Review of: Clark, Geoffrey: Betting on lives : the culture ...

“They discussed the Irish Question; but they never seriously contemplated the Irish Answer.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions 1919
99 years ago, on November 28, 1920, 36 IRA men under the command of Tom Barry laid an ambush just south of Kilmichael in West Cork for an 18 man British patrol and slaughtered them. 16 of the paramilitary policemen were killed outright. One was wounded, stumbled away from the carnage to seek shelter, and was summarily executed with his own weapon by two IRA men (not involved with the ambush) who were hiding nearby. The last one so severely injured that the IRA shooters thought he was dead; 24 hours later, he was scooped up by his comrades from the ambush site and nursed back to health to give the only British recollection of the fight.
It was the largest and bloodiest IRA action of the Anglo-Irish war. It was thought that the British superiority of numbers, logistics, and equipment made any stand up fight hopeless and so dictated that the IRA must skulk about sniping at tower guards and hitting isolated individuals and teams. 18 veteran soldiers being gunned down in the blink of an eye by some backwoods bushwhacker gang seemed to change everything.
—————————————————————
The Military and Political Situation in Ireland
I am going to attempt to give the background to the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-1921 in as broad of strokes as possible. My intent is to maintain focus on the ambush itself, which precludes delving too deeply into politics. However, military actions are welded firmly to political goals, and any discussion of fighting that does not give political context to them is inherently incomplete. Let them this extremely brief description suffice to satisfy both purposes.
As it stood at the end of the nineteenth century, Ireland was part of the UK the same as Wales, Scotland, and England, and was therefore represented within the British Parliament. For various reasons that convinced a decent sized majority of Irishmen (and a fair number of other ethnicities within the UK), people became convinced that Ireland needed its own Parliament to pass its own laws in order to prosper, which would give it a measure of self-sovereignty within the British Empire on par with Canada or Australia. Accordingly, Ireland had been demanding more and more insistently for Home Rule. For a variety of reasons which would needlessly elongate this section, Britain alternatively refused point blank to grant it and made false promises that Home Rule was just around the corner.
On Easter 1916, a coalition of Nationalists and Socialists joined forces in a rebellion centered in Dublin city to shove the envelope as far as it could go, asserting that mere Home Rule was insufficient. They declared the birth of a new Irish Republic, as distinct from Britain as France or Germany was.
The Easter Uprising in 1916 was utterly crushed by the superior British infantry and artillery within a few short weeks, but when the Nationalist leadership who had dared to declare independence right in the middle of the Great War were executed, their martyrdom sparked mass sympathy among the populace of Ireland. In 1918, the separatist party Sinn Fein ("Ourselves Alone") campaigned for Parliament seats on the promise they would secede from the UK if elected. They won the vote and, true to their word, they seceded to form their own Irish Parliament. The British naturally disagreed that such an action was legal or indeed possible and so declared Sinn Fein an outlaw political party. They sent troops over again to dismantle the nascent government and to keep order in the face of the simmering, belligerent rebellion, which in turn led the provisional government of the Irish Republic to organize resistance in 1919. Local militia units across the country, who swore allegiance to the Irish Republic as proclaimed on Easter Sunday 1916, formed a loose and decentralized guerrilla movement; the armed wing of the Republican movement was named, fittingly, the Irish Republican Army. The decentralization was necessary, for the leaders of IRA had no reliable and secure lines of communication and supply to their soldiers spread throughout the country. Every population center self-generated its own cadre of leaders and fighters and conducted the fighting as it saw fit- the West Cork IRA was for all intents and purposes on its own. The violence bubbled up sporadically in fits and starts as the various police, paramilitary, and military units loyal to the Crown feuded with the various “flying columns” of the IRA. The same population that had voted for Sinn Fein mostly supported the Republican cause, and this conviction only deepened when naked violence was employed against them to root out the insurgent forces.
On November 21st 1920, the de facto Commander-in-Chief of the IRA Michael Collins upped the ante of violence. Acting at last on two years' worth of carefully collected and organized information of enemy identities and movements, he sent assassins to murder every British intelligence agent and informant he could find, which turned out to be about 21 men all killed on the same morning, mostly at their own doorstep without warning. This stroke of violence not only shocked the British, it would also leave them blinded and almost incapable of detecting IRA members and helpers for the rest of the war. The British backlash was clumsy, emotional, and undisciplined. That same afternoon after Collins’ gunmen did their bloody work, the Dublin Auxiliary branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary surrounded a Gaelic football match with the apparent intent to mass search all 5,000 of them for weapons. Someone starting shooting, so all his mates started shooting, machine guns opened up on the crowd, and it was all in all about a minute and a half of pure craziness. 14 civilians died and about 65 were injured. ”Bloody Sunday” marked a significant uptick in the level of violence in Ireland.
Tom Barry of the West Cork IRA Brigade would match it just one week later at Kilmichael.
—————————————————————
So Who Are These People, Anyway?
The Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary were recruited and formed in 1920 to add firepower and spine to the Royal Irish Constabulary, who were trying to suppress the insurgents. Demographically, the Auxiliaries had a type. They were all former Army officers, mostly jumped up from the enlisted ranks in the First World War for valor and to fill dead men's shoes- not many blue blooded noblemen among them. They averaged about three years in the trenches each. They sprang primarily from the lower and upper middle class, the sons of merchants and shopkeepers. Ethnically, they were almost a perfect cross section of the UK with Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England being proportionately represented. Barring one or two individuals, none of them had criminal records. The average age was around 30 years old. They simply couldn't find work after the war ended and so jumped at chance to serve in Ireland.
The men of the IRA also had a type. They were mostly young men from a working class or laborer background. Most had avoided the First World War, unwilling to die for a country that denied them Home Rule, though Tom Barry himself was an exception that tested this rule; he had served in the British Army in Iraq before his exposure to Republican politics following the 1916 Easter Uprising, and had been initially distrusted in the IRA for flying the British flag over his home when he returned home. They were overwhelmingly Catholic, though interestingly there were a couple of Protestant members scattered here and there.
In the face of the experienced and well-equipped British war machine, the IRA’s primary task was to survive, for as long as they could produce “flying columns” of guerrilla fighters to harass the British forces, assassinate British civil servants, and intimidate loyalist informers, the cost of the war to the government would act as a powerful inducement to recognize Irish sovereignty. They therefore rarely took any immense risks that might lead their units to being cornered and wiped out; they could afford to have individual volunteers snatched up, arrested, and often killed, but the apparatus that recruited, organized, and directed them was fragile and almost irreplaceable.
—————————————————————
The Ambush Itself
To set the stage for the Kilmichael Ambush, the West Cork Auxiliaries based in Macroom were out raiding after Bloody Sunday. They hopped in their lorries every day and rode out to burn homes, terrorize women and children, assault men with rifle butts and pistol grips for speaking Irish, and murder suspected members of Sinn Fein in cold blood. That's the folk memory of how the Auxiliaries conducted counter-insurgency, and it is relatively accurate in spite of frequent exceptions. Much has been said about their brutality and lawlessness, framing them as a bunch of psychotic, sadistic hooligans. Like many stereotypes, this is based on reality, but there are many reasons to cast some doubt on the folk memory of the Auxiliaries. Many of their barn burnings and raids and killings were said to be official British policy, and this was a solid 25 years before army men found out that "just following orders" was a not a proper excuse. According to one IRA spy named who had embedded in their ranks as a sleeper agent, they were mostly good guys, but about 10% were "bad eggs"; obviously, the actions of a "bad egg" wearing a distinct uniform will be attributed to everyone wearing the uniform. Counter-insurgency too has the tendency to bring out the worst in people, as the frustration of dealing with a hostile population and not being able to separate the guerrillas from the civilians takes its toll. Finally, they are often conflated and confused with their sister unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve (known slangily as the Black and Tans, because their uniform was an irregular mix of army khaki and police black), who were also paramilitaries recruited from the army to bolster the police presence, but who were a) recruited from the enlisted ranks, not the officers; b) far more deserving off their reputation for brutality and lawlessness; and c) far more numerous than the Auxiliaries. These distinctions and mitigating traits were, of course, blurred a bit for the population who suffered under state sanctioned violence.
Tom Barry paints this specific ambush as an absolute necessity for the war effort. As long as the Auxiliaries can roam at will and terrorize entire counties with impunity, the population that the IRA depends on for sustainment (food, clothing, shelter, intelligence, volunteers, etc) will start to waver in their support. After all, if the IRA can’t fight back, why allow our houses to burn and our children to be threatened by armed men? What’s the point of declaring independence if we lack the strength to defend ourselves? From there, it’s but a short skip and a jump to “Why am I giving up the last of the food in our larder to provide dinner to a group of raggedy insurgents?” and “It’ll go easier on all of us if we give the police the names and home addresses of the guys in the flying column,” at which point the war is basically lost. As such, a dramatic counter strike was desperately needed.
Through intelligence given by sympathetic locals, Tom Barry noticed that the Auxiliaries were committing the cardinal sin of counter-insurgency work; they fell into a predictable pattern, taking the same route home every night. There were two stretches of their route where they were vulnerable, but one was far too close to a British outpost filled with reinforcements for comfort. The other was a country road just south of Kilmichael.
I have made an effort to recreate the ambush that Tom Barry planned: an improvised L-shaped ambush. For those who never lovingly leafed through FM 7-85 “Ranger Unit Operations”, chapter 6 of it describes it succinctly: “The L-shaped ambush is formed with the base (bottom) of the L perpendicular to the expected enemy direction of advance. This is a good ambush for a road, jungle trail, or an area where the enemy is canalized and his approach route is known.” Indeed, this matches the situation to a tee. I have no idea if Tom Barry instinctively sussed out how to set up a decent ambush from first principles or if he picked up the concept during his stint in the British Army. I suppose it hardly matters.
He divided up his force of 36 fighters into three distinct sections with some minor detachments. They were armed with captured rifles, shotguns, revolvers, bayonets, and a couple of grenades.
His three man “Command Post” (helpfully and expertly marked on my screenshot of Google Maps) adopted concealment behind a stone wall to the east of the ambuscade, staring west down the headlights of the advancing lorries. This CP would form the little leg of the L of the L-shaped ambush. Their task was to instigate the firing, for to preserve the element of surprise nobody would occupy their fighting positions until after the CP opened fire.
Section 1 with ten men was positioned mere yards away on the reverse slope of a big boulder, unable to see anything until they stood up and inched forward to peer over the top. They would function as the lower part of the long leg of the L of the L-shaped ambush, tasked with pouring flanking fire into the lorry once it was stopped. They would also be the assaulting element once the ambush was sprung.
Section 2 with ten men was strung out along the military crest of the hillside, hidden and protected by the rocky terrain. They would be the upper part of the long leg of the L. Once the patrol was fixed in place, they were to engage the second lorry in the convoy. I have no clear idea where exactly they were ensconced in, hence the question marks.
Section 3 was divided up into two groups, which I have arbitrarily labeled group A and B. Group A with six men was stationed behind some rocks to the south of the road in case the Auxiliaries dismounted and sprinted into cover on that side- trying to solve a problem before it developed, you see. Google maps shows no rocks that they could plausibly hide behind as Tom Barry said they did, so I’m not clear on where exactly they were either. I’m assuming that the field to the south has been cleared in the decades since the ambush, because this contemporaneous photo shows that the terrain south of the road was far rockier than it is today. Group B, also six men, were held in reserve somewhere north of the ambush site- they were expecting two trucks, but if there was a third or a fourth then Section 3B was tasked with maneuvering against them to prevent them from interfering with the ambush.
The remaining men were spread as scouts in all directions to provide security and advance warning of enemy movement. Tom Barry himself would take center stage, standing openly in the road in between the CP and Section 1; he's the green dot on the linked map. We’ll get to his role shortly.
This ambush was notable in two ways. First, it would be conducted at excruciatingly close range. The disparity of training between the IRA and the Auxiliaries was considerable. Due to ammunition shortages, there had only been enough bullets to allow each IRA man four live bullets to practice their aim before sending him into action, in contrast to the hundreds and thousands of rounds shot to hone marksmanship in the British army. Since there really aren’t any sharpshooters at a distance of five to ten yards- you either line up your sights onto the target or you don’t- the chosen tactics and starting positions neutralized the British advantage in arms.
Second, and very much related to the first, Tom Barry deliberately violated the cardinal rule of guerrilla warfare by selecting an ambush site with no easy exit. Every other premeditated skirmish they had ever staged had had an escape route to take if things went wrong. This time, however, neither the Auxiliaries nor the IRA would have any plausible opportunity to break contact after the first shot was fired. It was going to be (as Tom Barry gravely informed his men as they set up the ambush) a fight to the death- either the Auxiliary patrol gets wiped out, or the flying column perishes. To raise the stakes even higher, the West Cork Brigade were neither numerous nor well-stocked with weapons. At no point in the war did Tom Barry and his men have access to more than 116 rifles, and those 36 men were the cream of the crop of the whole county. If killed, and their weapons seized, they could not easily be replaced. Every egg they had was to be placed in the same basket for this fight.
The 36 IRA men got their battle plan from their captain that morning, then trudged off to take up their positions and wait. They’d marched on foot all night to reach the killing field to set up first. The owners of the house just to the south were sympathetic to the cause, but had no food for themselves, let alone a gaggle of frozen and weary riflemen. They sent a bucket of tea around instead to give the guerrillas something hot to drink. That’s how Tom Barry’s men passed the daylight hours of November 28th: soaked through from the dew and frozen in the Winter winds, empty stomachs gnawing at them, and with plenty of hours to sit still and think about what might go wrong.
—————————————————————
The Jaws Snap Shut
Francis Crake had been a clerk at an insurance firm, and he married his sweetheart in the same month the war broke out. On September 3rd, 1914, Private Crake enlisted with the 1st Hampshires and went to war in France.
Three years later, he was Lt. Crake.
A year later, in 1918, he was being mentioned in dispatches for conspicuous gallantry and leadership under fire.
February of 1920, he was discharged from the army.
October 3rd, 1920, seven years to the day since he joined the army as a private, Captain Crake joined the Auxiliary Division.
Two months after that, he was leading the 18 man Auxiliary patrol through West Cork. He sat in the lead vehicle, riding shotgun, heading home to Macroom after a day of raiding.
At approximately 4:05 pm, just after sunset, his convoy took the curve of the road around the darkened, rocky hillside at about 40 mph. Even without the headlights, the moon was almost full, so visibility was pretty good. He saw a man standing in the middle of the road wearing a military uniform, waving his hands as though to ask for help. Cpt. Crake ordered his driver to slow down to see what the problem was.
That man in the road was indeed wearing a military uniform, but not a British one. It was the official tunic of the IRA, though Tom Barry knew perfectly well that no British soldier would recognize it on sight. The man in the uniform with the military webbing and equipment over it was easily mistaken for a fellow Auxiliary.
Once Crake’s convoy had slowed down, the ambush was sprung. A grenade was flung into the cab, killing and mangling the driver and Crake alike. Rifle fire from the front and the left raked the men in the lead vehicle in a murderous crossfire. Behind them, the second lorry was being riddled with bullets by Section 2. Men shot rifles (designed to be accurate and deadly at a thousand yards) at men so close they could have spit on them just as easily.
