How to plan for the week of Nov 2-8, 2015

If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.

For detail on the all-popular, all-powerful NFL, which groups most of its games on Sunday afternoons, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Feast on soccer in the afternoon. You can get a good British professional soccer game on NBC Sports Network or enjoy the international stylings of Mexico and Ecuador’s Under-17 men’s teams in one quarterfinal of that age group’s World Cup. In the evening, the Monday Night Football game pits the undefeated Carolina Panthers against a disappointing Colts team who finally went public with the nature and extent of starting quarterback Andrew Luck’s injuries this weekend. Why tell the world before a game? Maybe just to lower expectations and potentially save the coach’s job.

Tuesday: As I’m writing this, we don’t know if the Mets will win Game Five of the World Series and survive to play another day. If they do, it will be tonight and Kansas City will play in Kansas City with a chance to win the World Series on home field. Other than that, you’ve got a cross-country matchup in the NHL and a cross-continent one in the UEFA Champions League. (Update – the Mets lost, so there will be no baseball this week.)

Wednesday: If the Mets survive Sunday and Tuesday, then the World Series will come to an exciting end in a winner-take all Game Seven tonight. I doubt this will happen, (Update – it will not happen) but if it does, it will be must-watch, must-drop-everything-else-you’re-doing television. More likely, it will be a quiet sports day whose highlights are a UEFA Champions League game between Bayern Munich and Arsenal and a women’s college volleyball game between Missouri and Texas A&M.

Thursday: Have fun watching an NBA double-header or hunker down and stay out of the cold while watching the battle of Ohio in the NFL. Didn’t know Ohio was worth fighting over? It is! Ask the Bengals and Browns.

Friday: Date night! Honestly — nothing much to see here, go out, enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about me, I won’t stay up waiting for you.

Saturday: Even if you’re not a college football fan, you’ve got to admit that LSU vs. Alabama is going to be one heck of a party/football game/television show. In soccer, the most compelling game is not in the British Premier League but in Italy’s Serie A between AC Milan and Atalanta.

Sunday: In addition to the normal coating of football, there’s a thick coat of soccer today. Major League Soccer will play all four of the second legs (the MLS playoffs are organized into two game series) in the quarterfinals. Added to that excitement are two NCAA women’s championship games, both at 3 p.m., one in the Big East, one in the SEC.

Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.

One line to fool them all – 11.2.15

Sports talk is frequently used as a common language but it’s far from universal. If you’re someone who doesn’t follow or even understand sports, you can find yourself at a disadvantage in common small-talk situations like in an elevator, waiting for a bus, sitting at a bar, or around the proverbial water cooler at work. Even if you are a sports fan, it’s impossible to watch everything and know everything. To help in these situations, we provide lines to use when engaged in a conversation about all of the high profile sporting events of the day, plus explanations of what they mean.

NFL Football

Cincinnati Bengals 16 vs. Pittsburgh Steelers 10

Line: Bad Andy reared his head but the Bengals still won.

What it means: Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton’s career has been full of periods when he plays extremely well, but they’ve never been free of times when he’s played equally badly. Because he’s never had any significant success in the playoffs, he hasn’t really earned any sympathy from fans, so these periods are called Bad Andy times. He played poorly in this game but the Bengals were still good enough to win and stay undefeated.

Green Bay Packers 10, vs. Denver Broncos 29

Line: Maybe the reports of Peyton Manning’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

What it means: The Denver Broncos defense slowed down the Green Bay Packers offense, specifically their quarterback Aaron Rodgers, in a way that’s really never happened before. The biggest news of the game though, might have been the play of Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who looked, at least for a night, as good as he’s looked in past years. At 39, people have reacted to his poor play so far this season by predicting his football demise, but tonight gave Broncos fans hope.

San Francisco 49ers 6 vs. St. Louis Rams 27

Line: Don’t look now, but I think the Rams are good. Gurley is the real deal.

What it means: The Rams are not a popular team, they’re not on national television often, and they haven’t been good for a long time, but thanks to the excellent play of rookie running back Todd Gurley, they’ve won three of their last four games.

Tennessee Titans 6 vs. Houston Texans 20

Line: The Texans are one game away from first place and one game away from firing their coach.

What it means: The division that the Texans and Titans are in, the AFC South, is so bad across the board, that it’s possible for a team like the Texans to be simultaneously so disappointing that their coach is at risk of being fired AND almost in first place of the division. Football can be a weird sport with small sample sizes and lots of randomness.

New York Giants 49 vs. New Orleans Saints 52

Line: This looked more like a video game than reality.

What it means: Games with this much scoring are very unusual in real football, but thanks to the “solveablilty” of video games, much more common there. Many football fans are or have also been big fans of football video games at some point in their lives. So this game’s bizarre scoring probably felt familiar, if only from virtual reality.

Minnesota Vikings 23 vs. Chicago Bears 20

Line: Hmmmm… the Vikings keep winning, but not in a way that inspires very much confidence. Plus, look at who they’ve beaten.

What it means: Beating the now 2-5 Chicago Bears is something that should be expected of good teams in the NFL, not the product of a dramatic, late-game win, like the Vikings needed today. The Vikings have a very respectable 5-2 record, but if you look more closely at it, the teams they’ve beaten (Bears, Lions twice, Chiefs, Chargers) are a combined 8-23. That’s doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Vikings’ ability to win against good teams. Sorry Vikings fans!

