Need to Know Sports: April 29, 2015

I’m introducing a new thing this week. It’s called Need to Know Sports and its a daily email that answers the question, “What do I need to know about sports today?” Whether you’re someone who needs to know everything about sports to feel alive or someone who views sports as being strictly on a need to know basis, this is a good way to start your day.

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Subject: Need to know sports: April 29, 2015

Dear Sports Fan,
What do I need to know about sports today?

Today’s Top Stories

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE REVOKES NON-PROFIT STATUS: The National Football League announced yesterday that it was dropping its tax exempt status and would in the future be filing and paying taxes as a for-profit company. While it sounds totally crazy that the league was ever considered a tax-exempt non-profit, it’s actually not, or at least not as much as it seems. What we think of as the NFL is an association of 32 football teams who play within a single structure. Each team is an independent company with its own owner or owners. These teams share equally in all of the money the league makes. The entity that had been considered a tax exempt non-profit was just the central office that helps coordinate and run the league. Now, given the size of the NFL, that’s still a material task that involves lots of money, but you could see how it could be described as non-profit. It’s job is not to make money, it’s to facilitate the making of money. Whether or not you buy that logic, the actual effect of this change will be that the league’s critics will no longer be able to criticize them for this and (and this is important) it will no longer have to file public financials. This means that high-profile NFL officials, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, most visibly, will no longer have their salaries made public. So while this seems like a step forward, it may actually be a small step backwards if you believe in transparency and accountability. Read Aaron Gordon in Vice Sports and Ken Belson in the New York Times for more information.

BASEBALL GAME IN BALTIMORE TO BE PLAYED IN EMPTY STADIUM: Major League Baseball announced that today’s game between the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox will be played but without any fans in the stadium. This follows the postponement of the two previous games scheduled between these teams which were supposed to be on Monday and Tuesday but will instead be played in May. The idea of playing a game with no fans allowed is not a new one, in fact it’s reasonably common in international and European soccer, but in that context it is done as a penalty for fan misbehavior, either violence or racism. In the United States, it’s basically never done. The only times that the New York Times could find were a 1989 basketball game played without fans because of a measles and a 1998 baseball game without fans in order to protect them from a potentially dangerously crumbly stadium. I honestly don’t know what to make of this decision other than that it seems like it will tie the league to the protests in Baltimore more firmly than canceling another game would have. Whether it is viewed as baseball siding with or against the protests, I’m not sure.

Yesterday’s Games, Today’s Conversations

National Basketball Association – The Houston Rockets won 103-94 over the Dallas Mavericks. This win ended the series and Dallas’ season. Mavericks fans will be shaking their heads, but that’s nothing new, they’ve been doing that for three straight months now, ever since their team made what turned out to be a disastrous trade to bring Rajon Rondo in from Boston. Rockets fans will have celebrated wildly last night and will now be pretending like winning in the first round is no big deal, they want to win it all. The San Antonio Spurs beat the Los Angeles Clippers 111-107 to take a 3-2 lead in their first round series. People will be talking about a non-controversial but critical goaltending call in the final seconds of the game but what they should be talking about is a vintage performance from all-time great Tim Duncan who led his team in points, rebounds, and steals, despite being 39 years old. The series now returns to San Antonio for Game Six with the Spurs having a chance to end the series on home court.

Major League Baseball – It’s no surprise that in a game featuring two of the best pitchers in the world, there wasn’t much offense. The San Francisco Giants won 2-1 over the Los Angeles Dodgers thanks to a single home run by Buster Posey. That’s how close the margins of victory are likely to be when Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner faces Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw. The Chicago Cubs continued their great start to the season by beating the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-2. The Cubs scored three runs in the second inning and never looked back. They led, the entire game.

British Premier League Soccer – By losing 1-0 to Hull City, Liverpool really hurt their chances of finishing the year as one of the top four teams in the league and earning a coveted spot in next year’s Champions League. By beating Liverpool 1-0, Hull City significantly aided their own chances of finishing the year above the bottom three teams who get relegated to a lower league. It was a big loss for Liverpool and a big win for Hull City.

Today’s Sports Forecast

NHL Hockey

Detroit Red Wings at Tampa Bay Lightning, 7:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Network: Thanks to a Tampa Bay victory in Detroit two days ago, the series is tied at 3-3 and hockey fans get to glory in yet another Game Seven. This one should really be no surprise, since the General Manager and architect of the Lightning is a former captain of the Red Wings who spent his entire 21 year career in Detroit. Everything he knows about hockey, he learned in Detroit, and he learned nearly everything. This edition of the Red Wings will have to win a Game Seven on the road without veteran defensive leader, Niklas Kronwall who is suspended after an illegal hit in Game Six. If any team can do it, they can, but it’s gonna be tough.

NBA Basketball

Brooklyn Nets at Atlanta Hawks, 7 p.m. ET on TNT: There’s a cliche in seven game playoff series that the “series doesn’t start until a road team wins a game.” If this is the case, then despite this being the fifth game of the series, it remains unstarted. The Hawks won the first two games which were in Atlanta and then the Nets won Games Three and Four in Brooklyn. Of the three remaining games, two are in Atlanta, so if this trend continues, the Hawks would advance.

