With less than 2 weeks until Maria Sharapova makes her return, there is a growing stir of speculation over her comeback. Having already been granted controversial wild cards and 3 Premier events, including the upcoming Stuttgart Grand Prix, Sharapova—after 15 months out of the game—will return to tennis with a unique opportunity to avoid the usual entry prohibitions of unranked players. Her first match will be in the middle of the first round of Stuttgart on April 26th where she will have a chance to take 470 ranking points.
Many players have questioned the fairness of issuing wild cards to a player returning from a ban after such a long period out of the game. Fair or not, the wild cards Sharapova has received make an implicit assumption that she will be able to compete at a high level after being away for 8% the length of her pro career.
Battling his way through an injury-plagued 2016-17 campaign to finish the 82-game schedule on a high note, 13-time All-Star Dirk Nowitzki says he will return to the Dallas Mavericks for a 20th season.
Bothered by a right Achilles strain that hampered him all season, Nowitzki played in just 54 games during the ’16-17 campaign for his lowest number of outings since his rookie year. However, he also averaged 14.2 points and 6.5 rebounds in 26.4 minutes per game, connecting on 43.7 percent from the field and 37.8 percent from three-point range. And after concluding his injury-riddled year with 21 points and eight rebounds in 27 minutes during the Mavericks’ second-to-last game on April 11, Nowitzki says he’s ready to come back even stronger next season.
“Well, unfortunately, the season is over now. I felt the best I’ve felt all year now the past few weeks, so it’s unfortunate (the Achilles injury) happened in game one,” Nowitzki explained. “My Achilles just wasn’t right for a long, long time, and I basically had to fight my way back from scratch. The work I did that summer was basically out the window, and I had to fight my way back the whole season, so that was tough at times. I was frustrated and disappointed at times, because it wasn’t going quick enough for me. But the last couple of weeks I felt good.”
… the fastest any outfielder ran in 2016 happened on June 8. Even if you were at that game between the Reds and Cardinals, though, you wouldn’t have noticed it. St. Louis’ Yadier Molina crushed a ball to left-center, and Cincinnati’s Billy Hamilton chased after it, running 31.8 feet in his fastest second. That is really, really fast, absurdly fast, almost 22 mph if he could maintain that speed. It’s fairly close to world-class sprinting.
You wouldn’t have noticed it, though, because Hamilton didn’t catch the ball.
This is one of the interesting things about sprint speeds — most of the fastest times are on balls that are not caught. That seems to make sense, logically. Those balls that are just out of reach would force outfielders to run absolutely as hard as they can, while balls that are caught might require a more balanced and measured kind of run.
Tony McCool has worked in all aspects of football over two decades. He was one of the pioneers in performance analysis software, coached at Luton Town’s consistently productive academy before moving to Queens Park Rangers, and scouted first-team opposition for MK Dons. Now, in addition to youth development work for Norwich City, he supervises in-school activities programmes.
His concern is authentic, vivid. It requires courage to express it in such terms, because the majority of those in youth development prefer to provide private confirmation of the troubling trickle-down effect of the cynicism and brutality of first team football, rather than raise their heads above the parapet. Careers can be undermined by candour. Power is a potential pollutant at whatever level it is administered.
“Honestly, the stuff I’ve seen in academies. Coaches can be vile with the kids, because they think they’ve got to kiss someone’s arse. I’ve sat in meetings with them, when they discuss the development of the five Cs in a player – confidence, commitment, control, concentration, communication.
… It’s not a normal week for Alasana Manneh. In fact, it’s not been a normal year. The 18-year-old from Gambia joined Barca last summer after impressing at the Aspire Academy in Qatar, which he’d joined having previously played at the Aspire Football Dreams centre in Senegal.
“When I first came here it was a big surprise to me,” the quiet teenager, who couldn’t make his debut until October due to bureaucratic issues, told ESPN FC at an open training session at Ciutat Esportiva. “It was a surprise to me, because to play for Barcelona is a great thing. It’s true it’s difficult to leave your home, your family… the language, but as a football player you have to be ready to go anywhere. The adaption has been OK. I have been living this life for five years so I have been able to manage it.”
Having recently suffered a high profile transfer-ban for breaking FIFA’s rules when signing minors, the Catalan club are extremely wary these days when it comes to young players. But they are the heartbeat of a club that prides itself on homegrown talent.
As MLS academies crank out more and more prospects, the mantra “play your kids” gets heard more often. It conjures up an image of a manager at the roulette wheel, one willing to risk results while throwing teenagers into the MLS deep end and see how they fare.
The reality, of course, is that it’s not always easy to put “play your kids” into practice. Inexperience oftentimes leads to mistakes that can cost a team points in the standings and the manager his job. At the same time, today’s mainstays will become tomorrow’s has-beens, so there needs to be a conveyor belt of fresh talent coming through a team.
Where those players come from — be it from abroad, an academy, college, the United Soccer League or another MLS team — is the big question. Most sides attempt to utilize all of those pipelines, but a look around MLS sees teams like FC Dallas and the New York Red Bulls using their academy products more than others.
