How to Shake your Defender with Behind the Back Dribble Wednesday, September 27, 2006
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posted by Brandon Schenz @ 7:13 AM,
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Instant Fall Savings--Save up to $50 at Amazon.com Monday, September 25, 2006
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Please note that product prices and availability are subject to change. Prices and availability were accurate at the time this newsletter was sent; however, they may differ from those you see when you visit Amazon.com. |
posted by Brandon Schenz @ 7:11 AM,
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Double teamed? Here's How To Escape It Wednesday, September 20, 2006
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posted by Brandon Schenz @ 6:55 AM,
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Instant $20 Off Shoes and Free Shipping at Amazon.com Tuesday, September 19, 2006
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| Men's | Women's | Children's | 40% Off or More |
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Add shoes from ONE of these sellers to your Shopping Cart until the total amount before taxes, gift-wrap, shipping, and other promotions is $80 or more. The rebate does not apply to purchases totaling $80 from multiple sellers. Please note that product prices and availability are subject to change. Prices and availability were accurate at the time this e-mail was sent; however, they may differ from those you see when you visit Amazon.com.
© 2006 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are registered
trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. "and you're done" is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com, 1200 12th Ave. S., Suite 1200, Seattle, WA 98144-2734.
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posted by Brandon Schenz @ 7:11 AM,
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Denver takes close look at Wells for help at guard Friday, September 15, 2006
The Nuggets are making a strong push to fill their veteran shooting guard void with free agent Bonzi Wells, according to two NBA sources.
Although Wells is an unrestricted free agent, Denver might need a sign-and-trade to get Wells. Houston and Miami also are believed to have interest in the 6-foot-5, 210-pound swingman.
Nuggets officials do not comment on free agents.
Denver has two shooting guards, newcomers J.R. Smith, 21, and rookie Yakhouba Diawara. Wells would give the team a veteran presence. The eight-year NBA veteran averaged 23.2 points and 12 rebounds in the playoffs last season for Sacramento. During the regular season he averaged 13.6 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists. Wells also could fill in at small forward when Carmelo Anthony isn't in the game.
The Nuggets have an excess of big men on their roster and potentially could move one of them to make a sign-and-trade deal to get Wells.
The Nuggets' management team knows Wells. Vice president of basketball operations Mark Warkentien was with Portland when Wells played there. Nuggets assistant coach Tim Grgurich also worked with Wells in Portland, and assistant John Welch worked with him in Memphis. Prior to last February's trade deadline, the Nuggets inquired about making a trade with the Kings for Wells.
In other personnel news, Golden State and Portland might have interest in a potential sign-and-trade for free-agent guard DerMarr Johnson, who played last season with Denver.
Footnote
The expansion Colorado 14ers have the top selection in the D-League Expansion Draft on Tuesday. Four expansion teams will select 10 players.
posted by Brandon Schenz @ 7:33 AM,
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Training Season is Here! Wednesday, September 13, 2006
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posted by Brandon Schenz @ 6:46 AM,
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Start Thinking About the New Season Now! Tuesday, September 12, 2006
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posted by Brandon Schenz @ 7:39 AM,
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3 NBA stars will discuss teen violence Monday, September 11, 2006
Three professional basketball players will attend a youth program this week to talk about issues faced by young people, especially African-American boys.
Pastor Eric Jones of the Koinonia Worship Center & Village in Pembroke Park will kick off the youth program Tuesday. The session will feature Miami Heat star Udonis Haslem, James Jones of the Phoenix Suns, and Keyon Dooling of the Orlando Magic.
Children, teens and adults will be divided into age groups to discuss violence and other problems facing young people at the seminar entitled "Raising Up Joshua."
On Tuesday, participants in the seminar will discuss the pressures young people face daily, the Rev. Jones said. The seminar comes on the heels of a spate of teen killings in South Florida this year, including 11 in Broward County.
"As a church we do a lot of things, but we are not effectively touching what's going on in the world around us," Jones said.
The project is based on the biblical account of Joshua, and how he was reared to lead the Israelites after Moses died.
"It's not so much a conference as it is a dialoguing session," Jones said. "We don't want them to tell us what the problem is. We already know what that is. What we want to know from them is what do they think the solution is?"
Jones said he expects a full house at his Pembroke Park church. He plans to host a series of similar conferences in the future.
"We know it's not optional, it's imperative. We can't just sit back and let it happen." Jones said.
posted by Brandon Schenz @ 6:27 AM,
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Shop 40% Off or More in Your Size at Amazon.com Thursday, September 07, 2006
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posted by Brandon Schenz @ 6:55 AM,
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24 Seconds to Shoot Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Legend: Why the NBA uses a 24-second shot clock to limit a team's possession of the ball.
Origins: To most fans of the major professional team sports in the U.S. (i.e., baseball, football, basketball), the competitions they follow have pretty much always been the same as they are now. Over the years the strategies have changed, the equipment has gotten better, the athletes have become bigger, stronger, and faster, and the leagues have tinkered with the rules a bit now and then (generally to maintain fan interest by increasing scoring), but the basic conditions and rules under which the games are contested were established long ago (baseball in the 19th century, and football and basketball in the first half of the 20th century).
One of these sports has changed considerably within the lifetime of its older fan base, however. The NBA (formed in 1949 from two earlier professional basketball leagues, the National Basketball Association and the Basketball Association of America) didn't always feature the high-scoring, "run and gun" type of games that have become so familiar to modern fans. In the early 1950s, basketball contests were too frequently boring, slow-moving, low-scoring affairs in which one team grabbed an early lead and then spent the rest of the game simply holding on to the ball until the clock ran out. The league predictably tinkered with the rules a bit (primarily by expanding the lane from six feet to twelve feet in width, thereby reducing congestion under the basket and forcing teams to rely more on distance shooting), but by 1954 the NBA's economic viability was in serious trouble as paying customers began walking out of some dreadfully dull games. The New York Times reported that "professional basketball's existence was in jeopardy" as fans became disgusted with the "continual stalling and intentional fouling," losing interest as teams sometimes required half an hour to play out the final four minutes of a contest. As John Taylor wrote in The Rivalry, his survey of the "golden age of basketball":
[The] game was still frequently boring, degenerating all too often into what were known as "freeze-and-foul" contests, with the team in the lead playing possession ball to run out the clock and the losing team fouling to try to recover, the game stopping each time it succeeded. In one notorious example of "stall ball," as it was also known, on November 22, 1950, between the Minneapolis Lakers and the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the final score was 19-18. The Pistons coach, Murray Mendenhall, had decided not to run the ball but simply to hold it and wait until the end of the game to score the winning point. He succeeded, but fans were reading newspapers in the stands; some walked out and demanded their money back, others swore never to buy another ticket to a professional basketball game.
The solution to this dilemma was another rule change, one which might seem simple and obvious to today's fans, but which was revolutionary for professional basketball at the time. Danny Biasone, the owner of the NBA's Syracuse Nationals franchise, argued that the league needed to Basketball place a limit on how long a team could hold the ball, thereby preventing one side from stubbornly hanging onto the ball until they were fouled (or until the clock ran out) and forcing both teams to play the game at a faster pace. The implementation of this change — what Taylor described as "the single most important innovation in basketball since James Naismith invented the game" — was the 24-second clock. From 1954 onwards, every time a team gained possession of the basketball during a game, they had to attempt a shot within 24 seconds or turn the ball over to the other team — no more hanging on to the ball for minutes on end to run out the clock or force the other side to commit fouls.
The new rule was implemented a little crudely at first (typically by giving a recruit a stopwatch and having him stand on a sideline and yell "Time!" whenever 24 seconds elapsed during a possession), but by the end of the season all the teams in the NBA had set up 24-second shot clocks around their courts that made the timers visible to players, officials, and fans. The innovation was an immediate and obvious success: In 1953 and 1954 combined, only three times did a team score as many as 100 points in a playoff game; in the 1955 playoffs alone, one or both teams scored 100 points or more in over half the contests (eleven out of twenty-one games), and over the course of those two years attendance at NBA games jumped by 50 percent.
Surprisingly, though (or perhaps not, since every alteration to something familiar usually prompts at least a few objections, even when the changes are clearly for the better), the new rule had some detractors, such as New York Post sports columnist Milton Gross, who complained that "Movement is no longer necessary. Ballhandling now becomes a liability. The strategic freeze is outmoded ... It's become a game for mathematicians, statisticians, clock-watchers, and coaches who are afraid to attack their problem at its sources." But NBA president Maurice Podoloff offered an opposite opinion of basketball's recent rule revision in 1955, claiming that the league "adopted the twenty-four-second rule and it has worked so well that I firmly believe it has proved the salvation of professional basketball. So far this year attendance receipts at our games have increased 57 per cent."
The question we want to consider here, though, is "Why 24 seconds?" Given our penchant for favoring round numbers, why didn't the NBA adopt a 30-second clock, or at least a 25-second clock? What's so special about the 24 seconds?
The answer is that Danny Biasone, the aforementioned owner who pushed for the adoption of the 24-second rule, based his proposal upon his observations, experience, and simple arithmetic. In Biasone's judgment, basketball was most exciting when it was neither a stalling contest nor a wild shootout, but a well-paced game in which team took 60 shots apiece. Since professional basketball games were 48 minutes long, Biasone divided 2880 (the number of seconds in 48 minutes) by 120 (the total number of shots taken per game when each team attempted 60 shots) and arrived at an optimal figure of one shot every 24 seconds. From such a simple formula came a change that completely reinvigorated professional basketball, a rule it is now hard to imagine the game ever did without.
posted by Brandon Schenz @ 6:00 AM,
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Back in the game: Jacobsen agrees with Rockets Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Forward Casey Jacobsen, who has spent the past year playing in Europe, said Monday he has reached a one-year contract agreement with the Houston Rockets.
Jacobsen told Houston television station KRIV that he would take a physical on Tuesday and that the agreement is only partially guaranteed.
The Rockets could not confirm an agreement with Jacobsen Monday night.
Jacobsen said he looked forward to playing for Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy.
"Jeff Van Gundy has a reputation of outworking others and it's going to be great playing with him," he told KRIV.
Jacobsen was the Phoenix Suns' top pick in the draft four years ago. He also has played for the New Orleans Hornets. In three seasons in the NBA, he has averaged 5.9 points per game.
posted by Brandon Schenz @ 11:55 AM,