Portland Trail Blazers at Memphis Grizzlies, 9:30 p.m. ET on TNT: The Grizzlies were up three games to zero in this series but lost Game Four, on Monday by a score of 99-92. In most series, the team that won the first three games would view a Game Four loss as just a small bump in the road. The only thing that suggests this might be a big bump is that the Grizzlies lost their starting point guard to a facial injury in Game Three and he’s likely to be out for a long time. Another loss here and Grizzlies fans will begin to get very, very nervous.

MLB Baseball

Toronto Blue Jays at Boston Red Sox, 6 p.m. ET on regional cable: It’s Game of Thrones season again and it’s hard to resist the lovable Blue Jays pitcher, R. A. Dickey, who uses the fantasy show’s theme song as his walk-up music before batting. He won’t get a chance to bat in this game, since the home team, the Red Sox, play in the American League where the designated hitter (DH) rule is in effect. The DH rule means that pitchers don’t ever need to hit.

Verisimilitude (or How to Sound Like a Sports Native)

ESPN has sued Verizon for testing out a new, partially unbundled approach to television pricing. Verizon was testing a new program where they would allow customers to choose theme based channel packages. Channels like ESPN have an interest in continuing to be bundled with virtually every other channel so that they can benefit from virtually any interest instead of just being purchased by sports fans. I favor bundling philosophically because it forces the majority to subsidize minority content that might not otherwise be profitable and therefore created. I’m curious to see what will happen in this legal battle of heavyweight companies. Retired baseball legend Kirk Gibson who hit one of the most famous home runs in World Series history in 1984 announced that he has Parkinson’s disease. If you’ve ever wanted to look behind the scenes at the NHL, here are two articles to read: the first is from Paul Brownfield of Vice Sports who spent a night watching playoff hockey with the members of the league’s department of player safety; the second, from Sean Leahy of Yahoo’s hockey blog, Puck Daddy, is an ode to the now former home of the New York Islanders, the Nassau Coliseum.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Photo by Eduardo Davad.

What does it mean to be a two possession game?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was watching a playoff basketball game last night and I heard the announcers talking about the game becoming a “two possession” game if someone made a free throw. It was clearly important but I’m not sure what it means. Is it about how much time is left? Or the score? What does it mean to be a two possession game? And why is it important?

Thanks,
Maria

Dear Maria,

A two possession game is a game in which one team is winning by enough points that the team that is trailing cannot catch up with a single score. The term is usually used in basketball and football, two games where scoring can be done in different increments. The number of possessions needed to tie the game is a simple mathematical equation based on how scoring works in each sport.

In football, the highest number of points that a team can score at a time is eight which they could achieve by scoring a touchdown followed by a two point conversion. A football game is said to be a “one possession” game if the team leading is leading by eight or fewer points. In basketball, the most points a team can score in one trip down the court is actually four points (a player is fouled while shooting a three point shot but still makes the basket; they are given the three points and get one chance at the free throw line to add a single point to their total) but this is so rare and so easy to prevent (just don’t foul a player taking a three point shot) that it’s generally discarded from the conversation. Instead, in basketball, a single possession game is generally thought of as one in which the team trailing is losing by three points or fewer. If you want more information (and a handy chart) on how scoring works across different sports, check out our post on the topic here. A two possession game in basketball is one in which a team is trailing by three to six points. Down by seven points? That’s a three possession game. 10, 11, or 12 would be a four possession game. Football follows the same pattern by eights. A zero to eight point deficit is a one possession game, nine to 16 is a two possession game, 17-24 is a three possession game, and so on.

The importance of whether a game is a one, two, or three possession game is tactical. While you were wrong in thinking that the term was based on the amount of time left, you were on to something. People usually talk about how many possessions apart the teams are only close to the end of the game, and end of game tactics are very much about the combination of score and time. A trailing team’s players, coaches, and fans are constantly doing a mental calculation: “how far behind are we and how much time do we have left to catch up?” One very useful short-hand to that mental math is to express both sides of the equation in terms of possessions — “how many possessions do we need to tie the game and how many possessions might there be time for?”

The end of basketball games is often defined by one team intentionally fouling the other. This topic is worth a blog post of its own, but the short story for why they do this is that a foul stops the clock. While fouling will give the other team an easy opportunity to get up to two points by successfully shooting free throws, it also extends the game by creating time for more possessions with the ball, during which the trailing team could score two or three points. What you probably saw was a player from the team that had the lead shooting a free throw that was intentionally given up by the trailing team. If that player had missed, the trailing team could have taken the ball and tied the game on that possession, whit a single shot. If the player made the free throw, it would have pushed the difference between the teams from three to four points, and meant that the trailing team would have needed to get the ball, score, and then either stop the other team from scoring or intentionally foul again, before having a chance to tie the game. The difference between a one possession game and a two possession game is a big deal.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

 

Need to Know Sports: April 28, 2015

I’m introducing a new thing this week. It’s called Need to Know Sports and its a daily email that answers the question, “What do I need to know about sports today?” Whether you’re someone who needs to know everything about sports to feel alive or someone who views sports as being strictly on a need to know basis, this is a good way to start your day.

