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Mike Vorkunov: NBA hasn't played in China in 5 years, not since Daryl Morey's tweet became an international flashpoint. But Adam Silver is optimistic about going back. "I think we will bring back games back to China at some point," Silver said at Columbia Univ.'s sports management conference
To help explain what happened and what might come next, GQ called up Len Elmore, a former NBA player with a background in law who now teaches at Columbia University on subjects including athlete activism and social justice in sports.
Magic CEO confident Orlando bubble idea is safe
Orlando Magic CEO Alex Martins told the Orlando Sentinel on Friday the NBA restart committee feels confident in the league’s safety plans. “We had a number of guiding principles as we had discussions about the restart and how we would restart, and the No. 1 guiding principle for us, for the league overall, is the health and safety of our players, coaches and staff that will be on the campus at Disney,” Martins said. “We have consulted with some of the top medical experts in the country, epidemiologists from Columbia University and Johns Hopkins, and others, [including] a former surgeon general [Vivek Murthy].
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Greg Logan: Dr. David Ho of Columbia University is consulting with #NBA about coronavirus and "affirmed there still is an enormous amount to learn." Adam Silver using very sober, realistic tone about resumption of business. Said ABC's Bob Iger said, "It's about the data, not the date."
He is a representative reminder: For all the basketball players from Africa who make it big, a much larger group comes to America, only to be victimized by corrupt coaches and recruiters motivated by a big payoff. A year-long 60 Minutes investigation, followed the Africa-to-U.S. basketball trail. The inescapable conclusion: It is littered with corrupt fly-by-night high schools and shadowy middlemen and academies that mislead families, run roughshod over immigration rules and sometimes commit federal crimes. Says Scott Rosner, professor of sports management at Columbia University, “It’s very much the Wild West.”
The NBA and National Basketball Players Association have been consulting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and infectious-disease experts, including a renowned researcher at Columbia University, the memo said. "The coronavirus remains a situation with the potential to change rapidly," the league told teams in the memo.
Carmelo Anthony expected to scrimmage with Knicks
Jake Fischer: In addition to Hasheem Thabeet, Carmelo Anthony is expected to join the New York Knicks’ informal 5-on-5 scrimmages at Columbia University this morning, according to league sources.
Ian Begley: Columbia’s Jeff Coby has agreed to a deal with the Knicks, league sources confirm. Coby, a Hatian National Team standout, has worked out w/the Knicks in informal sessions recently and impressed the staff. The Coby agreement was first reported by @NicolaLupo99.
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Austin actually tried to get the NBA’s permission to play once before, meeting with two NBA officials at Columbia University, along with a doctor who believed he should be given medical clearance and his former agent. He was told ‘no.’
The winning team at the hackathon examined the behavior of clubs in the regular season versus the playoffs, and whether any benefited from resorting to "hero ball." The team, comprised of Alex Wainger and Zac Robertson from Columbia University, Ella Kuzmenko from NYU and William Robbins from Pace University, found that changing a team's brand of basketball and decreasing overall passing and increasing the overall number of dribbles on offense resulted in fewer points per possession. For finishing in first, the four received an open invitation to play pickup at Terminal 23, free tickets to an NBA game, a $800 NBA Store gift card and lunch with league staff. In second place was Chris Packard from Stanford University and Senthil Natarajan from Rice University, two writers from Nylon Calculus. Their analysis focused on assessing the defensive versatility and analyzing how players defend against different types of scorers. "With positional versatility valued more than ever, we felt it would be cool to develop a tool to quantify players like Draymond Green who could capably defend multiple positions," Senthil said.
“There is enough nostalgia about that name that you could get some good karma from it,” said Joe Favorito, a professor of advanced sports marketing at Columbia University. “Would they stick around if the team isn’t good? Probably not. But that nickname could have the effect of getting some customers to give it a second look.”
But there’s a risk for Prokhorov, according to Stephen Sestanovich, the former U.S. ambassador-at-large to the Soviet Union. “The only risk for him would be if the effort got too successful,” said Sestanovich, now a professor at Columbia University. “Putin probably wouldn’t mind if a new pro-Western party that he can control gets 7 percent of the vote and shuts down the Democrats that he can’t control. “What he doesn’t want is for Prokhorov to get 20 percent, create real popular enthusiasm, and give people who consider Putin’s own party hopelessly corrupt a real alternative.” As a symbol of capitalist success and a subject of intrigue - and despite a 2007 arrest in France for allegedly arranging prostitutes for his guests at a ski resort - Prokhorov could be a danger to Russia's status quo. "No one ever asked why George Steinbrenner didn't run for President," said Stephen Sestanovich, the Columbia professor and Russian expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But Prokhorov has more going for him as a potential political figure, so the Kremlin will watch him carefully."
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