#could we possibly clone them instead of mammoths?

[journeysfable]

As a major Jurassic Park fan I need to add (go to end for TLDR):

Everyone here missed the point of the movie

In Jurassic Park things didn't go wrong because the dinosaurs were brought back to life. Like the book and movie is about why bringing back prehistoric creaturs is a bad idea. But the dinosaurs weren't really the problem at first in universe. Things went wrong because humans can be stupid greed driven creatures who don't know how to control the power we wield.

Dennis Nedry sabotaged and stole embryos from Jurassic Park because he was hired to by a competitor and because he was mad at Hammond. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were made by InGen. And their rival Biosyn didn't want Jurassic Park to exist for reasons I can't remember but money was def a factor. I don't remember details but I'm pretty sure JP book starts off by telling you these two companies have so much beef with each other.

But a really A big part of both Jurassic Park and Jurasic World is the subject of who's doing the funding and also why is it being funded.

Jurassic World Dominion kinda touched on this pretty well. In Dominion a business man has (a recreation of) an ancient locust species target every single crop that isn't his (or a partners can't remember) leading to a famine and forcing people to buy said business man's products. At the end of the movie Dr Wu releases a new species of locusts thay carries a pathogen that could stop the locust swarm. But Wu is only able to do this once the entire thing is exposed and said business man responsible is killed.

But Jurassic World series imo really hammers in the importance of asking who's funding. As I mentioned in Dominion the antagonist is Horseman Famine's fav business man. But in JW 1 and 2 War is involved. They had the raptors trained to track and kill for them. And in Fallen Kingdom it's revealed that the military had a genetically engineered weapon made.

(Also in Fallen Kingdom its revealed that a scientist cloned herself but altered the clone so she didn't have a fatal disease. The most unethical thing about this is the way the clone is treated as an actual replacement rather than her own person.

...Off track but the dinos in the Jurassic Series technically aren't dinosaurs but are imitations of them. Created to resemble what we believe they were like using what remains of them and what exists in the present day. To quote Dr Wu "you didn't ask for reality you asked for more teeth")

So anyway I think its a red flag the cia is funding this. Thats possibly why we're getting clones of mammoths of all things. Mammoths which if successfully cloned fast enough likely won't be at the mercy of poachers and would instead be used for combat in some way.

Because, TLDR, the message of Jurassic Park isn't just "bringing extinct creatures back to life is a bad idea" it mostly puts emphasis on the problems with money being a motivation for research.

Instead of pointing to a movie and saying thats whats gonna happen, figure things out yourself by asking what the purpose of the experiment is. Ask what Markiplier was proven to be incredibly wise for asking: where is the money coming from?

Because when money controls science you end up with terrible reasons to fund certain research. Arrogant business men who focus on how to hype up the t-rex exhibit instead of making sure its power outage proof. You end up with corporations monopolizing the food industry by geneticallly engineering diseases or animals to wipe out competition and incentive people to buy the product that coincidentally isn't targeted by a carboniferous era (wannabe) locust plague.

We've already seen stuff like this irl too. Some meds in the us are expensive af. And for a long time archaeology was about how to prove white people were superior. And eugenics still exists. Some research on psychology focuses less on how to help people with autism, adhd, did, schizophrenia, narcissim, etc and more on how to "cure" us or stop us from existing

When science is funded by the govt You end up with the military creating weapons that can camouflage, have perfect memory, can coordinate without human input, and can identify enemies by itself, all while being either resistant to or faster than bullets.

I think everyone in this thread brings up really good points though. If this really is just an effort to bring back mammoths now is really not a good time. But maybe its a step toward to reviving or creating creatures that can help. who doesn't want really fluffy rats

I just can't stand people misinterpreting one of my fav movie series and books

Regardless on your opinion on deextinction (this is about those GMO mouses to test mammoth wool) you should not base your conception of technology or science in fucking Jurassic Park

[extinctionstories]

What do you think of companies like colossal, who are working to bring back the mammoth and thylacine, among others? I’m on their email newsletter list because I’m fascinated and feel the need to keep up with their progress but will it ever actually happen? I’m not convinced. Hopeful, but not convinced

Thanks for the ask! I hope you don’t mind if I ramble a bit, haha; as with all extinction stories, this is something that I have a lot of feelings about.

For as long as I can remember, the various Mammoth People have been making announcements like clockwork that we “will have a live mammoth within ten years!” The first time I heard it was, oh, about twenty-five years ago.

Back then, the plan was to clone directly from permafrost tissue; my understanding is that now the strategy has shifted to gene-editing an elephant to make it into a mammoth. I’ve also heard similar ideas thrown around about trying to make a thylacine out of a numbat or Tasmanian devil, or a Dodo from a Nicobar pigeon. At that point, I have to wonder what the point of it all is?

Professedly, we want to bring these animals back in order to heal the wounds we have left in the web of life. To have them step back into their places, as though they had never left. But how could a genetically-modified numbat or elephant ever fill such bespoke shoes? Even if we were capable of it, how would we even begin to “program” the instincts and behaviors of animals of which we know so little?

Do we, instead, simply want the satisfaction of seeing a lost animal standing in front of us (or at least, something that looks like one)? Anyone who loves extinct species is familiar with the hunger for photos, videos, sound recordings—anything, to see them. Will we be happy if science can present us with the living, breathing equivalent of a museum’s goose-feathered imitation Dodo? A Disneyland sort of creature, like Franklin Dove’s unicorns, with no natural place outside of some big budget exhibition?

(Has the existence of rebred Tarpans and Heck Cattle soothed the ache we feel when we look at cave paintings of ancient horses and bulls?)

Personally, I would jump at the chance to see an extinct animal be alive again, in any form or capacity. Even just seeing a realistic CGI reconstruction of a passenger pigeon flock, or a Steller’s sea cow, would absolutely thrill me. Selfishly, I can admit that I do just want to see them—to have that lost experience of knowing what it was like to look at these lost creatures. As long as I feel that way, I can’t judge de-extinction efforts too harshly.

The fact is, though, that DNA is much more fragile and complicated that anyone could have guessed during the first heady days of Jurassic Park.

When Celia, the last living bucardo died, the effort to clone her was already in progress. The team had so many factors on their side: tissue samples collected while Celia was still alive; an ideal proxy species to carry the cloned offspring; a thorough understanding of the biology and reproductive mechanisms of goats. It was as close to an ideal situation as could be hoped for. Nearly 300 embryos were created; a single one survived to term. That clone died minutes after birth, due to a malformation of her lungs, giving the bucardo the rare distinction of being the only animal to go extinct twice.

And that’s not even getting into the problems presented by the theoretical cloning of egg-laying animals (which also represent the majority of extinct species).

Technology progresses in ways we could never imagine. One day, I’m sure the things that these groups promise will be possible, and more; we’ll discover the cure for cancer, and the cure for regret. For the time being, though, de-extinction is a self-indulgent distraction. It’s attention-getting clickbait, at the expense of animals that are still here to save—a plan to raise the crumbling hulk of the Titanic, while ignoring a thousand other ships sinking around us without a lifeline.

I know some of the companies involved do state that they intend to use their discoveries and funding to benefit extant endangered species, but I don’t think it undoes the damage that is done every time a website runs a headline like, “This Company Is Bringing Back the Dodo by 2030!”. It all erodes the gravity of extinction in a way that greatly concerns me. The more times a person sees de-extinction presented as a simple, achievable matter, the closer they will come to the conclusion that, well, extinction isn’t forever. And if the loss of a species can be so easily reversed, then why should anyone be overly concerned about its prevention?

[jaybug-jabbers]

Pokemon Gold/Silver Beta Pokemon: The April 2020 Leak

Look, 2020 was a rough year. So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that the April 2020 Gold/Silver source code leak flew almost entirely under my radar. If you Google about it, you’re find it’s very rare for news outlets to cover it. This is probably because many folks are hesitant to cover leaks. Also, the US was warming up to a truly awful pandemic around that point, not to mention other civil unrest, so it’s no surprise some people were a tad distracted. 

But the fact is, another leak turned up in April of last year, following a recent trend of huge Nintendo leaks. And this one was a doozy. I’ve only truly realized its full extent in the past few days. As such, I’d like to do a post that covers some of the new information. In particular, I’m focusing on beta pokemon that were cut or heavily reworked.

Now, back in 2018, the Spaceworld ‘97 Pokemon Gold/Silver Demo was leaked online. I made a post about some of my favorites. So, from this leak, we already knew of a while slew of beta pokemon. However, as it turns out, there were still more new faces to find-- and a lot of them! I list 45 new beta pokemon here, in fact!

In the April 2020 leak, several sprite sets were found as internal files, each at different phases of game production. The sprite sets were dated May 6, 1998, June 13, 1999, June 21, 1999, and September 17, 1999. The August 17, 1999 Spaceworld ‘99 Demo build was also found, so we have information on that as well.

Essentially, if you want to see this information at The Cutting Room Floor, then head to this page for the sprites discovered as internal backups/sprite banks. Head to this page for the Spaceworld ‘99 demo information page. And, if you need a refresher for the older leak, you can go to this page for the Spaceworld ‘97 demo build.

For this post, we will focus on the May 6, ‘98 set of sprites, which contain the vast majority of new faces. So, without further ado, onward to the pokemon!

(#300) Kokopelli Pokemon/Celebi

(May 6, ‘98)       (Spaceworld ‘99 Demo)

This first pair of sprites looks very much like Kokopelli, a fertility deity of some Native American cultures. This deity can be seen in ancient Native American petroglyphs, as a humpbacked flute player with feathers on the head. Surprisingly, we find that Celebi in the Spaceworld ‘99 Demo seems to be an updated version of this design, making Celebi’s design origins much different than expected. However, its fertility diety inspiration is still somewhat apparant in the modern Celebi, as a creature that causes plant life to flourish.

(#301) Eel Pokemon

While the sprite files did not reveal a name or other data, this eel’s sprites were numbered right beside the Gurotesu (Grotess) and Ikari (Anchorage) sprites, suggesting it once was the start of their evolution chain. 

(#304) Fire Fox Pokemon

This little fellow is a fox that seems to have a fiery tail. It’s possible this fire fox was inspired by kitsune (just as Vulpix/Ninetails were) and that it was later redesigned as Fennekin. 

(#305 - 308) Snow Bunny Evolution Line

These four pokemon seem to belong to the same evolutionary line. The second one seems to based on the Yuki Usagi, a ‘Snow Bunny.’ In Japan, these cute little critters are made in the snow (using leaves for the ears). They also sometimes make these Yuki Usagi as little marshmallow or mochi treats. So this pokemon line could be inspired by either of these. Considering the leaves and the snow, I would guess these would have been Grass/Ice. 

(#309) Elephant Pokemon

You might wonder if this chonky boy-- looking tough with horns on his head and back-- was an early version of Donphan, but Donphan and Phanpy were present in the Spaceworld ‘97 demo. Indeed, this elephant and Phanpy/Donphan both exist in the same set of sprites from May ‘98, so it was simply a case of two types of elephants. This pokemon also calls to mind a glimpse of a cut beta pokemon we saw from Generation 1 (from ‘Satoshi Tajiri: The Man Who Made Pokémon’):

Same fierce eyes, at any rate! Alas, these both never saw the light of day. However, it’s possible this elephant was reworked into Piloswine, which is not in the May ‘98 collection but does appear in the June 13 ‘99 collection (although Swinub is absent). While Piloswine and Swinub are more akin to wild boars, there is also some relation to mammoths (an inspiration more heavily leaned on with Mammoswine in later games). Then again, there’s another pokemon you’ll see a little further down this list that might have inspired Piloswine instead.

(#311) Natu/Xatu Mid-Evolution

What is clearly a mid-evolution (its file number sits between the two). Has a peacock-like tail. Honestly, I think this works really good as a mid-evolution, and I don’t know why it was cut. I want to name it “Watu.”

(#313) Drunk Kiwi Pokemon

This one is just hilarious to look at. It appears to probably be a kiwi-bird? A very crazy-eyed, loopy one. I can see why this one was cut. The goofy, simple design kind of looks like a knockoff cartoon character for children. 

(#314) Scorpion Pokemon

A pretty badass-looking scorpion, although a rather basic design. I dig the funky head, though. It seems like it has a single, beady eye and is rather menacing. This pokemon may have been later reworked into Gligar, a pokemon that first appears after this sprite set, in the June 13 ‘99 group:

Admittedly this is rather different from the Gligar we know, but it is an early design.

Or, who knows-- maybe this little fellah was later reworked into Skorupi. (If so, it’s a shame, as I don’t dig the weird accordian-like design of its limbs and its evolution.)

(#315) Quail Pokemon

A pudgey little quail pokemon. Doesn’t seem related to the kiwi pokemon. It’s a very cute little thing, and has lots of potential to evolve into something interesting, but it seems they scrapped it pretty quickly.

(#316) Music Note Bird Pokemon

Although these sprites are numbered right after the quail, and they are both birds, the designs are very different, so they seem unrelated. It seems the beta pokemon were simply blessed with a lot of birds. This little bird is in the shape of a clef, giving this bird a musical theme. It seems very likely it was later reworked into Chatot, a bird with a music-note shaped head and metronome tail.

(#319) Boar Pokemon

A cute, grumpy little boar with antlers. Probably what eventually led to Piloswine found in the June 13 ‘99 group. A bit of a shame, in my mind, as I kind of prefer this design.

(#325) Spikey Dog Pokemon

The curious thing is that this dog looks very similar to “Pudi,” a pokemon we saw in the Spaceworld ‘97 demo, which was intended to be a pre-evolution of Growlithe. But Pudi is also in this same collection of sprites!

Perhaps they were toying with the idea of re-designing Pudi (and had already scrapped a bunch of baby pokemon) and just hadn’t bothered to remove the old Pudi yet. It’s hard to say. Ultimately, these both were scrapped, but at least we still have Subbull/Granbull.

(#331) Yūrei Ghost Pokemon

This little ghost has two things that are common in Japanese folklore: the hitaikakushi (the white cloth headband it wears) and the two little balls of fire called hitodama. It is unknown why this ghost pokemon was scrapped, but perhaps they thought the little fellow wouldn’t translate well overseas? 

(#344) Viking Ship Pokemon

Look at this beauty! A pokemon based off some sort of Viking ship. I absolutely adore this one. It’s creative and charming. I hope to see it in the future.

(#349) Wooly Dog Pokemon

This canine-like creature is fluffy as all out. Honestly I think it’s a tad odd, with how tangled and disheveled its fur looks. I can’t help but compare it to the early desings of the three Legendary Beasts, since they also are very canine-like:

These three designs are present in this same May 6, 98′ sprite collection as the representations of Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. Were they possibly playing with a different design idea for the Legendary Beasts? Perhaps Suicune. The Wooly Dog is just such an imposing sprite, that I can’t help but wonder. All pure speculation, of course. 

(#350) Rabbit Pokemon

This rabbit has a rather intense look about him, and it makes me curious what the ideas were behind it. TCRF suggests it’s a possible pikachu clone.

(#351) Snake Pokemon

This cute little worm or snake seems to be wearing a feather headdress, suggesting its design may also be Native American inspired, like the Natu line. On the other hand, this could be inspired by Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent deity in Aztec culture. I would have loved to see this little guy’s evolutions.

(#352) Scarecrow Bird

A bird with a hat that kind of looks like a scarecrow. Honestly, it’s a super-cute idea.

(#353) Gargoyle Pokemon

This crouching beastie sort of looks like a gargoyle with a long, sharp tail. I can’t quite tell if those bits on the side are little wings or just a part of its legs. It would be interesting to see this creature standing in a different position-- I feel like that would give us a better understanding of what it looks like. Interestingly, there are striking similarities with Aerodactyl:

I wonder why they are so similar?

(#354 - 356) Manbō Evolution Family

The first of these three fishies was someone we already met in the Spaceworld ‘97 demo-- it was named ‘Manbō 1.′ In the demo, it evolved into  Ikari (Anchorage) and then Gurotesu (Grotess). It seems it’s now been split off from those and given a new evolution family here. While I find that neat, and I quite like the expressions on these fish, they are admittedly a little bland. 

(#360) Flying Squirrel(?) Pokemon

TCRF guesses this is a flying squirrel, and it seems to be wearing a sheathed sword. Not sure about the headgear it’s sporting. Is that a ninja star? 

(#364) Early Cyndaquil

So, this May 6, ‘98 collection is really exciting. The original Gold/Silver fire starter line we saw in Spaceworld ‘97 (Honooguma’s line) is still present in this collection (as is the water-type ‘Cruz’ line and Chikorita’s line). So, what we have here seems to be an early Cyndaquil before they decided to turn it into a fire type and make it the fire starter! In fact, those spikes might even be icicles (like Alolan Sandslash), for all we know. If so, Cyndaquil’s typing pulled a 180.

(#377) Early Furret?

Possibly an early Furret. Looks pretty awkward, not gonna lie; I’m glad it was probably refined into modern Furret, with more body definition between the head and tail.

(#378) Stork Pokemon

It’s a stork, based on the myth of where babies come from. A cute idea, although its curly ‘hair’ looks a little funny to me. 

(#380) Squid Pokemon

A squid with drills for its mantle and arms. Since that’s kinda Beedrill’s thing, I’m glad they scrapped the idea. The backsprite lacks drills so it’s probably from a different design stage. 

(#382 - 383) Early Burmy/Pineco

Burmy/Wormadam/Mothim is based off the bagworm. Bagworms are grubs that use silk and lots of bits of leaves, bark and other objects to create a camouflaged cocoon. When they turn into adults, some species of female bagworms just look like their larval stage, while the males turn into winged moths. That is why Burmy/Wormadam/Mothim have their unique evolution situation. Clearly, these two beta pokemon are playing around with the bagworm idea. They probably went on to inspire both Pineco (another pokemon based on bagworms!) and the Burmy line in gen 4.

(#386) Koala Pokemon

It’s so cool to see they were thinking about a koala pokemon this early. We would not finally get one until gen 7′s Komala.

(#387) Tanuki Pokemon

A Tanuki that is carrying campfire kindling on his back, but the kindling has caught fire. Apparently based on the Kachi-Kachi Yama folktale, which is a surprisingly violent story, but I suppose folktales often are. Who knows why it was cut, but Sentret is the closest thing we have to a tanuki pokemon for now.

(#392) Megaphone(?) Bird Pokemon

Yet another bird pokemon! There sure were a lot of beta birds. This one appears to have a megaphone-shaped beak. Or, possibly, its head is shaped like a gas mask (the strange eyes seem  to support this idea). Honestly I really dig the look of this one.

(#397) Frog Pokemon

It’s tough to tell but it has a small horn on its head. It has a long tongue and is probably shouting “ribbithhhhhh!” It’s cute, but a little plain.

(#400) Tiny Hippo Pokemon

Look at this little weirdo. I think it’s a tiny hippo? With a mohawk and a big grin and wild eyes. It doesn’t really seem to have a head, its mouth/eyes/ears are just stuck directly to a body. Looks pretty awkward, probably needed some polish. No idea what they were going for with it, but it’s interesting.

(#401) Skeleton Pokemon

A very spooky, bipedal, living skeleton beast. It has a long snout and sharp teeth, almost like a crocodile or a dinosaur-like creature. Its head and shoulders have bony spikes and the front of its snout has markings that seem to be a nasal cavity. Very detailed. It also reminds me of Missingno, as some Missingno used the fossil skeletons as their front sprites. I would have loved to have this pokemon, and it’s a real shame they didn’t use it.

(#402) Rodent Pokemon

A mouse or bunny with gigantic, spotted ears and no arms. Those are some serious ears; it almost looks like it could fly with them. 

(#403) Fly Pokemon

A bug-type!! It has a huge, creepy face, curly antenna and wings strangely really close to its head. I love it?? But it’s a bug, so of course I do.

(#404) Plant Pokemon

The Snow Bunny was likely part grass-type, but other than that, this is our first grass beta! It has one eye, a spikey head, and almost foot-like roots. I love how grumpy it looks. There’s a possibility it was a pre-evolution for Sunflora, before they had created the idea of Sunkern (which is not present in this collection).

(#405) Ant Pokemon

Another bug!! This one looks a lot like a winged ant. (Those do exist-- usually a temporary thing for mating flights) It’s possibly related to the fly pokemon above, sporting very similar wings. However, it doesn’t really seem like an evolution.

(#406) Dinosaur Pokemon

A little dinosaur-like pokemon, looking up at you. It’s unclear if that’s a tough, bony skull, or if it’s maybe a hat. The clubbed tail makes me wonder if it’s related to #415 below, but it’s probably unlikely. However, it is pretty likely that this later became Cranidos.

