Archive for the 'Layups' Category

From Sporcle, here's a quiz for everyone who fondly remembers the NBA of the nineties:

Can you name the players who made the All-NBA team in the 1990's?

Just saw this tweet from Darren Hoyt:

"the website for the movie Space Jam hasn't been updated since 1996 - http://j.mp/hMPQqG"

I'm so loving the 90s-era design of that page. Especially the pressbox page:

"No Spacejam news at the moment!"

As Michael Kerney tweeted, "If there's no Space Jam news now in the pressbox link, I'm pretty sure there's not gonna be."

We expressed our appreciation for Flip Flop Fly Ball at the B-R Blog this past April, so it's cool to see he's branching out into the NBA now:

The Jersey Numbers of Ron Artest - Flip Flop Fly Ball

This is pretty sweet... It's a PDF version of the Book of Basketball painting ESPN commissioned John Alexander to create, featuring all of the players the top 50 players in Bill Simmons' Hall of Fame pantheon-pyramid.

(Btw, somebody should make a Sporcle quiz where you identify the players from their depiction in the picture.)

For those who played their share of Connect Four growing up, ESPN Arcade gives you a chance to take on either Stuart Scott, Jeff Van Gundy, Amare Stoudemire, Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Steve Nash or Brandon Jennings in the classic Milton Bradley game.

Be warned, though: all of these guys are apparently world-class Connect 4 players. And they will taunt you when they win. Which will be often.

This layup comes courtesy of S-R president Sean Forman, who wanted me to give a shout-out to his alma mater Grinnell College for setting an NCAA record -- namely, the record for most players to make at least one 3-pointer in a single game. They had 19 different guys make a three in their 137-103 rout of Faith Baptist Bible College, going 29-for-88 from downtown in the game. Apparently they had the record in sight at halftime:

"The Pioneers play a rotation with three shifts of five players, and shift changes on the first whistle after 35 seconds. Ahead 88-38 at the half, [Grinnell coach David] Arseneault told his team to go for the record.

'Nobody in the stands knew what we were doing,' he said. 'There were times when someone would have a wide-open layup and then just dribble past the basket and pass the ball out. People were looking at us like, "What is he doing?"'"

Here's a fun layup from May that I didn't find until this week... As an exercise in counterfactual history, Roger Pimentel of How To Watch Sports used our own SRS to re-shape the NBA's 1990s landscape if Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls hadn't dominated the league so thoroughly. It's all for kicks, of course, but it is interesting to think of what might have been for Portland, Phoenix, Seattle, Utah, and Indiana, had #23 hadn't been standing between them and the championship.

For those with ESPN.com "insider" subscriptions, here's John Hollinger on the Miami Heat's struggles (written before the Washington game, but the points still stand).

For those without, the basic gist is that Miami's supporting cast hasn't really played below expectations; if anything, they've exceeded them -- guys like James Jones & Zydrunas Ilgauskas are playing better than you would have expected from their 2010 stats. Instead, the biggest reason for the gulf between the Heat's preseason hype and actual on-court results (which, given their +6.82 SRS, haven't been quite as bad as the media suggests) is the obvious one: the simultaneous decline of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and to a lesser degree, Chris Bosh.

(ESPN's Tom Haberstroh has more on the psychology of Wade's struggles here.)

Just take a look at the trio's advanced stats together this year, vs. last season when they were apart:

Read the rest of this entry »

This layup comes courtesy of Josh Levin and the live edition of the Hang Up & Listen Podcast...

While he was at MIT in 2005, Dr. Walter Sun (who -- random fact -- did his undergrad at my alma mater) published a paper about optimal fouling strategy in college basketball. He found that intentionally fouling the opponent's worst foul shooter for the 7th, 8th, and 9th fouls of a half (when the other team is in the 1-and-1 bonus) could increase your PPG margin by as much as 2 points. And this isn't just when fouling in desperation situations, either; the paper calls for you to intentionally hack the worst FT shooter no matter when you get to six fouls.

Although, as Josh points out, Dr. Sun wasn't the first person to think of this strategy. In the early 1980s, NC State coach Jim Valvano also used the intentional foul to his advantage. In fact, the NCAA instituted the 2-shot rule specifically because Jimmy V. was essentially using Dr. Sun's strategy on every foul he could (since there wasn't a double bonus in those days).

This is just extremely depressing news for Portland fans (and fans of gifted big men in general):

"Trail Blazers center Greg Oden, the former No. 1 draft pick whose short career has been marred by injuries, will have microfracture surgery on his left knee and will not play this season.

Oden hasn't played since last December because he needed surgery to repair a fractured left patella. The Blazers say this operation, announced Wednesday night and scheduled for Friday in Vail, Colo., will repair damaged cartilage and is unrelated to the patella injury.

Oden, the first name announced in the 2007 NBA draft, missed his rookie season because of microfracture surgery on his right knee. The procedure stimulates cartilage growth.

Blazers trainer Jay Jensen said the latest problem with Oden's left knee became apparent about two weeks ago when he experienced some pain and fluid in the joint. Soon thereafter, an MRI revealed the damage.

'We sat there and it was like we'd been kicked in the stomach,' Jensen said, choking up. "It felt like hearing someone close to us had died.'"

Criticize the Blazers all you want for picking him over Kevin Durant in that '07 Draft, but the fact remains that Oden is a talent. When he managed to find the floor in between the injuries and foul trouble, he has actually been a pretty productive NBA player -- in fact, Oden's career rate of Win Shares per 48 minutes (0.180) is actually higher than Durant's (0.140).

Even so, the Curse of Sam Bowie (or is it Bill Walton?) lives on in the City of Roses. Here are the fewest NBA games played by a #1 overall pick in the first four seasons after they were drafted (omitting David Robinson, who had to serve in the Navy before debuting):