The men of the lead vehicle (helpfully marked as a red square in the accompanying map) tried to dismount under fire. The survivors who did manage to get solid ground under their feet were hit by a charge as ferocious as any they’d seen in the trenches of France. They were alternately shot with pistols at close range, ran through with bayonets, clubbed down with rifle butts, and blasted with shotguns.
At some point, Temporary Cadet Cecil Guthrie escaped from the mayhem, crawling away from the rear vehicle with presumably non-fatal wounds. Guthrie was a Royal Air Force veteran, a pilot who spent the war all over the Middle East- in fact, it’s not impossible that he and Tom Barry were posted to the same base at some point, for although Tom Barry was an enlisted artilleryman and therefore unlikely to mix with the pilots, they were on the same front in roughly the same battle space and fighting the same Ottomans.
Guthrie was mentioned in dispatches in 1919 for his service in the Afghan war, where he met and fell in love with a nurse named Irene Peach. They had married earlier that year and the Mrs. Guthrie already had a child on the way; indeed, she was mere miles north of him at his base in Macroom, waiting patiently for his patrol to return. He scrambled into the dark, away from the Kilmichael ambush. He would make his way on foot four miles across the countryside towards safety, but two miles short of Macroom, Guthrie would try to get help at a civilian house. Unfortunately for Guthrie, two IRA men were hiding there, and they recognized the ragged, wounded man by face.
You see, a month before, an unarmed man named James Lehane has been snatched up by Guthrie’s unit in a raid and murdered without trial on suspicion of being an IRA volunteer. Witnesses had fingered Guthrie as the man who had emptied his revolver into Lehane at point blank range and in cold blood. It’s like I told you, counter-insurgency brings out the worst in people. Guthrie was executed with his own gun and his body was tossed into a nearby bog. Years later, after the Treaty, the Irish government had his remains dragged out and given a proper burial in deference to his widow and daughter, though there is no real way to know if the body they buried was in fact his or not.
As you can see from this updated map, the Auxiliaries of the lead truck were all killed. Those in the rear truck were at a lethal disadvantage. Tom Barry organized his CP and Section 1 and led them west down the road to fire into the enemy rear. The survivors of the second truck now were under fire from the hill to the north, the rocks from the south, and the road to the east. They had no cover at all save for the broken down lorry, which was not even bullet proof to start with. The next day, when a sister company from the Auxiliaries mapped out the battlefield and marked where the dead had dropped. The lead truck’s dead were bunched up in a tight clump, and the rear truck’s detachment were scattered across the fields. This indicates that the dismounted survivors of the rear truck scattered and were hunted down as individuals.
Here, presumably, Temporary Cadet Frederick Forde was dropped by a gunshot wound to the head. Forde was born to be a soldier; he grew up as a military brat in India and applied to the Royal Military Academy before the Great War even broke out. He commissioned in 1915 and served as an artilleryman in the Balkans, Egypt, and Palestine; at some point, just like Guthrie, Forde might well have bumped into the very man who had organized the ambush he’d been driven into.
By both Forde’s and Tom Barry’s account, the IRA finished off the wounded and stripped the bodies of ammunition, grabbed the dropped rifles, and searched the bodies for papers that might bear valuable intelligence.
Two of the Irishmen- Michael McCarthy, the leader of Section 2, and Jim O’Sullivan- were stretched out dead in the damp grass. They had died from Auxiliary shots from the rear truck. Sullivan in particular died under highly controversial circumstances that I will get to in a minute. Patrick Deasy, aged 16, was also hit, and hit bad. Pat Deasy was the little brother of 22 year old Liam Deasy. The two brothers had served in the West Cork IRA together, and when the Treaty came into effect the following year Liam would bitterly reject it. Both Liam Deasy and Tom Barry alike would end up on the Anti-Treaty side in the coming Irish Civil War, dodging policemen and soldiers of the Irish Free State instead of British policemen and soldiers, ambushing their former IRA comrades in arms instead of the Auxiliaries. Tom Barry would be cooling his heels in a Free State prison cell when his friend Liam Deasy set a long range ambush that would see Michael Collins shot to death in 1922.
However, all of that is in their future. That evening of the 28th of November, Liam’s little brother Pat was begging his commander for a drink of water. Tom Barry knew that giving water to a man with such a stomach wound would be lethal, so he promised him a cup of tea when they got to safety. Pat Deasy didn’t survive long enough to drink it.
Many of the IRA men were physically sick to their stomachs by what they had seen and done- by Tom Barry’s account, one IRA man had been standing so close to his victim that he had had blood splashed into his mouth when he shot the Auxiliary in the neck. The men of the West Cork brigade had learned the same lesson that the dead had learned in the Great War- violent death at close quarters was an intense and emotional experience. Noting that they had been shaken badly by the sheer violence of their own attack, Tom Barry found it necessary to spend valuable time parading them around the ambuscade site in close order drill- left, left, left right, about face, present arms, forward march, left face, right face, shoulder arms, left, left, left right- purely to settle their nerves and restore discipline. The drill was concluded by saluting their three slain comrades who were laid out before them.
The whole business took about a half hour from the initial shots until the flying column was marching off into the dark with their newly captured arms and ammunition, using their head-start to avoid the inevitable counterattack that would come once the results of the ambush were discovered.
The rains poured down heavy that night; black clouds blocked out the bright moonlight. When Forde’s comrades saw that Crake’s patrol had failed to return on time, they sent out a search party but in the dark and stormy night had found nothing. They tried again in the morning and found the site of the massacre easily this time. It is nothing short of miraculous that Forde survived until morning, and then survived the trip to the Battalion surgeon. He would end up with a medical discharge at the highest pension rate available at the time, which was only fair, for he would be paralyzed for life.
—————————————————————
The Controversies and Mysteries That We Are Never Going to Solve
The real problem here is that there are two primary sources for the Kilmichael ambush- Tom Barry’s memoir Guerrilla Days in Ireland and similar recollections from surviving volunteers given years or decades later, and the British account based on Forde’s recollection and on physical evidence collected the following day. I am happy to assume the truth when they are in agreement with each other, and even reasonably on board with details given by one account but not the other. However, when they assert conflicting facts, we are forced to play the part of the courtroom lawyer and the armchair psychologist by questioning sources and applying logic and unraveling unlikely alibis.
For instance, just after the ambush, a local coroner conducted a “superficial examination” and concluded that some of the bodies had been mutilated post-mortem with “an axe or some kind of similar heavy, sharp tool.” Forde’s personal account seems to confirm it- a fellow Auxiliary speaking of Forde’s private recollection claimed that “[t]he leader appeared to be an enormous red headed Irishman who personally inspected each body for signs of life. He was armed with a pistil [sic] and a small axe. The last thing Forde remembers was lying on the road with the red headed giant bending over him taking a swing at his head with the axe.”
Whereas Tom Barry stoutly denies any axe swinging or mutilation whatsoever, labeling it a vicious piece of British propaganda.
So just what are we to make of this?
Well, one, Forde was confused about a lot of things. He thought that there was about 100 IRA dressed as British soldiers, when there was only about 30 shooting in total and only one had a a uniform on. He thought that they had a machine gun and a mess of Tommy guns, when they absolutely didn’t. The guy walked into a maelstrom of chaotic violence and then got shot in the head, so how good could his memory possibly be? Not to mention that he described Tom Barry as an enormous, red-headed giant, while in real life he looked like he might go into a food coma if you fed him half of a ham and cheese sandwich. And it’s not like the British Empire held itself to a high moral standard when it comes to propaganda and spreading lies; the story that the West Cork IRA had mutilated the bodies hit the newspaper the day after the ambush, long before Forde was able to be properly debriefed. Come to that, Forde’s medical discharge stated that his head wound came from a gunshot with no mention of any other cause.
Then again, Tom Barry’s account may also be unreliable. He denied the allegation, sure, but he was also completely unaware at the time of his memoir in 1949 that Forde had survived at all. He was under the impression that 17 men had died by their trucks, and the 18th has escaped only to be hunted down and tossed into the bog the day after. So his account was made under the impression that no British eye-witness could possibly gain-say him. One might ask, what’s the point of desecrating the dead to make a point only to deny it later? The obvious answer is that the axe chopping was a spur of the moment, adrenaline-pumping-through-his-veins kind of thing. That is the exact kind of thing that an insurgent commander would need to stringently deny and cover up if he wanted to win the propaganda war.
If I had to make a call, which I really don’t want to do because I’d be standing on very shaky ground, I’d say that any post-mortem mutilation was a natural result of close quarters violence and not a deliberate attempt to subject the fallen to dishonorable degradation. I can kind of construct a timeline of it- the coroner takes a peek at a series of badly damaged corpses, ravaged as they were by grenades and bayonets and shotguns, and comments, “Jeez, it almost looks like someone took an axe to this guy.” Some savvy British spook then spreads the story far and wide that the savage Irish chopped up the dead like wild Injuns, Forde’s memory is influenced by the official story, and Tom Barry has to try to ignore all damage he ordered done to the enemy after they hit the dirt to counter the accusation. A nice, neat, clean interpretation of events, which is as plausible as any other fictional story because we simply don’t know.
We’ve already covered the controversial use of a uniform in an act of deceit. The British were convinced that the IRA used stolen uniforms to deceive Crake’s patrol, which infuriated them to no end. Tom Barry’s stance was that it was not only a practical strategy, but also perfectly above board because the IRA was a proper army under the leadership of a legitimate government, and the fact that the British couldn’t recognize the tunic on sight the way they could recognize a German or Italian uniform was their problem, not his. Deciding how foul and dishonorable a trick it was probably depends on your politics.
But the pinnacle of the controversy revolves around the narrative of “the false surrender”. Just as the British accused the IRA of mutilation, so to did the IRA accuse the British of faking a surrender to kill their attackers.
Tom Barry’s account is a clean cut narrative- once the ambush was sprung and Section 1 pushed west down the road to engage the rear truck, the British called out to surrender and threw down their rifles. The firing stopped, the Irishmen exposed themselves by walking forward to collect the prisoners, and the Auxiliaries opened fire with their pistols, killing Sullivan and mortally wounding Deasy (McCarthy had been shot and killed in the initial outbreak of gunfire). Tom Barry, in a fury, ordered them “annihilated” for their dishonorable fake out and had his men keep firing into the dead bodies for a minute or two to make sure of them.
There are reasons to doubt such a story.
One, Forde contradicts it. He claims the IRA did capture individuals after the fighting stopped and then executed them all one by one. Two, other volunteers who had taken part in the ambush being interviewed years after the fact offer a slightly different story- that they enemy tried to surrender and then drew pistols, sure, but not all of them. One volunteer, Jack O'Sullivan, testified that he disarmed a wounded Auxiliary but “[h]e was walking him up the road as a prisoner when a shot dropped him at his feet". Another volunteer recalled that Jim Sullivan had been shot before the surrender, not during. And three, frankly, Tom Barry’s story of the false surrender simply makes no sense.
How on earth could an ambushed squad, squirming about desperately under fire, possibly have concocted a plot to fake a surrender solely to get a confirmed kill or two? Why the hell would they? The West Cork Brigade had an established pattern of taking prisoners and letting them go again- it was broadly understood that if the IRA caught you flat-footed they’d take your rifle and ammo and send you off- so why commit suicide by opening fire after the shooting stopped? What kind of fast paced discussion among the dismounted and scattered men of the rear truck led them to think that faking a surrender would work out?
The ugliest explanation I’ve heard is that Tom Barry intended from the start to give no quarter- after all, if you’ll recall, the whole point to the ambush was to make a dramatic counter attack and prove that you’d couldn’t raid West Cork without paying for it. What makes the point clearer, jumping a couple of guys and disarming them, or slaughtering them all to a man? By this theory, after the initial volleys, the surviving Auxiliaries had tossed their rifles and given up only to be massacred as prisoners.
Tom Barry wrote his account in 1949, almost thirty years after the fact. His story is neat and clear cut and flows logically from point to point: the exact kind of clarity of vision that is deeply implausible during the rapid clash of arms that was the Kilmichael Ambush. I just don’t believe it. Based on the volunteers’ testimony, I can believe that in the confusion, some Auxiliaries tried to surrender at the same moment when others tried to keep fighting, and that the IRA vengefully slew them all in the heat of the moment, and that Tom Barry had decades to mull it over and decide that since those Auxies had sneakily murdered Jim Sullivan and young Pat Deasy with their false surrender, they had deserved what they got.
But I really don’t know. All the witnesses are dead and nobody involved had any great interest in the Truth for Truth’s sake.
—————————————————————
Reflections
The question naturally arises about why I bothered to do this write up. After all, not only did the Kilmichael Ambush happen before my grandparents were even born, but it’s not even my heritage. I’m neither Irish nor British; I lack a dog in this fight. The honest but surface answer is that I’m a nerd and I like reading up about wars. Even so, as an American, I have plenty of material to geek out over- Saratoga, Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir. Why this time and place?
An answer that cuts a little deeper into the issue is that I was once involved at the ground level with a counter-insurgency myself, though my role in the proceedings was not terribly dramatic. The ethnic and cultural differences between us and the insurgents were considerable, and it takes an immense amount of effort for me to even try and step into the other guys’ shoes and see the world from their point of view. It is fascinating for me to study another insurgency from not too long ago with an entirely different cast of characters, both of whose cultural backgrounds are present in my own society. The patterns of the Anglo-Irish war are similar enough to Afghanistan that I find them achingly familiar, and yet altered enough to startle me at the same time.
As well, I was deeply impressed by how small of a scale this ambush was on. Twenty men killed and one wounded was considered a major event. Compare that to the Somme, or to Austerlitz, or God save us all to the charnel house of frozen hell that was Stalingrad. Twenty deaths wouldn’t even show up as a blip on the radar in a big war. It is easy to reduce humans to mere numbers when the scale is big enough. 20,000 marching there, 5,000 dead and twice that wounded, a small detachment of 200 sent to hold that bridge, a big push of 60,000 attacking the left.... the human mind can’t handle the amount of empathy it takes to process that many people suffering and dying. But with so few people involved, you can put names and histories onto corpses and get a proper perspective on how God-awful and cruel the whole business of war really is.
A few weeks back, I got into an argument with someone who suggested half-seriously- purely as a hypothetical- that we ought to send troops to Mexico to stamp down on the cartels to help reassert the Mexican government’s control. I pointed out that such an action would be pretty pointless, since the starting conditions that created the cartels would remain after we came, killed, and left. He responded that the number of the cartels’ potential recruits would run out sooner or later. In effect, he argued that if we killed off enough military age males, potentially tens of millions of people, the cartel crackdown would be permanent.
And I thought to myself, “I would bet money that this guy has never so much as been in a fistfight before. If he had ever hurt somebody bad, or seen them hurt bad before his very eyes, or gotten hurt bad himself, he’d know just how criminally insane his suggestion was.”
It worries me that people whose only exposure to war is video games, movies, and gushing reports of steely-eyed elite commandos taking the fight to the jihadis are so instinctively enthusiastic about it. It bothers me that people without skin in the game will happily vote their way towards armed conflict without bothering to think through whether people truly need to suffer and die en masse over the issue at hand. I’m no pacifist myself, you must understand. It just seems to me that people who are disassociated from the reality of war have a tendency to ruin things for everyone else.
However, all such moralizing is ultimately secondary to my purpose. The impulse to tell the tale of the Kilmichael Ambush is an old one, for the telling of war stories is an ancient tradition. As far back as Homer's Iliad, people have been huddling around campfires to gush about this hero's courage, to scorn that villain's cruelty, to mourn the death and agony inflicted upon the innocent, and to retread in the footsteps of the dead and buried soldiers of yesteryear. Undoubtedly there is some clever sociological explanation for why humans of all cultural backgrounds do this, but I need no justification for it. The campfire is replaced by a computer screen and the audience is full of strangers instead of kin and allies, but the form is the same, and in my opinion that is what matters.

