regressing Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Based On Their Draft Picks, How Good <em>Should</em> The Cavs Be Next Year?
We have every reason to expect that the Cavs will improve over the next few years, especially since team is stocked with young, talented lottery packs. But given its draft position the last few years, how good could we have expected the Cavs to get? And how much of the improvement that any high-lo...
How Often Do World Cup Knockout Round Matches Go Into Extra Time?
Argentina and Switzerland was the fourth of seven knockout games this year to go into extra time, and if the Netherlands hadn't pulled a late penalty from elbow-deep out of its ass, it would have been the fifth. This is way, way above historical trends....
Nazi Insults Spike On Twitter When Germany Plays Other Teams, Too
Looks about right. ...
Changes In Player Heights And Weights In The NBA Draft, Year By Year
Out friend Ed Kupfer of the Houston Rockets made a quick animation of how the sheer size of the guys in the NBA draft have changed over the last 15 years. It's kind of surprising how much variance there is from year to year on short, tall, fat, and skinny players....
Chart: Scoring At The 2014 World Cup Has Been Bonkers
Over on Stats In the Wild, Gregory Matthews has visualized how much scoring there's been at the 2014 World Cup, using the clever grid chart you see above. The goals of the "winning" team—draws are included—are the y-axix, and the losing team is the x-axis. Each square is labeled (and colored) with t...
What Sixers Fans Should Know About Joel Embiid's Health
Philly took Joel Embiid with the third overall pick, as it continues to stock up on big men who do not play basketball. But hopefully, Embiid will be back and awesome before long. How likely is that? Our good friend Dr. Matt McCarthy went into some detail recently. ...
When Did Nazi Insults Spike On Twitter During USA-Germany?
Twitter users were already throwing around the word "Nazi" plenty before Germany-U.S. kicked off, but how about during the game? To find out, from 11:35 a.m. to 2:03 p.m. we recorded tweets and retweets that contained the word "Nazi" or "Nazis" (not case sensitive). We pulled 30,209 in total, or 3.4...
Are MLB No-Hitters Really Getting More Common?
Tim Lincecum's no-hitter yesterday was the 22nd since 2010 and a walk away from becoming the sixth perfect game in that same time. This makes no-hitters and perfect games sound abnormally common today. So just how much has the frequency of no-hitters and perfect games changed?...
Why Do NBA Big Men Break Down?
Joel Embiid, the University of Kansas seven-footer who was expected to be the first pick in tonight's NBA draft, just had two screws inserted into the navicular bone in his right foot.1 Embiid is expected to miss 4-6 months and the stress fracture—his second in three months—may cost him millions of ...
Which NFL Stadiums Are The Most Convenient To Drive To?
When the 49ers begin playing in the new Levi's Stadium this season they'll be 43.3 miles away from San Francisco's downtown as seen in the chart above from Redditor Tashre. But the Niners, now playing in Santa Clara, aren't the only NFL team having to drive outside their team's namesake city. Accord...
This Is Sort Of A Silly Chart, CBS
The pie chart above—from this otherwise solid look at the history of the history of the NBA No. 1 pick—shows the number of players taken first from each school, but only for schools that have had multiple players selected in the top spot. 16 schools appear on the chart, and 15 of them have had exact...
The Gross Things Caused By Human Bite Wounds
I was sitting in my office yesterday, not watching the World Cup, when I came across a tweet by my friend: "It's kind of fun that the third-best player in the world is just definitely insane," it said. A moment later, I was watching Luis Suárez, Uruguay's star forward, take a bite out of Italian def...
Watch The World Converge On Brazil, Using Facebook Data
The neat video above, from Facebook, shows how many non-Brazilians travelled to various World Cup cities from June 5th through June 16th. The site's data team built out the graphic using Facebook check-ins; each arc represents 20 people traveling from their home city to a city in Brazil, and the siz...
The NBA Misplaced A Point For 20 Years
Occasionally, from week to week, a league will go back and adjust the statline in a game. Yu Darvish gives up a hit, or LeBron loses a rebound, or Jamaal Charles loses three yards and everyone in your fantasy league ends up in last place. This is more or less like that, except 20 years after the fac...
How Much Is LeBron James Really Worth?
LeBron James is going to be a free agent again. Exactly how much is the best player on the planet worth? Maybe more than you'd think. ...
Which Leagues Are Having The Most Success At The World Cup?
For people who really know their shit about soccer, one of the fun bits of the World Cup is recognizing which club-level teammates and rivals are facing off for their various national squads. Which of these club leagues are best represented at this year's Cup? The New York Times built an elaborate w...
Which Countries Swap The Most World Cup Players?
Like the Olympics, athletes in the World Cup weren't necessarily born in the country they play for. This interactive graphic illustrates player migrations by country. ...
A Quick Look At Perfect Games Vs. No-Hitters Throughout MLB History
On Wednesday Clayton Kershaw threw the 283rd no-hitter in baseball history. What separated Kershaw's no-hitter from becoming a perfect game was a throwing error by shortstop Hanley Ramirez in the seventh inning that allowed the only Rockie player all night to reach first. The chart above, which come...
Did Chewing Tobacco Kill Tony Gwynn?
On Monday, Tony Gwynn died from complications related to salivary cancer, the same disease that claimed the life of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch two years ago. When Yauch died at the hospital where I work in Manhattan, I was shaken. A whole generation got a little older that day. The thing about Yauch's i...