The 2021 WNBA season is only beginning to take shape, but despite a small sample size, some teams such as the New York Liberty have already emerged as front-runners, even though they won just two games last season. Not all surprises have been good, however, as two teams are still looking for their first victories.
Our panel — ESPN’s Kelly Cohen, Dana Lee, D’Arcy Maine and Kevin Pelton, as well as The Undefeated’s Sean Hurd — breaks down the young season so far, including which players on new teams are making the biggest impact and how overseas commitments, injuries and absences might continue to impact the WNBA.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jonathan Tannenwald from
… “He was going in anyway — I felt like I got bullied into that,” Curtin said with a laugh in his postgame news conference.
The fans knew to temper their expectations, because Aaronson still has a ways to go before he’s ready for significant minutes. But they were right to want to see him on the field. Brenden’s younger brother has immense potential, and everyone around the Union knows it. Indeed, you don’t have to dig far to find people who think Paxten’s ceiling is higher.
Individual alpha peak frequency (IAPF), the discrete frequency with the highest power value in the alpha oscillation range of the electroencephalogram, is a stable neurophysiological marker and is closely associated with various cognitive functions, including aspects of attention and working memory. However, the relationship between IAPF and attentional performance as well as the effects of engaging attention on IAPF are unknow. Here, we examined whether IAPF values were associated with attentional performance by evaluating accuracy during the performance of a multiple object tracking (MOT) task, a well-established paradigm for investigating goal-driven attention in dynamic environments, and whether engagement in the task affected IAPF values. In total, 18 elite players and 20 intermediate players completed the study. Resting electroencephalogram recordings were obtained for 120 s while players kept their eyes open and an additional 120 s while players’ eyes were closed, before and again after performing the MOT task. Tracking accuracy in the MOT task and IAPF values before and after the MOT task were analyzed. As expected, tracking accuracies were higher in elite players than in intermediate-level players. Baseline IAPF values were significantly and positively correlated with the accuracy of target tracking in the MOT task. IAPF values were higher in elite than intermediate players in both the eyes open and closed conditions and both before and after MOT task performance. Interindividual IAPF values did not differ before and after the MOT task. These findings indicate that IAPF is a stable marker, without intraindividual changes associated with engagement in the MOT task. Elite players had higher IAPF values and exhibited more accurate MOT performance than intermediate-level players; thus, baseline IAPF values may be useful to predict attentional performance in the MOT task among athletes.
Boston Children's Hospital, Boston Children's Answers from
Working out can boost physical and mental energy. Yet as athletes return to play after a very strange year, some may feel more fatigued than energized.
“Feeling tired after a tough workout or bad night’s sleep is normal and temporary,” says Nicole Farnsworth, clinical nutrition specialist in the Sports Medicine Division at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Fatigue is a problem when it interferes with an athlete’s everyday life.” Fatigue might set in at certain times of day or during certain activities. It might feel like a physical heaviness or an inability to concentrate. “I see fatigue affect athletes in different ways, but it tends to occur repetitively and in an ongoing manner.”
What can an athlete do if fatigue makes getting through the day a struggle? Here, Farnsworth talks about fatigue, possible causes, and how athletes can address it.
… In essence, the NBA wants your help to improve the game, and in its initial callout to entrepreneurs and companies, the league is seeking innovative products, technologies or other platforms that address four NBA priorities: innovating ankle injury prevention and recovery; elevating health and wellness in youth basketball; enhancing elite youth player performance; and advancing referee training and development.
“It’s always been our interest to be an innovative, tech-forward organization, to be exploring ways to improve the product,” NBA executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch told USA TODAY Sports. “The reason we’re forming this new platform is essentially to allow us to take more control of that process.”
Wasch described Launchpad as a cross between “an incubator, crowd-source platform and ‘techstars’ program.”
YouTube is a treasure trove of virtual reality fails: users tripping, colliding into walls and smacking inanimate and animate objects. By investigating these “VR Fails” on YouTube, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have sought to learn more about when and why things go sideways for users and how to improve VR design and experiences so as to avoid accidents.
