What a great night of basketball!

There were only five games on the schedule but four of those were really good, one of them saw over 260 points scored and even the Wolves-Mavericks game wasn’t THAT bad. Al Jefferson had a big night to keep it interesting before the Wolves gave way to the better team.

With that said, I’m ready to give out some damn faces and you can’t do that without a proper opening act.

What do you say, boys?

Lion Face: Wilson Chandler’s Last Stand

For a Knicks team that can’t play any defense or defend the basket that well, they sure did a good job of protecting the rim against the Hawks on Monday night. Wilson Chandler’s block on a potential Josh Smith game-winning dunk not only helped the Knicks win the game but they also held Atlanta to under 100 points. When the Knicks hold their opponents under 100, they’re 15-7 this season.

Lemon Face: Roger Mason, Jr.
I know that shooters are supposed to shoot themselves out of slumps. I get that. They can’t know if they’re hitting unless they’re shooting. But at the same time, when one of your teammates has it going and another one is filling in really nicely for Tony Parker and you still have a HOF big man on your roster, maybe you shouldn’t keep firing up shots like it’s Pop-a-Shot at an arcade. Mason was 1/10 in this game and 0/8 from three. Hell, I could have done that for a much cheaper price tag than what the Spurs paid Mason in this game.

Lion Face: Manu Ginobili
Speaking of having it going, Manu Ginobili looked scary good Monday. With Parker down and George Hill as more of a scoring fill-in than a distributing point guard, they need Manu to be more aggressive and to make some plays. While he did a good job of moving the ball, he did a much better job of lighting up Quicken Arena with his scoring. Manu had 38 points with seven threes and only 23 field goal attempts. He pulled out all of the stops: pull up threes, spot-up threes, drives to the hoop. He even gave us the Shammgod move that he loves to pull off when he’s got it going. I have to think he has a decent shot at the Whoa Boy today (welcome back, fellas!).

Lemon Face: Mike Bibby
I guess technically Mike Bibby is still an NBA player. He’s paid an NBA salary to be on an NBA team. But he doesn’t exactly embody the NBA right now. He’s been horrible this year. You would think against teams like the Knicks, he’d be able to boost his miserable stats a little with the lack of defense this team often shows. Instead, he couldn’t do anything but manage one point and one assist to go with his 0/4 shooting from the field in 21 minutes of action. I guess you can still consider him a shooting threat in the crunch time of playoff games, but I’d much rather run with a point guard tandem of Jeff Teague and Jamal Crawford. At least they’re legit threats.

Lion Face: Danilo Gallinari
Danilo is a really bad man when he’s on. With the Hawks starting out in a good scoring rhythm early in this game, Danilo kept this game close by going 5/5 for 12 points in the first quarter. When the Knicks had their big third quarter, he scored a quarter of the points with eight on four shots and four free throw attempts. He finished the game with 27 points for the game-high and proved to be a problem the whole game. He stretched the floor to open up the middle and the rest of the perimeter for his team. David Lee was good off of pick plays because you simply can’t bring that help defender off of The Rooster.

Lemon Face: Jonny Flynn/Corey Brewer
I think Jonny Flynn can be an exciting player but when I look at him as the future point guard of my favorite team, it makes me want to start following Lacrosse more and more. Flynn can be good for short bursts. He might even score in the high 20s occasionally. But he’s more a jitterbugging kind of guard who looks less than average way more than he looks like the guy who will be manning the ship when the team returns to prominence. You could see that when he had just 13 points and a 1:1 assist to turnover ratio because he racked up eight of each.

Also, Corey Brewer has been tricking the majority of us with a decent falling jumper for a good portion of the season. Does he look like Anthony Morrow out there? Not even close. But he looks less like Marty Conlon this year than the previous two. Against the Mavericks on Monday, he fell back down to Earth where we expected him to be his whole career. 11 points on 10 shots and 1/7 from three doesn’t exactly convince me the jumper has been fixed long-term. Maybe I’m just being too harsh with the way I criticize this team.

Lion Face: Al Jefferson
That’s why I love Al Jefferson. He can keep my spirits up when he’s being fed the ball in the post and unleashing his hellish post package against the poor sap who has been assigned to keep him out of the paint. Jefferson had every pump fake, drop-step and counter-move ready at his disposal against the Mavs and it was all deadly. 36 points on 21 attempts with 13 rebounds against the smaller than hoped frontline of Dallas was impressive. He kept his game from being completely embarrassing. Let’s not trade him unless we get Danny Granger, okay? And even then I’m not so sure I’d ever really want that.

Lemon Face: Sasha Pavlovic
Two years ago, I was laughing at the fact that this guy was still in the league. It didn’t make any sense at all. He was a shooter that couldn’t really shoot. Now? He’s on the Wolves and he still can’t shoot. Against the Mavs, he had seven points on 10 shots with 1/6 from three. He was a minus-20 in the game in just 21 minutes. That seems like it would be hard to do. By accident, you would assume he’d be on the court when an errant three-pointer or two goes the team’s way.

Lion Face: Anthony Morrow
This guy is the best outside shooter in the NBA. It’s not Ray Allen. It’s not Steve Nash. It’s not Paul Pierce much to his chagrin. It’s not even Dirk Nowitzki who I’d bet my life on making the next jumper. It’s Anthony Morrow. We all remember the tale of his existence. He’s pure like snow. He’s pure like virgin snow. I can’t believe his jumper is not butter. He had 28 points in an OK Corral-level shootout with the Hornets Monday night. It came on 11/13 shooting with 6/6 from deep. 16 of his points and four of his threes came in the fourth quarter. He was a perfect 7/7 from the field in the second half and helped lead the Warriors in a second half shooting display of making 28 of their 40 attempts. Anthony Morrow made everything look effortless and if the defense hadn’t clung to his jersey on the final possessions, he probably would have won the game.

Lemon Face: Brook Lopez
I thought Brook Lopez was going to be a below average player when he got drafted. I’m never really big on PAC-10 big men in the modern era unless they’re related to the Beach Boys in some way so I had a bit of a bias going against Brook. I also didn’t think he was very intelligent despite the fact that he went to Stanford. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. He’s extremely talented and a very intelligent player on the court. He’s going to be a good center in this league for a long time. But Monday night, he had to go against one of the truly big boys in the NBA in Marc Gasol. And Gasol kind of ate his lunch. He managed just 10 points on 10 shots. He grabbed only seven rebounds to Gasol’s 13. He did pass out six assists but had three turnovers to go with them. He just wasn’t good enough to beat Gasol on the road. In a couple of years, he’ll probably be picking and choosing which lunches he eats and which ones he steps on.

