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Opioids: How Chemical Dependency Changed

The opioid crisis had a significant impact on how many admissions there were for chemical dependency treatment in Onondaga County. The numbers cannot be taken at face value because they do not consider the amount of people who were admitted to multiple programs or who were transferred out of state for treatment. The raw data include more than 65 thousand rows of statistics, starting from 2007 going to 2016, so I filtered it by only including inpatient rehabilitation for heroin and other opioids. The ages ranged from under 18 to 55 and older, with people between 18 and 34 being the most affected.

There are six types of general treatment programs and several sub categories. The other rehabilitation programs include crisis, opioid treatment, residential, outpatient and specialized. The main sub categories I looked at were medically supervised withdrawal for inpatients, medically managed detoxification and medically monitored withdrawal, among others. The data show that except for medically managed detoxification, the number of admissions went up significantly starting in 2013, peaking in 2016, which is when the opioid crisis started taking off in the United States and New York.

The numbers also support this trend locally because according to New York’s Health Department (page 67 of the report), outpatient emergency department visits in Onondaga County increased from 307 in 2015 to 482 in 2016, which is roughly 103 people out of every 100,000. The crisis has seen disturbing effects because opioid related deaths tripled in Onondaga County from 2012 to 2016, but went down 28 percent between 2016 and the beginning of last year.

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Syracuse Roads Rated 5 or Less

Syracuse rates its roads on a scale from 1-10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Out of the roughly 4,850 roads in the city, more than 1,800 are either a five or worse. Only one road was ranked a one.

I filtered the numbers by street type (streets and avenues), local roads and when their last overlay –meaning when the city resurfaces its roads– was, which ranged from 2003 to 2011. Some of the roads I didn’t include had their last overlay in 1981 and the most recent was 2015.

There are also many streets that have several consecutive blocks that have roads rated from one to five. Fellows Avenue is among the streets that fits that description. In some cases, there are even roads on the same block of a street in these conditions. Some examples of that are Union, Fellows, Brighton and Ramsey avenues.

Syracuse has a deteriorating infrastructure, so this may not come as a surprise. More than a quarter of the city’s roads are either in mediocre condition or worse. Part of the reason is the lack of resources dedicated to infrastructure. Using salt to melt the snow away from Syracuse’s roads also contributes significantly to the problem. The roads being in this condition is part of why the city’s residents are not happy with its infrastructure.

 

Link for Data: http://data.syrgov.net/datasets/road-ratings-2015/data?orderBy=dateLastOverlay&orderByAsc=false

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Gender Pay Gap in Professional Basketball

Since the NBA and WNBA were founded, there has been a huge disparity in salaries between the two leagues. One of the reasons could be that women in America make 78 cents for every dollar men make. Another reason is that the NBA was officially formed in 1949 and its female counterpart started 21 years ago. Therefore, the revenue gap between the two leagues is significant.

The NBA made almost $6 billion in revenue in the 2015-16 season, compared to roughly $51.5 million last year for the WNBA. Precise data for the latter don’t exist, but that’s based on the TV deal they have with ESPN. The NBA splits its revenue 50/50 between players and owners. The WNBA has a more convoluted distribution and the players have seen less of it in the last few years. According to Forbes, WNBA players take home less than 25 percent of the league’s revenue. It used to be 33 percent. Revenue is accumulated through ticket sales, merchandise, sponsorships and TV deals. NBA games have more than double the amount of fans than WNBA games and sells much more merchandise.

Another thing to consider is salaries. According to Forbes, as of 2016, NBA players make an average of $6.2 million per year. According to Vice Sports, that number goes way down to $75,000 for WNBA players. The maximum salary in the latter league is about $110,000, per CNBC, which is almost five times less than the NBA’s minimum salary. With that in mind, according to Buzzfeed, there were 52 NBA players in 2014 who made more money than the entire WNBA combined. The chart below shows nine NBA all stars and their salaries in 2014 compared to what the WNBA paid all of its players.