OrthoSpineNews, PR Newswire, Chris J. Stewart from
For the first time in Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR) history, one of its sports medicine physicians has been awarded a National Institute of Health (NIH) grant as a Principal Investigator (PI). Adam Yanke, MD, PhD, Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush surgeon and Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Rush University Medical Center, and Co-PI Nozomu Inoue, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Rush University Medical Center, will study the properties of donor knee cartilage to identify how to best match it with patients undergoing cartilage transplantation. Dr. Yanke is also the Assistant Director of the Cartilage Restoration Center at Rush, which has helped pioneer many cartilage transplantation techniques over the last 15 years.
Heart inflammation is rare in Big Ten Conference athletes who’ve had COVID-19 and in most it cases causes no obvious symptoms, according to the first data published from a league registry.
The results from the Big Ten COVID-19 Cardiac Registry show just 37 of nearly 1,600 athletes — a little over 2% — had evidence of heart inflammation on imaging tests. Of these, nine athletes had any chest pain, palpitations or other symptoms, according to the study published Thursday in JAMA Cardiology.
ATs were justifiably concerned about their positions after sports were canceled, and many ATs were furloughed as a result of budgetary concerns and lack of work through the spring and summer of 2020.
Then, the head ATs and their staff members, who typically provided care for student-athletes while understaffed even in pre-pandemic times, took on the role of arranging and attending COVID-19 testing sites for student-athletes, coaches, and staff on a frequent, if not daily, basis, up to seven days a week. In this new environment, ATs faced many challenges, such as dealing with non-compliant student-athletes, coaches, and staff; conducting contact tracing for COVID-19 positive tests; arranging for quarantining for those exposed to COVID-19-positive individuals; and navigating the demands of trying to schedule testing to accommodate practices, games, and holidays.
Precision medicine startup DayTwo announced over the weekend a $37 million fundraise for its app that provides users customized diet recommendations based on their gut bacteria. New investors participating include Poalim Capital Markets, La’maison Fund and Micron Ventures. They were joined by existing investors including the aMoon VC fund, 10D, and Cathay Innovation Ventures. To date, DayTwo has raised $85 million including this round.
The new funds will go towards Israel-based DayTwo’s technologies that help those with diabetic and metabolic diseases. In particular, the funds will go towards further enhancing the company’s first product, a platform that uses artificial intelligence, microbiome sequencing, and other clinical measures such as surveys to provide customized food prescriptions for users with these diseases. Doing so will help users manage their blood sugar levels, which is critical for those with diabetes.
The sports nutrition category is undergoing a seismic change—the rise of the “active consumer” is reshaping the market and the products within it. While typical consumer targets may have previously included professional athletes and serious gym-goers, 61% of average consumers are now looking to improve their overall health, according to data from FMCG Gurus. As a result, more people are lacing up their sneakers and seeking sports nutrition products to help support their quest for better health. In fact, 41% of consumers purchasing sports nutrition products use them to boost overall health, rather than specifically before or after a big workout. Covid-19 has, of course, had a hand to play in this change, as more people become conscious of their overall health and take action to improve it.
In a post earlier this year, we highlighted the most valuable players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) at that time. Los Angeles forward Lebron James ankle injury, however, provided us with the opportunity to see if a star power can still generate significant value for a team even when he is not playing.
Of the top-five performing on-court players by position, Block Six Analytics’ (B6A’s) Influencer Analysis Platform (IAP) has found that Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić is the NBA’s best player and Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo is the NBA’s most valuable player for the 2020-21 regular season. However, James is still more valuable than both even though he missed a significant portion of the season with an injury.
B6A’s research has found that both on-court and off-court factors have a statistically significant relationship to revenue. From an economic perspective, teams should value employees (such as players) in large part based on their holistic ability to generate revenue.
Therefore, IAP was created in part to determine the MVP from both an on-court and off-court perspective.
… “There is going to be constant turnover there, trust me,” said one NFL executive who has been paying particular attention to the Jaguars. “If you know anything about the people and the personalities involved, you can see it coming a mile away. There is going to be a constant churn.”
Another NFL executive added: “Won’t be the last time someone doesn’t make it through the season there.”
Meyer’s transition to the NFL will be one of the more fascinating case studies of the 2021 season. Hardly a week goes by without something bizarre or unconventional or wrought with peril going on down there, and it’s already clear that many of the people brought in early in his tenure won’t be there late, no matter how long this experiment lasts.
The Mets are in first place despite a disappointing offense and an MLB-high 17 players on the injured list, largely thanks to a massive turnaround on defense.