Thursday, April 21, 2011

Weekly Links

While you've been reading this site, we've been checking out some other ones and these are some of the best articles we read this week.  Enjoy.

The NBA playoffs are in full swing, and after a surprising upset of the defending champs in Game 1, the Hornets fell to the Lakers last night to even the series.  Still, Chris Paul is making it known how stupid talented he is, says Ethan Sherwood Strauss at Hoopspeak.  On another note, Brandon Roy's time in the sun seems to be fading fast, as Chris at Negative Dunkalectics writes.  And also, is DeMarcus Cousins really the MVP?

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has a fascinating breakdown of last week's "Black Friday" when the Justice Department indicted the three largest online poker sites, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.  After commandeering ESPN's programming in 2003, poker exploded in popularity and became a multi-billion dollar industry.  Now the futures of those companies, and the TV shows on which their logos are featured prominently, are up in the air.  Please, make the poker go away.

As you may have heard, Bud Selig went Expos on the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday, commandeering all financial operations for the club.  What does this mean for a team with a few budding superstars that are looking for contract extensions in the near future?  Well, at least Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have said they want to stick around.  For a scathing review of Frank McCourt's tenure as owner, read what Tim Brown has to say at Yahoo!, and for some background on how this whole mess started, Molly Knight at ESPN chronicled the McCourt's highly leveraged purchase of the club and their subsequent divorce.

Kevin Farrahar of Friarbasketball.net entertained us with a fantastic highlight tape of recent Friar commit Kiwi Gardner.

Maybe a spread offense in college doesn't doom a quarterbacks career in the NFL.  Sharon Katz breaks down some new data for ESPN's "Next Level".

And they say a .250 batting average is, well average. But what if we said it was .264? Well, that's Caey Blake's career mark, who was just names the Most Ordinary Hitter in the Major Leagues by Darren Everson at the WSJ.  Congratulations, Casey.

Collective shoutouts
Charlie Widdoes made his podcast debut last week on the DS Podcast at The Fan Hub, previewing the Western Conference first round in its entirety.

Also, be sure to read up on John and Dave's legendary debut of the Presidential Series comparing Richard Nixon and Isaiah Thomas.  It will make you WAY smarter.

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