basketball Archives - Page 7 of 14

What's the lesson of the greatest NBA shot ever?

Yesterday I was listening to the most recent episode of Bill Simmons’ BS Report podcast. This was a multi-part episode with Simmons interviewing a number of NBA figures, including Miami Heat starter Chris Bosh. Bosh was a member of the so-called Big Three in Miami along with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, who went to four straight NBA Finals and won two. Bosh and Simmons were discussing a pivotal moment in the Heat’s 2012-13 Championship run – a last second, game tying three point shot by Ray Allen. Simmons and Bosh, sports writer and player alike were marveling at Ray Allen’s obsession with practice. Allen, they said, was perhaps the only person in the NBA who had actually practiced, over and over again, the precise footwork and body positioning required for that exact situation.

Before we get to what they said about it, let’s set the scene quickly for those of you who don’t know the moment they’re talking about. The NBA Finals is a best four out of seven game series. The San Antonio Spurs were up three games to two entering into the sixth game. After three quarters, the Spurs led 75-65. A ten point lead is not insurmountable, but it’s not easily dismissed either. The pressure had to have been enormous on the Heat. They were at home, in Miami, knowing that if they lost this game, they would lose the series and their season would be over. With nineteen seconds left, the Spurs were clinging onto a three point lead but Miami had the ball. Their best player, LeBron James, took a three point shot to tie the game but it hit the rim and did not go in. Chris Bosh, the subject of Simmons’ interview, was in the right spot and grabbed the rebound. As he caught the ball, his teammate Ray Allen who was also trying to get the rebound, was in virtually the same spot on the floor as him, in the paint, right near the basket. As Allen sees Bosh catch the ball, he quickly takes four or five running steps backwards, without turning his body from Bosh. Bosh passes Allen the ball. Allen Catches as he is running backwards, stops right in the three feet or so of room between the three-point line and the out-of-bounds line, and without touching either, he shoots the ball and makes a three point shot to tie the game. It’s an amazing play. Watch it here:

Now back to the BS Report. Here’s how the conversation went:

Chris Bosh: You never know when you’re gonna shoot a back-pedal three in the corner.

Bill Simmons: I really think it was the greatest shot ever because I think he’s the only person who would ever practice the footwork it took to go backwards and not go out of bounds. I don’t even know who else would have thought to practice that.

Bosh: That showed me that you should work on everything because you never know when you’re gonna have to use it or when you’re gonna have to go in your bag and say hey I’ve practiced this a million times and to have the body recognition and the muscle memory to actually do it.

With all respect to Simmons and Bosh, who together know a hundred times more about basketball than I do, I think their conclusion is just slightly off. What they believe they’ve learned from this is that, really, you should practice everything, just in case you need it. That’s simply not practical. You and I don’t have time to practice everything we be called on to do. As a writer, I could practice writing haiku, sonnets, long-form narrative pieces, interviews, criticism, novels, short-stories, plays, and skip codes, but I don’t have time to do that, nor would I get very good at any of it if I practiced all of it.

Ray Allen did something more clever than practice everything. He considered his own strengths as a basketball player and his role within the team and then did a better job than most at figuring out what might be required. Once he figured out what that set of activities was, he practiced them with a discipline and regularity unknown to most. That practice helped him not just in making the shot but also in identifying what he had in his repertoire that would fit the situation. The fact that he identified how he could help his team in this particular situation (run backwards to the corner so that if Bosh passes me the ball, I can shoot a shot I know I can make) is just as necessary and remarkable as the fact that he made it.

The lesson of perhaps the greatest shot in NBA history is this: identify what you might be called upon to do; practice those behaviors obsessively so that you can identify and execute at the perfect moment.

2015: North Carolina vs. Duke

In 2015 Dear Sports Fan will be previewing the biggest sporting event of the year in each of the 50 states in the United States plus the district of Columbia. Follow along with us on our interactive 2015 US Map.

North Carolina — North Carolina vs. Duke

College Basketball — February 18, 2015 — 9 p.m. ET on ESPN. Also, March 7, 2015.

