(NBA) Survey Says ...
A few weeks ago I presented readers of the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza with a short burst of survey questions about both the NBA and my Substack. Here are the results regarding leaguewide matters
We are one lucky Substack over here to have our very own survey consultant who doubles as a loyal reader of The Stein Line.
His name is Dave Purcell, senior research specialist at the University of New Mexico, but he warned me from the jump that collecting survey data can be very challenging these days … even with the amazing modern tools available to newbies like me.
The warning proved prescient. The first reader survey in the history of The Stein Line went out to nearly 31,000 readers. I was hoping for 1,000 survey participants. We wound up with 758 responses even though I kept the survey open for a week.
So …
I am, as promised, sharing the results on the broader NBA questions that I posed while also seeking feedback on various questions that I posed about specific to this publication. Yet there is a required disclaimer to share: 758 respondents only accounted for 2.48% of The Stein Line’s overall readership as of noon ET on this Newsletter Tuesday. So please factor that into your consumption of the data.
The first chart is pretty self-explanatory. Mavericks, Knicks, Lakers and Warriors fans were the most active respondents to my maiden survey:
League officials will surely want to personally meet and thank everyone who falls among the 62% of respondents who said that following the playoffs represents their favorite aspect of NBA fandom. Regular season likewise fared better in this exercise than interest in trade deadline or free agency coverage. I most certainly did not expect such results:
Shortening the 82-game regular season and reducing ticket prices won the most support from respondents when provided with a menu of potential changes to institute regarding today’s NBA:
The next two charts deal with NBA viewership (and listenership) habits:
Survey rookie mistake: In retrospect I should have asked this last leaguewide question a different way. Instead of providing an open-ended space for respondents to merely list their favorite player, it probably would have been more useful to list eight to 10 names and ask you to select your choice for Best Player on the Planet from that list. (I think I might do a separate threaded poll just to re-ask that one.)
All that said …
Dr. Purcell, being the kind gent he is, personally tabulated the 700+ responses I received to my question asking survey-takers to name their favorite player. The results aren’t hugely surprisingly given the fan bases that most actively participated in the survey — except for Nikola Jokić finishing ahead of LeBron James:
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As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.
Wemby Watch
I can admit it.
Had you asked me a week to 10 days ago, I would not have named Victor Wembanyama as my Rookie of the Year favorite.
I simply couldn't let go of Wembanyama's summer league struggles. I thought he would face a harder transition to the NBA, mostly from a physicality perspective, than Portland's Scoot Henderson (who has essentially been handed his own team in the wake of the Damian Lillard trade to Milwaukee) or Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren (who will be surrounded by more established players to help him ease in.)
Now?
C’mon, man.
If you've watched Wembanyama's first two preseason games as a San Antonio Spur, it's impossible not to have been dazzled and swayed.
I'm still not sure how tall he is — 7-foot-5 strikes me as much more accurate as 7-foot-3 — but I do know that I'm already counting the days until I'm there in person for next Wednesday's official launch of the Wemby Era when San Antonio plays host to Dallas.
This week I asked Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki for his reaction to the footage from Wembanyama's last game against Miami.
Said Nowitzki: "Running a step-up pick-and-roll to a crossover between the legs to a stepback? At his size? Stop it."
Exactly.
If you're saying Wembanyama won't win Rookie of the Year at this point, that’s realistically because you believe that he won't play the required 65 regular-season games to win the award.
Otherwise?
Stop it.
A titan among journalism professors
Jay Berman, one of the most influential figures in my journalistic life, died in June at age 83 after a lengthy illness.
Berman was the peerless adviser of Cal State Fullerton's student newspaper (The Daily Titan) from 1981-1992 and so many of his teachings have stayed with me for nearly 40 years since I first met him while attending the California Scholastic Press Association camp for high school students.
I've said often that the little editing voice I hear in my head, whenever I write something to this day, is Jay.
His presence was a huge reason why I chose to attend Cal State Fullerton and why so many of his students, who will pay tribute to him this weekend in a Celebration of Life ceremony Saturday on the Fullerton campus, stayed close with him and his wonderful wife Irene well into adulthood. We all felt, largely because of him, that we attended the finest journalism school in the land.
Eternal thanks, Jay. For everything.
(For the record: Instinct tells me that Jay wouldn’t have loved the headline I used for this section — largely because he insisted that we address him as Jay rather than Professor — but I couldn’t resist. Yet I did, in his honor, manage to resist closing the last sentence or two above with an exclamation point, because Stephen Jay Berman was staunchly against the use of exclamation points in a proper and professional print publication.)
