2013 WNBA All Star Game

Statistics from the 2013 WNBA All Star GAme:

Refcam looks:  11 *
WNBA commercials:  9
Mentions that Brittney Griner was unable to play:  5
Audio from miked players (Candace Parker):  2
"Quick Ain't Fair" commercials:  2
Use of the phrase "Three to See":  2 **
Locker room speeches (Lin Dunn, Cheryl Reeve):  2
Appearance from NBA personnel (Adam Silver):  1
Times question of "Will we see a dunk?" asked:  1
Audio from miked coaches (Lin Dunn):  1

* A season retrospective included a video clip of Lamont Simpson wearing a refcam for the very first time.  This video clip of refcam feed from a previous game is not included in the totals.
** Twice in season retrospectives, the phrase "Three to See" was used. We are only counting uses of the phrase during a game broadcast.

Oh yeah, and the West beat the East 102-98.  Lamont Simpson wore the refcam for this game, and he keeps the record of being the only WNBA referee to wear a refcam.  

(* * *)

I'm thinking about something I read either from the recruiting-101.com website or some other website  I actually read it several days ago but this is the first time I that I felt I could use the knowledge.  Unfortunately, no link.

It was an admonition for athletes that one's career can end at any time.  The advice was that if you're choosing a school for basketball, you want to go to one where you have the opportunity to play as a freshman.  I'm not saying a guarantee, but an opportunity.

The reason being was that if you know you're going to be stuck behind someone in the rotation and that you're only going to see limited time on the court at best, then imagine getting the chance for significant time in your sophomore year but in the first game you suffer a significant, career-ending injury.  It's not merely that your career is over, it's also that you've basically thrown away a year that you could have been playing at some other school.  Or, a year that you could have devoted to academics.

 The philosophy espoused was that an athlete only gets to play a certain number of games - so play them.  You never know when it will all be over.  As said above,  you're not looking for a guarantee, you're looking for the chance to earn the opportunity to play.  You don't want to go to a school where you're not going to get that opportunity.

This led me to think about which schools last year gave the most minutes to freshmen.  It might be something to track year by year.  I have last year's data, so I could hopefully punch up some numbers for 2012-13.  It might show up on Swish Appeal; I'll let you know.