Hasta La Gadget!

NBA teams need a definitive go-to option for crunch time. When you’ve got to get a bucket, you either isolate your offensive weapon or run a set to get him a good look. But what if your best offensive weapon is a rotating slate of talented players all capable of making a play? What if — as the defending world champion San Antonio Spurs proved last season — you don’t necessarily have one go-to player? Well then, you are looking at the Atlanta Hawks, a team with four All-Stars who don’t care who gets the last look.

Watch the Hawks for even a few minutes, and immediately what jumps out is an unusual brand of half-court offense. Newly minted NBA Coach of the Year Mike Budenholzer — a Gregg Popovich disciple — stresses unselfishness, quality off-ball screening and floor spacing designed to generate solid shots on every possession.

Atlanta, the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference with 60 wins, ranked fourth in overall field goal percentage and second in 3-point percentage this season, trailing only juggernaut Golden State. The impetus to the offense is point guard Jeff Teague, a naturally attacking and probing lead guard who is enjoying the best year of his career. Teague’s role — and style — is not dissimilar to Tony Parker’s, and both are highly capable scorers who thrive in the paint and in pick-and-roll. In the set below, he finds a slipping Paul Millsap after Millsap perfectly reads the defense. Brooklyn then over-rotates and leaves DeMarre Carroll wide open for a layup.

Plays like this are the reason the Hawks led the league this year on assisted field goals. Teague’s seven helpers a game are a major reason for this success, along with the team’s two bigs in Millsap and Al Horford. Both All-Stars can really pass from either the high post or the block, as well as convert around the rim.

Budenholzer likes to run a series of cutters to make the opposing defense have to decide whether or not to help. That decision is made increasingly difficult by Kyle Korver’s presence beyond the arc. Korver — Atlanta’s fourth All-Star selection in 2015 — is often the most important player on the floor. A knockdown 3-point shooter his entire career, the 34-year-old has been especially lethal this season. He has connected on a stellar 49 percent, ranking him second in the league and first for starters. The former second-round pick produces a hefty part of his triples from offensive rebounds, generally the best time to shoot a 3 because the defense is left scrambling, as we see below.

Budenholzer, grasping the extreme value in the way defenses react to just the mere threat of Korver, designed his offense in part around him. As a result, we often see Korver being used as a decoy or even an ancillary option to free up another part of the floor. For example, in the first clip below, Brooklyn’s Joe Johnson is forced to stay high so that Korver can’t get a clean spot-up look. Atlanta, per usual, reads it and gets a wide open layup.

And here, the Nets are expecting Korver to launch a clean shot from deep, but he instead becomes a willing passer for an even better look.

“There’s this really fine line that some coaches don’t try to walk,” Korver told ESPN.com. “I feel like every coach is either really good at X’s and O’s or a really good personality manager, and there aren’t many coaches who know how to walk the middle. Bud? I’ve never seen a coach at any level who does it better than him.”

All in all, this is what makes Atlanta so dangerous from an offensive standpoint. Unselfishness and ball movement is always a positive in basketball, but between their diverse talent and “Bud’s” creative scheming, the Hawks generally enter every possession — both in the half-court and transition — as the aggressor with a distinct advantage somewhere on the floor.

As a result, it doesn’t matter that they lack a true “go-to” threat, because everyone on the floor becomes a viable option. Remember, the five starters all averaged between 12 and 17 points during the regular season, and nobody — not even once — has scored more than 30 points in any one game. For Mike Budenholzer and the Atlanta Hawks, that precise balance translates to consistent success and winning basketball.

Email me at jordan.schultz@huffingtonpost.com or ask me questions about anything sports-related at @Schultz_Report, and follow me on Instagram @Schultz_Report. Also, be sure to catch my NBC Sports Radio show “Kup and Schultz,” which airs Sunday mornings from 9 to 12 EST, right here.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Ever since Harry Truman made the first televised presidential address in 1947, TV has been the White House’s go-to medium for speaking to the American people, unparalleled in reach and credibility. But in the past few months, the Obama White House has forgone interviews with talking heads on traditional TV news networks in favor of digital-media organizations like Youtube, Vox, Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post. This represents a major shift in thinking.

With NewFronts on the horizon, these interviews with President Barack Obama confirm that media’s center of gravity has shifted. In the past, TV news outlets counted on digital publishers to extend their reach by posting clips. But now, online publishers are landing their own exclusives, and material from these online interviews is finding its way onto TV rather than the reverse.

For politicians, the message is clear: making the rounds on the Sunday morning news programs is no longer good enough. The lesson is no less clear for advertisers who rely on the same eyeballs. The advertising industry should take this as a sign that online video is a worthy investment.