Numbers Game
🏀 1978
Many, many, MANY thanks once again to loyal subscriber Dave Purcell, without whose assistance I would not have been able to conduct the first reader survey in the history of The Stein Line. As stated above, Purcell is a senior research scientist at the University of New Mexico ... and I think I've shown great restraint (until now) by holding off this long in bringing up what comes to mind whenever I hear a reference to his school: Cal State Fullerton's first-round upset of the Michael Cooper-led Lobos in our school's first-ever NCAA Tournament game in March 1978.
🏀 11
Jeff Van Gundy, recently hired by the Boston Celtics as a senior consultant in basketball operations, was an NBA head coach in New York and Houston for nine full seasons and parts of two seasons, posting a record of 430-318 (.575).
🏀 16
Van Gundy served as an NBA broadcaster for ESPN for 16 seasons after his final campaign as head coach of the Rockets in 2006-07. Van Gundy was among a number of high-profile employees cast aside by ESPN in late June in cost-cutting spate of layoffs.
🏀 307
In a recent piece highlighting major statistical milestones within reach this season, my fellow Substacker
noted that Philadelphia's James Harden needs just 307 points to become the 24th player in league history to reach the 25,000-point plateau. As Kubatko also notes, Harden has scored at least 1,000 points in 11 consecutive seasons.🏀 7
Harden's former Oklahoma City teammate (and potentially future LA Clippers teammate) Russell Westbrook is just 543 points away from the same milestone. Westbrook, per Kubatko, has scored at least 1,000 points in each of his last 15 seasons for the longest such streak by a guard in league history.
🏀 624
Milwaukee's Damian Lillard is 624 points shy of the 20,000 Points Club. Dwight Howard, who remains hopeful of getting back to the NBA at age 37 after playing last season in Taiwan, is 515 points away from 20,000.
🏀 2030
Brief detour to global soccer: Do you find FIFA's plan to utilize six host nations for the 2030 World Cup — yes, six — as farcical as I do? Morocco, Spain and Portugal would be the main hosts, but FIFA plans to stage a few games in faraway Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to pay tribute to the 100th anniversary of the first World Cup final in Montevideo in 1930.
🏀 146
I am getting my apologies registered (way) in advance to San Antonio's Devin Vassell, who agreed to a reported five-year, $146 million extension with the Spurs just as their training camp was opening. It hasn't happened yet (thankfully) and I will try to ensure that it never happens, but I fear at some point I will inevitably (and regrettably) call him Darius Vassell in a piece or on a podcast because saying the former Manchester City striker's name is borderline reflexive for me at this point when I hear their shared last name.
🏀 20
After 20 years in the Dallas Mavericks' organization, Scott Tomlin on Monday left his post as the team's vice president of basketball communications to become chief communications officer for Dirk Nowitzki's DN Companies and executive director of Nowitzki's foundation. One of Tomlin's unlisted duties at Mavericks home games for much of those 20 years was sitting next to the high-maintenance scribe who curates this newsletter. A better seatmate you could not wish to find.
🏀 97.1
Last week, in an unavoidable first for The Saturday Stein Line, my weekly NBA show presented by Panini Trading Cards and Collectibles on 97.1 (FM) The Freak in Dallas had to be pre-empted because of North Texas college football coverage. We'll be back this week at our usual time of noon CT to preview the start of the NBA’s 2023-24 season. Join us online at the link embedded in this sentence or via the iHeart radio app ... or catch the podcasted version of the show once it drops Saturday afternoon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your pods:
Thanks for the kind words, Marc. I'm happy to help! Thanks to everyone who participated.
Didn't realize there were so many from Dub Nation in your readership, although not surprising, given that, after Dallas, of course, and the iconic Lakers and Knicks, the Warriors might be right up there in mind share.
Quickly on Wemby. Sam Vecine brought this up, but there was a play in the Miami game right before the end of the 1st half, where Wemby was dribbling down the right side and passed it to Tre Jones who stood behind the 3-pt line off the right elbow. Jones immediately throw up a lob before Wemby had even crossed the 3-pt line himself (i.e., Wemby was the same distance from the hoop as Tre). Wemby grabbed the lob just inside the paint and flushed the dunk, making it look routine.
Because he made it look so easy, you don't even realize that, technically, he could have thrown himself an alley-oop from outside the 3-pt line. The space he covers is ridiculous. He doesn't look as athletically powerful as Giannis does when he gets a head of steam and needs only a couple dribbles to get from half court to the rim, but his fluidity and length are really impressive.
Here's the clip..
https://x.com/NBA/status/1712991053354016985