regressing Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Can You Predict If Your Kid Will Throw Left-Handed?
I'm at that age where my buddies from college are starting to sign their kids up for Little League. They'll differ in degree and in approach to helicopter coaching and buying up extravagant, miniaturized baseball equipment, but there's one thing they'll all agree on: They hope their kid's a lefty. ...
Which MLB Teams Does Your Town Root For? NYT Interactive Has Answers
Last month, when we showed you the most accurate map of MLB fandom, it was the most accurate in that it was based on the most accurate data. In the time since, the New York Times has gotten its hands on that data and made this interactive, which is awesome. ...
Terry Stotts, Reinvented: How A Retread NBA Coach Became Cutting Edge
Players get better, and players get worse. This is a fundamental truth, and an arc we've always understood, analytics or not, as part of the fabric of not just sports, but performance and ability in general. Sometimes you get better at your job, sometimes you fall off. But we don't really look at co...
Myth Busting: Do Japanese Pitchers Really Throw More Strikeouts In MLB?
When the Yankees signed Masahiro Tanaka this winter, there wasn't any real question that they were getting an outstanding pitcher, but no one was really expecting what he's done so far. Through 22 innings, Tanaka has struck out 28 batters, good for 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings pitched (SO/9). Th...
The Nets Are Very Old, But Their Defense Is Next Level
The average age of the Brooklyn Nets preferred starting lineup right now is 32.4. Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Deron Williams have seemingly been in our collective consciousness for decades. Even Shaun Livingston, the fifth member of that quintet, is best known for a gruesome knee in...
The "Final Minute" Of Grizzlies-Thunder Lasted 43 Minutes
Last night's Memphis-Oklahoma City game went overtime thanks to some Thunder heroics. Really overtime. From the start of the final minute of regulation until the final horn, 43 minutes and 14 seconds passed by—as did most of the first quarter of the following Warriors-Clippers game. Over the last mi...
Which Athlete Is Your State Most Obsessed With?
Over on the BestTicket blog, Andrew Powell-Morse has taken a look at the "most popular athlete" in each state, based on monthly Google queries over the last year. ...
Basically An Excuse To Bring Up That Iverson Game
Not even mad about it....
Is Chris Paul Somehow Underrated?
There's a neat narrative in the NBA today (which we help perpetuate) that LeBron James and Kevin Durant are the best players in the league by a mile, each season a clash between two great legacies in the making. But how true is this, really?...
How A Clever Algorithm Can Help Us "Complete" The 2013 Boston Marathon
In the aftermath of last year's Boston Marathon attacks, the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) was faced with—among other, more serious problems—a pair of logistical issues. It had to consider how to provide the nearly 6,000 runners who were unable to finish the 2013 race with an opportunity to qual...
The Greatest Season In NBA History*, Brought To You By DeAndre Liggins
The play above—what looks like an afterthought in LeBron James's 61-point outburst against the Bobcats—represents the sole meaningful play of #14 DeAndre Liggins's season. Spending most of the year in D-League, Liggins was signed by Miami late in February and released in mid-March, appearing in just...
The NHL's New Playoff Format, As Explained By Highly Paid Consultants
The NHL rolled out a new playoff format this season, which some have found a bit confusing. To assist, an employee at Accenture—the world's largest consulting company—has passed along a presentation he made for his boss to explain the changes. This is a great pro bono service: Had you personally ask...
Head-To-Head Records Of The NBA Playoffs, As Cool Radial Charts
Over on NBA.com, Andy Bergmann (@dubly) has put together some neat radial charts showing the head-to-head records between this season's playoff teams....
NBA Playoff Interactive Shows Who's Most Likely To Win Every Round
Our friend Ed Feng at The Power Rank, along with Andrew Phillips from Chartball, put together an interactive that shows win probabilities for the NBA playoffs, all the way through to the finals, weighted heavily by adjusted strength of schedule. ...
What's The Best Way To Score On Jonathan Quick And Antti Niemi?
Goalie performance is extraordinarily important to success in the NHL playoffs (which began last night, FYI). To get you ahead of the curve, Kevin Woodley of NHL.com has broken down the intriguing "goaltender matchup" between LA's Jonathan Quick and San Jose's Antti Niemi, with the help of some goof...
In The End, The Atlantic Wasn't The Worst Division Of All Time
Here's how the Eastern Conference's Atlantic Division stood, a couple weeks into this season:...
The Durant-LeBron Arms Race: Two Of The Best Seasons Of All Time
When we last took a look in February, LeBron James and Kevin Durant were both having monster seasons, with unprecedented combinations of offensive volume (usage percent) and efficiency (true shooting percent). There was still a lot of basektball left to play, but at the time we wrote that "if these ...
Which NBA Players Are Best Late In The Shot Clock?
You know the feeling. The post has been fronted, or the cutter bumped off course, or the screen jumped and the slip covered, or maybe whatever the hell happened here, unmercifully, is happening again. NBA offenses get clogged up for lots of reasons, and when the shot clock is winding down, someone's...
Which Leagues Have The Highest Average Player Salaries?
This week, Sporting Intelligence and ESPN the Magazine released the Global Sports Salary Survey 2014, a worldwide look at which leagues pay the most on a per-athlete basis....