… “I thought I was going to be here for a year, two years, and be long gone,” the 33-year-old, six-foot guard said. “Come up here for business and that’s about it but, at the end of the day, I think the perseverance and the work I’ve put in and the belief the organization has in me means something.”
Lowry is not a particularly warm and fuzzy guy who’ll publicly profess undying love for anything other than his family, the city (Philadelphia) where he was born and raised, his NFL Eagles and Villanova University.
And maybe that’s why he doesn’t get all the adulation that is due him for what he has accomplished in the city and the impact he’s had on the franchise.
Playing the world’s game, on the world’s stage, under attack by a world leader, she dominated. And in doing so without fear, Megan Rapinoe became a voice for so many across the world.
Pastrnak has scored on just over 15 percent of his 1-timer shot attempts over the last 3 seasons. How impressive is that? To find the answer, I compiled a list of players who have scored at least 20, 1-timer goals in this span from an average shot attempt distance of 30 feet or more. Since a backdoor tap in is technically a 1-timer, I used shot distance to separate as much noise as possible in determining who’s 1-timer shot is most lethal. This left us with 8 players.
Ovechkin, Stamkos, Pastrnak, Nikita Kucherov, Patrik Laine, Mike Hoffman, Tyler Seguin, and Nathan MacKinnon.
None of these players have scored at a higher rate than Pastrnak.
Matt Hughes is the Canadian record-holder in the steeplechase who recently relocated from Portland back to Toronto. As Hughes adjusts to the harsher Canadian winters, he’s also accepting that the treadmill is part of training like a Canuck. Hughes reached out to Twitter for advice on how to make his indoor miles more palatable and he got some great responses from many different kinds of runners.
Do you feel like you perform at your best when you have not gotten the sleep that you need? Very few people would answer this question in the affirmative. Despite this, millions of people worldwide go without the sleep they need without realizing how it can affect their future performance. A new study on sleep deprivation and cognitive function suggests that the effects of sleeplessness may be even more dramatic than we previously believed.
Since 2018, KARL MAYER has been developing highly efficient technology for producing functional warp knits with electrical conductivity under the concept of TEXTILECIRCUIT and is, therefore, setting the trend in electronic wearables. The special feature of TEXTILE-CIRCUIT is that conductive yarns can be incorporated directly into the textile during the warp knitting process, and they can be positioned in any location and in any design. Functional elements, such as sensors, conductors and coils, can be placed exactly where they are needed. No additional production sequences are needed whatsoever, and the textile characteristics are fully retained.
The MotionMonitor xGen provides the ability to easily define cursors and targets which can be visualized on a variety of displays. In this setup, a subject reaches for a 2D target displayed on a large rear-projection screen. Full body kinematics (including joint angles, segment velocities and accelerations) are captured along with 3D eye-gaze data, so that the researcher can evaluate attention, compensation mechanisms and more. [video, 0:52]
Danish tech startup Veo is making its artificially intelligent camera solution for recording live soccer available in the U.S.
Veo provides a 180-degree portable camera and tripod that is powered by software capable of tracking ball movement as action occurs. The AI’s computer vision automatically zooms and pans depending on the ball’s position. Coaches and players can then review the footage—live matches or training sessions—
… seven years ago a group of MIT researchers created a new imaging system that used floors, doors, and walls as “mirrors” to understand information about scenes outside a normal line of sight. Using special lasers to produce recognizable 3D images, the work opened up a realm of possibilities in letting us better understand what we can’t see.
Recently, a different group of scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has built off of this work, but this time with no special equipment needed: They developed a method that can reconstruct hidden video from just the subtle shadows and reflections on an observed pile of clutter. This means that, with a video camera turned on in a room, they can reconstruct a video of an unseen corner of the room, even if it falls outside the camera’s field of view.
