Portal:Basketball/Selected article/2007
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Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is an American former NBA player, and is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time.
A remarkable force at both ends of the floor, "M.J." ended a career of 15 full seasons with a regular-season scoring average of 30.12 points per game, the highest in NBA history. He won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, notched up 10 scoring titles, and was league MVP five times. He was named to the All-Defensive First Team nine times, and led the league in steals three times. Since 1983, he has appeared on the front cover of Sports Illustrated a record 49 times, and was named the magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" in 1991. In 1999, he was named "the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century" by ESPN, and placed second on the Associated Press list of top athletes of the century. His leaping ability, vividly illustrated by dunking from the foul line and other feats, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness." (more...)
The Euroleague is a high-caliber professional basketball league comprising teams from teams from 12 European nations and Israel.
Established in 1958 by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), the league operated under the auspices of FIBA until July 2000 when the Union of European Leagues of Basketball (ULEB), funded by the richest club teams in Europe, convinced most top teams to leave the FIBA Euroleague and to join that sponsored by ULEB (Euroleague was not trademarked and the name was appropriated by the ULEB league). For the 2000-2001 season, two elite European basketball leagues, ULEB's Euroleague and FIBA's renamed Suproleague, held competitions, and Europe's top teams were evenly divided between the two; Maccabi Tel Aviv, Élan Béarnais Pau-Orthez, and Partizan played in the Suproleague while FC Barcelona, AEK Athens, and Saski Baskonia (TAU Cerámica) played in the Euroleague.
After the season, a merger between the ULEB and FIBA leagues was effected, such that ULEB runs club-level competitions, including the Euroleague Final Four and the Korać Cup, while FIBA runs country-level competitions, including Eurobasket.
The Euroleague is contested in four phases: a 14-game regular season in which teams, divided into three groups of eight, intra-group play double round-robin schedules, after which a total of eight teams are eliminated; an additional double round-robin round, a top 16, in which the final 16 teams are divided into four groups of four; a quarterfinal round, in which a first-place top 16 team is matched against a second-place team from another group in a best-of-three-games series, with the first-place team's holding home court advantage; and a Final Four, in which two games, each between two quarterfinal winners are held, with the winners of those games playing in a championship game and the losers playing for third place.
A pick-and-roll is an offensive basketball maneuever in which one player–most often a forward–applies a screen (or pick) upon the defender assigned to a teammate–most often a point or shooting guard–blocking the path of the defender in order that the teammate should free himself and then pass the ball to the screening player, who rolls behind the defender; although typically employed against a man-to-man defense, the technique can be used against a zone defense as well.
The play begins with a ballhandler's, usually positioned on the court external to the three-point (semi-ellipsoid) arc and most frequently proximate to the free throw line and separated from the basket by a defender, moving in the direction of a teammate, who obstructs the defender with his static body (or, impermissibly, with his arms or legs or whilst moving), providing the teammate with open space.
Should the obstructed defender elect to pursue the ballhandler, the player applying the pick pivots (rolls) parallel to the ballhandler and in the direction of the basket, behind the defender, forcing the defender to choose whom to guard and creating extra offensive space even if the defender of the player applying the screen returns to guard the former; should the defender elect to guard the player applying the pick, the ballhandler either shoots, from distance or in a layup, before another defender can rotate to him or passes to an unguarded player.
A larger player typically applies the pick so that a mismatch–either of a smaller, ostensibly faster player against a the picker's larger defender or a tall player against the ballhandler's undersized defender–is created. Contemporary professional practitioners of the maneuver have used that formulation, most prominently the Utah Jazz of the mid-1990s, who advanced to the 1997 and 1998 NBA Finals behind power forward Karl Malone and point guard John Stockton, whom statutes outside Salt Lake City's Delta Center, pictured, left and right, respectively, honor, and the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns, who finished with the league's best record behind point guard Steve Nash and power forward/center Amaré Stoudemire.
A three-point field goal (colloquially, three-pointer or three) is a field goal—almost always scored off a jump shot—taken from behind a semi-ellipsoid arc radiating from the basket, often equidistant therefrom at a given distance, the making of which earns a team three points, one more than does a traditional field goal and two more than does a free throw.