New York Jets 20, vs. Oakland Raiders 34

Line: Eh, I wouldn’t worry about the Jets too much. Hard to get up for the Raiders the week after the Patriots.

What it means: Last weekend, the Jets lost a close and emotional game against their biggest rivals, the New England Patriots. It’s natural, even for a professional sports team, to have a let-down in the following week. Add to that, a trip to the West Coast to play the historically bad but currently sneaky good Oakland Raiders, and it’s no wonder that they came out flat and lost. The bigger concern is the loss of starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, possibly for the season, with a hand injury.

Seattle Seahawks 13, vs. Dallas Cowboys 12

Line: Can we all agree not to talk about this game again?

What it means: This game was televised nationally and really shouldn’t have been watched by anyone other than die-hard fans of the two teams. A bad game was further marred by the breath-stealing sight of a player on the Seahawks being knocked out on the field and stretchered off. Luckily, he is not paralyzed.

Detroit Lions 10, vs. Kansas City Chiefs 45

Line: Not sure the fire everyone the week before the London game gambit is going to work for Jim Caldwell after this showing.

What it means: The London game, which is always followed by a bye week, has become an opportune moment for teams to fire their coaches. As if he knew that might be a possibility and wanted to cut it off at the pass, the Lions head coach fired most of his offensive staff the week before this game. After losing so badly to the Chiefs, this almost blatant attempt to buy himself some time, may not work. Head Coach Jim Caldwell might get fired anyway.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23, vs. Atlanta Falcons 20

Line: The Atlanta Falcons? More like the Atlanta Frauds.

What it means: Okay, this is a little bit of a snotty thing to say, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. The Falcons got off to a great start this year, winning five games in a row. People thought they were a great team. Then they lost to the Saints, won a close game over the lowly Titans, and now lost to the equally lowly Buccaneers. From the evidence of those last three games, it looks a lot more like the Falcons are an average team that got lucky to start the year than a great team going through a rough patch.

San Diego Chargers 26, vs. Baltimore Ravens 29

Line: I can’t decide if that’s a fitting end for Steve Smith or a totally out of character one. Either way, it’s terrible.

What it means: Hall of fame to be wide receiver, Steve Smith, has been a fan favorite for many years. He had announced at the start of this season that it would be his last, but he didn’t expect it to end so soon. He tore his Achilles tendon during today’s game and will miss the rest of the season. Unless he reconsiders, this was the last we’ll see of him on a football field. What a shame!

Arizona Cardinals 34, vs. Cleveland Browns 20

Line: If the game had ended at halftime, I would have had to seriously rethink what I thought I knew about football. Phew.

What it means: People, myself included, assumed that the plot of this game was as simple as, “good team (Arizona) plays bad team (Cleveland).” What a surprise it was, then, to see the Browns leading the Cardinals 20-10 at halftime. The Cardinals scored 24 points in the second half and held the Browns scoreless, proving us right, albeit in a very tardy way.

What should I watch during Week 8 of the 2015 NFL season?

Every week, we rank the NFL games based on a number of factors to come up with a proprietary, totally un-trademarked Watchability Rating and publish them on our NFL forecast page. This post takes the quantitative and marries it to my qualitative thoughts about each game. To help you figure out what games you get in your area, check out 506 Sports NFL. If you need help figuring out how to make sense out of what you see there, use my explanation of how to use 506 Sports NFL here.

Big Screen

5.09 – Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, 1 p.m. ET on CBS

For decades, the Steelers have ruled their division with an iron steel fist. That’s meant that no matter how good the Bengals have gotten, they’ve always had to deal with the Steelers being a little bit better — a little bit more successful. This year, the Bengals are undefeated and the Steelers, thanks in part to an injury to starting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, are only 4-3. Roethlisberger is back for this game, so the Steelers will be at full strength for their attempt to knock the Bengals off their pedestal.

5.03 – Green Bay Packers vs. Denver Broncos, 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC

Sometimes fortune smiles on the people who scheduled all the NFL games months ago. They couldn’t have known, when they put these two teams in a prime-time, nationally televised game, that they’d both be undefeated entering the game. It’s a rare treat to have a matchup of two undefeated teams as late as the eighth week of the season. Both teams have overcome challenges to get this far without losing. The Denver Broncos have been winning despite once legendary quarterback Peyton Manning’s predictable but still shocking poor play. At 39, it looks like age and injury have finally caught up with him. Luckily, the team’s defense has been good enough to cover for him, so far. On the Green Bay side, quarterback Aaron Rodgers is still in the prime of his career, but he’s been playing all year without his favorite target, wide receiver Jordy Nelson, who is out for the season with a knee injury.

4.29 – San Francisco 49ers vs. St. Louis Rams, 1 p.m. ET on Fox

There’s a big jump between the interest of the top two games, both over 5 on our watchability scale, and the next group which starts with this game. The first two games basically don’t have any flaws. This one has a big flaw in the form of the 49ers. The 49ers aren’t completely collapsing this year, but they are stumbling around like a drunk person who seems about to fall at any moment. What lifts this game is the opportunity for the Rams to continue their push toward the playoffs. It’s almost too early to start talking about playoffs, but the Rams look like a team with a shot of making it as a wild card. If they don’t want that image to become a mirage, like it has in so many recent years for the Rams, they need to win the games they should win, like this one.