Sign up to receive Need to Know Sports

 

Here’s a preview of today’s edition.

Subject: Need to know sports: April 28, 2015

Dear Sports Fan,
What do I need to know about sports today?

Today’s Top Stories

ROUGH PLAY IN BOSTON, DAY 2, THE FALLOUT: Yesterday everyone was talking about the rough play in Game Four of the Cleveland Cavaliers sweep of the Boston Celtics in the NBA Playoffs. Today they’ll be talking about the collateral damage in terms of injured and suspended players. On the Cavaliers, the biggest loss is Kevin Love, their third best player, who has a dislocated shoulder and has already been ruled out for the next round of the playoffs. That’s at least two weeks, so you know it’s a major injury. For a detailed analysis of the injury, check out Jeff Stotts on his basketball injury blog, In Street Clothes. The Cavaliers other loss is to suspension. J.R. Smith, who basically punched a Celtics player, was given a two game suspension and will miss the first two games of the next round. The Celtics, were eliminated from the playoffs in the game on Sunday, so their loss of Kelly Olynyk to a one game suspension is a non-issue. The good news is that Jae Crowder, the guy who got punched by J.R. Smith, only has a sprained knee and nothing worse.

ORIOLES GAME POSTPONED IN BALTIMORE: When real life and sports intersect, it’s sometimes good to see sports give way. That’s what happened yesterday in Baltimore when the baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox last night was postponed due to the protests in the city. The Baltimore Sun noted in their article on the topic that this was the first non-weather related postponement in Baltimore since the week following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. It’s worth reading up on the situation in Baltimore from more hard-news sites than this one, but for a sports perspective, read a statement from the Orioles Executive Vice President (and son of the owner) John Angelos. It’s pieced together from Twitter, so it’s not the best writing, but the sentiments are good and seem to come from the heart.

Yesterday’s Games, Today’s Conversations

National Hockey League – The Washington Capitals won 2-1 over the New York Islanders in a climactic Game Seven. This is a giant step forward and a big relief for the Capitals, who have a reputation for falling apart in the playoffs and especially in Game Sevens. For the Islanders, the loss is particularly jarring, because it means they’ve played their last game in their long-time Long Island home stadium, the Nassau Coliseum. Next year, they move to Brooklyn. The Tampa Bay Lightning won 5-2 over the Detroit Red Wings to force a Game Seven in that series as well. That game will be on Wednesday night and is must-watch television. There won’t be any NHL playoff games tonight, so take a deep breath and prepare for Wednesday.

National Basketball Association – There were two teams facing playoff elimination yesterday and both of them won and will live to see (and play) another game at least. The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Chicago Bulls 94-84 and the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Memphis Grizzlies 99-92. The Bucks are now down three games to two in the series while the Trail Blazers are down three games to one. Still, I’d give the Trail Blazers a better chance (still not good though) to come back and win the series, because the Grizzlies have suffered some serious injury losses. The Brooklyn Nets beat the Atlanta Hawks 120-115 in overtime. This evens their series at two games apiece. It’s a surprising result given that the Hawks had by far the best record in the Eastern Conference this season and the Nets just barely made the playoffs. If you want to sound smart and a little smarmy, you can point out that the Hawks don’t have a star player and suggest that no matter how good a team works together, without a star, they are prone to playoff losses.

Today’s Sports Forecast

NBA Basketball

Dallas Mavericks at Houston Rockets, 8 p.m. ET on TNT: This might be the last game of an era in Dallas. With their team down 3-1 in the series, a loss tonight would end the season and could end the career of Dirk Nowitzky, a great player and fan favorite who has played for the Mavericks since 1998.

San Antonio Spurs at Los Angeles Clippers, 10:30 p.m. ET on TNT: This is the best of the eight first round series in the NBA. It’s tied 2-2 and both teams feel, with good reason, that if they can win this series, they have a legitimate shot at winning the championship.

MLB Baseball

Pittsburgh Pirates at Chicago Cubs, 8 p.m. ET on regional cable: There’s something about both these lovable losers that makes me want to feature them in my forecasts. I’m not sure what it is, something about tradition and pathos mixed together.

San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Dodgers, 10 p.m. ET on regional cable: This baseball game is the rare early season one that might be good enough to tempt even a neutral or casual fan. The two pitchers in this game are among the very best in the world: Madison Bumgarner for the Giants and Clayton Kershaw for the Dodgers. In the past, Kershaw has been better during the regular season but Bumgarner holds the trump cards of having been better in the playoffs and having the better name.

BPL Soccer

Liverpool at Hull City, 2:45 p.m. on NBC Sports Network: You’d think a game between the fifth best and fifth worst team in a league wouldn’t be interesting, but because the top four teams in the Premier League get coveted spots in next year’s Champions League and the bottom three get relegated to a lower league, this game is vitally important for both teams.

