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Here are some highlights of Russell and here are his career stats.
1) WINNING (Part 1): The Celtics were ho-hum right before Russell joined the team, pretty bad right after he retired, and even worse when he missed games during his career, but when he was there they were the most dominant title-winning franchise in sports history, which proves how ludicrous the “He was simply the best player on a loaded team” comment is. DETAILS: a) Boston won 2 total playoff series in the 10 seasons before Russell arrived, and both were short best-of-3 series (‘53, ‘55), b) Boston went 34-48 and missed the playoffs in ‘70 right after winning the title in Russell’s final season, and c) when he missed games during his career, the Celtics were 10-18 (.357), and 18 of those 28 missed games were against teams with losing records, so there was no excuse for a “loaded” squad to be so bad. When Russell missed 3 or more games in a row --meaning his teammates really had to adjust & couldn’t just “get up” for one game without their leader-- the Celtics were a pitiful 1-12. They were horrible without him. There is NO evidence the Celtics were any good when Russell wasn’t on the floor, rather a ton of evidence to the contrary.
2) WINNING (Part 2): It's been commonly reported that Russell was 21-0 in winner-take-all games, but that’s incorrect …. he was 22-0. If Russell's team played even with an opponent throughout a series or got to the same place in a tournament, Russell's team was ALWAYS going to pull it out in the end.

• At USF, his '55 team was 5-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
  
• At USF, his '56 team was 4-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
  
• In the '56 Olympics, the US squad was 2-0 when it came to the winner-take-all Final 4 for gold after the group stage.
  
• In the NBA, the Celtics were famously 10-0 in Games 7's throughout his career.
  
• In the '66 playoffs, the Celtics won Game 5 in the best-of-5 series with Cincinnati (link).
  

3) WINNING (Part 3): The Celtics didn’t win the title only 2 times during Russell’s 13-year career, and both were (very likely) due to difficulties experienced by Russell.

• In 1958, the Hawks topped Boston 4-2 in the Finals (winning by 2, 3, 2, & 1 points), during which Russell missed 2 games and played at far less than 100% with a horribly sprained ankle when he was available in the series. It’s safe to say Boston would have won that title with a healthy Russell.
  
• In 1967, the aging Celtics, fresh off of 8 straight championships, lost to the loaded and younger Sixers in the ECF. This was the first year Russell was Boston’s player-coach, which is significant since he faced horrendously stressful & over-the-top racism as the first black coach in major US pro sports history. He played so much and so intensely (43.3 min/gm in the playoffs) that he often forgot to sub players which hurt his team. The next season, the Celtics were older & considered “done”, but he added a bench coach to handle subs, and they beat the favored defending champion Sixers in the playoffs, and then won the title. Then the “seriously, they’re done now” 1968-69 Celtics clawed their way into the Finals & beat the loaded West-Wilt-Baylor Lakers 4-3 in Russell’s final season. Two giant asterisks have to go beside the only two championships Boston didn’t win during Russell’s career.
  

4) WINNING (Part 4): Russell went to college at the University of San Francisco which had just suffered through 3 straight losing seasons before he joined the varsity team. He lead an unranked USF team to 2 consecutive NCAA titles during his junior and senior seasons, going 57-1 along the way, and he could have won a title all 3 seasons he played at USF if not for losing teammate K.C. Jones one game into their sophomore season; they smashed the #17 team 51-33 in game 1 with Jones who was hospitalized that night with a burst appendix, but Russell still lead them to a 14-7 record before going on to those 2 titles. Even at the college level, he could lead players who weren’t supposed to win to the ultimate heights; it wasn’t just in Boston. Also, he was the leading scorer, rebounder, and defender on the 1956 gold medal winning US Olympic team, which had an average margin of victory of +53, the highest ever (’92 Dream Team was +44).
5) CLUTCH: I already mentioned how dominant Russell’s teams were when it was all on the line, but I’ll add that his list of clutch games, series, and moments is ridiculously long, plus his ppg, rpg, and apg averages all rose in the playoffs. I’ll simply point out that he had the greatest Game 7 performance of all-time in the 1962 Finals, scoring 30 points & grabbing 40 rebounds to win the title in a super-tight Game 7. If you didn’t know, the NBA Finals MVP award is officially called the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award.
6) INTELLIGENCE: Part of what made Russell so unbelievable in big games and moments was that his IQ and level of manipulating opponents is unparalleled historically. On defense, he’d often intentionally “just miss” blocking a particular star player’s shots earlier in a contest, but late in the game when the opponent was lulled into thinking they could get a certain shot off over Russell that night, he’d extend the extra inch and come up with clutch blocks & defensive plays they weren't expecting. I’ve never heard of another player doing stuff like this. The stories about his IQ are legendary & numerous; here are some clips about his hoops IQ. At least watch the 3rd one on that list ("Some more mindgames") to see a short interview with him talking about manipulation of a star opponent in a way I’ve never heard another player articulate; he truly was thinking on a whole different level to create advantages for his team.
7) VERSATILITY: Bill Russell was so versatile on the floor because he trained and played all 5 positions on offense. The only other players in history who could maybe do this are Maurice Stokes and Giannis Antetokounmpo, but Russell’s results were quite different, plus immediate & sustained. His value to the Celtics’ offense is WAY underrated, especially on the fast break where he arguably had a bigger influence than Steve Nash did for the Suns’ fast break due to how well he could start, run, and finish it.
8) PASSING & OFFENSIVE INFLUENCE: Speaking of his versatility on the fast break, Bill Russell was a great passer, both in the half-court & full-court, and put up insane assist numbers for a center, especially in the playoffs (averaged >5 apg in the playoffs during 7 different seasons, far more times than any other center).
John Havlicek, in his 1977 autobiography, said the following about Russell's effect on Boston's offense when specifically discussing their first post-Russell season ('70):

"You couldn't begin to count the ways we missed [him]. People think about him in terms of defense and rebounding, but he had been the key to our offense. He made the best pass more than anyone I have ever played with. That mattered to people like Nelson, Howell, Siegfried, Sanders, and myself. None of us were one on one players ... Russell made us better offensive players. His ability as a passer, pick-setter, and general surmiser of offense has always been over-looked.”

I’ll add that Bill Russell finished 4th in MVP voting with an 18% vote share in 1969, his final season (‘69 MVP voting). I believe this is the best MVP finish by any player in their final season.
9) MORE ABOUT HIS OFFENSE: Fans often knock Russell for not being a high scorer. He played on a team that spread around the scoring, so very few Celtics ever had big scoring numbers, and he often had the best FG% on the team. Russell was top-5 in FG% in the league 4 times, while more recent dominant-scoring centers Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing all did it once. Russell understood what individual sacrifices to make and how to improve his teammates so they collectively would be winners, which is why he won the 1962 MVP (voting) over Wilt Chamberlain (his epic 50 ppg & 26 rpg season) and Oscar Robertson (his epic triple-double season). By the way, Russell holds the record for the most consecutive MVP awards (3), most consecutive top-2 MVP finishes (6), and has the 2nd most MVP’s of all-time (5). It was clear that Russell’s approach was far more valuable to his team’s success than that of other superstars with monster stats.
10) DEFENSIVE IMPACT: There is no hyperbole in saying Russell was unquestionably the most impactful defensive player ever. The Celtics consistently & regularly had the #1 defense in the NBA throughout his career, yet they were FAR worse before he joined the team, and they immediately dropped in the ‘70 season right after he retired. Here are Boston’s annual rankings in Defensive Rating, starting in the ‘54 season: 8, 8, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 8 (the highlighted parts represent Russell’s career). He had an overwhelmingly positive influence on the entire team’s defense to a degree we’ve never seen from any other player.
11) ATHLETICISM: Watching film of Russell, it’s clear he was extremely fast and active, elite even by today’s standards. He also possessed Olympic-level leaping ability (7th ranked high jumper in the world in 1956). For the record, he was measured as 6-ft-9-and-⅝ without shoes, taller than both Dwight Howard and Alonzo Mourning. This incredible athleticism is what allowed his defense to be a cross between Tim Duncan & Kevin Garnett, covering everything everywhere with phenomenal explosiveness, plus impeccable timing & decision-making.
12) LEADERSHIP: Bill Russell had the best combination of elite on-court impact on team synergy plus elite locker-room unity & positivity. Very few guys are even in the discussion of having this type of elite combo: Tim Duncan, Jerry West, Larry Bird …. not many more, especially when you also consider a player’s impact on his team’s defensive synergy.

Here are some highlights of Russell and here are his career stats.
1) WINNING (Part 1): The Celtics were ho-hum right before Russell joined the team, pretty bad right after he retired, and even worse when he missed games during his career, but when he was there they were the most dominant title-winning franchise in sports history, which proves how ludicrous the “He was simply the best player on a loaded team” comment is. DETAILS: a) Boston won 2 total playoff series in the 10 seasons before Russell arrived (he was a rookie in '57), and both were short best-of-3 series (‘53, ‘55), b) Boston went 34-48 and missed the playoffs in ‘70 right after winning the title in Russell’s final season, and c) when he missed games during his career, the Celtics were 10-18 (.357), and 18 of those 28 missed games were against teams with losing records, so there was no excuse for a “loaded” squad to be so bad. When Russell missed 3 or more games in a row --meaning his teammates really had to adjust & couldn’t just “get up” for one game without their leader-- the Celtics were a pitiful 1-12. They were horrible without him. There is NO evidence the Celtics were any good when Russell wasn’t on the floor, rather a ton of evidence to the contrary.
2) WINNING (Part 2): It's been commonly reported that Russell was 21-0 in winner-take-all games, but that’s incorrect …. he was 22-0. If Russell's team played even with an opponent throughout a series or got to the same place in a tournament, Russell's team was ALWAYS going to pull it out in the end.

• At USF, his '55 team was 5-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
  
• At USF, his '56 team was 4-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
  
• In the '56 Olympics, the US squad was 2-0 when it came to the winner-take-all Final 4 for gold after the group stage.
  
• In the NBA, the Celtics were famously 10-0 in Games 7's throughout his career.
  
• In the '66 playoffs, the Celtics won Game 5 in the best-of-5 series with Cincinnati (link).
  

3) WINNING (Part 3): The Celtics didn’t win the title only 2 times during Russell’s 13-year career, and both were (very likely) due to difficulties experienced by Russell.

• In 1958, the Hawks topped Boston 4-2 in the Finals (winning by 2, 3, 2, & 1 points), during which Russell missed 2 games and played at far less than 100% with a horribly sprained ankle when he was available in the series. It’s safe to say Boston would have won that title with a healthy Russell.
  
• In 1967, the aging Celtics, fresh off of 8 straight championships, lost to the loaded and younger Sixers in the ECF. This was the first year Russell was Boston’s player-coach, which is significant since he faced horrendously stressful & over-the-top racism as the first black coach in major US pro sports history. He played so much and so intensely (43.3 min/gm in the playoffs) that he often forgot to sub players which hurt his team. The next season, the Celtics were older & considered “done”, but he added a bench coach to handle subs, and they beat the favored defending champion Sixers in the playoffs, and then won the title. Then the “seriously, they’re done now” 1968-69 Celtics clawed their way into the Finals & beat the loaded West-Wilt-Baylor Lakers 4-3 in Russell’s final season. Oh yeah, Russell was the only player-coach in NBA history to win a championship, and he won two.
  

Two giant asterisks have to go beside the only two championships Boston didn’t win during Russell’s career.
4) WINNING (Part 4): Russell went to college at the University of San Francisco which had just suffered through 3 straight losing seasons before he joined the varsity team. He lead an unranked USF team to 2 consecutive NCAA titles during his junior and senior seasons, going 57-1 along the way, and he could have won a title all 3 seasons he played at USF if not for losing teammate K.C. Jones one game into their sophomore season; they smashed the #17 team 51-33 in game 1 with Jones playing who was then hospitalized that night with a burst appendix, but 1st-year Russell still lead them to a 14-7 record without the HOF PG before going on to those 2 titles. Even at the college level, he could lead players who weren’t supposed to win to the ultimate heights; it wasn’t just in Boston. Also, he was the leading scorer, rebounder, and defender on the 1956 gold medal winning US Olympic team, which had an average margin of victory of +53, the highest ever (’92 Dream Team was +44).
5) CLUTCH: I already mentioned how dominant Russell’s teams were when it was all on the line, but I’ll add that his list of clutch games, series, and moments is ridiculously long, plus his ppg, rpg, and apg averages all rose in the playoffs. I’ll simply point out that he had the greatest Game 7 performance of all-time in the 1962 Finals, scoring 30 points & grabbing 40 rebounds to win the title in a super-tight Game 7. If you didn’t know, the NBA Finals MVP award is officially called the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award.
6) INTELLIGENCE: Part of what made Russell so unbelievable in big games and moments was that his IQ and level of manipulating opponents is unparalleled historically. On defense, he’d often intentionally “just miss” blocking a particular star player’s shots earlier in a contest, but late in the game when the opponent was lulled into thinking they could get a certain shot off over Russell that night, he’d extend the extra inch and come up with clutch blocks & defensive plays they weren't expecting. I’ve never heard of another player doing stuff like this. The stories about his IQ are legendary & numerous; here are some clips about his hoops IQ. At least watch the 3rd one on that list ("Some more mindgames") to see a short interview with him talking about manipulation of a star opponent in a way I’ve never heard another player articulate; he truly was thinking on a whole different level to create advantages for his team.
7) VERSATILITY: Bill Russell was so versatile on the floor because he trained and played all 5 positions on offense. The only other players in history who could maybe do this are Maurice Stokes and Giannis Antetokounmpo, but Russell’s results were quite different, plus immediate & sustained. His value to the Celtics’ offense is WAY underrated, especially on the fast break where he arguably had a bigger influence than Steve Nash did for the Suns’ fast break due to how well he could start, run, and finish it.
8) PASSING & OFFENSIVE INFLUENCE: Speaking of his versatility on the fast break, Bill Russell was a great passer, both in the half-court & full-court, and put up insane assist numbers for a center, especially in the playoffs (averaged >5 apg in the playoffs during 7 different seasons, far more times than any other center).
John Havlicek, in his 1977 autobiography, said the following about Russell's effect on Boston's offense when specifically discussing their first post-Russell season ('70):

"You couldn't begin to count the ways we missed [him]. People think about him in terms of defense and rebounding, but he had been the key to our offense. He made the best pass more than anyone I have ever played with. That mattered to people like Nelson, Howell, Siegfried, Sanders, and myself. None of us were one on one players ... Russell made us better offensive players. His ability as a passer, pick-setter, and general surmiser of offense has always been over-looked.”

