As you sit on the toilet, wondering how the 49ers shat the bed on a 31-3 lead, take your mind off the pain with a coupla good ole basketball stories.
Warriors and Kings: A Tale of Two Rebuilds
Aykis216
Sactown Royalty
What can we learn about team building in the case study of the Warriors and Kings, Northern California’s two professional clubs? According to contributing author Aykis216, we are reminded of the fact that the draft matters. A lot. Aykis216 conducts a through review of the last four years of front office activity for both teams, and finds that, when it mattered the most, the Warriors made the right draft picks, and signed the right players, while the Kings whiffed again and again. In this exploration of hits and misses for Geoff Petrie, Chris Mullin, Larry Riley and Pete Myers, we are reminded of some wonderful names. Richard Hendrix? Jon Brockman? There are many fish in the sea, but most are poisonous, and not worth baiting.
-JG
Basketball Diaries, Afghanistan
PeretzPartinsky
N+1 Magazine
Afghanistan’s a cricket country, with some buzkashi on the side. But basketball is present there as well, as PeretzPartinsky details in this very good piece from N+1 Magazine. In the article, Partinsky recalls his participation in a tournament hosted by the government in Kabul. He captains a team from Jalalabad, filled with characters like Big Boy Nasarat, Engineer Izatullah and Lefty Ashoq. Partinsky‘s experiences training, traveling and playing the the Nangarhar Stars serve as useful lenses to discuss nationalism, tribalism and post-revolutionary politics in the restive days immediately following the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. This piece is highly recommended.
-JG
The fate of the Sacramento Kings, the Maloofs and a brotherly disagreement
Tom Ziller
SBNation
If you’re like most basketball fans, you’re only vaguely aware of what’s happening with the Sacramento Kings. They were gonna move, then they weren’t, now they might? Virginia Beach or Anaheim? Tom Ziller has been in Sacramento for years, knows all the players involved, and is perhaps the only person that could write this article. An article that serves as a shocking indictment of the entire petty, squabbling, short-sighted, wretched Maloof family. Just get them out of the NBA already.
-KD
Basketball Isn’t a Sport. It’s a Statistical Network
Brian Mossop
Wired
Don’t read this article for the writing; read it for the graphs. Brian Mossop makes a valiant attempt to explain the basketball-related research of two computer science professors at Arizona State University, but the real meat of the post is the argument that better teams have a less ball-dominant point guard. Using network analysis, the aforementioned ASU profs mapped how the ball moves between players, and the variety of possible outcomes. I have a couple problems with their work (positionality is so overrated), but it makes me think.
-KD