Verisimilitude (or How to Sound Like a Sports Native)

David Aldridge’s weekly NBA column contains some amazing gems from an interview with nerdy NBA player, Brook Lopez, including his thoughts (and fears) about time travel. Read Johnathan Gilbert’s New York Times introduction to the strange sport of Footgolf and the Argentinian athletes who dominate it. NBA coach Rick Carlisle literally taped his mouth shut during a press conference two nights ago as a silent (and prop based) comedic protest against what he thought was unfair refereeing towards his team. Watch the video on Deadspin here. Talking about video, ESPN2 aired live coverage of a video game tournament and people freaked out a bit. Gamer site Kotaku wrote about it. To feel good about the world, watch this SB Nation video of widespread collusion in a Kansas University alumni football game to let 89-year-old former Kansas running back Bryan Sperry score a long touchdown. It’s amazing and I hope I can run like that when I’m 89!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Photo of Bert and Earnie by See-ming Lee.

Sports Stories: Meet Jehangir Madon

Everyone has a sports story. As part of my mission to create peace in the world between sports fans and non-sports fans, I am doing a set of interviews of people on both sides of the line. Whether you’re a die-hard fan with their favorite player’s face tattooed onto their body or someone who is not a fan but whose life intersects with sports in some way, you have a valuable story to tell. Sign up today to tell your story on our easy to use booking page.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Jehangir Madon. Jehangir is a man of international sports fandom whose enthusiastic and thoughtful nature make his sports story worth learning. You can read a synopsis of our interview below or listen to it in full here.

 

Name: Jehangir Madon
Current Location: Brooklyn
Home town: Bombay (now called Mumbai,) India

Teams:

  • The Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL
  • India in international cricket
  • The Williams team in Formula One racing
  • Otherwise, teams wearing blue.

How did you become an Eagles fan?

“I became a fan of the eagles for two reason within five plays. I had never really watched football before I came to America. It was on TV a few times and I was like, “Ehh whatever.” But then one day, I was home and it was the playoffs and there was nothing to do in the afternoon. So I turn on the TV, and there was this playoff game between the Eagles and the Giants, I think it was the 2000 playoffs. And on the first play the Eagles kick off and the Giants take the ball and run it all the way back for a touchdown. Now I would normally have rooted for the Blue team, you know, I like blue, but I was a little older so I say, “I’m going to cheer for the team that’s losing” and that was the Eagles. And then they had a black quarterback who was running around and I had never seen that. I did not know that Randall Cunningham existed. I didn’t know about anybody before McNabb who did that. So I thought, “Oh my God, this guy is so cool, I’m going to cheer for him.” And then I did cheer for them the whole game… and they lost.”

What’s your earliest sports memory?

“My earliest sports memory is the 1994 football World Cup. It was the final between Brazil and Italy. We took our TV from the living room and put it in the kitchen because I lived in a house with ten people and the kitchen was the only place where nobody would sleep… So me, my Dad’s brother and his son took the TV and we watched this really interesting and engrossing match… A zero zero draw, and I was cheering for Italy because they were wearing blue… and they lost… I was living in India, that match was going on at 2 in the morning I think that’s why I remember it because it was such an odd time for me to be allowed to be awake.

How do sports play into your family life? What about your group of friends? or dating life?

“Dating life, it’s mostly me watching sports while my girlfriend just lies in my arms and goes to sleep. She enjoys it and I enjoy it.”

“With my friends, during the NFL, I like to hang out, get a drink and watch some games. It’s a nice social thing. I think that’s why I like sports. I just remember sitting in my house with my uncle and my brother sitting and just watching a game very intently it’s something you do together and it’s fun to cheer for something. Or cheer against something, it’s great, especially when you win when you’re not supposed to.”

What do you think being an Eagles fan says about you? What makes Eagles fans different from everyone else?

“Somehow you just believe that this year you’ll win even when all of the statistics say that there’s zero chance. But there’s always this hope.”

On fidelity to a sports team:

“When you choose a team you cannot switch, nobody respects your fandom then, especially yourself.”

How does rooting for the eagles fit into your weekly routine?

“During the NFL season, it’s all NFL. I try to catch the game at a friends house or lately I haven’t been watching because I’ve been in New York and there’s lots of nicer things to do on Sunday… What’s changed over the past four years is fantasy football, it really pulls at you and makes you want to cheer for weird things.”

“It’s become less intense. I remember in 2004 or 5 when the eagles were really good, it was like, this week I’m really excited. Because once you start losing a lot, it makes it hard to look forward to, you know, the pain that’s coming if you’re going to lose.”

During the offseason — “There’s nothing going on, it’s just nonsense stories, there’s no reason to keep up with it. And that’s the best thing about the NFL you can really really be into it and it’s only one third of the year.

Who is your all-time favorite player from the Eagles?

“Donovan McNabb. He just seemed like a funny nice guy and no matter what happened, he always took the blame. I always liked him because he was a leader and when he was younger he did really amazing things. I think we just forget when we see somebody like Kaepernick doing these things now, we’re like, “oh my God, it’s never been done before” although it’s been done every three years, McNabb has done it, Vick did it. And when [McNabb] was in his prime, he was the best at it.”

Who is your all-time football nemesis?

