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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.

When the lockout happened in 1998, it made a lot of sense for the league. While it sucks that we lost three months and 32 games of regular season basketball, it was a necessary evil for the league to give themselves a timeout and figure out the lay of the land.

Kevin Garnett had just signed one of the biggest contracts in sports history and he was only 21 years old. The NBA was losing its dynasty and greatest player with the dismantling of the Chicago Bulls and the retirement (one of them) of Michael Jordan. The league had to figure out where it was going and how to get there in the most stable and lucrative financial situation possible. There was no guarantee of a transcendent star carrying a league on off nights and through national broadcasts throughout the week.

Heading into this lockout, the league is in a similar situation. It’s not the same in terms of losing a transcendent star (Shaq lost his luster years ago and Yao Ming has been sadly absent for far too long because of injuries), but it’s similar in that the league needs to get a hold of the financial parameters of its business. It needs to try to ensure that no matter what the accounting books tell you or what the owners tell you the books tell you, the NBA is ready to recover from the recent economic spiral and set itself up to be as profitable as possible in the coming future.

With so many hundreds of millions of dollars at stake now, and even billions of dollars at stake over the course of the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, it makes sense in theory for David Stern to have a strict policy of teams and players not interacting during this “negotiating period.” (Although, it would be nice if they were actually, you know, negotiating). The owners and the players union both need to show solidarity and unity in their actions during the lockout, so they can appear to be as strong as ever when they do actually sit down and try to hammer out a deal again.

So when Seth Meyers at the ESPYs was making jokes about the Mavericks being glad they aren’t allowed to talk to Mark Cuban during the lockout and we see the camera cut to Cuban and Jason Kidd sitting across the aisle from each other, laughing at the joke, and then sharing a moment of eye contact in recognition of the joke and the meaning behind it, I wondered just where the line in the sand actually was drawn.

It seemed like the seating chart and the longing looks across the aisle were set up to cost Cuban $1 million for interacting with players. I figured I was just reading into it too much and hoping for some kind of controversy during this NBA lockout. A short time later, Dirk Nowitzki won the ESPY for best NBA player and said, "I also want to thank Mark Cuban, but since I can't talk to him you've got to say hello to him."

However, there really wasn’t any “harm” done and the entire scene seemed to be bordering on a broken up couple that was trying to figure out how to greet each one another after crossing paths at the grocery store (if that grocery store was full of professional athletes and giving out awards).

Then the Mavericks won the ESPY for the best team of the year and all relative hell broke loose. Mark Cuban and the players got up, crossed the aisle (literally), and began hugging and congratulating each other. There was no getting around this contact between an owner and its players. Cuban was talking to his guys and Jason Kidd joked that since Cuban wrote the checks, he could pay the fine.

This is where we have some confusion and weakness within the guidelines of the lockout gag order. If the NBA gave Mark Cuban a reprieve of sorts for the night’s festivities, it shows weakness. It shows that award shows and moments of charity could be a loophole of sorts for owners and players to find a way to interact. It lessens the threat of Stern’s iron fist.

But if the league didn’t give Mark Cuban a reprieve for the evening and the NBA’s most maverick owner of sorts (see what I did there?) is willing to pay a heavy fine and break the links of the ownership chain for an evening, just to accept another shiny trophy, then the players union looks stronger than the owner’s stance, even if for a night.

Clearly, Cuban can afford a million dollar fine. And even if it’s a million dollar per player he interacted with last night, he can afford a $7 million fine as well. However, the money isn’t the issue here.

Stern and Cuban have had their issues in the past. Cuban has been looked at as a threat to Stern and the way he runs the league and oversees the officiating. He’s been looked at as a troublemaker and someone that doesn’t mind spitting into the wind of the NBA. He’s willing to accept outrageously massive fines in order to make sure his team and players are being taken care of and treated in a fair manner by the league.

However, this act of a brief moratorium on a league-mandated order of silence, whether allowed by the league or not, is a win in every way for the players union.

It doesn’t mean the lockout will end tomorrow and the players will win every issue and compromise on the table. It just means the players have held stronger together than the owners and league have so far during the first two weeks of the lockout. That gratification from an Internet of voters on ESPN.com was briefly more important than negotiating tactics.

Personally, I think this is a good thing. Not because I side with the players (I don’t really side with any side in this lockout), but because I think it’s ridiculous that while the two sides are supposed to be working out a business agreement for the next five to ten years, they’re not actually allowed to talk to each other unless there are lawyers present.

I understand the concept of unity when it comes to a labor dispute. My dad was the president of a law enforcement union for a long time, and I watched him deal with relative but similar issues every day for the better part of a decade. However, it makes no sense to me that interaction between an employer and its employees would have to be such a taboo occurrence.

When you tell two teenagers that they’re no longer allowed to see each other because the parents don’t like one another, it doesn’t stop the teenagers from wanting to be together and spend time together. If anything, it intensifies the situation and turns it into a more immature circumstance than previously feared.

At this time, Billy Hunter and Stern need to understand that not letting the owners and players date this summer isn’t going to make them not want to be together. It’s just going to lead to more hopeful looks across the aisle.