4.29 – Tennessee Titans vs. Houston Texans, 1 p.m. ET on CBS

There’s a severe power outage in this game. The Titans are 1-5 on the year. The Texans 2-5. But believe it or not, if the Texans win this game and the Indianapolis Colts lose theirs, they would be in a tie for the division lead. The AFC South division is so bad this year, that the Titans are probably not out of it either. Setting that aside, there are very few rational reasons to watch this game. It’s probably a signal that I should raise the impact of “combined power” on the watchability rating and lower the impact of the “in division” and “rivalry” factors.

4.29 – New York Giants vs. New Orleans Saints, 1 p.m. ET on Fox

Both of these teams started the year out horribly, the Giants with two losses and the Saints with three. Both have righted the ship to some extent. The Giants are 4-3 and in first place in their division. The Saints are coming off two straight wins against the Falcons and Colts. Fans of both teams are starting to believe again. One set of fans will be sorely disappointed after this game. As a tiny extra added piece of local interest, Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s father was the starting quarterback of the Saints while Eli was a child.

4.05 – Minnesota Vikings vs. Chicago Bears, 1 p.m. ET on Fox

 

This game is like a miniature version of the Bengals vs. Steelers game from above. The Bears and Vikings are long-time divisional opponents and rivals. The Bears usually have the upper hand but the Vikings have the better record this year. The Vikings should win this game, but it’s possible that the Bears have enough muscle memory left from having dominated the Vikings for so long, that they’ll be able to keep this game close and maybe even win it.

Medium Screen

3.99 – Indianapolis Colts vs. Carolina Panthers, Monday, November 2, 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN

It’s hard to believe this game didn’t make it to a Big Screen rating. Blame the poor play of the Colts so far this year for missing that hundredth of a rating point. Football fans, fantasy players especially, keep waiting for Colts quarterback Andrew Luck to turn things around and start playing up to his potential this year. At a certain point though, it may be time to admit that the players around him are simply not good enough to let him shine. Panthers quarterback Cam Newton has no such problem. His mostly unheralded teammates have all been playing above their expected level this year — a big part of why the team is undefeated.

3.85 – New York Jets vs. Oakland Raiders, 4 p.m. ET on CBS

I’m actually surprised this game did not get a higher ranking. I suspect that it will outperform it’s ranking. Certainly in the late-afternoon time slot, when there are so many fewer options, it’s worthy of consideration. The Jets were 4-12 last year, the Raiders, 3-13 but after only six games so far this year, both teams have already equalled their wins totals from last year. The Jets are 4-2 and the Raiders are 3-3. I’m interested to see how the Raiders young, talented offense plays against the Jets veteran and loaded defense.

3.47 – Seattle Seahawks vs. Dallas Cowboys, 4:30 p.m. ET on Fox

Alas, virtually the whole football-watching country will be watching this game in the late afternoon. It’s not without its attractions, but most of them have to do with the suspense generated by a team wildly disappointing its fans.

3.38 – Detroit Lions vs. Kansas City Chiefs, 9:30 a.m. ET on Fox

This is the last London game of the season and, like most of the others, it features two under .500 teams. It’s hard to say which team has been more disappointing this year, the Chiefs, who were 11-5 two years ago or the Lions who were 11-5 last year. I guess the Lions. Either way, this is not a game worth waking up early for.

3.30 – Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Atlanta Falcons, 1 p.m. ET on Fox

It’s actually somewhat hysterical that a divisional game involving one team (the Falcons) with only a single loss on the year could be so low in our rankings. It’s a measure of how little people believe in the Falcons as an actually good team, as opposed to a decent team with a good record, and how little the general public cares about the Buccaneers.

3.12 – San Diego Chargers vs. Baltimore Ravens, 1 p.m. ET on CBS

Looking at the landscape of the NFL over the past decade, it’s almost incomprehensible that a game between these two teams could be the second worst game of the day. The Chargers and Ravens have both been perennial championship contenders but they now find themselves scrambling around just to win a game. It’s a sad fall from grace for both franchises. At least the Ravens will still be in Baltimore next year. The Chargers may very well be in Los Angeles.

3.05 – Arizona Cardinals vs. Cleveland Browns, 1 p.m. ET on Fox

It’s not impossible to make a case for watching this game — this week’s slate of games is remarkably strong, without a single game in the small or no screen categories — but it just doesn’t match up to the competition. The Cardinals are very good, the Browns are not.

What is a balk in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a balk in baseball? I think it’s when a pitcher starts to pitch but then doesn’t but I’ve asked a few friends I have who are baseball fans and no one can explain it more clearly. Can you help?

Thanks,
Jeff

Dear Jeff,

The balk is one of the most unique rules in baseball. It’s controversial, important, and simultaneously confusing to the point of opaqueness. Reading Major League Baseball’s rulebook on the subject is almost entirely useless for anyone who doesn’t already know what a balk is. For example, here is a short passage on what constitutes a balk:

From the Windup Position, the pitcher may:
(1) deliver the ball to the batter, or
(2) step and throw to a base in an attempt to pick-off a runner, or
(3) disengage the rubber (if he does he must drop his hand to his sides).
In disengaging the rubber the pitcher must step off with his pivot foot and not his free foot first.
He may not go into a set or stretch position —if he does it is a balk.

There’s only one response to language like that, and Groucho Marx said it over 80 years ago.

