Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

The Oklahoma City Thunder nearly have the best record in the NBA this season and they have the No. 1 offense. But that won’t stop the trade ideas coming in on how to make this team better.

Yesterday, it was suggested by Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman that the Thunder attempt to trade for Minnesota Timberwolves point guard J.J. Barea.

Barea is averaging 10.7 points and 4.4 assists in 23.4 minutes per game this season. He’s shooting 40.6 percent from the field and 32.9 percent from beyond the arc. Those numbers are all slightly down from the production he has given the past few seasons.

Right now, the Thunder are going with second-year guard Reggie Jackson as Russell Westbrook’s backup. OKC began the season using Eric Maynor in the role but because of Jackson’s defensive ability, he has gotten the nod of late.

Jackson has shown improvement from a season ago but he’s not exactly killing it either. The Thunder second unit has also had some games recently in which they can’t buy a basket, that is whenever Kevin Martin can’t find the range.

Barea is someone who can create for himself and others in a pretty unique way in this league. He is an odd matchup being so short and stocky and able to still get to the rim in a variety of ways.

Just about any team could use a player like this. The question is though: how bad could the Thunder use him?

Barea would certainly help the Thunder score more off the bench. That is for certain. Defensively, OKC may dip a little using Barea instead of Jackson but it wouldn’t be anything too dramatic.

There could even be instances where you could envision Barea closing out games next to Westbrook, Sefolosha, Durant and Ibaka.

Barea has a history of playing very well against the Thunder. This always makes a team take a closer look at a guy when they traditionally get torched by him. And everyone remembers Barea killing the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals.

Barea signed a 4-year, $18 million contract with the Timberwolves back in Dec. 2011. He’s making around $4.5 million per season the next two years.

It wouldn’t be too easy for the Thunder to trade for Barea. OKC wouldn’t want to give up Sefolosha or Collison in a deal and would definitely involve Eric Maynor.

The Thunder could package Maynor and Jeremy Lamb for Barea and Chase Budinger. The best trade would be OKC dealing Maynor and Kendrick Perkins and picks for Barea and Derrick Williams but something like that would be super unlikely.

The other big issue is whether the Thunder would want to pay Barea around $4.5 million through 2014-15. Probably not.

Barea could definitely help the Thunder out. But for what OKC would have to give up, it just doesn’t seem like this could be a real possibility.

Jesse Johnson-US PRESSWIRE

Kevin Durant scored 20 points in the fourth quarter and finished with 43 points to help the Oklahoma City Thunder over the Minnesota Timberwolves 115-110 Saturday night.

Durant was unguardable in the final period playing all of it after coming out of the third quarter with 8:30 to play. Russell Westbrook finished the game with 35 points to go with eight assists.

The duo of Durant and Westbrook literally took turns tonight with Durant scoring 20 in the fourth and Westbrook scoring 16 in the third.

The Thunder needed all of this scoring from the top scoring pair in the NBA winning by just five despite no Kevin Love for the Timberwolves.

In Love’s absence Michael Beasley and Anthony Randolph stepped up. Beasley scored 26 off the bench and Randolph 22. J.J. Barea carried the load for Minnesota in the first half and finished the game with 24 points and 10 assists.

It was a game that felt like the Thunder could have let slip away if they weren’t so superior in terms of talent with their top two guns. Durant and Westbrook combined 27-for-48 from the field, 6-of-10 from deep and 18-for-22 at the line.

James Harden after missing last night essentially missed tonight as well going 1-of-11 from the floor and 0-for-8 from three. He scored just six points in the game looking the worst he has all season, unaggressive early and seemingly just going through the motions for a lot of the night.

Without Love on the floor, Oklahoma City outrebounded the Timberwolves 53-39 and the Thunder pulled down 17 offensive boards.

Defense was really optional tonight and the game finished with one of the more interesting matchups of the season: Anthony Randolph guarding Russell Westbrook for the final three minutes or so of the game. The Thunder didn’t really go to Westbrook at this point with Durant rolling but Westbrook did try and drive on Randolph once only to see Randolph repel perfectly in position to take the charge.

It was that kind of game and a fun game but that’s what we expect when these two teams get together.

The Thunder (44-16) will play at the Clippers (37-23) for their next game Monday night in what will be the second game in their five-game road trip.

Richard Rowe-US PRESSWIRE

The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 149-140 in double overtime in what might have been the best game in the NBA this season.

The Thunder won despite a career-high and franchise record 51 points from Kevin Love to go along with 14 rebounds and the game-tying three-point shot with 1.0 second left in regulation to send the game into its first overtime.

Oklahoma City got a career-high of 45 points out of Russell Westbrook and 40 points from Kevin Durant who also pulled down 17 rebounds in 52 minutes of action.

Durant dueled from deep with Love at the end of regulation and the first overtime. Before Love’s game-tying trey with a second left in regulation, Durant drilled a stepback bomb from straight away 25-feet to put the Thunder ahead 116-113.

The Thunder trailed by five with 46 seconds left of the first overtime following a breakaway dunk by Anthony Tolliver. Westbrook scored on a runner with 36 seconds left to cut the deficit to 129-126. Then Durant provided perfect pick-and-roll help defense on Love in the paint forcing a traveling violation.

With 10 seconds left, James Harden found Durant in the right corner for the game-tying three to send this game into another overtime.

It was all Thunder in the second overtime, outscoring Minnesota 20-11 with Westbrook leading the way. Russell refused to fatigue scoring nine points in the final overtime and everything coming from strong drives to the rim.

Richard Rowe-US PRESSWIRE

Down the stretch, Scott Brooks elected to go with Derek Fisher and Nick Collison alongside Durant-Westbrook-Harden. Fisher couldn’t buy a basket and was 2-for-11 from the floor and 1-for-5 on threes in the game. Collison plays hard but every now and then you can’t help but notice his undersized frame costing the Thunder on the 50-50 rebounds they easily consume via Serge Ibaka.

In the final overtime, the Thunder offense ran through Harden and executed with the same poetic feel that Harden brings to the floor every night. Harden put together a great all-around game tonight scoring 25 points to go with six rebounds and six assists.

It should be mentioned that in Ricky Rubio’s absence the Minnesota Timberwolves called upon 47 minutes of J.J. Barea tonight and he came through with his first career triple-double notching 25 points, 14 assists and 10 boards.

The Thunder have yielded many great box scores this regular season. It is yet to be decided if this is a good thing or not. One thing is certain and that is that the Thunder are the most exciting team in basketball this year.

Oklahoma City (36-12) is off tomorrow and then will square off in possibly their toughest test yet hosting the Miami Heat (35-11) Sunday night.

Matthew Emmons-US PRESSWIRE

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. The conference was founded in 2006 and is co-chaired by Houston Rockets GM and MIT alum Daryl Morey and Jessica Gelman.

The conference is basically the most sports nerds ever gathered in one place during the year listening to panels and presentations on all of the cutting edge analytics in sports today.

This year the Godfather of sports analytics, Bill James, was in attendance. Baseball was really the first sport to delve into statistics and use analytics at the professional level and was most recently featured in the movie Moneyball.

Basketball is on the rise in this department. Basketball is different than baseball in that it is less measureable because there is less one-on-one competition in the games. Plus-minus is a useful stat for a player but there are 10 players on the court at once.

At the conference there were probably more presentations on basketball than any other sport. The big moment of basketball analytics that kept being brought up was the Dallas coaching staff’s decision to start J.J. Barea in the final two games of the NBA Finals versus the Heat last season.

The decision was largely influenced by analytics determining Barea’s effectiveness while on the floor with certain players and what Dallas’ offense was missing at the start of games (penetration mostly).

Right now in terms of basketball analytics were at a stage where there is a lot of data and much less information on how to best implement and interpret the data. We can see what percentage a player shoots at every exact location on the floor but how useful is that information and how do you use it to your advantage.

“A lot of analytics is just noise,” says Dean Oliver, ESPN’s Director of Production Analytics.

A big consensus from many of the panelists was just that. A lot of times analytics were just confirming what already was thought about something. And analytics aren’t going to turn the Charlotte Bobcats in an NBA Finals team either. Sometimes the effect they have can be very small.

“I asked Daryl [Morey] if we shot two-for-one every time how many wins would that translate into,” Jeff Van Gundy said. “He said about one every two years.”

Relaying the information and translating it into coaching is another thing. Van Gundy, who is very skeptical and not that into analytics, often was making remarks about how some things you just can’t tell players because you don’t want them over-thinking during games.

Gary A. Vasquez-US PRESSWIRE

Jackie MacMullan mentioned coming across a stat depicting Kevin Durant’s shooting percentage based on how many dribbles he took. He shot 55 percent when he took no dribbles, 58 percent with 1-to-2 dribbles, 39 percent with 3-to-4 dribbles and 40 percent with 5-plus dribbles.

“I wouldn’t tell a guy you’re 39 percent on 3-to-4 dribbles so dribble the fifth time to go up to 40,” Van Gundy joked.

It also depends on the player. Van Gundy said there are things you can tell Shane Battier and you know he will understand you but that’s not the case for every player in the league.

“Coaches might have 20 things they want to implement in practice that they believe will help win,” Mike Zarren, Assistant General Manager of the Boston Celtics said. “You can only focus on six in practice and the players might remember four of those things and execute one in the game.”

It almost sounds hard to believe something like that. But especially during this condensed season when the players have almost no time for practice, scouting in this way can be very tough.

I go back to Tyreke Evans and how successful he was in his rookie season in the NBA. One of the things about Evans when watching the games was that you knew he would always go to his right hand to finish, always. It was amazing to see players not adjust to this. Then I heard how sometimes it can take an entire year before scouting reports come out on a player and are implemented in games

Gary A. Vasquez-US PRESSWIRE

A popular area that basketball analytics cover is crunch time stats. We all know how Kobe Bryant has made the most game-winning shots of any current player in his career but he also takes the most.

“There’s no accepted definition of what crunch time is,” ESPN columnist John Hollinger said. “There’s so little data over one season that random noise is going to blow away anything you can determine as an actual skill. You really need to look at multi-year data to have anything even remotely convincing as far as making conclusions especially predictive conclusions.”

It’s also tough even to do that because players aren’t the same for their whole careers. They’re not robots and that seems to be sometimes overlooked in a way with these analytics.

“Guys aren’t static either,” Zarren said. “You become a better player over time.”

The game also changes during crunch time as there are less transition opportunities and defenses are usually set resulting in a lot of isolation offense.

“It’s not who elevates their game when the game is on the line it much more of who Wilt’s,” Zarren said. “The first thing you want to look at is the team. If the team is always good in those situations then there’s probably someone on the team that’s doing something worthwhile.”

One thing everyone can agree on is that the playoffs — when there are fewer games per week and you can prepare for one team at a time — analytics can become the most impactful.

We saw it last year with the Mavericks and we’ll probably see it again this year with someone. Every team has analytics. It really just comes down to who knows how to use it.

Analytics might make an impact on one or two plays throughout the course of a series and that doesn’t seem like much but remember that the Miami Heat were just two plays away from sweeping the Dallas Mavericks last year.