I’ll add that Bill Russell finished 4th in MVP voting with an 18% vote share in 1969, his final season (‘69 MVP voting). I believe this is the best MVP finish by any player in their final season.
9) MORE ABOUT HIS OFFENSE: Fans often knock Russell for not being a high scorer. He played on a team that spread around the scoring, so very few Celtics ever had big scoring numbers, and he often had the best FG% on the team. Russell was top-5 in FG% in the league 4 times, while more recent dominant-scoring centers Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing all did it once. Russell understood what individual sacrifices to make and how to improve his teammates so they collectively would be winners, which is why he won the 1962 MVP (voting) over Wilt Chamberlain (his epic 50 ppg & 26 rpg season) and Oscar Robertson (his epic triple-double season). By the way, Russell holds the record for the most consecutive MVP awards (3), most consecutive top-2 MVP finishes (6), and has the 2nd most MVP’s of all-time (5). It was clear that Russell’s approach was far more valuable to his team’s success than that of other superstars with monster stats.
10) DEFENSIVE IMPACT: There is no hyperbole in saying Russell was unquestionably the most impactful defensive player ever. The Celtics consistently & regularly had the #1 defense in the NBA throughout his career, yet they were FAR worse before he joined the team, and they immediately dropped in the ‘70 season right after he retired. Here are Boston’s annual rankings in Defensive Rating, starting in the ‘54 season: 8, 8, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 8 (the highlighted parts represent Russell’s career). He had an overwhelmingly positive influence on the entire team’s defense to a degree we’ve never seen from any other player.
11) ATHLETICISM: Watching film of Russell, it’s clear he was extremely fast and active, elite even by today’s standards. He also possessed Olympic-level leaping ability (7th ranked high jumper in the world in 1956). For the record, he was measured as 6-ft-9-and-⅝ without shoes, taller than both Dwight Howard and Alonzo Mourning. This incredible athleticism is what allowed his defense to be a cross between Tim Duncan & Kevin Garnett, covering everything everywhere with phenomenal explosiveness, plus impeccable timing & decision-making.
12) LEADERSHIP: Bill Russell had the best combination of elite on-court impact on team synergy plus elite locker-room unity & positivity. Very few guys are even in the discussion of having this type of elite combo: Tim Duncan, Jerry West, Larry Bird …. not many more, especially when you also consider a player’s impact on his team’s defensive synergy.

1. Tyrese Haliburton
2. LaMelo Ball
3. Tyrese Maxey
4. Peyton Pritchard
5. James Wiseman

Write Up -
4 Payton Pritchard,
Boston Celtics, 8.6 points, 3.1 assists, 2.4 rebounds, 1.3 steals, Shooting splits: .516/.423/.900
Payton Pritchard is a pest who can score the ball, and he’s proven to be a physical force that belies his 6’1″, 195 lbs stature. With Kemba Walker missing time, he’s been forced into heavy action in high-leverage minutes, and he’s made the most of his opportunities. Pritchard isn’t just holding on, trying to survive as many rookies do. His strong play is a big reason that the Celtics have held their heads way above water in these early days of the season.
https://hoopshabit.com/2021/01/10/nba-rookie-rankings-lamelo-ball/3/
They also published a good article focused on Prichard
https://hoopshabit.com/2021/01/11/boston-celtics-rookie-payton-pritchard/

The Boston Celtics were initially criticized for selecting Payton Pritchard with their 26th pick, but he quickly became a fan favorite. So who is he?

The Boston Celtics‘ first-round pick, Payton Pritchard, has already exceeded almost all expectations. The Oregon legend was relatively overlooked in the draft. Also, being 22 (and turning 23 before Jayson Tatum) does not make you a desirable draft pick, no matter how good you might be. Comparatively, Patrick Williams, the fourth pick in the draft, is 19 years old. But the Celtics needed an NBA ready point guard with Kemba Walker hurt, and Pritchard, someone who knew how to be a winner, seemed to be the perfect guy to fix the Celtics problem.
Back in high school, Pritchard would wake up at 5:15 AM and dribble until his hands would bleed and then shoot until school started every day. In his freshman year, he was a starter on a state champion team. The next year, the point guard won another title after beating Jaylen Brown; additionally, Pritchard won the division’s player of the year.
RELATED STORY: Players Power Rankings: Steph Curry is back
Then, as a junior, he and his high school won their third title, and Pritchard was named Oregon player of the year. As a senior, he averaged 23.6 points, 6.8 assists, 5.1 rebounds, and 3.1 steals, winning his fourth title in four years, and once again named Oregon player of the year.
Eventually, Pritchard took his talents to the University of Oregon, where he was just as dominant. “Fast PP,” however, could not get a major role on an Oregon team filled with a plethora of talent. Dillon Brooks, Jordan Bell and Chris Boucher led them to the Final Four when they lost to top-ranked North Carolina.
After that season, many of the team’s top players left, and Pritchard suddenly became a centerpiece of Ducks basketball. But the team did not fit the style of their point guard, who had the job of managing the disarray of players. Pritchard led the team in scoring, but the team only won 23 games and did not make the NCAA tournament.
The next season, Oregon seemed like they would have the same dilemma, great players who could not play well together. Prichard had no outside shooters that could make it easier for him to manipulate the opposing team’s defenses, he did not have any big men to defend the interior, and he did not have many consistent players in general on either side of the ball. The team struggled until Pritchard was able to get a green light to shoot whenever he wanted during the Pac-12 Tournament.
Pritchard helped Oregon win the tournament and get a March Madness bid. The Ducks made it to the Sweet Sixteen, and Pritchard decided to enter the draft after his success. Nevertheless, teams were not impressed enough, with only about half a season of NBA-level play from the junior. Thus, Pritchard immediately took his name out of the draft.
After returning for his senior season, Pritchard impressed anyone who watched Oregon basketball. It was clear Pritchard was both the hardest worker and the best player on one of the best teams in the country. The team was ranked in the AP 25 throughout the whole season, winning the Pac-12 tournament, and Payton Pritchard won All-American honors. Pritchard then entered the draft once again. As a projected second-rounder, he was overjoyed when taken by the Celtics with the 26th pick.

Payton Pritchard is already overachieving for the Boston Celtics

Unlike many of Danny Ainge’s previous selections, most of whom were chosen based on potential, Pritchard had expectations to perform as soon as he entered the NBA. Without Walker, and with no players in return for Hayward, the Boston Celtics had limited playmaking from the guard position.
Smart showed sparks that he could spread the floor in the playoffs, but there were doubts about if he could do it for 82 games along with his all-Defensive defense. And the best free agent the Celtics could sign to fill this void was Jeff Teague, an aging point guard who had begun to lose some of his abilities. So, Pritchard was immediately going to be a core player in the Celtics rotation.
And shown by his game-winner on Wednesday night against the Miami Heat, he is suited to win. And the game prior, on Monday, he scored 23 points in 32 minutes in his first game as the lead ball-handler for the Celtics. On the defensive side, he has 1.2 steals per game in just 22.2 minutes, aggressive on defense while still strong enough to drive in traffic every time on offense. So it is not too much of a precursor to conclude: Payton Pritchard is good, and he could be really good.
Right now, though, in this phantasmagorial season, Payton Pritchard will have more responsibility than most rookies. The Boston Celtics’ Twitter account needed a three tweet thread to write out the injury report, with the team experiencing a virus outbreak, and Pritchard is one of the few players who can play. So it will be interesting to see what he can do in his temporary role as an on-court leader for this Celtics team. But Pritchard looks like he is ready to hold the reigns.

This post is updated daily.
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COVID-19 has now infected more than 144,890 people. There have been 5,401 confirmed deaths and 70,252 confirmed recoveries attributed to the virus.
 
MAJOR UPDATES See more recent updates further down this post.
MARCH 13 - President Trump declared a National Emergency. Watch the announcement here, and read about it here.
 
Recommended Reading:
A coronavirus cautionary tale from Italy: Don’t do what we did
 
Recent Updates
Note: These are the updates from the last 48-72 hours.
MARCH 13 -

• It’s a ‘false hope’ coronavirus will disappear in the summer like the flu, WHO says. Read more here.
  
• Europe is now the "epicentre" of the global coronavirus pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization says. Read more here.
  
• Spain, which has second-highest number of cases in Europe after Italy, joins other countries in declaring emergency. Read more here.
  
• Canada is warning against all international travel and is limiting inbound flights as part of a series of measures to limit the spread of COVID-19. Additionally, the wife of Prime Minister Trudeau has tested positive for coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• The Masters, which brings together the world's best golfers in April for the year's first major, has been postponed because of concerns about coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• No cruises will be leaving U.S. coasts for a month. President Trump tweeted Friday evening that Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and MSC were suspending outbound cruises for 30 days, at his request. Read more here.
  

 
MARCH 12 -

• The Australian Grand Prix has been called off, throwing the rest of the F1 season into doubt. Read more here.
  
• Disney is closing Disneyland and California Adventure, its theme parks in Anaheim, California, because of the coronavirus outbreak.Read more here. Disney World in Florida will also be closed. Read more here.
  
• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will self-quarantine “out of an abundance of caution” while his wife Sophie Grégoire undergoes testing for novel coronavirus. Read more here. Ontario public schools are also closing for 2 weeks. Read about that here.
  
• The entire country of Norway is 'shutting down'. Read more here.
  
• All three major US indexes closed more than 9% lower. The Dow Jones industrial average, which closed in a bear market on Wednesday, dropped 10%. That marked its biggest single-day decline since Black Monday in 1987. Read more here.
  
• The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced it would inject $1.5 trillion into short-term markets to offset the economic impact of the Wuhan coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• U.S. states have started to close public schools. Ohio and Maryland are the first to do so. Read more here.
  
• More sporting events and seasons are being cancelled and suspended. March Madness has been cancelled, NHL has suspended its season, MLS has suspended its season for 30 days, and MLB has suspended spring training and delayed opening day by atleast 2 weeks.
  

 
MARCH 11 -

• The World Health Organization has declared the Coronavirus a global pandemic. Read more here.
  
• A U.S. Senate staffer in Sen. Maria Cantwell's D.C. office has been confirmed to have coronavirus. See the tweet here.
  
• The NBA has suspended the rest of its season. See the tweet here.
  
• Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have announced that they have tested positive for COVID-19. See his tweet here.
  
• March Madness will hold games without fans. Read the announcement here.
  
• Italy announced that they are expanding their quarantine. All shops will be shuttered except supermarkets, food stores and chemists, and companies must close all their departments that are not essential to production. Services such as hairdressers and beauty parlours will also be closed, along with bars and restaurants that cannot guarantee they can keep a distance of at least one metre between customers. Read more here.
  
• Britain, Italy announce multi-billion dollar war chests to fight coronavirus. Read more here. Canada and the US have also announced funding to fight the coronavirus.
  
• Nationwide school closures in 22 countries have interrupted learning for more than 372 million students from primary to tertiary levels, including 58.6 million in universities and other post-secondary institutions, according to Unesco. The majority are in China. Read more here.
  
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that up to 70% of the country's population - some 58 million people - could contract the coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• Google parent company Alphabet is recommending that all of its North America employees work from home through April 10 due to coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• Major events are being cancelled all over the United States, including E3 and Rodeo Houston.
  
• Ukraine's government decided on Wednesday to ban mass gatherings and close schools for three weeks in a bid to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• Hungary’s government declared a state of emergency to help deal with the coronavirus outbreak, closing university campuses and banning large gatherings. Read more here.
  
• 13 US states so far have declared states of emergency in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Read more here.
  
• President Trump just addressed the nation from the Oval Office. Watch the address here. During the address, he said all travel from Europe would be suspended for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect on Friday at midnight, and the United Kingdom will be exempt. Read more here. President Trump also announced that:
  

• Insurance companies have agreed to waive copays on coronavirus tests and treatments, and to extend coverage to such treatments. Here is a tweet correcting this statement by the President. - Insurance companies have not agreed to extend coverage for treatment or waive those costs.
  
• The tax filing deadline will be extended for some Americans. He did not provide more details.
  
• He also called on Congress to provide Americans with “immediate payroll tax relief.”
  
• He said he would be soon taking emergency action to provide financial relief for workers who are quarantined or caring for others due to coronavirus. Details were also scarce about the specifics of this.
  
• The tax filing extension could provide up to $200 billion of liquidity that the government can make available to impacted businesses in the form of low interest loans.
  

Read more here. And read the fact check of this speech here.
 
CDC Recommendations:

• People over 60 and those with severe chronic heart, lung, or kidney disease stay at home as much as possible and avoid crowds. Read more here.
  
• Travelers, particularly those who are older and/or have underlying health issues, should “defer all cruise ship travel worldwide”. The CDC also notes that “cruise ship passengers are at increased risk of person-to-person spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19". Read more here.
  

 
Tracking COVID-19

• Vox is keeping track of COVID-19 infections for each U.S. state here.
  
• John Hopkins University has a live trackemap of the global spread of COVID-19 here.
  
• Today's situation report from the WHO.
  
• The CDC's COVID-19 Situation Summary.
  

 
New Countries reporting cases their first cases this week:
Note 1: The list starts fresh each Monday.
Note 2: This list is pulled from the WHO's daily situation reports (linked above).

