Two time zones away.

No League Pass; click on the link.

Laptop and earbuds.

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Man, we had fun.  It was a little odd when the folks running the Sports Complex asked me, "Is he with your group?" and my reply was, "Ummmm, I'm not really sure." [To the subject in question:] "Are you StR?" 

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Tuesday, August 24, 7:30pm.

Folsom Sports Complex. Directions can be found at www.google.com. Heh.  The address is: 66 Clarksville Road, Folsom, CA 95630. (Behind the Home Depot.)

I'm looking for at least 12 people who can commit to showing up with $10 to spare. If that's you, please vote below and leave your RSVP in the comments as well. If I get 12 positive responses, I'll go ahead and reserve a full court for 2 hours for exclusive StR use. And the more people that commit, the less we'll each have to chip in for the court. I'll also be playing at the Folsom Sports Complex on Monday night - if you can't make it on Tuesday but would still like to get your pickup game on, maybe we can get enough of us to take over the courts.

UPDATE: The court has been reserved for our exclusive use!  I'm really looking forward to meeting some of my invisible internet friends and playing some ball together.  Below is a quick checklist of things to bring (and to not bring):

Things to bring:

Things not to bring:

Well, for the Inaugural StR Pickup Game it looks like Monday and Tuesday are evenly split - we'd be able to get at least 15 or so players on either day.

That being the case, I think it comes down to which day we can find the best location.  Will anyone be able to provide access to an indoor court for either of those days?  I remember some comments in the pickup-player-type post that some folks may have access to an indoor gym...

If not, can someone suggest some nice, safe, well-lit outdoor court that we could play on?

And, here's a preview of what the event might look like:

Pookey?  Is that you? :)

There was a lively FanPost a while back discussing various types of Pickup player types.  One of the topics that was brought up was the possibility of a StR pickup game.

Since I haven't seen anything further on the subject, I thought I'd open up a FanPost to see if there would be enough interest and support to make it actually happen.  Why me?  Purely selfish motivations, really - I live in San Antonio but I'll be in Sac on business and will be able to play on Monday, 8/23 and Tuesday, 8/24.  But even if this thing goes off at another time and I can't play, I'm sure that the post-game chatter and the "view from section214" will be highly entertaining.

So, I'll go ahead and get the ball rolling - who's in to play some ball?

Dear Mr. Stern,

I am writing in regard to what has been called the worst statistic in all of sports – the assist.  The criteria for determining an assist, while perhaps logical in theory, seem to fall severely short in actual practice – but I’m getting ahead of myself.  First, we need to understand what an assist really is.

As a noun, the dictionary defines an assist as "a helpful act;" as a verb, to assist is "to be associated with as an assistant or helper."  In the basketball sense, an assist is deemed to be a pass that enables the receiver to score a goal.  But based on the true meaning of the word, an assist really should be much more than that.

Please indulge my outlining of several true-to-life scenarios – ones which all basketball fans are guaranteed see multiple times during every game – followed by my recommendations on how assists should be assessed for each.

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If you recall, our last episode concluded with quite a cliff-hanger.  There were some rather murky, quasi-conclusive statistics indicating that, at least for the 2009-2010 season, there seems to be a disparity in Personal Foul Differential in favor of large-market teams when they play small-market teams.  Conspiracy!!!!11

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I felt pretty smug.  To recap: BrooklynFan asked in a post-game thread a question pertaining to a subject that aroused my curiosity: do refs favor the large-market teams? Answering this question would require research and statistical analysis (both of which I enjoy doing, sadistically enough).  So, I dug up the numbers, crunched them, and posted my findings all wrapped up with a neat, little bow.  Multiple recs and kudos from the StR community later, like I said – I was feeling pretty smug.

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(An excellent analysis from the FanPosts. - TZ)

In the Kings/Mavs recap thread, BrooklynFan asked if there is a discrepancy between how fouls are called for small-market teams vs. the big boys.  I was curious about this too, nobody else wanted to do it (too busy knitting car covers or some such), and I had some time at work this morning… so I looked up YTD 09-10 stats on StatSheet.com as well as the market rankings by TV households as listed at TVB.org, and I crunched the numbers. 

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