Your doctor will probably admit that chronic pain is a possible complication resulting from vasectomy, but most will say that it happens rarely, or even very rarely.
What exactly does very rarely mean?
Before you decide to have a vasectomy, stop and ask yourself what odds of chronic pain you are willing to sign up for. To get some idea of what this would be like, just imagine being mildly nauseated every day and not knowing whether or not it would ever stop.
Here are the chances for chronic pain caused by vasectomy given by several national level health organizations. These are the professional societies and experts that the urologists are supposed to be getting their statistics from:

• Canadian Urology Association give the chronic pain outcomes for vasectomy at between 1-14% (Link)
  
• American Urological Association says chronic pain serious enough to impact quality of life occurs after 1-2% of vasectomies. (Link)
  
• British Association of Urological Surgeons, patient advice reports troublesome chronic testicular pain which can be severe enough to affect day-to-day activities in 5-14% of vasectomy patients. (Link)
  
• UK National Health Service says long-term testicular pain affects around 10% of men after vasectomy. (Link)
  
• 11th edition of Campbell Walsh Urology (2015) cites 10% incidence of chronic scrotal pain caused by vasectomy. (Link)
  
• European Association of Urology (2012) cites 1-14% incidence of chronic scrotal pain caused by vasectomy, usually mild but sometimes requiring pain management or surgery (Link)
  
• Royal College of Surgeons of England says significant chronic orchalgia may occur in up to 15% of men after vasectomy, and may require epididymectomy or vasectomy reversal. (Link)
  
• Journal of Andrology cites large studies that find Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome 2-6% of the time (Link)
  
• UpToDate says "surveys have found that the incidence of "troublesome" post-vasectomy pain is reported by approximately 15% of men, with pain severe enough to affect quality of life in 2%. However, survey respondents may not have been representative of all men who have had a vasectomy." (Link)
  
• European Association of Urology says Post-vasectomy scrotal pain syndrome is a scrotal pain syndrome that follows vasectomy. Post-vasectomy scrotal pain syndrome is often associated with negative cognitive, behavioural, sexual or emotional consequences, as well as with symptoms suggestive of lower urinary tract and sexual dysfunction. Post-vasectomy pain may be as frequent as 1% following vasectomy, possibly more frequent. (Link)
  
• American Family Physician says "Recent studies estimate the incidence of severe postvasectomy pain syndrome to be between 1% and 6%" (Link)
  
• International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a meta-analysis in March 2020 to determine the incidence of PVPS, which examined 559 peer-reviewed studies and concluded that "Post-vasectomy pain syndrome occurred in 5% of subjects" (Link) The authors determined that "the overall incidence of post-vasectomy pain is greater than previously reported."
  
