The Golden State Warriors are the most forgettable franchise in the NBA. They have one playoff appearance in 18 years, one All-Star representative in 16 years, and they're practically the only professional sports franchise in the country without the city or state they play in in their title -- which, while neat, basically means no one knows where the hell they play, or even that they're an NBA team. They've occasionally gotten attention for being sort of quirky, like when they adopted a ridiculously high-octane style under Don Nelson, or when Latrell Sprewell -- their one All-Star in 16 seasons -- choked his head coach and nearly got thrown out of the league. But other than that, and other than having an unusually rabid fanbase, the organization has been marked by failure if it's even been marked at all. And now that Jeremy Lin has taken off since joining the New York Knicks, it's just one more example of what a disastrous franchise the often-exciting Warriors really are.

Lin basically wouldn't even be in the league if the Warriors hadn't plucked him from obscurity last season. Lin, an undrafted, Asian, Harvard-graduate California local, was an immediate fan favorite in Oakland; he received a rousing ovation every time he came in the game, without exception. But it seemed that the Warriors didn't have much use for him. He played in merely 29 games last year, averaging only 9.8 minutes, and he never got a consistent run in the rotation off the bench. At times, it seemed like the Warriors would shoehorn him into the end of games just to get a cheer out of the fans, as though the entire reason he had been drafted was to appeal to the crowd as an eastern Brian Scalabrine.

In the offseason, the Warriors changed coaches and Lin was waived in a proactive move to clear cap space in case DeAndre Jordan decided to sign with them. Not only did Jordan leave them hanging, but Lin, at last getting legitimate playing time, has morphed into a superstar for the New York Knicks. The Warriors have an atrocious history when it comes to judging talent (they once passed up Kobe Bryant for Todd Fuller), but this is the lowest point in a long line of terrible recent mistakes. It's one thing to pass on a Kobe Bryant by accident, but it's something entirely to have a great player in your possession and do nothing with him. For a while, it looked like the Warriors were patently unlucky. Now, they just look incompetent.

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We're now a full week removed from Super Bowl XLVI, but before we bury the NFL season, there's one final note that needs to be made, and that's that this generation has been unbelievably lucky when it comes to Super Bowls. We have seen more great Super Bowls since the turn of the century than in the previous 33 years altogether. It's possible that people in their teens and early twenties may have never known the Super Bowl to be unwatchable, but yes, the game has undergone a dramatic about-face in the last decade or so. Believe it or not, it was once justifiable to not watch the game because the score was usually insurmountable within a quarter or two.

In the first 33 Super Bowls, with Super Bowl XXXIII taking place in 1999, the average margin of victory was a little over 16 points. There were as many twenty-point blowouts during that span as there were single-digit affairs, and as many games decided by 25 points as there were games decided by less than a touchdown. And even though there were occasionally games with a relatively close score, they were hardly any that people would classify as "great." Super Bowl V was decided by a game-winning field-goal, but it featured so many turnovers and bad possessions that it's since been dubbed the "Blunder Bowl." Super Bowl VII saw a seven-point win for the Dolphins over the Redskins, but the overall score was 14-7, and the Redskins only got on the board thanks to a muffed field-goal attempt by the Dolphins kicker that would have made it 17-0. Super Bowl XIII ended with the Steelers beating the Cowboys 35-31, but the Cowboys had to finish with 14 unanswered points just to lose by four. The same is the case for Super Bowl XVI, where the Bengals outscored the 49ers by eight in the fourth quarter but still lost by five.

In essence, only three of the first 33 were what most sports fans would consider very good to great: Super Bowl X (where the Steelers beat the Cowboys by four), Super Bowl XXIII (capped by a game-winning Joe Montana touchdown throw) and Super Bowl XXV (where Scott Norwood missed the would-be game-ending field-goal.) But that's basically the list. That's a watchability rate of 9.1% through the first 33 years.

