Ashjay001's Posts
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modath:Unfortunately, I think they need just two thirds of d senate to over-ride d president's veto. Since they all are corrupt and it might be anyone's turn tomorrow, getting two thirds won't be a prob! Shit happens! |
ArinzeAlec:Just make sure u get d right mate! |
TechWalker007:It was sarcasm, and my asking was to see if u can actually break it down, cos u didn't seem to understand it. All FG institutions with a common purse. Nobody gets to spend from it without federal approval unlike what was obtainable, whereby they all spend as they wish and remit d scraps to d govt. |
victorazy:Unlike what is obtainable today, artist then were making peanuts! No $1m sign on fees, no glo/mtn endorsement, no millions of naira movie sales. Those guys where generally living hand to mouth, not until recently, early 90s, when things improved. How many homes owned video players not to talk of satellite tv? They did it then, because of passion, not for any monetary gains. |
themosthigh:U wish! Since u seem ignorant, Calabar n PH do have working ports. Infact, Calabar was once Nigeria's state capital. And since u sound simple minded, rail transport generally is cheaper, more efficient and less prone to accidents compared to road transport. And d rail is to open up d hinterlands, after-all d rail will have stops in most towns it passes thru. Also, should there be high speed passenger rail, u can even work in PH, yet stay in Owerri. Simple as ABC |
Misterpaul:Most industries are truly owned by foreigners and they tend to repatriate any profit to their home countries, costing Naija serious forex. Since d new dispensation, its getting hard to import raw materials and export forex, they are reducing investments. Let's pray d Nigerian industrialists will take up d slack. The present situation is a recipe for Made in Naija, but a lot of wealthy Nigerian investors got their wealth illegally and as such don't have d acumen to build from scratch. |
Why follow the norm, when u can be a trailblazer? www.wsj.com/articles/the-golden-state-warriors-have-revolutionized-basketball-1459956975 OAKLAND, Calif.—On every NBA court, about 24 feet from the basket, there is a thin stripe of colored paint. The flat-sided semicircle it forms is the boundary between shots that count for two points and shots that are worth three. When the NBA added the lines in 1979, the players weren’t sure what to think. They sniffed and pawed at them like cats with a new toy. Only 3% of the shots they put up that season were 3-pointers. Over the next three decades, that number crept higher. When it reached 22%, the growth curve flattened. It seemed that the sport had found its optimal ratio. Then the Golden State Warriors came along and blew that assumption to pieces. The Warriors, the National Basketball Association’s defending champion, now stand three wins from tying the league record of 72 in the regular season, set in 1996 by Michael Jordan ’s Chicago Bulls. Much of the credit belongs to the star guard Stephen Curry, who is having, by almost every measure, one of the best seasons of any player in history. But there is another tale to be told about the Warriors. It involves a group of executives with limited experience, led by a Silicon Valley financier, that bought a floundering franchise in 2010 and set out to fix it by raising a single question: What would happen if you built a basketball team by ignoring every orthodoxy of building a basketball team? The process took many twists and turns, and there were times when it nearly failed. But the dominance the Warriors have displayed this season can be traced back to one of the most unusual ideas embraced by the data-loving executives: the notion that the NBA’s 3-point line was a market inefficiency hiding in plain sight. This season the Warriors have sunk 1,025 3-pointers, by far the most in NBA history. Not only has Mr. Curry taken more threes than any other player, he is making them at a rate of 45.6%, higher than the NBA average for all shots. He has shattered his own record for most 3- pointers in a season by 34%. Moreover, distance seems to have no significant effect on his accuracy. Mr. Curry is a better shooter from 30 to 40 feet than the average NBA player is from 3 to 4. The result is a basketball style no one has yet figured out how to defeat. “What’s really interesting is sometimes in venture capital and doing startups the whole world can be wrong,” said the team’s primary owner, Joe Lacob, a longtime partner at Silicon Valley venture- capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “No one really executed a game plan—a team-building architecture—around the 3- pointer.” In 2010, the Golden State Warriors hadn’t won an NBA title since 1975. They played in a dumpy arena beside an interstate and had made the playoffs just once in the last 15 years. The previous owner, Chris Cohan, was loathed by many loyal fans. Still, competition to buy the team was fierce. To fend off the other finalist, Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Lacob