November 1, 2012
In Houston, Jeremy Lin and James Harden Plot Revenge on the NBA The NBA’s most fascinating backcourt is not in Miami, where Dwyane Wade is joined by pedestrian point guard Mario Chalmers. It’s not in Brooklyn, despite the billboards throughout New York featuring Deron Williams and Joe Johnson. It’s not even in Los Angeles, where Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant have five NBA titles and three MVPs between them (but have played a combined 2,315 games and more than 78,000 minutes). No, the backcourt tandem to watch this year is in Houston, where Jeremy Lin and James Harden enter the season with a lot to prove. Those two kids, with a combined age of 47, are setting out to show their former teams and the rest of the league that they are worth every penny of their contracts and then some. And one of them just happens to be among the biggest breakout stars/cultural icons the NBA has ever seen. Read more. [Images: AP]

In Houston, Jeremy Lin and James Harden Plot Revenge on the NBA

The NBA’s most fascinating backcourt is not in Miami, where Dwyane Wade is joined by pedestrian point guard Mario Chalmers. It’s not in Brooklyn, despite the billboards throughout New York featuring Deron Williams and Joe Johnson. It’s not even in Los Angeles, where Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant have five NBA titles and three MVPs between them (but have played a combined 2,315 games and more than 78,000 minutes).

No, the backcourt tandem to watch this year is in Houston, where Jeremy Lin and James Harden enter the season with a lot to prove. Those two kids, with a combined age of 47, are setting out to show their former teams and the rest of the league that they are worth every penny of their contracts and then some. And one of them just happens to be among the biggest breakout stars/cultural icons the NBA has ever seen.

Read more. [Images: AP]

12:15pm
(Notes: 143)
  
Filed under: Sports Basketball Jeremy Lin Houston New York Race 
July 17, 2012

gifhound:

Errrrrr…The “kiss cam” at last night’s USA-Brazil Olympic exhibition men’s basketball game found itself locked on Barack and Michelle, they declined, were booed, and it was awkward for everyone involved (Malia, Joe Biden, the Secret Service, and certainly the operator of the “kiss cam”). The second try went much more according to plan, but was probably still pretty tense for the “kiss cam” operator. 

President Obama booed after initially failing to smooch during ‘Kiss Cam,’ but later plants one on First Lady during Team USA victory

(via buzzfeed)

11:05am
(Notes: 1,074)
  
Filed under: Kiss Cam Obama Michelle Basketball Team USA 
June 14, 2012
In New Orleans, High Hopes for the Perfect NBA Team Name The very day New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson was introduced as the new owner of the New Orleans Hornets back in April, he mentioned that he wanted to make one long-overdue change to the NBA franchise the city inherited from Charlotte, North Carolina, a decade ago. He wanted to change the team’s name, he said, to something that actually means New Orleans. “The ‘Hornets,’” he said, “doesn’t mean anything.’” Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: New Orleans Hornets] In a perfect world, they’d just trade names with the Jazz.

In New Orleans, High Hopes for the Perfect NBA Team Name

The very day New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson was introduced as the new owner of the New Orleans Hornets back in April, he mentioned that he wanted to make one long-overdue change to the NBA franchise the city inherited from Charlotte, North Carolina, a decade ago. He wanted to change the team’s name, he said, to something that actually means New Orleans. “The ‘Hornets,’” he said, “doesn’t mean anything.’”

Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: New Orleans Hornets]

In a perfect world, they’d just trade names with the Jazz.

11:08am
(Notes: 74)
  
Filed under: Sports NBA Basketball New Orleans 
May 10, 2012
Here Are the 15 Highest Paid Sports Teams in the World ESPN’s annual money survey of 278 teams across around the world found that we pay wages equal to $15.7 billion to the 7,925 athletes in 14 sports leagues in ten countries. Of the 15 teams with the highest average salary, eight were European football (ahem, soccer) clubs. In the graph below, they are outlined in red. Baseball teams, led by the New York Yankees, took three of the top 15 spots, and they are outlined in green. NBA teams, led by the Los Angeles Lakers, snagged the last four spots. They are in solid blue. One angle into this fun study is the “economics of superstars.” Real Madrid isn’t just a nice group of boys from the larger Madrid metro playing against their friends from around Spain. It’s an international team, comprised of international superstars, with a rabid international audience. That the top soccer teams from Europe have a worldwide audience means they have a worldwide revenue base, especially from TV deals and licensing. That’s why Barcelona can pay $217,014,221 a year to field their team, making them the most expensive sports team in the world. And it’s why the NFL and NBA can afford ever-rising salaries. If sports money comes down to audience, more televisions and internet connections around the world means the rights to broadcast the world’s most popular teams are getting ever-more lucrative. Read more.

Here Are the 15 Highest Paid Sports Teams in the World

ESPN’s annual money survey of 278 teams across around the world found that we pay wages equal to $15.7 billion to the 7,925 athletes in 14 sports leagues in ten countries.

Of the 15 teams with the highest average salary, eight were European football (ahem, soccer) clubs. In the graph below, they are outlined in red. Baseball teams, led by the New York Yankees, took three of the top 15 spots, and they are outlined in green. NBA teams, led by the Los Angeles Lakers, snagged the last four spots. They are in solid blue.