“Fantasy football makes it hard to hate anybody. cause you can have them on your team next year. I think fantasy football has tempered my love and hate for people in the nfl because I know they could be on my team next year so I can’t really hate them and I don’t want to love them too much because I know they could be gone. It’s made me a more moderate football watcher.”

What’s the most important thing you’d like non-sports fans to understand about sports?

“Most of us realize that it’s just sports and when it ends its okay but that doesn’t mean when you’re cheering you don’t cheer with all your heart. Cause the real extacy you only get when you really want someone to win and you don’t expect them to win and somehow they make it and there’s few things in life that are that good.”

The 'this game is important' playoff series trick

It’s playoff time in the NBA and NHL, so if you walk into a sports bar or, you know, your living room, you’re likely to bump right into a great basketball or hockey game. The basketball and hockey playoffs follow virtually the same format. Each has four rounds and each round is a seven game series where two games play each other for up to seven games. The first team to win four games wins the series. Once a team has won four games, the series is over (they don’t play seven games no matter what) and one team advances to the next round of the playoffs and the other team is eliminated. The games in a series are referred to by number: Game One, Game Two, etc. When you watch a playoff game on TV, you’ll almost invariably hear the announcers talk about a statistic that goes something like this:

Teams that win Game X win the series Y percent of the time.

This statistic bugs me because it’s misleading and a transparent ploy on the part of the television networks to retain viewers. Here’s why it’s misleading.

When we hear a percentage, we’re used to evaluating it as if either 0% or 50% is the baseline. If I hear that “people who eat apples at 2:03 p.m. get hit by cars within the next two hours 54% of the time” I’m going to assume the baseline is close to 0% and go out of my way to avoid apples at that time. If I hear that “teams that wear green win 49% of the time,” that sounds to me like the baseline is 50% and green is a slight disadvantage. The difference with this statistic is that the baseline is not 50%. Not even close! One win in a seven game series is a big deal! Teams only need to win four games to win the whole series. A victory in any game is a 25% contribution to the final goal. I don’t know exactly what the math is here (math friends, help!) but I’m going to say, since they’re 1/4 of the way to winning, let’s add 12.5% (1/4 of 50) to 50% and use that as the baseline. Just by winning a game (no matter what number game it is) a team has materially contributed to its own task of winning the series. Fine, you say, “but the statistics you hear are even higher than 62.5%.” Just wait, there’s more.

The next tricky trick trick in this misleading statistic is a problem with how the data is selected. In my last post about misleading statistics, the one on runs in basketball, I described a trick about including too little data in a statistic. Here we have the opposite problem. Instead of excluding data, the clever (and dramatic) people who create these statistics include too much data. Almost every year, there are at least a few seven game series in the NHL and NBA playoffs that are mismatches. The playoffs are actually designed to create this. The way they work is that the best team in the regular season (the #1 seed) plays the worst qualifying playoff team (the #8 seed) in the first round. #2 plays #7, #3 plays #6, and #4 plays #5. Now, these are professional sports, so usually the difference between a #1 and an #8 is not as great as you might see in March Madness. Still, some #1 teams are just way, way better than the #8 team they face. Maybe the #8 wins one game but loses the series 4-1. Not infrequently, a superior team will actually win four straight games, which is called a sweep.

Sweeps are legitimate playoff series, but they’re not usually all that suspenseful. In a matchup between a clearly superior team and a clearly inferior team, use of one of these statistics would be silly because the number of the game is immaterial next to the fact that one team is better. In the NBA, the Cleveland Cavaliers just swept the Boston Celtics. The Cavaliers have the best basketball player in the world, LeBron James, and their second and third best players are almost unanimously thought of as better than anyone the Celtics have on their team right now. The Cavaliers are better. The big problem with this, is that the data gets lumped in with all the rest of the data. When you add their data in, it’s going to inflate the correlation between winning Games One through Four with winning the series.

What the statistic is really trying to convince us of is that the specific number of the game is important — that this game is more important than the one before it or after it in the series. To do that, it uses too much data (including series between teams of very different skills) and also our own assumption about what the baseline of a percentage statistic should be. It’s possible that some number games do have more impact on the result of a series between two evenly matched teams than others and I’d be very interested in seeing a true analysis of that. Until then, ignore what any commentator tells you about the importance of a game. Unless, of course, that game is Game Seven, in which case, even I can tell you that the team that wins Game Seven wins the series 100% of the time.

Need to Know Sports: April 27, 2015

I’m introducing a new thing today. It’s called Need to Know Sports and its a daily email that answers the question, “What do I need to know about sports today?” Whether you’re someone who needs to know everything about sports to feel alive or someone who views sports as being strictly on a need to know basis, this is a good way to start your day.

Sign up to receive Need to Know Sports

 

Here’s a preview of today’s edition.

Subject: Need to know sports: April 27, 2015

Dear Sports Fan,
What do I need to know about sports today?

