3 Point Buzzer

With so much media attention and scrutiny, it's hard for any quality players to go unnoticed these days. It's like cheat sheets in fantasy basketball; every Schmoe on the block has one, but finding value in overlooked players can net fantasy owners (and real-life general managers) major return on investment.  Today's media algorithms are driven by page views. What draws views? Why, rim-rattling dunks, snazzy crossovers and nifty passes of course!  No matter how tangibly good a player is at basketball, if they unleash one of the above moves, it will make House of Highlights, SportsCenter, World Wide Wob's Twitter, you name it. But there are always undervalued assets among the masses. Always. That sentiment holds true not just in basketball, but for stocks, actors, writers, artists...everyone. There is always someone doing honest-to-goodness work out there and getting little recognition. It's just how the world works.  And now, I present to you my starting lineup of

The Dark Knight, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, was released ten years ago today in theaters, and it remains the greatest movie of all time. The film, which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, was released during a meager and embarrassing time for traditional superhero movies (and no, the Dark Knight was not a superhero movie; I'll delve into that soon). The Dark Knight's release followed "Fantastic Four", "Hulk", "Hancock" and "Hellboy: The Golden Army", all of which were Darko Milicic-esque busts with convoluted and bland plot lines featuring vomit-inducing CGI that seriously damaged superhero movie's reputations. Nolan was already working at a disadvantage, having to release his film to a skeptical and worn out audience. However, through a brilliant marketing campaign that featured hidden websites and coded pictures, anticipation for the Dark Knight grew. And Nolan blew it out of the park. While the Dark Knigh

The Daily Orange sports department is part of one of the most respected independent student newspapers in the country. The Syracuse-based paper has won countless awards throughout the years and consistently churns out quality journalists that have gone on to prosper in bigger markets. They are the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs of the college newspaper industry; fostering a culture of diligence, hard-work, resourcefulness and passion for the craft. Resourcefulness has been ingrained into the paper’s culture since it became an independent entity in 1971, severing ties to the university, meaning the school could no longer censure or control what content the paper published. Funded by a combination of alumni support and advertisements, the paper doesn’t exactly have a limitless budget, though those limited funds have led to some of the most memorable moments of these young, determined journalists’ lives. The pathway to becoming the next Pete Thamel, Greg Bishop or Eli Saslow (the full lis

Walk into Bob Thompson’s spacious and beautifully lit office on the fourth floor of Newhouse 3 and it’s immediately obvious that the man is a television maven. Three flat screen TVs are perfectly plastered on the right wall. Then there are the hundreds, yes hundreds, of books on television, and lastly, “Simpsons”, “CSI” and “Friends” themed trivia games. But Thompson isn’t just a professor, he is a pioneer, one who willed the study of pop culture as an art form to almost every college in America, and by doing so has become one of the most respected voices in the industry. Thompson and his associates estimate he has been interviewed more than 35,000 times, with a single-day record of 86 interviews. In fact, some news outlets have even ordered their reporters to stop interviewing Thompson since everybody else does. Thompson’s path to becoming such a renowned pop culture voice was a road that had very little precedent. In the early 80s, Thompson was an art history and political s

Crunch time (officially the last five minutes of a close game) in general is the ultimate test of an NBA team's ceiling. A win or loss is on the line, everybody is tired and the defensive intensity is usually at its peak. It's also the perfect time for a team to unleash it's best possible five-man combination. If that sounded intense, crunch time in an NBA playoff game is in a whole other galaxy of pressure. Seasons, contracts, money, jobs and legacies are all on the line, out in the open. It's a place where players and teams either realize they can take their game to a higher level (Damian Lillard in 2015), or get their hopes crushed and be endlessly ridiculed as a choker (The 2012-2017 Clippers).  It is not always in a team's best interest to play their best lineups too much in the regular season. The Warriors' feared Death Lineup has only played a total of 127 minutes this season. This is because asking Kevin Durant and Draymond Green to battle with behem