A year ago, Pew Research called news video on the web “a growing, if uncertain, part of news.” Pew reported that 36 percent of U.S. adults were watching news videos online. The number is even higher among younger audiences: almost half of 18- to 29-year-olds and 30- to 49-year-olds watch online news videos. As the digital news audience grows, TV cable news channels geared at Millennials like Fusion and Pivot have struggled to find an audience.

The White House recognizes that digital platforms are undeniable in terms of reaching the influencers shaping the opinions of the next generation of Americans, even while some national advertisers are still reluctant. The President embraced digital media from the beginning; it was this digital savviness that helped Obama get elected in the first place, leaving opponents who’ve been slower to embrace technology in the dust. Tech site Mashable reported on the Obama campaign’s digital initiatives in “The Digital Smackdown: Obama 2008 vs. Obama 2012.” Some of the digital campaigns included disseminating 14.5 million hours of free video on YouTube, which would have cost $47 million on network television, and participating in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread, which 1.8 million people subscribed to. While Obama was making the rounds on YouTube, Vox, Buzzfeed and HuffPost, Lindsay Graham said on Meet The Press that he’s never sent an email.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson national advertisers can take from Obama’s digital marketing playbook is customization. Shrewdly, Obama didn’t see his digital outreach simply as a means to gain incremental reach, but as a way to better communicate his message. He tailored his message to each publisher’s audience, capitalizing on their unique brand voice.

YouTube, which is audience-driven in a way TV is not, enlisted three of its biggest stars for its Obama interview, proving that pitching social influencers online is as important as pitching TV outlets. Obama’s interviewers each had very different followings. EcoGeek Hank Green covered drones, Green-lipped comedian Glozell Green talked about cutting her husband’s hoodies off and teen queen Bethany Mota tackled college debt. The president was able to hone his message for each personality to connect more deeply their followers. In the interview, Obama himself commented on the importance of online video given that “more and more audiences are turned off by traditional news shows.”

Vox used the properties of digital-media storytelling to relay Obama’s message to its audience. While it’s been a long-standing practice to adapt longer video into digestible clips online, Vox produced its interview with Obama as short clips from the get-go rather thinking about the tactic as a secondary dissemination strategy. The editors also included animated data visualizations in the clips highlighting the president’s most important points. For example, as he speaks about why income inequality has skyrocketed, an animated line graph shows how corporate profits have risen even as wages have dropped over the last three decades.

Buzzfeed did its part to make President Obama’s interview go viral. In addition to interviewing with Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith, the President showed his humorous side with a funny-selfie-stick gag during a Buzzfeed-style PSA that encouraged young people to sign up for healthcare.gov.

My own employer, HuffPost, was able to leverage its global reach and range of expertise — from politics to lifestyle (and everything in between) — to conduct a wide-ranging interview with the President that could then be broken up and packaged for HuffPost’s various communities around the world. Obama had the opportunity to cover the budget, Israel, race relations, college sports, being a father, and sleep –which he says he doesn’t get enough of but he hopes he’ll get in the “post-administration glow” — all of which was promptly translated across 13 international editions.

I’ve been working with online video for digital campaigns since the launch of YouTube 10 years ago. Since then, I’ve seen online video go from being inferior to TV as a desirable media channel, to the shiny new object that everyone wanted to try in order innovate (or at least feign innovation,) and now, among younger audiences, a viable competitor in terms of audience. Obama’s digital outreach marked the arrival of online video as a legitimate media channel for influence in politics. As we enter the 2015 NewFronts, I expect a similar awakening among advertisers.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Edward W. Campion, M.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D.

Eleven years ago, Massachusetts became the first state in the country to give same-sex marriages full legal recognition. Today, same-sex marriage is legal, through legislative or judicial action or by popular vote, in more than 35 states and the District of Columbia. It is recognized by the federal government. And polls consistently show that it is supported by a clear majority of Americans. However, in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of laws and constitutional amendments that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman only, denying recognition of same-sex marriage. Given the conflicting lower-court rulings, the Supreme Court has taken the issue under consideration. The Court will hear oral arguments on April 28 and is expected to hand down its ruling by the end of the current session, in June. We believe that the Court should resolve this conflict in favor of the full recognition of same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

A fundamental tenet of all medical care is the acceptance of patients as they are, for who they are, with respect and without prejudice or personal agendas. In most of the world, including the United States, there has been a long, sad history of mistreatment of homosexuals and misunderstanding of homosexuality, a normal expression of human sexuality. This mistreatment has ranged from disrespect to ridicule, from ostracizing to genocide. Medicine and psychiatry once saw homosexuality as deviant behavior and produced many baseless, foolish theories to explain it. [1] Until 1987, it was included (albeit increasingly less prominently) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. And there are still health care providers who offer ways to “treat” homosexuality as if it were an illness. Many of us in decades past have known people who felt they had no choice but to hide their homosexuality with false behaviors and sham marriages. [2] Too often physicians have seen the price that their patients have paid for society’s lack of acceptance of homosexuality. Stigma and shame lead to stress, anxiety, dysfunctional behavior, depression, even suicide. For all of us, sexual identity is an essential part of who we are. Those who are homosexual in a society that cannot give acceptance and respect suffer a constant insult to identity and a constant barrier to a normal life.

