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In an interview on his own website, Lamar Odom talks about the Orlando Magic, his team's three-game losing streak, his changing role and his marriage to Khloe Kardashian:

Married life is beautiful. I can't complain at all. There aren't too many times in life where one feels like he finds his soul mate, finds someone who understands you. We fit like hand and glove. We don't spend too much time apart, only for work. As a matter of fact I can't wait to get on the phone, get home and see my wife.

Odom was asked what it meant to him to be a Laker, and he replied:

Everything. It's special. Not too many people in their professional lives get to play for an organization that has so much tradition, that means so much to so many people. Anywhere I go, all over the world, people affiliate me with being a Laker, which is a big deal. The Lakers have to be one of the top three sports brands. I would say Cowboys, Yankees, Red Sox? Yankees or Red Sox, but Lakers is right there.

And finally, he was asked whether this year's Laker team is as good as last year's title-winners. Odom says yes, and adds:

We don’t get frustrated and baffled by losses. We stay composed at all times. Win, lose or draw. Teams take the personality of their coach a lot of times. You see teams go on a 15-20 run and Phil won't call a timeout. Just because we lost three straight or aren't playing well, we don't throw up the white flag or start pointing fingers. We know it’s going to be hard. We expect that.

• Daryl Morey's Facebook page: "My 8-year-old was playing NBA Live today & told me 'I figured out the strategy to beat the game.' Oh what is that? 'Just give the ball to Kobe.'"
• Gregg Popovich's beautiful inbounds play.
• John Hollinger ranks the best shooters of all time (Insider). You might be surprised to see who tops the list, and to see that Stephen Curry is on pace to make the top ten. And Kevin Pelton digs in a bit more.
• The Blazers had more front office geeky types at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last weekend than available players for many games this season.
• The fact that LeBron James might be coming to New York may be helping the Knicks sell tickets already.
• Ryan Schwan of Hornets247: "Peja Stojakovic left the game with a groin strain. I saw him gripping his shorts in pain at one point, and I was just praying it wasn't his back again. I also can feel some solidarity with him, because I too strained my groin this weekend. Of course, he did it doing something cool like playing NBA basketball, and I did it trying to keep from tripping over my own feet while teaching my son to ride his bicycle. So, uh, maybe I'll just stop talking about groins now."
• If you're a fan of a team that isn't using advanced basketball analysis, should you feel a little cheated?
• WANTED: That guy in the Pistons snuggie at the Cavaliers' game.
• From last Friday, but still must-read: An amazing analysis of Jerry West's time as an NBA general manager.
• John Krolik of Cavs the Blog: "What Manu [Ginobili] does still have is that evil step-back jumper of his. I’ll never know quite how Manu gets the space that he does for that thing. The release isn’t quick, it’s kind of low, and Manu barely jumps when he shoots it. He makes it work somehow, and tonight Ginobili was just raining threes. About the only thing that could slow him down was an extra coat of paint on the line that turned his game-tying three into a two. Between Kobe and Ginobili, the three-point line has really helped the Cavs out in the race for the league’s best record."
• Shortly after going to Houston, Jordan Hill has his best game ever.
• How to dribble.
• Great Hollinger line: "When we say Nash equilibrium, by the way, we’re referring to John Nash, not Steve; and when we say John Nash, we’re referring to the guy from 'A Beautiful Mind,' not the one who drafted Sebastian Telfair ahead of Al Jefferson. Also, the paper was presented by somebody named Brian Skinner, which had us taking bets beforehand on whether he’d be a backup center with a two-toned goatee."
• Don't assume the Lakers are a great offensive team. They're a great defensive team, but the offense has had some trouble. Wayne Winston says Ron Artest and Andrew Bynum have not been great on offense.
• Dan Shanoff: "In the end, like everyone at the conference, I believe in analytics. But there is a misconception that analytics is about numbers, rather than about the intersection of numbers and people."
• "This Mike Bibby toy will haunt your dreams."
• Knickerblogger names Magic Johnson the greatest point guard of all time: "The most interesting thing about Magic’s career is how unlikely it was. A 6-8 point guard without three point range is unthinkable today. If you had to construct Magic from today’s players, you’d take Joe Johnson (minus the three point shot), give him Steve Nash’s passing and efficient scoring, add Ronnie Brewer’s steals, combine LeBron’s rebounding, and sprinkle a little of White Chocolate’s flash (from his Sacramento days). Just an unbelievable mix of attributes, and a truly unique athlete."
• Rasheed Wallace has stopped shooting so many 3s.
• The Knicks get a key stop for the win.
• Former Georgetown teammate Jerome Williams interviewed by LostLettermen.com before recent reports of trouble, talks about Allen Iverson off the court. "He’s an artist. The first thing that comes to my mind is coming into the locker room before big games and before the coaches had chance to put up the game plans on the chalk board, and Allen drawing caricatures of our team, his teammates on the board, in cartoon. And I mean he could really draw and he’d have us cracking up. I remember he drew a picture of Jahidi White with his belly out, holding a hamburger. I mean talk about breaking the ice before the game and getting everybody laughing. John Thompson, when he came in and looked at it, he had a good chuckle too. But just doing things like that. That’s something that probably nobody knows, but if you give him a pencil and a paper, he can really draw. I remember he drew pictures of me one time and one of my other teammates, who was from Africa -- he drew him with a Tarzan suit and a spear. And I mean he just created things like that and making people laugh. He always had a thing for making people laugh."

I had a sense that Dallas’ recent survival pattern was unusual, but it wasn’t until I set the crack researchers at Elias Sports Bureau on it that I realized how odd it was. The Mavs’ 125-112 win over Minnesota Monday night was their 12th straight -- and almost a record-breaker. Had the Timberwolves' Sasha Pavlovic made a meaningless 3-point attempt at the buzzer, it would have dropped the Mavericks’ winning margin to 10 points rather than 13 … and marked the Mavs’ 12th straight win by 10 points or fewer.

According to the folks at Elias, that has never happened before … ever. The Mavs have already become the first team in nearly half a century to win 11 straight times by 10 points or less; the last club to do so was the 1962-63 Lakers.

That Laker team won 11 straight before losing, and then won 11 of their next 12, with nine victories by 10 points or fewer. In other words, their string of wins was even more bizarre than Dallas’ current run -- they went 22-2 over a 24-game stretch, with 20 wins by 10 or fewer. That Laker team is also a good example of how fortune in close games can be fickle. Just after that streak, they lost 10 times by 10 or fewer in the final month of the season.

If you’re curious, the 1962-63 Lakers went 18-15 the rest of the season after their 22-2 run and finished 53-27. L.A. was the top seed in the West and barely outlasted the St. Louis Hawks in the conference finals before losing in six games to the Celtics in the Finals. Of course, this was so long ago that "Hot Rod" Hundley, who retired this past season as Utah’s radio announcer at age 75, played on that Laker team.

The next closest streak is from more recent history: Cleveland, last March. The Cavs won nine straight games by 10 points or fewer before reeling off four more by more impressive margins (including, ironically, a 102-74 rout of the Mavs). A loss to the Wizards, of all teams, ended their streak at 13.

Dallas is going through a stretch similar to the '62-63 Lakers. This was only their second win by more than 10 points since Dec. 16, even though they’ve won 25 times in that stretch. No, that isn’t normal -- 12 of Dallas’ first 19 wins were by more than 10 points, for instance.

With upcoming home games against the Nets and Knicks, the Mavs have a great shot at extending their winning streak to 14 games … not to mention adding another double-digit win or two to their resume. Based on Tuesday’s Power Rankings and their home-court advantage in each game of their next two games, they would be 14-point favorites against New Jersey and 11-point favorites against New York.

All my life, I have loved the NBA.

But I have hardly ever bought tickets.

It's not because I don't want to go. It's not even because I can sit in the media section for free. I would like to go with friends and family, and hoot and holler. Instead of wearing starchy business garb at my laptop on press row, it would be fun to do what sports fans everywhere do -- to wear jeans and drink a beer. That difference is worth some money to me.

But not that much money. Holy cow, in a lot of cities to get a pair of reasonably good seats -- not amazing seats, but reasonably good seats -- is something like $300 before parking and beer and all that. Those are prices for corporate customers. People who are entertaining clients. People who are, frankly, writing off the expense.

It has been written a zillion times before: Because of those prices, the crowds at NBA games can be a little stiff. They're in starchy business garb too -- which makes sense, 'cause a lot of those people are there to work. To see and be seen. To impress people. To deal. To look good.

Sports are great ice-breakers. It is a great place to bring a client you hardly know. But if you do that, you are not going to let yourself act like a maniac fan, all delirious, boisterous and tipsy. You're unlikely to wear jeans, or go hoarse.

Cheap tickets would seem to be the only real way to address that.

The Timberwolves are now officially working the cheap tickets angle hard. In March, tickets are as much as half off, and there are even lower bowl season tickets that are ten dollars a game. They say it's going very well. "After one week," the team has announced, "the Minnesota Timberwolves 'Run with the Pack' ticket sales and renewal campaign resulted in the most new season tickets sold by the franchise in a one-week time since the NBA announced a franchise was coming to Minnesota. The team sold 300 new full season tickets during the record-setting week, while also renewing 30% of its current season ticket holders. At the same point last year, the team had only renewed 1.5% of its season ticket holders."

Timberwolves president of basketball operations David Kahn was part of a conversation with the business office that led to the drastic price reductions. "We want to start to re-energize the fan base next year as we start, we hope, a climb," Kahn explains. "It'll be easier to make that climb to the top with a very full, vibrant, loud building. This was an opportunity for us to start to reconnect, and to rebuild the fan base which at one point was one of the most rabid in the League."

Kahn then took a few of my questions about the decision.

A lot of NBA tickets are sold to people with corporate expense accounts, or people who can get tax write-offs for buying the tickets to entertain clients. I can't help but feel that hurts the atmosphere in the building. It's a little starchy, and less loud.
I agree with the overall premise. You want the building to be loud. But I've seen some people in suits and ties be pretty loud. I spent some time in New York. With a 41-game season, it's really hard for a lot of people, in today's society, to attend that many games. So when a business, small or large, buys those tickets, a lot of times it makes sense that they distribute those to all different people.

I don't think it's a case of wanting a certain kind of fan. We want those who are loud and boisterous. If it's your theory that those people tend not to work at businesses, I'm not sure I can ascribe to that. I've seen people in suits and ties be very loud.

I know this. This building was extraordinarily loud at one point, especially when the team made a run to the conference finals in 2004. I think it can return to that, and I think it will return to that. And this is a step toward making it so.

Have you heard from any of the other 29 teams, or the NBA about this? I could see somebody making an argument that you're devaluing the brand a bit. Ten-dollar lower bowl seats could theoretically make $100 lower bowl seats a tougher sell in another market.
The pricing of the very best seats are hardly ten dollars. There's some prime beachfront real estate, and the pricing is still quite expensive by anybody's standards. But the analogy that I've used is to think of the iPhone. Check me on this but I believe when it first came out, it was priced at $399. It came back a year later for $199 and with a better phone. I don't think anybody thought the iPhone had become devalued. It was just a way for it to broaden its usage, and it became even more iconic.

I see this as being a very similar product. Are tickets are being reduced in price in many cases, but I still believe there's enormous value, and hopefully this will mean there are more users.

If you're selling these tickets so cheaply, presumably that hurts how much you could spend on free agents down the road. Does this pricing decision point to the ongoing issues between large and small markets?
I don't want to say anything in defiance of the League's wishes that we stay quiet on collective bargaining. But I'll echo what the commissioner said at All-Star, there should be a more robust revenue-sharing program out of this agreement. I will say though, that having worked at Indiana for nine years, and now here, there's no question that he difference in broadcast markets has an impact on your revenues. I mean, that's just obvious. New York, L.A., Chicago, the Bay Area, they're in the top ten, and especially those first three, have the opportunity to drive revenues that simply don't exist for the rest of us. TV, radio, cable and even new media now ... ticket prices have always been a way for other markets to keep pace, but that's difficult to have that persist over a long period of time, whether there's an economic downturn or not. [In small markets] you ultimately have fewer consumers and have to keep raising prices to keep up.

I'm hopeful that the end result here is that the pricing decrease here will be made up with a fuller building and more buyers, and a better atmosphere for our team and our fans.

And I want to say this to you, really seriously. I get asked this a lot, by people as I travel with the team. How has attendance been this year? I actually think is has been better than I anticipated. I thought it would be a more difficult picture. With the exception of two or three home games, I think it has been reasonably OK. But no question, we can do better, and this is one way to do so.

I guess getting more people in the building can inspire other value for the team. More people who might watch on TV, who might buy some team merchandise, or talk their friends into going to a game.
Absolutely. The best thing for us is for people to be talking about us. This is one of those cases where you can't be anything but please if people are buying the tickets. And the more the merrier. ... And it adds value to every ticketholder. I always used to say, when I was in Indiana, that if the courtside seatholder can look up to the upper deck or the balcony and see those seats filled, it adds value to his ticket. Even though there's no real relationship there, he sees the amount of people who are there, and it confirms the fact that he made a wise choice to purchase his very high-priced ticket.

Only good things can come from a full building.

• Jeff Caplan of ESPNDallas.com: "Who needs centers? The Dallas Mavericks have played two games now without a true center and they've scored 247 points. Monday night saw Shawn Marion score a season-high 29 points to lead Dallas to its 12th consecutive victory. Talk about stepping up, Marion is averaging 19.0 points and eight rebounds in the last four games. The Mavs need one more win to tie the Cleveland Cavaliers for the longest win streak of the season. Think it can't get any easier than Monday in Minneapolis? The Mavs come home Wednesday to play the seven-win New Jersey Nets. So, it must get tougher after that, right? Hmm. On Saturday the New York Knicks are in town. The last time the Mavs saw the Knickerbockers, they drilled them by 50 at Madison Square Garden -- without Jason Kidd. "
• Brian Windhorst of The Plain Dealer: "LeBron James' ankle is fine. You should have seen him dash across the room to see the finish of the Knicks-Hawks game in the locker room after the game. ... In this game of analyzing and then spinning everything LeBron within the free agency prism -- 'What? He ordered a vodka tonic? Does that mean the Nets are still in the game?' -- I'm sure that will get all whipped into something. I probably shouldn't even be writing it because I'll be getting calls from New York radio stations for 'my take' tomorrow. But I did write about it because, well, LeBron is moving just fine on that ankle. And to pass along how it is always interesting to watch games with LeBron. Like when he's on the court, he usually sees things before they happen even on TV. He'll predict when players will go for backdoor lobs or scold players for not forcing the opponent into help or to his weak hand. You can really tell he watches a lot of film...on everybody. For that matter, he also reads a lot about the game. He's very up on the happenings in the league. In this case, he was enjoying the finish of a good game."
• Jonathan Abrams of The New York Times: "Hawks guard Jamal Crawford is preparing to finally shed the N.B.A.’s scarlet letter. Crawford, an adept scorer who causes few locker-room problems, seems to be an unlikely person to hold the league’s longest current streak of playing in the most games without appearing in the playoffs. But he holds it nonetheless. His streak reached 659 games Monday night against the Knicks. It will come to a finish at the end of this season at 679 games when the Hawks get ready for the playoffs. They are comfortably in second place in the Southeast Division and a near lock for home-court advantage in the first round. 'I always said the thing that bothered me most about it was I actually hadn’t experienced the big games in front of the crowd like that,' Crawford said. 'I just think on that stage, I’m at my best.' Now he can finally find out if his assumption is true. He was averaging 17.4 points off the bench for Atlanta and is a front-runner to win the league’s Sixth Man Award. The satisfaction comes after starting his career with the post-Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls, then spending a little more than four seasons with the hapless Knicks."
• Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer: "Stakes make for drama. And for maybe the first time in their history, the Charlotte Bobcats have some emphatic stakes Tuesday night against the Miami Heat. If the Bobcats beat the Heat tonight, they would clinch a tiebreaker against Miami. That would amount to a polite, 'Oh, really?' if not for the fact the Bobcats are in actual playoff contention this season and the Heat and the Chicago Bulls are their best targets to leap-frog from their current ninth place in the Eastern Conference. 'It definitely adds to the stakes,' Bobcat Stephen Jackson said Monday. 'You have to approach this like a playoff game. It's a mandatory win. If we approach it like the Lakers game, we should be all right, but we've got to understand where we are in the standings and what this game means to us.' "
• Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times: "Kobe Bryant described the Lakers as 'upset' and 'a little edgy,' supporting his descriptors with a series of curt answers to reporters' questions. Asked if he was feeling better a day after stomach issues forced him to miss the team bus to Amway Arena in Orlando, Bryant said, 'I'm getting a stomach virus now with all these questions.' The Lakers all seemed a bit queasy after losing three consecutive games for the first time since Jan. 23-27, 2008. Coach Phil Jackson lamented his team's lack of execution, and forward Pau Gasol said the Lakers needed to improve their ball movement. Gasol had not previously experienced a losing streak this long since joining the Lakers in February 2008, but he said their recent defeats weren't as vexing as the defending NBA champions' inability to play to their potential. 'That's what's disappointing and frustrating,' Gasol said. 'That's why I want us to get ourselves going and playing well and being confident and having that swagger of the best team in the league, and lately we haven't been carrying that with us.' "
• Brian Kamenetzky of ESPNLosAngeles.com: "Ron Artest arrived at Lakers practice Monday afternoon with shorn-yet-still-colorful head. Lesson one, kids: Purple dye doesn't just wash right out. While I certainly appreciate Artest's follicular whimsy, I have to admit, as a bald man there are times I find his cavalier attitude towards his hair a little offensive. 'Look what I can do! Whatever, it's just hair. It'll grow back.' Not forever, Ron. Not forever."
• Frank Zicarelli of the Toronto Sun: "The team that takes to the court Tuesday night against the visiting Raptors is one that has been scrutinized more times than Bryant heaved shots during the Lakers’ three-game losing streak, all setbacks on the road in rather dramatic and odd fashion. Despite the recent tumult, the Lakers still are the team to beat in the West because of Bryant’s presence and his assassin-like personality. They still are the champs, basketball’s measuring stick and the team no one wants to meet in the playoffs, or at least avoid until the stakes at their highest. But the aura that usually surrounds the Lakers has been punctured. What no one knows is whether this air of fallibility is fleeting or whether the remnants of a three-game slide will linger into the spring. What is for certain is that the Lakers are not accustomed to losing games in succession."
• Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times: "Who would have thunk? The Las Vegas oddsmakers predicted the Bucks would win 26 games this season, and Sports Illustrated forecast the Bucks being the worst team in the Eastern Conference. Kudos to John Hammond. The Bucks general manager drafted Brandon Jennings after several other teams in need of a point guard passed on him; he lured Ersan Ilyasova from Europe; he signed veteran Jerry Stackhouse when virtually nobody else wanted to take him out of the unemployment line and he pulled off a heist by obtaining shooting guard John Salmons from the Chicago Bulls at the Feb. 18 trading deadline. If there's a more qualified candidate than Hammond for NBA Executive of the Year, I'd like to know who it is."
• Jim O'Donnell of the Chicago Sun-Times: "The Bulls, besieged once again by injuries, appear headed only for the spotty uncertainties of April. They're 4-5 since John Salmons departed and take a four-game losing streak into a United Center date tonight against the Utah Jazz. 'I wish no one down there any bad,' Salmons said. 'We all went through too much together last spring against Boston. I consider just about everyone on that team a good friend. I do want to finish ahead of them, though.' The Bucks -- once 18-25 -- have leapfrogged to the fifth-best record (32-29) in the Eastern Conference. That puts them up on the No. 6 Toronto Raptors via tiebreaker (32-29), the No. 7 Miami Heat (32-31) and the Bulls (31-31). The 6-6 Salmons has glided in. He has bumped Charlie Bell as a starter and further eased concerns about the absence of top gun Michael Redd, whose season ended Jan. 10 with a torn-up left knee. Despite playing his first seven games with only one full practice, Salmons is averaging 19.2 points, adding length and smarts to a backcourt starring rookie Brandon Jennings and doing nothing to diminish the growing confidence of his new team."
• Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "For most of the season, when it came to playoff seeding, the view regarding the Heat was, 'whatever.' The sense was it did not make much of a difference whether the Heat faces the Cavaliers, Magic, Celtics or Hawks in the first round. It would be one-and-done once again, and then everyone collectively would hold their breath until Dwyane Wade made his free-agent decision. And then came Saturday’s game against the Hawks, a third victory by the Heat in the four-game season series. The Heat has now won 15 of the last 17 regular-season meetings at AmericanAirlines Arena. No, there won’t be homecourt in a potential first-round series against the Hawks, but there will be three home games if the series goes the distance. Beyond that, the Heat held the Hawks to 39-percent shooting in the four-game season series. That’s what makes Tuesday’s game in Charlotte so crucial, as well as Friday’s home game against the Bulls and games later this month against the Bobcats, Bulls, Bucks and Raptors."
• Dan Bickley of The Arizona Republic: "For much of his rookie season, Robin Lopez was an object of scorn, the recipient of misdirected frustration. He was mocked for his funny-sounding voice, for his love of comic books. He was a first-round draft pick that wowed nobody and thus became the symbol of Steve Kerr's perceived incompetence. Now, Lopez is proof that the general manager most certainly has a clue, and that the Suns might have a future. 'Defensively, the difference in our team has been unbelievable,' coach Alvin Gentry said. Since being inserted into the starting lineup Jan. 18, the Suns are 16-8, and 14-4 in their past 18 games. Since the All-Star break, the Suns have held five of 12 opponents to fewer than 100 points. During that stretch, Lopez poured in 30 points against the Clippers and promptly messaged his brother, Brook, who plays for the Nets. 'Until I score 33, he still has the family record for most points in a NBA game,' Lopez said. With Lopez on the bench, the Suns were outrebounded in 25 of their first 41 games. Since the change, they have won or tied the rebounding battle in 19 of 24 games. Now, a soft-serve franchise suddenly is besting its opponents by an average of 4.4 rebounds per game. But this isn't about numbers. Simply put, Lopez has changed the personality of this basketball team."
• Mike Baldwin of The Oklahoman: "Get one of your friends. Stand still. Then let your friend get a five-step running start and plow into you. Remember, you can’t flinch. You can’t move. Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? Thunder forward Nick Collison leads the NBA in taking charging fouls. It’s not a play listed in box scores, but it’s a play valued by teammates and coaches. 'It looks like it doesn’t hurt,' said coach Scott Brooks. 'It looks like you can just get up and go. But it hurts. Even if a point guard comes at you full speed, knee-to-chest, it hurts. Tough guys come up and take them. And you don’t ever want to show your opponent you’re hurting.' ... Kevin Durant said he once injured his knee in high school, which made him hesitant for several weeks to jump in front of an on-charging opponent. His rookie season in Seattle, he once hit his head falling backward. Another time, he injured his elbow when he landed hard. 'It’s something that’s not easy to do,' Durant said. 'It’s all about being tough, and that’s what Nick is. He’s gifted. He has a nice body to take that pounding.' "
• Sam Amick of The Sacramento Bee: "In the weeks leading up to All-Star Weekend in Dallas in mid-February, the Kings grew concerned at the constant demand for Omri Casspi's time that has come with his historical place as Israel's first NBA player. The sometimes-harrowing hype reached a new high Feb. 9 at Madison Square Garden, with Casspi scoring 18 points and grabbing nine rebounds against New York in a win that came in front of thousands of Jewish supporters. His participation in the Rookie-Sophomore game in Dallas opened him up to a weekend full of All-Star events, with Casspi handling himself graciously as always but surely feeling the fatigue. Yet he continued to play well, averaging 15 points and shooting 48.6 percent in the three games after the break. The downturn began Feb. 21 in Phoenix; Casspi has averaged 6.5 points in his seven games since while shooting 38 percent (19 of 50) and 20 percent from three-point range (2 of 10). 'Maybe I practiced too hard in the beginning,' Casspi said. 'In the first three months, I didn't take a day off at all. I'd come to lift (weights) when we had days off. Maybe practices I should rest a little bit. … That's something to learn for the future. I didn't know how to practice for 82 games.' "
• Bill Bradley of The Sacramento Bee: "In two years, Tournament Week and the NCAA Tournament will be even better. You can thank the NBA for that. The NBA is talking lockout for the beginning of the 2011-12 season. The collective bargaining agreement with the National Basketball Players Association runs out before that season, and NBA players are already making contingencies for life without pro basketball. College players should be, too. That's because -- if they are smart -- fewer college players will be leaving school early for the NBA. Why would they jump to the pros if the likelihood is there will be no games to play? If more great players stay in school, then the quality of the college game will improve, at least for two seasons. Conversely, there will probably be a glut of talent in the 2012 NBA draft once the league settles its labor issues. Until then, expect the performance level in the 2011-12 college basketball season to be more like the game used to be."

It would have been tough for TrueHoop to have covered the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference any more than we did. And yet, despite all that, the huge point we really haven't captured is that this conference was a point of no return for the NBA. Kevin Arnovitz and Henry Abbott discuss.


Arnovitz: One of the questions I'm not sure we've answered is what has happened over the past 12 months that caused the attendance at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference to go from 400 to a thousand attendees plus a 400-person wait list.

Abbott: The real answer here is going to make me sound the nerd who picks a fight the jocks, which is a bad position to be in. But I think this might be case of the real truth being that people who understood the power of geekery were always right. It was always the right direction, and teams that took advantage early were on to something that is helping win games, and now everybody else is going to have to run to catch up. I'm not saying everything every stat geek has ever said is gold. But I am saying that smart analysis, even from laptops, over the long haul, matters in the way that a good pair of running shoes matters in winning marathons. It's not going to run the race for you, but at the same time, you can't come to the starting line in penny loafers. Anyway, getting to your question -- when something's really happening to help people win games in the NBA, word gets around. (Also, it's a legendary networking opportunity, so there are also just a lot of schmoozers.)

Arnovitz: Last year, the substance of the sessions and presentations was enlightening. We learned a lot, and the conference framed some really important issues in very smart ways. That was true again this year, but the event also felt bigger -- not just in attendance, but in import. It seemed to make a mark. Most NBA teams were represented. That's a profound endorsement.

Abbott: We should disclose we're aware, that to many of you, we sound like total dorks here.

Arnovitz: And maybe a little bit tribal. But I think this stuff has relevance beyond stat heads and NBA front offices. If I'm a fan, I want my team to be one of those 16 in attendance. That would demonstrate a commitment not only to smart thinking, but to winning.

Abbott: You put your finger on it. That might be the mark this conference left. It's now clear there's a lot of force behind what's happening here. It's powerful to see smart alpha dogs like Mark Cuban and Jonathan Kraft vying to more closely align themselves with this movement. It now seems like the teams who don't do this stuff will soon be exposed as backward. It's happening. Get on board.

Arnovitz: Getting back to the question of "why this year," advancement in technology grows exponentially. 2009-10 might be the season when that curve really started to veer upward. We're seeing that trend everywhere, not just in sports.

Abbott: Back up there when I was talking about running shoes -- anyone wearing penny loafers who sees a competitor humming along in their Nikes ... they're going to quickly get some new shoes, and they're never going to run in penny loafers again. When ideas spread like that, quickly and in one direction, things happen fast. The stat geek population curve is steep.

Arnovitz: There is a level of certitude, or at least confidence. Last year it feel like the general tone was, "Hey we're really on to something." This year, the collective spirit of the conference was, "Maybe we haven't won yet, but we're up 18 in the fourth quarter."

• Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel: "The question everyone wants addressed (other than the identity of Ron Artest's hair stylist) might have been delivered with a counter-punch,18 games from the playoffs. Are the Orlando Magic better than they were last season and can they win the NBA title this time? The Magic hit back when the defending champion Lakers unleashed their full fury and beat them 96-94 on Sunday at Amway Arena. Sure, you can get a temperature reading on the Magic by listing their latest, greatest victims: They've beaten the Boston Celtics (twice), Cleveland Cavaliers and the Lakers while going 18-5 in the second half of the season. But attaching a face to the Magic evaluation makes it even more meaningful, if not credible, especially when it's Lakers coach Phil Jackson's. 'I think they're as good, maybe better, a little better than they were last year,' Jackson said."
• Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times: "Kobe Bryant was late for Sunday's pregame activities, but Ron Artest arrived on time, with a new blond dye job and several inscriptions in his hair. He etched the word 'defense' in three languages -- Japanese, Hebrew and Hindi, he said. In plain English, however, his defense was poor Sunday against the Orlando Magic. His assignment for most of the game, Vince Carter, had 25 points, including 10 points on free throws in the first quarter. The Magic beat the Lakers, 96-94. Artest was rubbed out by high screens on some possessions but lacked the defensive flair he'd unveiled in recent weeks. One play pretty much said it all: He went for a steal in the third quarter and didn't get it, leaving Carter open for an easy three-pointer. 'He had a struggle tonight,' Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said. 'Couldn't make a shot and everything was a foul on Carter. Ron really didn't get a chance to play the defense he's touted to play.' "
• Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com: "The Lakers have lost three straight games for the first time in the 217 games they've played since Pau Gasol joined the team. What they discovered from this lull is a conundrum that's as hard to solve as any defensive overload or offensive scheme they will face the rest of the season: How should the team react when Kobe Bryant dominates the ball and the Lakers lose, knowing full well that the only reason they were even in the game at the end was because Bryant orchestrated a comeback by dominating the ball? Tricky, right?"
• Michael Lee of The Washington Post: "Andray Blatche was noticeably upset and appeared to hold back tears as he explained his encounter with Kevin Garnett, which nearly got heated when Garnett approached Blatche and tried to wrestle the ball away from him. Blatche appeared to throw an elbow as Garnett continued to taunt him. Blatche later flung Garnett into a cameraman and sent him to the foul line for two free throws. Garnett smiled as he was helped off the ground. Reserve forward James Singleton said Garnett used his 'veteran senses' to needle Blatche and get under his skin. 'I see myself as defending myself as a player. I'm a man, just like they a man. If a man is talking to me this close to my face,' Blatche said, moving his hand toward his cheek. 'I'm going to say something back. He has to respect me just like I respect him. I just, 'Get up out of my face.' He was this close in my face -- I can feel his lips touching my cheek -- I wasn't bragging saying 'Ah we winning.' It was 'Back up.' ' "
• Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe: "A few months ago, re-signing Ray Allen seemed questionable at best because he was struggling mightily. Not only was he missing 3-pointers, he was passing them up when open, a clear indication he had lost his confidence. He and the rest of the NBA knew his name was being mentioned in trade talks. President of basketball operations Danny Ainge was determining a market for Allen’s expiring contract, but never got a deal he felt comfortable with and passed. And despite his constant denials that the trade talk was not affecting him, Allen took a deep breath, refused to take it personally, and focused on helping the Celtics. His numbers are sparkling since the trade deadline passed. In 10 games, Allen is shooting nearly 57 percent from the field and 44 percent from the 3-point line. Confidence in Allen is soaring to the point where Celtics coach Doc Rivers called a play for him to shoot a 3-pointer inside two minutes remaining in last night’s 86-83 win over the Washington Wizards with the Celtics down by 2 points."
• Geoff Calkins of The Commercial-Appeal: "Mike Heisley is charming, accessible and wonderfully blunt. But he doesn't get it. He doesn't know how to build a successful NBA franchise in this town. ... If you had any lingering doubt about this, read Ron Tillery's riveting Q & A with the man in today's paper. It's Heisley at his best and his worst. He says he was right about Zach Randolph, which is true. He says Mike Conley 'is the type of point guard we need,' which is a stretch. But his most telling answer was to a question about the draft. Tillery asked if the Grizzlies have to draft better. The correct answer to this question is 'Yes.' Of course the Grizzlies have to draft better. Their No. 2 pick in the 2009 draft has been playing in Bismarck, N.D., having been beaten out at backup center by an undrafted Iranian. Their No. 4 pick in the 2007 draft would be an excellent backup point guard. How did Heisley answer the question? 'No, we don't have to do better,' he said. 'Nobody was asking me whether I was concerned about the draft when we were beating everybody's (butt) in December and January. What I'd like to talk about is people coming out and supporting this team. I'd like to see people paying $5 to see the games. I'd like to see people spend less than what they spend for a movie to come see one of the better up-and-coming teams in the NBA. I heard it for years that we aren't very good. Well, they can't say that now, and there's no big rush through the turnstile.' So a question about the draft turned into an answer about attendance. And the answer revealed Heisley really doesn't understand what's happened with his team. Memphis fans were never going to rush through the turnstiles because the Grizzlies started playing .500 basketball. A few months of surprising respectability were never going to fix everything that's gone wrong over the last six years."
• Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "The lesson from the past week and even past few days is clear: Fall in line or fade away. So even after being benched at the end of three consecutive games, Michael Beasley opted against an I-told-you-so approach after Saturday's breakthrough against the Atlanta Hawks. Instead, after scoring 14 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter, the second-year forward said he appreciated the approach coach Erik Spoelstra had taken leading to the victory that extended the Miami Heat's winning streak to three. 'The lineup coach decides to play is usually a good one,' Beasley said. 'I look at Coach Spoelstra like a guru. He usually knows what he's talking about, so I'm not really going to argue about my minutes I should be out there. I shouldn't. I'm just going to play the minutes I get and play them well.' Contrast that to the approach of point guard Rafer Alston, who, after being demoted from starter to third string, abruptly severed ties with the team before Friday's practice, failing then to appear at Saturday's game. 'He's away right now,' Spoelstra said, with the Heat holding its annual Family Fest charity event Sunday having yet to speak with Alston."
• K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune: "After 62 games last season, the Bulls owned a 28-34 record and had gone 5-4 since making a major move at the trade deadline with the acquisitions of John Salmons and Brad Miller. After 62 games this season, the Bulls are 31-31 and have gone 4-5 since making two major moves at the trade deadline to shed salary and acquire Hakim Warrick, Flip Murray, Acie Law, Joe Alexander and a future first-round pick. Similar, right? Wrong. This season has a doom-and-gloom feel to it given that the Bulls have lost four straight, including three at home, and consecutively face six more teams .500 or better in a murderous stretch. Even more daunting is all this comes at a time that Joakim Noah is sidelined indefinitely with plantar fasciitis in his left foot. The Bulls' emotional leader is essential to the style they need to play to be successful -- get a defensive stop, grab the rebound and run. In fact, last season's team went 13-7 over the final 20 games and featured an absolutely potent offense that averaged 107 points down the stretch. Without Noah, this season's team is unpredictable at best and porous defensively at worst, as Saturday's 122-116 loss to the Mavericks proved yet again."
• Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press: “ 'You should be ashamed of yourself, Scott!' Those are the words Rip Hamilton just yelled at official Scott Foster before he sat on the bench for the Pistons. As you can imagine, Foster yelled right back at Rip, telling him in no uncertain terms he better knock it off before he is watching the rest of the game against the Rockets back in the locker room. I'm not one to talk about officiating errors normally, but this scene highlights a growing sense of frustration among the Pistons about the lack of respect they are getting from the officials. I know, I know. This is a team that is 21-41 and counting so the last thing you want to hear is that they are crying about the officiating. But Hamilton had a point. He raced down speedy Rockets point guard Aaron Brooks midway through the third quarter, but all he appeared to do was yell at Brooks as he went in for the lay-up. Brooks stumbled and Foster called the foul. Replays indicated Hamilton had a gripe."
• Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle: "If there can be one weakness to improve, one area to repair, just one part of the game to address above all others with the 20 games left in the season, the Rockets should not have to think twice. ... Game on the line, defenses tightening, every possession crucial -- how do the Rockets respond? More often than not, they put their fate in the hands of their shot-making, hoping they can put in just enough tough or long shots to get the win. That works on occasion, but the teams that rarely ever lose games like Sunday's, the playoff teams, don't rely on somehow getting just enough shots to fall. They execute. When they miss, they execute again. When they get smacked by bad calls, big momentum swings, bad breaks, they execute because nothing can substitute for that."
• Frank Zicarelli of the Toronto Sun: "A sense of uneasiness has crept inside the Raptors, a feeling of impending doom if the team’s attention to detail continues to be ignored. For now, there’s no danger of missing the playoffs, but the danger lies in the Raptors’ inability to seize the moment. Staring at a four-game Western swing that tips off Tuesday in Los Angeles against the reigning champion Lakers, the last thing the Raptors needed was to get wiped out on their home floor. The Raptors weren’t just beaten, they were exposed. It wasn’t so much their deficiencies on defence, their refusal to attack the basket and get to the line, their uncharacteristically poor decision-making or sloppy ball-handling. What was alarming was the team’s mind-set, an approach to the way they play that must be addressed and corrected. And the quicker, the better."
• Jody Genessy of the Deseret News: "Home is nice and all. Sweet even. But when it comes to reading, watching TV and movies, hanging out with the guys, playing card games and, aaaahhh, snoozing, there's no place like the road for the Utah Jazz. The Jazz will have plenty of time to do all of that in the final stretch of the season, considering they'll occupy the visitors' locker room for 12 of their final 20 games. The most popular pastime on the road? Don't yawn, but it might be getting extra shuteye on comfy hotel beds. 'Sleep,' Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko quickly said while cracking a grin when asked about his favorite road hobby. 'That's the only time of the year when you can sleep. Nobody around, (no) distraction. You just get to the room, get your sleep, so you kind of get your energy back.' Kirilenko isn't the only one who takes advantage of the slumber opportunities.'I sleep a lot,' Jazz shooting guard Kyle Korver admitted."
• Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee: "The campaign for Tyreke Evans to win Rookie of the Year will pick up at Arco Arena on Wednesday when the Kings host the Toronto Raptors. It will be 'Rally for RekeROY' night. Fans at Sunday's game had the opportunity to record testimonials about Evans that could be played on the JumboTron on Wednesday. Evans was Western Conference Rookie of the Month the first two months of the season. The award went to Golden State guard Stephen Curry (January) and New Orleans guard Darren Collison (February) the last two months."

I heard a ton of raves and very few complaints about the 2010 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. (Although, worth noting ... roll through Twitter coverage of the event, and you'll find scattered gripes about how there was only soda, and not bottled water, at lunch. What's amazing is that in 2010 the tiniest of inconveniences for a very few people is now a quasi-media event.)

But what here mattered? Probably a lot. There was more going on than one person could see. Many people have suggested that next year it might make sense to make this event two days long.

Certainly in the days to come there will be a lot of great coverage from all over the place. An early list of key moments, as told by TrueHoop Network bloggers:

• Bias in officiating This academic paper was presented late in the day. It didn't get a ton of attention, but oh, it will. Basically, the authors are making a strong data-based case that some things fans say happen with referees (superstar treatment, swallowing the whistle late in the game) really do happen. NBA executives have addressed similar research in the past, and have strenuously objected, saying their own unpublished internal research shows otherwise. More to come on this topic, for sure.
• The value of a blocked shot John Huizinga and Sandy Weil have a gift for doing fresh basketball analysis that gets everybody talking. Last year it was the hot hand. This year it's the fact that some blocked shots are not so valuable, while others are tremendous. Worth digging in.
• How NBA teams use analytics Remember when Andre Miller scored 51 in Dallas? Mark Cuban and Kevin Pritchard remember what Cuban says was the real statistical anomaly of that night: Juwan Howard's game-winner.
• Performance enhancements This is a very tough issue, and this panel had the chance to be extremely vanilla and safe, but people like Steve Kerr were impressively frank -- for instance Kerr says that late in his career, he took Vioxx which he found to be performance enhancing.
• Will coaches listen to stat heads? Avery Johnson was frank about the role Wayne Winston played in his time at the Mavericks, and it's fascinating.
• What geeks don't get The signature panel of the event was hilarious and insightful. It's a "Moneyball" event, so it's great to have the book's author on the stage, with Bill Simmons, Mark Cuban, Daryl Morey, Bill Polian and Jonathan Kraft.
• The price of anarchy This academic paper digs into the effect whereby teams are best when their superstars don't do everything themselves. How much is just right?
• The future of management and ownership It's really about globalization, revenues, getting into the business and such, but you don't want to miss the story about Red Auerbach and the cheerleaders.

The basketball analytics panel is always one of the best-attended and most engaging panel of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Last year, the debate crackled when the panelists revisited the Jason Kidd-Devin Harris deal. This year, the participants took inventory of the state of basketball analytics in the League, and made particular note of how many NBA organizations had sent representatives to the conference (by one count, 16 of the 30 teams).

Jared Wade was there and relayed his impressions of the panel at Hardwood Paroxysm. One especially fun portion of the discussion surfaced when Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Portland Trail Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard gabbed about a recent game between Dallas and Portland that came down the wire, when the expectations of the data diverted from the actual outcome on the floor:

Much to the chagrin of Cuban, Pritchard recounted a late-game play between his Blazers and Cuban’s Mavs in an earlier match up this year that showed how these things can effect the games on a day-to-day basis.

With Portland needing a big hoop with seconds left, Juwan Howard hit a 15-footer that sealed the win. Knowing Howard’s shooting percentages and tendencies from different locations on the floor, Cuban couldn’t believe that Juwan hit that shot. That was a shot he never makes, and it was a shot Cuban would love to see Howard take all game long.

Pritchard told Cuban that the look on his face after it went in was priceless. “That’s the only 15-footer he’s hit this year,” said Cuban.

“He’s hit two,” said Pritchard.

And whether or not that number is an exact figure that Pritchard can pull off the top of his head or just a quant-centric joke, I think it’s safe to say that Dorkapalooza isn’t just for dorks anymore.

In addition to the lively panels, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference features the presentation of research papers by up-and-coming thinkers in the field. Brian Robb of Celtics Hub attended one such presentation today, "Whistle Swallowing: Officiating & the Omission Bias." An omission bias can best be defined as a referee's willingness to make an incorrect call rather than make an incorrect non-call.

Robb explains the nut of the findings by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim, who wrote the paper:

So where does the NBA fit into this type of bias? The research showed a couple much maligned problems in the league are as big of an issue as many fans of the league would have presumed.

The first is star treatment.

TrueHoop at MIT Sloan Sports conference

• Will coaches listen to stat heads?

• What geeks don't get.

• The price of anarchy.

• The value of a blocked shot.

• Performance enhancements.

• The Next Generation of Sports Management and Ownership.

•The Dean of quant.

•Quantify my life.

The study compared how likely officials were to call loose ball fouls on stars compared to non-star NBA players they were contesting in loose ball foul situations. The results were found over a three-year study in which 1.5 million plays were examined in 3,500 plus games. “Star” criteria was based on players' MVP votes. The results:

• 42 percent of loose balls fouls called on stars in “regular” situation compared to 57 percent of the time on non-stars in plays.
• The numbers show a much more dramatic shift, favoring the star players when they are in “foul” trouble with only 28 percent of foul calls being called on them, a huge drop from the earlier 42 percent.
• When the roles are reversed however, and the non-star is in foul trouble, the numbers normalize again with 48 percent of the fouls called on the non-star compared to 51 percent for the star.

The other study involving the NBA involved a look at subjective calls (offensive fouls, traveling, double dribble, etc.) being made compared to non-subjective calls (kick ball, 24-second violation, etc.) over the course of the game. The tendency to want to let the players decide the game in close as well as late game situations showed itself once again in the form of omission bias, with the rate of calls falling dramatically from the first half to the second half. Another even sharper drop in subjective calls was apparent in overtime games with the subjective or “judgment” calls. The non-subjective call rates remained very level over those time spans.

It's one thing for an NBA organization to commit itself to collecting and analyzing advanced statistics, but it's quite another to get the coaching staff to buy in. Zach Lowe of Celtics Hub attended the panel on Saturday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on coaching analytics. Lowe reports that much of the discussion on the panel focused on the Dallas Mavericks' playoffs successes and failures while Avery Johnson implemented the findings of Wayne Winston, who was working for the Mavs as a consultant:

Before [Avery] Johnson was hired in Dallas, he says, the basic box score “was my Bible.” He never thought beyond the basic stats -- points in the paint, field-goal percentage, free throw differential. But then Mark Cuban and stats guru (and ex-Mav consultant) Wayne Winston began peppering Johnson about advanced plus/minus and what it revealed about various lineup combinations.

TrueHoop at MIT Sloan Sports conference

• What geeks don't get.

• The price of anarchy.

• The value of a blocked shot.

• Performance enhancements.

• The Next Generation of Sports Management and Ownership.

•The Dean of quant.

•Quantify my life.

And Johnson listened, especially in the first round of the 2005 playoffs, when the stats showed Johnson the Rockets were killing Dallas by inserting Jon Barry at the four and going small. (Says Jon’s brother, Brent: “That’s the only time Jon ever hurt any team”). Johnson responded by pulling Erick Dampier and shifting Dirk Nowitzki to center whenever Barry entered the game.

Dallas won four of the next five and advanced past Houston.

But in the Mavs’ infamous first-round loss to Golden State two seasons later? “I got burned when following the advanced stats,” Johnson says. Winston’s numbers showed that during the regular season, the Warriors had smoked the usual Dallas starting lineup, which featured Dampier at center. In a decision he now regrets, Johnson adjusted his starting lineup for Game 1 by benching Dampier and starting Nowitzki at center. The Mavs lost. Johnson, though, stands by the decison. “It was the right move,” he insists. Still, he reversed course for Game 2 and went back to the normal starting lineup. Dallas won, and Johnson believes the Mavs played better because they were -- psychologically -- more comfortable with Damp at center. “Everybody had freaked out” at the Game 1 lineup change, Johnson says.

And that represents the closest thing to a consensus that emerged from this panel: The best decisions will be made when coaches consider advanced stats not alone, but alongside everything else -- what their eyes tell them, what the film shows and the psychology of each individual player.

The marquee panel at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on Saturday was titled, "What Geeks Don't Get: The Limits of Moneyball," moderated by Michael Lewis. There's little doubt that the analytics movement in sports has strong momentum, but are there elements that practitioners of advanced stats are missing? M. Haubs has an insightful dispatch from the session at The Painted Area. Among the highlights of the discussion:

Lewis asked Morey if he believed in clutch stats, long a controversial difference between common fans - who worship the art of the clutch - and statheads - who tend to believe that the idea of clutch statistics are not definitive and conclusive.

Morey artfully answered, "We don't make any decisions based on the belief of that." Interestingly, Cuban disagreed, and said that that was one reason he wanted Kidd, whom he believes plays differently in "win time" than he does in the other 45 minutes of the game.

On Hardwood Paroxysm, Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game writes about a paper called "The Price of Anarchy in Basketball" presented by Brian Skinner at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The paper wrestles with reality that giving the ball to your best offensive player every time down the floor is not the best offensive strategy.

Mahoney writes:

One example that Skinner highlighted is Ray Allen. Allen’s shot usage over the course of his career makes him an easy candidate; in Milwaukee and Seattle he was called upon to be The Man, but in

TrueHoop at MIT Sloan Sports conference

• The value of a blocked shot.

• Performance enhancements.

• The Next Generation of Sports Management and Ownership.

•The Dean of quant.

•Quantify my life.

Boston, he’s simply a man. He’s a shooter, a scorer and leader, and one of the three. He offers plenty on the court but in a completely different capacity, and with a markedly lower percentage of his team’s total shots. There is power in variety, and with the offensive options that have been available in Boston (in 2008, namely, though still today on a theoretical basis, if nothing more), Allen, a talented offensive player, actually benefits his team by not shooting. Not because his teammates are better shooters than he is on a per-possession basis necessarily, but because putting so much of the offensive production on one source creates myriad problems. Fatigue. Defensive attention. Heat checks. Skinner invokes Dean Oliver in stating that as usage goes up, a player’s offensive efficiency goes down, and that makes a ton of sense.

But at the same time, that creates a bit of a boggling result: a team’s best play is sometimes to have their best shooter not shoot. That conclusion naturally led Allen’s former teammate, Brent Barry, to pipe up from the audience and announce that he texted Ray the results of the study with a note to not shoot so much. I’m pretty sure Denzel Washington told him the same thing over ten years ago, though, so I wouldn’t expect some kind of drastic change.

On the NBA Playbook, Sebastian Pruiti describes a presentation by John Huizinga and Sandy Weil, who made a big impression at this conference last year with their paper which strongly questioned the existence of the hot hand.

This year they have examined blocked shots and have found that they are not all created equal.

For instance:

Is blocking a layup more valuable than blocking a jump shot? Mr. Huizinga’s data says yes. In his presentation, he said that it all comes down to expected value. A jumper has an expected point value of 1.04 while a layup has an expected point value of 1.54. Looking at it this way, Brendan Haywood, who many people believe is a very good defender (me included) actually is a less valuable shot-blocker than Jermaine O’Neal.

Haywood gets 69% of his blocks on jumpers, meaning he only blocks 31% of the more valuable layups. On the other end of the spectrum, 91% of Jermaine O’Neal’s blocks were on layup attempts, while only 9% of his blocks were the less-valuable jump shots.

The paper also found that, with many different new factors taken into account, Tim Duncan's blocks are the most valuable in the NBA. The least valuable, they say, are Dwight Howard's.

I don't come to this panel without prejudice. My general view of performance enhancing drugs tends to run counter to most fans and sports journalists. I don't explicitly support PEDs in sports, but I do see them as neither good nor bad. They exist in every realm of modern life. Kids are prescribed adderall; more and more adults are taking neuroenhancers to give them an edge. Athletes are looking for every edge to give them a competitive advantage -- and PEDs are just one aspect of that. (You think LASIK hasn't had a beneficial effect on certain athletes? Is that natural? Doesn't it distort historical records?)

We can debate the moral and ethical issues surrounding this debate, but efforts to enhance human potential are a part of the evolutionary process. Always have been, always will be. The discussion about PEDs will probably seem quaint in a generation, as we improve our capacity to manipulate DNA or enhance memory (wouldn't that help a young quarterback or point guard charged with running a complicated offense?). What will we do with a young athlete with increased oxygen content in his blood because his parents decided to make that adjustment in the womb while they were also ensuring that their child wouldn't suffer from genetic diseases? Bar him from competitive sports?

These are some of the questions I have headed into this session at The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this morning. The panel, moderated by Gary Belsky, the editor-in-chief of ESPN the Magazine, are:

• Dr. Kim Blair, Founding Director, MIT Center for Sports Innovation; Director of the Sports Engineering Practice at Cooper Perkins, Inc.
• Mark Verstegen, CEO, Athlete's Performance
• Dr. Thomas Murray, President & CEO, The Hastings Center
• Mike McCann, Legal Analyst, Sports Illustrated
• Steve Kerr, General Manager, Phoenix Suns

Belsky starts by asking, "Where do you draw the line where enhancement is acceptable?" Verstegen begins by taking about technology is producing better equipment, better technology and specifically discusses how the swimsuit used by athletes in Beijing allowed swimmers to shatter all kinds of records. The organizing body for international swimmers has decided that they're prohibiting some of these suits. "They're taking a big step backwards," Verstegen says. He notes that swimming was never more popular than it was last summer and that the record-breaking had a lot to do with the public's embrace of the sport. He also recounts a conversation he had with his 10-year-old daughter who asked, "Does everyone get the same suit? Then it's fair."

Kerr says that he knew of one case in basketball where an athlete did steroids in basketball, a player who took them to bulk up for the draft. Kerr says he took Vioxx to help with his deteriorating knees when he was active as a player. "I think Vioxx is a performance-enhancing drug," Kerr says. It made him feel better and play through the injuries. Simply put, it enhanced his performance.

Murray, the bioethicist, feels that the three factors we need to consider in this conversation are safety, fairness, meaning. "You have to draw a line in sports," says Murray. Every sport needs boundaries and rules -- the dimensions of the field of play, equipment and what players can and cannot bring to the game -- including PEDs.

Verstegen says we need to keep in mind that the demands that are placed on athletes (he reluctantly refers to them as entertainers) prompt many of them to ask what they need to do to sustain themselves, and what kind of support they have in terms of physical remedies. He reminds the audience that PEDs are often about recovery from this regimen -- not specifically performance enhancement.

Kerr talks about Tom Gugliotta, who went to GNC years ago and began taking a lot of legal substances. One night after a game, he got on the bus in Portland and collapsed. Portland trainers helped him. They called the Suns' staff to find out what he was taking. The fact that the Suns knew, Kerr says, might have saved Gugliotta's life. The lesson is that training staffs need to know exactly what their players are taking.

McCann addresses the societal questions. He says society has an obligation to preserve safety. This is a natural regulating function of government. They do it with smoking, after all. He addresses whether there's a moral distinction between safe steroids and LASIK. He correctly states that we'll get to the point where we have safe steroids (we're already there), what will we do then? Murray doesn't think there will ever be steroids that have no effect. He also worries about the competitive question: Steroids as an arms race, whereby players who aren't taking them -- and don't want to -- might be effectively unable to compete with those who are.

Belsky asks a very good question: How should we think about "fairness" when Yao Ming is naturally endowed with height? Is there really such a thing as a level playing field? Murray responds that disparities in natural talents are far different than artificial disparities. "Sports is about maximizing our potential."

Belsky presents an interesting hypothetical: Michael Jordan and Candace Parker deliberately decide to breed a child. Do we root for that child? Blair answers that this happened in cycling between two champions who are husband and wife. The kid is now being coached by Lance Armstrong!

Belsky tells the panelist, "I have a dead man's ligament in my knee," by virtue of surgery on his ACL. He brings up the case of Oscar Pistorius, who has an artificial limb and a hypothetical 14-year-old who has had Tommy John surgery prophylactically. Blair says the leagues might have to step in eventually. McCann wonders if players unions might step in and prohibit players with artificial or enhanced limbs. Kerr says the medical advancements like transplants that propel an athlete further will present a murkier picture. McCann says that teams are interested in what sort of genetic red flags a player might have. He brings up the case of the Bulls and Eddy Curry. The team wanted him to take a DNA test to learn more about his congenital heart condition.

Belsky asks if it wouldn't be a good idea if all the sports banded together to create an enhancement board where players could go and get regulated and safe PEDs and make informed decisions under supervision, maybe require them to take courses in safety.

Blair delivers the conference's first Star Trek reference at 11:53 a.m. ET: "I'm only an engineer."

Kerr says that the NBA does a good job of enforcing PEDs and that its problem is regulating recreational drugs, a comment that draws a laugh. Players get a letter from the league about six weeks before the season starts telling them, "You're going to get tested for drugs, including marijuana, on October 1. Remember that the drug stays in your system for 30 days." Kerr jokes that players would take full advantage of those final two weeks or so. He also says the union makes a concerted effort to educate players. He also repeats the meme that PEDs wouldn't help an NBA athlete -- a claim that doesn't pass the smell test. We were told "speed guys" and pitchers and baseball wouldn't benefit, but lo and behold, dozens of these kinds of players were found to be taking drugs. Verstegen suggests that use of PEDs in basketball is probably more common than we're led to believe. McCann responds the panel that the NBA tests for steroids and that the government has busted many illegal steroids dealers and no NBA players have been found on their clients lists.

Murray worries that the drugs we'll see in the NBA won't be traditional steroids, but the kinds of biosynthetic hormones that exist in cycling. These are PEDs that help endurance more that strength.

Kerr makes an interesting distinction between the public's willingness to tolerate PEDs in the hallowed game of baseball ("your grandfather's sports") and football. "Football is a barbaric sport," Kerr says. "The public is like, 'whatever you have to do, go ahead.'"

Belsky: "My grandfather's sport was running from Cossacks."

European history might have been played out differently if there were PED dealers in the shtetl!