Yesterday on her Instagram story, cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky posted a short clip of a lecture in which she posed an intriguing question: if she switched brains with LeBron James, which of them would win in a 1-on-1 game? Some relevant facts: LeBron is 6’8”, 250 pounds, a 4-time NBA champion, 19-time All-Star, 4-time league MVP, and is the all-time NBA points leader. He also possesses a singular basketball mind:
“I can usually remember plays in situations a couple of years back — quite a few years back sometimes,” James says. “I’m able to calibrate them throughout a game to the situation I’m in, to know who has it going on our team, what position to put him in.
“I’m lucky to have a photographic memory,” he will add, “and to have learned how to work with it.”
Boroditsky is 5’3”, 105 pounds, and by her own admission knows nothing about basketball and has “no hops”. So who would win? Boroditsky’s body with LeBron’s brain or LeBron’s body with Boroditsky’s brain? And why?
Last night, in the third quarter of an eventual loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder (a team name that didn’t even exist when James made his NBA debut), LA Lakers forward LeBron James broke the once-untouchable all-time NBA scoring record, formerly 38,387 points and held by the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Afterward, James had this to say about the moment:
Everything just stopped. It gave me an opportunity to embrace it and look around and seeing my family, the fans, my friends. It was pretty cool. I probably can count on my hands how many times I have cried in 20 years, either in happiness or in defeat. So that moment was one of them when I kind of teared up a little bit. It was ‘I can’t believe what’s going on’ tears.
James’ path to the all-time scoring record will look much different than his predecessor, and it’s quite obvious why: 3-pointers.
The impact of long-range shooting within the NBA has grown since the league embraced 3-pointers during the 1979-80 season. How has that affected James’ path to the top of the NBA’s scoring list? During Abdul-Jabbar’s final season in 1988-89, NBA teams averaged 6.6 3-point attempts per game. This season, James is averaging 6.7 3-point attempts on his own.
Guided by the footsteps of Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell, Abdul-Jabbar pushed forward, stretching the limits of Black athlete identity. He was, among other qualities, brash and bookish, confident and shy, awkward, aggressive, graceful - and sometimes an immense pain to deal with. He could come off as simultaneously square and the smoothest, coolest cat in the room.
In other words, he was a complete human being, not just the go-along-to-get-along, one-dimensional Black athlete much of America would have preferred him to be.
James has run with the branding concept that he is “More Than an Athlete.” Fifty-plus years ago, Abdul-Jabbar, basketball’s brightest young star, was already living that ideal.
LeBron James opened his NBA career on Oct. 29, 2003, scoring 25 points in 42 minutes in a loss to the Sacramento Kings. On the Kings’ bench sat Jabari Smith, a 6-foot-11 center in his third year who wouldn’t remove his warmups that night.
Nineteen years, two months and 18 days later, James would be reminded of that matchup by another Smith, Jabari Smith Jr., a rookie with the Houston Rockets who is Jabari Smith’s son.
“Hey, you played against my dad in your first NBA game ever,” the rookie told LeBron.
“Why you do that to me,” a chuckling James said, to which Smith responded, “You feel old, don’t you?”
James had a head start on catching Abdul-Jabbar because he was drafted out of high school, which wasn’t allowed in Abdul-Jabbar’s day. Then known as Lew Alcindor, Abdul-Jabbar first spent four years at U.C.L.A., where he was one of the most dominant college basketball players in the country.
James, at 38, is one of the oldest players in the league and in his 20th season. When Abdul-Jabbar was 38, he was in just his 17th professional season. By the time he hit his 20th year, he was no longer as dominant as he had been. James, with the good timing of being able to start this journey at 18 years old, is still proving every day just how much he has left, scoring 40 points on several nights this season and almost reaching 50 in a January game against Houston. He could be the first player to score 40,000 points.
