Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with basketball

Best basketballs around

neoist — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:21:46 -0800

As March Madness is here, want to get a basketball as a gift. What's the best basketball on the market? While I don't want to spend a fortune, not too picky on price. Also understand there's a difference between indoor and outdoor usage, and plan on mainly using ball at gym, with some occasional outside games. Am thinking of something like the basketball closest to Nokona baseball gloves or Leatherhead footballs...

TV Commerical Search: People Yell "LAYUP"

unceman — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:13:26 -0800

Trying to find a commercial from the mid 90s (?). There's a guy talking about a basketball legend. The way he describes this legend goes something like this: "One day he was raining 3s from the sky" "He would pull up from 25 feet and people on the sidelines would be yelling LAYUP" My Google Fu has failed me, since I don't know what product was being advertised. Ideally, I'm looking for a video link, but would settle with knowing what was being advertised.

Send it in, big fella!

Flamingo — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:23:09 -0800

My fiancee loves Bill Raftery and I would love to get a signed photograph for him, but I can't figure out how to make contact. I've tried many googles, but all I can find up with are the following:

Contact for speaking engagements- Looks suspicious and not like a reasonable avenue for this search.

here

ebay posting for an autograph. Not what I want. Hoping for (1) photo and (2) customized/personalized message.

His twitter. This doesn't seem like an appropriate request for twitter and I don't use twitter. I am also 100% certain my fiancee follows him on twitter.

ESPN MediaZone's page doesn't have any real info, but I sent them an email a few months ago, with no luck.

Ideally, what I'd request is a signed photo with a witty/appropriate wedding-related saying involving his catchphrase "Onions!" (Just want to lay it all out here, just in case.)

I'm not really sure where to move forward with a request or other avenues to pursue. Any ideas? Anyone have an "in" with the big man himself? What am I not thinking of?

NBYay!

Georgina — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:35:48 -0800

Please recommend me the best books and films about basketball. Non-fiction, novels, documentaries, films -- all recs welcome! If you loved it, I'd love hearing about it. But things I'm particularly interested in include analysis of the game itself, the the way basketball intersects with race, class and sexuality, the NBA, the WNBA, high school basketball (is there a Friday Night Lights of basketball?), interesting rivalries and narratives, and the New York Knicks. I'm probably less interested in biographies of individual players unless they're amazing.

Thank you, and cheers!

How can an obese person get in shape for basketball?

Osakhomen — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:13:25 -0800

So I'm obese, I use to play basketball in high school (I fluctuated from slightly overweight to normal weight in high school), but because of depression and anxiety, I ate my feeling and I have gotten obese. Now I'm in grad school, and on the track to losing weight, and I want to play intramural basketball. I play pickup games sometimes with some classmates and other people at the gym, but I'm so out of shape, I end up walking a lot of the game... I wasn't sure if I wanted to play intramural because I'm so out of shape it's frustrating/embarrassing not to be able to do what I use to in high school... but I decided that the only way I can get close to how I played in high school, is actually to play more. I've been doing Power 90 for the last 2 weeks, and it's helped a bit with getting me in basketball shape, but since it's not geared to get you into basketball shape, it won't get me where I want to be. Any suggestions? TIA

Help me out with my fantasy basketball auction draft!

Thrillhouse — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:35:40 -0800

I'm participating in my first fantasy basketball league (I've done FFB) and another first for me is the auction draft. Help me not look like a fool. I don't have an excessive knowledge of basketball. It's never been my game. I've read some of the auction strategy guides and that all say to make this list and that list but I need help assembling a list and knowing how much to pay for different players. Can you help me make some smart choices as I go through draft night?
Thanks!

Where can I play basketball in Washington DC area (Bethesda) late at night?

crawltopslow — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:16:12 -0800

Where can I play basketball in Washington DC (Bethesda) area late at night? I'd like to play basketball late at night this Monday and Tuesday nights.

