I offer up an explanation, if not an excuse. After completing my last free agent regression model, I discovered that trying to perform a regression using all the variables in the dataset is much more complicated than I initially thought. The Excel spreadsheets containing all the data are not only organized very differently from year to year, the same variables have different names. As a result, the effort I have to put into it is much higher than before, or I measure slightly different things. This all coincided with moving and so I lacked an important thing called "motivation". I hope to keep working on this project soon but we'll see.
BUT, in an attempt to give something worth looking at, I provide this:
The Toronto Raptors are very good this year. I don't think they'll go to the NBA Finals, but I also don't think they need too many lucky breaks to get there. And, living in Canada, I get inundated with Raptor commercials every time I watch TSN. The slogan for the Raptors this year is "We The North". Clearly inspired by Game of Thrones, Canada's role as the USA's "neighbor to the North" add to make the slogan more relevant. Except that, does it make perfect sense. At first blush, of course it does. Toronto is in Canada and Canada is more North than America, where every other NBA team is located. But here's the unfortunate(?) reality.
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| courtesy of http://mapfrappe.com/IsoLonLat.html |
There are markers at three NBA cities, Toronto, Minneapolis, and Portland. In terms of straight latitude/longitude, Toronto is actually the third most Northern NBA city. And it used to be the fourth while Seattle was still in the league. Interesting to note (at least for me) is that Portland is the most North NBA city, I definitely thought that it would be Minneapolis.
Now, you could argue that the "We the North" slogan represents all of Canada and that it still fits perfectly because nearly every part of Canada is directly North of a part of the United States, which is valid, I suppose. But it implies that every part of Canada is "Raptor Country" even though most of the country is closer, distance-wise, to a different NBA team. You could take that view, but I think it's more fun to make fun Toronto for their somewhat silly slogan.
Minnesota Timberwolves: "We the MORE NORTH"
Portland Trailblazers: "We the Northernmost!!!"
