Archive for the 'Layups' Category

We haven't linked to a Sporcle quiz in a while, so here's one that's pretty fun: Can you name every NBA All-Star from 2000-2009?

Here's a really interesting development on the adjusted plus-minus front... Hoopnumbers, whose work with APM has been noted by us in the past, now has 3-year weighted APM scores for 2008-09 that break down every player's impact in each of Dean Oliver's Four Factors on both offense and defense. So now you can finally see that, for instance, Steve Nash increased his team's effective FG% more than any other player, or that Trevor Ariza was the best at increasing the opponent's rate of turnovers per possession. Very cool stuff.

No basketball-related post or links today, just a Sporcle quiz on turkeys... Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

(Fine, if you really want a Turkey Day post on hoops, last year we ran one on the best Thanksgiving Day performances since 1986... You can add Dwight Howard to that rebounding list, too, because he pulled down 14 vs. Washington last year. And if you want an Iverson fix, we ran a Keltner List on A.I. back in late February, which turned out to encompass all but the final few games of his career.)

The Trail Blazers blog Bust a Bucket was thinking about team chemistry recently, and what better way to work on some chemistry problems than to break out the old periodic table? Okay, not this one... This one:

"We narrowed it down to 108 of the most influential Blazers ever. However, keep the following disclaimers in mind: (1) We only included players that were on a Blazers roster for more than one season (sorry, Jim Barnett fan), (2) We included the front office and coaches (those that really mattered) and thus (3) were unable to mention every single Blazers' cubicle warrior, despite everyone's best effort to make the Portland Trail Blazers the one we've come to love and support unconditionally, just as (4) you'll have to come to support my being a die-hard Blazer fan and a big, fat, nerd.

But, this is chemistry. Regular old water? That's easy - H(2) + O - or, in this case Drexler(2) + Porter. Another example brings up three of my all-time favorite Blazers: Silver Nitrate - Ag + N + O(3), or - Aldridge + Petrovic + Porter."

Perhaps you've heard Keith Law's name come up this week a time or two? Well, sorry to disappoint, but this link has nothing to do with his Cy Young ballot... Instead, it's a piece about the old ABA -- basically a handful of nuggets about the renegade league that changed pro hoops forever. And of course, if you like the ABA, I'd be remiss if I didn't also highly recommend Terry Pluto's Loose Balls, one of the best sports books ever written.

From Sporcle, here's a great quiz about the decade that was the Oughts (1999-2000 thru 2008-09): Can you name each team's top 5 scorers during the 2000s?

In case you're a hoops fan that's been living under a rock these past 6 years, 82games is the web destination for NBA game-tracking data, including plus/minus, counterpart stats, and a variety of other incredible numbers that you can't find anywhere else. Today Roland Beech released the 2009-10 stats pages, so head over and just bask in the raw data. Bask in it!!

Okay, so I finally made a Sporcle quiz myself, and I think it might just be the most brutal NBA quiz on that site: Can you name the NBA Players' and Coaches' Given Names? All you have to do is enter some combination of the player's full name (i.e., first + last, or middle + last, etc.), but last names alone will not be accepted. Good luck, you'll need it!

Perhaps you've seen Tyler Hansbrough's Acura commercial:

Um... The acting needs some work, no? But perhaps it's not Tyler's fault -- maybe it's a breakdown in communication between he and his coach. No, not Jim O'Brien... This coach:

WOW!

Hoopnumbers.com has debuted a method of calculating adjusted +/- with the lowest standard errors yet. If you want the gory mathematical details, go here and here first, but if you just want the results, check out the 3-year version and the single-year 2008-09 results... A (very) brief synopsis: Kevin Garnett and Lamar Odom? They're really good. Josh Powell and Antonio Daniels? Er, not so much.