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On Hardwood Paroxysm Ian Levy has pretty pictures of teams' most effective plays, compared to how often they run them. Some lessons:

Cutting big men: Nice if you can get 'em

The first thing you notice is that big men cutting are most teams' most efficient plays. Fantastic.

But that's only so useful. By the time a big man catches the ball on his way to the hoop, the defense is already in dire straits.

In other words, "really easy plays when the defense is broken and the ball's in the paint" are good. But of course, most teams can't decide to run that play every time down. It's simply not available without the defense cooperating. Those plays are rare even on the most efficient teams.

Too much Kobe Bryant

The Lakers have some plays that they use way more than they evidently should. The first is (surprise!) Kobe Bryant isolations. Levy writes:

Of the Lakers’ five most productive offensive outcomes, none occurred more than 200 times on the season. Meanwhile nearly 1,100 Lakers’ offensive possessions were used by Kobe Bryant in either isolations, post-ups, or pick-and-rolls. The offensive efficiency the Lakers received from those possessions fell in between what they got from Metta World Peace in the post (0.84 ppp) and Ramon Sessions in the pick-and-roll (0.88 ppp).

Ouch. (Note: Ian is a very nice man, and he's telling nothing but the truth. Please be kind.)

Not enough Kobe Bryant

Here's the thing, though: Those 1,100 or so inefficient Bryant plays Levy spoke of? Those are the ones -- isolation, post-ups, as the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll, where Bryant gets the ball and then the action begins. Those are the plays where Bryant is in total control. Those are from the "in my teammates I do not trust" playbook.

Those are also the plays where the defense gets to say "oh, look, there goes Kobe doing his thing, let's load up on that."

However, the Lakers' best plays? Many of them are Bryant too. But they're Bryant relying on team actions to get him the ball where he can be more effective.

Look at Levy's charts! Bryant spotting up: Fantastic! Bryant coming off a screen: Among the team's best plays.

Those are plays where neither Bryant, nor the defense, can be sure Bryant will get the ball. Both struggle with that uncertainty.

Meanwhile, when Phil Jackson unloaded in his book on Bryant's over-reliance on his own scoring abilities, he didn't specifically complain that Bryant shot too much. He complained that he craved too much control, for instance by breaking plays to catch the inbound pass late in games, instead of working team actions to try to get somebody, Bryant or otherwise, open.

Bryant wouldn't work off the ball like Jackson -- and, now we learn, efficiency statistics -- demand.

Too much Andrew Bynum in the post

The Lakers' other play that seems to be run more than can be justified by its efficiency, is Andrew Bynum in the post. It is the Lakers' most common playtype, but their ninth most efficient.

These statistics all come from Synergy Sports Technology, where you can watch video of those plays.

Here's an informed guess, after watching lots of Bynum video for a post last week: All Bynum post-ups are not created equal. When he catches the ball close to the hoop, he is deadly. But he is not averse to catching the ball with a man on his back 15 feet or further from the hoop. And there, things don't look nearly as fluid. The spin move that, from good position, would have led to a chop shot, now ends with a spinning, off-balance big man deciding between dribble-probe and jumper, neither of which is a specialty.

Bad Bynum post-ups bring no joy at all. The good ones, though ...

The power of open shooters

The Spurs ended the regular season with the most efficient offense in basketball.

Their most common playtype was Tony Parker handling the ball in the pick-and-roll. That is no surprise at all. But would you believe that Richard Jefferson, Danny Green, Matt Bonner, Gary Neal and Kawhi Leonard spotting up were all more efficient per possession?

What I'm getting at there is: Look at how the Spurs managed to squeeze offensive productivity from inexpensive players. Asking players like that to create doesn't appear to work very well. But asking them to play alongside stars like Parker and Manu Ginobili, and to catch-and-shoot the open jumper ... that just works.

(Side note: One of the Spurs' least efficient options, and most over-used, is Tim Duncan posting up.)

Similarly, the Lakers have been getting excellent productive from Steve Blake and Matt Barnes spotting up.

James Harden, oh my

The Thunder finished the regular season with the league's second-best offense. And while these charts generally make ball-dominant guards look pretty inefficient (Bryant and Parker, for instance) ... Harden is amazing. Three of the Thunder's five most efficient playtypes are Harden , whether spotting up, isolating, or handling the ball in the pick-and-roll. He's a very rare player in that even when he is essentially a ballhog, flying solo, he's still, as the Mavericks will attest, very tough to stop.

That no doubt has a lot to do with the many potent offensive players he plays with. The defense can't just load up on James Harden with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka around. But still -- lots of players have great teammates, and very few produce like this.

Back in the lockout, a common theme was that David Stern was looking to massacre, destroy or otherwise obliterate the National Basketball Players Association.

It was never true. As Stern said then, he wanted a strong union because he needed a body that could deliver a deal. (If the union had fallen apart, who would have rounded up the player support necessary to get a deal done?) Stern bargained hard, but he certainly did not fire all of his guns.

We know this because it would have been a cinch to destabilize NBPA executive director Billy Hunter, and Stern did not.

One of the worst-kept secrets in basketball over the past few years has been nepotism at the players' association, where Hunter and his family profit in many and varied ways from union activities. But it was a card Stern never played.

Now that the collective bargaining deal is done, instead of would-be opponent Stern, a would-be ally -- NBPA president Derek Fisher -- has been the one to bring Hunter's nepotism to light.

Hunter insists he has done nothing wrong, and it's unclear how this will end. After a string of conversations with insiders, some insight:

Is Billy Hunter good at his job?

If you judge by results for players, the answer is yes. It is easy to point out things Hunter could have done better, and certainly he has negotiated sweet deals for himself and his family.

But the key skill of his job is saying "hell no" to bad deals offered by the NBA and then rallying player support for acceptable ones. In that regard, it's impossible to argue the results of his work to date. NBA players now collectively make around $2 billion a year. At the time of Hunter's first deal in 1998, players made about $900 million. NBA players enjoy many rights that elude players in hockey and football. Baseball players have a system that gives them more leverage, but NBA players still earn a similar percentage of league revenues.

Is Derek Fisher good at his job?

Fisher has a stellar reputation as a teammate and leader. Through much of the lockout, Fisher was the union's appointed spokesperson, because he is good at it -- exuding awareness, calm, empathy and a grasp of the issues. While Hunter and lawyer Jeffrey Kessler made strident or aggressive comments that at times tinged the proceedings with desperation, Fisher tended to project confidence, unity and calm. It's also noteworthy that with Fisher in the spotlight, this union of millionaires managed to prevent the kinds of embarrassing out-of-touch-with-real-people player quotes that undermined the players' cause in the previous lockout.

And yet, the NBPA executive committee voted 8-0 that it has lost confidence in Fisher’s leadership, for, among other things, failing to uphold his duties as president.

The union document also, intriguingly, accuses Fisher of "not acting in the players’ best interests during collective bargaining."

What's that about? During collective bargaining, there were rumors that Fisher went to the NBA behind Hunter's back in an attempt to broker a deal. Sources with direct knowledge of the process insist it never happened. Others, including apparently the NBPA executive committee, evidently believe that, or something like it, did happen.

This could prove to be as important as any other revelation. Neither side has been forthcoming with evidence in this regard, but if that changes, things could get complicated quickly.

Why open this can of worms?

Fisher is gearing up for a playoff run as a guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Players have bigger things on their minds. Why bring this up at all?

One theory is that by bringing to light governance issues surrounding Hunter, Fisher is simply doing his job as president of the union, much as former treasurer Pat Garrity once tried to do.

There is certainly good reason to have a serious look at Hunter's business practices, as even members of the union's executive committee have acknowledged. For instance, Roger Mason Jr. told Howard Beck of The New York Times: "Nobody is saying it’s not right to look at whatever Derek is charging Mr. Hunter with. What we’re saying is, there’s a certain way it has to be done."

Agents agitated to make a fuss of these issues during the lockout, when Hunter was under extraordinary pressure and the information could have been particularly hurtful. By waiting until the new deal was signed, sealed and delivered, Fisher kept it "in the family" when publicity might have caused players trouble. And now that concern has passed, he's evidently eager to clean up union practices.

Is this some kind of coup?

If this is an effort to oust Hunter, is that on behalf of somebody?

Nobody seems to know anything solid about that, other than to speculate that Hunter -- a veteran lawyer practiced in the arts of business-place battle -- will be tough to dislodge. Does Fisher want Hunter's job? Somebody else?

If you were making a short list of candidates to replace Hunter, one name that would come up is the head of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith. Smith met with NBA players at Fisher's request during the lockout. There's no indication Smith is angling for the job, but Fisher's effort to investigate Hunter comes with ties to Smith.

The fight between Fisher and Hunter arose over Fisher's desire to have the Washington, D.C., law firm Patton Boggs conduct an in-depth review of the union's finances. Smith's last job before the NFLPA was as chair of Patton Boggs' government investigations and white-collar practice group. Sources say an associate of Smith's, Christina Guerola Sarchio, who recently worked for Smith's NFL union, was set to handle the investigation Fisher ordered -- before the union's executive committee called it off.

What's the endgame?

It's impossible to find anybody who expects Billy Hunter to still be running the union when the next CBA is negotiated. Based on the evidence that has come to light so far, lawyers say it's unlikely Hunter will get in serious legal trouble. His potential conflicts of interest were disclosed to the union, and the executive committee approved the various hires and business deals in question. Fisher himself has been on that committee for the better part of a decade and was in many of those meetings.

At the same time, it's unclear how pressing the issues are. It is widely expected Hunter will leave of his own volition before the next round of talks, in about five years.

So this is not a fight about whether Hunter will leave. But when.

And to that end, sources in the know are adamant Hunter will not step down anytime soon, even if holding on to his job requires a massive battle.

Like all the other NBA teams, for the Bobcats the regular season began on Christmas. But what a miserable turd of a present the last 15 weeks have been for NBA fans in Charlotte.

By now the best teams have more than 40 wins. Charlotte's total: seven. The Bulls had won that many 13 weeks ago.

If there are NBA fans left in Charlotte, you better believe they are by definition die-hard. And to be a die-hard fan of this team is to be in need of some concept of hope.