It may seem funny that we chose a regular season college basketball game as the biggest sports event in North Carolina for 2015. The thing is… we’re right. There is no bigger sporting event in North Carolina than when Duke University and the University of North Carolina play in men’s college basketball. Indeed, it would be easy to make the case that there’s no bigger college basketball game all year than when these two teams play.

It’s said that familiarity breeds contempt and Duke and North Carolina are a prime example of this. The two schools are only eight miles apart and have played against each other at least two times a year since 1920. For people who live in North Carolina, it’s hard to remain uncommitted to one side or another. You’re either a Blue Devil (Duke supporter) or you bleed Tar-Heel Blue (North Carolina’s nickname is the Tar Heels and they wear baby blue but don’t call it that… 😉 ) It’s a rivalry that cuts through race, class, and family. The Wikipedia article on the rivalry has two wonderful quotes which together paint a wonderful picture of sports antipathy. The first is from Will Blythe’s book about the rivalry, To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever:

To legions of otherwise reasonable adults, it is a conflict that surpasses sports; it is locals against outsiders, elitists against populists, even good against evil… The rivalry may be a way of aligning oneself with larger philosophic ideals.

The other quote is from former U.S. Congressperson Brad Miller, who actually told an AP reporter this in 2012:

If Duke was playing against the Taliban, then I’d have to pull for the Taliban.

What’s the plot?

With Duke and North Carolina, there’s a macro plot about the rivalry as a whole and a micro plot about each edition. We’ll start macro. Like many great college rivalries, the one between Duke and North Carolina can be characterized easily as a rich private school against a public school. Duke is the elite, private school. If you know it mostly for its sports teams or don’t know much about it at all, it’s easy to not realize just how elite it is. Duke accepts only 10% of its undergraduate applicants and 4% of its graduate level applicants. It’s regularly listed as one of the top ten colleges in the country by all sorts of organizations that do that type of ranking. It has an enormous endowment — over $7 billion — and it spends a lot too — over a billion dollars in 2012 on research alone! Duke students and alumni are quite reasonably proud of their school and that pride translates for many of them into obsessive rooting for their school’s sports teams, men’s basketball first and foremost. North Carolina plays the role of the public school. The university is, indeed, a public school, as you can tell from its size — 18,000 undergrads and 12,000 graduate students compared to Duke’s 6,500 and 8,000 — and from its admission stats, which are much more forgiving than Duke’s. Other than that though, the mantle of public schools falls a little uncomfortably on North Carolina’s shoulders. Like Duke, North Carolina is sneaky elite when it comes to academics. North Carolina is consistently sited as one of the top five public universities in the country and claims its place as one of the “public ivies.”

Likewise in basketball, the similarities between the two schools are greater than their differences. They both have incredible histories of winning with no apparent plans to stop any time soon. They are number three and four in all-time wins. Together, they account for nine championships and 33 Final Four appearances. Since the beginning of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) that they both play in, the two teams have won 79% of the regular season titles and 59% of the conference tournaments. They both win. A lot. They’ve also been lucky enough to have two of the top three most well regarded coaches of all time. Dean Smith, who just died recently, coached at North Carolina for 36 years. My favorite story about him, which illustrates his stature and character the best, is that he was so well loved and respected by his former players, including basketball greats in their own right like Michael Jordan and Larry Brown among others, that they continued to call Smith for advice on any important life decision, well into their forties, fifties, and even sixties. Smith would get calls from former players asking for his advice on engagements, house purchases, etc. Duke’s current coach, Mike Krzyzewski is the current holder of the best coach in basketball mantle. He’s coached for Duke since 1980 and, with 932 victories, is the all-time winningest coach. Although he’s rejected countless offers to coach in the NBA, he has coached the USA Basketball team for the last ten years. In a rare but touching show of inter-rivalry solidarity, many Duke fans will be wearing a shirt honoring their late rival, Dean Smith.

This year, Duke is the more highly regarded and ranked team. Duke is currently 21-3 and ranked fourth in the country. North Carolina is no slouch themselves, but they are significantly behind at 18-7 and ranked 15th. Duke is coming off five straight victories. North Carolina has actually lost three of their last four games although two of those losses came in back to back games against highly ranked Louisville and Virginia.

Who are the characters?