By observing the interplay of shadow and geometry in video, the team’s algorithm predicts the way that light travels in a scene, which is known as “light transport.” The system then uses that to estimate the hidden video from the observed shadows — and it can even construct the silhouette of a live-action performance.
… The NFL has a head start in machine learning due to the sheer amount of data it collects on its players. The sport also has decades of video. That means they should be able to create meaningful simulations that can help improve helmet design and also lead to rule changes that could reduce the concussion risk that is endemic in the sport.
Goodell recognizes that the sport has all this data, but lacks the expertise to put it to work. That’s where the partnership comes in. “I think what’s most exciting to me is that there are very few relationships that we get involved with where the partner and the NFL can change the game,” he said.
Jeff Miller, executive VP for Health and safety innovation for the NFL, says this partnership is part of a broader initiative the NFL has taken over the last few years to find ways to reduce head injuries in the game. “About three and a half years ago the NFL started a project called ‘The Engineering Roadmap’, which was a multibillion-dollar effort supported by our owners to better understand the impact of concussions on the field, then design ways to mitigate those injuries and move the helmet industry forward,” Miller said today.
Bone stress injuries are usually caused by high loads on normal bone, or normal loads on weaker bones.
I will routinely see athletes who have been diagnosed with a bone stress injury and are looking for clues about causes and how best recover and reduce risk of future problems.
… Believe it or not, it is a real stat — simply how well opposing teams shoot free throws against you — and the Thunder do indeed stink at it; foes hit 79.7% against them, 27th in the league. The NBA average is around 76%, and considering OKC is losing games by 0.4 points on average, everything matters.
These are the kinds of things that haunt coaches. NBA games are decided in the margins, and finding loose change under the statistical cushion is an advantage.
That’s why, despite the confusion, [Billy] Donovan’s interest is piqued.
“So teams are shooting 80% against us? I mean, it’s really hard for us, when teams are shooting that kind of percentage,” he says, still searching for a reasonable answer.
… I’m in the Bay Area for Friday’s Silicon Valley Health and Performance Summit. It’s put on by Sparta Science, whose founder Phil Wagner, M.D., told me a while back that we have the scientific know-how right now to reduce NBA injuries 20-50 percent.
I relayed the Derrick Rose story to Dr. Wagner as we sat on black couches in the cavernous gym-as-warehouse which is Sparta’s high-tech workout-centric workspace. He’s crazy fit, his own employees marvel at his diet, his getting up at four a.m., and his ability to be totally focused for insanely long hours. The floor is NFL turf, the cameras and force plates are installed everywhere. The address is Menlo Park, almost literally in the shadow of Facebook. In the next room, rows of programmers and data scientists sit at laptops, looking like every other startup. The intelligence is natural and artificial.
Dr. Wagner’s reaction to my Rose story: “It’s shockingly not surprising,” he says. Sparta’s clients include all kinds of elite athletes: the Cavaliers, the Rockies, the NFL itself at the draft combine, and some unnamed branches of the military. Wagner has the team and tools at the ready to deploy sports science to reduce injuries, and is in meetings all the time with a who’s who of the sports world.
The Telegraph (UK), Katie Whyatt and Molly McElwee from
Fifteen years on from being part of a community-based sports club in Lyon, the team now known as Olympique Lyonnais Feminin are the major force in women’s football.
The Champions League winners for the past four years are a true superclub, cherry-picking the best talent from all over the world. Yet the ambition of their president, Jean-Michel Aulas, has not been sated. Last week, Aulas, the chief executive of the club’s umbrella OL Groupe, began exclusive negotiations to take a foothold in the United States by acquiring the Washington-based Reign FC of the National Women’s Soccer League.
“The president wants to be the first one, always, to do something good for women’s football,” Lyon forward Eugenie Le Sommer says. “He was the first person to trust in women’s football in France to be professional. It was a fresh thing for him. He lost a lot of money before, because he invested. It was uncertain. Now he wants to improve again. The US culture is different and I think he likes this; wants to learn from them.”