In this country and in many parts of the world, things have been changing. We are seeing greater respect and acceptance of people regardless of their sexuality. However, we have also seen efforts to avoid acceptance. Just a few weeks ago, the governor of Indiana proudly signed legislation making it possible for people to discriminate against homosexuals if the discrimination was said to be supported by religious beliefs. Fortunately, public outrage persuaded the governor and the legislature to backpedal, claiming it was all a misunderstanding. They have now amended the law to provide explicit protection for sexual orientation.

Same-sex marriage should be accepted both as a matter of justice and as a measure that promotes health. [3] Marriage as an institution is about stable, long-term relationships, which we know encourage health, reduce the risk of some diseases, and promote healthy families. All health professionals know that in those with chronic and severe illness, care almost always relies in part on family. And when things get really difficult, as when life and death decisions need to be made, physicians know that talking with a patient’s partner is not legally the same as working with a patient’s spouse. Many same-sex couples are now raising children, and the health of those children demands that their parents have the full rights and protection of marriage. In our society, marriage is often essential to obtaining and keeping adequate health insurance coverage for both members of a couple and for their children. More than 1,000 federal benefits are conferred by marriage, among them access to family medical leave, Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs medical services. Some of those benefits, however, are in jeopardy for same-sex spouses in states that do not recognize their union. The current situation — with same-sex marriages, including those in families with children, legally recognized in some states but not others — makes no sense, and the harmful consequences for health are well documented.

The Supreme Court should require the full recognition of same-sex marriage throughout this country. If the Court rules otherwise, whatever the legal logic, a clear injustice will result. And that injustice would damage the health and welfare of millions of Americans.

REFERENCES:

1. Bayer R. Homosexuality and American psychiatry: the politics of diagnosis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

2. Monette P. Becoming a man: half a life story. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

3. Gonzales G. Same-sex marriage — a prescription for better health. N Engl J Med 2014;370:1373-1376

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A New York-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy group hoped to send a powerful message when they posed outside of a notoriously anti-gay church in the city’s Harlem neighborhood.

Members of Harlem United’s H.O.M.E Program, which educates at-risk young LGBT adults of color on HIV/AIDS transmission, struck a unified pose April 26 outside of ATLAH Worldwide Missionary Church which, once again, was displaying a vehemently anti-gay sign.

“Many of these homos moving into Harlem looking for some black meat,” the sign read on one side. On the reverse, it declared, “The homo demons metastasized in Harlem restaurants possibly transmit sexual disease.”

At the time the photo was shot, Harlem United H.O.M.E Program participants had been coming from a session at Three and a Half Acres Yoga, and were out and about with photographer Robert Sturman. Once they spotted the ATLAH Worldwide Missionary Church’s sign, the group immediately wanted to take an unified photo in front of it.

Sturman later posted the image to Instagram:

A photo posted by Robert Sturman (@robertsturman) on Apr 26, 2015 at 3:42pm PDT

“Our clients struggle daily with being made to feel like they are invisible,” program coordinator Francisco Lazala said in an email statement. “To be the subjects of Robert Sturman portraits echoes what we already know: these lives and these stories matter. When the group walked past the divisive sign, our young adult participants and Robert all agreed they needed to make a response: Harlem is our home, too.”

The ATLAH Worldwide Missionary Church has earned a reputation for anti-gay signage over the past year. In February 2014, a sign was posted that read, “Obama has released the homo demons on the black man. Look out black woman. A white homo may take your man.” The church later replaced the sign with one that read “Jesus would stone homos,” along with “Stoning is still the law.”

A few months later, another sign appeared in front of the church, which read, “Harlem is a sodomite free zone. Stop sodomizing our children in schools across America.”

Meanwhile, ALTAH Pastor James David Manning has sparked controversy with his anti-LGBT remarks. In October, he labeled Starbucks “ground zero for Ebola” because franchises, particularly in urban areas, are meeting places for “generally upscale sodomites” interested in “clandestine sexual activities.”

He later argued that the coffee giant has been using “sodomites’ semen” in their flavored coffee drinks.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.