It's the Economy, Stupid: The Economic Ramifications of Abortion

            Morality has cast a long shadow over the abortion debate in the United States. Politicians and their constituents have dug deep trenches as to how they view the morality of abortion. Conservatives feel it is immoral to kill an unborn human life, while Liberals have insisted that it is immoral for the government to control the bodies of women. What is obvious is that neither side has made much headway with each other using their ‘moral’ argument. I see another route to create some common ground over the issue. For all of the talk about the morality of abortion, why are the economic ramifications not raised?

            When election time comes the economy is usually one of voters primary concerns. In a Gallup poll spanning from October of 2018 to April of 2019, the economy was viewed as the third most important problem facing the country behind poor leadership/ the government and immigration. People care about the economy when they head to the polls. It helps them decide who they will support and what policies they want. Yet, when it comes to abortion this, usually, important factor seems to go to the wayside. For men and women alike the economics of abortions should be one of their primary concerns.

            Economies at their barebones are about people. What people decide to make. What people decide to buy. What people do. Abortions or lack thereof have the ability to add or subtract a person from the economy. Yet, with all the focus on the fetus, there is little concern for the mother. The economic impact of having an abortion doesn’t stop at the fetus. Which raises the question; how does having a child affect the economic outcome of the mother?

            The gender pay gap in western nations has been closing but has yet to be demolished. For something that the world’s most powerful nations have been trying to curb why has it remained so persistent? The answer is motherhood. Mothers earn dramatically less than women without kids. Gender discrimination in pay, historically, is relatively small today until a woman has a child. Which, brings us back to the abortion debate. Women become economically less powerful the moment they have a child. Suddenly, a moral debate becomes a debate of dollars and cents.

            When society limits women’s access to abortion, they are in fact limiting their access to economic mobility and prosperity. Whatever the rationale is for paying mothers less the reality still remains the same. A study in Denmark, a country with a similar gender pay-gap as the United States, found that women, after having their first child, earned close to 20% less than they had prior to having their child. What is even more striking is that the decrease in pay is not a short-term setback, but rather, sets a course for women to earn far less over the next decade. Women would not reach the level of pay seen prior to their pregnancy until 6 years after the birth of their child. (I found these graphics from a New York Times article from February 2018 on the subject)

 

            The reasons why this pay-gap emerges or exists is of little consequence as it is a reality that is only faced by women. As seen in the next chart, men do not see any real decrease in pay by becoming a father compared to remaining childless.

It is a sad sight that women, by bringing future generations into existence, are economically punished. The fact that Denmark, a country with strong subsidies for childcare, sees this dramatic of a turn in the economic fortunes of its women due to childbirth should raise concern for Americans.

            The decision to be 'pro' or 'anti' abortion should not be exclusively viewed through a moral prism. We ask about the morality of the economy, and thus we should question the economy of morality. When women are denied an abortion and have a child as a result, their economic future is dramatically altered to their detriment. Is it moral to have an abortion? Is it moral for a woman to have to earn less for having a child? Is it moral for the government to decide? These are all difficult questions for people, but we should not turn a blind eye to the economic realities of motherhood simply because it is not deemed a moral question. I’ll ask one more question. How moral does it feel to have money taken away from you over a decision you could not make?

A Tale of Two Coaches --- Part Two: Mike D'An-'Phony'?

A Tale of Two Coaches

Part Two: Mike D’ An-‘Phony’?

If you have not read part one → here it is ← Click This

           

The NBA in its early stages was dominated by giants. Massive men designed to dominate the paint brought championships and glory to the franchises that deployed them. Back in those days, the NBA was a two-point game. This, by design, made the game all about getting a shot as close to the basket as possible. With the addition of the 3-point line in the 1979-80 season, the center began to lose its stranglehold on the NBA. It's funny how a gimmicky line brought on the imminent decline of the once-dominant center and ushered in a stylistic revolution that has begun to come to fruition only 40 years later. While the NBA was slow to incorporate the 3-point shot as a staple of their offensive systems, nothing would be the same after the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns, coached by Mike D’Antoni, blew the entire league right open.

Mike D’Antoni’s story is a story of circumstances and court geography. Without the 3-point line, Mike D’Antoni would probably be a college coach of a mid-major that had one NCAA tournament upset of note, but its very creation fundamentally changed the value of spaces on the court and as a result, altered the notion of what offensive basketball should look like. Mike D’Antoni was at the forefront of a philosophical change in how basketball was played. His legacy over the NBA remains huge even as he continues to coach. For all of the success and praise bestowed upon him, he remains unsuccessful in obtaining the ultimate prize in all of basketball. Is Mike D’Antoni a fraud? That’s unlikely, but the reputation of “D’Antoni: Offensive genius” has thwarted the valid criticism of his failures and insulated him from the wilderness of the life as a nomadic coach without a ring foraging for cast-off jobs and rebuilds. To understand D’Antoni’s place in the current NBA we have to understand how the league was before his arrival.