• StatPearls says "about 1% to 2% of all men who undergo vasectomies will develop constant or intermittent testicular pain lasting greater than 3 months which is then defined as post-vasectomy pain syndrome." (Link)
  

What do "rare" and "very rare" normally mean when describing side effects of a medical intervention?
The World Health Organization provides specific definitions for using these words when discussing medical side effects:

• Very Common = Greater than 10%
• Common = 1% to 10%
• Uncommon = 0.1% to 1%
• Rare = 0.01% to 0.1%
• Very Rare = Less than 0.01%

(Link 1) (Link 2)
Based on these definitions, chronic pain is not a very rare, or rare side effect of vasectomy. It isn't even uncommon.
Rather, chronic pain is a common side effect of vasectomy. Sometimes it is called Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome (PVPS). This pain may go away after several months or years, or it may be permanent.
Before they modify your body, your surgeon should make sure that you:

• Know about Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome
• Understand the impact it would have on your life
• Understand that it may be permanent
• Know that the risk is at least 1%
• Explicitly accept the risk

If your surgeon does not communicate the above points to you, they are operating on you without your informed consent.
Vasectomy works out well for most men. Those who have an uncomplicated vasectomy may be back to feeling normal in as little as a week and are quick to encourage others to "get the snip." They may reject stories about men who have chronic pain or other permanent complications as exaggerations. Sometimes they make the mistake of reasoning that if a bad outcome did not happen to them, then it must never happen to anyone. Health providers market the procedure as quick, effective, and safe. Men who worry that their health or sexual function may be permanently damaged by a vasectomy are repeatedly assured that after a few weeks they will feel and function exactly as they did before the surgery. Reports about the downsides of vasectomy are frequently dismissed as unreliable. They are disparaged as exaggerations, products of hypochondriac imagination, or myths being promoted by fear-mongers. Men are told that not only is it practically impossible for vasectomy to harm their sex lives, it is likely that their sex lives and even their orgasms will improve because of the surgery.
Unfortunately, the science shows that negative health impacts of vasectomy can happen and they are not rare. That might not surprise you after you consider a few key facts:

• Before vasectomy, sperm is kept separated from the immune system. After vasectomy, the immune system typically creates antibodies that cause it to seek out and kill sperm. In other words, men commonly become allergic to their own sperm, and a chronic auto-immune response can cause inflammation, making the area feel swollen and raw on the inside.
• After vasectomy, the testes continue producing sperm, but since the sperm cannot escape, they can create pressure inside the epididymis and vas deferens. In fact, the pressure can get high enough to rupture these tissues, releasing the sperm and allowing it to form a bubble in the scrotum called a granuloma. Anyone who has experienced epididymitis will immediately recognize the nagging ache of a swollen epididymis. If you haven't had this experience, you can compare it to the painful pressure an ear infection can cause.
• Nerves severed during the procedure sometimes heal poorly and interact with scar tissue and auto-immune inflammation, irritating the nerves and causing pain called neuralgia, which in PVPS is usually described as a burning sensation that is hard to localize but centered in the groin.
• The vas deferens is not just a passive tube--it is lined with muscles that contract during ejaculation to move sperm along. Presumably, motor and sensory nerves that connect to these muscles are cut when the vas is severed. The epididymis, particularly the tail of the epididymis which is at the bottom of the testicle, is wrapped with smooth muscle which contracts to expel sperm during ejaculation. Ejaculation involves many muscles in the scrotum, including the cremaster, the vas deferens, and the epididymis. (Link) After vasectomy, these muscle contractions may put pressure on an already swollen and irritated part of the body. Some men find to their dismay that ejaculation is uncomfortable -- even painful -- after vasectomy.
• The groin is a very complex region of the body, constantly under mechanical stress whether you are sitting, standing or walking. Multiple organ systems work in close proximity, so that problems in one system can spill over to cause problems in other systems. Nerves that enter the inguinal canal can refer pain to the inner thigh, stomach and lower back -- disrupting the normal functioning of muscles in those areas. For a point of comparison, surgery to repair an inguinal hernia results in chronic pain even more frequently than vasectomy. 16% of the time based on this study. Another study puts chronic pain at 28% post hernia surgery, with 11% saying it interfered with work or leisure activity. Chronic pain is not unique to groin surgery -- it is a common complication of many kinds of surgery, which is why you should avoid surgery unless you need it!

Given these facts, perhaps the real surprise should be that the percentage of men who suffer from long term health problems as a result of this surgery is so low.
For the unlucky minority, vasectomy opens a Pandora's box. Part of the pleasure of sex is taken away and replaced with pain. The constant discomfort reduces their quality of life, interferes with the activities they previously enjoyed and may frequently intrude on their thoughts. They try one therapy after another before finally giving up in exasperation. As months pass with no relief, they come to grips with the fact that pelvic pain is their new constant companion and may never leave. There are few opportunities to warn others about the danger. Bringing up the topic in conversation results in a social penalty and has no benefit -- even among close friends. They may feel reluctant to express their feelings to their partner, fearing it could have a negative impact on their relationship. Some men worry that by telling their partner that sex has become painful or disappointing, they could irreparably damage the attraction and desire their partner feels toward them. Instead, they pretend like nothing has changed.
Men initially complain to their doctors, who are reluctant to attribute the problems to the vasectomy and who are unwilling to warn the public that a problem worth taking seriously may exist.
In many ways, PVPS manages to have just the right properties to help it hide in plain sight.
Doctors who have not personally experienced PVPS seem dismissive of the scope and seriousness of the problem. They grudgingly acknowledge the published rates of chronic pain but claim it doesn't match their own observations. Even if they have done thousands of vasectomies, they claim they have only seen PVPS once or twice in their career.
Vasectomized men may be hesitant to continue to pester their doctor about discomfort that is not going away, especially if it is the same doctor who performed the vasectomy. When they do seek help, they are seldom diagnosed as having a chronic pain syndrome that is a complication of their surgery. Instead, they are given various therapies and admonished that healing can sometimes take many months. Urologists avoid discussing the possibility that the problem is a chronic pain syndrome, preferring to focus on the symptoms and making it difficult for men to realize that what they are experiencing is part of a pattern that many others have experienced. After several fruitless doctor visits, men who are nevertheless still in pain may view further appointments as a waste of time and money. When they stop making appointments, doctors are tempted to assume that the problem has been resolved successfully.
For men whose symptoms appear months or years after their surgery, nothing can persuade the urologist to conclude that the vasectomy was the ultimate cause. The symptoms sound similar to age-related problems that begin to afflict men in their 40's and 50's, which gives doctors who want to avoid blaming vasectomy a convenient scapegoat. There is no specific medical code with which to classify and track PVPS. The failure to gather statistics, low incidence rate, long time-spans and confounding age-related factors make scientific investigation into PVPS tricky and expensive.
Men who are notified about the risk of PVPS before their surgery are often reassured that residual pain would be a trivial inconvenience and that few who have PVPS pursue surgery to cure it. They are not made to understand that none of the the surgical remedies are guaranteed to work, and all of them have the potential to make the chronic pain worse. The option with the best results, vasectomy reversal, is very expensive, usually not covered by health insurance, painful to recover from, likely to restore the unwanted fertility, and fails to fix the problem about 20% of the time. Many men are emotionally traumatized by their vasectomy and too afraid to take the risk of another more surgery, choosing instead to cope with the pain indefinitely. (Example)
One of the factors that blinds practitioners and the public to the danger is that vasectomy has a lot of good things going for it. The majority of men recover very quickly and do not have residual pain or any noticeable change to their sexual function. They can have spontaneous sex without any fear of causing unwanted pregnancy. They protect their partner from all of the pain and risk of pregnancy. It seems like an almost ideal solution to many serious problems. The majority of men who have had vasectomies consider it one of the best decisions they have ever made and are pleased to boast about how little pain was involved and how quickly they returned to their normal activities.
Vasectomy is understandably seen as an indispensable tool to reduce the disproportionate risks women face. Vasectomy is viewed by many as an essential brake on a human population that is growing far too rapidly. In light of all this, the existence of PVPS is a very unwelcome fact, provoking in many a reflexive and unshakable assumption that PVPS cannot be a serious problem.
The lack of enthusiasm for discovering the truth about PVPS has lead to a situation where widely published figures for PVPS have been incorrect by at least factor of 10 and have only been recently corrected:
Example 1: Uptodate
Example 2: Campbell Walsh Urology textbook
Both of these sources were corrected in 2013. Urologists have not made it a priority to disseminate the correction and many still quote older, incorrect statistics.
Vasectomy is unusual, in that it is a surgery that is not performed to make the patient healthier. In fact, the patient's health can only be harmed by this procedure. Vasectomy is performed to protect the health of the patient's partner. Part of the reason it is labeled "safe" is because pregnancy and tubal ligation are more dangerous. Many in our culture see vasectomy as a man's obligation to his partner. A man who will not endure (what is thought to be) the trivial pain and risk of a vasectomy is often judged to be selfish or cowardly. A doctor who is advising a man on the risks of this surgery is thus placed in a delicate situation. Say too much, or say it the wrong way, and a man might decide to protect his own health at the expense of the health of his partner.
Doctors who believe PVPS has a psychosomatic component may feel that warning men in plain language could harm the man by creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. When telling people the naked truth has so much potential downside, what is a doctor to do? Most doctors choose to thread the needle by using the written and verbal equivalent of fine print to discharge their obligation without raising any undesirable alarms.
Doctors are not the only ones who treat facts about vasectomy complications as a kind of "hazardous information." Other examples include:

• Women who hope their partner will have a vasectomy: "Don't tell my husband about that, I'll never get him to go."
• Men deciding whether or not to get a vasectomy: "I stayed away from the horror stories. Didn't want to freak myself out."
• Men who are experiencing PVPS: "I need to focus on the positive."
• Men considering whether to warn another man who is getting a vasectomy: What happened to me was a one-in-a-million freak accident, and not relevant to his decision.