Contrast that with the 13 Super Bowls since 2000 and it's barely even comparable. Sure, there were a few duds; Giants-Ravens and Bucs-Raiders weren't even slightly competitive. On the whole though, it's been a steady stream of completely watchable, fun, exciting matchups. The average margin of victory during that period is 9.5 points, however, if you remove Giants-Ravens and Bucs-Raiders -- which were both 27-point slaughters -- the margin goes down to 6.9 points, and every matchup besides those two were decided by no more than two touchdowns, with eight of those eleven Super Bowls being decided by a touchdown or less. There have been more game-winning plays in the last 13 Super Bowls (five) than there were in the first 33 (two), and there have been as many games decided by seven or less in the last 13 than there were in the first 33.

Who knows how long this trend will last. There was a period from 1984 to 1995 where the average margin of victory in the Super Bowl was 23 points and there were twice as many thirty-point blowouts (four) as there were games decided by single-digits. For now, we need to appreciate how awesome it is to actually get good games on a regular basis. So much has been made about how many viewers have been tuning in to the Super Bowls lately, and how more people than ever before are watching them. Sure, the marketing and the cultural relevance of the NFL has a lot to do with it. But maybe the main reason is simply that the Super Bowl, since the year 2000, has actually been fun to sit through, which is a welcome change of pace from the first 33 editions.

Some people think Marvin Gaye's version of the National Anthem at the All-Star Game in L.A. was the greatest of all time. Some think that title belongs to Jimi Hendrix. There is no wrong answer since it's a matter of opinion, but to me it isn't even close. Whitney Houston's rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner prior to Super Bowl XXV -- the Scott Norwood game -- is the most beautiful version I've ever heard. And it was heart-breaking to learn that she had died the other day.

It's easy to sing the anthem well. There are a billion artists who have done it with great voices of their own that were more than acceptable. But I've never heard anything that compares to Houston's. Yes, her voice was phenomenal, but she had range! She had poignancy! In her version of the anthem, she was able to sway the emotion of the crowd just by shifting her tone, going from bombastic to serene to jubilant, and she did it at a time that captured the unsettled nature of America, which had entered into the Gulf War barely a week beforehand.

To be honest, it's hard to watch her sing with such unbridled emotion without getting a little teary-eyed. Houston, after all, was married to Bobby Brown in what can only be described as one of the most turbulent, dysfunctional marriages in history; it's hard to believe she was this ambivalent, this happy in her day-to-day life. And now that she's dead, it just makes her version even sadder to revisit because a damn good singer lost her life too damn early.

I have to admit, it feels weird writing about Super Bowl XLVI because it feels like I've already done it. Dunno about the rest of you, but I was getting a serious case of deja vu throughout game; it was getting downright spooky just how similar this game was to the Super Bowl from four years ago, and it wasn't just because the teams were the same, and they were wearing the same uniforms, and they were playing in a dome like before, or that the Patriots were favored again. Both games were duller than dishwater for the first three quarters; both games had significantly less scoring than people anticipated; both games were defined by a key injury to a New England Patriot; both games ended with Eli Manning going on a game-winning drive, helped by a miracle catch by one of his receivers; in both games, the Giant who came with away with the game-winning score was someone who had been completely invisible to that point.

The similarities were so striking that when it got to Tom Brady's final possession, and the Pats were at fourth-and-16 deep in their own territory, I seriously began to question whether I was watching an exact replicate of Super Bowl XLII. However, Brady at least completed a pass to Deion Branch to extend the game, so it wasn't entirely the same.

Anywho, let's get to the records. The convenient thing -- for me anyway -- is that because there haven't even been 50 Super Bowls, it's virtually impossible for there to not be a dozen records set in every single Super Bowl. It's not like with baseball, where over a hundred years of seven-game series have made it rare for there to be a record-setting anything -- not that this latest World Series wasn't historical. I guess that was a bad example. Anyway…

Tom Coughlin, at age 65, is now the oldest Super Bowl winning coach in history. It's funny how reactionary our praise is in sports. When Tom Coughlin took over as the Giants' coach, there wasn't a single writer who stood up and wrote, "Wow, look at him coach. This is guy is going to be a Hall of Famer." It's only after he's won two rings that people are praising him as an all-time great, but the funny aspect with Coughlin is that the Giants have been itching to can him for years. Had the Giants lost their season-finale to the Cowboys, Coughlin might be out of a job right now. He'd be the exact same coach that is today, but no one would be praising him as amazing.