The three-point rule was first employed in the United States in 1945 for a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) game between Columbia and Fordham Universities, but, as regards permanent usage, was first adopted by several professional leagues. The American Basketball League, having, by Abe Saperstein upon his being denied ownership of the Minneapolis Lakers franchise, been founded in 1961 as an alternative to the National Basketball Association (NBA), and desiring publicity, adopted, at the urging of Saperstein and after consultation with Paul Cohen, who brought his Washington Tapers (National Alliance of Basketball Leagues) and George Steinbrenner, who brought his Cleveland Pipers (Amateur Athletic Union), a three-point rule, but the league collapsed in 1963, midway through its second season.
A more prominent league, the Eastern Professional Basketball League, introduced the three-point shot in 1963—the league, subsequently operated as the Eastern Basketball Association and the Continental Basketball Association, is the longest consecutive user of the three-point rule—and the rule became widely known in 1968, when the American Basketball Association (ABA), in an effort to differentiate itself from the NBA, introduced, concomitant to rules extending the shot clock to 30 seconds, permitting the slam dunk, and requiring a tricolor ball, a three-point field goal rule, which was formally adopted by the NBA before its 1978-79 season, subsequent to its merger with the ABA; the international sports authority, Fédération Internationale de Basketball, three-point line pictured, followed suit six years thence and the NCAA, having employed the rule in several conferences since 1980, one year later.
Various considerations—including of league rules with respect to man-to-man and zone defenses and of league desires for offensive performance, especially in the context of comebacks and buzzer beaters—have led governing bodies to adopt different distances away from the basket at which to place the three-point arc, almost always between 19.75 feet (6.02 metres) and 23.75 feet (7.24 meters), and different regulations as to whether the distance from the basket is uniform or diminishes proximate to the baselines, but leagues categorically require that a shooter's feet remain behind the three-point line until the time he jumps and begins his shot and do not touch inside the line prior to his releasing the ball, lest the shot, if good, should be worth just two points.
The Toronto Raptors are a professional basketball team based in Toronto, Ontario, owned by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. They are currently the sole National Basketball Association (NBA) club based in Canada. The Raptors came into existence in 1994 as part of the NBA's expansion into Canada along with the Vancouver Grizzlies. However, the Grizzlies moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 2001, leaving the Raptors as the sole NBA team in Canada.
The Raptors endured the woes characteristic of many expansion teams as they struggled in their early years. However, after the acquisition of Vince Carter through a draft day trade in 1998, they saw success, enjoying record league attendances and making the playoffs in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Their best achievement to date was in 2001 when they earned their only playoff series win and advanced to the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Carter was eventually traded away in 2004 and the team is currently led by All-Star Chris Bosh.
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A hook shot is an offensive basketball maneuver in which a player, usually in a position perpendicular to the basket and most often situated in the key, gently throws the ball with a sweeping motion of his arm in an upward arc with a follow-through which ends over his head. Unlike the jump shot, it is shot with only one hand; the non-shooting arm is typically used to create space between the shooter and the player defending him. In view of the height achieved by the shooter and the released ball, the hook shot is exceedingly difficult to block or alter, but while dribbled and controlled in preparation for the shot, the ball is susceptible to being stolen from behind. The hook shot was most prominently practiced by seven-feet-tall center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the all-time leading scorer in the National Basketball Association, whose shot, because of the height at which it was released, was styled as the sky hook; because the shot was released at the top of Abdul-Jabbar's arm arc, an attempted block was likely to result in a goaltending infraction.
Cassell Coliseum is a 10,052-seat multi-purpose arena in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. The arena opened in 1961. It is home to the Virginia Tech Hokies basketball teams (men's and women's).
Built as a replacement for the much smaller War Memorial Gymnasium, the Coliseum's construction began in 1961. It was completed in December 1964 at a cost of $2.7 million. It was designed by Carneal and Johnston,(now Ballou Justice Upton Architects, Richmond, Va) and built by T.C. Brittain and Company of Decatur, Georgia. Originally just referred to as "the Coliseum," it was dedicated on September 17, 1977 to the late Stuart K. Cassell, former school business manager, first Vice President of Administration, and major supporter of the building of the arena.
The first game, however, was on January 3, 1962. The Hokies played Alabama. The Hokies won 91-67. Unfortunately, the crowd sat on the concrete floor to watch the game because the seats had not arrived.
