Does LeBron James player better or worse on his beloved Taco Tuesday?
1. I’m not a big sabermetrics/analytics guy, but this is an exception.
A very amusing Reddit user decided to do a thorough investigation into LeBron James’s love of Taco Tuesday and how the Mexican dish affected his play on the court.
If you follow LeBron on Instagram, you know that Tuesdays are special for the King. He never hides his excitement when it comes to Taco Night in the James household.
But can scarfing down all those tacos have an impact on James’s in-game performance? One person went on a mission to find out.
Via “AngryCentrist” on Reddit: “I began by compiling LeBron’s career game logs (the population) and identifying the day of the week each game was played on. Next, I pulled in his Season Averages (the control group) and selected the following 10 stat categories to get a comprehensive picture of his performance: Game Score, Points, Field Goal %, 3-Point %, Free Throw %, Total Rebounds, Assists, Steals, Blocks, and Turnovers. For each of these stats, I compared his average performance for each day of the week to his overall average for the corresponding season.”
AngryCentrists’s deep research showed that the tacos are NOT LeBron’s friend.
“Prior to his weekly taco tradition, LeBron’s Tuesday performance had the lowest rate of negative variances and the highest rate of positive variances. In the first two seasons of the Taco Tuesday era, James’ sacred day saw an +11% uptick in negative variances and a -17% drop in positive variances.”
I know this goes against the time we live in, but you can’t argue with facts. And. AngryCentrist brought the facts. Here is the full post.
2. A brand-new Sports Illustrated Media Podcast came out Wednesday morning. My guest was ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy, and he was tremendous. Van Gundy shared his thoughts on the NBA bubble, how players and teams will be affected by the restart and Lou Williams’s punishment, and also discussed the broadcasting setup he will have with Mike Breen and Mark Jackson. He also gave a very honest answer when I asked him whether he thought about not going to the bubble, which you can hear below.
Van Gundy also revealed that he did not watch one second of The Last Dance, talked about Magic City’s wings and critiqued his brother Stan’s Twitter performance.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Play.
3. Speaking of Magic City’s wings, Kevin Harlan shot his shot Tuesday night.
4. Nice get for Good Morning Football‘s Kyle Brandt on his debut podcast: Aaron Rodgers. The Packers quarterback told Brandt that after Green Bay drafted quarterback Jordan Love, he poured himself four fingers worth of tequila.
5. This is a savage quote by AEW’s Jon Moxley, who used to be WWE’s Dean Ambrose. Here it is in full:
“I’ll tell you what pressure is … pressure is having a two-page script written by a 74-year-old madman that makes no sense to you. That’s gonna make you look stupid and you’re on worldwide TV live and you gotta memorize every single line and somehow try to pull it off and not look like a total jackass. That’s pressure.”
6. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: National Lampoon’s Vacation was released on this date in 1983.
7. SPORTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: In honor of Jeff Van Gundy’s appearance on this week’s SI Media Podcast, here is he is going crazy for two straight minutes about flopping.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.