Lion Face: Courtney Lee
Ever since February hit us, we’ve been starting to see the same Courtney Lee that we saw emerge in the playoffs last year. His explosiveness seems to be back and his scoring with punches in bunches mentality is also showing itself around here again. He scored 30 against the Grizzlies after scoring 25 two days ago in New York. He helped keep this game a lot closer than the Grizzlies were comfortable with and was a big part of the Nets staying in this game in the first half. Welcome back, Courtney Lee. In your honor, I’d like everybody to watch this from last May.

Lemon Face: Hamed Haddadi
He didn’t do anything wrong. But Hasheem Thabeet is back up from the D-League after posting really good numbers that hopefully got his confidence back up. This means that “Who’s Your Haddadi and What Does He Do” will never see the light of the court again. Get him a comfy seat and a magazine on the bench. He seems like a Cat Fancy type of guy.

Lion Face: Marcus Thornton
When Buckets has it going, you need to make sure you’re tuning in. Don’t just tune in; study it like the Zapruder film and figure out if there’s a second gunman on the perimeter. Thornton was scoring in a variety of ways against the Warriors. He made some really difficult circus shots around the basket. He drained threes like his name was Anthony Morrow. He got out on the break and scored. He just has a good nose for the ball (if I can borrow the cliché) and finds a way to get the ball in a scoring position. There is a #leaguepassalert hashtag on Twitter to help you know which games to navigate to when the action is getting heated. Soon there will need to be a #BucketsIsDoingHisThing tag so we know when Marcus Thornton is the primetime viewing suggestion.

Lion Face: Reggie Williams
Once again, I’d like the D-League to stand up. Reggie has been here for five games now after Monday and he got a chance to have a breakout game against the Hornets. He responded by tying the game-high of 28 points and proving that perhaps he belongs in this league from here on out. The 28 points came on an efficient 16 shots and he even added six assists to go with it. He didn’t force the issue. He played within the hectic, chaotic Warriors offensive schemes and succeeded.

Lion Face: Darren Collison
Darren Collison is playing so well that people have contemplated the Hornets needing to trade Chris Paul in order to bring in a bevy of skilled players. While that’s maybe the dumbest idea in the history of the modern era not conceived by Isiah Thomas’ GM ability, it proves the point that Darren Collison has been pretty special since taking over for the injured All-Star. Collison’s turnovers (4.8 per game last month, seven Monday night) are an issue he needs to resolve. But his scoring and distributing has been through the roof. He’s kept the Hornets competitive and winning.

Monday, he allegedly set the Hornets’ rookie record for assists in a game (more on the alleged aspect of this later today) by racking up 20 to go with his 16 points. He helped limit Stephen Curry’s offensive production by sticking to him all night. Curry ended up with 12 points on 13 shots and that was thanks to two threes in the final two minutes to bring the Warriors within striking range. Collison had the chance to ice the game on the last Hornets’ possession of the game until they had to shoot free throws to clinch the game. He drove Steph to the right side, crossed back over backwards through his legs and then went left for the score inside. He knew he had a weak defender on him and set him up perfectly for the clinching basket. It’s that kind of leadership ability that has people foolishly thinking CP3 could be expendable.

Before the trade deadline, before the term starter was placed in front of his name and before Mike Wilbon said he was playing like the next Kevin Garnett, Andray Blatche was on notice as a literary subject for Backboard’s Shadow. (Not to toot my own horn.)  He’s always had the skill set to be a difference maker, but as Celtics broadcaster Mike Gorman stated Sunday night before Washington blew a winnable game in Boston, Blatche has the type of talent that’ll keep both teams in the game.  He takes bad shots; tends to loaf around the court and sulk when things aren’t going just so.  But since the all-star break, he’s been showcasing himself as a seriously skilled big man, one who’s certainly going to be in the Wizards future plans.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In a year that was supposed to be a healthy bounce back from last season’s embarrassing, injury riddled campaign, the Washington Wizards have been in the headlines this season for all the wrong reasons. A sketchy incident involving several firearms and immature inner-locker room quarrels cast a dark shadow over the franchise.  The aftermath was the franchise player’s season coming to an abrupt end and the other two mainstays getting shipped far, far away to teams that have an actual shot at playing meaningful basketball in the spring.

Blatche has decided in his fifth season at just 23 years old, that this was the time to breakout.

Throughout his career he’s shown brief indications of a prodigious gift.  He’s 6’ 11”  with outside touch, something that makes professional scouts drool.  A little over a week ago he scored a career high 36 points to go along with 15 rebounds against the New Jersey Nets.  A week before that he went on an offensive barrage versus the Timberwolves, netting 33 points with 13 boards .  In between those two notable performances was 26 points and 18 rebounds in an overtime loss to the Knicks.  In that game he let it all pour out.  51 minutes of hustle when the next highest contributor was Randy Foye who logged 40 minutes.  It was the type of performance an all-star gives his team on a nightly basis and is indicative of what Blatche is capable of.

Since replacing Jamison and Haywood as a centerpiece in Washington’s front court, Blatche has been sublime.  Upon returning from the all-star break, he’s started in all 10 games on the schedule, averaging 24 points, just over 10 rebounds and three assists per game.  Not only is his 18-footer gaining respect around the league, but his entire offensive game is on the cusp of something special.  He’s so young and so talented with skills and dimensions that could have him replacing Arenas as Washington’s go-to scorer (should the franchise man return next year).  It seems like nothing can stop him.  Nothing, except of course, but himself.

Before this season began, Blatche embodied a major reason why the NBA changed its high school entry rules for the draft.  The Kwame Browns, the Eddy Currys, the Jonathan Benders of the basketball world were bogging down the overall level of play with immaturity and unfulfilled promise.  They lacked fundamentals, they lacked any sort of on-court IQ and they lacked a responsibility to perform for the franchises signing the million dollar checks.

As a 21-year-old, three-year veteran, Blatche was a thoughtless millionaire.  Right after signing his contract extension, he tried to solicit sex from an undercover police officer. He was later arrested on June 4, 2008 in Virginia on charges of reckless driving and driving on a suspended license for the third time.

After a heartbreaking loss in Boston on Sunday night that saw Washington helplessly watch the Celtics go on a 20-4 run to close out the game, Flip Saunders called out Blatche for jawing back and forth with Kevin Garnett in the fourth quarter.  Blatche ended up with 23 points, shooting 50 percent from the field and performed at a nearly unguardable level for long stretches throughout, but it was his waking of a sleeping giant and the casual, unconcerned post-game explanation that make him such a puzzling player.

He has the physical tools to be LaMarcus Aldridge with court vision, but his drive to succeed and his need to dominate are too blasé.  It’s what’s in between his ears that could either hold him back or push him towards excellence and a max contract in a few years.   It’s one of the more intriguing plot lines basketball fans in D.C. have to follow now that the Wizards are officially starting from scratch.