Today’s Top Stories

ROUGH PLAY IN BOSTON: LeBron James and his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, advanced to the next round of the NBA basketball playoffs yesterday by beating the Boston Celtics 101-93 for their fourth win in a row. Winning four games in a row in a seven game series is called a sweep and it usually means that things went smoothly for the winners. That’s not the case for the Cavaliers who may be missing two of their key players after a series of rough and possibly dirty plays in yesterday’s game. Kevin Love got tangled up with Boston Celtic, Kelly Olynyk, in the first quarter of the game and ended up with a dislocated shoulder. Ouch. Later in the game, J.R. Smith, a Cavalier who is known to be a bit of a lunatic, swung his fist backwards wildly and connected with the head of Celtic, Jae Crowder. While falling to the ground, stunned, Crowder injured his knee and, after being helped off the court, was not able to continue playing.

There are four main opinions to have about this, none of them incredibly nuanced, and if you talk to sports fans today, you’ll probably hear all four.

  1. The Celtics are full of dirty players and are an abomination to the sport of basketball.
  2. The Cavaliers are full of dirty players and are an abomination to the sport of basketball.
  3. What happened yesterday was terrible. That type of play is not what basketball is about.
  4. What happened yesterday was great! That type of play was totally common in the 1980s when basketball was a great sport. Since then, it’s gotten way too sanitary to be truly enjoyable.

Feel free to take any of these positions in a sports conversation today. Or choose ONE of the top two and ONE of the bottom two. People will also be speculating about who should and will be suspended.

THE HEAD INJURY CRISIS COMES TO SOCCER: The concussion and brain injury crisis reached beyond American Football and reared its ugly (yes) head yesterday in a high profile British Premier League football game. During the first half of a game between first place Chelsea and third place Arsenal, the Arsenal goalie came out to defend against Chelsea player Oscar and their heads collided violently. Oscar seemed to have been unconscious in the air and was certainly out for some time after he hit the ground. Nonetheless, he returned to play and made it until halftime when he was reassessed and then sent to the hospital.

One of the major problems with addressing head injuries in soccer is that, unlike football or hockey, substitutions are severely limited. Teams are only allowed three total substitutions during a game and if a player has to be assessed for an injury, their team must play with one fewer player until she either returns or is replaced by a substitute. Once substituted, a player cannot return in that game. These rules make it extremely likely that players with brain injuries, even obvious, spectacular ones like today, will play through them instead of being assessed and treated. While a lack of immediate reform on this point seems insane, remember that these injuries have been happening for more than seventy five years and it’s only seemed insane to a majority of viewers for the past five years or so. Add to that the complexity of trying to negotiate a rule change between a dozen or more country-based leagues in Europe, and the slow pace of change is more understandable. Still, every injury like today’s will help push the soccer and sports world towards reform.

Yesterday’s Games, Today’s Conversations

National Hockey League – The first round (of four) playoff series in the NHL are coming to an end. Yesterday’s two games eliminated two teams and advanced two others to the next round. The Minnesota Wild won 4-1 over the St. Louis Blues. The Blues have now lost in the first round of the playoffs for three years running. This either means they are fatally flawed underachievers OR victims of the random small sample sized experiment that the playoffs are. The Montreal Canadiens finally ended the Ottawa Senators magical run over the past two months by beating them 2-0. The Senators were way down in the standings and not expected to even make the playoffs but no magic will soothe the burn of having lost to their neighbors and rivals, the Canadiens.

National Basketball Association – Los Angeles Clippers won 114-105 over the San Antonio Spurs: The most highly anticipated first round matchup in the NBA is turning into the league’s most competitive one. The Spurs are the defending champions but they come into this series as the underdog. Now tied at 2-2, the series returns to Los Angeles for game 5 and, if needed, game 7. You’d think this would give the advantage to the Clippers but my money is still on the Spurs. Quick soundbite if you want to sound savvy — point out that home-court advantage has been slowly disappearing this year and say that this lessons the advantage the Clippers once would have had. The story of yesterday’s game was the excellent play of Austin Rivers, son of Clippers coach Doc Rivers. Doc traded for his son part of the way through the year, a move which was widely scorned by fans and sports writers, but for one day at least, those critics will have to eat their words.

Today’s Sports Forecast

NBA Basketball

Atlanta Hawks at Brooklyn Nets, 7 p.m. ET on NBA TV: Atlanta leads the seven game series 2-1 but Brooklyn won the last game convincingly. Atlanta lacks star power and Brooklyn lacks the ability to play beautiful basketball.

Milwaukee Bucks at Chicago Bulls, 8 p.m. ET on TNT: The Chicago Bulls lead this series 3-1. With the game in Chicago and the Bulls firing on all cylinders, there’s little drama to be found here.

Memphis Grizzlies at Portland Trail Blazers, 10:30 p.m. ET on TNT: Memphis is up 3-0 in this series. Portland may with this game but they almost definitely won’t win the series.

NHL Hockey

Tampa Bay Lightning at Detroit Red Wings, 7 p.m. ET on CNBC: Down three games to two in this series, all the pressure for this game is on the Lightning. Lose and they’re eliminated from the playoffs. Win and they get to fly back to Florida to host a deciding Game Seven on Wednesday. The Red Wings are a veteran team and while they’d prefer to win this one, they won’t be afraid to go on the road and win game seven.

