The conference finals are set — Golden State and Portland in the west, Milwaukee and Toronto in the east. A great couple of matchups both likely to go deep. At halftime right now in Oakland, Portland’s keeping it close.
The east series will be a fun one, with Giannis and Kawhi going at it, each with spectacular playoffs going so far.
In other basketball news, earlier this evening New Orleans came away with the number 1 overall draft pick. With the Anthony Davis drama of a few months ago, and rumors of some sort of trade deal in the...
Automation is penetrating every industry, but still heavily reliant on human behavior and feedback to make it effective. In this piece, Benedict Evans talks about identifying the point in a workflow where the optimum point of leverage sits for human interaction:
This means that a lot of the system design is around finding the right points of leverage to apply people to an automated system. Do you capture activity that’s already happening? Google began by using the links that already existed. Do you have...
A fantastic one-on-one conversation between NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Bill Simmons from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference:
Adam Silver is one of the most thoughtful, enthusiastic, and interesting guys in sports leadership. He clearly cares immensely about promoting the health of the league and players. This conversation ranges through mental health, NBA trade deadlines, G League, tampering, and more.
At least 3 or 4 times he references European soccer features as having potential in the NBA — relegation (a long shot), player academies,...
We’re right at the middle of the season, and this one’s been an exciting one so far. A couple teams at the top expected, a few others blew up out of nowhere. The Bucks in the east, Nuggets in the west, PG carrying OKC, Harden’s crazy streak the past month, Giannis’s nightly consistency, Embiid’s dominance. So many fun threads to follow.
I’m thoroughly enjoying League Pass again this year. I probably watch an average of 5-6 games a week, and sometimes more if there are good matchups and I have time. Between YouTube TV for the national broadcasts and League...
The NBA season spun up a couple of weeks ago. With that, NBA Twitter and the NBA podcast scene is back in full force. Here are the feeds I try to keep up with:
The Ringer NBA Show is every weekday with a rotating cast of hosts, so you can always count on deep dives of nearly every game. And NBA Desktop is a must-watch each week. Hilarious.