• Bulgaria
  
• Costa Rica
  
• Faroe Islands
  
• French Guiana
  
• Maldives
  
• Martinique
  
• Republic of Moldova
  
• Bangladesh
  
• Albania
  
• Paraguay
  
• Brunei Darussalam
  
• Mongolia
  
• Cyprus
  
• Guernsey
  
• Panama
  
• Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
  
• Jamaica
  
• Burkina Faso
  
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
  
• French Polynesia
  
• Turkey
  
• Honduras
  
• Côte d’Ivoire
  
• Jersey
  
• Réunion
  
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
  
• Cuba
  
• Guyana
  

Over 100 countries have now reported lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19.
 
Reputable Sources for Information:

• The CDC's Dedicated Coronavirus Resource,
  
• The WHO's Dedicated Coronavirus Resource,
  
• The University of Chicago School of Medicine's handy FAQ style resource.
  

 
And for those too lazy to click on the University of Chicago Med resource, here are some of the answers to commonly asked questions:
 
What is a coronavirus? What is a novel coronavirus?

A coronavirus is actually the name for a set of illnesses, including the common cold and other respiratory infections. A novel coronavirus means it’s a new virus that originated in animals, but has jumped to humans. This particular 2019 novel coronavirus from Wuhan is called COVID-19 or 2019-nCoV.

 
How does the COVID-19 spread?

This virus is really transmissible and can spread easily from person to person even before a person develops symptoms. It’s carried on respiratory droplets when we talk, sneeze, and cough and these can land on surfaces or in someone’s mouth or nose. When it comes to respiratory droplets, 6 feet is the magic distance. That’s how far these tiny, infected droplets can travel. Being within 6 feet of someone who is sick can get you or your personal space contaminated with COVID-19.
When droplets land on surfaces, we can pick them up with our hands and transfer them to our eyes, mouth, and nose when we touch our faces. This is why hand hygiene is so important. Respiratory secretions (like snot and sputum) are also infectious so cover your coughs and sneezes.

 
What are the symptoms of the virus? Is it deadly?

It typically causes flu-like symptoms. Some patients — particularly the elderly and others with other chronic health conditions — develop a severe form of pneumonia.
Patients develop symptoms like fever, muscle and body aches, cough, and sore throat about 5-6 days after infection. Most people will feel pretty miserable for a week and get better on their own. Some people won’t get as sick, but it’s still important not to be out and about, so as not to spread the disease. A minority of patients will get worse instead of better. This usually happens after 5-7 days of illness and these patients will have more shortness of breath and worsening cough. If this happens, it’s time to contact your doctor again or even go to an emergency room. Be sure to call first so they know you are coming.
The numbers of people who have been diagnosed and how many have died are changing daily. As of early March, there have been over 97,000 confirmed cases, with a death toll of about 3,000 (more than 2,900 in mainland China). But these numbers are just estimates; it’s still unclear how many people have actually been infected worldwide. Most of the deaths have been in adults over 60 years old who had other health concerns.

 
Are we all at risk for catching this new coronavirus (2019-nCoV)?

Yes. It doesn’t appear anyone is naturally immune to this particular virus and there’s no reason to believe anybody has antibodies that would normally protect them.
The lack of previous experience with this pathogen is part of the reason why public health officials around the globe are working so hard to contain the spread of this particular coronavirus from Wuhan. When viruses come out like this that are both new (which means the population is highly susceptible) and can easily pass from person to person (a high transmission rate), they can be really dangerous — even if here’s a low percentage of people who die from them.

 
Why do some people with the COVID-19 get sicker than others?

It looks like only about 20% of people who contract this novel coronavirus need to be hospitalized. The other 80% get what feels like a bad cold and recover at home. A lot of this has to do with underlying medical conditions. People who are more vulnerable to any kind of infection — because of their age or chronic health conditions — are more at risk for getting really sick from COVID-19.
That said, some otherwise healthy people do seem to be getting sicker from this infection than we would expect. We don’t understand why that is or what might be different about these patients. If you have COVID-19 and you are getting sicker and sicker instead of better and better, you should contact your doctor or visit an ER. Be sure to call first so they know to expect you.

 
What kind of medical care do patients with COVID-19 need?

About 80% of people who contract this new coronavirus will feel sick, but ultimately be just fine. It’s the 20% of COVID-19 patients who get really, really sick that worry many of us in the infectious diseases field. A lot of these critically ill patients wind up needing to be hospitalized for their pneumonia-like illnesses. They typically require critical care and ventilation — special machines that help them breathe. And some need to stay on ventilators for weeks at a time. It’s this portion of patients that is most concerning. Depending on how many cases develop here in the U.S., providing that level of care for so many people over a number of weeks runs the risk of overwhelming the nation’s health care system pretty quickly. We can help prevent this kind of “surge” in patients by practicing social distancing (see below for more explanation).

 
Should people be more concerned about the seasonal flu or COVID-19?

There’s widespread seasonal flu activity going on right now all around the U.S. But there are steps you can take to protect yourself from influenza. You can get an annual flu shot. You can take medication like Tamiflu that protects you from getting influenza after you’ve been exposed. You can cover your mouth and wash your hands to mitigate the spread. And, like clockwork, this year’s influenza strain is going to die out in the spring because it will have run its course.
The challenge with COVID-19 is that we probably can’t contain it and we don’t know if we’re really prepared as a country for a massive coronavirus epidemic. If we are lucky, it will slow down a bit over the summer but the next few months look like they are going to be pretty tough for all of us. We need to be as ready as we can for whatever comes our way and know that we will get through it eventually.

 
How can I protect myself? Should I wear a facemask?

Take the preventive actions you do for the cold and flu. This includes avoiding close contact with people who are sick; not touching your eyes, nose and mouth; washing your hands thoroughly and frequently; and cleaning and disinfecting objects and surfaces you come in contact with regularly.
The CDC does not recommend you wear a facemask to protect yourself from getting COVID-19 or other respiratory illnesses. Those who have COVID-19 and/or are showing symptoms should wear a mask to protect others from getting the virus. Any healthcare worker taking care of someone infected with COVID-19 also should wear a mask.

 
Can I take an antibiotic or vaccinate against the virus?

There is no antibiotic (they are designed for bacterial infections, not viral ones) to treat COVID-19. Scientists are already working on a vaccine, but we don’t expect to have a good vaccine until spring of 2021 at the earliest. However, ongoing trials in China suggest that there are some existing antiviral drugs that may be helpful for the sickest patients. In fact, the University of Chicago is part of a multi-institutional team that has mapped a protein of SARS-CoV-2 and found drugs previously in development for SARS could be effective for COVID-19.
For now, doctors can only treat the symptoms, not the virus itself.