and entertainment mogul Peter Guber paid $450 million, which was, at the time, the highest price for a team in NBA history. It wasn’t long before Mr. Lacob, who is 60 years old, installed a basketball brain trust akin to a board at one of his companies. The team’s executives are always communicating—a group text message hums on their phones during games—and every decision brings vigorous debate. But from the beginning, the Warriors brass placed an unusually strong emphasis on numbers. The data dive yielded many insights, but the Warriors eventually zeroed in on the 3-point line. NBA players made roughly the same percentage of shots from 23 feet as they did from 24. But because the 3-point line ran between them, the values of those two shots were radically different. Shot attempts from 23 feet had an average value of 0.76 points, while 24-footers were worth 1.09. This, the Warriors concluded, was an opportunity. By moving back just a few inches before shooting, a basketball player could improve his rate of return by 43%. Mr. Lacob wasn’t the only team owner in sports to delve into statistics—baseball has been doing it for years—and the Warriors weren’t the first NBA team to see the potential of the 3-pointer. Starting in the 1990s, a string of teams with brutally effective defenses had prompted teams like the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs to search for different ways to score, and that meant shooting more 3- pointers. More recently, as the data improved, it became clear that teams weren’t taking nearly enough of them. The difference between the Warriors and everyone else was what the team decided to do with this information. For many years after James Naismith invented basketball in 1891, the prevailing view was that the most important area of the court was near the basket. From Wilt Chamberlain’s finger-rolls in the 1960s to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ’s sky hooks in the 1970s to Mr. Jordan’s soaring dunks in the 1990s, the NBA was the dominion of players who owned the rim. When the Warriors, under their previous owners, drafted Mr. Curry in 2009, he wasn’t a prototypical NBA superstar. Though his father, Dell, had played in the NBA, Stephen Curry was so lightly recruited out of high school that he had attended tiny Davidson College near his hometown of Charlotte, N.C. He only emerged as a tantalizing NBA prospect after his team made an improbable run to the regional finals of the 2008 NCAA tournament. Even after his first two seasons with Golden State, Mr. Curry wasn’t a sure thing. Still, as the team’s new executives settled on their plan to exploit the 3-point line, they became convinced Mr. Curry would be their centerpiece. The first test of their commitment came in the form of a controversial decision: trading the team’s leading scorer, Monta Ellis. Some believed Mr. Ellis was too similar to Mr. Curry and that he was costing him shots. Others thought it was crazy to banish the most popular player. At one point, just before the deal, Mr. Lacob tested the confidence of his basketball executives by telling them he was getting cold feet. They defended their plan and pulled the trigger. The week after the 2012 trade, Mr. Lacob was booed by fans. The team finished that season with one of the NBA’s worst records. Team building The Warriors already were building a team around Mr. Curry that would allow him to take more 3-pointers. The most critical step had come in the 2011 draft when they selected Washington State guard Klay Thompson. He, too, was the son of an NBA player and an excellent shooter. At 6-foot-7, he was 4 inches taller than Mr. Curry. The team believed Mr. Thompson’s shooting ability would make defenses too frightened to leave him alone, and that would limit their ability to double-team Mr. Curry. But because he was tall, he could defend the other team’s best guard and shoot over defenses without being blocked, which could help the Warriors compete against teams that hoped to use their size to contain Mr. Curry. What made the move most attractive was its novelty. Most 3- point-shooting teams had one superb shooter surrounded by a collection of supporting players. “Imagine if we could have two of those guys,” Kirk Lacob, the owner’s 27-year-old son and the team’s assistant general manager, recalled thinking at the time. “It’s once in a lifetime,” said Joe Lacob. The day after Mr. Ellis was traded, Mr. Thompson was inserted into the starting lineup. After that, according to the general manager Bob Myers, when the team was drafting and signing players, the strategy shifted from wondering whether they could play with Mr. Curry to asking: “Who can play with Steph and Klay?” By the time the 2014-15 season began, the Warriors had padded their roster with Andrew Bogut, a 7- foot center who protects the rim and shores up their defense; the position-defying Draymond Green, the steal of the 2012 draft; and rangy guards Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, whom they acquired in free agency. “They complemented shooting,” Mr. Myers