(#407) Early Cherrim

This clearly was a design that was picked up later, in gen 4, to create Cherubi/Cherrim’s sunshine form. I am glad the design was improved, because the lips on this one scare me.

(#412) Early Dunsparce

Dunsparce looking quite different. No wings, no drill tail, with a much more typical snake-like face. 

(#415) Dinosaur Pokemon

It looks like an aquatic version of an Ankylosaurus or something similar. It’s possible it’s related to the Viking Ship pokemon (as a pre-evo), but there’s no way to know. I quite like it, though.

(#416) Flying Fish Pokemon

This magnificent beast, this miracle of creation, is surely my favorite beta pokemon of all time. Revel in its glory. You may not like it, but this is the ideal pokemon body. What a perfect way to round off our collection of betas.

[babaleshy]

Why I'm Learning Russian

It's been a while since I was last here on this site, and since I seem to be back-back for good(?), I figured I'd update everyone following me on what's going on right now.

And I figured I'd make a separate post talking specifically on why I've chosen to learn Russian (instead of Serbian).

First off, I still wish I could learn Serbian due to family reasons, but there's a severe lack of sources for me to use. Duolingo ain't got shit regarding the language. I wouldn't have cared if it was listed simply as Croatian! I just wanna learn the language!

Thanks to the whole anti-communist propaganda in the states, many Americans (whether by ignorance alone, by design, or some combination thereof) would hear a Slavic language and get pissy. At least this is what I think is likely the reason behind why it can be so hard in some areas to find just books on a Slavic language. If you're lucky to find any, it's always Russian. The area I live in has plenty of Polish, Russian, and Serbian populations (albeit descendants of immigrants, but you get the idea). You're think they'd have a decent amount of books at the local library. The best I could find was a book meant to teach how to translate written Russian (apparently you have to have a ridiculous aptitude for high-difficulty languages or have to already be familiar a bit with it?) and a Polish For Dummies book. That's it.

There aren't any community colleges nearby that I can find that event teach foreign languages at all (this is a right-wing-heavy area, so surprise-surprise).

But in this country as a whole, the only Slavic language I can find that you will commonly find in colleges and universities if any Slavic language at all is supported is Russian.

So that's reason number one: accessibility.

Another reason is that there's quite a bit of stuff happening in the country that due to Americans not expecting to take on foreign languages on a regular basis, let alone a complex one, the ruling class could easily claim what Russians are saying whether it's a soundbyte, a video with audio, or signs and posters and such. They're relying on the American people to be completely ignorant of the language so they could spin whatever they wanna say however they need it to say. (This would largely be fux news' area of expertise, as they've been doing so recently with the protests in Cuba by not only showing protests that occurred in Florida and passing them off as Cuban protests in Cuba, but they straight-up blurred out posters because someone might know how to speak Spanish.)

On top of this, there's something boiling in Russia, so if the Russian people need help and ask Americans for advice, it would be nice if some Americans spoke their language, instead of relying on Russians (and anyone not American in general) to know English to some extent.

So there's reason number two: avoiding misinformation and misunderstandings.

I don't have to tell you twice that climate change is happening right now and that we may not see the climates of many regions go back to normal within our own lifetimes even if we did everything right.

However, worst case scenario, what if we were too late? Where in the would could remain habitable for humans? There's Greenland, Canada, Antarctica (which would be warred over for territory because of course it would), and then there's Russia. Russia is semi-landlocked thanks to the arctic ice on the northern coasts, but once that melts, they would easily be able to trade by sea. They also have a lot of currently uninhabited land that, in this worst case scenario, would be thawed out and quite fertile and suitable for agriculture, especially for the potential billions (remember, we're passed the 7 billion population point) that would emigrate just to be able to survive. This means that if you wanted to move to Russia, it's probably best to learn the language.

That's reason number three: it will be the largest habitable landmass on the planet if we cannot bring about a chance of reversal to climate change.

The last reason is due to the possibility that if I went back to school for what I ultimately want to be (paleoecologist), my interests (pleistocene ecology) may lead me to digging up frozen carcasses out of the Russian permafrost. There's also an attempt in a Pleistocene Park in the making right now (all that's missing is the mammoth which we will never successfully clone) to bring back fauna we still have that once existed there to help with the land's ecosystem in the Russian steppe. And so far, it's succeeding in its goals. And as a paleoecologist, this would be right up my alley. But knowing the language would be incredibly helpful, too!

Russian isn't actually hard for the reasons many "top x videos" claim it to be. The alphabet isn't that hard, to be honest. It's the cases, which is where I'm stuck at right now.

Duolingo is not a good way to learn a language, as they do not teach grammar or cultural context. The app has become a game that makes you rely on memory and hopes you'll catch on.

No other apps that I have found will teach the grammar in a beginner-friendly way for free, either. I'm poor, and can't afford this shit, so I'm hoping to borrow that library book I mentioned earlier (now that I've learned the alphabet quite nicely) might be able to give me a better idea in a way that I can best understand it.

For now, I'm focusing on keeping up my practice as well as building a nice vocabulary bank. That's going to make learning the cases much easier. The good news is my husband is also interested in learning the language and even he learned the alphabet without much of an issue. So I have someone to practice with.

Hilariously, like with Spanish, I have a problem with a foreign language... I can read it fine, I can hear it okay, but writing it? Eh.. And speaking it from memory? Holy shit I struggle. But my husband hasn't had much of a chance to really practice thanks to his job, so maybe it's the lack of practice?

Regardless, learning independently is going to be a nice primer for when (maybe if, who knows) we can finally go back to college once we've moved with my parents (long story) because the university in the area they want to move to does offer Russian. If things go well, I plan to take more than 2 levels (the university requires all students to take at least 2 levels of a foreign language).

So yeah. That's why I'm learning Russian. It's actually really fun, and I do watch vlogs from Russians on YouTube so I get a better understanding of their culture, too. I'm jealous they don't have this fucked up concept of a "lawn" like America does. All it is with the houses and dachas is native plants and fruits and veggies they decide to grow. Lucky...

[rhysintherain]

Hey, I can help with this!

I'm from the Pacific Northwest, where precontact textiles are a huge deal.

The major site you want to check out for this is Ozette, in Washington state. It's a wet site preserved by mudslide in the 1700s, and contained samples of baskets, mats and looms. It's an amazing site that was excavated for preservation with the full participation of the Makah community, and they run a cultural centre that features a lot of the artefacts and information about the old village.

Pretty much the whole coast had pretty advanced weaving techniques before contact, from Oregon in the south to Alaska in the north. Typical fibers included cedar bark, mountain goat hair, and woolly dog fur (my personal favorite). Mountain goat was more common in the north, woolly dogs were red for this purpose on Vancouver Island and the southern BC coast, and cedar was used wherever it was available.

The most well-known type of garment from this coast are the Chilkat Robes, which are incredibly intricate, time-consuming to make, and valuable. They were a symbol of wealth and power, generally worn by the most influential leaders at important events. If you've been to any of the big museums in BC, you've probably seen one. Important symbols and stories are woven into them, and they are incredible works of art.

Here's a Kwakwaka'wakw robe that's over 300 years old, which was sold to the Royal BC in the 1980s by Henry Bell:

And here is the same robe, worn by Henry's granddaughter Joye at her convocation:

(these pictures, and the story that goes with them, are from CBC News and can be easily googled)

We know a lot about precontact weaving technologies partly from archaeology, partly from continued use in communities, and partly from accounts and art from around the time of contact.

For example, there's this painting by Paul Kane, which kinda shows you how complex and important weaving was. The loom is huge and complex, and takes up a considerable amount of indoor space. I also love this one because it has a woolly dog:

(the people in this picture are thought to be Saanich, but we're not totally sure)

Another of my favorite woolly dog pictures is this one:

The girl looks so confident, the dog looks so resigned...

Woolly dogs were little white floofs, totally unsuited to dogly duties, but very suited to being cuddly and producing soft weaving fiber. Since they were so small and single-purpose, and since their fluff was so good for making very valuable textiles, they probably belonged to wealthy weavers, so I would bet money they also spent a fair bit of time as lapdogs, hanging out and being brushed for a living.

I'm not as familiar with mountain goat hair as a weaving fiber, but I imagine it was pretty valuable, since you can't just walk up and shear a wild goat, and even with modern technology they aren't the easiest thing to hunt.

Cedar bark, on the other hand, was a super common weaving material. In places cedar grows it's abundant and accessible, and can be used in wide strips for things like mats, or pounded soft to use in clothing. It was woven into blankets, robes, and skirts (that's one you'll see in a few museums), and could be tightly woven into baskets and water-resistant hats. The cedar basketry is highly detailed, intricately decorated, and comes in literally any shape and size. Where I'm from you commonly see whales and thunderbirds woven on hats and baskets. They're amazing. On the south coast of BC grasses were also used in basketry, and in the north spruce root was used.

The most important thing about these textile techniques, of course, is that they didn't really go away after contact. Robes made of imported sheep's wool woven in traditional styles from after contact turn up in museums sometimes, showing how important traditional regalia was after contact. On the west coast of Vancouver Island some elders and artists still make traditional baskets that you can buy in Indigenous galleries around BC. And Haida weavers have done incredible things to revitalise traditional weaving techniques, down to spinning their own yarn with precontact methods so the warp and weft have the same twist direction. It's all very cool, so go look up some Pacific Northwest weavers to see what they're up to!

One of your posts said you could tell us about pre-contact textiles and that sounds incredibly interesting! Do you have any examples you think are particularly neat?

Hey anon - I’m afraid you’ve got me muddled up with the tags from @buckets-of-dirt from this post who im sure can tell you ALL about that given the opportunity

australia doesnt really have pre-contact textiles per se in terms of a weaving type technology. but sewing and working with skins, as well as string and cord making was very common

not an archaeologically common find - but i love them and even though Wally is the one you want to talk to, imma tell you all about these anyway because i love them. 

possum skin cloaks - they typically started for a baby, and then were added to and grown as the child aged. they dont typically survive from past periods since individuals were often buried in them

(image source)

anyway i love them and everyone should read about them (x) (x) (x)

[shirlleycoyle]

UFO Hunter and Harvard Geneticist Announce $15 Million Effort to Resurrect Woolly Mammoths

A famous Harvard geneticist and a startup founder most famous for planning to launch satellites to search for UFOs in Earth’s atmosphere have announced a new venture to de-extinct woolly mammoths using advanced gene-editing technology.

Investor and co-founder Ben Lamm announced the launch of Colossal, along with a $15 million dollar seed round, Monday morning. It’s not the first science fiction-esque project Lamm has worked on. Lamm is also the founder of Hypergiant Industries, which, among other things, is trying to launch satellites to search for UFOs on earth.

Colossal describes itself as a “breakthrough bioscience and genetic engineering company” that is “accepting humanity’s duty to restore Earth to a healthier state, while also solving for the future economies and biological necessities of the human condition through cutting-edge science and technologies.”

Colossal will essentially sponsor research at a Harvard Medical School lab run by co-founder George Church, an infamous and at times controversial geneticist who has been discussing the possibility of de-extinction for nearly a decade. Church has been an emphatic supporter of de-extinction—the restoration of extinct species to their former habitats—and conducted research into mammoth de-extinction for nearly a decade.

In a Zoom call with Motherboard, Lamm said the company was building off of research from Church, as well as other researchers like David Rice, who have managed to sequence the genome of 23 Asian elephants, the closest living relative to woolly mammoths. Eriona Hysolli, Colossal’s lead biological scientist, also extracted and analyzed DNA from a well-preserved mammoth caracas found in the permafrost of the Siberian taiga.

“They’ve pretty much managed to complete the assembly of the 60 plus genes that would essentially make an elephant genome functionally that of a woolly mammoth,” Lamm said. “That’s the phenotypic attributes: small ears for low temperatures; cold-tolerant hemoglobin; 10 centimeters of brown fat; and of course what people mostly know and love, that furry, shaggy coat.”

The company is currently in the gene-editing phase, where it’s working to leverage genetic tools like CRISPR to splice and edit cells which can then be cloned to create embryos.

If all goes to plan, Lamm said that he is “confident” Colossal will produce its first set of elephant-mammoth hybrid calves in four to six years. Long term, the plan is to have large herds of mammoths reintroduced to the Arctic.

Colossal argues that returning extinct species to their original habitats will “revitalize lost ecosystems for a healthier planet.” Bringing back the Arctic grasslands, the company says, will slow the melting of permafrost storing gases like carbon and methane. A spokesperson also told Motherboard that technology developed by Colossal could be applied to other current species facing extinction. (Notably, the company does explicitly exclude the “use of these Harvard technologies in humans”).

Church’s lab is no stranger to criticism, however. In a round of media interviews in 2017, Church claimed he was two years away from creating a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo, a feat that one expert claimed Church knew “neither he nor anybody else is going to make” in that time span. Other experts have voiced ethical concerns regarding mammoth de-extinction, especially the potential use of surrogate mothers, and lambasted the potential gamble of placing “your climate-change mitigation hopes on a herd of woolly mammoths.”

There’s also the question of whether potential de-extinction is even worth the hefty price tag and resources, and whether those should instead be spent on species that are still living and breathing. Lamm, for his part, doesn’t see de-extinction and current conservation efforts as an intrinsic zero-sum game.

Colossal acknowledges that there are scientific hurdles ahead. Implementing a woolly mammoth embryo remains one of the challenges, and the company is exploring both surrogacy and artificial wombs as potential options.

Lamm claims it’s different this time, though. Church worked for years on a “shoestring budget”—a $100,000 donation from venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Now, Church and his team have millions of dollars behind them and a team of powerful investors.

“This allows us to give the biologists and scientists the focus they need to be successful,” Lamm said. “I truly believe that if I or others had been focusing the right level of capital and energy into this five years ago, we would have mammoths today.”

UFO Hunter and Harvard Geneticist Announce $15 Million Effort to Resurrect Woolly Mammoths syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[tyrantisterror]

Anecdotes from Neosaur Park: Regina’s Family

Another one of these?  Another one of these.  I guess it’s now a thing since I named it.  It’s significantly longer than the last one, so I’m putting a cut here to save people’s dashboards.

I said Tyrannosaurus wasn’t the most dangerous animal in the park.  That doesn’t mean she never caused trouble.

Back when this whole thing started out - when it was just an experiment, before we made it a zoo - we bent over backwards trying to account for every possible problem we might face.  And yes, it was because of that damn movie.  So many people thought this was doomed to fail from the outset, all because some hundred year old piece of media made such a large and lasting impression on the populace.

The One Specimen rule was particularly well enforced.  Despite all the strides paleontology has made, we still can’t learn most of a creature’s behaviors and biological needs until after they’re created.  To keep things from getting out of hand, we would only clone one specimen of a given species, spend at least five years to study its biology, and then and ONLY then would we think about creating more.  We thought we were being smart, and in some ways we were - there were some early hiccups in the project that definitely would have been worse if we had made more clones at the time.  On the other hand, there were some problems we faced later that could have been avoided if we had thought of these animals as social creatures from the outset.

Of course, we couldn’t have known this at the time.  We were working with what science could tell us.  The average dinosaur’s brain is more like a crocodile’s than a bird’s.  Therefore it was a safe assumption that most dinosaurs would be fine as solitary animals - that whatever social instincts they had would be rudimentary, and that they could easily adjust to life without company.  This felt like a particularly safe assumption in the case of the Tyrannosaurus.

I mean, what’s the pop culture image of the creature tell you?  The Tyrant Lizard King.  King.  Tyrant.  A king is the sole ruler of a land,  A tyrant even moreso.  We have always considered Tyrannosaurus to be a loner, a solitary hunter.  I mean, the creature was so goddamned huge - it would take miles upon miles of territory to sustain a beast that size!  Sure, there were herds of similarly sized Triceratopses - herds that numbered in the thousands, mind you - and hadrosaurs and other prey animals, but still, this is a seven ton carnivore we’re talking about!

Now, you have to understand that none of our creatures are 100% authentic.  Dinosaurs lived in a vastly different environment than our current world, even in the wake of the 21st century’s climate change disaster.  It was a lot hotter, and there was a lot more oxygen.  Disease back then and disease today had millions of years worth of evolutionary differences.  The technology that allowed us to recreate these animals is the same technology that allowed us to restore biodiversity during the climate change disaster - to properly bring these creatures back, we had to alter them in a few key ways so they could adapt to this climate.  It’s why we call it Neosaur Park, rather than Dinosaur Park.  They’re not quite the beasts their ancestors were.

But, as far as I’ve been told - I’m not a genetic engineer, mind you - we did not intentionally set out to modify their behaviors, and especially not their intelligence.  All we changed was some of their biochemistry, adapting them to a cooler, less oxygen-rich earth.  Maybe that had a ripple effect we haven’t realized yet - maybe their hormones are off, who knows.  This is still a developing science - we’ve only been at it a few decades, there’s a lot of new ground still to break.

We didn’t choose Tyrannosaurus as our first specimen out of popularity, as some have claimed.  We chose it because the DNA samples were plentiful.  Tyrannosaurus has a remarkable presence in the fossil record, and as a result we have a wide variety of T.rex genes to choose from.  Since our Neosaur would be genetically altered, we had to give it a new scientific name: Tyrannosaurus regina.  And, being sentimental, that’s what we named the first successful hatchling: Regina.

Everyone was as nervous as they were excited when she was born.  This was one of the most terrifying predators ever to walk the earth, a creature with enough bite force to rend steel, the end product of an evolutionary arms race that produced some of the most heavily armored herbivores of all time just to counter it.  It was the villain of hundreds of stories, the ultimate predator.

And she was as timid as a creature could get.

Regina was a fretful baby.  The smallest things could spook her - she once jumped a full foot into the air at the sound of a snapping twig.  More than anything, though, she was afraid of being alone.  While she had one preferred handler - the one whose face she saw first after hatching - she was fine so long as at least one of us was within sight at all times.  If she lost sight of us, though, she’d begin calling out with this strange, gurgling, peeping sound.  You couldn’t leave her for even a few seconds without her panicking, and for the first few years we literally had her under a twenty four hour watch.

Eventually she grew out of that, exploring her paddock as a gangly adolescent.  But she didn’t become as independent as we expected.  Again, we were thinking this would be like a crocodile - that once she started out on her own, she’d lose the bond she had with her “parents” and begin treating us more coldly, if not outright viewing us as prey.  Instead, she would routinely interact with us - greeting us with a hissing bellow, following us around for a bit, even leading keepers to her food trough and, upon seeing us stand there looking at it, taking a few slow, deliberate bites as if to show us that the meat was edible.  It had us all puzzled - this wasn’t the Tyrant Lizard we were expecting.

It was when she hit her late teens that the puzzle became a problem.  Tyrannosaurs take roughly twenty years to reach their full size, but like a lot of birds and reptiles, they’re sexually mature a bit earlier than that.  At sixteen, Regina began to do something new.  She’d walk around the edges of her paddock, sniff the air, look around, and then release this horrible bellow - some deep, booming hiss from the bottom of her gut.  It was so loud and such a low pitch that it actually made the leaves of the trees shake.  And she would do it for hours, traveling round and round the perimeter of her paddock while making this bone rattling noise.  We had been open to the public for about four years at this point, and Regina was already a bit of a celebrity - everyone wanted to see the Tyrannosaurus, even if she was far from the hyper-vicious predator they expected.

This behavior went on for three months, and then she went back to normal.  Till the next year, when she came back with a vengeance.  The searching was more frantic.  Regina was too big to run at this point - when she was younger and smaller, her legs were proportionally longer, and she could get one hell of a sprint.  At seventeen she was far bulkier, and the best she could do was a sort of power walk.  If that gives you a sort of comic mental image, well, you’re about on the mark - a frantic Tyrannosaurus power-walking as fast as she can does look pretty silly, at least until she heads for the paddock gate.

We weren’t dumb.  Every inch of her paddock’s perimeter was surrounded by insurmountable natural barriers - steep pits filled with sharp rocks that stretched down eighty feet deep and were sixty feet wide.  Most of the entrances to the paddock that crossed these pits were human sized.  There was only one gate she could fit through, and that was only by necessity - there had been occasions where we needed to transport her to a sterile environment for medical assistance.  This gate was thick, heavy steel, and a guard was always posted to it.  By this point, we had doubted we needed one there - in seventeen years, Regina had never once tried to escape.  As far as we could tell, she liked it here.

This would be the exception.  Now a five ton carnivore, Regina trotted up the gate and released that bone-chilling howl.  Her mammoth head peer over the walls.  Her nostrils flared as she smelled the air.  She released the bellow again, then watched.  The gate guard was spooked, but this had happened the year before, too.  Eventually Regina would move on to another part of the fence.