Luckily, we don’t need to understand the particulars of the rule as it’s written to understand how the rule works in actual baseball. We can work our way backwards from what the rule is trying to prevent to how it’s actually enforced.

The balk rule was put in place in 1898. Before then, a pitcher could get a base runner out in the following way. Imagine there’s a runner on first base. He takes a short lead toward second base and waits there. As the pitcher starts his windup to pitch the ball, the base runner takes one or two steps farther toward second base. This is a smart move, because it puts him in a better position to get to second base on a weakly hit ball and it still leaves him with plenty of time to return to first in the case of a strike or a pop fly. However (!) the pitcher hasn’t actually pitched. Instead, he’s tricked the base runner by winding up and starting to throw the ball but not actually letting it go. Now that the base runner has moved further from first base, it’s easy enough for the pitcher to stop, turn, and throw the ball to the first baseman, who calmly tags the base runner out. Now, baseball prides itself on being a tricky sport, but it’s possible that this trick was simply too devious to allow. It’s also possible that the main problem was not the move’s deceptive nature, but its effectiveness. Rules have always been created to balance the power between offense and defense, and a move which is almost guaranteed to remove a base runner from the game may simply have been too effective to allow. In any event, the balk rule was put in place to prevent pitchers from doing this.

For all its complex language, the balk rule can be summarized as this – once a pitcher starts his pitching motion, he must complete it by throwing the ball to home plate. I italicized the word “his” because pitchers all have unique pitching motions. One pitcher’s motion may be as distinct from another’s as a lion is from a house cat. The motion itself is not important to the rule, what is important is that every pitcher’s motion during one pitch is identical to his own motion on every other pitch. Umpires learn pitchers’ motions and are able to notice if a pitcher deviates from it, even slightly. When a pitcher throws to first base, to hold a runner there, or to try to pick him off, he uses a motion that may be similar to his pitching motion, but is not identical. The umpire is able to distinguish a pick off throw motion from a pitching motion.

Although the balk rule exists to prevent a pitcher from intentionally tricking a base runner by starting to pitch and then doing something else, the rule is enforced slightly differently. Most sports rules try to stay away from legislating intent and the balk rule is no different. In order to avoid asking umpires to make a judgement call about whether the pitcher intended to trick the base runner and whether the base runner was actually fooled, the balk rule simplifies the decision. If a pitcher enters his pitching motion but does not complete it, a balk must be called. This results in some unfortunate accidents when a pitcher starts to pitch but slips or stumbles or is attacked by a fit of sneezing or bees. In any of these situations, the umpire should call a balk. Balks legislate action, not intent.

The penalty for a balk is that all base runners get to advance one base. If there was a runner on first, he goes to second. A runner on third would score. The only exceptions to this are if the balk also results in the batter reaching first base because of a walk or a hit batter. In this case, all the runners would advance anyway, so there’s no further penalty. If, in the process of the balk, the pitcher loses the ball and it goes flying somewhere, the base runners are allowed to try to advance more than one base, but they do so at their own risk and can be tagged for an out.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra

 

 

What is a shift in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a shift in baseball?

Thanks,
Darrel

Dear Darrel,

If you’ve watched a baseball game on TV lately, there’s a good chance you looked up at your television screen at some point and were surprised by the location of the players on the fielding team. Perhaps the short stop was on the first base side of second base instead of in his normal position on the third base side. Or the first and third basemen were on the home plate side of their bases and creeping in as the pitcher readied to pitch. What you were seeing was a shift – a tactic whereby the fielding team adjusts its positioning before the ball is put in play. A team may choose to shift its outfield, its infield, or both for situational or personnel reasons. We’ll run through a few examples of each scenario in this post.

The shift is a compelling element of baseball because it is simultaneously so obvious and so revolutionary. If you’ve ever played in the outfield of a baseball or softball game, you probably automatically shifted based on who was at bat; that dude with biceps the size of watermelons who hit the ball way past you last time is up to bat? You move back. That’s an example of a shift based on personnel. You see who is up to bat and adjust based on what you think they might do. In the example we gave, it doesn’t feel revolutionary. The personnel shifts you see in Major League Baseball (MLB) games today are the product of a similar type of analysis, just formalized and backed by big amounts of data. By the time a player has been in the league for three years, they will have played in close to 450 games and been up to bat over 1,250 times. This gives opposing teams a lot of information about where they usually hit the ball. Virtually every player has patterns that will reveal themselves over time and with study. A player who has a strong tendency to hit the ball in one direction or location is more vulnerable to a defensive shift.

Other times, it’s not the player who is up to bat but the situation that dictates a defensive shift. For example, if the batting team is down a run, has a player on first base, and is likely to try to bunt the ball to advance the runner to second, the first and third basemen may move toward home plate so that they are prepared to field the bunt they believe is coming. If it’s the bottom of the ninth inning, the batting team has a player on third base, and the game is tied, then the fielding team knows that they will lose if they allow that player to reach home. If the batter hits a long fly ball to the back of the outfield, the base runner will stay on third base until the ball is caught but then have plenty of time to run home safely before any throw could reach home plate. In this case, the fielding team knows for sure that any ball hit to the back of the outfield will result in them losing. So why even have outfielders back there? Isn’t it better to have them move in, so a ground ball hit through the infield may be able to be fielded quickly enough to prevent the runner from scoring? It is! The outfielders moving in in cases like that are another classic scenario that calls for a situational shift.

