Archive for the 'Layups' Category

Sporcle wants you to name those select few coaches who were able to guide their teams to an NBA/BAA title. Are you up to the task?

A user named "Chendaddy" over at Bleacher Report has a beef with some of the All-Star fan voting so far this year. And with good reason: oft-injured Tracy McGrady (.388 FG%) has more votes than Chris Paul; Rafer Alston has more votes than Brandon Roy; Allen Iverson has more votes than Devin Harris; Samuel Dalembert in inexplicably 2nd among East centers in voting; Gilbert Arenas is 6th among East guards despite not having played a single game this year (and not having played well since spring '07).

Read the rest of this entry »

Courtesy of Basketball Prospectus, here's a fantastic piece from Kevin Pelton about Paul Millsap and the statistical transition from backup to starter. It's been a controversial topic in APBRmetrics for years -- do great per-minute (or per-possession) stats hold up with an increase in playing time? Well, in Millsap's case, that's a big 10-4: not only has he been better as a starter, but he's been playing like an All-Star!

With a hat tip to TrueHoop, here's a post at Queen City Hoops which compares Boris Diaw's defense favorably to that of Gerald Wallace (whom we all recognize as one of the better defenders in the league).

Over at ESPN.com, John Hollinger presented the case for his top 4 MVP candidates on Friday. And not only is the #1 guy having the best year out of anyone in 2008-09, but he's having arguably the greatest season of all time.

Thanks to Sporcle, you've got 8 minutes to name every player in NBA history with 5,000+ career free throws made. Have at it!

Former Warriors and Kings coach Eric Musselman has a blog, in which he picks articles from around the basketball world to illustrate various coaching points. The whole site is an interesting read, but I've been particularly interested in reading his posts about player roles within the team concept.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following up on Kevin Pelton's earlier post at Basketball Prospectus, he breaks down the East's top 3 PGs in each facet of the game. His conclusion? Well, let's just say that last year, one Western Conference team traded away the East's #1 PG of the future to get the East's #1 PG of the past.

Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus sorts out the Eastern Conference point guard hierarchy, since Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups both vacated the #1 position when each headed West over the past year. "With apologies to Mike Bibby, Andre Miller, Mo Williams, Jose Calderon, Derrick Rose and Rodney Stuckey," he narrows the list down to just 3 clear-cut candidates: Devin Harris, Jameer Nelson, and Rajon Rondo.

In his latest post, Harlan Schreiber of HoopsAnalyst takes a look at the Hawks, who stand out among 2009's surprise teams because they looked like they were trending distinctly downward over the offseason (Josh Childress, where art thou?). He also looks at historical surprise teams, and comes up with a list with a few teams in common with our quantitative one from a few months ago.