Tag Archives: nba

The Koch Brothers Usually Have Scott Walker’s Back. Not This Time.

by RosieDPFDpn Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Koch brothers and their political machine have long been key allies of Wisconsin governor and presumptive 2016 hopeful Scott Walker. With the GOP presidential field getting more crowded by the day and political observers wondering who will with the Koch Primary—and the financial backing of these billionaires and their donor network—Walker has sparked a controversy in his home state in which and he and Team Koch are on opposite sides.

When Walker announced a plan last week to spend $250 million in taxpayer money for a proposed $500 million basketball arena in downtown Milwaukee, the local chapter of the Koch-founded advocacy group Americans for Prosperity joined the chorus of detractors who condemned the project. The National Basketball Association is demanding the new venue and is threatening that the Milwaukee Bucks franchise may have to move if the arena isn’t built by 2017. This has put Walker in a tough spot. The failure to retain the team would be an ugly black eye for Walker, but the plan to spend taxpayer funds propping up a highly lucrative private business is irritating Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats alike.

While Walker’s forays into union-busting had strong conservative backing, the political dynamics involved in the public financing of sports arenas and stadiums are much different. Across the nation in recent years, conservatives and progressive groups and activists have questioned the notion that financing arenas for lucrative sports franchises with taxpayer funds will spur the local economy. And Walker is feeling the backlash.

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The Koch Brothers Usually Have Scott Walker’s Back. Not This Time.

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Bill Nye Slams Bill Belichick: "What He Said Didn’t Make Any Sense"

by EmiliaSchwindt Posted on January 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Let me start by saying, I don’t know anything about football. I’m from Los Angeles. We don’t have a football team. I went to NYU where the most popular sporting event is the Spring production of Damn Yankees. Up until very recently I thought football was soccer but with players who didn’t have feet, instead their legs ended with sort of rounded nubs—”balls,” if you will—and I thought it was so awful that millions of Americans get together every Sunday—which is the Lord’s day, by the way—to force disabled folk to compete in some sort of blood sport. It’s not that though. It turns out it’s the real life version of NFL Blitz, which it turns out isn’t just a video game. It’s based on a real thing. Anyway, what am I talking about?

Oh yeah! #Deflategate! The Patriots! (Why are they called “the Patriots”? I get that it’s about the American Revolution and Massachusetts played a key role in that but come on, we’re all patriots here, FOX News. Even the Bengals fans.) I don’t like the Patriots because they’re from Boston and Boston is the home of the worst NBA team in the whole wide world, the Celtics, who had the audacity to beat my Los Angeles Lakers a couple of times in the 1980s. Also, the Red Sox! They’re pretty awful! And Boston is a very cold city, at least in the winter. A not-so-long ago history of racism, Boston also has, let’s not forget. And New England clam chowder is garbage compared to Manhattan clam chowder. So, I say this just to be transparent. I don’t think I personally want the Patriots to win the Super Bowl. Maybe I do. The Seahawks don’t sound great. Pate Carroll is apparently a 9/11 truther, which is a turnoff.

Let’s veer this ramble towards the news: #Deflategate! Bill Belichick says he didn’t do it. It wasn’t him. It was Mr Blue in the Library with the piano wire. Or, something. He has a scientific explanation for why the balls were tested to be under-inflated.

“We simulated a game-day situation, in terms of the preparation of the footballs, and where the footballs were at various points in time during the day or night. … I would say that our preparation process for the footballs is what we do —I can’t speak for anybody else — and that process raises the PSI approximately one pound,” Belichick said. “That process of creating a tackiness, a texture — a right feel, whatever that feel is, whatever that feel is. It’s a sensation for the quarterback. What’s the right feel — that process elevates the PSI one pound, based on what our study showed. Which was multiple balls, multiple examples in the process, as we would do for a game.”

I don’t know what any of that really means. It reads like gibberish to me. I, like so many Republican politicians, am not a scientist. Bill Nye is though and he says it’s gibberish too:

“What he said didn’t make any sense…Rubbing the football, I don’t think, can change the pressure.”

And that’s the news. Goodnight and good luck.

P.S. One of the things I was confused about was how deflated balls would give an advantage to a football team, because presumably it would make them less aerodynamic, but as my colleague Tim McDonnell notes, it’s about “grippiness.”

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Bill Nye Slams Bill Belichick: "What He Said Didn’t Make Any Sense"

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Donald Sterling Is a Registered Republican

by ShelbyNorthcott Posted on April 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Does it really matter whether racist LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling is a registered Democrat? Or a Republican? Or a member of the Pirate Party of Russia?

