There is no way to sum up the 2014-15 season for the Toronto Raptors without including the word disappointment. You can debate the extent of it, of course – the team did win a franchise-record 49 games and saw point guard Kyle Lowry start in the All-Star Game – but the basic conclusion remains the same. Touted as a new power in the Eastern Conference, the Raptors exploded into last season borne on a wave of “We the North” expectation. This
LAS VEGAS– In a free agency period where LaMarcus Aldridge took what seemed like two dozen meetings and DeAndre Jordan’s recruiting process turned into the most bizarre sequences in years, the Toronto Raptors lured prized wing DeMarre Carroll away from the Atlanta Hawks before he left to meet with anyone else. So how did they do it? Well, $60 million over four years certainly helped. But it was more than that. SheridanHoops conducted one-on-one interviews with Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri, coach Dwane
It’s a busy Saturday night in the NBA and while a few of the ten games are meaningful in real life, others are like preseason exhibitions, where anything might happen. We are always shopping for unexpected DFS values, especially at this time of year. [Read more…]
Here’s hoping that Friday the 13th is good luck at DraftKings. Nine NBA games begin at 7:00 EDT but there are Turbo contests (covering three games) at 8:00, Late events (also spanning three games) at 9:00 and even Later action on the final two at 10:00. That’s multiple opportunities to win. [Read more…]
The rest must have helped. Kobe Bryant notched a triple-double (though only one turnover short of a less-spectacular quad-double) to lead the Lakers to a road victory. [Read more…]
On Monday night against the Charlotte Hornets, Timofey Mozgov looked like he belonged on the battlefield. He took an errant elbow from Bismack Biyombo to his left eye, just above it on his forehead, that left him a bloodied mess. Moments after, he got a nice slap in the face from Gerald Henderson to make matters worse. He had to leave the game due to the fact that his entire face was covered in blood, which apparently you can’t play through.
The growth of analytics in the NBA has been nothing short of phenomenal. It started with a deeper look at numbers that already were available and produced new and useful statistics such as true shooting percentage, defensive rebound percentage, offensive rating and win shares. With the use of a grid or a matrix, we now have the ability to determine a player’s offensive tendencies and hot spots. For some players, it is quite revealing. For others, such as DeAndre Jordan, it pretty
Brazil entered Tuesday’s World Cup semifinal match against Germany facing extreme obstacles. Their captain, Thiago Silva was due to miss the match having accumulated two yellow cards, and star forward Neymar had suffered a fractured vertebra in their quarterfinal match against Colombia. Even with such losses, they were still expected to play well, perhaps carrying out the role of underdog to move on to the finals. The match was highly anticipated and was garnering a lot of media attention and hype.