said, “even though they’re not shooters.” The Warriors then had a chance to trade for one of the league’s premier players, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love. The move would have been a no- brainer for most basketball people. But the Timberwolves wanted a player in return whose departure would have scuttled the Warriors’ master plan. “They kept asking for Klay, and we kept saying no,” Mr. Lacob said. “We weren’t going to trade Klay, and they weren’t going to do a deal without Klay.” The team doubled down on its 3- point plan by replacing coach Mark Jackson with Steve Kerr, a member of five NBA championship teams who had retired with a 45.4% shooting rate on 3-pointers, the highest in league history. It was his first NBA coaching job. That season, with all the pieces in place, the Warriors fielded five players between 6-foot-3 and 6- foot-8 who all were threats to shoot 3-pointers. This “small-ball” lineup— widely known as the “death lineup” or, as Barack Obama called it, the “nuclear lineup”—helped the Warriors take 9% more 3-pointers as a team than the year before and make a higher percentage than anyone in the league. This combination of frequency and efficiency had a fascinating effect on opponents. It forced them to spread out, extending their defense all the way to the 3-point line instead of packing the paint, leaving the Warriors with lots of open space. Mr. Curry set a record for 3-point shots and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. Mr. Thompson made the All-Star team. The Warriors overcame the Cleveland Cavaliers to win their first NBA title in 40 years. A step further The tinkering could have stopped there. The Warriors clearly had hit on a winning formula. But then they began thinking about an audacious idea that would make them even better. The plan had started to take shape in 2013, during a playoff game against the Spurs, one of the NBA’s top teams. Mr. Curry was just then coming into his own, showing signs that he could be both dazzling and deadly. During one possession early in the first quarter, Mr. Curry dribbled around a screen and found himself in a pocket of open space. Immediately, even before he had time to set his feet, Mr. Curry pulled up and fired a 3-pointer. Mr. Myers, the general manager who was in the arena watching that night, couldn’t believe his eyes. As the ball swished through the net, he turned to the other Warriors executives around him to confirm what he had just seen. “Did he just shoot that off one foot?” he asked. “Who shoots a three off one foot?” The shot was only one of dozens of stunners Mr. Curry had made during his young NBA career. But it played a crucial role in firming up another idea the team was batting around. The Warriors were dreaming about what would happen if they gave Mr. Curry a green light to take more shots, and more crazy ones, too—not off one foot, exactly, but from places on the floor where nobody had ever routinely taken shots. Mr. Curry had already reached the point where he could take as many as 10 threes in one game without anyone noticing. It didn’t matter if the shot was off one foot, from 5 feet behind the 3-point line or the popcorn stand in the concourse. His accuracy didn’t seem to suffer much. Before every game, in fact, Mr. Curry practices these kinds of bombs by shooting from the half- court logo. The team realized that any possession that ended with a 3-point attempt by Mr. Curry was worthwhile—and that they would never discourage him from taking one. In this, the season of Mr. Curry’s unleashing, the Warriors are shooting 17% more threes than a season ago. Mr. Curry is attempting more than 11 a game. No NBA team had ever had a player attempt more than nine. Last season he hit 286 threes. This season he is on pace for about 400. What amazes fans even more is the location of those shots. NBA players shoot an average of 28% from 27 feet or beyond. Most players don’t even take them unless the shot clock is running out. Mr. Curry has taken 253 such deep shots this year and made 47% of them. The result is that defenders have strayed even farther from the basket to guard him, opening even bigger spaces for his teammates. “Stretching a defense makes it easier to score,” Mr. Myers said. The success of the Warriors this season has turned Mr. Curry, who is 28 years old, into one the NBA’s biggest stars. He has an everyman appeal because he isn’t a giant. His celebrity has raised the profile of the 3-point shot. This year, like the last four years, NBA teams are taking more 3-pointers than ever. They now amount to 28.3% of total shots. College teams also hit another high in 3-pointers attempted per game this season. High school teams have caught the bug, too. Mr. Guber, the team’s co-owner, said other NBA teams will try to emulate the Warriors’ original approach as they attempt to end the team’s reign. “Other teams will do it in a different way,” he said. “They’ll take chances and challenge the incumbent and come up with another way to create the magic.” For now, the Warriors have it. They turned the 3-point line into a boundary in time. The kind of strategy that unfolded inside the line belonged to the game’s past. The future of basketball, they believed, lay behind the line—and Mr. Curry showed it was farther behind that line than even they imagined. “I don’t know why it took so long,” Mr. Lacob said. “You would think in sports that this would’ve been tried a long time ago.” Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com |
