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Our panel of voters says LeBron will win MVP again. Tom Haberstroh thinks it might go a little differently this time.

The Heat say Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are ready to go. Tom Haberstroh and Brian Windhorst have their doubts. TrueHoop TV at the Finals.

The Heat squeak through Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Pacers thanks to weird tactical stuff including the crunch time benching of Roy Hibbert. ESPN's Tom Haberstroh and Israel Gutierrez discuss the lessons of the opener, and name the game's dirtiest player.

So, the 76ers got Andrew Bynum.

Now what?

Now, Jrue Holiday needs to be more like Derrick Rose. And to do that, he needs to become an “extra-point player.”

Being an "extra-point player," a term coined by Henry Abbott, is the difference between being a very good player and an All-Star, or in Rose’s case, the difference between being an All-Star and an MVP.

Players can score in several ways -- a 2-pointer, a 3-pointer or on a fouled shot attempt -- but winning in the NBA requires an emphasis on the latter two, because that’s where the payoff is highest. Players can make life easier on themselves by finding extra points at the 3-point and free throw lines, and this is precisely what Rose did en route to becoming an MVP. And what Holiday should strive to do in 2012-13.

The season before Rose won the MVP, his extra-point percentage (percentage of overall shots from 3 and the free throw line) was just 23.9 percent, far below the 39.4 percent standard for guards. He was an All-Star then, but not the force he is today. In his MVP campaign in 2010-11, that all changed. Rose’s extra-point percentage (or ExPt%, for short) shot all the way up to 39.3 percent even as the overall number of shots he was taking also increased. All of the sudden, Rose was firing away from 3 and seeking out contact rather than avoiding it when he darted into the paint. By focusing on extra-point areas, Rose became one of the most powerful players in the NBA.

(Note: ExPt% is a close cousin of something called "Secondary Percentage," which was coined a few years ago by Carson Cistulli. The difference is that ExPt% just describes how often a player shoots from these desirable spots, while Secondary Percentage is more concerned with the amount of shots made.")

Holiday could also look to Chauncey Billups, the overall ExPt% leader amongst guards in 2011-12. Billups was a solid player in terms of ExPt% throughout his career, but his play went to another level when he went to Detroit and started posting up and going to the line more. In 2002-03, his first year as a Piston, Billups’ ExPt% leapt from 62.5 to 71.0. Now a 15-year veteran, Billups remains an clinically effective offensive player despite posting low field goal percentages because he still focuses on bullying his way to the line and hoisting from deep.

That’s what Philly fans are hoping will happen with Holiday, who has struggled to get to the free throw line throughout his young career despite an excellent first step. And even though Holiday is a strong 3-point shooter (38 percent in 2011-12), his number of attempts is relatively low -- just 2.8 per 36 minutes last season, which is right on par with Thabo Sefolosha.

As a result, Holiday’s 25.2 ExPt% was 81st out of 92 guards who took at least 10 true shots (to incorporate free throws) per game. The average guard posted a ExPt% of 35.4, far above Holiday’s rate.

What’s strange is that Holiday is an above average shooter from the free throw stripe and the 3-point line -- in fact, there are few players who are as proficient as Holiday yet shoot so sparingly. The more common profile for a player with Holiday’s ExPt% is someone like Rajon Rondo (89th out of 92 guards), who seems to consciously avoid drawing shooting fouls and taking 3-pointers.

Check out the list of top ExPt% guards from the 2011-12 season (min. 10.0 true shots per game):


It’s no surprise that Manu Ginobili and James Harden, two of the most efficient scorers in the NBA are on list. Nor is it a shock that a high-volume 3-point shooter like Ray Allen makes the cut.

But Randy Foye?

We’ve talked about guards like Rose and Billups changing their styles to be more efficient. But Foye’s high ranking comes from his context -- specifically, from playing with Chris Paul. The Clippers' wing shot 7.0 3-pointers per 36 minutes last season, an exceptionally high rate, and still made over 38 percent of them primarily because Paul is so good at manufacturing open 3-point shots. So even though Foye’s free throw attempts actually went down, the percentage of extra-point opportunities increased.

Also note that two Orlando players are also on this list, suggesting what we already know: that certain offensive systems and teammates (e.g., Dwight Howard) help dictate where players shoot.

Under head coach Doug Collins, Philadelphia's offense has not offered Holiday much freedom to freelance and has tended to create mid-range jump shots. Still, Holiday actually takes an above average amount of shots at the rim (about four per game). Yet, despite his size, Holiday hardly ever draws shooting fouls, suggesting that he can do more to initiate contact with defenders.