Welcome back to Build a Bear Dynasty, the least lit series about the most lit team in the NBA. This week I will be discussing Jonas Valanciunas.
Before I get to that, there are a few topics I need to discuss to give context to what I consider Jonas’ strengths and weaknesses. I realize that in the introduction I had brought up alternating player profiles and analysis of modern NBA terminology, but in planning for this first player piece I quickly realized that it would be helpful to be ‘on the same page’ so to speak when using certain words and terms to discuss his game.
So before getting to the analysis, there are a couple of the more vague terms used to describe basketball that I would like to break down first: Modern Offense, and Positionless Basketball.
Modern Offense
Broken down to its simplest terms, the game of basketball from a team’s perspective is played in two distinct phases: offense and defense. In the fewest words possible, offense is the team’s attempts to score points by putting the ball through a basket, and defense is the team’s attempts to prevent the other team from doing the same.
What makes basketball unique amongst North American major sports, and in my personal opinion makes it the most intriguing and beautiful sport, is the fact that it is the only one where the rules are written so that every player on the floor is allowed to perform every single legal action. All players are allowed access to every spot on the floor, and when the ball is in theirs or their defender’s hands they are allowed to do the same things every other player is.
Through a combination of the fluid nature of the sport, the inherent advantages both size AND speed can bring, and various changes to the ruleset, the game of basketball has evolved over time, valuing certain traits and attributes over others as they prove more or less useful in the changing landscape.
If you are at all familiar with competitive video gaming, you might refer to this concept with the term ‘Meta.’ In esports players develop optimal strategies through time and experience, and due to games often having fixed values for things like ‘damage’ and ‘health,’ players quickly find the statistically most ideal strategies, and the best teams spend hours and hours honing very specific skills and counters to give themselves the best odds of winning based on the rules of the game.
To counteract this rote memorization of inputs, modern game companies that produce multiplayer titles will often continue to update the game periodically after its release, not only to fix bugs and glitches, but to also change the game’s ‘meta’ to prevent the game from getting stale. They do this primarily through improving or worsening the values of certain items or characters in a practice known colloquially as ‘Buffing’ and ‘Nerfing,’ or by introducing new characters and gear all together. Players get used to the new changes, adopt new strategies, and the cycle continues as long as the developers continue to update, or as the players continue to uncover new strategies that provide further optimization.
WARNING: Incoming extensive history of the game Super Smash Bros. It does relate to later content, but is unnecessary if you wish to skip ahead to the next section about basketball.
An Unlikely Comparison
In theory, if the values of a game remain fixed, given enough time the players will develop the optimal strategy to play the game. A popular meme referring to the game Super Smash Brothers is the phrase ‘no items, foxes only, final destination’ referring to the presumed ‘optimal’ way to play the 2nd game in the series, Super Smash Brothers Melee. No items that might randomly give a player an advantage, the character many veterans of the game consider to be the all around best when combining his speed, attack power, and ability to survive, and a completely flat and empty stage that quite literally levels the playing field.
It took a very unique history for the game Super Smash Brothers Melee to get a point where there’s an almost universally held belief that there is a single ideal way to play the game. Before companies had the ability to update games over the internet thereby giving them the power to adjust the game after its release, one on one style fighting games like Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Street Fighter would release a new installment every few years. They would usually keep the majority of the same character roster and mechanics, while updating graphics, movesets, and the values of things like health and damage to keep the ‘meta’ game fresh between installments.
Unlike the directors of those other game series, the creator of Super Smash Brothers, Masahiro Sakurai, prefers the elements of a game that are fun for everyone, over those that make for an ideal competitive experience. Things like powerful items appearing next to players out of nowhere, and certain parts of some stages randomly hurting players all add to the chaos of Smash Brothers that makes it a fun party game.
But as with any game, whether it’s intended for fun or competition, players came along that wanted to adjust the rules to make it more challenging and skill based. By turning off the in game items and picking only certain stages agreed on by the competitors, a whole community developed to play an intrinsically anti-competitive game in a way that was more skills based.
In 2001 Nintendo released the Gamecube and Sakurai released the second Super Smash Brothers game, Super Smash Brothers Melee. The new game not only introduced new characters, but also massively changed the speed and feel of the game, making use of the new console’s better processor to create a more dynamic and fast paced game. The competitive community grew some more, but Nintendo as a company is very protective of their intellectual property, and at the time would go to extreme lengths at times to shut down grassroots tournaments and consumer created content, so it remained small in comparison to other fighting game communities.
Though a large number of players enjoyed the new gameplay, Sakurai felt that an overly competitive game was taking away from his vision of a fun and friendly game, and in the third installment he released, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, he slowed down the gameplay a bit, and added in random mechanics like tripping players that moved too quickly.
Unable to turn off those mechanics like they could with items in previous games, the competitive scene rejected the new game with large sections of the community sticking with the older Melee, and some going to incredible lengths to actually rewrite the code to modify the properties of the game itself.
Through a combination of a failure of the third game to capture the hearts of the players, and Nintendo focusing most of its efforts on shutting down the fan modified versions of Super Smash Bros Brawl, the competitive Melee scene exploded in a way unprecedented for a decade old fighting game. To this day, across the country tournaments are held fielding hundreds of players from here and abroad. Players new and old spend hours scouring over statistical data and practicing to hone the most optimal skills to give themselves an edge in tournaments with huge cash prizes. And it all culminates in a silly internet joke about Fox being the statistically optimal character.
If you’d care to know more about the ‘golden age’ of competitive Melee, there is a very well done, fan-made, 9 part docu series on youtube called ‘The Smash Bros’ that follows one of the most unique fandoms and cultures of any group that I’ve encountered.
But as I am sure most of you are thinking, what in the hell does a 20 year old Japanese video game played by a bunch of nerds have to do with basketball?
BACK TO BASKETBALL
Well, when it comes to sports in general, I feel that the term ‘meta’ is an excellent way of framing how basketball has changed as a sport over time. Players work on specific skills they feel give them an edge, coaches come up with plays that have more chance of success, defenses work to adapt to those and the league evolves.
New players enter the league every year, rosters change through trades and free agency signings, and league management ‘updates’ the game with occasional rule changes that they feel will balance the game better for the players and viewers.
Sometimes the changes are poorly received, like when they removed dunking from the college level of basketball from 1967-1976 as a result of a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s NCAA dominance. Other times they drastically affected the entire fabric of the sport.
In 1979 when the league introduced the 3 point shot during Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s rookie seasons, it changed the sport more drastically than anyone at the time may have realized. In the previous 87 years of the sport’s existence, having every shot during play have the same value of 2 points meant that the shot that went in the most is by default the best shot. This obviously led to taller players having an advantage, and a natural tendency for players to work as hard as possible to get as close to the rim when they can for an easier shot. If you looked at an overall ‘heatmap’ of an NBA court of how successful players were at shooting from certain spots, it would loosely look like a smaller hot circle centered on the basket, that cools in all directions the further from the basket it gets.
But with some shots being worth 3 points, a player could shoot a worse percentage while adding more value to the offense. A player that could shoot 50% while 20 feet from the rim would add 6 points for every 6 shots, and compared to other players in NBA history would be a midrange god. But a player shooting just 34% from just a few feet further away would add a slightly better 6.04 points for every 6 shots, and would have been considered a below average 3 point shooter in the league last season.
Kevin Durant, known as one of the greatest scorers of all time, over his career has shot 44.5% from between 3 and 10 feet from the basket, effectively 0.89 points per shot. On the other hand, the 2019-2020 league average 35.8% shooting from 3 is worth 1.074 points per shot. If you looked at a heatmap shot chart from today’s league, it would now have a ring that is the 2nd hottest part of the floor, behind the efficiency of the space immediately around the rim.
Suddenly there was a spot on the floor that theoretically had the same offensive value as a spot much closer to the basket. In a sport dominated by long limbed giants, any time a team gets to spread out the defenders makes it a little bit easier to get off clean looks. We refer to this trend in modern terms as ‘Spacing’ which I’ll focus on a bit more in next week’s piece.
It essentially boils down to that ‘spacing’ is all about generating separation between an offensive player and a defensive player. The more separation a player has from their defender, the more likely they’ll make their shot.
If you’ve ever seen NBA players warm up before a game, you’ll notice very quickly that they almost never miss when shooting a wide open set shot. By the time most of these players get to the league, they’ve played thousands of hours shooting from all over the floor. The hard part of the sport for most of them isn’t being able to shoot well, it’s shooting well while being defended by 7 foot monsters that can reach above the height of the rim without leaving the ground.
But the disadvantage that most 7 footers have that shorter players can potentially take advantage of is foot speed. Until 1979 this wasn’t a huge concern outside of transition basketball, as the goal of most players was to get as close to the rim as possible and taller players could camp out and wait, instead of chasing smaller, faster players around. But now there was an area of the floor that offers good value and covers a comparatively huge area. It’s easy to play defense when you know the team is working towards one direction and you don’t have to move as much, but when the offense can now move forwards AND backwards to get a better shot, it opens up a completely new realm of possibilities for offensive and defensive strategy.
Since that point and unless the league removes the 3 point line, all strategies and players have worked towards optimizing that potential. Modern Offense is the culmination of all of those efforts. But what strategy has evolved from all of this combined talent and effort? It took the Smash Brothers community more than a decade of study and practice to come to the conclusion that Fox is the best character. What type of ideal player archetype has the past 40 years been building towards? The trend I personally feel the NBA is moving towards is another vague but oft repeated term.
Positionless Basketball
It's an intriguing pair of words that is often used when discussing players that don’t fit the historic trends. Giant playmakers like LeBron and Ben Simmons that make point guards of look tiny, PJ Tucker playing the center position full time despite being a good 4 inches shorter than most other centers, 7 foot shooters like Jaren and Kristaps Porzingis that play more like a traditional small forward on offense.
But this loose definition feels like it’s only halfway there to me. There still seems to be this underlying assumption that positionless basketball is the positions themselves still existing, but players don’t have to play a specific role based on their size or skills. People will describe an idealized team of a 6’8 point guard with 3 6’8 wings and a 6’10 guy to play center and they all switch on defense. But they still expect the point guard to make most of the plays, the center to get most of the rebounds, and to generally run traditional NBA sets, just with a larger group of guys that are closer to a median height so they can all defend each other on the other end.
But a few recent things lead me to believe that it’s more than that. Could positionless basketball actually mean the end of the concept of positions in the sport of basketball? While I’m not sure we’ll ever get to a point where every player does every skill equally well, I do think we are starting to see a fundamental change in the way NBA teams across the league build their rosters around this idea of positionless basketball, and nothing is more responsible for it than the combination of Steph Curry and YouTube.
Breaking the Game
From the start of his career, Steph Curry has worked his way to breaking nearly every record you can think of when it comes to 3 point shooting. For his career he has shot 43.5% from 3 on over 8 attempts a game. That kind of shooting is not only unprecedented, it is statistically dominating when it comes to winning games. At an absurd 1.305 points per shot, a player would have to shoot 65.3% from inside the 3 point line to match that kind of scoring output per shot. When you consider that the true shooting percentage of the average NBA champion over the last 10 years is around 57.5%, Steph is hands down the best player in league history when it comes to adding offense through 3 point shooting, and he does it at a level that can win championships.
When the league average for 3 point shooting hovers around 35%, the value it provides is mostly from spacing the defenders, as though it’s efficient it’s not enough to beat scoring at the rim over the course of a game. The fact that Steph can shoot that volume, that efficiently, and maintain that performance against championship level defenses is game changing. He essentially proved that it’s possible to focus your game entirely around the 3 point line and still lead an NBA offense in scoring, something never done before.
In terms of positionless basketball this might have changed everything. If a player can shoot from 3 better than most can from 2, then ideally you’d want players that can shoot from 3 more than players that score inside unless they’re truly elite at scoring inside.
But not every player is Steph Curry, or Klay Thompson. Those two were raised by former NBA players that were above average 3 point shooters. You could argue that it might be that genetics gave them the shooting gift, but I think it’s more likely that they just practiced shooting more than any other kid playing basketball, and the part of genetics they benefited from most is their above average height.
Just look at Jaren Jackson Jr. another player raised by a former shooting specialist. He has a completely different form and build from his dad, but because his dad likely had him practicing like a shooting guard he naturally spent more time shooting 3’s than most kids.
Of course the vast majority of players coming into the league don’t have former players to teach them from a young age. But for players entering the league in this decade this might not be as big of a hindrance as it has been for players in the past.
Unlike every other kid to grow up and play in the NBA in the past, any player born this millennium has access to YouTube from the time they are physically able to manipulate a touchscreen. Across society this has had far reaching consequences that I think we were entirely unprepared for, and are only just now starting to come to fruition.
If you or someone you know is heavily into makeup as a hobby and artform, you might have jokingly said or heard them talk about the fact that “there are 13 year olds on YouTube that are experts at contour, and why don’t 13 years look like cabbage patch kids in overalls like when we were younger?” And it’s not just makeup. You look at any hobby, talent, skill, activity and you will see a bunch of experts expressing incredulity at the number of young people demonstrating master level skill in all these things that took them decades to hone.
The internet, and specifically streaming video is still in its infancy as a human technology, so there isn’t a ton of long term research of the effects of things like social media. While some it is likely bad for humanity as a whole, I don’t think we’ve considered just yet how positive it could be as well. We have instant access to every bit of information you could think to find, and videos posted by talented people of every interest that want to share that interest with others.
When you consider the fact that kids brains are at the height of their plasticity when it comes to learning new things, and that on average they have more free time to obsess over their interests, it seems like we have a combination specifically tailored to create super talented kids that seek out more and more advice from as many experts as they can. They watch videos, read, practice, and train until they themselves are experts, learned from the greatest minds on the planet in their chosen interest.
Ja Morant didn’t have a superstar dad. He played AAU, but usually on teams in secondary gyms. He didn’t go to a major blue blood university with an elite basketball mind head coach to teach him the important things other star players would be taught coming through their programs. All Ja had was a loving and supportive family that pushed him as hard as he wanted to go, a natural abundance of athleticism, and the internet.
Is it just happenstance that Ja Morant’s game reminds people so much of so many different great point guards? Westbrook, Wall, Chris Paul, and Rose have all been used dozens of times in Ja comparisons. Is it coincidence all 4 of those players had their primes overlap with Ja’s formative years?
From whatever age his parents let him get online, he could look up highlight videos and film of any player he wanted to, whenever he wanted to, studying and breaking down all their movements to recreate them himself. He didn’t need to be taught, as much as he taught himself through pure motivation and drive.
And it’s not just Ja. International players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid have both talked about watching film of American players while they were learning the sport of basketball. Growing up across the Atlantic ocean they didn’t have access to all the coaches and leagues young players here have, but they could still watch the best of the best whenever they wanted to.
The first players to grow up this way are now into their NBA careers, and the results haven’t gone unnoticed even if the means aren’t talked about. Players like Luka, Trae, Tatum, Ja, Jaren, Mitchell, Murray, Jokic, and Giannis have all displayed skill far beyond their years when compared to other NBA superstars of the past.
But it’s not just the star players. John Konchar recently made local media laugh a bit when asked what player he compares himself to, and he said ‘Pat Connaughton.’ Almost every player that enters the league has been the best player on every team they’ve played on for maybe a decade and rookies will usually compare themselves to stars that they watched and idealized growing up. So for Konchar to compare himself to an NBA role player that’s still in the league and only a few years older than him seems silly.But if you go back and look at their college numbers and their physical profiles, you start to realize that John Konchar might just be the single most self actualized player in the entire league.
Both 6’5, 210 pound guys, played all 4 years at schools that aren’t traditional basketball powerhouses. Efficient scorers that score in the paint and from 3, incredible at rebounding for their size, above average passing for off ball players, very solid defense, and advanced numbers that blow most players out of the water, though against weaker competition than most NBA recruits. John Konchar was never heavily recruited and always played against weak competition, even if his own numbers suggested he was incredibly good. Is it possible that he went out and found the best possible player that looks and plays like him, and did everything he could to emulate that player knowing it would be his best shot of making the NBA? I don’t think it’s that far fetched.
If this trend continues for all the young players entering the NBA for the foreseeable future, it might mean that we are right on the edge of a new era in the sport, where the best players come into the league ready to lead within the first year or 2, and role players perfectly comfortable with their smaller roles on NBA rosters. Players that hit early growth spurts won’t necessarily be regulated to center positioning, and a lifetime of paint scoring and rebounding. If a taller player wants to work on their 3 point shot, independent of coaching or parenting they can now study videos of the best 3 point shooters ever and add that element to their game if they choose to. And the most motivated players, the ones that live and breathe basketball, they have limitless teachers and lessons to watch with as many hours as they can spare.
Flirting with the Future
A future where maybe basketball truly is positionless, where players all know how to box out when they're in the paint and a shot goes up, that can all shoot the 3 when open, drive the paint if they see a lane, and pass to the open man when the defense slips up. Of course smaller players will on average tend to have an easier time creating separation on the perimeter through their speed, and taller plays in the paint through their verticality, though both types of players may at least be able to do both well when the opportunity presents itself.
Some teams have already experimented with this concept to some extent, but right now the majority of the players in the league are not ready for that type of offense. For the majority of players over the age of 25, they grew up in a basketball culture that placed certain focus on their game based on their size. Most aren’t capable of playing all aspects of basketball at an NBA level because they didn’t get the practice in all the necessary skills as they developed.
The Houston Rockets might be the most aggressive team when it comes to molding the team to this mindset, with them refusing to sign players that aren’t capable of all those aspects of basketball. With a lack of players above 6’8 meeting all the criteria to be a truly good basketball player, this limited them to playing PJ Tucker, the largest such player on the roster, against other teams playing true 7 foot centers. It’s not that the Rockets overvalue smaller players, there just aren’t many players that are tall and capable of meeting those requirements, and the Rockets valued the concept of positionless basketball offense above getting players capable of defending elite frontcourts in a playoff setting.
Miami might be the best recent example of a team that has gone ‘full positionless’ when it comes to their roster. Pretty much every player on the roster in the recent playoffs was capable of making the right play on the offensive and defensive ends, and though they weren’t very efficient compared to other playoff team offenses, their ability to change roles on a moments notice got them all the way to the NBA finals against one of the strongest teams in NBA history.
If you go back even further, take a look at the playoff numbers of the 2014 Spurs that ended the Heat’s chances at a third title under the dominance of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh. An incredible balance of scoring, playmaking, and overall basketball talent from all the players to get significant minutes in the playoffs led to a sum greater than the whole, and a team that went down in history as playing ‘the beautiful game.’
But where does that leave the Grizzlies with their current roster? While other young star studded teams went after vets that they felt would compliment their current talent, the Grizzlies continued to go young and replaced the open spots on the roster with more players on their rookie deals, and resigning young players coming off their first contracts. Most of these young guys have more in common than you might expect.
To give you an idea of what kind of players the Grizzlies have focused on acquiring, here is every player that in their final year of college play had an above average assist, rebound, steal, and block rate when compared directly to players roughly their height and weight, a true shooting percentage that was above the NCAA average for that season, but did NOT lead the team in shot attempts. Listed by their season, along with their box plus minus rank of all college players from that season (minimum 500 minutes played) In other words, these are the players that were above average in almost every NBA counting stat we track to measure a players success:
Xavier Tillman (1st - 19/20)
Killian Tillie (5th - 19/20)
Desmond Bane (19th - 19/20)
Brandon Clarke (2nd - 18/19)
John Konchar (91st - 18/19)
Jontay Porter (42nd -17/18)
De'anthony Melton (102nd - 16/17)
Justise Winslow (33rd - 14/15)
Kyle Anderson (13th - 13/14)
Grayson Allen met all the requirements except rebound rate and block rate, but was still 62nd overall in box plus minus.
Ja and Dillon (yes, Dillon too) met all the requirements except they both led their respective teams in shot attempts in their final seasons. Ja was 29th overall in 2018-19, and Dillon was 42nd in 2016-17.
Jaren met all the requirements except an above average assist and rebound rate, and was 4th overall in 2017-18.
Notably, every player saw their assist rate and 3 point attempt rate increase dramatically each year they returned to play in college.
If you asked me, the FO is 100% bought into the idea of positionless basketball, and they've got a whole group of some of the best all around players to come out of college in the last 5 years with the proper skillset for it. I don't think the fact that so many players on the list played with each other in college is coincidental or something as simply as appeasing the star players by signing their friends.
The Grizzlies FO has gone out and gone after elite all around players, that played at some of the programs in the country with the most long term success. Coaches like coach K and Izzo are basketball geniuses that instill smart play into any player that comes through their program, and between 5 players on the roster we have over a decade of collective experience under those guys, on top of their own individual talent and expertise.
I think the team will hit the ground way faster than anyone expects. Don't be shocked if they blow past expectations this year. The Grizzlies as a whole seem very forward thinking when it comes to the ‘meta’ of the NBA, and their plays have all paid off so far. But where does that leave a player like Jonas Valanciunas?

