It’s a non-traditional slate of sports for you today. For the last few months it’s been 🏈🏈🏈 but today looks more like ⭐️🏀🏀🎵⛳️

⭐️👄📉 All-Star Games vs. Smash Mouth
⛳️🤔🎯 The best golfer in the world is actually bad?
🙌📈🏀 Glass ceilings

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LEARNING MODULE 💡 

All-Star Games ⭐️

If you’re really good at your job, does your company give you a little vacation to the American Midwest to celebrate? No? Maybe try joining the NBA. 🏀

Indianapolis hosted the NBA All-Star game this past weekend upon which the best players in the world descended, blessing us with a top-5 most ridiculous basketball game of all time. 🙏

There are no incentives for winning this game and players don’t take it seriously - resulting in a laissez-faire event 🏖️ with hundreds of silly shots like the one above. 👆 If I wanted to watch someone miss half-court shots for 48 minutes I could just head to the Cal Poly Rec Center!

This year, the two teams combined for 397 points, close to double that of a normal basketball game and quickly approaching a tipping point in how the league approaches this event.

Viewership Problems 📺

This game, and most other All-Star games in sports have struggled to engage fans for years now.

Since 2002, the NBA has seen a 58% decline in viewers. While this past weekend was a bright spot and a 20% increase compared to 2023, the broader trends loom large. 📉

And it isn’t just basketball.

These mid-season interruptions have fans across all leagues scratching their heads and wondering what the point is. 🤔 If players don’t care, why should they? In fact, the only “All-Star” with a positive outlook is the Smash Mouth rendition 🎵 which has more people listening to it monthly than those who watched any league all-star game this year.

How do we solve the problem?

Incentives! They’ve worked in the past and they could work again now…

Solutions aren’t impossible to come by and there’s a precedent for things that work, all we can do is cross our fingers and hope for the best. If you want to learn a bit more about the state of the NBA, Joe Pompliano has a great article on it here.

THIS PAST WEEK ⏮

Great news for people who are bad at golf ⛳️

Golf is a silly sport. You’re 1,000 feet away from a tiny cup and need to get your ball into it in as few swings as possible. Each hole breaks down into 3 unique “shots.”

💪 Drive: Big club that goes the farthest.
🎯 Approach: The next shot that attempts to get the ball onto the “green”.
🏑 Putt: The final shots, only a few feet away from the hole.

Chat with any guy over 50 and they'll tell you the putt is most important. It's short but tricky, and every putt is worth just as much as a mighty drive on the scoresheet. 📝

For the young guns out there, it's all about the big stick. Less about gentle taps and more about unleashing power, hitting that ball as far and hard as your body allows. That's where the real fun is.

Enter Scottie Scheffler, the best golfer in the world.

This past week Scottie made headlines for being the worst-putting player in the Genesis Invitational tournament. 👎 Many now brand him a terrible putter in general, marring his almost sterling reputation.

But Scottie happens to be far and away the best at getting the ball to the green - the “drives” and “approaches” we talked about earlier. He ranks 1st in “Tee to Green” but 128th in Putting across all golfers on tour.

Scottie remains the overall number 1 player in the world while optimizing for the most fun part of golf, hitting it far and hard. 💪 If anything we should be celebrating him for representing the common man and giving us hope.

The slander must stop. We love you, Scottie!

If you can shoot, you can shoot 🏀

The NBA held its first-ever NBA x WNBA cross-over event 🔀 at the NBA All-Star game this past weekend, showcasing a 3-point shooting competition between Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu.

An Even Matchup

Steph Curry is the greatest 3-point shooter of all time in the NBA and has a lifetime 3-point shooting percentage of 42.7% - that’s really really good.

Over in the WNBA, Sabrina Ionescu, who’s only 4 seasons into her career, has a 3-point percentage of 44.8% this year… This would set the stage for a must-watch event. 👀

And a must-watch it was. Over 5.4 million people tuned into the competition and although Steph barely edged out Sabrina for the win, they were neck and neck the entire time. 👯 Below is the shot chart from each location the two faced off from.

The event was a huge success and a historic moment for the game of basketball, proving the skill gap is almost non-existent between the players.

As Nike puts it - If you can shoot, you can shoot. 

Achieving - while simultaneously chasing - history 📚

A week ago, Caitlin Clark became the highest-scoring women’s college basketball player of all time, passing Kelsey Plum with 3,569 points.

But she’s not done yet. Caitlin has four games left in her collegiate career and needs 100 points to pass the all-time college scoring record for both men and women, dethroning “Pistol” Pete Maravich.

Based on her 28-point-per-game average with a standard deviation of 7.7, this gives her an 80.3% chance of breaking the record. 🤓

Her final 4 games are:

Tonight: Iowa vs. Indiana at 5PM PST
Sunday 2/25: Iowa vs. Illinois at 10AM PST
Wednesday 2/28: Iowa vs. Minnesota at 6PM PST
Sunday 3/3: Iowa vs. Ohio State at 10AM PST

Tune in and root for 25 points each time to help get Caitlin to the promised land.🥇 

THIS NEXT WEEK ⏭

We’re now officially past the All-Star break for both the NHL and NBA, which loosely indicates a ramp in intensity for the regular season as the playoff race heats up.

For now, these are the only major sports with the addition of college basketball getting more important as March Madness approaches.

Caitlin Clark History

Two more opportunities for Caitlin to chase the record this week ⬇️

Tonight: Iowa vs. Indiana at 5PM PST
Sunday 2/25: Iowa vs. Illinois at 10AM PST

NHL

The Battle of Alberta: If you’re looking for a good old-fashioned hockey rivalry, the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames face off on Saturday at 7PM.

As we work our way toward the playoffs, this can be a primer game for you to feel the intensity and prepare for the long spring of hardcore hockey.

Don’t forget to share SportsBall with colleagues, family and friends! Thanks for reading and look for more of our posts over on LinkedIn.

— Riley and Claire

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