, how their career arcs literally saved the NBA, and set the stage for Michael Jordan to take it to the next level.  It captures Magic finding out he had HIV, what looked like a death sentence at the time, and retiring from the game as a result (a day that I remember vividly).

But most of all, it is a reminder of how the game has changed, how unlike today's stars needing to get their touches and shots, Magic and Bird could literally shape the game with 15 shots, usually scoring 20+ points, dishing 10 assists and grabbing 12 rebounds in the process.  There was never a minute with either of these guys where you wondered if Me came before Team.

It's full of magical moments, laughter, sadness and the inevitability of bodies breaking down when you commit to being the best there is.  If you like basketball, and the narratives that sports generates, don’t miss ‘Magic & Bird – A Courtship of Rivals,’ now playing on HBO.

Related Posts:

1. The Anaconda Squeeze: Why the Lakers Will Beat the Magic
2. Lakers-Celts and the Sporting Metaphor
3. NBA Basketball as Opera

Inside the Collapse: Thoughts on Michael Lewis' 60 Minutes Segment

 

What I love about Michael Lewis is his sense of narrative.  The subprime mortgage meltdown and Wall Street’s numbing disconnect from Main Street reality are all topics that have been put through the spin cycle again and again and again.  Is there really anything new to say? 

In the skilled hands of Michael Lewis, the answer is an unqualified yes. Lewis puts forth a crisply reasoned story of mass-delusion – of consumers, investors, bankers, ratings agencies and insurers – a complete and total 'Tulip Mania' to the level that perhaps only 10-20 investors worldwide realized that the subprime mortgage business was a house of cards, and found a way to bet against it.

A market of True Believers is nonetheless still culpable, as Lewis also goes on to show, when its underlying incentive structures virtually ensure that its rank and file will continue 'believing' until their weighty bonuses dry up.

This, the bonus culture, is the integral ‘moral of the story’ from both tonight’s excellent 60 Minutes segment and Lewis’ new book, ‘The Big Short.’  

Namely, that people see what they are incentivized to see, which given Wall Street’s bonus culture, coupled with a sense of entitlement fostered by looking within for reference points of worth, as opposed to the larger economy, is a vicious cycle simply begging for another crash to occur.

To be clear, this is less a commentary on “how much” (the compensation amounts) than “for what?” (what constitutes earning the bonuses, what behavior is being incentivized), for as Lewis argues, the business has become divorced from real productivity.

In other words, when you make your (quota/bonus) number by performing transactions that basically destroy the global economy – i.e., transactions that by any definition, should not have happened – that is a fucked up incentive structure.

No less, when Wall Street is earning “record profits” when said profits are essentially "earned" by borrowing from the government at 0% interest and lending back to the government (buying T-Bills, etc.) to make a spread, that is by definition a parasitical relationship between Wall Street and the US Economy, and evidence that Wall Street’s leaders have completely lost any sense of responsibility to society at large.

Therein lies the conundrum.  Lewis shows plainly that you have to be very careful how you incentivize people because they will respond to how they are incentivized.

Yet, he also shows that in Wall Street, you have an industry that lives and dies by the Upton Sinclair credo that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

This is the fuzzy junction point between “The Market is (Ultimately) Self-Correcting” and “Too Big to Fail,” a place made even fuzzier by its co-dependent enabler, Uncle Sam.

How will this story end?

Related Posts:

1. True Believers: Make Sense of Another Wall Street Fiasco
2. Review of 'The Big Short' by Michael Lewis
3. Getting Real: On Doomsday and the Demise of So-Called Experts

Apple Sucks...Until Compared to All Others

In ‘What is Apple up to?’ long-time tech pioneer and general industry curmudgeon, Dave Winer (RSS, Weblogs, Scripting, Web Content Management), opines that Apple and many, if not all, of the tech companies want to get the control back from the users, adding that, “To Apple, a perfect world is one where every moment a user is reading, listening or watching causes cash to flow back to Apple.”

Ooh, evil Apple, controlling Apple, bad Apple.  Add to the mush, Apple’s unfortunate decision to sue HTC, the Nexus One-creating Google Android proxy, for patent infringement (thereby turning frienemy Google to outright foe), and for an open systems purist like Dave, it’s conspiracy!

Well, I think that if we tried to pin-point the 'nexus' between building great products, growing great businesses and supporting open systems, we would see, unsurprisingly, that the 'answer' is paradoxical by nature.