Roy Williams — Roy Williams is the current coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels. Williams was not the direct successor of legendary Coach Dean Smith, but he’s the first one who’s stuck. He was born and grew up in North Carolina and went to the University of North Carolina where he played freshman basketball and volunteered for the Varsity team. After graduation, he took a job as a high school coach nearby and after five years there, returned to become an Assistant Coach under Smith at UNC. He stayed for ten years before striking off on his own to become the head coach of the University of Kansas. At Kansas, Williams succeeded admirably, taking the team to four Final Fours and losing two National Championship games. Still, when the North Carolina job opened up in 2003, Williams jumped at it. In his twelve years coaching for UNC, he’s succeeded even more than at at Kansas — three Final Fours and two National Championship victories. He may still live in the shadow of his one time mentor, but he’s comfortable there.

Jahlil Okafor — For years, Duke seemed to be a hold-out against the trend of recruiting athletes of such promise that they were likely to remain in college for only the one year that is required until they turn professional and enter the NBA draft. Jahlil Okafor is exhibit A that that is no longer a reality. Okafor is likely to be the first overall pick of the NBA draft for this year. He’s listed at 6’11 and 270 pounds. Guys that big don’t grow on trees (they’re so big, perhaps it would be more likely for trees to grow on them?) and to be as polished an offensive player as Okafor is extraordinarily rare. Okafor is deadly when he gets the ball around the basket. Watch for Duke to try to get the ball to him close to the basket so he can overpower or out-skill his defender. Okafor’s only weakness is that he’s not a great defender. North Carolina may try to attack him on that end and hope that the refs call a few fouls on him, forcing Duke to limit his playing time.

Who’s going to win?

Duke. Duke should win. They have the best player on the court and the best coach on the sidelines. It is a rivalry though and rivalries bring out strange performances, especially from college kids, so who really knows?

Should you watch NBA All-Star Weekend? What part?

All-Star games are not always a highlight of a sports season. In fact, they’re often so mundane that people wonder why sports leagues even bother to have All-Star games. The NBA All-Star weekend is sometimes an exception to that rule. It’s a star-studded, moderately action packed weekend of events that has controversially been dubbed “Black Thanksgiving” by David Aldridge in a CNN article which seems to have been removed from their archives. In the article, Aldridge quoted Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at USC as saying that “NBA All-Star weekend has turned into a celebration of African American culture.” Whether you’re black, red, yellow, brown, or white, a basketball fan or a non-sports fan, a fashionista or music fan, there’s probably something for you to enjoy this weekend. This guide should help you decide what parts of the weekend will be most or least interesting.

Celebrity Game

Friday, February 13 at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.

What is this?

It’s a basketball game played by a very strange mix of musicians, actors, general celebrities, retired NBA players, and current WNBA players. It’s… sometimes fun to watch. As opposed to the actual All-Star game, the people playing in this game usually do really want to win. They were chosen in part because they are competitive, entertaining, and at least kind of know how to play basketball.

Who plays in it?

The game has been dominated (no joke, dominated) over the past few years by Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. He’s missing this year, so I’m most excited to see the following three people play in the celebrity game:

Paralympic athlete and former high school basketball player Blake Leeper. Leeper was born with both knees missing below the knee and has been using prosthetics since he was nine years old.
Robert Pera, the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. At 36, Pera is one of the world’s youngest billionaires. I think this is probably the first time an NBA owner has played during All-Star weekend.
Mo’ne Davis!!! That’s right! The first girl to record a win (and pitch a shut-out) in the Little League World Series is going to be on the court! My guess is that she’ll mop the floor with most of the players she faces. After all, at 13, she’s already on a high school varsity basketball team and has talked publicly of wanting to play in college for the University of Connecticut.

With the NBA All-Star game coming up soon, it’s a good time to tackle your question. All-Star games are an exhibition that many sports leagues put on in the middle of their seasons. Based on voting by fans, coaches, or some combination of the two, the best and most popular players are selected to play a game in mixed teams against each other. These games take many shapes and have different histories, but the common theme is that they generally lack the competitive nature typical of professional sports. They are essentially an entertainment, not a competition, and they are often accompanies by a host of other sports related competitions. All-Star games are loved by some fans, hated by others, and both loved and hated by a third group. They are more successful in some sports than others. So, why do sports leagues have All-Star games? Like any good child of children of the 1960s, my short answer is: follow the money.

