Minden idők, satöbbi.
A 15-foot-tall statue of Zinedine Zidane head-butting Marco Materazzi by sculptor Adel Abdessemed has been placed in the courtyard of the Pompidou Center in Paris.
The statue, entitled "Headbutt," is by the Algerian sculptor Adel Abdessemed, and coincides with an exhibition of his work in the museum. "This statue goes against the tradition of making statues to honor victories," said Phillipe Alain Michaud, who directed the exhibition. "It is an ode to defeat... Zidane's downward glance recalls that of Adam, chased from paradise."
But as Michaud knows, and surely as Abdessemed intends, it is both not so simple and much simpler. It is an ode to more than defeat; but it's also a representation of very basic feelings complicated by literary analogy. The Headbutt was full of anger, stupidity, and recklessness, but beneath them lay a damaged sense of honor. This makes it hard for even the calmest football fan to wholly begrudge Zidane his actions.
We were browsing Getty Images last week for images of Olympic beach volleyball, when we came upon something interesting.Check out these results:
This got us thinking — What if all Olympic sports were photographed this way? We decided to find out.
Basketball
Diving
Gymnastics
Swimming
Track and Field
Wrestling
Via Kottke
Whenever sports and numbers meet, the Moneyball question inevitably arises: Is it possible to use big data sets to find undervalued players? Alagappan believes it is.
He isolated the 40 players in the “scoring rebounder” section who best epitomized that group. At the top were the stars you might expect: Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire of the New York Knicks, along with Nowitzki and the Los Angeles Lakers’ Paul Gasol. But lesser-known players like Marreese Speights of the Memphis Grizzlies and the Lakers’ Devin Ebanks produced statistically similar per-minute results. Even better, where Anthony’s salary averages around $18.5 million per year, the Lakers are paying Ebanks about $740,000.
Another inevitable question: Could Ayasdi’s software have predicted the success of Knicks rookie Jeremy Lin? Alagappan concedes Lin’s college stats wouldn’t have suggested or predicted Linsanity, but he did create a similarity network to identify those players most similar to Lin in college. Three names emerged from the 3,400 analyzed: DeMarcus Cousins, who the Sacramento Kings picked fifth overall in the 2010 NBA draft; Alec Burks, picked 12th in 2011 by the Utah Jazz; and Nik Raivio, a University of Portland guard currently playing ball in Kaposvar, Hungary.
The lesson? For teams who buy into this new classification of players, the next Jeremy Lin might be in Hungary, awaiting your call.