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Street rider Danny MacAskill starts off by riding his bike across a narrow fence about four feet in the air…and the video only gets better from there.
Stunning. I want to see MacAskill in the next Bond film. (via waxy)
Update: See also Ryan Leech. (thx, courtney)
I was up waaay too early this morning watching some trending topics on Twitter Search and John Madden’s name suddenly appeared. When you see a boldface name pop up on Twitter Search like that, it usually means they’ve died. I’m glad Madden’s not dead but I’m sad that he’s retiring from calling football games. I know he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved listening to him.
TrueHoop looks at the recent ABC teams in the teams in the NBA, those that have flown high but have not secured a championship.
Some may argue that the true window to win a title began when Jerry Sloan took over as head coach [of the Utah Jazz] during the 1988-89 season, and while Karl Malone and John Stockton had been paired up since the 1985-86 season, the Jazz did not make it to the Western Conference Finals until 1992. That’s when they became title contenders. As we all know, Stockton’s career consisted of dishing out over 15,800 assists, which is over 5,000 assists more than Mark Jackson, who is 2nd on the NBA’s all-time assists list. Karl Malone, meanwhile, went on to finish 2nd on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. To have that kind of talent for so long and not come away with a title is almost unimaginable, if not crushing to a franchise. The window came to an abrupt close in 2003, when Stockton retired and Malone went to the Lakers in a last-ditch effort to win a title. The ultimate kicker? Between 1991 and 2003, Utah’s 632 wins were the most in the NBA.
Hello photographers! I just ran across this photo (via TrueHoop) and was wondering if anyone out there knows how it was made. My guess is a combination of an IR camera, IR spotlight, and a bit of digital darkroom colorization after the fact. How else would you get lighting like that during an actual game? Anyone?
Update: Thanks, gang. Looks like a remotely fired strobe light is the culprit. No IR shenanigans needed.
A list of the Top 10 Mascots of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Though not completely relevant to March Madness, here’s a list of the worst mascots in college sports.
Related to ginger, galangal has been used since medieval times to spice food and quell digestive issues, but it doesn’t taste like your friendly, corner-store ginger candy.
If you were to bite into this tuberous rhizome, you would be very surprised at the slightly sweet, “perfumy” taste and scent of it, not to mention the spiciness factor. While not exactly “hot” like a chili, galangal has a sharp pungency to it that will make you gasp and perhaps cough a little.
Galangal’s role outside the kitchen includes a place in folk medicine and hoodoo magic, where it’s called “Chewing John.” If you’re entering litigation and require a favorable verdict, you’re supposed to chew it thoroughly before spitting it onto the floor of the courtroom.
If only Blake Griffin of the Sooners had hocked a ginger loogie yesterday, North Carolina would have been sent packing.
Lebron’s full-court shot on 60 Minutes makes me grin like a 4-year-old with a fistful of candy.
An organization called FIGMENT is building an 18-hole mini golf course on Governors Island and they are accepting design proposals through March 31 from artists, designers, and other would-be mini golf course builders.
The Challenge: Design and construct a single hole for this mini golf course, following the theme “City of Dreams.” Designs will be judged and selected on creativity, structural integrity, playability, feasibility, adherence to theme and budget.
(via hustler of culture)
Allonzo Trier is the top-ranked basketball player in his class. As such, he gets flown around the country for games, is provided with shoes and clothes with his own logo on them, and his private school tuition, academic & basketball tutors, and dental care is paid for by a foundation started by a current NBA player.
What accrues to Allonzo because of his basketball exploits leaves Marcie feeling dazzled, bewildered, seduced and wary. “They’re doing nice things for my son, things that he needs and I can’t afford,” she told me. “So how can I say no?” But she knows the reason for the largesse. “If his game falls off, they will kick him to the curb. That’s what makes me nervous, and I don’t want it to happen.”
Oh, BTW, Trier is a sixth-grader. I always get depressed when reading about kids and athletics in the US and this article is no exception.
Yesterday I wondered if athletes see themselves as two separate entities (the person and the player) like the actors that Mike Leigh works with.
