New Project and a New Feature

So I have had a lull in posting anything new, but I finally have come up with something to work on and I am sure it will take me a while to figure out. I have often wondered what makes one team better than another when it comes to winning championships. Growing up a fan of Utah, I saw the Jazz win 60 games a couple of times, have the best record in the league once or twice and still come up short. Some say, that if it hadn't been for Michael Jordan, they might have won a championship or two in the mid-90's. Others will contend that Stockton and Jordan simply didn't have what it takes to win on the biggest stage. Which of these two opinions is right? I am not sure we will ever be able to answer the question in the past, but we can look to the past to see what the future may hold. For example, before the playoffs started this year, I ran some numbers and saw that the Jazz had shots blocked well above the league average. There may be a number of reasons for this, but they struggled with it over the course of the year. So looking over the possible playoffs match-ups, one definitely stood out as a terrible match-up; the Los Angeles Lakers. They blocked well over the league average of shots. You put these two things together, take away one of our lengthiest players in Mehmet Okur and you have a nightmarish four games.

So here is my objective: Determine what qualities past champions have had in common? What are some key characteristics should you look for? The goal will be to look past and see if there are some defining qualities that a team must have to be able to win. Hopefully the information will provide a valuable insight to helping choose which teams will fare better in the playoffs. Initially I plan to look at 3 different aspects: Regular Season Team Performance, Regular Season Player Performance, Playoff Player Performance.

The other thing that I will be blogging about is my progress of NBA 2K10. I have started a My Player career and unfortunately did not get invited to an NBA Training Camp right off the bat. I was in the Nets summer league and performed quite well. 12 ppg, 8 rbg, 3 apg, 1 spg, 1bpg. Not to shabby for a 6'6" shooting guard. I managed to play both back court positions and then also logged a few minutes at small forward. Alas, I ended up playing in the D-League for the Reno BigHorns. We'll have to see how it goes, but I am through my first game and hopefully starting soon. It will take some patience, but I want to see just how far I can get on this on. Stay tuned for more updates.