Tag: player

Most Improved Player odds: Best preseason bets on the NBA’s most flawed award

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The NBA’s Most Improved Player Award is perhaps the league’s worst-named honor. Let’s take a gander at the numbers posted by the last six winners in the season prior to winning the award.

Aside from Siakam, the five other winners were already full-time starters that averaged 15 or more points per game before winning this award. Many of them fended off contenders with far more modest backgrounds. Jordan Poole finished fourth a year ago despite rising from G-Leaguer to third-leading scorer on the champion. Devonte’ Graham nearly quadrupled his scoring output a few years ago. It didn’t matter. This award doesn’t honor the player who improves most. It honors the player who improves in a very specific way.

In short, this is the first-time All-Star award. Of the 11 active players to have won it, nine did so in their first All-Star season, and a 10th, Goran Dragic, missed the All-Star Game only to earn an All-NBA selection months later. The only exception to this rule was CJ McCollum, and in fairness to him, here were the 2016 guards selected to the Western Conference All-Star Team: Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Chris Paul, Klay Thompson and Kobe Bryant. The first three were MVPs. The next two were All-Star staples. Bryant was a fan vote in his final season. There wasn’t exactly room for newcomers.

In a sense, that makes this a fairly simple award to bet on. Figure out who you think is ready to become a first-time All-Star and back that player. While this is hardly an exact science, there’s typically a fairly straightforward formula here:

  • Points and touches are the most important thing here. If a player finds himself on a new roster more willing to give him the ball, bet on him. If a player’s own
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Alabama’s Nick Saban goes in-depth on out-of-control NIL: ‘[Texas] A&M bought every player on their team’

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Texas A&M’s top-ranked 2022 recruiting class has long been on the receiving end of murmurs surrounding how, exactly, coach Jimbo Fisher signed more five-star prospects in one class than he had in his entire Aggies tenure prior to this offseason. That’s life for college football’s elite recruiting programs. On Wednesday night, however, Alabama coach Nick Saban said the quiet part out loud — and it was far from the only thing he had to get off his chest.

Speaking at a 50-day countdown event for the World Games, Saban touched on the ways name, image and likeness (NIL) has impacted the game. He didn’t pull any punches in the process. Specifically, Saban went straight for Texas A&M as an example of what’s wrong with NIL, flatly accusing the Aggies of buying their recruits through NIL deals and setting off an offseason feud for the ages. 

“It’s going to be difficult for the people who are spending tons of money to get players,” Saban said as part of a 7-minute answer to a question about NIL that was recorded and published by AL.com. “You’ve read about them. You know who they are. We were second in recruiting last year. [Texas] A&M was first.

“A&M bought every player on their team — made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it.”

Saban called NIL “a great concept for players,” noting that Alabama football players “created $3 million worth of opportunity for themselves by doing it the right way” in the past year. “And I have no problem with that, and nobody had a problem on our team with that because the guys that

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NFL legend Joe Theismann on the Tremendous Bowl, player security and sports betting

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Tremendous Bowl LVI has a lot to dwell up to. This year’s Nationwide Soccer League playoff video games have been amid the most enjoyable of all time, and Tremendous Bowl champion quarterback Joe Theismann thinks Sunday’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals will proceed to have lovers on the edge of their seats.

“If the playoffs are any sign of what we may perhaps see in this Tremendous Bowl, it need to be a basic,” the NFL MVP explained to Yahoo Finance Are living.

The Rams will be likely for their second Super Bowl get soon after their victory in 2000 from the Tennessee Titans, although the Bengals are hoping to provide house the Lombardi trophy for the first time in franchise historical past.

“I imagine it is really likely to be really aggressive,” Thiesmann said. “When you seem at the playoffs that we have had about the previous two or 3 months, you have to consider that this game is going to be that sort of a soccer game. The Rams are favored by 4 and a 50 percent. I never assume they can win by that numerous. I imagine it will be a much closer soccer activity. I am finding the Rams. This is the earliest I’ve at any time picked a crew.”

Theismann predicts the Rams will beat the Bengals by a discipline objective, but did not discounted a Bengals upset.

“If the Bengals acquire, I will not consider any one would be stunned. I know it really is their first opportunity. The Rams have been below just a couple of a long time back, and failed to really get it performed. So now they’re again once more to have a further shot at the brass ring, but I imagine it really is

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