Between the years of 2004 and 1979, the NBA saw a gradual shift in the balance of power. What had been an environment fertile for lumbering centers now began to open up to guards. Before the 1979-80 season only one non-forward/center had won the MVP, Oscar Robinson in the 1963-64 season. From the 1979-80 season on only 13 MVP’s out of 38 have gone to ‘big-men’, this includes Dirk Nowitzki and Charles Barkley as bigs, and none have won since Dirk in 2006-07 or Kevin Garnett in 2003-04, if you want to exclude Dirk. Guards, by no stretch of the imagination, took advantage of the ripe space now open to them beyond the arc, but when defenses were presented with allowing an open 3-pointer or closing out on the shooter defenders began to stretch a little further to away from the basket. The pull away from the basket allowed more driving lanes for guards and opened up the mid-range jumper even more. As more and more players honed their shooting skills to exploit this newly open space the number of players able to take advantage of the 3-pointer only increased and, consequently, so did the need to spread the defense even thinner to attempt to take away the shot. What had been a gradual shift in the environment from 1979 to 2004 was now beginning to show signs of a full-on environmental collapse.

The 2004-05 Suns were fun. Plain and simple they were a blast to watch. Helmed by Steve Nash at point guard position and flanked by Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire the Suns won the most games in the league and averaged almost 7 more PTS/G than the next closest team. They took the most 3’s in the league and hit them at a 39.3% rate, also tops in the league. With teams scared to give up the 3-ball to the Suns, they finished 2nd by .1% in 2-point field goal percentage on the season. Mike D’Antoni had built an offense that by-passed mid-range jumpers in favor of layups and 3’s. This has become the guiding philosophy of the modern NBA offense, but in 2004-05 it was not yet viewed as the future, and Mike D’Antoni shoulders the blame.

As great as the 2004-05 Suns were they did not win the NBA Championship. They did not even make it to the NBA finals. The San Antonio Spurs would go on win the West before taking the Larry O’Brien trophy in seven games from the repeat hungry Detroit Pistons. What should have been the coming out party for the ‘space and pace’ era ended in the reaffirmation of old NBA logic, that big men and grinding defenses were the championship formula. In retrospect, the Suns failings should not have been surprising. SRS or Simple Rating System is a metric that uses point-differential and strength of schedule to determine which team is the strongest. Over the course of the 2004-05 season, the Suns finished 2nd to the Spurs. In fact, San Antonio was in the midst of leading the league in SRS for a four year stretch between the 2003-04 season and 2006-07 seasons. The Spurs in 2004-05 finished tied for the second-best record in the league playing in a division with three other playoff teams including the Mavericks who finished with the 4th best record that year. Part of what allowed the Suns to rack up such immensely high scoring and win totals was that their division only featured one other playoff team and 3 of the bottom 5 teams in the Western Conference. The first year of Mike D’Antoni’s tenure in Phoenix would see the Suns flame out in the Western Conference finals and what looked like the beginning of a budding dynasty would, in reality, be the high-point of that era.

The Suns in 2005-06 won 54 games and dropped from the best record in the league the season before to 4th. As the playoffs began it looked like the ‘fun and gun’ Suns might have been a one season wonder. They went on to beat the two LA teams in the playoffs to book a flight to Dallas for the Western Conference finals. The Mavericks, having eliminated the San Antonio Spurs, were set to match up with the still high-octane Suns. What should have been an opening for the Suns to reach the finals, again, ended up in defeat. Losing in 6 games to the Mavericks placed a damper on a promising season and proved once again that D’Antoni ’s system didn’t work come playoff time.

What had proven to be a bonus for the Suns in the 2005-06 playoffs ended up costing them a chance at playing in the Western Conference finals. The Suns facing the Mavericks in 2005-06 in the Western Conference finals never should have happened. The Mavericks that season had the 2nd best record in the West, but because their division rival, the Spurs, finished with the best record they were the 4 seed under the old NBA playoff format. This set up an entirely unforgiving second-round series between the Spurs and Mavericks and gifted the Suns the right to play the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2nd round who had upset the 3 seeded Denver Nuggets who themselves had won three fewer games than the Clippers. Due to the comical flaws in the playoff seeding format, the league changed the rules and ensured that the teams with the three best records would be the 1-3 seeds, and the 4 seed would go to the other division winner if it was not one of the top 3 seeds. These rule changes for the 2206-07 playoffs set up a 2nd round match-up between the 61 win Suns, the 2 seed, and the 58 win Spurs, now a 3 seed, as Dallas had rampaged to 67 wins and the best record in the league.

