0 comments by justinwillard on 10/10/2014
With Rondo’s habit of missing games and the trade rumors increasing in frequency, I would not rank them quite low on a list of teams to watch for fun. The team’s a mess of young guys and debris from rebuild-oriented trades. Without Rondo, there are no signature players and this is a franchise that has […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 10/9/2014
There are few reasons to fear the deer these days, and Milwaukee comes up a lot in discussions about which teams should relocate. The franchise has seen better days, but there is some hope. The Bucks picked up an intriguing Greek prospect who turned out to be an exciting, unique NBA talent, able to hold […]
0 comments by justinwillard
If it weren’t for the franchise’s legendary status and the return of Kobe Bryant, the team would be lucky to have an appearance on national TV and they’d be buried under other headlines. The Lakers are an uncomfortable marriage of a rebuilding program and a flagship for their aging superstar. This is no disrespect toward […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 10/8/2014
I suppose any conversation about Philadelphia’s current season, and not the future, is pointless given the direction they have. This season will be like an endless training camp, rotating low-paid players through and giving extensive time to young guys. But I wouldn’t say they should be totally ignored. Nerlens Noel could be a fly-swatting defensive […]
0 comments by justinwillard
The Utah Jazz have a winning tradition, currently ranked fourth all-time in franchise win-loss percentage behind the obvious juggernauts of the Lakers, Celtics, and Spurs, but they suffered through a rebuilding season and a title, elusive even to Malone and Stockton, is far beyond the horizon. They were not content with being mired in mediocre […]
0 comments by @Adam_Mares on 10/1/2014
Last season, the Denver Nuggets experimented with several different styles of play. Coming into training camp, head coach Brian Shaw was determined to rid the Nuggets of the fast paced, drive-and-kick style that had become a staple under George Karl. The theory was that the run-and-gun style of play was not conducive to playoff success. […]
0 comments by halbrown on 9/24/2014
One of the more consistent refrains regarding the usage of statistics in basketball, from both stats gurus and the anti-stats crowd alike, is that basketball analytics lack the proper context to be relied upon. This is fairly objectively not true, for a number of different reasons. First, the basketball statistics are always built upon variables that […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 9/16/2014
After a surprising domination and despite losing some of the best players in the world, Team USA destroyed its opponents and never won by less than 20 points to win the 2014 World Cup. And this was the same tournament where some people viewed Spain as the favorite. They deserve their gold medals. But how […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 9/6/2014
NBA analysts are spoiled by the grueling 82 game schedule. Some may complain about a lack of data, but it’s a wealth of information compared to the FIBA tournament. Not only are there only five games in the qualifying stage before the “playoffs,” but teams are separated into groups that do not play each other. […]
0 comments by halbrown on 9/4/2014
An interesting development in the past month or so — since the 2014 NBA draft in which Andrew Wiggins, Aaron Gordon, and Marcus Smart were some of the hottest commodities — has been the growth of rebuilding teams who are focusing primarily on athleticism and defense from their new young talent. The Orlando Magic (who […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 8/30/2014
The FIBA World Cup starts this weekend and Team USA’s first opponent is Finland, and with many international stars skipping the competition — from Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to Lithuania’s starting point guard Mantas Kalnietis, injured, along with Ilyasova and Turkogulu from the silver medal Turkey squad — it appears to be reasonable to […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 8/25/2014
As we near the 2014 FIBA World Cup, it’s time to look back at what team USA has done in recent years. With only a handful of games and the fact that teams are split into groups before the single game elimination tournament, it’s a bit difficult to ascertain how strong certain teams have been. […]
0 comments by @Adam_Mares on 8/23/2014
The 1961-62 NBA season featured some of the most famous and untouchable NBA records of all time. Wilt scored 100 points in a single game and averaged 50 points per game for the season, adding nearly 26 rebounds per contest as well. It is also the only year that Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double (though […]
0 comments by halbrown on 8/16/2014
The advent of viewing basketball probabilistically, fundamentally changed how the game is managed. Basketball, to the extent that it was considered scientifically at all, used to be a function of physics — of arcs, gravity, and momentum. The realization that basketball could be viewed in terms of probabilities — in terms of the odds that […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 8/12/2014
In a recent article on Grantland, Kirk Goldsberry argues Kevin Love would be more beneficial for his team if he hung out on the perimeter less and crashed the offensive glass more. Goldsberry has an impressive dataset few can be competitive with and an arsenal of resources at his disposal, including some of the best […]