When Jon Wertheim was researching his new book, "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games are Won," someone associated with NBA officiating told him, "There’s a code that when the game steps up, we step down.”

Codes are human constructions, and for those who are disgusted by the idea of referee bias, that unwritten rule is precisely the kind of variable that corrupts the game.

The Tim Donaghy scandal and a study by Joe Price and Justin Wolfers on racial bias have focused the lens on NBA officiating in recent years. And the issue was the subject of a panel at MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Moderated by Bill Simmons, the panel included Wertheim, NFL official Mike Carey, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and sabermetrician Phil Birnbaum.

Call the game uniformly for 48 minutes
Among the findings in Wertheim's book is the revelation -- pretty obvious to most NBA fans -- that "whistle-swallowing" is rampant in the fourth quarter. For instance, the number of traveling calls falls precipitously.


This might be Cuban's biggest beef with NBA officiating, though he exercised a lot of restraint during the discussion. "I got an email from the league saying be careful what I say that there will be an intern watching," Cuban said in one of the bigger laugh lines of the panel. Throughout the discussion, the 2006 Finals between the Mavs and Heat sort of lingers beneath the surface. As a subtext, it provides a few chuckles.

Let's refine Cuban's stance a little bit more. More than anything he doesn't want context to have any place in officiating a call. Whether it's the first quarter or fourth quarter, LeBron James or Quinton Ross, a close game or a blowout, Cuban feels that each possession of an NBA game should be governed by the same rules.

"I don't want officials to have to worry about context, whether it's the crowd, whether it's the players, whether it's the time or the score," Cuban said. "It's a hard enough job as it is. If you have to worry about all those other elements, then it makes the job even harder."

Cuban said that games have monetary value to him as an owner, so getting this stuff correct is vital. Remove as much subjectivity as possible and include more clarity, he suggests, in the rule book. Cuban insisted that players are adaptable and cited the change in hand-checking and jump-stop rules as an example.

Replay
Cuban feels that, though it has helped the game, replay in the NBA has room for improvement. He put forward the following hypothetical: If in the process of reviewing an out-of-bounds call, the officials see that the player traveled with the ball, they should have the authority to call traveling. If there's a clear foul on the play, they should have the freedom to call it.

There was a general agreement that the NBA wouldn't be well-served by a football challenge "flag." Both Simmons and Cuban like the fact that the NBA corrects 2-point vs. 3-point calls during dead balls rather than interrupting the flow of the game.

Interestingly, Cuban approves of the NBA's using replay only for the final two minutes (with the exception of clear-path reviews and to determine which player should be taking free throws), which that runs counter to his opinion that games should be officiated consistently irrespective of time of the game. After all, if we want uniformity, shouldn't there be as much opportunity to correct a call in the first minute as the final minute of a period?

Referees are human beings
One of the more interesting exchanges occurred when Bill Simmons recounted Antoine Walker's time in Boston. Walker was notoriously surly to referees and would rarely, if ever, refer to them by their names, preferring to address officials as "You." Simmons suggested that dislike of a player probably had an adverse effect on how an officials treated that player. Cuban didn't take a specific position in response, but was adamant that if an official wasn't temperamentally equipped to deal with guys like Walker, then they were in the wrong business.

Wertheim expressed amazement at the lifestyle of NBA referees. He heard the term "chasing sleep" when he was researching his book and was floored by the travel demands and schedules officials endure. These are factors that are likely to impact performance. This launched an interesting conversation about whether there should be age limits for referees. After all, doesn't reaction time suffer as a person gets older? Carey disagreed strongly. He insisted that, as he ages, he’s becoming a better official. He sees new things and is continuing his mastery of the game. The added experience more than compensates for whatever atrophy comes with age, he said.

Recruitment and development of officials
When Cuban first bought the Mavericks, he said he was shocked to learn that a large plurality of NBA officials came from a couple of conferences (Count the number of NBA officials who came up as refs near Philly). A lot of the hires were nepotistic and this upset Cuban. He then praised the league for making corrective measures, including hiring General Ronald Johnson to oversee the recruitment, training and development process. Cuban has been pleased by most of the league's crop of younger referees, "who are actually good."

The counterintuitive public
Wertheim might have had the most interesting observation of the discussion. He spent years researching these findings, yet encounters people all the time who really aren't that bothered by them.

"I was surprised by how many people said, 'So what?!'," Wertheim said. "'I like that when I run a stop sign at three in the afternoon, but run it at three in the morning, he lets me go. I like that there's subjectivity built in here and that the officials do call it a little bit differently' ... 'I like that the whistle is swallowed and that LeBron is getting a few extra calls a game.'"

This human observation is fascinating. As much as fans bristle at any perceived bias, many of them want the drama produced by conflict.

