Author Archives: michaelbrus25

Westbrook’s Massive Game

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Whoa, OKC just beat Golden State 127-115!

But even bigger than the win was Russell Westbrook‘s epic performance in tonight’s game. And that says something, because Durant scored 36 points to go along with 9 rebounds and 4 assists, and Russ’s performance still eclipsed his.

Westbrook finished with a triple double of 17 points, 15 rebounds and 17 assists (and 4 steals). Such an achievement is a real rarity. Using the BBR’s Player Game Finder feature I found out that only 6 such instances, of getting at least 15 in all three categories, occured in the last 30 years. And Westbrook joins Jason Kidd and Rajon Rondo as the only players to achieve that since 2000. Continue reading →

Coach Pop and Pau

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Hey, a real brief post, following tonight’s games.

1) What did I say about Pau Gasol? He IS having his best season ever, at 34 years of age! In tonight’s game against the Bucks, he set a career-high of 46 points, adding 18 rebounds (his career high is 22). Amazing!

I didn’t check it, but I reckon he’s right at the all-time top of players who set their career-bests in points at such an old age. I mean, he’s 34 years old! I can’t recall any similar example from the past few years. Continue reading →

Hall Of Fame – Aleksandr Averbukh

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averbukh

It’s been a while since our first induction to the Blog’s Hall of Fame, so it is time we introduce our second inductee. And this time it’s Israel’s greatest track & field athlete of all-time, one of the greatest pole vaulters of the last 15 years, Aleksandr (or Alex) Averbukh.

My first encounter with Alex occurred at the 1999 World Championships. He immigrated from Russia only a month before that, and in the Championship’s program he was still listed as Russian. Alex was previously a decathlete, with a PB of 8084 points, a whole THOUSAND points better than the Israeli embarrassing record of 7096 (WTF?!). However, by then he already shifted his career to the Pole Vault. I must admit, I never heard of him before the championship, but in Seville he shocked everyone by winning the bronze medal. I still remember the excitement of when it happened – Israel won a medal at the World Athletics Championship! Wow! Averbukh competed with vaulters who were way more celebrated and more experienced than him, but it was he who managed to win the bronze medal with a result of 5.80m, which was also a new NR. Interestingly, he shared the podium with two more Soviet-born vaulters, but only one of them actually represented an ex-Soviet country – Maksim Tarasov (Russia), who won the gold vaulting an unbelievable height of 6.02m, and grabbing his head in amazement afterwards. The silver medalist was Dmitri Markov, who represented Australia. Continue reading →

A Few Thoughts on the NBA Teams and their Current Positions

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First post of 2015, what should it be about?

Hmmm… How about surveying the teams’ positions in the NBA standings? Hey, that’s a great idea! Boy, I love my ideas sometimes.

Honestly, what better time there is to do that? End of the season? Nah, too mainstream. At the All-Star break? Nah, I will be busy watching and writing about the All-Star itself. Maybe at the season’s halfway point? Give me a break, that’s even more mainstream than writing at the end of the season. Let’s do it now, when the teams played 31-37 games. Lets keep things unpredictable as possible, so the enemy can’t recognize a pattern. Continue reading →

Cristiano Ronaldo – Goals in 2014

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Goals scored in a calendar year were never really important, until Messi made everyone count them in 2012. Since then, people all of a sudden became very interested in this kind of statistic, and now whenever a calendar year ends – we get the stats of how many goals in the last calendar year scored the leading scorers in the world. Continue reading →

All Time Top Medalists at a Single Swimming World Championship – Men

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An update: Here’s the link to the updated 2015 rankings

Ok, we’ve looked at the most successful SWC’s for female swimmers. Now, what about the male swimmers? Who had the most successful single SWC ever? Is it Phelps? Is it not Phelps??? Is this tension too artificial? Well, yeah, sort of. So ok, you know already that Phelps holds every possible record there is, but let’s see whose records he broke and what other great hauls were there, in the history of the SWC’s…

The criteria to enter the all-time lists here are the same as they were for the female swimmers – 3 gold medals and 4 total medals at a single SWC. Well, no further explanations are needed, let’s see who are the best of the best! Continue reading →

My 2014 NBA All-Star Ballot

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I love the NBA All-Star game. Well, true, I used to love it more in previous years, when teams were actually playing some defense BEFORE the 4th quarter, but I do enjoy the game even now. It’s one of those rare occasions when you can see all the best players in the league sharing the same court.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I filled out my NBA all-star ballot, and I would like to share my picks. I think I started voting for the all-star game back in 2008, and it’s funny to see how some of my picks in 2014 are the same as they were back then. Continue reading →

All Time Top Medalists at a Single Swimming World Championship – Women

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An update: Here’s the link to the updated 2015 rankings

We have already seen who are the most successful swimmers overall – male and female, in the history of the Swimming World Championships. It is time now to embark on the second half of our journey through the SWC’s: a journey that this time will take us to the most successful individual performances in a single championship.

For the making of the rankings you will see here I used those excel files I created, based on that awesome FINA handbook (and updating it with the results from recent SWC’s). Swimming is different from Track & Field because of the real possibilities for swimmers to win multiple medals in a single SWC. In T&F it’s rare to see athletes win 3 medals in a single championship, and it’s really unique to see an athlete grab 4 medals. In swimming, it’s not unusual. One has to be pretty fucking awesome to win 4, 5 or 6 medals, but it is possible, and you don’t even have to be an all-time legendary swimmer to achieve that, as you will see shortly. Continue reading →

Kobe passes MJ

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Hey, Kobe passes! (ba-dum-tss)

So yeah, like you probably already know, Kobe Bryant passed Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list. Does that mean he is greater than Michael?

Well, of course! Up until this game Michael was greater, and in fact he was still greater than Kobe all the way through the first quarter, but then, when Kobe scored those free-throws in the second, their greatness was reversed. All the books that have rankings of great NBA players in them were called back to the stores to hastily correct the order and to put Kobe before Michael, all the websites that have the same rankings underwent some massive editing, and even “Space Jam” inserted Kobe’s CGI head over Michael’s body to account for Kobe bumping Michael from the greatness pedestal. Continue reading →

Triple Double Stories

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Triple Doubles. A testament to all-aroundness in basketball. One has to be pretty damn versatile to achieve them. It’s not enough to score – almost anyone can score. Rebounds are a bit more difficult, but even guards can manage to collect 10+ of them in a game. Assists are always the most difficult issue – there are always fewer assists than rebounds. For example, the highest all-time assists average over the course of a whole season? 14.54. And this number is not even in the top-100 all-time best rebounding seasons. However, if you have the assists – you can more easily get the rebounds, than the other way around. This is why guards were always more dominant in the triple-doubles department – they usually have the assists. Sure, there are also triple doubles with blocks (rare) and steals (extremely rare), but the points-rebounds-assists combo is the most popular one, by far. Continue reading →