The Trail Blazers blog Bust a Bucket was thinking about team chemistry recently, and what better way to work on some chemistry problems than to break out the old periodic table? Okay, not this one... This one:
"We narrowed it down to 108 of the most influential Blazers ever. However, keep the following disclaimers in mind: (1) We only included players that were on a Blazers roster for more than one season (sorry, Jim Barnett fan), (2) We included the front office and coaches (those that really mattered) and thus (3) were unable to mention every single Blazers' cubicle warrior, despite everyone's best effort to make the Portland Trail Blazers the one we've come to love and support unconditionally, just as (4) you'll have to come to support my being a die-hard Blazer fan and a big, fat, nerd.
But, this is chemistry. Regular old water? That's easy - H(2) + O - or, in this case Drexler(2) + Porter. Another example brings up three of my all-time favorite Blazers: Silver Nitrate - Ag + N + O(3), or - Aldridge + Petrovic + Porter."
Perhaps you've heard Keith Law's name come up this week a time or two? Well, sorry to disappoint, but this link has nothing to do with his Cy Young ballot... Instead, it's a piece about the old ABA -- basically a handful of nuggets about the renegade league that changed pro hoops forever. And of course, if you like the ABA, I'd be remiss if I didn't also highly recommend Terry Pluto's Loose Balls, one of the best sports books ever written.
In case you're a hoops fan that's been living under a rock these past 6 years, 82games is the web destination for NBA game-tracking data, including plus/minus, counterpart stats, and a variety of other incredible numbers that you can't find anywhere else. Today Roland Beech released the 2009-10 stats pages, so head over and just bask in the raw data. Bask in it!!
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!
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:
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.
Bill Simmons' new 700-page tome (and I just got it in the mail today, it's a legit 700 pages, there are no typeface shenanigans going on here) is called "The Book of Basketball", and the amount of work he put into it certainly lives up to the title's lofty aspirations. But for as many trees that had to die to make TBOB happen, is it so thick that it can stop a speeding bullet?
You didn't think we'd let the season begin without linking our favorite uniform guru's preview, did you? Over at ESPN, Paul Lukas breaks down all of the offseason changes that have nothing to do with roster movement, and yet feel only slightly less important... It's the 2010 Uni Watch NBA Preview!
