2014-15 PBA Philippine Cup standings and magic numbers

You guys know the drill. If you don't, check out what magic numbers are, see this.TL;DR: The magic number is the number of wins a team has to earn for them to qualify; the "tragic" number is the number of losses the team has to get before it is eliminated.

Your Asian Games basketball cheat sheet

Despite losing three consecutive games already, Gilas Pilipinas can still make it to the knockout stage of the 2014 Asian Games. How? See the cheatsheet below:

Advancing teams:

• Red: South Korea & Qatar
• Green: South Korea & Kazakhstan
• Yellow: Kazakstan & Qatar
• Blue: South Korea & Philippines
• Purple: See Note (A)
• Orange: See Note (B)

Notes after the jump:

The case for Andray Blatche

Andray Blatche, barring a presidential veto, is bound to be the newest naturalized Filipino. There have been questions on why not X player? Indeed, why not Kevin Love, or all-D-League-team winner Justin Hamilton?

Indeed, there are many questions, but we'd all have to  restrict ourselves into some criteria.

2014 PBA Commissioner's Cup team standings and magic numbers!

We're past midway the tournament, so the standings, and the magic numbers, are beginning to take shape. For details on what magic numbers are, see this.

2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup mock draw 3.0

First, the massive news: FIBA has awarded the 4 wild cards to Brazil, Finland, Greece and Turkey. They complete the 24-team tournament in Spain.

Congrats @HellenicBF @BasketFinland @CBB_basquete @TurkishBBall! See you Monday at the Draw of #Spain2014! http://t.co/wnPWScsN6L
— FIBA (@FIBA) February 1, 2014

Second... wait, Finland? How did even Finland get in the mix? First, the massive, I repeat, MASSIVE withdrawals of Germany, Italy and China, and the pseudo-withdrawal of Russia opened up three slots in the wild card race.

2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup mock draw 2.0

A week from now FIBA will announce the four wild cards which will complete the 24-team FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain. A week from Monday, they'd draw the teams to determine how the groups are split up. In between those dates, FIBA will announce how the teams will be seeded, and how the pots will be split up. Way back in September 2013, I already made a mock draw, before the conclusion of the EuroBasket. Now that all of the continental championships are over, and the 15 wild card entrants are known, it's way past time for a version 2 of the mock draw. Let's begin!

How to solve the PBA's FIBA scheduling woes

The PBA now has a huge problem on scheduling concerns as long as Gilas Pilipinas is concerned. Any well-meaning coach will tell you that 2 months is the best amount of time a national team can use in training: these include actual training, tuneup games, tuneup tournaments and traveling to and from each venue.

However, the PBA, to maintain fiscal stability, reverted to the three conference format: more playoff games, higher attendance. However, this means the season has to be lengthened somewhat; this also means less them for the national team to train. So, what can the PBA do?

Tanking for Ray-Ray

We don't actually know if Bobby Ray Parks, Jr., who hasn't settled for a basketball nickname yet so let's just call him "Ray-Ray", will be signing up for the 2014 Draft. All we know is that his UAAP playing days are over, he has next-to-nil chance of being drafted to the NBA, and he could very well be elevated by the BDO D-League team if they're thinking of joining the big leagues.

That means if Ray-Ray's isn't going to find a UAAP rule loophole to play again in 2014, isn't going to the NBA, isn't being elevated from BDO D-League team, there's a 100% chance he'd be picked first in 2014. This has to be the easiest #1 pick since the 2009 draft where Japeth was picked #1 by Air21... and you know the story; ever since that brouhaha, Air21, now known as Barako Bull, has never dealt with a MVP ballclub ever. Well, OK, maybe not on big-time deals.

2013-14 PBA Philippine Cup team standings and magic numbers!

We're past midway the tournament, so the standings, and the magic numbers, are beginning to take shape. For details on what magic numbers are, see this.

2013 senatorial election: where did the votes come from?

Do you remember the (in)famous "60-30-10" pattern that Rappler.com that debunked in not just one but three articles? Have you compared it with the 2010 senatorial election results? Now, do you wanna see where the candidates got their votes?

What's the oldest (and youngest) PBA team?

Have you ever wondered what the average age of every PBA team is? InterAKTV has just published the final team rosters for the 2012-13 PBA Philippine Cup. This is supposedly the "final" list but teams left out college players who are still playing (explained after the jump). Cross-referencing from the PBA official website players list, we can determine how old the players -- and their teams -- are.

What is the fattest (and "skinniest") PBA team?

Have you ever wondered what is the fattest PBA team today? It's gotta be Rain or Shine with their Extra Rice, Inc., right? How about the skinniest? Probably the minion-dominated Barako Bull, right?

How do we measure "fatness", anyway? The body mass index (BMI) is the most popular method right now. It is calculated by dividing the mass (or weight, since we're on Earth it's the same) by the square of the height of a player. If you're using SI units (or formerly known as the MKS from "meters, kilograms and seconds"), a BMI of more than 25 means you're fat. But since that's for Caucasians, the suggested BMI for Asians is between 22 and 23. For reference, the average BMI for Filipino males is 22.73.

UST vs DLSU: Head-to-head stats

UST and La Salle (or, as Boom Gonzalez prefers it, "DEE-EL-ES-YOO", each and every damn time) have met each other four times. They'd meet for the fifth and final time in the UAAP this Saturday. These are the stats from those four meetings this year. These are not season stats, finals stats or elimination round stats, but stats from games that involved both teams.