One angle into this fun study is the “economics of superstars.” Real Madrid isn’t just a nice group of boys from the larger Madrid metro playing against their friends from around Spain. It’s an international team, comprised of international superstars, with a rabid international audience. That the top soccer teams from Europe have a worldwide audience means they have a worldwide revenue base, especially from TV deals and licensing. That’s why Barcelona can pay $217,014,221 a year to field their team, making them the most expensive sports team in the world. And it’s why the NFL and NBA can afford ever-rising salaries. If sports money comes down to audience, more televisions and internet connections around the world means the rights to broadcast the world’s most popular teams are getting ever-more lucrative.

Read more.

3:25pm
(Notes: 55)
  
Filed under: Sports Soccer Football Baseball Basketball MLB NBA NFL 
March 15, 2012
3rdofmay: The art: Paul Pfeiffer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (8), 2005. The news: “Basketball players of the NCAA, unite!” by Patrick Hruby for TheAtlantic.com. The source: Partial and promised gift to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington. Critic’s note: Hruby’s essay notes that the NCAA financial model relies on the fondness fans and alumni have for their schools. The athletes themselves mostly do not participate in that success: They are the unpaid labor that enables a multi-billion-dollar annual industry. Pfeiffer’s Four Horsemen reminds us that when the identifying jersey is stripped away the player is almost always anonymous. The athletes are conditionally adored by the fans even as they are exploited by the schools for which they play. Jerry Seinfeld was right: We root for the laundry with which we identify. This remains one of my favorite Tumblrs of all time.

3rdofmay:

The art: Paul Pfeiffer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (8), 2005.

The news: “Basketball players of the NCAA, unite!” by Patrick Hruby for TheAtlantic.com.

The source: Partial and promised gift to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington.

Critic’s note: Hruby’s essay notes that the NCAA financial model relies on the fondness fans and alumni have for their schools. The athletes themselves mostly do not participate in that success: They are the unpaid labor that enables a multi-billion-dollar annual industry. Pfeiffer’s Four Horsemen reminds us that when the identifying jersey is stripped away the player is almost always anonymous. The athletes are conditionally adored by the fans even as they are exploited by the schools for which they play. Jerry Seinfeld was right: We root for the laundry with which we identify.

This remains one of my favorite Tumblrs of all time.

10:17am
(Notes: 66)
  
Filed under: art basketball ncaa march madness 
February 16, 2012
Meet the FedEx Employee Who Knew Jeremy Lin Would Be a Star You can’t help but feel some vicarious vindication for Ed Weiland, the low-key FedEx employee who saw Jeremy Lin’s potential when so many NBA GMs didn’t. Weiland has a humble background that’s the perfect fodder for Jason Gay profile of him in today’s Wall Street Journal: He’s a 51-year-old father of two, a college dropout, and amateur basketball sabermetrician whose 2010 post on Hoops Analyst predicting “Jeremy Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star” garnered so much traffic this past week that it crashed the site. Weiland relied on statistics from Lin’s career at Harvard in his analysis, so mark this down as another example of the continuing Moneyball-ization of sports. And mark Weiland down as one of the few people Linsightful enough (that’ll be our only Lin pun!) to predict the Knicks star’s success. (Others include Pablo S. Torre, who fawned over Lin in a 2010 Sport Illustrated profile, and UConn coach Jim Calhoun, who said of Lin in 2009 “I can’t think of a team he wouldn’t play for” after playing him.) Read more. [Image: Reuters]

Meet the FedEx Employee Who Knew Jeremy Lin Would Be a Star

You can’t help but feel some vicarious vindication for Ed Weiland, the low-key FedEx employee who saw Jeremy Lin’s potential when so many NBA GMs didn’t. Weiland has a humble background that’s the perfect fodder for Jason Gay profile of him in today’s Wall Street Journal: He’s a 51-year-old father of two, a college dropout, and amateur basketball sabermetrician whose 2010 post on Hoops Analyst predicting “Jeremy Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star” garnered so much traffic this past week that it crashed the site.

Weiland relied on statistics from Lin’s career at Harvard in his analysis, so mark this down as another example of the continuing Moneyball-ization of sports. And mark Weiland down as one of the few people Linsightful enough (that’ll be our only Lin pun!) to predict the Knicks star’s success. (Others include Pablo S. Torre, who fawned over Lin in a 2010 Sport Illustrated profile, and UConn coach Jim Calhoun, who said of Lin in 2009 “I can’t think of a team he wouldn’t play for” after playing him.)

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

11:31am
(Notes: 47)
  
Filed under: Jeremy Lin NBA Basketball Sports 
June 13, 2011
NBA Finals Recap, As Told Through LeBron James’s Facial Expressions

NBA Finals Recap, As Told Through LeBron James’s Facial Expressions

10:30am
(Notes: 225)
  
Filed under: sports basketball nba lebron 
March 17, 2011
Forget Your March Madness Bracket: Play NCAA Bingo! Instead Why even bother with brackets, really? You’ll be much happier playing BINGO!—our new March Madness-themed BINGO!, that is. Just print out the specially-designed card below, and use bottle-caps or coins to cover a square every time you hear one of these common March Madness-y words or phrases. Or you could just use the card to play a drinking game and drown your sorrows while watching your brackets implode. Read more at The Atlantic

Forget Your March Madness Bracket: Play NCAA Bingo! Instead

Why even bother with brackets, really? You’ll be much happier playing BINGO!—our new March Madness-themed BINGO!, that is. Just print out the specially-designed card below, and use bottle-caps or coins to cover a square every time you hear one of these common March Madness-y words or phrases. Or you could just use the card to play a drinking game and drown your sorrows while watching your brackets implode.

Read more at The Atlantic

12:02pm
(Notes: 67)
  
Filed under: sports culture march madness ncaa basketball 
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