• Wizards owner Ted Leonsis: "Last night there was a pick-up game played at Verizon Center on our practice court. There were many NBA players in attendance and a few NBA All-Stars played as well. I stumbled into watching purely by accident. Gilbert Arenas played last night. It was a very good evening of basketball. Gil -- our All-Star --matched up against another NBA All-Star. It was quite a show and quite a display of talent. I won’t comment yet on Gilbert or who was in the gym last night but suffice to say Gilbert looked trim, fit and explosive. His shot was sweet and he did one left handed dunk that was something to see. It had everyone talking. I was impressed and am happy." (Update via an email from Unprofessional Foul: Was it Chris Paul?)
• Andrew A. McNeill of 48 Minutes of Hell uses some sharp diagrams to illustrate San Antonio's prompt, low-risk, stay-at-home defensive principles.
• On the heels of the presentation of the prestigious Fields Medal to French mathematician Cedric Villani, Tom Ziller of AOL FanHouse asks, "Does defense really come down to atomic physics?"
• Steve Perrin of Clips Nation on Eric Gordon's inclusion on Team USA's final roster: "He came in less well known than many of the other players, a fact that Coach K acknowledged last week. But his work ethic in practice and his solid play on the court has given Team USA no choice but to keep him. He may be less flashy than the other guards on the team, but coaches tend to covet solid unspectacular play, especially from their role players. EJ plays unrelenting man to man defense, he doesn't need the ball on offense, he moves the ball well, and in the end Coach K and his staff appreciated the little things he was doing. It hasn't hurt that he has lived up to his reputation as a knockdown shooter."
• It hasn't been all confetti and champagne for the Lakers since 2000. Jeff Skibiski of Forum Blue & Gold walks you through the Lakers' 10 most forgettable moments of the decade.
• Michael Schwartz of Valley of the Suns says Phoenix could actually field a five-man small forward unit if it wants to: "Such a small forward lineup could put Hedo Turkoglu at the point, Josh Childress at the two, Grant Hill at his natural three, Jared Dudley at the four and Earl Clark at the five."
• Dudley asks a pretty interesting question via Twitter: "Imagine if the NBA had Int rules.. U think the All Star teams would be different?"
• Jeremy Wagner of Roundball Mining Company on why the grass is greener for Carmelo Anthony in Denver.
• Milwaukee did some intriguing things to its roster this offseason -- some of them curious, some of them clever. However we size up John Hammond's maneuvering, one thing is clear: The Bucks should finish at the rim at a measurably higher percentage this upcoming season.
• Mark Cuban says it's time to stay liquid: " If you don’t fully understand the risks of an investment you are contemplating, it’s ok to do nothing. In times of massive uncertainty like we are facing today, doing nothing is a valid and IMHO preferable investment strategy. Just put your money in the bank."
• Rob Mahoney of Pro Basketball Talk on Andre Iguodala's role on Team USA: "Iggy is easily Team USA's top perimeter defender, but offensively, he moves the ball, is a decent spot-up option (just don't ask him to shoot off the dribble...yeesh), and is a good positional rebounder."
• Some video of Wizards draft pick Kevin Seraphin.
• When Gary Grant ruled the world ... for one night.
• How to apply your childhood piano lessons to your NBA viewing habits.
• If the Wizards win 50 games this upcoming season, credit the new red stairs in the Verizon Center.
• Via J.E. Skeets, Living and Dying by the Jazz unearths some sharp threads from Jerry Sloan's playing days with the Bulls.
• FreeDarko revisits how Kwame Brown came to be a No 1 draft pick and the hazards of the pre-draft workout.
• In retrospect, exactly how bad for Cleveland was the Luke Jackson pick at No. 10 in the 2004 draft?
• Press row will be a cozier place next season in Miami.
• Somewhere in Italy is a bedroom treasure trove of NBA goodies.
• The Warriors have made crafty use of the D-League in recent seasons. Rasheed Malek of Warriors World tells D-League Digest's Matt Hubert: "Players such as Kelenna Azubuike, C.J. Watson and Reggie Williams are some of the players who’ve secured multi-year deals from NBA teams after initially being called up by the Warriors from the D-League. Add in other players such as Anthony Tolliver and Chris Hunter who’ve experienced significant playing time with the Warriors and it’s clear that the Warriors are the model franchise when it comes to utilizing the D-League."

There are a couple of lawsuits going on down in Texas, and it's much ado about nothing -- except for one huge thing.

It began not as a fight about the Mavericks, but about the arena they play in. Mark Cuban owns the majority of American Airlines Arena. Unlike the Mavericks, the arena has made some money in recent years.

When you own a business that makes money, the nice thing is you typically get some of it. But not in this case. That led to the first lawsuit, last summer. Cuban took money from the arena and, instead of handing it out to arena ownership, loaned it to another business he owns most of: the Mavericks. Ross Perot Jr. (the son of the presidential candidate with the ears cartoonists loved) is Cuban's minority partner in both businesses. He didn't like that move, and sued, saying that loan was not it was fair and proper.

Cuban chastised Perot for whining about all that, especially with a great line about looking for some change in the couch cushions. The bad blood blossomed into a second lawsuit, this week, in which Perot accuses Cuban of running the Mavericks into the ground. He says they have lost a staggering amount of money, and are only still operating thanks to having borrowed around $200 million and counting.

Cuban tells TrueHoop Perot's numbers are inaccurate. "None of it is right," he e-mails. "He pretty much misrepresented the entire situation. His projections don't take into account a new CBA and he has no idea what player salaries we will have. So he just made up numbers to suit his claim."