New York Islanders at Washington Capitals, 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network: This is by far the most exciting game on the sports calendar for today. This is game seven of the series between the Islanders and Capitals. Each team won three of the first six games, so this one is for everything. Game sevens are better than single elimination tournament games, like you get in March Madness, because the stakes are the same but the tactical and emotional plots have had six games over the past two weeks to build.

Verisimilitude

Read The Economist’s obituary of cricket legend Richard Benaud. Benaud was an incredible Australian cricket player who followed up his long playing career by becoming one of the most well known cricket television commentators. I loved learning a little about Benaud’s life and admired his decision to leave commentating in 2005 when the rights to televise cricket were bought by a cable channel. Benaud felt that “the joy of watching cricket should be free for everyone.” I laughed out-loud at the description of his commenting style as “almost prissily bipartisan.”

Glory in Bruce Ely’s amazing photograph of Portland Trail Blazers, Robin Lopez, and Memphis Grizzlies, Zach Randolph preparing to snag a rebound.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Photo of Two Rhesus Macaques at Blijdorp Zoo, Rotterdam (Netherlands) by Jinterwas.

Sport as an element of recovery

We all live with the nagging fear and sure knowledge that at some point, someone we love will be taken from us. If all goes well and the ideal, natural order of things comes to pass, this means we will lose our grandparents before our parents, and our parents before our children lose us. For many, that order is interrupted violently by disease, misfortune, or violence. Tradition and cultural institutions are a way to cope with loss and serve as both assistants and markers on the road to recovery. Today we have two stories of people who have turned to sport as a form of recovery. Our third story, just as a lighthearted bonus, is something completely different.

Shedding the Blockers

by Robert Mays for Grantland

The athlete who overcomes personal tragedy to accomplish great things in his or her sport is by now virtually a cliche. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good story though. People’s lives, situations, and characters are infinitely varied and interesting to learn about. Almost invariably, to learn about someone’s history is to develop a fondness for them. When the NFL draft comes around, I will be rooting for Danny Shelton to land in a good spot. He deserves it.

From the start, it was obvious to [coach Jeff] Choate what he had in the middle of Washington’s defense. In the Huskies’ season opener, a late-August game in Hawaii, [Danny] Shelton played 78 snaps. Even at 339 pounds — a number Choate calls “conservative” — Shelton was on the field for all three downs. He would finish the season with nine sacks, but his presence also created opportunities all over the Washington defense. Like Vince Wilfork — a player to whom Shelton has been compared often in the lead-up to the draft — single-teaming him with a center allows him to control both inside gaps, freeing up linebackers to worry about plays further outside. After the first series in Washington’s 27-26 loss at Arizona, Choate noticed the Wildcats were content to not double-team Shelton at all. Shelton finished the game with nine total tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, and a sack.

Away from football at Washington, he tried to be more of a Polynesian and a mentor with a 3.7 GPA than an athlete. This fall, he led a First-Year Interest Group on campus, helping mentor incoming students about the difficulties of the transition to college. He’s the first athlete Barker can remember asking to be involved with the program. Early on, when students would ask if he played football, he would lie. “I’d tell them I played tennis,” Shelton says. A few said he should give football a try. He told them he’d think about it.

Still in the Game

by Rick Maese for the Washington Post

While players, coaches, and owners get the spotlight, every professional team has dozens of stage-manager or techie type running around, doing incredible work to support them. These people, like Monica Barlow, who before her death was in charge of media and public relations for the Baltimore Orioles, are every bit as passionate about their teams as the people who wear the uniforms. Once in a very long while, we get a window into what it’s like to live for a team beyond simply being a fan. The view is as fascinating as the story of Monica’s death is heartbreaking.

Sports helps explain relationships. It connects generations, spouses, friends, parents and children. It becomes an expression of love and later a channel for grief. People etch team logos on headstones and sprinkle ashes on sports fields. For someone grieving a loss, a trip to the ballpark might offer a respite, a chance to escape their pain. For others, it’s a time to embrace their loss and feel closer to a loved one. For Barlow, it was everything. Baseball had dictated his routine for so long. Monica was gone, but the game would continue.

Predators’ Pekka Rinne Gets Puck Stuck In Pads For The Longest Time

by Darren Hartwell for NESN

After those two tear-jerkers, it’s good to cry with laughter for a change. A three minute delay in a hockey game because no one can find the puck… despite knowing that it went into the goalie and never came out? That’s a tear-jerker of a different sort!

Pekka Rinne doesn’t just save pucks. He makes them disappear. The Nashville Predators goaltender was his usual stellar self in Game 4 of his team’s Stanley Cup playoff series against the Chicago Blackhawks. With under six minutes remaining in the first overtime period, however, Rinne took his talents a bit too far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaqn-wHLg2M

What are ideal conditions for a marathon?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was watching the Boston Marathon this year and the announcers talked about how difficult the chilly, drizzly weather was for runners. I thought that weather would have been good for running. What’s up with that? What are ideal conditions for a marathon?