Now that Tom Brady has lost two Super Bowls, what does that make of him historically? I think as sports fans, we've been utterly spoiled in every aspect by Michael Jordan. Jordan had a perfect, spotless, storybook career, and he ruined what it means to be great for every other player. In truth, even the greatest of all time face defeat constantly. John Elway might be the best quarterback ever, and he lost three times in the Super Bowl in games that were never even close; Brady on the other hand has won three of his five Super Bowl appearances, and his two losses were at least competitive. In a way, Brady is a lot like Kobe Bryant: both are one of the all-time greats of their sport, both have lost twice in the championship, both are looking for one more championship to put them at an elite historical plateau -- Kobe would have as many rings as Jordan, and Brady would have as many rings as Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw.

At one point, Tom Brady completed 16 consecutive passes, setting a new Super Bowl record. In the end, key drops from Wes Welker and Branch, not to mention the ineffectiveness of Rob Gronkowski, will deflect much of the blame away from Brady. By no means will he be looked at as the reason they lost.

Super Bowl XLVI was the most watched television event EVER. 111.3 million people tuned in, which was slightly more than the 111 million people who watched last year's game between the Packers and the Steelers. And how did NBC capitalize on their sudden ratings boom? By unveiling a horribly-derivative American Idol rip-off that has less chance of becoming a hit show than Newt Gingrich does of putting a colony on the moon. There's nothing that'll get me to flip the channel faster than fake-outrage from B-grade judges who none of us care about. Also, the chairs are way too big.

And speaking of flipping, how about that half-time show? It was the most-watched halftime show in history, and guest singer M.I.A. took advantage of the spotlight by giving the audience a big middle finger. Lovely. Here's where I'm confused. I realize that we all want the game live and everything, but why can't the halftime show have like a five second delay? Would it really be that big of a deal? Most of us just complain about the half-time show as a joke anyway -- why does it have to be a live joke, especially if there's the possibility of something like that happening? Also, if the NFL is so concerned about performers doing controversial stuff on live TV, why was M.I.A. allowed to go on stage anyway? Why is there a loophole where the main performer can't be young or potentially risque, but the side performers can dress as half-naked 300 rejects?

It's hard to rationalize why Ryan Braun should be allowed to keep the National League MVP trophy. Braun was found to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, an act that he has since denied, but one that will nonetheless cost him $1.87 million of his $6 million salary and keep him out of work for 50 games. But... he's somehow allowed to keep the MVP. Guffaw??? This would be like if you counted cards at a casino, won a poker tournament that netted you a Coupe de Ville, got busted, went to jail, and had to pay a fine... but you still got to keep the Coupe de Ville. Kinda seems like an oversight, huh?

And what's especially weird is that this has become common for Major League Baseball, a league that used to be millitant in its preservation of statistical canonology. It was baseball, after all, that put an asterisk on Roger Maris' record-breaking 61-home run season. It was baseball that lowered the mound when they thought the pitcher was getting too much of an advantage, baseball that briefly banned Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for working at a casino and having even a tangential connection to gambling, and it was baseball that initiated a rule to keep ineligible players like Pete Rose off the Hall of Fame ballot and to keep the Hall as pure as possible.

Baseball was so steadfast in its ideology that when it was discovered that one of Ty Cobb's box scores had erroneously been counted twice, and that his hit total should have been reduced from 4,191 to 4,189, baseball simply ignored it because changing one stat would in a sense indict them all. To this day, the number of hits MLB.com says Ty Cobb has is two more than what Baseball Reference says he has, a contradiction that is absurd. Some might call this stubbornness or even close-mindedness, but to the people running Major League Baseball, the preservation of statistics was so sacrosanct that to disrupt them even rightfully wasn't even a consideration.

