At first I though this was legit and maybe some new jumping program hit the market but as I said only some spammer came up with the new technique to trick the people. If you see the same comments – report them as spam.

Recently some kind of bug on nba.com site started to ask for user name and password. It says “A username and password are being requested by http://www.nba.com. The site says: “ESI Test””

How to remove this annoying message? You can get away with that message clicking cancel couple of times, but this becomes annoying after some time if you watch more than 1 video. Then I tried to view videos while logged on but this didn’t change anything. Messages still pop out for user name and password.

Now it gets interesting, if you type any characters into this pop up box and you have Roboform installed (it’s password management addon for Firefox), the name for a new passcard is called Questionmarket. After little Googling I found that Questionmarket is some survey service but reputation of this company is questionable. There were few pages with info how to remove Questionmarket from your computer. It suggests that some kind of spyware and malware is involved. Visitors of nba.com complains in the comments about this issue but this problem lasts for more than a week now.

A group of people are throwing bags from a distance as close to gift voucher (target) as possible. Those who know they will get money (have the desire to get money) are throwing bags closer than the target. Those who think it’s just a game  throw bags further than gift voucher.

Psychology experiment

This psychology experiment concludes that our perception of reality could be directly influenced by our desires.

The reason I decided to write about this experiment is because I remembered my recent important free throw shot. We played basketball and there were 7 players on the court. For a 3×3 game only 6 players are needed, so we decided that those players who will make a free throw will play and the remaining one will go out. Well I missed and had to go away. However, guess what my free throw shot was like. You bet, it was short. I underthrew the ball despite wanting to make it. It was very important shot.

Now I remember that while shooting I still had in mind that desire to make a free throw but according to the experiment my mind was already affected and probably I underestimated the distance.

Of course you could say free throw is an easy shot that needs just practice but my tip would be never have in mind your desire to make a free throw, instead try to clear your thoughts and forget about everything while shooting from free throw line.

Next Manute Bol or another no name in the world of basketball? Bienvenue Letuni will show his real potencial some few years later.

Bienvenue Letuni grabbing rim

I love videos from old times so watching some game on Youtube I noticed two players with names Boozer and Allen on their backs. It’s from 1971 when Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul Jabbar dominated the court.

Boozer and Allen Reincarnation

Today probably Carlos Boozer and Ray Allen are better players than these guys.

If you like vintage NBA, here’s a good source to watch some great basketball clips on Youtube.

Pat Riley and Michael Jordan watching a game

Now look at the image from Dexter season 4 series 5, where special agent Lundy (actor Keith Carradine) is encountering Trinity killer.

Special Agent Lundy

Both of them look having something in common. They could make a duo team of special agents, that would look really cool.

In this video you can see some basketball shooting and defence tips from the MVP itself Kobe Bryant. I think he gives especially good tip on how to defend against left handed player. Usual defence is against right handed players at which left handed players only laugh and go by you standing like a chair.

Kobe can convert opponent strong sides into weaknesess. So for example to effectively defent against left handed player try to handicap his left arm by overplaying him from right. Don’t hesitate to use quick moves and push his left arm near his body. This way you will be able either steal the ball or make him to loose control because it’s only a matter of time when left handed player will try to cross over to the left.

I’m waiting anxiously to try this advice from Kobe Bryant in practise and there are 2 left handed players I will try to surprise in the next game.

Please comment whether it helped you to defend against left handed player.

Shaq is clearly not interested in the interview and most of the time looks somewhere away from announcer Fred McLeod while resting his left hand on the chair’s backrest.  This looks kinda funny because Shaq’s hand size is huge. Being not the tallest center in the NBA he has biggest foot size and I believe his hand size is also the biggest.

His thumb is probably twice as big as the interviewer’s you can compare from the screen-shot below.

Shaq hand size

Now imagine Shaq is celebrating Halloween dressed like Jason and it starts looking a bit scary

Shaq Hand (Halloween Edition)

This is the video itself.

Retro Nike Shoes

By the way, this is from documentary called “Black tar hero1n”. Very sad one I might say. Many young people lost their future by taking dangerous habits and one of the reason for that was “they didn’t know what to do”. Various sports including basketball can deter young people from doing wrong things in their lives.

I like watching old videos showing how things looked in the past and it’s amazing how the world evolved in this short amount of time. In 1995-1998 (when this documentary was filmed) there were no Google, no Twitter, no Digg and other popular websites.