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

Via SFGate

3:17 pm - 31 May 2012 - 1 note
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Filed under: #basketball #Rick Barry #Golden State Warriors

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.

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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.

Continue reading this post...

3:59 pm - 30 May 2012
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Filed under: #basketball #Charlotte Bobcats #Atlanta Hawks

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%.

9:47 pm - 11 May 2012
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Filed under: #basketball #attendance

One of the perks of being an NBA player is getting paid to play basketball while traveling the world. Today’s NBA is much different than the NBA of the past. Players travel on spacious, chartered planes, and fans regularly see Twitpics of their favorite superstars sprawled out sleeping on these flights.

It’s not a bad life, to say the least.

What happens, though, when a player is scared of flying? Like, terrified of flying?

Based on this and the linked story, I probably don’t have it as bad as Royce White, but man, do I empathize.

11:19 am - 12 Apr 2012
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Filed under: #basketball #flying #Royce White #fear

This headline on the Charlotte Observer web site makes almost no sense. I’m pretty sure they’re aiming for some kind of sexist WNBA dig, but they’re also trying to wrangle in a Wizards mention.

12:54 pm - 10 Apr 2012 - 1 note
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Filed under: #basketball #Washington Wizards #Charlotte Bobcats #newspaper #Charlotte Observer

This is the most surprising thing that has happened to me in basketball. I never been fired before for basketball reasons [sic]. This is the first time. When I was in Toronto, I was trying to buy a team and I left. When I was in Indiana, Larry Bird told me that he liked what I was doing but he was closer to Rick Carlisle. The whole thing in New York was crazy. This is the first time someone told me that I was being fired for basketball reasons.

— Isiah Thomas, fired by Florida International University today, is even more delusional than we thought. (Obligatory.)

6:41 pm - 6 Apr 2012 - 1 note
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Filed under: #basketball #Isiah Thomas

Latrell Sprewell, Gregg Popovich, Chris Webber, and Don Nelson during Game 3 of the Golden State Warriors 1994 playoff series against the Phoenix Suns.

12:09 am - 6 Apr 2012 - 3 notes
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Filed under: #basketball #Don Nelson #Gregg Popovich #Chris Webber #Latrell Sprewell #Golden State Warriors

Like in the 60’s, the world still isn’t ready for a superstar athlete with an Arabic name and the sense of identity to back it up.

— Shoals at The Classical, referencing Muhammad Ali in a piece about Shaquille O’Neal.

3:46 pm - 4 Apr 2012
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Filed under: #basketball #Shaquille O'Neal

Larry Brown, 1973. With the biggest bow tie he could find. Oh, if only this were a color photograph.

Via SI.com’s fantastic gallery of 1970s NBA coaches

4:21 pm - 20 Mar 2012
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Filed under: #basketball #Larry Brown

Bismack Biyombo, ending last night’s game against the Hornets with a monster two-handed block.

10:35 am - 13 Mar 2012
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Filed under: #basketball #Charlotte Bobcats #New Orleans Hornets #Bismack Biyombo #Trevor Ariza