Now, things have changed. Baseball seems content to let the steroid-users trample the records they had worked so hard to institutionalize. In a way, it seems like baseball doesn't know how to a handle a cheating epidemic of such scale and popularity, nor do they have much of a reference point to help them out. The founding baseball fathers did a great job establishing the rules of the game a hundred years ago, but even they couldn't have imagined the day where a butt-cheek-inserted syringe could transform a middling player into a perennial All-Star. The sport appears so overwhelmed by the rampant cheating, and so unclear on what to do with the stats, that not a thing has been done to challenge the validity of the steroid era's biggest offenders, from Barry Bonds to Sammy Sosa to Mark McGwire. All the home run records still stand. All the MVP's still stand. All the players found to have used illegal substances are still eligible for the Hall of Fame. And there isn't a single veto in sight.

It's debatable whether or not baseball should retroactively displace the numbers of the steroids era with an asterisk or by putting them in their own category, or "wing" if you will. With Braun though, there's all the reason in the world to claim that his MVP is invalid, and all the reason in the world for his prize to be revoked, asterisked, or put up for a new vote altogether. If he's able to walk away with the trophy, it lends little assurance to me that the steroids era really is over. After all, Ryan Braun played so well last year that he got a $104 million extension. If a 50-game suspension and a loss of $1.87 million allowed him to earn a nine-figure contract AND keep the MVP award, then unfortunately, the end still justifies the mean. And if baseball really wants to eliminate cheating, that's the part they're going to have to work on.

If there's one generalization that I've found applies to everyone in life, it's that no one truly knows how to deal with death. There really is no right way to address it, and a lot of times, people will only focus on the positive aspects of a person's life as a sort of memorial. On the one hand, this speaks to the kindness of human nature, that we can look beyond the faults and issues of a person and focus on what made others like them. It's a well-intentioned way to look a person posthumously, but often it's often a dangerously short-sighted tactic as well. Often, the media will whitewash any controversial aspects of a person's life, probably because they don't want to seem insensitive to the dead or because they don't want to insult the next of kin. When Michael Jackson and Jerry Falwell died and were treated like flawless, exceptional human beings, it rang hollow. Everyone has faults, and when those faults are as obvious as child molestation allegations (in Jackson's case) or blaming 9/11 on women and gay people (in Falwell's case), not mentioning their flaws is not only insensitive in how biased it is, it's unethical.

Which is how I felt over the swooning that took place when Joe Paterno died. If his former players and if the current Penn State students want to proselytize what a great man he was, they have to at least acknowledge why someone so otherwise beloved and respected had to be fired in disgrace. To just circle around the same anecdotes of leadership and courage without mentioning that his lack of principle allowed dozens of children to get raped, it's just not an accurate portrayal. He isn't Santa Claus. He is a three-dimensional, flawed human being. And yet when I watched the coverage of his funeral procession on ESPN the other day, I found myself on the verge of drop-kicking my television. Not once was the Jerry Sandusky fiasco mentioned. Not once, in a segment that featured tears and appraisals and compliments of him, was there even an inference of the scandal that got him fired. And in what was a recap of the man's life, it needed to be there. It needed to be shown that this too was a part of the man, myth and legend; to just bypass it entirely was disgraceful.

Now look, I'm not going to pretend that Paterno didn't do a lot of good in his previous fifty years at Penn State -- because that'd be wrong too. He did a lot of good things for the university. He helped a lot of inner-city kids, he preached ethics, he showed a compassion and enthusiasm that propelled the school from a Podunk nothing to a college football powerhouse in the time he was there. The school today wouldn't be nearly as prominent as it is now without him, and that's partly because he contributed millions of dollars to the campus over the years. These things are by no means meaningless.... BUT...

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The Orlando Magic are a very interesting franchise. They're located in sunny Orlando, Florida, a city that at first glance would appear to be a haven for potential NBA free-agents. And yet they have a miserable history of not only attracting players, but keeping the few players they manage to bring in. The Orlando Magic have the bizarre distinction of being a prime destination that no one ever goes to. It's almost inexplicable.

For instance, last night, Dwight Howard scored 14 points and became the Orlando Magic's all-time leading scorer, passing Nick Anderson, who held the previous mark with 10,650 points. Considering that the Magic have been around for nearly 23 seasons, it's hard to accept that Nick Anderson -- who was just a role player on the great Magic teams in the 90's that had Penny and Shaq -- had held this mark for this long.