 

Defensive shifts have become much more common and more extreme in recent years. As of this year, they have doubled in frequency every year since 2011. It’s now quite regular for teams to shift all or almost all of their defensive players to one side but it still looks weird. One wonders how professional baseball players, people who are paid millions of dollars to be good at hitting a ball, cannot simply hit the ball in an unexpected direction. Apparently, it’s harder than it looks! Shifts are all part of the greater statistical revolution in baseball. The gloriously large and discreet data that baseball creates have offered numerous opportunities for teams to identify exactly what each opposing player and team does best… and do everything in their power to take that away from their opponents. Shifts are an integral part of the tactical game of cat and mouse that makes baseball a compelling sport to watch.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra

NBA Basketball in 2015 is not selfish

The 2015-2016 National Basketball Association (NBA) season started yesterday. This offers a great opportunity to write about the current state of the NBA and one of the most persistent myths about the league. If you talk to enough people about sports as often as I do, you get used to hearing people say they “don’t like the NBA because the play is (or the players are) too selfish.”

There are two ways of interpreting that comment: a cynical way and a way that gives the benefit of the doubt to the person making it. Let’s start by giving the benefit of the doubt to critics of the NBA. Viewed in the best possible light, the criticism of the NBA as selfish is based on a belief that there is less passing in the NBA than there should be or than there once was. In the eyes of these critics, NBA basketball is typified by a player dribbling the ball up the court, telling his teammates to get out of the way, trying to beat his defender one-on-one, and then shooting the ball. In basketball terms, this is called an “isolation” or “isolation basketball.”

The truth is, isolation basketball has been on the decline for the last twenty years of NBA history and is now almost universally recognized as a losing tactic. Kirk Goldsberry, Grantland’s chief basketball illustrator and an excellent writer as well, wrote an article recently that summarized the shift in tactics from isolation ball to today’s NBA and explaining its statistical underpinnings. It is a wonderful article – clear and even poetic – and it explains why isolation ball, particularly when it leads to two point shots that aren’t layups or dunks, has become a tactic used only by the most clueless organizations. He writes with the strength of quantitative evidence:

Last season, NBA players attempted just over 200,000 shots. Fifty-three percent of these shots qualify as assisted, while 47 percent qualify as unassisted.1 Overall, the league’s shooters converted 45 percent of their shots — the assisted tries went in 51 percent of the time, while the unassisted shots scored only 38 percent of the time.

and also gives compelling anecdotal support to the theory. He quotes San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich as saying of today’s basketball, “You move it or you die.” Popovich is the most well-respected modern coach. He is seen as a guru of team building and on-court tactics. When he says, “you move it or you die,” he’s arguing that winning basketball has its foundation in teamwork and passing; in trust and interdependency. Want hard evidence? Look at a team assists statistic from last year. The team with the highest assist ration, the Golden State Warriors, won 67 regular season games (out of 82, by far the most in the league) and the championship. The team with the second highest assist ratio, the Atlanta Hawks, won the second most games in the league and made it to the Eastern Conference Championships before losing.

Even if the tactical shift in the NBA were in the opposite direction — toward isolation – it’s not altogether clear to me why that would be thought of as selfish. Selfishness has to do with intent. Tactics have to do with winning. If the tactic most likely to result in a victory involved giving the ball to a single player and asking him to do everything, then that would be the correct tactic. It would involve an incredible amount of unselfishness on the part of that player’s teammates, who would be asked to do the hard work of playing defense and setting picks, and on the part of the coach, who wouldn’t get very much acclaim for taking such a simple tactical approach. Maybe most of all, it would take unselfishness on the part of the player being asked to “carry the load” as they say in sports-lingo. Taking a majority of your team’s shots is exhausting. Carrying the ball up the court and taking every shot requires an almost super-human effort. This is close to what LeBron James was asked to do for part of last year’s playoffs because of injuries to his teammates and it clearly took a toll on him. He’s an incredible athlete, but even he had was visibly drained by the effort. Watching him force himself to keep handling the ball, keep driving to the hoop, and keep shooting when his body was telling him it would be easier to pass it up was a great lesson in unselfishness.

The last element of the question of selfishness in the NBA is the most delicate. In some ways, the criticism has nothing to do with tactics. The word selfish is a racially loaded word. I’ve written about this before. As basketball shifted from being a professional sport dominated by white and Jewish athletes to being one dominated by African-Americans, its default criticisms shifted as well. This is when basketball started being criticized as being selfish… and thuggish… and a whole bunch of other things that black people have been unfairly labeled as during the complicated and unfortunate racial history of our country.

It’s time to stop this. From now on, let’s all be more aggressive in our response to people who say they don’t like the NBA because it is selfish. They may not be racist — probably aren’t, in fact — but they are parroting a critique with a very bad history that isn’t at all, not even if you squint, supported by the actual evidence of what is going on in the NBA.

One line to fool them all – 10.26.15

Sports talk is frequently used as a common language but it’s far from universal. If you’re someone who doesn’t follow or even understand sports, you can find yourself at a disadvantage in common small-talk situations like in an elevator, waiting for a bus, sitting at a bar, or around the proverbial water cooler at work. Even if you are a sports fan, it’s impossible to watch everything and know everything. To help in these situations, we provide lines to use when engaged in a conversation about all of the high profile sporting events of the day, plus explanations of what they mean.

