Check out this week's Free Times, if you can afford it! In it, Corey and I make our legitimate media debut, with a review of Terry Pluto and Brian Windhorst's recent book, The Franchise. We hope you enjoy our article. And if, for some reason, you're hankering for a tactile version of our writing, keep your eyes peeled for Free Times news racks around Cleveland.

And to those of you reverse people who found our blog from our article and not the other way around, hello! Take a look around. Read some stuff. Click some links. Basically, pretend this is your local Outback Steakhouse because there are no rules.

How convincing was the Cavs' 121-85 win over the Wizards on Wednesday? Try: the most convincing Cavaliers victory in more than a decade.

I have game-by-game offensive and defensive efficiency data for all Cavs games going back to October 1997. When I went to update the spreadsheet with Wednesday's results, I noticed the Cavs had a ridiculously high offensive efficiency rating of 145.0, meaning they scored an obscene 1.45 points per possession during that game. Surely, I thought, this was the most efficient offensive performance I have on record. And I was right:

     game       O-Eff
1/23/08 vs WAS  145.0
11/9/05 vs SEA  136.0
2/16/02 at CHI  134.8
3/23/99 vs BOS  133.2
4/4/06 vs PHI   131.0

In fact, since 1997, no Cavs opponent has come close to putting up a 145.0 offensive efficiency, either.

But when you factor in Wednesday's very good (but not great) defensive efficiency of 94.3, was this the most dominating all-around beat-down in my archives? To approximate the "convincingness" of a win, I combined each game's offensive and defensive efficiency in a simple Pythagorean ratio:

     game       O-Eff  D-Eff   Pyth.
1/23/08 vs WAS  145.0   94.3  0.9976
1/24/06 vs IND  103.5   70.6  0.9953
4/14/07 vs ATL  123.6   84.4  0.9952
1/6/98 vs HOU   109.8   75.7  0.9945
1/29/02 vs MIN  121.5   83.8  0.9945

Yeah... it's not even close. Basically, Wednesday night, the Cavaliers administered their biggest beat-down in 11 years, and quite possibly the biggest beat-down in franchise history.

Yes, I just made a philosophy joke.

In one of the most-creatively titled articles I've seen, Bill Livingston masterfully lays the case against the renaming of Jacobs Field.

Bill "Macy's" Livingston here.

Has a nice ring, doesn't it? Like Bob "Texaco" Hope, Cleveland's own, who made his sponsor his middle name. A little up-front whip-out from a certain department store chain, and I'm all theirs.

Admittedly, I hadn't been born yet when Hope was still a spokesman for Texaco. Though after some pretty extensive Internet research—including some Texaco commercials that definitely wouldn't fly these days—I'll say that the name-change probably wasn't officially registered with the court. But that's neither here nor there. Nor is it the thrust of Livingston's article.

When the Cavaliers met Washington in the playoffs last spring, politicians could have fought over the chance to nurture nouns and cultivate conjunctions. Why not designate a "Voinovich Verb?" Anytime it's used, it's a payoff, the way it was when someone said the secret word on "You Bet Your Life."

Let me get this straight. Since the Cavs were playing in Washington, which is where all the politicians are, the politicians should've sold the naming rights to the words they use? Or are the politicians buying the naming rights to the words used to describe the Cavs-Wizards games? Maybe they're buying the naming rights for a word whenever it's used, by anyone. Also, Bill, just because "nurture nouns" and "cultivate conjunctions" are alliterative, you don't have to use them. And way to reference a show that hasn't been on the air for more than forty-six years.

The many shades of Livingston displeasure include scorn, anger, ridicule, saucy spoofs, and, readers hurtfully allege, the occasional "cheap shot." I don't know about you, but I'm thinking two-for-one handgun sales here. If the Bad News Bears could be sponsored by Chico's Bail Bonds, I say an NRA sponsorship (Suggested slogan: "Let's Make Saturday Night Really Special!") is an idea whose time has come.

