tempo-free stats Stories - Silver Screen and Roll
Lakers-Magic Game 2: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
This is going to be on the test, class, so please listen carefully: the Orlando Magic were the best defensive team in the NBA this year. What? Don't look at me like that. Honestly, they were. Possession for possession over the course of the season, they were the most difficult team to score...
Lakers-Magic Game 1: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
This is an odd thing to write about a 40-point, 8-assist, 8-rebound boxscore line, but Kobe Bryant's full-game stats don't do justice to the majesty of his Game One performance. Don't get me wrong; those numbers - which, lest we forget, include a couple blocks, a couple steals and a stunning...
Enemy at the Gates: An In-Depth Statistical Preview of the NBA Finals
Who do you think will sing the national anthem at Staples Center on Thursday night? If I had to guess, I'd say it'll be an au courant R&B star of whom I'll only barely have heard (because I'm a douchey crypto-hipster white guy who just listens to Pitchfork-approved indie bands that all...
Lakers-Nugs Game 6: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
In their twilight years, the physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the American military effort to create an atomic bomb for use in World War II, developed severe ethical misgivings about the fearsome weapon they'd invented. The Italian Enrico Fermi spent parts of his final years...
Lakers-Nugs Game 5: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
Anyone who's been following the Lakers' 2009 playoff run - also known as the Spring of Our Extreme Angst and Discontent and Holy Crap This Team Is Driving Me Nuts I Need a New Hobby - has, at one time or another, read or heard something like the following: The Lakers are struggling because they're...
Lakers-Nugs Game 4: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
Had Gertrude Stein been a hoops fan, and if she had lived to watch it, Game Four of the Western Conference Finals would have reminded her greatly of Oakland. There was, in last night's game - as she famously observed of her hometown - no there there. Not only did it fail to change either the...
Lakers-Nugs Game 3: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
Many of the problems that NBA teams face boil down to an allocation of scarce resources. On Friday, I wrote about the importance of intelligently dividing up the 240 minutes of playing time you get each game. That's one example. Another is the salary cap: what's the best way to allocate a limited...
Lakers-Nugs Game 2: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
I come not to bury Phil Jackson, but to praise him. Wait - that's not right. I've most certainly come to bury him. Not for all eternity, mind you. Maybe just up to his neck in sand. Nobody's here to suggest that coaching malpractice is a capital offense, but at the same time, it shouldn't go...
Lakers-Nugs Game 1: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown
You might not realize this about me, but I'm a fast learner. I've got a couple junior-high "gifted and talented" classes on my resume, plus I once needed only an afternoon to solve one whole side of a Rubik's Cube, plus parts of another. What can I say? It's cortical skills like mine that are...
Enemy at the Gates: How to Think About the Denver Nuggets
A season ago, the Denver Nuggets served as a tasty source of first-round empty calories for the Lakers, as they were dipped in barbecue sauce and rapidly ingested en route to an L.A. sweep. Now they're back, and if you buy the considerable buzz preceding their arrival, they're poised to spring a...
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