Won't be surprised if d policemen start trooping his hospital bed with their wives, kids, parents, pastors, alfas, siblings et al to beg! There will always be consequences, in d short or long run! |
jude33084:Tanx, bro. No mind my pple n witchcraft! If dem born am, make him centre him yansh! |
Well, if u were expecting to get something massive, u're in for a great disappointment! Unlike what is obtainable in Naija, these poor policemen are under investigations for accepting free rides and meals! Imagine??! With our "anything for d boys" policemen, the whole force would be under investigation! mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/nyregion/4-new-york-officers-are-put-on-desk-duty-amid-us-corruption-inquiry.html |
nengisteph:If u have sense n can think, u will realise, one person can fill 50 tellers to pay into d same bank! The bank staff too are culpable, and if u've read d proceedings, u'll see d bank reported those transactions. |
adekennis:Pls, don't even bet with ur dustbin! Wike's case was almost as conclusive, but d supreme court can always find a technicality to acquit him! His lawyers are not even cross-examining d witnesses, no objections sef. They av a joker and until dey play it, don't bet anytin! |
coolscott:At least u've toned down ur rhetoric. Expecting u on d zombie train soonest! |
LordAdam:If only u'll allow ur brilliant mind to be objective. With all ur listed achievements of the GEJ's govt, I wonder why our refineries didn't work for his six years, or that we're yet to generate over 5000MW(Obj) of electricity, or why he was borrowing to pay salaries(PMB is yet to do such), or he couldn't bail out d states owing salaries(23 at d last count), or how BH came to declare a caliphate over 23 Nigerian LGAs. Things where already worse in 2014- no fuel, no power, BH at large, no jobs, no salaries- d only thing available then was excess dollars to d ruling class! Where are d rails? the food? the robust economy? name one completed road project? Doesn't d sudden collapse show all GEJ's growth was on paper? PMB is yet to formulate any policy, what he has been doing is threading water and implementing d past policies and stopping leakages, yet everything is collapsing? I wonder which country u where, when Ekitigate happened or when APC members/party where being harassed by d DSS or when courts where giving orders of perpetual injunctions against prosecution of political exposed persons or when states were owing several months salaries or when criminals where strolling d corridors of power? U've read all these atrocities, yet u're shameless enough to conveniently forget them? Inculcate objectivity, pls! |
TheGoodJoe:Don't know how we're gonna go about that war, when their harvard educated coordinating minister madam will come into public space and become basket-case of contradictions! |
TheGoodJoe:Bros, na chicken brain all of them get! They can't even read to comprehend, so frustrating and annoying to observe this flaw in the supposed leaders of tomorrow. |
otil1: |
Obamina:There will always be a scapegoat! And, d good thing about this scenario is- all other govt officials earning illegal emoluments, are going to put a stop to it! Fashola, Akpabio take note |
Keneking:No mind am bro, small brain wey dem get, dem no go allow person rest! |
TechWalker007:Since u're not ignorant, how come u didn't see d youngman was catching fun? Why so serious? What exactly is d tsa self? |
She is bidding her time, her work is going to speak for her. |
Zoharariel:Well, I hope u realise d CCT is backed by d FG? Ordinary civil defence should make mincemeat of any marabouts! |
LordAdam:Study ur morality! List or probably mention d ability this ur GEJ has over PMB? Compare and contrast his best performance/s and how tangible/viable it was in relation to past govt efforts? Hear urself-"no messiahs, just pple with better abilities than others"; since he supposedly has better abilities, isn't he supposed to put it to good use? What is a messiah, if not someone with better abilities? A supposedly Phd holder, who doesn't even know how to motivate his people, propagate his message or possibly even bully opposition into submission? Just what d nepa certificate holder is doing presently! I know stark illiterates who'll reason u into d ground, leadership no be by book; abinibi>ability! This is one of d instances I wish to play God; just give u wailers ur utopia with GEJ as ur president! Mofos |
