NBA Regular Season 2012/13

padraig_f

kmart6 wrote: »

He was never going to be back anywhere close to last seasons levels this season! That was pretty obvious from the outset!!

Yeah I didn't have high hopes for this season, I notice Ricky Rubio's numbers are down across the board since he came back, and he's someone who relies less on his athleticism than Rose.

After the All-Star break was the broad target for his return, but even that makes it pretty difficult. That'll be the end of February/early March, with playoffs starting mid-April. So you've relatively little time to get up to an intense playoff pace.

If he comes back, he won't be at the same level, and I'd be afraid of a reinjury in the first month or two. So as much as I want to see him back on the court, I'd actually be kind of relieved if he took the rest of the season off.

Dublin Red Devil

buyer95 wrote: »

I was checking out NBA.com during the break and saw an extremely sad artcicle in which Rose is quotes as basically saying it looking like he mighn't make it back this season. Even if he does, it seem certain he won't be at the peak of his powers this season which is bad news for the Bulls and NBA fans in general. Hope he is proved wrong

http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2013/02/14/rose-i-could-miss-2012-13-season/?ls=nbahpsplit2

Lakers getting shown up at home to the Clippers

buyer95

Dublin Red Devil wrote: »

Lakers getting shown up at home to the Clippers

They were both at home, that makes no difference, Lakers just got punked. No excuses, kobe knows those rings like the back of his arm, Clippers atm just have a better team.

Paully D

Fantastic read - ''Michael Jordan has not left the building'' from ESPN's outside the lines:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/Michael-Jordan/michael-jordan-not-left-building

2smiggy

buyer95 wrote: »

They were both at home, that makes no difference, Lakers just got punked. No excuses, kobe knows those rings like the back of his arm, Clippers atm just have a better team.

Ya it turns out the Lakers and Clippers both have a permanent dressing room to themselves there ! I only looked it up to see would one have to use the 'away' one when they do play each other. Turns out there are nine dressing rooms, as the WNBA team, LA Kings both have one too , as well as the ones for away teams

Dublin Red Devil

buyer95 wrote: »

They were both at home, that makes no difference, Lakers just got punked. No excuses, kobe knows those rings like the back of his arm, Clippers atm just have a better team.

Yes it does make a difference. The Lakers set up The Staples Center with a much smaller court so they can fit in more court side seats. Lakers have allot of celebrity and wealthy fans who spend big money on court side tickets.

Clippers set up their court in a completely different way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBAIsxjpeAg

kmart6

Dublin Red Devil wrote: »

Yes it does make a difference. The Lakers set up The Staples Center with a much smaller court so they can fit in more court side seats. Lakers have allot of celebrity and wealthy fans who spend big money on court side tickets.

Clippers set up their court in a completely different way.

What?!

The Lakers court is not smaller, all NBA courts have to be 94x5, So there is no difference or advantage! It's the out of bounds space and scoring table that is smaller!

It's the arena that is set up differently, not the court!

Dublin Red Devil

kmart6 wrote: »

What?!

The Lakers court is not smaller, all NBA courts have to be 94x5, So there is no difference or advantage! It's the out of bounds space and scoring table that is smaller!

It's the arena that is set up differently, not the court!

Thank you Captain Obvious :rolleyes:

My point is there are many difference to how both sides set up the arena for their home games. So there is a home advantage. When Staples is set up for the Lakers, The Clippers are playing in completely different surroundings to they way they set up for their games.

kmart6

If your going to try and get smart it would be a good idea to word your original post correctly then wouldn't it?!

buyer95

Dublin Red Devil wrote: »

Thank you Captain Obvious :rolleyes:

My point is there are many difference to how both sides set up the arena for their home games. So there is a home advantage. When Staples is set up for the Lakers, The Clippers are playing in completely different surroundings to they way they set up for their games.

Your argument is piss poor, so the " surroundings " makes a different to how Kobe and co play. Its the same arena, with a bit less out of bounds space and a smaller scoring table! That does not give a " home advantage. " The argument is moot anyway, the reason the lakers lost last night, and the 2 other times the teams has met has nothing to do with what the surrounding. They just came up against a team with better players who are better coached, have a better bench are more athletic.

padraig_f

The Lakers do have a home advantage in that game, but it's not because of seating. Gene Hackman taught me that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb4QP6kNAoc

There's a good book called Scorecasting, where they take conventional beliefs about sport and challenge them. There's a chapter on home advantage, and what exactly constitutes the advantage of the home team. They investigate if it's travel, or familiarity with surroundings, and find out it's neither of those things (or they're small factors). They back it up with stats and studies, e.g. looking at historical records of teams who play near each other, and find that home advantage still exists, despite no travel disadvantage. Or that players make free throws at the same rate, whether they're playing home or away.