Thanks,
Cathy

Dear Cathy,

The weather for the Boston Marathon this year was between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit with light rain and a 14 mph ESE wind. That’s not ideal, but mostly because of the wind. Temperature and wind are the two main factors that effect running with precipitation a distant third. These factors affect elite runners and normal runners (if we can call anyone who is able to run 26.2 miles, normal) differently. We’ll go into each one of the factors separately but for the TL:DR crew, the ideal conditions are cool, dry, and depending on the course, either still or with wind pushing the runners from behind.

When I think about my ideal temperature for running, I think of a nice day somewhere in the high 60s. Not hot enough to be uncomfortable but not cold enough to make you want to bundle up or hang out inside eating Cheetos and watching TV. It turns out that I’m wrong, or at least, people who run marathons don’t share my Cheeto eating proclivities. The ideal temperature for marathon running is pretty much what we had for the Boston Marathon this year. According to the New York Times the best temperature range for marathoning is between 41 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. For every five degrees of warmth above that, elite marathoners slowed down by an average of .4 percent. The effect of heat on normal runners is around double that on elite runners, perhaps because “slower runners spend more time on the course, and the temperature generally rises through the day. Or it could be because slower runners tend to run with a larger pack. A tightly clustered group of runners generates heat and blocks it from dissipating.”

Wind is, perhaps, even a bigger factor than temperature. As you might expect, running with the wind at your back makes you faster, while running into the wind makes you slower. What you might not expect is that the effect is not even. Not even close. A headwind slows down a runner much, much more than a tailwind helps a runner. Many marathon courses have runners moving in all four directions over the 26 miles. When running on one of these courses, unless you were to get freakishly lucky and have the wind change direction to support you four times during the day, you’d be better off having no wind. The Boston Marathon is not like that — its course is pretty much a straight line traveling Northeast from Hopkinton to downtown Boston. This means that the wind is going to be a constant battle or boon all day. A few years ago, Geoffrey Mutai won the race with a time of 2:03:02 which would have smashed the World Record but wasn’t eligible because he was running with a tailwind of 15 to 20 miles per hour the whole way. In fact, the Boston Marathon is not eligible for World Records at all because it only travels in one direction. This year, that ESE wind was neither a true headwind or a tailwind. For most of the race, it would have been simply pushing runners left and forcing them to lean a little to keep going straight. Over the final five miles or so though, the course goes a little bit closer to due East where the wind would have been mostly a headwind, slowing the runners’ progress.

Precipitation, unless it is severe enough to threaten footing, or in Boston this winter, the ability to see over the snowbanks, is normally only a factor because of its effect on how people experience temperature. All the studies that I saw on temperature and marathon running actually weren’t about temperature, they were about “WGBT” or “wet bulb globe temperature.” This is one of those measures, like wind chill or heat index that attempts to more accurately measure what the weather feels like in a single number. Precipitation makes it feel colder, whether it’s rain on an 85° day or snow on a 30° day. On a day like this past Monday, when the raw temperatures were already ideal for marathon running, the rain was an unnecessary distraction. If it had been 10 degrees warmer, the rain would actually have helped the runners.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

What happened on Thursday, April 24, 2015?

  1. In the world of the hopeful, the Pirates are the king: At least for a day. The Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates, both teams who have lost for a long, long time and who are more hopeful this year than ever, played yesterday in a matinee baseball game. It was a good one. The Cubs led 4-2 after five innings but lost the lead sixth and then the game in the seventh both to RBI hits by Gregory Polanco. On the Cubs side, Kris Bryant, their star-studded rookie got his first start in his second game and has still not gotten a hit.
    Line: If things go the way we’re used to them going, the Cubs and the Pirates will be a nice story until around August and then the Cardinals will turn it on and leave them in the dust.
  2. Lightning strikes three times: The Detroit Red Wings were securely skating to a 2-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning before the Lightning struck three times in a row to win the game. Their first goal came with less than seven minutes to go in the game, they scored a second to force overtime with only a smidge over four minutes left. In overtime, it only took two minutes and 25 seconds for Tyler Johnson of the Lightning to end the game with a bad angle shot into an open net created by a rare overtime three on one break.
    Line: The Red Wings will be shaking their heads all the way to Game Five in Tampa Bay.
  3. Predictable results, unpredictable means: The NBA playoffs this year, as they often are, have been characterized by favorites winning. All three favorites won again last night but two of them needed overtime to do it. The Chicago Bulls beat the Milwaukee Bucks 113-106 in double overtime to take a 3-0 lead in their series. The Golden State Warriors beat the New Orleans Pelicans 123-119 in single overtime but needed a heroic 39 point fourth quarter just to erase a 20 point deficit and get there. Likely MVP, Steph Curry had 40 points including an incredible last second three pointer.
    Line: You’d believe the results but if you hadn’t seen the games (or the highlights,) you wouldn’t believe how they happened.

Sports Forecast for Friday, April 24, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • MLB Baseball – New York Mets at New York Yankees, 7 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NHL Hockey – Ottawa Senators at Montreal Canadiens, 7 p.m. ET on CNBC.
  • NBA Basketball – Los Angeles Clippers at San Antonio Spurs, 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • And more!

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