Browsing by Subject "Basketball"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

An analysis of the effect of mid-season trades on team performance in the National Basketball Association
(2016-05) Anderson, Neil Timothy; Todd, Jan; Sparvero, Emily S
One of the most important duties of a sports manager is ensuring a team keeps winning to the best of its ability. If a team is performing poorly, the manager will typically take action to try and remedy the situation, usually through coaching/administrative changes or player trades. The more we can understand how these actions affect a team’s performance, the better we as managers can work to help our teams. Thus the purpose of this research was to gain a greater understanding of how mid-season player trades affect a team’s performance. Using simple statistical testing over a five-year period encompassing the 2010-11 season to the 2014-15 season, data was collected from all thirty teams each season to determine rates of improvement, decline, or no change in team performance following a trade. Comparisons were also made between the teams that participated in a significant trade and those that did not. Of the forty-seven NBA teams that had a trade, four were determined to have improved following their trade while one team was found to have declined. Of the ninety-five NBA teams that did not meet the requirements for a trade, five were determined to have improved after the trade deadline and five were determined to have declined. Overall, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in these rates of improvement, decline, or no change between the trade and non-trade teams. As such it seems that the only generalization that can be made about trading is that it likely will not affect team performance. Likewise, not trading typically will not affect team performance.
Between practice and the classroom : the making of masculinity and race in the mis-education of Black male student-athletes on a college campus
(2012-05) Yearwood, Gabby M. H.; Gordon, Edmund Tayloe; Franklin, Maria; Richardson, Matt; Smith, Christen; Vargas, João
This project argues that American college sports involving Black male athletes (primarily football and men’s basketball) at Gulf Coast State University (GCSU) actively construct and impact local knowledge about Black masculinity in relation to white, male, hetero-normative systems of authority. These sports, in turn, then impact policy, administrative decisions, and teaching approaches as they relate to young Black men on a college campus. In other words, Black male college athletes on a white college campus offer the opportunity for a reinforcement of systems of authority through the pattern of de-stabilizing their subjectivity (as nothing more than physical entities) in order to provide a revenue-generating resource for the university. I posit that the positioning of Black males in this space as athletes and as students is strategic and intentional, when one takes into account the ongoing dynamic of the hegemonic positioning of white, male, hetero-normative value systems as the unmarked standard of social norms. That these contested meanings become significant within the realm of sport situates sport itself as another, often underutilized, space for social inquiry. I further argue that this categorization is heightened in the context of a predominantly white institution. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I explored the sport (mainly football and men’s basketball) and academic community at GCSU with the goal of understanding how high-profile and high-revenue sports and their participants become central to the understanding and expression of normalized ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. I reason that the predominantly white demography of GCSU, added to the uneven ratio of Black to white males on the football and basketball teams, creates perceptions about race and masculinity that factor into people’s everyday understanding of the term “student-athlete”. The term “student-athlete” becomes racialized and gendered in ways that continually make reference to Black male athletes differently than other students and student-athletes at the university. I believe these effects on the term then impacts the structural mechanisms that affect the daily lives of these Black male athletes both on and off the field, both inside and outside the classroom.
Cagers
(2013-12) Quiroz, Simon; Shea, Andrew Brendan; Lewis, Richard M., M.F.A.
This report summarizes the script development, pre-production, production, and post- production stages of making the short film Cagers. The short was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production.
Conquering the charity stripe : a literature review on the biomechanics of free throw shooting
(2021-07-24) Williams, Edward Joseph, M.S. in Kinesiology; Hsiao, Hao-Yuan
Basketball is one of the most popular sports on the planet and free throws are vital component of the game. This literature review aims to assess the existing literature to identify key performance indicators for successful free throw trajectory and the biomechanics of the free throw motion that generate such indicators. Specifically, this review addresses mathematical and computer-generated models regarding free throw shooting trajectory and biomechanical analyses that utilized motion capture. Several motor learning principles are considered in the analysis as well, such as Gentile’s taxonomy of motor skills, Bernstein’s degrees of freedom problem and individual variability. Modeling studies have shown that free throw success is remarkably sensitive to release velocity of the ball. Three other crucial variables were identified as well: release height, release angle and backspin. Biomechanical analyses showed that intersegmental coordination is crucial for success, particularly in the upper arm. Postural control, balance and stability are important as well. However, individual movement patterns can differ significantly and there is some degree of movement variability, even in experts. Therefore, individual analysis is warranted for different players. There are notable gaps in our current understanding of the free throw motion. While the upper extremity is frequently assessed in detail, details regarding the lower extremity are lacking and any relationship between the two is largely ignored. Although postural variables were revealed to play a significant role in consistent success, they are infrequently assessed. Application of models and biomechanical assessments to skill improvement has not yet been investigated in the literature and would be an ideal future direction for this line of research. Future studies should seek to assess the whole body as a unit, rather than the largely segmental approaches utilized thus far. More advanced kinetic data and force plate analysis should be explored by future investigators as well.
