Cavs hint toward “potential” new uniform
October 8, 2014Week 5 Film Room: The Defense
October 9, 2014Can I get emotional for a moment? At WFNY and around the webs, I’m often known as the nerdy sports analytics guy from Cleveland with a penchant for rambling about objectivity. Rabble rabble rabble stats.
But today, I want to share some really positive vibes and feelings about my fellow Cleveland sports fan. Yesterday was a great day to be a Cleveland fan, to be a Cleveland writer and, specifically, to be a part of Cleveland’s unique blogosphere. And I hope you didn’t miss any of it.
Early in the day, the Cavs Zine 5 Kickstarter closed officially. Jack Sanders, the good guy lawyer behind the always popular @WayneEmbrysKids account, had an ambitious goal of raising $5,000 to print 5,000 zine copies this year. He wanted to ramp up production ten-fold, involve fans and offer some fun prizes. He enlisted Alex Raffalli, the resident Frenchman of the Cavs blogging circle, to help out.
This was my first time contributing to Jack’s grand pet project. The deadline for contributions also was yesterday. I’ve read a couple others entries so far and they’re absolutely fantastic. From the numbers (of course) to the expected wit, humor and obscurity of any classic zine, this year’s publication should be better than ever.
And oh yeah, about that Kickstarter campaign. We somehow funneled together $7,651 from 351 backers. The vast majority of gifts were either $15, $25 or $35. Little by little, this incredible thing got funded. It warmed my heart to see the great writing of my friends and peers be rewarded so handsomely. Because of you, there will be free copies of zine to share with Cavs fans around the world.
That wasn’t the only news yesterday, of course. At 1:30 p.m. WFNY’s Ben Cox announced to the world the plans for a #SeasonOfHuh book, bringing together contributions from 14 of your favorite Cavs bloggers. The book was inspired by the Linsanity book that came out of the Knicks world a few years back.
I’ve been involved in the planning email thread – which has spanned hundreds and hundreds of messages, mind you – but won’t be contributing to the final product. But trust me, you’ll want to purchase this and save it for you children and grandchildren.
The 2013-14 Cleveland Cavaliers season was one of hilarity, obscurity and, most damningly of all, not even close to mediocrity on the basketball court. Luol Deng, Jarett Jack, Spencer Hawes and Andrew Bynum (!) all played for that team. Mike Brown coached again for some unknown reason. The ridiculousness is going to be immortalized in history in e-book and print form and that’s really damn awesome.
Cavs Twitter, you shined yesterday. You made me really, really happy. You represented Cleveland in a phenomenal way. I couldn’t be more excited to support these two projects and I hope you will too.
*******
The Columbus Crew: They rebranded! Hooray! The snazzy new logo looks very German and taxi-like, but it’s a marked improvement. I really enjoyed the very Deadspin-y reaction from Kevin Draper.
Sports Analytics Roundup: Within the last week since my last WWW post, I’ve created two roundups of sports analytics news. Here’s Friday’s edition and then here’s yesterday’s version. Go check them out for over 65 links from around the webs.
The Browns and Herschel Walker: I wasn’t born yet when this happened, so this 30 for 30 Short was really fascinating. It broke down the trade that sent Herschel Walker from Dallas to Minnesota for a convoluted package of draft picks that led to the ‘90s Cowboys dynasty. And oh yeah, the Browns almost got hosed first.
Careful of the goggles: Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Chris Haynes has quite the funny discovery from Rio. You know that hand-goggle things many NBA players do after making a three? Well, it supposedly means the f-word in Brazil. So yeah, the Cavs and Heat shouldn’t do that.
Read Zach Lowe: Read him some more. The Grantland scribe is just so fricking good at his job. His Cavs preview is sensational in so many different ways. His combined grasp of analytics, schemes and the overall NBA industry is unparalleled.
‘Glory Days in Tribe Town’: Remember a few weeks back when I shared how I was helping Terry Pluto with his new book collaboration with Tom Hamilton? Well, the Amazon book posting is here. It will be released within four weeks. Go grab yourself a copy. I guarantee it will be an illuminating read on those unforgettable ‘90s teams.
29 Comments
You have only been in the Pacific NW for a little bit and you already seem more laid back and relaxed.
I was actually really excited when i got the last email from Kickstarter yesterday asking where to ship my copies to. Will this arrive before the season starts?
Best moment ever http://fliiby.com/file/3rp68g2ra5p/ ! <3333
Also, still hate that an Ohio professional sports team is using black & yellow. That’s disgusting.
Cleveland fans are way better at limbo than the pole vault, which is a convoluted way of saying that our bar for team success is so low.