But she didn’t.  She looked at the gate, snorted, stepped back, and rammed it with her head.  The big carnivore reeled back, howled for a bit in pain, and then looked at her handiwork.  The thick, heavy steel had dented.  She snorted and rammed it again.  The guard started radioing for help, but he was too late.  With a third strike the gate gave way, and Regina was loose in the park.

The crowd panicked as they saw her stalking freely among them.  Many thought that the inevitable had come to pass - that our experiment had finally gotten out of hand, and our man-made monsters were finally biting the hand that resurrected them.  Most news outlets certainly painted this as such, and the bad publicity alone almost shut us down.

But, as I told you, Regina wasn’t a man-eater.  She really wasn’t much of a predator at all.  Whatever chase instinct she might have had was thoroughly smothered by her pampered upbringing.  Regina ignored the patrons running from her, ignored the paddocks containing other prehistoric fauna - many of whom were her ancestor’s natural prey items, I might add - and instead kept issuing that deep, unsettling bellow while slowly wandering the park grounds.

Though the death toll was nonexistent and the property damage minimal, we still had a hell of a time figuring out how to get her back.  A couple of solutions were offered - she was still traumatized from her brush with the struthiomimids a couple years back, so we could always try to scare her off by playing a recording of their shrieks.  That seemed unnecessarily cruel, though.  Tranquilizing her was on the table, but at her current size that could take a long while, especially given how thick her skin was getting.

One person saved the day: Regina’s preferred handler.  Even after all these years, there was still a bond between those two.  In a ballsy move, she called out to the tyrannosaur and slowly led her back to the paddock.  All in all, it was the best possible end we could hope for, given this was one of our nightmare scenarios.

We eventually realized that Regina’s bellow was a mating call, and that her panic had stemmed from the fact that there were no other Tyrannosaurs in the area, and hadn’t been since, well, since long before she was born.  We assumed she would be fine with that, but apparently not.

Luckily, we had long since prepared genomes for the next few Tyrannosaurs - again, we had an abundant supply to choose from, and the, well, let’s say “quirky” nature of Regina made our genetic engineers decide the try different profiles.  We still thought she might be “off” - an anomaly, far too friendly to be the real thing, perhaps even a little “slow.”  At the time we also thought that twenty years was the maximum Tyrannosaurus lifespan, so it was likely we would have to replace her soon anyway.  Two different gene profiles were selected, and the next generation was born a bit earlier than planned.

We waited a few weeks before introducing the babies to Regina.  Again, we didn’t know much about how Tyrannosaurs interact with their young.  It was assumed that, like their close relatives, they would take care of their offspring, but these young Tyrannosaurs weren’t ACTUALLY hers.  For all we knew, she might try to eat them.  To be safe, we took them in a jeep, along with a good handful of keepers armed with tranq rifles.

Regina came to us within seconds.  I think she could smell them before she could see them, as the big gal immediately headed for the jeep.  She didn’t bully her way through, though, stopping about a yard off to give a loud bellow.  When we felt confident the Tyrannosaur wasn’t going to get uncharacteristically violent, her preferred handler made the official introduction by carrying the male hatchling out of the jeep.  Regina’s eyes went wide, and soon the baby made the same gurgling, peeping noise that she had made seventeen years ago.

The bond was immediate, and it was all we could have hoped for.  Regina doted on the hatchlings, nuzzling them with her snout and watching over their every move.  When they cried out for food, she led them to her trough.  And when we tried to take them back, she followed us, soon developing the desperate panic we had seen before.  We ended up leaving the hatchlings with her, and they’ve been with her since.

By my count, the young ones should be about thirteen now.  Regina’s ten years older than we thought she’d live, and doesn’t show signs of slowing down - every year she puts on a few more pounds and grows another inch or so in length and height, and we’re beginning to think that Tyrannosaur lifespans may be akin to their crocodillian relatives.  As for whether her behavior is natural or a result of her strange upbringing, well, we can’t quite say.  The young tyrannosaurs both have their own personalities in contrast with their adoptive mother.  The male, who we ended up calling Machiavelli, is a bit of a shit starter, to be truthful.  He likes to start fights with his sister, though they’ve never gotten very serious - play fighting, as far as we can tell.  He also chases the zookeepers from time to time, though he’s never actually tried to catch one of us, and Regina generally gives him a gruff talking to for it.   The female is a bit colder - she doesn’t antagonize, but she can get oddly territorial, and is prone to sullen moods where she strikes off on her own, only to rejoin the other two a few hours later.  

Both of the young ones seem a great deal bolder than their mother - perhaps because they grew up knowing the giants they would one day be, rather than thinking that a bunch of hairless apes were their parents.  They’re still pretty easy to manage, but who knows.  Maybe a few generations down the line we’ll actually get that Tyrant Lizard we’re all expecting.  For now, though, we’re content with Regina and her kids.

[sciencespies]

The trouble with dinosaur bones

https://sciencespies.com/nature/the-trouble-with-dinosaur-bones/

The trouble with dinosaur bones

Bloodsucking insects, trapped in amber for millions of years, extracted for their blood-filled bellies, with the blood analyzed for ancient DNA.

At first glance, the scientific explanation for the revival of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park doesn’t sound too far-fetched. It was considered a genuine possibility at the time the book was written.

There’s just one problem – trapped in amber or not, DNA doesn’t like to stick around. Even in the best conditions, scientists estimate that readable DNA completely degrades in 1.5 million years, tops.

The asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs occurred 65 million years ago, so there are tens of million years in the interim, which means plenty of DNA degradation.

Any scientist you care to ask will tell you that Jurassic Park is the only place you’ll see dinosaurs cloned any time soon. But that’s not to say paleontologists are in total agreement about what constitutes the world’s oldest decipherable genetic material.

“Saying you can clone a dinosaur – it’s Jurassic Park, it’s not science,” paleobiologist Alida Bailleul from the Chinese Academy of Sciences told ScienceAlert.

“We’re not doing this to clone a dinosaur … we’re just trying to understand if we can get access to some of the genetic material.”

Bailleul has become one of the faces of the discussion in this area of paleontology, after discovering what she believes could be the oldest partially intact DNA ever found in a specimen of the dinosaur Hypacrosaurus.

Skeletal mount of Hypacrosaurus altispinus. (Etemenanki3/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0)

In the last few decades, myriad discoveries have pushed back the date of the oldest readable genetic material.

In 2013, a 700,000-year-old horse fossil frozen in permafrost became the oldest DNA ever sequenced. Before that, the oldest sequenced genome was from the remains of an 80,000-year-old Denisovan.

Then, earlier this year, scientists announced they’d sequenced DNA from a 1.2-million-year-old mammoth tooth – which currently holds the record for the oldest recovered and sequenced DNA.

Because of the fragility of DNA, some scientists think that might be the oldest we’re going to get, at least in terms of decipherable genetic material that’s not so degraded as to be worthless.

DNA has a half-life of 521 years, meaning that after 521 years, half of the bonds in its molecular backbone break. After 1,042 years, half of that remainder would be gone, too.

In absolutely pristine conditions, the last bond would break after 6.8 million years, but you’re likely to have a lot of trouble reading anything at all after about a million years, researchers say.

“I don’t think anything more than that could be trusted,” ancient DNA expert Sally Wasef from Griffith University in Australia told ScienceAlert.

“And it’s not just that it can’t be trusted. It’s about how much information it’d provide you. It might be a little piece preserved, but would it be enough to provide you with good information?”

Every human’s genome is made up of 3.2 billion ‘base pairs’, the building blocks of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that code our genetic instructions. Every living thing on the planet uses these DNA base pairs to store their genetic information, and most mammals have a similar number of base pairs to code our every hair, flipper, or horn. 

To work out most physical differences between two people, you can analyze tiny changes to these base pairs called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). In some diseases, only one SNP will be changed, while eye color can involve a handful, and some population-wide traits can take hundreds of these tiny changes.

To think about it another way, if you provided a sample of your DNA to a genetics testing company such as 23andMe, they’d look at 640,000 of your SNPs – which sounds like a lot, but they’re only actually analyzing about 0.02 percent of the whole genome.

With so much complexity in a genome, it gets complicated quickly if billions of those base pairs become degraded, leaving only parts of the puzzle behind offering physical genetic information.

Hypacrosaurus altispinus restoration. (ABelov2014/CC BY 3.0)

Wasef uses the analogy of our DNA being like a computer hard drive. “If the hard drive is in a safe place where it’s not exposed to a lot of factors that damage it, it will be well preserved,” she explains.

“But, once this hard drive gets attacked by viruses, you start to eat into your data.”

Even the very well-preserved 700,000-year-old horse DNA was corrupted enough that it had to be painstakingly stitched back together by University of Copenhagen researchers, while simultaneously removing any bacterial DNA that had been mixed in and also extracted.

In the end, despite their efforts, the team – lead by anthropobiologist Ludovic Orlando – only managed to recover 73 proteins, a far cry from the 20,000 or so that make up the entire horse genome.

Of course, identifying 73 proteins is a great achievement if you want to analyze genomic changes in horse species throughout the ages. But to attempt something like cloning, you’d need to know every single base pair in the genome – so we won’t be seeing any ancient horse species galloping around any time soon.

Cloning a dinosaur, then, is well and truly off the table, and given the finite lifetime of DNA, it doesn’t seem likely that there would be any useful dinosaur DNA left to find anyway.

However, Bailleul and her team recently discovered something that has triggered both excitement and skepticism in the ancient DNA research community – signs of DNA inside a dinosaur fossil, millions of years past its use-by date.

While analyzing a baby dinosaur called Hypacrosaurus from the late Cretaceous period, they found incredibly well-preserved cartilage. Inside the cartilage, they discovered cell-like structures that included material resembling DNA in the tests conducted.

“We isolated some cells of the dinosaur and we stained them with DNA stains,” Bailleul says.

“Inside the dinosaur cells, it looks like there’s still some material that’s reacting with the DNA stain.”

(Bailleul et al., National Science Review, 2020)

Above: Chromosome-like structures from the Hypacrosaurus dinosaur.

There’s only one problem: The dinosaur in question is between 74 and 80 million years old – much too old to still have intact DNA.

Because of this, the findings caused some controversy in the paleontology world, with many researchers believing that the sample is just too old to be genuine dinosaur DNA, with the results likely reflecting some form of modern genetic contamination in the samples instead.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to check the result. When working with a very tiny amount of potential DNA, the methods scientists use are destructive – meaning that the samples are destroyed while they’re being analyzed.

In other words, you have to know what you’re aiming to achieve before you get started.

“It has to be a very good aim, or you’re just wasting the sample to prove DNA can live,” Wasef explains.

Despite other researchers’ doubts, Bailleul still thinks it’s real dinosaur DNA her team found – not contamination of the samples.

“Everybody says, ‘Okay, there is no more DNA after 1 million years, it gets too degraded, too modified, you can’t get anything.’ And then yet, here we have this sample,” she says.

“It doesn’t make scientific sense to say it’s contamination … [The contaminated DNA] wouldn’t just be inside the cell. It would also be all around.”

But DNA isn’t the only way to find genetic information about ancient creatures.

In 2019, the same team that analyzed the horse DNA announced they had extracted genetic information from the tooth enamel of a 1.77-million-year-old species of rhino.

Instead of looking at the DNA itself, the team analyzed the proteins, determined the amino acids, and reverse-engineered a small DNA sequence out of that information.

“People are looking at the ancient protein as a new tool to go where the ancient DNA stops,” says Wasef.

Unfortunately, ancient protein has similar issues to degraded DNA. You can tell some information from reconstructing DNA from protein, but it’s only a small (and not exact) sample of the genome.

For example, each base pair (or letter) in a genome works with the base pairs next to it to make larger and larger structures. Groups of three base pairs code for specific amino acids, which then code for specific proteins. But there are redundancies and duplicates in this code, so working backwards is complex. 

“The combination of letters of DNA can make different amino acids, and those different amino acids can make the same protein,” Wasef explains.  

“So, you can’t really translate the same protein back to DNA.”

DNA transcription, translation, and protein folding. (Biology Corner/CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Despite these issues, many scientists think ancient protein truly is the next frontier of researching ancient genetics. You can still retrieve important information from these fossilized proteins, and some information is better than nothing.

In 2016, scientists found 3.8-million-year-old proteins in ostrich eggs. Although the protein wasn’t sequenced in that case, it still shows that protein has a much longer shelf life than DNA.

Right now, the techniques we have available for analyzing proteins are expected to push the age of the oldest genetic sequencing back a few million extra years, although it remains to be seen whether this will extend all the way back to the reign of the dinosaurs.

Nonetheless, both Wasef and Bailleul think the technologies empowering ancient genetics research are rapidly getting better. Just because we can’t do it today doesn’t mean we won’t be able to tomorrow.

“When people ask me, ‘Is it impossible to get ancient DNA from dinosaurs?’, I say yes,” Wasef explains.

“But when I started doing ancient DNA in 2009, what we’re doing now was considered impossible.”

#Nature

[circular-time]

D a l e k   F r e e   S p i r i t   ☼   t e a s e r

-Characters: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Turlough cameo -Rating: T for character death and going to dark places -Summary: The Doctor learns that when he and Nyssa escaped from the Daleks by the skin of their teeth, skin wasn’t all they’d left behind.

OPENING SCENES BELOW THE CUT

❝He could not change the past, nor could he alter her future. He’d be damned before he let the Daleks destroy the middle of her life, too.❞

{SPOILER ALERT: Prisoners of Fate, Entropy Plague, DALEK SOUL}

“A week! I thought you said this was a hospital ship, not some frontier apothecary’s hut!” Turlough’s brows bristled like backfires. His pale eyes were even more startling than usual, picking up the periwinkle blue of his hospital gown.

The Doctor patted the young man’s arm in awkward sympathy. “Bone regrowth in the foot is a delicate process. There’s so many ligaments and small bones that could fuse incorrectly. But don’t worry.  You’ll be as good as new with Dr. Kadowaki overseeing the process.” He flashed a wry smile. “I do wish my companions’ ankles were more durable.”

“Durable? I’m lucky the brute didn’t break every bone in my body while it was chasing me. A fine epitaph that would look on my funeral urn: Trampled to death by a pygmy mammoth. Although how anyone could name something that size pygmy I’ll never know. Humans!”

“Well, relatively speaking, it was a very small mammoth,” the Doctor pointed out. “Island populations tend towards dwarfism.”

“And your ‘perfect spots for painting’ tend towards hazard of life and limb. When you said you were taking me to the wellspring of California Impressionism, I was expecting sun, palm trees and beaches, not the Ice Age.”

The Doctor did not trouble to correct him. He had not expected to find a lonely mammoth on Catalina as late as 8000 BC, but then, the Wrangel Island herd had survived off the coast of Siberia right into the Minoan period. Even in the 21st century, there had still been enough frozen carcasses lying about for well-meaning scientists with confused priorities to clone and release them into the wild just after the Arctic Circle thawed.

So much for paradise. They would have to try again after Turlough’s ankle had healed. The Canary Islands, perhaps?

Setting aside the remains of a mediocre tea, the Doctor pushed back his chair. “Well, if you’re settled in, I’d better go check on the time rotor. It was scraping when we landed. Collision with a panicky pachyderm may have jarred it out of alignment.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Would you like me to bring you anything?”

“Some peace and quiet,” Turlough grumbled, “which is not to be found aboard the TARDIS.”

Humming to himself, the Doctor was taking the ship out for a quick spin to see whether he’d eliminated the squeak in the rotor’s downward motion. A light on the communications panel began to flash. Probably just a glitch to add to the ever-growing repairs list. Even so, any signal strong enough to maintain coherence in the temporal vortex was worthy of attention. Especially when it was a choice between scientific investigation, proceeding to the next item on the repairs checklist, or returning to a hospital that served no tea but Tetley. He hurried around to the communications panel and flipped a switch.

A shrill voice made him reel back from the console in shock, not so much from its volume as from its wrenching familiarity. “LEFT POCKET!” came the cryptic cry.

“Nyssa?!” He had never expected to hear her voice again. Although considering the way their timelines kept crossing and tangling with one another like vintage phone flexes, he should hardly have been surprised.

“Get in!” Her rising note of panic was difficult to block out. He felt a mad impulse to throw open the doors in case she was stranded outside.

Instead, he reached for the switch to respond. “Who is this? If this is some kind of joke, it’s in remarkably poor taste.”

“LEFT POCKET!”

The random outburst would have seemed like mere nonsense, did he not know its context. Nightmare memories flicked past: Nyssa’s wrist bleeding from the bite of the manacles where she had wriggled her hand free, the crack! of the straps springing back from his chest, the desperate dash back to the TARDIS, the frantic scramble for a misplaced key, and the howl of Dalek guns erupting on all sides as he threw her bodily through the doors.

“Get in!”

He gritted his teeth. The recording was repeating itself. To amplify its obscurity, someone had erased all traces of the Daleks and his replies, transforming a moment of terror into banal absurdity. Whatever it meant, it was intolerable. He stretched out his hand to kill the signal. Just then, the looping audio stopped, to be replaced by the gruff tones of an old man.

“Wait— don’t speak yet.” The voice was a stranger’s. “Hear me out. Our mutual acquaintances may be listening. So first, if you wouldn’t mind, tell me what was in your left pocket.”

Seething, the Doctor hesitated with his thumb over the “End” button. The caller sounded human, but that was hardly a bona fide. How could anyone but a Dalek agent have access to that security footage? How had the stranger managed to reach out to a specific TARDIS in the time vortex and establish two-way communications in relative realtime? Only a limited number of spacefaring races had that capability, and the Daleks were one of them. What would happen if the Doctor confirmed his identity, which was apparently the question’s intent? And how dare someone use Nyssa’s voice for a simple identity check? Too many questions. Yet the veiled warning about “mutual acquaintances” suggested that the Doctor was not the only one worried about a Dalek trap.

He needed answers. “A key.”  

“Very good. Now, listen closely. You know who that was, and you know where it happened. That was some years ago. They are gone. With her help, we drove them off. But she was the last casualty. I could do no more than keep her in cryostasis—”

“That’s less than six impossible things, but I’ve already had breakfast,” the Doctor broke in.

“Quiet. I am an old man now, and I fear what will happen to her when I’m gone. I had hoped to rehabilitate her without troubling you, but we lack her expertise. You are her only hope. For her sake, I must ask you to come.”

The indicator light blinked out before he could reply. The Doctor slammed his fist on the console beside it.

Deep breaths. Nyssa— Nyssa, whose distorted parting words had crackled from that same communications panel— was almost certainly dead. Yet death, like time, was relative. Once upon a time, she had said goodbye to her traveling companions and stayed behind on Terminus. By chance they had found her again, fifty years later in her own relative timeline, out on the galactic frontier searching for clues to cure another plague. There she had made the fatal mistake of accepting a lift home. Best not to dwell on how she had left them. The point was, before their reunion on Helheim, her career as an epidemiologist could have taken her almost anywhere, including… what was it the Daleks had called it? Mojox. It was not as if she would recognise the place, since the Daleks had transported their prisoners there while unconscious.

Unless—

He had not actually seen the moment of Nyssa’s death. So long as he did not know for certain, he refused to rule out her dogged stubbornness. Had she beaten the odds, then found her way back into normal space like Romana? There was always a chance, albeit an astronomically slim one.

Either way, his choice was clear. He must act upon the message just as if it were genuine. For her sake, he must confront the hateful possibility that he had mistaken a Dalek base in deep space for a Dalek outpost on an occupied planet. If that were true, and Nyssa had somehow found her way back there, no army of Daleks would stop her from trying to help the natives throw off their enslavement. That was the devil of it: the story was perfectly crafted to arouse his protectiveness and his guilt.

“Very well,” he said, addressing the mute walls of his ship. “Let’s get to work. We may as well know the worst at once.” He began to key in a Fourier analysis.

Twenty minutes later, he had his answer. As expected, the message had arrived via Dalek carrier wave. The signal’s exact source was impossible to pinpoint, but standard deviation placed it well within the neighborhood of Mojox, whose location he retrieved from the archives of the TARDIS flight log.

Mindful of other duties of care, he opened a channel to the hospital ship.

“Doctor, are you mad? You said it yourself: Mojox is a Dalek installation. Of course it’s a trap!”

The Doctor was pacing beside the console. “Be that as it may, I owe it to Nyssa to—”

“Nyssa’s dead, Doctor!”

“Thank you, Turlough.” He frowned at the speaker grill. “I’ll program the TARDIS to return to you via the Fast Return Switch. If all goes well, I’ll contact you, and you can bring her back to me in the same way. If you don’t hear from me within two weeks, transmit a message to Gallifrey that I may be compromised. They’ll see to it that you’re settled in a time and place of your choosing.”