So what is it? They say that 80% of home advantage is the home team getting favourable calls from referees. The referees don't realise they're doing, it's a subconscious thing that shows up on the more subjective calls. Psychologically, disagreeing with a crowd induces subtle feelings of stress, so the referees unknowingly avoid it by shading more of the subjective calls in favour of the home team.

It's backed it in the book with stats. I don't know if you can prove it in basketball (where one of the big subjective calls is charge vs. blocking foul), but you can in baseball, where it manifests itself in pitches thrown near the edge of the strike zone, and whether the umpire calls it a ball or a strike. They can measure these pitches accurately, and prove they're slightly more likely to go in favour of the home team.

With the Lakers being the home team in a Clippers game, it would be predominantly Lakers fans in attendance with their season ticket-holders, so they would benefit from this refereeing bias. I'd recommend the book, there's a bunch of other interesting stuff in it.

Paully D

Cool

http://mashable.com/2013/02/14/nba-stats-data/

Christmas just came six weeks late for basketball nerds.

The NBA will launch a new tool at midnight EST on Friday that gives hardcore and casual hoops fans alike access to an overwhelming amount of historical stats and data. Found at NBA.com/Stats, it includes box scores for every game dating back to the NBA's first season in 1946, as well as deep historical dives on player performance and effective team combinations.

Users will be able to access an incredible total of 4.5 quadrillion statistical combinations, according to Ken De Gennaro, the NBA's vice president of information technology.

Powered by the enterprise and analytics software company SAP, NBA.com/Stats appears to be an unprecedented step by a sports league into officially opening the gates of big data for fans.

A demo of the tool earlier this week was really impressive, with a pleasant interface complementing a staggering array of statistical combinations and insights.

Just a few clicks, for example, brought up a comparison of Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant's rebounding numbers in wins vs. losses. A couple more narrowed that comparison down to just home wins vs. home losses. A couple more narrowed it down further to home wins against Eastern Conference teams, then home wins against Western Conference teams.

Color-coded court diagrams showed Durant's shooting performance from different spots on the floor — where he shot from most and how successful he was from each region — during his rookie year compared to this season. A couple more clicks called up a chart of this season's best players in a variety of clutch situations.

Essentially, the common fan now has ready access to stats and diagrams previously only available to scouts and media.

"The idea is that you can go as deep as you basically want," De Gennaro tells Mashable. "You can look at stories that are presented to you, or just start asking questions to your heart's content by changing date ranges, points during the game, when a team wins vs. loses, player vs. player situations, anything you want."

An editorial component rounds out all the number crunching. It highlights certain stats and box scores from famous games, as well as contains a glossary section that explains some of the more advanced stats.

Each page also includes buttons to quickly share whatever you're looking at via Facebook, Google+ or Twitter — so all that trash talking on social media may finally have some substance.

As for what all this means for SAP's potential in sports beyond basketball?

"Our partnership with the NBA enables fans to enjoy a deeper level of insight and feeling of connection to their favorite players and teams," SAP's senior vice president of sports and entertainment, Steve Peck, tells Mashable via email. "In this way, SAP helps the NBA to reach fans like never before. This is just a precursor of what SAP is capable of in the world of sports."

Here's the site: http://stats.nba.com/?GameScope=Season&PlayerOrTeam=Player&StatCategory=Points

Nuri Sahin

The All Star Rookie game is on now between Team Shaq and Team Chuck. If anyone needs a recipe , just PM.

padraig_f

Nuri Sahin wrote: »

The All Star Rookie game is on now between Team Shaq and Team Chuck. If anyone needs a recipe , just PM.

The Cavs have four players in the game, Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters, Tristan Thompson and Tyler Zeller. They'll have another top pick in next year's draft. Could be a very good team in a few years.

Nuri Sahin

My boi ruining Brandon Knight

Dublin Red Devil

Chuck gets an awful slagging from Ernie, Kenny and Shaq because he has no rings. Chuck walks into it though, He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer but that's all part of his appeal to the viewer. He's likely to say anything, He's a good laugh

GoldFour4

All star saturday night, let's hope we see some great performances tonight

padraig_f

Have to like Team Harden here.

padraig_f

Ok, they're doing it a bit differently this year, with the East-West thing. Looks like one qualifies from the East and one from the West. I'm guessing that probably affects the dunk & 3-point contests too.

buyer95

Can't believe how badly White bombed last night, actually thought he was in with a great chance. Fair play to Ross some nice dunks, though I have a feeling voter fatigue may have played a part

leggo

Passed out before All-Star Saturday could begin, grr.

