The Athletic

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#1
The Athletic is rapidly turning into what Sports Illustrated used to be...at least for me. A premiere source of sports info, including some great in-depth reporting. It's well worth the subscription IMHO.

Here are a couple of stories currently available:

1. The night Doug Moe and Michael Adams gave the NBA a sneak peak into its future

The 8,831 spectators who saw the Denver Nuggets’ 156-142 victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Nov. 2, 1987 at McNichols Sports Arena never could have imagined it at the time, but they were getting a sneak peek at the future of NBA basketball...

Moe’s pre-game instruction to Adams was simple and specific.

“Doug came up to me after shootaround and said, ‘Mike, I’m going to put you in the starting lineup, and all I want you to do is push the ball and to start the game, I want you to shoot the 3,’” Adams recalled recently. “My eyes lit up but I wanted to make sure I heard him right and he said, ‘Yeah, start the game out, we’re going to push it up and if you’ve got the 3, shoot it. We’re going to open the game up.’”
2. Thompson: The godfather of NBA analytics, is on a mission to debunk a myth

Anwar McQueen remembers vividly when it all began. Spring of 2005...

Since McQueen had joined the Dons’ staff in 2002, all he’d known about film editing and data collection was connected to VHS tapes. Back then, video coordinators had to be wizards with the VCR, cutting the fat off of game film and splicing footage for the sake of analysis. But this software, which Johnson brought with him from Columbia — it was a game changer. Goodbye, analog, hello digital analysis.