2015 NFL Divisional Preview Baltimore at New England

Hello sports fans and friends, family, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, cousins and aunts of sports fans.

For many NFL football fans, this coming weekend is the best weekend of sports for the year. Like last weekend, there are four playoff games over two days. What makes it even better than last weekend is that the four teams with the best records in the league rested last weekend and now all host the winner of last weekend’s games. It’s the NFL Divisional round of the playoffs! To help prepare for the games, I invited my old friend Brendan Gilfillan to join me in a series of podcasts. We’ll go through each NFL playoff game and talk through the most interesting characters, the basic plot of the game, who we want to win and who we think is going to win, and just for fun, we’ll share our favorite player names from each playoff team. I hope you enjoy it.

The NFL Wildcard Round

NFL Football — Saturday, January 10, 2015 — Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots, 4:35 p.m. ET on NBC.

  • New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady — why is Brady the antithesis of everything the New England Patriots stand for.
  • New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski — a dude in all senses of the word.
  • New England Patriots cornerback Darrelle Revis — and how he may have his hands full this weekend.
  • Baltimore Ravens defensive tackle Haloti Ngata — why being suspended for the last four games of the season could have been the best thing for him and the Ravens.
  • Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh — how crazy is it that his recently fired little brother Jim is hanging out with him on the sidelines. What is he doing?
  • A plot synopsis of the game — Tom Brady is getting older, is this the last year for him to win a championship? Baltimore always seems to play well in New England in the playoffs, but is that a pattern or just a random series of events? Does it mean anything for this game?
  • The players on both teams whose names we most envy and enjoy
  • Who we want to win and who we think is going to win
  • And much, much more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

 

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Thursday, January 8, 2015?

  1. Everything that has happened will happen again, but it might be different: The first game between the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings since they met in last year’s Stanley Cup Final started out like a repeat of last year’s Californian dominance but ended very differently. After jumping out to a 3-0 lead, the Kings let in four straight goals and eventually lost 4-3. This makes the Rangers 12-1 in their last 13 games.
    Line: The Rangers got the best of the Kings in this rematch, but that’s little consolation for their fans.
  2. The West is the Best: I’m stealing perhaps the worst rhyme in all of rock and roll from Jim Morrison of the Doors, because in the NBA this year, it’s true. The Western conference is much better than the East, and Portland proved that last night by beating up on the Miami Heat 99-83. The Heat don’t even have injury to blame, they had their full compliment of players, they just couldn’t get anything going.
    Line: Don’t look now, but Portland has the second best record in the NBA. No one talks about them as being a championship contender, but why couldn’t they be?
  3. Dominance from Arizona: Talking about great teams that fly under the radar, the Arizona men’s college basketball team may be one as well. They’re ranked seventh in the country and last night beat Oregon 80-62, but they’re not nearly as frequently mentioned as a championship contender as Kentucky, Duke, Louisville, or even Wisconsin.
    Line: Watch out for Arizona when March Madness comes around.

Sports Forecast for Friday, January 9, 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:

  • NHL Hockey – Columbus Blue Jackets at Toronto Maple Leafs, 7:30 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NBA Basketball – Chicago Bulls at Washington Wizards, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NBA Basketball – Cleveland Cavaliers at Golden State Warriors, 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NCAA Hockey – Dartmouth at New Hampshire, 7:30, p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NCAA Basketball – Butler at St. John’s 8 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

How does icing work in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does icing work in hockey? No matter how much hockey I watch, I continue to be confused by icing. It seems like the refs will just randomly blow the whistle sometimes when the puck gets shot down the rink and then the announcers say it’s icing.

Thanks,
Gil

Dear Gil,

In hockey there are two types of calls that the refs make. There are penalties and then there are infractions. When the ref calls a foul, he or she sends one or more players off the ice into the penalty box for two or more minutes. Infractions are for lesser offenses. They are like the misdemeanors of the hockey world. Of all the infractions, icing is perhaps the most important one. In this post, I’ll explain what icing is and why it is so important in hockey.

Icing happens a player sends the puck directly from their side of the rink all the way past the goal line on the opposite side of the rink without one of the player’s teammates touching the puck and without any player on the other team having had a chance to play the puck. The team that shot the puck down the ice is penalized for icing the puck by bringing the puck all the way back to their defensive zone to restart play. Additionally, the team that has violated the icing rule is not allowed to change players while the other team can. As you might be able to guess from the rule’s description and penalty, icing is a rule designed to slant the game towards the offense by constraining the defense. Without the icing rule, a team trapped in their own end of the rink, frantically playing defense, would be able to blindly shoot the puck the length of the ice to relieve the pressure the other team is putting on them. With the icing rule, a team that does this is stuck with the same (usually very tired) players on the ice while their opposition gets to roll out a fresh set of players to set up on offense.

