Why I Cancelled My Times Subscription

Didactic journalism.  There are too many sententious morality lessons in The Times, often where the author or a new friend is the hero.  Too often the morality lessons lapse into outright falsehood to spice things up.  The last straw was Michael Powell's story about leaving the glitz of Super Bowl Phoenix for the unspoiled high school basketball of the Navajo reservation: the Navajo kids, though small, play fast with unmatched intensity and for the pure joy of the game.   This is a dubious opinion since there are plenty of big, six-foot Navajo basketball players, and the other white, brown and black youngsters playing basketball in Arizona are extremely fast and intense, if not joyful.

Where Mr. Powell egregiously went astray was when he claimed that the Navajo teams do well until they go down to the Valley to play the Christian schools, which recruit giant players with holy fervor.  The problem with this is that the Navajo schools don't, in fact, play the Valley Christian schools, and recruiting is illegal in Arizona high school basketball.   It might happen but it's the "big time", big-enrollment high schools that play in Division 1 and Division II that might be guilty.   The Navajo schools are small schools that play in Division III.  This year in the state tournament Navajo competitor Chinle High School lost to Palo Verde Magnet, a public school from the poverty stricken Tucson Unified School District.  The Division III state championship was won by Snowflake, a small public high school not far from the Navajo reservation. 

As far as purity goes, it's worth noting that the state final game was played at the Gila River Arena, home of the Arizona Coyotes hockey team, sponsored by the Gila River Casinos -- a group of gambling casinos controlled by the Gila River Indian Community.  The Navajo operate four casinos on their reservation, but have yet to acquire naming rights for a major Arizona sports venue.

All of the above and the fact that David Pogue the best tech writer in the business doesn't work there anymore.