NBA Playoffs: Western Semis Preview
5.14.12 1:28 am by Matt and PatFollow along with all of your picks at NBABracketology.com. See how your bracket stacks up against Matt and Pat.
See our Eastern Conference Previews here. Now on to the West:
Clippers at Spurs
Matt: The Spurs should easily take this Western conference matchup. The advantage they have at the wings is much greater than the Clippers’ PG and inside edges. Basically, I don’t want any Los Angeles SG or SF on or near a team supported by me or anyone I know. On the other side, Manu is posting 27 points, 7 boards, and 9 assists (per 48 minutes). And Leonard isn’t any less of a force, grabbing 16 and 10 and almost 3 steals. Both of them do their scoring damage extremely efficiently as well. They’re playing against guys like Nick Young. Niagra Falls isn’t as big of a drop off. But it gets worse:
East Round 2 Preview
5.12.12 1:06 pm by Matt and PatFollow along with all of your picks at NBABracketology.com. See how your bracket stacks up against Matt and Pat.
Matt and Pat are here to provide you with dueling perspectives on the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Let’s get started!
Pacers at Heat
Roy Hibbert explains the NOMS strategy is based on the 5th best OREB% in the NBA.
A Goalie Mask for a Space Cadet
5.04.12 10:18 am by MattIlya Bryzgalov recently re-expressed interest in space travel. John Gonzalez at CSN reports:
At which point Bryzgalov began a long dissertation about the American space program versus the Soviet/Russian space program and which was superior. He noted that the first two animals in space were Russian dogs, which led to a strange exchange between Bryzgalov and a reporter about who had lost more monkeys in space — the Americans or the Soviets/Russians. Bryzgalov conceded that too many monkeys had lost their lives in that vocation.
“The problem with monkeys,” Bryzgalov quipped, “they push the wrong buttons.”
Bryzgalov’s recent masks have matched themes from Philadelphia, Russia, fighter jets, historical figures… but why? His dream job is astronaut. So here’s an idea of how the Ilya Bryzgalov Mask In Space might look: Read the rest »
NBA Round 1 Guide
4.28.12 3:10 am by MattPlease visit http://nbabracketology.com/ and make your own picks!
8 Philadelphia at 1 Chicago
Chicago in 6
After calling in sick for most of April, Derrick Rose appears ready to ambush the 76ers. While a combined 8-of-20 for 21 points in his two comeback/tune-up appearances this week didn’t help his fantasy owners much, he still distributed 15 assists in the two games. If injuries do force Rose into more of a point guard role, the biggest impact will be at the free throw line if he’s unable or unwilling to drive the lane. His 5 freebies a game on 6 attempts accounts for a third of the Bulls’ work at the stripe and almost a quarter of his total points. And any help the 76ers can get on leveling the free throw totals—they attempted the least in the league—will surely be appreciated.
Regardless of Rose’s health, Chicago’s main attractions are league-leading rebounding and defense. By the end of the season the Sixers’ PF/C rotation had spun so fast it had gone into orbit, and which players will start, sit, DNP, and stay at home playing Wii hasn’t yet been announced. This is not a good sign when you face the #1 rebounding team in the NBA, even if Holiday, Turner, and Iguodala are excellent on the boards for their positions.
If Rose is 100% look for Collins to try Holiday and Iguodala against him, and look for Thibideau to find ways in the pick-and-roll to give Rose a big man to attack. Both teams showed a half-court trap in their regular season match-ups. Trapping the Sixers’ starters hasn’t seemed effective, as Jrue Holiday (6’4″) and Evan Turner (6’7”) are strong enough or tall enough to pass out of the double. Worse, they’re passing to Andre Iguodala and Thad Young, forwards more than capable of handling the ball and taking it to the rim. On the other hand, several teams tried it so there must be something in the scouting report. Trapping end of quarter iso plays that originate in a corner is of course perfectly defensible.
As the underdog, the Sixers will want to employ gambling strategies to mix up the game, so a trap might make more sense, especially with their collection of athletic 6’6”-6’8” players when the lineup includes Turner, Iguodala, and Young. They made late in a game against the Bulls by bringing Thad off of Carlos Boozer as soon as the ball crossed half-court.
Los Angeles Floppers
4.23.12 10:10 pm by AlexWith all the recent flopping shenanigans in the NBA, I felt like it was time to start calling people out. The Clippers have been the world wide leader in flopping all year, so here’s a cool new logo I designed for them to start using:
Click here to grab a t-shirt with the design on it.
Skip Bayless, a Twitter Analysis
4.19.12 2:29 pm by PatIf you’ve consumed any ESPN content over the past few years, you’ve undoubtedly encountered Skip Bayless of ESPN’s First Take debate show. He’s stubbornly opinionated and frequently gets under the skin of co-debaters and viewers alike which, like him or not, is exactly what he’s being payed to do. Combining the number of eyeballs that First Take draws with the high number of Twitter followers @realskipbayless has (just under 600k), Skip has essentially become the world’s most famous, most visible troll. Anyone who has seen the show a few times or read his tweets knows that there are a few individuals that he has a stalker like obsession with, primarily Tim Tebow and LeBron James. He’s become quite predictable over time and knowing how he will respond to certain events is basically common knowledge (Tebow = good, LeBron = bad, etc).
I wanted to find a way quantify Skip’s obsession with certain players, teams, and even words. Keeping track of all of the First Take topics would be a next to impossible task so I turned my attention to Twitter. Going back as far as I could on Twitter, I put every single Skip tweet from September 10, 2011 to April 18, 2012 into a word cloud generator to see what topics stood out. During this time period, Skip tweeted over 3,200 times which equals around 15 tweets per day. The following image takes the most frequent words tweeted and arranges them by size; the more the word was tweeted, the bigger the word. The word cloud generator automatically removes some of the more common English words (such as and, if, or, etc) but I did not remove any additional words myself and the results…well, the picture says it all.
I knew that Skip was probably close to getting served with a restraining order from Tim Tebow, but this picture really drives the point home. I put all of these tweets into a Word document to get a word count on his tweets. The five most common words in the English language are: the, of, and, a, to. Here’s the word counts: the (943), of (636), and (607), a (687), to (1712). Skip Bayless has tweeted “Tebow” 698 times during that time period which is more than three of the most common words in our language. LeBron comes in a distant second at 254 with Stephen (A Smith) and ESP2 not far behind. In order to reduce the clutter a bit, I removed several of the common words that showed up above that the filter missed and tried to leave mainly individual and team names along with a few other buzz words. Yes, “clutch” does in fact make an appearance.
