Grantland

Post by **Shirley** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:08 pm

This is a very cool piece on where the best basketball players come from and where they go to college.

That's an article I always meant to do on my site, but never got around to it. I always suspected that Virginia both produced an inordinate number of great high school players and also failed to get most of them. Sadly I was right. And this list doesn't even include Allen Iverson, David Robinson or Joe Smith.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:14 pm

I don't know how grantland should feel about this new thread...

rass · Post by **rass** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 1:09 pm

AB_skin_test wrote:I don't know how grantland should feel about this new thread...

This just in: I'm dead, and don't give a fuck!

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 3:33 pm

Shirley wrote:This is a very cool piece on where the best basketball players come from and where they go to college.

That's an article I always meant to do on my site, but never got around to it. I always suspected that Virginia both produced an inordinate number of great high school players and also failed to get most of them. Sadly I was right. And this list doesn't even include Allen Iverson, David Robinson or Joe Smith.

Similar story with Illinois, at least over the past 15 years.

Fuck Jon Scheyer.

DaveInSeattle · Post by **DaveInSeattle** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:46 pm

In the words of Krusty the Klown, "If this is anyone but Steve Allen, you're stealing my bit!

Grantland did a "Made Me Giggle" style breakdown of this picture of the Harvard band.

Post by **Sabo** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:56 pm

It's the guy holding the conductor's baton, isn't it?

howard · Post by **howard** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 11:43 am

This killed me:

Willie, a senior anthropology major from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is hard at work on his senior thesis: The Sexual Economy of Lillith Fair: An Ethnography.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:21 pm

The sortable list of all time McDonald's players is as good as the article. Georgia has a ton of players since 2000 as compared to 1970 to 2000. Maybe it's just population shifts but hen started thinking about McDonald's selection criteria. Would have been a better analysis with NBA draft guys. Trust that evaluation better.

Post by **brian** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:06 am

Great article about the end of Don King. (As a promoter.)

howard · Post by **howard** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 2:19 pm

Those words, the end of Don King, are so glorious. Although, to be fair, in the last few years he was actually a positive force for the sport (after decades of being one of the primary destructive forces affecting the sport).

DSafetyGuy · Post by **DSafetyGuy** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:23 pm

As the NBA season comes to an end, I just wanted to say how fantastic the work of Zach Lowe is. I hardly follow the league any more, but reading Zach Lowe's work is an absolute pleasure.

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:38 pm

DSafetyGuy wrote:As the NBA season comes to an end, I just wanted to say how fantastic the work of Zach Lowe is. I hardly follow the league any more, but reading Zach Lowe's work is an absolute pleasure.

I like Lowe a lot, but he always loses me. Reading him is kind of like high school science classes for me. I'm intrigued initially, then I can't break through the slog of minutiae.

sancarlos · Post by **sancarlos** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:10 pm

I rarely click Grantland on my desktop, but I often kill dead time reading it on my iPhone through the Flipboard app.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:36 pm

DSafetyGuy wrote:As the NBA season comes to an end, I just wanted to say how fantastic the work of Zach Lowe is. I hardly follow the league any more, but reading Zach Lowe's work is an absolute pleasure.

Yup, Lowe is awesome.

Johnny Hotcakes · Post by **Johnny Hotcakes** » Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:34 am

DSafetyGuy wrote:As the NBA season comes to an end, I just wanted to say how fantastic the work of Zach Lowe is. I hardly follow the league any more, but reading Zach Lowe's work is an absolute pleasure.

Really? I recalled you being the go-to Swamp expert on all things NBA? I guess I really was gone for a long time.

DSafetyGuy · Post by **DSafetyGuy** » Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:18 pm

Johnny Hotcakes wrote:
DSafetyGuy wrote:As the NBA season comes to an end, I just wanted to say how fantastic the work of Zach Lowe is. I hardly follow the league any more, but reading Zach Lowe's work is an absolute pleasure.
Really? I recalled you being the go-to Swamp expert on all things NBA? I guess I really was gone for a long time.

When I quit my longtime fantasy hoops league because it lost most of its fun, I stopped caring almost completely because there was no need to follow box scores, etc. Lowe is just fantastic for his knowledge and ability to break things down.

wlu_lax6 · Post by **wlu_lax6** » Wed Jul 03, 2013 1:10 pm

Wonder if this was a mistake by BS or him not taking a shot at ESPN and getting in trouble.

business insider wrote:NBC Sports responded brilliantly:

The final is on ESPN. RT @BillSimmons "Radwanska! Bartoli!!!!! It's the Wimbledon Women's Finals on NBC!"
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) July 2, 2013

Post by **brian** » Wed Jul 03, 2013 1:24 pm

He replied "Whoops" so I'm certain he didn't realize.

teeteebee · Post by **teeteebee** » Wed Jul 03, 2013 1:24 pm

wlu_lax6 wrote:Wonder if this was a mistake by BS or him not taking a shot at ESPN and getting in trouble.
business insider wrote:NBC Sports responded brilliantly:

The final is on ESPN. RT @BillSimmons "Radwanska! Bartoli!!!!! It's the Wimbledon Women's Finals on NBC!"
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) July 2, 2013

It is a reference to the old NBA playoff intro on NBC; which he has beaten to death three times over in the past decade. He executed it poorly and was taken to task immediately. This was pretty funny.

Post by **brian** » Wed Jul 03, 2013 1:30 pm

Exactly.

rass · Post by **rass** » Fri Aug 09, 2013 12:35 pm

Article on the 2002 USMNT "Boys of Soccer" photo shoot.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Thu Dec 19, 2013 11:17 am

Just as I was commenting about how much I like Keri and Lowe, a roundtable with those two along with Bill Barnwell and the NHL guy, Sean Mcindoe, comes out.

