UPDATE: Ways to describe a basketball player's talent, ranked

NOTE: Ran a version of this post 2 years ago the day after the 2015 NBA Draft, the draft were my New York Knicks did indeed select the 'Unicorn' Kristaps Porzingis in the first round. Fast forward two years later and these same Knicks apparently are flirting with the idea of trading the Unicorn, who is quite literally the only player worth watching on what has become a terrible team. If they do indeed decide to trade Porzingis, I want to make it publicly known that I am no longer a Knicks fan, and will be in search of a new team to support.

Having said all that, let's take another look at the many ways that the NBA analysts and pundits have come up with to describe a basketball player's skills and talents. Did you think 'fast', 'tall', or 'can jump high?' were good enough? Oh no, my naive friend.

After watching about 5 hours of draft coverage, (and pre-draft and post-draft shows), I offer up ways to describe basketball talent, ranked, and as always, these are unscientific, unresearched, and 100% correct.

Here goes...

15. Floor spacer

14. Efficient

13. Switch-capable

12. Rim-runner

11. Twitchy

10. Bouncy

9. Wingspan

8. Fluid

7. Motor

6. Elite-level athleticism

5. Second jumpability

4. High ceiling

3. Grit

2. High basketball IQ

1. Tremendous upside

As always, you can disagree with these rankings, but of course you would be wrong.

Have a great weekend!

Juniors, ranked

There seems to be a lot more 'Juniors' or if you prefer, 'Jrs.' around lately. I am not really sure why. But I heard a couple of guys on a podcast toss around some of their favorite Juniors, I thought it made sense to take 8 minutes on a rainy Sunday to set down a marker.

Thus, here is your unscientific, incomplete, unresearched, and 100% accurate break down of the 'Junior's that matter.

10. Ed Begley, Jr.

9. Cuba Gooding, Jr.

8. Ken Griffey, Jr.

7. Sammy Davis, Jr.

6. Junior Mints

5. Cal Ripken, Jr.

4. Junior Soprano

3. Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

2. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. Junior's Cheesecake

Of course you could disagree with this list, but you would be wrong.

Happy Sunday.

Situations where you should mark Emails as "Urgent", ranked

It's Saturday!

Woo hoo!

I woke up this morning to the sun shining, the snow melting, (yes, it was STILL snowing yesterday where I live), the birds chirping, my Liverpool Reds on TV, and not one, but two early morning business emails both marked as "Urgent".

Since I believe many readers would benefit from a better understanding of when, why, and in what circumstances one should mark an email as "Urgent", I present my unscientific, unresearched, subjective, and COMPLETELY biased breakdown of the situations where you should mark an Email message as "Urgent".

Here goes....

10. Never

9. Never

8 - 2. - Never

1. Never

Never mark an email as "urgent".

If your message is truly urgent, then email isn't the medium to convey that message. Call, or text. Or get off your butt and walk down the hall to my office.  And besides, who are you to decide your problem is really "urgent" to me? Maybe I don't really care. Maybe I have 37 other problems that are more pressing. Maybe that little red flag you just dropped in my Inbox has the opposite effect that you intended, and I shuffle it to the bottom of the 'respond' pile because I just got annoyed.

And if you are the boss, or CEO, or owner, then you don't have to make your messages as "urgent", if the folks on your team are not reacting to your directives in the way you see as appropriate, then you have a people problem, not an email problem.

Never mark email as "urgent". Especially on a sunny, springtime Saturday morning.

Of course you could disagree with these rankings, but of course, you would be wrong.

Have a great weekend!

Terms that mean 'employee', ranked

Lots of us are employees. But some of us work at places that don't refer to us as 'employees.' Somewhere along the line, (I am guessing in the late 1970s, but I really don't know for sure), it became trendy, if not fashionable for organizations to move away from the more formal sounding term of 'employee' and start referring to their, well, employees using other terms.

Inspired by a weekend spent in heavy retail environments and overhearing an 'All available associates, please report to the front of the store' announcement, I started thinking about all the various terms that are now used by organizations to substitute for 'employee.'

And then I thought it made sense to rank said terms.

As always, this list is unscientific, unresearched, incomplete, subjective, and 100% accurate.

Here goes -  Terms that mean 'employee', ranked:

10. Worker - About as cold as it gets. Unless you go with 'peon' or 'serf'. Which don't seem to be used (much), any more.

9. Co-worker - Slightly softer version of 'worker'. Still pretty cold though/

8. Staff member - As generic as it gets. Best used when the organization hates taking any kind of a stand about anything.

7. Teammate - Unless the 'team' is designed to kick a ball or run really fast, probably should not be used in the workplace.

6. Team Member - A little less cloying than teammate. But still not great. But yay - we are on a team!

5. Crew or crew member - Are you on a boat? Do you build boats? No? Then you are not on a crew.

4. Partner - This is actually sort of dumb. Unless the company is just made up of actual partners. Then it's ok.

3. Colleague - This actually would be the one I would choose if I had to choose. Rides nicely that fine line between 'touchy-feely' and 'we all just work here' that I like

2. Associate - a solid move if you for some reason need to move off of 'employee', but want to stay appropriately distant, yet convey a (fake) sense of importance to everyone in the organization. 

1. Employee - Call me old school, but I still think the simplest solution is the best. I don't think anyone is really offended by being called an employee. At least I don't think so.

Did I forget anything? Hit me up in the comments.

And as always, you could disagree with these rankings, but of course you would be wrong.

Learn a new word; Word of the year finalists, ranked

Earlier this week the good folks over at Oxford Dictionaries released their pick for 'Word of the Year' for 2016, and they went with 'post-truth', an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

Seems like a fitting choice for the current social and political climate, where it seems that how you say something has become more important that what you are actually saying. You can read more about 'post-truth' and the reasons why Oxford tapped it as the 'Word of the Year' over at their site.

There were nine other words that qualified as finalists for Oxford's Word of the Year for 2016 and taken together they paint a picture of a not-so-great year overall. 

But as Fitzgerald suggested many years back, we beat on, boats against the current and all that...

So let's end the week with some fun, and rank the Oxford Word of the Year finalists, and crown our own Word of the Year.

As a reminder, these rankings are unscientific, unresearched, subjective, and 100% accurate.

Here goes:

Here are the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year shortlist choices, definitions, and my revised rankings:

10. alt-right, n. (in the US) an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content. Find out more about the word's rise.

9. Brexiteer, n. British informal a person who is in favour of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union.

8. post-truth, adj. relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief 

7. glass cliff,  n. used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high.

6. Latinx, n. (plural Latinxs or same) and adj. a person of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina); relating to people of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina).

5. hygge, n. [mass noun] a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture):

4. woke, adj. (woker, wokest) US informal alert to injustice in society, especially racism.

3. chatbot, n. a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.

2. adulting, n. [mass noun] informal the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult,especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.

1. coulrophobia, n. [mass noun] rare extreme or irrational fear of clowns.

I have always been a little leery of clowns.

Of course, you can disagree with these rankings, but as it turns out, you would be wrong.

That's it from me - have a great weekend!