Perot's legal filings somewhat confirm Cuban's notion that the actual financial picture of the team is murky, accusing him of refusing to open the team's books as required by their partnership agreement and the law. One of the things the lawsuit seeks is better information about how the team is doing.

Nevertheless, Perot takes the position that Cuban's mismanagement has been so staggering that a receiver ought to be appointed by the court to run the team in Cuban's place. (Perot also suggests, as Lester Munson explains, that the Mavericks may have been overly generous in their dealings with some other Cuban businesses.)

Cuban, a billionaire, says he has the money to pay everybody who needs to be paid, so what's the big deal? There is no chance, he says, the Mavericks will become insolvent.

"I back all the debt," he writes. "All the other partners have no problem with how things are run. Perot is just being himself. Over time we will more than make it all back. And then some."

A lot of that money the Mavericks owe, they owe to Cuban. The rest Cuban says he is good for, telling the Dallas Business Journal, for instance, that "everyone always has been and will be paid on time."

Formever Mavericks coach Don Nelson -- who shares Perot's lawyers -- might dispute that last point, but in general there's no reason to doubt Cuban, and it's worth noting that, stressed though the Mavericks may be on paper, this is not a lawsuit initiated by worried creditors. The people the Mavericks actually owe -- besides Perot -- haven't appealed to the courts.

"We have invested in the team to turn it around from the joke the team became when Perot ran it," says Cuban. "Look at it this way: It the team is mismanaged and undervalued because of losses, why wouldn't he make me an offer to buy it, run it his way and immediately reap the benefits? He won't because the team isn't undervalued or mismanaged."

On some schedule, Cuban and Perot will presumably work out their differences. Whatever happens will likely not matter all that much outside the swankiest quarters of Big D. Mostly it's a couple of angry guys swiping at each other. Maybe somebody will get a black eye, maybe not. A few Texas-based lawyers will pad their kids' college savings, and we'll move on. Nothing here will mean much to NBA fans.

Except for one thing: When the shell on this lawsuit cracked, one very important chestnut did fall out, and it could have big ramifications.

Could it really be that the Mavericks -- one of the NBA's most successful franchises on the court, in a good market, with a modern arena -- really nowhere close to making money?

Perot paints a picture of total financial disarray, with losses of $50 million over the last fiscal year alone, while on track to be nearly $300 million in debt in the coming years, that over the last nine years net losses have exceeded $273 million, that the team has made "future cash commitments for deferred compensation" of more than $300 million as of last summer.

Who knows what the real numbers are. Presumably as the case evolves Cuban's side will present their evidence that the team is in better shape than that. But Cuban does not dispute that the team has lost money, and Perot's entire case would be a waste of time of Cuban was in position to easily demonstrate the team was doing well.

As fans and journalists we pretty much mock owners for being cheap, and we praise them for "going all out to win." Our business analysis of team ownership tends to be along the lines of "you have to spend money to make money."

Cuban rolled into the NBA nearly a decade ago as in icon of first-class thinking, and has never looked back.

Not too long ago I stood in the Nets' sad locker room at the Izod Center, where the TV is not even high-definition. You can get a big HD screen for $300 at Walmart these days.

Mark Cuban wouldn't do it that way, right? The implication is that's because Cuban is smarter, more forward thinking, or classier.

Cuban has never made any bones about the fact that going all out -- for free agents, extra assistant coaches, nutritionists, nicer lockers, airplanes and everything else -- did not exactly pay for itself. For instance, he said at the Sloan Sports Business Conference a couple of years ago that the best way to make money from your NBA team is to be in New York, L.A. or Chicago, or to be "rebuilding" and spending the bare minimum on salaries.

His own approach of spending through the nose in a good-but-not New York market, by his own analysis, would be no recipe for financial success. It can't be that big of a surprise to learn that he has been dipping into his own pocket pretty heavily to subsidize the Mavericks. He has also been clear that short-term profits take a back seat to winning.

But I think we always thought that there was some amount of money a team might make, and the Mavericks were spending somewhere close to that. If they lost $50 million last year, or anything like that number, doesn't that change things a bit? If the team is close to making money, adding, say, Shawn Marion is a prudent insurance policy. If the team is already well into the red, how crazy is it to shell out another $40 million on a slowing role player?

Let's say your rich neighbor likes fixing up cars, and spends $10,000 on his old Mustang. Indulgent, right? But how about spending $500,000 on that Mustang? At some price, hobby spending crosses into Imelda Marcos territory.

The way we think about how owners spend -- believing, basically, that spending lots of money was basically always good -- is colored by an amazingly rich sports business era that may have recently ended. George Postolos, former NBA and Rockets executive who advises sports team investors and is interested in leading a group to buy an NBA team, told me a few weeks ago that the last few decades have been special in way that may or may not be sustainable:

Between, say, 1980 and 2000 or 2005 or 2007 or whenever you want to define that period, you had such substantial appreciation in franchise value. A rising tide lifted everybody’s boat. It had to do with new stadiums coming online. Several broadcast networks that needed sports programming grew to be hundreds of cable channels. The development of all-sports networks, the development of suites, expansion of corporate sponsorship, companies using athletes to promote their products, and the economy in general was strong during that period … lots of thing were happening to increase values. The equity markets were growing almost as quickly as franchise values.