One thing that’s a little bit tricky about the icing rule is that it is not based on intent, only geography. It makes no distinction between a desperate defensive player who flings the puck all the way from their own goal line and a player skating up the rink on offense who dumps the puck into their offensive zone intending to retrieve it, but lets the puck go just inches on their side of the ice by mistake. Both players would be called for icing but the second scenario is much harder to see. That could be why the rule seems random to you.

Before we go into why the rule is so important, there are two key wrinkles we should cover. First — a team that is on the penalty kill (is playing with fewer players on the ice because of a penalty or series of penalties) is exempt from icing. Down a man, they can throw the puck all the way down the ice with a clear conscience. Second — it used to be that icing would not be called until the team not icing the puck had skated back to their end of the rink and touched the puck. That led to some exciting races, because remember that if a teammate of the player who iced the puck touches it first, it’s not icing. Unfortunately, it also led to a lot of horrible injuries. Normally players will let up a little if they are skating directly into the boards, but if an icing call was at stake, they didn’t. Two players, skating full speed towards unforgiving boards is not good. So, in 2013, the NHL finally adopted the “no-touch” icing rules that were prevalent in other leagues. These rules dictate that when a puck has been iced, the icing team can still race to negate the icing penalty but the end point of the race is the red face-off dot closest to the puck, not the puck itself.

Icing calls are frequently pivotal in a hockey game because, second to fouls that give one team a numerical advantage, icing is the most punitive rule in the sport. Hockey is not nearly as territorial as, say, American Football, but having a face-off in a team’s offensive zone rather than the neutral zone or defensive zone can be a big deal. The fact that icing creates this situation while also giving the offensive team an opportunity to substitute players while the other team cannot, can be a very big deal. If you want to do a little study, watch a few hockey games and keep track of the number of times your team gets a legitimate scoring chance directly from an offensive zone face-off following an icing call, versus any other offensive zone face-off. My guess is that icing will result in a much higher percentage of scoring chances.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What happened on Wednesday, January 7, 2015?

  1. Madrid defeats Madrid: When two teams from Madrid play each other in soccer, that’s bound to happen. In this case, Atletico Madrid, the less romantic and star-studded team beat Real Madrid 2-0. This was the first leg in a home and home series in the Spanish Copa del Rey tournament.
    Line: The battle of Madrid is a good way to identify the character of your friends. If they root for Atletico, they’re basically good people. If they root for Real Madrid, don’t leave them alone with your chocolate chip cookies…
  2. Boston edges Pittsburgh in OT: The hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins lived up to expectations. It was a very well played, super exciting game that went into overtime tied at 2-2. In overtime, Boston’s Patrice Bergeron deflected a shot nicely into the top corner of the Penguins net. After several minutes of review to see if he had deflected it with an illegally high stick (height, not sobriety) the determination was made that, because there wasn’t enough evidence to definitively say it wasn’t a goal, that the referees initial call of a goal would stand.
    Line: Impressive game between two teams that have had a rough time so far this year.
  3. Hot Pistons in Detroit: No one knows what is going on in Detroit, where the once woeful Pistons have absolutely caught on fire in the last two weeks. Last night’s 108-95 victory over the Dallas Mavericks, one of the best teams in the league, was their seventh straight win.
    Line: What the hell is going on with the Pistons?

Sports Forecast for Thursday, January 8, 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:

  • NHL Hockey – New York Rangers at Los Angeles Kings, 10:30 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NBA Basketball – Miami Heat at Portland Trailblazers, 10:30 p.m. ET on TNT.
  • NCAA Basketball – Arizona at Oregon, 7:30 p.m. ET on the PAC 12 Network.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

What is a corner three in basketball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a corner three in basketball? I hear announcers talking about it and I get that it’s some special kind of three point shot but I don’t know what makes it so special.

Thanks,
Lora

 

Dear Lora,

This is going to sound a little like a definition by repetition but a corner three is a three point shot in basketball taken from the corner of a basketball court. If you picture a basketball court, the three point line is the largest curve that arcs from the baseline on one side of the basket up towards the center of the court before curving back to the baseline on the other side of the basket. It is not one half of a circle, it’s a part of an ellipse. What this means is that the distance from any point on the three point line to the basket varies depending on its position. If you draw a line from the basket straight up the court, (perpendicular to the baseline), it will hit the three point line at its farthest from the basket. In the National Basketball Association (NBA), that distance is 23.75 feet. If you follow the baseline towards the corner of the court, you will hit the three point line at its closest to the basket. In the NBA, that distance is 22 feet. The corner three is the shortest shot a basketball player can take to earn their team three points if it goes in. Based just on this mundane 1.75 foot distinction, the corner three has become a cultural and tactical lodestone in the NBA.