For actors to be able to differentiate between themselves and the characters they are playing while at the same time remain in character and spontaneous requires a sophisticated combination of skills and spirit.
Nelson, commenting on Wreck & Salvage, is a pro basketball player in the Netherlands:
I do have an on the court persona, without a doubt, that has been cultivated throughout the years, like a character, and it’s extremely easy to slip into. There are definitely times when I don’t feel like playing/performing, but when the ball goes up a switch gets turned on. We do watch a ton of video and analyze what we could do better, or what we’ve done wrong. I guess the point is, one runs on instinct, the other is a learned/cultivated behavior, and a great performance is a mixture of the two, which exists not as a duality, but combined in one person, expressed easily from a lifetime of dedication and practice.
A more extreme case involves Herschel Walker, who has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder):
Walker and Mungadze believe the disorder actually helped Walker — who started for a number of NFL teams, including the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys — succeed on the gridiron. Mungadze offered a theory about the subconscious logic in Walker’s head. “Since people are laughing at you, we’re going to make you so strong, so fast, so talented, that you’re going to be above everyone. And that is what went into building this super athlete.”
Getting into character extends into other professions as well. In Pulp Fiction, before they go into an apartment to retrieve a briefcase for their boss, Jules tells Vincent to “get into character” after a conversation about foot massages.
In this Vogue profile of Melinda Gates, she describes her husband Bill’s transformation when he went to work.
Lately, they have begun to edge into each other’s territory. “I hope that one of the things about a great marriage is that you bring out the best in each other,” she says. “Look, I dated Bill for a long time before we got married, and I knew where his heart was. But I also knew that not many people saw it. The wall would go up the minute he stepped into Microsoft. Sometimes he would come into the foundation with the wall up. I would even tease him about it. He would be talking to me in the car, and by the time we got to the elevator I would be like, Whoa, where did he go?”
When my dad ran his own business back in the 70s/80s, he deliberately cultivated a “business voice” that he used on the telephone, a voice that was quieter, deeper, calmer, and more serious than his regular voice. The transformation when he got on the phone was pretty amazing. (thx, pavel)
Filmmaker Mike Leigh’s description of how he works with his actors in movies reminds me of (unsurprisingly) relaxed concentration and deliberate practice.
When it comes to the crunch it really is about having actors who are totally able to think deeply about their characters while at the same time, once we developed those characters, for them to be absolutely organic and able to respond emotionally to anything that comes their way. When it comes to thinking about how a character talks, there are literary and language considerations. For actors to be able to differentiate between themselves and the characters they are playing while at the same time remain in character and spontaneous requires a sophisticated combination of skills and spirit. The bottom line is this: For those that can do it, it’s a natural combination and they don’t think twice about it. For those that can’t do it, they can bang their heads against a brick wall from now till kingdom come and they still won’t get there.
Leigh’s acting example — that there are two distinct people at work, the actor and the character — is interesting to think about in the context of sports. I wonder if any athletes approach working on their games in this way, differentiating between the player who performs and the person who analyzes the playing. Plenty of athletes refer to themselves in the third person (Rickey Henderson!), I wonder if that’s why.
TrueHoop recently investigated a seemingly simple aspect of the NBA game: the traveling violation.
The question is basic: If you’re dribbling the ball in the NBA, and you pick up your dribble … how many steps can you take before you have broken the traveling rules? It’s a fundamental part of the game. But I asked several NBA players, and the answers were far from simple.
In addition to asking the players, TH’s Henry Abbott also talks with some NBA officials, gets the low-down on how the call is really made, and makes an argument that the rule should be rewritten. The intro to the series is here.
As athletes get bigger, stronger, faster, and more well-trained and records repeatedly fall in other sports, the percentage of free throws made in college and NBA games has largely stayed the same.
The consistency of free-throw percentages stands out when contrasted with field-goal shooting over all. In men’s college basketball, field-goal percentage was below 40 percent until 1960, then climbed steadily to 48.1 in 1984, still the highest on record. The long-range 3-point shot was introduced in 1986, and the overall shooting percentage has settled in at about 44 percent.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s amazing that with so much at stake in the NBA game (wins, money, championships, glory), there are still players whose FT% is in the 50-60% range over the course of a season…for a shot that undefended and never changes! I wonder how the putting percentages have changed over the years in golf (if they even keep such statistics). The Times’ Room for Debate blog has a related discussion on unbreakable sports records.
If the NBA game were played at the pace of the 1962 season, the year Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double and Wilt put up 50 PPG while pulling down 26 RPG, LeBron James might be averaging 40.1 points, 10.3 rebounds, and 10.0 assists this season.
Okay, so you’ve all seen Wilt and Oscar’s numbers from 1962… but have you ever sat down and looked at the league averages that year? In ‘62, the average team took 107.7 shots per game. By comparison, this year the average team takes 80.2 FGA/G. If we use a regression to estimate turnovers & offensive rebounds, the league pace factor for 1962 was 125.5 possessions/48 minutes, whereas this year it’s 91.7. Oscar’s Royals averaged 124.7 poss/48, while Wilt’s Warriors put up a staggering 129.7 (the highest mark in the league). On the other hand, the 2009 Cavs are averaging a mere 89.2 poss/48. It turns out that the simplest explanation for the crazy statistical feats of 1961-62 (and the early sixties in general) is just that the league was playing at a much faster tempo in those days, with more possessions affording players more opportunities to amass gaudy counting statistics.
(via truehoop)
Michael Lewis cast his Moneyball lens on basketball in this week’s NY Times Magazine. The Billy Beane of the roundball story, more or less, is Shane Battier, a guard for the Houston Rockets. Battier doesn’t seem like a great basketball player, but he does a lot of little things that helps his team win.
Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly Âreduces their shooting percentages.
Battier sounds like an intriguing fellow but the most interesting part of the article is about how the players’ incentives differ in basketball from other major American sports.
There is a tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group. On the baseball field, it would be hard for a player to sacrifice his team’s interest for his own. Baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team one: by doing what’s best for himself, the player nearly always also does what is best for his team. “There is no way to selfishly get across home plate,” as Morey puts it. “If instead of there being a lineup, I could muscle my way to the plate and hit every single time and damage the efficiency of the team — that would be the analogy. Manny Ramirez can’t take at-bats away from David Ortiz. We had a point guard in Boston who refused to pass the ball to a certain guy.”
No wonder it’s so hard to build a basketball team with the right balance of skills and personalities. Take five guys, put them on a court, let them do whatever they think they need to do to get a larger contract next year, and maybe you get some pretty good results. Now, consider a situation where the plus/minus statistic is the basis for player salaries and all of sudden, players need to figure out how they can make the other four guys on the floor better. And while everyone is making adjustments to each others’ games, each player is adjusting to everyone else’s game, and the process becomes this fragile and intricate nonlinear dance that results in either beautiful chaos or the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers.
PS. The brief author bio at the end of the article continues the recent game of “next book” Whack-A-Mole from Lewis. Since the publication of The Blind Side in 2006, Lewis’ next book has been listed in various outlets as being about New Orleans/Katrina, financial panics (which turned out to be an anthology edited by Lewis), his sequel to Liar’s Poker about the current financial crisis, and now is listed as “Home Game, a memoir about fatherhood”. I give up.
Myostatin is a protein that, along with its associated gene, limits the growth of muscle tissue in some mammals. The Belgian Blue cattle breed has a natural mutation of the gene associated with myostatin that supresses the protein, resulting in lean and heavily muscled cattle.
A myostatin inhibiting drug called Stamulumab is currently undergoing testing for treating those with muscular dystrophy. If approved, use and abuse by human athletes will surely follow. (via siege)
Update: Stamulumab is no longer undergoing testing. But a pharmaceutical company called Acceleron is developing a similar drug called ACE-031. (thx, stephen)
I had no idea people were swimming across the entire Atlantic Ocean now. The first woman, a 56-year-old from Colorado named Jennifer Figge, just completed the trip from the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa to Trinidad. But she made the trip in only 29 days, which has raised some questions as to how far she swam vs. floated via boat.
