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Tag Archives: Esoterica
Translated Lottery Odds
The NBA Lottery will be held tonight and the odds have been set since the end of the regular season. However, expressing those odds as percentages and fractions of percentages doesn’t always give a tangible sense of the real likelihood of each team winning. I took the liberty of converting each team’s odds into a unit that may be understood more intuitively. I hope it’s helpful. _____ Orlando Magic – 25.0% chance of winning … Continue reading
The Art of Mix-Making: The Showcase
The Art of Mix-Making is a four-part series looking at the artistic intersection of basketball and video editing. Part 1 went up yesterday. Parts 3 and 4 will run later this week. Yesterday, I introduced you to mix-making and what it is in essence. I’d guess most of you liked what you heard, so it would be silly of me to show you something so great then leave you stranded seeking more. With that, … Continue reading
The Art of Mix-Making: The Introduction
The Art of Mix-Making is a four-part series looking at the artistic intersection of basketball and video editing. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will run later this week. I don’t consider myself a common NBA fan. I doubt anybody who comes straight home from school to immediately start working an article about how good Paul Millsap is, or whether or not point guards are truly the dominant position in basketball, can consider themselves a … Continue reading
Free Throw Mind Games
Last week, I wrote about the multitude of free throw rituals that shooters engage in across the NBA. From my novice perspective, I identified a few situational observations, such as how Steve Nash stayed locked to the line, while Kobe Bryant went for strolls. Then I speculated whether wandering about the charity stripe after shooting the first foul shot was conducive to draining the second. Ultimately, I concluded (albeit weakly) that personal routines are … Continue reading
A Good Day to Die Hard
This is the time of year when I seem to take a step back from my usual fanaticism over the NBA and relax up until the chaotic, drama-filled adventure that is the NBA Playoffs comes around. But something propelled me to watch the Lakers-Warriors game on Friday night. I can’t tell you what it was. Divine intervention? If anybody asked, my response would have been a logical, “the Lakers are fighting for a Playoffs spot and … Continue reading
Player Development and the Condemnation of Defense
This piece is a collaboration between Cole Patty and myself (David Vertsberger), working together to tackle the topic of player development. CP: So this is a twitter conversation turned into a basketball writing piece, but basically we are covering all the different angles of player development. The start of our disagreement is Wilson Chandler. He’s a nice player, but I’m not sure he will ever be a considered a great player already being in his … Continue reading
It’s A League Of Give And Take.
Preface – Jordan White at Hardwood Paroxysm wrote about potential and getting to the point where we need to give up on it. His piece fueled the fire for me writing this. In scientific fields, even the best at their crafts don’t breakthrough into new ground on skill alone. Divine intervention always seems to be a part of the formula in the latest development, without discrediting the work of very smart men. In the … Continue reading
The Reality of Ball Don’t Lie with Art Rondeau
“Ball don’t lie” has become a sort of widespread belief in the basketball world. Simply put, “ball don’t lie” implies that the basketball ia an all-knowing entity which, by going through the rim or not, reveals if a foul should have been called. Hence, while a player playing pick-up ball in the park could call a foul when he was not touched or flop well enough to draw a whistle from a referee in an organized … Continue reading
My College Basketball Walk Of Shame
Last night Louisville won a splendid National Championship game, 82-76, closing the chapter on another season of college basketball. This season was also the ninth in a series of catastrophic personal bracket failures: Congratulations to Matt Cianfrone who came out on top of the Hickory-High tournament challenge group. If you’re looking for my entry you can find it down near the bottom. For the record, I was beaten by the guy who picked Harvard … Continue reading
The End Of The Regular Season: Should You Care?
We’ve come to the point in the season where, frankly, a lot of the games don’t matter. The playoff teams in the East are decided, while in the West, it looks like a contest between the Lakers and the Jazz for the eighth seed. Contenders will play each other, like the Spurs and the Nuggets on Wednesday, but they’re limping into the postseason, and you have to think they won’t play full-tilt. So with … Continue reading