On a personal note, I’ve never been that excited about LeBron James. I don’t hate him, but I didn’t really root for him or enjoy watching him play. Part of my aversion was no doubt due to many people trying, far too early, to place James on the GOAT throne, ahead of the player I grew up watching and rooting for, Michael Jordan. If I were in charge of drafting players for an all-time team, I’d still select Jordan first — his unique combination of drive, athleticism, and skill is still, IMO, the best in the game, ever. But with his versatility and longevity, LeBron James has more than earned the status of the NBA’s greatest player of all time.
A research company called Morning Consult had 1900 people watch the new Nike commercial featuring Colin Kaepernick and record their reactions in realtime. The video above shows the commercial and the graphed reactions of four age groups: Gen Z (18-21, white line), Millennials (22-37, teal line), Gen X (38-53, yellow line), and Boomers (54-72, red line). The report also has graphs showing results by race and political affiliation (the dashed line is when Kaepernick first appears on screen).
Gen Z & Millennials rated the ad higher than the older viewers throughout and had a less negative reaction to the polarizing parts. Now, the report only mentions the effect of Kaepernick appearing on the screen, but to my eyes, there are four distinct moments when the opinions of some viewers (white, older, Republican) turn negative:
1. Right before Kaepernick is shown for the first time, ratings start to decline when the ad refers to LeBron James as “the best basketball player on the planet” and “bigger than basketball” for recently opening his I Promise School.
2. Kaepernick’s first appearance in front of an American flag with his large Afro triggers a steep decline in favorability among older viewers, particularly Boomers and Republicans.
3. Serena Williams being billed as “the greatest athlete ever” results in the steepest decline during the entire ad…and this was before the controversy at the US Open. Across all groups, only black Americans had no problem with that characterization whatsoever (Gen Z & Millennials showed only slight declines).
4. Immediately after that, Kaepernick is shown again and there’s a continued follow-on decline from Serena.
So that’s interesting! What’s going on here? [insert an entire apologist NY Times Op-Ed piece here about how famous athletes are polarizing no matter what, particularly when accompanied by best-ever proclamations, etc. etc.] But of course, it’s probably racism with a side of sexism — three outspoken black athletes, one of them a woman, are uppity. That’s the simplest explanation.
I don’t live in Cleveland or Akron. I live, and grew up, just north of Detroit, in an inner-ring suburb known for Thai and Vietnamese restaurants and multiple expressways.
I didn’t live in the midwest for LeBron’s first run with the Cavs. I lived in Philadelphia, a city that was sports-crazy in its own aggro east-coast way, but didn’t live and die with its sports teams in the same all-enveloping way. Any city with an Ivy League campus has pockets of people who don’t notice sports at all.
When LeBron moved to Miami, I moved to New York. It made sense for both of us; a better job on a bigger stage, hopefully a better life. But soon enough, we were both headed back to the Midwest; we were both headed back home.
The Midwest is sports-crazy; the midwest is sports-starved. Free agents don’t want to play here. Owners don’t want to spend money. Championships cluster on the coasts.
When teams like the Warriors win, it’s compounded good news for a team moving to take advantage of San Francisco’s riches. When the Cubs or Packers or Cavs win, we talk about century-long curses lifted, quaint tales of tiny markets that could, and the uplift of entire regions.
Of the twenty best basketball players who ever played, nine of them have played for the Los Angeles Lakers. (Yes, I’m counting Karl Malone.) Only two ever played for Cleveland. (One of them was washed-up Shaq.)
Three of the best five — LeBron, Jordan, and Kareem — played in the Midwest. Two of them left for LA.
It was special to have LeBron James in the Midwest. In the age of player empowerment he ushered in, to play for a man he hated, at a time when blue states have flipped to red, when billionaire oligarchs are buying up whole cities, and the national discourse tries to erase everything in the region but its white reactionaries, LeBron was the best of us. He stood up, somehow taller and more regal than the sea of tall, regal men, unafraid to tell the truth. Through Ferguson, through Tamir Rice, through Trump and Trumpism, he stood up and told the truth. I won’t forget it.
He also dragged four outmatched teams to four straight Finals through sheer talent, intelligence, and force of will. I won’t forget that either.