Just by glancing at the list of the games available today, it would be fair to say that there is slim picking to choose from. With just one ranked team in action in Richmond, it would be very fair to have your attention taken away to reactionary galaxy brain takes on the AP and CBB rankings. However, taking a little deeper look, there are actually pretty interesting sets of mid-major games that could give you a preview of some potential tournament teams that can give powerful teams a run for their money. After all, we are all addicted to the sweet sweet drug that is live college basketball in any form. With that being said, let’s see what we can consume.
Wofford (2-0) vs 19 Richmond (2-0) - 2 pm EST, ESPN+
Richmond captured the attention and the heart of the die-hard college basketball fans when they sank the universally loved Kenyucky. Perhaps the scary part is that the Spiders weren’t even that great that game (or perhaps, that shows more about the state of the Wildcats). Enough has been said about their star point guard Jacob Gilyard, a diminutive defensive monster who can also do it all on the offensive end as well, but I also want to give a shoutout to their big man Grant Golden who is a key engine in their Princeton offense.
Richmond is genuinely a good, experienced old team that is a certified tournament team, and it’s a huge task for the young Wofford team. Gone are the days of Fletcher Magee heroics against the evil North Carolina, and the Terriers will need their star guard Storm Murphy to have a perfect game to have a chance at an upset.
Fairfield (0-3) vs Hartford (2-2) - 4pm EST, ESPN3
For so long, the American East has been dominated by Vermont. Except for that one time UMBC stumbled its way into the big dance (what did they do there anyway?), it has been the Catamounts to lose.
Except for last year.
After over a decade of suffering, Hartford finally had a chance to upend the power structure of the AE and take its throne back from the dictatorship of Vermont. They were on a roll late last season, beating Stony Brook to advance to the conference final against that no good Vermont team. With its crown jewel within its reach, everything was swept away when COVID-19 hit.
The Hawks bring a lot of talent back, led by their top talent Hunter Mark and young Moses Flowers. With their heartbreak behind them now, maybe this is the year where they can return to the glory. Watch them on their journey back to the top, today.
North Carolina Central (1-0) vs Coastal Carolina (2-0) - 6 pm EST, ESPN+
North Carolina Central is a favorite to win their conference, and you can brag that you watched this conference champion before the March Madness rolls around. What? They play in the MEAC and they might not even escape Dayton? Nevertheless, some MEACtion on Monday afternoon is not the worst way to spend your day. Coastal Carolina, on the other hand, has beaten two non-D1 schools, so to be honest, I have no idea what to expect from them.
Moorehead State (1-3) vs Eastern Kentucky (3-1) - 7 pm EST, ESPN+
Eastern Kentucky is showing some signs of life in what will be a competitive OVC. They comfortably took care of their business when they should have, and really pushed a very solid Xavier team until the end. With strong teams like Belmont, Murray State, and Austin Peay all lurking around, every single win counts by the Colonels, especially in conference play, will matter. Now, they take on their rivals Moorehead State to hopefully start 1-0.
Sneakily, Eastern Kentucky is also a very successful betting team, for those CBB moneymakers (shoutout to the guy who betted $500 on Texas yesterday, RIP). They have successfully covered the spread every game, and sometimes it’s a good idea to ride the wave while it lasts. Jomaru Brown is the one to watch here.
Northern Arizona (0-0) vs Arizona (2-0) - 9 pm EST, ncaa basketball streaming?
The only other bubble team that I consider who plays today, Arizona didn’t exactly put on a convincing performance when they squeaked by Eastern Washington by only three points. However, the Wildcats SHOULD comfortably take care of business against the Northern Arizona team that was forced to pause basketball activities due to COVID cases.
The player to watch for sure is James Akinjo, the do-it-all guard who has been carrying the team, perhaps a bit too much, considering he’s had only 8 minutes of rest so far. However, without him, the offense seems a bit lost without their point guard leading the line, and this could be a good test to see who can grab some minutes behind him for the future.
Another star from Arizona is Jordan Brown, a big man who is clearly the best of the bunch of bigs in the Wildcats. Again, this should be more of a game to find out the pieces next to the star. Christian Koloko, Azuolas Tubelis, and Ira lee are all vying for front court minutes next to Brown.
Honorable Mentions
George Washington (1-2) vs UMBC (1-1) - 4 pm, ESPN+, Lipscomb (1-3) vs Southeast Missouri State (1-1) - 7:30, ESPN+
Both UMBC and Lipscomb are chasing a pair of respective dominant champions in their division - Vermont in American East and Liberty in ASUN. While they might not be favorites, they have a good outside shot of knocking them down to make it to the big dance once again. I’m sure Virginia fans would be thrilled.
South Carolina State (0-4) vs Charlotte (0-2) - 6 pm EST, maybe possibly on that subreddit that streams college basketball games
One of them has to win right? Right?
Loyola Marymount (2-2) vs UC Santa Barbara (1-0) - 8 pm EST, to be completely honest this might be impossible to watch
Loyola Marymount hit the first mid-major buzzer-beaters, so maybe they can do it again?
Lewis vs Bradley (3-2) - 8 pm, ESPN+
I couldn’t justify asking you to watch Bradley take on a non-D1 school this Monday, but the Braves are one of the better mid-major teams in the country.
EDIT: After I wrote this up, I just saw the Oregon-Eastern Washington game got added. You should probably watch that over a lot of the games here, as Oregon is a legit bubble team that has legit players like Chris Duarte.

