Of all the awards given out in pro sports, the NBA’s Most Improved Player is perhaps the most arbitrary. (We won’t include hockey’s Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship.) There’s no single stat that indicates how much a player has improved from one season to the next. And why has that player improved? Is it just from increased playing time, or are there other factors involved? There’s just a whole mess of gray area involved. [Read more…]
If you know the difference between a basketball and a bocce ball, you know that upstart Florida Gulf Coast has come out of absolutely nowhere to capture the nation’s attention and become the first 15-seed in NCAA history to advance to the Sweet 16. What does this have to do with the Most Improved Player Rankings? Well, FGCU coach Andy Enfield called his team “the most improved team in the nation.” You know that caught our attention. That. of course, and
A dozen teams have played at least half their schedule and another seven will join them today, when the most of the most significant holidays in this country’s history becomes the season’s unofficial midway point. So Dr. Martin Luther King Day is as good a time as any to examine the current front-runners for the annual awards. Included are links to both our staff’s preseason picks and the current rankings. And as always, we’ve included snide remarks if/when necessary. [Read more…]
The race for this season’s Most Improved Player reminds me of one of those computer-simulated races that take place on the jumbotrons at arenas throughout the country. You know what I’m talking about. They’ve got the cute characters and cool animation, but they end up with more twists and turns than an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Most races go something like this: [Read more…]
It’s not Chris Sheridan’s fault. He didn’t know what he was getting into when he handed this column over to me, one of the top five most improved human beings on the face of the Earth. He didn’t know that I could barely read in 10th grade, but that my diligence and perseverance has make me grammar better so much. He couldn’t possibly have known that I successfully debated Mookie Blaylock’s candidacy for Most Improved Player in week three of the 1994-95 NBA season
It’s the Larry Sanders Show. Not the old HBO sitcom starring Garry Shandling, which I never really found to be that funny but ultimately paved the way for similar real-life parody vehicles such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage. No, this is neither parody nor sitcom. It’s more of a reality show, and its star appears as serious as a heart attack about becoming a permanent resident of our Most Improved Player Rankings. [Read more…]
I’m filling in for our peerless, fearless editor-in-chief for this week’s edition – – which means these will be our Most Improved Rankings in more ways than one. This is perhaps the most difficult award for media members, because every season there are dozens of candidates and almost as many parameters for what constitutes improved. A case in point came last season, when the media clearly voted for the wrong guy. [Read more…]
Yes, we are rankings-crazy here at the home office, where we are now up to five sets of rankings — MVP, Rookies, NBA Power Rankings, Euroleague Rankings … and now Most Improved. We are so rankings crazy we just used the same word four times in the same sentence. Later in the season, we’ll do the same for Coach of the Year and Sixth Man, which Jamal Crawford has probably already won, right? [Read more…]