Speed matters.
Via: Morry Gash / AP
H/T MLB.
Our Quidditch correspondent breaks down the basics of the game as the sixth annual wizard competition comes to an end.
The sixth annual Quidditch World Cup took place this past weekend in Kissimmee, FL, featuring more than 1,500 athletes from 80 teams around the world fighting for the title of QWC Champion. And since most people are only familiar with the version of the sport from the Harry Potter world, I'm here to help you understand how it works in a non-fictional environment. Below, the building blocks of a winning Quidditch World Cup squad.
Trading shoes with an opposing player dates all the way back to the 1920's when Greg Montgomery of House Ravenclaw generously gave his cleats to Allen Smithson of House Hufflepuff, after a dorm room fire left all of Smithson's belongings burnt to a crisp.
Since then, the trading of shoes has become a sign of sportsmanship amongst players.
During a substitution, the player coming off the field must place the broom on his head as a sign of "I'm Out." The incoming player must then place their hand on the lower back of the player he is replacing. Only then can a team complete a wizard substitution. Wizards!
The Kanungo Takeoff is the bicycle kick of quidditch. Not many players can master the move, but it can be a huge advantage for those that can. Let's look closer.
San Francisco's Jean Machi is a bad, bad man.
H/T Tom Ley at Deadspin.
“Just be who you are.”
Source: youtube.com
Via: Jesse D. Garrabrant / Getty Images
Wade Davis II, out former NFL player, and Darnell Moore, writer and activist, are launching a youth summer camp program aimed at bringing together LGBT athletes and straight allies.
Source: youbelonginitiative.com
The discussion about gay athletes and the NFL seems to have strayed a bit. Blogs are gay-baiting straight players with "gotcha" photos and salacious headlines. Industry insiders are whispering about the possibility of not one, but four players coming out at once. Nike has made it clear that an endorsement deal is ready and waiting for the first out player. While the debut of an out NFL player (or several) is something to look forward to as it would force the league to confront its homophobia in a more tactile way, youth advocate and out former NFL player Wade Davis says many of us are missing the point.
"I actually think the quest for the first gay athlete is the wrong starting place. We should be working to make sure that we can create safe enough spaces within sports and elsewhere that would make disclosure a safe possibility," Wade told BuzzFeed via email.
With that disconnect in mind, Davis has teamed up with writer and activist Darnell L. Moore to launch the YOU Belong Sports & Leadership Initiative, which will focus on supporting LGBT athletes and straight allies. The initiative is partnered with Outsports and the You Can Play project.
Speaking about the inspiration for the camp, Moore noted, "We wanted to come up with a proactive solution to the problems that we both assessed — namely, the dearth of attention paid to young people within the larger LGBTQ movement and the lack of conversation and programming centered on the needs of LGBTQ youth within sports environments."
Here is Davis and Moore's interview with BuzzFeed about YOU Belong, LGBT youth, and what the athletes they work with actually are thinking about.
Darnell L. Moore (left) and Wade Davis II.
Source: youbelonginitiative.com
YOU belong isn't the first time you both have teamed up to address issues in the LGBT community. You also collaborate on a column for Huffington Post Gay Voices. Where did this meeting of minds begin?
Darnell: We work together in New York City and would talk, almost daily, over lunch. Our lunch chats would spill over into early-morning and late-evening phone conversations. We soon discovered that we shared so much in common, even though our lives are vastly different: our commitment to LGBTQ issues, LGBTQ youth, and youth of color concerns, and a desire to address issues faced by black men and boys. Our conversations turned into tangible partnerships. We started speaking on panels together, co-facilitating public conversations, co-writing articles, and engaging youth work together. So this initiative emerged as a result of the work we've been engaging over the past year.
How did you both come up with the idea for a youth sports camp that targets not only LGBT athletes but straight allies as well?
