Okay, so I finally made a Sporcle quiz myself, and I think it might just be the most brutal NBA quiz on that site: Can you name the NBA Players' and Coaches' Given Names? All you have to do is enter some combination of the player's full name (i.e., first + last, or middle + last, etc.), but last names alone will not be accepted. Good luck, you'll need it!

Today I would like to unveil a new feature on the site: the NBA MVP Award Tracker. Before I say much more, let me get two disclaimers out of the way:

• The NBA MVP Award Tracker ranks candidates based on a model built using previous voting results. This list does not represent the opinion of this site. Rather, these are the players that the voters are likely to target.
• I am not trying to come up with a formula to pick the MVP Award winner. In my opinion it would be silly to use a single formula as the basis for determining who should win an award.

Got it? Good. Now moving on…

Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps you've seen Tyler Hansbrough's Acura commercial:

Um... The acting needs some work, no? But perhaps it's not Tyler's fault -- maybe it's a breakdown in communication between he and his coach. No, not Jim O'Brien... This coach:

WOW!

Back in September '06, Doug Drinen wrote a post over at PFR about how Tom Brady would have to spread the ball around in the passing offense more than ever before after the Patriots traded away their #1 receiver, Super Bowl XXXIX MVP Deion Branch (yes, there was a time when Branch was New England's #1 receiver... what would he have been, like, the #4 receiver on the '07 Pats?). Anyway, the post looked at which historical teams had spread the ball around most amongst their receiving corps by looking at how balanced a team's top 6 pass-catchers were in terms of receiving yards, with the '89 Bears coming out on top.

What does this have to do with the NBA? Well, I think there could be a parallel to the whole Branch situation in Houston this year. Just as Brady had to cobble together a passing attack while throwing to Reche Caldwell, Doug Gabriel, Jabar Gaffney, and the aging remains of Troy Brown, the Rockets are facing the Yao-less, McGrady-less reality of forging an offense from a lineup without stars. The early returns have Trevor Ariza, Aaron Brooks, and Luis Scola shouldering the brunt of the workload, combining to take on 245 of Houston's 473 possessions so far this season, but you have to think that the offense will start to be spread out more as the season goes on, since all of Houston's players -- those three included -- are charting new territory in terms of usage.

Read the rest of this entry »

And, of course, no Walton post would be complete without this gem:

Just like our WNBA section, Basketball-Reference has an area of the site devoted to the up-and-comers, the intrepid men of the NBA Development League. In honor of tomorrow's D-League Draft, you should go check out all of the results from last season, maybe browse the NBDL leaderboards (special shout-out to Billy Thomas, the all-time D-League leader in Win Shares), take a peek at the award-winners, or even look up your favorite D-League baller (Mad Boom Tho!). It's time to give these pros their due, because they might just be coming to an NBA arena near you sooner or later.

If you look at this quiz on PER leaders since 1970, one of the names that might stand out as perhaps being out of place is John Drew. And that's a colossal shame.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hoopnumbers.com has debuted a method of calculating adjusted +/- with the lowest standard errors yet. If you want the gory mathematical details, go here and here first, but if you just want the results, check out the 3-year version and the single-year 2008-09 results... A (very) brief synopsis: Kevin Garnett and Lamar Odom? They're really good. Josh Powell and Antonio Daniels? Er, not so much.

Sporcle actually e-mailed us and let us know about this one... Can you name the NBA's top 5 players in Player Efficiency Rating (PER) for every season between 1970 and 2009?

Today, we're rolling out a new feature on the site that I think you will all love:

NBA Milestone Watch

On that page, you can select one of 11 different statistical categories (Games Played, FG, 3-Pointers, FT, Offensive, Defensive, & Total Rebounds, Assists, Steals, Blocks, and Points) and track current players' progress toward certain milestones in that stat. On the left side of the page, you'll see the race for specific round numbers in each category, and on the right side there's a table showing where the top active players rank in NBA history, including how many of that stat they need to accumulate to move up in the all-time rankings.

So go ahead and take a look at it -- it's updated daily along with the rest of our stats, so you'll be able to track your favorite player's assault on history all season long.