Don't worry, I haven't removed any contextual information to help you parse that paragraph. I think Livingston was just mashing keys with his fists at this point. Try to follow this logic: if the "Bad News Bears" (who are a fictional team, mind you) could be sponsored by Chico's Bail Bonds, then the NRA should sponsor… someone? Sure! Why the hell not? "If a fictional entity can do it, we real-life people can do it twenty times better!"

Basically, the point is that Livingston doesn't like corporate sponsorships.

For the "Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame Sentence," anything with "izzle" in it ought to be da bomb for, uh, shizzle.

Because (1) the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would definitely sponsor a sentence, as long as it's for a humorous effect, and (2) in Bill Livingston's confused mind, all aspects of youth culture, like saying izzle or wearing your cap backwards, is associated with rock 'n' roll. Those damn kids with their long hair and their devil's music. Turn down that racket!

For my first post of 2008, I'll be getting back to our roots here at the Mistake by the Lake: criticizing Larry Hughes. It's taken a while, but I think the public is coming around on the issue of Larry Hughes's low-percentage shooting finally. Just look at the attention Hey Larry Hughes, Please Stop Taking So Many Bad Shots has attracted in a short time. Makes a blogger wish he'd come up with a snappier title all those years ago…

Anyway, we've written about our frustrations with Hughes a few times before, first in "Emptyin' the Mailbox: Cavaliers Edition," from nearly a year ago. Corey answered this question posed by C. Farbman: "Do you have any data pertaining to shot selection? I ask because of Larry Hughes—he drives me crazy the way he always passes up three point shots in favor of long twos, or pulls up for a jumper while on a fast break." Corey concluded that Hughes was taking long twos not at the expense of threes, but driving to the basket. He also found that "a typical Larry Hughes three-point attempt is far more valuable to the Cavaliers than a typical Larry Hughes two-point jumper attempt, or even a typical Larry Hughes layup attempt."

Corey had to painstakingly compile that shot chart data piece-by-piece, and could only go back one season at the time. Fortunately, NBA.com now puts its own shot charts online—called "Hot Spots," formerly "HotZones." Here a screen grab of Hughes's HotZones from the 2006-2007 regular season.



Using this helpful guide to "hacking" Hotzones, I was able to build a spreadsheet with data from the 2003-2004 season through today on Hughes's shooting tendencies. For lack of a better idea, I decided to see whether the side of the court he was on made any difference. I aggregated the fourteen zones into three categories, left, center, and right. Left includes the three touching the sideline, to the left of the key. Right is the same, but on the right. And center has everything else, including the key.

I made a graph of his effective field goal percentage (eFG%), which adjusts for the added value of making a three-pointer, from each category.



That ridiculous efficiency from the right side this season ought to come down—I think it's a result of a small sample. And his very low numbers from the left should improve, too. Just looking at the three lines on the graph, it looks like Hughes is definitely better from the center of the court than from the left. His right-side shooting has fluctuated more over the past few years. You could chalk it up to genuine improvement from that side of the floor, but without crunching the numbers, the likely answer is that this discrepancy would regress to the mean with a larger sample. For now, though, we can say that Hughes has been better lately from the middle and right side of the court than from the left.

I also separated Hughes's shots by four distance classes: 0-8 feet from the bakset is "close," 8-16 is "short," 16-24 is "medium," and from 24 feet to half court is "long." Once again, here are some trends in his efficiency.



Surprise! Except for the 2004-2005 season, when he wasn't even on the Cavaliers, Hughes has actually been more efficient from behind the arc than inside the key. Those two stand above "short" and "medium" shots, which seem to be jockeying with each other every season.