The 2006-07 playoffs most memorable series was between the Suns and the Spurs; being dubbed “the real finals”. The Mavericks had lost in the first round and created a massive opening for the teams with the 2nd (Suns) and 3rd (Spurs) best records in the entire league. The Suns fell to the Spurs in six games, but not without controversy. Robert Horry hip-checked Steve Nash out of bounds in Game 4 of the series prompting Amar’e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw to leave the bench and earning them one game suspensions. The loss of Amar’e Stoudemire would be crippling to almost any team’s chances, but with the addition of Diaw being out a series that had just been knotted at 2-2 was the Spurs’ to lose. Game 5 was in Phoenix, but their homecourt advantage was wiped clean without two of their crucial players. The Spurs closed the deal at home in Game 6 before dismantling the Jazz in five games and the Cleveland Cavaliers in a sweep to take the finals. Mike D’Antoni had once again fallen short, and once again, as it had been in the previous two seasons, to a team that was probably better.

For most NBA coaches this would have been close to the end of their time in the spotlight. The Suns would flame out in the first round of the 2007-08 season and D’Antoni would depart after the playoffs. After signing a lucrative contract in the offseason to help rebuild the Knicks it was clear D’Antoni was still held in high regard around the league, but his time in New York would go poorly. In four seasons he would produce one above .500 team that went 42-40, the lowest possible win total for an above .500 team. Even after the debacle in New York D’Antoni was a hot commodity. He signed on to be the Lakers head coach 10 games into the 2012-13 season. Entering the season the Lakers had believed they had built a super team to be helmed by D’Antoni, only to be disappointed.

Mike D’Antoni managed to go 42-30 with Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Metta World Peace, Antawn Jamison, Steve Nash, and Pau Gasol. As a team on paper, in 2013, that team should have competed for a championship, but was decidedly slightly better than mediocre. After getting swept in the first-round the wheels really began to come off in 2013-14. The Lakers went 27-55 amid crippling injuries, Kobe played 6 games and Nash 15, and D’Antoni resigned following the season. Following two disastrous stints at the helm of two of the NBA’s marquee franchises this is where D’Antoni’s journey should have ended. Yet, it didn’t.

The following season D’Antoni stayed away from coaching. He came on the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers coaching staff as an associate head coach for the 2015-16. That Sixers team won 10 games. Going to a dumpster fire to rehabilitate your coaching image is a novel strategy, but over this period something, 35 years in the making, occurred. Teams, league-wide, began to embrace the 3-ball and it was all in response to the emergence of the Golden State dynasty.

 What had made D’Antoni a star was his novel idea that basketball should be played fast, the 3-point shot hunted, and mid-ranges jumper discarded. While teams integrated these ideas into their core concepts it was still viewed as an unsuccessful model to win championships. The Golden State Warriors in 2014-15 proved that, if armed with gifted shooters, jacking 3’s with abandon was a championship formula. In Houston, the Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey had long believed in D’Antoni’s offensive philosophy. For him it was pure mathematics. 3 is more than 2. Play fast, take more 3’s, only take easy 2’s, and disregard the shots in-between. It seemed as if Daryl Morey was the perfect man to build a team that fit D’Antoni’s vision.

In 2016-17 the Houston Rockets hired Mike D’Antoni to help them challenge the Golden State Warriors. In the Warriors first Championship season, they played at the fastest pace of 98.3 possessions per game. In 2016-17 the Rockets played at a pace of 100, which, by then, was only 3rd best in the league. The league had embraced and lapped the breakneck pace that had made the late-to-mid-2000s Suns such a joy to watch and had dramatically outpaced their 3 point output as well. D’Antoni, empowered by his organization, has been expected to push the upper limits of just how many 3’s can you jack. His first season in Houston saw the Rockets chuck 29 3’s per game, only 10th in the league, the next season it increased to 29.5 but dipped to 17th in the league, and finally, in 2018-19 Houston shot 30.2 3’s per game, good for 23rd in the league. The Rockets, seemingly, haven't kept up the pace behind the arc and they have fallen even farther in the pace metric. Starting at 100 possessions per game in 2016-17 the Rockets have only gotten slower since. Dropping to 97.6 in pace the next two seasons, and dropping from 3rd to 13th and now 26th league-wide in the metric. Yet, D’Antoni’s idealistic vision of basketball still remains.