Holiday has a chance to benefit from both contextual and individual changes to his game. Though Philadelphia is not a team that relies on pick-and-rolls for offense, Holiday must, like Rose and Billups, take it upon himself to find ways to attack the rim more and get to the free throw line at a higher rate. But this season Holiday also has a new environmental advantage, which is that he will be playing with Bynum. Bynum draws double teams like few big men in the NBA, which should lead to more spot-up attempts for Holiday.

Playing alongside Howard, another double-team magnet, Jameer Nelson averaged about four 3-pointers per game. Holiday could very well be in that same range of attempts if Philadelphia employs a Bynum-centric offense.

Just 22 years old, Holiday is still finding his identity as an NBA player. With ball handlers like Lou Williams and Andre Iguodala shipped to new teams and Bynum on the block, he’s never had a better opportunity to capitalize on his combination of explosive quickness and reliable long-range shooting.

MIAMI -- Guard Mike Miller walked gingerly out of the Miami Heat locker room on Tuesday and spoke with the media for the first time since undergoing hernia surgery last week.

Amid speculation that the 12-year veteran might be released by the team using a proposed amnesty provision, Miller said he spoke with Heat president Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra earlier this week about his status with the team. And although he wouldn't definitively state the Heat's plans on whether to cut him, Miller was hopeful he would remain with the team.

"They're going to handle it the way they have to," Miller said, wearing a Heat warm-up shirt. "And right now, it seems like I'm pretty secure, but I'm just going to prepare myself to be ready to play where it is."

Technically, the Heat cannot use the amnesty clause to release the 31-year-old just yet because the new collective bargaining agreement has not officially been agreed upon. And it's unlikely the team has made the final decision on Miller before surveying the free agency landscape.

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Dan Ariely thinks Duke basketball fans are crazy. Or at least they act a little irrational sometimes. As a behavioral economics professor at the ACC school, he noticed something interesting -- that fans who won Duke basketball tickets through a lottery tended to overvalue those tickets. In fact, those randomly selected students valued those tickets 10 times more than what other students did. Cameron Crazies, indeed.

Ariely interpreted this phenomenon as an example of the endowment effect, an imperfection of the human mind that causes people to believe the things they possess are worth more than they actually are. It is just one of the many human quirks that Ariely studied in his book “Predictably Irrational,” which is a captivating read for those curious about the oddities of human nature. (For example, you’ll learn why bringing a bottle of wine to a pal’s party is absolutely bonkers from a rational perspective.)

The NBA lockout fascinates Ariely. It fascinates him because it’s a high-stakes, high-profile example of irrational behavior. Most of the complaints you hear about the lockout has nothing to do with basketball or law. No, most of the exasperation comes from a lack of common sense.

How did we get to this point? How can two sides, led by extremely intelligent, rational and savvy negotiators, fail to reach a timely agreement? Why can’t billionaires and millionaires strike a deal before it becomes a lose-lose situation? Why did irrationality take over?

Ariely admittedly may not know much about sports, but he’s an expert in explaining why smart people make poor decisions in everyday life. Before he sets off on a speaking engagement in Abu Dhabi, I got a chance to chat with him on the phone to ask him a few questions about the stalemate of NBA labor negotiations.

Tom Haberstroh: So let’s cut right to it. What are some of the common irrational behaviors that you’ve seen in the NBA’s labor talks?

Dan Ariely: First, in negotiations, there are salient objects which people focus the center of their attention, and then there are less salient ones. Often what happens is that people pay less attention to the salient one and lose out when they focus on the less salient one.

I’ll give you an example: When you do a trade-in of your car, people pay lots of attention to how much they get for their used junker and not so much what they pay for the new car. The dealer is basically giving them an extra good deal on the used car, and people are excited by this, and they think it’s a good deal, but they don’t realize they’re getting screwed on the bottom line.

The second thing is that this could be an occasion where the negotiation creates loss of goodwill between the two sides. Let’s say you and I negotiate, and the negotiation goes badly in a confrontational way, and then I need to work for you. I can do all kinds of things that would tick you off.

Imagine if the owners don’t pay the players what the players think they’re worth. Are their players going to play less well? Probably not, because it’s their own reputation on the line and their own excitement if they play well. But they might be more likely to, say, break something on the private plane of the team. Or will they might be more likely to not help an owner or coach if he needs a favor? This is something called sabotage, which is the fact that people sometimes destroy things for no benefit just to harm the company they work for.

In negotiations, ultimatums, like the one David Stern delivered over the weekend, happen pretty frequently, but do they typically have a real effect or is it just an empty scare tactic?

It depends on what the situation is, but what is very different in this negotiation is that all the producers are together. Imagine if Toyota has a labor dispute. If they stop producing, the employees know that GM is going to benefit from that. That’s not the case here. The owners know that there’s nothing the players can do. Here, the owners are saying to the employees, “Look, without us, you are useless. You cannot do anything. Work on our terms.” And of course, it’s a question of whether the laborers, the players, can say the same thing, “We’re not playing. You are useless, also.”

But there’s something very asymmetric about this. The people who run the teams need the team much less than the players who play in them. The people who own the team have lots of financial background, nothing terrible would happen if they stopped for, say, five years whereas the players would probably be wiped out. Not to mention there’s another aspect here which is different than a fair economic environment is that the players have reputations to uphold.

What’s happening here is that the players will look like jerks for stopping the negotiations because everybody who likes them thinks they’re making tremendous amounts of money. Now they seem greedy and it’s a little harder to admire them. But the owners don’t serve as inspiration for fans so they don’t lose that aspect.

We’ve heard the union claim that the owners aren’t negotiating “in good faith.” What does that mean? Is it a meaningful complaint?

Yes and no. Negotiating “in good faith” is cheap talk. It doesn’t really mean you’re obliged to do anything. But it turns out that when people say something, even if it’s not obligating the other party, it usually exerts social pressure to do so.

Imagine two situations. In one of them, you and I sign a contract, and in the other situation, we shake hands. The hand-shaking has no legal ramifications. But if you promise something, you feel like you’re going to do it. This is what saying “good faith” accomplishes. It has no legal ramifications, but both parties agree that they’re going to really try. It’s almost like a promise to themselves and to the others that things will be different.

We have two extremely competitive sides, which seems to be an explosive recipe for irrational behavior. Can competitive nature hijack a negotiation beyond reason? When does competition turn into ego, or can they be considered synonymous in negotiations?

They can become one in the same when negotiations become public. Imagine if you’re a team owner. Imagine somebody was going to ask you questions about this everyday because all your friends are thinking about it. “Are you giving up?” “Are you spending too much?” And if you’re the players, you’re worried about the same thing. It’s a full-time occupation for these people.

Pride is a lot of it. It’s very hard to create win-win situations in public negotiations. There are cases when there’s a win-win situation -- when there’s more information to be discovered. Imagine that what the players really want is somewhat more money, but they also want more time off to be with their kids, for example. They discovered they wanted something else.

On the point about trying, the players claim they’re making all the concessions, but the owners disagree on that. Stern established the starting point in the current talks and the owners have “conceded” many of those initial demands as the negotiations progressed. Is this a common negotiating tactic?

It’s a very nice trick by the owners, which we call anchoring. It is absolutely critical to control the starting position and the owners have done that. The other thing that is working for the owners is that 50/50 sounds very fair. We have this notion of a 50/50 split as being somehow logical for the two parties. But the two parties are not the same size, or value. The notion of fairness is working for the public opinion and any basic perception of fairness. 50/50 seems like the right thing to do, even if it’s not.

I think it’s going to be tough to break away from this 50/50 point simply because it sounds so reasonable. The players will probably have to agree to the 50/50 as a logical starting point, and try to do something else systematically that would get more income to the appropriate players. The owners have the upper-hand because of their income outside of the sport.

In a negotiation that involves an element of publicity, how much does winning the PR battle matter to winning the war?

Clearly, the PR war is not equal. The owners are much less affected by the PR than the players because the players are the ones to have to face the public, not the owners. I think there is a question of face and a question of coordination. I think PR has offered the chance to communicate to the other side what they’re going to.

The other part of it is that in doing this, they could make the whole sport less appealing. There is this potential here of cutting off your nose to spite your face, where they make the sport so unappealing and they all look like greedy monsters. At some point, nobody will want to watch.

If you followed NBA commissioner David Stern’s media tour last week, you probably heard him recite the following statement ad nauseum in one form or another:

The Lakers have a payroll of $110 million while the Sacramento Kings only have a payroll of $45 million. This is a real competitive balance issue that desperately needs fixing.

Stern is incredibly gifted when it comes to these things. He knows that the casual fan will look at those two figures and arrive at the tidy conclusion that the Kings simply cannot compete with the Lakers. I mean, look at that payroll disparity! Stern’s pitch is that the success of a team is directly tied to how much money they spend. And if you look at his example, how could you possibly disagree with him?

But then you look at the standings.

You notice that Stern did not sell the unfairness of payroll disparity by pitting the Orlando Magic against the Chicago Bulls. The Magic spent $110 million last season (the same as the Lakers) and the Bulls shelled out a lowly $55 million, or half as much as its Eastern conference foe. And the result? The poor Bulls won more games than any other team and reached the Eastern Conference Finals. The Magic? The nine-figure payroll bought them an embarrassing first-round exit.

If you scan through team payrolls, you begin to see that money doesn’t decide games. If cash was king, then the Bulls wouldn’t have a chance against the Magic. If spending power ruled all, how do we explain the Utah Jazz and their $80 million payroll winning 16 fewer games than the Oklahoma City Thunder, who spent just $58 million? The Toronto Raptors boasted a higher payroll than the Miami Heat, so why did the Raps lose 60 games while the Heat came within two games of a title?

The NBA has brought up the fact that the last four champions are big major market teams who spent a lot of money. While this is factually accurate, four consecutive years does not make a trend. Consider this: the previous five champions were smaller market teams (Spurs, Pistons and Heat). Evidently, the lesson changes as you slide the endpoints to make your argument. If we look over the past decade, the tally marks for titles between big market teams and small markets teams are equal at five.

The NBA is a complicated place, but when you cut through the rhetoric and look at the track record of the league, this much is clear: payroll doesn’t matter nearly as much it seems.

It’s about the draft, not dollars
Want to win games? Win the draft first. There you’ll find the breeding ground for championship teams. Dirk Nowitzki was drafted by the Mavericks (in a draft-day trade). Tim Duncan was drafted by the Spurs. Kobe Bryant was drafted by the Lakers (in a draft-day trade). Michael Jordan was drafted by the Bulls. Dwyane Wade and the Heat, Hakeem and the Rockets, so on and so forth.

There are some rare exceptions (e.g. the 2004 Pistons), but if you flip through through the title winners every season, you’ll find that the championship blueprint usually begins with hitting a home run on draft night.

To see why this is the case, consider the paths of two conference finalists last season. Going forward, the Bulls and the Thunder have a leg up on just about every team in the NBA, not because they spend a lot (which they don’t), but because they drafted a superstar and don’t have pay him superstar money.

Thanks to the rookie scale that keeps salaries artificially depressed for several years, the Thunder paid Kevin Durant, the NBA’s leading scorer, about a third of what the Jazz paid for Andrei Kirilenko last season. Similarly, the Bulls paid Derrick Rose, the league’s official MVP, about a third of what the Magic paid Gilbert Arenas, the league’s unofficial LVP.

Paying Durant $6 million is an enormous competitive advantage on its own, but the real benefit here is that it frees up Oklahoma City GM Sam Presti to spend money elsewhere when he needs to. The opportunity cost of paying Arenas is that you forfeit the chance to use that money on other things (like a James Harden or a Serge Ibaka or a Russell Westbrook).

This concept isn’t unique to NBA general managers. Do you pony up $30,000 for a fancy car or do you buy a slightly less fancy car and deposit the leftover cash into a savings account to help send your child to college? NBA teams face a similar choice when choosing to spend their money.

With a soft cap on payroll, it becomes imperative to spend your money wisely, and if you study successful franchises, those who spend money wisely seem to be bargain shopping at the draft.

The data reveals the truth
So, a couple franchises got lucky with drafting superstars and now they happen to possess bright futures and tight budgets. Big whoop, you say.

I’m with you. Just like I’m not satisfied with reducing a complicated topic to a line about the Lakers and Kings, pointing to the draft successes of the Thunder and the Bulls shouldn’t sit well with the rational reader.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and dig deeper. Many people have claimed that the draft is incredibly important to long-term success but the trouble has been backing up that assertion with hard data. Before we can talk about the significance of the draft, we first must have the tools to accurately measure draft success and go beyond anecdotal evidence.

To that end, it’s worth pulling up the draft value database behind the D.R.A.F.T. Initiative project from a couple years ago, which was an ESPN.com Insider series that analyzed the value of the NBA draft. The study tried to learn about the draft by tracking the career paths and production of every player drafted since 1989.

One of the discoveries during that project was that the Spurs and Lakers were huge winners on draft day. Apparently, finding Tony Parker at No. 28, Manu Ginobili at the end of the second round and plucking Kobe and Andrew Bynum without picking in the single-digits helps lay down a dynasty foundation. But if you look at the list of the most efficient drafting teams (as in, making the most out of where they picked), you’ll notice that the best drafting teams tend to also be the best teams of the past decade. On the flipside, the basement-dwellers of recent times found themselves routinely striking out on the draft.

Here is an updated chart of the best drafting teams and the worst drafting teams over the past decade, along with their winning percentage and dollars spent over that time. Also, it is color-coded to make visualizing the data easier (greater the number, greener the cell).

What do we find? New Orleans, San Antonio and Cleveland have done the most with the draft over the past decade. The Hornets built a perennial playoff team on the cheap by picking Chris Paul at No. 4 and finding an All-Star at No. 18 in David West. They squeezed out 18.5 wins above what we’d expect from their draft slots over the years. The Spurs built a championship core out of their picks. And, yes, the Cavaliers may have lucked into LeBron James, but they also found Anderson Varejao at No. 30 and Carlos Boozer in the second round.

More importantly, notice that four of the top six drafting teams have won a title this past decade while the other two have come very close to playing for the Larry O’Brien trophy.

And the worst drafting teams? Yikes. The Clippers, Timberwolves, Wizards and Bobcats represent the doormats of the NBA and it’s no surprise that they’ve been drafting terribly as well. Many of these teams have been gift-wrapped prime opportunities to draft franchise players, and instead, they selected Adam Morrison and Jonny Flynn. Even drafting an MVP in Rose didn't completely erase all the misfires the Bulls made in the early 2000s.

Now, the colors tell an important story. Strictly looking at the draft value and win percentage, you’ll notice lost of greens clustered together and reds clustered together. This hints that the two go pretty much hand in hand. If you draft efficiently, chances are you’ll be in good hands.

But look at the third column of data which tells us how much money they’ve spent over that time. It’s subtle, but the pigments aren’t as closely connected.

What we’re seeing is a strong tie between drafting efficiency and win percentage, but not so much for winning and payroll. In fact, draft efficiency alone explains 34 percent of the variability in a team’s record over the past decade. How much does payroll explain?

Just 7 percent -- a tiny amount in comparison.

Many economists have studied the issue of payroll and competitive balance. Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who has written several books on sports economics, recently told the New York Times, “The statistical correlation between payroll and win percentage is practically nonexistent.” That 7 percent is what he’s talking about.

What it means for competitive balance
Of course, we knew all along that the draft is important, but now we see it as an absolutely critical ingredient to the championship recipe. If payroll predicted championships, then the Knicks would have a dynasty by now. Instead, they largely ignored the draft, sold the lottery picks to other teams and look what it got them: a blood-red cell in the winning percentage column.

In order to be competitive in the NBA, you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of money, but you absolutely need to be smart with your money. And the smart money tends to be in the draft. When Stern says the system is broken because of the disparity in payroll, feel free to listen to the Lakers-Kings comparison but also note that the Thunder has been able to fast track success in a supposedly broken system.

Stern strives for a hard cap (or a punitive luxury tax disguised as one) and claims his pursuit is for the good spirit of competitive balance, but a closer examination shows that payroll and winning are not directly correlated.

What we've learned is that spending is cyclical. The smart organizations, like all businesses, try not to spend until they need to. As an example, the Boston Celtics' payroll the year before they formed their Big Three? It ranked 19th in the NBA. The year before that it was 21st. They lost over 100 games over those two seasons.

The NBA might contend that the Celtics weren’t winning because they weren't spending. But we must be careful about confusing cause and effect here. It may also be the case that the Celtics weren’t spending because they weren’t winning. Why throw big money at free agents when it won't really move the needle for title contention? Perhaps it is better to keep costs low until you can swing a big trade or increase your chances to land a superstar in the draft (see: Thunder, Spurs, Bulls).

Teams run into trouble by buying average players in a free agency market that usually comes with a "winner's curse" premium. If you spend money just to spend it, you find yourself in the in-between world that the Detroit Pistons, Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors currently occupy. As we’ve seen time and time again, if you want to be competitive, follow the lead of most champions: build through the draft and be smarter with your cash.

Of course, it helps to have more cash, which allows teams to be more flexible and spend when they need to spend. But if there’s a disparity of haves and have-nots in the NBA, the real disparity can be found in management, not dollars.