Mike DiNovo-US PRESSWIRE

The first major trade before the 2012 NBA Draft has occurred involving the Houston Rockets and the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Rockets traded Chase Budinger to Minnesota in exchange for the 18th pick in the first round as first reporter by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.

The Rockets now have the 14th, 16th and 18th picks in the first round and it is clear that they are trying to pull off a package that could land them Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard.

The Timberwolves are past stockpiling first round draft choices as just about every player on their roster feels like they were selected in the lottery within the past five seasons. Budinger is a nice piece for them to build around Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio.

Shortly after this trade was completed, Houston offered the Sacramento Kings Kyle Lowry, the 14th pick and the 16th pick for Tyreke Evans and the 5th pick in the draft.

The plan here is for Houston to have a package consisting of Evans, Kevin Martin, the 5th pick and the 18th pick to send to Orlando for Howard.

Houston is doing everything possible to get Howard even though it has been reported that Howard is not interested in resigning with Houston after the 2012-13 season.

The Rockets and their savvy GM Daryl Morey are confident in themselves and what they have in Houston that they will be able to convince Howard to stay after a season with the team.

Richard Rowe-US PRESSWIRE

Oklahoma City Thunder (1-game winning streak)
107.2 Offensive Efficiency (2nd)
99.7 Defensive Efficiency (9th)
95.7 Pace (6th)
56.7 True Shooting % (1st)
51.6 Rebound Rate (3rd)

Sacramento Kings (1-game losing streak)
100.3 Offensive Efficiency (22nd)
107.1 Defensive Efficiency (29th)
97.3 Pace (1st)
50.8 True Shooting % (27th)
48.8 Rebound Rate (24th)

The Thunder have put themselves into a position where they need to win just about every game here on out to capture the one-seed in the Western Conference. They have four games left and two are against the Kings.

The Thunder beat Sacramento last week 115-89 pretty easily. Kevin Durant scored 29 points in that game and Russell Westbrook 22. The starters weren’t needed in the fourth quarter.

Turnovers were a problem for the Thunder the first time they played the Kings this season but they did a good job last game with only 14.

The Kings are pretty much in tank mode the rest of this season but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a huge night from DeMarcus Cousins or Tyreke Evans and make this one close.

James Harden broke out of his semi-slump in the Thunder’s last game against Phoenix as he scored a career-high 40 points on just 17 shots. The Thunder are going to need Harden playing at a high level with the playoffs right around the corner.

Westbrook has still been struggling though shooting 10-for-32 in his last two games but he has a good chance tonight to get back on track as he is shooting nearly 57 percent against the Kings this season.

The other story line would be Durant and his chase of LeBron James for the MVP award. Durant has put up big numbers against the Kings in the past and a 40- or 50-point game tonight would give Durant a much needed boost in the MVP race.

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.

Kyle Terada-US PRESSWIRE

There was something about this game that made it seem like it was always about the Kings. It would be the only nationally televised game for Sacramento this season and they took advantage of it, beating the team with the NBA’s best record 106-101.

Even when the Thunder were leading in the second half, the night was just always about Sacramento. Kings legend Chris Webber was announcing the game for TNT and received a standing ovation from the crowd at one point. The play-by-play talk centered mostly around how the Kings are trying to become the next Oklahoma City.

The Thunder still shot themselves in the foot dropping this one. They turned the ball over 23 times and gave up 17 offensive rebounds.

It was a total team effort by the least looking “team” in the NBA. Tyreke Evans led the way with 22 points while DeMarcus Cousins added 19 points and nine rebounds (four offensive).

The Thunder got good games from Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook but only two points from players on their bench not named James Harden.

Westbrook led the team with 33 points (16 in the third) but also had seven turnovers. Durant scored 27 and Harden added 17 (14 in the first half).
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Soobum IM-US PRESSWIRE

Thunder (2-game winning streak)
105.6 Offensive Efficiency (3rd)
99.9 Defensive Efficiency (15th)
95.8 Pace (5th)

Kings (1-game losing streak)
95.5 Offensive Efficiency (26th)
104.8 Defensive Efficiency (27th)
95.7 Pace (7th)

This will be the first meeting of four between the Thunder and Kings this season. The Kings are a mess this season while the Thunder have the best record in the league. The Thunder have had to go down to the wire in their last two games on the road at Portland and at Golden State. The Thunder pulled out the victory each time with some good fortune. This game will be on national television on TNT tonight but there’s really no reason for the Kings to compete with Oklahoma City. The Thunder should be able to win this one easily and not have to play their stars too many minutes so that they can be rested for Utah Friday night.
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