The Bargnani talk veered off into a discussion of whose minutes a guy like Reggie Evans should be slicing into, if any? Is it Bargnani’s or Johnson’s? The stats point to the Raptors being a better team with Johnson on the floor as he brings more defense at the cost of offense which we seem to have in spades. Does Bargnani get a free pass when compared to Johnson? Amir gets yanked out of the game after two bad plays, but Bargnani continues to see floor time (39+ minutes last night) despite being a non-factor on defense and providing inconsistent offense. Is it a double-standard? What kind of message does it send?

via Rapcast #63: Bargnani indicted | Raptors Republic – ESPN TrueHoop’s Raptors Blog.

I kind of hope the Raptors re-sign Bosh and then find some magical way to trade Bargnani. Because the amount of crap that kid gets in comparison to two role players behind him is ridiculous.

Reggie Evans can’t play. I mean, he can. You just don’t want him to. He’d make a nice mascot, but I don’t want him working pick and roll defense on the floor. And that’s the good side of him. Because if he tries to shoot, whoa boy.

Amir Johnson is the other one. The dude was a rallying point in Detroit. Now he’s a rallying point in Toronto. I honestly believe that fans want him to start and for Bargnani, scoring 20 points with 10.5 7.5 (CORRECTION: I massively screwed up here and posted Barg’s TRR, which is horrid at 10.5, instead of his Total rebounds, which is mediocre at 7.5) boards per 40, mind you, to come off the bench.

Andrea Bargnani is a better basketball player than Amir Johnson. A MUCH better basketball player. All those things that people tend to denigrate him for, the defense, the focus, etc.? Those are systemic problems. It’s not like the Raps are a solid defensive squad except when Bargnani’s out there. They are systemically bad at defense.

Meanwhile, when he is on the floor, he provides a range shooter and athletic big that creates matchup nightmares all over the place. When Johnson is on the floor? He creates a big man version of Matt Barnes without the range.

I’m not sold on Bargnani as a centerpiece, but that’s the whole problem with this Raptors roster. The core pieces that have been set up as what should be built around, probably aren’t. That includes Bargnani. But that also includes Amir Johnson, Reggie Evans, Jose Calderon, and possibly even Chris Bosh.

UPDATE: I fear I may have (yet again), oversimplified things without pointing out all the random nonsense going on inside my head. So a few follow-ups.

1. The podcast is quite good. That’s why I linked to it. They mostly talk about the facts, which are that the defense does statistically play better with Johnson on board rather than Bargs, and there could be a host of reasons for that.

2. My main beef with the Reggie Evans thing is that there is a palpable sense from Raptors fans (not specifically the fine gents at Raps Republic) that they need more Reggie and Amir. That that will make them a better basketball team. Which completely ignores the fact that what Bargnani gives them on offense is really difficult to replace. A big that can stretch the floor, drive, and hit from the perimeter? That’s kind of a big deal. I know there’s some disappointment with Evans from Raps fans, but instead of turning on management, Bargs seems to be the main target.

3. It actually brings up a really interesting idea I’d like to kick around, on if there is a significant increase in sixth through eighth men off the bench in defensive lineups on average, and where Johnson lines up with that.

Brown has a player option to stay with the Lakers for $2.1 million next season second year of a bi-annual exception deal. Brown and his agent will not talk contracts, but the Lakers front office expects him to turn down that option thinking he can make more on the open market.And he can.Brown is about as athletic a guard as there is in the league, and there’s no doubt he can run the floor and finish on the break. Just ask YouTube. But he also has a solid outside shot he’s hit 43 percent of his looks from 16 to 23 feet this season, has pretty good handles and plays solid defense. His decision making as a lead guard within the Lakers triangle offense is holding his minutes back right now, but in a less structured system he might flourish.Plus, Brown is the kind of player the team marketing guys can sell.

via Shannon Brown slam dunk to be a free agent – ProBasketballTalk – Basketball – NBC Sports.

Being on good teams makes you better. Josh Powell looks better than Brian Cardinal, even though Cardinal is likely a better player. Jordan Farmar looks better than Kyle Lowry, even though Lowry is likely a better player. And on and up it goes to the top. The only player who looks as good as he did four years ago is Kobe Bryant, and that’s because he’s kind of sort of awesome.

But when you take guys away from that comfy system, when you remove them from a position of reverse-court on the non-overload side, take away the safety and security of the wide-open corner three, things look suspiciously different. Just ask the Rockets and Trevor Ariza. Ariza’s not an abject disaster, by any means. A talented, long defender who can knock down a shot or two. But as we’ve covered before, he’s not a volume guy. He’s meant to do what he did in LA. Fill in the holes. But when you’re a pivotal piece of a championship winning team, your value goes up, even though in reality, you could plug in any player of your type (in this instance, long, athletic three-point specialists- and he only learned the three-point thing last year in the triangle) and they would succeed in that system. It’s why the corpse of Derek Fisher still haunts that backcourt. No one else can look as good in that system for his price.

In Brown’s case, it’s even more of an exaggeration. Laker fans adore Brown. He’s so much like Ariza in a different model, it’s stunning. The highlight plays: instead of speedy inbounds steals and corner threes, it’s garbage-time dunks and pull-up jumpers. The lack of real defensive acumen: watch Brown try and cut off the baseline some time. It’s like watching the Mambo No.5.

Brown’s a fine player. But in this summer’s spending spree, even if it’s limited by the economy and next year’s CBA, Brown’s going to get paid. Being a championship backup point guard on the market is enough, then you throw in his dunk value kitsch, and the big shots he will inevitably hit in the playoffs (with no one around to guard him, or look at him, or suggest a nice Cabernet after the game), and you’ve got yourself a prime case of value-hiking.

Maybe Brown really is a star that’s just waiting to excel. But if I’m looking at the two Lakers point guards, I’d go more with the guy who shows flashes when he’s outside the triangle and struggles within, versus the garbage-time highlight champ who’ll likely be striking a hard bargain.

I would never get into a fight during a basketball game. It’s so immature and unnecessary.

If someone wanted to fight me, I would give them a really scary face. I’d try to look like the king of the jungle. It would be the face of a lion because nothing is more intimidating outside of Miley Cirus’ smoker-voice than a freaking lion. But what if it didn’t affect the person who wanted to fight me and they made their own lion face?

Then I would have to cower and respectfully back down after they called my bluff. I would scrunch my face up like I just had something very sour and citrusy. It would be like a lemon face. Like I was sucking on a lemon.

Guys, care to demonstrate?

Thanks, gentlemen.

Lion Face: Matt Barnes

Here’s what I liked about the whole Matt Barnes-Kobe Bryant thing: it was kind of a throwback to the days when NBA players could be a little tough. Now? Guys get suspended for making contact with someone’s head, whether it was dangerous or just trying to help them shoo a fly away. Barnes went after Kobe. Kobe tried to bully Barnes. Barnes knowing he had nothing to lose and everything to gain from standing up to Kobe never stopped. He pushed the envelope with Kobe. He faked a ball at his face on the inbounds. Kobe never flinched. It was a pissing contest and in the end, Matt Barnes’ clutch three was enough to hold off Kobe’s flurry. This reeked of Chris Childs all over again.

Lemon Face: NBA Officiating
The two games I paid the most attention to on Sunday were the Magic-Lakers game and the Kings-Thunder game. The two games were arguably the worst officiated games I’ve seen all season. The Magic game was a cavalcade of bad calls. Dwight Howard was getting called for fouls he didn’t commit. The Lakers apparently fouled Vince Carter enough to get him 10 free throw attempts… in the first quarter. There was an offensive goaltending call against the Magic when there was no goal to tend on the play. In the Thunder-Kings game, the game was officiated so ineptly that the teams had no idea what they could get away with and what they couldn’t. So they just tried everything. Nocioni got a flagrant because Westbrook fell down due to poor balance. Jeff Green, Kevin Durant and Westbrook all got first half technical fouls because… well… it’s not quite clear what they did wrong. What we saw in these two games on Sunday was a failure to control the game by the officials and it was due to their inconsistencies.

Lion Face: Vince Carter
Vince got the free throw line 14 times against the Lakers. In fact, he was really aggressive in the first quarter and sort of set the tone for the entire game. He finished with 25 points but he jumped the game off with 15 first quarter points. I can’t believe we had a game between two great teams on national television and Vince was actually responsible for it being fun. It made me think that maybe we were back in 1999 again. I was going to go watch The Matrix and throw on the Slim Shady LP. It was a year for rebellion in 1999 and Vince Carter rebelled against his legendary malaise-filled play. Good for him.

Lemon Face: Kobe Bryant
We have to hear so often when Kobe makes a big shot that everybody who isn’t a Lakers fan is going to relish in this a little bit.

Wait, we’re still relishing in it. You feel that? That’s failure. That’s Kobe failure.

Okay, are we done? No, not yet. A little bit longer. Okay, that’s enough…

After this one last bit of relishing. Okay, back to understanding they’re the best team in basketball when they want to be.

Lion Face: Kobe Bryant
For all the failure and feuding with Matt Barnes, Kobe had a decent game. The shot was struggling a bit with a 12/30 but he finished with 34 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. He did a decent job of moving the ball. Was there too much isolation for Kobe? Absolutely. But the Lakers were also about half a shoe size on two outside shots (one by Fisher and one by Bryant) from taking that game into overtime.

Lemon Face: Ben Gordon
What would you say, YOU DO here? You’re getting $10 million this year and you’re playing terribly. You’ve never scored this few points since your freshman year at Connecticut. In 26 minutes, you shot 1/7 and scored six points. You didn’t get a single assist. You turned the ball over two times. I’m not good at math but I think that assist to turnover ratio isn’t even an integer. Ben, I know you don’t want to try unless you’re on a playoff team but how about a little effort?

Lion Face: Drew Drue Dru Jrue Holiday
However you spell it, you certainly couldn’t defend it on Sunday. Holiday threw in his hat into the ridiculously talented point guard ring of this year’s rookie class. Is he going to be one of the top five point guards from this draft? Most likely not. But he showed against the Raptors that he could be a valid scoring option while providing a steady hand at the point and good defense in the backcourt. He got the basket with ease and he knocked down three-pointers. The thing about Holiday is he probably won’t make any All-Star teams in his career but you could see him being the floor general for a title contender.

Lemon Face: Kevin Garnett
It’s been 14 years since Kevin Garnett went an entire game without making a field goal. Sunday, it happened again to the delight of every trolling non-Celtic fan who has decided to vilify him because he yells obscenities into the open air. He actually didn’t have a bad game overall. He had eight points and 10 rebounds. He racked up three assists. He got to the free throw line 10 times. But he couldn’t make a single basket against Andray Blatche? Seriously? C’mon, KG.

Lion Face: JR Smith
I really feel bad for Nuggets fans. They’re one piece away from being able to challenge the Lakers in a seven-game series. It probably needed to be an extra big man but it easily could have just been retaining Linas Kleiza. Instead, now they have to pray Kenyon Martin isn’t out for the rest of the season and hope JR Smith continues to have great contributions like the 20-point, seven-assist performance he had against the Blazers. If you’re going to base your playoff hopes on the shot selection and offensive execution of JR Smith, then you’re probably in for a disappointment. But on any given night in the regular season, he can be electricity. When his game is going, he’s unstoppable.

Lemon Face: The Celtics’ First 42 minutes
For the first 42 minutes of the game against the Wizards, the Celtics were looking to be the most pathetic playoff team we’ve ever seen. Old. Disgusting. Letting themselves go. They could only manage a measly 66 points against the Washington Wizards who gutted their team in hopes of tanking and rebuilding. And then…

Lion Face: Ray Allen’s Clutchitude
The Celtics got their stuff together. Shots started falling. They got away with being more physical than the Wizards even if it meant bending some rules. And most of all, Ray Allen’s shot started to fall. He threw down a dunk. Then he sniped in a couple of clutch threes to give the Celtics a lead and then a win. Say what you will about the Celtics trade deadline deal and not taking advantage of Ray Allen’s expiring, if there is ANY chance that the Celtics can make a great run into the playoffs this year it only happens with Ray Allen’s clutch shooting.

Lemon Face: Randy Foye
Oh I remember you, Randy Foye. My Wolves fandom remembers you all too well. People will look to the eight assists and say that your playmaking ability is actually quite underrated. They’ll ignore the 3/14 shooting night. But I know better. All of us know better who tried to talk ourselves into you over Brandon Roy. I won’t let you fool anyone ever again.

Lion Face: Aldray Thorntatche
Al Thornton and Andray Blatche almost single-handedly beat the Boston Celtics on Sunday by becoming this two-headed monster of a forward tandem. They helped inspire JaVale McGee to get to the line and block a handful of shots. Most of all, they combined for 47 points, 20 rebounds and four steals. They seemingly took turns terrorizing the old guys on Boston throughout the game. I would like to see this monster more often. In fact, I’d like to see this monster so much and so consistently that the Wizards have no choice to build around it. And I want that to end up being a good decision.

Lemon Face: Kings’ Free Throw Shooting
In a game they lost by six, the Kings missed nine free throws. Tyreke Evans missed three in the fourth quarter. Carl Landry who had made 88% of his Sacramento free throws going into this game and was also on a streak of 20 made in a row, missed his first two attempts. He’d go on to miss one more. This is the reason Sacramento can’t have nice things.

