Archive for the 'Layups' Category

At TrueHoop today, Henry gave a nice rundown of the evidence on both sides of the age-old coaching debate abut whether or not to intentionally foul when leading by 3 points in the final seconds of a game, and presented some new research as well, conducted by Mavs advisor Wayne Winston:

In his new book "Mathletics," Wayne Winston -- Indiana University professor and consultant to the Dallas Mavericks -- tackles this issue, and offers some new data. First, he faults two of the main studies on the topic, by Lawhorn and Annis, for failing to account for the many different ways games can unfold. Neither, he says, embraces the idea that a game has an unknowable number of possessions left.Then Winston does something delightfully simple. He asks: Has it worked? He presents, for the first time I'm aware, the evidence:

"A student in my sports and math class, Kevin Klocke, looked at all NBA games from 2005 through 2008 in which a team had the ball with 1-10 seconds left and trailed by three points. The leading team did not foul 260 times and won 91.9% of the games. The leading team did foul 27 times and won 88.9% of the games. This seems to indicate that fouling does not significantly increase a team's chances of winning when they are three points ahead."

But perhaps David Thorpe had the best approach: "I would not have a hard and fast rule," he explained. "I'd have a fluid game to game strategy."

From the Houston Rockets' site, the unveiling of a new alternate uniform reminiscent of their old 80s/90s uni.

Maybe the biggest immediate news in the NBA right now is the fact that the referees' union is currently locked out of officiating NBA games because of a collective bargaining dispute, and the league has a group of replacements ready if the two sides are unable to reach an agreement before games tip-off. For many who have been critical of the officials in the wake of some rather unpopular performances this decade (criticisms fueled by convicted felon Tim Donaghy's allegations of systematic referee game-fixing), the reaction has almost been welcoming -- the idea is that the replacements can't get any worse than the crop that was in place the past few years, right?

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From Sporcle: Can you name each NBA Team's 3-point shooting leader?

More Kelly Dwyer love, courtesy of Yahoo! and Ball Don't Lie, as KD lists the ten most impressive statistical seasons since 99-2000. News flash: 2008-09 was a banner individual year, as four players had just flat-out ridiculous seasons. So you have to be excited about what's on tap next year, because three of them aren't even in their primes yet, and the other is only on the front end of his... Wow.

If you're anything like me (and if so, god help you), you love this time of year because it's NBA Preview season -- magazines, books, online articles, Hollinger training-camp pieces at ESPN, etc. I'm such an NBA preview addict that one magazine per season is never enough; I usually grab all of them and read every last one cover to cover in the month-plus between publication and preseason tip-off. Now, I usually don't throw all of my support behind any single magazine, because each has their strengths and weaknesses, but I'm wholeheartedly advocating the Yahoo! Sports preview this season. Why? Because many of the same cast of characters that run Yahoo's excellent Ball Don't Lie blog are responsible for the content in the preview, including one of my absolute favorite NBA writers, Kelly Dwyer. KD has written the majority of the team previews, and I can't tell you how refreshing it is to have an NBA preseason  magazine penned by someone as knowledgeable (and, may I add, stat-friendly) as he is. So if you're buying only one NBA magazine this season, seek out and find this one, because it's head and shoulders above the rest. (No, offense, Lindy's! And Athlon! And TSN! I mean, you're good too!)

From ESPN, Nick Friedell sat down with Tracy McGrady last week and discussed the Houston star's rehab progress after last year's season-ending (and possibly career-devastating, we suspected) knee injury. McGrady's been working with Tim Grover, Michael Jordan's longtime trainer, and he says he's feeling as good as he ever has. While you can certainly count us among those who doubted that T-Mac would ever return to being the player he once was (a player we appreciated a great deal), we hope we're wrong, and we're glad to hear his recovery is going well.

Remember Tamir Goodman, the so-called "Jewish Jordan"? As a high-school junior, Goodman dropped an impressive 35.4 points per game for the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore, getting him publicity with Sports Illustrated, ESPN, 60 Minutes and Fox Sports for both his skills (he was the 25th-ranked HS prospect in the country) and his faith (he wore a kippah when playing). But after earning a scholarship to Gary Williams' Maryland team, he had to be released from his commitment to the school because his religious beliefs prevented him from playing games on the Sabbath. He would eventually transfer to Towson, play for Maccabi Tel Aviv, serve in the Israeli Defense Force, and suffer a series of knee injuries that ultimately led to his retirement this week. Via J.E. Skeets and Ball Don't Lie, you can read more about Goodman here.

With the kids back in school, football in full swing, and basketball season rapidly approaching, is it really even summer anymore, equinoxes be damned? Either way, ESPN closed out their offseason series recently by revealing who their panel of experts expected to cop the 2010 NBA title, along with some selective rationales for each choice. I'll give a hint about who they picked at #1: they play in the Staples Center (and good luck guessing which of that building's two tenants I'm referring to!). Meanwhile, in the early going of our projections here at BBR, it's pretty obvious that our pick would be the Cleveland Cavaliers. But we have not yet begun to roll out our NBA preview, so that's far from an official pick...

I love this kind of thing... Over at Basketball Prospectus, Kevin Pelton uses his SCHOENE projection system for one of its coolest functions, answering the question: what would Michael Jordan's stats have looked like if he hadn't retired & come back twice, but rather played 1985-2003 all the way through?