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The Evolution of the Three Pointer in the NBA

NBA basketball changed immensely between the 1979-80 season –the year the three-point line was implemented– and the 2016-17 campaign. Players are attempting (and making) many more triples and scoring less points around the basket, A.K.A. the paint or post. Most players who attempted three pointers were point guards, shooting guards and a few small forwards. Those players are usually smaller and quicker than power forwards and centers and score more points from the perimeter than the latter two positions.

The three-point line was unpopular among players when it was introduced because many had to adjust their approach to the game and weren’t comfortable taking a triple unless it was absolutely necessary. But as time passed, players developed a rhythm and realized its importance to the sport, so the number of triples sky rocketed. There are several reasons this transformation happened.

The game is a lot less physical than it used to be, mostly because of rule changes like eliminating hand checking, which let defenders have both of their hands on opposing players at all times. This rule was done away with in the 1994-95 season, which is roughly the time when the concept of the stretch 4, a power forward who can stretch defenses with three-point range, was becoming a staple in the NBA.

The Houston Rockets won the championship that season because they put four shooters on the court at the same time as their legendary center Hakeem Olajuwon, which opened up driving lanes for guards and allowed for Olajuwon to pass out of the post when he got double teamed. At the time, only a handful of teams played like this, but now, almost every squad implements this strategy.

To show just how important the three-point shot is to modern basketball, 12 of the 16 teams that made the playoffs (out of 30 total) in the 2016-17 season had the best percentage of three-point field goals in the league. And nine of those 16 teams led in three point makes. By comparison, only five playoff teams in 1979-80 were in the top 12 –that was how many teams made the post season that year because there were 22 teams in the NBA– for three-point percentage. And only five playoff teams were in the top 12 for most made three pointers. This trend is also reflected in averages.

The league average for three point makes per team in the 1979-80 season was 64, which is 0.78 per game. To put that in perspective, that number in the 2016-17 campaign was 792, which translates to 9.65 triples a game. The chart below shows the league average for three pointers made per season and its percentage from that territory.

What’s interesting, though, is that the increase of three pointers has not affected overall scoring. In fact, in the 2016-17 season, teams averaged less points (8,658 for the year, roughly 105.6 points a game)  than in 1979-80 (8,965 for the season, 109.3 points a contest).

That’s because teams got more points closer to the basket and from the free throw line in the latter season.

The impact of the triple can also be seen on an individual level. When the three-point line made its debut, the league leader for made triples was Brian Taylor, who drained 90, which is 1.09 a contest. The leader in the 2016-17 season was Stephen Curry, who made 324 three pointers, which is 4.1 per game. Making 3s is crucial to having a successful team, but so is defending the three-point line.

The league average for three-point field goal percentage in the 2016-17 regular season was 35.8 percent. 12 of the teams that made the playoffs held squads below that mark, ranging from 32.4 percent to 35.7 percent in opponent’s three point field goal percentage.

To compare that, in 1979-80, the average three-point field goal percentage was 28 percent. And seven playoff teams were in the top 12 for defending the three-point line, ranging from 23.8 percent to 27.1 percent. The triple was not as much of a factor as it is now, so that’s also one reason the accuracy was much lower in the 1979-80 season.

Something to keep an eye out for is if teams eventually attempt more three pointers than two pointers. It might not be far off, as teams like the Houston Rockets and Cleveland Cavaliers took 46.1 percent and 40.1 percent of their shots from deep, respectively.

For season comparison statistics, I got my information from basketball reference here: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2017.html#all_team_shooting and here: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1980.html#all_team-stats-base

For the amount of three pointers players made per game and for rule changes in the NBA, I went here: https://stats.nba.com/leaders/?Season=2016-17&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StatCategory=FG3M and here: http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html

For how the game changed in the 1994-95 season, I went here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2015/05/08/stretch-4s-how-rudy-tomjanovic-and-robert-horry-radically-changed-nba-offenses/?utm_term=.d681c31bbc88

For the teams’ rates of three pointers, I went here: https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/three-point-rate?date=2017-06-13