So the value of all companies was growing.

We may be in a different era now.

Postolos also said, in the same interview, that investors getting into sports these days are scarce, and choosy. By and large, they're looking to be able to turn a profit. Which makes the Cuban model sound that much more outlandish -- driving into an era of slow growth .

In recent months we've had the Bobcats sold at a loss, the Jazz owner saying almost any other investment the Miller family would have made would have been more profitable, as well as steep discounts on tickets in places like Minnesota and Washington. The Cavaliers, despite having one of the biggest stars in the sport, LeBron James, at a below-market contract, are said to be close to break-even. And even though the economy is weak, meaning it's not an ideal time to sell, nearly a third of the NBA is either on the market or has recently changed hands, which tells you something about how those on the inside are projecting the next few decades.

Who cries for the owners? Nobody. But as fans, we want a league where teams can be run competitively as businesses, not just as hobbies.

All of which leads, of course, to the ongoing talks between the league and union about the next collective bargaining agreement. What is the main lesson of Perot's lawsuit against Cuban? "It validates," says Postolos, "David Stern's argument about needing a new CBA."

You never know whose numbers to believe, but the evidence is mounting that the owners may have strong reason to drive a very hard bargain with the players. The players union is coming up with a proposal of its own for the next collective bargaining agreement. I hope that takes the realities of 2010 into account.

Brent Barry has been thinking about statistics.

"Statistics," he says, "are like bikinis. They're really nice to look at but they don't tell you the whole story."

Barry attended the recent MIT Sloan Sports Conference with an NBA camera crew, and captured meaningful insight from the likes of Bill Simmons, Daryl Morey, Adam Silver and Mark Cuban.

My favorite moment comes when Barry asks Johnson if stats have ever really helped him as a coach, and Johnson talks about when he coached the Mavericks in a playoff series against the Rockets.

The numbers showed that Dallas was getting killed whenever Brent's brother, Jon Barry, checked into the game.

Brent, at this point, accuses Johnson of lying.

Then Johnson goes on to explain how, with this insight, the Mavericks changed tactics and went small whenever Jon Barry checked into the game, and it turned things around for them.

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

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

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

There are a lot of great storylines around the NBA these days. All those trades! Playoffs on the horizon! LeBron James and the class of 2010!

That's all fascinating, but sometimes it feels like worrying about such things might be a little like fussing over the radio as you drive the car off the road.

Because this labor situation is pretty serious, and could be getting worse.

In trying to understand it better, one thing that is missing is frank talk from owners. It's just not something most of them are willing to talk about in any detail. The gist of what I'd like to know is: Are you looking for a total reinvention of how this business works? Is the model totally broken? Are lots of you really losing your shirts? Or, is this simply a case of the economy has been bad, and you'd like to control player salaries?

Perfect information along those lines is very hard to come by. However, while not talking much about the NBA itself, Mark Cuban has been waxing poetic about sports leagues in general, and the kinds of business models they have. You can learn a lot about his NBA positions by reading carefully.

In 2008, Cuban explained how salary caps are really bad for small markets. Basically, leagues look at all the major income sources, and make a salary cap that is a percentage of that. That means, however, that if one team is doing really really well, and has a huge increase in income, while a small market team might lose a little money, then the next year's cap will be quite a bit higher, which leaves the money-losing small market team further in the lurch. His solution at the time was that in calculating the salary cap, leagues should ignore local revenues, and instead focus only on national revenues like the league's TV deals, which come with income for each team.

Now Cuban is blogging some more about collective bargaining agreements, and taking things a bit further. And it's clear that he's saying he believes the current system needs more than a little tweak.

We have seen bankruptcies in the NHL. If pro sports leagues don’t do a better job of risk management, it could get worse. ... What about the players side? They have kicked ownership’s ass in every league. ...

While individual NFL players take on significant risk, the players as a whole take on ZERO risk. If their membership just shows up for games, 53 guys on each team are getting paid. They never have to give the money back or contribute capital to make up losses.

The solution? It's a system where risks and rewards are allocated properly. Owners should take on more risk than players because they have more upside from franchise appreciation. They shouldn't take on all the risk. Nor should players be excluded from sharing in the upside of equity appreciation. I'm not saying that for example players earn a share of the sale price when an NFL franchise is sold. There are a variety of ways to track or index appreciation of franchises that rewards players that can work better and more efficiently. When the index appreciates the economics available to players appreciate. When the index depreciates, the amount available to players should be reduced as well.

The bottom line of the bottom line is that its time for a new model for professional sports.

What I hear him saying there is that it's possible teams will go out of business, he doesn't like the current revenue sharing at all and the meaningful long-term solution he envisions will be unlike anything we have ever had in the past.

Oh by the way he also points out that when players are locked out, owners lose some income, but players lose all of their income. That's yet another kind of tough talk.

If lots of owners are thinking like this owner, things could get messy.

A judge had dismissed the SEC's insider trading case against Mark Cuban. It seemed like it was over.

But ... the government is now pressing on in appeals court.

No one seems to dispute that Cuban had a call from an executive in a company that he invested in, telling him about some non-public plans, after which, Cuban sold a lot of stock. (Which proved to have been smart! The stock went down, saving Cuban a reported $750,000.)

