This Week's Show
We talk Daily Fantasy Sports, the WNBA, and Stephen A. Smith's wrestling promo.
Hosts
- Andres Alvarez (@nerdnumbers)
- Patrick Minton (@nbageek)
- Produced by Brian Foster (@boxscorebrian)
Sources
You can watch us live at twitch.tv/nerdnumbers, we're deciding a new time, we'll keep you posted.
Please subscribe to Channel NerdNumbers on YouTube and like us on iTunes!
Video Show
Sponsor
We have an official sponsor! If you deposit $1 on owntheplay.com using the keyword GEEK25, they'll give you $25 in money for the site. OwnThePlay is a daily fantasy sports site, which, if you haven't heard about is a heck of a lot of fun for any fantasy sports fan.
Show Notes
The NBA is back!
Well, it's the preseason, and I won't lie, I don't care yet. That said, Thank you Kobe, for this gift, I didn't get you anything.
This season I won't be putting any work into preseason predictions. Patrick won't be able to make his Vegas trek either. We may have some preseason thoughts, but full out projections are unlikely.
I mention that I've quoted this piece from Patrick on Kevin Love and the "sunk cost fallacy" a ton. Here's another link to it!
Patrick's first prediction? Rudy Gobert will win the Defensive Player of the Year. Also, has any team had a better stable of bigs throughout history than Utah?
Daily Fantasy Sports
We break down the recent scandal in Daily Fantasy Sports. Vox.com has a good breakdown of what happened.
The issue, we discuss, is not insider trading or fraud, but rather that Daily Fantasy Sports companies need better controls and processes on proprietary data. Patrick and I both mention practices major tech companies we worked for used.
The book I mention is Gaming the Game by Sean Patrick Griffin. Honestly, it's a must read and has a lot of interesting insight into how data and gambling markets interact.
The WNBA
I recently saw a talk from Dave Berri, and he mentioned that relative to other leagues, WNBA players are underpaid relative to their peers. Even accounting for smaller revenue streams, WNBA players get a worse cut relative to other leagues in the US.
Diana Taurasi is a WNBA player that was paid by a competing league not to play in the WNBA. Currently, the only real advantage the WNBA has is many foreign leagues have limits on the number of international players they can roster.
Patrick got to coach "minor league" basketball in Germany and go to see Dirk Nowitzki play in the U19 division.
We talk a bit about Holger Geschwindner, who is Dirk's unorthodox trainer. He sounds like our kind of guy!
We compare some of the WNBA's management issues with the ABA. Another good read is Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls" about the ABA.
Stephen A. Smith is a wrestling heel
In no world is Stephen A. Smith more powerful than Durant, despite what he says. It seems pretty clear that he's paid by ESPN to be a professional troll. And he's good at it.
Shout Outs
Patrick gives another shout-out to Flip Saunders, whose health has gotten worse. As Patrick says: "Fuck cancer!"
Brian shouts out Greg Howard's articles at Deadspin on Jason Whitlock and the failed "The Undefeated" site he was supposed to launch.
Brian shouts out Stephon Marbury's unconventional marketing tactic for his shoes.
Brian shouts out Thabo Sefolosha, who is in a trial against the police officer who broke his leg.