Integrating Texas athletics : the forgotten story of the first black basketball players
(2011-05) Abston, Grant David; Dahlby, Tracy; Minutaglio, Bill; Todd, Janice
During a period in American history when the racial landscape was rapidly changing, racial advances in collegiate athletics were taking place across the South in the 1950s and 1960s. At the University of Texas, that process proved harder to achieve than many expected as it would take nearly two decades to integrate athletics following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that admitted blacks to the university in 1950. Caught in the middle of the decade-long struggle, as blacks finally began integrating various UT athletic teams, was a group of black basketball players whose story reflects the racial progress made not just in Austin, but also across the United States.
Out on the court : progress for gay college basketball players comes in fits and starts
(2015-05) Capraro, Joseph James; Bock, Mary Angela; Cash, Wanda G
Gay college athletes have often faced homophobia from fellow players, coaches, and others on campus. Barriers are still being broken; there have been just two out gay men's basketball players at the college and professional levels combined, and some conservative institutions continue to force gay students into the closet. LGBTQ and questioning youth are already at increased risk for suicide and drug abuse, and those in hostile environments are significantly more likely to do self-harm than those in supportive or neutral settings. The responsibility for care of these students lies in part with the coaches and schools that provide the arenas and uniforms. While at some schools policies have changed with the times, Baylor serves as a high-profile example of a university that remains hostile to LGBTQ students. This report examines the experiences of two former Baylor women's basketball players and one graduating University of Massachusetts player, who came out before this past season. Context will be established by examining studies done on scholastic and collegiate out gay athletes in 2002 and 2010.
Sueños del norte : Black Panamanian hoop dreams and the realities of basketball trafficking
(2021-05) Wallace, Javier LaPree; Adair, Jennifer Keys; Harrison, Louis, 1955-; De Lissovoy , Noah; Brooks, Scott N
My dissertation focuses on the journeys an Afro-Panamanian basketball player, to unmask the discrimination and exploitation that shapes his efforts at achieving class mobility through sports. I utilize Multi-Sited Person-Centered Ethnography, underpinned by Critical Race Theory and Post/Coloniality Theory, to capture the complexity of the personal, including the macro and the micro of being an Afro-Panamanian male youth basketball player, who is spatially mobile and ultimately victimized by basketball trafficking. By employing this methodology, I explore the point at which basketball trafficking begins for the young men at the center of my study who are caught within this system. Basketball trafficking is a term I have coined that captures the exploitative and unregulated migration of youth to the United States as part of interscholastic athletic programs that abuse the F-1 student visa system. My research problematizes the idea that the trafficking and exploitation of young men within basketball solely begins in the United States and instead argues that histories of and ongoing practices of discrimination within Panama largely contributed to teenagers finding themselves in the precarious situation, where their international student-athlete visa status is used as a tool of exploitation. Additionally, my dissertation argues that U.S. intercollegiate athletics works in tandem with U.S Immigration Customs & Enforcement(ICE) to police and enforce the removal of non-citizen Black youth from the U.S. once their athletic labor is no longer needed.
Texas Ranger, December 1947
(Texas Student Publications, Inc., 1947-12) Johnson, Robert E. V.; Jeffery, Ben; Warmack, George; Miller, Ed; Yates, Bill; Porter, J. P.; Wade, Floyd; Bridges, Bill
The Cinderella team
(2022-12-05) Henson, Jana Lannette; Kelban, Stuart; Smith, Ya'Ke
This report is a discussion of revisions made to "The Cinderella Team”; a 30-minute comedy pilot centered on a rookie coach who inherits a nearly-defunct women’s team for the 1986-87 college basketball season. This report will break down the revision process by: explaining the conception of the idea, the original pilot, revisions to character arcs (and their implications for season arcs), and the application of story notes to the revision.