I’m not happy he’s going to the Lakers. (As a Pistons and Sixers fan, we have history. However, I am cool with him getting out of the Eastern Conference.) But I’m happy in the hope that he will get to be happy.
Update: Strongly recommend today’s The Lowe Post podcast with Zach Lowe and Brian Windhorst, which digs into the tick-tock and the fallout of LeBron going to the Lakers, including some midwestern angst over what it means as a midwesterner to have so many of the good players bound to the coastal metropoles.
Who could launch themselves higher on a trampoline? LeBron James or Simone Biles?
James has more mass & height and is stronger in an absolute sense but Biles is extremely strong for her size and is one of the world’s leading experts in launching herself of off trampolines (or more properly, vault springboards).
The answer would depend a great deal on what is meant by “launch themselves higher”. If the height is judged as a percentage of body weight or height, Biles wins easily. If you’re talking about absolute height (as measured from the lowest point on their body at the jump’s peak), James’ greater mass and absolute strength works for him but Biles’ ability to time her jumps to build momentum and her acrobatic skill in getting more of her body higher may put her ahead of James. If their bodies need to remain vertical at the highest point in the jump (think a basketball player’s form vs. a high jumper’s), perhaps that favors James, even though his legs are much longer than Biles’, measuring from their centers of gravity.
From a pure physics perspective, is the trampoline just a multiplier of a person’s max vertical? James’ max vertical is said to be around 40 inches. Biles’ max vertical is harder to determine because gymnasts jumps are measured differently, but she can get her body about 53 inches off the floor (according to this analysis). Can James get his entire body 53 inches off the floor? What’s his box jump height? I imagine with various slow-motion videos, you could figure out which of them can get their center of gravity furthest off the ground…but handspringing into a layout, dunking, and bouncing on a trampoline are still not equivalent activities. The only real way to settle this is clear: let’s get James and Biles together at a trampoline park and have them go at it. Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, or Twitter…make this spectacle happen!
A related question: Can Simone Biles dunk a basketball? A regulation hoop is 10 feet tall. I’m assuming she can’t palm a basketball but she might still be able to do a one-handed dunk with practice. Her height plus her floor exercise max height is 110 inches, about 9’2”. I don’t know how high her standing reach is, but assuming a similar ratio to mine (my reach is 25% of my height), that puts her theoretical maximum jumping reach, with many caveats, at about 124 inches (10’4”). A regulation WNBA ball has a diameter of about 9 inches. Soooooo….maybe but probably not? But if not, she could surely come closer than any other person in the world who is 4’9”.
This year, the NBA All-Star Game won’t be strictly the best players in the east against the best in the west. Instead, the top vote getters in each conference get to choose their own teammates: first from the list of starters in both conference, and then from the list of reserves.
The NHL has done something similar for the past few years, broadcasting the draft, and offering a free car as a consolation prize to the player chosen last. All of this is extremely entertaining. But the NBA, whose soap opera dramatics leaves the NHL and every other sports league far, far behind, is having none of it. They’re refusing to televise the draft, or even to publicize which players will be selected in which order, to avoid hurting the players’ feelings. Come on! Hurting people’s feelings is the whole point! We want drama, we want angst, we want entertainment!
Anyways, the All-Star Reserves have not yet been chosen, but the starters and the captains have. It’s LeBron in the East, and Steph in the West, as almost everyone predicted. I thought it would be fun to imagine how the draft might go.
LeBron picks first. And remember: they have to choose all the starters before they can move on to the reserves. Those starters are: Kyrie Irving, Giannis Antetokounmpo, DeMar DeRozan and Joel Embiid from the East, and Kevin Durant, James Harden, Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins from the West.
1. The LeBron Jameses select James Harden from the Houston Rockets.
LeBron needs a guard; he’s not going to take Kyrie Irving; Harden, despite injuries, is having another near-MVP season; and picking Harden rather than the best player on the board (Kevin Durant) pushes Steph into some predictable choices. I’m not letting Steph take all the guards and playing five out. I’m making him pick Durant.