Darnell: We cannot really recall specifics, but we should credit Bryan Epps, a friend, who planted the seed. It was almost as if we had an epiphany during one of our lunch outings. We wanted to come up with a proactive solution to the problems that we both assessed — namely, the dearth of attention paid to young people within the larger LGBTQ movement and the lack of conversation and programming centered on the needs of LGBTQ youth within sports environments. We figured that our combined experience in sports, education, youth development, and advocacy would provide the perfect foundation for a sports camp targeting LGBT athletes and allies.
Bet you can't.
The Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins have been outlets for collective emotion since the Boston Marathon bombings, but the city's teams aren't above the lockdown.
Via: Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Source: erikmalinowski
Big Papi says it best.
The Red Sox put together a lovely and touching tribute before their first home game since the attacks.
Also, check out player David "Big Papi" Ortiz's excellent, profane speech in honor of the city.
An emotional Fenway Park was the place to be after Dzhokar Tsarnaev's capture. David Ortiz gets an official pass.
Via: Rosie Gray/Buzzfeed
BOSTON — A couple were married in the stands at Fenway Park Saturday as a relieved city celebrated the first Red Sox game after the capture of marathon bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev on Friday. The Sox won the game by a score of 4-3.
Tammy Larson, from Minnesota, and Greg Lamoureux, of Worcester, Mass., got married a few rows back from the first base line during the seventh inning of the Red Sox game against the Kansas City Royals. Carol Merletti, a Justice of the Peace from Malden, Mass., read them their vows. The bride wore a red leather jacket and Red Sox t-shirt; the groom wore a navy Red Sox sweatshirt.
"It's moving, it's special, it's all about moving forward," Larson said afterward, with tears in her eyes.
Meanwhile, a man in the stands behind them yelled "Sit down! Now you're married, like everybody else."
"That shit would have gone on forever," if he hadn't yelled, the man could be heard saying afterward. "You go to the ball park, a wedding breaks out."
The ball park was the nerve center of Boston on Saturday as the Red Sox held an emotional opening ceremony with first responders on the field, and Neil Diamond himself came out to sing the stadium's anthem, "Sweet Caroline" in the eighth inning. According to Red Sox reporter Jason Mastrodonato, Diamond flew himself to Boston today, and called the Red Sox at 12:30 p.m. to ask if he could come sing at the game.
David Ortiz, back from an injury, took the microphone at the beginning of the game and summed up the feelings of many in the crowd.
"This is our fucking city," Ortiz said, on live television.
He was granted an immediate pass by the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcast decency.
"David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today's Red Sox game," the FCC tweeted Saturday afternoon, attributing the quote to its chairman Julius Genachowski. "I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston."
Mike McFarlane, of Brookline, and his friend Karen Hill, of Nahant, had been at the game on Monday when the bombs started going off at the marathon.
"I was at Fenway on Monday, me and my friend Mike," Hill said. "And today he said he had tickets, and I said 'I don't know if I can go back."
"But I came and it's been awesome," Hill said. "I'm very grateful for all of Boston."
"We heard there was explosions, and eventually it turned into bombs, and eventually it turned into 'let's get the hell out of here,'" McFarlane said of their experience at the game on Monday.
"I'm happy that it's over, and I'm here for that exact reason," McFarlane said. "To celebrate and move on."
Via: Rosie Gray/Buzzfeed
Andre Miller showing the kids how it's done.
Via: Photo by Doug Pensinger / Getty Images
Shaq, what are you doing?
Source: youtube.com
It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Source: i.cdn.turner.com
Source: images.covers.com
Via: Focus On Sport / Getty Images
Via: Denis Doyle / Getty Images
I mean, Luis Suarez has bitten MULTIPLE dudes in his career. The numbers don't lie.
Via: Phil Noble / Reuters
This story will warm every inch of your frozen little heart.
Via: AP
Teddy was born with Down syndrome and became an honorary bat boy for the Cincinnati Reds after his parents won a silent auction at a fundraiser. The gig was only supposed to be for one night last August, but things changed. Kremer's joyful personality and passion for the game made a lasting impression; he was invited to attend President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address in February and partake in the festivities of the Opening Day Parade.
