Chicken Noodle Hoop

Before I start writing here and at Nylon Calculus again, I thought I’d update my Great Reads section. Judging by how many people I’m following on Twitter, I’ll be forgetting a few given the number of writers I’ve come across since creating this blog is in the hundreds. Sigh, but this is a decent mix of already well-known writers/sites who don’t need my recommendation (but I included them anyway), and others who are up and coming. I also just respect the heck out of those who write at their own site frequently as it’s a giant commitment. Check out their work.

You can find this all on the right side of the blog (edit: I’ve been expanding the list) along with a few other things, but I also thought I should write up a post for it. This is in no particular order, save for the first two. Only 65 percent sure all of the following links open in new windows…

Basketball-Reference – Basketball-Reference is the greatest creation on planet earth, and eventually I made this blog just so I could write about what I found at that site. Now, I’m actually putting the final touches on a monster event finder I made in Excel, of all places, from the data on B-Ref, and I’m excited for how many weird things I’ll find from it (who wants jump ball stats? Anybody?!). I still don’t think I’ve found everything from that site, though.

Another influence was…

Zach Lowe – I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know about Zach Lowe before he came to Grantland, but he got me interested in writing about more than per game statistics and whatever else feels antiquated. It’s also been quite a thrill hearing him on some great podcasts and making the occasional appearance on TV.

And some people/sites I stumbled upon along the way:

Tim Sartori – Tim NBA, you fell off planet earth. Get your act together by writing for free again. Tim writes/wrote a good deal of work here.

Seth Partnow – Seth’s everywhere and it can be hard to keep up with him sometimes, but here’s his Tumblr where he puts all of his work into one place. With how frequently he writes, you’re probably better off following him on Twitter.

Inpredictable – Created by Mike Beuoy, and his work is just fantastic. His latest post looked at the arc of shooters and there’s plenty of other great work if you look around his site.

Corbin Smith – Only meant for mature audiences, I think. Here is his work if you want to risk it anyway.

Stat Intelligence – Jeff Fogle’s a pretty frequent writer and, among his latest posts, I liked this one about learning from The Onion’s tightness.

JZ Mazlish – JZ publishes NBA Draft-related material at Wingspan Addicts. Perfect time to check it out and I was surprised at how easy it was to look around his blog. Some sites can be messy, unfortunately.

Dean On Draft – Another draft-related blog. I started reading Dean Demakis’ work last summer and have enjoyed it ever since. He’s also been on some podcasts in the past, but none recently as far as I know.

Dunc’d on Podcast – Usually with Danny Leroux and Nate Duncan, the latter guy my favorite in-game tweeter. Sometimes they’ll add an additional, solid basketball mind to the mix. Not only does this podcast bring consistently interesting analysis, but there’s usually a new hour-ish long episode daily.

Over & Back Podcast: Hosted by Rich Kraetsch and Jason Mann, this is a podcast that goes over the history of the NBA one weird, fun episode at a time. In one podcast about the worst teams ever, they took a look at my post about the near-Bobcatters which, after reading that post again, I thought I was way too snarky. So that was weird. Don’t read your work that’s over a year old. Listen to the Over & Back podcast instead. My favorite episode so far is a look at the worst year of NBA jerseys: 1999.

Shitty Data Analysis – Posting just for the blog name. Created by Michael Murray.

Crab Dribbles – This site is about a year old since its last post, or so I think, but like Hickory High (RIP) it still has value. Founded by Scott Rafferty who you can at multiple sites including, but not limited to Upside Motor.

Hardwood Paroxysm and True Hoop – Well, duh.

Like I said earlier, I didn’t mention everybody I’ve come across. Not even close, but honestly I’m just so out of shape when it comes to writing that I’ve already dry heaved a little and had to stop ~halfway through my list of recommendations. If you would like to be included (and especially if you write at your own blog), feel free to shoot me a message on here, in an e-mail or through Twitter and I’ll throw you in the mix. Not a whole lot of eyeballs here lately since I haven’t wrote in several weeks, but with this…thing…I recently put together in Excel, I should have a bunch of fun things to write about over the summer.