If you're wondering how such a bad three-point shooter (career percentage of .291) could be better from the outside than from in the paint, you need to remember what I said before about eFG% adjusting for the added value of a three-pointer. Hughes may suck from the outside relative to the rest of the league, but he also sucks from the inside relative to the rest of the league. Therefore, the scant few threes that go in make a difference. Missing a three isn't much different than missing a two; making a three is very different than making a two. To have a better eFG% from inside the arc than out, you need to be significantly worse from outside—which Hughes isn't.

Through the magic of Google Spreadsheets, these charts will update automatically for the rest of the season. So, if Hughes's catches fire from the inside through some miracle, you'll see it here at the end of the season—even though I won't have to type another number in. Because this is a pretty coarse-grained look at the shot chart data I'm pulling from NBA.com, I can't make too specific a conclusion other than Hughes should shoot more threes and maybe stay away from the left side of the court. If you have any questions or suggestions as to what to look into, I'm all ears.

Ahhhhhh.... it sure is nice to be back here, ready to blog about all those 2008-type happenings, after that long vacation I was definitely just on. McMurdo Station is gorgeous this time of year!

So, let's see here, what blog fodder does 2008 have to offer? For one thing, the Indians have announced a deal to name their ballpark Progressive Field. Okay, I suppose I have an opinion about that.

I thought the reaction to this news would be mixed, but more positive than negative. Instead, I am finding that just about everybody has a complaint. Now, I can understand a sort of knee-jerk, but temporary, resistance to this kind of change, but what I can't understand is the prevailing sentiment of "The Indians are so cheap... they'll even sell the naming rights to their own stadium! And to a corporation! Rabble rabble rabble!"

For one thing, we knew months ago that the naming rights would be sold, so why are people acting so shocked and offended? Did they think that Bertman's Mustard was going to buy the rights? I could have told you last week that the main candidates would be Progressive, Key, National City, the Cleveland Clinic, Continental, and maybe, I don't know... Coca-Cola (or some company like it). Frankly, I don't see how Progressive is any worse than any of those others (and it's certainly worlds better than Coca-Cola... at least Progressive is based in the Cleveland area).

So there's nothing inherently wrong or offensive about the new name (at least no more so than any corporately-named ballpark... which is all of them). But despite the comments I'm reading and hearing, I think the negativity is less about attacking the new name and more about wanting to cling to the old one. The argument, I suppose, is that with the loss of the name Jacobs Field, we are losing "tradition"—whatever that means.

To some people, "tradition" is code for "but I'm so used to calling it Jacobs Field!" These people are probably telling their co-workers that they're going to continue calling it The Jake forever, but check back with them in two years' time—they will have gotten used to the new name, and their crusade to remain obstinate will have ended.

To others, "tradition" means "memories"—specifically, good memories of things the Indians did, like reaching the 1995 World Series. We all have great memories of events that took place at Jacobs Field. But how are our memories (or, more aptly, our ability to remember them) dependent on the survival of the name Jacobs Field? They could change the name to "The 1995 Season Never Happened Ballpark" but no one's memory will have been altered. Yes, in the year 2045, there will be a whole lot of people who don't remember the '95 season. But those people would not stand a better chance of remembering 1995 if they lived in a city where the ballpark happened to still have the same name—they are doomed to forget, no matter what.

In short, what do we owe the name Jacobs Field? Personally, I'm not in love with the trend of corporations putting their names on everything, but I don't think it's fair to hold the Indians to a higher standard than every other sports franchise in America. Dick Jacobs' lease on the stadium's name was set to expire, and I don't think Mr. Jacobs had any intention of renewing. What were the Indians supposed to do, just take the hit and allow the stadium to continue being named after the previous owner, all the while putting themselves at a slight (further) financial disadvantage? Selling the naming rights is simply doing good business. And doing good business is a hallmark of the organization; it's what allows them to be one of baseball's most competitive teams despite facing some of the toughest financial realities. So whatever they want to call the place, I'm still going there, I'm still rooting for the home team, and most importantly, I'm still having just as good a time as ever.

P.S. Browns "season in review" posts are on their way, I swear.