With the 2010s over, it’s time to look back at the past decade of football. From unprecedented dominance (Alabama, Clemson) to historical incompetence (Rutgers, Kansas), the past decade has provided a lifetime’s worth of drama and entertainment.
Undoubtedly, the Alabama Crimson Tide have been one of the (if not the) most dominant FBS programs of the 2010s. With four national championships and five SEC titles, Nick Saban’s squad has been the subject of much animosity from the rest of the college football universe. Powered by five-star recruits year after year, the Crimson Tide have enjoyed success that many programs could only dream of.
However, this does not mean that their historical run has gone unchallenged. With a total of 12 losses since the beginning of the 2011-12 season, it is important to remember the mantra of Any Given Saturday. With that, let’s take a look at all of these losses, ranked from 12 to 1.
Note: Rankings are entirely subjective and based upon my opinion, please let me know your opinions and whether certain game(s) are too high, too low, etc.
12. #6 Auburn defeats #1 Alabama 26-14 (2017)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
Was it an embarrassing loss for an Alabama team that had blown out pretty much everybody on their schedule that year? Did it hurt to lose to their archrival? Sure. But at the end of the day, this loss ended up meaning nothing to the Crimson Tide, who would go one to defeat SEC foe Georgia in the National Championship Game.
Auburn appeared to be one step ahead of Alabama the entire game, and the Tiger defense shut down Jalen Hurts and Co. just two weeks after thrashing then #1 Georgia 40-17. Led by the SEC’s leading rusher Kerryon Johnson and transfer QB Jarrett Stidham, the Auburn offense methodically moved down the field to set up their scores. A failed field goal and two turnovers on downs late ultimately sealed the win for Gus Malzahn, the first Auburn victory over Alabama since 2013.
Auburn would go on to be embarrassed in the SEC Championship by Georgia 28-7 and lose to the real National Champions UCF in the Peach Bowl. Meanwhile, Alabama snuck into the playoffs at the #4 spot before beating Clemson in the Sugar Bowl to advance to the National Championship Game. In the National Championship, the Tide would mount a second half comeback (led by freshman QB Tua Tagovailoa, who was inserted at halftime for the struggling Jalen Hurts), leading to their fourth national championship of the decade.
11. #15 Ole Miss defeats #2 Alabama, 43-37 (2015)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
Once again, despite being an upset loss to a hated rival, this game is a victim of the ultimate national championship claimed by the Tide. Led by QB Chad “Swag” Kelly and WR Laquon Treadwell, Ole Miss boasted a top 10 offense while also fielding a defense led by studs such as Robert Nkemdiche and Mike Hilton. Every team has to lose a game at some point, and this was just one of the many contests which handed Alabama their numerous one-loss seasons.
A rather ineffective run game forced the Rebels to lean on Chad Kelly, and deliver he did. Kelly tossed 3 TDs on the nation’s most vaunted defense, while the defense stood up on 4th down to seal the game. Bama QB Jake Coker’s 2 INTs certainly did not help the Tide in this shootout affair, but he still threw for 200+ yards and 3 TDs. Lost in the shuffle was Derrick Henry’s 127-yard rushing performance, during which he averaged over 5.5 YPC. The fourth quarter of this game was an absolute barnburner and ranks among the most exciting quarters of college football this past decade.
Late season losses to Memphis and Arkansas derailed Ole Miss’s season, and the Rebels would be forced to settle for a Sugar Bowl win over Oklahoma State. Meanwhile, the Crimson Tide would not lose another game for the rest of the season before shutting out Michigan State 38-0 in the playoff semifinal and knocking off #1 Clemson 45-40 to bring yet another national championship to Tuscaloosa.
10. #15 Texas A&M defeats #1 Alabama 29-24 (2012)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
The game that started “Johnny Football” was among the most memorable of the 2010s. Johnny Manziel seemed unstoppable all game, ducking tackles and evading sacks like only Houdini could. Coming off of a big win vs #5 LSU, this loss didn’t hurt Alabama all that much, only dropping them to #4 in the BCS poll. Their eventual victory over Notre Dame in the national championship game once again serves to drop this game to the bottom of the list.
The Tide defense simply had no answer for Johnny Manziel. A star-studded defense featuring players such as C.J. Mosley and Dee Milliner could only watch hopeless as Manziel repeatedly scrambled and found his trusty wideout Ryan Swope. A.J. McCarron’s 300+ yard passing game was clouded by his 2 INTs, including one to DeShazor Everett at the goal line which would allow the Aggies to bleed out the rest of the clock. An offside penalty on Alabama on 4th and 1 deep inside Texas A&M territory sealed the monumental victory for the Aggies.
Texas A&M would finish with the #10 ranking and beat Oklahoma for the Cotton Bowl title. Meanwhile, the Tide would stomp out Western Carolina and Auburn in consecutive weeks before defeating Georgia for the SEC title. Finally, in the BCS Championship Game, Alabama crushed #1 ranked Notre Dame to claim their second title in a row.
9. #1 LSU defeats #2 Alabama 9-6 (2011)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
The last of our games that ended up not mattering in the grand scheme, this matchup was one of the more… “interesting” games of the decade. The 9-6 loss was relatively meaningless in terms of the poll (Alabama only dropped two spots), and the Tide would go on to avenge this loss in the BCS Title game, shutting out LSU 21-0 for their first national championship of the decade. However, the hype surrounding this game and the fact that it was such a huge matchup is what vaults it into the single digits over the other “meaningless” losses. The four missed Alabama field goals also contribute to the heartbreak factor of this loss (though I’m sure that Bama fans are desensitized to it by now).
Both teams dominated on defense all night, as the LSU offense especially struggled to find footing. Four(!) missed field goals doomed Alabama and set in motion the “kicking curse” that haunts Tuscaloosa to this day. Trent Richardson led the Tide in both rushing and receiving, while LSU had no notable performances on offense (despite featuring players such as Spencer Ware, Odell Beckham, and Russell Shepard). In the end, LSU kicker Drew Alleman drilled a 25-yard field goal to give the Tigers a walk-off win in Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Neither team would lose another game until they met in the BCS Championship, each blowing out their next three opponents. The two would meet again in New Orleans, this time with the stakes much higher. Once again, the game was a defensive battle, with Alabama’s offense playing slightly better than LSU’s at halftime (in that Alabama could actually cross midfield). In the second half, the Tide pulled away from the struggling LSU offense. Eventually, the Tiger defense wore down, and Alabama was able to claim their first of four national titles in the decade.
8. #11 Ole Miss defeats #3 Alabama 23-17 (2014)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
The second of two Alabama defeats at the hands of Ole Miss, this game comes in at #8 primarily due to the sequence of events at the end of the game. Alabama QB Blake Sims’ endzone interception to Senquez Golson was originally ruled incomplete, but was changed to a turnover upon further review. Despite this loss, Alabama’s ranking in the polls did not suffer horrendously, and they were still able to gain the #1 ranking entering the College Football Playoff.
Though Sims threw for 200+ yards, most of Alabama’s offense came on the back of 123 rushing yards from TJ Yeldon. In contrast, Ole Miss QB Bo Wallace threw for 3 TDs and no INTs, nullifying an ineffective run game led by Jaylen Walton. Two missed field goals by Alabama K Adam Griffith haunted the Tide, though a missed XP late by the Rebels’ Gary Wunderlich gave Alabama a chance to win if they could drive down the field. Alas, Golson came down with the pass (which was intended for TE OJ Howard), allowing the Ole Miss faithful to storm the field.
For Ole Miss, eight wins (including this one) would go on to be vacated, giving them a season record of 1-4 (their win against Presbytarian was not vacated). Though they climbed to as high as #3, a late-season shutout loss to Arkansas dropped them to #9, and they finished the season with a 42-3 loss to TCU in the Peach Bowl. Meanwhile, Alabama would run the table for the rest of the regular season (including a win over then #1 ranked Mississippi State) and defeat Missouri to take the SEC title. However, their run through 2014 would come to an end in the first round of the playoff in a game which is featured farther down (up?) in this list.
7. #2 LSU defeats #3 Alabama 46-41 (2019)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
This one was a thriller. Billed as one of the most pivotal games of the season, this matchup featured two high-powered offenses led by elite QBs vying for the Heisman Trophy. The winner of this game would have control of the SEC West and the inside track to the conference championship game. As such, a loss in this game had major playoff implications for the Crimson Tide. However, the fact is that star QB Tua Tagovailoa would go on to suffer a season-ending injury against Mississippi State. Without him, it is unlikely that Alabama would have been able to defeat a team such as Ohio State or LSU (again). Additionally, the Tigers (led by Joe Burrow) were simply on another level this season, and it is unlikely that a Mac Jones-led Bama would have been able to take down the eventual champions.
Unlike most prior LSU/Alabama affairs, this matchup was based around the two teams’ potent offenses. The two QBs combined for 811 passing yards and 7 passing TDs, while Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Najee Harris combined for 249 rushing yards and 4 rushing TDs. Despite being down 33-13 at the half, Bama was able to claw their way back into the game with a 21-point outburst in the 4th. However, Burrow was able to lead a long TD drive late in the 4th, giving LSU a 46-34 lead. An 85-yard TD strike to Devonta Smith gave the Tide some hope, but a failed onside kick allowed LSU to run the clock out and conquer Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Alabama would win its next two games, though Tua’s season-ending injury put a damper on the season’s hopes. A loss in the final game of the regular season to archrival Auburn effectively ended the Tide’s playoff hopes, and they would have to settle for a Citrus Bowl win over Michigan. Meanwhile, LSU would dominate the rest of the regular season, claim the SEC Title, and win their two playoff games by scores of 63-28 (Oklahoma) and 42-25 (Clemson). Joe Burrow also set the single-season record for TD passes in NCAA history (60) while also claiming the Heisman Trophy.
6. #15 Auburn defeats #5 Alabama, 48-45 (2019)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
This one was a heartbreaker. It ended Alabama’s playoff hopes, causing them to miss the tournament for the first time since its conception. Like it had so many times before, this game came down to the right foot of the kicker. Joseph Bulovas’s missed 30-yard field goal combined with an illegal substitution penalty on 4th down allowed the Tigers to storm the field in celebration having vanquished their rival’s playoff hopes.
The game itself was a nail-biter from start to finish, with one of the wildest quarters of play in recent memory. In the second quarter alone, six total TDs were scored, five of which occurred between the 5:36 mark and 0:33 mark. A controversial end-of-half ruling afforded Auburn one extra second, which they used to kick a field goal that would ultimately make the difference. Shaun Shivers’s 11-yard TD midway through the fourth would give Auburn the lead for good, as the missed field goal allowed them to run the clock out. QB Mac Jones played admirably (tossing four TDs), but two interceptions (including a 100-yard pick six) doomed the Tide. For Alabama, this loss ended their playoff hopes and dropped them all the way down to #13 and a Citrus Bowl win over Michigan. Following the season, QB Tua Tagovailoa also declared for the NFL Draft. Auburn was not able to capitalize off of the momentum from the win, as they lost to Minnesota in the Outback Bowl. Regardless, the significance of this win from an overall perspective make it important enough to be listed this high on the scale.
5. #11 Oklahoma defeats #3 Alabama 45-31 (2013)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Alabama didn’t care.” It doesn’t change the fact that Oklahoma was 17.5 point dogs entering this game. It was the largest BCS bowl point-spread upset of all time, thanks mostly to the best game of QB Trevor Knight’s QB. A defense loaded with stars such as Jonathan Allen, C.J. Mosley, and HaHa Clinton-Dix was unable to stop the three-headed of… Trevor Knight, LaColtan Bester, and Jalen Saunders? Sure, this game might have not been as impactful as some of the other games on this list, but the sheer absurdity of the point-spread upset is what vaults it up to #5.
Alabama entered this game 11-1 and coming off of a very memorable loss to Auburn (which will be revealed shortly). Meanwhile, Oklahoma had lost a couple of games in the middle of the season, but a win in rivalry week over Oklahoma State propelled them to #10 and a spot in this prestigious bowl. The Sooners outscored the Tide in all but one quarter and took a 31-17 lead into halftime. Two 4th quarter TDs (including a strip-sack of AJ McCarron) allowed Oklahoma to hang on for an unbelievable win. Two McCarron interceptions also led to two Sooner scores, allowing the defense to put a stamp on an otherwise offensively-centric game.
Entering the offseason, Alabama made several major moves in recruiting. They signed OT Cam Robinson, DT Da’Shawn Hand, CB Tony Brown, RB Bo Scarbrough, and CB Marlon Humphery (among others). 2014 would be yet another successful season for the Tide, though it would end with the next game on this list. Meanwhile, Oklahoma would sign players such as Mark Andrews, Curtis Bolton, and Orlando Brown Jr. during the offseason. However, OU would finish with just an 8-5 record, including an OT loss to rival Oklahoma State.
4. #4 Ohio State defeats #1 Alabama 42-35 (2014)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
85 yards through the heart of the South. It’s all that needs to be said about this game. Ezekiel Elliott’s 230 rushing yards through a defense stacked with NFL talent was the difference maker for the Buckeyes. Entering the game with 3rd-string QB Cardale Jones (who, in all fairness, had orchestrated a 58-0 beatdown of Wisconsin in the Big 10 Championship Game), Ohio State was listed as 7.5 point underdogs to the mighty Crimson Tide. The Buckeyes would ultimately go on to win the inaugural College Football Playoff Championship over Oregon, but it’s undeniable that this loss was among the most demoralizing ones of the past decade for Bama fans.
After an evenly matched first half of play, Alabama headed to the locker room with a 21-20 lead on the Buckeyes. An opening drive TD by Ohio State in the second half caused tension to rise around the college football universe. A Blake Sims pick six late in the third allowed Ohio State to grab a two-score lead, one which would prove crucial in the outcome of the game. For the amount of points scored in this game, there were a decent number of three-and-outs forced by both defenses. Elliott’s 85-yard sprint to the endzone gave OSU a 42-28 lead, and in the end, Sims’ hail mary was intercepted by DB Tyvis Powell, ending the game and sending the Buckeyes into the championship.
As previously noted, the Buckeyes would go on to demolish the Oregon Ducks and claim the first ever CFP National Championship. They would follow this championship up with a recruiting class featuring the likes of QB Joe Burrow, DE Sam Hubbard, and FS Malik Hooker. They would finish 2015 with a record of 12-1, though a loss at the hands of the Michigan State Spartans prevented them from making a run at the title once again. Meanwhile, Alabama’s recruiting class featured QB Blake Barnett (the #1 ranked player in the country), Calvin Ridley, and Minkah Fitzpatrick. With a blend of returning starters and talented freshmen, the Tide were able to capture the 2015 CFP National Championship, their first of the post-BCS era.
3. #2 Clemson defeats #1 Alabama 35-31 (2016)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
Finally. “Lil’ old Clemson” makes an appearance on our list. The first of Alabama’s two national championship game losses to be featured, this was one was especially heartbreaking due to the way it ended. After a terrific 30-yard touchdown run by freshman QB Jalen Hurts, Alabama held a 31-28 lead with just over two minutes remaining. Not one to be outdone, Clemson QB Deshaun Watson led the Tigers down the field and threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Hunter Renfrow with one second remaining. This victory gave Clemson their first national championship since 1981 while handing the Tide one of their most shocking defeats of the decade.
Both teams came in having dismantled their previous opponents, with Clemson beating Oklahoma 37-17 and Alabama routing Michigan State 38-0. The game itself lived up to the hype, with neither team being able to truly pull away from the other. Watson’s 420-yard, 3 TD performance solidified his legend status among the Clemson faithful, while despairing Tide fans were left wondering how their defense could have fallen apart in the biggest moment of the season. Bama TE OJ Howard dominated the Clemson defense (much like he had in the prior championship game), but this time, it wasn’t enough to overcome a stellar second-half performance by Clemson. This game truly vaulted the Tigers to elite program status and was among the most exciting of the decade.
During the offseason, Clemson’s recruiting class included RB Travis Etienne, WR Tee Higgins, and WR Amari Rodgers. The team would finish 12-2, their only loss of the regular season coming in an upset @ Syracuse. Alabama would have a similarly stacked class, bringing in DE Isaiah Buggs (JUCO), RB Najee Harris, and WR Jerry Jeudy. Their only loss of the season would come to Auburn in the lowest-ranked game on this list. Ironically, these two squads would meet once again in the CFP semifinal game. In it, Alabama would avenge their championship loss, with a late pick six by Mack Wilson clinching a 24-6 win for the Tide.
2. #2 Clemson defeats #1 Alabama 44-16 (2018)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
The biggest beatdown of the decade? Maybe not, but this was probably the most embarrassing loss of the decade for the Tide (it was also their worst loss by point differential of the decade). Coming in as the wire-to-wire #1 ranked team, many believed that this offense (led by QB Tua Tagovailoa) was unstoppable. Nevertheless, the Tigers had other plans, as they held Tagovailoa under 300 passing yards and forced 2 INTs. A loss on a stage this big combined with the fact that it was the biggest Bama loss during the Nick Saban era cause this loss to be in the penultimate spot on this list.
Make no mistake: Clemson was (and is) no slouch either. Once freshman QB Trevor Lawrence took over, it became clear that these were the two best teams in the country. Lawrence’s excellent season culminated in this game, and boy did he shine. 347 passing yards and 3 TDs on one of the best secondaries in the country led many to believe that Lawrence could immediately be the #1 pick in the upcoming NFL Draft (despite not being eligible for two more years). This game was also Tigers WR Justyn Ross’ coming-out party, as the 5* frosh repeatedly made spectacular grabs around, over, and through the helpless Bama defense. A dominant effort by Clemson put an exclamation point on a perfect season and solidified the Tigers’ position in college football - as perhaps the best team in all the land.
Following this effort, Clemson would be rewarded with a recruiting class which featured the likes of WR Frank Ladson, WR Joe Ngata, and LB Kane Patterson. Clemson would roll through their regular season schedule (save for a September scare against Mack Brown’s Tar Heels) before defeating Ohio State in an epic CFP semifinal game. Eventually, the Tigers ran into the buzzsaw that was LSU, losing 42-25 in the national championship. Meanwhile, Alabama picked up LB Christian Harris, OT Evan Neal, and K Will Reichard. The 2019 offseason also saw the emotional departure of QB Jalen Hurts, who would go on to finish second in Heisman voting at Oklahoma. Though the Tide started off 8-0, they lost to high-powered LSU before losing Tagovailoa to a brutal hip injury. A late-season loss to Auburn sent the Tide to the Citrus Bowl, where they would defeat Michigan 35-16.
1. #4 Auburn defeats #1 Alabama 34-28 (2013)
Highlights
ESPN Box Score
Yeah, this one was really bad. If losing on a 109-yard missed field goal return touchdown to your archrival wasn’t bad enough, consider that it kept Alabama out of the SEC Championship Game and a berth in the BCS National Championship Game. Who claimed these coveted spots instead? That’s right: Auburn. The Alabama offense played great in this game, and they definitely had their highlights (Amari Cooper’s 99-yard TD comes to mind). But the defense was unable to stop Tre Mason. Oh, did I mention that Bama’s kicker missed three field goals? This game also brought us probably the most disastrous missed field goal of the Saban era, and it all occurred because T.J. Yeldon stepped out of bounds one second before time expired in regulation.
Three Bama TDs in the second quarter gave the Tide a 21-14 lead at halftime, though the run game had definitely gashed Alabama in the first half. A blocked Alabama field goal with 2:32 kept the Tide’s lead at 28-21, and Auburn took advantage of the short field to find Sammie Coates in the endzone for the tying score with just 0:32 remaining. With just 0:07, Yeldon bounced to the outside and scampered for 24 yards to the Auburn 38-yard line. While Yeldon was originally ruled to have stepped out of bounds as time expired, review put 0:01 back on the clock. Nick Saban sent Adam Griffith out (instead of their normal kicker Cade York) for a 57-yard attempt. Gus Malzahn responded by putting CB/KR Chris Davis in the back of the endzone for a possible return. What happened next was a moment in history. Auburn fans stormed the field in jubilation while Nick Saban walked out onto the field dejected. This victory came just two weeks after an unlikely (to say the least) 4th-and-18 TD gave Auburn the unlikely win over Georgia.
Following this monumental win, Auburn would beat Missouri to claim the SEC title and a spot in the BCS National Championship. Unfortunately, their run would come to an end in Pasadena, as a last-second TD pass from Jameis Winston to Kelvin Benjamin gave Florida State a 34-31 victory and the national championship. Alabama dropped to #3 after the game, sending them to the Sugar Bowl against Oklahoma (which would be yet another loss). This moment could even be considered program-defining for Auburn and the “Kick Six” continues to be replayed to this day.
And there you have it! All 12 losses for Alabama since 2011, ranked. Let me know what you thought of my final list and if you feel anything was ranked too low/too high.

CFB, since 1992 at least, has sought to avoid a split title by either having a no questions asked four team playoff, or a two-team playoff where #1 and #2 meet in the national title game. From 1992 to 1997 this wasn't always possible as the Big Ten and Pac-10 weren't signatories to both the Bowl Alliance and Bowl Coalition, so split titles were still possible (see 1997 Michigan and Nebraska), but in general, it did work more often than not.
What's fun for someone like me isn't inherently seeing how the current system plays out, but seeing how things would shape up this year if we'd have used prior methods of crowing a champion.
I'm going to do this through a few means. First of all, I'm going to set the rest of the season as far as it needs to crown a national champion under various systems. Then, I'll look at the probabilities and see which team likely would've been the national champion, as well as looking at if a split championship would have been had.
The spread I'll be using will be a composite ranking I've made using a combination of Sagarin, ESPN's FPI, Bill Connely's SP+, and TeamRankings.com which usually gives fairly good results. Games for this week could be done using just the Vegas spread, but for consistency's sake, I'll be using the composite I've made.
Implied win probabilities are done via a point spread study versus win probability. All win probabilities shown are ballpark estimates based on the chart.

1936 to 1960s/1970s: Bowl Games? With Title Implications? Why?

The AP poll from its inception from 1936 to the 1964 season wrapped up after the first week in December. In 1965 it released a post-bowl poll, but didn't for '66 and '67, before finally deciding to make a post-bowl poll permanent in 1968. The Coaches Poll did the same from its inception in 1950 to 1974. This meant that a team won a national championship before the bowl games took place. As weird as this sounds, bowl games were considered a tier above exhibition games but not the same as the rest of the season.
For 2019, something like this would be pretty straightforward. Instead of Selection Sunday being for a tournament selection, it would instead be the announcement of a national champion (or champions).

Title Race

Rankings are current and parenthesis indicate how far back a team is to 1st place.

Rank	AP Poll	Coaches Poll
1	LSU	LSU
2	Ohio State (-30)	Ohio State (-29)
3	Clemson (-51)	Clemson (-95)
4	Georgia (-172)	Georgia (-183)
5	Utah (-253)	Utah (-251)
6	Oklahoma (-271)	Oklahoma (-283)
7	Florida (-393)	Florida (-442)
8	Baylor (-454)	Baylor (-460)

Florida is out of the title race altogether since Baylor would pass them with a conference title game victory and Oklahoma is already ahead. With everyone else in play, our league championship games become even more high stakes than they already were.