What is disputed, however, is whether or not Cuban's phone call from the executive was priveleged insider information.

Zachary A. Goldfarb of the Washington Post:

Cuban's defense was that he had no legal responsibility to refrain from trading on the information and had never agreed to do so.

Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater, a federal judge in Dallas, dismissed the case in July, saying that the SEC had not proved that Cuban had a legal responsibility not to trade based on the information.

SEC lawyers filed its notice of appeal in the federal appeals court in New Orleans, which is expected to take up the case in late November. The agency is likely to argue it didn't even have the opportunity to prove that Cuban had a duty not to trade on the information. It is also likely to argue that Cuban did have such a duty.

Cuban once wrote about the transaction on his blog.

I had purchased stock in Mamma.com in hope that it could be an up and coming search engine. I thought I had done some level of due diligence. Talked to the company management. Talked to some employees who worked in sales. Read the SEC Filings. I knew that they had a checkered past and had been linked to stock promoter Irving Kott, and that their law firm still handled some of Kotts business, but the CEO, Chairman, lawyers all said that things were reformed and the company was focused on its business.

Then the company did a PIPE financing. Im not going to discuss the good or bad of PIPE financing other than to say that to me its a huge red flag and I dont want to own stock in companies that use this method of financing .

Why? Because I dont like the idea of selling in a private placement, stock for less than the market price, and then to make matters worse, pushing the price lower with the issuance of warrants.So I sold the stock.

Wayne Winston is a professor at Indiana University and for the last nine years he has been Mark Cuban's stat guru for the Dallas Mavericks. Winston's recently published book "Mathletics," explains much of his work -- complete with formulas and spreadsheets. This is the first in a series of TrueHoop posts in which Winston explains the surprising things he has learned about what works and what doesn't in the NBA.

Imagine you live on an island, with 13 people, and one of them is murdered.

Murderers are usually found (or not) by assembling all the available clues and seeing if they point to anybody. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

"Letting [Ben Gordon] go is just beyond stupid. It's ridiculous," says Winston. "And who'd they pick up to replace him? Jannero Pargo?" (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)

Another way to look at this one, however, would be to say, look, we know one of these 12 people did this thing. Let's try to find out what everybody was doing at the time of the murder, and then we can start making smart guesses at who was responsible.

This is a messy analogy for the state of basketball statistics.

A team loses a game. That's your murder.

The box score is the trail of clues. John Hollinger's PER is the embodiment of what can be learned from that. 

But there are some cases where PER doesn't tell it all -- maybe you have no suspect! We all know that some chunk of what matters in basketball doesn't make it into the box score. 

So there are people like Winston who instead favor saying we know all the players from both who were on the court while the loss occurred. Let's try to break the game apart, into little pieces, to see who gets the blame.

The result is adjusted plus/minus. Winston is one of many -- others include Dan Rosenbaum, Aaron Barzilai, Stephen Ilardi -- who basically look at the scores of games, and then use complex formulas to assign credit and blame for that happened to individual players.

It's often derided as an imprecise process, but it's worth noting that Winston, Barzilai and Rosenbaum all work for NBA teams. Winston has his detractors, but he's adamant, and often convincing, that such work can yield fascinating results:

The many new kinds of basketball statistics tend to fall into two groups. There are things that we can, with certainty, ascribe to individual players. Those things are mostly in the box score, or PER. But you put them all together, and a chunk of the game is missing. Then there's stuff we know the team does -- the final score, and the increments of it we see in +/- and adjusted +/-. The trouble there is that it's hard to know how to assign what the team does to an individual player. It's murky in both camps. But you're an adjusted +/- guy, right? Why?
Basketball is half offense and half defense. I don't think I have to prove that mathematically. It's got to be true. The box score is not half offense and half defense. I think that's where the box score breaks down.

The nice thing about adjusted +/- is that it's half offense and half defense. I think if we can estimate offense accurately, and most of the adjusted +/- stuff that is out there for offense agrees with the rest of the world.

It's on the defensive ratings I think that we disagree with whatever people think. And defense is half the game, I would argue even more, because you're only as strong as your weakest link. If you've got a guy who can't guard somebody, they'll just go at him all night long. In that sense, defense may be more important than offense.

We're trying to measure how you help a team win. There is noise in that system. But during the season, you can't change your roster very easily.

Winston's insight in action, against the Spurs in 2006: "Devin Harris had a great rating against the Spurs, and Tony Parker had a lousy rating ... So they started Devin Harris in Game 2 and won by 20." (Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images)

But I have an infinite number of stories about lineups and how it can help you.

The best example is about the Spurs/Mavericks series. Del Harris came to me before Game 2 (of the 2006 Spurs vs. Mavericks series). I love him to death, he's a wonderful person.

Boy, he's a genius. When he was working with the Mavericks, he'd always ask me questions. He always knew the right question to ask. The numbers, by themselves, mean nothing.

In the regular season, Adrian Griffin was terrible against the Spurs. They had a terrible offensive rating, which means they couldn't score when he was in.