NFL Football

Sunday, October 25, 2015 9:30 a.m. ET

Buffalo Bills 31 at Jacksonville Jaguars 34

Line: You can dismiss the teams if you want, but London got a heck of a game.

What it means: Most NFL teams don’t want to travel to London and it seems like the more powerful ones are able to prevent the league from sending them. As a result, the London games tend to be between teams, like the Bills and Jaguars, who have not been good for many years. That’s led many fans to dismiss the London games as boring or even unwatchable. Not true for this close game.

Sunday, October 25, 2015 1 p.m. ET

Cleveland Browns 6 at St. Louis Rams 24

Line: I can’t think of anything to say about this game. No really. I guess the Rams might be good?

What it means: I can’t think of anything to say about this game. No really. I guess the Rams might be good?

Minnesota Vikings 28 at Detroit Lions 19

Line: It’s hard to believe that this was the Vikings’ first division win on the road in three years. They seem downright respectable this season — like a strong wildcard contender.

What it means: The Vikings have been bad for several seasons. So bad that they’ve lost all their divisional road games (three per year) for the last three years. This week, they broke that streak by beating the Lions. It may seem like a meaningless statistic, but in this case, it’s also symbolic of real progress. The Lions are playing like a playoff team.

Houston Texans 26 at Miami Dolphins 44

Line: It’s amazing how much the Dolphins must have hated their old coach.

What it means: Since the Dolphins fired their coach three weeks ago, they’ve won both of their games in very convincing fashion. Since it’s difficult for a new coach to make tactical changes in such a short time, it’s safe to assume that the Dolphins simply didn’t like their old coach and weren’t playing as hard for him as they are now for the new coach.

New Orleans Saints 27 at Indianapolis Colts 21

Line: This year’s AFC South is last year’s NFC South — 7-9 might win the division.

What it means: Last year, the NFC South division, which the Saints are in, was so poor across the board, that the Carolina Panthers won it and qualified for the playoffs with a 7-8-1 record. This year, the Colts, who play in the AFC South division, may find themselves in a similar position. After seven games, the Colts are 3-4 and still better than the other three teams in their division.

Pittsburgh Steelers 13 at Kansas City Chiefs 23

Line: Big Ben will be back soon.

What it means: The Steelers quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, is known as Big Ben. He hurt his knee during the third game of the season. Since then, they’ve been trying their best to stay afloat without him. They’ve actually done pretty well — winning two games and losing two — but their fans will be very glad to get their starting quarterback back, probably next week.

New York Jets 23 at New England Patriots 30

Line: Dog bites man, Patriots beat Jets.

What it means: There’s a parable in the news industry that “dog bites man” isn’t news but “man bites dog” is. Well, in football terms, the Patriots beating the Jets isn’t news, but the Jets beating the Patriots would be. No news was made in this game.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 30 at Washington Redskins 31

Line: Kirk Cousins led a last minute drive to win the game and save Washington D.C. from another week of existential football crisis.

What it means: Washington is a tortured sports city and their sports talk would have been profoundly depressing this week if it weren’t for a last minute touchdown drive orchestrated by quarterback Kirk Cousins.

Atlanta Falcons 10 at Tennessee Titans 7

Line: This was either an ugly game that a really good team won or a sign that the Falcons aren’t actually a very good team.

What it means: There’s a sports truism that the sign of a good team is that they can win games even when they play badly. The Falcons may have done that today… then again, they may also have just struggled to beat a mediocre team because they themselves are not that good.

Sunday, October 25, 2015 4:05 or 4:25 p.m. ET

Oakland Raiders 37 at San Diego Chargers 29

Line: The future belongs to the Raiders.

What it means: The Raiders have been stuck behind the other three teams in their division, the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, and Chargers for years. Although they still probably won’t catch the Broncos, who are undefeated this year, but their stock of young, talented players suggests that they could surpass all three teams in the next couple years.

Dallas Cowboys 20 at New York Giants 27

Line: By the time Dez and Tony get back, it may be too late for the Cowboys.

What it means: The Cowboys lost their two best offensive players, wide receiver Dez Bryant and quarterback Tony Romo, at the start of the season to long-term injuries. They’re both expected back this year, but it may be too little, too late for the Cowboys to have a shot at making the playoffs. They’ve now lost four games straight without these two players.

Sunday, October 25, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

Philadelphia Eagles 16 at Carolina Panthers 27

Line: In a weird way, this game was worse for the New Orleans Saints than it was for the Eagles.

What it means: Despite the Eagles loss and general malaise, because of the weakness of their division, at 3-4, they’re still only one game back from the division lead. The New Orleans Saints, who won yesterday and who are also 3-4 are stuck in a division with the Panthers, who moved to 6-0 by beating the Eagles, and the Atlanta Falcons, who are 6-1. It’s going to be far harder for the Saints to maneuver themselves back into the playoff hunt than it will be for the Eagles.

How to plan for the week of Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2015

If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.

For detail on the all-popular, all-powerful NFL, which groups most of its games on Sunday afternoons, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Take a rest. Things are about to get super sportsy this week. In fact, if you want to, skip the Monday Night Football game. Nine times out of ten, the Cardinals are going to kill the Ravens.

Tuesday: Here’s where it starts to get real. The NBA season opens with a double-header and the World Series (that’s baseball) gets started with the first game of a best-out-of-seven series between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets.