“Doctor, wait!” Turlough’s voice subsided to a grudging mutter. “You’ll need backup.”

The Doctor hesitated, although there was no question of bringing a companion with him this time. Beneath his cynical, selfish exterior, Turlough was a fundamentally decent person overwhelmed by fears, indicative of some deep trauma that the Doctor had never pressed him about. Despite his handicap, the boy usually managed to master his cowardice when it mattered, which in itself was a special form of courage. The Doctor’s voice softened. “I appreciate the offer, but this is my responsibility. Rest. Heal. Try not to worry. Remember, I’ve been battling Daleks for centuries.”

“But never alone,” Turlough insisted, voice cracking. “You’re leaving me behind because you still don’t trust me like you did Tegan.”

“I wouldn’t take her into a Dalek base either, not after what happened last time.” At least Tegan had survived, but her tearful farewell had forced the Doctor to reexamine how much horror his companions could take. Whence the recent string of resort towns and artistically inspiring landscapes.

“But Doctor, I’m not Tegan. I understand the necessities of war. And I know something about infiltration.” That last was a bleak admission, a clue to whatever past Turlough was fleeing.

“If I didn’t trust you, Turlough, I wouldn’t be sending you my ship.”

It was not quite the truth, or at least not the whole truth. The Doctor could never forget Turlough’s part in trapping Nyssa in yet another time loop, this one walling her off from her own family. It was not Turlough’s fault that an enemy had diverted the TARDIS to a place and time where Nyssa’s son was working twenty-five years after she had set out for Helheim on a routine scouting mission. But Turlough had ensured that mother and son met face to face. After that, history was sealed. Once Nyssa had learned that she never returned home, then she could not return, not without creating a paradox. Possibly the time loop had been irrevocable from the moment the TARDIS touched down. But Nyssa would not have gone on her last journey burdened by fresh heartbreak, if not for Turlough’s indiscretion.

Time loops and crossed timelines: such tragedies were why Time Lords were required to steer clear of them. If the Nyssa in this transmission was Nyssa in the fifty-year gap between Terminus and Helheim, then the Doctor would have to act with the utmost discretion to conceal what he knew of her future. Turlough had already proved untrustworthy with just that kind of secret. Anyway, this was Time Lords’ work. Quite apart from personal considerations, the Doctor was embarking on a de facto CIA mission, protecting the integrity of the timeline by ensuring Nyssa’s survival until her appointment with fate.

While he mulled all this over, Turlough was evidently doing the same. “If you’re that worried about being compromised,” he said, “then how can I know whether it’s safe to fly the TARDIS back to you when you call?”

“We’ll just have to trust your finely-honed skills of self-preservation. Use your judgment.”

“Wonderful.” Turlough sighed. “Good luck, Doctor.”

“Thank you. We’ll talk again soon.” He closed the link and leaned heavily on the edge of the console, staring at his hands.

Ever since he had been the Watcher, Nyssa and he had been meeting one another in the wrong chronological order. It was becoming harder to face her each time. Truth be told, it was not Turlough at the most risk of blurting out something she ought not to hear. When you encounter us on Helheim, don’t let me put off taking you home. Go straight back to your family. Cure the Richter’s plague. Save lives. For you, these things are more important than all of time and space.

He could not change the past, nor could he alter her future. He’d be damned before he let the Daleks destroy the middle of her life, too.

to be continued....

[nancygduarteus]

74 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2017

This past year, reporters on The Atlantic’s science, technology, and health desks worked tirelessly, writing hundreds of stories. Each of those stories is packed with facts that surprised us, delighted us, and in some cases, unsettled us. Instead of picking our favorite stories, we decided to round up a small selection of the most astonishing things we learned in 2017. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and we hope you’ll be back for more in 2018:

The record for the longest top spin is over 51 minutes. Your fidget spinner probably won’t make it past 60 seconds.

Flamingos have self-locking legs, which makes them more stable on one leg than on two.

If your home furnace emits some methane pollution on the last day of 2017, it’ll almost certainly leave the atmosphere by 2030—but it could still be raising global sea levels in 2817.

By analyzing enough Facebook likes, an algorithm can predict someone’s personality better than their friends and family can.

There are cliff-hanging nests in northern Greenland that have been used continuously for 2,500 years by families of the largest falcons in the world. Researchers read the layers of bird poop in the nests like tree rings.

Hippos can’t swim.

Six-month-old babies can understand basic words like mouth and nose. They even know that concepts like mouth and nose are more related than nose and bottle.

Most common eastern North American tree species have been mysteriously shifting west since 1980.

In 2016, Waymo’s virtual cars logged 2.5 billion miles in simulated versions of California, Texas, and Arizona.

America’s emergency 9-1-1 calling infrastructure is so old that there are some parts you can’t even replace anymore when they break.

The transmitters on the Voyager spacecraft have as much power as refrigerator light bulbs, but they still ping Earth every day from billions of miles away.

By one estimate, one-third of Americans currently in their early 20s will never get married.

Donald Trump has a long and gif-heavy presence on the early web.

Somewhere around 10,000 U.S. companies—including the majority of the Fortune 500—still assess employees based on the Myers-Briggs test.

Humans have inadvertently created an artificial bubble around Earth, formed when radio communications from the ground interact with high-energy particles in space. This bubble is capable of shielding the planet from potentially dangerous space weather like solar flares.

Climate-change-linked heat waves are already making tens of thousands of Americans sleep worse.

China poured more concrete from 2011 to 2013 than America did during the entire 20th century.

A lay minister and math Ph.D. was the best checkers player in the world for 40 years, spawning a computer scientist’s obsessive quest to solve the entire game to prove the man could be beaten.

There is a huge waterfall in Antarctica, where the Nansen Ice Shelf meets the sea.

On Facebook, Russian trolls created and promoted dual events on May 21, 2016, bringing Muslim and anti-Muslim Americans into real-world conflict at an Islamic center in Houston.

Boxer crabs wield sea anemones like boxing gloves, and if they lose one of these allies, they can make another by ripping the remaining one in half and cloning it.

Cocktail napkins on airplanes may be essentially useless to travelers, but to airlines they are valuable space for advertising.

Scientists can figure out the storm tracks of 250-year-old winter squalls by reading a map hidden in tree rings across the Pacific Northwest.

On islands, deer are occasionally spotted licking small animals, like cats and foxes—possibly because the ocean breeze makes everything salty.

People complained of an “epidemic of fake news” in 1896.

Languages worldwide have more words for describing warm colors than cool colors.

Turkeys are twice as big as they were in 1960, and most of that change is genetic.

Two Chinese organizations control over half of the global Bitcoin-mining operations—and by now, they might control more. If they collaborate (or collude), the blockchain technology that supposedly secures Bitcoin could be compromised.

U.S. physicians prescribe 3,150 percent of the necessary amount of opioids.

Physicists discovered a new “void” in the Great Pyramid of Giza using cosmic rays.

Daily and seasonal temperature variations can trigger rockfalls, even if the temperature is always above freezing, by expanding and contracting rocks until they crack.

The eight counties with the largest declines in life expectancy since 1980 are all in the state of Kentucky.

The decline of sales in luxury timepieces has less to do with the rise of smartwatches and more to do with the rising cost of gold, the decline of the British pound, and a crackdown on Chinese corruption.

Spider silk is self-strengthening; it can suck up chemicals from the insects it touches to make itself stronger.

Intelligence doesn’t make someone more likely to change their mind. People with higher IQs are better at crafting arguments to support a position—but only if they already agree with it.

Among the strangest and yet least-questioned design choices of internet services is that every service must be a global service.

Steven Gundry, one of the main doctors who has contributed to Goop, believes Mercola.com, a prominent anti-vaccine site, is a site that gives “very useful health advice.”

At many pumpkin- and squash-growing competitions, entries are categorized by color: Any specimen that’s at least 80 percent orange is a pumpkin, and everything else is a squash.

Only 2 percent of all U.S. Google employees are black, and only 4 percent are Hispanic. In tech-oriented positions, the numbers fall to 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

The weight of the huge amount of water Hurricane Harvey dumped on Texas pushed the earth’s crust down 2 centimeters.

Russian scientists plan to re-wild the Arctic with bioengineered woolly mammoths.

The NASA spacecraft orbiting Jupiter can never take the same picture of the gas planet because the clouds of its atmosphere are always moving, swirling into new shapes and patterns.

During sex, male cabbage white butterflies inject females with packets of nutrients. The females chew their way into these with a literal vagina dentata, and genitals that double as a souped-up stomach.

If all people want from apps is to see new stuff scroll onto the screen, it might not matter if that content is real or fake.

Cardiac stents are extremely expensive and popular, and yet they don’t appear to have any definite benefits outside of acute heart attacks.

Animal-tracking technology is just showing off at this point: Researchers can glue tiny barcodes to the backs of carpenter ants in a lab and scan them repeatedly to study the insects’ movements.

One recommendation from a happiness expert is to build a “pride shrine,” which is a place in your house that you pass a lot where you put pictures that trigger pleasant memories, or diplomas or awards that remind you of accomplishments.

Some ancient rulers, including Alexander the Great, executed a substitute king after an eclipse, as a kind of sacrificial hedge.

A colon-cancer gene found in Utah can be traced back to a single Mormon pioneer couple from the 1840s.

In November and December 2016, 92,635 people called the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line to ask for turkey-cooking advice. That’s an average of over 1,500 calls per day.

In the United States as a whole, less than 1 percent of the land is hardscape. In cities, up to 40 percent is impervious.

​Half of murdered women are killed by their romantic partners.​

Among the Agta hunter-gatherers of the Philippines, storytelling is valued more than hunting, fishing, or basically any other skill.

The familiar metal tokens in the board game Monopoly didn’t originally come with the game, to save costs. Popular bracelet charms of the Great Depression were only added to the box later.

Thanks to the internet, American parents are seeking out more unique names for their children, trying to keep them from fading into the noise of Google. The median boy’s name in 2015 (Luca) was given to one out of every 782 babies, whereas the median boy’s name in 1955 (Edward) was given to one out of every 100 babies.

America’s five most valuable companies are all located on the Pacific Coast between Northern California and Seattle.

President Kennedy secretly had Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder, which he treated with injections of amphetamines and steroids from Max Jacobson, a doctor whose nickname was “Dr. Feelgood.”

Some of the most distant stars in the Milky Way were actually “stolen” from a nearby galaxy as the two passed near each other.

Hummingbirds drink in an unexpected way: Their tongues bloom open like a flower when they hit nectar, and close on the way out to grab some of the sweet liquid.

New York City has genetically distinct uptown and downtown rats.

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 created one of the most detailed maps of the deep ocean ever.

People who can’t find opioids are taking an over-the-counter diarrhea drug. Some are consuming as many as 400 to 500 pills a day.

It used to take 10,000 pounds of pork pancreas to make one pound of insulin. (Insulin is now made by genetically engineered microbes.)

Astronauts on the International Space Station can’t enjoy the yummy aromas of hot meals like we can on Earth because heat dissipates in all different directions in microgravity.

“Sex addiction” isn’t recognized by the psychiatric community in any official capacity, and it’s actually a deeply problematic concept that risks absolving men of agency in sexual violence.

The peculiar (and previously unidentified) laughter that was recorded for the Golden Record was—well, we won’t spoil it for you until you read the story.

The oldest rocks on Earth, which are 4 billion years old, have signs of life in them, which suggests that the planet was biological from its very infancy.

Fire ants form giant floating rafts during floods. But you can break up the rafts with dish soap.

Until this year, no one knew about a whole elaborate system of lymphatic vessels in our brains.

People are worse storytellers when their listeners don’t vocally indicate they’re paying attention by saying things like “uh-huh” and “mm-hmm.”

China’s new radio telescope is large enough to hold two bowls of rice for every human being on the planet.

Scientists calculated that if everyone in the United States switched from eating beef to eating beans, we could still get around halfway to President Obama’s 2020 climate goals.

The reason that dentistry is a separate discipline from medicine can be traced back to an event in 1840 known as the “historic rebuff”—when two self-trained dentists asked the University of Maryland at Baltimore if they could add dental training to the curriculum at the college of medicine. The physicians said no.

Naked mole rats can survive for 18 minutes without any oxygen at all.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/the-science-facts-that-blew-our-minds-in-2017/549122/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

74 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2017

This past year, reporters on The Atlantic’s science, technology, and health desks worked tirelessly, writing hundreds of stories. Each of those stories is packed with facts that surprised us, delighted us, and in some cases, unsettled us. Instead of picking our favorite stories, we decided to round up a small selection of the most astonishing things we learned in 2017. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and we hope you’ll be back for more in 2018:

The record for the longest top spin is over 51 minutes. Your fidget spinner probably won’t make it past 60 seconds.

Flamingos have self-locking legs, which makes them more stable on one leg than on two.

If your home furnace emits some methane pollution on the last day of 2017, it’ll almost certainly leave the atmosphere by 2030—but it could still be raising global sea levels in 2817.

By analyzing enough Facebook likes, an algorithm can predict someone’s personality better than their friends and family can.

There are cliff-hanging nests in northern Greenland that have been used continuously for 2,500 years by families of the largest falcons in the world. Researchers read the layers of bird poop in the nests like tree rings.

Hippos can’t swim.

Six-month-old babies can understand basic words like mouth and nose. They even know that concepts like mouth and nose are more related than nose and bottle.

Most common eastern North American tree species have been mysteriously shifting west since 1980.

In 2016, Waymo’s virtual cars logged 2.5 billion miles in simulated versions of California, Texas, and Arizona.

America’s emergency 9-1-1 calling infrastructure is so old that there are some parts you can’t even replace anymore when they break.

The transmitters on the Voyager spacecraft have as much power as refrigerator light bulbs, but they still ping Earth every day from billions of miles away.

By one estimate, one-third of Americans currently in their early 20s will never get married.

Donald Trump has a long and gif-heavy presence on the early web.

Somewhere around 10,000 U.S. companies—including the majority of the Fortune 500—still assess employees based on the Myers-Briggs test.

Humans have inadvertently created an artificial bubble around Earth, formed when radio communications from the ground interact with high-energy particles in space. This bubble is capable of shielding the planet from potentially dangerous space weather like solar flares.

Climate-change-linked heat waves are already making tens of thousands of Americans sleep worse.

China poured more concrete from 2011 to 2013 than America did during the entire 20th century.

A lay minister and math Ph.D. was the best checkers player in the world for 40 years, spawning a computer scientist’s obsessive quest to solve the entire game to prove the man could be beaten.

There is a huge waterfall in Antarctica, where the Nansen Ice Shelf meets the sea.

On Facebook, Russian trolls created and promoted dual events on May 21, 2016, bringing Muslim and anti-Muslim Americans into real-world conflict at an Islamic center in Houston.

Boxer crabs wield sea anemones like boxing gloves, and if they lose one of these allies, they can make another by ripping the remaining one in half and cloning it.

Cocktail napkins on airplanes may be essentially useless to travelers, but to airlines they are valuable space for advertising.

Scientists can figure out the storm tracks of 250-year-old winter squalls by reading a map hidden in tree rings across the Pacific Northwest.

On islands, deer are occasionally spotted licking small animals, like cats and foxes—possibly because the ocean breeze makes everything salty.

People complained of an “epidemic of fake news” in 1896.

Languages worldwide have more words for describing warm colors than cool colors.

Turkeys are twice as big as they were in 1960, and most of that change is genetic.

Two Chinese organizations control over half of the global Bitcoin-mining operations—and by now, they might control more. If they collaborate (or collude), the blockchain technology that supposedly secures Bitcoin could be compromised.

U.S. physicians prescribe 3,150 percent of the necessary amount of opioids.

Physicists discovered a new “void” in the Great Pyramid of Giza using cosmic rays.

Daily and seasonal temperature variations can trigger rockfalls, even if the temperature is always above freezing, by expanding and contracting rocks until they crack.

The eight counties with the largest declines in life expectancy since 1980 are all in the state of Kentucky.

The decline of sales in luxury timepieces has less to do with the rise of smartwatches and more to do with the rising cost of gold, the decline of the British pound, and a crackdown on Chinese corruption.

Spider silk is self-strengthening; it can suck up chemicals from the insects it touches to make itself stronger.

Intelligence doesn’t make someone more likely to change their mind. People with higher IQs are better at crafting arguments to support a position—but only if they already agree with it.

Among the strangest and yet least-questioned design choices of internet services is that every service must be a global service.

Steven Gundry, one of the main doctors who has contributed to Goop, believes Mercola.com, a prominent anti-vaccine site, is a site that gives “very useful health advice.”

At many pumpkin- and squash-growing competitions, entries are categorized by color: Any specimen that’s at least 80 percent orange is a pumpkin, and everything else is a squash.

Only 2 percent of all U.S. Google employees are black, and only 4 percent are Hispanic. In tech-oriented positions, the numbers fall to 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

The weight of the huge amount of water Hurricane Harvey dumped on Texas pushed the earth’s crust down 2 centimeters.

Russian scientists plan to re-wild the Arctic with bioengineered woolly mammoths.

The NASA spacecraft orbiting Jupiter can never take the same picture of the gas planet because the clouds of its atmosphere are always moving, swirling into new shapes and patterns.

During sex, male cabbage white butterflies inject females with packets of nutrients. The females chew their way into these with a literal vagina dentata, and genitals that double as a souped-up stomach.

If all people want from apps is to see new stuff scroll onto the screen, it might not matter if that content is real or fake.

Cardiac stents are extremely expensive and popular, and yet they don’t appear to have any definite benefits outside of acute heart attacks.

Animal-tracking technology is just showing off at this point: Researchers can glue tiny barcodes to the backs of carpenter ants in a lab and scan them repeatedly to study the insects’ movements.

One recommendation from a happiness expert is to build a “pride shrine,” which is a place in your house that you pass a lot where you put pictures that trigger pleasant memories, or diplomas or awards that remind you of accomplishments.

Some ancient rulers, including Alexander the Great, executed a substitute king after an eclipse, as a kind of sacrificial hedge.

A colon-cancer gene found in Utah can be traced back to a single Mormon pioneer couple from the 1840s.

In November and December 2016, 92,635 people called the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line to ask for turkey-cooking advice. That’s an average of over 1,500 calls per day.

In the United States as a whole, less than 1 percent of the land is hardscape. In cities, up to 40 percent is impervious.

​Half of murdered women are killed by their romantic partners.​

Among the Agta hunter-gatherers of the Philippines, storytelling is valued more than hunting, fishing, or basically any other skill.

The familiar metal tokens in the board game Monopoly didn’t originally come with the game, to save costs. Popular bracelet charms of the Great Depression were only added to the box later.

Thanks to the internet, American parents are seeking out more unique names for their children, trying to keep them from fading into the noise of Google. The median boy’s name in 2015 (Luca) was given to one out of every 782 babies, whereas the median boy’s name in 1955 (Edward) was given to one out of every 100 babies.

America’s five most valuable companies are all located on the Pacific Coast between Northern California and Seattle.

President Kennedy secretly had Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder, which he treated with injections of amphetamines and steroids from Max Jacobson, a doctor whose nickname was “Dr. Feelgood.”

Some of the most distant stars in the Milky Way were actually “stolen” from a nearby galaxy as the two passed near each other.

Hummingbirds drink in an unexpected way: Their tongues bloom open like a flower when they hit nectar, and close on the way out to grab some of the sweet liquid.

New York City has genetically distinct uptown and downtown rats.

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 created one of the most detailed maps of the deep ocean ever.

People who can’t find opioids are taking an over-the-counter diarrhea drug. Some are consuming as many as 400 to 500 pills a day.

It used to take 10,000 pounds of pork pancreas to make one pound of insulin. (Insulin is now made by genetically engineered microbes.)

Astronauts on the International Space Station can’t enjoy the yummy aromas of hot meals like we can on Earth because heat dissipates in all different directions in microgravity.

“Sex addiction” isn’t recognized by the psychiatric community in any official capacity, and it’s actually a deeply problematic concept that risks absolving men of agency in sexual violence.

The peculiar (and previously unidentified) laughter that was recorded for the Golden Record was—well, we won’t spoil it for you until you read the story.

The oldest rocks on Earth, which are 4 billion years old, have signs of life in them, which suggests that the planet was biological from its very infancy.

Fire ants form giant floating rafts during floods. But you can break up the rafts with dish soap.

Until this year, no one knew about a whole elaborate system of lymphatic vessels in our brains.

People are worse storytellers when their listeners don’t vocally indicate they’re paying attention by saying things like “uh-huh” and “mm-hmm.”

China’s new radio telescope is large enough to hold two bowls of rice for every human being on the planet.