As a result of the risk and impact of PVPS being downplayed by virtually everyone, including trusted authorities and the very men who suffer from PVPS, men with this disease find themselves in a situation that many find difficult to fully acknowledge as real. The mismatch between the pain in their own bodies and the public consensus about vasectomy can be a source of significant frustration. Their partners, hearing ubiquitous assurances that vasectomy is safe and cannot affect sexual function, are left to wonder if there is some other explanation as to why their man has become less emotionally available and suddenly ambivalent toward sexual contact.
The widespread misunderstanding about vasectomy also hampers the ability of doctors and scientists to improve the situation. How can you study a problem, such as diminished ejaculation sensation caused by vasectomy, if you don't dare admit that the problem exists? How can you recommend getting a vasectomy reversal to a man who is suffering without admitting that there is something fundamental about vasectomies that makes getting them reversed curative? In other words, you are admitting that getting a vasectomy is risky not just because it is surgery -- it is risky because it permanently changes the body to function in a way that sometimes causes disease. Many men report that their doctors do not mention reversal as a treatment option unless the man specifically asks them about it.
At the age most men seek a vasectomy, most do not have any experience with chronic pain, and cannot appreciate what an enormous psychological stress it can be. Having a chronic disease of the nervous system is not like breaking your leg. The permanent character, the disruption to your life, mental state, and personality make it more analogous to having a brain injury. For some it feels like being trapped and subjected to torture in slow motion over many years. Social media has provided a rare forum in which some men feel comfortable talking candidly and in detail about their experience with PVPS. Their stories have many similarities and common themes. By reading them you can get a detailed picture of what it is like to lose this bet. Some cases are mild. Some are severe. There are hundreds of stories in this sub. I do my best to avoid posting the same person's story twice.
More study needs to be done so that we can know the rate of this complication with more precision. Men who are still sore 3 months after their vasectomy want to know what to expect and what to do. Should they get additional surgery? How long should they wait before making this decision? They deserve to be taken seriously and given advice that is well-grounded in scientific study.
Finding and testing new birth control techniques for men and for women should be made a higher priority. Exaggerating the safety of the currently available options makes it harder to be motivated to search for real improvements. Perhaps a technique like Vasalgel could be seen as a better risk trade-off since it may have a lower incidence of PVPS or be easier to reverse if the man ends up with chronic problems. Perhaps the choice of vasectomy technique (open/closed, scalpel/no-scalpel, bilateral/midline) makes a difference in how likely chronic pain is to result.
This subreddit is a place to post stories or links to stories about what it is like to have PVPS. Scientists and doctors have not yet done an adequate job of measuring this problem and communicating it to the public, so the task falls to the people who have the most reason to care about the issue -- the people whose lives have been negatively impacted.
I have no ideological problem with vasectomy. In fact, before I had a vasectomy, I thought it was easy to see that it was the best choice for my family. I didn't investigate the procedure at all before having it done, trusting that my urologist would advise me of any relevant risks. My urologist did not give me an accurate idea of the frequency and impact of chronic pain. Unfortunately, I have been in pain every day since my surgery. My motive for working on this subreddit is that I want men to get a proper warning about the risks, and to disrupt the complacency that surrounds our attitude toward vasectomy so that we will be interested in developing a technique that is actually as safe as most people erroneously believe vasectomy to be.
It is true that there are many myths about vasectomy. One of them is the myth that vasectomy will not permanently damage your sexual health. The reality is that while it usually doesn't, sometime it does.
Men who are willing to step up and voluntarily risk surgery that benefits others, including their partners, doctors and all of society deserve better than to be mislead about how safe it is. They deserve better than to have their complications remain understudied and poorly understood. We need to see effort put into understanding how common chronic pain is after vasectomy, and into learning what can be done to prevent it, and what the best treatment protocol should be.
If you had a vasectomy in the last 12 months and are still in pain, I would not recommend getting additional surgery right away. I think it's better to wait it out and take some time to educate yourself about the alternatives, both surgical and non-surgical. See how you feel at 1 year. Waiting won't make things worse, and many guys experience improvement for a year or more.
Here is a good video from the Mayo Clinic describing treatment options.
Here are some other treatment ideas.
If you want to get a vasectomy and minimize your chances of developing PVPS, here is some advice from Dr. Sheldon Marks:

Any good urologist should be fine. When you go in for your pre-vasectomy consultation be sure to ask about your concerns - explain you have done you reading and ask him or her to explain the technique they use - then you can ask that small piece only be removed, as high up the vas as they can away from the testicle, minimize cautery, no clips, no ties and use plenty of long acting local anesthetic. Some will say sure, others will tell you they want to do it the way they do it…It may take a few doctors visits to find a urologist that does vasectomies the way you want. Don’t be in a hurry and don’t go to the first urologist you see if you have bad feelings. It would be great if you could call around and ask but I cant imagine anyone giving you that information or assurances as a nonpatient over the phone.

https://www.postvasectomypain.org/t/minimizing-risk-of-post-vasectomy-pain/77/5
Other long-term complications of vasectomy:
Vasectomy is correlated with an increased rate of prostate cancer. Scientists argue about why this is the case. For a long time, the consensus view has been that vasectomy does not cause prostate cancer. However, recent studies strongly suggest that a little more than 1% of vasectomies result in prostate cancer.
https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/jco.2013.54.8446
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31119294
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32772072/
If these studies are correct, then prostate cancer is another common complication of vasectomy. The studies show a "relative risk" of at least 1.1 for prostate cancer, with similar numbers for the aggressive, lethal type. Prostate cancer is a common killer of men; one out of 41 men die from prostate cancer. If you multiply that by the relative rate, about 1:410 men who get a vasectomy will die from prostate cancer that they got as a result of the vasectomy. That means about 244 out of 100,000 vasectomies will result in death. Tubal ligation results in death about 4 out of 100,000. This analysis is not the consensus scientific view, but in my view it is very plausible, and would mean that vasectomy is about 60 times more deadly than tubal ligation. Note also that salpingectomy can reduce a woman's risk of ovarian cancer -- possibly by 30% to 64% (Link)
Vasectomy also raises your risk for kidney stones by about 10% if you are under 46 years old:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9016891/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2891890/
Vasectomy may be a simple, quick snip, but long term negative consequences can extend far beyond the scrotum and affect many other parts of the body, including the prostate and kidneys, in surprising ways.

Artigo: https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:638f00a0-71b9-4d8e-a960-dddaf9ba57cb/150_history_of_insurance.pdf

• little is known about the history of the industry, although it has played a major part in shaping today’s society and culture. Industrialisation, welfare, innovation, economic development, or modernisation per se would not have been the same without private insurance (4)
• Trade and emigration became the two most important enablers for creating a global insurance safety network. (4)
• Today the link between risk, new ventures and growth seems self-evident. And yet this understanding is surprisingly recent. (7)
• Risk mitigation based on solidarity was widespread among guilds, trade associations, and village communities. Most seafaring nations distributed cargo onto different ships to hedge against storms and pirates while fraternal organisations provided [...] forms of solidarity (7)
• early forms of mutual insurance, whereby premiums were paid ex ante, lacked the sophistication of modern enterprises. [...] For modern insurance, spreading risk and managing finances was to become vital (7)
• In 1654 [...] The mathematicians Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat used an old pyramid of numbers [and] triggered a revolution in the development of probability theories and mathematicians all over Europe cooperated and applied their findings to calculate life expectancy [...] Mortality tables were often the work of clerics who wanted to discover the role and plans of a divine creator and prove the clear regularities and divine order behind the apparent randomness of mortality [...] Richard Price later developed a cost and accounting model. In 1774 he calculated profitability in life insurance [...] based on current and expected mortality, so that the current state of the operations could be assessed more precisely. From then on, life insurance no longer relied on speculation (9)
• Insurance was thus an ideal laboratory for enlightened business ideas. The process of collecting different types of institutional and personal information and using underwriting to transform it into quantifiable costs was important. It created a vital counterbalance to the new and potentially destabilising forces that were transforming the division of labour, urbanisation, and the economics of trade. Insurance also helped money become the means of communication within the economy and contributed to more and more problems being expressed in terms of costs and time. Not all cultures adopted such thinking from the start. In Southern Europe, it took a catastrophe to change the perception of risk and the views on destiny. The Great Lisbon Earthquake in 1755 (11) In England it was the Great Fire of London in 1666 which had changed public opinion. (12)
• in 1681, [was] created the first known joint stock insurance company. (12)
• The rational business ideas of the Enlightenment also tempted many investors to abuse the sound concepts of insurance to bet on the most unlikely risks [...] The government subsequently banned some forms of insurance. A ban on reinsurance had already come into force in 1746 (12)
• Towards the end of the 18th century the first truly modern and global insurance company, the Phoenix, was founded by an association of sugar refinery owners in London. Soon after its foundation it insured risks in distant countries and it was the first insurer to establish offices abroad (13)
• the British system was gradually adopted in most white settler colonies in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and in South Africa. [but] It remained a privilege of the European settlers and traders to insure themselves and their businesses. (17)
• In the early 20th century [...] many countries had adopted social insurance schemes based on the German model invented by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to appease the growing proletarian classes (19)
• Both the size and number of risks to be insured began outstripping the capacities of the insurance industry towards the second half of the 19th century. [...] Founding reinsurers, rather than just founding additional insurance companies, proved to be an efficient way of providing additional risk capital. Reinsurers were comparatively inexpensive to set up and run, not needing the large salesforce of direct insurers. Also, reinsurers started spreading risks more broadly than their clients. They tended to be more international, for one thing, and they were active in most or all lines of business known at the time, which allowed offsetting losses in one line with gains in another. (25)
• the ban on reinsurance in England had been lifted in 1864 (25)
• The world’s first dedicated and independent reinsurer, Cologne Re, was established in the aftermath of the Hamburg fire of 1842. [...] Swiss Re’s beginnings are often associated with the devastating fire that destroyed the thriving Swiss town of Glarus in May 1861. The fire, which hit some local insurers with claims five times their reserves, highlighted the threat of major catastrophes to the Swiss insurance industry and demonstrated the need for reinsurance protection to provide protection for events with a low frequency but a yet unknown severity. (30)
• it was the catastrophic 1906 San Francisco Earthquake that was to be the insurance and reinsurance industry’s wake-up call. The earthquake and subsequent fire that swept through San Francisco was a market changing event. The extent of the damage made insurers rethink the potential size of losses, as well as the importance of seeking well-capitalised counterparties. [...] The majority of claims were paid by foreign companies, demonstrating just how globalised the industry had already become (33)
• The opening decade of the 21st century was challenging for global insurers and reinsurers [...] The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 not only cost three thousand lives and billions of dollars in property damage, it also changed insurers thinking about the possible size of losses and the interconnectivity and accumulation of seemingly unrelated risks. [...] The first decade of the 21st century put into question the insurability of some large risks. Hurricane Katrina [...] floods in Australia, a sequence of earthquakes first in New Zealand and later in Japan, followed by a tsunami, and the year finished with yet another flood in Thailand.The financial crisis of 2008 was also tough (36)
• If the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 had taught the insurance industry that natural catastrophes could result in losses far beyond what had been calculated, inflation and the [1929] financial crisis forced it to recognise that monetary and financial upheavals could wreak even greater havoc. (41)
• in Nazi Germany [...] Jews and other minorities among policyholders were increasingly discriminated against and denied payments (45)
• the global boom also ushered in new kinds of unknown and complex risks of far greater proportions. Atomic reactors, super-tankers, aircraft, and large building sites forced reinsurers to think about the limits of insurability. Liability issues also started making an appearance in American courtrooms. Some voices declared the reinsurance industry to be in a state of profound crisis (48)
• The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 upset the international markets further and gave rise to neo-liberal politics. The ensuing deregulation of the markets was to change the insurance landscape once again. (51)
• All in all, during the 20th century, the pace of globalisation quickened and rising Asian and Eastern European economies joined the competition. Insurance was in greater supply than ever to meet growing demand in existing and new markets. But risks, too, were becoming more and more global. (52)
• the major challenges the industry is dealing with today: terrorism, financial crises, natural disasters, pandemics, longevity, and changes in the regulatory environment. (55)
• despite the magnitude of the losses inflicted by Katrina, the hurricane failed to bankrupt a single company. This was largely due to reinsurers who over the previous decades had specialised in providing cover for natural catastrophe risks and had done so to a much greater degree than had other organisations [...] the hurricane was a boon to the growing catastrophe bond market, which enjoyed its best year ever in 2007, issuing some USD 8.5 billion of protection. A series of large catastrophes in the past few years dramatically reminded the world of the need for reinsurance cover. The Chile earthquake in 2011, European windstorm Xynthia, floods in Australia both in 2011 and in 2012, the Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand, Hurricane Sandy and the largest insured loss in Japanese history, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, were exceptionally severe tests of strength for the insurance and reinsurance industry (57)
• [in 2008] the vast majority of insurers around the world experienced few issues besides the impact of volatile investment markets. And even at that level, previous financial crises had taught them the importance of rebalancing their portfolios, which to a degree mitigated underwriting losses (61)
• Certainly, the Great Recession also reaffirmed some of the fundamentals of insurance and reinsurance: to understand the underlying risks, to challenge models that suggest the future will follow the past, and to think the unthinkable. (62)
• Today’s issues and challenges for insurers are plentiful: ageing populations, natural catastrophes, pandemics, terrorism, energy solutions, financial stability, food security, or climate change are only the top of a long list that requires attention from insurers and reinsurers. [...] In essence, the art of risk management has remained the same over the last 150 years; what has changed is the complexity of those risks, their global distribution and their interdependency. (62)
• reinsurance remains virtually unknown by the general public, even though it plays a key role in taking on risk and enabling economic growth and progress. Reinsurance is “insurance for insurers”. It carries out one of the fundamental principles of insurance, namely that risks need to be spread as widely as possible. The more broadly they are shared, the more cost effective it becomes to cover them. From the very beginning the reinsurance business was international (63)
• Reinsurance naturally researches risks and the nature of risk more than any other part of the financial services industry. (63)