From the start, All-Star games have been about money. The roots of today’s All-Star games can be found in games that were quite literally about money — benefit games. The NHL seems to have been on the forefront in this department. Wikipedia lists several early benefit games including a 1908 game to raise money for the family of a player who had drowned, a 1934 game to benefit a player who had his career (and almost life) ended in a violent hit, a 1937 game in honor of a player who had his leg shattered and died soon afterwards, and a 1939 game to benefit another drowned player. From raising money for a particular cause, All-Star games soon became about raising money directly or indirectly for the league itself.

Wikipedia tells us that the first professional league to have an All-Star game was Major League Baseball which held what they thought was going to be a one-time event in 1933 as part of Chicago’s World Fair. (quick side-note, if you haven’t read Erik Larson’s book about the fair, The Devil in the White City, you should!) History.com has a good article about the game, in which they claim that, “the event was designed to bolster the sport and improve its reputation during the darkest years of the Great Depression.” In the three years before the All-Star game, baseball’s attendance had dropped by “40 percent, while the average player’s salary fell by 25 percent.” Teams were experimenting with all sorts of promotions to try to bring fans and money back into the game and while Major League Baseball donated the proceeds of the All-Star game to charity, they surely profited indirectly from the attention it garnered. The All-Star game was a success, with hundreds of thousands of fans casting votes for which players they wanted to see and the top vote-getter, Babe Ruth, hitting a home run during the game. After the success of the 1933 game, baseball decided to make the All-Star game an annual tradition.

Other professional leagues in the United States soon followed along: the NFL in 1938, the NHL in 1947, and the NBA in 1951. For newer leagues, like Major League Soccer, the WNBA, and Major League Lacrosse, the inclusion of an All-Star game must have seemed like an obvious move. It seems like the All-Star game is primarily an American thing with some international sports leagues following along, but not all of them. The world’s most popular leagues — all soccer leagues, of course: the British Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, and the Italian Serie A don’t have All-Star games. The Canadian Football League had one on and off from the 1950s but has not had one since 1988.

The format of All-Star games and accompanying competitive side-dishes have been tweaked over and over over the years to try to make the games slightly more competitive and therefore more entertaining to watch. These innovations seem to have generally moved in waves. Early on, some All-Star games were between last year’s championship team and a mixed team of players from other teams. After that, the now standard game between two mixed teams based on conference or league came into fashion. Two other formats that have been experimented with in the hopes of ginning up some competitive juices have been teams based on geographic origin (often the United States or North America vs. the rest of the world) or having teams chosen by two players or former players alternatively picking from the pool of All-Stars. I’m not sure that either of these have been very successful. The more successful though rare and extreme version of this is to actually invite a foreign team to play against a team made up of All-Stars. This happened very successfully in 1979 and 1987 in the NHL when teams of NHL All-Stars played against a Soviet national team. It’s hard to replicate that success because it was so reliant on the Cold War. Major League Soccer’s All-Star team plays against a European club team which kind of works but also is an admission of how weak the MLS is in comparison to other leagues. All of these innovations are intended to make the game more competitive. Perhaps the most extreme attempt came in 2003, when Major League Baseball took the extraordinary step of awarding home field advantage in the World Series to the league whose team won the All-Star game.

All-Star games are not only an opportunity for professional sports leagues to attract attention and earn money, they are also great opportunities for players. Players on the NBA All-Star teams this year will make $25,000 for playing in the game and another $25,000 if their team wins the game. The side-show events like the dunk contest and three point contest have their own purses that go to the individual winners of those competitions. Like for winning the Super Bowl, players may also have negotiated bonuses in their contracts for making the All-Star game.

The NBA All-Star game, which takes place this weekend in New York City, is definitely the biggest and most visible of the professional All-Star games in the United States. Check back in later today for a beginner’s guide to all of its elements.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What is a buzzer beater?

Dear Sports Fan,

What exactly is a buzzer beater? I know it’s a last second shot, but how last second does it have to be? And is it only in basketball? Why?