I prefer playing on outdoor courts with lights, for free, until 3AM, that is optimal. sub optimal would be indoor courts, that cost money, till midnight or something.

Anyone know where the games are at?

closer to Bethesda is a bonus

thanks!

Which group of athletes is more abnormal in height?

Trurl — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:19:20 -0800

Which group of athletes is further from the center of the bell curve distribution for height: Olympic gymnasts or NBA players?

How can we watch live basketball at home, just for a month?

filthy light thief — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:57:43 -0800

What's the cheapest way I can watch live basketball coverage in my one home? I'm in California, and a Charter cable internet customer. Complication: I only want a month of access. My parents are staying with with me and my wife for a month, and my dad is going through sports withdrawal. We've done away with cable TV, and entertain ourselves with Netflix on-demand programming, plus a digital antenna that picks up NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW.

Ideally, we could find some reliable streaming service, and pay for that for a month. He has his laptop, and there's a desktop computer we rarely use. We don't want cable TV, but he's willing to pay for it for a month, if that's possible, and he brought a spare TV for that specific purpose.

Past threads that talk about streaming sites that are either no longer working, or don't appear to have any NBA coverage. Searching for "streaming sports TV" and the like returns shady looking sites with a ton of ads, and demands that you install some plugin that I've never heard of before. ESPN.com has a streaming feature, but you need to be a member of Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, or Verizon FIOS TV.

Please hoop me!

Ipsifendus — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:20:58 -0800

How do I go about becoming a fan or follower of pro basketball? I am in my mid forties, and have always felt a pretty strong antipathy towards sports fandom. I've cultivated the feeling, as well, and as a result I am completely ignorant of virtually everything sports-related. Recently, however, I've been seized with an urge to start following professional basketball. We do not have cable television or satellite, so my viewing options are limited...but I've figured out ways around that.

What puzzles me is not so much how to watch, but what to watch. Wikipedia informs me that every team in the NBA will play 84 games in the regular season, playing many teams more than once and more than twice. So...suppose that I wanted to become a fan of, say, the Jazz (n.b.: this is just for the sake of argument). Assuming that I don't have time to watch all 84 games, how does a committed fan of a particular team decide which games they'll make a point of watching? And on that topic...given that there is no local franchise where I live, how does one develop an attachment to some specific team?

Oh...and I'm aware already, from reading Wikipedia that the regular season is nearly over. I may attempt to catch the playoffs if I can get over the mental blocks here.

Watch the KU championship online tonight?

xedrik — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:05:08 -0800

Any options for watching the KU/Kentucky championship game live, online? Have checked on the various ESPN sites, but it looks like there is only online viewing of pre-game coverage, not the actual game itself. Any stations or other websites offering live video feeds of the game?

Are there ideal numbers to have in a basketball "Square pool"?

JoeGoblin — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:58:47 -0800

Math/sports question! I entered a "Square pool" (purely theoretical money at stake :) ), for the NCAA basketball tournament. I am curious if there are better numbers to have, and why that would be the case. More information inside. This type of pool is very popular for the Super Bowl. You create a 10 x 10 grid, and people purchase squares (let's say five bucks a piece.) Once all the squares have been purchased, you randomly assign digits 0-9 to the rows and columns, as well as a team. Each square corresponds to the last digit of the score. So if the super bowl ended 42-35, Giants beating the Patriots, the person who had the square Giants 2, Patriots 5, would win.

Now in football, there are clearly a few numbers which are better to have. By virtue of the scoring opportunities in football, you're obviously going to do OK with numbers like 7, 4, 1 or 0. Numbers like 5 and 2 don't come up as frequently, just because these require less likely scenarios like kicking four field goals to get to twelve points.

However, I am curious if there are ideal numbers to have for the basketball version of this pool. So far this year, there have been a couple number combinations that have come up more than once. I am guessing this is just random odds, but I was wondering if anyone who knows statistics or probability or just plain math better than I do might be able to offer some advice or theories about which numbers would be better to have in a pool like this for basketball.