League	Team 1	Team 2	Tm1 Spread	Implied Win Prob
SEC	#1 LSU	#4 Georgia	-3.2	~57%
Big Ten	#2 Ohio State	#10 Wisconsin	-13.7	~82%
Big XII	#6 Oklahoma	#8 Baylor	-6.4	~70%
ACC	#3 Clemson	#22 Virginia	-22.9	~94%
Pac-12	#5 Utah	#13 Oregon	-2.8	~55%

Although LSU is #1, Ohio State is nipping at their heels only 30 points behind. LSU probably is not in total control of their destiny in this scenario, as a blowout Ohio State win could vault the Buckeyes above the Tigers, even with a Tigers win.
Clemson's championship probability hinges on both Ohio State and LSU losing their league title games, as well as obviously winning their league championship game against Virginia. With the implied point spreads and win probability data, this has about a 7% chance of happening, so not likely but still possible.
Georgia being at the #4 slot has a lot of interesting implications. The teams behind them would have opponents further down in the rankings than them, and with the #1 team being the one they have to beat, the other behind them could not equal it in terms of a recent quality win. Essentially, all teams below Georgia would be eliminated from national title contention.
While all this does make for a much, much, much more interesting Saturday, it leaves quite a lot to be desired from a big picture point of view. Specifically, with the highest probability result being three undefeated teams, it likely means a split title. As well as that, Clemson too would likely be able to have a few major selectors outside the major polls in their corner as well.
Needless to say, there's a reason both polls decided to expand to include bowl results.
Most Likely Champion: LSU
Would There Likely Be A Split Champion?: absolutely

1970s to 1991, Okay We Do Bowls Now, Please Stop Asking Us To Do More Shit

It seems logical to assume we'd be less likely to see a split champion with one more result against a decent team factored in. Naturally, the first year both polls released after bowls, there was a split championship (USC and Alabama in 1974).
Still, it was better considering it at least took the entire year into account. However, it does mean that getting a #1 vs. #2 was extremely reliant on conference bowl tie ins -- if you were in a conference.
Historically, bowl tie-ins looked like this. This does not represent one specific year, but an amalgam of that period in the sport

Bowl	Bid #1	Bid #2	Alternate
Rose Bowl	Big Ten #1	Pac-10 #1
Sugar Bowl	SEC #1	Big Eight/ SWC #2	At-Large (higher than #11)
Orange Bowl	Big Eight #1	At-Large (higher than #13)
Cotton Bowl	Southwest #1	At-Large	Notre Dame
Fiesta Bowl	At-Large	At-Large	Any #2
Citrus Bowl	ACC #1	At-Large (southern pref.)
Gator Bowl	SEC/ ACC	At-Large (non-southern)
Holiday Bowl	WAC #1	At-Large (major fanbase pref.)
Peach Bowl	ACC/ SEC	Big Ten/Big East/northern independent
Hall of Fame (Outback) Bowl	SEC/ ACC	At-Large (non-southern)
Sun Bowl	SWC/ SEC	At-Large

Mapping this onto the modern landscape is a bit of a challenge but not too much of one. We can substitute the Mountain West for the old WAC, but for title implications, we can sorta split the Big XII into two; the top Texas team goes to the Cotton Bowl, while the top team from the rest of the league goes to the Orange Bowl.

Title Race

Assuming all favorites win, the poll that comes out after the conference title games would look something like this.

1. LSU
2. Ohio State
3. Clemson
4. Oklahoma
5. Utah
6. Georgia
7. Florida
8. Alabama
9. Baylor
10. Auburn
11. Penn State
12. Notre Dame
13. Wisconsin
14. Minnesota
15. Oregon

Using that, our 2019 bowls using the 70s and 80s alignments would look something like this.

Bowl	Team 1	Team 2
Rose Bowl	#2 Ohio State	#5 Utah
Sugar Bowl	#1 LSU	#11 Penn State
Citrus Bowl	#3 Clemson	#7 Florida
Orange Bowl	#4 Oklahoma	#6 Georgia
Cotton Bowl	#9 Baylor	#12 Notre Dame
Fiesta Bowl	#16 Memphis	#15 Oregon
Gator Bowl	#8 Alabama	#13 Wisconsin
Outback Bowl	#10 Auburn	#14 Minnesota
Peach Bowl	#25(?) Virginia	#17(?) Michigan
Sun Bowl	SMU	#18(?) Iowa
Holiday Bowl	#19(?) Boise State	#24(?) USC

January 2nd's final ranking would be extremely interesting if everyone wins out. LSU has a much easier opponent but Ohio State has much more ability to impress via style points. Clemson playing Florida is also higher ranked than LSU's opponent. Oklahoma, our Big XII champion, is also facing a very good Georgia team. With Florida at #7 and having losses to both LSU and Georgia, they would likely be eliminated from title contention, as well as all teams below them.
With that in mind, our only real championship contenders would be participating in these games.

Favored	Opponent	Spread	Implied Win Prob
#1 LSU	#11 Penn State	-7.2	~72%
#2 Ohio State	#5 Utah	-14.3	~85%
#3 Clemson	#7 Florida	-8.8	~73%
#4 Oklahoma	#6 Georgia	+0.1	~50%

Our spread amounts mean Ohio State would likely impress far more than LSU would in their bowl game, and thus, would be my pick to win the national title.
Most Likely Champion: Ohio State
Would There Likely Be A Split Champion?: more likely than not

1992-1994: pls no big ten pac-10 pls no big ten pac-10

After Georgia Tech and Colorado's split title in 1990 and Washington and Miami's split title in 1991, the powers that be decided to write on a napkin what they were gonna do about it.
Instead of just having the bowls set according to whatever conference lucked or negotiated into which tie-in, the major conferences* and the major bowls* decided to pool together and force a #1 vs. #2 matchup if they could. This was called the Bowl Coalition, something that sounds vaguely like it should have first strike capability.
This, and its successor, the Bowl Alliance, had a major issue though: the Big Ten and the Pac-10, as well as the Rose Bowl, did not like the idea of sending their champions away or forgoing their traditional matchup. Therefore, they weren't part of either, and the split championship was still possible.

Title Race

2019 if run under this system would've seen the Big Ten/Pac-10 problem. Ohio State at #2 is going to throw a wrench in our "match the teams up if #1 vs. #2" philosophy.
Under this system, we have three conferences (SEC, Big XII, and ACC) that will send their champions to major bowls, and six bowls to send them to. However, Ohio State would need to lose to Wisconsin to have a real shot at forcing a #1 vs. #2 matchup.
There were a few changes to the bowl bids. The ACC did not seem to have a set top end bid, but twice they sent FSU to the Orange and once to the Sugar (against Florida). Therefore, the ACC is treated as an at-large.
These would be our bowl games. Rankings are the same as the hypothetical one above in the prior section. We're only taking into account "tier 1" Bowl Coalition bowls, plus the Rose Bowl.

Bowl	Team 1	Team 2
Rose Bowl	#2 Ohio State	#5 Utah
Sugar Bowl	#1 LSU	#3 Clemson
Cotton Bowl	#9 Baylor	#6 Georgia
Orange Bowl	#4 Oklahoma	#7 Florida
Fiesta Bowl	#8 Alabama	#10 Penn State

Again, we look at the bowl matchups with title implications, which are the Rose, Sugar, and Orange Bowls.

Team	Opponent	Spread	Implied Win Prob
#2 Ohio State	#5 Utah	-14.3	~85%
#1 LSU	#3 Clemson	+1.4	~48%
#4 Oklahoma	#7 Florida	-1.1	~51%

Ohio State seems to really have the inside track here, as LSU would actually be a 1.5 point underdog or so according to the composite rating. Oklahoma would need quite a lot to break their way and a massive blowout to even be in consideration.
Most Likely Champion: Ohio State
Would There Likely Be A Split Champion?: Ohio State would probably wrap up either one of the AP or Coaches title, but either Clemson or LSU with a win would likely to win the other poll championship. The answer is an almost definite yes in that case.

1995-1997: Look! Look! We Did The Same Thing Again, But With Style

The difference between the earlier Bowl Coalition, and the Bowl Alliance, is mostly nothing. It still didn't include the Big Ten champion or Pac-10 champion, nor mid-majors. Instead, changes were mostly cosmetic or led by the leagues themselves. The Bowl Alliance ditched everything that wasn't a tier one bowl (Orange, Fiesta, Sugar), and ensured that the top two teams in the polls (hopefully #1 and #2...hopefully) from the Alliance conferences met in a "title" game that had the distinct possibility of not being a title game.
With the Big Eight and SWC merging to form the Big XII and the Big XII sending their champion to the Fiesta Bowl instead of either the Orange or Cotton Bowls. Also, teams from the Pac-10 or Big Ten could get a bid to one of the bowls, but only if they weren't the champion.
The Big East sent their champion to the Orange Bowl and the ACC is a sort of free agent able to be sent anywhere.

Title Race

Gonna be a nice copy and paste situation here. Our favorites have won, and our poll looks the same as it did in a prior section. The only difference is where the teams are sent.

Bowl	Team 1	Team 2
Rose Bowl	#2 Ohio State	#5 Utah
Fiesta Bowl	#1 LSU	#3 Clemson
Orange Bowl	#4 Oklahoma	#7 Florida
Sugar Bowl	#6 Georgia	#9 Baylor

The Fiesta Bowl, if we're magically bringing back the alliance for 2019 after a 22 year rest, will be the host of our "championship" game.
Only three teams would have a realistic shot at a national championship with #1 LSU playing #3 Clemson and Ohio State playing against #5 Utah. We've already rehearsed this in the Bowl Coalition scenario with spreads and win probabilities, so it's Ohio State very likely to win at least one of the poll titles, with LSU and Clemson squabbling over another one of the poll titles.
Most Likely Champion: Ohio State
Would There Likely Be A Split Champion?: In two of the three seasons this system existed, there was a split champion. There is no reason to think that a split championship would not occur if Ohio State won the Rose Bowl.

1998-2013: The BCS, aka ooooh #1 vs #2 shiny

For the vast majority of this sub, this is the national championship system you remember growing up with. The rules were fairly simple now that the Big Ten and Pac-10 were in; the top two teams in the BCS standings met in a national championship game, while the four major bowl games (Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange) would retain the bids they wanted. The BCS's selection system is as follows

• No more than two teams from any conference can get a BCS bowl bid.
• BCS conference champions (ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Big East, SEC, Pac-10) were granted an automatic bid.
• Teams from outside needed to be either in the top 12 of the BCS standings or top 16 and better than one of the BCS conference champions
• The at-large teams are chosen from a pool of schools that were both in the top 14 of the standings and had 9+ wins. If enough teams are not filled by the top 14, then four more teams would be added until enough teams became available.

As some of you might notice, I'm using the 2006-2013 procedure for this scenario, since prior rules were much harsher and had two less bids available.
Bowl bids themselves changed. The ACC now sends their champion to the Orange Bowl, and since the Big East doesn't exist anymore, that bid is converted to an at-large. The Big XII will still send their champion to the Fiesta Bowl.

Title Race

Thanks to the twitter account @BCSKnowHow, we have an idea of how the BCS would look heading into this final week. If we assume all our favorites win, as we have through this whole exercise, then a simulated BCS heading into the bowls may look like this.

1. Ohio State
2. LSU
3. Clemson
4. Oklahoma
5. Utah
6. Georgia
7. Florida
8. Penn State
9. Baylor
10. Alabama
11. Auburn
12. Wisconsin
13. Notre Dame
14. Memphis
15. Oregon
16. Michigan

With our rules in place and our bowl bids set, our 2019-20 BCS looks like this.

Bowl	Team 1	Team 2
National Championship	#1 Ohio State	#2 LSU
Orange Bowl	#3 Clemson	#14 Memphis
Fiesta Bowl	#4 Oklahoma	#15 Oregon
Sugar Bowl	#6 Georgia	#9 Baylor
Rose Bowl	#5 Utah	#8 Penn State

According to our composite, Ohio State would be favored by a little over 7 points against LSU. We'll assume for brevity that they win the title game. With Clemson being a 16 point or so favorite over Memphis, Clemson would wrap up an undefeated season unless Memphis comes out like 2017 UCF. However, if the most probable scenario happens, we'll have two undefeated power conference champions.
Most Likely Champion: Ohio State
Would There Likely Be A Split Champion?: Clemson would almost certainly gain some minor selectors, enough for them to be printed in the NCAA's record book as a national champion similar to 2004 Auburn. However, Ohio State in this scenario would likely do like 2004 USC did; be voted by both the AP and Coaches as national champions and be the ones holding the crystal ball. Thus, while technically yes there would be, it is unlikely that Clemson would be recognized as co-equal with Ohio State in this scenario.

Is Any of This Shit Better Than Now?

If your goal is to crown a champion? Well, duh, no it isn't.
If your goal is to argue about who the champion is? Yes, all of them are.
I don't know if there was really a point for me to make doing this. One could see it as showing people perhaps new to the sport that what we have now, as shit as it is, is quite a bit better than what we used to have. But, I also think there's a small but kinda noticeable downside; the playoff is inherently less zany in a sport built upon zaniness.
Anyways, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. If you like it, great, and if you didn't, your honesty is probably needed but also soul-crushing.

