Sports Staturday - February 1, 2025
Welcome to Sports Staturday. A little weekend sports blog on quirky stats from the past week for whatever relevant or random topics I so choose. It's a dark Saturday with no football and even darker knowing the Chiefs and Eagles are the two teams left. Again.
Anyway, pour yourself some Fruity Pebbles, sip your coffee, hit the vape, whatever you do to start your weekend.
This is Sports Staturday.
The big topic of the past week in sports is clearly the NFL referee controversy. But I was talking about this well before the game in my megablog data deep dive the Friday before the game:
TL;DR the Chiefs last four season span is the second most lopsided in terms of total penalties called on vs their opponents in the playoffs since the 1970 merger. And they've somehow got better at being so much more disciplined than playoff opponents each and every four-year span going back four years. But despite being so much more disciplined than their opponents, this doesn't track in the regular season. Penalties for and against were pretty darn close. You'd think playoff opponents would be on average more disciplined than non-playoff opponents, but that's because you're a conspiracy theorist. Since 2021, the Chiefs committed 16 subjective penalties in the playoffs vs 34 called on their opponents. Less than half as many. And only 3/15 (after last Sunday added one more to the denominator) subjective penalties called in Chiefs playoff games since 2021 in the 4th quarter and on were called on them.
Again, I chronicled these exploratory stats BEFORE everyone saw the absolute shit show of a performance by the zebras. Even Nantz and Romo were continually befuddled. The more I think of it, the harder it is to believe this is from just an innocent subconscious bias. I think the NFL might have just had it's 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals moment. The narrative is there. The data back it up. And you saw what you saw last Sunday to corroborate what seemed like the data was suggesting.
buzzing sound
Ah snap. I forgot. This is Saturday morning! We should be doing light hearted fun stuff. Enough of this conspiracy theory talk.
Let's talk about a sports league that historically has shown there never to have been funny business affecting the integrity of its game. The NBA.
psst. ChatGPT, little tip. You need to stop sourcing Barstool blogs to feed your spelling AI
Bronny James avoided the no-net January club by making one field goal Thursday Night to go 1/14 from the field in January
Bronny started the month of January 0-11 from the field before making what I can only assume was a fantastic 3-foot layup including an and one. Overall, he ended the month 1/14 from the field which as you can see from the table below prevents him from being the player with the most missed shots without one made field goal in January. While he decalined including himself from this list, it was certainly a close calle. 
Pre-apology to anyone that scored on the 31st as this code rune was done before the games
That leaves Adam Flager as the hungriest player in January. Here's to a better February! Adam is a two-way guy on OKC, so it must be tough trying to make an impression. Emoni Bates of the Cavs is next on the list. Makes some sense that the top-two on this list are on the two best teams, I guess. Lots of blow outs to give them opportunities. But here's to a better February to all on this list. Go get em guys.
Congrats to your Houston Rockets' franchise single-game leader in made three pointers… Dillon Brooks???
Dillon Brooks, you have earned my respect. No, not for tying a franchise record 10-three pointers in a game with James Harden, Fred Van Fleet, James Harden, Chandler Parson, James Harden, and James Harden. But for finding a new slant in playing the villain. This bad boy has seen how much we all hate watching a quarter of all field goals in a game be a de facto three-point contest and has been in the lab to work on his game to add to this casual fan infuriation. And for that, I tip my cap to Dillon.
But here's where Dillon goes wrong. The NBA needs a relative bad boy like him. Someone other players actually despise. I can't wait to see where that goes come playoff time. Don't go all nice guy on us Dillon. We need a hero. Well, an anti-hero.
The Cleveland Cavaliers lost three games in a row putting an end to the 70+ win dream
Forgot to add the seasons for the 72-win Bulls and 73-win Warriors. Whatever. It's Saturday. But I think that's a wrap for hoping the surprise Cavs were going to make a run at history. Still a super fun team to watch. While they do take a ton of threes, they make them better than anyone else in the league at 39.5%. Compare that to the monotonous Celtics who are 13th in efficiency despite taking almost 300 more attempts than the second most prominent three-point shooting team (Chicago).
Back to the Cavaliers though. The fun team to watch. It's never great to lose three in a row, but it happens. Especially in the dog days of January. The 1966-67 76ers (confusing season / team combo there) won 68-games despite dropping three in a row at some point in the regular season. And the 2016-17 Warriors (67 wins), 2007-08 Celtics (66 wins), and 1970-71 Bucks (66 wins) all won it all with a three-game skid on their regular season rap sheet. So no big reason to think this team is about to crumble. But that'll do it for any hope of them matching the Warriors or even Bulls win totals. Regression to the mean is a bitch.
That's enough for this week. Have a good weekend everyone!