The Tribe’s “Glory Days” resulted in 0 championships.
The Kosar glory years resulted in a 3-5 playoff record, including three . . . well, you know.
And my favorite is the “Miracle” of Richfield, in which the Cavs won a league quarterfinal series.
Nonetheless, I loved every minute of it.
from that comment, one would think the closest we got to a ring with LeBron “last time” was getting swept in the Finals or something.
A common refrain around Cleveland is that Hoyer struggles with the deep ball. So this is an interesting take from Doug Farrar at SI:
Brian Hoyer, Browns: One of the reasons the Browns are playing surprisingly well: Hoyer seems to have a knack for the deep ball, completing 10 of 18 passes for 352 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Not bad for a passing game that was supposed to be sunk after Josh Gordon’s suspension. Travis Benjaminand Taylor Gabriel each have three deep catches for the team.
just can’t understand why they’d do that. Can’t understand. Bengals and Browns fans must make up 90% of the state, so why use the colors of their most hated inter-division rival?
While they’re at it, I hope the Crew – excuse me, Crew SC – get a 3rd jersey that is purple and black.
only 2 reasons I can think of:
(1) Spit in the face of football fans in general.
(2) Rooney’s paid them off to try to convert more of Columbus to thinking those are acceptable colors to wear.
Those are cool stats, but the fabled “eye test” leads to a different conclusion, IMO. For example, yeah, Benjamin, Taylor, and Gabriel may each have three deep catches (not really sure that Benjamin’s are accurately classified as “deep”), but we all know that if Hoyer hit Taylor and Gabriel in stride on a few of those, we could be 4-0 (or 3-1). His “problem” with the deep ball is not in making the right reads or finding the receiver, it’s more in the ball itself. It seems to launch off of his hand more vertically than necessary, which indicates that he’s heaving it as hard as he can. It just doesn’t travel the way that a great deep ball travels (i.e., “laser rocket”).
Agree, even though I still don’t associate the colors with Pittsburgh (I’m in the minority). Orange is clearly the unifying color across the state. Why not fashion a trade dress that uses orange as the primary color? Just don’t use brown or black. Orange and white; orange and grey; orange and blue; whatever.
http://www.draftbrowns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/laser_rocket_arm.jpg
Yeah this a thousand times. Anyone who has watched the games knows how badly he’s struggled with the deep balls and the completions are not due to Hoyer putting the ball where and when it needs to be.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics…
http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/52805289/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/tie_dye_shirt__640x480_.jpg
Here’s yet another national writer who is simply shocked that Brian Hoyer is a competent quarterback.
Do these people watch NFL games? Did they see any of the tape on Hoyer last year? I’m not such a homer or naive enough to say that those handful of games proved he could play QB in the NFL, but I think they did show that it was a possibility. Of course, you would have had to be paying attention. Should I take anything they say about any team seriously?
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/brian-hoyer-caretaker-qbs-and-the-ferrari-in-clevelands-garage/
Agree that it’s disappointing that national sports folks can be so clueless, but I do like his Subaru/Ferrari analogy.
He also equates his knowledge of the Browns offense as to what he saw in the preseason, so I pretty much throw out everything that he has to say about anything.
The analogy doesn’t really work though when you get into the fact that you don’t know if you have a Ferrari in the garage or just a beat up Pinto. It’s like Schrodinger’s car or something.
It works, though, if you consider that every Ferrari is a high-priced object that comes with a fantastic reputation but could just end up costing you far, far more than it’s worth. It might be the high-performance machine that it appears to be; but it could also be an unreliable, costly lemon. Nobody that needs a car to get them to work buys a Ferrari.
Also, with that Ferrari, you might find some old rich dude (maybe a Texan?) that’s willing to cough up lots and lots of other cars down the road just to get his hands on it.
The tentative shipping date is Opening Night. Don’t hold me to this, I will deny ever saying it 🙂
“but we all know that if Hoyer hit Taylor and Gabriel in stride on a few of those, we could be 4-0 (or 3-1).”
……..and we all also know that if the wind changed direction and the butterfly didn’t flap his wings when the flower fell we’d all be dead.
Who knows how many future generations Hoyer has saved by missing those throws!
The NBA playoffs were one round shorter then, so that was a Conference Semifinal!
But, yeah.
Have you read my submission, JR? Super pumped about this edition.
STRETCH!
The FC used after some MLS team names also does not endear me to the sport or league either. So pretentious. While we’re at it, where do I sign up for my little soccer scarf?
So dumb.
You mean
http://www.cloudsidekick.com/blog/images/stretch.jpg
I had one of those just like Walter Mitty!