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Tag Archives: Steve Nash
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
The Free Throw Hokey Pokey
This piece is not about the camerawork at a basketball game, but for this introduction, it’ll be about the camerawork at a basketball game. You can often tell when the producer is slacking off. He or she hoards an army of cameras, sprawled across the arena, ready to provide their unique view of the game. During periods of inactivity, the producer must cut to the most action-y shot he or she can find: a … Continue reading
Nash being Nash
The Lakers struggles have been well documented this season, on television, in print, in blogs, and along the Pacific Coast Highway. After an offseason where the Lakers where nearly everyone associated with the NBA picked the Lakers to win everything this season, it really has been remarkable to see the Lakers struggle. Who could have predicted that they would barely be in contention for the playoffs? While one of my “Lewis Laws of Life,” … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week, thanks to the suggestion of David Vertsberger (@_Verts), I decided to take a look at the top assist men on each team and how they contributed to each game this week in terms of percentage of total points scored (PS%) and percentage of total assists handed out (A%). I constructed a spread sheet that detailed the top dime dropper on each roster along with the PS% and A% for that player entering … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
Thanks to Utah Jazz fan, Taylor Berthelson (@utahmankiyi), this week’s study was devoted to determining the importance of the first quarter to the game result. I used years of data to determine that winning teams typically performed well in the first quarter earlier this week, but it doesn’t hurt to add some 2012-2013 statistics to prove the trend true for this season. Taylor estimated that 60% of teams that win the first quarter win the … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
As mentioned in the previous edition of the Weekly Stats Recap, the suggested #StatStudy for this week was orchestrated to determine the impact of elite assist men. Perry Missner (@PerryMissner), a noted doubter of the importance of great point guards, estimated that 65% of the teams with a double digit dime man would win. As it turns out (for this week at least), Perry wasn’t pessimistic enough when it comes to the correlation between … Continue reading
LeBron James: NBA’s Big Bang Theory
Big Bang Theory: the theory that the universe [new era of basketball] originated from the cataclysmic explosion [the draft of LeBron James in 2003] of a small volume of matter at extremely high [level of production] density and temperature. In layman’s terms, the style of play and level of efficiency that we are seeing from LeBron James has the potential to change the NBA forever. There are a lot of ways to describe greatness, but … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week’s study my brother (@KurtSoppe) pondered if FG% or FT% was more directly correlated to the game’s final outcome. He hypothesized that both FG% and FT% would be consistently higher for victorious teams, with the stronger correlation being found in the field goal percentage. In support of Kurt’s guess, winning teams shot an average of 47.9% from the field while losing teams shot only 42.3%. Winning teams shot better than 50% from … Continue reading
Game of the Week: Los Angeles Lakers at Los Angeles Clippers
Slim pickings this week. For some reason TNT isn’t broadcasting the Thursday games. That leaves the ESPN games on Friday. I think the Bulls-Heat game will be great, but I couldn’t resist picking the Los Angeles-Los Angeles matchup. There has been a lot of talk about how the Nets moving to Brooklyn created a great intra-city rivalry, but the Knicks and the Nets have done battle for a long time, with each side experiencing … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I had a stat request from Jesse Silverman (@JesseBeau), a Cortland intramural champion and defending March Madness king. He wondered if the number of double digit scorers was directly correlated to victories, guessing that winning teams would have more double digit scorers in each game. As it turns out, there was not a considerable difference in the number of players in double figures for winning and losing teams. Over this holiday week … Continue reading