Scientists calculated that if everyone in the United States switched from eating beef to eating beans, we could still get around halfway to President Obama’s 2020 climate goals.

The reason that dentistry is a separate discipline from medicine can be traced back to an event in 1840 known as the “historic rebuff”—when two self-trained dentists asked the University of Maryland at Baltimore if they could add dental training to the curriculum at the college of medicine. The physicians said no.

Naked mole rats can survive for 18 minutes without any oxygen at all.

Article source here:The Atlantic

[flauntpage]

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving!), The Outlet Pass has arrived one day earlier than normal this week. Enjoy!

1. In Honor of Thanksgiving, Here’s a Fake Trade We Can All Be Thankful For

Cleveland gets: Marc Gasol Memphis gets: Brooklyn’s first-round pick in 2018, Tristan Thompson, and Iman Shumpert

When Gasol first signed his five-year $110 million deal nearly two and half years ago, popular thought was father time would tarnish it sooner than later. This was something the Memphis Grizzlies had to do, even while fully understanding the odds-on risk attached. (A broken foot suffered the following February increased the likelihood of it being a sunk cost.)

Instead, at 33 years old and in his 10th season, with a new coach, overhauled system, and personal submission to the three-point line, Gasol is still kicking as a borderline All-Star, albeit one whose crater-sized impact in Memphis isn’t as expansive as it used to be.

According to Synergy Sports, Gasol is currently the least efficient player in the league when he gets double-teamed in the post. Some of this is thanks to a small sample size, diminishing athleticism and curbed quickness, but his surrounding personnel deserves a smidge of blame, too. Even though some of their shooting percentages are up, opposing teams are still open to doubling off Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans, James Ennis, Dillon Brooks, and the rest of Memphis’ roster.

A move to Cleveland would do freaking wonders for Gasol’s one-on-one game. The attention LeBron James demands is unrivaled, and picturing those two surrounded by three dead-eye snipers—like Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, healthy Isaiah Thomas, or Jae Crowder—is a daydream. James has never played with someone like Gasol: A pass-first center who can space the floor, anchor an excellent defense, and singlehandedly create open threes on the weakside when he goes to work on the block.

And just think about the lineups Ty Lue could utilize with LeBron on the bench. Gasol and Love, by themselves, could become the NBA’s mightiest frontcourt tandem this side of New Orleans. Gasol helps in a likely Finals rematch against the Golden State Warriors in a way very few players can. He’s a savant on both ends.

The risk in trading a lottery pick for any player who can opt out of his contract in 2019, let alone a declining 33-year-old who plays the league’s least attractive position and would have to sacrifice a whole bunch of touches overnight, is an obvious risk—even if said pick is owned by a Brooklyn Nets squad that figures to finish with the sixth or seventh worst record and not the first or second.

But let’s play out one possible scenario if they don’t make a seismic trade: Cleveland adds a borderline-washed-up buyout candidate, loses in the Eastern Conference Finals or Finals, lands the sixth pick, watches LeBron leave in free agency, and is bad forever. If surrendering the Brooklyn pick for someone like Gasol is possible, then convincing James to stay is the right move.

Meanwhile, Memphis should do this in a heartbeat. Injuries around the Western Conference are keeping their playoff odds on a respirator, but Mike Conley’s weary Achilles tendon isn’t really allowing them to make up much ground. They’ve lost five in a row and eight of their last ten, with an offense that ranks 22nd despite them never, ever turning the ball over.

The smart long-term play here is to squeeze as much as they can get for Gasol, then rebuild around two lottery picks, with one potentially landing in the top five, in a five-player draft. They can also move on from Thompson and maybe even get a late first-rounder for his service as well. Memphis already has its own top-eight-protected first-round pick headed to Boston in 2019 (which becomes unprotected in 2021), so the best time to replenish their roster with high-upside youth is today.

2. Victor Oladipo…

Photo by Steve Mitchell - USA TODAY Sports

...has more points than Anthony Davis, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, and...Russell Westbrook. The Indiana Pacers have had a top-10 offense all year long despite not having Myles Turner (the dude everyone expected to be their best player) for seven games. Oladipo deserves a statue.

3. It’s Time to Expand Kelly Oubre Jr.’s Role

The Wizards are an obscenely dominant basketball team when John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and Kelly Oubre Jr. share the floor, outscoring opponents by 22 points per 100 possessions. This makes sense. Three of those players are on a max contract and the fourth is a 21-year-old southpaw who’s shooting 47 percent from above the break.

Washington knows what it has with its three best players, but Oubre Jr.’s growth is the variable worth watching. Right now he’s still raw and able to impact games with his athleticism, energy, and length. But knowing the ball ultimately starts in Wall or Beal’s hands—particularly throughout the postseason—it’s worth wondering what type of developmental path Washington should try and set their moldable Sixth Man on.

Oubre Jr. has only run a handful of pick-and-rolls this season, and, to nobody’s surprise, whenever he does dribble off a screen and try to make a play his timing and vision are both a little off.

Despite a leap in playing time, his assist to usage ratio is still near the bottom at his position (and down from where it was last season). He averages as many potential assists per game as DeAndre Jordan—fewer than Steven Adams and Tyson Chandler—and his 20.9 passes per game are fifth fewest in the entire league among all players who average at least 25 minutes.

This doesn’t make him selfish. Oubre Jr. is happy and willing to swing the ball and forfeit his own good shot so a teammate can have a better one. His job is to finish plays instead of start them, but given Washington’s routine bench struggles, it’d be a godsend if Oubre Jr. could quickly grow to become a reliable secondary or primary ball-handler when Wall and Beal both rest.

If the organization’s plan is to win with this foursome leading the way, the Wizards would be wrong to clone another Porter instead of encouraging Oubre Jr. to become a more versatile offensive weapon. In about eight fewer minutes per game, he touches the ball less than Jeff Green. It isn’t too early to diversify Oubre Jr.’s responsibilities. When you’re a good team that knows it’ll make the playoffs, that’s exactly what the regular season is for.

4. Everyone is Surprised by Portland’s Secret Weapon Except LeBron James

Last week, the Portland Trail Blazers decided to turn back the hands of time by deploying Jusuf Nurkic and Caleb Swanigan in their starting lineup. The mammoth-sized duo was a predictable disaster, clogging up driving lanes for C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, preventing either big from having as much room to operate in the post, and creating at least one mismatch on the defensive end that could be exploited by a more modernized frontcourt.

Despite going 2-1 during this week-long experiment—that was partly induced by injuries elsewhere on the roster—Portland consistently found itself in a hole from the jump, causing Blazers head coach Terry Stotts to start the third quarter of last Wednesday’s win over the Orlando Magic with Pat Connaughton, instead of Swanigan, on the court—a game-saving halftime adjustment. (Stotts’s final straw came two nights later when the Blazers scored 82 points in a very bad loss against the Sacramento Kings. Noah Vonleh has started at the four since.)

The buried lede here is that while Portland struggled to score trotting out two slow frontcourt players who don’t complement one another in any way, what they discovered during this same stretch is a three-guard unit that could be their secret weapon.

Lillard and McCollum are an obvious staple that create myriad headaches for the opposition. Throw Shabazz Napier into the mix and it’s pandemonium. The trio only played 20 minutes last season, but in 38 minutes this year they’ve blitzed opponents by 38 points per 100 possessions.

Last summer, Evan Turner was paid a handsome sum to be the ball-handler who could enable Portland’s two franchise guards to work off the ball, decimate opponents off screens and rouse panic by setting paralyzing picks for each other on the weakside. He can still do that, especially from the block when backing down smaller defenders. But replace Turner with Napier and install a versatile wing like Mo Harkless or Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and all of a sudden the court becomes a hornet’s nest.

The offensive upside is clear: three ball handlers who can shoot, drive, and pass, constantly racing around to kick dirt in your eyes, is hard to slow down. But so far (small-sample-size alert!) they’ve also been able to hold their own on the defensive end, in part because Napier plays like an unswattable mosquito whose hands and feet never stop moving.

But there are limits to being “frisky” when you aren’t catching an opponent off guard, and some of their success is because Napier’s three-point percentage is actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. That doesn’t mean this speedy triad should be demoted or even stuffed in glass as a “Break-in-Case-of-Emergency” axe. Stotts should ride this unique group as long as he can, knowing few teams have the personnel to match up with it on both ends.

5. Jimmy Butler is Sacrificing Too Much

The Timberwolves are not the NBA’s most disappointing team. Since November 1st, they own a top-10 defense, and for the whole season they’re outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions when Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson share the floor. But this team, at 10-7, feels disappointing.

They’ve yet to find a way to synchronize their overwhelming talent in a way that accentuates each individual’s skill-set, and startling losses against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons (a game they should’ve won, considering they were home, with a day of rest, against a team that’d just dropped two in a row) have been the result.

Given his contract situation, past performance, and high expectations, Butler’s struggle to look like himself is probably the team’s largest concern. Nobody should’ve expected a fluid overnight fit, but 15 games into his seventh season, the three-time All-Star has yet to find any rhythm in a system he’s already familiar with. Sacrifice is wonderful and necessary, but the degree to which Butler has altered his role to appease Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jeff Teague is a little excessive.

What’s best for him is probably also best for the Timberwolves. Instead, watching him play he looks out of rhythm, like he doesn’t know when to hunt and when to be passive. The degree of difficulty in some of Butler’s scoring situations has been higher than it should be, too, given the influx of talent by his side. Last year, 17.1 percent of Butler’s shots were hoisted when the shot clock was “late” or “very late,” according to NBA.com. This year, that’s up to 25.9 percent. He has more catch-and-shoot opportunities, which sounds nice but has never been his strength.

According to Synergy Sports, Butler’s possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler are down 11 percent from last season. What was once a tool he used to carve defenses up has been more of a dull blade.

Butler’s usage is down, he’s touching the ball 11 fewer times per game, his turnover rate is at a career high, and his free-throw rate is at a career low. That last point is crucial. What initially elevated Butler to an elite level was his ability to draw contact and live at the line. Last season, he was fouled on 20.1 percent of his shots, which ranked in the 98th percentile among all wings. That percentage is currently half what it was. (A plethora of pull-up twos are acceptable when you live at the free-throw line; he’s not quite Tobias Harris, but trending in that direction.)

So much of this is because Minnesota’s roster simply isn’t conducive for a slash-first-ask-questions-later bulldog like Butler. His drives to the basket are now more complicated than Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. one million lasers, in large part because defenses are ready and willing to help off a majority of his teammates.

There are few in-house alterations that can make life easier for Butler, but he hardly ever plays with Nemanja Bjelica (who, ho-hum, is the most accurate three-point shooter in the league right now); in the 52 minutes they’ve shared the floor Minnesota has obliterated everything. (General side note: Gibson has been awesome but Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad have not—play Bjelica more often Thibs!)

There’s no need to panic in Minnesota. But youth, lack of shooting, and non-existent depth at the wing are concerns they’ll have to navigate the rest of the season. Putting the ball in Butler’s hands more often won’t solve them, but Jamal Crawford, Teague, and Wiggins should not have a higher usage rate than he does.

Among all players who’ve seen the floor for about the same or fewer minutes than Butler this season, Evan Fournier, Jayson Tatum, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jeremy Lamb, Will Barton, and Bojan Bogdanovic have all scored more points. Something needs to change.

6. Toronto’s Offense Is Official

Despite struggles in the clutch, which reflect a reversion back to the isolation-heavy, late-shot-clock-heaving approach that hurts them so much when it matters most, Toronto’s offense is quietly morphing into an unselfish monster.

Last season, the Raptors ranked dead last in assist rate. (They were 28th in November during the 2016-17 season.) This year, they’re up to 14th, with 17 more passes per game. They’re 14th in pace (up from 22nd last season), shooting way fewer long twos and a lot more threes. Paths to the rim are wider and open more frequently. The result? They rank fourth in offense and third in effective field goal percentage.

It’s growth in real time, partly due to the infusion of youth from guys like OG Anunoby (the most underrated rookie in an abnormally loaded class), Fred VanVleet (whose name I thought was “Van Fleet” for about two years), Delon Wright (who just dislocated his shoulder), and a few others.

Toronto’s two lynch pins are doing their part and C.J. Miles is flashing Ryan Anderson-esque range. The ball moves better when DeMar DeRozan isn’t on the floor, but that’s also when their offensive rating drops to its lowest point. Probably because the guy’s footwork makes it look like he’s hovering two inches above the court at all times.

DeRozan jacked up three shots beyond the arc in the opening minutes of Sunday’s win against the Wall-less Wizards. While still low, his three-point rate is exactly double what it was last season. They aren't perfect, but Toronto's evolutionary shot profile makes them the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

7. Orlando Treats the Three-Point Line With Too Much Reverence

The Magic should shine on defense. They have athletes who excel at key positions and a coach who’s known for extracting brick-wall execution from much less physical ability.

But after a hot start shooting the ball, Orlando’s defense has become one of the league’s 10 worst. Part of that’s due to injuries up and down the roster, and high usage big men—like Nikola Vucevic—who have known limitations. But a bit of their struggle can be explained by an aggressive “stay home!” attitude towards the three-point line.

Orlando’s defenders, as twitchy as most of them are, have been directed to form a permanent fence at the arc. They don’t allow swing passes to open threats on the weakside and aim to make outside shooters feel claustrophobic. According to Cleaning The Glass, Orlando holds its opponents to a 27 percent three-point rate, which is second-lowest in the league. And from there, the strategy of always being in position to contest outside shots has worked pretty well, with opponents only making 34.5 percent of their threes (though that’s likely a bit more happenstance than strategic ingenuity).

On the surface, this is a rousing success! But in reality it’s like they’re hermetically sealing a body part that actually needs reconstructive surgery. Here’s an example:

At the top, Aaron Gordon does a good job keeping Joe Ingles from getting to the middle of the floor, leaping up and forcing him left. But as the Australian swingman drives towards Vucevic, neither Elfrid Payton nor Evan Fournier pinch in to tag the rolling Derrick Favors. Instead, they treat Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell like they’re Splash Brothers when, actually, they're Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell. Favors snatches Ingles’s pocket pass and finishes with an easy dunk.

The moral of the story: Personnel matters. It’s great that the Magic are executing their coach’s scheme and denying three-point attempts en mass in a league that’s filled with teams that are obsessed with that exact shot, but nothing will ever be more efficient than a layup, and nobody is allowing more of those than the Magic.

8. The Willie Cauley-Stein Bandwagon Has Plenty of Room

Photo by Brad Penner - USA TODAY Sports

I will forever believe that Willie Cauley-Stein is a useful, if not good, basketball player. He’s my personal equivalent to how a specific segment of NBA Twitter once felt (feels?) about Anthony Randolph. If Cauley-Stein was, like, seven percent more confident and nine percent more aggressive, with a point guard who draws attention, manipulates back-line rotations, and can shoot, he’d be Steven Adams.

Cauley-Stein actually made a three last week, too, and is one of a few centers who’s defended Joel Embiid without much help and not been steamrolled in the process. I want nothing more than to see him develop outside of Sacramento, not sharing the court with Zach Randolph and Kosta Koufos. Is that too much to ask?

9. You Can’t Help But Respect Carmelo Anthony’s Commitment to Being Carmelo Anthony

Before clarifying is words and backtracking from the belief that he, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook need to be more selfish in order for the Oklahoma City Thunder to find offensive nirvana, Carmelo Anthony concluded that he and his two All-Star teammates are instinctive players who need to be more instinctive.

Even though his instincts have been wrong for quite some time, that’s a perfectly fine thing to believe. But if I played for the Thunder and read this quote, I'd refrain from ever passing him the ball. On top of a defensive demeanor that exudes the same amount of energy and attention I used to display on Thanksgiving morning throughout my early 20’s*, Anthony’s assist to usage ratio is only higher than nine percent of fellow forwards around the NBA. He could wear wide receiver gloves sprayed with stickum for an entire quarter and nobody would notice the difference.

*The below isn’t a great reflection of Oklahoma City’s collective effort, but Anthony somehow manages to make everyone else look like they're hustling their ass off. He airballs a jumper and then backpedals to midcourt as the rest of his teammates turn to run.

Salute.

10. Donovan Mitchell’s Audaciousness Is Inspiring

The Utah Jazz are in a sad place, but, on the bright side, they also have Donovan Mitchell, a fearless firecracker with more responsibilities on his plate than any rookie on a decent team should. Just look at this wraparound pass to Rodney Hood, the finishing touch on Utah’s execution of a Hammer action.

Freeze the clip at the exact moment the ball leaves his fingertips. Even though Mitchell knows Hood is about to (probably) spring free in the corner, it still must feel a little scary to sidearm a ball the length of the baseline towards empty space. It arrives a little low, but that's nitpicking. This was hard and he made it look easy.

Most of the 21-year-old’s offensive numbers are dreadful, but bold, trustworthy traits seen in sequences like this are enough to convince me the Jazz have a keeper.

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

The Outlet Pass: Butler’s Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre’s Evolution

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving!), The Outlet Pass has arrived one day earlier than normal this week. Enjoy!

1. In Honor of Thanksgiving, Here’s a Fake Trade We Can All Be Thankful For

Cleveland gets: Marc Gasol Memphis gets: Brooklyn’s first-round pick in 2018, Tristan Thompson, and Iman Shumpert

When Gasol first signed his five-year $110 million deal nearly two and half years ago, popular thought was father time would tarnish it sooner than later. This was something the Memphis Grizzlies had to do, even while fully understanding the odds-on risk attached. (A broken foot suffered the following February increased the likelihood of it being a sunk cost.)

Instead, at 33 years old and in his 10th season, with a new coach, overhauled system, and personal submission to the three-point line, Gasol is still kicking as a borderline All-Star, albeit one whose crater-sized impact in Memphis isn’t as expansive as it used to be.

According to Synergy Sports, Gasol is currently the least efficient player in the league when he gets double-teamed in the post. Some of this is thanks to a small sample size, diminishing athleticism and curbed quickness, but his surrounding personnel deserves a smidge of blame, too. Even though some of their shooting percentages are up, opposing teams are still open to doubling off Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans, James Ennis, Dillon Brooks, and the rest of Memphis’ roster.

A move to Cleveland would do freaking wonders for Gasol’s one-on-one game. The attention LeBron James demands is unrivaled, and picturing those two surrounded by three dead-eye snipers—like Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, healthy Isaiah Thomas, or Jae Crowder—is a daydream. James has never played with someone like Gasol: A pass-first center who can space the floor, anchor an excellent defense, and singlehandedly create open threes on the weakside when he goes to work on the block.

And just think about the lineups Ty Lue could utilize with LeBron on the bench. Gasol and Love, by themselves, could become the NBA’s mightiest frontcourt tandem this side of New Orleans. Gasol helps in a likely Finals rematch against the Golden State Warriors in a way very few players can. He’s a savant on both ends.

The risk in trading a lottery pick for any player who can opt out of his contract in 2019, let alone a declining 33-year-old who plays the league’s least attractive position and would have to sacrifice a whole bunch of touches overnight, is an obvious risk—even if said pick is owned by a Brooklyn Nets squad that figures to finish with the sixth or seventh worst record and not the first or second.

But let’s play out one possible scenario if they don’t make a seismic trade: Cleveland adds a borderline-washed-up buyout candidate, loses in the Eastern Conference Finals or Finals, lands the sixth pick, watches LeBron leave in free agency, and is bad forever. If surrendering the Brooklyn pick for someone like Gasol is possible, then convincing James to stay is the right move.

Meanwhile, Memphis should do this in a heartbeat. Injuries around the Western Conference are keeping their playoff odds on a respirator, but Mike Conley’s weary Achilles tendon isn’t really allowing them to make up much ground. They’ve lost five in a row and eight of their last ten, with an offense that ranks 22nd despite them never, ever turning the ball over.

The smart long-term play here is to squeeze as much as they can get for Gasol, then rebuild around two lottery picks, with one potentially landing in the top five, in a five-player draft. They can also move on from Thompson and maybe even get a late first-rounder for his service as well. Memphis already has its own top-eight-protected first-round pick headed to Boston in 2019 (which becomes unprotected in 2021), so the best time to replenish their roster with high-upside youth is today.

2. Victor Oladipo…

Photo by Steve Mitchell – USA TODAY Sports

…has more points than Anthony Davis, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, and…Russell Westbrook. The Indiana Pacers have had a top-10 offense all year long despite not having Myles Turner (the dude everyone expected to be their best player) for seven games. Oladipo deserves a statue.

3. It’s Time to Expand Kelly Oubre Jr.’s Role

The Wizards are an obscenely dominant basketball team when John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and Kelly Oubre Jr. share the floor, outscoring opponents by 22 points per 100 possessions. This makes sense. Three of those players are on a max contract and the fourth is a 21-year-old southpaw who’s shooting 47 percent from above the break.

