tatis Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Chris Paul Problem Is An Analytics Problem

In broad terms, the Chris Paul Problem—there is one!—is as follows: Pretty much everybody agrees that Paul is, and has been for the past decade, one of the NBA’s best players. He made nine straight All-Star games from 2008 to 2016; he has made eight All-NBA teams and nine All-Defense teams; he is th...

Ron Jaworski Is Using Someone Else's Data Without Attribution

Until he got swept away by the recent round of layoffs, Ron Jaworski dissected Xs and Os for several of ESPN’s NFL-related programs. Those gigs gave him a prominent platform from which he could draw heavily on his knowledge as a former NFL quarterback. Jaworski still loves to boast about how much ta...

Are You Sure Russell Westbrook Should Be MVP? Consider These Stats

An NBA season is not a triple-double-getting contest. Yesterday, Albert Burneko argued that the discussion about who deserves the NBA Most Valuable Player award has lately gone off track—that Russell Westbrook, averaging a triple-double for the Oklahoma City Thunder, has been so thoroughly and overw...

Cool Charts Show You Just How Good The NBA Has Gotten

By pulling team statistics from Basketball Reference and graphing them by category, stats guy Ed Küpfer has offered us a pleasantly concise picture of the NBA’s evolution over the last 36 years:...

Basketball's Most Influential Pick-and-Roll Turnover Ball Handlers

Today, Politico shared a list of bloggers ranked by influence by a proprietary survey conducted by an analytics firm called StatSocial. This seems useful, in its way. Similarly, Deadspin would like to share some data from Synergy Sports, a sports analytics firm. Here is a list of NBA players, ranke...

Introducing: The Shabazz Assist 

Two years ago, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry introduced the Kobe Assist, a new statistic that "proves that missing shots is sometimes just as valuable as making them." Goldsberry's analysis was interesting, but it left out a key component: the dunkpass. You see, Goldsberry examined what percentage o...

Chart: All Of Peyton Manning's Pick-Sixes, By Defender And Distance

Hey, remember that cool chart from last week, visualizing all of Peyton Manning's regular season touchdowns? Well, it missed a few. In belated honor of Peyton's record-setting career throwing touchdowns, here are all the touchdowns he's thrown to the other team. ...

Correlation Does Imply Causation (Sometimes)

Hey, It's 15 Years (And A Day) Since Fernando Tatis Hit Two Grand Slams In An Inning

On April 23, 1999, Fernando Tatis set an MLB record that's as unlikely as it is pointless, hitting two grand slams in a single inning. It is, I feel confident saying, unlikely to ever be broken....

Do Colder NFL Games Have Fewer Penalties?

While watching some insanely frigid football last weekend, one Deadspinner wondered if there were fewer flags in cold NFL games, the result of referees deciding, consciously or not, to speed games up and get the hell off the field. Without scrutinizing hundreds of hours of game tape we can't really ...

Rex Ryan's Odd Obsession With Passer Rating

According to the New York Times, the Jets coach "cares deeply" about passer rating, that much-maligned, simplistic, often misleading statistic dismissed by many as a curio. He uses it to evaluate his and opposing quarterbacks, and considers it one of the leading indicators of team success—even as it...

Brandon Marshall Is Better Than Drew Brees, And Other Fantasy Truths

Fantasy football may not have all the blood and sweat and violence and trauma of the game as it's played on the field, but there's at least one way in which it's just like the real thing: as John Madden put it, "usually the team that scores the most points wins." How you get those points may be ver...

Phil Mickelson Takes A Statistical Approach To His Short Game

British Open winner Phil Mickelson has remained relatively quiet in the media since his win last week, but he popped up on the radar after requesting to be featured on the podcast Science Friday. What'd he talk about? Math, science and golf!...

What The Hell Is Going On With The Grizzlies' Coaching Situation?

Lost though it may have been in the relentless beatdown the Spurs delivered last week, the Memphis Grizzlies had a great season, another tremendous step forward. Under head coach Lionel Hollins, the Grizzlies' winning percentage has increased every year: from .293 in 2008-09 (he coached the last hal...

Even If Icing The Kicker Doesn't Work, It's Better Than Never Icing The Kicker

Mike Tomlin iced the kicker twice last night, but with an unfortunate twist: First, he called a timeout on his own kicker, Shaun Suisham, who proceeded to miss a 54-yarder. Then he stopped the Titans' Rob Bironas just as he was about to attempt the game-winning 40-yarder. Bironas waited two minutes ...

Just How Tight Is The AL Playoff Race?

With three weeks to go in the season, over half of baseball is still in the race. Seventeen teams are within five games of a playoff spot. You might think that's mostly due to the new second wild card, and that's the case in the NL. With all three division leaders comfortable and the Braves safe at...

Redskins Quarterback Had A Great Debut

For a bungling NFL franchise looking for a reason to believe, there's nothing quite like a breakout performance by a superstar quarterback. So after years of failure, Washington fans had to be delighted to see the numbers RGIII put up in his first start for the team. When you see a stat line like th...

Denard Robinson Had More Offense Than Michigan's Offense Today

Some stock car named Denard Robinson suited up for Michigan today and accomplished more offense than the entire Michigan offense. This sounds impossible but it is not. Like the American financial system, college football's statistics attribute success to individual performance while collectivizing t...

Fernando Tatís Had A Nice Chat With Homer Simpson On Twitter [CORRECTION]

To hear Fernando Tatís tell it, he learned to speak English from The Simpsons while he was working his way up through the minor leagues. He eventually made it out of the the minors and played 11 season in Major League Baseball for the Rangers, Cardinals, Nationals Expos, Orioles and finally the Met...