Lion Face: Russell Westbrook
Westbrook got inadvertently hit in the eye by Carl Landry. It split Westbrook open and he had to get stitches in the game to close the wound. He came back right before the end of the third quarter to try to make sure his team didn’t blow a road win they could definitely use. He seemingly had enough of the rough play and Thunder miscues. So he went to the basket. Over and over again. He scored 13 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Thunder to victory and finished with a stat line of 21 points, eight rebounds, four assists and five stitches. From now on, instead of making note of all the times Westbrook drives to the basket, we should make note of all the times he gets stopped driving to the basket. It will be a much shorter list for us to keep.

Lion Face: Andre Miller Dunked… What?

I don’t know what to tell you. Do I believe it actually happened? Of course not. That would be preposterous . There’s no way Andre Miller dunked in a game at the age of 47. It’s just no feasible. Maybe he laid it up really hard. Maybe Jerryd Bayless was wearing an Andre Miller jersey as some sort of sophomore hazing ritual with the Blazers and HE dunked the ball. Maybe we’re watching a video game and someone messed with his dunk rating. I’m not quite sure how to explain what the video shows. But I do know one thing: there’s not a single reason for ANY OF US to believe that Andre Miller dunked a basketball on Sunday night. Not a one.

Loren Lee Chen is the former author Pure Point and and a contributer for Stacheketball. You can follow his ramblings via Twitter. He was an official representative of Hardwood Paroxysm, along with Rob and Jared, at the Sloan Sports Conference at MIT on Saturday. Enjoy. -MM

When Matt first asked me to write about the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in January, I was flabbergasted to say the least.  My first reaction was something to the effect of, “Yes, yes, yes!” I mean, how often do you get a chance to be in the same room as Daryl Morey, Bill Simmons, Mark Cuban, Adam Silver, John Hollinger, and literally hundreds of the most prominent faces in the sports world.  As I kept thinking about it though, I started to get a little apprehensive.

As you undoubtedly know, Matt Moore has built a veritable army here at HP.  Why then, was he coming to me for this? I don’t have the innate writing prowess of Rob Mahoney, the comedic stylings of Jared Wade, or the statistical knowledge of Tom Haberstroh or Jon Nichols.  So, what do I have to offer?

Let’s take a step back for a second.  If I’m lucky, you used to read my now defunct blog, Pure Point, have seen me contribute to Stacheketball, or follow me on Twitter, but more likely than not, most of you have never heard of me before.  However, if you’re on this site right now, chances are that we’re a lot alike in that we like to consume as much basketball information as possible.  That’s the perspective I think I can bring to this discussion; I’m the everyman, I’m you.

Stepping into the conference center, I was immediately overwhelmed.  In a sea of 1000 attendees, trying to match faces to avatars and scouring name tags for familiar names was a daunting task.  I would have killed to be standing behind Sebastian Pruiti in the coffee line, to have bumped into Zach Harper in the hallway.  As chance would have it, fortune did happen to smile upon me, in the form of Gian Casimiro of KnickBlog, who happened to take the seat directly next to me during the opening remarks.  We talked basketball a bit, discussed how ridiculous the conference was, and generally just chummed it up. But when the first panel rolled around, we went our separate ways, and I was alone again. That is until a 6’3″, athletic-looking guy with a blonde crew-cut confidently strolled up and took the seat next to me.

Do you know the feeling you get when you see someone famous in real life? It’s like, “You know, that kinda of looks like… No, it couldn’t be…” I had that feeling, and then the man, possibly noticing my lingering stare, turned to me and non-chalantly said, “Hi, I’m Steve.” Steve, as in Steve Kerr, 5-time NBA Champion, GM of the Phoenix Suns.  Imagine that.

I introduced myself, and we got to talking.

The first thing I asked him, with a possible nod to Scott Schroeder in mind, was what he thought was the difference between the back-of-the-rotation guys, and those who are scraping away in the D-League, China, Europe, etc. According to him, there might be a talent discrepancy, but the main culprit is circumstance.  When a rookie comes into the league with superstars ahead of him, naturally he’s going to struggle to get off the bench.  If this keeps up for a couple years, he’s going to gain a reputation as someone who’s not good enough to play in the NBA.  Steve seems to be a man of examples, and in this situation he looked at Darren Collison.  When Chris Paul was healthy, Collison was a decent reserve, providing a few efficient minutes per game, but he wasn’t making the splash that the other point guards in the class– Tyreke Evans, Brandon Jennings, Steph Curry, Jonny Flynn, and even Ty Lawson– were.  But now that he has been given the reins to the team, we know that Collison might be one of the best there is.  If Chris Paul had never gotten injured, we might still think of him as nothing more than a serviceable back-up.  This might seem like general knowledge to us commonfolk, but it’s refreshing to see that top GM’s consider it as well.

The panel started up, and my brief encounter with greatness was over.  Still, the impression stayed with me for the rest of the conference. Finally, I felt like I belonged with these people.

The rest of the conference was business as usual, but one note in the final panel struck a note with me. Rob King, Editor-In-Chief of ESPN.com, was asked why athletes are gravitating towards Twitter and other social media outlets.  His response, “People are inherently lonely and disconnected. People want to connect; they want to know that they matter.”  That’s exactly how I felt. Being recognized by Jared Wade and Rob Mahoney, sharing a drink with Zach Lowe, Brian Robb, and Kevin Arnovitz, every one of the 19 new followers I got on Twitter throughout the day; these were all small confirmations that I mattered.  Hopefully, you think I do too.

One of the panels at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference yesterday dealt with performance enhancement. Obviously, steroids in baseball and — to a less hullabullo-ed degree — football are the first things that come to mind when the topic is broached. And indeed, supplements and pills led the discussion.

Kevin Arnovitz of TrueHoop broke down a story Steve Kerr told about the potential dangers of supplements.

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

According to Kerr, the scare after Googs collapsed prompted all the trainers throughout the league to mandate that their players told them about any substances going into their bodies. “It came from that incident,” said Kerr. “It was an eye-opener for the entire league.”

And as the field of supplements and over-the-counter pills has increased, this has only become more critical. “Think of the explosion in that industry — in GNC,” said Kerr. “If it’s legal, somebody’s going to sell it.”

But like most people, Kerr doesn’t think MLB-type doping is a problem in basketball, and he only ever saw one example of a player trying to get an edge with an illegal substance — and it came about 20 years ago when he was still at the University of Arizona. It was also unsuccessful, as the player in question was trying to bulk up for pre-draft workouts that never led to an NBA career.