The three point line was introduced to the NBA in 1979 and it had an instant impact on the game. Before the three point shot, basketball was dominated by big men like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. If all shots were worth the same amount, why wouldn’t the game be dominated by the players who could make the closest shots most easily? For the first twenty five years of its existence the three point line gave a measure of equality to smaller players who could shoot three-point shots with some consistency but it didn’t materially change the nature of the game. The most dominant players in basketball were still giants like Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neill or guys half a foot shorter like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant who used their ferocious athleticism to drive to the hoop and convert lay-ups, dunks, or get fouled. Sure, championship teams often had a player or two who specialized in lurking at the three point line, ready to catch a pass and shoot a quick three pointer, and yes, these guys frequently preferred the shorter corner three to the longer threes on the court (and yes, they were stereotypically less athletic and white) but this was a side-show to the main attraction.

In the past five years, this has started to change, and all signs point to us being at the front edge of a basketball revolution sparked by the corner three. When Michael Lewis published his book, Moneyball, in 2003, he didn’t just popularize the statistical revolution in baseball, he also helped legitimize the use of statistics in other sports as well. Basketball has found more success in using statistics than football or hockey, perhaps because its relatively small number of players and high number of scores and scoring attempts create simpler and better data sets than other sports. The relatively clear conclusion of a statistical analysis of basketball shots tells teams that shots from very close to the basket and three point shots from the corner are by far the most effective and efficient tactics in the game. Teams and players have acted on this knowledge and by 2015 probably 26 or 27 of the 30 NBA teams use offenses designed to maximize the team’s chances of ending possessions with either a lay-up, dunk, or corner three. Today, it’s not just the stereotypical unathletic white guy who lurks in the corner and jacks three pointers, now it’s the best players in the league who do that.

No combination of team and player represent this new way of playing better than the Houston Rockets and James Harden. Kirk Goldsberry wrote a wonderful article about this for Grantland. If you want to learn more about how the corner three is changing basketball, I suggest you go read his article! Here’s a short excerpt that summarizes the emotional and perceptual issue that basketball fans over the age of 30 are having with watching this new style.

For those of us who grew up watching Bird, Magic, and Jordan, there’s an increasing dissonance between what we perceive to be dominant basketball and what actually is dominant basketball. Sometimes the two are aligned, but they seem to be increasingly divergent — and perhaps the most tragic analytical realization is that the league’s rapidly growing 3-point economy has inherently downgraded some of the sport’s most aesthetically beautiful skill sets.

Like everything in sports, the corner three is subject to change. Whether it’s a rule change or simply a strategic adjustment, something will come along that threatens the dominance of today’s ascendant basketball shot. Until that time though, watch out for the open player in the corner!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Sports are an escape

As a sports fan, I pretty frequently am asked why I spend so much time following sports. I find this question to be pretty difficult to answer. It’s such a complicated question for me, but like, “how’s it going?” I don’t think people who ask it are actually looking for a ten minute answer. One of the reasons is that the sports world provides a consistent source of humor and inspiration. On days like today when you awake to news of a dozen artists being killed by men with AK-47s, that facet of sports is a real comfort. Sports doesn’t help you escape the horrible things in the world but it does remind you that there’s a balance. Today I want to share a couple of elements of sports humor and inspiration that cheered me up. They’re not the funniest or the most inspirational things ever but they brought a smile to my face today. Hopefully with some explanation, they will to you too.

The New York Times Trolls the New York Knicks

You wouldn’t expect irreverence from the Grey Lady, but yesterday, the New York Times took a shot at New York’s primary professional basketball team, the New York Knicks, it this short piece. The background of this piece is that the Knicks have lost almost all their games so far this season — 32 losses out of 37 games — and that was before they traded two of their best five players earlier this week to the Cleveland Cavaliers. In return, the Knicks got… basically no one who will help them win this year. Trades like this are a common peculiarity of the NBA, which has a relatively hard salary cap and therefore teams are frequently willing to make trades to benefit their financial situation even if it hurts their basketball situation. After the trade, the New York Times had this to say:

We feel it’s only merciful to give our Knicks beat writer, Scott Cacciola, a break from such woeful basketball. He deserves to see the game played at a higher level. For the next month or so, we would like to point him to some good, quality basketball, wherever it might exist. Any suggestions? Maybe there’s another N.B.A. team that warrants his attention, or perhaps a high school or a college squad. For that matter, maybe you know of a strong coed team at your local Y that Scott should write about. Tell us where to send him.

Coach suggests a reasonable strategy. Hilarity ensues.

