White Boy Profile #4: Jeff Foster

Origin: January 16, 1977 in San Antonio, Tx.

Upbringing:  Played his college ball at Southwest Texas State University (Bobby Bouche, anyone?)

Keys to his Game: How on Earth is this guy an 11 year NBA veteran?  He has never averaged more than 7 points or 9 rebounds.  He is perfectly mediocre.  Keys to his game?  He sets great screens.  Seriously.  He is a marginal rebounder for his height.  He covers the baseline.  Bless his heart, he has earned over $40 million in the NBA.  

Best White Boy Feature: It is a tie between his pre-balding poof and his appeared cluelessnesss

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Interesting observations:  Again, how has this guy pulled in $40 million?  The most points he ever scored in a game was 19... twice.  11 year pro and he never even broke the 20 point barrier.  I got to give the guy credit.  White boys have a unique ability of just remaining mediocre.

NBA Career:  Only in Indiana can  Jeff Foster remain relevant for a decade.  How is it that this guy is an NBA vet when this guy never even sniffed the court 

Amazing.  Watching this video is sad to think this kid never had a legitimate shot.

Nickname(s): N/A
Proposed New Nickname:  Survivor Man

Closest Comparison (Current or Historic): 

ALL THE WAY!!!

White Boy Level: 5 out 10.  Pedestrian white boy who never broke double digits in rebounds or points

Skill Level: 3 out of 10.  Jeff Foster, you will never cease to amaze me.

White Boy Profile #3: Brad Miller

I have to say I am impressed Brad Miller is even still in the league.  Going back to his Purdue days, who knew we would still be watching his big white behind 13 years later.

Origin: April 12, 1976 in Kendallville, Ind.  If you are keeping score, that is 2 white boys from Indiana.

Upbringing: Played 3 years high school ball in Kendallville before transferring to a prep school in Maine his senior year.  Went to Purdue where he was an instrumental member on some very physical Gene Keady teams.  He was consistently average scoring 1,400 pts, grabbing 800 boards and dishing 250 assists.  He will be remembered as a tough guy for busting his chin open in his final game but refusing to stay off the floor.  And bonus white boy points for playing on the same collegiate team as Brian Cardinal, another proto-type NBA white boy.

Keys to his Game: Strong physical player with a large frame and farmers build.  Brad Miller looks mean but he has a sweet mid range jumper which has kept him relevant in the NBA.   He is not the typical rebound/shot block center you would expect.  He is a sweet shooter.  After all, he is an Indiana boy, less we forget.

Best White Boy Feature: The B.A. go-tee

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(5 great things: Oakley GANG tackles everyone, Marcus Fizer haha remember that guy?, Brad Miller shirtless, Kobe has no sympathy for Shaq, Ron Artest is the calming influence in this fight.)  Wow.

Interesting observations: He wore corn rows back in Sactown.  What on Earth was he thinking?

NBA Career: Undrafted and went to play in Italy during the lockout before being picked up by the Hornets in 98.  He is well known for his years with the Kings and Bulls.  He also had a stint with the Pacers and will be suiting up for the Rockets this year.

Nickname(s):Boss (not validated)
Proposed New Nickname: The Big Mean Shooting Machine

Closest Comparison (Current or Historic): Mehmet Okur

White Boy Level: 8 out of 10.  Brad has flourished in the league despite being undrafted and rather pedestrian through his college years.  He has found success because of his ability to shoot and play a physically demanding position.  

Skill Level: 6 out of 10.  Not an incredible rebounder or shot blocker hurts his overall skill level.  His consistency and shooting ability keep him above average.

Chase Budinger rises above

Volleyball aficionado, Chase Budinger has the athletics.

White Boy Profile #2: Gordon Hayward

Gordon Hayward

We will look at Gordon early on because I want to create some buzz about the rookie fresh off a stellar National Championship game run. 

Origin: March 23, 1990 in Brownsville, Ind

Upbringing: Born to an undersized father, it was assumed Gordon Jr. was destined to be a guard.  His father pushed him to develop his guard skills.  As a 5’11 freshman he almost abandoned basketball to pursue tennis but by his junior year, he had shot up to 6’7 and 6’8 in his senior year.  He received 3 Indiana-area scholarships and ultimately settled on Butler because 6:30 am practices would not interfere with his computer programming major and Butler enabled his twin sister to join him on campus and play tennis.   

As a college athlete, everyone by now knows about his shining moment in the NCAA tourney.  When he started on the U-19 US Men’s team, that is when the NBA dream became real to him and he decided to abandon his junior and senior seasons.  

Keys to his Game: Guard skills in a 6’9 frame.  He is a great shooter, passser, and dribbler, plays surprisingly good defense as long as it is within a scheme, and is a deceptive rebounder.  He will struggle at the NBA level beneath and around the rim but can find a long career as a spot shooter and mid-range attacker.  

Best White Boy Feature: Indiana farm boy ears.

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Interesting observations: He came from an incredible system that was predicated upon two things: run the offense through Gordon and play a cohesive team defense.  Both of those things won’t happen in the NBA.  Can Hayward flourish in the NBA style of game?  I think he can if he is willing to adapt.  As a cerebral guy, I think he has potential.  

NBA Career: Drafted by Utah with the 9th pick

Nickname(s): Flash Gordon Hayward (lame)
Proposed New Nickname: Corn (you know, because of Indiana and the big ears and all).  

Closest Comparison (Current or Historic): Mike Miller

White Boy Level: This is purely based on potential.  I will give him a 6.5 out of 10.  I see that as his ceiling.  A quality back up who can score in bunches, make funny Internet cameos and even hold his own on the defensive end.  