Washington knows what it has with its three best players, but Oubre Jr.’s growth is the variable worth watching. Right now he’s still raw and able to impact games with his athleticism, energy, and length. But knowing the ball ultimately starts in Wall or Beal’s hands—particularly throughout the postseason—it’s worth wondering what type of developmental path Washington should try and set their moldable Sixth Man on.

Oubre Jr. has only run a handful of pick-and-rolls this season, and, to nobody’s surprise, whenever he does dribble off a screen and try to make a play his timing and vision are both a little off.

Despite a leap in playing time, his assist to usage ratio is still near the bottom at his position (and down from where it was last season). He averages as many potential assists per game as DeAndre Jordan—fewer than Steven Adams and Tyson Chandler—and his 20.9 passes per game are fifth fewest in the entire league among all players who average at least 25 minutes.

This doesn’t make him selfish. Oubre Jr. is happy and willing to swing the ball and forfeit his own good shot so a teammate can have a better one. His job is to finish plays instead of start them, but given Washington’s routine bench struggles, it’d be a godsend if Oubre Jr. could quickly grow to become a reliable secondary or primary ball-handler when Wall and Beal both rest.

If the organization’s plan is to win with this foursome leading the way, the Wizards would be wrong to clone another Porter instead of encouraging Oubre Jr. to become a more versatile offensive weapon. In about eight fewer minutes per game, he touches the ball less than Jeff Green. It isn’t too early to diversify Oubre Jr.’s responsibilities. When you’re a good team that knows it’ll make the playoffs, that’s exactly what the regular season is for.

4. Everyone is Surprised by Portland’s Secret Weapon Except LeBron James

Last week, the Portland Trail Blazers decided to turn back the hands of time by deploying Jusuf Nurkic and Caleb Swanigan in their starting lineup. The mammoth-sized duo was a predictable disaster, clogging up driving lanes for C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, preventing either big from having as much room to operate in the post, and creating at least one mismatch on the defensive end that could be exploited by a more modernized frontcourt.

Despite going 2-1 during this week-long experiment—that was partly induced by injuries elsewhere on the roster—Portland consistently found itself in a hole from the jump, causing Blazers head coach Terry Stotts to start the third quarter of last Wednesday’s win over the Orlando Magic with Pat Connaughton, instead of Swanigan, on the court—a game-saving halftime adjustment. (Stotts’s final straw came two nights later when the Blazers scored 82 points in a very bad loss against the Sacramento Kings. Noah Vonleh has started at the four since.)

The buried lede here is that while Portland struggled to score trotting out two slow frontcourt players who don’t complement one another in any way, what they discovered during this same stretch is a three-guard unit that could be their secret weapon.

Lillard and McCollum are an obvious staple that create myriad headaches for the opposition. Throw Shabazz Napier into the mix and it’s pandemonium. The trio only played 20 minutes last season, but in 38 minutes this year they’ve blitzed opponents by 38 points per 100 possessions.

Last summer, Evan Turner was paid a handsome sum to be the ball-handler who could enable Portland’s two franchise guards to work off the ball, decimate opponents off screens and rouse panic by setting paralyzing picks for each other on the weakside. He can still do that, especially from the block when backing down smaller defenders. But replace Turner with Napier and install a versatile wing like Mo Harkless or Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and all of a sudden the court becomes a hornet’s nest.

The offensive upside is clear: three ball handlers who can shoot, drive, and pass, constantly racing around to kick dirt in your eyes, is hard to slow down. But so far (small-sample-size alert!) they’ve also been able to hold their own on the defensive end, in part because Napier plays like an unswattable mosquito whose hands and feet never stop moving.

But there are limits to being “frisky” when you aren’t catching an opponent off guard, and some of their success is because Napier’s three-point percentage is actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. That doesn’t mean this speedy triad should be demoted or even stuffed in glass as a “Break-in-Case-of-Emergency” axe. Stotts should ride this unique group as long as he can, knowing few teams have the personnel to match up with it on both ends.

5. Jimmy Butler is Sacrificing Too Much

The Timberwolves are not the NBA’s most disappointing team. Since November 1st, they own a top-10 defense, and for the whole season they’re outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions when Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson share the floor. But this team, at 10-7, feels disappointing.

They’ve yet to find a way to synchronize their overwhelming talent in a way that accentuates each individual’s skill-set, and startling losses against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons (a game they should’ve won, considering they were home, with a day of rest, against a team that’d just dropped two in a row) have been the result.

Given his contract situation, past performance, and high expectations, Butler’s struggle to look like himself is probably the team’s largest concern. Nobody should’ve expected a fluid overnight fit, but 15 games into his seventh season, the three-time All-Star has yet to find any rhythm in a system he’s already familiar with. Sacrifice is wonderful and necessary, but the degree to which Butler has altered his role to appease Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jeff Teague is a little excessive.

What’s best for him is probably also best for the Timberwolves. Instead, watching him play he looks out of rhythm, like he doesn’t know when to hunt and when to be passive. The degree of difficulty in some of Butler’s scoring situations has been higher than it should be, too, given the influx of talent by his side. Last year, 17.1 percent of Butler’s shots were hoisted when the shot clock was “late” or “very late,” according to NBA.com. This year, that’s up to 25.9 percent. He has more catch-and-shoot opportunities, which sounds nice but has never been his strength.

According to Synergy Sports, Butler’s possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler are down 11 percent from last season. What was once a tool he used to carve defenses up has been more of a dull blade.

Butler’s usage is down, he’s touching the ball 11 fewer times per game, his turnover rate is at a career high, and his free-throw rate is at a career low. That last point is crucial. What initially elevated Butler to an elite level was his ability to draw contact and live at the line. Last season, he was fouled on 20.1 percent of his shots, which ranked in the 98th percentile among all wings. That percentage is currently half what it was. (A plethora of pull-up twos are acceptable when you live at the free-throw line; he’s not quite Tobias Harris, but trending in that direction.)

So much of this is because Minnesota’s roster simply isn’t conducive for a slash-first-ask-questions-later bulldog like Butler. His drives to the basket are now more complicated than Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. one million lasers, in large part because defenses are ready and willing to help off a majority of his teammates.

There are few in-house alterations that can make life easier for Butler, but he hardly ever plays with Nemanja Bjelica (who, ho-hum, is the most accurate three-point shooter in the league right now); in the 52 minutes they’ve shared the floor Minnesota has obliterated everything. (General side note: Gibson has been awesome but Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad have not—play Bjelica more often Thibs!)

There’s no need to panic in Minnesota. But youth, lack of shooting, and non-existent depth at the wing are concerns they’ll have to navigate the rest of the season. Putting the ball in Butler’s hands more often won’t solve them, but Jamal Crawford, Teague, and Wiggins should not have a higher usage rate than he does.

Among all players who’ve seen the floor for about the same or fewer minutes than Butler this season, Evan Fournier, Jayson Tatum, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jeremy Lamb, Will Barton, and Bojan Bogdanovic have all scored more points. Something needs to change.

6. Toronto’s Offense Is Official

Despite struggles in the clutch, which reflect a reversion back to the isolation-heavy, late-shot-clock-heaving approach that hurts them so much when it matters most, Toronto’s offense is quietly morphing into an unselfish monster.

Last season, the Raptors ranked dead last in assist rate. (They were 28th in November during the 2016-17 season.) This year, they’re up to 14th, with 17 more passes per game. They’re 14th in pace (up from 22nd last season), shooting way fewer long twos and a lot more threes. Paths to the rim are wider and open more frequently. The result? They rank fourth in offense and third in effective field goal percentage.

It’s growth in real time, partly due to the infusion of youth from guys like OG Anunoby (the most underrated rookie in an abnormally loaded class), Fred VanVleet (whose name I thought was “Van Fleet” for about two years), Delon Wright (who just dislocated his shoulder), and a few others.

Toronto’s two lynch pins are doing their part and C.J. Miles is flashing Ryan Anderson-esque range. The ball moves better when DeMar DeRozan isn’t on the floor, but that’s also when their offensive rating drops to its lowest point. Probably because the guy’s footwork makes it look like he’s hovering two inches above the court at all times.

DeRozan jacked up three shots beyond the arc in the opening minutes of Sunday’s win against the Wall-less Wizards. While still low, his three-point rate is exactly double what it was last season. They aren’t perfect, but Toronto’s evolutionary shot profile makes them the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

7. Orlando Treats the Three-Point Line With Too Much Reverence

The Magic should shine on defense. They have athletes who excel at key positions and a coach who’s known for extracting brick-wall execution from much less physical ability.

But after a hot start shooting the ball, Orlando’s defense has become one of the league’s 10 worst. Part of that’s due to injuries up and down the roster, and high usage big men—like Nikola Vucevic—who have known limitations. But a bit of their struggle can be explained by an aggressive “stay home!” attitude towards the three-point line.

Orlando’s defenders, as twitchy as most of them are, have been directed to form a permanent fence at the arc. They don’t allow swing passes to open threats on the weakside and aim to make outside shooters feel claustrophobic. According to Cleaning The Glass, Orlando holds its opponents to a 27 percent three-point rate, which is second-lowest in the league. And from there, the strategy of always being in position to contest outside shots has worked pretty well, with opponents only making 34.5 percent of their threes (though that’s likely a bit more happenstance than strategic ingenuity).

On the surface, this is a rousing success! But in reality it’s like they’re hermetically sealing a body part that actually needs reconstructive surgery. Here’s an example:

At the top, Aaron Gordon does a good job keeping Joe Ingles from getting to the middle of the floor, leaping up and forcing him left. But as the Australian swingman drives towards Vucevic, neither Elfrid Payton nor Evan Fournier pinch in to tag the rolling Derrick Favors. Instead, they treat Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell like they’re Splash Brothers when, actually, they’re Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell. Favors snatches Ingles’s pocket pass and finishes with an easy dunk.

The moral of the story: Personnel matters. It’s great that the Magic are executing their coach’s scheme and denying three-point attempts en mass in a league that’s filled with teams that are obsessed with that exact shot, but nothing will ever be more efficient than a layup, and nobody is allowing more of those than the Magic.

8. The Willie Cauley-Stein Bandwagon Has Plenty of Room

Photo by Brad Penner – USA TODAY Sports

I will forever believe that Willie Cauley-Stein is a useful, if not good, basketball player. He’s my personal equivalent to how a specific segment of NBA Twitter once felt (feels?) about Anthony Randolph. If Cauley-Stein was, like, seven percent more confident and nine percent more aggressive, with a point guard who draws attention, manipulates back-line rotations, and can shoot, he’d be Steven Adams.

Cauley-Stein actually made a three last week, too, and is one of a few centers who’s defended Joel Embiid without much help and not been steamrolled in the process. I want nothing more than to see him develop outside of Sacramento, not sharing the court with Zach Randolph and Kosta Koufos. Is that too much to ask?

9. You Can’t Help But Respect Carmelo Anthony’s Commitment to Being Carmelo Anthony

Before clarifying is words and backtracking from the belief that he, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook need to be more selfish in order for the Oklahoma City Thunder to find offensive nirvana, Carmelo Anthony concluded that he and his two All-Star teammates are instinctive players who need to be more instinctive.

Even though his instincts have been wrong for quite some time, that’s a perfectly fine thing to believe. But if I played for the Thunder and read this quote, I’d refrain from ever passing him the ball. On top of a defensive demeanor that exudes the same amount of energy and attention I used to display on Thanksgiving morning throughout my early 20’s*, Anthony’s assist to usage ratio is only higher than nine percent of fellow forwards around the NBA. He could wear wide receiver gloves sprayed with stickum for an entire quarter and nobody would notice the difference.

*The below isn’t a great reflection of Oklahoma City’s collective effort, but Anthony somehow manages to make everyone else look like they’re hustling their ass off. He airballs a jumper and then backpedals to midcourt as the rest of his teammates turn to run.

Salute.

10. Donovan Mitchell’s Audaciousness Is Inspiring

The Utah Jazz are in a sad place, but, on the bright side, they also have Donovan Mitchell, a fearless firecracker with more responsibilities on his plate than any rookie on a decent team should. Just look at this wraparound pass to Rodney Hood, the finishing touch on Utah’s execution of a Hammer action.

Freeze the clip at the exact moment the ball leaves his fingertips. Even though Mitchell knows Hood is about to (probably) spring free in the corner, it still must feel a little scary to sidearm a ball the length of the baseline towards empty space. It arrives a little low, but that’s nitpicking. This was hard and he made it look easy.

Most of the 21-year-old’s offensive numbers are dreadful, but bold, trustworthy traits seen in sequences like this are enough to convince me the Jazz have a keeper.

The Outlet Pass: Butler’s Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre’s Evolution syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[flauntpage]

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving!), The Outlet Pass has arrived one day earlier than normal this week. Enjoy!

1. In Honor of Thanksgiving, Here’s a Fake Trade We Can All Be Thankful For

Cleveland gets: Marc Gasol Memphis gets: Brooklyn’s first-round pick in 2018, Tristan Thompson, and Iman Shumpert

When Gasol first signed his five-year $110 million deal nearly two and half years ago, popular thought was father time would tarnish it sooner than later. This was something the Memphis Grizzlies had to do, even while fully understanding the odds-on risk attached. (A broken foot suffered the following February increased the likelihood of it being a sunk cost.)

Instead, at 33 years old and in his 10th season, with a new coach, overhauled system, and personal submission to the three-point line, Gasol is still kicking as a borderline All-Star, albeit one whose crater-sized impact in Memphis isn’t as expansive as it used to be.

According to Synergy Sports, Gasol is currently the least efficient player in the league when he gets double-teamed in the post. Some of this is thanks to a small sample size, diminishing athleticism and curbed quickness, but his surrounding personnel deserves a smidge of blame, too. Even though some of their shooting percentages are up, opposing teams are still open to doubling off Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans, James Ennis, Dillon Brooks, and the rest of Memphis’ roster.

A move to Cleveland would do freaking wonders for Gasol’s one-on-one game. The attention LeBron James demands is unrivaled, and picturing those two surrounded by three dead-eye snipers—like Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, healthy Isaiah Thomas, or Jae Crowder—is a daydream. James has never played with someone like Gasol: A pass-first center who can space the floor, anchor an excellent defense, and singlehandedly create open threes on the weakside when he goes to work on the block.

And just think about the lineups Ty Lue could utilize with LeBron on the bench. Gasol and Love, by themselves, could become the NBA’s mightiest frontcourt tandem this side of New Orleans. Gasol helps in a likely Finals rematch against the Golden State Warriors in a way very few players can. He’s a savant on both ends.

The risk in trading a lottery pick for any player who can opt out of his contract in 2019, let alone a declining 33-year-old who plays the league’s least attractive position and would have to sacrifice a whole bunch of touches overnight, is an obvious risk—even if said pick is owned by a Brooklyn Nets squad that figures to finish with the sixth or seventh worst record and not the first or second.

But let’s play out one possible scenario if they don’t make a seismic trade: Cleveland adds a borderline-washed-up buyout candidate, loses in the Eastern Conference Finals or Finals, lands the sixth pick, watches LeBron leave in free agency, and is bad forever. If surrendering the Brooklyn pick for someone like Gasol is possible, then convincing James to stay is the right move.

Meanwhile, Memphis should do this in a heartbeat. Injuries around the Western Conference are keeping their playoff odds on a respirator, but Mike Conley’s weary Achilles tendon isn’t really allowing them to make up much ground. They’ve lost five in a row and eight of their last ten, with an offense that ranks 22nd despite them never, ever turning the ball over.

The smart long-term play here is to squeeze as much as they can get for Gasol, then rebuild around two lottery picks, with one potentially landing in the top five, in a five-player draft. They can also move on from Thompson and maybe even get a late first-rounder for his service as well. Memphis already has its own top-eight-protected first-round pick headed to Boston in 2019 (which becomes unprotected in 2021), so the best time to replenish their roster with high-upside youth is today.

2. Victor Oladipo…

Photo by Steve Mitchell - USA TODAY Sports

...has more points than Anthony Davis, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, and...Russell Westbrook. The Indiana Pacers have had a top-10 offense all year long despite not having Myles Turner (the dude everyone expected to be their best player) for seven games. Oladipo deserves a statue.

3. It’s Time to Expand Kelly Oubre Jr.’s Role

The Wizards are an obscenely dominant basketball team when John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and Kelly Oubre Jr. share the floor, outscoring opponents by 22 points per 100 possessions. This makes sense. Three of those players are on a max contract and the fourth is a 21-year-old southpaw who’s shooting 47 percent from above the break.

Washington knows what it has with its three best players, but Oubre Jr.’s growth is the variable worth watching. Right now he’s still raw and able to impact games with his athleticism, energy, and length. But knowing the ball ultimately starts in Wall or Beal’s hands—particularly throughout the postseason—it’s worth wondering what type of developmental path Washington should try and set their moldable Sixth Man on.

Oubre Jr. has only run a handful of pick-and-rolls this season, and, to nobody’s surprise, whenever he does dribble off a screen and try to make a play his timing and vision are both a little off.

Despite a leap in playing time, his assist to usage ratio is still near the bottom at his position (and down from where it was last season). He averages as many potential assists per game as DeAndre Jordan—fewer than Steven Adams and Tyson Chandler—and his 20.9 passes per game are fifth fewest in the entire league among all players who average at least 25 minutes.

This doesn’t make him selfish. Oubre Jr. is happy and willing to swing the ball and forfeit his own good shot so a teammate can have a better one. His job is to finish plays instead of start them, but given Washington’s routine bench struggles, it’d be a godsend if Oubre Jr. could quickly grow to become a reliable secondary or primary ball-handler when Wall and Beal both rest.

If the organization’s plan is to win with this foursome leading the way, the Wizards would be wrong to clone another Porter instead of encouraging Oubre Jr. to become a more versatile offensive weapon. In about eight fewer minutes per game, he touches the ball less than Jeff Green. It isn’t too early to diversify Oubre Jr.’s responsibilities. When you’re a good team that knows it’ll make the playoffs, that’s exactly what the regular season is for.

4. Everyone is Surprised by Portland’s Secret Weapon Except LeBron James

Last week, the Portland Trail Blazers decided to turn back the hands of time by deploying Jusuf Nurkic and Caleb Swanigan in their starting lineup. The mammoth-sized duo was a predictable disaster, clogging up driving lanes for C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, preventing either big from having as much room to operate in the post, and creating at least one mismatch on the defensive end that could be exploited by a more modernized frontcourt.

Despite going 2-1 during this week-long experiment—that was partly induced by injuries elsewhere on the roster—Portland consistently found itself in a hole from the jump, causing Blazers head coach Terry Stotts to start the third quarter of last Wednesday’s win over the Orlando Magic with Pat Connaughton, instead of Swanigan, on the court—a game-saving halftime adjustment. (Stotts’s final straw came two nights later when the Blazers scored 82 points in a very bad loss against the Sacramento Kings. Noah Vonleh has started at the four since.)

The buried lede here is that while Portland struggled to score trotting out two slow frontcourt players who don’t complement one another in any way, what they discovered during this same stretch is a three-guard unit that could be their secret weapon.

Lillard and McCollum are an obvious staple that create myriad headaches for the opposition. Throw Shabazz Napier into the mix and it’s pandemonium. The trio only played 20 minutes last season, but in 38 minutes this year they’ve blitzed opponents by 38 points per 100 possessions.

Last summer, Evan Turner was paid a handsome sum to be the ball-handler who could enable Portland’s two franchise guards to work off the ball, decimate opponents off screens and rouse panic by setting paralyzing picks for each other on the weakside. He can still do that, especially from the block when backing down smaller defenders. But replace Turner with Napier and install a versatile wing like Mo Harkless or Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and all of a sudden the court becomes a hornet’s nest.

The offensive upside is clear: three ball handlers who can shoot, drive, and pass, constantly racing around to kick dirt in your eyes, is hard to slow down. But so far (small-sample-size alert!) they’ve also been able to hold their own on the defensive end, in part because Napier plays like an unswattable mosquito whose hands and feet never stop moving.

But there are limits to being “frisky” when you aren’t catching an opponent off guard, and some of their success is because Napier’s three-point percentage is actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. That doesn’t mean this speedy triad should be demoted or even stuffed in glass as a “Break-in-Case-of-Emergency” axe. Stotts should ride this unique group as long as he can, knowing few teams have the personnel to match up with it on both ends.

5. Jimmy Butler is Sacrificing Too Much

The Timberwolves are not the NBA’s most disappointing team. Since November 1st, they own a top-10 defense, and for the whole season they’re outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions when Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson share the floor. But this team, at 10-7, feels disappointing.

