Of Basketball

I miss basketball. This morning I decided to stay home from campus since my only class is live remote anyways, so during my lunch break I wandered upstairs to talk to my neighbors for a bit. They had a basketball chilling on the living room floor which of course I picked up and practiced my shooting form several times. I then noticed they had a full length mirror on the wall, and my form looked to be in surprisingly good condition (Shayne, notice how there is no hyphen between surprisingly and good since surprisingly ends in ly). 

It's been since the end of June since I've balled. Last year we had a great group of ballers in my elders quorum and we'd rent out a gym in the RB to play in every couple weeks. I hope my jumper hasn't dipped to Russell Westbrook levels in this COVID-affected year. I'm grateful that despite my own lack of participation in the beautiful game the game continues onward. 

Watching Anthony Edwards absolutely destroy a man tonight with a poster dunk was a sight to behold. We mustn't forget about Steph Curry and the Warriors mounting an epic comeback a couple days ago against the Heat while playing with no bigs and Wiggins on the tallest guy on the court. Can we talk about the NBA without talking about the atrocity it was that Luka is starting in the all-star game over Dolla Dame? I actually like Luka a lot so no disrespect to him at all, but he hasn't been as good this season as he has been in prior years and Dame has been playing out of his mind. But then again this was probably the best thing to happen to Damian Lillard because now he'll use that as even more fuel to convince people to (as he said) "put respect on his _______ name."

Basketball is a large reason I'm studying statistics. In high school I watched the beginning of the analytics revolution in the NBA and how Steph Curry fueled that by his incredible scoring efficiency and deep three-point range. I love the data visualization Kirk Goldsberry did in Sprawlball and what he continues to do on Twitter. I love playing basketball, I love watching basketball, and I love how statistics and basketball overlap.

Here is a photo from the last time I played basketball at the Tueller reunion. Stay tuned for a riveting post next week featuring random facts about shrubbery and geocaching.