Month: April 2025

6th Man of the Year Award: The Stupidest NBA Award

Why does this award even exist? Many internet sites claim it was a cunning strategy invented in the middle of last century by Red Aurebach. By keeping a starter player on the bench, he could maintain pressure throughout the game for more wins. Or perhaps it was to soothe egos. Frank Ramsey was a good player, he was a starter-level player. The whole “6th man” concept kept him satisfied with coming off the bench.

Either way, it was an idea built around that particular Celtics team’s lineup and how it related to the rest of the league. It doesn’t scale. It’s not the 1960s. Most teams today don’t happen to have the talent level fall off between positions six and seven. In todays NBA more stars take nights off or have reduced minutes, so player number six plays more and starts more games than in those days.

But mostly, the logic just doesn’t add up. If a team is so deep that a player who would start on most teams comes off their bench instead, that player is a good candidate for the 6th man.

Payton Pritchard is good enough to be starting for most teams in the NBA. But he happens to have Derrick White and Jrue Holiday starting in front of him. That’s great for the Celtics. It’s not so great for Payton Pritchard since he doesn’t get to start. But at least it makes him a leader for sixth man of the year award. Two years ago, Malcolm Brogdon was also coming off the bench behind White and Holiday. Brogdon became the sixth man of the year. That is not because Brogdon and Pritchard are particularly bad or particularly great players – they are both good players who just happened to be on a stacked team at that position so they had to come off the bench.

The 6th man award is actually the “best player not quite enough good to start because the team is loaded” award. That’s not so great an achievement. It’s an achievement of the front office who built the roster, not the individual player. If Jrue Holiday is traded/dumped next year for salary cap reasons, Pritchard will go from an NBA award winner to a non-award winning guard on an amazing team. Yay?

Project 2029

One of my smarter very-liberal friends posted on Facebook about a proposed Project 2029 plan.

I posted a similar list two years ago. It’s not a platform, they are things to improve American democracy:

I’m also mostly aligned with the “Common Sense Democrat manifesto” platform proposed by Matt Yglesias.

Anyhow — I approve of most but not all of the below “2029” ideas. I was challenged for more detail. Challenge accepted!

  1. Eliminating Citizens United: Yes. Anything that reduces the influence of money on politics is good. The richest man in the world who also cares about politics (Elon Musk, duh) shouldn’t have such a huge influence, but it was awful before he showed up. I am in favor of anything that improves the voting and electoral process (two of my four priorities fit under that).
  2. Doubling Minimum Wage: Yes, okay, I guess. Generally, I am in favor of income/wealth redistributive policies from the richer to the poorer, this fits under that. The minimum wage is weird. Basic economics says it is a bad idea, yet none of the bad things materialize when it’s tried. Given that, why not increase it. I have no idea if doubling is an appropriate amount, and how do you account for higher wage cities vs rural America etc.. but all that is second order.
  3. Removing Presidential Immunity: Of course. It’s amazing that we need to reassert the President is not a king, the law still applies. C’mon.
  4. Breaking up Massive Corporations: No. I haven’t seen a convincing case for it, in a way that also recognizes the many goods that come from massive corporations. As a sub-bullet, I feel strongly we should re-legislate what a corporation is. Corporations are legal fictions, not people. We can legislatively define them however we want, what rights and privileges they get.
  5. SCOTUS Term Limits: Yes, 100%.
  6. Expanding SCOTUS to 13: Nope. Don’t see a reason for it. It will just make everything worse. Liberals who think this will solve anything are crazy.
  7. Taxing Mega Churches: All religious profit institutions that can’t follow the law and stay out of the secular world should have their tax-exempt status removed. As was starting to happen in the Obama administration. Other than that, I don’t see the point of this. If this was a broader policy around re-thinking non-profits in general I might change my mind (see above about corporations).
  8. Women’s Healthcare Rights: I assume this is the latest code phrase for legalized abortion. Yes.
  9. Banning Right-to-Work Laws: No. I don’t see the case for it. I live in a right to work state, no one here is particularly repressed and the economic benefits are real.
  10. Amendment for Marriage Rights: I don’t know what this is.
  11. Reversing Global Warming: Yes.
  12. Medicare for All: It’s a fine partial solution to the health care mess in America. There are lots of other things that would help, this is as good as any. At least it’s feasible.
  13. Assault Weapons Bans: Meh. I don’t think this is the real problem. Focus ought to be on enforcing current laws, background checks, a general re-balancing of what is allowed… this is one little bit that doesn’t matter much. And it’s crazy hard to define, enforce, stirs up massive opposition, etc. Not something to focus on.
  14. Progressive Taxation (added by poster): 100% yes. But we already have this, not sure why it would need to be on a platform.

I don’t really get what this 2029 list is all about. It’s presumably a response to the project 2025 plan. This is an odd way to frame since the 2025 plan was disowned by Trump and most of the GOP even as they now follow many of the recommendations. That is, although the 2025 plan is public, it was meant to be kind of a secret. It’s a war plan. It’s the quiet part out loud. This list of 2029 priorities looks like it is meant to be a platform, a rallying cry, it’s on Facebook. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell. After all, most of the items here are things that have been Democratic priorities for decades. Maybe it came from this Op-ed. But that oped is um… well… smart. This 2029 plan isn’t. Even though I agree with most of it, it’s just a grab bag of stuff, and seems designed to lose any general election.