Thanks,
Wesley

Dear Wesley,

Nothing reminds people that sports are a constructed universe more than the clock that counts inexorably towards the end of a game. In most timed sports, like basketball, football, and hockey, this clock is present in the arena and on television screens throughout the entire game. In soccer, the official time is kept only by the referee, and in untimed sports like tennis and basketball, time takes a back seat to sets, games, or innings. Each sport that has a clock deals with what happens when the clock runs out a little differently. Hockey rules simply that when the clock hits zero at the end of a period or game, the action ends. If the puck is an inch from crossing the goal-line when the clock hits zero, there is no goal. As befits football’s nature as a set of successive plays, football rules dictate that time only matters at the start and end of plays. If there is a second on the clock, that is enough time for another play. If there is no time at the end of a play, (with an exception for penalties) there will be no next play. The clock hitting zero during a play makes no difference to the result of that play whatsoever. Basketball has a different way of deciding what happens when a clock hits zero.

There are two clocks in basketball: the game clock and the shot clock. The game clock starts at 12 minutes for each National Basketball Association (NBA) quarter or at 20 minutes for each college basketball half. The shot clock starts at 24 seconds in the NBA and 35 in college and resets each time possession of the ball switches from one team to another or if a shot hits the rim. The shot clock was introduced in the NBA in 1954 in order to force teams to shoot the ball more frequently. Basketball wants shots! As part of the shot clock rule, the NBA decided that instead of requiring a shot to go in or hit the rim before the 24 second clock hit zero, they would enforce it from the moment the ball left a player’s hand. Once the ball is in the air, flying towards the hoop, time is effectively no longer an issue. Basketball teams have 24 seconds (or 35 in college) to shoot the ball, not to make a basket or hit the rim.

This is a natural rule for the shot clock. After all, the shot clock was not put in place to stop play every 24 or 35 seconds, it was intended to create a fast-moving, offensive, and continuous game. When the same logic is applied to the game clock, it’s a little bit more jarring. When applied to the game clock, it means that a ball, flying through the air, after the clock hits zero, is still in play as long as the player who shot it let go before time expired. This is the essence of a buzzer beater! It’s a shot that continues after the game clock has hit zero.

There are, as you might expect, a few wrinkles to how this term is used. First, although a buzzer sounds whenever a shot clock or game clock hits zero (thus the “buzzer” moniker), people almost always use the term to refer to the game clock hitting zero at the end of the fourth quarter. Second, although buzzer beater literally should be a shot that leaves a player’s hands when there is time left on the clock and goes through the basket (or doesn’t) after time has expired, people have gotten a little sloppy. Shots that are made with less than a few seconds left are often referred to as buzzer beaters, even if you and I know that they technically should not be. In this Youtube video of great NBA buzzer beaters, about half of them should technically not qualify because there is still a fraction of a second left on the clock after they go in:

As you can see from the video, buzzer beaters are exciting! This is the third and last exception to their pure definition. A buzzer beater that happens when a team is down by forty points is not really considered a buzzer beater. To really be though of as a buzzer beater, a shot should not only fall after the clock hits zero, but it should also win the game for the team that shot it.

The only other sports parallel I can think of to the buzzer beater is from boxing where a fighter who has been knocked to the ground can be “saved by the bell.” In boxing, a downed fighter has ten seconds to rise back to his feet and prepare to continue boxing. If he or she can’t do that, they lose the fight. The only exception to this is a boxer who gets knocked down with less than ten seconds left in a round. In this case, depending on the rules of the fight, he or she might be given a free pass from that time requirement. It’s mostly an anachronism today — boxing rules have evolved enough to recognize that a fighter who cannot recover in ten seconds should not keep fighting, even if it is at the end of the round. Still, it’s interesting that both phrases for how sports action continues after the clock hits zero have become recognizable phrases in our language. People are fascinated by what will happen after their own time has run out. In the constructed world of sports, we get to decide how that works. In boxing and basketball, there is momentarily, life after death.

Thanks for asking,
Ezra Fischer

How do free throws work in basketball?

Dear Sports Fan,

How do free throws work in basketball? It seems like usually a player gets two shots, but then sometimes it’s only one. Can you explain?