[Very long, but I know you have nothing better to do] [EDIT: Tried to fix formatting. And for those who live in terrible places - take a joke!]
When NBA players reach the rare points of their careers when they actually have the unfettered discretion to choose where they want to live and play basketball, they choose different places for different reasons. Where would he have the best opportunity to contend for a championship? Who can pay him the most money? Where can he be the number one option and play the way he wants to play? Who has the best coach and front office? Which city has the best weather? Which city has the best clubs? The best strip clubs? Proximity to models? Proximity to Kardashians? Where did he grow up?
Recently, every slight compliment that Kevin Durant bestows on a team or a town leads to wild speculation of where he will play next season. As the biggest free agent since Lebron took his talents to South Beach in 2010 and since he took his somewhat fading talents back to Lake Erie in 2014, there is good reason to speculate about KD’s future. In all likelihood, his carefully crafted decision will lead to five years of playing for the Larry O’Brien trophy no matter which jersey he dons.
The complexities of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the increasing intelligence of most front offices in the league (sorry Sacramento), and the ability to be marketable from anywhere in a globalized economy have changed the way that players make decisions. It is no longer about forcing yourself to the biggest market, which historically, have been the places where a player was most likely to win. A monstrous television deal that will only increase in the next couple of years has leveled the playing field. As has a CBA where a team actually has to plan and make smart decisions to manage their salary cap situation.
But let’s pretend that it’s just about the city and the history of the franchise (but not the active basketball operations, coach and players. So – for example – we can say Michael Jordan played there! But, we cannot factor in Fred Hoiberg, the general current management of the team or the fact that you can play with Jimmy Butler). All else being equal – which NBA locations/teams are the most attractive to NBA players? Remember, we are looking at this from the perspective of young millionaires.
BIG CITY, BRIGHT LIGHTS:

Los Angeles Lakers

It used to be like the rap wars of the mid-1990s. East Coast or West Coast? Biggie or Pac? New York or L.A.? Los Angeles had Hollywood opportunities (What if I told you that you get play a 7 foot genie, star alongside Francis Capra and Da Brat and be directed by the genius behind The Cutting Edge and three episodes of Miami Vice?) Jack Nicholson watching courtside, young actresses (and aspiring ones) flooding the Forum Club and then Hyde at the Staples Center. You could have a mansion in Beverly Hills or on the Strand in Manhattan Beach. A player could enjoy the finest well-done steaks at Mastro’s.
Or you could live in a Park Avenue penthouse. Give high-fives to Jay-Z. Get your boy a guest spot on Law & Order SVU. 4:00 a.m. nights with models in Tribeca and SOHO. And most importantly, being in the center of the media universe could make you as marketable as…Patrick Ewing?
But times have changed. In the age of Twitter and Vine, League Pass, and nationally televised games, no matter where you are, players don’t needNew York. They don’t need L.A. But they still want L.A. The perfect weather and the pull of Hollywood, which remains the epicenter of the entertainment industry. A place where you can blend in and be afforded a little more privacy because residents are more excited by encounters with Jax fromVanderpump Rules.
Los Angeles remains the place where you can play for one of the two most storied teams in the league, while being able to roll along Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible maroon Bentley on a 78 degree January afternoon.
It is the Lakers history that puts L.A. at the top. Veterans grew up watching the late Magic years. Younger players grew up watching the Kobe-Shaq dynasty or the Kobe-Pau years. The games under the Showtime lighting, framed yellow jerseys and 16 championship banners just feel different. It is one thing to be an NBA player. It is a whole other to be a Laker.

Miami Heat

It’s pretty much Los Angeles, but with the occasional hurricane, worse humidity, and Cuban telenovelas instead of big-budget motion pictures. Miami still has the beach and the clear and beautiful warm waters of South Florida. NBA players love neon lights and other bright shit, making South Beach a favorite. There are the palm trees and the waterfront mansions. A player can still date models. Prime 112 has tempura lobster (A Jalen Rose favorite).
Alonzo Mourning and the late 1990s teams brought legitimacy to a new organization. Dwyane Wade and Pat Riley turned them into a premiere franchise and Lebron and the big-three era catapulted the Heat to arguably becoming the most marquee NBA franchise, other than the Lakers and Spurs, in the post-Jordan era.
Also, in case you forgot every Cribs episode, never underestimate an NBA player’s adoration for Scarface.
BIG CITY, NOT AS BRIGHT LIGHTS:

Los Angeles Clippers

Basically the Lakers, but with selfies hanging inside Staples instead of championship banners and nostalgia for Eric Piatkowski instead of Magic Johnson.
The trash organization gained legitimacy when the NBA evicted their slumlord owner and brought in a tech billionaire whose products are not used by a single person in Los Angeles, most of whom are working on Broad City spec scripts at their local coffee shop.
The marketability factor is still present with opportunities for players to be the king of insurance or mid-tier Korean family sedans.
It’s still Los Angeles and a player can always go out on Sunset and pretend he is on the Lakers.

New York Knicks

We pretend the Knicks are the unheralded kings of free agency. That everyone dreams of playing at the Garden and living in New York. But unless you grew up in the five boroughs - no one liked Ewing, Starks, Oak and Anthony Mason (RIP). Most NBA players would not know if Bernard King played on the Knicks between 1983-1987 or 1963-1967. The oldest active player in the NBA (the professor, Andre Miller) was born approximately three years AFTER the Knicks last won an NBA championship. Sorry, the Knicks aren’t a premiere NBA organization. And this is without even mentioning James Dolan.
And - contrary to popular opinion - New York City is not the premiere place to live if you are an NBA superstar. A player would rather live in a sprawling 8,000 square foot mansion with a regulation sized basketball court, shark tank, nine-hole golf course, and a Ritz Carlton quality pool than pay $10 million for a 2,000 square foot apartment or brownstone.
Your average NBA player would rather eat at The Cheesecake Factory than the awesome hole-in-the-wall Pho spot or David Chang’s latest Michelin rated restaurant.
NBA players aren’t known to spend Saturday afternoons strolling the Museum of Modern Art or checking out trendy and provocative performance art projects in Bushwick warehouses.
It isn’t 1981, so nearly every NBA city has some semblance of nightlife where a player can enjoy a bottle of Dom P, VIP area, and have a flock of jersey-chasers clamoring for attention.
NBA players don’t fuck with the Subway.
New York is really cold during approximately 80% of the NBA regular season.
But even though I spent approximately 300 words shitting on New York, it’s still New York. Just ask JR Smith.
[NOTE – THIS ABOVE PARAGRAPH DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU IF YOU ARE MARRIED TO LA LA].

Brooklyn Nets

The team’s history is buried in a swamp in New Jersey. The legacy of the team since it has moved to Brooklyn centers around former stars who were collective decades removed from their primes.
NBA players are not Lena Dunham.
It’s still New York, but not quite.
Basically the New York Clippers.
Having a Russian Oligarch multi-billionaire for an owner is pretty cool.
NOT L.A. OR MIAMI, BUT THE WEATHER IS NICE

Houston Rockets

It’s hot. There is good food and lots of chain restaurants. Huge houses for cheap and no state taxes. Paul Wall, Mike Jones (who?) and Chamillionaire were at the height of their popularity when most of these guys were in junior high and high school.
Hakeem might help you with your footwork.
Allegedly, great strip clubs.