Last night, the Detroit Pistons played the San Antonio Spurs in just one of the 2,460 NBA regular season games. It was a totally ordinary game, interesting perhaps to Pistons and Spurs fans as well as NBA junkies but what happened at the very end of the game transformed it into must-see TV; into an event; a happening. The situation was this: with less than a second left, the Pistons went ahead by 1 point. The Spurs were able to take a time-out so that they could talk about what to do once they threw the ball into play from the sideline just over the halfway line into the Piston’s half of the court. The game clock was set to 0.1 seconds. Two rules dictate what can happen here: first, the clock does not start until a player on the court touches the pass that’s thrown in; second, a tenth of a second is officially not enough time to catch the ball and shoot it, so the only thing the Spurs could try to do was to tip the ball into the basket; more a volleyball move than a basketball one. The Pistons coach, a man named Stan van Gundy who famously bears a slight resemblance to an infamous 1980s era porn star (this is already getting funny, right?) quickly recognized the situation and began to instruct his team to simply create a human wall around the basket and keep the opposing team on the outside. The exact phrase he used to convey this idea, which was caught and broadcast live on television, was equal parts profane and hysterical in its simplicity.

Mike Prada broke the whole thing down with game analysis, diagrams, screenshots, memes, and close reading for SB Nation. Give it a look!

NHL stars try their hand at sledge hockey

Okay, so this one is tainted slightly by its commercial association with Gatorade, but you know what… if a brand wants to spend money to inspire people, I’m okay with that. In an idea that was surely ripped from Guinness’ moving commercial last year that showed a group of friends playing basketball in wheelchairs so they could compete on an even playing field with the one of their group who actually needed a wheelchair, Gatorade arranged for a handful of NHL players to play in a sledge hockey game. Sledge hockey is the ice hockey equivalent of playing in a wheelchair. Players play from a seated position on a sled with a single blade running down the middle. They have two short sticks which are used for propulsion around the rink as well as stick-handling, passing, and shooting. The best part of this video for me is seeing the sledge hockey players skate circles around the NHL players as they try to adjust to playing without their legs. Still, by the end of the game, it looks like the NHL stars had picked up some tricks.

Watch videos of game highlights, the day from the perspective of the sledge players, and the NHL players.

 

What happened on Tuesday, January 6, 2015?

  1. Late goal seals a draw for Everton: A late goal from Romelu Lukako, the Belgian striker who terrorized the United States National Team in the World Cup this past summer, helped Everton tie their game against West Ham and stay alive in the English FA Cup. Everton supporters hope that this is the pebble that stops the flow of losses their team has been suffering lately.
    Line: Sometimes a draw is really more of a win for one team and a loss for the other. It’s all about expectations and momentum.
  2. Spurs finally looking mortal: After more than fifteen years of sustained excellence, the San Antonio Spurs are finally losing some basketball games. They’ve lost six of their last ten games and December was their first month with more losses than wins since the mid 1990s! Last night, they lost 105-104 to the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons were considered one of the worst teams in the league until a couple weeks ago when they made the rare move of simply cutting a big-name player, Josh Smith. NBA contracts are fully guaranteed, so teams rarely cut players, but I guess the Pistons felt they’d rather pay him not to be on their team than to be on their team. Looks like they were right, because since then they’ve won six games in a row, including last night’s game against the Spurs.
    Line: What is going on in the NBA? The Spurs are bad? The Pistons are good? I don’t believe it. No, really, I don’t believe it yet and I won’t unless it keeps happening for another month or so.
  3. Vlasic comes through again: The Minnesota Wild had two high-profile games this week on back-to-back days. They won both of them thanks to game winning goals from defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Vlasic scored with less than ten seconds left to win the Sharks game against the Jets on Monday and in overtime against the Wild last night to win that game 4-3. Vlasic is not even known as a goal scorer, but he’s certainly having a good week!
    Line: I guess when things go right for you, sometimes they go really right!
  4. Kentucky shows weakness?: The University of Kentucky has the best college basketball team in the country this year and it doesn’t seem to be very close. They haven’t lost a game yet this year and have barely even been challenged. Last night their opponent, Ole Miss, played the game of their lives and forced overtime before eventually losing. Was it a sign of real weakness or just apathy from Kentucky? Or is apathy a form of real weakness?
    Line: I still think Kentucky will go undefeated this year and win the championship but I’m a little less sure today than I was yesterday.

Sports Forecast for Wednesday, January 7, 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:

  • Spanish Copa del Rey – Real Madrid at Atletico Madrid, 3 p.m. ET on beIN Sports.
  • NHL Hockey – Boston Bruins at Pittsburgh Penguins, 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NBA Basketball – Houston Rockets at Cleveland Cavaliers, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NCAA Basketball – Colorado at Utah, 9 p.m. ET on ESPN 2.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.