People tend to think that those who prefer to see arguments based on numbers and statistical evidence are lacking in personality and a sense of humor. In an effort to counter this perception, here is a joke David Tufte (a fellow economist at Southern Utah University) posted on his blog (VoluntaryXchange). A statistician’s wife […]
Henry Abbott created quite the stir at TrueHoop on Friday. In “The Truth about Kobe Bryant in Crunch Time”, Henry attacked a belief held by NBA decision-makers, the media, and fans. The vast majority of these people appear to believe that Kobe is the best player in the clutch in the NBA. Henry presented extensive […]
Andres ‘Dre’ Alvarez — of NerdNumbers — offered a post this week that generated some attention. His discussion of the merits of Derrick Rose led a number of people to suggest that he start watching basketball. In response to this argument, Dre offered the following at NerdNumbers (which is re-posted in its entirety below): Just […]
The Utah Jazz haven’t won a game since January 14th, a streak of six consecutive games. Prior to this streak, the Jazz were 27-13 and appeared to rank amount the top teams in the West. But after losses to Washington, New Jersey, and Philadelphia – below average teams in the East – fans of the […]
The All-Star game is almost upon us. This means it is time for the media to tell us who they think are the ‘best’ players in the game. And it also means it is time for the people who look at stats to say “sorry, that player is not among the ‘best’”. So let’s get […]
My latest for Huffington Post discusses what Jerry West recently said about the Lakers. For those who missed this story, the NBA’s Logo argued last week that the Lakers have a problem on defense and this is because the team is old As I argued at Huffington Post, I think West is a little bit […]
On Saturday night I watched Jimmer Fredette (who scored 42 points) and BYU defeat Colorado State (where Martin Schmidt, Stacey Brook, and I received our Ph.Ds back in the 1990s). Throughout the broadcast I got to hear much about the greatness of Fredette. And that led me to wonder, how good is Fredette? Fredette currently […]
On November 2nd of 2008, the Pistons — the team I root for — were 2-0 and coming off a season when the team had won 59 games. The next day, though, the Pistons decline began. Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess, and Cheikh Samb were sent to the Denver Nuggets for Allen Iverson. At the time, […]
John Calipari – head coach of Kentucky – has made a living off of recruiting one-and-done players (think Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, John Wall, and DeMarcus Cousins). The latest in this group is Terrence Jones. Draft Express currently has Jones as the #7 pick in their 2011 mock draft (a pick they project will be […]
Darren Rovell – of CNBC — examined how much an NFL player gets paid for winning the Super Bowl. As I have noted before, professional athletes are paid for the regular season. For the playoffs, the players are paid according to the playoff bonus pool. And as Rovell notes below (where I re-posted his […]
Wages of Wins Journal 
January 31, 2011 by dberri
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