Kerr was similarly candid about himself and pills, saying that he took Vioxx late in his career to help with his knee problems. “I think Vioxx was a performance-enhancing drug,” he said. Obviously, Vioxx was a completely legal anti-arthritis pill/pain reliever, and whether it is really even performance enhancing or not is debatable. But Kerr felt it was. “Maybe some of it was psychological … I felt better, more confident.”

This led me to wonder what perfectly legal things might potentially be giving NBA players an edge other than pills and supplements. I don’t care to discuss that. My interest in that debate has been entirely exhausted by MLB coverage in recent years.

No, I’m curious about equipment.

The panelists talked about possible advantages gained by the utlra-buoyant suits worn by swimmers in the Beijing Olympics. Well, NBA players have begun donning a lot of new attire over the past decade, too. It doesn’t make them float, but it does dull some of the pain they might feel.

Guys like Dwyane Wade wear padded shorts under their uniforms to protect their hips and lessen the chance of an errant knee giving them a dreaded deep thigh bruise that can linger for weeks and hamper mobility. In short, this lets him drive to the hoop with less concern for his own health or fear of pain, which has always been a natural deterrent to penetrating just as it has been with taking a charge from a guy like Shawn Kemp on the other end of the floor.

Dwyane is quoted as saying as much on the webpage for McDavid’s “HexPad,” which are the padded shorts he wears.

“I never have any second thought about taking it to the hoop wearing HexPad” – Dwyane Wade

It’s hard to gauge exactly what type of advantage this gives Flash. Lots of other NBA players wear similar protective gear, so it is not like he is the only one who thinks they help. We do know, however, that George Gervin and Isiah Thomas didn’t wear HexPads in the NBA “glory days.” Then again, guys like Patrick Ewing and Kevin McHale did rock bulky knee-pads that must have helped them along the same lines.

So is this any big deal? Probably not.

But what about Kenyon Martin and others who now wear shin guards? It seems to me that if I was a guy whose main role was to challenge guys going hard to the rim and battling for rebounds in the post, it would be easier to do so if I didn’t have to worry about getting kicked in the shins. That hurts. Throw on the compression arm sleeve with a elbow pad that Kenyon likes to wear, a padded compression tank top under your jersey and some HexPads underneath your shorts, and you’re pretty well-armored from head to toe. May as well add some knee pads and a Rip Hamilton face mask to complete the package. Take the court in riot gear, essentially.

Now, I’m not sure of all the rules surrounding what you can and cannot wear for medical reasons. We know that full-leg compression tights are no longer allowed without a note from your doctor. And Dwyane knows that he can wear a bandage over a cut, but not a “Band-Wade” with his name on it.

We like to joke about the foolishness of all this stuff (see A Stern Warning’s “Over Accessorizers“), but given all the new, light-weight protective and support equipment out there (including the new shoulder sleeves that we have seen from Vince Carter, Michael Beasley, Antawn Jamison and Mike Miller this year), when does it all become too much?

Where is the line?

Hypothetically, I have to imagine that if any player tried to wear all the gear used by Kenyon, Wade, Ewing and Rip at the same time, the league would step in and tell him to take some of it off. But all this leads back to some of the other topics broached at the Sloan conference.

Eventually, bio-medicine is going to offer innovations that are true advantages more so than colorful fashion statements with protective qualities. The panelists speculated that artificial limbs might some day be stronger than natural ones. Cancer survivor Kyle Garlett completed an Iron Man Triathalon last year after receiving a heart transplant and getting an artificial hip. He is a hero who overcame long odds to accomplish such an athletic feat, but what if science develops artificial hips that improve performance?

Arnovitz brings up LASIK surgery as another performance enhancer that no one has an issue with now. And Tommy John surgery for baseball pitchers is now widely seen as a mostly innocuous way to make your arm stronger. But what about trying to surgically attach a fully inorganic arm? Maybe it helps your shooting form. Or maybe it just lets you go harder for rebounds. I dunno. I’m not a doctor. And, yeah, it certainly seems like something that would not be allowed in a league of non-cyborg basketball players.

Well, OK. No full metal limbs allowed. Seems like a good rule.

But what about a titanium finger?

Tougher call.

While I’m not able to be in Boston to attend the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, I’ve been following the great work being presented by all of those in the TrueHoop Network. Guys like Zach Lowe and Brian Robb at Celtics Hub, Sebastian Pruiti at Nets are Scorching and NBA Playbook, Henry Abbott and Kevin Arnovitz at TrueHoop, Haubs at The Painted Area, and our very own Rob Mahoney and Jared Wade here at HP have all submitted fantastic write-ups on some of the discussion going on at this conference.

The conference is essentially a meeting of the minds of the smartest and most innovative sports analysts that have graced the pro athletic world throughout the past decade. And while it doesn’t necessarily take a PhD to attend or understand a modicum of what’s going on and where the statistical revolution is headed, it is important to take the information and discussion from this conference and try to make sense of why the subject of advanced statistics is so essential to understanding the modern era of sports.

But I’m not writing this to get you to buy into advanced stats and analysis. I’m hardly someone that understands the majority of what these stats are. It was enough of a chore for me to figure out what offensive and defensive efficiency ratings were when I started my writing career (technically, I have one). The thing that most inspired me about this conference is that tolerance, understanding and acceptance are all underlying themes that correlate to the everyday world in which I write in.

The parallels between advanced statisticians and the way they’ve tried to earn acceptance into the front offices of the sports world compared to the way bloggers and new media technicians have attempted to move their way into the mainstream media are eerily similar in my opinion. 20, 15, even 10 years ago if John Hollinger walked into the office of someone like Kevin McHale or Glen Taylor and started talking about Player Efficiency Rating, they’d ask him to kindly leave and send a memo around the office urging everybody to make sure he doesn’t get his parking validated.

Now?

One-third of the league’s front offices have guys on staff that can do the PER calculations in their heads. In another decade, the majority, if not all, of the teams around the league will be using advanced stats and relaying them to NBA coaching staffs in order to maximize lineups and winning efforts on the court. It’s just where the sport is headed. The guys who were once called “nerds” and shunned away from the world of sports are still being called “nerds” but at least they’re contributing to the knowledge and success of NBA franchises.

And isn’t that sort of where blogging has come from and where it’s going?

A decade ago, the closest thing you could find to a successful blogger was Bill Simmons. Guys were clawing their way up and trying to find ways to get into the world of being legit sports coverage but the idea that anything other than the newspaper and major media industries covering sports to a mass audience was a pipe dream.

Now it’s not a pipe dream but commonplace. Three years ago, I was trying to figure out how to start a website of my own hoping to become a voice people know. Now, I’m a credentialed member of the media for all Sacramento Kings games. I’ve been on the Daily Dime three times, which for someone who has been reading it since it’s inception is pretty freaking cool. It says much more about the evolution of sports coverage than what I actually do.