Bracketology- Blown up!

sandmanwv — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 07:09:04 -0800

NCAA Tourney Filter: I want to blow up bracket (lets say 5 by 10 feet) to put on my wall. I'd love to just be able to print using my home printer. What are my best free options? I have a MS Office.

Tips for going to first basketball game?

telsa — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:04:41 -0800

Tips for going to first basketball game? GF and I are looking to go to our first basketball game and I have some questions to prepare. From googling, it seems like getting seats in the side of the court is best.

Will we be able to see from upper sections? What do rows actually mean? Ex) Section 333 Row 1 is closer than Row 8?

EBay is best price for tickets and will those seats be consecutive?

What should we bring?

Finally any tips are appreciated, thanks!

I have some random NBA questions

Sully — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:36:40 -0800

I watched my first NBA basketball game ever and I have some random questions. So I watched the NY Knicks vs. Toronto Raptors Valentines' Day game because I was curious about Jeremy Lin and a bunch of random questions came to mind and I was hoping someone might be able to answer them. (Please keep in mind that I am a hockey & MMA fan, so I have a large understanding of how the game works, but no knowledge of the makeup of NBA teams or the general NBA landscape.)

(A) Are the NY Knicks a good team? Are they expected to make the playoffs? Do they tend to?
(B) I am a hockey fan and in that sport, each team can only call one time out. But in basketball, I noticed that they called time out a lot. How many time outs can teams call?
(C) The two Point Guards tended to be "smaller" men. Are they usually?
(D) One of the players wore goggles. Why? How many players in the league wear goggles?
(E) I noticed that thumping music was playing DURING the play. Is that usual? In hockey, the music stops as soon as the puck is dropped. Or, it crossed my mind that maybe only the television audience could hear the music. What is the truth?
(F) The "three-pointer" seems to be a very effective way to score points. Why do teams not just go for three-pointers all the time? Is there a team that consistently just snipes from the edge?
(G) The great hype about Jeremy Lin is what caused me to watch the game. The ensuing game itself seemed to bear that out - but has there been this amount of attention paid to a NBA newcomer in the past who turned out to be a flash in the pan?

NBA teams to watch to complement my acute case of Linsanity?

cosmic osmo — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:00:26 -0800

In addition to the Knicks, which four teams should I add to my NBA League Pass subscription? Due to the Time Warner Cable/MSG dispute, I signed up for NBA League Pass to watch Knicks games. I also get to pick four other teams whose games I can watch, and I’m looking for suggestions.

I followed the Knicks in the 90s but stopped during Isiah Thomas’s reign of terror and only started watching again last season after Melo joined the team, so I’m pretty ignorant of the current state of NBA basketball in general. I’m looking for teams that would be exciting to watch, maybe with young rising stars, who I wouldn’t get to otherwise frequently watch on nationally televised games. I can be, um, either “in DC” or “in LA” while watching, so blackout restrictions aren’t a concern.

(Boston Celtics need not apply.)

Value Over Replacement Database

no regrets, coyote — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:28:02 -0800

Sports nerds of MeFi: where do you go for your downloadable sports statistics database needs? I'm looking for sports statistics that I can download in CSV files (or similar) to play around with on my own computer. I'm not looking for websites like baseball-reference.com that just have a web interface.

I'm particularly interested in baseball and basketball, but would love to find data on other sports too -- pro, college, hell, even high school. I'm interested in any level of detail, from win-loss records to advanced metrics.

This is for personal, non-commercial use; I'm just tired of writing scrapers to get the data and want something that's easier to download and load into a database.

On any team, four offensive players won't have the ball…

philosophygeek — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:07:16 -0800

Why is off-ball movement such a difficult basketball skill? The more I watch college, and even NBA, basketball and focus on offensive plays rather than just the person with the ball, the more I realize that most of the guys on the court are not moving, and it results in stagnant offenses. So why is off-ball movement such a difficult skill to develop? I would think that, at least in set plays, coaches would script out the off-ball movement for not just the key players (like the person who is going to make the backdoor cut) but for the rest of the team as well. Yet with rare exceptions, you only see one or two players moving at a time. Why?