2. The Steph Currys select Kevin Durant. Not only is he Steph’s teammate, he’s the best player on the board.
3. The LeBron Jameses select Anthony Davis. Versatile big who regularly guns it in the All-Star Game. You can’t tell me LeBron doesn’t want to play with this guy.
4. The Steph Currys select Giannis Antetokounmpo. Steph likes his bigs versatile. And Giannis was nearly unstoppable in last year’s All-Star Game. He plays hard.
5. Some real drama here. Kyrie is arguably the best player left on the board. Alternatively, LeBron needs to pick another big man, and either Embiid or Boogie is going to be salty if the other guy is picked first. But LeBron is a man of the people. He’s a man with a Philly beard. He’s going to take the popular choice. He’s going to have fun. He’s going to trust the process. He’s going to choose Joel Embiid.
6. Steph has some interesting choices here, all of which would be more interesting if the draft were televised. He could force LeBron to take Kyrie. Instead, he’s going to put together one of the most entertaining backcourts in All-Star Game history. He’s going to draft Kyrie Irving.
7. At this point, LeBron has too many bigs. Just for fit, he has to take DeMar DeRozan. Or have Boogie Cousins play the two and guard Kyrie. I don’t see it happening.
8. The Stephs Curry select DeMarcus Cousins. Who will be furious at being picked last (if he ever even finds out about it) and probably win All-Star MVP and/or pick a fight with LeBron, Embiid, and his own teammate AD.
Final lineups:
The LeBrons
G: Harden
G: DeRozan
F: James
F: Davis
C: Embiid
The Stephs
G: Curry
G: Irving
F: Antetokounmpo
F: Durant
C: Cousins
So basically, the west traded AD and Harden for Giannis and Kyrie. Probably a slight downgrade. But they do get the first pick in the second round, where they can take former MVP Russell Westbrook, any of Steph’s Warriors teammates, some young unicorns like Kristaps Porzingis and Ben Simmons, and so forth. In general, I would say these are more balanced teams, and they’re definitely more interesting teams.
Tell me again why the NBA isn’t televising this draft?
LeBron James, as a basketball player, is arguably better now than he’s ever been. More importantly, LeBron James’s beard is inarguably better now than it’s ever been.
Look at that fullness, that thickness, that beautiful roundness! That, my friend, is the beard of a man with a dietician, a dermatologist, and a barber on retainer.
It is the beard of a dad and a daddy both.
It is a beard fully realized. It is a Philly beard.
Here I need to explain. I was born in Detroit, but lived for many years in Philadelphia. The men of Philadelphia, and particularly the black men of Philadelphia, are known for their lustrous beards. Some of it is the influence of Islam; some of it may just be needing to be outdoors in cold weather. But it’s a source of civic pride and power.
This was the first video I ever saw on the Philly beard, made by the now-defunct Phillybeard.com in 2009:
The local PBS station made its own version, emphasizing some of the qualities needed for a proper Philly beard:
But overseas the moustacheless, bushy beard is not so identifiably hip-hop and has caused considerable controversy, with security officials in Europe and the Middle East mistaking the Philly for a jihadi beard. In February 2014, for instance, Lebanese police arrested Hussein Sharaffedine (aka Double A the Preacherman), 32, a Shia rapper and frontman for a local funk band. Internal Security Forces mistook him for a Salafi militant and handcuffed and detained him for 24 hours. In Europe hip-hop heads such as French rapper Medine — a Black Powerite who wears a fierce beard that he calls “the Afro beneath my jaw” — complain of police harassment. French fashion magazines joke now crudely about “hipsterrorisme.” European journalists are descending on Philadelphia to trace the roots of what they call la barbe sunnah and Salafi hipsterism.