So Devin Harris had a great rating against the Spurs, and Tony Parker had a lousy rating in those games. The coaches sort of knew that Devin Harris could handle Tony Parker, but this gave them a metric to prove that.

So they started Devin Harris in Game 2 and they won by 20. 

Then we can do head-to-head -- when one guy is on the court against another guy. When Marquis Daniels was on the court against Manu Ginobili, the Mavericks lost by a point a minute. So in Game 7, they didn't play Daniels. Del Harris told me "we don't know why this happens, but since you tell me Marquis Daniels is getting creamed, we didn't play him."

This is where there's a really old debate with scouts and the data people, that's in Moneyball and everything else.

I don't think either person is right, by themselves. Well, the data is one factor that you should look at.

The flaw with adjusted +/- is that there's noise in the system. But there are flaws in any system. Red Auerbach said K.C. Jones' team won every scrimmage. His PER sucks. There has got to be something missing.

Kevin Martin always has a fantastic PER meanwhile, but every year his defense is terrible. 

So, I don't mind looking at PER. If we mess up, PER would probably get it. But PER messes up a lot because it just doesn't do defense.

So we're saying if you're talking box score based stats, you're going to miss defense ...
A lot of it. Not all of it, a lot of it. You're also missing things like taking the charge. Saving the ball going out of bounds, the pass that leads to the assist. Nobody knows what percentage of basketball is not in the box score, but that determines which side of the debate you're on.

But looking at the lineups, you can see a lot.

"In every playoff series," says Winston "there's what I call the team's kryptonite. For the Mavericks against Denver last year, it was Chris Andersen and J.R. Smith." (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

For instance, in every playoff series, there's what I call the team's kryptonite. There's two or three players on the
court that the other team can't handle.

For the Mavericks against Denver last year, it was Chris Andersen and J.R. Smith. When those two were on the court, the Mavericks got killed.

So what we do is we play detective. We look at every minute those guys are on the court. What worked? 

That's the type of stuff that we do. 

My prediction is that the Bulls are going to stink this year. Ben Gordon and Brad Miller were their best players. They let Ben Gordon go to the team they need to beat for the playoffs? Why'd they do that?

He wanted a lot of money.
Well, he's worth it.

Letting him go is just beyond stupid. It's ridiculous. And who'd they pick up to replace him? Jannero Pargo? I looked at their lineups, and I guess that they're expecting that Luol Deng can play his position. If he's healthy -- and I don't know if he's healthy.

You gotta mine the data. Because sometimes you're helpless. Denver -- I knew that would be bad for the Mavericks last year.

And Golden State [when the top-ranked Mavericks famously lost to the upstart Warriors, in 2007], I knew that would be bad for the Mavericks. The only hope the Mavericks had was to go small, and they did in Game 1 and lost that game. They got a lot of heat for that, but it was probably the best thing they could do.

Dampier is on the team so you can beat the Spurs and you can beat Shaq. And they beat the Spurs really easily. They had no trouble. But against the Warriors, small was better.

Did you advise the Mavericks to go small against the Warriors?
I show the numbers to the coach and they make the decision.

Against the Hornets, I would have certainly gone small. Against Golden State I would have gone small.

In Game 1 they just came out flat. Baron Davis hit like two half-court shots in that series. The Mavericks played horrible. And that series ... I do think it had a long-term effect, the hangover from that. The team didn't go back to being as good as it used to be.

How can you possibly fix something like that?
You can't. That's the whole thing. One of the holy grails of stats is predicting how well a player will do next year.

More from Winston on TrueHoop tomorrow.

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks has been chatting on the website of the Dallas Morning News. He fields a lot of questions about the makeup of the Mavericks' roster -- which, naturally, he defends -- and then is asked about the longevity of his superstar. Mark Cuban writes:

I think Dirk can be a strong contributor for years to come. One thing about dirk, he isnt a high flyer. He isnt even a low flyer :). The guys like to kid him that you have to throw him Alley Unders , not Alley Oops. He is a skill player that doesnt depend on athleticism , which I think can help him out.

Look at ray allen, he continues to be a great player, as do many others who are 4 and 5 years older than dirk

UPDATE: Later in the chat, a commenter takes Cuban to task for his embarrassing behavior during games, and asks him if he'll change. Cuban's response:

This will be my 10th year. I promise you Im not going to change.

the real question is why anyone would be embarrassd by the actions of someone they dont know ? Or why you think you are entitled to judge someone you dont know ?

Hows about you be you, and I will be me. We are one big happy family ? Next time I see you, we can hug it all out. Ok ?

Cuban also says, by the way, that in the Mavericks' assessment, Shawn Marion's performance has not dropped off. Instead he has been asked to play slower, and has not been featured much.

Posted by Kevin Arnovitz

Whatever Mark Cuban's personal leanings toward international basketball, the Dallas Mavericks owner has made his feelings on the subject known. He's said that the practice of lending out $100 million assets for free wouldn't fly in any other commercial industry, yet NBA owners are expected -- as a goodwill gesture -- to hand over their superstars for months at a time.

He's right, which makes the question as to whether NBA players should have to get the permission of their owners to play in international competition a complicated one. That's true whether or not you're a post-nationalist, a self-fashioned patriot, a lover of the international game, or interested exclusively in the NBA.

