Evolution of Timmaaayyy

Someone smart probably once said that greatness transcends time. I agree with whoever probably might have said something to that affect.

Tim Duncan transcends time as a basketball player (not to diminish his video game skills, but I have no knowledge of their quality). He is great. 

How Wrong Incentives Are Holding the NBA Back

I think everyone who has ever played, watched, coached, or in any other way been involved with basketball will tell you that it is in a team's best interest if its players are unselfish. But from a player's perspective, is that the case? Is there an incentive for each individual player to play unselfish basketball?

2010 NBA Genesis Draft

Note: This was originally posted on my old blog on Monday, August 16, 2010.

I just finished this year's version of my NBA Genesis Draft. For a description of what a Genesis Draft is you can read my description from last year.

Here are the pick-by-pick results of the draft with comments included for most players.

Here are the team-by-team results.

One note. I accidentally forgot Tiago Splitter. By the time I realized my mistake I was midway through the eighth round at which point it was too late to try to fit him in. He would have gotten drafted much earlier.

A Big Fundamental: Outlet Passing

Note: This was originally posted on my old blog on Sunday, April 25, 2010.

The Big Fundamental. Average fans think he's boring. He doesn't dunk on people and he doesn't break anyone's ankles when he crosses over. But for anyone who can appreciate the minutiae of basketball, Tim Duncan is endlessly fascinating.

My Five Favorite NBA Teams to Watch

Note: This was originally posted on my old blog on Sunday, January 31, 2010.

At the beginning of every week I look at the week's upcoming NBA schedule. Given that my NBA viewing is limited to what is on ESPN, TNT, and ABC I watch what I am given to watch. So when I see the schedule I hold my breath and hope one of these five teams is on the slate of upcoming games (not that I won't watch if they're not).

NBA Roster Ratings (Preseason 2009)

 Note: This was originally posted on my old blog on Tuesday, October 13, 2009

In June I said that I was going to be working on two major projects to post on this blog. One of the two, the NBA Genesis draft, I completed. The other, roster analyses of every NBA team, I hardly even started, much less finished. Shortly after beginning to work on the first of these roster analyses, I realized that in order to do a good job and produce something that someone would want to read I would have to put in way more work than I was prepared to put in. I also realized that throughout the time that I was working on this, teams would be changing due to free agency, etc. This would make this project even harder. So sometime near the end of the summer I realized that I would not be able to produce all of these roster analyses before the NBA season started.

Recently though, my desire to do something like this has resurfaced. Being as I am pretty busy right now with school and basketball and everything I decided to abbreviate the analysis quite a bit. I came up with a pretty elementary rating system to rate certain elements of each team's roster that resulted in a nice, neat chart that tells you everything you need to know about every team's roster. OK, so it might not tell you everything, but it does do a pretty good job of summarizing the various strengths and weaknesses of each team's roster.

MAC Commonwealth Advanced Stats and Such

Note: This was originally posted on my old blog on Sunday, August 30, 2009.

Over the summer I have worked sporadically on calculating some advanced statistics for Messiah and the other teams in the MAC Commonwealth conference (it's DIII, so no, you haven't heard of it). I was curious as to what some of these stats could tell me about some of the players and teams in our conference.