number Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Science! Proves Ron Artest's Halftime Drinking Hurt His Free-Throw Shooting
Our old friends at the Harvard Sports Analytics Collective took a long-overdue look at whether Ron Artest's early-career practice of drinking Hennessy cognac at halftime hurt his play. "Sure enough during the 2001 and 2002 seasons his free-throw percentage during the third quarter was 67.21% compare...

ESPN's <em>Numbers Never Lie*</em> Expects Every American To Drink 12 Beers Sunday
Here's a ridiculous segment by the usually-reliable Michael Smith on ESPN's Numbers Never Lie* in which he recites a series of absurd statistics about the Super Bowl (without citing where they got the information, of course)....

A Graphic Guide To Understanding <em>USA Today</em>'s Purchase Of The Big Lead
The old new paradigm got a piece of a newer paradigm this week, as once-revolutionary USA Today acquired the Big Lead. What does this mean? Blog posts slipped under your hotel-room door? We pulled some numbers from the press release to illustrate how it all might fit together....

Kobe Is (Allegedly) A Better Womanizer Than He Is A Basketball Player: A Statistical Analysis
The National Enquirer dropped one of its perhaps-truth bombs this week on Kobe Bryant's marriage (here's a summary, since the Enquirer wants you to splurge in the supermarket and didn't put its story online): The tab reports that Bryant had affairs with 105 women during the 10 years he was married t...

David Beckham's New Daughter Is Named Seven
David and Victoria Beckham have welcomed to the world the sixth member of their family, their fourth child and first daughter: Harper Seven. In terms of bizarre athlete baby names, this one ranks somewhere between George Foreman III and George Foreman IV. Everyone's trying to come up with an explan...

Memo To Jonah Lehrer: Mark Cuban Says The Mavs Used Statistics Against The Heat
Jonah Lehrer is still arguing that the Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat by ignoring statistics and turning loose the intangible powers of J.J. Barea. Or at least that stat-heads can't prove that wasn't the case:...

Grantland's Jonah Lehrer Loves Intangibles So Much He Made A Whole Argument Out Of Them
Aren't sports statistics terrible? Of course they are. Sports has been overrun by number-nerds, and the number-nerds get angry if you point this out. So Jonah Lehrer, writing at Grantland about the pernicious influence of numerical analysis, makes sure not to bring up any actual examples of how numb...

Playing Left-Handed At Wimbledon Is As Big An Advantage As Playing Right-Handed
Today's New York Times reports from Wimbledon on the sneaky advantage that left-handed tennis players enjoy on grass:...

Chone Figgins's Low Batting Average Helps People Get Drunker, Cheaper
Seattle Mariners third baseman Chone Figgins is currently batting .202 on the season. Hitting a notable .087 this past week, manager Eric Wedge sat Chone on the bench for last night's game against the Yankees. There's chatter of moving him down in the lineup; like No. 9 down....

Let's Stage A Citizen's Intervention. Here's Charlie's Sheen's Phone Number.
We got a hold of Charlie Sheen's cellphone number (one of them, at least) and distributed it to some people who were desperate to contact him. Then it occurred to us that everyone seems desperate to contact Charlie Sheen these days. So now you can, too. Watch the video above and you'll hear Sheen ...

Nine Chinese Figure Skaters May Not Be The Age China Said They Were
After the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the IOC launched an investigation into the ages of China's women's gymnastics team, because it seemed very possible that a few members were not women at all, but actually pre-adolescent girls. The '08 gymnasts were eventually cleared, but it came out that a '00 Olymp...

The Super Bowl Almost Broke Twitter
"[In] the final moments of the game, fans sent 4,064 Tweets per second – the highest TPS for any sporting event... Twitter users shattered that record six times over the course of the game." [Twitter Blog, Wired]...

Sign Up For The Deadspin Facebook Group Now And Receive Another Celebrity Phone Number
Who will it be this week? An ex-athlete? A porn star? A former comedian now better known for doing voiceovers in cartoons? A former bass player for Quiet Riot? Sign up for the Deadspin Facebook group and find out!...

Please Sign Up For The Deadspin Newsletter And Receive A Special Celebrity Phone Number
See that little box on the left hand side of the masthead that says "Join"? If you click that, you'll get a daily splash of Deadspin's top stories, now in an email form....

Tim Tebow At The Combine: A Revelation, Set To Iron Maiden
As you know, Tebow impressed at the NFL Scouting Combine, running the three-cone drill in a hell-blazing 6.66 seconds. (It's the second coming! Of Mike Alstott!) Here's video of Tebow's big day, set to Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast."...

The Original Sports Guy, Now Blogging
Charles P. Pierce — author, Deadspin's chief book critic, and America's best sportswriter (no matter how many pins Bill Simmons sticks in his voodoo doll) — now has a blog. Read it immediately. [Boston.com]...

Sports Numerology Will Drive You To Madness
Tired of scanning the sports pages, insider blogs and talk radio to gain an edge on Vegas on Sundays? Turn to the one science that's empirically proven (at least according to its biggest proponent) to pick winners: numerology....

My Hot NFL Picks This Weekend
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! It is NFL Day. Here are my Hot Six Spread Picks for the weekend, given gratis and at no charge. DISCLAIMER: What you do with this information is At Your Own Risk. (LOL)...

You Keep Sending 'Em, I'll Keep Posting 'Em
These distracted young men are the Division II Colorado School of Mines Orediggers. Think your school can top this? Bring it on. After the jump, a very special bonus photo of some very "special" players....

More Bad News For Lenny Dykstra
"Nails On The Numbers" has been eliminated from The Street.com. [Daily Options Report]...