Wednesday: The World Series, unlike the NBA or NHL finals, doesn’t always take a day off between games. Game Two comes tonight right on the heels of yesterday’s Game One. Over in soccer universe, the Major League Soccer playoffs get started with two single-elimination knockout games. They’ll be worth watching if you don’t have a stake or interest in the World Series.

Thursday: The World Series wisely takes a night off to make room for the NFL. Nothing in today’s sporting landscape can go up against the NFL and not look bad, at least in terms of ratings. Major League Soccer apparently just doesn’t care, they’re playing two more knockout playoff games.

Friday: Date night! If you’re hanging around in the afternoon, stomach full of butterflies, settle yourself by watching some good horse racing or some even better rugby. Then enjoy Game Three of the World Series on the date!

Saturday: It’s another week of uninspiring college football matchups. There’s only one game with two top twenty five ranked teams playing each other, and that’s Notre Dame vs. Temple. Luckily, the British have us covered. Start your day with a great soccer game between Chelsea and Liverpool at 8:45 a.m. and then switch over to the Rugby World Cup finals (hosted by England this year) between Australia and New Zealand. Seriously — don’t miss the rugby. It’s going to be awesome.

Sunday: There’s soccer and football and baseball on all day. It’s a sports fan’s aspirational Sunday.

Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.

Pitch That Game: NFL Week 7, 2015

Hello everyone and welcome to America’s favorite game show that… has never actually happened before and no one has heard of it… it’s Pitch That Game!

Here’s how it works. As your host, I have one sentence to pitch a sporting event. If, after my pitch, you’re interested in watching, I get a point! That’s it! Usually I do this in podcast format, but I’ve got a cold this week and no one wants to listen to me cough and sniffle over a microphone, least of all me. So, the pitches will be in written form only this week.

In this episode, I pitch you, the reader, all of the NFL games this weekend, on Sunday October 25 and Monday October 26. If you want to know which games will be available on your TV this weekend, check out 506 Sports NFL. If you need help figuring out how to make sense out of what you see there, use my explanation of how to use 506 Sports NFL here.

Enjoy the show!

Sunday, October 25, 2015 9:30 a.m. ET

Buffalo Bills at Jacksonville Jaguars

All of the NFL games in London are part of an experiment to see how global American Football’s reach is. This game takes that experiment one step further in a particularly interesting way: it will be broadcast only online. It’s the first NFL game in memory that won’t be available on television, it’s only streaming on Yahoo!. This means that it will be completely free to viewers and totally global. Depending on the response, we might be seeing the first step toward a television-free or at least blended future of entertainment.

Sunday, October 25, 2015 1 p.m. ET

Cleveland Browns at St. Louis Rams

This is my choice of the week for being the game between two kind of crummy teams that turns into the most exciting, high scoring, close game of the week. The Browns have had surprising success on offense this year, thanks to much-traveled quarterback Josh McCown and a slew of underrated receiving weapons. The Rams took a big gamble during the offseason by trading quarterbacks with the Philadelphia Eagles and the jury is still out on new quarterback Nick Foles. He’s looked good at times and bad at times but so far, he’s always been on the field, competing, which they could not say for their last quarterback.

Minnesota Vikings at Detroit Lions

The Lions finally won their first game of the season last week and they did it by embracing who they really are this season: a somewhat crummy team with one absurdly prolific wide receiver. Quarterback Matthew Stafford stopped trying to play in a controlled way and just started chucking the ball to Calvin Johnson and it worked. We’ll see if they stick with this new-found devil-may-care attitude this week. The Vikings, on the other hand, play exactly the way the Lions thought they should play. They run the ball and make safe, careful throws. Unlike the Lions though, it’s working for the Vikings. They’re 3-2 and looking to pick up another unremarkable but effective win.

Houston Texans at Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins came into the season with high expectations, based largely on the perceived strength of their defense, started the season poorly, got to their bye week with a losing record, and then fired their coach. In their first game under new head coach Dan Campbell, they looked better by several degrees of magnitude and won. The Texans came into the season with high expectations, based largely on the perceived strength of their defense, and started the season poorly. Their bye week is the week after this one, and given what just happened in Miami, you’ve got to wonder if Houston’s coach feels like he’s playing for his job in this game.

New Orleans Saints at Indianapolis Colts

The Saints and Colts have both been like high performance cars with bad spark plugs this season. Both teams have great quarterbacks who are used to being able to score, almost at will, but who have struggled this year. Both Drew Brees for the Saints and Andrew Luck for the Colts have also been dealing with shoulder injuries. Both teams play their home games in domes on artificial turf. What is going on here?!? The parallels are uncanny. Here’s one big difference – both teams are coming off games last week against their team’s arch-rivals but the Saints won their rivalry game against the Atlanta Falcons while the Colts lost theirs against the New England Patriots.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Kansas City Chiefs

The Steelers will be playing with their third string quarterback because of injuries to their first and second. The Chiefs will be playing with their first string quarterback, but fans are close to the end of the rope with him. Quarterback Alex Smith has long been thought of as someone who succeeds despite lacking the arm-strength that most NFL quarterbacks have. That deficiency seems to have gotten to his head. These days, he’s not even attempting any long throws. This fact has been seized on by opposing defenses who now focus on taking away the only thing they know Smith will do. It’s a bad situation and one that doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better any time soon.