In the early years of the Coliseum, the Hokies frequently saw capacity crowds pack the venue. In recent years, however, this has not been the case. Student and alumni interest in basketball decreased in the 1990s due to the Hokies' lack of a stable basketball conference home and due to the success of the football team. Fan support has begun to gain momentum under the new coaching staff and the school's recent move to the ACC, which includes archrival Virginia.
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The UNC-Duke rivalry, sometimes referred to as The Battle of Tobacco Road or The Battle of the Blues, is a fierce rivalry, particularly in men's college basketball, between Duke University and the University of North Carolina athletic teams. Considered one of the most intense rivalries in all of sports, a poll conducted by ESPN in 2000 ranked the basketball rivalry as the third greatest North American sports rivalry of all-time. The intensity of the rivalry is augmented by the proximity of the two universities, located only eight miles apart roughly along U.S. Highway 15-501, and the dissimilar funding structures of the schools, with Duke being privately funded and North Carolina a state-supported school.
Battling it out at least twice a year since 1920, Duke and North Carolina routinely rank among the nation's best basketball teams. The games frequently determine the Atlantic Coast Conference champion - Duke and UNC have combined for 79% of the regular season titles and 58% of the tournament titles in the 53-year history of the conference. The final game of the regular season alternates between Durham and Chapel Hill and has been played in Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1940 and the Dean Smith Center since 1986. Duke has won three NCAA championships and has been in fourteen Final Fours, while North Carolina has won four NCAA championships (the team was also awarded a fifth national championship by the Helms Athletic Foundation in 1936 for their undefeated 1924 season) and has appeared in an NCAA-record sixteen Final Fours.
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The Dean Smith Center, popularly referred to as the Dean Dome, is a multi-purpose arena in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It is home to the University of North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team. The arena opened in 1986.
It is named after former UNC coach Dean Smith, who coached at UNC from 1961 to 1997. According to David Halberstam's biography of Michael Jordan, Smith did not want the arena named after him, but was persuaded by the UNC administration and the arena's backers that fundraising efforts for the facility could fail if they did not use his name.
The arena originally seated 21,444. Seating adjustments brought capacity to 21,572 in 1992 and 21,750 in 2000, making it the fifth largest arena in college basketball. The largest crowd to see a game in the Dean Dome was on March 6, 2005, when 22,125 saw the Tar Heels defeat Duke.
The arena was built to allow more fans to attend Tar Heel basketball games than could fit in then 21-year-old, 10,000-seat Carmichael Auditorium. The Tar Heels have been among the nation's attendance leaders ever since the arena opened.
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The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located in downtown Springfield, Massachusetts, honors players who have shown exceptional skill at basketball, all-time great coaches, referees, and other major contributors to the game. It is separate from the Naismith Museum & Basketball Hall of Fame in Almonte, Ontario. Five entire teams have been inducted—the Buffalo Germans, the New York Renaissance, the Original Celtics, the Harlem Globetrotters, and most recently the 1966 Texas Western College team. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's mission preserves and promotes the game at all levels and serves as basketball's ultimate library of history.
It was established in 1959, with fundraising leading to an actual building opened to the public on February 17, 1968, at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. In 1985 a new building off-campus was opened near downtown Springfield on the east bank of the Connecticut River.
On September 28, 2002, the Hall of Fame found its third home in a new $45 million, 80,000 square foot (7,400 m²) shrine to the sport, located just south of the previous Hall of Fame. The facility's bolder architecture features a large, silver, semi-spherical structure (resembling a giant basketball) several stories high and a tall spire topped with an orange globe. The hall is surrounded by a shopping center of retail outlets and restaurants.
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Portal:Basketball/Selected article/November, 2007
Free throws, or foul shots, are unopposed attempts to score points from a restricted area on the court (the free throw line; informally known as the charity stripe or foul line), and are generally awarded after a foul by the opposing team.
Each free throw is worth one point, and normally more than one is awarded. The importance of free throws is nevertheless sometimes underestimated; games have been known to be decided on them, especially if the score was close. Teams who could have sealed the game on free throws can finish with a narrow win or even a loss because of failure behind the line.
Free throws normally can be made at a high percentage. In the NBA, most players make between 70% and 80% of their attempts. Some good shooters (such as Reggie Miller, Mark Price, Chauncey Billups, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Ray Allen, Kyle Korver,Yao Ming) can make as many as 90%-92%, while notoriously poor shooters (e.g. Shaquille O'Neal, Ben Wallace, Adonal Foyle) may struggle to make 50% of them.
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