But just as not everyone who rocks a Sunnah is Sunni, it’s a mistake to conflate the moustacheless Sunnah with the Philly beard as such. For instance, check out Questlove and Black Thought, two classic examples of the Philly beard, avec une moustache:
These, I think, are the key criteria for a Philly beard:
A full beard, trimmed only at the edges of the cheek and the neck;
A trimmed moustache. The lips should be visible;
That roundness. A Sunni muslim might grow out their beard long, so it gets that verticality. The Philly beard is round — as Medine says, it is an “afro beneath the jaw”;
It has to be well-cared for. A Philly beard is not unshaven; a Philly beard is deliberate.
Even though LeBron James does not live in Philadelphia, nor has ever lived in Philadelphia, nor had anything to do with Philadelphia other than beating the Sixers and occasionally saying nice things about our rookie Ben Simmons, if I had to point to an example of a Philly beard, after the guys from The Roots? I would point to LeBron James.
This of course, leads to the obvious question: is LeBron, who has never before worn a beard quite like this, announcing without announcing, hiding in plain sight, via the medium of his face, his preferred free-agency destination in 2018?
The answer, for any fan of the Philadelphia 76ers, is clearly yes.
Naysayers, like my brother, would say the beard’s meaning is ambiguous. Perhaps it signals his intention to join James Harden with the Houston Rockets. But James Harden’s beard is not a Philly beard. Harden has to wear that thick moustache on top to hide his baby face. Harden’s beard is not round, but rectangular. It’s an impressive beard. But it is not the beard LeBron James is wearing. LeBron’s is a Philly beard.
Look: suppose you had to choose between playing in Los Angeles with Lonzo Ball (no beard, no hope of one), Brandon Ingram (sick, scraggly beard), Kyle Kuzma (my guy is from Flint, represent, but still), and maybe Paul George (who plays your position already) — OR you could play with Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Robert Covington, Markelle Fultz, Dario Saric, and MAYBE JJ Redick, for an equally storied franchise, but one that hasn’t won a title since 1983, AND you can stay in the Eastern conference and stick it to Dan Gilbert and Kyrie Irving forever — why would you not sign with the Sixers? Play in a city that would love you, love your children, is just a few hours away from home in Akron, and would love the hell out of that beard?
I think the choice is obvious. LeBron will be a Sixer in 2018. He’ll teach Simmons how to shoot, Embiid how to become indestructible, and be Magic Johnson and Dr. J rolled into one. I’ll make this promise now, with the web as my witness: I will move back to Philadelphia if this happens. And I will love every second of these young talents filling in around LeBron’s dad-game.
With Kickstarter’s advanced search capability, you can see a list of projects on the site with the goal of raising more than $1 million but with less than $1,000 in pledges. A sampling of recent projects from the list:
Secure Spent Fuel Rods Now ($30,000,000 goal). Needs the funds to produce and air TV commercials about the need to secure spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.
LeBron the Redeemer Statue ($1,000,000 goal). This is my favorite: this project aims to construct a statue of LeBron James in the style of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. I think we should actually be backing this.
The Exodus, one Ark or many ($100,000,000 goal). To buy used cruise ships to form permanent sustainable societies at sea. “Pirates” is listed as one of the project’s potential risks.
Breakfast 24/7 ($1,000,000). For building a chain of restaurants that will serve and deliver breakfast 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 360 days a year.
I know that headline is a little harsh; many of these projects are good ideas that perhaps need more reasonable budgets and goals or might be better realized through non-crowdfunding avenues. Keep on reaching for the stars, kids!
Calling someone “the Michael Jordan of…” or, more recently, “the LeBron James of…” is a trope that acknowledges excellence in a way that everyone can understand. So with the NBA getting set to host its annual All-Star Game, the Wall Street Journal went on a hunt for all of the Michael Jordans and LeBron Jameses in newspapers around the world. We found thousands, including the Michael Jordan of bagpipers and private detectives, and the LeBron James of yodeling and midwives.
Some examples:
Jimmy McIntosh, the Scotsman who started Carnegie Mellon’s bagpipe program, calls Gillies the Michael Jordan of piping.
We are the Michael Jordan of onion growers, Butch Peri said. “We started off as the smallest onion grower in the state of Nevada, and in 1999, we became the largest producer in the world of fresh market onions, the kind you buy in the grocery store.”