Thanks,
Justin

Dear Justin,

A free throw is one element of the penalty given to a player who commits a foul in basketball. The player who the foul has been committed on, if he or she is given a free throw, gets to shoot the ball from the free throw line without any interference from the defending team. The free throw line is fifteen feet away from the basket and, although it is a few feet long, most players shoot from the middle of it, so that they have a straight shot at the basket. Each made free throw is worth one point. Free throws are a valuable commodity because they are among the easiest shots in basketball. Towards the end of games, they become even more valuable to the team that’s behind because they are a way to score without any time elapsing. There are a bunch of different ways to earn a free throw. It’s technical but not incredibly complicated.

Any time a player is fouled while she is shooting (or in the overly technical jargon of sports, “in the act of shooting”) she is awarded the same number of free throws as points she would have scored if her shot had gone in. Usually this is two free throws, but if she was shooting from behind the three-point line when she was fouled, she would get to shoot three free throws. If, despite being fouled, the shot goes into the basket, the basket counts for two or three points (depending on where it was shot from) and the shooter is given a single free throw in recognition of having been fouled. This is called an “and one” and we wrote an entire (and somewhat entertaining, if I remember right) post about it. Fouling a three-point shot is never a good idea, because the expected value of a three-point shot is lower than three successive free throws. Figure that a good three-point shooter will make between 30% and 50% of their three-point shots. One way of looking at this percentage is to imagine that every time they shoot a three, you should expect their team to get between 1 and 1.5 points from that action. Most good shooters make around 80% of their free throws, so if they are given three of them, using the same logic, you should expect them to earn 2.4 points. Fouling a three-point shot that goes in is just about the worst thing you can possibly do, because it gives the other team the chance to earn four points in a single possession.

Depending on the situation, a player that is not shooting the ball when they get fouled may still get to shoot free throws. The most common reason for them to shoot free throws is if the fouling team has fouled too many times in that period of the game. In the NBA, teams are allowed four fouls per quarter before non-shooting fouls earn free throws. In college basketball, it’s a little more complicated. A team is allowed six fouls per half before the other team starts earning free throws. From foul seven to foul nine the player that has been fouled must make their first free throw in order to earn a second. This period is called the bonus or one-and-one. After the ninth foul in the half, any player who gets fouled earns two free throws, just like they would in the NBA after the fourth foul of the quarter. This is called the double bonus. The only other oddity about free throws is the one that is shot as the result of a technical foul. A technical foul is given for a violation of the rules that doesn’t involve physical play within the game. The two most common reasons for technical fouls are arguing, cursing, or otherwise antagonizing a ref and for staying under the basket on defense for more than three seconds without actively guarding an opposing player. When a technical foul is called on one team, the other team gets to choose any player on their team to shoot one free throw and then the game picks up wherever it left off.

As we mentioned in the opening, the clock stops while free throws are being shot. This leads to some tactics at the end of the game that are useful but often very unappealing to watch. If a team is down near the end of the game, they may choose to foul the other team, intentionally giving them free throws but stopping the clock. The idea is to trade free throws for time. Instead of letting the other team run 24 seconds in the NBA or 35 seconds in college basketball off the clock, the trailing team can foul almost immediately, stop the clock, and get the ball back after the free throws. If the team that’s up misses a few free throws and the trailing team can hit three pointers when they have the ball, they can sometimes catch up. When the alternative is certain defeat, even a long-shot strategy like this one is better. Sometimes teams will adopt this strategy earlier in the game if they feel they can take advantage of a player’s inability to hit free throws. Except for technical fouls, the player who gets fouled has to shoot the free throws, so fouling a particularly inept free throw shooter can be an advantage. The most famous example of this was when it was used against Shaquille O’Neill and it picked up the nickname, “Hack-a-Shaq.” Like how the suffix “-gate” is used generically for all scandals now, the prefix “hack-a-” is used for any version of this tactic now.