… MLS teams generally found it tough going against overseas competition. Argentinean power River Plate won the GA Cup’s upper bracket, the Championship Division, which consisted of eight foreign and eight domestic teams. The New York Red Bulls were the only MLS side to reach the semifinals. They fell to Brazilian club Flamengo on penalty kicks. In the second-tier Premier Division, where only five of 16 teams hailed from abroad, two of the four semifinalists came from MLS. Led by standout prospect Gio Reyna, son of Claudio, NYCFC edged Mexico’s Tigres in the final.
“I think it’s the professional approach to the game from the foreign teams,” Red Bulls coach Paul O’Donnell told me after his side defeated Ecuador’s Independiente del Valle to claim third place. “Taking very little risks, their ability to compete and tackle – these guys are fighting for jobs down the road. They’re so competitive in every tackle, they’re a little bit soccer-savvy at times when they need to be. As we progressed we got a little bit more soccer-savvy, more competitive, and realized that hey, we can play with these guys, there’s nothing to be scared of.”
… Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard knows he needs sleep. The problem is he can’t put his smartphone down at night. No matter how heavy his eyes are after another 14-hour day at the team’s facility, Ballard struggles to turn off the device, put it down on his nightstand, and doze off.
Ballard wants to be the best at his job. That’s why his eyes are fixated on his phone screen before going to sleep. Ballard is reading “The Cubs Way,” a book about how Chicago Cubs general manager Theo Epstein helped turn a franchise that hadn’t won a World Series in 108 years into the World Series champion in 2016.
“I’m a big nighttime reader,” Ballard said. “Unfortunately, it cuts into my sleep. Because then, you know, when you get into a book and you can’t — you just keep reading and going. And I’m a big phone [reader], which is probably why my eyes aren’t good. So I got the iBooks on my phone, so I do a lot of reading on my phone. But it’s at night.”
… The devices we use daily are constantly gathering information from their users. Much of it is diagnostic, such as error parsing and performance tracking, which developers can use to determine how well the device is working.
However, some devices track far more specific health information like heart rate, location, and even medical conditions. Many companies, like Fitbit, Garmin, and Misfit, require you to set up an account with your email and password — which can be easily compromised.
All of this begs one question: is your personal information at risk in the new world of wearable tech?
Intuitive products will be the key to success in the “wearables” market, especially if manufacturers want to persuade an aging population to use advanced health care devices, an expert told attendees at the recent Advanced Design & Manufacturing conference in Cleveland.
Mike Maczuzak, CEO and founder of SmartShape Design (photo, below), said that wearables will need to be more approachable in the future because older users are less familiar with the world of apps and mobile technology. “The challenge is that the people who need remote health care the most are the least able to participate it in,” Maczuzak said. “So the key to success will be making it as intuitive and seamless an experience as possible.”
Harvard Business Review; Jongbin Jung, Connor Concannon, Ravi Shroff, Sharad Goel, Daniel G. Goldstein from
Machines can now beat humans at complex tasks that seem tailored to the strengths of the human mind, including poker, the game of Go, and visual recognition. Yet for many high-stakes decisions that are natural candidates for automated reasoning, like doctors diagnosing patients and judges setting bail, experts often favor experience and intuition over data and statistics. This reluctance to adopt formal statistical methods makes sense: Machine learning systems are difficult to design, apply, and understand. But eschewing advances in artificial intelligence can be costly.
Recognizing the real-world constraints that managers and engineers face, we developed a simple three-step procedure for creating rubrics that improve yes-or-no decisions. These rubrics can help judges decide whom to detain, tax auditors whom to scrutinize, and hiring managers whom to interview. Our approach offers practitioners the performance of state-of-the-art machine learning while stripping away needless complexity.
Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard knows he needs sleep. The problem is he can’t put his smartphone down at night. No matter how heavy his eyes are after another 14-hour day at the team’s facility, Ballard struggles to turn off the device, put it down on his nightstand, and doze off.
Ballard wants to be the best at his job. That’s why his eyes are fixated on his phone screen before going to sleep. Ballard is reading “The Cubs Way,” a book about how Chicago Cubs general manager Theo Epstein helped turn a franchise that hadn’t won a World Series in 108 years into the World Series champion in 2016.
“I’m a big nighttime reader,” Ballard said. “Unfortunately, it cuts into my sleep. Because then, you know, when you get into a book and you can’t — you just keep reading and going. And I’m a big phone [reader], which is probably why my eyes aren’t good. So I got the iBooks on my phone, so I do a lot of reading on my phone. But it’s at night.”
… This is the owner of an NBA team learning some complex stuff which that is of critical importance to the future of sports analytics. When the boss of the team knows how to do your job, you better be ready to do it better or you will be out of work.
Please don’t mistake this for alarmism; this is truly an exciting development. As owners in sports are more and more likely to be tech and data analytics savvy, they will inevitably invest more in the field, both financially and emotionally.
If I wrote out my skill set when I started this job, the list would probably be one tenth the size it is now. As an analyst, you either adapt or die, it’s that simple. That means learning new technical skills as well as social skills.