Dallas Mavericks

It’s hot. There are quality steakhouses and lots of chain restaurants. Huge houses for cheap and no state taxes. Unfortunately, no strong rap history.
No one to help you with your footwork, but Cuban provides the best perks (remember when he put a Playstation 2 in every player’s locker back in 2002?)
A lot of players are Dallas Cowboys fans because they are front-running assholes who grew up with the Irvin, Emmett and Aikman teams.
Allegedly, great strip clubs.
And if Chandler Parsons chose to play there you know it is a good time.

Phoenix Suns

It’s really hot. There are lots of chain restaurants. Huge houses for cheap, but there are state taxes. Unfortunately, no strong rap history.
NBA players treat Phoenix as if it is a distant suburb of Los Angeles.
Few models, but plenty of surgically enhanced cleavage and Arizona State Coeds.
More NBA players than you think golf.
Pool parties where players can wear socks, rubber Nike sandals, and two pairs of oversized basketball shorts.
The Steve Nash teams revolutionized basketball and rescued the NBA from the 84-79 point games era. Barkley took them to the Finals against Jordan and maybe a player can get invited to his poker game (hope he makes a max-level salary!)

Orlando Magic

Players have been known to live on lakes and jet-ski to each other’s houses to play Madden, which sounds like exactly the kind of life I would have liked to have led when I was 17.
The weather is really nice and it’s almost tropical.
It’s basically Miami, but rednecks instead of Latin people and New York retirees, lakes instead of the ocean, and strip malls and Disney World instead of any semblance of nightlife. Those D12 teams were underrated (beat Lebron in his prime), but no one has ever said “Dwight Howard did it, so you know it is a good idea.” Some goodwill remains from the Penny-Shaq era. Everyone forgets that T-Mac and Grant Hill played here.
THE CITIES THAT SHOULD BE HIGHER

Atlanta Hawks

It is a mystery why Atlanta is not a more popular NBA city. You would think Atlanta would be at the center of the Venn diagram of where rappers and NBA players want to live. But apparently, NBA players don’t care too much about fraternizing with 2 Chainz, Outkast, Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri, Gucci Mane, Lil Jon, and Young Jeezy.
It isn’t San Diego, but the weather is nice. The food is good. You can buy a Southern estate for about the price of a condo in Inglewood. You might be able to get a cameo on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Freaknik is in Atlanta, even though its heyday has long since passed.
It’s at the top of the list of where traveling NBA players play like shit. Atlanta has arguably the best clubs of NBA cities that are not Los Angeles, New York, or Miami.
Of course, I have to bring up The Gold Club, where you can feel free to hang around a little bit and talk to them, then leave.
It’s one of the two major African-American metropoles in the country.
Highlights of the Hawks history are basically limited to the 2015 team getting swept in the conference finals, that time Joe Johnson hit a three, and Dominique Wilkins almost (he should have) beating MJ in the 1988 dunk contest. Maybe that’s why guys don’t want to play here.

Washington Wizards

Affectionately nicknamed Chocolate City.
But basketball has really never mattered in DC outside of Georgetown hoops.
THEY ARE REALLY GOOD AT BASKETBALL, BUT THAT’S ABOUT IT:

San Antonio Spurs

What would San Antonio be without the Spurs? The answer is El Paso. No one wants to live in El Paso.
This is a good reminder that this list does not consider the strength of the present-day organization, but it does factor in the history of the organization.
Therefore, the Spurs get a bump for having five titles, four of which no one cares much about. There’s a better chance of Fox News covering a Bernie Sanders rally than Hardwood Classics ever airing a game from the New Jersey Nets and San Antonio Spurs 2003 Finals.
San Antonio is, in essence, Dallas or Houston, but they tend to fare worse in the most obese cities rankings, more residents speak Spanish, and the chain restaurants are next to a dirty river.
I am not sure any NBA players remember the Alamo.
REMEMBER THAT WE ARE NOT FACTORING IN STEPH CURRY:

Golden State Warriors

Two years ago you would probably agree with this placement. Now you probably think I am insane, stupid or both.
But in my completely arbitrary and not very well contemplated rules for this exercise, you don’t get to factor in playing with Steph and company, but you do get to factor in the insane current popularity of the franchise, which has been propelled by Steph and company. So – ummm – make sense?
Until this ongoing Warriors run, Golden State was akin to Milwaukee west.
The years of Run TMC were all too brief and the most prominent superstar (before Steph) claimed by this franchise shot free throws underhand and is widely regarded as the most despised Top-50 player and champion in league history.
And as much as tech-bros are popularizing Northern California, NBA players aren’t exactly swayed by the most European of NBA cities. Other than Boris Diaw and Tony Parker, not many NBA guys would enjoy a nice red at a sidewalk café on a foggy San Francisco afternoon and coordinate team day-trips to Napa.
BIG CITIES, SHIT IT’S COLD:

Chicago Bulls

The greatest of all-time wore number 23. No NBA team’s identity is as much ingrained in the image of a single player. The Lakers are the Lakers even without one of Kareem, West, Wilt, Magic, Shaq, or Kobe. The Celtics are the Celtics even without one of Bill Russell, Bird, KG, or Pierce.
The Bulls are the Timberwolves without Jordan. MJ has rewritten the history of the franchise so extensively that people forget that they were one of the league’s most dogshit franchises when they drafted Jordan out of North Carolina.
To play in Chicago is to follow in Jordan’s footsteps, but unfortunately, the shadow he casts is so large that players are hesitant to fill those Air Jordan’s. Lebron – allegedly – scoffed when Chicago’s pitch to him in 2010 was exactly that. The Bulls sent him a pair of Jordans with an accompanying message: “Do you dare to fill these shoes?” We know how he answered. “Fuck no!” And that seems to be the attitude that modern superstars hold.
Why would I go to a team where – no matter what I do and how many championships I win – I’ll never be Michael?
Chicago is the pride of the prairie. It’s the grandest American city outside of L.A. or NYC. But it is also the windy city and the most frigid big city in the country, where gusts off of Lake Michigan will literally pain your bones. Unless you are an opera connoisseur, it doesn’t hold much appeal over many of the NBA’s mid-sized cities.
There’s a reason in Kanye West’s Good Life, he raps: “The good life, it feel like Atlanta, it feel like L.A., it feel like Miami. It feel like N.Y., summertime Chi, ahhh, now throw your hands up in the sky.”
Summertime Chi. As in – great place to play for the Cubs! But stay the fuck away during the NBA season.

Boston Celtics

How can the team with the most championships in NBA history be as low as 15? Why are the Celtics ranked below the Bulls when they have 11 more titles?
Because even though Boston has the richest basketball history in the NBA, it also has - well - Boston history. Just ask Bill Russell about that.
Even if Boston is a more friendly city to African-Americans in 2016 than the city was in 1966, it still has never been a free agent destination. The recent Big 3 era was orchestrated via trades rather than free agency, even if KG ultimately agreed to join Pierce and Jesus Shuttlesworth to win his first and only ring. But he was apprehensive, even calling Bill Russell to seek advice.
Boston is a tremendous place to live, to go to college or graduate school, to be Irish, and the optimal place to be if you’re a fan of the Dropkick Murphy’s, where bagpipe-punk ballads are bar staples on far more than just St. Patrick’s Day.
Memories of the Garden and Bird and the other several hall-of-famers certainly serves as a strong recruiting factor.
But when New England poet Robert Frost poses the question about two roads diverged in a yellow wood, the NBA millionaire is not going to choose either road that leads to the frigid Boston winters, no matter how pretty the foliage when the season begins.

Toronto Raptors

It is Canada. Which is not the United States. Which means it is a pain in the ass to deal with currency conversion. And you have to file taxes (which are higher in Canada) in two separate countries.
Toronto is possibly the most metropolitan and lively large North American city outside of New York. Because I have not been to Toronto as an adult, I Googled the best clubs in the city to get a feel for how well those Canada nights complement the life of an NBA star. Number one as of July 2015 was Uniun, which sounds like a failing Vegas club at New York, New York, which not so successfully attempts to emulate some chic Manhattan spot. Here is the description: “Owned by the Ariana Grande of the Toronto club scene, Charles Khabouth…” So yeah, apparently a Lebanese Canadian club owner and hotelier in his fifties is the Ariana Grande of the Toronto club scene. Makes sense.
Some other Union gems:
BEERS ON TAP: None, but bottles of Heineken, Coors, Corona, and Molson Canadian.
BAR SNACKS: None as of yet.
WHO GOES THERE: Dressed-up fans of electronic music, beautiful people in their 20s and 30s.
That place sounds TERRIBLE. I bet Jonas Valanciunas has a standing table reservation.
In Toronto, English is still the primary language. While perhaps too similar to the Bratislava clubs in Eurotrip, there are numerous nightlife options. There is an abundance of diversity. Most importantly for NBA players, there is a Benihana!
But it is cold. Really cold. Like colder than Boston, Chicago or New York cold. And if you’re learning anything from this list, it’s that NBA players do not like being in the cold. Which is a primary reason that the Western Conference has been dominant for two decades.
Even if NBA players have a debaucherous time on the road when traveling up to The North - it’s hard to shake the perceptions that are formed in childhood. And nearly every NBA player grew up thinking of Canada, even places like Toronto, as an uninhabited frozen wasteland with the occasional igloo and Eskimo.
Three years ago Toronto would be ten spots lower on this list, but it’s helpful to have your ambassador and biggest celebrity fan be the most popular rapper on the planet. Drake might be worth more to this franchise than Lebron is worth to Cleveland.
MEMPHIS:

Memphis Grizzlies

It’s a smaller town than the warmer cities listed above and the weather is less desirable. It’s one of the top cities for BBQ in the country, and perhaps, the best of any NBA city. Beale Street is apparently fun.
It is more of a blue-collar city than NBA players typically prefer, but at least it is not in the Rust Belt.
It is rated higher than similarly sized and geographically located cities Charlotte and New Orleans because the grit & grind era gave Memphis a distinct basketball identity that resonates with fans. The three most exhilarating things currently in the NBA are Russell Westbrook attacking the rim at full speed, Steph Curry pulling up from 40 and the Memphis PA system bumping Whoop That Trick during a crucial fourth quarter playoffs timeout.
If only NBA players were bigger fans of Elvis.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS:

Portland Trailblazers

The last remaining frontier of professional basketball in the Great American Northwest. Portland, as a city, has undergone a surge of popularity among America’s twenty-somethings, inspiring such articles as the Washington Post’s Why quirky Portland is winning the battle for young college grads.
Oregon has lakes, streams, rivers, trees and picturesque mountains. It also has one of America’s most infamous foodie scenes and thousands of clones of young Bill Walton, albeit the political and socially-conscious new anti-yuppies of Portland lack The Big Redhead’s size and athletic ability. But riding a fixie bike does keep those quads strong.
While natural scenic beauty and hiking have not historically been strong sellers to NBA free agents, Portland - or at least nearby Beaverton - does have one thing that turns the heads of young athletes…The Swoosh.
The Blazers also boast an NBA title, one of the better logo/color scheme combinations in professional sports, a devoted cult-like local following, and hall-of-famers across multiple generations.
If only it did not rain so fucking much.