Well, according to multiple conservative media outlets, yes, it does matter. On Sunday, National Review ran a blog post originally titled, “Racist Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Is a Democrat.” The post breathlessly noted a handful of contributions he made in the early 1990s to Democratic politicians, including California politician Gray Davis and Sen. Bill Bradley, who had played in the NBA. (Sterling has owned his NBA team since the early 1980s.) The headline has since been changed to “Racist Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Has Only Contributed to Democrats,” with an update reading, “his official party affiliation is not known.” Still, the Donald-Sterling-Is-a-Democrat meme already took hold within right-wing media:

“Report: Clippers Owner Caught In Racist Rant Is A Democratic Donor” — Fox Nation.

“NBA Sterling is a Democrat…” — Matt Drudge.

“Race Hate Spewing Clippers Owner Is Democratic Donor” — the Daily Caller.

“Media Ignoring Dem Donations of LA Clippers’ Owner, Allegedly Caught on Tape in Race-Based Rant” — NewsBusters.

“LA Clippers Owner Donald Sterling is a Racist Democrat” — the Tea Party News Network.

Politico piggy-backed on this flood of Sterling-triggered liberal-shaming with a softer headline: “Donald Sterling made donations to Dems.”

Not that Sterling’s broader political views or party affiliation have much to do with the controversy over his insanely racist comments, but here’s a news flash for those conservatives eager to bring up the topic: He’s a Republican.

On Sunday, Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times columnist, tweeted that local voter records show Sterling to be a registered Republican “since 1998.” We followed up on that, and a search of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s website for Sterling’s name, date of birth, and address confirmed that he’s registered as a Republican:

Screenshot: lavote.net

There’s little reason to get excited about Sterling’s political affiliation. But if you choose to do so, you ought to get it right.

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Donald Sterling Is a Registered Republican

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Area NBA Owner Just Wants to Keep His Head in the Game

by Abraham Lowe Posted on April 26, 2014

Mother Jones

If you were hoping that an audio recording laying bare Donald Sterling’s long-tolerated racism would inspire unanimous public outrage from his fellow NBA owners, sorry.

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Area NBA Owner Just Wants to Keep His Head in the Game

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Unsportsmanlike Conduct in the NBA Follows an Inverted U-Shaped Curve

by BrandieRitz Posted on April 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at 538, Benjamin Morris asks “Just How Bad Were the Bad Boys?” The bad boys in question are the Detroit Pistons basketball team of the late 80s, who had a reputation for being unusually aggressive on the court. Did they deserve their reputation? To test this, Morris looks at how many technical fouls they racked up, a good measure of unsportsmanlike conduct. In fact, he takes a look at the total number of technical fouls for the entire league, and finds that the number rose steadily until 1995 and then started a long-term decline.

I promise this is just for fun, but I’ve overlaid another line against Morris’s chart. Not a perfect fit, granted, but not too far off, either. I’m sure a few of you can guess what it is, can’t you?

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Unsportsmanlike Conduct in the NBA Follows an Inverted U-Shaped Curve

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Hot Hand? Well, Maybe a Lukewarm Hand….

by XNYMelisajdeots Posted on February 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Decades ago, the “hot hand” theory of sports was debunked. Massive statistical analysis showed that players in most sports went on streaks about as often as you’d expect by random chance, and when they were on a streak, their odds of making the next shot/goal/hit/etc. were no higher than at any other time. You might feel hot when you sink three buckets in a row, but that’s just the endorphin rush of doing well. It doesn’t mean you’ll make your next basket.

But now, there are all-new mountains of data to crunch, and two teams of researchers have concluded that hot hands really do exist in at least two sports:

Baseball: Brett Green, at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, and Jeffrey Zwiebel, at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business…controlled for variables, like the abilities of the batter and the pitcher, the stadium in which the at-bats took place, and even matchups like lefty versus lefty. And their findings, laid out in a working paper, show that a baseball player on a hot streak is batting 15 to 20 points higher than a teammate who is cold.

Basketball: Ezekowitz and his coauthors…with the help of cameras that NBA teams had installed at 15 arenas…could see that players with recent success in shooting were more likely to be taking shots from further away, facing tighter defenses, and throwing up more difficult shots….So the researchers controlled for these variables—and found what players and fans have long believed: The hot hand does exist. At least a little. According to the new research, players enjoying the hot hand are 1.2 to 2.4 percentage points more likely to make the next shot.

Hmmm. So that’s about 1-2 percentage points in both cases. And even that tiny effect is visible only after introducing a whole bunch of statistical controls that strike me as being a wee bit subjective. I suspect that if you varied your assessment of how tight the defense was or how difficult the shot was, the effect might go away entirely.

But even if it’s all legit, I have to say that 1-2 percentage points is pretty damn close to zero. And frankly, that’s still surprising. The truth is that it’s always seemed pretty logical to me that players would have hot hands now and again. But they don’t. At best, they occasionally have lukewarm hands. All the rest is just chance.

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Hot Hand? Well, Maybe a Lukewarm Hand….

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