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Nobody can really tell you -- not the NBA scheduler, those who work in the NBA offices in New York, nor historians of the game.

Stuck on 82
NBA teams played 80 games each beginning in 1961-62. The league added a game in 1966-67, bringing the total to 81, then ultimately settled on 82 games for the 1967-68 season, when the San Diego Rockets and Seattle SuperSonics joined the league. Now a 12-team league, the NBA had each team play its conference rivals eight times and its inter-conference foes seven times. As the league continued to expand, the NBA maintained its 82-game schedule -- the only exception being the 1998-99 season, when a lockout produced an abbreviated -- and compressed -- 50-game schedule.

Too often, we allow tradition to govern the way we do things, and that holds true in the NBA. Rules and laws that were drawn up ages ago become entrenched and are rarely reexamined to see if they're working to their intended effect or whether we can improve upon them.

A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times, Richard Sandomir made the case for a shortened NBA schedule, noting that fewer games might save some wear and tear on NBA players. He consults with Jeff Van Gundy (who advocates for fewer games, but over the same duration) and Bill Simmons, who each support trimming a handful of games from the NBA schedule, while David Thorpe counters not so fast. At TrueHoop last week, J.A. Adande filed a concurring opinion in support of a 76-game schedule.

The wear-and-tear argument for fewer games certainly has merit, but the best reason to play fewer games is to create more compelling basketball, an NBA where there are more meaningful games and a greater number of fans who make appointments to watch.

March Madness and the NFL
Eighteen months ago, CBS and TNT agreed to pay the NCAA $10.8 billion for the rights to broadcast the 67 games that compose March Madness over a span of 14 years. That's more than $771 per year. Throw in the digital rights (including the ingenious boss button) and that figure crosses $11 billion.

The NBA currently receives approximately $930 million deal from its broadcast partners, ESPN/ABC and TNT, in a deal that will run through the 2015-16 season. The two networks combine to televise 142 regular-season games. TNT gets the All-Star Game and a slew of playoff games, while ABC airs The Finals and a handful of weekend postseason games.

In other words, the NCAA sells the 11 broadcast dates of March Madness for just a smidgen less per year than the NBA earns for the rights to eight months of NBA basketball. It's important to note that March Madness has a lot of things going for it. Seemingly every office in America hosts a bracket pool, and the sudden-death nature of the tournament produces a level of drama that's tough to replicate in any sport.

The NFL, whose broadcast contracts are staggering, provides another measuring stick. Pro football is the ultimate appointment-viewing sport in North America and rakes in an obscene amount of money. ESPN pays $1.8 billion per season for the rights to Monday Night Football, streaming rights, expanded highlight packages and the draft. That's nearly twice what the NBA earns from its partners for nearly its entire national package, and doesn't include the enormous amount of cash the league generates from Sunday broadcasts on Fox, CBS and NBC. The NBA, of course, generates significant revenue from local television rights, though few of those numbers are publicly available -- and few of those deals likely come close to the $150 million per season the Lakers will reportedly earn from their new agreement with Time Warner.

Finding the sweet spot
How can the NBA tap into some of magic of the NCAA tournament or the NFL?

Many skeptics insist that the NBA product just isn't as telegenic or engaging as March Madness or the NFL. NBA enthusiasts would argue that's not the case -- it's just that the league hasn't cracked the code on how to translate all the virtues of the pro game into something people really, really, really want to watch, even in January.

If the NCAA and NFL have taught us one thing, it's that scarcity matters. Simply put, the fewer the games, the more eventful they feel. When games have greater consequences, they're imbued with a special brand of relevance. We congregate with friends, families and sometimes people we merely tolerate to create a community gathering around a game.

But how much does scarcity matter? How would we determine the ideal length of the NBA schedule?

In Economics 101, students learn about the utility or indifference curve, and how to find the sweet spot on the graph where a product's availability matches market demand.

Right now, there are 82 games. Why? Because it's been that way for decades. But "been that way for decades" -- or tradition -- is generally a lousy way to make decisions or to determine utility. Your local grocery doesn't buy inventory for the frozen food aisle based on purchasing and sales figures from 1972. The smart retailer constantly evaluates and re-evaluates consumer demand. People's habits change and a product that was a good loss leader 10 years ago might not be one now.

If we assume that 82 games is too many to achieve our goal of increasing interest, it's safe to say that 16 games are too few. A 76-game schedule would eliminate many of the "schedule losses" that come when exhausted teams roll into a far-off city at the tail end of a road trip, but what about something more radical -- say a 44-game schedule:

Let's play 44
An NBA team would play twice a week:

• One mid-week game: National doubleheaders on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the remaining 22 teams playing on Wednesday night -- which would also feature a the current nationally televised double-header, with the remaining 18 teams playing on local television outlets. Mondays and Fridays are essentially travel days.
• One weekend game: Teams playing on Saturday and Sunday. Following the NFL season, the NBA's Sunday schedule would feature a quintuple-header, with the remaining teams playing on Saturday.

Teams would play conference rivals twice -- home and away -- and inter-conference opponents just once. Since that equals an awkwardly-numbered 43 games, the extra contest would be an additional matchup with an inter-conference opponent. The team that finished No. 1 the previous season in the Western Conference would play its counterpart in the East a second time; No. 2 would play No. 2, etc. This doesn't offer the balancing act the NFL performs to give lesser teams an easier schedule while planting land mines for the juggernauts, but it's something.

Take into account the All-Star break and you have a 23-week season that would extend from approximately Nov. 1 through the first week in April, virtually identical to what we have now.

In the current scheme, it's difficult to answer the question, "When does your NBA team play?"

Tuesdays? Sometimes. Every other day? Occasionally it works out that way. Sundays? It depends.

A twice-a-week format (once during the week/once over the weekend) would provide the NBA with the comfy consistency we see in the NFL schedule (once a week) and Major League Baseball schedule (every day). In the process, the NBA would have at least 88 nationally televised dates prior to the postseason -- dates that feature games of far greater magnitude. Inter-conference matchups become real novelties. The days of the dreaded second-night-of-a-back-to-back would be history.

Revenue costs up front, but a better product
Clearly, a 44-game schedule wouldn't come without a cost. The hit would be especially hard for teams like the Lakers, Knicks and Celtics who have lucrative television deals. Both local broadcast revenues and gate receipts (and associated game-night revenue) would be drastically reduced, but some of that revenue would be recaptured with increased ticket prices tighter and healthier national ratings right off the bat.

That's still a tough sell to the owners -- and it might be a tougher sell to the players if fewer games meant smaller paychecks, even if less wear-and-tear could translate into longer, healthier careers. And try telling a small-market owner that the Lakers or Heat will appear in their building only once every other year.

But fewer games would introduce the kind of randomness that makes the NCAA Tournament and the NFL so tantalizing. When you play fewer games with higher stakes, a couple of bounces here and there over the course of a season can vault Cinderella to the ball. A greater number of teams would hang around the playoff chase later into the season. For a league that insists an NFL-like "competitive balance" is a priority, a shorter schedule that encourages parity is the place to start.

In an era when the league's fortunes are driven by broadcast revenues, a 44-game schedule during which rested athletes are playing their best basketball in front of more vested fans would create a superior product the NBA could televise to a global audience with more capacity than ever to tune in. A nod toward a made-for-broadcast schedule would go a long way toward evenly distributing the NBA's dominant income stream, because local television rights would be secondary to the global reach of a superior product.

The Lakers aren't playing the majority of their games for the Los Angeles and San Diego markets at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on a weeknight. Instead, they're playing half their games (each of which is twice as meaningful) as the showcase event at 12:30 p.m. Pacific, 3:30 p.m. Eastern and 8:30 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on a Saturday or Sunday. Everyone watches, and everyone profits. If the NBA wants that NFL feel -- "competitive balance" driven by non-local broadcast revenue -- this is a far better blueprint than redistribution.

Would 44 games enhance fan interest in the NBA? If so, would that interest translate into greater revenues that would compensate for fewer games? We simply can't say and it's virtually impossible to conduct an experiment.

For all we know, the best way to maximize profits for the NBA, its owners, players, coaches landlords and ushers might be to increase the number of games to 94 -- start in mid-October and host Game 7 of the Finals the weekend before the Major League All-Star Game. More games equal more money, yes?

Ninety-four is just an arbitrary number. And so is 44.

But so is 82.

Revenue sharing continues to linger in the background of the labor negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.

And, to some extent, that makes sense. Before owners can engage in a meaningful debate about the redistribution of revenue across the league's 30 teams, there has to be some consensus about what revenue will actually look like in the context of a new deal.

As a disclaimer, I'm a skeptic of revenue sharing as a means to achieve competitive balance. It's a strategy that hasn't succeeded in baseball -- the Pittsburgh Pirates being the prime example. Not only has the payout to the Pirates from "richer" clubs not resulted in the kind of investment by the team the revenue sharing plan was designed to incentivize, but there's also a fundamental illogic to the whole scheme because the formula is based on actual revenue (from which "wealthier" franchises cut checks and "struggling" franchises deposit them) rather than projected revenue. To wit, the Seattle Mariners, despite losing 101 games in 2008, paid $16.1 million into the revenue sharing pool, then ended up losing more than $4 million on their bottom line! Meanwhile the Pirates pocketed the cash and, until their somewhat competent half-season in 2011, continued to founder.

Parity and competitive balance are the most oft-cited reasons for instituting revenue sharing. I'm not convinced that parity is either achievable or even desirable in team sports (but that's a different conversation for a different day). Barring the abolition of free agency and a reinstitution of the reverse clause, which stipulated that teams got to hang on to the rights of their existing players even after those players' contracts expired, there's little guarantee that the playing field can truly be balanced.

Despite my wariness of a revenue sharing system that forces profitable franchises to underwrite the losses of unprofitable ones -- losses very often born out of mismanagement or indiscriminate spending -- I am a sucker for sound, principled arguments, even if they challenge my general beliefs.

In 2000, Major League Baseball was undergoing a similar self-examination. A blue-ribbon panel was convened and its wise men issued a report that said that, between 1995-99, the 30 major league teams teams lost more than $1 billion. According to the findings, only the New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians and Colorado Rockies turned a profit over that period.

Broadcaster Bob Costas has always been a self-appointed guardian of baseball. He's a rational, erudite guy with a passion for the game. Costas applied his uncommon ability to combine pragmatism with his love of baseball to author a book called "Fair Play," subtitled "A Fan's Case for Baseball."

Costas set out to address many of the structural problems that existed in major league baseball -- along with a few of his pet issues like the designated hitter (blech) and interleague play (yawn).

Among the meatier issues was revenue sharing in a sport where the most profound gap in revenue between the haves and have-nots were local broadcasting revenue. At the time, the Yankees earned approximately $58 million per year, while Jonah Keri's Montreal Expos generated only $3 million -- hardly enough to pay Youppi.

To his credit, Costas is unmoved by revenue sharing proposals based on abstract notions of "the longterm health of the game," even as he supported leveling the playing field. In his vision, if you're going to put forward a blueprint for redistribution, it must stand on a foundation of principle.

And in his eyes, the idea that the Yankees should keep every dollar of their local television revenue didn't make a lot of sense, and here's why:

You don't have a game without two major league teams. The New York Yankees make $58 million a year in local broadcasting revenues, but the money comes because they're playing games against other major league teams. Yankee intrasquad games are not broadcast, and wouldn't be watched in such numbers if they were.

Costas' proposal was this: Since the Yankees can't generate eyeballs -- and, in turn, ratings -- unless teams like the Kansas City Royals or Oakland Athletics or Toronto Blue Jays are in the other dugout, those franchises have a legitimate claim to the Yankees' local television revenue. Fifty percent of the Yankees' massive haul from their local media deal should be placed into a pot that will be divided equally among the league's teams. As Costas writes, "[N]otice that the principle is not mere charity."

The 50/50 team/league split of local broadcasting revenues has the virtue of being connected to a rock-solid principle that doesn't have anything to do with altruism. Instead, it's based on a sound understanding of the cooperative nature of leagues.

This is the only way to equitably spread the wealth and help balance the playing field. Any other plan that I've seen either goes too far toward complete revenue sharing (reducing the incentive for teams that is crucial for this to work) or uses the ends to justify the means (arbitrarily robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, without recognizing that there is some room for fluctuation in the identities of "poor" and "rich" teams.

When we consider the nine-figure deal struck between the Los Angeles Lakers and Time Warner, the Yankees' $58 million ($29 million of which would go into Costas' pool) seems quaint. But the underlying principle holds:

Very few people are going to watch the gold jerseys vs. the purple jerseys live from the Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo. When Kobe Bryant scores 81 points, it's impressive because the Toronto Raptors (an NBA team, at least nominally, at that moment) were on the floor in a (nominally) non-exhibition game.

There's a reason Delaware State gets a nice payday when it travels to Ann Arbor to face Michigan at the Big House on a Saturday in September. Michigan can't whoop up on a cupcake opponent and stoke their fan base without the Hornets of Dover.

In a similar spirit, visiting NBA teams have a rightful claim to profits home teams derive from that appearance (at the turnstile as well, another proposal Costas puts forward).

Competence and frugality will always be essential for small-market NBA teams to prosper, but it's myopic -- even for revenue sharing skeptics like me -- to ignore the fact that the Milwaukee Bucks could go 68-14 next season, capture the attention of every man, woman and child from Racine to Superior and into the Iron Range of Minnesota, and never achieve a fraction of the broadcast revenue the Lakers will milk from Time Warner over the next 20 years.

At the same time, proponents of willy-nilly revenue sharing must ground that conviction in cold, rational logic. An insistence that wealthy hobbyists need welfare from luckier wealthy hobbyists to solve the league's structural issues needs to be accompanied by a firm case.

Costas' 11-year-old idea provides a strong one.

• For reasons Kevin Arnovitz explained a few days ago, some poor sucker at every team has to maintain a website without any player content. No images, no Twitter feeds, no videos, no nothing. So, what's the next logical step? Why, take the dancers to the local zoo, of course, to help clean up after various animals, and video the whole thing. Pitchforks in hand, a zookeeper informs some Utah dancers that one of the zoo's elephants can leave a 125-pound deposit. "That's like pooping me!" exclaims one of the dancers. Could be a long summer.
• Don't expect the National Labor Relations Board to act fast.
• David Stern has one of the best game faces in labor relations history. But watch the video from Thursday's press conference. He still has it, but now it's served with a generous helping of blatant fatigue. When Adam Silver mentioned the upcoming three-day weekend, I found myself nodding. Just a few days off is the first order of business.
• I think the union will pay right now for a huge error over the last decade. They're competing in just one country, but there's a global market out there. In theory, the union could announce next week that they are opening negotiations to send 200 players to Spain, Italy, France, Russia, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Greece -- maybe even England in advance of next summer's Olympics. But they will make no such announcement, as a group, because they are only in the business of dealing with one client, the NBA. But that doesn't mean players can't go overseas, and no one disputes NBA free agents (who will pay for being free agents now in their next, smaller deals) can head to play overseas right now if they want to. As for American players under contract, Larry Coon explains that if players want to play overseas, they need a letter from USA basketball saying it's OK. Coon: "In order to play professionally overseas, FIBA (the organizing body for international basketball) requires a Letter of Clearance from the player's national organizing body. In the case of players from the United States, that's USA Basketball. The Letter of Clearance certifies that the player is free to sign a contract -- i.e., he has no other contractual obligations that would get in the way. An NBA contract is such a contractual obligation. Lockout or not, it's still an existing contract. So on the surface, an NBA player who's under contract would not be allowed to sign in any FIBA league. NBA free agents, on the other hand, can sign wherever they'd like. But here's the rub -- we're getting into uncharted territory. FIBA has never found itself in this position before. FIBA could decide to alter or suspend its rule requiring a Letter of Clearance, or allow contracts to be signed so long as they contain language that says the contract becomes null and void immediately if the NBA lockout ends. More likely, FIBA simply would stick to its existing rule, essentially punting the problem to the national organizing bodies. These bodies (such as USA Basketball) could decide to issue a Letter of Clearance notwithstanding the NBA lockout. Or they could issue a Letter of Clearance with a specific notation about the lockout -- essentially punting the problem right back to FIBA. Finally, the NBA players could take FIBA and/or the national organizing bodies to court. The ability to block players in a lockout has never been tested through litigation, and once they're there, anything can happen."
• NBA coaches or employees can't have any contact with players. Got to believe that's a major boon for unemployed coaches (right this way, Larry Brown!) and unaffiliated private trainers and the like. Serious players will be seeking out serious help.
• Remember that every NBA player had eight percent of their salaries escrowed all season? They're due for those payments, of something like $160 million, next month. Not a bad little bump to keep people going if this thing drags on.
• Chris Sheridan reiterates how friendly the tone of these talks are. Theory: That's because the real adversaries aren't in the room. Stern and Silver are in the business of running a basketball league, not shutting one down. They have given oodles of indications they want a deal. The real hardliners are the owners who prefer a lockout to the status quo. Maybe what matters is not the tone between Stern and the players, but the tone between Stern and his most hawkish owners. That's one place movement will have to originate for a deal to get done.
• David Thorpe points out that the NBA has done the NCAA an enormous set of favors. First they scared off all this top talent like Harrison Barnes, and now they're potentially going to let the NCAA be the only real basketball on television this winter. (Which begs another question: Wonder if anybody would televise European hoops as a stopgap.)
• In American history, the model of standing together to wield power is the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were just the tip of the iceberg of what worked there. A less famous aspect was that the city miscalculated in how much the people of Montgomery would help each other, and for how long. The idea was that if people couldn't get to work, they'd cave eventually, because they needed those buses to pay their bills. But the shared ride services emerged -- those with cars helped out those without. It ran on goodwill among those who had little, and it worked well enough to deliver a clear victory. I bring this up thinking that the owners are assuming more than enough players will break under the financial stress of living without paychecks. And that may be true. However, if you told me that the players were all pledging to help each other out, in real terms, like paying each others' bills as necessary through the lockout ... well that would be a formidable foe for the owners to face.
• Sad thing for all of us: People have a very limited time of their lives to perform at an elite NBA level. Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade ... whatever happens with the money, it'd be a shame for them to miss one day of their primes.

• Blazers GM Rich Cho has been fired. When Portland GMs assert themselves in a Paul Allen world, these things happen. The Blazers are a turbo-charged GM merry-go-round -- the more it spins, the more executives fall out. Hold on tight, acting GM Chad Buchanan.
• Rick Welts tells great, uplifting stories about how his coming out has been received. Suns executives stood and applauded when he returned to work. His teenaged niece says her friends think she is now way cooler than ever, just for being related to the basketball executive who came out of the closet. And in the stacks of mail, amazingly all of it has been positive so far.
• The other day I learned from Luc Richard Mbah a Moute that one of the toughest realities of guarding LeBron James is his handle. Size, power, quickness ... we all knew that. But the handle element was interesting, and I have been watching ever since with an eye to how he handles the ball. It's no joke. I'd also add that Game 3 included some of James' best passing ever -- a number times he got the defense all out of whack, then fired a laser right to the hoop.
• Russell Westbrook misses some opportunities to pass. He is ridiculed as if that's intentional. David Thorpe asks a different question: What if he lacks vision? "On one play, Nick Collison was open for a dunk, but just for a millisecond. Westbrook didn't make the pass, and it might be because he didn't see it," says Thorpe. "That's a tougher thing to learn."
• See the Thunder offense not moving.
• So Danny Ainge, you assembled the team that leads the league at not pointing fingers at each other, in public, when things get tough. So, whose fault is it your team isn't still playing? You wouldn't point fingers, right? Hayes Davenport on CelticsHub: "In making the media rounds after Game 5, Ainge explicitly assigned blame for the season’s end to his players, and nobly declined to leave any for himself, the person who brought those players together. Articles like these are riddled with quotes about how Ainge believes the Celtics lost because the players didn’t play as well as they could have. His tone, throughout, is that of a disappointed father whose son didn’t practice enough for his piano recital and missed out on a piano scholarship. ... The buck is supposed to stop with him, but Ainge is snowblowing bucks out of his office."
• The Warriors are doing some aggressive things to court season ticket holders. One of them is a straight bet against a lockout, offering your money back plus five percent on any games that end up being canceled. They're also going to give ticket holders some valuable goodies if the team fails to win at least 26 of 42 home games, make the playoffs or have an All-Star on the roster. They say they have had the highest renewal rate of any non-playoff team. During the season, if you renewed your season tickets at the arena you got to take a half-court shot with a chance to win $25,000. Worked like crazy, the team says, with 17 percent of fans renewing on game nights.
• The highest level basketball in the world and every now and again everyone watching on TV and in the stadium knows something that the guy with the ball does not: That the shot clock is just about to expire. That's kind of a silly moment, huh? Very often it's after an offensive rebound. A player might think the clock reset, but in fact it didn't. Then, instead of attempting a heroic buzzer beater, we see some poor guy on the baseline dribble his way into a dead ball turnover. Awesome. So, here's a radical idea: Make the lights go a little crazy. Talk to experts. With technology these days, a lot of the lights around the court, or even built right into the floor, could get progressively lighter or more colorful as the buzzer approaches. (We could create a real hoops "red zone.") It's a way to make the game a lot more fun and interesting, without harming it in any profound way.
• Lots of mock drafts mashed together in a cool graphic.
• An argument against the Wolves' trading the second overall pick.
• Back when Lucious Harris was outplaying Manu Ginobili in the Finals.
• ESPN the Magazine's Player X, who calls himself a big-name NBA veteran, writes that in a lockout a lot of NBA players will head overseas (Insider): "A guy like the Pistons' Chris Wilcox -- who can barely dribble or shoot after all these years -- simply wouldn't slip through the cracks over there. Had he grown up in Europe, Wilcox, with his size and athleticism, would be a serious force. Players are beginning to realize that if they go overseas, even for a season, they'll come back with more skills, and that translates into greater success and better contracts back here. I'm a big-name veteran, so my situation is a little different from Chris'. But if there's a lockout, I'm going overseas. A lot of guys are telling me they'll do the same. I've even heard a few top-10 stars, including Kobe and LeBron, are open to the idea. Whether or not those guys go, I predict that at least 15 percent of the NBA will be playing somewhere else if we call off the season. And some of them will stay there."
• Joakim Noah's passing forces the Heat to play him like a lot of teams play Steve Nash -- closing down his passing lanes and encouraging him to shoot more.
• Derrick Rose has once again stopped getting to the line. The Bulls' success more or less rises and falls with his free throw attempts.
• If the market is open for Brandon Jennings -- a super talent who takes way, way more shots than he makes -- what's a fair price?

Steve Nash has a pretty weird little ritual. When he heads to the free throw line, before the referee gives him the ball, he takes a moment to mimic the shot he's about to take. Little warm-up free throws, shooting air. Like a golfer before a big putt.

Most NBA players do not do this, and it's not hard to wonder why: It does look a little goofy, and it's hard to imagine it could make a big difference.

But it's worth noting that Nash is essentially the best free throw shooter in NBA history.

And now there's a new kind of confirmation that a little last-second practice may be just the ticket: Players who have just shot a free throw shoot far better than those who just step to the line.

Alok Pattani of ESPN Stats and Information dug into this season's data from the NBA's StatsCube, and found that an average NBA player shooting two free throws makes the first one 73.9 percent of the time, and the second a notably better 78.2 percent of the time.

The picture becomes even clearer when you consider players fouled in the act of shooting a 3-pointer. Those guys tend to be shooters, so all their numbers are higher, but how about this: 79.4 percent of the first shots go in, then 86 percent of the second shots, and a whopping 88.3 percent of the third shots.

Players get nearly nine percent better from the first shot to the third.

Now, think about that golfer with his putter. He mimics the motion several times before touching the ball. It's not hard to imagine that all those little biological processes that have to fire properly -- the nervous system, the muscles, the blood flow, the oxygen -- might work more predictably after a rehearsal.

Whatever biological bizarreness causes the occasional misfire ... it's a cinch to believe you'd have fewer of those on the second or third run-through.

It's practice, in the purest sense.

It could be that, by practicing, Nash effectively makes his first free throw as good as his second would otherwise be.

Not a bad time to point out that among the other outliers who warms up with a practice stroke is Ray Allen, who is just slightly behind Nash on the list of the best free throw shooters in NBA history. Also, Kevin Martin had his highest free-throw percentage ever this season, since he started taking Nash-style practice strokes.

If the theory is right, and a player is quite a bit more likely to make a shot he has just practiced a few times, then how long will it be before a coach uses a late-game timeout to have his players practice shooting?

The NBA playoffs have been fantastic so far. If there's one really bad thing, though, it's that the Thunder got a key bucket in a thrilling game against the Nuggets on a crucial -- and fairly blatantly incorrect -- no-call. The rules state that players can't touch the ball when it's in the imaginary cylinder extending up from the rim. Players touch it in there all the time, though, and often get away with it, as Perkins did.

Denver Coach George Karl is livid.

This is not some crisis of refereeing, in my view. There is no league with better officiating that I'm aware of. It just happens. That's a tough job.

But the answer, on this particular one, is dead simple, and it's happening right now in the NBA D-League and in international competition.

At the beginning of the season, we announced that the D-League would be experimenting with some new rules.

One of them is an absolute no-brainer. Let players touch the ball when it's on the rim, like they do in Europe. In other words, allow Kendrick Perkins to get that ball.

It rewards great athletes playing their hardest at the rim. The downside is almost nil -- D-League sources say it has been great this season. And with that one little tweak, key moments like this can be taken away from the referees and given to the players and the fans, which is a great trade.

On Monday we dangled the first word of the upcoming Idea Machine, and asked you to help us brainstorm new ideas for season-end NBA awards. With the help of Royce Webb, Beckley Mason and hundreds of your great suggestions, here's what we came up with:

1. Offensive Player of the Year
TrueHoop reader Rad Rico has a fiendishly clever suggestion. First of all, the existence of the Defensive Player of the Year begs the question: Don't care about offense? But then we get to the heart of the matter: The NBA's best offensive player is frequently rewarded with the MVP trophy. Breaking this out as a separate award frees the MVP for the player who contributes most all over the court. It also lets fan-favorite scorers like Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant and Monta Ellis have another crack at earning trophies.

Want to nominate an Offensive Player of the Year? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

2. Scrappiest player
We have pretty much taken care of this award already, with Joakim Noah topping the list, but there's still a lot of love for Memphis' Tony Allen. Beckely Mason of HoopSpeak writes: "Tony Allen is nine parts scrap, one part maniac. Everytime he goes after a loose ball, I expect him to recover possession and maybe come out of the scrum with an opponent’s finger in his mouth."

What's scrap, exactly? That's as good a definition as any.

Click to see our ideas of some of the scrappiest NBA players.

3. Best game
Every now and again you'll find yourself watching what you assumed would be a forgotten nook of the NBA schedule ... and it turns into an absolute classic. Makes me want to shower everybody involved with praise. Rad Rico (with a second "rad" suggestion) insists we should do that.

Some of the contenders include the Suns vs. Lakers triple overtime thriller.

Devin Kharpertian of Nets are Scorching: "It's hard to think of a better game than Knicks-Celtics back in December. Regulation, high-scoring, back and forth right to the very end ... to me, it's a standout among the many games I'd really call 'battles.' I think this photo says it all."

Jared Wade of 8points9seconds says his favorite game of the year was the Warriors' insane February overtime win over the Orlando Magic. "The teams combined for an NBA-record 36 treys with the Warriors knocking down 21 and Dorell Wright alone sticking 8. It improbably went into OT on a series of I-can't-believe-this-is-happening plays."

Breene Murphy of ClipperBlog remembers the Knick win over Los Angeles that witnessed some of Blake Griffin's most insane dunks. "You realize that Amar'e Stoudemire went nuts for 39 points, dunked all over the place and the thing he was most famous for, the thing that drew millions of views on YouTube was a friggin' nod? Blake Griffin gave us the Mozgov dunk, the Gallo dunk and some of the most entertaining basketball I've ever seen."

Want to nominate a game of the year? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

4. Best teammate
I've long had the suspicion that if you had real all-access to an NBA team, and watched all the little personal interactions year in and year out ... you'd come away wishing this award existed. The NBA is a very competitive league -- and not just between teams. Those rare players who consistently go out of their way to inspire their teammates are exceptionally valuable, and rare.

Mason's candidate is Kendrick Perkins: "His departure left an entire locker-room in tears. Since he’s come to the Thunder, he’s emboldened their whole squad to be tougher, communicate more actively on defense and play an even more fearless brand of ball."

Want to nominate the NBA's best teammate? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

5. Best beard
TrueHoop reader Steven Claeys suggested this and it started something of a riot behind-the-scenes at the TrueHoop Network.

Harper says: "James Harden and if anybody says otherwise, I'd like to curse them with Paul Pierce's beard."

Royce Young of Daily Thunder follows Harden's beard closely and concurs, pointing out that "Harden's beard actually has a 21.05 PER all on its own this season."

Breene Murphy of ClipperBlog, however, wasn't going with the flow, and brought up the mighty facial hair of Baron Davis. "I realize that this comparison is the Kobe-LeBron debate of beards, and statistical analysis will show that Harden's beard is better in every metric. But gosh darnit, give me Baron's beard every time. It might not be as big but it's an icon of beardliness the world over. Every man can either admire that beard, aspire to have that beard or be lucky enough to have a beard peer of the highest quality. I recognize Harden as the heir apparent, and maybe he's already taken over, but give me some Boom."

Young responded that "Baron's beard is a stone cold assassin. Best crunch time beard in history."

Want to nominate the NBA's best beard? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

6. Best thespian
J. Matt Cheshire suggested the award as a way to mock floppers.

Patrick Hayes of PistonPowered wonders if perhaps Raja Bell and Manu Ginobili could both win the award for the same play.

"Paul Pierce is a method actor," says Mason. "Every movement on the court screams 'Hey! That guy is mauling me like a starved Jaguar!' There is no line between Pierce the man, and Pierce the blunt force trauma victim."

Want to nominate the NBA's best thespian? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

7. Most underrated
Reader Seth Harthun suggested this award, which could probably go to Tim Duncan every year, even the two he was named MVP.

Who is the NBA's most underrated player? Tell us in the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

8. Best trade
It's a chance for a front office to earn some attention, but not just for cap management, nabbing free agents and drafting well.

Kharpertian nominates the Nuggets for the way the haul they got from the Knicks for Carmelo Anthony. His argument is subtle: "Just look at them!"

Harper prefers the Thunder, for nabbing Perkins -- who shows up in these awards way more than anyone could have predicted -- from the Celtics.

To name the best trade of this NBA season, hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

9. Best single game performance
When Daniel Ritchey suggested the award, he was thinking of Kevin Love's historic 31 point, 31 rebound game. But in discussing it, the leading contender among TrueHoop Network bloggers was that LeBron James' evisceration of Orlando in February -- with 51 of his team's 104 points, on 25 shots -- to go with 11 rebounds and eight assists.

Which performance most impressed you? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

10. Real sixth man
Every year we torture ourselves over how to define a sixth man. This year, for instance, Lamar Odom became the favorite only once people realized he wasn't a starter. He is third on the Lakers in minutes played this season, and has started a ton. He doesn't feel like what this award was designed to honor. Reader Alex Sudnik has a simple tweak: Only those not in the top five in minutes played per game are eligible.

Under these terms, Zach Harper nominates Eric Maynor, who he calls the "best backup point guard in the game." Dan Feldman of Piston Powered nominates several other candidates: Taj Gibson, DeJuan Blair, Tony Allen, Darrell Arthur, Tracy McGrady and Lou Williams. (See how this Pistons blogger just slipped McGrady in there, like we wouldn't notice? Dan's a pro.)

Want to nominate the NBA's best sixth man? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

11. Rim protector
David Thorpe loves to see his players getting dunked on ... because it means they're going all-out for their teams trying to make athletic plays at the rim. Even if you only block a handful, it's a tremendous thing for your team. For the player personally, however, the YouTube humiliation can last a lifetime.

The idea is that players who go all out protecting the basket deserve praise. Thorpe's reaction was: "Oh that ... I freaking love that. Who thought of that?"

TrueHop reader Brian Bunke, that's who.

Sebastian Pruiti of NBA Playbook says Kris Humphries deserves serious consideration. "He tries to throw just about every single shot attempt that happened near him. It hurt the Nets' on the weakside, and he got dunked on a few times, but he also came away with a lot of great blocks over the course of the season."

Harper likes JaVale McGee. Brett Hainline of Queen City Hoops nominates Emeka Okafor, while J.M. Poulard of WarriorsWorld points out that Dwyane Wade "gets himself in a position to get dunked on but usually walks away from the damage with his pride intact."

Who is most aggressive trying to protect the rim? Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

12. Best screener
This was Thorpe's idea. It's not the sexiest part of the game to most of us, but to NBA head coaches it is. And it is an art form -- getting your teammate open is not just about being big and strong -- it's also about arriving at the right moment, at the right spot, with the right angle. Once that's all set, you have to extinguish the chosen opponent from the play without fouling. Some of the names that entered the early conversation: Perkins (who should probably grow a beard so he can be eligible for just about all these awards), Kevin Love, Joakim Noah and Al Horford.

Help us come up with a list of the NBA's best screeners. Hit the comments or e-mail us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

We’re working on something new.

It’s called the Idea Machine, and it will be a way for you, for us at TrueHoop, and for others involved in basketball to bring ideas to a larger audience. Especially you.

The Idea Machine will be unveiled in stages in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll have lots of ways for you to put in your ideas.

In fact, let’s start right now.

We want to know: Which new awards would you like to see in the NBA?

Forget the standard stuff: MVP, Coach of the Year, etc.

Let’s juice up awards season. To submit your ideas, use the conversation area below or email us at basketball.idea.machine@gmail.com.

We’ll pick some of the best ideas and give you the opportunity to vote.

While we’re brainstorming, here are a few ideas to prime the pump and get this machine rolling:

• Best trade
• Best team cohesion
• Best highlight
• Best player for the money
• Most watchable player
• Best quote

Whatcha got?

Henry Abbott writes TrueHoop. Royce Webb is NBA editor at ESPN.com.