William M. Briggs shows you how. This is abundantly applicable to basketball stats.

Click on the headline to read.

From the Wall Street Journal: the Nets hire a stats guy with a background in Wall Street.

GSW's Jeremy Lin and his unusual path to the NBA.

Other nominees included Andre Ethier, Matt Barkley, Anze Kopitar and Torii Hunter.

Once again, I toot my own horn: I write about the nature of genius, and whether or not it can be applied to athletes as well as scholars or artists. As I'm a basketball fan, unsurprisingly, I conclude that it can. (As an aside, although I don't come out and say it in this blogpost, I think that Magic is a basketball genius.)

Pretty soon, I hope to finish writing a post for SSR about superstars and statistics, and how the two aren't as related as many think. You know you want to read it. :)

At our sister blog Rufus on Fire.

Maybe it's because he's in the Phillipines, or maybe he's just a free talker, but Gary Payton doesn't mince words when comparing Kobe and Dwyane Wade in talking about the expectations on the Heat this season:

"I’ve played with Dwyane and it’s no knock on him but if you compare him with Kobe (Bryant), there’s a big difference in their work ethic. I played with Kobe, too, and he’d be more from my era. Kobe knows how to be humble. If Kobe loses a game, you’ll see him the next day in the gym, working extra hard to make sure he’ll be better. I don’t know if it’s the same with Dwyane. They’re both great players but Dwyane is more the show type..."

It's a bit strange coming from Payton, since DWade delivered him his only ring, but hey, the truth is da truth!

Click on the headline for the full article

Of course, the Lakers would win an "All-Time Greats" series against the Celtics...