Good stuff.

Maybe I'm overreaching, but if Grantland can continue to offer this kind of analysis, I think that all of these games will be better for it and every outlet will have to start giving more pagespace to analytics guys.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 8:42 am

As part of my prep for this weekend's playoff games, I tried to read Bill Barnwell's 6,600 word preview (not including footnotes which must have added another 500 words).

Tried, but couldn't do it. I got halfway through his Saints-Eagles essay and my eyes just refused to continue. I like Grantland a lot, but my life is far too short to read this much verbiage that amounts to nothing but speculation.

But Barnwell did demonstrate a full knowledge of the sport when he ended the Saint-Eagles section with this:

This game might very well be won by who executes on offense in the first half.

Well, that makes sense.

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 9:15 am

I really enjoyed Rembert's piece on James Avery.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:15 am

verbosity for the sake of it is not a gift. it's a curse.

rass · Post by **rass** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:20 am

I generally really like Barnwell, but I couldn't make it through the whole thing either yesterday. I started skimming part way through the NO/PHI section, and pretty much gave up on the KC/IND game.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:27 am

rass wrote:I generally really like Barnwell, but I couldn't make it through the whole thing either yesterday. I started skimming part way through the NO/PHI section, and pretty much gave up on the KC/IND game.

I do too. But I think it can be frustrating to see all that copy and then the conclusion that Pruitt posted and this about the Chiefs game.

I think it will be exceedingly difficult for the team that loses the turnover battle to win this game.

Ending a War and Peace-lengthed missive about two football games with a talk-radio soundbite isn't ideal.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:27 am

I read most of it but did find myself skimming a bit more than usual.

BSF21 · Post by **BSF21** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 12:08 pm

Read the Colts/Chiefs preview. TL;DR: Whoever has the ball more and turns it over less probably wins. Thanks?

Gunpowder · Post by **Gunpowder** » Fri Jan 03, 2014 12:23 pm

BSF21 wrote:Read the Colts/Chiefs preview. TL;DR: Whoever has the ball more and turns it over less probably wins. Thanks?

Wait, so you read it, but then didn't read it? While that's what he writes in the summary section, the entire thing was about the hows and whys.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:14 am

Not a huge fan of the redesign, but it's nothing so terrible as yahoo's, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:15 am

That ain't a redesign, that's a tweak.

and the other one... yeah. I'll leave it at that.

DSafetyGuy · Post by **DSafetyGuy** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 4:10 pm

I'm not sure how the footnotes throw off the spacing, even though the numbers in the text do not appear to affect the spacing at all.

And since the original intent was supposed to set it off from other websites as being "better", the photo revenue-driving links at the bottom are a very classy addition.

Post by **Shirley** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:29 pm

Dr. V's Magical Putter

http://grantland.com/features/a-mysteri ... club-dr-v/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wild story.

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:15 pm

Is it just me, or does the standard text since the redesign seem overly cramped and much less readable? Also, the header text looks like something from a low-res screencap.

rass · Post by **rass** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:34 pm

Shirley wrote:Dr. V's Magical Putter

http://grantland.com/features/a-mysteri ... club-dr-v/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wild story.

Holy shit....

Johnny Carwash wrote:Also, the header text looks like something from a low-res screencap.

Yes. Especially the author's name in the byline.

Scottie · Post by **Scottie** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 4:21 pm

The style code is this (below). Whenever I see that gaussian blur bleeding sort of text it is almost always because of the use of "ems" instead of an absolute value (font-size: X). The nutshell explanation is that an "em" scales with the document. So the byline probably looks just peachy to the "designer" that wrote it on his iPad.

That whole site is style sheet(s) overkill.

Code: Select all

element.style {
}
grantland.com/media="screen"
.title-card .byline .fn {
margin-right: .3em;
font-family: "Harriet Text", Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
font-size: 0.91667em;
font-weight: bold;
}
 . . . 
Inherited from div.byline
grantland.com/media="screen"
.title-card .byline {
text-transform: uppercase;
letter-spacing: 0.08333em;
color: #6d6f72;
font-family: "Knockout 31 A", "Knockout 31 B", "HelveticaNeue", "Helvetica", "Arial", sans-serif;
font-size: 0.75em;
}
grantland.com/media="screen"
.byline {
font-size: 0.6875em;
line-height: 1.63636em;
font-family: "Harriet Text", Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
}
Inherited from body.single.single-grantland_feature.postid-95305.mp6.typekit-enabled.highlander-enabled.highlander-light
grantland.com/media="screen"
body {
font: 100%/1.3 "Knockout 31 A", "Knockout 31 B", "HelveticaNeue", "Helvetica", "Arial", sans-serif;
color: black;
}

sancarlos · Post by **sancarlos** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:19 pm

Shirley wrote:Dr. V's Magical Putter

http://grantland.com/features/a-mysteri ... club-dr-v/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wild story.

Yes that is quite a story!

Post by **brian** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 4:15 pm

Here's an interesting response to the story. Long, but worth reading.

rass · Post by **rass** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 4:38 pm

brian wrote:Here's an interesting response to the story. Long, but worth reading.

Hannan outing Dr V to the investor from Pittsburgh would have rubbed me the wrong way a little more if that lie hadn't been part of a larger deception. I can't fault Hannan for digging to uncover that part of the story. There is no story here if she doesn't completely make up her background to better sell her club. She is the one that made it about more than just a golf club.

I also just read the Sinatra essay recently, and didn't make any sort of connection between the two stories myself.

And did Gary McCord just flat out made up the Dan Quayle anecdote to help sell the myth of Dr V and the club?