What Can We Say About Kobe?

Kobe Bryant is 14th in NBA history in total regular season minutes played.  45,502, as of this writing.  He's 2nd in playoff minutes played, at 8,641, with only a playoff series or two separating him from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  That's 54,143 minutes played over his 17 years in the league.  That's almost 38 days of playing basketball, and that only counts game time.  He's amassed these totals despite being only 25th and 4th in total games played (regular season and playoffs), and 37th and 43rd in minutes per game (regular season and playoffs).

That, my friends, is longevity.  It is also the combined luxuries of frequently sharing the court with other great players and having a traditionally deep bench, allowing Kobe to get a bit more rest than teams that have leaned heavily on one superstar, like Kevin Durant's Thunder (16th and 12th in regular season and playoff minutes per game career averages) or Lebron James's anything (6th and 6th in minutes per game averages).

Western Conference Predictions

Yesterday we took the time to examine the Eastern Conference first round match-ups. Today, we look at the much more exciting because there's more than one good team Western Conference playoff picture. Like yesterday, you'll find all you need to know, or at least a couple of facts that are probably true (since that's the nature of facts), and then our tweetable predictions will follow.  Hopefully we win you a lot of money in your office pool.

(1) Oklahoma City Thunder vs. (8) Houston Rockets

This gif comes from Business Insider. That's not a joke.

50 posts? It's time to celebrate!

Today marks Volume Shooters' 50th post on this site. Don't worry - we're surprised we made it this far as well.  To honor ourselves, and because the playoffs are right around the corner, we're looking back at some of the top moments from the 2012-2013 NBA season.

50 point performances

Jack: What better way to start things off than by commemorating our 50th post than by examining the best 50-point efforts from this season? (Side note: In an attempt to include more games and players I thought about making it players scoring 45+ in a game. Turns out this would only expand the field from 3 performances to 9, and from 3 players to 6.  You can see the list here. My take-away is that Carmelo Anthony and James Harden have clearly been out to prove things this season - Carmelo that he can still perform while being hung over lead a team to success at the highest level, and Harden that you should always fear the beard. Anyway...) Only three times has the 50-point mark been eclipsed this season - here's my ranking of those performances: