Archive for the 'Layups' Category

In an annual rite of passage, ESPN has gathered their stable of NBA experts and polled them on various topics regarding the upcoming NBA season. First among the discussion fodder? The Rookie of the Year race (or non-race, if Blake Griffin lives up to expectations), and dual polls for the best newcomer and the worst newcomer. That Ron Artest finished top-3 in both polls tells you all you need to know about L.A.'s big offseason roll of the dice...

Deadspin first brought us the story of Nick Van Exel's 23, um, creatively assigned assists in a game, and now they have more sordid tales of NBA statstical manipulation, including the use of assists, blocks, and steals as PR devices for popular players. Meanwhile, to read the statistical communty's reaction, go here, here, and here.

In honor of David Robinson's induction into the Hall of Fame next month, the NBA has been posting some of the Admiral's highlights to YouTube. Here are some choice plays from a young D-Rob:

At TrueHoop yesterday, it was pointed out that Houston has 11 players on its roster between 6'6" and 6'9":

"TrueHoop reader Terry: 'Do you realize that the Rockets will have 11 players between 6-6 and 6-9? And their 6-6 player is Chuck Hayes ... what is the plan here? Trevor Ariza 6-8, Brent Barry 6-7, Shane Battier 6-8, Chase Budinger 6-7, Brian Cook 6-9, Joey Dorsey 6-8, Chuck Hayes 6-6, Carl Landry 6-9, Tracy McGrady 6-8, Luis Scola 6-9, James White 6-7.'"

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Another Sporcle quiz! No, this one isn't specifically related to college basketball, but I found myself thinking a lot about conference affiliations as I took it. And some of these are definitely not easy... So can you name the states (including DC) in which these universities are located?

It's Sporcle quiz time!! And this edition is a lot of fun -- they want to know, can you name the leading scorer for each letter of the alphabet in NBA history? If ever there was a quiz that was right up our alley, this is it.

Courtesy of Sporcle: Can you name the players who have won the most NBA championships? (Hint: It helps to know your 1960s Celtics here...)

This isn't specifically basketball-related, though he did encounter his share of hoops memorabilia: Bill Russell's signed Converse All-Stars, a replica of Larry Bird's Wooden Award, this awesome collection of throwbacks, a copy of Dr. J. vs. Larry Bird in: One on One, old-school card sets like this and this, a 1969 Minnesota Pipers Schedule featuring Connie "The Hawk" Hawkins, a Robert Parish RC Cola can, and... a game-worn Keith Closs Clippers jersey. (Which one of these doesn't belong?) It was all part of ESPN's Bill Simmons' trip to the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland, where he encountered what would be (for me) a bankruptcy-inducing amount of awesome items from years gone by. He wrote about the experience here, but the best part is this monstrous photo gallery chronicling all the cool stuff he saw during his visit. Is it just me, or is there something about old sports memorabilia that can turn even the most level-headed consumer into a crazed spendaholic?

Jon Nichols has been doing some nice work with play-by-play data over at Basketball-Statistics.com recently, and today he takes a look at how shooting tendencies change in the closing stages of games. The striking part of the data is how much more teams launch 3-pointers in the closing stages of the game (eschewing the midrange/post game in the process) than in the previous 46 minutes, showing just how much of an equalizing strategy the 3-point shot is for teams that trail late.

Seems like I've been running lots of Bill Simmons-related links recently for some reason... This one comes courtesy of Gravity and Levity (a great intellectual blog about science in general, and physics specifically, in case you want to check out some of the other posts there), which makes a really fascinating connection between Braess’s Paradox -- "closing a road can actually improve traffic" -- and Simmons' old "Ewing Theory", the observation that sometimes teams who lose their best player biggest star actually do better without him (so named after the '99 Knicks went to the Finals sans Patrick).

(H/T: hoopster101 at APBRmetrics.)