In other words, Apple doesn't inherently suck or isn't evil because they have a unified vision that includes: A) being profitable; B) exercising a bit of a 'control drama' around pursuing/realizing their vision; and C) being outcome-driven when it comes to embracing open standards.

No, Apple doesn't suck any more than Dave doesn’t suck or isn’t evil for having a different vision, albeit one that ignores the fundamental truth that most people aren't hackers and tinkerers (and don’t want to be), and more importantly, that the alternative industry computing models haven't been materially better to date.

Think about it. The IBM Era? Hardly democratizing or empowering to the masses. The Microsoft Era? Democratizing yes, but truly great products? No.  And ultimately, a zero-sum outcome player. 

Google, the Great Open-ish? Yeah, everything is free, loosely coupled and ad-supported, but has it rendered great products, and what about the industries that, poof, have simply blown up and gone away? (NOTHING is free.) 

And, relative to the 'Open equals Good' quotient, if any company wants to get rid of the hard drive, push your personals to The Cloud, and own The Index and Data Store, it's Google (Just 'Trust Us').

In that regard, Apple is best analogous to US-style democracy. It sucks until compared to all other forms of industry governance, an aphorism that sagely old Winston Churchill can get behind:

"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

The grass is always greener...in the abstract.

Related Posts:

1. Some thoughts on Apple's patent infringement suit against HTC
2. The Chess Masters: Apple v. Google
3. Android vs. iPhone: Why Openness May Not Be Best
4. Open "ish": The meaning of open, according to Google
5. Ruminations on Apple Q1, 2010 Earnings Call and Investor “Dead Zones” 

Some thoughts on Apple's patent infringement suit against HTC

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

The decision by Apple to sue HTC today for patent infringement seems to answer (unfavorably) the question of whether Apple's patent portfolio strategy around iPhone was birthed more to be a defensive move (i.e., to block others from suing them) or an offensive one (i.e., to block competitors from emulating them).  

As the aggressor, Apple opens itself up to getting tarred by the "Apple's Evil" crowd, who can use this as evidence that the company is trying to slow down the rate of innovation by iPhone competitors.

No less, this makes the company look fearful of an open, competitive market and less confident in the defensibility/differentiation of their platform, since we all know the moniker, if you can't beat 'em, sue 'em.

While it's an imperfect analog, people will likely look to this suit as akin to the "look and feel" lawsuit that Apple pursued and ultimately lost against Microsoft, signaling once and for all the descent of Macs and the dominance of Windows.  

Granted, that was a copyright suit, and not a patent litigation, but perception has a way of becoming reality, and the perception is that the company (Apple) that has consistently kicked butt on the merits of products (and products alone), has just pulled out the chemical warfare to change the shape of the battlefield.

Why they felt the need to pull out the weapons of mass destruction NOW is the question that Apple lovers and haters alike should be wondering.

UPDATE 1: And so it begins.  The blogosphere, and mainstream media are already talking this one up as the beginnings of a major war with Google, and proof positive of Apple's fear of Google (see 'Apple's Wimpy Patent Suit Is Proof That It's Terrified Of Google').  As I noted yesterday, fair or unfair, this is one of those "perception has a way of becoming reality" type of deals. When you are kicking butt and taking no prisoners, the last thing you want to do is validate the competition by acknowledging their existence as a viable threat. It's the same reason we all poke fun at iPhone competitors when they market, position and message themselves relative to iPhone. It's seen as the ultimate proof that they don't have their own identity. Alas, Apple is validating the impact of Android by suing it's nearest proxy (HTC). 

UPDATE 2: John Gruber of Daring Fireball has put together a nice compilation of some educated perspectives on both the (woeful) state of software patent law, and how same shapes an intellectually honest read on Apple's suit against HTC. Here is an excerpt (from Tim Bray): "I’m inclined to think there’s a spectrum of reasonability in software patents. 'One-click ordering' seems like a grievous error, simply because if you said those three words to any web-savvy ecommerce-savvy programmer, they’d say 'OK' and build it for you and it would work; which doesn’t seem to meet a high enough bar to qualify as an invention. But consider the basic PGP setup by Phil Zimmerman, it’s just immensely clever and elegant. I have the feeling that that really does qualify as an invention in totally the same sense as my brother’s gas-mixing apparatus. Obviously I think the things I filed are closer to PGP than one-click ordering."

Related Posts:

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2. The Chess Masters: Apple v. Google
   
3. The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK