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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rob Pelinka/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 20:14, 6 June 2009 [1].

Rob Pelinka

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Nominator(s): TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured article because it is a high quality article of a sports agent. I don't think there are currently any sports agent FAs and he is as interesting as any, IMO. I also feel that he is an interesting example of what a Walter Byers Award winner might become. TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – Really not that happy with what I saw early in the article; hopefully it improves as it goes into his college years and career as an agent.

  • In the lead, NBA and NCAA need to be spelled out on their first usages (NBA is spelled out in its fifth usage. You might want to do the same for MVP as well.
  • Four straight sentences in the first paragraph start with he. Please mix it up a little.
  • "He has also been the agent for NBA All-Star Carlos Boozer, which has been controversial." What is "which" supposed to be referring to? I think this sentence's organization can be improved.
  • four of whom play for Los Angeles teams and a likely 2009 draftee."
  • "As a basketball player he is former high school All-American." Missing "a" word.
  • In the third paragraph, I don't think University of Michigan needs to be repeated; for the team name, Wolverines, or Michigan Wolverines, should be fine.
  • Check the punctuation throughout. I see some places where there should be commas, and others that have unneeded ones. An example of the latter is the second comma in "Nonetheless, scouts who questioned his true height and dribbling, doubted whether he was talented enough...".
  • "Even previously doubtful scout Kaplan noted...". Who's Kaplan? Is he the scout Pelinka questioned through the media? And what is his first name?
  • "After selecting Michigan, he had memorable performances in his regional all-star games, including a 27 point performance in the annual City-Suburban all-star game."
    • I don't see what is wrong with this sentence.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:46, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Forgot to say earlier that I don't know how many people would consider his performances in high school all-star games memorable. Also, "27 point" needs a hyphen. The POV-sounding part is my main concern here, though. Giants2008 (17-14) 03:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that I make no promises about returning, as I have four or five new FACs that I'm interested in reviewing. Giants2008 (17-14) 15:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finally was able to come back for some more.
  • College: "As a guard, he became the first athlete to reach three NCAA Tournament Final Fours during his Michigan Wolverines career." Is this only for Michigan athletes? I can think of many UCLA basketball players who have appeared in three Final Fours. That just confused me a bit.
  • The WP:LEAD says "he has the distinction of being the only person in school history to have been a member of three National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Final Four entrants", but I will say it clearly in the body too.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 16:41, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes surely UCLA, UNC, Duke, Ohio State and Michigan State, to name a few, have many such athletes.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Capitalize final four in the second sentence of the section.
  • "He did have an opportunity to take a 20-foot shot with five seconds left in what turned out to be a 76–74 loss to Texas on December 29, 1990. He missed the shot." Instead of having such a short sentence at the end, why not work it into the previous sentence?
  • Education: Notre Dame and North Carolina could be linked.
  • Typo: "he be came the home game color analyst...".
  • Possible grammar issue: "on a 16-station broadcast network that originated from a WGR-AM." Remove second "a"? Giants2008 (17-14) 15:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from Dabomb87 (talk · contribs) 1a and 2a problems. These are just examples from the top.

  • Is there nothing about his life before high school?
    • Notice that this article was compiled without almost any biographical sketches. It is more of a scrapbook of his life and there were no significant scraps before high school. I.E., his notability has not produced WP:RS of his entire biography, just events, based on what I have found to date.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I just realized that when I first wrote the article, I only had newspaper archives from the state of Illinois. Now I have the entire world. I am going through Michigan newspapers.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:00, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm baffled as to why the lead doesn't go in chronological order, and indeed, the order of the body of the article. It makes more sense to mention his basketball playing career and then his work as an agent.
    • The issue here is that if in three words you were going to describe this guy you would say "Kobe Bryant's agent". Thus, to help the reader understand who he is immediately you need this in the first paragraph. I will try to rearrange things a bit though.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 20:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please spell out MVP on its first appearance for our readers who don't follow sports.
  • "As a sports agent, he is best known as NBA MVP Kobe Bryant's agent and President and CEO of The Landmark Sports Agency, LLC." Spot the four redundant words (repeated information).
  • "and he will be the agent for James Harden in the 2009 NBA Draft." The "he" can be deleted through ellipsis.
  • "a role which has been controversial." "which"-->that
  • "As a basketball player, he is a former high school All-American." Too wordy. Try "Pelinka played basketball for Lake Forest High School, earning All-American honors." Is there a link for All-American?
  • "and his impressive season statistics made him highly recruited by the end of his senior year." "made" is unidiomatic.
  • "He eventually went to the University of Michigan where he has the distinction" Needs a comma after "Michigan". You could probably do away with "eventually".
  • "that were best remembered as the Fab Five teams. " "that"-->which
  • The section title "Basketball player" doesn't sit right with me. Why not "Basketball career"? Dabomb87 (talk) 16:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Pelinka grew up with a religious faith." This is so random and vague, either add detail or remove the sentence altogether.
  • "By the time he was a junior teammate of long-time Chicago Bears quarterback Bobby Douglass' stepson, Bill Douglass, he was regarded as one of the best shooters in the Chicago area." More unnecessary detail. Why do we really want to know about a relative of a football player?
  • "Pelinka also played in the Chicago pro-amateur leagues where he played against local stars such as Mark Aguirre, Tim Hardaway, Kevin Duckworth, and Kendall Gill." You go from talking about his junior season in high school to pro-amateur leagues. Can we have a time parameter please?
  • "However, he was not a national preseason top 500 pick by Street & Smith's basketball magazine, which may have been because his senior season marked the first season that the three point shot was adopted by state high school associations and Pelinka was mainly a shooter." I'm trying to make sense of this. If Pelinka was a shooter, then surely he would benefit from the change and would be more likely to be selected to the top 500?
    • I think the point is that the rule might have been adopted after scouts had evaluated talent without adjusting for the rule change.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "During the four-game December 1987 Elgin tournament, in which he was named MVP, Pelinka made all 41 of his free throws and recorded a career-high 139 points, including 45 in one game." I put in "career-high", does that sit well with you?
  • "By the beginning of February of his senior year, Pelinka was listed as one of the top ten Illinois Class AA (the larger school class)" "larger school class" is unclear. Is this going by population?
    • In almost all U.S. states high schools are broken into classes based on enrollment. Would you like a change in the text?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Even previously doubtful scout Kaplan noted" Doubtful of what? Dabomb87 (talk) 21:50, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: I think this is missing some hyphens, but a better prose person should check: ... Big Ten Conference and was the preseason number one ranked team ... All of these numbers together are awkward, can the sentence be recast to avoid the numbers together? ... free throws in a January 29, 1992 89–79 road ... Text sandwiched between images in "Professional career", see WP:MOS#Images. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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