Bulls versus....? Who would be the best to see?

fuzzysoft — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 11:21:55 -0800

Now that the NBA has come to an agreement (or is very close to), that means I can purchase an awesome Xmas present for my pops! Which team would be the best/most exciting/fun to see play against the Chicago Bulls? It needs to be a home game for the Bulls, but other than that, it doesn't matter. I know next to nothing about basketball, other than its my dad's favorite team, and I want to set up my parents on a nice date evening in their hometown of Chicago. :) They now live in Wisconsin, so my first impulse was the bucks vs bulls game, but I think the bucks are kind of boring? No idea. Any team or game suggestions would be great! Thanks!

DC basketball leagues??

matt755811 — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:53:16 -0800

Hi, I'm an average ex hs basketball player. Are there are competitive adult men's basketball leagues in Washington DC? I live on Capitol Hill so not looking to travel very far. I'm also hoping to not have to pay to join a gym to play in that gym's league. If anybody knows of any I would appreciate the info. Thanks, Matt

Where can I watch Chinese Basketball Association games online?

jng — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 02:47:53 -0800

Where can I watch Chinese Basketball Association games online? Streaming would be preferable, but I'd also be happy to download and watch the day after if anyone knows where they're posted. With the NBA still locked out, I might have to get my basketball fix elsewhere, so the CBA it is. I'm in the U.S., so ideally the site wouldn't block non-China viewers (though if it does, let me know if you have suggestions for Chinese proxies heading back across the Great Firewall). Thanks.

Traitor!

acidic — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:55:05 -0800

I'm trying to choose a new NBA team to follow. Specifically, a really bad team with enough good qualities that it would be fun to support. Any suggestions? I'm from LA so I've been a Lakers fan since childhood, but I want to start following an additional team that's much more of an underdog. It must be a team that didn't make the playoffs this year (and preferably didn't come close). Anyone from the East or the Timberwolves. I prefer owners/GMs/coaches/players who are smart, interesting in interviews, and not homophobic or otherwise horrible.

Half-court shot stats in the NBA

suckerpunch — Wed, 04 May 2011 07:24:25 -0800

Where can I find statistics on half-court shots in the NBA? I haven't found any basketball statistics site that breaks down any shot length beyond the 3-point line. (I did see a few shots in the paint/shots at the rim/midrange statistics.) What I'd like to find is just the overall NBA league half-court (or greater) shots made/attempted for the previous regular season. Anything more complex than that would be excellent but unnecessary.

The bigger they are, the more they run?!

the NATURAL — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:55:03 -0800

NBA Filter: Why does the PF or C always inbound the ball after a made shot? I watch a lot of the NBA, and only the NBA, so I don't know if this is the case in college too. But isn't this counterproductive? It seems to me, the formally un-hoop-educated, that having a big man jog at an accelerated pace down the court to get in position will tire him out faster. I must be wrong.

Printable NCAA Men's Tournament Brackets

dbirchum — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 06:36:02 -0800

Looking to 'collect' NCAA Men's Basketball printable blank "brackets". Help me find some links/resources? I know it may seem odd, but as a big Men's NCAA basketball fan that watches the March Madness tournament every year, I always have a printout of a bracket on hand with me at my home, office, etc. Over the years, I have printed and kept several of these in a folder and I like to look back at previous years and review the brackets.

Therefore, now I am trying to go back and located as many of these as I can (at least until 1992, when I started to REALLY follow the tournament). So I am looking for links to find previous NCAA tournament brackets online. PDF versions are my favourite, but some of the GIF versions are ok too, depending on the file.

Ultimately, I am looking to 'collect' as many of these blank brackets as I can - I don't want them filled out, just blank ones that are either a PDF or GIF so it will print a full page/sheet of paper.

If anyone can help me with this quest, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!