If you were to convert him from his importance in science to the sports world, Charles Darwin would be the Wayne Gretzky or the Michael Jordan of biology, says Dr. Greg Bole, a bioscientist from the University of B.C. “He shaped the field.”
With a medical cause ruled out, I was forced to accept reality… my son is just really good at screening things out. No, let me rephrase that. The boy is the LeBron James of selective hearing, the Michael Phelps of tuning me out. He’s a best-in-class parental ignorer, and actually it would be kind of admirable… if it wasn’t so infuriating.
This is surely the Tiger Woods of fun Friday links. (via @lauratitian)
So what does it mean? What it seems to suggest — at least the part of it that James will discuss — is that if you give up the baseline to James on a drive in November 2011 and he’s playing against you in March 2013, the Heat small forward will remember it. It means that if you tried to change your pick-and-roll coverage in the middle of the fourth quarter of the 2008 playoffs, he’ll be ready for you to try it again in 2014, even if you’re coaching a different team. It also means that if you had a good game the last time you played against Milwaukee because James got you a few good looks in the first quarter, the next time you play the Bucks you can count on James looking for you early in the game. Because, you know, the memory never forgets.
“I can usually remember plays in situations a couple of years back — quite a few years back sometimes,” James says. “I’m able to calibrate them throughout a game to the situation I’m in, to know who has it going on our team, what position to put him in.
“I’m lucky to have a photographic memory,” he will add, “and to have learned how to work with it.”
Which sounds great, right? Except that thinking’s best friend is often overthinking.
Consider what you know of the 2011 NBA Finals. And now consider it, instead, like this: In what will likely be remembered as the low point of his career, James is miserable for several games against the Dallas Mavericks — including a vitally important Game 4 collapse when he somehow scores just eight points in 46 minutes. At times during that game it appears as if James is in a trance.
“What is he thinking?” the basketball world wonders.
James — with two titles and counting, and four straight trips to the Finals — can admit today what he’s thinking in 2011: He’s thinking of everything. Everything good, and everything bad. In 2011, he isn’t just playing against the Mavs; he’s also battling the demons of a year earlier, when he failed in a series against the Boston Celtics as the pressure of the moment beat him down. It’s Game 5 of the 2010 Eastern Conference semifinals, and it is, to this point, perhaps the most incomprehensible game of James’ career. His performance is so lockjawed, so devoid of rhythm, the world crafts its own narrative, buying into unfounded and ridiculous rumors because they seem more plausible than his performance.
1. “Jordan never would have done THAT.” The THAT in question is not bringing it in the playoffs. Taking your foot off the pedal in the playoffs is just not done if you’re supposedly one of the top players in the game.
2. “We made so much fuss about LeBron these past two years and he’s not even the most important dude on his own team.” LeBron might be the better pure player, but Wade is a leader and winner.
The Heat may go on to win the title this year and for six or seven years to come but unless something changes with LeBron’s approach to the game, he’ll never be as great as Jordan was. There’s more to being the best than just talent.
Cleveland’s response to LeBron James’ boner of a Nike commercial has more heart, but this mash-up of the LeBron commercial with a previous Michael Jordan Nike commercial is an absolute masterpiece.
As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier. This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his “decision” unlike anything ever “witnessed” in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.
And that, my friends, is how you take the low road. (via @hurtyelbow)
From a few days ago on TrueHoop, a lengthy debate about who is the better player: LeBron James or Kobe Bryant. LeBron has the statistical dominance but Kobe’s game is the prettiest.
[LeBron] just doesn’t move like the best basketball player in the world. Put almost any part Kobe Bryant’s game in super slow motion, and you’ll see beauty. Every little part of his game is refined, perfected, tested and honed … Put LeBron James clips in super slow motion, and you’re liable to find things here and there that he could do a little better. That footwork, that release, that way that he walks a little bit like a duck. There is a cognitive leap. Could the best basketball player in the world have noticeable flaws?
