Three-point play...

The three-point play is one of my favorites in basketball. No, I'm not talking about a long-distance bomb from a dude who usually has no business jacking up that shot and is then emboldened to take more after the rare make. I'm talking about the guy who crashes through the lane, makes the effort to finish his shot and gets fouled for his trouble. He then goes to the line and makes the free throw. To me, it's a beautiful thing.

My other favorite play in basketball is the extra pass - which is why I generally don't like the NBA. I have had protracted arguments with my friend Joel about my views on the National Basketball Association, which are generally stymied by the fact I refuse to watch NBA games to bear out Joel's theories that it's gotten better.

However, today's blog features two news articles that look on professional basketball with a positive or, at the least, neutral eye. And from reputable news sources, no less!

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at what it terms the "locker room nerds" - international players who are bringing reading back to the locker room. The article calls out many international (and some US) players by name for their reading habits, some of which are far more advanced than mine. While some may argue the Bucks players have more pressing matters to attend to on the court, the organization gave them Kindles for Christmas last year, and the player's association publishes a quarterly reading list. I do have to give Dwayne Wade props for admitting one of his favorite books is Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." Especially since the "handful" of Trail Blazers who read aren't comfortable acknowledging they do so.

The New York Times published a story in the Health section that examines the findings of researchers who have been focusing on non-verbal cues like touches. The scientists have found that a touch to the arm, a grab of the shoulder or a pat on the back not only emphasizes the feeling being conveyed in words but is also capable of conveying the same feeling without verbal communication. In an experiment a blind-folded participant was able to identify eight different emotions with 70 percent accuracy. Later in the article, the Times references work by Berkeley scientists who studied non-verbal communication in NBA games last year. They report, with a few exceptions, good teams tend to be touchier than bad ones (hello, Celtics and Lakers) and good players are also more likely to touch teammates during a game - fist bumps, chest bumps, high fives, etc.

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Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few days, you know that the USA men's ice hockey team defeated Canada by two goals on Sunday. While clearly not of the magnitude of the 1980 US men versus Russia, this was definitely an upset. The Boston Globe mentioned in a blog that five year-old YouTube star Josh Sacco attended a team dinner before the match up. Sacco is known for his oddly affecting and remarkably accurate impression of Herb Brooks giving his famous locker room speech during the "Miracle on Ice." I enjoyed watching Sacco the first time I saw this video. Here it is if you would like to see it too.

Putting the student back into student-athlete...

Despite being in and around college athletics for the last 11 years, I have no idea when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) put an emphasis on calling college sports participants student-athletes, as opposed to simply calling them athletes. I know the NCAA has faced a lot of flack for being an athlete mill, churning out trained bodies for various professional leagues instead of individuals prepared for life.

But for all the pressure on the schools to up their graduation success rate (GSR) and all the NCAA commercials touting the tagline "I'm going pro in something other than sports," I can tell you from four solid years on the front lines, for the most part, the concept of student being equal to athlete has not sunk in.

Luckily for the future of civilization, there are a few exceptions. The New York Times recently posted an article on the rise in NBA players going back to school in the off-season to earn the degrees they abandoned when they declared for the draft. This year 45 players - 10 percent of the league - went back to school. The Times cites the disturbing facts presented in a March issue of Sports Illustrated that 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retirement, and 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or under financial stress because of being unemployed or divorced within two years. Baseball players sometimes fare about as well. So it's a good thing athletes are now realizing those boring classes and homework left in the dust of a signing bonus could really lead to something.

ESPN's College Football Nation blogged yesterday about Dave Shinskie, Boston College's 25 year-old freshman quarterback. Shinskie, a minor league pitcher for the past six years, was released and made the decision to go to school to get his degree. He has not yet declared a major but plans on sticking around all four years and maybe going for an elementary education degree so he can teach third grade and possibly coach. Shinskie has suffered the usual freshman growing pains - confusion with the playbook, lack of experience and handling classes and football - but his coach and teammates (who call him Uncle Dave) are standing behind him and have high hopes.

Finally, I'm going to take a little space to plug a site one of my former rowers has set up on his own, jumping into the fray that is the Middle East peace process. The Middle East Alliance is, as stated on its website, "a not-for-profit project founded in July 2009 to provide a one-stop location for all Middle Eastern news and blogs for Western audiences ... The ultimate goal of the Middle East Alliance is to provide a source that enables the English speaking world to truly understand life on the ground in the Middle East, as told from the people who live there and experience it first hand."

Having lived in a foreign country at the start of the second Iraq war I know how important it is to get a glimpse, on a more personal level, of how people in other countries view events, particularly when those events are so volatile and touch so many other parts of the globe. My former student-athlete is working in Kurdistan for an American university and has already recruited bloggers from Iraq and Iran as well as feeds blogs from Syria onto his site. It's worth a look when you're feeling open-minded or perhaps especially when you are not...