Head to head: Teng vs Teng - UAAP Season Seven-TENG-six Finals

If there's a "Throwback Thursday" finals, this is it. Meeting in four finals series in the 1990s, the UST Growling Tigers won three out of four, but La Salle won the last matchup in 1999, capped by an epic Game 3 that went into OT; the green school was saved by Don Allado and Dino Aldeguer.

It's now 2013, and the players from that 1999 series are either now retired or at the twilight of their PBA careers, if they made it that far. It's a new generation of Tigers and Archers are on court, including brothers, the sons of Alvin "Robocop" Teng: Jeric and Jeron Teng. But it won't be just about the Teng brothers, with both teams suffering title droughts: UST since 2006, and La Salle since 2007; in fact they were the last two schools that won the title before Ateneo's unprecedented, at least in the Final Four era, 5-consecutive title romp.

2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup mock draw I

With only the EuroBasket left to decide Europe's 6 berths in the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup, and with 7 quarterfinalists guaranteed to get in, that means only one unlucky team would not go to Spain outright. There are also four wildcards, but on 2010 three of them are on pot -- more on pots later -- so we can assign placeholders form them in the meanwhile.

Provisional 2013 PBA Draft order

Hey, it's that time of the year when PBA fans get to care if Raymond Almazan would either be the next Kerby Raymundo or the next Bonel Balingit, if Greg Slaughter is the next EJ Feihl or the next Junemar Fajardo, if Kevin Alas is as good as advertised, if Bobby Ray Parks is signing up, if Sudan Daniel is the great Filipino center... wait, he's an import, and if we'd see the next Wilmer Ong from the collegiate ranks.

2013 PBA Governors' Cup team standings, magic and tragic numbers!

Why not a PBA version of our magic and tragic numbers? For details, see this.

UAAP Season 76 and NCAA Season 89 team standings, magic and tragic numbers!

It's back! Track your favorite teams performance with magic and tragic numbers! For an explanation, see this.

60-30-10: Compare it with 2010!

So you've heard of the 60-30-10 conspiracy theory. You can choose to believe whatever explanation there is, but one thing has bugged as: has it always been this way? A pattern when you add up per party totals in senatorial elections? First, a refresher. Here's the 2013 Senate election results per region: 

 

The national pattern quite holds, but there are minor differences now per region. Something to the tune of 6%. The pattern deviates further when you break it down into provinces and cities which were directly canvassed by the NBOC:

   

Now, here's the 2010 presidential election per region: 

 

As seen here, the 42-26-16-11-5 national ratio does not hold up in most regions. But this is a single-winner election, and we can't compare this one to the 2013 senatorial election. What we can compare it with, is the 2010 senatorial election. 

Here's the chart of the 2010 senatorial election, and compare it to the 2013 results per province.

But first, there were several shared guest candidates here, so it's imperative that I disclose how I came up with this chart.

For LP: Acosta, Bautista, M., Biazon, Drilon, Guingona, Hontiveros, Lacson, Lao, Lim, Recto, Roco.

For NP: Cayetano, Defensor-Santiago, Marcos, Maza, Mitra, Ocampo, S., Ople, Pimentel, Querubin, Remulla, Tamano

For PMP: Bautista, JV, De Venecia, Enrile, Estrada, Lozada, Plaza, Tatad.

For Lakas-Kampi: Bello, Guico, Lambino, Langit, Lapid, Revilla.

For others: Entire KBL, Kapatiran, Bangon Pilipinas slates, Caunan, Osmena, E., Osmena, S., Palparan, Princesa, Sotto. 

Data came from Ateneo's mirror of the now dead COMELEC-Smartmatic website for the 2010 election results (for provincial-level results), and the official COMELEC website for the national total per candidate. Unlike the "Transparency server" that was used in 2013, the results in this website were the actual results used by the board of canvassers. The reason I came up with this conclusion is that the vote totals here are identical with the vote totals of the winning candidates displayed on the official COMELEC website.

I realized you haven't read most of what I've said above and went directly here. Can't blame you LOL

 

(National totals at the far right.)

Time to draw up your own conclusions!

2013 elections: You compute the results!

In legislative (or parliamentary) elections, the popular vote totals of every party is computed. This is the sum of votes each party participated at on every district it participated in. For some reason, that hasn't been done in the Philippines. In fact, even the most basic of election results, such as the number of seats a party won in the lower house elections isn't published anywhere. Not by the media, not by the parties themselves, or even by the COMELEC.

This 2013, that changes.

With the power of the internet, and the power of Smartmatic and COMELEC, we can now compute the popular vote totals for every party that participated in this year's elections to the House of Representatives. With this, we can also compute how many seats a party wins.

This is actually pretty easy. First, we'd need the stats from COMELEC. Starting in the 2010 elections, we have been supplied by the COMELEC and Smartmatic vote totals up to the precinct level in the internet. Without those, this project won't be possible.

Then, on this document, you can encode/paste the vote totals from the official COMELEC website. The Microsoft Excel spreadsheet automatically detects which party wins the district.

With that, the only thing we'd need are vote totals. Once we get those, just encode, and voila, we'd know the party standing for the upcoming 16th Congress.

Be a part of this project that has never been attempted before. Be a part of history. Now, your vote really counts.