It’s gotta be weird for Roger Federer. Last year at this time, people were saying that he was the best tennis player of all time. Now, near the top of his game and height of his powers, he might not even be the best current tennis player. And if you look at the statistics, Rafael Nadal may turn out to be the best tennis player ever.
Federer won his first Grand Slam title at age 21 and, by his 23rd birthday, had won two more. Sampras had won four by that age. Nadal is well ahead of that pace, having won his first Grand Slam at the precocious age of 18. The Australian was Nadal’s sixth and he will be a prohibitive favorite to capture his fifth consecutive French Open just a few days after he turns 23 in June.
The NY Times has a timeline map showing what people from around the country said on Twitter during the Super Bowl broadcast. I like the emoticons tab but they also should have included a profanity tab.
A Philadelphia sports fan with a knack for getting into good seats at the ballgame for free ended up partying with the Phillies in their clubhouse after winning the World Series.
Lionel goes 5’8”, 240, and he’s got the same shirt and lei as the players, so he looks like a player, which is maybe why he’s suddenly in the middle of every hug. And that’s about when Chase Utley says to Jimmy Rollins: “Let’s go celebrate!” And Lionel says exactly what you’d think he’d say, which is, “I’m with you guys!”
(via memeticians)
A video explaining how the yellow first-down line is drawn on the football field during games. (thx, david)
Some designers take a crack at redesigning the most recent Super Bowl logo. Most are completely impractical, but I thought Aaron Draplin’s had a nice throwback style.
Jump London, a 2003 documentary about parkour, is available in its entirety on Google Video. (thx, sacha)
The Ravens are looking good in the playoffs but Mark Lamster imagines a football team made up of characters from The Wire. The most inspired choices:
Offensive Coordinator: Lester Freamon
FB: Thomas Hauk
MLB: Wee-Bey Brice
MLB: Cheese Wagstaff
Kicker: Ziggy Sobotka
Fan club president: Roland Pryzbylewski
Sports Illustrated named 2008 the best year ever in sports. In my best links post, I said that three 2008 sporting events stuck out in my mind but this article reminded me of one more: Jason Lezak’s amazing anchor leg in the 4x100 freestyle.
Highlights of yesterday’s Patriots/Bills game, aka The Wind Bowl. We must have rewound that Buffalo field goal attempt at least five times…I still can’t believe it hooked that much in two different directions.
Each player probably won’t fall neatly into one of these classifications, but I would say that most could claim one of these titles as their “primary” classification. Take Kobe, for example: I would classify Kobes as primary: Surreal scorer, secondary: Renaissance man. So what does that say about Kobe’s placement on this type of hierarchy? It says that in terms of value based on classification alone, Kobe would be among the second tier of players. This brings about the point that as a general rule, sheer talent could push a player up one tier, or maybe even two.
And LeBron James is off in a blue circle on top, all by himself. (via truehoop)
Wiigobot is a robot built out of Legos that can bowl a perfect game in Wii Sports bowling. Just another step on the way to total human obsolescence. See if you can stay awake during a video of a robot playing a computer in bowling. (via thih)
This is more than a week old but I just finished reading it, so stick it. Malcolm Gladwell says that the problem of finding good teachers is the same sort of problem encountered by scouts attempting to find good NFL quarterbacks.
The problem with picking quarterbacks is that [college QB] Chase Daniel’s performance can’t be predicted. The job he’s being groomed for is so particular and specialized that there is no way to know who will succeed at it and who won’t. In fact, Berri and Simmons found no connection between where a quarterback was taken in the draft — that is, how highly he was rated on the basis of his college performance — and how well he played in the pros.
A group of researchers — Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard’s school of education; Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth; and Robert Gordon, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress—have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom. Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications — as much as they appear related to teaching prowess — turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans.
The upshot is that NFL quarterbacking and teaching are both jobs that need to be performed in order to find out if a certain person is good at them or not. For more, check out a follow-up post on Gladwell’s blog.
From a 1977 film called Gizmo, some urban tumbling from the 1930s that strongly resembles the contemporary sport of parkour.
The full film is available on Google Video. (via waxy)
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