They’ve yet to find a way to synchronize their overwhelming talent in a way that accentuates each individual’s skill-set, and startling losses against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons (a game they should’ve won, considering they were home, with a day of rest, against a team that’d just dropped two in a row) have been the result.

Given his contract situation, past performance, and high expectations, Butler’s struggle to look like himself is probably the team’s largest concern. Nobody should’ve expected a fluid overnight fit, but 15 games into his seventh season, the three-time All-Star has yet to find any rhythm in a system he’s already familiar with. Sacrifice is wonderful and necessary, but the degree to which Butler has altered his role to appease Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jeff Teague is a little excessive.

What’s best for him is probably also best for the Timberwolves. Instead, watching him play he looks out of rhythm, like he doesn’t know when to hunt and when to be passive. The degree of difficulty in some of Butler’s scoring situations has been higher than it should be, too, given the influx of talent by his side. Last year, 17.1 percent of Butler’s shots were hoisted when the shot clock was “late” or “very late,” according to NBA.com. This year, that’s up to 25.9 percent. He has more catch-and-shoot opportunities, which sounds nice but has never been his strength.

According to Synergy Sports, Butler’s possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler are down 11 percent from last season. What was once a tool he used to carve defenses up has been more of a dull blade.

Butler’s usage is down, he’s touching the ball 11 fewer times per game, his turnover rate is at a career high, and his free-throw rate is at a career low. That last point is crucial. What initially elevated Butler to an elite level was his ability to draw contact and live at the line. Last season, he was fouled on 20.1 percent of his shots, which ranked in the 98th percentile among all wings. That percentage is currently half what it was. (A plethora of pull-up twos are acceptable when you live at the free-throw line; he’s not quite Tobias Harris, but trending in that direction.)

So much of this is because Minnesota’s roster simply isn’t conducive for a slash-first-ask-questions-later bulldog like Butler. His drives to the basket are now more complicated than Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. one million lasers, in large part because defenses are ready and willing to help off a majority of his teammates.

There are few in-house alterations that can make life easier for Butler, but he hardly ever plays with Nemanja Bjelica (who, ho-hum, is the most accurate three-point shooter in the league right now); in the 52 minutes they’ve shared the floor Minnesota has obliterated everything. (General side note: Gibson has been awesome but Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad have not—play Bjelica more often Thibs!)

There’s no need to panic in Minnesota. But youth, lack of shooting, and non-existent depth at the wing are concerns they’ll have to navigate the rest of the season. Putting the ball in Butler’s hands more often won’t solve them, but Jamal Crawford, Teague, and Wiggins should not have a higher usage rate than he does.

Among all players who’ve seen the floor for about the same or fewer minutes than Butler this season, Evan Fournier, Jayson Tatum, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jeremy Lamb, Will Barton, and Bojan Bogdanovic have all scored more points. Something needs to change.

6. Toronto’s Offense Is Official

Despite struggles in the clutch, which reflect a reversion back to the isolation-heavy, late-shot-clock-heaving approach that hurts them so much when it matters most, Toronto’s offense is quietly morphing into an unselfish monster.

Last season, the Raptors ranked dead last in assist rate. (They were 28th in November during the 2016-17 season.) This year, they’re up to 14th, with 17 more passes per game. They’re 14th in pace (up from 22nd last season), shooting way fewer long twos and a lot more threes. Paths to the rim are wider and open more frequently. The result? They rank fourth in offense and third in effective field goal percentage.

It’s growth in real time, partly due to the infusion of youth from guys like OG Anunoby (the most underrated rookie in an abnormally loaded class), Fred VanVleet (whose name I thought was “Van Fleet” for about two years), Delon Wright (who just dislocated his shoulder), and a few others.

Toronto’s two lynch pins are doing their part and C.J. Miles is flashing Ryan Anderson-esque range. The ball moves better when DeMar DeRozan isn’t on the floor, but that’s also when their offensive rating drops to its lowest point. Probably because the guy’s footwork makes it look like he’s hovering two inches above the court at all times.

DeRozan jacked up three shots beyond the arc in the opening minutes of Sunday’s win against the Wall-less Wizards. While still low, his three-point rate is exactly double what it was last season. They aren't perfect, but Toronto's evolutionary shot profile makes them the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

7. Orlando Treats the Three-Point Line With Too Much Reverence

The Magic should shine on defense. They have athletes who excel at key positions and a coach who’s known for extracting brick-wall execution from much less physical ability.

But after a hot start shooting the ball, Orlando’s defense has become one of the league’s 10 worst. Part of that’s due to injuries up and down the roster, and high usage big men—like Nikola Vucevic—who have known limitations. But a bit of their struggle can be explained by an aggressive “stay home!” attitude towards the three-point line.

Orlando’s defenders, as twitchy as most of them are, have been directed to form a permanent fence at the arc. They don’t allow swing passes to open threats on the weakside and aim to make outside shooters feel claustrophobic. According to Cleaning The Glass, Orlando holds its opponents to a 27 percent three-point rate, which is second-lowest in the league. And from there, the strategy of always being in position to contest outside shots has worked pretty well, with opponents only making 34.5 percent of their threes (though that’s likely a bit more happenstance than strategic ingenuity).

On the surface, this is a rousing success! But in reality it’s like they’re hermetically sealing a body part that actually needs reconstructive surgery. Here’s an example:

At the top, Aaron Gordon does a good job keeping Joe Ingles from getting to the middle of the floor, leaping up and forcing him left. But as the Australian swingman drives towards Vucevic, neither Elfrid Payton nor Evan Fournier pinch in to tag the rolling Derrick Favors. Instead, they treat Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell like they’re Splash Brothers when, actually, they're Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell. Favors snatches Ingles’s pocket pass and finishes with an easy dunk.

The moral of the story: Personnel matters. It’s great that the Magic are executing their coach’s scheme and denying three-point attempts en mass in a league that’s filled with teams that are obsessed with that exact shot, but nothing will ever be more efficient than a layup, and nobody is allowing more of those than the Magic.

8. The Willie Cauley-Stein Bandwagon Has Plenty of Room

Photo by Brad Penner - USA TODAY Sports

I will forever believe that Willie Cauley-Stein is a useful, if not good, basketball player. He’s my personal equivalent to how a specific segment of NBA Twitter once felt (feels?) about Anthony Randolph. If Cauley-Stein was, like, seven percent more confident and nine percent more aggressive, with a point guard who draws attention, manipulates back-line rotations, and can shoot, he’d be Steven Adams.

Cauley-Stein actually made a three last week, too, and is one of a few centers who’s defended Joel Embiid without much help and not been steamrolled in the process. I want nothing more than to see him develop outside of Sacramento, not sharing the court with Zach Randolph and Kosta Koufos. Is that too much to ask?

9. You Can’t Help But Respect Carmelo Anthony’s Commitment to Being Carmelo Anthony

Before clarifying is words and backtracking from the belief that he, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook need to be more selfish in order for the Oklahoma City Thunder to find offensive nirvana, Carmelo Anthony concluded that he and his two All-Star teammates are instinctive players who need to be more instinctive.

Even though his instincts have been wrong for quite some time, that’s a perfectly fine thing to believe. But if I played for the Thunder and read this quote, I'd refrain from ever passing him the ball. On top of a defensive demeanor that exudes the same amount of energy and attention I used to display on Thanksgiving morning throughout my early 20’s*, Anthony’s assist to usage ratio is only higher than nine percent of fellow forwards around the NBA. He could wear wide receiver gloves sprayed with stickum for an entire quarter and nobody would notice the difference.

*The below isn’t a great reflection of Oklahoma City’s collective effort, but Anthony somehow manages to make everyone else look like they're hustling their ass off. He airballs a jumper and then backpedals to midcourt as the rest of his teammates turn to run.

Salute.

10. Donovan Mitchell’s Audaciousness Is Inspiring

The Utah Jazz are in a sad place, but, on the bright side, they also have Donovan Mitchell, a fearless firecracker with more responsibilities on his plate than any rookie on a decent team should. Just look at this wraparound pass to Rodney Hood, the finishing touch on Utah’s execution of a Hammer action.

Freeze the clip at the exact moment the ball leaves his fingertips. Even though Mitchell knows Hood is about to (probably) spring free in the corner, it still must feel a little scary to sidearm a ball the length of the baseline towards empty space. It arrives a little low, but that's nitpicking. This was hard and he made it look easy.

Most of the 21-year-old’s offensive numbers are dreadful, but bold, trustworthy traits seen in sequences like this are enough to convince me the Jazz have a keeper.

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving!), The Outlet Pass has arrived one day earlier than normal this week. Enjoy!

1. In Honor of Thanksgiving, Here’s a Fake Trade We Can All Be Thankful For

Cleveland gets: Marc Gasol Memphis gets: Brooklyn’s first-round pick in 2018, Tristan Thompson, and Iman Shumpert

When Gasol first signed his five-year $110 million deal nearly two and half years ago, popular thought was father time would tarnish it sooner than later. This was something the Memphis Grizzlies had to do, even while fully understanding the odds-on risk attached. (A broken foot suffered the following February increased the likelihood of it being a sunk cost.)

Instead, at 33 years old and in his 10th season, with a new coach, overhauled system, and personal submission to the three-point line, Gasol is still kicking as a borderline All-Star, albeit one whose crater-sized impact in Memphis isn’t as expansive as it used to be.

According to Synergy Sports, Gasol is currently the least efficient player in the league when he gets double-teamed in the post. Some of this is thanks to a small sample size, diminishing athleticism and curbed quickness, but his surrounding personnel deserves a smidge of blame, too. Even though some of their shooting percentages are up, opposing teams are still open to doubling off Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans, James Ennis, Dillon Brooks, and the rest of Memphis’ roster.

A move to Cleveland would do freaking wonders for Gasol’s one-on-one game. The attention LeBron James demands is unrivaled, and picturing those two surrounded by three dead-eye snipers—like Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, healthy Isaiah Thomas, or Jae Crowder—is a daydream. James has never played with someone like Gasol: A pass-first center who can space the floor, anchor an excellent defense, and singlehandedly create open threes on the weakside when he goes to work on the block.

And just think about the lineups Ty Lue could utilize with LeBron on the bench. Gasol and Love, by themselves, could become the NBA’s mightiest frontcourt tandem this side of New Orleans. Gasol helps in a likely Finals rematch against the Golden State Warriors in a way very few players can. He’s a savant on both ends.

The risk in trading a lottery pick for any player who can opt out of his contract in 2019, let alone a declining 33-year-old who plays the league’s least attractive position and would have to sacrifice a whole bunch of touches overnight, is an obvious risk—even if said pick is owned by a Brooklyn Nets squad that figures to finish with the sixth or seventh worst record and not the first or second.

But let’s play out one possible scenario if they don’t make a seismic trade: Cleveland adds a borderline-washed-up buyout candidate, loses in the Eastern Conference Finals or Finals, lands the sixth pick, watches LeBron leave in free agency, and is bad forever. If surrendering the Brooklyn pick for someone like Gasol is possible, then convincing James to stay is the right move.

Meanwhile, Memphis should do this in a heartbeat. Injuries around the Western Conference are keeping their playoff odds on a respirator, but Mike Conley’s weary Achilles tendon isn’t really allowing them to make up much ground. They’ve lost five in a row and eight of their last ten, with an offense that ranks 22nd despite them never, ever turning the ball over.

The smart long-term play here is to squeeze as much as they can get for Gasol, then rebuild around two lottery picks, with one potentially landing in the top five, in a five-player draft. They can also move on from Thompson and maybe even get a late first-rounder for his service as well. Memphis already has its own top-eight-protected first-round pick headed to Boston in 2019 (which becomes unprotected in 2021), so the best time to replenish their roster with high-upside youth is today.

2. Victor Oladipo…

Photo by Steve Mitchell - USA TODAY Sports

...has more points than Anthony Davis, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, and...Russell Westbrook. The Indiana Pacers have had a top-10 offense all year long despite not having Myles Turner (the dude everyone expected to be their best player) for seven games. Oladipo deserves a statue.

3. It’s Time to Expand Kelly Oubre Jr.’s Role

The Wizards are an obscenely dominant basketball team when John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and Kelly Oubre Jr. share the floor, outscoring opponents by 22 points per 100 possessions. This makes sense. Three of those players are on a max contract and the fourth is a 21-year-old southpaw who’s shooting 47 percent from above the break.

Washington knows what it has with its three best players, but Oubre Jr.’s growth is the variable worth watching. Right now he’s still raw and able to impact games with his athleticism, energy, and length. But knowing the ball ultimately starts in Wall or Beal’s hands—particularly throughout the postseason—it’s worth wondering what type of developmental path Washington should try and set their moldable Sixth Man on.

Oubre Jr. has only run a handful of pick-and-rolls this season, and, to nobody’s surprise, whenever he does dribble off a screen and try to make a play his timing and vision are both a little off.

Despite a leap in playing time, his assist to usage ratio is still near the bottom at his position (and down from where it was last season). He averages as many potential assists per game as DeAndre Jordan—fewer than Steven Adams and Tyson Chandler—and his 20.9 passes per game are fifth fewest in the entire league among all players who average at least 25 minutes.

This doesn’t make him selfish. Oubre Jr. is happy and willing to swing the ball and forfeit his own good shot so a teammate can have a better one. His job is to finish plays instead of start them, but given Washington’s routine bench struggles, it’d be a godsend if Oubre Jr. could quickly grow to become a reliable secondary or primary ball-handler when Wall and Beal both rest.

If the organization’s plan is to win with this foursome leading the way, the Wizards would be wrong to clone another Porter instead of encouraging Oubre Jr. to become a more versatile offensive weapon. In about eight fewer minutes per game, he touches the ball less than Jeff Green. It isn’t too early to diversify Oubre Jr.’s responsibilities. When you’re a good team that knows it’ll make the playoffs, that’s exactly what the regular season is for.

4. Everyone is Surprised by Portland’s Secret Weapon Except LeBron James

Last week, the Portland Trail Blazers decided to turn back the hands of time by deploying Jusuf Nurkic and Caleb Swanigan in their starting lineup. The mammoth-sized duo was a predictable disaster, clogging up driving lanes for C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, preventing either big from having as much room to operate in the post, and creating at least one mismatch on the defensive end that could be exploited by a more modernized frontcourt.

Despite going 2-1 during this week-long experiment—that was partly induced by injuries elsewhere on the roster—Portland consistently found itself in a hole from the jump, causing Blazers head coach Terry Stotts to start the third quarter of last Wednesday’s win over the Orlando Magic with Pat Connaughton, instead of Swanigan, on the court—a game-saving halftime adjustment. (Stotts’s final straw came two nights later when the Blazers scored 82 points in a very bad loss against the Sacramento Kings. Noah Vonleh has started at the four since.)

The buried lede here is that while Portland struggled to score trotting out two slow frontcourt players who don’t complement one another in any way, what they discovered during this same stretch is a three-guard unit that could be their secret weapon.

Lillard and McCollum are an obvious staple that create myriad headaches for the opposition. Throw Shabazz Napier into the mix and it’s pandemonium. The trio only played 20 minutes last season, but in 38 minutes this year they’ve blitzed opponents by 38 points per 100 possessions.

Last summer, Evan Turner was paid a handsome sum to be the ball-handler who could enable Portland’s two franchise guards to work off the ball, decimate opponents off screens and rouse panic by setting paralyzing picks for each other on the weakside. He can still do that, especially from the block when backing down smaller defenders. But replace Turner with Napier and install a versatile wing like Mo Harkless or Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and all of a sudden the court becomes a hornet’s nest.

The offensive upside is clear: three ball handlers who can shoot, drive, and pass, constantly racing around to kick dirt in your eyes, is hard to slow down. But so far (small-sample-size alert!) they’ve also been able to hold their own on the defensive end, in part because Napier plays like an unswattable mosquito whose hands and feet never stop moving.

But there are limits to being “frisky” when you aren’t catching an opponent off guard, and some of their success is because Napier’s three-point percentage is actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. That doesn’t mean this speedy triad should be demoted or even stuffed in glass as a “Break-in-Case-of-Emergency” axe. Stotts should ride this unique group as long as he can, knowing few teams have the personnel to match up with it on both ends.

5. Jimmy Butler is Sacrificing Too Much

The Timberwolves are not the NBA’s most disappointing team. Since November 1st, they own a top-10 defense, and for the whole season they’re outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions when Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson share the floor. But this team, at 10-7, feels disappointing.

They’ve yet to find a way to synchronize their overwhelming talent in a way that accentuates each individual’s skill-set, and startling losses against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons (a game they should’ve won, considering they were home, with a day of rest, against a team that’d just dropped two in a row) have been the result.

Given his contract situation, past performance, and high expectations, Butler’s struggle to look like himself is probably the team’s largest concern. Nobody should’ve expected a fluid overnight fit, but 15 games into his seventh season, the three-time All-Star has yet to find any rhythm in a system he’s already familiar with. Sacrifice is wonderful and necessary, but the degree to which Butler has altered his role to appease Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jeff Teague is a little excessive.

What’s best for him is probably also best for the Timberwolves. Instead, watching him play he looks out of rhythm, like he doesn’t know when to hunt and when to be passive. The degree of difficulty in some of Butler’s scoring situations has been higher than it should be, too, given the influx of talent by his side. Last year, 17.1 percent of Butler’s shots were hoisted when the shot clock was “late” or “very late,” according to NBA.com. This year, that’s up to 25.9 percent. He has more catch-and-shoot opportunities, which sounds nice but has never been his strength.

According to Synergy Sports, Butler’s possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler are down 11 percent from last season. What was once a tool he used to carve defenses up has been more of a dull blade.

Butler’s usage is down, he’s touching the ball 11 fewer times per game, his turnover rate is at a career high, and his free-throw rate is at a career low. That last point is crucial. What initially elevated Butler to an elite level was his ability to draw contact and live at the line. Last season, he was fouled on 20.1 percent of his shots, which ranked in the 98th percentile among all wings. That percentage is currently half what it was. (A plethora of pull-up twos are acceptable when you live at the free-throw line; he’s not quite Tobias Harris, but trending in that direction.)

So much of this is because Minnesota’s roster simply isn’t conducive for a slash-first-ask-questions-later bulldog like Butler. His drives to the basket are now more complicated than Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. one million lasers, in large part because defenses are ready and willing to help off a majority of his teammates.

There are few in-house alterations that can make life easier for Butler, but he hardly ever plays with Nemanja Bjelica (who, ho-hum, is the most accurate three-point shooter in the league right now); in the 52 minutes they’ve shared the floor Minnesota has obliterated everything. (General side note: Gibson has been awesome but Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad have not—play Bjelica more often Thibs!)

There’s no need to panic in Minnesota. But youth, lack of shooting, and non-existent depth at the wing are concerns they’ll have to navigate the rest of the season. Putting the ball in Butler’s hands more often won’t solve them, but Jamal Crawford, Teague, and Wiggins should not have a higher usage rate than he does.

Among all players who’ve seen the floor for about the same or fewer minutes than Butler this season, Evan Fournier, Jayson Tatum, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jeremy Lamb, Will Barton, and Bojan Bogdanovic have all scored more points. Something needs to change.

6. Toronto’s Offense Is Official

Despite struggles in the clutch, which reflect a reversion back to the isolation-heavy, late-shot-clock-heaving approach that hurts them so much when it matters most, Toronto’s offense is quietly morphing into an unselfish monster.

Last season, the Raptors ranked dead last in assist rate. (They were 28th in November during the 2016-17 season.) This year, they’re up to 14th, with 17 more passes per game. They’re 14th in pace (up from 22nd last season), shooting way fewer long twos and a lot more threes. Paths to the rim are wider and open more frequently. The result? They rank fourth in offense and third in effective field goal percentage.

It’s growth in real time, partly due to the infusion of youth from guys like OG Anunoby (the most underrated rookie in an abnormally loaded class), Fred VanVleet (whose name I thought was “Van Fleet” for about two years), Delon Wright (who just dislocated his shoulder), and a few others.

Toronto’s two lynch pins are doing their part and C.J. Miles is flashing Ryan Anderson-esque range. The ball moves better when DeMar DeRozan isn’t on the floor, but that’s also when their offensive rating drops to its lowest point. Probably because the guy’s footwork makes it look like he’s hovering two inches above the court at all times.

DeRozan jacked up three shots beyond the arc in the opening minutes of Sunday’s win against the Wall-less Wizards. While still low, his three-point rate is exactly double what it was last season. They aren't perfect, but Toronto's evolutionary shot profile makes them the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

7. Orlando Treats the Three-Point Line With Too Much Reverence

The Magic should shine on defense. They have athletes who excel at key positions and a coach who’s known for extracting brick-wall execution from much less physical ability.

