David A. Arnott

The trivia question at Caribou Coffee this afternoon. They...

Thu, 31 May 2012 17:59:19 -0400

The trivia question at Caribou Coffee this afternoon. They included the $24 million parcel of land the county is GIVING the Knights, but that no one mentions anymore, so I was one of the few to get the “correct” answer: $72 million.

Love this photo of Rick Barry sooooooooo much. Feeding ducks. In...

Thu, 31 May 2012 15:17:25 -0400

Love this photo of Rick Barry sooooooooo much. Feeding ducks. In uniform.

Via SFGate

Charlotte was an anomaly -- not anymore

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:59:00 -0400

I’m working on a long-ish piece about the Charlotte Bobcats that describes their history and why they are America’s least-loved team. Here’s an excerpt from the working draft.

===

Charlotte’s similarities to other Southeastern cities should have given the league pause. It’s easy to see why Commissioner Stern and the other owners wanted a team in Charlotte. After all, it had already proven it could provide a rabid fan base for a pro basketball team. But that there was a rabid fan base for a pro sports team in the first place makes Charlotte an anomaly among cities in the American Southeast.

Consider the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta is a top-ten media market, and a magnet for young professionals and the upwardly mobile. The Hawks have been there since the 1968-69 season, when they moved from St. Louis. Back then, Atlanta was already a top-20 media market, so it’s somewhat surprising that it took twelve years, until the 1979-80 season, for the team to crack the league’s top half in attendance, and that was a year they won the Central Division. The next year, attendance fell back into the cellar.

Things started looking up when Dominique Wilkins hit the prime of his career, and the team had a three-year run with attendance in the league’s top half from 1986 through 1989. In two of those seasons, the Hawks drew the eighth-most fans in the league. But just as quickly, the fans lost interest, and they stopped coming.

Atlanta wouldn’t see another spectator surge until 1997-98, the season after the Hawks finished with the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference and defeated the Pistons in a first-round playoff series. That year, they also began a temporary residence in the Georgia Dome — a football stadium large enough to host the Super Bowl — which could have had something to do with the Hawks’ claiming the 13th-highest attendance among 29 teams. But before anyone could entertain the notion that the franchise had turned a corner, everything fell apart in 1998-99, the lockout-shortened season. The Hawks’ attendance fell 24%, more than any other team’s.

For the 1999-00 season, the team moved to the brand new Philips Arena. Attendance remained stagnant. In the decade-plus since, no matter what’s happened on the court, whether a lottery team or a squad that made noise in the playoffs, they’ve never had better than the 18th-highest attendance in the league. In their entire history in Atlanta, 44 seasons as of this writing, the Hawks have finished in the league’s top half in attendance five times and have had the league’s worst attendance four times.

The pattern holds across the Southeast. In eleven seasons, the Memphis Grizzlies have never been top half in attendance. The New Orleans Hornets’ situation is complicated by Hurricane Katrina, but even before the storm, attendance had cratered, and after the team’s full-time return to the city, their attendance has been firmly among the league’s bottom-dwellers. Until this past season, the Orlando Magic had never been higher than twelfth in attendance, a span of 22 seasons. Miami is a city unlike all the others in this list, but there’s still some level of correlation. The Heat finished top half in attendance only once in their first 16 seasons, had an influx of fans when Shaquille O’Neal arrived, saw attendance tumble back to the middle of the pack when Shaq left, and then have had another spike after LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade to form an instant superteam.

The lesson: Southeastern teams have a tough time drawing fans, win or lose, though winning clearly helps. Charlotte is no longer an exception. However, the Bobcats have an added complication. On top of competing for attention and consumer dollars with big time college sports and every other entertainment option, just as those other southeastern teams do, they have to contend with the team that used to be in Charlotte.

(Image via stock.xchng)

snfantasybaseball: Buy Low, Sell Low: Brad Pinkerton, Bill...

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:11:00 -0400

snfantasybaseball:

Buy Low, Sell Low: Brad Pinkerton, Bill Bender, and David A. Arnott talk about Tim Lincecum’s struggles, whether it’s worth it to trade him at this point in the season, and what owners can expect from hurting pitchers.

Download MP3 (8:40)

Fantasy baseball: I picked up Rafael Dolis in a trade a couple...

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:03:00 -0400

Fantasy baseball: I picked up Rafael Dolis in a trade a couple weeks ago, and this is his glorious stat line for my team. GLORIOUS.

5 games. 3.0 innings. 0 wins. 0 saves. 4 strikeouts. 24.00 ERA. 4.67 WHIP.

Washington DC is decadent and depraved.

Sat, 26 May 2012 21:10:13 -0400

Washington DC is decadent and depraved.

Charlottesville, VA, is decadent and depraved.

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:09:43 -0400

Charlottesville, VA, is decadent and depraved.

Charlotte’s Speed Street is decadent and depraved.

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:28:00 -0400

Charlotte’s Speed Street is decadent and depraved.

Well, we finally reached Peak Carly Rae. Via Popdust

Wed, 23 May 2012 14:12:21 -0400

Well, we finally reached Peak Carly Rae.

Via Popdust

snfantasybaseball: Old Dudes Worth a Fantasy Pickup: Brad...

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:09:50 -0400

snfantasybaseball:

Old Dudes Worth a Fantasy Pickup: Brad Pinkerton, Bill Bender, and David A. Arnott talk about whether or not it’s worth picking up Manny Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, or Roy Oswalt this season.

