Free Ballin’

Bill Simmons posted a great email exchange he had with Malcolm Gladwell, in which they discuss the NBA’s deeply flawed (league-damaging) draft.  Both make good (though imperfect) suggestions for how to improve it—I’ll write about how to fix NBA draft, in the near future—but at one point, Simmons, noting how the draft could be used [...]

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I’m hitchhiking out of Charlotte today, up to the house of a friend of my mother’s, in Little Switzerland, NC, which I’m told is sensational, overlooking Mt. Mitchell (tallest peak east of the Rockies.) My next game is the Clippers/Celtics, on February 25th, in Los Angeles.  My plan is to stay in Little Switzerland for [...]

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This post by Ian Ayres on the NY Times Freakonomics blog, about offensive rebounds, seems ill-considered. He notes that the Celtics had an extraordinary offensive rebounding edge over the Lakers in the Finals and wondered “whether Lakers’ low number of offensive rebounds was just a matter of bad luck.” This comment assumes that getting offensive [...]

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