valboy20:Read ur reasoning: u called me an ass-hole earlier, then towards d end u try being polite and tell me not to end up a dullard? Who do u tink is d ass-hole? Since u've got half-baked reasoning like other wailers, PMB was already winning 12 core north states b4 Tinubu! Oyo, Kwara, Ondo, Kogi, Benue and even Ekiti will never vote Tinubu! During elections in those states, Tinubu is always lowkey. So, Tinubu might be taking d glory, but deep down everybody realised d Buffoon fuc-ked up big time! Everybody, except tribalistic buffoons like u! The whole democratic world, turned against him and insulted him to his face! Was that propaganda too? Did u know when soldiers where deployed to welcome Yar'Adua's body into d country, without GEJ, as a acting presido, knowing anything about it? I almost bursted a vein on fb. Do u even know anything about d 'doctrine of necessity'? I jubilated for over a week, when it was applied. I registered to vote because of d bloody buffoon! What broke my delusions of GEJ's messianic abilities, was when he appointed achike udenwa, a minister; I served as a corper during udenwa's tenure, it was terrible! Imagine my saviour president appointing such a deadbeat as his minister? I'm gonna shut my trap and allow u enjoy ur tomfoolery, while I bid my time and pray PMB doesn't fu-ck up, but if he does, the kicking out circle begins again! No more will mediocrity be allowed to get 2 terms! We need true change |
Give me some sunshine Give me some rain Share ur troubles, the solution/s might just be round d corner! Don't just fu-cking give up! |
plaetton:What u don't seem to understand is; GEJ was supposed to be different! He was supposed to be one of us, fighting battles on our behalf. I remember very well, all my social media rantings on his behalf during d Yar'Adua health saga; I remember the jubilations on the streets, from lagos to calabar to plateau to kaduna, when he won against PMB! He became one of them, incubating corruption, standing up for thieves, protecting them, shielding them, even removed a cbn guv for them! He lost our trust and as such PMB became attractive. Tinubu couldn't sell PMB, infact with Tinubu as his VP, PMB would av lost gallantly! PMB came into power because GEJ betrayed our trust! That we've had thieves as our former leaders gave GEJ the wherewithal to breed thieves? Hear urself Compare d 2011 results to the 2015 results, d SW want progress, to hell with sentiments! |
chiefoboh1:For 50yrs+, all our govts have been claiming to provide all these things u mentioned; power, fuel, budget, economic policy, rule of law; still, we are yet to refine our own fuel, diversify our economy, generate more than 6000MW or even make corruption illegal! Our prayers should be, make God enter PMB mind make him deviate from d norm! Dazzol |
[quote author=Nelkoko post=44466156][/quote]Those chickens depict d ruling class to a T! The masses where always like d APC version! |
plaetton:Seriously, u think Tinubu sold PMB? If it comes to a vote, do u really think all zombies will vote for Tinubu? I personally, though I respect his achievements, grudgingly, don't, won't and can't vote Tinubu! Infact, I'm still wondering how PMB was convinced to partner with him! What so hard about understanding that GEJ lost, inspite of a six years head-start, to a 3 time loser? Obj was bad, we didn't vote PMB. Yar'Adua was unknown, yet we didn't vote PMB Jonathan was seen as a messiah, so we didn't vote PMB What happened within 4yrs, to make pple jubilate on d streets at GEJ's loss? U seem to have closed ur ears to the news of absolute corruption he allowed. The culprits are not denying, infact some are returning funds voluntarily, what they are complaining about is a witchhunt! And, u're hear beating ur chest, defending him n them, without any iota of shame? Don't worry, relax, in 3yrs time, if PMB continues on this path, we'll probably vote in Wike! QED! What has perception got to do with supporting a criminal, who owns up to his crime?! Praying ardously for him to come and continue from where he left off! Are u matured urself? |
plaetton:Mr Clueless did all what u mentioned above, and was still beaten hands down at d ballot by a 3 time loser, even Mr Clueless himself won against last time around! In an election Mr Clueless oversaw as an incumbent? Seriously, I need what u're smoking! A 3 time loser thrashed a supposedly working president(who trashed d 3 time loser handsdown in round one) in an election he organised and u're listing fallacies? He used our funds to finance his campaign! Funds meant to fight BH, improve schools, airports, railways, healthcare etc. If he had actually spent those funds judiciously, u won't be here missing him! When will u realise his failures made PMB attractive? PMB couldn't even win a quarter of d votes in a single SW state in 2011, and yet he became d man to beat barely 4yrs later?!!!! I'm almost running mad, trying to understand wailer reasoning!? Supporting a failure? |
No, what it shows is d level of ineffectual buffoonry of Jona to make PMB attractive after 3 attempts! PMB's unknown quantity was preferred to Jona's cluelessness! |
naijaboy756:Seriously? Under a year and u're acting so fickle? |
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