But after a hot start shooting the ball, Orlando’s defense has become one of the league’s 10 worst. Part of that’s due to injuries up and down the roster, and high usage big men—like Nikola Vucevic—who have known limitations. But a bit of their struggle can be explained by an aggressive “stay home!” attitude towards the three-point line.

Orlando’s defenders, as twitchy as most of them are, have been directed to form a permanent fence at the arc. They don’t allow swing passes to open threats on the weakside and aim to make outside shooters feel claustrophobic. According to Cleaning The Glass, Orlando holds its opponents to a 27 percent three-point rate, which is second-lowest in the league. And from there, the strategy of always being in position to contest outside shots has worked pretty well, with opponents only making 34.5 percent of their threes (though that’s likely a bit more happenstance than strategic ingenuity).

On the surface, this is a rousing success! But in reality it’s like they’re hermetically sealing a body part that actually needs reconstructive surgery. Here’s an example:

At the top, Aaron Gordon does a good job keeping Joe Ingles from getting to the middle of the floor, leaping up and forcing him left. But as the Australian swingman drives towards Vucevic, neither Elfrid Payton nor Evan Fournier pinch in to tag the rolling Derrick Favors. Instead, they treat Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell like they’re Splash Brothers when, actually, they're Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell. Favors snatches Ingles’s pocket pass and finishes with an easy dunk.

The moral of the story: Personnel matters. It’s great that the Magic are executing their coach’s scheme and denying three-point attempts en mass in a league that’s filled with teams that are obsessed with that exact shot, but nothing will ever be more efficient than a layup, and nobody is allowing more of those than the Magic.

8. The Willie Cauley-Stein Bandwagon Has Plenty of Room

Photo by Brad Penner - USA TODAY Sports

I will forever believe that Willie Cauley-Stein is a useful, if not good, basketball player. He’s my personal equivalent to how a specific segment of NBA Twitter once felt (feels?) about Anthony Randolph. If Cauley-Stein was, like, seven percent more confident and nine percent more aggressive, with a point guard who draws attention, manipulates back-line rotations, and can shoot, he’d be Steven Adams.

Cauley-Stein actually made a three last week, too, and is one of a few centers who’s defended Joel Embiid without much help and not been steamrolled in the process. I want nothing more than to see him develop outside of Sacramento, not sharing the court with Zach Randolph and Kosta Koufos. Is that too much to ask?

9. You Can’t Help But Respect Carmelo Anthony’s Commitment to Being Carmelo Anthony

Before clarifying is words and backtracking from the belief that he, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook need to be more selfish in order for the Oklahoma City Thunder to find offensive nirvana, Carmelo Anthony concluded that he and his two All-Star teammates are instinctive players who need to be more instinctive.

Even though his instincts have been wrong for quite some time, that’s a perfectly fine thing to believe. But if I played for the Thunder and read this quote, I'd refrain from ever passing him the ball. On top of a defensive demeanor that exudes the same amount of energy and attention I used to display on Thanksgiving morning throughout my early 20’s*, Anthony’s assist to usage ratio is only higher than nine percent of fellow forwards around the NBA. He could wear wide receiver gloves sprayed with stickum for an entire quarter and nobody would notice the difference.

*The below isn’t a great reflection of Oklahoma City’s collective effort, but Anthony somehow manages to make everyone else look like they're hustling their ass off. He airballs a jumper and then backpedals to midcourt as the rest of his teammates turn to run.

Salute.

10. Donovan Mitchell’s Audaciousness Is Inspiring

The Utah Jazz are in a sad place, but, on the bright side, they also have Donovan Mitchell, a fearless firecracker with more responsibilities on his plate than any rookie on a decent team should. Just look at this wraparound pass to Rodney Hood, the finishing touch on Utah’s execution of a Hammer action.

Freeze the clip at the exact moment the ball leaves his fingertips. Even though Mitchell knows Hood is about to (probably) spring free in the corner, it still must feel a little scary to sidearm a ball the length of the baseline towards empty space. It arrives a little low, but that's nitpicking. This was hard and he made it look easy.

Most of the 21-year-old’s offensive numbers are dreadful, but bold, trustworthy traits seen in sequences like this are enough to convince me the Jazz have a keeper.

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving!), The Outlet Pass has arrived one day earlier than normal this week. Enjoy!

1. In Honor of Thanksgiving, Here’s a Fake Trade We Can All Be Thankful For

Cleveland gets: Marc Gasol Memphis gets: Brooklyn’s first-round pick in 2018, Tristan Thompson, and Iman Shumpert

When Gasol first signed his five-year $110 million deal nearly two and half years ago, popular thought was father time would tarnish it sooner than later. This was something the Memphis Grizzlies had to do, even while fully understanding the odds-on risk attached. (A broken foot suffered the following February increased the likelihood of it being a sunk cost.)

Instead, at 33 years old and in his 10th season, with a new coach, overhauled system, and personal submission to the three-point line, Gasol is still kicking as a borderline All-Star, albeit one whose crater-sized impact in Memphis isn’t as expansive as it used to be.

According to Synergy Sports, Gasol is currently the least efficient player in the league when he gets double-teamed in the post. Some of this is thanks to a small sample size, diminishing athleticism and curbed quickness, but his surrounding personnel deserves a smidge of blame, too. Even though some of their shooting percentages are up, opposing teams are still open to doubling off Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans, James Ennis, Dillon Brooks, and the rest of Memphis’ roster.

A move to Cleveland would do freaking wonders for Gasol’s one-on-one game. The attention LeBron James demands is unrivaled, and picturing those two surrounded by three dead-eye snipers—like Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, healthy Isaiah Thomas, or Jae Crowder—is a daydream. James has never played with someone like Gasol: A pass-first center who can space the floor, anchor an excellent defense, and singlehandedly create open threes on the weakside when he goes to work on the block.

And just think about the lineups Ty Lue could utilize with LeBron on the bench. Gasol and Love, by themselves, could become the NBA’s mightiest frontcourt tandem this side of New Orleans. Gasol helps in a likely Finals rematch against the Golden State Warriors in a way very few players can. He’s a savant on both ends.

The risk in trading a lottery pick for any player who can opt out of his contract in 2019, let alone a declining 33-year-old who plays the league’s least attractive position and would have to sacrifice a whole bunch of touches overnight, is an obvious risk—even if said pick is owned by a Brooklyn Nets squad that figures to finish with the sixth or seventh worst record and not the first or second.

But let’s play out one possible scenario if they don’t make a seismic trade: Cleveland adds a borderline-washed-up buyout candidate, loses in the Eastern Conference Finals or Finals, lands the sixth pick, watches LeBron leave in free agency, and is bad forever. If surrendering the Brooklyn pick for someone like Gasol is possible, then convincing James to stay is the right move.

Meanwhile, Memphis should do this in a heartbeat. Injuries around the Western Conference are keeping their playoff odds on a respirator, but Mike Conley’s weary Achilles tendon isn’t really allowing them to make up much ground. They’ve lost five in a row and eight of their last ten, with an offense that ranks 22nd despite them never, ever turning the ball over.

The smart long-term play here is to squeeze as much as they can get for Gasol, then rebuild around two lottery picks, with one potentially landing in the top five, in a five-player draft. They can also move on from Thompson and maybe even get a late first-rounder for his service as well. Memphis already has its own top-eight-protected first-round pick headed to Boston in 2019 (which becomes unprotected in 2021), so the best time to replenish their roster with high-upside youth is today.

2. Victor Oladipo…

Photo by Steve Mitchell - USA TODAY Sports

...has more points than Anthony Davis, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, and...Russell Westbrook. The Indiana Pacers have had a top-10 offense all year long despite not having Myles Turner (the dude everyone expected to be their best player) for seven games. Oladipo deserves a statue.

3. It’s Time to Expand Kelly Oubre Jr.’s Role

The Wizards are an obscenely dominant basketball team when John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and Kelly Oubre Jr. share the floor, outscoring opponents by 22 points per 100 possessions. This makes sense. Three of those players are on a max contract and the fourth is a 21-year-old southpaw who’s shooting 47 percent from above the break.

Washington knows what it has with its three best players, but Oubre Jr.’s growth is the variable worth watching. Right now he’s still raw and able to impact games with his athleticism, energy, and length. But knowing the ball ultimately starts in Wall or Beal’s hands—particularly throughout the postseason—it’s worth wondering what type of developmental path Washington should try and set their moldable Sixth Man on.

Oubre Jr. has only run a handful of pick-and-rolls this season, and, to nobody’s surprise, whenever he does dribble off a screen and try to make a play his timing and vision are both a little off.

Despite a leap in playing time, his assist to usage ratio is still near the bottom at his position (and down from where it was last season). He averages as many potential assists per game as DeAndre Jordan—fewer than Steven Adams and Tyson Chandler—and his 20.9 passes per game are fifth fewest in the entire league among all players who average at least 25 minutes.

This doesn’t make him selfish. Oubre Jr. is happy and willing to swing the ball and forfeit his own good shot so a teammate can have a better one. His job is to finish plays instead of start them, but given Washington’s routine bench struggles, it’d be a godsend if Oubre Jr. could quickly grow to become a reliable secondary or primary ball-handler when Wall and Beal both rest.

If the organization’s plan is to win with this foursome leading the way, the Wizards would be wrong to clone another Porter instead of encouraging Oubre Jr. to become a more versatile offensive weapon. In about eight fewer minutes per game, he touches the ball less than Jeff Green. It isn’t too early to diversify Oubre Jr.’s responsibilities. When you’re a good team that knows it’ll make the playoffs, that’s exactly what the regular season is for.

4. Everyone is Surprised by Portland’s Secret Weapon Except LeBron James

Last week, the Portland Trail Blazers decided to turn back the hands of time by deploying Jusuf Nurkic and Caleb Swanigan in their starting lineup. The mammoth-sized duo was a predictable disaster, clogging up driving lanes for C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, preventing either big from having as much room to operate in the post, and creating at least one mismatch on the defensive end that could be exploited by a more modernized frontcourt.

Despite going 2-1 during this week-long experiment—that was partly induced by injuries elsewhere on the roster—Portland consistently found itself in a hole from the jump, causing Blazers head coach Terry Stotts to start the third quarter of last Wednesday’s win over the Orlando Magic with Pat Connaughton, instead of Swanigan, on the court—a game-saving halftime adjustment. (Stotts’s final straw came two nights later when the Blazers scored 82 points in a very bad loss against the Sacramento Kings. Noah Vonleh has started at the four since.)

The buried lede here is that while Portland struggled to score trotting out two slow frontcourt players who don’t complement one another in any way, what they discovered during this same stretch is a three-guard unit that could be their secret weapon.

Lillard and McCollum are an obvious staple that create myriad headaches for the opposition. Throw Shabazz Napier into the mix and it’s pandemonium. The trio only played 20 minutes last season, but in 38 minutes this year they’ve blitzed opponents by 38 points per 100 possessions.

Last summer, Evan Turner was paid a handsome sum to be the ball-handler who could enable Portland’s two franchise guards to work off the ball, decimate opponents off screens and rouse panic by setting paralyzing picks for each other on the weakside. He can still do that, especially from the block when backing down smaller defenders. But replace Turner with Napier and install a versatile wing like Mo Harkless or Al-Farouq Aminu at the four, and all of a sudden the court becomes a hornet’s nest.

The offensive upside is clear: three ball handlers who can shoot, drive, and pass, constantly racing around to kick dirt in your eyes, is hard to slow down. But so far (small-sample-size alert!) they’ve also been able to hold their own on the defensive end, in part because Napier plays like an unswattable mosquito whose hands and feet never stop moving.

But there are limits to being “frisky” when you aren’t catching an opponent off guard, and some of their success is because Napier’s three-point percentage is actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. That doesn’t mean this speedy triad should be demoted or even stuffed in glass as a “Break-in-Case-of-Emergency” axe. Stotts should ride this unique group as long as he can, knowing few teams have the personnel to match up with it on both ends.

5. Jimmy Butler is Sacrificing Too Much

The Timberwolves are not the NBA’s most disappointing team. Since November 1st, they own a top-10 defense, and for the whole season they’re outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions when Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson share the floor. But this team, at 10-7, feels disappointing.

They’ve yet to find a way to synchronize their overwhelming talent in a way that accentuates each individual’s skill-set, and startling losses against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons (a game they should’ve won, considering they were home, with a day of rest, against a team that’d just dropped two in a row) have been the result.

Given his contract situation, past performance, and high expectations, Butler’s struggle to look like himself is probably the team’s largest concern. Nobody should’ve expected a fluid overnight fit, but 15 games into his seventh season, the three-time All-Star has yet to find any rhythm in a system he’s already familiar with. Sacrifice is wonderful and necessary, but the degree to which Butler has altered his role to appease Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jeff Teague is a little excessive.

What’s best for him is probably also best for the Timberwolves. Instead, watching him play he looks out of rhythm, like he doesn’t know when to hunt and when to be passive. The degree of difficulty in some of Butler’s scoring situations has been higher than it should be, too, given the influx of talent by his side. Last year, 17.1 percent of Butler’s shots were hoisted when the shot clock was “late” or “very late,” according to NBA.com. This year, that’s up to 25.9 percent. He has more catch-and-shoot opportunities, which sounds nice but has never been his strength.

According to Synergy Sports, Butler’s possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler are down 11 percent from last season. What was once a tool he used to carve defenses up has been more of a dull blade.

Butler’s usage is down, he’s touching the ball 11 fewer times per game, his turnover rate is at a career high, and his free-throw rate is at a career low. That last point is crucial. What initially elevated Butler to an elite level was his ability to draw contact and live at the line. Last season, he was fouled on 20.1 percent of his shots, which ranked in the 98th percentile among all wings. That percentage is currently half what it was. (A plethora of pull-up twos are acceptable when you live at the free-throw line; he’s not quite Tobias Harris, but trending in that direction.)

So much of this is because Minnesota’s roster simply isn’t conducive for a slash-first-ask-questions-later bulldog like Butler. His drives to the basket are now more complicated than Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. one million lasers, in large part because defenses are ready and willing to help off a majority of his teammates.

There are few in-house alterations that can make life easier for Butler, but he hardly ever plays with Nemanja Bjelica (who, ho-hum, is the most accurate three-point shooter in the league right now); in the 52 minutes they’ve shared the floor Minnesota has obliterated everything. (General side note: Gibson has been awesome but Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad have not—play Bjelica more often Thibs!)

There’s no need to panic in Minnesota. But youth, lack of shooting, and non-existent depth at the wing are concerns they’ll have to navigate the rest of the season. Putting the ball in Butler’s hands more often won’t solve them, but Jamal Crawford, Teague, and Wiggins should not have a higher usage rate than he does.

Among all players who’ve seen the floor for about the same or fewer minutes than Butler this season, Evan Fournier, Jayson Tatum, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jeremy Lamb, Will Barton, and Bojan Bogdanovic have all scored more points. Something needs to change.

6. Toronto’s Offense Is Official

Despite struggles in the clutch, which reflect a reversion back to the isolation-heavy, late-shot-clock-heaving approach that hurts them so much when it matters most, Toronto’s offense is quietly morphing into an unselfish monster.

Last season, the Raptors ranked dead last in assist rate. (They were 28th in November during the 2016-17 season.) This year, they’re up to 14th, with 17 more passes per game. They’re 14th in pace (up from 22nd last season), shooting way fewer long twos and a lot more threes. Paths to the rim are wider and open more frequently. The result? They rank fourth in offense and third in effective field goal percentage.

It’s growth in real time, partly due to the infusion of youth from guys like OG Anunoby (the most underrated rookie in an abnormally loaded class), Fred VanVleet (whose name I thought was “Van Fleet” for about two years), Delon Wright (who just dislocated his shoulder), and a few others.

Toronto’s two lynch pins are doing their part and C.J. Miles is flashing Ryan Anderson-esque range. The ball moves better when DeMar DeRozan isn’t on the floor, but that’s also when their offensive rating drops to its lowest point. Probably because the guy’s footwork makes it look like he’s hovering two inches above the court at all times.

DeRozan jacked up three shots beyond the arc in the opening minutes of Sunday’s win against the Wall-less Wizards. While still low, his three-point rate is exactly double what it was last season. They aren't perfect, but Toronto's evolutionary shot profile makes them the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

7. Orlando Treats the Three-Point Line With Too Much Reverence

The Magic should shine on defense. They have athletes who excel at key positions and a coach who’s known for extracting brick-wall execution from much less physical ability.

But after a hot start shooting the ball, Orlando’s defense has become one of the league’s 10 worst. Part of that’s due to injuries up and down the roster, and high usage big men—like Nikola Vucevic—who have known limitations. But a bit of their struggle can be explained by an aggressive “stay home!” attitude towards the three-point line.

Orlando’s defenders, as twitchy as most of them are, have been directed to form a permanent fence at the arc. They don’t allow swing passes to open threats on the weakside and aim to make outside shooters feel claustrophobic. According to Cleaning The Glass, Orlando holds its opponents to a 27 percent three-point rate, which is second-lowest in the league. And from there, the strategy of always being in position to contest outside shots has worked pretty well, with opponents only making 34.5 percent of their threes (though that’s likely a bit more happenstance than strategic ingenuity).

On the surface, this is a rousing success! But in reality it’s like they’re hermetically sealing a body part that actually needs reconstructive surgery. Here’s an example:

At the top, Aaron Gordon does a good job keeping Joe Ingles from getting to the middle of the floor, leaping up and forcing him left. But as the Australian swingman drives towards Vucevic, neither Elfrid Payton nor Evan Fournier pinch in to tag the rolling Derrick Favors. Instead, they treat Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell like they’re Splash Brothers when, actually, they're Raul Neto and Donovan Mitchell. Favors snatches Ingles’s pocket pass and finishes with an easy dunk.

The moral of the story: Personnel matters. It’s great that the Magic are executing their coach’s scheme and denying three-point attempts en mass in a league that’s filled with teams that are obsessed with that exact shot, but nothing will ever be more efficient than a layup, and nobody is allowing more of those than the Magic.

8. The Willie Cauley-Stein Bandwagon Has Plenty of Room

Photo by Brad Penner - USA TODAY Sports

I will forever believe that Willie Cauley-Stein is a useful, if not good, basketball player. He’s my personal equivalent to how a specific segment of NBA Twitter once felt (feels?) about Anthony Randolph. If Cauley-Stein was, like, seven percent more confident and nine percent more aggressive, with a point guard who draws attention, manipulates back-line rotations, and can shoot, he’d be Steven Adams.

Cauley-Stein actually made a three last week, too, and is one of a few centers who’s defended Joel Embiid without much help and not been steamrolled in the process. I want nothing more than to see him develop outside of Sacramento, not sharing the court with Zach Randolph and Kosta Koufos. Is that too much to ask?

9. You Can’t Help But Respect Carmelo Anthony’s Commitment to Being Carmelo Anthony

Before clarifying is words and backtracking from the belief that he, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook need to be more selfish in order for the Oklahoma City Thunder to find offensive nirvana, Carmelo Anthony concluded that he and his two All-Star teammates are instinctive players who need to be more instinctive.

Even though his instincts have been wrong for quite some time, that’s a perfectly fine thing to believe. But if I played for the Thunder and read this quote, I'd refrain from ever passing him the ball. On top of a defensive demeanor that exudes the same amount of energy and attention I used to display on Thanksgiving morning throughout my early 20’s*, Anthony’s assist to usage ratio is only higher than nine percent of fellow forwards around the NBA. He could wear wide receiver gloves sprayed with stickum for an entire quarter and nobody would notice the difference.

*The below isn’t a great reflection of Oklahoma City’s collective effort, but Anthony somehow manages to make everyone else look like they're hustling their ass off. He airballs a jumper and then backpedals to midcourt as the rest of his teammates turn to run.

Salute.

10. Donovan Mitchell’s Audaciousness Is Inspiring

The Utah Jazz are in a sad place, but, on the bright side, they also have Donovan Mitchell, a fearless firecracker with more responsibilities on his plate than any rookie on a decent team should. Just look at this wraparound pass to Rodney Hood, the finishing touch on Utah’s execution of a Hammer action.

Freeze the clip at the exact moment the ball leaves his fingertips. Even though Mitchell knows Hood is about to (probably) spring free in the corner, it still must feel a little scary to sidearm a ball the length of the baseline towards empty space. It arrives a little low, but that's nitpicking. This was hard and he made it look easy.

Most of the 21-year-old’s offensive numbers are dreadful, but bold, trustworthy traits seen in sequences like this are enough to convince me the Jazz have a keeper.

The Outlet Pass: Butler's Sacrifice, a Fun Cavs Trade, Oubre's Evolution published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv