{"id":238,"date":"2004-12-30T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-30T15:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/efficacy-of-prayer\/"},"modified":"2004-12-30T07:22:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-30T15:22:00","slug":"efficacy-of-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/30\/efficacy-of-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Efficacy of prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris C. Mooney<\/a> mentions something that certainly surprised me — the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets begin each home game with a prayer. Not just the team, the whole arena — the prayer is read over the loudspeakers by someone standing at center court. Since the Hornets are not a government institution, they certainly have a right to hold a prayer, but it seems obnoxious, as there are certainly plenty of non-religious people, or devotees of different religions, in the crowd for each game.<\/p>\n

Apparently New Orleans is the only NBA franchise to have a prayer before each game. Among other things, the prayers ask for success for the Hornets and the NFL’s Saints. This gives us a nice chance to check on how useful it is to ask for divine intervention. Here are the current NBA standings<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n
PhoenixSuns          24  4   .857 <\/span>\n
SanAntonioSpurs      23  6   .793 <\/span>\n
SeattleSupersonics   20  6   .769 <\/span>\n
MiamiHeat            23  7   .767  <\/span>\n
DallasMavericks      19 10   .655 <\/span>\n
SacramentoKings      17  9   .654 <\/span>\n
MinnesotaT-wolves    16 10   .615 <\/span>\n
ClevelandCavaliers   17 11   .607  <\/span>\n
OrlandoMagic         15 11   .577  <\/span>\n
WashingtonWizards    15 11   .577  <\/span>\n
LALakers             15 12   .556 <\/span>\n
DetroitPistons       14 12   .538  <\/span>\n
NYKnicks             15 13   .536  <\/span>\n
IndianaPacers        13 13   .500  <\/span>\n
PortlandTrailBlazers 13 13   .500 <\/span>\n
Philadelphia76ers    13 14   .481  <\/span>\n
DenverNuggets        13 15   .464 <\/span>\n
HoustonRockets       13 15   .464 <\/span>\n
LAClippers           12 14   .462 <\/span>\n
BostonCeltics        12 15   .444  <\/span>\n
MemphisGrizzlies     13 17   .433 <\/span>\n
UtahJazz             11 17   .393 <\/span>\n
NJNets               10 17   .370 <\/span>\n
GSWarriors           10 18   .357 <\/span>\n
ChicagoBulls          9 17   .346  <\/span>\n
TorontoRaptors       10 20   .333 <\/span>\n
MilwaukeeBucks        8 16   .333 <\/span>\n
CharlotteBobcats      7 17   .292 <\/span>\n
AtlantaHawks          5 22   .185 <\/span>\n
NOrleansHornets       2 25   .074<\/span> <\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
  Goodness, all that praying doesn’t seem to be helping very much.  Where is God-Man<\/a> when you need Him?
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris C. Mooney mentions something that certainly surprised me — the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets begin each home game with a prayer. Not just the team, the whole arena — the prayer is read over the loudspeakers by someone standing at center court. Since the Hornets are not a government institution, they certainly have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}