Denver Nuggets

I’d personally rather live in Denver than any NBA city outside of Los Angeles, but I reckon I enjoy snowboarding, the mountains and IPAs more than your average professional basketball player.
My team-building strategy for the Nuggets would be to target all Euro stars and convince them that living in the mile high city is like residing in an eighties ski movie, which it probably is for Gallinari. Vail and Aspen are surely suitable stand-ins for the Swiss Alps.
I would also try to work on getting Kendrick Lamar a residency at Red Rocks.
Unfortunately, among the most forgotten teams and players from the eighties were the really fun Fat Lever and Alex English led scoring machines. Fresh in the minds of most players is Melo’s slow and painful mid-season exit and there’s no other recent period in Nuggets history which serves as a draw for free agents.
But once the NBA gets out of the weed regulation business and ceases testing for non-performance enhancing drugs and non-narcotics, you can go ahead and bump the Nugs up a spot or ten.
THE PROCESS:

Philadelphia 76ers

The city of brotherly love is the fifth largest United States city. But just because it is big doesn’t mean that there is anything notable about the town. No one talks about the restaurants or the bars or the museums or anything that has really happened since the 18th century. There is the liberty bell, so that’s cool? Most people only know about Philadelphia because of Ben Franklin book reports in fourth grade.
Alllen Iverson was just interviewed by Complex Magazine and said his favorite thing to do in Philly was go to TGI Fridays.
But people remember Dr. J and Moses Malone. And more recently, Allen Iverson had his best years in Philly and brought them to the Finals and I am not going to underestimate AI’s impact, as he is up there with Jordan as one of the most iconic and culturally transformative players to ever pick up an orange ball.
Too bad Sam Hinkie has worked his hardest to demolish a once proud franchise’s reputation.
At least Philadelphia is not Milwaukee or Detroit.
NICE CLIMATE, TOO REGIONAL:

New Orleans Pelicans

I don’t have a lot of history to go on here, since The Big Easy has been a permanent NBA town for about a decade.
It seems like a pleasant enough place to live. It is inexpensive. The cuisine is excellent. You can hear the best Jazz of your life on an unassuming street corner. You can legally walk down the street with a drink in your hand. You can legally gamble. No one seems to mind if you urinate outside a bar in the French Quarter at five in the morning. There are Southern mansions and a quieter life available in the burbs. Cash Money records reps the 504, but unfortunately, I’m not sure Lil Wayne carries the same weight in 2016 as he did when he ruled the aughts. There’s an NCIS here now.
The weather is mostly mild during the NBA season, but the worst natural disaster in United States history likely still looms large in player’s minds.
Even if it is home to Mardi Gras and is essentially the Vegas of the American South, it’s still a very small town and that historically has not played well with NBA dudes.
I just have the feeling it’s more likely for a player’s bachelor party than it is as a permanent residence. But New Orleans’ place on this list should be revisited in five or so years.

Charlotte Hornets

Everyone in Charlotte is a bank teller, financial analyst at a large commercial bank, works for the Federal Reserve or worships at the altar of Dale Earnhardt. I am surprised that the professional sports teams in the state don’t have a permanent 3 patched onto the breast of the team jerseys.
Charlotte is where SEC and ACC grads end up if they didn’t get jobs in Atlanta.
Other than middle-management at a regional office and NASCAR, when I think of Charlotte, one other thing comes to mind - college hoops. Jordan, Worthy, Stackhouse, Vince, Sheed and Dean Smith. Tar Heels versus Blue Devils.
Pro basketball has already died once in Charlotte, but was singlehandedly resurrected by the greatest basketball player of all-time who just so happened to be from the state. If MJ was raised in Detroit, L.A. or Chicago, the Charlotte Hornets would be the Seattle Sonics 2.0 or the Kansas City Jayhawks.
But every male between 30 and 35 years old, no matter where they grew up in the U.S., had a teal Hornets Starter Jacket. If the Hornets want to increase their free agency rankings, they need to go back to their early-to-mid 90s LJ and Zo throwback attire. They also need to make Grandmama the permanent mascot.
And at least for the next five to seven years - the front office can lure free agents with 50 yard line seats to see Cam Newton.
FACTORY TOWNS AND KIND OF A CALIFORNIA TOWN:

Detroit Pistons

The epicenter of the desolate remains of once proud American manufacturing. If you sign with the Pistons, they may be able to hook you up with a good deal on a Ford Explorer.
Living options are between a dilapidated warehouse in downtown Detroit or a 10,000 square foot mansion in a Pleasantville-esque suburb, which are similar to the Northside burbs of Chicago, but if Chicago itself no longer existed and it was even colder.
But the Pistons do well with adopting the persona of Detroit toughness. From the Bad Boys to the Billups-Rip-Tayshaun-Sheed-Ben Wallace squad.
So a player can feel good about being perceived as a badass, but will soon learn why everyone respects his toughness and resilience, he has to live in Detroit.

Sacramento Kings

It sounds appealing to work and live in the capital of California, until you realize that the capital of California is Sacramento.
The current Kings arena – Sleep Train (formerly Arco) – is located in a cow pasture.
The best thing about Sacramento is the approximate 100 mile distance to Lake Tahoe and 90 mile distance to San Francisco. When your best selling point is being located not that far away from better places, it does not speak all that highly about your city. Sacramento…at least we’re not Barstow.
The Maloof bros sold, so there is no longer access to free Vegas depravity.
The Webber-Bibby-Peja-Vlade years were fun, but the franchise has since slowly slid into complete chaos and incompetence.
They should just ditch the new digs and move to Orange County (which would immediately be a top three free agent destination), where players can live in Newport and Laguna Beach and not have to wait until retirement to hit on cougars at Javier’s.

Indiana Pacers

Reggie Miller scoring eight points in nine seconds and miming the choking sign to Spike Lee single-handedly keeps the Pacers out of the bottom of the barrel.
Aside from Hoosiers, Bobby Knight, Peyton Manning before the neck, Andrew Luck, Parks and Recreation, the beginning of The Jackson 5 and the non-NASCAR kind of racing, I don’t know much about Indiana. I know Notre Dame is in South Bend, but the Irish pretty much exist independently of the State.
Apparently you can fish there, which Roy Hibbert and Paul George taught us that a friendly team fishing expedition can heal deep wounds.
So…here we are. Indiana!

Cleveland Cavaliers

I’ll start with the obvious – if I was factoring in playing with Lebron, the Cavs would be near the top of these rankings. Although, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving might argue differently.
Before Lebron Round One, the most iconic Cavs moment was Jordan nailing the double-pump, buzzer beating jumper in the 1989 playoffs and sending Craig Ehlo crying to his knees.
During the early Lebron years, the Cavs are most remembered for wilting twice in the playoffs and being subsequently deserted by The King for the number two squad on this list.
Cleveland rests on the shores of water so disgusting and polluted, that Lake Erie has caught on fire MULTIPLE times, including the 1969 Cuyohoga fire that played a major role in inspiring the formation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act of 1972. That same fire even had a cameo in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax.
The stench of failure is so strong in Cleveland that the Indians were the franchise chosen to be featured in Major League. Other than Jim Brown, Otto Graham and Lebron, Roger Dorn is probably the city’s most treasured professional athlete.
At least there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is basically a Hard Rock Café without the food.
ONE DAY WE SHALL FIND OUT:

Oklahoma City Thunder

One of my good friends and former college roommates is from Oklahoma City. His dad is an incredibly nice and smooth man who happens to own an oil and gas business and whose world view is equally shaped by attending college in Austin in the 1970s. If he were so inclined, I’d let him frack in my living room.
Here is what he has to say about living in Oklahoma City: We may not have the beach and we may not have the mountains, but people sure smile and say hello when you pass them on the street.
While it may have warmth and friendly strangers, I don’t know if that is enough for NBA free agents. And until Durant and Westbrook are no longer in the Sooner State, we will not find out.
THAT KG FELLA WAS REAL TENACIOUS, DON’T YA KNOW?:

Minnesota Timberwolves

It is cold in Detroit. It is cold in Milwaukee. It is cold in Chicago. But only one United States city has an entire downtown system of enclosed pedestrian footbridges (Minneapolis Skyway System), so residents can walk in a climate-controlled environment year round. How fucking freezing does it have to be for a city to build an infrastructure so people never have to feel the outside air?
Minneapolis is one of the more underrated American cities, but that designation mostly applies between Memorial and Labor Day. A July day on Lake Minnetonka is a Kenny Powers wet dream.
But unless you’re an ice fishing enthusiast, there are better places for the young and absurdly rich to spend their winters.
It does not help that the most notable retired former Timberwolf is Wally Szczerbiak.
Light Beer and Sausages:

Milwaukee Bucks

Kareem played here, but after six seasons, forced a trade to the Lakers. In return, the Bucks received four guys I am certain you have never heard of. Oscar Robertson played here, but played the majority of his prime in Cincinnati. Ray Allen played here, but was traded after six and a half seasons along with a collection of spare parts for old Gary Payton (who left the next offseason) and Desmond Mason (who would play two more seasons for the Bucks). Expect to see the Bucks trade Giannis in three years for Deron Williams and Frank Kaminsky.
The Bucks did have one of the better forgotten runs in NBA history between the 1970 and 1974 seasons, where they won an average of nearly 61 games per year. Their 1971 championship run led by Kareem and The Big O was among the most dominant in history, where they went 12-2 through the playoffs including a finals sweep.
Most outside of Milwaukee forget that the Bucks’ success continued after Kareem and Oscar departed, when Sidney Moncrief led them to a decade of near excellence in the Reagan era. But their strong eighties teams have been greatly overshadowed by those great and better 76ers, Celtics and Pistons squads.
As for the rest of Wisconsin - it is shitty beer, the Packers, cheese, Madison and whatever the hell is going on in Manitowoc County.
The New Orleans Jazz Moved to Utah, Where They don’t Allow Music:

Utah Jazz

The State of Utah is about 61% Mormon and 91% white. Approximately 1.27% of the population is African-American. No other U.S. state that has an NBA team has a smaller African-American population.
If the Jazz could guarantee the NBA players/budding film producers that their projects would be admitted to Sundance, they might be able to field a dangerous team. A Baron Davis/Kobe/Lebron core could perhaps secure the 7th seed in the West.
The Jazz do boast a rich history and a rabid fan base. But the very smart and talented front office knows that they operate in Utah, so they are better served building through the draft, where you can retain players against their will.