Skill Level: Potentially 5.5 out of 10.  I don’t see Hayward representing his conference in an all star game, and I don’t even seeing him in the starting line up of a quality playoff team.  But that doesn’t mean, he can’t have an above-average career has a bench scorer on a good team or a starting forward on a 30 win team that is fun to watch.

White Boy Profile #1: Introduction and Troy Murphy

Basketballitics is back.  Over the course of this season, I am going to do my best to document the white boys of the NBA.  The under-rated and under-estimated NBA white boy deserves a place where He can be recognized (or at least documented).  Besides, the unintentional comedy is just too priceless to pass up:


White Boy Profile #1: Troy Murphy

I am happy to start with a New Jersey native.

Origin: May 4, 1980 in Morristown, NJ but grew up in Sparta, NJ.

Upbringing: Played his high school ball at uptight prep school, Delbarton (tuition averages around $25k per year).  3 standout years at Delbarton prepared him for Notre Dame where he led his team in scoring and rebounding for each of his three seasons, earned two All America selections and shared player of the year honors for the Big East with Troy Bell in 2001.

Keys to his Game: He is a gifted rebounder and a great shooter for a guy of his size.  Murphy has wonderful touch.  He has increased his strength which has assured his lengthy NBA career.   

Best White Boy Feature:  Floppy hair

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Interesting observations: Murphy seemed to level off around 2005 but resurrected his career over the past two seasons after assimilating to the Pacers.  Now, as the home town boy in New Jersey, he will split time in the paint with Brook Lopez and Derrick Favors, two of the three earning the starting spots.  My guess is Murphy will contribute a solid 14-10 as Favors will struggle to adapt to the NBA size and strength.

NBA Career: 9 years- 5.5 with Golden State and 3.5 with Indiana.  

Nickname(s): Horse (honestly, that is pretty good)
Proposed New Nickname: The Big Tan

Closest Comparison (Current or Historic): Cross between Andrew Bogut and Matt Bonner with a little Cliff Robinson on the side.

White Boy Level: 9 of out 10.  He is one of the better white boys you will find in the league both from a consistency and skill standpoint.  What he lacks in athleticism, he makes up in size and skill.  

Skill Level: 7 out of 10.  Better than average NBA talent who is best suited to be the number 3 option on a winning team.  I bumped him from 6 to 7 because he is regularly a top 10 rebounder.

A Feat Never to be Repeated

Ok, I have never deviated from basketball on this blog, but things change.  There is a great big world out there and I think it would be small-minded of me to deny it!

There has been some talk about Jorge Cantu running his hitting streak to 20 games. However, his Marlins team has only played 16 games this season.  We have seen this before where hitting streaks extend over two seasons. The debate this brings up is whether or not a hitting streak should count when its spans over two seasons.

At first glance, I think it is a clear yes.  Despite the gastric reflex it seems to cause when I think of it, theoretically, it is valid.  Why should a guy be penalized if there was several months between games?  I mean the Cal Ripken Jr streak is over several seasons and everyone loves him for that (sort of).

But I think it is a dull point to the much more fascinating point: that we are talking about this streak at all when a player is only 35% of the way there.  Doesn't that say something about the streak itself?

While DiMaggio was pursuing this feat, he had to deal with some extraordinary circumstances.  He had this favorite bat stolen mid-streak.  His team mates didn't know how to interact with him.  The media was in a frenzy.  All of that adds to the aura of the record.  What if a team pitched around him for a night?  Streak over.  What is his teammates were cold and he only got to the plate three times?  On the night the streak died, he hit two screamers that were caught for outs.  Baseball is funny that way.  So many things in baseball just seem to predicated on luck.

But here is why I bring this up.  A Nobel laureate physicist named Ed Purcell applied gaming theory and coin-flip theory to analyze all baseball streak and slump records.  What he found was very interesting.  Every single record in baseball history except one falls within the boundaries of what would statistically expect to happen.  In other words, nothing ever happened above and beyond the frequency predicted by coin-toss models.  So win streaks, losing streaks, hot and cold streaks, etc.- they all are scientifically expected.  There is only one exception and only one as this excerpt from the book Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of 41 by Michael Siedel so eloquently states,

There is one major exception, and absolutely only one—one sequence so many standard deviations above the expected distribution that it should not have occurred at all. Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six–game hitting streak in 1941. The intuition of baseball aficionados has been vindicated. Purcell calculated that to make it likely (probability greater than 50 percent) that a run of even fifty games will occur once in the history of baseball up to now (and fifty-six is a lot more than fifty in this kind of league), baseball’s rosters would have to include either four lifetime .400 batters or fifty-two lifetime .350 batters over careers of one thousand games. In actuality, only three men have lifetime batting averages in excess of .350, and no one is anywhere near .400 (Ty Cobb at .367, Rogers Hornsby at .358, and Shoeless Joe Jackson at .356). DiMaggio’s streak is the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in American sports. He sits on the shoulders of two bearers—mythology and science. For Joe DiMaggio accomplished what no other ballplayer has done. He beat the hardest taskmaster of all, a woman who makes Nolan Ryan’s fastball look like a cantaloupe in slow motion—Lady Luck.

That is just incredible.  Will we ever see what Joe DiMaggio did that summer recreated in any sport?  Science says no.

That is truly amazing.

NCAA Tourney Held to 68 Teams!

Great, great news but I can't talk about it now.  Will have to get back this next week.  Just wanted to mention that the 96-Team Travesty has been avoided at least for the foreseeable future.  Ah, I can sleep at night.