Your Annotated Smartphone Bathroom Reader for Sunday August 5, 2012

Your Annotated Smartphone Bathroom Reader for Sunday August 5, 2012

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Ahh, I've been waiting to be the one that compiles the Smartphone Bathroom Reader just to share the above video with you all. THAT is a top ten all-time youtube video. But I digress. On to the basketball...

What If the 2012 Olympics Had Been in New York?
Reeves Wiedman
Grantland

With the Brooklyn Nets opening the 2012 season in a brand new building, Seattle seemingly on track to build a new stadium and Sacramento seemingly falling apart, it is fascinating to take a step back and think about what happens when stadiums aren't built. Reeves Wiedman looks back at New York's failed bid for the Olympics, and what it has meant for the future of athletics in the city. With the London Olympics almost $5 billion dollars overbudget, Wiedman convincingly argues that New York is actually better off for having failed in its bid, for it has received many of the benefits of hosting an Olympics without any of the negatives. Still, one wonders a temporary stadium in Central Park would have looked like...
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On Team USA and the Positional Revolution
Jordan White
Hollywood Paroxysm

 One of the most interesting things about watching the US Olympic basketball team is that you cannot easily point to a guy and say “he’s their small forward”. When Tyson Chandler is on the bench there is no “center”, and while Chris Paul and Deron Williams are fairly traditional “point guards”, at times it is LeBron James or Kobe Bryant that initiates the offense. Jordan White writes that  Mike Krzyzewski and Jerry Colangelo have turned a perceived weakness, a lack of “centers”, into a strength by fully embracing the positional revolution. If you are up on the positional revolution the article doesn’t contain anything you haven’t read before, but it covers the topic well and serves as a call to NBA coaches for more innovation.
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Why the Wolves Whiteout Does Not Matter
Punch Drunk Wolves
Andy G.

If you've been paying attention this offseason, it's been hard not to notice something pecuilar about the composition of the Timberwolves roster: practically the entire team is white. With the exception of Brandon Roy and Derrick Williams, and assuming no trades, every contributor to the Wolves next year will be white. In a thought-provking piece, rounded out well with personal anecdotes of growing up in Minnesota, Andy. G. explores why, if at all, this matters.
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Basketball World Owes Manu Ginobli and Argentina a Debt of Gratitude
Adrian Wojnarowski
Yahoo! Sports

For all of his success with the San Antonio Spurs (three-time NBA champion), Manu Ginobli is an even better Olympic player. Wojnarowski looks back to the 2002 Basketball World Championships, contrasting the US players jetting away as quickly as they could after a sixth place finish to Ginobli and his Argentina team brokenhearted after finishing second. Wojnarowski argues that it was Ginobli, more than anybody else, that spurred USA Basketball to develop a real system for international competition instead of just throwing all-stars together. Wojnarowski's argument is compelling, but ultimately the article veers off into a few different directions, leaving a bundle of interesting thoughts but no full strands of a story.
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