The Rockets in 2018-19 took 51.9% of their shots from 3-point range. Up from 50.2% and 46.2% the previous two seasons. What has altered is that as everyone in the league has sped up, D’Antoni hasn’t. D’Antoni is still searching for the outer limits of 3-point shooting, but he seems to have lost his appetite to try and play faster than everyone. Even as D’Antoni has altered his approach by reining in one extreme and blazing a trail towards another he still has come up short in achieving his ultimate goal of winning a championship.

The overarching narrative of D’Antoni’s career hasn’t altered much. He has been open to and pushed innovation in the sport of basketball, but has been able to navigate a team through the postseason successfully. His genius is viewed through the prism of philosophy and less for its practical results. He has been viewed as being ahead of his time for so long that it begs one to ask if it will ever be his time? It won’t be this year, as his Rockets, once again, fell to the Golden State Warriors in the playoffs. Which is a gentle reminder that for all of his failures in the postseason he has consistently lost to better teams than his in the playoffs. His first three years in Phoenix he went down to the Spurs and the Mavericks who both were equal or better than the Suns in SRS. Year one in Houston he lost to the 61 Win Spurs, who were 2nd in the league in SRS behind the Warriors. Year two his Rockets led the league in SRS and advanced to the Western Conference finals only to lose to the Golden State Warriors in seven games. The one-time D’Antoni had led a team to the top of the league in both wins and SRS his team fell to a dynasty that for all intents and purposes had taken a breather over the course of the regular season. If D’Antoni is a great coach he has yet to elevate an out-gunned team through a playoff series.

Mike D’Antoni is going to go down as a coaching legend. He has won too many games and his vision of basketball has taken too deep a root throughout the league. His revolutionary Suns teams would look like a ‘grit and grind’ team of the 90s compared to the league now (His 04-05 Suns team led the league in pace at 95.9, in 2018-19 that would be dead last). Yet, for all of his visionary ideas about basketball he has not achieved what all greats strive for. His story is that of a folk-hero. He sprung up out of nowhere and started a revolution that has gone on to topple the previous regime, but he has yet to stand on the mountaintop and look down in triumph over what he has created. Mike D’Antoni is not a fraud, he is Mike D’Antoni. He believes basketball can be played differently than conventional wisdom and to a large degree, he has been validated, but to be great you need to have tangible success. His failures at game management and making tactical decisions in series have proven his undoing. By believing so much in his own ideas he has been blinded to the realities right in front of him. Most revolutionaries die before they get to see their vision come to fruition. For Mike D’Antoni he again ends the season thinking next year will be his year.

End Part Two

Epilogue

            The longevity of Mike D’Antoni and the brevity of Mark Jackson’s coaching careers highlight the defining characteristics of today’s NBA. The Golden State Warriors are potentially the greatest dynasty in the history of the sport. Considering the salary cap, max-contracts, and the national television deal the NBA now has the Warriors (most likely) winning 4 of 5 championships and reaching five straight finals is something that should not go unappreciated in its time. The stylistic renaissance in basketball has been driven by the Warriors success. The idea of playing without a traditional center, now commonplace, was a niche idea until Golden State’s death lineup devoured the league. Building a team outside-in was viewed as a gimmicky way to win in the regular season (hello D’Antoni’s Suns) that failed in the postseason. Now it is the future of the NBA. Mark Jackson was viewed as being the stick in the mud that prevented Golden State from ascending to the top of the league, which, in Part One, I find to be questionable, and Mike D’Antoni is seen as the architect for the modern NBA offense that the Warriors have used to conquer all foes. Both of these narratives are problematic. Jackson may not have been as good a coach as Steve Kerr, but he definitely did not hold the Warriors back substantially, and D’Antoni’s core offense is built on the pick and roll, which, while all teams utilize, is not the hallmark of Golden State’s offensive system. The Warriors cut, pass and back screen to open up shots in a way that D’Antoni has never completely embraced. What has defined both of these men is the success of the Golden State Warriors. Jackson has had it used to highlight his coaching deficiencies, while D’Antoni is viewed as being a prophetic figure in their ascent. For Jackson, he may never return to coaching, but with D’Antoni the future is less clear. If he wins a championship all of his past failures will be erased, but if he continues to fall short he will be viewed like The Velvet Underground, as a man who inspired people to be different but never was able to achieve mainstream success in his time. The harshest reality as a coach is that who and who doesn’t have a job is usually a product of circumstances. As the geography of the basketball court changed Mike D’Antoni found new life, while Mark Jackson’s phone remains silent.