Welcome to another
installment of the sports terminology translation station.
Since Rosetta Stone hasn’t
yet developed a ‘sports watchers to non sports watchers’ educational
explanation software yet, the time has come to translate common sports
terminology for those who don’t speak fluent ESPNeese.
Sadly there aren’t enough
inches in this column to break down every single sports term and its immediate
meaning. Instead the focus here will be to breakdown the backhanded complements
of sports that share the airwaves with Michael and Kelly.
The first term that deserves
decoding is the term ‘glue guy.’ Usually this term comes up primarily in
basketball, although baseball and hockey see this term in their word banks
occasionally. The player’s relevance to the team is usually brought up when
Skip Bayless or Stephen A. Smith are in the middle of debating who the better
team is.
What a ‘glue guy will’ most
commonly be defined as is a mediocre player whose primary function is to be a
catalyst to improve team chemistry. In the NBA guys like Derrick Fisher of the
Oklahoma City Thunder would be a good example.
Back in Fisher’s heyday with
the Los Angles Lakers from 2000-2004 he averaged roughly eleven points per game
and his signature moment was a falling away
‘there-is-no-possible-way-this-shot-should-go-in-but-why-the-hell-not’ three
pointer in the 2004 playoffs.
Nowadays Fisher is a backup
guard who will occasionally hit a three point shot; that is if he has enough
space to read “War and Peace” before a defender gets to him.
Talking heads and journalists
will reward the ‘glue guy’ term to a good teammate who can’t produce on the
court anymore in order to get good quotes from him after the game. Everyone who
follows Fisher knows that he hasn’t averaged more than ten points per game
since 2008 and hasn’t been a reliable defender since 2005.
Yet because Fisher is a nice
guy who serves as an important catalyst for team chemistry, nobody is going to
outright say Fisher sucks. Instead they give him the backhanded complement of
being a ‘glue guy.’
Synonyms for glue guy include
‘hustle player’, ‘hard worker’, or any player description that includes the
word grit.
Now the sports terminology
translation station will break down what it means to ‘turn back the hands of
time.’ This phrase will make appearances from football to hockey and every
sport in between.
When a player ‘turns back the
hands of time’ he or she is an older player who is statistically producing
similarly to when they were in their prime. Anyone who has watched ESPN in the
last two weeks has heard this term applied to Kobe Bryant after two
historically great (40 plus points and 12 plus assists) games in a row.
Although the black mamba
deserves the praise, there is a bit of bile in pundits saying Kobe
For one thing that phrase is
a not so subtle reminder that Bryant has played in the NBA for 17 seasons and
is 34 years of age. Kobe
Still nobody likes to be
reminded that they are not as young as they once were and Bryant probably
doesn’t want to be reminded that the last championship he won was in 2009-2010.
He is still a good player who happens to be up there in years.
While there are no synonyms
for the phrase ‘turning back the hands of time’ although there is probably one
daylight savings time joke in there somewhere.
Another term to break down
depicts the constant breaking down of athletes’ bodies.
When a player frequently gets
hurt over the course of their career they are plagued with the dreadful ‘injury
prone label.’ This term is also not sport specific and has more people fit the
bill than in a casting call for Les Miserable.
Perhaps one of the most
drastic cases of an ‘injury prone’ player would be former Boston Red Sox
outfielder and vanilla ice cream substitute J.D. Drew.
Over the course of his
career, the infamous Drew missed roughly 96 games per year during a five year
span in Boston
Drew missed so much time due
to injury that the fan base of Red Sox nation not only questioned the severity
of Drew’s injuries, but also assigned him the dubious (but hilarious) nickname
of “Nancy Drew.”
Synonyms for injury prone
include ‘just can’t seem to stay healthy,’ ‘injury plagued,’ ‘soft,’ ‘frail’ or
in the most extreme circumstances ‘quitter.’
While ‘injury prone’ is by
far the most condescending term that the translation station has defined
perhaps the most loaded term would be ‘trade bait.’
Players who are ‘trade bait’
are athletes that a franchise is looking to get rid of in return for other
players, draft picks, cash, or some combination of the three.
On the surface that doesn’t
sound so bad because ‘trade bait’ implies that the player openly being shopped
has value. However, the notion that a player is expendable decreases his
overall value to the team and therefore some could have a lower opinion of his
or her production.
Before the NBA trade deadline
this year Los Angeles Clipper guard Eric Bledsoe was mentioned in more rumors
than Kris Humphries and his wife.
Bledsoe put up good numbers
for his team off the bench for the Clips (21 minutes, nine points, three
rebounds, and three assists per game) was a player with the potential to get
better (age 23) and was a part of the deepest team in the NBA.
So the Clippers tried to
dangle Bledsoe as trade bait in order to lure that final piece to make a
championship run this season. Bledsoe ultimately didn’t get traded and now his
value has depreciated because of the Clips openly willing to bargain for
Bledsoe.
The biggest reason that being
acknowledged as trade bait is partially condescending is because it can hurt
the psyche of a player. If a player has to hear that his or her name is being
discussed in trade rumors then it automatically becomes a distraction to the
team.
Instead of worrying about
winning, trade bait players like Bledsoe have to answer questions about how
they are dealing with the rumors of their impending departure.
The free trial in ESPNeese is
now over. Hopefully now the language of sports is a bit easier to translate.
No comments:
Post a Comment