Best I can come up with:

• This is a decent draft. The worst record would deliver the Bobcats the best possible odds -- only 25 percent, thanks to the lottery -- of securing the top overall pick and the much-celebrated Anthony Davis.
• Many say this is the way to really rebuild, and now you have a GM in Rich Cho, who has experience doing this in Oklahoma City.

There's also this: The most respected minds in the game agree that the worst place to be in the standings is in the middle. On stage at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last year, geek hero and former Portland general manager Kevin Pritchard spoke of the importance of getting off the "treadmill of mediocrity."

The audience included any number of current, former and future NBA smartypants decision-makers, many of whom nodded assent.

Remember the proposed trade that David Stern rejected as owner of the Hornets? It would have brought the team all kinds of players who are good right now. But as the thinking goes, that's not how you build a winner. The NBA rejected that trade, and instead accepted one that meant less prime-of-career talent now, less winning now and a better draft pick later. Even now that the star of the trade they accepted instead, Eric Gordon, is injured, the consensus seems to be that the Hornets were wise to reject the package of veterans, take on fewer assets and punt the season away -- mostly because by doing so, they have a better chance to get Anthony Davis and escape mediocrity.

Speaking not of the New Orleans decision, but about the league generally, the NBA's president of basketball operations Joel Litvin says: "It’s the best way to improve yourself. Go young. Lower your payroll. Draft intelligently. Be smart about your free agent signings and your rookie extensions and hope you can become the Thunder."

The tough news is that it almost never works.

No-brainer: You need a superstar

To contend for a title, you need a true MVP-caliber player. Unlike some assumptions that have echoed through gymnasiums for eternity, this one jibes with the evidence. Since 1986, every title but one (Go 2004 Pistons!) has gone to a team with one or more of these 11 players: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kevin Garnett, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant or Dirk Nowitzki.

All those other ways to win, all that great team defense, all that inspired coaching, all those "Hoosiers" highlights, all those occasionally amazing players ... and the biggest prize still almost always goes to the "it" players. Does anyone doubt that the next title will go to someone already on that list, or to some other other-worldly talent like LeBron James, Kevin Durant or Derrick Rose?

So, clearly, the Bobcats have their eyes on that prize. Get one of those guys.

And you have to get them through the draft, because they seldom move via trade or free agency, because the whole league knows they're amazing. Garnett is the only one who was traded while he was still in condition to lead a title team (although you could make a case for O'Neal's role in support of Wade in Miami). Most have stayed with one team their entire careers.

You get players like that on draft day. That's what Litvin is talking about. And that's what roughly a third of the league -- including the league-owned Hornets -- is trying to do right now.

It is very tough to do. Some drafts don't have any players like that. Because of the lottery even a horrible team like the Bobcats, with the league's worst record, is more likely to pick third or fourth than first or second. Not to mention, on draft day it's seldom clear which players will ultimately prove to be stars at the next level.

From lottery top to title: Tim Duncan and emptiness

If tanking is a great way to win a title, then quick, name a team that has done it.

Anyone? Anyone?

We're looking for a team that had a horrible record, won one of those magical, coveted top-three draft picks the Bobcats are after, and celebrated a title in the following four years because of that special player.

If you said the San Antonio Spurs, congratulations ... kind of. In the history of the lottery, which goes back to 1985, it's the only technically correct answer (ignoring Detroit and Darko Milicic, who barely played).

OK, let's expand the limits beyond four years. According to Devin Dignam of the Wages of Wins, there is still a shocking lack of further examples. We can disregard multi-team players like Jason Kidd, who won a title with the team that drafted him (Dallas) only after toiling for 17 years for the Mavericks, the Suns and the Nets. A slightly more pertinent case is the that of David Robinson, who overcame years of frustration by winning a title with San Antonio 12 years after the Spurs made him the No. 1 pick. But Robinson needed Duncan to get it done.

In other words, NBA history has awful news for bad teams hoping to become great through the magic of a high pick.

Tanking, as a way to get good, is not tried and true. It is tried and tried and tried and tried and once-in-a-long-while kind of true.

More importantly, the Spurs are no model at all. Yes, they got the top overall pick that became Duncan by winning just 20 games in 1996-97 . But they weren't really a bad team. They were a great team, missing the injured Robinson. But that was just a timely blip. In the three seasons prior, the Spurs contended for the title, winning 55, 62 and 59 games. They had been among the league's top teams for seven years running.

Duncan didn't make a bad team amazing. He made an amazing team into champions.

Those who say losing, and a top lottery pick, are essential parts of building a championship team need Kevin Durant's Thunder to win it all this year -- and even then, we're talking about three high lottery picks that have turned out amazingly well, in addition to another first-round pick. (And while Oklahoma City has a high ceiling, it has yet to make the Finals, much less win a title.)

Short of that, there are no other examples. Derrick Rose's Bulls averaged 43 wins a season over the four years before he arrived. Even if you expand beyond the lottery era it's hard to find exceptions.

For instance, what about Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan?

First of all, we're talking about three of the greatest players in the history of the game. If you can tank (and luck) your way into talent like that, go for it.

Second, let's not forget -- Larry Bird was the sixth pick in the 1979 draft and Jordan was the guy Chicago had to settle for with the third pick after Olajuwon and Sam Bowie were off the board. On draft day, those players were not seen as Anthony Davis-style draft prizes, but rather solid-but-flawed talents.

Bird did turn Boston around, but a cavalcade of great decisions -- trading for Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, among other nifty moves -- were all necessary for those rings.

As for Olajuwon? His Rockets were mired in mediocrity and unhappiness for much of his tenure before catching a wave and taking advantage of Jordan's absence for two mid-1990s titles, in Hakeem's 10th and 11th seasons.

Jordan famously needed the arrival of Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant to overcome six seasons of frustration in winning his first title.

In other words, even the exceptions are really just examples of extreme luck followed by extreme success in team-building. Really, can anyone with a straight face point to the Celtics, Bulls or Rockets of the 1980s as a model for building a title team?

How about a more recent example, LeBron James? Without question, LeBron is a meaningful case. But: very few players come into the league with LeBron's talent. (There is no shortage of ways to prove this.) Second, the Cavs made the Finals only once in seven seasons with James, and lost in a one-sided sweep.

Widen the scope even further. Surely there are more examples of teams getting bad and then getting good, right?

Surprisingly few.

Continued bad luck for lottery teams

You have probably heard about the large number of people who win millions in the real lottery and are broke again a few years later.

The same is a little true in the NBA, where the good teams tend to stay that way, and the bad teams tend to stay that way, too.

• In the lottery era, there have been 150 teams to reach 55 wins or more -- a level around which a team can be said to be contending. How many of those 150 were bad at any point in the preceding four years? How many endured a season of, say, fewer than 30 wins? How many walked the path that tanking teams aspire to walk? Just 34 of 150, or 23 percent, according to the tallies of economist David Berri on the Freakonomics blog. And only two teams -- the Heat last year and Chris Paul's Hornets -- have gone from winning fewer than 20 games to winning more than 55 in four years or less (the Thunder never won fewer than 20). In other words, bad teams have almost no shot of becoming great with any speed, and one of the two that did did so through the power of cap space, not the draft. That's a blow to tanking teams everywhere.
• Does more time help? Not much. Win 34 games or fewer in any season, according to Arturo Galletti at The Wages of Wins, and over the next decade your chances of winning more than 55 are abysmal, at just 12 percent. Think about that. A 34-win team is not bad, winning 41 percent of its games. This season's closest equivalent would be the Timberwolves. But still, a team that good has only about a 1-in-10 chance of winning 55 or more at any point in the next decade. Heaven forbid you are a truly bad team. Even given a full decade to get it done, teams have done the full metamorphosis, from the cocoon of a sub-20 win season to the contending butterfly of 55-plus wins, only six percent of the time, and again, one of those was the outlier Heat.
• Meanwhile, in the four seasons after getting a top-three pick, teams are not living the dream. Dignam shows missing the playoffs for four straight years even after getting that plum draft pick is common, and writes: "After four years -- the amount of time on rookie scale contracts -- about 31 percent of the teams with top three picks hadn’t made the playoffs even once. Almost 26 percent of these teams’ best showing was only the first round. And a further 22 percent of teams topped out in the second round."

Every once in a while

On Basketball Prospectus Neil Paine reacts to news that tanking usually fails, but that doesn't mean there aren't some superteams that got good by first being bad.

Paine writes:

Teams who were led to the Finals by players they drafted (or otherwise acquired before their NBA debut) averaged just 31.3 wins per 82 games in the season prior to acquiring the player, and that number is skewed by teams like the 1989 Lakers, who were already good when acquiring James Worthy with Cleveland's 1st-round pick.

27 of the 39 finalists (69.2 percent) who were led by original-team players had 33 or fewer wins the year before picking up their star.

21 of the 39 (53.8 percent) won 27 games or fewer, and 13 of the 39 (33%) won 21 or fewer.

Simply put, the vast majority (75 percent) of NBA Finalists acquire their stars via the draft or draft-day trades, and the majority of those players came to the team after a tank-worthy season.

A rational-minded person would add to this analysis that these teams are no models. Because over the period of time Paine studied, all kinds of teams lost all kinds of games, and only the tiniest of minorities emerged as winners.

The broad data says "almost nobody survives that path through the jungle." Those special exceptions, however, scream "people have made it through the jungle, and most of those have taken that path."

What everyone can agree on, however, is that the jungle is rough. You're probably not going to make it through. If the past is any guide, the Bobcats probably won't be great at any point in the next decade.

Good teams stay good

Dean Oliver, now the ESPN Director of Production Analytics, is widely respected in the world of sports analysis. (Bill James: "I learn a lot by reading him.") Oliver's book, "Basketball on Paper," includes a chart showing how, over time, there is a natural tendency for all teams to move toward .500. He calls that every team's "ultimate fate," in a league where every game has one winner and one loser. Just as surely as water runs to the sea, teams are likely to find that level. And his chart shows that bad teams do indeed tend to reach .500 in the anticipated way.

But here's the oddity. The good teams ... they don't drift down to .500 nearly as quickly as you'd expect. The good teams stay good. "Parity has pulled on the bad teams, but the good teams have resisted," Oliver writes. "Even ten years down the road, good teams seem to be able to maintain some comfort level between themselves and .500."

Ten years is longer than most players can stay at their peak, so this seems to be about more than one superstar keeping a team good. Along those lines, consider the Spurs right now. They're somehow contenders again, playing about as well as any team. And while they still have Tim Duncan, they certainly do not still have Tim Duncan, the problem solver, the best big man in the game, the player who makes Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford look like geniuses no matter what play they call or which player they pick. The current version of Tim Duncan is the kind of big man many teams have, in terms of production. But even without that magical player, they're still majestic.

In Oliver's book, he suggests that some franchises have been built in a way that "stays strong."

So in addition to getting a player like Duncan from the lottery, teams have to be built the right way. Winning the lottery doesn't get it done, and interestingly it was never designed to.

The draft was never intended as salvation

David Berri argues in his 2010 book "Stumbling on Wins" that the draft was not, as widely assumed, created to help bad teams get good. In 1935, the NFL's Dodgers and Eagles got into a bidding war for the Minnesota Golden Gophers' Stanislaus ("Stockyard Stan") Kostka. The Dodgers won, Kostka got a big salary and Eagles owner Bert Bell was angry.

"The owner of the Eagles argued that NFL teams should no longer compete for the services of college talent," writes Berri. "For Bell, a better system would be reverse-order draft ... Upon being drafted, the players would only be allowed to negotiate a contract with the team that held his rights."

It was a great system for Bell and all owners, in that it eliminated bidding wars and sharply reduced rookie salaries. Furthermore, the next year Bell's team was the worst in the league and got the first pick in the draft he made had made a reality.

Most assume the draft is about parity -- that is, about making bad teams good. Berri concludes Bell's primary goal was saving owners money. And that's exactly what drafts have done. Interestingly, economists studying drafts in major sports through the years almost uniformly agree that they have worked perfectly in keeping paychecks small for young players.

Meanwhile, fans and other observers accept this because it appears to have this wonderful ability to make bad teams good.

It's an illusion, argues Berri and much of sports economics history (the field was essentially founded with the 1956 publication of Simon Rottenberg's work to this effect). Meanwhile, the vaunted ability of a draft to help bad teams get good ... that is so tough to find that many economists insist it does not exist at all.

In other words, the draft doesn't work to make bad teams good, because that's not what it was ever designed to do. It just gives that appearance.

Good picks alone aren't a strategy

Put it all together, and you get hopes and dreams of greatness -- but nothing remotely resembling assurances. Any objective look through NBA history suggests that "the Thunder model" is no model at all. Good luck with your tanking. If you get bad, you will get a high pick and you may even get a good player. But by far the most likely thing is that you'll be tanking again long before you make it to the promised land, or even the conference finals.

But remember, way back up there at the beginning of this story, fans of the Bobcats had two reasons for hope. The first was the draft lottery, which has only a little more cause for hope than a ticket in the real lottery. The other reason was a new GM, who is talking about a long-term process and building a culture ... maybe there's something to that.

What is it about those good teams that stay good, even as their good players come and go? How is it the Lakers, who already hit home runs with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also placed the right bets on James Worthy and later Kobe Bryant (the 13th pick!), Andrew Bynum (10th!) and so many other transactions -- not to mention going all-in on Shaquille O'Neal in free agency?

As magical as great young players can be, maybe that systemic genius is just as essential. And maybe that's the Thunder model. Even when the Thunder were terrible, they had a way of doing things. They drafted players with squeaky clean lives, on and off the court. They did not leak information to the media. They worked obsessively to identify talent in the D-League and overseas. A visiting coach was blown away at the organization and on-time scheduling of everything from his ride from the airport to the start time of practice. Maybe they uncovered ways to get more out of players.

There is a very short list of NBA superstars -- getting one on your roster is one of the hardest things to do in sports. But when it comes to assembling a contender, that might be the easy part.

HoopIdea has a lot of roles.

One is to attempt, as best we can, knowing darned well we'll fail constantly, to acknowledge, curate and promote the many great ideas made public before we got started.

And when it comes to re-imagining the NBA, Bill Simmons has been a leading voice for a long time. One of our recent obsessions, tanking, is one of his pet topics.

In "The Book of Basketball," Simmons takes us back to the heyday of tanking:

With Hakeem and Jordan looming as draft prizes, both the Rockets (blew 14 of their last 17, including 9 their last 10) and Bulls (lost 19 of their last 23, including 14 of their last 15) said, "Screw it, we'll bastardize the sport," and pulled some fishy crap: resting key guys, giving lousy guys big minutes and everything else. Things peaked in Game 81 when a washed-up Elvin Hayes played every minute of Houston's overtime loss to the Spurs. Since none of the other crappy teams owned their picks, only Chicago and Houston controlled their destinies (hence the tanking). ... The unseemly saga spurred the creation of a draft lottery the following season. And even that didn't totally solve the tanking problem; Team Stern has changed the lottery system five times in twenty-four years, and we're probably headed for a sixth soon.

In a 2007 "Tanks a lot" column he noted that the NBA is fun when really good players play on really good teams:

I blame the lottery for foisting modified parity on us. Ever since Orlando went back-to-back, top picks have gone to lousy teams every spring, creating a vicious circle in which the lottery replenishes weak teams with blue-chippers who aren't ready to carry weak teams. In the past 14 years, only one No. 1 pick made his team instantly competitive: Tim Duncan, who joined a contender that had slipped only because of injuries. Looking back, was it bad that Duncan and David Robinson played together? Was the NBA's competitive spirit compromised? Of course not.

And that's why the lottery sucks: Not only does it render the occasional Duncan/ Robinson pairing nearly impossible, not only does it reward poorly run clubs like the Hawks (103 games under .500 since the 1998-99 season), it encourages also-rans to bottom out once they suffer some bad luck because they know it's their best chance to eventually contend. So can't we admit that the lottery system has failed? Shouldn't the element of luck play a bigger role than it does?

Simmons proposed a return to "the envelope lottery," where the 14 teams that miss the playoffs each receive an equal chance (an envelope with their logo in it) to win the top pick.

Two years later, in a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell, Simmons renewed the call for decent teams to have a crack at top picks:

I am a fervent "Every lottery team should have the same odds" believer for two reasons: Not only would it eliminate any incentive to tank down the stretch for a "better" draft pick (really, better odds at a better draft pick), but the current setup penalizes potential franchise players by giving them too much responsibility for carrying inferior teams. A borderline lottery team defied the odds three times: In 1993 with Orlando (the Magic reach the NBA Finals two years later); in 1997 with San Antonio (the Spurs bottom out only because of Robinson's injury, land Tim Duncan, then win the title two years later) and in 2008 with Chicago (the Bulls land Rose, turn into a fringe contender, then give us the best first-round series ever). Was it a bad thing that we turned a half-decent young team into a contender? Did anyone not like how this turned out?

The bigger issue (you already hinted at it): Of all the professional sports, parity hurts the NBA the most. Ideally, you want a league with a distinct upper class and a distinct lower class.

More recently, on Grantland, Simmons re-capped the other element of his anti-tanking agenda: A season-ending tournament for the eighth playoff spots in each conference.

My Entertaining as Hell Tournament -- the top seven seeds in each conference make the playoffs, then the other 16 teams play a single-elimination tournament to "win" the no. 8 seeds. This would discourage tanking for lottery picks, reward late-bloomer teams and generate extra interest because, again, this tournament would be entertaining as hell. All 14 games would be televised -- eight in Round 1, four in Round 2, then a doubleheader final at Madison Square Garden to decide the no. 8 seeds -- over a week as the other 14 playoff teams regrouped and rested up.

You have stumbled into HoopIdea's biggest project yet: Let's end tanking.

We'll be rolling out different ideas about how to do that over the next few days. But before we get into that, let's make clear what's at stake. Getting this right is of gargantuan importance, and not merely in the name of making a few late-season Nets games more entertaining.

In fact, when I talk about tanking, I'm not even talking about something players, or even coaches, are doing. I've watched the video, and looked at the substitution patterns. It is very tough to come up with strong evidence any players or coaches are doing anything other than trying to win.

For the GMs and owners of about half the teams in the league, however ... everybody knows it's not smart for them to try to win every game. They don't throw games by intentionally missing shots. But they do strip rosters bare of high-priced talent, hoarding cap dollars for another day, and knowing that the inevitable losses that ensue -- the tanking -- will come with some of the most valuable rewards in all of sports.

In other words, in a sport based on the excitement of live competition, they are trying to lose, which attacks the integrity of the game. And by encouraging this, the NBA has essentially brainwashed fans to root for their own teams to lose.

"I think NBA fans understand and appreciate the concept of rebuilding," says Joel Litvin, the league's president of basketball operations. "Whether that’s done through the draft, through signing free agents, it’s a process that is not helped when a team has a lot of highly paid players who are either in the middle or approaching the end of their careers. ... Go young. Lower your payroll. Draft intelligently. Be smart about your free agent signings and your rookie extensions and hope you can become the Thunder."

The thing is that it's very hard to tell the difference between a well-run team that is rebuilding and a team that is horribly run.

This tactic is so commonplace that fans believe that teams are supposed to “get bad to get good.” But not only is this a perversion of the sport, it also means that a lot of teams actually “get bad … and stay bad.”

Right now superstar-grade players are going into a lottery populated by the worst teams, in a sport where one great player has more impact than in any other team sport and is locked into below-market salaries throughout their careers (because of rookie scale contracts followed by maximum-salary limits).

Meanwhile, teams that win consistently very seldom get players like that, by trade or any other means. Essentially, the best-run teams are penalized while the worst-run teams are rewarded.

Is it any wonder that many front offices aren't sweating losses?

Getting this right is of massive importance because it affects, in ways big and small, the way every front office in the league operates, how bad teams become good and even who makes the big decisions.

The challenge is: How do you motivate 30 teams to be great at what they do? Because right now it's hard to make the case that 30 teams are being as smart as possible.

Fix tanking, and I think you push over a domino that would knock some of the most backward thinking right out of the NBA, giving fans across the league more genuine hope that they might win a title.

While good luck and deep pockets play a role, you win a title by getting a huge percentage of your decisions right. Look at the Thunder's last 20 transactions, and I think we'd agree that they made the good or great calls in at least 17 of them. The same goes for Chicago and San Antonio.

But the teams out there that are not winning year after year ... in most cases they're not just "rebuilding through the lottery." They're also making one dreadful decision after another. That means with the draft, coaching hires, trades and everything else. I assure you GMs in many NBA markets really don't want you to examine the record, because it won't be kind to them. They're already preparing their stories about how everybody has bad luck.

Baseball fans know there is such a thing as batting average, though. Yes, even the best strike out. A miss here or there is part of the game. But striking out almost every time you step to the plate, for years on end ... that's not bad luck. That's bad baseball.

My point is that if you're a fan of a miserable team, the gift of a player delivered from the basketball heavens might be useless without better decision-making, a better long-term strategy, and quite probably a better front office -- from the GM to the owner and everyone in between.

And do you know why you're not getting a new GM? In no small part because even with the old one, if you lose enough, you're still going to get a player straight from the basketball heavens, thanks to the peculiar way sports drafts work.

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Rewarding bad performance

Imagine you teach English to high school seniors. Your students are applying to colleges. Many of them need all the help they can get, grade-wise, to get through the admissions process with any success.

And you have a lot of flexibility with the grades. Those kids with the 4.0s, they'll be fine no matter what you do. But if you give some of those nice A's to those struggling kids ... well, that might really change their lives. You might get someone into a college they wouldn't otherwise get into. You might get someone into college who was thinking about not going at all. You might help somebody get financial aid.

The merciful thing is to give the best grades to those who need them the most, right?

Wrong, say a choir of economists and more than century of research. If you give the good grades, the best prizes you have to hand out, to the worst students, then you might help a kid here or there, but over time you'd create a messed-up environment that would hurt all kinds of students.

Working hard and being smart would stop paying off, so those kids would normally get the good grades be bewildered and distraught. The students who never cared about your class, didn't read the books and triple-spaced their papers to meet the assigned length would be walking tall, as if they had cracked the code.

And that's where we are in the NBA today. If you could give truth serum to the full front-office staffs of all 30 NBA teams, I think you'd find that just about describes the attitude right now: Who looks smart and dumb has very little to do with who knows how to do their jobs.

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A fine line between good strategy and mailing it in

In researching this story, I was told about a GM of a struggling team who, as described to me by a source well-positioned to know, showed up for work "less than part time." As in, a few hours a week.

Even after all the stories I've heard through the years, this surprised me.

A little while later I was on the phone with a front-office employee for another team. Without using any names, I told him what I had heard.

Could it be true?

His response: "Was your source somebody at our team?"

Wow. His GM was the same way.

I have since talked to people with two other teams who say their GMs just don't work very much -- that's four such current GMs I've been told about so far this week. None of those teams is likely to make the playoffs either, which means all four of those teams are due to get a sweet player in June for being lousy at their jobs.

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Losing is good for one thing only

There are lots of reasons to make good trades. There are lots of reasons to acquire and play young players. There are lots of reasons to hoard cap space. There are lots of reasons to do all the things that are a normal part of rebuilding in the NBA.

But losing is part of that script too, and it need not be. Because there's only one reason to lose: To increase the chances of getting a really good draft pick.

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Anatomy of a long-term loser

If you were making the case that the NBA should extend a helping hand, in the form of high draft picks, to teams in need, the Sacramento Kings would top the list of the most needy. They are nearly league leaders in losses over the last five years. Just as bad, their owners are feeling a serious financial pinch, the team has been at high risk to flee to another town and the badly deflated fan base -- once the rowdiest in the NBA -- could use some good news.

On the other hand, maybe handouts from the league are a big part of what's keeping them down, just as paying for beer is no help for an alcoholic.

Maybe the team is bad not because they haven't been given enough but because they have been given too much.

First, the back story.

The Maloofs (who own the team) and general manager Geoff Petrie have made horrible basketball decisions:

• They recently fired castoff coach Paul Westphal, whom they hired after he had made the Pepperdine team worse every year he was there.
• They moved one of the league's great value plays -- a rotation player on a rookie deal -- in Omri Casspi for J.J. Hickson, whom they have since waived. The Kings were the team to throw an extra first-round pick into that deal -- and their only hope of keeping that (conditional) first-round pick is to stay bad for six full seasons.
• After the Nets used the amnesty clause on the vastly overpaid Travis Outlaw, the Kings saved the Nets $12 million by signing him for that amount off waivers -- and now he has one of the lowest PERs at his position and averages only about 10 minutes a game.
• Factor in production, potential, contract and everything else, and many would value Bismack Biyombo, Beno Udrih, Jimmer Fredette and John Salmons in that order. Biyombo is a very young, high-risk/high-reward big man, and Udrih is a middling player with an affordable contract. Fredette has been one of the least effective players in the NBA, while Salmons is both inefficient and terribly overpaid. Last June, however, the Kings essentially moved the two best assets out of those four for the worst two. Within hours, John Hollinger had explained all the ways this was clearly a disaster. All at once, the Kings got less productive, more expensive, older, positioned worse in the draft, and more crowded at the shooting guard position.
• This last offseason the team made a big splash in signing noted post defender Chuck Hayes to a bigger deal than the Rockets were willing to match. But the Kings botched the medical exam, publicly backed out of the deal based on the perception of health problems, which led to an awkward and public back-and-forth between the players, independent doctors and the team. By the time it was settled, the team had agreed to add an extra million dollars to Hayes' already ambitious salary. At an age when he should be in in his peak, Hayes has struggled with conditioning and has underperformed expectations in essentially every statistical category.
• A few years ago the Nets voided Shareef Abdur-Rahim's contract because of medical concerns about his knee. The Kings then gave Abdur-Rahim a five-year deal worth more than $30 million. Three years into it, Abdur-Rahim retired because of that same knee.
• The Kings waived Mikki Moore with a year left on three-year, $18 million deal.
• Petrie publicly offered Bonzi Wells a multi-year deal worth more than $30 million in the summer of 2006. Had Wells accepted it, he would only have recently come off the Kings' payroll, even though he played his last NBA game in May 2008.
• As a recent All-Star and first-team all-NBA defender, Gerald Wallace has earned greater honors than any current Kings. And he would be a current King, if Petrie hadn't left him unprotected in the 2004 expansion draft. Wallace could barely get off the bench in Sacramento, but given playing time was instantly the Bobcats' best player.
• A team that has struggled to find a coach is also a team that fired both (now Timberwolves head coach) Rick Adelman and (now Thunder head coach, a former Kings assistant) Scott Brooks.
• The Sixers are very pleased with young big man Spencer Hawes, whom they got in a trade that got the Kings nothing that has proved to matter.

This is just the short list. Because of these mistakes and others like them -- the kinds of mistakes that teams that the best teams in the NBA seem to be able to avoid for years on end -- in a few months the Kings will make their sixth lottery pick in a row. And yet despite the hope that has come with each of those draft days, the team is still nobody's pick to make the playoffs anytime soon.

Those lottery picks have become Spencer Hawes (since given to the 76ers), Jason Thompson, Tyreke Evans, DeMarcus Cousins and Jimmer Fredette. Mostly solid enough. Yet all kinds of teams have come out of those drafts with better results, even when their draft picks didn't always work out. And the list of highly rated prospects the Kings passed on, and could have now, includes Thaddeus Young, Roy Hibbert, Stephen Curry, Greg Monroe and Brandon Knight.

Every team misses. That's understood. Talent evaluation makes weather predicting look easy. It is unfair to compare a team to what a perfect team would have done, because no team is perfect.

But even an average team is due to have some "home run" transactions now and again, and here is where the Kings have come up empty.

Of course, it's not just the Kings, either. The Timberwolves, Clippers, Bobcats and Wizards, for example -- the teams that are the reason the lottery exists -- have all whiffed systematically, and too often on draft day, as Tom Haberstroh demonstrated powerfully. Not drafting well drives a lot of the NBA's losing.

Rod Thorn, for instance, now with the 76ers, has long been seen as elder statesman of GMs and a visionary, but in his decades in the league his teams have a combined winning percentage well below .500, and well below average for current GMs. His record was helped not at all by first-round picks wasted on the likes of Zoran Planinic, Eddie Gill (by draft day trade), Antoine Wright, Marcus Williams, Josh Boone (the latter two drafted directly before Kyle Lowry), Sean Williams and Terrence Williams. Kyle Korver plays key minutes for the Bulls, the team with the best record in the league. Thorn once traded him away for nothing but cash. He has whiffed on a string of big men, spending dollars and roster spots on Shawne Williams, Jamaal Magloire, Mikki Moore, an aging Cliff Robinson, Mile Ilic and the like.

The Bobcats are a similar story. Before Rich Cho took over nearly a year ago, and initiated a new approach, the team's more notable deals included trading Tyson Chandler -- a one-man team defensive upgrade for the champion Mavericks a year ago, and the Knicks this year -- for Erick Dampier. Or how about trading three useful assets (Jason Richardson, Jared Dudley and a draft pick) to Phoenix for were-never-really-good-again Raja Bell, Sean Singletary and Boris Diaw? Among the most disappointing players in recent years, a bunch of them have done some of their disappointing in Bobcats uniforms: Adam Morrison, Darius Miles, Javaris Crittenton, Kwame Brown, Sherron Collins, Larry Hughes, Alexis Ajinca, Ryan Hollins, Corey Maggette ...

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Good management would crush a fair fight

Sam Presti turned around the Thunder after just two miserable seasons and four lottery picks. How can it be that teams like the Kings are still miserable after five? Luck is part of it, but the bigger story is Kings management making one bad decision after another.

The point is that the teams that are really in need of help in the NBA, are, more than anything, in need of better decision making.

In a fair fight, GM vs. GM, surely Petrie, Thorn and the like wouldn't stand a chance against the likes of the Spurs R.C. Buford and the Thunder's Presti.

In a world where GMs like Buford and the Presti exist, then, what owner in his right mind would employ a GM like Thorn or Petrie, each of whom has such a poor rate of making good transactions?

Because the playing field is balanced against the more intelligent, professionally run teams. Meanwhile, Petrie and Thorn are gifted some of the most valuable assets in sports almost every year, which muddies the waters more than a little.

Without the prospect of high picks, however, surely owners around the league would replace incompetent GMs with executives who knew about building culture, developing players, identifying talent, negotiating good value from contracts and trades and the like. Expecting any team to contend without that kind of management is asking too much of luck. Winning in the NBA is like winning in anything. A well executed long-term strategy creates the most predictable success, even in a game with trump cards. If you're a fan of a team that makes several bad decisions a year, you probably can't luck into players good enough to overcome the the missteps of a chronically underperforming front office.

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Running an NBA team shouldn't be just a game of chance

There is a book on how to play blackjack. People know this, by and large. You never split 10s and always split aces and always hit 11 or under. Casinos assume players follow the basic rules -- if you do, the house maintains a very slender advantage, which is a win for players compared to all the other games.

Once you're playing by the book, however, and assuming you can't count cards, your job as a player becomes dead simple: Watch the cards the dealer flips up, follow the playbook and see if you win. If you do win, you pump your fists in the air, start bragging and blow your winnings. If you lose, well ... that's the breaks. It's a game of chance.

I put it to you that this is how most NBA GMs operate. They start each season hoping to get good cards. Just maybe, like the Timberwolves or Sixers this season, the dealer will serve up wins. If not, well, the house usually wins and what can you do? The fallback plan is the draft.

Meanwhile, the best GMs in the league are, by comparison, counting cards. There are several teams that "win" the vast majority of their transactions.

In a world where there are people who can count cards, why would anyone send a regular old by-the-book player into the fray?

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Acting like a bad team

Here's where tanking gets really crazy: When teams with really smart front offices are forced to mimic teams with really bad front offices.

"The process of rebuilding is extremely rough on everyone," says Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo, "and unfortunately made worse by the reality that the whole system is counterintuitive. Strangely, losing may help you eventually win. But players, coaches and management are all in this place trained as competitors. How in the world do you tell a player or coach to go out there and lay down? The answer is you don’t. But I continually stress that even in defeat we must win in other ways with the intent of moving the dial forward."

In other words, build with talent, build with coaching, build with culture and build with the long-term benefits of losing.

Or take this year's worst team, the Bobcats, now run by Cho, who is well-regarded. What's plaguing the Bobcats is a history of mistakes, but also the reality that the front office -- Michael Jordan, Rod Higgins, Cho and company -- is not doing all it can to win right now. If there are cheap free agents they could add to make this team better, they have not added them. If there are better coaches available, now would not be the time to hire them.

Cho says he made something like that a condition of his joining the team. "They called me the day after I got let go by Portland," he recalls of the Bobcats. Cho had three years left on his Portland contract, and had that finest of luxuries -- he simply didn't have to work. "I had thought about taking some time off, or teaching at a high school," he told me on a recent episode of TrueHoop TV. "I thought about maybe coaching high school tennis, which I've wanted to do for a long time."

But he flew to Charlotte for a conversation that came down to a key moment, when Cho asked if the Bobcats really wanted to win. As in, did they want to win so badly that they'd be willing to follow in the footsteps of Cho's former employer, the Thunder, who won 20 games one season, and then 23 the next, in the process of amassing the core of their current team?

In other words, Cho was asking, were they willing to lose? "Are you willing," Cho remembers asking, "to take a step back to take two steps forward?"

Cho says the room answered, unanimously, "yes." A few months later, that team is 7-40.

Cho explains how the Thunder did it. When they had cap room, they didn't use it. Massive losing streaks helped too. The team's point guard of the future (Russell Westbrook) learned on the job while leading the league in turnovers.

There is no suggestion that any of the players or coaches didn't try their hardest. But the fact is the front office trotted out a young, cheap and, frankly, bad team for a good long time. Intentionally. During those same years they could have been, with a different strategy, far more competitive. But if they had done that, they'd never be leading the Western Conference right now, because they wouldn't have gotten the good players that came with the good picks that came from losing.

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HoopIdea: Evidence-based incentives

I asked the NBA's Litvin what he makes of economists who insist the league would have more teams making better decisions if the best incentives were not handed to the bad teams.

His reply: Sports are not bound by the usual logic of economics.

"What you continue to characterize as giving prizes for coming in last, I continue to characterize as help for the teams that are the weakest," he explains. "If an economist has a hard time with that, it may be because this is a business that thrives on competitive balance and the goal is not to compete each other out of existence. That’s not how sports leagues operate. They operate on the basis of the best possible competition on the floor or the field."

Meanwhile, there is strong evidence some teams are chronically making bad decisions, the role model franchise is one that barely competed for years and the NBA's own economist pointed out during the lockout that the league has perhaps the worst competitive balance in sports (the opposite of what the league is claiming its system creates).

And the big prize driving all that is something handed out by the NBA.

In other words, what's happening is exactly what economists say would happen if you had the incentives all messed up. Could this really be the smartest way to do things?

Going into last week's trade deadline, the Lakers had various priorities, but, interestingly, not all of them had to do with fielding the best basketball team imaginable.

The package they traded for point guard Ramon Sessions included the stale contracts of Luke Walton and Jason Kapono. And that's no small part of the reason the team had to ship out a potentially valuable first-round pick to get the Cavaliers to agree. Similarly, they recently traded Lamar Odom for a pick (albeit as part of a larger scheme to get Chris Paul that famously fell apart). They have saved money in various deals through the years, including Vladimir Radmanovic, Chris Mihm and Adam Morrison.

Not to mention, during the lockout, they took the step of aggressively trimming all kinds of staff, cutting loose various video guys and the like.

Meanwhile, isn't the story that this business is made of money, in the best media market in the NBA, with insanely high ticket prices, no competition from the NFL and one of the richest local TV deals in the history of sports?

Forbes says the local TV deal alone will bring the team an average of more than $200 million a year for the next 15 years.

Why on earth would they ever do something like fire the video guy, or give up a pick in the name of ditching a contract?

There are various answers. One is that they're paying more than $85 million in salaries this season. Also, while a lot of NBA teams are hobbies for their owners who make their billions elsewhere, the Lakers are the primary business of the Buss family -- who are wealthy compared to you and me, but not compared to many in the owners' club. And, of course, the various layers of luxury tax negotiated into the new CBA will punish the team mightily this year, and even more severely in the future, which requires some planning now.

But the biggest answer has to do with one of the crown jewels of last summer's multi-faceted lockout talks: The NBA now has aggressive revenue sharing.

And sources say that alone is set to cost the Lakers very close to $50 million this year, and something similar every year of the new collective bargaining agreement.

Imagine the Lakers were paying three Kobe Bryants this year, but two of them couldn't play a single minute, while still receiving full salaries. Few would wonder why the team was feeling the financial pinch in that scenario. In terms of how it affects the bottom line, however, revenue sharing is effectively that.

The way NBA revenue sharing works, now, the poorest teams can expect some serious help. Player costs were slashed right off the top -- most teams will save something like $10 million just from the players agreeing to take a fat cut in their share of league-wide revenues. On top of that, teams most in need of help, for instance in Memphis, Milwaukee, Indiana, New Orleans and the like, can expect to receive $10 or $20 million annually in money taken straight from the league's fat cats.

And the Lakers are the fattest cat -- at least in terms of how their basketball business performs.

Last year rich teams shared about $40 million with poor teams. That number is now approaching $200 million, and the Lakers lead a very short list of teams paying in.

So if you see the Lakers acting like they are feeling the financial pinch ... revenue sharing is a big part of the reason.

• Darius Soriano of Forum Blue and Gold on Derek Fisher: "He became a player that superstars looked to for guidance but role players saw as one of their own. He was part player, part coach. Part clutch performer and part motivational speaker. He was an iron man on the court (not missing a game in 6 straight seasons and counting) and iron willed off it. Competitive as all get out and willing to do whatever necessary to win. This endeared him to his teammates and Lakers’ fans, despised by other fanbases, but respected all the same. During this past off-season, he led the players union with dignity and dogged determination. He spoke of sticking together, of fighting for what was fair, and for not backing down in the face of what would surely be a deal that would be remembered as a defeat. He did this not because he necessarily wanted to, but because he was chosen to by his peers. Chosen to represent all players as the head of their union and fight for their interests.Gaining such respect doesn’t just happen on accident. It happens because of an abundance of character and leadership ability. Players from opposing teams and those that shared a locker room with him saw these qualities in him. He was yin to Kobe’s yang of leadership style. The one that could smooth off the rough edges of a biting critique. The person that could turn a harsh phrase into a useful plan of attack to implement in the next game, on the next possession. And now, with him gone. A void must be filled. Who steps in at this point is anyone’s guess. Maybe Gasol – a player of long tenure and equal thoughtfulness is the guy. Maybe Bynum’s youthful honesty and emerging game will command the respect of his peers. And, of course, Mike Brown and Kobe will need to step in and be the guides that move this team forward."
• Benjamin Polk of A Wolf Among Wolves: "Everybody loves March Madness and you can hardly blame them. The frantic, frayed late-game possessions; the mad, ten-man scrambles for rebounds and loose balls; the blood-thinning, oxygen starved comebacks; kids holding hands; grown men shedding tears: this stuff is truly compelling. But I will tell you now that I’m perfectly content sticking with the NBA, even as the tournament rages on. For one thing, the players are better at basketball and I really appreciate that. But for another, even your average NBA game carries a certain narrative richness, a structural depth that the college game really can’t match. Matchups evolve over the long course of the game. Players surge and regress. Momentum wavers and shifts many times over."
• Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell says the Spurs have telegraphed their future with one little Richard Jefferson trade: "In the summer of 2013, the Spurs could have a cap number just north of 30 million. This coincides perfectly with the new CBA -- the market on players should dramatically re-price itself in 2013 and it appears the Spurs will have significant leverage on that market. This is nothing short than a transparent rebuilding strategy. But, unlike most rebuilding strategies, the Spurs will enjoy the privilege of contending right up to the moment the team decides to begin again. ... Look to the Spurs to offer Duncan an eight figure contract for next season, but I suspect they keep their options open for 2013. ... On the Court Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green are the winners here. Their playing time will increase. ... Stephen Jackson will play more of a limited role than many fans expect. He’s a great fit for the Spurs in terms of guile and moxie, but he is unquestionably on the decline. The Spurs love wings that are positionally versatile on offense and defense. Captain Jack can defend multiple positions, and he can play multiple positions on offense, including advancing the ball and running as a small four. Jackson is a great fit for Popovich’s system. Jackson provides the Spurs with more size in their backcourt and insurance in the event of another Manu Ginobili injury. All wins. ... But beyond that, Jefferson is a vastly superior three point shooter. It’s not only a question of percentages (.421 vs. .278), it’s also a question of shot selection. Jefferson is more disciplined than Jackson, to put it mildly. I like Jackson. This is a good deal. It’s just better long term than short term; it’s better off the court than on it."
• Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game on Jason Kidd: "I understand that his influence goes well beyond the box score. I know that he spaces the floor and has a great understanding of how to operate a high-functioning offense. But we can only give Kidd so much benefit of the doubt before pondering why his highly esteemed passing skill doesn’t result in more assists or actually create all that many easy buckets."
• The Lakers have another deal fall apart under unusual circumstances. And this time the unusual circumstances are the Timberwolves.
• All in. Three out of three Magic bloggers believe Dwight Howard will re-up in Orlando beyond next season.
• Tyreke Evans' jumper is hurting. Somebody call a doctor!
• Rightly noted: Corey Brewer is always smiling. Love that. It is sometimes taken as weakness, but that's a crock. He's tough as nails. His dad just died, for crying out loud. Every night he scraps with far beefier opponents. And he's always smiling.
• What the Nuggets got in JaVale McGee. By the way, McGee is the epitome of a player who fails at the "optics" of the game. He makes very noticeable, obvious-to-all, brain-dead mistakes. So, that is a sin of politics. However, even when you count up all those whoppers, he's still very productive. McGee's not the best defender, but among the things PER captures, including all those gaudy turnovers and misses, he's a top-ten NBA center already, ahead of Al Horford, Tyson Chandler, Roy Hibbert, Marc Gasol etc. I'm not saying he is more valuable than those guys, or that statistics have all the answers. I'm saying those blooper reels can cloud your vision. If you watch the whole game, there's a lot more to him than some mistakes. And if he made similarly harmful, but more subtle mistakes, he'd take far less guff.
• Colin McGowan of Cavs: The Blog: "A lot of experts are calling this a coup for the Lakers, but I think a lot of experts haven’t seen Ramon Sessions play much basketball. He’s a good backup and a subpar starter, certainly better than Steve Blake or Derek Fisher, but the gap between him and Kyle Lowry is lake-sized. He can score, sometimes in bunches, and he’ll have the odd game where he racks up double-digit assists. He’s ball-dominant, totally capable of having a five-turnover nightmare of a game, and asking him to check a talented guard is like putting duct tape over the mouth of a geyser. I think he’ll be fine in LA, and they’ll be happy to have unburdened themselves from Luke Walton’s albatross-ish contract, but getting a first-rounder and moving up some eight spots in next year’s draft is more valuable to the Cavs than any contribution Sessions would have made over the coming years."
• Ronny Turiaf will not be forgotten. Neither will the Hawks' little-bitty trade.
• Vernon Macklin!
• In New Orleans: A bummer of a deadline, but keeping the team ain't bad.
• Wow. A (recently, anyway) contending team might really start Nick Young?

We like sports because they are like life, but cleaner, with pretty uniforms, clear rules, in-your-face competition, instant justice and winners declared nightly.

We also like to see effort rewarded. That's something that happens on the court and in our daily lives. Doesn't the thought of little Derrick Rose hammer dunking over 7-footers in the NBA put a little bounce in your step at work? How could you really be scared to ask for a raise, or make a presentation, when he's willing to do that.

Similarly, don't you love to see a team painstakingly make its draft picks and trades and coaching hires and just have it all work out? The Grizzlies were called every name in the book when they traded Pau Gasol for no big names at all, but you're damn straight they lasted in last year's playoffs for a whole week longer than Pau and the Lakers. Evidently the pieces they gathered weren't so lousy after all. Good effort, Grizz. They took their lumps, they scrapped, they improved ... and they proved everybody wrong except the Thunder.

Something like that is what we all aspire to do, right?

Sports are awesome.

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Consider one of Portland's trade deadline trades.

Perhaps the scarcest resource in sports is a useful NBA center. They just don't make a lot of seven-footers with elite athleticism. Marcus Camby is one of them. The Blazers traded Camby and his expiring contract for two players with expiring contracts who have never produced meaningfully and are virtual locks to be cut (Hasheem Thabeet and Jonny Flynn) and a poor-quality second-round pick.

Consider, also, that the two teams involved -- the Blazers and the Rockets -- have been locked in mortal combat for playoff positioning for half a decade or so.

If Portland wants cap space for next summer, simply keeping Camby would have done the trick. Gifting him needlessly to a rival, though, for the kind of pick that last year became ... Jon Diebler ... What is the point?

Of course, we all know the point. The Blazers are going in the tank, and this helps in the organizational mission to become a very, very bad team. You simply don't play wily veterans like Camby on teams like the Blazers who are playing to lose. It's a blemish on the venerable Camby's reputation, it doesn't serve the team's goals anyway, and if he gets hurt logging waste-of-time minutes it's the kind of NBA karma you might never escape. Bring on Thabeet.

Gerald Wallace is out, too, in what everyone agrees is a great trade. He's the kind of player any team would want, but the whole goal of rebuilding through the draft is getting the kind of draft pick only really bad teams like the Nets have. That was one of the best trades of the day.

Similarly, Nate McMillan is a real deal NBA professional who buttons his shirt all the way up, gets bossy in timeouts and coaches games with the conviction it's best to win them. So he's out too, whether out of mercy, respect, or acknowledgement that the love affair was over. Bring on Kaleb Canales, whom everybody in the organization loves, but some still refer to as "the video guy." You can't ask a guy like McMillan to captain a leaky ship like this. He's the kind of guy who will have a W-L record after his name until the day he dies.

---

Here's the crazy thing about this: As a Blazer fan, I think this loser of a strategy is a winner. I'm only sad they didn't go further. The team was not on a path to win a title. My conviction is that LaMarcus Aldridge should be traded, too. As a talented big-man All-Star in his prime he'll hurt the lottery positioning. But he might fetch some splendid cap space and picks.

We are conditioned to embrace this kind of strategy as sports fans. But it plays very poorly to people who buy tickets, and even worse in the world of sports-as-inspirational-metaphor-for-real-life.

How does this part of the sports world translate to our daily lives?

When my team was fighting like crazy every darned night, that felt a little like going to work and giving it my best even if it didn't always end well.

Ditching the good players and the coach, though ... that feels more like trumping up an injury to collect disability.

Whatever it is, it's not even one little bit scrappy.

And of course, this is not just the Blazers. Do you really think the Bobcats are doing everything they can to win, when their GM just took some time to explain that in keeping with the Thunder model, they were still focused on longer-term goals? I see the Nets playing Gerald Green long minutes, with better players resting, and I know what's up. There are similar oddities in Washington, Sacramento, Toronto and Detroit, and maybe some others besides. The NBA still owns the miserable New Orleans Hornets, and even the league's top officials have made noises about the long-term value of getting bad.

I'm not saying players are laying down, and maybe not even coaches. But the sad reality of the NBA system is that if you're the owner or GM of one of those teams, and you have a strategic bone in your body, losing a lot is at least one good approach, if not the very best approach.

---

We all get why it's so. Who wants those terrible teams to be locked in the basement forever? Throw them a bone, right?

Wrong. Not because I don't want bad teams to get good, but because this approach doesn't do the job. As the league explained again and again during the lockout, this sport has the worst parity of all the majors, and in particular this sport has bad mobility of teams. Bad teams have a hard time getting good -- I would argue that's because those bad teams have bad ownership and/or management, and there is no cure for repeated poor decision making.

What's more, the entire principle is flawed. Not to get all libertarian on you, but governments have long wanted to have as many citizens as possible enjoy financial security. And I think we can agree that somehow the approach that promises the least to the poor -- capitalism -- is the one that did the most for them. The "you figure it out" of the United States ended up working better than the "let me help you with that" of the communist block.

Getting your act together, being smart, and working really hard is what works wherever you are. The more people who do that the better. How many incentives should be set up to encourage that? Maybe all of them.

That's what works in the real world. There's no special reason to believe sports would be meaningfully different. Handing out draft picks to teams for losing has always been crazy, even if your goal is to help bad teams get good.

Malcolm Gladwell was onto this years ago (and now he has Jeff Van Gundy on board, among many others) in a conversation with Bill Simmons: "No economist in his right mind would ever endorse the football and basketball drafts the way they are structured now. They are a moral hazard in spades. If you give me a lottery pick for being an atrocious GM, where's my incentive not to be an atrocious GM?"

Meanwhile, consider the Rockets. They have dealt with all kinds of injuries to Yao Ming and many others. But have made trade after trade, year after year, just trying to win a few more games, and to get a tiny bit better. They have always been competing and scrapping, and by the looks of things always will be. And do you know what's sad? In the NBA, teams almost never progress from pretty good, like the Rockets and Blazers have been, to excellent. It's the jump we allege every team can make, but it's one of the least likely in sports.

So remember this Camby trade, and watch the Rockets and Blazers from here forward. They're racing to be the first to make it back to the Finals. One of them is trying to win by competing hard every night, the other is trying something that nobody in their right mind would want to watch.

As much as I appreciate the strategy in Portland, as a fan of competition, I wish I could support a league that inspired 30 teams to approach things like Houston.

As Dwight Howard and the Magic play out the end game of the trade deadline, they are charting a course through the eight different options the collective bargaining agreement creates:

• Howard can play out the season with the Magic, become a free agent, and re-sign with the team for five years. This would give him a total of $109,229,064 through 2016-17. But the Magic don’t appear to be open to this option -- they’d rather trade him now than risk losing him as a free agent this summer.
• Howard can play out the season with the Magic, become a free agent, and sign elsewhere. He could sign for four years at the same starting salary he’d get with the Magic, but with smaller raises. This works out to $81,114,453 through 2015-16. This is the scenario the Magic fear the most, so don’t expect to see him become a free agent this summer on the Magic’s watch.
• Howard can decide he’s ready to make a long-term commitment to the Magic, and forgo free agency both this summer and next, instead signing an extension to remain with the team. This locks in the highest possible salary for 2012-13, $19,536,360. But an extension can total just four years -- and those four years include any remaining years on his original contract. Even worse, the current season counts as one full year, even if he signs an extension as late as June 30. As a result, if he signs an extension before June 30 he’d add two additional seasons and be paid $63,004,761 through 2014-15 (this includes the option year 2012-13 on his current contract). The Magic would be happy to have Howard make a long-term commitment, but would want it done before the 3 PM trade deadline.
• If Howard signs an extension after July 1 he could add one additional season to his total, and be paid $86,936,802 through 2015-16. The only way the Magic would let this happen is if Howard first commits to the 2012-13 season by eliminating his early termination option. They can’t risk letting him become a free agent on July 1.
• The Magic could decide they’ve had enough of the Howard drama, and trade him now. This appears to be the most likely scenario if Howard does not agree to alter his contract to eliminate his option to become a free agent. His new team would inherit the same dilemma that currently face the Magic -- Howard could become a free agent in July, but his new team could re-sign him for the same $109,229,064 through 2016-17 that he could get with the Magic.
• If Howard is traded and becomes a free agent in July, he could also leave his new team to sign elsewhere. He could receive the same $81,114,453 through 2015-16 that he would get by leaving the Magic for a new team.
• Howard also could be traded and sign an extension with his new team. But extensions that occur within six months of a trade are treated like extend-and-trade transactions, which limit the extension to three seasons -- again, including any seasons remaining on his current contract. This means he’d get just $40,537,947 through 2013-14 -- which appears to be his least desirable option from a financial standpoint.
• Finally, Howard could be traded, opt-in with his new team for the 2012-13 season, and sign an extension after July 1 -- in fact, after the six-month anniversary of the trade (September 15). He would then be eligible to receive the full four years, giving him the same $86,936,802 through 2015-16 that he could get by extending with the Magic after July 1.

Be careful to avoid apples-to-oranges comparisons. It’s easy to compare $109 million to $81 million and conclude that it’s a no-brainer to take the $109 million. But it’s not that simple -- the $109 million is for one additional year, and if he takes the lesser amount for a shorter contract, the presumption is that he will sign for that additional year somewhere down the line. So he’s not “giving up” salary by taking the lesser amount -- he’s merely taking a risk of a career-ending injury occurring before he has a chance to sign.

It’s a complicated decision, and a tough choice, but it will be done by 3 PM today.

David Stern was all smiles in Orlando on Saturday: "We've had a great All-Star week so far. In addition to last night's Celebrity Game and the BBVA Rising Stars Competition, we had the two highest ratings in the history of those events, which is really keeping track with what's been going on this season ... all indexes are great with respect to attendance, with respect to ratings, with respect to sales, with respect to column inches, blogs, you name it. Instant messaging, Tweets, likes, and YouTube videos."

And then he added: "Everything is good."

This is an enormous change from a summer's talk of unsustainable business models and $300 million annual losses.

All of the indexes he described suggest the promise of a better bottom line to come. Not to mention, thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, this year owners have slashed player costs from 57 percent of basketball-related income to 51.15 percent.

That's like found money, on top of which the league is literally more popular than ever.

And yet, shortly after Stern's statement, deputy commissioner Adam Silver explains the league is still not out of the woods.

"The league will not make money this year," Silver says. And next year? "Maybe."

How can the league be so shockingly popular this season, and not yet profiting?

The league's books are not public, and thus there is not an independent answer.

The explanation from the league is that the cuts in player costs roughly match the losses from last year. But this year the league says there were an additional $200 million in losses related to the lockout, for instance due to lost ticket revenue and corporate sponsorships that didn't happen.

More importantly, popularity only equals big changes in revenue over years. The most obvious way that happens is with more lucrative national TV deals, but the old deals are still in place for two more years. High TV ratings have not meant new TV revenues for the league. Corporate sponsorships similarly take time to develop.

And according to the league, the popularity is nice, but not yet a cure for the league's financial distress.

When Tom Thibodeau was coaching at Harvard, he was more than happy to take some extra time to work out a talented young player named Arne Duncan. Years later, that young player has become the U.S. Education Secretary, and was in Thibodeau's words, "a strong advocate" pulling strings to get Thibodeau his current job.

Duncan joins us to describe the series of phone calls he made on Thibodeau's behalf to Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf. We also talk about little things like diversity, basketball, "Waiting for Superman," and fixing the American education system.

Also, recorded live at the NBA All-Star Tech Summit, Sonny Vaccaro digs into why it is that the NBA and the Players Association pushed off a decision about the age limit in crafting the current CBA. Interesting stuff.

Arne Duncan and Sonny Vaccaro on NBA Today.

Jennifer Epstein of Politico:

Obama rounded a day of travel that included a speech on energy policy and two fundraisers in the Miami area with a third fundraiser, at the home of Dallas Mavericks player Vince Carter. Carter welcomed the president to his home for an event that included former NBA players Magic Johnson, Alonzo Mourning, Chris Paul and Steve Smith, plus NBA commissioner David Stern and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Near the start Obama also offered his appreciation to Stern. "I just want to say, thank you so much for settling the lockout, because I don't know what I would be doing with myself if I didn't at least have some basketball games around," he said. "And obviously we're looking forward to the All-Star Game. The game in Miami is tight, by the way. I was checking on the score as I was flying out."

Earlier in the day, Obama said he had hoped to attend the game this weekend, as well as Thursday night's New York Knicks-Miami Heat game. “In another life, I would be staying for the Knicks-Heat game tonight, then go up to Orlando for NBA All-Star Weekend," he said earlier in the day in Coral Gables. "But these days, I’ve got a few other things on my plate. Just a few.”

At another event, he added: “I just want you to know that I am resentful I'm not going to the game tonight. I am mad about that. It's not right. It's not fair. But I wish you guys all the best.”

Mark Cuban made his feelings about the Chris Paul trade saga public back in December, and reiterated them last night as the Mavericks and Clippers squared off in Dallas:

The right deal, in Cuban's opinion, would have been none at all, even if that meant losing Paul for nothing at the end of the season.

"You're better off just taking the cap room, or whatever," Cuban said.

... "I don't think it was about the Lakers, per se," Cuban said before the game. "I think it was just the way they did the deal, which was ridiculous. I don't think it was about which team. I think it was the fact that, even with the Clippers, we just went through this whole (collective bargaining agreement) and said the incumbent team still has the advantage and then the team the league owns (wimps) out. And look how it's worked out for them.

"Bad management gets you bad results."

That was meant as a jab at NBA commissioner David Stern, not Hornets general manager Dell Demps.

"It's not about being better or worse," Cuban said when asked to compare the offers for Paul. "It's hard to judge any trade until it's done. It's about the concepts involved and the integrity of what we went through for the CBA. That's what it's all about. (The league office) screwed the pooch either way.

"The whole idea about having most of these rules is that you'd have an advantage and wouldn't have to trade people."

Cuban has made a bunch of smart points about the clumsiness of the events surrounding Paul's departure from New Orleans, but here's where I take issue with his logic. He's repeatedly stated that the negotiations of the new collective bargaining agreement should have empowered the Hornets to dig their heels in and hold on to Paul for the full duration of his contract. After all, why fight for a new CBA only to cave on the very principles the battle was waged when a superstar asks out?!

The problem here is that the new CBA didn't adequately address the issue Cuban refers to with regard to the incumbent team still having an advantage at retaining the services of a superstar. Yes, the Hornets would still be able to offer Paul more money than any other club -- and I also agree with Cuban that letting Paul walk while getting nothing in return wouldn't have been the worst outcome for the Hornets -- but what other assets do they have other than some abstract notion of incumbency?

If the league's owners were serious about giving teams like the Hornets the leverage they needed to hang on to players like Paul, they should have demanded a franchise tag, plain and simple. While they were at it, they should have also radically reformed a system that rewards franchises with low-priced, high-ceiling talent when they dump good players. The Lakers/Rockets package was rejected, in some part, because the players coming to New Orleans would've made the Hornets too competitive which, in turn, would've made it difficult for New Orleans to get its hands on the best young talent on the draft board for the foreseeable future. [I personally disagree with the first proposal and agree with the second].

Cuban's frustration is understandable and even justified on many levels. But the idea that the new CBA should've prompted the Hornets to hang onto Paul doesn't pass muster. The incentives simply weren't strong enough -- otherwise Paul would still be a Hornet. The spirit of the law and the law itself are two very different things.

Jeremy Lin's agent says he hasn't slept in days, fielding calls with business opportunities. Knicks games are being added to broadcasts all across Asia.

In the strangest of ways, the NBA has found, in a young Taiwanese-American, a near-perfect poster child for the league in the NBA's biggest market. It's a shot in a critical arm of the league's global brand.

What's interesting is that the league says that despite Yao Ming's retirement and recent reports of blown opportunities, the league is doing very well in China, thank you very much, despite one prominent apparent misstep.

A few years ago, all kinds of heavy hitters lined up all kinds of money to create a new business entity called NBA China. What precisely it would do was never all that clear, publicly. But when NBA China was created, there was a lot of excitement about more reforms and openness in the Chinese sporting world, especially surrounding the 2008 Olympics.

"The model that we're working on now is the placement of all of our assets in China in an enterprise with all NBA rights," David Stern said at a Reuters Summit in 2006. Those would include rights to sponsorship and merchandise revenue and TV deals and, he said, "the ability to operate a league such as NBA of China. It's something that will be articulated by the close of the Beijing Olympics."

If the NBA has a scheme for global sports domination, this was a major pillar.

It never happened, of course. There is no NBA league in China.

Why not?

That's a big question for at least two reasons. The first is that it's a mystery, and everybody likes mysteries.

The second is that off the record, various insiders have suggested that the NBA's recent financial woes -- the very woes that fueled the lockout and inspired a wholly different collective bargaining agreement -- had more than a little to do with missed bets in China, which Stern's comments have at times appeared to support.

February 2010 was one of the first times Stern explained why NBA players would need to accept a smaller share of revenues. After talking about flat ticket prices, he volunteered another reason: the league's spending overseas. At that time, the only bold new play was China. "Internationally, those initial dollars are very costly to come by," he explained. "We are out there; when you open an office and you ship people there and you do the investment spending; we have always investment spent and we are continuing to do that. But it's beginning to … this economic environment, we are feeling it a little bit more. We have had cutbacks at the league, we have had cutbacks at the teams and reductions of expenses and the like."

As Jim Yardley explained recently in The New York Times magazine, the NBA's very talk of a league in China helped to doom a league in China:

Stern’s comments at the Reuters Summit, delivered almost as an aside, were quickly picked up in the Chinese media and caught the attention of the man who then ran the C.B.A., Li Yuanwei. A former college professor, Li was known as a reformer who admired the N.B.A.’s business model. I spoke with Li during my season following the Shanxi Brave Dragons, and he recalled being stunned when he learned about Stern’s plans for an N.B.A. league.

"He had never said this before to us," Li said. "If he had said he wanted to cooperate with the C.B.A., then that would have been understandable. But he didn’t say a word, which meant he knew nothing about China." ...

In an unpublicized meeting, Tim Chen, then chief executive of N.B.A. China, presented a proposal to Li Yuanwei, in which both sides would equally control a new eight-team league under the N.B.A. brand. C.B.A. owners would have the first right to buy a team for $50 million. Li Yuanwei, already distracted by preparations for the Olympics, flatly rejected the plan and postponed any further discussions until after the Games. Instead, when Stern returned to Beijing for an exhibition game, a month and a half after the Olympics, he discussed the N.B.A.’s plans to help develop and manage a network of new arenas across China. "If we do get to the point where we have that cooperative league," he said, "we’ll have the buildings already."

The N.B.A., however, has largely suspended those grand plans for the foreseeable future, while also stalling plans to build N.B.A. retail stores throughout the country. David Shoemaker, who became N.B.A. China’s chief executive in June, said the N.B.A.’s agenda now involves several collaborations with the Chinese league, including exchanges in which Chinese coaches and referees receive training in the United States, as well as a basketball academy in southern China to develop elite players. As for a league? Shoemaker called it a distant possibility.

Sounds like failure, doesn't it?

"They haven't failed at all."

Before he founded The Raine Group, while working for Goldman Sachs, Joseph Ravitch advised the NBA on setting up its China business. He has been watching closely ever since and says the NBA executives "haven't failed at all. They've done exactly what they said they were going to do."

Goldman Sachs valued the deal at $2.4 billion at the time, a number that Ravitch says can be justified even without a league.

"The key to that deal is that NBA China owns all of the rights, past, present and future, to all NBA trademarks, all NBA content, all the video past, present and future, for greater China," he explained. In other words, the counting starts with every dollar the league will ever earn from broadcasting to one of the biggest NBA TV markets in the world. (It is said that more people in China play basketball than live in the entire United States.)

"What people bought when they invested in it was effectively the intellectual property around the NBA past, present and future. Which is, one can argue, incalculable in value,” Ravitch said. "David Stern will tell you he sold it way too cheap because you can't possibly calculate the value of that. The NBA jumping man logo is on a billion milk cartons in China. It's on tissue boxes. It's on a mobile phone. People license it for consumer products because it seems such a cool, healthy brand. People know what the NBA is from the jumping man logo.”

"In basketball, you miss some shots," David Shoemaker, the current head of NBA China, said in response to Yardley's article, which had a headline online about the league missing shots in China. "[Michael] Jordan famously talked about how many shots he missed on his way to all those championships. I feel like we're making a lot of shots. We're hitting some 3s, there are some dunks along the way."

Shoemaker came to NBA China after running the World Tennis Association from Beijing.
"I was sitting on the sidelines at the WTA, looking up at the NBA, and NBA China in particular, as the gold standard, the model we aspired to." he recalled. "It was a thriving and growing business -- as far as we were concerned -- set the standard of sport in China and was clearly the No. 1 sports marketing property in all of China measured by every metric. The valuation then and now comes as no surprise to me. It's based on a fully diversified business that starts at its core as a sponsorship business, which has an A-list who's who of sponsors, both multinational and Chinese companies. You've got the likes of Coke and adidas, Nike, Visa as multinationals and then the likes of Lenovo, Dungfeng and Peak.

"Then you turn to the digital business, where the NBA is routinely breaking records with two portals, Sina.com and QQ.com. It makes a lot of money. Very valuable business. It has potential to make many multiples more. Our partner on League Pass is the Shanghai Media Group. It's only a couple of years old. But it's something we believe has an extraordinarily bright future, given the projections of the Chinese middle class and disposable income tied to the popularity of NBA basketball in China. We've got a merchandise business, where NBA merchandise is available at over 25,000 points of sale. Our on-court apparel is in over 2,200 adidas stores in China. We also have our own NBAstore.com here in China. We believe that's an integral part of our strategy here in China."

Underscoring all of that is that reality that the NBA is more popular than ever. The retirement of Yao Ming was said to predict the league's demise, but even before the explosion of the Knicks' Jeremy Lin -- a huge story in China -- TV ratings have been up 39 percent compared to last season. The two or three preseason games NBA teams play in China every year are, Shoemaker says, "probably the most popular recurring live sporting event in China ... always playing to sold-out houses, always to very well-sponsored events, with extremely good television ratings, digital coverage and the like."

To anyone who doubts the NBA's popularity in China, Ravitch suggests attending: "Go for the China games in October. It's a phenomenon."

Ravitch says the NBA's prominence in China underscores a key global branding success: Elite basketball, all over the globe, is synonymous with the NBA. That's a feat no other global league has accomplished. "It's the only league," he pointed out, "where it’s made its league brand and its players synonymous with the sport globally. In Italy, where basketball is a successful sport, the NBA games outrate the Italian basketball games on television. The best thing they've done is create a global brand of basketball synonymous with the NBA. There's no global brand associated with soccer. You have national teams, you have leagues, you have FIFA ... there are very few sports that are truly global … the NBA is truly unique.

"When the Chinese 20-year-olds are looking for heroes or are wanting to watch games or wanting to watch the best basketball players, they watch NBA games, they buy NBA merchandise and they idolize the NBA players. There's lots of statistics about the number of uniques on NBA.com.cn far exceeding the number of uniques on NBA.com. All the videos, social media. The notion the NBA hasn't succeeded because we don't have a league is crazy."

Where's that league?

There seems to be little argument that the NBA runs a strong business in China. The NBA is essentially the most popular sport in the biggest and richest basketball market in the world.

But a local NBA league in China has not gotten anywhere, with estimates it is a decade or two away at best.

So what was all that talk about? Stern's talk at the Reuters Summit, for example, or Tim Chen's meeting with Li Yuanwei?

The party line is that a league was never a big deal. "A league," said Ravitch, who was in the room when NBA China's strategy was born, "was a bonus. But it was never in the plan."

Shoemaker, who took over NBA China last year, echoed that sentiment: "I don't think there's ever really been a change in the plan. Everyone has understood that the most important thing to do is to collaborate in growing the game of basketball. That's a strategy that I've been fully focused on, but it's not like I invented it. That was here well before me and all the foundation for that sort of stuff was laid by my predecessors. Could there come a day where we collaborate with the Chinese Basketball Association on a league here in China? Surely yes. But that's not our focus. And it'll take a long time to get to that point. We're going to do it right. And we're going to build the game of basketball at the most fundamental level, and if those pieces fall into place, then so be it. That's how it'll work."

Yet Stern, Chen and others directly involved certainly once anticipated real progress around the time of the Beijing Olympics. Whether it was a "bonus" or a "strategy," those involved once spoke of it optimistically but have shifted to using the vaguest possible terms and schedule. Why?

A theory: The NBA's desire for a Chinese league was very real -- and was thwarted by the machinations of Chinese politics. When NBA China was founded, known reformer Li was in the key decision-making position. After the Beijing Olympics, Li was replaced by the more conservative Xin Lancheng. That was part of a bigger trend: Before the Olympics there had been confident talk about opening the Chinese sports system to reforms and outsiders, but in reality very little of that has happened.

Whatever the barriers are to a league, they certainly seem to be sensitive. I asked Shoemaker what the challenges were, and he was silent for nearly 10 full seconds before saying, "You've got me there, in a sense," and then talking in the vaguest terms about settling on the right plan.

My interpretation: The obstacles are politicians. And calling them out makes them bigger obstacles. So somebody in Shoemaker's position must say nothing even approaching inflammatory, keeping expectations quiet and learning from Stern's evident error with Li before the Olympics.

Ravitch said the idea that Stern's comments derailed the process has been "overstated," but nevertheless the calculus seems to be that even admitting NBA China still really wants a league would be an error of rhetoric that could make political problems. So those at the NBA and NBA China speak in "maybe one day" terms and wait for political stars to align.

In the meantime, the wins are in selling NBA-branded TV broadcasts, milk cartons, cell phones, online experiences and the like -- and in incrementally raising the level of the game so that if and when there is an NBA league in China, it will pass muster with fans. To that end, NBA China now touts more modest, politically careful accomplishments such as referee and coaching exchanges, rehabbing arenas in China's major cities and collaborating in creating the CBA Donnguan Basketball School for elite players.

"The Chinese are extremely sensitive right now about protecting their own cultural institutions, as they should be," Ravitch said. "The NBA’s strategy is to work with the CBA and make it a stronger league, train coaches, make the CBA better because the more successful basketball is in China the better for the NBA in the long term."

And in the long term, perhaps the NBA will find a way to present live, in-the-flesh basketball to a massive, basketball-loving, brand-conscious and increasingly wealthy domestic Chinese market. Until then, the other parts of the business are doing well enough to declare victory.

In a chat with Freakonomics, the owner of the Mavericks addressed all kinds of things.

Two, in particular, had to do with the league office. In one he was asked about the state of refereeing. Cuban responded:

Trust me, I’m still working hard to help the league improve its processes. Like any other profession, there is still room to improve.

A reader named Ryan asked Cuban if the new collective bargaining agreement addresses the problems facing the NBA. Cuban's response:

No. Not even close.

Also, a ton of people seemed to want Cuban's advice about what kind of job to seek. His most direct answer was "sales, anywhere in the technology field."

And check out the final answer in his chat for why he thinks you should never follow your dreams.