There’s also an interesting argument in there that LeBron’s game is such that it’s very difficult to say why he’s so good other than, well, just look at him play! In the same way, LeBron is difficult for kids to imitate on the playground whereas Kobe’s catalog of moves are easy to imitate but difficult to get perfect to the extent that Kobe has.
Let’s wrap things up by tackling LeBron James. As the 2009 postseason rolls on, the King has become its most compelling story, not just because of his insane numbers, that Jordan-like hunger in his eyes, even the fact that he’s still on cruise control to some degree. (Note: I would compare him to Nigel Tufnel’s amp. He alternated between “9” and “10” in the regular season, and he’s been at 10 in the playoffs, but I can’t shake the feeling that he has an “11” in store for Kobe and the Finals. An extra decibel level, if you will. In my lifetime, Jordan could go to 11. So could Bird. Shaq and Kobe could get there together, but not apart. And really, that’s it. Even Magic could get to 10 3/4 but never quite 11. It’s a whole other ball game: You aren’t just beating teams, you’re destroying their will. You never know when you’ll see another 11. I’m just glad we’re here. End of tangent.)
I have a hunch that Kobe may not even make it to the finals. They’ve got to beat the pesky and superstarless Rockets first and those Nuggets are looking good, although the long layoff could affect their momentum. Gladwell shared one of his ideas for changing the NBA draft: let the best teams pick first.
I think the only way around the problem is to put every team in the lottery. Every team’s name gets put in a hat, and you get assigned your draft position by chance. Does that, theoretically, make it harder for weaker teams to improve their chances against stronger teams? I don’t think so. First of all, the principal engine of parity in the modern era is the salary cap, not the draft. And in any case, if the reverse-order draft is such a great leveler, then why are the same teams at the bottom of both the NFL and NBA year after year? The current system perpetuates the myth that access to top picks is the primary determinant of competitiveness in pro sports, and that’s simply not true. Success is a function of the quality of the organization.
Another more radical idea is that you do a full lottery only every second year, or three out of four years, and in the off year make draft position in order of finish. Best teams pick first. How fun would that be? Every meaningless end-of-season game now becomes instantly meaningful. If you were the Minnesota Timberwolves, you would realize that unless you did something really drastic — like hire some random sports writer as your GM, or bring in Pitino to design a special-press squad — you would never climb out of the cellar again. And in a year with a can’t-miss No. 1 pick, having the best record in the regular season becomes hugely important.
Simmons and Gladwell did this once before in 2006: part one, part two.
Okay, so you’ve all seen Wilt and Oscar’s numbers from 1962… but have you ever sat down and looked at the league averages that year? In ‘62, the average team took 107.7 shots per game. By comparison, this year the average team takes 80.2 FGA/G. If we use a regression to estimate turnovers & offensive rebounds, the league pace factor for 1962 was 125.5 possessions/48 minutes, whereas this year it’s 91.7. Oscar’s Royals averaged 124.7 poss/48, while Wilt’s Warriors put up a staggering 129.7 (the highest mark in the league). On the other hand, the 2009 Cavs are averaging a mere 89.2 poss/48. It turns out that the simplest explanation for the crazy statistical feats of 1961-62 (and the early sixties in general) is just that the league was playing at a much faster tempo in those days, with more possessions affording players more opportunities to amass gaudy counting statistics.
Only three men have ever graced the cover of American Vogue. LeBron James is on the cover this month with Gisele Bundchen…see if you can guess the other two before you click through.
LeBron James dropped 50 points on the Knicks in Madison Square Garden last night to chants of MVP from the New York crowd. It’s good to be the king.
Update: Did you see the buzzer beating three pointer at the end of the first quarter?! He shot it almost from mid-court, floating left. It looked effortless. It was almost like Jordan’s game ending shot against the Jazz in game six of the ‘98 Finals, but, again, from almost mid-court.
LeBron James’ new house: 35,440 sq ft, 2200 sq ft master suite (with 2-story walk-in closet), theater, casino, barber shop, bowling alley, and a limestone bust of LeBron wearing a headband.
Stay Connected