But it really was a record of attrition. Anderson held it because he is not only the only Magic player to spend ten consecutive years with the franchise, he is the only player period to last ten years with the franchise. It isn't just that Orlando has been unable to attract many big-name players (Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill and Rashard Lewis barely qualify as exceptions). It's that they've been categorically incapable of re-signing the good players they manage to get. They lost Shaq after four years, they traded Penny, they traded McGrady, they lost Hill, they dealt Steve Francis, and it's pretty damn clear that they're about to lose Howard too.

Their lack of success in retaining players is staggering. Assuming they lose Howard, not only will they have lost every single superstar they ever had no longer than seven years into their contract, they've never re-signed anyone of importance. I had to scour Basketball Reference's archives just to be sure, but here's two pieces of information that personify their ineptitude: they have never had a single player who played with them for more than seven years who made $10 million in a season with them; and Dwight Howard is the only player in franchise history to sign an extension that gave him a $10 million salary. And, again, they're about to lose him.

So what exactly is going on here? It's one thing for a cold Midwestern team to struggle to attract players and eventually lose the good ones they have. But this is Orlando, a city with a fantastic climate, an array of amusement parks and tourist attractions, and, let's not forget, it's in a state where you don't have to pay an income tax, which is an enormous plus if you happen to be a multimillionaire basketball player. And yet no wants to be there for very long. Weird.

Choking happens to athletes all the time, but that doesn't make it an indictment on the player. In 1997, in Game 5 of a semifinals series against the Jazz, an 18-year-old rookie Kobe Bryant shot not one, not two, but four airballs in the final five and a half minutes of regulation and overtime, in a game his Lakers eventually lost. By any definition, this was choking at its most obvious. Now, 15 years later, Kobe Bryant is regarded as the clutchest player in the NBA by a mile; a 2011 Sports Illustrated poll asked 166 players, "Who do you want shooting with the game on the line?," and a whopping 74% of them chose the Black Mamba. The next closest player, Kevin Durant, got only 8%.

LeBron James wasn't even in the top five.

Like Kobe, LeBron has had some disappearing acts in crunch time, most notably in the 2011 finals. Unlike Kobe, LeBron has become defined by his failures. But LeBron is a totally different animal from Kobe. Kobe resembles Michael Jordan in his brazen willingness to try to take the game over, to take as many contorted, mid-range fade-aways as humanly possible, and to always take the final shot. LeBron is a much more efficient player, even eliminating the weakest aspect of his game, the three-point shot, from his arsenal this season. Often, he seems content to let D-Wade and Chris Bosh take the last shot in the game, and whereas Kobe seems to exhibit a rabid competitiveness -- shown last week when he indignantly referenced an ESPN ranking that had him listed as the seventh best player in the league -- LeBron doesn't seem to have that drive. He was perfectly willing to join the Miami Heat and relinquish his role as the team's alpha dog, as the team leader and primary go-to-guy; it's hard to imagine Kobe willingly accepting a such subservient role.

At the same time, it's hard to believe Kobe wouldn't bristle at having such a pathetic showing in a poll by his peers. LeBron is the best player in the NBA, and not even 2% of player said they wanted him with the ball in the final minutes.

And maybe that's why Kobe is considered clutch and LeBron isn't. Whereas Kobe's imprint is always on the fourth quarter, LeBron will just vanish sometimes for no conceivable reason. With the Heat, he's developed a nasty tendency in the fourth quarter to hand the ball off to one of his teammates and just sit there in the perimeter, not even trying to get open. Not even trying to make a screen, or direct a play, or do anything that makes it look like he's in the offense. It's not even about deferring to Wade or Bosh -- there are times when he simply doesn't try, where he'll allow a gnat like J.J. Barea or Jason Terry to guard him without ever posting them up.

In simplest terms, LeBron James is hiding himself in the offense. Anyone who's ever played basketball can see it. I certainly know what it's like to have an off game, and to make a less concerted effort to find a shot out of fear that maybe I'd get the blame, or let my team down, or look badly. But I'm not an NBA player. LeBron seems to embody that self-consciousness mentality in every fourth quarter he plays. He seems to do as much as he thinks he has to, or as much as he thinks is acceptable, but little else besides that.

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