Archive for the 'Layups' Category

Another very funny Nike spot starring Kobe and LeBron as muppet roomies:

Nike presents: "Rings"

In honor of the fact we've been covering the Kobe-LeBron debate all season:

Nike presents: "Chalk"

In case you didn't read about this bit of news, former Pistons great Dave Bing was elected Mayor of Detroit last week. Here's an interview by SLAM Magazine with the 7-time All-Star, Hall of Famer, and member of the NBA's 50th Anniversary Team.

As someone who has dabbled (very minorly) in basketball uniform design as a hobby, I can definitely appreciate this: a graduating senior at the University of Tennessee (alias "conradburry") recently put together a final design project called "NBA Europa," an 8-team European NBA spinoff complete with crests, shields, logos, jerseys, and more. He even documented the entire process of creating the league with a blog. Pretty cool, if you ask me (then again, I'm the kind of nerd that used to create imaginary dice baseball leagues when I was a kid)...

Besides, with David Stern making noise from time to time about actually expanding league operations to Europe, don't be surprised if you see something like this in real life at some point in our lifetime.

(H/T: UniWatch.)

Although we have two playoff games coming up this afternoon, today is a sad day for the basketball world. That's because the great Chuck Daly passed away this morning at the age of 78.

Daly accomplished just about everything a basketball coach can during a career that spanned 4 decades at the college, pro, and international levels. Named one of the 10 greatest coaches in NBA history in 1997, Daly led the "Bad Boy" Pistons to 2 World Championships in the late 1980s, molding a challenging combination of personalities into a great, hard-nosed team. Here's an interesting piece about his influence on the game as well, in terms of causing the league to slow down in the 1990s after the Showtime Lakers' style had dominated the 80s.

Daly also brought that gift for chemistry-building to Team USA at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, coaching the original Dream Team to the gold medal and helping to secure their place as one of the most iconic squads in the history of the sport. For his efforts, he was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994. Needless to say, Daly will be missed both as a person and as a great contributor to the game we love.

Ever wanted to take a quiz on the NBA's all-time steals leaders? Well, Sporcle's got you covered. Just keep a close eye on the ball while these guys are around!

Our friend Jon Nichols runs Basketball-Statistics.com, but he's also writing a weekly column now for Hardwood Paroxysm, stepping into the stathead breach left by David Sparks when The Arbitrarian was assimilated into the Collective. :) This week, Jon looks at the weaknesses of the 8 teams that survived round 1 of the playoffs. Particularly interesting is his take on Houston's low steal %, and why it may not be such a bad thing for the Rockets' D.

(H/T: TrueHoop.)

Slate asked, so Bradford Doolittle of Basketball Prospectus went to work. The result is a stat that's sort of an homage to Kurt Rambis, intended to measure hustle and all of those other Rambis-y things that hard-working do...

Unfortunately, there's no evidence it goes up in the playoffs. But what does that mean? Teams don't seem to be trying as hard when they should be trying their hardest? That doesn't make sense.

Of course, I'm not sure if he adjusted for the fact that it's tougher to put up numbers -- gritty RAMBIS ones included -- against the better competition one inevitably faces in the playoffs than it is vs. the Grizzlies in January. Either way, it's still an interesting read.

Strangely compelling evidence from DallasBasketball.com's Mike Fisher that Dan Crawford has it in for the Fighting Cubans when he officiates one of their games. What is it with refs named "Crawford" and Texas teams?

(H/T: Jakedfw at APBRmetrics)

In case you hadn't heard, LeBron James copped the Maurice Podoloff today, confirming what PER, SPM, Win Shares, and a million other metrics already knew. Here are the greatest individual seasons since 1974, in terms of Win Shares:

Player		Year	 WS
----------------------------
Michael Jordan	1988	20.3
Michael Jordan	1996	20.3
Michael Jordan	1991	19.8
LeBron James	2009	19.6
Michael Jordan	1989	19.1
----------------------------

Pretty good company, wouldn't you say? Congrats, LeBron!