A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
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Apparently it could happen. According to our friends at Lost Lettermen, based on a Yahoo! Sports report, the Maine Red Claws of the NBDL are courting the former Tennessee coach.
Follow @TodaysBestMSF to get immediate updates when Today’s Best links are posted.
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Two-Start Pitchers
This week there are several interesting pitchers starting twice, as well as a several must starts. While most of the aces will not be pitching twice this week, there are several pitchers who should be a fixture in your fantasy lineup.
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This really shouldn’t be surprising at this point. Here are the details of Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie joining Floyd Landis in accusing Armstrong of doping.
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I’ve been alluding to it on Twitter for awhile now, and finally the day is here: we’re getting a new theme.
If you notice anything strange over the next few hours it is because we are making the theme changes right now.
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It’s time for another edition of the Sports Agent Corner, our periodic Q&A with Dallas-based sports agent Gary Glick of Synergy Sports, Inc. Learn more about Gary and see his list of past and present clients at the Synergy Sports website.
In this brief but informative Q&A, Gary breaks down the key issue causing all the strife, explains how undrafted free agents are being affected, and offers his prediction for whether regular season games will ultimately be missed.
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While the Big Ten has been the benefactor of a low number of draft early entrants in recent years, many of the league’s best players graduated following last season. Seriously, there are real live players graduating (or at least staying in college for four years). Novel idea for college athletes, don’t you think?
That’s a rant for another day, but a quick look shows that the conference lost three first team All-Conference performers, eight of its top 12 scorers (including the top three), six of its top 10 rebounders, and its top two assist men.
Still, the league will be bolstered by the unexpected return of Jared Sullinger and may well boast the nation’s top point guard in Jordan Taylor. Throw in do-it-all forward Draymond Green, the return of Robbie Hummel, and three or four Top 25 recruiting classes (depending on which recruiting site you trust), and the Big Ten may not be down quite as much as people think.
Since the conference is my first love despite being the butt of its share of jokes around the style and pace of play, I’m starting in the midwest with an early look at how each team is shaping up.
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Yesterday, Jerod wrote a fantastic article on Dirk Nowitzki’s historically efficient night. In his article, he took an idea that was initially launched by Bill Simmons about a stat that measures a player’s efficiency on the offensive side of the ball.
He called the stat Points Per Miss, or PPM.
The stat really speaks for itself. How many points does a player score for every one of his missed shots? Really, it’s determining if a player brings more to the table than he takes from it. Every missed shot is a blown possession for his team while every make is a converted one.
We discovered that Dirk had an outstanding single-game PPM of 16 in Game 1. For every one of his misses, the big fellow scored SIXTEEN points. Simply outstanding.
However, as we thought about the stat more, and took the insightful and analytical contributions of commenters into consideration, we realized a few things.
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Two weeks ago today we posted the second episode of the MLB Trivia Challenge sponsored by Generational Equity, which featured special guest Will Carroll of SI.com. A number of people produced perfect scores on last week’s quiz (much to Ari’s dismay), with Andrew Schwartz ultimately being chosen as the winner of the $20 gift certificates to Chili’s. Congratulations Andrew!
Today, we present Episode 3 of the MLB Trivia Challenge. Ari has another series a fun and interesting questions prepared, and he vowed to make this week’s questions extra difficult to make up for the ease of last week’s.
Joining me on the podcast this week and brave enough to take the first stab at Ari’s vengeful Week 3 question list is Kevin Kaduk, who you all know from Yahoo’s superb Big League Stew baseball blog.
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The year was 1961.
It was back in the days of the Original Six in the NHL, back when the two Canadian teams dominated the NHL for years. Before the tradition of clapping during the National Anthem. Before the Chicago Blackhawks played at the United Center. And before the time of most Blackhawk fans today.
It was also the year the Blackhawks won their third Stanley Cup.
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When rumors surfaced that the Atlanta Thrashers were on their way to Winnipeg, I got to work on an article about how the NHL should realign its divisions. (I moved the Winnipeg Thrashers into the Western Conference and the Northwest Division, bumped Minnesota to the Central Division, and moved Nashville into the Eastern Conference and the Southeast Division.) But I decided against writing that article because the Thrashers haven’t moved to Winnipeg yet, and we don’t know if they ever will.
A few weeks ago, we were certain that the Sacramento Kings were on their way to Anaheim. But the Kings have decided to stay put and give Mayor KJ more time to build a new arena. Just last week the Phoenix Coyotes were presumed to be packing their bags for Winnipeg. Then the city of Glendale agreed to pony up $25 million to keep the Coyotes in Arizona for another season.
A franchise may appear ready, willing, and able to move to a new city, but appearances can be deceiving.
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Editor’s note: Amanda Lawson is a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan who is getting into baseball for the first time this year. After much deliberation and counsel, Amanda settled on the Minnesota Twins as her team. With “Beginning Baseball” Amanda is documenting her first season of baseball fandom.
On May 17, 2011, baseball lost a legend. Today and the rest of this week, we mourn and honor him.
Yesterday morning, Harmon Killebrew lost his battle with cancer. As a Twins fan, I knew this was a sad day for fans everywhere. I was glad to see the Twins are honoring him through the rest of the season.
But as a new baseball fan, I didn’t realize the impact Killebrew had made across the country as an icon on and off the field. I discovered many of my friends, who are long-time baseball fans, didn’t know much about him either.
Here is my tribute to Mr. Harmon Killebrew.
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While watching Dirk’s evisceration of the Thunder last night, I had a revelation:
Dirk Nowitzki’s fadeaway is the single most unstoppable individual move since The Sky Hook.
Now before you get carried away, just listen to the qualifications. I’m talking about a single, individual move that is just impossible to stop.
Obviously, there have been much better scorers. When Jordan got the ball on the wing, he could do any one of eight different things — and do all of them well — in order to get points for his team.
Kevin McHale may have had more post moves than anyone in history. His combination of jab steps, head fakes, and duck-unders was nearly unguardable when he had his jump shot going.
But there have been a few guys in history that had a go-to move that you just couldn’t stop – even when you knew it was coming.
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Last night, Dirk Nowitzki turned in one of the most mind-bogglingly awesome individual basketball performances I have ever seen. As I tweeted near the end of the game: “Nowitzki is German for un-fucking-believable. Sometimes, only the f-word will do.”
Here are the raw numbers: 48 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 blocks in 41 minutes. As impressive as those numbers are by themselves, they do not even begin to tell the story of just how close to perfect a basketball game Dirk played last night.
Here are the most impressive numbers: 12-15 from the field, 24-24 from the free throw line. Feel free to re-read those numbers a few times to ensure that they sink in.
As Bill Simmons tweeted: “48 points, 3 missed shots total (FG + FT). We need a stat like ‘points per miss’ to see if that’s a record for a 40+ point game.”
For the evening, Dirk’s “points per miss” (or PPM as we’ll refer to it henceforth) was 16. 16! 16 points for every missed shot. That is astounding, and it is a terrific way to appreciate what was one of the best single-night shooting performances on any level of basketball ever.
And as I went to bed last night, Simmons’ tweet had me thinking. Just how useful of a stat would PPM be? So I decided to get up this morning and investigate it a little further.
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