Download MP3 (12:11)

Conversation between insurance company customer service representative and soon-to-be former customer of said insurance company

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:09:00 -0400

Based on a true story.

Customer Service Rep: Hello, this is **** Insurance. How can I help you?

Woman: Hi, yes, my name is ******* ******, and I’ve had your homeowner’s insurance for six years. I just got home and see that I received a letter in the mail from your company informing me that you’re dropping me because I made a claim last year.

CS Rep: Let me pull up your information here… Yes, we have dropped you. Just to make sure the letter is correct, your insurance runs through June 22nd. Does it say that on the letter?

Woman: Um, yes, it does. Today is May 21st, though, and — well, actually, I’m not too concerned about that — I am concerned about getting new homeowner’s insurance — but I guess, really, I want to know why I’ve been dropped. I’ve only made one claim in six years, and that was last year, when wind blew some siding off my house. One of your adjustors came out to look at it and said it was no big deal, that he’d cut us a check for $80 right then and there.

CS Rep: Yes, we see that.

Woman: And that’s why I was dropped? Because I made a claim for $80 once in six years?

CS Rep: Yes. We have so much saturation in North Carolina that our policy is that small claims have a limit of zero before we drop the insurance. For catastrophic insurance, the limit is one. So, if your house had burned down, we wouldn’t have dropped your insurance like this.

Woman: …

CS Rep: Ma’am? Are you there?

Woman: Yes, I’m still here. You do realize that’s absurd, right? You’ve just told me that you don’t want to take my money anymore because I accepted an $80 check to go towards an extremely minor $150 repair. If I’d have known that, I might have just refused the check and paid for it all myself.

CS Rep: Yes, you could have done that.

Woman: Yes, I could have. Again, your company doesn’t want hundreds of dollars from me each year, that I pay automatically as part of my mortgage payments, because I made an $80 claim last year, even though I’ve never made any other claim?

CS Rep: Yes, unfortunately, you’ve been dropped, and your insurance will run through June 22nd.

Woman: So, what do I do now?

CS Rep: Here’s who to contact about new homeowner’s insurance…

Aaaaaaaand: SCENE

(Image via stock.xchng)

UZTHE4CE Taken outside Amelie’s, on North Davidson.

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:42:35 -0400

UZTHE4CE

Taken outside Amelie’s, on North Davidson.

I get a mild panic chill just watching this video of Russian...

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:54:49 -0400

I get a mild panic chill just watching this video of Russian dudes climbing to the top of a massive suspension bridge without safety harnesses.

Via Gawker

I care about correct punctuation, but this is on the borderline...

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:26:43 -0400

I care about correct punctuation, but this is on the borderline of piling on to the poor saps who actually don’t understand the difference between your and you’re. At least 50% of the people who switch between the two do know the difference but just don’t care. Right?

This arrived in my inbox, from Living Social. I’m not sure...

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:25:38 -0400

This arrived in my inbox, from Living Social. I’m not sure how they target their deals, but… wow. Who wants a special deal on Botox? Not this 29-year-old dude.

snfantasybaseball: Roto Math: George Winkler, Matt Lutovsky,...

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:50:33 -0400

snfantasybaseball:

Roto Math: George Winkler, Matt Lutovsky, and David A. Arnott discuss how they play the fantasy baseball roto math game. We all want the best all-around, five-category, players, but how much weight should owners give to those players over one-category contributors?

Download MP3 (6:42)

"This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:38:52 -0400

“This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.”

- I gave up on Flickr some time ago and switched everything over to Google/Picasa. Though I’m unlike those people who simply post their pics to Facebook — because I want to link them out to the web — Gizmodo explains why I’m one of many to leave Flickr.

Charles P. Pierce: The bizarre case of Paige Sultzbach

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:05:40 -0400

Charles P. Pierce: The bizarre case of Paige Sultzbach:

This story hits home with me. Growing up, I played at the highest levels of youth baseball in San Francisco and was a pretty good infielder, catcher, and pitcher. By the time I reached high school, and the cream had risen, I was no longer among the very best players in my competition pool. That said, up until high school, the best defensive second baseman I played with was Sarah Berrin, who played on my junior high school team. She was too small and not a good enough hitter to play competitive baseball after eighth grade, but I’m telling you: there aren’t many thirteen-year-olds who could play middle infield as smoothly and efficiently as she could.

"NBA owners and players couldn’t hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement before the 1998-99..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 21:47:03 -0400

“NBA owners and players couldn’t hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement before the 1998-99 season, leading to a lockout. After play resumed in February of 1999, attendance in Charlotte dropped from 23,405 per game in 1997-98 to 19,232. That was still the sixth-highest per-game attendance in the league, but it also reflected an 18% percent drop from the previous season, nearly matching the Washington Wizards’ 18% drop, and coming behind only the Atlanta Hawks’ 24% loss. In fact, aside from those three teams, league-wide paid attendance was virtually static before and after the lockout.”

- This is a passage from the working draft of a longish-form piece I’m writing about the NBA in Charlotte. Perhaps this is common knowledge, but I was surprised to find that the NBA’s attendance only really suffered in three markets after the 1998-99 lockout. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have been surprised that in-arena attendance barely dropped this season, even though Cleveland saw a 21% drop, Detroit dropped 13%, and Phoenix dropped 11%.

Me and Marley, having a staredown.

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:10:09 -0400

Me and Marley, having a staredown.