Basketball meets the Bacon Game

By now I'm sure you're all aware of the Kevin Bacon Game (also known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon), which challenges players to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon via his film roles, using no more than six steps. Thanks in large part to Bacon's roles in several movies with loaded casts (including Animal House, JFK, and A Few Good Men), the game is remarkably easy to play, which helped lead to its cult status as a game.

Despite the fact that other film actors--most notably Donald Sutherland and Dennis Hopper--in fact come closer to being the center of the Hollywood universe, the legend of the Bacon Game lives on. Now, thanks to a friendly group of nerds known as the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective (an organization that I'd love to pretend I wouldn't have been a part of had it existed when I'd been there, but let's be serious, I'm almost surprised I didn't start it), the Bacon Game has now been brought into the world of sports, most specifically the NBA. Yes, as a baseball guy, I wish they'd set their sights on MLB, but let's not be picky. This thing is awesome to play around with.

According to the nerds, the NBA equivalent of Kevin Bacon is 7-footer James "Buddha" Edwards, with fellow big man Moses Malone right behind him. I'm not sure what it says about the NBA that Buddha and Moses are at the center of NBA history, but there you have it. Enjoy.

[Deadspin]