As we hole up in our homes and ride out the coronavirus pandemic, we need some content to pass the time. After all, there's only so much Netflix and so much pornhub that one man can handle. In the interest of providing some OC for the sub, I'm going to write more long-form posts about various topics around the league.
We already did a deep dive on the Brooklyn Nets, and Detroit PF Christian Wood. Today, we're going to take a look at a coach who -- like Christian Wood -- was having a very fine year before this coronavirus got in the way.
Let's highlight Oklahoma City's Billy Donovan and examine his past, his present, and his future.
PART ONE: Rick Pitino's Pride and Joy
To many younger fans, Rick Pitino is best known as a disgraced college coach, or as a failed NBA coach. But in the scope of college basketball history as a whole, Pitino is still one of the giants. He made the Final Four with three separate schools (at Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville), and ranks as one of the winningest coaches of all time (despite having 100+ wins vacated due to scandal!)
No coach can claim the mantle of Pitino's protege quite like Billy Donovan. Donovan played under Pitino at Providence, where he served as the team's point guard. As you'd expect, Donovan was a plucky gym rat. Sneaky athlete. "First one in, last one out" kind of guy. But all jokes and racial bias aside, Donovan actually did merit that type of reputation. Pitino later called him the hardest worker he'd ever coached. Pitino must have seen a lot of himself in young Donovan; as a player, Pitino had also been a gritty and overachieving point guard from New York, too. As a player, Donovan had more success than Pitino did. He helped lead Providence to the Final Four, and even had a cup of coffee as a pro for a bit.
Later on, Donovan ended up serving as an assistant coach under Pitino at Kentucky, arguably at the height of Pitino's reign. And like any top lieutenant, he was destined to land his own job soon enough. Marshall (then a struggling 9-18 team) made Donovan the youngest coach in the country at 28 years old. Donovan immediately led the team to 2 winning seasons before leaving for the University of Florida.
PART TWO: Reaching the (Widow's) Peak
At Florida, Billy Donovan had some solid success, including 7 straight seasons with 20+ wins. However, postseason glory had been eluding the Gators. Until... they found it.
Led by two sophomore big men in Joakim Noah and Al Horford, Donovan's Gators emerged as a force during the 2005-06 season, and got better and better along the way. The # 3 seeded team ended up running the table, beating UCLA in the national title game. In almost every similar circumstance, that would lead to a massive exodus of their stars to the pros. However, Noah, Horford, and their fellow starters (which included SF Corey Brewer, PG Taurean Green, and SG Lee Humphrey) collectively decided to return to school and try to do it all over again. Suffice it to say, that type of decision would be quite shocking today.
As you may know, the veterans ended up accomplishing their goal, repeating as champions in the 2007 tournament. At first blush, you may think that would be a fait accompli and a cakewalk for a veteran team like that, but winning the NCAA Tournament is never that easy. Even if you presume a team will win 85% of their games, their chances of winning 6 games in a row is less than 38%. Moreover, that happened to be a stacked Final Four, where the Gators had to beat UCLA (with Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook) and Ohio State (with Mike Conley and future top pick Greg Oden.)
PART THREE: Look Before You Leap
Naturally, a two-time national champion (still only 42 years old) would become a hugely coveted prize in NBA circles, presuming anyone could pry him out of the state. And no one did pry him out of the state, because Billy Donovan signed a huge contract to become the head coach with the Orlando Magic. They even had an introductory press conference and everything. However, Donovan ultimately got cold feet about the change, and decided to go back to school instead. (Don't cry for Orlando, Argentina; they ended up hiring Stan Van Gundy, who did quite well.)
Donovan ended up staying 7 more seasons in Gainesville, with more mixed results. They made the Elite Eight four more times, but also missed the tournament three times. Perhaps his most impressive season in his entire Florida tenure was in 2013-14, when he rode a more-limited team to a 36-3 record and a Final Four appearance. Unlike those title teams, this group had very little NBA talent; the most decorated pro among them would be Dorian Finney-Smith, who was a backup at the time.
Ultimately, Donovan decided to finally make the leap (for real) to the NBA, signing with the Oklahoma City Thunder to replace Scottie Brooks. Presumably, Donovan felt like he had accomplished everything that he could in college. Or at least, at his particular program. The Florida Gators had fallen behind in the race for the super one-and-done talent, and wouldn't figure to be a dynasty any time soon. And with that decision, a new challenge emerged.
PART FOUR: Trials and Tribulations of a "Rookie" Head Coach
No doubt, part of the reason that Billy Donovan agreed to go to the NBA was the chance to coach the talented Oklahoma City Thunder. Scottie Brooks had done an admirable job with the team during his run, but it appeared as though they may have plateaued. The NBA Finals appearance was behind them -- the Kevin Durant MVP season was behind them -- James Harden was behind them. They needed a fresh spark, somehow, some way, to fulfill their long-standing potential.
In the first season (of his five-year contract), Billy Donovan had some growing pains, but also a lot of success. The Oklahoma City offense jumped up to 112.4 points per 100 possessions, 2nd best in the NBA and the best in the franchise's run in OKC. They finished 55-27 in the regular season, with a +7.3 point differential. In many seasons, that may be good enough to earn a # 1 seed.
But not in 2015-2016. That happened to be an HISTORICALLY good year for the Western Conference. Famously, Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors broke the record with 73 regular season wins. Less famously (and often forgotten by history), the San Antonio Spurs also won 67 games. They had an emerging superstar in Kawhi Leonard, a prime LaMarcus Aldridge, and the best statistical defense in the NBA. In the conference semi-finals, the Spurs shellacked the Thunder in Game 1 (124-92), and ultimately took a 2-1 series lead. However, the Thunder battled back, winning 3 games in a row to upset the veteran squad and move on. We all may remember what happened next. The Thunder stunned the Warriors and went up to a 3-1 lead, before ultimately cracking and losing 3 games in a row and going home in bitter defeat.
Looking back, that Thunder team is often seen as "chokers." But we have to acknowledge the good here. Yes, they blew a 3-1 lead, but they also got a 3-1 lead. This isn't like Donald Trump being born on third base and thinking he hit a triple. Oklahoma City earned those three wins, and Billy Donovan deserved some credit for helping them do that (with some unconventional super-big lineups along the way.) Ultimately, the Warriors figured it out, and ultimately their shooting came back. I wouldn't say that was inevitable, but it shouldn't be shocking (especially in a series where Kevin Durant shot 28.6% from three and Harrison Barnes shot 52.6%).
Don't get me wrong; if we're giving Billy Donovan partial credit, we should also give him partial blame. Phil Jackson became a legend for taking "very good" teams and turning them into "great" teams. As a rookie NBA coach, Donovan couldn't get that done. When push came to shove, the Thunder fell back into bad habits (like iso ball) and lost. Moreover, Donovan couldn't fix whatever cracks had emerged under the surface of the locker room, as Kevin Durant bounced for Golden State the following year.
PART FIVE: One Man Show
When Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City in free agency, the franchise (understandably) struggled to replace him. Over the course of a few seasons, they'd have lost two of the NBA's best players, and only have one left in their wake. Russell Westbrook took on an enormous workload, oftentimes carrying the team on his back -- for better or worse.
We've seen plenty of examples of each. That following season, "Good Russ" would average 31.6 points, 10.7 rebounds, 10.4 assists, and step up in clutch situations time and time again. Even the Westbrook haters (like myself) who thought James Harden should have won MVP would concede that Westbrook would be what... 2nd? 3rd? That's hardly a bum.
Of course, we also saw "Bad Russ." His shooting efficiency continued to wane -- dropping to 52% and 50% true shooting the next two years -- but his workload never did. He continued to jack up 20+ shots and 4+ threes those next two seasons, despite shooting below 30% from distance. And despite that obvious problem, coach Billy Donovan couldn't rein in his superstar or convince him to change his approach. In some ways, it harkened back to his problems in the Golden State series.
In Donovan (and Westbrook's) defense, it's not like the Oklahoma City Thunder had a lot of options. In an ideal world, you'd surround an attacker like Westbrook with 4 shooters, like Milwaukee has done with Giannis Antetokounmpo and like Houston has tried to do with Westbrook now. But prior to Paul George's arrival, OKC had some of the worst spacing in the league. Consider this: in Westbrook's MVP season, he shot a career-high from three (34.3%), but the Thunder as a team still shot an NBA-worst 32.7% as a team. In the modern NBA, that's a recipe for a first-round exit, which is exactly what happened three times in a row. 1-4. 2-4. 1-4 (even with Paul George.)
Effectively, Billy Donovan has lost 15 of his last 19 playoff games (going back to the Warriors series.)
PART SIX: Rising from the Dead like Lazarus
This past summer, Sam Presti called up the Acme Corporation and ordered some dynamite. Time to blow it up. Paul George: traded. Russell Westbrook: traded. Billy Donovan...? Eh... Kept. For now. After all, the clock was running out on his initial contract. They'd pick up an option on the last year of his deal, but not give him an extension beyond that. He'd enter the season as a lame duck. A dead man walking.
But as it turned out, Presti's dynamite order was about as effective as Wile E. Coyote's.
The 2019-20 team felt like a Frankenstein's monster: a mash-up of several different teams. You had the leftovers from before (Steven Adams, Dennis Schroder), the young bucks for the impending rebuild (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), and the veterans that were supposed to be flipped at a garage sale (Chris Paul, Danilo Gallinari.) But oddly enough, that hodgepodge actually gelled together like jambalaya. Prior to the stoppage, the Thunder were 40-24, good enough for a pace that would have translated to a 51-win pace. Keep in mind: the Thunder had only won 47, 48, and 49 games the prior three years.
Oklahoma City's surprising success has a few major contributors (turns out Chris Paul isn't dead either), but Billy Donovan deserves at least partial credit. This year's OKC team felt more like a Billy Donovan team in several ways. The scoring has been balanced, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari and Dennis Schroder nearly identical (19.3, 19.2, 19.0 respectively) and CP3 not far behind them at 17.7. That harkens back to Donovan's successful college teams. During that first title win, all five of his starters averaged between 10.9 and 14.2 points. The following year (the repeat), the spread was even closer, with all five starters averaging between 10.3 and 13.3. Similarly, that last Final Four team (the one without much pro talent) had four leading scorers who averaged between 11.0 and 13.8 points. Balance, ball movement from 1-5 -- two areas that OKC had struggled with prior.
Moreover, Donovan and Oklahoma City have found success this year with "smallball" lineups in regards to the backcourt. He's often played two point guards together, and even three at the same time (SGA, CP3, and Schroder.) In the past, playing multiple point guards at once had been derided dismissively as a "college" thing to do (Jay Wright and Bill Self have had success with the same at Villanova and Kansas). And as it turns out, it's been one of Oklahoma City's most effective lineups this year as well. In that way, and several others, this team has started to take on more of Donovan's identity. Or at least, felt more in simpatico with their coach.
PART SEVEN: Coming to a Fork in the Road
And with that, Billy Donovan and the Oklahoma City Thunder became one of the most pleasant surprises of the 2019-20 season. Together, they lived happily ever after. The end.
Of course, happy endings only exist in Grimms' fairy tales and Robert Kraft's massage parlors. In our cold, cruel world, there are far more nuances at play here. The chief among them: the fact that Donovan's initial 5-year contract is set to expire at the end of the season (whenever that may be.) As far as I'm aware, the team hasn't announced an extension for him yet (although they could have agreed to terms behind closed doors.)
It'd be easy to presume Sam Presti and Billy Donovan can work out a long-term extension here, which could be in the interest of both parties. That said, Donovan has a lot more leverage in this situation than he did a few years ago. He's improved as an NBA coach and re-established his credibility; he could land another NBA job, or go back to a top-notch NCAA program if he preferred.
Staying in OKC should be the first choice, of course. As mentioned, the team is not only pretty good right now, but also has a bright future with Gilgeous-Alexander and a boatload of draft picks coming down the pike. At the same time, it's not a perfect situation. Chris Paul is already 34, and locked up on a bloated contract. Danilo Gallinari is 31, and slated for free agency. There's a decent chance this team may chalk this season up as a nice little storyline, but then brace for a long rebuild after that.
So what will Billy Donovan do? What should Donovan do? Let's take a closer look at some of the options.
PART EIGHT: Surveying the (Cloudy) Landscape
In a normal circumstance, Billy Donovan may have a plethora of options. But as we all know, this isn't a normal circumstance anymore. The COVID-19 virus is going to affect millions -- and some in serious, fatal ways. I don't want to undersell the gravity of that. Then again, this is a basketball post, so let's focus on the basketball ramifications here.
And through that lens, this won't be a normal NBA season or normal NBA offseason at all. It's going to be hard for teams to scout draft prospects -- it's going to be hard for them to meet with free agents -- it's going to be hard for them to interview coaches. Moreover, teams may be reluctant to make a coaching change, presuming that a new coach may have an abbreviated training time with his new team. In some ways, it may spare the hot-seat coaches like Jim Boylen (CHI) or Scottie Brooks (WAS).
However, there are two jobs that have already opened up, pre virus. And as fate would have it, both happen to be in Billy Donovan's home state of New York.
Of the two, the Brooklyn Nets would have the most appeal for a coach who wants to "win now." At the same time, Billy Donovan isn't likely to the top choice of the organization and its stars. After all, Donovan and Kevin Durant have worked together already, and it didn't end well. I wouldn't say there's any antipathy or ill feelings there, but there's at least some baggage.
Conversely, the New York Knicks may be the better fit, for a number of reasons. The organization is still in a rebuilding mold, so a former college coach could work there to help develop the players and take ownership of the locker room. Unlike the Nets, the Knicks don't have signature stars who may bump against an outside voice to guide them or make tweaks to their game. Perhaps R.J. Barrett can be that star, but he's not there yet. Donovan could try to mold the young Knicks to fit his personality and his style. And if new president Leon Rose actually wants Donovan, then money shouldn't be an issue either.
There's also the karmic fit as well. As mentioned, Donovan is also from New York; he grew up in Rockville Centre, Long Island. To Donovan, there would be some lingering mystique about the franchise. He would have been 8 years old when the Knicks last won their title in 1973. Returning the Knicks to the promised land would represent a huge and historic accomplishment. It's an epic challenge that's been attempted before by several coaches, including one named... wait for it... Rick Pitino.
PART NINE: The Bottom Line
We can play out several hypotheticals, including Billy Donovan returning home to New York to take over the Knicks, or Donovan returning to a blueblood NCAA program.
However, the most realistic scenario would be Donovan re-signing with Oklahoma City, and continuing to lead this new-look team going forward. But if that happens, Donovan will have some leverage here. He's improved as an NBA coach over the years, and finally won over the OKC fanbase. Simply put, his stock is back up around the basketball landscape. If the Thunder want to keep him, they're going to need to pony up a healthy salary and a longer extension (3 years? 4 years?) then most coaches who have survived the hot seat have enjoyed.