Entertainment

AKABAS | The Top 50 Players in the NBA: #7-1

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In case you missed Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, you can scan through my complete, updated Top 50 list for a quick refresher. This final group of players was so hard to rank that, after losing nights of sleep over it, my dad suggested that I go back to my original criteria for ranking players: “If you dropped this player onto any NBA team at random, by how much would they improve that team’s odds of winning the title?” I set up a spreadsheet with each of the remaining players as the columns and all the playoff teams as the rows, and I tried to estimate (as best I could) the increase in championship odds if each player were to be magically placed onto each team’s roster. The results were laughably inconclusive. For the players ranked 5 through 7, I estimated that their average increase in championship odds would be 17.26%, 17.21%, and 17.15%, respectively. RIP.

Entertainment

AKABAS | The Dunkies

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The dunk contest was my favorite night of the NBA season as a kid, to the point where I would count the days down from months away until I would get to watch the most athletic players in the league see who could jam a basketball into the hoop in the coolest way. Many years after I reenacted every single dunk contest dunk on my NERF hoop, something about the event continues to enthrall me, so I’m handing out awards for the bests and worsts in dunk contest history. Best Dunk Contest

I ranked every dunk contest throughout history in four different categories. While 2016’s duel between Zach Lavine and Aaron Gordon unequivocally had the best dunks of any contest, the overall greatest contest ever is a tie between 2000 and 1988. In the former, Vince Carter attempted five dunks, made all of them on the first try, never competed again, and remains the undisputed greatest contest dunker of all time.

Culture

AKABAS | The Top 50 Players in the NBA: Part 2

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If you’re interested in which guys were 27 through 50 on my list, my criteria for these rankings, or the meaning of the different statistics I’m referencing in this article, check out Part 1. Additionally, after flubbing some players’ rankings in Part 1, I’ve decided to keep my Top 50 in a Google Doc, so that I can both correct my previous mistakes and continue to update the list throughout the season. All stats are current as of 1/11/19.  

26. Marc Gasol – I think he’s a tad overrated.

Culture

AKABAS | The Top 50 Players in the NBA: Part 1

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We know how to rank teams: my team beats your team, therefore my team is better. Just rooting for our teams carries an old-school sense of hometown pride and loyalty, but ranking players is overwhelmingly more interesting and fun — it’s a combination of statistics and intuition, of situational evidence and conjecture. How does one even begin to try to rank basketball players? One obvious way is to determine which players are most valuable to their own teams. That’s what the Most Valuable Player award tries to do, at least in theory, but does anyone really know what that award means? This metric is fairly quantifiable, since we can look at team performance with a certain player both on and off the court.

Entertainment

AKABAS | Stop Complaining About A Perfectly Good NBA Finals Matchup

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Since when did NBA fans become so spoiled? All I see online is people kvetching about another “boring” finals rematch between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers and how Kevin Durant has ruined the NBA. Said people are dumb. First off, this is the best option we had. The Celtics are fun, but they would have gotten romped by either Western Conference team.

Entertainment

AKABAS | 10 NBA Offseason Questions, Asked and Answered

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For how many more finals do you anticipate the two teams will be the Warriors and Cavs (i.e. the next 3,4,5 years?)
– Kyrollos B.

Basically the Warriors’ entire roster is entering free-agency this offseason. Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant are going to do what it takes to both re-sign, but what about the other guys? Andre Iguodala seems to be seriously considering offers from other teams. In the 2015 Finals, his insertion into the starting lineup swung a series in which the Cavaliers were underratedly close to going up 3-0. In this year’s Finals, the Warriors were +60 with Iguodala on the court and, drumroll please… -26 with him on the bench!!! It’s surprising, but not unexplainable.

Entertainment

AKABAS | 10 NBA Finals Questions, Asked and Answered

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When the NBA season came to a close on Monday night, I had too many thoughts to sort out, so I decided to let my friends do it for me by sending me questions. Below are my answers to 10 questions about the 2017 NBA Finals, ranging from most simple to most complex. Very Simple Questions

Is ball even life? – Brian R.

Yes. Ball is still life.

Entertainment

AKABAS | 6 Things the NBA Could Do with the Rookie of the Year Trophy

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This NBA season, not a single rookie who played more than half of his team’s games averaged at least nine points per game while shooting at least 46%. For context, those were the 2016-17 statistics of 35-year-old defensive-specialist Tony Allen. For further context, two years ago the Warriors came back from down 2-1 to defeat the Grizzlies in the Western Conference Semifinals by literally ignoring Tony Allen’s offensive presence.  

The Rookie of the Year trophy is typically given to the best rookie from a particular season (which seems obvious, but since the Academy almost never awards Best Picture to the best picture, you never know). This season, however, begs the question: is giving a trophy to a player less offensively adept than Tony Allen really the best use for it, or are there better options?