The last tactic teams use when they choose to give away free throws is actually adopted by teams that are winning in the last few seconds of a game. If a team is up by three points, they may choose to intentionally foul a player to give up two free throws with the knowledge that two points cannot hurt them. The risk of this is that if the player they try to foul can immediately jump up and shoot and convince the ref that they were in the act of shooting a three pointer, they could be given three free throws. In disastrous, doomsday scenarios, that player might also be able to make the three point shot, earning an extra free throw for a fourth point and the lead. That’s what happened to the Indiana Pacers against the New York Knicks in the 1999 playoffs:

So, yes, free throws can be given out in quantities of one, two, or three. There are lots of different rules that dictate when and how many are given but they are mostly understandable. Free throws are a good way of penalizing teams who foul but they lead to some tactics at the end of the game that are almost always (with some notable exceptions) ugly, boring, and unsuccessful.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra 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.

2015 in the United States of Sports

With the new year approaching, I wanted to do something to celebrate the last year and look forward to 2015 with you all.

2014 has been an enormous year in sports and also for Dear Sports Fan. The year began with the NFL playoffs and a decisive Super Bowl win by the deserving Seattle Seahawks. The day after the big game, I took a train to John F. Kennedy airport, where I, like almost everyone who had been to the Super Bowl in New Jersey, waited while our planes were delayed by a snow storm. It was actually a pretty funny sight. All the gates to the Denver area were full of depressed people wearing orange and the gates to the West Coast were packed full of hung-over but happy fans wearing neon green. I flew off to Barcelona where I eventually and slowly made my way over to Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics. In Russia, I got the chance to watch a bunch of men’s and women’s ice hockey plus some speed skating, curling, and cross-country skiing. It was all good, even when the United States lost to Canada 1-0 in the semifinals of the men’s Ice Hockey. Just a few months later, the nation’s imagination was captured by the most exciting World Cup in my memory. The United States Men’s National team did the country proud, more by generating bizarrely exciting soccer games than by winning, but still. The United States found itself in the throes of a soccer passion that mimicked, if not met the rest of the world’s normal experience. The summer was notable in the sports world for LeBron James deciding to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, a tectonic shift in the power dynamics of the NBA. For Dear Sports Fan, and for myself, the biggest move of the summer was my decision to leave my job of seven and a half years and throw myself into working on Dear Sports Fan full-time. Since then it’s been a roller-coaster ride. The Kansas City Royals rode their way, bunting and bunting some more, to the World Series before falling to the San Francisco Giants. The focus of the NFL season blurred when off-season issues like domestic abuse, child abuse, institutional idiocy, and the long-term effects of concussions overwhelmed the normal focus on football, fantasy football, and gambling. Like these issues made football seem like an insignificant side-show, so the great cultural issue of police brutality and our legal system’s inability to properly deal with it made sports in general seem like an insignificant side-show.

That’s where we are as we begin to hurtle towards 2015. 2015 is a year of great promise and plentiful sports. To celebrate it with you all, I’ve created a map with the biggest sporting event in each state in 2015 labeled. The events were chosen by me, so your results may vary of course, but I’ll be happy to hear from you with all disputes of import. The events vary in size and national stature, of course. Minnesota may not have anything to match the national profile of Arizona’s Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean their Star of the North Games in June are anything to sneeze at. In fact, with four to six thousand athletes competing in around twenty sports, the Star of the North Games are a massive undertaking. The sports range from the expected big four of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, to more unusual events like New Jersey’s international Fistball competition and Delaware’s World Championship of Punkin’ Chunkin’ where teams compete to build the best pumpkin throwing machines.

The United States is truly a great sporting nation and 2015’s sports will truly range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy them all year with a copy of Dear Sports Fan’s 2015 in the United States of Sports map. If you’d like a copy of the map, sign up for our email list and I will send you either a link to download a high quality .pdf or mail an actual physical copy to your home or office! If you’re already a subscriber and want a map, send me an email to dearsportsfan@gmail.com.