New York Jets at New England Patriots

Last week’s Patriots game was the ultimate game in terms of emotional and off-the-field plot-lines. This week’s game may be even more interesting, but all the intrigue is on the field. The Jets have one of the league’s best defenses, thanks in part to cornerback Darelle Revis who is usually able to take the opposing team’s wide receiver completely out of the game by himself. The Patriots best wide receiver is Julian Edelman, but their best pass-catcher is tight end Rob Gronkowski. If we assume Revis will nullify Edelman, than it will be up to Gronkowski to carry the Patriots to a victory and up to the Jets to figure out how to stop him. It’s an intriguing game of cat and mouse and cheese and elephant.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Washington Redskins

It’s the rapist vs. the racists. Let’s move on to the next game.

Atlanta Falcons at Tennessee Titans

The Falcons got off to a hot start this year with five wins in their first five games. A loss last week to the New Orleans Saints, a divisional rival, took just a single petal off the rose. A loss to the titans this week and the entire bloom will be off. A suspicious or pessimistic Falcons fan will have spent the past week noticing that all their team’s wins came against NFC East teams, who seem generally bad this year, and the Houston Texans, who are definitely bad this year. The Titans are no great shakes, so Falcons fans shouldn’t have too much to worry about, but the bulk of them will be worrying nonetheless.

Sunday, October 25, 2015 4:05 or 4:25 p.m. ET

Oakland Raiders at San Diego Chargers

The Raiders and Chargers are two of the three teams rumored to be moving to Los Angeles next season. If that’s true, this intrastate rivalry will deepen to new subterraneous levels of interest. As it is, they provide an interesting contrast. The Raiders are an up-and-coming team trying to take the next step and the Chargers are an established but slightly over-the-hill team trying desperately to hold on for another season of success. They’re like two ships passing in the night except they have to stop and play football against each other.

Dallas Cowboys at New York Giants

If you took away any concern about the quality of the teams, this matchup would be consistently the number one draw in the league. The Cowboys are the most loved and most hated franchise and the Giants are their biggest rival and not far behind in terms of notoriety. The mammoth character of this game in principle helps boost it up even during years like this one, when the two teams aren’t actually all that good at playing football.

Sunday, October 25, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

Philadelphia Eagles at Carolina Panthers

The Panthers defend their undefeated record this year against one of the most confusing teams in the league. When the Eagles offense is clicking, they look unstoppable. Why they can only get it to click once every other game for about a quarter is the primary question their fans are struggling with. You get the feeling that if it could click steadily for a whole game, it might jumpstart the team and launch them into Super Bowl contention. The Panthers defense has been rock solid this year, propelling their team to five straight victories despite the team’s offense being as under-the-radar as any team’s in this era of easy name recognition. Seriously – ask a football fan to name four players on the Panthers defense and see if they can do it.

Monday, October 26, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

Baltimore Ravens at Arizona Cardinals

Uh oh. The Cardinals have one of the league’s best passing offenses and the Ravens have one of the league’s worst passing defenses. This could be a catastrophe of colossal proportions. It could be bird on bird violence unlike any we’ve seen before. It’s truly difficult to imagine a tactical path that would allow Baltimore to slow Arizona’s offense down enough to win.

 

How does a snap shot work in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a snap shot work in ice hockey? Can you describe how it works and when or why a player would choose to use it?

Thanks,
Pat

Dear Pat,

There are three main kinds of shots in ice hockey: the slap shot, the snap shot, and the wrist shot. Each shot has its own technique and is distinguishable when watching hockey on TV or in person. Each shot has advantages and disadvantages and is appropriate for different situations. In this post, we’ll describe the most commonly used shot in today’s National Hockey League, the snap shot. You’ll learn how to identify it when you see it, when and what it’s used for, and even how to do it if you find yourself with a hockey stick in your hands.

The snap shot is a hybrid shot which combines the best features of the slap shot and wrist shot together in a single unstoppable combination. As we described in the post on wrist shots, the wrist shot is the quickest to get off because it requires no windup and the most accurate because it’s done in a single, fluid motion where the puck never leaves the blade of the stick. As we described in our post about slap shots, the slap shot is the most powerful shot in hockey — it can send a puck flying through the air at over 100 miles per hour. The snap shot steals elements from both shots. You can understand the snap shot as a slap shot but without most of the wind-up or as an abbreviated wrist shot. Take a look at one good example:


The clearest advantage of a snap shot is that it takes virtually no preparation to take. You can move into the snap shot motion equally well from stick handling or immediately from a pass. The snap shot doesn’t have the wind-up of a slap shot or the fluid but long motion of the wrist shot. This makes it much harder for goalies or defenders to block. Curtailing the wind-up also robs the other team of vital information about the direction of the shot. The snap shot takes advantage of the flexibility of modern hockey sticks but also allows a player to aim quite accurately.

If you want to work on taking a snap shot yourself, start with a slap shot or a wrist shot, whichever you’re more comfortable with. If you choose slap shot, take a smaller and smaller wind-up until you’re barely moving your stick back from the puck before propelling it forward and into a shooting motion. Once you’re there, raise your bottom hand up six inches to a foot on the shaft of the stick and add an extra flick of your bottom wrist right after your stick comes in contact with the puck. If you’re more comfortable starting with a wrist shot, practice leaving the puck still on the ice as you do the first half of the sweeping motion of the shot. It will feel like you’re picking the puck up in the middle of the wrist shot motion. Now add some extra oomph to the shot by slapping the puck when you first make contact.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer