Archive for November, 2009

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.

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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.

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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: the 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.

From the files of, "Gosh, the wacky things you find in the plus/minus data"...

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Yesterday's New York City Marathon was of particular interest to me, primarily because I'm an avid runner myself, but also because it was the strongest field of American runners in years (not to mention that the race doubled as the 2009 US National Championship). Well, in case you missed it, Meb Keflezighi became the first American man since 1982 to win the New York City Marathon. Way to go Meb!