This week's Sports Illustrated has Tyra Banks on the cover with her shorts halfway off . I don't know how to compete with that, especially since I probably just sold a bunch more copies just by saying it.
This year, rather than actually complementing their sports coverage with pictures of poorly covered bathing suit models, Sports Illustrated chose to devote an entire issue to nothing but bikinis. Their only links to sports were to capture tennis player Steffie Graf and volleyball player Gabrielle Reece in bikinis and -- for all you Playboy subscribers who get it for the articles -- there are actually a few words about Banks' visit to a Laker game.
Given that Sports Illustrated took some liberties in their coverage this week, so will I. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to make up for this. I don't have any violence either. All I can promise is that I will mention Tyra Banks at least six more times before the end of this article.
So what happened this week? Don Nelson was in the news for trading away the entire Dallas Mavericks team. Given the choice between a cover of Nelson or Tyra Banks, I can see why SI went with Banks. As good as Banks looks, Nelson looked equally awful with the trades he made. In particular, his trade with the Nets that sent Jim Jackson, Chris Gatling, Sam Cassell, George McCloud, and Eric Montross for Shawn Bradley, Khalid Reeves, Robert Pack, and Ed O'Bannon was widely viewed as a mistake. Regardless of the ultimate and unpredictable future of these players, if the general populace is so overwhelming in their belief that the Nets won this trade, that indicates that the market value of the Dallas players was much greater than what Nellie got.
In another recent Sports Illustrated piece where they actually covered sports, they rated the point guards in the league. Their study showed that coverboy Terrell Brandon, Cleveland's underpublicized lead guard, is the best in the league this year.
Brandon is indeed a fine point guard, one of the best in the league. He was a worthy All-Star this season and last. He is the primary offensive threat on a relatively meager offensive team. Replacing Brandon with an average point guard brings the Cavaliers down from a decent playoff team to a very average team.
However, the method that Sports Illustrated used to rate the point guards is not beyond reproach. What this once-a-year skin magazine did was akin to when a dating agency gives you one of those compatibility tests to see if you have a chance of going out with Tyra Banks. Depending on the questions asked and the pool of candidates, you could end up with Banks or you could end up with someone, well, with great personality.
Specifically, Sports Illustrated selected 16 point guards to rank against one another in nine different categories, weighting assists and turnovers by two, weighting rebounds and blocks by one half, and weighting points, steals, field goal percentage, three point percentage, and free throw percentage by one. I duplicated their study with statistics from two weeks later and got the following table, which strongly resembles their results:
| Two Points | One Point | 1/2 Point | |||||||||
| Rank | Player, Team | AST | TO | PTS | STL |
FG % |
3PT % |
FT % |
REB | BLK | Total |
| 1 | Brandon, CLV | 3 | 14 | 14 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 7 | 15 | 112.0 |
| 2 | Stockton, UTA | 15 | 5 | 4 | 12 | 16 | 16 | 15 | 3 | 4 | 106.5 |
| 3 | Payton, SEA | 8 | 11 | 15 | 16 | 15 | 6 | 3 | 12 | 5 | 101.5 |
| 4 | Blaylock, ATL | 2 | 13 | 10 | 14 | 10 | 13 | 5 | 14 | 12 | 95.0 |
| 5 | Anderson, POR | 4 | 16 | 9 | 10 | 7 | 10 | 8 | 13 | 7 | 94.0 |
| 6 | Johnson K., PHO | 13 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 13 | 15 | 12 | 5 | 3 | 94.0 |
| 7 | Hardaway A., ORL | 1 | 12 | 13 | 6 | 9 | 4 | 13 | 15 | 16 | 86.5 |
| 8 | Hardaway T., MIA | 9 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 2 | 84.0 |
| 9 | Jackson, DEN | 16 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 12 | 11 | 16 | 9 | 83.5 |
| 10 | Van Exel, LAL | 12 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 11 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 81.5 |
| 11 | Johnson A., SAS | 7 | 15 | 3 | 5 | 14 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 74.5 |
| 12 | Kidd, PHO | 14 | 7 | 1 | 13 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 9 | 13 | 73.0 |
| 13 | Stoudamire, TOR | 11 | 2 | 12 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 72.0 |
| 14 | Strickland, WAS | 10 | 4 | 7 | 8 | 11 | 1 | 6 | 10 | 8 | 70.0 |
| 15 | Iverson, PHI | 5 | 1 | 16 | 15 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 11 | 14 | 67.5 |
| 16 | Marbury, MIN | 6 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 11 | 64.5 |
A few people have changed positions from the original results, but there are no major differences. Now consider what happens if the candidates are limited only to Anderson, Brandon, Hardaway, Avery Johnson, Payton, and Stockton. Using the exact same methodology, the rankings now are
| Two Points | One Point | 1/2 Point | |||||||||
| Rank | Player, Team | AST | TO | PTS | STL |
FG % |
3PT % |
FT % |
REB | BLK | Total |
| 1 | Stockton, UTA | 6 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 40 |
| 2 | Payton, SEA | 4 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 39 |
| 3 | Brandon, CLV | 1 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 38 |
| 4 | Anderson, POR | 2 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 35 |
| 5 | Hardaway T., MIA | 5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 31 |
| 6 | Johnson A., SAS | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 27 |
Just by changing the players being evaluated, Brandon drops behind both Stockton and Payton in the rankings of the best players. This is a common trick that lawyers use when they are trying to be slimy.
Of course, the results also can change if you change the weights on the different numbers. Why are assists four times as important as rebounds? Why isn't it three times or six times? Depending on how these values are set, any one of the top five or six point guards can be viewed as "The Best".
Having torn the method to pieces, I should admit that it actually has merit. It isn't very good at identifying the absolute best, but it can separate a class of players that can qualify for that title.
Hmm. I'm forgetting something. Oh, yeah. I have to mention Tyra Banks one more time. That makes sex... I mean, six.