Have €5 on a double of East to win, LBJ to get MVP. Returns €48 on Paddy Power. The West have a deeper talent pool, but I'm not willing to bet against LeBron in a high profile environment right now.

Dublin Red Devil

The shooting stars thing was great. Probably the best part of the night.

The skills challenge was pretty good, 3 point was decent as well

The dunk contest was ruined by lazy missed dunks. I really didn't need to see James White ruining down the court and messing up at the rim again and again

Gerald Green cutting off the net, Failing to do his dunk like 8 times and then some guy putting up a new net was even worse

It was just a massive disappointment

I say scrap the dunk contest unless they can get an All Star line-up

I want to see James, Wade, Griffin, Anthony, Westbrook etc

buyer95

Dublin Red Devil wrote: »

The shooting stars thing was great. Probably the best part of the night.

The skills challenge was pretty good, 3 point was decent as well

The dunk contest was ruined by lazy missed dunks. I really didn't need to see James White ruining down the court and messing up at the rim again and again

Gerald Green cutting off the net, Failing to do his dunk like 8 times and then some guy putting up a new net was even worse

It was just a massive disappointment

I say scrap the dunk contest unless they can get an All Star line-up

I want to see James, Wade, Griffin, Anthony, Westbrook etc

:pac:
Melo isn't a dunk contest caliber dunker

padraig_f

Paully D wrote: »

Fantastic read - ''Michael Jordan has not left the building'' from ESPN's outside the lines:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/Michael-Jordan/michael-jordan-not-left-building

Very good piece. I sometimes wonder about that, successful athletes retiring from playing, and how they handle it. You have these ultra-competitive guys, and then in their mid 30s or whatever, they have to stop doing what they've done all their life, and what's defined them to a large extent. How do they channel that competitive drive, once they've retired from the sport? It must be difficult to adjust. MJ is a very successful businessman and has the Bobcats to run, but you can see he still misses playing.

It reminded me of a classic article by Gay Talese about a retired Joe DiMaggio: The Silent Season of a Hero.
I'd guess that Wright Thompson was thinking of this when he wrote it, the style is quite similar.

padraig_f

Dublin Red Devil wrote: »

The dunk contest was ruined by lazy missed dunks. I really didn't need to see James White ruining down the court and messing up at the rim again and again

Gerald Green cutting off the net, Failing to do his dunk like 8 times and then some guy putting up a new net was even worse

It was just a massive disappointment

I say scrap the dunk contest unless they can get an All Star line-up

I want to see James, Wade, Griffin, Anthony, Westbrook etc

It was the pits, I lost interest when they had two guys on in a row who failed to complete a dunk in the 90 seconds allotted, followed by the guy reattaching the net to the hoop.

The judging panel as well, I think they were selected to be as ethnically diverse as possible, rather than knowing anything about dunk contests....Yao Ming, Dikembe Motumbo, Rudy Tomjanovich (!). They gave out perfect scores of 50 for a couple of standard dunks, and because the lowest score they could give was 6, the guys who failed to complete a dunk received 30 points or more (some of the judges gave them a 7).

Now I'm seeing today they used branded basketballs they were plugging, that the players couldn't grip:

@KDonhoops:
'The NBA's latest money grab cost us a good Dunk contest. By using new, ASW-logo balls that were hard to grip. Stupid.'

I wasn't expecting too much, as the last few years have been disappointing, but when you think of some of the great dunk contests, MJ and Dominique squaring off, they're really sullying the memory of that stuff now.

ButtersSuki

My God, that was LAME. Glad I recorded it and didn't get up in the middle of the night to watch it.

Dunk of the night for me was Gerald Green 1st dunk. Look where his head is on the last replay. Crazy. All downhill after that though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC3NU4i7DMY

Dublin Red Devil

MY 2013 Mock Draft

1st Pick - Charlotte Bobcats - Ben McLemore - 6ft5 -SG - Kansas Jayhawks



2nd Pick - Washington Wizards - Cody Zeller - 6ft11 - PF/C - Indiana Hoosiers



3rd Pick - Orlando Magic - Alex Len - 7ft1 - C - Maryland Terrapins (Ukraine)

kmart6

Riiiiiggghhhtttt!

Dublin Red Devil

I was going to put Nerlens Noel in, even before Zeller but he just tore his ACL and is probably going to miss most of his rookie year, He will still be drafted pretty high because he's just 18 and after he recovers from the injury could still be a great player. The problem is that most teams who have the early picks can't afford to wait that long.

stuchyg

Shabazz