Archive for the 'Layups' Category

The Painted Area has a really cool post on the Friday before All-Star Weekend about the demographics of this year's ASG rosters. Two of their bigger findings: the South is suddenly a big-time hotbed in terms of producing great players (KG, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Danny Granger, Amare Stoudemire, Mo Williams, Ray Allen, etc.), and the fact that New York City, the mecca of basketball for so long, is absent from the rosters (unless you're counting David West's Jersey roots, which is to me a huge stretch). Where is the Dolph Schayes, the Bob Cousy, the Julius Erving, or the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of this generation? Instead, today's NYC prospects have too often been flops like Sebastian Telfair and Omar Cook... Why is that? Anyway, you can read more about NBA player demographics at Depressed Fan, as well as Henry's response at TrueHoop.

In his most recent column at Basketball Prospectus, Kevin Pelton gives us his midseason award picks. No shockers in the most visible categories (MVP, All-NBA, etc.), but you might be a little surprised at Kevin's RoY choice...

Over at ESPN.com, the Sports Guy came out with his always-entertaining "NBA Trade Values" column this week. Kobe fans (who I'm told make up approximately 95% of our readership here at the BBR blog) will chafe at the idea of Bryant ranking 6th, but all in all it's a fun and informative read. And if you doubt Simmons' chops as an NBA prognosticator, check out who would be winning our prediction contest at APBRmetrics...

Here's an interesting post from Corey of the Mistake by the Lake Sporting Times, regarding the perception that LeBron James is getting fewer calls this season compared to 2007-08. Clearly, the suggestion that there's some kind of conspiracy against James is tongue-in-cheek, so there are some good insights here about why what we may think we see happening isn't what's really happening at all.

(For what it's worth, LBJ's '09 FTr is the 2nd-highest of his career and down only a point from last season; right now, he's drawing fouls on 11% of his touches... which is exactly the same rate he had in 2006, 2007, & 2008.)

Todd Spehr was kind enough to interview me for SLAM magazine online. Many thanks to Todd for helping to promote the site.

82games is one of our very favorite sites on the interwebs, and its proprietor Roland Beech has put together another great piece of research for his latest article... In an earlier piece, Roland looked at game-winning shots from 2004 to 2006, but now he has almost 3 more seasons (and postseasons) worth of data tracked, so he figured it was time to check back in and take another look at the leaders in game-winning shots. And we're definitely glad he did. For instance, now we can see that Kobe Bryant has hit 50% (league average is 28.3%) of his playoff game-winners in that span, Carmelo Anthony has the best overall FG% of anyone attempting >20 GWS, and LeBron James leads all players with 17 total game-winners since 2003-04.

If it's NBA statistical news, we're all over it here at the BBR blog. This time, it's Ball Don't Lie with the revelation that LeBron didn't actually haul in what was at the time credited as his 9th rebound in Wednesday night's game between the Cavs and Knicks. If you recall, Ben Wallace sort of tipped the ball in the direction of LBJ, who then corralled it and moved upcourt. We thought this bit of generous scorekeeping had helped LeBron achieve an historic 52-point triple-double, but now the NBA has reviewed the tape and (correctly) given the board to Wallace. Anyway, the long and the short of it is this: what was a 52/11/10 game is now a "measly" 52/11/9 game. Poor LeBron.

As a big fan of Bill James' work (especially the Historical Abstracts), I absolutely love this. In fact, it was an idea I thinking of doing myself, but this is way better than what I could have come up with (maybe they'll let me do the 90s?). What I'm talking about, of course, is Basketball Prospectus' Kevin Pelton and his James-style look back at the decade that was (still is, for now) the "oughts". A must-read for the NBA enthusiast -- which I'm assuming describes our entire readership here at BBR.

In the latest on the health front, resident injury expert Will Carroll drops in on Basketball Prospectus and helps Kevin Pelton sort out the implications of C Andrew Bynum's latest knee injury, both on the Lakers and the rest of the league.

On Wednesday, Brad Doolittle of Basketball Prospectus wrote an article that's right up our alley here at BBR: 50 super-geeky (that's a compliment in my book, by the way) facts about 50-point games in NBA history. And he even added a nice update after LeBron dropped 52 on New York Wednesday night!