… The Thunder seems to be having a lot of fun these days, whether it’s cutting up after practice or carving up opposing defenses.
Westbrook, in both cases, seems to be a big reason why.
“Every (year) I’ve been here, playing with guys, they enjoy playing with me and competing,” Westbrook told The Oklahoman on Saturday.
“I think I’m the only one in the league that has that tag of it, ‘Is it a joy to play with this guy? Is it fun to play with this guy?’ But that’s fine. I’m OK with that. It doesn’t do anything. As long as my guys, my teammates have fun and enjoy the game of basketball, that’s all that matters.”
Two days before the Knicks guaranteed Jarrett Jack’s contract, the point guard who had been through so much rehab to get to this point, and who admitted to the Daily News that he contemplated retirement, said he was so consumed with the season that he was unaware the deadline was approaching.
“My individual well-being wasn’t even at the top of my desk,” he said. “It’ll be cool, it’s great, I’ve had a tremendous time playing and competing with these dudes coming back from my injury.”
Just the fact that you’re reading this tells me that you’re ahead of the pack. You already have what many don’t: the motivation to get out there, grind workouts, and train your body to be its best day after day. That’s clutch, but unfortunately it’s not enough to keep you ahead of the pack! One of the secrets to helping NBA athletes get ahead and making sure they stay there is a sound movement assessment. A movement assessment is an appraisal of how a player moves before they hit the court. Movement assessments don’t have to be restricted to a defined and organized battery of tests. Although I use something of the sort, I’m also constantly assessing players’ movements as they train, warm up, and play.
Without ongoing movement assessments, you run the risk of sending a player out to compete and perform with underlying limitations and weaknesses. Often these limitations and weaknesses are hidden by the highlight reel athleticism that we all see during game time action. This scenario is a huge problem because as we’re all cheering at their big plays, damage is being done to tissues, structures, or joints that can ultimately lead to debilitating injury.
MLS has invested a lot of money in youth development but its own archaic rules have severely hurt the league’s ability to compete and even thrive in the modern global landscape. ASN’s Jamie Hill offers a detailed analysis of the problem and provides ways to fix it.
Just in time for the rush of aspiration that comes with a new calendar year, the American Psychological Association has published new research exploring the rise of perfectionism in young people. Compared to prior generations, today’s college students are harder on themselves, more demanding of others, and report higher levels of social pressure to be perfect.
Published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, the study examines responses to the Multidimensional Perfection Scale from over 40,000 college students who took the survey between 1989 and 2016. It is a test used to assess generational changes in three types of perfectionism. The results showed increases across all three: a 10 percent increase in self-directed perfectionism, a 33 percent increase in socially prescribed perfectionism (that is, high standards dictated by the expectations of others) and a 16 percent increase in other-oriented perfectionism (perfectionistic standards that are applied to other people).
… We spend all week preparing for the first game of a weekend series, and it can all go out the window in the first period. How do you guys prepare for that tight turnaround?
The fine line with preparing your team is finding a balance between what you already have in your system, your habits, and finding what works for your opponent. The biggest thing right now for us is finding a way to compete every night. We feel if we compete we have a chance. In game, reading and reacting, what can we do better, and not necessarily changing our systems but adapting to where we’re losing those battles on a Friday or Saturday night – that’s our focus when we’re preparing.
The maker of advanced swim apps, Swim.com, has teamed up with Spire to create the world’s first smart swimsuit.
We wrote back in November about the new Spire Health Tag. The little wearable is different from most activity trackers on the market in that it attaches to clothes you put on every day. The idea here is to provide a seamless experience so you do not need to worry about battery life, maintenance, or even to put it on! It comes in packs of up to 15 tags so you can stick them onto clothes you wear the most.
Sports Thread today announced Sports Thread 3.0, a social media-based, self-promotion and communications software platform for the 40 million youth athletes in the United States.
For Davante Adams, the time to do something about ugly hits that result in concussions is now. For David Irving, recovery is still the primary concern, with symptoms of his concussion lingering after more than a month. With their NFL teams’ playoff hopes dashed, the two players spoke out this week about scary concussions they suffered during a season in which the league was forced to reassess its protocol.
Adams, the Green Bay Packers’ wide receiver, suffered one of the most frightening injuries early in the season when he was carted off the field and taken to a hospital after a hit by Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan in late September. Adams missed no games — until Week 15, when Thomas Davis of the Panthers hit him with an illegal block that sent him back into protocol and ended his season. Both Trevathan and Davis served one-game suspensions for what Adams said were “real, real ugly hits,” but the effects on Adams were far worse.
“You have to do something about it,” Adams said Tuesday (via ESPN). “I feel like what they’re doing in college [with its targeting rule], they review it or whatever. Having it in place would definitely help, but we’ll see how they take care of it.”