Sign up for the Dear Sports Fan email list:

Thanks for the support,
Ezra Fischer

The top ten Christmas or holiday gifts for a sports fan

The Friday after Thanksgiving is infamously the first day of the holiday shopping season. Black Friday, as it’s called, is a time for sales of questionable worth and dangerous hordes of stampeding shoppers. The whole phenomenon is a funny one though, because by and large, the only people I know who actually get their holiday shopping done before the last minute are all people I would classify as being the least likely to riot over reduced-price electronics. Most of my friends are just rounding into shopping form now, with plenty of gifts left to buy before the 25th. Their motto (our motto, I suppose I should say,) is “if you leave it until the last minute, it only takes a minute.” Here are the top ten sports related gifts that I’ve reviewed over the last couple years. All are guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of the sports fan in your life!

Bob Ryan’s Scribe

Bob Ryan is one of the best known and most respected sports writers in the country. He started as an intern at the Boston Globe in 1968 and retired from full-time work there in 2012 after 44 years as a beat writer and columnist. He is a Boston sports writer, through and through — never bothering to adopt the feigned objective neutrality of many journalists in sports. Although he is “retired” now, he remains almost as prolific as he ever has been and this book is proof of that.

Stadium prints

We’re always on the look-out for tasteful ways to represent beloved sports teams in home decor. Items that fit this bill are worth their weight in, well, not gold at current prices, but aluminum at least. They give the sports fan in the household a way to express pride and love while simultaneously giving their family, partner, or housemates a chance to express their own tasteful sense of home propriety. The large selection of colorful stadium prints from City Prints fits the bill on every detail.

30 for 30 sports documentary box set

ESPN and Bill Simmons’ series of sports documentaries, released under the 30 for 30 brand name, have been home to many of the best sports documentaries of the last several years. Their model of targeting filmmakers from outside of the sports media conglomerate and then asking them to work on a subject of their choosing has produced some very interesting pieces. My favorites (Once Brothers, The Two Escobars, and June 17, 1994) from the series are all included in the box set of twelve films.

NBA player art

Baseball is the sport of the trading card but that leaves some very interesting niches for other sports to fill in. Seattle-based illustrator Matthew Hollister decided to create player artwork for every basketball player in the NBA. He displays and sells these funky and attractive prints at his site, EveryPlayerInTheLeague.

The Stanley Cup of popcorn

This gift should be a perennial on every top ten list of gifts ever written. It’s hard to beat the combination of the Stanley Cup, the greatest and most desired trophy in all of sports, with the equally desirable delicious goodness of home-popped popcorn!

Baseballism shirts

The holidays are the perfect time to invest in some stylish, clever baseball apparel for yourself or for the baseball fan in your life. Baseballism is a great place to find baseball apparel that looks and feels good. Their style plays on the traditional aspects of baseball without taking on the conventional and a slightly ugly characteristics of old-school baseball uniforms.

The Blind Side

A best selling book and Hollywood movie, Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side remains a classic and incredibly contemporary. On top of being a touching story and a great tactical history of football, The Blind Side, is an insightful, challenging book about America, one that has incisive insight into this fall’s cultural issues.

Baseball stadium prints

Not only are these minimalist baseball stadium prints by S. Preston great presents but they’re also a good defense against the fan in your life buying a regular sports poster to remember the season by; one that you will not want hung in your living room. A gift of one of these prints says, “I like how big of a fan you are and I support your team” without saying “let’s turn our house into a locker room.”

Rep your school this holiday season

For fans of college sports, December is not just the holiday season, it’s also the time when college football enters into its postseason bowl games and when college basketball starts its regular season in earnest. It’s a great time to pick up something sports related as a gift for yourself or the college sports fan in your life. Here’s a selection of college sports gifts that range the gamut from useful to kitschy.

Sports books for children

How better to pass on the gift of sports than to give a young sports fan a book that will spark their imagination and inspire them? Two of my childhood favorites, Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars by Walter Brooks and Ice Magic by Matt Christopher are joined by three wonderful baseball books, Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates, You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!, and You Never Heard of Willie Mays?! by Jonah Winter.

Bonus: Who’s on first?

Holiday time is classics time in many households. It’s the perfect time to slip back into the wonderful nostalgia and legitimately great entertainment of the mid-twentieth century, back when men were real men, women were real women, and comedians were really funny. Whether it’s an introduction or a reprise for the fiftieth time, watching or listening to Abbott and Costello’s classic Who’s on First comedy bit is a great time. Celebrate the genius of their humor with this selection of Who’s on First memorabilia.