Kate Hudson and Bad Data

Earlier this summer during the 2007 NBA Playoffs, the Golden State Warriors were blasting the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks in their first-round matchup.  Sports journalists and most fans picked the 67-win Mavericks to run all over the Warriors.  Of course this conveniently ignored the fact that the Mavericks simply did not match up well against the smaller, quicker, highly-skilled players of the Warriors.  In fact, only a real hoops junkie could remember the last time those Mavericks had beaten the Warriors.

It turns out the Warriors had developed quite a fan base.  As the series neared it’s end, a buddy of mine decided to share one of his latest conspiracy theories with me.  It seems that the reason the Mavericks were losing was closely connected to the reason the Spurs would eventually win the championship.  Television and hotties!

The theory went like this – television/movie star hotties are good for ratings.  The Warriors fan base included Jessica Alba and (drum roll) Kate Hudson.  Hence the Warriors would defeat the Mavericks who don’t have any fans of note.  Moreover, the Spurs would win because Tony Parker was (at the time) dating Eva Longoria.  Ok…sounds easy enough.  For a basketball fan, it’s far-fetched as hell, but it’s also funny.

So around that time, I wrote a basketball post about the Mavericks which included references to and pictures of Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba.  A funny thing happened…I believe some sort of image-bot or name-bot picked up the reference to Kate Hudson (though not to Jessica Alba) and began to generate hundreds of hits on this blog.  I can’t imagine someone wading through a basketball post to look at scantily clad Hollywood types…but it was interesting.  The bot is gone and my numbers have returned to normal.

Top post today – “I Want to Get High with Clarence Page.”

That’s more like it.