John Pudner wrote his first statistical analysis for the New York Post more than 20 years ago, ranking pitchers on opposite Sundays from when Bill James ranked batters, and he was named as the top sports news writer in his newspaper class in Virginia by the Virginia Press Association.
Since then he has run more than 200 political campaigns for candidates or ballot issues while continuing to write statistical analysis for sports and developing a database of thousands of basketball players at www.valueaddbasketball.com and writing for www.crackedsidewalks.com. He met with and advised several NBA teams to advice on the future performance of potential draft picks this year. His work for the Alabama Farmers Federation in 2010 included helping to coordinating door-to-door efforts that reached the homes of 170,000 voters, and his more recent statistical work was featured by CNN/Sports Illustrated.
Magic Johnson played in some of the greatest NBA games of all time, but he is not sure he has ever seen a game as great as the back-and-forth between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs that the Heat eventually won to force a Game 7 Thursday. Johnson initially said it may have been the greatest game he had ever seen, but later in the post game backed off slightly to say it was, "One of the greatest games I have ever seen."
18 Jun 2013
The Spurs were six seconds from the NBA title until Chris Bosh grabbed an offensive rebound and got the ball to Ray Allen for a three-pointer to force overtime at 95-95. The Heat preserved the win with two unbelievable defensive plays in the final two seconds of the game to preserve a 103-100 win that sets up a decisive Game 7 Thursday.
18 Jun 2013
Dwyane Wade turned in his second strong performance in a row with 25 points and 10 assists Sunday. In the previous game, he became the first player since Allen Iverson 11 years ago to put up 30 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists in a Finals Game. At 31 years old Wade is within a year of when Iverson quickly slid from All-Star to out of the league using a same style of play.
17 Jun 2013
The Miami Heat overcame tough defense at the rim to score 104 points, but continued to have no way to stop Danny Green's 3-point shooting. NBA teams average 1.2 points when they attempt a 3-pointer, but the Spurs scored 10 points more than average on Green's 3-pointers, 22 points on 10 shots, to provide the winning margin in a 114-104 win that gives them a three games to two lead heading back to Miami with a chance to clinch the NBA title.
16 Jun 2013
Rick Porcello led the Tigers to the fifth shutout of the night in Major League Baseball, driving the average runs per game to 8.48 this season, well below the 9.21 that were being scored at this time in the 2002 season. The Boston Red Sox lead the majors with 355 runs scored, exactly as many as they had scored at this time 11 years ago, on then that was only good enough for fifth in the Majors behind the Yankees, Angels, Mariners and Twins as shown below.
14 Jun 2013
Dwyane Wade had more steals (6) than the Spurs team (5) in falling one steal short of tying Robert Horry's 18-year NBA Finals record. Kawhi Leonard (left in photo) once again joined Gary Neal and Danny Green to give the Spurs a great boost on seven of 10 three-point shooting, but LeBron James ripped the ball away from him for this offensive rebound and joined Wade and Chris Bosh to outscore the young trio that had matched them for three games, 85-35, to even the Series 2-2 in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Thursday in San Antonio.
13 Jun 2013
San Antonio's young three earning a total of $6.2 million a year has matched the points of Miami's big three earning $52.3 million a year through three games of the NBA Finals. The Spurs continue to pay the fewest dollars per win of any NBA team year-after-year as they use proven indicators that players will be strong NBA players. The breakdown of salaries follows:
13 Jun 2013
Who has the better Big Three? It did not matter Tuesday as the Spurs took a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals. The rest of the San Antonio Spurs beat the rest of the Miami Heat 88-34 as Danny Green and Gary Neal combined to hit 13 of 19 three-pointers to help the Spurs shatter the NBA Finals record with 16 total three-pointers in the third biggest blowout in Finals history.
11 Jun 2013
Unlike the Miami Heat, which were given better than a 50 percent chance of winning the NBA title before the season began, the Chicago Blackhawks (5%) and Boston Bruins (4%) were given very little chance of winning the Stanley Cup but now start the Finals on Wednesday behind the two top goalies - Blackhawk Corey Crawford and Bruin Tuukka Rask in both goals allowed (1.74 to 1.75 respectively) and save percentage (93.5% and 94.3% respectively).
11 Jun 2013
Trailing by one late in the third quarter in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat went on a 33-6 run en route to a 103-84 victory that evened the series at one. The next three games in the 2-3-2 format will be in San Antonio. The Spurs hit 9 of 14 three-pointers to take a 62-61 lead and actually shot better than they did in their Game 1 win, but the Heat returned to their relentless pressure to dominate the final minutes of the third quarter and early fourth quarter.
9 Jun 2013