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."
As you might imagine, Len Bias' name comes up quite a bit in Bill Simmons' newBook of Basketball. As a lifelong Celtics fan, I understand the emotions that surround the very mention of Bias' name -- for instance, my father was convinced Bias was going to be almost as good as Bird, and take the torch from Larry Legend as he extended the C's dynasty into the 1990s. (Instead, Reggie Lewis died, and we got Rick Pitino & Antoine Walker. Go figure.) So I can see why Bias is such a burning "what if?" for the NBA, and Celtics fans in particular, because he represents untapped potential and a posthumous legend that's only grown by leaps and bounds since his tragic demise. But I want to know -- coldly, rationally -- how good Bias could have legitimately been if we put down the green-tinted glasses: What were his college numbers like? What were people saying about him before the draft? In other words, I want to remove the James Dean aspect from the Bias story and focus solely on the facts at hand.
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.
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Okay, it's time for the inaugural edition of the BBR Rankings, which will be coming to you every Friday from now until the end of the season. The idea behind these rankings is to rate a team's past accomplishments rather than predict what they'll do in the future -- sort of a retrodictive ranking rather than a predictive one. The Simple Rating System is the best predictor of future wins and losses because it focuses purely on point differential, filtering out the whims of lucky or unlucky performance in close games (which has been shown to have no bearing on future performance regardless of coach or players). However, it doesn't really give teams credit for wins and losses, which I feel like is the only real factor when you're looking at how impressive a team's season has been in the past.
One cool thing about our Play Index is that it allows you to search for single-game performances vs. a specific team (going back to 1986-87, that is). Using the Game Finder, you can also look for the total games in a span matching a certain criteria, and you can combine that with the opponent search to come up with a list like this:
Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days; Sports-Reference is having its annual company meeting, so I've been a little indisposed. That said, I thought I'd share these gems with you from the 1977-78 season:
There's a surprising name atop the Southeast Division these days, and it's the Miami Heat, winners of 3 straight and 6 of their first 7 games. How have they been doing it? Well, with Dwyane Wade powering the attack (via 31.8 pace-adjusted P/40) you might think they were an offensive team, but it's actually been their 3rd-ranked defense that's staking Miami to the hot start. After the jump, check out the box score-based defensive stats for the Heat so far (league average pts/possession = 105.9):
As you might imagine, 
Okay, it's time for the inaugural edition of the BBR Rankings, which will be coming to you every Friday from now until the end of the season. The idea behind these rankings is to rate a team's past accomplishments rather than predict what they'll do in the future -- sort of 
According to 
There's a surprising name atop the Southeast Division these days, and it's the Miami Heat, winners of 3 straight and 6 of their first 7 games. How have they been doing it? Well, with