Free Ballin’

My friend Mark read my Oden post the other day and opined that Oden has a higher upside than Howard, but that it’s not likely Oden will ever even match Howard, much less surpass him.  That sounds about right to me.
Oden blocks way more shots than Dwight Howard, but fouls way more often.  And the [...]

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It doesn’t have to be a great game to get my attention.  Last night’s Trailblazers/Heat matchup was competitive, but nothing special.  Watching Greg Oden and Michael Beasley go at each other, on the other hand, was sensational.
Amid a bevy if impressive sequences, the most significant play of the game to me (in a big picture [...]

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People are too concerned about the accuracy of their sports predictions.  Predicting what you feel most likely to occur is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you’re a necessarily disinterested party, like a journalist, or have a stake in the outcome, like degenerate gamblers.  But otherwise, the only benefit of being right is say, [...]

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Michael Lewis (yes, of Moneyball fame) wrote a piece today in the Times.  I like that Lewis is interested in analytical ways of understanding sports, and that he talks to smart people and publishes what they say.  It just annoys me when he writes as though the answers to his questions are known, and clear, [...]

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I’ll be heading to Toronto in a few weeks, and I was really hoping to see Jermaine O’Neal play.  I’m a huge fan of his, and I wanted to see what he had, at this point.  I’ve read all season about how disappointing he has been, but his numbers indicate more of a mixed bag.  [...]

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