… concussions can lead to the creation of higher concentrations of reactive oxygen species in the brain, raising the oxidative stress on neurons. If that stress is too high, the neurons may die and trigger a cascade that affects other nearby cells. Head injury can also lead to the release of too much of a neurotransmitter called glutamate, overloading neurons and disrupting their ability to function normally. This can also lead to neuron death, and neuroprotectants that dampen the over-excitation of the cells can be used to calm the glutamate storm.
The theory behind captons is that they could be taken as a prophylactic before injury. When a concussion causes a spike in ROS, the captons will react with those free radicals and neutralize the oxidative stress. Additionally, the transformed captons will then act as neuroprotectants to de-excite the neurons at the site of injury, and only there. “[Pathology after concussion] is like a ripple effect,” says Sara Isbell, Mercaptor’s CEO and co-founder, “we prevent those ripples from expanding.”
When Raptor was bought out by Horizon Pharma in September 2016, Isbell and other members of the research team founded a new company called Mercaptor Discoveries to develop captons. Kovach, who has served on the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee, joined Mercaptor’s advisory board in August.
Now more than seven months into research on stem cells and cartilage regeneration, medical professionals at the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine in Gulf Breeze have reported positive early results in a study that could ultimately overhaul how doctors treat common joint maladies.
Since May, Andrews Institute has participated in a Food & Drug Administration study that examines the efficacy of creating new cartilage in the knee through a series of stem cell injections. Adam Anz, orthopaedic surgeon at Andrews Institute, said researchers have planned to enroll a total of 60 patients.
Of the eight participants already partaking in the study, Anz said officials have witnessed early evidence that indicates stem cell treatments and physical therapy could effectively nullify the current medical solution of solving knee degeneration through total joint replacement surgeries.
Advertising junk food to children would be banned, sugar-sweetened drinks taxed, and unhealthy vending machines removed from all medical facilities under an all-out assault on poor nutrition being pushed by the Australian Medical Association.
In a new position statement, the powerful doctors’ group says a suite of measures needs to be adopted by governments and businesses in 2018 to reduce the large-scale damage being wrought by over consumption of sugar.
“This article presents our opinions and suggestions on how an Advanced Analytics department should operate. The post is not intended to be a comprehensive list of steps, but rather, a list of tips and warnings. We hope this will be useful for those who want to implement analytics work in their company, as well as for existing departments.”
We’ve known for years that as time went on, an inevitable trend in baseball would be the blurring of the line between “starting pitchers” and “relief pitchers” into just pitchers. Starters don’t go deep into games anymore, and that’s largely by design, knowing all that we know now about how less effective the typical pitcher gets when facing a lineup a third or fourth time.
We know the game is catching up to the theory because we saw the Dodgers and Astros use the idea to great effect on their way to the World Series in 2017. We know it because Houston manager A.J. Hinch did something unprecedented in Game 7, pulling a starter with a shutout before three innings (for a non-injury or gimmick reason) for the first time in World Series history. We know it because the Mets and Rays have outright said it is part of their 2018 plan, and because the relief-pitcher market is the only part of this frigid Hot Stove that’s moving.
“If the numbers are telling you that guys can’t get through the third time of the lineup, then they shouldn’t be out there,” said Mets GM Sandy Alderson to MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo in November.
For years, the joke has been whenever a team struggled in Los Angeles on a back to back, or on a weekend day, that once again, “LA nightlife is undefeated.” It’s a hilarious premise that taps into the common joke about players partying in certain cities, particularly Los Angeles. The best example?
After the Warriors trounced the Oklahoma City Thunder last season in November, Golden State had a back-to-back the next night vs. the Lakers. Music star and Raptors Brand Ambassador Drake accompanied them on the plane. The next night, a lethargic Warriors squad lost to the Lakeshow, 117-97.
Lakers fans balk at the idea, and it’s understandable. Since the Dwight-Kobe-Gasol-Nash team mercifully self-destructed, the Lakers are 147-300. So when they actually play well? The fans want to feel like they actually played well! Especially earlier this season when it seemed like the Lakers might actually be competitive. (Spoiler: They are not.)
… According a 2006 study by economists at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business, when the state implemented the HOPE Scholarship in 1993, one of its goals was to increase retention of the state’s best students. The researchers found that the scholarship reduced the number of students leaving Georgia to attend college elsewhere by 560 students per year. Freshman SAT scores, a measure of student quality, increased by nearly 40 points statewide after HOPE was implemented, the study found.
However, a study conducted in conjunction with Georgia State University and the University of Cincinnati found that “HOPE might cause some students to ‘leave’ the University System of Georgia because of HOPE’s increased selectivity in admissions. Merit scholarships like HOPE often lead to increased competition for enrollment at top public universities such as the University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology” — two of the state’s biggest football schools.