Via: AP
And on Thursday night, he was back in the dugout. The Cincinnatti Enquirer's C. Trent Rosecrans reported that Kremer asked for three things: "11 runs, 11 strikeouts for free pizza and a Todd Frazier home run."
Twitter, you give the best gifts sometimes.
Going to a ballpark this summer? It's your duty to get your hands on some of these.
Five sliders. At least a pound of french fries. All served in a giant souvenir bucket. For only $20. This is, quite literally, a bucket for your stadium bucket list.
Weird bonus: If you pay with your MasterCard, they throw in a liter of Pepsi for free.
Source: instagram.com
It's an Old Bay Roma sausage inside a pretzel roll, topped with crab dip, and then topped with more Old Bay seasoning. (The Orioles also have plenty of Old Bay around the ballpark in case you're running low.)
Via: @Orioles
Luther Vandross was rumored to enjoy his hamburgers inside a bun made of doughnuts. This version of "The Luther Burger" features a Krispy Kreme doughnut, with bacon and cheese topping the burger. The team claims it's only 45 grams of fat and 1,000 calories, but that seems impossibly low.
Source: pinterest.com
Taco + Bacon shell = Baco. Would eat.
Source: tincaps.mlblogs.com
Denver and Houston, whatever else they might have to worry about, are OK with playing slow.
Ty Lawson and JaVale "Pierre" McGee of the Denver Nuggets.
Via: Matt York / AP
The NBA playoffs are a different beast than the regular season. You know this. I know this. We all know this. The pace of the game slows to a crawl as players expend maximum energy on defense; moving the ball or beating your man down the floor becomes harder, while the more physical D also leads to more fouls that interrupt the flow of the game. Any team that normally plays fast is D.O.A. unless it can figure out a backup strategy.
We've all heard this said, and probably said it ourselves. But is it true? I looked at the question specifically in reference to this year's most prominent run-and-gun teams, the Denver Nuggets and the Houston Rockets. The Nuggets hold the Western Conference's third seed, and beat Golden State in the first game of their series Saturday. The Rockets are an eighth-seed underdog against West favorite Oklahoma City, where they were blown out last night. Their playoff success obviously depends on a lot of factors, but will a slower pace be one of them?
I first checked to make sure the pace of the game was actually slower in the playoffs. On that issue, at least, the conventional wisdom is correct. Over the last five years, teams average somewhere between two and 4.5 fewer possessions per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. That may not seem like much at first glance, but here's another way of putting it: the average playoff pace in 2011, for example, was lower than the slowest regular-season team's pace.
So the game does get slower. How does pace influence offensive output? Let's look at Denver and Houston. Both teams spent most of the season playing at impossibly fast speeds. The league average number of possessions per game this season was 92.0. Denver's pace was 95.0, Houston's an even more ridiculous 96.2, a full two standard deviations above the mean (HIDE THE KIDS! MATH TERMS!). They're also two of the most efficient offensive teams in the league. Even adjusted for pace, Denver and Houston were the fifth- and sixth-best offenses in the league, respectively.
But are they able to score so efficiently BECAUSE they play fast? It sounds like a reasonable assumption — teams that play fast will get more easy baskets in transition, and they'll create quick scoring chances before the opposing defense is able to set up. You might expect them to tend to play worse in games in which they don't get quite as many of these easy chances as they're used to. So I charted each game of Houston and Denver's seasons besides their last one, which they hadn't yet played while I was doing the research. That's 81 games for each team. On one axis I put the number of possessions they had, their "Pace Factor." On the other, their offensive efficiency. If they had a problem playing slow, we should see a slanted line: lower efficiency in games with lower pace.
Gahhhh it's so horrible make it go awayyyyy
Via: @ivan_ecus
Via: Mike Stobe / Getty Images
The injured star's twitter account got more attention than the playoff game itself.
Via: Ross D. Franklin / AP