Players of Nowitzki's caliber blossom in large part because their nations invest in their potential. With that investment comes a tacit understanding that, as the player matures -- be it in the NBA, Euroleague, or elsewhere -- he'll repay that debt by representing his country in international competition. Expectations aside, most professional ballplayers enjoy playing for their country, and you could argue that, as world-class athletes, they've earned the right to peddle their trade how, when, and where they want. 

Sounds sensible, but what happens when that same player signs an eight-figure deal with a professional franchise? Doesn't that binding contract supersede any symbolic expression of national duty and/or service? If you're a business person, do you really want your employee moonlighting for some other entity, particularly if his extracurricular activity has the potential to undermine his ability to do the job you've hired him to do? 

It's a tough one but, as Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game explains, today's story comes out of a longstanding compromise between Cuban and Nowitzki ... but is still complicated for all the aforementioned reasons. The agreement also says as much about Nowitzki as it does about Cuban:

Dirk is pretty much the face, head, neck, greater shoulders area, vertebrae, life blood, and relevant limbs and appendages of the German national team, and without him they're pretty much dead in the water.  That doesn't really concern most of us, but there should be a few dimensions of this news that pique your interest as a Mavs fan.

First and foremost, this is a signal that Dirk is not your typical superstar.  It only makes sense that if the NBA is a players' league, decisions from on high within the organizations are made to cater to the needs and interests of the best players.  Dirk undoubtedly fills that role for the Mavs, and yet here is a clear compromise between star and owner.  Mark Cuban has long preached the horrors of international competition from the perspective of a business owner and a man greatly vested in the team, a fact which Dirk must know all too well.  While Dirk is rooted in the German national team to say the least (Dirk, after qualifying for the 2008 Olympic Games: "I never thought I would cry because of basketball, but I could not stop the tears. I had to be alone for a little bit right after the game and could not even do the post-game interview.”), the fact that he honored his commitment or even made such a commitment in the first place to the Mavs' organization speaks to Dirk's character.  It's not something we didn't already know about ze German, but it never hurts to have a reminder.

Also, keep in mind that Dirk is functionally a free agent next season.  He could jump ship next summer if he so chooses, and yet Mark Cuban is still willing to stick to his guns in this case.  That's Cuban's involvement and power as an owner coming into play, as well as a trust in and understanding of Dirk.  If tensions were high or if Dirk were a high maintenance fella, other accommodations might have to be made.  But they're not and he's not, which turns a potentially disastrous situation into a manageable one because of Dirk's easy going nature.  Dirk's just a 'chill bro' who wants to play some basketball, and we should all be thankful for that.

And finally, Cuban's reminder of his deal with Dirk last summer confirms that this decision is not a reaction to Pau Gasol's recent injury playing for his national team.  More than a few MFFLS will be quick to tell you what happened last time the Mavs became reactionaries to the goings-on of one Pau Gasol, and it's hard to blame them.  It's important to know that your team is willing to make moves to adjust to what's going on around them (lest you'd prefer pretending to ignore the assassin before he stabs you in the back), but more important to know that organizational moves are being dictated internally...

Posted by Kevin Arnovitz

• Mark Cuban puts the kibosh on Dirk Nowitzki playing for the Germans in the European championship.
  
• Dave Berri is much more bullish on the Rockets in 2009-10 than most observers, and appraises the team from -- no surprise -- a very Berrian persepctive: "... wins are about more than scoring.  And when we measure these players contributions to wins (via Wins Produced), we see that Houston has fewer problems than people believe.  Consequently, I think it's possible that Morey's considerable reputation is about to become further enhanced." 
  
• Courtney Lee is still smarting over the trade from Orlando to New Jersey, says former teammate Dwight Howard. 
• Kurt Helin of Forum Blue & Gold on Magic Johnson's post-Laker life in Los Angeles: "After Magic left the Lakers he did not leave Los Angeles, he invested in it. He invested in the urban, poor neighborhoods that nobody else would, and got big name companies to join him (but not without considerable work). He showed corporations they could make money in areas that before they had feared to tread, and while those floodgates have never truly opened, they are more open now than they have been."
• Brian Grant has never been to a hockey game, but he's built a strong friendship NHL lifer Brent Peterson, now the Nashville Predators head coach. Both men suffer from Parkinson's disease.
• Quentin Richardson is in perpetual motion. Somehow this no longer seems so far-fetched.
• I like this piece by Shoals on J.R. Smith and representational issues that arise when we size up ballers. 
• Another senseless death, this time in Milwaukee over ... a car. 
• Suns rookie Earl Clark was a big basketball card collector as a kid, and just handed down his collection to his nephew. 
• Charley Rosen gives us (in alphabetical order) his best NBA defenders. Not on the list? Dwight Howard and LeBron James.  
• In honor of Sunday's premiere of "Mad Men," John Krolik of Cavs the Blog puts together power rankings for the year's best ads. 
• Clippers center and Texan DeAndre Jordan is an avid fan of Kornheiser and Wilbon ... and, apparently, our friends to the north. From DJ's twitter feed: "PTI! I'm waiting on the Canadian flag wave! That's my favorite part of the show!"