regressing Page 19 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Deceptive Math Behind The Seahawks' Pitch To Undrafted Free Agents
As soon as the NFL draft ends, the mad scramble to sign the best undrafted players begins. To get an edge, the Seattle Seahawks have distributed this data-heavy deck to NFL agents, a move that caught the eye of NFL.com's Ian Rapoport....
Whites Are Way More Lenient On Sterling, Unless They Follow The NBA
In the past week, two polls have tried to dope out the public's thoughts on the NBA forcing Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. Both tell you approximately what you'd expect, but the ways they differ are a little more interesting. ...
How Carlos Gomez Unfixed His Swing And Turned On The Power
Most hitting changes are subtle and small. Even to the trained eye it can take time to notice a change a hitter may have made months ago. The emergence of Carlos Gomez, All-Star, goes hand in hand with a swing change he made at some point between July 6 and 23, 2012....
How To Plan A Road Trip To All 30 MLB Ballparks In 30 Days
Over at Slate, Eric Brewster and Ben Blatt have put together a very cool tool that completely automates an itinerary for you for a <30-day road trip to every MLB park. It's pretty useful—if you have the leisure time and bank account to run off and do something like this. Go poke around at it and pla...
Kiper Vs. McShay Vs. Mayock Death Match: Who's The Best Mock Drafter?
With the NFL Draft pundits rolling out their final mock drafts this week, which one should you pay the most attention to?...
NBA Rookies Were Historically Bad This Year
Michael Carter-Williams is the 2014 NBA Rookie of the Year. Except, everyone's pretty sure that this was a very bad year for rookies. So we thought we'd put into perspective just how bad this season's rookies were, if that's actually the case. ...
How Rick Carlisle Turns The Misfit, Mismatched Mavs Into Contenders
Every team loves rooting around for under-appreciated, undervalued, post-Moneyball players; the Mavericks have simply taken it to an extreme. Under Rick Carlisle, Dallas has thrown out conventional fit in order to focus strictly on value, the way you might in baseball, but which has failed again and...
Meet Kyle Lowry. He's Very Good (And Probably Not A Giant Asshole).
NBA fans have known for a while that Kyle Lowry is pretty damn good. But that respect was an abstract one: Lowry's value was an acknowledged fact, if not one with specific dimensions. He's good, but why? He plays in a far away land, is never on national TV and has made more headlines for the trade ...
Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, has his pick for the Kentucky Derby. He likes Chitu as the best value—20-1 right now—but he has some other recommendations for exotics that you should check out on his blog. Levitt also swung by Deadspin to chat horse racing yesterday, which you can read her...
How Athletic Departments (And The Media) Fudge The Cost Of Scholarships
Paula Lavigne has an insightful piece on ESPN.com about how college sports thrived even as the rest of America suffered through a terrible economic downturn starting in late 2008. Paula is one of the best people writing in the mainstream sports press on money issues, and this piece is no exception. ...
<em>Freakonomics</em> For The Derby: I'm Steven Levitt. Let's Talk Horses.
Steven Levitt is one of the authors of Freakonomics and a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He's also something of a railbird and an adviser to Derby Jackpot, a legal online horse betting website. Dive into the discussion below and ask him about handicapping tomorrow's Kentucky De...
Feel Old With Our "How Many Pro Athletes Are Younger Than You?" Tool
An important milestone on your inexorable march toward bleak death is the sudden realization that most professional athletes are younger than you are. To help this along, the tool below calculates the percentage of players in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB who are already younger than you are at this ve...
The NBA Player No One Would Pass To
Early this season, we ran an item called "The NBA Players No One Will Pass To." It used newly accessible SportVU motion-tracking data to determine who among all the NBA players receives the ball the least. It was based on just a few weeks' worth of data, but ended up being representative. In short: ...
Behold, The Most Useless Graphic Of The NBA Playoffs
The map above—from TNT last night—is one of those "who's getting the most buzz" graphics that are as ubiquitous as they are useless. Unfortunately, Houston and Portland both wear red, a nuance lost on whatever computer program generated this image. Better luck next time, computer program!...
Cool Charts: Where The NBA's Best Scorers Are Getting Their Shots
Last Friday on Grantland, Kirk Goldsberry released a great series of charts breaking down the top NBA scorers and shooters from various spots on the floor. The graphics—interactives, thanks to Bostonography's Andy Woodruff—are revealing as always, especially Dirk Nowitzki's:...
Liverpool Would Have The Biggest Turnaround For A Champion In 29 Years
The race for the Premier League title got a lot closer this Sunday, as Liverpool fell to Chelsea and Manchester City topped Crystal Palace. With one fewer game played, City holds the goal differential tiebreak over Liverpool, and is currently a 4/5 favorite to win it all....
How Have NBA Pundits Fared In The First Round Of The Playoffs?
Most of the NBA's first-round playoff series are shaping up to be hotly contested matchups, so let's check in to see if the "experts" had them pegged right....
Oscar Robertson Is Right About Carmelo And The Knicks
Oscar Robertson, who is the highest order of NBA great and disagreeable sumbitch, went on SiriusXM NBA radio today and said that Carmelo Anthony should definitely leave the Knicks. There are a number of reasons why Melo should or should not leave New York, but Oscar actually hit a big one square in ...