To me, what this means is that ANYONE can make a name for themselves in the world of online media. It’s growing by leaps and bounds every day. The smart entities that once ruled the playground aren’t trying to take our lunch money anymore. They’re offering us affiliations and free-lancing gigs. Those who don’t accept the world of blogging are the ones that live in a mindset of stigmas and fear of change.

To many people, blogging is a style of “writing” that is uninformed, churlish and anonymous. It’s the fall of the written word and the reason the newspaper industry is in danger of going under. That’s probably the most short-sighted way of looking at what the world of blogging has brought to the media world. It’s dismissive and defensive. It’s flat-out wrong.

Blogging isn’t a style of writing. It’s a platform and nothing more. It’s a gateway to some of the most brilliant writers who have ever graced your computer screen. Do you think Bethlehem Shoals is a blogger or a writer or both? When you read his work does it even matter? Is Kelly Dwyer just some immature blogger in his mom’s basement? No, that would be a completely ignorant way of viewing his work and the industry at large.

Blogging is a different way to access the analysis and information. Blogging makes sports media better. Is it because the newspaper industry wasn’t doing a good job of relaying the story? Not at all. It’s that as technology grew and people became more demanding of when and how they received their information and knowledge, there was simply a demand for more coverage and the supply couldn’t satisfy it.

People wanted more analysis and more news. The smart ones in the mainstream media have found a way to work with this new movement. They’ve accepted it as a reality instead of an absolute threat. They’ve embraced it on their end. Look at what guys like Howard Beck, Sam Amick and Brian Windhorst (just to name a few) do on a regular basis. They’ve attempted to bridge the gap between mainstream media and blogging. And they’ve done a bang-up job at doing so. They’ve accepted and embraced where sports media is going and are staying ahead of the curve.

It’s the same thing with advanced stats. More information and more analysis make everybody smarter and more informed. Do you have to know what Win Shares or trackback links are? Not necessarily. You don’t have to read everybody. You can pick and choose a handful of writers to keep you smarter. You can learn some advanced stats inside and out to know if what you see on the court is actually what’s going on. The worlds have evolved together. Advanced stats came into the world as blogging exploded onto the scene. We’re both here and we’re both just trying to expand the coverage and the conversation of sports.

We’re not better. We’re not worse. We’re a different way of looking at things. And events like the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference show how far everything has come and give a glimpse of where we’re all headed.

At the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, discussion generally surrounds the quant-friendly nuances of how the statistics of the game can be collected, analyzed and adjusted to provide the closest numerical representation of the truth. What are the limitations of Player Efficiency Rating? How valid is adjusted plus-minus? Can any of these advanced numbers ever really show us an objective reality or are they all too biased by the contextual roles that players have within their unique roles on their teams?

These are all fine debates and ones that will continue to rage on throughout every corner of the Dorkapalooza community.

What is most relevant to NBA fans today, however, is how front offices across the league are using these numbers to make decisions in a practical sense. Some of these answers became clearer on Saturday as Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard and Celtics Assistant GM Mike Zarren gathered to speak on a panel alongside two of the NBA’s statistical pioneers, Dean Oliver, who works with the Nuggets, and John Hollinger, who we all know from ESPN.

How do team execs really use the numbers?

“Depends on the time of year,” said Pritchard, noting that different stats mean different things depending on whether he is thinking about the trade deadline, the draft or optimizing lineups to match up with an opponent in a seven-game series. “Overall, it’s on the personnel side.”

Trade and free agency decisions are increasingly being made with more statistical information, and Oliver broke down how widespread this is all becoming and stated that he knows of eight teams that have actually integrated advanced analytics into their decision-making (Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, Orlando and Portland). In all, he says that he saw 14 different teams with personnel on the attendee list for Sloan Conference this year — and knew of two other assistant GMs who were not listed. Kevin Pelton also broke down which statisticians are now working in the league, in the process, revealing that he is now consulting with Indiana.

Cuban has been bullish on gathering data since he first bought the team, and early on began consulting with noted statistician Wayne Winston, who he had as a professor for a statistics course while attending Indiana University and had lost touch with until he got to the NBA. “I hadn’t seen him until three weeks before I bought the team. I saw him on Jeopardy, and thought, ‘Hey, I should give that guy a call.’”

In his early days, he admittedly made some mistakes. At least twice during the day, Cuban mentioned Evan Eschmeyer as a guy who he overvalued — and badly overpaid — based largely on some plus-minus data that, in retrospect, he realizes was based on too small of a sample size to translate to the future.

That was something Cuban learned from, but it didn’t deter his reliance on plus-minus, which he not only used recently to make a perhaps sea-changing trade for the Western Conference, but to help decide to hire Rick Carlisle before the 2008-09 season. He ran the numbers, and found that Carlisle was the NBA coach who had the greatest positive affect on the plus-minus rankings of those players who joined new teams. “It was Rick by a long shot,” said Cuban earlier in the day.

A big challenge to all this, however, is just gathering the data. “[Only] 20% or maybe a quarter of defense shows up in a box score,” said Hollinger. Steals, blocks and personal fouls are there, but what happens on all the other plays is not. Who forced a shooter to miss? Who blew a rotation? The box score will never tell you that.

“The box score is an incomplete story,” said Pritchard. “And more than that, it can be misleading.”

Still, unless you have the time to watch, chart and analyze every play qualitatively, the numbers — many of which can now be instantaneously collected automatically from play-by-play data — provide an invaluable base level of evidence on which to make better decisions. Oliver summed it up perfectly. “Individuals see a game better than the numbers,” he said. “But the numbers see all the games.”

Cuban and Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who run the Sloan Conference in partnership with MIT, have devoted a ton of money and organizational resources to mining all the games to find the data that goes beyond the box score. But they have both expressed their desire to see more of this being done by the league.

“Evaluating players, you have to do a lot more work and that’s what’s frustrating to us,” said Cuban. “You have to have someone charting every play. And there is no more inefficient use of someone’s time.”

Zarren understands the frustration and knows that Boston and the other major teams embracing data mining are probably wasting resources just to come up with the same data that other teams are unveiling. “There has to be a lot of duplication of work going on.”

Some have suggested that if the league — or some third party provider — does the work and makes it available to all the teams, it would take away some of the competitive edge for those on the cutting-edge. Cuban doesn’t seem worried about that and feels like it is what you do with the general data that really matters.  “We all have our own special sauce,” he said. “We’re only talking about the data gathering … All of the teams are going to catch on, we may as well nip it in the bud.”

Hollinger, whose PER metric is all-too-often proselytized as a Holy Grail player ranking despite his insistence that that is not its utility, similarly seems to believe that most advanced numbers are more important within the context of individual front offices than they are when used as some monolithic, numerical judge of every player in the league. He says that he “wouldn’t want to pick the All-Star teams” based on league-wide advanced statistical measures alone, but, within the operating philosophy of each front office, almost all of these numbers — when put into proper context — can be used to help make better decisions.

Getting the numbers from the stat heads to the people coaching the team is the next hurdle.  “As important as the work you do is how you communicate it,” said Zarren. In Boston, it took him and Doc Rivers a while to understand each other and the vocabulary barrier is something that will always be difficult to overcome.

Dean Oliver has had similar experiences working with the Nuggets, but has learned a lot in his time there and the whole organization has continued to improve its ability to talk the same language. “These communication skills are not trivial,” he said. “And improving these skill may be more important than improving how you calculate adjusted plus-minus.”

Once everyone is one the same page, teams can start seeing some real results. Coaches can tailor their systems to the overall organizational philosophy and get the players to do those things they were brought in by the GMs to do. And while a guy like Shane Battier has famously embraced this from the player side, a lot of this stuff can stop with the coaches. It may not be necessary to have the players in on the math.

“It’s really important for the coaches to design schemes around the data,” said Zarren. “But it’s not important for the players to know everything that went into designing it.”

The goal should be to integrate the analysis into the overall coaching philosophy, but for many players — some of which can’t even remember the plays they are supposed to run — advanced stats are not something that can be used to change the way they play.

“We had Gerald Green,” said Cuban, with a glance over towards Zarren. “You had Green. He does stuff [athletically] that makes you say ‘Oh my God!’ … He just doesn’t understand the game of basketball.”

Offering further evidence of the difficulty in putting any of this into the players hands, Cuban talked about the logistical problems presented by the arduous schedule of the NBA season. “We haven’t had a practice since the trade,” he said in reference to the deal that brought Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood to the Mavs.

“We’ve had two since then,” said Zarren.

But while the numbers are not something Cuban will be using immediately to help Haywood play better individual defense as the Mavs make a run at an NBA title, they are a big reason he is now in Dallas. “Defensive numbers absolutely had a large part in the trade for Brendan Haywood,” he said. “And we wouldn’t have done the trade without him.”

Still, when it comes to the actual game, there is a lot that this can do.

Much to the chagrin of Cuban, Pritchard recounted a late-game play between his Blazers and Cuban’s Mavs in an earlier match up this year that showed how these things can affect the games on a day-to-day basis. With Portland needing a big hoop with seconds left, Juwan Howard hit a 15-footer that sealed the win. Knowing Howard’s shooting percentages and tendencies from different locations on the floor, Cuban couldn’t believe that Juwan hit that shot. That was shot he never makes, and it was a shot Cuban would love to see Howard take all game long.

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

“He’s hit two,” said Pritchard.

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

(Giant hat tip to Kevin Arnovitz for some additional reporting.)

Brian Skinner’s presentation of his paper, “The price of anarchy in basketball,” at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference hits in two distinct ways:

• One hand hand, Skinner’s proposal is so dreadfully counter-intuitive on a conceptual level that it could make a lot of NBA fans turn up their noses.
• But on the other, that concept is such a deeply-seated part of sport as we know it, that any self-respecting follower of sports would be deemed foolish for turning a blind eye.

His work appropriately brings the contrast between macro and micro into broad daylight, but in a completely different way than many NBA fans are used to. The struggles to find balance on a basketball court typically occur in an effort to best determine the optimal method of achieving a common goal…assuming that there is a common goal. One guy may be playing for a contract, another just for the joy of scoring more than anyone else on the floor, one just because basketball is the only thing he’s ever been good at, and finally, there may actually be some players who want to win games. More realistically, their interests are some combination of those mentioned above, in the form of a veteran athlete drifting through the regular season almost out of habit, and shooting/scoring because that’s what he’s always done.

Somehow, someone has to take all of those intentions and all of the production, potential, and talent that comes along with it, and figure out the best possible way to win. It’s not an easy task, and the natural inclination is to break the incredibly complex, holistic game on the hardwood into its most basic components: Steve Nash is effective bringing the ball up the floor and running the offense, but Amar’e Stoudemire is probably not. Kobe Bryant is an excellent shooter, and D.J. Mbenga is not. Then, we can take all of these things, take into account all of the players on the floor and their relative strengths and weaknesses, and decide which conceivable outcome will give you the best possible chance of scoring points on a given possession. Our logic and reasoning processes tell us that choosing the option with the greatest probability for success is an easy call. Skinner tells us that your logic and reasoning could be completely off-base.

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

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

It’s also interesting to note that such an idea is pretty much in direct conflict with the love of excess when it comes to sports. We want a player to one day hold up a piece of paper reading “101″ in a locker room, to waltz into Madison Square Garden and drop 50, to average a triple-double for an entire season. America is a nation of decadence and sports are absolutely no exception. But the underlying mentality that drove guys like Michael Jordan or Larry Bird to greatness is, despite each player’s phenomenal success, not the best possible approach.

Think about that. It’s completely possible, supposing you buy Skinner’s basic argument, that Jordan and the Bulls underachieved. If they had achieved the perfect offensive balance — where Jordan may have stopped scoring well before the point which Skinner describes as something akin to the Nash equilibrium, in which a player’s likelihood of scoring is equivalent to that of his teammates scoring — the ’96 Bulls could very well have improved upon their 72-10 record. Or maybe that’s exactly what allowed that particular team (and all of Chicago’s championship teams, really) to excel compared to some of Jordan’s earlier campaigns.

When you think about it that way, it’s the same argument we’ve heard over and over again: Player X should shoot less for the benefit of the team. It’s disguised as “trusting their teammates” and, as Skinner noted, “keeping the defense honest,” but it’s probably as old as winning itself. Where this argument differs from others is the disregard of our micro-obsessed desire to dissect the game’s minutiae. We do possession breakdowns and pick apart the decision-making of every player on the court, but sometimes the view is so narrow that it obscures the bigger picture. Your best player getting a good shot isn’t always the best case scenario for an offense in the long-run…even if it’s LeBron James kicking it to an open Donyell Marshall in the corner.

But Skinner’s study, while deeply theoretical, lacking in obvious applications, and definitely limited and assuming in a lot of respects, represents a pretty interesting intersection that occurs at places like Sloan; new, innovative research confirms something that we already knew, but in such a way that offends even our modern sensibilities. That the Lakers could actually benefit from Kobe Bryant passing to Smush Parker? That the Nuggets could run a more efficient offense by having Chauncey Billups pass up a shot in favor of Joey Graham? It’s not always an easy fact to stomach, but the research shows, at least at a basic level, that those plays are so wrong that they’re right.

You can read Skinner’s paper in its entirety here.